Monthly Archives: September 2017

Attending my first MtG prerelease event – Ixalan 

magic, MtG

Earlier today I went to my first ever MtG prerelease event at my FLGS The Hobbit Hole. 

I’d liked to report that I had a great time playing MtG with all the new cards I got. But sadly that was not the case because I had to leave before I could play a game.

I’ve not had hot water since Tuesday. So when a family member is coming round to sort out my hot water, it’s proper I should be there. Unfortunately I won’t know until tomorrow morning if it has been fixed, because my water heater comes on over night.

Which means my experience of the prerelease was less than perfect. Naturally I got the prerelease kit. I even had time to build a 40 card deck (I went with a blue/green or simic, built around my Legendary creature, so most of my creatures were merfolk). I even sleeved my deck! But sadly that was all I got to do. 


The cost of attending the prerelease event was £22 for prebooking or £25 on the day. I’ve looked at the economics and value for money previously. But that was for a couple of prerelease kits I’d bought online. Which were slightly cheaper. If you prebooked then you break even, the value of the contents of the prerelease kit equals the cost of the event plus whatever value you put on the promo card you get, you might consider it slightly ahead of the game. If you paid on the day on the other hand then you are £3 down. Is that promo card worth £3?

When you factor in extra booster packs for playing games or participating, then the value for money starts to become really obvious. 

Here are the pulls from my six prerelease kit packs and the participation pack.



  • 1 foil
  • 1 Planeswalker 
  • 1 Legendary creature

Not a bad haul. But it’s the Legendary I’m really happy about, it’s one of the ones I want from this set.

Hopefully the next one will see the planets align better for me.

Destiny Dice Storage Solution 

Destiny, star wars

One of the biggest problems for Star Wars:Destiny players is how to store your dice.

With the three sets, two starter sets, 2 player starter the dice mount up fast.

At the weekend the discussion about storage solutions once again popped up on the UK Destiny Facebook page I follow. I skim these posts now and again to see if there is a solution I like. The tool box/tackle box idea I found interesting. But I’ve solved my card storage issue a while back. I went the folder and the special card holding pages you can get.

In this discussion Feldherr was mentioned, but so was Just Lasered. Yes a foam tray looked like the solution I’d been waiting for. So naturally I went with the “cheaper” UK based company.

I went for the 13mm deep tray. I wanted the dice to be easy to get out when needed, and the maximum size they did of 370mm by 275mm. Which I was told would hold 96 dice. I went with 6 trays to give me a total capacity of 576 dice. This also meant the trays were slightly cheaper also. I went with this size of tray because if I put them in a box to transport I’ll be using a KR storage solution. Mainly because I have a KR rucksack that I got a few years back now.

So what’s my opinion of these foam trays? I like them. I like the fact with the 13mm the dice are really easy to take out. The dice fit really snugly, there is no movement at all.

The page for the foam trays says the following “Foam tray up to 370 x 275 with 2mm MDF support.” I’m not sure where the 2mm MDF support is. I can’t see or detect any MDF. But 2mm is pretty thin. So would I?

Naturally with the foam topper in place there is a gap around the edges with the 13mm. Which isn’t an issue for me. The ease of access to the dice easily out weighs this point. Plus I’m going to be storing these at home for a good 99% of the time. At some point I will get the KR box to use with them.

I’m glad I got these for organising my Destiny dice they needed a solution. The game has gone passed that point where you can take everything with you and make decks up on the fly. It’s getting to that point where you will take two or three decks and that’s it. With maybe the odd card that you want to maybe try and see how it does.

You can visit Just Lasered by clicking their name.

Back to basics

game night

Last night at Fenrock, Justin,Chris, David, Liz and myself stepped back to an alternate 1920’s Europa, where mechs exist in my favourite game of all time, Scythe.

I was playing my favourite faction of the game, Rusviet. Tigers are cool. But cooler still is the Rusviet power of being able to abuse actions by continuously being able to repeat the same action over and over. Justin was Nordic, Chris was Crimea, David was Saxony and Liz played Polania.

For this gaming session we played with Justin’s copy of the game. Which was a brand new copy. So new in fact that he had not punched the tokens out, cards were still sealed. Yep not played. A virgin copy so to speak. If I had known when asked earlier by Justin whose copy we would use I would have said my pimped out copy. I don’t think until last night I had played a store copy of the game. All my plays have been with my Kickstarter, promo ladden, pimped out copy. This was going to be a weird experience!

David and Liz had not played Scythe before, and this was my first time meeting them also. So after setting up the game, I went through the rules, leaving out combat until we had some in the game. I also talked David and Liz through what they should be trying to do in their first couple of turns based on their factions and to enable them to get pass the river and start claiming territory for their faction.

David got the hang of taking a turn pretty quickly. While Liz took a little longer. But considering this was Liz’s first modern hobby game (probably) she picked up Scythe really quickly. You look at Scythe and think “OMG! this looks complicated”, and yes there is a lot of pieces to the game. Then you start explaining the game, and it seems so overwhelming. But once they start playing, and have taken a handful of turns, the simple action selection soon clicks.

Naturally I was the first to the factory. I think in all the games I played, this was the worst selection of factory cards to chose from. I didn’t really like any of them. But went for one that I paid two money, got to do an upgrade, and gained a popularity. Those cards were not really friendly to my factions ability. I wanted a card I could just sit on, abuse to pieces until it no longer was any use.

I gained my two combat victories early on. But that backed fired in the later half of the game when I was easy prey for Chris and Justin (who were either side of me) who were able to get revenge for my early aggression. Which basically kicked my back into my starting territories and a couple of crumbs tucked away in the corner of the board.

Some how David managed to not get much done, and only producing on one territory, which also had his commander and mechs on it. It was very very crowded.

The last third of the game Justin was claiming lots of territory. I felt it was my duty to point this out to the others, and try and get them to do what I didn’t have the resources to do, clip his wings and kick him out of some of his spots. Luckily David and Liz took the warning and attacked Justin.

I triggered the end game by getting out all my workers. I had no idea who was going to win. I was sure it wouldn’t be me. After the finally scoring, it seemed Chris and Liz may have tied. But after a double recount, Liz had won by a single point. Justin was third, and he might have got first if David and Liz hadn’t had heeded my warning. David and I were far far behind the others on the scoring.

Justin, the first thing you need to do with your copy of Scythe… get the metal coins.

But a fun evening playing my favourite game with some pretty cool people. Hope they invite me again.

bgg store september update

Uncategorized

Since hearing that the promos for The 7th Continent and Mint Works were going to be available on the bgg store in September I have been checking the store on a regular basis. And by regular I mean daily, and possibly more than once in that 24 hour period.

Yes that might be obsessive and sad. I can see that argument.

However The 7th Continent promo was only available at GenCon at the bgg stand. As you can imagine I wasn’t overly happy about that. And I wasn’t the only one unhappy with that either. Us Kickstarter backers can be a bit moany sometimes. I kinda calmed down when the publisher said that any surplus would be available from the bgg store.

According to the bgg store this promo is five new cards.

The promo for Mint Works I first heard about from Shiny Happy Meeples aka Lindsay. Lindsay does these great previews and reviews, so naturally the publisher/designer of Mint Works wants her to cover his games. So when Lindsay mentioned she had used the promo in her games I like many wanted to know what promo? How do I get that promo? You know the usual stuff.

It turned out that the promo was going to be available through the upcoming (at the time) kickstarter for the follow up game Mint Delivery. However you would have to wait for the delivery of the kickstarter to get the promo. That’s next year. Luckily the publisher/designer thought of the impatient people like me and has made the promo available through, yep you guessed it the bgg store.

This promo apparently adds the following:

  • two new advanced locations
  • a solo AI opponent
  • new co-op AI opponent with rules for co-op play
  • six red mints worth 5 mints each

Yesterday the store finally got updated with the new promos, including the two I’ve been waiting for. And yes they may have accidentally fallen into the virtual shopping cart and some bits went from one place to another to show that I had paid them. So in approximately two weeks time, postal services allowing, they should be in my grubby mitts.

Now I have mine ordered I don’t mind telling you the rest of the world that they are available.

Empire at War Box 2

Destiny, star wars

Yep be afraid very afraid, 36 more rare and possibly legendary cards from the second booster box opened from the new Star Wars:Destiny set Empire at War.

Here is what I pulled in box 2…













Not a bad haul if I say so myself. 4 from my hit list of characters. Kanan is now playable as an elite. I think all the pulls from yesterday can now be played as elite characters. I also got two of the weapons/vehicles I wanted.

Although I think Ezra, and one or two of the others are too frequent in the packs.

I also got an Ancient Lightsaber that some-one on the Facebook trading/selling page wanted £30 for at the weekend!!!

Final post in this short boring series tomorrow.

Empire at War hits Whitespider1066 Towers

Destiny, first look, star wars

Finally the latest Star Wars:Destiny release Empire at War has hit the stores in the UK. It felt like an age after it’s release in the US last Thursday. It was so hard seeing all these Yanks opening all their new booster packs and the goodies inside over the weekend. There were also the odd release events at the weekend in the UK, where the chance to open some boosters also occurred (but we need a local scene to be able to get that happening).

It was looking like according to the weekly release sheet from the local Asmodee Borg Collective Esdevium that we would have to wait until the 21st to get our hands on the boosters. However my FLGS said the boosters were arriving early. TODAY!!!!

Thanks to Dale giving me a lift over to my FLGS during our lunch break I was able to pick up my pre-order.
My first three boosters opened, three yellow villain cards for the rares. Two characters and a weapon.
So I’ll save you from total boredom and just show you the rares and legendary cards/die that I pulled.

I’m happy I got the EMP grenade.



I was surprised by two of the following cards. I hadn’t heard anything about “Servant of the Dark Side” or “T-7 Ion Disruptor Rifle”. I’m curious to build a deck with “Servant of the Dark Side”, maybe pair him up with FN? That Ion Disruptor Rifle is insane, and has an insane cost to go with it. I think that 5 cost is the only thing stopping this going straight into a FN deck.


So we hit the first of my “hit list” of characters I wanted to pull with Kanan.

I even got a candidate for worst card in the set Chance Cube. Don’t think I will ever be playing this.

A strong finish on the rare/legendary pulls. I’m happy with these three. That “X-8 Night Sniper” is screaming Han/Rey to me.

So that’s the first booster box done and dusted. Reasonably happy with the pulls. I got “Roll On”, “Rend”, “Quick Escape” and “Thermal Paint” on the commons front. So I’m chuffed with those ones.

Right onto box two…

Ixalan Prerelease Weekend Incoming

magic, MtG

We are less than a week away from the prerelease weekend for the next MtG set Ixalan. 

(Image above taken from the Internet)

My local FLGS The Hobbit Hole is running several prerelease events over that weekend. The first is a midnight one on Friday night. I like Magic but not that much.   So I’ll be popping along for when the store opens at 10am on Saturday and seeing how tired John the store owner is. But you should be checking with your FLGS/LGS to find out what their plans are. 

This prerelease WotC are also trying to get players signed up for their latest digital version of MtG, Arena and its closed beta. However  signing up doesn’t guarantee you will be selected, but attending the prerelease will increase your chances apparently. I believe the encouragement will be via prerelease players being given a special treasure token (whilst stocks last, stores do not have an unlimited supply).

I think that’s it Magic wise for this blog until next weekend I’d imagine. Which might be a relief for some of you. Ok I might put up a reminder Thursday. But be warned it’s the Empire at War set for Star Wars:Destiny hitting stores in the UK this week. So I will be boring you with that during the week. 

Magic Saturday

magic, MtG

Yesterday was an epic day of playing Magic the Gathering (MtG).

It started off with attending the Ixalan Open House at my FLGS The Hobbit Hole. Sadly the Welcome Decks used for this by MtG were the Amonkhet ones. The only link to Ixalan was the full art foil Walk the Plank card you got for playing four games of Magic with the Welcome Decks. Which was a shame really. But I can see why that’s the case. It would undermine the prerelease abit, plus instead it would swamp the event with current FNM players wanting the early access to Ixalan cards. The focus of the Open House is to teach MtG to new players wanting to learn the game, bring back players that drifted away, not scare them off. 

Was it wise to hold the Open House the week before a prerelease? I could argue for or against this. I maybe wouldn’t have slapped Ixalan on the event. Mainly because I was expecting Ixalan cards in the Welcome Decks. So I was a little disappointed that the decks were Amonkhet based. But I’ve already discussed  why it is as it is. 

(Above image nicked off the Internet)

However the full art foil Walk the Plank card from Ixalan was cool. I felt I knew the card already though because of the Magic Arena game play videos I saw a week or so ago. 

How did I do playing my four games at the Open House? Attrocious is the most positive spin I can put on my games. In the end I was setting my target as getting my opponent to single digit life. I’m going to have to look back at the previous Open House event I went to. But I don’t think I’ve won a game with one of these Welcome Decks yet. 

This time I went with the Liliana Vess Welcome Deck, so black. Which means 30 cards were black, and the second colour WotC added to this blue. So 30 blue cards also, to make a 60 card deck. I believe this blue/black combo is also known as Dimir.

Despite my lack of wins I still had a fun time.

A Fat Pack Opening

At home I opened an Eldritch Moon Fat Pack. 

This comes with the following contents:

  • 9 Eldritch Moon boosters
  • A life counter die
  • 2 cardboard deck boxes 
  • Players guide with card encyclopaedia of cards for the set
  • 70 basic lands cards
  • The card box
  • 10 double faced card checklists


I’m not sure this Fat Pack is good value for money. With 9 boosters costing between £27 – £31.50 if bought separately. £2 for the spindown life die. Plus the two cardboard deck boxes, the card box, lands and checklists. Is this enough value added to justify getting this? I don’t think so. 

What did I pull from the 9 packs?

  • 3 Legendary creatures
  • 1 Planeswalker 

So not bad.

Fenland Games MtG League Day 3

The afternoon was spent playing in our MtG league.

Things started off just like the morning with me losing my first game. I had been hoping that I had got losing out of my system in the morning, obviously not.

I did win my next game against Justin. The card tweak my student made to my deck (yeah I’m not proud I had a student who plays Magic look over my deck and my sideboard in the week, they swapped two cards out) worked well. They replaced Cartouche of Zeal with Cartouche of Ambition. The life link was really handy. Things just went my way in this game.

But Justin got his revenge immediately in our next game when things did work so well. No Cartouche being drawn this time. Plus Justin got to finish me off with his “signature” play using Fling and sacrificing a creature that had been beefed up considerably to an 8 attack!

I then won my next game. Which was my last win of the day. I played one of the strongest decks in the league next. I got off to a blinding start. I Magma Sprayed away my opponents Slither Blade their main way to kill you off. It gets beefed up, made unblockable etc, and the slow drip drip death happens. So I was able to stop that before it started. A big win. My Cartouche was out, using the same one my opponent uses. 


It ended with my opponent winning. But only just it was close they were almost milled. One card left. Sadly I wasn’t able to hold on for one more turn. 

My next game was against Josh who somehow I hadn’t played against before! That’s shocking. But 

My final game of the afternoon was against Jamie. If I’d drawn a second mountain land sweltering suns would have wiped the board clean removing all of his creatures and allowing me to get the win. Sadly that didn’t happen and I lost. 

I will say my bonus pack for losing has potential. For starters a second Cartouche, and non-basic lands. The first ones I’ve pulled in the packs I’ve cracked open for the league. Yes I will be consulting my deck doctor in the week.

I think in 11 games in total today only one of them did I not mulligan. A couple of times I was down to a starting hand of five cards! Yeah that sums my days play. 

But despite an atrocious win record for the afternoon I had a great afternoon playing. 

Giving in to temptation

I knew that once I got home any unpurchased boosters would not remain unopened. So a weak willed me opened 17 booster packs when he got home. 

Here is the highlights of my pack opening:

  • 1 invocation 
  • 1 foil full art basic land
  • 1 foil creature
  • 1 Legendary creature
  • 5 full art basic lands

I’m not sure how I feel about this. On one hand I’m a bit disappointed but on the other I pulled an invocation! 

I’ve had a great day playing MtG. Looking forward to continuing the experience next weekend with the prerelease weekend.

I think my big win of the day though wasn’t Magic related. It was getting my car through its MOT without needing anything extra doing to it to get it passed.