Category Archives: Tournament

Tech and Magic

magic, netrunner, Tournament

Yesterday six people with nothing better to do than play a few games of the rather excellent asynchronous living card game Android Netrunner gathered at The Hobbit Hole to compete for the Summer game night kits main prize of some plastic tokens. 

Match 1 Phil 2 – 0

The cards were really against me in this first match up. 

Take for example our second game when I was the corp. Two back to back runs on R&D hits three agendas for the win. Well that is the danger of the high value agendas. Up until that disasterous moment I thought everything was going to plan!

Phil does take part in a lot of the organised play like regionals etc. He also is an Ashes player. So that makes four I know in the area. That almost makes a local meta if we all managed to play together! Sadly we are dispersed a little over the area. So will need to work on how we can get together.

Match 2 Kar-Fai 1 – 1

Two runner wins this time. Kar-Fai is fantastic at deck building. He proves you don’t need every card going to be competitive. With core sets, a deluxe set I believe he builds very strong decks. His deck building and playing skills beat mine hands down.

Match 3 Jamie 1 – 1

At last facing off against Jamie. We managed not to play against each other in the last tourney.

I was confused a bit initially by Jamie’s tactics during our plays. For instance he happily took tags against my NBN deck! 

Which has in other games been an issue. Because most now know to avoid that with my deck, because that then allows me to start messin with the runner and eventually scorch earth them.

Which is exactly how I killed Jamie for the win.

Jamies Jinteki deck is very punishing. Making runs and scoring triggers damage of some kind. He leaves servers open, plays lots of little agendas, daring you to run and score. Black mail allowed me to hit servers easily, and with Same Old Thing and Deja Vu made it seem like I had more than two copies.

But then Jamie returned the favour killing my runner!

Two corp wins for the record.

Finished joint 4th with Jamie

Phil was the winner. So being beat comprehensively by the winner of the comp wasn’t too bad.

Final thoughts…

There was definitely a bias towards Jinteki and Shaper decks this time round. A lot of fun was had. Sadly the next tourney will be in the new year. Once Esdevium manage to get their act together and send the kits out.

So while waiting for the Netrunner tourney to start yesterday I caved and joined the new Magic the Gathering league that’s started up at The Hobbit Hole. 

Yes I know I’m an ultra ultra casual Magic player. Mainly playing the duel decks, I have a green/black deck I built. Which I played once, but the deck I think isn’t currently legal for standard, but might be for modern.

So why have I entered a league? Have a look at the rules below. As the way it’s been setup, it’s ideal for new players, and ultra ultra casual players like me.

You buy three boosters and construct a deck of thirty cards from them. It means I don’t have to have a large collection of Magic cards, or have been buying lots of the latest set to take part and stand a chance of doing well. It eliminates that how deep is your pocket element.


In my three packs I got one shiny and a Planeswalker. The Planeswalker according to Chris (a much much more experienced Magic player than me) in this format is potentially a very powerful card to have in a deck. 


Looking at the Planeswalker if she is going to be in my deck then she has made my deck a blue/red which after a quick Google is known as Izzet. 

Luckily with this colour combination I have enough cards to make up the suggested numbers from above. How well it plays is another thing.  

Now all I need to do is get along to the store and play some games!

This Is Saturday…

Ashes, Game day, imperial assault, Tournament

Saturday mornings growing up meant watching Swap Shop and/or Tiswas. 


I have to admit along with almost every teenage boy and adult male Sally James was the fantasy woman to dream about.

Adult me know spends his Saturdays now and again playing board games. 

This Saturday was one of this occasions.

My FLGS The Hobbit Hole was running an Imperial Assault Summer 2016 game kit.

I haven’t played Imperial Assault for a year and a half, and then it was a learning skirmish game!

So as you can see I was in great shape for a tourney. I’d thrown together a Jedi team to play with, could hardly remember how to play. The omens were good.

I was up against two regular players who “toured” the local game shops playing these tournaments. So yeah they were experienced. Whilst the third was the brother of one of them and had been playing for two days. Two days of intense training I think.

As you can imagine out of three games I won precisely zero. In my first two games I did score some points by eliminating a unit or two. 

But the cursed reinforcements command card stopped me scoring any points in my last game. 

It was evident especially in the last game being familiar with the scenarios, their objectives and tactics, was a big advantage.

So the most predictable result happened I was fourth, or last as it’s officially known in a four player tourney.

It was then onto Cambridge and meeting up with Scott to collect the two latest Phoenixborn, and play a game or two of Ashes.

I’d been lazy about what deck to play and build against Scott when I hit on the genius idea mid week of using one of the new Phoenixborn and the deck that comes with them.

Victoria Glassfire was the one I chose. Boy did I enjoy playing her. I loved some of the new cards. The art as usual is out of this world.

Scott won our first game whilst I was getting to grips on how to play Victoria.

But our second game was a different story, especially after I tweaked the starting five by swapping out one card. 

I’m still sure there was a more optimal way to play Victoria but I’ll take the win.

I think despite no Sally James teenage me would have enjoyed spending his Saturday this way.