All posts by Darren

False Summit! 

Destiny, Game day, game of thrones, star wars

Monday Dale and I met up at The White Lion to do combat using cards and dice playing Star Wars: Destiny. It’s been a couple of months since we’ve had a chance to play like this. Our timetables don’t really sync that much this year at work.


While waiting for Dale to turn up (which wasn’t long) I threw together an Elite Thrawn and Darth Vader Sith Apprentice Deck. 

Dale was playing the nasty combo of Elite Mace Windu and Jedi Instructor.
That Mace die is nasty. 

The day got off to such a great start with Thrawn/Vader getting me the win. Everything went to plan. Vader was doing damage with hate, I got to use Maces dice against him.

But it went to pot after that. For once when you want Dale to roll badly and get lots of blanks, he decides to roll well. Blanks were few and far apart.

I did tweak the deck a couple of times, which included swapping Vader for an elite Kylo. But still my arse got handed to me.

These weren’t quick games. One or two were nearly victories for me. In those games the dice really did love Dale.

I think both my combos with Thrawn have potential just need to sort the deck out. It needs more removal I think.

Still despite lots of losses I had a lot of fun. 

Oh last night FFG decided to finally release a rules update. It’s massive. FN,Unkar,Phasma (2 player version) and Poe get their point costs adjusted upwards in what FFG are calling Balance of the Force. It’s a bit like the Netrunner Most Wanted List. There are some card errata as well. The main one nerfs Vibroknife. And the overwriting of upgrades gets changed to dial back FN and Rey. But in Reys case it’s still possible to do a big action cheat with Force Speed and an Ambush weapon and her ability, but there are tools to at least stop it now. Overall not a bad update. You can read it here.

Yesterday also saw the Justin and Liz alliance once more in full swing as we played our first six player game of A Game of Thrones the boardgame. We played with the A Dance With Dragons expansion.

The expansion replaced the combat cards from the base game. These cards could be used in the base game all the time if I wanted to. It also had starting scenario cards for all the houses. 


I liked the expansion a lot. The new combat cards shake things up a little for those that have learnt the cards in the base game. Whilst the starting scenarios jump you more into the action, speeding the game up a little. The game also plays over 6 rounds with the highest score being the winner at the end of the 6th round if no-one has gained the 7 points before then. So it’s a shorter game too. Forcing people to be aggressive and grab those castles and strongholds. 

In our game it almost worked out that it was one side of the table/board against the other side. With puppet master Justin trying to manipulate the unholy alliance on his side to his benefit. Luckily the Tyrell’s were placed on the Iron Throne denying the axis of evil. My last round was spent attacking Liz (Starks) to cut down her points. Which would deny her a shot at victory. A lesson not to side with Justin.

As the Greyjoys I was last. But I think everyone enjoyed the game. I think Cry Havoc would be a good game for Liz to try next.

Liliana Planeswalker – Death Wielder 

magic, MtG

I’m a fan of the lady in black Liliana. I love the graveyard shenanigans that she does. I even have a commander deck in the design process that makes use of her special abilities. Yeah I know I haven’t finished the dinosaur tribal one yet. But that doesn’t stop me from thinking “oh I’d love a deck that makes use of that”. I’d also like to do a merfolk tribal deck too. And that’s after seeing a preview of the Ixalan duel decks that are coming out in November. 

So on my travels I saw the Liliana Death Wielder Planeswalker card and thought that’d be cool to play with. Can you believe there are folks on eBay that will sell you the foil Planeswalker card from this deck for more than it costs to buy this deck? Buyer beware indeed. It’s also the reason why I bought this preconstructed deck over just getting the card. I’d rather have the deck and add the other cards (eventually after playing with it) to my collection to use as potential building blocks for a commander deck for less money. 

We get the standard stuff in a Planeswalker deck.

Half the value of the deck is the two boosters, that if bought separately would cost between £7 – £8. The cardboard deck box is thankfully large enough to hold the deck sleeved. But at best worth a quid. Then the 60 card deck making up the rest of the value. 

For new and returning players these Planeswalker decks are great vfm. For the established player less so. Unless like me you want the foil Planeswalker. Then it’s amazing value. 

Here are the rares and full art basic land that I pulled from the two boosters.

The Only London I Like

Fenland Gamers, Game day

Whose idea was it to do a 10am play session?  Getting dressed before midday on a Sunday such a silly idea. Ok it was the only time Jonathan was free for us to try the latest addition to his collection London (Second Edition) by Martin Wallis. Which I was pretty keen to try. There was the compensation for getting dressed of a full English with optional extra (75p addon) black pudding, and unlimited refill coffee at  Spoons where we were meeting to play.

The day before Jonathan had messaged me that he had to be back home by midday and that London as a two player experience a long drawn out game. Apparently there was a two player variant for the original version but not the second edition. With an eye on the clock we were going to play London and see how we got on.

I’d got to Spoons slightly early so I could have that traditional breakfast. Which I had  was just having the last bites of when Jonathan arrived. The coffee used by Spoons according to the menu is Lavazza coffee. It was awful. Not even sugar could hide it’s hideous taste. And sugar can usually hide most things. Jonathan had already had a bacon sarnie for breakfast so he too signed up for the unlimited refill coffee.

I really do think Osprey the publisher do a fantastic job with the presentation of their games. I love the graphic design of the box for the game. It’s simple, yet elegant. The component quality is usually pretty good too.

Jonathan had said people had complained about the cards in the game. But they were thick, not linen finish. Jonathan thought maybe a little sticky. They seemed ok quality wise. Not the best, but definitely not the worse either. However by the end of the game the were scuff marks showing on the edges of one or two cards. Not good. There is certainly an issue here. I wouldn’t expect this after just one play!

The game itself is very enjoyable and definitely not a long and drawn out experience. I think it was just over an hour including learning to play the game by reading the rules, and with the expected looking up the odd rule through out the game.

I’ll talk more about the mechanics once I’ve had a chance to play the game with more players. There are some nice mechanics here.

I did win the game, I scored massively with my city cards. Something Jonathan failed to notice I had been doing. The Westminster borough was also a useful one to own. I could draw 0,1, or 2 cards at the start of my turn. Most of the time I drew two cards. But the odd time I didn’t draw any. Like at the end to stretch out the game a turn or two more to rack up more points. 

I liked it as a two player experience. Glad I have a copy on the way. If you are paying £30 or more for this then you aren’t looking hard enough online. At under £30 this is good value for money, over less so. Mind you that money you save will have to be spent on sleeves for the cards.

While out playing London, my half term reading Rogue Trooper: Tales of Nu Earth Volume 1 arrived. I remember reading Rogue Trooper when he first appeared in 2000 A.D. as a teenager. So he was long over due a revisit to renew our friendship. 

Magic and Politics!

Commander, Fenland Gamers, Game day, magic, MtG

As a “palette cleanser” between MtG leagues we set up a Commander session.

Commander for those wondering what the hell it is, is a multiplayer variant of Magic the Gathering. Each player has a commander (a Legendary creature), a deck of 99 cards (apart from basic lands, you can only have one copy of each card), and starts with 40 health. It’s basically a free for all after that, last man standing is the winner.

But the thing is there is a political element to the game that a “normal” game of Magic doesn’t have. You are making deals, ganging up to remove the current big threat on the table. 


We had seven players turn up to play Commander. Which meant we had two tables with people playing Commander. 4 players on one table, and 3 on the other.

I was on the 4 player table. Which was made up of myself, Diego, Justin, and Jamie.  We were all playing with preconstructed decks. Justin was using the cat tribal 2017 deck, Jamie had the dragon tribal 2017 deck. While Diego and I had decks from the Anthology. I had chosen the Plunder the Graves deck, which I assumed was going to be putting stuff into the graveyard and doing stuff with it. Diego chose Freyalise Llanowar’s Fury that had a Planeswalker as it’s commander. 

Naturally dragons were seen as the biggest threat on the table. So we all smacked Jamie first, although the odd blow went towards each other as well. However that allowed Diego to make use of his deck, get commander out, work those combos. It wasn’t long before Diego had too much out, and was dominating things. Sadly no board wipes were coming. So the inevitable happened, he won.

Our second game started out the same way. Keep those big nasty dragons off the table. This game was looking like a win for Justin. He’d got 22 health left, Diego was on 8, I was on 10. I’d got some creatures on the board (after a great power play a couple of turns earlier) that made me less of a target than Diego. I’m not entirely sure I could have survived Justin swinging at me, but luckily I didn’t have to find out because he swung in with everything he had but 1 creature suffering from summoning sickness at Diego to finish him off. If I swung in with everything I had enough to win, even if Justin blocked. I’d won!

The tables then swapped round. The four player table was now Justin, myself, Josh and Michael. Josh was running the dragon deck. But the biggest threat was Michael and his constructed deck he built. Which meant a pact was made to target him first. I’d mulliganned most games during the afternoon. But I’d forgotten we were using the Paris mulligan, I could have been keeping a card or two I wanted in the mulligans. Doh! The biggest surprise for me in this game was that I lasted so long in this epic long game. I needed lands, particularly a forest so I could start playing cards. I had removal stuff in hand that would ruin Michaels plans, if I only had a flipping forest. 

Our alliance fell apart for a while after I was finally able to cast spells, and a failed attempt to remove Michael’s two creatures in front of him. I had played a card that forced everyone to sacrifice two creatures. I had none, so was ok. It got rid of the creatures in front of Josh and Justin. However it didn’t get rid of the one I’d hoped for with Michael. He flashed in a third creature and sacrificed that saving the threat. Justin soon developed into the biggest threat, and saw him with some nasty pumped up cats in front of him. We all managed to work together to take out one particularly nasty threat from Justin. Josh was getting salty about not being able to keep any dragons out on the battlefield. I don’t think it helped when I took control of one from his graveyard. Justin killed Josh first. I was next on his hit list. Not a surprise really. After such a bad start I was gobsmacked is lasted so long. At my death Michael had just triggered his threat.  He was no getting an extra turn after every other players turn. With his extra turn he somehow wrangled it so that after Justin’s turn he’d be getting 17 extra turns!!! That’s game over once he started taking them for Justin. Sadly for Michael he never got to take them. Justin smacked the life out of him to grab the win.

A great afternoon, some amazing game play. This was such great fun. 

Commander adds that extra political element, and multiplayer that almost makes MtG into a different game! If you don’t like “regular” MtG would you like Commander? It depends on what it is you don’t like about MtG. At the end of the day you are still playing MtG. However as my bad starts have shown that isn’t such a liability in Commander. The bigger liability is being seen as a threat. So if it’s the “I always draw badly” or “it’s down to luck of the draw” as your reasons for not liking MtG then give this a go. If it’s the theme and mechanics, that’s not changed.

A big big thank you to our hosts Fenrock for the use of their facilities, and great coffee.

Our next MtG league starts on the 4th November for anyone interested in joining in the fun. Details of time and location (Fenrock) can be found on the event set up on the Fenland Gamers Facebook page. Where you can also sign up to say you are coming (which would be handy to know so I know how many boosters to get in).

Amonkhet Bundle Pack

magic, MtG

I can’t believe that I missed getting this bundle in for Amonkhet.

Let’s jump in with more content lite. You already know what I think about the vfm for the bundles from previous posts.


In the players guide it has The Top Ten Coolest Amonkhet Cards. So how many of them do I have?

  1. Nissa, Steward of Elements
  2. Kefnet the Mindful
  3. Trial of Solidarity
  4. Liliana, Death’s Majesty
  5. Never/Return
  6. As Foretold
  7. Glorybringer
  8. Honored Hydra
  9. Wayward Servant
  10. Channeler Initiate

I actually like the look of that Nissa too. I think she could fit into the unconstruction Dinosaur tribal deck I’m playing. Getting the 5 or less converted mana cost creatures out for free would be a very useful thing to have. Scry 2 isn’t a bad ability either.

But what did you pull Darren?

  • 3 full art lands

  • 3 shiny Foils


Followed by the following rares/Mythics…

  • 2 Legendary creatures

Well apart from a couple of target buys like Nissa and As Foretold, this is my farewell to Amonkhet.

The art on a lot of these cards has been amazing. It’s been fun. I enjoyed playing with the cards in our league. I will pay a little visit to Hour of Devastation, so I won’t be saying good bye completely to this plane.

Hashtag Favourite Token Friday #6

#favtokenfriday

After a weeks hiatus due to illness I’m back with #favtokenfriday.

This week it’s these rather cool brains that I got from the bgg store to pimp out the push your luck dice game Zombie Dice.

Instead of using a score pad, or piece of paper to keep track of players score, we use these brains instead. Simple and very thematic I think.

Look over there

game night

Not over here!

Last night I introduced Liz, Dave and Justin to Kemet.

Why would I introduce to newish gamers a game like Kemet? Liz loves Scythe, her enjoyment of Dead of Winter was some what lacking, and apparently she did not enjoy Eldritch Horror. There was a theme developing here. Co-op games, and potentially games that use dice were not ones Liz enjoyed. So this is why I went with Kemet.


Like Scythe each player has a board that they select their actions from. Unlike Scythe the player boards are identical, where in Scythe you do have the same actions but they are combined differently. For example your produce action may have enlist paired with it, while another player may have build paired with their produce action. You do have a little resource management as you manage your prayer points, which is kind of similar to managing your bolster popularity in Scythe. There is some hand management with the divine intervention cards and battle cards. Although the combat system has more in common with A Game of Thrones.

Naturally Kemet is much much more aggressive to play than Scythe. Combat plays a much bigger role in the game. As does politics! When some-one is about to win the game with their 8th victory point, as I was, then the others ganged up to deny me by taking back some of the temporary victory points I had. First up in the gang of three to do this was Justin who reclaimed his level 4 pyramid, but forgot to leave a soldier behind on the temple he had taken his forces from. So my response was to move into the temple that was just vacated and get the point back. Next up Dave. He teleported in to the temple and won the ensuing battle. With the permanent victory point and the temporary one, that put Dave on to 8 points and able to claim the win at the end of the round. That put Liz into a difficult position. I was sitting on 7 points, her plan had been to move into my city and take my level 4 red pyramid. But if she didn’t stop Dave he would win. Liz wasn’t sure she could beat Dave in battle if she teleported into the temple. I gave her some advice with the divine intervention cards she had, plus the right battle card, she didn’t need to win, just kill all of his troops. With the cards in hand there was no way Dave could stop Liz killing them all. So that is what Liz did. She jumped into the temple, lost the battle, and killed all of Dave’s forces. Dave lost the temporary victory point.

Here’s the cunning part of this plan. While Liz used her last movement action to stop Dave it meant she couldn’t move in and take my pyramid. This also meant that no one was now able to attack me because all movement actions had been taken by everyone. So for my last action of the game I upgraded my blue pyramid from level 3 to level 4. Bang the last victory point that I needed to get to 8 and no one could stop me. I had won! That distraction of “look over there, if you don’t do something they will win” and “what me? nothing to see here, I’m I can’t win I’m on 7 points” worked a charm.

Liz liked the game, as did the others. Next Tuesday it’s A Game of Thrones!!

Gisharth’s Army

Commander, Deck tech, magic, MtG, MtG Deck Building

Welcome to the start of a long and laborious series of posts where I work through building my process (based on the template suggested by The Command Zone, with input from The Prof at Tolarian Community College).

My Commander is…


Considering the title of this blog post, is it really a surprise? So I am running a three colour mana deck. As the rather crude image at the start of this post says, this will be a dinosaur tribal deck. I think it has to be to make use of Gishath’s ability.

Here is The Prof with a short information film about how to choose the right commander.

Obviously I have followed The Prof’s most important rule when selecting a Commander to play with:
I want to play dinosaurs, I want a big fun dinosaur commander. Who in their right mind doesn’t want to play dinosaurs right now? Nope pirates are not even close, so don’t go there. Just for the record in the current set Ixalan, it’s dinosaurs, merfolk, then vampires, and finally the over rated pirates. Why do I hate pirates? Those awful (and that’s the most positive word I can think about them) movies in the Pirates of the Caribbean series.

Unlucky for me I don’t seem tick some of the other factors that he hints we might like to consider.

Gishath is not a cheap commander to cast, at a converted mana cost (cmc) of 8. Which means I am breaking his following advice:

But considering this is the only dinosaur commander, then I have no choice but to accept that I won’t be getting Gishath out on to the battlefield early.

I do know that being red, green and white I have ticked one of The Prof’s recommendations.

Having access to those three colours of mana means I can use, or at least have access to all the dinosaurs that are in Ixalan. Which is what I want in a tribal deck (I think).

I’m not sure in what universe Gishath would not be considered an immediate threat when it enters the battlefield. Gishath has trample, vigilance and haste. Plus when it does damage to another player you draw cards and get to put into play any dinosaurs drawn! So I kind of break the following rule from the Prof.

I have to consider the following questions that The Prof raises:

  • is my commander my win condition?
  • does my commander enhance the existing synergy of my cards?
  • is my commander a tool that strengthens my position in the game?

That first point is important, The Prof says that your commander shouldn’t be your win condition because your commander will always be a target and get removed. He recommends you have multiple win conditions, and that you are able to win without your commander. The Prof suggestions a commander that enhances an existing synergy within the deck is the stronger route to go. Considering I haven’t built the rest of the deck yet it’s a hard one to say whether Gishath will do that or not. But it’s something I will need to consider when looking at cards.

In my next post in this limited series I will start looking at constructing my commander deck, starting with my mana base for the deck.

Cake and Magic

magic, MtG

It doesn’t get much better than a student baking (this was a belated cake to celebrate German Unification that happens on 3rd October) and bringing it in to share.

Not only that, it’s enrichment for my students today. So it was great to see them playing with their new Magic cards that they have purchased, and their welcome decks. One got the Huatli Planeswalker deck, another got the latest deckbuilding kit. Some games of Magic were played by them. A couple have downloaded a life tracking app to use while playing to track their life totals. There has been 1 v 1, 2 v 2, games.

Yesterday one of my students came up to me and said he’d been watching Magic videos on YouTube all weekend, and wants to play Commander now. So looks like in his enrichment session I will have to bring in my Commander 2017 decks for him to try.

Naturally I have to play the odd game with them. If a student manages to beat me they take great pleasure in that. They have had to work for that victory, I haven’t let them win. The games have been pretty close when I have lost. I know that once they improve then they will easily beat me. My win record against more experienced players proves that.

But it’s all good because we have had delicious cake as we play.

What have I started?

We survived!

game night


Saturday evening Justin,Liz,Dave and myself attempted to survive the harsh cold zombie apocalypse as depicted in The Dead of Winter.

Earlier in the day I finally punched out the tokens etc for the expansion/stand alone game The Dead of Winter: The Long Night, and integrated in some of the modules to the core game. Considering that Dave and Liz were both new to the Dead of Winter universe, I thought it best not to use the Raxxon and Bandits modules. I didn’t think that the improvements module or the other additions added so much that it would make it overwhelming to a new player.

I did like that the Long Night added thick cardboard versions of the locations. I much prefer this compared to thin cardboard almost paper like ones in the core game.

The location decks were generated the suggested random way when combining the new cards into the core game of shuffling the cards for each location and dealing twenty out to make the location deck.

The main objective we selected for the game was the above one from the Long Night. You don’t think about it at the time of selecting, but when you start to put the zombies out on the board, 18 zombies basically means every space outside the colony is full. Adding or moving anyone to the colony would mean that unless you have also killed some zombies at the colony they would be over run and survivors would die. Not having anyone at the colony did have the benefit that we would not have to find food for them.

So with more characters, more crossroads cards, more crisis’s, just more of everything, I think that the variety added is massive.

Starting out, outside of the colony was weird. But it allowed us to search for items early without first having to move to the location and roll for exposure. But we couldn’t sit tight forever. We would have to move into the colony at some point and start taking care of that zombie infestation.

We soon started to find survivors and having to find food for them, because they get added to the colony. Which in turn meant we had to start chipping away at the zombie horde at the doors.

Time was running out. 5 turns is not a lot of time. By turn three arrived we had not really achieved much. Ok averted a couple of crisis’s. But the population at the colony had crept up. If we could kill enough zombies, taking into account the number we would have to add at the end of the round before checking for the win condition, we would be able to win the game. We couldn’t fail the current crisis, that would add a further 9 zombies if we failed that. But we could afford to fail the feeding the colony. So we started killing zombies. First using abilities that didn’t require rolling for exposure. They are the best kills. Then some more risky ones that we passed the exposure rolls with flying colours.

We’d done it, we had met the main objective win condition. Although it turns out that there was no betrayer (although I think Liz’s suspicions that Justin was a traitor were justified based on a couple of actions/decisions he made during the game). Sadly no-one achieved their personal objective.

Next time I’ll add in the bandits module.