Blue Moons, Tea Houses and Tree Spirits

game night

A monthly meet up the night before one of the most commercial and manufactured nights of the year, probably wasn’t going to get many people to attend. But that’s the advantage of hindsight.

Last weekend it was looking like it was just myself and The Usual Suspect that had committed to go. Honestly I didn’t fancy an evening gaming with him. Longtime sufferers of this blog know all about The Usual Suspect by now. It wouldn’t be an enjoyable time. So I cancelled the February meet up.

Then a couple of days before the cancelled date Gavin contacted me asking if the monthly meet up had been cancelled. Which I confirmed it had. In response I was asked if I was free that night and if I wanted to meet up and play some games. Naturally I was (I have no life after all). So we made arrangements to meet up.

Our first game of the evening was Blue Moon Legends. Neither of us had played the game before. It had only been in my collection less than 6 months, when a chance to buy a second hand copy, still sealed, at a bargain price came up on Facebook. It would have been rude not to snap the game up.

The thing I liked about this game before I had got it, and was a major attraction, everything you needed for the game was in the box. It came with 8 decks, and rules to construct and draft decks from that card pool.

Gavin and I played with the recommended starting decks for learning the game.

I loved the tug of war element for attracting the dragons. And how if you win a dragon and your opponent has more than one, you move one of them to the middle before you get to add one to your side.

The hand management is interesting, and really comes into it’s own when you get down to the last remaining cards of your deck. No cards in hand or your deck is an end condition. That looks at who has the most dragons. So you could use that to your advantage to prematurely end the game and grab the win.

The two games we played had a nice back and forth between the two decks. And it never felt that there was a run away winner, with no chance of coming back into the game.

Once you get used to the turn structure, the game flows nicely. And a nice touch is the summary of the main parts of a turn on the central game board. That game board is a nice alternative to a single big play mat or two play mats. It clearly marks where the deck goes, the discard pile, leaders, etc.

The plastic minis for the contested dragons are cool.

I just love that a friend and I who fancy playing a two player card game, can pick this up and play straight away. Everything we could ever need is in there. Pre-constructed decks – check, draft – check, deck construction – check. I know especially with the constructed side, and pre-constructed decks there is a finite replay ability. But it’s still a lot of game play. The only other game I have in my collection that is really as flexible as this, and in away is similar in idea, is Epic the Card Game.

Despite Gavin winning both games, I had fun playing this.

Next up it was time to take Gavin to the tea houses and play Hanamikoji. We played 5 games of this. But then it is a quick game. Apart from the first game that Gavin won, all the rest went to a second round. This presented Gavin with a mental block he struggled to overcome. For me in the second round words like attacking and defending start popping into my head. If Gavin currently has the gheisha’s favour I’m attacking it, if I have it I’m defending it. When defending I just need to make sure I match my opponent, because ownership doesn’t change on a tie, whilst trying to get the upper hand on the ones he controls. And that’s how I’m evaluating the situation.

We finished the evenings gaming with the recently delivered Kickstarter Kodama Duo (which is also just hitting the shops now too).

This is the 2 player version of Kodama (which could play 2 iirc). Basically they have tweaked the game to make it a better 2 player experience. But if you have Kodama, you can use this with that as well.

After a false start (we were scoring incorrectly) we started growing our trees, and attracting Kodama.

I like the I split, you chose mechanic for drafting your branches each round. That’s a nice improvement. Plus the person who only got one card gets a spirit token after scoring to replace a symbol on one of their branches.

Through out our play Gavin and I were fairly evenly matched on the score front. It was only the last scoring kodama that gave me the win.

I liked the original. This is just as nice as the original. It still looks beautiful on the table. Yeah a nice 2 player only version of the game.

So that was the second Wednesday. Some 2 player games, (which let’s face it often get left on the shelf on game nights, and need opportunities like this to play them) with a great friend. And hosted as usual by our excellent hosts The Luxe Cinema.

Thrashing around

magic, MtG

Yesterday I talked briefly about my love of being able to play dinosaurs in MtG thanks to our visit to the Ixalan plane. I also looked at probably one of the star cards for green from the set, Carnage Tyrant.

In today’s post I thought I’d look at another card that won’t be with us for much longer, because it will be keeping Carnage Tyrant company when the Ixalan block rotates out. Yeah I know why am I only just looking at these cards now then? Because, reasons!

But over the last few months I’ve grown to really like this card.

Today we are looking at a great utility card for green, which is definitely a really good sideboard card, and that’s Thrashing Brontodon.

At 3 CMC for a 3/4 body it’s pretty good. Plus it doesn’t die to removal after it hits the battleground. Well unless they hit it a couple of times. Which I’ll take that trade any day. Plus it can block and still be around afterwards.

But in this current Standard meta where enchantments like Wilderness Reclamation and Experimental Frenzy are very popular, there has to be some form of removal in your deck. That’s where the ability of paying one mana and sacrificing Thrashing Brontodon comes in. If you pay that cost, you lose the body naturally, but you get rid of that enchantment or artifact.

I can assure you Wilderness Reclamation especially with a couple out can be abused in combination with the right cards. I’ve already in a previous post about my Simic deck described one such situation. And John the owner of my FLGS has been on the receiving end of such an abuse. I’ve been on the receiving end of an Experimental Frenzy. Not fun if you can’t get rid of it.

And that’s why you will find copies of Thrashing Brontodon in the sideboard of a lot of decks that splash green in Standard. In my Commander decks it’s an instant include. And despite technically not being a big stompy creature it’s in my big stompy deck.

With the almost default inclusion of Llanowar Elves in decks with green, having your copy of Thrashing Brontodon out turn two is a realistic play. But even if not, it’s still a great turn three play.

If you are remotely interested what card would you like me to look at next in the current Standard legal sets? You will notice that these two posts so far have been from the Ixalan block, and cards that I have used and played in my decks. But more than happy to talk about other cards.

Keyforge Age of Ascension Announced

keyforge, news

Yesterday in a FFG Live simultaneous broadcast on Twitch and YouTube, FFG sprung an announcement about the next Keyforge set.

Coming in Q2 of this year is Keyforge Age of Ascension.

This new set will be a combination of old and new cards. The new card pool of 370 cards will be a combination of 166 old cards and 204 new cards. From the live stream Garfield said a lot of the cards dropped from the first set were commons. The reason being so that players are more likely to see the new cards.

In the live broadcast there was mention of three new keywords, deploy, alpha and omega. Deploy will allow you to insert a creature in between other creatures on the battlefield, instead of just on one of the flanks. Alpha means that card has to be played at the start of the third phase before anything else is done. Otherwise it can’t be played. Whilst omega is the opposite, it is the very last card you play in the third phase.

Naturally there will be a new starter set, that will contain the following:

As you can see the starter decks are gone. As are the power and stun cards, which have been replaced with cardboard tokens. A much much better option, and practical. It was mentioned that the tokens in this starter set are smaller than the original starter set ones, “to make it easier to fit everything into a deck box” (their words paraphrased from the live stream). Instead of the starter decks, they are replaced with two,poster playmats. I’m not sure how I feel about this. Great for teaching the game. But durability is a concern. Plus is this just something being put in to justify keeping the rrp at the same cost as the previous starter set? I’m also convinced that the reason for the smaller tokens is cost, and the fact they are printing 44 more than before.

The this starter set will sell, because players will want those new power and stun tokens. But will it offer value for money? Is all the extra stuff on top of the two included decks worth the difference between buying the two decks separately?

UPDATE: Taken from Facebook – “Just a heads up about the new set regarding prices….

The new RRP for decks is £9.99 which is a £1 increase

The new RRP for starter sets is £23.99 which is a huge drop of £12”

£4 for the tokens? I could live with that.

End of UPDATE

During the broadcast there was also some reveals about OP play, and some of the stuff you can get. They showed off two playmats. One was a four horseman one. They looked ok.

Apparently there will be alternative ways to get stuff from the prize wall if you can’t get to an event where there is one. Well that’s what I read afterwards in a comment on Facebook. I didn’t hear them say that myself. But I did skip through some of the game play. Which if that’s the case, is a good sign and shows they are listening (maybe).

I appreciate that FFG are doing these live events on a regular basis. But they need to improve the production quality. It was annoying during the live gameplay with the new decks when they went to show the new cards they were not shown, or there was a delay for the image to appear. I know this is all new for them, and they are learning. Maybe they need to talk to the Tap,Tap, Concede guys about their live MtG coverage.

You can read the full FFG announcement here and watch the video here.

All Hail The Carnage Tyrant

magic, MtG

For me one of the fun things about Ixalan and Rivals of Ixalan was being able to build decks that had dinosaurs in them.

I have a fun (for me) to play Commander dinosaur tribal deck. Which could do with an update. Add some of the tribal cards I’ve gotten since building the deck, replace one or two of the cards with the more powerful option that I now have. But I digress.

There are a few dinosaurs from those sets that I just love. The elder dinosaurs fantastic. Ghalta, Gishath, Regisaur Alpha, Burning Sun’s Avatar, Rampaging Ferocidon (unjustly banned in Standard), Thrashing Brontodon and Raptor Hatchling to name some of my favourites.

The incredible thing is that two or three of them still have a place in the Standard meta. They will always have a place in my dinosaur tribal deck (until we ever return to Ixalan).

But there is one that if you splash green in your deck is an auto include. And when it comes out strikes fear in your opponent.

Yep Carnage Tyrant.

If Carnage Tyrant isn’t in your main deck, there is usually a copy or two in the sideboard.

For a 6 CMC, it’s not a cheap card. But you get a lot of bang for your buck. First off it’s a 7/6 body with trample. So no chump blocking with a 1/1 to stop the damage getting through.

But it’s these next two abilities that make this card so powerful, and an auto include. Carnage Tyrant can’t be countered. So those pesky control players can’t use their counter spells to stop you casting it. Then when it is out on the battlefield it has hexproof. Which means that now it is out they can’t target their removal at it.

And that’s why at the very least you will see copies of it in the sideboard. It’s the anti-control card.

But even at 6 CMC being green, you have ramp. So in all likely hood Carnage Tyrant could be out turn four, definitely turn five. There is not much that will be out at that point to stop it.

Sadly because it is such a good card in Standard, it’s not a cheap card to buy. So Commander players will have to wait for it to rotate out to pick their copies up.

I have heard/read that in some decks now with Hydroid Krasis now on the scene that Carnage Tyrant isn’t as powerful as it used to be in some decks. I can’t really comment on that, I’m not really playing at the high levels the people making those statements are. For me in the decks I’m building and playing it’s a star card.

I’m going to miss Carnage Tyrant when it rotates out, I hope it likes it’s retirement homes in my dinosaur tribal deck, and the big green stompy deck.

Some early planning for a Judge Dredd Campaign

RPG


Thought I’d share some early high level campaign planning for a Judge Dredd campaign I want to run.

It’s basically bolting together some out of print and current scenarios into what I hope is an interesting campaign for about four judges.

I still need to source a couple of things but they are not show stoppers. But they would make life easier. The Justice Hall source book (for the Mongoose d20 system) is fairly easy to get hold of, and not that expensive either. Unlike the White Dwarf adventures for Sector 255. I found pdf online for one of them, and guess what? The part that I wanted was corrupted!

I think I have an overall arc for the players that sees them graduating from rookie judges, and getting their full eagle shield to become judges in the opening scenario ‘Full Eagle Day’. No sooner are they assigned to their first sector house, when they are attached to a task force that has been set up to clear out criminals living in the Empire State Building in the ‘State of the Empire’ scenario. The judges return to their sector house and go out on patrol in their sector. After a couple of encounters while patrolling our judges get caught up in Call-Me-Kenneth’s robot revolt in ‘The Robot Wars’. Which once put down sees the judges back on the street patrolling.

I think the way it is at the moment there is weeks of bringing law to the citizens of Mega City One. Which means slotting in the two planned scenarios ‘Luna-1’ and ‘The Cursed Earth’ when they are released shouldn’t be a problem at all.

It also gives me time to source copies of the two classic scenarios from the 80’s Judge Dredd RPG ‘Slaughter Margin’ and ‘Judgement Day’. Although the later is much much cheaper to get than the former.

So that’s my current plan. Now to convert the npc’s from ‘Full Eagle Day’ d20 system to the WOIN system.

First Ever Alley Cat Games Con

Game day

Saturday saw roughly seventy odd gamers turn up at the offices of Alley Cat Games to participate in the company’s first ever con. It also clashed with the start of Standard Showdown season at my FLGS. If I was going to miss taking my Simic deck out for a spin, playing games with Jonathan and trying prototypes was a bloody good alternative.

The day started with Jonathan picking me up at the end of the street I live in. Thanks to roadworks closing off Jonathan’s usual route on to the A1, we ended up on the A14 and a pleasant cross country route to Letchworth that avoided the A1 altogether.

Once we arrived in Letchworth we pulled over in the car park of the local Morrison’s to enter the post code for one of the recommended car parks. Which saw us deciding to sample their breakfast offerings before proceeding to the car park. It’s important to make sure you are fully caffeinated and have a full stomach when playing board games.

After registering at the door, Jonathan and I found a table and played our first game of the day, Hanamikoji. Hanamikoji is a recent addition to my collection, after buying it from a friend and member of Fenland Gamers. Neither of us had played the game before, so this was a learning game.

Hanamikoji is a really nice, quick, two player game. Love the two main mechanics of hand management and area control. Each round you have four actions to take that are used to manage your hand and influence which cards you play. However you only take each action once.

One action for example you have is taking four cards from your hand, splitting them into two piles of two, and your opponent chooses one pile and those cards go in front of the matching card in the middle on their side. The remaining two cards go in front of the matching cards on your side. I love this I split you chose action, and all the decisions involved in that alone.

If you like Bloodbowl Team Manager, which is basically an area control game also. But want something that has a similar core mechanic but plays quicker. Then this is worth a look.

I love the art. It’s very watercolour, pastel shades looking. It has that old traditional Japan look and feel to it.

Jonathan and I won a game a piece.


The next game we got to “play” was one high on Jonathan’s list of games to try, Chocolate Factory.

This was a prototype, the game will hit Kickstarter later in the year. And we only got to play three rounds. Well there were a few people keen on trying it. So it would have been rude to hog the game.

However I was pretty impressed with the mechanics and the way the game played. Jonathan pointed out that the graphic design of this prototype needed tweaking. However it already has been taking into account the tweaks suggested, and the changes were shown to us digitally.

I liked the drafting element at the start of each round that gave you an improvement to your factory, and a round only power and access to selling to a department store.

The moving tiles through the factory and your engine, is a nice touch and piece of theatrics. The ordering of improvements from the drafting is key. It determines activation order.

The competing to sell to the department stores, with points being awarded on whose sold the most to each store at the end of the game, gives a nice competitive touch to the game.

There looks to be a couple of paths to victory, either going for the department stores for points, or completing your private corner shop ones. You could go for a mix of the two.

We thought having a role card with a unique power, similar to the ones used in Marco Polo would be a cool improvement to the game.

Overall this looks like it’s going to be a great, fun, game.

At the end of the third round we went to end game scoring. I came second aka first loser, while Jonathan propped us all up at the bottom.

Ruthless had been a pirate themed game faintly on Jonathan’s radar. So I twisted his arm to try it out. We were there, there was a copy in the game library. It made sense to me.

The copy we played, was unplayed! Jonathan and I had to punch cardboard! After setting up, which we thought the rulebook could be clearer on (it was a little confusing), one of the Alley Cat staff/helpers stepped in to talk us through the game.

As soon as it clicked the game was a deckbuilder, I laughed. Jonathan hates deckbuilders.

As far as deckbuilders go, it’s ok.

The fixed number of rounds was an interesting idea. As was using a semi poker hand mechanic with recruited pirates in front of you to decide points at the end of each. The end of game bonus scoring was ok.

I’m just not sure being ok in this day and age is good enough. The bar for deckbuilders for me is Star Realms/Hero Realms. Price, replay ability, expansions, game play. It ticks all the boxes. Then on the big box deckbuilders, I have Marvel Legendary and Eminent Domain. Which are both really good. Ruthless kind of sits in the middle ground. Unless you really really want to play a pirate themed deckbuilder, I can’t see why you’d get it.

The records will show I won our game.

Jonathan and I both enjoy roll and writes. We have one or two in our collections. So I thought a chance to try Welcome To DinoWorld couldn’t be passed up.

I’m not sure why but the game left me feeling indifferent. Even now while writing this post I still can’t really put my finger on why.

Would tweaking how the dice are used, and who can use which dice help? Maybe.

There was a massive misplay we found out after the game, which potentially might have made a difference.

The actual sheets used in the game are quite pretty. Which at the moment is about the nicest thing I can say about the game.

The roll and write market is getting crowded. Apart from theme I’m not sure this stands out. But is more man in the crowd.

I was first loser, but finished above Jonathan.

We followed up by playing Wingspan with Scott. Unusual for me I went with a new tactic of birds on board, instead of egg spamming. It didn’t quite workout enough to get me the win. But in out tightest scoring game to date, I lost by four points. And Jonathan was beaten into first loser position by a single point. So your deduction skills will tell you Scott won.

We finished off our days gaming with a game of Nusfjord. I really was rusty on this. I had played it once nearly a year ago. So after a brief refresher, we settled into building our fishing communities and fishing fleets.

It looked at the end of the game that Jonathan and I were going to have to share the honours of first place. But under further review I had missed three points from shares that I owned. Which meant I was the winner.

Although we left at 6pm there was another five hours of gaming left for those that had the stamina, and more importantly (most likely) didn’t have a long distance to travel. And to be fair our journey time was just under a couple of hours. So we could have stayed longer I suppose. But I think about eight hours of gaming for us was about right.

Our journey home was uneventful, full of good conversation, and we delivered Scott home safely.

Naturally this post would not be complete without a photo of me in action, and thanks to Jonathan I’m able to avoid disappointing you.


Some thoughts

Despite having a great time. The day did confirm to me that these sort of things (such as Handycon and Airecon) which focus on playing games may not be for me. They reenforced my opinion that you need to be going with a bunch of friends. I didn’t see much mingling going on, it seemed more people playing with people they knew. Which means if that is the case, why don’t you just stay at home and play games with your friends? Or if you are intent on going away for a weekend from your usual haunts, going to a hotel or hostel to play?

Having said that for Jonathan and me this is the ideal one to attend. It’s the gaming equivalent of a day out in London. Next time with a bit more planning maybe we can take more of our friends along with us, and have a Fenland Gamers day out.

Alley Cat Games. Now I will give a caveat for this next statement in that I haven’t played every one of their games, so is based on the ones I have played so far. Which is most of them. I think they should drop the smaller games and concentrate on the big games. In the current market place that we have, games that are good at best just don’t cut it. Publishers need to be putting out great games to stand a chance of standing out from the crowd, get the sales, and be a success. Dice Hospital and my experience of Chocolate Factory meet that criteria. Sadly the smaller games fall into the former, and don’t cut it. The Alley Cat Games crew are a great crew that I want to see succeed and grow. And their strength seems to be the bigger box games. For me those smaller games are not their forte.

But it’s easy for me to say. I’m just an armchair critic. It’s not my money on the line here. And what do I know?

I want to end this rather long post with a big thanks to Alley Cat Games for organising this mini con. For inviting us into their home and being such gracious hosts.

I’d also like to say a big thanks to Jonathan for doing the taxi duties. And being a great gaming buddy throughout the day.

A Potential Tweak To My Simic Standard Deck

Deck tech, magic, MtG, MtG Deck Building

While I was looking through my Ravnica Allegiance pulls to see if I had any Tithe Takers or Unbreakable Formations to use in my Commander Death and Taxes deck. Although unbreakable Formations may well be finding it’s way into any of my decks that splash white. I came across the Frilled Mystic I’d pulled.

I’m seriously considering using this as a card in my Simic Standard deck.

What attracts me about the card? It’s a counter spell and a body on the board. So a two for.

I’m ok with the 4 CMC because of the value it gives. Although being a 3/2 it does die to a shock. But if it counters a spell and forces them to use a shock. That’s two cards to my one. I’ll take that bit of card advantage. I’d prefer that it was not two forests and two islands, but maybe one of each and two of any. But I suppose there is that delicate line of making sure that the card is not too over powered.

But what goes to make way for it? I’m thinking the two copies of Open the Gates in the main deck, and the copy in the sideboard. Plus the third copy of Simic Ascendancy in the sideboard.

I just need to play test this change now.

I’m having a hard time accepting the stupid high price of Hydroid Krasis. It’s a good card. But wow. So glad I got mine before that nasty spike.

I know with my deck the lands could be better. I’d love a play set of Breeding Pool and Hinterland Harbour. It would speed things up on that front. But I don’t think the cost justifies it. The deck could also do with another Vivienne Reid. But that too has spiked. Another Incubation Druid would be nice, potential go up to a full play set.

The deck is fun to play. There are some slight improvements that if this was for a GP or something might justify the extra expense to make them. But seeing as this is a Standard Showdown deck. I don’t think splashing out for those cards is justified. If I can trade for them then I can live with that, but not at spending more. In fact I am mid trade. I’ve traded a shock land, and just waiting for my friend to see if he has a spare one of the ones I need.

Well time to end this post. I’ve already reenforced Jonathan’s views of MtG being a money pit. Which it can be. I don’t deny it. But that doesn’t detract from the fact that the game is still pretty awesome. Time to read some RPG manuals.

I am the law

news, RPG

Yesterday I stumbled upon the fact that the pdf version of the Judge Dredd & The Worlds of 2000 AD RPG system have been released to the world at large.

This new system was kickstarted last year and is the third or fourth time that the future law man has been captured in a RPG system.

DriveThru RPG have the basic rule book, a free taster scenario and the not free Robot Wars scenario. The latest publisher has two more scenarios Luna-1 and The Cursed Earth lined up for later in the year. Along with two more source books focusing on the classic 2000 AD characters Rogue Trooper and Strontium Dog (really looking forward to this one).

This latest iteration uses the What’s Old is New (WOIN) system as it’s basis. Which uses a d6 dice pool system. As a prospective GM I like these dice pool systems (Genesys is an example of another). The pools of dice used for checking skills, combat etc can be adjusted based on difficultly and conditions. In the WOIN system the total of the dice rolled must be the same as or greater than a figure given by the GM. So the GM may decide that the task being attempt is simple and give a low score to beat. If the task succeeds and there are three sixes rolled there is an additional benefit that happens.

There is an interesting count down mechanic using a pool of dice, that can be used for players on deaths door, drowning or some other event that you want the player to feel the pressure of a clock.

I love the fact that they have taken the scenario from the main rules, and made it as a Quick Start scenario with pre-made characters to allow players to try the system before they commit to the full blown experience and campaigns in Mega City 1. Unlike the Genesys free scenarios you only need d6 dice to play this free scenario and the main game.

With the decades of the comic strip, source books and scenarios from the previous Judge Dredd RPG’s there is plenty of material to base/inspire adventures and campaigns on. Plus there are miniatures out there from the now defunct miniature skirmish game. So these potentially may not be cheap to get.

I just need to find some Judge Dredd fans like me to play the initial scenario with.

Exhausted but fighting on!

D&D, game night, RPG


I hope you have enjoyed the last couple of days of no posts happening. For you dear suffering readers the positive side of me being ill for a couple of days. Sadly as this post shows I’m back.

The astute amongst you will have noticed I’ve been doing posts recently about planning a RPG campaign and in a soon to be finished and published post plotting an adventure.

I thought in this first half of this post I’d share the tools/apps I’ve been using in getting ready for my first time as a GM and the Android universe.

I’m a fan of both the physical and digital versions of books. So for the digital side I use the two most popular apps for ebooks the Kindle app and iBooks. DrivethruRpg is a great source of RPG books and their digital format of choice is the watermarked pdf. I use iBooks mainly for pdfs. For me it’s the better experience for the consumption of a pdf than the Kindle app.

The advantage of the digital version of a book is it’s easier for me to create my own custom cheat sheets. I can copy and paste the information I need. Plus I find it’s easier to print a page from the ebook than photocopy a page from the physical book.

This is why PDF Expert is included here. It enables me to manipulate and extract information from a pdf. It also allows me to select pages from the original and create a separate pdf with the pertinent pages for printing, and keeping for future reference.

I’m a big fan of brainstorming apps. That’s why iThoughts (mindmaps), Outliner (outlines) and GoodNotes (general note taking with an Apple Pencil) are here. These are the apps I capture ideas and plan.

Scrivener is a writing app. It is focused on writing, but it’s a very flexible app that works round projects, which can have research notes within the project. This is where the adventure gets written. The research functionality is amazing, and being able to include or not include sections is really handy.

I’ve included MS Word here, but it could also be Pages. This is the app I use for creating my custom cheat sheets.

Finally I’ve included Pixelmator for any image manipulation that’s needed. This really is one of my favourite apps. It makes it look like a can create graphics.

I have recently found a couple of apps for creating dungeon maps randomly which I need to play with. Once I have I’ll talk about them here. I know my friend Edmund, and the GM for the D&D 5e campaign I’m playing in uses his autodesk expertise to create the maps we get to use in our sessions (which are rather good). So I’ve downloaded the iPad version of it to play with.

Finally before we get onto the dramatic retelling of last nights shenanigans FFG are looking at character creation with in Shadow of the Beanstalk (the Genesys source book for the Android universe) this week along with the taster scenario. People that pre-ordered directly from FFG are starting to receive their copies. Although not shown on this weeks sheet for new releases that Asmodee UK, one or two are saying it’s available tomorrow (Thursday). But I tend to think more likely that it will drop next week. However this wouldn’t be the first time something gets released that is not on the sheet. So basically Shadow of the Beanstalk due out any day now.

And now we rejoin Dram and the rag tag team he is currently having adventures with…

Feeling magically spent. Dram really felt like he could do with a long rest to recoup.

But considering there was still unknown threats in the rest of the unexplored castle the likely hood of that happening were very remote.

He’d have to push on through the exhaustion and use his cantrips as much as he can to back up the others. They’d just have to accept that is all he had left at the moment. No big theatrical spells to save the rests butts for the time being.

After a very brief discussion the party started to move through the rest of the castle room by room. Ace would first check any closed door, and listen for any signs of danger the other side of the door.

This started off well, Dram was hanging back, Ace was taking the risks.

Ace disappeared into one room that turned out to be a chapel only to be ambushed by three goblins. Dram in his exhausted state was happy to let the others rush in and help Ace out and nullify the goblin threat.

Once the sounds of battle stopped Dram joined the rest in the chapel. The group made their way to the far end of the chapel and the unblocked door.

Ace again repeated the drill of checking the door. Despite the gnome having already checked it. Ace could be heard mumbling under his breathe something about being better at it than the short arse.

The party piled into a small hallway. As Dram was examining a curtain over what looked like a door way. A scream of immense agony could be heard coming from the chapel. It was Nick. He had been attacked.

The others once again rushed into the chapel to help Nick. Before doing the same Dram peaked behind the curtain to make sure there would be no surprises coming from that direction.

Dram joined the fray. Surrounded by the party in the middle was a grey stone coloured serpent like creature with four tentacles surrounding its beak. It was a Grick. A Grick caught in the mouth of a dire wolf. Nick had gone all canine on it. Dram used Grull as cover as he tried to use his cantrip shocking grasp on the Grick. His hand sparked blue and just as quickly faded away. The cantrip failed to connect.

Before Dram had another chance to try again with the shocking grasp the Grick was dispatched by the rest of the party.

Back in the hall way Ace checked another door and heard voices the other side of it.

Unusual for Ace he stepped back and prepared himself to attack anything that appeared from behind the door.

Dram pushed open the door and stood back out of the way.

Suddenly a hobgoblin appeared in the door way. There was a sudden flash of metal as Ace swung in and killed it.

A whoosh of air could be heard as Sarmyar let lose an arrow through the open door into the room. Closely followed by the javelin of Grull.

The party rushed into the room, jumping over the hobgoblin corpse. In the room was a fat goblin and a seriously wounded hobgoblin. The hobgoblin was quickly killed by adventurers. But the fat goblin was sneakier than expected and disappeared off behind a curtain door. Ace gave chase. Throwing caution to the wind, not waiting for back up.

Back up (minus Nick would had decided to stay behind in the room with the hobgoblin corpses) finally caught up with Ace in a small hallway. Just as he disappeared into a room. The whelps of a wolf could be heard from the room.

As the back up bundled in to back up Ace, they were greeted with the scene of Ace standing over a badly wounded wolf, a disgruntled bugbear, the fat goblin and a seriously injured dwarf laying on the floor.

Sarmyar’ s panther attacked the fat goblin, while Grull and the gnome took on the bugbear. Once again Dram used Grull as a shield as he used his Ray of Frost cantrip to attack the badly wounded wolf.

In all the confusion that is combat, another enemy used that confusion to it’s advantage to attack the party from its hiding place. It was a female Drow.

As the wolf was killed by a particularly effective bolt of ice from Dram’s cantrip, Ace was knocked to the ground badly injured by the Drow. Before the bugbear followed its pet wolf to the next world, it took the gnome out.

It was at this point that the Drow decided to make a run for it. She grabbed a parchment off a small table in front of Dram and made for the door. However her escape was blocked off by Nick and Sarmyar. The Drow was soon surrounded by the party. Sarmyar grabbed the parchment off her, while a ropey Ace, blade to her throat tried to interrogate her. With no answers forthcoming Ace took revenge on the Drow by slitting her throat.

While this was going on Dram administered a healing potion to the downed gnome that had been given to him by Ace.

And that is where we leave our adventurers for another week.

Testing 1,2,3 Testing

Game day, magic, Magic League, MtG

Yesterday was the start of the Ravnica Allegiance Magic League with my FLGS.

I discussed this format for MtG in previous posts, but for those new to the blog, MtG or just poor memories and don’t want the trauma of remembering my posts, I’ll try and summarise it briefly.

Magic League is a sealed event, where a player buys three booster packs, and with the contents builds a 30 card deck to play against other participants. The league takes place over four weeks, and each week you are able to buy an additional booster to strengthen your deck. Also after three losses you can also buy a booster pack to strengthen your deck. At the end of the league you get a cool promo card for participating.

The nice thing about the league is that it is accessible for new players. It provides a level playing field between new and old by removing the large card collection, and having to spend lots of money to get a “competitive deck” (although you can build a competitive deck on a budget).

After buying my three packs for the league, naturally I cracked them open and did the first thing every MtG player does. I went to the back of the pack and looked at the rares and uncommons I’d pulled.

With two Simic Guild Gates pulled I was getting the distinct hint I should be leaning towards a Simic deck.

After just throwing my Simic cards together I had no decision making to make to get the right number of cards. I had the right number to build the deck with. Instead of playing a league match we played some Commander!

I only had the one Commander deck with me. It was my big green stompy deck. I didn’t win any of the three games we played. But I had a blast. My deck did it’s thing. I got creatures out, made them big, and stomped over a player or two.

I also managed to get some testing of my Simic Standard deck against John and his Merfolk deck.

Our first game was a surprise to me and John. By turn four I had three Llanowar Elves out, three lands and I’d cast a Biogenic Ooze. Ramp wise this was a start I could only dream of. With my removal and counter spells, pumping out more oozes, and them getting bigger each turn. I easily took the first game.

In our second game of the best of three, it was more to plan. Ramp, Wilderness Reclamation , Biogenic Ooze, frustrating John with counter spells and bouncing creatures back to hand. A bit of mill with the walls. Threats from John to kick me under the table.

We started a second round of best of three. But this time I took out the walls and replaced them with two Incubation Druid’s (it’s all I have) and a Llanowar Scout.

Despite losing to John 2-1. I did like what these bought to the table. The Incubation Druid was pretty good, getting a +1/+1 on it was easy with the Essence Capture. So I wasn’t having to wait for the three mana it can tap for. My main problem during these three games was my mana sinks hadn’t come out. So I wasn’t getting the full value from them.

During these games John got to witness the double Wilderness Reclamation, Biogenic Ooze combo. There was a little questioning with the stores future MtG judge (he’s,in training) about the way that combo worked during the start of the end step. My interruption was correct.

Our third game was pretty close. If John hadn’t tapped down all my creatures when he did, my Hydroid Krasis would have swung in next turn for lethal. As it was I didn’t have enough tricks in hand to prevent the loss. I really like games that are like this, where they could go either way. Close games that turn on a moment. They are exciting. Even now the next day, I’m replaying the decisions I made at that point, and working out if I’d done things a little different would the result have been in my favour?

Afterwards there was general chit chat. But eventually I went home after having a great afternoon of MtG. The Hobbit Hole really does have a great MtG community.