The Wisbech Han Solo

Fenland Gamers, game night

Last night deceit, half truths and smuggling where the order of the day as we tried to smuggle contraband past the Sheriff of Nottingham.

It’d been a while since we had played the game last. And this was a first time for Nathanial and Jess.

Since Jonathan and I last played the game I had managed to get hold of the mini that the publisher did for the store game kits. This mini replaces the cardboard standee used to signify who is currently the sheriff. As minis go it’s rather nice, and I bet it would look awesome painted.

At some point I should get the expansion for the game. But considering how often we get or play them game there is no great pressure.

It would appear from the result of our game that I am indeed the most deceitful. But we knew that before the game. I lied, bluffed and bribed my way to victory.

Our second and final game was also another favourite game that we haven’t played for a long time, Dice Town. This is another game with expansions which I don’t have. And yet again the amount of times this hits the table, would it justify getting them?

I’m pretty sure me asking the question not once but twice will have shocked my friends.

I was denied victory by one point. One point that I had until Nathanial played a card taking a gold off every other player at the end. That card gave him the win by one point. If he hadn’t played it, I’d have won by 3 points. Those types of victory are the sweetest. Nathanial seemed to be really happy with stealing the win. He said this was the first time he’s beat me. But I’m sure that’s not right. Sadly I can’t confirm either way because at the moment on the app I record game plays he gets logged as anonymous.

But still despite the heat we had a great evening of gaming.

From the depths

magic, MtG

It’s obvious I think that my next Commander brew is not going to be the infect/wither one that was hinted at in a previous post. The lure of big green stompy things was too compelling.

But as I was going through my disorganised filing system (I really must get better organised) looking for cards that would be good or cool in the new deck I came across one or two other cards in other colours that I thought I must build a deck with them in.

Particularly those cards seemed to belong to a single colour and have a common theme. The colour is blue, and they all seemed to be big monsters. With the likes of Fleet Swallower, Stormtide Leviathan, Slinn Voda, the Rising Deep and the Rivals of Ixalan…


Elder Dinosaur Nezahal, Primal Tide. These are all cards that are hard to play in other formats, not impossible. Let’s face it unless you have some way to cheat them out earlier, usually by turn 7 or 8 the game can be pretty much over.

But that’s the beauty of Commander. Big creatures that are fun to play, in this casual format are playable (unless you are playing competitive Commander, but where is the fun in that?)

I’ve played Thing in the Ice before, it’s such a fun card (unless you are on the receiving end of it). It comes in all innocent then four instant or sorcery spells later, BAM! It’s transformed into Awoken Horror a 7/8 Kraken Horror that clears the board for it to swing in unopposed. Nice thing is Arcane Adaption allows me to make all my creatures Horrors if this happens late game. Early on I may not even bother, and use Arcane Adaption to make everything of mine a Kraken.

At the moment this “from the depths” (seems a cool name to give this future deck) is looking like a mono blue deck. Which I’m not opposed to. But I’m not sure who to have as the commander. I suppose I could have one of the legendary creatures from above. But do I want a commander that is expensive? I’ll have to research potential commanders that fit in with this big stompy plan. It may open up more cards that fit in with the plan.

I’m not sure what ramp cards I have access to in blue, if any. It may have to rely on the staples like soul ring to get there quicker. Naturally being blue I have access to the full control suite to help keep me alive, interrupt the plans of others, bounce creatures back to the owners hands etc etc.

Plus the above cards may be giving you a certain image of me. I like playing big stompy creatures. The current brew is mono green big stompy creatures. I have dinosaurs and dragons as other decks that have big stompy creatures. I don’t know why, but there is something satisfying swinging in with a big creature and doing lots of damage. I think the only thing that tops it is killing said big creature with a 1/1 deathtouch creature.

So that’s my initial thoughts on a future big blue stompy deck. Or cards that I want to build the deck around. Oh wait I’ve just thought when I play this deck once built, I can say “I’m about to slap you with a big wet fish” as I swing in.

Timeless Legends

magic, MtG

If you are a MtG player/fan and just so happen to be going to this years Comic Con, and if you are fast enough (as I’m sure these will fly off the shelf) you can for the bargain price of $99 buy from Hasbro this limited edition Timeless Legends box set.

This box is 5 classic Planeswalker cards of the usual suspects featuring new art. And I have to say that under sells the art. Because the art is unbelievably awesome. The artist Terese Nielsen has really knocked it out of the park. I think this is some, nah is the best art on a MtG card to date. And there has been some pretty amazing art on the cards over the year.

Does anyone else think that the ex-magic cosplayer Christine Sprankle may have been the inspiration for the Chandra card?

The sad thing is I think the secondary market for this product is going to be hundreds of pounds. Every MtG player will want these versions of the cards. I know if I had the disposable income I’d be splashing the cash for them.

These cards really should have a wider distribution, and even then I think these would be going for more than rrp or msrp as the yanks call it.

I hope the art from these becomes available as prints to buy. That will be the closest I will come to having these cards.

In the meantime if you are lucky enough to get this sdcc exclusive, well done you lucky so and so. Wish I knew some-one well enough who was going to get me one. Draw back of being an anti-social me.

Hail Hydra!

magic, MtG

As a comic book fan would I call this post anything else to show off some of the new arrivals and cards I already had that make sense going into a big green stompy deck?

I have chosen a few hydra for the deck. I particularly like the way that some of them I can sink as much mana into them as I can at the time of casting to make them pretty big. Especially if I have Doubling Season out.

Oh there are a couple more hydra in the postal system. Hydra are almost a sub tribe within this deck. It’s not quite hydra tribal. Naturally there will be one or two dinosaurs in the deck. Ghalta and Carnage Tyrant for starters. But there are one or two others that deserve a slot. I’m thinking for this deck around 30 creatures in total, some of them will like Llanowar Elves allow me to ramp. Sadly I won’t be able to get away with using some of the great tribal cards to pump things up, but I’m sure I can find alternatives that boost all my creatures. It’s mass board wipes that I’m going to be short of.

While I’m talking about cards that may or may not be going into big green stompy here are some more recent arrivals.

Naturally with the clue I gave the other day one of my possible commanders is in the photo above. Ugin is definitely going into my Dragon deck, but does he go in this new deck? I’m not sure. Elvish Piper, not big, but allows me to cheat out creatures that are.

I wonder which of my remaining cards will arrive before the weekend?

Zombicide Reused

Uncategorized

So you have this fun co-operative zombie survival horror game that gets harder the more zombies that you kill. You have everything for it (well almost everything), but it’s hard to get to the table. Not everyone shares your love for the game. Which means all that thematic plastic and cardboard is taking up valuable shelf space, calling you to play with it.

After a long overdue conversation last night with a great friend of mine that lives north of the border and who I often describe as the “Scottish version of me” (which isn’t really a compliment) I know have a rule book on it’s way through the crumbling UK postal service.

My friend told me about a rule book just released from the looks of it from Osprey Games called Last Days Zombie Apocalypse, a miniatures skirmish game that could use any old miniature. After our phone call in a blatant attempt to lure me in my friend shared a video about the rules via a tweet.
After watching the video I was very interested. Even more so when I saw that the rules were just under £14 with Prime on Amazon.

So what attracted me to click the purchase button for the rules to this miniatures skirmish game? I mean I often complain that the reason I don’t play any miniature type game like Age of Sigmar, Star Wars: Legion and Blood Bowl to name a handful is the cutting of sprues, gluing and painting before I can even play them. Which takes an age. My argument has been I want to be able to buy the game in a FLGS, open the game up, punch cardboard for 20 minutes and start playing or learning to play. Not spend hours/days constructing everything before I can start playing. Which is basically every miniatures game out there. How about that for a sweeping generalisation?

The reason I went for this rule set for my first miniatures skirmish game, (ok may not be my first if you include Star Wars: X-Wing and Star Wars: Imperial Assault skirmish mode) is because it is designed to be used with whatever models you have at hand. The designer even mentions various games and sources you can get models from to use in the video (and on the Facebook group for the rules). One of those games he mentions is Zombicide. Oh wait I have a lot of Zombicide stuff, I can use them! A miniature skirmish game where I can virtually start playing straight away using my Zombicide miniatures, count me in.

Now I know that my unpainted miniatures will be an abomination to the full blown, totally into the hobby, builds their own custom miniatures person. But stuff them. This all of a sudden makes the format accessible to some-one like me. And believe me there are an awful lot of people like me out there, where that cut/glue/paint bit switches them off totally. Until the likes of Games Workshop remove that part of their product they will never really make the miniatures hobby accessible to a wider audience.

But back to this rule set. As part of my due diligence I looked at some of the terrain options that were linked to by the designer. They look pretty cool, and a reasonable price. The game like X-Wing plays in a 3ft x 3ft area. Which is a nice size. Totally easily to get a playmat to cover the play area so it is easy to know the boundaries. There is also the fact that this rule set adds zombies into the mix too. So there is that extra element to the skirmish that you have to take into account. How this compares to the Walking Dead miniatures skirmish game I don’t know. Not sure I will get to know either, because I won’t be buying it because of the above reasons.

I’m pretty excited to look at this rule set and see about adding some of the Zombicide characters into this alternate zombie apocalypse. I want the Big Bang Theory Gang as my skirmish crew.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

magic, MtG


In my post Saturday about the Open House at my FLGS The Hobbit Hole I wrote that one or two cards that I got had me inspired to brew a big green stompy deck for Commander at some point. This post is the story of the start of that brewing.

Sunday started off early with an experiment. Using the best cold brew in town (my own, not that awful brown sludge Costa passes off as cold brew), some milk, a dash of vanilla syrup and ice, I blended the lot together and created my initial version of a cooler or whatever they call them at these franchised coffee chains. In this current damn awful heatwave it was a refreshing chilled way to start the day.

Earlier, before doing the coffee experiment I had shared with the world via Radio 5 Live how absolutely lazy my planned Sunday was going to be, and deciding when to have a bath was my big decision for the day. I know you are dying to know what the answer to the big question was. 11:30am was when I decided to impersonate a beached whale trapped in a confined space, and enjoyed a relaxing soak and read a chapter from the book Cyber War by Charles Arthur.

Somehow I ended up having a nap yesterday afternoon. After I woke up I was compelled to find the full art promo from the Game Day the previous weekend. If I didn’t I knew not knowing where I’d placed it would eat away at me. The not knowing would just consume my every thought until I found them. So it was in my best interests to find them fast.

From locating the promos and filing them away in the folder, it was easy to jump to seeing if I had any suitable commanders for a big green stompy deck. My legendary creatures are in a folder too. There were a couple of potential commanders, plus I had a couple of Nissa Planeswalkers that might also be good in the deck.

But what did the internet think? I was pretty sure some-one must have asked the question I was thinking. Naturally they had. In one particular thread on reddit I think it was, there was a discussion with suggestions being offered to the original poster. There were a couple of possible commanders I really liked the look of. Somehow those 2 cards ended up in an eBay basket and now on the way to me.

But that was the slippery slope, a handful of hydras accidentally decided they needed to be in this deck. As did a rare green board wipe, and a couple of cards for the mono red deck.

I’m hoping that the majority of these cards will be with me before next Saturdays Commander game. Although I know a couple are unlikely to be because they have to navigate the choppy waters of international postal services. But at least I should have the skeleton of the deck ready to play.

Oh which Commander am I going with? Well there will be a choice of 2 for me in the deck. I’ll chose which to go with based on the other Commanders on the table. But the image above does give a clue to one of them.

Next Weekends Plans – More Magic!

magic, MtG

This weekend isn’t over yet, but today will as my text (that got read out) to Radio 5 Live said be doing absolutely nothing. My biggest decision of the day will be when to have a bath. Other than that it’s watching Netflix, experimenting with my cold brew and blending it it with ice to get the ratio right.

But because we are fastly approaching the release of Core Set 2019, it means next weekend is Prerelease weekend. So basically a chance for players to get their filthy grubby hands on cards from the new set a week early.

Thanks to a decision made by WotC for Dominaria stores like my FLGS The Hobbit Hole are able to sell booster boxes a week early. So instead of just a handful of packs early from the Prerelease kit and from participation prizes, we can get boxes of boosters with the buy a box promo (while supplies last).

It’s a rather sweet promo, that has caused some heated debate because it is only available as the promo and no other way. There are plenty of places online where you can find the rants and ramblings on this so I won’t go into any more here.

So you may have guessed correctly I’m going to a Prerelease event next weekend. I’m looking forward to it. Not only because I get to play some MtG with the new cards, but also I get to play Commander with some of my ex-students who also are going.

Is it next weekend yet?

Against the odds

Game day, magic, MtG

On a hot day like today there is only one thing to do. Yep spend the day indoors playing MtG. Not only was it Open House at my FLGS, but it was also holding a PPTQ or Preliminary Pro Tour Qualifier for the more serious and competitive MtG player (hence why I wasn’t taking part, I’m rarely serious about anything).

I hit Chatteris just about the right time. Any later and I’d have been caught up in the town fete/parade that sees the high street closed and makes getting to the car park at the back of the store impossible until it’s over. I must remember it’s Wisbech’s turn next week to be this annoying.

In side the buzzing FLGS I quickly grabbed some of my favourite card sleeves (Dragon Shields Matt) to sleeve up the remaining 3 decks in the Second Commander Anthology. I also succumbed to buying 3 boosters from Conspiracy 2. They would have been from BattleBond if there had been any left. But apparently they sold out at FNM.

The hardest choice at an Open House for me is which pack to go for. In an ideal greedy world I’d have one each of the red, black and green decks. But we don’t live in that world, so I had to make a choice. So I decided to go big green stompy.

I think with the 2 new how to play cards in the Welcome packs, WotC have knocked it out of the park. I think these are a big improvement over the folding leaflet that was in the old ones.

I’m really glad I went with green. Look at these 2 lovely big green creatures plus there was a Colossal Dreadmaw. I just want to start building a big green stompy Commander deck. I love the art on Loxodon Line Breaker. The flavour text is so me too.

The white side of the Welcome deck really made me happy, 2 new angels that could be used in my Angel Tribal Commander deck. Which I happened to have with me. Plus Take Vengeance whose art is graphically thematic for the deck.

My first couple of games with my Welcome deck were against an ex-student. It was my green/white deck against his blue/red deck. Both games that we played I felt that I made a good flying start, but ran out of steam. Unable to make the allusive killing blow to get a win.

My third game was against the nephew of a store regular. I thought it was going to be a mirror match up. But it wasn’t he had green but instead of white had red. It was a match up that once again saw me get close but unable to get over the finishing line. We traded blows, except my opponent was able to land more of them than I was.

My final game to qualify for the promo was against the uncle who had blue/white. This time it wasn’t my deck that was misfiring. But unlike the previous 3 games I was able to deliver the finishing blow and grab that all important win to avoid a complete whitewash.

After claiming our reward for having a good time playing MtG, my ex-student and I caught up, and talked decks.

We took part in a 5 player game of Commander. One of the 5 was Mr McSalty from last week. He started to get a bit salty again when I destroyed his artifact that gave him unlimited hand size. Couldn’t have that, even if the nephew (playing a super powered up version of the Dragon 2017 Commander Deck) did have some also attractive targets.

The uncle then played an enchantment that was a slow painful death for us all. Basically on our end step we drew a card, and took 2 damage. Then with his consecrated Sphinx started to mill me. Well I was mono white. Out came a creature that every time we drew a card we lost a life. Yeah the uncle was developing a board state that didn’t require him to attack, just sit back and let us die playing the game. It hurt even more when I had to discard my hand with a Fumigate and another board wipe in it, to then draw 7 new cards. Oh and take 7 damage. But this was hitting all of us.

Dragons were getting out of control. And single shot killed McSalty. My and my ex-students health was getting low. But we were hanging in there.

After the uncle reset the nephews board state to zero creatures, my ex-student swung in and killed the uncle. Lifelink was starting to push my health back up. The nephew swung in at me, but I chump blocked with some angels, got more health back. Then I hit back, more health. I was out of single hit range. My ex-student took out the nephew, leaving me the chance to swing in and kill him for the really unexpected win.

How I won this I don’t know. It was a shocking victory.

Naturally I picked up my order of the 5 Planeswalker decks. So along with the cards from the welcome deck, I have also opened my first packs from Core Set 19.

These are the pulls from the booster that came with the Sarkhan Planeswalker deck.

It even had a foil basic land.

I’ll share the other pull highlights in another post.

I had a great time at the Open House. Really enjoyed myself. Looking forward to next weekends pre-release event.

This is my Saturday

magic, MtG

Yeah not an official advert from either my FLGS or WotC. Just a little fan art I did for this post to remind people that tomorrow is Open House at the majority of LGS or FLGS (Depending on how you feel about your LGS).

It’s a great event if you have wanted to learn or try the game. Free welcome deck, promo card, taught how to play the game, play some games with your new deck. All in a friendly, welcoming environment (unless your store is just a LGS, that I can’t help with).

Naturally I’m going to be found at my FLGS The Hobbit Hole. I’m going to be playing some MtG, collecting the new Planeswalker decks, opening the five Core 2019 boosters that gives me (and continuing my run of not opening anything of value).