Kaldheim Spoiler Gets Me Excited!

Commander, magic, MtG

At the end of this month MtG players get their hands on the new Norse inspired set Kaldheim.

Until then we are in the middle of what is known as spoiler season. Which is basically when WotC use various content creators (mainly streamers and YouTubers) that they deem worthy to reveal cards from the new set (and hopefully building up excitement) over like a two week peroid before revealing every card in the set.

WotC did spoil one card that has me very excited for it, and adding it to my Big Green Stompy Commander deck.

This deck is my mono green deck that plays big creatures. Naturally there are more than a handful of hydra in the deck. I think it would be fair to almost say I’m not far off from this being a hydra tribal deck.

To make those hydra and any other that I put a +1/+1 counter onto I have the following three cards in the deck.

As you can guess with just one of these cards out the hydras can come in pretty big. If I’m allowed to have more than one of these cards out at the same time (a pretty silly move by the other players) then the hydras start to become silly.

However I do play one hydra that just abuses the cards above and the math can get insane! That card is Primordial Hydra.

I think in a previous post many many moons ago now I told you about a Commander game at my FLGS where I indeed did have Primordial Hydra out with Primal Vigor and won the game swinging in with a 156/156 hydra. You can imagine how insanely large Primordial Hydra would have gotten at the start of my next turn.

Now with Kaldheim I will have a new instant add to the deck. And forgive any pun but it doubles down on the counter doubling for me! The new card is Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider.

For my deck it’s an insane card and increases the odds of me hitting a way to double my counters. That’s the bit I like a lot. A 6/6 with tramp and haste for 6 CMC is nice, and a green deck not a lot to pay, and possible to play early ahead of curve with the right ramp pieces in hand. And I have ramp in the deck. It’s green!

The final paragraph on the card is a really nice bonus. Which if I’m reading this correctly means that while Vorinclex is on the battlefield any Planeswalkers that opponents play comes in with half the counters on it! Which means it takes longer for an opponent to ultimate them and gives me and others longer to remove the Planeswalker. Plus it negates single +1/+1 or -1/-1 counters being placed if my understanding of the text is correct. But making sure that whatever permanent the other player brings in with counters is smaller is amazing.

So in my deck this is a monstrous card indeed. I think you can see now why I am excited about the card.

Pointcrawls

D&D, RPG

Ever since Sly Flourish in his weekly DM Prep YouTube video mentioned and then started using Pointcrawls in his Eberron campaign I’ve been curious.

Being the lazy so and so I am. Instead of doing my own research on Pointcrawls, I decided to wait for Sly Flourish to write a blog post about them.

The waiting game paid off when Sly Flourish recently put up a YouTube video about Pointcrawls with links to articles that go into them in more depth.

I’ve embedded the video below.

So why am I interested in Pointcrawls?

Way back I wrote a post about travel and making them interesting.

Within our campaign we have land and sea travel.

For the land travel I have tried using The One Ring rules, or a version of. It went ok. For the sea travel I used a variation of the hex crawl rules from Tomb of Annihilation. Which also seemed fine.

But I’m constantly conscious of the players getting bored, not engage, or tired of the repetitive nature that these types of travel have.

Pointcrawls sound like from what Sly Flourish has said something I may find solves some of this. Obviously it will have its own drawbacks. Which I’m sure will become clear once I start reading the articles Sly links too.

And the one thing I can be sure of with current world events is I have time to look into this before our campaign resumes.

Quest Decks by Dice Dungeons

D&D, first look, new arrivals, RPG

Nearly a year ago now I backed a Kickstarter for these deck of cards to be used with RPGs called Quest Decks.

By there end of the Kickstarter there were ten quest decks unlocked. These decks covered various genres and types of missions:

” •  The Notice Board – Filled with traditional quests a party may find in a fantasy town.

•  For The Crown – Plunges your character into a world of nobles and intrigue. A chance at bigger rewards, but with higher stakes.

•  Into The Stars – This sci-fi themed deck will take your players on Interstellar adventures. Designed to work great for space-fairing games such as Stars without Number and Starfinder.

•  Grimm Adventures – Explore spooky crypts and dark secrets in this eerie, ghost-themed deck.

•  Coastal Threats – Great for coastal regions and seafaring campaigns. Explore docks districts and seek buried treasure.

•  Far-flung Journeys – Embark on quests that require distant travel that will take you beyond the edge of world.

•  Neon Dystopia – From megacorps to mechanoids, dive into the neon shadows of the future in this cyberpunk inspired deck.

•  Eldritch Omens – Bring a touch of madness to your game and investigate unknowable horrors with this Lovecraftian themed horror deck.

•  Uncharted Expanse – Take your sci-fi adventures to edge as you explore the outer regions space.

•  Partners in Crime – This deck will have you using all your wits and cunning to plan heists, shake down shop owners, and fight for territory.” (Taken from the Kickstarter page)

I backed for five decks of my choice (a decision based on funds, and interest), and the physical copies arrived a couple of days back. I’ve had the digital versions of the decks I chose for a while. But unless I was in a hurry to use them, printing my own copies to use didn’t appeal to me.

The nice thing about the digital version of the decks was the “bonus” content. These are pdfs that any DM would find useful. There were three in total, A Lively Encounter (tables to add depth to random encounters), 50 Plot Points to Add Depth to Your Side Quests, and D100 Names (can never have enough lists of names).

The decks themselves are fine quality wise. I’d have preferred maybe better card stock for the deck boxes and cards. However I plan to sleeve the cards anyway, which means the deck boxes are redundant and most likely for the bin.

Each deck consists of forty five quest cards, three blank cards, a quick guide card (although the Quest deck didn’t have this), and an advert card for more Quest Decks.

I’m looking forward to using these Quest Decks. Tie them in with some of the other decks and the npc dice, and it’s possible to create a random quest, dungeon, and NPC’s on the fly during a session. Or as inspiration whilst session planning.

What is old is new!

D&D, RPG

Well the new year is upon us and so far very little has changed from the previous year. It’s just more of the corruption, lies, ineptitude, shelfishness and just plain old incompetence.

My bedtime routine during the last few nights has consisted of listening to the 12 Days of Christmas Edition Wars from The Tome Show podcast. “In this special mini-series Brandes Stoddard and Sam Dillon take a deep dive into the Dungeon Master’s Guides from each edition of our favorite game.”

It’s been a fascinating look at the previous editions and this morning I finally got round to digging out the Dungeon Master’s Guide 2 for D&D 3.5, and the Dungeon Master’s Guide for D&D 4.

There were a couple of things that the hosts mentioned that I thought sounded still valid for use with the current 5th edition. And I wanted to make sure I had them as notes to refer to later on when session prepping or running a session.

The first thing I added to my notes was the sidebar on page 30 of the Dungeon Master’s Guide 2 for 3.5. This contains “Sample Move Descriptions” and “Sample Quips and Battle Cries”. I thought these would be something I can add instantly to my combat encounters (once our sessions start back up).

I also made note of the Prioritizing section on pages 32 – 34. This is all about what you can do preparing for a session based on how much time you have available to prepare. Although I’m a fan of the Lazy DM. It’s always handy having another opinion. Plus I thought at some point it might be an interesting exercise to contrast and compare the two.

Page 34 also has handy ideas on aids you can create outside of the session to help improvise at the table. Which cross references to a handy table on page 98 to create random tavern names. I already have plenty of tables to use for names. But I might look at the other suggestions in a post.

I thought the Random Politics table on page 86 looked very useful for its intended use of creating a quick political profile for a medieval-style kingdom. I can use this every time my adventurers discover/arrive at an island.

The 50 Rumors and Hooks on pages 88 – 90 to use within Towns and Cities looks handy for bringing them to life in my campaign.

Another long but handy list/table to have starts on page 99 – 101 is the 100 Instant NPC Agendas. This will hopefully bring my NPC’s to life and make them more memorable.

The Dungeon Master’s Guide for 4e had one page I wanted to add, and that was purely from what The Tome Show said about it. That was page 42. It talks about actions the rules don’t cover. When I saw this page I thought “this looks kinda familiar”. Indeed it did it looked similar to a page from the Lazy DM Workbook. And like one or two comments by me above I think it will be a the subject of another post comparing the two.

I should note that a fair bit of the advice on sessions, planning adventures and campaigns that isn’t system specific still is of use today.

My Game of 2020

Uncategorized

Let’s face it this year is an anomaly when compared to other years. Well I hope it is, and that we are not looking at the new normal.

Obviously the least surprising stat is that I have played very few board games this year. In totally 22 games, down from 70 in 2019. But considering the state of things that’s not bad.

My most played game was Las Vegas (6 plays), which only just pipped D-Day Dice Pocket by one.

Of the 22 games played 8 of them were new to me. And that is the pool I have to choose from for my 2020 game of the year.

My game of 2020 although technically is over 30 years old, was out of print for most of that, achieving almost legendary status and greatly inflated prices on the secondary market, got a reprint in 2019 by Galeforce Nine. It wasn’t until the start of the year that I got to play the game.

My game of 2020 is…

Dune the board game did not disappoint. For me it lived up to the hype.

The two plays that I got were a 3 player and 5 player game.

I love the asynchronous faction powers. They were very on theme for each faction.

Which reminds me this game oozes theme. It captures the conflict for the planet Arrakis and the control of spice perfectly.

I’m a fan of games that capture or build in a political element between players, such as Commander, and A Game of Thrones the board game. I love making alliances and that potential for portrayal. And believe me those involved in the alliance are looking at when it will be the most advantageous for them to break the alliance and stab the other in the back.

The combat is pretty cool, although it can be a forgone conclusion, there is still an air of uncertainty. Especially when the the forces involved on both sides of the combat are pretty close in size. It comes down to leaders and cards played by both sides.

Dune can be a longish game to play. Not up to TI4 times. But still over two hours, more likely three to four. But even so, the time flies whilst playing. You are engaged between turns as you have to keep up with what the other players are doing. So you may have an idea what your next turn might be, by the time it is back to you that may have changed because of what others have done.

Yep Dune the board game is a classic that has held up rather well. I love it. It does need to be played with the higher player counts. But that is where the game sings.

Dune the board game my game of 2020.

Roll & Play: The Game Master’s Fantasy Toolkit

D&D, RPG

I think it’s well known that I like generating random content and having tables to roll against.

My latest addition to the myriad of tables for me to use for inspiration while session planning or even during a session is the Roll & Play: The Game Master’s Fantasy Toolkit from Roll & Play Press.

Roll & Play was published with the help of a successful Kickstarter campaign (one that I sadly did not back), and was finally available to the public to purchase last November.

There are over 120 tables with in the pages that cover I would say the majority of a DM’s needs. The contents above give you a good idea of the sort of tables included.

I like that the tables use a variety of die. They are not just d20’s, but you will be using d8’s, d12’s, and d100’s as well.

Another nice feature of the book is that it is spiral bound. Which means it can lie flat or fold in half. The paper stock used is quite thick and robust as well. And should take rough handling, along with wear and tear of use from being lugged around in a bag really well.

Along with the many tables, scattered throughout is handy advice relevant to the table you are rolling against. Which in itself could inspire.

Roll & Play: The Game Master’s Fantasy Toolkit is different from one or two of the books of tables I have because those were aimed squarely at session prep, whilst this sits firmly on the fence of being able to be used for session prep and during a session. With the emphasis on the during a session.

A retro video game project started

gameboy, retro gaming

Merry Christmas.

I hope everyone got everything they asked Santa for.

This post isn’t board gaming related at all. It’s about a little “project” I’ve decided to do that sees me jumping into a time machine and revisiting my younger years and video gaming history.

It all started Tuesday when I saw on social media somewhere (most likely Twitter) some art work related to the video game Nebulus from Hewson Consultants.

Now I’m old enough to remember it coming out originally and playing it in the eighties in its 8bit form. But I had a vague impression that it got released on home consoles that included the Nintendo GameBoy. It was probably an old Retro Gamer I was remembering.

As always a couple of minutes on Google and Wikipedia confirmed that there had indeed been a version for the GameBoy. But it had been renamed Castelian for some reason.

Five minutes later a Castelian cartridge had been purchased on eBay. Which means it’ll be with me most likely in the New Year. If I’m lucky before then.

I thought wouldn’t it be cool to revisit some of the old GameBoy games I own while I was waiting for Castelian to arrive.

Finding my old games was the easy bit. The hard bit was remembering where my handheld consoles were. Eventually I found them after some digging around. I even managed to find the correct chargers!

While I put my GameBoy Advance SP (GBA SP) on charge, along with my 3DS lite I sorted through my games collection to select a handful of games to play (see photo below).

I don’t know why I didn’t think of doing this earlier in the year. I could have been playing these during the lockdown.

As I was going through my GameBoy collection I could swear I had Robocop for it. But it was not to be found. Maybe my mind and poor memory were playing tricks on me.

But another visit to eBay saw a GameBoy version of Robocop on its way to me.

Christmas Eve afternoon saw me fire up my GBA SP with Tetris for the GameBoy plugged into the cartridge slot.

Tetris was bundled with the original GameBoy back in the day. It was a classic combo that sold insane numbers. There is an amazing chapter in the book Game Over by David Sheff that goes over the saga of how Nintendo got the license for Tetris and teamed it up with the GameBoy.

For many it was the only game they played on the GameBoy. It was a portable Tetris player.

For me GameBoy Tetris is the definitive version and the yardstick later versions are judged against.

It’s easily been a decade since I’ve played this version. So to clear 75 lines on my first attempt wasn’t too bad for this aging player. My next couple of games I was in the eighties for lines cleared. Back in my younger days I had reached over 120 lines. But that’s with the tetrominos falling at a silly speed.

The music for Tetris on the GameBoy by Hirokazu Tanakais is still iconic and catchy as ever.

While this “project” is going on Tetris is going to be a game I keep coming back to for a break.

Another classic on the GameBoy is Donkey Kong.

Like so many games (and this will be a recurring theme during this “project”) I never completed the game but got pretty far into it.

I like Donkey Kong. It’s an interesting take on the arcade classic.

Donkey Kong starts off with the four levels from the arcade original. And to be honest if they had just recreated the arcade game I would have been happy. But they didn’t.

After you complete the fourth level you start to work through 97 new levels! However although the over all aim is still to rescue Pauline, on each level you now have to collect a key to open the door to advance to the next level. These new levels remind me more of old Spectrum and C64 platformers like Manic Miner or Chuckie Egg.

A nice touch is the ability to save your progress at regular intervals. It aids progressing through the game.

It took a couple attempts before I was sailing through the classic arcade levels without losing a life. It’s amazing how even after all these years it all comes back to you. But the game is still a joy to play.

I’ll write some more on Donkey Kong in the next post about this “project” as I progress through more of the levels.

Until then stay safe.

Hodge podge

Commander, magic, MtG, RPG

We are now in to the last few days before Christmas. A Christmas that will be unusual for many. Where time will be spent away from loved ones instead of with them.

Over on the Fenland Gamer discord server we have a game of chess in progress. Which at the moment looks mainly to be between Jonathan and myself. Gavin did suggest a couple of moves. But otherwise it hasn’t captured anyone else’s imagination and had them participate.

Sitting in my pile of RPGs to try are the new Fate Condensed rules, and the Fate Space Toolkit (a source book for running space themed Fate sessions).

It’s looking like the Cyberpunk Red core rules won’t be hitting the UK FLGS’s until the new year. It’s the now expected reasons for the delay of current world events. So I’ll try and get a copy then.

The last couple of days have seen the start of the Kaldheim spoilers.

If I remember correctly Kaldheim is a viking inspired set.

There have been a couple of cards spoilt that will be insane in my elf tribal Commander deck. Elven Ambush (below) potentially could give me an insane number of elves on the battlefield. With cards like Essence Warden (life gain), Elvish Vanguard (gets bigger), Ivy Lane Denizen (+1/+1 counter) also giving a major benefit from playing it.

Canopy Tactician gives a nice Lord effect making everything else bigger, and taps for 3 mana.

I like Sarulf, Realm Eater. I’d like to use it in the new deck I have in the works.

There are some nice looking angels as well in this set. And I really do need to revisit my angel deck and update it. Especially since Iona got banned.

Naturally I have preordered the two Commander decks that will be coming out along side Kaldheim. Plus a couple of the white and green themed boosters. I also have a prerelease kit preordered too. I’m still deciding whether I’ll get a draft booster or just a gift box.

I’m also tempted to pick up some of the excess prerelease kits that my FLGS has left over from previous sets. Thanks to world events times have been hard for all FLGS’s. It’s because of this that this rare opportunity is an option. Under normal circumstances this would not even be possible because they get sold out prerelease weekend. It’d be cool to use some as prizes once physical MtG is possible again to once more try and get something started locally.