Category Archives: On the Tabletop

Adventures from cards, miniatures, pencil and paper RPGs, and other old fashioned games from before the internet ruined everything.

How to Play Your Dragons (of Tarkir)?

(Editor’s Note: Ultimately, I had to decide not to bring the boys to a prerelease because Liam isn’t feeling well, but I’m interested in in what everyone thinks about this.)

With the last set in the Tarkir block imminent and big changes on the horizon for the game, I wanted to do a preview article of some sort. Since so many others have already written articles that list the best cards for this format or that format, I don’t want to (nor do I feel comfortable) add to that. If you’re looking for those articles, I recommend LSV’s take on limited (The link takes you to his thoughts on gold, colorless, and lands. There are links to the other colors in the article) or Channel Fireball’s Magic TV video that discusses constructed Standard. The video is long but worth the watch. I still haven’t finished the whole thing. If Chris and I are going to seriously pursue constructed decks, though, I will have to watch the rest of it.

The 2 Guys Gaming pride ourselves in bringing a fresh voice in the gaming community. We may not have the most current or cutting edge content, but we try to make it fun, entertaining, and maybe even a little informative. I initially drew a blank on how to approach this article. I know that I want to focus on the prerelease. I’m positive that I want to include my sons in some way. I am struggling with the angle. Chris and I are going to talk about the set this weekend. That narrows the possibilities even more.

I want to write an article about this weekend’s prerelease and children. Okay, I got it! As usual, inspiration hit last night while in that weird place that your brain resides as you are on the verge of sleep. I will write an article about the prerelease and children. So obvious and simple, right? Why did it take me so long? Sometimes my muse takes time off. Maybe she extended her St. Paddy’s Day celebrations. She finally showed up just in time as she likes to do and I’m ready to write this article.

I’m a member in a Magic group on Facebook. It is an eclectic group and mostly friendly, so I fit right in. An offshoot group formed last year called MtG Secret Santa that encourages members to send cards other anonymous members. I am not a huge fan of Facebook, but every now and then, the stars align and it leads to something great. The reason that I bring up the group is that it contributed to inspiration for this article.

One of the most common questions in the group is some variation of “What age is good to start my kids on Magic?” More often than not, one of the first answers is an attempt at humor, “As soon as possible because then they won’t have money for drugs.” I must admit that one always makes me chuckle. As generally happens online, after the trolls get it out of their system, people give genuine responses. Most give the advice that they would start as soon as possible because the came can teach math reading, critical thinking, and other valuable skills. While that might be true, that is not the reason that I taught my kids the game. Truth be told, they weren’t even considerations. I taught them the game for the same reason that I wanted to learn it myself and still play. It is a fun game. Plus, they had the added advantage of already having played Pokemon. Teaching them has the added benefit of being able to share with them something that I enjoy.

The reason that I bring all of this up is that there are always two sides to every one of these discussions. I always try to consider both sides before making a decision. The predicament, as you can no doubt guess, revolves around whether or not to take my sons to the prerelease. i took Liam to the Theros prerelease and he had fun. I took both of them to the Khans of Tarkir one and even though there was a monumental mix up, we ended up having an okay time. Before recently, I never even considered that either one of them at the events was a problem. I can honestly say that I don’t have a problem with them going. There have been other children at the other two prereleases. Admittedly, not many and they may have been older than my kids, but they were there.

So, what’s the problem? Well, I might not see a problem and you might not either. However, I recently learned that there might be a problem because others don’t like the idea. I can’t definitively say that their attitudes extend to the prerelease. The conversations always start with Friday Night Magic and end with several people gleefully telling stories of how they demoralized some kid who shouldn’t have even been there.

Forget, if you can, that they are most likely grown men who are bragging about beating a child. That might be difficult since I just made a point to remind you. Let’s put that to the side and stick to the main point. Clearly, there are those in the community that don’t want children at these events. I know that not everyone likes children. Hell, I don’t like some of the people that I meet at a Magic event. In the spirit of competition, we are encouraged to respect our opponents.

I agree and sympathize with the sentiment that young kids shouldn’t be at competitive events, even as spectators. I’m going to Star City Games in Providence and Worcester in April and May and I’m not taking either of the boys. They get bored easily, so there’s no way they would last all day at one of those. Friday Night Magic might be borderline. I have never been to one of those, so I don’t know how seriously or casual people take those games. I have been to two prereleases, as I said, and those are more suited for kids. I even saw that they have a new dice rolling game for Dragons of Tarkir, so Wizards seems to be skewing the demographic younger by themselves.

At 7, Aiden might be on the border of acceptable. He got bored and a little whiny towards the end of Khans of Tarkir and we had to leave early as a result. I will try again at the next one (not Dragons, more on that later) and if he can’t handle it, I will wait a couple of years until he is at least 10. That’s how old Liam is and both times he was well behaved and independent enough to build his own decks. He even won a match during Theros.

As it stands, this who decision is no longer relevant. I might be going but I won’t be taking the boys to the prerelease because Liam isn’t feeling well. Hey, kids are unpredictable! It’s why we love them. It’s why they drive us nuts. Still, the larger point remains valid. Magic is a game that appeals to a wide variety of people. You probably won’t get along with every person you meet at an event. You should still respect your opponents both during and after the game. Especially new players, since without them, the games that we love so much might cease to exist before long.

I don’t feel bad taking my kids to the prerelease. Should I? What do you think? I’d like to know if this is honestly a big problem for the community at large. It might be that the only people that I hear saying this are Twitch chat. We know how they can be about pretty much everything. Let me know in the comments or via email how you feel about this.

Overdose on Cardboard Crack

(Editor’s Note: I know that I’ve been heavy on the Magic articles lately, but this is an exciting time for the game right now. I will do something on Diablo III on Friday to prepare for the podcast next week.)

As most of you already know, Pax East was this past weekend in Boston. Since it is the most “local” of these conventions, I made a vow last year to go this year. Coincidentally, I made the same vow this year for next year. I broke that vow and the gaming gods punished me accordingly. Among the constant stream of Twitter and Facebook updates (that I checked in between rounds of the Star City Games GP in Miami), was news of a new Orcs Must Die game, a Hearthstone adventure mode with more cards, and many new spoilers from the latest Magic the Gathering expansion set. They’ve never done a dragon themed expansion before and we quickly learned that they weren’t lying when they said that “Here there be dragons (of Tarkir).”

The block started with a plane on which all of the dragons had been hunted to extinction. Having relatively recently lost big time to Chris’s dragon deck, I thought that this was a great idea. I love my dragons and all of their destructive power, but this loss was especially devastating for some reason. Usually, I take the losses in stride, but I immediately started to plan ways to exterminate that dragon deck. I still haven’t quite finished the planning stages of my “Dragons Be Gone” deck and I’m afraid that it might be too late now.

The second set, Fate Reforged, saw one of the characters travel back in time and reverse the events that led to the deaths of the dragons. It is this set that introduced the dragons, obviously, and started to turn the plane topsy turvy. Five powerful beasts rise from the fray to destroy the puny human clans and take their rightful places as the rulers of Tarkir. Several prominent characters saw their fates changed as a result of what happened. I suppose that’s where the name of the set came from. While somewhat underwhelming to me and Chris, Fate Reforged provided a perfect bridge between past present, and future or alternate past and present…or whatever actually happened.

Truth be told, I lost interest in Magic to such a degree that I had no idea the new set was imminent and that spoilers were about to happen. I remarked to Chris that it felt really early, but then they were happening. A couple of dragonlords, command cards (that let you choose two of four options), new mechanics (like Megamorph, which always makes me think of Power Rangers), and a set that looks to blow the roof off, as I thought it might. Both Chris and I found a renewed interest and excitement for the game as the days passed and new cards were added to the web pages.

Enter Pax East. By the end, we met all of the dragonlords. We witnessed the final destruction of the clans and a refocus on ally 2-color magic instead of the 3-color wedges of the clans. We saw Sarkhan changed by his successful alteration of the timeline, or creation of a new timeline….or whatever happened. Other than the lords, we got new dragons. Lots of dragons. Dragons that breathe fire and those that breathe acid. Dragons that morph, dragons that clear the board. Dragons that buff others, dragons that draw cards, dragons that alter the effects of spells, dragons that don’t really do much…okay, that one so far is a lie. Almost all of these dragons look impressive and no matter which ones I end up pulling from my fat pack and booster box, I will put them into at least one of my decks. I’ve already started. I have a dragon in my Mardu deck and I’m thinking of putting one in my new Abzan deck. As I said to Chris, it is at the point of “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”

Crazy as it is, that wasn’t even the best Magic news to come out of Pax East this weekend. They also announced the theme of the last core set in the form of a double sided Liliana card. On one side is a legendary form and the other side is a planeswalker form. More information reveals that the set will focus on five different planeswalkers and tell the stories of how and when their sparks ignited. As somebody who simultaneously liked and hated the core sets, this is exciting and interesting news. I am a fan of the two sided cards even if I haven’t found a way to use them in my decks. The main thing that I don’t like about the core sets is the amount and quality of reprints. Since it is the last core set, they can go one of two ways. They can either go crazy with the reprints to give players one last chance to get some of the cards from the past that are very expensive on the secondary market or they can have one last core set where they showcase their imagination and originality.

Personally, I think that they will lean towards the latter. They might reprint some cards as they always do because they are also taking the occasion to relaunch their Duels of the Planeswalkers series with the same Origins branding. They are making the game free to play to draw in that audience. They also have brought back some of the more popular games modes that they removed in the last version of the game. Making new players feel like they have a chance is key to getting those players to enjoy playing your game, so giving those new players cards to play in a card game seems legitimate. Hearthstone does a terrible job of this, in my opinion, but they report huge numbers of players, so what do I know?

This article isn’t about Hearthstone. It is about Magic and there is still plenty to discuss. There may be reprints in Origins for the reasons outlined in the previous paragraph, but I don’t think that there will be a large number of reprints. My main reasoning is that Wizards also (I know, right?!) announced their new Modern Masters set. I remember the first Modern Masters as an overpriced set of reprints. This appears to be the same, but one of the cards spoiled has me excited beyond reason. Upon seeing the card, I wrote a message to Chris telling him that I was considering an order of a box of the set at $350+. Thankfully, he talked me off the ledge, but that card still speaks to me on a deep level and I’m not sure why. Modern Masters 2015 contains reprints of Tarmogoyf. Widely considered to be one of the best cards for many modern decks, fewer copies of the card exist than maybe should because at the time of printing, not many considered it to be that good of a card. While not on the price level of Alpha cards, it still costs quite a bit. None of that matters to me, though. I just think that it has the most fun name of any Magic card ever created. As I said in my recap of the Star City Games modern tournament, I defy you to find a card that is more fun to say than Tarmogoyf. $300 for a chance at bragging rights on a card that is fun to say? Shut up and take my money! Totally worth!

Are you all newsed out after announcements of Dragons, two sided planeswalkers, a relaunched digital game, and reprinted tree zombies? Well, prepare to be severely disappointed because there’s more. After learning of the origins of five of the planeswalkers, Magic is bringing us back to Zendikar. They haven’t announced any more than the name of the first set, but just that one word was enough to send players into either a near orgasmic state of joy (me, for one) or spastic fits of rage (many of the standard players) in a fight that some are calling the “Battle over the Battle for Zendikar”. Not really. I’m almost sure that I just made that up.

So, what (aside from nearly everything) could divide the player base into warring camps? We don’t know how the events on Tarkir have affected other planes, but when we last left Zendikar Eldrazi were devouring it. If you think that a set full of dragons is going to make for powerful decks, wait until the mana consuming Eldrazi make their comeback. Sure, they have huge casting costs, but (and they have big butts, too) the costs are always colorless, they swing (usually at your face) for massive amounts of damage, and they have annihilator to destroy any board that you might have built to try to counter them. I’m not a competitive player and only got to play the Eldrazi in an old version of Duels of the Planeswalkers, so I’m excited for the possibilities of being able to annihilate (haha, get it?) my opponents. Oh, and from a purely Magic nerd point of view, Zendikar was the set of full of art lands. So, that possibility exists. If you give me a chance at full art lands again, I welcome our new Eldrazi overlords.

Wizards of the Coast absolutely crushed it with these announcements. I don’t know if anybody else had the same reaction as Chris and I did. We both considered finding another hobby because we were both so unimpressed by the set. Fickle? Perhaps, but Magic can be an expensive hobby and if it isn’t returning that expense in terms of enjoyment, I can think of many other ways to spend that money. I, for one, am interested in Magic again in a big way. Well played, Wizards. I might not be your white whale, but you will continue to get my hard earned money for at least the next year.

Majorly Modern Magic

(Editor’s Note: I challenge you to find a Magic card that is more fun to say out loud than “Tarmogoyf”.)

StarCityGames.com held their first Modern Open Tournament this past weekend in Baltimore. I watched nearly every (maybe every) featured match on their Twitch stream. I kept chat open. For the most part, I’m glad that I did. The Magic audience seems to be closer to my demographic than the normal Twitch chat.

That’s not to say that chat was a completely positive experience. This is still Twitch, after all. Some players generated intense hate from viewers because of slights (perceived or real), board states (angled graveyards and land in the front as illustrated in the comic), and seemingly no reason once or twice. That has to be the single thing about competitive gaming that bothers me most. It is the same thing about other sports that I don’t like.

11025721_1079316468760804_660827812328493524_n

Instead of just being able to enjoy the games, there is so much baggage. We attach all of these perceived offenses to “our” team perpetrated by the “other” team. Very seldom are fans able to congratulate that “other” team on a well fought victory. Adding to their ability to suck any and all fun from the games, every minor detail of the game gets analyze, overanalyzed, and then criticized. Due to the mostly younger demographic, the video games community skips right to the criticism. There is no resolution or nuance in the conversations. Just a constant drone back and forth. What ever happened to simply watching and enjoying the games.

Okay, rant over, now to the event itself. Part of the reason for the outrage in chat is that like many competitive card game tournaments, players brought decks that were a variation on a theme. Maybe part of the reason that it didn’t bother me as much is because I don’t play modern, so I wasn’t as familiar wit the decks and haven’t experienced the frustration of playing against them. Still, I came into this event with no baggage or expectations.

I learned quickly about the intense hatred for the so called “Twins” decks and the card Blood Moon. Many are calling for it to be banned while others defend it to their last breath. It’s the typical conversation that surrounds controversial cards or combos. I made my usual joke on the topic.

x needs to be banned.” –Every player who ever lost a single game to x.

x is fine.” –Every payer who has ever abused x‘s broken mechanic to their benefit.

Honestly, though, as a completely neutral party, I didn’t see a problem with Blood Moon. Sure, it can be frustrating to encounter, but it also seems easy to deal with. By my understanding, the decks that run it do so because of an abundance of nonbasic lands being played in Modern. Seems to me that modern players just need to adjust. I don’t know much about the competitive Magic scene as a participant, but isn’t that a part o it? Players adjust to one another, decks, cards, and combos. While one of the blood moon decks was in the final round, they didn’t dominate to a point where it felt unfair. Let’s take a look at the standings to see if this is on the level of Treasure Cruise or Pod.

Two of the top four decks of the open used Blood Moon either in their main deck or sideboard. Four of the top 8 represented a “Twin” deck, the archetype mentioned that led to this discussion of Blood Moon. Only three of them ran the card, but people were calling for the heads of these players all the same. Those calling for a ban are just full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. While the decks might be mostly unoriginal and a pain to face, that is just the nature of competitive card games from what I can tell. All of the tournaments that I watch feature the same decks. If you want innovation, then you need to innovate.

Witness the the other decks played at the tournament. Twenty seven different archetypes were identified in day two of play from Abzan to good old zoo. Even if we look only at the four other top eight decks, we get a Jund with Chandra and Liliana, White/Black tokens with Soren and Liliana, and four color control built around Snapcaster Mage as the only creature. I have simulated a few games with each of these decks and they are fun to play for a player like me who enjoys the control aspect of Magic. So far, I have watched Vintage and Modern and both formats heavily favor control, making me wonder why I haven’t followed these formats more closely before. My main reason, as is usually the case in these types of situations, was ignorance. I heard, and believed without evidence, that the games were dominated by the same decks and boring to watch. While that might be true in Standard, which is a format limited to the last few sets for its card pool, both Modern and Vintage have proven to be interesting and fun to watch.

Though certain decks are favored, as I discussed, the formats are not stagnant. Different types of the same deck play differently. With 60 cards, instead of 30 like Hearthstone, to use to build decks, even the same deck will look different from game to game. The same cannot be said for Hearthstone. Most games can be predicted by even the most novice viewer after only a few games. I admit that I was wrong. Competitive Magic is great to watch and I’m going to follow more closely.

You may have noticed that I’ve only focused on 7 of the top 8 decks at the event. The reason for this is that the deck that took the top spot in Baltimore deserves more than a mere mention. During the event, I jokingly called the deck “Sultai cards that I found in my couch cushions” since SCG only could only identify it as “Sultai”. The decks creator, Gerard Fabiano, ensured that they would not be able to be more specific in their classification. The story behind the deck is that he held an internet pull to choose his deck and “Sultai cards I own” won. I immediately fell in love with the idea, watched all of his matches closely, coined my own pet name for the deck, and kept writing Chris with updates that I’m sure he didn’t care all that much about.

The deck (found here and an absolute blast to play and watch) inspired me to make plans to go to Star City Games events in Providence and Worcester, so look for my in person reports from them in April and May. It has also helped to contribute (along with my discovery of Vintage Super League) to my renewed interest in Magic. I felt underwhelmed by Fate Reforged, but I’m back in and looking forward to Dragons. I might even sign up for a prerelease again.

You may sat that is quite a lot to attribute to one deck. I tend to agree and it might not be completely because of the deck, but have you seen that deck? I’ll give you time to click the link. Back? Not only does it have many Modern staples, but it has cards like Feed the Clan, too. It has everything; counter spells, creature removal, forced discard, peeks at the opponents hand, graveyard manipulation, life gain, the ability to steal creatures that you don’t remove/have already removed, and Tarmogoyf. The entire deck list is like something snatched right out of my fevered Magic dreams after passing out from too many whiskey shots. It is an absolute work of art from top to bottom and Mr. Fabiano has a new fan boy for life.

If you haven’t had a chance to watch the finals match of him playing the deck, you can find it here. It is a thing of beauty. You can actually watch all of the matches on the playlist there, but the finals match was some of the most fun I’ve had with Magic. Hell, I even found myself searching prices for Tarmogoyf and coming away disappointed that I will never own one. Nevertheless, this event looking forward to checking out the events in person in April and May.

Lightning Bolt! Lightning Bolt!

(Editor’s Note: ‘NERDS!)

I haven’t written about Dungeons and Dragons yet for a couple of reasons that are closely related. ‘Mainly, because Chris doesn’t play, we haven’t made it a part of our monthly game nights. ‘More generally, I haven’t played D&D since AD&D 2nd edition and haven’t even though about the game since moving about a decade ago and putting all those books up in the attic. ‘For some reason, during the summer, I got interested in the state of the game again. ‘ ‘I ‘went in search of the new editions, tried to find some free and relatively quick adventures, and tested out the game.

I went with 3.5 to make my characters and for the rule books. ‘4th editions seemed a like it simplified things a little too much for me and the 3.5 character sheets looked like what I remember as D&D. ‘I rolled a party of five (not the old TV show, but a half-elf fighter, eladrin ranger, human rogue, elven wizard, and a dwarven cleric), wrote some brief personalities and histories for them (just enough to get started), downloaded an adventure, and got to it.

As you may imagine, playing D&D solo was not nearly as much fun as getting together with some friends. ‘I started to wish that I had Wednesday nights off to be able to go to the Encounters nights at the local-ish game store. ‘I tried to think of ways that I could get some of the old crew together (maybe via Skype) to play some games. ‘Nothing came of either of those plans, but my brainstorming led to Roll20 and Meetup. ‘Roll20 is an online community that allows you to play roleplaying games with others. ‘Meetup is more general, but I joined a group of comic fans, gamers, and sci-fi enthusiasts. ‘These ventures haven’t led to anything yet, either, but I will hopefully have the time to dedicate to figuring out how to use either or both of them to my benefit.

One unexpected positive to come out of my resurgence of interest in the game is that I have rediscovered my Dragonlance books. ‘As of writing this article, I have only found the Annotated Chronicles from my collection, but they should be enough to get me started. ‘(Editor’s Note: ‘I have since visited a local used bookstore and picked up 3 more books for my birthday.) ‘I have plan to revisit Dragonlance in an article that I will post tomorrow on the main page, so that will be another hopefully entertaining and interesting trip back to the roots of my nerdiness. ‘For now, though, back to the topic.

A reason for this article is that the 5th edition of the game was released last year. ‘(Mostly self-promoted) hype on my Facebook feed proclaim the update as the perfect time to get back into the game. ‘Let’s inspect to see if it actually is, or we should take the advice of Public Enemy on this one. ‘First impression is that it is D&D. ‘I don’t see much difference in the core elements of the game. ‘All of the races, classes, attributes, spells, and saving throws are still there. ‘This is a good thing since the core of the game has always been strong and the basis of many copycats and clones. ‘To be honest, at first glance, I don’t see any reason to choose this over the others, but maybe I will find something to distinguish it as I take a closer look.

So, let’s start by making a character. ‘My go to first character has always been an elf (or usually a half-elf) magic-user of some sort. ‘I think to change it up, I’ll choose a druid this time. ‘the race and class combination could make for an interesting back story for the character. ‘Given up for adoption by an elven mother to a group of druids because the human father died (killed in war?), left (intentionally? ‘driven away?), he now looks over a spring used by local villagers. ‘Whatever, the beauty of the game is that I can fill in the details later.

More importantly, I posted something on my Facebook about the new edition and how I wanted to find a group again. ‘Because most of us work during the week, it would have to be a weekend group. ‘All of the local stores only run them during the week. ‘However, a friend mentioned that he has been looking for a group, too. ‘We got our families together for dinner the other day and I mentioned Roll20 to him. ‘We both explored the site more and decided that it more that does what we want. ‘He sent out some invites and I sent out a couple to old friends about joining. ‘So far, we have 5 or 6 that are willing to play, so we definitely have the makings of a group.

I probably won’t use my earlier character for that group. ‘I might incorporate him into a series of short stories that I can share on the web page. ‘I was going to do something like that when I first got back into the game and couldn’t find others to play. ‘As I am currently writing him, the druid seems like he would work better in stories than a campaign. ‘Since he is a loner and with little desire to change that status, it might take too long for him to enter civilization and find companions. ‘Admittedly, you can always accelerate time in these games, but I’d rather roll a different character for the campaign. ‘(Editor’s Note: ‘I am falling on the proverbial sword for the group and rolling a dwarven cleric again.)

Well, it appears that the new edition of D&D is not just all hype. ‘It has inspired me to write a little bit. ‘It got me together with new and old friends to plan a campaign. ‘It’s gotten me excited about the prospects of playing the game again. ‘If you’re like me and you used to play D&D, but haven’t looked at it in a while, I would definitely check out the 5th edition. ‘Admittedly, I have not tried any of the other rules for any extended period, but if they are as intuitive as the character creation, then we are going to have some fun with this and you probably will, too.

One final note. ‘As far as I know, we are up to 6 for our Roll20 campaign. ‘If you take a look at some of the materials from 5th edition and like what you see, give a thought to joining us. ‘We can always use more players for greater flexibility. ‘We are mostly born again noobs, but if that sounds like your speed, send an email or leave a comment.

Booster Break!

Welcome to our new column Booster Break! It’s exactly what it sounds like, we will be opening assorted booster packs and boxes and showing you guys and gals our monumental pulls and/or spectacular failures via video or pics. ‘ This month I’ll be showing you what I pulled from a Marvel Heroclix Fear Itself booster and a Marvel Heroclix Guardians of the Galaxy booster.

Okay first up is the Fear Itself booster pack. I think I actually did really well with this one, not just because I pulled some strong characters, but because I didn’t get the typical 3 commons, instead it was comprised of 2 commons, 2 uncommons and 1 rare. No super rares or chase, but I was happy with the rare I pulled.

Monkey King (common)

Asgardian Troll (common)

Ms.Marvel (uncommon)

Tanarus (uncommon)

Dr. Strange (rare)

Alright onto the next booster…this one is a Guardian of the Galaxy booster pack. I didn’t do well on this one, some cool sculpts but nothing that stuck out as being playable

Triton (common)

Brother Royal (common)

Nebula (common)

Nova (uncommon)

Shriek (rare)

Yup, this pack sucked..but the sculpts for Nova and Triton (not pictured) are pretty decent, too bad they are not strong in play.

 

That’s it for this edition of Booster Breaks! Thanks for reading!

Breaking New Ground: Heroclix

heroclix boosters

 

One of the most important things that we have learned from producing our podcast and writing for this website is that it really forces us to expand our gaming horizons. Let ‘s be honest, we can ‘t just write about Xbox and Magic the Gathering all of the time. That would be boring as hell for you as well as boring for us. Variety is the spice of life and there are some great games out there that deserve their moment in the spotlight. As Shawn has already covered the World of Warcraft card game I thought I would take a little time to talk about the next game that we will be dabbling in; Heroclix.

Late last summer, Shawn mentioned that he would like to try the Warmachine/Hordes tabletop game in order to really bring our nerdiness to the next level. OK, OK, it was actually because he has had an ongoing interest in trying a tabletop game, also the models looked great and the paint/craft aspect was appealing to him. Being an artist, the paint aspect intrigued me as well so I googled the game and was amazed at how incredible the models looked. Then I realized I googled Whores not Hordes. Heh..bad joke..sorry..ahem.. seriously though the models are absolutely amazing and I was immediately fumbling for my debit card. Then I saw the price tag. Game over. Since I have never played a tabletop miniatures game I couldn ‘t justify spending hundreds of dollars to get enough models to build an army. I mean that ‘s a lot of scratch lost if for some reason the game isn ‘t that good. So instead I decided that it would be better to go with the low cost alternative; Heroclix, so we could get a feel for tabletop gaming. We are both comic geeks so it seemed like a good fit. Being completely ignorant in the ways of ?Clix, I logged onto Ebay and ordered the first booster I saw (Marvel Sinister). A week later it arrived and I eagerly tore the box open. What the?! Where were the character cards?! More importantly where were the goddamn functional dials?! The dials were terrible; it was extremely tough to move it even 1 click on every piece. Frustrated, I slammed them back in the box and tossed them in the closet. I couldn ‘t understand why people spoke so highly of the game. I sent a message to Shawn letting him know that I thought I should have done more research on the game before making a purchase. After a couple of days, I decided to ?Wiki ? Heroclix and found out that the Sinister set was one of the very first expansions. The first sets had crappy dials, and had no character cards, you just had to memorize the powers. To get actual functional dials and character cards, I would need to buy a more recent set. Long story short, I bought a booster of Fear Itself and a booster of Guardians of the Galaxy. I won ‘t get into every piece that I got as that will be coming in a new column where we ‘ll document our pack and box breaks with pictures or video. (Cheap plug.)

So what are my first impressions of the game? Well that ‘s tough to say, we have yet to play an actual “real” game..but I ‘ve played myself (I can hear your jokes from here.), and it’s gone well. I ‘ve started to be able to memorize what the colors on the dials mean. I was a bit overwhelmed when I first opened the rulebook but just taking the time to actually study and memorize the colors on the dials, the powers they represent and their meanings made a world of difference. I really like the heavy emphasis on strategy and building the right team. From building your team right up to your last move, you really have to think before you act. It ‘s like chess but with cooler pieces..aaaaand a ton more rules. As far as the actual pieces themselves ‘well it ‘s never going to be confused with Warmachine/Hordes but some of the sculpts are pretty damn good (Tanarus and Dr. Strange come to mind). But some of them are pretty damn goofy too. With that said, the good sculpts definitely outnumber the bad ones. I’m really looking forward to playing an actual game in the near future. I picked up this game as a way to get acclimated to the world of tabletop gaming and as a primer for Warmachine but to my surprise I found a really great game that will most likely stick around in my gaming rotation.

Tempting Fate

(Editor’s Note: Stay tuned for a more in depth look at the set in next month’s episode of the podcast. For now, I just wanted to catch up after a busy holiday season and give a first impression of Fate Reforged.)

I have been keeping an eye on spoilers as they’ve been revealed and Chris and I have kept alive our unofficial tradition of sending cards to one another. Chris is excited that dragons are back (not in a big way, the last set is called Dragons of Tarkir or something like that, so they’ll hopefully blow the doors off with that one) and, as usual, I’m intrigued by some of the mechanics that are being used in the set. One of the first spoilers to be leaked was Ugin and, as happens in this day and age, many thought it was a fake. Some saw a dragon and leaped to the conclusion that, if it was real, it would be from the third set and others just dismissed it outright. It is real and pretty amazing. However, I know that I won’t play that card. If I do pull one, it will most likely be one that I sell similar to the foil fetches and Planeswalkers from the previous set of cards. I’m also pretty sure that I won’t ever play against it, either, so that’s all that I’ll say about it. Better to focus on the cards that will see play in our eternal struggle of two.

In keeping with the multicolored theme, hybrid mana is back. I only see it in casting cost of abilities instead of as a way to cast spells and creatures. Maybe in the next set they will have hybrid mana creatures and spells like they did in the earlier multicolored sets. The Return to Ravnica block had a huge number of multicolored cards and especially more hybrid mana cards than I could imagine. I suppose that it keeps with the theme of that block. While Khans is three colored clans, the focus seems to be more on making those colors interact with one another in unique ways instead of attempting to fuse them together into a whole new strategy. Therefore, I can understand the decision to not have hybrid mana casting costs for creatures and spells. Thanks for joining me as I talked myself through that one.

As I mentioned above, Chris is excited that some dragons are in this set. He’s infamous for his dragon deck that once got me to utter, “That is bullshit” in response to him playing it once. This is noteworthy because our games are generally friendly and there isn’t much in the way of grumble unless one of us is having particularly bad luck with the mana screw or something. I made the observation that it looks like they seem to be trying to make dragons similar to slivers. There are a new class of legendary multicolored dragons that all have an ability that affects the board in some way. Instead of triggering on play, though, the new dragon abilities all trigger when a dragon attacks. That adds an interesting wrinkle to EDH. The other dragons also have similar abilities, but they are more localized to one creature in most cases. Again, this seems like a bit of a teaser for the last set where they will most likely unleash the dragons in a big way. Maybe it will even inspire me to make a dragon deck.

Being the type of player that I am, the mechanic that has me most excited is manifest. I am enamored with Morph and even though I haven’t quite figured it out, I am determined to make a morph deck that works consistently enough to frustrate the opponent as my decks often are designed to do. I mentioned in the missing Episode 2 of the podcast that I hoped that they would either have more morph creatures or at least more mechanics that work with morph. While manifest isn’t that, it does share some DNA with morph and makes me even more excited that a face down deck will work in some shape. I’m going to get to trying to build my Temur morph/manifest deck as soon as possible.

Overall, this set seems like the calm before the storm. The last set in the block is a big one like Khans and it is named for the other big players on the plane, the dragons, so I think we’ll see some really huge things out of that set. Fate Reforged isn’t a great set but there are definitely some cool cards and I can’t wait to pick up my box in a few weeks.

RIP WoW: TCG

(Editor’s Note: This is the same editor’s note as on the main page. I had been working 3 jobs and had precious little time to devote to the pages. However, two of those jobs are on winter break, so I have more time and will be updating the pages on a more regular basis.)

(2nd Editor’s Note: Playing a few rounds of this game has only increased my anger that Blizzard killed it in favor of Hearthstone. I understand the decision, but it still makes me mad.)

After fits, non-starts, and a fried hard drive (2 actually) that took episode 2 of the podcast, Christ and I got together for a couple of game nights. We didn’t record, but we are going to this weekend, so be on the lookout for the triumphant return when we push the reset button on the show. As part of these game nights, in addition to the usual games of Magic and Gears, we played some WoW: TCG. This isn’t our first experience with the game, but it was our first attempts at deck building and strategy. Overall the games were a success and both of us mentioned that they inspired us to find more cards and build new decks or solidify the ones that we already have. For me, at least, the games were more fun than the recent Magic games.

The first reason is the “new”ness of the game. I am always really excited when I discover or rediscover something and it has that feeling of being new. Since we had not played WoW very much, it was a brand new game whild Magic is the old and faithful game, always there for us. Sure, Khans made it new and exciting for a couple of months, but it’s time for a new expansion again. Also, because Chris had more time to tweak his decks, the Magic battles were not very competitive this round. WoW was much more balanced between us. I don’t care if I win or lose, but I do want the games to be interesting or entertaining.

Secondly, WoW has some definite advantages over Magic. There is no mana and therefore no mana screw unless it somehow works to your advantage. Let me explain. You build resources to cast creatures and spells. The more powerful resources are quests because they allow you to draw cards and perform other actions. However, any card can be played face down as a resource. Doing so removes it from the game for its intended purpose, so you can trade a less powerful creature or spell in order to cast a more powerful one or vice versa. All of this adds to the strategy and complexity of the games. I generally try to build my decks so that I don’t have to use cards other than quests as resources, but it is nice to know that the option is there.

Chris and I toyed around with some kitchen table rules to make Magic more like WoW and to remove (or at least reduce) mana screw and make our decks play more like the way we intended. Chris posted the article last year and you can find it on the page here. I was trying to think of other ways to counter mana screw, but honestly it has gotten to the point where it isn’t that big of a deal in the games that we play. Still, it might be nice to have options for people learning the game, so I’ll keep brainstorming.

The only con against WoW is that it is no longer supported by Blizzard, as I mentioned above. Therefore, the shelf life of the game is very limited, especially if we don’t get out there and buy more cards before they are not on the market any more. Chris has picked up some cards, but I don’t feel compelled to do so because I’d rather spend my money on the new Magic expansions coming out and expand into other formats in a game that is still alive and growing.

WoW: TCG was (and still is for a limited time) a great game that got put to the side in favor of the push to digital content. The most unfortunate part is that as I did research into the game, it felt like it got killed right as it was starting to reach its potential. I don’t hate Hearthstone as much as I used to, but every time I see a card that uses art from the WoW: TCG (like the Leeroy card above) it gives me a twinge of anger and sadness that both games can’t coexist and that digital content wins out again. If you get a chance to pick up some of the starter decks for relatively cheap (which shouldn’t be a problem for the near future) you should definitely check out the game. You could also get a lot of 2000 cards for fairly cheap, but those are more random and if you are going to do that, maybe get both the starter decks and the random cards to swap them out for stronger decks. If you are looking for a slight change from Magic, WoW: TCG is absolutely a strong contender and I, for one, will miss it greatly and wish that I had paid more attention when it was around.

As a post script (postmortem?) to the game, Chris and I were first talking after the announcement that the game had been cancelled and I tried to come up with some ideas to extend the life of games that have been taken off of the market. The one idea that I thought would be easy to modify is to give people the chance to make their own cards for the game. There are already web pages that let you make Magic and Hearthstone cards. It wouldn’t be that difficult to make one that does the same for WoW cards, both heroes and the other cards. I don’t know how much support there is for such an idea, but it is definitely something that I’d like to see implemented and not just for WoW.

Do you love WoW: TCG? Is there another defunct TCG or other table top game that you would recommend as an alternative when Magic becomes stale again? Let me know in the comments. Thanks, as always, for reading!

Gotta Draft ’em All

(Author’s Note: Apologies for the weeks of no communication. I’m still trying to figure out a writing schedule with my new job. Hopefully, things return to normal soon.)

Liam’s birthday–number 10, which is considered a big one–was this past weekend. He wanted to have a sleepover with a Pokemon theme. That gave me an idea. Pick up some booster packs and let them have a draft tournament. I’ve never done a draft for any of the games other than Magic Online, but that ended in disaster. We want to put together some Youtube videos for the web page that show how to conduct a Magic draft with us and the boys, so this was good practice.

What you need

  • Some players – Generally, each group should have at least four and no more than 8 players. We decided to keep the group small for this first time. Only Liam and three of his friends played in the tournament.
  • Some packs of cards – The suggested number of packs per player is six. Since it felt gauche to require admission to a birthday party, we had to come up with at least 24 packs. At three to four dollars per pack, that can get expensive. We lucked into an open box of packs for relatively cheap. If we want, we have 12 extra packs for prizes.
  • Schedule – Depending on the size of your group and the time available, you could go with a round robin. Since we only have four, that’s how we organized it. Whether you have a round robin or not, you can use this link to help put together and print your schedule.
  • Non essentials – Snacks, prizes, some other games for in between rounds. We gave the snack funny Pokemon themed names like Charizard fireballs for cheese balls, Charmander chips for potato chips, and Squirtles’s Squirt for the juice boxes. The boys all got a kick out of the names. We didn’t end up having games in between rounds because they went quickly, but we did have a game for them to play when they woke up after the sleepover. We hid plastic golf balls painted to look like Pokeballs around the yard and they had to find them like an Easter egg hunt. That was a huge hit, too.

Okay, we’ve got it all. What now?

There are a few ways to do the draft. I was going to have them each open one pack, pick a card, and then pass the pack on to the next person. Repeat this process until all cards are picked from those packs. Then, do the same with the remaining packs. The boys thought that this was too confusing, so I allowed them to draft like we do at the prerelease tournaments we’ve attended. They took 9 packs each and built their decks from the cards that they got in those packs. I tried to convince them to do 40 card decks, but they insisted on 60 card decks. I tried to get them to play best of 3, but they only played one game rounds. My ideas got shot down left and right. Everything worked out well for them, so they knew what they were doing. I just got out of the way and let them do their thing.

They took turns and played each other in a round robin tournament. As I mentioned above, we didn’t need any entertainment for in between rounds since the rounds went quickly and the two that finished early just watched the game that was still in progress. We also had no need for prizes since the boys were so excited about their new cards. Liam came out the winner and there weren’t any major bouts of poor sportsmanship during the whole tournament.

Overall, this one went well and they were able to figure things out with minimal (actually, no) intervention. Now that I’ve done it once, it will go easier and more smoothly when we sit down to put together the instructional videos. Have you ever participated in a Pokemon draft tournament? Do you have any ideas to make it slightly more organized (other than the participants not being 10)? Let me know in the comments.

Lessons from the Kitchen Table Vol.3: Get out of that Gaming Rut

Most of you have been there before: the dreaded game rut. Everything you own sucks. Why the hell did you spend all of that money on a library of games that you have zero interest in playing? Why did you buy all of those booster boxes of (insert CCG title here)? Hey, hey, calm down, it’ll be alright! I’ve been there myself, quite a few times actually. (Although hopefully game ruts are a thing of the past now that Shawn and I run this website and produce the 2 Guys Gaming podcast. This job forces us to try ALL of the different games out there in order to write articles for you guys and gals. ) Earlier this year I found myself in the mother of all gaming ruts. All of my usual ?go to ? games were now boring and extremely unappealing. It felt like a chore just putting a disc into my 360, and when I did I found myself playing for only a few minutes before I would hit eject, put in another disc, play for ten minutes or so, hit eject again…rinse and repeat…until I finally would just shut off the Xbox. My rut didn ‘t just apply to video games either; even MTG became repetitive and stale. So how did I beat the rut? Well looking back, it actually wasn ‘t that difficult to do. First thing I did was stopped looking at my Magic collection. The more I looked at it, the more depressed and frustrated I became because I wanted to recapture the interest in the game that I had even just a few weeks earlier and that spark just wasn’t there. The only way I can possibly describe that feeling is that it ‘s like quicksand; the more you struggle and fight the faster you sink. By taking a break from even looking at the cards it felt like I had removed a source of frustration. I then started to research current CCG ‘s to get a feel for any game currently on the market that might be down my alley. Unfortunately, nothing really stuck out to me, so I started to look at discontinued CCG ‘s. I ‘m a penny pincher when it comes to games, so this is always a viable option for me since all product associated with a discontinued game is cheap as hell. And as I found out, discontinued doesn ‘t mean the game is crap. I ended up with 3 games bouncing around in my head: Rage, Marvel VS, and finally World of Warcraft TCG. Just like that the rut began to weaken. After talking with Shawn, he mentioned that he had actually purchased a box of Warcraft starter decks awhile ago and just had them sitting in a closet. That ‘s all I needed to hear, I went to dacardworld.com and purchased a booster box of the expansion set, War of the Elements (for only $18!!!!). After playing the game a few times, the ?CCG wall ? of the rut crumbled and I could see daylight. I found myself scouring the internet checking out deck lists and strategies. The game is so well-designed and fun that even in death, that still to this day people actively play it and write articles about it. It was only pulled off of the market because Blizzard decided to go with a bare bones digital version of the game, that we know as Hearthstone.

Ok, so one wall of the rut down, one to go. But you might be saying to yourself, ?Blondie, I don ‘t even play CCG ‘s, ya nerd! ? Ok, ok, point taken, so how did I beat the video game rut? I managed to crawl out of the rut by doing a few different things. First, I unplugged my 360. It was symbolic in a way. I was unplugging the source of my boredom. None of the games were doing it for me so why would I have it connected? In its place I plugged in my Playstation 2 which had been previously collecting dust on a shelf in my game room. Ok, so I replaced the console that was boring me with another console that I hadn ‘t played in a long time. What now? I turned to eBay to find some games that I hadn ‘t played yet. The kicker was that they couldn ‘t be games in the genres that I usually favor. So no shooters and no 2D fighters as that would just be like playing the same games that I already had. So I picked out Dragon Quest 8 and Odin Sphere. Usually I tend to not buy as many RPGs as fighters and shooters because of the time commitment involved, but in this case, I was desperate. Games are essentially my only hobby, so without that satisfaction of sitting down after a rough day of work and just unwinding with an hour of gaming, I was slowly becoming miserable. After playing DQ 8 (Dragon Quest not Dairy Queen), I felt the depression lift..I couldn ‘t get enough of the game, the gameplay was decent as well as the story. Once again, I found myself on eBay hunting down other Dragon Quest games. I ended up purchasing DQ 4, 5, 6 and 9. There was now a huge crack in the last remaining wall of the rut. Then I popped in Odin Sphere. The wall exploded. If you have never played Odin Sphere finish this article and go buy it. Now. You will not regret it. But I digress as this isn ‘t a review for Odin Sphere. (Seriously though, it ‘s an amazing game.)

Ok, so let ‘s review how I beat my video game rut. I removed the source of my frustration (aka my 360), plugged in another system that I hadn ‘t played in a really long time, went and found some games in a genre that IS NOT one that usually I dabble in. Now let’s review how I broke out of the CCG rut. I removed the source of my frustration (aka my MTG collection), researched other games that I have never tried before and picked one out. See the pattern? When you find yourself in a rut, take a step back from your normal gaming habits and think outside of the box. It’s important to get out of your comfort zone and try games that you ordinarily wouldn’t give a second look to. Whether it’s a game in a genre that you usually pass on, or a discontinued card game. Who knows you might find something worthwhile. I know I did.