Blogs

The Forces of Warmachine: Mercenaries book will be released in June and it looks so good! I will be getting it in hardcover which, by the way, is a limited edition.

My only complaint: Why isn't Ashlynn on the cover? :(

Mercenaries is my favourite Warmachine faction and I have been using Ashlynn as the warcaster in my army since I started playing this game. She's not the best warcaster out there and only has 6 focus points. Hmmm... maybe that's why she is not on the cover. However, I find her abilities quite interesting.

I started playing with MKII rules about a month back. Won one game :)

Lost three :(

In the 2nd game that I lost, Butcher was running away as he lost all his focus points with the help of Eiryss' disruptor bolt. I managed to hit Butcher, thanks to Ashlynn's feat Roulette (roll 2 additional dice on attack rolls and choose 2 attack dice rolled to be discarded). I rolled for damage but my dice roll was tragically bad. Ashlynn is a weapon master and I boosted - 4 dice for damage roll, and what did I roll? 1, 1, 1, 2. Not enough to scratch Butcher, let alone kill.

Needless to say, Ashlynn was Butchered the next turn (sorry for the pun, just can't help it).

I decided to get a new set of dice - Chessex 36x D6 16mm dice in Gemini orange-yellow/black. Yes, I blame the dice for my lost :D

I was browsing the internet one late night at the store and came upon this:

It's Hello Kitties (Space Marine) vs "big", bad Keropis (Orks)! Makes me want to play Warhammer 40K!

It also reminded me of this other picture of a Hello Kitty Dreadnought:

Which brings the question: What is the connection between Warhammer 40K and Hello Kitty?

REVIEW by Sandra
Race for the Galaxy

The basics of the game
You are the supreme ruler of a planet. Like any good ruler (think Alexander the Great or Senator Palpatine aka the Emperor), you seek to expand your power by conquering more planets.

How to win the game:
Get the most victory points.

Review of the game
Uncle Ho got this game a a gift (Thanks Joseph!). We both heard great reviews about this game and are eager to test it out. This is a 2-4 player game. We got 2 other customers to join in the fun.

I opened up the box, filled with 150 playing cards, 4 reference card (made from stronger material) and an instruction manual. Since none us had played this game before, we refer to the instruction manual, which is not the best written manual out there. We fumbled a little in the beginning but we finally figured out how to play.

On with the game:
We each have a planet card (gives bonuses), 6 action cards and 4 random cards. The 6 action cards are:
Explore: Each player gets to draw a card
Develop: Place a development card (Give bonuses)
Settle: Place a world card
Consume: Discard good on world card for victory points (Objective of the game)
$ Trade: Sell good to draw cards
Produce: Place a good on your world

Each player chooses an action. You reveal the actions at the same time. Only the actions that are chosen will be acted upon. All actions can be performed by everyone, not only by the person who chose it. However, only the person who chose the action will get the bonues that comes with the action.

For example, in our first round, we all chose Explore, except Uncle Ho who chose Settle. So everyone, including Uncle Ho, got to Explore (draw 1 card). We all got bonuses except Uncle Ho. Once that's done, we all got to Settle (place a world card). Only Uncle Ho got the bonus.

In the 2nd round, we got smarter and started guessing what action cards the other players will play so that we will not play the same actions. That's when the fun begins.

The objective of the game is to get as many victory points as possible either through selling goods or through the development cards. You have to plan ahead, explore till you have enough cards, settle and develop, then produce and finally consume/trade the good off for victory points.

It was a quick game, around 1 hour, but definitely could be shorten once you get used to the game mechanics. I like the game. It's fast-paced, not overly complicated and it involves everyone in the game every round.

Should I get it?
This is a game for the non hard-core board gamers. Not to say it that does not appeal to the hard-core gamers, but that it appeals to everyone. Girls, in general, do not like the many rules that comes with some of the board games or miniature games. Race for the Galaxy is simple, but yet not an easy game to beat.

If you want a game to play with casual board gamers (ie. girlfriends, friends who are girls, other friends/family who have never touch a card/board game in their life), this is the game for you.

Where can I get it?
Store:
Come to Two Headed Dragon, your local friendly game store, located at 5017 Yonge St. on the 2nd floor.

Telephone:
Call Two Headed Dragon at 416 221 5004 and order it. We will send the game to you with free shipping (within Ontario).

Expansion:
Interested in getting the expansions to this game? You can also get them from Two Headed Dragon.
Race for the Galaxy: Gathering of Storm
Race for the Galaxy: Rebel vs Imperium

One little recommendation:
I suggest buying card sleeves for the cards to avoid the normal wear-and-tear that comes from playing and shuffling. It's a small investment of 2 packs of penny sleeves, or pay a bit more for the better quality sleeves.

It's Valentine's Day and you are wondering what to get for her. She's probably wondering about the same thing. Let her wonder no more and ask her to go buy your gift(s) at Two Headed Dragon. Don't you wish it was that easy for you?

Here's what you need to do:

Write down precisely what you want

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REVIEW by Sandra
Descent: Journeys in the Dark

The basics of the game
You and your party of up to 4 players explore the dungeons, kill the monsters and be rewarded with treasures. You can get better equipments from treasures or buy them in town with gold from your adventures.

One of your friend will be the Overlord. The Overlord only has one purpose: To kill your party with the monsters that he spawn and with a lot of other tricks up his sleeve.

How to win the game:

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Personally, I don’t like the Shard of Alara Sealed Deck format. I prefer drafting the set. But, because most of us played in at least one prerelease or release event, and a few of us are planning on attending a PTQ for Kyoto, the Sealed format at least deserves a look. I’m going to take a look at a sealed pool and try to help you figure out how to properly tackle this format. I have read and seen quite a few people trying to “teach” the format to others, yet I feel like most of them don’t really teach you anything, but instead just tell you what deck they built with the random cards they were given.

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Let’s talk about the recent preview card from Shards of Alara, Sarkhan Vol. For those of you who don’t know what it’s abilities are…

2RG, Planeswalker
4 Loyalty Counters

+1: Creatures you control get +1/+1 and haste until end of turn.
-2: Gain control of target creature until end of turn. Untap that creature. It gains haste until end of turn.
-6: Put five 4/4 red Dragon tokens with flying into play.

I remember when I read about Mythic Rares (the new rarity for Magic that will be introduced in Shards of Alara), Mark Rosewater (lead Magic designer) assured me that these Mythic Rares, even though they are harder to get than normal rares, wouldn’t be tournament-staple cards and merely be limited to Dragons and other flavourful cards. Well, Mark lied to me because he printed Sarkhan Vol as a Mythic Rare.

First of all, this card is a mere 4 mana. Llanowar Elves or Birds of Paradise also accelerate it to turn 3. Needless to say, it comes into play pretty fast. When it does, it comes in with 4 loyalty counters. Now, let’s take a look at the power of each ability.

The first ability is reminiscent of Ajani Goldmane’s second ability, except this time, you add a loyalty counter. I don’t really care what deck you are playing, but chances are if you are playing red and green, you’ve got a creature or two in your deck. This ability is just plain strong because of the surprise element alone. Most decks have trouble dealing with surprise right away. Also, since you add a counter, the card is immune to Flame Javelin, which is one of the strongest burn spells and best ways of dealing with Planeswalkers right now. The reason Flame Javelin isn’t amazing against it is because when you play the card, you can activate the first ability right away without passing priority to your opponent. It’s a little trick of the stack. You play the card, and if your opponent has no responses, it resolves. Right after it resolves, you receive priority to do whatever you’d like before your opponent has a chance to do anything. So, when you activate Sarkhan Vol’s first ability, as a cost, you put a counter on him, and THEN his ability goes on the stack, which is the first point since you played him, that the opponent gets a chance to burn him, but since he now has 5 loyalty counters on him, it’s tough for the opponent to burn him away.

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