What's the Big Deal?

Deals and discounts. Everyone is looking for a great deal. They want to feel like money was saved, triumph was had, or just that something is worth more than was paid. I don't begrudge anyone these things, because I think they're inherently human drives.

"What's he talking about now?" thinks the reader. Well as much as I love buying a brand new, shiny, shrink-wrapped box of board gaming goodness, I have also made the leap on occasion and picked up used or clearance games as well. The first one the I can recall buying was Age of Conan a little less than a year ago. The box was a little dinged up but when I opened it, I found that all of the contents were still sealed in their original plastic. Triumph indeed! Age of Conan is a spectacular looking game which I've sadly only tabled once, but is noteworthy as my first used game purchase.

Over time I have found other games in a similar fashion...and have yet to be disappointed. Arena Maximus was the second used game I purchased. While not still in its sealed condition, I would certainly have surmised that it had never actually been played by the original owner. And it's a really fun game!

Shortly before Christmas I bought Colossal Arena and was pleased to find it in the same condition as my Conan purchase. Opened box, sealed components, used price. Score another for me! While I would probably mark this as the weakest game I've bought in this fashion, it's still seen some decent table time, so it was certainly worth my money.

Most recently I picked up a trio of games, sealed and brand new, from one of my local gaming shops. These three games are based on the HeroCard system and produced by TableStar Games. The interesting thing about that system is that the heroes for each game can supposedly, and seamlessly, be used in any other game. I picked up Champion of New Olympia, Galaxy and Cyberspace, including all of their various expansions for a substantial discount. I think each game would have cost on the order of $30 to $35 each (including said expansions), but I spent less than that amount all three. Again, quite the coup...at least in my opinion

I had looked these games over a few times, but not having heard of the publisher, and finding the artwork to be of a substantially lower quality than that of Fantasy Flight or Mayfair Games, opted not to purchase them. Would I be as happy with them paying full price? Probably not. But are they good games? Absolutely.

Of course I have to qualify that statement by saying that I've only played two of the three thus far. I was very impressed to find that Galaxy and Champions of New Olympia are substantially different games, even though the central mechanic for conflict resolution in each is the same. Champions is a rather light-hearted super hero romp that can be played in teams or individually and hits a happy place in my soul for its subject matter. Galaxy is a much deeper game built around capturing and defending territory, but without a map as such. I expect Cyberspace to be even more in depth than Galaxy based on reading the rules. However I do think that while the components are very nice, the artwork and colors used in the game are sub-par at best. I hope the game play will outweigh my first impressions based on looks alone.

Having picked up these three games I'm very tempted to seek out the other three games produced by TableStar Games that utilize the HeroCard system. Each looks to be quite varied in terms of game play and subject matter / genre. The biggest problem will be tracking copies of each down. But maybe a brief quest is just what I need!

Where's the VS?

It's been a long time since I actually wrote an article about a VS System event, cards, or decks. This month due to scheduling conflicts I'll only be able to attend two of our weekly VS nights. The one I'm missing next week was actually something I was really looking forward to: DC Legend.

Most of the players in our group know, but you might not, that I prefer the DC Comics universe over that of Marvel. While I do have some beloved characters over there (Alpha Flight anyone?), there's just something that appeals more to me about DC's denizens. How that relates to my experience with building legend decks is what I thought I'd talk about today.

Going from memory I can recall four specific Legend builds of my own creation: Batman, Superman Sinestro and Darkseid. I've also tackled a Batman-Superman dual-legend which was a lot of fun to play as well.

Batman lends himself too much to control/negation, which is not my favorite style of play. I enjoyed the effects on his support characters more than those of the Dark Knight himself. Superman has tons of different strategies, and I've tried a few of them. While not a legend deck, the one I had the most fun testing was a Team Superman/New Gods team-up that tried to use the 5-cost Superman Blue with the New Gods soldier character. It didn't prove very successful though, and led me to try something similar with the Teen Titans. Again, not much success, but a fun diversion.

Sinestro is the character that I have spent the least amount of time working with, even though he has great support in the DCU set. I know other players have come up with far better builds than mine. But hands down my favorite of those four legends would have to be Darkseid!

Admittedly Darkseid's effects also lean more towards control, but I find them to be far more fun thematically than those of Batman. There's just something deliciously evil about making your opponents afraid to play plot twists, stun your characters or even flip resources over. Burn, KO, extra stun; Darkseid's everywhere, and if he doesn't get you, his Female Furies will!

I took my Darkseid deck apart a few months ago to try building a deck for a Countdown format and never put it back together. Now I'm wishing I had, because it was what I was hoping to play next week. Yes I know, Hal Jordan is the biggest, most powerful DC character in the game right now...but that's because someone designing the DCU set had a huge construct for him in their tights. I'd rather play something malicious and tricky that leaves my opponent guessing than a straight up, beat down deck.

Of course that's probably why I lose so often. I don't go for the obvious or easy path to victory. I want the fight to be entertaining, and without the danger of losing, where's the fun in the conflict?

I'm off to find my Darkseid Legend deck list. Apokolips awaits...

Getting Started All Over Again

Well it seems that in some ways I'm doomed to repeat myself. I don't mean textually, although I'm sure that I repeat myself quite often in my writing as well. However it seems I just can't leave well enough alone. Now that some of the more stressful things have passed (it's been a rocky start to 2012) I'm starting to feel more myself. That of course means that my schedule has settled into some semblance of normality, I'm not laying sick on the couch and I finally feel like a normal human being once again.

Once I get typing I tend to find that I have started mid-thought. That might prove interesting for me, but then I realize I have to go back and try to explain myself, or at least lay out some context in order to provide meaning to the earlier vagueness. Here goes...

By saying I was repeating myself I actually had a two-fold meaning, and neither of them is so dire or desperate as to cause doom of any kind. Yes, an inflammatory statement...I admit my guilt to using overly strong verbiage! I must have seen too many TV commercials recently.

The first thing I was talking about was my health/workout plan. It was frustrating to start missing workouts, and then have to stop altogether, but was necessary. I had to give myself permission in my own head to do so. If I'm not healthy enough to go to work and breathe normally, why berate myself for not being able to do a strenuous workout?! So I've started a new program as of yesterday, which will be accompanied by a much healthier diet. Not too many changes at first, but better food and some exercise should definitely help me avoid getting sick like the last time!

The second thing I was talking about was organizing games; hell just organizing events in general. Less than two weeks after cancelling one thing, I was off planning something else! We had a casual game night at my place on Sunday that I really enjoyed. While waiting for Scott to show up Sebastien, William and I ran a very quick (time and speed-wise) game of Rush 'n Crush. Aside: I won by a mile, which doesn't often happen when I play games, even games I own, so hooray for me! We followed that up by a game of Eaten By Zombies in which we finally figured out the rules correctly. It's a much better game than I had originally thought. Finally we played our first ever game using the Savage Worlds system I was gushing about. We ran short of time, but when we last left our heroes they were wandering through darkened fields after leaving their broken down bus behind. They were lucky to survive an attack by mummified dogs and zombified corpses and decided to make a break for freedom...

I'd be an absolute liar if I said planning games or events was purely altruistic and done with only my friends' happiness in mind. My reasons for organizing game nights, VS events, trips to the theatre, lacrosse games or any other kind of get-together is purely selfish. It's because I want to do those things, and I don't want to do them by myself! So I guess I just have to accept my role in the grander scheme of things and realize that that's part of what makes me...well, ME. The benefit to it, other than providing entertainment and company for myself, is that other folks that decide to join in might *gasp* actually have some fun too.

What Good Are Games When There's No One To Play With?

A little over a year ago I tried running an adventure from the Dark Heresy role-playing game. If memory serves me right, we played four sessions. We were using one of the introductory adventures and some of the pre-generated characters. I had spent a fair amount of time prepping the materials for the game and getting familiar enough with the rules to actually run things with some feeling of competency. The players pieced together the clues a little more slowly than I'd intended, but that was more my fault as a first-time game master than their actual detective abilities. Unfortunately, the session in which they would have encountered the final villain of the story never came to pass.

As a brief aside: I love the theme for Dark Heresy, which is set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. The game system seemed pretty good, but it was a little tough to handle for me and the players so that could certainly have contributed to our incomplete adventure.

It seems that arranging gaming sessions with any kind of regularity, or regular attendees is a bit of a problem these days. Now I'm not certain that this is a problem I'm alone in experiencing, or if it's something that other gamers also struggle with. Since almost no one comments on the articles that I post, I may never know the answers to my question. Of course, it being a little after 4am I'm not exactly expecting an answer anyway.

Generally speaking, I have spent far more time with card and board games than I've ever done with role-playing games. That's not to say that I don't like them. I remember the first time I ever played one sometime back in high school. I can't remember the name of the game we played but it was a contemporary horror setting. The adventure was run by a friend of mine and it was a lot of fun. Similarly, we planned another session but never actually played again.

I recall an almost parallel experience while I was living in Japan. One of my friends there was an avid collector of role-playing source books. Of course, living in Japan it was difficult to find English speaking players! We played some sort of cyberpunk adventure with another fellow, which was a little slow on the action, but fun nonetheless. Once again, a follow-up session was planned but never materialized.

So perhaps my four-session experience with Dark Heresy was actually somewhat of an anomaly in that it went beyond session #1? I somehow doubt that's the case, as I've heard rumors, rumblings and whispers in the darkness, all saying that there are regular gaming groups out there somewhere. Some of them play card games. Some of them play board games. Some of them play poker, lose all their money and go home to lie to their wives about it. Maybe even those weird "furries", people that get turned on by other folks in animal costumes, have regular gaming groups, although I am not sure that I want to know about the games they play.

At some point in time I ended up with a hardcover copy of Deadlands Reloaded. This revised version of the game uses an engine called Savage Worlds. So having this sourcebook for a setting, I needed the core rulebook for the engine. Turns out the rulebook for Savage Worlds cost me a grand total of $12, and was the shortest RPG rulebook I'd ever seen. In fact, it was actually something I was able to read, make sense of, and still have time to do something useful before bedtime. (Which as you can tell...I didn't do, nor have I gone to bed.)

In addition to the clarity and brevity of the rulebook...turns out there are (quite literally) hundreds of settings like Deadlands Reloaded available for the engine. Want to play high or dark fantasy with elves, dragons, dwarves, wizards and necromancers? Check. Want to play a swashbuckling pirate adventure? Check. Need to fit someone with cement shoes for betraying the big boss? Check. The latest cult of the great Cthulhu needs infiltrating? Check. Want to save the world from aliens as a super-powered ex-villain. Check. I could go on, but I won't because I think you get my point. Any kind of adventure, ability or character I could ever hope to wish for, Savage Worlds either has, or has the tools for me to create.

Even though I seem to have no one to play with, I still seem to spend a lot of time reading about, researching, or thinking about games. Even role-playing games, which in my middle-length life, I've almost never played. Maybe some day.