Thinking Outside the Box

It's been an interesting year. Everyone seems to be a little busier with family, work, home building and in general life taking its course. Our gaming group has gotten a little smaller over the course of the year too, which is naturally a little disappointing. As games are a form of entertainment they are usually among the first activities to get hit when schedules or budgets get a little tight. Of course, the Christmas season these kinds of changes are even more pronounced. There are family obligations, work deadlines, company parties, shopping to be done and all that other fun (and sometimes exhausting) stuff needs to get done. As for my gaming habits, they have changed a little bit too. I've tried some great new games this year! Ascension , Warlord , Touch of Evil , EVE Second Genesis and yes, even Magic the Gathering have all been added to my realm of interests. A few games haven't gotten the attention I'd like, most notably being Call of Cthulhu . We did t...

I was recently able to get things underway for obtaining prize support for Warlord . The original idea for running tournaments was once a month to garner interest and get some players comfortable with the game. The tournament day would likely be Friday evenings, but that will be finalized before the end of the year. For anyone interested in obtaining some Warlord cards to play with, they are having a great sale right now over on the US Store . With the move of our VS tournaments to Thursday nights, that opens up some opportunity for a few Friday nights to be used in a more open-gaming type of format. I'll be happy to provide decks for players interested not only in Warlord, but Call of Cthulhu , EVE and Warhmammer Invasion . And don't forget...Trilogy is once again hosting Friday Night Magic as well! More details forthcoming!

This is a variation of Bring Your Own Two Teams. All the regular BYOTT rules apply, but with one catch: each of your teams must be from a different universe. This means that you may not have two DC teams, two Marvel teams or two Hellboy teams in your deck. I will add one further rule... In addition to the approved ban list, I am going to add the cards "X-Men Assemble!", "Legendary Battles" and "Bamf!" to the ban list. These cards may not be included in your deck for this event. So, who are you going to team up?

One of the things about customizable card games that is both a blessing and a curse is the infinite variety offered. Having dozens, hundreds or even thousands of cards to chose from can be liberating and daunting all in the space of a few heartbeats. Additionally, as most of us have some kind of addictive mentality when it comes to these sorts of games, invariably we will devote our time to more than one. We have now taken that variability and likely performed a square operation on it, rather than a simple doubling effect. Whoa, pretty heavy vocabulary for a Monday morning I admit. I'm only two paragraphs in and I'm talking about math. Often when I'm writing something I have only the roughest sense of what my topic is before I start. Even more often I'll simply write a title on the spot and carry on from there. I may change the title after I'm done, but that doesn't change its initial impact on my creative process. In many ways this is very similar to ho...

Well I'm a little behind, but last Friday we capped off our DC Universe season with a final tournament. There were six players who came out for the event (which is probably all of the people who are reading this article!). The rounds shape up as follows; the winners are in italics: Round 1: Jason vs Jordan, Will vs Seb, Roy vs Scott Round 2: Jason vs Roy , Scott vs Will , Jordan vs Seb Round 3: Jason vs Seb, Scott vs Jordan, Roy vs Will I ended up playing in Jason's place due to him having to leave after the first round. He found a really interesting little combo equipping Killer Shark with a Batmobile. Using his pay willpower ability to increase his attack and defense, while becoming unstunnable thanks to the Batmobile is probably not a combination that the designers foresaw, but it was pretty fun nonetheless! One of the great things about this set was the big endurance swings in the late game. I saw a lot of games being played with endurance totals like 10/12 at the en...

VS System I thought that it would be good to update everyone about things with our gaming group as our DCU tournaments are coming to a close. As it stands, I'm very happy with the continuing attendance for the weekly Friday night VS System tournaments. We'll wrap up with DCU on the last Friday of September (Sept 24th) with another big tournament which I trust will be good fun for all. Please make sure to mark it on your calendar! Through October and November we will play some fun tournaments with no prize support while I prepare things for December and into the New Year. The details of those plans will be forthcoming as they are solidified; but have no fear, we WILL continue playing VS into 2011 with more awesome new events and prizes! Scheduling-wise, we've been talking about moving the tournaments from Friday evenings to Thursdays. I haven't settled on this yet, but am leaning toward making the change starting in December. There are a lot of reasons why this wil...

For reference purposes, I wanted to post up a list of formats available for play. I'll link it to the side panel and maintain as necessary. Age Formats Modern Age: - DC Legends (includes DCX) - Marvel Universe (includes MUL and MEQ) - DC Universe - Marvel Factions Silver Age: - Legion of Super-Heroes - Marvel Team-up (includes Hellboy) - World’s Finest - Marvel Legends (includes MAA, MCG and MEX) - DC Legends (includes DCX) - Marvel Universe (includes MUL and MEQ) - DC Universe - Marvel Factions Golden Age: - All sets are legal in Golden Age. Banned cards may not be played. Block Formats Origins Block: - Marvel Origins - DC Origins - Web of Spider-Man - Superman, Man of Steel - Marvel Knights - Green Lantern Corps (includes Batman TCG starter set) Crisis Block: - The Avengers (includes Fantastic Four TCG starter set) - Justice League of America - The X-Men (includes The X-Men TCG starter set) - Infinite Crisis - Heralds of Galactus - Legion of...