Thinking Outside the Box

Our VS System tourney on Friday had a new first-time winner: Congratulations to Vern and his formidable Inhumans! Those moon-dwellers are full of tricks... Ben came in second, piloting an Injustice Gang deck centering on Criminal Mastermind. Impressively he was able to set up four copies of it in his row on not one but two of his four matches. As per the winner's decree our next tournament format will be Golden Age Open: Ban 5. Each player chooses 5 cards that they can ban for this event. If a card has been reprinted, banning one effectively bans all versions (such as Mobilize or Flying Kick). Post your ban-lists in the comments to this article. Selections must be entered by midnight on Sunday, August 2nd. Your ban list is void if you do not join us to play in the tournament.

Hey again loyal readers. Er...I guess one begins to wonder if there are any such folks, but honestly it doesn't really matter much. This site is more for me than anything else, although I do heartily appreciate the comments by those of you who do stop by from time to time. Ok so back to my ramblings. If you checked in earlier this week you may have seen my post about the Dark Heresy game we ran last weekend. During the course of this week I've been doing a lot more reading and thinking about role-playing games, genres, available books and all kinds of other related nerd-activities. *gasp* Yes, I used the n-word! Thinking back on things, I think the first time I actually played an RPG would have been in grade 10 or 11. A friend of mine who had recently moved to town rounded up a few of us to play a game he went to special pains of describing as "not Dungeons and Drgaons". That game turned out to be "Dark Conspiracy". I don't remember much about th...

With our upcoming tourney on Friday night being Golden Age, it got me to thinking. I have lots of decks that I could play, but somehow I just think I need something new. Last event we cracked a box of Marvel Knights to use for sealed play, and I found that to be a lot of fun. I really enjoyed the Crime Lords / Underworld interplay and was shocked at just how awful the X-Statix really are on their own. After batting around some posts on the forums over at vssystem.org I decided that a mono-teamed X-Statix build just wouldn't be the thing for me to build. So what does that leave me with? I have been playing the game almost from the beginning be there is a surprising amount of stuff that I've left untapped thus far. Looking back over the past few months it seems I've focused mainly on the mini-teams or those that seemed harder to make work on their own like Doom Patrol, Starjammers and Secret Six. Assessing those efforts as honestly as I'm able, I would say that my...

Yesterday I had the chance to run a game of Dark Heresy for some friends. This was only my second time as game master (GM), and our group consisted of one experienced role-player, one long-out-of-practice player, and two brand new ones. It was their first exposure to Dark Heresy however... I've been buying the Dark Heresy books since they were first released early in 2008. Initially I had been shown the core rulebook by a friend of mine while on a trip to Pittsburgh and was captivated by the artwork. I knew little of the Warhammer 40,000 universe, and next to nothing about the miniature game. Before heading home on that trip I happened upon a copy of the rulebook for half price, and haven't looked back since. I devoured the contents of the core book and have purchased all of the other products released to date. I've also purchased dozens if not hundreds of 40k miniatures, and now have pieces to build approximately seven different armies. Sadly only three of those are...

Which I'm going to blame on it being summer rather than the decision to ban Blink, but I suppose it could be a little of both. With the stupefying amount of rain we've had here lately though I think that there is probably a lot of kitchen table gaming going on. I was able to do exactly that on Monday evening, playing several games of VS w/ Scott. My new Arkham Inmates insanity deck held its own against a massive Jean Grey legend, but just couldn't pull out a win on turn 9 (yes NINE) when faced up against a 19/19 Jean Grey, plus an 8-drop Professor X and an Onslaught. Even against all that the game was still pretty close. We also played a game with this deck facing off against the Fantastic Four. I believe that was my only win of the evening. Insanity is tough to build, but so far I think it's a blast to play. My Legionnaires also got a chance to come out and play. Another deck I love to use because I think the characters are great. However, every time I play thi...

Well, here it's a national holiday and people were out in large numbers to enjoy the sunshine and wave their maple leaf-emblazoned flags proudly. I'm proud to have been born in such a great country like Canada, and now we need to protect it more than ever...from the ancient ones! Over the past few months I've been doing demos for the Call of Cthulhu LCG, and have been please with the reception it's getting from most players. One of the major selling points is that after you buy your base set, it's a minimal investment. The Asylum packs are released on a (near) monthly basis and run around $12. That's around the price of three random packs of your average collectable game, so it's pretty easy to get into for little cost. So in preparation for league play I thought I would give you a few pointers on getting started with the contents of your base set. There are seven factions in the Call of Cthulhu LCG: - The Agency: A human faction of law enforcement age...