Thinking Outside the Box

This week I started cleaning up my place in preparation for the holidays. It has nothing to do with the fact that I've been lazy and not properly cleaned it since before Halloween, honest! One of the first things I have to do when cleaning up is collect all the various gaming junk lying around on the tables, counters and even the floor, and put it all into one spot. Well this time around I realized that one spot simply isn't going to cut it anymore, unless I get a bigger spot. So today I thought it might be an interesting bit to talk about some of these games and why I like (or don't) them so much. For today, I think I'll restrict it to card games, because otherwise this list is just going to be too damn long. Grab a cup of coffee and let's go! VS System - If you have ever met me, or come to this blog at all it's very likely that you know of my love for the VS System card game. This was not the first collectible card game I got into, but it has certainly ...

Hey kids! I just wanted to check in with all of the players and remind them to bring their team-play hats for this Friday's Giant-Size VS night. We'll be running both Galactus AND Starro multiplayer events. The Starro deck is a really interesting creation from the online community that I've play-tested a few times and feel is good enough for regular use. It's a different take on the Giant-Size idea that came to us with the Galactus set and is a lot of fun. I also wanted everyone to think about what night would be good for them if we were to make the tournaments weekly rather than bi-weekly. Of course the prizing system would be vastly improved. Regular players would not only get to play more VS, but would be rewarded for playing on a regular basis with new cards and great new deck ideas. Please drop a comment on the site here to let me know which day is best for the majority of folks. Of course Trilogy's open-hours will affect what we're able to do, but p...

Well I'm back again, and have some happy news on the Call of Cthulhu Living Card game! Most of you probably have heard about the upcoming full-size expansion for the game, entitled Secrets of Arkham . The new expansion will include 100 cards total (2 copies of 50 new cards) and be released this winter. In light of this news, I think it will be a great jumping-on point for players interested in joining our current Adventure League play. Currently all players have purchased a starter set and added cards from purchased Asylum packs to it. We'll continue with that format until I have news of a release date for the new expansion. At that point we'll have a round-robin tournament event for everyone to finish off the current league. After the release of Secrets of Arkham we'll begin a new cycle with new rules, to be decided at that time. There will be a new Adventure League kit to co-incide with this and should spark another cycle of deckbuilding, insanity and fun...

Well we had another night of demons vs investigators last night at Trilogy. Our Call of Cthulhu league is starting to gain a decent player base which I'm really happy to see. Four players came on Thursday to battle it out over story card and drive their opponents insane. Sebastien is probably the bravest (or most insane) of us all, as he has not yet added any Asylum Packs to his original Syndicate / Cthulhu deck. The scary thing is that he's still winning a good portion of his games! Jason has built two decks, and is probably the farthest along into integrating Asylum Pack cards into both of them. They fought each other to a standstill over two games, each declaring a single victory and adding to their currency pools accordingly. I was also able to play two games, one versus Sebastien and another against our newest player Cameron. Prior to last night's gaming I had set out to improve my deck further, after having been sorely disappointed by its performance thus far. ...

We had a smaller turn out than I expected, but travel plans, wives and colds kept some of our regular players away. The six of us who were able to make it out each grabbed our three packs and the draft was on! I set up two pods of three players to draft, but in retrospect I think that we should have all drafted together. Since draft is a format we don't play all that often I hadn't really thought about the team availability being a little easier in groups of three, but it didn't seem to affect things adversely...just something to note for next time. Harry, Vern and Scott made up pod 1, Dustin, William and I made up pod 2. In my first pack I noticed a large number of Marvel Knights cards and started filling out my curve early on. A lot of the more team-specific cards were coming back to me, so I started grabbing them. After all three packs were done I had ended up with an almost complete MK build, only using two Doom characters and an X-Men 6-drop to round things out. ...