Hola all. Massawyrm here.

MAGIC: THE GATHERING SLIVERS!

Wow is this a brutal little deck. While certainly not a tournament winner, SLIVERS, the latest deck from the Premium Deck Series is definitely a strong contender as a fun play deck. A five (yes FIVE) color deck loaded with nothing but Slivers and cards that aid slivers, the deck involves throwing out lots of low cost small creatures that all work in tandem – each sliver giving all other slivers in play a special ability. By turns 5-7 you should already have a slew of these things in play, each of them beefy and working to tear your opponent apart. As a deck all its own it is rough – although it plays slower than I prefer (common for these decks.) Without any card to allow you to draw more cards, the low cost of its cards will lead you to empty your hand quickly, falling into the draw-a-card-play-a-card routine; meaning this deck needs to pulverize its opponent early and has few surprises up its sleeve.

As a deck to pilfer however, the thing is a godsend. While the Slivers themselves aren’t going to fit remarkably well into random decks that don’t already incorporate them, the deck comes with a slew of multicolor land cards, which will aid ANYONE playing a multicolor deck.

Collectors of course will love the fact that the entire deck is made up of foil cards, and beginners might find it a fun place to start as the simple purchase of a booster or two will allow you to begin swapping cards in and out to play a five color deck with what little you start out with. A solid, definitely recommended deck to pick up.

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 2 FOR 1 PHB DEAL!

Have you been kicking around picking up a players handbook and checking out what this Dungeons & Dragons thing is all about? Are you a Dungeon Master with a player who has yet to pick up books of his own? Well WotC’s got a great holiday special this year: The Player’s Handbook as well as the Player’s Handbook 2 are bundled together for the price of a regular PHB. $35 gets you both. You can pick this set up at your friendly local game store.

WARHAMMER FANTASY ROLEPLAYING GAME (WFRPG) 3rd EDITION!

When I first tried out the WHFRPG roughly 20 years ago, I was a bit confused. My friends had invited me over for an afternoon of gaming and I sat down to make a character only to discover something peculiar: Warhammer was like D&D, only with six sided dice. It struck me a little odd. “Why aren’t we just playing D&D?” I asked. I was met with strange looks. “Because…because we’re playing warhammer?”

One of the problems with Fantasy Roleplaying games is that while the specifics of the system may vary, they are at heart almost entirely the same. You play a Tolkien race (Human, Elf, Dwarf, hobbit-substitute) and fight against dragons, orcs, goblins and the undead. And in this day and age, there are a number of very good choices in that field. On the high end you have D&D and PATHFINDER – both excellent games – and on the indie end, creative alternatives like SHARD and FANTASYCRAFT, which are also great, interesting additions to the field. So when Fantasy Flight Games set out to re-invent the long running WHFRPG, it left many of us wondering why bother? And if not why bother, then what next?

The answer to that is an awesome box set that takes the game in a brand new direction. FFG, long the leader in reinventing the gaming wheel, has created a new system involving new dice, tokens and cards to create a very Tabletop Board Game experience merged with all the roleplaying, intrigue and imagination of an RPG. The idea is simple: if you’re just dealing with an arbitrary system of numbers and using dice to simulate randomness in that system, why not create new dice for that system and give the game a radically different feel? So that’s what they did.

The game comes with 36 different colored (as well as different sided) dice, with each color and die type reserved for different types of actions or modifiers to actions. Various factors are all worked together, with both benefits, stats and adversarial or environmental hindrances each adding various dice of their own type to the dice pool – then you roll, total your successes and check to see if anything weird happens from the other dice. While similar to some of the FFG’s previous dice mechanics, this is far more complicated and gives the Game Master a lot of tools with which to play around with strange actions.

I haven’t yet had a chance to put together a game, but I’m going through the rule books (there are 4, a rulebook, a DMG of sorts, a wizardry book and a books for priests) and liking what I’m seeing. This has a radically different feel from other tabletop FRPGs. The $100 box set is a nicely packaged, full bodied game with all the trimmings. Definitely worth the initially high sticker price (which is arguably just $5 cheaper than a full D&D starter set.)

This should reach your friendly local game store this week, just in time for Black Friday holiday shopping. Check it out!

ROLLERBALL (RÜLERBALL)

Okay, this one is just weird but too cool to pass up. JP Trostle, the man behind the Speed Rally game (a speed racer like board game/RPG) has released a PDF of a game he created using the ROLLERBALL rules based upon the classic film. The PDF includes printouts to assemble an actual Rollerball track as well as paper models in case you don’t want to have to find/paint your own. Filmbuff tabletop gamers should get a kick out of this. It’s a fun sendup of one of the greatest sports never to actually exist and I for one can’t wait to build a track and have some buddies over to try it out. Here’s what JP had to say about it:

When I was growing up I loved the movie Rollerball (not the awful
remake, but the one and only 1975 dystopian classic.) About a decade ago
I designed a set of miniature rules to play this fictional future sport,
and friends and I have had a lot of fun with it over the years.

For a variety of reasons, I have decided to release my game for free
under Creative Commons licensing. (Due to copyright factors, the name is
now Rulerball ... with an umlaut over the u, lol... but it is still the
violent death sport you know and love.) For a short time you can
download a PDF of the complete rules, track sections and playing pieces
from my site, http://japenet.net (in the games section). Everything can
be printed out on a standard color printer, and there are also
guidelines as to how you can build your own 3-D arena.

Like I said, there are a variety of reasons I decided to release this
game onto the net for free. If you and your friends really love the
rules and want to make a donation of $5 or $10, I won't say no. In the
meantime, I thought it was more important to finally share what is a
great game (if I do say so myself) with passionate gamers who might want
to play it.

Happy holidays!

So there you go. You can download the game for FREE HERE at JP’s website. Enjoy guys!

Oh yeah, and Happy Thanksgiving! Enjoy your holiday and all the turkey sandwiches.

Until next time friends, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em.

Massawyrm

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