(Editor’s Note: ‘NERDS!)

I haven’t written about Dungeons and Dragons yet for a couple of reasons that are closely related. ‘Mainly, because Chris doesn’t play, we haven’t made it a part of our monthly game nights. ‘More generally, I haven’t played D&D since AD&D 2nd edition and haven’t even though about the game since moving about a decade ago and putting all those books up in the attic. ‘For some reason, during the summer, I got interested in the state of the game again. ‘ ‘I ‘went in search of the new editions, tried to find some free and relatively quick adventures, and tested out the game.

I went with 3.5 to make my characters and for the rule books. ‘4th editions seemed a like it simplified things a little too much for me and the 3.5 character sheets looked like what I remember as D&D. ‘I rolled a party of five (not the old TV show, but a half-elf fighter, eladrin ranger, human rogue, elven wizard, and a dwarven cleric), wrote some brief personalities and histories for them (just enough to get started), downloaded an adventure, and got to it.

As you may imagine, playing D&D solo was not nearly as much fun as getting together with some friends. ‘I started to wish that I had Wednesday nights off to be able to go to the Encounters nights at the local-ish game store. ‘I tried to think of ways that I could get some of the old crew together (maybe via Skype) to play some games. ‘Nothing came of either of those plans, but my brainstorming led to Roll20 and Meetup. ‘Roll20 is an online community that allows you to play roleplaying games with others. ‘Meetup is more general, but I joined a group of comic fans, gamers, and sci-fi enthusiasts. ‘These ventures haven’t led to anything yet, either, but I will hopefully have the time to dedicate to figuring out how to use either or both of them to my benefit.

One unexpected positive to come out of my resurgence of interest in the game is that I have rediscovered my Dragonlance books. ‘As of writing this article, I have only found the Annotated Chronicles from my collection, but they should be enough to get me started. ‘(Editor’s Note: ‘I have since visited a local used bookstore and picked up 3 more books for my birthday.) ‘I have plan to revisit Dragonlance in an article that I will post tomorrow on the main page, so that will be another hopefully entertaining and interesting trip back to the roots of my nerdiness. ‘For now, though, back to the topic.

A reason for this article is that the 5th edition of the game was released last year. ‘(Mostly self-promoted) hype on my Facebook feed proclaim the update as the perfect time to get back into the game. ‘Let’s inspect to see if it actually is, or we should take the advice of Public Enemy on this one. ‘First impression is that it is D&D. ‘I don’t see much difference in the core elements of the game. ‘All of the races, classes, attributes, spells, and saving throws are still there. ‘This is a good thing since the core of the game has always been strong and the basis of many copycats and clones. ‘To be honest, at first glance, I don’t see any reason to choose this over the others, but maybe I will find something to distinguish it as I take a closer look.

So, let’s start by making a character. ‘My go to first character has always been an elf (or usually a half-elf) magic-user of some sort. ‘I think to change it up, I’ll choose a druid this time. ‘the race and class combination could make for an interesting back story for the character. ‘Given up for adoption by an elven mother to a group of druids because the human father died (killed in war?), left (intentionally? ‘driven away?), he now looks over a spring used by local villagers. ‘Whatever, the beauty of the game is that I can fill in the details later.

More importantly, I posted something on my Facebook about the new edition and how I wanted to find a group again. ‘Because most of us work during the week, it would have to be a weekend group. ‘All of the local stores only run them during the week. ‘However, a friend mentioned that he has been looking for a group, too. ‘We got our families together for dinner the other day and I mentioned Roll20 to him. ‘We both explored the site more and decided that it more that does what we want. ‘He sent out some invites and I sent out a couple to old friends about joining. ‘So far, we have 5 or 6 that are willing to play, so we definitely have the makings of a group.

I probably won’t use my earlier character for that group. ‘I might incorporate him into a series of short stories that I can share on the web page. ‘I was going to do something like that when I first got back into the game and couldn’t find others to play. ‘As I am currently writing him, the druid seems like he would work better in stories than a campaign. ‘Since he is a loner and with little desire to change that status, it might take too long for him to enter civilization and find companions. ‘Admittedly, you can always accelerate time in these games, but I’d rather roll a different character for the campaign. ‘(Editor’s Note: ‘I am falling on the proverbial sword for the group and rolling a dwarven cleric again.)

Well, it appears that the new edition of D&D is not just all hype. ‘It has inspired me to write a little bit. ‘It got me together with new and old friends to plan a campaign. ‘It’s gotten me excited about the prospects of playing the game again. ‘If you’re like me and you used to play D&D, but haven’t looked at it in a while, I would definitely check out the 5th edition. ‘Admittedly, I have not tried any of the other rules for any extended period, but if they are as intuitive as the character creation, then we are going to have some fun with this and you probably will, too.

One final note. ‘As far as I know, we are up to 6 for our Roll20 campaign. ‘If you take a look at some of the materials from 5th edition and like what you see, give a thought to joining us. ‘We can always use more players for greater flexibility. ‘We are mostly born again noobs, but if that sounds like your speed, send an email or leave a comment.

(Editor’s Note: Stay tuned for a more in depth look at the set in next month’s episode of the podcast. For now, I just wanted to catch up after a busy holiday season and give a first impression of Fate Reforged.)

I have been keeping an eye on spoilers as they’ve been revealed and Chris and I have kept alive our unofficial tradition of sending cards to one another. Chris is excited that dragons are back (not in a big way, the last set is called Dragons of Tarkir or something like that, so they’ll hopefully blow the doors off with that one) and, as usual, I’m intrigued by some of the mechanics that are being used in the set. One of the first spoilers to be leaked was Ugin and, as happens in this day and age, many thought it was a fake. Some saw a dragon and leaped to the conclusion that, if it was real, it would be from the third set and others just dismissed it outright. It is real and pretty amazing. However, I know that I won’t play that card. If I do pull one, it will most likely be one that I sell similar to the foil fetches and Planeswalkers from the previous set of cards. I’m also pretty sure that I won’t ever play against it, either, so that’s all that I’ll say about it. Better to focus on the cards that will see play in our eternal struggle of two.

In keeping with the multicolored theme, hybrid mana is back. I only see it in casting cost of abilities instead of as a way to cast spells and creatures. Maybe in the next set they will have hybrid mana creatures and spells like they did in the earlier multicolored sets. The Return to Ravnica block had a huge number of multicolored cards and especially more hybrid mana cards than I could imagine. I suppose that it keeps with the theme of that block. While Khans is three colored clans, the focus seems to be more on making those colors interact with one another in unique ways instead of attempting to fuse them together into a whole new strategy. Therefore, I can understand the decision to not have hybrid mana casting costs for creatures and spells. Thanks for joining me as I talked myself through that one.

As I mentioned above, Chris is excited that some dragons are in this set. He’s infamous for his dragon deck that once got me to utter, “That is bullshit” in response to him playing it once. This is noteworthy because our games are generally friendly and there isn’t much in the way of grumble unless one of us is having particularly bad luck with the mana screw or something. I made the observation that it looks like they seem to be trying to make dragons similar to slivers. There are a new class of legendary multicolored dragons that all have an ability that affects the board in some way. Instead of triggering on play, though, the new dragon abilities all trigger when a dragon attacks. That adds an interesting wrinkle to EDH. The other dragons also have similar abilities, but they are more localized to one creature in most cases. Again, this seems like a bit of a teaser for the last set where they will most likely unleash the dragons in a big way. Maybe it will even inspire me to make a dragon deck.

Being the type of player that I am, the mechanic that has me most excited is manifest. I am enamored with Morph and even though I haven’t quite figured it out, I am determined to make a morph deck that works consistently enough to frustrate the opponent as my decks often are designed to do. I mentioned in the missing Episode 2 of the podcast that I hoped that they would either have more morph creatures or at least more mechanics that work with morph. While manifest isn’t that, it does share some DNA with morph and makes me even more excited that a face down deck will work in some shape. I’m going to get to trying to build my Temur morph/manifest deck as soon as possible.

Overall, this set seems like the calm before the storm. The last set in the block is a big one like Khans and it is named for the other big players on the plane, the dragons, so I think we’ll see some really huge things out of that set. Fate Reforged isn’t a great set but there are definitely some cool cards and I can’t wait to pick up my box in a few weeks.

(Editor’s Note: This is the same editor’s note as on the main page. I had been working 3 jobs and had precious little time to devote to the pages. However, two of those jobs are on winter break, so I have more time and will be updating the pages on a more regular basis.)

(2nd Editor’s Note: Playing a few rounds of this game has only increased my anger that Blizzard killed it in favor of Hearthstone. I understand the decision, but it still makes me mad.)

After fits, non-starts, and a fried hard drive (2 actually) that took episode 2 of the podcast, Christ and I got together for a couple of game nights. We didn’t record, but we are going to this weekend, so be on the lookout for the triumphant return when we push the reset button on the show. As part of these game nights, in addition to the usual games of Magic and Gears, we played some WoW: TCG. This isn’t our first experience with the game, but it was our first attempts at deck building and strategy. Overall the games were a success and both of us mentioned that they inspired us to find more cards and build new decks or solidify the ones that we already have. For me, at least, the games were more fun than the recent Magic games.

The first reason is the “new”ness of the game. I am always really excited when I discover or rediscover something and it has that feeling of being new. Since we had not played WoW very much, it was a brand new game whild Magic is the old and faithful game, always there for us. Sure, Khans made it new and exciting for a couple of months, but it’s time for a new expansion again. Also, because Chris had more time to tweak his decks, the Magic battles were not very competitive this round. WoW was much more balanced between us. I don’t care if I win or lose, but I do want the games to be interesting or entertaining.

Secondly, WoW has some definite advantages over Magic. There is no mana and therefore no mana screw unless it somehow works to your advantage. Let me explain. You build resources to cast creatures and spells. The more powerful resources are quests because they allow you to draw cards and perform other actions. However, any card can be played face down as a resource. Doing so removes it from the game for its intended purpose, so you can trade a less powerful creature or spell in order to cast a more powerful one or vice versa. All of this adds to the strategy and complexity of the games. I generally try to build my decks so that I don’t have to use cards other than quests as resources, but it is nice to know that the option is there.

Chris and I toyed around with some kitchen table rules to make Magic more like WoW and to remove (or at least reduce) mana screw and make our decks play more like the way we intended. Chris posted the article last year and you can find it on the page here. I was trying to think of other ways to counter mana screw, but honestly it has gotten to the point where it isn’t that big of a deal in the games that we play. Still, it might be nice to have options for people learning the game, so I’ll keep brainstorming.

The only con against WoW is that it is no longer supported by Blizzard, as I mentioned above. Therefore, the shelf life of the game is very limited, especially if we don’t get out there and buy more cards before they are not on the market any more. Chris has picked up some cards, but I don’t feel compelled to do so because I’d rather spend my money on the new Magic expansions coming out and expand into other formats in a game that is still alive and growing.

WoW: TCG was (and still is for a limited time) a great game that got put to the side in favor of the push to digital content. The most unfortunate part is that as I did research into the game, it felt like it got killed right as it was starting to reach its potential. I don’t hate Hearthstone as much as I used to, but every time I see a card that uses art from the WoW: TCG (like the Leeroy card above) it gives me a twinge of anger and sadness that both games can’t coexist and that digital content wins out again. If you get a chance to pick up some of the starter decks for relatively cheap (which shouldn’t be a problem for the near future) you should definitely check out the game. You could also get a lot of 2000 cards for fairly cheap, but those are more random and if you are going to do that, maybe get both the starter decks and the random cards to swap them out for stronger decks. If you are looking for a slight change from Magic, WoW: TCG is absolutely a strong contender and I, for one, will miss it greatly and wish that I had paid more attention when it was around.

As a post script (postmortem?) to the game, Chris and I were first talking after the announcement that the game had been cancelled and I tried to come up with some ideas to extend the life of games that have been taken off of the market. The one idea that I thought would be easy to modify is to give people the chance to make their own cards for the game. There are already web pages that let you make Magic and Hearthstone cards. It wouldn’t be that difficult to make one that does the same for WoW cards, both heroes and the other cards. I don’t know how much support there is for such an idea, but it is definitely something that I’d like to see implemented and not just for WoW.

Do you love WoW: TCG? Is there another defunct TCG or other table top game that you would recommend as an alternative when Magic becomes stale again? Let me know in the comments. Thanks, as always, for reading!

(Author’s Note: Apologies for the weeks of no communication. I’m still trying to figure out a writing schedule with my new job. Hopefully, things return to normal soon.)

Liam’s birthday–number 10, which is considered a big one–was this past weekend. He wanted to have a sleepover with a Pokemon theme. That gave me an idea. Pick up some booster packs and let them have a draft tournament. I’ve never done a draft for any of the games other than Magic Online, but that ended in disaster. We want to put together some Youtube videos for the web page that show how to conduct a Magic draft with us and the boys, so this was good practice.

What you need

• Some players – Generally, each group should have at least four and no more than 8 players. We decided to keep the group small for this first time. Only Liam and three of his friends played in the tournament.
• Some packs of cards – The suggested number of packs per player is six. Since it felt gauche to require admission to a birthday party, we had to come up with at least 24 packs. At three to four dollars per pack, that can get expensive. We lucked into an open box of packs for relatively cheap. If we want, we have 12 extra packs for prizes.
• Schedule – Depending on the size of your group and the time available, you could go with a round robin. Since we only have four, that’s how we organized it. Whether you have a round robin or not, you can use this link to help put together and print your schedule.
• Non essentials – Snacks, prizes, some other games for in between rounds. We gave the snack funny Pokemon themed names like Charizard fireballs for cheese balls, Charmander chips for potato chips, and Squirtles’s Squirt for the juice boxes. The boys all got a kick out of the names. We didn’t end up having games in between rounds because they went quickly, but we did have a game for them to play when they woke up after the sleepover. We hid plastic golf balls painted to look like Pokeballs around the yard and they had to find them like an Easter egg hunt. That was a huge hit, too.

Okay, we’ve got it all. What now?

There are a few ways to do the draft. I was going to have them each open one pack, pick a card, and then pass the pack on to the next person. Repeat this process until all cards are picked from those packs. Then, do the same with the remaining packs. The boys thought that this was too confusing, so I allowed them to draft like we do at the prerelease tournaments we’ve attended. They took 9 packs each and built their decks from the cards that they got in those packs. I tried to convince them to do 40 card decks, but they insisted on 60 card decks. I tried to get them to play best of 3, but they only played one game rounds. My ideas got shot down left and right. Everything worked out well for them, so they knew what they were doing. I just got out of the way and let them do their thing.

They took turns and played each other in a round robin tournament. As I mentioned above, we didn’t need any entertainment for in between rounds since the rounds went quickly and the two that finished early just watched the game that was still in progress. We also had no need for prizes since the boys were so excited about their new cards. Liam came out the winner and there weren’t any major bouts of poor sportsmanship during the whole tournament.

Overall, this one went well and they were able to figure things out with minimal (actually, no) intervention. Now that I’ve done it once, it will go easier and more smoothly when we sit down to put together the instructional videos. Have you ever participated in a Pokemon draft tournament? Do you have any ideas to make it slightly more organized (other than the participants not being 10)? Let me know in the comments.