Serpent’s Tongue

Serpent's Tongue Core Set

One of the most interesting projects I’ve seen so far is Serpent’s Tongue. I am not quite sure how to categorize this game as it feels like it pulls elements from various sources including card games and pen and paper games. Each player has a codex (an actual hardbound book) that holds all of their 33 incantations (4×6 “cards”). There are dozens, if not hundreds, of cards to build your codex from which gives this the feel of building a deck in a CCG. Unlike a CCG though, players do not shuffle their incantations; they always have access to all of the incantations in their codex.

Players take turns casting incantations which consists of the player having to do the appropriate hand gesture and say the correct phrase in order to cast the spell. The front of the card has a special code that a player can decipher or they can memorize the incantations, while the back has a picture of the gesture and the phrase so the other players can tell that you did it right or not. There are a few game types including free for all and team competitions where you must do enough damage to defeat the other players/team but there is also a cooperative campaign included as well.

Ground Floor

Ground floor is an interesting take on the worker placement/resource style board games. Players take control of a new business and must build it to be the best business they can from the ground up. You allocate our your workers to various tasks each turn in order to do things such as gather info or make money. If you are into resource management games it is worth checking this out.

Defenders of the Realm: Battlefields

Defenders of the Realm: Battlefields is a spin off game from the previously published Defenders of the Realm. Whereas Defenders of the Realm was a cooperative game, Battlefields is a competitive game with two sides competing against each other: the Dark Lord and the Heroes. This game consists of players playing cards into the various battlefields to attempt to win that battle. Players must win on 3 battlefields or 2 of the same color battlefields to win the game. Since the game includes at least 14 different battlefields and 3 are in play at a time there looks to be a decent amount of replayability to this as well. While I have not had a chance to try out Defenders of the Realm yet so I don’t know much about the setting here, it looks to be an interesting game using a fairly standard medieval fantasy theme.

Tammany Hall

Tammany Hall

This game has technically already been released, there was only a limited number of release of 500 copies. Tammany Hall is a game of backstabbing and corruption. Players compete for power in New York City by helping immigrants settle for political favors, securing votes, and slandering opponents. I have to admit that after reading up on it I’m still not quite sure how it plays but the whole idea has me very intrigued, especially since it appears to be a sort of resource game with more direct competition between players. I highly recommend looking over the page for this one.

Disaster Looms

Disaster Looms is a hex based game in which players build the board during the game from various hex tiles. The basis of the game is that earth is being destroyed and everyone must be evacuated. Players compete to build colonies, save colonists, and earn money. There is also an interesting layer of the game in which each player has their own various technologies that affect the game and other players are able to use these by paying that player. I am personally a fan of games in which the board is built throughout the gameplay because it tends to keep the game interesting through many plays.

Exile Sun

Exile Sun

Finally, we come to Exile Sun. The Kickstarter for this game has actually already ended, but I wanted to post about it anyway because I backed it and will be reviewing my copy when it shows up soon. This is a space themed game in which players complete various objectives for points. There are a lot of elements to Exile Sun, but the one element that intrigued me was the combat system. Players secretly assign power to offense/defense for ships in 5 different slots in attempts to destroy the opposing player’s ships in each slot by overpowering the defense in a slot by having more offensive power assigned to that slot. This is an interesting game of strategy as players pick which ships to use in battle and then have to outsmart their opponent through strategic assignments of power. Keep an eye out for a full review of this game hopefully in July or so.

These are just a few of the interesting projects on Kickstarter. There seem to be lots of intriguing new projects going up all the time as well. While there is a certain risk to backing projects on Kickstarter, most of the board game projects seem to be mostly finished and simply looking for funding for mass production. Often you’ll find you can get a copy of the game cheaper by backing it on Kickstarter rather than waiting for retail, and in many cases there are Kickstarter specific expansions and rewards as well. I plan to do more of these posts as I find more interesting Kickstarter projects. If you have any suggestions for games on Kickstarter that you like then send us an email. We would love to hear about them!

Nightfall: The Coldest War is the latest (standalone) expansion to Nightfall, the deck-building game from AEG. We absolutely loved Nightfall, so we were excited to try this latest addition. The Coldest War not only adds new archive card options, but includes new wounds, starter cards, and a whole new aspect to the game with the moon deck. For those of you who are not familiar with Nightfall I will give a brief rundown of the basics of the game itself (though I recommend starting with our review of the core Nightfall game if you are not already familiar with Nightfall) and then I will get into the specifics of this expansion.

Nightfall is a deck-building game with several unique elements for a deck-building game. The first of which is the fact that Nightfall is a game of direct combat between players. At the beginning of every turn a player attacks with all of his minions in play before discarding them. Since the combat phase is the first phase any minions played on that turn last until the beginning of the player’s next turn, allowing them to be used for blocking in the meantime. Combat is generally pretty simple: assign attackers, declare defenders, and then assign damage. Any excess damage is dealt to a player in the form of Wound cards which enter the player’s deck, and the player with the least wound cards at the end of the game is the winner. However, when playing with multiple players it can be difficult to decide who to attack each turn.

"Clever Ivan", a New Starter Minion

The other major element of Nightfall is the chain system. Unlike most deck-building games in which players may simply play 1 action (which will sometimes give the player more actions to spend) the player may play a single chain. Each card has a large moon in the upper left corner, and two smaller moons beneath that. Each of those moons is of a specific color. The larger moon is the color of that card and the smaller colors are the colors that may be chained from that card. During the chain phase a player plays any card to start and then may continue to chain cards (as long as the large moon on the new card matches the smaller moons of the last played card) as long as he wishes. After the current player is done the player to his left may chain off of the last played card and so on until each player has had a chance to play cards, meaning every player has a chance to play cards on every player’s turn. Once the chain is finished all cards are resolved in reverse order. This leads to some very interesting outcomes, especially since some cards can alter or remove other cards in the chain.

Since there are no money cards the buy phase plays out different than most deck-building games as well. A player receives 2 influence (the currency used to purchase new cards) each turn and may receive additional influence by discarding cards from his hand. On top of this unique way of handling buying cards each player also has 2 private archives from which only he may purchase cards in addition to the common archives from which all players may purchase cards. The private and common archives are chosen in a draft at the beginning of the game, allowing the players to start planning their strategy before the game has even technically started.

A 2 Player Game in Progress, with Chain Events and Damaged Enemies!

All of the above are core mechanics and are true of the base game as well as The Coldest War. However, there is a completely new element introduced with this expansion as well, moon phases. There are 6 moon phase cards that make up a special deck. At the start of the game these are shuffled and one card is placed face up on top of the moon deck. Each card has a unique effect that changes the game while it is in play, such as increasing the strength of Lycanthropes by 2 or making all cards resolve their kickers when played. At the end of each player’s turn he may choose to leave the current moon phase or change it (either by placing the current card on the bottom and flipping the next card or shuffling the cards and flipping the top one).

One of the New Moon Cards

This adds a new strategic level to the game in which a player can plan certain plays around these moon phases (such as throwing all his Lycanthropes into play to try and take advantage of the moon phase, or changing the order in which a chain is played since the requirements do not need to be met to activate kickers). However, these do not always have a huge effect and you will find that sometimes the moon cards are ignored or that you will cycle through repeatedly without much coming out of it. Still, they are a welcome addition that can create some crazy and unexpected scenarios on occasion.

There are also a few card effects that did not appear in the base game, but did appear in previous expansions. Some cards include a “Combat” effect which allows the player to discard that card from their hand during combat for a special effect (such as a bonus to strength). This leads to some more interesting combat scenarios than the base game. The only other card prior to this expansion that included this effect is the Martial Law Wound card. The other effect that appears very rarely in this set is the “Feed” effect. A card that includes “Feed” may repeat an effect as many times as they can afford to pay the feed cost (such as discarding cards from their hand). This can be very powerful if the player is able to repeatedly pay the cost. These two effects make for some interesting new strategic options compared to the base game.

The thing that actually was very exciting to me was the introduction of new starter cards. While these are still 6 sets of 2 cards (one set for each color) they have very different effects than the base starter minions. If you have both the base game and The Coldest War you can use either set or you can allow players to put together their own starter decks picking any 2 minions of each color to build a custom 12 card deck to start with. Being such a huge fan of customization I really like being able to build my own starter deck.

The New Coldest War Wound, with New Art!

The final difference from the base game is the inclusion of three different wound types. Included are the wounds from the base game, the wounds from Martial Law, and a new wound type unique to this expansion. This new wound may be played in a chain, and chains to and from any color card. Using one of these wounds you can bridge that gap between two cards in your hand to keep a chain going. This also does not count towards the one wound effect per turn, so you may still use the old wound cards after using one of these new ones in a chain. On top of this, the wound cards have new art instead of the simple bullet hole art used with previous sets. Unfortunately this art is based around the Bite, Bleed, or Burn types which caused some confusion among the players I played with when two cards with the same art had different effects while another card with different art had the same effect, but this is really only a minor gripe.

Overall this has turned out to be a very good standalone game and expansion, though it adds a bit of complexity (which some players, such as myself, will appreciate and other players will not). If you already own Nightfall and are looking to add more or if Nightfall sounds intriguing to you and you are already familiar with deck-building games I definitely recommend picking up The Coldest War as it has plenty to offer. If you have never played a deck-building game before or do not enjoy too much complexity I would recommend purchasing the base Nightfall game, and then perhaps looking to The Coldest War later as it can be overwhelming if you are not already familiar with the basics.

Related Posts

• Review: Nightfall
• The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game Review
• Review: Dominion
• Review: Super Dungeon Explore

Nightfall

Since the release of Dominion and the birth of the deck-building genre there have been a large number of deck-building games released. Each game brings their own twist to the table, and Nightfall by the Alderac Entertainment Group has several unique gameplay elements that make it stand out in my mind. The first thing you might notice though is that Nightfall is based around vampires, werewolves and other creatures of the night mixed with guns in a more modern setting.

Note: If you are not familiar with the basics of deck-building games I recommend reading our Dominion review first as that explains the basics of the genre.

The initial draw of Nightfall for me was the promise of direct conflict and combat between players. The one thing that I had a problem with in the deck-building genre (and specifically with Dominion) was the lack of interaction between players. In Nightfall players are directly attacking each other with their minions each turn. Added to the beginning of the typical genre turn setup of playing actions, buying, and cleanup is a combat phase.

A Minion Card

During the combat phase a player must attack with all of his minions, divided up amongst the other players as he wishes. The combat itself is fairly simple; the attacker chooses which minions are attacking each other player, defenders assigns minions to block each minion, damage is assigned to the defenders (defenders do not attack back), and then all attacking minions are discarded. Any undefended or excess damage goes to the defending player. Each point of damage dealt to a player causes that player to draw a wound card. Once all of the wound cards are depleted (there are 10 per player) the game is over and the player with the least amount of wounds is the winner. While wounds are not necessarily a good thing to have, the negative effects are somewhat negated by the wound effects on the cards. In the base set the only wound effect allows a player to discard wounds from his hand at the end of his turn and draw 2 cards to replace each wound discarded, meaning that players with too many wounds will not simply get left behind and in some cases it might even be beneficial to try and take a couple wounds for the extra card draw.

The other element that really makes Nightfall stand out is the chain system. Instead of having a single action to play each turn players instead are allowed to play a single chain. Each card in Nightfall has a colored moon in the upper left corner of the card and 2 smaller moons that denote what cards can be chained off of that card. During the chain (action) phase the player can start by playing any card from their hand. They may continue playing cards as long as that card’s colored moon matches the chain colors from the previously played card, creating a chain of cards. What is interesting is that after that player is finished playing cards the player to their left is allowed to then play cards chaining off of the last played card (and continuing this way until all players have had a chance to play on the current chain).

An action card has an effect in a chain and then is discarded.

Once all players have had a chance to play cards the chain is resolved in reverse order with the cards played last being resolved first. Cards have chain effects that take effect when they resolve that do all kinds of things from damaging minions or players to canceling other cards in the chain. In addition, many cards have a “kicker” effect that also occurs if the card they are chained from is of a specific color. If the card is a minion it then enters play and stays in play until it attacks at the beginning of the owner’s next turn. Since the chain phase comes after the combat phase minions played on a player’s turn are around for a full round to defend before they attack and are discarded at the beginning of the player’s next turn. Also, since players can chain off of another player’s chain they are able to bring in minions during another player’s turn. This creates a very interesting and strategic setup in which players have to decide when it is best to player a card into a chain, and how best to chain their cards together.

The buy phase is also different. Nightfall does not include any money cards. Instead, all players receive 2 influence (the currency used to purchase new cards) every and they may discard cards from their hand for 1 influence each. There is at least 1 card that gives the player a bonus to influence when played in a chain as well. This means that even if a player has a card in his hand that he does not want to play or is not very useful for the current situation he can turn it into something useful. Players do not discard their hands at the end of the turn however, so there is an advantage to not discarding all excess cards for influence each turn.

The Wound card

While I am discussing the buy phase there is another interesting aspect to the buy phase of Nightfall as well. The player may purchase cards from the common archives (the piles of cards in the middle of the play area) as well as from their own private archives. At the beginning of the game there is a draft in which players pick the 8 cards that will appear in the common archives (that any player can purchase from) and then each player also drafts 2 cards for their private archives (which only that player may purchase cards from during the game). These private archives mean that players can develop different strategies based around the private archives they pick.

All of these elements combined together make Nightfall a very unique deck-building experience. Nightfall is currently not only one of my favorite deck-building games but one of my favorite games of any genre! The base game comes with 24 unique card types giving plenty of variety and replayability when you consider the combinations possible with these cards in the common and private archives. There are also 3 expansions available currently (Blood Country, Martial Law, and The Coldest War) that add plenty of new cards to play with, including new wound types and more variety in potential chain combinations.

Keep an eye out for more deck-building game reviews coming soon, including a review of the Nightfall: The Coldest War stand-alone expansion as well! The Coldest War adds not only new archive cards but new starting minion options, new wound types, and an interesting new game mechanic, moon phases.

Related Posts

• Review: Dominion
• The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game Review
• Review: Super Dungeon Explore
• Review: Nightfall: The Coldest War

Dominion

We have recently discovered the relatively new genre of deck-building card games. If you are not familiar with the genre the name might conjure up thoughts of Magic: The Gathering or other CCGs. However, the deck-building genre is something very different. Instead of building a deck of cards and then playing a game with that deck the game itself is building your deck by purchasing cards each turn, not to mention the entire game comes in one box so there is no card collecting. We have tried out many different deck-building games recently, but I am going to start by reviewing the game that started the genre, Dominion.

The first thing that you need to know is what the cards are:
Treasure Cards are the currency with which players are able to buy new cards.
Victory Cards have no value during the game, but are worth victory points towards winning the game.
Kingdom Cards are the action cards which players purchase during the game. These cards have a large variety of functions allowing players to do things such as draw more cards, take additional actions, purchase more than additional cards on their turn, or even force other players to discard cards.

The Village card allows the player to draw 1 card and play 2 more actions.

The general formula behind Dominion (and for most games in the genre) is fairly simple. The goal of the game is to have the most victory points in your deck when the game ends (which occurs when the Province cards are all purchased or when any 3 supply piles are empty). Each player has their own deck of cards to draw from that starts as 10 cards: 7 treasure cards and 3 victory point cards. There are also several piles of cards in the center of the table, called the Supply, which is where players will purchase new cards from. A player’s turn consists of 3 simple steps performed in order: play an action card (optional), buy a card from the supply and place it in your discard pile (optional), then discard all cards in play and in your hand and draw 5 new cards (reshuffling your discard pile into a new deck if necessary).

Cards are purchased using money earned from Treasure cards in the players hand (and also some Kingdom cards that give extra money). Through purchasing new cards each turn the players are each continuously customizing their deck the whole game. The cards available for purchase in the supply consist of 10 different Kingdom cards (chosen by the players or randomly selected from all available cards), more Treasure cards (Copper, Silver, and Gold worth 1, 2, and 3 money respectively), and Victory cards (Estate, Duchy, and Province, worth 1, 3, and 6 points respectively). Since the end goal is to purchase victory point cards the general strategy consists of trying to create a deck that can efficiently purchase victory points each turn. Of course, since Victory cards have no purpose during gameplay having too many in your deck will dilute it, making it harder to get the good cards into your hand each turn causing the players to balance their victory card purchases carefully.

While the general gameplay is fairly simple, the variety in the cards makes the game very interesting. Players can use cards that allow them to play more actions creating intricate chains of cards. Through these chains players can build up a hand in a single turn to purchase high valued cards (such as the Province Victory Card) or trade in cards in their hands for higher valued cards from the Supply, for example.

Thief, an attack card

The core game consists of 25 different potential Kingdom cards to go in the supply, but only 10 different Kingdom cards are used in a single game. This means there are millions of potential combinations of cards, making each play different. There are suggested sets to use in the rulebook, but there is also a set of randomizer cards so that you can randomly choose which 10 cards to use each game. There are also many expansions available that add new Kingdom cards (and sometimes new rules) that will ensure that you never have a lack of variety.

The only complaint I have about Dominion is the lack of interaction with other players. There are a few “attack” cards that allow a player to do things such as steal cards from another player, force a player to discard cards from their hand or give other players curse cards (which are negative victory point cards), but for the core game there are only a couple of these cards so each player is mostly focused on himself the whole game. This is only a minor complaint though, as the game is still very fun.

One thing outside of the gameplay itself that should be noted is that the box for Dominion comes with a tray with dividers for all of the cards. As someone who is obsessed with keeping cards organized this is really awesome! It makes setup and cleanup much easier, and it keeps your cards safe.

Dominion Big Box, contains Game + 2 Expansions

I highly recommend checking out Dominion if you have never played it before, and especially if you have never played a deck-building game. It was the first of the genre, and after playing several different deck-building games the genre is quickly becoming a favorite of mine. Dominion is also one of the easiest deck-building games to pick up, and once you have the core mechanics down I’ve found that it becomes very easy to pick up any other deck-building game.

Keep an eye out because there will likely be several more reviews of deck-building games coming soon! Next up will be Nightfall which changes up the formula a bit with an intriguing chain mechanic and direct combat between players.

Dominion Core Game
Retail $44.95 Sale $35.99

Dominion Big Box
Retail $100 Sale $79.99

Related Posts

• Review: Super Dungeon Explore
• Review: Nightfall: The Coldest War
• Review: Nightfall
• The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game Review

Super Dungeon Explore!

With my new found obsession with Super Dungeon Explore I love to see what people are doing with the miniatures. So when I found the Super Dungeon Explore boards made by Tyson Koch of FigurePainters.com I was just blown away. These boards look fantastic and they really give off the feeling of a great dungeon crawl.

As I usually do when I find something that inspires me, I contacted Tyson for an interview. Read on for the full interview, and don’t forget to check out his site for more pictures of not only the Super Dungeon Explore board but tons of other amazing works as well!

Where are you from?
I am originally from Southern California. For the past seven years I have lived near San Luis Obispo, which is located on California’s Central Coast.

What is your occupation?
Currently it is painting miniatures full time. Before that I did civil engineering, but during the economy down turn I was laid off.

How long have you been interested in the tabletop hobby and how did you get into it?
I have been playing table top games since about 7th grade. It all started when my science teacher brought Star Fleet Battles into class for us to play at recess/lunch. He also owned a game store. So one weekend I went in and they were playing Warhammer 40k (2nd ed.) and I was totally hooked.

What tabletop games do you play? What armies do you play in those games?
Oh boy, this would be quite a list so I will hit the high points.
Warmachine/Hordes: Trollbloods, Cryx, Menoth, Mercenaries
40k: Tyranid, Blood Angels
Warhammer fantasy: Skaven
Malifaux: Neverborn (3 crews)
Super Dungeon Explore (current Friday night favorite besides Warmachine)
Descent

Full Super Dungeon Explore Scene

What drew you to Super Dungeon Explore initially?
I was drawn to the artwork and the retro gaming feel that it had. I am always on the lookout for games that my wife and I can play together and when we have friends over. I cannot talk her into the larger miniatures games, Warmachine/40k, so this seemed like a perfect game that still had miniatures. Did I mention I LOVE miniatures?….

How long did it take you to build the Super Dungeon Explore boards?
I took about a month. I would cast up the parts during the day as I was painting and then assemble what was dry at night while watching TV. They probably could have gone together faster if I worked on them solidly. There were some weeks when I barely touched them.

Painted Paladin and Ranger

What materials did you use to build these boards?
I used Silicon rubber molds and Hydrostone to cast up the individual pieces and then attached them to a piece of 12″x12″x1/4″ piece of particle board. After everything was glued down using thick tacky craft glue, I primed them and used spray paint for the base colors. I used 4 different colors of red, from deep crimson to an almost orange. Large spray paint cans make it pretty easy to quickly paint your base colors while providing a durable finish. After that I clear coated them as they were a little shiny and I was worried that the acrylics that I was going to use to detail it out with would not stick well. After that it was out with the airbrush and craft paints to add all the lighting and detailing. I plan on having a step by step put together so you can just check my site in a week or so and it should be up.

Any plans to build more boards with different layouts/themes?
Why yes I do! I am working on a purple themed board with ornate floor tiles. I am also working on making some custom boards that people would be able to buy for those that don’t have the time to make their own.

How does the 3D aspect of the boards affect the gameplay? How have you handled things such as climbing up and crossing bridges?
Having 3D boards definitely raises the players excitement to play and the immersion of the games. You have to do less imagining when the board is built up around your little heroes and things seem more threatening.
I have been playing that anything with flight can “jump” up the bridge or higher levels just with normal movement. If you don’t happen to have flight you are stuck using the stairs The bridge has the same amount of “squares” as that the occupies the floor underneath it. So I think 2×2. It just takes a little bit of extrapolation. It definitely is not as clean as having all the squares printed on the map like the printed tiles. But after playing on it once or twice it is pretty easy to tell where the squares are though on the 3d board.

Battle Across a Bridge

Do you prefer to play as the Consul or Heroes when playing? Which hero is your favorite?
Pretty much all I play right now is Consul. I am playing with enough new people most of the time that to keep the game going quickly I have to run it. Though hopefully soon I can see what it is like on the other side of the board. So far the top on my “kill on sight” list is the barbarian and the archer. Either one can kill hordes of my little Consul beasties very quickly.

Do you have any rituals while modeling/painting (such as listening to specific music)?
Typically I always have a podcast of some type going, or an audio book. I don’t have a lot of time for reading unfortunately, but with audio books I can actually get through my reading and painting at the same time. I have tried watching TV at the same time but find it too distracting looking up and down all the time.

What are some of your influences or where do you draw your inspiration from? Are there any books, movies, art, or other sources that have had an impact on your work?
I get a lot of inspiration from other miniature painters on the Web. There’s a lot of great talent out there! I have folders of hundreds of pictures of miniatures that I have saved over the years that I will use for inspiration for new ideas and techniques.

Close Up Barbarian Battle!

What is your favorite piece that you’ve done or what are you most proud of? What do you like about it?
I think what I am most proud of would be my 40k Tyranid and Hordes Trollblood armies. They are all pretty much painted to an above average quality and, more importantly, are finished! Well, at least until the new stuff comes out. Being a player and collector I end up with one of everything at least, so keeping up with that can be difficult.

What is your favorite piece that someone else has done? What do you like about it?
This would be another long list! But in general most of the people that typically show up in the Top on CMON. They have so many good ideas and techniques that it is hard not to look at your own stuff and think it is not very good. But it gives me something to aspire to. Now if I could just clean my painting backlog and dedicate 60 hours to a mini I’d be set!

What is your favorite part of the hobby? Do you prefer working with terrain or miniatures?
I think I may be a little atypical. I enjoy all aspects of it because they are all each a little different. Building terrain is fun because I am dealing with larger shapes and structures and can use more “classic” building materials and larger tools. I supply most of the terrain for our groups and have a lot of fun coming up with new stuff for us to play on. Miniatures I enjoy for the aspect of creating finer detail and more delicate objects along with using different materials and techniques than you would generally in terrain.

The Bridge Tile

Are there any painting/modeling techniques that have given you trouble? Do you have any tips for someone else who might be struggling with it?
Free hand gives me the most trouble. I just don’t get enough practice on it. It is one of those things that just takes time to get good at unfortunately. Some basic tips would be: Thin down your paint and use multiple layers. If you have access to an airbrush it will make your life so much easier for applying base coats to tanks and troops that are generally all one color. Also, don’t get frustrated when it does not turn out right the first time. You can always strip it and start over. Just like with any art it takes practice. There are tons of places out there on the net that have advice on how to model and paint.

Are there any areas that you’d like to improve on?
Shading and free hand. I get caught up on mass production stuff so I don’t get as much practice on the kind of stuff where you use 10-15 levels of fine glazing/shading on a model. I would like to have more time for that kind of practice and painting.

Another Tile

What projects are you working on currently? Do you have a dream project?
Hmm, currently I have Knight Lords army, two Blood Angel armies, Imperial Guard army, Tyranid army, and a bunch of one-off pieces. For myself I have a few new Trollblood pieces, a bunch of my Menoth army, and a few competition pieces that I hope to complete for Lock and Load later this year.

My current dream project involves a very large dragon (about 18″ if you stretched him out), a knight, and a damsel chained to a block with a waterfall and river, and maybe some snow. Right now most of it is just sitting in a box waiting to be worked on. I think it has been there for like 10 years so far….

What tips, tricks, or advice can you share? Are there any special brands or materials that you use that other people might not know about?
The biggest ones would be practice, patience, and the internet. Practice will let you improve on whatever you are working on. Patience will give you the time to improve. There are no shortcuts, at least not until they get that whole mind-jack instant-upload thing working. And the internet has a vast resource of knowledge on how to do pretty much everything. This is a good place to start, http://www.coolminiornot.com/articles, though there are lots of places out there with info and advice.

What other hobbies do you have outside of tabletop gaming?
Mountain biking, motorcycling, general outdoors kind of stuff, and long walks on the beach… oh, this is not that kind of interview?

Anything else about yourself that you care to share? Do you have a website that people can check out if they are interested in knowing more about you or seeing more of your work?
My wife and I have gone house rabbits, and we’ll never go back.

For anyone that is interested they can follow me at www.figurepainters.com. I will keep the site updated as I make more SDE boards.

Happy gaming to all!

A Non-SDE Model by Tyson

Related Posts

• Interview: madscuzzy (Creator of Orktimus Prime)
• Interview: Foot_of_adhesive_tape (Andrew Mosen)
• Interview: Nathan Caroland (Wyrd Miniatures/Malifaux Developer)
• Interview: UnderBheit

Super Dungeon Explore!

In addition to the card games that I have reviewed recently I have also been playing several board games. Among these is Super Dungeon Explore from Soda Pop Miniatures, which crosses the board game boundaries and heads straight into miniatures territory with a cute chibi anime style.

Super Dungeon Explore is a hack and slash board game that can be played with anywhere from 2-6 players. One player plays the Consul, the evil overlord who spawns and controls the monsters, while the other plays are the Heroes (a player can control 1 or multiple heroes depending on the game size and number of players). The entire game is played on a set of modular tiles and uses a whole lot of miniatures.

Close Up View of Some Models

The gameplay is fairly simple and easy to pick up for just about anyone. Each round the Consul spawns up to 4 skulls worth of monsters (the monster cards each have a printed skull cost) from each spawning point. Then the Heroes and Consul alternate taking turns, the Consul activating up to 4 skulls of monsters on his turn and the Heroes activating one hero on their turn. Once all models have activated the round ends and starts over again with the Consul spawning more minions. The goal is for the heroes to kill the boss, which is spawned by either destroying all of the spawning points or inflicting enough damage to move the power marker to the final space on the tracker.

Unboxing the Game

When a model is activated they are allowed to move as well as perform a certain number of actions (indicated on that model’s card). There are basic actions such as attacking or looting a treasure chest as well as actions specific to individual characters, with some actions requiring multiple action points. As mentioned above, this game is very much “hack and slash” and as such, most of the time the actions being used are going to be attacks though there are some support skills, such as defense/attack auras.

This brings me to one of my favorite parts of the game, combat! Soda Pop has managed to create a very simple yet effective method of combat that allows characters to power up easy without any complicated formulas. The game comes with 3 types of dice (blue, red, and green). The faces of these dice have either 1-4 stars, potions, hearts, or nothing. The way combat works is that the attacker rolls the dice listed for his attack stat and the defender rolls the dice listed in his defense stat (plus any extra dice from loot, potions, auras, etc). If the attacker rolls more stars than the defender the attack is successful, inflicting a wound (and any status effects in the case of special attacks). The different colored dice range in power from blue (max 2 stars) to red (max 3 stars) to green (max 4 stars). No complicated formulas to remember, no tables to look up, and no complicated math required. In addition to all this, if a Hero successfully completes an attack and also rolls a potion or heart they are obtain a potion or are healed, respectively.

Hero With Loot

As the Heroes inflict damage they also have a chance to earn loot. This is my other favorite part of the game (who doesn’t love loot?). Loot cards are one of 4 colors with the items being represented on the top, bottom, left or right of the card. These loot cards slide partly under the hero card to be “equipped”. A Hero may have 1 loot card of each color attached. This makes it very easy to keep track of each character’s equipment and which slots are being used. Loot typically modifies one of the character’s stats by adding dice, but they may also occasionally add special skills or status effects.

Soda Pop has put a lot of effort into making the game flow as smooth as possible. This game is, quite simply, about hacking through hordes of monsters and the special combat dice and easy loot mechanics make sure that is what players are spending the majority of their time doing. The entire game is executed very well, and it is just a ton of fun to play!

With that being said, I do have a few minor gripes. My game was missing a loot card when it arrived. After a quick search I found that I was not the only one missing parts. Players reported missing various parts including cards and miniatures parts. Luckily this is being remedied fairly quick and Cool Mini or Not (the publisher for Super Dungeon Explore) is quick to send out new parts. I would say that this is only a minor annoyance since you can usually still play until the replacement parts arrive, but it is worth mentioning.

The Consul's Monster Cards

The other issue that I’ve had is that the game seems to be balanced slightly in favor of the Consul from the games I have played. I felt myself having to hold back a little bit so as not to slaughter the heroes early. However, with 8 heroes able to be used in combinations of 2, 3, or 5 at a time and the 5 double sided tiles this could have simply been luck on my part, or even inexperience on the side of the players (especially when it comes to picking a cohesive group of heroes). In the games I played (all were regular size games with 3 Heroes) the Heroes never managed to destroy more than 1 Spawning Point before the boss spawned from damage.

For some people the assembly required will be a turn off. For any miniatures gamers, however, you will probably love it. It took me several hours to put together the dozens of models. If you are so inclined you could paint these models, and I have seen some nice looking paint jobs already. The chibi anime style is also a nice departure from most miniatures games.

Overall, I am loving this game. I am very excited for the future of this game as well. The game was quite obviously built with future expansions in mind. While the Consul doesn’t have much choice right now, the rules are set up to allow the Consul to pick and choose his boss, mini-boss, and spawning points. Soda Pop can easily create plenty of extra content in the form of new monsters/spawning points, new heroes, new tiles, or new loot cards which can add endless replayability due to the very modular style of the game.

Game in Progress

Whether you enjoy board games, miniatures games, or both it is worth taking a look at Super Dungeon Explore. The price may seem high (retail $89.95) but this game is well worth the money with the amount of replayability that is built in.

For more pictures, check out my Super Dungeon Explore gallery over at my user site. Keep an eye out here for more reviews of board games coming soon!

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So how do you play over the internet? Well, we decided to use a video chat (via Skype) to simulate sitting across the table from the other player. We took a few minutes to connect to a video chat and sat our computers across from us and aimed the cameras at the playing field. This way we could each see the other person’s cards as if they were actually sitting across from us.

Just Getting Started

The quality on our cameras was not great so we could not read all of the text on the cards, but at the very least we could see the images and positioning of the cards, as well as any tokens/counters. One thing that we did was read off the title and if necessary the text of any cards coming into play so the other player knew what we were playing and simply ask the other player what a card was or what the effects were if we needed to. If you are not familiar with all of the cards you could keep open something like CardGameDB to look up the full text on cards pretty easily.

Close Up View of the Laptop... with glare.

While this may not have been perfect, we managed to get the experience of physically playing cards while sitting 50 miles from each other. It is not quite the same as getting together with some friends to play games but I would call it a great success! I think this is a great thing for people like myself who do not know many players nearby but like physically playing games instead of using virtual materials.

Later in the Game

There are a few other things to consider if you are going to attempt this. Both players need a laptop or PC with a webcam somewhere with enough space to play cards and sit the computer across from them. There is the problem of players being able to cheat off camera, but this should not be an issue if you are playing with people you know. If you do play with random strangers you could institute rules that you may not move any cards outside of the visibility of the camera or something similar to less the possibility of someone cheating.

I look forward to trying this out again. I would even like to try it out with some new people, so if anyone is interested maybe send me an email and we could try it out.

Warhammer: Invasion

Living Card Games are starting to become a much larger part of my tabletop gaming these days. It started when I discovered The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game. This time up I will be tackling a different LCG, Warhammer: Invasion. While The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game is a cooperative LCG in which players compete against a randomized quest and encounter deck, Warhammer: Invasion is a classic competitive card game pitting 2 players against each other.

I explained Living Card Games in some depth in the Lord of the Rings LCG Review but I will go over the basics here as well. Living Card Games from Fantasy Flight Games are a (relatively) new style of card game that draws heavily from Collectible Card Games (CCGs) in many ways. The main difference between an LCG and a CCG is that when you buy a pack of LCG cards you know exactly what you are getting. You are purchasing a full set of cards. Otherwise LCGs still rely heavily on deck building and other familiar mechanics for any CCG players. The best part about this is it means you will spend far less on an LCG and will be able to have all of the cards without any luck involved.

Game in Progress

As I mentioned, Warhammer: Invasion is a competitive card game pitting 2 players against each other, much like many of the CCGs such as Magic: The Gathering. In the case of Warhammer: Invasion each player has a capital board in addition to his deck of cards. The goal of the game is to burn 2 of your opponent’s capital zones before they can burn yours.

Chaos Capital Board

Turns consist of four stages (3 of which correspond to a zone on the player’s capital board): Kingdom, Quest, Capital, Battlefield phases. The Kingdom is used to increase the number of resources a player obtains each turn. The Quest zone is used to increase the number of cards a player draws each turn. The Battlefield is, as expected, where units are placed to be able to attack the enemy. The Capital phase is the phase in which the player is allowed to play new cards from his hand.

Players are able to play units and support cards into any of their three capital zones. The unit or support cards increase the benefits gained from the zone by the amount of power (hammers) on the card. There is a lot of balancing to be done with the three zones to ensure the player has enough resources to play more cards, can draw enough cards, and can attack enemy zones successfully. In addition players need to make sure to simply have enough units in a zone to be able to defend that zone from attackers.

One of the interesting things about Warhammer: Invasion coming from other card games is that you do not generally exhaust (or “tap”) cards in order to use them for things such as attacking or defending. Instead certain cards allow a player to exhaust or tap a card (called “corrupting”). Players are only able to normally uncorrupt a single card on their turn. This idea was something that actually took me a little bit of time to get used to coming from other card games, but once I was used to it I found it to be a nice change of pace from the typical “tap to perform any actions” play style.

Dark Elf Hero Card

The other mechanic that differs a bit from other games is the combat mechanic. During the Battlefield phase of his turn a player may choose units from his battlefield to attack any of his opponent’s zones. The defending player may choose any number of units in that zone to defend with. Instead of assigning individual attackers to a specific defender, the attack occurs as one large group versus another. Once the attackers and defenders are declared the players assign their damage to the enemy units of their choosing. This method of combat gave me more of a “big battle” feel than the typical one on one combat of most card games, which made a lot of sense for a Warhammer game.

Those of you familiar with the Warhammer universe will be right at home with most of the cards and the races. The core set comes with 4 races (Dwarves, Empire, Chaos, and Orcs) and 2 more races are added through the Assault on Ulthuan expansion (Dark Elves and High Elves). Other races make appearances as neutral cards, including Lizardmen, Skaven, Wood Elves, and Vampire Counts. Each race has an area that it really excels at. For example, Chaos includes a lot of ways to corrupt your opponent’s units, Orcs have hordes of units with lots of damage, High Elves are great for dealing indirect damage to your opponent without attacking. My one major complaint about the game is that sometimes the races feel a little bit too specialized, making it hard to break free from a specific play style.

My Collection in Custom Card Box

At this point Warhammer: Invasion has been out for a few years and has amassed quite a large collection of expansions. At the time of this writing there are 3 deluxe expansions and 20 smaller battle packs. As mention above, though, this does not get nearly as expensive as you might think. I was able to pick up everything but the latest 2 or 3 battle packs for under $200. This gave me a very large collection of cards to use, and unlike my time spent with Magic: The Gathering I do not have 500 land cards that are worthless.

Whether you are new to competitive card games or an experienced CCG player the game is very fun. The rules at their core are very simple to pick up (though you will most certainly end up with many situations in which you need to refer to a FAQ for something that pops up), but there is plenty of room for strategy.

If you would like to find out more we have put up a Living Card Game Resources page for players of both Warhammer: Invasion and The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game. This page contains many valuable downloads and links to reference sheets, deck builders, and various other goodies. You can find links to the official rules and FAQs as well as full video tutorials from Fantasy Flight Games on this page as well.

If you are interested in Warhammer: Invasion you can pick up the core set and expansions from Funagain Games for very cheap:

Warhammer Invasion LCG: Core Box Set
Retail $39.95 Sale $31.99

Warhammer Invasion LCG: Assault on Ulthuan Expansion Box Set
Retail $29.95 Sale $24.99

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Fortunately everything should be fixed and back to normal now. If you find rosters or photos missing, you will have to re-upload or save them. I don’t expect there to be any other lingering issues from this, but if you do have any other issues with the site please contact us. Sorry for the inconvenience!

In more positive news, I have been playing some of the Warhammer: Invasion LCG and will be putting up a review soon. I may also put up a review of the Lord of the Rings LCG expansion sets as well. I have also been working on refining the flagstone technique. We have decided not to use the stamp and instead cut out the pattern and fill the grout with lightweight spackle for a more realistic look. I picked up a new hot cutting tool that works great for hand carving the flagstone as well. I will be putting up a full post on this new technique soon, but for now you can see the work in progress shot.

Work In Progress Flagstone

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Lord of the Rings LCG Core Set

We generally focus on miniatures games here at Tabletop Geeks, but that is not all we play. Just recently I stumbled upon the Living Card Games (LCG) from Fantasy Flight Games. Being a huge Lord of the Rings fan I had to pick up the Lord of the Rings: The Card Game LCG to try it out. So far I am absolutely loving this game.

If you are not familiar with Living Card Games they are similar to a Collectible Card Game (CCG) in many ways with one really large difference, you are not going to go broke collecting cards. This was really the first thing that drew me to this game. Ever since I gave up on collecting Magic: The Gathering cards many years ago I have been wanting something that could bring the same enjoyment without forcing me to spend thousands of dollars to get the good cards. With a Living Card Game you simply buy a set that includes ALL of the cards for that set, all at a very reasonable price.

In fact, the core Lord of the Rings LCG game is priced at only $39.99 (though it can be found even cheaper at Amazon) and comes with everything you need to play, including 226 cards and all of the counters and tokens you need to play. The “Living” part of Living Card Game comes into play in the frequent expansions that are released. These 60 card expansions retail for around $15 and include all of the cards from that set, as opposed to a booster pack from a CCG which costs about as much and only gives you a few random cards from a set. These expansions are completely optional of course, but can certainly extend the life of the game.

As for the game itself, I have to say that I have been very impressed. The game is very easy to learn, but includes quite a bit of depth already with just the core set and no expansions. The game includes 3 unique quests to start with, each with a good bit of re-playability due to the random encounter decks. If you have ever played a CCG then you will be right at home with most of the concepts. If you have never played a CCG, do not be intimidated as this is very easy to pick up and the website includes tutorial videos that do quite a good job of explaining the basics of the game.

A game in progress

The other major part of the game that intrigued me from the start was that the fact that The Lord of the Rings LCG is a cooperative game instead of a competitive game. The players work together against a quest and encounter deck to complete a scenario instead of playing against each other. This also means that it is entirely possible (and actually quite fun) to play solo!

Each player has his own deck (either constructed by the player or a “starter” deck listed in the rulebook) and 3 heroes. The gameplay occurs in 7 rather simple phases that make up a round which players play simultaneously. There are Starting/Ending phases that include the cleanup and upkeep between rounds and then there are 5 major phases of play, including Questing, Traveling, and Combat.

Aragorn Hero Card

The players start out by playing cards from their hand, such as allies (which work alongside your heroes for questing and combat), attachments, or events. The players are then tasked with sending heroes and allies questing against the encounter cards in the staging area in order to attempt to progress through the current objective. After questing players may then travel to a location (which consists mainly of resolving a travel effect found on the card) before moving on to combat. Players can choose to engage an enemy in the staging area, or if a player’s threat is high enough an enemy may engage them. Combat consists of first defending and then attacking (comparing attack and defense values, and any modifiers and then assigning damage). Unlike most card games you do not defend and attack back with the same character, but rather choose characters specifically to defend and then choose characters with which to attack.

Players must balance their questing with combat (and within combat must balance defense and offense) in order to steadily progress through the current quest until completing all phases. Players are also on a sort of time limit due to the threat counter that is steadily increasing. A player is eliminated if his threat counter reaches 50 OR if all 3 of his heroes are defeated. If one player manages to complete the final stage of the quest then all players win the game. There is a scoring system in place that will give you an idea of how well you did on the quest as well. This all may seem a bit daunting at first, but in the games I played all players picked up the flow within only a round or two.

Another nice feature is that the game scales with the number of players. During the questing phase players will flip 1 card for each player in the game, so more players means more encounters to deal with. After having played games with 1, 2, and 3 players this seems to work fairly well and keeps the game from being too difficult with fewer players or too easy with several players.

Gandalf Ally Card

Once players are familiar with the basics of the game they can move onto deck building. Player cards consist of cards from 4 spheres of influence (Leadership, Spirit, Lore, and Tactics) and also neutral cards with no sphere. Each hero is tied to a sphere and produces resources of that type that can be used to play cards from that sphere (neutral cards can use any resource type). Players may then mix and match cards and heroes from various spheres to build their own custom decks and come up with their own strategies. You can use the scoring system to determine how well your custom deck fares, and continue to refine while trying to lower your scores.

You can even track your scores on the website. Fantasy Flight games has put up a Quest Log on their website that allows you to input data from your games and track them. You can enter the heroes you played, the adventure, your score, number of players, and add some notes as well. You can use this to share your scores with friends or to just keep track of your various scores.

One last thing that I feel is worth mentioning is the quality of the pieces. The tokens and threat counters are not cheaply made. It is clear that some though was put into making pieces that will last. Each piece is a thick quality cardboard with a sealing coat that will make them last for quite a while. I would not even normally mention this but I was very impressed with the quality of everything when I first opened the box.

Overall I can not say enough good things about The Lord of the Rings Living Card Game. I highly recommend that anyone check this game out. It is easy to pick up and learn and it has all the fun, strategy, and deck building of a CCG without all the expense. The expansions will give you plenty more deck building options and new quests to keep the game fresh and exciting at very reasonable prices as well. On top of it all you can play the game solo or with several friends. I’ve been sharing this game with friends and they all love it (see one of my friend’s thoughts after I showed him the game over at Living With a Nerd).

Quality Tokens and Counters

If you are a more competitive person keep an eye out as I just picked up the Warhammer: Invasion Living Card Game and will be reviewing that soon as well. Warhammer: Invasion has the same basic LCG principles as The Lord of the Rings but is a competitive game in which players attempt to destroy the other player’s keep first.

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