We Have A Hulk - Early Thoughts on the Hulk Deck for Marvel Champions

I wanted this post to be my initial look at the new Thor Hero deck for Marvel Champions that released last week. However, I haven’t had the chance to get it to the table just yet. Luckily for me, Fantasy Flight Games had a stream where they teased the upcoming Hulk Hero pack that should be coming out in the June time frame. Just like I did for Black Widow and Doctor Strange, let’s take a look at the cards that were teased from the FFG stream and announcement post.

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Arkham Horror LCG Battle Report: The Unspeakable Oath (Path to Carcosa Part 4)

Disclaimer: If you haven't heard about Arkham Horror: The Card Game, you might have trouble with this post. Also, potential spoilers ahead.

Last time we talked about Path to Carcosa, we had gone inside a library to investigate a rumor that weird play “The Yellow King” had toured through Arkham years beforehand. In our search, we found that one man, Daniel Chesterfield, survived that encounter and was now being held at Arkham Asylum. So in this scenario, we venture to the asylum to find the Joker…..I mean Daniel Chesterfield. This was the first scenario in Path to Carcosa that I haven’t previously played before, so I was kind of excited to play this scenario and experience some new content.

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Continues To Put The Drag In Dragon - Tyranny of Dragons Special Edition Review

Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) 5th Edition hit a big milestone last year, as it was the game’s fifth anniversary. Which means for us players, we should probably expect to hear rumors of the next edition coming along shortly. However, for Wizards of the Coast, they took the opportunity to celebrate the big milestone with some hefty gifts...if you were willing to spend the money. The most elegant of these was the Sapphire anniversary dice set, which was a magnificent set of dice for the low price of just $299.99…Wow.

Equally as elegant, but not as back breaking, was the Special Edition reprint of “Tyranny of Dragons”, the adventure series that launched with D&D 5th Edition with the books “Hoard of the Dragon Queen” and “Rise of Tiamat”. It’s a great idea: celebrate all the good years that D&D has had by going back to where 5th edition started. Plus, it took these two adventure books and combined them into a single looking hardcover with a new beautiful cover.

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Marvel Champions LCG Battle Report: The Wrecking Crew

February was a very busy month for me, so I didn’t get a whole lot of board gaming in. Especially when it comes to the Marvel Champions card game from Fantasy Flight Games (FFG). I did get a chance to go back to North Carolina and play the game with my dad, but we ended up playing Rhino again since we convinced my wife to play (that’s a story for another time). I was fortunate enough to get a copy of The Wrecking Crew scenario expansion, it wasn’t until earlier this week that I was able to get it to the table and try it out.

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The Purge: For 12 Hours All Board Game Crime Is Legal - Boards & Swords #145

Rut roh! All the shelves have gotten full! Now what do you do? We talk about whether or not we purge board games from our collection and what we do with them if we do.

News

MTG Arena getting smaller in 2020
https://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2020/02/mtg-arena-will-come-to-mobile-in-2020/

FFG's RPGs crit fail their saving throw
http://www.d20radio.com/main/fantasy-flight-games-long-term-plan-will-discontinue-rpg-development/

Asmodee updates their customer service by deleting it
https://www.asmodeena.com/en/customer-service-faq/

Hold the liiiiiiineeeee, Kickstarter isn't always on tiiiiime....
https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/18/kickstarter-workers-vote-to-unionize/

Lets Get Villainous....Villainous....
https://io9.gizmodo.com/marvels-baddies-are-getting-their-own-disney-villainous-1841702456

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Descent into Avernus Pt. 1: "Meet The Beetles" - The Dirtbags of Holding #153

We love getting feedback, and so this next campaign was actually a suggestion from one of our listeners, Beetle! He suggested we take the new D&D 5th edition adventure “Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus”, and play it as a party of only halflings! Now he gets to see what a poor decision he has made! In this episode, we meet most of the party as they answer a summons to see a local Captain in Baldur’s Gate.

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Descent into Midnight: Gaming Better, Down Where It's Wetter (Interview with Richard Kreutz-Landry and Rich Howard)

This week, I had the opportunity to sit down with 2 creators of another Kickstarter in the Roleplaying Game (RPG) genre, Richard Kreutz-Landry and Rich Howard of Descent into Midnight (DiM). Based on the popular Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) engine, this Kickstarter still has a couple of weeks to go and is already well above its $25,000 goal.

In DiM, you play as characters in an underwater society, one that has not interacted with any type of human society. It is your responsibility to create this community and defend it from some type of threat. The exact nature of that threat can vary between games, as the game is centered around how the characters respond to these varying threats. I’ve kept an eye on the development of DiM for a while now, ever since I played in a couple of games with Richard at Acadecon a few years ago.

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Arkham Horror LCG Battle Report: Echoes of the Past (Path to Carcosa Part 3)

Disclaimer: If you haven't heard about Arkham Horror: The Card Game, you might have trouble with this post. Also, potential spoilers ahead.

Last time, I continued our recap of playing through the Path to Carcosa campaign. Now that we’ve witnessed a crazy play and made a party get “lit” (har har), it was time to get down to business. The next scenario, Echoes of the Past, has us go to the nearby museum to investigate a rumor that this is not the first time that “The King in Yellow” has come to Arkham.

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Decuma: Card Gaming Before Role Playing (Interview with Kimi Hughes)

One thing I’d like to start doing on this blog is interviewing various people in the tabletop gaming communities (board games, RPGs, etc.). I used to do this back when I did the Boards & Swords podcast solo, and I miss talking with new people and finding out about cool new projects in the works. At the time that I realized this, I also came across a brand new Kickstarter called “Decuma” from first time Kickstarter company Golden Lasso Games.

Golden Lasso Games is the brainchild of Kimi Hughes, one of the hosts of the Happy Jacks RPG podcast. I’ve talked about Happy Jacks before in my video last year highlighting women in RPGs. I also follow a few cosplayers, and Kimi is very active in that community as well (her company name stems off the fact that she is a big fan of Wonder Woman).

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Silver, Menace Among Us, Meeple Party - Boards & Swords #144

We've got the news, the reviews (Silver from Bezier Games, Menace Among Us from Smirk & Dagger, and more!), and the.....cool personalities?

News

Secret Hilter being played in State Senate
https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/gop-senator-wants-legislative-pages-to-stop-playing-secret-hitler/article_d5b4ed05-c503-5e86-8534-8de650fd3e1d.html

New J. Alex Kevern game I'm required to talk about
http://www.tabletopgamingnews.com/Renegade-Game-Studios-Taking-Pre-Orders-For-Succulent-Board

Game Games announced I really don't care about https://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/100003/spielwarenmesse-2020-ravensburger-teases-castles-t

Expansion for Journey into Middle Earth https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2020/1/28/shadowed-paths/

New Keyforge cards! https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2020/1/30/mass-mutation/

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Let’s Get Mystical - Early Thoughts on the Doctor Strange Deck for Marvel Champions

Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) has been announcing a lot of new stuff for their Marvel Champions Living Card Game (LCG). Some might argue that they should focus on getting more stock of the products that have been already released, but those kinds of issues usually take weeks to fix. In the meantime, last week we found out about the newest hero that will be coming to the game, Doctor Strange. Currently, the schedule has this hero deck becoming available in May (March = Thor, April = Black Widow, May = Doctor Strange).

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Containing the Insanity! Creating a Custom LCG Case

Unless this is your first visit to this website, you are probably familiar with the fact that I am a big fan of the board games made by Fantasy Flight Games, specifically their cooperative Living Card Games (LCGs): Arkham Horror the Card Game and Marvel Champions the Card Game. Both of these games come in smaller “core” boxes, but with the vast waves of expansions that FFG is known for putting out, these types of games quickly outgrow these boxes.

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Arkham Horror LCG Battle Report: The Last King (Path to Carcosa Part 2)

Disclaimer: If you haven't heard about Arhkam Horror: The Card Game, you might have trouble with this post. Also, potential spoilers ahead. 

Last time, I began recapping our group playing through the “Path to Carcosa” campaign, which ended with me realizing that I had mixed up the Act & Agenda decks. In the next scenario, The Last King, our characters stumble into the weirdest dinner part ever in order to find out more about the play “The King in Yellow”.

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You Got Your Iron Man in My D&D! (Eberron: Rising from the Last War Review)

Having played Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) 3.5 edition in college, when I got an actual job in 2008 and was able to afford things I started playing RPGs again. Unfortunately, I ended up playing a lot of D&D 4th edition, but at the time I was loving it. After getting the core books, I wanted to get some of the vast sourcebooks that were available. There were a ton of different settings, but the one that grabbed me was Eberron. Written by Keith Baker, it was a custom setting that was submitted to Wizards in a D&D3.5 contest that became a full setting supported in 4th edition as well.

If the idea of flying ships, magical trains powered by elementals, and huge steampunk colossi in your D&D game sounds awesome to you as it did to me, then you are in luck. Wizards of the Coast has teamed up with Keith Baker to make Eberron: Rising From The Last War, an official D&D 5th edition sourcebook that updates the lore of the world and brings its mechanical and mystical creatures into the most recent version of the game.

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DC Adventures Pt. 2: "Azrath Matador Zit Cream" - The Dirtbags of Holding #151

We continue our DC Adventures RPG from Green Ronin. Our players are “famous” heroes from the DC Comics universe who have been gathered at Arkham Asylum to investigate some weird stuff going on. Last time, there was a meteor crash that had the team wake up to find that the asylum had been….altered. Wear headphones if you can! We experimented with using the Syrinscape software to add some thematic background noise to help with the ambiance. Let me know if it came through alright!

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You Are Not Prepared! - Early Thoughts on the Black Widow Deck for Marvel Champions

I love the new Marvel Champions Living Card Game (LCG) from Fantasy Flight Games. You might have gathered that from the post I did talking about teaching the game to my dad. Well, FFG recently showed off some of the cards in the upcoming Black Widow hero deck, currently scheduled to release in April. The more I play this game, the more I want to dig in deep into all aspects of this game, so let’s take a look at the released images. Note that I have not yet read the FFG article where the images debuted as I wanted to capture my initial thoughts of seeing the cards.

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