...and Dragon Liches, and slavers of unimaginable alien grotesqueness, and vile zombie rot diseases...
Our Year With The Dragon (D&D 4e) continues. Now that we are Paragon (12th level) characters, our challenges have risen to meet our new powers and abilities. Due to zombie rot infecting the party and threatening the only city we have freed from it's zigarut dragon temple, we were forced to once again descend into the depths and find Lady Vizandra's tomb. In our hopes of finding a cure, even leads that brought us into a trap were welcome. Yes, we have fought Neogi and their slaves. Nasty umber hulks. Even a dragon lich. Some tough encounters.
But the biggest insult of all is that the party had to once again plunge the skyless depths of the vile underdark. After lifetimes of striving to escape tunnels, after finally walking the beach of the surface on a sunny day we had no choice but to once again descend to the realm of perilous lava tubes, acid pools and worst of all the home of the Dragon Empire. Worse than that is the knowledge that the Dragons rule the cities of the surface as well, naming each of their carefully divided communities of slaves only by the race that dwells there. Because it was the first city we found, we freed "Lizardtown." We don't even know the name of the world we are saving because the draconic name is unworthy of being revealed to non-dragons, but now to save it from undeath we delve the tunnels below it...
Among the heroes are:
Wikipedia Jones (Mat's human bard 12)
Aurora (Ava's shifter cleric)
Pit Fighter Kamal (Jimmy's 1/2 orc barbarian 12)
Shadow Sticky Fingers (Alma took over Shawn's halfling rogue last time)
Rolen (Carson's half-elf Shaman)
Azer (Phil's human wizard)
Robrik Willikers III (Rod's drow rogue)
Hadji & his dog (Jon's Elf ranger)
Jorel of the Stars (Rob's warforged paladin/sorcerer)
Terra (Chrissy's dwarf rogue)
Shamash Kriv & Fy'Ev (Dave's dragonborn warlord Battle Captain & his dragonborn fighter henchman)
Ella Enchanted (B's Human Fighter, a mounted Polearm Master)
I don't have all your paragon paths here, but I will add them later.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Star Wars - 7/25/09 session
How could it be possible?
A small band of Hutt operatives on one light cargo ship arrive on a highly populated, previously ignored but now promising world.
When they depart, they are responsible for the defeat of 4 Imperial Star Destroyers and a garrison, and have a legally binding Hutt trade contract signed by the planet administrator as well as an Imperial Moff.
All in a few days' work.
Ho ho ho, says Dabbo the Hutt.
A small band of Hutt operatives on one light cargo ship arrive on a highly populated, previously ignored but now promising world.
When they depart, they are responsible for the defeat of 4 Imperial Star Destroyers and a garrison, and have a legally binding Hutt trade contract signed by the planet administrator as well as an Imperial Moff.
All in a few days' work.
Ho ho ho, says Dabbo the Hutt.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
"Your cities are forfeit...er..."
...or something.
Our Year With The Dragon: Session 7/12/09 D&D 4e lvl 8
(This campaign is based on "Planet of the Apes" only underground and with reptiles)
We drank Coca-Cola from the 2 liter bottle. We ate Doritos out of the red bag. Our characters killed an army of lizardmen and an adult green dragon, some of us while flying on giant mosquitos. I know, you've heard this before... but that doesn't make it any less fun!
Shamash (dragonborn warlord 8) and his henchmen Fy'Ev (dragonborn fighter 5) had a bad feeling about this battle, because they have seen it before, and they are concerned about their warmblooded friends. When the dragons bring their army of lizardmen, the townspeople surrender without a fight and are enslaved within hours. The second rank of reinforcements stopped bothering with weapons centuries ago because the need for leg chains, mancatchers, whips and nets always comes shortly after the appearance of an actual dragon with its army.
But as it turned out, the dragons were wrong this time. In their arrogance (and also from being cheap) they brought a smaller show of force than usual. Also, in a major miscalculation they split their forces and attacked the two cities simultaneously, hoping to crush the humans and their allies before they could unite. Even so, under normal circumstances victory would have been easy for them.
What the dragons (Verpa the Green and her brother Sizzum) did not anticipate was that a rising band of heroes (including lowly elves, a drow, a couple dragonborn traitors and even a halfling) could have any chance to foil their directive from High Mage-Priest Quigtagzigak (known by other names as well...) to crush the free cities.
New Anthrotaria was attacked slightly ahead of Mysan City. In a stellar show of power, dragon magic turned the city wall into a cottage cheese of molten lava, then froze it solid. The lizardman army followed, well armed, armored and equipped with weapons and armor built by but a small fraction of the human slaves. Verpa the Green urged them on, leading from the rear. Once she could work her way into sight of everyone in the city she would roar, breathe her poison if neccessary, and accept surrender from the twin of the mayor, the weaker willed of the brothers, she was sure. She was already counting her treasure, and wondering what worthless trinkets the artisans here might create for her to sneer at.
Somehow though, a handful of the New Anthrotarians didn't seem to understand the order of things, of how events must be. Impossibly, and before her army was completely mustered and in position, her forces were attacked.
Eachann (Phil's elf invoker 8) set up his symbol, which would aid the party throughout the battle, and began attacking the enemy with magic - almost before it arrived, putting several down. Shadow (Shawn's halfling rogue/Artful Dodger/Alchemist 8) attacked one of the forward lizardmen scouts, downing his foe as well. Rholian Carack (Carson's elf shaman) attacked lizardmen using a powerful spirit he brought forth, with much success - and also supported the other members of the ramshackle band. Robrick Willakers III (Rod's drow rogue) brought down lots of minions with one sudden burst of daggers, seemingly emanating from a cloud of darkness. Karl (Marshall's human wizard) let loose some kind of fireball, followed by a larger fireball, again all at once. Shamash and Fy'Ev double-teamed an enemy warlord, forcing him onto the defensive.
Stunned to lose so many forces so quickly, Verpa the Green was able only to save herself, and possibly save face by assuring her retreating forces that they were only a scouting party and now they knew where the enemy was and what they were capable of. Her quick thinking saved her life. Her brother Sizzum was slain in the other city - by that very same band of upstarts mere hours later.
Our Year With The Dragon: Session 7/12/09 D&D 4e lvl 8
(This campaign is based on "Planet of the Apes" only underground and with reptiles)
We drank Coca-Cola from the 2 liter bottle. We ate Doritos out of the red bag. Our characters killed an army of lizardmen and an adult green dragon, some of us while flying on giant mosquitos. I know, you've heard this before... but that doesn't make it any less fun!
Shamash (dragonborn warlord 8) and his henchmen Fy'Ev (dragonborn fighter 5) had a bad feeling about this battle, because they have seen it before, and they are concerned about their warmblooded friends. When the dragons bring their army of lizardmen, the townspeople surrender without a fight and are enslaved within hours. The second rank of reinforcements stopped bothering with weapons centuries ago because the need for leg chains, mancatchers, whips and nets always comes shortly after the appearance of an actual dragon with its army.
But as it turned out, the dragons were wrong this time. In their arrogance (and also from being cheap) they brought a smaller show of force than usual. Also, in a major miscalculation they split their forces and attacked the two cities simultaneously, hoping to crush the humans and their allies before they could unite. Even so, under normal circumstances victory would have been easy for them.
What the dragons (Verpa the Green and her brother Sizzum) did not anticipate was that a rising band of heroes (including lowly elves, a drow, a couple dragonborn traitors and even a halfling) could have any chance to foil their directive from High Mage-Priest Quigtagzigak (known by other names as well...) to crush the free cities.
New Anthrotaria was attacked slightly ahead of Mysan City. In a stellar show of power, dragon magic turned the city wall into a cottage cheese of molten lava, then froze it solid. The lizardman army followed, well armed, armored and equipped with weapons and armor built by but a small fraction of the human slaves. Verpa the Green urged them on, leading from the rear. Once she could work her way into sight of everyone in the city she would roar, breathe her poison if neccessary, and accept surrender from the twin of the mayor, the weaker willed of the brothers, she was sure. She was already counting her treasure, and wondering what worthless trinkets the artisans here might create for her to sneer at.
Somehow though, a handful of the New Anthrotarians didn't seem to understand the order of things, of how events must be. Impossibly, and before her army was completely mustered and in position, her forces were attacked.
Eachann (Phil's elf invoker 8) set up his symbol, which would aid the party throughout the battle, and began attacking the enemy with magic - almost before it arrived, putting several down. Shadow (Shawn's halfling rogue/Artful Dodger/Alchemist 8) attacked one of the forward lizardmen scouts, downing his foe as well. Rholian Carack (Carson's elf shaman) attacked lizardmen using a powerful spirit he brought forth, with much success - and also supported the other members of the ramshackle band. Robrick Willakers III (Rod's drow rogue) brought down lots of minions with one sudden burst of daggers, seemingly emanating from a cloud of darkness. Karl (Marshall's human wizard) let loose some kind of fireball, followed by a larger fireball, again all at once. Shamash and Fy'Ev double-teamed an enemy warlord, forcing him onto the defensive.
Stunned to lose so many forces so quickly, Verpa the Green was able only to save herself, and possibly save face by assuring her retreating forces that they were only a scouting party and now they knew where the enemy was and what they were capable of. Her quick thinking saved her life. Her brother Sizzum was slain in the other city - by that very same band of upstarts mere hours later.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Our Year With The Dragon
A BIT OF BACKGROUND FIRST
If you have ever seen "Planet of the Apes," you have the starting point for the setting and basic premise of my tacky new shared world 4th Edition D&D campaign, except replace "Apes" with "Reptiles," and replace "Planet" with "Endless Dungeon." It's a shameless hack 'n slash, but that's kind of the point. It's really fun, and kind of liberating. At the start, kobolds and lizardmen have enslaved all of the mammal races to mine, build weapons and ships, and to enlarge their already enormous underground empire. The humans, elves, halflings etc. are completely deprived of any freedom or education and have never seen the light of day and in fact this campaign has yet to set foot on the surface. Is it a big cliche? Yes it is.
As the party has ventured deeper, both the slaves and their masters have become bigger and more powerful. Further down the group have encountered cold blooded shahaugin, evil dragonborn, and giant lizardmen--and the heroes have freed warm blooded ogres, giants etc. from slavery. Greater amounts of magic continue to appear in the dungeons themselves (yes, even in the walls and floors), as a more impressive level of affluence reigns with the powerful who reside in the deep levels -- and there is no end in sight to this dungeon. In fact, it may BE the entire world for all the party knows.
So it was inevitable that in this campaign the party would encounter dragons, and sooner than would be usual. Now don't get me wrong here. In the past, (and I have been DMing since 1980) I have been very sparing with my use of dragons because I always felt they were over-used in other campaigns. In fact I have deliberately gone in other directions (golems, conspiracies of elves, etc.) whenever possible, and most adventuring groups in my campaigns haven't even seen a dragon until at least 15th level, or more likely higher. Why? Because when I run a dragon, I want to run a DRAGON! Dragons should be city-destroying forces of supernature that strike fear and respect from those poor souls unfortunate enough to encounter them. Dragons should regularly end the lives of entire parties of adventuring heroes, or even cause the end of a campaign with "Oh well, too bad, the dragon got you. Okay, I already have plans for my next campaign. What are you thinking about for your new characters?"
Not that mine is the only campaign going on within our group. Rod's new 4th Edition D&D campaign (actually I think he has more than one) so far seems to center around an undead villian, Skull Lord Kromdor, a guy with three skulls who seems to continually manipulate the party, march armies of undead on us and then laugh at us with his three skeletal jawbones. It's awesome. Robby's new 4th Edition campaign is more military in scope, and our characters in it are very young (my dragonborn cleric is 15, but really about 315 because he and his city were turned to stone 300 years ago). Some part of me gets a sense of Mordheim/Warhammer from the style of Robby's setting, which is something different that I really like, touches like a city pointer sign made out of a skeleton. My characters (yeah, I've actually been playing more instead of running lately) in all three of the above campaigns have so far been Dragonborn, which I initially thought I was going to hate but I actually really enjoy playing because it's something new, fresh and well-written.
Anyway, I was saying dragons can really be a terrible cliche. But they also happen to make really cool encounters, even for low level characters in 4th Edition D&D, as Rod proved last night, when he ran the session in my endless dungeon crawl setting that I described above. (Phil had his turn running in this shared world a couple weeks ago and did a terrific job, by the way). Phil picked up where I left off, and Rod picked up where Phil left off. Here's a recap that's bound to be off a bit...
THE SESSION
So it was me, Shawn R., Carson, Phil, and Rod (Shane came later). Shawn, who is new to our group, played an awesome halfling rogue named Shadow. Carson played an elf Shaman "To Darwin," Rolen. Phil, who played well last time but had a character die anyway from bad luck, had another new character, Krug Nument, a really tough half orc barbarian (from the PH2). The party's other rogue, Robrik Willikers, is a super nasty drow Rod built and Carson played, then Shane took over when he arrived. I played my same old Dragonborn Warlord, Shamash Kriv, who specializes in inspiring his allies to be even more powerful than they already are, and killing enemies up close and personal. Currently (but not for long) the party are all at 5th level.
At the end of Phil's session, we had seen an old green dragon (if I recall, we had thought it was a statue earlier...) with glowing red eyes, right at the end of a big encounter with dragonborn and drakes, if I remember. Anyway, Rod started the new session it from that point. The dragon turned out to also be a vampire. Her name was Lady Viza(something). She had a young green dragon son (who was not undead). She dominated my character to throw my Shield Guardian amulet into the Aboleth tank. Then, she taunted the party and left. Knowing we were likely to be heading for an ambush, we followed her anyway once Shamash could clear his head, because we heard people screaming in that direction. Besides, none of us felt much like going after the amulet anyway.
We came to a hallway that opened up into a large rectangular chamber with an area coming off one side filled with coffins and a strange purple glow. A couple of us noticed that the wall on the left looked a bit unsteady. Two pools of boiling blood occupied positions in the middle of the hallway, their purpose unknown. Undead, possibly zombies or worse, seemed to be everywhere here. Leading from the rear was a humanoid vampire with scaly skin. Glowing red eyes stared at us from every direction.
Krug slammed his weapon into the wall on the left, collapsing an area onto some of the undead but also himself. Robrick snuck around, and ended up getting some good dagger attacks in on the enemy. Shadow also snuck around, and seemed to have excellent timing and luck, continually downing opponents in the most amazing ways. Rolen at one point ended up admiring Shadow from a vantage point upside down, within a gelatinus cube, saying "who is that amazing little man?" or some such thing. Shamash wound up fighting a swarm of rat-sized dinosaur looking things who turned out to be really tough. The vampire commanded a minion to activate the dragon statue at the end of the hallway/chamber, which then spewed slippery poison all over most of the party. He then retreated to his zone of power, which glowed purple, in the center of the room with coffins. Krug defeated him but he came back. Shadow took him out the second time and then Krug wrecked the coffin and whatever else was bringing the vampire back.
After a brief reprieve, the party continued past the statue. Here we encountered the vampire dragon, Lady V. The large cavern almost gave the feel of being outside. It featured swampy areas that occasionally flared up in gaseous explosions as well as briar brush, spore molds, and a giant red crystal atop a building in the distance, among other features. The main thing were the curious blue crystals which one could reach through, and poke a hand (or a weapon) out of another blue crystal of your choice. They weren't big enough to teleport you, but you could use them to attack anywhere next to any of the other crystals - and there were a lot of them. After Lady V. charged the party and breathed her acid on us (ouch), Shamash was able to give himself combat advantage by attacking her rear flank with his Glaive, as it reached nearly 10' poking into one crystal and out another to strike. Zombies appeared in the swamp, menacing, and Rolen dispatched some of them with his magical bear of winter's wrath or whatever it was, that kept re-appearing. A yellow crystal teleported party members back and forth across the cavern. Robrik managed to get to the red crystal, which turned out to be an effective weapon once mastered, focusing a red beam of agony on Lady V., who had herself inflicted her poisonous breath, mind-warping glares, and flesh tearing claw and vampiric bites upon the party. Yet somehow, supporting each other, attacking, moving, retreating, attacking again... the group were ultmately able to somehow, eventually defeat Lady V. in an epic battle of wills, wits and weapons...
The building contained the shield guardian, as well as its amulet which was in the process of being altered in some way. Our group also found treasure there.
Good session Rod, you were really on. Thank you for coming everybody, see you in a couple of weeks.
-Dave
If you have ever seen "Planet of the Apes," you have the starting point for the setting and basic premise of my tacky new shared world 4th Edition D&D campaign, except replace "Apes" with "Reptiles," and replace "Planet" with "Endless Dungeon." It's a shameless hack 'n slash, but that's kind of the point. It's really fun, and kind of liberating. At the start, kobolds and lizardmen have enslaved all of the mammal races to mine, build weapons and ships, and to enlarge their already enormous underground empire. The humans, elves, halflings etc. are completely deprived of any freedom or education and have never seen the light of day and in fact this campaign has yet to set foot on the surface. Is it a big cliche? Yes it is.
As the party has ventured deeper, both the slaves and their masters have become bigger and more powerful. Further down the group have encountered cold blooded shahaugin, evil dragonborn, and giant lizardmen--and the heroes have freed warm blooded ogres, giants etc. from slavery. Greater amounts of magic continue to appear in the dungeons themselves (yes, even in the walls and floors), as a more impressive level of affluence reigns with the powerful who reside in the deep levels -- and there is no end in sight to this dungeon. In fact, it may BE the entire world for all the party knows.
So it was inevitable that in this campaign the party would encounter dragons, and sooner than would be usual. Now don't get me wrong here. In the past, (and I have been DMing since 1980) I have been very sparing with my use of dragons because I always felt they were over-used in other campaigns. In fact I have deliberately gone in other directions (golems, conspiracies of elves, etc.) whenever possible, and most adventuring groups in my campaigns haven't even seen a dragon until at least 15th level, or more likely higher. Why? Because when I run a dragon, I want to run a DRAGON! Dragons should be city-destroying forces of supernature that strike fear and respect from those poor souls unfortunate enough to encounter them. Dragons should regularly end the lives of entire parties of adventuring heroes, or even cause the end of a campaign with "Oh well, too bad, the dragon got you. Okay, I already have plans for my next campaign. What are you thinking about for your new characters?"
Not that mine is the only campaign going on within our group. Rod's new 4th Edition D&D campaign (actually I think he has more than one) so far seems to center around an undead villian, Skull Lord Kromdor, a guy with three skulls who seems to continually manipulate the party, march armies of undead on us and then laugh at us with his three skeletal jawbones. It's awesome. Robby's new 4th Edition campaign is more military in scope, and our characters in it are very young (my dragonborn cleric is 15, but really about 315 because he and his city were turned to stone 300 years ago). Some part of me gets a sense of Mordheim/Warhammer from the style of Robby's setting, which is something different that I really like, touches like a city pointer sign made out of a skeleton. My characters (yeah, I've actually been playing more instead of running lately) in all three of the above campaigns have so far been Dragonborn, which I initially thought I was going to hate but I actually really enjoy playing because it's something new, fresh and well-written.
Anyway, I was saying dragons can really be a terrible cliche. But they also happen to make really cool encounters, even for low level characters in 4th Edition D&D, as Rod proved last night, when he ran the session in my endless dungeon crawl setting that I described above. (Phil had his turn running in this shared world a couple weeks ago and did a terrific job, by the way). Phil picked up where I left off, and Rod picked up where Phil left off. Here's a recap that's bound to be off a bit...
THE SESSION
So it was me, Shawn R., Carson, Phil, and Rod (Shane came later). Shawn, who is new to our group, played an awesome halfling rogue named Shadow. Carson played an elf Shaman "To Darwin," Rolen. Phil, who played well last time but had a character die anyway from bad luck, had another new character, Krug Nument, a really tough half orc barbarian (from the PH2). The party's other rogue, Robrik Willikers, is a super nasty drow Rod built and Carson played, then Shane took over when he arrived. I played my same old Dragonborn Warlord, Shamash Kriv, who specializes in inspiring his allies to be even more powerful than they already are, and killing enemies up close and personal. Currently (but not for long) the party are all at 5th level.
At the end of Phil's session, we had seen an old green dragon (if I recall, we had thought it was a statue earlier...) with glowing red eyes, right at the end of a big encounter with dragonborn and drakes, if I remember. Anyway, Rod started the new session it from that point. The dragon turned out to also be a vampire. Her name was Lady Viza(something). She had a young green dragon son (who was not undead). She dominated my character to throw my Shield Guardian amulet into the Aboleth tank. Then, she taunted the party and left. Knowing we were likely to be heading for an ambush, we followed her anyway once Shamash could clear his head, because we heard people screaming in that direction. Besides, none of us felt much like going after the amulet anyway.
We came to a hallway that opened up into a large rectangular chamber with an area coming off one side filled with coffins and a strange purple glow. A couple of us noticed that the wall on the left looked a bit unsteady. Two pools of boiling blood occupied positions in the middle of the hallway, their purpose unknown. Undead, possibly zombies or worse, seemed to be everywhere here. Leading from the rear was a humanoid vampire with scaly skin. Glowing red eyes stared at us from every direction.
Krug slammed his weapon into the wall on the left, collapsing an area onto some of the undead but also himself. Robrick snuck around, and ended up getting some good dagger attacks in on the enemy. Shadow also snuck around, and seemed to have excellent timing and luck, continually downing opponents in the most amazing ways. Rolen at one point ended up admiring Shadow from a vantage point upside down, within a gelatinus cube, saying "who is that amazing little man?" or some such thing. Shamash wound up fighting a swarm of rat-sized dinosaur looking things who turned out to be really tough. The vampire commanded a minion to activate the dragon statue at the end of the hallway/chamber, which then spewed slippery poison all over most of the party. He then retreated to his zone of power, which glowed purple, in the center of the room with coffins. Krug defeated him but he came back. Shadow took him out the second time and then Krug wrecked the coffin and whatever else was bringing the vampire back.
After a brief reprieve, the party continued past the statue. Here we encountered the vampire dragon, Lady V. The large cavern almost gave the feel of being outside. It featured swampy areas that occasionally flared up in gaseous explosions as well as briar brush, spore molds, and a giant red crystal atop a building in the distance, among other features. The main thing were the curious blue crystals which one could reach through, and poke a hand (or a weapon) out of another blue crystal of your choice. They weren't big enough to teleport you, but you could use them to attack anywhere next to any of the other crystals - and there were a lot of them. After Lady V. charged the party and breathed her acid on us (ouch), Shamash was able to give himself combat advantage by attacking her rear flank with his Glaive, as it reached nearly 10' poking into one crystal and out another to strike. Zombies appeared in the swamp, menacing, and Rolen dispatched some of them with his magical bear of winter's wrath or whatever it was, that kept re-appearing. A yellow crystal teleported party members back and forth across the cavern. Robrik managed to get to the red crystal, which turned out to be an effective weapon once mastered, focusing a red beam of agony on Lady V., who had herself inflicted her poisonous breath, mind-warping glares, and flesh tearing claw and vampiric bites upon the party. Yet somehow, supporting each other, attacking, moving, retreating, attacking again... the group were ultmately able to somehow, eventually defeat Lady V. in an epic battle of wills, wits and weapons...
The building contained the shield guardian, as well as its amulet which was in the process of being altered in some way. Our group also found treasure there.
Good session Rod, you were really on. Thank you for coming everybody, see you in a couple of weeks.
-Dave
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Hi Guys, Hi!
Hey, I know it's been a while since I wrote anything on this blog. For anybody reading this for D&D (and Star Wars RPG) game/story ideas, I recommend taking a look at some of my early entries on this blog if you haven't already.
For the past couple years or more, I haven't really been gaming every week - it's been every other Saturday, but we play 6 hour sessions instead of 3. I think I posted earlier that I really do enjoy 4th Edition (mostly thanks to Rod). I think it's the minis aspect - It's like playing a D&D version of Mordheim, which I really like a lot. So it's the best of both worlds, only different from either one. I do still like the Pathfinder story line and plan to run it (D&D 3.5) in a couple of weeks.
MAGIC
Today I played in a Shards of Alara/Conflux Magic booster draft tournament at Old Town Hobby. I would like to thank everyone who came for playing - there were 9 of us and we had a great time. Ray (K) won (4 packs instead of 5). Luke took second (3 packs instead of 2), and it was a 3-way tie for 3rd between me, Shawn (R., who won the booster rolloff with a 10) and Nate (last initial unknown at this time). It was great to meet Nate and Shawn, thank you also to Jon (G), John, Phil (who got the Ultimate Loser pack) and Stuart. Ray ran black-red-blue with heavy removal, and when he showed me his deck I saw why - he grabbed pretty good cards, he kept most of his mana costs at 4 or lower, and he has been playing a lot lately.
I ran Green-Red-White with some removal. My deck had okay early speed and a wonderful late-game (5-6 mana) punch, but could have benefitted from a stronger middle game (3-4 mana cards). More evasion and utility (card drawing and all-creature effects) would have helped it too. When it went off, it did great but I could have done better in drafting, deck building and game play - as well as luck of the draw. Originally I had intended to contain my deck to just green-red based on strength of the cards I saw early but both Alara (the 1st 2 packs) and the draft format really favor 3 color, so I splashed the white. I saw some nice rares, but I wasn't rare drafting (in fact, I think I only ended up with 2 or 3 rares). I'm always just trying to put together a deck that will work. In retrospect, I probably should have splashed black or blue instead of white, but oh well - it was really fun. I wonder how my deck would have matched up against Ray's. I played Nate and Shawn (and drew one of the byes).
These sets have some great 5-cost creatures, some of the best special lands I have seen in 10 years, and several "interesting" cards that will probably need to be banned someday...
For the past couple years or more, I haven't really been gaming every week - it's been every other Saturday, but we play 6 hour sessions instead of 3. I think I posted earlier that I really do enjoy 4th Edition (mostly thanks to Rod). I think it's the minis aspect - It's like playing a D&D version of Mordheim, which I really like a lot. So it's the best of both worlds, only different from either one. I do still like the Pathfinder story line and plan to run it (D&D 3.5) in a couple of weeks.
MAGIC
Today I played in a Shards of Alara/Conflux Magic booster draft tournament at Old Town Hobby. I would like to thank everyone who came for playing - there were 9 of us and we had a great time. Ray (K) won (4 packs instead of 5). Luke took second (3 packs instead of 2), and it was a 3-way tie for 3rd between me, Shawn (R., who won the booster rolloff with a 10) and Nate (last initial unknown at this time). It was great to meet Nate and Shawn, thank you also to Jon (G), John, Phil (who got the Ultimate Loser pack) and Stuart. Ray ran black-red-blue with heavy removal, and when he showed me his deck I saw why - he grabbed pretty good cards, he kept most of his mana costs at 4 or lower, and he has been playing a lot lately.
I ran Green-Red-White with some removal. My deck had okay early speed and a wonderful late-game (5-6 mana) punch, but could have benefitted from a stronger middle game (3-4 mana cards). More evasion and utility (card drawing and all-creature effects) would have helped it too. When it went off, it did great but I could have done better in drafting, deck building and game play - as well as luck of the draw. Originally I had intended to contain my deck to just green-red based on strength of the cards I saw early but both Alara (the 1st 2 packs) and the draft format really favor 3 color, so I splashed the white. I saw some nice rares, but I wasn't rare drafting (in fact, I think I only ended up with 2 or 3 rares). I'm always just trying to put together a deck that will work. In retrospect, I probably should have splashed black or blue instead of white, but oh well - it was really fun. I wonder how my deck would have matched up against Ray's. I played Nate and Shawn (and drew one of the byes).
These sets have some great 5-cost creatures, some of the best special lands I have seen in 10 years, and several "interesting" cards that will probably need to be banned someday...
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