GameStorm weekend

Last Wednesday I flew to Portland to visit my friend Jeremy from college and to attend GameStorm. GameStorm is a convention with lots of stuff going on, but I was only interested in 2 things, board games, and Protospiel West. In fact, I didn't do much except the Protospiel stuff for most of the weekend. Protospiel is a convention for playtesting prototypes by other designers and giving feedback. Protospiel West is being put together by Travis Ball and Mike Nickoloff from Los Angeles. Mike has a company called Sorvent which is intended to help designers get their games to market. Here's how it went:

First, I spent Thursday with Jeremy and Amelia in their apartment in Salem. We played 2 games of Pandemic, which I'd gotten them as a gift for putting me up all weekend, and Jeremy and I played some Rock Band, Culdcept Saga on the Xbox, and even drafted a couple packs of Magic. We also played a game of his design called Arena, which he'd thought up when he was in Tucson over the holidays. He'd put together a prototype and so we played a game. It took a long time, but I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. I'll give more details on the game later.

Friday morning Jeremy and I drove up to Portland where he has a condo they're going to move into soon. The condo is brand new, and has absolutely no furniture, so we were "urban camping" all weekend. After a stop there and a quick lunch, we ended up at the convention in time for the first Protospiel West event of the day. Both Jeremy and I played a game called Catch of the Day by Francois (I didn't catch his last name) from Canada. I'll describe the game later, I enjoyed it quite a bit. Much more than I thought I would. I also played BrainFreeze! with Jeremy, and showed Love Means Nothing to him and Francois.

In the Friday night session of Protospiel I ran Terra Prime with myself, Travis, Jeff, and Jonathan playing. The game went well, and the players seemed to like it. Many of the comments afterwards focused on things that could have improved the prototype, and about how many games should be played to test balance. Having played 50 games of Terra Prime I think the balance is pretty good. there were some good, meaty comments made as well, one in particular which I'd like to explore is making the blue and green planets in the further reaches of space produce more than 1 resource at a time. this might help increase their value. Other questions I'm pondering are whether there needs to be a VP given when someone uses your colony (though I like that, even if it doesn't necessarily do anything), or whether to change the way movement works, as some players feel that many of their actions are "wasted" moving from sector to sector.

Jeremy played Arena with Mike, and got some interesting feedback there.

Jeremy and I checked out the main board gaming room as well, and in particular we learned how to play Wabash Cannonball by watching the explanation. Since the game is short, we stuck around and played it after the first group finished. I'm not sure I love the game, but I don't think it's bad either. I don't like that the production quality is so low... I'd left the prototype room and here I was playing a game on laminated cardstock...

In the interim between some of these things I talked Jeremy into playing some Race for the Galaxy, which I know he hates, but which I though he'd like better after playing some more.

Late Friday night we played a few games of Werewolf, which is always fun. There were 32 people though, which means it's a little crazy, and people pretty much avoid logic and go by mob-rule often. Nonetheless, the first game we played I was a Werewolf, and if I do say so myself, I did a really good job :) I threw a fellow werewolf to the wolves (?) for the good of the team, and I convinced several people I was a villager... In the second game I was a werewolf again, but frankly I didn't stand a chance - partly because of he previous game, and partly because (as Jeremy noted) if I were a villager, the werewolves would likely have eaten me very early. They of course did not, and that was something of a giveaway I guess. In one other game I was a villager, and we were down to the wire - one more incorrect lynching and we would lose. It so happened that the seer knew who *2* of the werewolves were, as well as 2 villagers, but she didn't say anything! Needless to say we lost that one.

Saturday we returned and found that Jay Tummelson of Rio Grande Games was scheduled to meet for 15 minutes at a time with designers so they could pitch their games. I hadn't signed up, and the list was long, but the reality was that there could be time in the schedule as some people may finish early or not be there on time, and it seemed like a bad plan to pass on this opportunity to show my games to a publisher. Jay doesn't accept submissions, he'll only consider games shown to him in person. So I set up Terra Prime and Wizard's Tower on one of the tables in case I got a chance to pitch it. While we waited, we played 2 games of Wizard's Tower. First a 2 player game between me and Jeremy, and then a three player game with Jeff, another designer who had playtested Terra Prime the day before, and who had just pitched his abstract game to Jay right next to us. The 2 player game was incredibly close, a 1 point game, after Jeremy destroyed several of my towers. The 3 player game was good too, with towers destroyed all around.

Unfortunately the session ended before I got a chance to pitch my games, but Travis had set up a time in the morning for me and for Bo to meet with Jay for a longer period of time, since we each had several games to pitch. With about an hour before the next official Protospiel session started, I began to show Jeremy and Jeff my copy of Lost Adventures, the Indiana Jones game by Jeff Warrander and Steve Sisk. we went through the rules and started to play, so when the session started we just kept going. The game ran longer than I'd have thought, but we were talking and sort of messing around part of the time. The turn before the Nazis would find the temple, Jeff revealed it's location to draw some cards. This allowed me to actually dig for the temple before the Nazis found it, earning me the point for that. Jeremy and I headed into the temple with some cards in hand, while Jeff decided to hang back and draw for a few turns. Instead of leapfrogging Jeremy and entering the next room, I decided to let him blaze the trail. This turned out to be a bad idea, as he collected all of the torches strewn about the temple while I got nothing. In the end I delayed the Nazis from finding the grail for one last turn, hoping I'd have a chance to get to the grail room and find the grail, but all that did was allow Jeremy the time to get his pick (he had a 50-50 shot) of grails to a Font and test it... it turned out to be the true grail, so he scored about 5 or 6 extra points for that, finishing the game with 14 points to my 8. Jeff didn't fare as well, scoring only about 4 points. I enjoyed the game, as usual, and I think they did too. we discussed a couple ways to make it better, and the biggest comment was probably to get rid of the revelation mechanic.

At the end of the game Jay was in the room again, and I asked if he had time to look at another game. I had Homesteaders with me which I thought would be a much better fit for Rio Grande, but I wanted to use my allotted time to show him my own games. He said sure, but he had to get back to the main board game room. Unfortunately when I went over there, I couldn't find him anywhere. Meanwhile, Jeremy ran his Arena game again with 2 playtesters.

Later in the evening we saw Jay again, and he said he'd teach Stone Age to Jeremy, Jeff, and I. We had seen the game being played and got a lowdown on the rules earlier in the day, and it looked pretty cool. We sat down to play along with Rachel (the person who taught us Wabash Cannonball), and after about an hour of just talking with Jay and asking him questions, we finally began.

The next morning I didn't want to be late for my scheduled meeting with Jay, so we made sure to get there in time. I pitched Terra Prime and Wizard's Tower to him, and also talked about All For One (but I didn't have a copy with me to show him). As expected, he was not at all interested in Wizard's Tower, as it's an abstract game. However I was surprised at just how disinterested he was in Terra Prime. I'm something of a pessimist, so I didn't expect him to jump at the chance to publish it or anything, but his response was "it just doesn't excite me *shrug*" Maybe for the best, as that game is being reviewed by a different publisher at the moment anyway, so if Rio Grand was all of a sudden interested I'd have other problems.

It had been a while since Jeremy and I had been to a Magic tournament, so we decided to play in the booster draft that was on the schedule: Lorwyn-Lorwyn-Morningtide. We ended up sitting next to each other, and Jeremy passed me good red card after good red card. I passed him a number of good black cards as well. I ended up playing a mono-red deck with a lot of very good cards in it, and I won the whole thing. Frankly though, that's not saying much, as the competition wasn't exactly pro caliber or anything. After one match, my opponent mentioned that there was no need to have more creature D in the deck than your opponent has creatures, and evidently he was passing terrific creature D cards up in favor of mediocre creatures which weren't even in his main color. I didn't feel the least bit bad beating that guy.

After the Magic tournament, the convention had pretty much cleared out. There were a handful of people in the main boardgame room, but that was it. Mike had said he'd play Homesteaders with us after the Magic tournament, but he was nowhere to be found, so after getting some food, Jeremy and I ended up talking to Jay some more as he had just finished teaching Stone Age again. That guy is full of amusing stories! I told him that I had a game to show him that was likely more up his alley, and that we were going to play it as soon as Mike got back, and he said he'd take a look. When Mike arrived we set up the game and I started explaining it. Jay said he had just 1 question... could he bring a copy to the Gathering to test.

...

I had kinda watched Jay's reactions to the games he was looking at earlier, and he didn't seem very excited about any of them (I heard he was at least a little interested in Catch of the Day). His reaction to Homesteaders looked entirely different, he really seemed interested, and he did ask for a copy of the game to test. Now this game isn't mine, it's my friend Alex Rockwell's, but he's told me before that if I wanted to help get it published, he was all for that. So I left my copy with Jay to take with him, and I look forward to hearing his thoughts on it after the Gathering. It's a good game, and it's the kind of thing Rio Grande would publish, so maybe he'll be interested... who knows? :)

Finally, I ended my weekend by getting up at 5am to make my 7:00 flight. after 5 hours on a plane I went straight in to work, and was so tired by the time I got home that I skipped frisbee practice, fell asleep early, and slept for 11 or 12 hours straight!

I'll post some details of the games I played in another post since this one got long.

Welcome!

I've noticed a lot more people reading my blog lately, some due to searches for Magic: the Gathering stuff, and some linking in from BoardGamegeek.com - several people check regularly from across the world - Vienna, Netherlands, even as foreign a place as Texas!

I just wanted to say "Hi" to whoever it is that's reading my blog, and encourage you to post a comment telling me at least who you are, if not how you came across my blog or whether you enjoy it.

It's good to know I have an audience :)

Magic: the Gathering - Lorwyn Constructed follow-up post

The last deck I wanted to mention is probably my favorite of the decks I made, but it's probably actually the second best of the bunch - the Green/Black deck is a powerhouse. The last deck is Blue/black Faeries, with flash creatures and counterspells.

All blue ever needed was creatures they could play at the end of their opponent's turn, rather than having to commit resources to during their own turn. That way they can always have all their mana open for tricks and countermagic, and if they don't need it then they can put a creature in play. And in the case of Faeries, one of these creatures actually counters a spell when it comes into play. Another acts as a Vampiric Tutor, bringing any Faerie card to the top of the deck. These creatures stick around and attack as well, so no need to fill your deck with boring "win conditions" that don't actually do anything...

The down side to the Faeries is that they are fragile, and the deck has little or no ways to remove more than 1 creature or draw more cards. The only card advantage that can be gained is by countering a spell with the Spellstutter Sprite, or hard casting a Shriekmaw (which of course means tapping land on your own turn). My build does use Wydwen, the Biting Gale, a 3/3 flying faerie which can bounce to my hand for BU and a life, which could create card advantage as well.

I still think the deck is good, but it needs a little something to gain card advantage, or to deal with a dangerous permanent that gets past a counterspell. I believe there's a 4cc creature that has a control magic effect... I don't think it's a faerie but it might be good enough anyway. There's an expensive creature (6cc) with Evoke (1UU) which bounces a creature when it comes into play, but like Shriekmaw it hasn't got Flash.

Shriekmaw is one of the better cards in the set I think, as it's in the same color as one of the very best cards in the set (Nameless Inversion), it can be cast for 2 so it means early creature D vs crazy things like 2cc 3/3 Elves, and later it can come into play and stay there, which in some games can make a huge difference.

There exists a black faerie which costs 3 for a 1/1 flier, and when it comes into play it makes your opponent discard a card. The effect is interesting, but the cost and power/toughness are very unexciting. There's also a 1cc black faerie which is 1/1, flies, and can't block. A 1cc faerie is attractive because it can lead into a turn 2 Stuttersprite, but it means playing enough Swamps to reliably cast it on turn 1.

I can't figure out what in the deck needs to come out to make way for better things, and I also can't quite figure out what would be significantly better. Here's the list as it stands... I think there might be too much land in the deck with the Twigs in there, but I'd hate to not draw enough:

15 Island (2 should be Secluded Glenns)
8 Swamp (1 should be a Secluded Glenn)
1 Secluded Glenn (obviously 3 more go in)
4 Wanderer's Twig
4 Ponder
3 Broken Ambition
4 Nameless Inversion
4 Spellstutter Sprite
2 Familiar's Ruse
4 Faerie Trickery
3 Pestermite (maybe fewer)
1 Scion of Oona (should be more for sure)
3 Faerie Harbinger
1 Wydwen, the Biting Gale
3 Shriekmaw

After playing a few games with people using the 5 decks I made, I have come to the conclusion that I have indeed been overvaluing Moonglove Extract. I took them out of the Elf deck, as well as the Final Revel, and replaced them with Twigs. I'm not sure if I'm sold on the twigs or not, but they still seem like a fine idea in theory.

This post is about Magic: the Gathering. Feel free to skip it.

Lorwyn Constructed thoughts

I've been thinking a lot about Magic lately, having had a lot of fun playing in these Lorwyn tournaments. I mentioned last post that I made maybe 5 different decks for Lorwyn Constructed - a format that may never really exist in the tournament environment, at least not until the next set comes out. In fact, Aaron Forsythe of WotC research and Development (I think, maybe it was someone else) said something to the effect of "Lorwyn wasn't designed or tested to be played in Block Constructed all by itself" - which, if its true, I think is a huge shame. My favorite format was always Block Constructed.

The format that is relevant at the moment is probably Lorwyn Standard, which is the new Type II, after Lorwyn rotates in. State Championships will be that format, and they're coming up like this or next weekend. I think this weekend is too soon for me, but if it's next weekend I may consider going to States... but if that's the case I'll have to get some cards to supplement the Lorwyn cards I have made decks out of, and I should probably do my due diligence and look at which cards are legal and etc.

I'd much rather just take my sub-optimal Lorwyn Constructed decks to Friday Night Magic and pit them against the Type II decks people use there. I'll probably lose to the good players, but I bet I wouldn't go 0-4... at least 2 of my Lorwyn decks are probably good enough to do alright at a local tournament (where the competition isn't necessarily top notch).

Lorwyn is all about Tribes. Each color has about 2 tribes represented, and each tribe is represented in about 2 different colors. A quick search on Wikipedia will show a little chart indicating which tribes are in which colors, etc. Here's a quick rundown of the decks I made, more or less from worst to best...

Merfolk
There are a lot of Merfolk in Lorwyn, some of them sound pretty good such as Silvergill Adept, a 2/1 Merfolk creature for 1U (a pretty good start) which says When Silvergill Adept comes into play, draw a card. That's probably the best Merfolk ever printed. Aside from the Adept, the card that will probably make any successful Merfolk deck is Merrow Reejerey - another "All Merfolk get +1/+1" card like Lord of Atlantis, but this one also lets you tap or untap a permanent when it comes into play. At first I figured that ability would likely be used to tap blockers (and indeed, in limited play that's probably what happened) - but then I realized you could untap a land with that ability. In constructed play that's likely going to be a popular use of the card... it allows Merfolk to be played with a rebate, meaning you could play them out faster, or you could play Merfolk and still keep counterspell mana untapped.

This particular pile of Merfolk I put together doesn't seem particularly good - it's just a mess of Merfolk with 3 on the high end of the mana curve, and splashing Oblivion Ring and Nameless Inversion - 2 of the best removal cards in the set. As an experiment I replaced a few lands with Wanderer's Twig, a 1cc artifact which you can sac to get a basic land into your hand. I'm not sure if I like it or not, but I figure it's nearly as good as a land as long as you have 1 land already, and it thins land out of your deck so you don't draw it. On the down side, it's slow.

There exists a 6cc Merfolk that does something like "Whenever ~this deals combat damage to a player, take an additional turn after this one." It seems like there should be a way to take advantage of that in a control style deck and basically take infinite turns. However it does require that you have at least 1 Merfolk in play when you play that guy... I don't think he'd fit in this "super low casting cost" version of a Merfolk deck, but maybe in a more regular one. Today I was actually thinking there could be a Green/Blue deck with a lot of Changelings in it which runs the Time Walk Merfolk (and of course, Silvergill Adept) - it could also use the Shapeshifter guy which changes any Changeling creature into a copy of any creature on the board, so once the Time Walk guy is in play, you could theoretically be attacking with several of them.

Current decklist:
14 Island
4 Vivid Creek
3 Wanderwine Hub
4 Wanderer's Twig
2 Runed Stalactite
4 Ponder
4 Tideshaper Mystic
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Deeptread Merrow
3 Nameless Inversion
2 Merrow Reejerey (should be 4)
4 Paperfin Rascal (should be 2, or none)
4 Oblivion Ring
4 Faerie Trickery

The Giant Package
Aside from an amusing name, there's a subset of Giant cards that strikes me as a good, solid base of a deck. There's a "package" of about 10 cards that could comprise part of a deck - 4x Blind Spot Giant, 3x Thundercloud Shaman, and 2-3x Giant's Ire. Along with these there are some staple red removal spells (Tarfire and Lash Out) which are obvious for just about any deck with Mountains. And the common red Free Agent (Fire-Belly Changeling) is a pretty good deal for the casting cost, so he should probably be in the deck as well. I hadn't thought about the bigger Free Agent (4cc, Haste, Champion a creature), but I suppose that wouldn't be bad either.

I initially wanted to try this package with some of the Kithkin white weenies, as the Greatheart guy synergizes well with the Giants, the Runed Stalactite would help the 2 teams play nice, and White means Oblivion Ring. My first attempt may have leaned too far toward the Kithkin White Weenie side though, as the new White Knight (Knight of Meadowgrain) and the Crusade on Wheels (Wizened Cenn) both require WW to cast, which probably wants a mono-W land base, or at least doesn't go well with a deck that would like to case Blind Spot on turn 3. My second attempt was more an attempt at forcing as much direct damage on my opponent as possible by combining with Black. Adding a few Goblin spells - Mudbutton Torchrunner, Nameless Inversion, Boggart Harbinger, and Fodder Launch) might be the key to a really fast and dangerous deck, but I doubt it. Giant's Ire + Fodder Launch does bring a lot of burn to the a table already littered with Tarfire and Moonglove Extract, and the Torchrunner acts as either direct damage or creature D that the opponent really can't do much about.

In any case, I think the key card in the Giant Package is not the 3 casting cost 4/3 creature, but the 5cc 4/4 Wrath of God. Thundercloud Shaman is the only reason I really want to play Giants at all.

Current decklist:
16 Mountain
5 Swamp
3 Auntie's Hovel
4 Tarfire
3 Lash Out
2 Nameless Inversion
4 Fire-Belly Changeling
4 Blind-Spot Giant
4 Boggart Harbinger
4 Mudbutton Torchrunner
4 Moonglave Extract
2 Giant's Ire
2 Fodder Launch
3 Thundercloud Shaman

Kithkin WW
Some of the more attractive cards in the set are white and cost 2 or 3 mana. The most notable of them might be Knight of Meadowgrain and Oblivion Ring. I'm personally a fan of Kithkin Greatheart as well, but that may be because I also like Runed Stalactite, and attacking for 4 with 1 creature on turn 3 seems like a good deal. The rest of the deck doesn't seem as stellar - Neck Snap is effective against those nasty fatties or 3/3 Deathtouch elves, but it costs a lot of mana. I chose it over Crib Swap because (a) it doesn't leave a blocker, and (b) I actually didn't have any Crib Swaps on me when I made the deck. I seem to put Moonglave Extract into just about every deck I build, but I'm not sure if the 3cc price tag is really worth it - in a creature rush deck I think you could do worse for creature D. Of course the Kithkin weenie deck will be using the new Savannah Lions (Goldmeadow Stalwart) and the Crusade (Wizened Cenn, but the creature options after that are questionable. I'm trying Kinsbaile Skirmisher in the first draft, and a couple Avian Changelings - mostly because they are Free Agents and therefore immune to the Elf Terror (and nice to play after Greatheart), and because I liked them a lot in Sealed Deck. Yes, I realize that's a bad reason to use a card in a constructed format. Finally, Surge of Thoughtweft seems a natural to go in the deck, but in the end maybe that Kithkin Militia enchantment might be better.

Current decklist:
22 Plains (too many?)
3 Runed Stalactite
4 Glodmeadow Stalwart
4 Knight of Meadowgrain
3 Wizened Cenn (4 if I had them)
4 Kithkin Greatheart
3 Kinsbaile Skirmisher
3 Surge of Thoughtweft
3 Avian Changeling
4 Moonglave Extract
4 Oblivion Ring
3 Neck Snap

G/B Elves
Green/Black is probably one of the best decks I can think of. Outside of Oblivion Ring, Black has the best creature D in the set - Nameless Inversion can be tutored for with any Harbinger, Eyeblight's Ending flat out kills anything except Elves and Changelings, no matter how big, and Shriekmaw kills just about anything the Elf Terror doesn't - and it leaves a 3/2 creature in play! Green's creatures are amazing, and this time even more than usual they work together really well. Initially there were Fertile Grounds in the deck, and between them and the Leaf Gliders, one could easily play a turn 3 3/3 that makes Elf tokens, or 5/5 that makes Wolf tokens. Since then I dropped the enchantments in favor of more good creatures. With the potential for so many elves in play, the Jagged-Scar Archers seem like a good deal at 3 mana. Wrens Run Vanquisher is a powerhouse on turn 2, and bombs like Wren's Run Packmaster and Vigor seem to fit well in the deck. At the pre-release I opened 2 of those legends which make your opponent discard at random and put an elf into play every turn - seems like they should go right in the deck, but as yet they're not in there (I forgot!) Finally, there are 2 cards which I'm trying out in the deck which I think are pretty solid... Final Revels can be a Wrath of God in a match against Goblins or Kithkin (or other Elves!), even if some of my creatures are susceptible. The fact that it can turn into a finisher if I happen to have a number of Elves/Wolves in play I think makes it definitely worth playing. At the moment I only have 1, but I think I'd like to go to 2 at least. The other card I'm trying out, which I think I'm going to really like in general even if not in this deck, is Hoarder's Greed. A deck like this doesn't mind drawing cards, and if you win 1 clash then it goes from being an "OK card drawer" to a "really good hand refill". Anything more than that just gets better, with the slim possibility that you'll be in a situation where you effectively kill yourself by playing it. I bet that'll be rare though.

Current decklist:
13 Forest
7 Swamp
4 [B/G dualland]
4 Nameless Inversion
4 Leaf Glider
4 Wren's Run Vanquisher
3 Woodland Changeling
3 Jagged-Scar Archers
2 Elvish Harbinger
2 Eyeblight's Ending
3 Moonglove Extract
3 Lys Alana Huntmaster
2 Wren's Run Packmaster
2 Hoarder's Greed
2 Shriekmaw
1 Final Revels
1 Vigor

And, saving the best for last...
[This post is still under construction, I will come back and finish with what I think is probably the best deck idea to come out of lorwyn]

Recent gaming - Long time, no post!

I've done very little in the way of game design lately. No playtest sessions on Sunday mornings, no new game designs of my own (Red Colony is still rolling around in my head). Here's what I have been up to in the last 2 weeks (in no particular order):

On the design/developement/prototype front...

I have played some more Lost Adventures. Jeff and Steve are sending me a prototype of it made by them, which in theory will be a bit nicer than the one I made. I'm going to take it to BGG.con with me, where I intend to play a lot of prototypes!

I made a geeklist at BGG for people to sign up to play prototypes. Gil Hova (IngredientX) will be at the con and is signed up to play Terra Prime. A couple other people expressed interest in TP as well, enough for a full game which is now tentatively scheduled for Thursday afternoon the first day of the con.

I also put together a prototype of Scott Slomiany's Sir Reginold's Fabulous Country Manor, which entailed cutting out about 250 stickers and applying them to the faces of 3/4" wooden cubes. The game seems like a really fun idea - you build a fancy mansion with the cubes in order to satisfy the Desires of Sir Reginold. Scott is still working on the scoring system, but in general if you satisfy his desires, you score points, and he who satisfies the desires "the best" scores a bonus. I think the premise is sound, and the idea is fun, but the game needs some work. I think Scott has actually made some changes for entering the game into Hippodice, a big game design contest in Germany - I haven't played it again since the changes, but they sounded like a step in the right direction.

Speaking of Hippodice, I have never really entered that contest. David submitted All For One once, and it did pretty well, but he is the one who did everything for that and I didn't really see it. I am always hesitant to try and do things I have no idea how to do or that I'm not familiar with. There's no reason I shouldn't send in an entry (or 2!) to Hippodice, and resolved to do just that this year. I have until November 1st to send in a rulebook for something... I'm not sure what to send. Probably Terra Prime I suppose. I told John we should enter Wizard's Tower, and I think he started looking into it. I emailed Alex and suggested he enter Homesteaders.

Of course since making that resolution, I haven't even looked at any of my games :/ I think I'll try extra hard to wrangle people from my game group to play Terra Prime this Thursday.

On the game playing side of things...

I've played Phoenicia a few times now, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. I start to think there's something to it, then I play it with some people and we talk about it and it seems like it's contrived and boring. Then I play it again and it seems like it might be alright. I think it's one of those games that needs to be played with a full compliment of experienced players, but my problem is finding people who want to play it enough times to become "experienced".

I've also played several games of Caylus Magna Carta, which I might like even better than Caylus. I think Caylus is the better game, but CMC might have a better fun-per-unit-work ratio, and it's similar enough that it satisfies in some of the same ways. It's also much shorter and more compact, which is a plus.

The game I've probably played the most recently has been Magic: the Gathering. A couple weeks ago, Jake, Tyler and I went to Phoenix for the Lorwyn pre-release tournament (the new set that just came out). None of us have played Magic seriously in a really long time, but we're all pretty good. We went home with 90 packs of prize between the three of us - that's 2-1/2 boxes, more prize than we used to get when we played all the time! I went to Amazing Discoveries (a local shop down the street from my house) and played in another Lorwyn sealed tournament last Saturday, and I sorely missed building decks - so I built about 5 Llorwyn Constructed decks out of the common and uncommon cards that have piled up from these sealed deck tournaments. 2 of them are really good, and if I decide to play in any upcoming tournaments I'm sure those will be the ones I use. One of them is Green/Black and has some really good creatures, like a 2 casting cost 3/3 with the old Basilisk ability (which is now called Deathtouch). The other is a Blue/Black deck based on Faeries, all of which have an ability called Flash, which means you can play them whenever you could play an Instant. Blue has needed creatures like this forever, as it means they can always leave Counterspell mana open, and if they don't need to counter anything, they can play a creature at the end of the opponent's turn! As if that's not enough, one of the Faerie creatures actually counters a spell when it comes into play! Another one searches out Faerie cards, and one of the counterspells is a Faerie card... I'm certain this will be the best deck I can come up with.