Magic the Gathering: Mini Spectrum

As a player of various games, I spent my youth playing a lot of Magic: the Gathering.  As time has gone on, I have other things to spend money on and keep up with, but I still often play with my wife and we wanted a way to do a little bit of fun deck-building without much investment, so I invented a new format.

I call it Mini Spectrum, but I'm sure somebody else could come up with a better name for it.  It labors under the following restrictions.  Your deck must consist of:

Plains x3
Island x3
Swamp x3
Mountain x3
Forest x3

Cards of your choice x15

All cards are restricted to one copy per deck (except I guess Relentless Rats?).

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It's basically just a constructed version of Mini Masters.  Like Commander, games tend to be long(ish) and unfocused.  The deck building restrictions make card choice very interesting since you can't skimp too much on any one color (although an artifact deck could probably do fairly well), and need to watch out for cards that require more than one colored mana.

I've played quite a bit of it with my wife, and while we haven't worked really hard to build busted decks or anything, I think it's definitely got potential to be a fun format.  If anybody tries it out, let me know in the comments, I'd certainly enjoy hearing experiences besides my own.

Efengie Campaign Book

I have officially completed the first Efengie Campaign Book!  If you've read much of anything here, you may have seen some of my Eucebium posts.  This is the culmination of about six months of running themed Age of Sigmar events at my FLGS.

Age of 40k

I've had a couple people in the comments mention more specific and restrictive elements of 40k that I don't generally think mesh well with warscroll design, however, it seems like there is a desire to replicate some of those mechanics, and so I am happy to do so if it makes my work on these warscrolls more enjoyable.  Much like my prior 'Age of Warhammer' rules, this is a one page 'Age of 40k' rules set (pdf here) that brings in some of the mechanics that people seem to want without overpowering existing mechanics or forcing them on anybody.

The Lady's Blessing

Mengel Miniatures is running a fiction contest for their Endless Deserts campaign book.  So I entered this story about some Duke Eobard of Betone (the Endless Deserts home for Bretonnians displaced by the End Times).  I've added some pictures of my Black Knights to illustrate (they were taken in my 2 year old's sandbox!).

Fliers in AoS 40k

As this post will demonstrate, I'm well on my way to having Necrons up and running with a full complement of warscrolls (I'll put them up sometime in the next week or so after I finish proofreading them).  So what's next? (Besides of course finishing the battle traits for about half of the armies)

Sororitas Tanks

Although I still haven't finished a warscroll for the Penitent Engine, I've got new warscrolls for the Immolator and Exorcist.  I initially set out to make a Sororitas Rhino so that they could have a transport, but then I remembered that their Razorback equivalent was the Immolator.  So what I've done here is make the Immolator their main transport, and they can downgrade the Heavy Weapon to a Storm Bolter in exchange for an increase in transport space.  When it's downgraded, it's still cooler than a Rhino in some ways because it's got the Blood of Martyrs ability, and it can have a twin-linked Melta-gun or Flamer "instead of" a Storm Bolter.

Greater Good Battle Traits

The next army getting Battletome treatment is the Greater Good (aka Tau).  I have more than one friend who plays this army, so it was an early request, and I thought I should get it up to snuff.  The Greater Good's battle traits are Overwatch, and more options for how to use Markerlight tokens.

Review: Luke Cage

Luke Cage is the newest entry in the Netflix Defenders family of tv shows.  It follows in the footsteps of Daredevil and Jessica Jones, both of which were excellent, but I think managed to outdo both of them.  Insomuch as Daredevil is the Iron Man of Hell's Kitchen, and Jessica Jones is the Hulk with a worse attitude, Luke Cage is Harlem's Captain America.  Not only did they call him that at one point in the show, but he is the most morally centered hero of the Defenders so far.  Though he frequently says "I'm not the hero type", he is really the only one so far acting out of altruism.

I think that Luke Cage was a higher quality television show than the others because it made excellent use of social commentary.  It used the story of Luke Cage as a finely crafted metaphor for social ills of our time, all without losing sight of the superhero show I wanted to see.  It espoused a similar view of the world to Zootopia, and like Zootopia kept its eye on the ball, making good use of allegory without sacrificing the story.

The show was also the best so far at tying itself into the larger universe.  Not only did they name drop when appropriate, but minor characters (very minor, but memorable too) from the other Defenders shows were sprinkled liberally at the edges of the show.

All in all, I really honestly think it was the best one yet.  Even if you haven't watched the others, you don't really need to have.  While it uses some of the same characters (especially Claire Temple), it isn't super important for you to already know who they are.

Kabalites Battle Trait

It's already up with the rest of the battletomes, but I thought I'd talk a little about the Kabalites Battle Traits.  Some armies (like the Dark Eldar) have army-wide abilities that pretty much already resemble battle traits.  Other armies (like Imperial Guard) do not.  The Dark Eldar's Combat Drugs and Power from Pain abilities lent themselves to this task, so I rolled with it.

Malifaux Overview

I don't only play Age of Sigmar (even though it might seem that way).  I also dabble in a variety of other games, one of which is Malifaux.  This is going to be kind of a rambling review/discussion of the game and its models.

The game itself is a lot like WarMachine in that it has very complete and thorough rules.  However, unlike WarMachine, it is not quite so cut-throat in spirit.  It is highly scenario driven (more so than any other miniatures game I've played) and the players basically never have the same victory conditions.  In fact, the core rulebook even includes a "narrative" scenario generator.

Kabalite Abominations

The Kabalite Abominations (as I'm calling them) are a sub-faction with five units to their name.  They are led by the Haemonculus, who can get them into combat quickly with his "Speed of Pain" command ability (I've noticed that for whatever reason there ended up being more pop culture references in the Dark Eldar than I've had in most of the other armies).  The Haemonculus also has a couple ways to deal some extra damage.  Shadow of the Torturer messes with nearby enemies' battleshock tests, and the Torturer's Tools have a somewhat open-ended damage roll.

Dark Eldar Kabalites

While I have been posting about these new "battletomes", I have been creating warscrolls for the Dark Eldar, a.k.a. Kabalites.  These guys appear to be the most fragmented of all of the 40k armies in terms of having distinct sub-factions each with their own leaders and troops and whatnot.  I ended up classifying them into four different groupings.

Battletome: Imperium Astartes

Last Monday, I updated the Space Marine Warscroll Compendium to Battletome: Imperium Astartes.  Now they have Battle Traits, Artefacts, Command Traits, and access to the Librarius Discipline.