Author: chunnert

Dominion Strategy #1 The Opening Few Turns

As Dominion is one of my favorite games, I thought I might share some strategy articles with you. As this article is going to go over basic strategy, if you have played Dominion a few times, none of this information might be new or useful to you. However, if you have never played Dominion before or are a fairly new player, hopefully you can find some of this information useful to you.

Before I start going over some things that I have found useful, you might wonder why you as a reader should listen to my advice. I discovered Dominion in 2012 and played quite regularly from 2014 to 2016. I probably still average about 6 plus or minus games a month. I am guessing but have probably played about 300 games.

The first strategy is to figure out your initial turns. As long as you are not playing with certain event cards, the Baker or a few other odd ball cards, everyone starts with the same two first hands. You are going to have three copper in your first hand and four copper in your second. Or, you are going to have four Copper in your first hand and three in your second. Our group rules out a five two start or a two five start. It is crucial to figure out what your plan is going to be in the first few turns. There are a few strategies here.

The first opening strategy you could use is to figure out how you are going to get to six coins before any other player. With six coin, the obvious buy is going to be the gold. So, the question is, how to get to Gold faster then anyone else. Since a silver is worth three coin, this is a decent three buy. Now you have to figure out your four buy. This could even be another silver not using your last money point. Another good four buy would be a Kingdom card that lets you draw another card or perhaps a card that gives you one or two money. Don’t buy a Copper. This is usually bad in 99% of the situations.

A second opening strategy is to try and thin your deck as fast as possible by trashing your cards you may not want. Trashing cards are very powerful as it let you get to your more powerful cards faster as you cycle through your deck. It is generally a good idea if you can trash all your Copper and Estates before the end of the game. Yes, the copper give you one money point but if you have a silver or gold instead, that would be a much better card then your copper. Same with the estates. Duchy’s and Provinces are better then Estates which are usually not as important in final game scoring.

A final, third opening strategy is getting certain Kingdom cards that have synergy with each other. All cards are not created equal. Some cards are good, some cards are bad, and some cards work really well with others. As you play more games, you will figure out what works well with each other. As I am not going to go over any of the Kingdom cards in this article, you will find out as you play more games what works well with each other. Going over certain Kingdom cards will be in a future strategy article.

One final entry level strategy is to count Provinces and Colonies. These cards are most likely how someone wins the game. I may not care if you used your buy for a silver but I do care if you used your buy for a Province. If you want to get good at Dominion, know who has how many provinces. This includes yourself.

As for me, Dominion is such a great game with infinite combinations of cards with all the expansions. Hopefully this article was helpful for you. In the future, I would like to write a few more article about some strategy behind Dominion.

Non-Gamers

My parents came to visit me recently. I don’t currently live near my parents so they are not able to visit often. This time they came to help me out on some projects and I am very thankful of that. However, they are getting older and I would like them to enjoy themselves every once in a while. I feel that they work a lot and they do what is interesting to them but to me, some times it just looks like work. Relaxing is sitting around, doing some sport, seeing the sights and well, playing board games.

While they were here, they were able to do some touristy things but, they have been here enough that the standard first time touristy stuff has already been done.

Anyway, to get to my point, they are what I would call a casual gamer. They are familiar with the games that a lot of people know but that is about it. One game that we have played over the years is a game called Trumps. We have found variations to play this game with people ranging from two to eight. Basically a 52 card poker deck trick taking game such as hearts or spades. Depending on the variation would determine the trump suit. This was a game that was commonly played at some family gatherings.

Bidder’s Trumps. This game takes place over the course of 10-16 rounds depending on player count. In the first six to eight rounds you are dealt a similar number of hidden card or cards. A random person is chosen to go first. Each person in turn order will then bid the number of tricks they think they will win and this number is written down. Then the first person will play a card. After everyone plays a card this is called one trick. The person with the highest card wins unless a trump suit is played. In Bidder’s Trumps, hearts are always the trump suit. A trump card can only be played if you don’t have any cards left or you can’t play a card with the same suit that the first person played. After all the card in hand are played, each person will check to see if they made their bid. The twist to this game is you have to make exactly what you bid. Not over or not under. If you did not make your bid you lost the round. If you made your bid, you won the round. If you lost the round then a negative gets placed in front of your bid. If you won the round, a one gets placed in front of your bid. For example, if you bid zero and got zero tricks you get ten points. If you bid zero and you got one trick, you get minus zero points. In round two, you get two cards. Say, in round six you bid four and got four tricks, you get fourteen points. If you did not and lost, you get negative four points. In future rounds, when all the cards are out and each player has an equal number of cards, this will be the highest card count for rounds. In the next round, you get one less card until you are back to one card. Who ever has the highest number of points wins. Really fun casual game but can get a bit tense at the higher card count.

Recently my parents have been playing a lot of Scrabble. They play a co-op version of Scrabble and it is pretty fun. I’ve played a few times with them on this version and you play to just try and use all the letters and end on the same round. On this visit we were able to get in a few games of Scrabble on the last day. It was fun and we won both games.

In earlier days during their visit, I tried to get them to play Scrabble and they said it was too much thinking. Yes, we were doing some things during the day that required thinking but it was too much of a brain burner. Hmm. This got me thinking. I look at a lot of reviews of board games from people and I feel that there is sometimes a disconnect. Perhaps that is not the right word but there is something not quite right. Board games have a lot of moving pieces, tokens and rules that you need to learn to play even the simplest of games.

With all the reviews I’ve watched from multiple reviewers, games seem to be placed into five different categories. Kids games. games that rely on roll and move, speed or dexterity. Light weight or family games. Games that rules are basic but there is some sort of strategy. Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne, Catan, Pandemic, Splendor. Mid weight and Heavy weight games. I’m not really sure where the line is drawn here but I would say that heavy weight games are games with very complex rules and take a long time to play. Twilight Imperium Three, Agricola, Twilight Struggle. I guess the mid-weight games are some where in between this level. The final category is the box store games or games you might grow up with. Both are not really a good definition. Monopoly, Scrabble, Chess, Checkers Risk.

Here are just some of my experiences with non-gamers. I tried to teach my parents Pandemic. A family game. They kind of got it the first time but didn’t want to play again right away. The second time a few days later I was able to bring it out but was too much thinking. I think my mom liked it a bit more but has never asked about it again. I tried to teach my Dad how to play Dominion. Another family game. At the end of the game he kind of got the deck builder part but was way to much for him. We played scrabble on later dates. I tried to teach my Mom how to play Splendor. A family game. She seemed to like it as we played it multiple times in a row but has never asked about it again.

Here are a few more experiences. I tried to teach my cousin and family how to play King of Tokyo. A family game. They got it but one game was enough. I tried to teach my cousin and family how to play Codenames. A family game. Thre were two teams of four and I was one person on one team. Out of the seven new players, one person liked it and wanted to play again. I think the rest were done with it.

I feel that another category needs to be created between kids games and family weight games. Yes, I know there are party games but not everyone is outgoing or wants to play a party game. I think there are a lot of games that fit into this category. I know I mentioned Splendor but I think this is a bit less rules to learn and would be a good fit. Battle Line, Patchwork, Forbidden Island. Or, perhaps I’m asking too much and we are stuck with the old generation and modern gaming in the family category.

Battleborn Legacy

As part of my gaming group was off doing some other adventures we decided not proceed with Dominion as I feel it doesn’t run well with two people. I’m just going to call this other person J. J likes to fund games on Kickstarter. This has was fairly popular a few years ago and it is still going strong. People will create games and create funding for the game through other people who read about their game they created called backers.

This game that J got on Kickstarter that he was trying to learn some basic rules on was called Battleborn Legacy. As we did not get to finish the game and more just seeing how a turn works and some mechanics, it is interesting. I would call it a fantasy game with area control, leveling your character up or advancement, resource management and dice rolling damage mitigation. It says it takes 2-4 players and I would guess a game would last somewhere between 90 minutes or more depending on the number of players and how familiar each person is with the game. I would put this in the class of a medium weight game as there is a lot of things going on. After playing I went home and read more information online and found out this was created in memory of a brother. The two brothers grew up playing Dungeons and Dragons and always talked about creating a game but never did. One brother got sick and passedaway so the other brother created this game. The name is based off of one of his brothers character names.

There are a few interesting things going on in this game. There are four hero’s that you can pick from and those can be paired with four different races making for different initial set up and replay ability. You will also select your starting space on the map as this allows for more replay ability.

The object of the game is to get the most victory point over the course of a number of rounds. I think it was somewherebetween 6-9. You getvictory points by doing certain actions and achieving certain things in the game. The general idea of the game is to move your lord around the board and gain allies, fight local races and other people. If you win you can put markers down on the board saying that you conquered that territory and if you control the color group of territory, then you gain victory points.

Another interesting piece to this is every turn some sort of disaster or uprising happens. This is randomly figured out by rolling a two dice. There are three different symbols on the board associated with a number and depending on what you roll, this will tell you what area is affected. Perhaps a disaster will occur, the dragon will attack or a horde of undead will cause an uprising.

Combat works as there are six different colors of dice. You roll two D6 dice and you want a higher number. If you have more units of that color, that will mitigate the dice so your number doesn’t have to be so high. In addition there is ranged combat that starts first and then goes to melee combat. If a second round of combat occurs, the archers are no longer far away and lumped into melee combat. If you hit, you roll on a hit table chart to see what type of unit was hit. Of course you only roll dice of the color in your units so no more then 12 dice would probably be ever rolled at one time.

The component quality of this game is pretty good. I would say that you get a lot of little square chits on the board and they look pretty similar but they are different so it may be hard to tell what each one is. The design looks good and the player boards seem to work well if we ever put them together. There are a lot of pieces, cards and tokens. Overall, this game seems decent so far. Since there are so many games that fill this same similar style for me, I’m not sure if I would get it but it was fun to play and I would recommend trying it this seems interesting to you.

 

 

Amonkhet

In Magic, there are many ways to play this game. My favorite format is sealed deck and to be more specific pre-release sealed deck. Every few months Magic releases a new set of cards. Some cards can be reprints of older cards but most of the cards are new cards. The sets are grouped into blocks and now two sets consist of one block. Each block has some sort of theme that is grouped with that block. Amonkhet is the name of the newest Magic set and considered the first of the sets in the block. Amonkhet is the name of the world which is an Egyptian themed harsh desert planet. Magic designers have created a story of a group of planeswalkers. Planeswalkers are powerful people who have been gifted with the magic to travel to different worlds. These planeswalkers have formed an alliance and are hunting down Nicol Bolas who is a powerful elder dragon and is believed to be on Amonkhet.

In the sealed deck format, players are given six booster packs and one special promo card. Using these randomly selected cards, the players will build a deck to play with against others. One of the reasons I enjoy this format is because everyone starts on a level playing field. Of course some cards are better then others and other people may get these cards but I think if you build your deck well and play well then you will do very good. It is about skill of what to include in your deck construction and the decisions that you make during the game that will get you wins.

There are some general rules to follow when building a sealed deck but this is not always the case and rules are meant to be broken. There is a minimum of 40 cards that you can include in your deck and I think you should stick to 40-41 cards to have a chance to draw your more powerful cards. Second is the amount of lands that you should include in your deck. 17 lands are the standard. Third is the amount of creatures you have in your deck. 14-17 creatures is standard. Fourth is your mana curve. You should have a somewhat bell curve of casting costs for things in your deck. Fifth is your removal. Having some sort of cards or abilities to kill creatures is a good thing. Sixth is synergy. Cards that work together to create a more powerful effect can be great to use on your side of the battlefield. These are not in any specific order in my opinion but if you have all of these in your deck, then I think you have created the best deck you can with your card pool.

I liked to create two color decks in the sealed deck format. A lot of times, generating mana is an issue. You may have a great spell or creature but you can’t cast it because you don’t have the right mana or even enough mana. When I started to open up my packs I saw that I had a lot of creatures in white with some removal. I saw some great creatures with abilities in black but not very many. But, there was also some removal. In Blue, I had two removal and less then six total creatures. Green had one removal, some synergy and not great creatures but also not bad. Red had one great creature, some average creatures and a great spell. In the end, I decided to go with a Red/Green hopefully aggression or aggro deck. I only had a few removals and I usually like those but I felt I had some good synergy and enough aggro creatures.

Since I went to a midnight pre-release, the tournament was not completely full but there were about 35-45 people. There are four rounds of play and if your record is 2-2 then you can win prize packs. Each round you play 2/3 and continue to play others with the same record. My first opponent was playing a red/green/white deck. In game one, he did not do very much. Later in the game he brought out a few creatures and drew the game out but I won.

Hmmm. There is a new mechanic called exert which gives your creature some sort of bonus when attack and I had a few in my deck but it was not as fast as I thought it was going to be. In game two we stalled again mid game and then he brought out a Samut, Voice of the Dissent. Flash, double strike, vigilance, haste and give all other creatures haste. I didn’t have anything to deal with that and I lost. In game three I had to mulligan and was at a card disadvantage. I came out very strong. He decided to attack with all his creatures which brought me down to about ten life. He was at 10 and I had a fling in my hand but would not be able to deal lethal damage this turn. I attacked with all my creatures and brought out a blocker. He then Flashed in Samut during my end step, fought my creature with Green Cartouche of strength and killed me. I probably should have played more cautiously but it was a close fun game.

My deck broke some rules of my general deck construction. I was running 16 land and my mana curve was very low. I had four creatures that cost four and two double cards with the second side costing four but the initial card costing three. The rest of the cards I had were three casting cost and lower. It was not even a battle with my second opponent. She was playing a Green/Blue deck. I had two lands the first game and lost. In game two, I was able to draw some extra cards and had lots of red land, but had a hand full of green cards. I lost again. She had a great card called Sandwurm Convergence creating a 5/5 wurm token every turn and great mana fixers. She also had multiple Naga Oracle which was a card I had but kind of dismissed its abilities in my initial deck construction. This is an awesome card in sealed.

Ok. 0-2. If I win the next two games I might get something. My next opponent had a Black/Blue deck. In the first game, We were even in the beginning to mid game. He had an Edifice of Authority that stalled my creatures from attacking. I was finally able to get in my Heat-Piercer Manticore and sacked a four toughness creature with Honed Khopesh to deal five damage to him. Then I put Honed Khopesh on the Manticore and casted a fling at him. In game two, I saw Edifice of Authority again and stalled out. He also had some cycling synergy with Pitiless Vizier giving it indestructible and Rhonas’s Monument giving +2/+2 to a creature when a creature enters the battlefield. I lost game two. Game three was a complete repeat of game two and I lost.

0-3. Of course my last opponent dropped from the tournament because you can’t win any prizes with a record of 1-3 and it was 4 AM. I stuck around to watch a friend finish his last match. It was really fun to see two 2-1 decks going at it. In the end of that round, my friend was able to win and finished with a 3-1 record. Of course he broke the rules as well with a five color deck, but he had multiple mana fixers.

After getting some sleep, I re-made my deck with the card pool I had. I made a Black/White/Blue deck…all the colors I didn’t play? More removal and a better mana curve. I think this deck would have been a lot better for me. Over all, I just didn’t do very well this time. I don’t even recall having a record with no real wins. I usually average a 2-2 record and an occasional 3-1. I think only playing pre-releases is getting to me and I am getting a bit rusty. Unfortunately for Magic, there are many other games that I want to play as well so it will probably continue to be this way. I enjoyed my time and it is an interesting set. Very nostalgic for me as I see a lot of cards I remember from long ago.

Weiss Schwarz

Weiss what? What the heck does that mean? Well, to me the first thing that I would think about when hearing the word Weiss Schwarz is some sort of German foreign language. But, it is actually the name of a Japanese collectable card game.

I love watching my anime or Japanese cartoons…and Weiss Schwarz is basically a card game about Japanese anime. Awesome! Today, I am going to give a basic review of this game but also some experiences I’ve had as well.

Every few months or so, I’m really not sure on the timeline, a new set is released. Each set is based on a theme such as an anime show, video game or manga. Manga’s are basically Japanese comic books. You will buy cards to create a 50 card deck based on your theme. Some popular themes are Attack on Titan, Sword Art Online, Kill la Kill, KanColle, Disgaea and so on. Since it is collectable, they have their own rarity system of cards. The most rare cards are signed by the artist or voice actor. The game takes about 30-45 minutes to play and play is one on one. Weiss is the Cute side and Schwarz is the fighting side. It really doesn’t matter what side you play.

As you play your deck you are basically putting on a show. When you start the game, everyone is at level zero and the object is to get your opponent to level four first. This was kind of an interesting concept to me as you basically play characters from your theme who are not as strong. You then use your characters to deal soul damage or bring out emotion in the form of cards. For each soul damage you will flip over a card and put this card into your clock area. Every seven clock damage you take, you will go up in level. As you go up in level, your characters get stronger but you are closer to loosing.

Each deck will have exactly eight climax cards in their deck. This is where a lot of the game’s strategy comes in. When a climax card is played, it is a point in the game that is interesting or something will happen. When played, climax cards can help draw cards, put cards into your stock area to bring out more powerful characters, search for characters in your waiting room where characters are defeated or even help deal damage. When dealing damage, if a climax card is revealed it can prevent damage being taken.

I’m not going to lie. I would say this game is pretty similar to Magic. I would say that Magic has more strategy but if you like the themes of sets coming out it is pretty awesome to be able to play some of your favorite characters. I would say that there are two main differences. One is how damage is dealt and the game winning condition. Two are the climax cards.

I first learned about this game While attending Sakura-Con two years ago. This is an anime convention held in Seattle Washington. While walking around the convention, I went into the gaming room and people were playing this game. I remember they were playing a Sword Art Online deck vs a Fairy Tail deck. I love both shows and watched a bit while they were explaining the rules to me. Last year while attending the same convention I went to a learn to play session. After that I went to the expo where they were selling some cards and got a few trial decks. These are pre-constructed decks that are a cheap entry point into the game. I also entered a few constructed tournaments there. They were giving out a lot of promotions and schwag. In one, I got second place with my trial deck. I was hooked.

A few months later I found a local game store that sold this game and found out they held weekly tournaments on Sundays. Sundays are really busy for me. I have multiple weekly events or things that I do and one is on Thursdays and one is on Sundays. Those are my two days that I have multiple things I want to do. Weiss Schwarz fell aside. I found I was always browsing the website or looking at cards to buy every once in a while but never really played again.

This past weekend was Sakura-Con. While looking through the list of things to do, of course I wanted to enter a tournament. On Friday, I found myself walking into the gaming room of Sakura-Con. Two of the guys from last year were there and they remembered my face. I told them I really had not played since last year and was going to run another trial deck. They were grateful enough to lend me one of their pre-constructed decks. Last year I cosplayed or dressed up as Archer from Fate/Stay Night and one of the constructed tournaments I went to I had a Fate/Stay Night trial deck. He let me borrow a Fate/Zero deck.

 

Fate/Zero Spoiler Alert – Sort of

 

There are four colors that you can choose from and this was a three color deck. Green, Yellow and Red. The main two characters were Archer as Gilgamesh and Rider as Alexander the Great. My first opponent was a guy playing a Japanese deck of…hmmm I don’t remember what theme he was using. This game is printed in America in English but more sets are printed in Japan in Japanese. In the first few rounds I kept drawing my level two and three cards an no level zero cards so I couldn’t play them. I got to level one pretty quick. I was able to come back with a few nicely timed climax cards. Then we were both at level three and he was able to heal some damage that I gave him and cancelled a five soul attack that I did with a climax card. He won. I thought it was a pretty close game. I think if I had drawn just a few level zero characters in the beginning it would have been better.

Game two. Well, I played a girl that I played last year in the learn to play series! She told me how much she loved the game and go into it after learning last year. Hey, just like me. She was running a Disgaea deck. I had a much better start then last game but somehow still got to level one first. In this game I was able to keep my characters on the board and use some of their special abilities.This gave me a bit of a card advantage. At the start of your turn you can clock yourself or deal a damage to yourself by discarding a card from your hand to draw two cards. I was doing this every turn and she did not for a turn or two. I won in the end and we decided to play again next year.

Game three. This was a horrible game full of mistakes. The guy I was playing had a Japanese KanColle deck. He was playing the evil side which is KanColle: Fleet in the Deep Blue Sea, I think. On my first turn, I forgot to clock. Card disadvantage right from the start. I think it was fairly even in the begining but then I got to level one. To play a card, you need to have that same card color in your clock or as your level card. When you get to the next level, you choose a card to become your level card and put the rest of your cards in your waiting room or out of play. I chose a red card and I had a hand full of green cards. This went on for two turns. When I got to level two I got a level zero card that I could play. Since he was at level one, all of his characters were stronger then my level zero character. When you play characters you can have up to five characters out in play at one time. There are three characters in the front who attack and two support characters. If your opponent does not have any characters in front of them, the character has more soul and adds more clock. I had one or no characters in play and he had five for most of the game. When I got to level three, I finally had the right colors out but I didn’t have the stock to play any of them since the main way you gain stock is from attacking. I lost horribly, but it was fun to play.

All in all, I had a fun time playing this game again and hopefully I can get in a few games before I go to next Sakura-Con 2018.

Magic: The Gathering

Magic: The Gathering. What can I say about  this game. For me, there is a love/hate relationship with this game. It is the game that first got me into modern board gaming, or card gaming over 20 years ago. It is a game that after 20 years, is still going strong by gaining new players, pushing the boundaries for coming up with new and creative ideas and could arguable be the game that on its own, keeps the board gaming hobby alive.

In Magic, you take on the role of a wizard who is trying to bring your opponents life down to zero. This is the main path to victory but there are others such as getting rid of all their cards, playing certain cards or giving them poison counters. To achieve this goal, you will use your cards to cast spells and summon creatures. You can then use these creatures and command them to attack or defend attacks from your opponent. Each game can take an average time of 10-60 minutes to play. There are also many formats that you can play that range from 2-infiate number of players but it is normal for no more then about six players.

In Magic, there are five different colors that represent the world. White for Plains, Black for Swamps, Red for Mountains, Blue for Islands and Green for Forests. Each color represents a certain type of magic. White is holy, healing and honor. Black is death, destruction and evil. Red is fire, mountain creatures and spells that deal direct damage. Blue is control, sea creatures and creativity. Green is Forest creatures, healing and spells that help your creatures get stronger.

To play, you will choose what cards you want to use in your deck before you face your opponent(s). You may choose to use one color or all the colors in your deck. It is typical that one, two or three colors are in your deck and I would say most decks are two colors. You will then shuffle your deck so it is random and draw seven cards from the top.

To play your spells or creatures you will need to create mana. This typically comes from your lands. Your lands are generally what was listed above such as Plains, Swamps, Mountains, Islands or Forests. Lands are free to play and you will want to put those into your deck. However, you can only play one land a turn so your more powerful creatures and spells will not be able to come out until later in the game. If, for example, you wanted to cast a creature that you had in your hand that cost four mana, you might wait till turn four. Hopefully you were able to play a land on each of your turns. Then you will turn your four lands sidewards. This is called Tap. Tap means to turn a card from right side to sideways indicating that it is being used or spent. In Magic, at the beginning of your turn you will Untap your cards that are tapped so you can use their abilities again. Tapping something that first came out in Magic and since they copyrighted the term, other games have to use a different term.

Creatures are a normal way of reducing your opponent(s) life total down to zero so you will most likely want to put some of those in your deck. After you generate enough mana to cast a creature, they will stay in play until they are destroyed. You will then be able to command your creature to attack one of your opponents or stay and defend so that you will avoid taking damage. Everyone each typically starts out with 20 life points.

This was a basic overview of Magic. I say typically a lot here because it is not always the case. In Magic, rules were created so that cards can be innovative and break these rules. I am grateful for Magic as it got me into world of modern gaming. It is an amazing game that has lots of depth, great art, replay ability and strategy. It is also a game that can be expensive and was the reason I went into what I would call my dark ages of gaming. I’m not going to go into that right now but I would say I like the game.

As I said Magic can be expensive. I know people who have invested thousands of dollars into this game. Since it is collectible, you don’t know what you may get in one booster pack. Some people try to collect one of each card in a set and some try to get four as you can possibly have up to four copies of the same card in your deck. There are also cards that are not printed as much called rares and even mythic rares. There are four sets that come out each year and each set can have around 250 cards. This has been going on for the past 20 years. This means that there are a lot of cards.

Moving on, there are different formats or ways to play Magic. Some popular formats are Commander, Draft, Standard and Sealed. I have played them all and my favorite is Sealed. Sealed can be expensive as you are suppose to purchase new cards every time. To play sealed you will need six booster packs. Each pack cost about $4. You will then create your deck with these cards and adding any amount of land in addition. You will mainly play one on one or duels best two out of three playing someone else who opened the same types of booster packs. I enjoy this format and is the only form of Magic I have been playing recently as it puts everyone on a somewhat level playing field and it is your skill that you use to beat your opponents.

X-Wing

My second favorite game and coming in at a very close second is a miniatures game by Fantasy Flight called X-Wing Miniatures. This is a game based on the smaller dog fighting ship battles of the Star Wars Universe. This is best known to play one on one but you can play more people and can take 30-90 minutes per game. In this game you will take control of one of the three different factions, Rebels, Empire or Scum and Villainy. After choosing a faction, you will choose certain ships to fly such as X-Wings, Y-Wings or Tie Fighters to try and maneuver your ship to be in the best position to take out your opponent.

This game comes with small models or miniatures that are pre-painted. This game that came out in 2012 was a game that sort of broke the mold for tactical miniatures and it was this system, along with the fact that I am a Star Wars fan that got me hook, line and sinker! Before this game, there were basically two other types of movement in miniatures. One is the hex movement where there is a board with little hex shaped spaces that your figure would move and turn on. The other is pretending that you are a carpenter and breaking out the measuring tape using inches as movement.

While not moving on hexes is pretty cool, using the measuring tape is cumbersome and the rules just continue to bog down the fun of the game such as moral, and armor, and penetration and strength.

X-Wing is straight forward using movement templates. But, before you can move you have to plan your move which is where half the fun of the game is. For each separate ship, you have a specific movement dial that only that type of ship can perform. During the first phase of the game, you plan what you are going to do for that turn and possible turns ahead. You will then select a move for each of your ships and place them face down so your opponent can’t see what you are doing. Then each ship will move in pilot skill order from low to high. Darth Vader pilots better then a rookie X-Wing pilot so the rookie would move first so Darth Vader know what they are doing. Then the pilots shoot in pilot skill order from high to low. As we all know, Darth Vader will be able to shoot first, potentially taking out the rookie X-Wing pilot before they have had a chance to shoot.

Combat is determined with attack dice and defense dice. After the dice are rolled, maneuver dials are again selected and continues like this until one side completes the objective. This generally means that the other side is wiped out but there are missions that can be played to change up the play style.

When choosing who is going to be on your team, there are cards and they all have a point cost. You and your opponent will choose how many points will be available to create a list or group of cards to use when you play. A standard game is a 100 point list. You can also play an epic game which is 300 points.

There are so many parts that I love about this game and when they all come together, it is pretty fun. I love not having a board to play on and just using the table. Each game of a 100 point list is played on a 36″x36″ mat or board. But, you can basically just start playing on your dining room table. Then, each model is amazingly detailed and they are even painted and pre-assembled. This means that you don’t have to glue stuff together and you don’t have to paint for them to look, already fantastic out of the box. I also, love creating lists. Trying to figure out what cards will work together with others. Who are the best pilots. Is it Han Solo, Darth Vader, Soontir Fel, Dengar, Manaroo, Coran Horn, Poe Dameron or Jan Ors. There are so many more pilots and more ships that it is just so fun. Then, there are things that you can add on to your ship to make them better such as Engine Upgrade to fly and maneuver better, or add astromechs to your ship such as R2-D2 to make your ship live longer. Do you want to use R2-D2 or do you want to use BB-8? Do you want to put proton torpedoes on your Y-Wing or do you you want a Twin Laser Turret instead. I also like the games weight. No, not the lbs weight but the length of time to play each game and rules complexity. I would say that each game lasts about an hour and the rules are not as complex as a miniatures and not so light that I find it obvious in choices and how to actually play the game. Finally, what I love about this game is that I love Star Wars and this game is oozing Star Wars from start to finish.

Now, there are some downsides to this game. One of the biggest downsides is the cost. I’ll go more into this later. Another downside to this can be your set-up time to play the game. There are a lot of components that you need to play. Before you start, you will need to get them all organized and this can be time consuming. Then, the flip side to list building is, list building. If you don’t want to figure out what cards go together before you even start playing you may not like this game. It is kind of like deck building in cards but not like the mechanic in Dominion. You will need to create your build before you come to play. You will not create your build as you play in this game. In other words, you will need to figure out what cards you are going to use before you start your game. Finally there is dice rolling. Some people don’t like to roll dice because it is too random. There can be a bit of randomness but there is great system that Fantasy Flights came up with to mitigate the dice or get them better in your favor.

There are many board games that you just buy the base game and then you are done. Maybe there is an expansion that comes out ever year or two but that is it. In this game you don’t have to have everything but if you only have some you will want more and it is possible to justify your purchase in getting more. If you buy one starter set you get one X-Wing and two Tie Fighters. At most you can play about a 35 point game with no real choices on how to build your list. This will get you everything you need to play the game and learn the rules but you will not be able to make a 100 point list and you will have to share some components with your partner you are playing with. There are basically three types of ships. Little, Big and Epic. All can be purchased separately. Little ships are about $15-$20, Big ships are about $25-$40 and Epic ships are about $50-$100. I’m not going to tell you what to buy but in my experience, most people play standard which is a 100 point game. To get a standard list, you will need to spend about $100 for one list. This means that if there are two of you, you will each need to spend about $100. Perhaps I will get more into this later in another article.

I would say if you and a friend are getting into this, I would just get one of the starter sets, there are two, and see if you even like the game before you spend more money. Then, you can perhaps slowly buy more ships if you like it. Or, head down to your local friendly gaming store and watch others play or ask to try it out.

I love Star Wars. X-Wing oozes Star Wars so I love X-Wing! I would say that I am more into people combat vs ship combat and there is a game like that but I know more people who play X-Wing and it is a great game design so I’ll take it.

Dominion

My favorite game to play is Dominion. I just wanted to do a brief review of the game and give my thoughts on why I like it so much.

Dominion is a deck building game made for two to four players and can take anywhere from 30 to sixty minutes to play. I have played a five player variant that can be fun or drag on depending on the kingdom cards in play. I think that the two player game is very different and runs best at three to four players.

The object of the game is to have the most victory points at the end of the game. In every game there are certain cards that are the same and some that are different. The green cards are the victory cards. The Estate worth one point, Duchy worth three points and the Province worth six points. The yellow cards are the money which is used to purchase other cards. There is Copper worth one money, Silver worth two money and Gold worth three money. These six cards are the same in every game. In addition, there are ten other cards that are used for each game that are determined randomly, by choice or selection. These cards are called Kingdom Cards. Kingdom cards can be Victory, Money or Action Cards. These Kingdom cards are the heart and soul of Dominion along with its game mechanic, deck building.

What is deck building, you ask? Dominion came out in 2008 and was the original deck builder. A deck builder is essentially using cards that you have to gain more powerful cards, remove weaker cards and have some sort of synergy or card interaction with other cards to create powerful combos. In Dominion, every player will have the same deck of three Estates and seven Copper. These cards are then shuffled and in turn order the active player will draw a card hand of five cards. During your turn you can play one action, have one buy, discard and then draw. The active player may choose to play an action. Generally, on your first and second turn you will not have any action cards to play. Next the active player will reveal their yellow cards or money and add the total up. This player will be able to buy one card. This card that they buy will go into their discard pile. Then they will discard the rest of the cards in their hand. The final step is to draw back up to a hand of five cards. This will be the end of the active players turn and the next player will follow the steps listed. At the end of turn two, the player will need to draw their hand size back up to five. Since they are not able, the active player will shuffle their discard pile so that this step can be accomplished. Shuffling will put all their purchase into their deck or hand. If the player used their two buys in turn one and two to purchase cards, they will now have a deck of 12 cards instead of 10. This process will be repeated, reshuffling their discard pile anytime they need to draw cards and can’t.

The game ends on the turn when there are no more Provinces or three of any combinations of cards of piles are empty. Each kingdom card pile generally has ten kingdom cards per pile unless they are green victory cards which will have twelve.I say generally a lot because this rule can be broken. Anytime a card breaks a basic rule, the card rule takes precedence. For example, kingdom cards will let you draw extra cards, give you more actions to play more kingdom cards on one turn, give you more money to spend during your buy phase or even harm other players hand or draw deck. They may even let you trash cards. When you trash a card, you will take the card out of the deck and put it into a pile that will be out of the deck. This can get rid of your bad cards or get rid of your opponents good cards. At the end of the game, each player will count the number of victory points they have and the player with the most victory points wins!

I love Dominion! One of the reasons I like it so much is because of its replay value. With 25 different cards in the base game, there are a lot of different 10 card combinations you can make. Where this game really shines, in my opinion, is all the expansions there are. I generally play with three to four people and randomize the cards. When randomizing the cards and using a couple boxes, there are a large amount of card combinations that can happen and the interactions between the different cards makes it so cool. It is awesome to try and figure out what the best path to victory is. And what is great, is that everyone starts with the same cards so no one really has an advantage over the other. It comes down to the strategy they use and mitigation of how the cards show up in their draw pile.

What people don’t like about this game is basically how old it is. Because it is older, game theme was not as relevant as it is now. Now theme seems to be very important in games. This game doesn’t really have a theme. The names of the cards are based off of old English times, but there is no tie in to why certain cards do certain things or what each round represents. There is no theme as to why a Smithy lets you draw three cards, a Laboratory lets you draw two cards and gives you another action or Chapel lets you trash up to four cards from your hand. Another reason I think that people don’t like this game is because I think playing it more or being the math guy gives you an advantage. There are cards that work better together and doing certain things in a certain order will work out in your benefit. If you have not played the game or are newer, it is harder for you to win. This can be mitigated by playing with someone of your skill level so you don’t get crushed, pick up strategies as you loose for a few games or play with someone who doesn’t taunt you when they win will get over this barrier.

There are many games that have tried to create a better deck builder, generally with a better theme. For me, this beats all that I have played. Ascension, Marvel Legendary, Thunderstone Advanced, Trains, Street Fighter and Naruto Shippuden. I would say that Star Realms or Hero Realms are a better two player game. If I wanted to play a two player game I would probably rather play that but overall, I have more fun playing Dominion and I think it is a better game. I think Thundersone Advanced come pretty close but I don’t think there are as many options and I just like Dominion better.

Thanks for listening. If you have never heard of Dominion and like card games I suggest giving this a try. If you like Dominion, I am thinking about writing some basic strategy articles in future posts.

The Beginning

My name is Jason Chun and I wanted to create a blog about my board gaming experiences. Even though I may have limited experiences compared to others in the hobby due to the fact that I enjoy doing may things, one of the things I enjoy doing is playing board games and I wanted to share some of my thoughts and experiences with you through the form of writing and images. Through this blog I would like to share with you my joys and frustrations, thoughts, opinions and the hours I spend board gaming. What I enjoy about board games are the strategies involved and how mechanisms and components work together to create an idea, along with the bonds that you can create with your other fellow gamers. I would hope that reading this may encourage you to enter the world of what I would consider an exciting hobby or just entertain your mind as you see what unfolds.

Before I begin, I would first like to share my background in board gaming to show my previous experiences why I might make certain choices. I grew up playing Monopoly, Clue, Risk, Stratego, Chess and Checkers. These board games are your standard American board games that lots of people know. While I didn’t play a lot, I knew how to play them and they were fun. I remember playing clue one Halloween night with my parents, Aunty and Uncle. On one birthday my parents got me Hero Quest. I played a few quest with my mom being the DM but it was too complicated and soon fell off for other things.

My parents liked playing cards and we played a lot of Cribbage and Trumps. During high school in my ninth grade year, I got introduced to Magic: The Gathering. I was hooked! For the next four years I played lots of Magic. This introduced me to the Customizeable Card Game boom a few years later and got into Original Netrunner, BattleTech, OverPower, Pokemon, Middle Earth and many others. In my Senior year of high school, I played Axis and Allies a few times, was doing Battle Tech Miniatures, Dungeons and Dragons, Rifts and Star Wars Role Playing Game.

I then moved away for college and basically fell out of the gaming hobby. I played Magic here and there, but never really played many board games. I started to get back into Cribbage, started to play a lot of Texas Hold Em Poker, pool and darts. This is what I would consider my dark ages of board games. But, it was a time when I was introduced to what is now considered the modern age of board games. I would visit some of my original gaming group that I kept in contact with on occasion and got introduced to Munchkin, Guillotine and Talisman.

In 2012 I found myself wanting to go into a board gaming cafe that opened up in my local area. I entered a Magic 2012 Core Pre-Release Sealed Tournament and it was really fun. I found out they had a board game night and decided to try it out. I don’t remember what I played then but that was really fun too. I went back occasionally for the next few years. During this later time I was enticed to play this odd card game. It looked fun. I played it once and I was hooked! I think my extensive Magic background was what drew me to this game. Some board game mechanic called deck building. Dominion now remains one of my favorite games of all time! In 2014 I was at this same local gaming store and saw something really cool on the table. They were little Star Wars ships. I was a star wars fanatic growing up. What is this game where you can move an X-Wing, tie fighters, A-Wings, B-Wings and the Falcon around the board? Did you have to paint them. The answer was no! They came pre-painted. WHAT! Another one of my favorite games, X-Wing Miniatures.

After this, I started going back to this board game cafe on a more regular basis playing this new age of games. While I don’t play board games as much as others because I have so many hobbies, I would say I play more games then others. I also seem to tend to play the same games over and over and over again so I don’t get to play all the new hotness all the time. There are many games that are fairly popular that I have not played. I am willing to try any game but tend to drift toward family to mid weight games lasting an hourish or so with strategy. I would also like to dive deeper into games that seem interesting and would rather play a game multiple times rather then play lots of games just once.

Thanks for listening and hope you come back for more of what I think about board games and how they can expand the mind.