A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (Second Edition)

A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (Second Edition)

In A Game of Thrones: The Card Game, the warring factions of Westeros await your command, inviting you to engage in a life-or-death struggle. In every game, you select devious plots and challenge your opponents on the field of battle, through back alley intrigue, and in the political arena. Whether you play a against a single opponent, in a game known as a joust, or engage in a battle of three or more players, called a melee, winning challenges against your opponents is the way to victory.

Your ultimate goal in A Game of Thrones: The Card Game is to gain influence over the greatest seat of power in Westeros: the Iron Throne! To achieve this goal, you must call upon iconic characters, such as Tywin Lannister, Robb Stark, Stannis Baratheon, Daenerys Targaryen, Euron Crow’s Eye, The Red Viper, and dozens of others. You must maneuver the members of your House and your allies in a constant battle to gain power. The first player to claim fifteen power wins!

In the game, each player has two decks: a draw deck and a plot deck. Your draw deck contains the tactical elements of your struggle, including the characters, locations, attachments, and events that you call upon in your struggle to claim the Iron Throne. You can command characters from throughout A Song of Ice and Fire, and you can march forth from the icy walls of Winterfell or muster your armies around Casterly Rock. You may even equip your characters with storied weapons, such as the Valyrian steel blades Ice or Widow’s Wail. The draw deck holds these powerful characters, locations, attachments, and events. This deck is randomly shuffled and players draw their hands from this deck.

At the start of each round, each player simultaneously chooses and reveals one of the plot cards from their individual seven-card plot decks. Your plot for a round determines how much gold you can spend on cards, which player starts with initiative, and how powerful your challenges are. Your plot also bears a reserve value, which determines how many cards you can keep in your hand past the end of the round. Plots may also offer powerful effects that can trigger when the plots are revealed or persist to shape the entire game round. You may scorch the earth with a deadly wildfire assault, or call upon all players to support the faith of the Seven.

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Impressions: A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (2nd Edition)

Impressions: A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (2nd Edition)

Quinns: In a couple of weeks the 2nd edition of Fantasy Flight’s Game of Thrones: The Card Game, with its direwolves, chunky coins and endless pictures of sultry nobles, will be released. A lot of people are very excited, and with good reason- the 1st edition amassed a cult following, and the 2nd edition looks incredibly sharp.

You won’t be getting our review just yet. As a Living Card Game, this box encourages players to collect monthly expansions and build their own decks, and we want to have conviction when we suggest you get involved (or not). But I can offer some early impressions and comparisons to the LCGs that this site has gone on the record as recommending, namely the bizarre Doomtown and the sublime Netrunner (on the subject, Paul will have a review of Plaid Hat’s new card game Ashes in the next few weeks).

So let’s begin. How do you win the Game of Thrones?

I’m thrilled to say that it’s by being an appropriately sneaky f***.

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Dropzone Commander

Dropzone Commander 2 Player Starter Set

Hawk Wargames is pleased to announce the brand new Dropzone Commander 2 Player Starter Set! It is designed to be one of the most complete wargaming starter sets ever released. Containing two sizable starter forces, the full sized 1.1 DZC Core Rulebook, plenty of accessories as well as a starter battlefield with a set of card scenery, the only other things a new player will need are glue and paints! This boxed set makes a fantastic entry point into the Dropzone Commander universe as well as a great way for existing players to add to the core of their forces.

All the 10mm scale miniatures in this box set are injection moulded in plastic. These crisply moulded models feature extremely fine detail, matching their resin kits in quality.

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Miniatures Game Review: Dropzone Commander

Miniatures Game Review: Dropzone Commander

Eric: If you’re like me, some days you want something small and cozy, an intimate exploration of a few characters. Other days, you want something big and brassy.

Some days, though, you just want to flatten a building with your opponent’s soldiers still inside it.

Today I’m talking about the sweeping Dropzone Commander by Hawk Wargames. DzC (as we’ll abbreviate it for time and acronyminal sexiness) is a large-scale science fiction game set in the 27th century. As you all know, in the 25th century humanity was driven from its core worlds, including Earth, by the invasion of the parasitic Scourge. Now, 160 years later, it is time to TAKE THEM BACK!

DzC is a game about combined arms – the necessity of diverse units fulfilling specialized roles. On a given turn, you will have squads of infantry searching high rises for precious objectives and engaging in running close combats through their halls. You will field tanks and walkers unleashing massive firepower into each other and those high rises, causing them to collapse. Your aircraft will zip across the whole table at supersonic speeds while blowing up said tanks and bombing high rises as well (in the 27th century you really don’t want to be a footsoldier) and your anti-air firepower will hunt down these aircraft.

And you will have dropships – lots of dropships. We’ll come back to them in a minute.

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Games News! 17/08/15

Bruges

Paul: They come unseen.

Quinns: …what?

Paul: They come unseen!

Quinns: I’m a bit concerned.

Paul: They Come Unseen! It’s a new hidden movement game designed by an actual Royal Navy submariner! Andrew Benford was a real Commander, just like Commander Riker.

You can’t knock Royal Navy submarines, Quinns.

Quinns: I wasn–

Paul: While everyone else was posturing with their toys in the cold war, the RN was the only service that ever actually used a nuclear submarine to sink an enemy warship. This man comes from one heck of a pedigree, AND his game’s asymmetric! You like those.

Quinns: Wait a second. I’ve checked his profile on BoardGameGeek and he’s definitely not a Will Riker.

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The 2015 Gen Con Special!

The 2015 Gen Con Special!

What do board games, miniatures games, dexterity games, dinosaurs, dancing, Spider-Man, hot cosplay, leather kilts, hugs, remorse, death-defying climbs, arguments, soapy baths, vampires, fragile cities, farkles, conferences, boffing, children and blindfolds all have in common?

Why, they’re all featured in our GEN CON SPECIAL EPISODE, of course!

Exposure to this special may create a burning desire for more Gen Con Specials. If this occurs, go and watch last year’s Gen Con Special again.

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Cacao

Cacao

Cacao is a quick game of placing workers in a jungle to harvest cocoa, mine gold and claim temples, all the while outmanoeuvring other players for the limited resources found in this colourful climate.

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Review: Cacao

Review: Cacao

Paul: Do you like jungles? How do you feel about jungles? I think I would be a disaster in a jungle. Coming from the mild and unremarkable environs of suburban Hampshire, where any deviation from the overcast and temperate ambience causes wonderment and confusion amongst the locals, I would be helpless. It seems like everything in the jungle wants to kill or poison you. Everything is massive. The trees are massive. The cats are massive. The ants are massive.

But when I saw Cacao, I saw a safe jungle that I could enjoy, a jungle free of carnivorous plants, raging thunderstorms and toxic frogs. Yes, I will happily admit that the first thing that attracted me to the game was how Carcassonne-like it seemed. It has meeples. It has square tiles you lay down as you map out a patchwork world. How gentle! I thought. How soothing. There would be no rumble in the jungle here, just a… while with some tiles?

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The Burning Wheel

The Burning Wheel Gold

Burning Wheel is an award-winning fantasy roleplaying game in which players take on the roles of vibrant, dynamic characters whose very beliefs propel the story forward. Starting with a simple D6 dice pool mechanic, this game intuitively builds on its core concepts. The rules detail dramatic systems for task resolution, advancement, trials of belief, tests of nerve, searing social conflict, dangerous sorcery, miraculous faith, and brutal, gut-wrenching martial combat.

Behind the dice, your decisions drive the game’s systems. Their choices tangibly affect every outcome—from glorious victory to ignominious defeat. But there are consequences to every decision, ramifications to every action. The choices you make close off one path, while opening another. This philosophy underpins the character creation system for Burning Wheel. And it’s not just a matter of pushing a point here, or nudging a number there: As soon as a player decides to make a character in Burning Wheel, he is confronted with decisions about the character’s past, ethics, beliefs, scars, goals and dreams. Questions whose answers affect not only the player’s character, but the shape of the story as a whole. Burning Wheel is presented in an easy-to-read writing style, with plenty of insight and advice from the designer. If you’re not careful, Burning Wheel will change the way you play roleplaying games. The Gold Edition combines both the Revised Edition’s Burning Wheel and Character Burner. It has been reorganized for clarity and updated by the author.

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RPG Review: The Burning Wheel

RPG Review: The Burning Wheel

Lately I’ve had Burning Wheel on my mind.

Some friends recently started up a streamed campaign with Roll20, and I tuned in to watch all 4 hours of their character creation. I joked around in chat, explained bits of the rules and mechanics to people who asked, and generally had a great time. But I haven’t been watching them actually play. I’ve stayed away partially because the timing doesn’t quite work for me, partially because one of my roommates is in the game and I can hear him talking in real time and then again 10 seconds later via Twitch’s time delay, but, most of all, because I am way too jealous.

Burning Wheel is one of those games I’ve played just enough to fall in love with, but not nearly enough to be sick of. Or even remotely satisfied.

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