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ComiXology and IDW Bringing a Night of Dungeons & Dragons to NYC

Posted 11/22/11 2:00 pm EST by in Comic Books, Hobby Gaming, Wizards of the Coast


The mead can wait. NYC-local geeks should be celebrating America's drinking holiday on Wednesday night with a healthy dose of Dungeons & Dragons. In celebration of IDW's release of all 13 issues of their D&D book on ComiXology, the digital distributor will be holding a night of roleplaying at Jim Hanley’s Universe on 33rd Street.

The festivities will be overseen by Tavis Allison, veteran DM and founder of Adventuring Parties, LLC. Tavis's company specializes in hosting roleplaying-focused bachelor parties, birthday parties, or just about any event you can think of where you want dice involved, so expect a grand night of gaming.

Players need not have any experience with D&D to enjoy the event, but hopeful participants are asked to RSVP on the event's Facebook page if they want to guarantee a spot at the table. As an added bonus, if you show up with a D&D comic already loaded on your digital device of choice, you'll score a free ComiXology t-shirt.

Related Posts:
Game Review: D&D Adventures Explores The Legend of Drizzt
Warning: There Be Dragons in This Box

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It's the End of the World, Let's Play Munchkin

Posted 11/22/11 10:30 am EST by in Hobby Gaming


There are plenty of months left before the Mayan calendar ends, but it's never too early to start planning your "end of the world" parties. What better way to go out than with a card game on the table? Munchkin Apocalypse, the latest full-blown Munchkin expansion, will be coming your way some time in the latter half of next year.

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Game Review: Conquest of Planet Earth is Landing on a Table Near You

Posted 11/18/11 10:10 am EST by in Hobby Gaming, Reviews


The bad guys always win when players control warring alien races seeking world domination

If you're a fan of pulp horror board games, then the name Flying Frog Productions is already a familiar one. After breaking in with Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game, Flying Frog has gone on to sell many other games with the company's iconic art style. Best known for its use of real actors and makeup for striking photos on their game cards, Conquest of Planet Earth: The Space Alien Game is a change of pace for Flying Frog as the game uses original illustrations, not photos. But can a Flying Frog game without the signature style live up to its predecessors? Read on for the full review.

Just the Facts:

Players: 1-4
Playing Time: 60 minutes
Age: 12 to adult
Publisher: Flying Frog Productions
MSRP: $49.99
Release: February 2011

The Gameplay:

Conquest of Planet Earth: The Space Alien Game is about one thing: crushing humans under your slimy tentacle, claw, thumb, or other alien appendage. Each play in Conquest takes on the role of a unique alien race, each with its own special powers, intelligence and strength ratings, and a stock of four UFO models.

Over the course of about 60 minutes, players will manage their moves (regulated by the use of command point chips) to spread out across the board and take over territories. Conquering spaces will earn the alien race terror points, of which 8 are required to win the game.

A starting three-player setup. Re-configurable boards give a different setup for every player count.

It's not as simple as mowing down a few human towns, though. Aliens won't know what space they're about to conquer until they moment after they commit. A location card is drawn from the deck which reveals just how many terror points the space is worth, and what level of human resistance must be overcome to earn them. Many spaces are worthless, putting the aliens on a chase across the board for high-value conquests as they jockey among other races for the 8 point goal.

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Magic: The Gathering to Crown a New World Champion This Weekend

Posted 11/17/11 4:30 pm EST by in Hobby Gaming, Magic: The Gathering, Wizards of the Coast


Magic Worlds is returning to its 2004 home, seen here.

Magic Worlds is travelling back to the USA, with San Francisco serving as host city for the first time since 2004. Nearly 600 professional players will converge on Fort Mason Center this weekend, hailing from 50 different countries and earning their qualifying status in a number of ways: prior Worlds placement, national championships, regional DCI rankings, and more.

By the conclusion of Sunday's events, Magic: The Gathering players will be awarded with over a quarter of a million dollars in prize money, and one competitor will walk away with the title of World Champion. If history serves them well, they'll go on to manage a hedge fund and be the focus of a puzzling diatribe about online dating.

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Days of Wonder Shakes Up the App Store With $0.99 Ticket to Ride Pocket

Posted 11/16/11 3:17 pm EST by in Apps, Hobby Gaming


Pretty soon you'll be laying track just about wherever you go

Just yesterday, a freshly-discounted Scribblenuats Remix stormed the App Store and de-throned the venerable Angry Birds. Now a new challenger has entered the mix with a strong fan base and similar under-a-buck pricing. Days of Wonder has launched an iPhone version of their hit board game Ticket to Ride, which has already sold over 2 million physical copies and had its iPad version named Apple's Game of the Week. Now the only remaining question is how much mainstream success this hobby gaming hit can have as it attempt to climb the App Store ladder.

Ticket to Ride Pocket includes the standard USA map and three game modes: solo, pass-and-play multiplayer, and local wifi multiplayer. Separate leaderboards for the 2-3 and 4-5 player modes, as well as 20 achievements, are included to spur score-based competition among your friends.

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Upper Deck to Launch New Marvel Slingers Game

Posted 11/16/11 10:29 am EST by in Hobby Gaming, Marvel


Known mostly for its trading card products, Upper Deck has ventured into gaming products from time to time. Their offerings have been light since getting out of the World of Warcraft TCG in early 2010, but now they company is making another push with Slingers, a Marvel-themed collectible game that uses a unique yo-yo dexterity mechanic to create what Upper Deck is marketing as "the ultimate game of skill and strategy." For those already wondering, there is no connection to the similarly-titled late 90's Marvel comic book.

Upper Deck's Slingers uses an array of Marvel character medallions laid out on the floor as its play area, and a yo-yo-like Slinger device is used to pick these medallions up for points using an "invisible energy shield" which we can only imagine is marketing speak for "magnets." In total, there are 84 different medallions broken down with the following rarity distribution: 30 common, 30 uncommon, 12 rare, 12 super rare.

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Game Review: 'Dungeons and Dragons Adventures' Explores the Legend of Drizzt

Posted 11/11/11 11:43 am EST by in Hobby Gaming, Reviews, Wizards of the Coast


Pull up a chair for what Dungeons & Dragons does best: toss you and your friends into a dungeon, where you must hack and slash your way towards whatever cruel objective the DM has set. The D&D Adventures series of board games provides a cut-the-crap take on dungeon crawling through which players can get a quick 60-minute D&D fix. Marking the third entry in a series that has so far provided some of the best gameplay in the genre, does The Legend of Drizzt pack enough twists and turns to warrant a trilogy? Read on for the full review.

Just the Facts:

Players: 1-8
Playing Time: 60 minutes
Age: 12 to adult
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
MSRP: $64.95
Release: October 18, 2011

The Gameplay:

The Legend of Drizzt is a scenario-based dungeon crawling board game. The book included contains numerous different scenes to play out, affording players with plenty of replay value as each scenario provides its own take on the game, detailing a different starting setup and dictating some series of rules and objectives to complete. Read More...

Phil Reed of Steve Jackson Games Talks Munchkin and More

Posted 11/9/11 12:05 pm EST by in Hobby Gaming, Interviews, New York Comic Con


The biggest news out of an otherwise gaming-light New York Comic Con this year was when Steve Jackson Games announced their agreement to license the recent hit Image Comics book, Skullkickers. Naturally, we had to catch up with company COO Phil Reed, who was in attendance, to get his thoughts. Check out our video highlights below to find out what's new with Steve Jackson Games.

Phil Reed on Munchkin licensing

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Assassin's Creed... the Card Game?

Posted 11/8/11 12:02 pm EST by in Apps, Hobby Gaming, Video Games


Prepare to get a dose of strategic planning in your Assassin's Creed

The worlds of video gaming and hobby gaming don't collide very often, but when they do, prepare yourself for some rather interesting results. Ubisoft has thrown video game journalists for a loop by announcing Assassin's Creed Recollection, a digital card game for iOS. With a 10 hour campaign.

Little is known about the gameplay outside of this blurb from the official Ubisoft press release:

Assassin's Creed Recollection lets fans discover and amass a wide variety of artwork created for the Assassin’s Creed franchise. Players also will be able to compete in political battles in a real-time strategy game with key characters and locations from the Assassin’s Creed franchise.

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Game Review: Wrapping Our Tentacles Around Elder Sign

Posted 11/4/11 11:40 am EST by in Hobby Gaming, Reviews


Cthulhu, Yog-Soggoth, Shub-Niggurath, and friends are all here. The Ancient Ones have come to drive you mad, but don't worry, you'll have strength in numbers when playing this co-operative board game. It's everyone versus the Ancient One in this new title from Fantasy Flight Games that aims to take the gameplay of their mega-popular epic Arkham Horror and condense it into a quick-playing dice roller. Will Elder Sign feel like the perfect appetizer or leave you hungry for the real meal? Read on for the full review to find out.

Just the Facts:

Players: 1-8
Playing Time: 60-120 minutes
Age: 13 to adult
Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games
MSRP: $34.95
Release: September 12, 2011

The Gameplay:

At it's core, Elder Sign is a series of smaller push-your-luck dice games. In the quest to prevent the arrival of an Ancient One, players can choose one of six or more different adventures on their turn. For every adventure chosen, they must roll the dice shown on the associated adventure card.

The eight dice of Elder Sign. You'll be rolling these a lot, it is a dice game after all.

It's not as simple as just rolling and praying, though. The dice requirements are listed on separate rows, which represent individual tasks. After every roll of the dice, the player can fill only one row, and must re-roll the rest before filling an additional task. If a player ever fails to roll enough symbols to complete a task, they'll have to remove one die and try again, or give up on that adventure completely. Read More...

Wizards of the Coast Continues to Shake Up Magic: The Gathering Organized Play

Posted 11/3/11 3:00 pm EST by in Hobby Gaming, Magic: The Gathering, Wizards of the Coast


Live spectators will become a thing of the past with invitation-only World Championship events

If you haven't been to a Magic: The Gathering event lately, then you've got a lot to catch up on. Wizards of the Coast has been rolling out a series of changes to their organized play programs, and the shakeups continued yesterday with major revisions to the Worlds tournament, National Championships, and the Pro Players Club.

For the newly re-scoped 2012 Pro Tour World Championship, Wizards has announced the 16-player invitee list:

  • 2011 World Champion
  • 2011 Magic Online Champion (determined at the 2011 Magic Online Championship held at Magic Weekend San Francisco)
  • Winners of the previous three Pro Tours (Philadelphia, Dark Ascension in Honolulu, and the second Pro Tour in 2012). Pro Tour Philadelphia champion Samuele Estratti is the first invitee to the 2012 World Championship.
  • The top-ranked player from each geo-region (Asia Pacific, Europe, Japan, Latin America, and North America) in the Planeswalker Points 2012 Professional Total who are not yet invited based on the above criteria.
  • The top-ranked players in the worldwide Planeswalker Points 2012 Professional Total who are not yet invited based on the above criteria sufficient to bring the total number of invited players to the 2012 World Championship to sixteen.

Notably absent are National Championship winners. While the tournaments won't be going away, Wizards felt that with the growing world-wide popularity of Magic, country-specific tournaments as World Championship feeders were a one-size-fits-all solution that no longer worked. Instead, National Championships will now grant players an 8x Planeswalker Point bonus for their participation, with the hopes that players can qualify for the Pro Tour based on regional points rankings.

Stay tuned for more changes as well. The Pro Players Club, which grants members tournament invitations, comped travel, and appearance fees, will be going away after 2012. The new system yet to be announced, but it is already known that it will lean heavily on Planeswalker Points.

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Warning: There Be Dragons in This Box

Posted 11/2/11 2:29 pm EST by in Hobby Gaming, Wizards of the Coast



Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures didn't die, they just faded away. Wizards of the Coast is cracking open the vault to release a new collection of D&D namesake dragon miniatures just in time for the holiday season.

As a set of five, this limited-edition box takes three previously seen sculpts (red, blue, and black dragons) and combines them with two brand new models (green and white dragons) to capture the full span of D&D's most iconic beasts.

Check out more photos from this collector's set unboxing after the break:

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Game Review: Blowing The Lid Off Of Eruption

Posted 10/28/11 2:00 pm EST by in Hobby Gaming


Eruption is a game where players take turns controlling the flow of lava from an erupting volcano. They'll want to steer it towards opponent's villages while building walls to protect their own. Be the player with the least amount of damage to your village at game's end and you'll walk away the victor.

While the game draws some comparisons to the popular Carcassonne because of its tile-laying mechanic, there's much more substance in a game like Eruption, which I'll explain in the gameplay section below. I'll be honest though, Eruption holds a special appeal for me simply because I have an unfulfilled 80's-child desire to play Fireball Island again. Let's see what happens when theme nostalgia collides with a love for modern game mechanics.

Just the Facts:

Players: 2-6
Playing Time: 45 minutes
Age: 10 to adult
Publisher: Stratus Games
MSRP: $44.95
Release: October 2011

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HeroClix Announces New Star Trek Tactics Game

Posted 10/28/11 11:30 am EST by in Hobby Gaming


Some early renderings of the Star Trek HeroClix: Tactics models

WizKids is preparing to boldly take its HeroClix lineup where no game has gone before. In February 2012, the HeroClix system will branch out with a new game, Star Trek HeroClix: Tactics, that brings space ship combat to your table with a 100% HeroClix-compatible rules set.

While that will bring down the learning curve for fans already familiar with the system, the Tactics tagline on this set is meant to differentiate it from Modern and Golden Age HeroClix figures, which will not be mixed together for purposes of tournament play. This represents a new branch in the HeroClix lineup, with Star Trek getting its own standalone game.

The set includes over 20 models and will be sold in single-figure boosters or a 4-ship booster (pictured below).

The decision to merge HeroClix and Star Wars must have been a no-brainer for WizKids, as both properties have been massive successes for the company as of late. The revival of HeroClix brand was more popular than anyone expected, to the point that recent sets have run into product shortages. As for Star Trek, the company first exercised the rights this summer with Star Trek: Expeditions and Star Trek: Fleet Captains, both of which have been critically praised.

Related Posts:
WizKids Previews Superman HeroClix Set
Review: Star Trek Expeditions Board Game
WizKids Gaining Footholds with Two Home Grown Gaming Franchises

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The Euro Games are Coming: Recapping Germany's Essen Spiel Convention

Posted 10/27/11 12:19 pm EST by in Hobby Gaming


If you look at the average American family's board game shelf, you'll see Monopoly, Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit, and maybe Life. It might as well be "the land that time forgot," because that selection is awfully stale by modern standards. Board games never stopped evolving over in Europe, though, and are a considerably more popular activity across the pond as a result.  Every year, European gamers converge on Essen, Germany for the International Spieltage (offhand referred to as the Essen Spiel, with spiel being the German word for "play") to see what new games will be hitting store shelves.

That's not to say that America doesn't have its own A-list conventions to tout: Gen Con and the Origins Game Fair attract huge crowds as well. Yet while American conventions embrace all aspects of hobby gaming, including RPGs and miniatures combat games, the Spiel focuses solely on board and card games. Still, 150,000 gamers attend, putting even geek mecca, the San Diego Comic Con, in the shadow of Spiel.

Which way is the bathroom again?

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