One way I play more TTRPGs is to join various Facebook groups. There’s a local group that I’m a part of and I can occasionally find one-shot games to join. Last month I drove to the Source Comics & Games to partake in a small campaign utilizing the Star Frontiers rule book. Having never played Star Frontiers before, I would recommend it for any one-shot campaign as I had a blast.

Combine 80’s sci-fi action films with DnD and that’s how I would describe Star Frontiers. Star Frontiers is set in the center of a spiral galaxy like the Milky Way. In this setting, ships can jump to the “Void” allowing ships to travel to various planets. The basic game takes place in the “Frontier Sector” where four races have come together to form the United Planetary Federation which is similar to Star Trek’s United Federation of Planets. After acknowledging the background of the Star Frontier, this is where the role-playing session begins.

The four races to pick from were Humans, Dralasites, Vrusk, and Yazirian. I picked Dralasite which reminds me of the adipose in David Tennant’s run of Doctor Who. The Dralasites have a voice box, so in the actual DnD session, I used my “alien” voice. It helped to make the character sound more real. The Dralasites can have as many limbs equal to their dexterity divided by 10, rounded up. I didn’t roll high on my dexterity, so I only had four limbs, but it would have been cool if I had so many limbs that I looked like a squishy octopus.

Our campaign started in a bar where we saved a fellow Yazarian from some bounty hunters. Our team decided to help this Yazarian locate the treasure in this pyramid statue. One of my favorite parts of our session was when we were fighting these poisonous spiders. Once we defeated them, I touched the poison on the wall. The DM advised me not to do that, but I did anyway. I rolled a critical success and became “immune” to the poison. I created a vaccine I could use for the other players. The DM was shocked.

Our one-shot lasted about four hours. The time completely flew by as I became immersed in the 80s space nostalgia of Star Frontiers. If you’re looking for a completely new system, I would recommend this one because who doesn’t love 80’s sci-fi films?

It’s been a rough start for me this week trying to get back to reality after attending Twin Cities Pride all last weekend. I had a blast walking around and taking pictures. I decided to spend my Sunday after Pride writing about this new card game I tried out with friends titled Cultists & Cthulhu. If you read any of my board game reviews, you shouldn’t be surprised how much I enjoy any game based on H.P. Lovecraft’s stories. I found this game at Con of the North, a gaming convention I attended in February. This would be a perfect game to pack for a convention, or to a brewery.

Cultists & Cthulhu is a card game where players are trying to roll dice to complete rituals. On a single turn players will draw cards from the purple deck. These cards will either be cultists or minus cards which impact another player’s dice roll. Cultists are the most important card in the game because to complete a ritual, you need a cultist in play. This is where the game becomes tricky because you can steal cultists from other players. This is how I lost the game because my friend stole my cultist, so I couldn’t complete the rituals.

Once a cultist is in play, the player has to roll 4’s, 5’s, or 6’s to receive ritual tokens to be placed on a ritual card. The twist on this is if you roll at least three 1s and 2s in one roll, the cultist loses their sanity and has to be discarded. Fortunately, I rolled extremely well, so this never happened to me. My friend, however, had to discard two of her cultists in one game. I like the dice roll aspect of the game because it makes every game different.

Winning the game includes completing a ritual that earns points. Each ritual card has a book icon on the bottom left. This is the amount of ritual tokens needed to complete a ritual. The Cthulhu symbol on the right of the card is the amount of points received once the ritual has been completed. The first player to have twenty-one points worth of completed rituals wins the game.

Cultists & Cthulhu is a sinister card game that’s perfect for any Lovecraftian fan. Prolific Games, the publisher behind Cultists & Cthulhu, is a local MN-based board game company. It gives me a sense of pride to share my love for a board game crafted in my state. To purchase Cultists & Cthulhu, head to Prolific Games online store where you can find the many fabulous card games to add to your game collection.

On Sunday, I drove to Rochester, MN to participate in the Magic the Gathering: Modern Horizons Pre-Release. This will be the third pre-release I have attended since rejuvenating my interest in Magic: The Gathering. I’m still an amateur player, however, playing in these events has given me the confidence to keep playing the game. I had a blast playing with the new cards, but I also wanted to share some general tips for drafting in Magic that one of my friends sent me.

Modern is a format in Magic where decks are built with at least sixty cards versus standard Magic where decks have forty cards. Me and two other friends participated in this pre-release except it wasn’t like a typical pre-release I attended, it was a draft. Drafting in Magic can be difficult. Drafting is where everyone opens a booster pack and picks only one card. The pack gets passed to the next player and they pick a card from the pack. This means I need to pick cards from what’s passed to me without knowing what cards were picked by other players. I chose to make a blue/white deck with flying creatures.

My deck wasn’t that great. I found the other players in our group had more “aggressive” decks. This means their decks worked faster than mine. I only won one game out of twelve games (as I said, I’m still an amateur). After this experience, my friend sent me an article about what to look for when drafting. It’s titled BREAD which stands for:

B – Bombs. These are the super powerful cards. This could mean creatures that can’t be removed from the game easily or instants that can remove many creatures at once. It’s a card that you can’t pass up, so pick this card first in a draft.

R – Removal. These are cards that remove creatures or artifacts. If a deck doesn’t have removal, it’s useless. Creatures make up a deck, but the deck needs to be defensive.

E – Evasion! Choosing creatures that are difficult to block. This includes finding abilities such as flying, deathtouch, unblockable or I find menace to be an obnoxious ability. My deck was based around flying creatures, but the deck failed. That’s because of . .  . 

A – Aggro. This is why my deck failed. Aggro refers to filling up a mana curve. This means you want to cast a creature card every turn if able. This means choosing creatures that are cheap to cast. My flyers were great creatures, but often required at least 3 sometimes even 5 mana to cast. This means by the time I could cast a creature, my opponent had at least three or four creatures out at once. This cost me almost all of my games. 

D- Duds! These are the cards no one wants. I was playing a blue/white flying deck, but I still found cards that were green or black which didn’t work with my color scheme. This happens to everyone at a draft where you’re forced to take cards no one wants. These cards can be sorted out when the deck building begins. 

Even though my deck sucked, I liked the cards I drafted. I pulled a couple “Phantom Ninja” which cost three mana. Their special ability is they can’t be blocked. This is useful because anytime I attack with them, my opponent can’t do anything about them. I also liked my “Wall of One Thousand Cuts.” It’s a wall that provides a blocking creature for my deck. I also like the artwork on “Oneirophage.” This is a squid illusion in which every time I draw a card, I put a +1 / +1 counter on Oneirophage. This squid could become powerful as my turns progressed.

As I reflect on the pre-release, I learned valuable deck-building skills. Deck building is the hardest thing for me to grasp in Magic: The Gathering. Once I have a successful deck, I’m good to go. I’m trying to play more Magic because, in August, I’m going to Gen Con. If I can win at least one game in Gen Con, I would be thrilled.

Playing video games will always be a hobby of mine, but the time I have to play them has drastically decreased. At my full-time job, I often have to stay late past the hours I’m supposed to. I drive home from work where I cook dinner, work out and then once I get an ounce of free time, I want to go to bed to get the sleep my body needs. Weekends have become busier with me and my fiancé attempting to plan a wedding. I won’t ever abandon gaming as a hobby, but I have accepted that I don’t have as much time for it as I used to. I still want to keep up with latest releases and I wanted to share with you about which video games I’m highly anticipating.

Jedi Fallen Order – November 15th 2019

The trailer dropped at Star Wars Celebration in Chicago. I remember playing Star Wars Battlefront in 2003 with one of my childhood friends. I have avoided the new Star Wars Battlefront games thanks to EA’s policies of having to pay to unlock items. Since Jedi: Fallen Order is a single player-based game, I will enjoy this a lot more.

Jedi: Fallen Order is set after Episode III when Order 66 was initiated. Not all the Jedi’s were murdered, but many of them were forced to go into hiding. Cal was training to be a Jedi, but now works as a scrapper on the planet, Bracca. After an unfortunate incident where one of his fellow workers falls off a ledge, Cal uses some of The Force to save him. This exposes Cal and he’s forced to flee from the army of Stormtroopers sent to finish him.

This game has a lot of potential because of its departure from Star Wars Battlefront which pissed off a lot of gaming fans. Jedi: Fallen Order is released on November 15th on Playstation 4, Xbox One and PC. It’s also being released three days after The Mandalorian premieres on Disney+

Man of Medan – August 30th 2019

During the Polar Vortex in February (where the temperatures dropped to -30), I was playing Until Dawn. Until Dawn is a horror game which is hilarious to me since I’m not a huge fan of horror games to begin with. This had the perfect level of jump scares combined with a great setting and fun characters to play as. Immediately after completing Until Dawn, I went to follow the developer, Supermassive Games, on Twitter. This is where I discovered Man of Medan, the latest game Supermassive Games had been working on.

Man of Medan is based partially on true events. The Ourang Medan was a ship in the 1940s where the entire crew perished under suspicious circumstances. The main story is centered on five characters who are investigating an old 1940s shipwreck. The characters are Julie, Conrad, Alex, Brad and Fliss. Man of Medan will be similar to Until Dawn as certain decisions made within the game will impact the final ending. After making a crucial decision in the game, you can’t reload saves. This means that you’re stuck with the decision you made.

Man of Medan releases on August 30th, 2019. I highly recommend playing Until Dawn before the release of Man of Medan 

That’s all the games I’m anticipating. It helps when my fiancé is subscribed to Game Informer because then I can keep up to date with video games every month. I’m trying to use my off days from work to catch up on my video game back log, so that when these games release, I’m ready to devote all my time to them.

I’m the first to admit that I’m not a Star Trek fan. That’s not to say I don’t like Star Trek, I have never sat down and watched an episode. I now have access to Hulu thanks to my subscription to Spotify, and I have considered watching the original series or Star Trek: Next Generation. When my uncle bought Star Trek: Ascendancy, I wasn’t sure if this game would be for me because of my limited Star Trek knowledge. I’m astonished because I thought this game was massively addicting.

Star Trek: Ascendancy was published by GaleForce Nine which is a company also producing the Doctor Who board game which is another game I deeply enjoyed. Star Trek: Ascendancy allows the player to choose out of four factions to travel deep space with. These include: the Federation, Romulans, Klingons, and the Cardassians (which I believe is pronounced similarly to the Kardashians?). I picked the Romulans as everyone in my gaming group had wanted to play the other factions. The objective is to build up your fleet and take over another faction or acquire five Ascendancy tokens.

From the above picture, this is towards the middle of the game. To win the game, it’s crucial to explore different planets. They can net resources for the faction which can be utilized to build or upgrade ships. This allows for better success in intergalactic space battles.

Each faction starts with a card that gives them an added benefit to the game. I had “the Romulan cloaking device” which allowed me to strike first in space battles. I never used the device because my main premise was to explore other planets. Another aspect of the game is offering “trade agreements”. These agreements are established between planets to avoid conflict and gather resources. Trade agreements are violated when you betray the faction and attack them instead. In our game, I had a trade agreement with my brother. I wholeheartedly believe that if we had time to finish our game, he would have stabbed me in the back and attacked me.

I will admit, that turn orders are extremely time-consuming. As a player, my attention wavered because I was waiting for my turn. Turns are split into a “build” and a “command” phase. Building ships and formulating upgrades always happens first. Once you spend your resources, you flip the turn card over and command your ships across the galaxy. As my gaming group started to learn the rules, turns weren’t as lengthy, but it felt like a round took forever.

Ultimately, I did enjoy this game and I’m not a “Trekkie”. I’m inspired to watch more Star Trek, so I can understand where all the references come from. I have heard nothing but good things about Star Trek: Next Generation. I think that might be my new TV-watching project after finishing up How To Get Away With Murder. Until then, I’ll keep up my galactic conquest with the Romulans.

This has officially become the longest Dungeons & Dragons campaign I have ever been in. My character Althaea is level #5 now and has more spells she’s learned through the course of her adventures. Our last session was one of the most entertaining sessions I have ever witnessed. If you can’t already tell by the title of this post, one of the characters has some fun with the Wraith we fought which I will go into detail shortly.

To begin the session, our group heads to Lake Constance to fetch some of the remaining magical artifacts. We were going to head there in the prior session, but we were attacked by Frost Giants. As we carefully walk on the frozen lake, we see a Wraith pausing over a hole in the ice. We investigate the Wraith and see it has been injured and unfortunately succumbs to its injury. One of our characters has a spell where she can breathe underwater, so she dives down to collect a dark arrow and a pair of gauntlets. We also uncover a map from a corpse nearby which has been frozen solid in ice. This map leads us to certain locations where other magical artifacts can be found.

Althaea decides we should investigate the Dark Tower. As we climb the stairs we see a light Wraith guarding the light artifacts. One character named Cupo decides to yell “GOOD MORNING, HOW’S YOUR DAY??” at it. I burst out laughing because of the way he randomly yells this and his facial expression as he says it. The Wraith immediately sent a bolt of light at Cupo who took 13 damage. Since wraiths are ghost-like creatures, it was immune to physical weapons. It was also resistant to poison, fire, ice, and thunder magic. This happened to be what most of my spell slots were.

Muglupus and Cupo weren’t able to fight the Wraith since they weren’t spellcasters. This is where things got weird. Cupo decides if he can’t fight the Wraith, he will distract it. First, Cupo starts asking him generic questions like, “SERIOUSLY THOUGH HOW IS YOUR DAY?”. Cupo starts rolling high enough that the Wraith is apparently distracted. Next, Cupo undresses and starts “shimmying” at the Wraith. If that wasn’t enough, Cupo completely undresses and starts “dancing” which turns into twerking in front of the Wraith. Cupo rolled a critical success, which led to the Wraith gliding up to Cupo and licking him!

Eventually, Althaea and Maeva defeated the Wraith by casting various spells at it even though it might have been resistant. Althaea dealt it 20 damage with Maeva dealing it 25 damage. Our characters turn to see Cupo desperately trying to dress himself as we walk out of the Dark Tower with our items. As our characters decide our next move, we make our way back to a village we saved back in session #2. I bought more health potions since I had plenty of physical weapons. Our group looked at the map we gathered from the frozen man and saw that the mountain range was our next place to go. As we walk to the mountains we see a group of monks who have been slaughtered. This ends our session.

This was an exciting session for me due to being able to fight the Wraith. It was entertaining seeing Cupo trying to distract this Wraith. It’s not as funny typing it out in a blog post as it was actually being there and seeing him say these things to the Wraith. I’m looking forward to our next session where we will be in the mountains collecting more magical artifacts. Thank you so much for reading all these recaps, hopefully, you’re enjoying them as much as I am.

Remember how I’m involved in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign? Our campaign titled Dark Ages is still active, I fell behind in writing the recap posts for each session. There’s a lot to summarize since our group of characters now befriended a pack of wolves intending to kill us. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, I did write recap posts from our first two acts which I will link here:  Dark Ages Act #1 & Dark Ages Act 2. Let me recap how we added a pack of wolves to our gaming group.

Act #3 Lots of Wolves

Our group is staying at our friend Rose’s house after we killed the innkeeper because of his human experiments on the townsfolk. Through our exploration, we know that there are bandits within the area. We could either stay and defend Rose in case she is attacked by bandits or explore this monastery with arcane artifacts. We chose to adventure to the monastery.

As we set up camp due to poor weather, we heard wolves howling in the distance. Muglupus (my boyfriend’s character) howls to the wolves which probably wasn’t smart to do. The wolves show up because a dwarf howling can be heard from miles away. It was Muglupus’s idea to try and befriend the wolves. Everyone in our group rolled terribly. Muglupus however, rolled well. As long as we feed our wolves at regular intervals, we can keep them. There were five wolves including the alpha. Each of our characters got to name a wolf. This is what our group decided:

Alphie *is the alpha* named by Muglupus. 68 HP.

Liam Neeson 11 HP

Mrs. Waffles < this one is mine. 11 HP

Jacob – 12 HP

Debra 9 HP

We also killed a group of bandits with help from our wolf pack. The wolves allow us to get to the monastery ahead of schedule which marks the end of this session.

As a side note, what makes this session important is how my boyfriend was crucial to the story. As Muglupus, he rolled well, so our characters could befriend the wolves. My boyfriend was so excited about it, I thought it was cute.

Act #4 Fighting with Frost Giants

As our characters pulled up to the monastery, we were greeted by monks. They told us a story of these artifact tablets representing light and dark magic. If one of these tablets is destroyed, it puts the world out of balance as far as magic takes over. The light tablet is located at the bottom of Lake Constance farther north than the monastery. Our characters have decided to find the tablets and either destroy them or give them to the monks for safekeeping.

As we attempt to go to Lake Constance, our group is surrounded by Frost Giants. Unlike our previous session, we couldn’t befriend them and we were forced to fight for our lives. Althaea didn’t do a whole lot with them but was able to deal eight damage to one with the firebolt spell. Unfortunately, one of the Frost Giants was able to severely wound Mrs. Waffles, my wolf. I had to use my last red vial to heal her, otherwise she would have perished. Our group was lucky because these Frost Giants had up to 68 HP. After looting their corpses, we see a fire in the general area where Rose’s cottage was.

Our group goes to investigate and it seems Rose’s cottage has been burned to the ground. Deep in the ground seems to be footprints from her cottage leading north. As we circle back to the monastery (without the light tablet from Lake Constance), we reunite with Rose as she was able to make it back to the monastery. In our next session, we will try to secure the light tablet and establish whether or not we will keep the tablets safe or give them to the monks for safekeeping

Recapping these past two sessions, Althaea didn’t have a huge role in either of them. However, it’s been exciting to see my boyfriend become more involved with the campaign. I’m not sure if he would ever seek out Dungeons & Dragons without me involved, but it’s fun for me to see him getting excited about the game. Our next session is next weekend and I’m curious to see what our Dungeon Master has planned.

TeeTurtle has some of the cutest t-shirts. Recently, TeeTurtle has delved into tabletop gaming by creating their Unstable Unicorns card game. During one of our DnD sessions, a friend brought over the main game with the expansions. Unstable Unicorns is easy to learn and super adorable.

Unstable Unicorns is a game of collecting unicorns for your stable. Every player starts with one baby unicorn. Throughout the game, you can play cards in your hand which could be adult Unicorns, upgrade cards to help you gain Unicorns, or downgrade cards to prevent other players from gaining unicorns. There are also “Neigh” cards that prevent a player from completing their action. The person who collects seven unicorns in their stable first will win the game.

The main base game of Unstable Unicorns is perfect for all ages, however, some expansions are NSFW. When I say NSFW, I truly mean NSFW. I find these cards hilarious, but they aren’t for everyone.

This game is great for anyone who’s a casual gamer and likes cute things. I liked how quick the game was considering most of my board games I own take hours to play. I highly recommend buying the main game for your next game night.

I’m behind in my blog posts considering Con of the North happened close to a month ago. Con of the North is located in the Northwest suburbs of the Twin Cities. It had been on my radar for years, but I couldn’t afford the gas to drive home when I was in college. This year, I invited a friend to attend with me, so I didn’t have to go alone.

Con of the North was extremely well organized. When I registered for Con of the North, I could sign up for games, role-playing sessions, and other gaming events. When I signed up for an event, it showed my gaming schedule on the website, so I could see what blocks of time I had left. If there was a full event, you could be added to their waiting list in case someone had to drop out last minute.

On Friday, I drove to the hotel to pick up my badge. Along with a badge, I got a Con of the North die, all of my tickets to the events I pre-signed up for, and a packet for the convention including a map of the hotel. The first event I signed up for was to learn how to play the Batman Miniatures game published by Knight Models. Miniatures is a type of tabletop game that has fascinated me, but I’m terrible at it. I find it challenging to predict what an opponent will do next and then try and place my miniatures in a compromising position to the opponent’s objective. I did lose to my opponent, but the game was easier to learn than I thought.

On Saturday, me and a friend had signed up to play several games of Magic: The Gathering EDH. These games were low stakes which was good because I’m a pretty casual Magic player and most of my decks aren’t competitive.

On Sunday, me and my friend split up because she wanted to play a massive game of Settlers of Catan while I went to try RunePunk, a steampunk-themed adventure using the Savage Worlds game system. Imagine Steampunk mixed with references from children’s stories.. that’s how I would best describe this.

Con of the North is a convention I would attend next year if I’m free. The organization, the convenient location, and the welcoming community made this experience a positive one. It was a great way to spend a dull weekend in February.