My blogging schedule has been irregular lately due to attending Gen Con in Indianapolis last weekend. Gen Con was one of the best conventions I have ever attended and I plan to write about my experience soon. Hopefully, my blog posts will be on a regular schedule since I don’t have any more out-of-town vacations or conventions to go to. I took this Monday off from work because I figured I would need a day to recover from the convention. Besides catching up on housework, I decided to finish playing Heavy Rain, a game I started almost two months ago, but couldn’t find time to finish. Heavy Rain had a mysterious story, but it’s a dated game in terms of graphics and the controls.

Heavy Rain is a psychological thriller launched by game developer Quantic Dream. The game centralizes on four playable characters: Ethan, a father suffering from PTSD, Scott Shelby a PI, Norman Jayden, an FBI agent and Madison, a photojournalist. All of the characters are wrapped up in solving the mystery of the “Origami Killer”. The Origami Killer kidnaps boys and forces the parents to perform trials to see how much they love their kids. If the parents fail their trials, they won’t be able to save their son from drowning in a sewer grate. Various chapters are told by the characters as they uncover little by little the secret to the Origami Killer’s identity.

The story itself is rather creepy. There were a couple chapters with jump scares, but it was far and few in between. I hate playing video games with jump scares because I can’t focus on the game. I wasn’t expecting how the story was going to play out which allowed me to feel surprised by the reveal of the killer’s identity. As the chapters continue, the chance of killing one of the playable characters is high. On my first play-through, one of my characters died as that tends to happen in these types of games.

The number one deterrent for wanting to replay this game is the controls. The controls feel unnatural. To move each of the characters, you have to hold down the right trigger for the entire movement. I would much rather use a joystick to move my character because it’s more seamless with the controller. Another slightly annoying factor with the controls is all the QTE. QTE or Quick Time Events is when a series of buttons comes up in rapid succession meaning the player has to hit the buttons on the controller in response. I don’t mind QTE sequences, but the buttons during some chapters felt really weird. There were times when the QTE was trying to direct me to move my controller in a certain way and I wasn’t comprehending what I was supposed to do. As a result, there were certain QTEs I had to replay more than others and that became obnoxious.

Heavy Rain is one of those games that’s dated, but it inspired countless other games since then. I respect Heavy Rain as being a dramatic and well-made game at the time of its release. I struggle with wanting to replay this game again. I purchased Heavy Rain in a two-pack with Beyond Two Souls. I plan to play Beyond Two Souls despite Heavy Rain’s terrible control settings. It’s worth it to play Heavy Rain as the story is worth experiencing.

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.