Thursday, September 6, 2012

Kaijudo Review Part Two

As promised, this is the second part of my Kaijudo review. Today I will talk about how to play the game, and discuss the different aspects of the cards themselves. As before, please feel free to ask questions or make comments!



Sunday, August 26, 2012

Kaijudo Review Part One

Kaijudo. You may have heard this word recently, and wondered exactly what it was. Perhaps you saw an episode on the HUB channel, or your children have asked you for the cards, or you listened to a commercial for it online. Or, just maybe, you're one of the many gamers who are eagerly awaiting an opportunity to prove your skills at one of our tournaments starting in September.

Regardless of which category you fit into, I'm sure that this review will help to answer some questions about this exciting new CCG from Wizards of the Coast. I'll divide it into two parts; Part One will detail all the current releases for Kaijudo, whereas Part Two will be about the gameplay, and card types.


Wednesday, July 11, 2012

When You Play The Game of Dice, You Crit or You Die



"Geek Chic" is everywhere these days.  From t-shirts to movies, "geeky" stuff has taken the world by storm.  From zombies to comics to swords and sorcery, it's what people are talking about...and most, if not all, of it has either a direct root in gaming or has been turned into a popular game of its own.

Take a look at "Game of Thrones".  Here's a wildly popular TV show, based on some award-winning books written by George R.R. Martin.  One of his early books in 1977 contained the inspiration for the classic D&D monster known as the githyanki. Now, Game of Thrones has a Living Card Game, a board game (now in its second edition), two different roleplaying games, and a video game of its very own.


As he relates in this podcast interview, Martin got his start in the 50's playing chess and monopoly. After he got out of college, he made his living as a chess tournament director.  In the 80's, he started playing Call of Cthulhu, Paranoia, the Morrow Project, and other RPGs...and then he ran Superworld, a superhero RPG.  He'd play with them 'til 4AM, getting hugely addicted to the game--and then, with the people he played with, he went on to write the Wild Cards superhero series of novels based on the characters and stories in his game.

So, the next time you run into someone who looks down on gamers, let them know that without them, we wouldn't have a Game of Thrones.  Do you know any other famous folks who are gamers?  Let us know!

Monday, July 9, 2012

Dragon's Den Player of the Year for Magic Update

Now that we have made it half way through the year, I thought we should post a quick summary of the top 8 players in each of the four different categories, as well as some statistics about the number of players we have seen for the different events we have run.  Also, this Friday I'll be giving small gift to the Top player for each category. 

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Just as a side note, I've been asked about why we run so many different events so I thought I would throw a quick answer here.  I like to run a Free and a Paid event at the same time on Friday nights so that the competitive players can play the tougher decks and the casual players don't feel like they are getting crushed all the time.  It is a work in progress as we still get many players in the Free event that could play in the Paid, but the hope is that the new players and more casual players can build up to playing more competitive over time.

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Free Standard has seen 235 unique players.

FREE Standard 7/4/2012
Rank Name Points Matches
1 Evan Odden 267 167
2 Dave Oppenheimer 221 100
3 Carl Naumann 204 109
4 John Franczak 199 105
5 Mike Cox 198 111
6 Scott Fish 183 105
7 Will Shost 163 67
8 Niko Peone 152 73


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Legacy has seen 58 unique players.

Legacy 7/4/2012
Rank Name Points Matches
1 Paul Lake 123 52
2 Rich Cali 105 56
3 James Rynkiewicz 98 42
4 Casey Madrick 89 50
5 Steve Carpenter 88 40
6 Frank Kick 88 57
7 Janene Andersen 76 53
8 Darryl Moss 64 49

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Competitive Standard has seen 82 unique players.

Competitive Standard 7/4/2012
Rank Name Points Matches
1 Doug Kimball 70 34
2 Chris Brellochs 58 31
3 Kevin Jones 51 25
4 Steve Carpenter 51 25
5 Alex Sherman 51 31
6 Lyon Kressner 44 25
7 Alex Kobes 40 19
8 Mica Buchanan 36 30

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Limited has seen 227 unique players.


Limited 7/4/2012
Rank Name Points Matches
1 Paul Lake 85 34
2 Will Shost 61 32
3 Mike Cox 53 28
4 Alex Sherman 51 23
5 Doug Kimball 49 20
6 James Rynkiewicz 48 23
7 Jonah Acosta 39 19
8 Mica Buchanan 36 22

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We are excited to see how the rest of the year plays out as many of the Top 8 players have changed in the past several months.  We will be posting some more information about what the players are getting for winning as well as changes to the Top 8 as the year goes on.  If you have not played yet, don't despair We have had several player climb the ranks by playing every week in the different events.  If you want to see what we have to offer each week check out our calendar of events!

Sean "Striderlotr" Banks

Friday, June 29, 2012

Opening Gambit: Gamer Nation


We live in a nation of gamers.  From Angry Birds to Call of Duty to World of Warcraft, it's highly unlikely that you'll find anyone under the age of 40 who doesn't play at least one game that, 20 years ago, would have placed them squarely in the realm of the 'nerd' or 'geek'.  We're not even talking about 'geek' in the carefree "geek credibility" sense those words are used in nowadays. We're talking about the 'living in mom's basement, beaten up for your lunch money' sense of the word.


But we're out of the basement now.  There are hundreds of blogs and thousands of pages on the Internet dedicated to gaming.  We've even got our own TV channels now, not to mention 'geek chic' dominating the culture of internet memes and popular culture. Economically, in 1996, the video game industry had $2.6 billion in sales revenue. In 2011, that number is $24.75 billion.

It's pretty much certain that the people making those video games got their start with tabletop games of one sort or another. Even those who didn't built on such concepts as 'hit points', 'mana', 'resource management', 'min-maxing', and all those other terms that tabletop gamers are intimately familiar with.

As mainstream video games have grown, so have tabletop games and the gamers who play them.  This continuing series of posts will take a look at both areas: how games have evolved, and perhaps more importantly, how the people who play them have evolved.  We hope you find this as fascinating as we do!