West Point Historic Games Weekend

This past weekend, The West Point Museum held the first West Point Historic Games Weekend.  Focused on playing historic games of all types, ranging from board games, to miniature games, to card games; each game had history involved in it. The Dragon's Den was excited to be a part of this first event and helped to run demo games both days. The games that were being demoed at the event were:

1. Flames of War
2. Command and Colors Ancients
3. Battles of Napoleon: The Eagle and the Lion
4. Wings of War
5. Pocket Battles: Celts vs Romans

One of the highlights at the event was a 2 day long game of Axis Allies! The big twist was that it was played blind! This means that the teams that play each side (Axis or Allies) don't know what the other side is doing until they either enter a new territory or do a recon mission.  They set up the complete game using 1940 Pacific and 1940 Europe, make 2 very large game boards. Each team had 3 members controlling different countries involved in the war. This method of play allowed for some fantastic tactics and plans that you could never do if you can see the whole board in play.

If you are curious about how the blind Axis and Allies is played, or what it looks like to have both of the games together, check our calendar in December as we are planning a day to give this a try! We are also looking forward to attending next year and making the event even bigger.

Castle Ravenloft Board Game

Castle Ravenloft

This Boardgame is crammed to the top with stuff! 41 interlocking dungeon tiles, 92 plastic minis (yes they are the D&D minis, just unpainted), 5 different heroes, an adventure book, 200 cards, 192 tokens, and a D20! Play as a heroic adventurer, explore, overcome hazards, find treasure, and face Lord Strahd! Published by Wizards of the Coast for 1-5 players.

Below is a convention chart showing which prepainted D&D miniature (DDM) is represented in the game which an unpainted game piece. The chart offers the name of the DDM mini, and it's set.

Minis to Painted DDM Minis
Wolf = Warg, Harbringer
Spider =  Death Jump spider, Savage Encounter
Ghoul = Gravetouched Ghoul, Unhallowed
Zombie = Terror Wight, War Drums
Rat Swarm = Rat Swarm, Savage Encounters
Skeleton = Warrior Skeleton, Archfiends
Kobold = Kobold Soldier, Angelfire
Blazing Skeleton = Blazing Skeleton, Against the Giants
Gargoyle = Earth Element Gargoyle, Blood War
Zombie Dragon = Zombie White Dragon, Deathknell
Werewolf = Werewolf, Against the Giants
Kobold Sorcerer = Kobold Sorcerer, Aberrations
Dracolich = Dracolich, Dragonqueen

Also, WotC has now posted a new set of adventures for the game. Click on the adventures link in the previous sentence to check out the 2 new adventures: Zombie Guards of Castle Ravenloft, and Search for the Sunsword.

Magic at the Dragon's Den

Many people have asked us about our events at the Dragon's Den... specifically Magic Events. We post our schedule of events on our web-page: EVENTS

But to answer the question here, so players can know and come play, here is a general break down of our events.

Monday 6:00pm: Standard Constructed FREE
     This event is Standard and follows the rules for Standard constructed events. We hand out prizes to the top players as well as random door prizes. DCI Foil Cards are the prizes for this event, plus other foil promos that are left over.

Monday 6:00pm: Draft $15.00
      This event will include 3 of the most recent booster packs. We hand out prizes to the top players as well as random door prizes. DCI Foil Cards tend to be extra prizes for this event, plus other foil promos that are left over. The main prize for this event is a prize pool of 2 packs per player split between top players.

Tuesday 6:00pm: Casual
     We don't have a set game for this night, but we have players who come in and play alternate formats of Magic. Planechase, Archenemies, and EDH are three of the different formats that get played this night, but other versions could be played as well.

Friday 3:00pm: FNM Draft $15.00
      This event will include 3 of the most recent booster packs. We hand out prizes to the top players as well as random door prizes. DCI Foil Cards and FNM cards are the prizes for this event, plus other foil promos that are left over. The main prize for this event is a prize pool of 2 packs per player split between top players

Friday 3:00pm: FNM Standard FREE

     This event is Standard and follows the rules for Standard constructed events. We hand out prizes to the top players as well as random door prizes. DCI Foil Cards and FNM cards are the prizes for this event, plus other foil promos that are left over.

Friday 6:00pm: FNM Standard FREE

     This event is Standard and follows the rules for Standard constructed events. We hand out prizes to the top players as well as random door prizes. DCI Foil Cards and FNM cards are the prizes for this event, plus other foil promos that are left over.

Friday 6:00pm: FNM Standard $10.00 Event

     This event is Standard and follows the rules for Standard constructed events. We hand out prizes to the top players as well as random door prizes. DCI Foil Cards and FNM cards are the prizes for this event, plus other foil promos that are left over.The main prize for this event is a prize pool of 3 packs per player split among the top players.

Saturday 5:00pm: Extended FREE
      This event is Extended and follows the rules for Extended constructed events. We hand out prizes to the top players as well as random door prizes. DCI Foil Cards are the prizes for this event, plus other foil promos that are left over.

If you have never stopped in for one of our Magic events, they are a treat.  we have many fantastic players who are not only good players, but fun players. We have been averaging 40 or more players at our 6:00pm FNMs, and we get over 60 players for our Prerelease events!

If you are looking to learn to play Magic, stop in and ask; almost every employee in the store now either plays or collects the game. For more information about the game, try the Wizards of the Coast web site.

D&D Essentials Game Day: Sunderpeak Temple

To celebrate the release of D&D Essentials and the new D&D Red Box, Wizards of the Coast (WotC) went old school and really brought some great memories back for an old time RPGer. Here is a break down of some of the interesting RETRO things they did to make this such an interesting event.

1. A Classic look on the cover of the adventure: The fighter taking on the Red Dragon! This is such an iconic image that players who played in the 80s will remember this image and think fondly of Keep on the Borderlands... which interestingly enough is the next Wednesday Night Encounters.
2. The Goldenrod character sheets reminded me of the old school blank character sheets that you could buy to make your PC look official. The images they used for the characters all looked very retro as well.
3. The "hand-drawn" map was classic! I loved the triangles that were not all the way closed at the bottom, it really gave it a feel of being drawn that day for the players. The one thing that would have really made it was if the maps on the inside cover had been printed in blue not black.

Now for how it played out! We ran several sections for this event. Some went better then others! We had one DM who almost TPKed in the first encounter! It was rough, but the players managed to survive... only to die 2 encounters later. They had fun and played it out to the bitter end. Another group made it to the final fight and found out that the Dragon was not as tough as the Orcs and Rage Drakes! The fighters both beat the Dragon on initiative and used their daily... then action pointed!

Just as a reminder, we run many sessions of D&D here at the Den. Come in on a Wednesday night to play D&D Encounters. This week will be the last session for the Dark Sun Encounter: Fury of the Wastewalker. Next week we start the new Encounter Keep on the Borderlands!