View From the Bushes

I came home from last week's vacation with a pile of work waiting for me and a major deadline on Monday. As is often the case with me and deadlines, it slipped to Tuesday morning, but it's done now, so hopefully I can get back into the blogging scene. Of course I wonder what the point is since I'm sure that in the 10 days between my last entry and the one before that, that I lost my remaining reader (though that may have more to do with me missing my last two "friendship" payments). Actually the point today is that I was introduced to a couple of new games at GTS and I'm excited to talk about them.

The first game is called "Dreamblade" and it's being released by Wizards of the Coast. The idea is to take the visual and tactical satisfaction one gets from miniatures (as oppossed to cards) and attach it to a card game (or rather a collectible card game) type rule-set. See, most miniatures games are designed to be played on some kind of terrain map, whether it be a blasted post-apocolyptic cityscape, an underground dungeon or a grassy field with scattered hills. As a result of that, these miniature games are not as amenable to tournament play, because the field itself is too variable. Since Dreamblade is set in the dreamscape (as you might guess from the title) the playing field is simple, it looks like this:

Before the dash:
P = Initial summoning portal
S = Summoning Row
# = Number of points the square is worth

The number after the dash is which player it applies to, player 1, player 2 or 'A'll players.

Whoever controls the most points at the end of each turn gets a victory point; the first person with 6 victory points wins the game. If both players have creatures in a square then neither of them gets the points (or both of them get the points, if you prefer). And it doesn't matter how many more points you have, you still only get one victory point per round. The first round both players start at the portal, after that they can summon creatures to any space on the summoning row which contains one of your creatures in that same column. What that basically means is that the highest scoring squares on the grid are the closest to your opponents reinforcements. It's also obvious that if you try and spread out and take too much territory that it makes it easier for your opponent to pick off your individual figures.

The game gets its name from an interesting mechanic associated with the dice. Each creature has a power which represents the number of dice you get to roll. The dice are six sided, two of the faces count as misses, three of the faces have numbers, 1,2 and 3 and the final face has a blade. A blade roll can be used to activate the creature's special ability, which can range from additional damage to forcing another creature to move, and anything in between.

In any event, that's all for now. The discussion of the other game will have to wait until tomorrow. Till then...

Trapped in a petty pace
Ross