Just Frickin' Cool, Part 2

I mentioned Events in yesterday's entry. Let me say once again how cool it was to open my email one day and see a link to the following image:



Granted, I misunderstood at first. I thought that Keith Parkinson actually had something to do with this. I really thought that some company was creating a new expansion for sale in Europe. (It had a revival over there. I'm jealous!)

No, it's only a fan collaboration to make a new fan-generated Seven Seas expansion set. Not only do they want my permission to use the Event cards (and some of my other .sig cards) but they wanted my opinion on the card design!

What was I going to say? It was a beautiful site to behold, and the fact that something of mine was going to be associated with Parkinson's artwork just put it over the top! I was an ecstatic fanboy!

It was a great moment.

Guardians CCG Blog

Allow me to interrupt my Creature Class Critiques to plug another Guardians CCG weblog. This is an easy one to remember: it's http://guardiansccg.blogspot.com/.

This is more than just a reciprocal link. Jackalware has an active Guardians blog, and he has referenced me and my Event cards a few times.

By the way, you may have noticed that the Events link goes to philbarfly's site, and not my own site. Like I've mentioned before: I'm migrating all that material to this site here. In the meantime, check out phil's site. It's a treasure trove of stuff.


The Event cards will be coming to this blog soon.

Speaking of Event cards, the banner of Jackalware's blog is a new card called Gypsy Caravan and the artwork is based on the artwork for the homebrew Event cards. He's planning another 99 cards and designating the set with the symbol for pi.

By the way, I had nothing to do with those designs other than writing the text and rules. I was absolutely amazed the first time someone showed me the prototype for the Ice Age card.

Creature Class Critique #13: Animals

Hot on the heels of the Wanderers come the Animals, another miscellaneous grouping of creatures with little common bonds between them. Just as the residents of your local zoo vary in size and ability, so do those that only have the classification Animal.

There are a dozen animals, excluding the Barnyard Animals and the Giant Penguin (which isn't even a Mortal, nor does it have a class). And what may seem odd for common animals, most of them are bribable.

And speaking of Bribery, that's one common thread for the Animals:

The Babe Hound gives bonuses if your opponent is bribable by Babes.
The Pig Dog lets you bribe by Babes and then re-use them. The Major
Party Animal makes all Beer-bribale creatures sit out the fight. Party Animal is immune to any creature that can be bribed. And the Minx, if she goes up against a Babe-bribable creature, returns to your Combat Hand (nice against Ogre and Pirate Decks!).

The Party Animal is the weakest of the bunch. At only one point (and four stacking), it isn't going to beat anything, but it's the equivalent of a re-usable Idiot -- so long as it goes up against a bribable creature. Great against Pirate, Knight, Giant, Ogre, Fairy and Swamp/Clamjack decks; not so good against Slag Beast, Angel and Undead. So-so versus Spirit and Demon/Devil Decks.

Major Party Animal requires some care: it affects you, too. But it can give you an easy victory over Giant shields, along with Disciples of Entropy, Phil the Bar Fly/Amazing Cider-Man combos, etc.

Babe Hound and Pig Dog can work together. If they're both in play, your creatures get a bonus against Babes bribable creatures. If it doesn't look like that will be enough to beat your opponent, bribe him with Babes and get them back. Then, on top of that, add the standard bearer that allows you to alter your opponent bribery icon (Brom's Dem Bones 15) -- now, if it's bribable, you can bribe it with Babes for a stone and get the Babes back to do it again.

Vitality Boosters:

Along with Babe Hound, there are two other Vitality boosters. Dead Cats, the only External Animal because it's also Undead, gives all your creatures a boost, but only if it dies. That shouldn't be too tough to arrange. And Jalupee Lobo gives each of your creatures a boost if you can guess the size of your opponent's creature before he reveals it. This card joins the Idiot Fiend, jumping into my deck at the first sign of a Tookle/Fairy deck. (Does anyone else think that Jalupee was a counter card to help prevent being overrun
by all those little guys?)

The Sales Weasel also gets a boost if your opponent doesn't spend a stone. I consider it an honorary Varmit, because it's as annoying as Varmits are. Actually, the Varmits would work well with these boosters: consider Jalupee and Pesky Varmit -- you can guess small or large and have a 2 of 3 chance at a bonus, or guess medium and have a 1 or 3 shot and a BIG bonus.

Another animal that goes well against Fairies and Undead is Fangis the Hunter. If you have the Henchman class (I don't), that's a misprint -- he's an Animal. Fangis gets the equivalent of an off-color bonus against Externals instead of Elementals. He's a Vampire Hunters with a much wider effect.

The Other Three:

Bruce the Goose: Actually, he's the best of the lot, but he didn't fit in with the others, so I waited to mention him. Bruce forces your opponent to lose! Your opponent *must* play the card with the greatest vitality that will lose to your creature. However, your opponent is free to choose between multiple creatures with the same Vitality -- and if he doesn't have any creatures that will lose, he's free to play whatever he wants. Team this guy with a Lawyer, but watch out if he
only has 3 Mist Veilers in his hand.

Gopher: The Gopher, if he survives combat (doesn't have to win), flips
your opponent's terrain card over. Now there aren't too many terrain-based decks out there, but enough decks use benefit from them. Giant decks use Mountains; Pirate decks use Rivers and Lakes; Fairies
use Woods. Flip it over and the extra bonus goes away. Flip the Woods over and you can use ranged-attacks! Flip over the Iron Crag Mountain Brewery and you can bribe with Beer! (And Tiger Baloo will get a bonus if played after the Gopher.)

Pink Flamingoes: Everything is immune to them. Your opponent will need a nice big shield to kill them and your Shield and take the space. Best when paired with an Idiot or Goldthwaite Jumper or a Scamp Jones and a couple of little creatures (DON'T use Rye Beaner!) to draw fire so that it will take a few turns for your opponent to kill it and claim the space. Watch out for Major Party Animals!

So what do we have here? The Major Party Animal takes out all the Beer bribable creatures (even in that Iron Crag Mountain Brewery). You play Dead Cats and they get squished, giving a bonus to your Gopher (and add a Varmit Archer to help him win or a Djinn if necessary) so that he survives and you flip over the Brewery -- or better yet, flip over the SS House of Babes. Now you're free to play your Pig Dog and Babes card. Or just play your Minx over and over (again, use that Brom's Dem Bones 15) and let your animals crouch and then pounce and tear to pieces.

Summary: Animals are not a cohesive lot. The herd mentality is definitely missing. But grouped together, they have what it takes to take on several types of decks -- particularly a Tookle/Fairy deck. One-shot decks lack versatility, but they can be good for that one shot if you expect to see that same old Tookle deck again. Undead decks fair better, but still have to watch out. And Pirate and Giant decks are positively crippled, with Knights and Ogres fairing only a little better.

I was laughing when I starting this critique. It doesn't seem so funny anymore.

Someone try this and let me know. This could be that one unexpected deck that does some damage just because it's so unexpected.

C. J. Burke
Keeper of the Flame

Playing 'Possum: Spell, Up 8
Play as Command Card. All Animals (excluding Barnyard Animals), if used as ranged-attacks gain, +1 to their ranged attack, and if used as secondary attackers, gain +3 to their Vitality.

Creature Class Critique #12: Wanderers

Like Outlaws, Wanderers have no class identity. They just are. It's a miscellaneous grouping of characters that didn't fit in anywhere else. As such, they do they're best work individually, helping other decks, rather than working together in a deck of their own.

Seventeen Wanderers were introduced starting with Dagger Isle and ending in Necropolis Park. I'll briefly detail many of them. (The ones that are, in my opinion, the most useful.)

Common Threads

Bribery: All but three are bribable, mostly by Gold. Four are bribable by everything (and those four are the only ones bribable by Babes.) Furthermore, four creatures have an effect on your bribery cards: Cratur Hobbs (bribe with Magic Items), Jambo Slick (retrieve bribery card), Jamchops (bribe with any bribery) and Slatch Willer (discard Beer for Vitality bonus). This means that you can bribe anything with Jamchops or boost Slatch and then on the next combat, use Jambo to get the card back. Jamchops is strong also because he gets around terrain restrictions (SS House of Babes, Iron Crag Mountain Brewery) as well as the restriction imposed by the Fiends (see critique #9).

Up-Cards: Two cards allow you to fiddle with your Up cards. Buster Scrimbo, who also you to draw an extra card if he's your up card, and Jonstello the Seeker, who also you to discard him and find whatever card you want from your deck. Of the two, Jonstello is far superior, and as an added bonus, he's not too bad in combat, being a 7 with an off-color bonus of 3 (that almost makes him a "Black Knight").

Terrain-oriented: Barnicle Bazluee gives bonuses to creatures with Rivers & Lakes bonuses (or Banks & Lakes for those of you in France!) even when not on R&L terrain. Cactus McFingers allows you to play a terrain card after combat if you win. Tiger Baloo gains a bonus on Face-Down terrain. These don't exactly work together very well, except if you put down a face-down card or Rivers and Lakes after winning with Cactus, you'll be in better shape for your defense.

Where to Use Them?

There's no one place to put most of them, so I'll describe them individually.

Elandar, Mighty Wizard - Not a Wizard by class, but he's powerful, all
text boxes are blanked including ranged-attacks! and it's a slugfest. Best class to use with? I'd vote for Knights. Sure, a couple will lose their immunity to fear -- but "fear-based attacks" will be reduced to regular attacks, so there wouldn't be anything to be immune to anyway. But Knights, as a class, have the best off-color-bonuses and don't have much text to lose. Pirates are good, but they're very bribable, and the ranged-attacks have stacking penalties (and you can't use the ranged attacks). Some Giants have bone-crushing OCBs, too. But their best use is against any kind of trick deck (except "Spell-only", of course). You can't match any cards together. Low-vitality creatures are a good-choice
as well to prevent secondary attackers from getting to Elandar.

(Mini-quiz: During a primary matchup, how can you kill Elandar?)

Longshot Louie - A personal favorite. He's Vitality 7, OCB 2 and a channel receiver. Nice. His ranged-attack destroys the channeling creature (not the Guardian though). Nice bonus. He's good against a non-channelling deck; he's great against a channeling deck. Necromancers, Winterseed's Mistresses and Valkyrie Spirits beware!

(And it could be me, but I wonder if this card was inspired by the SF book Ringworld, by Larry Niven.)

Disgruntled Postal Worker: Great name, nice artwork. Great against Fairy decks or other low-vitality decks. At first, the DPW looks like a
worthless card -- if he wins, his opponent survives! But you can play him multiple times and leave your opponent with a bunch of Unchallenged Creatures that you can pick off at your leisure. Who to use him with? No clue, but he's best used to protect big creatures from being ganged up on by the little guys.

Quick One-liners

Cratur Hobbs: Get rid of those extra Items you don't need.

Delilah Rangoon: Despite the fact that she looks like someone I know, I don't like this card because unless she goes up against a Giant or Ogre, odds are that you will actually be giving the advantage to your opponent. (She should be an 8 against Mortals, but instead she's a push).

Evil Baron Stoner: In practice, his text box (add opponent's OCB to Stoner's Vitality) doesn't help much unless he goes up against a Snoot or a Schneeble because his base is only a 3.

Jamchops the Trader: Combine him with a Babes and Pig Dog for maximum fun; get around Greedy Fiends by using a Beer bribery; use Gold in the Iron Crag Mountain Brewery to get rid of Giants and Ogres.

Karnis the Transcender: Useful because he's an 8-point channel receiver with OCB 2, but also good if your opponent likes cards that use dice.

Slimwit Man: Silly picture, bad pun, odd card; I've never used it and don't plan to. Use it in a weenie deck to take out a big creature shield.

Whalebone Rick: I know someone named Rick who could look like this picture with a little work; don't expect to get the bonus unless you have a Creature Magic Item command card.

Cards to Watch Out For

Magnate Justice, of course. Why would anyone use a gray card that "Kills Wanderers" when you're not likely to see Wanderers that often? Beacause he's a Vitality 16 elemental with a 7-point off-color bonus that will clobber an Eternal Witch Lord! He's a great card against Undead decks (though he's overkill against Fairy decks and won't survive very long -- and worse, Gateway to Mystfall will bring back the destroyed Fairies.)

Elandar, Mighty Wizard. Watch out if your opponent has one. Most of these cards are trick cards that rely on their text box for their strategies. Granted, five Wanderers have OCBs of 2 or better, which is a 25-50% boost.

Summary: I started these critiques to find different types of theme decks that you could try to build around the various classes. But let's face it, some groups are just miscellaneous clusters of unrelated creatures that don't reference each other nor support each other. Wanderers is one of these. Use them individually in your other decks, but don't try to build a deck around them.

C. J. Burke
Keeper of the Flame

Belmont D'Yan: External, Vitality 4, OCB 2, M, LGB, Wanderer, CMP 0 Green.
C: All Wanderers gain +2 Vitality if the Shield moved to the current space from a different one this turn or if the terrain has changed since the last combat.

(Come on, now. Could you think of a better name for a "Wanderer"?)

Creature Class Critique #11: Nymphs

Okay, admit it. When you got your first starter pack, what cards drew your eyes? Babes, Snow Daughters and the Nymphs. (And, truth be told, I went through three starters and a half-dozen boosters before I got a Babes card. I only knew it existing from the rule book illustration!). Sure, there are a couple more cards, if you can get them, but these were the first.

Now that you're done looking at them, what do you do with them? Strike that! I don't really want to know. I meant how do you use them in a deck. The answer: nothing fancy.

There are only three Nymphs and one supporting card:

Wild Nymph, a Small channel receiver with a bonus in Woods.
Wood Nymph, a Medium creature with a bonus in Woods.
Water Nymph, a Medium creature with a bonus in Rivers & Lakes and a Gold bribery icon.

Additionally, the Woodland Troll gets a bonus for each Nymph in play.
It's also the only reason to use the Water Nymph in a Nymph deck.

(As for the aforementioned Snow Daughters, they're Spirits. I'm not sure why -- they could just as easily have been Nymphs, which are female Greco-Roman dieties that represent parts of nature. Snow Daughters could represent either the mountains, the snow or both. And consider the graphical representations of the Wood Nymph vs the Wood Spirit!)

The obvious route to go is to take the Nymphs and use a Woods/anti-ranged attack deck. Iron Crag Bugglers help with this (and they're low Vitality). So do Haba Naba Kaba and Smoke Spirits. Sprinkle in some extra Woods creatures.

Suggestions for other creatures:

Blackthwaite Jumpers - Vitality 1, +1 in Woods. That's a 100% bonus. And they're immune to all AOEs.

Wood Spirits - Vitality 6, +4 in Woods. That's a 75% bonus.

Hair-de-hobbins - Vitality 6, +3 in Woods. That's a 50% bonus. Incidentally, Hair-de-hobbins is a Medium Fairy (which is one of the answers to a mini-quiz in a previous critique) so it doesn't turn up in too many Fairy decks, which are usually keyed to Small creatures. Here's a chance to use it.

There are other Woods creatures, but most of them are high Vitality with little bonus. They do have their uses (Fire Elementals have a 4 point fire AOE and fly, which are nothing to sneeze at, but the 2-point bump to its normal 14 is not the best in the game for a terrain-based deck.)

Barnacle Bazluee is useful to give a little bump to your Water Nymphs, so they can get some kind of bonus.

Other Classes to use Nymphs with:

Trolls -- see Critter critique #6, and notes above.

Gnomes -- Why Gnomes? Why not? It saves me from writing another critique. < g >
Seriously, though. There are 3 Gnomes. One gets a Woods bonus. One can channel to your Wild Nypmhs (only a point, but it's something). And the final one gives bonuses to small creatures (your Wild Nymphs and Fairies, except for Hair-de-hobbins).

Fairies -- I've already mentioned a few of them, so add in Winterseed's Maiden and Mistress for channeling support. Be careful: add in too many Fairies and you may not want to pull the Nymphs from your deck. (Obviously, Fairies are formidable by themselves. They don't need help.)

Knights -- No reason. Knights are boring, strong guys, so they might want to get together with the ladies. Leave the Archers home. I love Knights, I like Nymphs, seems as good a combo as Kngiht & Angels.

Summary: Pleasant to look at, but lacking in numbers or a unifying strategy. This was allieved a little by the addition of Trolls to the game, but still a disappointment given the game's roots as more of a roleplaying card game. Trolls & Nymphs could use help from an extra border color, and all terrain-based decks are stuck in defensive mode. Try them out, see if they work for you.

C. J. Burke
Keeper of the Flame

Beautia, Queen of the Flowers: External, Vitality 9, OCB 2,
Medium, Nymph, CMP 0, red bar.
While Beautia is in play, all your Nymphs are +3 Vitality.
Only one Queen per Shield.

(If anyone has a better name for the Floral Queen, I'm open to suggestions. It's the first one that came to mind.)

Creature Class Critique #10: Forces

Are the Forces with you? Maybe they should be!

Forces are elements of nature itself that manifest in many forms, some unlikely, others dangerously. When you have a Force on your side, match-ups can change abruptly and victory can be snatched from defeat.

There are at least 11 Forces, though there isn't one that ties them all togethers. They are all Elementals with Vitalities of 12 or less. Most are non-bribable, most cannot fly, and they vary in size. None recieve channeling. So there are no common threads as there are with, say, Spirits (which I sometimes confuse a couple with).

The largest connections: 3 have Swamps bonuses (plus one each in Spires
and Rivers and Lakes), 3 have decent off-color bonuses, 2 are anti-channeling, 2 don't allow secondary attackers. Those ideas are okay for theme decks, so some Forces could have a secondary role in a deck.

In fact, the two most famous Forces in the game, by their very nature, must take secondary roles. They are Corruption Stream (which wins as a secondary attacker, period, end of battle) and Djinn (which ties any primary match-up, that's all she wrote). If you control the forces around you, you can control the creature forces in your opponent's combat hand.

Two other cards worth mentioning: Tangle Web and Water Spout. The Tangle Web is a handy creature in any anti-flying deck. The best method to prevent flying is the use of Spires, and as long as you have Spires
anyway . . . The Web is one of only three creatures with bonuses in Spires (the Sliphs in Dagger Isle are the other two), but Tangle Web has a great ability -- it can kill creatures that beat it. Consider it
the anti-healer -- if you stay on the space, your creature lives, but if you don't it dies.

I have two things to say about the Water Spout. First, I was calling it a Spirit for a long time because it seems like it should be one to me. Second, it's Vitality 4 with 3 bonus in Rivers & Lakes, that's nearly double! Combine it with a Grotto Troll for a bonus in Rivers and Lakes or with Barnacle Bazluee for a bonus to your R&L bonus.

The list of Forces includes: Annihilator Cloud, Corruption Stream, Djinn, Energy Leach, Energy Toad, Fire Walker, Mist Veiler, Primordial Goo, Roving Force Inferno, Tangle Web and Water Spout.

But as long as you're trying to corner the market on the Force, remember two spells that fit the theme nicely: Detect Life Force (a useful tool when deciding whether to attack or even if your opponent is just bluffing with that little stack) and Force Barrier (stops his progress cold -- but be careful, the Barrier can get in your way, too).

Summary: You can't make a deck out of Forces alone, but they support so many different deck types. It's hard to imagine a deck that can't get some use from a Djinn, though a Corruption Stream is a little harder to stack (get a Petrified Heart!). Some great cards.

C. J. Burke
Keeper of the Flame

Combined Forces: Spell, up 6.
Play as command card. In any primary match-up, you may play any Force as a ranged-attack with a value of half its Vitality (rounded up). You may only do this if your primary match-up creature is a Force.

(Yes, this will bump up the Annihilator Cloud 2 points and the Energy Toad 1 point. I have no problem with that. If you want to play it with a Djinn, that's your own strangeness, leave me out of it.)

Just Frickin' Cool, Part 1

Please allow me to toot my own horn for a second here.

I first came to Guardians about 14 or 15 years ago, back when Usenet was the big thing and not everyone did the Web yet. I used to post regularly about Guardians [GD] in rec.games.trading-cards.misc. That's how I first came into contact with Dave Gentzler. He's sent me email occasionally based on things on my page or stuff that made it to the mailing list. And that was cool.

But here is something that (for me personally) tops all.

It's one thing when a fan boy like me can talk to or correspond when someone in the industry about something you both love.

It takes it to a whole new level when someone like Dave Gentzler mentions you in an interview, which I had nothing to do.

Here is an excerpt from a 2003 interview posted at Phil the Bar Fly's site (which you should definitely check out.

Referring to the proposed but unpublished Seven Seas expansion, Dave had this to say:

The new expansion: The reason nobody you have spoken to knows anything about this is because I made it up one day while on the phone to Scrye. We were talking about upcoming releases and I was asked what the next expansion would be. Knowing there wasn't going to BE one, I just said the next set would be mostly aquatic. I don't remember if I actually said "Seven Seas" or CJ Burke later came up with it. In my mind, tenatively, it would have been a split of an underwater kingdom and some sort of arctic locale. Of course, I hadn't told Keith this, and it was his game and all.

It just says to me, "Wow. He knows my name." (Well, I knew that when he was answering my emails, sure. But when talking to someone else?) And more than that, he was giving me credit when he certainly didn't have to. (Like I would ever know? Hell, this interview is more than five years old as it is! Okay, I knew about it before now, but I just read it again recently.)

Dave is a cool dude.