7 reasons why Ashes is better than Magic

Below you will find the seven reasons why I prefer Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn over Magic: The Gathering (MTG). This list is purely my opinion and I still think MTG is a great game but just prefer what Ashes has done with the two player, spellcaster, card game genre.

Doom doomy Doomfist

Lots of talk has been focussed on Sombra, but I’m more interested in Doomfist. We have one melee hero so far in Reinhardt and we could do with another. My hope is that Doomfist will be an offensive melee character.

Scythe is the most anticipated boardgame of the year. Was it worth the hype?

I finally got my copy of Scythe, I’ve seen the Watch it Played video read all the KickStarter posts and was finally ready to play this game that’s been in the boardgame geek hotness list for what seems like forever.

Over there, over where, Overwatch

I love playing support in Overwatch, but am disappointed to only see 4 choices when Offence and Defence get 6 and Tanks get 5.

So I was thinking what other types of support could there be, and what type of abilities they would have.

Board game designs and Kickstarter musings

So I’ve been designing a load of board games recently. Some of which I am close to finishing (the on paper stage). Then I can finally start making some prototypes and seeing just how wrong I was and get some feedback.

Top Five Favourite Ultimate’s

I decided to list my favourite ultimates from league of legends. However I wrote this is before Illoai was released and her ultimate is devastating but I'm not sure if it would make the list.

Whimsical Times

I'll admit straight away that I'm one of those people who liked Cards Against Humanity. It appealed to my dark sense of human and worked in my group who aren't as into strategy games as I am and prefer something lighter.

Top 10 League Champs Part 1 - Support

This is the first of my top ten champ blogs, each will focus on one of the different positions: Top, Jungle, Mid, Bot and Support.

Of the five positions you can play support is probably my favourite. You might not get the flashy kills of the other positions but helping secure kills for your carry or keeping them alive can be just as thrilling.

My favourite champs and why I hate meta’s

I like League of Legends and I play many different champs. I am in no way a pro at the game but neither would I consider myself a complete noob.

I have not yet reached the level to play ranked matches, so I can pretty much get away with using any champ in a normal match.

Once you reached ranked you have to play the meta (mostly) and this I see as a problem, as some of my favourite champs and items are not really viable at that level.

I hope that the next season will provide some balance so that less utilised champs can be played without being flamed out of a game.

Halloween Game Night 2014

As it is Halloween I thought I would do something horror related for my blog.

As you may have noticed I play a lot of board games. Amongst my collection are several horror themed games.

So we are planning a horror board game night while some of our favourite horror movies play in the back ground.

I would love to stream this event but sadly I don’t have access to a decent enough camera, yet!

My thoughts on League of Legends

I've been playing, and more importantly enjoying League of Legends (LoL) recently.

I'm only at level 12 and mostly been plying against bots. I feel that this is necessary until you find the champions that you're good at.

I realised in a recent game that I'm not that bad as I went against real players and had my teams highest damage output, most assists and second highest kills by 1. I was playing as Soraka who is a healer so was shocked to get that much. After the game I found I was the least experienced vs human opponents and I put my win down to honing my skills against the AI.

Enough bragging about my skills ;-P

A new card game (to me) that captures the feel of a video game - Anima

While there are a few board games out that are based on video games there are also those that feel like you are playing a video game.

We have Gears of War, Bioshock Infinite and the upcoming XCom and Witcher, which in some ways capture those games they are based on, we also have games that feel like a video game. Be it either their theme or even their mechanics.

My inspiration for this is due to playing a very JRPG game called Anima the Card Game, my hopefully soon arrival of the Video Game High School board game and the fantastic beat-em style game system Battlecon (another backed KickStarter project I should have before Christmas).

I'll talk about Anima a bit as it's not a new game, in fact the card game originally came out in 2006 with a revised edition a few years later and two follow up standalone add-ons.

Update of my nerdy purchases

Things have got busy in my life but my buying of all things nerdy has increased.

Kagami Taiga by Megahouse - Review

Even though I like to stay fit I've never really been into sports. AS a teen the only sport that really caught my attention was basketball, I watched Michael Jordan on TV back in his prime and ever since have enjoyed the sport to some degree.

Now that I'm older I enjoy a few more sports and like to watch and play them in various medium. For instance I enjoy watching sports anime, which judging from the title of this review will be obvious to some.

Kagami Taiga is from the manga and anime Kuroko no Basket. This is an anime which I have thoroughly enjoyed and would recommend to any one who likes basketball or action animes. Kagami is the Michael Jordan/LeBron James of the show and as such a popular character.

Zombie 15' Review

The horde is coming will you survive.

I have backed a few Kickstarter projects in the last year and finally they're starting to be delivered. This week I was fortunate enough to get my copy of Zombie 15', a co-op, zombie, survival board game.

This is the first Zombie board game I have played (I'm not counting Zombie Dice). I have also been playing more and more cooperative games lately as MMO's or other multi-player video games don't provide that human element that a bunch of friends in the same room does.

Collecting is an Addiction

I love to collect; in fact I probably have slight OCD sometimes when I get into something. This could be anything from Yu-Gi-Oh cards to cake decorating tools (I have cutters for about 6 different flowers all in various sizes and several butterfly cutters, to name a few).

Once I get into something I will focus on it and obsess over it, before the next new thing catches my eye. I call it OCDADD. It's a problem but it also means I always have some cool new stuff to open, use or display.

Replacing your archaic board game collection

Boardgames are growing in popularity, with Wil Wheton's TableTop show and TableTop Day getting the word out to a different audience that boardgames aren't just for Sunday afternoons with your parents.

I like video games, in particular ones that I can play with friends in the same room. Unfortunately less and less companies are making these type of games so I now turn to board games. They provide many games for both competitive and cooperative play so that my friends and I can sit down and enjoy a game together.

The games that most people own are probably ones that you either don't enjoy playing any more or are so simple that they lack any competitive enjoyment. I hope to enlighten you with some alternative options to refresh your dusty old pile of games and to get you back into doing something that is both enjoyable and sociable.

Since when did micro mean big

So I've put quite a bit of spare time into Marvel: Avengers Alliance on Facebook, but I have now hit a point where it takes days to make any progress. I send my heroes off on missions for a day so they net me a bit of cash, but it's only enough to do some very minor thing. I have a load of training and research to do and cool stuff to buy, but it takes a few days now to do even one thing.

Cabin Full of Spandex

So Joss Whedon is riding the success train once again, after a few derailments that were in no way his fault (damn you FOX I still want more Firefly).

The first of these successes was in partnership with Drew Goddard, making his directorial début, with the horror/comedy The Cabin in the Woods. Drew and Joss co-wrote this movie which almost succumbed to the minor curse that has followed Joss since the end of Buffy. For more info on this check here but don't scroll up unless you want spoilers.

Luckily for us Lionsgate got a hold of this movie for general release and now we can all enjoy it.

Keeping the crows at bay

A few years ago a friend introduced me to a book by the writer Matthew Reilly. Now I eagerly await getting my hands on each new release.

His latest book follows the exploits of one of his two main protagonists, Captain Shane Michael Schofield, call-sign Scarecrow. His books are like good 80's action movies (you know the last time they were good), think Die Hard meets Navy Seals (I know this came out in 1990 but it's an 80's action film at heart).