Important Winter Retreat 2013 update

 

 

 

 

Important Notice

We have just been advised by the venue that names for all attendees for must be made by the end of next week. This means that those of you who wish to come to Winter Retreat must commit by this club meeting (ie a firm commitment and a $20 non-refundable deposit). Our apologies for this late notice. Full payment will be due by the meeting in June. If you aren’t coming to the May meeting but wish to make a Winter Retreat reservation by other means please contact use as soon as you can.

Also, for some members have expressed to attend Winter Retreat but stay off camp. We can advise members that this is possible and you will be charged a reduced fee of $120 per adult (most of the fees are in the catering charges). The child rate remains the same.

May Meeting Preview

This Sunday 19 May is the next LXG meeting, so get your games ready and come along!

At this meeting:

Our large games library will be available for use

You can improve your Game of Games score, or start playing

The next round of our Thunderstone and Grand Melee leagues will take place

A Dragon’s Maze draft will take place in the morning, for 5-8 Magic: The Gathering players

Bring along your favourite miniatures game and make use of our tables and terrain

Book for Winter Retreat 2013, and renew your club membership if you didn’t have the chance to do this last month

And more!

LXG Grill’d Burger Board Games Challenge

The Grill’d Burger Board Games Challenge kicks off May 14th 2013.

You can win trophies and prizes to the value of $500

Play in any board games at Grill’d on Tuesday night and your score in the game gets registered with the League of Extraordinary Gamers. The top three scorers at the end of the 10th December meeting will share in the $500 prize pool.

How does it work?
There will be score sheets available on Tuesday night. You rank the players who participated in order of placing (1st, 2nd, 3rd etc). The number of players in a game determines your score. For example, if five people were playing the game, the person who came gets 5 points, second place gets 4 points, 3rd place gets 3 points and so on.

Hand your score sheets in to the LXG representative at Grill’d on Tuesday Game Night and your points will accumulate. Check out the leader board each fortnight to see where you are placed.

This process will be familiar to those of you already playing LXG’s Game of Games system.  In fact if you are an LXG member you are earning Game of Games points when you play at Grill’d Burger, and these will be added to your score.

The three highest scored paricipants at the game meeting to be held on the 10th of December will receive:

First Place: Trophy + $300 games voucher
Second Place: Medal + $150 games voucher
Third Place” Medal + $50 game voucher

Where Do I Play?
Grill’d Burger, Cnr Samuel Street and Boundary Road, Camp Hill QLD 6pm to 9.30pm every second Tuesday.

The dates to play in 2013 are as follows:

14th May
28th May

11th June
25th June

9th July
23rd July

6th August
20th August

3rd September
17th September

1st October
15th October
29th October

12th November
26th November

10th December

Planeswalkers in Grand Melee, part 36: Ral Zarek

Ral Zarek is the most recent planeswalker to hit the magic tables, and also one of the oddest. More than any other planeswalker Ral Zarek encourages you to gamble. Very fitting for a blue/red character.

Ral Zarek costs four mana to cast, of which one must be blue and one red. He enters the battlefield with four loyalty counters and has three abilities. The first two are useful, the third is more of a gamble. Literally. We’ll get to that.

The first ability lets you tap target permanent, then untap another target permanent, for the cost of adding a loyalty counter. Very nice. You be be untapping one of your creatures or lands, while tapping down something one of your opponents needs.

The second ability costs two loyalty counters, and with this one Ral Zarek deals three damage to target creature or player. Lightning Bolt is a popular spell even with multiple players at the table, and this ability will be useful at all times.

The final ability is the one that catches the eye, and makes this planeswalker unique. You need to remove seven loyalty counter to pay for this one, and you flip a coin five times. For each flip you win, you get to take an extra turn after this one. This could be fantastic (five additional turns) or useless (no extra turns), but will more likely be generally very good, as two or three additional turns is going to set you up nicely.

Verdict: Good. The abilities look unconnected, but Ral Zarek is actually an excellent representation of his colours. The first ability gives you the controlling finesse of blue, the second gives you the straight blasting ability of red. The final ability gives you the chaos that the red/blue colour pairing is known for. All in all a perfect card, and a great addition to the game. This is not the most powerful planeswalker, but this is certainly a character that feels right, and will no doubt be a joy to use.

Connections: Like Ral Zarek? You may also like [Ajani Vengeant] [Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker] [Domri Rade]

Don’t like Ral Zarek? You may prefer [Liliana of the Veil] [Jace, Architect of Thought] [Vraska the Unseen]

 

Melee Library Decks: Ch- Ch- Changelings

The melee library decks series is an LXG initiative. We take cards from the club library, make decks from them. These decks are available to LXG members and come with a Magic booster for $6. Each deck is legal to play at the grand melee that runs each month. These decks make good starting points, and are a way of adding cards to your collection in a focused way.

Keep your opponents off balance with this creature based deck. They won’t know what to expect next! This deck is creature-based but comes with enough utility cards to keep the game interesting and varied. The deck works best when you can get some early changelings into play, and then follow them up with the likes of Tribal Golem and Gutwrencher Oni. Watch out for your opponents taking out your changelings to remove your advantage though!

Deck Name: Ch- Ch- Changelings

Colours: Blue, Black, Green

Cards: 60

Designed by: David K

Deck list: Cards are ordered by converted mana cost (cmc) with the cheapest cards first, then land.

cmc1: 1 Cloudfin Raptor, 1 Rapid Hybridization

cmc2:  4 Woodland Changeling, 2 Nature’s Spiral, 2 Naturalize, 4 Frilled Oculus

cmc3: 2 Seal of Doom, 3 Woodland Chnageling, 2 Mistform Warchief, 1 Verdant Haven, 1 Dimir Cluestone

cmc4: 1 Blunt the Assault, 2 Deep Analysis

cmc5: 4 Gutwrencher Oni, 2 Adaptive Snapjaw

cmc6: 2 Tribal Golem, 2 Skaab Goliath

Land: 3 Terramorphic Expanse, 10 Forest, 6 Island, 5 Swamp

See other melee library decks

Dragon’s Maze Multiplayer Set Review

Dragon’s Maze is the third and final set in the Return to Ravnica block, which has been wildly successful so far. Return to Ravnica is the highest-selling set in Magic’s history. If the 30% rise in sales in Q1 2012 is anything to go by, Gatecrash is either second or outsold even return to Ravnica. See our multiplayer review of the first two sets here and here.

In Dragon’s Maze all ten guilds of Ravnica return, with the guild Abilities seen in either Gatecrash or Return to Ravnica. If that weren’t enough there is an eleventh mechanic, this one new to the set. Split cards make their return in Dragon’s Maze, but with a twist. Usually a split card allows you to choose which half of the card you want to cast. The Dragon’s Maze split cards all have the ‘Fuse’ ability which allow you to choose to cast both halves of the card if you wish. This “have your cake and eat it” change is bound to be popular.

While the other ten mechanics are all known, the additional cards plug some gaps and add powerful new options for every guild. Each guild gets and equal share of the pie, so no one is being favoured over everyone else. There are a few reprints in this set, including Putrefy from the original Ravnica.

Each guild has a “champion’ in Dragon’s Maze, a legendary creature in that guild’s colours. Each of the champions appear at rare and they all add something interesting to the mix.

Another way this set has mixed things up is in the distribution of cards within a pack. Usually, Magic boosters contain one basic land, regardless of what set they are from. With Dragon’s Maze the basic land is replaced by a random guildgate, giving the set mana fixing in every pack, great for a multicolour set. In some packs the guildgates will be replaced by one of the “shock lands” from Return to Ravnica or Gatecrash. There is even the possibility of receiving the new Mythic Land, Maze’s End in place of a guildgate! This doesn’t affect the normal distribution of rares and mythic in packs, making it possible to open a pack with two Mythic rares, Maze’s End and one of the set’s regular Mythic cards.

This set has taken multiplayer into account, something that makes the cards of all rarities interesting to the grand melee player. There are plenty of “each opponent” type effects, from the life-sucking Extort cards to the punishing Ruric Thar, guild champion of the Gruul.

Ten interesting cards

1. Ruric Thar, the Unbowed – a multiplayer beast who punishes all your opponents
2. Tithe Drinker  – a cheap vampire that presents an early threat
3. Zhur-Taa Druid – a creature that damages each opponent when it taps for mana
4. Ready//Willing – a great combination of creature-boosting
5. Unflinching Courage - best creature enchantment since armadillo cloak
6. Maze’s End - the land to end the game, in your favour
7. Blood Baron of Vizkopa – another creature to fear
8. Gaze of Granite – mass removal a la carte
9. Warleader’s Helix - Lightning Helix has a big brother
10. Ral Zarek a very interesting planeswalker design

 

See also: [Return to Ravnica] [Gatecrash]

Melee Library Decks: Artifact Blues

The melee library decks series is an LXG initiative. We take cards from the club library, make decks from them. These decks are available to LXG members and come with a Magic booster for $6. Each deck is legal to play at the grand melee that runs each month. These decks make good starting points, and are a way of adding cards to your collection in a focused way.

This blue deck exemplifies that colour’s affinity for artifacts. This deck concentrates on tying your opponents’ creatures down (or stealing them!) while your artifacts come online. At this point you will have options to increase the charge counters on your artifacts to gain more value from your cards.

Deck Name: Artifact Blues
Colour: Blue
Cards: 60
Designed by: David K

Decklist: Cards are organised by converted mana cost (cmc) with the cheapest cards listed first. Click on the name of a card to view that card.

cmc1: 3 Vedalken Certarch, 1 Surge Node

cmc2: 1 Cranial Plating, 3 Coast Watcher, 1 Shrine of Piercing Vision, 1 Silver Myr, 2 Prophetic Prism, 3 Haunted Guardian, 1 Arcbound Slith,

cmc3: 1 Shell of the Last Kappa, 1 Spined Thopter, 2 Vacuumelt,  2 Wall of Frost, 1 Guard Gomazoa, 2 Trespassing Souleater, 2 Necrogen Censer, 2 Conversion Chamber

cmc4: 1 Chamber of Manipulation, 3 Pierce Strider

cmc5: 1 Corrupted Conscience, 1 Trigon of Thought, 1 Mirrorworks

land: 18 Island, 6 Swamp

See other melee library decks

 

Top Articles April 2013

While it was a relatively quiet month on the LXG website, there were plenty of popular articles. This month it was game reviews that captured eyeballs, though not necessarily the ones you might think. Our PAX article was again the most popular, even with all the tickets for this event sold out! Also making the Top 15 this month is part 5.2 of Keith’s One Gamer’s Diary series, this part covers the genesis of LXG and like the rest of the series is a very interesting read.

Top articles April 2013

1. PAX Australia – Melbourne July 2013
2. New Games Stores in Brisbane
3. Games Workshop Shuts Down 3D “print-a-like”
4. Winter Retreat 2013
5. Dystopian Wars Forces: Empire of the Blazing Sun
6. April 2013 Meeting Preview
7. Caption Competition Results
8. Dystopian Wars Forces: Prussians
9. New Top Selling Games
10. Game Review: Deadwood
11. Game Review: Dixit
12. Winter Retreat Images
13. Game Review: Quarriors Quarmageddon
14. A Game of Games April 2013
15. One Gamer’s Diary part 5.2

2013 Grand Melee League round 4

Fourteen players entered melee this month, meaning two tables of seven players each. This included two guests and three club members playing for the first time this year. The tables were split according to current standing in the league.

Garth P won an epic battle on table 1, where it was a case of go black/white or go home. Table 2 went to time, mainly because it started 30 minutes late. There is a reason we start at 3pm, and if you are planning to play in the melee you need to make sure you are available at that time.

With two packs awarded to the winner of table 1, and two achievements gained this month, the achievement pool grew by 10 packs to rest at 30 packs.

Below are the new standings, click the image to enlarge. Couple of notes; non-members who played in round 4 are not on the list, your points have been recorded and as long as you join at the next meeting or the one after, you will keep those points. Likewise there are four non-renewed members in the current standings, and those people also have two meetings to renew or they will fall off the list.

Caption Competition Results

Not everyone noticed the caption competition at the April club meeting. It was laid on by David M, featuring two Star Wars toys as the prizes, figures of Han and 3PO. The image for a caption to be supplied was this one:

Are you thinking of one now?

Four club members put in a number of entries (more than one entry was allowed); Nigel B, Jennah C, Adrian R, and Jeremy N. At 2.00pm the entries were judged by David K and Angela C.

The winner was Jeremy N with “No, I am not your father!”

Jeremy got the first pick of the prizes. Terry K randomly selected one of the entry sheets as the lucky second prize, this went to Adrian R. Well done to all entrants, and thanks to David M for putting this on and supplying the prizes!

A Game of Games April 2013

It was a busy month of playing games and renewing memberships, or joining for the first time. With so much activity it’s not surprising that a number of people gained a new rank this month. Leader of the pack Eddie has knocked over another rank reaching Archduke. Twelve other members also gained ranks.

Adrian R and Alex D are Princes
John M is now a Marquis
Terry K and Graham M are Viscounts
Sean H is now a Baronet
Steve T and David B are Knights
Peter B, Dustin H, Jennah G, and Philip B are now Esquires

April 2013 Meeting Preview

April is membership renewals month, so be sure to bring along what you need, and check out our about page for memebrship rates (rates remain unchanged from last year) and see which level of memebrhsip will suit you best.

There’s more to do in April than simply renewing your membership of course. Our games library will be available, and the Thunderstone and Magic: The Gathering leagues will hvae their fourth rounds. THunderstone in the morning, Magic in the afternoon. See Jeremy N for Thunderstone and David K for Magic.

New Top Selling Games

ICv2 have posted their latest list of top selling games, across the categories of role-playing, miniatures, card/deck building, collectable cards, and board games. There are a few surprises in this update.

The chief revelation is the strong sales performance of Fantasy Flight’s new Star Wars miniatures game. It enters the top 5 miniature games as second only to perennial top dog Warhammer 40,000. This pushes War Machine to third, Warhammer Fantasy to fourth and Hordes to fifth on the list.

In board games Settlers of Catan is again the top board game. Ticket to Ride and Small World here also strong sellers as is the new edition of the Game of Thrones board game.

Magic: the Gathering is again the top collectable card game as this games phenomenal recent growth continues.

Munchkin is the top card/deck building game, followed by Dominion and the new Android: Netrunner. New game Gloom and club favourite 7 Wonders are also in the top ten list.

The top RPG list has also seen some changes. Pathfinder remains the top selling game, but the old dog Dungeons & Dragons falls to third, with Fantasy Flight’s new Star Wars RPG taking second spot. Whatever Fantasy Flight are doing with Star Wars, they are clearly making games people are happy to play.

Melee Library Decks: Life Swing

April 2013 update: this deck has been sold
The melee library decks series is an LXG initiative. We take cards from the club library, make decks from them. These decks are available to LXG members and come with a Magic booster for $6. Each deck is legal to play at the grand melee that runs each month. These decks make good starting points, and are a way of adding cards to your collection in a focused way.

Keep everyone occupied with this black and white deck while you gain life and make everyone else lose life at the same time! Tap down opposing creatures and have opponents lose life from your creatures, without ever needing to attack! A couple of larger flying creatures help you deal with anything too annoying, and use your cheaper creatures to tap everything else.

Deck name: Life Swing
Colours: Black and White
Cards: 60
Designed by: David K

Decklist. Cards are organised by converted mana cost (cmc) and then land. Click on a card to see what it does.

cmc 1: 4 Goldmeadow Harrier; 2 Plague Rusalka; 2 Quag Vampires; 1 Smolder Initiate
cmc 2: 2 Tablet of the Guilds; 1 Basilica Screecher; 1 Suture Priest; 3 Executioner’s Swing; 1 Orzhov Guildmage; 2 Vizkopa Guildmage
cmc 3: 2 Last Kiss; 1 Blistergrub; 2 Solemn Offering
cmc 4: 1 Falkenrath Noble; 2 Windborne Charge; 2 Syndicate Enforcer; 2 Zarichi Tiger
cmc 5: 2 Shriekmaw; 1 Serra Angel
cmc 7: Lord of the Pit
cmc x: Shining Shoal

land: 1 Nomad Stadium; 3 Evolving Wilds; 2 Barren Moor; 9 Swamp; 9 Plains

See other melee library decks

2013 Membership Renewals

April is membership renewals month, so please remember to bring along what you need to renew your membership for this year. Rates remain unchanged from last year, and you can see them on the About page.

This year we have added a new membership type, the Gaming Membership, so we now have four tiers, plus a causal rate.

Family: Up to five family members on a single membership. This is designed to make it easy for mum, dad and the kids to join. Full year cost: $72

Individual: For single members. Full cost $60

Concession: For under 18s and health care card holders. Full cost: $36.

Gaming members: For individuals who are no longer able to attend meetings more than a few times per year. $10 per meeting attended.

Casual gaming: For non-members on their second or subsequent visit (the first visit is free of charge). $7 per meeting attended.

Family, Individual, and Concession memberships get you entry to our meetings from April through to March 2014. In addition you are able to order games through us from Mil Sims at a discount.Gaming members can also take part in the discount and with the other three levels are also eligible to take part in A Game of Games. Family and individual members are additionally able to borrow games from our games library between meetings.