Kid Friendly events
Open(ish), and doing MTG Events!-Real Reopening first Weekend in August.
By Ben Calica / Leave a Comment / Main Page, News
We meant to reopen at the beginning of August to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the store. But they went and released a new magic set that combined Magic and D&D so we snuck open early to be able to run some events. We are doing events all through the weekend of July 24th.
So here is the scoop with magic events through the end of August:
We have missed 6(!!) in person prereleases during covid lockdown…we're gonna do them all over the next month (and we will do them again till the next set comes out!
Starting on the last week in August when we do Core 2021 prerelease events all weekend.
Bringing back Two Headed Giant! This is my fav form of magic….great for buddies, couples and parent kid combos)
Keeping things safe. (really)
We're gonna do Sealed instead of Draft for all events including FNM till the end of August. Both because we got all these fun prereleases we didn't do, and because I want to be overly cautious and not have people passing cards around to each other.
Vaccination cards required for everyone 13+ for events in the store. I'm really not kidding about this. I've spent the last year an a half making choices to keep people safe, including waiting to open up. I'm not gonna be a place where variants get a chance to bounce around. Anyone who disagrees can feel free to email me and I will politely discuss it with them.
12 and under and 13+ events. Because there is no current way to get kids under 12 vaccinated, the best solution is to separate the events. Each weekend there will be at least one event that will be set up for the younger crowd. Adults (parents, etc) are welcome to attend, but will be advised to wear masks and MUST have their vaccination cards with them. PS, I know there are a ton of kids that have both the skill and temperament to play with the adults…they will get to do so again when things settle down.
Smaller (but more) events. To keep the airflow good and give people much more space between each other, we are going to do much smaller event sizes. To help with making sure that no one shows up to not be able to play, we will have event tix available online. (We're trying a new POS, so this is gonna change in what it looks like, but not what happens.
Adventure in Forgotten Realms Events
By Ben Calica / 1 Comment / D&D, Features, Game Guides
By Ben Calica
This guide is designed as a simple, English translation for parents, significant others, and just those who felt curious as to what the heck D&D is all about. We run D&D Encounters at D20 Games these days, and I'm old enough to have played the game with the first white books back in the mid 70s. I'm also a dad of tween twin boys and a daughter who's three years younger, so I can do the kid to parent translation pretty well. 😉
What is D&D? Dungeons & Dragons is the game the popularized role playing. Created in the mid-70's,D&D was unique in casting one of the players in the role of the Dungeon Master. A person who both kept the secrets of the world that the other players were trying to discover, and acted as a living interpreter of the rules, allowing players to try all sorts of creative solutions to problems they encounter, and not be limited by only what the original game creators set down on paper. This was quite literally a game-changer, in that it really allowed people to use their imaginations to inhabit characters that they created and moved through the world. It works best when the players access the freedom of their 8-12 year old selves and create characters that are ones they would have chosen to play on a playground. (BTW…those of us who were around for the first round of this remember the media frenzy over kids in the sewers doing horrible things. That was more made up then the game. The truth was it was a bunch of us utterly harmless little nerd boys and girls being imaginative in the basement of our parents houses.)
D20s-The rolls at the heart of role playing. The D20 that is the name of our store refers to 20-sided dice, and are the key to most role playing games. As much control as the Dungeon Master needs to have over the world that he/she is slowly unveiling, if they end up as the autocrat that just tells a story without any possibility of success or failure outside of what is ordained by them, the game becomes either stale or feels unfair. Instead, based on a characters developing abilities the Dungeon Master either consults pre-created tables of possibilities for certain types of actions (attacking with a sword, jumping out of the way of a dragon's fire breath, getting a good nights sleep without being discovered by some roving band of creepy creatures), or makes their best guess for some creative idea a player has, and assigns a number that they must beat for that to succeed. "I want to use my special agility to do a back-flip over my friends head to the back of the group." "Ok…you need to roll an 18 to make that happen. Since you have extra agility bonus..you get to add 4 to whatever you roll. Roll a d20!" It is the mix of imagination and estimated chance that is the heart of what makes role playing games ongoing fun, and a story that even the Dungeon Master doesn't know how will play out.
18 again, the birth of a character. The other key part of what makes role playing games fun, is the birth and evolution of your character. A few different methods can be used, from the genetic randomness of rolling dice to determine the basic DNA of your character. Are they quick smart, wise, strong charming, or tough, or some combo of the above. The first method involved rolling three six sided dice for each attribute, and then figuring out based on what you got what that character would be.
For example right now I'll roll out one to show you.
Strength-7
Dexterity-9
Constitution-6
Intelligence-13
Wisdom-15
Charisma-11
Well…obviously this guy is going to be hiding in the back of the group, not swinging anything bigger then a stick. But…with those Wisdom and Intelligence scores, looks like we might have a wizard or kind of skinny healer.
Using the more popular method of rolling 4 6-sided dice and throwing out the lowest one, we get a little better result.
Strength-10
Dexterity-15
Constitution-16
Intelligence-9
This guy (or gal), could end up as a thief, or bard, or ranger, whose dexterity will make a bow sing in their hands. How the characters start out is only the birth, because as they go out in the world and experience interesting things, they gain, well, experience. and that experience directly leads to them increasing their levels, and with each of those new levels, their skills, toughness and abilities increase, so that the monsters that almost destroyed them in that first week of play, go running from them a few sessions later. The greater the risks, the greater the rewards in terms of experience points AND goodies that they find along the way. But those risks are very real (in the world of the game), in that if the hit points of your character (A number created based on your level, constitution, and what profession your character chooses), gets knocked down in battle to 0, then your character, well, dies. Most often in the early levels, your playing buddies (your group), will drag you back to town, and find a sufficiently powerful healer to bring you back. But that gets increasingly expensive both in terms of gold you've been able to collect, and eventually costing you some of those experience points you've been working so hard to gather. Plus that fact that during the rest of that particular adventure, when the DM asks each character what they want to do next, the answer from you is "lying in the corner…still dead."
The DM–The guy that gets to have fun by not playing the whole time: The Dungeon Master, or DM, has a very important and sometimes tricky role. It is their job to have either created or familiarized themselves with the world and adventure that the players are going to encounter. They need to keep things moving at a good pace so people keep having fun in the world, and they have to strike a very careful balance between making the world so easy to defeat that there is no sense of real risk or drama, and making it so tough that the players feel like they are spending half their time trudging back to town to get resurrected They need to make puzzles that are solvable, but hard enough to be challenging, and they need to be open to the players creativity taking the story in a direction they didn't anticipate. Common mistakes are to become the great and powerful OZ, manipulating the players into doing things they really don't want to do, or being seen as vindictive and mean..being the enemy of the players, as opposed to their guide to a world they have never encountered. The best DM's enjoy the story being told and it's telling, and are open to knowing that the player's creativity is a huge part of what makes that story fun for everybody, including them.
D&D vs. Pathfinder. Both of these games were born from the original D&D. While many people were kind of mad about D&D 4.0 (kind of an attempt to turn D&D into World of Warcraft) they redeemed themselves with 5th edition. It honors the best part of role playing games, the, well, role playing. Pathfinder is a game made by a different company that was founded by a number of people who used to work on D&D an has stayed very much in the spirit of the original D&D. The reality is that both of these are brothers in spirit, and you can't really go wrong with either. There are also a host of other genres of role-playing that have been born from the same basic ideas and that speak to the different 8-12 year-olds in each of us.
Special notes from one parent to another: First off…most any game that gets people face to face instead of screen to screen is a good thing. Second, the game is jam packed with creative problem solving and social skills building opportunities. The books are expensive (in the $30-40 range) and they will read them to the point of seeming obsession, but what is happening is that they are using the possibilities in the books to load themselves up with tools to solve problems when they play as well as doing creative thinking in their heads about what they could become. The games can go from a couple of hours a time, to 2 in the morning when they get older. It is the, "let's just see what is behind that next door" that create that. Obviously, the timing issues are different based on the age of the kid.
It takes a lot to get a group of kids together on a regular basis to play, and once a game is going and gets healthy it is worth encouraging. Despite whatever "Revenge of the nerds" preconceptions there are about people who play, the reality is that the people who are drawn to the game do tend to be disproportionately bright, mostly because they don't like the constraints that standard games place on their creativity. The groups also tend to provide good social support. The characters they create have different specific ethical rules, and it is important for the player to stay true to those rules, making for a great chance to explore and understand those. For the kids who are bright but have social skills challenges, the role playing stuff is wonderful, both because it provides some set of written rules for social interactions, and because usually the DM provides a level of moderation for social issues that come up that makes the sessions mini-social skills groups wrapped in a big spoonful of sugar.
Aether Revolt – D20 Set Central
By Ben Calica / Leave a Comment / Magic
Things are revolting in Kaladesh….(ok…that was bad) Tezzeret has come to town and turned things into a different kind of party. The second set of the Kaladesh block takes the playful world of Kaladesh and revolutionizes it. (Ah man…the Dad puns are just forcing their way out today..) Here is a bunch good links to give you the scoop on the new set…
Aether Revolt Story….
Aether Revolt – D20 Set CentralRead More »
Kaladesh @ D20 Games
About Kaladesh: A few years ago, Wizards had the foresight to remind everyone that people are more then they are portrayed, by creating a world inspired by some of the historical spectacle and invention of the Middle East. The result is Kaladesh, a land of master craftsmen's creations and invention, where mechanical beasts battle great ships that fill the sky, echos the days when the Islamic Golden Age lead the world in innovations of science, art, mathematics, craftsmanship, and other creations of brilliant and open minds. (Ok…I'll admit that as a dad, I love when the fun also brings a bit of learning, and more important, a more open perspective. We have a lot of people painting simplistic pictures of a group that consists of 1/3 of the world. I try not to bring political options into the store, but if you have to think about people in groups, there is never a time when getting a more rounded view of their heritage is anything but a good thing)
The set also features a set of special treats. Just like the super rare Expedition lands from Zendikar, that created special foil versions of some of the most popular lands from the history of magic, Kaladesh introduces the Masterpiece: Inventions. A set of some of the coolest artifacts from all time, from Crucible of Worlds to an amazing version of the Commander staple, Sol Ring.
If you want to take a look at all the cards in the set, click here, or if you want to do a simulated opening of bunches of packs or do test sealed or drafts to get familiar with the set, click here.
Kaladesh prerelease Sept 25-26. Boxes on preorder for 99.99 till sept 15, $109.99 till 9/21. $119.99 after that. The set releases Friday, Sept. 30th, and we will be open at midnight on the Thursday before to give folks their boxes if they want.
Buy Prerlease tickets here
Saturday. 9/23
10 Am–Kaladesh Prerelease
4 PM-Kaladesh Prerelease
Sunday- 9/24
3 Pm-THG Kaladesh Prerelease
Kaladesh Prerelease Kits…6 booster Packs, Special foil Promo card and limited edition life counter die
The cards in this set reflect the Inventor's fair that is taking place, with a special focus on artifacts and those that create them. There are extra abilities, such as vehicles, that are mere inert artifacts until other creatures lend their power to crew them and bring them to life. There are creatures who come into play creating (either adding to their own strength, or creating little artifact creatures to help them out. And there is a new kind of energy, not mana, but special counters that can be spent at any time to help power up lots of tricks and abilities.
Conspiracy: Take the Crown- Multi-Player Draft-O-Mania
We're playing a ton of Conspiracy with our Launch Party
It's BAACCKKK….This special version of magic is specially tuned as mutant hybrid of the "everybody starts out evenness" of Drafting with the "I get to play with/ whomp on my buddies" group play of Commander. This time its adding a couple of new mechanics:
Goad (the ability to provoke another creature to attack)
Melee (rewarding spreading the love by adding +1,+1 to a creature for every opponent you attack that turn)
Council's Dilemma (where each vote really counts, since each vote does an effect all by itself)
The Monarch, not the butterfly, but a king of the hill style crown that gives all sorts of goodies, but gets taken away whenever another player takes a successful shot at ya.
http://magic.wizards.com/en/content/conspiracy-take-crown-cards
http://syunakira.us/smds/
How To play Conspiracy
Conspiracy Take the Crown Mechanics
Eternal Masters–Sooo Much good stuff
" Really, they reprinted that!!" Eternal Masters (releasing 6/10/16) is the third set in the limited print run Masters series, this time bringing back some of the best cards from the eternal formats (cards from before 8th edition, special editions, and those that got banned because they were just too good.) Like there predecessors, these packs won't come cheap, and will almost definitely go up and up in price over the next year, but we will do our best to allocate them for playing over just buying boxes.
Before you ask, no there are not duel lands or power nine in this set. Wizards has been good to their promise never to reprint those items on the so called Reserve list, but short of that, this set looks beyond amazing, with a shocking number of some of the best cards in all of Magic, from arguably the king of Planeswalkers, Jace the Mindsculpter, to Mana Vault, Sensei's Divining Top, and even Force of Will, these packs are just, well, packed with goodness.
Boxes will pre-sell in VERY limited quantities for $349.99 ($339.99 for regulars). And we will do a number of special events. For the limited events, to make the more affordable, we will offer player the option of taking $10 off the event price if the opt to take any prize packs they win in regular packs rather then Eternal Masters packs. (Obviously, BEFORE they look at their deck pools). Events will include:
6/11 FNM-Drafts @ $40($50 with Eternal Masters Prize Packs)
6/12 Two Headed Giant at $50/60 per player
6/13 Sealed Tournament $70/80
Plus we will be doing a Tuesday Night League. $75 to Start, and $11 a week for a new pack (four weeks) or $110 for the whole event. Players report the weeks match results by the end of each Tuesday and get their new packs when they come in on or before Tuesdays.
By Ben Calica / Leave a Comment / Magic, Misc
Everything old is, well nice and creepy again.;-) In Shadows Over Innistrad, we return to the glorious classic horror of Innistrad, a land where Vampires, Zombies and Horrors, try and hunt down humans, who grab their pitchforks and stand side by side with the Hero's Spirits and Angels who fight on their side.
Spoilers Here...Wizards starts leaking cards about 4 weeks before the set comes out…it's fun to get a sneak peek…
The first Innistrad, ironically enough, was also the first set that came out when I took over the store, so the attachment is beyond how great the set was. (And it was great…Innistrad was the first set in a long time that Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic, was brought back to have a hand in, and it shows. Beyond the utter commitment to the storyline-i.e. no elves popping up in Bella Lugosi land, the mechanics of the set had a fun and directness to them that carried over to many of the sets that followed.) So stop smiling…this is supposed to be horrible (or Horror-ible). Hey…the puns are in the right Spirit!…Oh, stop barking at me, I know my jokes suck. (Yeah…I have teenagers…I can pull out bad Dad-puns all day long. Bring your groans…they are the music of the children of the night to me….)
Each new set introduces a small number of new abilities and brinks back a few oldies. Here is a rundown on these new (and some old) mechanics pulled from the wizards of the coast website.
DOUBLE-FACED CARDS
It wouldn't be Innistrad if horrible things weren't transforming into other horrible things, so double-faced cards make their return. Each double-faced card has two card faces and no back. Whoa! For the most part, they haven't changed, although we have made a few rules tweaks that may pop up. If you're comfortable with double-faced cards, feel go to the Double-Faced Cards Rules Changes section.
D ELIRIUM
As advertised, Innistrad is a bleak world of horror and death, so a focus on the graveyard is to be expected. Delirium is a new ability word that highlights cards that get better if you have four or more card types represented in your graveyard. There are many different kinds of delirium abilities, including activated abilities such as the one found on Reaper of Flight Moonsilver.
The card types that could show up in your graveyard are artifact, creature, enchantment, instant, land, planeswalker, sorcery, and tribal (a card type found on older cards). Don't count supertypes like basic or legendary, and don't count subtypes like Vampire or Equipment. The number of cards doesn't matter, as long as you get four or more card types. An artifact creature, an instant, and a planeswalker will do the trick.
INVESTIGATE AND CLUES
Mysteries permeate Innistrad like strange references permeate my writing. Zoinks! To solve these mysteries, you'll need to investigate and follow the Clues.
She looks friendly enough. I'm sure she'll help! Investigate is a new keyword action found in Shadows over Innistrad. It's pretty straightforward. To investigate, you put a Clue token onto the battlefield. A Clue is a new artifact type. Clues are colorless artifacts (what, you though they'd be blue?), and they each have the ability "{2}, Sacrifice this artifact: Draw a card."
MADNESS (A returning mechanic)
T he next stop on our tour of brand new, never-before-seen Shadows over Innistrad abilities is madness, a returning ability you may have seen before. If you discard a card with madness, you exile it instead of putting it into your graveyard. This causes an ability to trigger. When that ability resolves, you can cast the spell for its madness cost. If you don't cast the spell this way, it's put into your graveyard. Well, all of that just sounds insane.
Note that the mandatory discard into exile is a small change from previous rules. Before, you could discard a card w
ith madness into your graveyard and skip the whole madness thing. This may be relevant with cards like Jace, Vryn's Prodigy. That dude shows up a lot in this article for a card not in this set.
One cool thing about casting a spell using the madness ability is it doesn't matter what its card types are. So if you manage to discard a creature card with madness during an opponent's turn, you can cast that spell and maybe create a surprise blocker. The spell's mana cost and converted mana cost don't change. You're just paying the madness cost instead.
SKULK
By now, I'm sure you've noticed that Innistrad is a bleak world of…Right, we've been over this. For some creatures, being all conspicuous isn't the best plan. For those creatures, we present a new keyword: skulk. A creature with skulk can't be blocked by any creature with greater power. Introducing Farbog Revenant.
Aww…it's totes adorbs, in an inky kind of way. With skulk, you consider the power of potential blockers only as blocks are being declared. If Farbog Revenant gets legally blocked by a 1-power creature, raising the power of the blocker won't undo the block. But if your opponent has amassed beefy defenses, skulk can be an effective way to sneak damage in.
Order Tickets Here….
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About the Pokemon BreakPoint Set…
By Ben Calica / Leave a Comment / Events, Misc, Pokemon
The newest set of Pokemon, BreakPoint, releases in February. The second set in the Break set, it features both Mega Ex's and the New Break cards that can be played on top of a Pokemon of the same name to add its abilities.
Release Date is Feb 3rd,
Prerelease, Jan 30th at 10am and 2 pm. $30 per player. Each player gets 6 packs, makes their best deck and plays for 3 rounds. After having a bit of fun, they turn in their borrowed energy and get two more booster packs and a special promo card. The 10am event is run by D20 so you CAN register in advance. The 1 pm event is run by the Pokemon League folks and is first come, first served and needs to be paid in cash.
More info about the set below…
http://www.pokemon.com/us/pokemon-tcg/xy-breakpoint/explore-and-watch/
http://www.pokellector.com/sets/BPT-BREAKPoint
By Ben Calica / Leave a Comment / Events, Magic
Here comes the newest set for Magic…Oath of the Gatewatch…the second set of 2 in the Battle for Zendikar block. This set features a new set of mechanics that really favor playing with buddies (two-headed giants and such) as well as the first new land type in, well, ever. (Really just turning colorless mana into it's own thing, but cool none the less)
[from the Wizards Site]
Kozilek, the Great Distortion
The battle to save the plane of Zendikar rages on.
Confronted with overwhelming odds, the Planeswalkers face a dire choice: Retreat away to safety and leave the world to oblivion, or stay at great personal risk and fight for Zendikar.
Will you stay and fight?
Prerelease the weekend of 1/16-1/17–4 events (Sat 10 and 5, Sunday at 10 and 2hg at 3…$30 pp…good for all levels of players.)
Buy Tickets for the prerelease here:
What's in the Set?
Practice Drafting and Sealed here (great way to get to know the set.)
The New Mechanics…
http://magic.wizards.com/en/content/oath-gatewatch-home
http://magic.wizards.com/articles/archive/feature/oath-gatewatch-mechanics-2015-12-28
http://mtgmirror.com/#/
Buy Advance Tickets Here:
D20 GamesMagic Countdown to 2016 Septathlon
To ring in the new year, we are doing a different magic event for every day starting the day after x-mas.
The events are.
Chaos Two-Headed Giant -Sat 12/26 @4-$17.50 pp
Standard -Sunday, 12/27 @ 11 am $5 pp
To the Left Drafts–Draft for another player– Monday, 12/28 @ 12 and 6 $15pp
Sealed-Mystery Box-Prerelease kits- Tuesday 12/29 @12 and 6
Zombie Commander, Weds 12/30 4 pm and 6 pm (2 hours each) $5 pp
Modern Tournament: Thursday 12/31 10-3pm $10 pp.
Super FNM Draft Friday 1/1 ….FNM with Lots of extra FNM Promos. Lottery for extra promos based on tickets earned by participating in every Septathlon event!
Bonus Raffle entry Tix for number of events you attend for the Friday FNM Goodie raffle. Raffle items will include promo cards, playmats, Modern Masters Packs, a From the Vaults and more stuff. The more people that come to events, the more we'll stuff in the give away…
#of Events Bonus Tix