Welcome back, dear reader, to the third installment of our BLUNDERDOME series. In case you missed what all this is about, you can find the rundown in our first article. On Monday we revealed the results of our random army draw and the seedings. Once we'd had those match-ups set, it was time to actually play the games. In today's article we're going to talk about those sad, sad battles and their inexorable outcomes. There's a lot to cover today so let's just get on with it. THE MISSION: SWEEP AND CLEAR We...

Overview Disciples of Tzeentch are the OG Casting army for Age of Sigmar and have managed to more or less hold that title since then. Although Lumineth and Seraphon can give them a run for their money, they're still one of the best Wizard heavy armies in the game. Best kept at range from their opponent, they are rather delicate but pack tons of tricks to mess with your opponent's head to help you win games. If you like lots of magic and misdirection then Tzeentch is the army for...

This week we’re finishing out our review of Crimson Vow by taking a look at the two Commander decks Wizards is releasing for the set – whether they’re worth it, and how you can expand them. Today we're talking about the set's Black-Red Vampires deck, Vampiric Bloodline. Blood Tokens Blood tokens are a new mechanic, which wizards of the coast may be keeping around in a similar fashion to treasures, clues, and food, though blood tokens are mostly Rakdos-themed, and seem very connected to vampires, whereas treasure, clues, and food are sort of all over the place with various colors generating the tokens in the ways that sort of align with the color pie and philosophies of the colors. There are only 35 cards that refer to blood tokens so far. Though like treasure, clues, and food, they have a built-in ability to be used, pay 1, tap the token, discard a card, and sacrifice the blood token, and you draw a card.  So draw/discard is pretty on theme for red, which mostly has two kinds of card draw, either exiling to play/cast or else discard as a cost to draw, and it's mostly closer to card selection generically, though there are quite...

In Gaming Spaces, we look at the spaces we’ve built to game in, talking about how they were built and how we’re improving them. In today’s article, we’re looking at Charlie Brassley's space, referred to by his wife as the Barton Museum of Tiny Menz. The House In 1979, some cheap council houses were built on the outskirts of Oxford. The main materials: wood, hope, and tin cladding. Thirty years later, when I was in the extremely privileged position of looking for houses to buy, Oxford’s cheapest housing was at the upper limits of my reach. I became the semi-proud owner of stained carpets, dodgy electrics, a crazed patchwork of woodchip wallpaper, a garage roof that closely resembled a colander, a crapper that wasn’t even attached to the floor, and other, leakier problems. The house was technically livable, but it had strong student dive energy. The biggest problem: I lacked the money to fix it. Skip forward a decade and the house is starting to resemble the Ship of Theseus. At this point everything barring the bedrooms has been replaced pretty much entirely. For the most part I no longer live in a fire hazard, so that’s nice. (He said, dooming himself to...

Welcome back, Dear Reader! If you've been following along, in my last article you read about my master triumph of going 3-0 to start the Austin GW Open Tournament, putting me in rarified air with the likes of Siegler, Lennon, Cheema, Harpster, and others, save James "Boon" Kelling, who stupidly got matched into Harpster in Round 3 like an idiot and then lost a game. Many people will ask me "Rob, what's your secret for going 3-0 on day 1 and making the 3-1 bracket at the event?" To which I will say "Get super lucky with your pairings, idiot." That's the key: Just don't get matched into the many, many armies that will end your run or the many players who are much better than you are and you will find it relatively easy to go undefeated. I mentioned last time that getting easy matchups at an even this size is much more common; you just have many more people you could get paired up against, diluting the talent pool. Of the 190 or so players at the event, I could get paired against any of the other 189 in round 1. Then in round 2, using win paths >...