Zendikar!

Wow, fantasy worlds are colliding! I never thought I'd see the day, but D&D and Magic: The Gathering are (sort of) crossing over. The world of Zendikar from Magic is now a playable Fifth Edition D&D setting -- and best of all, it's free! Click here for the scoop.

Games on the Go

Matthew is now on a traveling ice hockey team (the Tahoe Grizzlies) so we'll be hitting the road periodically for away games in exotic locations. (Hey, now I know where Vacaville is!) We also have a few trips planned for the summer, including my sister's wedding back in New York. With all our travel coming up, it's great that we have card games like Magic and Exploding Kittens to while away our down time in hotels and such. Huzzah for portable games!

Tyrants of the Underdark

There's a new D&D board game on the way: Tyrants of the Underdark, from Gale Force Nine. If you like drow, you'll like this game...

Shadows Over Innistrad

I picked up a couple of Intro Packs for the new Magic series, Shadows Over Innistrad, during my lunch hour today. Looks like cool stuff, and I think we'll finally have enough cards for a blue deck!

Magic Morning

While Mom and Dad paid the bills and fertilized the lawn, respectively, the boys got involved in a pretty epic Magic duel. I have no idea to what extent they were following the rules, but it sure looks impressive. As I write this, they're still locked in battle...

Magic Showdown

Still raining cats and dogs...so we dragged Amy into a couple of Magic duels. She used my best deck (white/black) and defeated a wretchedly unlucky Matthew and his top deck (black/red) in the first duel, but then got annihilated in the rematch when Matthew was able to demonstrate the full power of his deck. The new Magic series, Shadows Over Innistrad, comes out this week, so I shudder to think what new horrors Matthew will be able to add to his deck!

The Thin Line

There's a thin line between sanity and madness -- in Mansions of Madness, at least. On this rainy Saturday afternoon, we finished up the adventure that we started last weekend. Over the course of the scenario, I had been whittling down Michael McGlen's sanity points until he had only one left. At zero, I could have played a card that would have turned the gangster against his companions. Alas, the heroes won the game before I could find a way to turn him insane, but it certainly would have made for a memorable ending if McGlen had machine-gunned his friends right when they were about to achieve their goal...

Fiery Doom!

The madness continued tonight with the second part of our current adventure. As fire spread across the grounds of the estate, hard-boiled thug Michael McGlen (Matthew) cut down a couple of monsters with his trusty tommy gun, clearing the way for our heroes to search for clues. A box buried in the garden pointed toward a clue in the most distant corner of the estate (the small room in the upper-right corner of the photo below).

With every outdoor map tile already ablaze, the players knew that someone would have to make a mad dash through the flames to the distant building. While cursed heiress Gloria (Amy) and plucky glamour girl Jenny (Nathaniel) hid from the flames in the caves beneath the estate, Michael McGlen raced across the lawn. Unfortunately, fire causes a hero to lose sanity as well as life, and poor Michael has little sanity to spare. He reached the building, obtained the clue, and then sprinted back to his companions -- but arrived dangerously low on sanity! Gloria has some magic that can restore lost sanity points, but the clock is ticking, the estate is burning, and the final clue remains to be uncovered!

The Madness Returns!

It's been quite a few months since our last foray into Mansions of Madness, but Nathaniel has been begging for more Lovecraftian horror -- as five-year-olds are wont to do, I suppose -- so I spent a good hour setting up the board and cards (user-friendly this game is not) and we jumped into a new scenario after dinner.

We're still in the early stages of the adventure, but it's been quite eventful thus far. While investigating the gloomy, run-down estate inherited by the occult writer Gloria (played by Amy), we've learned that the family long ago made a blood pact with eldritch forces, and now Gloria is expected to renew the bargain. Oh, and the grounds of the estate are on fire...

Santorini

There's a cool Kickstarter board game in the works called Santorini (click here for the page). The project has already funded (and then some!), so they're now going for various stretch goals. It's a Euro-style game (with a Greek mythology theme) in which players build buildings and try to reach the highest level first. It seems like a great game for families, and the various deity and hero cards add a lot of variety to the gameplay. I think we'll back this one!

D&D Movie Director

A bit of news about the upcoming D&D movie can be found here.