By josh
April 6th, 2009 D&D – Hybrid Characters Playtest
Wizards has posted a playtest article for what they call Hybrid Characters, if you’re an Insider member you can check it out.
Gaming News & Views
By josh
April 3rd, 2009 New Rats
This is truly a bit of randomness but I really don’t care. Anyone that knows me knows I love rats. I find them to be incredibly fascinating animals that are also amazing pets. Recently my wife and I adopted two new baby rats that will be joining Bartleby and Rufus shortly. For now they are in a separate cage.
By josh
April 3rd, 2009 Dominion Card I Would Like to See
Everyone who plays Dominion has a few ideas of what they think would be cool to add to the mix of kingdom cards. Pat and I were discussing a few ideas a while back and thought it would be neat to have a card called Sheriff that was basically a moat that gave treasure instead of cards. I think we agreed that it would most likely be a 3 cost card that gave two treasure but had the Moat reaction ability. Seems, at a glance, like this would be a decent card and we found it pretty thematic.
I was thinking about some card ideas and came up with a card I would like to see in the next next expansion (Seaside).
By josh
April 2nd, 2009 Dominion: Intrigue – French Magazine Previews Three Cards
So for those of you who are like me and are eagerly awaiting the next Dominion expansion we have three of the cards that will be appearing in it. I have spoken a lot about Dominion and its expansions in the past. Here are the cards:
By josh
March 30th, 2009 Regarding Casual Games – My Thoughts, My Theory
Recently I have been thinking a lot about casual games and I wanted to ramble about these thoughts and provide you all with a small theory I have.
By josh
March 27th, 2009 Dungeons and Dragons: Paragon Path Rules Issue
One of my players was a bit unhappy with his characters plot (or rather lack there of) and decided he wanted to bring in a new character. As he was one of the two leaders in our six-player party he decided to stick with a leader character but bring in a Shaman as they are good at group healer while the other leader, a Cleric, could hand the single target big heals. In our first game with this character things seemed to go fairly well but an issue came up with one of his paragon path powers (say that three times fast!).
By josh
March 23rd, 2009 Language Independent Games – My Response to Matt Thrower
Matt Thrower has a problem with language independent games and he decided to voice this problem over on Board Game News. If you scroll down you will see that I commented on his post and I wanted to make sure I linked from here to there.
By josh
March 21st, 2009 Some Words from Donald X
This post is sort of a follow up post to what I wrote yesterday about Dominion as we have a bit of information right from The Donald himself. (No… not Trump but he had a pretty cool game too!)
By josh
March 18th, 2009 Hands on With the Player’s Handbook 2
I was planning on picking up a copy of the Player’s Handbook 2 at our local game store yesterday but when I stopped in I didn’t see any copies. It’s possible they weren’t out yet or I missed them but after getting back to my house and having two of my players bring copies, a third mentioned they had one on order, and a fourth said they would probably pick up a copy at some point, I decided that spending the money for a copy of my own just felt like throwing money away.
By josh
March 14th, 2009 History of the World – Rules Error Discovered After Years of Play
So, I was on BGG yesterday popping around and I saw this forum title: Reallocation: the uber card. This made me scratch my head as I have discussed just how bad I thought Reallocation was. This lead me back to the rules and to discover that we had been doing something wrong for all of the years we have been playing.
By josh
March 10th, 2009 Local Game Stores
A couple things recently have gotten me thinking about local game stores and I decided I just wanted to post a quick little ramble about them. I would, as always, love to hear some comments about this topic so please stick around and leave a few words.
By josh
March 10th, 2009 Last Night on Earth FAQ and a Tiny Bit of Dominion Info
I have a few pieces of info I wanted to share but neither really felt like they deserved their own post so I crammed them together. It’s days like this that I wish we had a twitter on this blog…
By josh
March 5th, 2009 Game Crazed – A Bit About the Board Games I Have Played Recently
By josh
March 3rd, 2009 RftG Expansion Info
Click here for a bit more info about Rebel vs Imperium for Race for the Galaxy.
By josh
February 23rd, 2009 Small World – Intrigued and Excited
I have been following Small World, a new game coming from Days of Wonder, for a couple weeks now and I wanted to put up a couple links to some information about it.
By josh
February 18th, 2009 A Nice Collection of Skill Challenges
I just wanted to link to Critical Hits in the same way that I linked to The Core Mechanic as they both linked to my skill challenge example.
By josh
February 18th, 2009 Dominion Promo Cards at BGG
I already mentioned that BGG was going to be distributing the Envoy card for Dominion but I just noticed today that the Geek is now taking orders and not only do you get your Envoy cards (10 plus 1 for randomizing) for your 1 cent plus 4.99 shipping but you also get a copy of Black Market.
By josh
February 18th, 2009 On the Brink of Paragon: Some Thoughts on D&D 4th Edition
Last night my group reached level 11 in our Dungeons and Dragons campaign. We have been playing this same game since early last June, giving us over eight months of play time so far. If the next two tiers go at a comparable speed we will reach the end of the whole campaign (should we see it to its conclusion) at right about the two-year mark.
Overall I have enjoyed the new D&D quite a bit and I just thought it would be interesting to comment on a few of my observations as we have just reached a major milestone in the game.
By josh
February 12th, 2009 Thomass Lehmann – Past, Present, Future
I have been thinking of doing a couple posts on game designers and how their designs evolve and such over the years but I just wanted to get this tidbit out here now.
By josh
February 12th, 2009 Boardgame News – Check it Out
I just signed up for a year long membership over at Boardgame News. I highly recommend that those interested in board games pay the rather small amount of cash to support the efforts of Eric Martin.
By josh
February 2nd, 2009 A Lazy Way to Link You to Cool Stuff
So, whenever I find something game-related that I think is really cool I like to write a post about it and link to it. I did this with Obsidian Portal, Brettspielwelt and others. Today while I was popping around I found another blog that does this as a weekly thing and has it far better organized than my rather erratic posts.
By josh
February 2nd, 2009 Totems, Totems, Totems! – Wizards Previews the Shaman
The first three levels of the Shaman are up for Insider members over at Wizards site and I have to say it looks pretty interesting and gives us four options for the Leader slot once the PH2 comes out (Cleric, Warlord, Bard and Shaman).
By josh
February 1st, 2009 My Brief Return to Magic
Sunday Morning found me awake fairly early. Recently I have been sleeping better and thus sleeping in but this Sunday the alarm went off at our normal weekday wake up time and I never got back to sleep.
So, I wandered downstairs looking for something to do and decided to sign on to Magic Online and after a bit of waffling I decided to give it a go.
By josh
January 30th, 2009 RftG: More Info on the Expansion
I just want to follow up on my post from two weeks ago about the second Race for the Galaxy Expansion.
By josh
January 29th, 2009 D&D Character Builder – Pleasantly Suprised
Being an Insider member and a naturally curious person I decided to download the full version of the character builder that Wizards put up recently and I have to say, I like what I see.
By Scott
January 26th, 2009 Whither Magic?
Not Shadowmoor’s damage as -1/-1 counters ability, I’m pondering the state of Magic: the Gathering and its newest card sets.
By josh
January 26th, 2009 Sorcerer Preview – A New Twist on the Old Favorite
Wizards has put up their preview of the first three levels of sorcerer and it seems pretty neat.
By josh
January 23rd, 2009 Obsidian Portal
I was poking around on Penny Arcade today and was informed about this nifty wiki-like site called Obsidian Portal.
By josh
January 20th, 2009 A Weekend of Games
This weekend was an exceptional one as far as gaming goes. While I did not get the blogging done I would have liked (my game reviews are so backed up now it isn’t funny and before I write them I still want to write about the changes I want to make in the way I review in my Review of Reviews post that I haven’t finished).
I did get the chance to play some new games and several old games. Since the number of different games was fairly high I decided it would be fun to toss a post up here about the games I played from Friday night until Sunday night.
By Scott
January 18th, 2009 Savoring Level One
Say for a moment that you are starting a brand-new role playing campaign. I’ve known some GMs to begin players at mid-level so they don’t have to toil around as a first-level character. Yet I think doing so misses the sweetest part of many role-playing games: starting your characters inexperienced and watching them grow.
By josh
January 16th, 2009 In a Word: Eclectic
In my opinion one of the biggest assets this blog has is also its greatest negative. That is to say, Pair O’ Dice Games is probably one of the most eclectic game blogs out there.
By josh
January 15th, 2009 Race for the Galaxy: Rebel vs Imperium
Over at the geek their is a bit of information about the next Race for the Galaxy expansion.
By Scott
January 14th, 2009 Magic: Channeling Land, Oona, and You
It’s been some time since I wrote the Channeling Land Magic variant. In my group we’ve been playing that flavor of Magic exclusively for several months now. There are just a couple of sticking points, which I’ll cover here and offer suggestions on how to smooth them over.
The Faerie Queen
By josh
January 14th, 2009 A Pointless Post About the Pointlessness of XP
I had been noticing for a while that experience points in D&D 4th Edition were almost more trouble than they were worth and I thought I would do a post about it. Unfortunately, I was beaten to the punch last week by Chris Youngs who wrote about XP in his Editorial. Still, I wanted to say a couple words about it even if I am treading over a well-worn path.
By josh
January 14th, 2009 Skill Challenge Example from My Game
A lot has been said about Skill Challenges in D&D 4th Edition, some good some bad. I like the concept but as I have said in the past I have had a hard time implementing them to my satisfaction. Honestly, for the most part they have been enjoyable as they have mixed role playing with dice rolling in such a way that, when done correctly, can appeal to two different kinds of gamers. Still, sometimes it is hard to get the descriptions right in such a way to appeal to those who are looking for story in what is often predominantly an adventure game.
By josh
January 5th, 2009 Commentary! The Musical
For any of you fans of Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog I recommend checking out Commentary! The Musical. While the actual commentary (the non-musical version) on the DVD will certainly give you more insight into the production (I’m never certain to what to call it… “show”, “film” etc.) the musical version, again simply called Commentary! The Musical, is quite funny and gives you the feeling of knowing these people in some intimate way.
By josh
January 5th, 2009 The Warden and Other Cool New Stuff for Insider Members
I have so many cool things I want to write about but this past weekend ended up being a bit crazier than I had planned. I hope to get back to writing more, including writing reviews for no less than six games that I have either played recently or have recently realized I never got around to reviewing. For today I just wanted to send you over to Wizards where you can check out the newest preview from the Players Handbook 2, the Warden.
By josh
January 1st, 2009 BrettspielWelt
I haven’t finished my review of Dominion yet but as you can probably tell, I like the game a lot (having already mentioned it a couple of times). At any rate while checking it out on BBG I saw that there is an online version of it at BrettspielWelt. I have since gone to the German site and played several games of Dominion. If you’re ever bored I highly recommend it, or any of their other games.
By josh
December 31st, 2008 A Few Things I’m Looking Forward to in 2009
There are several more games I need to review and I also would like to write a bit more about reviewing and perhaps change the way I write reviews but it occurred to me that there are a number of game related things I am quite excited about at the moment and this being the last day of the year a post about these items might be a good idea.
By josh
December 29th, 2008 Card Games Cometh
I have several new games I am planning to talk about and review soon and it came to my attention as I was driving to work today that quite a number of them are card games. After making this realization I decided I wanted to post a quick note about it and see if anyone else has noticed this rather interesting change in game design in recent years, where card games seem to be making a move from the casual to the more strategic.
By josh
December 15th, 2008 D&D Controllers: Wizards and Druids and Invokers Oh My!
By Scott
December 14th, 2008 Dice Roller is Live
Here’s a little tool for anyone who’s ever in need of rolling dice but doesn’t have a few good polyhedrons on hand: the Pair O’ Dice Games new Dice Roller.
By josh
December 2nd, 2008 Game-It-Yourself!
As Minimum Wage is now live (I really just can’t say that enough!) I wanted to poke around the net and look at other print-and-play games.
By josh
December 1st, 2008 D&D: Druid Preview
By josh
November 24th, 2008 How Best to Print Out Minimum Wage
So it’s finally out (announcement here). Phew, it has been a long road to get here but I have finally managed to get Minimum Wage up on the blog for any and all who would like to download and check it out. If you haven’t see it yet, just click here.
By josh
November 24th, 2008 Catalyst Games and Wizkids Properties
This isn’t exactly news at this point (it was posted a week ago) but I thought I should direct your attention to it anyway. One week ago Catalyst Game Labs announced that it has made an offer to The Topps Company to purchase “various WizKids’ properties, including such dynamic game lines as HeroClix, the Pirates Pocket Model Game, BattleTech/MechWarrior, and Shadowrun“.
By josh
November 17th, 2008 Minimum Wage Pre-Release Primer
I feel a little bad about the rather minimal time I have spent working on this blog lately and while I have reasons for my absence I can’t say they were all good reasons. Feel free to read my tangent along the side for a bit more info on that.
The one good reason I have not been working on this is that I have been working on it, that is to say, I have been working on the final touches to Minimum Wage!
By Scott
November 12th, 2008 Eclipse Phase – On the Horizon
I was checking out some Shadowrun stuff recently when I noticed a mention of Catalyst’s new upcoming SF/Horror game Eclipse Phase.
By josh
November 12th, 2008 Dungeons and Dragons – Character Builder Beta
So the Character Builder Beta was released to those who have subscribed to D&DI, and being one of those willing to fork over the bucks I was able to download it and check it out. Personally I can’t say I was impressed but then I doubt they could have impressed me.
By Scott
November 11th, 2008 Magic Q&A: Deathbringer Liege
Time to tackle a Magic: the Gathering rules question.
Q: My opponent has one creature, untapped. I have a Deathbringer Liege in play. If I play a black and white spell, can I destroy my opponent’s creature?
