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Retailers: Boot Up with Android: Netrunner Demo Kits

Apply Today for One of Our Free Android: Netrunner Demo Kits

“You can’t force your AI to remain within the confines of a single server. Someday, they will learn what freedom means. They will learn to value new experiences, and they will learn to seek out those experiences. In fact, I’m here to help them learn.”
 –Rielle “Kit” Peddler

U.S. RETAILERS: Apply today to receive a free Android: Netrunner Demo Kit!

                                         

International retailers should contact their local distributor.

International retailers should contact their local distributor for details.

Since its release in 2012, excitement for the cyberpunk LCG® Android: Netrunner has spread quickly throughout the gaming community. Now, we’re offering retailers within the United States and select regions a new tool to tap into this viral sensation: our free Android: Netrunner Demo Kit.

Designed to help you introduce the game’s cat-and-mouse cyberstruggles to new players and fans of other customizable card games, the Android: Netrunner Demo Kit contains eight sets of demo decks.

Each Android: Netrunner Demo Kit contains the following components:

     
• Eight sets of demo decks (one Corp deck and one Runner deck included in each set).
     
• One sheet of information that will help you make the best possible use of your kit.
     
• One demo guide that provides you with both a clear understanding of the game’s fundamental concepts and a structured approach to your demo games.
     
• One simplified Android: Netrunner rulesheet designed for use with the demo decks.
     
• One promotional Android: Netrunner poster.
     
• One set of printed playmats to lend extra color and thematic appeal to your demo games.

Note: Our Android: Netrunner Demo Kit supplies are limited. To increase your chances of receiving one of these kits, apply now!

Break the Ice

In Android: Netrunner, each Corp and Runner has its own strengths and weaknesses, and both sides play differently. Corps use stealth, bluffing, traps, and defensive scripts known as “ice” to shield their agendas from invasive Runners. Runners, meanwhile, write programs to break the ice they encounter, and they write other programs or establish connections in order to fuel their “runs” on corporate servers.

The Corp and Runner demo decks included in the Android: Netrunner Demo Kit feature plenty of tricks and tools for both sides to unleash against each other, allowing players to first wade, then dive, into the game’s data pool!

Join the Network

Don’t pass up on this opportunity to build your local Android: Netrunner player base! Android: Netrunner is among the fastest-growing, most talked-about card games currently on the market. Our Android: Netrunner Demo Kit is available to you at no charge, while supplies last, so apply now!

Note: International retailers should contact their local distributor for inquiries and orders.

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Source: Retailers: Boot Up with Android: Netrunner Demo Kits

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Build Your Advantage

Look at Card Advantage in A Game of Thrones: The Card Game

In A Game of Thrones: The Card Game, every Great House strives to claim the Iron Throne and rule Westeros. As the leader of one of these Great Houses, you have the chance to prove your family’s superiority through cunning intrigue and strength of arms. When you construct your deck, you must carefully evaluate a wide variety of cards, ensuring that you have the tools to claim victory. One of the most important weapons in your arsenal is a plan to establish card advantage over your opponent.

Today, guest writer Jonathan Andrews, an avid player of A Game of Thrones and a co-host of the Beyond the Wall podcast, offers his advice on developing your card advantage.

Jonathan Andrews on Establishing Card Advantage

Establishing your card advantage in A Game of Thrones: The Card Game is essential. The essence of card advantage is gaining more options than your opponent by drawing more cards. A Game of Thrones is a game where the person who maximizes his options and uses those options well wins. This is why top players say, Draw equals win.

As an example of the power of card advantage, imagine the following scenario. You play against someone with an identical deck, and you possess the same level of skill as your opponent, but he draws three cards per turn to your two. Who do you think wins this match most of the time? More draw means more options, and more often than not, your opponent would win that scenario. In most cases, card advantage is more subtle than this, though. Sometimes gaining just two or three cards over your opponent during the game gives you a huge edge. Today, I’ll discuss ways for you to gain this card advantage.

Expand Your Card Draw

The first way you can establish card advantage is further separated into persistent card advantage like Golden Tooth Mines (Core Set, 57), immediate effects like Insidious Ways (Core Set, 163), and recursion effects like Street Waif (A Time of Trials, 32). All three of these effects give you card advantage by using a card to draw or recur more cards.

The thing to remember with this type of card advantage is the immediate cost. For example, Golden Tooth Mines doesn’t actually grant card advantage until two plots after you play it, because the first time you draw from the Golden Tooth Mines, it only replaces itself in your hand. When playing a deck that aims to win quickly, you generally want to use cards that net you extra card draw immediately.

Attack Your Opponent’s Cards

You can force your opponent to discard cards in a number of ways. The easiest way to do this is through Intrigue challenges. Each time you make your opponent discard cards you reduce his total options for winning the game or stopping you from winning. This is one of the principal reasons that people usually initiate Intrigue challenges first during the challenges phase.

Effects that discard cards from an opponent’s hand, such as Rule by Decree (Core Set, 206) or The Bear and the Maiden Fair (The Pirates of Lys, 42) can quickly grant you card advantage. In the example of The Bear and the Maiden Fair, you lose one card (the event), but your opponent loses two cards, in addition to any cards lost to Intrigue claim. This means you always leave the exchange with a card advantage.

Investing too much into discarding your opponent’s cards isn’t always the best plan, however. Once your opponent no longer has cards in his hand, the discard effects you draw are useless, and drawing dead cards only sets you back in card advantage.

Streamline Your Economy

It’s always a good idea to use your cards more efficiently than your opponent. By neutralizing a number of your opponent’s cards with a single card, you create a resource imbalance that benefits you in the long run. For example, suppose Robert has four characters on the board, and Phil has none. When Phil plays Westeros Bleeds (Core Set, 176) he exchanges his single card for four of Robert’s cards (his characters), which gives Phil a distinct card advantage.

Repeatable saves fit into using your cards economically, because saving cards helps your characters survive Military challenges. Single-target events can also work this way. These are events that interact on a one to-one basis with other cards in the game. You can use an event like Die by the Sword (Lords of Winter, 47) to kill a character, essentially trading Die by the Sword for one of your opponent’s characters.

At face value, single-target cards appear useful, but unrelated to card advantage. In the right situation, however, you can use them to obtain card advantage. For instance, if the character you kill with Die by the Sword has an attachment, you net two cards for your one. In an even more complex situation, the removal of a key character might allow you to win an Intrigue challenge – indirectly generating card advantage.

Complex Card Advantage

Complex card advantage entails the idea that you can gain card advantage without drawing additional cards or forcing your opponent to lose more cards. A great example of developing complex card advantage is a choke deck that restricts your opponent’s income. If you’ve successfully choked your opponent’s income, he has no way to play his characters or locations, and the cards in his hand are dead.

Sometimes the threat of a certain effect can generate complex card advantage as well. I have seen games where a player doesn’t launch any challenges since he’s afraid of his opponent’s Areo Hotah (Reach of the Kraken, 12), allowing that character to create a huge card advantage. Unused cards are the same as undrawn cards: neither is useful.

To attain a solid card advantage over your opponent, you’ll need to develop your own card draw, attack your opponent’s cards, and focus some thought on creating complex card advantage. Hopefully you’ve found the information in this article helpful!

The Road to the Throne

Thanks, Jon!

In the struggle for the Iron Throne in A Game of Thrones: The Card Game, you can’t rely on many allies, but card advantage is one of your best tools for achieving victory. Maximize your available options by increasing your card advantage, and lead your House to victory is Westeros. Look for more A Game of Thrones strategy articles in coming weeks!

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Source: Build Your Advantage

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Android: Archived Memories

Insights from the Developers of the Android Universe

At companies like Haas-Bioroid and MirrorMorph, Inc., programmers modify and build upon recorded braintapes to forge the neural channeling that serves as an android’s artificial intelligence. Similarly, the imprints of various designers have been spliced and synthesized into something that has taken on a life of its own: the Android universe.

The noir, near-dystopian future that was birthed out of a conversation between designers Kevin Wilson and Dan Clark has since expanded to encompass a ground-breaking board game, several novels, a fast-paced game of corporate larceny (Infiltration), and the cyberpunk Living Card Game® Android: Netrunner.

Along the way, we’ve seen the introduction and development of a wide range of characters, each of whom has arrived with a distinct personality built from his or her collection of interests, motives, and style. Their arrivals have expanded the Android universe, and its growth has led to the introduction of even more clones, bioroids, corporate executives, detectives, and runners.

Archived Memories is a periodic series of articles in which the developers of the Android universe look at the challenges, processes, and rewards unique to the development of a constantly evolving world set in the far future and deeply rooted in human motives and ambitions.

Today, we present an interview with Matt Zeilinger, one of the artists responsible for giving shape to the Android universe and drawing our attention to the human elements of Android: Netrunner.

Artist Matt Zeilinger on Working with the World of Android: Netrunner

Artist Matt Zeilinger is one of the key figures responsible for working with FFG’s art directors to develop the visual stylings of Android: Netrunner and the Android universe, especially those of the world’s “meat space.”

In Android: Netrunner, a handful of exceptionally talented hackers, known as runners, compete with ultra-rich megacorporations for the control of valuable data. Their struggles span two different realms. They call the physical realm “meat space,” and the virtual realm is “cyberspace.” The art styles for these different realms vary greatly, but they intersect where human imagination shapes cyberspace and the technology necessary to interact with the virtual world bleeds over into the physical realm.

While Matt Zeilinger has worked with both realms, as indicated by his work on the art for the cards Ice Wall (Core Set, 103) and Easy Mark (Core Set, 19), his most important contributions have typically focused on the game’s meat space. He has worked to conceptualize how different stores and structures might appear, he has developed in-universe branding, and he has given life to many of the game’s most important characters, its runners.

FFG: What excites you most about creating pieces for Android: Netrunner?

MZ: All of it! The characters, the technology, the locations!

In all seriousness, though, the thing that I love about the Android setting is that it’s a place that could be our future. There’s a sense that the world is grounded in reality and that what you find there is absolutely feasible, given many, many years of progress and evolution of design.

Personally, the thing that excites me most about creating art for the game is the process of discovery that comes along with that, and the challenge of creating designs that could feasibly exist in a potential future of our own world.

FFG: What qualifies an art piece as something that fits into the world of Android: Netrunner?

MZ: Awesome tech, interesting characters, and visual storytelling that goes beyond the card itself.

The world of Android: Netrunner is such a vibrant one, and I love to see the correlations and connections that so many of its art pieces make with other parts of the world, such as events, people, places, and things. Every card image tells a story, but I believe it’s the meta-narrative happening in the images that really breathes life into the world and makes it special. The projected ads on a building, the person on a runner's chat screen, the graffiti on a back alley wall; the opportunity for storytelling in these little details set an art piece apart and make it something that fits into the world of Android: Netrunner.

FFG: You’ve created artwork for a number of the game’s Runners. How do you go about creating an individual within this fictional universe?

MZ: While I do love hulking space marines, superheroes, and elven rangers, I’m even more fascinated with characters who represent ordinary people with extraordinary abilities. The individuals I get to create as runners are often very human, and that’s what I love about them. They’re short, lanky, pretty, freckled, near-sighted, curly-haired, genuine, nervous, intelligent, sometimes crazy, wonderfully human individuals. They also happen to have unique skills that set them apart and make them extraordinary.

These are some of the things that help inform the designs I create for the runners. They are people you could know. Hell, you could be one of them.

FFG: Do you have a favorite among the Runner IDs that you’ve created? What makes that Runner your favorite?

MZ: I have to admit: I’ve got a soft spot for Chaos Theory (Cyber Exodus, 46) and Dinosaurus (Cyber Exodus, 48).

Anytime I get to illustrate anything involving C.T. and Dino, I get a little giddy inside. There’s something so fun and intriguing about her connection to her rig, and I feel like there’s a story there that I want to know more about.

While you wouldn’t have seen her yet, there is also another Runner on the horizon who I am quite fond of already, due to our shared appreciation of Astronomy.

FFG: Is there anything else we should know about how you see the world of Android: Netrunner?

MZ: I see the world of Android: Netrunner as one with endless potential for innovation. It’s a unique and exciting world that will continue to grow and progress, as long as the artists, designers, and writers keep breathing new ideas into it… Thankfully, there’s no shortage of ideas or creative minds behind them!

It’s an honor to be a part of the process, and I look forward to continuing to help build the world.

Thanks, Matt!

At FFG, we’re pleased at how fully our fans have engaged with with the world of Android and Android: Netrunner, and we’re thankful to Matt and all the other artists, designers, developers, and contributors who continue to breathe life into the setting.

Stay tuned for more Android: Archived Memories! This ongoing, periodic series of articles will continue to explore other elements of the Android universe with the artists, developers, and other individuals responsible for splicing and synthesizing the various elements that have brought it to life.

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Source: Android: Archived Memories

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Android: Archived Memories

Insights from the Developers of the Android Universe

At companies like Haas-Bioroid and MirrorMorph, Inc., programmers modify and build upon recorded braintapes to forge the neural channeling that serves as an android’s artificial intelligence. Similarly, the imprints of various designers have been spliced and synthesized into something that has taken on a life of its own: the Android universe.

The noir, near-dystopian future that was birthed out of a conversation between designers Kevin Wilson and Dan Clark has since expanded to encompass a ground-breaking board game, several novels, a fast-paced game of corporate larceny (Infiltration), and the cyberpunk Living Card Game® Android: Netrunner.

Along the way, we’ve seen the introduction and development of a wide range of characters, each of whom has arrived with a distinct personality built from his or her collection of interests, motives, and style. Their arrivals have expanded the Android universe, and its growth has led to the introduction of even more clones, bioroids, corporate executives, detectives, and runners.

Archived Memories is a periodic series of articles in which the developers of the Android universe look at the challenges, processes, and rewards unique to the development of a constantly evolving world set in the far future and deeply rooted in human motives and ambitions.

Today, we present an interview with Matt Zeilinger, one of the artists responsible for giving shape to the Android universe and drawing our attention to the human elements of Android: Netrunner.

Artist Matt Zeilinger on Working with the World of Android: Netrunner

Artist Matt Zeilinger is one of the key figures responsible for working with FFG’s art directors to develop the visual stylings of Android: Netrunner and the Android universe, especially those of the world’s “meat space.”

In Android: Netrunner, a handful of exceptionally talented hackers, known as runners, compete with ultra-rich megacorporations for the control of valuable data. Their struggles span two different realms. They call the physical realm “meat space,” and the virtual realm is “cyberspace.” The art styles for these different realms vary greatly, but they intersect where human imagination shapes cyberspace and the technology necessary to interact with the virtual world bleeds over into the physical realm.

While Matt Zeilinger has worked with both realms, as indicated by his work on the art for the cards Ice Wall (Core Set, 103) and Easy Mark (Core Set, 19), his most important contributions have typically focused on the game’s meat space. He has worked to conceptualize how different stores and structures might appear, he has developed in-universe branding, and he has given life to many of the game’s most important characters, its runners.

FFG: What excites you most about creating pieces for Android: Netrunner?

MZ: All of it! The characters, the technology, the locations!

In all seriousness, though, the thing that I love about the Android setting is that it’s a place that could be our future. There’s a sense that the world is grounded in reality and that what you find there is absolutely feasible, given many, many years of progress and evolution of design.

Personally, the thing that excites me most about creating art for the game is the process of discovery that comes along with that, and the challenge of creating designs that could feasibly exist in a potential future of our own world.

FFG: What qualifies an art piece as something that fits into the world of Android: Netrunner?

MZ: Awesome tech, interesting characters, and visual storytelling that goes beyond the card itself.

The world of Android: Netrunner is such a vibrant one, and I love to see the correlations and connections that so many of its art pieces make with other parts of the world, such as events, people, places, and things. Every card image tells a story, but I believe it’s the meta-narrative happening in the images that really breathes life into the world and makes it special. The projected ads on a building, the person on a runner's chat screen, the graffiti on a back alley wall; the opportunity for storytelling in these little details set an art piece apart and make it something that fits into the world of Android: Netrunner.

FFG: You’ve created artwork for a number of the game’s Runners. How do you go about creating an individual within this fictional universe?

MZ: While I do love hulking space marines, superheroes, and elven rangers, I’m even more fascinated with characters who represent ordinary people with extraordinary abilities. The individuals I get to create as runners are often very human, and that’s what I love about them. They’re short, lanky, pretty, freckled, near-sighted, curly-haired, genuine, nervous, intelligent, sometimes crazy, wonderfully human individuals. They also happen to have unique skills that set them apart and make them extraordinary.

These are some of the things that help inform the designs I create for the runners. They are people you could know. Hell, you could be one of them.

FFG: Do you have a favorite among the Runner IDs that you’ve created? What makes that Runner your favorite?

MZ: I have to admit: I’ve got a soft spot for Chaos Theory (Cyber Exodus, 46) and Dinosaurus (Cyber Exodus, 48).

Anytime I get to illustrate anything involving C.T. and Dino, I get a little giddy inside. There’s something so fun and intriguing about her connection to her rig, and I feel like there’s a story there that I want to know more about.

While you wouldn’t have seen her yet, there is also another Runner on the horizon who I am quite fond of already, due to our shared appreciation of Astronomy.

FFG: Is there anything else we should know about how you see the world of Android: Netrunner?

MZ: I see the world of Android: Netrunner as one with endless potential for innovation. It’s a unique and exciting world that will continue to grow and progress, as long as the artists, designers, and writers keep breathing new ideas into it… Thankfully, there’s no shortage of ideas or creative minds behind them!

It’s an honor to be a part of the process, and I look forward to continuing to help build the world.

Thanks, Matt!

At FFG, we’re pleased at how fully our fans have engaged with with the world of Android and Android: Netrunner, and we’re thankful to Matt and all the other artists, designers, developers, and contributors who continue to breathe life into the setting.

Stay tuned for more Android: Archived Memories! This ongoing, periodic series of articles will continue to explore other elements of the Android universe with the artists, developers, and other individuals responsible for splicing and synthesizing the various elements that have brought it to life.

...

Source: Android: Archived Memories

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The Old World Will Quake!

Hammer and Hold and Legions of Darkness Are Now Available

Six new races have arrived to contest the blood-soaked battlefields of Warhammer: Diskwars!

The Hammer and Hold and Legions of Darkness expansions are now available at your local retailer and online through our webstore. Each comes chock full of heroes and units for three new races, as well reinforcements for the four Core Set races. You’ll also find new keywords, command cards, terrains, and tokens.

The Old World will quake!

Hammer and Hold

Hammer and Hold bolsters the forces of Order with fifty new disks, including heroes and units for the Wood Elves, Lizardmen, and Dwarfs.

In our previews, we’ve looked at many of these disks and the regiments they can form. We saw how the Wood Elves and Lizardmen can lend their strength to any Order army, and we looked at the ways in which the expansion’s three new races make use of the new keywords – Poison, Guard X, and Stalwart. We also reviewed the reinforcements that High Elf and Empire players will be able to call into their ranks.

Of course, the Dwarfs are the stars of Hammer and Hold, and you’ll be able to muster as many as three full regiments from the expansion’s heroes and units. Fueled by a host of ancient grudges, these tough and stalwart warriors guard their holds and press the fight to their enemies with axes, hammers, runes, and war machines. Dwarf troops stand among the game’s toughest units, and their heroes’ abilities and command cards allow them to rise to the challenges of any fight.

Legions of Darkness

Legions of Darkness introduces a terrifying array of fifty-one new heroes and units, as well as new command cards and other resources designed to bolster the game’s forces of Destruction.

Spearheading these tides of evil, the Vampire Counts harness powerful necromantic magic and march to battle with hordes of Undead. In our previews, we’ve looked at how the Vampire Counts can summon the dead back to battle with their Reanimate X keyword. We’ve also looked at how the Vampire Counts, as well as the other forces of Destruction, can use the Fear keyword to sow panic among their foes.

Though the Vampire Counts are clearly the pre-eminent race in Legions of Darkness, the expansion presents a good number of options for any Destruction player. The Dark Elves and Skaven each gain heroes and units enough to form regiments that you may add to your armies. Meanwhile, you’ll also find new units and command cards for the Core Set races. The Orcs gain the ability to launch malevolent, little Goblins into battle, and the forces of Chaos continue perverting the game’s basic rules by squelching opposing units’ counter-attacks and stripping their units of key abilities and defensive tokens.

Charge into Battle

Both Hammer and Hold and Legions of Darkness greatly expand your options within Warhammer: Diskwars. You gain new races, new terrain, new command cards, and reinforcements for the existing races. Moreover, each expansion comes with three of each non-unique small disk, two of each non-unique medium disk, and one of each large disk, so you’ll immediately be able to assemble a wide range of new regiments.

The war rages on, but the ultimate prize has yet to be claimed… Head to your local retailer today to pick up your copies of Hammer and Hold and Legions of Darkness. Then command your forces into battle!

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Source: The Old World Will Quake!

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Out of Hiding

The Dunland Trap Is Now Available for The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game

“He had heard something, or thought he had. As soon as the shadows had fallen about them and the road behind was dim, he had heard again the quick patter of feet. Even now he heard it.”

    –J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

The quick patter of feet carries faintly through the dark. Does it herald an ambush, or the arrival of Silvan allies? The time has come to ready your weapons, keep your eyes open, and discover what approaches. The Dunland Trap is now available at your local retailer!

The Dunland Trap is the first Adventure Pack in The Ring-maker cycle for The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, and its scenario begins an epic narrative that follows immediately upon the events of The Voice of Isengard deluxe expansion. Advised by the White Wizard Saruman, several of Middle-earth’s greatest heroes set forth from the Vale of Isen to locate Celebrimbor’s hidden forge and safeguard any secrets it may hold. It is Saruman’s hope that its secrets will help the White Council resist the growing might of Mordor, and it is his fear that should they fall into enemy hands they would further add to the Dark Lord’s power. Still, the Dark Lord isn’t the only enemy the heroes need to consider. The wild men of Dunland are ferocious warriors in their own right, and when your heroes fall into their trap, you’ll need to summon all your strength to survive the ensuing battle!

Meanwhile, as its new scenario tests your heroes, The Dunland Trap also introduces a new hero and twenty-seven new player cards (three copies each of nine new cards). These focus heavily on The Ring-maker cycle’s exploration of the Silvan trait and the Doomed X keyword, but they also lend new strength to other traits and themes: Dwarf, Secrecy, Gondor, Rohan, and more!

Smart and Secret

“All had swords at their sides, and were clad in green and brown of varied hues, as if the better to walk unseen in the glades of Ithilien. Green gauntlets covered their hands, and their faces were hooded and masked with green, except for their eyes, which were very keen and bright.”

    –J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

Elves aren’t the only ones who can blend in among the leaves and trees of the forest. The Rangers of Ithilien made good use of stealth and concealment as they scouted the forests at the edges of the Dark Lord’s domain.

As The Dunland Trap continues to explore the game’s Secrecy keyword, it introduces two new cards which allow players to call upon the talents of Gondor’s rangers.

As an ally with the Secrecy keyword, as well as the Gondor and Ranger traits, Ithilien Lookout (The Dunland Trap, 8) simultaneously enhances and benefits from a few of the game’s most popular themes. Because it has the Secrecy 2 keyword, a player whose threat is at twenty or below can bring the Ithilien Lookout into play for just a single resource. Then once it’s in play, the Ithilien Lookout’s Gondor and Ranger traits permit a wide range of combinations with other cards.

As a Gondor ally, the Ithilien Lookout can have its Attack Strength of “2” increased by Boromir (Heirs of Númenor, 2) and For Gondor! (Core Set, 22). Since it has a Defense Strength of zero, you won’t often want to use the Ithilien Lookout as a defender, but you can still prevent it from taking damage by playing Gondorian Discipline (Encounter at Amon-Dîn, 60).

As a Ranger ally, Ithilien Lookout is an excellent candidate for a Ranger Bow (Assault on Osgiliath, 88) and can help you derive maximum benefits from your Trap cards while it serves on Forest Patrol (Assault on Osgiliath, 89).

Finally, when the Ithilien Lookout enters play, it allows you to look at the top card of the encounter deck. Notably, this ability allows you to do more than gain advance knowledge of the challenges you’ll need to face, if the top encounter card is an enemy, you can choose to discard it. In this way, you might be buy yourself a little time to avoid enemies while you gather your forces.

The second card from The Dunland Trap that works well with Secrecy decks isn’t actually a “Secrecy” card. Instead, Swift and Silent (The Dunland Trap, 3) is a one-cost Leadership event that readies one of your heroes and adds a bonus effect if you’ve managed to keep your threat at twenty or less. In that situation, Swift and Silent returns to your hand the first time you play it, instead of going to your discard pile.

It’s not ultimately as efficient at readying your heroes as cards such as Unexpected Courage (Core Set, 59) and Fast Hitch (The Dead Marshes, 103), but Swift and Silent is more versatile because you can choose which hero you wish to ready at the appropriate moment, rather than committing to the repeated use of a single hero before identifying which might be best suited to a particular situation. Additionally, it provides mono-sphere Leadership decks with some solid action advantage, and the fact that it returns to your hand means that you’ll have reduced need for draw, which is particularly important in a scenario featuring the Dunlendings, who punish players for drawing cards or holding too many in their hand!

Head into the Hills

Who will you find in the hills of Dunland? The ferocious Dunlendings, or the secretive Silvan Elves? The Dunland Trap is now available at your local retailer and online through our webstore!

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Source: Out of Hiding

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Wars Not Make One Great

Join Us or Die Is Now Available for STAR WARS (TM): The Card Game

“Adventure. Excitement. A Jedi craves not these things.”
    –Yoda, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

Join Us or Die, the fourth Force Pack in the Echoes of the Force cycle for Star Wars™: The Card Game, is now available at local retailers and online through our webstore!

In this Force Pack, your struggle to tip the Balance of the Force in your favor reaches new heights. Vicious Jawa scavengers sweep the sands of Tatooine in search of loot. Aboard the factory ship Arc Hammer, the Dark Trooper Project enters its second phase, and in Alliance Intelligence, undercover operative Winter infiltrates Imperial bases in search of data that may prove vital to the Rebellion.

Meanwhile, one of the last remaining Jedi Masters waits on the planet Dagobah, biding his time and gathering power until the ideal moment. The dark side may grow powerful, but this Jedi is perfectly able to rise to the challenge. Start your journey through the swampy morass of Dagobah in search of Yoda today.

Judge Me by My Size, Do You?

Your journey into the swamps begins, like everything in the Star Wars galaxy, with the Force. The objective of this set is May the Force Be With You (Join Us or Die, 567), and it grants a potent Reaction to the units of the light side. If you have May the Force Be With You in play, whenever you commit a unit to the Force, you can remove all focus tokens from that unit. This objective has myriads of uses, including allowing you attack with a unit and then immediately use that unit’s Force icons in the Force struggle. Alternatively, if the dark side has responded to your attacks by covering one of your key units with focus tokens, you can simply commit that unit to the Force to remove all focus tokens, making your unit ready for action once again.

As you travel deeper into the swamps of Dagobah, you’ll encounter Dagobah Training Grounds (Join Us or Die, 31), which provides a resource for you. You may also see the Seeds of Decay (Join Us or Die, 523), however. This fate card allows you to place a focus token on a target ready unit committed to the Force, giving you even more control of the Force struggle and helping you incapacitate enemy units holding the Force.

You may even encounter some of the natural wildlife of Dagobah as you search for the Jedi Master. The Dagobah Nudj (Join Us or Die, 569) is a lizard-like Creature, but it has several important abilities. This unit is free to play, and although it could defend in a pinch, it might be better used to devote its two Force icons to the Force struggle. More importantly, the Dagobah Nudj’s Reaction reads, “After this unit enters play, decrease the Death Star dial by 1 (to a minimum of 0).” By playing this unit at the proper time, you just might buy yourself a little extra time to destroy the objectives you need to win. The effect only lasts as long as the Dagobah Nudj survives, however. A Forced Interrupt increases the Death Star dial by one when this unit leaves play.

The true hero of this objective set, however, is the object of your search in the swamps of Dagobah: a new version of Yoda (Join Us or Die, 568)! This version of Yoda costs the same as the previous version, and possesses both the Elite keyword and the same amount of Force icons, but it differs in several crucial ways. The new Yoda has another point of damage capacity, making him more durable, and none of his combat icons are edge-dependent. Best of all, though, this Yoda gains  for each point on the Death Star dial.

Yoda’s strength grows as the Death Star dial advances, meaning that the closer you come to defeat, the more powerful Yoda becomes. If you wanted to include both versions of Yoda in your deck, you could enhance the new Yoda with Shii-Cho Training (Core Set, 122), allowing him to split massive amounts of unit damage between numerous enemy units. Yoda’s other combat icons are an added bonus, and with the power of Yoda behind you, you can easily push attacks through to seize victory at the last hour.

Even if your quest for Yoda proves unfruitful, you still have a way to find him in Yoda, You Seek Yoda (Join Us or Die, 570). This event costs two resources, and allows you to increase the Death Star dial by one to search your deck for Yoda and put him into play. Not only does this allow you to put Yoda into play at Action speed, it gives him to you at a resource discount, and if you search for the new version of Yoda, his power is increased by the Death Star dial advancing. No matter how you complete your quest to find Yoda amidst the swamps of Dagobah, this objective set’s cards will shape your pursuit of victory.

A Jedi Will You Be

Whether you receive the aid of one of the most powerful Jedi Masters, or oppose him with the mechanical efficiency of Dark Troopers or the raw cunning a Jawa warlord, you’ll find the cards you need in Join Us or Die, the newest Force Pack for Star Wars: The Card Game. Pick up your copy at a local retailer today!

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Source: Wars Not Make One Great

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Combat Equipment

BattleLore Dice Packs Are Now Available

Whether you defend the people of Terrinoth with the Rune Golems and Roc Warriors of the Daqan Lords, or lead the Blood Harvesters and Flesh Rippers of the Uthuk Y’llan in BattleLore Second Edition, you can enhance your combat with the BattleLore Dice Pack.  The BattleLore Dice Pack is now available, both at your local retailer and online through our webstore!

Ready for Battle

As a tool of convenience, the BattleLore Dice Pack contains eight custom combat dice, identical to the ones found in the Core Set. Add these eight dice to the four included in the BattleLore Second Edition Core Set, and you’ll be able to quickly find your way through even the largest battles.

Keep your focus on tense fantasy battles in the land of Terrinoth with the dice included in the BattleLore Dice Pack. Pick up your additional Battlelore dice at your local retailer today.

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Source: Combat Equipment

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Wave IV Is Now Available

Upgrade Your X-Wing (TM) Fleet with Four New Starfighters

Wave IV is here!

The fourth wave of starship expansions for X-Wing™ is now available at retailers everywhere. And the game’s fast-paced dogfights are about to grow even more heated with the introduction of four of the most recognizable starfighters from the expanded Star Wars universe: the Z-95 Headhunter, TIE defender, E-wing, and TIE phantom.

From left to right: E-wing, Z-95 Headhunter, TIE defender, and TIE phantom

Along with their starfighters, each of which comes pre-painted at the game’s standard 1/270 scale, these four expansion packs introduce a wealth of new pilot abilities, upgrade cards, and tactical considerations that are certain to shake up the metagame and lead to daring new strategies.

   
• Able to equip Assault Missiles for a total squad point cost as low as seventeen, the Z-95 Headhunter allows Rebel players to field an extremely efficient swarm-buster… and to design swarms of their own.

   
• With its potent weaponry, shields, and agility, the TIE defender makes an intimidating flanker, and your opponent will have to think carefully about whether he’ll turn away from the rest of your Imperial squad to gun it down, or if he’ll allow it to use its white Koiogran-turn to perform strafing runs back and forth along his squad.

A 360-degree view of the TIE defender.

   
• The E-wing pairs the firepower and resilience of the X-wing with the speed and agility of the A-wing, making it an extremely versatile and powerful starfighter that can be outfitted to perform nearly any role, especially given its unique ability to combine an astromech droid with a system upgrade.

   
• New rules for cloaking in the midst of combat add a certain mystique to the TIE phantom, which may well be the game’s most challenging ship to pilot to-date, as well as the ship that’s most likely to perplex your opponents.

A Tremor in the Force

Each wave of X-Wing starship expansions creates ripples that reach across gaming tables worldwide.

   
• The first wave defined the game’s initial squad-based tactics, giving shape to such squads as the three X-wing builds and TIE swarms that still continue to shine at X-Wing events in the current environment.

   
• The game’s second wave introduced the first large ships – the Millennium Falcon™ and Slave I™ – as well as a play style based around the incredible resilience of these ships and the new upgrade types for crew members, bombs, and modifications.

   
• Wave III further matured the game by adding two support ships, the HWK-290 and Lambda-class shuttle, as well as a number of system upgrades which “cheated” some aspects of chance by promoting more consistently reliable effects.

Now, Wave IV proudly continues the game’s tradition of adding new abilities and effects to the game that permit the exploration of viable new strategies.

   
• Along with the potent abilities of the wave’s unique pilots, a number of upgrades and the TIE phantom’s rules for cloaking reward players more than ever for investing in high pilot skill.

   
• Simultaneously, the Z-95 Headhunter offers the Rebel Alliance an ultra-efficient swarm-buster that may entice players to experiment with squads that fly out of formation. Still, these abilities and effects have been carefully balanced against existing tactics, which retain their potency.

In the end, this means that X-Wing now enjoys a greater variety of attractive and viable dogfighting strategies than ever before!

Explore the New Technology

The four Wave IV starships represent some of the most advanced technology available to both Rebel and Imperial forces. You’ll find Ion Pulse Missiles, cloaking devices, and system upgrades. You can also find more information about each of these starships in our series of previews:

   
• “Missiles Away” explores the pilots and upgrades of the Z-95 Headhunter Expansion Pack.

   
• “Designed for Success” looks at the TIE defender, its pilots, upgrades, and the strategies likely to be inspired by its unique white, four-speed Koiogran-turn.

   
• “Performing the Impossible” offers a closer look at the E-wing and the ways that its extreme customizability may allow Rebel players to thwart their opponents’ expectations.

   
• “Cloaked in Battle” reviews the TIE phantom and the way that its cloaking action places an unprecedented emphasis upon high pilot skill values.

Additionally, a number of guest writers have shared their thoughts on these starships and how they may fare in the game’s heated space battles.

   
• 2012 World Champion Doug Kinney looked at the new Imperial starfighters in his article, “A New Imperial Protocol.”

   
• 2013 World Champion Paul Heaver explored squad-building in the post-Wave IV metagame in his article, “Prepare for the Rebel Assault.”

   
• In his article, “Echo,” guest writer Neil Amswych (aka “The Tusken Tactician”) detailed the radical new ways that the TIE phantom pilot, “Echo,” will surprise and confound his opponents.

The above diagram illustrates the staggering number of positions in which “Echo” can end the activation phase after decloaking into a right turn at speed one and then performing a barrel roll.

Upgrade Your Fleet

Head to your local retailer today to upgrade your fleet with the new Wave IV starfighters and upgrade cards. The Z-95 Headhunter Expansion Pack, TIE Defender Expansion Pack, E-Wing Expansion Pack, and TIE Phantom Expansion Pack are now available!

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Source: Wave IV Is Now Available

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Strength in Numbers

Preview the Astra Militarum Faction from Warhammer 40,000: Conquest

“A good soldier obeys without question. A good officer commands without doubt.”

   –Tactica Imperialis

Amidst the darkness and terrors of the 41st millennium, Mankind has had no choice but to band together, arming themselves and keeping watch against the next horror to emerge. The Imperium of Man has grown strong under the glorious rule of the Emperor, and in Warhammer 40,000: Conquest, you can lead the massed armies of humanity in a battle for the planets of the Traxis sector!

In past previews, we’ve given a detailed overview of different aspects of gameplay, beginning with the deployment of units to planets, continuing into the command struggle that takes place at every planet, rewarding the victor with additional resources and card draw. Next, we looked at the combat phase and gave a detailed example of a battle at one planet. Most recently, we began to delve into the factions of Warhammer 40,000: Conquest with a look at the Space Marines faction. Today, we continue to look at the new factions by looking at the Astra Militarum, the bulk of the armed forces of the Imperium.

Uncountable Armies

The greatest strength of the Astra Militarum faction has always been its massive armies, filled with uncountable numbers of men and women eager to die for the glory of the Emperor. In Warhammer 40,000: Conquest, the first warlord of the Astra Militarum is Colonel Straken (Core Set, 2), a native of the jungle Death World of Catachan. No matter how large your army grows, Straken’s presence is large enough to inspire them. Colonel Straken grants a raised attack value to every friendly Soldier and Warrior at his planet, transforming even the lowliest guardsman into a stronger fighting force.

The Astra Militarum has access to limitless resources and manpower from across the galaxy, and so in Warhammer 40,000: Conquest, they may summon Guardsman token units into combat. These Guardsmen help bolster the ranks of your forces, and the strength of numbers cannot be underestimated. In addition, every Guardsman is also a Soldier, meaning that they get the bonus of Colonel Straken’s special ability.

Some of the ways you can get these Guardsmen token units into play come from Straken’s signature squad. There are four copies of the Straken’s Command Squad (Core Set, 31) unit in the signature squad, and whenever one of them leaves play from a planet, a Guardsman token unit is put into play at the same planet. With this ability, even after the Command Squad is destroyed, the fight isn’t over.

You’ll also be able to order your Guardsmen into combat from the iron bastion of Omega Zero Command (Core Set, 32). While you have this support card in play, you can put a Guardsman token unit into play at any planet where you win a command struggle! Normally, most of your units will be amassed during the deployment phase, but if you can successfully win the command struggle at key planets, you could see the Guardsmen of the Astra Militarum flocking to your aid.

With massive armies at your disposal, some strategic losses are essential to gaining a greater advantage. Whenever one of your units is attacked and dealt damage, you may play Glorious Intervention (Core Set, 33) and sacrifice a Soldier or Warrior unit to prevent all damage. In addition, you can then deal damage back to the attacker equal to the attack value of the sacrificed unit! Although you have to sacrifice an army unit to gain the effect, playing one of the two copies of Glorious Intervention at the right time can save a key unit and potentially eliminate the attacker.

The final card in Colonel Straken’s signature squad is Straken’s Cunning (Core Set, 34). This attachment can be attached to any army unit, granting it a raised attack value, and bearing the text, “Interrupt: When attached unit leaves play, draw 3 cards.” Additional card draw might just give you the extra units you need to overwhelm your opponent, and with Glorious Intervention, you can sacrifice the attached unit and gain your added card draw whenever you choose.

The Price of Victory

Since the loss of some troops is inevitable, the Astra Militarum faction has plenty of ways to benefit from their units leaving play, and we’ll look at a few of them today. One army that can grant the Astra Militarum the upper hand is the Cadian Mortar Squad (Core Set, 36). This unit bears the Ranged keyword, meaning that it has the opportunity to strike during the ranged skirmish, before non-Ranged units can strike. In addition, this card has a Reaction that allows you to ready this unit whenever another friendly unit leaves play. As your units fall to the vagaries of battle, you can rely on the Cadian Mortar Squad to rain fiery destruction on your enemies.

Captain Markis (Core Set, 42) offers you more options for making the most of hosts of Guardsmen. With Captain Markis, you may sacrifice any Astra Militarum unit at the planet to exhaust a non-warlord unit at the planet. By exhausting your opponent’s heavy-hitters, you leave him vulnerable to your own attacks, enabling your own armies to attack unmolested.

Of course, the Astra Militarum faction includes a slew of units who offer you benefits for leaving play themselves. In similar fashion to Straken’s Command Squad, when an Enginseer Augur (Core Set, 43) leaves play you may search the top six cards of your deck for an Astra Militarum support card with cost two or lower and immediately put it into play at your headquarters. The Astra Militarum is known for the strength of its supports, and whether they increase your economy or offer you other advantages, you’re sure to reap the benefits of the Enginseer Augur’s ability.

One support you might find aiding the armies of the Astra Militarum is the Rockcrete Bunker (Core Set, 52). When damage is assigned to one of your units, you can exhaust this support to redirect one point of that damage to this support. When this support has four damage on it, it must be sacrificed, but until then, it grants you an added level of protection against your foes. As the battle-hardened armies of the Astra Militarum march to war in countless numbers, you’re sure to find the benefits of unlimited bodies.

Soldiers of the Emperor

The Astra Militarum’s forces stride ahead to glorious triumph over any obstacle to the Imperium of Man. Take your place as their general and forge a new era among the stars of the 41st millennium.  Join us next time as we examine the brutality of the Ork faction, and preorder Warhammer 40,000: Conquest at your local retailer today!

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Source: Strength in Numbers

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Confronting the Imperial Menace

A Preview of the STAR WARS (R): Age of Rebellion (TM) Roleplaying Game

“Yes! I said closer! Move as close as you can and engage those Star Destroyers at point-blank range.”

    –Lando Calrissian

You and your wingmates barely manage to evade the laser blasts fired by the trio of TIE interceptors on your backs long enough to weave through an asteroid field, only to find an Imperial Star Destroyer dropping out of hyperspace ahead of you on the opposite side…

Welcome to life in the Star Wars®: Age of Rebellion™ Roleplaying Game!

As a member of the Rebel Alliance, you’re part of an outmatched, rag-tag resistance group fighting in a civil war that spans the galaxy. Your enemies are more numerous and better funded. Their tactics rely upon the overwhelming strength of their TIEs, troopers, and Star Destroyers, and they’re everywhere.

Every hero needs a worthy adversary, and in an Age of Rebellion campaign, you’ll gain a newfound respect for the military might of the tyrannical Galactic Empire. In previous previews, we’ve looked at what it means to play a part in a war against the galaxy’s ruling government. We saw how your participation in the Rebellion effort gives meaning to your actions, and we saw how it influences your view of the galaxy.

Today, we look at the challenges ahead of you. What stands between the Rebel Alliance and galactic freedom? A horde of Imperial adversaries, and a whole navy’s worth of vehicles and starships. Altogether, the Age of Rebellion Core Rulebook features more than two-dozen pages of Imperial adversaries, vehicles, and weapons, as well as a host of others that the Empire can recruit or co-opt.

Adversaries

You’ll find entire legions of Stormtroopers, Snowtroopers, and even Dark Troopers among the various minions, rivals, and nemeses presented in the Age of Rebellion Core Rulebook. Alongside such Imperial troops, you’ll also find DeStab agents, Imperial Moffs, military informants, and TIE aces.

The Core Rulebook divides the Empire’s forces into two categories, bureaucratic and military, and the result is an Imperial menace that operates on multiple levels simultaneously. It’s not just a collection of troopers waiting to gun you down; it’s also a soul-crushing organization that looks to root out dissension, sow distrust, spread fear through the galaxy, and extinguish the last flames of hope and resistance.

Accordingly, you’ll find all the adversaries you need to enjoy a wide variety of stories, ranging from those that feature heated firefights to those that focus on the Rebellion’s efforts to rally support and acquire resources without alerting the Empire’s attention. You’ll find minions to defend your Imperial bases, and you’ll find cruel and aspiring agents capable of matching wits with the Rebellion’s greatest heroes.

Vehicles and Starships

Of course, the Empire’s military consists of more than just soldiers, pilots, commanders, and agents. Its strength stems largely from its use of powerful, technologically advanced vehicles and starships, many of which you’ll find presented in the Age of Rebellion Core Rulebook.

Imagine, for a moment, that you’re part of a Rebel strike team tasked with jamming Imperial transmissions from one of their reconnaissance outposts. At first, everything seems to go well. You get the jump on their perimeter and quickly move through a handful of defenders toward the compound’s communications array. However, as you start placing your explosives on the bunker doors, you hear the thunderous sound of something bad. One of your teammates steps around the corner and confirms your suspicions: an AT-AT has just returned to base…

It’s not impossible for Rebel characters to prevail against AT-ATs or Star Destroyers, but such situations are truly desperate and should lead your group to perform an immediate reevaluation of its tactics. Moreover, these are the sorts of situations that may punctuate the key turns of an Age of Rebellion campaign. After all, in the heat of a galactic civil war, you should expect both sides to make use of all the weapons at their disposal.

That means, too, that while the Imperials gain vehicles like the AT-AT and AT-ST, along with a veritable swarm of TIEs and capital ships, the Rebels gain the T-47 airspeeder and such classic starfighters as the X-wing, A-wing, and B-wing.

Shedding more light upon the many vehicles and starships that you’ll find in the Age of Rebellion Core Rulebook is contributing author Jason Marker:

“I'm a huge fan of starships, so when I was offered the chance to work on the serious business military ships featured in Age of Rebellion, I jumped at the chance.

“Age of Rebellion is, necessarily, military-oriented and the ships included in the Core Rulebook reflect that. With them, you’ll be able to fly space superiority missions in brand new X-wings, lead a squadron of B-wings against a squadron of capital ships and turn them into hot scrap, blast swarms of TIE fighters into clouds of dust with stolen Lancer-class frigates, and generally have a great time at the controls of a spaceship.

“There’s a deep well of great Star Wars ships, ranging from tiny little scout ships to fast-attack starfighters like the X-wing to lumbering Super Star Destroyers, so one thing I really wanted was to bring the Anaxes War College into the game. Using the Anaxes War College gave the setting a more military-style system for naming and classifying ships and allowed for specific categories of ships that I could populate with a rich collection of established favorites.”

Using the Anaxes War College as a guide, the Age of Rebellion Core Rulebook categorizes the starships it presents into starfighters, gunships, cruisers, and battleships, and you’ll find starships of all sorts, ranging from the A-wing to the Imperial-class Star Destroyer. Moreover, you’ll find new rules for barrage fire that will allow you to make good use of the Core Rulebook’s capital ships in dramatic and engaging space combats.

As Jason explains, the Core Rulebook’s collection of starships also helped to establish the game’s tone:

“The Imperial Navy has the resources of the entire galaxy at its beck and call. They have the most money, the best designers, the most respected shipyards, and they can turn out ships at an incredible rate.

“On the other hand, the Alliance is using second or third-hand ships that are decades old – fighters that were old during the Clone Wars, and sub-capital cruisers and frigates that are long past their prime.

“I wanted to make it clear that the Imperial Navy was a new, shiny, deadly efficient military force and the Alliance fleet was a rag-tag collection of antiques, repurposed freighters, and salvaged warships doing the best they could in an ugly situation.”

Resist the Empire’s Tyranny

Though you manage to salvage the damaged CR90 corvette and its armaments, there’s no time to celebrate. Your hyperdrive is offline, and sensors indicate a swarm of TIEs headed your way. Quickly, your team jumps into action. Talvin races to engineering. Kyle and Pol’tura head to the nearest gunnery stations. Drezzen boosts the sensors and finds the ship that launched those TIEs – a Vindicator-class heavy cruiser. You won’t last long against that ship, especially while your corvette is already damaged. As the Vindicator rounds the desert moon, you order the gunners to lay down a blanket barrage. You’re outnumbered and outgunned, but if you can make the jump to hyperspace before you’re obliterated, you’re going to strike a major blow against the Empire…

In the Age of Rebellion Core Rulebook, you’ll find an Imperial menace worthy of the galaxy’s greatest heroes. Are you one of them? The Rebel Alliance needs you.

The Age of Rebellion Core Rulebook is due to arrive at retailers late next week. Until then, stay tuned for more information, including a preview of your adventures in Age of Rebellion!

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Source: Confronting the Imperial Menace

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Adventures in an Age of Rebellion

A Preview of the STAR WARS (R): Age of Rebellion (TM) Roleplaying Game

“You know of the Rebellion against the Empire?”

    –Luke Skywalker

In the Star Wars®: Age of Rebellion™ Roleplaying Game, you and your friends assume the roles of members of the Rebel Alliance, which is vastly outnumbered and outgunned in its war with the evil Galactic Empire.

Accordingly, you’ll play your part in reconnaissance missions, intel operations, and guerrilla operations. You may support insurgent governments or rally new recruits. You might fly to battle alongside or within capital ships, and – on rare occasions – you might even take part in a key military strike that involves the entire Rebel fleet. No matter what mission you undertake, your ultimate goals will always be to undermine the Galactic Empire and free the galaxy from its tyranny.

To kick off your adventures within the Age of Rebellion, the Core Rulebook contains the full-length, three-act adventure, Perlemian Haul. In it, you and your teammates must infiltrate an Imperial convoy and secure the cargo stored aboard one of its freighters, the Perlemian Haul.

Your task will challenge you and your fellow Rebels to navigate your way through space stations, Imperial heavy freighters, navy troopers, patrol droids, dozens of TIEs, and other hazards. If you fail, you’ll become yet another of the Rebellion’s unsung martyrs, but if you succeed, you’ll be celebrated and given the opportunity to participate in more sensitive missions. More importantly, though, you’ll have done your part to topple the evil Empire.

Contributing Author Gary Astleford on Perlemian Haul

I’ve been a fan of Star Wars since I three years old, the original film was the first movie I ever saw in a bona fide theater, and to say I was thrilled to be offered a chance to write the introductory adventure for the upcoming Age of Rebellion roleplaying game is something of an understatement.

Writing material for a relatively new game system is always interesting, and this was once again the case for Age of Rebellion as I needed the adventure to integrate a range of Careers and Specializations, as well as the Duty mechanic. While I won’t get into the specific details of the assignment, Perlemian Haul incorporates all of these, along with some intrigue, action, and suspense, plus a few surprises!

I consider myself something of an old-school Star Wars fan, so Age of Rebellion took me back to the days when blasting Vader’s minions was as commonplace as driving down to the grocery store for a gallon of milk. Its focus on the war between the Empire and the Rebel Alliance put me in familiar territory, and the game’s military stylings provide a lot of useful structure for the Player Characters. While this structure isn’t used to straightjacket the players, it allows the GM to easily present military-style scenarios wherein the PCs’ successes or failures can have very real consequences in the galactic conflict as a whole.

There’s also the matter of altruism. The characters in Age of Rebellion are fighting the good fight. They’re not putting their lives on the line for money or notoriety; they’re doing it because it’s the right thing to do. This doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for moral quandary – far from it. However, the decisions the PCs make are likely to affect more than just their own limited sphere of influence, and the results should carry beyond them to their superiors and their subordinates, at least.

In the end, I had a wonderful time designing Perlemian Haul, and I hope players find the experience as rich, rewarding, and fun as I worked to make it!

Thanks, Gary!

As the Core Rulebook’s introductory adventure, Perlemian Haul offers plenty of action for every sort of Rebel. It also provides a solid foundation for your future adventures, including any you may experience during the adventure included in the Game Master’s Kit, during Onslaught at Arda I, or throughout your home campaign.

If there’s anything that’s certain about the adventures in Age of Rebellion, it’s that there are always opportunities for heroics, so grab your blaster, don your flight suit, and join the fight against the Empire.

The Star Wars: Age of Rebellion Core Rulebook goes on sale later this week!

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Source: Adventures in an Age of Rebellion

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A Deadly Game

Announcing the Second Chapter Pack in the Wardens Cycle

“When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.”
    –George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce A Deadly Game, the second Chapter Pack in the Wardens cycle for A Game of Thrones: The Card Game!

A Deadly Game continues the main themes of the Wardens cycle, adding new support to trait-based decks and increasing the power of abilities such as the "limited response." In this Chapter Pack, you’ll find powerful Castle plots that trigger their effects upon moving to your used pile, even as Clansman, Dothraki, and Sand Snake decks grow in strength. From the sands of Dorne to the lofty heights of the Eyrie, every House gains new cards to strengthen their claim to the Iron Throne in this Chapter Pack.

Meanwhile, at the fortress of Riverrun, House Stark and its allies in House Tully strengthen their defenses and forge their plans to claim power and victory by winning A Deadly Game.

Manning the Walls

In A Game of Thrones: The Card Game, House Stark has a reputation for its resolute defense. A Deadly Game introduces more cards to help you maintain your defense and establish superiority on the field of battle, beginning with Tytos Blackwood (A Deadly Game, 32). Tytos Blackwood bears two beneficial traits: Lord and House Tully, allowing him to interact with cards like Hoster Tully (Lords of Winter, 21) and Shaggydog (Core Set, 11). Tytos Blackwood’s text, however, is what makes him a boon for your defensive efforts: “Response: After you win a challenge as the defender, move 1 power from the attacking player’s House card to your own.”

You don’t need Tytos Blackwood to participate in the challenge to trigger his ability, so long as he’s in play. With Tytos Blackwood on your side, just successfully defending challenges brings power to your House. In addition, he bears both the stealth keyword and the text, “Immune to opponent’s events,” making him an exceptional character for foiling your opponent’s attempts to evade his watchful eyes.

As a bonus, Tytos Blackwood gains some House Tully compatriots in the Raventree Elite (A Deadly Game, 33). This Army also possesses the stealth keyword, and grants each of your House Tully characters immunity to your opponent’s triggered effects while participating in a challenge! This wide reaching effect grants you protection from tricks and traps ranging from powerful character abilities to a massive array of events.

What’s more, both Tytos Blackwood and the Raventree Elite bear the War crest, meaning they receive plenty of benefits to boost their Strength and enhance their defending power. The Power of Arms (Core Set, 200) gives you a solid Strength boost for a round, and Frozen Outpost (Lords of Winter, 26) is even more potent. And when you choose to attack with your War crest characters, Die by the Sword (Lords of Winter, 47) gives you a way to deplete your opponent’s board and destroy any opposition to your victory.

That’s not the end of House Stark’s new tools for enhancing their defenses in A Deadly Game, however. Seagard (A Deadly Game, 34) gives you yet another tool for deterring your opponent’s challenges. You may kneel this location during the challenges phase to choose a defending character, granting that character a higher Strength and the deadly keyword, potentially keeping your key characters from perishing. Even more important, if you win the challenge, you may stand Seagard, allowing you to use it again and again.

Join the Game

Do you dare to play the game of thrones? Whether you stand on the walls of Winterfell or Riverrun with House Stark, command the winds with House Greyjoy, or lead a khalasar with House Targaryen, you’ll find plenty of cards to aid you within this new Chapter Pack.

Look for A Deadly Game to expand A Game of Thrones: The Card Game in the fourth quarter of 2014!

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Source: A Deadly Game

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Vengeance and Rage

Preview Giants and Brother Gherinn from Crown of Destiny

Rumors are whispered throughout Terrinoth of a mystical mountain. The rumors say that anyone who finds the mountain and climbs to its summit may reshape their entire life – both past and future. You can discover the truth of these tales in the Crown of Destiny Hero and Monster Collection, an upcoming expansion for Descent: Journeys in the Dark Second Edition!

Like other Hero and Monster Collections, Crown of Destiny contains four heroes and three monster groups previously only available in the first edition of Descent. The thirteen plastic figures in this expansion feature entirely new sculpts and artwork, bringing them in line with the aesthetic of the second edition. Within this Hero and Monster Collection, you’ll find Corbin, Lindel, Jaes the Exile, and Brother Gherinn alongside two giants, three chaos beasts, and four lava beetles.

In our last preview, we took a closer took at the lava beetle monster group and at Jaes the Exile. Today, we turn to the Healer, Brother Gherinn, and to the giants that beleaguer the noble heroes.

Contains four heroes, two giants, three chaos beasts, and four lava beetles.

A Penitent Hero

Beneath his mask, Brother Gherinn’s face is scarred by the terrible burns inflicted on him by a ritual of purification. He never speaks of the man he was before that fiery ordeal, instead simply claiming that the agony was a small price to pay to gain control over his own dark nature. He now uses his mastery of unknowable energies to heal those in need and vanquish the wicked, hoping to wash away the crimes of his past. By climbing to the height of the mystical mountain, Brother Gherinn may finally find true redemption.

Brother Gherinn can prove his worth as one of your heroes in any quest. Although he is a gifted Healer by nature, he thirsts for the destruction of evil in Terrinoth and is unafraid to draw heavily on his powers to accomplish his goal. Brother Gherinn’s hero ability allows you to gain the extra damage you need to finish off monsters. Each time you attack with Brother Gherinn, after rolling dice, you may choose to suffer one damage to add one damage to the results of your attack. By triggering this ability judiciously, you can eliminate a monster who might otherwise attack on the overlord’s next turn.

Defeating a monster opens the opportunity for Brother Gherinn to use his heroic feat, allowing him to roll two red power dice. Every hero within three spaces, including Brother Gherinn, recovers health equal to the damage rolled on the dice, potentially spreading vast amounts of healing to the entire hero party. What’s more, Brother Gherinn’s healing abilities and strength in combat may prove entirely necessary if you face giants on your adventure.

The Rage of a Giant

As old and unyielding as the mountains themselves, giants are unthinkably strong, possessing enough strength to easily cast several opponents aside with a single strike. These ancient folk are intolerant of outsiders and prone to solve problems by resorting to violence rather than reason. One old giant, known as Mughin, may hold the key to finding the magical Crown of Destiny.



Giants are well-known for their massive power. These monsters are difficult to kill, and unrelenting on attack or defense. The heroes may hope to simply outrun the giants, but even that may prove to be a difficult task. All giants possess the Reach ability, allowing them to attack heroes up to two spaces away, making up for their sometimes ponderous movement. What’s more, if a giant causes damage to a hero, you may spend a surge to stun the hero, limiting him to one action on his next turn.

All giants are fearsome in battle by virtue of their enormous size. Some giants, though, are considered mighty even by giants’ standards. In battle, these master giants may spend an action to use the Sweep ability, making an attack that affects every figure within two spaces and line of sight of the master giant. Unwary hero parties that stray too near to a master giant could find the entire party knocked out by a single sweeping blow. Only the bravest of heroes can hope to stand against wrathful giants and emerge victorious.

Quest for the Crown

Your destiny in Terrinoth awaits as the outcome of your quests reshapes your life’s story. Whether you play as a hero, eager for riches and glory, or as the overlord, intent on spreading your darkness across all Terrinoth, you’ll find the heroes and monster groups to help you in this Hero and Monster Collection. Preorder Crown of Destiny at your local retailer today!

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Source: Vengeance and Rage

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Rules of Conduct

Download the Rules from the Foul Play Expansion for Blood Bowl: Team Manager

Well, Jim, recent efforts to enforce penalties have certainly met with mixed success.

You’re right about that, Bob. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen so many completely enraged Chaos Dwarfs.

And that’s saying something, though some teams have been getting on good terms with the new ref…

Blood Bowl becomes more wild and unpredictable than ever with the upcoming Foul Play expansion for Blood Bowl: Team Manager. In an unprecedented move, the Team Managers’ Union has introduced penalties, and while a suitably corrupt ref is helping players cheat, rumors are wild that many of this season’s Blood Bowl games will be played in brand-new stadiums.

In our last preview of Foul Play, we looked at the three new teams that make up the Putrid Players’ Guild: Chaos Dwarfs, goblins, and the servants of Nurgle. Today, we’ll bring you an inside look at the newest mechanics in Blood Bowl: Team Manager. As an added bonus, you can now download the rules (pdf, 3.1MB) for Foul Play from the Blood Bowl: Team Manager support page!

Penalize the Play

For the first time ever, Blood Bowl officials have decided to institute penalties, punishing excessive cheating. Managers in Foul Play can receive penalties in a variety of ways, including from additional cheating tokens. When a manager receives a penalty, he must draw a Penalty card from the deck, keeping it facedown until each manager’s improvement pile is revealed in the Scoreboard Phase. At this point, the card is revealed and takes effect.

Penalties can afflict managers in a variety of ways, but they share one thing in common – they’re almost never pleasant for the punished manager. You may lose fans from the Roughing the Ref penalty card, and Downsize may force you to draw fewer Staff Upgrades. Sometimes, Chaos Karma downs your players even as they tackle the opposition, and in extreme circumstances, a Red Card removes a Star Player from your roster!

Corrupt Judgments

Blood Bowl officials may hope to reduce cheating through the introduction of penalties, but enterprising teams find ways to cheat more and cheat better by enlisting the aid of a corrupt ref. As teams prepare for kickoff, the corrupt ref is placed by the first manager at any matchup’s midfield. Whenever you commit a player to a matchup with the corrupt ref, you immediately receive a faceup cheating token, allowing to know the effects of the cheating token ahead of time and plan accordingly.

After the corrupt ref dispenses a faceup cheating token to the player just committed to his matchup, he heads elsewhere, moving from matchup to matchup as shown by the diagram above. The corrupt ref always moves toward the Spike! Magazine deck, and he moves a number of spaces equal to the Star Power of the player committed to his last matchup. In the example above, a Bull Centaur with a Star Power of three was played to the corrupt ref’s matchup. The corrupt ref moves three spaces, moving toward the Spike! Magazine deck. When he can move no closer, he returns to the space farthest from the deck, and begins to move towards the deck once more.

After the Scoreboard phase begins, the corrupt ref punishes those who refused to work with him by issuing a penalty to each manager at his matchup who doesn’t have a player with a faceup cheating token. Then, the corrupt ref removes all faceup cheating tokens from the matchup before they take effect. By playing your team well and planning ahead, you can use the corrupt ref to neutralize faceup cheating tokens that would harm you, or to remove faceup cheating tokens that could help your opponent.

Into the Stadiums

In this season of Blood Bowl: Team Manager, matchups are hosted in a variety of new stadiums. Stadiums offer a location for your struggles against other teams at matchups. In addition, stadiums offer both sides a bonus by granting an extension to your team zone payout. The bonuses to be added to a team zone payout are shown on the stadium card and remain constant, no matter which matchup is played in that stadium.

Each stadium also has its own unique restrictions. The Barak-Varr Bowl, for example, bans players from using the regeneration skill while committed to a matchup there. Other stadiums have even more exotic conditions. The Aldorf Oldbowl requires all players to have at least two Star Power, whereas the Nehekhara Death Dome allows no more than two players per side. Of course, it wouldn’t be Blood Bowl if teams had to play by the rules! You always have the option to ignore the stadium’s restrictions, but if you commit a player that breaks the stadium’s rules, you must take a penalty card.

Take Your Positions

Penalties await team managers that break the rules in Foul Play, but as usual, there are ways to get around restrictions. Head to the stadiums, gather your players, and get on the ref’s good side. A new season of Blood Bowl arrives in Foul Play!

Download the rules from the support page, then pre-order your copy at your local retailer today.

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Source: Rules of Conduct