Delve the Darkest Depths of Khazad-dum

Nightmare Decks Are Now Available for The Lord of the Rings: Khazad-dum

“I too once passed the Dimrill Gate,” said Aragorn quietly; “but though I also came out again, the memory is very evil.”
–J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Three new Nightmare Decks for The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game are now available via FFG’s in-house manufacturing.

Upon the release of the game’s first deluxe expansion, Khazad-dûm, Middle-earth’s heroes first departed the Shadows of Mirkwood and embarked upon a perilous journey through the dark and twisting mines of Moria. Their search for the missing Dwarf, Balin, led them far from the familiar locations and foes of the Core Set into a lightless realm populated by hordes of Orcs, Goblins, and Cave Trolls, along with another presence, darker and more sinister than anything they had previously encountered…

Now, you can experience the novelty and terrors of Khazad-dûm all over again with Khazad-dûm Nightmare Decks, a single set of three twenty-card Nightmare Decks, one for each of its three scenarios: Into the Pit, The Seventh Level, and Flight from Moria.

Nightmare Decks introduce deadly new encounter cards and scenario-specific rules that greatly increase the challenges of the scenarios they enhance, while simultaneously layering subtle plot twists and thematic alterations. The result is that when you play these scenarios in Nightmare Mode, your old strategies may be countered, and if you don’t adapt to the new challenges you face, you may quickly meet your doom.

Developer Matt Newman on Khazad-dûm Nightmare Decks

Dust off your delving picks, and head for the mines of Moria… It’s time for the Khazad-dûm Nightmare Decks!

We’ve been hard at work on these brand new Nightmare Decks, and I am very excited to preview some of the new cards and challenges players will face in these updated Khazad-dûm scenarios. As always, with our Nightmare Decks, each of these sets of twenty cards is designed to amplify an existing scenario, making it more challenging, while simultaneously tweaking its strategies and making it more atmospheric, as well. Let’s dive right in and take a look at the changes that Nightmare Mode brings to these scenarios!

Into the Pit

The opening to the Khazad-dûm deluxe expansion introduces players to the Cave Torch (Khazad-dûm, 41), an objective attachment that helps them explore the darkest corners of Moria. Because the Cave Torch offers a powerful benefit and a relatively small drawback, players found themselves relying on its ability every turn… and why not? After all, who would dare to explore Moria without a light to guide them?

The Nightmare version of Into the Pit limits the number of times that players can use the Cave Torch, thus presenting players with difficult decisions and interesting choices. The Nightmare setup card (Into the Pit Nightmare Deck, 1) reads:

“Forced: After Cave Torch exhausts, place 1 damage token on this card. Then, if there are 5 or more damage tokens on this card, remove Cave Torch from the game.”

When players can only use the Cave Torch five times before removing it from the game, they’ll need to think twice before using it. Many of the new locations and enemies in this deck also work alongside this limitation, such as the Patrol Sentry (Into the Pit Nightmare Deck, 3) who can easily spot the heroes’ sources of light, or the Narrow Fissure (Into the Pit Nightmare Deck, 7), which the heroes cannot explore without first using the Cave Torch.

Taken as a whole, this Nightmare version of Into the Pit becomes a race against the clock as the heroes’ light dwindles more and more, and they are forced to make extremely tough decisions. Rely too much on their torch, and they risk being swallowed by the darkness of Moria. Conserve too much light, and they will never find their way out of its twisting passages.

The Seventh Level

The Seventh Level is a straightforward quest that is meant to be a battle against never-ending swarms of goblins. The Nightmare version pushes this theme to extreme levels, sending wave after wave of goblins at our heroes, and as players will quickly learn, these goblins are all about strength in numbers.

Many of the new cards, such as the Pit Goblin (The Seventh Level Nightmare Deck, 6) and the Deep-Mines, (The Seventh Level Nightmare Deck, 7) place resource tokens on the scenario’s many Goblin enemies. Other cards, like the Orc Taskmaster (The Seventh Level Nightmare Deck, 4) and the Western Hall (The Seventh Level Nightmare Deck, 8) increase the strength of any Goblin with one or more resource tokens. The more Goblins are revealed by the encounter deck, the stronger the synergy between these many cards becomes, and eventually our heroes will find themselves battling against a horde of Goblins with tons of resource tokens!

Finally, in Nightmare Mode, The Seventh Level builds toward an epic battle against a unique enemy commander, Overseer Maurûl (The Seventh Level Nightmare Deck, 2). The final stage becomes much more challenging when players are forced to contend with this powerful taskmaster of Mordor along with the scenario’s many goblins. The result is that in Nightmare Mode, even the tiniest goblin can become a nightmare if left alone.

Flight from Moria

This unique scenario introduces players to a quest deck with many different Stage 2B options, which are shuffled and placed in a random order. There are only two ways out, and players never quite know where they’re headed next. Luckily for them, they are given the option to bypass any quest they don’t want to travel through, placing it at the bottom of the quest deck. In the original Flight from Moria, players almost always chose to bypass quest stages instead of progressing through the quest and powering up The Nameless Fear (Khazad-dûm, 25) in the meantime.

In Nightmare Mode, players are presented with a much tougher choice between bypassing and exploring, as many of the scenario’s new cards hinder their ability to bypass quests, and the setup card has the following text:

“When a quest card is bypassed, shuffle it into the quest deck instead of placing it on the bottom.”

This means that the only way to truly guarantee never having to see a particular quest again is to explore it fully.

But what’s really most exciting about this Nightmare Deck is the inclusion of three – that’s right, three – new quest cards! These quest cards are easily slotted into the scenario’s existing randomized quest deck, so that players never quite know if they’re running into one of the scenario’s original quests, or one of the three punishing new ones. Players who are familiar with this scenario in Standard Play may be surprised to find their party decimated, here, by blasts of fire, or blocked by the Nameless Fear himself!

I enjoyed revisiting these scenarios to create exciting and challenging new Nightmare Decks that present you with tougher decisions that will truly test your skills. Keep those Cave Torches ready, because you’re going to need them more than ever!

Prepare for a Terrible, New Challenge

"I have never felt such a challenge. The counter-spell was terrible. It nearly broke me."
–Gandalf, The Fellowship of the Ring

The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game shook to its foundations the first time that Middle-earth’s heroes encountered the unique challenges of Khazad-dûm. Now, as you once again approach the gates of this abandoned Dwarven realm – this time in Nightmare Mode – you can feel earth rumbling beneath your feet. What lies beyond the East-gate?

Discover the new terrors of Khazad-dûm with Khazad-dûm Nightmare Decks!

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Source: Delve the Darkest Depths of Khazad-dum (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4850)

The Firespray-31

An X-Wing (TM) Strategy Article by Guest Writer Doug Kinney

Nearly everyone in the Star Wars universe with a bounty on his head dreaded the idea that he might someday see Slave I show up on his sensors. Not only was its pilot, Boba Fett, one of the most ruthless and inventive bounty hunters in the galaxy, but the ship itself was a heavily modified Firespray-31 – fast, maneuverable, and loaded with firepower…

We continue our series of X-Wing™ strategy articles with a look at the Firespray-31 by one of the players most responsible for shaping its presence in the tournament environment, 2012 World Champion Doug Kinney.

2012 World Champion Doug Kinney on the Firespray-31

Released in the second wave of X-Wing expansions, the Slave I Expansion Pack introduced the Firespray-31, one of the game’s two earliest large-base ships. Along with the Millennium Falcon, this ship has had a profound impact upon how the game is played.

Many people believe that the stock Firespray-31 is the most balanced ship in the game for both offense and defense. It boasts a primary weapon that fires a base of three dice and can be used in both the front and rear arcs. It can perform both the focus and target lock actions, and if it gains both tokens, it can become an offensive juggernaut. It shines on defense, as well, with a base agility value of “2” and the ability to perform the evade action. Plus, with a shield value of “4” and hull of “6”, even once it starts taking hits, it’s tough to take down.

A 360-degree view of the Firespray-31. (Click to enlarge.)

Then, the Firespray-31 is highly customizable. You can load it out with a missile, a cannon, a bomb, and the Slave I Title even lets you add a torpedo. The Firespray-31 adds to these a myriad of good crew options, and both Kath Scarlet and Boba Fett also have elite pilot talent slots. So there are any number of good combinations to make your basic Firespray-31 a more imposing force. Alternatively, you can outfit it with crew members like Recon Specialist, Rebel Captive, or Flight Instructor to increase its defensive abilities.

And don’t forget that the Firespray-31 is a large-base ship! Its size gives it significant presence on the battlefield. At a pilot skill value of “3,” the Bounty Hunter can be an effective blocker against ships with higher pilot skill values, and the Firespray-31 is an especially effective blocker against the Rebellion’s heavy assault fighter, the B-wing. Even once you stop blocking, one of the greatest aspects of the Firespray-31 is that you can fly out of your enemies’ firing arcs and still attack with your auxiliary firing arc, meaning you can often attack without being attacked.

Flying the Firespray-31

For all its strengths, the Firespray-31 is not an easy ship to fly. There is a learning curve to being able to fly it well. I spent many weeks practicing before I was able to maneuver it effectively, and there are many good Imperial players that will attest that it takes a good amount of time to learn how the ship moves.

As you practice, you’ll want to see how the ship’s base serves as a guide to how far it will move when it performs certain maneuvers. For example, a turn with a speed of “2” will move your Firespray-31 only about half of a small-base width and length away from your starting position. That means if your ship is currently in contact with a small ship on its corner, you won’t be able to complete a speed “2” turn in that direction.

A Bounty Hunter fails to move past an X-wing with its speed “2” turn.

You will, however, be able to complete a speed “3” turn in that direction, as a speed “3” turn takes your ship a little bit wider and longer than the size of a small base away from your starting position. Making note of little tricks like that will help you learn to fly your Firespray-31 into and out of harm’s way during the heat of battle.

A Bounty Hunter clears an adjoining X-wing with its speed “3” turn.

Another hurdle you’ll need to clear is learning how best to use the auxiliary firing arc. The Firespray-31 is the only ship to-date with a printed rear firing arc, meaning it can fire its primary weapon either forward or backward. It was difficult for me to get out of the mindset that I needed to perform a Koiogran turn in order to attack, but I now use the rear arc as much as the primary arc – if not more so. It takes practice to maneuver while remaining cognizant of where your ship’s rear arc is facing, but once you get the maneuvering down, you will be able to continue your forward movement and perform actions, instead of performing Koigran turns, gaining stress tokens, and losing your actions.

The Firespray-31 in Imperial Squads

Many squads run a single Firespray-31, often complemented by a mini-swarm of TIE fighters, and when the metagame starts to shape up after the release of the fourth wave of starfighters that were announced a while back, I think you will see mini-swarms becoming increasingly popular. Thus, a squad with one Firespray-31 and a mini-swarm may be an increasingly popular archetype in the future.

Krassis Trelix (36) with Heavy Laser Cannon (7)
“Howlrunner” (18) with Swarm Tactics (2)
Academy Pilot (12)
Academy Pilot (12)
Academy Pilot (12)

Total Squad Points: 99

The Heavy Laser Cannon on Krassis packs a devastating punch and makes good use of his pilot ability. It also forces your opponent into the undesirable position of having to reconsider who to target first. Does he go after the big gun, leaving the mini-swarm to fire off volleys of quality attacks? Or does he go after the mini-swarm, leaving the big gun alone, letting it rain down shots of four dice each?

Meanwhile, you can line up your squad all together, or you can split your forces and attack in a type of pincer movement. I generally prefer to split my ships a little distance apart to allow myself room to maneuver my Firespray-31 without running afoul of the Academy Pilots.

One of the nice things about running a single Firespray-31 is that you generally have a lot of attacks on the board. The sample squad above boasts five separate attacks, which is a decent amount for an Imperial build. When you get into builds with two or three Firespray-31s, you will be getting some bigger bang for your attacks, but at the cost of a reduced number of attacks.

A number of other common squads run two Firespray-31s, and there are a few schools of thought on them. Some people build squads with just two fully loaded Firespray-31s, and they can be successful squads, like the example below:

Kath Scarlet (38) with Expert Handling (2), Gunner (5), Seismic Charges (2), and Assault Missiles (5)
Krassis Trelix (36) with Heavy Laser Cannon (7), Recon Specialist (3), and Seismic Charges (2)

Total Squad Points: 100

This is a hard-hitting duo, and it comes with a little additional damage to help mitigate the fact that it only offers two attacks per round. Scott Williams, a player who has put this squad to good use in tournaments, designed an opening where he forces his opponent to chase Kath Scarlet while he chases his opponent with Krassis Trelix. Kath shoots out of her auxiliary arc, while Krassis uses his Heavy Laser Cannon to devastating effect.

Personally, I like to include a third ship in my squads for the extra attack and for drawing fire away from my Firespray-31s. One example is the squad that I took to second place at the 2013 Star Wars Game Experience, “Additional Damage”:

Bounty Hunter (33) with Assault Missiles (5) and Seismic Charges (2)
Bounty Hunter (33) with Assault Missiles (5) and Seismic Charges (2)
“Howlrunner” (18) with Squad Leader (2)

Total Squad Points:

The “splash” damage from the Assault Missiles and the Seismic Charges allows you to pile damage onto your opponent on top of the damage you inflict with your standard attacks. However, it can be tough to keep the TIE fighter out of the way of the two Firespray-31s, especially if you’re trying to maximize the pilot ability of “Howlrunner.” TIE fighters and Firespray-31s have different size bases and usually have different pilot skill values, so keeping the TIE fighter out of the way of your Firespray-31s can be tricky, and that’s before you factor in your opponent’s ships.

Another list that makes good use of two Firespray-31s is a very powerful squad that Anthony Lillig took to the Top 16 at both the North American Championships and Worlds in 2013. It combines two Firespray-31s with two TIE fighters.

Bounty Hunter (33) with Gunner (5)
Bounty Hunter (33) with Gunner (5)
Academy Pilot (12)
Academy Pilot (12)

Total Squad Points: 100

It’s a simple, yet tough and effective, list that deals a lot of consistent damage. It has a great balance of offense and defense combined with action denial.

Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the squad that runs three Bounty Hunter Firespray-31s. (Yes, I can hear the collective groan of everyone who has had to fly against it.) This squad has no frills, just thirty points shields and hull and devastating combination of offense and defense. This squad is a bear to play against, especially when flown well, and Jacob Pichelmeyer, the reigning North American Champion, flew three Bounty Hunters to fourth place out of forty-six players at the 2013 Star Wars Game Experience.

A squad with two Firespray-31s battles a squad of HWK-290s at Worlds 2013.

With its great balance of offense and defense, the Firespray-31 has had a major impact upon the shape of X-Wing, and the tremendous versatility afforded by its loaded upgrade bar ensures that it will continue to be an imposing force in the future.

Thanks, Doug!

Will you rely upon the balanced baseline statistics of the Firespray-31 to make the difference in your games of X-Wing? Will you discover clever and potent combinations of upgrades to hit enemy ships for more damage? Will you fly your Firespray-31 with a complement of TIE fighters, or will you pair it with other Imperial vessels?

Whether you run one Firespray-31 in your Imperial squad, or two, or three, we trust Doug’s advice will inspire you to explore more of the ways this ship can impact your games, and you can always find more advice and more discussion about this and other starships in our community forums!

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Source: The Firespray-31 (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4851)

The Antlered Crown

Announcing the Thrilling Conclusion to The Ring-maker Cycle

“There are many that cry in the Dunland tongue,” said Gamling. “I know that tongue. It is an ancient speech of men, and once was spoken in many valleys of the Mark. Hark! They hate us, and they are glad; for our doom seems certain to them.”

–J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

War has come to Dunland.

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce the upcoming release of The Antlered Crown, the sixth and final Adventure Pack in The Ring-maker cycle for The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game!

After having found Celebrimbor’s hidden forge and securing its secrets from a horde of Orcs, several of Middle-earth’s heroes near the end of their service to the White Council. First, however, they must return to Isengard, and this means passing through the hills of Dunland, where war has broken loose.

The Antlered Crown introduces sixty new cards to The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, including a new Rohan hero, three copies of each new player card, and a new scenario that carries players deep into battle with the wild men of Dunland. Amid ferocious combats and brutal treachery, you’ll find plenty of moments for heroics, and you’ll have plenty need for stalwart allies.

Naturally, The Antlered Crown delivers heroics and combat-ready allies in abundance; you’ll find allies and events that further depict the ability of Rohan’s finest warriors to charge headlong into battle, as well as a handful of cards that wrap up the cycle’s introduction of the Ent trait to The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game.

Unlikely Allies

“We are tree-herds, we old Ents. Few enough of us are left now.”

–Treebeard, The Two Towers

While The Ring-maker cycle focuses a great deal of attention toward further defining and enhancing the unique play style associated with the Silvan trait, it also lends new support to several of the game’s other traits, and it introduces several cards for the much-beloved Ents.

Though there are few Ent allies in the cycle, their footprints are large. They are slow to anger and slow to act, but once roused, it’s hard to keep a good Ent down. The Ents don’t make their debut in The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game until Celebrimbor’s Secret, but once players gain the opportunity to play with the cards from The Antlered Crown, these Ents are bound to make a major impression upon fans everywhere.

We saw the first of the Ents revealed in the announcement of Celebrimbor’s Secret. At just two resources, the Wandering Ent (Celebrimbor’s Secret, 119) is a powerful ally that boasts a remarkable array of two Willpower, two Attack, two Defense, and three Hit Points. Yet as an Ent, this ally is slow to commit himself fully to your cause, so he enters play exhausted. This is a theme that runs throughout the cycle’s Ent cards, and both of the Ents from The Antlered Crown also enter play exhausted:

Ents may be slow to anger, but the Booming Ent (The Antlered Crown, 141) is one Ent who has seen too many evils and too much deforestation to sit idle any longer. Portrayed with arrows jutting out of his hide in all directions, this ally gains one Attack Strength for each damaged Ent character you control. Because you’ll be able to command as many as seven Ent allies once The Antlered Crown releases, it’s entirely possible to get this two-cost character up to a massive Attack Strength of nine.

Finally, the most recognizable of the cycle’s Ents is the venerable Treebeard (The Antlered Crown, 146), who appears as a neutral ally with some truly massive statistics: two Willpower, four Attack, three Defense, and five Hit Points. Moreover, like Radagast (A Journey to Rhosgobel, 59), Treebeard collects a resource each turn, which he can use to recruit other Ents or to ready them. Don’t be too hasty, though, using Treebeard to ready an Ent will cost you two resources, so you’ll have to wait at least one turn to do so.

Though there are only a few different Ent characters in The Ring-maker cycle, these unlikely allies may still make a powerful impact upon The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, especially if they crash into action to aid your heroes during the battles of The Antlered Crown.

No One Is Safe on the Field of Battle

War rages across the hills of Dunland, the horse-lords of Rohan ride into the fray, and even the neighboring tree-herds storm into battle. Can you complete the mission you began in Saruman’s service? Can you deliver the ancient lore you found in Celebrimbor’s secret forge?

Stand fast amid the chaos of war, and make your mark upon Middle-earth in The Antlered Crown. This thrilling conclusion to The Ring-maker cycle is scheduled to arrive at retailers in the fourth quarter of 2014!

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Source: The Antlered Crown (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4852)

A Crusade in Twilight

A Rogue Trader Adventure and Character Guide Are Now Available For Download

“Your training will be harsh. It will last a lifetime. It will be rigorous, meticulous, and all encompassing. You will learn the lessons of the greatest minds the Fire caste has produced, but also how and when to use them. All of this will be so you can fight for the Greater Good, and likely perish in the process, but it will be an endeavor you will willingly embark on.”
–Commander Blindside

The Rogue Traders voyage across the vast reaches of space, searching for adventure, renown, and riches beyond count on the edges of the galaxy. To be a Rogue Trader and bear the sacred Warrant of Trade means journeys beyond the boundaries of the Imperium. In some cases, these adventures may lead you to strange realms and stranger alliances.

Two new Rogue Trader digital-exclusive supplements are now available for download: the Twilight Crusade adventure and the Tau Character Guide! Journey to the edge of space in the company of an Inquisitor and his unlikely allies: a cadre of Tau Fire Warriors. As you journey to confront an ambitious Rogue Trader, the Tau support you, and by using the Tau Character Guide, you can become a Tau Explorer yourself.

Click an image above to purchase a download of the supplement.

Twilight Crusade

Twilight Crusade is a three-part adventure that focuses on your mission to confront the heretical Rogue Trader, Vir Modren. Your Explorers must embark on a Grand Endeavour into the heart of Modren’s Realm, alongside the acolytes of an ardent Inquisitor and his unexpected allies – a hunter cadre of Tau from the far-flung reaches of the galaxy. To confront Modren directly, you must venture deep into his domain and negotiate his followers’ power-struggles, before gaining entry to Modren’s personal fortress.

This adventure’s Grand Endeavour provides your GM with an excellent framework to gauge your progress and success, no matter how you choose to venture deep into Modren’s Realm and navigate the intrigues within. This Endeavour can be modified to suit the GM’s needs, inviting freeform action from you and your fellow Explorers. To help the GM guide the Explorers even further, a detailed breakdown of the Grand Endeavour’s objectives can be found at the end of each chapter of the adventure. In addition, this adventure offers the perfect opportunity for players to use the Tau Character Guide, as Tau warriors feature extensively throughout Twilight Crusade.

For the Greater Good

The 43-page Tau Character Guide provides Rogue Trader players with all the necessary information and rules to play Tau Explorers, whether in the Twilight Crusade adventure or in another voyage across the Koronus Expanse. In this supplement, you find a concise history of the Tau Empire, rules to play Tau Warriors of the Fire Caste with various specialised classes, and an armoury for outfitting characters with the advanced technology and powerful wargear of the Tau empire.

As you realise your Fire Warrior more fully, you may choose to take alternate career ranks. The Tau Character Guide offers three options for alternate career ranks, enabling your Explorer to become a Pathfinder, a Drone Handler, or even a Battlesuit Pilot. Of course, the Tau Empire would be nothing without its hyper-advanced technology, and you’ll find plenty of equipment and battlesuits in the Tau Armoury. Whether you strike from afar with a Kroot Hunting Rifle, blind your foes with Tau Photon Grenades, or experience the raw power of an XV8 Crisis Battlesuit, you’ll find Tau technology is a great companion in the wild space of the Koronus Expanse.

Begin Your Journey

The hubris of Vic Modren’s realm can no longer stand as an affront to the Imperium. By the will of the Emperor, and for the Greater Good, Modren must fall. Are you prepared to embark on this adventure? Purchase Twilight Crusade and the Tau Character Guide, and begin your ship’s journey past the edges of the Koronus Expanse!

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Source: A Crusade in Twilight (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4853)

They Wait Within

Preview the New Monsters of the Overlord in Manor of Ravens

Deep in the foothills of Greyhaven sits an abandoned manor house. The house was once the abode of the high mage, Ithyndrus, but his death left it to the ravens and other scavengers. Bandits camp in the forests around the mansion, venturing inside to loot while the light lasts. At nightfall, the manor belongs to the wraiths that rise from the crypts, bringing a horrible death to anyone unwise enough to remain within the manor walls.

In the Manor of Ravens expansion for Descent: Journeys in the Dark Second Edition, a few heroes have dared to cross the mansion’s threshold in an attempt to root out its evil. Within the manor, the heroes will face terrible monsters, and today’s preview, takes a closer look at the two new monster groups the overlord unleashes on the heroes in Manor of Ravens.

Desperate Men and Criminals

The only predators that survive in every climate and culture, bandits take what they want, thrive on others’ failures, and only regret the effort their ill deeds require. The plague of highwaymen has never been eradicated, and it falls to the heroes of Terrinoth to hold these scoundrels in check or fall prey to their quick blades and underhanded tricks.

The greatest strength of the bandits in Manor of Ravens is their versatility in fighting at range or in melee combat. Bandits possess the Ranged icon as an option for staying out of the heroes’ reach, but they also feature the combat dice necessary to deal solid damage at close range. All bandits have access to the Pillage ability as well. Pillage allows a bandit to perform an attack against an adjacent hero; if that hero is knocked out by the attack, you may choose one of his Search cards and shuffle it back into the deck! Not only will this deprive the hero of some powerful benefits, it also reduces the amount of gold he receives at the end of the quest.

Bandits can also spend surges to cause extra damage or poison a hero, while master bandits take their skulduggery to a more deadly level with Black Venom. When you trigger the Black Venom ability, the hero you attacked becomes both Poisoned and Doomed. Doomed – a new condition introduced in Manor of Ravens – can quickly maximize a hero’s damage. While a hero is Doomed, any damage that he suffers causes him to take an additional damage, until he spends a surge in combat to remove the condition. A bandit can poison or doom heroes with his tricks and abilities, and they aren’t the only monsters you control in the haunted manor.

A Haunting Specter

At the sight of a wraith emerging from its crypt, even the bravest turn and flee. If it’s not the spirit’s looks that cause such dread, it’s fear of their call. To hear the summon of the wraith is to invite death and submit your fate to its malevolent will. The aura of doom that permeates a house that hosts a family of wraiths is more than sufficient to deter all but the most foolish of adventurers.

When you employ the aid of wraiths to destroy the heroes, you can be sure to strike terror into the hearts of any that oppose you. A wraith can attack a hero in close combat with rending, spectral claws, but wraiths can also harry the heroes from afar, using their dark calls to strike out of reach of the heroes. In combat, any wraith can spend surges to deal additional damage or to give a hero the Doomed condition, sentencing the hero to take even more damage later, unless he can dispel the condition by spending a surge in combat.

As an added bonus, every wraith possesses the Death Cry ability. By using this as an action, you may choose a hero near the wraith to test Willpower. If that hero fails, you choose whether he becomes Doomed or suffers a damage, giving you more ways to drain the heroes’ willpower and deal more damage. Finally, master wraiths have the powerful Reaper ability. Whenever a hero within five spaces of a master wraith is knocked out, the master wraith may immediately move up to its speed and make an attack. As your master wraith gains energy from the fading will of the heroes, his power can maximize the amount of damage you’ll deal in a round.

Enter the Manor

In Manor of Ravens, the haunted mansion’s doors have opened, daring those who call themselves heroes to enter. Bandits and wraiths rise to serve the overlord, but new heroes also make their debut. Join us in our next preview as we examine the two new heroes and hero classes.

Preorder the Manor of Ravens expansion at your local retailer today!

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Source: They Wait Within (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4854)

Plotting and Scheming, Part Two

A Look at Mastering Your Plot Deck in A Game of Thrones: The Card Game

“Tell me, Lord Varys, who do you truly serve?”

Varys smiled thinly. “Why, the realm, my good lord, how ever could you doubt that? I swear it by my lost manhood. I serve the realm, and the realm needs peace.”

–George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

Last week, we looked at how the plot decks of A Game of Thrones: The Card Game add layers of bluffing, control, and aggression to the game that distinguish it from other customizable card games. We reviewed the reasons that your plots are the most important seven cards you’ll bring to a game, and we explored several sample plot decks that exemplified vastly different styles of play.

Because you can choose which plot you reveal each turn, your plot deck provides you the means to enhance the strategies you develop in your draw deck, to compensate for its weaknesses, to weave combinations between the two, or to imagine other ways to bolster your bid for the Iron Throne.

It is, in fact, possible to imagine a plot deck that admirably performs a couple of different functions. As an example, a well-built plot deck may support an aggressive Stark deck, allowing its characters to rush onto the battlefield, eliminate enemy characters, and gain early control of the Challenges phase. However, if your opponent gets the better early draw, you might have one or two “reset” plots that can remove enemy characters and help you recover.

Today, then, we’ll take a look at some of these “reset” plots, and we’ll start with a close look at Valar Morghulis (Core Set, 201), which is arguably the most popular, potent, and important card in A Game of Thrones: The Card Game.

Valar Morghulis and Recovering from Disaster

Despite your best efforts, you will, at times, find yourself falling behind in the battle for the Iron Throne. Perhaps a Greyjoy player will strike hard and fast in the midst of winter, killing your characters, freezing your income, and discarding your locations. Perhaps a Lannister player will amass a host of fickle allies and threaten to choke your hand of cards by winning Intrigue challenge after Intrigue challenge. In times such as these, you want a way to bounce back, to reset the game, and to buy yourself a moment to recover. These are the sort of times at which you want to be able to reveal Valar Morghulis.

When revealed, Valar Morghulis kills all characters in play. If you’re falling behind in a game, this plot may give you the breathing room that you need to mount a comeback. It is, in fact, such a powerful and prevalent card that its mere existence demands a host of strategic considerations, many of which extend into deck-building and the interactions between your plot deck and your draw deck:

First of all, the plot’s ability to kill all characters in play doesn’t actually mean that all characters in play will actually be killed and moved from the table to the dead pile. Instead, it’s possible to cancel Valar’s ability, and even when Valar’s ability triggers, it first checks to see if all the characters in play can be killed. If a copy of The Power of Blood (Core Set, 194) is revealed, characters with the Noble crest cannot be killed; “cannot” is absolute within A Game of Thrones: The Card Game, so Valar Morghulis wouldn’t affect those characters. Even when characters can be killed and Valar Morghulis targets them, before they actually die, they enter a “moribund” state from which it’s still possible to save them by discarding a duplicate, an attachment like Bodyguard (Core Set, 150), or a location like The Iron Mines (Kings of the Sea, 27). There are other means, too, of saving characters, and every player will want to bear these in mind while building a deck and plot deck.

Valar Morghulis may have one of the game’s most powerful abilities, but it offers only two gold and no claim. Additionally, it has an initiative value of zero, so the turn you reveal Valar as your plot, you’re quite likely to lose the initiative and make little or no headway against your opponent apart from killing off his characters.

Valar Morghulis hits all players equally. If you want to recover from a bad board position, you’ll be sacrificing your characters in order to do so. Accordingly, you’re going to want to have other characters in your hand that you can play onto the table in the Marshaling phase. If you’re playing Valar in order to recover from a bad board position, you’ll almost certainly want to be able to play more and better characters than your opponent so that you don’t simply slip back into yet another losing position. This means you want to understand how Valar functions within the scope of your deck; it needs to fit together with your economy cards, your draw, and your deck’s cast of characters.

In the right deck, Valar Morghulis can be a tool for offense, not just defense. All characters are not created equally, and characters like Robert Baratheon (The Tower of the Hand, 46) who have Renown or can participate in more than a single challenge (or both) are simply more important than non-unique characters like Knight of the Rainwood (Core Set, 81) who can only participate in a single challenge each turn. Even though Valar offers no claim and very little gold, if it can clear out threats or impediments to characters like Robert Baratheon, then it can help you push through for the power you gain from Renown and unopposed challenges. After all, the goal of the game is to claim the Iron Throne by earning fifteen power, not to fiddle with large claim for its own sake.

Finally, it’s worth noting that if you put Valar Morghulis into your plot deck and play through six plots without revealing it, you leave yourself no choice but to reveal it as your next plot. If you’re playing a slower deck, like the sort that might accompany a control strategy, and your intention is to build toward an inevitable victory, you may not wish to include a plot that strikes at you as much as it strikes at your opponent.

Seven Kingdoms Full of Threats

Of course, Valar Morghulis is not the only reset plot in the game. Other reset plots can also help you recover from a bad board position or strengthen your hold on an advantageous one. Several key reset plots present an alternate set of abilities and promote another range of deck-building considerations:

Wildfire Assault (Core Set, 191) is a good reset for control strategies that wish to avoid the double-sided effect of Valar Morghulis. Not only does it allow each player to avoid killing up to three of their characters, but it prevents all others from being saved, meaning that the plot ignores any board advantage your opponent may have expected to retain through cards like Bodyguard and The Iron Mines.

The First Snow of Winter (On Dangerous Grounds, 59) works well in decks with a range of characters of cost three or more. Not only does it allow you to recover from a slow setup, but it can help you push for a win or two in the Challenges phase.

Threat from the North (Princes of the Sun, 56) isn’t a true reset plot insofar as it doesn’t, on its own, balance out the table. However, it’s easily one of the more common plots for players whose draw decks include a measure of “burn,” or cards that lower the Strength of opposing characters. This is a plot you’re likely to encounter when you face a Targaryen burn deck or even a Stark deck that features Shaggydog (Lords of Winter, 3) and other Direwolf attachments.

Characters aren’t your only concern in A Game of Thrones: The Card Game. Locations can trigger a host of nasty, disruptive effects, and several Greyjoy locations can even participate in challenges. Furthermore, a player with a whole realm’s worth of locations at his disposal may be able to play more characters than you each turn or recycle key cards from his discard or dead piles. Fleeing to the Wall (Core Set, 187) is a reset for locations that fits well into decks that aim for more straightforward challenges between characters.

Using Chaos to Your Advantage

Most A Game of Thrones: The Card Game matches end well before players reveal their seventh plots. This means that players usually have room for one or two plots that shore up their decks’ weaknesses, rather than building upon their core strengths.

Accordingly, most plot decks will include at least one reset plot, and one of your key considerations in building your draw deck ought to be to determine a path past your opponent’s reset. This could be through the use of cards that prevent your characters from being killed or that save characters otherwise destined for death, or it could be through the use of greater card draw and economy, playing to the goal of bouncing back from what becomes a momentary setback.

Meanwhile, new players (or those with fewer cards at their disposal) may wish to consider including multiple resets in their plot decks. Let’s face it, until you’ve mastered the game, your odds of finding yourself falling behind are better than those of getting ahead. By including multiple resets, you may stand a better chancing of turning the tables on your opponent. At the least, you’re likely to buy yourself more time to strike.

The plot decks of A Game of Thrones: The Card Game are one of its most central and distinguishing features, and gaining a fuller understanding of them is a critical step to mastering the game. In our next installment of Plotting and Scheming, we’ll continue to look at more of the interactions between your plot deck and draw deck, including the different possibilities introduced by “plot twists.”

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Source: Plotting and Scheming, Part Two (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4855)

Between the Shadows

Announcing an Upcoming Deluxe Expansion for STAR WARS (TM): The Card Game

“Mos Eisley spaceport: You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.”
–Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars, A New Hope

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce Between the Shadows, the third deluxe expansion for Star Wars™: The Card Game!

Across the galaxy, there are always those who are most comfortable while unnoticed, under the cover of shadows. In this upcoming expansion for Star Wars: The Card Game, you’re invited to slip into the shadows to meet with those who hide within.

Secrets in the Shadows

Some of those you will find in the shadows stay there to escape persecution and execution. The Jedi were supposedly exterminated when the Empire was created, but their fire has not yet been extinguished from the galaxy. In the desert wastelands of Tatooine, or in the swamps and bogs of Dagobah, the remaining Jedi bide their time, devoting themselves to the study of the Force. Although they work in secrecy, the Force is strong with them, and soon, the Jedi will emerge to once more play a hand in the fate of the galaxy.

Others who make the shadows their home have far less savory occupations. For the Scum and Villainy of the galaxy, back-alley deals, covert operations, and stealthy assassinations are a way of life. You may not see them on the well-lit streets, but a multitude of bounty hunters, mercenaries, brawlers, and collectors wait for the unwary in the shadows. They may work for honor, for credits, or for the massive criminal organization known as Black Sun, but whenever these professionals work, the wise know enough to stay out of their way.

In this deluxe expansion, you’ll find twenty-six new objective sets, giving you two copies each of twelve distinct sets and one copy apiece of two “Limit 1 per objective deck” sets. Although the expansion is focused on the Jedi and Scum and Villainy affiliations, every affiliation will find cards to use in this expansion. Two brand-new fate cards bring new tension to every edge battle, while new versions of iconic characters like Luke Skywalker join the fight alongside new heroes and villains, such as Prince Xizor and Talon Karrde.

Today, however, we’ll step into the shadows to join the most feared Bounty Hunter in the galaxy: Boba Fett.

Fearless and Inventive

When you work with the best in the bounty hunting world, you always get what you pay for. If you pay for sabotage, you’ll get flaming rubble and shattered duracrete. If you pay for a hit, you know the damage goes where it’s supposed to. Boba Fett has built a reputation around ruthless efficiency, so it follows that the objective of his set makes your units more reliable. The objective is “No Disintegrations,” (Between the Shadows, 665) and its text reads, “Combat damage dealt by a Bounty Hunter or Mercenary unit you control cannot be reassigned by the protect keyword.” While this objective is in play, your opponent will no longer be able to evade damage with protector units. The damage you assign sticks, and since Bounty Hunter and Mercenary are two of the most common traits for Scum and Villainy, you can be sure your opponent will think twice before attacking your objectives.

Another card in the set is both a Bounty Hunter and a Mercenary, ensuring that she receives the benefits from “No Disintegrations,” as well as from objectives like Lucrative Contract (Assault on Echo Base, 271). This card is the Freelance Hunter (Between the Shadows, 667). Naturally suited for attack, the Freelance Hunter is an excellent choice for deactivating objectives that are only active while undamaged. The objective set continues with a copy of Prized Possession (Between the Shadows, 378), giving you the resources you need to hire the best Bounty Hunters in the business.

Even the best hunters can be surprised once in a while. At times like that, it’s best to have a trick ready. This set includes the free event Entangled (Between the Shadows, 669). When your opponent chooses a unit to strike, you can play Entangled to force your opponent to strike with a different eligible unit instead. In an engagement involving multiple units, there is nearly always one unit that your opponent wants to strike first. If you can upset that order with Entangled, the engagement is tipped in your favor, even if you lost the edge. As an added bonus, you draw a card after playing Entangled, filling your hand with more tricks and traps.

For other jobs, all you need to rout your enemies is a little extra firepower. You can find what you’re looking for in the Flamethrower (Between the Shadows, 668). This card can enhance any friendly Character or Droid unit, instantly turning them into a one-man army. Whenever a unit enhanced with a Flamethrower is focused to strike, you deal one additional damage to each participating enemy unit. If your opponent doesn't deal with the Flamethrower's incendiary effects, he'll soon find his units nearly exterminated. Of course, any Character or Droid can use the Flamethrower, but there’s only one Bounty Hunter who’s a true master of this Weapon…

Many Bounty Hunters achieve fame: Bossk, Dengar, IG-88, and Zuckuss are just a few examples. But one man has forged a reputation as the utter professional. Boba Fett (Between the Shadows, 666) features a spread of combat icons that makes him equally suited for attack or defense – whatever the job requires. The Elite keyword and three Force icons make him excellent for holding the Force, but it’s Boba Fett’s Reaction that makes him the best at what he does. After Boba Fett resolves a strike, you may immediately remove all focus tokens from him! Essentially able to strike twice in any engagement, Boba Fett could easily finish nearly any opposing unit, or destroy an objective single-handedly with the edge. If you enhance him with a Flamethrower as well, he’ll be able to trigger it whenever he strikes, dealing unparalleled amounts of damage to any light side units that stand in his way.

Invisible Connections

The criminals of the Scum and Villainy are dangerous in the extreme, but the last of the Jedi stand ready to oppose them. In Between the Shadows, every affiliation finds powerful new cards to aid them. For more information on this deluxe expansion, visit the Between the Shadows about page, and prepare to enter the shadows of Star Wars in the third quarter of 2014!

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Source: Between the Shadows (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4856)

The Resourceful Investigator, Part Two

A Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game Strategy Article by Guest Writer David Boeren

“Warning me that many of the street signs were down, the youth drew for my benefit a rough but ample and painstaking sketch map of the town’s salient features. After a moment’s study I felt sure that it would be of great help, and pocketed it with profuse thanks.”
–H.P. Lovecraft, The Shadow Over Innsmouth

In Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game, you pay for cards by draining domains. Accordingly, if you’re looking for a map deeper into the game’s dark heart, there’s no better place to start than with the orders and shapes in which your domains are arranged.

In the first part of his guide to resourcing domains, guest writer David Boeren introduced a few fundamental concerns and walked us through a sample game, examining the initial resourcing decisions presented by his opening draw. Now, he walks us even deeper into his game, how he addresses the resourcing decisions that all players face, and how he views the theory behind his decisions.

Guest Writer David Boeren on Building Your Domains

David’s eight opening cards contained six Syndicate cards, one Silver Twilight card, and one neutral card:

Lena Di Boerio (Denizens of the Underworld, 5)
Clover Club Torch Singer (Core Set, 66)
Johnny V’s Dame (Aspirations of Ascension, 77)
Peter Clover (Seekers of Knowledge, 53)
Meticulous Scribe (The Gleaming Spiral, 94)
On the Lam (Denizens of the Underworld, 31)
Intimidate (Secrets of Arkham, 16)
Eldritch Nexus (Core Set, 154)

He resourced Peter Clover, Intimidate, and On the Lam. However, this meant that his two-faction deck, split between Syndicate and Silver Twilight, would start the game without domains for each faction.

Focused on gaining a strong early board position, David initially resources a character he can't afford to play on his first turn, along with two events.

Before David resumes his game walkthrough, he explains how he approaches resourcing for multi-color decks (decks split between two or more factions).

It’s generally desirable that you quickly build your domains so that some or most of them contain resources for all of your factions. This allows for maximum flexibility in the cards that you play. While it’s okay to put this off temporarily in order to hold onto important cards or to play a two-cost Loyal card early in the game, you’ll want to get around to adding multiple colors to your domains as quickly as you can.

There are, however, some things you can do to reduce your need to add multiple factions to each domain:

Run mostly one faction and just a splash of another. This sort of deck may only need a single domain to carry a resource from the secondary faction.
Keep most or all of your one-cost cards in one faction. By doing this, you will find yourself under less pressure to build your smallest domain to two resources simply in order to match both factions.

After resourcing, I go first. On my first turn, I draw one card and get Steal the Soul (The Order of the Silver Twilight, 52). This is a great card. It’s also a Silver Twilight card, which was what I had hoped to draw.

Fortunately, there’s also an action window between the Draw Phase and Resource Phase, and I use it to play my Eldritch Nexus immediately, to see what I get before I have to make my resource decision.

Which Domain Should You Build?

Turn one usually presents an easy resourcing decision; you want to build your domains to 2-1-1. But where do you go after that? Do you build your domains to 3-1-1 or 2-2-1?

This will depend on the design of your deck and the cards in your hand. Usually these concerns go together, as your opening hand should reflect the intent of your deck.

Generally, I advise resourcing according to whichever tactic will help you play more of your important cards faster. For a given deck, one path will usually be best the majority of the time, and if you find yourself resourcing to 3-1-1 most of the time in order to play high-cost charaters, then you likely need to think about balancing those with more one-cost characters, event,s and supports to play from your second and third domains.

When Eldritch Nexus resolves, the top card of my deck goes facedown as a new domain. This is another Intimidate. The second card of my deck goes underneath this new domain as a resource… and it’s another Eldritch Nexus!

This is a small problem. I’m not really concerned about losing the card since four domains is probably enough, but seeding a neutral card as a one-resource domain is less than ideal. I can still use it to pay for abilities that require me to “pay 1,” but I’m better off in the long run to put another resource there to convert it into something more useful. The problem is, I no longer have any spare Syndicate cards in hand.

This forces me to make a difficult decision:

Resource a Silver Twilight card on a Syndicate domain. This will let me play either Meticulous Scribe and Lena Di Boerio, or Johnny V’s Dame plus another Syndicate character. It will also give me a two-color domain.
Resource a Silver Twilight card on my neutral domain. This will let me play Meticulous Scribe and Lena Di Boerio, and it will fix my neutral domain, making it more useful in future turns.
Resource a Syndicate card on the neutral domain. This will let me play Johnny V’s Dame plus another Syndicate character, and it will fix my neutral domain.

Of the choices, the two-color domain seems best as I’ll be able to build it up so that I can play a three-cost character of either faction on my next turn if I need one, so I decide to give up Steal the Soul, resourcing it on a Syndicate domain.

By resourcing a Silver Twilight card to the same domain as a Syndicate resource, David ensures that his first two-resource domain can be used for either faction.

Here, even the decision where to resource it matters: In case I should win Chaos Unleashed (The Shifting Sands, 8), I want to resource Steal the Soul with the Syndicate card I expect I’d most like to get back later in the game. The resources in my open domains are Peter Clover and Intimidate, and I decide to add Steal the Soul to the domain with Peter Clover.

Chaos Unleashed

Some of the story cards from the Asylum Pack The Shifting Sands allow you to exchange cards from your hand with the cards in one of your domains. The most important of these stories is Chaos Unleashed, which lets you add an entire domain's worth of cards to your hand and then replace them from the top of your deck.

Chaos Unleashed won't appear every game, but when you see it, you should resource all your best cards to one domain, which will typically also be your biggest domain. This way, if you win one of these stories, you will maximize the benefit your receive from winning the story by giving yourself the best selection of cards to retrieve.

Keep in mind that you won't win one of these stories for at least a couple of turns, so you should resource cards that will be useful in the mid-game rather than the early game. Still, this isn't hard because you should already want to keep your good early game cards in your hand in order to play them.

After resourcing, I drain my domain of two to play Johnny V’s Dame, and then I use my other Syndicate domain to play my Clover Club Torch Singer at one-cost. My neutral domain remains open to pay for her ability if I need it, and I’m holding two characters that I can play on my next turn.

I wish I didn’t have to give up Steal the Soul, but I really want the Meticulous Scribe on the table for his Arcane icon, and without a Silver Twilight domain of one, I’d have had to build and hold onto a domain of two just to play my event. If I’d had a Silver Twilight domain of one resource, I’d have probably gone the other way and resourced Meticulous Scribe, trusting that I’d soon draw into another character with Arcane or Investigation icons.

Fortunately, in this case Lena Di Boerio is a reasonable substitute. Although her ability is very domain-hungry, she can mess with icons. In fact, she would have been a very reasonable substitute for the Clover Club Torch Singer, but because my deck is full of Criminal characters, I wanted to take advantage of Johnny V’s Dame’s discount as early as possible.

Subsequent Turns

My opponent appears to be playing a Serpent-themed deck. On his turn, he plays Naaginn (Touched by the Abyss, 105) and two Degenerate Serpent Cultists (The Wailer Below, 63). All three have Terror icons but no other icons. During his story phase, my opponent opts not to commit to stories since he sees that I could kill one Serpent and use my Clover Club Torch Singer to reduce another to skill zero, preventing it from gaining success tokens.

On my second turn, then, I draw another Johnny V’s Dame and Josef Meiger (Denizens of the Underworld, 52). The second Dame does little for me since they can only discount the first Criminal I play each turn. Fortunately, though, Josef is a Criminal himself, despite being a member of the Silver Twilight. This presents me a good opportunity to fix my neutral domain.

I resource the Dame on my neutral domain, then play Josef and Lena Di Boerio. At this point, the only card in my hand is the Meticulous Scribe. However, I have two domains left open. This allows me to threaten to remove my opponent’s Terror icons, so that I can commit to two or even three stories.

David doesn't require a three-resource domain for any of the cards in his hand, and by resourcing a Silver Twilight card to his neutral domain, he not only gains the ability to play two two-cost cards on his turn, but he makes transforms his neutral domain into one that's more useful to his deck.

I commit Josef, the Clover Club Torch Singer, and the Dame. If my opponent opposes all three, I can easily afford to let the Dame go insane, as her ability will work even if she is exhausted, and I’ll be able to kill some Serpents in return…

The Game So Far

When Should You Stop Resourcing?

At some point, you want to stop resourcing. After all, every card you don't resource is one extra card in your hand, and the sooner you stop letting go of those options, the sooner you’ve got a card advantage on your opponent.

This doesn't mean that every deck should be a rush deck, nor is it a good idea to stop resourcing too soon. If you do, you may have trouble playing your higher cost cards when you draw them.

Simply, you want to maintain the flow of cards from your deck to your hand and into play. If you can afford to play two to three cards every turn, then you may be ready to stop resourcing, or at least skip a turn. If you don't immediately need an extra resource and resourcing would cost you a valuable card, it's well worth skipping as long as your deck doesn't have too many high-cost cards that would leave you feeling off-pace later in the game.

At this point, I’ve had a fairly successful opening, and on my next turn, I’ll draw two more cards to add to my Meticulous Scribe. Also, since I know my deck’s composition, I expect that I’ll be able to play at least two of the cards I’ll have in my hand. At this point, there’s a good chance that I will only need to resource once more; if I add another Silver Twilight card to the domain that has one neutral and one Syndicate card, I’ll have two two-color domains, and one of them will be able to pay for three-cost cards.

Finally, now that I’ve established a fairly strong board presence, the time to favor characters over other card types has passed, and I can pay more attention to holding onto useful events and supports.

Hopefully, this has been a useful glimpse into the sort of choices that come up with resourcing, particularly early in the game when these choices are most critical. I think this particular example also helps to illustrate the sort of problems that occur even with a finely tuned deck and how you often need to be able to reroute your plans if you find yourself off of your ideal path.

…

Thanks, David!

The resourcing mechanic of Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game is one of its most central and defining characteristics… and mastering the art of resourcing intelligently is essential to your efforts to save humanity or hurl it headlong toward the abyss!

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Source: The Resourceful Investigator, Part Two (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4857)

Plotting and Scheming, Part Two

A Look at Mastering Your Plot Deck in A Game of Thrones: The Card Game

“Tell me, Lord Varys, who do you truly serve?”
Varys smiled thinly. “Why, the realm, my good lord, how ever could you doubt that? I swear it by my lost manhood. I serve the realm, and the realm needs peace.”
–George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

Valar Morghulis and Recovering from Disaster

First of all, the plot’s ability to kill all characters in play doesn’t actually mean that all characters in play will actually be killed and moved from the table to the dead pile. Instead, it’s possible to cancel Valar’s ability, and even when Valar’s ability triggers, it first checks to see if all the characters in play can be killed. If a copy of The Power of Blood (Core Set, 194) is revealed, characters with the Noble crest cannot be killed; “cannot” is absolute within A Game of Thrones: The Card Game, so Valar Morghulis wouldn’t affect those characters. Even when characters can be killed and Valar Morghulis triggers, before its effect resolves, there is an opportunity to save them by discarding a duplicate, an attachment like Bodyguard (Core Set, 150), or a location like The Iron Mines (Kings of the Sea, 27). There are other means, too, of saving characters, and every player will want to bear these in mind while building a deck and plot deck.

Valar Morghulis may have one of the game’s most powerful abilities, but it offers only two gold and no claim. Additionally, it has an initiative value of zero, so the turn you reveal Valar as your plot, you’re quite likely to lose the initiative and make little or no headway against your opponent apart from killing off his characters.
Valar Morghulis hits all players equally. If you want to recover from a bad board position, you’ll be sacrificing your characters in order to do so. Accordingly, you’re going to want to have other characters in your hand that you can play onto the table in the Marshaling phase. If you’re playing Valar in order to recover from a bad board position, you’ll almost certainly want to be able to play more and better characters than your opponent so that you don’t simply slip back into yet another losing position. This means you want to understand how Valar functions within the scope of your deck; it needs to fit together with your economy cards, your draw, and your deck’s cast of characters.
In the right deck, Valar Morghulis can be a tool for offense, not just defense. All characters are not created equally, and characters like Robert Baratheon (The Tower of the Hand, 46) who have Renown or can participate in more than a single challenge (or both) are simply more important than non-unique characters like Knight of the Rainwood (Core Set, 81) who can only participate in a single challenge each turn. Even though Valar offers no claim and very little gold, if it can clear out threats or impediments to characters like Robert Baratheon, then it can help you push through for the power you gain from Renown and unopposed challenges. After all, the goal of the game is to claim the Iron Throne by earning fifteen power, not to fiddle with large claim for its own sake.
Finally, it’s worth noting that if you put Valar Morghulis into your plot deck and play through six plots without revealing it, you leave yourself no choice but to reveal it as your next plot. If you’re playing a slower deck, like the sort that might accompany a control strategy, and your intention is to build toward an inevitable victory, you may not wish to include a plot that strikes at you as much as it strikes at your opponent.

Seven Kingdoms Full of Threats

Using Chaos to Your Advantage

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Source: Plotting and Scheming, Part Two (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4855)

Lead the Charge

Preview Combat in Warhammer 40,000: Conquest

The servants of Khorne stood from horizon to horizon, filling the air with their barks, gibbers, and howls. Their battle banners, straining in the coppery wind that blew through their ranks, were of the deepest red, bearing a single rune and a legend of simple devotion: Blood for the Blood God.

–The Tome of Blood

In the grim darkness of Warhammer 40,000: Conquest, there can never be peace. The only way to achieve total conquest is to utterly vanquish your enemies with fire and sword.

In past previews of Warhammer 40,000: Conquest, we’ve looked at methods for deploying units to planets across the Traxis sector. We’ve also explored the command struggle, a strategic battle for resources and influence that takes place at every planet, granting you the card draw and extra resources to maintain your assault. Today, however, we’ll move into combat, exploring the battles that occur every round.

The Clash of Arms

During the combat phase, battles rage throughout the sector, but the presence of opposing units at one planet is not necessarily enough to trigger a battle there. Sometimes, your units work against your opponent on a strategic scale, illustrated by the command struggle. In the combat phase, however, tactics take the fore as battles erupt, taking place each round at the first planet and at planets where you or your opponent have committed a warlord.

Combat in Warhammer 40,000: Conquest is conducted over a series of merciless rounds. Combat begins at a planet when the player with initiative chooses one of his ready units to strike. Every unit has two numbers on the lower left border of its card. The upper number is that unit’s attack value, while the bottom number is its hit points. When you exhaust one of your units to strike, it deals damage equal to its attack value to an enemy unit chosen by you. If a unit ever has damage on it equal to or greater than its hit points, it is destroyed.

After you strike with one of your units, it’s your opponent’s turn to strike with a unit, after which the combat turn transfers back to you. The battle rages on until all units at the planet are exhausted, at which point every unit at the planet refreshes, preparing for another round of combat. If defeat seems imminent, or if staying at the planet would not accomplish your goals, you and your opponent have the chance to retreat any number of units before a new combat round begins. Any army units that remain behind will engage in a new round of combat, battling for ultimate victory. The battle only ends once one player retreats all of his forces, or one player has slain every opposing unit at the planet!

After a battle ends at any planet, the victor has the opportunity to trigger that planet’s Battle ability, which offers a powerful bonus. The planet Atrox Prime, for example, possesses a Battle ability that reads, “Deal 1 damage to each enemy unit at a target HQ or adjacent planet,” granting you a potent strike against the heart of your opponent’s strength. Although the Battle ability of a planet can be resolved after any battle, only the first planet is claimed by the victor and placed in his victory display, bringing him one step closer to dominion of the sector. After the first planet has been claimed, your victorious units there return to your headquarters with your warlord, awaiting new conquests in the next round.

A Stalwart Shield

Your warlord has a critical role in combat as the leader of your forces in the Traxis sector. Part of that warlord’s role is potentially claiming initiative for you. Typically, the player holding the initiative token strikes first in a battle, but if your warlord is present, you can steal the opportunity to strike first in the battle. If your opponent’s warlord is at the same planet, however, initiative reverts to the player with the initiative token.

In addition, every warlord has a powerful special ability, but your warlord’s presence at a planet puts him in danger of attack. Whenever your warlord takes damage equal to his hit points, his card is flipped over, leaving him bloodied, without his special ability, and in danger of being defeated again. If a bloodied warlord is defeated again, that player immediately loses the game. Although both warlords must commit to a planet each round, there are measures you can take to reduce your opponent’s chances to harm your warlord. Once combat begins, instead of exhausting a unit to strike, you can use your combat turn to exhaust your warlord and retreat him to your headquarters.

Fortunately, you have more ways to avoid combat damage than strategic retreats. Attachment and event cards have a number of shield icons on the upper left border of the card. For example, the card Drop Pod Assault (Core Set, 24) holds two shield icons. When one of your units would take damage, you may discard one card with shield icons from your hand to reduce the damage by the number of shields on the card.

Use Your Skills

Although the foundation of combat rests on attacking with units to deal damage, there are a wealth of keywords introduced in Warhammer 40,000: Conquest that add depth to your battles, allowing you to win seemingly impossible fights. For example, a unit like the Enraged Ork (Core Set, 63) has the Brutal keyword, meaning that he gains one attack power for each damage on him. Before he takes damage, the Enraged Ork has no attack power, but if an enemy dares to strike him, he’s more than ready to strike back just as hard.

Another keyword can be found on the Daring Assault Squad (Core Set, 16). This unit has the Area Effect (2) keyword, meaning that whenever it attacks, instead of dealing its normal attack of three damage to one unit, it may deal its Area Effect of two damage to every enemy unit at the planet! Other keywords can be found on the Black Legion Heldrake (Core Set, 87). This unit has the No Wargear Attachments keyword, keeping it from receiving that type of attachment. It also holds the Flying keyword, meaning that it takes half damage from non-Flying units. With the ability to evade damage in that way, this unit will have a long-lasting influence on your battles.

War Is Coming

Warhammer 40,000: Conquest casts you directly into the futuristic battles for the planets of the Traxis sector, matching your strategy and battlefield tactics against your opponent in a struggle for the stars. In our next preview, we’ll look at a detailed example of a battle. Check back for more previews and preorder Warhammer 40,000: Conquest at your local retailer today!

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Source: Lead the Charge (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4858)

All That Remains

Announcing the Fifth Data Pack in the Lunar Cycle

Three tunnels formed a triangular shape with the work area in the center of the room. It was filled with rows of ancient displays, below which were a series of knobs, keyboards, and ports and all covered with a thick layer of dust…

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce the upcoming release of All That Remains, the fifth Data Pack in the Lunar Cycle for Android: Netrunner!

What will come of one Runner’s hunt for the net’s legendary source protocols? All That Remains explores this question with sixty new cards (three copies of each new card), including a new Criminal Runner identity, a new shard of the source protocols, and a host of assets designed to support the ambitions and secrecy of those Corporations that have the most investment in lunar development.

Additionally, a number of other cards ensure that every action ripples outward and spurs new responses. You’ll find a trio of Corp agendas with powerful “when scored” abilities and trace cards that can hit the Runner even if their traces fail.

Life is different on the moon, and the cat-and-mouse cyberstruggles between Corp and Runner follow deadly new twists. Explore the ends to which they lead in All That Remains.

The Ripple Effect

On the net, all data is connected. One upload alters a server, which modifies the next transmission that server emits, which alters the server that receives it, and so on into infinity. Because of this, no transmission ever truly ends. Instead, data echoes ripple throughout the net and assume their own forms of permanence or recurrence.

We saw these echoes depicted in one form in The Spaces Between. That Data Pack’s current events and operations introduce players to data packages that have echoed throughout the net long enough to assume something like a static permanence. Now, several of the cards in All That Remains revisit the moon’s oldest data streams, offering efficient means to revitalize old data and derive new benefits from it.

Three Corps gain agendas with “when scored” effects that gain strength based upon the amount of data the Corps have previously pumped into the net.

NBN gains License Acquisition (All That Remains, 85), which allows the Corp to install and rez an asset or upgrade, ignoring all costs. The Corp can choose to install this card from HQ, but it can also choose to install it from Archives. This means that even if a Runner manages to trash an asset like SanSan City Grid (Core Set, 92), the Corp can pull up its archived schematics and quickly get back to business.

Weyland Consortium gains Superior Cyberwalls (All That Remains, 87) which rewards players for sticking with Weyland’s expertise in barriers. The more barrier ice you install, the greater the benefit you’ll derive from Superior Cyberwalls. For starters, “when scored,” it grants you one credit for each piece of rezzed barrier ice. Then, it enhances each of these barriers, granting them all a permanent one-point bump to their strength. Moreover, these bonuses are cumulative, meaning that if Weyland can quickly score two or more copies of Superior Cyberwalls, it may be able to form an impenetrable defense by layering its barrier ice before the Runner.

Finally, Haas-Bioroid gains tremendous flexibility from their new agenda, Bifrost Array (All That Remains, 81). When scored, Bifrost Array allows Haas-Bioroid to echo the “when scored” effect of any other agenda in the Corp’s scored pile. This means it can be as powerful as an Accelerated Beta Test (Core Set, 55) or Director Haas’ Pet Project (Creation and Control, 4). A repository of many forms of data, Bifrost Array can even deliver all the benefits of winning a Corporate War (Future Proof, 120), without any threat of suffering the penalties of losing the war. Naturally, you need to have the other agendas in your scored pile in order to copy their effects, but by combining Bifrost Array with Fast Track (Honor and Profit, 27), Haas-Bioroid can deliver upon an adaptable schedule of agendas.

Data Never Dies

When bytes hit the net, they can’t be taken back. The best you can do is seek to master the flow of information. With its sixty new cards, All That Remains allows Corps and Runners to explore new means to hunt – and ultimately control – the net’s legendary source protocols.

Look for All That Remains to add greater depth and resonance to your games of Android: Netrunner when it arrives at retailers everywhere late in the third quarter of 2014!

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Source: All That Remains (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4859)

Secrets and Schemes

Announcing the First Chapter Pack in the Wardens Cycle for A Game of Thrones

“Lysa knew more than she had dared to put in her letter. She might have the very proof that Ned needed to bring the Lannisters to ruin, and if it came to war, they would need the Arryns and the eastern lords who owed them service.”

–George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

Lords and ladies across the Seven Kingdoms have fought for the Iron Throne. Many have died. Still others have held back, aloof and apart, courted by those who desire their strength. But these lords and ladies have their own plans and ambitions…

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce the upcoming release of Secrets and Schemes, the first Chapter Pack in the Wardens cycle for A Game of Thrones: The Card Game!

In Secrets and Schemes, you will discover sixty new cards (three copies each of twenty different cards) that touch upon the schemes concocted by those patient individuals who have remained above or outside of the wars that have shaken the Seven Kingdoms. Additionally, you’ll learn how they make their opening moves with a host of new Knights, attachments, and the agenda, Aloof and Apart (Secrets and Schemes, 18), which encourages players to revisit some of the game’s most expensive, powerful, and recognizable characters.

Additionally, as it opens the Wardens cycle, Secrets and Schemes begins the exploration of its ongoing themes. For more about these themes and what the cycle has to offer players of every type, we turn to lead developer Nate French.

Lead Developer Nate French on the Wardens Cycle

Hello, A Game of Thrones players!

The Wardens cycle is the twelfth expansion series for A Game Thrones: The Card Game, and with it, we sought to explore a number of under-explored nooks and crannies, both in the game and in the A Song of Ice and Fire setting. This means there’s plenty to appeal to all three of our archetypal players: Ned, Shagga, and Jaime.

The “Ned” Archetype

“Ned” players are fans of the source material, who come to the game to immerse themselves in the A Song of Ice and Fire setting. For such players, the biggest draw in the Wardens cycle is likely to be its exploration of the Vale of Arryn and the Eyrie.

In this expansion cycle, you’ll find a number of important unique characters and locations that have not yet appeared in the LCG®, including Lysa and Robert Arryn, The Knight’s Declarant, The Moon Door, and the “Petyr Baelish” version of Littlefinger.

In the novels, a number of different lords and ladies desire the support of the Vale, but the Arryns have not yet emerged as a unified player in the game of thrones. To this end, the Arryn cards were designed so that they can be splashed as useful support into a wide variety of different decks, rather than collected together as a unified deck archetype. Instead of having a direct impact, the Arryns are more content to lend their support and influence from afar, “safe” within the walls of their Eyrie.

The “Shagga” Archetype

“Shagga” players are fans of novelty, always eager to play around with any new “bright and shiny” toys. The Castle plots of the Wardens cycle introduce a new type of “delayed” plot effects to the cardpool. In exchange for broadcasting their intentions ahead of time and delaying the payoff, Castle plots allow players to take advantage of powerful effects when these plots enter their used plot piles. Because they represent the tendency of the Arryns to plot slowly and cautiously behind the impregnable walls of their mountain fortress, these cards also have a nice Nedly angle to them.

In addition to these new Castle plot cards, you’ll find support for a number of synergistic Trait-based decks that have long enticed Shagga players, but that have not yet made it to the top of the competitive hill. Clansman, House Tully, Sand Snake, Dothraki, and Raider decks all receive a number of new options in this expansion, and House Baratheon gains an entirely new set of cards that focus on the Rainbow Guard.

The “Jaime” Archetype

Finally, the “Jaime” player archetype is the competitive player, for whom winning isn’t just the ultimate objective – it’s the only objective. As we looked at the game from the perspective of these players, we decided that the category of “Limited Response” abilities had not yet been satisfactorily explored.

For most decks and games the limitation of “1 limited response per round” just wasn’t a big deal. To make this aspect of the game experience more interesting, a number of powerful limited response abilities, such as those on The Drumm (Secrets and Schemes, 4) and Maester Vyman were designed into the Wardens card pool. These should challenge competitive players to determine which limited responses, and how many, to include in their decks. They’ll also find themselves confronted with more over-the-board situations in which the decision as to which limited response is more useful in a given round becomes a significant choice.

Another area of the game that was explored from a “Jaime” perspective in this cycle was the cost threshold between printed cost “3” and printed cost “4.” Historically, this has been an important breaking point in a card’s evaluation, where, once a card costs four or more, the Jaime evaluation of the card changes dramatically so that only the most fantastic four-cost characters are considered for inclusion in such a player’s deck.

To challenge these assumptions, the Wardens cycle provides players with a number of cards such as The Eyrie and The Bloody Gate that encourage the use of higher cost characters. Attacking the situation from the other side, a number of cards such as Mord, Sky Cell, and Ser Ilyn Payne aim to undermine the reliability of characters with printed costs of three or lower, necessitating that competitive players re-evaluate the relative merits of vast swaths of the character pool when working out their decks.

Whether you count yourself a Ned, Shagga, or Jaime – or some combination thereof – the Wardens cycle was designed and developed with you in mind. We’re looking forward to seeing what you do with them!

Enter the Fray

For years, some of the Seven Kingdoms’ most powerful lords and ladies have remained aloof, apart from the turbulent wars that have revolved around the Iron Throne. Now, as they start to stir to action, how will you respond? Will you broker an allegiance? Will you crush them in battle? Will you use lies and cunning to foment dissent within their ranks?

As the first Chapter Pack in the Wardens cycle, Secrets and Schemes ushers into the game some remarkable new characters, locations, attachments, and plots. However, it also serves as a portent of those things yet to come.

Look for the powers to rally to action when Secrets and Schemes arrives at retailers everywhere late in the third quarter of 2014!

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Source: Secrets and Schemes (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4860)

Secrets and Schemes

Announcing the First Chapter Pack in the Wardens Cycle for A Game of Thrones

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce the upcoming release of Secrets and Schemes, the first Chapter Pack in the Wardens cycle for A Game of Thrones: The Card Game!

Lead Developer Nate French on the Wardens Cycle

Hello, A Game of Thrones players!

The “Ned” Archetype

The “Shagga” Archetype

The “Jaime” Archetype

Enter the Fray

Look for the powers to rally to action when Secrets and Schemes arrives at retailers everywhere late in the third quarter of 2014!

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Source: Secrets and Schemes (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4860)

Rise from Darkness to Rule the World

A Preview of the Legions of Darkness Expansion for Warhammer: Diskwars

“Take their gold, burn their homes, kill their families and enslave their souls. Show them no mercy.”
–Malekith, Witch King of Naggaroth

In our last preview of Legions of Darkness, we looked at the Vampire Counts and saw how their powerful heroes could draw upon the Wind of Death to raise armies to threaten the whole of the Old World. However, there’s more to Legions of Darkness than just the Vampire Counts, it also introduces heroes and units for both the Dark Elves and Skaven.

Today, then, as we turn our attention to the death, darkness, and destruction that these two new races will add to Warhammer: Diskwars, developer Michael Gernes introduces us to their heroes and units, and explores the strengths that their regiments may add to your Destruction armies.

Cloaked in Darkness

Hailing from the frozen reaches of Naggaroth, the Dark Elves are a bitter race, driven by their resentment and their hatred of their kinsfolk, the High Elves. Their armies are lightning fast, though potentially fragile, and they’re capable of striking nearly anywhere in the Old World, which they frequently do in order to secure the slaves that do the bulk of Naggaroth’s menial labor… and that provide fodder for ritual sacrifices to Khaine, the Thousand Faced Lord of Murder.

Accordingly, the Dark Elves of Legions of Darkness, excel at striking fast and subduing their foes. They’re hateful and cruel, and as Michael explains, they can easily surprise and destroy unwary enemy forces:

“The Dark Elves are deceitful, merciless raiders, and players will do best with Dark Elf regiments that utilize the sort of aggressive tactics that reflect their nature. Like the High Elves, Dark Elves must control engagements in order to win in melee because they cannot count on toughness.

“Black Ark Corsairs are best when they’re able to flip onto and pin their prey, using their mobile ranged attacks to soften up their targets or to slow down enemy disks that might be waiting to counter-charge the Corsairs. As they advance, their stealth keyword helps to protect them from enemy ranged attacks.

“Unwary opponents might underestimate the Dark Elves’ Karond Kar Harpies, but such a mistake might prove fatal. The Harpies’ flying keyword, combined with their ability to give slow ( ,) to enemy disks that they engage, makes them an excellent melee support disk, even when they are embattled.

“Further adding to the Dark Elves’ penchant for picking their battles and ganging up on their foes, their hero, Lokhir Fellheart provides flank to Corsairs in your reserve, so that they can launch sudden attacks from an unguarded battlefield edge and overwhelm isolated enemies. Then, when he joins in on the attack, Lokhir Fellheart is ferocious on offense with a high attack value, frenzy, and fear.

“Finally, the Cloaked in Darkness command card grants all Dark Elf disks temporary immunity to ranged attacks, better allowing them to rush forward and pin their enemies.”

Rising Upward in a Verminous Tide

The Skaven are a subterranean race of ratmen that have the numbers, the strength, and the sorcery to threaten the whole of the Old World. However, they have long been held back by in-fighting and distrust among their separate clans.

In Legions of Darkness, we receive our first units from the Skaven’s many different clans, and while there are many different aspects of this malevolent, selfish, and cowardly race begging to be explored, developer Michael Gernes explains how their first appearance is designed to add more new dynamics to the forces of Destruction:

“The Skaven disks in Legions of Darkness emphasize the ratmen's warpstone-fueled ranged attacks, rather than their horde tactics, and these first Skaven units are best used to give your Destruction armies a more powerful reach.

“Gutter Runners are adaptable infiltrators who can scout before the battle starts, and rely on their stealth to avoid being picked off at range when caught in the open. Meanwhile, they have the speed to quickly race to the location they’re needed most, and as they approach, they can use their own ranged attacks to pepper the enemy.

“The Ratling Gun is a support disk that can use its mobile ranged attack to keep up a marching fire and soften up multiple enemies. Like many Skaven weapons, though, it can be unpredictable, so you’ll want to be careful as you position with your troops. The Ratling Gun’s ability guarantees that scatter results will deal damage to disks near its target.

“The Skaven hero, Ikit Claw, is both a powerful caster and a solid melee combatant. His ability to use magic 3 at long range can be deadly when used against low toughness disks, or as support for your other ranged attacks. Then, when Ikit Claw is… inevitably… rushed by enemies, he can use the Skaven command card Vermintide to deal an impressive amount of destruction to any disks caught within short range.”

Rain Destruction Upon Your Foes

While the Vampire Counts of Legions of Darkness present the expansion’s greatest threat to the Old World, the Dark Elf and Skaven regiments it allows you to build should not be overlooked. These races add new range and depth to the forces of Destruction, and their first opportunistic units will gleefully join any Destruction-aligned army in the hopes of claiming blood, slaves, and treasure.

How will you make use of these new races? Head to our community forums to share your strategies and army builds. The darkness is coming.

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Source: Rise from Darkness to Rule the World (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4861)

Battle Plans

An X-Wing (TM) Turn Zero Article by 2013 World Champion Paul Heaver

“The Empire doesn’t consider a small one-man fighter to be any threat, or they’d have a tighter defense. An analysis of the plans provided by Princess Leia has demonstrated a weakness in the battle station.”

–General Dodonna

In his “Turn Zero” articles, reigning World Champion Paul Heaver offers a look at one of the most critical components in mastering the game of X-Wing™… getting started.

Previously, Paul explored the importance of asteroid placement and of determining how best to place your starships at the start of your game. Today, Paul continues his exploration of the important decisions that you make in every match well before the first shots are fired and the first defense dice are rolled…

2013 X-Wing World Champion Paul Heaver

2013 X-Wing World Champion Paul Heaver on Forming a Battle Plan

Welcome back to “Turn Zero”! In this edition, we’ll look at how to form a plan for victory.

There are multiple steps to consider, starting with one that you can begin days or even weeks before an event begins:

Step One: Study the Metagame

The first step in your tournament preparation is to analyze the current metagame. For example, as I prepared for tournaments toward the close of FFG’s 2014 Store Championship season, Rebels had posted more wins than Imperials, primarily with a variety of four-ship builds. Usually, these utilized some combination of B-wings and X-wings.

Squads of two X-wings and two B-wings are common at tournaments.

Five-ship Rebel builds were also seeing some popularity, and builds that utilized Chewbacca plus two other fighters were still going strong.

Chewbacca remains a popular addition to squads with two X-wings.

On the Imperial side, the TIE swarm still reigned.

The TIE swarm is still as every bit as effective as it is intimidating.

Sometimes, a shuttle replaced two of the TIE fighters. After the swarm, I saw Imperial builds that used three Bounty Hunters, or two Bounty Hunters and another ship or two for support.

Squads of three bounty hunters use the Firespray-31 to great effect.

All told, as I planned to head to tournaments toward the end of the Store Championship season, I expected most people at my event to be running lists that could be placed into one of the major archetypes listed above. Since my region tends to be heavy on Rebels, I planned on facing squads with two B-wings and two X-wings, as well as builds with Chewbacca and two fighters. I also expected to face a few Imperial swarms. Of course, your local metagame might be different!

Once you form an educated guess about the lists that you’re likely to face, you need to decide what to play. You don’t want to play something that will fall apart to the most popular builds in the metagame! For example, if you have someone that always shows up with a squad that uses two YT-1300s and consistently does well, you might want to think twice about a three-ship list featuring TIE interceptor aces.

Generally, I also like to avoid complete mirror matches, so if I choose to play a common archetype, I try to bring something specifically for the mirror of my list: I may include a HWK-290 with an Ion Cannon Turret in my four-ship Rebel build, or I may drop my TIE swarm to ninety-six points to win initiative.

Step Two: Plan Three Turns Ahead

So, if you’ve figured out which builds are likely to be the most popular, what’s your plan for facing them?

At the very least, I recommend developing plans for asteroid and ship placement against two or three of the popular builds. I always start by planning how to confront TIE Swarms since their setups are well-documented. You know they want to set their asteroids as close to them as possible to minimize their impact, and you know they’ll place their ships first in one of the usual formations. Next, I’d plan to face the popular Rebel lists that utilize two B-wings and two X-wings. Usually, two detailed plans are good for most events. My previous articles dealt with asteroids and ship placement, so you can look there for my advice.

Once you’ve developed your plans for asteroids and ship placement, you’ll want to practice three turns of maneuvers. Usually, that’s about the length of time it takes for both fleets to approach the first round of combat. As you practice, you’ll assume the TIE swarm you are practicing against is going to move toward you as aggressively as possible while dodging asteroids. On the other hand, the Rebel squad of B-wings and X-wings will run roughly halfway down the edge of the board before turning into the center.

Understanding and anticipating your opponent’s maneuvers helps you better plan your initial approach. Here, we see how a squad of two X-wings and two B-wings and a swarm of TIE fighters might approach each other.

How can your squad take advantage of this knowledge? Ideally, you’d find a way to get a free round of shots at your opponent, but, realistically, that won’t happen. In most cases, the best that you can do is develop an opening that allows you to encounter your opponent’s starfighters after they’ve lost actions bumping into allied ships or performing barrel rolls and boosts to bypass asteroids, and if all goes well, you’ll have saved your actions for focuses and target locks. Additionally, a perfect opening is one in which you can encounter your opponent’s squad with all your ships in range to fire, but one or more of enemy ship lagging behind and out of range. Practice is essential to the development of such a successful opening.

Another bonus to planning out the game’s three opening rounds is that you can place your dials quickly in the beginning of your matches. Being able to project confidence in your plan is often enough to cause your opponents to question their plans, second-guess themselves, and make mistakes.

Step Three: Study Your Opponents

Once you get to the event, look around! Study your opponents. Most people will have their ships out, ready to set up, and visible. Did you guess the metagame correctly? You’ll have a chance to find out. If you see a ton of YT-1300s, you should start thinking about what you need to do to work around their powerful turrets. If you see a lot of bright red TIE interceptors, you should start planning what you’ll need to do to block their moves and prevent them from dodging out of your firing arcs.

Then, throughout the tournament, take time to watch other matches after you complete yours. You may possibly discover some interesting tactics you might not have thought of, and you may also see how your future opponents act. Do they avoid asteroids at all costs, or do they fly over them for a tactical advantage? Do they clear stress tokens immediately, or do they sacrifice actions in favor of position?

Finally, when you get to the table, you need to determine how your opponent plans to win and which are his most important pieces.

Does he have a vulnerable wingman that he plans to hold away from the front lines to give bonuses to his other ships? “Howlrunner,” Biggs Darklighter, and most of the HWK-290 pilots fall into this category. Usually, you want to destroy them first.

Is there an ace pilot that he’ll try to use to establish a flank? Set up your asteroids to make flanking difficult. Alternatively, you can plan on setting up a trap where you can pounce on the flanker without exposing yourself to the rest of his fleet. If you use just two asteroids to protect your planned attack routes, then you can use the last one to close off your opponent’s most obvious attack route.

When you place your ships, you’ll want to think about your three-turn plan, and how it will interact with your opponent’s probable location after three turns.

Switching to Plan “B”

In some cases, you’ll need to abandon your plan. After placing your asteroids, you may realize that if you follow your ship placement and three-turn plan, you will be woefully out of position. Do not just stubbornly follow the plan anyway! Spend a moment to think about what you can to do to salvage this situation. Perhaps, you can move super slowly to react to your opponent’s movement, or you might rocket down the edge of the map as fast as possible to throw off his plan.

Hopefully, by now, you will realize how important it is to master the game before the game. As in a chess match, you can sit down knowing nothing but the rules and still win, but you stand a much better chance if you know a few openings and known counterattacks. Games of X-Wing are often won or lost before the first shot is fired.

Thanks, Paul!

In X-Wing as in the original Star Wars trilogy, matches are won and lost with daring maneuvers and heroic shots. Still, just as in the original Star Wars trilogy, your victory also requires careful planning. It takes a great deal of coordination to get all your heroes into position to make the most of their contributions, and that planning starts well before you sit down to the table.

If you’re looking to improve your skills as an X-Wing player, then, it would serve you well to follow Paul’s advice, and while you’re thinking about how to develop and counter a number of different opening gambits, you can share your thoughts with the members of our community forums!

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Source: Battle Plans (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4862)

A Twisted Plan

A Guest Article on Twist of Fate in STAR WARS (TM): The Card Game

Star Wars™: The Card Game is made up of hundreds of unique cards, divided across two sides of the Force and six affiliations. Many of these cards have distinctly shaped the way the game is played, but has one card had a greater influence than any other? In today’s guest article, Zach Bunn asks that question and offers his thoughts on one card’s effects on every game of Star Wars: The Card Game.

Zach Bunn on Twist of Fate

What would you choose as “the most important card” in the Star Wars: The Card Game? Maybe you’d choose Sleuth Scout (Edge of Darkness, 340) for its meta-defining ability, or Orbital Bombardment (Core Set, 103) for the way it shifts the dark side’s endgame. The Defense of Yavin 4 (Core Set, 138) isn’t a bad pick either, since it gives speed and efficiency to an entire deck.

There are certainly more than a few fantastic cards in the game, and all of the above are worthy picks. But when we’re discussing the most important card in the game – a quite prestigious title – I can’t get away from a relatively simple one that impacted the game since the beginning: Twist of Fate (Core Set, 171).

Twist of Fate is a straightforward card. It cancels the current edge battle and forces players into a second edge battle. So what is it that makes Twist of Fate so important?

To understand the power of Twist of Fate, you have to also understand the power of edge battles. The edge battle is one of the most critical components to winning or losing a game of Star Wars. If you’ve played a few games, you should understand the importance of edge battles for determining the outcome of a game.

But Twist of Fate isn’t about winning edge battles. Let me say that again. Twist of Fate is not about winning edge battles.

Twist of Fate is about card advantage.

Two Steps Ahead

In my first article posted to the FFG website, The Flow of the Force, I discussed the importance of cycling through your deck and not holding onto cards that you know you won’t be using. Twist of Fate doesn’t get you extra cards, but when used ideally, it costs your opponent cards.

Imagine a typical scenario, where your opponent attacks and you block. You each have three cards in your hand. They play a card into the edge stack. You play a Twist of Fate. Even if they predict your Twist of Fate and pass, a new edge battle begins, forcing them to either put another card into the edge stack or automatically lose the edge battle.

If they don’t call your Twist of Fate and put a second card into the edge, you can pass, and they have now spent two cards and will need to spend their third just to have a chance of winning the edge battle.

This accomplishes so much:

Your opponent has less cards for more offensive edge battles on their turn
Your opponent has less cards for defensive edge battles on your turn
Your opponent now has less options in hand
You now have a better chance of winning the current edge battle, if desired

That was a defensive example, but even on offense having a Twist of Fate can be big. Effective offense in this game is predicated on your ability to divide attacks to force your opponent to give you one of a few determined outcomes.

Perhaps you want to obtain the Balance of the Force. Maybe you send an initial attack that won’t be as damaging as your second attack, but by attacking in this way, you force your opponent to choose which attack to block. Ideally, you should be forcing your opponent to give you some, if not all, of the outcomes you want on a turn. Managing the cards in your hand and your opponent’s hand is a skill that leads to huge turns.

If you have a Twist of Fate, you can often have your cake and eat it too. If your opponent only has a few cards in hand, you can often attack in such a way that should they attempt to stop your initial attack, you’ll empty their hand and have your way with any further engagements.

While Twist of Fate can win you an edge battle, it ought to lead to card advantage. But even with all of this, Twist of Fate’s largest impact is deeper than winning edge battles and gaining card advantage.

Unseen Effects

Once you pass the new player experience level and start anticipating Twist of Fate, the effect this card has on the game grows immeasurably. The most important cards aren’t really the ones that need to resolve or trigger. Rather, the most important cards are the ones that alter how the game is played regardless of whether or not they are ever seen. Sometimes, these cards might not even be in a player’s hand or deck!

For example, we can all agree that Darth Vader (Core Set, 35) is extremely powerful. However, his effect on how the game is played when he isn’t on the board is minimal at best. The effect that Twist of Fate always causes, purely from existing, is incredible.

Consider for a moment the example I used earlier, but this time you’re the attacker. You dropped a single card into the edge battle and your opponent followed suit. What do you do? If you play a second card and they played Twist of Fate, you’re in a really bad position. With no other knowledge, this might cause you to pass and hope the one card wins you the edge battle. But what if your opponent’s single card was a single card with a high Force icon count? Twist of Fate single-handedly forces players to approach every edge battle differently.

Investigating Objectives

Without looking, how many objectives for light and dark sides contain Twist of Fate? The answer might surprise you.

Currently, the dark side has six objectives and the light side has five objectives with Twist of Fate. What’s most interesting to me is the mental impact this card has on every top-level player I’ve played against and discussed the game with, even though it’s in relatively few objective sets.

Below are the objective sets that contain Twist of Fate:

Light Side

The Secret of Yavin 4 (Core Set, 144)
Fleeing the Empire (Core Set, 56)
Hit and Run (Core Set, 68)
Asteroid Sanctuary (Edge of Darkness, 331)
Forward Reconnaissance (Heroes and Legends, 501)

Dark Side

Counsel of the Sith (Core Set, 27)
Defense Protocol (Core Set, 40)
Reconnaissance Mission (Core Set, 127)
The Killing Cold (The Desolation of Hoth, 190)
Lucrative Contract (Assault on Echo Base, 271)
The Tatooine Crash (Edge of Darkness, 380)

For me, knowing this list is extremely important. By the middle of a game, when edge battles get absurdly important, I ought to know most of the objectives in my opponent’s deck. Knowing the odds of them having a Twist of Fate can open up winning opportunities that I would overlook if I assumed my opponent had the cards to shut me down.

More importantly, this illustrates a grander point. The mental effect we allow important cards to have on us can be negative. There’s a reason power cards have the mental impact that they do, but it’s important to keep an open and observant mind and remember that your opponent doesn’t always have the answer. Full awareness in these moments allows great players to make game-winning plays.

Until next time, may the Force be with you.

Zach Bunn

Thanks, Zach!

Zach Bunn is a Star Wars fanatic, a lead member of Team Covenant, and a member of the winning team from the Star Wars multiplayer tournament held at Worlds. In coming weeks, stay tuned for more Star Wars guest articles from Zach and other writers!

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Source: A Twisted Plan (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4863)

Serve the Emperor

Preview Character Creation in Dark Heresy Second Edition

In Dark Heresy Second Edition, you and your friends assume the roles of Acolytes in the service of an Inquisitor, battling heresy within, without, and beyond. An Acolyte can come from any planet and any background, but all Acolytes must face the universe’s secrets – the existence of the Warp, and the ravenous hunger of the Warp’s Daemons. In creating an Acolyte, you craft a character to strive against these terrible threats.

These steadfast men and women that you create are all that stand between the Imperium and the extinction of all Mankind. In this preview of Dark Heresy Second Edition, developer Tim Huckelbery introduces how you create characters in Dark Heresy.

A Designer Diary of Character Creation in Dark Heresy

Character creation in Dark Heresy is comprised of three main selections: the Acolyte’s home world, background, and role. A character can be made from any combination of these choices, so there’s a huge variety of possible Acolytes to be created! Each selection a player makes develops his character, from generating starting characteristics and equipment to granting special rules unique to his selection. The Dark Heresy core rulebook offers dozens of examples of settings, organisations, and people from the Askellon Sector, giving players new ways to create their own characters.

Stage 1: Choose Home World

A character’s home world is the planet or location where he was born and likely spent much of his life. It determines his physical appearance, mannerisms, and perspective on the Imperium as a whole.

Dark Heresy contains six home world types in the core rulebook. Four of these are archetypal Imperial planets – feral, forge, hive, and shrine worlds – giving players a range of primitive savagery, technological immersion, cut-throat survival, and devout service. The other two home world types represent origins that could come from planets across the Imperium: the power-drenched environs of the highborn, and the artificial, empty reaches of the voidborn.

Stage 2: Choose Background

A character’s background represents what he has done with his life up to this point, including the previous Imperial organisation that he served. It determines what sort of training the character received throughout his life, what kind of resources he can access, and who he knows.

Seven potential backgrounds are included in the core rulebook: the Imperial agencies of the Adeptus Administratum, Adeptus Arbites, Adeptus Astra Telepathica, Adeptus Mechanicus, Adeptus Ministorum, and the Astra Militarum, along with Outcasts, those who have escaped the confines of any group or organisation. Forming a character with a background in an Imperial agency allows players to create Acolytes from powerful organisations, steeped in connections, but simultaneously entrenched in their own structures. An Outcast has greater relative freedom, but fewer allies, save for others who also exist outside the Imperium’s many strictures.

Stage 3: Choose Role

Roles illuminate an Acolyte’s essence. While a home world establishes where an Acolyte came from, and a background indicates his prior experiences, his role reveals who he really is underneath his clothing, armour, and cybernetics. It reflects how he views the world around him and his place in it, and broadly defines how he faces dangers, interacts with others, and resolves problems. A role also dictates what areas of expertise he excels at, and how he grows and learns with experience.

Dark Heresy includes eight roles in the core rulebook: Assassin, Chirurgeon, Desperado, Hierophant, Mystic, Sage, Seeker, and Warrior. While it is common parlance in the Imperium to mention that someone comes from a feral world, or works for the Adeptus Mechanicus, roles do not actually exist as titles or Imperial designations. Roles operate within the context of the game, indicating a mindset or attitude that a character adopts over his lifetime. Desperado or Seeker, for example, don’t exist as actual occupations or titles in the 41st millennium. Instead, players will find a Trade Sable smuggler or a Hive Desoleum Bondhound Sanctionary.

Continuing Growth

Once these major choices have been made, players develop their new Acolytes further by advancing initial characteristics, skills, and talents, as well as purchasing weapons and other gear. Players also bring their characters to life by giving them names, selecting special Divinations to show the Emperor’s Will in their lives, and choosing other additions to make their character unique.

Character creation doesn’t have to end once you have a character, though, as players can use elite advances to modify their characters. Elite advances represent large, defining aspects of a character that set him apart from his peers. Each is unique and could be the result of a new position, an aspect of a character that has been part of him his entire life, or an ability that emerged more recently due to external stimuli.

Dark Heresy includes three elite advances in the core rulebook: Inquisitor, Psyker, and Untouchable. Using these, an Acolyte can rise to become an Inquisitor himself, allowing a group to have one or more Inquisitors if the players desire. A character can also become blessed (or cursed) to become a psyker and wield the terrible powers of the Warp, or discover himself an untouchable, one of the soulless pariahs who are anathema to psyker and Daemon alike. An elite advance doesn’t alter a character’s role, however. A Warrior still views violence as the best solution to problems, even if he gains the Psyker elite advance. A role defines how a character views the galaxy and his position inside it. Elite advances may take a character along different paths, but they don’t change how he walks upon them.

Success Is Measured in Blood

Thanks, Tim!

The endless threats of the Askellon sector threaten to completely overwhelm the Imperium. Only you and your Acolytes can keep humanity safe for another day. In our next preview, developer Andy Fischer creates his own Acolyte. In the meantime, preorder Dark Heresy Second Edition at your local retailer today!

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Source: Serve the Emperor (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4865)

Serve the Emperor

Preview Character Creation in Dark Heresy Second Edition

A Designer Diary of Character Creation in Dark Heresy

Stage 1: Choose Home World

Stage 2: Choose Background

Seven potential backgrounds are included in the core rulebook: the Imperial agencies of the Adeptus Administratum, Adeptus Arbites, Adeptus Astra Telepathica, Adeptus Mechanicus, Adeptus Ministorum, and the Imperial Guard, along with Outcasts, those who have escaped the confines of any group or organisation. Forming a character with a background in an Imperial agency allows players to create Acolytes from powerful organisations, steeped in connections, but simultaneously entrenched in their own structures. An Outcast has greater relative freedom, but fewer allies, save for others who also exist outside the Imperium’s many strictures.

Stage 3: Choose Role

Continuing Growth

Success Is Measured in Blood

Thanks, Tim!

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Source: Serve the Emperor (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4865)

The Forms of Battle

An Example of Battle in Warhammer 40,000: Conquest

Amidst the grim darkness of the future and crushing chill of outer space, mankind still stands against the waves of xenos, heretics, and traitors that attempt to bear them to the ground. Every day, the battle is fought anew on a thousand planets spread across the far flung reaches of the galaxy. In Warhammer 40,000: Conquest, you take your rightful place in that story, commanding the armies of your faction as you strive for ultimate control of the Traxis sector.

In past previews, we’ve examined separate aspects of the game round. In our first preview, we explored deployment and the strategy behind placing your armies at different planets. Our next preview expanded the command struggle, in which you and your opponent gain resources and draw cards based on your armies’ influence on the planets of the Traxis sector. Most recently, we took a closer look at combat, exploring the broad picture of battles, including how they happen, how units fight, and some of the keywords that can come into play.

In today’s preview, we’ll see the flow of combat firsthand by looking at an example of a battle for just one planet in the Traxis sector.

Opening Salvos

The beginning of the combat phase finds the armies of Chaos and the Astra Militarum clashing at this round’s first planet: Osus IV. Jack has three units present: his warlord, Zarathur, High Sorcerer (Core Set, 4); an Umbral Preacher (Core Set, 86); and an Alpha Legion Infiltrator (Core Set, 81) with the Mark of Chaos (Core Set, 80) attachment. On the other side of the battlefield, Kate’s forces consist of her warlord, Colonel Straken (Core Set, 2) fighting alongside a Ratling Deadeye (Core Set, 35) and a Leman Russ Battle Tank (Core Set, 38). In addition, Kate has a Catachan Outpost (Core Set, 53) support in her headquarters.

Click to see the image from the Chaos player's point of view.

Battle begins by determining which player has initiative. If only one warlord were present, that player would automatically win initiative, but since both warlords are present, Jack will strike first, since he holds the initiative token this round. After initiative is determined, the ranged skirmish occurs, allowing any units with the Ranged keyword to fire upon the opposing army from afar. Since Jack has no units with Ranged, he must forgo the opportunity to strike in favor of Kate.

Kate exhausts the Ratling Deadeye to strike at the Alpha Legion Infiltrator in order to negate this unit’s high attack power before it has a chance to strike. The Ratling Deadeye deals one damage to the Alpha Legion Infiltrator. If a unit has damage on it equal to or more than its hit points, it is destroyed, and one damage is enough to destroy the Alpha Legion Infiltrator.

The vanquished Alpha Legion Infiltrator leaves play, but this triggers the Mark of Chaos attachment, dealing one damage to each enemy unit at the planet. This damage is increased by the Chaos warlord’s Interrupt ability, which reads, “When damage is dealt to an enemy unit at this planet, increase that damage by 1.” Each of Kate’s units at the planet take two damage, destroying the Ratling Deadeye. Since there are no more ready units with the Ranged keyword, the ranged skirmish is complete.

Click to see the image from the Chaos player's point of view.

Chainswords and Lasguns

As normal combat begins, Jack has the chance to strike first with either of his ready units, because he has initiative. He chooses to strike with the Umbral Preacher against Colonel Straken, dealing one damage, plus an additional damage from Zarathur’s Interrupt, to Straken. This damage, combined with the two damage Straken took from the Mark of Chaos, means that the Astra Militarum warlord can only take two more damage before he is bloodied.

It is now Kate’s combat turn and she decides to remove the threat of the Umbral Preacher, whose ability prevents units from retreating. Before she strikes, Kate also exhausts the Catachan Outpost support card, granting her next attacker a higher attack value. Colonel Straken exhausts to strike, dealing four damage with the aid of Catachan Outpost. Four total damage is more than the Umbral Preacher’s hit points, and that unit is destroyed.

On Jack’s next combat turn, he has only one unit remaining: Zarathur, High Sorcerer. He chooses to strike at Colonel Straken, hoping to deal the last damage necessary to bloody Straken. However, Kate has a card in her hand that can be discarded to shield damage! Promotion (Core Set, 174) has one shield icon, blocking part of the damage from Zarathur’s attack. Straken is dealt one damage, leaving him able to take one more hit point of damage.

Finally, Kate strikes with her remaining ready unit, the Leman Russ Battle Tank, dealing four damage to Zarathur. At this point, all units are exhausted and the combat round is over. All units ready, and both players have the opportunity to retreat any number of units back to their headquarters. Jack examines the board, and determines that, while he would most likely be able to bloody Straken, his own warlord would be bloodied by the Leman Russ Battle Tank, and Kate would still win the battle at the planet. Not desiring this outcome, Jack chooses to retreat Zarathur back to his headquarters, leaving Osus IV to the Astra Militarum!

The Fruits of Victory

As the victor of a battle, Kate chooses to trigger the Battle ability of Osus IV, allowing her to take a resource from her opponent. After taking the resource, Osus IV is placed in Kate’s victory display because it was the first planet, and her units are returned to her headquarters.

Since this was the only battle in this combat phase, the headquarters phase now begins. The first planet token is moved forward to the next planet in line, indicating that this planet will be contested and added to one player’s victory display in the next round. Next, if there are any facedown planets at the end of the row, the next one in line is revealed, offering a new location for players to deploy units. Both players draw two cards, receive four resources, ready all units, and the initiative token is passed to Kate, beginning a new round!

Thus far, our previews have focused on the gameplay of Warhammer 40,000: Conquest, but in our next preview, we’ll begin an exploration of each of the factions you’ll find in this game, beginning with the most loyal servants of the Emperor, the Space Marines. Check back for more previews, and preorder Warhammer 40,000: Conquest at your local retailer today!

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Source: The Forms of Battle (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4866)

Your Tale Begins

Winter Tales Is Now Available at Your Local Retailer

The White Rabbit paused his daily inspection on a freezing balcony, high above the hissing construction of the Nightmare Factory. Beneath him, dozens worked, brainwashed into mindless service, creating weapons and monstrosities for the winter regime. The White Rabbit sipped his wine, warmed against the chill in the air. He started this war with the products of his factory, and he would end it in the same way.

In the frosty city of Wintertown, two factions wage a constant struggle. On one side, Snow White, Candlewick, Mad Hatter and the other soldiers of winter strive to maintain their rule and ensure that winter never leaves. Opposing the winter regime are the spring rebels, including Alice, Dorothy, Pinochio, and others, attempting to overthrow the oppressive soldiers holding Wintertown in its grasp.

Take your place in these struggles and weave your own stories in Winter Tales, now available at your local retailer!

The Story So Far

In Winter Tales, you and your friends control characters fighting for either the spring rebels or the winter soldiers. Every action your characters take expands the story of the struggle. During the struggle, you play story cards, each of which features art that can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Your characters move, quest, and fight by interpreting the art on story cards and weaving it into your narrative.

In our first preview, we examined how you and the other players use story cards to move through the streets of Wintertown and complete quests. Quests offer you opportunities to complete key goals, such as establishing a safe house for the resistance, or spreading propaganda to uphold the regime. Quests can be contested by characters from the opposing faction, and when a set number of quests are completed, the game’s epilogue begins.

Next, we took a closer look at ways you can keep your opponents from ever reaching their quests. Winter soldiers have the opportunity to interrupt the rebels’ movement with battle, potentially incapacitating them if they are unable to escape. The rebels are unable to fight openly, but they can still lay traps for unwitting soldiers. A well-laid trap can incapacitate a soldier, or force your opponent to waste his story cards breaking free.

Once a certain amount of quests have been completed, the story reaches its climax and the epilogue triggers, as we explored in our third preview. At this point, the story you told throughout the game comes to a head, as each player tells of his characters’ final efforts to tip the outcome of the game in his faction’s favor. The faction which wins the epilogue wins the game, and you bring your story of spring rebels and winter soldiers to a dramatic conclusion.

If you’re looking for ways to bring greater strategic depth to your stories of Wintertown, you can add this with advanced rules, as we showed in our most recent preview. Whether you tap into powers gained by successfully completing quests, give characters specific objectives, or take advantage of each character’s unique skills, these advanced rules enhance both strategic gameplay and the richness of your narrative. The full rules for Winter Tales are now available for download from the game’s support page.

Chapter One

Your chance to create enduring stories in the fantasy world of Wintertown has arrived. The reign of winter will endure forever unless a committed band of rebels can topple its leadership.

Decide the fate of Wintertown when you pick up your copy of Winter Tales from your local retailer today!

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Source: Your Tale Begins (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4867)

Empire vs. Rebellion

Announcing an Upcoming Card Game of the Galactic Civil War

“Any attack made by the Rebels against this station would be a useless gesture, no matter what technical data they have obtained. This station is now the ultimate power in the universe!”
–Admiral Motti, Star Wars: A New Hope

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce Star Wars™: Empire vs. Rebellion, an upcoming card game for two players that pits the villainous plots of the Galactic Empire against the heroes of the Rebel Alliance.

A massive civil war shakes the galaxy. On one side of this struggle, the men and women of the Rebel Alliance plan for the day when the Empire will be overthrown. The Rebels are unafraid to use their military might, but clever diplomacy and reconnaissance may accomplish what displays of strength cannot. Opposing the Rebellion is the unlimited power of the Galactic Empire, under the command of Emperor Palpatine. Whether conducting reconnaissance and searching for Rebel spies or crushing insurgents beneath the heel of the Imperial Navy, all the galaxy knows to fear Darth Vader and the Empire.

Star Wars: Empire vs. Rebellion puts in you in command of the Empire’s unlimited reserves or the heroes of the Rebellion and challenges you to tip the outcome of key events in your favor. Every round, you must extend your might and commit your resources towards taking control of the Galactic Civil War, whether you use military power or diplomatic aplomb to achieve your goals. If you can outwit your opponent’s schemes and claim victory in crucial events, you can shape the future of the entire galaxy!

Take Command

To overthrow the Empire or crush the Rebel Alliance permanently, you will need to demonstrate your superiority by ending several key events in your favor over the course of the game. You win the struggle for an event by employing all the resources at your disposal, whether political connections, military forces, timely reconnaissance, or the Force itself.

At the beginning of each round, Imperial forces clash with the Rebels over a newly revealed event card, such as Mos Eisley Spaceport. On your turn, you will continue the struggle for the revealed event card, utilizing all the contacts, tricks, and martial force at your disposal. When a struggle for an event card first begins, you must establish your forces in the event by drawing the top card of your resource deck and place it in your play area.

Cards in your play area contribute their resource value, shown in the upper left-hand corner, to the current struggle. For example, the Rebel Alliance military resource card shown to the right has a resource value of five. Every event card has an objective value in the lower left-hand corner; Mos Eisley Spaceport, for example, has an objective value of eleven. Your goal is to use your resources and connections to bring your total resource value as close to this event’s objective value as possible without going over. If your resource value surpasses the event’s objective value, you have overcommitted your forces and your opponent easily claims the event.

Ultimate Power

Each turn, you must decide your faction’s best strategy for gaining the upper hand in the current event. You may choose to call for the support of your faction and put another card from your deck in play, but your ability to tip the event in your favor is limited. The number of your cards in play cannot exceed the event’s capacity, shown to the right of its objective value. Likewise, if the total resource value of your cards exceeds the event’s objective value, your efforts are discovered, and the opposing faction wins the event.

Alternatively, you may put your resources into action by using the special power of a resource card currently in play. To trigger a resource card’s power, you must exhaust the card by rotating it 90 degrees clockwise. While a resource card is exhausted, it contributes its exhausted resource value, which is located in the lower-left hand corner of a ready card. Activating your resources’ powers gives you several ways to control the outcome of the event.

A card’s special ability varies based on its type: military, diplomacy, recon, or the Force. Engaging in a military show of force allows you to discard one of your opponent’s resource cards, potentially depriving him of his most useful card. Diplomacy helps you manage your own resource cards by inviting you to discard the exhausted card or one of your other resource cards. Engaging in timely reconnaissance of Empire or Rebellion activities filters your resources or your opponent’s, allowing you to look at the top two cards of a resource deck – discarding one and replacing the other on top of the deck. Finally, drawing upon the Force helps you keep your opponent’s options at a minimum by exhausting one of your opponent’s ready resource cards.

An exhausted card cannot use its power again, but if you’ve already used a card’s power, you may wish to use that power again. Fortunately, the Rebellion has contacts and connections that span the countless worlds of the galaxy, and there are always those willing to sell information to the Empire. Influence tokens represent these connections, and they can be called upon to help you in the struggle for an event. By spending an influence token, you may ready one of your exhausted resource cards, letting you use that card’s power again.

When both the Empire and the Rebellion have completed their operations around a current event, their total resource values are compared. The player who came closest to the event’s objective value without surpassing it claims the event, along with its victory points and extra influence. The player who claims seven victory points from events first is victorious!

Strategies for the Future

Your struggles in the Galactic Civil War gain added depth from the presence of iconic characters and overarching strategies. Key characters like Leia Organa or Boba Fett provide a higher resource value than other resource cards while ready, but if they are exhausted, the resource value they provide plummets to one. Sometimes, however, a lowered resource value is worth the cost of triggering a character’s powerful effect. A single hero can make the difference between a lost cause and a triumphant victory.

Strategy cards offer another way to tip a struggle into your favor. Before a struggle begins, both players secretly choose strategies for their faction in this event. These cards determine your faction’s approach to their operations surrounding the event, and they can drastically change how you choose to play your cards during the struggle. At the end of the struggle, both players reveal their strategy cards, and they take effect, potentially allowing the Empire or the Rebellion to snatch an unlikely victory!

Claim the Galaxy

Your struggle for supremacy may take you to the heart of the Empire, or to the very reaches of the Outer Rim. Wherever the Empire finds the Rebellion, however, a strategic battle must occur. Take command of one faction’s resources in Star Wars: Empire vs. Rebellion, an upcoming two-player card game! Head to the Empire vs. Rebellion description page for more details, and look for this game of galactic struggles at your local retailer in the third quarter of 2014.

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Source: Empire vs. Rebellion (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4868)

Fight for a Cause Greater Than Yourself

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

“General… count me in.”

–Leia Organa

With the Star Wars®: Age of Rebellion™ Roleplaying Game, you and your friends gain the opportunity to fight for a cause greater than any one person. As members of the Rebel Alliance, you’ll undertake desperate and daring missions to help undermine the evil Galactic Empire and restore freedom to the galaxy!

In Age of Rebellion, your success is vital to the Rebellion. It’s vital to the Rebellion’s next intelligence operation or military success, and it’s vital to the people you know and for whom you care. Your missions are matters of life or death. Your actions touch upon the fates of hundreds of planets and thousands of Rebels. This is war, and you must prevail, no matter the odds.

Heroes of the Rebellion

One of the ways that Age of Rebellion grounds you in the civil war raging between the Galactic Empire and the Rebel Alliance is through its use of Duty.

In an earlier preview, lead developer Andrew Fischer explored the concept of Duty as it relates to character creation and advancement, as well as the Game Master’s ability to shape the campaign. Still, it’s worth noting that Duty is a positive mechanic in Age of Rebellion. Players want their characters to accrue Duty points; the more they receive, the more they’re recognized, and the more central they become to the Rebel Alliance and its efforts.

In turn, this means that Age of Rebellion is a relatively selfless gaming experience, and your character is a true hero. He or she isn’t hunting credits or swindling other con artists at a sabacc table; your character’s using his or her talents to aid the Rebellion.

Fly your starfighter into battle alongside other Rebels.

Rally talented scientists to the Rebellion's cause.

Operate a listening post deep undercover in Imperial territories.

Launch guerrilla strikes against Imperial supply ships.

The variety of missions you can undertake are limited only by your imagination, but whatever you do, you’re doing it for the good of the galaxy. You're risking your life to free others from the tyranny of an evil, authoritarian regime.

Even the careers and specializations you’ll find in the Age of Rebellion Core Rulebook suggest that your conflicts may resonate with other actions on a much grander scope. Careers like the Commander and the Diplomat are well-suited to players who want to keep an eye on the bigger picture. One of the Engineer specializations, the Scientist, is all about devising new ways to help the Rebel Alliance stay in the fight against the much richer Galactic Empire and its newest technological advances. Even the Soldier career suggests a character’s role within a larger conflict; its specializations – the Commando, Medic, and Sharpshooter – all lead characters into clearly defined roles that are meant to interact well with their teammates and other members of the Rebel Alliance.

In Age of Rebellion, you and your friends are the protagonists of your adventures, but those stories are defined by your roles within the Rebel Alliance. You’re heroes, but you’re not the only ones.

Fighting for Galactic Freedom

It’s important that the characters in Age of Rebellion are part of a force greater than themselves because they’re fighting against an overwhelming military force that no single individual could possibly hope to withstand.

The evil Galactic Empire has subjugated countless worlds. Its Navy uses Star Destroyers and swarms of TIE fighters to spread fear through the galaxy. It marches across battlefields with AT-AT walkers. Its military presence in the galaxy is completely unmatched.

Despite this fact, the Rebel Alliance continues to fight. Massively outnumbered and outgunned, the Rebellion must rely on tactics other than pitched battles to strike at Imperial forces. Defeat and retreat against the superior foe is common, and victories are hard-won. Living to fight another day is essential to the success of the Rebellion. Retreat is often not only a wise long-term move; it is built into Rebel battle planning.

The Age of Rebellion Core Rulebook allows you to participate in the countless skirmishes, battles, and incidents that occur between the Rebellion and Empire, and you’ll find a vast array of the Empire’s mightiest weapons brought to life amid the book’s sections on adversaries, vehicles, and starships. You’ll also find stat blocks for Rebel starfighters like the X-wing, A-wing, and B-wing, but none of these ships will hold up long against a full squad of TIE fighters or TIE interceptors. Ultimately, you’ll need to learn how to coordinate your actions with the rest of the Rebellion in order to make your shots count.

Hope, Faith, and Courage

Members of the Rebel Alliance don’t live easy lives. Instead, they devote themselves to the cause of galactic freedom. Against the unparalleled military prowess of the Galactic Empire, they rely upon cunning tactics and each other.

We’ll look more closely at Rebel tactics and the Rebellion’s unique view of the galaxy in our next preview. After that, we’ll explore the new starships and vehicles appearing in the Core Rulebook, along with the rules for Barrage starship actions that allow players to run meaningful capital ship encounters within the timeframe of a single gaming session. Then, in our final preview, we’ll look at the Core Rulebook’s adventure, Perlemian Haul, and how it serves as an example of the type of adventures you can expect during your service to the Rebel Alliance.

You’ll soon have your chance to make your mark in the Galactic Civil War. The Age of Rebellion Core Rulebook is scheduled to arrive at retailers everywhere early next month. Head to your local retailer to pre-order your copy today!

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Source: Fight for a Cause Greater Than Yourself (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4870)

Bring Out the Big Guns!

Announcing the Fifth Wave of X-Wing (TM) Starship Expansions

“I owe the Outrider the best. She's brought me home when any other ship would have scattered me across space.”
–Dash Rendar

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce the upcoming release of two new starships for X-Wing™!

In this, the game’s fifth wave, two large starships arrive ready for the heat of battle: the Rebellion’s YT-2400 and the Imperial’s VT-49 Decimator.

In addition to their starships, each of which is sculpted faithfully at the game’s standard 1/270 scale, the YT-2400 Freighter Expansion Pack and VT-49 Decimator Expansion Pack introduce a host of new upgrades and terrain pieces that allow you to explore a wide range of new tactics in your space battles.

You’ll also find a large cast of characters drawn from the expanded Star Wars universe, the first Imperial turret weapon, and upgrade cards designed by the game’s first two World Champions.

YT-2400 Freighter Expansion Pack

A fast and resilient light freighter, the YT-2400 features no fewer than thirteen weapon emplacement points, making it an attractive vessel for smugglers, mercenaries, and other individuals looking for a heavily armed “transport.” Although a stock YT-2400 light freighter has plenty of space for cargo, much of that space is often annexed to support modified weapon systems and oversized engines.

The YT-2400 Freighter Expansion Pack brings this formidable light freighter to your table as a Rebel starship with two attack, two agility, five hull, and five shields.

The highlight of the YT-2400 Freighter Expansion Pack is its detailed miniature starship, which is enhanced by one new mission, three debris cloud tokens, a maneuver dial, all requisite tokens, and four ship cards, including one for the famed smuggler Dash Rendar.

Of course, a ship as readily customizable as the YT-2400 needs to come with a host of upgrade options, and the YT-2400 Freighter Expansion Pack comes with thirteen upgrade cards, including a Lando Calrissian crew upgrade, the Outrider Title, and upgrade cards designed by each of the game’s first two World Champions.

VT-49 Decimator Expansion Pack

To be granted command of a VT-49 Decimator is seen as a significant promotion for a middling officer of the Imperial Navy. A heavily armed transport, the VT-49 Decimator is one of the Empire’s most feared warships, often used to provide long-range reconnaissance or to deploy raiding parties past enemy forces.

The VT-49 Decimator Expansion Pack brings this intimidating Imperial gunboat to X-Wing as the game’s largest ship yet designed for Standard Play. Even at the game’s signature 1/270 scale, the expansion pack’s detailed miniature towers over its base and smaller starfighters.

In addition to its imposing, pre-painted miniature, the VT-49 Decimator Expansion Pack introduces four ship cards, three debris cloud tokens, a new mission, a maneuver dial, and all the tokens you need to fly your Decimator into the thick of combat. Finally, you’ll find thirteen upgrade cards, which introduce a variety of crew members like Mara Jade and Fleet Officer designed to help you fill out the Decimator’s three crew member slots.

Blast into Action

With its two high-powered new starships, multitude of upgrades, debris cloud tokens, and new missions, the fifth wave of X-Wing expansions is destined to make a massive impact when it blasts into action across gaming tables everywhere.

Wave V is scheduled to arrive late in the third quarter of 2014. Until then, keep your eyes open for more X-Wing news, including previews of these new hard-hitting expansion packs, which will look more closely at their various unique pilots, their new debris cloud tokens, and their missions!

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Source: Bring Out the Big Guns! (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4869)

Reinforce and Retaliate

A Preview of the Hammer and Hold and Legions of Darkness Expansions

“Every vale, ford, and copse has seen the blood of warriors spilt, and for each battle paid homage by the minstrel’s lute there are a multitude that lie shrouded in the mists of time.”
–Warhammer, “The Years of Conflict”

The Hammer and Hold and Legions of Darkness expansions will soon add six new races to the brutal battles of Warhammer: Diskwars. They will also allow the four Core Set races to bolster their armies with a slate of new reinforcements and command cards.

Today, we preview the units and command cards these two expansions will offer the Empire, Orcs, Chaos, and High Elves.

The Empire

With Hammer and Hold, the Empire, the game’s most tactical race, can recruit two new units to field an even more varied army.

Commanders looking to establish a solid defensive perimeter would do well to look toward the Talabecland Halberdiers. For a mere five recruitment points, they boast a highly respectable counter strength of four. If that’s not enough to discourage your opponents from breaking through a line of Talabecland Halberdiers, there’s also the fact that their counter is swift, meaning they’re likely to finish off would-be assailants before they even suffer damage.

Meanwhile, the Empire’s Priest trait becomes significantly more meaningful with the addition of the Warrior Priests and the Shield of Faith command card. Like Luthor Huss, the Empire’s Warrior Priests gain resistant (,) when they’re empowered, and they can benefit from even greater protective blessings with the Shield of Faith command card, which can potentially negate a fatal blow and, instead, remove all damage from the unit. With those kind of protections to inspire them, it’s no wonder these Warrior Priests arrive to battle ready to trample their foes underfoot, and Impact 2 helps them do just that.

Orcs

The Legions of Darkness expansion allows Orc players to reinforce their armies with hordes of malevolent and cunning Goblins. Though they’re smaller than the Orcs, they’re nonetheless bound to make a huge impact upon the game, some of them quite literally.

At just four recruitment points for a unit with Impact 5, the Goblin Doom Diver offers your Orc army an obvious and lethal punch. Of course, it’s every bit as lethal to your Goblin Doom Diver as it is to your opponent; the Goblin Doom Diver suffers a wound whenever it deals impact damage.

Additionally, to fling your Goblin Doom Divers into battle, you’ll need to field a Doom Diver Catapult. Though this War Machine allows you to deliver some of the game’s hardest-hitting (live) ammunition, it’s also slow and frail, meaning that you’ll want to consider bringing two of them to battle, or carefully protecting the one you’ve got, or bringing two to battle and protecting them both. Fortunately, since a Doom Diver Catapult only costs you five recruitment points, it should be easy enough for you to work it into any flexible Orc army.

Orc players gain even further army-building flexibility from the addition of another Goblin unit, the Night Goblins. Like the Goblin Doom Diver, this Infantry unit costs just four recruitment points, meaning that you can soon expect to see it fielded by those Orc players who want to spend early activations to lure your units into position before bombarding them with impact damage. Moreover, whenever the Night Goblin enters an engagement within short range of another Orc disk (yours or your opponent’s), it can hit just as hard as some larger and more expensive units.

Finally, the command card Brain Bursta supplies your Orc army with more damage potential and instability. Capable of dealing damage to enemy leaders from long range, Brain Bursta can deal as much as five damage… or fizzle completely. It’s the sort of spell that’s well-suited to an aggressive army, like the Orcs, that’s willing to take some risks in pursuit of power and destruction.

Chaos

Only one of the two new Daemonic Chaos units from Legions of Darkness incorporates the expansion’s new fear keyword, but both are likely to cause fear in your opponents.

Because Screamers only have an attack strength of three and three movement, it’s possible your opponent may overlook their potential effectiveness… once. However, if your opponent ever ignores the threat that your Screamers pose, he’ll likely learn his lesson when they pin a foe and use their fear ability to reduce its counter strength to “1.” Used wisely, your Screamers can paralyze an enemy hero or elite unit with fear and set it up for the killing blow delivered by one of your other units.

You might even deliver that killing blow with your Daemonettes. At just six recruitment points, the Daemonettes pair four attack strength with the swift keyword. That’s the sort of perfect combination that pleases even the Chaos God, Slaanesh. However, your Daemonettes’ perfect attack comes at a cost, and in this case, the cost is fragility. With just three toughness, Daemonettes are vulnerable to quick demises, so you’ll want to lure your opponents into position before sending your Daemonettes into the fray.

Meanwhile, in the event that your opponent would counter your ambitions by fielding a unit immune to fear or one with a swift counter, the Chaos command card Acquiescence can squelch that unit’s text for a round. When you want your opponent’s unit to die, this command card offers an excellent means to strip away irritating abilities or defenses.

High Elves

In a game as brutal and bloody as Warhammer: Diskwars, it’s possible that even a race as skilled at defense as the High Elves may, at times, need to adopt a more offensive stance. To that end, Hammer and Hold introduces two new High Elf units capable of making early, decisive strikes against their enemies.

The Lothern Sea Guard enters the game as the least expensive High Elf unit at just five recruitment points. For those points, they offer modest attack and counter strengths, but they enhance those with five movement, a ranged missile attack, and the mobile keyword. This combination of offensive and defensive abilities make the Lothern Sea Guard an excellent fit for a range of strategies and offers your army good tactical versatility as the tides of battle shift one way or the other.

Less versatile, but certainly no less powerful, are the Silver Helms, which can race into battle from distance and cut down their foes with Impact 3, and five swift attack strength. Of course, such martial prowess is bound to make them an early target, but you can use that to your advantage. You’ll get two copies of each non-unique medium disk in Hammer and Hold, meaning that when one Silver Helms unit draws a crowd, the other can easily ride over to support it. Moreover, because your Silver Helms have five toughness, it ride away from even some of the deadliest engagements.

Finally, the High Elves gain the ability to call upon some timely healing with their new command card, Isha’s Mercy.

There Will Be War. There Will Be Blood.

Six new races will soon arrive to Warhammer: Diskwars, and its battlefields will drown in blood. The races from the Core Set may need to adjust their strategies to survive their skirmishes with these new foes, and if their armies look to adapt, they’ll find plenty of potential recruits in Hammer and Hold and Legions of Darkness.

The Old World will quake. Muster your armies. The Hammer and Hold and Legions of Darkness expansions arrive at retailers everywhere later this week!

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Source: Reinforce and Retaliate (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4871)

Ready for Anything

A Guest Article on Tournament Preparation for STAR WARS (TM): The Card Game

Ready are you? What know you of ready? For eight hundred years have I trained Jedi… A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind.

–Yoda, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

Star Wars™: The Card Game takes you and your friends to interplanetary battles in a galaxy far, far away, but a vital part of Star Wars: The Card Game is participating in tournaments. Regional tournaments have already begun, but some new players may not know what to expect from a Star Wars: The Card Game competition.

If you’re unsure of what awaits you, today’s guest article by Matt Brown offers a closer look at how to prepare for any Star Wars: The Card Game tournament, from Regionals to Worlds.

Matt Brown on Tournament Preparation

A new Regional season has already begun, promising larger and more competitive tournaments than last year leading up to the National Championships. For many players, this may be their first exposure to any tournament larger than local league events. What should you expect as the tournament season progresses through Regional tournaments into Nationals and the World Championships? Today, I want to present a quick overview of the tournament process and offer some tips for tournament play.

Before the Event

Make sure you contact the local store and know exactly when the tournament is going to start. You may also want to check in the day before the event to make sure that the time hasn’t changed. Nothing is worse than driving several hours for a tournament and missing it because you didn’t realize that the schedule changed.

Decide on your deck lists as early as possible. Star Wars: The Card Game is a very tactical game, and knowing your deck well is extremely important. It can be difficult to make good decisions throughout the tournament if you change your deck the night before, leaving you without time to test it. Generally, last minute changes are acceptable if your testing identifies a critical weakness in your deck, and even then you want to have time to test your revised deck several times.

Write out your deck list. When everyone comes to the event with their deck list filled out, the tournament starts much smoother. You don’t want to be the person flipping through objective decks and writing them down while everyone else waits to start. A pdf copy of the deck list sheet can be found on the support page of the Star Wars: The Card Game minisite.

Read the most recent FAQ (pdf, 6.1 MB), also available in the support section. Know the current errata and rulings, especially as a few previous rulings have recently been reversed. Make sure you pay special attention to rulings or clarifications that could affect cards in your own deck, but be familiar with all of the rules so you know how your opponents’ cards work without needing to ask.

Read the Tournament Rules (pdf, 8 MB), once again available in the support section. I’ll provide a brief outline of the tournament format below, but reading through the full version of the rules at least once is a good idea.

Sleep!

Click on the thumbnails above to download the new FAQ (left) and Tournament Rules (right)

What to Bring

Your decks in opaque or art sleeves

All materials needed to play: tokens, Death Star dial, Force marker, etc.

A pen to record your game outcomes

Water bottle and snacks are a good idea unless forbidden by the store. Tournaments can be long and keeping yourself hydrated and fed helps you play your best.

Optional: a notebook or device to record match details between games. This isn’t required, but the community always appreciates a good tournament report and taking notes after the game helps you include more details if you decide to post one later. It is important to note that taking notes during a game constitutes cheating.

During the Event

Arrive early to allow the tournament to start on time.

Tournaments start with a Swiss-style section. This means that every round after the first, you will be paired against someone with a similar total score to yourself. Thus, if you keep winning, you’ll face other players who have also won. In the first round, pairings are random.

Each match consists of two games, one with each side of the Force. Each game is worth four points. Additionally, winning the match nets you a bonus point. If both players win with their light side decks, the match winner is the player who won when the Death Star dial was lower. If both players win with their dark side decks, the match winner is the player who destroyed the most total objectives during the match. In the case of a true tie, neither player gets the bonus point, so each player scores four points.

Matches have a time limit between sixty and eighty minutes. If you’re unable to finish both games within that time, you miss out on points throughout the tournament. You don’t have to be a speed master, but make sure you’ve practiced enough that playing two games within an hour isn’t too hard.

After a number of rounds using the Swiss system, larger tournaments cut to a smaller number of players and play single elimination rounds. During this segment, winning a match determines who moves on to the next round instead of giving a bonus point. In the case of a true tie after the final cut, the player with the higher seed advances. The exception is the championship match – this is the only time a third game is played as a final tie breaker.

Final Tips

Don’t be a sore loser or winner. You’ll win some games and lose some games. Either way, shake hands with your opponent and thank them for the game. If you lost, think about what you can learn instead of complaining about bad luck. If you won, be gracious. Resist any urge to point out your opponent’s mistakes unless they ask for tips, since unsolicited advice can come off as gloating.

Teach others. No matter how long you’ve been playing, there’s probably at least one player present less experienced than you. Immediately after beating them probably isn’t the best time to correct their mistakes, but you can usually find ways to engage in discussion that can help them learn more about the game. A simple way to do this is by asking about their deck choices. If they’re playing something unusual, ask them why. You can discuss the pros and cons of the deck and why you might consider a different deck. Don’t discourage them because their deck is different, but really discuss their methods and things that need to be considered.

Have fun! At the end of the day, we all play this game because we love it and we love Star Wars. Don’t let your competitive side overwhelm that. Smile, meet new people, make new friends, and enjoy playing Star Wars: The Card Game!

I hope you found this helpful as you prepare for the remainder of the tournament season. Whether you’re a new player or a seasoned veteran, make sure you get out to these events and have fun. Spread the excitement around your local play group. Get everyone together for a road trip to a distant Regional. The more enthusiasm we show for the game, the more attractive the game becomes for new players.

Thanks, Matt!

Now that you know how to gather the information you need from your opponent’s deck, you’ll need to make the most of it in your games of Star Wars: The Card Game. Look for more guest articles from Matt and others in coming weeks!

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Source: Ready for Anything (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4872)

Find a Route Through Fog on the Barrow-downs

RETAILERS: Apply to Host a Fellowship Event for The Lord of the Rings

“They found that they were upon an island in the fog. Even as they looked out in dismay towards the setting sun, it sank before their eyes into a white sea, and a cold grey shadow sprang up in the East behind. The fog rolled up to their heads until it became a roof: they were shut in a hall of mist whose central pillar was the standing stone.”
–The Fellowship of the Ring

This October 10-12th, join the worldwide The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game community for an exciting, global Fellowship Event!

Are you a retailer? Register today to host your own The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game Fellowship Event!

What Is a The Lord of the Rings Fellowship Event?

October’s Fellowship Event for The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game is a chance for players to come together and share their appreciation of the game even as they attempt to navigate the treacherous turns and trials of a special, all-new scenario.

The centerpiece of October’s Fellowship Event is the new, standalone scenario, Fog on the Barrow-downs. This fifty-five card scenario, produced by FFG’s in-house manufacturing, comes complete with seven quest cards and forty-one encounter cards. During the event, players will play through the scenario in groups, and each player who participates will walk away with his or her own copy!

Additionally, each player who participates in October’s Fellowship Event will receive an exclusive playmat, featuring art from The Black Riders, and an alternate art version of the Core Set Aragorn.

Note: Each Fellowship Event kit supports up to four players. Be sure to order enough kits to meet the expected number of players.

Brave the Barrow-downs

In The Lord of the Rings, Frodo and his fellow Hobbits barely made it through the Barrow-downs alive. The fog obscured their path, spells made them drowsy, and Barrow-wights lured them into the ancient barrows. In truth, their journey across the Barrow-downs was as harrowing as any of their adventures in The Fellowship of the Ring, and the Fog on the Barrow-downs scenario that players can play during October’s Fellowship Event provides them an opportunity to encounter many of the Barrow-downs’ deadly threats—as well as to meet a well-known character from The Fellowship of the Ring.

Note: The Fog on the Barrow-downs scenario will be made available for purchase at a later date. Playmats and alternate art cards are exclusive to the Fellowship Event and will not be available after the event.

How Does This Tie into the Gen Con Fellowship Event?

The Fellowship Event at Gen Con Indy 2014 includes a separate standalone scenario called The Old Forest. Players do not need to play The Old Forest before participating in October’s Fellowship Event. However, both The Old Forest and Fog on the Barrow-downs were designed so that they can be played with The Black Riders Saga Expansion in campaign mode, and come with new Boon and Campaign Mode setup cards. Players can use one or both of the scenarios when playing a campaign.

Encourage Your Favorite Local Game Store to Apply Today

Players, October’s Fellowship Event is your first chance to play through the challenges of Fog on the Barrow-downs and your only chance to get your hands on the event’s exclusive playmat and alternate art Aragorn. Let your favorite local game store know that you want to participate.

All applications are due by July 3rd at 11:59 PM CST, so talk to your retailer about this Fellowship Event today!

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Source: Find a Route Through Fog on the Barrow-downs (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4873)

Fresh Blood on the Pitch

Preview the Three New Teams from the Foul Play Expansion

Well, Jim, we’ve certainly had a lot to see so far from the new teams of the Putrid Players’ Guild.

You’re absolutely right, Bob. Between the Nurglings’ disease, Chaos Dwarf riots, and Goblin cheating, this upcoming season might be our most interesting yet.

The fans certainly agree, and opposing teams are racing to adapt to some of the PPG’s more… unconventional tactics!

Foul Play introduces the Putrid Players’ Guild to the Team Managers’ Union and to your games of Blood Bowl: Team Manager. The PPG’s new teams distinct play styles and unorthodox techniques are sure to make a splash, and the best talent scouts are already investigating what these new teams can offer. In today’s preview, we’ll bring you an update on the newest teams to take their positions on the pitch.

Nurgle’s Rotters

As the team devoted to the Chaos god of disease, Nurgle’s Rotters rank as the most odorous players in Blood Bowl – no mean achievement! In fact, few players can use noxious disease as a weapon the way Nurgle’s Rotters can. The Pestigor, and other key players in Nurgle’s Rotters, have the Spread Disease ability, which allows you to place a disease token at midfield. When another player is committed or moved to a matchup with a disease token in midfield, that player immediately receives the disease token, lowering his Star Power by one.

In addition to spreading disease, Nurgle’s Rotters make excellent use of the downed skills first introduced in the Sudden Death expansion, especially regeneration. Whenever a player is downed, he immediately resolves any downed skills he may possess, including cheating, passing, or even regeneration. When a manager attempts to regenerate his downed player, he rolls two tackle dice. If a die shows the “Tackler Down” result, you may immediate stand your downed player, bringing his full Star Power back to the matchup.

Whether you stop your opponent’s passes with the Beast of Nurgle or use a star player like Pusbubble to spread disease, Nurgle’s Rotters have plenty to offer.

The Zharr-Naggrund Ziggurats

Masters of destruction and revenge, the Chaos Dwarfs love to walk the ball to victory over a field littered with the bodies of their former opponents. With players like the Bull Centaur and Hthark the Unstoppable in the Zharr-Naggrund Ziggurats’ roster, it’s not hard to see how they’ve gotten a reputation for fighting to the last breath and beyond. Chaos Dwarf players feature a massive amount of cheating and tackling skills, helping them crush any opponent that stands in their way. If an unfortunate player downs a Chaos Dwarf, however, he’s certain to get more than he bargained for in return. Nearly every Chaos Dwarf player has at least one downed skill to get revenge on your opponents.

The Chaos Dwarfs also showcase the new skill introduced in the Foul Play expansion: fouling. One place you can find this skill is as a downed skill for the Hobgoblin Thrower. If you choose to use a player’s fouling ability, you choose an opponent who has a player at the matchup. Then, you take one card from that manager’s hand and secretly look at it, before choosing to discard it, or replace it in your opponent’s hand. By using the fouling skill, you not only gain knowledge of your opponent’s players, but if it’s one of your opponent’s best players, you can discard it. If it’s a lowly Lineman, however, you can replace it in his hand, keeping him from drawing better cards!

The Lowdown Rats

For sheer insanity on the field, there’s no team that can match the Lowdown Rats. With typical goblin ingenuity, they’ve contrived entirely new ways to break the rules, whether by using pogo sticks, chainsaws, or bombs. You can use a Looney to take down your opponent’s best players with his trusty chainsaw, his Dauntless ability, and his array of offensive skills. On the other hand, maybe you prefer the wide-spread damage of the Bombardier. By pitching bombs around the field whenever he successfully tackles another player, the Bombardier can cut a swath of destruction through your opponent’s team.

Other goblins stay ahead of rivals by just being faster than anyone else. A Star Player like Scrappa Sorehead has well-developed sprinting abilities, even after being downed. If one of your opponent’s players is unlucky enough to miss a tackle on Scrappa Sorehead, you may use this player’s superior mobility to move him to safety at one of your other matchups. Whether you rely on crazy plans, frantic cheating, or chainsaws and pogo sticks, the Lowdown Rats have the tools to bring in fans and get you to the top of the Team Managers’ Union.

The Blood Bowl Awaits

The three new teams of the Putrid Players’ Guild offer unique skills and powers to any manager who can control them. There’s more to discover in Foul Play than new teams, though. In our next preview, we’ll look at some of the new mechanics introduced in this expansion, including penalties, stadiums, and a corrupt ref.

Pre-order your copy of Foul Play at your local retailer today!

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Source: Fresh Blood on the Pitch (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4875)

Born of Magic

Preview the Skarn Lieutenant Pack for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Deep within a haunted manor, a new threat has been created. Skarn is a magical construct infused with life by the death of a high mage, and he possesses the ability to increase his size and strength endlessly by incorporating pieces of his environment. If left unchecked, Skarn could grow large enough to threaten all of Terrinoth with his enormity.

Skarn emerges from the ruined mansion as an agent of the overlord in the Skarn Lieutenant Pack expansion for Descent: Journeys in the Dark Second Edition. Within this Lieutenant Pack, you’ll uncover a sculpted plastic figure and a unique, ten-card Plot deck, that allows you to bring Skarn to life beyond the bounds of the Manor of Ravens campaign. (The full rules for Descent Lieutenant Packs can be found on the Descent support page.)

Today, we’ll preview the massive power that you can unleash on Terrinoth through the Skarn Lieutenant Pack.

A Twisted Soul

Skarn’s ten-card Plot deck, Twisted Soul, imparts some of Skarn’s potent defenses to your other monsters. The Plot deck begins with What Doesn’t Kill, a card that you may exhaust whenever a monster suffers one or more damage. If the monster wasn’t defeated by the attack, it recovers a damage, and you mark the monster with a threat token. Every marked monster then adds a brown die to its defense pool, maximizing your monsters’ resistance to the attacks of the heroes.

What Doesn’t Kill also allows you to gain the benefits of other Plot cards that enhance monsters marked by threat tokens. A monster once touched by Skarn’s regeneration is forever changed, as evidenced by the Thick Scars and Bitter Rage Plot cards. Thick Scars gives two additional health to your marked monsters over the course of a quest. Bitter Rage, on the other hand, grants additional damage to every attack performed by a marked monster. By marking your monsters with What Doesn’t Kill, you can quickly bring your monsters to impressive new levels of power.

You can also use the Summon Skarn Plot card to summon Skarn as an agent into any quest. As a powerful guardian and agent of the overlord, Skarn’s ability to repair damage to himself is unmatched in all of Terrinoth.

Hardy Defenses

The power of your presence in Terrinoth grows to enormous levels when you summon Skarn into a quest as your agent. Skarn is powerful in combat, and since he features massive amounts of health and powerful defense dice, destroying him is a formidable task for a band of heroes. Skarn’s surge ability only make him more difficult to defeat. He can spend a surge in combat to activate the Mend 4 ability, recovering four damage as he repairs himself with materials at hand.

In battle, Skarn’s other abilities give you more options for widespread damage. Skarn can spend a surge for extra damage, and Thrash invites you to perform an attack that affects every figure adjacent to Skarn. By combining Skarn’s widespread damage capabilities with his powerful defenses, it’s clear that Skarn excels in the center of a hero party, shaking off blows and spreading his damage far and wide. You can even negate the heroes’ options with the Energy Drain 4 ability. Whenever a hero takes damage from Skarn, you may choose that hero to suffer up to four damage as fatigue instead, reducing the hero’s options for triggering abilities, gaining movement, and resisting your monsters.

Agent of Darkness

After you summon Skarn into play, his Plot deck gives you plenty of ways to gather additional threat. If you have Possessive Nature when Skarn enters play, you may use Possessive Nature to gain threat tokens equal to the number of relics in play. The Unknown Origin Plot card gives you another way to seize threat; by using Unknown Origin, you force each hero to test his Knowledge when you summon Skarn. For each hero that fails, you receive a threat token. Even Skarn’s defeat can bring you more threat tokens. By exhausting the Faithful Guardian card when Skarn is defeated, you immediately gain three threat tokens, giving you enough threat to repurchase the Summon Skarn Plot card, allowing Skarn to heal himself and regenerate for the next quest.

As Skarn’s threat looms over the lands of Terrinoth, your darkness spreads to consume the realm. Preorder the Skarn Lieutenant Pack at your local retailer today, and gain access to the magical construct’s unparalleled abilities!

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Source: Born of Magic (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4876)

Find a Route Through Fog on the Barrow-downs

RETAILERS: Apply to Host a Fellowship Event for The Lord of the Rings

This October 10-12th, join the worldwide The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game community for an exciting, global Fellowship Event!

Are you a retailer?

Apply today to host your own The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game Fellowship Event!

What Is a The Lord of the Rings Fellowship Event?

Note: Each Fellowship Event kit supports up to four players. Be sure to order enough kits to meet the expected number of players.

Brave the Barrow-downs

How Does This Tie into the Gen Con Fellowship Event?

How Do You Apply?

Retailers within the United States should apply through our online form.

International retailers should apply through our list of participating distributors.

All applications are due by Thursday, July 3rd at 23:59 CST (Central Standard Time). If you are approved to host a Fellowship Event, we will send instructions for ordering your event kit.

Encourage Your Favorite Local Game Store to Apply Today

The application period is limited, so talk to your retailer about this Fellowship Event today!

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Source: Find a Route Through Fog on the Barrow-downs (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4877)

Inside the Inquisition

Developer Andrew Fischer Creates an Acolyte for Dark Heresy Second Edition

The galaxy in Dark Heresy Second Edition is a grim and terrifying place. The heresies that threaten the Imperium come from all directions – within, without, and beyond. All that stands in the way of Mankind’s destruction are the Acolytes and Inquisitors that you create and play as to wage a constant, secret war against heresy in the Imperium.

Last time, Tim Huckelbery gave an overview of the character creation process in Dark Heresy. Today, developer Andy Fischer leads us through this process by creating his own Acolyte! Read below to see how he gives life and purpose to another unsung warrior of the Inquisition.

Developer Andy Fischer Creates a Dark Heresy Character

When we created Dark Heresy’s character creation system, our goal was to make a system that gave you a few clear choices that had a big impact on your character and guaranteed you the flexibility to create whatever type of character you wanted. You can either start with a clear character concept to bring to life, or you can come to the game with no idea what you want to play, and let the character creation process inspire you as you follow its steps. For this example, I’ve chosen the latter approach. I’m going in without big preconceptions about what I will create, and I’m letting the combinations of my choices inspire the character for me.

Stage 1: Choose Home World

To start, I have to select where my character was born. I’ve recently played a lot of combat characters, so I’m interested in playing as a more cerebral character. I look through different home world choices, and settle on voidborn. Choosing voidborn as my home world gives me a better chance of having high Intelligence and Willpower, and provides me with the Intelligence aptitude, which helps a lot when creating a character who uses her brain over her brawn.

True to my home world choice, I end up rolling a 40 for my Intelligence and a 45 for my Willpower (the highest possible starting value)! Unfortunately, in the other direction, I rolled a 31 for my Strength, and a 1 when determining my wounds, giving me a total of 8 wounds and a pretty frail character. Based on my low Strength and wounds, I decide my character is probably getting old, and has been riding the ship she was born on for her entire life.

Stage 2: Choose Background

Now that I’ve decided where my character was born and lived most her life, I have to decide what she has done, and what part of the Imperium she spent her life serving. I look through the various backgrounds I can choose from, and based on my character’s Intelligence, I decide she belongs to the Adeptus Administratum. This gives her some useful skills such as Logic, Medicae, and a Scholastic Lore of my choice. It also allows her to take the Knowledge aptitude, which guarantees my character will continue her intellectual pursuits once I start playing the game.

After reading through the background on the Adeptus Administratum, I decide my character fits best as some sort of scribe. She’s been given the task of recording the full history of the ship she rides and sorting its massive library of materials. Her entire life, she has sat among the mountains of scrolls and tomes, recording everything the ship does, and everything that happens onboard. She is the collector and holder of all knowledge on-board the ship; if you want to know something, you go to her.

Stage 3: Choose Role

Lastly, I have to decide what my character’s role for the Inquisition will be. What makes her special? What function will she serve, and how will she grow? As I consider my options, Sage stands out as a good fit for my current character concept. I haven’t done anything with my incredibly high Willpower, though, and I want this character to have something that stands out beyond being an incredibly knowledgeable member of the Administratum. Based on this, I decide that the reason she is so good at her job is that she has unnatural gifts that no one else suspects. She harnesses the powers of the Warp in unnoticable ways that allow her to see beyond her stuffy library and subtly control those around her. To reflect this, I choose the Mystic role.

The Mystic role grants my character the Psyker elite advance for free, and grants her a number of aptitudes that fit perfectly with my character concept. Additionally, a couple of the aptitudes double up with ones I’ve already received in character creation, allowing me to choose from a list of options as a replacement for any doubles.

Now, all that’s left is to integrate the details of the psyker elite advance. Unfortunately, because my character is not a member of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, she’s not sanctioned. This means that she is a rogue psyker, never taken by the Black Ships to Terra, and hiding her powers from everyone around her. Because she never underwent sanctioning, she starts the game with a random amount of Corruption. I roll for a total of nine Corruption, which thankfully just misses forcing me to start with a malignancy!

Finishing Up

My character has come together on a solid foundation. I know where she was born and lived, what function she has served in the Imperium up to this point, and the role she will serve in coming adventures. All that’s left is to decide the final details.

As a member of the Adeptus Administratum, I decide to give my character a High Gothic-sounding name: Sophronia. She’s a very old woman who has worked aboard her ship as long as she can remember. She’s so valuable to the Administratum, they do everything in their power to keep her alive. As a result, many of her body parts are replaced with cybernetics. I decide that Sophronia came into the service of the Inquisition when an Inquisitor came aboard her ship for transport between systems. During the journey, he discovered Sophronia’s secret powers and after seeing her talents, decided to bring her into his retinue instead of reporting her to the Astra Telepathica. Ever since, she has put her intellect and powers over the Warp to use fighting heresy throughout the Askellon Sector.

Now that my character is all finished, I’m ready to dive into a game of Dark Heresy Second Edition! As you can see, there are tons of possibilities for different characters. Just given the three big decisions covered in this designer diary, you can make hundreds of different character types! Above and beyond that, there are dozens of smaller decisions you make to customize your character that I didn’t have room to cover here. Altogether, the possibilities Dark Heresy offers for creating a unique character are virtually endless.

Thanks, Andy!

Heresies and insanities await you in the Askellon sector, and the Acolytes and Inquisitors you create are all that stand between the Imperium and eternal midnight. Take up bolter and chainsword, and join us for our next preview, as we examine the process behind creating the iconic cover of Dark Heresy Second Edition.

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Source: Inside the Inquisition (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4878)

Begin Your Crusade

Preview New Ways to Launch a Black Crusade in The Tome of Decay

“Your boasts are empty, little sorcerer. All eventually fall to the Grandfather, no matter how they might scheme or plot.”

–Gullivox Arcul, Plaguemeister of the Burrowing Flies

With The Tome of Decay, the upcoming Black Crusade sourcebook devoted to Grandfather Nurgle, you join the putrefying disciples of Nurgle to spread disease and plague across the worlds of the False Emperor and throughout the galaxy. The Tome of Decay introduces six new Archetypes worthy of the Lord of Ruin, a new adventure, and rules for organizing and launching a Black Crusade against the hated Imperium.

Today, contributing writer Jordan Goldfarb writes on how you can become Warmaster and lead your own crusade.

Jordan Goldfarb on Launching a Black Crusade

Greetings, Black Crusade fans!

I’m here to talk about what we’ve all been dreaming of since the beginning – running your own Black Crusade and trampling the servants of the False Emperor beneath the legions of Chaos. Of course, it’s possible to do this using only the Black Crusade Core Rulebook, but in The Tome of Decay, there’s a new system designed for high-level strategic play that allows you to conquer whole sectors without compromising roleplaying or losing the personal touch that the best Warmasters are known and feared for!

When setting out on a Black Crusade, as an able Warmaster, you must choose your target well. The system in The Tome of Decay guides you to work with the Game Master to define the scope of your efforts, whether it be conquering the Calixis Sector, storming the Warp gate into the Jericho Reach, or even battling across a full Segmentum of the galaxy. The GM uses players’ input and his own plans for the campaign to prepare a Crusade Map for the forces of your Black Crusade to battle upon.

A Call to Arms

After declaring themselves Warmasters of a Black Crusade, you and your fellow servants of Chaos must quickly gather other forces under your command, ranging from other Chaos warbands or cults in service to the Ruinous Powers, to alien mercenaries and pirate fleets. The Crusade Forces system abstracts these armies during the strategic play of a Black Crusade, leaving an end result complex enough to be interesting, but not so much that you and the other Warmasters cannot intervene personally.

The Crusade Forces system invites you and your fellow Warmasters to gather support at the beginning of your own Black Crusade. Previous characters and groups from the campaign can become Hosts, Cults, Covens, Fleets, or even Lieutenants in your service, and other followers of the Dark Gods are sure to join fighting for a promising Warmaster. As leaders of a new crusade, you can put some gathered Infamy to use calling more followers to your banner. It’s generally a good idea to do this, even if you’ve gathered many allies during normal play, although if your army grows too large, you risk weakening your ability to intervene personally.

Ruin or Glory

There’s no way to talk about the lure of Chaos without discussing the perils as well as the prizes. To hold your forces together, you must intervene personally on key battlefields, instilling a proper fear into servants and foes alike. This opportunity to influence the battlefield personally allows you to wreak their own brands of destruction and terror across the battles of the crusade.

If you can’t control your wild forces, or if they fall on the field of battle, a dismal fate awaits. When a Warmaster appears weak, his own forces inevitably turn on him, and the Imperium doesn’t take long to rally if given room to breathe. All Black Crusades work on a time limit, calculated out along with the scale and the map, meaning that you have only one chance to make yourself into a living legend of terror. The greater the risk, the greater the reward – and though the consequences for failure are absolute, the chance to bring havoc, destruction, and disease to the Imperium is well worth the risk.

Thanks, Jordan!

Your crusade will bring the pestilence of Nurgle out of the Warp to engulf the galaxy in his foetid embrace. Prepare to launch your Black Crusades in the service of the Grandfather! Preorder The Tome of Decay at your local retailer today.

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Source: Begin Your Crusade (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4879)

"Echo"

Guest Writer Neil Amswych Looks at an Ace TIE Phantom Pilot

Recently, we reviewed the contents of the TIE Phantom Expansion Pack, coming to X-Wing™ in the game’s fourth wave. This expansion introduces the new “cloak” action, which its two unique pilots will soon use to great advantage as they dart through battles in the most surprising of manners.

Today, guest writer Neil Amswych (“The Tusken Tactician”) takes a closer look at one of these pilots, “Echo,” and the ways that he may revolutionize how your games of X-Wing are fought and won.

Guest Writer Neil Amswych on “Echo”

Of all the pilots in X-Wing, few (if any) are more game-changing than “Echo.”

When any TIE phantom other than “Echo” decloaks, it does so to one of three possible locations. This means one of the phantom’s strengths is that, once it’s cloaked, it isn’t actually moving from the location where your opponent can see it on the table – it’s going to begin its maneuver from one of three different locations. Since the phantom has fifteen maneuvers on its dial, this means that when it decloaks and then moves, it can end up in any one of forty-five different locations. Impressive as that may be, “Echo” doubles that number. Because he uses the bank “2” template instead of the straight “2” template, he can decloak to any of six different locations, enabling him to end his maneuver at any of a dizzying array of ninety final possible locations.

Though variance exists in where his barrel roll starts and ends, “Echo” can fly from any of six relative positions when he decloaks before he reveals his maneuver dial.

X-Wing has never before seen a pilot capable of such maneuverability and probably never will again. In fact, “Echo” almost mandates an entirely different way of thinking when you plan to fly with or against him.

Flying with “Echo”

When he upgrades his phantom with an Advanced Cloaking Device, “Echo” can fire at an opponent and then take a free cloak action. Accordingly, he wants to avoid stress (because it would prevent him from recloaking), meaning that he usually wants to avoid his two Koiogran-turns. When “Echo” is stressed, he leaves himself vulnerable as a pilot with limited hull and shields and not fully enough agility to compensate.

However, the vast array of final positions available to “Echo” means that he doesn’t need to K-turn to rotate his ship.

”Echo” and his maneuver dial shown side-by-side.

So, if “Echo” wants so badly to avoid stress, how can he turn his ship?

For starters, if he carefully selects the start and end points of his barrel roll, he can combine his decloaking with a two-speed turn that results, effectively, in an angled K-turn that’s roughly half of the “1” speed template and incurs no stress, leaving him the ability to still take an action. It’s not a perfect K-turn, but the fact that “Echo” can choose which direction he faces actually offers him more flexibility than a basic K-turn.

“Echo” decloaks to position E and then turns left at speed “2,” shown with comparison with a fictional one-speed Koiogran-turn.

“Echo” isn’t just limited to smart turns, though. He can move laterally across the table without turning and with only a fractional forward movement, by decloaking backward and then banking forward at speed “1.” This shifts his ship the equivalent of a five-speed maneuver sideways – the equivalent of two range bands – from outside edge to outside edge. Such lateral movement, without any notable forward motion, can be extremely confusing for opposing pilots who are used to opposing ships coming toward them. So long as he has space at his flanks to perform this maneuver, “Echo” can move forward more slowly than any other ship.

“Echo” can move sideways across the table without the need for turning. Here, he follows a "2" bank maneuver with a barrel roll, and the total forward distance is far shorter than a straight “1.”

If you need “Echo” in another part of the battle, he can quickly disengage from his current dogfight and relocate by performing hard turns that complement the direction in which he decloaks. He can even end up behind his original position. Conversely, if you need “Echo” much further ahead of his current position, then he can decloak forward and fully engage his thrusters, traveling much farther forward than your opponent may have expected. Remarkably, the distance between the most diverse endpoints potentially available to “Echo” is essentially the equivalent of two entire range rulers.

Here, we see “Echo” with two of his potential decloak and maneuver options shown together.

The extreme range of decloak and maneuver options available to “Echo” is undoubtedly his greatest strength and enables his phantom to be the most unpredictable of all ships. It is this unpredictability that makes “Echo” so intimidating. Each round, when your opponent looks at “Echo,” he has to calculate up to ninety different possible end positions, and because the TIE phantom features such a potent primary weapon, he can’t just ignore “Echo” as he focuses on your other starfighters. The end result is that “Echo” messes with your opponent’s head in a way that no other pilot does.

Outfitting “Echo”

Extreme maneuverability is not the only strength “Echo” brings to battle; he also offers extreme customizability. He can upgrade his ship with an elite pilot talent, a system upgrade, a crew member, and a modification. However, your modification should almost always be Advanced Cloaking Device, both in order to protect him from enemy fire and to ensure his decloak options continue to mystify your opponent. After that, how you choose to equip him should be driven by your decision whether to have him assume a more aggressive or defensive stance.

For example, an aggressive setup might combine Outmaneuver with Fire Control System and Tactician.

This setup removes one agility die from targets already trying to protect themselves from the four or five dice “Echo” gets with his shot (depending upon whether or not he ends up at Range “1” of his target). Then, it ensures an automatic target lock on his target, and if the original shot is made at Range “2,” his target will be stressed.

A defensive setup might use Veteran Instincts with Sensor Jammer and Recon Specialist.

Such a setup boosts “Echo” from a pilot skill value of six to eight, allowing him to move after most other ships and ensuring that – with his Advanced Cloaking Device – he can cloak again before most ships fire back at him. He will also be able to convert one hit rolled against him to a focus result that can’t be rerolled, and he’ll be able to use one focus token in attack and another in defense.

Neither of these builds are cheap, though. Advanced Cloaking Device is as close to an auto-include on “Echo” as you’ll get with upgrades, so with it, the aggressive setup comes in at forty-one squad points while the defensive setup costs forty-two points. Adding eleven or twelve points of upgrades onto a ship that already costs thirty points may not be advisable, so you’re going to have to make some difficult choices. Because the phantom’s primary attack of four dice already makes it formidable in attack, one of the most likely builds for “Echo” leans toward a cheaper combination of natural offense and upgraded defense: Veteran Instincts, Recon Specialist, and Advanced Cloaking Device, costing a total of thirty-eight points.

Squad Designs with “Echo”

The release of Imperial Aces and the upcoming release of the TIE Phantom Expansion Pack go a long way toward ensuring that success is determined more by positioning than by build-strength alone. Three-ship builds with high pilot skills can pursue victory by moving last, darting out of firing arcs as much as possible, and firing early when it’s not possible to get out of opposing arcs.

“Echo” forms the center of one such design:

“Echo” (30)

    Adrenaline Rush (1)

    Recon Specialist (3)

    Advanced Cloaking Device (4)

Royal Guard Pilot (22)

    Push the Limit (3)

    Royal Guard TIE (0)

    Stealth Device (3)

    Hull Upgrade (3)

Total Squad Points: 100

In this build, the Imperial player’s three pilot skill “6” ships are hyper-mobile and difficult to hit. “Echo” takes Adrenaline Rush to increase mobility by opening access to one Koiogran-turn without fear of stress.

Alternatively, “Echo” could team up with larger ships, creating a squad that capitalizes on shields, hull points, maneuverability, and firepower.

“Echo” (30)

    Veteran Instincts (1)

    Recon Specialist (3)

    Advanced Cloaking Device (4)

Bounty Hunter (33)

Tactician (2)

Omicron Group Pilot (21)

Tactician (2)

Engine Upgrade (4)

Total Squad Points: 100

In this build, the use of Tactician on two ships allows for the possibility of damaging and double-stressing a target for “Echo” to then move in for a kill-shot the next turn.

Flying Against “Echo”

Even the most extraordinary pilots have weaknesses that others can exploit. In the case of “Echo,” the effectiveness of his maneuverability is significantly reduced by turret weapons. Forcing stress upon him with Tactician, Flechette Torpedoes, or Rebel Captive leaves him unable to cloak after firing and, therefore, extremely vulnerable to attack, as does the use of ships with higher pilot skills; they can fire on him before he can use his Advanced Cloaking Device.

Despite these vulnerabilities, though, as long as “Echo” has space to decloak with his curved barrel rolls, then he is unquestionably one of the most exciting pilots in the game. Flown well, “Echo” is truly terrifying, capable of destroying a host of lower pilot skill ships without taking any damage. Those who face this phantom should beware!

Thanks, Neil!

Much as the game’s second wave shook up the metagame with the introduction of its first large ships, the Millennium Falcon and Slave I, the game’s fourth wave is going to spur a wholesale reevaluation of tactics through the introduction of new ships, upgrades, and pilots (like “Echo”) that emphasize high pilot skill and tactical maneuvering. We’ve seen the beginning of this shift in the final matches of our Assault at Imdaar Alpha preview events, and we’ll see even more of it once Wave IV arrives at retailers everywhere late next week!

Will you make the transition to more ace pilots with high pilot skills? Will you tweak your squad and tactics to brace for the surprises your foes will launch against you? How will you adapt? Wave IV is coming!

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Source: "Echo" (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4880)

On Our Honor

Preview the Space Marine Faction from Warhammer 40,000: Conquest

“On our honor and for the Emperor, we shall not fall!”

–Brother Vandius, Ultramarines

The planets and stars of the galaxy are enveloped by darkness in the 41st millennium, caught in a maelstrom between xenos, heretical traitors, and the darkness emanating from the Warp. Yet despite the encroaching darkness, a light still burns in the forces of the Imperium of Man, devoted to the Emperor – a bulwark against the grasping hordes of Chaos and complete annihilation.

In Warhammer 40,000: Conquest, you have the opportunity to take command of the battalions of the righteous pledged to the Emperor’s service. In past previews of Warhammer 40,000: Conquest, we’ve looked at different aspects of gameplay, exploring the rules for deployment, the command struggle, and combat, and we’ve also looked at an example of a battle. Today, however, we’ll begin delving into the factions of Warhammer 40,000: Conquest, starting with the Space Marines themselves.

Defenders of Humanity

The Space Marines warlord included in the Core Set is Captain Cato Sicarius (Core Set, 1) of the Ultramarines. Like other warlords, Sicarius determines both your starting hand-size and resources, granting you seven of each to begin the game. Sicarius also bears a powerful Reaction, granting you the ability to gain a resource whenever an enemy unit is destroyed at the same planet as Sicarius. Your warlord is sure to be in the thick of battle throughout the game, so if you can keep Sicarius hale and unbloodied, you’ll secure a steady inflow of resources, powering your army’s deployment.

Like every other warlord, Captain Cato Sicarius comes with an eight-card signature squad. These eight cards must be included in a warlord’s deck, giving you a strong foundation to your deck. The Space Marine warlord – Captain Cato Sicarius – is a fearsome warrior, but he is also a brilliant tactician, and his signature squad rewards you for outthinking your opponent amid the heat of battle. The signature squad begins with four copies of Sicarius’s Chosen (Core Set, 8), an army unit that thrives in battle. This unit has an attack value of two and three hit points, as well as a command icon, but like Sicarius himself, the true value lies in its Reaction. This army unit’s ability reads, “Reaction: After this unit enters play, move a target enemy army unit at an adjacent planet to this planet and deal it 1 damage.” Whether you use this unit to divert your opponent’s heavy-hitters, quickly eliminate weakened units, or pull enemy units into battle.

The signature squad also includes a single copy of Cato’s Stronghold (Core Set, 9). Captain Sicarius plots his battles and campaigns from this impregnable fortress, and you can use it to seize a tactical advantage in battle. By exhausting this support after an enemy unit is destroyed, you can ready any Space Marine unit at the same planet, potentially allowing your strongest or most dangerous unit to strike twice in one combat round. Clever utilization of this card can make the difference between winning and losing a battle.

Sicarius’s Space Marines are devoted to battle, and there are few tools for taking your opponent by surprise and crushing a unit equal to The Fury of Sicarius (Core Set, 10), which has two copies in Sicarius’s signature squad. By playing this event when a Space Marine unit damages an enemy non-warlord unit, you can immediately destroy the attacked unit. Since most players won’t expect a small amount of damage to spell their unit’s demise, they may choose not to shield, allowing you to destroy the unit with The Fury of Sicarius. Successfully using this event also allows you to trigger Cato’s Stronghold, enhancing your battlefield advantage over your opponent.

The final card in this signature squad is the Tallassarian Tempest Blade (Core Set, 11), a Relic and a Weapon of prodigious power. Relics are limited to one per player, but when you attach the Tallassarian Tempest Blade to one of your unique units, it grants that unit an increased attack value and the Armorbane keyword, meaning that shield cards cannot be used when that unit attacks. With this attachment enhancing one of your unique units, including Sicarius himself, you’ll become even more dangerous in battle, forcing damage through to your opponent and opening the door wide for other cards, including The Fury of Sicarius and Cato’s Stronghold.

Two Steps Ahead

Tactical knowledge runs throughout the Space Marines faction, and the Core Set offers plenty of other key ways for the Space Marines to demonstrate their grasp of tactics with units like Veteran Brother Maxos (Core Set, 19). This unit has the ability to summon reinforcements as an Action in the combat phase, paying the printed cost of any Space Marine unit in your hand to put it into play at Veteran Brother Maxos’s planet. By dropping in unexpected units, you can swing the tide of battle abruptly in your favor.

Some units require no assistance from Veteran Brother Maxos to leap into combat. One such unit is the Eager Recruit (Core Set, 20), who bears the Ambush keyword, allowing you to deploy this army unit during the combat phase. The Eager Recruit is not a massive unit, but even a small shift in the battle can be significant. If you play your cards right, the Eager Recruit just might be the unit you need to claim a critical planet for the glory of the Imperium.

Players looking for more ways to suddenly deploy armies in the combat phase would do well to consider launching a Drop Pod Assault (Core Set, 24). By playing this event, you can search the top six cards of your deck for any Space Marine unit costed three or lower. That unit is then put into play at a planet of your choice, enabling you to deal out the Emperor’s wrath on the xenos of the galaxy.

Sometimes, however, even the combined might of the Imperium’s Space Marines cannot demolish the swarming hordes leveled against mankind. At these times of crisis, you need to have the power to call for Exterminatus (Core Set, 26) to punish your opponent for attempting to avoid battles. By leveling this obliterative power at a target non-first planet, you can destroy all non-unique units there with a single blow. Although this power can’t be used on the first planet, you can certainly upset your opponent’s foothold on another planet in the Traxis sector. With the finest tactics and technology the Imperium can offer, the Space Marines stand prepared to keep Mankind’s hope alive in their struggle for survival among the stars.

The Service of the Emperor

Lead your Space Marines for the glory of the Emperor throughout the Traxis sector! Join us next time as we explore the militarized ranks of the Astra Militarum, and preorder Warhammer 40,000: Conquest at your local retailer today.

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Source: On Our Honor (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4881)

Reinforce and Retaliate

A Preview of the Hammer and Hold and Legions of Darkness Expansions

Today, we preview the units and command cards these two expansions will offer the Empire, Orcs, Chaos, and High Elves.

The Empire

With Hammer and Hold, the Empire, the game’s most tactical race, can recruit two new units to field an even more varied army.

Orcs

Chaos

Only one of the two new Daemonic Chaos units from Legions of Darkness incorporates the expansion’s new fear keyword, but both are likely to cause fear in your opponents.

High Elves

Finally, the High Elves gain the ability to call upon some timely healing with their new command card, Isha’s Mercy.

There Will Be War. There Will Be Blood.

The Old World will quake. Muster your armies. The Hammer and Hold and Legions of Darkness expansions arrive at retailers everywhere later this month!

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Source: Reinforce and Retaliate (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4871)

The Rebel Alliance's View of the Galaxy

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

“The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”

–Leia Organa

The Star Wars®: Age of Rebellion™ Roleplaying Game thrusts players into the middle of the civil war that rages between the evil Galactic Empire and the heroic, rag-tag bands of freedom fighters that comprise the Rebel Alliance.

In our last Age of Rebellion preview, we looked at how their allegiance to the Rebel Alliance gives player characters a cause to fight for that’s greater than themselves, and we explored how that idea carries out through the system’s epic scope: The missions your character undertakes will impact the fates of hundreds of Rebel soldiers, the outcomes of massed space battles, and the lives of millions throughout the galaxy.

Mechanically, the system’s epic scope is given form by its focus on Duty and by the new adversaries, vehicles, and starships that help comprise the Imperial threat. Today, however, contributing author Sterling Hershey turns our attention toward another way that the Age of Rebellion Core Rulebook reminds you that your character’s actions are always creating ripples that echo throughout the galaxy.

Sterling Hershey on Portraying the Galaxy and the Rebellion

The Star Wars: Age of Rebellion Core Rulebook contains more than the rules you need to play; it contains setting details and story ideas. Setting details include information about the planets and locations where the player characters might go, and they address the groups and organizations to whom the heroes may talk or against whom they may fight once they get there.

The Star Wars galaxy is vast, and such information is helpful to orient both Game Masters and players. They can use this chapter to jump start their character backgrounds, discover interesting places and people they haven’t previously heard of, or find suitable locations for new encounters, adventures, and campaigns.

My contributions to the Age of Rebellion Core Rulebook included Chapter 10: The Galaxy and Chapter 11: The Rebellion.

A Galaxy at War

Naturally, The Galaxy includes a lot of physical information: major hyperspace routes, regions of the galaxy, and a galaxy map. Each region of the galaxy is described, along with a list and brief description of important systems, but the approach is unique to the Rebellion’s specific interests.

The descriptions in the Age of Rebellion Core Rulebook don’t just describe a location as a static entity; they talk more about how areas may be useful to the Imperials and Rebels who may visit or target them. That isn’t to say that every single entry focuses on battlegrounds; there are still shady places throughout the galaxy where characters can slip off the sensors for a while, and the Rebels make use of these as well. The Rebel Territories section discusses exactly what that means in a war where it is difficult to hold ground.

The chapter’s in-universe, in-character sidebar descriptions and vignettes also reflect the Core Rulebook’s focus on the Rebel Alliance. A variety of voices and viewpoints emphasize the range of opinions regarding the Rebellion and its efforts throughout the galaxy. A few examples include a Bothan Spynet report, Rebel recruiter, Imperial defector, and a skeptical citizen.

The Rebel Alliance

The Rebellion is a primer on the Rebel Alliance, how they operate, and the battle tactics they employ. Players trying to figure out how their characters or groups fit into the Alliance should find this information helpful. Common mission types may also serve as story hooks or inspiration for other Rebel operations.

The chapter also covers the Rebellion’s bases. Everyone needs somewhere to operate out of, and the chapter offers general base-building advice for those GMs or players who want to create their own. For those who want something more recognizable, the Rebel Main Base on Yavin IV is included, straight out of the movies.

You will also find a new base called Watercrest Outpost. Watercrest isn’t a military base, but an intelligence gathering base situated near sensitive Imperial star systems – places suitable for covert Rebel missions. It is hidden in plain sight, concealed within a failed vacation resort that the Alliance has “reopened” as a way to cover its ship traffic, as well as to provide better accommodations than the average secret base. Because the outpost hosts non-Rebel guests from time to time to keep up local appearances, the use of Watercrest Outpost introduces new roleplaying and story opportunities not available at an isolated military base.

Thanks, Sterling!

As the core of an entire, standalone Star Wars roleplaying system, the Age of Rebellion Core Rulebook provides all the rules you need to enjoy countless hours amid the civil war raging between the Galactic Empire and the Rebel Alliance.

We’ve now seen how Age of Rebellion immerses you in this epic, galactic conflict with both its rules and its setting information. In our next transmission, we’ll continue to explore the different elements that make Age of Rebellion a uniquely satisfying Star Wars roleplaying experience. We will turn our attention toward the Imperial threat and the vehicles, starships, and massed space battles that may decide the outcome of the Galactic Civil War!

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Source: The Rebel Alliance's View of the Galaxy (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4882)

Rouse the Dragon

The Ancestral Home Chapter Pack Is Now Available

“To go north, you must journey south. To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward, you must go back.”

–George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

Each of the Great Houses of Westeros gains access to its honored legacy in the Ancestral Home Chapter Pack, now available for A Game of Thrones: The Card Game at your local retailer and online through our webstore!

In this Chapter Pack, you’ll find powerful new prized cards for every House, developing the central theme of the Conquest and Defiance cycle. Every House gains a powerful Title that attaches to its House card, and while House Greyjoy calls upon its Warships, the princes of Dorne gather loyalists in the south. Whether you claim the Iron Throne in the name of Renly Baratheon, scheme in the darkness with Tyrion Lannister, or wage war in the north with The Blackfish, the cards in the Ancestral Home Chapter Pack will help you advance your bid for the Iron Throne.

Across the Narrow Sea

Not every Great House has a home in Westeros to call its own. Across the Narrow Sea, some of the last supporters of House Targaryen gather, hoping to one day return to Westeros with fire and blood. In the Ancestral Home Chapter Pack, House Targaryen gains access to some potent new ways to gain power and pursue their claim to the Iron Throne.

Daenerys Targaryen (Ancestral Home, 76) is one of the last scions of House Targaryen, and you’ll find a new version of her in this Chapter Pack. This version of Daenerys Targaryen is both a Lady and a Queen, and she boasts an impressive Response ability. After you declare Daenerys Targaryen as an attacker, you may choose a character without attachments controlled by the defending player. If you win the challenge, you kill the chosen character! This gives you an easy way to kill nearly any character, but if you want to kill a character with an attachment, Viserys Targaryen (The Champion’s Purse, 36) can discard the attachment from play, leaving the character vulnerable to Daenerys’s ability.

Daenerys Targaryen is already powerful, but she can become even more adept at destroying your opponent’s characters when you combine her with Khal (Ancestral Home, 77). This Title attaches to your House card, and after you play a prized card, you may kneel the attached House card to choose a character. The chosen character gains deadly and doesn’t kneel to attack or defend Power challenges until the end of the round. If you choose Daenerys as the target of Khal’s effect, you can potentially kill even more of your opponent’s characters between the deadly keyword and Daenerys’s ability.

Because Khal requires you to play a prized card to activate its ability, you’ll want to include several such cards in your deck. House Targaryen gains an inexpensive prized card in the Horselord (Ancestral Home, 75). While the Horselord is participating in a challenge, characters with more than one icon don’t count their Strength, which can prove useful for pushing through some Power challenges. On the other hand, your Horselords may be able to serve you in other ways as well. Your opponent may use his characters to interfere with your challenges, but by using Harrenhal (Ancestral Home, 78), you can kill your characters to cancel triggered effects. Killing a Horselord via Harrenhal not only cancels your opponent’s ability: the Horselord’s prized keyword gives your opponent more power for you steal.

Claim the Iron Throne

Whether you support the claims of House Targaryen, or another of the Great Houses of Westeros, you’ll find plenty of powerful cards within the Ancestral Home Chapter Pack. Will you rise to dominance through strength of arms, or will you create an entirely new strategy with the Dark Wings, Dark Words (Ancestral Home, 80) agenda? Craft your plans to seize the throne and forge a legacy when you pick up Ancestral Home at your local retailer today!

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Source: Rouse the Dragon (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4885)

Master the Royal Courts

Game of Thrones: Westeros Intrigue Is Now Available

The court of King’s Landing is rife with intrigue. Knights, lords, ladies, and courtiers plot and scheme their way closer to the Iron Throne, but even the one who sits the Iron Throne can be easily influenced by his closest advisor. Your task is to manipulate every member of the royal court in an attempt to become the newest power behind the throne of Westeros. Game of Thrones: Westeros Intrigue is now available, both at your local retailer and online through our webstore!

Forge a Conspiracy

Game of Thrones: Westeros Intrigue is a fast-paced card game for two to six players based on HBO’s Game of Thrones TV series and designed by world renowned game designer, Reiner Knizia. In every game, you strive to create a conspiracy from the character cards in your hand, ensuring that your schemes are deeper and more far-reaching than your opponents’. If you’re the last player able to play character cards at the end of a round, you win that round!

At the beginning of the game, each player is dealt a number of character cards, featuring screenshots of iconic characters from the Game of Thrones series, divided between House Stark, House Lannister, House Baratheon, and House Targaryen. Each turn, you will play one character card, adding to the tangled conspiracy that makes up the King’s Landing court. The first cards played form a single row, but this row can hold no more than eight cards. Sooner or later, you will need to expand the conspiracy upwards by playing character cards in new rows above other characters. A character must always be supported by his own House, however, so each character card above the bottom row must match the House of one of the character cards directly beneath it.

An example of gameplay in Game of Thrones: Westeros Intrigue

For example, as shown above, one player chooses to play Tyrion Lannister from his hand. He can play Tyrion on the right side, above Jaime Lannister, or on the left, above Sandor Clegane. Tyrion cannot be played in the spaces marked "X" on the bottom row because the bottom row cannot be more than eight character cards wide. He cannot be played in the other spaces marked "X" because there is no Lannister character card immediately below those spaces. Since you’ll have character cards from more than one House in your hand during the game, you must make the choices determining the fates of different Houses. If one House stands in your way, it’s up to you to engineer that House’s demise!

The Power Behind the Throne

When a player can no longer legally play a character card on his turn, he is eliminated from the round. The round continues until only one player remains as the master of intrigue in King’s Landing. The round winner receives an Iron Throne card, representing your advancement ahead of the other players towards your goal of controlling Westeros from behind the sovereign on the Iron Throne. Over a series of rounds equal to the number of players, every player competes to draw closer to the Iron Throne, and the closest advisor at the game end is the victor.

Game of Thrones: Westeros Intrigue is a fast-paced card game that thrusts you into the secrets, schemes, plots, and manipulation of the Game of Thrones TV series. You’ll need to successfully manipulate the Great Houses of Westeros if you wish to stand alone as the power behind the Iron Throne. Will your plans outlast those of your opponents? Find out when you pick up your copy of Game of Thrones: Westeros Intrigue at your local retailer today.

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Source: Master the Royal Courts (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4884)

A More Versatile A-Wing

Preview the Rebel Aces Expansion Pack for X-Wing (TM)

“Take evasive action!”
–Admiral Ackbar

In March, we announced the upcoming release of the Rebel Aces Expansion Pack for X-Wing™. Featuring two miniature starfighters with alternate paint schemes, one A-wing and one B-wing, Rebel Aces is a great expansion for Rebel players looking to build up or add new color to their fleets. Still, it’s also much more than that; Rebel Aces is an opportunity for Rebel players to revisit two of their core starfighters, outfit them with new upgrades, and launch them back into battle with new tactics and strategies.

Today, we take a look at how Rebel Aces makes the A-wing a more versatile starfighter, and we look at what that might mean for X-Wing.

A 360-degree view of the Rebel Aces A-wing miniature.

Built for Speed

The RZ-1 A-wing interceptor was built for speed.

Designed to outrun the Imperial Navy’s TIE fighters during tactical strikes, the A-wing was manufactured with top-end sublight thrusters and highly sensitive controls that offered a potent combination of speed and agility. However, this combination proved to be both a boon and a challenge, as it strained even the Rebellion’s most skillful pilots.

Despite the challenges it presented its pilots, the A-wing’s speed and missiles made it an excellent fighter for tactical, hit-and-fade missions, and it further proved its worth by helping to cripple Star Destroyers during the Battle of Endor.

In X-Wing, as in the Galactic Civil War, the A-wing is a tricky ship to fly, but one that offers a lot of tactical value – a value that is greatly enhanced by the pilots and upgrades in Rebel Aces.

If it’s a demanding task to pilot an A-wing, then the Rebel Alliance should be doubly thankful for aces like Jake Farrell and Gemmer Sojan.

One of the individuals called upon to help design the A-wing, Jake Farrell knows how to push the ship to its limits. His unique pilot ability reads, “After you perform a focus action or are assigned a focus token, you may perform a free boost or barrel roll action.”

This means not only that Jake Farrell gains a free action whenever he gains a focus token; it means that he gains an action type not normally associated with the A-wing, the barrel roll. Furthermore, if you give him the elite pilot talent, Push the Limit, or coordinate his actions with those of Kyle Katarn or Garven Dreis, he can use his boost and barrel roll actions to dart about the battlefield while performing an unprecedented number of actions.

The other unique A-wing ace appearing in Rebel Aces is Gemmer Sojan, who flew in the Battle of Endor under the call sign Green Two. There, he used his A-wing’s speed and agility to evade enemy fire and get in close enough to the Empire’s lead communication battlecruiser, which he helped to destroy.

Appropriately, Gemmer Sojan appears in X-Wing with a unique pilot ability that emphasizes how he flourishes at combat in tight quarters. It reads, “While you are at Range 1 of at least 1 enemy ship, increase your agility value by 1.”

Gemmer Sojan’s ability plays well into your typical A-wing tactics. A-wing pilots can use the boost action to close in on enemies, and most players already want to fly their A-wings into Range “1” of their targets since it raises the number of attack dice they’ll roll from two to three, an increase of 150 percent. Notably, however, to trigger his ability, Gemmer Sojan just has to be within Range “1” of any enemy ship; it doesn’t have to be within Range “1” of his target or any ship firing at him.

Furthermore, as an ace who likes to get into the thick of the action, Gemmer Sojan is a natural target for either of two new upgrades appearing in Rebel Aces, Chardaan Refit or Proton Rockets.

By equipping his A-wing with one of these two upgrades, Gemmer Sojan can focus on delivering powerful alpha strikes, or he can focus on maneuvering through the battlefield, taking advantage of his ship’s speed and agility to dogfight more efficiently with his primary weapon.

An Expanded Role in Your Rebel Fleet

As much as the Chardaan Refit and Proton Rockets present Gemmer Sojan with an important decision for how he chooses to approach battle, they present Rebel players an even more important and large-scale decision about how to use their A-wings, as they open tactical possibilities that didn’t previously exist.

At seventeen of your one-hundred squad points, the base A-wing, the Prototype Pilot, is faster and more durable than the Empire’s TIE fighters, but it lacks the TIE’s barrel roll action and, more importantly, costs five more squad points than the base TIE, the Academy Pilot. In part, the difference in squad point costs owes to the fact that the A-wing is also capable of firing missiles, and missiles can provide both raw firepower and flexibility to your squad designs.

However, some players prefer to use their A-wings as dogfighters, eschewing missiles entirely in favor of relying upon the ship’s speed, shields, and agility to weave through combat and disrupt enemy flight patterns. These disruptive tactics are commonly called “blocking,” and they’re best performed by low-skill pilots, who can maneuver and perform their actions ahead of enemy ships so that they can enter the path of enemy formations and force them to split up or lose actions. Players using such tactics will benefit greatly from equipping their Prototype Pilots with Chardaan Refits, as doing so will free up squad points that they can spend elsewhere, potentially increasing the firepower of their squad members with higher pilot skill values.

Such a squad might use a pair of Prototype Pilots with Chardaan Refits:

Prototype Pilot (17) with Chardaan Refit (-2)
Prototype Pilot (17) with Chardaan Refit (-2)
Blue Squadron Pilot (22)
Blue Squadron Pilot (22)
Biggs Darklighter (25)

Total Squad Points: 99

On the other hand, Proton Rockets provide yet another option for squads that use A-wings to race into combat and deliver powerful alpha strikes.

Because you must spend a target lock token in order to fire most missiles, missile-based squads often rely upon Push the Limit or unique pilot abilities that allow them to gain focus tokens the round in which they intend to deliver their payloads. This is only natural; after players invest squad points into their missiles, they’re typically willing to spend a couple more to give them much greater odds of hitting.

Proton Rockets, however, don’t require the expenditure of any tokens. Instead, they only require that you have a focus token the round you want to fire them. Accordingly, you can use the extra actions you build into your squad to get into range earlier, or to acquire target locks that you can actually use to increase your chances of hitting.

Alternatively, you can drop the extra actions altogether and simply keep your squad point investment in any single ship to a minimum. Five Prototype Pilots with five Proton Rockets would cost you one-hundred squad points and could deliver a tremendous alpha strike.

Of course, you don’t need to rely solely upon Proton Rockets in a missile-based A-wing squad, and you’ll find the squad list below highlights the versatility the A-wing offers as a missile platform and dogfighter.

Jake Farrell (24) with Push the Limit (3) and Assault Missiles (5)
Arvel Crynyd (23) with Chardaan Refit (-2), A-Wing Test Pilot (0), and Opportunist (4)
Gemmer Sojan (22) with A-Wing Test Pilot (0), Push the Limit (3) and Proton Rocket (3)
Prototype Pilot (17) with Chardaan Refit (-2)

Total Squad Points: 100

Balancing the A-wing’s ability to launch devastating alpha strikes with its ability to dance through enemy fire, this squad is designed to launch its Assault Missiles before zipping into the midst of the enemy, disrupting enemy flight patterns and capitalizing upon the unique talents of pilots like Arvel Crynyd and Gemmer Sojan who excel at close-quarters combat.

Take the Helm

How will you fly your A-wing? With its new pilots and upgrades, Rebel Aces adds tremendous versatility to this iconic Rebel starfighter, and you’ll find more reasons than ever to incorporate the A-wing into your Rebel squads.

Start planning your tactical strikes… Head to your local retailer today to pre-order your copy of the Rebel Aces Expansion Pack for X-Wing!

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Source: A More Versatile A-Wing (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4886)

Pieces of the Puzzle

An Android: Netrunner Strategy Article by Guest Writer El-ad David Amir

“They see our business as a puzzle because they only see the pieces. We see the whole picture. That is why we succeed.”

–Chairman Hiro

Since its release in May, Honor and Profit has lead to a new surge of Android: Netrunner deck-building experimentation and the rise of a whole slew of new, tournament-quality decks for both Corp and Runner.

Today, guest writer El-ad David Amir provides some insight into the deck-building process and looks at some of the new card combos permitted by this latest deluxe expansion.

Guest Writer El-ad David Amir on Deck-building and Card Combos

Android: Netrunner is a Living Card Game®, which means that before players sit down to their games, they can customize their decks from a constantly evolving pool of cards that grows with the game’s monthly Data Pack and the occasional release of a deluxe expansion. Accordingly, the ability to assess the value of any card within the growing card pool is integral to a player’s success within the game.

Some of the cards are straightforward. These include cards such as Hedge Fund (Core Set, 110), Melange Mining Corporation (Core Set, 108), and Private Contracts (Cyber Exodus, 59), all of which just accelerate the rate at which the Corp can gain credits. Other examples include the Runner’s icebreakers, which offer different ways to get Runners through ice. Other cards, however, are more difficult to assess. Their roles are less straightforward, and they permit much of the ingenuity of the deck-building; a clever player can use these cards to construct a well-oiled contraption with many interlocking pieces. The sum of the parts will be greater than the whole.

All Cards Are Not Created Equal

That said, that ability to craft wildly innovative card combinations and decks might become a trap for the unwary. Space is at a premium, and you need different cards to handle different situations. For example, let’s imagine a Criminal who needs to decide which decoder icebreaker to include in his deck. He might choose Peacock (What Lies Ahead, 6); it’s in-faction and can break any code gate, at a cost. However, this selection assumes that the Criminal can safely bank upon a steady flow of credits; Peacock can become expensive in situations where the Corp has rezzed multiple code gates.

Another option is Yog.0 (Core Set, 14). This decoder will cost more to install and requires an influence point, but it can break a lot of small ice for free. The selection of Yog.0 raises a risk, though, as it will be thwarted by ice with more than three strength.

A third alternative is Gordian Blade (Core Set, 43), which is the most expensive influence-wise but offers the greatest flexibility.

An aspiring Runner will choose which program (or programs) to put in his deck based on his assessment of potential game situations and Corp ice compositions.

The Alchemy of Card Combinations

Of course, no cards exist in a void; each is measured within the context of the deck that contains it, where card combinations can alter the relative weight or shortcomings of any one component. Our fledgling Criminal might employ Datasucker (Core Set, 8) and Bishop (Second Thoughts, 21) as support for Yog.0. And voilà! A combo has been born.

Likewise, a Corp that runs Chimera (Cyber Exodus, 60) – a flexible piece of ice that has the downside of derezzing at the end of turn – could install it in a remote server supervised by Akitaro Watanabe (Core Set, 79), therefore mitigating the repeating rez cost. Even better combos can turn disadvantages into advantages. The tag from Vamp (Trace Amount, 21) is a liability unless the Runner can follow it up with a Data Leak Reversal (Future Proof, 103).

Even while combos may increase the value of their component cards, many combos can be further improved by tweaking their respective components. Installing two copies of Access to Globalsec (Core Set, 52) and an Underworld Contact (A Study in Static, 69) will provide the Runner with a recurring credit, but drawing the pieces and paying the resources for them will slow her down. An alternative might be to play a Runner identity with one link, reducing the need for one Globalsec. The next step in refining this combo might be to run The Helpful AI (What Lies Ahead, 8), which provides a bonus even in situations where the Corp does not have trace. Meanwhile, since The Helpful AI is a connection, the Runner could run Hostage (Opening Moves, 4) to fetch it and get the required link, and Hostage can also perform double duty to fetch the Underworld Contact.

A deck that includes many such combinations while also maximizing the use of each component separately from the others will be highly robust. In a tag-heavy Corp deck with Data Raven (Core Set, 88) and Dedicated Response Team (Future Proof, 118) each card stands on its own in addition to forming a combo. An ideal deck will focus on combos where the pieces have their own worth.

Ignore Everything You Just Learned

Sometimes, a combo is so strong that a player might be willing to invest in assembling the disparate pieces even if they don’t function well on their own. One such example may be a deck that partners Accelerated Diagnostics (Mala Tempora, 52) and Power Shutdown (Mala Tempora, 58) with Jackson Howard (Opening Moves, 15). In such a deck, the Corp uses Power Shutdown to trash all of the cards in R&D and then uses Jackson Howard to set up ideal three-card combinations for Accelerated Diagnostics. Eventually, this sort of deck can play four or five copies of Scorched Earth (Core Set, 99) in a row. By mitigating the unpredictability of Accelerated Diagnostics, this deck transforms it into a powerful click-generator and card-draw hybrid, and its central combo results in a flatlined Runner. Of course, there’s risk involved in trying to assemble the combo, but winning the game is certainly a worth the risk.

New Data Analysis

Let’s analyze a couple of combos in Honor and Profit, the latest deluxe expansion.

Harmony Medtech (Honor and Profit, 1) is a Jinteki identity that allows either side to win as soon as they reach six agenda points (one less than the usual seven). Harmony Medtech is an example of a symmetric card; it benefits both players equally. The trick to exploiting it, and similar cards, is in breaking their symmetry and “unlevelling” the playing field. Enter Shi.Kyu (Honor and Profit, 11), the perfect companion to the Harmony Medtech ability. When Shi.KyÅ« is accessed, the Corp can pay one credit more than the number of cards in the Runner’s hand, forcing him to take the negative agenda point, and now the Runner’s win condition returns to the regular seven points.

Another example is Feint (Honor and Profit, 34), a run event that initially appears to do nothing, as what is the point in successfully running HQ if you cannot access or manipulate cards? The value of Feint, however, is that it combos with other Criminal favorites. It enables Emergency Shutdown (Cyber Exodus, 43) while triggering the abilities on Gabriel Santiago (Core Set, 17), Desperado (Core Set, 24), and Datasucker. It can also enable the subsequent installation of Data Leak Reversal or allow the play of Quest Completed (Fear and Loathing, 81).

Balanced Experimentation

Building a well-tuned deck calls for creativity chastened by an eye to economics and risk assessment. By learning how to gauge the effectiveness of combos while considering the trade-offs between situational cards and their powerful combinations, a resourceful player could surprise even the most prepared of opponents. The secret to designing decks that are both imaginative and effective is to balance the various parts while keeping the big picture in mind.

Thanks, El-ad!

It’s an exciting time to build decks in Android: Netrunner. The game’s network has expanded to include Honor and Profit, and the upcoming release of Upstalk, along with cards like Mutate (Upstalk, 4) and Lamprey (Upstalk, 14), means that you’ll soon be able to configure your decks in more fashions than ever.

What sort of card combos will you aim to build into your decks? Are you the sort of player who’s simply looking to push for greater efficiencies? Are you looking for card combinations that lend greater weight to their individual components? Or are you the sort of player who wants to discover a new endgame? Head to our community forums, and share your card combos and deck-building ideas with the game’s worldwide community of fans!

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Source: Pieces of the Puzzle (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4887)

Pieces of the Puzzle

An Android: Netrunner Strategy Article by Guest Writer El-ad David Amir

“They see our business as a puzzle because they only see the pieces. We see the whole picture. That is why we succeed.”
–Chairman Hiro

Today, guest writer El-ad David Amir provides some insight into the deck-building process and looks at some of the new card combos permitted by this latest deluxe expansion.

Guest Writer El-ad David Amir on Deck-building and Card Combos

All Cards Are Not Created Equal

A third alternative is Gordian Blade (Core Set, 43), which is the most expensive influence-wise but offers the greatest flexibility.

An aspiring Runner will choose which program (or programs) to put in his deck based on his assessment of potential game situations and Corp ice compositions.

The Alchemy of Card Combinations

Ignore Everything You Just Learned

New Data Analysis

Let’s analyze a couple of combos in Honor and Profit, the latest deluxe expansion.

Harmony Medtech (Honor and Profit, 1) is a Jinteki identity that allows either side to win as soon as they reach six agenda points (one less than the usual seven). Harmony Medtech is an example of a symmetric card; it benefits both players equally. The trick to exploiting it, and similar cards, is in breaking their symmetry and “unlevelling” the playing field. Enter Shi.Kyu (Honor and Profit, 11), the perfect companion to the Harmony Medtech ability. When Shi.Kyu is accessed, the Corp can pay one credit more than the number of cards in the Runner’s hand, forcing him to take the negative agenda point, and now the Runner’s win condition returns to the regular seven points.

Balanced Experimentation

Thanks, El-ad!

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Source: Pieces of the Puzzle (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4887)

The Making of an Inquisitor

An Interview with the Designers of the Dark Heresy Core Rulebook Cover

Corruption festers deep within the heart of the Imperium, penetrating throughout the Askellon sector. Only the Acolytes of the Inquisition can eliminate these threats to Mankind’s continued existence.

The development of Dark Heresy Second Edition involved creating enormous amounts of fantastic art, set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Today, we’ll take a closer look at the design behind one of those pieces: the iconic cover of the Dark Heresy Second Edition Core Rulebook. Read below for our interview with Andrew Navaro, the head of the Fantasy Flight Games’s art department, and Mathias Kollros, the artist behind the piece, on the making of this artwork.

Designing the Cover of Dark Heresy Second Edition

FFG: What you were looking for and what do you focus on in the art for the second edition of Dark Heresy?

AN: John Blanche’s work is always inspirational, and we usually try to capture the environments that he creates. John’s art is filled with dark and otherworldly imagery in a way that truly captures Warhammer 40,000. Overall, we chose to create more environments in this edition, placing characters in environments to bring the art and the experience to life. We wanted to use the world as a character, essentially.

In terms of specifics though, that’s more of a gut feeling. An image of a Space Marine, for example, could be literal in its portrayal, but that doesn’t mean it captures Warhammer 40,000. This setting is all about the nightmarish and strange, and John Blanche’s art is full of details, while still leaving room for viewers to draw in more with imagination. It’s surreal and dreamlike and great as a conceptual launching point.

FFG: What were you looking for in this cover? Were there any special concepts or imagery you wanted to capture in it?

AN: I was looking to capture the feeling of being an Inquisitor. We’ve had covers filled with action, gunfire, and explosions, and I was looking to bring other aspects of the Inquisition to the forefront with this cover. An art piece that Alex Boyd did for a past Witch Hunters codex was very inspirational, since it showed what a trial might looks like in the Imperium. It’s filled with weirdness and with beautiful texture and detail, and I wanted to bring some of that feeling into our cover.

FFG: Can you explain the process of creating this piece, from start to finish?

AN: The cover began with an art description, which the artist, Mathias Kollros, worked from when creating his original sketch: At the fore of the composition is an Inquisitor. He should be impressive, intimidating, ruthless, and heroic (in an anti-hero sort of way). He should be elaborately and lavishly equipped in well-tailored clothes and armor. He should be large in stature, but he's not a Space Marine, just a broad-shouldered, tall, muscular man. He should be armed with a bolt pistol, but he need not be holding it at the ready.

In the background, I would like to see something evocative of a hive city, down on street level, or a crowded interior, where life is abysmal and the architecture oppresses you on all sides. This universe, in general, is a terrible place to live, so the background environment should help create that mood of spiritual oppression.

Also in the background, if it works, I think we could include some secondary figures: associates of the Inquisitor and/or a heretic, strung up and captured.

An early version with added armor detail.

I’ve worked with Mathias on several projects, and we’ve gotten pretty like-minded for Warhammer 40,000 art. His initial sketch was what I was looking for, so there wasn’t much to change as it developed into the final cover.

Much more detail in foreground and background. The color palette cools. The Inquisitor gets an eyepiece.

The biggest change came after Mathias had done a close-to-final version of the Inquisitor and his surroundings. The cover went around for review, and we felt that it could push the boundaries of presentation even more. The decision was made that the cover would feature a large Inquisition “I” symbol to prominently distinguish it from the previous edition. While a great idea, this put me in a bit of a bind as I didn’t want to lose the Inquisitor.

In the end, though, we moved the Inquisitor to the back cover so we could make the image one big wrap-around cover for the book. This let us put the Inquisition symbol on the front in a really strong image. Mathias essentially painted another side to his original art to flesh out the right side of the Inquisitor. The double-page art image was filled with so many wonderful details that we kept words on the cover to a minimum, to show off the art as much as possible.

First sketch of the extension from Mathias. Inquisitor head design changes.

FFG: What items did Mathias suggest/add to the piece?

AN: The Inquisitor’s armor was all him. Mathias also suggested all the details surrounding the Inquisitor. He really gave it his all, and I feel that this piece truly stands out among Warhammer 40,000 artwork. As we developed it, I often asked him to focus on one area or another, and he filled those areas in with the wonderful, strange details that bring the image to life.

Details fill in. Note the man in the vat. He disappears in later versions.

FFG: Mathias, what can you tell us about the cover and your work on it?

MK: The story of this cover is funny, as the left side, now on the back of the book, was originally planned as the front. The added cover scene on the right gave me the opportunity to add a little twist to the story. Instead of the Inquisitor speaking judgement upon heretics, we witness an argument between various characters, maybe even the start of a rebellion or schism within the order.

I used a lot of classic Warhammer 40,000 art as a reference for this piece, especially Karl Kopinski’s work, since his portrayals of this universe are incredibly rich with details and life. Regarding the design, it needed to be gritty, dirty, uncomfortable, and dark. A key part of the Warhammer 40,000 universe is that the distinction between the "good" and "bad" guys is almost nonexistent. I wanted to depict that idea, because it’s what gives me the chills and makes this universe so intense.

Submitted final. Spot the one difference between this and the final cover!

Stand Against Heresy

Thanks Andrew and Mathias!

If you want the art from the Dark Heresy Second Edition Core Rulebook as a desktop, you can download it from the Dark Heresy Second Edition support page! Stay tuned for more articles on Dark Heresy Second Edition, and preorder your copy at your local retailer today.

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Source: The Making of an Inquisitor (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4888)

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 (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4891)

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 (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4892)