WoW TCG Servants of the Betrayer Review

The Servants of the Betrayer [Amazon, Funagain] release marks 5th set of the solidified World of Warcraft trading card game. No longer the new kid on the block, Upper Deck now has a foundation of cards and mechanics to work with, and as the middle set release in the Outland series (between March of the Legion and The Hunt for Illidan coming later this year) the Servants of the Betrayer has the potential to both solidify the style of the game, the set, and steer the entire franchise in new directions at the same time.

But does it pull it off?

The Setting
This set release includes a standard lot of heroes, each sports new flip powers, specialization the works -- as is the norm. But Upper Deck found the story of Outland - the shattered and floating home world of the orcs that the current detailed focus is the World of Warcraft MMORPG - needed an extra oomph beyond the stock set of heroes.

Outland is ruled over by a particular bitchy demon named Illidan Stormrage who's nicknamed The Betrayer, hence the name of this expansion release. Outland's story is saturated with backstabbers, traitors, and unsavories, and Upper Deck aimed to bring that feeling home in the WoW TCG version of this setting.

The Traitors
Enter the traitor heroes - each sport alternate storylines and reciprocal 'atttitudes' in more aggressive flip powers compared to their standard hero counterparts. Take the horde hero #26 Vor'na the Disciplined for instance, who possesses the pretty straight forward frost-mage flip abillity: 3 -> Allies Can't Attack this Turn. Compare the flip ability to to her far more destructive Traitor counterpart #35 Vor'na the Wretched: 3-> At the end of this turn, the player whose turn it is destroys each ally in his party that neither attacked nor entered play this turn. You can see how that's a bit more of a game changer. There are also class specific traitor-hero=only ability cards, which are quite powerful for their cost, and some traitor only allies to boot. It's a regular cornucopia or treacherous destruction.

So what's the drawback? Well Traitor heroes can't play any specialization cards, because their specialization is - in fact - "Traitor". That means Vor'na the Wretched can't play any Fire Specialization Hero Required, nor Frost, nor Arcane. But considering the low cost traitor-only abilities, this isn't such a bad deal. And for this set only - at least - it might be worth deconstructing some of your older decks and taking the Traitor plunge. They're fun, evil, and a breathe of fresh air.

But Upper Deck has also turned the sands of time against these new mechanics. From what we understand, the Servants of the Betrayer expansion will be the only release that supports Traitor cards. With the innumerable onslaught of future ability cards tied to the standard three specializations of heroes, the Traitor heores will become more and more obsolete. We'll surely give this portion of our collection a sarcastic smirk in a few years, and feel like we've been slightly gypped.

You can read more about the design philosophies of the Traitor heroes in the WoW TCG Upper Deck Feature Preview "Servants of the Betrayer Previews: Acts of Betrayal"

The Aldor and Scryer Save the Day
Thanfkully the Inspire and Sabotage mechanics of this cycle (March of the Legion, Servants of the Betrayer and The Hunt for Illidan) get a nice boost from the Betrayer set release. The set includes a lot of tap powers to aid the growing fleet of powerful Aldor Inspire cards (who untap particular types of cards at the begining of every turn), and it's in this area where toying with game mechanics is really starting to shine in the budding WoW TCG franchise.

Meanwhile the Scryer Sabotage cards (which tap or destroyer enemy abilities, armor, or allies instead of fighting them in combat) click the deviousness notch up to 11. Aside from being a more diverse collection, in Betrayer some of the rare / epic cards Scryer cards start messing with new areas of the game, like Spymaster Thalodien's ability to sabotage a player's deck. And if you're lucky enough to get Magistrix Larynna into play near the end game, then it'll make your the Aldor Inspire knuckleheads seem like Disney characters.

Over all we're very please with where the Aldor and Scryer factions have gone in this set, so much so that we actually think of the Traitor heroes as a sideshow. We can't wait to see whats in store for these factions when the Hunt for Illidan brings it altogether.

The Supporting Cast
While the warring Scryer and Aldor certainly have a place in our decks, the standard Horde and Alliance allies still form the major ranks. It also seemed like allies have continued to band togheter around common damage types, at least for the casters. March of the legion had the fiery Hoxie Mettlemelt, and this set continues with:

• Barous the Storm Baron: Nature allies in your party have [tap] -> This ally deals nature damage equal to its ATK, divided as you choose, to any number of target allies."
• Lunen the Moon Baron: Arcane allies in your party have [tap]->Draw a card
• Roke the Ice Baron: Elusive; Frost allies in your party have " Target ally can't attack this turn.
• Lifemistress Tanagra: Nature allies in your party have +1 ATK for each other Nature ally in your party.

We love this sort of stuff. There have been few reason to make themed decks, other than the fact that attacking someone with legions of gnomes can be good fun. Finally Upper Deck gives us good-reason to start throwing in hordes of fiery, arcane, or naturalist bad boys who rally behind particular captains. Sure, they're rare, but they can make deck building far more entertaining after having slugged it out against decks usually defined by the class of hero than anything else.

Some Complaints
Aside from the Traitors being a one-trick pony, we do have a major complaint about the game. It doesn't stem from the art, or balance, or any other weakness of content. One could even label our complaint as bickering.

To us the problem apparently stems from straightforward laziness of Upper Deck's editing staff. The words on the cards are far too confusing for their own good in some cases, and the rules are so vague that sometimes it feels as though they want your own group to play with their own creative interpretation of the rules. Unfortunately, considering that the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game is a tournament game, this is simply not the case.

No, Upper Deck just doesn't try enough to iron stuff out. And it's inexecusable at this stage in the game's lifespan. Take Unbalance's description, for instance:

Unbalance: Exhaust all opposing heroes and allies. If you have an equipment, each of them can't ready during its controller's next ready step.

Turning a critical eye to this, the word "them" in the second sentence refers to the subject of that sentence, which is the "equipment". In a strict interpretation of this card, the rogue's weapons would remain tapped instead of readied. But the intention was that the allies do not untap, but the Upper Deck rules team was out having beers instead of cleaning up their rhetoric.

Likewise, Titan's Grip doesn't mention that you can have a one-handed and two-handed weapon - which you can according to the FAQ. In fact, the card's wording is specific in the details on offhanded item, but since two handed + one handed isn't mentioned at all, the card's lazy wording implies that it's illegal.

Another needlessly confusing card description includes the minimalist Anchorite Fareena, where only valid attachments can be brought over (ie: you can't transfer a weapon attachment to Anchorite Fareena). Simply-put - there's gobs more room on that card to be a bit more detailed, but Upper Deck wanted to take longer lunches.

Conclusion
Servants of the Betrayer is a solid release. It's full of nice cards that yet again adds to the game without making too many older cards and mechanics obsolete. And it does this over 8 well-balanced classes, which is definitely nothing to sneeze at. The cards of this set also rejuvenate many other have been gathering dust in the back of your collection; playing well in new combos and enhancements that we're there before.

While the Traitors might not be long lived, they're a fun addition of focused aggressive tactics for a nice change of pace. We can't wait for the final cap to be put into place on this set later this year to see how everything rounds out.

We had some substantial questions on the direction that the WoW TCG was going. It seemed like the title might stagnate. But that was before the March of the Legion release, and more importantly the Servants of the Betrayer release. Now we have high hopes once again.

Gisborne: a Eurogame Board Game to Avoid

We tend to ignore the bad releases, and as 'Critical Gamers' one could superficially complain that we're doing our readers a disservice. In reality we cull all of the crappy games you shouldn't play, silently dismissing them to the bottom of the stack.

\We hope to start talking a more proactive approach to steering you way from games.

We haven't played Gisborne (Clementoni, 3-5 players, 40 minutes) ourselves, but we can smell a frustrating and unimpressive experience when we see it coming. We've done some research and what we've found just ain't up to snuff to win moneys from our gaming budget. And we thought we should warn you.

Gisborne is a game in which players explore New Zealand during the colonial age, and though isn't necessarily a game you should completely avoid, it sports some glaring faults. The over engineered components - once sloppily assembled - don't easily fit back into their box without a heavy sigh of dismantling, and the rules take a few gaming runs to go through to fully understand. Finally, the game is only a slight advancement on the innovation scale. In the end, this is not the most approachable Eurogame - a genre of games that are meant to be approachable - so we highly suggest that you spend your money elsewhere. It seems that this game can only be recommended to Eurogame fanatics who want to stay on top of the genre.

Here's an entertaining critical look from a Board Game News' review, specifically about the game's pieces and woefully inferior packaging techniques:

"Ideally, you'll convince a mortal enemy to open the game box. You'll invite him over under the pretense that you want to settle your differences, that you want to limit future confrontation to family board games and not acid-filled scarfs and showers booby-trapped with razor wire. You'll wave towards the box in a friendly manner, inviting him to open it, while you fetch him a drink from the kitchen. Will a Merlot be good? Whatever he asks for, though, you can put it out of mind and pour a celebratory glass for yourself since his doom is near thanks to this lethal chunk of cardboard... " - W. Eric Martin's Review on BGN

Overly critical? Perhaps. In the hopes of being somewhat impartial (despite this article's name), we'll end this story with some links for you to research the game for yourself:

• Tom Vasel's Postivie Review on RPG.net
• W. Eric Martin Biting Review on Board Game News
• Board Game Geek's Gisborne resource page

Last Night On Earth - Avioid The Mansion Scenario

Last night we sat down to play the Last Night on Earth - our favorite zombie board game to date - and something bad happened: we didn't have fun. Why? We had the unfortunate event of randomly drawing the Manor House scenario, something that we'll ensure won't happen again.

This scenario pits 4 nimble axe toting heroes against 16 shuffling zombies. The goal: prevent the sea of zombies appearing on the cusp of the board from reaching the mansion in the middle. If 9 zombies set foot indoors before the sun rises (some 15 turns) then it's lights out. Game over. You lose.

It all boils down to this: there are just too many zombies to fight, and there ain't no way to kill 'em all. As soon as one dies, another appears on the edge of the board, walking in the dead Z's footsteps. While this is great for theme, it stinks for balance. Due to the combat mechanics of the game - a hero has to roll doubles on two dice to kill a zombie - the heroes quickly become flooded with beaten zombies, but not killed zombies. Their only chance is to pick up some key weapons drawn from a random deck, but they have to reach the fringes of the map to successfully search for weapons, knives, and supplies. Spending the time moving and searching means even more zombies make their way to the Mansion, setting up forts with kitchen tables and couch cushions.

Sure the heroes can use their bodies to attract zombies away from the Mansion (zombies have to move towards adjacent heroes), but they soon fall due to the mass mob and the nature of the fight dice. And once it's down to three heroes things just start falling apart fast. Even the Zombie player was having a pretty lame experience , and felt sorrowful as he tore the intestines out of the heroes and wore them as hats.

It got to the point that we thought we had done something wrong, or played the game in some stupid way, so our group played it again; the heroes lost 7 turns in the second time around, too.

We've had lots of great times with Last Night on Earth, and we hope it remains a mainstay in future, including the Growing Hunger Expansion coming in the next few months. But we'll be sure to ditch the Mansion House scenario when it comes around next time.

Wits and Wagers Review

Self-captioned “Trivia for people who don’t know stuff,” publisher North Star Games’ Wits and Wagers [Amazon, Funagain] attempts to mix things up the trivia genre. Instead of players straight-up answering stock trivia questions on pop culture or mainstream history, the questions hit the edge obscurity requiring players to ballpark a guess at the answer. This increased challenge is balanced by betting phase where people stake points on which guess is the closest answer without it going over (every answer is a numerical value). This layer of abstraction keeps everyone involved and entertained throughout, and makes Wits and Wagers a great addition to anyone’s stack of party or trivia games. In fact, it conrasts some older titles in the trivia game genre, making them seem like the dinosaurs that they are.

Yes Trivial Pursuit, you dice tossing and inconsistently challenging spawn of ancient early-1980s gaming culture, we’re looking at you.

Slightly tarnished by the inclusion of some cheap components, Wits & Wagers’ gameplay shines through its foggy exterior to deliver a fast paced and most importantly fun 20-30 minute trivia party game that's well worth your time.

Read on for a more detailed breakdown in our full review.

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Top 5 Halloween Games 2007

The weather just turned all overcast and rainy up here in New England, and when darkness fell as the sun set at about 3:30 pm it suddenly struck us: Halloween is just a few weeks away. Something about the cold rainy weather of autumn complements the theme of fighting undead beasties, and that’s a-ok with us. Our game nights for the next few weeks just went into zombie / demony / vampire slaying-fest mode.

Here is our select top 5 games to throw down for the 2007 Halloween season. Some of our choices might surprise you, but hey toughen up -- it’s freakin’ Halloween ya pansy. Close your eyes and stick your hand in this bowl of eyeballs, or even better read on to see our selection for this year.

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WoW TCG Damage Dice Review

We didn’t know what we should have expected from the WoW TCG Damage Dice [Amazon, Funagain], and Upper Deck accessory product that's a sideshow to the formidable WoW TCG. After all – it’s just a box, with dice in it. It’s a Box O’ Dice. Pure and simple. But to be honest, we thought it would be something at least a little bit cooler that it actually is.

The Good Points
It’s a handy little dice carrier that’s not too large and matches the artistic theme of the game, bringing some of the World of Warcraft cartoony art style alive on your table top. It really is a pretty slick looking treasure chest model... when viewed from afar*. The dice set contains both blue and red dice for assigning damage to your alliance or horde allies, and two 10-sided dice (one 1-10, the other 10-100) which work well in tandem to assign damage to your hero. In other words, the product does what it says it does without any major usability gripes.

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Murdero Review

We don’t usually review many card games so we weren’t quite sure what to expect when the title Murdero [Official, Amazon UK] - a murder mystery themed game from D'Avekki Studios – showed up on our doorstep in its bright white box. Our immediate concern was that we’d all be wearing funny hats, drinking scotch, and pointing Deringers at each other across the table. And then the night would end with us talking with old-timey accents as we accused the woman with the purple boa of the premeditated murder of her rich, drunken, and estranged twin brother / husband.

But then we cracked it open and played a few rounds and lo and behold! Murdero is actually a really entertaining card game, and there’s absolutely no roleplay nor feather boas required. Sorry Russell... sorta. Checkout this brief preview movie from the game's designers, then read-on for our impressions.

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WoW TCG Fires of Outland Review

The World of Warcraft Trading Card Game set expansion Fires of Outland [Amazon, Funagain] was released a few weeks ago, and after the hangover of opening boxes upon boxes of new cards we’ve had ample time to put the release through its paces.

To sum it up: it’s fun, but how well does the game stack up against the other sets? And does Fires of Outland introduce enough new elements to the Heroes of Azeroth and Through the Dark Portal framework to warrant your hard-earned gaming cash?

Truth is that we’ve had some mixed feelings about it all. Read on to find are conclusions on the Fires of Outland’s Art, Gameplay, and the thoughts on the future of the WoW TCG in general.

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World of Warcraft TCG Molten Core Review

In our review of the World of Warcraft TCG: Molten Core Raid Deck [Amazon,Shopzilla] we offer our final impressions on the second - in what we hope to be a long line - of cooperative WoW TCG experiences out of Upper Decks lab of mad scientist .

Of course this article serves as the final act in a tree part series. Our step-by-steb impressions from the two prior Molten Core articles: WoW TCG Molten Core Raid Deck Hands On Part 1 and Part 2 walked through the extended raid experience of ten boss battles in a row. Today we offer some insights and reflections on the good bits, the bad bits, and some suggestions on how you might sculpt the raid to get thoe m most challenging and entetaining experience for your WoW TCG group.

The only question we still have in our group of five, is "what's next?"

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WoW TCG Molten Core Raid Deck Hands On Part 2

When sat down and talked about running through the World of Warcraft TCG Molten Core Raid Deck [Amazon,Shopzilla], with a party of five heroes, we unanimously decided to make a true challenge of it and go for the entire raid experience. That meant downing each of the raid's 10 bosses in a row, without rest, or heals, or reshuffling of decks. We were going to tackle this thing like a Forza 2 Endurance Race.

But the first night [part one] went much slower than anticipated. We were thinking the whole raid would be a three hour affair. But with five of us playing heroes, and a sixth pulling the strings of the Molten Core bosses and cannon fodder, the night stretched, and stretched, and stretched on and on, until we decided to call it quits 3.5 hours at 11:00pm. So we packed things up on the fifth boss - Baron Geddon.

We reconvened a week later for the final push. The group sat down, cracked some beers, setup the board as it was before, and in forced march sitting we put our heads down and pushed through the five remaining bosses: Shazzrah, Sulfuron Harbringer, Golemagg, Majordomo Executus, and the king of the first pits Ragnaros. Here's how evening two went down from th e perspective of Russ - the Critical Gamer who we placed in charge of running the Molten Core raid experience.

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Catan Xbox Live Impressions

Catan officially launched on Wednesday. We didn't write a story then because we figured that our previous coverage from earlier this week already kept you on top of the news. Call us self-critical but we didn't want to sound like a loudspeaker bullhorn pumping out the consumer propaganda. At least not until we had a chance to wrap our hands around the game so we could give you our impressions, and let you know if it’s worth the 800 points on Xbox Live (~ $10.00 US).

The Good and the Bad
Catan Live is a great translation of the classic board game. Those who have played the Settlers of Catan enough to know the details of the game backwards and forwards will be very much satisfied with their play experience on Catan Live. However, those players who are unfamiliar with the Settlers of Catan board game might need to a bit of convincing to see where all the excitement is at.

This isn't really because Catan has any obvious shortcomings that shoot up a red flare of FAILURE. However as the first release of a board game on the Live service, this title might have a tough time luring a console gaming audience into the world of Catan – where most of the excitement comes from the outcome of a pair of dice - when many of the Xbox Livites thirst after explosions, chainsaw kills, gibs and car wrecks. Even worse, it's a bit confusing to determine exactly what's going in a game of Catan given the game's UI - the graphical presentation of card trades and gathered resources is done well, but it fades very quickly in order to keep the game moving at a good pace.

We think players new to board gaming like to learn by observation, keeping track of other players behave in certain situations, and that's pretty difficult to do for a beginner of Catan on Xbox Live. We could see how players new to Eurogames - who might be itching for any reason to dismiss the game - could get confused and lose interest almost immediately due the game's hasty presentation.

It took a while even for us to get used to what was going on. For instance, in a face to face game, there’s a part of each Settlers when people call out which resources they gathered after a dice roll. We’ve become used to this being a good thirty second production where excitedly demand their well-earned resource cards, etc. The audible and physical presence of the in-person Settlers makes each turn an event, and thus easy to remember ‘who got what?’ even from a few turns ago. But in the console Catan game, the whole resource awarding phase ends in about 3 seconds, and it takes a few games to realize that you’re not paying enough attention to a very important part of the game that almost seems to be brushed aside for the sake of efficiency.

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World of Warcraft TCG Onyxia Raid Deck Review

The Onyxia's Lair Raid Deck [Amazon,ToyWiz] for the World of Warcraft Trading Card Came has shipped to stores, and most retailers have finally received enough copes to meet the preorder demand. We picked up our copy a few days ago, and we were like kids on Christmas morning. Immediately we tore into to our copy and ran the game through its paces.

The cards themselves are gorgeous - with some of the best artwork in the game to date. The deck comes in carrying-case that matches the same design as the World of Warcraft TCG Starter Decks [Amazon,ToyWiz]. The black dragon Onyxia is represented by an over sized Hero card, just as those that shipped with the starter decks, and her deck of cards is the same size as the normal WoW playing cards. But they sport a gold framing around them because they're special.

Now - if we were to sum up our experience in two concise words which lack any sort of elaborate details, then we'd have to say: "too easy".

Fortunately we're not dismissive jerks. We feel the game merits a far more detailed and constructive criticism than that, and we're more than willing to break-down our experience a bit more. Perhaps whatever you read here can make the Onyxia's experience a bit more challenging for yourselves than it was for us, and hopefully a bit more fun.

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World of Warcraft TCG Review

We had our first WoW Trading Card Game rumble last night. Five of us grabbed a Starter Deck [Amazon] and 3 extra Booster Packs [Amazon] each. Five hours later, in the dark hours of the morning, we reluctantly decided to call it a night. At 1:15 am - on a weeknight - we went our separate ways to sleep off the giddiness, but as early as 1:50 am some of us were already emailing each other with exciting WoW possibilities. No Joke.

Was all the hype for the World of Warcraft TCG worth the wait? You bet your sweat bippy it was.

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Review: "Ticket to Ride: Marklin"

Ticket to Ride: Marklin [Amazon,Funagain] is hands-down fantastic. Days of Wonder once again shows that they can produce a well balanced, high-quality title with staying power. Don't let the happy train model cover fool you - although this is a game chalk-full of content geared toward train enthusiasts (Marklin is gigantic train hobbyist company out of Germany), it is absolutely not a niche game. Ticket to Ride: Marklin has enough depth and replayability for the strategy gamer in you, and yet is light and simple enough that families shouldn't feel at all nervous about throwing its board down onto the dining room table to play a round with their kids.

In Marklin players collect and play train cards of various colors to construct a strong rail network connecting the towns of Germany. Then, once their empire is established, players can send passengers along their network, collecting points for each city they visit on their way. The turns are fast. The game is colorful, dynamic, and most importantly - a blast to play. Here's why:

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