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[dropcap]O[/dropcap]h, Star Wars: The Card Game – the Fantasy Flight game, of course, not the old school Wizards of the Coast one. You’re such a lovely game with an interesting deck design concept. I love the idea of adding/removing cards in a single chunk; it simplifies your deck design process but leaves room for so many interesting interactions and choices.

But it’s sad how so many people look at you with disdain since your younger sibling came to the table.

Look at Destiny over there with it’s fancy dice, thinks it’s so good…

While I can’t hate on Destiny too much, it does contain two things which, at this point in my life, I no longer find appealing: randomized packs and randomized outcomes. Now, that’s not to say that there shouldn’t be some randomization to outcomes – after all, I play card games and ideally the cards being drawn are fairly close to random outside of tricks – but the addition of the dice outcome on top of that adds some problems for me. Because of said dice, it doesn’t matter exactly how well you play with the hand you’re dealt – bad dice rolls can still screw you over through no fault of your own and through no input from your opponent.

So it’s safe to say I never actually picked up Destiny beyond the starter decks – the mechanics of the game don’t appeal to me and, as you may have realized by now, I’m a stickler for mechanics.

So, that brings us back to Star Wars: The Card Game (which, because I feel odd typing out “The Card Game” every time, is simply going to be SWLCG going forward). This was the first of Fantasy Flight’s Living Card Games that I picked up and, despite the slow death it feels like it’s dying (even Fantasy Flight seems to be absolutely dragging it’s feet about the new cycle), I still enjoy the hell out of it. And it kind of hurts me to see how it’s being treated.

That is, of course, not to say that the game doesn’t have it’s problems. I mean, ask any long time player and it quickly becomes clear that the currently released deluxe boxes cause a balance issue that will be a pain to remedy without rotating those same boxes. The way the game works and the way decks are built compels – nay, almost forces – certain builds upon those who want to play a particular faction. Pod design has, unfortunately, lead to situations where the majority of the cards in the pod must be outstanding in order to even be remotely considered for inclusion – there’s too many near-mandatory choices competing for a very limited numbers of pod spaces in the deck.

This is the closest I could find to Yoda versus Executor…

But the game is still amazing fun. There’s a bit of abstraction going on that begs you to suspend your disbelief a bit (“Oh yeah, I’m totally blocking your giant ten kilometer spaceship with my little green muppet.”) but it happens in a way that feels interesting and fun. That headlong race against the clock as a Light Side player while the Dark Side player tries to stop what seems inevitable is an amazing bit of multiple win conditions tomfoolery that I love.

Star Wars is experiencing an incredible resurgence! And yet, somehow, here is SWLCG limping along looking like it’s headed for it’s death bed. There’s a problem in here, somewhere, that needs solving to save the game. It’s not that the game is too complicated; if you want complicated for complication’s sake, I invite you to look up Decipher’s Star Wars: Customizable Card Game from the ’90s (and possibly play it – there’s still a decent sized community of us old school players still playing over on Gemp-SWCCG).

Perhaps it’s just that there’s too many Living Card Games – not to mention all the other card games out there – to be able to sustain a long term player base for SWLCG. After all, and I won’t lie here, I find Star Wars to possibly be the weakest of the Fantasy Flight card games I currently play. While I love playing it from time to time, I never truly find myself getting the same itch I do with Netrunner where I absolutely positively have to play right this very second (of course, that might have something to do with our weekly Netrunner meetups being at a bar where I can enjoy a fine draft with my runs and I’ve come to strongly associate the game with those meetups).

Perhaps it’s simply hard to recruit in new players to an ever shrinking community – after all, if the old timers are abandoning it in favor of stupid sexy Destiny (again, I don’t hate Destiny; I just needed my Simpsons reference of the day), why should new people come in to play? I’ve seen several new people come to /r/StarWarsLCG only to be told there’s almost no activity and be directed elsewhere – I almost simply wouldn’t even look at much there, given it can be weeks between posts.

So, what’s the solution? I really don’t know. I just like to rant and ramble and then continue to give Fantasy Flight money for a game I can’t really even play because my local meta fell apart faster than Starkiller Base.  Zeroth Edition, in it’s current form, is rather new; I’d hate the have to give up on writing about one of my favourite games before I’ve really even had a chance to start.

Artwork is © Fantasy Flight Games.

The Phantom Card Game was originally published on Zeroth Edition

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It is a period of great upheaval!

…

All right, I’ll stop the Star Wars shtick before we go any further.

As some readers might have noticed, the project that was Zeroth Edition fell apart after about two months. As an experiment in what myself and a few friends could accomplish, it completely fell through. For this, I am sad.

Sad Cat is also sad.

However, instead of letting this all go to waste, I’ve decided to convert the project into something else I can work on. So I’m converting Zeroth Edition into a site about some of my hobbies – how far I go with this will depend entirely on how things go going forth. My primary focus will be discussions and postings about the various card games and tabletop games I play – covering (hopefully) news, reviews, and just general thoughts.

It’s early days for the new Zeroth Edition and I’m still deciding how things look and how they get laid out – but I hope to be fully up and running soon. Tone might shift a little bit over the next few posts as I get a handle on things but I hope to get myself stabilized soon.

So! I look forward to the future and hope you guys hang around to see where things go. Look for more content coming soon.

Episode 0: A New Start was originally published on Zeroth Edition

An extra bit for the Tumblrs~

Hey guys! So, it's coming to my attention that it's extremely difficult to have the plugin properly transfer over my posts from WordPress. Because of this, I'll likely have it stop automatically posting them (boo~!). Instead, it's very likely I'm going to start manually posting articles here, formatting them properly for Tumblr (yay~!). Hope you guys stick around here too!

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4th Edition's primary downfall is that it was marketed as mainstream Dungeons & Dragons - and that was all we got for a period of time. I like a lot of the fluff that came out during that period and even don't mind the game itself... but it didn't actually feel like D&D as I'd been playing it for fifteen years at that point. It felt more like playing MMO: the Roleplaying Game and that didn’t appeal to a lot of players of the previous editions (which, of course, gave Paizo the room to create Pathfinder). 

That and it often feels like it was created as an excuse to push miniatures on players. (Just a note: we as a group and I, as a person, played a lot of 4E. I was on both sides of the screen; I don’t mind the system but don’t find it strong enough to hold up against 3.5, Pathfinder, or 5E for the same robustness.)

do you know about open legend? would you recommend it?

Can’t say I have. I’ve played D&D 3.5 Edition, D&D 5th Edition, Mutant and Masterminds, Star Wars Saga, D20 Modern and *shivers* …..D&D 4th Edition…

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Phew. So, we’ve been playing some Only War with our gaming group up this way lately. When we started out, we created a regiment loosely based on some jokes about Canada (that’s where I’m from, anyways), turning into a sort of Space Canada... that eventually got some nice serious background going with loose references to our jokes in there.

Where we ended up was the Odawan 2nd Mobile Infantry as our regiment and, thanks to the folks at @eagleordinary, I finally had a chance to do up the colour scheme that’s been loosely in my head since we started this whole crazy business.

And here it is! It’s loosely based on the colours of the Galian military from Valkyria Chronicles with some modifications to make sense. This is a rough draft with some ideas we expanded upon literally just now - the decision was made to keep the piping off the armor, except for Sergeants who have it running vertically down the center of their right shoulder pauldron with the left serving as squad markings. Just thought we’d share! ~ Trav PS: Doing that piping by hand with a mouse was way harder than I thought it’d be. PPS: Yes, I realized after we already had the name all rigged up there was a First Nations tribe with the name; it ended up worked into the background snippets for the regiment.

#only war #imperial guard #eagle ordinary #guardsman #hammer of the emperor #only in death does duty end #for horton! for the emperor! #odawan 2nd mobile infantry #warhammer 40k #warhammer 40000

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To join our Drunken Dwarf, I present Conspiracy Commissar to get to the sci-fi side of things. The base image was found on FunnyJunk, so I’m having trouble tracking down the original artist. (And yes, I’m aware that Rick and Morty in the grim darkness of the future.)

Inspiration from /u/Pyretic87 on Reddit.

#commissar #warhammer40k #cadia #fall of cadia #conspiracy commissar #warhammer 40k #warhammer 40000 #the gathering storm #gathering storm

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So, what a year that was, eh? We did ever so much in 2016 around here, didn’t we? No, seriously - I apologize and so does the rest of the crew here. See, real life swallowed us up real good (I, myself, became a semi-stay at home watcher of a toddler who’s been a real handful).

But we’re coming out the other side and into 2017. Swearsies. While the others on the crew poke and prod the projects we had temporarily shelved, I myself am busy at work trying to get our website back up and running and making sure all our social media stuffs is good to go - including you fine folk here.

So look forward to more posts - hopefully good ones; the Drunken Dwarf seemed to be a hit this last year though as did the commentary on the Dungeons & Dragons movie.

In the meantime, have this gif of Finn being totally overwhelmed by all this.

~Trav

#zerothedition #starting over

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Oh man. I love this module so much - it brings back some good memories of my early days playing D&D. <3

~Trav

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90% of my game time comes down to this anymore - so many of my players are paranoid once they hear stories of my old games.

When your players are worried you’re about to spring a trap on them, and even though the area is totally safe, you’re just sitting there like

I love making my players nervous

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Whoops!

Last couple posts were from the wrong account. My bad. ;_; Not gonna bother correcting them in the future, I’ll just make sure I use this one going forward.

~Travio

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Just had to do this one after seeing another dwarf-type comment. =) Inspiration from /u/ Ar4er13 on Reddit.

#dwarf #elf #drunk dwarf #punching bag #rpg #role playing #D&D #dungeons and dragons #pathfinder

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Ahoy there, folks! DM Travio here. We’ve been busy people here at Zeroth Edition lately - all of us picked up contracts at the same time and life just sort of swept us away from our plans.

While the other two are still busy with work, I’ve found some free time to work on Zeroth Edition some more! Thanks to my own knowledge in various programming languages, it’s been agreed that I’m going to start my own project under the Zeroth Edition umbrella.

While I can’t exactly say what it is yet, let’s just say it’s well under way! More updates on it (and other stuff) soon.

I promise.

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A little bit of wizardy to work one inside a bag of holding, somehow, then mount that whole thing inside a portable frame with the keys able to be accessed. Congratulations, you’ve just created the keytar!

Medium characters might struggle to carry and play it - but that troll lounge singer concept works perfectly.

Now brainstorming ways to make the Piano Bard a feasible character option.

Setting the campaign entirely in saloons/concert halls? Tenser’s Floating Disc? A loyal orc retainer named ‘Keys’ to push the piano around behind the party?

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Walk without rhythm / and it won’t attract the worm.

Sandworm by Matthias Kinnigkeit

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Whenever the Chaotic Neutral player proposes a plan

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I dunno... Jeremy Irons was pretty good in...

All right, we’re done here. Let’s never watch this again.

i mean if you’re having a bad day you could always wrap yourself in the comfortable knowledge that nothing you got wrong, or will ever get wrong, will fly as wide from the mark as early 2000s hollywood trying to capture d&d

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All right! We’ve had both a dungeon and a dragon 3 minutes, 30 seconds into the film. We can all go home now, we saw what we came to see.

#dungeons & dragons #dungeons and dragons #show's over folks #dungeon #dragon #movie

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Jace has always been one of my favourite characters in Magic, mostly from a design standpoint and a certain love of mindmages (I’ll confess, during my days of playing I primarily played blue).

I’ve considered making a roleplay character flavoured after him a few times - no one ever seems to want to allow psionics though.

Comparative Analysis

TCG Illustration Year: 2015 Client: Wizards of the Coast Project: Magic: The Gathering Art Direction: Jeremy Jarvis

Will Murai

#jace #magic #mindsculptor