Descendants of Isha

Seeing as this has been out a while and I haven't done this yet.  seems like I should.

Baharroth
Solid stats for a warlord, 2/6 is fairly standard.  And Mobile.  Bloody mobile.  Turns out if you are mobile you become a giant pain in the ass to kill.  But it's not a game changer.  it does let you bait that lose or get doomed play easier though.  Commit to plant 1.  if your opponent does, just mobile out to planet 2 and doom them next turn.  They will be sad.

Baharroths Hawks
Slightly too expensive for my taste, but those two command icons are very tasty.  And being mobile are almost unsnipeable.  The real juice is that +3 atk when with Baharroth.  A 2/3/2 for 3 suddenly becomes value. 4/5

Banner of the Ashen Sky
1 cost which is fine for it's effect.  After a unit moves, give it some extra attack. The sad thing is that it obviously gives your opponent a chance to do something about said unit before it attacks.  2/5

The Shining Blade
This puzzles me.  It could be fun, sniping things on adjacent planets, but here's the issue.  There has to be an enemy unit at your planet to even get a chance to declare an attack.  So you are giving up the chance to eliminate an immediate threat to go for something else.  I guess it's fine if you facing a rogue trader or something and getting the chance to put free damage on a warlord, but still.  Maybe if the blade gave some sort of +1 atk...   Also if you attach to this to Baharroth and he gets bloodied, it will go in the bin as he isn't mobile anymore. 1/5

Cry of the Wind
Move guys more.  Pretty tasty with death from above as that super cheap unit gets to where you want it quicker.  Offers some amazing tactical benefits.  4/5

Urien Rakarth
Solid body.  Makes tortures events 1 cheaper, makes all other event 1 more expensive.  The biggest issue with this guy is Archons Terror.  it;s the best DE event by far, and making it 3 cost hurts.  But tortures and just plain annoying.  And rapid firing them out for cheap is such fun.  Obviously if you run Urien you pack your deck with Tortures.  And laugh as the only faction than stop the pain is Eldar.  Also 8 card starting hand, nice.

Twisted Wracks
Even if you never use their ability to ready by discarding tortures, you have a really good 3/3.  No hammers is an issue, but when push comes to shove these guys could murder someone.  I'm fine with only having 2 of them as well. 4/5

Rakarth's Expermentations
Well it's free!  Assuming you've not done something stupid and got your warlord bloodied.  And that choice of discard or take a damage is actually a lot harder than it seems.  You can't give up free damage on your warlord in this game, but you also need cards to win, argh. 5/5

Ichor gauntlet
Double pain.  Copying events (for free!) is so very tasty.Ok you exhaust your warlord, but if it means I get two of your best units out the discard from one Soul Seizure, I am ok with that. 4/5

Uriens Oubliette
Information is power, and over time you will see good portion of what goes into your opponents hand.  Not to mention you can just stop them seeing all their good cards.  5/5

Space Wolves Predator
Stupidly expensive.  it does have a 3 command though, and a 5/5 body.  The reaction text states you're opponent can't commit to the planet you deploy this unit at.  That's a huge reaction, but sooo expensive.  Interesting rules query, if there is 3 planets left, and you deploy 1 to each planet, what happens?  Anyway too expensive 2/5

Primal Howl
It's free, it gets you cards and it has two shields.  the only bad thing about this card is finding room for it in current space marine decks what with drop pod, indomitable and crushing blow being amazing.  5/5

Hallow Librarium
So can exhaust this to give a unit -2atk, but only if your opponent warlord isn't there.  and 2 cost to play in the first place.  Not all that good.  1/5

Big Shoota Battlewagon
Rather pricey but it does have things going for it.  With Nazdreg it's got Brutal.  So there is that.  When it dies you get some free snotlings.  Depending on how it pans out, that could be a free 4 damage.  When compared to goff nob, you pay 1 more for 2 less attack, the command icon and the free snotlings.  Probably not worth playing in Zogwort?  3/5

Made ta Fight
Free damage, but not to warlords  But hey, they kill your goff nob, and you get to more than likely kill something in response.  gets round indomitable and that's always good.  4/5

Squiggify
If you see a lot of super powerful units this could be good.   Bear in mind, if you want to win the battle, you still have to kill the damn thing.  The real value is blanking text boxes.  Maxos is a juicy target, as is Honored librarian, anything with Area Effect.  So go at it. Orks keeping getting useful cards and are still not great.   Odd that.  3/5

Ancient keeper of Secrets
This costs the same as the predator in this pack.  it's still too expensive, but Chaos have ways of discounting it.  Plus the ability to ready it by feeding it cultists is scary.  the only problem is getting all those cultists. 3/5

Slaanesh's Tempation.
Really really hate this card.  it's more annoying that good, but for that 4/5

Doom Siren
Kill lots of things.  However there is an issue currently.  Chaos have two things with Area Affect, Bloodletters (who can't use this) and Blight Grenades.  So you have to have the grenades to do this.  That's a two (three if you count the nurgle unit requirement) card combo, that makes it quite weak.  2/5

Shrieking Basilisk
It's rather tasty with ranged.  I would much rather it destroyed the support rather than exhaust it.  But ho hum.  2/5

The Emperor's Warrant
Oh this card, this card is fantastic.  exhaust and ENEMY unit, and it deals it's damage to another unit.  ok so the enemy warlord has to absent.  But seriously.  it's not printed, so a fully damaged enemy Killa Kan could wreak havoc.  4/5

Vior'la Warrior Cadre
Fulfil the same role as stingwing Swarm, Gain +1atk but you lose permanent Ranged and only get it when with an Ethereal.  Obviously only good with Aun'Shi, and I would rate them above the stingwings for him.  Otherwise, stingwings every time.  3/5

For the Tau'Va
Shadowsun gets some love.  Exhaust your warlord to ready 1 OR MORE units with attachments.  Go go ranged gunline.  5/5

Inquisitor Caius Wroth
Good value, and the cool meta defining reaction of making each player discard down to 4 cards in hand.  Eldar prob won't run him, neither will urien.  But otherwise go nuts  5/5

UKGE

This weekend was the UK games expo.   Which I attended primarily for the UK conquest nationals.  I finished 2 wons 4 losses, so did not do well all told.  But it was a fantastic weekend.
A run down.

Friday.  First day of the event.  Not much to do except shop and find space for open gaming.  Didn't buy anything,  but did play some games.  

Fresco is a worker placement game.  Where you are all artists attempting to restore a Fresco(!)  The interesting part that you assign all your workers in secret.  And then all workers go out in turn order.  So you could well waste actions if all the limited spaces are filled before you get your go.  You need to buy and mix paints in order to buy tiles from the Fresco for points.  We all finished our first game within 7 points of each other.  We took that as a good sign of balance.

Castles of Mad King Ludwig is tile laying game by the same guys who did Suburbia.  And it plays much the same, except now you are building a castle.  The main difference is that rather than the Power grid like set price order, and everything gets cheaper as it goes on, in this the first player sets the prices. And all money used to buy tiles is paid to him.  But they pick last, and pay the bank when they buy a tile.  Then at the end of the round all remaining tiles get 1 currency on them, which is collected if you buy that tile, and new tiles are drawn.  Being rooms the end result tends to look better than the hexes of Suburbia.  I did as badly at this as I do in suburbia.

Love Letter is a very light game of basically guessing what your opponents have in their hand.  You always have one, each turn you draw a card, then discard one for it's effect.  The cards have various powers, and your aim is to eliminate your opponent, or have the highest card at the end of the round.  The High cards tend to have negative effects (if you ever discard the highest card for instance, you lose) and the low cards have the better powers (the Guard (value 1) can guess an opponents card, if you are right they are gone).  Very light, good fun.  We never finished.  We all finished with one round vitory (you need 4).  I won the first round, so I will take that as a win.

Dead of Winter is a coop(ish) game of surviving a zombie apocalypse in the middle of winter.  The catch is everyone has their own secret objective, and one of them may well be a traitor though not always.  Each game had an objective for the colony which must be completed if you are not a traitor.  This needs to be done before the morale reaches 0 (the game end condition)  If you are traitor you are attempting to get that morale track to 0.  But also each secret objective (traitor or otherwise) will have a second condition on it, that must be completed if that player wishes to win.  And that condition may or may not be wholly compatible with the rest of the group.  So each turn you are attempting to resolve a crisis (playing cards into a facedown pile the crisis needs x icons to overcome.  Any non matching count negative) , control the zombies and gather cards representing weapons, food (the colony needs feeding) or medicines.  Two intersting thing, if you travel, or go out to kill a zombie, you must roll the dreaded exposure die.  It has a 50/50 chance of doing nothing.  It could just ause a wound.  Or 1/12 of your surivior being bitten which is death and a horrible snowball effect.  Another note is the event cards.  One is drawn by the player the current players right.  They have a secret trigger, and if the condition is met by the current player during his turn, the event occurs.  We all died.


Seasons is a sor tof card game where you are just trying to play out cards from your hand in order to accumulate points.  To pay for these cards you are gathering energy and crystals, which you can get from the the dice that are told each turn.  Each round is a year, and each year has 4 seasons.  Each turn the dice for the current season is rolled.  Each player takes turns choosing a die, which may give them energy, a summon charge (a counter of how many cards you can have in play) or the ability to turn energy into crystals (a currency, but also victory points). Energy is more abundant in some seasons, and totally unavailable in others.  So you are just playing out cards attemtoing to get an engione going to get points.  It's ok, but player interaction is very minimal.  Very multiplayer solitaire.  me and Barry played this, and we tied.  On points and on the tiebreaker.

Harbour is a very light euro game, where are collecting goods and shipping them to buy buidings.  Each turn you put your worker in an unoccupied building and use it's action.  If a player owns said building, you must pay them a good to use it.  Some actions gain you goods. Some may let you ship.  Their is no currency in this game.  You ship what you have according to the market, and then buy a building.  In order to ship you need to have whatever the market says.  for example, meat may be worth 2$ and you have to ship 2+, Stone may be $5 but you need 5+.  if you ship a good, you ship all of it no matter how much you have.  For example if I had 6 meat and shipped in the above example I would only get $2 but lose all my meat.  Each building has a victory point value, first to 4 buildings triggers final round and highest combined building value wins.  I won(!)

Legendary Encounters Alien.  Been tempted by this for some time, but seems too pricey for what it is.  It's basically the same game as Legendary, the marvel deck building game.  But with some differences.  I can't explain it all here, but we failed miserabley.  It's hard.

 Saturday was all Conquest.  Result was at the start.   My first game was a win.  the guy I beat then went on to win all his games the rest of the day.  I never stayed for the finals.  But I know he made at least top 4.  It then went horribly wrong.  faced Kith, Cato, Baharroth, Shadowsun, Zaruthur and a Ragnar.  My two wins was vs Kith and Ragnar.  Turns out you can bully Ragnar with an Armorbane sword and crushing blows.  I never had cards vs Kith, but it didn't matter too much.  I just threw units on the planets that got me wins the quickest, and I guess he never saw a doom to punish my warlord train.

Sunday was all Netrunner.  Now I haven't played Netrunner for well over a year and half, maybe 2.  I just entered for giggles.  Net decked some decks from wins from whatever the last pack I bought was and turned up.  I did much better than I thought.  My corp deck went 4-2. Runner did badly, 1-5.  Some real fun games though.  I had to fight hard for those corp wins, just installing things everywhere and hoping the agenda's didn't get run.  My best game was vs a Leela Pattel.  Was so close, but a last turn agenda score left my hq open which he hit mercilessly and scoring a win.  I did get a Ken 'Express' Tenma which was the worlds partipation promo.  Now Netrunner is hugely popular.  And the Americans haven't had their nationals yet.  I think ours might be the first.  This card may well be on ebay.  Already seeing it on there for £90+