Cantrip Games Journal – Week 4

Games covered this week: Final Fantasy 6, Wordscapes (mobile), World Wide Wrestling (PnP RPG), and Hearthstone.

Cantrip Games Journal – Week 2

Welcome to week 2 of my games journal. This week I played a larger number of games, for a little bit of time. The first two are prototype card games I played at a local game design meetup. Then there’s a bunch of video games. Last, a recommendation for an entertaining YouTube video series about one of my favorite games, Final Fantasy VII.

Cantrip Games Journal – Week 1

I’m going to try something different for my blog. One of my goals for this year was to update at least once a week. So far, I’ve been keeping up, but I’ve been having difficulty with writing on interesting topics each week. Coming up with ideas for posts is easy, but I’d like to dedicate more time to fleshing them out. To compromise I’ve decided to make my weekly updates quick journal entries about each game I’ve played throughout the week. This is a pretty simple format that should be easy to keep up with, while also allowing me to put down quick thoughts on games as I play them (traditionally I’ve felt the need to “complete” a game before I express my total thoughts on them). I still plan on posting more focused essays, but they will be more sporadic, but hopefully longer and of higher quality. Without further ado, here is the first entry of my “Games Journal”.

Top 5 Coolest Hearthstone Cards from Witchwood

The newest expansion for Hearthstone, Witchwood, has been out for a little while now. In the past I did my card picks right before the set came out, but when I reviewed them the cards tended to be flashy clunkers. This time I decided to mess around with the new cards awhile before making any picks. This isn’t to say these cards may be unimpressive in the long run, they are pretty interesting. Generally I lean towards cards that open up new archetypes and gameplay options, which there are quite a few of in this expansion. Click on for my top 5 coolest cards from Witchwood!

Solving the Mana Problem

In my mind the biggest issue with MTG (other than cost) is its mana system. Anyone who has played MTG can tell you about the many times they’ve lost games because they either drew too much, or not enough mana. This problem is so old and common it has a name known by both its players and developers as Mana Screw. While this problem can be managed to a certain extend by good deckbuilding and mulligan practices, there is nothing preventing it from rearing its ugly head in any given game of magic.

100 Word Game Review x 2 (Lisa & Hearthstone)

Lisa the Painful, Score: 7 ~ (PC) 

Hilarious and heartbreaking.

5 Coolest Card Designs in Knights of the Frozen Throne

Knights of the Frozen Throne, the latest hearthstone expansion, launches today.  This set looks unlike any other set we’ve had in hearthstone.  In many ways, it reminds me more of an MTG expansion (which makes sense as they’ve brought on an ex-MTG designer for this expansion).  There are many large and interesting ideas, as well as more counter play options.  For this list, I’ve chosen the 5 cards that stood out most to me while perusing spoiler lists.   Each of these cards I think will add interesting decisions during gameplay and deckbuilding to Hearthstone.  This list isn’t a ranking of how powerful I think these cards will be.  But I do think each is strong enough to see some play, otherwise they wouldn’t be adding interesting decisions to the game.

The 5 most interesting Journey to Un’goro cards

In honor of Journey to Un’goro launch day I decided to take a look at the 5 cards I’m most excited about.  I do not think these cards are necessarily the best or most powerful within the set, just ones I think will lead to interesting gameplay.

It’s too bad this cool purple T-Rex didn’t get a card in the set.

Games Update

Games I played during the week of 1/22 – 1/28/2017