Month: January 2026

January 2026 retrospective

Hey everybody,
It’s been a fantastic month, I have to say that right now! Traditionally, of course, January lasts for about seventeen weeks, and while I usually don’t mind it all that much, I’ve really tried to make the most of it this time around. We’ve had hobby goals and gaming goals, we’ve seen the beginnings of Star Wars Legion, and more. Let’s dive in to see what January was all about…

Lord of the Rings LCG

To begin, I think it’s fairly safe to say that January 2026 has been my Lord of the Rings LCG renaissance. I have been a fan of this game since 2011, but due to how difficult it became fairly early on, I definitely slowed my pace of actually playing it. I’ve been looking at my stats, because I love a good stat, and I can see that already, the amount of games played so far in 2026 eclipses the totals for the previous two years. In just one month! I think it definitely helps that I have been in the mood for this game, and that is what has brought it back to the table for me – all too often, it feels like I try to play games to get the numbers up, or because I feel like I should play it to get my money’s worth from it, but it’s not really an enjoyable time. With a game like Lord of the Rings LCG, where the deckbuilding is so key to how much you enjoy the scenario, I feel like you really need to be keyed-in to what you’re playing, and it’s hard to play casually and enjoy it.

I’ve started to write short posts about my games as well – not all of them, but about certain things that I thought were particularly notable. I suspect that will continue on for as long as I’m still enjoying this renaissance, at any rate!

Marvel Champions

Of course, Lord of the Rings LCG has been huge, but I’ve still been enjoying Marvel Champions! It’s a bit of a tradition round these parts, of course, after getting a new box for Christmas. Last year I had Age of Apocalypse to enjoy, and was absolutely loving Magik and Bishop, but this year, while Civil War has been the new box, I’ve actually been mostly enjoying Agents of SHIELD. Batroc, in particular, was a stand-out for me in terms of the villains played.

I have played single game of Civil War, as well, taking Captain America and the new Hulkling out for a spin, going up against Captain Marvel. It was… fine, I guess? In many ways, it was no different to going up against any other villain, just with slightly different terminology involved. However… in terms of the theme, I don’t love it. I know that it’s the whole Superhero Registration storyline thing, but there’s just something so very wrong to me about all this! I’m not interested in the PvP stuff, which has been causing most of the gnashing of teeth that I’ve seen online, but I think even as a regular game of Marvel Champions, it just didn’t quite feel right to me. That’s very much a me thing, though. The new heroes are fantastic, of course. I have looked at Tigra’s deck to sleeve it, and it looks great. Hulkling, though, was a lot of fun, and I’m thinking I’ll definitely try him out again soon!

Marvel Crisis Protocol

Marvel Champions is all well and good, and it is kinda great to have Lord of the Rings back on the menu of course, but the most notable thing about the month was that I finally got back to painting my miniatures! I feel as though I’ve been on a hiatus for months, but after getting the Cad Bane squad to a point where I could call it finished, I started work on the Endor heroes for Shatterpoint, as well as getting some Marvel Crisis Protocol stuff painted. The impetus here was a fantastic game with my Defenders – it’s not always about the win, of course, but it felt very much like I played the game correctly, and seeing as how Elektra was a stand-out character, it only seemed right that she finally gets painted!

I’ve been trying to up my game with painting minis, and have been working on improving when it comes to painting eyes – always a nightmare! I’m not saying that I’m amazing, of course, but it’s something that I never thought I could do. I suppose all those years painting minis for Warhammer, where it was all I could do to make the barest suggestion of a face, has trained me to aim low! However, almost as soon as I put the dots in the eyes for Elektra, it just looked so much more alive than any other minis I’d done, and I feel now that I need to keep the faith! 

Sector 4 MDF terrain

I said at the top there that I’ve started on Star Wars Legion, and while I haven’t actually started my adventure with painting any Legion minis yet, I have nevertheless been hard at work on building MDF terrain to use in the game. Atomic Mass Games don’t really have much terrain in the way that Games Workshop have for Warhammer, and I get the impression that this is a holdover from the days FFG used to make Legion; under them, it seemed like the intent was that you scratch-build your own terrain, and the rulebook even now shows the sort of foamcore buildings that do a great job of representing Mos Eisley, or something, but which I don’t think you can actually buy.

Sector 4 MDF terrain

I’d decided to pick up three MDF kits from TT Combat, who are based in Cornwall I believe, and have a huge variety of terrain kits available, as well as some games that they make! For £64, I’ve got a massive turbine, a boxy control room thing, and an “air scrubbing plant”. It’s all part of their Sector 4 Industrial Hive stuff, which is the fourth iteration of terrain that looks very much like it has been designed with Necromunda in mind. However, the scale for Legion seems fine (I believe Legion is slightly bigger than GW games), and the sheer amount of terrain this MDF stuff provides is astounding for the price. Of course, there will be arguments about details and overall look, etc, but I think getting this massive amount of stuff for the same price as a single plastic piece from GW is very telling. 

As an aside, TT Combat make a set called “iron labyrinth” that is designed specifically for the 2017 Necromunda cardboard tiles, and looks like it could be a fantastic fit for that game… it’s got me thinking…!

MDF terrain is definitely a new direction for me, much like painting eyes, and I think it could be wonderful to see where this particular adventure takes me as time goes on!

And finally…

I started to read the Star Wars 2020 comics run from Marvel way back at the start of December, and after about seven weeks of wading through all four series (and four crossover events), I finished that survey last week. Overall, I didn’t think I was entirely enamoured with the whole thing, but bringing all that to a conclusion has allowed me to move on to other literary horizons. With the LCG being such a big thing once again, I have been thinking about Tolkien, and watched a YouTube video about The Silmarillion that has got me very interested in that! For now, though, after having such a good time with The Way of Kings last autumn, I have embarked on book two in the Stormlight Archive series, Words of Radiance. It’s very good so far, and while it took me about two months to read the first book, I’ve been zipping through the second one with wild abandon. I really enjoy Brandon Sanderson’s writing, his style is very readable, and his imagination is off the charts.

I’ve been so immersed in the whole Cosmere, that I actually bought the Mistborn deckbuilding game the other day! The Mistborn trilogy was my introduction to Brando Sando way back when, and I’m happy to report that the game was very good on my initial play through. I’m hoping to get some more games played with it as the year goes on, at any rate!

So yeah, a very busy, and very productive month. Let’s hope that this has set the tone for more exciting times as 2026 marches on!

Lord of the Rings LCG: the renaissance

Hey everybody,
I’ve really been on a high for Lord of the Rings LCG over the past couple of weeks, and it has been so much fun to get back to this game! I’ve said this many times before, of course, but Lord of the Rings LCG was the game I would refer to as being my all-time favourite for many years, even when it had actually fallen somewhat out of favour. However, I’m back playing the early quests at the minute, and I think it’s a combination of this, plus listening through the earliest episodes of the Cardboard of the Rings podcast, that have made me so well-predisposed towards the game once again! 

Lord of the Rings LCG

Listening to the podcast has really been like stepping back in time, to 2011 when the game was new. When I first became interested in it, I think Journey to Rhosgobel was the new pack, but the first two packs in the Mirkwood cycle were unavailable in the UK. It was so much fun, and it has been fun to go through all of the ups and downs with those guys once again. Indeed, listening to them talk about some of the oldest cards in the game’s history has made me go back and take another look at them, myself. It’s been kinda fascinating to hear them talk about cards and rate them fairly low, and see how I’ve been playing with them to great effect in decks that utilise the entire card pool.

I suppose that’s been a hallmark of this game, though, albeit one that I hadn’t really seen until now. In my recent rambling post about the game, I talked about how important deck-building is for this game, and it’s very difficult to take the same deck through multiple scenarios (much less, the same deck through an entire nine-scenario cycle). There are so many situational cards in this game, I think that’s one of the things that made it initially so difficult. We know that a cycle’s player cards were designed as a whole, then split up for release across all the adventure packs and deluxe box of that cycle, but it’s been interesting to see just how they split these things up now that I’ve been looking back. All too often, we’d have player cards that, essentially, came one pack too late. So a scenario would have some feature or other, then the next pack would have cards that allow you to address those features to have a slightly easier time.

Lord of the Rings LCG

When I was initially playing Lord of the Rings LCG, I absolutely loved it, and I would regularly play and re-play the adventure packs with all manner of different decks. On reflection, I think the fact that I branched out into every single other LCG Fantasy Flight were making meant that my time for this game grew more limited. As a result of this, I wanted to have just one deck to play, and wasn’t really into the deck-building commitment anymore. It’s interesting to think back and see how this happened precisely when the game demanded more of a commitment, as the cardpool grew and the options available became so varied. I can still remember playing the Watcher in the Water scenario in the second cycle, and being absolutely hosed, and wondering if this game is for me. I carried on playing, but it was during the fourth cycle, the Ringmaker, where I truly felt that the magic had gone and pretty much stopped playing regularly.

Lord of the Rings LCG

Fortunately, I kept on buying everything as it released, because while FFG have re-released some of the products, they haven’t kept the entire game in print, and now some of these earlier packs are like gold-dust. As such, I’ve been able to come back to this game after 14 years and really enjoy it! The Lord of the Rings LCG renaissance has truly begun!

Marvel Star Wars: the 2020 run (finale)

Hey everybody,
If you’ve been with me since December, you’ll know that I’ve been working my way through the 2020 series of Star Wars comics from Marvel. This encompasses four series – the main ongoing series (by Charles Soule), Darth Vader (by Greg Pak), Bounty Hunters (by Ethan Sacks) and Doctor Aphra (by Alyssa Wong). The ongoing series and the Vader series each run to 50 issues, while Bounty Hunters closed at 42, and Aphra ended with 40. Along the way, there were four crossover events, with a main book all written by Charles Soule, but all four series were also involved in each of these events. The overarching narrative was of the return of Qi’ra and the Crimson Dawn crime syndicate, although that came and went as a trilogy, with the Dark Droids event forming the last crossover. With the Dark Droids series, we also saw the conclusion of both the Bounty Hunters and Doctor Aphra, so all that’s left now is two books for the ongoing series, and two for Darth Vader.

Star Wars comics

The Sith and the Skywalker is the penultimate book of the ongoing series, and I feel is quite erroneously named. It collects a two-part series that features Luke in his quest to purify the red kyber crystal he gained on Cristophsis, when he met the Fallanassi Gretta. He goes back to her for help, and together with her Auntie Feez they guide him through the meditation, after which the crystal emerges white.

The main meat of the book, though, is The Trial of Lando Calrissian, after his admission during the Dark Droids crossover that he stole the droid responsible for creating the new Alliance code. During the trial, Mon Mothma is abducted by a gang who demand a ransom for her, but as it happens Lando knows the gang, so gets Chewie to check through a list of known locations where they could be holding her. Lando is able to rescue Mon Mothma, though General Madine is all for pushing him through an airlock for treason. Of course, Lando gets off with essentially a massive fine to help the Rebel cause, but it was definitely one of the better storylines that I’ve read so far in this series, not least for Lando’s speech in his own defence.

The Rise of the Schism Imperial picks up from the end of the Vader instalment of Dark Droids, where Sly Moore has essentially been collecting disenfranchised Imperials with a beef against Vader, though who hold the Emperor accountable. These Imperials are part of Sly Moore’s “Schism”, and work together with Vader – and his newly-abducted Rebel super-soldiers – to consolidate his power base. The book culminates with Vader’s raid on Exegol, during which he kills a massive monster and steals a huge kyber crystal, via which he communicates with the Emperor, who finally lets him pursue Luke. It’s all very weird, I have to say, and while I have been trying to enjoy the Vader book, it’s definitely been very patchy of late. The whole thing with the Rebel super-soldiers was almost unbelievable, but the constant Vader vs the Emperor, and trying to establish a power base of his own, has been all over the place in this series. The one bright spot on the horizon is that the book ends with Sabé getting in touch with Luke… 

The Vader run ends with volume ten, Phantoms, and we find out that Sabé wanted to test Luke to see if he had the same darkness within him that Vader does. Meanwhile, Sly Moore tips her hand when the Rebel super-soldiers manage to incapacitate Vader, and she reveals that she wishes to take Vader’s place at the Emperor’s side, so tracks down Luke to try to kill him. Vader manages to convince the super-soldiers that Luke, their hero, is in danger, and somehow they believe him, so everyone goes to the same planet, and obviously Luke makes it off alive. All of this has been yet another test from the Emperor though, and Sly Moore is still in his good graces while Vader resumes his place as the Emperor’s apprentice. There’s a bit of a montage of endings then, and among other things we get to see Sabé meet with Leia and offer her the chance to rule at Vader’s side, before she realises that Leia too is pure of heart and so leaves her to it. This was, if anything, an infuriating bit because of how short it was. In the Legends continuity, Sabé actually accompanied Leia to Alderaan and served as her weapons trainer, and I think there was an intent that Sabé was meant to be the reason why Leia believes she could still recall her mother’s face, etc. Here, though, Leia angrily recognises Sabé as a lieutenant of Vader, and also completely dismisses her idea of ruling the galaxy, then it’s over.

While I wanted to like the book, I felt that ultimately it didn’t go where I had perhaps wanted it to, as I thought we could have had some far more interesting scenes with Sabé and both Luke and Leia. Interestingly, though, Luke recognises the former handmaiden though I believe this was their first canon meeting…

The ongoing series then comes to a close with volume nine, The Path of Light. This is basically a two-part story that involves Leia and Luke investigating the disappearance of the Alderaan survivors’ fleet, along with Evaan Verlaine who returns after a bit of a gap. Evaan was first seen in the Princess Leia miniseries from 2015, and has since been retconned as Gold Three, who flew in the Battle of Scarif and was the lone returning Y-Wing from the first Death Star assault (replacing Keyan Farlander). I quite like her character, as she has hints of Deena Shan as well as Winter, although I think Amilyn Holdo has now more fully taken over the mantle of Winter. Anyway, the three of them fly to the last known location of the Survivors’ fleet, and it soon becomes clear that they have landed in a trap – laid by none other than Commander Zahra! Yes, she didn’t die way back in issue 26, but instead managed to get free, and traded her tactical expertise to some raiders in return for medical attention. She’s been leading them ever since, and has been determined to exact vengeance on Leia. Luke is able to see her off, and she escapes only to attempt to fly her starfighter directly at Leia, but a Mon Cal cruiser arrives and shoots her down. After the mission, Evaan receives a message from the Alderaanians saying they have decided to disperse and live their lives, which initially upsets Leia as she feels the final bastion of her people has gone, but eventually she is encouraged by the fact that life is moving on. As such, she determines to go rescue Han. 

Issue 50 of the ongoing series is a bit of an outlier, as we jump forward in time and Luke is training Ben Solo on Ossus, and he tells him a story of the time when he was part of a team to assassinate Palpatine. There’s a Dark Side doohickey that needs some genetic material of the target, at which point it will do Dark Side stuff to “find” them, and kills not just that person, but everyone who they have ever been in contact with. Realising the billions of people the Emperor has been in contact with, they decide not to go through with it, but Chewie is determined to get revenge for Kashyyyk’s enslavement, and so the team give it different genetic material from a person long-dead to essentially turn the thing off. The story is meant as a lesson for Ben, but really, it was a fairly poor way to end the ongoing series. 

Indeed, I think this mostly sums up my thoughts on the entire 40-odd books that I’ve been reading for the last 7 weeks! Let’s look at them in turn…

Doctor Aphra is mostly Aphra causing chaos, being a terrible person that we are presumably meant to cheer on or something. There were some interesting ideas as we wafted by the criminal underbelly of Canto Bight, but ultimately this was the series that I just did not enjoy. I guess I just don’t see how a “rogue archaeologist” could be wound up so closely with the big characters from the movies. It kinda made sense when Vader was initially looking to build a droid army to consolidate his power base in the initial 2015 run, and needed someone who could not only reprogram these droids, but also do the archaeology bit as well. But that initial premise has since been stretched so paper-thin that it’s now beyond irritating. I know there was another run that has been cancelled after a dozen issues or something, but until she has something better to offer, I just hope Aphra gets retired.

The Bounty Hunters was initially very confusing but, as time went on, I think I got into it somewhat. It was very much tied into the crossovers, as we’re dealing with the galactic underworld during the time of Crimson Dawn and the syndicate wars, but it was interesting to get to spend some more time with those hunters from the bridge of the Executor. There was some promise along the way, when we saw Inferno Squad deployed to take out Valance, but ultimately I think this one was only marginally better than the Aphra run. 

The ongoing series felt very good to start with, as we were dealing with the fallout from the Battle of Hoth and the fact that the Alliance fleet had scattered, but couldn’t regroup due to the fact that their code had been cracked. Unfortunately, this plot point was hastily solved to make way for the series of crossovers, and so we’ve ended up with a series of throwaway adventures on the whole. The idea of Luke needing to search out more Jedi lore is a bit weird as it had me asking “why doesn’t he just go back to Yoda?” There’s an attempt to hand-wave this as “Yoda isn’t answering my Force-call” or somesuch, but really, I think the biggest problem we have here is that tradition dictates there is a year between Empire and Jedi, and for that entire year, the Rebels are just dithering about, not really making any move to rescue Han, and Luke makes no attempt to return to Yoda. It makes me wonder whether George initially had planned for only a couple of weeks to elapse between the two films, because it really stretches the imagination. 

Finally, the Darth Vader series started out so strong. Indeed, it was reading this book that got me back into the Marvel comics as a whole, because I had mainly checked out back in 2016 or 2017 when they were getting a bit too silly. The idea of Sabé leading a pro-Naboo faction that was determined to have justice for Padmé was just awesome in my mind, and the push and pull there was very interesting. As time went on, though, and we had all the crossovers, I think the Sabé storyline got a bit lost, and the constant power struggle between Vader and the Emperor went on perhaps a bit too long. There’s definitely some good stories in here, and I like the inclusion of the likes of Sly Moore and Ochi of Bestoon, but I do believe if Greg Pak had been given more freedom to create his story, rather than “you need to hit these four crossover points” (and, quite possibly, “you need to tie into Exegol and stuff”), we could have had something more interesting.

Aside from the Amidalans, I also really enjoyed the fact that Kitster and the other slave children make an appearance, and one of the pseudo-endings in the tenth book involves Kitster and Wald returning to Tatooine and freeing their former slave-friends, so that we have the whole gang of kids from Episode I reunited, reminiscing about their childhoods and wondering what happened to Anakin. I thought this was actually pretty perfect, as you can just imagine it’s the sort of thing that kids brought up in hardship would be like. 

Out of all of these books, I think I would probably re-read the Vader run, but do it by itself rather than peppering in all of the others. I might return to the ongoing series one of these days as well, because I feel that my summary just now might be doing it a disservice, though the fact that nothing really stands out for me beyond Lando’s defence speech during his trial is perhaps telling…

At any rate, this post has gone on long enough now, so I’ll stop my rambling nonsense!

Mistborn: the deck building game

Hey everybody,
I’ve been really enjoying Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive books lately, having recently started on the second book in that series and having a blast. As I’m on leave this week, then, I decided to treat myself to picking up a new game, the Mistborn deckbuilding game!

Mistborn deck building game

I read his Mistborn trilogy years ago now, and surprised myself by just how much I enjoyed it at the time. I don’t think I was truly expecting to like it as much as I did, somehow. It’s the story of a group of rebels taking down their immortal Lord Ruler, and then what happens next. This is urban fantasy, with a magic system based on ingesting metals for specific powers. So iron will let you pull things toward you, while steel will let you push things away. There are some Allomancers who can only affect one or two metals, known as Mistings, while Allomancers who can make use of all eight metals are called Mistborn.

Mistborn deck building game

The game implements this Allomancy quite well, as you have a board of tokens for all eight metals, which are effectively your resources for the turn. You spend a metal’s token to pay for card abilities, but the training track indicates how many of these metals can be used (or burned, to use the correct term). As you improve in training, you can burn more, but you do have the option to flare a metal, which essentially removes it from your available supply until you discard a card to refresh it.

Mistborn deck building game

This is a deck building game, of course, so the standard stuff around buying cards to improve your deck is all in play. There’s a central market, and you can purchase action cards or allies, leaning into distinct strategies as you see fit. Something that I like is how the character you play as will have a certain ability that will trigger if you’re burning a certain metal, like Kelsier generates 2 attack if you’re burning steel. So you can lean into that, and purchase more steel cards which means you’ll have more opportunities to trigger his ability. Allies also have similar passive abilities, meaning that resource management is key to making sure you’re maximising your turns.

It’s not just a basic deck builder, as you also have three active missions in play, and you can generate mission points to go up these tracks, gaining bonuses as you do.

Mistborn deck building game

The game can be played by 1-4 players, and it really feels like this is a truly scalable game. With 2-4 players, you’re going against each other, trying to defeat your opponents to claim ultimate victory. However, you can also play solo or up to 4-player co-op, where you’re all going against the Lord Ruler himself. He comes with a deck of minions and Edicts, which interact with a Dominance track that lets him affect the game in many different ways. He also gets to heal a lot, depending on how many missions are still outstanding.

I had this game delivered yesterday, and this morning played my first game as Kelsier, in a solo game against the Lord Ruler. I really liked how it captured the feel of the Mistborn setting, and while it’s got the bones of a deck builder, I was surprised at how well they’re dressed with an actual game on top. Sure, trying to buy better cards is a key consideration on your turn, but there’s so much more to do that it genuinely feels like an actual game, if you know what I mean? I’m only one game in, of course, so could be completely off base here, but from what I’ve seen of the game, I would say that the co-op variant is actually the superior version of the game, as it feels like you’re actually playing out the story. Sure, you could say that a game of Kelsier vs Vin could be representative of his training her on the rooftops of Luthadel, but it strikes me that it works better playing against the Lord Ruler.

While I’m very impressed with the game overall, and I really enjoyed playing it, I don’t want to play it a dozen times before the spring, and find that I’m bored with the same enemy to fight against. There is an expansion coming in November, I believe, which features more cards for the market, as well as a Siege of Luthadel solo/co-op variant. Not sure if there will be more characters, but still. It’s perfectly fine as a game, and I’m currently pondering whether I would rank it higher than Dune Imperium, or on the same level. I definitely want to play it some more, though, and will no doubt be back with some more thoughts, but I’m so excited by how much I enjoyed it, I wanted to share these first impressions today!

The Silmarillion… in 30 minutes

The Silmarillion is one of those books that has quite the Reputation (capital R). It’s like Pelléas et Mélisande, where the snobs try to catch out the noobs by saying how much they enjoy it. Years ago, I bought myself a copy when Harper Collins released it with the same look as my box set of The Lord of the Rings, and around six years ago, I did try to read it.

I say try, because I did abandon it. It’s not technically DNF’d, I’ve very carefully noted on Goodreads which page I’m on so that I could come back to it… but I don’t think that’s incredibly likely now, is it?

See, the thing is, this book is actually pretty good. It’s not written like a story, as such – for all that The Lord of the Rings is dense, it’s still readable prose. The Silmarillion is, in contrast, written like an encyclopaedia. So rather than getting a flowing prose story that details the creation of the Silmarils and the subsequent battles for possession of them, instead we have something not unlike what we’d read if we were to look up Fëanor in an encyclopaedia, and read a sort of bald synopsis of what went down.

I don’t really mind that, because it reminds me of the sort of Greek Myths books that I used to love as a kid. I really enjoyed reading the roughly half of The Silmarillion that I have thus far waded through, and I’m not entirely sure why I put it down and didn’t carry on with it back in the day…

At any rate. This morning, I came across the YouTube video that I linked up at the top of the post, and it was an amazing ride. By giving us the highlights, it’s really raised my level of interest in the stories in this book, and for the first time in a long time, I’m thinking about giving it another try.

In actual fact, I’ve been thinking a lot about reading Tolkien again this year. I’ve only read these books once, in 2002, and back then it was peak-Tolkien because we’d just had The Fellowship of the Ring come out, plus I was in college so had next to no responsibilities and could spend a day just reading if I wanted to. (I actually read Book V of The Lord of the Rings in a single sitting, way back when…)

I’m currently very much on a Brando Sando high, and am really enjoying the second book of his Stormlight Archive series. But Tolkien is definitely there, hovering on the horizon…

Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord (teaser trailer)

This looks really good!

A ten episode series that is set in the early years of the Empire, and sees Maul attempt to rebuild his criminal empire, it should be fun. Of course, we have another Jedi who has escaped Order 66 involved, but we’ve also got that Inquisitor from the Ahsoka show, and a world “untouched by the Empire”.

Should be an interesting watch! I’m looking forward to it, at any rate!

Lord of the Rings LCG: In praise of Dúnhere

Hey everybody,
I am definitely not the first person to sing the praises of Dúnhere in Lord of the Rings LCG, but as I’ve been playing a lot of Rohan decks recently, I wanted to make this short post about just how much fun I’ve been having with him in those games. He’s a core set hero from the spirit sphere, which is possibly the most powerful sphere out of the core set given how it focuses on threat reduction and “cancel” effects. His starting threat is 8, so respectable, and he has stats of 1 willpower, 2 attack, and 1 defence, with 4 total hit points. However, where he shines is his ability to target enemies in the staging area when he attacks along. When doing so, he gets +1 attack.

This is huge, because normally, enemies make engagement checks to see if they come down from the staging area to attack you, and when they make an attack, they go first. Dúnhere’s ability gets around engagement, and he simply targets them with an attack. So long as he’s the only one doing it, he’s going to hit those enemies for 3 damage, which is often enough to wipe out some enemies before they get to engage you.

Of course, we don’t just stop at 3 attack, do we? 

If ever there was a card that was printed for specific use with a hero, it’s the tactics attachment card, Spear of the Mark. It costs 1 resource, and it is Restricted, so you can only play one such card per turn, plus a character can only have a maximum of two Restricted cards on them. However, it grants the attached character +1 attack, or +2 attack if you’re attacking an enemy in the staging area. So now, Dúnhere is hitting for 5 attack, which is fantastic. But why stop there? Dúnedain Mark is an attachment from the Shadows of Mirkwood cycle, and is a 1 cost leadership attachment that simply gives the attached hero +1 attack. So now Dúnhere is going to be hitting for 6 into the staging area, which is enough to wipe out something like Dol Guldur Beastmaster from the core set, one of the early pains in the game. 

I know some folks like the Rohan Warhorse attachment on Dúnhere, which is another tactics attachment that lets you ready up a hero if they participated in an attack that destroyed an enemy. With 6 attack strength, Dúnhere should be destroying a lot of characters, but I like Steed of the Mark personally, as it lets me quest with Dúnhere and then pay 1 resource to ready him up. I especially like this with cards like Astonishing Speed, which gives Rohan characters +2 willpower.

However, if we’re looking for better tricks for Dúnhere, there are a set of tactics events that I love to throw at him. Chief among them is Swift and Strong, which you play after Dúnhere destroys an enemy to exhaust a weapon attachment on him (the spear), ready him and give him +2 attack. So he can destroy an enemy with 6 attack, then you exhaust his spear to give him 8 attack for the next round! The only problem I’ve had with this so far is getting enough enemies for him to beat up. Charge of the Rohirrim costs 2 resources, and gives all Rohan characters with a Mount attachment +3 attack, so he can potentially be swinging for 11 attack if all goes well! Finally, Goblin-Cleaver costs nothing and lets you exhaust a weapon to choose an enemy engaged with you, and deal 2 damage to it. The timing on this one is a little bit off because the enemy needs to be engaged with you, and Dúnhere of course wants to keep enemies at arm’s length.

Lord of the Rings LCG

Charge of the Rohirrim is great because I often want to attach Firefoot to Éomer, who is the guy giving me the tactics resource match, and so he’s mounted, and will be getting a ridiculous amount of attack as well.

It’s things like this that make the Rohan deck one of my favourites to play. However, it’s not all about massive attacks, as there is a subtheme among the horse-lords around characters leaving play. Horn of the Mark is a 1-cost attachment that goes onto a Rohan hero (or Merry), and when a character leaves play, if it shares a trait with the attached hero, you exhaust the horn to draw a card. Card draw is always great in this game, so I can’t fault that. But the rate at which allies in particular will just naturally be leaving play means you get through the deck quite a bit. Escort from Edoras can quest for 4 and then gets discarded; Rohirrim Scout can discard itself to prevent one non-unique enemy in the staging area from making engagement checks (keeping it there for Dúnhere); and Westfold Horse-Breaker discards to ready a hero. Perhaps the best of all these, though, is Éomund, who readies up all Rohan characters when he leaves play. Of course, if you have Gamling out, you can exhaust him to return these allies to your hand instead of sending them to the discard pile. And even if you don’t want to trigger any of those effects, Ride to Ruin lets you discard a Rohan ally to place 3 progress tokens on any location.

There is also a great sub-theme of Rohan in Leadership, which I don’t often get to explore because the spirit-tactics mix is just so good. My current Rohan deck has been Dúnhere, Éomer and Éowyn, but I’m thinking at some point I will most likely return to them, though with leadership heroes Théodred, and allies like Éothain.

Star Wars: Dark Droids

Hey everybody,
We’re getting close to the end now! Dark Droids is the fourth and final crossover event for the four Star Wars comic book series from 2020, and feels like a much bigger event, along the lines of War of the Bounty Hunters from earlier in the series. I say this because, while each of the four series has its own “Dark Droids” crossover volume, we also have the main five-issue miniseries, and a tie-in miniseries as well. It’s interesting how these crossovers have worked as each series moved on, from War of the Bounty Hunters where each series included some shared panels with the main event, through Crimson Reign and Hidden Empire where the links became more loose, until finally we’re here, where each book simply seems to allude to the main event without giving us a re-telling. I think I mentioned it in War of the Bounty Hunters, but it reminded me a lot of how the old Bantam “Tales from…” books worked, as each short story necessarily included movie scenes like Han shooting Greedo, or Luke being thrown to the floor by Ponda Baba.

Anyway! 

Star Wars comics

The main event is basically a droid supervirus taking over. It ties directly to the Spark Eternal from the Doctor Aphra run inhabiting the ancient piece of tech that had been held in the Fermata Cage, whereupon it develops into an ancient consciousness named the Scourge. This consciousness takes over droids at first on a Star Destroyer, but somehow a mouse droid finds its way to the Rebellion, and Threepio gets “infected”. Over the course of the book, the Scourge begins to take over all manner of droids, and seeks to move “from the metal to the meat”, and place its consciousness into humans. Lobot, Magna Tolvan and Beilert Valance are all taken over, as cyborgs and hybroids are all deemed to be suitable hosts, and the Scourge takes over a communications hub to further its plans. Of course, Lando is determined to save his friend, and leads the gang to the hub where they are all briefly infected by the virus, before the Scourge master-host is destroyed, shutting down the hive mind.

There’s an interesting subplot about self-awakened droids led by a droid called Ajax Sigma, who has created a sort of haven for similar droids to live out their lives peacefully without subjugation. The Scourge is seen as a threat to that, since everyone is aware of the fact that there’s something wrong with the droids… As it happens, Artoo leads a droid team to Ajax to ask for his help, which includes the lies of Triple Zero and Beetee, which is the plot of the D-Squad tie-in book. That book manages to stretch out a couple of panels from the main event into a four-part miniseries of its own, but is entertaining enough, I suppose!

The storyline reminds me of elements from Legends continuity, mainly the plot from The New Rebellion where Kueller uses droids “because they’re everywhere”. In some ways, it’s quite ingenious because nobody thinks about droids because they’re so pervasive. However, the placement of this story feels somewhat weird, because it’s actually a pretty huge event – killer droids trying to take over the galaxy? There would be ramifications to that, which by rights should be felt for a long time after the fact. However, this story is supposed to take place in the weeks or months before Return of the Jedi, and despite the fact that Threepio was taken over by the hive mind thing, everyone just carries on like normal in the movie? Obviously the reason for that is because this series came out 40 years after the movie was made, but it disappointed me because it disturbs the timeline!

The ongoing series takes the Dark Droids story and places Lando and Lobot firmly at the centre of things. Lando realises that the Talky droid they used to develop a new comms code way back in volume 2 is going to be crucial to helping Lobot overcome the negative effects of his implants, so they head off to Jabba’s palace and rescue it. While there, Lando is able to walk right up to Han on the wall because Jabba and his retinue are off sailing the Dune Sea, and yet he doesn’t do anything to rescue Han because he’s concerned he doesn’t have the ability to deal with hibernation sickness or whatever. Feels a bit flimsy, that. Anyway, the Talky heals Lobot and all of Lando’s dodgy dealings come out when he gets back to the fleet, which sets up the next arc, where Lando will be put on trial by the Alliance… It’ll be interesting to see how they handle this, because again, we’re close in the timeline to Episode VI, and we need to go from Lando being in the brig to General Lando being in charge of the Death Star Assault? Hm. 

We next move to Doctor Aphra, and the Dark Droids volume brings her series to a close here with a total of 40 issues. It’s a bit of a fragmented storyline, which sees Aphra having kidnapped Luke to help her open the way to a lost Jedi temple, which she hopes to plunder. Later on, she leads a rescue mission to save Magna Tolvan from the Scourge, along the way bringing down TaggeCo. I haven’t been the biggest fan of this series, and despite how closely Aphra is linked to most of these crossovers, I think my overriding opinion of the Dark Droids volume was “not her again”. I think the fact that she’s able to kidnap Luke, who at this point is meant to be growing in his power in the Force, seems very much like it shouldn’t have worked, so therefore increases that feeling of Mary Sue-ness Aphra has. She just doesn’t seem to belong in the Star Wars universe, which I know sounds ridiculous as we’re talking about a vast galaxy of possible here, but even so. It all just feels a little out of place, and ultimately just feels like a let-down. 

The Bounty Hunters also sees its run close, after reaching a total of 42 issues. The ongoing series had Lobot, and Aphra had Magna Tolvan; the Bounty Hunters therefore focuses on Valance being taken over by the Scourge, and T’onga’s crew attempts to track him down as she feels a compunction to rescue him. I must admit to feeling quite annoyed as this series went on, because I was actually siding with Bossk. Valance was already losing his humanity after the Empire had first replaced his human heart with some kind of mechanical pump, but after wiping his memories of the possibility that he had seen plans for Death Star II, his processors had been damaged or something, so that he was slowly losing any memory of being anything other than a cyborg. T’onga is determined to prevent that, but it seems to be costing her crew, and new recruit Khel Tanna kinda leads a mutiny against her. Of course, they’re able to rescue Valance, and the final issue collected here gives us a fun adventure as Valance walks into Jabba’s Palace, as part of a plan with the Rebellion to draw off Jabba’s new superweapon, an enormous battle droid that could have caused havoc for their rescue mission. Everyone then goes off into the sunset, with T’onga planning to open a bar for bounty hunters… as you do…

Lastly, we come to the Vader crossover. The Executor is struck down by the Scourge, so Admiral Corleque is sent by Mas Amedda to destroy the ship, preferably with Vader on board. There’s a load of Vader montages where he’s blasting droids, and it all gets really confusing for the most part, but Vader – and the Executor – survive, Admiral Corleque is fired upon, though he does survive to make it into the next story arc. Back on Mustafar, the droid infection follows Vader and takes over one of the massive Octuparra droids still on-planet, but its real goal is to take over Vader himself, as he is of course “more machine than man”. However, Vader is able to control the infection within him, and ultimately rejects the Scourge. Along the way, there’s more Emperor vs Vader baiting, which is getting pretty old by this point, but the book ends with Sly Moore, Corleque, and former Governor Tauntaza wondering whether the Emperor or Vader is to blame for the problems in the Empire, and whether they should attempt to recruit Vader to help overthrow the Emperor…

Of all the crossovers in the 2020 run, Dark Droids is simultaneously the best in terms of its core idea, but also the messiest in how each of the series interweaves with it. Ultimately, the thing I find most annoying about it is that it’s a massive event, but it necessarily fizzles out to nothing because the media that happens immediately afterwards – Return of the Jedi – makes no mention of it. I think it would have been better if it was smaller in scale, but referenced an older event that was more widespread. That way, the main event could have taken place in the High Republic or something, then the main thing here was an attempt to stop the same thing happening again. As it is, I think it’s too odd that all the droids rise up and all of the main movie characters are possessed by a hybrid-droid intelligence, then a few weeks later they’ve moved on like it’s no big deal.

Though I suppose real-world events have shown that we can move from crisis to crisis in the past year, and find it difficult to keep up or remember just what happened.

I’ve read a lot of favourable reviews of the overall event, but having now made it through everything, I think this one being so messy as regards how it all worked out has left me feeling overall negatively towards it. At least we’ve now had both Doctor Aphra and Bounty Hunters conclude, so we only have the main ongoing series, and Darth Vader (two books each) before we conclude the entire 2020 run of Star Wars comics from Marvel. Stay tuned, we’re almost there!

Unboxing the X-Men starter set for Marvel Crisis Protocol

Hey everybody,
I always think it’s very important to have something to look forward to as January rolls around, because we’re in the depths of midwinter and all the rest of it. Christmas has been and gone, and now all we’re looking forward to is the start of spring, but not here! I decided to make maximum use of some gift cards, and have picked up the X-Men starter set for Marvel Crisis Protocol!

X-Men

X-Men have definitely become my team of choice in the game, although the Defenders have recently seen a resurgence in my mind also. I’ve heard a lot about how people think of them as somewhat underpowered in the game, which I would like to say is the reason for my fairly patchy record with them! The thing I like the most about them is that feeling of team-playing they have, as the leadership abilities on characters like Cyclops or Professor X are very much about allies benefiting from actions taken by other team members. 

The starter sets seem to be a way for Atomic Mass Games to bring several older packs together into one neat package, though it’s interesting that they had already done this with the characters in this box, when they released the X-Men and Brotherhood affiliation packs. However, as the game continues to expand, characters who were in a two-pack have been repackaged into a four-pack, and now here we have those boxes collected up into a ten-pack. The absolute gold here, though, is Rogue and Gambit, who have been unavailable to buy since I got into this game two years ago, and really they’re the reason why I’ve picked this box up.

X-Men

The very interesting thing about this box, though, is not just the bundle of mutants that it contains. We also have measuring tools, dice, tokens, a scoreboard, and crisis cards! It’s very much a core set redux, so there’s no terrain or rulebook, but you do get as much as you would see in something like the Earth’s Mightiest core set. Of course, there is the added bonus that all ten of the heroes in this starter set can fit into one roster a little more cleanly than the core set, so it’s a great place for a single player to start. 

We also get a bunch of crisis cards including some from the War of Kings box that came out last year. Great stuff, as I didn’t pick that up in the end so it’s good to have some of these newer cards to play, and see what I’ve been missing!

I’m hoping to try to off-load the four X-Men that I already have, as I bought this principally for Rogue and Gambit. I’m sure I’m not the only one, of course, but hopefully I can get a few pennies for them, at least! The interesting thing of course is that I now have four Brotherhood characters as well, which is a fairly good start for that team as well. It wasn’t something that I was necessarily looking to start, but I’ve been eyeing up the Exodus mini for a long time now, so this would be the perfect excuse to now get that box! 

All in all, I’m pretty chuffed to have this, and I’m really impressed with the fact that it comes with all these additional bits as well. I wasn’t expecting to have dice and crisis cards, so that’s a definite bonus! 

Lord of the Rings LCG – looking ahead

Hey everybody,
Last week, I posted about Lord of the Rings LCG with some of my reflections on having been playing the game for just over fourteen years, but as I’ve mentioned a couple of times since 1 January, I’m looking to try and play some more of this game in 2026. Today, therefore, I thought I’d look ahead to what I’d like to achieve in the coming months, though of course, I don’t want to risk setting myself up for any kind of fall here, so won’t be making any sweeping statements about how I intend to play through the entire Saga campaign! 

Lord of the Rings LCG

So far this month, I’ve been enjoying the game with the Shadows of Mirkwood scenarios that I know extremely well. I’ve been playing a lore-leadership deck themed around dwarves and traps, along with a spirit-tactics deck that focuses primarily on Rohan. I used to love playing a Rohan deck back in the day, and I suppose in some ways this is an evolution of that. The dwarf deck isn’t a “proper” dwarf deck, of course, but does have many of the tricks that you’d expect from the short folk. I suppose the biggest change is that I have Aragorn in his Lore hero form, along with the ranger traps stuff to bulk that out.

They have been fun decks to pilot through Mirkwood, and I like how there is some synergy across the two. Aragorn has Sentinel, so can defend against attacks coming at the Rohan team, who then hit back harder to hopefully one-shot enemies. Obviously, I’m making full use of Dúnhere to attack into the staging area, and I’ve really enjoyed Spear of the Mark to bolster his attack to 5 when attacking alone in this way. With Dúnedain Mark from the other deck that is increased to 6, which is enough to clear out plenty of enemies before they become an issue. 

Lord of the Rings LCG

When playing the Rohan deck, I’m always looking for Spear of the Mark, therefore, and I’ve noticed quite a few other key interactions that I’m trying to get. Éomer with Firefoot and Unexpected Courage lets him defend against an attack, then ready up to hit back for 5 if he’s attacking alone. Éowyn and Windfola is able to quest for 5 quite easily, and obviously she can bolster this further with the card discard ability she has. I’ve also enjoyed putting a Horn of the Mark on her, so that as the Rohan allies get discarded (Escort from Edoras being a perfect example, of course!) I’m able to exhaust the Horn and draw a card.

Lord of the Rings LCG

As much as I’ve been enjoying the decks, however, I’ve started to think ahead to what I want to play next, and how I’d like to change up the decks for this. I’ve been thinking about all sorts of ideas for which cycle I’d like to play next, and I think I’ve now settled for the Dwarrowdelf cycle. It sounds a bit boring maybe, going in release order like this, but I’ve been thinking that I’d like to change up the dwarf deck, and pair it with either more dwarves or else something like Dúnedain. I haven’t properly started looking into this yet, but I do want something reasonably thematic.

I really want to try my hand again at the Ringmaker cycle, as well. This is the one that initially started to put me off, due to the difficulty of trying to play true solo back when it was released. I’ve played some of the quests since, though, and two-handed it wasn’t too bad – still very difficult, of course, but it feels more achievable with two decks! I think I’d perhaps like to take a similar Rohan deck through for that cycle, so have kept a decklist to re-assemble it in time. In looking through my cards recently, I’ve realised that I’ve never played with Ent cards, and I don’t think I’ve done much with Hobbits either, so maybe this cycle could see that kind of deck?

Looking further ahead, I would love to try out a new-to-me cycle, and I’m leaning very much towards the Ered Mithrin cycle, which I seem to recall was seen as something of a softer cycle after things like Dream-Chaser and Harad. Of course, we’re now getting into the danger realms of over-committing, so I think for the time being I’m going to stick with my ideas of just going into the Dwarrowdelf, which for the most part has been unplayed since 2014 or so! So that should be interesting to go back to some of those scenarios and see all the cards that I’d forgotten about. 

Lord of the Rings LCG

It’s always so easy to write these sorts of posts, isn’t it? Looking forward to the bright future of gaming with all these wonderful ideas of what to play, only to suddenly wake up and it’s August, and I haven’t done any of the things I had hoped to do! However, I do feel reasonably confident about getting more Lord of the Rings LCG played right now, as most importantly in all this, I’ve been enjoying the idea of changing up my decks regularly and seeing different cards. So I really hope that I can keep this ball rolling and not only get a variety of decks built and played, but also rediscover some of these old scenarios, with maybe some new-to-me ones along the way!