Magic the Gathering Cube Draft

This weekend it was all about the worlds most popular card game, Magic
the Gathering. Well, most popular CCG at least. Over the years we've
amassed a fairly sizable collection, although we haven't increased our
collection for a year or so. We have mostly commons and uncommons, we
only keep the rares we absolutely have to have, like Angels. We've
sold most of our rares to help fund the game. I guess you can say we
are "pauper" players. A lot of our commons we actually picked up on
the secondary market for next to nothing. In short, we don't dump a
lot of money into the game, preferring to play on the cheap.

Lily and I love the game, especially during Soccer season. With games
on the weekend, two practices during the week, and all the other
things she does after school its hard to find time to play D&D or
board games. Magic is the best game for squeezing in between running
here and there. Plus we love the artwork, and you can use one deck
and have the game play out differently every time. Lily is getting to
the age where she can really benefit mentally from the game. Not only
does it teach strategy, but the game rules are constantly changing
from one turn to the next leading you to constantly adapt to the
changing parameters.

Friday night we played constructed. I have two angel decks that I ran
through. One is a all white Serra Angel deck, the other is a
White/Black Life and Death deck. Both are fairly powerful and
tweaked, but are known to loose against fast competitive decks. Lily
on the other hand played her Green Badger Mushroom Snake deck, and her
White Pegasus Unicorn deck, two very simple decks. She was fairly
competitive, but its hard to beat my angel decks given enough time. I
won both games that we played.

Saturday after we got home from Church, dinner and Shopping, Lily
wanted to play again. This time instead of playing constructed, we
drafted. A few years ago I learned of a new format called Cube Draft.
Lily and I have a TON of cards laying around doing nothing, but are
cool nonetheless. We decided to collect our cards into a cube and
drafting them. Our cube is a Pauper cube consisting of 250 land cards
(50 each of islands, swamps, plains, mountains, and forests), 50 of
each color, and 50 artifacts. Enough for us to play with up to 5
people. We have a lot of cards, we can scale it up if we need to.
Most of the time its only two or three of us playing.

The official way to draft is to have three packs per person. Thats 45
cards per player, and they should be an even amount of all colors and
artifacts, excluding land cards of course. So 45 cards per person
makes 90 cards, divide that by six (five colors plus artifacts) and
you have 15 cards of each color plus artifacts. So we shuffled each
color out of the cube, counted out 15 cards of each color, and
constructed three booster packs per person.

Now, the normal way you draft is to lay out the boosters face down.
Each player picks up a booster, picks a card, and passes it to the
right. Repeat until each card has been drafted. Now since there is
only two of us, this format does not work for many reasons, so we
Winston Draft. Shuffle all 90 cards together to form one massive
library. Take the top three cards and form three piles next to the
library. Each player takes turns drafting by looking at the first
pile, keep it if you like it or turn it down. If you turn it down,
take a card from the library and place it in the first pile, then do
the same for the second pile. If you look at the third pile, and turn
it down, take a card from the library, add it to the third pile, and
you have to take the top card of the pile. If it sounds complicated,
its not. Just watch this Youtube video demonstrating the process
http://goo.gl/KUYR

Once we had all the cards drafted, we constructed Limited decks with
our cards ( thats a deck of at least 40 cards ) and played the game as
you normally would. Lily played Black, Blue and Green. I ran with
White, Red, and Green. The first game went to me easily, Lily kept
drawing land. For the second game we shuffled up her deck really
good, and she easily beat me! She had a lot of unblockable creatures,
she really played the blue color well.

All in all it was a fun couple of nights!

Lessons Learned and Problem Solving

Greetings!

On Friday (4/23/10) we had our Family Game Night, and we played our favorite game Swords and Wizardry (Dungeons and Dragons Original Edition). The session went very well, although the little ones had a bit of a hard time maintaining concentration. They were doing very well, even though Rose, three years old, tried to cheat on her dice rolls several times. We had to have a few talks about that. After this game session, Lily decided to write a book on the adventures of Raeow and Lucy! I can't wait to read her perspective on the story.

A quick note on our game, although we are playing Swords and Wizardry, we are using OSRIC to fill in the gaps, mostly in random monster tables and random dungeon generation. We have even used the monster stats from OSRIC, and had no problems putting the nasties down. In the future we may go all OSRIC, but for now the hybrid game is working fantastic!

In dealing with kids, I've found that its best to dive right into the action. After a quick summary, we were off and rolling. A few rolls on the random encounter tables, and they were fighting a small pack of jackals.

This encounter went rather poorly, for one the Jackals managed to surround them due to the players missing a few hints. Then the team split up, with Lucy (Lily, 10 years old) sending the soldier traveling with them to the far side of the battlefield to check out a noise. Thats when three Jackals pounced, one of the beasts being bigger than the other two. While one of the smaller took on the girls the other two jumped the soldier. Although he managed to cleave the larger Jackal in twain, he took damage before Lucy and Raeow could subdue their beastie.

Thats where it really turned ugly, actually. Lucy tried to rush to the soldiers aid, making a straight line to the soldier's position. This blocked Raeow's shot, so she couldn't fire at the beastie. Then as Lucy closed in on the Jackal, she rolled a critical fumble ( a one on the d20 ) and dropped her sword. This put her out of the battle for the next round. The soldier managed to miss the jackal with his sword, and this brought the creature to deal his second critical wound, causing the soldier to fall over unconcious. Before Lucy could recover her weapon, Princess Raeow (Rose, 3 years old) slew the beast with a well placed arrow and nice roll on damage.

Once the dust cleared, they had to figure out what to do about the soldier. He was still alive, just unconcious. Lucy attempted to revive him by splashing water on his face, but to no avail. After running through several ideas, Melissa (my wife) helped them come up with the idea of creating a makeshift gurney to carry him into town.

Arriving in town, they were met by the town guard. They immediately recognized their comrade and hauled him away to be healed. They said his wounds were too great for him to continue with the ladies, and Lucy managed to divulge too much information to the guards. He was not happy with this brave soldier being injured under Lucy's command, and when she told them they were rescuing Apple the Dragon's baby, he really flew off the handle. However they would allow the girls to check into the inn and enjoy their evening in town, but in the morning the princess would be escorted back to her home. Lucy was to be relieved of command.

Completely demoralized, they headed into town to find the Inn. They stumbled across "Chipper Helga's Cool Mart" general store. Entering the store, they fed Helga some story about escorting the princess to her aunt's palace, which didn't add up since they were heading south and the Palace was north. As they were talking, the door swung open, and the girls noticed the same soldier entering the store. Not noticing them, they ducked behind some inventory in back, and eavesdropped on the conversation.

The guard said he lost track of the princess, and needed to know where she was. If the owner of the shop saw them, he wanted her to let him know right away so he could keep an eye on them in case they had the bright idea to skip out of town early to avoid the forced escort home. She claimed she had not seen them.

After the guard left, the owner told the girls it was all clear. After some coaxing, she got the true story out of the girls. The shop owner was not a fan of the goblins the girls had planned on clearing out to rescue the dragon, and offered them gifts. She gave the party eight healing potions, Raeow got a +1 Elven Longbow, and Lucy got a +2 Elven Longsword. She also let them in on a little secret, Helga's real name was Helena, and pushing back her hair revealed pointed ears. She was an Elven maiden, and wished to assist the girls on her quest.

She snuck them out the back door, and into the Deep Woods near the small town, giving them a map to a secret residence in the trees. The Deep Woods had a canopy so thick you couldn't see the sky. The girls followed the map closely and found the hidden rope ladder near a very ancient and large tree. Climbing the ladder, they entered the thick canopy, finding a hidden elven treehouse. The house was large, with a common room, kitchen, and three small rooms. Two of the rooms were furnished bedrooms. In the common room was a spiral staircase leading to a platform on the roof. From there they could see the stars clear and bright, but what really shocked them is the many lanterns lining the forest ceiling, a whole elven tribe was hidden in the canopy of the Deep Forest.

They planned on getting an early start to the journey and cutting through the swamp where Apple the Black Dragon most likely lived. Although they kinda hoped to run across her, they decided that after their experience in town they decided not to go "looking for trouble" so to speak, just in case Apple turned out the be evil.

We ended the session on good terms, the girls had a great time, and I loved presenting them with their quest. I love doing these on the fly organic stories. With enough resources to randomize things, its amazing what grows out of a few encounters! Plus the girls are having a blast. Now to come up with some plot twists, perhaps a grumpy old troll? I'll need riddles!

Until Next Time

Happy Adventuring!

DM Arthur

From One Encounter Grows Seeds

Greetings!

We had our first game of the current adventure on Sunday ( (4/18/2010) and it was a rousing success! What kicked this adventure off is my daughters insisting on playing Dungeons and Dragons. The current system we are using is Swords and Wizardry Whitebox, with a few suppliments. It took us about ten minutes to setup the folding banquet table, and get all our gear out.

We stared off with a simple concept. Rose wanted to play a Warrior Princess named Raeow, and yes Rose created that name, and Lily is playing her personal guard Lucy. They are on a journey with two soldiers to their Aunt's palace. It took us about 15 minutes to roll up characters. Of course, if the younger one could write it would take less time. I joined two hirelings to their party, and we started with an encounter in the woods. It was simple enough, they were attacked by wolves. They made short work of them, and they decided they wanted to use the wolf meat to make jerky, and use the hides to make blankets. I figured it took them most of the day.

While they were curing the pelts and cooking the jerky, the soldiers that were with them discussed the area they were camped at. A dragon named Apple had a baby dragon named Eepie (yes, Rose named the dragons) and they lived near the east coast of Lake Deep. About eight leagues from her lair there was a nest of Goblins in an abandoned mine. They hatched a scheme to kidnap the baby dragon and use it as a weapon against the humans.

Raeow, being the free spirited warrior princess, decided to go rescue the baby dragon and return it to the momma dragon. Droping hints, Lucy deduced that the dragon must be a Black Dragon, the east coast of Lake Deep is mostly swamp land. Lucy is the daughter of a blacksmith, but is in posession of a book about Dragon Lore. Raeow sent one of the guards on to her destination to let her Aunt know of her plans.

Lily has a book from Wizards of the Coast on dragons, I don't recall off the top of my head what the name of the book is, she is seldom without it. Its not the draconomicon, its a book that has flavor test from the Draconomicon in it, written from the perspective of a researcher in Greyhawk. She loves that book, and I wanted to tie it into the adventure.

We ended the session with the girls starting for the swamp in Lake Deep. They want to stop off and discuss the situation with the mother dragon before going into the mines.

Lily named the NPC tagging along with them, he is Frederick, captain of the guard. He is an ill tempered 42 year old grizzled fellow that walks with a limp. A little bit of flavor makes all the difference.

So what started off as a simple encounter has grown into a massive adventure that should last us a few months. It may even make a pretty decent module some day to publish out there for others to use.

Most definately there will be more to follow.

Happy Adventuring,

Arthur H. Johnson II

Johnson Family Campaign

Greetings,

My name is Arthur H. Johnson II. I'm a Linux expert, 4th Degree Knight of Columbus, proud Catholic, and father of a family of four, and we LOVE gaming. Our Wii gets daily exercise, the girls are seldom without their Nintendo DS's. However their main passion is Dungeons and Dragons. They love to roll the bones around the game table, pushing miniatures, and exploring high fantasy worlds of imagination. One of their favorite shows is Legend of the Seeker and love to watch Lord of the Rings, although they have been talking about How to Train Your Dragon for weeks. My oldest daughter, Lily, was born in 2000, and the younger, Rose, was born in 2006.

We are currently gaming with Swords and Wizardry Whitebox. My daughter is going to be using the boxed set from Brave Halfling Publishing ( http://bravehalfling.com/ ) and I'm using the Lulu printed copy of the First Print Edition. We supplement the campaign with OSRIC and Swords and Wizardry 0E Reloaded Monster Book. Eventually we want to get the core rules of S&W, but are having just too much fun with Whitebox. It only takes us about 20 mins to roll up a whole party of player characters, and with OSRIC and a few other free suppliments we are able to pretty much game on the fly.

I'm documenting our adventures in the land of adventure. The posts will show up at both kids-rpg@yahoogroups.com and http://johnsonfamilygaming.blogspot.com/. Mainly we will be covering our adventures with Dungeons and Dragons, but may stray into the realm of board games and video games.

I look forward to sharing with all of you!

Happy Adventuring,

Arthur H. Johnson II