Pixar Game night 2/28/2011 Wrath of Ashardalon!

Hey Geekshelfers!  Wow.  This has been such an AMAZING week so far!  Toy Story 3 won the Oscar for Best Animated film this past Sunday.  I posted pics of the celebration which you can take a look at HERE.

On the gaming front, Everett bought Wrath of Ashardalon which we played for this week's Pixar gamenight!  For the uninitiated, WoA is a follow up to Castle Ravenloft, a dungeon-crawl boardgame set in the D&D universe.  I've really wanted to give Ravenloft a go but it was out of print for awhile and I never got around to playing it.

Anyway, lets take a closer look at Wrath of Ashardalon!

The game plays with up to 5 players, each of which takes on the role of the classic D&D archetypes (Dwarven Fighter, Rogues, etc.)

I always end up with the dwarf:)

Here's the Dwarf Fighter Vistra's character sheet along with her utilites, at-will, and daily powers.  You'll be needing these powers to survive.

My character and her abilities.

The game also comes with a ton of beautifully sculpted minis.  Another upside is that you can use them for your D&D roleplaying sessions!

beautiful minis!

After about 20 minutes of Everett setting up the game and explaining the rules, the game began with a bang.  As you can see from the picture below, it didn't take long for our crew to become surrounded by a horde of monsters.

our heroes are surrounded!

This game rewards you for exploring the dungeons.  If you end your turn adjacent to the edge of a tile, you can draw another tile and extend the map.  For the scenario, we had to find the "vault" tile and grab the gear within it to win.

As more tiles are revealed, the map grows larger.  I really liked this aspect of the game since the generated map is almost always different with each game.

you'll need a lot of table space

After awhile the Vault tile is revealed! The adventurers must defeat the two creatures defending the entrance and get the gear to win the game.

towards the end of the night...

Here's a close up of the three heroes squaring off against the last Vault guardian.

vault discovered.  Scenario beaten!

All in all, everyone had a great time playing the game.  I was impressed by how close we were from losing a party member during some encounters and even up to the end, there was still a good chance of one of us not making it out of the adventure alive.

At first blush I think I like it better than Descent but I'll have to play it more to really know.

If you'd like more information on Wrath of Ashardalon, visit Boardgamegeek.

Happy Gaming, Geekshelfers!

Pixar game night 1/2/11: GammaWorld!

Hey Geekshelfers!  Hope you all had a wonderful holiday break.  2011 has started off with a (nuclear) bang here at Pixar as the Dandies break out the latest D&D re-release of "Gammaworld".  

We were going to play Descent but we had one too many players.   Luckily, Everett had an adventure ready so we promptly rolled up some characters and got the adventure going!

Everett helps everyone roll up their characters!

The basic premise was that our characters were junk collectors for Al's Premium Salvage Emporium.   

The first game of the year:  D&D Gammaworld!

The Dandies roll out the new LED D20!

It always helps with creativity when you draw your characters and the situations they encounter during the game:

Dr. Ploeb and Grimm

For a better look at the cast of characters, follow Austin's LINK HERE.

...a beautiful friendship

Anyway, the beginning of the game saw the group casually hanging out at Sally's local bar when a robot ranting about "The Iron King" appeared and caused some havoc with a rocket! 

Austin, Ross, and Yvie

Al sends the team to investigate and after travelling for some time, they discover an area guarded by nomadic Porkers and Badders!

Our intrepid scrap collectors journey into danger!

After killing two Porkers, the group was led into the hideout where they encountered a menacing Lion-Bat creature!  Who knows what other foul monsters await?!

Lion-Bat.  Only in GammaWorld, folks!

Towards the end of the night, Emma joined in and proceeded to roll up a character which turned out to be a pyrotechnic mutant!

Story artist extraordinaire Emma Coats joins in...

....Emma rolled up a pyrotechnic mutant!  How fitting:)

All in all, Gammaworld was a great start to our weekly gaming night and a wonderful way to kick off the New Year!

Stay tuned for further adventures!

D&D Nov 1, 2010

Here's the latest report on the Dandies' latest D&D session...

The group tracked Traevus to a dark tower which led down to a forbidden dungeon.  The adventurers encountered some zombies soon enough!

Daeven used his burning hands to deal out some damage, turning the tide in the party's favor and the adventurers promptly kicked some undead ass...

a little sketch I did while playing:)

After a short healing surge, the party moved onwards and discovered a room with a deadly blade trap!

Much bickering ensued but the short tempered Dwarf, Gottri failed to convince Kipling, the rogue to disarm the trap.  Finally, out of frustration, Gottri took matters into his own hands.  In a feat of unbelievable acrobatics unusal for a dwarf, Gottri leapt across the rigged floor and was able to reach the wall on the other side of the room to disarm the trap.

Fuming from anger, Gottri barged into the next room where he unleashed the fury of several skeleton warriors.  After a long and sustained battle, Gotrri nearly fell from taking too many arrows, forcing the party to retreat into the previous chamber to take some healing surges.

A friendly ally reveals himself!

There were a few close calls but luckily Valora's Mace, her magical healing abilities, and Daeven's burning hands kept the party alive!

To be continued....

Valora

Hey Bloggers, here's a sketch i did of Valora, the elven cleric I'm playing in our weekly Dungeons & Dragons 4e campaign.  At the moment, I'm playing her as an icy, level-headed priestess / warrior that has the stature of command, deeply religious, but at the same time doesn't mince words and VERY deadly with her mace.

Valora, the elven cleric

As many of you know, I usually get together with a few guys here once a week after work for a weekly boardgame/RPG night and I have to say, its a great way to get together, throw ideas around, have some laughs and just let off some creative steam over a few beers.

This past week saw our characters going into a cavern where we encountered a band of goblins (one of which Valora killed with her trusty Mace for 12 hit points).  Our party also ran into a few gigantic rats which we easily disposed of and a Dragon that sent us on a mission to kill a certain mysterious fellow within the dark caverns (more on this next week)!

One of the more challenging battles happened when we walked into a room looking for the mysterious stranger only to happen upon a room full of these living statues that we had to fight on a chess-patterned floor.  If you moved onto the wrong square ,  ZAP! you'd get an electric shock and have to take 5hp worth of damage.    The battle was drawn out but we were able to defeat everyone in the room, partially thanks to Valora's healing ability.

After realizing late last week that Valora needed a long range weapon, I was finally able to pick up a bow and arrow from one of the dead goblins in this session.  I was pretty thankful for that since I usually love playing long-range rogues and Valora's HP are not really suited to close quarters combat for too long anyway.

I always pictured Valora being played by Tilda Swinton. She looks like she could kick some ass, huh?!

Even though the first few sessions saw a few players ragging on the 4th edition rules, and World Of Warcraft comparisons being slung around mockingly, I'm really impressed with the new D&D redbox adventure so far.  With a great GM like Everett,  it does its job of throwing you right into a fun adventure that ramps up slowly but with enough excitement to make you want to continue on.  It's a great way to introduce D&D to the uninitiated yet stay true to what made it popular in the first place.  Can't ask for more than that, right?

Anyway, stay tuned for more updates soon!  Happy Gaming everyone!

Last night after work.....

Me and the boys hunkered down for our weekly game night.  Everett wanted to get back to basics so he started running a new D&D campaign with the recently released Starter Set.

My character is an Elven Cleric named Valora.   She's got loads of magical healing abilities and an INSANE mace that ended up taking down a couple of baddies even though I was rolling shitty half the time.

We left off going into a cave and nearly getting wiped out by a couple of goblins and a drake which we ended up locking in a room.

You know that dragon is a badass cuz it only has ONE horn on it's head.  Can't even be bothered with two.

stay tuned for our further adventures...