What is coming up!

Grand Prix Utrecht

This weekend, European Standard players will converge on Utrecht in the Netherlands this weekend. This is another important tournament to determine the course of the Standard format.

Star City Games Open Indianapolis

The SCG Tour rolls into Indianapolis this weekend showcasing the Modern format. It’ll be exciting to find out if the Death Shadow Aggro is the real deal in Modern. You can find live coverage of the tournament on https://www.twitch.tv/scgtour

What you missed!

New York Toy Fair

So I had the opportunity to hop on a train and venture to Manhattan for the New York Toy Fair this weekend. Publishers and developers from all over the world congregated in NYC to show off their latest and greatest. This is what caught my eye.

First on our list the Dark Souls board game by Steamforged. I entered into the game demo expecting a bland dungeon crawler covered by a video game license, sure the production value would be high but the game play would be.....meh.  

I should not of underestimated Steamforged. 

It took about two minutes for the combat rules to be explained and for dice to start rolling. I love it when the most daunting part of a dungeon crawl game happens in the dungeon and not in the rule book.

"The Dark Souls board game is a brutally hard exploration miniatures game for 1-4 players. Prepare to die." - boardgamegeek.com

Nothing could be more true, the combat system requires your team to be planning and working together from step one. One person dies, the games not over, but you must return to the bonfire and start again.

Suffice to say I eagerly await the Dark Souls release. Next we move over to Asmodee where we found a hidden gem on the Star Wars Destiny: Spirit of Rebellion box.

Looks like R2D2 may be joining the growing cast of Destiny characters, thought we can't know for sure if this is in fact R2D2, we can certainly hope. We also got to see some box art for the new Pandemic Legacy: Season 2.

There are also a handful of releases for the Rick and Morty fans out there. Cryptozoic will be releasing both the Rick and Morty: Anatomy Park, and a deck building game.

  

Additionally Rick and Morty will get their own Munchkin expansion and Monopoly game from USAopoly, who had whats looks to be an all-star line up in 2017.  

USAopoly will also be coming out with their first expansion to the Harry potter deck building game, "Hogwarts Battles: The Monster Box of Monsters" which will offer four additional modules that can be added to the popular deck building game.

How do you top a Harry Potter expansion? Well, with two releases that start with Codenames, and if I'm being fair its almost like four releases. Codenames: Disney/Pixar, and Codenames: Marvel, will be gracing shelves this year, and the coolest part is, they've combined the text and picture versions of Codenames for these products. The cards will feature text on one side and a corresponding image on the other. I applaud USAopoly for putting both variants of the game in these releases.

Lastly one of our favorites of the show, perfect for when you don't have the room but you still have the need.

Grand Prix Vancouver

Josh Utter-Leyton and his Death Shadow Aggro deck was the talk of the town this weekend as he took home the trophy defeating Jonathon Zaczek and his Merfolk deck in the finals. Utter-Leyton’s 5 man team all played the deck and put 3 copies of the deck into the Top 4 of the Grand Prix. The Death Shadow Aggro deck took the tournament by storm and seems to be the best deck in Modern. You can find the Top 8 decklists here!

Grand Prix Brisbane

Oliver Oks took down Grand Prix Brisbane with Lantern Control, defeating Zen Takahashi and his Dredge deck in the finals. You can find the Top 8 decklists here!

Starcity Games Open Baltimore

The team of Sam Pardee, Matt Nass and Ben Stark took down the first Team Constructed Open. Their choices of Sultai Control in legacy, Death Shadow Aggro in Modern and BG Constrictor in Standard took them to a dominant performance only losing one match in the tournament. You can find the Top 8 decklists here!