Weirdo Central

Me: *busts out old biology textbook just to play animal crossing*

The head of Medusa carved from BC Jade

An articulated dark ivory Roman doll that was found in the sarcophagus of an eight year old girl buried in the 2nd century AD. Roman children were often buried with toys although dolls have been found in burials of young women as well. [499x960]

Incredible pin-up PSA's by the artist Rattu!

If you’re a person like me and like playing Magic: the Gatherings sometimes you get burnt out on constant releases and inconsistent gameplay.

I’ve gathered a list o games here that might interest you depending on what in MTG you like!

When you play EDH do you like the wacky decks that come to the table? The weird strategies and watching your own plan come to fruition?

Villainous is a wonderful, flavorful romp where each player takes the reins of a Disney villain on their own thematic board and attempts to execute their plan. Each villain deck plays radically different from the other and there’s some 12 different villains as of now. Its a well balanced romp as games usually come to a head with each player on the cusp of completing their goal. I highly recommend picking up the expansion containing Yzma, its good stuff.

Do you like deckbuilding? Amassing the right cards for a well oiled machine?

Dominion is the tabletop for you! Starting with a deck of 10 cards can you work your way through the available lot of cards to make a fine-tuned machine? Dominon has countless expansions lending it to near infinite combinations of cards for deckbuilding puzzle after puzzle.

Or do you like drafting? Making picks to forward your goals?

Seven Wonders is what you’re looking for! Seven Wonders is a draft style game of 3 rounds where you draft different cards for gains in military, science, gold, and sometimes just bulk points. It has a touch of a learning curve as rules are represented by symbols and not text, but after a starting round its easy to get a grasp of. Plus, this can hold up to seven players!

Special recommendation to Seven Wonders: Duel for being there for you when you and your buddy want to draft but no one’s available.

Maybe you like reading the boardstate and making plays based on that?

Smash Up is some goofy fun. There are multiple factions here: robots, ninjas, dinosaurs with lasers, zombies, bear cavalry, and you take two decks and shuffle them together. That’s your deck! Do you combine zombie reanimation with robot’s ability to spit small minions out quickly? Or do you make time traveling super apes who bolster their power while rewinding plays? There’s a lot of field manipulation and play among the Bases that score points, its a joy.

But maybe you aren’t in EDH for the literal gameplay. No. You’re a person of culture. You’re here for the politics.

Have you ever wanted to bribe and lie your way around your friends and the law? Here it is! Sheriff of Nottingham is a game where each player bundles up to 5 cards in their “bag” and passes it to the sheriff for inspection. That’s when deals begin. You can bribe and/or talk your way out of sticky situations and make good with the sheriff. Or rip them off. This game has a simple set of rules that allows it to be rife with mind games.

But maybe you need more than politics. You need to dig a knife into your buddy’s back just as they’re about to succeed.

Prepare to die. I was skeptical of Bloodborne’s card game but its quickly become one of my favorites if not the favorite tabletop game of mine. Hunters fight beasts together eager to dig in damage for the most blood. Turns go with a horrible abomination being revealed. You have a hand of up to 7 cards and each player chooses one to play. They flip. The monster attacks, with dice that allow a potential lethal combo on all hunters with a stroke of bad luck. Then the hunters strike. Damage takes blood echoes and the most blood at the end wins. Cards sabotage and harm opponents, the expansion’s Church Cannon laying waste to careless hunters. I highly recommend giving this a look and getting this with the Hunter’s Nightmare expansion. The new weapons, consequences for death, and bosses add a lot to the game. And with multiple big bad final bosses to pick it has a lot of replay value.

Sometimes you don’t want to be violent. You don’t want to use the EDH side of your brain. You want to be a series of fluffy bunnies looking at dreamlike art arguing “that isn’t at all what “Locked” looks like!!”

Dixit is a very right-brained card game, in that you’ll be flexing creative muscles instead of abstract ones. The active player puts a card facedown and describes it. Each opponent puts a card down that matches the description. If all players guess correctly or incorrectly the active player is awarded zero points, the key is to trick just a few players into guessing your card but not all of them. And if you like this check out the equally artsy Mysterium.