Is It Story Time? - Yes it is!

I decided it would be a cool thing to have a storyline to accompany my decks. Something of a side plot to the original story to explain how the fights we perform by playing our decks take place in the world of Eredan. Here is the first one, I am opening it up to my deck 'Is it Story Time?' you can read up on teh deck details here: http://msnbatcocas.blogspot.com/2010/10/is-it-story-time.html

Is It Story Time?

Briscar viewed upon the piece of land the ship was approaching. A few pillars of smoke indicated a larger village nearby the shore, where they were going to land. He climbed down the mast to join the rest of the crew, waiting on deck, prepared for a fight. ‘Captain, it’s a village. Doesn’t look like they will pose a threat to us.’ ‘Great.’ said the red haired woman with a mischievous grin.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

‘We cannot tolerate this any longer!’ yelled Lord Galmara while slamming his fist onto the table. ‘This is the fourth village these outcasts have raided in the past weeks!’ He looked over to Lord Gakyusha and the other assembled members of the Kotoba clan: Karasu Kage, Iro, Asajiro and Tsuro. ‘We have to do something!’
A few of the members nodded in agreement. The discussion was halted for a brief moment as Kimiko entered the room, bearing a tray of tea cups and freshly made tea. She served the tea and left the room with a short wink of the eye towards Asajiro. ‘We know nothing of our enemy, nor do we know when and where they will strike next.’ Asajiro established, once Kimiko had left the room. ‘We cannot just run around and hope to find them, let alone be able to defeat them without knowing a shred about them.’
‘Our informants tell us they are heading in this direction.’ Tsuro drags his finger along the coast of western Xzia. ‘They attacked these four villages and will presumebly attack this one next.’ he points out. ‘My brother Oogoe is already scouting the area and the shore line.’ added Karasu Kage. His deep voice emitting from behind his dark mask gave Galmara a shiver down his spine. He did not know much of the man, he did however know, that he could be trusted as well as that he was a fierce opponent in battle. ‘What do you think of all of this, my Lord?’
All eyes diverted to Lord Gakyusha who calmly sat in his chair and viewed the map solemnly. Gakyusha leaned towards Iro and whispered something into his ear. Iro, eyes closed. took a moment to think and gave a slight nod. ‘Lord Galmara, you will lead the scouting team and gather information about this unknown enemy. Take one of my warriors with you and group up with Oogoe Kage. Do not engage the enemy, unless directly threatened. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, my Lord.’

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Lord Galmara and Sen’Ryaku were walking down the path towards the Shing Peng village. The bamboo forest is dense and deep to their right and thins to their left, heading towards the shore line. ‘I am soooooooooo excited!’ exclaimed Ryaku with a cheerful grin on her face. ‘A new adventure awaits!’ Galmara liked the girl’s enthusiasm, but had to keep a focused mind for the mission as well as present himself as the leader of the scouting team. ‘This isn’t an adventure and fun, it’s an important mission, my dear. Try to stay focused...’ ‘Aw, alright. Poopy face!’ she said with a pout.
Time went by and the two got closer and closer to Shing Peng. ‘Where is that crow guy? Shouldn’t we have met him by now?’ asked Ryaku while twirling a dagger between her fingers.
‘Speaking of the devil...’ Lord Galmara whispered as he saw a dark figure amongst the trees to his right. Oogoe Kage stepped out of the forest and joined the scouting team. ‘Lord Galmara, Miss.’ he said with a short and courteous bow. ‘I bear bad news my Lord. The pirates have already attacked Shing Peng.’ he said pointing in the village’s direction.
‘What of the villagers?’ asked Galmara in a stern voice. ‘I have sent most of them away before the attack could happen. The majority fled inland but a few remained to protect their property...’ Oogoe explained in response. ‘I saw the pirate ship approach the cost about an hour ago. They landed swiftly and are looting the village’s stocks of goods and valuables.’
‘What about the villagers who remained in the village?’ Ryaku asked Oogoe. ‘Severely wounded,... or dead.’ he said solemnly. ‘They are going to pay!’ Sen’Ryaku yelled while storming off into the direction of the village. ‘Ryaku, wait!’ Galmara ordered in vain. The girl had stormed off and there was nothing he could do but follow. Galmara and Oogoe followed Ryaku towards the village, weapons drawn.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Briscar had just finished packing up the last crate of good to be brought to the ship. This village had a decent deal of live stock, something different from the past villages they have raided. He was looking forward to digging into one of those juicy legs and started imagining the delicious flavours and scents of the meal yet to come.
‘Hey dumb ass, get it together! We got a job to do!’ said one of his companions. ‘Oh shut it fish face. I am ready to go!’ he looked at the tall blue and green scaled friend of his. ‘Where is the boy?’ Poukos asked. He looked up towards the southern side of the village and saw the boy chasing after a chicken. ‘Hey Laddie, it’s time to go!’
The red haired boy stopped chasing the chicken and waved back to his comrades. He was the youngest recruit on the ship and very excited to be on his first mission. He looked at the pistolblade strapped to his belt and thought fondly of his mother who had given it to him when he officially became a crew member. Suddenly a crash from the woods frightened him. ‘You will pay for what you have done!’ screamed the girl running towards him from the forest. She looked like the villagers they had encountered throughout the region, yet she was more fierce looking. Armor plates and weapons drawn made her stand out from the people Laddie has encountered until now.
The girl thrusted her dagger towards him. Luckily he was able to block the attack with his drawn pistolblade. The skirmish was short and soon after the initial encounter the two broke off and stared at each other for a while. Laddie’s companions were taking forever to come to his aid. He heard their shouts from behind him, but didn’t understand a word they were saying as he was solely concentrating on his opponent. Laddie had an idea and raised his pistolblade and aimed it at the girl. The girl looked puzzled at his behaviour and decided to start an attack. *BOOM*
Laddie shot the round from his pistolblade. After a few seconds the smoke vanished and he saw not one, but three figures in front of him. One of the two new figures was standing in front of the girl, his hands pressed against his chest, trying to hold back a flood of blood coming out of the wound caused by the bullet.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Lord Galmara did not understand what was going on. Oogoe and he had reached the village in time to aid Ryaku when suddenly a loud explosion caught them off guard. Now he stood there aghast seeing Oogoe bleeding to death and the cocky pirate boy standing in front of them. Two of the pirates comrades joined the young boy who had taken down Oogoe with one attack.
The pirate boy ran off while the other two pirates started drawing their weapons. The dark skinned one with grey long threads of hair pulled out a long curved blade that starkly resembled the one the boy had used on Oogoe. The other pirate, a massive and giant scaly fish like creature unwound a coil of chains around its belly. Attached to the chains’ end was a large anchor that thudded into the ground.
The dark skinned one aimed his blade at Ryaku, simular as the boy had done before. This time she was prepared though. The man pulled the trigger and in that moment Ryaku dodged to the left and thrust her dagger forwards, slashing the man in his right arm. He screamed in pain and slashed with the blade in her direction, hoping to catch her off guard after her attack.
The bulky fish creature started twirling the anchor around above his head and threw it forward toward Galmara. He was astonished at how easily that creature tossed the heavy anchor at him as it crashed shortly behind him without touching him. Galmara used this moment as an opportunity to attack and slashed at the creature with his long and edged dagger. The green monster blew out a breath of cold air and stopped the blade short from hitting him in the stomache. Galmara was shocked to see the blade had frozen and was frightened when the anchor flew right past him, shattering the frozen dagger as it returned to the green creature in front of him.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Briscar’s arm was hurting more and more every time he parried the girl’s attacks. She had gotten the lead in their battle and continued to attack him relentlessly. Each attack draining him of his strength. He could not keep up with this much longer.
The other part of the battle was running more in favour of his comrade. Poukos had managed not only to trick his opponent, but also managed to destroy his weapon. A victory was surely going to happen soon. He swung his mighty anchor and tossed it toward his opponent. His opponent, however dodged the large anchor easily. A darkness arose from his opponent’s hand and formed into the shape of the dagger he had held just moments ago. It was back in his hand, as if nothing had happened to it.
Poukos now knew that he had underestimated his opponent greatly. Guemilites are powerful creatures, especially ones like his opponent. The dagger was back now and his opponent started to shroud himself in a darkness. The blackness emitting from him oozed over the ground and engulfed Poukos. He felt the sharp pain of a blade piercing his body.
Both Poukos and Briscar had underestimated their opponents and were close to being defeated. They did the best thing they could do in their extremely wounded state, that was to flee towards their ship and hope the boy would bring reinforcements.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Ryaku felt the verge of victory as she slashed at her opponent. His defenses were becoming weaker over time. The rage in her helped her become a machine like killer, ruthless and tireless. After a while her opponent broke off and started to run away, as did the green scaly creature fighting alongside him. Ryaku and Lord Galmara persued the fleeing pirates, in hope of avenging their comerade, Oogoe.
Nearing the north side of the village, the two immediately stopped, shocked at what they saw. A tall and red haired woman stood in front of the two they had persued as well as the boy who had shot Oogoe. The odd thing about her was that she was covered in a flame like aura, getting bigger and bigger and bigger over time.
‘You dare attack my boy and my crew!?’ she boomed in an extraordinarily loud voice. ‘It is your crew and you who raids and plunders our people and villages! How dare you!?’ boomed Lord Galmara back. He was intimidated by this woman, yet he had to remain his calm as well as intimidate as much as possible. He thought they had a chance against the two pirates, but now reinforced by this woman and the boy again, he doubted they stood a chance to survive.
‘Leave our shores, pirate! Or you will suffer the wrath of not only the Empire of Xzia, but also of that of the Kotoba guild!’ he threatened. He hoped this would scare her off, but he could tell by her expression he had failed to intimidate her.
‘Hahahahaha! You threaten me?’ she asked with a large grin on her face. ‘We are surely bound to see the wrath of your country, a we do not plan to leave any time soon!’ she countered. The flames around her cause small explosions and were getting bigger and bigger.
The boy had already begun to leave with his two wounded comrades. Ryaku wanted to persuit, but Galmara held her back. ‘We have to deal with her first...’ he whispered to her. Galmara and Sen’Ryaku braced themselves, as the woman with the red hair exploded...

Time to get this rolling Bitches!

New years bring new ideas and all kinds of other new things. Lets start off with our new guild list. I removed some of the inactive/never seen members and have added some of the newer ones who joined past weeks. (One person is inofficially, officially in the guild, but still needs to pop up into our chat...)

Joining our guild will need a person to be at least active in our regular chat http://xat.com/englisheredan and then everything depends on how good people work with our current clannies.

Another new thing I would like to work on is a new blog layout at least. The web site idea kind of got Smashed against the Wall and we're gonna have to wait a bit until I can find an alternative solution. Any suggestions/Ideas on a new guild blog layout, feel free to post them here.

I have been semi busy with helping out in the forums and fulfilling moderator duties as well as entirely reworking up the FAQ/Wiki section to help the community get their shit together. If anybody is up for helping in this, I will surely find something to help out. Ask either Rathedan or me on this issue. :)

With that cheers and Happy Near Year fags! :D

Pirates, bitch!

The day has finally come, Pirates has infiltrated Eredan in the form of the Al Killicrew Pirates. Not only are they a new release, but they're their own brand new guild, and the folks are Eredan made sure that they made a big splash with a 22 card release, including 8 character cards. Now that is how you introduce a new guild.

Along with introducing a whole new guild, the pirates bring a new gameplay mechanic in the form of "Powder" tokens. Powder is used to fuel the pirates action and spell cards and sometimes even strengthen the characters themselves, like in the case of Armada. Armada gains +1 attack for each Powder token on both herself AND her opponent. Paired with Captain Al Kilicrew, the supposed leader of the guild at the moment, she can gain an attack bonus of +6 on turn one without playing a single card. Throw in a Supplying, all live characters get 3 powder tokens, and thats a whopping +12 attack bonus. Other cards like Pistoblade give the character an addition attack bonus if they have powder tokens. The pirates have also brought along some powder driven spells, Fiery Sword and Flames of Phoenix. Fiery sword is pretty much the spell version of Armada's organic ability, +1 attack, and an additional +1 for each powder token on your character. The key to this spells is that all token ares are removed from your character after the spell is used, leading us to our next card, Flames of the Phoenix. Flames of the Phoenix is the Pirates devistating and self destructive answer to Lightning Bolts. It deals x fire damage to each character, where x is the number of powder tokens they have, those tokens are then removed.

I have two sample decks for your reading pleasure, the first is my concept, and the next is Joe's. Be sure to leave your feedback in the comments!

This is my approach to a powder heavy deck based around Armada and Flames of the Phoenix

Armada - Captain Al Kilicrew - Bragan

3x Supplying

2x Fiery Sword

3x Flames of the Phoenix

2x Potato Peeling Duty

3x Tadaa! You're a Bunny

2x Jolly Roger

1x Gofer Sinker

1x Journey

1X Ill Omen

2X Fallback

And this is Joe's deck. It's more item centric.

Captain Al Kilicrew - Clover - Armada

3x Dominate your Opponent

2x Pistoblade

3x Multitasking

3x Jolly Roger

2x Devouring Dagger

2x Ammunition Box

2x Pirates Code

3x Supplying

Ishaia Magic

I finally decided to keep one of the Ishaia's I've bought and make an original deck with her. The new Witchblades motivated me to do it. I fooled around with Keeping Moira and Eglantyne separate along with Anazra. The deck was pretty fun but lacked the offense necessary to really compete. However, it did help me realize how good ice shield can be. So this is what I came up with:

Characters:
Ishaia
Eglantyne
Moira

Cards:
3 Ice Barrier
3 Ice Shield
3 Life Devourer
2 Manipulations
2 Overwhelming Victory
1 A New Start
1 Hungry Void
1 Magic Attack
1 Freeze!
1 Lightning Bolts
1 Magic Shield
1 Tadaa!

The 1 of cards are extremely sketchy at this point. I haven't played enough games with the deck to really flesh out what works best. The Overwhelming Victories and Magic Shield might look weird but those are mainly to give me a chance against Noz (Haven't tested against Noz yet but I'm not expecting big things). The first 14 cards I listed though are pretty set. Ishaia and her unbalanced +1 to everything is the center of the deck. Turn 1 Ice Barrier and Manipulation is almost a game winner. Chaining Ice Shield to Life Devourer is the goal with the two sisters. After just 1 Ice Barrier on Ishaia, the sisters get up to 6 def each. Their attack is super low but the +3 from the daggers is enough to punch through almost every deck you'll face, especially if you manage to get 2 of them on one sister. Needless to say, you'll be in for some long games as the deck has very little offense but amazing defense. I've never gotten so many people leaving games as with this deck. It has weaknesses, mostly to noz mage, but also if Ishaia gets one shot (which is really hard to do). Some other cards I've been thinking of adding are the Calling, Storm, and maybe the Best Defense.

Messing around with Ice Shield I learned that it deals 2 dmg for each physical attack. This means each time you are dealt physical dmg. The saps double attack counts as physical dmg. I've one shot Meli before by playing just one Ice Shield. It's pretty funny. Anyways, hope you like the deck and I would love to hear any thoughts on it, positive or negative. Cartel

Christmas Came Early

Now that the XP event is over and the majority of us have spent the entire time leveling up characters and cards, I've decided to start a thread for us to post what we accomplished in a few days time, when it would have normally taken weeks.  I'm going to start this and then we can just add as a comment what we finished up during this process.

Reject Tourney Edit

The tournament has been moved! To next Monday, the 6th. Message me with your character line-ups. The sooner we have all our registrations. the sooner we can start.

My Card Contest Entry For Next Week

So some of you may have been following a French fanblog's card creation contest; a great way to have fun as a community and within a community. A great idea and I also find it admirable that some of our more richer players are willing to supply funds for prizes.

I decided to participate and as many of the thousands, hundreds of thousands of entrants, have worked up an awesome card! One of the main rules for judging was the card submitted being realistic and applicable in our game atmosphere.

Unfortunately for me and many others, that was not held by the judges and many of the submitted cards here are pretty overpowered, unrealistic or even totally obnoxious. Some of the entries are pretty damn cool and I like them a lot, others on one hand are just unfitting imo and do not stick to the given rules.

I held back a bit with my previous card and have decided to prepare a new card for the possible next contest. I decided to follow suit a bit and go a little overboard with the OPness, but overall I still think it is applicable in most situations.


Wish me luck on the next card creation contest! Cheers~