Zooleretto ... what does it mean

Board Game Review – Last Christmas my daughter received Zooleretto as a gift. For some reason it sat on the shelf unplayed until recently. The premise of the game is each player is building a zoo and the goal is to finish your zoo before the other players. Basically it's a worker placement type of game with a few interesting twists.

To start all the tiles are placed in the center of the table (subtract all animals of a type for smaller games) and players take turns drawing tiles and placing them face up on the delivery trucks. During a players turn they can do one of the following: draw a tile, spend coins to remodel or buy animals, or take a truck. Once a player takes a truck they can not do anything else until all the trucks are taken and than play continues as before. 

Once all the tiles are gone players total up their score based on how complete their zoo is and the winner is determined by the highest point total.

Sounds really simple right?

The basic mechanics of this game could be re-skinned with any type of theme and they'd still work just fine and provide an entertainingly simple yet challenging game. What makes this an entertaining family game is the colorful zoo animal art and universally appealing nature of cute animals to children of most any age.

We've played several times with various numbers of players and each time the game is very different. The first few times my daughter focused on collecting the animals she liked rather than what would fill her zoo and therefore lost. Soon she figured out the basic strategy and can be really hard to beat. Zooleretto has become her go to game when friends are over.

If you're looking for a family-friendly game that involves a bit of strategy I recommend picking this one up.

Commander Corner – Sen Triplets

Magic the Gathering – Welcome the the first installment of Commander Corner a semi regular column discussing the EDH/Commander format for Magic the Gathering. In each installment I'll review a general and deck that I've built around them. For more information on how to play Commander please check out the official site.

Every Commander deck has to feature a general, this is a legendary creature and you can only include cards which match you general's color identity (the mana symbols on the card, in the cost or in the abilities) or are colorless. 

The first general I'd like to talk about are the Sen Triplets, a legendary creature for the Alara Reborn expansion. This commander falls into my favorite color combination and the deck began its life as a token machine with Ertai, the Corrupted at the helm. In practice he was a bit annoying as a commander since the threat of counter magic can slow down games and I rarely was able to keep him on the table. 

The deck primarily consists of my favorite cards in Blue, Black and White and is geared to deal with multiple threats. The general while fun isn't required to make the deck run and more or less acts as a surprise by taking threats from an opponents hand. What I like most about the Sen Triplets are the politics involved in using their abilities. Do you cast someones best creature, or use their board sweeper to mess with everyone? There's plenty of ways to use them without making the whole table angry.

Without further ado here's the list:

Commander: Sen Triplets

Creatures (25): Beloved Chaplain, Drift of Phantasms, Disciple of the Vault, Stormscape Familiar,
Silver Myr, Leaden Myr, Alloy Myr, Pride of the Clouds, Pulsemage Advocate, Teysa, Orzhov Scion,
Ambassador Laquatus, Mageta the Lion, Raven Guild Master, Abyssal Persecutor,
Phyrexian Metamorph, Arcum Dagsson, Mindleech Mass, Sharding Sphinx, Skeletal Vampire,
Memnarch, Stuffy Doll, Avatar of Woe, Sphinx Sovereign, Weathered Wayfarer, Wall of Souls

Planeswalkers (1): Jace Beleren

Instants (9): Smother, Unmake, Oblation, Hinder, Spin into Myth, Rend Flesh, Chain of Vapor,
Mortify, Essence Vortex

Sorceries (7): Wrath of God, Demonic Tutor, Life's Finale, Culling Sun, Phyrexian Rebirth,
Show and Tell, Bribery

Enchanments (7): Guilty Conscience, Celestial Dawn, Nevermore, Seal of Doom,
Declaration of Naught, Mobilization, Debtor's Knell

Artifacts (15): Proteus Staff, Orzhov Signet, Dimir Signet, Azorious Signet, Thopter Foundry,
Sol Ring, Witchbane Orb, Darksteel Forge, Mycosynth Lattice, Mask of Avacyn, Trepandation Blade,
Darksteel Plate, Umezawa's Jitte, Sword of the Meek, Bonehoard

Lands (35): Seat of Synod, Glacial Fortress, Volrath's Stronghold, Boreal Shelf, Jwar Isle Refuge, Drowned Catacomb, Azorius Chancery, Urza's Factory, Isolated Chapel, Creeping Tar Pit, Vault of Whispers, Orzhov Basilica, Academy Ruins, Command Tower, Sejiri Refuge, Arcane Sactum, Dromar's Cavern, Frost Marsh, Ghost Quarter, Bad River, Godless Shrine, Minamo, School at Water's Edge, Wanderwine Hub, Grand Coliseum, Ancient Den, Watery Grave, Hallowed Fountation, Dreadship Reef, Polluted Delta, (2) Island, (2) Swamp, (2) Plains 

The deck has an artifact theme that works to eventually turn everything I control into an indestructible machine. Once Arcum Daggson gets online with a token maker I'm able to fish out all the pieces to protect my permanents and wipe the board.

The amount of tuck spells (spells that put a card back into the library, really effective ways to get rid of annoying generals) is necessary due to my play groups meta. There are a few decks in our group that revolve so heavily on the general that I like to be able to eliminate that threat when cards get out of hand (Doran, the Siege Tower; Niv-Mizzet). 

Some of the better interactions in this deck are Stuffy Doll with Guilty Conscience, which is a great way to eliminate one player. I also like the Thopter Foundry, Sword of the Meek and Disciple of the Vault little combo, while it doesn't go infinite it is a nifty way to reduce a life total while padding your own.

There is also a minor milling theme, while it's not the best strategy against 99 card decks it is more painful given the singleton nature of the format. Trepandation Blade is a personal favorite as it triggers just by attacking, at the very least your mill out one card and get a slight bump, I have seen it go up to a +15 when a player is mana screwed though, which is funny when it happens. Raven Guild Master is nice because it exiles the cards which means no graveyard recursion shenanigans. Pulsemage Advocate works well with milling your opponent as you can give back those utility creatures that don't threaten your position but will wreck someone else at the table and bring back your own threat.

I've found Abyssal Persecutor to be a great choice as opponents who are in a bad spot like to keep you around for a bit longer as they can't lose while he's on the table. 

I'm considering adding in Grand Arbiter Augustin IV as he combos with several parts of my deck to reduce my mana costs and hinder my opponents. Potentially I'll cut the Sphinx Sovereign to add him in. So far the Sphinx has only attracted a ton of kill spells when he hits the table so I'm not sure if he's worth keeping in.

I Command you ...

Magic the Gathering – I was recently introduced to the Magic the Gathering Commander Format (Formerly called EDH),  and this format is interesting enough to pull me back into the world of cardboard crack. While I primarily like to play miniature games and boardgames I was reintroduced to those hobbies through friends that played Magic. Over the years I've had stints where I'd be totally into the games and spend ridiculous amounts of money for pieces of cardboard and then I'd lose interest because of a format change or new set that I didn't like.

The newest set Innistrad, peaked my interest as it has a Gothic Horror setting which I really enjoy. There are cards the evoke all the major archtypes of the genre including but not limited to werewolves, vampires, zombies and even the exorcist. While looking into this set I also came across Commander Decks, which are a fixed content product (win!) geared for multiplayer play (win again!). After picking one up and reading through the rules, it seemed pretty straightforward and fun. One of my biggest issues with Magic is needing to have four copies of a card to have it be useful in a deck, Commander is a singleton format which means you can only ever have one of any card (other than basic land) in your deck. So now the cost of acquiring something good for your deck has effectively been reduced by 75%, and those random "good" cards you open in a pack that's all you need.

After going over all this with my regular play group we busted out the boxes of cardboard gold we've had stored for a few years and started building decks. The first few iterations of said decks were utter crap and resulted in plenty of "mana screw" (being unable to play cards because of a lack of resources) and lucky drops in which one player won because no one at the table had an answer for their card. It felt much like it did when I first learned the game and players played what was fun for them rather than whatever the current overpowered combo was. The great thing was the banned list is really small so almost any card you own can be played which is cool, I hate owning things I can't use because of a rules change. 

We've started a small league to play commander games and I'll post updates on how it's going in the future as well as the ground rules our group is using.

If you're interested in learning more about the commander format these sites have some interesting tips:

Commandercast.com – Podcast and website with regular articles and good suggestions.

gatheringmagic.com – Website with daily articles dealing with multiple formats

And we're back ...

First I'd like to introduce the newest member of the Twilight Emporium Family, Oliver Patrick Powers. My son surprised us by coming a little earlier then we expected, which was probably the best Christmas gift we could ask for. It's going to be a few years before he can help dad out with hobby projects but that doesn't mean he can't get his geek on. (note: yes that D20 is a gift my wife crocheted for me, cool huh?).

It's been an interesting experience so far as my daughter is 12 so it's been a while since there's been a baby in the house. Luckily much like riding a bike you don't really forget what to do. Babies for the most part just sleep, eat and poop, the fun part is getting them to switch over to regular hours. For some reason they don't understand that nighttime is when you're supposed to sleep not during the day.

In hobby news I still have quite a few projects to complete and I hope to be able to get back to work on them soon. I received an airbrush for Christmas and I need to relearn how to use it. Once I get the hang of it again I'm going to focus on completing the downtown Malifaux board. I also got a vacuum chamber that I'm looking forward to using on molds, I'm hoping that by degassing the molds they'll stand up to more rigorous use.

I'm in the process of reading Black Crusade (newest Warhammer 40K roleplaying system) and will post up a full review once I've had a chance to try it out.

Holiday Madness (A brief update)

I wanted to apologize to regular readers for the lack of updates as of late. Between the holidays, work and a new baby on the way I haven't had as much time to devote to my hobby as I'd like.

I'm still plugging away at the new Malifaux board and I hope to have an update within the next few weeks to show the progress. After experimenting with a few different ways to add buildings to the board I've settled on a solid solution. Each structure with be a solid block of foam which will form the facade of each building. I'll run balconies along the front of each to add additional elements that are accessible in game. I went back and forth with a few ideas and decided against doing interiors. While they are ultimately cool I feel like interiors will only serve to further complicate an already complex board. 

I also have a bunch of models in my painting que that need assembly and painting which I hope to get to as soon as things calm down a bit.

Last week I did have a chance to see the Muppets movie and I can't recommend it highly enough. It's a fun movie that breathes new life into a struggling franchise. The bit with the chickens covering Cee-lo's "f" you is enough to cover the price of admission.