Magic Life Lessons

Magical Life Lesson #3 — Know Your Goal 4nh51

Magical Life Lessons are short snippets of wisdom learned from playing Magic the Gathering. It may be a game, but here you’ll find insights learned from slinging cards that you can apply to the game of life. 196x2e

Magic the Gathering is a great game, and it has plenty to teach about life. Today I want to talk about goals.

You win a game of Magic by getting your opponent’s life total to 0. Nothing new about that. There are other ways to win, such as if your opponent has to draw a card from an empty deck, but, for the most part, it’s all about that magical number, 0.

It’s easy to miss the point here. You can play to “beat” your opponent, forgetting that you’ve got everything set up for a lethal play. Taking your opponent down to 0 is the goal, any distraction from that goal is an opportunity for your opponent to win. Strong decks and strong players keep this in mind.

You’ll see people forgetting this in MTG Arena often. When your opponent has a significant advantage, but doesn’t go for the win, then they’ve forgotten the win condition. That can buy you time for a life-saving or game-winning play.

Knowing your goals will get you ahead, in Magic, and in life.


GOALMagical Life Lesson #3 by MaxieLindo on DeviantArt

Magic Life Lesson #3 — Know Your Goal 64162n

By figuring out your goals, you can eliminate anything that distracts you or stops you from achieving it.

As an example, I’ve been wanting to do regular posts here again, and blog about Magic, but I didn’t want to kill my productivity. I figured that short, 300-word posts would give me a chance to achieve my blogging goal without taking too much time away from writing RPG content. My priority — my number 1 goal — is to write new RPG books. Knowing this goal helps me manage my time and gauge how well I’m doing, so I budget time for blogging appropriately.

We’re halfway through 2019, so it’s a great time to look back at the year’s goals and see how you’re doing. Cut any goals that aren’t working out, create new goals where needed, prioritize them, and the rest of the year’s your chance to shine.

Rodney Sloan
Rising Phoenix Games

Check out our blog, our Facebook page and on Twitter.



Tips and Tricks

Set Sail in a Miniature Ship — Mini Monday, Ep 4 655f58

It’s Mini Monday, where I share customizing, scratch building, kitbashing, and miniature painting projects for your roleplaying table. This week we’ll build a miniature ship to go with your Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign or Undersea Sourcebook inspired adventures.

“Yo ho ho, a pirate’s life for Smee!”

This little boat is very easy to make, looks great on the table, and is highly customizable. I’m planning to make a small armada for my undersea pirate campaign, which won’t take much time or break the bank with this technique.

“Arr, tis a ghost ship!”

Building the Ship 326ah

I used foam board, which I marked out to be an inch wide and 5 inches long. I then cut it and shaped the bow and stern.

For the gunwales, I used cardboard strips, which I glued to the sides of the foam board. The prow and rudder is made from balsa wood, and the tiller is a match stick. The deck was left plain, except for four struts, which are used to mark the squares off for models to stand on. The mast is a bamboo skewer, with thick yarn glued around the bottom of it.

I then undercoated the miniature ship in white, and painted the hull and prow a dark red. The rest was either painted dark brown to resemble wood, or light brown to resemble rope.

When the paint was dry, I rolled up a thin strip of linen and tied it to the mast. I then glued it in place and painted the yarn. To finish up, I painted the whole thing, including the sail, with matt varnish.

Full Stats Coming Soon 5t3h45

The wind runner, which this is a model of, will appear with full stats in our forthecoming Undersea Sourcebook: Feats & Equipment, which includes two new ships, two submersibles, and an airship.

Rodney Sloan
Rising Phoenix Games

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The second edition of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game launched this month at GenCon. If you’re eager to include aasimar & tiefling ancestries with the new rules of the game, we’ve got you covered.

Heaven & Hell: Aasimar & Tiefling Ancestries presents two popular races — the tiefling, of diabolic heritage, and the aasimar, descended from angels — fully compatible with the second edition of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

Inside you’ll find:

  • Everything you need to create an aasimar or tiefling character
  • Aasimar & tiefling heritages, including the lawbringer archon heritage and gobmaw barghest heritage
  • Ancestry feats for both ancestries, for 1st, 5th, 9th, and 13th level
  • 50 random ancestry features for each ancestry
  • Ancestry equipment
  • Rules for adding either the aasimar or tiefling to another ancestry, as a heritage, are provided in the errata, which will be added to the book in the future.
The artwork conveys the majesty of the aasimar, and recalls the works of the Renaissance masters.

The book was written by the talented Kim Frandsen, with art and layout by Bob Greyvenstein. Bob has given the tiefling and aasimar a classical representation that lends real weight to the book.

Ancestry feats for the tiefling
The new Bestiary includes the aasimar and tiefling as “planar scions”, and doesn’t provide rules for building characters of either type. Paizo will be releasing rules for both ancestries in the future, but don’t be worried about the rules in Heaven & Hell becoming obsolete. There’s plenty here that you’ll be able to use in conjunction with their offering.

Buy Online 414h2t

You can find Heaven & Hell on the following stores:
When you buy from our store, we offer a 30 day, no questions asked money-back guarantee.

Rodney Sloan
Rising Phoenix Games

Check out our blog, our Facebook page and on Twitter.



General

Magical Life Lesson #2 — Practice Lots 2y4x3b

Magical Life Lessons are short snippets of wisdom learned from playing Magic the Gathering. It may be a game, but here you’ll find insights learned from slinging cards that you can apply to the game of life.

I’ve been playing Magic the Gathering on and off for around 20 years now, but I only started to understand many aspects of the game recently, after playing hours of Hearthstone and MTG Arena.

With online play, you can get in more games against a wide variety of players in a single sitting, so you learn quicker. If you’re open to learning, do some reading (or YouTube watching), your growth can spike quickly. The rest is all practice, lots and lots of practice.

And the same goes in life…

Magic Life Lesson #2 — Practice, Practice, Practice 3b1d4q

Here are two covers I designed myself, using stock art:

I studied design as part of my degree, so you could argue that I knew what I was doing back in 2012 with my first RPG book cover. I won’t hold it against you if you disagree. Fast forward seven years to the present and my cover for Horde is far more solid, works better from a distance, and communicates what the game is about.

Practice alone won’t get you to where you want to be. In his book, Talent is Overrated, Geoff Colvin talks about how practice needs to be intelligently done. Pick something you need to work on, and focus your practice on it. You don’t go into a game of Magic with a set of random cards and hope to win, you plan your deck, try it out, and refine it after a few games.

Figure out one thing you want to improve about yourself, practice that skill until you nail it, then move to the next thing. Rinse and repeat. Don’t give up.

Rodney Sloan
Rising Phoenix Games

Check out our blog, our Facebook page and on Twitter.



Tips and Tricks

Scratch Built Flying Sword — Mini Monday, Ep 3 2v4f2z

It’s Mini Monday, where I share customizing, scratch building, kitbashing, and miniature painting projects for your roleplaying table. This week I’ll show you a simple scratch building project for a flying sword.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Oh, never mind!

This was a simple scratch build, and there are plenty of ways to get similar results. I wanted a flying sword animated object for one of my NPCs, but the model can just as easily be used to mark a guardian of faith or spiritual weapon spell.

I took the scimitar off an old Warhammer orc, then drilled into the base of the blade to insert a pin, made from a paper clip. I then used modeling epoxy to craft the handle, then attached this to a small base. Done!

I undercoated with white, then painted black over the sword and pin. I then painted the base green and dry brushed the sword with metallic paint. I used brown with a leather brown color for highlights on the handle. I then flocked the base and varnished the whole thing with matt varnish. For the second varnish coat, I used gloss on the metallic parts and matt varnish everywhere else. And that was the painting done.

This was a quick project and the idea can be used for so much more, such as spell effects, other animated objects, floating orbs, and markers, such as a triggered blade trap.

Rodney Sloan
Rising Phoenix Games

Check out our blog, our Facebook page and on Twitter.


Tips and Tricks

Magical Life Lesson #1 — Never Give Up 135564

Magical Life Lessons are short snippets of wisdom learned from playing Magic the Gathering. It may be a game, but here you’ll find insights learned from slinging cards that you can apply to the game of life.

One Card to Rule Them All 6b5f1a

So I’m playing a life gain black and white deck against an arguably better version of the same deck. I’m at 9 life, my opponent’s at 765! He or she has four creatures that could nail my coffin shut, and I can block three of them. But, for multiple turns, only two creatures come at me, so I block with my two 1/1 bats, spawned each round by Regal Bloodlord. A win doesn’t look possible, and I could throw in the towel — something common on MTG Arena — but I press on.

Then I land Adjani, Strength of the Pride. I activate his +1 ability and reach 40 health. My opponent goes all in on the attack, but at this point I’ve got the extra creatures to block. I kill off all but the three biggest guys, then pop Adjani, destroying my opponent’s advantage for good. Still far above 750 life, my opponent quits the game.

Draw Engine Fail 5b2a3w

Earlier the same day, I played against an elemental deck with Omnath, Locus of the Roil and Risen Reef featuring prominently. My opponent’s forces were stacked heavily against me, but I waited for the assault that never came. In the end, I won because my opponent drew their last card off Omnath.

So…

Magic Life Lesson #1 — Never Give Up 6p4w2r


NEVER GIVE UP! by Emezie on DeviantArt

Never give up, success could be just around the corner. I’ve seen this again and again in RPG publishing, where one book might struggle to sell and another can fly off the shelves. You can do all sorts of things to help sales along, but you’ll never make it in the industry if you’re not creating new content regularly.

Rodney Sloan
Rising Phoenix Games

Check out our blog, our Facebook page and on Twitter.



 

Tips and Tricks

Simple Drow Paint Tutorial — Mini Monday, Ep 2 i4zm

It’s Mini Monday, where I share customizing, scratch building, kitbashing, and miniature painting projects for your roleplaying table. This week I’ll show you a simple drow paint scheme to have you ready for your next drow encounter in no time.

This paint scheme is perfect for an Underdark campaign and doesn’t take much time at all. I used the drow duellist miniatures from the Dungeons & Dragons: The Legend of Drizzt Board Game (Boardgame Geek Link).

“This way!” “No! This way!”

Base Coat s3b4u

Base coat your drow miniatures with a medium to dark grey. I use this as the skin tone for my drow, since black is a very flat color that pulls in light. Your drow figures are going to be predominantly black, so the grey gives you some variation, and you can always darken it with a wash later.

Any Color as Long as its Black 71w52

Paint all the armor, weapons, bases, and gear black. Leave only the skin and hair grey. For variety, you could paint the armor and any cloth dark red or deep purple.



Hair 1c5051

Drybrush the hair white. This works very well with the grey basecoat, which defines the recesses.

Metals 4v2m4n

Pick out metallic parts by dry brushing with a metallic color. I used Mithril Silver from Citadel, which shows how old my paints are. Mithril Silver is a bright metallic, now called Runefang Steel. I painted the swords with the same metallic paint, but might have gone with a darker metallic color, like Leadbulcher, just for more variation.

Done, And… 4g2u6l

At this point, the simple drow paint job is done. They’re ready for gaming.

If you have time, you can go back into your simple drow paint scheme and pick out details like eyes, belt straps, wands, or markings. With white, you can highlight the hair, and use greys to highlight the skin. When you’re done, use a dark purple wash to bring out the detail, but leave the hair.

Painting Heroes and Villains g6rp

This tutorial works best for rank and file drow, but you can extend these principles for major NPCs and dark elf player characters. I use this technique as my first stage on all my drow figures, then work in more detail for the major minis.

Pro Tip: Us a purple base coat if you want your drow to look like the ones in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

Till next time, play good games!

Rodney Sloan
Rising Phoenix Games

Check out our blog, our Facebook page and on Twitter.

General

The Horde is Coming! — Take a Sneak Peek 6i6b3n

Horde is a hack and slash game for 1–4 players. Stand against masses of enemies without lucky dice rolls to save you. Horde’s rules emphasize the need for clever tactics to stay alive long enough to protect the Flame of Life and defeat the deadly hordes.

Horde includes two modes: Defender, for a shorter game, and Dungeon, for a full dungeon crawl through caverns teeming with enemies.

Horde is currently in playtesting, and I’m hoping to release it by the end of the month. Here’s a peek at the cover:

Horde Cover Concept

Horde’s Concept 3l6l1h

I wanted a game where you play a powerful hero wading through masses of enemies, where dice rolls didn’t determine the outcome of attacks, but tactics meant everything. I wanted to use as much of my growing collection of fantasy miniatures as possible and put hordes of figures on the board. Horde is my answer to that.

Playtesting Horde

The game also had to be playable solo, quick to set up, and — most importantly — loads of fun.  Horde is checking all those boxes in playtesting, and I’m excited to share more about the game with you, soon.

Horde is being created for the A Game By Its Cover game jam, inspired by the Youkai Project famicase cover art done by Yowan Langlais.

Winter Is Coming 1o1954

Aurora’s Whole Realms Catalogue was a second edition D&D book for the Forgotten Realms, and we’ve brought it back for fifth edition. Aurora’s Whole Realms Winter Catalogue is out now:

Aurora’s Whole Realms Winter Catalogue

You can find the Summer and Autumn catalogues on the Dungeons Masters Guild.

Print Books Coming Soon 2p1k3c

We’ve done print cards for a while now, mainly for maps and dungeon tiles. Now we’re adding our first print on demand (POD) titles, which will be available from Drive Thru RPG in a few months time. The first two books we’re setting up are Griffins — A Field Guide (D&D) and Anaximander’s Adventuring Studies (Pathfinder). Going forward, new titles will be available in POD, if the platform allows it.

Rodney Sloan
Rising Phoenix Games

Check out our blog, our Facebook page and on Twitter.

General

Last Night I Met a Galeb Duhr 6v6x42

A galeb duhr is a boulder-like creature from Dungeons & Dragons, and a creature I’ve never written about or encountered anywhere but in the Monster Manual. Until last night, when I met a galeb duhr in the woods.


Galeb Duhr by james-olley on DeviantArt

So here I am, wandering along the wooded coastline of some unknown land, when I hear a rustle in the bushes up ahead. The next thing I see is a massive tree stump moving through the air — obviously a club. My fight reflex is about to kick in when I see the walking boulder that’s carrying it. “No worries, I think, this thing’s neutrally aligned.”

Okay, I’ll confess, this was all a vivid and memorable dream, but it stuck with me for some reason. Apart from questioning the effect of my work on my sanity, I found myself wondering about these strange little elementals and why their gravelly complexion would illicit such instinctive trust from me. Is there more to the pet rock thing? Are geographic formations naturally trustworthy?

[GARD]

I think it was the sense of wonder and realism that struck me most. Roleplaying games, by definition, allow us to experience the fantastic. The realism and wonder I felt in my dream are the holy grail (grails?) of a good RPG session, and many of us have had those moments when our imaginations take us beyond reality. If the runner’s high is what keeps a runner running, it’s the wonderous trips of the imagination that bring roleplayers back for more.

The galeb duhr has never piqued my interest before, so why would I dream about such an odd little monster? How do you even pronounce galeb duhr without sounding like a moron? Does any of this matter? 42!

Have you had similar dreams, or nightmares, linked to roleplaying? Or am I booking into the looney bin all on my own? We just need enough lunatics to start a game group in Cellblock C.

Rodney Sloan
Rising Phoenix Games

Check out our blog, our Facebook page and on Twitter.

Be the Hero 1a662i