Bluffing the Dead

Last week I had occasion to sit in on GM Krzys's Phoenix Dawn Command. Whilst I had sat in on the game a few times, as I find the narrative driven card based game quite refreshing, it was my first time actually playing the cards themselves. With a little familiarity and a lot of help I did get the general idea of making plays of cards combining their face value that had to beat a certain GM set score given the constraints of whether I could use Grace, Intelligence or Strength card categories to do so. There are also situational modifiers in our favour as we could add narrative for additional attack points, burn sparks for bonuses and augment scores for other party members.

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Having a strong poker background proved to be absolutely no help whatsoever as the particular Undead Warrior we were fighting didn't seem phased by bravado, but given the fact he was also regenerating a bit each round did inject a bit of urgency. Perhaps I should have been prcticising with Tarot cards rather than the usual fifty two card deck. Ultimately we did take him down which required several of us to combine our face value cards to exceed quite a high total (armour) before the remainder came off his hit point pool but it stuck me how well balanced the encounter was. Worth mentioning that one of us was dead when the encounter began and another Phoenix died boldly during the fight, which is not the end of the world as you get seven lives and dead phoenixes can give spiritual aid to players - think glowing blue Jedi. The debrief at Eerie Command was amusing tho but I think we got an above average appraisal as it seems that we have discovered that the great undead army marching upon the south of our world are particularly vulnerable to Shamanic magic and all have a history as individuals that perhaps, could be levered.

Credit must also go to GM Fade as when I stole his Phoenix Dawn place, he began a new D&D to fill the gap from GM Mike's enormously fun makeshift adventure and as we finished for the evening, characters were created and dead things were found on beaches. More of that later I am sure.

Exalted continues on with the promise of Andras extending the experience and a welcome shout out to Alfie who joined the club last week so, for now, we are as busy as the Borg and backed up further than a constipated Ogre. I wont post the usual glib picture in this instance.