1. You won’t be young forever.

2. The more money you spend, the longer you have to work. Maybe you don’t mind working, but ultimately there will come a time when you stop working & you will need more than potential social security benefits for this.

3. If you don’t know where you money goes, will you know if you are being overcharged? if someone has stolen from you? if you are just wastefully spending all of your money?

There are tons of different approaches to to managing your money. When you are just starting out learning to manage your money – whether you are in debt or not – the key is to spend within your means.  This means that you must first learn where your money is going. So the key first step is to track your spending. How you do this depends on how you spend money. If you mainly use cash, then you will have to manually track by saving your receipts or writing it down, but if you mainly use an electronic method this can be done more simply. Look at your bank statements and fill out categories in a spreadsheet. Alternatively, you can sign up for a multitude of online services.  2 really good free sources are Mint & Personal Capital.  Both are excellent safe ways to track your spending & sort it into categories. You can link every account you own to get a complete financial picture. I personally prefer Personal Capital because it has a more robust system & Mint doesn’t look at everything that interest me, but for many people Mint is an ideal online source because you can more easily track your budget their.

You will need to look at several months in order to get a complete picture. This is because you need to know an average of how much money you are spending on things like food, gas, utilities, etc. You will also need to know how much you are spending on various intermittent expenses like filling your propane tank, charity organizations, insurance, etc.

Make a list of categories.

Determine how much you spend on average in each category.

Include everything – this means that you need to think about yearly expenses such as taxes, insurance, vacations, etc.

After you have done this – you need to determine how much income you make every month. Ideally you will not include intermittent income that isn’t dependable such as bonuses, commissions and overtime, but for some people these are regular and dependable and can be included.  Your budget should not be speculative. It should be based on actual income you expect to receive and not dependent on income that you might not get.

Now you have some options – you can make a spreadsheet budge (my personal choice), create a budget in Mint, download YouNeedABudget or find another online budgeting option.

I use a spreadsheet, it looks like this:

I have sections based on whether I will be paying out of my checking account or automatic credit card payments.

Some things about our budget:

Both of our cars are paid off so we have a car fund. You have certain car expenses every year & one day we will need to get a replacement car.  Instead of pretending like we aren’t aware of this fact, we are saving for this occasion.

We have a vacation fund. This is a savings account for the money we need for all anticipated trips for the year. We calculated how much a trip generally costs us, where we plan to go for the year and then averaged it out over the entire year. If this is your first time doing this, you will also need to consider how soon the vacation is coming up. It does no good to have the money in August for a trip you take in June.

We make extra mortgage payments. This is a personal choice. If you have debt you should be repaying it. Also, many people believe that you should invest instead of prepay your mortgage if the rate of return is better. For us, we believe that paying off our mortgage is essential in order to stop working. We can always cut back on our spending if we have retired & are have a bad financial year, but we can’t cut back that payment if we still owe on the house.

We own 2 houses – one is a rental property.

Most importantly we have miscellaneous expenses.  These are things that we pay every year, but occur infrequently. So we have added them up and averaged how much we need to save during the course of the year to pay them. I always estimate on the high side. Extra money can be saved or spent at the holidays, but it is important to me to be prepared.

Every year, I like to set Goals. These are things I hope to accomplish throughout the year with extra money that we receive. This year its a pretty short list, but last year it included things like purchase a new computer, buy a freezer, etc. This is  a list of things that would be nice, but aren’t essential to purchase right this minute & I try to work it in if I can. I’m happy to say that the only thing I didn’t get to this year was a picnic table, but I decided we didn’t really need that. 

If you have significant debt, you budget should focus around eliminating that debt. Once you have an initial budget, look at it and figure out where you can trim off some fat. This is something I’ll be talking about in my next post.

I have been reading some of the SNAP “Challenges” & disregarding the fact that hunger in America is a problem that we need to solve, these challenges are stupid. You don’t just wake up one day with $30 (or less than $350/mo for a family of 4) to spend on food for the week (I mean maybe in rare occasions that really happens) but most people have some some basic pantry items already spices, flour, oil…things that don’t need to be replaced every single week. A loaf of bread can be made for under $1 if you have:

Flour

Milk

Eggs

Yeast

Oil

Butter

Sugar

Salt

Coincidentally – these ingredients will also allow you to make pretzels, pizza crust, crepes, pancakes, and a variety of other cheap meal options.

A can of tomatoes with some herbs is all you need to make both pasta and pizza sauce, plus it can be used for some tomato based soups.

A lot of these challenges talk about how they can’t season their food or didn’t have some basic ingredient.  I mean these items have to be purchased, but not all at one time.  No one has to restock their pantry every week. It is not representative of reality to act like you don’t have use of these ingredients unless you legitimately can’t figure out how you would buy 1 of them every week/month to keep a basic pantry stocked.

Many people spend very frugally on their grocery bills because they want to save money, not necessarily because they have to & there are many blogs & stories all over the internet on how to eat on a budget or trim your grocery bill while still eating well.  Most of these don’t even include the use of coupons, which certainly help to lower costs. I just think many of these “Challenge” posts are being too ridiculous & don’t actually include reality.

Please do not think that I am under the impression that ~$30/week is enough to provide a great diet for 1 person or that I think there isn’t a problem & the current gov’t budget negotiations shouldn’t be addressing this problem.  Merely that I think the problem could be helped more if these challenge actually showed ways to stretch that money further rather than pointing out how they are unable to properly feed themselves.  Education & basic cooking skills are key to stretching your food dollars.

Debt can be crushing – there were times in my early 20s where I wouldn’t have been able to eat if I didn’t get free or nearly free food from the restaurants where I worked.  I worked multiple jobs in an attempt to get ahead & this strategy is the only one open to most people who find themselves deep in debt & looking to get ahead.  If your bills are more than you make, the only way to get out from under them is to make more money.

Debt is an all consuming problem.  You can’t escape it.  It haunts every aspect of your life.  That $100 in your bank account can’t buy you groceries when it is already promised to the Credit Card Company, bank, or government.  Your entire life becomes about paying those debts.  Initially it’s about just staying afloat, but eventually you realize that you can’t live this way forever so you have to determine a solution. How can you get out of this problem?

1. Make a budget – determine where all of your money is going & if any of it can be redirected (more about this in a different post)
2. Find a better paying job or get a raise
3. Find a second or third job – no job is too lowly when you need more money.
4. Turn your hobby into money
5. Sell your possessions
6. Meet with a debt counselor
7. Work out payment arrangements with your collection agencies
8. Consolidate as many things as possible

In my case – 2 & 8 were what made a difference.  I knew that I couldn’t work 2-3 jobs forever & since I had considered it before, I joined the military.  This was a significant pay raise for me at the time.  I also consolidated all of my student loans into one loan which lowered my payment to a very manageable amount. Finally, I closed all of my credit cards & worked out payment arrangements with the companies.  This was the hardest part. In the end I directed all of my spare cash towards paying off my Credit Cards followed by my car.

Are you in debt? What steps are you taking or did you take to get out of debt?

What I was really thinking about was how I got here.  My closest friends & family members know about my slight obsession with accruing money. I’m not really interested in buying things, just in having significant amounts of money in the bank. I think I’m getting closer to doing the right things financially, but like everyone else I haven’t always made the best financial decisions & what I have done has been learned through trial & error.

Like most people, I have debt, credit cards & differing financial opinions from my SO. What I have learned is that none of this matters as long as you keep plugging away towards your end goal, whatever that might be. As I write this post, I’m not in some special kind of category.  I’m not an early retiree, semi-retired, millionaire or extreme frugality person.  I’m a fairly normal, moderately upper middle class married woman.

When I was 18, I went away to college like most people do.  I went to a state school, took out a few loans & opened up my first credit card before classes even started because the CC people are present on campus trying to sign you up ( or at least they were 15 years ago) & at the time it seemed like a good idea to buy the supplies & books I needed.  Having 4 younger sisters and parents who didn’t earn a high income meant I was pretty much on my own to pay for school.

Interestingly, my initial run through college is probably the only time in my life that I didn’t have my act together.  I didn’t know what I was going to do, didn’t particularly want to be there & instead of graduating in 3 years with all the credits I had when I started, I ended up transferring to private school and going for 5 years.  After graduation, still not know what I was going to do, I started graduate school.

After 1 year of graduate school,  I realized that this was never going to work.  I owed a not insignificant amount of money ~$27,000.  I was involved in 2 serious car crashes that year through no fault of my own & totaled 2 cars.  The first car that I totaled was a car that I took over payments on when someone that my one of my sisters cosigned for couldn’t make the payment & the loan was for more than the actual value of the car. In the end, I ended up with a worse car, payments on that car & payments on the car that was totaled.  At least, all of my medical bills were covered, but since I worked for tips at the time & didn’t work for over 3 months, I got pretty far behind on my bills. The payouts from the 2 insurance companies kept me afloat, but didn’t help me with the money I was saving for my next semester’s worth of tuition.  Being unwilling to take out another $15k worth of loans, I dropped out of graduate school. I was 24.

For nearly a year, I worked 1 full time job in a restaurant during the day, part-time 3rd shift waitressing  & part time as a youth pastor. Needless to say this was not covering the amount of debt I now had nor was it getting me any closer to my goals.  I had been in a dual degree graduate program with the intention of getting my M. Divinity & M.B.A.  I was planning to go into the Navy as a Chaplain & let the Navy fund my Ph.D. while paying off my enormous (at least to me) student debt, I had had a plan.  I wasn’t simply accruing debt with no plan on how to pay it all off, but now I didn’t know what to do & I certainly wasn’t getting ahead.

Then, one of my brothers-in-law enlisted.  Another one & I decided to do the same, so he would get a better promotion at the end of training. I considered it, along with the option of moving back home, but since I had planned all along to join the Navy it seemed like the best solution to my financial problems.  I would get some bonus money, a much higher salary than I currently earned, free education & experience. Plus I could do some traveling.

So, I left for boot camp as a Navy Nuclear Electrician’s Mate complete with the full $20K sign on bonus.  Even so, my debt almost prevented me from getting my security clearance. When all was said & done – car, Credit cards, & student loans I owed nearly $50,000. I had to write out a plan showing how I was going to manage my debt & pay it off.  I think this was the first time I ever wrote a budget. It was actually pretty simple. I got some help consolidating all of my student loans into 1 20 year loan and lowering the interest rate to a very manageable payment (which I still have today) at around 2% my payment went from roughly $700 to $140.  I used my bonus after taxes – which if you have ever received a lump sum bonus, you know I only got about 50% of the bonus after taxes – to pay off my car & the original car loan. I closed my CC accounts & worked out deals to pay off the balances.  It took me a little over 6 months to get to the point where I had actual extra cash at the end of every month with these changes.

And then I got married…

I love house rentals for vacations.  They let me have all the amenities of my house with a few added perks for vacation.   The key is to know your needs, top wants & price range.  I know that renting a hotel room for a week in Indianapolis, a decent one, will run me around $1500 for the week.  I’m not willing to share my hotel room with other people, but I am delighted to share my rental house with friends & family who otherwise couldn’t afford to attend GenCon.  It’s a blast for everyone involved. This means that when I can find a house in that price range for 1 week, its a no brainer to book it because I can afford to give people pretty heavily discounted rates since we are simply discounting my already planned vacation. So pricing is a key point in my search for a house.  Secondly, I need to be within a reasonable driving distance of the convention center, maybe this isn’t a concern for some people but I don’t want to get up any earlier than necessary or have trouble driving home to a strange place late at night.  Third, the location needs enough place to very comfortably house 8 people  & up to 12 since I never know how many people are tagging along.  The final thing I look for in a vacation rental is lux items.  It’s just not a vacation if there aren’t comfortable bed, a nice kitchen & grill for our food & a hot tub/pool to lounge around in the evenings.  Typically I can find all of these things with free parking for under $2000 in Indianapolis & after thou roughly checking reviews I book the house.

Buying the event tickets requires a lot of planning.  I don’t’ want to miss out on anything new or exciting, but I also do not want to overbook myself.  There is nothing worse than having to run from 1 event to the next for 4 days never being certain that you won’t miss something.  Typically, I only schedule 1 to 2 things per day to allow for plenty of time for eating, checking out new games, meeting new people & just general wondering.  These means that it is a little bit of a chore to decide on the things I’m going to do for certain every year.  Fro me – there are just 2 key things to GenCon – I must play Acquire, there aren’t enough opportunities to play this game so I never want to miss one, & I must go to the Charity Auction – the auctioneers are a blast, there are always cool things & I like donating money to a good cause for interesting items.

The biggest part of before GenCon planning though is the actual trip – finding out who is coming along, planning the route & deciding what to do .  Usually we drive down at night to minimize time off work & traffic.  Renting a good book is a great way to stay awake all night long with decent entertainment long after people have gone to sleep if you’re the drive.  Last year we arrive in time to tour the Colts stadium – I’m undecided what to do this year, but am leaning towards taking the chocolate tour.  I also try to find time to visit the Farmer’s Market downtown to get fresh food & snacks that I can carry around.  There are tons of things to do & places to eat in downtown Indianapolis.  It’s an awesome place to vacation especially during one of their biggest conventions.

I hope I’ve given you a little taste of why I love to travel to GenCon on vacation. Even if you’re not a huge games – it’s definitely worth a trip.  Everyone likes to play board games with their friends & family and here you get to experience them in a way you’ve never done before.

I have to say that the most frustrating thing about Magic for me is the randomness.  I sat down at the Starcitygames.com Open on Saturday playing an Izzet Control list that I designed and have been testing – although it still needs some work I felt like it was ready enough to get in some fun games over the day & I have a pretty decent match up against Zombies and Miracle control,two decks that I knew I would probably be facing.  I won my opening die roll and looked down at a hand containing 1 land not very good for a control deck so I shipped it immediately.  Onto 6 cards, again 1 land.  Onto 0 land.  Finally, I kept on 3 land & a spell.   Of course I was facing Jund Zombies, a deck I would like to play against – you know if I actually had any cards in my hand.  Then comes game 2 – about halfway through the game if you looked at our board state you might question who was playing the control deck as the Zombie player had twice as many lands in play as I did.  Thus began another wonderful SCG experience for me.  Round 2 I played against Jund Midrange – where I found myself staring at a Thundermaw Hellkite/Desecration Demon played on the same turn G3.  He hadn’t played anything larger than an x/3 in the first 2 games. Surprise! Followed by RDW where I proceeded to have more land troubles.  Sometimes 26 lands just isn’t enough.

So, I “hit” the trade tables – which is to say that I wondered over with my trade stuff and mostly watched Rob trade – occasionally interjecting that I was interested in acquiring something or trading with the people who were waiting for him.  I always have a blast doing this.  I used to work a little harder at the trade grinding but then it really does feel like work & I have a job.  I don’t really want a hobby that feels like a job.  I have a blast watching Rob do trades that sometimes go into the thousands of dollars.  I love that you can trade Dual lands into a bunch of standard cards that simply allow you to turn a profit much faster.  We tried all day to make an epic trade for the 2 complete sets of Return to Ravnica that I brought with me, but were unsuccessful in repeating the epic trade at the last tournament for a complete foil Urza set.

I made a bunch of trade during the day.  I had a goal of up trading based on buy list prices.  I was aiming to cash out in the neighborhood of $1000 for the day, but I did not bring the bulk items I had set aside & was a little too overzealous in acquiring items for my personal collection for the day, so I ended up a couple hundred short of this goal.  I had a lot of new Return to Ravnica items that I was eager to get rid of at the current obscenely high prices.  I have no reason to believe that they will stay this high once more product is opened & the anticipated shortage is not quite as bad as we thought it would be.  I had also hit on a few items I have been holding such as Falkenrath Aristocrat & had around 2 dozen shocklands to trade off.  One of the bigger trades I made on the day was to one of the local “big” traders who had been unsuccessfully trying to offload 19 foil Zendikar lands – which I happily picked up for $105 in trade (around $5.5 each).  I really just needed the foil Forest in order to complete the Zendikar part of my foil land collection, but am always happy to pick up items that I think are going to continue to increase in value while trading down things that I think are near their peaks.  I am happy (for the most part) to sit on certain items for months while I wait for their peak price.  I did not write down this trade, but it involved Thragtusk, Jace, Architect of Thought & a few other return to Ravnica cards.  This is part of the fun for me, picking up higher priced cards that people sometime have trouble moving, but are probably not going to decrease in value – foil lands, foil angels, certain foreign language cards, etc.  I also have a good time meeting new people.  I met 2 different individuals that I knew from the QuietSpeculation forums & got to know a few other individuals a little better that I had talked with before at various events.  Traders are just another community of people you can become a part of just like your LGS crowd & the people you see grinding at every local tournament.   Pics of the cards I acquired Sat (next time I will take pictures of the actual trades so I can talk about why I do what I do).

Trading outside your LGS can be a little daunting when you first start doing it.  It’s easy to trade with the people you seek every week, but harder to judge people you have never met before.  How do you know that they aren’t trying to rip you off? Can you watch closely enough to make sure that they don’t steal from you? How do you figure out who wants to trade & who is just trying to profit off of you?  These are things you probably don’t worry too much about at your LGS.  You know who has the best stuff, who likes to hoard cards, who tries to build value & which kids are brand new and need a little help with their collections. It’s much different at a large event.

The good news is that a lot of it is like trading at your LGS.  Sit down across from your opponent, finish your match and just politely ask if he has trades available.  This will mostly keep you away from sharks.  It will also open up a couple trades usually as the players around you will want to jump in if they have trades or see something cool in your binder. There are hundreds of other people at the event just like you who came to play, not just to trade.  Beyond this, the people who come to these events to trade can often be found congregating in groups around the room with a bunch of different trades happening.  These groups of traders actually function a little like your LGS, but on a larger scale.  Some of us trade for fun just more seriously, some people are trading from a stores inventory, a couple people are interested in foreign cards, some people just really like promos, 1 or 2 might be trying to grind pack to power,  1 or 2 people might be actively trying to rip you off, but they get a bad name quickly, etc.  If you have concerns about a trade you’ve been offered, just ask a couple people around you.  People should not be offering you cash as that’s not allowed at most sites (not to say it does not happen).  If an offer seems bad to you it probably is.  I know at least one trader was kicked out of the hall for ripping people off (technically it was because he was purchasing for cash, but most traders just ignore that, it was just the reason that was offered up to the TO).  He offered a kid with a pretty standard low end binder $40 cash for his whole binder making it seem like a good deal. The monster binder by itself is practically worth that amount.

I do not advise needing to look up the price of every single card involved in a trade if you plan to do more than a couple trades over the course of the day.  First, most sites do not have great cell reception & the wireless prices are often high making this  difficult.  Second, its tedious.  Finally, your battery will run down from the constant downloading if you don’t have a high end battery.  Try to have a decent idea of the price of the cards in your binder so you don’t have to check every single one and of the cost of the cards you’re interested in picking up.  Of course there will be items you see that you just want – such as the foil Sigara, I picked up – and then you will have to check the price, but for the most part try to have a little consideration for the people you are trading with.  We don’t want to spend more than about 15 minutes in an individual trade (between rounds), if you’re not playing, during a round is the time to do a prolonged trade so you don’t miss out on opportunities with people actually in the tournament.

Another important consideration is that the pricing you use at your LGS may not be the pricing used at a larger tournament.  Most people (not all) prefer to go with TCG average or an Ebay average.  There are a couple apps available if you have a smart phone that I know give you the TCG Average( I have a Droid & typically use MTG Familiar).  I am not aware of one that gives you an Ebay average.  Just make sure that it gives you the actual averages as some apps do not pull their data from the correct place & can be slow to up date during a price fluctuation. If you need price info – there is probably someone standing around who can give it to you if you’re having an issue with your phone.  Contrary to popular belief most people are generally happy to answer a question as long as you don’t keep bothering them.

Finally, if you know someone from your local community who loves to trade – they can probably point out 1 or 2 people to get your feet wet with.  It helps to have a good start to build up your confidence before you start trading with the more hard core traders.  Particularly keep an eye out for someone who continually asks what you value items at.  They are especially looking to find an area you are weak in and take advantage of it, but don’t be afraid it there is something you really want to get from them.  It’s just a few pieces of paper smashed together after all.

If you liked this let me know – I wasn’t intending to write about trading, but it is something I enjoy  – I can write a little more about different ways to gain value and understanding how to make money on Ebay or online trading if that interests anyone.

Over the last two years, there have been two decks that I really enjoyed playing – Tempered Steel & my own version of Zombie Pod that I like to call dead pod people.  So, I played FNM the last 2 weeks to give myself a final opportunity at piloting these decks and they were as much fun as I remembered and I didn’t have any of the issues I have been suffering from all summer, which was good because it allowed me to have once last enjoyable tournament with these decks.  I also, really loved playing Steel against the new kids who didn’t even remember this being a deck because they have only played 6 months or less.  The shocked looks on their face were the bright side of my nights (well, except for the winning of course).

This motivated me to play even more Magic this weekend – which was excellent as it was pre-release weekend!  I played in three different events this weekend. I started with the midnight event, proceeded to the Saturday morning event and wrapped up my weekend by playing 2 Headed Giant Sunday afternoon before heading to work.  I can honestly say that it is one of the most fun weekends I have ever had playing Magic & I have had a lot of great Magic experiences over the last 4.5 years.

If you’ve never been to a Magic Pre-release event, you are missing out.  Here you get to meet and play with people who often do not play outside of casual magic.  You also get to play with some of the more competitive players.  Depending on the store you choose, it is typically a well-rounded experience playing with all different types and ages of player.

At midnight, Friday, when I was at my sharpest (I’m a night person), I chose to play the guild I was most interested in – Izzet.  There were  a little over 40 people present all of us eagerly anticipating this first opportunity to open a sealed box and reveal the contents.  and the contents of this box did not disappoint. Inside of the boxes were 20 sided dice in your guild colors, a guild sticker, a welcome letter from your guild leader, and an achievement card in addition to your 5 regular packs and 1 guild pack.

I proceeded to open my packs – preferring to open every pack and then look at what I have received.  Typically this means that I can get a good idea which colors I have the most of without getting distracted by the fancy white Mythic I just opened before I realize I only have 5 other white colors, but tonight I was distracted by the fancy new planeswalker I opened in my second pack – it’s hard to miss the different frame even when you are just sorting cards by color and not really looking at them – that’s right, I opened a Jace 4.0 to go with my Izzet guild pack.  In fact, my entire box of stuff was pretty awesome.  There was a second Hypersonic Dragon, a Chemister & just the right amount of Azorious mana fixing that I was able to splash for the good W/U stuff that opened, including Isperia.  After building a U/R/w deck, I proceeded to play 4 rounds of Magic against some pretty fun opponents.  I had a blast with the deck and ended up splitting packs with my final round opponent to ensure that neither of us went home empty-handed after a long night of playing.

None of my decks were as good or as fun for the rest of the weekend, but I still had a good time playing Golgari on Sat and Rakdos with Jon my 2 Headed-Giant partner who ran Izzet.  All-in-all, I think the ability to play the guild of your choice is one of the best ideas Wizards has had lately – & I hope none of you missed out on the opportunity.  If you missed it just remember, 5 more guilds come out next year & you should give it a try then.  For myself, I feel a little more excited about Magic than I have all summer, but after playing 19 hours of Magic over the weekend – I’m happy to take the next 2 weeks off before the SCG open comes to Providence.  Hope to see you guys there.

Wednesday

When we finally made it out of the bed, we travelled 10 minutes to visit the local farmers market where we bought fresh food for the week, had fantastic fresh squeezed lemonade and hot pretzels as we walked through downtown to pick up our badges and tickets at the Indianapolis Convention Center (ICC).  The guys took the time to visit the Soldiers and Sailors Monument & Museum, while Zoe and I enjoyed fresh cups of tea from the South Bend Chocolate Cafe̕ across the street.  Finally we arrived at the Convention Center where it appears that Gen Con has finally figured out how to run a registration/will call line.  Twenty minutes later everyone had all of the tickets they needed.  We went on a quick tour of the ICC to locate our first events on Thursday and then headed back to the house to hang out.

Thursday

Bright and early, we headed to day one of the con.  First stop was the First Exposure Playtest Hall where I played an interesting game still in development with a working title of Deus.  I really like this game and hope that the developer is successful in his attempts to get this published.  The game involved 4 players each representing one of the magical schools (earth, wind, fire, water) and was supposed to determine the champion for the year.  In order to do this, your wizard must acquire certain tools and visit each of the academies before the other wizards are able to do this.  This is accomplished by placing tiles around the board, both across the board and on top of each other.  The rules were relatively simple, but the game was a lot like playing a complex form of checkers and was very enjoyable.  The 3 people I played with also liked the game and I hope that I will have the opportunity to play again one day.

Afterwards,  I went to the exhibition hall, which had been open for about 45 minutes,  where I found that all copies of Mage Wars for the day had sold out in under 2 minutes, due to a problem with shipping a few of the parts from China in time for the convention.  Luckily, there would be 60 copies for sell every morning and I could try again another day.  Unfortunately, I had really hoped I would be able to read the complete rules before the Mage Wars tournament, but that was not to be.  I watched another demo game of Mage Wars and then moved on.  I spent several hours just wandering the aisles in the hall checking out new games.

I watched a lot of Android: Netrunner demos, but never actually played because the game sold out so quickly (10 minutes after the door opened) that I knew I would have to wait if I wanted to purchase it. I didn’t want to be too excited about a game that I might be able to purchase next month.  Netrunner is the newest Fantasy Flight Games’  Living Card Game.  It is a 2-player game where one person plays the corporation and one person plays the runner.  FFG expects it to be available for full purchase sometime next month.  They plan to support it with full tournament play as they have done with their other LCGs and I plan to purchase it when it finally becomes available.

Luckily Mayfair Games had a lot more copies of Star Trek: Catan than they said there would be and I was easily able to pick up a copy of this game.  I spent a fair amount of time checking out the foil lands that were available in the hall and made a couple large purchases (only 109 more lands to go!).  I also picked up a complete set of John Avon Unhinged Lithographs.  Eventually, I wandered over to the tabletop room and signed up for my first Ascension PvP tournament of the weekend.

While I waited for the event to fire, I headed back into the dealer room with Morgan where we spend a fair amount of time in the Dr. Who booth.  Then we played Fear & Greed: The Stock Market Card Game.  This is a quick multi-player game that strives to simulate the stock market experience.  The game was much too random to give a good simulation.  The stock market changes each “day” by flipping over the top card of the deck and changing the stock prices.  Then, players are forced to either buy or sell by the broker of the day.  This is supposed to simulate the Fear or Greed exhibited by most peoples stock purchases, but wasn’t very exciting.  I’d rather play more Acquire to practice my buying and selling, which is exactly what I did.

I played in my first Ascension PvP tournament of the weekend.  These were 8-player single elimination tournaments.  This tournament was the original block and I won the first round before being eliminated in the semis.  Before this weekend, I didn’t have much experience playing PvP since my games typically involved 3-4 players.  It was a much faster paced game which changed a lot of the strategy that is necessary.

It was time to play Acquire.  This is something I look forward to every year, the opportunity to play a game I’ve played all my life.  Acquire is a game that was originally published in 1962 by 3M (yes the tape makers used to publish games) and has since be republished in various forms.  In my opinion it is the best stock purchasing game ever made.  The game involves a simple tile board.  Players are allowed to place a tile every turn forming or expanding hotels.  Each turn a player may purchase up to 3 stocks in the existing hotels until the stocks run out or you have no more money.  Hotels can merge with each other by becoming connected.  There are then bonuses to be earned for having the first or second most stock.  Afterwards a player must decide whether to sell the stock, hold the stock (if they think the hotel could form again) or trade the stock 2-for-1 for the hotel that bought them out.  The game ends when one company has become the largest and after cashing out the person with the most money wins.  About an hour and a half later, I walked away with my one and only Rogue Judge Tournament ribbon, winning the game by a slim $3,000 margin.

I met up with the gang and everyone but Matt played in the first Gen Con Mage Wars tournament.  Mage Wars is a game that was just released at Gen Con and should be available for sale in stores by Sept. 15th (preorders are available now).  This is the game that I was most looking forward to and I made everyone play by signing them up for the event last spring.  Mage Wars combines the best elements of different games into one game.  Your Mage has an actual spell book and gets to select 2 spells to use every turn.  This eliminates the “luck” element that is inherent in most card games.  There is a board which is divided into 8 squares.  These squares are used for movement and determining range – eliminating my least favorite element of miniature play – measuring.  Mages channel energy every turn which is used to cast spells or conjure various creatures/equipment – no mana issues here.  Players battle it out attempting to kill their opponents’ mage.  Yes, you do get to roll tons of dice to determine hit points for various creatures and mages.  This is a two player game, but adding a second or third board allows for multi-player variants.  Zoe and I were paired in the first round of the single elimination tournament.  Unfortunately, being unfamiliar with all the rules it was a long, slow game in which we failed to do any damage to our mages.  Instead, it came down to a tie-breaker which Zoe won.  This happened to be fortunate, because Zoe took down the tournament with her Beastmaster deck!

Friday

Friday, I only had one event scheduled – the Penny Arcade: Gamers vs Evil tournament, where I hoped to pick up some cool promos.  I once again failed in my efforts to acquire Mage Wars.  Entering the hall at 10:02, I was not among the first 60 people to make it to the line.  Wandering through the hall again, I did discover that Star Trek: The Original Series DBG should be available for pre-orders and doing so would get me some cool new promos.  I also discovered that there is a Star Trek: Enterprise playmat which I hope to get in the near future.

I picked up a copy of Quills. Quills is an interesting card spelling game where players use their cards to spell out words and attempt to make melds.  It’s like a combination of Scrabble and Gin. I purchased this game for my 9-year old nephew who both enjoys games and showing off how smart he is.

I played in another PvP Ascension tournament while waiting for the PA tournament time.  This time I got into a Storm of Souls block event which allowed me the opportunity to play with the newly released Immortal Heroes expansion.  This expansion adds new cards and events to the Storm of Souls deck.  Additionally, it adds a new game element in the form of Soul Gems.  Soul Gems are an additional deck and are acquired through the purchase of a card from the main deck which gives players the ability to gain a Soul Gem.  Soul Gems are one time use cards which must be used the turn they are gained and mainly reflect cards from the original block.  Initially I was not impressed with the added element as I have begun to feel like there are too many items to track when not playing the game electronically.  However, over the course of the weekend I have been persuaded that the addition is good for the game.  I went onto win this event & finally got the Ascension Playmat and Ender of Days Promo card.

From here I proceeded to the PA tournament.  Nothing new or exciting to report from this event.  We played with the original set.  The event had twice as many people as Cryptozoic was expecting and so it got off to a somewhat late start.  Scout Master is pretty broken in 4-player play.  Most of the games were won by the individual who was lucky enough to get him because drawing 4-6 extra cards late game is pretty great.  The tournament was a lot of fun and I got the Mega Fan Promo Card which I did have yet, plus another copy of Fruit Fucker end boss promo.

Saturday

I arrived at ICC at 8 am because Ryan and Matt both had early events.  This allowed me time to wander around and get some breakfast as well as to exchange my Ascension World Championship ticket for more Generics.  Since I was in the top 8 currently for the heads-up championship, I figured there was no need to spend the morning playing more Ascension.  Instead, I planned to be one of the first 60 people in line to buy Mage Wars and to get my Catan Uhura card signed by Nichelle Nichols.  After waiting in line for 45 minutes (not my specialty), I was the second person into the hall on my side of the room and made it to the Arcane Wonders (Mage Wars) booth where I was number 31 in line to get my copy of the game.  I got my number (good for purchase anytime that day) and wondered back to wait in the autograph line.  Here I got to briefly meet Nichelle Nichols and get my Star Trek: Catan items signed. Afterwards, I made a bunch more purchases (Dominion, Dominion: Dark Ages, Mage Wars: Core Spell Tome, Dominion Base Card, Dominion Promos, 3M Bookshelf games from the Consignment shop).

I walked around the room some more with Matt.  We watched the DC Comics Deck Building Game demo.  It seemed like a pretty straight forward version of a deck building game.  The only interesting thing is that you get to be a superhero – which as a fan of DBGs and Superheroes is enough for me to purchase the game. Expected release date is sometime next month.  Matt also took the opportunity to buy a copy of Cards Against Humanity and have some special cards made up by the designers – who were hanging out across the aisle from the demo.   Then I did one of my favorite things at Gen Con.  I went to the CCG auction.  I bought several booster boxes for $80 each, watched a bunch of bulk lots get auctioned off.  Picked up a complete set of Judgment ($40). Watched some people bid over some promotional items like banners and posters.  Then I picked up 2 partial sets of The Dark – one English and one Italian ($42) knowing that there was a NM English Maze of Ith inside.  Auctioneer said that there wasn’t an Italian one so I was pleasantly surprised to find both an English and Italian copy inside.  I ended this portion of the auction by watching the start of the Toys and Oddities auction where I picked up pictures of the cast of  Voyager, Next Gen, and DS9 as well as a box of old Star Trek books.  I also bought an unopened box of Desert Storm Trading Cards ($3), for unknown reasons.

I played another round of Ascension, losing again in the semis and then went to the Charity Auction which is typically my favorite thing about Gen Con.  The auctioneers are very entertaining and some really nice items go up for auction.  Unfortunately, the entire auction was running behind because they attempted to have two back to back charity auctions.  The first being a special donation of TSR archived items for the Gary Gygax Memorial Fund.  This auction was supposed to last for about 1 hr, but ended up lasting for 2.5 hours.  This meant that we missed the most fun portion of the auction, the artist donations because they occurred while we were playing Artemis: Green and Gold.  They shifted items around and lost most of the audience due to the late hour (the auction didn’t end until nearly 1 am), which I believe was a disservice to the STARS youth foundation they were supposed to be raising money for.

In the middle of the charity auction, Ryan and I played Artemis: Green and Gold.  Artemis is a multi-player, multi-computer, spaceship bridge simulator.  This game was a blast to play.  Ryan and I played with 4 other people on their simulated bridge complete with a red alert button.  Ryan was the Captain and I was theEngineer.  The game involves each individual running a station as our ship attempts to defend the docking stations located in our sector of space.  I shifted energy around the ship determining which systems could operate at a higher rate (shields, weapons, engines, etc) while balancing the cooling to them so that they didn’t over heat while operating above 100%.  The company intends for people to get together for old school network parties and play the game, but play is possible on various network platforms.  The game doesn’t have fantastic graphics as it is produced by one person, but the simulation is quite good.

Sunday

I played in a final Ascension PvP to ensure I stayed in the top 8, and qualified for the championship.  This time I won a Chronicles of the Godslayer pod getting the same promos and playmat I won before and ensuring a prize for all my effort.  Then I wondered around in the hall for the last time as I waited for the Ascension PvP Championship to start.  Matt and I demoed Tsuro of the Seas, which I did not like.  I thought that the addition of the daikaiju (sea monsters) added too much randomness.  The original version of the game, Tsuro, is more skill intensive and you are not likely to die due to a random roll of the die.

The Ascension Heads-Up Championship started and I was paired against David Williams (Poker & Magic Pro) playing Storm of Souls block.  This game was a bit of a nail biter.  For most of the game I was winning significantly, having ~40 honor gems to David’s  ~7 gems.  Then things changed.  I was pretty well on the power plan while David was on the rune plan.  There were no monsters in play for several turns and I could not end the game.  Aaron the Godslayer flipped over.  David snatched him up.  Still no monsters in play.  Passed a few turns with not much happening.  Then David bought a hero, flipped over a new monster which he was able to kill with Aaron gaining him 6 honor and 3 trophy monsters from the Void.  This brought him back into the game and allowed him to win several turns later when he drew Aaron again and was able to use it on another larger monster as well as simply having a great last turn.  I lost by 8 or 9 honor.

Finally, made a last tour of the dealer hall picking up a few new dice and missing an opportunity at a small retail dice booth who was the first person all weekend to tell me they were only taking cash, when I had no more cash.

Originally posted & edited by Battleground Games & Hobbies

Mage Wars is a game designed around the concept of 2 Mages battling it out on the field of combat.  It has a unique game play that I believe combines the best of card games and miniature games.  Each player selects a Mage.  Currently, there are four options available – Beastmaster, Warlock, Wizard, & Priestess.  Each Mage has mastered various parts of magic.  This magic is evidenced through the selection of cards a player puts into her spellbook.  These books determine what spells you have access to during the course of a game as well what creatures you will have available to attack with and any other game play devices you might want. As an avid Magic: the Gathering player, I was immediately drawn to this idea because it eliminates the random luck involved in drawing from a deck. Every spell is worth a certain amount of points and each spellbook can contain a maximum of 120 points worth of spells.  Further, every Mage is able to generate a certain amount of mana each turn which is used to cast spells.  This mana can be stored and thus eliminates the mana production problems found in many games.

Players begin battling with their Mages on opposite corners from one another. Play proceeds in rounds with the Mages taking actions in turn.  Available actions are items such as moving, casting spells, & attacking.  Among the spells available to each Mage are items like creatures, attacks, enchantments, walls for blocking,  armor, etc.  Standard items you would expect a magical user to have at their disposal.  Mages battle it out by moving around the board and attacking each other as well as the creatures defending the other Mage.  The first person to run out of life dies.

Of course things aren’t really that simple.  Game play in Mage Wars is complex.  Each Mage is able to do a variety of actions that you would expect from them such as the Beastmaster having a pet that is much stronger than the creature would normally be & the Priestess being able to do a significant amount of healing.  The more creatures and other permanents you have, the more actions that are possible each round.  Unlike a standard card game, play is not one sided.  Mages take turns acting, this means that if you attack one of my creatures and it doesn’t die, that creature may just hit you back immediately.     If you are a fan of RPG’s you will probably find a style of Mage that suits you well enough right now.  If you’re like me though – you may not be satisfied with the current 4 options, but no worries – there are more expansions in the works & plenty of things to try out in the mean time.

If you’re an avid card player like me, but not a miniature player – you will find that this game gives you a taste of the action involved in moving characters around for battle without the pain of having to build, paint, setup or measure things.  You even get the fun of rolling a billion dice without having to do too much counting as the options available are all 1’s and 2’s.  Mage Wars is a complex, but fun game requiring about an hour to play (around 2 for a first timer) that I highly recommend.  Plans for organized play are in the works, but nothing is known yet except that the promos which will be available will be previews of future card sets.  I’ll keep you updated as plans are developed.  Hope to see you playing this game soon! Hit me up if you live in the area and want to try out a game.

Check out my new website A Gamer’s Life for more information about this and other games  & stay tuned for video of Mage Wars game play coming sometime this week as well as my review of Android: Netrunner & MtG: Return to Ravnica.