The Dejark Table

Tyrants of Lothal has been out for a few months, and I haven't really written anything about it yet. Partially that's because I simply haven't played with the expansion much, but partly it's because there are only a few things that really stand out to me from it. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing- the new expansion does a lot of things really right, and more of the same is always good with me. But there are only a few things that really pop, if you know what I mean. I'll try to avoid spoilers as much as possible, but far and away my favorite part of the campaign is a specific mission that involves the heroes infiltrating a large vehicle. One map represents the vehicle in question, while a separate one acts as a sort of minimap, on which the infiltrated vehicle and others can interact.  In my opinion, it really captures that classic Star Wars spirit by being a layered and complex battle, while still remaining intimate to its heroes, and I would...

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood of Venice debuted at Spiel Essen '18 last week, and I was lucky enough to know a few wonderful members of the Assassin's Creed community who were demoing it: Sunny and Jaelle  (who also specifically provided me with the fantastic photos in this article). While it's important to note that the game is still in its development stages and certainly subject to change before release, we learned much of how the mechanics of this game will work, in contrast with some of our earlier predictions a few weeks ago. The Brotherhood Clara and Domenico join the previously revealed Bastiano and Alessandra as the heroic Assassins of the game. Domenico reportedly works as a support hero, offering additional actions to the other beefier Assassins, while the sneaky Clara gets buffs to stealth related actions. A game turn is divided into two phases: the Assassin Phase, and the Guard Phase. This seems like it will work relatively simila...

It's been a busy few months, so I haven't posted a lot, but an Assassin's Creed board game is more than enough to bring me back. I've written a bit about how badly I've wanted more high quality Assassin's Creed board game titles , and Brotherhood of Venice looks like a dream come true. With high quality miniatures and campaign-style play, this looks like something designed specifically with me in mind. We currently don't know a ton about the game yet, at least until Spiel later this month. You can expect me to be covering this game more in the future, but for now I wanted to cover some of the features that I would love to see in Brotherhood of Venice . Good Stealth Gameplay This title is being created by Triton Noir, a company perhaps best known for their V-Commandos series. This seems more than appropriate, since V-Commandos is is notable for being a campaign-style stealth and infiltration game set in the second World War. Stealth, specif...

Several months ago, I wrote an article detailing what I'd like to see in an Assassin's Creed board game. I still think that the series has a ton of potential on the tabletop, but for now I figured it might be fun to create a playlist of board games for each title in the series. Here goes! 1. Assassin's Creed- Crusader Kings Surprisingly, outside of heavier war games there really aren't a ton of popular titles about the Crusades.  However, it looks like the popular PC series Crusader Kings is finally coming to the tabletop soon . I don't know a ton about this game yet, but it appears to be set in Europe during the Crusades, and will features playing as factions that have fragile alliances with each other. Peace and diplomacy seem to be key strategies here, but there's no doubt that war will eventually erupt. Keep an eye on this one! 2. Assassin's Creed II- The Princes of Florence The Princes of Florence pits pl...

This week at the Hyperspace Report, Fantasy Flight Games announced a huge second edition of their popular miniatures game, X-Wing.  They appear to be taking advantage of this shift in product to address several aspects of the ambitious game, including turret tracking and faction flavor.  Best yet, conversion kits will make all previous sets compatible with the new edition. Of course, Imperial Assault could probably benefit from a new edition as well, and while in the past I've been very opposed to the idea of a new edition, the way X-Wing is being handles has won me over. Here are some arguments I'd make in support of IA 2.0 (and yes, I know some people refer to the app as that already). 1.  Errata This game is full of errata .   And that's fine, with a game this expansive and old it's to be expected.  But having all of these "hidden" rules (as in, not in official rulebooks at release that may be in a casual player's collection) means that pla...

My Rebel players generally try to pick different heroes when they start a new campaign, but there have been exactly two times that a hero has been so good that a different player selected it for the directly subsequent campaign.  The first time this happened, it was Mak, simply because one of my players mistakenly thought he seemed like a relatively straightforward shooter hero. The second time this happened, it was with Vinto Hreeda- because he's just that good. When people think of multi-target damage dealers, the prototypical example tends to be Fenn.  His splash damage is indeed pretty impressive, and can be really punishing for a careless Imperial who bunches up his units too much. But generally, Fenn isn't too terribly difficult to play around.  With Vinto, though- even with his built in abilities of Boltslinger and Thread the Needle, he can deal multi-target damage and there is nowhere to hide .  Generally, I tend to look at it this way- Fenn is a br...