Kill the Shaman

This is my first post on the Bake on this blog, so I will provide more background on the players involved in this campaign. But first a picture of my dice!

The Bake is the longest running campaign I have ever played. It is basically a beer and pretzel game that meets in Vandales Garage once a month on Thursday.

Brett is the host & we generally show up around 7:00 PM, have some Pizza delivered, and then head into Eberron.

DM James has been our DM for the last few years. He is fantastic.

The Bake is an Eberron Campaign that is very steeped in the lore of Eberron--we have had players join our campaign historically that really know Eberron stuff, but currently we are a little short on lore knowledge.

Andrew is playing a Genasi Warden--a defender for sure. His characters name is Bemin and he is likely the most tactical player ever week. He also generally knows what is going on and has a great memory for Campaign history.

Cameron is playing a Wilden Invoker named Fiddenmar. As our controller he is really fantastic, but Cameron's real strength is actually having a plan. As a rather rules light informal game Brett and I often go off half cocked and get the party in all sorts of trouble. Cameron is basically in charge of getting us back on track.

David is a relatively new player to the campaign, but is definitely our most knowledgeable D&D player--he knows all the rules, effects, etc. He has also rebuilt several of the characters to be a whole lot more Min/Max'd so that the party right now is way more effective than we have ever been before.

James generally runs about three sessions of investigation, roll playing, and clueless hi-jinks before a massive fight breaks out.

This week was fight week!

We had released a bunch of undead giants [Eberron giants are super strong--basically gods] who had besieged Stormreach. This week we attempted to take out this Shaman who was created clouds of shadow snakes and other wise charging the city with necrotic energy that was waking the dead every 15 minutes.

He was huge, contained a shadow serpent inside of him, and was basically unbeatable--Brett's ranger Vassa burned a daily, action pointed, and burned another daily for 258 points of damage in one round. And the thing was not bloodied.

it was a big long drawn out fight with a lot of consequences for the characters. For example, my hero, who is a variety of different shardminds [Kubaba the Sorcerer,  Akuba the Avenger, Bukaka the Warlord, etc.] was rejoined together and with the main thread of his fate and he gained additional knowledge of the Gate and its relationship to the Draconic Prophecy.

Actual Play Murder in Baldur’s Gate--D&D Encounters S15 S11

Murder in Baldur’s Gate--D&D Encounters S15 S11

Another great week of D&D Encounters at Mercenary Market in Costa Mesa.

Scott was there when we arrived at the shop--ready for his amazing Bard to continue his party leadership.

Brian was in rare form this week--I think that the your mom joke meter hit 15--some of them were fantastic, but he did fall back on a few old classics.

Eric, the Drunk Monk, ran out of Ale this week--a real party tragedy!

Derek joined our table for his first D&D experience  This man owns a Nintendo DS2--which I had never seen before, claims Thor as his nickname, and earned the nickname Broody this week.

DM Will took a while to get us running--we have split into two tables--with DM Nick having Diem, Sara, Cory, Jake, & Sean who was also playing his first game of D&D. 

Great to see the turnout continue to increase & new players show up--this is exactly what Encounters is designed to do.

I had tons of space again this week to run Xenagos the Ragging Sage Mage

Martial law has been declared at Baldur's Gate. There was a large explosion at the funeral casket makers shop in the lower city, homes & shops were damaged and 7 people killed when a coffin was dropped and exploded.

The Heroes of the Wide headed to the Hall of Records to see who was behind this. Turns out the shipments were for Scoond, the Duke's right hand who is living in Cescar Gates, a haunted mansion in the rich part of town. 



We went to question him & ended up killing him and his guards.

The party worked well together in combat.

The bard's initial plan to lock them all down did not work that well, but it slowed them down enough for us to get the jump on them.

We got into the manor and killed Scoond.

There was a flurry of crits at the end of the night.

Derek scored two back to back.

And the Drunk Monk closed the night with a classic Boss Crit

Face The Hydra

As part of the Theros Game Day, Wizards of the Coast released the Face the Hydra deck. The Deck is this awesome play experience that Jack and I have been dying to try & we finally got a chance at Mercenary Market in Costa Mesa.

WotC released this fantastic promo video that kind of explains what the deck is all about

Jack and I played against the Hydra together at the Normal level. He was playing his Green Heroic Deck, Voltron, and I was playing my Rakdos Minataur deck.

Keeping score was simple--the instructions for playing the Hydra are very straight foreword. It was easy to simply sit down and play.

 Jack and I got were both playing Hero cards that we had earned at Prerelease & Release day events.

We both got off to good starts. Jack had some deathtouch & I had some Lightning Strike so we were able to kill heads fairly quickly. Also, we never drew any replacement heads so we were able to charge through the beast in three fairly straightforeword turns. 

It was great.

The shop was selling the Hydra deck for 12 bucks which seems very affordable to me & a good way to encourage the Tuesday Morning with Magic crew to continue to play.

Lee's Sandwich Show Down

On Monday, Tuesday, & Thursday I take Jack to Water Polo practice at UCI. This week, while I was waiting for him Brian came by for some Magic.

He has a ton of cards in this bag.

We set up on a small table outside of Lee's Sandwich's which is sadly being turned into a Chicken restaurant [that one that all the Christians eat at because of some anti-gay stance they took a while back]. There is a Blaze Pizza and a Chipotle going in as well so it is not all bad.

And we were right outside the Irvine Center for Peace--perfect place for a Planeswalker showdown

I was ready to go from the moment I sat down.

Brian had to drive there 

and he took a rather odd route.

In any event, once he sat down and we got shuffled up it was on! And he killed me--his mono blue deck prevented my Rakdos deck from doing anything and then milled me to death with Jace.

The second game some UCI Business Major showed up. He was very experienced at Magic and coached me on how to better use my deck.

Needless to say the second game went a very differently as I was able to use the Whip  of Erbos my Gray Merchant very successfully.

Tonight we will play game three to decide the champion.