The Star Wars: Unlimited card Boba Fett (Collecting the Bounty) is now suspended from play in the Premier format. The announcement of the change was made by lead designer Danny Schaefer in a blog post published Wednesday. He also called the card “a development mistake.” While Boba Fett is not being banned outright, it will have limited utility starting Nov. 8.
“If we knew back then what we know now,” Schefer said, “we never would have let him go to print with that combination of abilities, stats, and deploy cost.”
According to Schaefer, the Boba Fett card in question — a leader card — was included in the decks of 55% of winners in a recent competitive tournament. For a game with 54 different leader cards at time of publication, that represents a significant design issue. Schaefer writes that the decision to suspend the card was not taken lightly, but was preferred to alternate methods, including an outright ban or retirement, as is common in competitor Flesh and Blood.
“He is the most severe power level outlier and his power level issues are exacerbated because he’s a leader,” Schaefer writes. And he’s correct: Every time players sit down at the table, they have their choice of leaders, which begin every game in play on the table. Leaders also set the tone for the entire rest of the deck
“Leaders carry special weight in this game because they define archetypes, because you have guaranteed access to them in every game, and because a deck can only ever have one leader,” he writes. “Boba Fett’s combination of stats and ability have proven to be too far ahead [preventing] other midrange leaders […] from being viable in the metagame. Regardless of what specific card choices in these decks shift from set to set, it would likely remain optimal to have the Boba Fett leader at the helm.”
Star Wars: Unlimited launched in March 2024 to near universal critical acclaim. Reviewers, including here at Polygon, lauded developers at Fantasy Flight Games for the TCG’s fast and powerful gameplay. Mashing up a beloved IP with a novel two-lane style of combat, with ground and space forces segregated to separate sides of the battlefield, remains a winning combination.
Schaefer left the door open for Boba Fett (Collecting the Bounty) to return from suspension at a later date.
Polygon has reached out to Fantasy Flight for additional clarifications, and will update this story accordingly.
Whether you want jump scares or that level of persistent terror that comes with a thriller, there’s nothing like playing a horror game. Even better if it’s a horror board game, so you can sit around a table with friends or family and bond over being scared together.
If you want to get really into spooky season (hello, Halloween!) or horror just happens to be your go-to choice year-round, we’re here to make your life a little easier by rounding up some of the best horror board games you can buy right now. And if you really want to get into the mood, use candles as your only source of light — you can thank us later.
There’s a reason we can’t stop recommending Betrayal Legacy. The follow-up to Betrayal at House on the Hill is a masterpiece of storytelling, which sees you and your fellow players taking on the role of family members across generations to shape the house’s origin story. Every decision you make becomes part of the house’s terrifying history.
If you’re looking for a social deduction game that is perfect for big groups and can be played in quick rounds, One Night Ultimate Werewolf is for you. Each player is given a secret role with its own abilities, and must rely on their deduction skills — or work together — to figure out who is a werewolf. This version also comes with a free app to moderate the game on your behalf.
Mansions of Madness: Second Edition is a co-op detective-style board game set in the same universe as Arkham Horror: Third Edition (and many more). In it, you must explore Arkham’s cursed mansions and the streets of Innsmouth to solve puzzles, search for clues, and battle evil. The game uses a free app to play, and features four campaigns that vary in difficulty.
A mix of investigation, deduction, and cooperation, Mysterium will see you and your fellow players take on the role of mediums to help an amnesiac ghost at Warwick Manor figure out who killed them. Similar to Clue, you must figure out who committed the crime, where it took place, and which weapon they used — this time by piecing together the vision cards the ghost hands you each turn.
This twist on the classic Clue game is perfect for lovers of the Goosebumps franchise. Horrorland monsters have been unleashed on the town thanks to the ventriloquist dummy Slappy. Your job is to figure out where Slappy is hiding, which monster is helping him, and what traps they have laid.
If you’re a big fan of the classic film Alien, then this co-op strategy game will be a hit of nostalgia as well as an on-the-edge-of-your-seat thriller. Playing as the Nostromo crew members, you and your fellow players must evade the Alien while gathering supplies and crafting items in order to complete objectives such as patching the ship. Once the objectives are complete, you have to take on a final mission to win the game.
Another take on a classic, Taboo: Horror sees you picking one of 900 words from across the horror genre — everything from locations to objects — and trying to get your teammates to guess the word without actually saying it (or the listed words that relate to it). If you say the Taboo word, your opponent pushes a buzzer that screams. This party game can apparently be played with up to 99 people, perfect for family gatherings or getting your witch coven together.
Yet another co-op detective game (are we sensing a pattern here?), Eldritch Horror will see you taking on an “Ancient One” who wants to destroy the planet. You and your fellow players will assume the roles of investigators who travel around the world to gather clues, battle creatures, and solve mysteries to avoid global destruction.
The third season of the animated series The Legend of Vox Machina is now streaming in full, and the Critical Role role-playing team is ready to talk about it — without digging into spoilers just yet.
At the annual Fantastic Fest film festival in Austin, Texas, Polygon sat down at the table with Legend of Vox Machina writer-producer Travis Willingham (the voice of goliath barbarian Grog Strongjaw) and writers Marisha Ray (half-elf druid Keyleth), and Liam O’Brien (multiclass elf Vax’ildan) to unpack their personal “regerts” and wins from The Legend of Vox Machina season 3 — and consider how their approach to the show has changed over three seasons of growing involvement and growing confidence.
This interview has been edited for clarity and concision.
Image: Prime Video
Polygon: By the time you started making season 3 of Legend of Vox Machina, how had the process or your level of input changed in terms of making sure the show got your characters right?
Marisha Ray: We are deeply, deeply in the weeds — especially Travis and Sam Riegel, leading the charge every step of the way. The rest of us have full control over our character voices. A lot of times, we’ll go into the writers room — we start every season being like, These are the moments that it would be a dream to hit, with acknowledgement that we might not get there, but trying to honor a lot from the campaign as much as possible.
I do feel like it’s gotten smoother, in the sense that the wheels are greased now. It’s much more seamless. The writers we work with, the artists as well, they’re getting to know these characters as deeply as we have. So I think the process has become a lot more of a well-oiled machine.
Liam O’Brien: I think that Sam and Travis especially have layers and layers of experience now doing it, so nothing throws them. [To Travis] Well, I don’t know if things threw you — but you just are so experienced with it now that it’s that well-oiled machine Marisha talked about. Marisha and I have joined the fold as writers on the show, so we’ve just gotten more involved in that way. [Marisha and Travis applaud lightly]
O’Brien: And we’ve looked for ways which you’ll find in this current season — after the Vox Machina campaign ended on our channel, we continued to tell stories, and the world and history just ballooned outward and became more dense. And we’ve enjoyed finding little elements from other places to enrich the Vox Machina story. That history exists, so it makes sense that it would be in [the show].
Willingham: Yeah, I think in seasons 1 and 2, we were trying to figure out how we would squish 25-plus hours of gameplay down into six hours, and we’ve figured that out now. So that’s good. And the cast — they are planted in the writers room like snipers. It is great to see them listen to ideas that are being thrown out, storyline changes that are being entertained, and then coming up with dialogue on the fly and other ideas. [It’s great] just watching that creativity spark back and forth across the room.
But as Liam said, I think what’s most interesting about season 3 is that we’re starting to pull in other things from different parts of the universe, to really tee up where the new version of the story can go. I think season 1 and 2 were about delivering the Briarwood arc and setting up the Chroma Conclave arc in a way that was very close to faithful to the canonical representation from the livestream. And now we’re trying to unsettle our audience a little bit, trying to make ’em guess about where things are going.
Can any of you think of anything you sniped? Have you pointed at a change or a line of dialogue and said, “Oh, I don’t think my character would do that, or say that”?
Willingham: All the time. All the time. I would say everyone is so dialed into their characters that as we’re exploring these things — it can be as small as a dialogue tweak or change. Taliesin Jaffe is probably one of the best at making his lines be as Percival de Rolo as possible. But we’ll also give arc notes, emotional notes, we’ll ask questions, give suggestions. We give action suggestions, sometimes: “My character wouldn’t fight up close like this, they’d want to stay farther away.” “Don’t forget about this thing that I used a lot in the game.” All sorts of stuff.
ScreenshotImage: Prime Video
Ray: Yeah, I think we’re in a very unique situation — and the writers will tell you the same thing. It’s not often when working on an adaptation that you get not only the executive producers and creators of the story in the room, but also the people who created the characters.
I think early on, there was probably a little bit of nerves from some of the writers on that, and being like, [long, nervous groan] I don’t want to mess this up. How much freedom do I have?? There was a learning curve for us as well, to know that some things that were very nuanced, or took an incredibly long amount of time to develop in the campaign, you kind of need to nail in one act of an episode.
Willingham: And now [the writers are] just irreverent. They don’t care what we think!
O’Brien: It was a learning curve. I remember early in the process of making the animated shows, going, Nnnnng! I’m holding my baby so tightly! But at this point, it’s proven, and the heart and the essence of the story is so beautifully wrought that I think all of us were able to relax into it. On the flip side, with the writers, I multiple times remember writers besides us saying, “It’s so great to have—” Well, at first it was, Oh my God, the creators are here. If you’re writing Snow White, you don’t typically have Snow White in the room going, “That’s not what I would do.” So it’s like having a creative Clippy in the room, which you can either listen to or—
Willingham: Or “Shut up!”
Ray: That [reference is] so 2005 of you.
“You seem to be trying to write a romance between these two characters!”
O’Brien: “Have you considered dying instead?”
ScreenshotImage: Amazon Video
In the spirit of killing your darlings, is there anything your character did in the campaign that you were sorry to lose in the adaptation?
Willingham: We haven’t touched on it, and I don’t know if we will, but — Grog’s bag of holding from the campaign at this point had accumulated a grotesque number of body parts. There were orc limbs, there were all sorts of monster appendages and guts, different rocks for no reason, pieces of armor. And, y’know, it’s not refrigerated in there. So things would come out in, as Matthew Mercer likes to say, a slaw. We never quite found the right moment to make that bag as disgusting as it possibly could have been. It’s just an 80-gallon bucket of clam chowder.
O’Brien: Because things are so condensed, there have been many guest players at our table over the years that we haven’t found a way [to get onto the show]. Like, Felicia Day as Lyra the wizard stands out in my memory. We’ve pulled in a few of those people, but there just is not a lot of real estate, so we’ve had to be economical with everything.
Ray: Yeah, that’s probably the biggest tragedy. Same with NPCs. You can’t always fit all of ’em. Sometimes we try to combine NPCs, or moments, even. We haven’t gone into anything with the Trickfoots with Pike, and how they kind of came out of nowhere, and were not great people. So there’s stuff like that. Maybe we’ll see if we can honor it down the road. There are even lines — I was actually just talking about this with one of our writers the other day. There are a few lines, especially of stuff that Taliesin had said in-game, where you’re like, “We’ve gotta get that in there.” And sometimes even with individual one-liners, you’re like, “But how?” [Everyone laughs] “It’s not relevant!” You try to find it, though.
O’Brien: Sometimes we try to capture something that took a couple of episodes or games to get through, and it’s just a single frame of animation. I’m just trying to give a nod to it.
Image: Prime Video
What’s the flip side of that? What did your character gain in this season that you were excited about?
Ray: I mean, I think the beauty of what we’re doing is, you can show a lot of perspectives or things that might’ve happened that we didn’t really act out in the game. In campaign one, there was a time where we kind of took an in-game yearlong break where the characters went off, did other things, accomplished some personal drives that they had, and we get to see that. So with Keyleth, you get to see her journey to the Earth Ashari, and go through her Earth Ashari trials.
That was something in the campaign that we just kind of went, This happened! Now she can turn into an Earth elemental! Isn’t that cool? So I think being able to flesh out — when you’re playing Dungeons & Dragons and you level up, a lot of times, it’s picking a spell out of a book and writing it down and you’re like, I can just do that now. But the show allows us to explore how those characters get those abilities and grow. I think that’s always fun.
O’Brien: I just like Vax’s continuing evolution in his relationship with the Matron of Ravens, and where he ends the season, where it’s less of a cat being dragged kicking and screaming into a bathtub, which was kind of season 2 for him, and more coming to terms with it.
Willingham: The thing I love isn’t necessarily for Grog. But for Pike Trickfoot — Ashley Johnson wasn’t around very much [in season 2] because of her shooting on a show in New York. And so she was constantly in and out, and she would miss parts of the storyline. So we took an opportunity to pad her storyline [in season 3] and really bring her more into the way season 3 develops. In future seasons, we really tee her up nicely for a bit more of a meatier bone to chew. And she’s such a force of nature that putting the screws to Ashley is always going to be really fun to watch. So I think that’s the thing I like the most.
O’Brien: I’ll also toss in that what I love about season 3, is the progression of the romantic threads, where they go, how they relate to each other. Where they end in this campaign is pretty incredible.
The formation of the CFP formally brings an end to the all-volunteer committee, first formed in 2006. The move also effectively brings the casual, multiplayer Commander format fully under the control of publisher Wizards of the Coast for the first time.
“Ultimately, myself and other designers at Wizards are going to make the final calls [on Commander going forward],” Verhey said in the post, “but I do expect that most of the time majority opinion on the panel will win out.”
CFP members include the following individuals and pseudonyms, whose X social media accounts were also linked in the original announcement:
The Commander format was severely disrupted last month following a series of high-profile card bans initiated by the CRC. An unprecedented period of harassment followed those bans, including threats of violence and death threats, ultimately leading to the resignation of the entire body. For the CFP, Verhey said that Wizards took as its inspiration the Pauper Format Panel, which was spun up in 2022. Verhey is also a member of that panel.
“We’re a bunch of individuals from around the world that work together to monitor the health of Pauper, suggest changes, and discuss things like ban updates,” Verhey said. “I feel like it’s worked out well, and it’s the base that we wanted to model Commander’s community group after.”
Verhey added that previous members of the CRC and the Commander Advisory Group were all invited to join, but that the goal with such a large panel was to expand the core group’s perspective.
“We wanted to add in some new eyes as well,” Verhey said. “I really wanted to bring in players from other places in the world who have different preferred levels of Commander play. That way, the feedback would come from more regions of the world and we could hear the full range of the Commander spectrum, from players who prefer extremely casual decks to “cEDH” (competitive Commander) players.”
Following a break-in period, the Commander panel will provide feedback on the newly proposed “bracket” system, which Wizards pitched immediately after the CRC originally stepped down as a way to mitigate the existing power differential between some cards in the format. You can read more about it on the Wizards website, but fans should understand that it’s still a ways off from being implemented. And, even when it is, Verhey said it shouldn’t have a big impact on casual play.
Following the proposed brackets, Verhey said that Wizards will once again look at the ban list.
“After aligning on a bracket system and running some tests, I expect our focus to turn to our evaluation of the banned card list,” Verhey said. “To set expectations on that timeline, I wouldn’t expect any changes before early next year at the earliest, and you will have advanced notice. As we said previously, it’s still true that you should not expect any new bans in that evaluation.”
The Legend of Vox Machina is a chance for the cast of Critical Role to revamp their first campaign. Sometimes that means characters who weren’t present for certain events now get to play bigger roles. Other times that means pulling in lore and mythology of Exandria that didn’t get fleshed out till after Vox Machina concluded its first run in 2017.
In the case of the most recent episodes, that means turning a small gameplay hiccup into a huge emotional moment. And the cast was all for it.
[Ed. note: This post contains massive spoilers for the newest episodes of The Legend of Vox Machina, as well as spoilers for the Vox Machina Critical Role campaign.]
Image: Prime Video
The seventh episode of The Legend of Vox Machina ends with gunslinger Percy de Rolo (Taliesin Jaffe) offering mercy to the devious Anna Ripley (Kelly Hu). And instead of taking it, she shoots him in the chest and he falls dead.
There’s a similar moment in the campaign, but the rest of the party is able to quickly rush Percy to a temple and resurrect him. However, in the show, it looks like he’s going to stay dead.
“In the campaign, we were able to bring him back very quickly, but I think that can be something that loses its gravity if you’re constantly able to revive somebody who has died over and over again,” explains Laura Bailey, the voice of half-elf ranger Vex’ahlia. “So in order to make us sit with it and experience that grief, I think it needed to be extended.”
“And give it consequence,” adds Jaffe. “There are definitely consequences left over.”
There’s no shortage of ways to bring back a fallen companion in Dungeons & Dragons. But while having a resurrection option is a great way to not totally lose morale when facing a tough enemy while playing with your friends around the table, in a television show, an easy revival cheapens the ever-increasing stakes.
Image: Prime Video
“We wanted death to feel consequential,” says Travis Willingham, who plays barbarian Grog and also writes for the show. “We wanted it to have weight, otherwise it would just feel flighty and not a big deal if a character goes down. And so this was really a time to get a gut check about what is important around these characters and really how fragile they can be and how temporary some of this stuff is, if you’re not careful.”
Percy’s death sends an emotional shock wave throughout the entire party. And unlike other heavy moments throughout the show, which they had played through some version of before during the actual play campaign, this plotline was new and particularly raw. Since Vex’ahlia and Percy have a romantic relationship — which they finally acted on this season — Bailey found the grieving to be particularly satisfying to dig into, draining as it was.
“We’d leave the sessions and then just feel terrible the rest of the day, but I think it was necessary,” says Bailey. “We started out the entire series and [Vex] is very standoffish, closed off from the get-go. That’s how it was in the campaign as well. She was harsh as a person because she felt she needed to be. But I wanted to make sure in the series that we got to explore why she was like that and really get to see those walls coming down. And through her grief and her regret of being closed off and not letting him know what he meant to her, she was able to grow as a person. I don’t think she would’ve gotten there had it not been for the trauma.”
There was one person who didn’t face a huge emotional challenge, however.
“It was easy on my end,” says Jaffe.
“You just close your eyes,” Bailey adds.
New episodes of The Legend of Vox Machina drop every Thursday.
When I’m playing board games, I have a habit of photographing the table at the very end, just before we put everything up. There’s something intrinsically rewarding about capturing how a game went from box to setup and then from setup to a full game — to capture how busy and frenetic everything got, as seen through token-laden boards and stacks of cards in various states of disarray. It’s not that we’ve built anything permanent or long-term impactful, but I love to take time to capture a memory of that experience nonetheless.
Monkey Palace seems designed for someone like me, someone who’s compelled to treat the end of the game like a chance to photograph some collaborative creation. Co-designed by David Gordon and TAM (aka Tam Myaing) and retailing for $39.99, Monkey Palace puts players in the role of highly intelligent monkeys working together in the jungle to build a tower out of Lego bricks. Only by reaching high up into the canopy can the monkeys get the most bananas, represented in endgame scoring as having the most banana points. Lego is the centerpiece of it all, and the result is something very rewarding — sometimes frustrating, yes, but overall very rewarding.
The concept for Monkey Palace is fairly straightforward to explain, but the devil’s in the details. Each turn, your monkey uses a combination of arches and support blocks (both 1×1 bricks and, more rarely, taller 3×1 columns) to build a path from the jungle floor as high up as they can go. There are distinct rules for how this works, but the gist is that the structure must always go higher with each piece that gets added, and that players must, at least in part, build on top of the existing structure.
Photo: Ross Miller/Polygon
The height and the length of your makeshift staircase that turn determines how many monkey points you get. They’re a short-term, use-it-or-lose-it currency that players quickly exchange to purchase cards from a shared marketplace, and here’s where the strategic layer really starts to kick in. Cards have immediate benefits as well as long-term rewards, and only by choosing the right mix of cards from the marketplace can monkeys come out on top. Perhaps you’ll snag a few more arches in the short term, with the promise of additional support pieces flowing in on future rounds. Or maybe you feel confident in your supplies and opt to purchase big fat bundles of bananas instead. Thankfully, the marketplace refreshes automatically with every purchase, so new mechanics are constantly entering the game.
When you first open the box, it actually seems like something is missing — like you’ll run out of Legos before the game is over. But the beauty of Monkey Palace is that it naturally goes vertical very quickly, with the pieces creating a dense, architectural shape that coalesces around one or two tall points, only to gently slope down from there. It’s a rather beautiful system that seems to come together organically between the players by mandating everything stay connected and rewarding verticality. Additionally, the number of bricks you pick up each round grows exponentially as you purchase more cards, which in turn allows you to create longer and more elaborate structures.
Tactically, I found a need to strike a balance between placing arches — which is the only piece that nets you monkey points — and the support beams that allow you to overcome particularly tall blockers. These monkeys, to be sure, just need the staircase you build to go up with each step — they don’t need it to go up gradually, and more often than not in the late game you’ll find yourself cashing in a lot of support bricks all at once to get just one more arch built near or at the top of the makeshift tower.
There are a handful of special rules that complicate this system and can shake up the dynamic between the players. Decoration bricks — an assortment of leaves or a shiny golden column — are added to the end of every path and determined by the type of ground you start your pathway on. Depending on the decoration and the height, you may be able to call forth the monkey piece, which you can use to block the path of your opponents. We especially liked the butterfly piece, which essentially blocks the topmost spot from being used until another tallest point takes the mantle. This had a knock-on effect of breaking us out of just one vertical tower and looking for other “backup” spires to build around, ultimately making for a more interesting final set-piece.
Photo: Ross Miller/Polygon
But Lego is both Monkey Palace’s biggest boon and also the biggest point of contention among those we playtested with. When planning out a turn, most players think first about the highest point they can reach and then work their way backward to figure out if that’s possible. The problem here is that, with Legos, you literally can’t build this way — they have to start at the bottom and work their way up, lest you find yourself trying to squeeze connective pieces from your aspirational staircase to the preexisting support structure you’re building upon. Far too often, a player would try to go this way, only to risk breaking parts of the structure. We eventually found ways to think about how to play from the “bottom up” — to find the right patterns that we could somewhat confidently start to build over and hope for the best — but this method proved counterintuitive.
In an odd way, many of these mechanics and scenarios reminded me of Scrabble, but for STEM kids. Many of the same gameplay patterns are found here: The need for a good balance of high-score-value tiles (arches) with low-value support ones (columns); the time spent during other players’ turns planning out your staircase; and the subsequent pain of all your plans going awry when another player takes your spot.
But that pain is more a testament to how invested we got in the game — even if we honestly stopped caring about who won. There’s a tangibility in Monkey Palace that supercedes even the desire of winning. Sure, we kept score and celebrated our wins as much as rued our losses, but ultimately what we enjoyed more than anything was the 3D creation at the end — something organically co-created together. I suspect after several games the shapes start to feel similar, such is the case with how the system encourages a gradual slope, but we still appreciated having something that we built together. And unlike other board games, I didn’t find myself immediately tearing down the board and putting everything away. In fact, our most recent game remains intact, a temporary centerpiece for our kitchen table.
That Monkey Palace is fueled by Lego pieces, a brand almost viscerally associated with building recklessly for fun, is only more apt.
Monkey Palace was reviewed with a retail copy provided by Asmodee. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.
Valheim is a fun crafting survival game to play with a group of pals set in the Viking afterlife, and the board game adaptation is off to a great start. On Tuesday, a crowdfunding campaign for Valheim: The Board Game went live on Gamefound, and it already hit 300% funding. There are no stretch goals for the game, as the developer is choosing to deliver a complete, core experience — but there are some fun goodies that players can pledge for, along with the game itself.
We interviewed developer Ole Steiness back in June about the board game’s design; a two-hour session is designed to mimic the evolution of playing Valheim on a server with friends. This means that there are roles for everyone, even players who prefer to maintain the homestead. “You have to develop yourself and your home to be able to take on this challenge,” explained Steiness. “You’re going to explore the map, which is going to be tiles on the board, and you’ll have events going on and creatures showing up to challenge you. As you fight your way through it, you gather resources so you and your friends can build up, make a cool character, a cool home, until you take on the big boss fight at the end of the game.”
Mood Publishing showed an 18-minute trailer of one way the game can unfold, with a party of Vikings teaming up to take on Bonemass. There’s also a solo mode for players who prefer to go it alone.
The crowdfunding campaign will run up until Oct. 21; the estimated arrival date for the board game is October 2025. Players can also pony up for extra goodies like an exclusive dice set, a game mat, and a fancy dice tower. The Collector’s Edition is a way to pick up these extras, and it also comes with a classy gold-foil box with holographic cards.
Ten years ago this month, when The Adventure Zone started as a one-off actual play experiment on the My Brother, My Brother and Me podcast, two of its four hosts worked here, at Polygon. In fact, Justin and Griffin McElroy helped co-found this place, after we worked together at another video game website (RIP Joystiq) as far back as 2007. I mention this, in the interest of disclosure, because I am not impartial when it comes to all things McElroy.
It’s been 10 years since the show began and rapidly grew across many seasons and hundreds of episodes, across a bestselling graphic novel series and countless live shows. I can measure my life alongside its evolutions.
When I listened to the first episode of The Adventure Zone — this would be the introductory Balance arc, up and running on its own podcast feed later in 2014 — I did so while building some basement shelves, in part to hold some kid stuff overflow for a 9-month-old upstairs. The most recent episode I listened to was the pilot episode for TAZ’s new season, Abnimals (not a typo), during a recent family drive to the beach, with a now 10-year-old listening along. The theme song is still stuck in his head (more on this later).
“Imagine a world in which all of the anthropomorphic animal hero shows of the ’90s and early 2000s existed at the same time,” explains this season’s Dungeon Master, Travis McElroy (or “zookeeper,” as the team floated in an early episode shared with me). “And within that world there were three team members who had been removed from their former teams for various reasons now trying to form their own kind of ragtag group trying to exist in this world of heroic teens. And this time no swears.”
Artwork from a graphic novel adaptation of The Adventure Zone.Artwork from the cover of The Adventure Zone: Here There Be Gerblins
Those three team members include Roger Mooer, a Charolais cow — well, technically a bull — with a knack for spy stuff and a gift for ballroom dancing, as played by Clint McElroy, their dad; Navy Seal, an aquatic commando who is also a beefy anthropomorphic Ross seal and is not and has never been, it must be noted, a member of the armed forces, as played by Griffin McElroy; and Axe-O-Lyle, an extreme firefighting axolotl who can regrow his limbs… but it’s kind of embarrassing, as played by Justin McElroy.
Why the shift to a family-friendly format? “What sort of changed my mind on it was seeing how meaningful it was to me to find decent stuff that I like listening to with my kids,” Justin says. “We have a few podcasts that they’re obsessed with and it’s nice to find ones that I’m into too. So making something that could serve that purpose I feel was also sort of a public good, or at least serving our audience well.”
“Recently, as I’ve been doing meet-and-greets and we’ve been doing conventions and stuff, there’s just a lot more kids coming through,” Travis agrees. “Twelve-year-olds with their graphic novels to be signed, and a lot more people talked about their kids being into The Adventure Zone.”
Outside of an absence of swearing, I asked how they’re choosing to adapt their improvisational storytelling for younger listeners. Should we expect something akin to a G rating?
Travis continues, “I’ve gone back through and watched a lot of the source material cartoons and thinking about it in that framework of what those setups are, what they’re doing and what the stakes are, because, for example, with the original 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, they made the Foot Clan robots. So we can just kick him in the face all day. It’s robots, man! Don’t even worry about it.”
The pilot episode I listened to had henchmen who were knocked out, but never killed; environmental attacks instead of weapon-based attacks; a Big Bad doing a heist (greedy!); and some longer story arc mystery with a surprise cliffhanger ending. All the while, the play system Travis designed for the series — which rests on rolling two to three d8 dice — provides plenty of room for the flexibility and improv that has defined the show’s last decade while also emphasizing momentum.
So we can just kick him in the face all day. It’s robots, man!
“I am trying to keep action and momentum in my head,” explains Justin. “When we were doing previous seasons, the comedy was almost always the point. And so if something’s funny but not necessarily propulsive, we’ll kind of sit in it and mess around with it until it stops being funny and then move along. But I have been cautious in my head thinking this isn’t going to be interesting if you’re younger; you just want something to happen. Let’s make something happen. And if something hasn’t happened in a while, I’ll make something else happen.”
For the tabletop role-playing curious kiddo in your house, this may help whet their appetite for their own seat at the table, but it won’t give them a framework to host their own adventures.
“When I made up the rules system, I wanted something that isn’t chunky, isn’t complicated so that we don’t have to spend a lot of time explaining or adding up various die. I wanted it to be like, You roll, good, go. So that we could focus more on moving the story forward and doing the action,” Travis explains. “There are some wonderful versions of actual play stuff that you watch or listen to and learn how to play the game. I mean, it’s wonderful, but that’s not what I pictured this season to be and so I didn’t want it to be school. I didn’t want it to feel like school.”
What does come through in Abnimals is a focus on family, Clint McElroy — in a fitting role for the patriarch of the family — says. “One thing that runs through everything we do in TAZ that is also applicable here, and this was a constant in [Teenage Mutant Ninja] Turtles and a lot of those other shows, was family. I don’t think there’s any way we could do something that didn’t have something to do with family, whether it’s found family or actual family coming together. We’re going to explore that in Abnimals as well.”
You can now listen (with or without your family) to the initial “setup” episode of The Adventure Zone: Abnimals , conveniently embedded at the top of this post. But I’ll also encourage you to indulge in the season’s theme song, with music by Eric Near, lyrics by Near, Justin McElroy, and the internet’s Jonathan Coulton, and performed by Coulton.
In spite of what you have heard We’re at the height of our powers Atop the tallest of towers we stand (They’ll never stop us now)
So take my hand if you trust That we will do what we must Until it’s turning out just like we planned (We’ll find a way somehow)
Yeah the road is long But our mojo’s strong And unless I’m wrong (and I’m not) We’re at the height of our powers
Update: Added an embed for the first episode to the post, and updated some language to reflect that the season is now live.
Currently, the Altered TCG is exclusively available through the Asmodee storefront, with just two products primarily intended for resale. But, if you’d like to get a head start on collecting this freshly minted TCG, we’ve detailed all the available products below, along with their contents.
Altered is launching with a collection of six different starter decks, which are currently only available as a $89.94 bundle from the Asmodee store. Each deck represents one of the factions in Altered, and includes a 39-card deck in addition to a single hero card, rulebook, foldable game mat, five Adventure cards, a pair of reminder cards, a foil card, and essential play markers.
Like traditional TCGs, Altered will have Booster Packs available to expand your collection and customize your deck. While individual packs will be available eventually, currently, you can only purchase a $143.64 box from the Asmodee store. Each box includes a total of 36 Booster Packs, each of which includes 12 cards. Each Booster Pack is guaranteed to include at least one card from every faction in addition to potentially holding unique variants of existing cards, or a single true one-of-a-kind card. The rarity spread for individual boosters isn’t disclosed, but each Booster Box, on average, includes 36 hero cards, 288 commons, over 100 rares, and up to five unique cards.
Altered has also launched with a robust collection of premium accessories produced by Gamegenic, including game mats, card sleeves, deck boxes, and more. For now, the only place to find these accessories is the Asmodee store, but we’ve outlined the entire catalog below if you’re looking for some fun extras to enhance your experience with Altered. Just note that some of these accessories, like the premium game tokens, are still in pre-production and are only available to pre-order.
We’re big fans of board games, card games, and the like. They’re better than screen time, they’re great on summer roadtrips, and they are awesome for learning. So here are our 5 favourite games to play.
Uno. We’re all obsessed with this colour and number matching game, and we have all different themed packs of Uno cards (minions, Minecraft, and more). It was an easy card game for my son to learn and pick up, and we have lots of fun with the “tricky” cards (like skipping someone’s turn or making the other player pick up two or even four more cards). The hardest part of Uno for littles: holding all of the cards in his/her hand (the bean used to spread them out on the floor to see em).
Checkers. I didn’t think he’d be able to understand this game when he was younger, but he has always loved playing checkers. It took some practice when it came to learning how to block the other player’s move, but he loves the challenge of learning it. The hardest part of Checkers for a littles: understanding the difference between a regular piece and a king.
Go Fish! We have a great set of Go Fish! cards from Melissa & Doug with actual fish on it – we loved them. They’re much easier to learn with than standard playing cards. The hardest part of Go Fish! for littles: again, holding the cards (Amazon has some cool gadgets for this).
Candyland. This one is a classic with kids. It helps them practice counting and mastering colours. And you don’t have to buy it new – we found ours at a garage sale for $5! The hardest part of Candyland for littles: Resisting the urge to ask for sweets while playing!
The Ladybug Game. The bean got this for Christmas one year, and while it wasn’t one we’d ever heard of, it’s lots of fun. Not only did it help hone his counting skills but learn a bit about nature too. The hardest part of The Ladybug Game for littles: the initial learning of the rules (there’s a few steps to this one).
A full-time work-from-home mom of a toddler, Jennifer Cox (our “Supermom in Training”) loves dabbling in healthy cooking, craft projects, family outings, and more, sharing with readers everything she knows about being an (almost) superhero mommy.
Wizards of the Coast had a lot going on at this year’s Gen Con — in addition to the regular hubbub of being the biggest name in tabletop role-playing games at the biggest tabletop convention whose namesake is literally Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. You know, the place where D&D was born. But this year’s D&D Live presentation was also an opportunity for Wizards to show off its new project: a virtual tabletop that goes by the codename Project Sigil.
Framed as an actual play performance, the event was originally slated to last only two hours, but unsurprisingly ran long thanks to excellent showmanship by the star-studded cast. Participants included Aabria Iyengar as Dungeon Master, Brennan Lee Mulligan as a Dwarven cleric, Samantha Béart reprising her role as Karlach in Baldur’s Gate 3, Neil Newbon as Astarion from BG3, and Anjali Bhimani as a human wizard.
Polygon senior editor Charlie Hall attended the event in person and said the actors “chewed through the scenery in the first half,” leaving slightly less time for the team to switch to play around with Project Sigil. Hall said the Project Sigil showing was “halting” but ultimately well-received — and any snafus aren’t too much of a surprise given the platform hasn’t even entered closed beta yet. (Wizards is still accepting requests to join the closed beta, which is expected in fall 2024.)
Lucky for us, Gen Con filmed the whole game, lovingly titled “An Astarion and Karlach Adventure: Love is a Legendary Action,” and you can now watch on YouTube in all its silly glory. According to Hall, the entire playthrough is worth a watch.
“Let’s just say,” said Hall, “there’s an epic reveal in the second half that gives your favorite actual play performers plenty of room to explore… the source material.”
Adventures on Tap hosts tabletop gaming for charity
For the past three years, Orlando gaming enthusiasts have gathered regularly to roll dice, drink beer and raise money for local charities.
Nick Larson and Cami Wooley co-founded event company Adventures on Tap in 2021 after realizing tabletop roleplaying organizations in their area tended to emphasize profit, not community.
“We say we’re here to do good, not well,” Larson said. “The RPG [roleplaying game] space as a whole seems to be heavily monetized, and we wanted to do something different.”
The self-proclaimed “beer geeks” and “game geeks” had a vision: inclusive events where players could drink beer, play tabletop games, buy crafts from local artisans and raffle on baskets for local charities.
Today, Adventures on Tap hosts three to four events per month at a rotating roster of local spots including Oviedo Brewing, Conduit in Winter Park and Ten10 Brewing. It raises about $1,200 to $1,200 monthly for exclusively local charities. Beneficiaries have included nonprofits like Pet Alliance of Greater Orlando and Child’s Play Charity, which donates video games to pediatric hospitals.
“We never send the money out … we always make sure it’s local,” Wooley said.
Adventures on Tap specializes in “one shot” gaming sessions, or single adventures completed in a few hours, like a sold-out Dungeons & Dragons event at Conduit on Saturday, Aug. 3. But it also offers miniature painting lessons, including one happening Monday, Aug. 5, at Twelve Talons Beerworks on East South Street, and ongoing campaign meetups.
At each one-shot session, the company holds a charity raffle. Prizes range from crafts that Adventures on Tap buys from local vendors, like dice bags and homemade shirts, to tickets to Kissimmee’s Medieval Times. Proceeds go entirely to charity.
But ticket sales, which equal about $20 per player, go to internal funding — including paying the dungeon masters, or DMs, responsible for organizing each game.
“We’re one of the only D&D [Dungeons & Dragons] groups in town that pays our DMs,” Wooley said. “We don’t pay them a huge amount, but we do make sure that they’re not out for their supplies and travel and beer.”
One of the most popular draws is Dungeons & Dragons, a popular fantasy game first published in 1974. But players also have the opportunity to try out lesser-known games. Those include the Harry Potter-esque “Kids on Brooms” or sinister “Blades in the Dark” — Wooley and Larson’s respective favorites.
Larson said he also hoped to bolster another community: local breweries, which he said suffered after the pandemic. Adventures on Tap has a “symbiotic relationship” with the restaurants where it hosts events, the former service industry worker said.
“We want to put butts in seats for six hours and have them buy beer,” he said. “And we’re not going to charge the brewery anything, and the brewery is not going to charge us anything.”
Adventures on Tap holds most of its events during time spots when breweries are traditionally “absolutely empty,” like midday on Sundays.
As far as the interaction between beer drinking and gameplay, Wooley said the combination affects each player differently.
“If somebody says, ‘I want to do something,’ and they describe it and it sounds dope, One Beer Cami is more likely to be like, ‘well, let’s try and maybe think about that,’” she said. “Five Beer Cami is like, ‘yeah, that sounds awesome, let’s do it.’”
Both Larson and Wooley hold day jobs, as an engineer and software marketer, respectively. They consider Adventures on Tap a “labor of love” that they’ve enjoyed seeing grow from a small, one-event-per-month group to a company hosting three to four events per month as far north as Mount Dora and Sanford.
Larson and Wooley have tried for the last two years to register their company as a nonprofit, but without the money to pay for legal assistance, they haven’t been able to navigate the “legal rat’s nest” required to do so, Larson said.
But Larson said he still looks forward to seeing the group expand and encourages those looking for community to give it a try.
“If you have any experience whatsoever, you’re overqualified,” he said. “We’re not here to make a million dollars … we try and keep everything open, welcome and cheap.”
As mentioned, Saturday’s Dungeons & Dragons event at Conduit is sold out, but tickets are still available for its September campaign session Sept. 14 at Ten10 Brewing on Virginia Drive. There are also some spots still available for Sip and Paint at Twelve Talons at 6 p.m. Monday, Aug. 5. Tickets are available through Adventures on Tap’s website.
While Amazon’s Prime Day doesn’t kick off until next week, Target is hosting an excellent sale on board games, movies, books, and more that you’ll definitely want to check out. Through July 13, Target Circle members can get a third item free when they purchase two other eligible items of equal or greater value. While this deal is restricted to members, joining Target Circle is free, and grants you access to free two-day shipping, in addition to exclusive discounts and promotions.
There are literally hundreds of eligible products included in this sale, but we’ve picked out some of our favorites from different categories and listed them below.
The Battletech Essentials kit has everything you need to start playing the Battletech tabletop game. Each box comes with a pair of assembled mechs, a double-sided game map, quick-start rules booklet, and more.
A striking hardcover collection of the first three books in the Dune saga, featuring amazing cover art in addition to an illustrated poster inside each dust jacket.
The deluxe hardcover version of the first book in the Dune: The Graphic Novel collection is currently on sale at Target for $27.99 (was $50). The standard version of the second book is available for $13.99 (was $24.99). The third volume isn’t due to launch until July 16, but it’s currently available for pre-order for $25.99.
The Illustrated version of the Lord of the Rings illustrated edition includes 30 color illustrations, in addition to removable maps and sketches detailing Frodo’s journey and the greater geography of Middle-Earth. You can currently pick up a copy at Target for just $38.99 (was $74.99).
The pocket-sized, leatherette-bound box set featuring The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy is also on sale at Target for $34.99 (was $59.99).
The 25th-anniversary edition of Paul Verhoeven’s sci-fi satire Starship Troopers has been re-released for 4K UHD formats, complete with unique steelbook box art.
Walter Hill’s gritty New York odyssey The Warriors has been remastered for 4K UHD formats, complete with collector’s edition packaging. Can you dig it?
Capcom’s open-world fantasy RPG Dragon’s Dogma 2offers spectacular vistas, a massive world to explore, and monsters to slay. It’s dangerous to go alone, but Dragon’s Dogma 2 also features a unique take on cooperative gameplay by allowing you to recruit characters other players have made, turning them into NPCs.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth builds on the foundation of Final Fantasy 7 Remake, taking Cloud Strife and the rest of his crew beyond Midgar to regions filled with new minigames and quests — some of which were not present in the original 1997 version.
Assassin’s Creed is the latest Universes Beyond expansion for Magic: The Gathering, and will be popping out of an unsuspecting haystack near you starting on July 5. The new set features a total of 100 mechanically unique cards inspired by the stealthy, stabby franchise.
While these new cards won’t include characters or settings from the recently announced Assassin’s Creed Shadows, you can expect appearances from virtually every other corner of the Assassin’s Creed universe, including Altair, Ezio, Eivor, and more. If you’d like to add any of these new cards to your existing collection, the new expansion is available to pre-order in a variety of formats from Amazon and GameStop, which we’ve linked out to below, along with a list of their contents.
Image: Wizards of the Coast
The Assassin’s Creed Universes Beyond Starter Kit is the fastest way to start playing with the new cards introduced in this set. Each box comes packaged with a pair of pre-constructed 60-card decks, which both feature a pair of Mythic Rare cards in addition to eight rares and a storage box for each deck, and a Learn-to-Play guide. Both decks are constructed exclusively with the new cards introduced with the new expansion. The Starter Kit is currently available to pre-order from Amazon or GameStop for $19.
Image: Wizards of the Coast
The Assassin’s Creed Universes Beyond set is introducing a slightly different take on the classic Booster Pack format with Beyond Boosters. These seven-card packs can include up to four rare cards, in addition to at least one foil art card and borderless art card. Each box comes with a total of 27 Beyond Boosters, and can be pre-ordered for around $131 from Amazon or from GameStop for $179.99. Individual Beyond Boosters are also available from GameStop for $7.99 each.
Image: Wizards of the Coast
If you’re looking to supplement your existing MTG collection with cards from this new set, the Assassin’s Creed Universes Beyond Bundle is the quickest way to do it. Each bundle is packaged with nine Beyond Boosters from the new set in addition to 40 lands (20 of which are foil cards). Each box also features a single exclusive alternate-art foil card and an Assassin’s Creed-themed spindown life counter. The $65 Assassin’s Creed Universes Beyond Bundle is available to pre-order from Amazon and GameStop.
Image: Wizards of the Coast
The Assassin’s Creed Universes Beyond set will also launch with Collector Booster Packs, perfect for scooping up all the tastiest foil and alternate-art cards introduced with this expansion. Each Collector Booster contains ten rare cards with at least one extended art and borderless art card in addition to at least two foil-etched cards. A box of 12 Collector Boosters can be pre-ordered from GameStop for $279.99 or from Amazon for around $308. Collector Boosters can also be pre-ordered piecemeal from GameStop for $27.99.
Paizo, fresh off a highly-anticipated refresh of Pathfinder’s2nd edition ruleset, announced some big moves for the game’s ongoing narrative on Tuesday. The War of Immortals meta-event will kill a god, span multiple rulebooks, and restart the publisher’s line of hardcover novels. It will also introduce the first two original classes built following the company’s formal departure from the legacy Dungeons & Dragons ruleset and the OGL.
At the center of the new narrative arc will be Pathfinder War of Immortals, a 240-page hardcover rulebook expected in October that will introduce “mythic rules” for Pathfinder Second Edition. These rules should function similarly to past mythic-tier content, which represented ways to make your high-level characters stand out with powerful boons and abilities. According to a news release, the book will also include two new character classes — the animist and the exemplar — which are “the first original classes built on the remastered foundation of Pathfinder Player Core.”
Next, Pathfinder Lost Omens: Divine Mysteriesis a setting book with a smattering of character options — not unlike Pathfinder Lost Omens: Tian Xia World Guide detailed here at Polygon in March. Instead of a guide to an entire region, however, this 320-page hardcover will include a remastered pantheon of deities. It will also feature new deities, such as Aleph, god of darkness, and Nin, god of vampires. The $79.99 book is expected in November.
Several new adventures are included in the War of Immortals arc. Pathfinder Adventure: Prey for Death is a standalone 128-page adventure for high-level characters (level 14 and above). Expect the larger-than-usual, hardcover format to make a splash when it is released at Gen Con on Aug. 1, 2024.
Two even larger campaigns are also on the docket.
Pathfinder Adventure Path: Curtain Call — Pathfinder’s 40th since its launch in 2009 — will take characters from level 11 all the way to 20. The episodic release will begin at Gen Con with Pathfinder Adventure Path #204: Stage Frightand will conclude in September. Pathfinder Adventure Path: Triumph of the Tusk, which has players fighting alongside a band of orcs, will pick up in October with Pathfinder Adventure Path #207: The Resurrection Flood and continue into December.
Finally, a new novel titled Pathfinder: Godsrain, written by Liane Merciel, is also due out in November. Paizo said in its news release that the book will follow “four iconic heroes — the wizard Ezren, the barbarian Amiri, the cleric Kyra, and her wife, the rogue Merisiel — as they witness the calamity of the Godsrain and are faced with the opportunities — and consequences — of mythic power.”
Converse is partnering with Dungeons & Dragons to celebrate the legendary tabletop franchise’s 50th anniversary with a hot new collection of shoes and other gear that will be available online starting April 11. For those attending this year’s Gary Con, the popular Dungeons & Dragons fan event celebrating its co-creator Gary Gygax, they’ll be available there on March 21.
Converse’s new products display a clear understanding of the assignment. Just look at the designs, which draw inspiration and incorporate details from first editions of D&D’s Player’s Handbook, Monster Manual, and the Dungeon Masters Guide.
Naturally, the collection includes several limited-edition “Chuck 70” style canvas and leather high top sneakers. The two leather high top designs feature an alternate version of the Chuck Taylor All-Star logo, designed to resemble a D20 instead. The canvas designs feature some other fun details, like illustrations of Kelek the Sorcerer, Warduke the Fighter, and Zarak the Assassin from the D&D action figures made in the 1980’s.
Image: Converse
Some of the patterns, illustrations, and other unique elements will even be ported over to Converse By You, letting you apply them to your own bespoke apparel designs. To top it all off, the box that these high tops ship in has lovingly been transformed into a Mimic.
In addition to the special-edition high tops, Converse’s D&D collection will include a trucker hat, shorts, a sweatshirt, and three T-shirts. The hat and shorts feature the demonic face found on the cover of the player’s guide for the first edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, but my personal favorite is the light green tee that features a Gelatinous Cube, which is consuming the Chuck Taylor logo.
Converse hasn’t revealed any pricing information surrounding the collection just yet, but as someone who wore Chuck Taylors to their wedding, I can’t wait to pick up a pair for myself.
The seminal role-playing game’s official 50th anniversary was last month, and it passed without much fanfare from its owner. Then, on Monday, Wizards shared a news briefing containing a partial release calendar for the next 12 months. Buried at the bottom is the fact that Monster Manual, the third and final book in the new set of revised 5th edition rulebooks, won’t be available as a physical product until Feb. 18, 2025 — over a year from now. That means fans won’t have the full complement of revised core rules until after D&D’s 51st birthday. For comparison, the original 5th edition Monster Manual arrived in the same year, 2014, as the other two core rulebooks.
Making matters worse, that date further complicates the revised edition’s proposed naming convention. It, perhaps erroneously, started out being called One D&D and shifted to be known as the 2024 revision. But that’s largely academic at this point.
Here are the highlights from the announcement, including details on a few new adventures and a history book:
First up, the Player’s Handbook (2024) is expected to release on Sept. 17, 2024, followed by the Dungeon Masters Guide (2024) on Nov. 12, 2024, and Monster Manual (2025) on Feb. 18, 2025. According to Wizards, all three will have the now customary two-week digital pre-release window for those who pre-order it through D&D Beyond. That means you could potentially start playing with the revised rules for characters, combat, and adventuring by Sept. 3, 2024.
The standard cover for Vecna: Eve of Ruin.Image: Wizards of the Coast
Alternate art cover, available only at local game stores.Image: Wizards of the Coast
Vecna: Eve of Ruin is a campaign for characters starting at level 10, and tops out at level 20. It’s set to arrive as a physical product on May 21, 2024, and as a digital product for those who pre-order two weeks ahead of time. From the official description:
A high-stakes adventure in which the fate of the entire multiverse hangs in the balance. The heroes begin in the Forgotten Realms and travel to Planescape, Spelljammer, Eberron, Ravenloft, Dragonlance, and Greyhawk as they race to save existence from obliteration by the notorious lich Vecna who is weaving a ritual to eliminate good, obliterate the gods, and subjugate all worlds.
Quests from the Infinite Staircaseis another anthology, a format that Wizards has excelled at in the past with hits like Candlekeep Mysteries and Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel.Expect it on store shelves July 16, 2024, and as a digital product for those who pre-order two weeks earlier. The official description reads:
This anthology weaves together six classic DUNGEONS & DRAGONS adventures while updating them for the game’s fifth edition. The Infinite Staircase holds doors leading to fantastic realms. It’s home to the noble genie Nafas, who hears wishes made throughout the multiverse and recruits heroes to fulfill them.
Image: Wizards of the Coast
The ultimate book showcasing D&D’s inception, including Gary Gygax’s never-before-seen first draft of D&D written in 1973, a curated collection of published fanzine and magazine articles contribute to D&D’s origin story. Each document is introduced, described, and woven into the story by one of the game’s foremost historians, Jon Peterson.
The news release teases a few more things to come in 2024, including projects that have yet to be announced. Highlights include a return of adversarial, tournament-style play common to the original version of D&D. There will also be “footwear and apparel from Converse, an official LEGO(tm) IDEAS building set complete with minifigures, and delicious treats suitable for snacking around the gaming table from Pop-Tarts.” More convention appearances by the D&D team are promised, as is the rollout — in some form — of the highly anticipated 3D virtual tabletop.
For those who grew up with the Pokémon TCG, the Classic box is one of the best ways to get back into it. Normally $399.99, this collector’s box set is currently discounted to $319.99 at Amazon and Best Buy (its lowest price ever). And while the cards may bring back memories, the rest of this set takes a more mature approach to the game you remember.
In addition to vintage decks, inside the box you’ll find enough sleeves for all 180 holofoil cards, and a trio of classy leatherette deck boxes with magnetic closures. Perhaps the coolest addition to this set, however, is the collection of stackable metallic damage and status counters, which carry some serious heft and are a massive improvement over the Mancala beads that came packaged in the original set. The classic box also forgoes the usual double-sided coin in favor of a roulette-style wheel in the middle of the organizer box to determine heads or tails.
Everything is neatly organized in a folding case (with felt cutouts for your decks and damage counters), which doubles as a matte playing board with a convenient carrying handle.
Image: The Pokémon Company
While none of the cards contained in this set, except for the energy cards, are tournament-legal, the Pokémon TCG Classic collector’s box is an awesome way to show off your love for the game and elevate your experience with this childhood classic.
Back when I was running the game for my local Dungeons & Dragons group, I would always pride myself on bringing something handmade each time we got together around the table. Maybe it was a leather-bound book filled with vintage David Sutherland illustrations of the Tomb of Horrors, or a 3D map of a few rooms from Castle Ravenloft with just the right assortment of miniatures from my collection. As a lifelong fan of D&D, Rick Perry knows that impulse well. But as production designer and creative producer on Dropout’s Dimension 20, he’s operating at a scale that’s on another level entirely.
Season 21 of Dimension 20, an actual play program on the streaming television service Dropout, will premiere on Jan. 10, 2024. It’s an incredible run that shows no sign of slowing down, and Perry’s work has been integral in its popularity. To celebrate his impact, Dropout has released a feature documentary titled The Legendary Rick Perry and the Art of Dimension 20. In advance of its release, Polygon sat down with the lifelong Texan, now a resident of Washington state, to discuss his work.
A miniature high school dance inside the gymnasium at Fantasy High.Image: Dropout
While world class Dungeon Masters like Brennan Lee Mulligan, Aabria Iyengar, Gabe Hicks, and Matthew Mercer lead each game at the start of each Dimension 20 season with a high-level creative direction, it’s up to Perry and his team of skilled artists to bring that vision to life in miniature on the table. That means creating hundreds of inch-tall figures from scratch using clay and sculpting tools; kitbashing dozens of scale models into fantastical landscapes to anchor the viewer in the world; and crafting dynamic, multi-tiered battle maps where skilled improv actors can chew up the set.
Just like the props you bring to your home games, it’s bait, really, that he willfully uses to draw players — and viewers — closer to the center of whatever complex story he’s trying to tell.
“Dimension 20 [requires] a massive amount of creative genesis to create a 20-episode series,” Perry said, “[one that] that takes place in a completely new world where we don’t know what color the sky is, or what food the people are eating. So there’s this massive amount of creative activity that has to start at the beginning of it, and that takes a big chunk of time.”
The documentary details how that creative work begins at his homestead on Lopez Island in San Juan County, Washington at an outdoor sink first cobbled together by his father-in-law in the 1970s. It then moves into a converted three-car garage that once held farming equipment, but is now filled with bins labeled for the miniatures they contain — a box of trolls here, bugbears in the corner. Only after weeks, sometimes months of effort on the farm with a whole team of designers do the larger pieces get crated up and shipped to Los Angeles. Often, Perry said, that’s where the real work begins.
Rick Perry (right) with his team on Lopez Island taking the original Fantasy High Dungeon Master’s screen from storage for the first time in four years.Image: Dropout
The trick, he went on, is to stay nimble — even when you’re building maps for tabletop encounters that won’t happen for weeks.
“It’s part of the DNA of Dimension 20,” Perry said, “because at the very beginning when we decided we wanted these eight battle maps that are custom, that have this mix of say high school and fantasy, it’s not like something we can just crank out really fast. We need to know ahead of time in order to make skater dwarves, and all this sort of stuff.
“That means that we have to map all that out down to every detail — as much as we can,” Perry continued. That sort of on-rails gameplay is, unfortunately, anathema to modern role-play, which emphasizes creative freedom for the Dungeon Master as well as the players at the table. It’s always a challenge, Perry said, to keep things on track. But with a miniature set that, often times, costs just as much as a full-scale one, it’s up to everyone involved to keep the trains running on time.
“That tells the Dungeon Master that these are landmarks,” Perry said. “These [scenes that we are building] are places that you have to pilot the ship through these little hoops. We try to build in as much flexibility, as much opportunity for improvisation as possible, meaning that sometimes where a battle map falls, they could switch places or we could cut one. We try not to cut one because they cost money to make. And it’s a business venture, the show, and we want all that production value to appear on screen.”
The nearly 45-minute film goes even further in its exploration of Perry and his work, delving deep into his childhood and his time spent in college as a member of a troupe of performance artists. For fans of Dimension 20, it’s a rare behind-the-scenes look at how its particular brand of storytelling comes to life. But for artists, craftspeople, or even just casual hobbyists who paint miniatures on the weekend for fun, it’s the story of a kindred spirit who has found a vital, transformative role in the creative industry.
The Legendary Rick Perry and the Art of Dimension 20 is now streaming on Dropout.
Despite the history-changing implications of battles on Endor and Yavin, the nature of war, especially within the Star Wars universe, is one of countless skirmishes across the furthest reaches of the galaxy. Unlikely heroes and allies come together to fight on land and in space, accruing small advantages along the way to inch toward their versions of victory. The same will be true for Star Wars: Unlimited, the newest entry into the hotly contested battle for players in the world of trading card games.
Its seventh project based on the Star Warsuniverse, Fantasy Flight Games’ latest effort combines time-tested elements from its past ventures, along with inspiration from other popular TCGs, to make Unlimited its most dynamic version of a galactic battle yet.
“We’re trying to go in a bit of a new direction with this game in terms of streamlining things and making a really fast back-and-forth game, compared to some of our past games,” said Danny Schaefer, a designer at Fantasy Flight, in an interview with Polygon.“We definitely picked up some elements from our past [living card games] as well as some of the older Star Wars games, as well.”
One of Unlimited’sdesigners, Jeremy Zwirn, also worked on FFG’s previous Star Wars: Destiny dice and card game, which utilized a fast-paced tit-for-tat action system, and helped port that to the rules and vision for Unlimited.
An early demo of Star Wars: Unlimited was held at Gen Con 2023.Photo: Fantasy Flight Games/Asmodee
“The turn structure is very quick, very interactive, and simplified,” Zwirn explained. “You don’t have something like the stack in Magic with confusing timing issues when things are happening. That worked really well in Destiny, so we wanted to carry that over to this game too.”
Another one of the game’s fundamental characteristics was borrowed from a different body of work altogether. Like many trading card games, Unlimited cards have a cost that must be paid in order to play them from your hand. But unlike Magic: The Gathering,which requires adding specific land cards that generate mana, Unlimited’sresource system is closer to Disney Lorcanaand Flesh and Blood’sapproach, games that allow you to use almost any card in hand as a potential resource.
“The Call of Cthulhu LCG had a somewhat similar resource system where essentially any card could be used as a resource,” Zwirn explained. “You resource one card per round, so you can eventually build up, get more powerful cards, and play them at a higher cost.”
As these varied inspirations gradually came together over more than three years of design, they eventually paved the way for more defining elements that the game’s creators introduced to make Unlimited exciting, replayable, and, in its own way, challenging.
Deck-building dynamics
Central to deck design are the game’s heroes and bases, which start on the board at the beginning of every game.
Similar to Flesh and Blood or Magic’sCommander format, Unlimited utilizes iconic Star Wars characters to serve as a deck’s primary hero. These include the likes of Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Boba Fett, Chewbacca, and plenty others. Likewise, base cards depict classic locations from Star Warsstories, from the swamps of Dagobah to the Death Star Command Center and even the Catacombs of Cadera on Jedha.
The heroes provide several important contributions to each deck. For one, they have built-in abilities that impact the game in a variety of ways. These heroes can also serve as units that do battle more directly with opponents. But most importantly, heroes and bases feature colored “aspects.”
Unlimited utilizes six different “aspects” that determine the play style and possible abilities of the game’s cards. Think of them like colors in Magic,the Pokémon TCG, Hearthstone,and countless other card games.
In Unlimited,the aspects are Vigilance (blue), Command (green), Aggression (red), Cunning (yellow), Heroism (white), and Villainy (black). An Unlimited deck must have a leader and a base — your leader then provides up to two aspect icons while your base provides one. Together, the aspects that your base and hero feature then shape the cards the rest of your deck can include.
“All those permutations of mix-and-matching a leader with different bases and different aspects can create an entirely new deck,” Zwirn emphasized. “Sometimes those bases can really make or break a deck, as well.”
To highlight the basic look and structure of Unlimited’sfuture decks, the design team shared a few examples that feature different leaders and bases, along with some of the cards that play well with those configurations. Zwirn points to the Cunning and Villainy Boba Fett deck as one example of the importance of maximizing heroes and bases to get the most value and synergy out of the remaining cards in the deck.
A deck by Jeremy Zwirn based on the hero Boba Fett, with his base set in Jedha City.Image: Fantasy Flight Games
“For the Boba deck, the card Cunning is an extremely powerful card that has double Cunning aspects. So to play it for only four [resources], you have to have a base and leader with Cunning aspects, which is gaining you tempo,” Zwird explained. “And the card itself creates probably the best tempo in the entire game; it can exhaust two units and bounce an enemy unit, all for four resources.”
When you break down these aspects further, you begin to see how they express the game’s play styles and color identities into classic card game archetypes.
“There are some very good aggro decks, especially on the hero side. Some very good control decks, especially on the villain side. And there are a variety of midrange decks somewhere in between,” Schaefer said.
However, don’t expect to see breakout combo decks when the game first hits shelves in 2024.
“We’re intentionally not leaning hard into combo, with the first set at least,” said Tyler Parrott, another designer on Unlimited. “There will be some combos eventually, inevitably.”
“There are combo elements to decks, but not really like ‘we’re going to kill you in one turn’ or infinite loops,” Schaefer added.
A deck by Danny Schaefer based on the hero Han Solo, with his base set to Catacombs of Cadera — also on Jedha.Image: Fantasy Flight Games
“The Han Solo deck is about as close to combo as you’ll get in Set One, with the ability to cheat out expensive cards a little bit ahead of time,” Schaefer explained. “It’s playing You’re My Only Hope with all the cards that look at the top of your deck. It’s not like a one turn kill combo, it’s more like I got my seven drop out on turn five, or my five drop out on turn three.”
Another intriguing aspect of Star Wars: Unlimited lies in its deck-building mechanics. Decks must be a minimum of 50 cards, with a limit to only three copies of any one card.
“It’s a bit less consistent than if you have four-ofs, obviously,” Schaefer said. “That was partially because you see so much of your deck in a given game, we didn’t want it to be quite as easy to always see your same cards over and over — especially in the first few turns.”
According to Parrott,50 cards is “also just a value that we’re familiar with. We have enough other games that have been 50 with three copies that we knew exactly what that was going to play like mathematically.”
Arenas of battle
One of the most unique elements to Unlimited, which fans of Star Warswill surely recognize as a recurring theme across the films and stories, are battles that occupy both land and space.
Unlimited features two arenas of play, ground and space, which are then occupied by respective units.
“One of the things we learned from the Star Wars LCG, it bounced off a lot of people for thematic reasons because the idea that Chewbacca could fight a Star Destroyer was a little bit too much of a stretch,” Parrott explained. “That was one of the big incentives to have the two lanes be separate.
Danny Schaefer’s Chewbacca deck finds its home on Hoth, naturally: “Chewy’s ability lets you play three drops or smaller and give them Sentinel, which means they have to be attacked. It’s really good for slowing the game down and stopping your aggro opponents from hitting your base. And the idea here is you play those cheap units early, stall things out a little bit, and then eventually either build up to some ramp or some removal, keep the game under control, then get to seven resources and bring out Chewy, who when he flips is a giant monster. He has Sentinel and he has Grit, which means his power goes up for each damage he takes. So once Chewy flips, it just locks down the ground and threatens to hit really hard. You’ve also got a couple eight drops in here for once you’ve gotten to that point, you can slam the door shut with your giant capital ships.”Image: Fantasy Flight Games
However, not only does this element make the flavor of Unlimited more authentic to its source material, it also adds an important strategic element too.
“Bringing the correct ratio of ground to space units is going to matter a lot,” Parrott said. “If you go to a tournament and you expect the metagame to be heavy on people playing space aggro, then now I need to add more space units to my deck to fight against the space units, and now my ground units maybe can be fewer and they’ll go farther in the game because that is now the uncontested lane.”
Play modes and organized play
Looking ahead, Star Wars: Unlimited will feature a variety of play modes, including 1v1 and multiplayer, where players bring pre-built or fine-tuned decks to battle at stores or other casual environments.
The game will also feature draft and sealed modes, where players can open a specified number of card packs to construct a brand-new deck on the spot.
Eventually, Unlimited will also introduce its own system of organized play spanning from weekly store events to galactic championships, though more details on the specifics behind organized play are coming down the line.
Star Wars: Unlimited launches in game stores globally on March 8, 2024.
:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25525500/wh06ypm4.png)
:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25281904/81cyBeH24XL._SL1500__copy.jpg)
:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25525570/hhmdilq3.png)
:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25525573/lp6n4m9t.png)
:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25525587/81r4l1rqDRL._AC_UF894_1000_QL80_.jpg)
:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25525584/qxkzfbq4.png)
:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25403071/h40x7hhr.png)
:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25472440/ccvkbd4n.png)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25507308/91cig3zu.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25507306/xzo34ag9.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25507313/h6lu82tz.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25277270/D_D_Vecna_Eve_of_Ruin_Alt_Cover_copy.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25277262/The_Making_of_Original_D_D_Front_Cover.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25176321/rick_perry_team.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25158281/SWH_Article_DesignerDecks1_Jeremy_copy.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25158284/SWH_Article_DesignerDecks1_Danny_copy.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25158472/SWU_DesignerDeck4__1__copy.jpg)