It’s a new year, so it’s a perfect time to talk about…last year! Let’s go through my 2017 year in review. I started streaming last year, which was something I’ve planned for a while. I started my own Dungeons and Dragons playgroup (future post to come about that). I also got to play Magic for a store when I participated in the first Austin Store Wars tournament. All and all a pretty full year of gaming, both video and tabletop. Hopefully this year will be as exciting, as I’m planning go to more conventions, larger magic tournaments, and review more games!

Streaming

It’s been a goal of mine to start streaming games, with a focus on MtG. I realize now that I underestimated the difficulty of not only streaming, but the things that come along with it starting with the hardware. It’s been a few years since I’ve had a solid computer – so I built a new one!

Part list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/FwnBf8

CPU: AMD – Ryzen 5 1600X 3.6GHz
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master – Hyper 212 EVO
Motherboard: Gigabyte – GA-AB350-GAMING 3 ATX AM4
Memory: Corsair – Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB)
Storage: Samsung – 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5″ Solid State Drive
Storage: Western Digital – Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5″ 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
Video Card: Asus – GeForce GTX 1080 8GB ROG STRIX
Case: Corsair – Crystal 570X RGB ATX Mid Tower
Power Supply: EVGA – SuperNOVA G3 650W Fully-Modular

All that was left was to set up the stream and play some games. Easy enough, right? I followed the recommended settings, created some graphics, and set aside some time. Then I discovered it wasn’t so easy. Keeping up energy while both interacting with viewers and staying engrossed in the game gets more difficult the longer I stream. Because of this I try not to go over 4 hours. Scheduling regular streams also becomes an arduous task, but I hope to be online more routinely this year.

Natural 20! (New Dungeons and Dragons group)

I’ve always enjoyed playing tabletop RPG’s. However, when I brought up the subject of starting a game to a couple of my friends, the idea of playing Dungeons and Dragons seemed to be a better fit for them as players. D&D as a system lends itself to longer campaigns, and my newly created playgroup enjoys high fantasy as a setting in the same way I enjoy using horror settings. Running one-shot horror games is one of my favorite things to do as far as tabletop gaming is concerned.My personal compromise was to create a high fantasy setting that lent itself to use of horror elements. I homebrewed my own campaign setting rather than using something off the shelf, partly because I wanted the challenge of creating a setting, but mostly because I greatly enjoy worldbuilding. However, D&D did come with its own challenges, as coordinating schedules for 6 people to try and find free time to get together is pretty tough. I’m going to make a full post about this in the coming weeks.

Store Wars

The first Austin Store Wars was one of my favorite events to take part of last August. This mulit-store Magic the Gathering tournament pitted various teams against each other in this city-wide multi-format tournament for charity. Each game store in town put up a three person team for each of the standard, draft, modern, and legacy formats. I got to play modern with some cool teammates for Team Hops and Heroes, check us out!

For the Modern event I played a version of the UR storm deck, going 1-2 total. While it’s not the best record, I had a blast with my teammates. You can see one of their writeups here. Pat’s Games ended up winning the entire thing, donating $200 to African Mother’s Health Initiative and $600 to other various charities!

Goals for the 2018 / things to look out for

As fun as 2017 was, I’m hoping to both do more, and post more this year. I want to stream more regularly, aiming for at least once a week which you can catch here if you want. Hit the ‘follow’ button if you want to get notified when I go live! I also want to finish the overarching structure of my D&D campaign, and try to get more sessions with my playgroup in. I’ve been greatly enjoying their adventures through the world I’ve built, and it’s great to see them have fun discovering it. Since playing magic has always been a part of my gaming identity, I’d like to get more competitive at that, possibly going to a Grand Prix, or one of the large Star City Games tournaments this year. And since this blog originally started with tabletop game and convention reviews, it’s high time I got back onto posting more about those! I’ll be posting about my PAX South experience in a couple of weeks, and hopefully get a review shortly after that at the start of February. Here’s to hoping gaming in 2018 is as exciting as 2017 was!

Written by – Adrian Rillon

Edited By – Maria Belyaeva