TableTop Day 2015 [Gather Your] Party! Exhibition Games

by Rae

At this Saturday's TableTop Day evening event at 2PIGS, we will be running three exhibition games (in addition to all the other awesome games available). These are Star Wars: X-Wing, Star Trek: Attack Wing, and D&D Attack Wing!

Star Trek: Attack Wing – Borg vs. DS9

In this oversized mission, players will be taking sides with either the Oversized Borg Cube or the DS9 to see which team will be the last one standing! Players are asked to bring a 60-point fleet of one or two ships following the standard fleet-building rules. Both the Borg and DS9 will be balanced against the opposing number of players to ensure an even match. The winner (by player ballot) will win a Tactical Cube 001!

D&D Attack Wing – Tiamat, Dragon Queen

Players will be faced with their greatest challenge yet – Tiamat herself. Bring a 80-point legion following standard legion-building rules to team up against the queen of dragons! But be warned, Tiamat may not be alone, and her own army could be more than one bargains for. The winner (by player ballot) will win an Young Bronze Dragon!*

Star Wars: X-Wing – A Podrace in Space

In this game variant, players will not be duking it out over a star map; instead they will be racing around our Pitchcar track in a Deathrace-style showdown! Players will complete one of three laps of the course, picking up random one-use secondary weapons as they move over bonus tokens on the track. The first one to the finish line will win a Han Solo alternate art promo card!

Players are invited to bring a single fighter ship and manoeuvre dial. All ships must have a small base, and cost no more than 30 points. No upgrades are allowed, and all primary weapons, boost, and cloaking abilities will be disabled. Ships with shields will not be able to perform any manoeuvre higher than a “4”. Please bring any required tokens and manoeuvre templates with you.

Doors for [Gather Your] Party! open at 6:30pm, with games set to start at 7pm. Tickets cost £3 in advance, or £5 on the door. See you there!

* The prize for D&D Attack Wing was previously listed as an Aarakocra legion. This was in error, and has now been amended.

Ramping up! EPOSible! Comic Wars! Gaming Tournaments! And TBCF16!

by Ben Fardon

Phew! What a busy time here at Proud Lion!

The shop itself has just seen several great upgrades in the past few weeks.

We've finally taken delivery of a folding access ramp. If anyone needs to make use of it, please ring either of the doorbells by the front door and we'll bring it out and set it up for you.

This is great news and something we've been working towards since we relocated the shop last year.

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Apologies to anyone who has noticed that our email newsletter has become a little intermittent over the last few weeks. We're in the middle of an extensive EPOS upgrade that propels Proud Lion into the 21st Century with barcode scanners, touch screen tills and all manner of other great functions. This will allow us to unveil a host of excellent new features to our services in the coming months, and should speed up the queues on big events like Free Comic Book Day.

I'll keep you posted with the new developments as they become available and I'll endeavour to keep up-to-date with the mailing list during the upgrade as best I can. Thank you for your patience.

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Thank you to everyone who has completed the DC Convergence order form we've been circulating in February; it's been a huge help! We have a little bit of every Convergence title on order for the shelves, with extra of the main title and the seemingly standout offerings like the Harley Quinn and Batman: Shadow Of The Bat issues, but I'd still advise you to pre-order anything you know you want to avoid disappointment!

To do so now that the survey is closed, please email shop@proudlion.co.uk.

The aim next week is to bring you a roundup of all of the Secret Wars titles on offer from Marvel in May. I'm also delighted that after the frustration of Convergence, I find myself actually very excited about the following launch of DC's new Divergence titles in June!

“This heralds in a new era for the DC Universe which will allow us to publish something for everyone, be more expansive and modern in our approach and tell stories that better reflect the society around us,” said DC Entertainment Co-Publisher Dan DiDio.  “Whether you’ve been a DC fan your whole life, or whether you are new to comics – there will be a book for you beginning in June.”

More on that at the end of this month. Stay tuned.

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We've just had our biggest weekend of gaming tournaments thus far, with both a Marvel Dice Masters Rainbow Draft and a Star Trek Attack Wing OP yesterday, followed by a really fun Netrunner draft tournament today. Our huge thanks to everyone who helped to get the word out about these events, and congratulations to all of our players from this weekend, not just the winners. Fantastic sportsmanship conduct throughout all of the events; you're all a credit to the local gaming community.

Work has also begun on bringing you our biggest and best TableTop Day event to date, on Saturday 11th April. Further details to follow, but for now you can follow the news at our TableTop Day 2015 Facebook event.

We're aware that not everyone uses Facebook, so work has begun on bringing a dedicated forum to the Proud Lion website; initially for gaming, but eventually intended to expand to include comics, TV, films, and more. This should hopefully create a place for everyone to discuss our favourite hobbies!

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Finally, we're all booked in for the True Believers Comic Festival 2016 on Saturday 6th February next year. Save the date!

Ben Fardon really enjoyed Power/Rangers!

Big Game Hunting Live - three tournaments, one weekend!

by Ben Fardon

This weekend sees Proud Lion play host to not one, not two, but three different organised play/tournament events, and we have tickets still available for all of them!

On Saturday 28th February from 1:30-5pm we're hosting our second Marvel Dice Masters tournament! This one's a Rainbow Draft where your ticket price includes 12 Uncanny X-Men Dice Masters boosters packs (RRP £12.00), and you and your fellow players will open, select, pass and assemble your team from the cards and dice you open on the day. A great level playing field for both new and experienced Dice Masters players.

Each player will receive a Magneto card as a Participation Prize, with further prizes for the winners. Tickets cost £12.50 each.

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Thirty minutes and one quick rearrange of the store later and we'll be rolling up our sleeves for our latest Star Trek Attack Wing OP and our first Open Format STAW event. This OP runs on Saturday 28th February from 5:30-11:30pm.

The Open Format means ANYTHING GOES (provided it fits within the scenario build cost). We're even expecting to see a few of these monstrosities make it to the table!

This is a constructed tournament and each player will receive a blind booster (RRP £12.00), along with the Advanced Targeting Systems Resource Card, plus further prizes for the winners. Tickets cost £15.00 each.

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Then on Sunday we round out our big weekend of gaming with our first Netrunner LCG Draft Touurnament, Cyber War! Running on Sunday 1st March from 11am-8pm, this sees players drawing cards from three special Cyber War products produced by Fantasy Flight Games to allow players a break from the usual constructed LCG play, again creating a level playing field for new and experienced players alike.

Each player will receive one Draft Starter Pack (11 cards and 2 IDs provides a fixed core of essential cards for both Corp and Runner), one Corp Draft Pack (a selection of 40 randomized Corp cards) and one Runner Draft Pack (a selection of 40 randomized Runner cards). The cost of these items are included in the ticket price.

The overall winning player will receive £25 worth of Proud Lion vouchers, enough to cover the cost of the next two Netrunner Data Packs (and still have change for a comic book!). There will be additional prizes of £10 worth of Proud Lion vouchers for runners up, TBC. Tickets cost £20.00 each.

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We do our best to make these events fun and lighthearted; we want to enjoy running them and support the local gaming community in lots of different ways, with Organised Play being a key part of that.

I hope to see some of you this weekend and good luck to all of our players!

Ben Fardon is itching to throw down with a D&D Attack Wing 3BG build, but there just isn't enough hours in the day right now!