Players, we're back, and hotter than ever!

It's Prerelease weekend for Magic: The Gathering's core set, M19, and we're having a great time! It's not too late to preorder yourself a box full of dragons (may vary!), or a planeswalker deck. Don't forget, while stocks last you get a free Nexus of Fate with every booster box bought! 

Speaking of awesome prereleases, the Final Fantasy trading card game gets its latest addition this month! OPUS VI is here at last. We have a prerelease event this weekend, and we'd love to see you there. 

You might have noticed some stuff about football going around lately. Certain catchy songs being played, or just bellowed in the street. Well players, I'm here to tell you that Blood Bowl is coming home! The Naggaroth Nightmares are the latest team to take to the pitch in the game of Fantasy Football, and there's no question they're the absolute best team ever. One of the spikiest, anyway, and that counts for a lot in my book. 

So much for the Old World. In the Age of Sigmar, the battle for the silent city of Shadespire is heating up again with a whole lot of new cards! The Leaders pack features a ton of ploys, upgrades and objectives based around playing to your Leader's strengths or bolstering their weaknesses. 

While Shadespire is being shaken up, why stop with cards? At long last we have new tiles in the form of the Shattered City pack, featuring lethal terrain to avoid, or use to your own ends! 

Whatever you're playing this summer, enjoy, remember to get some sun, and remember our fridge is always well stocked! See you soon, players. 

Playerrrrs! 

Welcome to another roundup of cool new stuff. 

This episode is brought to you by...

Magic: The Gathering! We've got the first of the Global Series decks, Jiang Yanggu and Mu Yanling - two strange journeys, intertwined by fate! Designed by Magic players in China  and realised by Chinese writers, artists and folklorists, this beautiful pair of decks is the first of a unique set, exploring the different expressions of MTG around the world. Supplies are limited, so get involved while you can! 

Fans of Arkham Horror, you twisted individuals, we've got Return to Night of the Zealot  available on pre-order! It's an updated return to this core Arkham campaign. Not for the faint-hearted!

This edition of the blog is brought to you by the colour green. Green Stuff World, to be precise! We've just become a supplier of the world's greatest hobby supply company, and we are loving it. It's hard to pick some highlights for you, honestly, but I'll try. How about...

Tiny leaf-punches!

Colour-changing paints! 

Rope and vine creators!

Runic textured rolling pins!

It's all so cool! Check out the full range here or just come in the shop and talk excitedly to me about everything. Like... little tiny sandbags! 

A corrugated metal maker! 

100 resin skulls!

I'll stop. See you next time, players (and painters, and sculptors, all of you!)

Hey there, players. Can you hear me at the back? Alright! 

We've got some exciting Dragon Ball Super news to begin with - the Cross Worlds set is available to pre-order now! 

Pulling characters, abilities and whole universes from every one of the Dragon Ball series, this is DBS:CG's most ambitious release yet, and all you fans are going to love it. We have new Special Packs, boosters and even a Draft Box available to order, along with a release tournament on the 21st of July! Come crack a cold raspberry lemonade and some all-new boosters! 

Continuing along the twin themes of "cards" and "whaaaat?" we're happy to announce that Threads of Fate, the latest Arkham Horror expansion, is up for pre-order too! This is a truly twisted expansion that lays three parallel mysteries before you; which will you attempt to solve?

Can you find your missing friend as the world falls to ruin? Can you concentrate on saving the world while your mind is befuddled by a new and suspicious stranger?? Do you trust the stranger to help you find your lost companion???  Try to do all three and you risk failure across the board. Leave any task incomplete and the path of the future will be forever changed... As always, you'll forge your own fate, and the decisions you make will affect the entire game going forward! 

Enjoy, players, and check back next week for news from the Mortal Realms and a galaxy far, far away... 

Peace out! (This anime stuff has me feeling all 90s) 

Players - it's Warhammer Fest weekend! Plenty of incredible news from the Games Workshop crew to get through in the next few weeks and months - but what about right now? Let's get into it...

The final wave of preorders for the Idoneth Deepkin have arrived! Electric eel riders (in metal armour, hmm) and gigantic battle-sharks ahoy. 

Meanwhile, the World That Was makes a comeback with the fourth edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay! The team have outdone themselves again with an adventuring setting that's grim, sinister, and inescapably funny. Gather your band of anti-heroes: the Old World is your oyster! 

Along with the rulebook and starter set, we have the limited edition collector's book, in glorious embossed leather-effect hardback. Presented in a beautiful, magnet-sealed box, featuring gilt-edged pages, cloth bookmarks and a numbered Certificate of Authenticity. 

Meanwhile, fans of the Lovecraftian LCG can continue their spiral down into madness with the Arkham Horror: Labyrinths of Lunacy expansion. Awaken in a dim dungeon, vision blurred and muscles weak, and greet your new companions. Will you escape the mastermind's lair? Act quickly - for better or worse, you are not alone...

Terraforming Mars: Prelude is here, and it's cracking. Whatever your general thoughts around prequels in space, this expansion for the bestselling board game gives you stategies to kickstart your Corporation's endeavours on the Red Planet, giving the game as a whole a faster, more exciting pace with greatly raised stakes!

Today, players, a new feature comes to the blog. Since we've been expanding our board game sectioin week by week, we thought it'd be worth telling you a little bit about some of our favourites, new releases or not. So without further ado, here's Not Monopoly issue #1. 

Today we're looking at Scythe, a 2016 release with no fewer than 22 prestigious awards and nominations behind it. 

This is "an engine-building game set in an alternate-history 1920s period. It is a time of farming and war, broken hearts and rusted gears, innovation and valour." It's set in a decidedly creepy alternate 1920s Eastern Europe, with a lurking sense of unease and doom. When your monstrous mechas start firing up, it's easy to see why that was. 

Some of our favourite features include the total lack of player elimination - everyone plays to the end, and has fun doing it! - and the level of control you have over your character's fate.

Luck barely comes into it except when you draw your Encounters, and you still have unprecedented input into the outcome of that Encounter. Even combat is choice-based and without random factors. 

 Not enough? Scythe also has expansions involving airships (what alternate history setting is complete without giant floating skyvessels?) and the Albion and Togawa factions - check out The Wind Gambit and Invaders From Afar for the ultimate Scythe experience! 

Chuck that on your barbie and grill it, players. Have a great week, and we'll see you soon!

Welcome to another feast of new gaming things, players! I hope you're well. I've been thinking about you. 

There's plenty to look at today: we've got pre-, mid- and post-apocalyptic goodies, and some that aren't anything to do with the end of the world at all! Let's get into it.

The unstoppable hype train that is Games Workshop pulls into town again, carrying even more Idoneth Deepkin for Age of Sigmar. The mysterious deep-aelves bring their Isharann Agents to battle: the Soulrender, Soulscryer and Tidecaster. Command the tides of magic and steal your enemies' souls with the power of the abyss! 

Not to be outdone by the Mortal Realms, the grim darkness of the far future gets its own new addition as the Van Saars stride into the turf wars of Necromunda. Accompanying them is Gang War III, with all you need to take your gang wars to the next level (figuratively of course - nobody escapse the Underhive!) with expanded campaign rules, scenery tutorials and more.

From one industrially-ruined planet to another now, as we approach Earth, in a hellish alternate 2018. The Martian corporations run everything, Earth is a ghetto, and the mob is kept entertained by the most extreme and violent of gasoline-powered blood sports.

Players, GASLANDS is here! Osprey Games' most famous work, GASLANDS is a tabletop racing game filled with outrageous mods, burning rubber and utter carnage. All you need is the rulebook, a selection of toy cars and a twisted imagination! Keep an eye out for our Gaslands organised play series, coming soon!

In another, slightly more pleasant world, Blood Bowl gets a new team and a new publication. In the first issue of Spike! journal you'll find tons of advice on coaching your Chaos Chosen to victory on the pitch, star player profiles, a misty-eyed career retrospective on Lord Borak the Despoiler, and even rules for how to proceed if one of your players is turned into a frog! Magical moments indeed...

The aforementioned Chaos Chosen team are also out this week. The Doom Lords, a motley collection of Chaos Blockers and Beastmen, are sure to carve themselves a niche in your local league... One way or another... 

Now let me hear those engines revving, players, and we'll see each other very soon!