November... Guardian Promotion? And... Deck Building Games...

Hmm... still working on the S3 videos. Kinda busy as of late so it's been getting harder and harder to do them. I'll still work on them for a little bit longer. Hope to just finish chapter 2 (in two parts) and leave it at that. I already have most of the first part complete. But it's been really difficult to just finish it up.

Anyway, it's time for... Boring Sales Talk Time!
This month(well, last month, talking October here), sales have been slow...?
We got 8 sales. All of them US/India.
Hangin' in there!

Since it's the beginning of a new month, thought I'd do a small promotion. The Guardian will be free on Amazon on the 9th. That's a Friday, next Friday. People still grab them during promotions, so I hope it at least expands the amount of people who get exposure to my books.

I hope you all had a Happy Halloween (for those of you that enjoy that sorta thing)!
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Now that we got that outta the way. I figure I'd do a little write-up on Deck Building games.
Deck Building games aren't exactly a new thing. But they're still new to me, and I don't think they're exactly public knowledge. Here we go:

So what's a Deck Building game? Well, from what I understand, Dominion is the one that started it all. We'll use that as our starting point.

It's like a board game, but the focus is on cards, so it's more like a card game that plays like a board game... I think. And it's fairly simple in concept, but has enough depth and variety for great replayability (also, because it's a card game, expansion packs can be bought to spice things up).
You get a bunch of people together, (2-5 players I believe) and each person gets a little deck. Everyone starts out the same, gets the same deck, to make things fair. Then the strategy is in how you buy cards and use cards on your turn to get the most points by the end of the game.

That's the general idea. But now I'll shift over to what I think is great take on Deck Building: Thunderstone Advance.

Let me begin by saying that I love CCGs (customizable card games). I love the concept. I love collecting. I love how it's tangible and has neat artwork and how some cards are cooler than others and need to be sought after. But by gosh, by golly, CCGs are a real pain!
    Want cool cards? Buy expensive expansion packs for a chance at something cool! Or spend WAAAY too much money to buy the specific card you want! CCGs are expensive.
    The other issue is that CCGs are strictly multiplayer games. Want to play with your cool cards? Well... you can only do that if other people find them cool enough to play. Most of the time they're fads. They come and go. You buy them 'cause they're popular, but then they stop being popular and you're stuck looking at your cool cards, unable to use them in any capacity.
   So... they're expensive and mostly useless after a while (unless you have friends who are willing to invest in it and play together for the rest of your life).

But Deck Building games can solve that! Specifically, Thunderstone Advance solves that.

Thunderstone is a very thematic style of Deck Building. You have your dwarves and elves and swords and spells and curses and dragons and ALL that good stuff. You're building your deck like in Dominion, but instead of something plain like buying points toward victory, you have to kill monsters to get those points. There's a constant feel of progression as your getting cards that summon other cards, or you get heroes with special abilities that can whisk away monsters, destroy curses, or draw support from other player decks. There's a random aspect to it because you can't use all your cards at the same time (unless you do a variant instead of the standard, balanced rule set) so you will only use a few specific cards and that makes each game you play different.

Worried that other people won't want to play? Well, don't worry because (unlike Dominion) Thunderstone Advance actually offers a single player mode. It's not the same as playing with other people, but it's certainly a desirable option for me as it allows me to use the cards whenever I want, and not just when people are over.

The original Thunderstone was good, but they decided that certain aspects needed to be fixed (layout of cards, confusing text, and specific rules) so they made an update called Thunderstone Advance. If you're interested in giving it a go, I'd recommend starting with Thunderstone Advance: Towers of Ruin, as that is the standalone set for the Advance series. You'll need one of the standalones in order to play and that's the newest one with the updated rules. The other standalones include the original Thunderstone and Thunderstone: Dragonspire (or something like that). While the original and the Advance style of cards are technically compatible to be used with each other, it's bound to be confusing because they use different terminologies and have different layouts.

Anyway, that's it for now. Signing off.