If you have read the post about our trip to EXG last month you may of seen that one of the free codes available was for a Pokemon Trading Cards Online deck, if you haven't read it yet I would recommend it but here is the code that was posted: 49H3-J2S8-VX21

This code unlocks the Rallying Cry theme deck which is a Pokemon Trading Cards Online exclusive and is not available as a physical pack.





This code is for use only once per account this will give you a copy of the deck and all cards within. It uses the standard card back and a red Arceus coin so doesn't add anything new for visual customisations.

This deck is comprised of water and normal type Pokemon and also contains a selection of Trainer cards which are generally useful for your own deck building, such as Cheren which allows you to draw extra cards and the Switch card which allows the player to switch out their active Pokemon freely.

The main aim when playing with this deck to to build up the bench with Pokemon who have the Round attack. The unique thing about this attack is that it gets more powerful with each Pokemon in play with it.
For example Wigglytuff does 20 damage times the number of Pokemon with Round in play.
The Exploud in this deck does 50 damage per Pokemon in play with the round attack while this maxes out at an impressive 250 damage enough to neutralise any Pokemon card your opponent may have. However only having two Pokemon on the bench with Round this Pokemon can still output 150 damage per attack which deals with almost everything apart from strong legendary Pokemon/ Pokemon EX cards.




A decent strategy with this deck is to use kangaskhan and its call for family attack to start filling the bench quickly while using its high hit points to absorb damage. Alternately Chatot can be used to stall the opponent by causing confusion with its Tone deaf attack.

This should leave you with enough time to build up the bench full of Pokemon with Round. However if you are unable to do this the Wigglytuff also has Hypnoblast which deals 60 damage and has a chance of causing sleep. This attack really has helped to to neutralise some fairly serious threats with a little luck on the coin flips to make or keep the enemy asleep.





The one downside of this deck is that there is no single card able to deal high damage by itself so without the set up of other Pokemon on your bench the match may become difficult. Particularly if your opponent has a strategy which damages the benched Pokemon making it difficult to get them out to evolve. At this point my only resort is to use Chatot, Wiggytuff or Jigglypuff to hopefully get a status effect on the opponents active Pokemon to lower its threat if its not possible to deal the damage to take it out quick enough.

Finally once you have been playing with this deck in versus battles for a while you may want to change a few of the cards to customise it. There isn't too many substitutions that can be made without changing the focus of the deck away from building up the bench for the round attacks from Loudred and Wigglytuff.

An easy substitution is to change the Meowth/Chatot in the deck for a stronger basic Pokemon card. The purpose of the Meowth/Chatot in this deck is to help stall for time while you add energy/ evolution cards to your bench. 
However it is possible to get basic Pokemon with more HP and attacks which aid stalling.

For example:
Bouffalant From the Dragons Exalted expansion
This can be found in the Basic Green deck obtained from the trainer challenge so the easiest to get.
With 100 HP and the Bouffler special ability reducing incoming damage this card is really effective at stalling.
Alternatively you could use this as an opportunity to use a water type Pokemon Ex for this purpose or if you have an Articuno/ Kyogre the high HP will help stall and they can deal high damage on their own if the rest of the deck is not yet set up.

Trainer card substitutions

For a deck which needs the bench to be set up with evolved Pokemon it is surprising that there are only two cards (Level ball) which allow searching for Pokemon. A worthy addition to this deck would be the Wally supporter card makes it easier to get to the first and second stage Pokemon which have the Round ability particularly after using kangaskhan to fill the bench with Basic Pokemon.

Personally I would trade out the two Ether Trainer cards. The Ether card attaches an energy card to a Pokemon in play only if the top card on your deck is a basic energy card. Without any ability to stack the top of the deck this approach is down to luck at best. Perhaps other players have much better luck with this than I do but I find the use of this card rarely if ever works out for me and isn't to be relied on.

Finally if a single Rallying Cry is not enough for you and you would like to obtain more copies of the cards for deck building you can find more codes on the Bulbapedia page here.
 If you'd like to see more Pokemon themed posts various craft posts are available over at Buzy Bobbins which this month is creating Pokemon baubles.

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Continuing my delving into the available free games advertised on Steam I encountered Viridi a small simulation game created by Ice Water Games and released August 2015. This is Ice Water Games second game on Steam, the other been Eidolon which has mixed reviews and was released the previous year.

Using the term loosely the goal of Viridi is to grow a number of succulents plants  however the true aim of the game seems to as a relaxation aid with calming music and cute cell shaded visuals.
Thinking this might be a fun little distraction I decided to give it a try and recorded my first impressions which you watch below: 

Once again I feel like I require a mixed recommendation, because while I feel that this is a really quaint little thing, certain details just make it a mild annoyance for me personally. Viridi is also quite difficult to write about due to the very little content it possesses.

Basic Overview: There isn't much to the core of the game, it's basically just a plant simulator where you nurture a small pot of succulents that grow in real time. You water them, sing to them (also the snail) and watch them grow. Released by Ice Water games as their latest creation.

You're launched into the game with nothing more than a start button, you then choose the decorative pot, the first few starting succulents and name it whatever you wish, after this.. You simply watch plants grow.

Pros: Cute,, minimalistic, relaxing, quaint, easy to have in the background and to just check on it every so often, cute snail. It's nice to de-stress for a brief period of time
 

Cons: There's not tutorial, no restart if you do something wrong, any additional seeds are micro-transactions within the game (Or you wait a week to get a free seedling from the nursery), the click box for selection of the plants is right next to a delete button which in turn leads to many accidental killing of plants - Even plants brought with real money and finally the erratic camera controls that flick you from one side of the pot to the other when something is selected.

Final conclusion: Honestly, you have nothing to lose by trying it except a few minutes of your time and very minimal hard drive space. I praise the effort and ideas that have obviously gone into it and have a mild whine about the little things that could easily be improved to make this far more enjoyable. It is however exactly what it claims to be; A relaxing oasis to run in the background or a quiet space when you need something simple to get your mind off things.

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If your unfamiliar EGX  it is the UK's largest video game convention, a colossal mixtures of merchandise stalls, the chance to play both Indie and AAA title video games and hardware months or on occasion years before release, take part in betas, view presentations by game designers from world renowned studios, various areas dedicated to esports, have the opportunity to meet and chat with game creators, take part in cosplay and loads more.

I hadn't expected to attend EGX but it turned out my housemate had bought several extra tickets on a offer earlier this year so I was pleasantly surprised when I was offered a chance to go, this was made even better when my girlfriend also managed to book a day off from work and able to join us also.
With the EGX been held at NEC in Birmingham it was quite the trip with us getting up at 6:30am and leaving by 7:20am to arrive on time (we had intended to leave by 7am but our drive overslept) but we arrive around 10am.


We arrived to a throng of people but the queues moved quickly and we were able to acquire our wristbands in no time at all but we were stuck waiting for the doors to open and the event to begin for general ticket holders.
As soon as the doors opened the horde that we were now part of were funnelled into the entrance of the massive hall, unlike similar events I attended there was no intentional pushing or shoving and everyone was pretty well mannered. I wish I could claimed to have rushed straight to the lines for games such as Star Wars Battlefront but the car journey had left me rather queasy so myself (and several others I noticed) rushed to toilets first though on the way I ran into Teams 17 mascot.


Unfortunately as I write this I am unable to access the dropbox folder of all the pictures that we took over the day, instead I am going to briefly go over the highlights of the day and make sure you guys don't miss out.
So to begin here is a scan of the event map and a link to the event page  just so you can see just how much was occurring on the day.



Now I didn't want to spend half the day queuing for several hours to play a game for 15 minutes and I've always enjoyed watching other people play games so made my way through the convention I tended to observe the AAA titles and play the smaller Indie games but even so there was so much going on there was no way to see everything, so I really advise if you get to go yourself to see if you can get a ticket for several days.

So here is my break down of my most memorable moments of EGX:

Prison Architect: These guys had an amazing stand designed to look like several cells, had photo opportunities in the electric chair and line up and finally were giving out various emote headbands.


If your curious what the big announcement they had to make at the EGX you can watch the video here starting at 8:35.



Monsters and Monocles: This little game was a blast to play and scores highly on my local coop rating, additional bonus for having some of the nicest badges and brilliant artwork. Tally Ho pass me my tea and crumpet cannon Monocle bot.



Mayan Death Robots: Having grown a little tired of Worms Mayan Death Robots is a fresh action packed entry into the artillery genre with the focus been on destroying your opponents power core rather than their robot. Turns are taken simultaneously with shots fired once the timer ticks down, I managed to rack up an impressive win streak against my fellow players as the god of lightning.



Black and White Bushido: This is a curious mix of stealth and brawler catch my eye with its thematic music and art style and kept my attention through its game play. While I do believe it needs online multiplayer to really fill its potential I see this been a hit on console stores and would love to see it on the Ouya. Also Hats off to having a awesome logo for the game and I imagine it will be popping up as several peoples user avatars in the future.



Warhammer: The End Times: Vermintide: Left For Dead meets Games Workshops now discontinued Warhammer Fantasy Setting. With Games Workshops new Age of Sigmar been a pile of rubbish and a money grab its good to see that at least the video games are amazing (With the possible exception of Blood Bowl 2 which is a good game but also a despicable money grab with basic teams been DLC). Vermintide is much more of a challenge than Left for Dead and will really require good team work, I just hope that when bots are implemented they have decent intelligence.

TotalBiscuit has a good overview of the current beta in video below.

Shadow Hand: A visual novel set in England 1770 where a noblewoman Lady Darkmoor must masquerade as notorious highway thief, ShadowHand to retrieve an incriminating family jewel and safeguard a woman she holds dear. It differers from the usual visual novel by introducing various card games that must be completed to progress. 

Sol Trader: Currently in Kickstarter but I recommend trying the demo and I believe this could be a great little game with some work.



VA-11_Hall_A: A game about been a bartender in a cyberpunk setting, I absolutely love the mechanics and artwork for this game. I highly recommend  trying the demo and grabbing this game early for just £5


Want to hear more about the big games at EGX then pop over to Euro Gamer.

There are so many more Indie games I could go into here but for now I'll leave this here and move onto the real reason your all still reading this.

EGX loot time:

Fatshark is celebrating the upcoming release of Vermintide and are offering a free copy of Bloodsports TV. 

React games is offering a prize draw for one of 100 steam keys for Super Dungeon Bros if you register for the SDB newsletter at www.superdungeonbros.com

Total War Arena, Steam codes:

Beta Keys: 
6mew3-fgk85-h3b8n
z5y74-7zgbd-ebr0p
wr5ex-eynj6-q6fm0
pn3qm-xkqq5-l5cql
t97fp-3chdm-i2eia
8q22j-pjjk6-dpvvx
cne5x-w4gta-yev2p

20,000 gold and Greek Myrmidon Unit
apya39-4ddx-queg6
3upex3-ey2d-3txfx
2trq7h-ayaw-r7pap
7eqga6-7gup-rpg7y
r7qy9f-4q7f-74dpe
69wfah-darr-dq9at
9g74r3-erhf-eufh6

Total War Battles: Kingdoms Steam Codes:

500 gold
3gned2psy1
8sdnlgw1n4
a5n36uy8xr
v29fbq82x7
ahh2w3pe57
jxjrrbnrq6

Free deck for Pokemon Cards Online
This code is usable once per user account so you guys don't have to worry about it been used already.
49h3-j2s8-vx21

If you grab a code please be kind and make a note in the comments.

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After hearing about it the week before I decided to attend the "GEEKS Comic-Con" in Lincoln on the 20th of this month. I was initially wary about the amount of attendance since 3000 people on the Facebook stated they would come it was located in the Lincolnshire Showroom which is a little bit out of the way, lacks any real facilities nearby and whilst it claims it can hold over 1000 people this requires the whole building which is often not available.

With no ability to purchase tickets before hand myself and the delightful lady from Buzy Bobbins arrived shortly after the opening time at 10:30am and already the queue was circling around the building. Thankfully this gave me time to admire some of the amazing costumes (I recommend checking the Facebook page) and the queue moved very quickly, I was also able to get the general mood of the crowd and get comparisons to other events people had attended it it was all rather educational.

Paying the reasonable fee of £3 I moved inside and was not disappointed by the amount of stalls that were offering all kinds of merchandise and fun raffles, in fact my only gripe would be the lack of Fate Stay Night items and that several of the stalls were pretty much identical.

 
With my lovely companion signing up to the costume contest which was at 3:15pm we spent our time wandering around the stalls and had pretty much seen everything by 12:25pm, I wasn't really impressed by the guests who were charging £15+ even for an autograph and there were no other events planned during the day. More frustratingly we were informed that if we left the building we would have to queue to re-enter even though we had paid. Thankfully the cafe within the Showroom was still open and we managed to grab some seating and watch people in costume attempt to play pool and table tennis which was amusing.

The costume contest itself was bluntly a shambles, first of all  the rules surronding the contest were just bad with Shop bought costumes and homemade entries would be judged together which just seemed unfair.
Then due to the lack of space it was forced to be held in the car park, rather than separating the contestants into the two age categories and showing each in turn instead the names on the entry form were read out in order which lead to some confusion as people arriving thought they had missed the child entries and there was a lot of trouble hearing the announcer who had no microphone assistance.
Finally the judging seemed rather biased and more aimed towards awarding the prizes to suitable entries rather than costume quality the most telling moment been when (again been completely honest) a rather lackluster zombie costume somehow won third place in the children category.
The whole affair left an air of disappointment and was somewhat of a poor end to the day, however I hope that if there is another con next year these issues will be addressed.

On the bright side even the local paper which has a tendency to be narrow minded about such events (though less so in recent years with the growing popularity of Steampunk) seemed to give a fair review of the day and interviewed several people.   
      

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On the first of this month I mentioned Chapter Master the Space Marine Chapter simulator created by Duke was been re-released and having all copyrighted material removed, The key reason for this was to avoid a possible future Cease and Desist lawsuit from Games Workshop and I predicted that any further Warhammer 40k theme would be produce via mods for the core game.
What I could not predict however was how fast Duke and the Chapter Master community would do this and already both the first builds of Interstellar Army Simulator 2015 and the mods have been released.
That said this initial release of  Interstellar Army Simulator 2015 is still rather buggy and experimental (especially with Windows 10) as Duke Explains in his post:

Interstellar Army Simulator 2015 v0.70 Published Sep 2, 2015
It's been a very, very monotonous two weeks but I've finally got a working initial release of Interstellar Army Simulator 2015.  I'm going to have to ask for your patience, as it will likely be a few days before replacement images and text are provided in mod format.  I am likewise searching for free use images to serve as default ones, but this could take a million billion years so let's not even worry about that for now.

Note that the game will most likely be unstable for another patch or two.  All of the bug reports I have received since then have been saved, and will be the focus of further patches.  These upcoming patches will also be focused on hitting any text/images that were not changed.  Still, give Interstellar Army Simulator 2015 a crack and check for bugs/old text/crashes.  While you are at it you may wish to play around with the image and text modification.

Interstellar Army Simulator 2015 v0.70 is available to download here.

The Chapter Master Mod should be easy to install by simply dragging and dropping its contents into a mod folder and is available to download here.

Want to support Duke> Check out his Patron.

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Some of you hopefully remember my posts on Chapter Master a fan game by members of 4chans /tg that initially began life as a joke "what if this was a game" thread
Just as recap: it a minor project that stuttered after a few months and died until picked up by a user only know as Duke who has since created a decent simulator strategy game in August 2014 and had released several versions since as well as creating a Patron to help fund development.

However as I have feared from the start and increasingly so with the addition of the Patron Games Workshop has gotten wind of the project, thankfully Duke has done the sensible thing before the cease and desist/ inevitable lawsuit and dropped the copyrighted material but saved the engine to develop further and this was his announcement on the 29th of August.

Important Status Update Published Aug 29, 2015

Due to recent concerns, as of now, I am no longer continuing production on the 'Chapter Master' project. Any future content for 'Chapter Master' is not produced by myself or with any supervision by myself. I have also decided to stay clear of working on parody games in the future to avoid similar concerns.

Because of this I will begin production on a new game called 'Interstellar Army Simulator 2015'. Take the role of a Commander in guarding an interstellar sector from alien and renegade threats! This new game should provide a very similar experience, but with a new and original setting! It also grants more freedom to you, the player, in being able to mod and change game content*- up to and including all of the images and text fields.

I should have the new game more or less ready in a few days. From then on be sure to be on the lookout for fan-made mods.


Thanks again for all of your ongoing support,
Duke

*Changing game content limited by engine constraints

So does this mean Chapter Master is dead? Well yes and no while Chapter Master is technicality no longer been developed I suspect the first mods for Dukes engine will be Warhammer 40K themed and keep him safe from lawsuit.
There is a good chance that if the right people ask Duke will pass on his files for Chapter Master and the development will continue underground though even if this doesn't happen it will only be a matter of time until someone finds a way to explore the code for the existing 10 August release.

While this is all a bittersweet I do look forward to Dukes further developments.
Just in case though I recommend getting a hold of the latest version of Chapter Master available: [Link Here] [Alternative]

Update: The First Release of Interstellar Army Simulator is here.

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