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As we get closer to the release of Hearthstone’s next big expansion, Blizzard keep releasing peeks at the new cards all over the Internet. These are the ones that were introduced to the public in the last two weeks, with a good number of new Legendaries seeing the light of day for the first time.
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Master of Evolution
Minion, 4 Attack, 5 Health, 4 mana cost.
Battlecry: Transforms another friendly Minion into a random one that costs 1 mana more.
Hallazeal the Ascended
Legendary Minion, 4 Attack, 6 Health, 5 mana cost.
Whenever your spells deal damage, heal your Hero for that much.
Thing from Below
Minion, 5 Attack, 5 Health, 6 mana cost.
Taunt
For each Totem summoned in this game, this Minion costs 1 mana less.
Undercity Huckster
Minion, 2 Attack, 2 Health, 2 mana cost.
Deathrattle: Adds a random class card from your opponent’s class to your hand.
Tentacle of N’Zoth
Minion, 1 Attack, 1 Health, 1 mana cost.
Deathrattle: Deal 1 damage to all Minions.
Spawn of N’Zoth
Minion, 2 Attack, 2 Health, 3 mana cost.
Deathrattle: Give your Minions +1/+1.
Faceless Shambler
Minion, 1 Attack, 1 Health, 4 mana cost.
Taunt
Battlecry: Copies a friendly Minion’s Attack and Health.
Infested Tauren
Minion, 2 Attack, 3 Health, 4 mana cost.
Taunt
Deathrattle: Summon a 2/2 Slime.
Cult Apothecary
Minion, 4 Attack, 4 Health, 5 mana cost.
Battlecry: Restores 2 Health to your Hero for each enemy Minion.
Skeram Cultist
Minion, 7 Attack, 6 Health, 6 mana cost.
Battlecry: Gives your C’Thun +2/+2 wherever it is.
Tentacle of N’Zoth
Dragon Minion, 2 Attack, 8 Health, 6 mana cost.
At the start of your turn, this Minion’s Attack doubles.
Mukla, Tyrant of the Vale
Legendary Minion, 5 Attack, 5 Health, 6 mana cost.
Battlecry: Add 2 Bananas to your hand.
Ancient Harbinger
Minion, 4 Attack, 6 Health, 6 mana cost.
At the start of your turn, take a 10-cost Minion from your deck and place it in your hand.
The Boogiemonster
Legendary Minion, 6 Attack, 7 Health, 8 mana cost.
Whenever this Minion attacks and kills another Minion, it gains +2/+2.
N’Zoth, the Corruptor
Legendary Minion, 5 Attack, 7 Health, 10 mana cost.
Battlecry: Summons all your Deathrattle Minions that have died this game.
Y’Shaarj, Tage Unbound
Legendary Minion, 10 Attack, 10 Health, 10 mana cost.
At the end of your turn, take a Minion from your deck and place it into the battlefield.
Vilefin Inquisitor
Murloc Minion, 1 Attack, 3 Health, 1 mana cost.
Battlecry: Your Hero Power becomes “Summon a 1/1 Murloc.”
Steward of Darkshire
Minion, 3 Attack, 3 Health, 3 mana cost.
Whenever you summon a 1-Health Minion give it Divine Shield.
Ragnoros, Lightlord
Legendary Minion, 8 Attack, 8 Health, 8 mana cost.
At the end of your turn, heal 8 Health to a damaged friendly Character.
Infest
Spell, 3 mana cost.
Give your Minions Deathrattle: “Deal 1 damage to all Minions.”
Cabalist’s Tome
Spell, 5 mana cost.
Add 3 random Mage Spells to your hand.
Shadow Word: Horror
Spell, 4 mana cost.
Destroys all Minions with 2 or less Attack.
Herald Volazj
Legendary Minion, 5 Attack, 5 Health, 6 mana cost.
Battlecry: Summon a 1/1 copy of all your other Minions.
Mark of Y’Shaarj
Spell, 2 mana cost.
Give a Minion +2/+2, if it’s a Beast draw a card.
Tentacle of N’Zoth
Minion, 1 Attack, 1 Health, 1 mana cost.
Battlecry: Equip a 1/3 Rusty Hook.
Tentacles for Arms
Weapon, 2 Attack, 2 Durability, 5 mana cost.
Deathrattle: Return this card to your hand.
Renounce Darkness
Spell, 2 mana cost.
Replaces Warlock Hero Power and class cards with those of another Class. The cards cost 1 mana less.
DOOM!
Spell, 10 mana cost.
Destroy all Minions, then draw a card for each.
Xaril, Poisoned Mind
Legendary Minion, 3 Attack, 2 Health, 4 mana cost.
Battlecry & Deathrattle: Add a random Toxin card to your hand.
Bloodthistle Toxin
Spell, 1 mana cost.
Return a friendly Minion to your hand, it costs 2 mana less.
Briarthorn Toxin
Spell, 1 mana cost.
Give a Minion +3 Attack.
Fadeleaf Toxin
Spell, 1 mana cost.
Give a friendly Minion Stealth until your next turn.
July last year (2015), Station manager Digmbot was stupidly excited for a new shoot ’em up, or shmup that he’d found on STEAM.
That was Steredenn and we’ve loved it on STEAM ever since, but a week ago the guys at Pixelnest (Thanks Damien) dropped us a review copy for Steredenn on XBox One and I had to yoink it before any of the team found out.
I love this game, it’s crazy hard but in a great way and makes you want to carry on killing the evil aliens and by evil I mean seriously, what other scifi game have you seen alien skips shaped like chainsaws?!?
The controls are perfect on the Xbox One, they are fluid and responsive, just as you’d expect them to be.
The graphics look lush for a pixel based game aswell, so much happens on screen you forget this is a pixel game.
But what really stands out in steredenn is the music, I would happily buy this soundtrack if I could (Please damien, if you read this review, drop me a copy for the station PLEASE!)
I can’t reccomend this game more, it’s the perfect example of this genre of game and very few have grabbed me since R-Type way back in the old days of my teens.
Battlefleet Gothic: Armada (releasing April 21, 2016) takes the idea of tall ship combat and places it the Warhammer 40k universe. Based on Games Workshop’s tabletop game, you can take command of the Imperium, Chaos, Eldar and Ork fleets in real time space battles.
This beta version of the game includes the prologue of the campaign as well as solo skirmish and multiplayer. To avoid spoilers, I’ve only demonstrated solo skirmish in this video.
The game features deep ship customization, detailed maneuvering options for your ships as well as a plethora of upgrades, skills and faction alignments. Only three fleets are available as yet, but each places extremely differently. It’s fun, flashy but can be daunting to newcomers to the RTS genre, or those that are intimidated by multitasking. Fortunately, Tindalos Interactive has taken that into consideration in the gameplay systems.
Ok, I’ll kick off this review by admitting I’m actually pretty bad at this game, I spent a couple of weeks trying and honestly, I’m just bad 😀
So, onto the review…
Bow we’ve been following Ironcast on PC since it was released on STEAM March 2015, roll on a year later and the XBox One version was released on the 9th of March.
At it’s heart, IronCast is a turn based gem collecting game, but calling it just that does it an incredible disservice. This is a roguelike tactical RPG if ever there was one.
Inspired by Victorian era science fiction writers such as H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. Ironcast is set in an exciting alternative history; a time when refined men and women in top hats and bonnets commanded gigantic walking war machines, laying waste to the enemies of the British Empire.
Take control of a 7 meter tall walking vehicle called an Ironcast and face off against an invading force of enemy Ironcast in order to defend 1880’s Victorian England. Battles are fought by generating resource nodes which in turn drive the Ironcast’s various weapons and systems. You must choose how to spend these nodes wisely, either offensively in order to cripple and destroy your opponents, or defensively, if they suspect a barrage of incoming weapons fire is due.
As the blurb says, you are the commander of an 1800’s era steampunk inspired steam tank/walker. You have to collect gems in your turn the correspond to ammo, coolant, etc, which you then use to move your mech, fire your weapons and/or raise your shields, but you never really have enough to do all of it.
The game is simple in idea, but in the execution, its easy to forget what you’ve done and as you’ll see in my twitch playthrough below, I regularly forgot to do something or simply ran out of what I needed to keep myself alive or attack the enemy. Now this could just be me, watching other streams, people are gettign the hang of it, but i also wonder if for me, the transistion from keyboard and mouse, to a single controller system is, for me, the downfall. Everything in the controller layout makes sense, and on screen the items are marked with the button that makes them work, but maybe it was too much for this old senile head to master.
That aside, I really enjoyed playing Ironcast and I love the steampunk vibe of the game.
The sound is also great too, the voice acting is a wonderful cockney British that makes me feel like I’m part of the game (it is my natural accent anyway) and the force feedback of the controller suited the sounds of the gun fire and moving mech perfectly too.
The leveling up and skill system seemed a little tricky to get to grips with and my main gripe while playing it on stream was some of the text is too small to read, even on my rather large tv in teh front room, something that would be less of a issue on a pc monitor you’d usually sit closer to.
As I said though, I enjoyed Ironcast and I will play it a lot more and it’s definitely worth £10, so head over to xbox.com or check your Xbox One’s store page!
MMOs. The very term can make some people wary. There’s a huge time investment involved. Questing, looting, raiding, experiencing the story, getting killed by a half naked guy who’s 8000 levels higher than you….it’s a lot to take in. Good news for you then that the staff here at Sanitarium.FM love MMOs. And we play a ton of different ones. So if you’re looking to jump into an MMO read on. We’re going to breakdown our five favorites and why you should give them a try.
World of Warcraft – k1ng0fspades
After a decade long lifespan, WoW is still the most subscribed MMORPG in the world. In many ways it sets the gold standard for its genre and many MMOs still live in its shadow. It’s gone through many iterations over the years, constantly evolving and improving and altering the formula to respond to the ever-changing needs of its playerbase. I began playing in early vanilla when reaching level 60 and earning enough money for an epic mount was the ultimate achievement, and despite a few hiatuses during content drought, I’ve remained a loyal citizen of the world of Azeroth.
In classic WoW, the world of Azeroth was simply the lands of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms, and traversing this world was a magical experience that captured my young imagination and created a life-long love for this universe. Each expansion made this already staggeringly huge world even larger, more immersive, more interesting. Each expansion added new features to every class, new classes, new races, new collectibles, new challenges to surmount, which created a hunger in the playerbase to explore every facet of the universe, conquer every obstacle, earn every reward.
Blizzard’s customer service is second to none. Ask any player about any exchange they’ve ever have had with a Game Master and they’ll tell you, the agents are constantly friendly and sincerely invested in providing the quickest and most effective service they can. If there’s one thing that creates loyalty to a game, it’s customer service that cares and understands the perspective of the consumer and Blizzard embodies this mentality.
Legion is highly anticipated as a return to the glory days of WoW, with the release of the demon hunter class and presumably the final conflict with the eponymous Burning Legion, one of the most iconic enemies of the Warcraft universe. Despite years of declining subscribers, the game is still going strong and still remains on top, and there it shall likely remain.
Get it here: https://us.battle.net/account/creation/wow/signup/
WildStar – Digmbot
WildStar has had it’s ups and downs. Now a free to play game, it seems to have found some new life. A game that relies heavily on mobility in combat, Wildstar uses a telegraph system to make sure that you always know where your attacks are going and where enemy attacks are coming from. This doesn’t mean it’s easy to dodge everything- Wildstar’s bosses have some fiendish patterns that make your average Japanese bullet hell shooter look like a walk in the park.
Combine this with a charming and unique wild west meets outer space aesthetic, a wicked sense of humor and a truly insane cast of characters, and you have a recipe for a fun, fast and colorful MMO. Quests can be turned in from pretty much anywhere, so this game is light on backtracking to quest givers. There are multiple crafting systems, and you can make some truly meaningful decisions about how you specialize your characters trade and crafting skills. Oh, and we haven’t even mentioned the character classes.
WildStar is unique in that every character class can perform two roles. The medic is capable of putting out a staggering amount of DPS. The stealthy assassin-like Stalker can also tank. And the Engineer…the engineer has a bigass mechsuit, badass robot pets and a gun the size of a small city bus. Keeping players from feeling locked into traditional MMO roles gives you a sense of freedom in the game, and lets you tailor a party of friends to your needs without having to rely on locked in rolls.
With a free to play model, fair micro transactions that prevent buying power and a ridiculously fun style of play, WildStar is the perfect MMO if you want a little more action in your playstyle and also love goofy, wacky and sometimes creepily insane characters.
Get it here: http://www.wildstar-online.com/en/freetoplay/
Guild Wars – Lonesamurai
Guild Wars holds a special place for myself and the radio station, we launched the Sanitarium.FM with my weekly Ascension show on a Tuesday night, sat in Lion’s Arch International District 1, sometimes with Gaile and Froggy along for the party and a host of players joining in the conga lines
Guild Wars 1 was, for some, a strange beast, it had no jump button and outside of towns and cities, the area was instanced for your party, whether that party was made of other players or just a team of AI
But that was part of Guild Wars charm and that charm still exists to this day. This was at a time when World of Warcraft had just released as well, but Guild Wars held it’s own against WoW with a fifth of the player figures WoW had. It’s clean, easy to follow gameplay and skill system, a pvp system Blizzard would eventually steal from for WoW arenas and an art style that still looks fantastic to this day
Guild Wars 2 may have been a disappointment to all the station team and the guild, but GW1 still makes us feel nostalgic and was totally worth the £180 I spent on it all those years ago!
Get it here: https://www.guildwars.com/en/
Eve Online – Lonesamurai
Nowadays we have Elite and other gorgeous space flight sims that satiate our bloodlust and our joy for the exploration of the final frontier (que Star Trek theme)… Way back when the station first started though, the other MMO we regularly covered was EvE Online, still, in my opinion, one of the best space MMO’s out there, and although Digm and others disagree, I actually loved the 3rd person point of view and even CCP’s lore behind it 😀
Some find EvE Online a straight up excel spreadsheet simulator and some like to play the game that way, sitting in Jita, playing the market, but personally, my fave past time and sometimes I miss this, was sitting in my Amarr Tech 2 Battleship clearing tier 4 zones, then coming back in my Cruiser and salvaging the lot for profits
EvE can be as massive or as small as you want to play it, and unlike Elite, with its closed and personal servers limiting players griefing, Eve is a death threat just ready to slit your throat. PvP is usually brutal and quick, with gate campers sometimes in groups of two or three, each ship with a role to catch unwary pilots that forgot to check where they were going.
But it’s in the corporation (guild) play that evE gets really exciting, with some guilds of hundreds of players going up against other guilds with similar numbers for some truly epic space battles, the like Elite and others just couldn’t do right now, but maybe in the future. The first time you see a titan warp in on top of a combined fleet and open up its doomsday weapon is a site to behold, unless you happen to be in the path of that doomsday, then, it’s time to clone jump and set up a new ship!
Blade and Soul – Digmbot
Do you want to be a Kung Fu Winner? Then Blade and Soul is the place for you. A Korean MMO, Blade and Soul places you in the shoes of a student who’s school was destroyed and is out for revenge. Taking inspiration from movies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Blade and Soul allows players to run, jump, flip, fly and literally race across the very surface of the water as a kung fu master. With a healthy selection of classes, including a brand new warlock magic wielder, the adorable yet deadly summoner, and the punchy punchy kung fu master himself, there’s a playstyle here that will suit you. Want to teleport around, leave little wooden logs to confuse enemies and then plant bombs at their feet? Assassin is the way to go. And theres more to it than just the classes. Blade and Soul rewards combos. Use your abilities correctly and your menu of combat choices keeps expanding in a glorious and seemingly never ending buffet of destruction and kung fu glory.
The story is engrossing and well voice acted, the locations are gorgeous and inspired by the best of kung fu movie and anime art, and the characters you meet prove to be memorable, even if you only remember them because you can’t wait to stick a sword in their guts. Blade and Soul doesn’t place higher on this list unfortunately, because at it’s heart it is a Korean MMO. The vast majority of quests are going to boil down to kill this many things and bring back this many items. You must return to most quest givers to hand in quests, making backtracking a huge part of the game. On the plus side, being overwhelmed by gear is rarely an issue, as you feed your gear other gear to level it up in Blade and Soul. This, unfortunately also has a few negatives, as you can find yourself farming the same spot for quite a while to get an item you need to breakthrough to the next level.
At it’s core, Blade and Soul is a fun romp through a mystical kung fu inspired world. Movement and combat are glorious, but the game is dragged down by what becomes a huge grind fest when you get to higher levels. Still, if you want to run on water and glide through the air while being followed by your giant mallet wielding cat familiar, Blade and Soul is the only place to go.
Get it Here: http://www.bladeandsoul.com/en/freetoplay/
