WoW TCG – Betrayal of the Guardian is here, so take a look, it’s in a “Book”

The latest WoW TCG Expansion, Betrayal of the Guardian, is now here and I just finished sorting through all the goodies after receiving them a couple of weeks ago.  The second set from the Timewalkers block, this set continues the theme of bringing back older characters from the past back into the fold.

Just like the prior set, War of the Ancients, each booster box comes with 36 packs, with 15 game cards per pack.  The Epic Collection box contains the following goodies:

• 1 Collector’s box
• 6 Booster packs
• 1 Playmat
• 1 Deck box
• 15 Card dividers
• 1 Visual Spoiler
• 5 Foil Hero cards
• 1 Loot card (for this set, it’s the Gusting Grimoire)

Here is a sample of what you will find in the Betrayal of the Guardian set:

Magatha Grimtotem and Zul’jin

Khadgar and General Turalyon

Some familiar faces you’ll see when you visit Karazhan….

Thrall’s Poppa and Momma

Some of the coolest legendaries you’ll find in-game, Atiesh and the Warglavies of Azzinoth

I was kinda bummed that one of my favorite artists, JonBoy Meyers, didn’t have any cards in this set, but I did find some cards from another favorite, Gonzalo Ordonez.  He also did the artwork for Atiesh and Magatha Grimtotem.

And the winner of the “Best Flavor Text” in this set goes to Don Carlos’ Famous Hat, lol.

And the Phat Lootz! Cha-Ching!

Gusting Grimoire

The common loot card of the set, the Gusting Grimoire is a Magic-type companion/battle pet that shares a similar model to the Lofty Libram, only with rounded corners and a different cover.  The Grimoire shares the same second-line abilities as the Libram, but their first-line abilities are different.

Here are the Grimoire’s abilities:

• Fel Immolate
• Agony
• Meteor Strike
• Shadow Shock
• Amplify Magic
• Curse of Doom

I named my Grimoire, War, and my Libram, Peace, get it? LoL

Dark Portal Hearthstone

The uncommon loot card is the Dark Portal Hearthstone, which is an on-use item that actually doesn’t give you an extra Hearth, but instead replaces your regular hearthing animation with a much cooler one.  This is also similar to the Ethereal Portal loot card from the Icecrown expansion.

Here is the Dark Portal Hearthstone being used in front of the real Dark Portal, lol:

Ghastly Charger

And finally the rare loot card from the set, the Ghastly Charger.  When I first saw images of this mount, I knew I was going to redeem it if I got one, I really like the look of the spectral mounts.  So after I got lucky with my RCG (random card generator) and pulled the loot card out of one of the packs, I headed straight for Landro Longshot to claim my prize.

Here is a shot of the Charger in front of Karazhan:

So what’s better than running around on top of a spectral skeletal horse?  Well, I wanted to get a screenshot of the mount on its hind legs and found a nice surprise when I hit my space bar….

….it flies!  I didn’t realize that the mount would be similar to the Headless Horseman mount.  Woohoo, a new ground/flying mount! =)

Take a look, it’s in a book

So, interested in owning your very own Grimoire? Well, I’m giving away two Grimoires to two lucky readers, all you have to do is leave a comment at the bottom of this post, telling me what your favorite or most memorable book or books are and why. I’ll go first.

One of the most memorable series I remember reading were the Anne McCaffery’s Dragonriders of Pern books.  During middle and high school, I spent a lot of time at the local library after school waiting for my ride home, immersing myself into the fantasy world of dragons.  McCaffery’s books immediately got me hooked on these mythical creatures; maybe that’s why it was so easy to pick up WoW, with all of the flying beasts it contains, lol.

So get your comment in by Saturday, March 16th at 12 am US-EST and you will be included in the drawing.  I’ll throw all the names into the same Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron I used last time for the Eyes and draw out two random peeps.  Good luck!

UPDATE:  Thanks to everyone that commented, I know I said that I was going to give away two Grimoires, but I found an extra one to give away, so congrats to Tome, Tyledres and Arioch, you guys are the lucky winners!

Da Claw and Da Bug

The pet RNG gods took pity on my soul this weekend and Brann gave me enough of the right fragments to finally discover the final archaeology pet in my journal, da Crawling Claw!

To celebrate this moment, I’ve compiled a few other famous “claws”:

Bruce Lee vs. Han with his claw

Inspector Gadget’s Dr. Claw

Toy Story and “the Claw”

Wolverine and his claws

And speaking of gods, I didn’t realize how close I was to solving a certain Nerubian artifact, so I used my leftover crates to discover da Blessing of the Old God, which is a cool on-use item that transfers you into a Green Qiraji Battle Tank for 20 seconds.

Not quite the “bug” I was looking for, but I’ll take it.  =)

Brann is safe from punting…for now.  Let’s hope I don’t have to wait as long to solve this, lol.

WoW TCG Sneak Peak – Timewalkers: Betrayal of the Guardian

Betrayal of the Guardian booster box image from Cryptozoic

Cryptozoic has announced the next expansion to the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game – Timewalkers: Betrayal of the Guardian.  They haven’t confirmed a release date yet, but some gaming sites are projecting the set to come out early February 2013 (UPDATE: Cryptozoic has finally listed a release date on their website, February 22nd).  This is the second set out of three in the Timewalkers Block and will feature 232 cards.  Here is the description of the new set:

Return to the days of the first and second war, when Orcs first came to Azeroth with Betrayal of the Guardian, the second set in the epic Timewalkers Block!

Medivh, the last guardian of Trisfal, first orchestrated the eventual wars that pitted humans versus orcs by bringing the bloodthirsty orcs and Gul’dan to Azeroth through the Dark Portal. Relive the first moments of the original Warcraft games with cards that harken back to this time. Will you be part of the stalwart humans, the bloodthirsty orcs, or will you be tempted to support the Monsters that have been left to lurk in Karazhan after Medivh’s corruption?

Form strategies with the Timewalkers, allies that become more powerful if you control multiple copies of a Horde or Alliance race. In fact, there’s more that rewards you for having more of the same race out than ever before! Get rewarded with double the fun out of your abilities through Echo, or receive a big discount on some big effects with Rift.

Will you aid the Alliance or Horde in these great wars? Or will you become a Monster, and fight against both? The choice is yours!

I’m excited to see what cards they’ll bring out that are Karazhan related.  And the new abilities Echo and Rift sound pretty cool too.

And what’s a WoW TCG expansion without the awesome loot cards?  Here are the loot cards proposed for this set (I will updated this page with images once they become available):

Common Loot Card – Gusting Grimoire

• This pet seems to be similar to the Lofty Libram pet, but with a different color scheme.  Add the Enchanted Broom and you could have your own Team Fantasia!

UPDATE:  Added this image from WarcraftPets.com

Uncommon Loot Card – Dark Portal Hearthstone

• This item is similar to the Ethereal Portal item released in the Icecrown Expansion.  It won’t give you an extra hearth, but instead you’ll get a cool animation when you use it.

Rare Loot Card – Ghastly Charger’s Skull

• The tooltip says that this is a flying mount, so it’s animations are probably similar to the Headless Horseman mount, just with a different skin.

Ghastly Charger mount from MMO Champion

And what about the awesome artwork?  Here’s a sample (all images from Cryptozoic):

Nightbane

Magatha Grimtotem

General Turalyon

The Opening of the Dark Portal

Guardian of the Ages

Looks like Cryptozoic is going to start 2013 with another great TCG expansion, can’t wait to get my hands on this set!

Zugzuug of Al’ar

Image from wallpaperswide

So Drak’Tharon saw its first Ashes of Al’ar mount posted on the Black Market Auction House on Saturday.  This mount has a ridiculous drop rate off Kael’thas in Tempest Keep of like 0.0000001% or something and if you’ve been farming this for weeks, months and years unsuccessfully, you know what I’m talking about.  Ever since Blizzard announced news and screenshots about the BMAH before Mists was released, Ashes was the most coveted mount that most people wanted.  So when the mount finally appeared, I knew that the residents of Drak were going to go crazy after it.

Zug was one of those crazies.  He had already gotten Bananas and Rivendare’s Deathcharger from BMAH already and wanted to add the colorful and bright mount to his collection.  We knew that the competition was going to be fierce, so Fayle and I decided to help out Zug get the mount.  With the three of us camping the BMAH, if one of us got overbid on, the other two would be quick to bid to maintain the high bid.

The auction started at 20K and quickly rose to 100K with 2 hours left to go.  Slice thought that the price should have been at 500k at that point, but with Drak being a low pop server, there probably weren’t that many high roller ballers around or interested.

With about an hour to go, the price had risen to 270K and by then, Fayle was getting antsy to get back to running heroics to cap out his VP, so he told Zug just to end it.  I was thinking he would just bump it up to something like 500K-700K to put it out of reach and break the hearts and hopes of the other Drak’onians looking to buy it, but Zug took it a step further.  He posted the “Buyout” price:

Yep, you read that right….999,999 gold.  There really isn’t a “Buyout” price for any auctions on the BMAH, but the maximum bid on any auction is 999,999, so if you’re looking to guarantee an item as yours, this is what you’re gonna have to bid, lol.  At first, Fayle thought you could still bid on the mount, but the Bid box turned grey and you can’t enter another digit after the 104899.  Oh, and for good measure, Zug posted the minimum bids on Cat Carrier and the Picnic Basket and won them both as well, lmao.  He did have a rare moment of “fayleness” though….he found out later that he already had the Siamese cat in his pet journal already. ><

We decided to hang around the BMAH and wait for the auction to officially end so we could take pics with Zug on his new mount.  The other bidding Hordies that were monitoring the auctions quickly dispersed after they found out that the mount was just “crit’d” on.  There was an Alliance warrior and pally that were hanging around too, so Zug, Fayle, Slice and I had a little fun by keeping them out of the BMAH.  We ended up killing the pally three or four times before the pally made a Horde alt to yell obscenities to me about not letting him check out the auction house.  Why he only targeted me, I have no clue, cause Zug and Fayle were the first ones to attack him by trying to ginzu’ing him to death on his mount.  Maybe he got mad because on one of his deaths, I threw out the D.I.S.C.O. ball and he clicked on it, dismounting him and we all just went to town on his ass, lol.  But we decided to put our nice guy suits on and we allowed he and warrior to check out the auctions and have their dreams crushed too.  We even ended up having a toy party with the pally, having sandbox tiger rides, D.I.S.C.O. dances and even a foam sword friendly fight.  Who says Horde and Alliance can’t get along? =P

So SR is not only taking over the regular AH, but we’re going to own the BMAH too, lol.  Muhahaha!  Grats Zug on your new mount!

WoW TCG – War of the Ancients is here and have I got “Eyes” for you!

War of the Ancients Epic Collection and Booster Box

Finally went through my Epic Collection and booster boxes of the new WoW TCG expansion, Timewalkers: War of the Ancients and once again I must say, Cryptozoic did an excellent job putting out another great set!  With a huge set of hero cards from heroes and villains past and present, new abilities, allies and gear to choose from, this is turning out to be an awesome block.  I can’t wait to see what’s in store for the next two sets.

Each booster box comes with 36 packs, with 15 game cards per pack.  I usually buy boxes through an online card gaming website, but you can find single packs at most Targets or Wal-Marts as well.  If you’re interested in getting the Epic Collection box, you can also find those at Target and Wal-Mart and you get the following goodies:

• 1 Collector’s box
• 6 Booster packs
• 1 Playmat
• 1 Deck box
• 15 Card dividers
• 1 Visual Spoiler (has images of every card in the set)
• 5 Foil Hero cards
• 1 Loot card (generally it’s the common loot card, i.e. pet, but you have a chance at getting the uncommon or rare loot cards too, it hasn’t happened to me yet, lol)

Just wanted to share with you a couple of my favorite cards from this set:

Arthas and his alter ego

The Brothers Stormrage and Illidan in his corrupted form

A longtime artist for the WoW TCG, Jonboy Meyers does the best work imo

This is an interesting card.  The card on the right is numbered as “EA”, which stands for Extended Art.  Extended Art cards are usually promo cards that are given out at events like Sneak Peaks, New Releases or Tournaments.  And they are usually ”extended” versions of the original art pieces that are surrounded by the card text and borders.  This card is neither; it’s a new art piece, which I think looks better than the original.  I think it’s cool that Cryptozoic is now inserting these Extended Art cards in the packs.

Poor Rhonin.  Did he really perish at the Battle of Theramoore, or is he really just ”lost in time”?  Only Blizz time will tell….

Hey, these guys look familiar, lol.

And what everyone’s been waiting for, the phat loot cards!  I’ve only redeemed the Eye of the Legion and the Demon Hunter’s Aspect loot cards, not sure what I want to do with the Feldrake, as I’m not really fond of the recolored drake mount.  I might try to sell it though, we’ll see.

Eye of the Legion

Arv doing his best Three Stooges impersonation…..nyuk, nyuk, nyuk

The Eye of Legion is a nice addition for any pet collectors out there.  It shares the same model as the upcoming Darkmoon Eye that’s going to be released with the new additions to the Faire.  It’s considered an Undead pet for you pet battlers, so if you’re missing this type of creature, here’s a good pick up for you.

Demon Hunter’s Aspect

The Demon Hunter’s Aspect is a fun on-use item that transforms you into a version of Illidan himself, complete with blindfold and tattoos.  The disguise lasts for 5 minutes, has a 30 minute cooldown and has unlimited uses.  Using this item also changed the color and style of my hair, Arv currently sports short dark hair.  I’m not sure how this item works for the other races or females, but it is a cool item regardless.  I only wished that it would also give me some temporary War Glaives to play with, lol.

I only have “eyes” for you

So do you want your own Eye of Legion to follow you around too?  Well, you’re in luck, I have two eyes to give away to two lucky readers, all you have to do is leave a comment at the bottom of this post.  You can comment as much as you would like, but I’ll only count your name once.  Your comment must be in by Saturday, October 26th at 12 am US-EST for you to be included in the drawing.  Once I have all the names, I’ll throw them into my opened Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron (aka hat) and draw out two random peeps.  I will update this post with the winners and email them with the codes to redeem from Landro Longshot.  Good luck to all!

UPDATE:  Congrats to Cymre and Khizzara, you guys are the brand new owners of some green eyeballs!