Okay, so really it was more of a “game afternoon” but who wants to be out all night on a Sunday? The return of the Seattle Geekly game night was a huge success, mostly thanks to the kindness of the great people at Wizards of the Coast who provided us with some awesome door prizes including a gargantuan Orcus “mini”.

We’re going to be doing these on the third Sunday of the month at Wayward Coffeehouse. The next night will be August 15, again from 1 – 5pm. There won’t be a game night in September because we’re going to be at the Maelstrom International Fantastic Film Festival that weekend but keep an eye on our Event Calendar for dates in October and beyond.

Tonight, the group was large enough that we broke into two. One group played an epic game of Super-Vampire-Pirate Munchkin followed by a round of Tsuro and Kill Doctor Lucky. The other group played a ton of Magic: the Gathering including two rounds using the new Archenemy rules.

Archenemy is a four player, 3 vs 1 game with one player taking the role of the Archenemy. Archenemies start with forty life instead of the usual twenty and have access to a twenty card deck of over sized “scheme” cards in addition to a regular 60 card deck of standard Magic cards. At the beginning of each turn the Archenemy gets to put a new scheme in motion by drawing one of the over sized cards and it is from these cards that they get the extra boost needed to be a challenge for the three opposing players to bring down.

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There were some truly vicious schemes in the two decks we played (Trample Civilization Underfoot and Assemble the Doomsday Machine). The Archenemy won one of the games and the players won the other, but both games were surprisingly close.

Since the three players opposing the Archenemy play cooperatively, these rules are ideal for teaching new players the game and it is also an excellent variant to throw in on experienced players looking for something a little different.

There are currently four Archenemy decks available. the decks come with a 60 card pre-constructed Magic deck and a 20 card pre-constructed scheme deck. They retail for around $20.