Category Archives: Shadow Era

SpartanNerd Blog….right at 2100 pageviews!

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Thanks for all the support, oh Hub City Geeks, whoever you are!

Information about my blog….

Most traffic comes from the USA, but some comes from almost everywhere around the world!

Shadow Era reviews generated the most hits right from the beginning.  My reviews of the Magic The Gathering Event decks are right behind those….

The SpartanSmurf #1 is requesting a name change…..We’ll see….

I have been pretty good at keeping my identity secret….I mean there are some people who have figured it out, and I have given some pretty strong hints out there to those who know me.  My sister in law said, “So you’re the SpartanNerd….Wierd.”  Good.  I hope that’s what she thinks.

The review of the Sonic the Hedgehog figures is the one that I am most proud of the photos.  I really should look into a better situation for photographing my stuff.

My favorite thing to cover is Masters of the Universe…everything!  You would see a lot more of this if I had more time. My review of Masters of the Universe #5 got a bunch of hits…(the one about She-Ra)

I want to start doing some top ten lists.  I need to do more things like the Groovy Dork lists.

SpartanNerd Sundays have been a mild hit.  I am still trying to work that out in my heart and mind.

I still have no followers or subscribers…out of all this traffic?  I haven’t figured that out yet.  One thing, Google doesn’t make it easy to be anonymous.  I have had a few comments.  But no people interested in my give-aways….

So this is where I stand as a blogger.  May I write something similar in when I get 2100 more hits!  Thank You all!

Two Unbeatable PokeMon decks

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Long ago, between the addiction with Shadow Era and Magic the Gathering, me and my boys began playing PokeMon cards.

Now I have some background with PokeMon.  In college, my roomates would watch the show.  I would not…But eventually when I got a Gameboy Color, I got the first PokeMon game, and HATED IT.  You would think I would have like it, being a fantasy lover and all that.  Also being a fan of Zelda and Final Fantasy.  But PokeMon the game just didn’t do it for me.

It wasn’t long before I was confiscating PokeMon cards from students, as they were banned.  (Most cards are banned at school.)  I would read what was on the card and scratch my head.  Sometimes an “energy” card would turn up.  Then I really scratched my head!  That made no sense to me at all.  In fact, Trading Card Games didn’t make sense to me.

But after I finally started playing the game with my boys, I saw that it was really easy.  I liked how the game allowed the boys to win, it wasn’t just me dominating all the time.

But now I have two decks that can’t be beaten.  And I must consider making a deck that is weak enough for them to take out so that they won’t lose confidence.

Deck #1….Reshiphlosion  (Reshiram and Typhlosion)  link to bulbapedia

This deck is called a “championship deck.”  The cards do not have the standard back of the regular cards.  Basically, it only has four Reshirams and four Cydiquil/Quilava/Typhlosions.  (Well, technically it only has one Quilava…It counts on Rare Candy to evolve Typhlosion most of the time)  This deck is all about card advantage, being padded with support cards that let you search for the cards you need.  The two Pokemon have synergy….Reshiram has a Blue Flare attack, that hits for 120 damage, but then he loses two fire energy to the discard pile.  Typhlosion allows you to take fire energy out of the discard pile and put it on a Pokemon….See how this is an unbeatable strategy?

Deck #2….Furious Knights/Noble Victories (heavily modified)

I picked up Furious Knights one day when we all decided to splurge on some cards.  The knights are Escalvier in this deck.  And I found it to be weak sauce.  So I looked to the Reshiram and Typholosion deck for inspiration!  I included four copies of Shelmet and Karablast, each of which likes the other.  These evolve into Escalvier and Accelgor, so I included the four copies of each of those.  Everything else pretty much allows me to get what I need out of the deck, with the exception of some healing cards and Snivy/Servine/Serperior, which are there to help heal the PokeMon.  (you see, because this deck is a grass deck, it can be burned very easily.)

The idea is to get the Escalvier attack “Twin Needle”  If you can pull this off, you can knock out almost anyone…your opponents become anxious every-time you flip the coin!

So, anyone want a complete deck list?  Write a comment and I will get that out to you!

More about Shadow Era….Dark Prophecies

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Dark Prophecies expansion

I dropped some Shadow Crystals on some booster packs of Dark Prophecies today….Here are my thoughts about the expansion….

One thing that is new is the idea of weakness…..For instance, some allies might be resistant to Ice damage, but hurt more by fire damage. Certainly not a new idea in fantasy stuff, but new to Shadow Era.

I put some new cards in my Majaya deck.  “Meteor Shower” is one of my favorites, hitting someone for 3 damage and setting all of the allies on fire.  SCORE!  My best trick has always been to use the “Voice of Winter” as my weapon.  This thing freezes any new allies.  So they might be frozen and burned if the cards fall right!  But now there is another new card, “Kelvin’s Charm,” which allows you the chance to make any weapon have the ability to freeze things when they are hit.  Wicked touch for a weapon like the “Wrath of Summer,” which also sets things ablaze.

I won four matches in a row today, with a 40 card deck, In every case, my life total was whittled down to almost nothing, and then Majaya’s spells really started their work.  I made a poor calculation once, and was still able to recover.

One of the coolest tricks was the “Scrying Eye.”  You play this as a support item, and then you can see the next card your opponent has on top….and you can use a shadow energy to shuffle his deck.  Needless to say, at the end game when card advantage is key, this tips the scale for Majaya.  “Boris Skullcrusher” has “Kings Pride” up next, pay out and shuffle.  Then he gets “Rain Delay,” a useless card against an all support user!

You see, the way it was before the expansion, Majaya couldn’t do what I wanted her to do….to be an all powerful loner.  She was too weak.  Now it seems that there are enough offensive spells, weapons, armor, and support to make this happen.  And this isn’t a common strategy in Shadow Era.  Everyone seems to be all about the YuGiOh style “Summon Monsters.”  No one is taking the “Blue” magic approach like me.  And that is going to be my beat for awhile.  I am leaving “Gravebone” and “Boris,” along with “Ogloth the Glutton,” because this is not my vision for the game.  Finally things seem to be right.

He looks awesome!  King He-Man, anyone?




Another thing….The Shadow Era website has some articles about two LEGENDARY CREATURES. One is “Karlstrad, Ruler of Gaderi” and the other is “Scourge Colossus.”  I have not seen these two in the merchant….(the in game store.)  The article mentions people finding them in booster packs…I bought ten boosters today, and got three EPIC cards, but neither of these LEGENDARY creatures.  Did someone say one of them was 4200 in-game gold in the comments?  Wow.

Well, I haven’t seen them in action, either.

I wish you really could trade your cards.  If there is a way, I haven’t figured it out.  This might be a way of scoring one.
“Five card stud, nothing wild. And the sky’s the limit”


Shadow Era: Call of the Crystals and Dark Prophecies review

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My introduction to Trading Card Games, (TCGs for those not nerdy enough to know,) was actually not Magic: The Gathering, World of Warcraft, of Pokemon.  I knew OF these, but did not play them.  Then one day I got the itch to start playing cards.  I had been playing poker and such as that on the computer, and somehow came across a Macworld article about Shadow Era when I was doing research about cards.

I began to play Shadow Era, which was still in beta testing mode.  I jumped in apparently after the second big update was pushed out.  I had a hard time figuring the game out.  I mean, I read the rules, and sort of knew what to click…the game lights up the available cards, and in about two weeks I had it down.  Before we knew it, I climbed the ratings ladder up to near 200.

Then, I would get knocked back down every time they updated the game.  This happened sort of frequently.  What struck me the most was that they were still evolving the game as people were playing it!  My favorite card then (and now!) is Majaya, but poor Majaya started out as too good of a card, then they weakened her too much, until finally finding the right balance…..

You see, I can’t really explain this game without just talking about my experiences with it.  Basically, you have your cards, you draw a hand, make a sacrifice, which becomes your “mana pool” (to use a Magic term, Shadow Era calls it Resources)  and you can play your cards with the resources you build up.  Only certain cards go together, so Human and Wolf  cards won’t share the same weapons and armor, etc.

The creatures you play in this game line up with their hero’s card type.  So Majaya can play “Shadow” creatures.  Boris, on the other hand must play Human creatures.  DarkClaw must play wolves, etc.  These creatures are called “allies,” and can attack.  Your hero, in my case Majaya, can’t do much of anything except use Shadow Energy, which builds up every turn….

So there you have it….You are confused already….But this game isn’t confusing.  Just hard for me to explain.  It is really very deep.

I ordered some of the physical cards last year….They had sort of a “kickstarter” thing going on, where you could pre-order the cards and you would get bonuses.  This was the GREATEST VALUE EVER.  These physical cards were great, and perhaps I will review them one day, but they sent two whole sets of foil cards in addition to all that I ordered!  And slowly but surely, I received even more stuff, both by mail and on my Shadow Era digital account.  I still have a ton of “Shadow Crystals” to spend, which brings me to the next point.

This game can drain your real money, for digital goods.  It is a FREE game to play, but if you want better cards, you have to either grind against the AI, (boring,) or fork over the cash for shadow crystals, which you can use to buy digital cards.  So warning there!  But this isn’t sooo bad.  In fact, it makes it more like the card games you can buy at the store!

Shadow Era was my jumping on point.  After I started playing this, I introduced the boys to the correct way to play Pokemon, then we went on to try YuGiOh (didn’t like so much) and Magic the Gathering. (Love it, but stink at it!)

So, get on over to this site and start playing!  They just recently released their first expansion to the game, called “Dark Prophecies.”