Doomtrooper : Mutant Chronicles The CCG

Doomtrooper! So after the summer of 1994 when I got the Mutant Chronicles game I still looked at it but moved on the Magic The Gathering. Just after Christmas there was a new magazine at the local book store about M:TG called SCRYE (Issue #4 to be exact) and inside was incredible, it had pictures of Mutant Chronicles, there was a new game based on it, it was just released but I had not seen it anywhere in my small local area. The pictures were amazing, new Imperial people, Sunset Strikers, cool! but more then this flyer on the back page was a 5 page spread with all the rules and a full list of cards.

With cool stats so you compare your favorites characters and some big revelations. What there is a new faction the Brotherhood! It has some cool Magic with different styles called The Art. There's even a Cardinal! Imperial caused all of this with a plant Nero they went to, say it ain't so. And the rules felt they matched, actions, promotion points, different citadels, I know Algeroth who are these other names, 4 new apostles. I need a starter and some Necropaks (booster packs)! I don't think it was until 6 months later a few starters came to our local store, Wilkies, which was a regional chain of maybe 5-6 stores that's pretty well defunct. So they would split up starter deck and booster boxes and only send 2 starters and 6 boosters to each store. I only got to see the starters and Inquisition the first expansion sold there. So take a look, and think of how amazing it would be to see this when you never had the internet news like it is today. But the early internet is a whole topic for another day.

Magic: The Gathering and the CCG Excitement

 When I was into D&D and Heroquest there was/is a magazine that came out at the local bookstore called Games Magazine that is still being published. It had a variety of puzzle games, the 3d image that was crazy in the mid 90's and a few reviews. Somewhere in there must have been an ad for what I believe is Toad and Trolls that would send you a free catalog. Some how I ended up with a catalog at the time and among the games for sale there was a fascinating one described called Magic: The Gathering.

Shortly after the game showed up at my local game store and i was able to get one deck of revised edition but they were quickly sold out. The other game store in the local mall also got packs so I got a 2nd deck weeks later and maybe a booster or two and they were sold out. I loved the deck boxes as they looked like magic books. Here are the two decks I still have (but not all the cards that came in them). I remember getting two Nightmare cards and thinking they were common but they turned out to be rare. I also ended up with one of the fabled dual lands which are now $1000.. and once I got out of magic early on I traded it for $15-20 store credit to get a couple of wyvern decks. It's one of those things you kick yourself over now, but who knew then. After a number of months Fallen Empires finally came out for $2 a pack and everywhere had them, and I mean everywhere. You still couldn't get a revised pack. The sports card shots were now Magic shops and dabbled a tiny bit in other CCGs until Pokemon came around but I was in University by this point. 

The Magic novel Arena came up and I gobbled it up. I picked up Scrye #4 and was amazed at all the new games coming out. I grabbed the odd pack of 4th edition and by Ice age I had moved on to other games. I wish I would have dug into Ice Age more but there was so little M:TG that you could by in stores other then Fallen Empires and with limited funds I found other games like Spellfire and Doomtrooper to fill the void. And countless others along the way. So that was my CCG Start!

Pre-History Collections

This seems like the perfect time to do some prehistory on my gaming history prior to the passion for CCG/TCGs and Mutant Chronicles.

I've always been a collector, I remember collecting stamps in grade 2. Then those amazing Panini Sticker books that I would never get enough sticker packs to complete. In grade 5 (1989) I was in to Donruss Baseball cards. When I moved to Nova Scotia we found out there was a card / comic / hobby store in town and they had Donruss cards. Interest few into their comic books and I dived head long into Punisher comics for a year or two, comics and sports card were huge at the time, before the bottom fell out. 

Around the same this time my neighbor was into Dungeons and Dragons and what they could find at the library. That lead me to the original D&D Cyclopedia as well as the Fighting Fantasy book Titan that showed a fully detailed world, I only seen this book at this point so I had no idea about the FF books until much later.

Shortly after HeroQuest showed up in the toy section of the defunct small regional department store Peoples. I think it was pretty inexpensive and I got it for my birthday that year. It is pretty rough looking but I still have it:

I'll do a follow up article on HeroQuest. From this to D&D Black box / Mutant Chronicles: Seige of the Citadel then very shortly after a new game came out, maybe you've heard of it...Magic:The Gathering.

Mutant Chronicles: Siege of The Citadel

    With the 2nd Edition of Mutant Chronicles Shipping now it's time to go back to the my Beginnings with this game, and focus of attention for almost 30 years.

    When I was in Grade 8 (93/94) the big excitement was Warhammer 40K 2nd edition. Kids spent their hard earned paper route money on minis. I had received HeroQuest a year or two before but this was something new and exciting. The cost to get started with Warhammer 40K was way beyond my means. At the same Hobby / Comic shop they had a new board game on display, the box was open set up. It was Mutant Chronicles Siege of the Citadel but the cost was something like $50-60 Can (About $90 today), still pretty hefty. During the summer after Grade 8 I went to visit my family in Newfoundland. On one of our trips to down in Stephenville at the small Walmart I went to the toy section and there on the bottom shelf of the boardgames was stacks (maybe 20-30, I can still see it now) of Mutant Chronicles SoTC for only $9.99. I was so excited picking up this copy that you can see below. It's the Canadian Edition in both languages and has you call Playtoy Industries that produced the game here. I remember opening it up and tossing out all the French parts and spending the summer playing the game with my cousins and setting up battles with the minis.

With the Story / mini comic parts it seemed so much bigger then any one off game:

And all these Named Characters, What was Edward S. Murdoch's story. Who were the Blood Berets? Without knowing there was more to come, an RPG out there it was an exciting time for just this one game. Even the art, what amazing are with all kinds of stuff and equipment, so much detail you could feel you  were there.

At one point I sadly tried to paint them a little with Testors Paints, fortunately this was all I did. For some reason I still have the stickers I never applied hoping to one day eventually paint them up.

So that is the Origin story.. and in 1994 something was just launching that was crazy to the gaming community....