I made a terrible mistake last night. I played the miniature game Dreamblade at our favorite local gaming store. It was so much fun that I bought a starter set. My husband responded by buying two booster packs. He has intentionally stayed away from playing Dreamblade so as not to get hooked on it. I entered a tournament since they needed another player.

Dreamblade is a game for two players. Each player assembles a warband of up to 16 figures. There are no points to spend on figures or any other major rules except you can’t have more than 3 of the same figure in the warband. The first person to score more points in six rounds wins the game.

Each round consists of each player rolling for initiative. The higher roll goes first. Add the rolls to get each player’s spawing points for that round. Spawning points allow you to bring in creatures from your warband or to trigger special ablities of creatures in play. Players have two actions each turn: move or attack. Movement can be for as many creatures as you would like. They can move one space as long as it’s not diagonal. All creatures who can attack can do so during an attack round.

Each figure shows how many attack dice to roll, the number to beat to kill the creature or to knock back the creature to the starting roll - or spawing row. Some creatures have a special blade ability that you can use if you roll a blade. Some blade abilities require more than one blade be rolled during combat.

After each person takes their two actions, you add up combat points. The playing map of Dreamblade has marked which scoring areas score points for which players. If you are the only player in that square then you earn the points for that one. You also score one point for each kill that round. The one with the higher score wins the round and notes it on the Dreamblade map.

Dreamblade is a lot of fun to play. It reminds me of Magic the Gathering and Chess. It’s not nearly as complicated as those two games but can be challenging.

Now to make room for one more collection on the gaming shelf. This could be tricky. I may have to buy a new one.