A Legendary Encounter with Liezl Buenaventura

The UnGeek board(game) crew are back (to the choppa) once again! Last October 25, 2015, the team went to Fire Sword Café for the Legendary Encounters: Predator event and to meet local artist Liezl Buenaventura, who was commissioned to do some of the art for the game, mostly for the characters from the 1st movie. (Can someone say DUTCH!?)

Local Legendary Encounters: Predator Artist, Liezl Buenaventura

Liezl is a comic book artist and colorist based in Manila, who is recently notable for her works on Widow’s Web and Stabbity Bunny. She is also a digital painter and co-founded HobbyMash, a Filipino-owned company in Singapore which specializes in Web and Mobile applications. On a more casual note, she is a Firefly fan and a veteran Magic the Gathering player with a collection of Type 1 cards. She also likes to paint tabletop miniatures.

Locally-made art for an Internationally-renowned game!

Legendary Encounters: Predator was her first commissioned work for a designer board game. She got the break from her colleague who works for Upper Deck Entertainment (Predator game publisher), and with the magic of friendship, the rest is history.

OMG Look at the art! So much Legendary awesomeness!

Of course, since we were already there, we wouldn’t DARE pass up the chance to game with Liz and her husband, Josh.  While she was relatively new to the boardgaming scene, a quick game of Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards: Duel at Mt. Skullzfyre (Yes, that’s really the title) quickly revealed that she was a natural in picking up rules fast and actually good in playing games thematically (as evidenced by her shouting the spell “Beard o Blasty’s Ballsy Testikills” to the amusement of her opponents) 😛

The UnGeek Boardgaming Crew with Liezl and Josh playing Epic Spell Wars

Of course, we HAD to Legendary Encounters: Predator. It wouldn’t seem right if we didn’t. 🙂 If you’re not familiar with the game, it’s a cooperative deck-building game where all players starts out with a similar set of cards that eventually improves and (hopefully) becomes tailored-fit deck according to your liking and operates like a well-oiled machine as the game progresses (once again… hopefully).

We use the cards to recruit new characters and fight whatever the board throws at us – from guerrilla soldiers to actual Predators. In order to survive and win the game, the players need to finish a total of 3 scenarios, which mimic the course of the 2nd movie.

We started at a very nice pace, at first, but after the 2nd scenario, the game just started to punish us as there were fewer and fewer humans to deal with and more Predators to fight. After a grueling battle, we managed to grab a  win by chasing down the City Hunter Predator. He escaped and we won, but eliminating the final enemy was reserved for another game day. 🙂

The game was awesome but the struggle was real! @_@

So that’s that! Our boardgaming crew heads back to the choppa and off to another great cardboard adventure! Thanks to Raphael Gallegos at Fire Sword Café and Liezl Buenaventura for making the event possible. See you next time!