Plaid Hat have just announced two new Phoenixborn for the rather excellent lcg like game of theirs Ashes Rise of the Phoenixborn.
They have opened up the pre-orders on their site, which also gives the opportunity to get a new promo Phoenixborn with the pre-order. Or if you want just the promo Phoenixborn you can just pre-order that, and get the new Phoenixborn from your FLGS.
You can find out all the info you need here , oh and they’ll also let you order from there too.
You have been warned…
As the Rock would say if he was in our play group “Finally we get back to Pandemic Legacy. Finally we are attempting to beat the month of November!”
Yes you may be detecting a little frustration with our recent lack of plays. With the finish line in sight I'm hoping our final session doesn't get strung out.
But let's be positive about this we did manage to get together to take on November.
The months briefing fore told of our imminent demise.
That was it, no new surprises, we didn't need to scratch off the card provided because we had already opened the two required boxes in previous games.
We had three objectives to complete, one of which was the mandatory find three cures, with either destroy two military bases, vaccinate six cities, or build three vaccination centres (iirc).
In the players deck we had three one time use cards that allowed the avoiding of an epidemic card, at the cost of raising the riot level of any chosen city.
With Debbie doing the initial infections, she somehow managed to get a lot of faded on the board. I, I mean we, may have given Debbie a little grief over this.
I started off with one of the one time use cards. Which after a brief discussion was used, so that when we hit the next epidemic card we'd have a bigger pool of cards to cycle through so it wouldn't be so potent.
With an early vaccination centre built, I was picking up vaccines to try and clear up some of the faded so they didn't outbreak.
Matt destroyed the two military bases giving us that objective early. We cured a disease or two, vaccinated six cities, even built the three vaccination factories, whilst also finding the third cure.
We did use a second one off card, which Matt wasn't too keen on, and boy was he adiment that he wouldn't use the third and final one that he had in his possession. Maybe we will be thanking him when we play December for his stubbornness.
Finally and I'm not sure why we have waited so long in playing this, but we pulled the nuclear option and used an unfunded event we had that removed a city from the game forever, it also removed any virus counters and faded on it too.
There were a couple of minor misplays, yeah you'd think we'd be experts by now. But boy did it feel good to have a win back on the record books.
One more month to go and then for the time being our adventures together in the world of Pandemic will come to an end.
I finally caught up with the latest Android Netrunner data packs for the Mumbad Cycle. Somehow missed Salsette Island coming out. I know shocking, how did I function without it? Yesterday on the way home from the NEC I was listening to Terminal 7 run through the cards for The Liberated Mind (the latest data pack), and was getting excited about a couple, and thinking how do I fit them into my deck?
I have to say there are cards from Salsette Island I want to fit in as well. Looks like I'm going to be tinkering with my Noise and NBN decks. I also got an idea for a Criminal deck too, which was given to me by the Run Last Click guys from the live podcast recording I went to at the weekend. Which I think will also have one very special card in it.
Also arriving too late to go with me to the expo, but it didn't matter because I didn't get to play the Magic duel decks I took anyway, was the latest duel decks Blessed v Cursed that is set in the Shadows over Innistrad world.
For a casual Magic player like me these duel decks are brilliant. I don't have to worry about deck building (which I have dipped my toes into using my limited card pool), and two of us can battle it out using “balanced” decks.
All the expo building work that was done at the weekend will be in its own seperate post when I write up the happenings of the expo.
If I hadn't been at the tenth UK Games Expo and stalking Sam and Tom from the Dice Tower round the venue (write up of my experience coming naturally in a day or two time) I would have been telling you all about the new stuff hitting your FLGS (or it might be just a LGS) that caught my eye on Friday.
Well I'm back home now after an exhausting time enjoying myself. Having fun is such hard work.
Anyhow let's look at what Esdevium are throwing our way next week…
First up is something for the Magic the Gathering player, with Magic the Gathering: Eternal Masters.
A pack of these cards isn't cheap at £8.50!!!!!! Yep a regular booster is £3.50. I get that these are “reprints” of some hard to get cards from the archives. But still it's not as if you can use them in newer decks. One for the Magic die hard I think.
The only other thing that caught my attention is Imperial Settlers 3 Is A Magic Number. Disappointingly not available at the expo early. And this won't be the last time in the next week you will hear me moan about this. You have been warned!
So that's it for this week, with the caveat that this is the stuff that would interest me. There is other stuff coming out, Pokemon, RPG, games, accessories and expansions. However they don't interest me. So if you are remotely curious go visit the Esdevium website and have a butchers at their weekly PDF of new releases. Then come back and tell me what I missed, and why I should have mentioned it.
We were once more going to be a man down for our Pandemic Legacy session on Wednesday, so we decided to turn it into an open gaming session to the members of The Fenland Gamers (which you can join for FREE either on the Facebook page or the clubs website).
Our evenings gaming started off with us playing 51st State Complete Master Set. Yes the theme isn't on Jonathan's top 1000 themes to play. But I thought he might like the mechanics.
After going over the rules from the excellent and humourous cheat sheet, we started playing. The game started off slow, maybe because we were all learning the game. No one was building much, or getting victory points. Jonathan was the first to score a point, and he held the lead right upto the end of the game to get (spoiler) the win. In fact I was the last to start scoring. However I did make a late dash to grab second place.
I think roughly the game took about one and half hours for us to play with four players. Which surprised me because from podcasts I'd heard talking about the game they were saying it played quicker than Imperial Settlers.
In this game there was very little razing other players buildings, I was the only one who did it, and that was a too late attempt to slow Jonathan's scoring engine. So were we not being aggressive enough?
It did seem to take a few rounds to get any sort of engine going. I made a lot of deals to bring in resources.
I do need to check the rules again, because none of us got shields. And we didn't spot any cards that gave us one either. So unless an expansion (included in the box) gave them, we were a bit confused how we got them. That also goes for the bulldozer token.
I do like Imperial Settlers (wish I could play it more often), so unsurprisingly I enjoyed playing 51st State. I liked the extra option when building of discarding a building already built of the same type, along with a brick. It allowed the more expensive to build building to be built more easily. A fact I remembered too late in the game. I like the different levels of raze cost of buildings based on position on the player board.
The components, art work, are fantastic. I feel it's very thematic. Love the humour in the rules.
After playing in a post apocalyptic world there is only one thing to do, play test a an aphid apocalypse based game for Jonathan! Jonathan and his design partner Rebecca are working on a co-operative pandemic influenced kids game set in the Ladybug Lunch (a previous kids card game of theirs) universe. But in this world instead of diseases you are trying to stop aphids taking over the flowers in your garden.
This was as a said a play test. A first in the UK. The game was over very very quickly. Jonathan was under the opinion that it was too hard for a kids game. My suggestion was to have a double sided board, a hard and easy side. It will be interesting to see if Jonathan and Rebecca run with that idea.
Our final game of the evening was Love Letter Batman, which I won, leaving Jonathan as the only one in the game that didn't score a point. Yes I had to point that out.
A great evening of gaming, I hope this got you interested in coming along to one of our gaming sessions.
So a new month, time to reflect on my stats for the month of May.
May has been a pretty good month for gaming. I took part in my first Netrunner organised play at The Hobbit Hole, which was great fun. I'm in the process of organising an Ashes event with the official op kits (now on their way). But look at that massive fifty plays I had for May. I didn't think I'd beat the March total for a while.
Two more games disappeared off the pile of shame (Eight Minute Empire Legends, and Brew Crafters: The Travel Card Game), and another got back to the table after nearly a year from trying it with Nath (Nations the Dice Game). Plus I got to play six new games. Two of them got added to the collection, and one was mine that I had just bought.
Let's look at the graph for the over all trend.
I think on reflection this would have been a choice between two games Traders of Osaka and Bohemian Villages at the start of the month when I first played them. However there is only one clear winner, and it will come as no surprise, Bohemian Villages is my game of May. Jonathan and I LOVE this game. When we go to gaming sessions its in our bags ready to be pulled out. It's our go to game at the moment.
This really is a great little gem of a game, deserves a lot more love, but with none existent coverage in the gaming media its remaining under everyone's radar.
I am very happy to say that this month there are no candidates for this award. Even my experience of Agricola was pleasant.
Being a naturally supportive and loving father – IN YOUR FACE NATH!!!!!
Sorry had to be done. I think this is the highest I've had my authority for a victory in Star Realms. The top picture shows the moment just before I deliver the killing blow. Then the bottom one celebrates my glorious victory.
I got the idea for gloating over the victory from Jonathan. It's his fault I'm coming off as a dick in this post. Oh wait you say I come off as a dick all the time! You got me. ^__^
Ok I've never actually seen that DiCaprio/Hanks movie. But if you are at the expo over the weekend you might see my dwarfish likeness wandering around.
Please say hi, it'd make my day.
I'll have my Netrunner decks with me, Epic with the demigods constructed decks, couple of Magic duel decks, Bohemian Villages, so if any of those take your fancy I'd love to play them with you.
Oh and I'll have Ashes with me too.
But I'm up for playing/trying most games.
Or you are more than welcome to bend my ear about how unfair my opinions of wargames is, or how Caverna is the best game ever.
Anyhow hope to bump into some of you and have a great expo.
UPDATE: Friday at 4pm There should be some Ashes action going on that will be in one of the open gaming rooms in the hotel part of the expo either the Warwick room or the Palace suite.
If like me you pre-ordered the 51st State Complete Master Set from Portal Games you would have received three mysterious tiles. There was no clue to what these tiles were, how they were used in the game, just a QR code on the back of them taking you to the Portal site where there was no information.
After contacting Portal I was told all would be revealed about these tiles on the day the game was released to the world, along with additional solo variant rules that the pre-order Kickstarter-like stretch goals had triggered.
This week the 51st State Complete Master Set hit the shelves of your FLGS ( or just plain LGS depending on what your local one is like, The Hobbit Hole is definitely the friendly kind).
And as promised Portal Games have put up PDF files with the solo variant rules, and rules for using these mysterious tiles. You should be able to go straight to the Portal website page with these on by clicking HERE.
On a slightly related story, the 8/6/16 or next Wednesday if you like, is the street date that the next Imperial Settlers expansion 3 is a Magic Number hits the shelves of your FLGS. And I was like WTF? It's the UK Games Expo this weekend, and I won't be able to buy it there, but have to order it three days later!!! Wow poor timing.
We ended the evening by introducing Katie to Bohemian Villages. Jonathan and I really should stop trying to play the “meta” game and using Jedi mind tricks on others to try and get a tactical advantage, and concentrate on playing. Katie kicked our butts at this game, some would argue beginners luck. But not I. Getting a massive score of sixty three is not luck.
Before our racing started Jonathan and myself had met up a little early to play a game or two as warm up. So we played Nations the Dice Game.
Our first game saw a couple of miss plays, like scoring only one point for being in front in books instead of two. The other more crucial was missing out the fourth age/round. DOH!
Neither of us got much of an engine going, mainly because there were very few tiles coming out to buy that gave us extra dice.
I sneaked the win. Despite the misplays, Jonathan liked the game enough to give it a second play. This time we played it correctly, and with more tiles coming out that gave more dice, engines kicked in, and more options of what to do became available.
Jonathan liked the game, and made the comment I think everyone makes after playing it, I know I have, it's over way too quickly. You just want it to go on for another round or two.
A great evening gaming once again.
Posted by me using my iPad and the Blogsy app