Category Archives: new arrivals

new arrivals

Start of 2016 New Stuff

new arrivals

Yes Christmas has just wrapped up, the new year has bearly had time for the cord to be cut from the old, and stuff has started to arrive.

I am not a Netrunner Winter 2015 Champion, I've not had to hack my way to the top. However I did have some money burning a hole in my pocket once I saw this Day Job play mat that was a prize for oh maybe playing Netrunner! I found some-one selling it for a reasonable price, so I parted with the correct number of credits to purchase it. It's a gorgeous design, and I've since found out you can also get prints of the art work. Which I might get for work.

As an earlier post this week showed I was so impressed by Bomb Squad Academy that I bought a copy, that arrived at the start of the week.

Also I got a Kickstarter copy of Bottom of the 9th, a one or two player game based on that American game Baseball.

Finally for this week two Ultra-Pro Pro Tower deck boxes arrived. These are so hard to find in the UK, why I'm not sure. I got these from the US.

As you can see the Pro Tower is a big deck box. I've put it next to a Ultra-Pro Satin Tower and an Ultimate Guard Flip 'n' Tray (middle grey one) below.

The photo below shows the three deck boxes open. They all have a compartment for dice/counters. My least favourite is the Satin Tower. I like the Flip 'n' Tray, it's design is so much better than the Satin Tower.

The Pro Tower now I have it in the flesh does not disappoint. Bigger than I expected, but hey this would make a good box for taking on holiday stuffed with small box games.

Q

So that's the new stuff this week, most of it ordered just before Christmas, so not bad getting here so soon considering how much more the postal service gets used over the holidays. Still a couple of things to arrive from the US, one an expansion, the other some promos bits. I thought the expansion might have arrived today, considering the deck box arrived yesterday, but the postal system is a law unto itself.

 

Small Box Gaming

new arrivals

This morning the game Bomb Squad Academy arrived. Yes I liked it that much that it had to be added to the collection.

But Bomb Squad Academy could be called by many a “micro” game. I'm beginning to not like that description. I think it does the game it is being applied to an injustice.

Take for instance the new arrival, on bgg the playtime is listed as twenty minutes. From experience of the time I played it at Fenland Gamers, and when it was played a second time also by a group at Fenland Gamers, I would put that play time more in the thirty to forty minute zone.

For me a more accurate and less demeaning description is small box games. How can you dismiss the games above as “micro”? Yes they are in smaller boxes, play quicker, but they deliver a lot of punch for the size packaging and components used.

Machi Koro could easily fit into a smaller box like the one used for Tiny Epic Galaxies, and then become a “micro” game. Yet it is classed as a full game because of the packaging, which is rediculous there is so much empty space in the packaging (yes I realise it was most likely done for shelf space and attracting potential buyers).

Some of these “micro” games have so much game play it's amazing, and put some of the big box cousins to shame.

So why not call them small box games instead? Pay them the respect they are due.

I like, nay love small box games. I like that they are portable, can be throne into a bag, a suitcase, a pocket. That they can then be pulled out at a moments notice to get that gaming fix. Heck you have seen on here that often I meet up with friends at drinking establishments to enjoy a hot beverage and some gaming. Heck I've also gamed at the establishments of perveyors of alcoholic beverages too.

Small box games are great, let's stop calling them “micro”.

 

Fenland Gamers Last Hooraa of 2015

Fenland Gamers, game night, love letter, new arrivals
Last night saw the last of the Fenland Gamers Christmas program of meet ups, and the last one for 2015.
For this end of year game fest, Jo, Debbie, their Dad and brother to Jonathan, Katie, Jonathan and myself met up at the usual location.
After a couple of false starts on games, we played Bang the Dice Game. This warm up game with the whole group playing saw the outlaws sneak the win. Sadly I wasn't on the winning side, I had been cast as the deputy.
For our next games we split up into two groups of three. Jo, her Dad and myself made one group and played one of Jo's favourite games Machi Koro.
Once again I rocked this game, and romped home with the win. My tactic of buying the expensive land marks early once more paid off. Next time I think we will play with the Harbour expansion, that should shake up the game a little.
While waiting for the other group to finish their game we played Love Letter The Hobbit. I like this version for the couple of new bits it introduces. I like the zero value One Ring card, that if you have it at the end of the game becomes a seven in value. Plus the two different three value cards. One being Legolas and if you have the lower value card in the hand comparison you are out (nothing new there), and the other being Tauriel which switches that comparison totally around, so the person with the highest value card is out.
Coming from behind I managed to get the win. By the time I had achieved my victory, the other group were coming to the end of their game and using advanced calculus working out the scores and who had won.
We split into different groups this time, Debbie, her Dad and myself played Kingdom Builder, whilst the others went off to play at bomb disposal.
A victory for me at Kingdom Builder gave me a hat trick of wins for the evening.
While we were waiting for the other group to finish their game, I quickly set up and read the rules for Codenames.
Codenames is a game Jonathan had been wanting to try for a while. Well it has been getting a lot of buzz earlier in the year when it came out. It also has made a few top ten lists of games of 2015 since.
We split up into two teams, blue and red. Blue was Jonathan, Debbie and Jo. While Red was myself, Katie and the girls Dad. Jonathan and I were the clue givers for our respective teams.
The history books will record that Blue won two games to one. But the history books won't show that we had a great time playing this. It's always a good sign when folks ask to play another game when the first play finishes.
I liked Codenames (which is cool because I bought it!). But boy giving the clues is hard. Trying to find clues that relate to more than one word is hard. You may think the clue is obvious and it just doesn't click with the guessers on your team. Keeping that poker face amid frustration seeing the guessers go down the wrong path is hard.
Then there is the doh! moment when you the second after you give a clue you suddenly realise it applies to more than one word, and you had missed that!
The game has a lot of replayability, and is a steal at the price. A great party game (which I'm not usually a fan of).
The other group played the new Pennsylvania map for Ticket to Ride (which I want to give a try), and also the rather good Bomb Squad Academy.

Don't forget if you are local and into gaming, or would like to try something more than mainstream fair, why not come along to one of the Fenland Gamer sessions.

Costa and Gaming… Reprise

Once again I had an errand to run in town, so plans had been made to again meet up at Costa for coffee and games. This mornings casual gaming session was attended by Debbie and her visiting Dad. Jo had decided the warmth and comfort of staying in bed asleep was more preferable than enjoying a hot beverage, got d company and games. That or she didn't fancy hanging out with two old fuddy duddys like her dad and myself. Which is totally understandable.

The coffee shop gaming experience started off with a game of the push your luck dice game Age of War. After Debbie beat the two old dudes, we played Oink Games little push your luck game Deep Sea Adventure. Whilst playing a lady from another table enquired about the game we were playing, because she hadn't seen anything like it before. In the meantime Debbie's Dad and I struggled to get any treasure to the surface, whilst Debbie once more racked up the points. After the third and final dive, Debbie was the only one to score anything, a win by default!

Our final game of the mini meetup was a game of my favourite version of Love Letter, Batman. Look I'm a Batman fan, so why wouldn't this be my favourite version? Anyway I managed to get a convincing victory and stop Debbie walking away with a clean sweep of wins.

Another great caffeine meetup, thanks Debbie and Debbie's Dad for a great time.

Boss Monster II Final Part of Kickstarter Jigsaw Arrives…

 

 

 

Pre-Christmas Eve Arrivals 2015

new arrivals

The second scenario for T.I.M.E. Stories The Marcy Case, it's meant to be be less puzzle focused and has zombies!

So the Cosmic Gambit expansion for Star Realms is for Nath, while Colony Wars is mine.

I have a bag(s) of games plus Nath's Christmas presents all ready to go. So looking forward to seeing Nath and spending some quality time with him. I think there may even be a visit to see the new Star Wars movie again on the books.

The Week Before Christmas Arrivals

magic, new arrivals

Ever since seeing Kingdom Builder played with rule fubars (who hasn't made mistakes when playing a game?) that sparked some interesting finger pointing on Tabletop, I thought that looks like an interesting game. I'd like to play that sometime.

So when the opportunity to get the game second hand popped up on that Facebook selling page at a nice little saving, I thought it was worth a punt. Said punt arrived at the start of the week.

So my addiction continues, I found a cheap way to build up my collection of Magic cards. This deck builder kit got me 185 cards and 100 lands for £12! Considering a tenner normally gets you four booster packs of fifteen cards each, that's a pretty good investment in my book. But I'm sure a more seasoned Magic player will point out the floors in my logic here.

Still in the postal system somewhere…

  • Neuroshima Hex promo army
  • Star Realms Colony Wars and the new Gambits expansion
  • My misplaced Tiny Epic Galaxies card sleeves

 

End of week goodies

new arrivals

So after the Amazon fiasco of losing my order in transit, I ordered another that made it through to me (was sent via a different courier), so I'm the proud owner of Neuroshima Hex. Also the game Room 25 came.

The nice thing about the army expansions for Neuroshima Hex is that they are relatively cheap. By that I mean less than a tenner. You could argue that they should be considering they are basically only cardboard tokens.
This gives me eight armies to play with (a ninth promo army from Portal Games is on its way). Now to find folks to play with. Luckily both new games have solo modes.

Finally through the international postal system the two playmats ordered a couple months back have arrived.

The rather nice and large playmat for Tiny Epic Galaxies. Which looks lovely. Then a nice little action mat to replace the cardboard one in Tiny Epic Kingdoms.

Sadly no sign of the card sleeves to sleeve the cards in Tiny Epic Galaxies.

A Tale of Woe and Joy

lego minifigs, new arrivals, promo

While gaming last night I was expecting to get home to find that Neuroshima Hex 3.0 had been delivered.

Amazon had told me it was due for delivery yesterday, and was out and about, on its way to me. The courier doing the delivery was Amazon itself. So my expectations of it having been delivered were not unreasonable.

However Amazons own delivery service seems to be totally incompetent. Not only do they make the slow myHermes courier look speedy, they also make the Royal Mail look competent.

I don't think the Amazon service is capable of next day delivery. They seem to take longer so long to transport a package.

But they exceeded themselves this time.

When I got home, no package. So I logged in and saw that my game had been lost in transport!!!!

WTF! I was not happy.

Yep I was straight onto their customer support people. They apologised, gave me an extra month on my Prime account as compensation, refunded me the money, so I could reorder the game. But guess what the same company had upped the cost by a fiver, so I complained and was given a fiver promo code on my account to make up the difference.

The customer service of Amazon is brilliant, just a shame they are let down by a subpar service on the delivery front.

But lost in transit smacks of it was knicked by their staff.

This morning through my letter box a joyous surprise dropped through it.

There was no warning it was on its way, I had no idea. When I saw the package I thought who is this from and what is it?

I ripped open the packaging, to be greeted by the City Lego box, and an envelop. I opened the envelop to reveal a Christmas card from Duncan. Inside Duncan had written when he saw this he couldn't resist buying it because it reminded him of me! I'm assuming Duncan is referring to the bearded minifigs and in particular the one with the neck beard!

Wow! Duncan this is so amazingly generous, and kind of you. Thank you so much not just for your generosity, but for being such a great friend. Thank you.

Finally a couple of promos from the bgg store arrived…

Let's talk about the elephant in the room of the Police Precint promos. Yeah I don't own the game. It is on my wish list. So why buy them? I don't know, habit?

Somehow I thought the Alien Frontiers expansion would be bigger. So I was a little taken aback to see how small it is. I mainly got this one for the player reference cards. Once again this raises the question why aren't these in the base game?

 

This weeks New Arrivals – Start of December 2015

expansions, magic, new arrivals

At the start of the week the Magic the Gathering Battle for Zendikar Fat Pack arrived, along with some more dividers to use in the gift box, and some card sleeves.

Inside the Fat Pack…

The Fat Pack because of the eighty full art basic land cards has been going for silly money on the Internet. Which has been the cause of many a heated debate on the various online outlets.

Personally I have little opinion on this. I think the full art cards are beautiful, and I can see why people would want them. They are available in the booster packs, ok you get one per booster pack, but still I do believe the serious Magic player usually buys a box of boosters anyway. Plus the full art cards that come in the Fat Pack are being sold separately. So they are easily obtainable.

The box everything comes in makes a really nice card storage box. The quality of the box is really high. I just wish FFG produced something like this or the gift box for the Android Netrunner cards to be stored in. We are crying out for something like these.

So what else arrived this week?

Well 7 Wonders was added to the collection. I really did enjoy that game I played at The Hobbit Hole, so when I visited there at the start of the week and they had one in stock, it somehow ended up in my bag as I left!

I finally got the Walking Dead version of Bang the Dice Game. I like the Walking Dead, and this game uses the comic book art, which I like. So nothing new here really, just a different theme, which may appeal to some more than a western one does.

So is anyone really surprised that the expansions for Colt Express and Istanbul have turned up? I thought so, no one is.

UPDATE:

Typical I hold off, waiting for the post to arrive nothing comes, so I upload this blog post. Then a package I was expecting next week turns up today.

So part of Nath's Christmas present arrived today, along with another game for the collection Survive Escape from Atlantis!

Here is a clue to Nath's Christmas present for Nath (if he reads this that is).
 

 

Star Wars Lego Advent Day 1

lego minifigs, netrunner, new arrivals

Yep today I can start opening the Star Wars Lego Advent Calandar. After keeping it safe round my Nans for a few weeks now (I would have opened them all by now if I hadn't) it is now TIME!

So today's little bit of Star Wars inspired Lego is a mini Jabba's Barge from the sixth Star Wars movie Return of the Jedi. It's amazing what can be done with eleven bits of Lego.
Finally the click trackers from Team Covenent arrived today. I do like these for tracking clicks while playing Android Netrunner.

These are really nice, I also like their money counters for the game. I'll get some at some point, oh along with the extra click tokens.

The invoice came in a really nice card, and had a Team Covenent sticker inside too. Back of the invoice had really nice gushing text on it thanking for buying etc etc. This was a real great way to present the invoice, it is very stylish, and clever. A very very nice touch.

Saturday Morning Goodies

expansions, new arrivals, promo

The English version of two issues of Spielbox arrived this morning. These were back issues that I ordered for particular promos that came with them.

So this is the Kebab Shop promo. It comes on thinner cardboard than the game uses for its tiles. It is suggested on bgg that one solution is to stick it to the German language side of the fountain tile. And I know Jonathan printed out this tile and did that. But there is a bit of me that just can't bring myself to do that. What if I want to play the game in German? Ok I don't speak German, and I don't know anyone who does (that I know of), I've always wanted to learn German (only held back by the fact I'm rubbish at languages, and find speaking them difficult), but who knows I may over come my barriers holding me back, and playing the German version would help with that learning.

As a separate promo from the issue it was given with is the Carcassonne Plague promo. I'm going to need to visit bgg to get the rules for this little promo/expansion.

Over on eBay the playmat for Colt Express is used as bait to separate the gullible from their coins. Yes this is another of those promos that goes for silly money. But it is also another of those promos that you can buy from the original source at its original cost!

My google skills are not some super ninja level, they are those of a mere mortal. So why am I finding these promos at the far more affordable level, while others seemingly aren't?

Any ways I think the game is going to look awesome set out on this playmat.

So I've made up the time machine promo ready to be used.

Now all I need is Amazon to get Colt Express to me in time for this afternoons gaming session. They let me down yesterday by not delivering it.