Category Archives: new arrivals

new arrivals

End of October 2015 Arrivals

new arrivals

 

With the arrival of the deluxe expansion Creation and Control for Netrunner I am now briefly upto date on the deluxe expansions and data packs for the game. However the latest deluxe expansion Data and Destiny seems to be hitting the store shelves, so maybe you could argue I'm not.

Codenames is one of this years “hot” games, but that isn't why I got it, however all the fuss over the game is how it came to my attention. Codenames is another potential game that I can use with my students. The game plays two to eight players, and is definitely a game that will get the students interacting with each other.

Finally the game that has just destroyed the second hand fleecing of its earlier release. Yep Fury of Dracula third edition. Whenever I saw reviews of Specter Ops (still to be gotten to the table) Fury of Darcula was always one of the benchmark games it was held up against. I was never going to buy the second edition at the crazy prices to see what all the fuss was about, but with the printing of the third edition I can at a much more reasonable price.

 

Half Term Gaming

Fenland Gamers, flash point, game night, new arrivals, tabletop

So yesterday my order from BGG arrived. The order consisted of the promo character cards for Pandemic, plastic brains counters and the Joker promo cad for the DC Deckbuilding game.

The Pandemic character cards behave “slighty” differently from the regular character cards for the game. Here is the description of the cards from the BGG store:

“Each card is double-sided, meaning there are four roles included, two of which you can use in any given game.

Card 1: Epidemiologist and Operations Expert

Card 2: Generalist and Medic

The key difference with these promo characters is they lose health when cubes are added to the city they are in, or if the city they are in outbreaks. If all four health of a promo character is ever exhausted, the players lose the game. This increases the difficulty of the game.“

It seems an interesting twist for playing the game. I look forward to playing with them.

Now the Joker promo is interesting! Because I don't have the DC Deckbuilding game, and I have no intention of buying it. When I tried the game I didn't like it at all, it is far far inferior to the Marvel Legendary game. So why get this promo? I'm a fan of the Joker. So had to get it really.

So the brains were bought for one reason. That was to pimp out Zombie Dice. So instead of using a scrap of paper or the official score pad to track players scores, I will now use these brains instead. Which I think is really thematic for the game and a lot more fun.

Fenland Gamer Open Gaming Evening

Last night saw another Fenland Gamer mid week get together. While waiting for Mat to turn up, the evening started off with four of us playing…

Bang The Dice Game

I've been wanting to play this game for a while. I have three copies of the game! Ok there is a reason for this, but I'll get to that in a minute or two.

With four players, Bang the Dice Game has a sherif, two outlaws and a renegade. I've pimped out the game with the Lego Minifig Sherif figure that goes to whoever has the sherif card. This is the only known role in the game, the others are all hidden, and each has their own win condition.

So as one of the hidden roles you have to work out who is on your side and who isn't. While the sherif knows everyone is out to get them, they have the “easier” task, stay alive, kill the others.

We played the game that whoever was the sherif last got to shuffle and deal out the four role cards next game. Which meant somehow Debbie kept getting the sherif card from the second game onwards. But to be fair Debbie did win as the sherif.

Most of the games I was an outlaw, and as an outlaw won a couple of games with my fellow outlaw. The one game I was a renegade I was eliminated very quickly. But boy when you have to chose between two players to shoot, not sure if they are on your side or not. Wow! Tense.

I really enjoyed playing this game, the others enjoyed it also. Now this is a quick game to teach, learn and play. Although with more players (up to eight) it would take a little longer to play. But the important part for me was how easy it was to teach and learn, plus the number of players it supports.

As regular long time readers will know I use board games with my students in induction week, and at other special times. Student favourites are games such as Love Letter, Munchkin and Resistance. My class size can be upto twenty four students. So I need multiple copies of a game for use in class. With Bang the Dice game supporting three to eight players, it means I only need three copies of the game to use in class. And definitely this game will be seeing some class time.

It would have been nice to have got the Walking Dead themed version of the game (especially for Saturday), however it seems out of print at the moment and more expensive than its rrp. So I'm going to have to wait for it hopefully to get reprinted. I think my students would enjoy the Walking Dead theme a lot.

With Mat arriving we finished our current game of Bang the Dice Game, and the girls got to choose the next game we played.

Flash Point

 

At last I have finally got to play this game. It is part of my collection, but something I've not gotten to play yet. This evening we were playing with Jonathan's copy. The hardest decision was which map/scenario to play, mainly because Jonathan has all the expansions. It was decided by the girls (I think) to do the submarine scenario, and with advanced rules (which iirc none of the others had played before, well we know I hadn't).

Jo started off the game by going first, so by the time it got to my turn I had a good idea of what I was doing. Our tactics for the scenario had us split into two, one team taking the left side of the sub (sorry no nautical terminology here) and the other the right side of the sub.

It seemed to be a semi successful tactic, we rescued victims, some lucky rolls of the dice put one or two victims straight in the safe zone, but the rolls for fire didn't go our way.

We ultimately lost the game, but it came close to the wire, we nearly completed the scenario by rescuing seven victims. It was a damaged piece of machinery from the fire that ultimately cost us the game.

I enjoyed my first game a lot, and can't wait to play more games and scenarios. Maybe Lego Minifig firemen next time?

It was the boys turn to choose…

Tiny Epic Galaxies

So a game of TEG with its maximum number of players, it was going to be interesting to see how the game went.

This was Mats first time playing the game, so a quick explanation of the game was given. Maybe too quick. However I started the game so Mat could observe a couple of goes before his.

Jo was as usual making head way on developing her empire, and colonising planets. I think I was the last player to upgrade their empire. Which definitely put me at a disadvantage on the available actions front for a few turns.

Jo could have triggered the end game and maybe have won the game, but a wrong decision on what was to be her last turn, gave Mat the window to get to twenty one points and trigger the end of the game. Debbie and Jonathan took their last goes. This was to prove a game winning last go for Jonathan, who managed to colonise a final planet and get enough points to get the win.

Mat was unsure of his first game, and thought he needs another game to decide. I partially blame myself being a poor teacher for this.

I enjoyed playing TEG with five players, there is more competition for planets. With the ability to follow another players action, you are semi engaged when it's another players turn. Which cuts down on the downtime a little between turns.

The evening finished off with a quick, light game of…

Zombie Dice

I don't think I've won a game of zombie dice yet, and last nights game kept that losing streak going. The brains as scoring tokens added to the game I thought. And was a nice light, fun way to end an enjoyable evening of gaming with great company.

So Brew Crafters to look forward to playing for the first time on Friday, followed by an open gaming session on Saturday (which will have cake!).

 

The Little Train That Couldn’t

expansions, Fenland Gamers, game night, lords of waterdeep, new arrivals
Yesterday really did turn out to be an awesome day. It started off me getting a coffee bought for me. Free coffee is always good. Then at break time there was chocolate cake and banoffee pie! from Doreen (mother of a colleague and friend who makes these to die for cakes) for the staff room. Yes I had both, it would have been rude not to. Both were amazing. But I handled the sugar rush that followed, I'm a serious cake addict so my fix needs to be larger than this.
When I got home two more kickstarters had arrived. One Night Revolution and Coup Rebellion G54 were in one box. Wow this version of Coup was a tad larger than the original. It certainly isn't portable anymore in the same way that Coup is. Coup Rebellion G54 is the sequel to Coup, and is stand alone from the original game. While One Night Revolution is a version of One Night Werewolf, but with some tweaks! Oh and naturally set in the Resistance/Dystopian Universe.
The Diamonster promo cards for Machi Koro also arrived, along with the final expansion that I needed (if we don't include the original Mutant Boss sculpt) for Run, Fight or Die, the Zombie Horde expansion.
The second Kickstarter to arrive was the long delayed and over due (although not by some Kickstarter projects standards) King of New York tee. Doesn't it look awesome? This just had to be worn for the gaming evening.

Fenland Gamers

Snowdonia a beautiful part of Wales. Sadly during the Summer so over crowded, it's hard to find that quiet remote spot away from the maddening crowd. But it is possible.
The Snowdon Summit is probably not my favourite, with the cafe and train line scaring it (despite the rebuilt cafe that is meant to be less intrusive). However its popularity can not be denied.
Last night Jonathan, Mat and myself got together to play a game of Snowdonia. Where we are trying to build that train line I described as a scar from Llanberis to the summit.
This was the first time any of us had played the game, which meant there was regular referring to the rules, and taking a round or two before things started to click.
Jonathan had two promo engine cards for the game, the kids favourite Ivor the Engine, and Jimmy and the Little Old Engine (a character I've never heard of). I think these are a pretty cool promos for the game really, and the publisher did really well getting permission to do them. Maybe I'll get Blood Rage when they produce a Noggin the Nog promo for it (I was more a Noggin the Nog fan than Ivor the Engine, but I did really like Ivor the Engine too).

The final turn of the game involved Jonathan stealing seven points from me by claiming a fourteen point rail slot that I was going for. I thought he didn't have the resources to get it! Mind you even I had got it, I still wouldn't have come close to coming second let alone winning. On that front Jonathan and Mat well and truly beat me.

So what were my initial impressions of Snowdonia? I enjoyed our game of it. But there is a but. I think I need a couple of more plays. It took me a little bit longer than I liked to get the hang of the game. I enjoyed the weather mechanic effecting what actions can be used, I liked the bag of resources with the use of white cubes mixed in that when drawn from the bag trigger certain events.

We finished the evening off by playing Lords of Waterdeep. With the amount of time we had left sadly we couldn't use either of the two modules from the expansion. It's well known how I feel about Waterdeep, and Jonathan and Mat had not played the game before, so after setting up it was time to teach Waterdeep.

Waterdeep isn't a difficult game to teach, and can be picked up very quickly. Which both Jonathan and Mat did.

I made a token attempt at trying to complete quests that would earn me extra victory points at the end of the game from my Lord of Waterdeep. Instead I kept going for high value quest cards, and trying to deny them from the others. Obviously this tactic was doomed to failure, even though it gave me the lead score going into the final round of the game.

During the final tallying of scores from the left over workers, money and bonus points from the Lords of Waterdeep cards that lead just slipped away. Jonathan just ran away with an amazing winning score in the one hundred and forties, while Mat got a comfortable second place, leaving me trailing far behind in last place.

Luckily Waterdeep didn't disappoint Jonathan and Mat. Which was my biggest fear. They enjoyed the game itself, and were impressed by the high quality of the components and packaging. Which to be fair is very good. Next time they both want to play with the expansions.

So free coffee, cake, stuff arriving, and an evening of great gaming. Yes yesterday was a truly great day.

 

The Big Box Expansion

new arrivals, run,fight or die
There I was expecting some Kickstarter stuff to arrive any day. I get home ask the neighbours if there have been any packages, and where is my tea? (It's handy having Nan and Mum living next door) The neighbour (mum) said there was. I started to get excited, at last the Kickstarter had arrived. After get the wolf pack back I ripped open the box, only to be be pleasantly surprised. It wasn't the Kickstarter but just as good, it was my pre-order for the Run, Fight or Die Big Box expansion.
The Big Box expansion is basically a bigger box to store the base game and all its expansions in one box! To up the value side of things the Big Box expansion also comes with a “running late but we're worth it” expansion.

So the “Running late” expansion adds five new character cards, a pink dice! and other cards to be shuffled to the appropriate decks.

I also pre-ordered at the same time the new mutant boss sculpt, who it appears now is called the Jivecat Boss, and is used to replace the mutant boss in the base set. Well the token that is included. But boy is the Jivecat boss awesome, and big!

Although Run, Fight or Die can be played solo out of the box. 8th Summit have also now published a separate solo mission, which I also pre-ordered at the same time.

So it's rather cool that these have arrived in time to be used at the end of the month. However it still leaves me with the difficult mission of trying to get a copy of the Mutant Boss sculpt to replace the token in the base game. These are pretty hard to get (they were the original Kickstarter exclusive).

 

Scoundrels hit Waterdeep

lords of waterdeep, new arrivals

I like Lords of Waterdeep a lot. Plus using the excellent iPad app I can get my fix when I'm not able to get the game to the table.

Previously when playing the game with Jamie and his wife Alison I was introduced to the expansion for the game Scoundrels of Skullport. Which I enjoyed so much I bought the expansion for the app as soon as I got home from that gaming session.

Finally after ordering the expansion on Amazon at the tail end of last month they got the expansion in and sent me a copy.

Scoundrels of Skullport is not a single expansion but two, plus adding all the bits for a sixth player to the game.

The two expansions in the box are the Undermountain module, and Skullport module. Both bring new Lords, Quests, buildings and Intrigue cards to the game. Plus their own mini game boards to expand the main board and options available to players.

As the rule book describes them, the Undermountain module “focuses on new quests with great demands and greater rewards“. While the Skullport module “focuses on a new resource, Corruption, and the risks associated with being corrupt“.

The base game can be played with either module or both. To be able to play the base game with the sixth player (the Gray Hands) you need to use at least one of the modules.

Playing the base game has been something Jonathan and Mat at my gaming group Fenland Gamers have wanted to play for a while. Due to illness a planned session had to be cancelled, but I'm sure it will be hitting the table very soon.

I'm tempted at that session not to just use the base game but also to use the Undermountain module. It keeps the same base game mechanics the same without having to worry about teaching the corruption side of things.

I'm glad I've got the physical expansion now. It really does make a great game better!

 

This weeks arrivals 16Oct15

lego minifigs, new arrivals

I think I must have been one of the last to have their Thunderbirds game posted out to them, because it only turned up yesterday.

With Pandemic Legacy Season 1 hitting the shops and Thunderbirds coming out this has been a busy month for game designer Matt Leacock. Although I think somehow Pandemic Legacy is going to get all the limelight.

Will this be a sleeper hit for Matt? Very possibly, but I need to play this first. Which means getting it to the table with the Fenland Gamers at some point (soon hopefully). Plus hopefully in time for Christmas gaming the expansions should be sent out.

It can't have been missed that Lego Dimensions launched recently for home consoles. Lego Dimensions is the Lego version of Disney Infinity and Spyro Skylanders.

Now I've not got into the whole Skylanders and Infinity thing on the consoles. I liked the idea but the whole price thing of the figures kind of put me off.

And it's for that reason that I'm not going to be jumping on the Dimensions band wagon. HOWEVER! That hasn't stopped me from buying one of the Level packs for the game. I had to buy the Portal 2 level pack. I loved the Portal games and I wanted the figures. Sadly the only way to get them is to buy this Level pack.

The only draw back is that to make the sentry and companion cube you need to have the game for the inbuilt instructions. Luckily YouTube comes to the rescue in that front.

But still the Lego looks good.

Still in the postal system is my King of New York tee, One Night Revolution and the Coup G54 games, and a mystery package from the BGG store. Plus at some point towards the end of the month my pre-orders should be arriving (Pandemic Legacy is one of them).

 

Westeros Bound

game of thrones, new arrivals

Taking its place as my fourth command and colours based game in my collection is the just arrived today Battles of Westeros. This is another great purchase from the UK Trading and Selling Facebook group. Funny enough it could mean from the same guy I bought Battlelore from!

This is as the title of the game suggests a Battlelore game themed around the A Game of Thrones books. Now I know I haven't played my copy of Battle Cry or Battlelore, but I have Memoir '44, and I love the Command and Colours system.

I want to play them all. I'm lucky that Jonathan is a Memoir fan. I don't think it will take much persuasion to get Jonathan to play the others with me too.

The quandary I have is do I take Battles of Westeros with me to play with Nath at the weekend? I mean I haven't included Ashes this time. I'm trying Nath out with the deck construction mechanic by taking Epic before I try him with Ashes or Android:Netrunner. Plus I know if Thunderbirds does arrive I know I won't be able to resist taking that.

I know Nath is a Game of Thrones fan, he really enjoys the tv series (he hasn't read the books). So the theme will really appeal to him.

There are other games out there that use the Command and Colours system, but the only one I'm interested in adding to my collection is The Great War, if I remember the name correctly. Which is based around the First World War.

I still want the A Game of Thrones boardgame but for a gaming fix to take me back to the A Game of Thrones universe between series on tv this will I hope be far easier to get to the table.

 

End of September 2015 Arrivals

lego minifigs, memoir 44, new arrivals

In Sunday's post about the Memoir '44 games I played with Jonathan I mentioned that he bought along his newly arrived copy of Memoir '44 Tactics and Strategy Guide.

Well war is a terrible thing, as is the arms race it creates. So having looked at Jonathan's copy I decided I better get my own copy, just to keep things even.

My copy of this epic arrived yesterday. So the studying begins…

The first of two kickstarters arrived today. First up Tiny Epic Galaxies. I'm looking forward to getting this to the table, I like Tiny Epic Kingdoms, I'm looking forward to seeing what their Western themed game is like.
Secondly long over due Dead Drop. The posting of this game did not go smoothly. I'll detail the mini story of woe when I look at the game in more detail.

Oh nearly forgot these two little fellas also arrived today. Ok one was too late to celebrate his special day at the weekend. But better late than never.

 

A Surprise Kickstarter Arrival

new arrivals

A package arrived this morning, excitedly I opened it wondering if it was Epic the card game or Tiny Epic Galaxies. But it was neither but just as cool. My copy of The Story of U.S. Gold arrived plus all the extras I had paid for.

The book is awesome. But the highlight for me was a copy of Dropzone signed by the developer himself Archer MacLean. I had this game on the Commodore 64 when it came out. It was an instance classic. zzap64! (Definitely my favourite gaming magazine at the time) gave the game one of its exclusive Gold Medals. I think the only way I could top this in my collection is if I got some signed Llamasoft games by Jeff Minter.
Plus I also got a signed postcard of the loading screen also.

I'd forgotten about this bit of the pledge level, but there was also a cd of remixed C64 game chip tunes. I have to admit I love listening to the old game music on the C64. It's probably the majority of music I listen to, if I listen to music in the car (mostly its audio books or podcasts).

In the very top photo you will also see what looks like a U.S. Gold badge but is in fact a fridge magnet. That went straight on to my fridge ^__^

A really nice surprise this morning a great way to start the weekend.

 

Deck Boxes and a Futuristic Fair

expansions, netrunner, new arrivals

Ok so I had some new arrivals this morning. Not the Kickstarter games that are still somewhere in the postal system however. Although on the Kickstarter front backers of the Thunderbirds game had some good news in the past couple of days. The base game is nearly with us. It's hitting the relevant shores and going through customs. Which means by the publishers estimate backers should be getting their grubby hands on the game by mid October.

On the Game of Thrones boardgame front, I got a refund on that. Somehow it got “lost” by myHermes. So the wait for a copy continues.

Right onto today's new arrivals.

First up is two Ultra-Pro Satin Tower Deck Boxes. I bought these to use with Ashes, to hold a deck and its dice. I have to admit these aren't exactly the model I was expecting. However it meets the main requirements I wanted from the model I thought I was buying, space for the deck I've built and the ten dice.

For a really bargain price from that addictive and expensive (only in the sense you spend so much) Facebook board game trading page I got this little card game called Race for the Summit. Which from its box art you can tell is all about climbing.

I've no idea what the game is like, and I'm curious to find out.

The last data pack in the SanSan cycle The Universe of Tomorrow also came today. I'm looking forward to cracking open this data pack and seeing what goodies are inside.

Android:Netrunner News

Yesterday FFG released floor rules for Android:Netrunner. The floor rules are for judges and organisers to help them with decisions that crop up during organised play, like a misplay or cheating.

I think this is great that FFG have done this, it shows that they are serious about organised play and making sure that there is a consistent experience and decisions no matter where you play. This can only be of benefit to the community.

You can get the floor rules from links in the official FFG news story announcing their release HERE