Category Archives: news

news

Some Boardgame Breakfast Thoughts

expansions, news

In this post I'm picking out some bits from the latest Dice Tower output that has interested me.

While watching this weeks Boardgame Breakfast in the news section of the show it was mentioned that Days of Wonder had released a solo variant for the game.

I own the game. I've played it once since getting it. I like the game despite the temper tantrum by one of the other players (that was a first). I'm hoping to get the game to the table with the Fenland Gamers. But in the meantime this new solo mode should help me reach that Five Tribes itch.

While you are over at the Days of Wonder page for Five Tribes look at the other goodies they have there for the game. Some nice little surprises there, I should of visited their site earlier.

Get your Five Tribes goodies HERE

The Dice Tower also reported that AEG have announced the first expansion for Dice City. Despite Jonathan handing me my butt in this game, I still enjoyed playing this game. So I'm looking forward to this expansion coming out.

In the Tom Thinks section this week, Tom makes his annual ten predictions for the coming year in the games industry. One of those was about Magic the Gathering Arena of the Planeswalker. Tom's prediction was that this game would disappear because of lack of backing for the game by Hasbro. I would and this is with a heavy heart have to agree with Tom. Which is a shame, because this game with its great price, potential for organise play, could be huge. The crime is the lack of support from Hasbro.

This game needs expansions, it needs to allow the team/squad building. But that only comes when you have a pool of spells etc to choose from. That pool comes from expansions. There also needs to be more terrain pieces made available, maybe a specific terrain expansion. The pieces you get with the base game is nothing but stingy. I know why they did this to keep the price down. I also know yes you can buy old Heroscape terrain to use with the game. But this needs Hasbro to man up, and make some available with the Magic name. It sends a powerful message to the consumer.

Hopefully Hasbro are looking at the FFG playbook for games like Imperial Assault (a far more expensive competitor). Since that came out a year ago, we have seen two big expansions, and four waves of “character” expansions. There has been a World Campionships, three or four organised play kits for stores. Why are we not seeing this from Hasbro? They have the infrastructure already for the organised play side with Magic the Gathering.

Hasbro are certainly frustrating.

Finally yesterday the annual Dice Tower Kickstarter kicked off. It has already reached its funding target in the first twenty four hours. There are some nice promo sets as backer rewards. Each promo set is made up of promos for a number of separate games. There is at least one promo in each of the promo sets available that I'd like. But because of the way the rewards are structured to get all the promo sets it would cost me about $250. Which yes the main point of the Kickstarter is to help fund the channel, and not about the rewards. However if I went with that tier of support I'd be left with a lot of unwanted promos. Yes I could eBay the stuff but that's effort! Or I could hope the promos I want form the sets are available to buy separately later on. Or possible I could try trading the promos I don't want for ones I do.

Luckily for me the promo set with the most promos I'd use is set A. That's the $60 tier. It would be nice to be able to select which set you wanted at this tier, or any of the tiers between this and the “All of them” tier.

My ideal would be to be able to select the promos I want to make up my set, but that is a LOT of extra effort for the Dice Tower team.

Anyway apart from that little moan, the Dice Tower is a great channel, putting out a lot of free content over the year for gamers. You can show your support for the Dice Tower HERE.

 

Kick that hornets nest

expansions, imperial assault, netrunner, news, star wars

 

With the arrival of the latest additions to the Star Wars Imperial Assault universe, I thought I'd better finally do the posts for the previous additions. So over the next few days I'll be doing posts looking at those expansions plus the new arrivals.

In the meantime before those posts start taking over this blog, I'd briefly point out that FFG over the holiday period decided they would “tweak” one or two of their games. The two I currently care about are naturally Imperial Assault and Android:Netrunner. X-Wing as a collectable game for me is on hold.

Imperial Assault got off lightly I think with the “tweaks”. The Royal Guard, Rebel Saboteurs, and Imperial Officers have had some of their card text changed. Below I have extracted the changes from the FAQ.

Naturally for the new season of store championships FFG have updated the legal skirmish maps. The legal maps are, the Kuat Space Station, Mos Eisley Cantina and the Training Ground map.

Here is the link to the new FAQ, here is the link to the FFG explanation for changes , new tournament rules

Let's look at the Netrunner changes, or as I like to describe it “kicking the hornets nest”. These changes have been the more controversial from my observations of the two Facebook communities for both games I follow.

So what has caused the hornets in the Netrunner community to swarm? Let's take a look at the FAQ for the two changes:

Here is the kick that stirred folks up.

Link to the new FAQ , link to new Tournament Rules , FFG explain why

My Thoughts on the subject…

FFG spent a lot of time analysing the recent world championships they held, I think they also monitor the meta in other ways too. So they have a very accurate image of the current state of the game. More so than us players.

Which means that they won't have reached the decisions they have on a whim. They will have thought about them, play tested them, and made a decision that would have the least impact on the game to fix the “problem” as they see it based on the data they have.

One of the things I don't like about Magic, Pokemon etc is the banned cards list. I think this is a sloppy, annoying fix. So I'm glad to see the solution that FFG have come up with. At least with the FFG solution I can still play with the cards, I just have to make a compromise or two to my deck to use them.

What I would like to see is a more elegant way of doing the errata for the cards. I'd love to see some stickers made available cheaply to purchase to update the cards with from FFG. I'd also like to think all new printings of these cards are with these changes. Or even better still I'd love to be able to buy corrected cards to replace the existing ones with.

FFG think/hope that these changes will add variety to the meta for the games. That it will encourage players to build a wider variety of decks/teams, which they will see reflected in tournaments.

I've been playing Netrunner for nearly a year now, but from what I can tell certain deck types come and go out of fashion as new data packs/expansions come out. At one point a Weyland deck may have the upper hand, while Criminal decks maybe stronger on the runner side. Then the next Deluxe expansion NBN becomes more popular.

If these changes even that out, I'm happy with what's been done.

 

In A Galaxy Far Far Away A New Love Letter

love letter, news

Hobby World and AEG have just announced one of the least surprising licences for Love Letter yet. In fact the only surprise is it's taken them this long, and that it is country exclusive.

If you haven't guessed from the above photo, there is going to be a Star Wars: Love Letter. Apparently according to the announcement Seiji Kanai (creator of Love Letter I believe) has created an exclusive Bobba Fett card for this version.

The sad thing is at the moment it is a Russian exclusive. I so hope that the licensing can be sorted so that we can get this beautiful looking version here.

Here is the announcement. Images taken from the Hobby World website.

 

UK Games Expo Tickets Now On Sale

news

Well the post title kinda says it all really. Tickets for the 2016 UK Games Expo have just gone on sale.

Don't forget next year it's going to be bigger and better than this years. Also Colin Baker (the 6th Doctor) and the dynamic duo of Tom Vassel and Sam Healy from the Dice Tower will also be there.

And yes I bought my ticket for the expo, I have a three day pass. Just need to arrange accommodation now. Which means finding the nearest/cheapest with free wifi that I can.

Hope to see some of you there.

 

Black Friday Hopes

news, tabletop

So the countdown to Black Friday is on. A day of shopping madness in the hunt for a bargain that has become part of Americas traditions to take its place alongside their Thanksgiving turkey.

After so long resisting this celebration of consumerism across the pond, in recent years it has been making an appearance over here. Amazon has been making their Black Friday offers available this side of the pond. Which has been great, although last year I didn't find anything in their offerings that interested me.

I've looked through me wishlist on bgg, and thought which of these would I really like and snap up if they appeared on Amazons Black Friday offers. So I whittled that list down to two games that I'm hoping, crossing fingers, touching wood, rubbing a lucky rabbits foot etc will make an appearance on Amazons Black Friday offers.

First up would be Colt Express. It really did impress me that much. Plus I do have a couple of the promo items for it on the way form Germany. So it won't be long before the game joins my collection, it would just be nice to save some money getting it.

This has been on my wish list for a long long time, Room 25 or its follow up Season 2. Imagine a boardgame version of that Doctor Who episode with the orbiting tv station, and those deadly game shows. And them going from one show to another, only to escape, and find out the whole station was a dalek plot. Forget the dalek plot, and space station bit, and you have Room 25 I believe.

So what are you hoping to see on the Amazon Black Friday offers?

 

Ticket to Ride App Update

iOS, news

A new release of the Ticket to Ride app has just been released on the App Store. There is little point me listing all the changes when I can show you them using the developers own words.

Love the cross-platform addition along with addition of being able to play multiple games at the same time. About time I say. In this day and age, I should be able to start a game on one platform and continue it on another. The excellent Star Realms app does this. So app developers have no excuse for not doing this.

Some of the changes by the looks of it are cosmetic, and will make it hopefully easier for the developer to add new content in the future. Having a universal version of the app “should” also make the developers life easier.

A nice looking update.

Oh and if you fancy a game of Ticket to Ride my username is whitespider1066

 

Game of the Year Prediction

news

Below are what I believe are the top three contenders for game of the year. I'm basing this on buzz that I have seen online from various sources like bgg, podcasts, YouTube etc. Sadly I've not played any of these games yet.

I think the amazing thing is that two of these games are “play once” experiences. Which I believe from bits and pieces online has rubbed some gamers up the wrong way.

The main argument being they have paid forty odd pounds for a game, and expect that they can play it forever (well until it wears out, or they loose some pieces). Not play through the game once and then put it on the shelf never to be opened again.

Naturally the count argument defending these games compares the cost to other forms of entertainment, such as going to a movie or the theatre.

What I find interesting is that both Pandemic Legacy and T.I.M.E. Stories when reviewed or described by people are talking about the experience, comparing them to movies for their storytelling.

I will be getting Pandemic Legacy, and I can see myself getting T.I.M.E. Stories, and the thought of playing them excites me. Pandemic Legacy will be one I play with friends from the Fenland Gamers group (mainly because it is at least twelve games, upto a possible twenty four, depending on how well you do), but T.I.M.E. Stories I think I will be able to play with Nath.

Blood Rage although by one of my favourite designers I don't think I'll be getting. Famous last words I know, and please do remind me of them if I do add it to my collection. But from what I've seen, I would enjoy it, but I don't think there is enough there to justify getting it.

So out of these three games, which do I think will be game of the year? My prediction is Pandemic Legacy. With a dark horse prediction (well not exactly a dark horse or outsider) of Mysterium. Which also got a lot of buzz that seems to have been eclipsed by the other three.

UPDATE 17/11/15: I forgot to add Codenames to list of contenders for Game of the Year. I do have this one, but have not got round to playing it yet. This has been a lot of buzz too, but even though I think it will give my prediction a run for its money, and be very close. I'm still calling Pandemic Legacy to take the crown this year of Game of the Year.

On Twitter my friend Gav asked

And this was my Twitter reply

 

 

Who Dice Tower is it?

news

Next years UK Games Expo looks not only to be its biggest yet, but also its best! In the last week or so the shows organisers announced the Colin Baker the sixth Doctor will be a special guest at the show. Then today the shows organisers announced another piece of amazing news.

I'm a big fan of The Dice Tower and its host Tom Vasel and grumpy side kick Sam Healy. The likely hood of me making it to the US and one of the conventions that they attend, or even Essen in Germany is very remote.

So to have them come to the UK is awesome. I know they will be mobbed by their UK fan base.

But wow! This guest list for a geek is becoming amazing.

Read the full announcement here