Wow FFG or Fantasy Flight Games as they are known, part of the Asmodee Borg Collective made one or two Star Wars related announcements yesterday.

The first one I’m interested in is the first expansion for Star Wars Rebellion, Rise of the Empire.

“…Rise of the Empire enhances your games with eight new leaders, thirty-six plastic miniatures, five target markers, two attachment rings, three new dice, and more than one-hundred new cards. You’ll find U-wings, TIE Strikers, Nebulon-B frigates, and the Interdictor.” 

Rogue One is basically coming to the game. So despite having not played Rebellion yet (and I do own it now), I’m still pretty stoked about this.

You can read the full FFG news post HERE.

Next up from FFG and their big announcements was news about their next big box expansion for Imperial Assault, Heart of the Empire and new villain packs.

Heart of the Empire naturally means the campaign side of the game visits Coruscant. And naturally that means two new skirmish maps.  We can tell which characters are tokens in this box because we are also getting two villain packs and an ally pack along side it.

• Maul Villain Pack
• Emperor Palpatine Villain Pack
• Ahsoka Tano Ally Pack

I’m excited about Maul. Vader,Maul and Palpatine skirmish team up against a Jedi one?

I have to face up to the fact this may be the last wave for Imperial Assault for me. It’s just not getting to the table. I love it. But to justify the expense it needs to be played.

FFG are saying third quarter for these.

You can read the two stories HERE and HERE.

On a related note the Star Wars Destiny Spirit of Rebellion booster box finally arrived this morning.

Sadly I can’t open it until Monday! Dale and I bought this together. Fifty fifty split. So we do that at work, blind drafting booster packs.

On a totally unrelated note, Days of Wonder are releasing the third (?) expansion for Five Tribes, Whims of the Sultan next month.

Jonathan likes to point out, and I’m sure many others have done also, Five Tribes only plays upto four and not five. Plus if you add in the expansion The Artisans of Naqala it’s technically six tribes!

So this expansion allows a fifth player. How it plays with five I don’t know. Would I want to play with five players? These sort of addition player addons make me nervous. If it was meant to be played at that player count or was any good they would have released it that way in the base game. This strikes me as pandering to demands (by who I don’t know). New tiles and options are always good on the other hand.

So yeah this will be added to the collection. If I’m really really lucky it’s at UKGE. But in reality more likely Origins in the US.

You can read the full announcement HERE.

I love the zombie post apocalyptic survivor theme, especially when it’s wrapped in a great graphic novel like The Walking Dead or one of the classic Living Dead movies.

The boardgame Dead of Winter did a pretty good job of capturing the feeling of those source materials. Survivors thrown together to try and survive against the odds. The odds were not just the zombie horde but dwindling resources and the elements. 

Plaid Hat then followed that up adding an expansion that could be combined with the original game in a modular fashion or be played stand alone.

But Plaid Hat have decided try and recreate that feel of warring survivor communities that you see in the last season or so of The Walking Dead. Plaid Hat today announced a new Dead of Winter expansion called Dead of Winter: Warring Colonies.

This new expansion adds a new Team Variant that requires both The Dead of Winter and The Long Night to play. But it then allows 4 – 11 players to form two colonies to compete against each other. 

The Lone Wolf module also sounds interesting. Which has a single player playing as their own team.

It sounds like a very exciting addition to the game. 11 people playing the game at once?!!! Wow. Could I get that many people together to play it?

I like the sound of the direction Plaid Hat seems to be taking Dead of Winter. It’s like they are following the story arc of the Walking Dead. Or the survivors story we have been playing in the Dead of Winter has just taken a new twist. 

You can read the full announcement HERE.

Unsurprisingly the second printing of Gloomhaven funded this morning. So my bank account is a bit smaller today.

But look at that final funded total. Two more games (with delivery) would have taken it through the $4 million barrier. 

It was within $300k of matching the Eric Langa Ding Dongs and CMoNs oriental version of A Game of Thrones – Rising Sun. Which is phenomenal. Especially when you consider Gloomhaven didn’t have to rely on cheap (well not so cheap to produce) theatrics of amazing looking minis and Kickstarter exclusives.

The great thing is delivery is expected in August. So barring any unforeseen events, September should see the start of the campaign.

With 7th Continent also hopefully arriving around the same time. Plus Pandemic Legacy Season 2 also dropping in this crowded slot. This Autumn is going to be a scheduling nightmare.

I’m a sucker for boardgames based on video games I love. Ok I’ve not bought Portal: The Uncooperative Cake Acquisition Game (yet), and the Doom game from last year might see the collection eventually, but more likely I’ll go for the first edition. Although I think the Gears of War board game is higher up on my wish list.

But I do have unplayed in my collection Starcraft, and Bioshock Infinite. And next week Dark Souls joins the collection. Which I think Nathan will love playing.

So I was kinda excited this morning when Board Game Brawl linked to the very brief post by Modiphius that they are doing a miniatures game based on the amazing Fallout games called Fallout Wasteland Warefare.

The minis look good. I’m hoping that because this will appeal to none miniature gamers that these will be pre-made. None of that having to cut off sprues and glue together shit. 

I’d say go over and read the thing for yourself. But the only reason to go there at the moment is to sign up to the newsletter about the game. So if you want to do that click HERE.

The Kickstarter for the second printing of Gloomhaven (click HERE and then come back) has just gone live. 

Don’t worry it funded in minutes. 

This nice image I stole from the Kickstarter page shows what you can get this time around.

But this other stolen image shows what comes in the box.

So why should you care? 

Apart from those that backed the original Kickstarter project (good call by the way), only a small handful were luckily enough to get a retail copy of the game. Why? I can only give my theory that the publisher grossly underestimated demand. It worked out that your and my FLGS and online retailers would only get one copy of the game. Leaving a lot of people a little sad and desperate to play the game.

You see Gloomhaven once in the hands of reviewers started getting glowing reviews. Then people started playing it, and they too loved it. So much so that Gloomhaven is sitting at number eleven on the BGG top 100 games of all time. I think once this second printing hits it will break into the top ten.

So as you can imagine copies of Gloomhaven fetch a bit more than it’s retail price of approx £120. If they go up for sale at all. The original Kickstarter backers paid $79 plus any postage. Yeah! 

So not quite as generous for this second printing on the savings, but $99 is still a nice price. Enough to allow getting the extras for not to far off the retail price.

So saving money, getting more for your hard earned cash, it also means you are going to get a copy and not have to enter a royal rumble to get one when it hits retail again (if it does). 

What more do you need?

Oh people to play with! Ok they don’t provide those with the game. But there is a solo mode for the game.

Will this beat CMoN and Rising Sun? Will it come close to Kingdom Death Monster? I think no for KDM, and possible for bodily fluids Rising Sun.

Right bugger off and back this so you get your copy. 

Fans of the game Scythe (my game of 2016) will be very excited by this image.

What does this image mean? Why are we wetting our pants (that’s English pants not American ones) over this?

This image is the teaser for the second expansion for Scythe. But to go along with it Jamey Stegmaier has written a blog post that reveals more details about what to expect in this expansion.

So in summary (I don’t want to just copy and paste, you can go read Jamey’s words for yourself – link at the end), there will be two expansions in the box. The first originally designed by a fan adds airships to the game. Hey we are getting new miniatures for these as well. 

The second half of the expansion adds a resolution tile that adds a twist to the end of the game, and effects your decisions during the game!

Personally I didn’t think Scythe needed another expansion. If there had not been another one announced I’d have been more than happy with what I have. 

But I’m not going to turn new stuff away. I’ve just got to work out how everything is going to fit into one box. It’s tight now. I may have to make an insert.

It would be fair to say Scythe has been a hit. I think it was said that by April 100,000 copies sold. Which for a “hobby” game is massive. And it still appears to be selling out whenever stock hits the shelves of stores. Plus what’s even more incredible is that the extras like the metal coins are also selling like hot cakes.

The game walked away with a truck load of awards at the recent BGG awards, voted for by the game buying/playing public.

So this new expansion when it comes out later in the year, is I’m suspecting going to be flying off the shelf in to the grubby mits of gamers faster than me after free cake. So you have been warned. 

Read the full post by Jamey Stegmaier HERE.