Today I believe we have a viper probe droid. Which is the droid we saw the Empire send out to look for the rebels at the start of Empire Strikes Back.
Will tomorrow's mysterious advent gift continue the Empire Strikes Back theme? Or will we move onto something new?
Jonathan, Jo and myself met up yesterday for the first of three planned gaming meet ups of the Fenland Gamers for the holiday period.
To accompany the planned gaming we had bought “nibbles” to eat and beverages to drink.
As you can see between Jonathan and myself we had a “small” selection of games to choose from for the session.
We started off the session playing Jonathan's latest addition to his collection, his just arrived Kickstarter copy of Bomb Squad. Earlier I had downloaded the companion app for the game that provides a timer for the various missions in the game.
Bomb Squad is a collaborative game where you are all working together to rescue hostages, and disable bombs before the time runs out. However this isn't your normal collaborative game. Imagine the love child of Robo Rally and Hanabi, put it against the clock and you have the game play of Bomb Squad.
We played the training mission, with the program cards being played face up. So “easy” mode. Our first game we failed miserably, rescued a hostage but failed disarming the first bomb. The second game we did better and rescued the first hostage, disarmed the first bomb, and got the second hostage. Which we repeated on our third and final attempt at this mission.
The timer certainly adds to the tension. You can't spend time thinking too much on your go. It can be frustrating if another player isn't getting the hint which card to play. And I certainly need to remember the clues given to me more. I bet that was frustrating for the others when I guessed the card totally wrong when trying to charge the robots battery.
To play the game you don't need to have the companion app, anything that can be used to time something, like a stopwatch, kitchen timer, can be used with the game. This is how apps should be used with boardgames. The app should compliment the game and not be an intergal part of the game play. So that if you don't have the app you can't play the game. It's why I've avoided the XCom boardgame. I should be able to play the game without an app, end of.
The app did add to the experience, with the ticking noise, spoken ten second count down.
I enjoyed playing Bomb Squad. I'd definitely play it again. I can't imagine at the moment what it'd be like to play when the cards are played face down when programming the robot. That just takes the game to at the moment an unimaginable level of difficulty. In fact playing it that way sends shivers down my spine.
Jo selected Splendor as our second game. I got a nice little engine going that was getting me lots of free cards, but sadly hardly any blue gems. For most of the game I was trailing behind Jonathan and Jo point wise. However that soon changed when I nabbed two of the nobles for six points and pushing me to thirteen points. I was in touching distance of the required fifteen points to end the game and hopefully win. Sadly Jonathan took the next noble to reach fifteen points to get the win.
There was a little bit of “banter” or gentle ribbing of Jo about how long it was taking her to take her goes especially at the start of the game. Hey I'm not a young guy, time is precious to me, I don't have much left.
For our third game I selected Kingdom Builder. Wow what a great deal I got on this game. Jonathan said he was expecting this heavy euro style game that would take along time to play. But instead it was the opposite.
Kingdom Builder plays quite quickly, and the variety between games is amazing. Mixing the game boards up, along with the scoring conditions even without any expansions gives a lot of replayability.
Our first game was a pretty tight game when it came to scoring. I won, but there was only a four point spread between myself and last place. The second game the spread between winner and loser was much wider. But that was due to a single decision mid game by Jonathan that if he had played differently would have given him over twenty points instead of three!
I think it's safe to say Kingdom Builder was a hit.
It was Jo's turn again to select a game. Her choice was Machi Koro. I totally owned this game. With four cafes in place and the right completed building (forget which one it was) every time one of the others rolled a three it cost them eight coins. I was rolling in money, while the others were cash poor. For some reason they would build up a little cash and then go and roll a three. I think this must have been the best I've played the game.
My choice was Neuroshima Hex. We played a three player deathmatch. It was interesting to play a three player game. In the app I've only played two player, which I enjoy a lot. But three player was fun.
I was abit apprehensive about the game with the others. I knew Jonathan wasn't a big fan of the scifi theme. And I wasn't sure about the abstract nature of the game either. However I think the game grew on Jonathan. I'm not sure how Jo felt about the game, but I think she liked winning.
The session was bought to a close with Jonathan choosing Age of War. Jonathan really liked this game. Hey it's in my collection, so it's obvious I like the game. Jonathan managed to steal one of my cards to complete a set. Jo also tried to do the same with one of my cards, but after three attempts to steal it gave up. Jo once more won this game. If memory serves me right, she won the last we played this also.
Through out the session Jonathan was partaking in his new “passion”, taking 3D photos of the games. The photos should be appearing on the Fenland Gamers blog that Jonathan writes over on bgg.
I had a great time, with fantastic company. We played some great games.
I'm not able to make the second holiday meet up. I have other plans, but I will be at the third and final holiday meet up. Which I am looking forward to.
Continuing the Empire Strikes Back theme and inparticular the start of the movie on Hoth, today we have the ion cannon.
And still buzzing from how awesome The Force Awakens is.
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…
What an incredible little model of an AT-AT in today's Lego masterpiece.
Oh for the record saw Star Wars The Force Awakens last night. Amazing movie, doesn't disappoint, and not riddled with the typical J J Abrams trade mark lens flare effect.
Knew we were due a minifig. And now we have one, a rebel trooper from Hoth. Which is for those that can't remember the ice planet at the start of The Empire Strikes Back that the rebels are hiding on.
No wait this is super cool, as the next big expansion for Imperial Assault is Return to Hoth ( due to hit stores any day now). Which has nothing to do with Lego, but that's the way my mind works!
If we include app versions of the game my most played game of the year is clearly by a long shot Star Realms.
There are some great app versions of boardgames out there. Sometimes I'll get the app version before getting the physical version to see if I like the game. Then other times I will get the app version so I can learn the basics of the game before actually getting to play the game in real life. Plus the app allows me to game when I wouldn't be able to, whether it's against an opponent online or the built in AI.
Regular readers know that recently I got Neuroshima Hex and four of the army expansions for it, with a fifth promo army in the post somewhere. But I haven't got the game to the table yet (Gav we need to arrange a time and place). So in the meantime I got the app and have been playing that.
The app is pretty awesome. I've been playing the quick game option against the easy AI. This gives me a random army each time I play a game against a random army on the opponents side. I like this because it means I get experience playing all the armies, against all the armies. Although the Vegas army is one I'm not having much success with.
I have to admit the easy AI is giving me a pretty good challenge. But I can't wait to get the game to the table also. But in the meantime this is scratching the itch to play.
Tomorrow sees the release of the new Star Wars movie, and yes I'm going to see it.
We in the “hobby” gaming world are a bit luckier than those that get their games from mainstream outlets. How? Well we have been over the last three or more years been lucky enough to have some really great Star Wars games to play.
Fantasy Flight Games have done a really great job of releasing great games, that look amazing, and give a really enjoyable experience.
Capture the feel of dogfights between squadrons of rebel and imperial ships from the Star Wars universe. The base set gives you the two fan favourites of an X-Wing and two Tie Fighters to battle it out. The base set gives you everything for two players to fight it out. Currently there are two versions of the base set. The newest version gives you versions of the X-Wing and Tie Fighter based on the new movie.
There are a lot of expansions for this game, that give you more ships from the Star Wars universe like Tie Bombers, Y-Wings, A-Wings, the Millenium Falcon, Slave 1 to name a few.
I will warn you this game is like crack, once you play you get hooked and start buying more and more ships.
The models look stunning in this game, and when played on a playmat (usually of some awesome star field/space image on) this game takes your breathe away.
Based on the Descent system, Imperial Assault moves its mechanics to the Star Wars universe.
The amazing thing about this game is that you get two games in one! You have the campaign mode, where one player plays as the Empire while the other players play as the rebels. Plus you also get a two player skirmish mode, where two players go head to head with their teams fighting it out.
The miniatures are super amazing in this game. But then so do all the components for the game.
There are expansions for this game, introducing fan favourite characters like Han and Chewy.
So they are the two I have played. I still have the Carcassonne Star Wars edition to get to the table. But I'm a fan of Carcassonne so I'm hoping this is a match up that works.
Also from FFG you can get the following Star Wars games, which I don't own and haven't played. So I'll apologise now for the rubbish coverage of them. However these have had some good reviews. And if I had the budget I'd definitely be buying Armada.
From the mainstream market there is the new Star Wars Risk, which apparently not being as good as the fabled expensive out of print Queens Gambit, is still from reviews I've seen a decent game, that is similar to Queens Gambit and not actually Risk.
So I hope that's given you some ideas for games to play with the Star Wars fan in your life. Or even buy (although some of these are not cheap) for that special Star Wars fan.
Posted by me using my iPad and the Blogsy app