A Night At The Museum

elder sign

And I’m not talking about that popular but awful film with Ben Stiller. Nope I’m talking about one of the battles in the war against the forces of darkness that is going on around us. Subconsciously we know it’s going on, but it happens in the shadows, the dark places we avoid.

From an early age we are trained to ignore the truth that we see. The monster under the bed or in the cupboard, that spooky looking house down the road with the grumpy old man who hates kids living in it, all dismissed as figments of a child’s active imagination. “Don’t be silly, there is nothing there, see?”, “oh Mr Trumpton he’s had a hard time and been so lonely since his wife died last Summer”. Despite these dismissive reassurances that it’s nothing they leave a night light on for you, or warn you not to hassle that grumpy neighbour. Better to be safe than sorry.

Oh we suspect something is going on. We catch glimpses from time to time. Something or some-one caught moving in our peripheral vision. We turn to look but whatever it was is gone. The shadow world hidden from us once more.

The war will never end, it has been going on for millennia and will continue for millennia. Battles will be won and lost by an ever changing cast on both sides.

Today we will get a sneak peak behind the curtain and witness one of those battles between good and evil.

The Fens has a rich history of local “myths” of giants, dragons and fairies. Is it any wonder that the battle we will witness is going to happen in the heart of the Capital of the Fens, Wisbech?

In the heart of Wisbech sandwiched between its castle and St Peters Church the highest point in the town is an almost nondescript entrance (although some may argue otherwise) to a building that is home to an Iron Age treasure the Wisbech Scabbard and the story of the fens. That unobtrusive entrance with its treasures and stories is the Wisbech Museum. It is here at this focal point of mystical energy that the battle between good and evil will be occurring.

In the shadows out side the market towns museum stood Mandy Thompson a researcher of the paranormal, and along side her Monterey Jack an archeologist who beared a remarkable resemblance to a famous fictional character but in no way infringed on that intellectual property.
Mandy and Monterey had been in many a museum stopping evil from breaking through into our realm. There had been more of them in this fight but the victories had been bought at a great price.
They stood in the entrance of the museum. Mandy and Jack were impressed it was certainly bigger on the inside than the outside.
Was this why they were always having these battles in museums? Just what was it that attracted these monsters from hell?
Mandy’s research had led her to believe they were looking at a rather messy battle ahead of them with Azathoth. An ancient being that if he awoke would mean the instant destruction of the world as we knew it.

“Mandy as much as I enjoy our little adventures saving mankind, I really do need to answer the call of nature before we start getting our hands messy.”

“If you have to go, you have to go. The public lavatory is over there. Just be quick.”

When Monterey entered the generic public lavatory the bloody mirror kind of gave it away that he wasn’t going to be able to go about his “business” quietly. That and the fact that a witch and a cultist were already in the public lavatory (that sounds like the start of a crap joke) waiting to ambush anyone that came into the toilet.

Monterey really did need to go, which made the ensuing fight particularly more painful for him. But he managed to subdue the cultist and witch without destroying the urinal.
After completing what he had originally intended to do in the public lavatory Monterey returned back to the museum entrance.
“You took your time, what kept you?” enquired Mandy.

“There was a little party in there that I gate crashed.”

“Well while you were having fun in the bathroom I checked out the Storage closet over there.”

“Anything interesting?”

“Nah just a gate to another Other World” replied Mandy.

TO BE CONTINUED

PLEASE NOTE: photos of Wisbech Museum taken from the Wisbech museum website. If you get a chance it’s always worth a visit to the Wisbech Museum along with Peckover House. Ideally The Castle should also be open to the public but our council prefer to keep it to themselves and on the rare occasion let us in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An Elder Rant

elder sign

Warner Brothers and DC the other day released a photo of Jared Leto as the Joker for The Suicide Squad movie that they are making. All I'm going to say is I hate them, despise them, and hope they contract a nasty disease. To distract fanboys from the attrocity that has been committed they tried using subtle references to previous Joker iterations like The Killing Joke etc. But it fails it doesn't cover up that all they have done is make a Marrilyn Manson clone with green hair.

I know that after Heath Ledger as the Joker in The Dark Knight the bar was raised incredibly high for whoever followed him by playing that role. However DC and WB have screwed up massively and ruined the character for me now.

The Joker is one of my favourite comic book characters, if not my number one. It is criminal what they have done.

With decisions like this is it no wonder Marvel are kicking DC butt at the cinema. How can they get it right on the small screen and then screw up on the big screen so often?

DC it's not rocket science fire the incompetent fools who are working with the WB side and hire me to correct this screw up before it's too late.

Time to Fight Lovecraftian Horrors and Save The Planet

I finally managed to track down a copy of what was turning out to be a very elusive game to get Elder Sign. Sometimes Google just isn't good enough, everything I found online was out of stock or if on Amazon a stupid price.

Then last weekend I decided just to vent on the UK Buyers and Sellers page on Facebook about why was it so hard to buy a copy of the game. Then fate struck, a new retailer MeepleCity saw my mini rant and messaged me that they had a copy of the game. I was quickly on their site and ordering the game. Not only was it at a reasonable price but also if I accepted the longer delivery time free delivery.

So now with the delivery arriving today I am the proud owner of the game Elder Sign from Fantasy Flight.

Elder Sign has a similar mechanic to Roll For It and Age of War behind it. Which for me is one I like. Rolling dice, completing a target such as getting three of a kind, maybe a press your luck element.

The idea that you can introduce a none gamer to the mechanic with Roll For It, then introduce them to Age of War that adds a little bit more to the mechanic, then play Elder Sign that takes that mechanic and adds so much more to it, I like that a lot.

There are two expansions to this game out there in the wild. Unseen Forces ups the difficulty and adds blessings and curses plus more investigators and ancient ones I believe. Whilst Gates of Arkham takes the battle out of the museum and onto the streets of Arkham.

I've embedded the episode of Tabletop where they play Elder Sign so you can see what all the fuss is.

 

 

Speechless

Uncategorized

Before I start this post I want to get this out there and make it perfectly clear for the record it WAS NOT my birthday yesterday it is NEXT WEEK.

There got it out of the way. Now I can tell you about this marvellous, amazing and some more adjectives that my limit vocabulary can't think of at this point in time, EARLY birthday cake that Doreen the mother of my friend made for me yesterday.

The cake was early because this master baker is going to be on holiday whilst it is my birthday. Doreen makes cakes that deserve to be on the tables of the gods. They are just simply divine.

For the record the only thing not edible on the cake were the Lego figures. Yep that's right those Lego bricks are edible, made from chocolate. That is attention to detail and dedication to the craft.

There was banter with my friend in previous weeks in the run up to next week, when I found out that there would be no birthday cake. I was my usual obnoxious self claiming my birthday would be ruined without a cake from Doreen. How could she do this to me? Well if my birthday was going to be ruined I'd use my contacts north of the border to return the favour for her holiday. Naturally my friend was just stoking things up, enjoying my wining knowing full well what had been plotted.

Apparently the rest of the office knew about the cake! Although it nearly did get let out of the bag the night before by one of them. But it went over my head, I was more concerned that they thought I would only be unbearable on my birthday and not everyday. Really!

The cake was a total surprise I had no idea. However there was a catch with having such an incredible cake. I had to share it with my colleagues. Like magic, cake always comes with a price dearie. And sharing with the the hoi pollio of the office would be the price I would be burdened with. The sacrifices and pain I endure for cake.

I owe Doreen such a big thank you. Words don't seem to describe how grateful I am, and in awe at this fantastic cake.

In a dark week this has been a beacon of light thank you so much Doreen and the mystery daughter who can not be named because of her left handedness and crippling gingerness.

 

Mini games to take on holiday

tabletop

Yesterday I was chatting with a friend and colleague (I do that sometimes just to keep my social skills upto date), and the conversation turned to booked holidays for the Summer and a game that my colleague and her daughter played last year while on holiday (which was a match the word with its meaning game they came up with).

I asked if they were taking Tsuro with them this year (they are big fans of the game). However the response was in the negative because they were going to Spain again and it's too big to take etc etc.

So my response was had she not read my post where I had about four games in the Age of War box that I had taken to the pub with me? And can you believe that she said she hadn't? I mean WTF? This blog should be the first thing she checks everyday! I'll be testing her again soon and if she fails the test I'm naming and shaming.

Anyway this got me thinking there is a blog post here.

You've booked your family holiday, somehow avoiding a booking at Camp Crystal Lake. So you know that your holiday won't end in senseless mindless violence from a psychotic back from the dead killer.

The big day is about to arrive you are packing your bags and struggling to decide what to take with you. You know this is a family holiday and there will need to be some sort of family activity in the evening to strengthen the family ties between parents and offspring. You don't want them just to be faces buried in the screens of their iPads. But a board game is too big to take with you, or is it?

You have had a great day's activities, enjoyed some great local food of egg and chips and cheap plonk and all back at the accommodation for the evening.
But what to do for the rest of the evening? Well there are two options on the gaming front. In this post I'm going to concentrate on the physical games and not the virtual versions of games. I'll look at that side in a future post possibly, maybe, ok if I remember.
As I showed in the previous post it is possible to get carry several games with you in a small box. This will require for the holiday deboxing some games so they can all be carried in one small box. There are some great mini or micro games out there that can be taken with you to play as a family. Here are some of my recommendations, and this is by no means exhaustive and is based on what's in my collection.
The criteria I've used for selecting these mini/micro games is that they can be played by four or more people. I would say that they are also fun games but that is subjective anyway and I wouldn't still have the games in my collection if I didn't think they were fun.
In the list below I'm not going to go into depth about each game, you can get all that info on the Boardgame Geek website. I may mention the type of game and advise if the box needs removing before going into the holiday going box.
  • Zombie Dice – Zombie Dice comes in a nice cardboard or plastic tube depending on the version you buy. However for the sake of taking on holiday and space constraints get hold of the official zombie dice dice bag that can be used to hold the dice and replace the job of the tube for our holiday needs. Although the tube does make a rather satisfying noise when used. But needs must.
  • Love Letter or one of the licenced variants – ok my favourite version at the moment is the Batman one. But I'm sure once I get the Hobbit version I'll like that too (well I am a Tolkien fan). Depending if you have the boxed version or the one that comes with the nice little bag, you may have to put the box in a safe place and store in ziplock bag for the holiday.
  • Poker Dice – ok I like poker dice, a quick simple game or look up variants/games that use them in the excellent Reiner Knizia book about dice games.
  • Fluxx or one of its many versions – choose your favourite variant of the game mine currently is Star Fluxx. There is no waste with the packaging for this game, so I wouldn't even bother.
  • Age of War – Push your luck dice game with some set collection, and a bit of conflict being able to steal others completed cards. Duncan liked this so much he was inspired to create his own cards for the game (which by the way look pretty awesome). As I've shown the box for this can hold a few games if thought out carefully.
  • Roll for It – another dice game that will fit easily inside of another box. In fact I'd be tempted to get one more coloured dice for the Perudo dice to give each coloured dice in that game six to use for this game, and cutting down on the amount of dice taking and space. Naturally remember to only use five dice per player when playing Perudo.
  • Harbour – worker placement on a tiny scale. And well worth the effort of squeezing into the holiday gaming box.
  • Tiny Epic Kingdoms – a 4x game that packs a lot of punch in a small box. This is definitely a must take if you want something a bit more thoughtful.
  • Bang the Dice Game – Dice rolling, hidden roles, definitely a game that has too much packaging and can easily be placed inside another box.
  • Hanabi – bang, bang, boom. Work together to create an amazing fireworks display. Another game where the packaging although not excessive isn't really needed in our circumstances.
  • Eight-minute Empire – See my suggestion at the end of this list for this box. Another of the more thoughtful games as you via to control areas of the board.
  • Perudo or Liar's Dice – you could take everything you need which includes the dice, or just take the dice and improvise the cups once you are at the holiday destination.
  • Machi Koro – this game is all packaging and the cards and components can easily be rehomed for easier transporting to play on holiday.

If you use the Eight-Minute Empire box you can fit an amazing amount of game to take with you to pass the evenings away with. There is also a good variety in the types of game so there should be something there for most tastes.

All these games won't fit into one box even the Eight-Minute Empire box, however a lot of them will. Plus these are just suggestions, ideas based on my limited experience and collection. Your usage and enjoyment from this list may vary.
I've not included Star Realms in this list because it is a two player game, despite it having everything you need in a single box. However White Wizard are going to be releasing a four player game that fits into a similar sized box called Epic if I remember correctly from the press release. This will I think be on the list in a future update I'm sure. Whilst I'm talking of future games to consider Tiny Epic Galaxies when it hits the shelves will be worth adding (I did back this on kickstarter) it's from the same folks behind Tiny Epic Kingdoms.
Ones that will be worth looking at also are This Town Ain't Big Enough for the 2-4 Of Us a cheap micro game, and VivaJava: The Coffee Game: The Dice Game. And by this I mean these games are pretty high up on my too buy list that they will most likely drop through my letter box sooner than later.
I do hope that you have found this post useful, that it has given you food for thought about how you can take some great tiny games with you to enhance that family bonding experience known as the annual holiday.

UPDATE 1/6/2015: I've just added Sushi Go! To my collection, and it definitely is a great game that should be added to the above list of games. I've also added Get Bit too that also should be on the list for consideration.

UPDATE 7/6/2015: Coup has just arrived and plays 2-6 players so perfect to take on a holiday. And small enough to combine into another box with other games.

 

Down in a blaze of glory

star realms
Last night saw the start of the sixth Casual Sunday Star Realms Tournament on the Facebook fanpage. So join me in this predictable tale of woe, as I retell the thrilling events of this first round showdown between me and PokemonMasta.
Sunday started so well I was on a streak, I had won a handful of games and was sitting at level 7 and 0, when the pairings went up for the first round on the event page. I had been drawn to fight PokemonMasta.
I sent my challenge for our first game. Sometimes I regret that when issuing challenges in games a virtual glove is not removed and slapped across the face as they did so many moons ago when duelling for honour or any excuse that could be found was used.
The first game with PokemonMasta continued the streak I had been on all day.
But that victory was short lived, I had not seen the dark storm clouds gathering in the distance. They had been blocked from my field of view by the bases PokemonMasta had deployed to hide them from my sight. It was one game apiece now, everything was once more hinging on the last game.

Our final game was going so well, we were trading shots at each other, chipping away at each other's authority. I had thirty odd authority enough time I thought to get a combo going for the win. Then the story of my Star Realms life – BAM gunned down in a combo blaze of glory. I was laying in a puddle of space debris left over from my defeated fleet of cards.

That was it I was just another beautiful corpse gunned down in his balding middle aged prime, and out of the tournament like 99% of my tournament games in the first round.

I had lost 2-1 after taking the an early lead. Somehow I had mirrored in Star Realms the score and flow of my beloved Liverpool in the days FA Cup Semi-Final match against Aston Villa. Liverpool too had taken an early lead only to have the match taken away from them. You'll Never Walk Alone even with my bad tournament record.

PS This Monty Python clip kind of sums up my games with CrShaner and frankly a lot of my games these days, I'm chipping away with the little hits (fish in the video) then my opponent just wacks me with a big combo hit (big fish). In fact isn't this most people's games. This should be the official gameplay video.

 

Daredevil and King Pin Battle Caught on Film

marvel legendary, tabletop

At some point later today Youtube will have finished processing a solo game of Marvel Legendary I filmed, where Daredevil and a couple of chums take on the mastermind King Pin and his henchmen.

I hope you like it, I'm not the most sparkling of personalities on or behind the camera. Hopefully for your sake I will improve!

Things Get Legendary

marvel legendary, tabletop
 

Yesterday an idea hit me, wait Avengers: Age of Ultron is out this week. We were due to celebrate this fact by playing Marvel Legendary on Thursday but due to unforeseen circumstances our host has had to cancel the themed evening of game playing. The idea that hit me was more a question, “is there an Ultron mastermind card in Legendary?” I was hoping so, I couldn't remember who the masterminds were. If Ultron was a mastermind I could play solo on Thursday and play the movie!

So I pulled out the Legendary box with everything in, opened it up. Then thought I really should sleeve these cards. Which then saw me get sidetracked looking for official sleeves. I had a heart attack when I saw a place on Amazon (UK for any international readers) selling a pack of fifty sleeves (I'm assuming that was one pack it didn't say otherwise) for twenty six pounds plus postage. That wasn't just daylight robbery, it was a mugging that ends up with the victim dead, and then the mugger peeing on the corpse. I think this South Park clip of Cartman quotes from the Humancentipad episode sums it up. BTW this is definitely NSFW!

 

These are sleeves that should not cost more than three or four pounds (yes twice the US price, yes that Cartman stuff is relevant for this as well too about us in the UK). To sleeve all your cards you need an aweful lot of sleeves. At the price on Amazon I'd have needed to become a mastermind myself and come up with cunning scheme to rob the Bank of England to buy enough to sleeve all the cards.

I could get generic sleeves, but having official sleeves with the art work on is just nicer. Maybe my FLGS might get them in (if the monopolistic UK distributor that has sewn up distribution for the majority if not all the major game companies has decided we in the UK are allowed to buy them, the seem to have deemed us unworthy on many accessories).

Any way I managed to focus again and looked through the masterminds for Legendary. Ultron wasn't one of them. Bugger. That poured cold water on that idea right away.

I think Upper Deck are missing a trick in not selling mini expansions that tie in with the movies and shows. The expansions don't have to be packaged anything more fancy than the foils packets similar to the ones used by the likes of White Wizard for the Gambit and Crisis expansions.

For the soon to be out Avengers: Age of Ultron they could of introduced a mini expansion containing Ultron as a mastermind, one or two scheme cards, and henchman cards, all for five coins of the realm or five pound. Then we could have been playing Marvel Legendary this week recreating the movie by going up against Ultron.

Later in the year Upper Deck could of released a couple of Antman related packs to tie in with (what looks promising in the trailers) Antman movie. Or we could of had a Winter Soldier pack. I do hope they do something for Civil War.

But nope Upper Deck havent announced anything like this, however we are getting a Secret Wars expansion in the Summer.

I missed a trick last weekend or did I? Well as I have pointed out previously Daredevil hit Netflix last week. Thirteen episodes in a Netflix exclusive series tied in to the Marvel cinematic universe. Just don't go watching it expecting guest appearances from Captain America or Thor. This is set at the street level with our heroes living in the world they are defending, and not operating on some grand scale alien invading level that Capt and Thor live in. Daredevil is darker, grittier and it's fantastic. Being on Netflix we benefit from their binge model of watching, so we got all thirteen episodes available to watch at the same time.
So last Friday I watched eight of the episodes and then finished off the final five episodes on the Saturday. It is such a great series. The look, the way they portray the characters, the story arcs, the character interactions. Everything about this series is just miles ahead of the other superhero tv series on at the moment or before it.
Don't get me wrong I love Gotham (and wow the penguin is amazing in this series, the actor playing him has created a performance that defines the character for me as did Heath Ledger for The Joker), I love The Flash and it's fan service and nods to the eighties series. I'm a very loving person and that love carries over to Arrow and Marvel Agents of Shield.
I even liked Constantine, the actor who played Constantine was really good. However Constantine although so much better than the Keanu Reeves Constantine movie, needed to be darker and grittier. It had thirteen episodes but failed for me to achieve the same impact and development that we have seen with Daredevil.
In Daredevil the stand out casting for me has to be Vincent D'Onofrio (he of Law and Order Criminal Intent fame) as Wilson Fisk or not called by this name yet in the series King Pin. The performance as Fisk is nothing but amazing, and for me steals the show. Vincent plays Fisk so well giving the character a menacing threatening presence however he also brings a vulnerability to Fisk. This is a character defining performance, that if anyone else plays King Pin will have a hard time topping.
I'm looking forward to the other four series that Netflix have the licence for hitting their streaming service. And I've crossed everything hoping that we will see more seasons of Daredevil.

So what was the opportunity I missed? Playing Marvel Legendary with King Pin as the mastermind with Daredevil and other street level heroes hoping to foil his scheme. But have I missed it? Nah I can play it today while re watching the series.

I'm going to finish this long post with a warning for those that have Marvel Legendary but not bought the Spider-Man Paint the Town Red and/or the Fantastic Four expansions. BUY THEM NOW! Upper Deck have said these will not be reprinted. The Spider-Man one surprised me, but not the Fantastic Four one. Well Marvel are going nuclear with the film studio that hold the rights for doing Fantastic Four movies, and that side of things will just get uglier.

 

A Star Wars Celebration

imperial assault, star wars, tabletop, X-Wing Miniatures

Over in the US of A there is a three day Star Wars celebration currently going on. Already we are getting to see the new teaser trailer for Episode 7, a trailer for the new Battlefront video game, and fan pictures of the ships and figures that make up the Fantasy Flight Games offerings that will be joining their official licenced boardgames later this year (hopefully) from their stand. Naturally at these sort of events there are panels, cosplay and more. And yes I wish I was there.

Above is my “fleet” for when I get to play X-Wing miniatures. Definitely not the largest “fleet” out there by a long shot. However considering the number of expansions they have released, the amount I get to play the game (hardly ever), and the number of other games in my collection that release regular expansions I think my “fleet” is very large. Naturally it could be bigger, for starters the Scum and Villiany ships could be there, but I'll add to the “fleet” when resources permit. One thing that anyone who sees these models up close does say is “wow, those models are amazing”. FFG do knock it out of the park with the X-Wing models.
All your farms belong to us!
It's funny to think what an impact and impression Star Wars and the franchise has had on western society. Who would of thought in 1977 after falling in love with Olivia Newton John as Sandy in Grease, and her bad girl look in the song “You're the one that I want” from the end of the movie. Which seemed to be constantly on tv and Top of the Pops. That the clip that rivaled it for being on tv all the time that year of Han and Luke operating the guns on the Falcon shooting at tie fighters ending with Han saying to Luke “great kid, don't get cocky” would be such an amazing film and still fueling the imagination of people decades later.
Some of my rare childhood memories that I have are linked to Star Wars. I remember queuing up round the corner with my family waiting to get into the cinema at Kings Lynn to see the rest of the movie that went along with that clip. Lucas really did capture the people's imagination everywhere. Marvel comics hit a home run with the comic strip adaption that made it over here in a UK comic book edition. I missed the first issue but got the following ones.
My friends and I were mad for anything Star Wars, it was all our playground conversation was for a long time. I even made my own tie fighter in class using a ping pong ball, cardboard, paper mâché and paint. I remember being jealous of those that had official merchandise, but still I had my tie fighter.

Back in the late seventies we had panini sticker books for football, and from time to time the odd hit movie. It was never like this day and age where there seems to be a sticker book to collect for everything that could even remotely be pimped to the public. We also had bubble gum cards and I remember collecting the cards and stickers for Empire Strikes Back. Well not exactly the cards but definitely the sticker book.

If seventies Darren had access to the stuff modern Darren has he would of been in a fanboys dream world. Back then we never had a foggiest the journey we would be taking with Han, Luke and Leia over the years. Let alone the constant fiddling Lucas would do to the movies we loved so much. South Park did such an amazing job of capturing what every fan was thinking (the clip below is definitely not safe for work) about Lucas and Spielberg because they did the same with another beloved character of theirs Indy.
 

On the video game front the first Star Wars game I played was a Commodore 64 port of the classic Star Wars arcade game in all its wireframe goodness. From there I progressed to the Atari ST port of the Return of the Jedi arcade game. After that in the nineties while working in Byfleet for a credit card company on my first pc, an Amstrad 16Mhz 386sx clam shell laptop I got taken totally away into the Star Wars universe and lived every fans dream of being able to pilot an X-Wing in the groundbreaking game X-Wing. Naturally the follow up X-Wing vs Tie Fighter was more of the same amazing goodness. And then the Star Wars franchise jumped on the Doom band wagon with the amazing Dark Jedi Knight, a rather cool Star Wars FPS.

My only brushes with the Star Wars games during the Sony console dominated late nineties and early noughties was by proxy of my boys when they played them. However I'm getting a chance to play some of those games now thanks to a recent Humble Bundle that gave me a crap load of them for under a tenner. But the Humble Bundle folks also gave me a load of Star Wars comics (including the original Marvel ones) recently as well, also for a criminally low price. TOP TIP keep an eye on the Humble Bundles, sign up for their alerts they have some great value deals on regularly.

In the late nineties I collected the cards that made up the Star Wars collectable card game that was out at the time. Didn't get to play the game sadly. Plus in a box when there were the anniversary celebrations and special editions released I collected the Tazos and little plastic busts that Walkers did as part of the promotions that Lucas film had given them the licence for.

Now days it seems we are spoilt for good quality Star Wars related boardgames. the main plus side is that we don't have to put up with thinly rebranded editions of Risk and Monopoly. But can experience the rich tapestry of the Star Wars universe with X-Wing miniatures, Armada, Imperial Assualt or the Living Card Game to name some of them. FFG have done such a great job bringing the Star Wars universe to the table top, although I think none gamers and gamers will agree not always cheaply.

Having implied that rebranded versions of Monopoly and Risk are just cashing in (well I'm not a Monopoly fan), one cashin that I would love to see is the Star Wars theme being applied to Love Letter. I think it would work very well, and I love Love Letter especially the Batman Love Letter, and a Star Wars themed version would be awesome.

Here is the original

I don't know if the above words make any sense or form some sort of coherent narrative, or even have a point. But I hope you enjoyed them, what are your experiences of Star Wars growing up and of the games (which ever media).

Finally if you haven't seen the movie Fanboys it's worth a watch, it's been out a while.

 

Chip chip

Uncategorized

Everyone seems to be doing a kickstarter podcast or YouTube video. So who am I to not jump on a band wagon. Here's a relatively short post of kickstarter projects I think are worth backing at the moment.

Project Sidologie looks amazing. Back in the day as hip and trendy people say the Commodore 64 battled with the ZX Spectrum for supremacy of these emerald isles. In those heady ground breaking days of the home computer there was a flourishing demo scene on the Commodore 64, helped by the Commodore owned Compunet dial up network where demo writers distributed their latest opus on the 64. These demos pushed the limits of the hardware and then stepped over them often doing what people thought impossible. Some of these demo writers went on to be recruited into the games industry.

It was on Compunet that I sent my only piece of fan mail to Jeff Minter, and he replied! Anyway I have some fond memories of the demos from this time. To hear Axelf, Stairway to Heaven, Zoolook or Rendevous IV blaring out of the speakers of the tv, generated on the computer sitting in front of you was amazing. So amazing, the memories are still with me now as I write about this walk down memory lane, and the notes of these famous tunes as they sounded on the SID Chip playing in my ears.

Even now when I'm not listening to audio books or podcasts on the way into work I listen to the chip tunes from my childhood. If you were next to my car you would hear the likes of Hubbard, Galway et al and their classic tunes emanating from my car stereo.

Into this nostalgia comes Project Sidologie being Jarre inspired Commodore 64 music remixes. I'm looking forward to hearing these albums. Jarre was a big influence at the time for some of the musicians creating tunes on the Commodore 64 and the demo writers. This kickstarter is a tribute to this fact.

One Night Resistance will be sooo cool. Resistance is a favourite with students when I take it in. I'm looking forward to this hitting the shops. It will be interesting to see what students think when they play this.

The other games in the list are cards games (I seem to be into those at the moment). The Apocrypha Adventure game looks cool, plus can be played as a card game or RPG. So two games for the price of one. Best Treehouse Ever looked a fun little card game about building the best treehouse strangely enough. I think along with A Chaotic Life a fun “filler game” to use on a game night or like I have done with other small games something that can fit in a pocket and be taken down the pub to play with friends over an alcoholic beverage.

I hope these words have helped and that seeing the list has given you an idea of something to back that will reward you with hours of fun gameplay.

 

Catan Day is getting closer

catan

Is getting closer! 24th of this very month in fact. I'm hoping to play the game in the meat world, but if my plans to do so are as unsuccessful as my plans for a gaming night last night (ie no one came) then in reality I will end up playing the app version as my part in the day.

Don't forget you don't have much longer a day if that to get the games in the Humble Bundle Tabletop deal, of which Catan is one of the included games (don't forget Ticket to Ride and Smallworld). Quick aside on this its a pity the expansions you get on Ticket to Ride and Smallworld don't carry across your account onto the iOS version. I did try it to see if they were, but this deal isn't as generous as White Wizard are with Star Realms and their buy on one platform get on all policy.

Here are some clips that will hopefully if you haven't played the game get you interested in playing the game.

Or if you are a Trekkie there is a Star Trek themed version of the game. Which the episode of Tabletop below shows being played with Jerri Ryan who played Seven of Nine in Voyager. Oh and we can't forget Will Wheaton was also a Trek alumni. And let's face it who wouldn't love to play Star Trek Catan with a cast member of one of the many series.