April Fool

A lot has happened in the last 3 months, and I realized my January 7 post didn’t save properly! On no!

Anyways, life goes on…

My son got Undaunted: Normandy and Undaunted:Reinforcements for Christmas and we played a bunch of that. Great game.

My Oathmark Elf Cavalry arrived and I built those.

Like all Oathmark plastic kits, they are well made and easy to assemble.

I also built my Goblin Slaves. I also finished another 2 boxes of undead. 30 Skeletons and 30 revenants.

Next I built 3 4ground houses.

I also got the Century: Big Box and we played that. Very similar feel to Splendor which we enjoy mightily.


I also jumped in head first to HeroQuest and picked up all the expansions. My youngest son and I have almost finished the quests from the core box.


I also decided to start gaming a Very British Civil War (because I need another era to game in). Thankfully I already had this platoon of Footsore Miniatures Early War Scotsmen.

I primed them, painted the kilts and hats blue (base colour for Black Watch Tartan -wtf am I thinking) I also painted the webbing green, and all the black and brown bits (boots, scabbard, rifle). All that’s left is the skin, hair and metal bits.

In the end of March we attended Holyead. Southwest Ontario’s premier gaming convention. It’s in its 29th year.  Saw a lot of friends and played 4 games.

The first (Friday night) was a WWI game set in Africa in 1914. Rules were modified 1 hour skirmish Wargames. GM Dan Hutter runs a well oiled table. 


Saturday AM my youngest played a game for all ages but meant for kids. Wooden soldiers and armed teddy bears and frogs. Great way to introduce youth to the hobby. 

I also hit the bring and buy pretty heavily. I sold about $255 worth of old rule sets and codexes and some plastic figures I’m not going to use.

I purchased some interesting things. I did have a bit of buyers remorse though. I was debating buying two full painted Afrika Korps armies (one infantry based and the other vehicle based). Instead I bought painted 3D printed Battletech mechs that were printed to a larger scale (my kids and I played Gamma Wolves with those mechs last year and they loved it). I bought the mechs for them but they didn’t seem to impressed with them this year. I should’ve just bought the Africa Korps for myself then.

I also picked up a larger river (6 pieces) and a set of 4 fields from an estate sale. 

I came out slightly ahead all in all. Then blew the earnings and then some on some 3D printed vehicles for VBCW.

Saturday afternoon, my eldest had a nap so I brought the youngest down for a game of Speedfreaks! Think Gaslands using GW Ork vehicles and rules. Last year we placed a paltry 2nd place. This year we took home the cup.

Saturday evening, after his nap, my oldest joined us for a game of silly hats. Back of beyond somewhere in Warlord China. White and red Russians, Mongols and various Chinese factions all vying for the hand of a Warlords daughter.  Another Dan Hutter masterpiece.

All in all, quite a busy three months. We played a game yesterday but I plan to cover that later this week.

Cheers everyone!

Covid 19 gaming

It’s been a rough 10 months for everyone. 

I miss seeing family and friends and going to gaming conventions. I am fortunate enough to be an essential worker and my wife is able to work from home. We have been able to cancel our child care needs so are saving a bit of money in that regards.

I’m fortunate I have two sons who have been gaming with me for a few years now and are getting better at grasping technical games.

October: We played the now OOP Pocketmodels Pirates of the Caribbean game. Pirate, French and Spanish fleets took to the seas in a three way battle.

November: Zombicide season 1. My kids really like Black Plague so getting them to play the modern one was a struggle but they enjoyed it. 

In the Hall of the Mountain King. My buddy ordered it from Kickstarter and promptly gave it to me. Lol. We really enjoyed this one. The cascading mechanic is a very cool concept.

Eldest son got Risk: Europe. I don’t mean to brag (and I haven’t played a super serious game of Risk in over 10 years BUT I was a very good Risk player. 

This was very different but I enjoyed it. I lost. Waawaa.

Zombicide Black Plague

A couple of weeks ago, Cool Mini or Not (CMoN) announced they would ship the core box of Zombicide: Black Plague ahead of the exclusive/add-ons/expansion. The expected delivery date was "before Christmas".

A shipping label was created December 23rd for my package with the expected delivery date of December 29th. Which was a surprise. As each time CMoN sent me a shipping label, I had already receive the packages. 

December 29th came and went. So did December 30th. Despite the fact Canada Post had the package since December 24th. Obviously, with the Christmas rush, they were busy.

Nevertheless, I was starting to get a little frustrated. Everything is accessible at my fingertips instantly, my ability to wait has diminished. So I checked the Canada Post tracking number I had, and lo and behold, it was on a truck to me! 

Great success! My wife had a small series of chores she wanted me to go out to do! Nope! Had to wait for the package.

And three hours later, I heard a noise outside. Inquisitively, I poked my head out the door, and was met

With a wonderful sight. The Canada Post truck was outside.

Here is it. Being unboxed. At this time, my iPhone informed me I had no more space for pictures so this will have to do for now.

My 4 year old and I sat down to the intro level. He seemed to enjoy it. Success! I'm reading the rules now though as there are some differences between Black Plague and the modern series.

I have a "real" game scheduled for January 2nd, with some friends. Hopefully it lives up to the hype.

That's all for now. Catch you next year...

Happy New Year!

Descent: Journeys In The Dark 2nd Ed. - Forgotten Souls

So I picked up the (newish) Descent Cooperative Adventure titled Forgotten Souls from Meeple Mart about 2 weeks ago. And printed the rules at work (on the full colour printer -shhh!)

The package included Peril Cards, Exploration Cards (how the campaign gets laid out), Activation Cards (dictates how monsters activate) and track sheet (chances to get upgraded equipment or lose horribly).

The exploration cards contain an onset card ( initial encounter) three main encounters and 8 other encounters. Without failing miserably and being defeated, the game will run from 10-12 encounters depending on how you've dealt the cards.

I played a quick campaign and found it pretty enjoyable. I was a bit distracted though and only managed to make it halfway through. As you can see, with everything laid out, there's not a ton of table space. 

I had to turn the map and extend the table leaf to fit before I finally called it quits. I was distracted and ran out of time...

I also find I get caught up in whatever I'm doing and forget to take photos. 

Today, I thought I'd set up the exploration deck and draw the cards and lay out the tiles to show just how big the game can get.

I kid you not, this was a completely random shuffled and drawn layout. Due to a special rule regarding overlapping tiles, last main encounter is separated from the rest of the map. Otherwise it would actually be partially off the table.

Now imagine the table with player boards, act 1 gear decks, etc and this is huge! I suppose you don't need to leave the previous encounters spread out behind but I think it adds to the dungeon crawling theme.

Overall it's a pretty good expansion. It was good enough to get me to purchase  the 2nd coop expansion Nature's Ire. 

Pros: No Overlord/fully coop. Everyone wins or loses together. Ability for solo play.

Cons: only utilizes 4 monster classes. The activation cards control how the monsters activate and change each encounter but it's still only 4 monsters classes for the entire campaign. Only utilizes specific tiles. The exploration cards dictate the order they are played in but each tile has the same monster classes in it each time you play.

Definitely a good expansion. I'm a bit concerned about the replayability but Nature's Ire (hopefully) should utilize diff tiles monster classes and knowing Fantasy Flight Games' love of expansions, there are probably others in the works as well. 

Another boardgame night.

IYesterday I met with Will at Jamie and Vanessa's for what will probably be my last night out for the next few months (baby #2 is due in one month).

First we played Bang! The bullet. It went down with dramatic flair. An outlaw and the renegade were killed early, leaving the sheriff and remaining outlaw left to battle it out. The dynamite blew me up and the Sheriff won. 

Jamie had just gotten Xia: legends of a drift system off of amazon. We had both missed the Kickstarter campaign and heard about it though Dice Tower. We played a quick intro game to familiarize ourselves then launched into a 10 point game.

This games comes with painted miniatures to match each battle board. It uses Tetris like pieces inside the ship interiors to limit what you can carry. I have a decent engine (grey z piece) and a basic missile (yellow I piece) but couldn't fit blasters of a shield. The two purple cubes are cargo and I had two other (empty) cargo spaces remaining. 

Some pics from the game...

It started out with 4 tiles and as we explored, it began to sprawl...

This was the final map layout:

Th

This is a sandbox style game. Basically you can do whatever you want. You can explore new territories, complete missions, buy and sell cargo, or go pirate and try to destroy other ships. There are also 3 NPC ships flying around. One is a merchant, one is and outlaw hunting good ships, one is an enforcer hunting outlaws.

All in all it was a great game an I can't wait to play more of it.

Lastly we finished off with Tsuro of the seas. It ended with me laying the tile that killed both my ship and Vanessa's. As you can see, it was quite the voyage.

Board Game Night

Well, these are becoming few and far between, but it's always good to get out and see the gang. We had a new addition today. My friend William had his fiancée play. Apparently her boardgame experience started yesterday with Pandemic and Kerplunk! We had discussed playing Settlers of Catan so I brought that and Forbidden Desert. Power gaming couple Jamie and Vanessa brought Tsuro, Letters from White Chapel and Cosmic Encounters.

We played a five player Cities and Knights expansion. I haven't played Settlers in a while and I forgot the importance of upgrading technologies and did Will. Jamie won this one rather quickly. I was the bank so I can't even accuse him of cheating...

Next we played 2 games of Letters from White Chapel. Jamie was Jack the Ripper for the first and Will was the Chief of Police. We managed to find the Ripper fairly quickly and won. Next Will was the Ripper and I led the police to catch the dastardly villain and once again good triumphed over evil.

Next we played Tsuro where Vanessa (green) eliminated herself 1st. And I took out myself (red),Will (blue) and Ashley (yellow) in the bottom Left handle corner two turns later.

Lastly we squeezed in two games of Cosmic encounters. I could have won the second game but sidetracked myself and took a big gamble (for the win!) that utterly failed. 

After 5 1/2 hours we called it. I really enjoy Settlers but having forgot a crucial element of strategy cost us all quickly. I had never played the other games before. Tsuro was nice and quick. A nice casual game. Letters from White Chapel was good. I'd like to have a go as the Ripper though. Both Will and Jamie said they got pretty nervous trying to elude police. Cosmic Encounters was good too. I'd like to play it again before I give my full opinion on it though.