Dude! Take Your Turn!
A Gaming Life
Review – Legendary: A Marvel Deckbuilding Game
Can you name a game that I have played 61 times with various expansions but for some reason haven’t actually done a review for?
You can?
How is that?
Oh, it’s in the title of this post.
Cheater.
Anyway, Legendary: a Marvel Deckbuilding Game (I’m just going to call it Legendary from now on) is a deckbuilder published by Upper Deck Entertainment. It was designed by Devin Low with artwork by a bunch of different artists. And the expansions probably have even more artists!
The base game (which this is a review of) came out in 2012. I can’t even count how many expansions there are (though I may do a review of all of them eventually).
How does the game work?
Let’s go to the board (i.e. past the “More” tag)
Read MoreTerraforming Mars: Ares Expedition Coming to Kickstarter
The other shoe has finally dropped!
A couple of weeks ago, I did a post about a “Terraforming Mars-esque” game that noted designer Geoff Engelstein teased on Twitter.
And now it’s arrived, or least the Kickstarter launch page has.
Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition is so new that it’s not even on Boardgame Geek yet, but Man Vs Meeple broke news about it last night on their Youtube channel in their “Most Anticipated Games of 2021” video.
They also put it out on Twitter.
It’s a card game in the Terraforming Mars universe, but that’s pretty much all we know.
Look at that pretty cover!
We know pretty much nothing else about this other than that it’s a card game.
It is designed by Jacob Fryxelius, Nick Little and Sydney Engelstein.
Here’s the blurb that’s on the Kickstarter page, though:
“A new, stand-alone, game inspired by Terraforming Mars featuring faster gameplay & over 200 beautifully illustrated cards!”
Sounds exciting!
I will be following this closely because, as you know, I’m a huge Terraforming Mars fan.
Any thoughts on this?
I will be posting more about it as I find out.
What do you think of it? What do you think it will be?
Or do you know stuff and you’re not telling me?
You bastard…
Anyway, let me know in the comments!
Stories from Boardgame Cons
This last weekend was the virtual edition of OrcaCon. Since I was spending the weekend doing things with my wife, I didn’t take part, but seeing the tweets and Discord messages from them just brought it all to mind.
If it wasn’t for this fucking virus, I would have been down in Bellevue, Washington last weekend interacting with my peeps, playing some games and just having a lot of fun.
I’m hoping that maybe things will pick up with a whole bunch of people getting vaccinated that maybe things will be relatively back to normal by the time SHUX happens in October, but we’ll have to see.
In the meantime, this weekend’s OrcaCon just makes me think back to other conventions, and I want to talk about them here.
Because cons are a wonderful place to meet people (I know you’ve seen this pic a bunch of times, but it’s still one of my favourites)
Read MoreBoardgame Geek Top 200 – Play or Played – #110-101
After months of waiting (I hope you weren’t holding your breath), we have reached the end of the line (for the second time).
Yes, we are at the end of the Top 200 BGG games, and it’s been an interesting ride.
I’ve really discovered how few games I’ve played!
Excuse me a moment…
Sorry, I just had to get that out.
Anyway, that will hopefully change when we can get back to some semblance of normal. Maybe we’ll even see a convention in 2021?
We’ll have to see.
In the meantime, you’re stuck with me and my lists.
So why don’t we see what the last bit of the Top 200 are?
I don’t know…maybe you’ll have feelings too.
Read MoreReview – Shards of Infinity
There’s something to be said for a nice, simple deck-building card game that you can knock out in 15-20 minutes (maybe 30 if you’re unlucky).
These games are perfect for a couple of games at lunch with co-workers, or maybe as a way to begin or end a game day.
Ascension and Dominion are the grandfathers of the genre, but they require a bit of setup before you can get down to business. Then you have to sort all the cards when the game’s over!
In those games, you are basically trying to outrace your opponent, either by collecting more honour tokens than your opponents or making sure the stack of points cards runs out and you have more than the other players in your deck.
More recently there have been games where you are actually attacking your opponents and trying to make them lose “health” (however that is defined in the game). This is a Magic: the Gathering concept so it’s surprising it took so long to become popular, with games like Star Realms and its ilk.
How about a game that takes the best parts of Ascension and Star Realms and puts them together into a juicy package?
That will get you Shards of Infinity, published in 2018 by Stoneblade Entertainment and Ultra-PRO. The game is designed by Gary Arant and Justin Gary, with artwork by Aaron Nakahara.
It plays 2-4 players but I’ve only played it with 2 (and I think most deckbuilders of this type really work best with 2 anyway).
How does this relatively simple deckbuilder work?
Let’s take a look.
(Wow, it’s great to be saying that more often again).
Read MoreBlog in Review – 2020
Welcome to 2021!
2020 was a very hard year, not just as a boardgamer but as a person in general.
The arrival of COVID-19 and extreme measures taken to counteract it have really taken a toll on me and Dude Take Your Turn in general. But we’ve all persevered.
If you’ve survived and you are in at least a decent mental place, good on you. We did good.
If you are struggling, I’m sorry and I hope you are able to get the help you need to keep moving on until things get back to a relative normal.
One thing I have found funny ever since the beginning of this pandemic. We’re all familiar with the post-apocalyptic movies and books where a disease has run rampant and wiped out half of the world’s population or something like that. The planet is left desolated and roving bands of marauders are making life miserable even as the “good guys” are banding together in small towns to try and survive what’s going on, and perhaps thrive.
The thing these authors and writers have never really shown us (maybe because it would make a boring movie) is the entire world going on lockdown, basically shutting down society for months on end to try and stem the tide of the pandemic.
And it’s largely working (even though too many people have died from this disease).
You don’t see that in the novels or movies!
Anyway, last year, after seeing a number of my fellow bloggers do this, I did a retrospective of how Dude Take Your Turn did in 2019.
If you want to see a little bit of history of how Dude Take Your Turn was formed, I explained it in the introduction to that post so I won’t do that again.
However, I also wanted to do a little bit of a 2020 retrospective in general.
I actually had a good first two months as far as boardgaming went.
I attended three conventions in those two months and got a lot of games (and new to me) games played.
I ended up playing 62 unique games, which isn’t bad considering 9.5 of the 12 months of 2020 were playing with my non-gamer wife.
The highlight of the “new to me” genre was definitely Shards of Infinity, just because not only did I play it for the first time at a convention with my wife, but I bought it and we have played it many more times during our lockdown.
I made it to OrcaCon, CascadeCon, and Dice Tower West in those two months before we were locked down and all of them were great experiences.
Read MoreReview – Roll Player
Growing up, while I played a few wargames with my brother, I was also an avid player of Dungeons & Dragons. I played with a few of my school chums (Editor: Look at you, trying to sound English), even sometimes during class!
One of my favourite parts of playing the game (or really any role-playing game, as I played a few back then) was rolling up my character. There was just something about rolling the dice, recording each stat (Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution and Charisma). At the time, you rolled up your character and then decided what class you wanted to be. (I’m not sure if that’s the way it’s done now, but I doubt it).
What makes me think of those bygone days of adventuring?
Roll Player, the 2016 dice-placement game designed by Keith Matejka with art by JJ Ariosa and Luis Francisco. It was published by Thunderworks Games.
Yes, this is the game where you basically roll up a fantasy RPG character, and then get points for doing it well.
Or maybe not well! That can get you points too.
What do I mean?
Let’s take a look.
(Wow, it’s been ages since I’ve done a review and I still say that!)
Read MoreCity of Crowns – Paladins of the West Kingdom Expansion – On Kickstarter in feb 2021
Two posts in one day is very rare for this blogger, but I had to get this one out there because I’m so excited.
On the heels of mentioning the Works of Wonders expansion for Architects of the West Kingdom, I get the Kickstarter update from Garphill Games that talks about some upcoming stuff.
And there’s news that I love to see in there!
The City of Crowns expansion for Paladins of the West Kingdom is coming to Kickstarter in February 2021!
I knew it was coming (I’ve been subscribed to the BGG page for a little while now) but I think this is the first time an actual date (well, month anyway) has been announced.
Read MoreNew to Me – December 2020
It’s the end of December and 2020 has been a really cruel and wicked year.
However, one benefit of all of this is that I’ve played a lot more games with my wife than I had in the past.
She graciously volunteered to play more with me since I don’t have my usual game days any more. She could see what my lack of game-playing with my friends was doing to me.
While she does enjoy the games we play, she’s not a “gamer” and thus I don’t bring out the heavy hitters (no Food Chain Magnate or anything like that).
While my game-playing has slowed down this year due to my mental state, it’s nice that I’ve still been able to get at least a new to me expansion played each month if not a new game (I did miss a couple of months, but what can you do?).
The Cult of the New to Me has been happy with that, given the circumstances.
No revolts this year, anyway. It’s not like they’ve been getting too many played themselves.
As we say good-bye to an atrocious 2020 and welcome in a more hopeful 2021…
ok, maybe let’s hedge our bets somewhat because I think we all got a bit too cocky in January 2020.
So, without further adieu (all of my adieu was hate-drafted by my opponent anyway), let’s get started!
Read MoreTop 5 Games Played in 2020
Most years, I get to play at least 100 unique games, based on conventions and my Sunday game days.
Sadly, due to COVID, that didn’t happen in 2020. My wife willingly played a bunch of games with me during our lockdown, so the fact that I managed to get at least 60 games played is an accomplishment.
Part of that is because I somehow made it to three conventions in the two months before the lockdowns were put in force. OrcaCon, Cascade Con, and Dice Tower West were highlights of the year!
However, 60 games is not really a good pool of games to make a Top 10 list.
So how about a Top 5?
Yes, this post is going to be about the Top 5 games I played in 2020.
Adaptability! That’s my middle name.
Those who say it’s “Brian” are heathens.
Note that these games weren’t released in 2020 (None of them were, in fact). These were just games I played in 2020. There’s no way I could ever (even in a good year) play enough 2020 games to actually have a Top 10 games of 2020 list.
I know that it may appear that I’m on Renegade Games’ payroll, but I’m really not! It’s just they happen to make (or license, since all of the games below from them are also produced by another company as well) great games.
Looking at last year’s Top 10, it’s sad that the other 5 games on that list I didn’t get to play this year.
Maybe next year!
On that note, let’s get this post started!
Read More