Dude! Take Your Turn!
A Gaming Life
New to Me – August 2020
What’s this?
Yes, it’s a “new to me games” post!
We skipped July because we didn’t play anything new (thanks, COVID!). However, in August we did actually get some games played and even one new one!
The Cult is getting a little antsy, but they do realize that “new to me” games are hard to come by in the pandemic era. They’re not rebelling like they would have before all of this hit. I have to thank them for that.
Instead of playing games, we’ve been streaming lots of cool TV, including the entire 7th season of Agents of SHIELD and now we’re watching all six seasons of Bosch on Amazon Prime.
What a great series. Titus Welliver is awesome in the role and the supporting cast is also wonderful. We haven’t watched The Wire yet but a number of alumni from that series are in this one and they all do great jobs.
But yes, I would like to play more games, and we are vowing to ourselves that we will do more in September.
With my month-long vacation coming to an end, I hope to be doing more blogging. This week will hopefully see at least a couple of posts (though maybe not everything I promised in my last post though I do plan on doing all of that in the next couple of weeks).
So, without further adieu (all of my adieu was drained of all its health by a couple of Vampire hippies), let’s begin!
Read MoreMaracaibo Coming to Digital!
How about a little news for the last day of my vacation?
*sniff* Sorry, let me just absorb that sentence again. *sob*
Anyway, yesterday it was announced that Maracaibo, a 2019 game published by Board & Dice, designed by Alexander Pfister with art by Fiore GmbH and Aline Kirrmann, is going to be coming to Android and iOS this year! (No word on Steam, which is surprising).
The digital adaptation will be designed by a pretty new company, Spiralburst Studio (makers of the Hexicon strategy word game on portable devices).
This game has intrigued me for a while but I’ve never actually seen it on the table yet (it was played at least once at one of our game days but I was playing something else unfortunately).
What is the game?
Let’s blurb this because, as I’ve said many times before, I’ve never played this one.
“Maracaibo, the new strategy game for 1-4 players by Alexander Pfister, is set in the Caribbean during the 17th century. The players try to increase their influence in three nations in four rounds with a play time of 40 minutes per player.
The players sail on a round course through the Caribbean, e.g., you have city tiles where you are able to perform various actions or deliver goods to. One special feature is an implemented quest mode over more and various tiles, which tells the player, who chase after it, a little story.
As a player, you move with your ship around the course, managing it by using cards like in other games from Alexander Pfister.”
Sounds great, doesn’t it?
I’ve heard that if you like Great Western Trail (and I do like it), you’ll like this one.
I guess we’ll see about that, won’t we?
Read MoreDeluxe Edition of Castles of Mad King Ludwig?
Edit (12/21/20) – And it has now been announced!
Imagine my surprise the other day when I got an email from Bezier Games with an intriguing link.
After the massive success of the Deluxe edition of Suburbia on Kickstarter, Bezier Games is looking at the possibility of doing a Deluxe edition of it’s other hit, The Castles of Mad King Ludwig.
This is also posted on Boardgame Geek:
“Brainstorming this week: What would you like to see in a collector’s edition of Castles of Mad King Ludwig?
We’re looking into this possibility after a few requests from our fans, so we’d love to get your feedback on this survey”
Are you interested in new art? New tiles? Any new rules?
Bezier Games wants to know.
Here’s the survey.
I’m really impressed with the Deluxe Edition of Suburbia though I haven’t played it yet.
A deluxe version of Castles of Mad King Ludwig could be insane!
If you’re a fan of the game, go to the survey and let them know what you would like.
Some people would like the Polish game artwork, though others find it too busy to actually be usable (though it’s definitely prettier).
Others would just like some new rules.
Let them know what you think, and maybe we’ll get a cool Deluxe version of this one as well!
Are you a fan of this game like I am? What do you think of a possible deluxe edition?
I would definitely have to check this out.
Fantastic Factories: Manufactions Coming to Kickstarter
Really quick post for Friday because, well, it’s Friday. I’ve already done two posts this week and I just returned from an 8-hour drive around British Columbia that was really beautiful but also really exhausting.
So let’s talk about Fantastic Factories: Manufactions!
I first got the chance to play the wonderful tableau-building card game Fantastic Factories, designed by Joseph Z. Chen and Justin Faulkner, at a Dragonflight Con a couple of years ago.
Oh yeah, it was also when I got the chance to meet and play a game with Christian!
Joseph was running the game and did a great job of it, and the game itself is amazing.
Sadly, I missed the chance to pick it up but I did get a chance to play it with my wife at Dice Tower West in February.
Read MoreKickstarter Backing – Arcana Rising
Sometimes it’s a good thing to be subscribed to the various boardgame company emails.
I would normally say “especially as a reviewer,” but that hasn’t really paid out much.
Instead, I’m saying this as a consumer who was alerted to the Kickstarter campaign for Grey Fox Games‘ Arcana Rising, a Kickstarter campaign that ends on August 28.
The game is designed by Tim Armstrong with art by Yaroslav Radetskyi.
What is Arcana Rising and why did I back it?
Let’s take a quick look.
Read MoreBoardgame Geek Top 200 – Play or Played – #200-191
After finally getting the last post for the BGG Top 100 games done last week, I was a bit at a loss.
What to do for a follow-up?
I’m still not getting many games played and while I am behind on a review or two (would be even more if my review copy of The City would actually get through Canada Customs!) ultimately there’s not a lot to write about.
Then I got to thinking: people really seemed to like me posting about a bunch of games, some of which I’ve never played so really don’t have anything to say about.
So why not keep the ball rolling and count down from #200 to #101?
Ok, ok, I did kind of spoil it by mentioning the possibility in the post last week.
So sue me.
I’ve discovered that I like writing about games, even those I haven’t played much of, if at all, and I wanted to keep doing it.
Consider it my COVID go-to topic.
It gives me something to write about.
And there was much rejoicing…
Let’s see if we can set a record for how many blurbs are in one post.
So on that note, let’s get started!
Book Review -Arnhem: the Battle for the Bridges by Anthony Beevor
I’ve been reading a really long time. My mom was amazed at how I was reading even before I went to Kindergarten. She never really had a chance to read to me because of that.
For only a little shorter amount of time (like 2nd-3rd grade), I’ve been reading military history books on World War II. I do remember in 3rd grade I was reading long books like Battle: the Story of the Bulge by John Toland.
I was also always a fan of Cornelius Ryan’s A Bridge Too Far and the movie based on it, the epic story of the massive airborne assault on three major bridges attempting to get over the Rhine river in September 1944. The cast is amazing, but the story itself is just so good.
The Allies, thinking the war is close to being over, decide to make an effort to end the war even more quickly, and it all goes wrong.
Unfortunately, A Bridge Too Far has been my only exposure to Operation Market Garden, so I was really happy to finally read another book about the whole thing.
Anthony Beevor’s Arnhem: The Battle for the Bridges, 1944 is an excellent book about the hubris of the Allies, the horrible mistakes that people in charge like Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery made, and ultimately the terrible effect on the Dutch people as the operation failed to fulfill all of its promises.
What was Operation Market Garden?
The Allied army had raced across France after the D-Day landings in Normandy, with the German army retreating in total disarray. It looked like the war would be over by Christmas.
The OP & AEG Announce New Marvel Smash Up Factions
Even after all of this time, I’m still kind of on the fence regarding the idea of Alderac Entertainment Group and the OP teaming up to do an officially licensed Smash Up expansion.
The idea is cool, and I’m sure the execution will be there, but I’m not quite as excited as I would be for a “regular” one that’s full of funny factions and parodies.
On the other hand, what they’ve revealed so far has shown some really cool artwork and interesting card ideas that make me think this could work.
Especially if they have rules for combining sets even though the terminology is different (“character” in Marvel vs “minion” in the regular Smash Up).
As part of the online GenCon convention that happened over the weekend, a number of presentations that would normally happen with a packed house instead happened on streaming video, and the OP was no different.
They announced four of the eight factions that will be in the game (two of which we already know, so I guess they only announced two new factions): Avengers, Hydra, Ultimates and Masters of Evil.
Boardgame Geek Top 100 – Play or Played – #10-1
It’s been almost 4 weeks since the last post in this series looking at the Top 100 Games ranked on Boardgame Geek.
I was riding high, feeling all the love the series was creating and posting something almost every week day.
And then I hit a wall.
Call it a bit of depression, just a bit of the blahs, I don’t know what it was.
I really hit a point where I was wondering what the hell I was doing.
What’s the point of it all? When it comes right down to it, I don’t really know that much about games. I don’t play them nearly as much as most people who write about them.
Even less so now.
Who really cares what I think?
Am I just putting this crap out there because I want to hear myself talk?
Maybe those two posts about the Terraforming Mars: Big Box causing my blog traffic to increase almost 1000x over a week or so period and then watching everything plummet back to where it was before just kind of got me down.
Whatever it was, I just couldn’t bring myself to sit down and write this post.
Every time I did, I couldn’t think of anything that even interested me to say, much less interest all of you.
So I went back to playing Griftlands.
(side note: you must try this game. It is sooooooooo good!)
You know what it took to get me back to blogging? To actually sit down and write something?
A combination of a friend of mine who had asked my blogging advice about using WordPress actually starting his blog (and me finding it when he tweeted a link to it) and getting the notification that a former student of mine is now following the blog (I hope she actually reads this, and if so, thank you!).
At that point I realized that I needed to get out of this funk and actually start doing what I enjoy doing: writing about games.
Who cares if only a few people see it?
Even if only a few people really notice what I’m doing, that’s still better than nobody noticing.
And I like doing it, so why should I stop?
Anyway, I know this isn’t the “funny” intro that you’re used to in this series, but I thought you deserved to know why you’ve been having to hold your breath for four weeks for the next entry.
And really, you shouldn’t hold your breath that long.
Your face might freeze that way!
On that note, let’s start the Top 10!
Ascension Tactics on Kickstarter
Usual readers of this blog (Hi Bob!) might remember that I’m a big fan of the Ascension franchise. I love this deckbuilding game to death, though I’m more of a fan of it on the iPad than I am on the table (all of that shuffling for a 10-15 minute game can get a bit tedious).
When Stoneblade Entertainment announced that they were Kickstarting a new variant of this deckbuilding classic, I had to check it out.
Ascension Tactics: the Miniature Deckbuilding Game is the result of all that.
This has classic Ascension gameplay, but it’s also a skirmishing game where you are commanding heroes on a map, trying to eliminate your opponent(s) and (depending on the scenario) take control of certain areas to earn enough honour tokens to win the game.
There’s even a Cultist miniature in the game!
Dude! Take Your Turn! 