Dude! Take Your Turn!
A Gaming Life
App Review – Football Highlights 2052
(Edit: Peter has graciously corrected a couple of things. Rather than mention them here, I’ll note the edit in each spot. I apologize for the errors. Thanks, Peter!)
Mike Fitzgerald knows card games.
My first exposure to his work was the brilliant trick-taking game Diamonds, but lately he’s been in a sports frame of mind.
Baseball Highlights 2045 was a fun little game playing a futuristic version of baseball, but only really the “highlights” of the game (hence the name).
Last year, though, Football Highlights 2052 was Kickstarted and I finally received my copy of it in December, first getting it played in February.
Then COVID-19 hit and the game’s still at work waiting for me to return to the office and my normal 2-player game opponent.
So when I heard that Peter Kossits, the developer of the excellent Baseball Highlights 2045 app, was doing the app for Football Highlights 2052, I began panting as I enjoy this game a lot more.
The app is now out on iOS and Android devices. So how is it?
Let’s take a look.
Q&A – Stephen Buonocore (President of Stronghold Games)
(Edit: And it’s live! Let me know what you think now that it’s up and running in the comments. I also did a post about it.)
(Edit: Apparently this has now been pushed back to June 16)
You may have heard something last week, though most likely it slipped under your radar.
I know it did mine.
Did you know that there is a Terraforming Mars Big Box coming to Kickstarter on June 9?
That’s, like, next week!
I know! I was shocked too. And seemingly many of you were too judging by all the visitors I had for the first few days afterward.
I reached out to Stronghold Games President Stephen Buonocore to see if he’d be willing to answer some questions about the upcoming Kickstarter campaign, and he graciously agreed.
Because that’s just the kind of guy he is.
In the Q&A, you’ll get some juicy tidbits about the Big Box as well as some caginess about the future (which is totally understandable).
Check them out below, and thanks to Stephen for being such a great sport and giving such comprehensive answers.
Here’s the pre-launch page.
Speaking of juicy, check this one out.
Boardgame Geek Top 100 – Played or Play? 70-61
It’s week 4 of my weekly look at the Boardgame Geek Top 100 games to see how many I’ve played and how many I even want to play.
It’s a rather blah week, for a lot of reasons, but also just because there aren’t many games in this week’s entry that I’ve played!
It’s like the Cosmos saw all those comments like “oh, you’ve played a lot of these games!” and said “Let’s have no more than that.”
Still, there is two of my favourite games on this list, so there is that.
It’s also the first week of June, which means Summer is just around the corner!
Let’s have a picture of a nice sunset and beach to lift all of our spirits.
It’s something I think that we could all use.
And on that note, let’s begin!
Roll for the Galaxy – App Beta First Impressions
A while back, I reported that Temple Gates, developer of the wonderful Race for the Galaxy and Shards of Infinity apps (the latter of which a review is coming soon!), was going to be rolling out the beta for the app version of Roll for the Galaxy, the dice version of Tom Lehmann’s classic card game.
(Is that enough links in the first paragraph? Should I do more?)
Well, now the beta’s finally arrived!
I’ve been in it since Friday night (May 29) and I’ve been monkeying around with it all weekend, both in multiplayer and single-player games against the AI.
How well is it going right off the bat?
(Please note that all screenshots are from the beta so the graphics could change, and these impressions are also from the beta, obviously, so things could change in gameplay as well)
Let’s take a look.
New to Me – May 2020
We’re back!
Pandemic notwithstanding, I managed to actually get a new to me game (and a new to me expansion) play in with the wife this last month.
I have some new games coming so hopefully this trend will continue into June as well.
It does feel good to finally be playing games again.
It felt wrong to suddenly not be playing games, like watching Betwitched and then suddenly having the second Darren sprung on you.
Be that as it may, we’ll keep this game-playing train rolling!
I’m posting this today even though there’s one more weekend left in May because I know what we’re playing this weekend and there’s nothing new. Going to play some old favourites instead.
So, without further adieu (all of my adieu was eaten by a giant dragon from another realm anyway), let’s get started!
Imbalanced Boardgames – What’s Wrong With These People?
Yesterday, in the midst of watching my blog views go to new heights because of a small bit of Terraforming Mars news, I saw this tweet from Robin David on Twitter:
Cold blooded! pic.twitter.com/hAZLBeEjfd
— Robin David (@robinwriting) May 27, 2020
This tweet highlighted comments from designer Richard Garfield in an interview with the DiceBreaker web site.
In the interview, Garfield is talking about his many game designs, his thoughts on designing, and especially the many deck-building games that he has been involved with, all the way back to Magic: the Gathering.
However, what my post (and Robin’s tweet) is about is his view on designing “different” games.
This view saddens me, even as I know it’s true and I sometimes have to stop myself from succumbing to that feeling myself.
Take Root, for example. Up to six different factions (and more with the new expansion that just came out), all with asymmetric powers and different requirements for playing well.
Boardgame Geek Top 100 – Played or Play? 80-71
It’s week 3 of our weekly look through the Boardgame Geek Top 100 to see what games I’ve played and which ones I may be interested in playing.
Last week I got educated about Dominion, maybe even enough to try it again some day.
What will this week bring?
Maybe a treatise on train games?
You got that in you, Dave? (let’s see if he reads this…)
I picture Dave like this.
Anyway, this week there are a lot more that I’ve played, and some good stuff in here.
And some…well, not so good stuff. At least for me.
So let’s get started!
Wingspan Digital App on Steam – Beta Impressions
Wingspan is one of the more popular games out there right at the moment, with it arriving in January 2019 by sitting on a wire and crapping onto a whole bunch of tables.
No, sorry, that’s taking the bird metaphor a bit too far. It’s actually an excellent game that I’ve played three times now (twice at Dice Tower West!). It would probably have made my Top 25 Games I’ve Played list if I hadn’t played it shortly after doing that list.
This game, designed by Elizabeth Hargrave and published by Stonemaier Games, is a tableau-building game where each card is a unique bird in North America (unless you’re playing with the European expansion cards).
And now it’s coming to digital form, as announced last year.
Over last weekend, the beta was opened up and I was a part of it.
I think it may be unusual that a beta for a game is only open for 4 days, but that’s the way that developer Monster Couch wanted it.
(Please note that all images are screen shots taken from the beta, so it’s not necessarily final graphics. Also these impressions are from the beta, so the interface and stuff might change too)
It’s looking pretty good even in beta form!
Talisman – Legendary Decks
In addition to the three new characters that Nomad Games recently released for the digital version of Talisman, they also released a series of what are called “Legendary Decks” for the base game and a number of the expansions.
These Legendary Decks are for the base game, Reaper expansion, Highlands expansion, and the Dungeon expansion.
Dude! Take Your Turn! 