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A Gaming Life
Tekhenu – New Picture!
We’re all still enjoying enduring all of this self-isolation. For that reason, a lot of my blog hits have been on apps, mobile, and online gaming.
Yet there are still lots of great boardgame-specific things going on, and here’s another post about one of those.
Remember the announcementof Tekhenu: Obelisk of the Sun, the latest game from Teotihuacan master Daniele Tascini?
Board & Dice games just emailed with an awesome picture of the new game, and it looks amazing!!!
Not only does it give you a little more insight into how the game works, with the light and shadow side of the obelisk, but it just looks so cool even without all of that.
New to Me – March 2020
As we move into April, the self-isolation continues.
For some people, that was their normal behaviour anyway, but it’s still hard to be sequestered away from seeing pretty much anybody.
I’ve been working from home since March 16 and it’s been quite the adjustment.
Even more so has been the lack of game days. Much of my gaming was at work on lunch, while the rest of it was on our Sunday game days that have been cancelled for the foreseeable future.
Hence, this is going to be a thin post.
Not as thin as the rationales behind some of the Cult of the New to Me leadership revolts!
Also, I should probably let you know that this may be the last “New to Me” games post in a while, because my source of these games is totally dry until we can get back to socializing.
Just be warned.
So, without further adieu (all of my adieu is now in Evidence after Mr. Walton’s murder anyway), let’s begin!
Sagrada App – Early Access on Steam – First Look
(Edit 3/31/20) – Sagrada is now out on full release, iOS & Android! It’s $9.99 CDN for me, so maybe $7.99 US? Not sure. It requires you to be in Portrait mode, which I guess makes sense.
Here’s hoping that notifications work on the mobile platforms (it did ask me if I wanted them enabled, but I’ve been asked that before and still not received them). Dire Wolf told me that Steam notifications would be coming soon. Other Dire Wolf games have great notifications, so I’m confident that this one will too.
It’s unclear if the multiplayer bugs I mention below have been fixed or not. I’ll keep updating this post once I know more.
(original “first look” below)
Dire Wolf Digital has a great history of digital games, from the wonderful Raiders of the North Sea (hey, I should probably review that sometime, eh?) to the very good adaptation of Yellow & Yangtze (I’m not a huge fan of the game itself but the digital adaptation is great!). They’ve also done Lotus (something I’ve reviewed!) and Lanterns (another good app I should probably review at some point)
Recently, Dire Wolf released Floodgate Games‘ excellent stained glass window dice-placement game, Sagrada, on Steam Early Access.
I did a review of the boardgame so I’m not going to go into great detail on how the game plays.
Basically, though, a number of coloured dice are randomly taken from a bag and rolled (2 x the number of players plus one more die). Then, in turn order each player drafts a die to put into their stained glass window pane, following a few rules:
- No dice of the same colour or the same number can be placed next to each other.
- You must place the die adjacent (even diagonally) to a die that’s already in your window.
- You must follow any placement restrictions on your window (if a square has a colour, the die placed there must be of that colour; same with a number)
Once each player has chosen, then players choose again in reverse order (so the last player chooses two dice in a row).
Do that for 10 rounds and score.
Go to the review for more detail on how to play.
How is the app?
Let’s take a look.
Expansion Review – Smash Up: Monster Smash
Wow, two Smash Up expansion reviews in two weeks? After a months-long hiatus?
What can that mean?
It means that I’ve been combining new expansions while playing them for review.
What, did you think I meant global annihilation or something like that?
Let’s save that for the Nightly News.
Anyway, this will probably be the last one for a while as with all of the social distancing going on, I won’t be playing the other new expansions I have anytime soon.
But one day, they will return.
With all the viciousness of King Rex.
Anyway, today I’m going to be talking about the Monster Smash expansion. This is an expansion of, well, monsters and their ilk.
Thus, the set is already much more thematic than the Awesome Level 9000 set.
Twilight Struggle: Red Sea – Conflict in the Horn of Africa – From GMT Games
(Edit – 12/2/22) – This has now been charged which means it’s going to be shipping this month! Can’t wait to get my hands on it.
We may all be stuck at home, either working from home (hopefully) or quarantined (if so, I hope you are doing well and stay safe), but business goes on, especially in the gaming world.
Though GMT Games is following the California order to stay home and close everything for now, that doesn’t stop new announcements from still happening all the time, and in this age of social distancing, what can be better than playing a boardgame or two with your family and loved ones?
Yesterday, GMT Games put out their monthly update that includes their latest P500 game additions (once the game hits 500 orders, it goes into the pipeline for production) and I was stunned to see a marvelous-sounding game show up.
(Ok, I wasn’t *that* stunned as I heard about it on Twitter a couple of weeks ago, but still…stunned).
Grant over at the excellent Players’ Aid blog usually does a post about the latest update at some point shortly after it comes out, but I had to get this one out quickly.
What was this news that made my jaw drop?
Jason Matthews is creating a 2-player “lunch time game” addition to his classic Twilight Struggle 2005 hit.
Called (and I will not be typing this whole thing every time I talk about it) Twilight Struggle: Red Sea – Conflict in the Horn of Africa, this game is the Cold War but confined to, well, the Red Sea area and the Horn of Africa (funny how that works).
This would be the fourth in GMT’s Lunchtime Games series (after the wonderful Fort Sumter, the long-awaited Flashpoint: South China Sea and the recently added Red Flag Over Paris). The concept of making games specifically for play at lunch (rather than just “oh, this game only takes 45 minutes, so we can play it at lunch) is very admirable.
Expansion Review – Smash Up: Awesome Level 9000
It’s been a few months since I’ve done a Smash Up expansion review. Between the Christmas holidays and work stuff getting the way, it’s taken a while to get the required three plays in to review the first of the five new expansions I bought recently (I am all caught up now except the two I don’t want!).
It’s only fitting that I started going through all of the expansions with the Awesome Level 9000 one.
It was the first expansion to the game that came out in 2013. It’s also the first expansion to come out for the Smash Up app.
The factions in this one are interesting with one rather unique one.
The factions are also not quite as refined as some subsequent ones have been. That doesn’t matter too much, though, as they are still fun to play!
As with previous expansion reviews, I’m not going to go over how to play Smash Up. You can go to the original review for that one.
New to Me – February 2020
We’re a little late with the “New to Me Games” post for February, but there is definitely a good reason.
Last week was the Cult of the New to Me fundraising car wash!
Unfortunately, the flyers I sent out and put up had the wrong week on them, so nobody ever showed.
This was me on Friday. There was some other charity fundraiser happening inside.
They looked happy.
Anyway, as predicted, going to Dice Tower West also contributed to the delay, as I played four new to me games there!
But here now, finally, are all of the new to me games played in February 2020.
There being a 2016 and 2018 game in there, there weren’t even any attempted revolts this month!
Gotta keep them sated.
So, without further adieu (all of my adieu was intercepted and run back for a touchdown anyway), let’s begin!
Three 2020 Games from Bezier Games
Being on a game company’s mailing list is an interesting thing.
It’s cool that a little blog like mine is actually on a list where they send you news and say
“this is embargoed until…” a date. It makes me feel important (even though I’m not).
Today’s bit of embargoed news is that Bezier Games has announced three new games that are going to be coming out in 2020, and I’m happy to bring them to you. One of my favourite early posts was my Q&A with Phoebe Wild from Bezier Games (though I’m not sure she’s with them anymore), which also made me feel like this blog was something, so I’m happy to help them get the word out about some of their stuff.
I’ll get the one that I’m not as invested in out of the way first.
Silver Coin is the third stand-alone game in the Silver series of card games put out by Bezier Games.
The original Silver game, put out in early 2019, was a card-shedding game where you were trying to have the fewest number of werewolves in the cards in front of you. It’s not a game that I have tried, but it sounds interesting.
Maybe one day.
Preview – Dead Reckoning
John D. Clair is one of my favourite designers, and I find the “card-crafting” game mechanic to be very neat.
Space Base is #16 in my best games played of all time list and its position is well-deserved (even though it’s not a card-crafting game).
For that reason, one of my best experiences at Dice Tower West last week was a sit-down meeting and play with Alderac Entertainment Group CEO John Zinser and Clair (along with developer Mark Wooton) to play Clair’s new pirate game coming to Kickstarter in May, Dead Reckoning.
It was an amazing experience, really making me feel like part of the boardgame media. Wow, an actual individual demonstration! An appointment that was on my calendar and everything!
It helps that the game seems great too.
Before getting into the nuts and bolts of the game, though, let me say that the Ian O’Toole artwork is wonderful in this game (but then, isn’t it always with him?).
Also, please note that while everything is near final, changes could be made to the game and we played an (almost finished) prototype so the bits and pieces may change after this post too (like stabilizing the middle mast of each ship, which kept popping out when it was grabbed).
Also, I didn’t actually get pictures of everything (whoops!).
Let’s take a look.
Viscounts of the West Kingdom now on Kickstarter
I should have posted this yesterday, but wanted to get the Dice Tower Con post out and I don’t like to do two major posts in one day.
Yesterday morning, the Kickstarter for one of my most anticipated games went live.
Viscounts of the West Kingdom, designed by Shem Philips and S J Macdonald and with art by Mihajlo Dimitrievski, will be published by Garphill Games and Renegade Game Studios later in 2020.
Dude! Take Your Turn! 