Dude! Take Your Turn!
A Gaming Life
Digital Charterstone – Story Trailer Released
I’m not big on the concept of legacy games.
I just don’t play a game enough times in a row to actually sit down with the same group of players and work our way through it.
Want to get me to try a legacy game?
Put it on digital.
I told Acram Digital that very thing, and they obviously listened to me since they are now working on Charterstone from Stonemaier Games, the immensely popular legacy game that was all the rage in 2017.
I take full credit for this! You can thank me with cookies.
(Editor – I want to come visit the fantasy land you apparently live in)
Here’s the game blurb just so you know what this game actually is:
“The prosperous Kingdom of Greengully, ruled for centuries by the Forever King, has issued a decree to its citizens to colonize the vast lands beyond its borders. In an effort to start a new village, the Forever King has selected six citizens for the task, each of whom has a unique set of skills they use to build their charter.”
And today, Acram Digital released the story trailer for the digital version of the game that’s coming out in 2020.
It looks pretty cool, and it’s nice to know that it’s coming out on Steam (you can put it on your wishlist now!), iOS, Android and Switch.
It will be nice to see what all the hype was about without actually having to dedicate 10-15 game days to the game.
I don’t know how people find the time to do that, but they must.
Is this something that’s intriguing to you?
Let me know in the comments!
I know I will probably be there on Day 1.
Review – Fantasy Realms
Sometimes for dinner you just want a big, juicy steak grilled to perfection with a mashed potato, something that you can savor for a long time while you’re enjoying good company and a glass of wine.
And sometimes you just want a few White Castle sliders that you can shove into your mouth that you can enjoy like the typical college student.
Both are enjoyable, in their own way and at their own time.
(Sorry, I don’t have enough knowledge to make a similar vegetarian analogy, but I’m sure you can think of one!)
While your typical Vital Lacerda game can be an example of the former, Fantasy Realms is a perfect example of the latter.
Quick, not very filling but yet incredibly delicious to eat play two or three times in quick succession.
Fantasy Realms is a card game designed by Bruce Glassco with art by Octographics. It’s published by Wizkids in North America and plays 3-6 players. It was published in 2017.
New to Me – October 2019
October was SHUX month.
SHUX is a 3-day boardgame convention in Vancouver that was simply phenomenal. I had so much fun, and would have had even more fun if I hadn’t felt so terrible.
Maybe next year!
You know what conventions mean, right?
No, not being told by multiple people that I need to take a shower.
That means a bunch of new to me games!
The Cult of the New to Me was very excited to hear I would be attending this convention. They wanted to see all of the new stuff that I would be talking about when I came back.
They also appear to be a bunch of lazy gits, because while they get mad at me for playing too many *new* games (not just new to me, but games that just came out), they never appear to actually play any “new to them” games themselves. I’m sensing some kind of scam here.
Are they just here for the free cookies?
Anyway, prepare for a *really* long post. There are ten games on this list. Usually, I go into a bit more of an explanation of how to play, but that’s a bit abbreviated this time.
Leo Tolstoy ain’t writing this blog.
So without further ado (my ado got covered in vegetables and thus I had to throw it away anyway), let’s get started!
New Designer Diary out for Clank in Space: CyberStation 11
Just a quick news post (hasn’t been one of those for a while!) to give you more information on the exciting new Clank in Space (my #3 best game played of all time) expansion, Cyberstation 11.
Designer Evan Lorentz has posted to the Dire Wolf Digital page a lot of information on just how this expansion came about.
App Expansion Review – Talisman Origins – Beyond the Veil
Talisman and Talisman: Origins are two of the really great digital board game adaptions. The former because it looks so tedious on the table but in digital form you can start a game, go for a while, then turn it off and come back to it. This rectifies any bad feelings I might have about the game.
The latter, for reasons I outlined here.
Playing single-player Talisman with a story behind it is kind of neat. It’s not going to blow you away, but it’s fun. And you don’t have to sit there forever if you “lose your next turn.”
I liked the first expansion I played (but second one released), The Legend of Pandora’s Box, but Nomad Games was nice enough to give me a code for the first bigger expansion, Beyond the Veil.
Would it hold up?
Sadly, it doesn’t. Too many quests that are just tedious along with one quest’s questionable set up that can actually make it unplayable has me wishing Beyond the Veil had stayed there for a bit more maintenance.
In Beyond the Veil, you are playing mostly as the Black Knight who begins the story just wanting to go out and have some evil fun, tormenting the other denizens of the Talisman universe.
Podcast Episode 1 – At SHUX19 with Paula Deming!
Yes, that’s right.
I’ve started a podcast!
Well, kind of.
This is going to be fairly irregular, and almost “guerrilla podcasting” quality (I don’t have a fancy microphone or recording studio or anything like that…just my phone). This will be a way for me to perhaps record my thoughts in a different format that might not work as well in a written form (or might just be too long).
But I thought it would be cool, and I wanted to make sure the first episode was awesome.
Thus, it was a no-brainer to see if Paula Deming, boardgamer and Youtube star of Things Get Dicey (along with a bunch of other videos) would help me kick things off.
Graciously, she and her husband Lawson agreed to take some time out of their busy SHUX 2019 schedule to record an interview with me. We did it in the gaming hall, so that’s the background buzz you hear.
I am so grateful to them for that.
We discuss a wide range of subjects, from what got them into boardgaming, how Things Get Dicey came about, and the joys and hazards of streaming video game plays.
Paula also made time to mention a couple of other very cool boardgaming personalities, so I’ve linked to them as well.
The finished audio is below!
https://anchor.fm/dude-take-your-turn/embed/episodes/Episode-1—At-SHUX19-With-Paula-Deming-e6e474
(And while I’m trying to figure out why the embed isn’t working, you can listen to it here)
Let me know what you think in the comments.
Paula’s social Media
Twitter: @ThingsGetDicey or @paulademing
Youtube: Paula Deming
Instagram: paolobandita
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/paulademing/videos
Death By Monsters Podcast: Twitter (DeathxMonsters) and Instagram (DeathbyMonstersPodcast)
Ross
@moregamespls (Twitter)
Moregamesplease (Instagram)
https://linktr.ee/moregamesplease (Website)
Christian
Twitter (@takeyourchits)
Instagram (takeyourchits)
Intro and outro music is Tribute to the Kings (Trafic de Blues) through a Creative Commons license
New to Me – September 2019
It had been a quiet September at Dude Central. There was a birthday party that nobody came to (it’s not my fault I accidentally put September 9, 2018 on the invitations. How was I supposed to know that everybody would actually look at the year and think the party had already happened?)
My birthday post did get some traffic, though, so that was nice.
There was almost an insurrection (yet again) because the only three new to me games had been from 2018 and 2019.
The Cult of the New to Me was not happy.
There was a lot of yelling!
But then, just as the month was about to end, I played a 2016 game and a classic from 2009.
Everybody was happy (or at least appeased) and we could all go down to the bar and drink our mineral waters.
Until next month, at least.
So, without further adieu (I had to use all of my adieu to turn the power back on anyway), let’s begin!
App Expansion Review – Talisman: The Clockwork Kingdom
I’ve done a couple of reviews now for Talisman: Origins and one of its expansions, but there’s also a new digital-only expansion out for the base Talisman game as well.
As we all know, Talisman is the roll and move game where you are journeying around the Talisman board trying to eventually get to the Crown of Command to do…whatever the current game’s goal is. With so many expansions out, and with all of them adding more possibilities, who knows what you’re going to be doing this time?
Now, Nomad Games and Asmodee Digital have released a new digital-only expansion for the game called The Clockwork Kingdom.
In this expansion, technology has come to Talisman and players are trying to restore the kingdom to its former glory by constructing machines and other automata, using them to further their own goals.
Deciding on Buying a Game – Crystal Palace
One of the things about us gamers are that, yes I know it may sound strange to you, we all like to buy games.
Some much more than others! But even those who are successful in curbing their game buying (or acquiring them in some other manner) still like to buy them. I’m sure they do get at least a little bit of a thrill when they pick up a new game, undo the shrinkwrap, open it (and sniff that new game freshness!!!!), and start punching counters.
I’ve gone through long periods where I’ve successfully fought that urge, and then some periods like recently where I totally succumbed.
Something I’ve never really thought deeply about, though, is how we make these game-buying decisions. It’s not always just a basic “oh, that game looks cool” or “I’ve played this before and want it in my collection” thought process.
Sometimes it’s back and forth like a point in a Bianca Andreescu tennis match (and welcome to all of you who came here after Googling her name! Stay for the boardgame content, please! We have cookies.)
I recently received a newsletter email from Capstone Games, and in it was mentioned a new game coming out in November called Crystal Palace.
It’s a game designed by Carsten Lauber about the World’s Fair in 1851 London.
App Review – Talisman: Origins – The Legend of Pandora’s Box
Fresh off of my review of Talisman: Origins, the solo Talisman game for Steam and mobile devices, let’s talk about the latest expansion for it (discussion of the previous expansion, Beyond the Veil, will be coming later).
As with the base game, Talisman: Origins – The Legend of Pandora’s Box is a story-based solo version of Talisman developed by Nomad Games. In the game, you are basically playing solo Talisman, but using story-based “quests” that tell tales from the Talisman universe.
For those of you who don’t know (and for some reason didn’t read my original review), Talisman is a roll-and-move adventure where you are moving your character around the board based on dice rolls, drawing and resolving adventure cards, all in pursuit of some goal. In the original, you are trying to get to the Crown of Command, but in Talisman: Origins, you are trying to do whatever the quest is.
The Legend of Pandora’s Box tells the story of a Dwarf and his Leprechaun friend as they are trying to stop an influx of creatures from the Nether Realms.
Dude! Take Your Turn! 