Spring is here. The days are longer and the sun has definitely got his hat on.
Of course this now means that the sun likes to invade our dining room in the latter half of the day, forcing us to pulled the blind down and prevent the room heating up as well as stop the sun’s glare making all the sleeved cards unreadable.
But this won’t be a first world problem for much longer. This month saw our garage conversion begin. As always with building works, it’s currently messy and noisy (like meal time for a baby), but it’ll be worth it when it’s completed when we can have a dedicated board game space.
AGEMONIA: NEW HEROES – After we completed the epic experience that was GLOOMHAVEN, we were both super hungry for more big box fantasy gaming. AGEMONIA appeared from nowhere (via Paul Grogan’s YouTube channel) and I liked what I saw. It was a long wait but it was very much worth it. And now we have another, much smaller kickstarter, arriving to complement the bog box game. It includes boards and booklets for the two extra characters, more event and equipment cards for the decks, and more difficult enemies if that’s your thing. It also includes dividers for the many, many cards of the game, something I was originally excited for but ended up disappointed by. And then there is the errata. With such a big game, typos and rules errors were expected. To fix this they chucked in some replacement cards (yay) and a whole bunch of stickers (nay) for the manual. Now, I did find out that you could have paid money for an updated manual, but I think this was about £25, which sucks. Now I have the unenviable task of going through the manuals and adding more stickers than a 1980’s teenager’s Panini collection. All in all this adds a negative edge to the product as a whole, made worse becasue more errors have been discovered since the errata went to print. So our fixes are already out of date, nearly four years after the orginal campaign. But that’s crowdfundung.
REBIRTH – This is an odd one. Normally a game appears in the next section, New To The Table, after it appears here in New Arrivals. But after a gaming day with @getintogames saw us get to try REBIRTH, I allowed impulse to take over and ordered a copy from Out Of Town Games (under new management). It’s not the ‘most amazing game in the world’ that I just couldn’t live without, but it really left an impression on us both. Despite it’s big beautiful board and hoards of tokens, the gameplay itself is super simple. You’ll have one token in your hand and on your turn you must place it. The tokens come in a variety of three. What I’m getting at is there isn’t much in the way of analisis paralysis here which is great for anyone playing the game with me. And it seems like I’m not the only person that Craig and Becky have influenced to purchase this great game.
REBIRTH – We didn’t know much about this one before our visit to @getintogames but people seemed excited about it so I took the chance to have a go. Well, as you can see above, I definitely liked it because we ordered our own copy a few days later.
The game is not what I thought. From seeing it played several tables away at a previous group meetup, it had the look of some sort of territory control war game. Instead, it’s a quick flowing and quite simple area control game. Pick up a face down tile and place it. Score some points and it’s on to the next player. It has a post apocalyptic theme to it that feels weird (I also thought it was an historic game based on it’s Scotland and Ireland setting when I first spotted it in the wild from afar) but it’s just a thin layer of theme, easily ignored. You place tokens and try to maximise your score, paying attention to your opponents so that their placements don’t get out of hand or get in your way. It plays pretty good at 2, but that first 4-player game was probably REBIRTH at it’s best. We’re still to try the Ireland side, so looking forward to that.
SETI – We followed up REBIRTH by diving straight into SETI. I love CGE games and this has the same quirky production of previous games. The excellent rewood components, the peculiar non-standard board. It’s great. As for the gameplay itself? Well, it was good. There’s a really nice game there. One that I would absolutely play again. But it’s a thinky game with lots going on and lots inconnecting with other parts. It’s a first play that hurt my brain and one that was hindered by my lack of understanding all the interlocking mechanisms. It’s also super tight with resources, so planning what to do is required. Going in wild like I did is not efficent. But I love the planet mechanism. I love the multi use cards. I love that the board is clearer to understand than it looks like it should be. Who knows; maybe a few more plays will see it enter our collection, but for now it’s a game I can enjoy when others need an extra player.
KABUTO SUMO – How to you clense the pallete after a 2-3 hour play of SETI? You have an insect royal rumble, that’s how. This is a game that I’ve never been desperate to own, but have always wanted to play. Pushing wooden pieces onto the board to push other players off. It has that fun, penny machine vibe from the arcades. It’s simple to teach and it is 70% chaos. While it remains a game I don’t think we’d play much at home, it’s one I would rush over to if somebody was setting up a game.
A NICE CUPPA – Not all ButtonShy games are hits with me, but I do like a fair few. In the last year I’ve been enjoying the solo ones specifically like UGLY GRIFFON INN, SPACESHIPPED, and ANCIENT REALMS. But I skipped the A NICE CUPPA campaign because it didn’t appeal to me at the time. Thankfully @mrsgetintogames was eager to put the game in front of me while we took a break from bigger games and it’s actually quiet an interesting solo game. You flip a card and trigger it’s ability, using what it can do to move a row of cards into numerical order. On your next turn you’ll flip another card, but action all face up cards from left to right. So while a revealed card might give you a great ability now, it might hinder you on future turns. Of course, there are ways to remove these action cards, but this requires further planning of your turns. It’s a lot more puzzly than it first appears. While I’m not rushing to grab a copy now, I can see this being added to a future campaign back if it’s available as an add on.
- Our third gaming day with @getintogames and @mrsgetintogames
- Our third Land Of Eem session being one of my favourite TTRPG experiences. Ever.
- My wife and I completing The Dunwich Legacy campaign for Arkham Horror LCG.
- Work begins on our garage to games room conversion!!!
Always Play Blue 