Category: Cardboard

Board Games and the like

Mraakbowl Finals!

The Skinny Dippers (Skaven) and Goatsee (Chaos) made it into the finals of the Mraakbowl.

The Norse team (top seed) was knocked out of the running after a hard fought 4-2 shoot out with the Skaven. While the Norse are arguably the worse team in Blood Bowl, their coach is arguably the best coach in this league to have brought them so far.

The Amazons, in contrast, are one of the better Blood Bowl teams, but just couldn’t stem the tide of Chaos, losing 2-0 in what amounted to a big frown from Nuffle on all of Amazonia and the inevitable questioning by the coach of the dodge skill’s existence if his ladies can’t dodge worth a damn.  Chaos, on the other hand, was dodging up a storm with everyone on the team as if they had greased themselves up with pig-fats.  Shockingly, none of the Chaos team made the leaderboard for most casualties inflicted, a sad state of affairs that will likely be rectified during the Mraakbowl Final.

Stay tuned to see whether or not Nuffle favors the Horned Rat or He who sits on a Brass Throne atop a Mountain of Skulls.

Yet another Talisman Expansion!

I’ve gotten in only a couple plays since the Sacred Pool expansion (they were great games and it’s a solid edition to the game) and now we have an announcement of the next Talisman expansion, not city— not Timescape: DRAGONS! With the 2nd edition Dragon expansion setting records for prices for ink printed on cardboard, I can see why FF would take on this subject.   Their take on it looks very different from both 2nd and third editions, no big tower in the middle of the board (but a new board space to replace the center region), no giant corner section to further balkanize the game, and, because it’s Fantasy Flight, looks like a boatload of tokens.  Six new characters are included, looks like a Dragon Hunter, a Dragon Priestess, some sort of barbarian, what looks like a Harpy and an elf with strange pants.

I don’t get in enough games of Talisman, granted, it’s a 3-4 hour game but I’m hoping when this comes out, I’ll be able to get in a game or two out of pity from the game group for my purchase…

Game of Thrones board game after a long, long long time

The greyjoys probably should have started sowing.

My board game version of A Game of Thrones has been languishing in my basement for almost 5 years without being played, until last night. Granted, I used to bring it almost every time to board game nerd night– it just never got selected for play over the euro of the week or The Great Khan Game. In fact, it was played so long ago it was before I really started tracking my (too infrequent) board game plays on boardgamegeek.com. With the show out and everyone pretty happy about it, this finally got a chance to hit the table. Probably would have a week or so ago, but one of the essential order counters was replaced by Fantasy Flight after going through the wash (man they are a great company for supporting their games) and I had to wait for the pieces to come in the mail (shockingly in it was only a week!).

The infrequent play is sad really because last night was a cracking game even with all newbs but me–I still had a run for my money FTW as the Lannisters. Greyjoy was totally wiped off the map after attacking both Stark and Lannister. Being in the middle, they had little hope to survive without help from Tyrell who stayed out of the game until the end. Bearathon started to beast with power early in the game, but couldn’t get up the supply track to really get an offense going. In the end it was Stark, Lannister and Bearatheon with 5 cities each and the tie breaker was the Supply track. Lannister is tough to play, even though you can get to a boatload of supplies early and get some big armies, you are the ‘in the middle’ house who more likely will get steamrolled off the board, a lot like Austria-Hungary in Diplomacy.

All in all, it was like looking at the game with fresh eyes and it is SOLID fun. Plays fast, lots of very difficult choices. Getting a wargame this scale done in an evening (it took about 3.5 hours) and have people not be bored is quite a feat of design.

The Mraaking Blood Bowl League

After much ado ado, we finally got an even number of players for the Mraaktagon Blood Bowl league (not with miniatures this time but via the Legendary Edition online).  Here are the teams.

Steveformer – Amazons

Sensless – Skaven

Littlemute – Chaos

Nodamage – Undead

Turftoe – “High” Elves

Ultrasmurf – Norse (!?)

My guess for the winners? We have two heavy hitting teams and four agility/passy teams (yes the Skaven are a bit of both).
High Elves and Skaven in the final. High Elves 3, Skaven 2.

New Awful Green Things from Outer Space!

Looks like AGTFOS is getting a new printing from Steve Jackson games with an actual real board and thick counters.  I’ve gotten about 10 games of this since I picked it up for 3$ on clearance at Kay Bee toys when I was 12 or so and  it’s solid 2 player fun and one of Tom Wham’s best.    Now if we could get The Great Khan game printed on a real board with real cards and a few tweaks to speed up combat that would be pure dwarven gold.

First Game with Cosmic Conflict!

I got in on a 4 man, 4 planet game with the new expansion and it was great, though I got my ass kicked all across the galaxy during this particular game.  Fantasy Flight continues to prove that they are making the ultimate version of Cosmic Encounter with no let up in sight.  The new expansion is mostly about the new set of 20 aliens, but the 7th player cards and ships helps (black looks much better than I thought it would).

As for new rules and stuff in the box, the Hazard deck was entertaining in our first game, but it definitely made the game more crazy.  One of the Hazard cards shuffles all the cards in the hands of the player and redistributes them (same number of cards, just random ones) and this was a game changer as the landscape of Flare cards was instantly different.  A second hazard card is proof that the fantasy flight version of Cosmic Encounter will never have the Reverse Cone as one of the new Hazard cards did just that (Defensive allies get a base, offensive allies get cards).  Really thinking about the Reverse cone and the hassles surrounding it (it comes up too often in the Mayfair version) I don’t think I will miss it in the FF version.

Though others may dig it, the alien power I played in this first game did I was not a huge fan of: Warhawk.  Essentially, the Warhawk never negotiates and gets either a free Morph or a negotiate card converts to a 00 attack card.  I am a wheeler and dealer and not having the option of negotiating with other aliens is tough to swallow tactically, and also means you are always going to have to fight for your bases. With so many better combat powers out there, Warhawk is going to have a tough time competing when he can only fight it out all the time.

All in all, art, components and new rules in Cosmic Conflict are top notch and if we needed even more excuse to just play Cosmic Encounter over all other games, here it is.