“keen to play this tonight. It’s my latest acquisition”
bruv is diversifying his portfolio
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Lords of Worlds - weird name but it’s a K&K. I have a feeling that it’s gonna be ass. But you never know until you try
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Well, I technicially didn’t buy it.
Between my food/drink allowance for running a game and the vouchers, my bill (bagel, two drinks, cake, booking into a game as a player, and SS&P) was a grand total of 10p.
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It is my anniversary today, and my wife got me Moon Colony Bloodbath. Really looking forward to giving it a try. It gives me the same ridiculous vibes as Galaxy Trucker where you build something up just to watch the game utter demolish it.
A short time later, a package was delivered which contained my KS copy of Inis: Nemed expansion, as well as a copy of Cairn, which I had forgotten I had included as an add-on after playing it on BGA and enjoying it.
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Got my copy of the Nemed legacy expansion without the right legacy cards. Also got the special edition of Puerto Rico. Seems like it’s kickstarter season.
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not sure what the non legacy card backs look like. or the legacy for that matter. i definitely see the new cards are darker😢
it is more pronounced with the red
on the same note i checked my 2 lautapelit edition boxes of el dorado and while cars size is identical at least one is linen finish and one is smooth. how dumb can publishers be?
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nope those seem to be new card backs. my photo is showing the old ones albeit with slight difference in shades which sucks but they least tried to get it right
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Bought Inis Legendary Edition. Thanks @raged_norm
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Seems like they finally learned. It used to be January was “we’re going as fast as we can but Lunar New Year is coming and the country is closing for five weeks” season. Now January is fulfillment season and I don’t have to listen to the whinging.
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I’ve been following RFTG: Xeno Counterstrike for a long time. The game has been in print for so long that the paper supplier no longer makes the specific cardstock. Rio Grande has been going around the world stockpiling the “correct” paper in order to do a print run that is compatible with all the existing editions, but the project has been delayed for years as they work it out.
So maybe not stupid, just sometimes it’s impossible to keep things consistent across so many years with a volatile supply chain? (they should at least acknowledge that they know the problem and why it was necessary, though)
That said, Xeno Counterstrike is finally in production. And I’m guessing we’ll get an RFTG 3e big box a year or two later to keep the game in circulation, now that RFTG card stock is officially a think of the past.
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I’ll believe it once I’m holding the expansion in my hands.
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Lehmann as of November: “All the production work was completed several months ago. However, getting an actual print quote and print date from the printer has been unexpectedly difficult due to them being completely swamped and Rio Grande having to supply the paper (which is no longer made and RGG had to do a special order with the paper manufacturer). Now that Essen is done and the printer has more bandwidth to consider what cost reduction is reasonable when they aren’t supplying the paper, negotiations are underway.”
As you said, we’ll see.
3 Likes
Flash Point Fire Rescue suffers from this: the Point of Interest/Victim markers have a white ? on pale blue on the back of each counter, but over time these have taken several different shades, which is why I use a 3d-printed ? marker and draw from a bag instead.
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Usually I don’t like to post about new arrivals until I’m certain they’ll be staying. I ran into an issue with one that I eventually sorted out, but then completely forgot to post about my Christmas Haul!
But first, some pre-Christmas deal hunting…
Ashes Reborn:
+ Ashes Reborn: Red Rains – The Spawn of Shadowreck
+ Ashes Reborn: The Messenger of Peace
+ Ashes Reborn: The Artist of Dreams
+ Ashes Reborn: The Ocean’s Guard
+ Ashes Reborn: Red Rains – The Flood of Moon Cove
Knowing that Ashes Reborn was ending and Ashes Ascending (AshAs for short, if you will) is being released, I saw a bunch of Ashes Reborn products for sale and picked them up, with the bulk of them getting purchased right before Black Friday on a pre-Black Friday discount (for some reason?). Anyway, one of the packages took so long to arrive that I ended up getting 3 of the products refunded and still got to keep them. Lucky!
However, I now own products that require Time Dice, but I never got Breaker of Fate, so I guess I’ll have to just order the Time Dice from PHG… and probably the 6 or so remaining Ashes Reborn products that I don’t own, in order to complete the product line. No interest at this time in buying AshAs- I have years of AshRe content to play at this point.
Christmas Haul
Everdell: Mistwood (from my partner)
My partner and I agreed to not buy each other Christmas gifts. I kept the deal (well, sort of. I gave her a gift but I didn’t buy it… every year my employer gives employees a list of gifts we can choose from… she saw the list and wanted one of the items, so I opted for that and wrapped it for her).
However, apparently she was planning to give me a backpack cooler (because I complained so much about hauling a cooler around last summer for my daughters’ softball games and I was telling her about the parents I saw with backpack coolers and how convenient they looked). But my father-in-law was struggling to come up with ideas for something to get me (he won’t buy me games… for… whatever reason); so my partner agreed to let him give me the backpack cooler and she ordered a couple of things from my boardgame wishlist on Amazon. This was one of them. Everdell comes with a solo mode, but I haven’t tried it yet because it seems most people say the Mistwood solo mode is way better- so here we go, now I can check it out.
Flash Point: Fire Rescue – Tragic Events (from my partner)
At this point my wishlist is like 90% expansions and expandalones. This was out of print when I added it to my wishlist a couple of years ago, but it’s been restocked. I think this was my last item to complete my FP:FR collection other than some promo items (Veteran and Rescue Dog and the Fire Academy Challenge), which I’m not worried about. I’ve read a lot of people say the Tragic Events are way better… but also some people saying the opposite. Either way, it’s been a few years since I’ve played even the base game. But glad to have (most of) the complete content, legacy and spinoff not withstanding.
Santorini: Riddle of the Sphinx (from my grandmother)
I had originally completely skipped over this when I first heard about it. I have the original Santorini without the revised art and I assumed this was only compatible with the new edition. I’ve played Santorini with my oldest daughter a few times, but only once by the actual rules (we mostly and most successfully just played with the buildings and not the god powers).
But eventually I saw it in a list of expansions that make competitive games cooperative, which made me realize that since that’s basically all it is, I looked over it too soon. I put it on my wishlist so that I could go through the campaign with aforementioned daughter cooperatively.
Legendary: A James Bond Deck Building Game – Thunderball (from my grandmother)
This one caused the problem! It was ordered by my dad through Amazon. Apparently there is an issue with a large portion of the stock of this game that was shipped to US Amazon warehouses. In each box is two packs of cards; a lot of the inventory Amazon has contains two duplicate packs, so you get twice as many of half the cards and none of the others.
I had an issue with a previous 007 Legendary game and got pretty good results contacting their customer support, so I figured it wouldn’t be a problem. However, this time, they wanted me to ship the duplicate cards at my own expense back to them so that they could send me the correct cards. And all of this was being done as a “1-time courtesy”.
Instead, I asked my dad to help me arrange an exchange via Amazon and do a roll of the dice on the next one (thinking that, perhaps, if they sent me one of the boxes with dupes of the OTHER cards, maybe I could do myself and another person a favor by assembling two viable copies). I had a replacement product with the correct cards the next day.
Alls well that ends well, I guess… but I’m not sure how much more I’m willing to buy (or wishlist) UpperDeck products after that.
Post Christmas!
Chicago 1875: City of the Big Shoulders
My Gamefound pledge for Quined Games new edition (upgrade pack) arrived. I originally won City of the Big Shoulders from the BGG content. 3 copies of it, in fact. I gave one to a friend, sold one, and kept the last one to collect dust on a shelf. It never had a solo mode, so I never bothered to even punch the components because heavy economic games on real tables just don’t work out for me at the moment without a solo mode.
But Quined offered two different upgrade options; I opted for the cheaper one. I think I missed out on a new expansion, but honestly I’m not worried. The “Light” upgrade pack was already pretty expensive for a game I think I’ll like. When I originally won the game, I hadn’t yet played an 18xx game of which this is greatly inspired. I have a much different perspective on 18xx now and I’m eager to figure out how 1875 will fit among my other heavy economic solo games.
The Bloody Inn
This is one of those games that I’ve had on my wishlist for a while but it’s always out of stock at Christmas and around my birthday. I knew that Amazon had stock during December but by the time Christmas had come, it was showing out of stock. I was sad that nobody grabbed it for me from my wishlist while it was available. After Christmas, I had some money in my pocket (not really, just room in the boardgaming budget after getting the Ashes refund from above), so I tracked down a copy from an online retailer. Very happy to have it. I think it looks light and fun for both solo and multiplayer. Such a delightfully small box… but it could have been smaller?
13 Likes
Fantasy Realms: Greek Legends – I think this might be the version of the game that I could get to the table with almost anyone, as it’s a theme that absolutely everyone is familiar with, and I wouldn’t be embarrassed by some of the artwork (which is a bit Disney, but seems otherwise reasonable). I’ve placed a pre-order to go with:
Pathfinder: Dice Conquest – I like Dice Conquest. Do I need two of it? Probably not, so this version may end up replacing the original. OTOH they’re small boxes, and they’ve made it so that you can mix and match the cards, so I might well keep both regardless.
R.A.V.E.L. – a solo puzzle game; just looked like fun.
4 Likes
Oh yeah… the thing that just arrived for me was Light Speed Arena which is the latest version of Light Speed, the real-time card game first published by Cheapass Games. In the middle there was Stellar Conflict which was a more complicated version with a larger selection of ships and asymmetric fleet-drafting. The two older games are somewhat renowned for taking ten times as long to score as they take to play, as you need to figure out what’s actually happened in the space battle between all the ships that you’ve frantically arranged on the table, and you do this by manually following the lines of their lasers (with string or elastic bands or rulers) to see what they’re hitting (following the initiative order of the ships – some might be destroyed before they can act at all).
Light Speed Arena is the first app-supported game I’ve ever bought. When you’ve finished playing a game of this one, you take a photo of the table, and after a few seconds you get an animated battle showing the outcome. The app is not self-contained, sadly – it needs internet access to upload the photo because the processing is done remotely – which would be a non-starter for me, except I happen to like Light Speed and I couldn’t help agreeing that this was a good use of technology, and that if it means that five games can be played in the time it would previously have taken for one, I can get on board with that.
I suspect the app approach will also eliminate some of the tension and drama that comes from working through it manually, but I feel that the benefits must outweigh the negatives. But hey, you could still score it the old-fashioned manual way if you wanted (but if you’re planning to do that, you can buy (or PNP) the old version much cheaper!)
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Ooh, that’s interesting. I made a circular Light Speed deck a while back, and it still gets played occasionally.
Largely depends on whether the app is good and works as advertised, I suppose. I also imagine it might not be easy to take photos in a way the app likes?
EDIT: having looked at the game on BGG, I’m a bit concerned about playing over 8 discrete rounds. I liked the rush of Light Speed trying to get all your cards down in a minute.
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- Intarsia - Kiesling. From a club member so it was rather cheap.
- Lords of Worlds - K&K and also 2nd hand.
- Toy Battle - having a good time playing this on BGA. I’m sure it’s more fun IRL. So, I gave in on my birthday and bought it online.
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With the timed approach you can set rounds to anything from 3 to 60 seconds per ship, so that can still be pretty frantic; however – you can 100% play it using the original method, and use the app solely to score a finished game (there’s a button to just take a photo and process it).
Other than the optional new features (asymmetric abilities and “sponsor” goals for bonus points), the main changes for auto-scoring purposes seem to be (1) that lasers have to be hitting the actual ship outline, not just the card outline; and (2) that shields (which must also be hit precisely – they don’t just extend to the card edge) are no longer impervious (they just reduce the damage by 1 point, and so stronger lasers will still hurt). That last one is quite a significant change, but I won’t knock it without having tried it; it’s probably fine?
Oh, and if you’ve seen videos where people have to keep tapping the screen to acknowledge points, that’s not required – you can tell it to just play through continuously.
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