I fully intend on living my lifelong dream of a bug army vicariously through you. No pressure.
I thought his hair went under his arm, and continued down. I just could not fathom what was intended by a photo of a Legolas impersonator who had tied his own hair to something offscreen, and was tugging at it.
It arrived! Happy in the end, enough to get me going.
Now to wait for an airbrush to go on sale and will start painting when I get to Aus
The Gang. A co-operative poker game, where you rank hands without communication to win. At base, fairly simple, but still takes a lot of playing and careful judgement when the hands are close (we won several games in a row, then promptly lost when all three of us had a Hearts flush). There are some extras in there, with an Advantage/Disadvantage deck when you start losing/winning, and several game modes. Very nice production, cheap, perfect pub game.
Invaders again. Crunched my way to a win with a lot of nukes/anti-matter bombs and other instants crippling my opponent’s biggest cards. Twas nice to get the right cards at the right time. Promptly lost a game as the aliens though, as I got cocky, and depleted my deck far too soon, and had to accelerate the end of the game to get some cards back and try and end it sooner.
I found out in the last couple of months, that I actually do not enjoy coop board games. Sold a big collection of games like: Spirit Island, TMB and many many more.
The Gang is a game I’ve preordered, but I’m still awaiting my copy. I thought it might be funny (and light on the rules side) that I might actually like it. And I like Poker. So I am happy to hear you have enjoyed it.
Hope you enjoy it, it’s a solid choice, and retains the nice, tight feel of poker. Plenty of space for recriminations, too.
Got my next Heat tracks printing as we speak.
Nice!! Barcelona looks a challenge. Looking at the chicanes on both tracks I’m guessing you’ve got the expansion to Heat?
Yes, although quite frankly it’s not particularly good. I don’t know if I’ve already complained about it, but the Heavy Rain weather effect being particular to Japan is a very silly decision, and I’m working on implementing it on other tracks, just like, er, every other weather condition can be. The upgrades and tracks themselves are great, no argument there.
I picked the expansion up a week ago and agree on all counts. I’ll also add not providing new Legend cards for the one included additional car seemed a bit odd although the obvious answer if playing solo is to race as orange (which does have a rather cool good luck charm hanging off the dash. Wondering who that is a nod to?). The 2 new tracks are definitely a good challenge though. Would printing “flooded” tokens that could be placed on any of the other tracks be a workable option?
McLaren, I think? He was from New Zealand, and apparently was orange (his car, at least).
I’m hoping some 3D printed tokens will be good enough, though it means laying them beside the track. Hoping I can print them to a good size so they can slot between track numbers, so they’re still noticeable and players don’t skip over them. The whole situation is so frustrating, seems like such a missed opportunity to have heavy rain available on every track. I won’t even dignify the 1964 championship by playing it (“Just play Japan twice.” made me toss the card aside).
Apparently it’s going to be one expansion a year for the next few years. That’s okay, I suppose. I’m hoping for more corner condition tokens, weather tiles, and championships.
Apart from Heat and the odd light war game (Root / C&C) my preferences are mainly more so Euro’s. However being on holidays and doing a stay-cation with a couple of local day trips around our area, made me look for something different: The Mandarin - Adventures.
I’ve only completed the first mission which is more of a tutorial and fairly easy but more rules and components are gradually introduced over subsequent missions. The first follows E1 of the show - tasked with recovering “the package”. You get a nice graphic novel intro
Game play is simple. Choose 2 cards from a hand of 4 which must be played to different slots. The strength of the card (1-4) determines the strength of the action. Catch is when a column has a combined value from all played cards of 5, this triggers an event which causes the bad guys to do….bad things. 6 or more and a bad guy reinforcement is triggered as well as an event. The cards in the column are then discarded.
Mission one needs 2 keys retrieved which are randomly placed and hidden which then allows access to the locked area where the package is (which can be 1 of 2 hidden tokens - the other is a guard). Mando has scoped out the first via an Intel action while IG-11 distracts some guards.
IG-11 decides to dual blaster the guard hiding around the corner of the building. Unfortunately the noise attracts the attention of the sniper on the roof of the building. As he isn’t an Imperial Stormtrooper he wings IG-11.
Meanwhile Mando, spotting the final key to the locked area in the bottom corner of the map decides to light up a couple of bad guys in his way.
The door is now open to the final area but the sound of toasting blaster guys brings even more reinforcements running. Mando is trapped, wounded and can’t get to the package. With no time to properly scope out the building, IG-11 charges in, flips the proverbial tin coin and chooses wisely - the package not the guard. Victory. Queue E2.
I haven’t posted my reviews here in a while, but Rock Hard 1977 is really good
Good call and 100% correct I believe. I was born in NZ but haven’t lived there for well over 30 years. I’m ashamed to say that although young at the time of his death, I had completely forgotten this piece of history. I do remember now my father telling me of his passing when the news filtered through. Might have to stick with the orange car.
I only know because someone on BGG suggested it, and I looked the chap up on Wikipedia, so no shame there.
I’m hoping to find a good solution to the heavy rain issue, and maybe 3D print a bunch of different corner speed indicators to make the +1 and -1 counters redundant. I think the base box set high expectations for me, and that along with finding so many good tracks on BGG, led to me being very disappointed in Heavy Rain.
Harass the devs across all forms of social media, effectively gas lighting them into believing your issue is the most burning issue with the game. Then they’ll include the tokens in the next expansion.
Worth a try, it seems to work on video game devs
Getting a new player in to Fighters of the Pacific. A terrific snarl of a dogfight commenced immediately, and we ripped each other to shreds. We got so into it we forgot about the turn counter, which didn’t matter, because the combat was so intense we smashed through most of our planes in half the allotted turns. The way you have to spend all your movement makes dogfighting a situation you have to unpick, but it unravels as planes dodge, get into further trouble, shoot down their attacker, etc allows for long chains of unintended consequences. Fantastic stuff again. Unapologetic table hog, and things can get very confusing when the dogfights get going, with lots of markers, but totally worth the trouble.
I’d like to see some Micro Machines instead of cardboard, please.