Thinking Outside the Box

On my last school break I picked up The Valiant Card Game - Ninjak vs The Valiant Universe . I ordered it on a whim, after hearing that it was based on a comic and live-action web-series of the same name. I confess it's been a couple of decades since I have read anything from Valiant , but I was aware that they had relaunched a few years back, and had picked up their RPG series and their card game last year, neither of which had yet to see the table. However if you've ever stopped by here before you'll know I'm a sucker for superhero comics, so none of these purchases should be a surprise. Deciding that I needed to see the web-series before trying out the game I fired up YouTube and spent an hour being mildly impressed. The writing and acting weren't anything amazing, but overall the costumes very well done, and FX were certainly better than I had expected. I would certainly watch more if it were produced. Anyway, back to the game at hand. It's a basic ...

The past week and a half has been really good for some gaming! Rather than focus on each play individually I'll just rip through them all in brief. During a quick trip to I had picked up a copy of a nifty little 1-2 player card game called Onirim . We both tried it a few times, ending up with the base game played as a 2-player affair. The game came with SEVEN expansions in the box, which we haven't tried any of yet. A lot of value in that little box though, and I am looking forward to trying a couple of variants soon. I also had a chance to try out a nifty little dice game called Art of War . Ironically enough I had been looking at this game on the same evening I bought Onirim, and damned near bought it. I may still do, but we'll see. I'm not sure how much fun it will be with smaller groups, but it was great with 6 players! Mid-week I got to play another 250 rep game of Batman Miniature Game . My opponent was gracious enough to let me try out my "Batman Beyon...

I have to start off by saying that this might be the nerdiest post I've written to date, and that's sayin' something! The amount of fun I've had working on these, and thinking about what kind of games or scenarios I could play with them has been pretty ridiculous. I'll admit that I fully intended to have these completed before end of the year...that obviously didn't happen. There are a few options out there for figures, but they are either the wrong scale, too damned expensive of just don't capture the feel I was looking for; and then I found this! The TMNT Foot Clan Street Fight  board game was on sale for $12. After I liberated the figures out of the copy I bought, I made some cardboard standees so that I could still play the game with my nephews. It was a big hit during our Christmas holiday too! Now about those figures...on the down side the plastic is pretty soft. The paint work is passable for a mass produced product, but (accurate to the cur...

I was able to move two of my board games off of the 'never-played' list over the weekend! Most of the time when I'm trying to tackle items off of that list we'll only get through one new game in a session. First up I thought we'd play a horror-themed game since it is so close to Halloween: Herocard Nightmare . This is one of the six Herocard games that I own, and I think is the fourth of them that I've actually had a chance to play. Like the others, the core combat mechanic uses the Herocard duelling system, but the game wrapped around it is very different. I forgot to take a photo of this one, so enjoy the random pic of the components from the internet. In a nutshell, Nightmare is a deduction game. All of the players are trapped in a shared dream of scenes (cabin, forest, lake, etc...) and killers (beast, zombie...). Each player knows where they will die and who will kill them there. The challenge is to move the scenes around in order to figure out who is s...

If you stop by here with any regularity you already know that I'm a big supporter of Mantic Games . It all started with Dreadball for me, but since that original Kickstarter campaign I've ended up supporting several others. One that I didn't pledge for was Mars Attacks! When Mantic released their plans to put out a game based on the Mars Attacks! license via Kickstarter, I wasn't all that interested. Not having been a fan of the trading card games or other related materials, my exposure to the license was solely the Tim Burton movie. I remember at the time that I really didn't like it, so I glanced at the campaign a few times, then let it pass. Shortly thereafter stuff from my way-larger-than-it-should-have-been Deadzone pledge started showing up and I pretty much forgot all about Mars Attacks. Fast forward a few months and images and videos for the game start popping up. I like what I'm seeing, and since I already own Deadzone, I start thinking th...

Just because I think crowd-funding is interesting, I thought it would be worth going through some of the many campaigns I've supported and give a brief run-down on where they're at. If you're not into Kickstarter or crowd-funded games, you can click here to read something else . Coming Soon: Age of Conan expansion - Starting tomorrow (October 9th, 2014). This one is really interesting in the sense that FFG has let the original designer/publishers have their remaining stock. The expansion should modify Conan's role within the game, although I don't know how or to what extent. Disappointingly this expansion won't add space for additional players to the game. Currently Running: Carnevale - An interesting one here in that it's both and expansion and a second edition in one campaign. I supported Vesper-On a few years ago and picked up the entire range at that time. I'm in for the new book and Strigoi (vampires!) faction, but it's doubtful I'...

I haven't had much time for hobby and gaming lately. Well, perhaps that's not true. It might be more of a case time and motivation not aligning for me. Our Dreadball league recently started up, but I've only played one game. Without a set schedule it's up to the players to arrange their own games. While I can understand why that is being tried, I'm unconvinced that it will work. I have a feeling that I'll have to be the one contacting other players in order to play the games I need to for the league, and in all likelihood most players won't finish this one. That'll be a shame, because the game really is a good one. I should have some photos of my team (The Keldorian Krushers) posted this week, as I'm almost finished them. I just have some highlighting and numbers to add and they'll be all finished. In an effort to cross some games off of my waiting-to-be-played list I invited a bunch of folks over yesterday. It was a short-notice invitatio...

Over the long weekend we had a chance to try out my copy of Doom: The Board Game  for the first time. I picked it up at auction at last year's Fallcon  and now after having played it, it's really a shame that we hadn't played it sooner! I intended to start our gaming session with a game of 011 , but one of our players was running late and that game requires a minimum of three to play. So we decided to fire up Doom, since it seemed reasonable that a latecomer should be able to 'spawn in' at any time without causing any major problems. During the first few rounds we were getting to grips with the rules, all of the different tokens and how to read the map information as the invader player. It wasn't clear what everything was at first, but by the time the marine had opened up the third room we had it sorted. (We had missed a few tokens and retroactively gifted the marine with two weapons and some ammo.) Once our third player arrived we spawned him in at the...

I arrived home from a vacation a little while back and smartly enough, I had booked a couple of extra days off so that I could recover from any possible jet-lag. Also, I really didn't feel like going to work on my birthday. I had to run some errands in the morning, and on my way home I decided to stop in at Revolution Games to pick up some goodies. I figured I might as well get a present I knew I'd like for myself, just in case! I didn't end up with any new games, but did find plenty of expansions. I haven't played any of them yet, but I really hope to do so soon! My aunt also dropped in from out of town while I was post-vacationing. I had shipped some stuff to her place to save some postage fees during the past year. I was also planning go to pick it up myself, but hadn't been able to make the timing work. I'd forgotten just how much stuff was waiting for me. It was like Christmas all over again (or more birthday presents), once again courtesy of my own...

Had a busy weekend with family stuff to do, events to attend and the like. However I was able to round up a few folks for some games late Sunday afternoon. First up was William's new copy of Dungeon Dice . Lots of plastic cubes in assorted colours with non-standard symbols on them, drawn from differently coloured felt bags. I gave William a hard time about this game because it's the third (or maybe fourth?) game he's supported that has a dungeon theme and custom dice in. Of those games, I think this one was the most fun. The biggest trouble I have with custom dice is that I need a card or cheat sheet to know what each one means. With a good one of those, this game could be good fun. On the (possible) down-side, it can very much turn into a solitaire-with-friends kind of game if you don't promote the trading and help-me-out-against-this-monster mechanics. Second up was a game (my first) of Spartacus: A Game of Blood & Treachery . I've had this one for sever...

I've been working on a lot of Deadzone figures from my massive shipment before Christmas, and have made good progress. On the other hand, I've been too lazy to actually take pictures of said figures. So I'm posting this in lieu, until I get off my butt and take said photos. Enjoy or ignore. Or whatever. Let's start with more Mantic Games stuff: Project Pandora - Grim Cargo . I picked this up mid-week and was able to put the figures together Saturday afternoon. They're the same resin-plastic material that makes up most of Mantic's models. The Veer-myn figures were really quite easy to construct. The squad of ten came with three different bodies, which would result in two different troop styles, a toxic weapon dude and their leader. I did a few part swaps among the troopers and ended up with some decent variation among them that I was quite happy with. The Corporation trooper squad was quite similar but took more work. These ten figures came with thr...

Man oh man I sooooo don't need to buy any new stuff, but I keep doing it anyway. On the plus side, I've actually been playing a bunch of my games. Played my 2nd round exhibition match for our new Dreadball league. It was the Etherian Horde vs. the Broadstreet Bullies. Another game that went into OT, another win for me. I just can't earn enough cash to buy a seventh player, so I opted for another coaching die. Not a great investment, but it feels better than just having cash as part of my roster. Wrapping up a week of work before the Family Day weekend, I wrangled some co-workers into a lunch-time game of Lords of Waterdeep . They all really enjoyed it, and I only won by 3 points! I'm looking forward to getting that game on the table again. During the long weekend had the first game of AT-43 using my Cogs army box and a few boosters. We played 3000 points against Karmans. I'm considering adding a few more squads to my army, because having so many heroes in th...

I was away for a business trip during the second half of January and did very little gaming or hobby stuff during that time. During my trip I did however have a chance to meet a fellow gamer down in the Tampa, FL area. Patrick (aka styx) was kind enough to show a few of my co-workers and I around during some of our downtime. You should go read one (or all) of his blogs... - Army of the Week - Dice of Legends - Strange Aeons Adventures After I came back it took me some time to get back into my regular schedule. Actually, I may still be working on that. In terms of miniatures I haven't finished anything new yet, but I've got a batch of SuperFigs  on the table that should be fun once they're finished. I've received several more items from my Kickstarter -craze last year. Sorry for lack of pictures, all I have is a list of text. - Incursion : buckets of blood level t-shirt. Pretty nice, and I had forgotten I was getting this! - Hell Dorado, Inferno : complete shi...

In the final few weeks of the year my work and personal schedule generally get overloaded. I'm sure that's no different than most of you folks out there. I was smart enough to get my shopping done earlier than usual, which meant everything was wrapped and under the tree by the 15th, which I believe is a new record for me! I generally don't get a lot of gifts at Christmas time, which isn't a bad thing because usually what I do get is pretty awesome. I also tend to buy myself a few things that I know won't show up in my stocking. So here's a recap of the things that showed up as the year rolled to a close. Deadzone A massive box of plastic showed up a few weeks before Christmas. I honestly wasn't expecting something of this magnitude, and when it showed up and was opened I shook my head and wondered why I had thought I needed so much extra scenery. It took quite a while to sort through everything, and I'm pretty sure the only items I'm missing ar...

Since the release of Star Trek: Attack Wing , any regular visitors to my blog has probably noticed a rather high frequency of posts by me about the game. If anything, that should tell you simply that I think it's a good game. A very good game in fact. There are several things that I think it has going for it: 1. The universe - Star Trek has been around for decades and has a rich history to pull from, which makes it extremely good for gaming. With new releases every two months, it would still take YEARS to cover off all the ships we've seen on screen, let alone ships like Riker's USS Titan . 2. The engine - WizKids decision to license a proven system for the game was a good one. I feel that this has allowed them to concentrate on building on a good system by truly embracing the subject matter when making changes. 3. The factions - Directly linked to the universe, Star Trek offers numerous factions to explore. Mixing and matching factions is allowable (which I thin...

On Tuesday I arrived home to find two parcel cards in my mailbox. Having forgotten that I'd received tracking numbers from Cool Mini Or Not  a little over a week earlier, I wasn't expecting these massive things. I missed out on the first Zombicide  campaign on Kickstarter, so for their second one I went all in, not realizing quite what I was getting into. "What did you order THIS time?" "Ok, let's see what's in box number one..." "Cool artwork. Gross, but cool." "Wow, that's a LOT of zombies." "So that's everything in box 1. What's in the other one?" Oddly enough, the second package was exactly the same as the first. Even down to the zombie dogs and dog companions boxes being slightly squashed. As far as I can tell I was only charged for one set... Double the zombies double the fun? Not sure what happened, but I'll not complain too loudly about it.