More KS Stuff Arrives. I Play Card Games Instead.

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 are four regular game dice and the Mercenary deck of cards.

The castings look cleaner than the first round of Dreadball stuff, and the Antenocities resin terrain items look excellent. It's a little disappointing that Mantic didn't put in some bag listings or assembly instructions, but I'm not surprised. It did make cataloguing everything a tiresome chore however.

Dreadball

My final little package arrived a few days after Deadzone. This one was the alternate sculpts for some of the season 2 teams. I'm only waiting for two missing Asterian figures from the previous shipment and this one will be all finished up. I really enjoy the game after a year of playing it and wish that I had ordered the multiplayer pitch and cards during the Kickstarter campaign.

We have finally hit a high enough saturation point among the local players to drum up a league. It took me a year of pounding the game, doing demos, showing off my figures and basically begging people that bought it to give it a try. Several of the Blood Bowl crowd have finally come around and one of their folks is going to run the league with me serving as an advisor. I'll actually get to play in this one without having to do too much management work!

Judge Dredd Miniatures Game

Another package. It's been over a year since my first one arrived. I'm still missing stuff that should have showed up in that first box. Poor communication, terrible organization, good game, great figures. At this point I'm just tired of dealing with the whole thing and wish they'd get their shit together so I can cross it off of my damn list.

Wild West Exodus

About a week before Christmas this box showed up. I'd forgotten about this campaign completely and had pretty low expectations. I'm still waiting on some of my add-on scenery, but the stuff in the main box looked pretty good. The figures ARE pretty close to 35mm so I won't be mixing and matching them into many other lines or games. There were two items missing from my package, and I'm waiting a reply from their customer service about those.

Achtung!Cthulhu

I've already received some of the PDF books from my pledge and I've sadly not even really looked them over. When I got a little package at the end of last week I had no idea what it might be. It was the figures I'd ordered. On initial assessment they look pretty good, although I'm not sold on the assortment of Naz-ombie poses. I'll have to modify a few of them to get some more variation out of them. They're closer to 25 or 28mm scale and so should fit in nicely with my Strange Aeons figure collection.

If memory serves I had requested one figure be swapped out, so I have to dig through my records to see if that's correct. It's a bit of a shame that most (or ALL) of these campaigns have issues with them. On the other hand with the volumes of things they're dealing with I suppose it isn't much of a surprise.

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After trying to arrange a final game day of the year last Sunday it turned out games weren't to be played at my house until the 4th. Of the nine invitees for the re-schedule, only one person felt like braving the icy temperatures and abysmal road conditions.

William dropped by with one of his recent Kickstarter acquisitions, The Agents but first we played my newest game Hero - Immortal King. I had opted for the Lair of the Liche set (there are three different sets available) when looking for a game I could play solo the week before. I gave it a run through on my own and, while not a heavy game, it was a quick diversion. Will had looked at the game a few times too so we played twice.

The dungeon player doesn't have a lot to do, and the adventurer player in both of these games lost fairly quickly. I think it's a little better game solo, and is probably a little bit easier. The price is high for what the game is, so I'd only suggest it if you want a solo game that packs really light, and can find it at a reduced price.

We followed up with a game of The Agents core game. The first few rounds were spent learning the rules and figuring out how things work. Once we got the hang of it I quite enjoyed it. The art style suits the game material well and after a few rounds there are a lot of available options on the table. While the rules say the game can support up to five players I'd say that two or three would be the best number to avoid a bunch of down time.

I'm actually tempted to look for a copy of the game myself, but that'd be silly since the only person I'd likely talk into playing it already has the game and all the KS exclusive add-ons.