The second shipment for the Guardian Chronicles 2013 Kickstarter campaign arrived last week. The package I received in the mail included three expansions (Terror Trio, Night Squad and True King of Atlantis), replacement figures for the core game (the core heroes and Skarov) and the backer-created characters.
I was excited to hear this had shipped and am slightly ashamed to admit it. There has been a lot said about the Kickstarter campaign, the quality of the original figures, the abysmal campaign communications and the clarity/quality of the rules. Since I put my money in so long (two years) ago, just receiving more of the product I pledged for is a pleasant surprise. We've played the game on three different occasions and while not without its problems, Guardians Chronicles is an enjoyable super-hero game and I'm happy to see the expansions arrive.
The Terror Trio expansion contains three new lieutenants for Dr. Skarov to enlist in his pursuit of his evil plans. They can be played with as a group or mixed in with the Kinoichi sisters for some unique villain teams. A scenario book and some new tiles round this one out, and it's interesting that one of the scenarios replaces Skarov as the master villain with one of his lieutenants instead.
The Night Squad is an expansion box containing four new heroes, based in Canada according to the fluff! They can be played as a team, or mixed in with the original heroes to create a lot more variety in team composition. With a game like this there will be some combinations that prove more capable or have more synergy than others. Discovering what those are will be part of the fun in my opinion. The box also includes a new scenario book and a few more tiles to use in your games.
The Atlantis expansion is an odd monster, providing Aquarion (an alternative master villain) and a new control room tile. Aquarion also comes with two different sets of his own minions, 5 of each. A scenario book and a few new tiles, adding water are also included.
In addition to the three expansion sets we get a batch of new heroes and their cards, Killeroo, Ms. de Green and Antaean. These were created by backers on the KS campaign. Adding these to game creates a sizeable number of combinations available to the hero players. There is also a new lieutenant (Lady Montague) in this batch, and is actually my favourite looking figure in this shipment.
Finally we received five replacement figures, to take the place of the four original heroes and Dr. Skarov included in the core game box. These are a nice upgrade, but it's a shame that we didn't get replacement figures for the Kinoichi sisters as well, because they are easily the ugliest figures I've ever seen in a board game. I'll likely find some replacements for them on my own just so they match the higher quality of the rest.
I apologize for not having photos of the new characters and replacement figures, it was late...
Although the boxes for the expansions are very nice looking, they really don't serve much purpose. The box for the core game has plenty of room to house the expansions. You can see above that I was able to sleeve all of the cards, and with a tiny bit of work, put together a simple divider system that will let me store everything in the box. There is still ample room for the wave 3 cards, but it'll be a bit of a squeeze to fit in all the figures and have a massive box of comic-themed fun!
It'll take a while to play through even a portion of this stuff but I'm glad that we finally received more of our stuff. Guardians Chronicles is a fun game, but Iello has a long way to go in regaining consumer trust after the shit-show of a campaign. I no longer feel like my money was wasted, but a lot of my time sure was. I'll try to recoup some of that by playing my game and getting some enjoyment out of it.
I was excited to hear this had shipped and am slightly ashamed to admit it. There has been a lot said about the Kickstarter campaign, the quality of the original figures, the abysmal campaign communications and the clarity/quality of the rules. Since I put my money in so long (two years) ago, just receiving more of the product I pledged for is a pleasant surprise. We've played the game on three different occasions and while not without its problems, Guardians Chronicles is an enjoyable super-hero game and I'm happy to see the expansions arrive.
The Terror Trio expansion contains three new lieutenants for Dr. Skarov to enlist in his pursuit of his evil plans. They can be played with as a group or mixed in with the Kinoichi sisters for some unique villain teams. A scenario book and some new tiles round this one out, and it's interesting that one of the scenarios replaces Skarov as the master villain with one of his lieutenants instead.
The Night Squad is an expansion box containing four new heroes, based in Canada according to the fluff! They can be played as a team, or mixed in with the original heroes to create a lot more variety in team composition. With a game like this there will be some combinations that prove more capable or have more synergy than others. Discovering what those are will be part of the fun in my opinion. The box also includes a new scenario book and a few more tiles to use in your games.
The Atlantis expansion is an odd monster, providing Aquarion (an alternative master villain) and a new control room tile. Aquarion also comes with two different sets of his own minions, 5 of each. A scenario book and a few new tiles, adding water are also included.
In addition to the three expansion sets we get a batch of new heroes and their cards, Killeroo, Ms. de Green and Antaean. These were created by backers on the KS campaign. Adding these to game creates a sizeable number of combinations available to the hero players. There is also a new lieutenant (Lady Montague) in this batch, and is actually my favourite looking figure in this shipment.
Finally we received five replacement figures, to take the place of the four original heroes and Dr. Skarov included in the core game box. These are a nice upgrade, but it's a shame that we didn't get replacement figures for the Kinoichi sisters as well, because they are easily the ugliest figures I've ever seen in a board game. I'll likely find some replacements for them on my own just so they match the higher quality of the rest.
I apologize for not having photos of the new characters and replacement figures, it was late...
Although the boxes for the expansions are very nice looking, they really don't serve much purpose. The box for the core game has plenty of room to house the expansions. You can see above that I was able to sleeve all of the cards, and with a tiny bit of work, put together a simple divider system that will let me store everything in the box. There is still ample room for the wave 3 cards, but it'll be a bit of a squeeze to fit in all the figures and have a massive box of comic-themed fun!
It'll take a while to play through even a portion of this stuff but I'm glad that we finally received more of our stuff. Guardians Chronicles is a fun game, but Iello has a long way to go in regaining consumer trust after the shit-show of a campaign. I no longer feel like my money was wasted, but a lot of my time sure was. I'll try to recoup some of that by playing my game and getting some enjoyment out of it.
Comments
The figures still aren't great, but I'm relatively happy with the game and am looking forward to the final shipment.