New Arrivals

Postman bought me three parcels yesterday. 

One was Pitchcar, from Imagination Gaming. This is the game I won from them for completing their comments slip at the UK Games Expo.












It is perhaps one of the heaviest games I own - physically, that is. Rivals Z-man's War of the Roses. Anyway, had it all set up for when the kids came home, and we had a blast. Played about five four or three player games in the space of an hour - laughs and groans all around as we attempted to out pace each other around the tracks. Very simple to play, and great fun.

Next two parcels were from the Treefrog games sale. Hadn't planned on buying them, but as they were such a good price (Treefrog are selling up in the UK and moving to NZ), I had to get them a part of my Martin Wallace Collection. I got London, and Age of Industry. Just had an unwrapping look at them, and the components look good quality with decent, if not fantastic, artwork. Mapboard for London looks very impressive.





Will attempt to learn these two over the next few months, but given the summer nights will probably be Autumn before I get it done.

Also had an additional parcel from Total Wargamer - my John Henry flying Robots for Dystopian Wars. These will take my Federated States of America naval force unto a respectable 1000 points. Not planning on going beyond this, as my core forces are Kingdom of Britannia and Empire of the Blazing Sun. However, the upcoming release from Spartan Games - Hurricane Season - may change this

Flashpoint: Fire Rescue - first outing

Played Flashpoint: Fire Rescue for the first time this weekend. Bought the game in late May, from Gameslore, and finally got it to the table on Sunday.

Played four games of the Family Game setting - basic rules, suitable for kids, and probably the first game any gamer will want to play as it teaches the basics.

Have played Forbidden Island and Castle Panic with my son (soon to be 7, which I admit, is a strange name), so the concept of competitive play wasn't new to him. Flashpoint plays a little more crunchy than Forbidden Island, and is more random in the "Oh no, it's all going wrong" category - but not as random as Castle Panic can be. This adds to the tension, rather than takes away as you have to adapt the plans on the fly.

Pieces in the game are very good - thick cardboard, and good sized Pawns/Meeples. Rule are simple to learn, but would recommend playing a learning game by yourself, first, rather than sitting down to play cold. I did this and  played through a game and read the rules to a point whereby I could teach it in about 30 minutes. There is a video on the publishers (Indie Board and Cards) website that teaches the game - I found it a little too dry to watch it all!

After the games I played with my son, we expanded the number of players to four, with two of my nephews who visited. They are 14/15 and picked up the game quickly - sadly we lost - the faster pace of disasters happening in a four player game drove out the collapse of the building a lot quicker than in a two player game. Don't quite understand how that works out mathematically, but it did. To me this means that you need to play more as a team with four players (we were evolving a strategy of two fight fires, two rescue, by the end) than you do with two players.

Hope to take it upto the club soon, and get the game played by some adults to see how it goes, and then add in the advanced rules.

Overall though I'd give it a solid 5/5 as a family game, and can see it competing with the likes of Cash n Guns, Survive: Escape from Atlantis, and Zooloretto as family favourites

Also, got in a game of Carcassone, with five players, and revisited Castle Panic, at the weekend. Had gone cold on Castle Panic due to its random nature, but my son has got a new taste for it so we played three games. All were good fun, and quite close run victories. I have the Wizards Tower expansion, but haven't learnt how to play that yet.  As ever got a few games of Ticket to Ride in on the iPad and also a game of Roll Through The Ages on the iPod touch. Bot excellent apps.

Games planned for this coming week are Risk Legacy, where we are unto game 5 out of the 17, The Resistance, and Shogun

I Won Something!

Found out earlier this week that I won the £30 voucher from Imagination Gaming from their comments box at the UK Games Expo 2012. They selected the winner by playing Qwirkle and Pitch Car with the names of the people who'd commented put on to the gaming pieces.

See more on their Facebook page in the photo albums.

Nice to have a turn up in my luck - maybe it will be a precursor for the job hunt. That said, car clutch now playing up, so perhaps not :-)

Anyway, after looking through their store, and taking advice from The Dice Tower reviews, have decided to add some money to the purchase and go for Pitch Car itself.  My kids enjoyed The Black Pirate when they were younger and we've had fun with Catacombs, so adding Pitch Car as another dexterity game looked like a good bet.

Should be here in a week or so.

Lords of Water Deep and Small World

Was a quiet night up at the Brackley club on Tuesday - England were playing Ukraine in Euro 2012. Those of use who did turn up had a good game of Lords of Waterdeep and a quick four player game of Small World.

Lords of Waterdeep was a close run thing between three of us, with only 8 points separating us at the end. The fourth player had an interesting strategy of just dealing with intrigue cards - got a lot of points at the end, but not enough to catch up those of use who'd played the more traditional quest completion strategy.

The game played really fast - less than 90 minutes (probably 75), with four players, two of whom hadn't played before. Wasn't as in your face competitive as the previous game - felt more like a game of Ticket To Ride in that we were doing our own thing, with some interaction and frustration between players, but not a lot.

Given the speed of play of the game, do believe it will be played a lot more - and the box control and components are excellent!

Hadn't played Small World for a few months, apart from the iPad version, and been a long time since I'd played it with more than two players. So was a tight fun game - those players who'd played before had a distinct advantage - the double bonus of reducing your opponents score at the same time as adding to yours, and knowing which races and abilities to play, came through against the two players who were new to the game. That said, they did pick it up quickly and were getting into the strategy after a couple of moves.

Next week is Risk Legacy, and hopefully our first game of The Resistance.

WMMS 2011

Went to WMMS for the first time in at least 3 years. Enjoyed it but still not as good as it was at the old venue. Sense of exploration and discovery is missing!
Still, managed to buy a copy of El Grande for a good price (from Chris at E-Collectica), plus got some Pendraken 10mm ACW and some Peter Pig 15mm ACW to experiment with Sharp Practice.
Will I go next year? At this point totally ambivalent, as it was OK but not great.