Zombicide: Black Plague 1st Impressions

So I have my Zombie Apocalypse survival plan sorted and there are 100s of games out there that let you test how you'd do.  Black Plague is different, most zombie games have a modern or post-apocalyptic theme, Black Plague is a fantasy take on the original Zombicide.

I got the chance to play two games and thought I'd write a bit about my first impression of the game and the changes between this and standard Zombicide.  I haven't played enough for a full review but I can let you know what I think and what happened during our games.

Kickstarter

I thought I'd talk about some of the stuff I've backed on Kickstarter for this week.  Now I live in the UK so I often see games on there that I just can't back, some of the shipping costs on projects to the UK are sky high.  Have backed a few that were EU friendly and a couple that were low cost enough that it made it worth it.  It is my biggest issue with Kickstarter really, that so few projects can ship to me without paying almost as much for the postage as for the actual game.

Saying that I really like Kickstarter, I think it is a great way of getting games printed that might not have been released otherwise.  I do think it is going a bit too far for some companies, there are plenty of companies still using Kickstarter that could afford by now (with so many successfully games previously released) to produce games without Kickstarter.

So what Projects have I backed?

King of Tokyo

Does anyone remember the old computer game Rampage? Ever wanted to play that on a board?

King of Tokyo is a more recent purchase for me that has been seeing a lot of table time.  It is a fast and fairly simple dice game.  As the name suggests it is basically a King of The Hill style combat game.

Dice Masters

There are a lot of different sets for Dice Masters now.  I have two and my usual opponent has three (two differant from me).  They are the ones my opinion is based on because that is what I have experience with but they all work the same.

I have the DC Justice League set and the Marvel Uncanny X-Men sets (with a few Age of Ultron cards and dice thrown in that my friend gave me as spares).  I normally play against my friend with his Uncanny X-men, Age of Ultron and Amazing Spider-man sets.  It is one of my most played games and one I actually have a decent win/lose ratio at.

Sheriff of Nottingham

Smuggling and bribery, it's all fun and games...right?

That's the theme of Sheriff of Nottingham.  Each of the players is trying to get goods from the market into the city of Nottingham.  The problem is that the Sheriff is checking sacks as they come through the gates and not everything in your bag is legal.

Eve Online: 1st Day in a New Alliance

After rejoining Eve I have found myself a new corp and alliance.  I wasn't really sure what I wanted to go and do in game but I was sure it wasn't going to be 0.0 Sov Wars.  I was looking for any non-sov PVP corps that I thought could be fun and I have ended up back with my first love, Lowsec Piracy.

I have joined Relentless Terrorism, a lowsec pirate corp and member of the Separatists alliance.  I love being back in lowsec and it something I have gone back to a few times since I first flew with The Gurlstas Associates back in 2011.

I also had a very nice 1st evening in the alliance.

Back To Eve Online

As you may know I used to play Eve Online for a long time.  I used to really enjoy it but after moving and not having a reliable internet connection I stopped and never went back to it.  Well now I am.

So what made me come back?

1st Play Through of Fury of Dracula

A few month ago I posted a list of games I wanted to get next.  On that I said that one I was really looking forward to was Fury of Dracula 3rd Edition.  I haven't bought it, but a friend of mine did and we tried it for the first time Saturday Night.  I'm not going to do a review, I know we made a few mistakes and we didn't use all the advanced rules, I'd rather wait for play a few more games before writing a proper review.  Instead I'm going to write up our first play.

The BBG play record is here.  It does contain spoilers for this write up about where Dracula started.

Eve Online: A Tale of Fail

OK so this Eve Online post is different from others I have done.  It is a write up of a kill but not the same as my last.  This was written by another guy that was there and I'm just copying and pasting.

For a little background I was looking for anomalies to run while we were quiet in lowsec.  We were in a pirate alliance but everyone was AFK and me and you're mum decided to make some money.  I was in a dead end system with no stations when this happened.

Everything below was written by You're Mum and is a direct copy and paste, it is NSFW...sort of.

Fluxx

Fluxx, the game where the rules are always changing.  I will admit up front that with all the different versions of this game out now I have never played the original game, but I have played a couple of different versions.

World of Tanks

The last few weeks I've been playing a lot of PS4 rather than tabletop games and this game is the reason.  A few years ago me and a group for friends used to play World of Tanks on the PC, now it has just been released on PS4 (and is also on XBoxOne) and we have really got back into it.

Upcoming Purchases. Jan 2016

I recently went through some new games I was looking forward to in October.  Yesterday I got my hands of the first game off that list and played it, Vault Wars.  I only played one game of it, so wanted to get a few more games of it under my belt before I review it.  It did get me thinking about what games I am thinking about getting next.

Some are the same mentioned in that post, others are older games I have got or haven't played but want to.  I only buy one game a month average, so I am unlikely to get all of these in the next few months, but they are all games I am thinking about getting soon.

I have a long wishlist of games but I have a few, which change from time to time, that make it to my shortlist.  When it comes to buying games I pick one of this smaller list.  This post is that short list as it stands now.

Spyfall

This entry I'm going to talk about one of my new favourite party games, Spyfall from Cryptozoic.  It is a relatively simple social deduction game, that can be played over any number of rounds you choose, so one game can be as short or long as you like.

Legendary: Marvel Deck Building Game

I going to talk about one of my most played games, Marvel Legendary from Upper Deck.  It is a deck building game where the players work together to defeat a Mastermind and their scheme.  I had a dilemma when I choose to buy this, I am more of a DC fan than Marvel and there is a DC deck builder as well.  I picked this one in the end because I think the game underneath the theme sounds better.  I haven't played the DC game and might look into it in the future but for now I am happy with this.  I have a few of the expansions to, at the moment Dark City, Paint the Town Red and Guardians of the Galaxy.  I will just be talking about the base game now.

Writing an RPG Part One

So recently I've been trying to write a story for a Tabletop RPG.  I've never done it before, I've never DM'd before and it has been awhile since I've actually played an RPG so it's a long process.  I'm not going to post any details of the story here since I know members of my group read this blog from time to time and I don't want to spoil it incase I get to use it.  I will be posting some updates on how it is going.

Christmas Games Night 27/12/2015

So the festive season is upon us and that means more new games.  I was lucky enough to get two this year, Sheriff of Nottingham and Carcassonne (with the River and Abbot expansions).  This was the first chance we got to play any since Christmas so we got a few games in.  We had started with 6 which was over both games player counts so we started with a few other games until we were down to 4 players.  These aren't as big or story driven games like my last Games night post but they were new games for all of us and I wanted to write about them a bit but haven't really played them enough to do a full review.

Game Night 09/12/2015 "Night of the Living Dead"

I'm going to be doing a quick overview of our last game night, it won't be reviews of the games but just what happened in them.  We only played two games, Dead Men Tell No Tales and Dead Of Winter.

You can see the Board Game Geek plays here, Dead Men Tell No Tales & Dead Of Winter.

Fillers

I like a long deep game dripping with theme, but sometimes you just need to get a short game out, something that you can either play multiple games of in a go, relax between more taxing games of the night or just killing 10 minutes while waiting for people to turn up/get food sorted/pack up the last game.  So I'm going to take about a few of my favorite short games.  

I find that fillers see a lot more table time that larger games, most work with higher player counts so work if we have a large group together and we could just spend the night playing a selection of fillers.  They also tend to be quite light so work with non-gamers.

Munchkin

I'm going to be looking at Munchkin today.  This was one of the first table top games I played when I got into the hobby.  It's still a game I enjoy but I play it less and less these day.  In the game you are a group of adventures moving through a dungeon D&D style (minus the roleplay unless you really want to).  So whether you are a Wizard Dwarf or a Elf Cleric it's time get kill as many monsters as you can and get out with more treasure than your friends.

New and Upcoming games for Oct 2015

I thought I'd talk about a few games that have been recently released or are due for soon that I'm looking forward to or have caught my attention.  Some are re-prints of older games and some are new.  I haven't played any of these and have different amounts of information on each one.

I hope to get a chance to play all of these and a few I do plan on picking up very soon.  This list isn't in any particular order.  I might not go into much detail on some of the games, since they are not always light and I haven't seen the rules for any of them and I'd rather be vague than wrong.  This isn't the definitive list, there are plenty of new and upcoming games but these are a few I'm really excited about.