Games I Haven't Played, But I'd Like To

It doesn't seem to matter how many games I have or play I there is always something I haven't tried that I want to play.  I decided to write a little bit about a few games that have caught my eye recently that I'd like to try.  Like the list I posted in January 2016 & October 2015 this is just games I am thinking about at the moment.  My mood seems to change faster than I can buy and play games so I may or may not get all or some of these games.  There might even be a little cross over with those old lists.

I have decided to split the list into Old, New and Upcoming games and have picked a few from my ever increasing wishlist to talk about here.

Legendary Encounters: Predator

After playing Marvel Legendary plenty of times I got the chance to play Legendary Encounters.  Both games are very alike but do have some differences.  Recently I probably have played Encounters Predator more than Marvel Legendary so I thought it was time I wrote about it a bit.

Deception: Murder in Hong Kong

Deception: Murder in Hong Kong was a game I got after hearing really glowing reviews of it.  It was described as a game that killed a game I liked already, Mysterium, so I knew it was something that should appeal to me.

It also filled a nice gap in my collection of games that can handle a large number of players but are still very much a gamer's game and not a light filler.

The Most Heartbreaking Moment in Video game History.

I watched a video the other day from Outside Xtra about the 5 most heartbreaking moments in video game history, which you can watch for yourself here 5 Heartbreaks We're Not Ready to Talk About (But Like Heroes We Will Try).  In it each presenter talks about their most emotional moment in a game.  They almost touched on mine but didn't quite mention it so I thought I'd write about it myself.

Beware Spoilers Ahead!

8th Edition: What We Know So Far

8th Edition has been announced and we are starting to see leaks and teases of what is to come.  I don't have time to write about each update as it comes out but I thought I'd write about what we know so far all together and what I think about it.

Standard Disclaimer: this is not news, I don't get any inside information or anything like that. It is just what I think about things that have already been released and reported on by everyone else already.  Also with new teases and information being released by GW every day at the moment, this may be out of date really fast.   If you want to keep up to date with news as it comes out of Games Workshop read Bell of Lost Souls, it's where I get most of my news from anyway.

Hope for the Grim Darkness of the Far Future

There have been some great announcements out of Games Workshop recently and I have been trying to follow it more than I have in the last few years because of that.  Could it be enough to get me playing Games Workshop games again? Is there hope in the grim darkness of the far future? or only war?

Unboxing Art of War Studios Tokens for Malifaux

After deciding to start playing Malifaux I also decided to pick up some tokens to use playing the game.

Malifaux use a lot of effects that need to be kept track of in the game and their are markers than need to be placed on the board.  You can use spare bases or poker chips for markers and keep track of effects with paper or on your phone, but I decided to pick up some markers to use in game.

Blood Rage

If you are interested in board games you have almost definitely heard of Blood Rage from Cool Mini or Not.  It was one of the hottest games of the last few years and has probably been reviewed 100s of times online, but I thought I'd get in and do one as well.

Blood Rage is a game about the Ragnarok and vikings fighting to earn their place in Valhalla.  It combines a number of different game mechanics and is a great mix of game styles.  It also allows players to use a number of different strategies and still compete.

The End of the World: Zombie Apocalypse "Banged Up"

We played another game The End of the World: Zombie Apocalypse.  Again I am writing this up from memory so I might have made a few mistakes, it was also influenced by the guys over at the INVICTUS Stream YouTube channel where I got the idea for the scenario from (seriously you should look them up at check out their Call of Cthulhu game).

For this scenario our players (Chris, Sam, Boris and Martin) have gone to do an escape room at a disused prison. This was the 1st time Chris, Sam and Boris had every played a RPG game.  I used the "Under the Skin" scenario from the rulebook.

Starting Malifaux Part 2

Following my post about starting with Malifaux I thought I'd share my first purchases for the game.  Some of the thing's I picked up aren't necessary to play but should help or give a better experience so I decided to pick them up.

Rising Sun Kickstarter

The Rising Sun Kickerstarter is live and I have backed it.  From Eric Lang and Cool Mini or Not it has been described as the spiritual successor to Blood Rage.  I already have Blood Rage, but I wanted to get this as well.  I thought I'd talk about why I have decided to back it.

The Five Clans of Rising Sun. Koi, Dragonfly, Bonsai, Lotus and Turtle

Why I Don't Have The New Edition of Blood Bowl...Yet

A game that puts the fantasy into fantasy football.  I really love Blood Bowl and have done for years.  I had the old 3rd Edition box set when I was a kid and used to play with my brother a lot.  Over the years I lost my old set probably somewhere between moving houses.  Later I started playing the PC game online and even running leagues and cups with my friends.  I really wanted to get a tabletop Blood Bowl pitch and team but they were either quite expensive or hard to find something I liked so I never did.  When Games Workshop re-released a new edition I should have been the target market but I still haven't brought a copy yet.

Starting Malifaux Part 1

Malifaux is a game I have talked about wanted to start before, you can read why I was looking for a new wargame and why Malifaux appealed to me here.

I have finally decided to take the plunge and get started with it.

PC Gamer Weekender 2017

So last weekend I was lucky enough to go to the PC Gamer Weekender.  I thought I'd write a little about it and the games I played while I was there.  You can find out more about it on their website here.

This won't be a complete write up, I wasn't planning to write about it while I was there and we played quite a lot of games so I'm not going to talk about all of them, but I thought I'd mention some bits I enjoyed.

Ticket to Ride

Today I wanted to write a bit about Ticket to Ride.  I plan on talking about the game in general not one particular map, there are a lot of different board available and each plays slightly differently.  I have got Europe, United Kingdom, Pennsylvania, Switzerland, India, Asia and Legendary Asia.  The basic mechanics are the same no matter which one you use, but normal they all have one or two different ways of scoring or a new action to take.

Plague Inc

This was a game I Kickstarted and talked about a little bit while I was waiting for it to be produced here. It is based off a PC and mobile game with the same name which I played a lot and really enjoyed.  With the Kickstarter version I got the 5th Player expansion and the Patient Zero expansion included.  5th Player just adds tokens and a player board to play 5 player.  The Patient Zero pack included a few new event and trait cards.

My RPG Collection

So I wanted to write a little bit about the Tabletop RPGs I own.  This wont be complete, I have a few small RPG PDF's that I got as part of bundles or free, mostly Humble Bundles or from DrivethruRPG.  I might talk about some of these but I haven't read through them all and might not have have chosen them if I was paying full price.

I decided to write this because I do enjoy RPG games but don't get to play them as much as I'd like any more.  I guess it just gives me a chance to talk about games that I don't get to play much.  That being said, I haven't played some of these for a while and might not have read through the books even longer than that so I could be a little rusty, if I make any mistakes I'm sorry.

Game Ranks Jan 2017

So following on from my post last week about ranking my collection I have done it again, this time with my logged plays list from BBG.

There are a lot more games this time (59 instead of 31).  There are a few changes in place from my last list, I guess a few of my preferences are based on my mood at the time, but most of my collection are in the same order.

The same rules applied as last time.  I removed expansions but when picking games I considered based on them being available to me (again the Ticket to Ride map packs and Legendary expansions I assumed were included with the base game if I have played them).  I also didn't take into account outside factors like available time, gaming space and player counts.

Read on for my list.

My Collection Ranking 27/12/2016

So today I found a link to a site which helps you rank your board game collection.  It works by taking the list of games you want to rank and pulling two of them up and asking you which of the two you prefer.  When you select one of the two a new pair are put up for you to compare.  This can take a while especially for large collections but once you have answered all of the questions it gives you a list of board games in order of preference.

The link to do this yourself is http://www.pubmeeple.com/board-game-ranking-engine/

For this list I imported my collection from Board Game Geek.  Then I cut out games that I haven't played yet and expansions.  For my comparisons I just picked which of the two games I'd rather play if I was given a choice with no other factors taken into consideration (available space and time etc) and assumed I had my preferred player count for each game.  I also assumed I'd have access to any expansions I own for each game (Ticket to Ride for example I considered any of the map packs I own and Marvel Legendary includes all the expansions I own).

Read More for my list.

The End of the World: Zombie Apocalypse "Death on the Open Water"

So tonight we ran a game of The End of the World: Zombie Apocalypse.  This was the first time I had GMed a RPG, the first time I'd played the The of the World system and the first time any of my three players had played an RPG so it was a bit of a learning experience for all of us.

For those that don't know The End of the World is a series of RPG games that all use the same system from Fantasy Flight games.  They all have different scenarios for the Apocalypse where the players play as themselves trying to survive an apocalyptic event.  This was a Zombie Apocalypse but they also have Alien Invasion, Wrath of the Gods and Revolt of the Machines.

The system itself is easy, players create a pool of positive and negative dice when making a test.  Any positive and negative dice with the same result cancel each other out and as long as one positive that is left is under the target number (determined by the players stats) they succeed.  If any negative dice are left they player takes stress (damage) in the appropriate area, Physical, Mental or Social.

This is the story of how my players did on the open sea.