Paint + figure = Amazeballs!!!

26 January 2016
Shock - horror!
I actually managed to sit down and get some painting done!
Actually, not such an accident - just me promising myself it was time to enjoy some painting.

So this is 'Smash-bot' from 'RoboRally'.  After the cool big game we had last weekend, I've had the motivation ramp up to go over the basic inked silver they come with out of the box.
Each will be a distinct colour scheme as well, to help players remember which one is theirs.

So satisfying to pick up a brush again.  It's been way too long.

Long Weekend Gaming

So on this Oz Day weekend we went down to have a day with J and A at their holiday house on Phillip Island. (Nice!) Also there were C (with J and E) and later T (with G) turned up as well.
Apart from enjoying a swim, we managed to get a few games played as well.
As a homage to the past, we started with a couple of rounds of Star Fluxx.
Boss Monster was suggested, but then C had a better suggestion - Boss Monster 2!  So we enjoyed a round of that before heading out for another swim.
Roborally proved to be a hit again, although with seven of us it did take a while. Eventually the younger ones dropped out.
King of Tokyo was fun with C and J and K and K. I managed a smashing double kill on the monsters in Tokyo in one turn, which took J and Kn out. It was a close finish with Kr sneaking in a points win.
The other guys stayed the night, but we had to head back for another busy day on Sunday, so left late for the drive home where everyone but me snoozer in the car.

New Game - BANG!

Picked up a new game the other day, "Bang - the dice game".  Not to be confused with "Bang" which is a card game.  After hearing the D6 Generation talking about it in a recent podcast I decided to keep an eye out for it next time I was in the shops, and that turned out to not be long later.

We played a couple of games on Friday night, and it is a good game - fast, easy to learn, some strategy to master, and the personality cards will keep it fresh for some time to come.

We finished both games with the Outlaws winning via the demise of the Sherrif, which seems like the easiest of the win conditions.

Good fun game, and looking forward to trying it with even more players!

Just an afternoon this time

After the previous weekend's full 12 hour marathon of gaming, we kept it to a more respectable few hours when L's friend D came over on Saturday the 23rd of May.
After a yummy big Asian feed up at the China Bar, we launched into some gaming.  I piled a bunch of our games on the table, and we started with Tsuro, which D had not seen before.
As always, Tsuro impressed with it's beautiful presentation and fun gameplay.  A couple of games were had.

D then introduced us to Saboteur, a great little game where you are dwarves trying to mine your way to the gold, but someone is trying to foil you - or maybe isn't, as the role of saboteur is randomly assigned, and there is a chance that none of the players are it.  I was the saboteur for the first two rounds, and had a great chuckle as L's naturally aggressive gamestyle drew the attention to her, allowing me to succeed with my nefarious schemes! Muah ah ah ah ahhhh!

Then we got to the main game.  D is a longtime Catan player who introduced us to the original game, so we wanted to share our new Egyptian themed Catan with her.
The game went well, but experience won over enthusiasm in the end, with D securing a comfortable victory over L, Kr and myself.

For a whole day!

So the new local FLGS ran a whole day of board-gaming a few Saturdays ago.  On May 16th, the game day called GateCon was an opportunity for Kn and I to get there fairly early and play as many games as possible - to be joined by L and Kr later in the afternoon.  Also there were LnK who were running the D&D 5th Ed demonstration game.

Kn and I paid our gold coin to access the game library and then started with one of our own games brought from home... 

Boss Monster
We bought an expansion for this a couple of weeks before, and this was the first chance to use it.  Lz joined Kn and I as we broke out the "Tools of Hero-Kind" expansion which adds new cards to the game.  The 'Items' give the Heroes some new powers as they enter the dungeons but if they die in a room you (the 'Boss') get to keep and use the item yourself.  In our game they provided a nice little touch, but didn't throw out the game balance or anything.  It was amusing that 'The Fool' hero managed to get an item that allowed it to get through Lz's dungeon and cause a wound to her.  That was a first!

 

Smash Up

We borrowed this from the game library as Kn and I had been keen to have a go since we saw it on TableTop a few days before.  

A card battle game, you randomly put together two factions as your side and then attempt to invade bases with your minions.  When the base is destroyed you gain points based on how many of your minions were on it at the time.  It's a pretty good game, and I was very happy with the performance of my Pirate UFO's.  Kn enjoyed his Ninja Dinosaurs as well.      

We had another game in the afternoon when L and Kr joined us at the con.  

King of Tokyo
Another game that we had seen on Tabletop, and we could borrow from the game library.  Just like SmashUp we were lucky to have found another 'con goer who had experience with this game and could run us through the rules so we could jump in quickly.
Having selected our giant critters we jumped in and started battling it out.
Rolling dice, pushing your luck and working to a strategy all come together for a fun little game.  I managed to buy a heap of added ability cards which helped in the end to secure a win.  Kn loved it enough that we had a second game right away, and then another game later in the afternoon once Kr had joined us.
 

Dominion
Kn took a break from the board games to try some D&D 5th Ed (doing a good job as a Dwarf Fighter) and so I joined in with some others who were setting up a game of Dominion, which looked interesting.
Dominion is a 'deck building' game where you have your own stack of cards that you draw from and add to during your turn, buying new cards to improve your deck and get extra victory points.  At the end of your turn you shuffle your deck again and deal yourself a new hand for your next turn.
It was ok, an interesting concept - and very Euro, with a nice Medieval theme, but I'm not all that taken by it.  Maybe just not enough Ninja Pirate Dinosaurs eating cities.

Munchkin - Legends
Kr and L had joined us by now, after lunch, and it was time to bust out my Munchkin board and get to kicking down doors.
I was hoping for a few more players, to get the back stabbing really going, but there were just four of us this time.  Still had a good game though, and it was nice how the board was received.

Camel Up. Cup? Up.  I guess...
Is it Camel Cup or Camel Up?  Will we ever know?
Great game of racing camels around the pyramid and betting on who will win the sections and overall places.  Interesting mechanism where the pyramid is used as a dice cup to roll out one die at a time to move each camel, the player having to decide how to bet based on the previous players' turn with the camels and then if they want to move a camel or not.
The board is beautiful, the camels are well done - including their stack-ability as they share spaces around the track (hence the Camel Up confusion) and there are nice cards and coins, and the pyramid dice dispenser is a great touch as well.  Fun game.

Smash Up - again
As mentioned before, we had another go at Smash Up so L could have a go.
Kn was on to his third D&D character by now, as Krl worked on his total-party-kill skills.
 

Takenoko
It was really late now, 9pm heading towards closing time at 10pm.  But L and I wanted one final game, and jumped at a chance to try out Takenoko (another Tabletop game).
The lateness was the biggest hurdle as we got our head around the gameplay, but it rapidly became clear that this is a very elegant game with some nice strategy decisions to work with as you build the garden, tend to it and look after the dietary requirements of the panda.
We didn't get to finish it, but we'll happily have another game when the opportunity is found.
 

The End
That was a big day of gaming.  The kids did very well, and we all had a great time. 

Settlers of Catan, but not in Catan

We have a new FLGS! Down the road in Nth Fitzroy is a new game store that also has space for gaming. We checked it out this Sunday, and were badly tempted to buy much stuff. But reason prevailed and we escaped with just the collectors edition of Settlers of Catan - Egypt. Which is just Catan with an Egyptian skin on it, and some nice pieces and an extra scenario.
We also grabbed an expansion pack for Boss Monster, just some extra cards.
L and I managed to get a game in yesterday of the base Settlers rules. It was fun, although we had to fudge a third player as the kids weren't interested this time. It worked out and L won 11vp to my 7vp.
It's a fun game, I can see why it is regarded a classic.

Grrrr! Arrrgh!

Friday night games, and Kn chose "Brown Bear" and 'Rampage!' (aka Trouble in Meeple City)
Brown Bear a simple little game of turn based card drawing with a memory aspect if another player picks up a card you want and puts it back. Fast, so we had four games before moving on.



Then Rampage! Lots of Kaiju fun. Some of us may have tried to focus a bit too much on knocking the teeth out of each other while L snuck away to a good meeple-fed win.

Need more space!

Storage is always a problem. Especially as our board games collection continues to grow. So a couple of weekends ago a quick trip to Bunn-waas and some power tools (woah!) and saw dust resulted in this...
A brand spanking new shelf unit big enough to store more gaming gear in comfort.

First ever game of Settlers Of Catan

Had our first ever game of Settlers Of Catan on Saturday night. Played at a friend of L's place using the expansion to get it up to a 5 player game. Awesome.
Kr and Kn got the hang of it right away, and played well even after a big day. The three adults had a great time and I almost pulled off a win! But was beaten at the post by D 😄
Great game, and I will now definitely be buying it as soon as I'm near a FLGS again!

More for a galaxy, far far away...

So the Star Wars itch continues to need scratching.  Thanks to the magic of eBay, a new wave of ships joins our Star Wars TCG fleet.
First a 'limited release' of a Star Destroyer and some rare cards. (although, they are everywhere on eBay, so it can't have been all that limited!)

Then I found another guy in the States who was selling another Star Destroyer, then it turned out he had some other cards to sell as well ... and... OK, I may have gone a bit overboard here - but the guy was giving a great deal, a bargain and it was too good to pass up :)

So now I'm pretty sure Kn and I will have plenty of options for our next few battles.    I'm looking forward to our next battle where I can bring out a classic Imperial fleet with plenty of TIE fighters and a Star Destroyer or two as the backbone.  Yeah.