Tag: Cryptozoic

Ghostbusters II: the board game

Following on from last week’s look at the two Ghostbusters games that were published by Cryptozoic, I have perhaps inevitably delved into the second box for today’s game day blog, as I’ve not yet tried this one out for size.

Ghostbusters II is all about slime, of course, and that’s no different here. The new game, and all of its expansions, all feature mood slime quite heavily, and that is, I think, the biggest difference between the two games. At their core, of course, they are the same game, but the second box has a number of additions that I thought I’d talk through today, as a sort of compare/contrast.

Slime is big, then, and this affects the game through Goo Piles – tokens that are placed on the board, and that need to be investigated throughout the course of the scenario. Each scenario has a Goo Timer along the bottom, which is basically the timer that ticks down each round as you can imagine. Investigating Goo Piles will increase the timer, however, buying you time to complete the scenario.

When you investigate the Goo Pile, you get to draw from the Goo Pile Deck – another new thing. This deck is mainly made up of cards that will instruct you to either draw from an event card pile, or an equipment card pile. Equipment is stuff that you can use, while Events are additional challenges to overcome.

There are new Ghost types in this game, called Plazms. These are denoted by pink miniatures, while the Ghosts are purple. Combat works the same as previously, in that you roll a d6 and compare it with the Entity’s to-hit value, then consult the card to see what happens if you hit or if you miss. The big, big switch up here though is that the Ghostbusters themselves now come in two varieties, regular proton packs, and the new slime blower version. Ghosts are not affected by slime, and Plazms are not affected by proton packs, so you need to plan accordingly! However, a character can spend an action to swap an adjacent buster’s pack between the two (or you can spend both action slots to do it for yourself).

Really, then, that’s all there is to it! We’ve got a raft of different ghosts, we’ve got goo and plazms, and we’ve got event and equipment cards. It does make for a bit more of a hectic experience, I think, but it’s still the same basic game underneath. Which is good, I think, because it means that you can throw the dice and have some fun, while playing as the iconic ghostbusters!

The Kickstarter version that I have does come with a bunch of extra stuff, but unlike the first game, this time a lot of the “base game” is actually really quite varied, and there isn’t a tremendous amount of “important” stuff left out this time. Of course, the deluxe edition does incorporate the Louis Tully expansion, which I’m not a huge fan of because I’m one of these people who prefers to keep things separate so that I know what I’m playing. It’s not a massive problem, but it niggles a little. The actual KS exclusives this time are some fairly niche additional ghostbusters from the Extreme Ghostbusters cartoon, which doesn’t seem particularly inspired, and sadly the KS campaign never made it to $850k to give us Dana Barrett, but she’s probably the only major movie character missing from both games.

Ghostbusters II is an interesting development from the first game, with some nice additions in the way that the event and equipment cards are implemented. With the added considerations of different entities needing different combat styles (proton vs slime), it definitely feels like the gameplay steps up. The fact that we have all the new ghosts, which include the Haunted Humans toy line, is just great, and definitely taps into the nostalgia factor for me.

It’s still a fairly light game, and with the timer element it can be over very quickly. If you like Ghostbusters, if you liked the first game, and/or if you’re a child of the 80s like me, then it’s all good really!

Ghostbusters: the board game

Yesterday’s post, talking about the Ankh Kickstarter game, has got me thinking about my own (tiny) collection of Kickstarter games – tiny, since I sold most of my games off between house moves. I have the massive Hellboy of course, but somehow the Ghostbusters game always flies under the radar for me.

I’ve played the original game a long time ago, and I do remember enjoying it rather a great deal, but I’ve made just a single attempt to play it again since it was delivered back in 2016. There is a lot of content that remains completely unknown to me, and I think that’s really quite sad.

The second game arrived in 2017 and until this week, I hadn’t even popped the tokens. I remember feeling a bit bummed by the delivery of the second one, principally because of the sloppy way it was presented. Sure, the big white deluxe box is lovely, but those bags on either side of the box in the above Instagram photo are also expansions in the same mode as the Slimer box. It’s like Cryptozoic had started to package things, but then just gave up and shipped it.

I think seeing how CMON package Ankh and others as full game systems with the proper boxes etc really drew a significant contrast, for me!

The second box seems to be all about the goo, and most of the additional Kickstarter content also makes that connection. I’ve only given the game a couple of cursory once-over glances in the last few days, but I like the fact that the slime seems to be quite pervasive here, as it seems to draw the content together somehow. It’s a shame everything doesn’t fit into the box, but if we’d had the Lewis Tully expansion boxed separately, like Slimer, I think it would have easily all gone in together. Anyway, I need to let that point go!

The second box is stand alone, so has all the stuff you need like Spirit World tiles and so on. What I particularly like about this one is the variety of ghosts this time around – even the retail version, I believe, has more variety than the core retail set. We also get the awesome 80s toys like Granny Gruesome and Mail Fraud as minis! Shame the quarterback guy doesn’t get a model, but I suppose we can’t have everything.

I’ve read some pretty negative reviews of the second game though, which is sad really because I do love the theme and all, but it’s not going to put me off, seeing as how I have it all. As it’s co-op, as well, I might see if I can convince my wife to try it out with me, but she isn’t a fan of the source material at all, so I’m not sure how successful I would be there!

Between it all, I have the two games, then enough content for four clear expansions, plus the raft of Kickstarter exclusives from each campaign. I think that’s going to be plenty of stuff to keep me occupied for a long time yet!

I’ll no doubt be featuring the further ghost-busting adventures here in the future, so make sure to keep an eye out for that! I have a week off coming up, so hopefully I’ll be able to give this game another spin sooner rather than later!!

It’s the GAMA Trade Show 2019!

Hey everybody!
It’s the GAMA Trade Show, and as I have done in the past, I’ll be keeping an eye on the proceedings to see what we’ve got to look forward to in the coming weeks and months!

First up, it’s none other than Games Workshop, who have just updated their community site with a first look at the next expansion for Kill Team – Elites. I mean, of course they have – not to be too proud of myself, or whatever, but I saw this coming a good while ago…

We’re getting all manner of delights here, from terminators (as we can see on the cover) to Drukhari Grotesques! It was almost prescient of me, then, to have just bought a pair of these delights!

For all my cynicism of expanding the game like this, I am actually looking forward to seeing how it continues to grow – the danger, of course, being that it will soon turn into just low-point 40k if it isn’t careful. But so long as we continue to get intelligent choices with reasonable rules behind them, why not, right? Just let me take Lychguard now!

I suppose this also answers the question, where has the Thousand Sons faction box been?

Along with a Kal Jerico model for Necromunda, we’re also getting a Halfling team for Blood Bowl, with promises of more announcements to come in the next couple of days!

…let’s see what else is on offer!!

Next generation of the DC Deck Building Game, with the Rebirth branding? Very cool. Not sure about the more board-gamey aspect with moving cardboard chits around – it is supposed to be a deck building game, after all – but linked campaign scenarios and character progression do sound like they should be a lot of fun. Gonna keep my eye on this one!

You know, I’d forgotten about the two Fortune & Glory expansions until reviewing last year’s GAMA blog, but now that I’ve had my memory jogged, I really feel the need to have them in my life! It feels like Shadows of Brimstone has taken over Flying Frog, and with the third kickstarter for this game currently ongoing, I have to wonder if they have their sights set anywhere near the more traditional games manufacturing route. Not that I’m trying to be bitter or anything, but I do miss their games like Fortune & Glory, and A Touch of Evil. Last year, they were in the middle of making sure the Forbidden Fortress SOBS game was shipped in time, pushing the FANG expansions back to the first quarter of 2019. Well, we’ll just have to wait patiently for something not weird-west related to arrive, I guess!

GAMA day two has arrived, and my goodness, how exciting is this:

Traitor Command, the next Blackstone Fortress expansion, gives us a Traitor Commissar and a Chaos Ogryn, both of whom look delightful gentlemen – and will have 40k rules, to boot! Awesome! Forging alliances with unlikely friends sounds interesting, too…

I’ve said it before, of course, but I really love how GW are using Blackstone Fortress to explore these weird and wonderful bits of the 40k universe. The Commissar in particular looks like a stunning chap, I’m really looking forward to snapping these up when they’re out!

Warcry, the skirmish game set in the AoS universe and first teased a few months back now, has finally been shown off to be really quite the interesting game! Pitting different Chaos warbands against one another, at first it sounded like it might be a bit too exclusive – I mean, what about us Death players, right? But whether Chaos is just the first wave or not, it’s difficult to not be enamoured with at least one of these factions, particularly the cute looking devil-bats! I like it, which I’m a bit sorry about, as I feel like it might well become another juggernaut like Kill Team, and I’m not sure my bank balance can cope with that!

I really like the look of those pit-fighters with the welding masks, they remind me of Haemonculus Covens creations among the Drukhari, and I’m sure plenty of us will be using them for Grotesque conversions as these things move along. The scenery looks pretty amazing, too!

Not sure, of course, but this could tie in with the rumours of Warriors of Chaos/Slaves to Darkness getting an overhaul soon. I suppose we’ll see!

At any rate, that appears to be that! Plenty to look forward to from Games Workshop, who appear to have taken over with their exciting announcements of new stuff! Nothing from FFG, though the distributor Asmodee has announced a deal with Cool Mini Or Not, which may bring those incredible games to the masses (personally I try to avoid CMON as I find it difficult to resist them!)

It almost feels like the landscape of boardgame news has changed, and the big trade shows are no longer that important for getting a picture of what’s coming up next. Even the big daddy of them all, GenCon, hasn’t been that explosive for the last year or two. Is it a result of Kickstarter seemingly taking over the world of boardgame production? Speaking from an entirely personal perspective, it seems like the companies I used to watch – FFG in particular here – just aren’t knocking it out of the park anymore, with nothing really overwhelming me with its excitement. Meanwhile, established companies like Cryptozoic and Flying Frog Productions seem to be using Kickstarter more like their business model than not, and it’s leading to an over-saturation of stuff. Shadows of Brimstone has been a case in point here – when that stuff eventually found its way to me, it was like receiving 5+ years’ worth of expansion material in one hit, and I’m not sure I want that from a board game. Has our modern sense of impatience and always wanting the next thing caught up with us, to the point where we suddenly need everything for a game right now? All of these companies using Kickstarter to distribute games, and somewhat by necessity producing almost an entire game’s run in one go just to ensure the crowdfunding, seems to have led to a point where they just don’t have anything new to announce, because we had it all in one hit a year or two ago.

Makes me wonder what GAMA 2020 will have in store for us…

Attack on Titan

Well, Cryptozoic have been churning out quite a few Cerberus-engine games since I last took much significant notice of them! Enjoying DC as much as I do, though, I’ve not really felt the need to take too much of a look. But at a recent games night, my usual gaming buddy brought over Attack on Titan, and we gave it a whirl. Both of us are old hands at the usual Cerberus stuff, so I wasn’t expecting too much to change – boy, was I wrong!

The game is superficially the same, with a main deck of cards, a basic deck that you start out with, and a currency system based on power. However, this game is based on the anime of the same name by Hajime Isayama, and deals with the idea of humanity living behind massive walls as defense against the roaming Titans, who eat humans at will. As such, the game is set out with five districts, and cards are revealed from the main deck into each of these districts at the start of the round. This idea essentially replaces the line-up, anyway. Furthermore, there are four Archenemy Titans stacked into the deck at the start of the game, timed to appear at specific intervals – these Titans are placed into a district and must be fought before they destroy the walls. If the heroes defeat all four Titans, they win; if the Titans destroy all of the districts, or if they manage to kill three heroes, or if the main deck runs out, the heroes lose.

So it’s a co-op game, which I quite enjoy anyway, but I was especially grateful for that this time around as it was a difficult game! There are regular-style Titans throughout the main deck, as well as good stuff for the heroes to buy, and these things will also attempt to knock the walls down. At first, the game felt a little bland, as we weren’t really doing all that much, but once the first Titan showed up, followed swiftly by the level-one Archenemy Titan, the game escalated quickly. Archenemy Titans have a hit-points level that needs to be reached before they can be dealt enough damage to be defeated. To add insult to injury, they’ll also regenerate lost hit points if you can’t defeat them there and then! Brutal!

It was a really fun twist on an established formula, and one that I definitely enjoyed as a change. Co-op games are always a lot of fun, and while I wasn’t familiar with the source material, having Tony on hand (who is a massive manga fan anyway) certainly helped there. But I don’t think it’s particularly important to know the story to enjoy the game – as usual with theme, it did lead to some cool moments, such as the idea of Titans being on the outside battering walls down, and the like, but it was still a tense game without any prior knowledge.

Attack on Titan

Game stuff ahoy!

Hey everybody!
I’ve been missing out on a lot of new game stuff coming out over the last few days and weeks, so following the news about new 40k yesterday, it’s time to get caught up!

Magic the Gathering Commander

So first of all, we’ve got Commander 2017 coming on 25 August. August? I always thought these things came out later in the year! Well, anyway, Bank Holiday weekend will no doubt be full of digesting all of that stuff. Four new pre-constructed decks coming, based along a tribal theme rather than the usual colour-based design, I’m excited for this for a number of reasons. First of all, getting four will be cheaper than five, and since the C16 decks have sold out so quickly and I’ve missed out on at least the Atraxa one, I’m planning to buy all of them this time around just in case. Secondly, I love tribal stuff, so I’m sure there will be a lot here that I’ll enjoy. Definitely looking forward to seeing what’s going on here!

The Commander Anthology is of course coming out in June, and that’s something else that I’m feeling the need to pick up before it becomes impossible to find a Kaalia deck once again.

We also know the name of the next set after Hour of Devastation: Ixalan! It has that vaguely Mesoamerican sound to it that came through from the “leaked” packaging a while back, though with a different name. Hopefully it’ll still have that sort of aesthetic and will be wonderful, anyway!

Iconic Masters will apparently be a thing, but crucially the Reserved List is going to remain unviolated and intact. While I’m a huge proponent of allowing people to play the game rather than supporting people who want to hoard the components of a game and not use them for their intended purpose, I’ve recently changed my mind and have come to appreciate the fact that having a Reserved List adds a depth to the game that elevates it above its competitors.

And, I don’t think I want to actually play with cards like Kukemssa Pirates, Tracker or Boris Devilboon. I’m sure there are plenty of more interesting cards on the list (dual lands, anyone?) but by and large, I’m actually content to have the new stream of cards coming out.

Legend of the Five Rings

Let’s move over to FFG now, and their Legend of the Five Rings LCG!

Another famous CCG from back in the day, L5R is being reimagined as a LCG from Fantasy Flight and is due out at the end of the year. It looks like a really interesting game, a bit of a cross between A Game of Thrones and, well, Magic. I’ve noticed that I’ve been buying fewer actual games lately, partly because I’m saving up to buy a house, but also I’ve been throwing a lot of money at Magic singles. L5R looks like it should be a good experience, so I’m actually looking to get this thing and see what it’s all about!

We’ve got the next deluxe expansion for Arkham Horror LCG, while we’re on the subject of the living card games now, The Path to Carcosa. I mean, first of all this expansion has already been spoiled on the internet by a European game shop (I believe), so I suppose it’s about right for them to show it off here before too much thunder has been stolen.

I’ve not actually been delving too much into Arkham Horror LCG since I first played through the core set at Christmas, but I’ve picked up a couple of the expansions that have come out since, so really should get back into this game. It seems to have been really popular locally, and the boardgamegeek forums are lighting up daily with threads, so a part of me is slightly concerned that it might actually overtake Lord of the Rings LCG soon, because –

The final Saga expansion for Lord of the Rings LCG has finally been announced, and it looks splendid! We’ve got two scenarios that follow Frodo and Sam through the spires of Cirith Ungol and to the fires of Mount Doom, with the third depicting the clash on the Pelennor Fields. I am really excited to see this box, even might get me playing through the entire Saga at last!!

Ever since The Black Riders was announced, there have been rumblings about the future of Lord of the Rings LCG, with an almost consensus being that the game would lose a lot of momentum once we dump the Ring into Mount Doom. I’m hopeful that FFG will have room for two co-op LCGs in their stable but, given that they have previously cancelled one LCG in order to start up another (Warhammer Invasion for Warhammer Conquest, for example). If Lord of the Rings hasn’t got anything further to offer once we’ve been to The Mountain of Fire, and it will be retired in favour of Arkham Horror.

As much as I would love to see more content for years to come, and as much as I’m concerned that we might not see this happen, I’m sure my wallet will be relieved to have one less game to pick up each month!

Runewars Miniatures Game

Runewars has been released, and while I haven’t actually dropped the £80 on a core set, I have actually been tempted by that Rune Golem model. It does actually look pretty decent, though, and I’m concerned that my resolve will waver if I walk into my local store and it’s still on offer there! But the fact that I don’t know anyone who has even expressed a passing interest in the game has managed to keep me away from it for the time being. Maybe at some time I’ll see if I can get a demo in, and see what it’s all about.

FFG have already announced the Latari Elves expansion for the game, which I find funny, so I might actually be tempted to get it if they bring the Uthuk Y’llan out and they also look as good. For now, I’m resisting, though!

DC deck building game Rogues

It’s been a while since we’ve had anything new come out for the DC deck-building game, but finally the next Crossover pack is apparently out and available, so it’ll be time to try and sniff that one out soon enough. We’ve also got the artwork for the next Crossover pack, Birds of Prey. The Multiverse Box has recently had another preview over on the Cryptozoic website, showing some of the new content that will be coming out in the box, which is really exciting! Anything that just adds depth to the game is always welcome by me, anyway! Looks like there are elements from the Crisis packs being ported over into the more standard game, which I like, so I’m excited to pick that up, anyway!

More DC!

Following on from the Rivals blog I posted earlier, I just wanted to mention some of the other stuff we’ve slowly been seeing that will be coming out for the game in the next few months. It was the New York Toy Fair last week, which is usually the first event of the year to start showcasing new games, and always worth checking out Twitter to see what’s on the horizon from your favourite publishers!

So let’s start with this bad boy! Looks like a big box version of the Rivals game, with four iconic pairings of heroes and villains! We’ve got Superman vs Lex Luthor, Wonder Woman vs Circe, Aquaman vs Orm, and Zatanna vs Felix Faust, it seems! Bit sad that there’s no Flash in here, vs either Zoom or Captain Cold, but this box looks like it releases in Q4, so maybe there’s still time for a standalone box? I’m kidding myself, I know…

Long before that, however, we’re getting a massive storage box for all of the current content, as well as room for future expansions. It’s not just a big box, though, as there’s a Crossover Pack inside that utilises cards from across the entire range of the deck-building game, which sounds like it should be pretty great! At a really good price, it’s going to be a must-buy for anyone who enjoys the game!

We’ve also got two more Crossover Packs due out imminently – Birds of Prey (which you can see at the bottom here) and The Rogues, which allows you to play as some of the iconic Flash villains!

I had been hoping that we’d be seeing another big box expansion for the game by now, but it looks like the above Confrontations could well be it. I’m not exactly disappointed, but I had been hoping for something… else. At any rate, I think it’s just great to be getting new stuff for the game, in general. It’s been quiet for a long time on the DC DBG front now, probably not helped by the Rebirth stuff going on within the comic book world itself – have you noticed all of these preview images have the new DC logo on them? New 52 is now old news, it seems! Perfect timing for that new big box, then!

Rivals!

Hey everybody!
It’s time for another game day blog here at spalanz.com, and what else could I possibly feature during DC week than the DC Comics Deck-Building Game from Cryptozoic?!

DC Rivals Batman vs The Joker

Today, I thought I’d take a look at the standalone expansion released back in 2014, the first in the Rivals subseries, showcasing Batman vs The Joker. It’s a rivalry that’s almost as old as comic book superherodom itself, after all, so probably the best way to kick off what seems to be a new set of small scale expansions to the DC line.

The game plays almost exactly like the main game and its tie-ins, with a new set of starter cards and main deck cards all centred around Batman and his arch-nemesis. These cards can be used within any of the main games, so you can either view this expansion as a nice source for new cards to shake up your games, or keep it separate as a stand-alone experience. What’s more, the main deck also comes with a number of super powers and equipment that are specific to the Joker, meaning you could slip these into Forever Evil and keep the theme alive there!

Where this game is really different is the Confrontation step. Rather than starting the game with your oversized Super Hero card, which grants a static ability each round, each player has three oversized cards, for Batman and The Joker, respectively. If you have amassed enough power to do so, at the very start of your turn, you can announce a Confrontation against your opponent. This is basically you attacking your opponent as if they were the Super Villain, as each oversized card has a health value in the lower-right corner – 9, 12 or 15. Once you defeat your opponent, the topmost card is discarded, granting a different ability thereafter, until the third card is defeated, whereupon that player loses the game.

DC Rivals Batman vs The Joker

It’s a really fun variant to the DC deck-building formula, and I love the fact that Cryptozoic are supporting the game like this rather than trying to somehow put together the pieces out of existing cards. That we also get new cards for the main deck is also very cool. While there were initial plans for a Rivals 2 box to coincide with Batman vs Superman, that seems to have gone by the wayside, and we’re left without much news (as of the time of writing) about the future of Rivals. Will we ever get Superman vs Lex Luthor? Or Flash vs Zoom? Who knows. 2016 seemed a bit sparse for the deck-building game, considering there were two huge movies for the DC extended universe, with more announced for the future. Maybe 2017 will see some more exciting developments to come!

Who ya gonna call?

It’s birthday week again at spalanz.com, as my blog turns two on Thursday – aww! To celebrate, I’m having another theme-week, though not quite as expansive as last year’s Indiana Jones week unfortunately. But it’s still amazing, as we once again return to a beloved franchise from the 1980s – it’s Ghostbusters!

I’ve got a couple of blogs coming later in the week that will be waxing lyrical on the movies and such, so you can definitely look forward to those, but it’s Tuesday, so it’s time for a game day blog – and one that I’ve been really looking forward to sharing with you guys: it’s the new board game from Cryptozoic!

Ghostbusters board game Cryptozoic

Well, it was new back last November, but anyway. This was a kickstarter game that was funded in March 2015, and eventually found its way to me later that year. It’s a relatively straightforward game, where you play one of the iconic four Ghostbusters – Ray Stantz, Peter Venkman, Egon Spengler, or Winston Zeddemore:

Ghostbusters board game Cryptozoic

(Other Ghostbusters are available…)

During the game, you get the opportunity to level up your character by busting ghosts, which gives your character additional skills – it’s a simplified RPG-style system, and one that I am pretty impressed by!

Ghostbusters board game Cryptozoic

Ghosts come in different classes, which roughly denotes how difficult they are to deal with, and feature the mechanics used to both move and trap them (more on this shortly). The ghost miniatures are all this clear-blue plastic, with the exception of Stay Puft Marshmallow Man (white, obviously) and Slimer (in green). Something I think is really cool is that whenever a ghost moves into another ghost, they become a bigger threat, turning into a ghost of the next class up! Wonderful!

The game is played according to different scenarios, outlined on their own cards:

Ghostbusters board game Cryptozoic

These cards show how to set up the map tiles, where to place ghost miniatures, etc, and feature the win conditions.

So let’s talk gameplay.

The game round is split between the Ghostbusters’ movement, any “end of round” effects, then the Event die is rolled. On a Ghostbuster’s turn, you have two actions to choose from, such as moving, aiding others, and combat. The main focus is of course combat, as you try to rid the streets of New York of all the paranormal manifestations!

Ghostbusters board game Cryptozoic

Importantly, to hit a ghost, you must have line of sight to it – so any terrain features outlined on the map can potentially block you. You also need to be no more than 3 spaces away from it. Each ghost has a to hit and to trap value on its card – when you’re fighting it, you roll a d6 and try to equal or exceed the hit value. If you’re successful, you’ll get to put a proton stream marker underneath that ghost (as shown above, Egon has hit the Boogaloo Manifestation once, so he gets to put one stream token under it). Class 1 ghosts only require one stream token to trap them, so if you hit them, you get to remove them from the board and place them on your character sheet; otherwise, the ghosts will continue to move around with that stream token under them until they are trapped – hit enough times to have stream tokens under them equal to their to trap value. When this happens, the Ghostbuster who put the final stream token on the ghost gets it, but anyone else who had stream tokens under the ghost gets 1XP. Ghostbusters also have some abilities to gain additional XP from their abilities.

Ghostbusters board game Cryptozoic

Once each Ghostbuster has had their allotted two actions, if the scenario card shows any end-of-round actions, they’ll happen, then the event die is rolled. This is a custom d6 with the Zener Card symbols (from Venkman’s test at the beginning of the movie?) – the scenario card tells you how many gates there are open on the map, represented by cardboard tokens as seen in the above photo. These gates also have the symbols on them, and if the symbol rolled matches an open gate, a new ghost will come out of it.

The way these ghosts come out is pretty nice, as well – there is another cardboard tile that represents a PKE meter, with numbers 1-8 around a central square. You roll a d8 to determine which square the ghost will emerge onto, imagining the gate tile as being the central square. The event die also has an eight-pointed Chaos star (if you’re familiar with Warhammer, you’ll know this one). This represents Chaos and each ghost on the map will move according to its reference card.

Ghostbusters board game Cryptozoic

This is a really fun game, I like it a lot! The rulebook isn’t particularly great, which made my very first game a bit confusing as I tried to make sense of what I was doing in terms of the round structure or whatever, but once I got past that, I think it went pretty smoothly and I quickly got into it – after which, I quickly discovered that I really loved it!

The basic game that you can get at retail has a lot of fun, but the kickstarter version has got a whole ton of extras, and it would be remiss of me to not mention this. To be blunt, the kickstarter campaign was a bit of a mess. Almost all of the classic movie stuff was kickstarter exclusive, including the librarian, Gozer and the dogs, etc, which was something of a bizarre move from such an established game company. As of the time of this writing, there is a second game up on kickstarter, which has a lot of this kickstarter loot available in add-ons, and anyone who picked up this game at retail should definitely look into that. It’s not all of the content, unfortunately, but it’s a lot of it.

The scenarios are where the game shines of course, and there are plenty of them to keep you going through so much gaming, and they are a whole ton of fun.

Pick up a copy today!

New stuff Monday!

So this dropped today, and I have to say I’m finally thinking this might be worth looking into now. I’m not the biggest fan of Suicide Squad, I have to say – always found it a bit unnecessarily violent, to be honest, but after watching the new trailer, I’m really interested… Might even pick up a graphic novel at some point, see if there’s anything to it…

The Ghostbusters II board game has gone live on kickstarter today, and looks a lot of fun! I have a blog upcoming for the first game soon, but suffice it to say, it is great. The second game looks to be just as fun – I’m particularly pleased to see Jail Jaw and Mail Fraud, two of the great ghosts from the toy line!

So excited for these things!!

Games Night!

Hey everybody!
It’s Tuesday, so it’s game day here on spalanz.com – and today is a very exciting game day blog indeed, because I got to play an awesome game at the weekend, and really can’t wait to talk about it! Let’s get going!

After something of a hiatus, my longtime gaming buddy Tony came round at the weekend and we basically had a day of gaming, trying out a couple of new games he has bought. I haven’t been buying all that many games lately – indeed, I’ve actually been downsizing my collection in the wake of all the plastic I’ve been investing in! – but in the couple of months since we last played anything, he’s gotten quite a few new ones.

The Hobbit deck-building game

We started out with The Hobbit deck-building game from Cryptozoic. This follows the same basic premise of all the other Cerberus-engine games from them, such as DC and Street Fighter, and the only real difference that I could see came in the form of the One Ring card. The “super villains” this time are three arch-enemy cards that form a stack, each separated by loot cards – powerful artifacts such as Glamdring and Sting, as well as “manoeuvres” that act much like superpowers. When you defeat an arch-enemy, you take a treasure card then everyone suffers an attack, discarding cards. There’s the One Ring card that can also be found in this manner, and is initially placed to the side of the line-up – cards such as Bilbo and Gollum will let players take control of this card, which functions as a sort of ongoing-effect. It’s actually really nice, especially if you happen to have a Bilbo card to take it, then your opponent takes it back with a Gollum card (screaming “My precious!” is mandatory in this instance).

I lost this one, 86 to 96.

But let’s move on to the main event!

The Witcher adventure game

Released late last year, Tony has been eagerly awaiting this game for what feels like ever, as he’s a big fan of both the video game and the novels. He’s often talked to me about them, and they do sound intriguing, but I can’t say I’ve ever shared his enthusiasm for it. Until now, of course!

This game is just awesome. You play one of four (presumably) iconic heroes from the world, and you go about the board trying to complete quests in order to score victory points, and the winner is the person with the most who has completed three quests.

The Witcher adventure game

I have recently come to realise just how much I love games like this. The sort of games that take up at least two tables, that feature massive boards, and allow you to truly immerse yourself in the world as you go through. Even knowing nothing about the lore, I felt like I was able to track a story of my own here, which is a mark of just how successful the game works I suppose. This in itself is a new experience for me, as I usually have some idea of what I’m doing in thematic games like this! So that’s definitely in its favour!

The quest cards are really cool, as they have your main objective, as well as two side quests you can complete for additional VPs, and a support quest that another player can complete for you, both of you then scoring. This adds a degree of co-op to the game that I thought was really interesting – it’s still a race, but you’re not trying to outright screw each other over, as you might want to complete a quest for them, or get them to complete one of yours. We were only playing two player of course, but I can see how this support mechanic could lead to forming brief alliances as you try to get ahead of other players.

The Witcher adventure game

On your turn, you can take two actions from a small menu of such things – move, investigate, develop, prepare, and rest. While you can never actually die in the game, taking wounds reduces what you can actually do during your turn, and can force you to rest to heal up. Developing yourself allows you to draw cards from a small deck of personalized skills, customizing your hero for what you want to do. Preparing then allows you to potentially buff those skills, or at least make them playable in future rounds.

I really love the investigation action, though, because of its variety. When you move, you travel along the dotted line between locations, and pick one ‘lead’ token of a colour available at that location – red, blue or purple. These can be traded in later for tokens that will allow you to complete your main quest, and each hero has a different ratio of leads to quest tokens, so some might have an easier time converting blue tokens, for instance. Investigation will sometimes give you even more leads, but can also provide tasks that provide greater benefits when you accomplish them, or setbacks, such as combat or just delaying you.

As I said before, it’s super thematic and even with no prior knowledge of the game, I had a great time playing as I began to spin this tale of my character travelling through the land for whatever reasons…

At the end of your turn, you have the obstacle part. Each location of the board is part of one of six regions, each colour-coded. There’s a track down the side of the board where you can amass both enemy tokens and skull tokens – at the end of your turn, you must then face whatever is in that part of the track. The skulls are Foul Fate tokens that cause you to draw from that deck, and usually awful things will happen. Enemies (the token in the bottom-right of the above picture) have two attributes, swords and shields. To defeat them, you must roll the three battle dice as well as your hero dice, and equal or exceed both stats – to symbolize both defeating the monster and escaping unharmed. If you fail on the swords, the monster remains in the region, and you suffer any penalties listed on the token. If you defeat it, but fail to equal the shields, you can still claim the successful combat but you may find yourself wounded or something. It’s a really interesting way of dealing with combat, making it more than just outright defeat of something.

The Foul Fate mechanic – while awful – is also really interesting, as you can take these tokens onto your hero sheet as well, causing you to draw a card if you wish to take the action you placed the token on. It really adds a lot of depth to the game, so that you aren’t just running around killing stuff and completing quests to win!

Like I said, I really enjoyed this one – I even won! – and hopefully we’ll get to play it some more over the coming weeks and months.

We rounded out our game day with six games of Magic, which I haven’t played for about five or six months, so unsurprisingly didn’t do very well. Managed to get him to 1 health in two games, and still lost, but did win two of the games. My Jeskai deck did a lot better than I thought it would with three colours involved – I even triggered Narset’s ultimate! – but my Rakdos deck was just appalling, so I need to sort out the mana in that one. Shame, because there are some really fun cards in that one. Magic is still a fun game, when I can get to play it, so I’ll no doubt feature more of that in upcoming blogs…

Anyhow, this blog post has trundled on for quite enough time now, so I’ll leave it there! Suffice it to say, though, that Witcher boardgame is amazing!