It Is Alive!

Wow, it's been a week already since my last post!  I apologize for the lack of posts lately, I promise that I am still alive, but we have had a lot going on (building a new house, two kids under five, and numerous meetings with friends and for church)!  There hasn't been much time for gaming much less writing about gaming.  But here are a few highlights from the last few weeks.

Logan, Jenn, Sharayah and I have started a campaign of Charterstone.  For those of you who don't know about this game, it's a competitive, village-building, legacy game.  We are three games in and (I won't spoil anything) but we've written on cards and placed stickers into books and onto the board.  Even though this is not usually my favourite style of game, I'm really enjoying the legacy aspect of it, especially because of who we're playing the game with.  After three games, here's what I've learned.

• I suck.  Consistently.  In three games, I'm the the only person to not win a game.  But, I've got second in every single game.  So, I can't win, but at least I'm usually close (guess how many benefits the second place player gets...).  
• Don't plan TOO far ahead.  It's good to have a plan for a few turns ahead, but big things can happen to change the rules on you between games (especially) and even within games.  Have a plan, but have some backup plans as well.
• I LOVE opening sealed boxes!  It's so exciting!  Every game we've got to open a new box and get something new that changes the rules!

Board Game Designer?

I've had plenty of experience playing board games over the last two years, but lately I've been dabbling in board game creating as well.  A few friends and I have been working on a few game ideas but nothing really solid.  I knew that when I made I game I wanted to make one that I would like.  So that game needs to (A) be a deckbuilder, (B) be an action/adventure game and (C) have a board to travel around on.

I've actually been working on one idea in particular over the last 9 months and am getting a pretty good handle on it.  I've got starting characters, starting cards, a whole bunch of upgrade cards, enemies and their cards, and a whole bunch of ideas.  But you know what I'm finding?  This is HARD work.  Hard BRAIN work.  My brain hasn't worked this hard in a while.  I don't want to give away too much of the game (in case on of you tries to steal my idea *insert shifty eyes here*), but it is indeed an action/adventure deckbuilder with a board.

Someday I'm hoping to have a solid prototype and maybe even kickstart it.  For now, I'm (mostly) enjoying the process.

Too Many Spirits on the Island

So I recently picked up one of my wishlist items, Spirit Island (woohoo!).  I'd only played it cooperatively so far and it had been a little while, so I decided to throw down a multiplayer game to refresh my memory of the rules.  Usually when I play a cooperative game solo, I'll play at least two-handed (e.g. Lord of the Rings: The Card Game and Aeon's End).  I thought I would try that here as well, I'm a pretty expert gamer, right?

I decided to use two of the lower complexity spirits: Lightning's Swift Strike (chosen for their attack) and Vital Strength of the Earth (chosen for their defense).  I played on the simplest difficulty with no specific invader or blight cards.  Things seemed to be going pretty well at the start. The invaders were slowly spreading but I had a pretty good control of them still.

Busted (Playthrough of Burgle Bros)

I've been performing a heist over the last few days.  My team of three broke into a bank and we were trying to make off with as much loot as possible.  My job, as the The Rook, was to help the team hide and sneak around the guards as much as possible.  Due to this fact, I was the one most often in the line of sight of the guards.  The Peterman came along to help us crack into the safes and he was doing a great job.  We had two of the three safes open when everything came crashing down.  With her sharp eyesight, The Hawk helped us spot out the best routes to travel.

We were on the third floor, we had found the last safe and were just working on the combination.  The Hawk had traveled back to the second floor to try and confuse the guards.

You Got Porgs, We Got Borgs (Playthrough of Star Trek: Frontiers)

When rumours of Borg activity reach my ears, I don't hesitate.  I jump into action right away.  We've had relative peace within the galaxy for several years and I'm not about to let a few giant cubes ruin that.

Get In Its Face! (Playthrough of Tragic Events Expansion)

The call had come in - there was a fire on Main Street.  It wasn't big, yet.  The information received over the radio made it clear that it was spreading quickly and that there were people inside.  The fire truck there sent two firefighters into the blaze - Ed Kearney, a structural engineer, and Pete Templeton, a suppression specialist.

The Fire Has a Mind of it's Own (Review of Tragic Events Expansion)

I've already reviewed Flash Point: Fire Rescue (I can't recall if it was on here or just on BoardGameGeek...either way I'll be restating many of the points now) but I was very excited to get my hands on the new Tragic Events expansion.  Flash Point: Fire Rescue is in my top 20 solo games last (sitting at #9) and I wouldn't be surprised if it moved up a spot or two with this new expansion.  But why?  Let me tell you!

First of all, let me explain what this newest expansion adds to the game.  It adds three new heroes (with miniatures that match those from the Extreme Danger expansion) as well as the corresponding character cards and a revised one for the structural engineer (to take into account the rule changes).

It also comes with two brand new decks - these are the real game changers (ha ha ha).  One of these is the fire deck.  This is supposed to replace the old hot spots from the base game.  Instead of just rolling dice after your turn, you flip a card and the card tells you what to do.  Most of the cards just say "roll the dice" but some of them ask you to roll twice, draw more cards, add more bad cards to the deck, or draw from the event deck.  This is the meat of the expansion and, in my opinion, it really delivers.