GUNSHIP: FIRST STRIKE... a quick and dirty review.

I got GUNSHIP: FIRST STRIKE for my birthday, and it's loads of starship battling fun that's easy on your pocket book. In this game, you are the commander of a starship carrier group that has just joined battle with an enemy carrier group. You trade fire with up to 3 other opponents' carrier groups using cards, dice, and ship boards. The object is to destroy your opponents' "Assault Carriers" before they destroy yours.

While the mechanics and cards are simple enough that i was able to easily teach my 6 and 7 year old sons how to play, there are enough subtle strategic nuances, action sequences, and suspenseful moments to make it a romp for adults. As  parts started blowing off of everyone's gunships, my 6 and 7 year olds weren't the only ones acting like they had ants in their pants. Gunship is a game where, with a little luck, it's possible to lose every battle but still win the war if you exploit the right opening at the right moment. This was evidenced during a 2-on-2 when little Mikey ultimately sacrificed his Gunship (the "Hero" unit in this game) to make a glorious kitchen sink attack of "thruster bombs" and torpedoes on our Assault Carrier that so badly damaged it, that it was dead in 2 turns.

There rules are modular enough that there are rules variants, including campaign play, as described on the game's site, escapepodgames.com)  and still more variants you can make up yourself. After only playing the game twice, I was able to create a 2-on-1 variant that was extremely fun.

Reviewer's advice: this game is a must buy for sci-fi fans and gamers, young and old, that have a fetish for ship-to-ship combat.

Board Game Review: Mice and Mystics

On  Mice and Mystics...

I just finished two sessions of Mice and Mystics with my wife and 2 young sons. The mechanics and artwork are superb, but there are a LOT of questions left unanswered by the rulebook and adventure book (called the storybook). Learning the game was daunting with the rulebook alone, but fortunately Plaid Hat provides an instructional video on their site: http://plaidhatgames.com .

The game says it's co-op, and suggests everyone at the table is a player with no need for a GM. When playing the game we found that the game runs a LOT smoother, more quickly, and the players have much  better time when it's run by a pseudo-GM... a concept hinted at, but not fleshed out in the rulebook. In the rulebook version, the pseudo-GM reads the "chapter" (adventure) beforehand, but that's all. I added the duties of reading the story text aloud, gradually revealing the map tiles, placing antagonists, and rolling for antagonists. If you want to know exactly how this was done, leave a comment below and I'll elaborate.

Bottom line: I'd say this game is a MUST buy for any lover of co-op games, dungeon crawling, and The Secret of Nimh (It captures the ambiance of the movie perfectly), even with the required initial FAQ hunting, and the steep price to box content ratio of the base set.

Oh... and the outcome of our games? The dice were not kind to us this day, but tomorrow is another day and we will happily brave the fantastic world of Mice and Mystics again! :)


Game on.

Doc

We Two, Through The Ring of Fire

Man, what a night. I'd had six burritos with refried beans and extra hot tamale sauce, chased by half a two-six of texas whisky and most of a jar of pickled eggs.

Somehow I'd managed to make it to the biffy, and something evil was about to breach the gate I'd inadvertently opened to hell through my tortured bowel, if the gutteral growling from underneath was any indicator.

I heard from the stall beside me, "Sweet jimminy cricket! Are you all right in there?"

That's when most of my innards exited my body, along with three metric tonnes of what felt like molten brimstone. I answered, "Bgaaahhhgg!"

Without missing a beat, you started yelling, "Puuuush! Puuuuuuuush!"

This prompted three others who'd apparently entered while I was otherwise occupied to start yelling the same...

"C'mon! Puuuush! Puuuuuuush!"

I grabbed the stall walls, braced my feet and pushed to beat hell. "Ghaaaarghaaaaghaaaa!"

My bowels answered in kind with a sound not unlike a mighty river throwing a heard of bison into a half-full olympic swimming pool.

In what seemed like an epoch, I emerged from the stall sweating, bleeding, and raggedly breathing. I found you, like a Canadian soldier at the Somme, still at your post when the others had apparently fled.

"Thanks.", said I, and we wandered off to enjoy the rest of the Con'.

"No problem, man, no problem."

Nearing the End of a Long Road

Blinding flashes of insight and inspiration have been happening more often over the last year than they have in a very long time.

I think the one I had today has resulted not only in the final rules edit of OdB, but in the base concept of the third expansion.

The card art is coming along at a nice clip, and I really like the way Ben Hofer has brought my vision to life.

If my gut is correct, my final closed beta session will be next weekend, and I'll be opening it up to open blind testing the week after that.

If there are any local game shop owners in Winnipeg or surrounding areas/towns who want to host for me and become a part of the process, let me know. Otherwise, I'll be announcing times/places/dates as I can arrange.