Archive for October, 2014

Death Angels – Todesengel

Sunday, October 26th, 2014

Space Hulk : Death Angel – the Card Game from Fantasy Flight Games is a is a cooperative card game for up to six players. The game is part of FFGs Games Workshop licensing. The original Space Hulk game from Games Workshop was a spinoff of GWs Warhammer 40K miniatures war-game. Space Hulk was one of the early dungeon crawl board games. In it each player plays a single squad of space marines, while one player is the kind of dungeon master and plays the Tyrannid forces.

In FFGs Space Hulk card game the Tyrannid (or actually Genestealers) are handled by card draws. Each player plays a squad of marines, however in the card game the squad is represented by just two marines. Gameplay is very simple, the marines march in column they have a front and a back (i.e. left and right side of the card). They can attack Genestealers in front of them. Each card has just one hit point. This makes the game very fast paced.

In case you are wondering Todesengel is the German title of the game.

 

Why do I like this game?

What I like about the game is that it is a quickly paced game, doesn’t take long, and still it transports the atmosphere and tension of the original game quite well. I can almost hear the heavy bolter rounds when I roll to attack the Genestealers. Bam!

 

Single Player

I have not yet played the game multiplayer. I played it with different numbers of marines and believe that it scales fairly well.

 

Posted in Card Games, Science-Fiction, single player, Warhammer 40K | Comments Closed

Guardians of the Galaxy

Sunday, October 19th, 2014

Yesterday I went to the movies to see a film with friends. I had a look at metacritics, which ranked Guardians of the Galaxy at 76. So I decided against Dracula Untold (40) or The Maze Runner (56) and was not disappointed.

 

One of my favorite scenes is when Rocket (the raccoon) tells Peter Quill (main character) that the cyber leg, he just worked so hard to procure from the prison inmate, was actually not needed for the escape plan but was just taken for fun.

 

Did you notice in the end credits it said something like “no raccoons or tree creatures were harmed during the making of this film”? I suddenly had to laugh while me friends were staring blankly at the screen waiting for the typical Marvel end scene (which by the way was quite disappointing).

 

 

All in all a great movie. I would however have liked it better if the plot had been less of a save the world/galaxy story. It started out great as a movie about some criminals chasing each other for different reasons. Unfortunately it unfolded into this stop the super villain or we are all doomed story. I would have preferred a firefly/serenity type of story.

 

None the less I’m curious if the last part of the hobbit can top Guardians of the Galaxy as my movie of the year.

Posted in Science-Fiction | Comments Closed

Obsidian Portal – First Impressions

Sunday, October 12th, 2014

A few years ago I stumbled across obsidianportal.com while searching for a specific Earthdawn adventure. On the occasion of my newly starting Pathfinder campaign I thought about setting up a blog for campaign management. Instead I now created a page with Obsidian Portal.

https://spacefox-kingmaker.obsidianportal.com/

 

So far this site makes a good first impression. I set up some NPCs, entered details for some locations and prepared some hidden information, which I will make available to the players once they reach certain stages in the campaign.

 

The good

I like the option of setting up characters with portraits, descriptions etc. and assigning them to specific players. Thereby only that player (and the GM) can change the entries.

I also like that the basic version is free and you don’t get bombed with advertisements.

It is good that you can use Obsidian Portal for virtually any roleplaying (or boardgame) campaign. There are listed campaigns for older games such as Twilight 2000, WHFRP 1st Edition, Tunnels & Trolls, etc.

 

The bad

The price for the full version (called ascendant status) is quite substantial in my opinion. The upgrade costs 5$ a month or 40$ a year. That is basically 40% of the price of a typical MMO subscription (and the time of the subscription based MMO seems to be over anyway).

A minor nuisance is that IE9 does not work well with the site (I am unable to login). Instead I use firefox.

Other things I am missing are predefined flags for the characters. Now I use labels (which you can define yourself and assign as you like to characters, wiki entries, items) to signify whether a character is an NPC and/or a villain etc.

 

Conclusion

I recommend trying the page for your campaign management. If you restrict yourself to small file sizes for the images and/or work with external links you should be able to squeeze your first campaign into the 2MB, which are offered for free. The decision to upgrade or not I would make considering:

  • How often do you play?
  • Do you get contributions from your players to the wiki/blog?
  • Is the campaign going on between sessions (i.e. are the characters pursuing quests or professions outside the regular gaming sessions)?

 

 

edit:

I just noticed the site has an embedded pathfinder character sheet, which makes some of my previous comments obsolete (and thus I deleted them).

 

2nd edit:

I’m not sure if I like the included character sheet templates. If you switch the format or remove them all stored information is apparently lost.

Posted in Pathfinder, RPG | Comments Closed

My Wish List for Essen 2014

Monday, October 6th, 2014

Soon there will be the Spiel in Essen. For those who don’t know, it is supposed to be the biggest trade show in the board gaming industry.

My recommendation is usually not to go on the weekend but rather on Thursday or Friday. On the weekend the halls are crowded and you have to be careful not to step on the little kids that are running around along with their parents. The other thing is that the hot new releases are likely to be sold out by the weekend. There is however one advantage to going on Sundays. You are likely to strike good bargains on whatever is still left for sale. The booth operators usually don’t like to ship their merchandise back home so they will sell the rest of their stuff really cheap.

Sometimes when games are not yet released you can have a look at a demo (don’t go on Sunday if that is your plan, because many companies from overseas will have packed their stuff and gone by then).

 

Anyway here is what I plan to have a look at in Essen (and possibly purchase):

Andor

There is supposed to be a new expansion released and I really like the game as a puzzle.

Arcadia Quest

A competitive dungeon crawl if I understood correctly. Well I’ll have a look.

Warhammer 40K Conquest

Two player living card game from FFG. I expect of it something like Bloodbowl Team Manager but for just two players.

Dead of Winter

Semi cooperative game about the Zombie Apocalypse.

Star Trek Fleet Captains

An older title with nice miniatures and ship combat.

Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures

There are a lot of new releases I didn’t yet have the chance to look at.

Stronghold

An old title which seems to be interesting. It’s a two player battle of Orcs besieging a human castle.

Posted in Board Games, Card Games, Events, Spiel (Essen Trade Show) | Comments Closed