The Season of Lists

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…”

- Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities Rejoice,

Comrades, for the Old Points have been overthrown, and the New Points have been bestowed upon us. Put away your stale meta Lists, Throw open the Builders, and bring forth a new dawn, with new ships, in new combinations. What a time to be alive!

Hype-ing for Hope-erspace

Yes, its another opinion on Hyperspace. No Wait! Come Back!

Undoubtably one of the biggest changes to X-Wing 2.0 was the formalisation of variant formats, and the idea of the "Hyperspace" ship/upgrade rotation for major events. It's caused....debate. But it's now properly upon us, and Club Night is full of U-Wings, for goodness sake, so it's clearly having an impact. We've got our first event this time next week over a Element Games in Stockport, so naturally thats what we've been talking about pretty solidly.

It's my blog, I can talk about what I want to!

Who's the Casual Now?! (Spoiler Alert: It Me)

Hello, and welcome back to another blog on "Conversations I have with The Teenager in the Car". It's a thing now, clearly. This weekend was a big one for us on the X-Wing front, as we hit not one but two tournements with new shiny lists we didn't know how to fly. It went about as well as you'd expect (more on that in a moment) but it also brought up an interesting conversation. You see, back when we started out playing somewhere other than the kitchen table, one of the things were told about was "Serious Players". Oddly, Element Games' Sith Takers were held up as "Serious Players", a dark place beyond the Pennines "Serious Games" were played with "Serious Lists". But there is an assumption behind this, if you think about it, about the old Casual/Serious split, and so that's really what I'm thinking about now.

Todays List Building Challenge is How to Get the List From the Cat

On Expectation, the Enemy of Fun

Well hello again. It turns out a bunch of you read my last blog so dammit, I just have to do another one. We went to our first tournament of the year this Sunday - the "Wave 1 Championship" at Travelling Man Leeds, our home store. 16 players, four rounds of Tiny Spaceships and only the second week of the year, and so inevitably I wanted to try out a new list I had next to no practice with. Oh yes, that's how we roll. Below is a verified true image of the reaction I get in my house when I explain how this latest new list is going to be "great". 

2018: The Year in Tiny Spaceships

* Blows Dust off The Thing* 

Hello? 

So reading around the X-Wing Community, there are a lot of fun, thoughtful and helpful blogs around, and so I thought to myself "hey, didn't you used to have one of them?". Indeed I did, and appropriately, with one exception, the last post on it was me talking about the IQ Games Regional of November 2016, which means I've been playing competitive X-Wing for just over two years. Gosh. You'd think I'd be better at it by now. But one feature of this year that has been fun is the email exchanges with a friend detailing tournament experiences, and so I guess that helped scratch the blogging itch, but maybe...just maybe...it's time to go public. 

So without further ado, here is a quick summary of my 2018 X-Wing experience by way of my favorite lists. 

Event: IQ Gaming X-Wing Regional Tournament

Gosh it has been a while since I got anything down here, but life, as they say, barrels onwards towards the existential horror of the Heat Death of the Universe, or something like that. We've been busy, and one of the things I wanted to get down on (virtual) paper was mine and Ewan's experience at our first competitive gaming tournament, an X-Wing Miniatures Game Regional held at IQ Gaming in Huddersfield last weekend. Neither of us have done anything like this before, so it was with some trepidation we found ourselves in a 3-storey building full of gaming tables and about 130 competitors. So here's how I got on.

Games Round-Up, March 2016 Edition

One of the continuing entertainments of our house is the gaming shelf, which continues to provide entertainment for the long, wet afternoons of the winter, and consequently keeps providing more opportunities to spend money on board games. Hooray! Not helping is the recent discovery of a local games club, too, which seems full of freindly gamers of all ages at a convient time, even if we're not managing to get there every week. But still, more games, which is a win for us. Our main criteria is currently games that all of us can play (Robert with help, obviously) with a decent replayability factor, and I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that two of the three games I'm about to talk about are co-operative, even if the other really, really, isn't. So, here we go.

Games Review: Colt Express

So, our attempt to own and play all the Boardgames in the world continues. It has been, and remains, a main source of family entertainment around the house, and with Robert approaching 6 there there is always new games we can try him with. Z has also found a local games club, which we've only managed to get to once (dammit) but looks to be a fun group with lots of opportunity to make me buy new games. Which is pretty cool, it has to be said. So today we'll catch up with one of our recent aquisitions, Colt Express which has had multiple run outs recently.

Best of 2015: Games!

Right, onwards with the review of the year. For all we watch about a movie a week, and for all I've managed to read quite a bit, this year has probably been dominated by gaming; both electronically and around a table. The former has become a main source of relaxation; and a lot more solo-oriented than previous years, whilst the latter has has largely been driven by the kids, now Robert is old enough to get into something a little more complex than Mousetrap. By my count I've played 14 video games this year, and 18 boardgames (some several times and one a lot) so I feel thats a pretty varied run. Lets break it down a bit.

Boardgames: Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords

Over the past year, a regular feature of our week has been sitting down, myself, Zoe and Ewan, to play a scenario from the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords, or to shorten it here, PACG. The very fact that this has become a thing we can all do together (once Robert is in bed, unfortunately for him) means that I suspect that I would have warm feelings about the game no matter what, but as it turns out, PACG is a pretty solid co-operative experience, with some interesting that can do a pretty diverse range of things over the course of 6 adventure decks, of 5 scenarios each. 

Boardgames: Round Up!

I have often joked that my secret agenda for parenthood is simply to grow my own gaming group. It's actually going pretty well, too - Ewan will play almost anything, and Robert, at 5, is already keen to play almost anything, whether he understands it or no. Mostly not, truth be told. But it does mean that wet afternoons can be filled with getting the family around a table, and the general renaissance in quality and availability of modern boardgames means that the ancient horrors of Cluedo and Monopoly (shudder) long consigned to the dustbin of history. We manage a pretty good turn over of games, too, and I'm always confident that buying a new one won't be a waste of money. So, lets have a quick look at some of our recent additions.

Exploding Kittens
Produced from one of the largest Kickstarters to date, Exploding Kittens is a fast paced card game where you have to draw cards from a central deck hoping that it's not an eponymous detonating cat. To avoid this fate you can manipulate the deck, skip the forced draw, defuse them, and so on, but if not, you explode and am out of the round. Its a very lightweight game; luck plays a large factor, but is mostly balanced by it's speed, accessibility joie de vivre.

It feels, in a lot of ways, like a great "warm up" game. The rounds can be over pretty quickly, it's easy to drop people in and out, and it's hard to take seriously by design. We've mostly played it with 3, but I suspect it will scale pretty well. One of it's great strengths is the card designs, actually, but was probably a big contributor to the somewhat viral nature of it's kickstarter success, and we also ended up with the "NSFW" deck, which is the same game but with more scatological descriptors. Anyway, it's a lot of fun, if a little bit shallow in the long run.

Sushi Go
The other card game we've got a lot of play out of is Sushi Go. You start by dealing a hand of cards to each player, who takes one, and passes the hand onto the left. You reveal the cards, and then pick from your new hand, continuing until all the cards are picked, when you score. Each card scores points based on other cards - some you need pairs, or threes, or simply having the most points. Some cards carry over between hands, and after three hands you declare a winner. Very simple, right? I mean, Robert plays it, and has even won a couple of times.

But there is actually a huge amount of depth here. For a start, the game is gradually revealing information to you as you see the hands going round, telling you what is "in play". Then there is the cards people are chosing, based on their information. Then, as you discard each hand at the end of each round, and draw from the pile, you also have some idea what is left in the main deck. I've got to say I loved Sushi Go, and it's become a firm family favorite.

Quirkle
There doesn't look like a lot to Quirkle. It's a bag of small wooden blocks, each with a coloured shape - 6 shapes, 6 colours, with 3 of each combination. The idea of the game is to place them in a grid, but you have to them up matching either the colours or the set of shapes (or both, if overlaps require it). You score points for the length of each run you add to, and  get a bonus for completing a run of either all six shapes in one colour, or all six colours and the same shape. Again, pretty simple at first, but increasingly a complex pattern matching problem.

You may be spotting a pattern here but this is another game that is very quick to learn but with a decent level of complexity to the decision making. Being good at pattern spotting is a huge help, of course, as it being able to keep track of which options are still open. You can also play to distrupt patterns if you're afraid of others completing them, so whilst there isn't any direct competition, you can still feel like you're impacting other players if you're that way inclined.


Terror in Meeple City
Finally, to  Terror in Meeple City. In this game you play a rampaging monster intent on destroying the city and devouring it's inhabitants, and so does everyone else. So, you start by building the city, stacking cardboard floors on meeples to three or four floors. You move your little wooden monster around the board by flicking its base with your finger, or jump on building by picking it up and dropping it, or throw cars by flicking them off the heads of your monster. Chaos and debris abound, and meeples go everywhere, including, but not limited to, the stomach of your monster.

Terror in Meeple City is not a game for people who like order and control, but is a game for people who like random destruction. You win through destruction, and get points for wrecking buildings, eating meeples and attacking other monsters. As you can probably guess, accuracy can be a problem, and things do go awry, and I'm not sure I'd want to play it all the time. But it's great for kids, with the right supervision, and we've definately had our moneys worth!

Games Review: X-Wing, X-Panded

Its been a long time since I reviewed the X-Wing Miniatures Game, and since then we've played it quite a bit. Actually, a lot. We've also bought a lot of new fighters for it, expanding both the Rebel and Imperial Fleets to allow for larger battles, or just a lot of variety in smaller battles. Also, a collection of tiny model spaceships which may be a victory in it's own right. Ewan has almost permanently claimed the Imperial side, which is slightly worrying, but not as worrying as the number of times he is beating me these days. So what I thought I'd do is a quick run down of some of the expansions released so far, and how we've found them on the table-top.

Games Review: The Pathfinder Adventure Card Game

What we've started to do, as Ewan has got older, and (though he often pretends otherwise) increasingly interested in same array of geek stuff that his parents are, is play a lot more board games. As often said here and elsewhere, we are in a bit of a golden age for getting around a table and playing games, especially of the sort that are quick to pick up, and fast to play, without sacrificing too much depth. So on our recent holiday, for evening entertainment, we bought something different, something a little more complicated, to pass the late-summer nights. 

Games Review (sort of): Warhammer 40,000: 7th Edition

Gosh, it must be "games week" here on the Rambling blog, but its probably a fair enough representation of out time at the moment. But for a games-mad household, Warhammer 40k is a odd bird, a large-scale, long game with a lot of plastic miniatures bought at high prices. But that said, its starting to eat up a fair bit of my free time at the moment, and I even got a chance this weekend to head down to their HQ in Nottingham where you can book out tables to play on. Which was pretty cool. So, what's it all about, and what the attraction?

Games Review: Gloom

I think its fair to say that the Web Series "Tabletop" has cost me a lot of money. Its a pretty fun series hosted by Wil Wheaton (yes, that Wil Wheaton) and three guests, where they play boardgames for your entertainment. It's really slickly put together with cut-outs for rules explanations, and on-screen graphics, and edited to be pacey and funny. It's good stuff, but for a family full of gamers its...expensive. Especially for smaller, shorter, more portable games that look like they'll run well for newbies as well as more veteran gamers. One such game was Gloom, a card game based around making your characters as miserable as possible, and then killing them horribly.

Games Review: Smash Up

We seem to live in an era of pop-culture determined to eat itself. Most of the biggest movies and TV at the moment - at least in terms of generating the sort of heat that means everyone talks about them - are remakes, adaptations and sequels. Geek culture (if there is such a thing) gets particularly excited about the idea, partly, I think, because it can get into a frenzy of anticipation on the one hand, and have a lot of moan about due to change on the other. Probably the ultimate expression of this is the "Mash Up" sub-genre, which has brought us such delights as "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter". Maybe we shouldn't hold that against it though, because the idea of sticking two distinct things together is a fun one and it was only matter of time before someone made a game out it. 

Games Review: King of Tokyo

One of the problems of getting older and having kids is that your free time gets heavily eroded. You get less, and what you do have tends to broken down into smaller, less predicable chunks. Its the price you pay for the great adventure that is parenthood, and to be honest I wouldn't change it for the world. But it has meant that, for the most part, my days epic gaming are behind me, as it gets harder to corral both the time and the people. On the plus side, one of the perks of parenthood is growing your own gaming partners, although it can take longer than "hey, whatcha doing next saturday?". It does mean that I'm always on the look out for games that appeal to a wide range of ages and abilities, without being either too dull, or too complex. In King of Tokyo, we found another winner. 

Games Review: X-Wing Miniatures

One of the nice things about having kids is that as they get old you can attempt to inflict your interests on them, and sometimes they stick. Other times they don't, because to them you are old and stuffy and don't really know anything, but thankfully one of things that Ewan (10, going on 15) does enjoy is board- and war-gaming. Its one of the reasons I can justify buying miniatures to paint. It also meant that for Christmas he got the X-Wing Miniatures Games and we've played a good few times since.