Why is it possible to get through MORE games when a six year old is involved?  That’s got to make it harder, yeah?  Just as puzzling had been my total inability to beat the 6yo at Quarriors in recent days.  Fortunately, Dust was able to come over to assist in totally annihilating him in Quarriors…yes, that’s self respect flooding back through the veins!!  As a follow-up to the warm-up we played Frag, Shudd-up!  After pondering why you can’t print awesome graphics on a piece of card for the same price as rubbish graphics we entered into this quick-fire first-person shooter sim.  Sim as in sim-of a console game on a boardgame.  Dust assures me this is a low-price easily accessible game for people to take on and it’s in the genre of game he’s designing so we were taking part in market research.  Awesome…I think?  I hated it…but I admitted to being a good graphics whore so I was never going to be won over.  Dust slayed us in no time too!!

After this was a rather interesting venture into card-board gaming with Warhammer – Invasion.  That was a refreshing change after Frag as it was “pretty” – thank goodness for FFG!!  My occipital lobes were compassionately reassured it was all over and I managed to steer a kingdom of Dwarves to a mighty victory over the orcs and humans.  I think Dust and Travis negated each other and my guys rode in to town for the victory.

After battling it out all day we got all collaborative and busted out G.O.W we figured ‘China Shop’ the Berzerker scenario would be fast…fast as we’d die quickly.  In some turn around of strange fate…we beat it!!  Once again we stared at the six year old…wondering how we can manage back to back victories with him on the team????  Is he so unpredictable even the game mechanics can’t compete.  Or is it that M@ was a such a massive handbrake in previous attempts???

M@ you are summoned to duty…we have an experiment to test.  I’m sure you’ll be fine…

A desperate last roll of the dice today set a new record for most games in day!  Dust (AKA: Dust), myself and Travis (known by no other name) busted out the games day green felt and emptied Dust’s generous car boot all over it.  What we then found was:

Quarriors (which bought the following week from Tactics); a dice building game of small proportions but something that was very easily picked up by those of us under 7.  It was also nice summer-time, easy flowin’ fun…nothing too mind tinglingly alarming for our holiday sanitys.

G.O.W: Obviously a current favourite and something Travis wanted to play with tha big boyz (That’s me and Dust).  We actually…hold on…won!  Yeap, won a game of G.O.W!!!  Our strategies included, doing the objective and ONLY the objective…Dust did wander slightly but he assured us that he would only need resuscitating once or twice.  Another strategy was to stick close together unless tickers/lambent wretches are about as they explode and cause damage to every foe in the area (Mo-Foe…hmmm there’s a catch-phrase in that!!).

Our final two games, in order to beat the ‘games played in a day’ record, are a bit of a cheat.  They were both Lego games that Travis got for Christmas.  ‘Heroica’ and ‘Ramses Pyramid’ the latter needed some rule modification to make it work better and the former must be taken as a non-collaborative game…otherwise you both just win eventually.  We’re looking forward to adding several more Lego islands to the Heroica game and as it’s Lego, I can’t see why the Millennium Falcon and Boba Fett’s Slave 1 can’t get in on the act too.

A new game to be trialled today: Blood Bowl Team Manager. Dave and Matt were in de ‘ouse for today’s gaming.  I had Travis to assist my efforts, accuse the others of cheating and throw the dip across the table.  Now this was quite an effort to get going this game.  Despite several aborted starts into the manual we eventually had to just start and let experience teach us the game.

It’s a card based system unlike the original however, Matt recognised the teams as being drawn from the old format; as were many of the terms.  We basically play four games at once, one a cup round and the other games are highlight reels.  From this you win star players, fans, staff coaching development and special event cards.  It got moving eventually and we played 3-4 rounds leading up to a massive play-off for the actual Blood Bowl.  I forget who won either the Dungeon Bowl or the Blood Bowl although I do remember some of the post-match press being somewhat inaccurate…cheating is an aspect of the game after all.

Following this we played a grinding battle of Gears of War.  I’m still a fan, I think Matt lost some patience with it and Dave has too.  Whilst we were better with the mechanics of the game we realised it takes a long time to get anywhere and popping around the corner for a shotgun/mulcher isn’t a quick thing to do.  I guess some of my interest may still be born out of playing the XBOX game…as I sit here writing this I’m planning on having a game afterwards (motivated by playing the board game).  I guess what we learned today was to get stuck in to completing the objectives.  Specifically tooling up before hand only costs you too much ammunition and health which probably leaves you worse of than when you started.

Stunned myself by eating the healthiest gaming day meal ever today: a tuna salad…what!?
Ridiculous, I know. Even managed to squeeze in some mourning of the loss of regular Monday night RPG-ing too

We need to recruit more players for a future Arkham Horror, hopefully more GOW and whatever else may be released soon.  Next games date planned for a week/fortnight before Christmas…get in touch if you want in!

The Dark Knight has landed…Batman: Arkham City, is here.  Fresh out of the wrapper and into the X-Box 360, Travis and I test drove the teeny-tiniest part of the beginning of this game today.  We couldn’t be more excited.  It’s ridiculous.  Widely acclaimed as the best game of all time, this product has so much to live up to hype-wise.  I feel so assured about it meeting its potential however, as the previous greatest game of MY all time was ‘Batman, Arkham Asylum‘.  All I can comment on at the moment really is the Collectors edition package which came with a bundle of download vouchers, a proper quality Batman statue (going straight to the cabinet that one!), a lovely artwork book from the development of the game, an animated movie, ‘Batman Gotham Knight’, in-game skins, a rather ordinary ‘Soundtrack’ download and a lovely display case.  As my first, collector’s edition purchase of a game, it feels well worth it and certainly helps with the hype of starting the game.  The statue is by ‘Kotobukiya’…I don’t know what that means…unless it’s that thing where some slag ends up with jizz all over her face????  …I’m way off track.  But hey, unsuspecting readers, you didn’t see that one coming did you!! …<insert obvious gag here>…

I’m going to have to return with more updates as the game progresses, I’m not going to rush this one at all and it looks (and is reportedly) massive compared with the first game.  I hope YOU out there are going to be playing this game and will join me online with it soon.  Fun times ahead!!

Sunday, in honour of the Jovian Dentists, we gathered for a trial run of Gears of War the board-game.  Matt, Dave and I were present as Justin was underwater somewhere (I hope he’s now resurfaced!).  Travis even chipped in with some chit and miniature sorting assisting before heading out to the theatre.  The rest of us (the uncultured lot) stayed behind to battle with the grubs and their warring ways.

The game itself forms it’s own unique board structure every time you play which, one imagines adds to re-playability.  The board pieces are rooms or collections of rooms often at varying heights and with ‘cover’ spots indicated in them.  The game comes with a selection of 4xCOG (Acronym open to interpretation) minis and fists full of Grub miniatures of varying sizes…tickers right up to the Berzerker.  It’s all Fantasy Flight stuff and so is really good quality.  My favourite part of all, IT’S COLLABORATIVE, YAY!!!  I’m not great with picking up on game rules so it’s fabulous to work together and not have to worry about this so much.  As a veteran of the two X-box360 G.O.W games I found it real easy to pick up the lingo, the characters and what different threats the opposition brought.

It could be said that the day was split into two halves: ‘The Modified Dave Version’ and ‘The Actual Rules Version’.  As Dave notes, some people have said the former is the better game.  It’s certainly more challenging, one could say.  The results of the above were that we had are arses handed to us in the first game, spending most of the time crawling around on the floor ‘bleeding out’.  In the intermission we wondered why we were only using six out of the 35+ AI (opposition movement) cards.  In the second game we incorporated these ‘surplus’ cards into the action which resulted in fewer spawning and reinforcement scenarios.  Therefore, the onslaught of grubs was more manageable.  We endeavoured to lose at the end by trying several ‘heroic’ moves.  A single sniper shot ended the game propelling this weapon to the pinnacle of our regard…the shotgun lies at the other end of this list.

It was great fun to be back out in the shed rolling the dice and we agreed to start sniffing around for a spare Saturday or Sunday in about 4-6 weeks time…we should have burnt off Sunday’s excess calories by then <wheeze>.  We need recruits, from out there in the community, for an epic Arkham Horror game with 4-5 players sometime in the future.  Dust Tactics also lies in wait as a possible future game for us to play.