BoardGameBlogging

Board Games, Card Games, RPGs and Fun!

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Pulled out Catan Dice during game night the other night. We play a lot of Island One, but Island 2 is great because ti plays almost just like Catan without all the setup!

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New games added to the collection:

Assault of the Giants

Evolution: The Beginning

Mech vs. Minions (!!)

Have only played Evolution so far, but excited to play a board game based on one of my favorite computer games!

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So now that I am using my BitBoxes, I don’t actually need to keep all of my game boxes, which is great because a lot of my boxes were from my childhood or from used book shops. Take that to mean torn up. But there are boxes out there that are just so pretty and look so great on a shelf, which I know is why a lot of people did NOT switch to BixBox. So what I did was keep some of my favorites, some of the pretty boxes and put them on my shelves as placeholders. They look good, I get to keep some “games” on display, and it keeps me from stacking up useless junk in those empty shelves. And I can always hide things in the boxes if I wanted to!

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Had an impulsive Amazon haul the other day. I wanted to make sure that I got my hands on Pandemic Season 1 before Season 2 launches and this one becomes too hard to find. I also had my eye on Double Feature to play with my mom the next time I see her.

I admit I am afraid to break the seal on Pandemic. I want to be sure that I can play with the same team through the whole campaign and I don’t have a solid, regular gaming group that I can do that with so it might be awhile before I start this, but I have it just in case now. :D

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Checked out a new FLGS today, The Game Chest in Mission Viejo, and I have to say I'm in love. Such an array of Pandemic, Munchkin, and other great games. I picked up these two beauties at a great price and I'm excited to go back the next time I am in the are to check out their games and STEM kits.

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Bit Mobile all prepped for a weekend with the family. Inside: Ticket to Ride Europe (no board, just the trains etc) Ticket to Ride Nederland Ticket to Ride UK and Pennsylvania Pandemic: Iberia Tokaido King of Tokyo with Power Up! And Cthulhu Munchkin Loot Letter Guillotine Code names Forbidden Island

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The before and after of using my brand new Bit Boxes. I need to order some more smaller boxes and a second Bit Mobile and another Bit Box. I have a lot of larger boxes with more then one game that I'd like to separate to I can pick and choose which games to take places easier. Now to get rid of the empty boxes!

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One of the FLGS in the area (Desrt Sky Games in Gilbert) is trading up to a bigger space so they are having a moving sale. Picked up all of these for a total of $52!

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Picked this guy up at Target today, on clearance! Combined with my Target RedCard, this cost is less than that on Amazon, which is great. 

I was a little surprised to see it, I don’t think I had ever seen Carcassonne in a physical Target store before, and then to have it be on clearance was cool.

This is just a speculation but I wonder if it is suddenly on shelves and on clearance due to the ZMan-Asmodee merger last year. If Asmodee is sending out a new, rebranded copy, then the ZMan copy has to go I guess. I mentioned that I think that this is what happened with the Stone Age scarcity awhile back. And to be honest, it is still looking hard to come by at a good price ($50 or less). To me, I don’t care as long as the game is the same, who’s name is on the box. For me, this was a great pick. :)

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Successfully won two games of Forbidden Island, the first two times I have played. The first game we played with the water level at the lowest level and it was pretty easy. Then we stepped it up and this is what happened. We almost lost. We had a lot of the island sink. I cannot wait to play again. Here are my main points on this game.

The main point of the game is to collect treasure cards to collect the four treasures on the island and then get off the island before it sinks. Each square represents a section of the island and first a section floods (goes to the blue and white side) and then sinks. While flooded it behaves like a non-flooded tile, except that it could sink soon and if that’s a treasure tile, the tile you need to leave the island or a tile that is strategic for movement, that could be a problem. I like that you have to get off the island, as it adds realism to the game and requires you to be strategic about when you will use your helicopter cards during the game versus saving it to the end.

I am excited to see if more players make the game easier or harder. I think it will make it easier than 2-player (which we played today) because each person can specialize in one treasure. With a hand limit of 5, we had to throw a lot of cards back and made the game take longer.

A counter-point that was presented to me on this was that you go through the cards faster, which is true. Even though you can go through the deck as many times as you need to, the water level rise cards could kill you if you are going through too fast.

But mostly I want to see how the game plays with more roles (more than two at a time I mean), as I think that could be very strong.

This game is an instant favorite of mine and is a really great smaller co-op game when Pandemic is just too long.

I cannot wait to play again! And maybe turn up the intensity on the difficulty.

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It has arrived! (it came on Saturday, this post is late). Ticket to Ride: Map Collection 3: Heart of Africa.

Now I just need India and Rails and Sails and my TTR dreams will be complete. (until hopefully Days of Wonder and Alan R. Moon hit us with the next amazing TTR thing...)

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Hit up Target one more time this weekend before the Buy Two Get One Free promo and I was very happy with my options. I went to a different Target this weekend and they had Forbidden Island and Hanabi, which my local Target did not. Excited to play these. 

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Tested two sizes of Post-It's for my Stone Age game. I am awful at actually scoring during these games (Ticket to Ride, too) and usually save it until the end. So I need a way to remember how much those "wild" huts in Stone Age. I tried the small squares, which were too big, and the small flags, which fit well onto the card and can be written on to say which resources were used and the score for that hut. I am going to keep these in the box so I have them at hand all the time.

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Sub Terra: a Cooperative Survival Horror Game for 1-6 Cavers - You and up to five friends are trapped deep underground. Explore quickly, avoid deadly hazards, run from the darkness. Can you escape? - http://kck.st/2jow6Uh

Ends soon! (< 2 days) I got mine, get yours!

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One of the things I always make sure to do when I get a new game (or gameS in the case of today) is to open them and get them all organized and punched out. I hate the idea of wanting to play a new game and then opening the box only to find out that nothing is ready. I keep my own baggies available so that if a bag provided in the game is too large I can put the components into a smaller one. (I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Bit Box and thus I don’t have time for baggies that are too large because extra plastic takes up a lot of space in Bit Boxes.)

I punch out the components, bag them up and rubber band the cards. I also remove the plastic trays in my games (except in this round I left the liner in Small World because there are just so many tiny pieces.)

I ran out of space on my GoPro card apparently before the end of this two-hour adventure so the end of Small World (the agonizing organizing) and One Night Ultimate Werewolf are left off of this from my haul from Target. I did Sushi-Go before I started filming this and Dominion and Minecraft are gifts so I didn’t break those open.

So here I am assembling

King of Tokyo

Catan Seafarers

Ticket to Ride Europe

Sheriff of Nottingham

Smallworld

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Out of Print Games/Unicorns/Hard to Find Games

So I just posted about my stroke of luck finding a brand new copy of the out of print Stone Age the other night. Sometimes we get lucky. Other times if we really want a game, we will have to pay top dollar for sometimes used copies on Amazon or eBay or other sites (looking at you Ticket to Ride Marklin!). This also recently happened to me with a Ticket to Ride expansion (not Marklin). Days of Wonder released the 5 part map collection for TTR including the following expansions:

Asia/Legendary Asia

India/Switzerland

Heart of Africa

Nederland

United Kingdom/Pennsylvania

I was able to find, at an amazing price, three of those expansions at a FLGS (post here) but they did not have India in stock, but I can get that on Amazon if I am not able to find it at another FLGS. The one that really evades me (and anyone else now looking for it) is Africa. The game has been listed as out of print on the Days of Wonder site and could not be found for less than $60 online from Amazon and eBay. 

I was sad, one because TTR is one of my favorites and I want ALL THE EXPANSIONS! (cue all the things meme) but also that this was a numbered set and I couldn’t bear the thought of being without the middle one... my collection would always feel incomplete... kind of like the sets of Disney Parks pins I have been trying to finish, some of them 7 years later even!

And then a couple days ago I was clicking around on Amazon and to my surprise I saw Heart of Africa listed for about $60 (yikes) but with the Prime label. Did this mean it was back?! I checked DOW and it is no longer listed as out of print! Yay! Between this and Stone Age my out of print dreams were coming true.

Luckily for my I was able to find a FLGS in Middle Island New York (The War Store) who has it in stock at a much more reasonable price (<$30!) so I ordered that right away and I am hoping to have it soon. It’s been FLGS to the rescue for me this past week. :)

I cannot wait until Heart of Africa arrives!

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Target's buy two get one free sale is going on for books, movies and of course games. I went over there today and picked up a nice selection. Whose to say I won't go back later this week. ;) 

 My haul includes:

Dominion

One Night Ultimate Werewolf

Minecraft Card Game

King of Tokyo

Smallworld

Sheriff of Nottingham

Ticket to Ride Europe

Sushi Go

Catan: Seafarers Expansion