G.R.O.W.L. Spring Season Round 1

 Mummies and Vampires squared off on the Vampire Castle Pitch today at WZKD as Matthew's Vampires and my Tomb Kings had our Round 1 match! 

It was a wild and wacky day of Blood Bowl as the not so agile Tomb Kings started out by continuously booting the ball along their own goal line as they couldn't pick it up and ended up leaving the ball on the field for the Vampire runners to scoop it up and run it a couple of squares for the first touchdown.  

Later the hard stone tiles of the Vampire Castle took their toll on a few of each sides' players.  Then in the second half the Vampires were about to run in for their 2nd touchdown but the one of Tomb King blitzers went for it and knocked the ball loose and it skittetered into the end zone. After a few meager attempts of Khemri to pick it up and get it out of the end zone another Vampire shook his head and simply walked into the endzone to pick the ball up and score their second TD. 

As the game headed into the final rounds there were a number of Vampires starting to pile up in their respective KO and Causality dugout from the strength of the Tomb Gauardians and Blitzers, but suddenly some really unlucky rolls found the mummy wrappings of the Tomb Kings ablaze from the burning area rug of the Vampire Mansion and nearly killed a couple of Tomb Guardians if it hadn't been for a reroll of their regeneration skill.

In the end it was Vampires 2 and Tomb Kings 0 in what was one of the most entertaining and thematic blood bowl matches that G.R.O.W.L. had seen!

Thanks to my buddy Matthew for one heckuva fun afternoon of Blood Bowl at WZKD today!

Nerd LOLs

Nerd LOLs

Star Wars Fridays at WZKD kicks off with Armada

 Also known as, "How to run away to live another day in an Imperial Star Destroyer."

That's right - my buddy Mark and I kicked off (officially this time) Star Wars Fridays at WZKD Comics and Games yesterday with our usual go to SW lovefest, Star Wars Armada.

It was great to get the gorgeous (and pre-painted) big ships from a galaxy far, far away - it certainly seemed like a long time since we'd threw down the Armada dice and started chipping away at shields hoping for face up critical hit cards.

Apparently, I had forgotten that my fave Imperial Carrier can seem to be pretty much made of paper mache as it's first pass on the Mark's Assault Frigate Mark II and found itself with collapsing shields and hull hits aplenty.

As I quickly realized I was well on the way to a loss of shear points - I began picking off X-wing Fighter Squadrons and the occasional  Y-Wing Bomber Squadron.  But Mark's MC30c Torpedo Frigate made it's way around the central ringed planet on the board and rammed my wounded Carrier turning into some rather inglorious space debris and I decided it was time to high tail it to hyperspace with my Imperial Star Destroyer mostly unscratched.  As turn 6 ended - the points told no lies and the Empire took yet another deserved defeat.

Great to get back to some Armada...next Friday...Outer Rim (with the Unfinished Business expansion)!

Peace...

Mike

 

Quetzalcoatl Dragons take a loss in first Spring League match

Had my first match for Round 2 in the Gratuitously Rowdy Oddballs WZKD League (G.R.O.W.L.) Spring Blood Bowl League yesterday (I had a bye for Round 1) and took a 2-0 drubbing from my buddy Zeqe and his Black Orcs. This included 6 casualties inflicted on my hapless Lizardmen including the untimely death of Copperhead, one of my Saurus Blockers.

Great match with Zeqe and congrats on his first league win while I'll be bringing a Journeyman on for my next match. 

Best, 

Mike 

RPG Space

 

Due to a bit of a scheduling conflict at WZKD Comics and Games I needed to hold yesterday's WZKD D&Ders session at WZKD East (aka my place).

Waa fun to fire up my RPG space in the Game Cavern finally... 

Peace, 

Mike 

Interstellar Supremacy in a Really Big Box

 

After a long wait, I was finally able to get Twilight Imperium 4th edition to the table (and I didn't give myself a hernia doing so).  Had a three player 'Learn To Play' game with a couple of regular gamer buddies of mine after our regular monthly game of John Prado's Third Reich fell apart when one of that usual bunch had to postpone.  

Factions chosen were The Federation of Sol, The Universities of Jol-Nar, and Sardakk N'orr. 

We used the suggested three-player Galaxy Setup and the Great Races began their machinations toward seizing the throne and ruling the Galactic Council on Mecatol Rex.

Overall first impressions is that this is one helluva fun game and the possibilities and strategies are endless.  First time set up alone took a good 90 minutes for a noob like me (not too mention that the unboxing is a gargantuan task as well).  However, after seeing it all on the table and working through the game phases I think it will be much quicker next time around. 

But this is no beer and pretzel's game to be played over an hour or two.  We played a goodly six and a half hours and if we hadn't been nearing our scheduled full stop time and started space battles just for fun (and not for strategic importance) it would have easily continued on.  At that time, no one was arguably out of the game.  As we got better at understanding the mechanics play speed picked up considerably. 

When we called it quits, One player had accumulated 6 victory points and the other two of us had 4 (of the 10 required to end the game).  

The is a Fantasy Flight title - so the production quality is superb.  But this is a Fantasy Flight title - so be prepared to get your OCD on to get things properly punched out and sorted (particularly when thinking of storage that allows a reasonable unpacking to the table for future games.) 

All the cards, tokens, minis, and game pieces are well done - but IMHO the real standout is the Galaxy Map itself.  These are gorgeous map tiles and while the suggested 3, 4, 5, and 6 player galaxy preset setups are great, the concept of players drafting the system tiles to build the galaxy map looks awesome and I look forward to trying that on the next session.  A full on 6 player game is likely at least a weekend event and will take up a large amount of space (we used to 6 x 4' table space for three of us - that might have been tight for 5 or 6). 

Keep in mind if you are really looking at a multi-day game then the Prophecy of Kings expansion brings another 10 ton box filled with new content to add - seven more factions to choose from (there are seventeen factions in the base game box so what's seven more?), forty more system tiles to build your galaxy, tons of new forces to do battle with, new exploration, relics, technology, etc, and the components to add two more players for up to an eight-player game (mother pusbucket!)

All in all, Twilight Imperium is the gargantuan King of Kings of space themed boardgames - and it's a joyous thing to behold!

Peace...

Michael D.