So after Fantasywelt cancelled my order of Fleet: The Dice Game at some point in time because they said that they wouldn't get any more copies, I thought to myself "Screw this" and ordered it from a UK-based retailer. And not only got Fleet: The Dice Game (Second Edition) but also the Fleet: The Dice Game – Dicey Waters Expansion. I played the first edition of the game solo on TTS once and liked it quite a bit, so with the improved second edition on my shelf, I should probably be able to get it played against real human opponents in the near future and tell you how well it holds up that way. I hope really, really good...
The next one turned out a bit smaller than I had anticipated. When I forked out 20€ for Santa Monica: The Long Weekend, I hadn't realized just how little content this expansion had to offer. It's just a new scoring tile and a couple of cards (some of them oversized event-cards, which are admittedly pretty cool). As far as I heard, it does seem to have a significant impact on the base game of Santa Monica, though, and since I like that one quite a bit, I'm looking forward to finding out how significant an impact we're talking about. Fingers crossed that I'll find out soon.
The next one is one that I will probably dissect in greater detail in an upcoming "Germanizing Games"-post, because that German translation is just atrocious. It's Food Chain Island. Or rather "Die Schmatzinsel", as it's called in Germany. Yes, it's as embarrassing as it sounds... Apparently a decently cool game, though. A solitaire-only-game by Scott Alms. Whose games I usually don't like. So... here's to Food Chain Island being the exception to the rule. And holy sh*t is that name terrible...
I talked about Stew and Skulls of Sedlec (or rather "Das Beinhaus von Sedlec", which means "The Ossuary of Sedlec" in German) yesterday, so you can read my thoughts about them in that post. But yeah, I own them both now. Yey!
The second row contains the four new Minnys-games from NSV (next to the Fleet: The Dice Game – Dicey Waters Expansion). They are from left to right: Go for Gold, Bunte Blätter, Loot, Shoot, Whisky and 5 Minuten Puzzle. The first and the last of those are once again roll-and-write-games, the former one with an adventurous exploration-theme, the latter very abstract. Bunte Blätter is a speed-card-stacking-game, where you have to mimic a shape of leaves by using your own five cards as fast as possible, while Loot, Shoot, Whisky is a rock-paper-scissors-esque two-players dueling card-game. I've only played 5 Minuten Puzzle now and didn't necessarily like it as much anything that was released during the first phase of this... erm... "project"? Not terrible, but not great either. We'll see whether the other ones are better. Go for Gold looks nice at the very least.
At the bottom, we've first got Deckscape: Escape from Alcatraz. Look, I needed to save some money on shipping by reaching the "free shipping"-threshold on an order recently and then I remembered that playing through Deckscape: Heist in Venice with E. was fun and even though I still have some more Deckscape-games in my drawer, you can never have enough of them up your sleeve. So I own this one now as well. Going by ratings, it seems to be the second best one at time of writing (right after Deckscape: Behind the Curtain), so maybe it's good?
Riverside is one of the games I said I'd have a look at if I were going to Essen this year. So after writing that post, I was like "Hey, wait a second, I am an idiot and shouldn't be trusted with money, so I might very well just buy a copy right now and check it out, where's the harm in that?". And so I did. It's a roll-and-write-game by one of the fellas who made Avenue and his brother and it looks nice and might shake up the genre a bit by adding a pseudo-board to the game. I don't know. All I know is that I'm looking forward to trying it out soon.
And finally, we've got RRR. A French copy of that one, to be precise. Because for some reason, people were asking absolutely ridiculous prices for a multilingual copy of that one, even though it's completely language independent, and apparently there was a new French version of it last year and I was able to get that one for like 16€ or so. So I did that. It's an abstract tile-laying game by the minds behind Love Letter and... what the f*ck? Uncharted: The Board Game. That probably doesn't say much, but it sounds interesting.
But wait. There's more. Here's some stuff that also came in:
f*ck YES! Gravwell: 2nd Edition has finally been released. With new ship-abilities, more fuel-cards and rules that let you play it with up to six players. Which also includes the "half of the players try to go from the inside out and half vice-versa"-rules that were teased a long time ago. I haven't had the opportunity to play it yet, but I'm really, really looking forward to it. This has to be awesome. It just HAS to be...
Then there's the super-deluxe version of Radlands. Which I have played twice a couple of days ago. And I'm probably gonna talk about it at length soon-ish (I've got a lot of stuff to talk about in the near future, so it could take a couple of days), so you can look forward to that. Slight spoilers: it seems to be quite good.
From the same publisher (Roxley Games), I got Super Motherload. I actually got the two games in the same package, because I added a copy of Super Motherload to my pledge for Radlands back when the pledge manager was open. It had been one that I wanted to try out for quite some time and I've already done so over the weekend, so a session report for that one is in the pipeline shortly after the one for Radlands. Also not bad a game, if I dare say as much...
And the last one for this picture is another Essen-release that I bought more or less on a whim, namely Friedemann Friese's Full Throttle!. A.k.a. "Baby's first Downforce"? "Downforce meets Snail's Pace Race"? Something like this but also not really that. I already played that one as well and am gonna talk about it soon. Not too sure about this one yet. There's some fun to be had here, but I wonder how long it'll last... Ah, you'll see.
You'll also see: I went quite buy-crazy, because HERE'S EVEN MORE!
I still haven't finished MicroMacro: Crime City yet. I really should get back to playing through the cases, because it's fun and they don't take long, but you know how it is. But in any case, I thought to myself, it can't hurt to have the sequel, MicroMacro: Crime City – Full House, already on the shelf. And so I got it. It's that easy.
"Lueur" on the other hand is the French name of the game Glow. Which may or may not have been released at Essen this year as well. I actually don't know, which is why I didn't include it in my Essen-recommendation-roundup. I would have, had publisher Bombyx be a bit clearer about this, because it looks and sounds quite good. I've also played it already once. With two players. Which might not have been the best number. Although I do have a couple of qualms about the game regardless of the number of players. But it has made enough of an impression to make me want to play it again soon, so... I think I'll do that some time. It's... something.
And now the last one for real: The Specialists. Which also came out at Essen. And looked lovely. And plays... well, once again, you'll have to wait for my *harumph* thorough analysis that is coming up in a couple of days (probably on Saturday), but let's say I wasn't a hundred percent content with it. Oh, it has its strong points, but... ah well, you'll see.
Also yeah, that was the last board game. But we have even more stuff. Like these two beauties:
I'm pretty sure I could have included my hardcopy of the rulebook for Outlaws 'N' Owlbears in one of the previous "New to the shelf"-posts, but I kind of forgot about it. Yes, it is kind of bare and basic-looking, but come on, I got a printed copy shipped to Germany for 5$. You can't expect anything too fancy for that price. The game still sounds really fun and I haven't been able to play it yet. Maybe after our Chronicles of Darkness-campaign?
Or maybe we'll play Nowhereville first, because that sounds quite good, too. It's a "game of small town horror" and draws inspiration from stuff like "Twin Peaks", "X-Files", the writing of Stephen King, etc. But with a decidedly more overt supernatural twist. You're folks who grew up in the eponymous Nowhereville (actually called Norville, but who's counting), a small town that won't let anybody leave and that harbors dark secrets. The rules seem a bit Blades in the Dark-ish and I don't know yet what the focus of the game is actually gonna be (are you just gonna solve problems in that town or are you gonna try to destroy/escape it?) but I'm looking forward to trying it out.
Also here's some DVDs and BluRays. Yes, I still buy those.
Yes, I already bought the third season of "Ghosts". I already bought it a while ago and received it at the end of September, so I forgot to tell you about that as well. I'm two thirds through it (which isn't a huge feat, it's only six episodes long) and I still love it dearly. Just a great, great time altogether.
Next to that, we've got "Why Don't You Play In Hell", a movie by Japanese cult-director Sion Sono, who helmed "Love Exposure" (which I'm not a huge fan of). P. (not that one) mentioned "Why Don't You Play In Hell" to me when we had our sixteen-movie-marathon-weekend after we had watched "One Cut Of The Dead" and it sounded intriguing, so I went to the lengths of hunting down a US-DVD-copy of the movie. I hope it's good. I mean, it sounds positively bonkers. As far as I understand, it's about a Yakuza-boss who wants to shoot a Yakuza-movie but since he lacks the funds, he provokes a real Yakuza-gang-war and forces a renegade film crew to turn the proceedings into a feature film. Or something like that. Count me f*cking in!
Then we have "Starman", a.k.a. the only theatrical John Carpenter-movie I haven't watched yet. As I noticed when Jay Bauman and international superstar Rich Evans ranked all John Carpenter-movies on RedLetterMedia a couple of weeks ago. So I got myself the BluRay and am looking forward to watching it... at some point. Maybe it's something I can talk E. into? It's supposedly quite good.
And now we've finally really reached the end with "Death Valley", a horror-mockumentary TV-show that was distributed by MTV back in the day (the day being 2011). I recently started tuning into "Wellington Paranormal" (not too sure what to think about it yet, I might talk about it in a future TV-show roundup) and then I read that some people consider it to be "like 'Death Valley', minus the gore". And then I was like "There's something like this with gore? Awesome!" and got myself the full TV-show "Death Valley" for... 4€ including shipping. That's a bargain, if you asked me. Dunno when I'm gonna watch it, I'm still knee-deep in six other shows, but... I'll get to it.
And YOU (yes, you) should absolutely get to checking out my second album "Upon A Monument Of Disrepair", because I'm working on new stuff at the moment and you want to get in on the ground-floor, right? RIGHT? Here's a link.
:strip_icc()/pic6320385.jpg "The sixteenth haul of the year! | Everything that sucks! And some things that don't. (6)")
