PUNCHBOARD KINGS

Civilization: The Board Game: The Fame and Fortune Expansion: The Rules

Ah, yes, Civilization.

We do like Civilization here at PBK (or Sid Meier’s Civilization: The Board Game, to give it its full Sunday name). Daniel reviewed it way back in August and he loved it. In fact, we honoured it by awarding it with our first ever review. Daniel waxed lyrical about just how grand it is for almost 1500 words. He loved the fog-of-war implementation, the clever multiple paths to victory and the frankly genius tech pyramid.  You know you’re in for a good thing when the only real complaint is that the box isn’t particularly useful for storing the hundreds of tokens and cards included.

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Things were going well for the Blood Angels, little did they know, however, they would all be dead within the hour!

Celebrating my 1st Gameiversary and a Salute to Robert Florence

Today is a very special day. No, it’s not my birthday, it’s nothing quite as mundane as that. I am in fact celebrating one year since I became a proper boardgamer. It is my gameiversary! (That’s a word, right?)

How does one know when it’s their gameiversary? I’ve pondered this myself. Should you celebrate the first gaming night you arranged? Maybe. The first time you were dragged round to a mate’s house for a game of Dominion? Possibly. Or, perhaps you should honour the first time that you paid Amazon a short visit and clicked “Add to Basket”, handing over £40 for some silly cardboard game. That doesn’t feel right either.

I am not celebrating any of those anniversaries today. No, the 9^th October 2010 was a special day in my gaming life for another reason. It was the day I read Robert Florence’s brilliant review of the Battlestar Galactica board game.

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Civilization: The Fame and Fortune Expansion →

I’m a big, big fan of Civilization. In fact, if you haven’t read my review yet, you should definitely do that! This probably goes some way to explaining why I’m so excited about the new expansion: Fame and Fortune.

It’s promising to add four new civilisations (The Greeks, Arabs, Spanish and Indians), new map tiles, Great People cards that introduce famous figures from history such as Marco Polo and Hannibal, massive metropolises that add to a city’s outskirts and more!

More you say? More? Yes, more! More players. That’s right! Fame and Fortune will also be increasing the maximum number of players up to 5! I have no idea how this is going to work, how the map tiles will be laid out or indeed how long a game will take (given that we regularly clock up 6 hours in our 4-player games), but it sounds great. And it’s coming out before the end of the year!

Now, I appreciate that every sentence in this last paragraph has ended with an exclamation mark… forgive me, I’m very excited! For more information, just click the article title above and it should whisk you off to the Fantasy Flight website!

Pandemic

Can you remember 2008?

The world economy was on the brink of collapse, the price of petrol rose above $100 a barrel for the first time and Russia and Georgia went to war. Good times. Good, good times!

But in the middle of all the fun and games deadly diseases where breaking out all over the world. From Africa, where a yellow disease was spreading like wildfire, to the Middle East and Asia where the black disease infected millions. China and the Far East had to deal with a red variant and worst of all the US and Europe were plague-ridden with some unknown blue blight.

Ok, so the four colourful diseases threatening the world weren’t real, but they were the perfect theme for a friendly cooperative board game. That game was, and is, Pandemic.

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Bull in a China Shop: Gears of War - Game Report

Dean has already talked about how excited he is about Gears of War: The Board Game. Being the lucky boy that I am, I received a copy on Saturday as my early birthday present from my lovely girlfriend! Lovely. I’ll definitely be writing a proper review once I’ve played it a bit more but as first impressions go, it’s left a deep, curb-stomping boot-shaped impression on me.

On Sunday evening I had a go at playing a solo game. I shall attempt to recount that game for your reading pleasure now…

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Pre-Order Corner: Dreadfleet

Ok, shit just got serious.

When Games Workshop announce a new game you sit up and listen. Blood Bowl, Space Hulk, HeroQuest. All ace, all out of print (apart from Blood Bowl, you can still pick up a copy from GW) and all going for crazy money on Ebay. Well you can (potentially) add another game to that list.

Today GW announced Dreadfleet. A Warhammer pirate game thingy. Now I’m not a massive Warhammer fan. 40k has always been more my sort of thing. Big Space Marine super soldiers are cooler than Elves and Lizardmen. This is fact. But pirate sea battles in the Warhammer world? Yeah, I can get behind that!

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Look what I got for my (early) birthday present! \o/

Lord of the Rings: The Card Game - Khazad-Dûm

It’s been almost two weeks since we looked at the Lord of the Rings: The Card Game and in that time I imagine that you’ve all bought the game and brought Bilbo and Frodo along for the ride, not to mention Prince Imrahil. I’m sure you’re also looking forward to the remaining three unreleased Adventure Packs in the Shadows of Mirkwood cycle too. 

Well now you have something else to look forward to, such is the life of a Living Card Game gamer. It’s called Khazad-dûm, it’s a big box expansion, and it’s going to have Dwarves, lots and lots of Dwarves!

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