Star Wars News

Within the last week I haves discovered a lot of Star Wars related news. This news ranges from new merchandise to special events being held near where I live here in Florida.

First we have the new line of Hasbro action figures. In a move to make the line seem fresh, Hasbro has decided to launch a game system called that “Galactic battle game” that can be played with the new waves of action figures. Each new figure will come with a stat card and a dice to play this new game. This is a neat idea but I’m not sure that it would make me buy anymore figures than I normally would (right now about one figure a month). In fact, after looking at the first two waves I’m not even sure that I would get any of these because all of the figures in the first two waves look like simple repackaging.

The next new merchandise line that I discovered is Disney’s Star Wars Vinylmation Vinyl Dolls. Looks like Disney will be releasing several vinyl doll collectibles late this summer from Vinylmation. The website VinylNation.net has additional information and some great photos of what the characters will look like. Unfortunately, this series of toys will be blind purchase.

Finally, apparently this summer Orlando is the center of the Star Wars universe. Celebration V be taking place at the Orange County Convention Center, Disney’s Hollywood Studio is hosting its’ annual fan boy extravaganza known as Star Wars Weekends, and finally on August 14 Disney will hold an afterhours party called the “Last Tour to Endor”. I’m most excited about this event since Disney usually puts on expellant afterhours parties. After more than a decade of interstellar travel, Disney Parks’ Star Tours attraction is powering down to make way for its reimagining in 2011 and Last Tour to Endor party offers fans the opportunity to attend an out of-this-world, first-of-its-kind decommissioning party before Star Tours launches its final flights. Fans and families attending Last Tour to Endor at the Walt Disney World Resort can enjoy a one-of-a-kind entertainment experience – including specially-themed intergalactic party zones, Star Wars shows, a Death Star Disco and much more. The evening will culminate with a Star Wars fireworks spectacular.

Saturday Gameing

My family took a trip to my wives father’s house today and luckily I got in some unexpected gaming in with a few of my brother-in-laws. I had brought over a few board games (Zooloretto, Blokus, and Pandemic) thinking that I could rope some of the younger kids into playing, instead I ended up playing with two of the guys closer to my age (Chris and Mike).

First we played one of my new favorite games, Pandemic. We lost the first game within about eight minutes when Asia became overrun with all of the red disease cubes. At this point I looked at the guys and said, “Well there are three ways to lose and only one way to win”. Chris looked at me and responded,”Set it up again. We have to play this game again.” Not to many times that you lose a game this quickly and people want to play again. The next game we just barely won. One more time around the table and we would have ran out of cards in the draw deck, and thus lost. The guys wanted to play again but we needed to clear the table for dinner.

After dinner we decided to try out Blokus. I had brought this game along to try it out with some of the younger people there. Well, they all were busy doing their own things so it ended up being Chris, Mike, and me playing again. We played this game twice and I won twice. I have to say that the guys didn’t seem to like this game as much.

Voltron: Defender of the Universe

Monsterpocalypse is one of my favorite games of all time. The only thing that I truly dislike about it is the random starters and boosters that the game is packaged in. I stand by my original belief that this game would have been improved if it would have used non random boosters (you see what you get). Well this summer Privateer Press is addressing this issue by introducing the Voltron, Defender of the Universe battle miniatures game. Instead of random packaging this new standalone game will come with a preset group of miniatures taken from the Voltron universe. The game will cost right around $50 and will containe the following items:

1 Voltron figure

5 Voltron Lion figures

5 Voltron force Galaxy Garrison Cruiser figures

1 Lo-Tron figure

1 Lotor's Command Ship figure

4 Robeast figures

5 Lo-Tron Skull Ship figures

4 health tracking tokens

4 dice tracking tokens

24 dice

1 double-sided game mat

1 full color rulebook

Not only will this game use the basic Monsterpocalypse rules but it will also be fully compatible with the rest of the Monsterpocalypse line. Last year this game would have been an instant purchase for me but right now I’m being a little more discriminatory on how I spend my hobby dollars. Privateer Press has started posting previews of the game’s miniatures and that is pushing me towards picking this game up (So I can yell “Form Blazing Sword”!). If you would like to know more about this game go look at http://privateerpress.com/voltron

January’s game….Pandemic

The first game that I chose to try out this year was Pandemic. In this game players randomly take on one of five specific roles of specialists at the CDC. Each of these roles can do unique special actions during the game. The team’s mission is to prevent a worldwide pandemic outbreak, treating hotspots while researching cures for each of the four plagues before they get out of hand. The players can lose several ways but can only win by finding cures to all four of the plagues.

Pandemic is a cooperative board game that is published by z-man games. In a cooperative game the players work together as a team against the game itself. The whole cooperative game concept was new to my gaming group but people quickly became very found of it. Pandemic can be played with 2 to 4 players and generally takes right around an hour to play (although we did play one game that we lost within 10 minutes). The components found within the box are about what you would expect of a “euro-game” (simple yet durable). The board is nice and thick, the card stock is average and frankly wooden cubes are wooden cubes. The rulebook is short (only eight pages) but is very well written and full of practical game examples. The game mechanics are relatively straight forward and includes a card mechanic that can make the game either easier or harder. Very quickly smart players will realize that this game is all about resource management (mainly cards and actions) and team work.

The first people that tried this new game out with me were my cousins Buddy and Alex. We played the game twice and won both times (granted we just barely won and played the game on the easiest level but a win is a win). They both liked the game but said that they preferred more competitive combat centered games (not surprising since they both usually play Axis & Allies or a version of Risk).

Next I broke out Pandemic at my weekly gaming group. We promptly lost the first three games played and just barely won on the fourth try. All of the guys really like this game and I discovered a lot more about the game from this session than the previous one. First, the Medic is the most important role in the game. The three games that someone played the medic we won the three that no one played the medic we lost. That pattern has since changed but we still believe that the Medic is almost essential for a winning strategy. Secondly, we discovered that playing the game on hard is a completely different world from easy. We still play the game on hard because it is more interesting (on easy we win most every time now). Finally, this game can be very intense. Almost every game near the end you can feel the tension as you and your teammates try to pull out a win.

Pandemic has become a mainstay in the local gaming group for several reasons:

1. This game plays very fast with most session lasting for less than an hour, making it a perfect game to play when someone has to run an errand or before everyone has arrived.

2. It’s an easy straightforward game that everyone likes. It is actually one of the few games that peoples non-gamer girlfriends will play.

3. Frankly, the game itself comes in a small compact box that easily transports. If I don’t want to bring a lot of stuff to game night I can still find room for this game most of the time.

4. It’s nice to have a game that the whole group can work together instead of competing against each other. Don’t get me wrong, the guys enjoy games that we beat the crap out of each other but this game is a nice change of pace.

Wow, over a year? time to catch up

Well to start I cannot believe that it has been a year since I have posted anything here. Not sure where that time went but, I guess it is time to catch up. Back in January I decided that I wanted to try a new game every month this year. The decision was made after noticing that my Monday night gaming group had basically only played either Magic the Gathering or D&D 4^th edition for most of 2009. Now I had to set up a few simple rules for this endeavor.

1. The Game can be picked from any genre of game but I will be paying particular attention to boardgames.

2. It must be a game that I have never tried before.

3. The game will get reviewed on my BLOG (a bit behind on this one but I hope to catch up quickly)

4. I must play the game at least 3 times before I review it.

So far this year I have played a new game each month and even replayed it at least two times after the first game. Unfortunately, I have completely ignored the rule about writing about it. My goal now is to catch up as quickly as possible. The list of games for this year so far is as follows:

January – Pandemic

February – Cutthroat Caverns

March – Power Grid

April – Malifaux