Category Archives: new to me

New to me: The catch-up edition

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It’s been a good, long while since I’ve done a New to me blog post and a lot of games/expansions have come in since. Between the post Essen/GenCon releases and the Kickstarter games that all came out right before Christmas, I may have picked up too much stuff, but hell…

Craziest day? Right between Christmas and New Year, I got 6 different packages of games. Most of them were one or two games, but still! That’s a lot of gaming. Some exceptional games in there too!

Let’s look at the better/more interesting games to come in. I won’t be looking at (most) expansions, since a lot of them are the simple, little expansions that are available on the BoardgameGeek store. Some of the games (Freedom: The Underground Railroad, Euphoria: Build a Better Dystopia, Hegemonic, Russian Railroads,  and Trieste) I’ve already talked about in either my 10X10in2014 or my Year in review article (part 1, 2 and 3). Expect reviews of them in the coming weeks. I’ve done a review of Council of Verona already and there should be reviews of the last few (American Rails, Trains and Stations, Legacy: The Testament of Duke de Crecy) as soon as I can get them to the table another time.

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New to me: Tomorrow, Navajo Wars and Hillfolk + Blood on the Snow

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It’s been a while since I did a New to me post, but it’s not from wanting to buy new games. I’ve been trying really hard to keep my purchases to a minimum and catch up to my monumental stack of older, unplayed games (it’s now under 300, make of that what you will). While the willpower has been strong, it didn’t stop Kickstarter rewards and P500 from coming in, which is not a bad thing, really.

So, all this to say that while I haven’t been buying new games, I’ve still acquired new ones and can’t wait to get them on the table, to the detriment of the older games that I haven’t played. *Sigh*, at very least, the pile is going down… Continue reading →

New to me: Tenka, Infection, Mr Jack Pocket and The Duke

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Buying new games is always an interesting process. If you’re at all like me, there are several ways you end up buying a game: some are just pure impulse purchase, knowing nothing about the game but there is a little something that makes you grab it, usually a sentence or an image; sometimes, you read about the game and you stow that info deep inside the vault, thinking there might be something interesting in there; other times, the first time you hear about it you know you need to get it; and lastly, there is the type of game that somehow fits into a current project and you just want to see what others did within that space.

All this to say that I bought four new games in the last few weeks. These are not games I had pre-ordered or backed on Kickstarter, but rather games that either had lodged themselves in my brain because of something I had seen about them before or games that had a lot of talk about them once they came out.

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New to me: A Distant Plain and Cuba Libre

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pic1714070_tI love asymmetrical gameplay and one series that has stood out for me recently is the recent one from Volko Ruhnke and GMT Games: COIN. This series is all about counter-insurgency and explores unconventional conflicts such as the one in Columbia at the end of the 1980s (Andean Abyss), the war in Vietnam (the upcoming Fire in the Lake, which I took a look at here). As there are very few games that explore COIN-type conflicts (most wargamers tend to prefer games that have direct conflict instead of more subtle conflicts like Vietnam and Algeria), any game that deals with that topic will always gets at very least a peek from me.

So it’s no great surprise that I’ve P500ed and couldn’t wait to receive the second and third volume in the series, namely Cuba Libre and A Distant Plain. Weighty games on very interesting subjects, they should be very interesting to dig into, using a system that I’m familiar with. It should be interesting to see how the system both adapts to the very different conflicts and offers new challenges to those who’ve played Andean Abyss before.

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New to Me: Math Trade special

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Last Saturday was the “every-few-months” Montreal Math Trade, this time held at the Pub Ludique Randolphe. The turnout was excellent and the trades took place really quickly, with the whole trading taking place in under an hour for me.

What is a Math Trade? Well, simply put, it’s a trade that goes beyond the usual 1-on-1 trade and instead institute a multi-participant trade, often resulting in giving items to someone who will give something else to someone else who, maybe, will give you something. It’s hard to track exactly what the result of your giving a game to someone, but it also means that the odds of getting what you want are much greater since as long as someone wants what you want and that someone else has what you want, your odds are good.

At the end of the day, it’s a great occasion for me to get rid of games I don’t play much/care much about/actively dislike and get stuff that I really want or that I’m intrigued by but haven’t gotten around to purchasing. The Montreal Math Trades tend to be organized by Willy the Snitch over on Boardgamegeek and I am very thankful for that.

What did I give away this time and why? And, more importantly, what new games did I get? Let’s check it out.

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New to me: Trains, Mascarade, Warmachine: High Command, Railways Express and Storm the Castle

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Even though I didn’t attend GenCon this year, I followed eagerly the twitter chatter to see what was going on and what interesting games were coming our way. Such following of interesting new games is inevitably followed by purchases of said interesting games, thus this weeks new arrivals.

The latest acquisitions: 4 purchases and a KS reward.

The latest acquisitions: 4 purchases and a KS reward. Boxes are getting bigger and bigger.

So, I ordered four new games (Trains, Warmachine: High Command, Railways Express and Mascarade) and received as a Kickstarter reward Storm The Castle!, which I wasn’t expecting yet.

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New to me: Ribbon Drive and The Quiet Year

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Lately I’ve been getting back into pen-and-paper RPGs (role-playing games), or at least, I’ve been paying attention to what is being done in the RPG space, exploring what studios like Pelgrane Press, Bully Pulpit and others are doing. I’m fascinated with the systems that they are bringing to the table, moving away from the usual skill-based system into systems that help the players get into character and support the story/mood. I’m also very interested in the new push into “narrative games”, or the one-shot games that are not quite RPGs, but also not quite board games, but rather collaborative storytelling game, like one of my old favorites, Once Upon a Time (Atlas Games) by Richard Lambert, Andrew Rilstone and James Wallis.

So when I found Ribbon Drive and The Quiet Year (both published by Buried Without Ceremony) by Joe Mcdaldno, I had to get them.

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