Huge X-Wing Fun

Amy is visiting friends in San Francisco this weekend, so the boys and I are on our own. We've been keeping busy with a lot of games. We had some raucous King of New York action yesterday, when Nathaniel won the game and yet still freaked out anyway (apparently he thought we were just letting him win). We also played some X-Wing, bringing in the huge rebel transporter (from the Hoth evacuation scene in The Empire Strikes Back) for the first time. 

Maneuvering the transporter is a challenge, to say the least. In X-Wing, huge ships automatically destroy small and large ships if they ram them, and that rule came into effect when Matthew plowed his lumbering cargo vessel directly into a TIE Interceptor that was tangled up with one of Matthew's own X-Wing fighters. The transporter obliterated friend and foe alike, and we all learned the valuable lesson of keeping the hell away from that sucker.

The battle ended in a draw when Nathaniel and I spent numerous turns chasing Matthew's transporter around the map, only to watch it regenerate its shields every time. So, we all jumped to hyperspace, vowing to return and resume the fight another day...with reinforcements!

Batgirlin'

Oh Injustice! You've thoroughly monopolized my time! Just when I thought my ultimate team of Luthor, Catwoman, and Hawkgirl was set in stone for a run through the final stage of battles, you now offer a new Batgirl as a special challenge character! So, naturally, I had to get her, and she's totally awesome...not unlike the heroine of the recently revamped Batgirl comic series. But will she replace one of my Big Three? I guess only a few more days (weeks?) of leveling up will tell...

Hollow Mountain

Interesting...I may add Pathfinder comic books to my pull list once again.

Injustice Indeed!

I've been playing the iPad version of Injustice: Gods Among Us here and there for the past couple of months, and today I finally made it to the last stage of the game. Looking ahead to some of these battles has filled me with dread! It is indeed an act of grievous injustice to pit so many seemingly invincible beefcakes against even my A-Team of Lex Luthor, Hawkgirl, and Catwoman. I have no idea how I'm going to win these final battles, but I've invested so much time in this game that I won't quit until I win! (And yes, I'm very aware of the concept of the sunk cost fallacy, thank you very much!)

Uh Oh!

Must resist temptation...must resist temptation...

Imperial Assault Carrier

Drool! The TIE-toting Imperial Assault Carrier (click here to see preview pics) is going to be part of the X-Wing miniatures game. As a guy who loves to swarm TIEs, I'm thinking this huge-sized expansion is a no-brainer.

Water...Water!

Damn, Forbidden Desert is a very unforgiving game! We've played twice (using a different mix of characters each time) and in both cases we lost when one or more heroes died of dehydration. I'd say we were on the right track (having acquired or at least located all the airship components) in both games, but luck was against us and we drew so many sun cards that we croaked. D'oh! Well, Amy is fired up to keep playing until we win...

Book of Vile Darkness

Remember a few years ago when a third D&D movie was announced? No? That's okay. The Book of Vile Darkness was essentially made-for-TV fare that, to my knowledge, was not released on DVD in the US. Today I found the complete flick on YouTube, in all its hammy glory...

I'm glad that the rights for D&D films have finally returned to Hasbro, who, in partnership with Warner Brothers, are now working on a big-budget D&D movie set in the Forgotten Realms world. I plan to follow the development very closely, so I'll keep you posted on the latest news.

Sandblasted

We're well into our first game of Forbidden Desert and the storm is really picking up! We've explored most of the ancient city and have discovered the location of the four missing components of the airship (three of which are visible in the image below, and the fourth has already been collected).

We have adventurers (Amy is blue, Matthew is green, Nathaniel is white, and I'm yellow) in position near the remaining airship components and our Water Carrier (the equivalent of a cleric or other healer-type in RPGs) is in a good position to keep our team hydrated, but the storm is dumping huge amounts of sand all across the map. Can we collect all the pieces and make it back to the launch pad (which is also buried under the sand!) before the storm traps us in the ruins forever?!

Hillsfar Adventure

Free D&D! Click here to download a full-length Fifth Edition D&D adventure.

Forbidden Desert

Our family D&D night -- featuring the Tyranny of Dragons adventure path -- was on hold for the past couple of weeks while we were vacationing in New York. It's Friday again, but it looks like Tyranny will have to wait yet another week -- we've got Forbidden Desert on tap for tonight, and everybody is pretty stoked to try it out.

I knew we had a winner as soon as I opened the metal box that contained the game's many goodies. There's a cool little plastic airship (the objective of the game is to find the ship's missing components and repair it so that you can escape from the desert before you die from dehydration or get buried by the raging sandstorm), cards for the various adventurers (each with their own special abilities, as in Pandemic), equipment cards featuring a nifty steampunk design (sorry, Amy!), variable tiles to ensure that no two game maps are ever the same (like Settlers of Catan or the various D&D cooperative board games that have been released over the last five years), and more.

But is it a good game? We won't know until we try it, but the rules are simple and elegant, and I think we'll be up and playing in a matter of moments. I anticipate it will be loads of fun, but also very challenging -- our adventuring party may well die many horrific deaths in the scorching desert before we at last escape on that airship!

Post-Vacay Blues

After a long and very enjoyable trip to western New York, it's now back to the grind for me. How to cure the post-vacation blues? Order a new game, of course! We're going to try out Forbidden Desert, from the creator of Forbidden Island and Pandemic. I'll let you know how it goes!

Museum of Play

We spent today at the National Museum of Play (click here for their official website) in Rochester. The place is chock-full of fun stuff; in particular, the whole family got a kick out of all the classic arcade games. Here's a shot of us getting ready for a four-player game of Gauntlet.

The kids tended to shoot the food -- rookie mistake! -- so we didn't survive many levels.

I was also pleasantly surprised to see all the nods to D&D history. They had the first-ever D&D video game, which, as I understand it, was a pretty basic and generic dungeon-crawler -- but at the very least a spiritual ancestor of the many awesome D&D games that have followed in its wake.

Elsewhere, a display case included some notes about RPGs in general and the foundational role played by D&D itself. They had some of the earliest D&D products as well as a sampling of modules, dice, miniatures, and non-D&D RPGs. Here's one side of the display...

And here is the adjacent side...

I kind of feel like I could have pulled a better display of RPG history out of my ass...ets. My own assets, as it were. Even after discarding so many RPG products from yesteryear, I still have a lot of the most iconic items, such as the First Edition D&D PHB and the first Basic set. Still, it was great to see D&D featured in as amazing and wondrous a place as the Museum of Play.

Hawkman Cast

As if the D&D movie news wasn't amazing enough, we also learned today that the CW's Hawkman has been cast. Click here to meet the guy who will basically kick everyone's ass.

Holy Crap, Here Comes a New D&D Movie!!!

Click here for the scoop, yo!

Back on Home Turf

It's good to be back! Breakfast at a Tim Hortons in Buffalo, lunch at a different Tim Hortons (at the new HarborCenter ice hockey facility), and dinner across the border at Harvey's. In between this delicious fast food fare we had enjoyable visits to the Buffalo Naval Park and Niagara Falls. Tomorrow, we've got all sorts of fun stops in Rochester -- not the least of which will be Millennium Games. I've visited game stores all across America and in Canada, England, and Germany as well, but nobody can top Millennium.

2015 ENnie Wins

Congrats to Fifth Edition D&D for its massive haul of ENnie awards! Click here to see the roundup.