SPANISH BOARD GAME INQUISITION 2014?

No one ever expected the Spanish Inquisition and I don't think any one in the gaming community was expecting 2 knock out board game releases set for 2014 from 2 Spanish gaming companies.

First up is the Alien vs. Predator : The Hunt Begins board game that is building up momentum on Kickstarter right now by Prodos Games the creators of Mutant Chronicles. I think this is a dream come true for a lot of gamers and is for me being a massive fan of the AVP movies. The Boxed Game AvP – The Hunt Begins is a self-contained gaming experience, a fusion of mission and narrative driven Board Game and Table Top War Game. A family game where 1 (yes you can play on your own) or more players can sit down and play through their own narrative and develop their own characters and objectives over many inter-linked games. Or players can sit down and play a ‘free for all’ with games like ‘Survival’, ‘Last human/Alien/Predator standing’, ‘capture the objective’ etc. filling an hour or two of your evening or raining Sunday afternoon. Their is also an idea of linking this board game to a wider table top AVP game where players can control armies of Colonial Marines against whole nests of Aliens!


The miniatures are stunning which is the normal standard Prodos have set for their miniatures and fit the feel and vibe of the AVP cannon very well. This project has smashed through most of its stretch goals already and is no doubt all set for a very popular release date of 2014. Rest assured this one that will entering collection next year and as always I will be sharing my journey into this game with you all here on games-knight, providing the Weyland Corp. don't get to me first.....

For our 2nd Spanish export we move from the world of high octane Sci-fi board games to classic fantasy adventure! This news has only hit the gaming community over the last week and has unsurprisingly had a favourable reaction from gamers of my age in particular. From the minds of Gamezone Miniatures comes the 25th anniversary edition of HeroQuest. This is huge! I cant hide my excitement of this news so I am not even going to try! The original MB release in 1989 was my fist taste of gaming action and what hooked me into gaming so I have a lot if sentiment for this game and still play it today. If you had asked me if I would ever wanted this game revamped by anyone else other then GW / MB then I would have said no, but now its happened I am not worried at all and really looking forward to seeing how this project pans out. The official news on the Gamezone Miniatures website is that this is to be a 'crowd funded' project which to me means Kickstarter.

Lets take a look at what the game would offer -

-1 BOARD – ALFA Model

      Reversible, with two usable sides, Side A is with a Classic Dungeon simulation, while side B brings into play ruins and exterior scenes. The squares on the board are slightly larger than the original to provide more comfortable figure movement and scenery/element placement

- 1 MENTOR SCREEN

      The game screen is for dual use. The Mentor Side (inside) displays the tools that the Game Master will need to direct the game, creature stats, game symbol keys codes, weapon characteristics, etc.. On the Player Side (outside) there will be an illustration of a temple on which the essential rules for the adventures will be written into stone like reliefs. This way any novice player at a glance will have all the necessary information they need without having to badger the Director with continual basic questions.

-8 DICE

      The 25th model dice will have squares representing boxes instead of round dots. The 25th model battle dice will have the already known symbols but appear more consistent with the actual skills or the characters / current technology available.

-1 RULE BOOK

      Rule book, highly illustrated, to explain every rule that needs it with a corresponding clarifying   image.

- ADVENTURE VOLUME I “No Threat Unanswered”

      In this Book you will find the missions that Mentor will entrust to the adventurers. Formatted as standard stand alone adventures or missions that will continue as if chapters in a series. Others will be set up in an independent campaign structure that will evolve in parallel within a common storyline. The total overall quantity of adventures will be around 50.

-8 Adventurer Cards

      The Adventurer Cards will have the values ??and the different characteristics between the male characters and their female counterparts. Life and mind/will points are shown in wheel-cut windows in which the corresponding number is displayed and can be changed by rotating disks, added to the rear or the cards. This way you will not be writing the values ??of each character on a separate sheet, you can modify them directly in the windows that each character card offers.

-86 Cards

      Every spell element in the cards is written in Latin and the symbols used have their origins in classical antiquity

      The Chaos spells are a recourse that will only be utilized by the Evil Wizard player.

-46 PLASTIC RESIN FIGURES

      The figures will have the standard Gamezone® miniature size of 28mm/30mm. This way is a sure way that they will also be compatible with other popular miniature games.

      Plastic Resin is a high quality material with and extraordinarily high degree of detail, making for a clear and clean finished product. The presence of bubbles, common in all resins to a larger or smaller effect, has been practically eliminated through the modeling process. The final weight of the miniatures is lighter.

      The bases are round and transparent; being round helps with easier figure movement across the board and the transparency of the base allows players to effectively see the floor of the map their characters are standing on. The figures will be different colours the same as the miniatures in the original box set.

-48 Resin SCENE ELEMENTS

   These elements will also be made of resin as this allows us to create pieces with greater details. Some elements will come separate and will need a simple assembly.

- The wardrobe pieces are interchangeable making verity a real possibility in the 25th.

- The doors will be able to be open or closed as the door frame will have hinges.

- The treasure chests will have open able lids to see what is inside. The interior will be empty and ready to have a treasure inserted in the form of a token that will represent a bag of coins, a pile of coins, or an empty bottom with a singular coin. The interior chest tokens are also interchangeable with other elements .

- The gargoyle pedestal has a space for a treasure token when the figure is removed

- The Cell door can open or close depending on the mission guidelines

- The sarcophagus also has an area to add treasure tokens if you wish to show different contents

-35 Resin Marker Tokens

All with volume to represent scenery and not the cardboard tokens of old.

All very impressive I am sure you will agree and I will be backing this project via Kickstarter for sure.

So what do you guys think about these 2 projects? Excited? Not impressed? All opinions are welcome at Games-Knight so please get in touch - contactgamesknight@gmail.com.

Ciaran

THE WALKING DEAD HALLOWEEN SPECIAL

Greetings gamers and a Happy Halloween to you all! With the Halloween theme being present at the moment I thought I would share a board game I discovered last year that deserves some lime light and where better to show it off than right here on Games-Knight. The board game in question is The Walking Dead Board Game from Cryptozoic Entertainment which is based on the popular TV series The Walking Dead. I am a fan of the TV series so this appealed to me straight away when I discovered the game but there are points to it that would appeal if not a franchise I am a fan of which I will share with you. This game was released during the period of the 1^st and 2^nd series so you will see characters from those series who – spoiler alert! – may no longer be part of the living.

UNBOXING THE WALKING DEAD BOARD GAME

As you open the box you will instantly find that the game is very self-contained and has minimal components required to play the game, which is not a bad thing. There are no miniatures in this game just cards and tokens. The rule book is a mere 5 pages long, including a FAQ, and is explained in a very simple, no fuss manner. And my favourite touch about the layout and presentation of the game is the roll-out playing mat instead of a traditional cardboard gaming board. This is a unique touch that gives the game a real charm about it and also makes it a game you can play pretty much anywhere as it is very easy to transport. Ideal for if you like to take your board games down to your local hobby / gaming club. Presentation wise I like the look and feel to it and the minimal aspect to it is quite refreshing as some games can be a bit over powering when you have tonnes of components to use.

THE WALKING DEAD BOARD GAME RULES

There are 2 scenarios you can play with The Walking Dead board game, Survival Mode and Team Game. Both scenarios are for 2-4 players.

In survival mode each player selects a character card and its matching game piece. Players star the game at camp. Then with the corresponding game cards make an Ally pool and a Scrounge deck and place each location tile next its matching corner. The object of the game is that the first player who collects all 4 of the location tiles and returns to base camp is the winner. Of course there will be lots of flesh eating walkers to try to prevent you from doing this and subsequently mean that most players will star the games as survivors but end it as walkers! Any player who doesn’t survive becomes a walker and plays out the rest of the game as a zombie, turning on his friends and family i.e. the other survivor players. I like this as it means no one has to sit out the rest of the game when that player dies, they can come back as a walker and still be involved in the game.

A survivor turn sequence is resolved in 4 steps –

1.       Movement – roll a die and move that many spaces.

2.       Resolve the space you land on if any encounters.

3.       Resolve any encounter cards you are asked to draw.

4.       End your turn.

 

When players die they come back as walkers and the game then turns to a team zombie vs. team survivor affair. A walker’s turn sequence plays out as follows –

1.       Roll a die and move up to that many spaces.

2.       Play a walker card.

3.       End you turn in which you can discard a walker card form your hand if you wish and also draw walker cards until you have a hand of 4.

 

The Team game sis exactly the same only at the start players pick sided if they are to start as survivors or walkers. Team zombie only have to kill both survivor players to win! You will find with this game that it is nearly impossible to win as a survivor! This isn’t a bad thing as it makes for a very challenging game, which given its simple set up and game mechanics is very impressive.

 

GAMES-KNIGHT SURVIVOR CAMP

This really is a super little game which combine simplicity and fun to bring a great board game to the table. Avid gamers or family after some light-hearted fun will not be disappointed with this product and I thoroughly recommend it. Here at Games-Knight I will award The Walking Dead board game 4 brains out of 5, come on! It’s Halloween!

 

OTHER GREAT ZOMBIE GAMES FOR HALLOWEEN

Alongside this game also check out Last Night on earth from Flying Frog productions. I had the chance to play this a few weeks back and it plays really well and is very, very challenging! Put it this way, I killed 14 zombies and still didn’t win! Lots of different scenarios to play and some cool little miniatures to play with make this another fun game for a night’s gaming making it another 4 brains out of 5.There is also Zombies!!! By twilight Creations and the very popular Zombicide.

That’s your lot for this week, hope you have enjoyed this week’s post and have a great Halloween. Next week it is back to my coverage of Dropzone Commander as I show off my painted UCM faction. Till then have fun and be safe. Ciaran-contactgamesknight@gmail.com