Great Scott! It's Back to the Future!

1.21 gigawatts! Yay, one of my all time favourite films has been made into a game! And a great game too! I'd seen this previewed on Boardgamegeek and heard it was based on a previous game called Chrononauts. I picked up a copy from Battlequestgames at the weekend as it was a cheap purchase.

Both of these have been released by Looney Labs - Chrononauts had been very successful, but was supposed to have several bugs in the game play. Here, these have been ironed out apparently. Hard to say for me because I haven't played the original, but this version I can say is excellent.

The idea is that you have a series of cards, line A to D, number 1 to 6. Each card represents a moment in time, an event or storyline. And as in the films, if something is done in one part of the timeline, such as Older Biff giving Younger Biff the sports almanac, this has effects which Ripple down the timeline. This is shown in practise by flipping cards marked by the Event or Linchpin as it is called. Each Linchpin has a number of Ripplepoints it affects - such as if Older Biff gives Younger Biff the sports almanac, this has all sorts of connotations down the timeline such as Biff willing millions, killing George McFly, marrying Marty's mother etc.

The idea of the game is that you play as one of the descendants of a character from the film. I have read complaints that these characters have no background or depth as they are not seen in the film or if they are, don't have any characterisation. The aim is the character has three things to do in the timeline, set it in a particular way. Some want George McFly dead, some want him publishing his story. Some want Marty to get injured in a car crash, others don't. The idea is to take a card in hand and use one of those cards in play. This might involve placing an object on the table that will help you with another card. For example you can't use the Mark 2 time machine (the flying one), unless you have the Mr Fusion card in play. The time machine cards allow you to "edit" these Lynchpins as how you see fit, thereby affecting the timeline.

Some cards allow you to affect a specific event and only that event (Such as the metal pie tray stops Buford Tannen from shooting the blacksmith - Doc - in the back), some cards allow you to change any other time event if you have X card in play. To win, you have to have your three Lynchpins set, the timeline set how you want it then finally change history, stopping Doc inventing the flux capacitor. Even this may not win the game because there is 5 cards for this linchpin and only one is successful!

It's an interesting game to play - I've played it a few times by myself against another fake player. It is a very sublime game because you think it is very quick, that you can change a few items and you've won, then suddenly someone changes an event again causing another ripple then you are loosing!!

One caveat - you must have seen Back to the Future to play this!! Lol - Roshni and I tried to play, but the lynchpins didn't make much sense as she couldn't remember much of the film - so we all sat and watched BTTF part 1!! Part 2 up soon.

New game! Nordic Ticket to Ride. And a replay of Ticket to Ride Europe

Crikey it is turning into a game fest couple of months - games ordered, preordered, purchased from afar - apparently the new Space Hulk and Back to the Future card games are out soon too which I'll take a look at (Although Anita has put a bit of an embargo on game purchases for a while). Friday I picked up a copy of Nordic Ticket to Ride, a snow bound version of the popular train game, covering the Scandinavian arena and parts of Russia. It uses some of the rules introduced in Europe (Tunnels and Ferries), but leaves out Stations and some of the rules introduced in the Marklin Edition. Very nice version - up to 3 players only - using white, black and purple trains. The cards are lovely, the European size and the trains/carriages are covered in snow. There is even one huge 27-point link between Finland and Russia! This is one great game - lovely for two players over a glass of wine! Anita beat me by 3 points! 

Then we had a go at Ticket to Ride Europe - Anita had big reservations when we first got this - the rules for tunnels especially seemed overly complex, when added in with Stations and Ferries. Therefore we've not played this one for a while, but with the experience from the Nordic one, we played again and found it very enjoyable. 

Disaster at Dieppe and Hedgerow Hell battlemaps ordered!

The latest Memoir '44 battlemap Disaster at Dieppe and the rare out of print Hedgerow Hell have been ordered (HH from the States, so I have a week or so wait for it...)!

Match Attax!

Now this is a weird one; I hate football. Well hate is a strong word, I love it when my team won the sweepstake in the World Cup and netted me £70, but apart from that I don't get the attraction of seeing a whole load of overpaid guys running about after a ball. Then came MatchAttax. Apparently these have been about for a while, and Maya has been on about them for ages, collecting a few, doing a few swaps at school, but not really knowing why and what for.

Eventually she convinced me to get her the collection tin and storage book for somewhere to put her collection so far and we had a couple of games to find out what it was like. It is sort of like Top Trumps - you select your players and lay them out in a 2 attackers, 4 midfielders and 4 defenders with 1 goalie. Then a player selects a card to attack with by tapping the back of the card and the defending player selects a card they hope will deflect the "shot". The attacker reads out their cards Attack score whilst the defender reads out the Defence score. If the attack is higher, a goal is scored otherwise it is deflected.

This is continued back and forth until all the cards are expended; it's also possible to Sub in up to 3 players and use once per game a Managers defence/attack score to bolster up a "just missed" score.

In all, an enjoyable little game that is perfect for younger and older kids alike.

Here we go, here we go, here we go......

First proper playtest of Zombies!!!

Today decided to crack open Zombies!!! to see if the rules played ok for a single player. Been through the rules several times before, but obviously only an actual play will make 100% sense of them. So I decided to play 3 characters at once against the zombies of the game - all three going in different directions to find the helipad. The game plays ok and pretty quick, gameplay is smooth and fast. The only thing that put me off was the Event cards - I'm pretty squemish and I have to say I didn't use the cards! Stupid really considering the content of the game but I found that in solo play, you can play against the game pretty well without them. A friend found the same thing with his two daughters who wanted to play, but are 7 and the cards' content he found a bit too much for them.

All in all a pretty good fast game if I ever fancy a solo.

A weekend of gameplay - 3 player Ticket to Ride and Germany changes history!

Blimey what a busy gaming weekend! We tried to get in as many games as possible with Citadels and Dominion on Saturday and Ticket to Ride: USA and Memoir '44 on Sunday. 

Citadels was another great game as usual, big family winner this. I just managed to win this with Roshni just denied an extra 4 points for all 5 colours in her Citadel cards by Anita Warlord destroying one of her coloured cards. 

Then we had another go at Dominion - this time was much better than the last with the game over in about 50 minutes. This time we learned the lessons of the past and used our money to buy more money and then use this to buy victory cards. Although the game is supposed to be only for 4 players max, we managed to  include Maya as a fifth player - she was happy to just buy up kingdom or money cards and randomly attack the rest of us with a Militia card, but as long as she was happy that was all that matter. 

Sunday we started with Ticket to Ride and this time Roshni played with Anita as a team, Maya played alongside me and Kavita by herself. This proved to be interesting as we'd only ever played TtR with 2 players/teams, so Kavita playing was a curveball - as Anita discovered! All of her normal gaming tactics seemed to go out of the window in the face of two rather than one opponent! :-) Kavita won in the end. 

Initial set up - look at those tanks!

Finally in the afternoon, Roshni and I took on our first Soviet vs German Memoir scenario. Wow, this turned into a huge battle! The Germans were on a push for the gates of Moscow with a huge en-masse of tanks and soldiers. The middle and right Russian positions could not withhold the attacks, even with the backup of artillery, and moved back to more secure positions. To the left, brave Soviet peasant infantry tried to hold out with German tanks in one direction and Commissars waving pistols in the other. A German tank platoon split a wedge between the left and centre Soviet commands by taking the bridge over the river. Then German tanks, which had been badly hit, in the centre, took the hills overlooking the city and forced a general retreat to the bottom right of the board. The remaining left hand command were left to their own devices and eventually destroyed by a huge tank advance! 

The Germans take the hills, ready to capture the Bridge!

The left command is crushed!

With German guns firing from the hills, there was little to do, but try to rush them from the right and try to retake the hills, but all was lost with the loss of the Left command and the capture of the bridge over the river! The road to Moscow was open and history changed again! 

With the left, Bridge and hills taken,
little remains but for the Soviets to retreat!

Sold! Queens Necklace and Mystery of the Abbey!

Both of these games have gone - to a better home I hope - and we'll be ploughing the money back into a new game - either Niagara or Stone Age. We'll have to check both out on BoardGameGeek to see what they are like, but Niagara has got a lot of thumbs up. EDIT - Niagara it is (Not Viagara as my friend thought I said!) - ordered via Battlequestgames for a good price. Can't wait to get hold of it!