This is What it’s All About

More Games!!! My order from Thoughthammer arrived, www.thoughthammer.com It has been almost a year since the last time I placed a game order, due to a personal shake up in my life. Now I am settled down and ready to whittle away at the massive wish list of games I have been building up on Thoughthammer over the past year, all the games that I’ve been wanting to buy but had to wait on. Most of the games on my list are expansions for games I bought in the past and so because I like the original game and because I am a completist of almost OCD like proportions I had to put those games on my list first. Strangely enough though, the first games I ordered when I got back in the saddle are for the most part not expansions.



Sure I did buy the 2nd wave of expansion decks for Runebound, you can see them in the picture above, they are the little yellow card boxes. The games I bought that are not expansions are a little bit of a branching out for me.



Colosseum is a game from Days of Wonder, www.daysofwonder.com/en the same company responsible for great games like Ticket to Ride, Battlelore, Memoir ’44 and Shadows over Camelot (which I own). This game obviously has a Roman Gladiator theme to it but with a twist. The game focuses on gaining points for putting on a good show and gaining spectators for your Colosseum. This is different from a lot of games of this theme that would focus on Gladiatorial Combat. This game looks like a lot of fun, I can’t wait to play it, but it looks more complicated then other games from Days of Wonder. There is a ton of stuff in the box, and boy is that box heavy. It took my girlfriend and I over an hour and a half just to punch out all the cardboard counters and tokens in this game, whew!

Formula De’ is not the usual type of game that I would buy. I am not attracted to games based on real sports, probably because I do not follow any professional spots. Football is the only sport that I will actually sit down and watch with any real enthusiasm. But I was blown away when Scott introduced me to Pizza Box Football, www.boardgamegeek.com/game/17851 I was really surprised that I like that game. So when Ed showed up with Formula De’, which is based on Formula One racing, I was willing to give it a try. Once again I was blown away, “how can a game about racing be this much fun” I thought. When the rules were first explained to me I thought “this is like racing in slow motion, that can’t be fun.” But I was willing to try and boy was I wrong. Is it fast paced like a real race? Do you feel like you are driving a car at a high rate of speed? No. How could a board game feel like that, it’s not a video game, but the game does focus on the strategy of lane positioning and speed management, you can’t just floor it all the way. You have to figure out the best way to take turns and shift into higher gears when it is safe to do so. It’s just fun and competitive, and I really enjoyed it. Of coarse after playing it I was horrified to learn that the game is out of print now, and that there are some 30+ expansion tracks out for the game that are also out of print. For a completist like me this is very scary, but when I found a copy of the base game on hammer I just had to buy it. I just need to figure out what I will do about all those track expansions, some sell on e-bay for over a hundred bucks!! Forget that! I’ll just secretly hope that they get reprinted some day, ugh.

I think the my biggest branch out from the norm would have to be Yspahan, www.boardgamegeek.com/game/22345 This game is very “Euro”, and it’s got camels in it for Pete’s sake!! I usually leave the “Camel” games to Scott. As a matter of fact Scott should be all over this game. Well what made me decide to branch out and get this game, besides a grudging acknowledgement that Scott maybe onto something with these “euro” games, is a video review of the game on “Boardgames with Scott”, http://www.boardgameswithscott.com/?p=65. I love the “Boardgames with Scott” website, it really helps to see the games in action. It was seeing Yspahan in action that convinced me that it would be fun, I don’t think anything else could have done that. The thing that most enticed me about this game was it’s unique “Dice Tower” mechanic, where the first player rolls 9 dice (or possibly more) and depending on what the results are and how the dice get grouped together will make a difference on what actions will be available in the game. That little bit of randomization ensures that no two games will be the same. It also makes certain outcomes more rare and desirable, which if you are player one when these outcome come up will probably make you giddy with excitement.

Well I am going to tear into these games this weekend and I guess it’s a good sign that I am very excited to do so. Hey gaming isn’t cheap you should get your money’s worth.