Through the Ages online

tta

THIS is a work of genius.  A buddy of mine at a wedding recently alerted me to the online version of this game.  I had been threatening to learn how to play it for years but never got around to it despite having played a full game of it a few years back.  My impression of it then was a fantastic game and now…. well I have nothing but respect for it.  It is the ultimate work placement game with a large dollop of cock blockery thrown in for good measure.

In essence it’s a civilization type game without a map. And while a game like this shouldn’t work (where’s the map?) it does in spades.

The online version features several flavors of the game. The community of players are friendly and great fun to plan with and in a lot of case are Extremely good at this game.

There’s an online league which I haven’t tried yet.  It can be played on any device you care to mention.

For those of you looking at the basic graphics and wondering what the fuss is about I recommend you give it a lash and come back to me

http://www.boardgaming-online.com/

MrTimewalk

Thur Night Gaming – A New Hope

Thur Night and it was time finally for an epic battle of X-wing

The Rebel Fleet Lines up
The Rebel Fleet Lines up

We got to play a big game of x-wing last night here’s the rundown

The Bad

Takes a bit of setup, partly we were learning the game and partly there’s a lot of pieces and of course we were playing a large game 175pts, so lots of models, add-ons etc.  The game NEEDS a good storage system, if you look on boardgamegeek you’ll see a lot about storage solutions.  End of the day it’s a fantasy flight game so if you like your tokens you won’t be disappointed.   Also it’s quite easy to mix up pieces and cards if you’re sharing sets.  Myself and Kieran’s sets are not so much married to each other as a bit engaged.   Again I don’t see this as a big problem as chances are you’ll be using your own models in the future, or one set, as it was a bit battle and we wanted the  maximum amount of models on the table it was quite the orgy of cards and tokens. The game was long.  Again we we’re learning it and it was a big battle.  Took a good 3.5 – 4hrs to finish but we DID finish it and it was excellent all the way through, especially towards the end

The Good

It’s a great little game.  It’s snappy, there’s a nice bit of strategy to it, guesswork, luck, planning, all that sort of good stuff.  It’s simple, the manoeuvre dials are clever and on top of that the models are GOREGOUS.  Have a look at the big photo.  The millennium falcon is a work of art as is slave-1.  In fact all the models look really well and they’re pre-painted. Very important.  You don’t need to get the expansions for it, you could quite happily play with the base game (or two).  I really really like it.  The models all act the way you would expect.  The tie fighters are agile but fragile, the falcon is a tough cookie, the y-wing can take and give a pounding.  The tie interceptor is nice and fast.  The a-wing didn’t make it but lurked in the background.

The game is balanced, the point system is simple and concise.

Slave 1 + Falcon Square off

The game itself

The Imperials took a mix of middle of the road and elite pilots (vader) while the rebels went mostly elite (han solo, Chewbacca) and a few extra weapons The imperial went straight in (well a bit to the right) and let rip with everything on a lone x-wing taking it out first turn for very little return fire.  Swung around and lined up with the converging rebels and it was wild west stuff.  The Y-Wing dishing out a lot of hurt while the falcon hung back and took pot shots.  The imperials concentrated on the fighters and started to take them out whilst the rebels concentrated on slave-1 (a slippery beast).  Y-Wing was destroyed followed by a tie fighter and it was looking very good indeed for the imperials UNTIL the falcon slipped up behind it and let rip with everything doing some serious damage to it.  The show on the other foot slave-1 slinked off hoping to avoid further damage persuaded by an x-wing.  Vader took out another x-wing and 4 Tie fighters harassed the falcon.   The last part of the game saw slave one avoid damage and the falcon eventually cornered and taken to pieces.

GREAT GAME

I would recommend it.  I would also recommend a smaller game and I think next time we’ll go with one of the scenarios from the manual.

Thanks to all those how took part and I reckon next week it will be to normal programming!

Huzzah

MrTimewalk

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