Shadows of Brimstone Kickstarter #3

Last week, I was a little surprised to see an update from Flying Frogs announcing their next Kickstarter.  Details were scarce, but there it was.  I wasn't incredibly surprised that there would be a third campaign, but it caught me off guard a bit  that they'd be kicking it off right now without much build-up. 

But no, we got a few days heads up, a couple of Facebook posts, and it's off to the races with a relatively short, 14d campaign.

This time around they're launching their "Adventure" boxes, which are a pair of basically mini-cores.  Intent is apparently an easier starting point for new fans, and good integration with the original two cores (Swamps of Death and City of the Ancients).  In this smaller box will be the usual "stuff" - map tiles, figures, cards, gear, missions, but scaled back a bit (e.g. fewer map tiles than a full core).

New mechanics will be "team" heroes - apparently instead of 4 unique heroes all with their own skills, skill trees, and mechanics, each of the 4 Adventure heroes will effectively be of the same class.  (Therefore less playtesting and fewer balance issues with an already large Brimstone universe).

There's a bit of apprehension about the team heroes, as it feels like "less," (less content, less customization).  I'm actually okay with it - in our house we typically play 2-player, it will be easier for us to run a full squad of 4 without having to remember all the nuances of 4 unique heroes. 

The campaign is off to a roaring start already - pushing $650k at the 23 hour mark and smashing through stretch goals. 

Anyway, I'm all-in on this one.

This Just In: Dog Might Component Collector

Straight from the box:  Component Collector in storage mode.

Once the recent cold snap lifted (I refuse to use the term 'Polar Vortex' ... oh damn, I just did), our USPS mail delivery resumed.  

I came home from work yesterday to find a greatly anticipated package on my doorstep:  Dog Might Games delivered my Component Collector Kickstarter pledge!  (And there was much rejoicing).

This was an interesting campaign.  Each backer was able to pick their wood species and tile layout from a long list of options.  My particular setup is a Bolivian Rosewood (BoRo) kit.  I chose one dragon sculpt to show, three Square tiles, two 'L' tiles, and two Counter tiles.  The tiles stack in a base that doubles as a personal rolling tray or another larger token tile, and once stored a leather strap keeps things together.

All of it is magnetized and smartly indexed to create a grid that clacks together with a satisfying 'schnock!' sound.  Once together, no small amount of table shenanigans will knock the tiles around.

3/4 View. 

Unpacked and gridded together.  I intentionally took this and the next picture partially in/out of the sun, so you can get an idea of the luster of the BoRo.  It's yummy.  I lucked out and get quite a bit of figure/character in my pieces.

Deployed with some Shadows of Brimstone bits.  For scale, most of these tokens are a little larger than a U.S. dime,and the dice are 'standardish' sized poly dice (also from Dog Might; their Bone Box from a previous campaign is shown above).

So far, I've just played around with these staged photos, but for token-heavy games like Shadows of Brimstone I'm looking forward to adding some sanity to our table.  I probably won't use the counter tiles all that much, but the dials simply lift out and the remaining recess will hold things fine.

Two CoCo tiles magnetically locked to the Dog Might Kingdom Death gear grids that I had done as a commission a few months ago.  I can continue to chain tiles to this "dashboard" as I see fit.  Super happy that we added the magnets, Konas.

Unboxing: Triplanetary

So, in general, I'm a fan of Steve Jackson Games.  I love sci fi games and space-based combat.  And of course I'm a Kickstarter junkie.

Triplanetary checked all three of these boxes, so I was in!  Triplanetary is a game that was first released in 1973, and last reprinted in 1981.  Through Kickstarter, SJG brought this title back to life, which I think is pretty cool.

This was a low stress campaign with zero additional stretch goals or other shenanigans.  Pledge. Wait. Get game.  Simple simple.

Anyway, here's the grand unboxing.

The game box - Front.

The game box - Back.

Box top open.  Oooooh, I love that smell.  The instruction booklet is nicely printed and illustrated but is thinner than "modern" sprawling epics like Gloomhaven or KDM. 

The game board comes in two pieces. At first I thought these were to separate mission maps but they actually join together.

Game board laid out with the game box for scale.

Most of the box is actually empty space.  There's the game board and a single sheet of punch-out tokens - no minis, meeples, or standees (although it's probably begging for some 'borrowed' ships from X-wing or Armada).  There are a pair of dry erase markers to record ship movement (the manual provides a method of shorthand to encode past moves).  And a single d6.  ... that's pretty much it!  

I'm actually impressed that the game was reprinted intact - the temptation to pimp out the box and "Kickstarterize" the reprint with minis, addons, and stretch goals.  But I think they made the right call and kept the price down.

The neat part about the game is going to be the vector-based movement and fuel management.  Simple, elegant rules where ships maintain their inertia between turns and fuel points are spent to change direction - sort of like Classic Asteroids on the old Atari 2600.

Will be fun to hotseat a game on a rainy Saturday soon.