Miniature Market Order

If you want to go to a board game shop with really good online sales, Miniature Market is the best I’ve found so far. Granted, it is an issue, because well, board games. But let’s see what I order this time.

Horizon Zero Dawn

I finally took the plunge on this game. I wanted to back it it when it was on Kickstarter, but the all in for Horizon Zero Dawn was a lot. Then I heard, when it came out that the game was good, but there wasn’t enough in the base box. Now with even more reviews coming out and more reviewers I knows talking about it. I am back to being very interested in it.

Plus the expansions, or at least some of them, are available. So if really like the game, I can get expansions. If I don’t like the game, well, I suspect I’ll like the minis. We’ll need to see, the game might just make me want to get back to playing the video game. I have too many video games that I really need to get played. Horizon: Zero Dawn, and The Witcher are the top two.

Cockroach Poker

We go from a big box to a small box with Cockroach Poker. I knew about this game, but not how to play it until I watched an anime actually. It shows up in Afterschool Dice Club, and the game looks fun. Plus the game looks like a fun filler. The person who is it passes a card to the next person telling them what is on the card. But that could be a lie. The person either can look at it and pass it to the next person saying what it is. Or call the persons bluff. If they call their bluff, and they lied, it goes back to that person. If they are telling the truth, it goes in front of the person who called their bluff.

The concept is simple. And I like that for a filler game. But the game itself seems fun. When do you bluff, when you do not? You are trying to not get four of a bug in front of you. So if it is something you don’t want to get do you tell the truth, or do you lie and hope it gets passed on one further? The game play feels clever to me.

Detective: Signature Series – Petty Officers

Of course I’m going to get more Detective. I love the Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game system that Portal has created. And Petty Officers looks great. It isn’t about a Petty Officer as in the military, it is about pet detectives. I don’t know how that will work, but I’m excited to see. And I really liked the Dig Deeper case from the signature line. I think that it is a fun way to get a lot of different stories into the game.

Final Girl: Feature Film – Slaughter in the Groves

And this is the other reason that I’m talking about Final Girl in the title. I found one of the feature film boxes in the wild. But of course, I haven’t been able to find the core box. I am constantly checking for it on Miniature Market and CoolStuffInc and other sites. Because I’d love to get that and get the game to the table sooner versus waiting for the Kickstarter to fulfill. This is just another horror movie to be played through. I know I will eventually collect them all.

All Systems Go

My boss game me a gift card for the holidays to my favorite board game shop. And I had a bunch of games to trade in with them. That was part of the big point of sale I did a little bit ago. But when I brought in the trade, I did pick up a game, and a big one at that.

Marvel Champions: Vision

But let’s start small. The latest expansion, Vision, is out for Marvel Champions. All Systems Go knows to set aside a copy for me every time. I always say I need to play this game more, and I really do. Because there are so many characters and villains out now that I need to play against. I have everything sorted, I just need to throw stuff together to play again.

That might be another goal I give myself this year. When I sort characters into my big boxes to pull out a villain and face them off against it. That way I can play through more characters, even if I do only play them that one time right away.

Sea of Legends

This is the big game that I got. And it is a big game because it was a Kickstarter. And the game comes with an expansion box as big as a game. Another one that I almost backed on Kickstarter. But I am glad that I didn’t. When the game delivered, the app it uses, wasn’t ready to go. So it really wasn’t playable. It sounds like the rule book has issues as well.

All of those things are a negative. But I have heard that the game is good when you play it. When it is working right it is a lot of fun, and it sounds like it is working right now. Plus the game does some cool things. Each player picks a Captain, Lover, and Nemesis. And you enter that into the app and that determines how story in the game unfolds. It reminds me, in concept, of Merchants and Marauders, but with even more.

Kickstarter

Final Girl: Season 2

I already spoiled it that Final Girl is on the list. The question is, what did I back for it? So, I wasn’t sure what I was going to back. I originally did an a la carte option where I could get the core box and add on a few of the feature film boxes. But then Van Ryder Games made my job easier. I don’t care about some things like minis, or other odd extras that the game has. Yes, it makes it more thematic, but I don’t want them.

Instead, what they gave me was the game play option. That is all five feature films for season two. Now, I need a core box as well. But I could add that on, which, I did. And that is cheaper than getting everything separately. It is cheaper than getting stuff in the big bundle which has things like minis in it. If I cared more about the minis, I’d get them. But this is a solo game. I don’t feel like I need minis for it.

Which is Most Exciting?

Let me know in the comments below which of these games would you want to play first?

For me, I think I want to get Horizon Zero Dawn played the most. I can play that one solo. And while it is a bigger game, I will likely make weekend time to get it played. The aesthetic of the game is just so cool, and I think I’m going to dig it. I know there are some weird things about the them. For example, you shoot and kill a monster across the board, the loot drops next to you. Thematically doesn’t make sense. But makes it nicer to just pick up something.

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In this episode, they are at the Aya’s house, the girl who has befriended Miki to play a game of Incan Gold (or Diamant). However, Miki starts to have a strange feeling with Aya’s older sisters friend joins them and is aggressive about playing the game. It reminds Miki of one of the times as a child that she was bullied and with the help of her friends she stands up against the bullying in the game. The game itself is a push your luck sort of game, so in the end Miki’s nerves of steel end up with her getting more gems, but only after she’s stepped out of her comfort zone and, with her friends at her back, pushed her luck just a little bit further. It turns out, though, that the reason she remembered Aya’s older sisters friend was that, in the situation where she was being bullied, that person had been the one to scare away the bullies and rescue her.

I think that this episode, as compared to some of the others, did a bit better job creating a twist at the end and creating some development for Miki. In the previous two episodes, she’s mainly stayed the same but has been brought out of her shell a little bit. in this one, she had to push past something, not only in her past, but in her current personality where she would have normally folded to the pressure of the more aggressive player. While I’m not sure that this carried on extremely well into the next episode, it was a well done episode and created a better story than some of them.

Incan Gold or Diamant are a game about pushing your luck to get the most gems. However, if two of the same monster ever show up, those left in the temple don’t get to leave with anything. So you have to play the odds, because everyone who stays in gets a share of the treasure. You don’t want someone to get too far ahead early in the game because it’ll require you to push your luck more at the end of the game to try and catch up. The twist on that is that the gems are hidden, so you might have a general idea of what people have, but unless you’re really good at counting cards, you’re not going to know everything.

Looking at this episode, I think it teaches a couple of interesting things. The first being that people should watch their game personas and read the table. In the episode, the friend is loud and aggressive in how she plays and it makes Miki uncomfortable at the table because of things in her life outside of the game. So there needs to be some need to read the table and know how your group plays or how a group that you’re joining plays. I think we also get to see how board games and real life do often intersect for people. The easy example is of someone being bullied, but people can throw fits if they don’t get the what they wanted in a game because they always do in real life, or not believe that they are wrong because they have been told they aren’t wrong or that they are perfect in the real world. I feel like that’s been a common theme of the show as they do a good job of pairing the games with what’s going on in the rest of the episode. But I feel like that’s something that can be overlooked in actual gaming, especially by gamers, because I want to play a game all the time as escapism and just for the challenge, but for other people are game might be something new or something that has other memories attached to it.

Overall, I think that this episode does a better job of being more than just what was expected. I don’t think that it is amazing in terms of storytelling and plot, but there are some cool things. But I am still enjoying the concept of the show and as someone who loves board games, it’s fun to see it more in the culture and games that I haven’t played, because there are so many out there you can’t play them all.

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5 – Sword Art Online
#5 was actually the hardest spot to fill, because I have a number of anime that I want to put here after a definite few that are some of my top ones. But Sword Art Online (SAO) is just a solid anime that has had multiple stories through it, regular SAO, Gun Gale Online, Ordinal Scale, and they are all solid. It tells an interesting story in the first season as well, where you have the main character (and a lot more people) who are going into a full immersion video game, like they’ve done before, but the creator of the game is making his masterpiece and legacy and traps them all in the game. And, if you die in the game, you die in real life, but if you can beat the final boss of the game, you can escape the game and free everyone from it. But that means clearing a lot of levels. SAO isn’t a show about clearing levels, though, it’s about how people adjust to living in this digital world and the problems that arise from it. Then the other seasons deal with more virtual reality or augmented reality, but not in the same way as the first season. There’s definitely fan service in this show, but not a ton, and the story can be simplistic at times, but the premise was interesting to me.

4 – Assassination Classroom
A silly anime, it actually ended up having more heart to it than I expected, which I enjoyed. Assassination Classroom is an insane premise, which most anime area, and from the sounds of it should be about a classroom full of assassins, instead, it’s about a class of middle school (maybe junior high) age kids who have been tasked by the government to kill their teacher, a weird yellow tentacle monster. That is an insane premise, but what you get is a classroom of misfits who eventually have to start working together and growing after getting in trouble previously, all of this being led by their weird yellow tentacle monster teacher. I don’t think this anime is for everyone, but I think it did a good job of doing what it was trying to do and tell a compelling story of the growth of the kids.

3 – Is It Wrong to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?
Long title, good fantasy anime. This is one of the things that really got me checking out LitRPG on Audible, for better or worse (fairly often they were worse), but in Is It Wrong to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeons (IIWTPUGIAD (not catchy)), it does a good job of creating an interesting world and an interesting story. And it does a trope that I enjoy, the clueless hero, he’s very earnest, and he wants to do the best possible after being rescued from this magical resetting dungeon by Aiz Wallenstein, this extremely talent female dungeon delver. Then there are a bunch of other characters who may or may not be interested in the main character. It has some of the harem anime feel to it, which isn’t a genre that I care about, but the main character is so earnest and caring that it doesn’t feel as gazy as some of them, but it does still have fan service in it. I also like how it ties in real world pantheons in an interesting way, so it’s not just a generic fantasy setting.

2 – Cowboy Bebop
Cowboy Bebop is a very immersive space opera that pulls you in not just through the story telling, which is well done, but so much through the music. The music of each episode helps inform the story that is being told and draws you further into what you are watching. It also is really well done and the variety of music throughout the show, because each episode has it’s own feel, is really impressive. This is an anime that has good character depth as well, even with being thrown into the middle of their story, you start to get an idea of who the characters are, and what they have gone through in their lives.

1 – Steins;Gate
This has been #1 for me for a while, this time travel anime is just well put together with a good cast of characters. I really feel like they do a good job of developing those characters as well. And while there are definitely characters that can fall into various anime tropes, they do a really good job of keeping most characters out of them and even the tropy characters end up having more depth than it seems. The time travel is also really well done. Time travel is one of those things that I generally like in concept, but too many shows and movies end up having time travel become so convoluted that it doesn’t work, or too simple that you can poke holes in how they are doing things. Steins;Gate does a good job of making something simple enough that you can generally understand the concept of it, but complicated enough that it doesn’t feel like time travel can be easily solved.

As always there are some honorable mentions that I need to add in as well.

Honorable Mention:
Ghost Story
Fruits Basket
The Devil is a Part-Timer
The Disastrous Life of Saiki K
My Hero Academia
My Roommate is a Cat
Dagashi Kashi

There are a lot of anime out there that I want to watch more of that I either can’t easily find on Funimation or just haven’t had the time for yet. But Ancient Magus Bride, Fairie Gone, and Afterschool Dice Club are all that I’ve watched a chunk of and want to watch more that could make it to my list eventually.

What are some of your favorite anime? Do any of the ones I’ve listed here sound interesting to you?

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