Burn Cycle - Heavy Metal Magnets

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Board Games - Sometimes I wonder about the models I’m asked to paint. Burn Cycle is a game that features deluxe metal miniatures that are colored and shaded. Personally I’d opt to leave them as is because it’s a pretty classy looking game, but for playability sometimes it’s better to have characters match their cards.

The game features magnetic pieces that the models stick to, I’m assuming they are upgrades for game play. The board and mats are all a nice mousepad material which make for a really interesting looking game.

Painting was a bit of a challenge because the strong magnets kept wanting to clack together so I put a piece of sheet metal on my tray to keep them organized while I applied contrast over a metal base coat.

This is another one I haven’t had a chance to play but the publishers description sounds interesting:

A puzzly infiltration game for 1-4 players, burncycle puts you in command of a team of robots in the far future. Their mission: taking down evil, human-run corporations responsible for subjugating AI under their heel. Your team arrives at each corporate headquarters and must sneak inside, shutting down the companies' physical operations as well as their circuitous digital networks. As you search rooms and advance to the higher floors, you'll be rewarded with new items and abilities, but you'll also be challenged by threatening guards, fatal viruses and the architecture itself, which was built to fight off robotic intruders.

Key to this solo and cooperative experience is the idea of “creative action sequencing.” During each round of play, all players will contend with a randomly drawn set of programming directives, which tell them in what order their bots are allowed to take physical, digital and command actions. Players can choose to skip over directives at the cost of having an incomplete turn, or they can disobey the directions by paying costly action dice. The best players, however, find a way to work within the “burncycle”: essentially, organizing their actions so that they benefit the team while staying within the directive order.

Each of the corporate headquarters in the game use unique neoprene layouts on a larger mat, changing the geography of the game to suit your target. Each CEO also has at their disposal a special threat meter, which will trigger new obstacles for your robots as time runs out. If you don't complete the mission quickly, you may end up leaving bots behind, the victims of immobilizing power drains or destructive counterhacking.

Your team wins the game if you complete your objectives on every floor without losing your captain or maxing out your threat level.

Northguard - Fully Painted

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Board Games - This year it seems I’ve painted quite a few board games based on video games, which is an interesting trend. I supposed it makes sense to create analog versions of popular properties as people are more likely to pick something up based on name recognition.

This is one of those games that has a ton of tiny pieces that I used a simple contrast method to put some color on, while painted the larger monsters in a more traditional method. I was asked to keep these in my lower level to save on cost which makes sense based on the detail level on the models.

I haven’t played it but here’s the description from the publisher:

Based on the universe of the Northgard video game, Northgard: Uncharted Lands is a game of conquest and exploration set in the age of vikings. Each player controls a Viking clan, looking to achieve victory by reaping glory in various ways or controlling the most prized territories of this new continent.

The game focus is on streamlined rules and mechanisms, allowing for a fast-paced and smooth rhythm of play. Each turn, players alternate their actions to adapt their strategies to their opponents' moves and the expansion of the board. Fame (i.e., points) can be earned by exploring, fighting, and controlling and developing territories. The various corresponding actions are played through the cards that the players have in hand. At the end of each turn, they have to choose a new card to improve their personal deck as their clans develop new tactics and technologies.

The conquest of Northgard also requires clever management of resources to build new buildings, improve your warriors' effectiveness, better your hand of cards, and upgrade your clan's specificities. The winter phase makes this management more difficult as you have to feed your units to keep them healthy and happy.

The pace of the game is set by the players as the game ends after seven turns, but can also be cut short at any time if one of them is in control of three closed territories hosting certain types of buildings.

Turris - Post Technology Worker Placement

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Board Games – Turris has some pretty cool monster miniatures.

In Turris, players take on the role of tribe leaders in a post-technology society. Exiled from a once glorious city, tribes of scavengers are all that remains of a scientifically advanced humanity.

As the regular offering to the gods was delayed, the ground split open and vile Beasts arose from the Abyss, relentlessly attacking everyone in their path. Driven out of their home and left for dead in the harsh desert, the people have lost all hope, until an unexpected discovery was made.

Turris is a competitive Worker Placement game where players attempt to build the Tower as a final defense mechanism, utilizing the prehistoric technology of divine origin. You assign your Scouts to acquire resources and decipher the data from ancient machinery, all the while being constantly chased (and often devoured) by the unstoppable Beasts. The tribes all follow the Council's directives and complete its missions, but as a tribe leader you know that once the Tower is built and humanity is saved, it will dissolve without strong leadership. In building the Tower, you acquire Prestige Points which represent your standing amongst the tribes. The leader with the most Prestige will take control of the Council and lead humanity into the future — whatever it may be.

Turris uses miniatures that represent the Beasts and Scouts, decks of Mission and Tactics cards, as well as Tarot-sized gold/silver lined Trionfi cards which represent the Tower rooms.

Transmissions - Cute Robot Worker Placement

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Board Games – Transmissions is a neat board game.with some amazing miniatures:

Based on the lovely illustrated world of Matt Dixon, Transmissions brings his world of mechanical friends to life. In the game, players share robots as workers moving around a rondel-styled board, collecting engrams and electricity. These are used to gather ideas to improve your use of the robots or items to score points at the end of the game. You also build your own set of connected, flowing pipes while gathering birds and butterflies to score even more points. The game ends when no ideas are left, a player's robots are complete, or no pipes remain to be built. After an equal number of turns, the player with the highest total score wins!

The game features a unique mechanism of worker selection and sharing with incredible illustrations, adorable miniature robots, and very welcoming play for everyone!

—description from the publisher

Zombie Carnivale –

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Board Games – Venice is usually a great location for an interesting style of game. Zombie Carnivale is a unique game that was nominated for several awards with the first edition of the game and with the Kickstarted Second Edition new scenarios and miniatures were added to the game to improve the experience.

From the Publisher:

The ancient manuscripts talk about a Leviathan, a huge creature lying on the silt bed of the lagoon on whose back the city has its foundations. All manuscripts agree on its eternal sleep and they all tell that the beast will wake up one day, shaking the city from its muddy roots, smashing the vitrified stilts on which the city stands, and crashing it into the seething sea where the monster will rise. The ancients say, however, that there will be signs; it is written that the Venetians will feel the tremors, that they would therefore save themselves from the monster, who will recover his freedom by plunging into the waves a deserted city.

But there were no signs. What ancients did not know is that the Leviathan is not alive. For centuries, the city lived and prospered on the back of a corpse. That corpse, though, is now awakening – and with it the dead arise from the lagoon...

In the cooperative game Carnival Zombie, players lead a group of characters who are fleeing on terra firma from the terror that has emerged from the lagoon of Venice. This group of characters must make its way through hordes of rotting "Infected" to leave the city, and players need to rush as the Leviathan upon which the foundations of Venice were built is awakening. Thus, it's only a matter of time before the city sinks in the dark waters of the lagoon.

Each game is divided into several nights and days. During the nights, players hide in trenches behind the barricades to resist the attacks of the Infected. During the day, players move through the city, which is shaken by tremors. The Infected are drawn by the groans of the Leviathan in the abyss to help their master free itself from the rotting stilts that nail it to the silt bed.

Players have several ways to get out of town, but little time to do it – and their path is hindered by the bosses, the most implacable servants of the Leviathan. If the players do make it out, they can assess their skills – and set a goal for next time – by counting the points scored during the game.

My Father's Work - Perfect for Halloween

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Board Games – Do you love Frankenstein? Are you a Victorian Horror aficionado? Is being a mad scientist interesting to you? If so you probably want to check of My Father’s Work.

This game from Renegade Studios seems really interesting:
The walls were lined with iron shelves, each metal slat overfilled with glass jars containing formaldehyde and grotesque curiosities within. Pristine brass tools and refined metals of a quality I had never before laid eyes upon were strewn across sturdy slabs of rock and wood, their edges sharp with use. However, my eyes were soon drawn to a sturdy writing desk, its mahogany eaves inlaid with thin strips of copper, the center of which contained a well-worn leather-bound book. My father's journal — passed down to me and representing years of knowledge and countless experiments. And inside that weathered tome, atop the pearly parchment oxidized yellow at its frayed edges, were the deliberate quill marks of a crazed genius outlining the ambitious project he could never complete in one lifetime — his masterwork.

Without realizing it, my hands were shaking as I clutched the book to my chest. At once, I felt an ownership and anxiety for the scientific sketches scrawled so eloquently on those frayed sheets. It was at that moment that I began my obsession: I would restore this laboratory to its former brilliance and dedicate my life to completing my father's work!

In My Father's Work, players are competing mad scientists entrusted with a page from their father's journal and a large estate in which to perform their devious experiments. Players earn points by completing experiments, aiding the town in its endeavors, upgrading their macabre estates, and hopefully completing their father's masterwork.

But they have to balance study and active experimentation because at the end of each generation, all of their experiments and resources are lost to time until their child begins again with only the "Journaled Knowledge and Estate" they have willed to them — and since the game is played over the course of three generations, it is inevitable that the players will rouse the townsfolk to form angry mobs or spiral into insanity from the ethically dubious works they have created. The player with the most points at the end of three generations wins and becomes the most revered, feared, ingenious scientist the world has ever known!

—description from the publisher

Conan - The Barbarian

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Board Games – I’ve painted up several set of miniatures for the various Conan games and have been pretty pleased with the look of most of them. This latest batch is no exception the sculpts are decent and interesting.

Return to the Dark Tower

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Board Games - The 80’s were a crazy time for board games electronic components were all the rage and the big daddy of them all was Milton Bradley’s 1981 Dark Tower. Recently Restoration Games did a Kickstarter to bring this classic back into production with improved components and some amazing miniatures.

Sea of Legends - Purple Box

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Board Games – Pirates are pretty cool, a cartoony looking pirate game with interesting character design and fun illustrations is even cooler. This is an expansion for Sea of Legends which you can read more about here.

The game looks really nice and the miniatures are big, detailed and fun. I have no idea if the game is actually good but according to the Kickstarter it funded in under six hours, which is pretty good I suppose.

Crisis At Steamfall

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Board Games - Crisis At Steamfall is an engine building board game where players attempt to set up a city that will level up their characters. I guess the game was Kickstarted and added an expansion during that process. You can read more about the game here.

Erune - Hero Quest with an App?

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Board Games – Prior to the rerelease of Hero Quest you’d get a similar dungeon crawl every now and then or replacement components to recreate the magic of the original. I guess using modern technology you can attempt to recreate that dungeon crawl with a narrated app. The concept is cool but as I mentioned in my post about Familiar Tale - app based games have the same issue of limited shelf life as the VHS games of old.

Apart from the app “issue” the game looks really cool and having a narrator solves that age old problem of needing a DM that doesn’t get to play with the party. I like the graphic design and box design for this game, everything has a place and they even thought of including boxes to keep track of your character throughput the campaign.

The description from the publisher is pretty good:

Enter the world of Erune and roam through its darkest dungeons... Experience epic quests, fight hordes of monsters and thwart the Master of Shadows' evil plans!

Erune is a Dungeon-Crawler for 1 to 5 players.

Thanks to the mix of a board game with a mobile app, you can talk with your game!

The Spirit of Erune is the privileged companion of your adventures. Guardian of the ancestral knowledge of the world of Erune, it resides in each and everything. Impartial, it does not take part in the conflict between the Adventurers and the Master of Shadows.

The Spirit of Erune is the narrator of your adventure
It allows you to speak with the characters you meet during your adventures.
It punctuates your quests with all kinds of events.
Beware! Your choices have consequences that influence your story!

The Spirit of Erune is a source of knowledge
It will answer all your questions about the rules of the game and the objects of the world of Erune down to the smallest detail.

The Spirit of Erune is luck
It unveils the treasures, the traps and the effects of items among thousands of possibilities!

The Spirit of Erune makes you evolve
It reveals your earnings when you level up, your quest objectives and the winner of the game.

The app is free on iOS and Android but requires an Erune Game Box to be used.

Townsfolk Tussle

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Board Games – I used to love Merry Melodies and the other vintage cartoons, they had such a unique look and feel that feels a bit lost in modern cartoons. Oh course the extreme cartoon violence isn’t there any more either so this game looks to capture some of that lost magic with a co-op boss battle.

I really enjoyed painting these models the cartoony style allowed for some mixing of contrast paint with some more traditional techniques to get the look i was going for.

Here’s the description from the publisher:

After the death of the beloved sheriff of Eureka Springs, Ruffians are coming in droves to take advantage of the defenseless town! It is up to you and your fellow townsfolk to wallop these troublemakers into oblivion. And who knows—if you play your cards right, you may just prove yourself worthy of becoming the new sheriff!

Townsfolk Tussle is a co-op boss battler for 2-5 players. In each game, your goal is to take down four unique Ruffians, each one tougher than the last! You'll build up your townsfolk with gear, explore Eureka Springs, and concoct unique strategies to take down even more unique hoodlums.

Batman - Gotham City Chronicles Expansions

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Board Games – Gotham City Chronicles looks like a really interesting game, you’d never know that by looking at the game box which has some really cool art on the front but zero information about what’s in the box on the back. It’s really frustrating and bad packaging design. If I pick up a game box I should be able to flip it over and at a minimum get a description of what in the box with a picture. Sure a nice clean fancy looking box is impressive but years down the road no one’s going to remember what this game is and won’t be able to quickly figure it out at a glance.

It’s a shame really because the miniatures are great and the inside of the boxes are well done, if not a bit space hungry. These expansions are the Batman Inc and Suicide Squad Expansions which are nice sets but to further add to my rant the characters pictured on the box art are not even included in the sets. I’m sure they appear in another box but putting Harley and Dick on the covers when they’re not in the box is a bit annoying.

Familiar Tale - There's an App for That

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Board Games – I don’t know how I feel about combining apps with board games, part of the appeal of a good board game is having everything in one box that you can pick and play after reading through the rules. Age doesn’t matter as everything you need is in the box. When you introduce a media component to the game you’re eventually going to lose a means to access that media. Remember the VHS supported games, DVD or CD guided games, any of these app games that used a no longer supported operating system? I’m not against innovation and it’s cool that publishers are looking at ways to push the definition of where a board game ends and video game begins.

Familiar Tale is on of these app supported games by Plaid Hat Games. The premise seems fun and the miniatures are really cool. You do need to download an app in order to play so there’s that.

Here’s the description from the publisher:

Familiar Tales is a co-operative, deck-building, fantasy adventure for 1-4 players. It's an exciting narrative game in which players take on the roles of a wizard's familiars, entrusted with saving and raising a displaced princess. They must keep her safe from the evil forces that would see her dead, but when it comes to children, it is not enough to merely survive! The familiars know that every choice they make will affect the young one in their care. If they are victorious and the throne is reclaimed, what kind of woman will sit upon it?

Players will explore a massive world through the pages of a fantastical story book filled with branching paths and memorable characters. Fight off enemies, and explore the many nooks and crannies of an enchanted world. Experience a professionally narrated, fully scored, decade-spanning fantasy epic. Easily downloadable for both Mac and Windows, this browser-based app is required to play Familiar Tales. Think of it as an automated game master and storyteller! The app also features a digital, searchable rulebook.

An innovative card play system allows players to level up their familiars by building and customizing their skill decks. Players will use their skill cards to perform all manner of exciting actions throughout their campaign.

Another Bug Hunt?

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Board Games - Aliens seems to have had quite a few games in the market lately. This latest one to cross my table is Alien Bug Hunt by Upper Deck Games. From what I’ve been told the game is ok, but feels a bit like you’re stuck on rails based on the character you choose.

The info from the publisher doesn’t do much to elaborate on gameplay:

Your challenge in Aliens: Bug Hunt is to complete the mission and evacuate the complex because these xenomorphs converging from every direction are heartless, smart, relentless, and hungry.

Pick your favorite character from the movie Aliens, each with a unique ability. Every role is critical as players rely on each other to cover their six and make it out alive. The complex is comprised of thirty different location tiles to create different challenges. Private Hudson might ask whether this is a stand-up fight or just another bug hunt; the real question is who's hunting who?

Another Glorious Day In the Corp - Aliens

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Board Games - I don’t know if it’s nostalgia or if the game is really that good, but this is the third complete set of Aliens: Another Glorious Day in The Corp that I’ve painted. I don’t mind because the miniatures are great and I’m a huge fan of the franchise.

Who Ya Gonna Call?

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Board Games – The Ghostbusters board game by Cryptozoic doesn’t have a tone of miniatures that require paint. Most of the ghosts are cast in transparent plastic so painting them would loose the ghostly effect. I previously had painted my own Kickstarter version of this game which has significantly more models than the retail version. The game feels a bit like Zombicide with a different skin on it so you’re level of enjoyment may vary, however playing through missions that feel like the movie, old cartoon and comic mixed together is pretty fun.

Bloodbourne

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Board Games - Bloodbourne Mergo’s Loft.

Deep in the Nightmare of Mensis sits the towering structure known as Mergo’s Loft, and at its apex resides its namesake master. Who, or what, exactly is Mergo is beyond mortal minds to comprehend, but his host of deadly attendants will strike down any who would approach their master. In this new Campaign, players will first need to discover a way to access this otherworldly place and, once there, discover the means to slay the unslayable. —description from the publisher