z22
3861
I load the finished map in Photoshop and create a all black layer on top of the final product. I use the eraser tool while playing to delete black areas the party explores. Even cooler, I create new layers of effects as players create zones, etc.
z22
3862
I considered requesting replacements for some of my ships that are glued together incorrectly, but instead I just painted all of them and started playing. Take a look at the first 2 ships in the 2nd row from the front. One of the nacelles on the The USS Venture (1st ship in both pics) is crooked and looks goofy. The 2nd ship, USS Sutherland, has a bent top section. It’s more pronounced and noticeable in person. I’m still considering asking for replacements. This game was expensive and I had to glue some models back together and I had to open and free up EVERY clik base to make it easy to spin. :(
What do you think?
I think your paint jobs are awesome, and that you should have asked for replacements. The process was painless (unless there’s something wrong with the replacements, which many people have complained about). If you’re up for more painting I’d take pics of stuff you are unhappy with and send them along with an email explaining your disappointment to WK.Replacements@gmail.com. They will ask you to set up an account at http://heroclix.com/replacement/ and create an order with two pieces in it, and then they will manually add the rest from your email and mail the package to you. (Note that the WK replacements site did not work in Chrome for me, but worked fine in Firefox.)
I was originally just going to ask for replacements for broken ships, but got nitpicky because the game cost a lot and quality control should be their problem, not mine. I’ve purchased many WizKids minis in the past and very few of them had the crazy problems my set of ships had, with pieces glued on at completely wrong angles or not fitted completely into the tabs before they were secured. It really makes me wonder if the problem was with the glue taking too much time to set and letting gravity wreak havoc instead of with shoddy workers, but again, I’m paying them to take care of those problems.
The issues your ships have are similar to those I requested and received replacements for. My Yeager, for example, had a nacelle that was cracked and about to fall off that could have been pulled and re-glued, but they replaced it. Similarly, one of my Birds of Prey had a gun glued on at the wrong angle that I probably could have heated up or snapped off and repositioned, but they replaced it as well.
Some BGG folks argue that people like me are abusing the replacement program and should make as many fixes as possible ourselves so we don’t ruin it down the road. I think customers should be 100% satisfied with a premium purchase like this, that most of the mistakes could have been mitigated had they thought out their production and packaging better, and that getting a lot of return requests should signal to them that they should focus more attention on quality control in the future. Considering that this game is screaming for expansions, I’m hoping to avoid later screwups by holding their feet to the fire now.
I’ll trade you my minis for yours. ;-) Looks good!
Those look better than whats coming soon from Wizkids:
Wow, WK is pure evil. After all the screaming for painted ships, and all the screaming back about excessive costs, they had this move planned the entire time. Painted ships in HeroClix blind-buy format. Evil, evil, evil.
Pre-ordered already. I’ve been watching this game since it was first announced and to be honest I thought it sounded to good to be true. So I was happy to hear it was a huge success at Essen. I’m really looking forward to this.
I am a little worried about having time to play it. My last few game purchases have surpassed my imposed time limit to play
Runewars 3-6 hours
Fortune & Glory 3 hours
Urban Sprawl 3-4 hours
Eclipse
Finally got a crack at Elder Sign and Eminent Domain, and both benefited greatly from the “Reldan rapidly digesting the rules and teaching it to us” approach that I would recommend to all of you.
I liked the former a great deal, especially in terms of how simple yet engaging the adaptation of Arkham mechanics was. If there’s a criticism I would offer it’s that a lot of the flavor of the game is missing in something that is reminiscent of what I disliked about MoM, where it was built more around the missions per se than the character of the story itself. It seems like it would be trivial to “flavor text” each aspect of the problem solving (ie now you must overcome a bleep and a bloop, but there is also a bleepblapbloop to worry about that you must x out of existence). There is no real equivalent to the way that location cards would really add sub-stories to the arkham experience, which is a shame. However, it’s really quick and I expect it to teach very fast in the future, and I think with a slower pace where you at least read each card as it comes up and sort of draw out those moments you might get a hint of that even if it’s too late for it to be a substantive part of the game.
ED, on the other hand, was exactly what I wanted it to be.(Some Dominion, some Glory to Rome, in a Race to the Galaxy wrapper) - (inscrutable icons and pointless diversity of RttG). I liked it a lot, and I think it will teach quickly as well and develop much more strategic depth as we figure out the kinks of how to exploit the different paths most effectively.
Did you find Elder Sign to be too easy LK? We played it once 4 player and smashed it too pieces. As a single player it seems like a bit more challenging, but still kinda easy. I also agree that Elder Sign really looses a lot of the character of Arkham. It really feel like basically all mechanic and no sense of survival horror. Still as a quickie single player game it’s pretty relaxing.
I feel like Death Angel offers a much better challange, regardless of numbers (except 3 player wich is kinda awful for DA).
That Miskatonic School for Girls kickstarter project finally put up the rules of the game – to backers only. And $45 is the minimum contribution to get the game itself.
Congratulations, guys! You’ve guaranteed that I won’t be giving you my money. (Yes, they already got fully funded within 2 days, but still… the balls on those guys).
Xemu
3872
I’ve played about 5 games of Elder Sign now and we’ve never once had an even close challenge. It’s just too easy to rack of VP with virtually zero chance of getting doom tokens.
I’m the first to admit that Arkham Horror’s rules could use a good cleanup and some streamlining. Unfortunately Elder Sign, while kind of interesting, is not anywhere near an adequate replacement for the real thing, IMO.
I haven’t played enough to say whether it’s too easy but my hunch is that Xemu is correct. We drew Azathoth, which I would expect to be easy on account of his fragility as an Arkham GOO, and it seemed also that the investigator special abilities were really, really useful (the science power to not spawn monsters, the double use clues, and even my bonus spell draw). And here I thought we were avoiding the OP characters by not drawing the nun or the cleavage researcher.
I think the difficulty could be tweaked a variety of ways, but I’m not sure there’s a fix for the lack of flavor which is really what bugs me.
Thanks, Chuck, I hadn’t heard of that.
Absolutely agree. The first thing I thought when going through a solitaire game was how odd it was that they’d do a little location blurb but they never even bothered to connect the dice rolling with any kind of location based tasks. If going to the Museum Office requires rolling three magnifying glasses and a book for one thing and a gun and a horror for the other, how hard is it just to give a brief explanation, even just a sentence or a title, for what these tasks mean. Hell, I’d just be happy with ‘Searching for clues!’ and ‘Shooting at shadows!’ or something. Even that tiny touch would give some story context that would elevate the game past rolling a bunch of multicolored dice.
Ugh. I’ve been going back and forth on that one. I like the theme and the art but the rules rundown they give in their intro video is just so simplistic I was waiting to see the official rules before contributing. Nevermind then, fellahs!
Over the weekend, I played Star Trek: Fleet Captains for the first time. It was a 2-player game with my girlfriend, and it was a hit!
She wanted to play the Klingons, so that left me with the Federation. She drew three Klingon ships of varying sizes, while I drew two Size 5 Federation ships. Since neither of us knew anything about the 20 sub-decks, we chose the ones whose titles that sounded like a good fit for our fleets. While she proceeded to complete 1-VP mission after 1-VP mission, I had a hard time running only two ships. I felt like my hands were tied not being able to take a third action each turn. Also, my drawn missions weren’t well suited for only two ships, but I also didn’t cycle my missions nearly as often as she did. And while she discarded one Command card practically every turn, I rarely did, which was a mistake. She ended up winning easily, 10 VPs to 5.
The only problem we have with the game is the bloody font used on the Clix dials. Damn, it’s a PITA to read. Did none of the playtesters comment on how difficult that font is to read, even for someone with perfect near vision? I fear we may have to use plastic paper clips going forward. We’ll see.
I demanded a rematch, which she said she’ll gladly give me, since she really enjoys the game. So that alone makes it a winner in my book! Now, if only I could get her to feel likewise about Sid Meier’s Civilization: The Board Game…
I got the rules. If you guys want, I’ll forward them to your email address if you PM it to me.
Wendelius
My replacement order arrived today. They threw everything into a box with packing peanuts and no other packaging, but it all arrived safely. Unfortunately they sent one wrong replacement, and my replacement U.S.S. Sutherland looks like it was glued together by a drunken toddler. I sent another replacement request for those so I’ll see what happens. Other than that, all the other replacements look good. I’ll need to heat and tweak a few nacelles, but they’re far, far better than the Frankenships that came in the box.
AlanQ
3879
I picked up Agricola last night, and played a game of the family version with my wife. We both really loved it. I was worried that my wife might find it too heavy, but I think after mastering Through the Ages she can handle pretty much any Euro. I know I’m late on this, but what a fun game!
Tasty Minstrel announced a new Kickstarter for Kings of Air and Steam. I don’t think I’ll bite this time.
