A Table Full

When you have a new game and two expansions filling the table as you unbox, boxes and punch boards covering the floor, and your wife walks in and uses your first and middle name... 😯

I reminded her it's not "three games". It's one game and two expansions. That's practically nothing. 🤣 She did grin afterwards. 😉

It was a great day of unboxing this past Thursday afternoon. Better yet, a storm rolled through cancelling my night of reffing, so guess what I did?? Played games! Woo!

Marvel Champions took centre stage that day. It didn't take long for me to enjoy this one; from the artwork to the mechanics, this game holds true to the Marvel universe and theme.

I've played a handful of times now with the "starter/intro decks" of Rhino, Spider-man and Captain Marvel. Rhino is a real pain I gotta say. 🤣 I haven't beat him yet, but I did manage to piss him off pretty good in one game with Captain Marvel. 😏

I haven't yet tried to battle him with two heroes, as I'm still getting used to the game. But that'll come soon enough. I'm impressed with the length of the game overall as well. Not that I mind long OR short games. Marvel Champions can be short (those are usually the sad games... 😥) but it can go on for a bit as well if you're really giving the enemey a good go!

I'm very excited to keep diving into this one and to build more hero packs and enemies into my collection.

******

Last night we had a wind storm come through and knock our power out. Naturally, that meant game time! I opened the window in the games room, allowed the natural light to shine on my game table and brought Wingspan: European Expansion to the table. As you can see the same beautiful artwork, and few extras (like 15 purple eggs) are added to your base game with this first Wingspan expansion.

In typical Stonemaier fashion, this expansion simply ADDS to your game. It doesn't take anything away or have major changes. This expansion does add more player interaction with new "teal bird powers". The 'teal bird powers' trigger at the end of a round, prior to end-of-round bonus scoring. There's also some new ways of bringing birds into your aviary. Some predatory birds for example, rather than paying the egg and food cost to place this bird, it can cover another bird in your aviary. However, you lose any eggs and/or food on that bird you've covered. BUT it now becomes a tucked card for end-of-game scoring. Cool. 😎

The expansion offers some additional food tokens, the purple eggs, 81 new birds from Europe (totally 251 bird cards when combined with the base game!), new bonus cards and new end-of-round bonuses. All of this fits seamlessly in to work with the Automa opponent that you've come to love (for it's simplicity in running) and hate (because it beats you... like it did to me last night). 🤣

*****

Finally, travelling back in time to Thursday afternoon, when I had unboxed Anachrony: Fractures of Time. Here's my reaction to my unboxing of that expansion...

There's almost as many components in this expansion as there is in the base game!!!

The rulebook at the top shows all the components to play the Fractures of Time expansion (as well as the new faction: Path of Unity). The bottom rulebook is the additional components for the solo mode(s). 😯😯😯 Unreal!

Here's what I didn't realize with this expansion; The Path of Unity comes with exo-suit minis!!!!!!!! YES!!!!!!

You know this means I absolutely HAVE to get the exo-suit minis pack for the other factions now. 😏

Here's the new Path of Unity faction player board. The artwork in this game is just fantastic all around. I love it.

I'm very happy that I decided to get this expansion. Sure it'll be fun to add the expansion play (eventually) with the new 'flux cores', 'blink ability' and 'the Valley' board. BUT I'm most excited about the solo-mode(s)!!! So long PnP Chronobot. You didn't need to be here long, but you helped me realize that getting the retail solo version was a must. 🤣

This expansion provides an UPDATED Chronobot, which has some changes to how it plays. Of course, it has a beautiful player board and components as well which "somewhat out-do" my PnP cardboard, paper and glue components...😋

Flip that board over (and flip over the components like the Chronobot warp tiles for example) and you have the other solo-opponent option, which plays more 'human-like'; "The Chronossus" (*cue dramatic movie music*)...

Oh boy! I will definitely adhere to what it says in the manual, which is suggesting getting used to the updated Chronobot play first BEFORE playing against The Chronossus. Good idea Mr rulebook! I couldn't even beat the OLD Chronobot!!! 🤣

Now all I need is time to jump into this one!

It'll come soon enough!!!