February 2025

February 2025 retrospective

Hey everybody,
So just like that, we’re 1/6 of the way through the year. While February did seem to last marginally less than January, it still seems like not in any rush to see the summer, although the last week or so has seen some very pleasant, sunny days here in the UK. Stop the press, I know. It’s been great to see, though, and the garden is slowly waking up now – I think I may need to mow the lawn soon, as it has been looking pretty desperate out there. This slide towards spring does wonders for the mood, not least because I am really getting into the mood for all Star Wars now. Easter will forever be associated with my discovery of the EU back in high school, and that glorious two-week break where I obsessively watched the original trilogy each day (I’m not even joking).

I think this has become more evident here on the blog in the past week, where I’ve been posting a variety of content relating to the GFFA. After getting the game for Christmas, Outer Rim has had its review here, but if for some reason you don’t want to read that post, suffice it to say, the game is excellent. It took me some time to get into it properly, I think because I had been approaching it through the task of learning it, if that makes sense? Obviously, we need to learn how to play these things, but I was looking at it too mechanically, and since I was able to sit back a little and enjoy the story that was being told, it has really set my world alight. I’d picked up the expansion earlier in the month regardless, and I’m saving it until I’ve played at least once with each of the playable characters in the core game, but I’m so glad I now have that as well!

Earlier this week I returned to watching Rebels as well, picking it back up in the middle of season two where I left off a long while ago. I’m still hesitant to say that the show is growing on me, because there are so many annoying things about it, particularly how I’m clearly meant to just love these characters who are about as disparate a band as you could ever hope to meet. But there’s increasingly more to enjoy, so I don’t think it’s as much of a chore to watch it as I had been thinking back in the day. However, as with a lot of the new canon stuff, it is becoming increasingly difficult to enjoy Star Wars unless you do actively engage with the new canon like this, and given that Rebels was one of the earliest things to come out of the Disney take-over, its reach is now quite long. From Hera Syndulla showing up in the Alphabet Squadron books, to the models in Shatterpoint being amazing pieces for that game. Actually, when watching this week I finally learned who one of the Outer Rim characters is, as otherwise I had not encountered Ketsu Onyo. It’s very much a pervasive media, and so I think it’s almost incumbent upon me to learn more about it – thankfully, as I say, it’s becoming easier to engage with!

Speaking of Star Wars TV, the trailer for season two of Andor dropped and I’m really looking forward to watching that, when the time comes! I’ve started to watch Skeleton Crew this month, as well, so want to finish that first, then rewatch season one of Andor before the next one starts.

What a time to be alive!

I mentioned Shatterpoint there, and that’s a game that I am really struggling to not throw myself back into wholeheartedly. There’s a few folks who play at my local store, and obviously James is a fan as he is the one who got me into that game almost two years ago now, but I have such a huge backlog of miniatures that need painting for this game, that I don’t really want to go buying more, despite the fact that they look so damn good! The game has grown so much over the last year, though, and seeing the products that are coming out for it next, I think it’s really fascinating to think back to how it was a year ago. List building was always something like mental gymnastics for me, I think, as I struggled to fit certain characters with others, and so came to the conclusion that it’s just better to play strike teams as a box. Of course, AMG are making things difficult there because some, like the Ewok boxes, come with multiple primary or secondary characters, so you need to make a choice. The recent Kit Fisto box that has been previewed shows a drastic take on this, where he has two secondaries, and if you play Kit with all-clones, you’re actually not using all of the squad points he brings. Very interesting, like they’re changing the distribution method for how characters are coming out. Previously, I guess they were costing characters to fit the points – I believe Aurra Sing is always the one used by the community for this – but now we’re almost seeing them throw in a character who doesn’t make the best tactical sense, but can be used with other squad boxes for list building.

It’s a fascinating development, and with stuff like Director Krennic’s box coming soon that is the largest box yet, the mould is being stretched further still!

All of this talk of list building brings me on to Marvel Crisis Protocol, though, which has been perhaps the miniatures game I have been most focused on for the last three months. James and I have been obsessed, truly, and I’ve made some decent progress with getting models built and painted, though startlingly few of them are actually “finished”. At any rate, we’ve had some amazing games, and I have been building rosters with some of my favourites as a result. I’ve noticed a theme with MCP and Shatterpoint, though, where I’ve been trying to painstakingly match colour schemes to characters, but I’ve had something of a realisation of late, that the models don’t really benefit too much from being done in the same way as Warhammer. For example, the standard process of base – shade – highlight doesn’t always work when it comes to the bright colours of some of the X-Men, and I feel a bit like I’ve made a mess of Jean Grey by painting her yellow costume in that way. Colossus doesn’t actually need anything more than a basecoat, in my opinion, as his metal skin is defined enough that it is quite naturally shaded, etc. I think I need to learn when to let these things go, and when the painting process has gone too far and is starting to detract from the finished piece.

In general, Marvel has been quite a big part of the month, anyway. I’ve had some great games with Marvel Champions, including the Second International with Mr Bookstooge where we took on Rhino and some Hydra soldiers. The team was Black Widow and Captain America on my end, with Black Panther joining from across the Atlantic. I’ve also had some fun games with the earlier hero packs, Thor and Venom versus Crossbones, and Hulk and my own Black Panther vs Absorbing Man. These are heroes that I don’t tend to play that often, but were pretty fun to see them in action – though Hulk did disappoint me a bit, and I ultimately lost that match.

Marvel Champions does lead me on to the big news of February, of course, which is the Fantasy Flight re-organization of the Living Card Game lines. Not sure if they’re really able to be called Living anymore, but Marvel Champions and Arkham Horror are both going to see a rotation hit, where only the most recent 2-3 years of product will be classed as “current”, and the new cards will be designed and balanced with this in mind. I’m not the biggest fan of this, principally because I can see it creating a two-tier system of players where some, like me, will be using cards and talking about decks built from the entire collection, and the newer players who haven’t been able to pick up something like Rise of Red Skull or Path to Carcosa, and they’re no longer being printed. My only hope is that the new content that replaces them will have plenty of good stuff, that Carcosa will be dethroned as the best campaign for the game, but that is a very tall order, in my opinion!

All of this doom and gloom didn’t stop me enjoying some more Arkham Horror LCG though, and despite a slow start with The Circle Undone campaign this year, I did finish playing it this month, then in the space of three days I played through the entire Dunwich Legacy campaign, including the final five scenarios in a single day! I think it’s time I just accepted the fact that I really enjoy the Dunwich campaign, and it’ll probably remain my most-played campaign for that fact. Indeed, I’ve been thinking a fair bit about this issue over the course of February, where I had previously found myself playing games because I feel I ought to, and it has sometimes led to some fairly dreary game sessions. I’ve really tried to turn that around now, and have seen myself having a good run with Dune Imperium when I felt I should be trying to get my head around Outer Rim, but then I’ve really enjoyed Outer Rim when I was actually in the mood to play it!

While we’re on the subject of this, I’ve been doing fairly well with my gaming plans for the year, therefore, and have got a few plays in with the games I had earmarked as being games I want to play more in 2025. I’m now two campaigns in with Arkham of course, with decks set up for a third soon. I’ve played a bunch of Dune Imperium, and Outer Rim has come to the fore, but the biggest news on this is that I have now had my first game of the year with Eldritch Horror. I had determined that I wanted to play with each expansion twice, so that’s 16 games in total for the year. I had a game with Forsaken Lore on Wednesday and it was an absolutely glorious effort, though I lost when the mythos deck ran out of cards. I don’t think I’ve ever had that happen before, but this was especially noteworthy because I had solved two of Yig’s mysteries, and Trish Scarborough was actually perfectly positioned to win the game at the end of the next round, but because the mythos deck was empty at that point, I couldn’t draw a card so the game immediately ended. If only there had been one more card, so I could survive the mythos phase to win! Ah well. Epic stuff, and it’s definitely whetted my appetite for more to come.

I feel quite lucky to have kinda defined a core of my game collection now, anyway. Things like Eldritch Horror, which have been around forever, as well as the new stuff like Outer Rim and Dune Imperium, they’re all really fun games that I don’t think I will tire of playing for a long time. The card games also help to mix things up, as a game like Marvel Champions has effectively more than 50 ways to play thanks to the variety in villains/scenarios, so while the base mechanics are the same, it’s often wildly different from game to game. I’m not trying to launch into some kind of monologue worthy of r/boardgamecirclejerk but I think there’s definitely something to really enjoy about having this small core of games that get played often in rotation. Of course, the miniatures games are slightly apart from that, but anyway! Suffice it to say, I feel really pleased to have added these games to the list, and I’m so glad it’s not like the old days when I had 50 or more board games, the vast majority of which I never played – or only played once.

This retrospective is turning into a bit of a beast here, so I’ll draw it to a close now. Suffice it to say, I’m looking forward to more Star Wars content coming to the blog as we head into the spring, so there’s more coming for Shatterpoint, the old LCG, possibly even some Unlimited stuff, as well as hopefully my views on Skeleton Crew, Rebels season two, and probably a bunch of the comics. Though I need to finish Chapter House Dune first…

Shatterpoint: Fearless and Inventive

Hey everybody,
It’s been a long while since I last talked about Shatterpoint here on the blog, but it’s a game that has been creeping up on me for a good while now, and my interest in the game is once again really high. As part of my return to the game, though, I’ve been working on the Luke Skywalker squad that I was painting last year – I got so far, but didn’t quite seem to finish them. I suppose in part this is because of the fact that getting the miniatures movie-accurate has been a bit of a stumbling block for me!

The box set came out around twelve months ago now, and was one of the first in the waves of original trilogy era releases for Shatterpoint. In a somewhat interesting move, AMG went with Return of the Jedi first, and have been releasing models for characters in reverse-movie order since. So here, we’ve got Luke Skywalker and his band as they attempted to infiltrate Jabba’s Palace. Luke Skywalker is the primary, with Leia as Boushh in the secondary slot. The support unit is Lando in the guise of Tamtel Skreej, and R2-D2 as he appears on the sail barge.

Luke brings 7 squad points and 3 Force, with a stamina of 11 and a durability of 3 which makes him a pretty standard main character-esque unit, similar in many ways to his father Anakin in the core set. He has a number of very good abilities, but unlike a lot of the primary units from the Clone Wars era, he does appear as fairly self-sufficient, and stands apart from the rest of his squad as a result. Running down his abilities, he has a tactics ability (Return of the Jedi) that lets him jump and refresh a Force at the start of his activation – the jump is always useful for free movement of course, and I suppose the Force refresh does benefit the team in some ways. His active ability (You can either profit by this, or be destroyed) costs 1 Force but allows him to force a choice in your opponent – you pick an active objective within range 2 and any enemy characters contesting that objective can dash away; Luke then dashes in and makes a 5 dice attack. So he’s similar to Cad Bane in that he can potentially force enemy units off objectives, which is quite nice.

He has the Deflect reactive ability, which allows him to deal 2 damage to an enemy if they shoot him and roll any failures. His other reactive ability (I will not fight you) costs a Force, and is similar to Deflect in that when he has been targeted by a melee attack and the attack roll contained any failures, he can heal twice and then jump – much like he does in the Emperor’s throne room, jumping away from the fight to catch his breath. Very nice. Finally, his innate ability (I am a Jedi, like my father before me) gives him immunity to the exposed condition while his card is in the Order deck or in reserve, whereas if his card is not in the Order deck, he is immune to the pinned condition. So if he has been, you cannot prevent him triggering the jump from I will not fight you, and if he hasn’t yet been, you can’t weaken his defences by exposing him. Very nice, though I do understand a lot of the criticism around immunity to game effects being a bit OP. I suppose we have to remember, though, this is Luke Skywalker…

His stance card on the Form III Soresu side has 7 attack dice, and 6 defence dice (both ranged and melee), and his defensive expertise are quire useful as he’s getting a block and turning an opposing crit to a hit (which can then be blocked) on just one expertise result – making that immunity to expose really useful! His offensive expertise is all about crits though, but the actual combat tree is quite offensively defensive. With five tiles, he can either deal 8 damage (with two shoves, a jump, a pin and a disarm), or he can deal 5 damage (2 shoves, a jump, and 4 heals).

I find healing to be such an overlooked part of this game, especially because you can’t use the same action twice during a character’s activation, so while most people will end up moving and fighting, or fighting then moving to a better spot, you do have the option of fighting then healing, which removes either one damage or one special condition from the character. Additionally, healing isn’t just restricted to yourself, as you can also heal an allied character within range 2. In the specific case of Luke, he can potentially be in a position where he has been attacked in melee but the attack roll contained a failure, so for one Force he can trigger I will not fight you to heal twice and jump, then on his own turn he can jump again and refresh that Force, then on a best-case scenario turn he can get 4 tiles down his Soresu tree to deal four damage and shove the enemy off an objective, jump if he needs to, but also heal 4 more times. As his second action, he can then heal again and basically negate any of the damage that may have been dealt in the earlier attack. Healing in this way can be infuriating, because it can undo an entire turn for your opponent if they have been trying to wound Luke.

Anyway!

The other side of Luke’s combat card is Form V Djem So, his father’s favourite form. It’s definitely the more offensive side, with eight attack dice and only five defensive dice, and his offensive expertise are only adding to the number of hits being done. The tree has six tiles this time, and in an ideal situation where he can go all the way through, he can deal a maximum of 10 damage, which I think is excellent – enough to one-shot most other characters, if their defensive roll is terrible. In addition, though, he also has the option to reposition on tile three, tile four diverges to either deal expose and damage, or disarm and damage, then it converges on a strain and a damage, ending with a jump and two damage. So two conditions and a lot of movement overall, you could probably reliably deal 6-7 damage as well as getting the expose or disarm, and the reposition (though admittedly, I am no good at the maths of this stuff!)

Overall, I think Luke is impressive – though I am biased as being a big fan of the character!

His sister also comes with a tactics ability, which lets her or another allied spy character reposition – there are some spies that have been released such as the ISB agents, though for the purposes of this box, Lando and Artoo are as well, which is useful. Leia as Boushh, however, isn’t really seen as a very good option, so let’s take a closer look. She costs 4 points, and in addition to the tactics ability, she has active, reactive and innate abilities. Low Blow costs 2 Force and allows her to push an enemy she is engaged with away range 2, then follow them range 2, and Focus for free. Focus allows her to gain an extra dice on the next attack she makes, so she could potentially move up to engage an enemy, push them and herself to move them off an objective, then get +1 to the attack she will inevitably make. Her reactive ability, Fearless and Inventive, costs 1 Force and allows her to add 2 dice for each enemy unit engaged with her, but that is not wounded and that is not being targeted by her attack. We’ll come back to this one shortly. Finally, I want fifty thousand, no less is her innate ability that lets her gain an additional momentum token when she wounds a Primary unit, unless your opponent spends a Force.

Her stance card, Rough and Tumble, gives her six attack dice, and five ranged defence but six melee defence. Now, those six attack dice might be misleading because if she has played everything out correctly, she could be getting a minimum of 9 attack dice in melee, but at a cost of 3 Force (which, you may recall, is what Luke brings to the team to begin with). Her tree doesn’t look too bad, with a maximum of 9 damage possible as well as a pin and a shove, and her melee offensive expertise deal straight damage which is always nice to see. That said, I do feel that I am trying to make the best of a fairly poor situation here, because it does require an awful lot of careful positioning, not to mention Force, to actually get to that point. If she activates late in the round, though, and you have the excess Force to spend, then it could be quite good. I think that might be the optimum play, as well – use her as late as possible, move up to engage someone and Low Blow them to push them and Leia so that she is engaged with a Primary unit as well as at least one other model, then throw your nine dice and hope that the damage goes through so that you can wound that Primary and your opponent won’t have the Force to spend, so that you can then swing the momentum two spots back to your side of the track. It’s something of a magical Christmas land, I know, but I think that could be the reason why she’s a 4 cost character. She’s so Force hungry though…

The final unit in the box is Lando and Artoo, Inside Job. A sneaky duo costing 3 points, they have an innate ability that prevents them from being targeted with ranged attacks if their card is in the Order deck or reserve. Again, it’s a bit like Luke’s immunity in that it messes with the game, but the theme is completely there in that your opponent doesn’t realise they’re the enemy, so doesn’t attack. I love it, anyway! As an active ability, they can pay 1 Force to dash, but if there are no enemy characters within range 3, they can advance instead. Free movement in a game that is all about positioning is huge, and while it does cost a Force, it allows them to double move, which is always great. Element of Surprise is another thematic ability – it costs a Force as well, and when the unit makes a combat action, each character in the unit gets +2 dice but, if any failures are rolled, this unit then gains exposed. They’ve blown their cover, basically. Finally, Forward Planning allows an allied Primary or Secondary unit within range 4 of this unit at the start of its activation can remove one condition from itself. Remember Luke’s crazy amount of healing? He gets even more now.

The stance card for these guys, On the sly, gives them six melee attack and five ranged, with five defence dice. They have a total of five tiles, but how they follow the combat tree is kinda convoluted. Overall, they can deal a maximum of 7 damage (with a shove, a heal and a disarm along the way), or they could potentially deal six damage, but heal three times. Or they could just go for three damage, a heal, a pin and then dash away from the fight. It’s very interesting, and I like the fact that it has the feel of both characters on this card – when Artoo is with Threepio as a secondary character, they had their own sides so you could get the flavour of each droid. Here, the ranged attack seems to be Lando (the expertise chart is titled Watchful Eye) whereas the melee is Artoo (Unexpected Assault).

They’re not going to set the world of fire, of course, but overall I really like the look of these guys, not least because they are some of the most iconic images from the original trilogy. I haven’t yet played with the box, though it is definitely one of the highest entries on my list to bring to the table.

Star Wars: Outer Rim

Hey everybody,
Last year, I finally got my hands on Outer Rim, the board game of smugglers and bounty hunters that Fantasy Flight initially launched back in 2019. It’s something that I’d had my eye on in those early days, but the price tag just wasn’t doing it for me while I was deep in the throes of the plastic addiction. However, I’ve been moving back towards the boardgames over the last year or so, and after having the opportunity to play this game last summer, I knew at once that I wanted to get it for myself!

You play as some of the most iconic fringe types in the Star Wars universe, such as Han Solo or Boba Fett, and the object of the game is to fly around the outer rim, taking on jobs such as delivering cargo or hunting bounties, which earn you credits to upgrade your ship, but also gain you fame, and the first player to reach 10 fame wins the game. It’s such an interesting take on a Star Wars game, because while there is the option for head-to-head combat, you can ignore the other players entirely, and still play the game really well. There are “patrols” that do the rounds, though, and depending on how your relationship is with, say, the Empire, you may need to fight your way past them if they ever land in your spot.

The game reminds me a little bit of Arkham Horror, as there are a lot of card decks on the board, from the encounter cards for each segment of the board, to the six different market decks that you have the opportunity to interact with. There is also a deck of cards called the Databank deck, which has cards with numbered backs that help to tell the story of the game. At set-up, you’ll be instructed to take one of these cards to start you on your journey. This will tell you which planet you start on, and give you a destination to either deliver cargo, or complete a job. As you move around, you might encounter some of the character chits that occupy the different planets, which have certain story elements associated with them, and so you will draw the relevant card from the deck for that, as well. If you’re trying to deliver some cargo and you fail the test to safely do so, you draw from the deck to see what happens. It helps to drive the narrative aspect, which I find a lot of fun.

I find it such an interesting game, though, as it is unlike any Star Wars game I’ve played before. It doesn’t have the conflict that you come to expect, and nobody is a Force user so it doesn’t have crazy lightsaber action going on. You’re just flying around the galaxy in a ship, which determines how many spaces you can move (and can be upgraded to fly faster) and taking on jobs to gain fame. There are three types of combat, because you can’t be out on the rim without a bit of gunslinging, after all. Firstly, there is ship-to-ship combat that happens either when you encounter a patrol, or if you decide to shoot your fellow players while in space. The game uses custom d8 dice, and you roll a number of them equal to your attribute. The dice have hit (solid blast), crit (blast outline) and focus (eye) icons on them, and during combat you need to roll more hits than the opposing character. Crit results count as two hits, and focus doesn’t count for anything unless you have a card that says otherwise.

Ground combat involves the combat attribute of your character, and you can fight other players in ground combat if you’re both on the same planet. Finally, when bounty hunting, if you encounter your quarry as a contact during the encounter step, you must fight them in ground combat, where you roll dice similar to ship combat as described.

Along the way, you’ll also have to make skill tests, which also involves these dice. To carry out a skill test, you always roll 2 dice, but the results will depend on how skilled you are in a certain, er, skill. For example, if you need to make a Stealth test, but you don’t have that skill, you are “unskilled” and so must roll at least one crit to pass. If you have a single instance of Stealth among cards you control (your character and any crew you’ve got), then you’re “skilled” and need a crit or a hit to pass. Finally, if you have more than one instance of Stealth you’re “highly skilled” and a crit, hit or focus result will be deemed a pass.

The game is incredibly open-world, though, and while it is a race to 10 fame, things tend to move quite freely as you take your turn. It’s really interesting, because there isn’t any kind of round structure to the game, it’s a continual pass between the players, so it’s difficult in some respects to understand exactly the structure at first. After my first game last summer, since Christmas I have played the game exclusively solo, as the game comes with an AI deck of cards that simulates an opponent who is also flying around the galaxy on the quest for fame. This AI works remarkably well – of the eight characters in the core set, only four of them can be used as the AI due to their personal goals and whatnot, but the deck itself works really well – it feels like a functioning player at the table, and I have actually lost twice so far to the AI player! They’re also completing jobs and delivering cargoes, and due to the fact that job completion for the AI is just “they complete it” and so no skill tests are required, I think that makes up for the AI not being a regular person, and increases the difficulty overall.

It’s so refreshing for a Star Wars game, though, to have this type of feel to it. Over the course of your turn, you can either move or stay where you are to collect credits. If you’ve been in a combat and have been defeated, you’re not out of the game but you miss out on the move aspect of your turn because you have to recover, instead. But sometimes you might want to stay where you are because you’re trying to buy a ship, or you’re looking for a lucrative cargo to deliver, and so you’ll need to be on a planet to buy cards from the market. You may be looking for a contact on a planet that you had a job to complete last time, as well. It’s really fluid as regards what you might want to do with your turn.

If you’re on a planet, you can deliver cargo for credits (and, potentially, fame), then during the market action you can discard the top card of any deck before buying a card – not necessarily from the same deck. So you have the opportunity to screw over your opponents by discarding from, say, the luxury or the ship decks, then you take on a job of your own. During the encounter step, you can either have an encounter on the planet you’re at, or you can encounter one of the contacts at that planet, which may net you crew to help you on your travels, or you can attempt to complete a job which will require skill checks and so on.

In previous games, I have perhaps concentrated on just one or two of these aspects, and it hasn’t really gone well for me. A recent game where I played as Lando, however, was an absolute joy – doing a spot of bounty hunting, taking on a job, but mostly delivering cargo, it was a grand old time! Also, Lando has the ability to reroll one dice whenever he makes a check, which is really useful when you’re fishing for crits. I think taking that broad approach is super helpful, and I credit that to my eventual win.

It’s such a fantastic game, I am so happy to have it as part of my collection at long last. To the point where I bought the expansion after just three games with it! I haven’t yet played with that expansion, as I have barely scratched the surface of the base game, but having recently seen a number of Fantasy Flight products go out of stock and get really expensive as a result, I didn’t want to take the risk! I’ll probably look to incorporate the expansion later in the year, once I’ve seen more of the base game, and played as all of the characters at least once. Which is something I can’t wait to do, because I am enjoying this game so much!

Andor season 2 trailer

Very excited about this! The first season of Andor was definitely a slow burn, and it took me a long time to get into it. However, I have definitely come round to the fact that it is one of the best offerings of Star Wars we’ve had in quite some time. Season two is set to land April 22, and from the looks of the trailer, it’s going to be pretty explosive. As I understand it, the show will lead directly into Rogue One, which explains the presence of Director Krennic and Saw Gerrera.

With twelve more episodes, forming four arcs of three episodes each, I’m really excited to see more Rebel action in the weeks prior to A New Hope. Hopefully it’ll retain the same quality of the first season, and of course Rogue One!

Star Wars LCG: Endor cycle

Hey everybody,
In 2024 I was able to cover two full cycles and two deluxe expansions for the Star Wars LCG, so today we’re heading to Endor to see how far we can get in 2025! The Endor cycle kicked off in December 2015, just a few weeks after Imperial Entanglements hit shelves, and shifted the focus onto Return of the Jedi. The game had previously attempted to provide a sense of location with the very first cycle, as we focused on Hoth, but the theme there was perhaps too top-down, with a focus on control of Hoth objectives and how many you had versus how many your opponent had. It wasn’t a bad implementation, but the cycle definitely suffered from having been reconfigured from the co-op game as was originally planned.

With the Endor cycle, there are Endor objectives, and there are cards that care about how many Endor objectives are in play, but overall the cycle attempts to do something slightly different, as we look at Return of the Jedi more as a whole. This was the fourth cycle, of course, and we’ve already had cards like Jabba the Hutt, so in terms of personalities we’ve got a few newer versions such as Luke, Han and the Emperor, but we’ve got a lot more of the background EU characters this time, which is very exciting. General Walex Blissex, Lieutenant Renz (“you rebel scum”), Lando in disguise as Tamtel Skreej, as well as Ephant Mon and Bane Malar.

As always, we have new Fate cards, including the Battle of Endor card that gets +1 Force icon (to a max of +3) for each Endor objective in play. This is across the whole table, so if you’re both playing Endor objectives, this can become quite powerful! The second card is Secret Objective, and lets you change which objective you’re attacking during the Edge battle – this too can be quite powerful, because when you play it right, you can potentially launch some guys against a fully healthy objective that your opponent isn’t too worried about, so they don’t defend sufficiently but mid-battle you switch to the already-damaged objective and can blow it up handily. It adds an additional layer to an already sneaky bluffing aspect of the game.

The big thing about the cycle, however, is the new card type, Missions. These look like Objective cards in that they are landscape, they have an ability of some sort on them, but they provide 0 resources and when you play them, they are put into your opponent’s objective row. They count as an objective for victory purposes, but they don’t take the place of an objective if you had blown one up in a previous round. Some of them will have a reaction to being destroyed, while others have a reaction to being played. It’s an interesting design, and I think it makes a lot of sense when you think about what you’re trying to do in the game.

I know a lot of criticism had centred on the abstract nature of the game – people talking about how a combat works, where you declare attackers against your opponent’s objective such as the idea of “A Hero’s Journey” or “Counsel of the Sith”, then your opponent has the opportunity to defend that idea, or concept, or whatever. With Missions, there’s a bit more clear idea around what you’re actually supposed to be doing, in that you’re sending your people on a mission and will gain a reward when it is complete. They give the feeling that you’re actually doing something beyond the abstract “destroy three objectives” or whatever.

A much smaller change, but something quite pertinent, was the number of cards that cared about how your deck was constructed. We’ve seen faction-locked objective sets forever, of course, but here there are cards that are designed specifically to work in-faction, and will do strange things, like not be quite so good, if you have splashed another faction in your deck. It’s something that we have seen a little bit in the deluxe expansions so far, though here we’ve got quite active punishment for going out-of-faction.

Across the Light Side, there is also a very strong Ewok theme that comes out, with all three factions having objective sets that care about the number of Ewoks you have, or that bolster the Ewoks you have in play, etc. There are a couple of neutral sets, which include Chief Chirpa and Wicket, then each other faction has at least one set that feeds into this further. There have already been some objective sets, even going as far back as the core set, which provide more Ewoks for this deck to function well, so it’s fun to see it come together here!

Indeed, something that strikes me about the Endor cycle is how it manages to pull together objective sets from almost across the entire game up to this point when making decks. In preparation for writing this post, I disassembled all of my decks and started pretty much from scratch, adding back in some sets as I saw fit. Some, like the Jedi deck, I just can’t seem to let go of some of those classic core set cards, but others like Empire and Smugglers, were completely rebuilt. However, in doing this, I thought it really interesting how there are older sets that could feed into the Endor theme. The General Madine objective set from Echoes of the Force is a case in point, but there is an Endor set from the core set for the Empire, which features AT-ST walkers and the like, but which still works in this theme. It’s completely fascinating to see how the cycle is able to work with these older cards, and something that I definitely appreciate about the design of the game. It’s a shame, I think, that the game at this point was seeing diminishing returns. The errors and failures that afflicted the game early on, particularly with the Hoth cycle and the first deluxe, drove a lot of potential players away, and when the game finally began to hit its stride with Rogue Squadron and, now, Endor, there weren’t too many people left to experience this. As it happens, I drifted away from the game initially after the cycle concluded (and the final deluxe came out). But that’s probably a story for another time.

Marvel Crisis Protocol: MOAR terrain

Oh, wrong franchise…

I recently panic-bought the NYC terrain pack for Marvel Crisis Protocol, a supplement to the original core set terrain inasmuch as it is a basic duplication of the cars, street lights and dumpsters, but along with a second Daily Bugle kiosk, we also get a coffee shop kiosk as well.

More terrain is always good, of course. AMG may want the boards to be fairly light in terms of what’s on them, but personally I like the look of more stuff on the table, regardless of whether I’m playing characters who can throw it around or not.

I say that I panic-bought it, because I’d not seen it available for a bit, then saw this set on Amazon for £25. What a bargain! So I now have this, as well as the terrain from both core sets, the commercial trucks, and Deadpool’s truck. Not too shabby, though unfortunately very little of it is actually painted, as I find it tricky to paint stuff to actually look like realistic cars…

The other reason for wanting this terrain specifically is the one-shot cards that were released a while back. A lot of the newer terrain, such as the Wakanda pack, have come with these cards to add more rules than simply having objects on the table you can throw, and AMG has retroactively applied the same idea to other bits of terrain. In the article I linked to, there are cards that give effects like the Oscorp chemical truck, for which you roll dodge dice based on your energy stat when it’s thrown at you, or the Daily Bugle kiosk that lets you reroll one defence or dodge dice if you’re within range 1 of it (because you benefit from the news…)

On the whole, I think they’re a great idea, and in the case of the coffee shop, which gives nearby characters additional power in the power phase (caffeine and carbs, baby!) it may prove a deterrent against destroying that terrain feature. However, these one-shots can also affect the overall crisis threat level. Many of them are +0, but some either increase or decrease the threat level, making for even more interesting games! James and I are planning a 23-threat game tomorrow that includes one-shot cards, and I have it in the back of my mind to try at least one game where all of the terrain I have included it’s dedicated one-shot card, which interestingly would all cancel each other out for a net +0 to the overall threat level. Which is probably just as well, as that would be six pieces of terrain with active rules in play… 🥴

Captain America: Brave New World

I went to see the new Captain America movie last night, and I really enjoyed it. Seems like there’s a lot of negativity going around online, but I really don’t understand why – unless it’s part of the intentional MCU-hate that seems to be fashionable these days. Of course, there’s also the fact that Cap is no longer Steve Rogers, but that’s just silly.

Spoilers abound, people, so turn back now if that’s gonna be a problem!

The story seems to be partly an effort to join up a few threads that had been left throughout some of the previous 34(!) movies, such as that massive Celestial sticking out of the Indian Ocean since The Eternals, as well as being a “stealth sequel” to The Incredible Hulk from all the way back in 2008. Indeed, it’s that earlier film that seems to be the main genesis here, as we get Thunderbolt Ross (now re-cast as Harrison Ford once more playing the President) and his attempts to forge a treaty between the US, Japan, France and India for shared control over this Celestial, and what it represents: a source of adamantium.

Now, I literally sat up and took notice at this point. The MCU has been slowly working the idea of the X-Men into the movies since Disney bought Fox, and this is definitely going to allow for an interesting turn.

Where does Cap fit into all this, then? Well, the film opens with him on a mission in Mexico to recover some stolen adamantium, stolen by Sidewinder and the Serpent Society. Giancarlo Esposito is glorious here, despite a lot of people (myself included) hoping he could be Professor X. The Serpent Society are classic Cap villains, so it’s great to have them here, and I believe Esposito has said that his introduction here will lead to something more. Here’s hoping it doesn’t fizzle like Crossbones.

The Society has been employed by a mysterious “buyer”, who begins to pull the strings more openly during an assassination attempt on Ross. Sam and his new Falcon buddy Joaquin Torres locate this buyer at Camp Echo One, and head out there to see what’s up.

They discover a secure facility that had been used by Samuel Sterns, following his contact with the gamma-irradiated blood of Bruce Banner, as he developed a technology to mind-control unwitting folks. Sterns flees, but Sam and Joaquin, along with the President’s head of security Ruth Bat-Seraph, realise that Sterns has orchestrated a conflict between the US and Japan at the Celestial, and rush out to de-escalate the situation.

Ross confesses he kept Sterns alive as he helped to develop a cure for Ross’ heart condition, though Ross needs to regularly take medication as a result. However, Sam soon learns the pills are actually increasing the levels of gamma radiation in Ross, and during a White House press conference, Ross finally Hulks-out, and all hell breaks loose.

Sam is able to lure Red Hulk away from central DC but is almost beat – in the end, he’s able to appeal to Ross’ humanity to calm him down, and Ross accepts punishment for the good of the nation, being transferred to The Raft, where he is finally reunited with his daughter Betty after having been estranged for years.

While the movie doesn’t quite hit the mark of spy thriller that we had with The Winter Soldier, I think this is still a very close second, and a solid 8/10 as a result. There is a definite sense of atmosphere in the film, and I really liked how it echoed the earlier Cap film in that sense. Anthony Mackie has some fantastic action scenes, notably the opening and subsequent battle with Esposito, and the central conflict in the Indian Ocean. If anything, only the climactic face-off with Red Hulk was a disappointment, as it didn’t seem to last long enough…

The film has been pushed back quite a bit, I’m sure it was meant to come out last year (with the subtitle New World Order, which is rather unfortunate in the current global context). This, coupled with reshoots that have been talked about negatively, all seem to have contributed to a lot of folks feeling underwhelmed. Personally, I didn’t think the film suffered for this – all I know is that the reshoots seem to have involved the inclusion of Esposito and his integration into the whole. I’m all for that, because the actor is phenomenal, but also the whole Serpent Society subplot is kinda fun. Maybe I’m just a weirdo on the internet, but I love seeing how the MCU makes these stupidly dated ideas workable within the modern aesthetic.

While there’s a lot been said already about how the film seems to cut a bit too close to current events across the pond, I don’t personally want to get caught up in all that. There’s also some controversy over the inclusion of Ruth Bat-Seraph, the Israeli superhero Sabra. Here, she’s been updated to be a product of the Red Room. That was cool, and I didn’t need to get all controversial about how her former comics appearance has been handled over the years.

The inclusion of The Leader, albeit in a better way than Ant Man handled a live action MODOK, was almost a step too far at times, though I can see why he was required. I suppose if there’s going to be any negativity, it’s around just how much the film tries to pack in. It’s definitely a sequel to The Incredible Hulk, though we do have a continuation of the theme from Falcon and Winter Soldier in how Sam feels uneasy with the mantle of Captain America. He’s adjusted now, of course, and the new vibranium wings make for some stunning action set pieces, but it’s nice to see there’s still a tension there. Bucky makes a tiny cameo, but it’s a very good one, so that was a definite highlight.

All in all, this has been one of the better movies to come out of the MCU since Endgame. I know a lot of people don’t like the tonal shift since the Infinity Saga ended, and that’s fine, but speaking for myself I’ve been generally neutral to positive about these things. Brave New World, however, genuinely feels like it’s a return to form, and I think, when I go back and rewatch my way through these things, this will be one that I will definitely look forward to.

🚧 WIP Wednesday: Mean & Green

It’s been a while since I’ve done much by way of miniature painting, mainly because I’ve been playing so many games! However, on Monday I started to paint up the big green fella, after having built and primed him in the middle of my MCP frenzy last year. He’s a great model, though I’ve been a bit worried about getting the skin tone right – hence my procrastination I guess.

I’ve used about 6 shades of green so far, and it was looking pretty good until I decided to give him a wash with Biel Tan green, which kinda made it all look a bit… weird…

So I think I need to go back and try to lighten him up, then build that tone back to something a bit more, well, radioactive? I suppose that’s what it needs…

Crossbones is very slowly coming along as well, as is Shadowland Daredevil. Hopefully my Criminal Syndicate will have a decent amount of painted models available soon!

Some new arrivals

I’ve been a huge fan of the Dune Imperium game since I got it for Christmas in 2023, and while I’ve been trying to pace myself in terms of expansions, only getting Rise of Ix last month, I couldn’t help myself when I noticed Immortality had gone down to £26 on Amazon. I’ve played Ix about five or six times now, and it has really made me want to play the game a lot more, as a result.

Immortality comes with a graft mechanic, which I’m not entirely sure about just yet, but it does involve another sideboard, and specific cards at least. The expansion is notable for being quite small, otherwise, and I think the only other thing worth mentioning is the ‘family atomics’ rule that lets you blow up the market once per game, clearing out the current cards. It’s an aspect of deckbuilding games that is often overlooked in core sets, I think, where there’s no mechanism to keep things moving, nobody wants to buy what’s there, and you end up needing house rules to clear things out.

I’m not trying to sound like I’m down on this expansion, of course, especially when I haven’t even played it yet! I think I might go for a couple more games with Ix, then I’ll give this a try. Look out for the inevitable review post sometime around Easter then!

The latest expansion is Bloodlines, which works with both the original game, and the re-imagined Uprising. I don’t have that, and im hearing mixed opinions on whether it’s worth it to get Bloodlines as a result. But it is me, so…

In addition to expanding my Dune collection, I also picked up the expansion to Outer Rim, which might seem a bit premature, as I only got that for Christmas last year! However, the game is pretty good, so I have no regrets buying it now. In part, I think it was motivated by the fact that one of the expansions for Arkham Horror has been unavailable for a while, but when it does come back into stock, it’s been more expensive than the base game. I don’t want to miss out, so let the FOMO get the better of me a little!

I’ve played the game three or four times since I got it, so a review post will be coming soon. These things tend to go in cycles, and I think Star Wars is creeping back up onto the radar for me. So I imagine it’ll be hitting the table hard soon!!

Arkham extravaganza

My goodness. It’s not often that this happens, but I’ve surprised myself this week and have played through The Dunwich Legacy in the space of three days. After taking almost a month to get through The Circle Undone, I’ve sped through Dunwich like there was no tomorrow!

It’s one of my absolute favourite campaigns, perhaps because it was the first one, so has formed the baseline. I’ve now played it five times, and despite this, I’m still not always sure how these scenarios play out – I remember the main story beats, of course. But there’s still that element of surprise as I make it through!

I was playing with two investigators that I have not used that often, Jim Culver and Tommy Muldoon. Jim is able to treat the skull token as 0, which came in very handy as I went through the early stages of the campaign. I built him as a basic mage in the end, with a focus on spells and chaos token manipulation. It was a very fun deck, and one that I was surprised to find myself enjoying. Tommy is a very interesting Guardian, as he can also take up to level 2 Survivor cards so to begin with I had a few of those cards that turn failures around, etc. However, as the campaign progressed, I found myself including more Guardian cards, which fed into the narrative that he was growing in confidence, and was no longer merely a rookie cop! I really liked his deck by the end, anyway!

After building these decks, I dove into the campaign on Wednesday night, playing the first scenario and trying to be somewhat careful and studious, to ensure I was doing everything right. I’ve played the game so many times over the years that I sometimes feel like I probably have some bad habits creeping in! On Thursday I played through the next two scenarios, so Jim had the Necronomicon and we were all set for that train ride to Dunwich. At this point, I decided to go full-on Return to mode, and found it really interesting.

The Return to boxes include a couple of encounter sets that are beefed up versions of, mostly, the core set encounters like Ancient Evils, often making things slightly worse as you play. I suppose the idea is similar to the nightmare decks in Lord of the Rings, and it tries to represent a deck of cards that has learnt some new tricks since last time. Anyway, while I was playing through in this way, I noticed that I was becoming genuinely anxious about what was coming from the encounter deck, which I think is a tremendous job! It’s a shame they only did Return to boxes for the first four campaigns, though I suppose expansions for expansions aren’t always a winner.

Over the course of the day, anyway, I’ve played through the rest of the Dunwich Legacy campaign, all five remaining scenarios. I think this was in part due to the fact that I was really enjoying the investigators I was using this time around, but also there’s just something really enjoyable about the campaign. Like, it’s kinda just straightforward, somehow. I do like the intricacies of some, don’t get me wrong, but playing Dunwich does feel a lot like “coming home” in this game, and I really hope they keep it as an evergreen product when the whole rotation thing kicks in next year.

With that, I’ve played two full campaigns already in 2025, which is quite remarkable really! I’m already thinking about a third, and I’m eyeing up The Forgotten Age as it’s one that I’ve only played once before, and I’m not sure I can remember a lot of it.

This evening, as if getting through five games of Arkham Horror LCG wasn’t enough, I’ve also been sleeving up the latest arrival, The Feast of Hemlock Vale. This is currently the latest campaign expansion, while we await the arrival of The Drowned City, and in getting all of the new cards sleeved ready, I’ve noticed how bizarre some of these things are. Without context, I’m not sure what to make of it, but one scenario has locations that are enemies on the back, as a sort of hybrid card? Very weird. It seems the designers are really going to town! It’s the first campaign to be released since MJ left, so I guess it’s going to be a little bit different, plus it’s the ninth campaign in a long-running card game… I guess this is what the whole fireside chat controversy was on about, how the designers need to rotate cards to improve / increase the design space.

At any rate, it struck me how exciting these big box releases can be for the game. Having a big box that contains 355 cards that tell a story through a series of eight scenarios is just incredible, especially when you’re a long-time fan of the game. It feels a bit like it’s an event, getting one of these things, and in many ways I think this is how Arkham Horror LCG should always have had its release model. It’s always been a board game played through the medium of cards, which is in no way a bad thing, but seeing these boxes of promise now really reinforces that, for me.

As such, Hemlock Vale is also a strong contender for the next campaign. I think I might take a slight break before deciding, as I don’t want to grow tired of it. I suppose it’s also going to depend on which investigators I go for. Recent player cards, like the recent campaign stuff, have become quite crazy, so I’ll have a think. I definitely want to go for a Seeker next, as I feel like it’s been a while since I had a Seeker in the team. Maybe with a Rogue..? We’ll see…