Ashore at last!

Awoken far too early I found myself having a parcel thrust into my hands.

"I thought I could hear strange noises coming from downstairs", she said "...as I was taking my shower. Afterwards I went down, opened the door and found this package. It says it's from Print Mighty. What have you ordered now!?"

"Nothing" I said, but I had a pretty good idea what was within.

Stunning cover art from Mr Dimitrievski.

I tore open, ok, carefully cut open the package and sure enough, to my delight, found a shiny new copy of Shipwrights of the North Sea. Generously donated to my collection by the games author, Shem Phillips of Garphill Games, for a touch of play-testing and editing I had done for this very title.

Time to build us some ships!

The quality is fabulous. A very sturdy linen laminate box; within are beautifully printed player boards and cards, also with linen laminate; wooden resource tokens, ships and workers ...all created specifically for the game ~ no common meeples here. A stand-up first player marker, point tokens, as well as a mini art-book showcasing the great art of Shipwright's artist Mihajlo Dimitrievski.

Great stuff ...I have a feeling Vikings will certainly be invading my games table this weekend.

Northmen, ships... and all you need to build 'em.

Little did  I know that later this day I would receive another surprise.

Checking my emails in the eve I found I had one from Z-Man games...

"Hello, Congratulations on winning our Pandemic: The Cure contest on BGG!".

It felt a bit strange that I would soon be having, fingers crossed, fun, playing a game revolving around an outbreak of a contagious diseases set to wipe out humanity with what's going on in the world at the moment. Hmm.

An offshoot of Matt Leacock's board-game Pandemic ~ a game I have never played but have always found looked intriguing. A dice based version. Disease busting Yahtzee ...looking forward!

Fast acting and fun!

Well, I can say I probably won't be sniffing the fresh gamy aroma from within the box when I spring the lid, just in case it contains a bit of extra 'theme'.

Thank you Z-Man games!!!

Between the two occurrences above I had been continuing with my Pathfinder Adventure Cardgame - Rise of the Runelords. Well, more of restarting it from scratch. Several months back I had acquired the base set, character add-on and first adventure pack. I played and found it very enjoyable.

If you love the die rolling part of role playing games like D&D and Pathfinder then this is a game (or could well be) for you. It's a bona fide 'roll' (the dice) playing game.

It's a full co-op that can be played with a handful of players ...or solitaire (which is how I tend to roll with this one).

There's an overarching story there (supposedly based upon a campaign from the Pathfinder role playing game) and each scenario contained within has an intro tale... but once the game has started it's all dice action. It's all about ability and skill checks ...gathering treasures, throwing spells, hacking monsters, visiting dangerous locations and tracking down and quelling major villains!

Missing livestock ...scorched earth ...sounds like something scaly afoot!

As you progress through the scenarios you gain better items, grow in power and abilities ...and gain larger pools of dice with which to adventure where no hero has adventured before ...unless you are re-playing a scenario you've tried before ...but failed (it does happen thank goodness - if there was no challenge where would be the fun) ;p

The fighter ...always a handy chap to have about.

The reason though that I've just restarted the whole thing is because I've gone ahead and grabbed the remaining adventure packs (a total of 6) as I saw that they were, well almost all of them, on sale at the Book Depository. On sale plus free shipping - it had to be done.

So with the full Rise of the Runelords set. I thought I'd scratch my old characters and start afresh.... Onward ho!

Another package at the door?....

What? ...more polyhedral dice? Huzzah!.

:)