Dec 212012
 

It’s not quite to midnight yet (as I start writing this), but I’m calling it in favor of us all outlasting the Mayan apocalypse.  If you didn’t get enough of the end-of-the-world conspiracy theory, then Tzolk’in:  The Mayan Calendar is here to supply you with more.  The oft talked about Mayan calendar plays into the mechanics of the game, as players carefully place their Mayan Meeples onto interlocking gears which rotate around the board, moving the pieces to different action zones.  To accomplish placement and conduct other key actions, players must spend corn, ultimately attempting to please the gods or constructing underground temples.  So, until the next apocalypse myth comes along, make mine Tzolk’in.

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Is the force strong with you?

Or have you given into the dark side?

Either way, you’ve got a side to play in the new two-player Star Wars LCG card game from Fantasy Flight.  Set-up like many of their other popular LCGs (but with more X-Wings and stuff), Star Wars has players choosing sides in a head-to-head battle for galactic domination.  Players then balance objective decks (containing mission cards) and player decks (containing character and equipment cards) in order to complete their assigned tasks.  As with Magic the Gathering or most other CCG-style games, players place/play their cards into the center of the table in order to activate them.  Of course, the real question of the game will be, who shot first?

I’m going bet that many who read this have fantasized about manning a starship at one time in their life.  Be careful what you wish for, however.  Space Cadets fulfills that wish by assigning each player an important role on the bridge of a freshly minted starship.  This cooperative game for three to six players enlists a captain, helmsman, engineer, and weapons, shield, and sensor officers.  Each member of the crew has a specific  task to complete in order for the entire team to win, so make sure you staff your bridge wisely, or else it’ll be your final frontier.

Bad guys need friends, too.  Eclipse:  Rise of the Ancients is the first expansion for the epic space battle game, Eclipse, introduces tons of ancient adversaries which can assist all the baddies from the original game.  Along with these foes, the expansion also includes original rare technologies, developments, alliances, ancient homeworlds, and warp portals.  Three brand new player boards also offer four new alien races to choose from.  And with the game’s modular design, all or some of these additions can mixed in with the contents of the base game, completely at your discretion.

 

For those that know their Shakespeare, Merchant of Venus might sound slightly familiar. Same for anyone who knows their board game history, because Merchant of Venus is a reboot of the classic Avalon Hill board game. This second edition of Merchant of Venus contains a new re imagined game design as well as Richard Hamblen’s classic design.

In Merchant of Venus, one to four players take roles of intergalactic merchants competing to trade goods with alien cultures. Will pirates, space junk, or sabotage end your business? Or can wheel and deal your way to financial superiority.

Any self-respecting Pathfinder GM needs to pick up a copy of the new NPC Codex. Quickly becoming an essential volume, this hardcover contains information on over 300 characters! A go-to guide to running, equipping, and stating out opponents and allies for your players to face, the NPC Codex will easily alleviate set-up time or on-the-fly awkwardness as you grope for enemies. Plus, the book comes with multiple versions of classic Pathfinder characters for easy pre-generated play. Pathfinder releases a ton of great books over the course of a year, but this is certainly one of the most essential!

Your fleet is growing! Wings of Glory today releases four new WWII fighter planes, each pre-painted, assembled, and packed with all the necessary elements to incorporate it into any Wings of Glory WWII games. This new set includes four miniatures, two American, two German. The North American fighters are B-25 Mitchell model planes, while the Germans are Heinkels. For easy-to-learn, mechanically inventive war games, Wings of Glory is the best out there.

It only gets worse in the world of Thunderstone. After defeating Mowtil and collecting three thunderstones in the Caverns of Bane expansion, players are now faced with an even worse threat as Doom’s ultimate plan is revealed. Root of Corruption is the second expansion for the Thunderstone Advanced base game, this time introducing a co-op as well as six new monster groups, seven new heroes, new village cards, and a new poster map board. If you’re going to continue crawling through this dungeon, you’re going to need to get to the Root of Corruption.

Deathwatch has made it to the Outer Reach.

With this new hardcover edition to the Deathwatch corpus players can take the Dead Stations Vigil and serve alongside the Dead Cabal, learning all their ancient secrets. Face the Necrons Suhbekhar Dynasty, an ageless foe clawing to earn back their fallen empire. And once your done defeating the Necrons, explore worlds beyond the reach of the Achilus Crusade, rich with weapons capable of defeating the coming darkness. This hardcover supplement to the base Deathwatch rule book details all the information GMs and players need to explore and conquer the Outer Reach.

Time to get all shirtless up in this Enterprise!

The captain’s log needed a little Shatner-ing up, so Bandai decided to publish an original series Star Trek Deck Building Game to go along with their Next Generation games. This new base game can be combined and played with the previous two Next Gen releases or simply as a stand alone game. Either way, players begin as a captain of a starship, controlling a standard crew and basic weaponry. From there, however, you choose to improve various aspects of your ship and crew, attempting to complete the mission directives of two diverse scenarios. If you want to go boldly where no other deck builder has gone before, go on a Star Trek.

 

There’s been Star Wars. There’s been world wars. But never has there been anything like Mage Wars. I mean, like, really, this game is pretty damn unique. Players build a spell book of spell cards, doubling up on ones if they want (put you’ll want to pick up the spell expansion pack to do that), with an end goal of decimating you opponent more than they decimate you. Coming with an excellent looking game board, tokens, life counters, and more, this is a well designed and pretty looking game to own.

The chaos can’t be released just yet, but when it does (which is midnight) you better run for cover.

That’s right, the new Chaos Space Marines, well, everything comes out tomorrow (which, again, is midnight). The “everything” of that last sentence includes the new Chaos Space Marines Codex, sporting the new hardcover trade dress. The big guns, that being the Heldrake and the Forgefiend/Maulerfiend, plus the Raptors, Warpsmith, and Mutilators. These guys look b-e-a-utiful! Check out the detail on the Heldrake to the right. Great looking miniatures all around.

Don’t have the free time it takes to construct, paint, and organize terrain for your miniatures games? That’s where Terraclips come in. These easy to assemble thick cardboard terrain sets are designed for use with any miniatures with in the 25mm to 32mm range. Each location collection comes with all the pieces you’ll need to build the environment (which are three dimensional, by the way), which includes the walls, floors, obstacles, and clips used to link the pieces. The three newest sets releasing today are the Prison of the Forsaken, Vaults of Ruin, and Dungeon Essentials, each coming fully painted.

If you’re the kind of person who’s ever said they want to experience mind-numbing terror as you evade and escape evil creatures who want to eat your brains? No, probably not, but if you want to play a game like that then Level 7 is your game. A semi-cooperative game for 1-4 players, Level 7 drops you into a subterranean base and makes you work with or betray your partners as you fight to get out. If Last Night on Earth and Panic Station had a slimey, evil baby, Level 7 would be it.

 

The women of comics barely ever get their due. Last year’s Womanthology HC (which we just got a restock on last week), a giant collection of stories written and drawn by only women, was a huge success both as a Kickstarter project and as published through IDW, so a sequel was in order. Womanthology: Space is a five issue miniseries, containing three stories an issue, based around the concept of “space” in all its various definitions. Packed full of artwork, in both written and drawn forms, this series is a one-of-a-kind showcase of female comic talent of all experience levels and a wonderful example for any young woman hoping to break into the business some day.

If you’ve had dreams about Star Trek mixing with Back to the Future, those dreams have just come true. No, there’s not actually a Star Trek/Back to the Future crossover, but Star Trek the Next Generation: Hive is the closest you will ever come. Written by Brannon Braga, former TNG producer and writer, this four issue miniseries has the Next Gen crew jumping into a future where the Borg have overtaken the entire galaxy; they are its only hope. IDW has been kicking butt with their current Star Trek ongoing title as well as their Doctor Who/Star Trek crossover, so I expect great things from this series.

Ed Brubaker has written the main Captain America book for around eight years now (soon to be replaced by Rick Remender), and in those eight years he has turned Bucky Barnes into one of the most fascinating characters in the Marvel Universe. So, couple his love of Barnes (aka the Winter Soldier) with his absolute talent for crafting espionage stories and you have the extremely enjoyable Winter Soldier v.1 trade paperback. In this first volume of the highly under rated series, Bucky and the Black Widow team-up to uncover what happened to the other brainwashed soldiers who went through the process that turned Barnes into the Winter Soldier. Expressively illustrated by Butch Guice, Winter Soldier is a dark, gritty, mysterious compelling spy movie spread across the comic page. And it has gorillas with machine guns.

To end the evening, I pose to you one question.

Why open your own beer when you can acquire a herald to do it for you?

 

Dun dun dundundun, dunna na na nana na na na NA!

Say it with me!

I am Iron Man!

If you’ve rocked out to the Black Sabbath tune, devoured the Robert Downey, Jr. films, and/or been reading about the alcoholic, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist for years, then you will want to snag these first time items quicker than a repulsor ray can blow away the Hulk.

First up, the Iron Man Neon Sign. Matching the Captain America Neon Sign from earlier this year, this one comes complete with a dual-purpose stand which can be used as an up right base or a wall mount. Also, as the preverbial cherry on top, the sign comes with a special edition Iron Man comic. And, yes, we are open to doing layaway.

Second, the fantastic looking Avengers Iron Man Statue from Kotobukiya. Pulling the design directly from the box office behemoth that was The Avengers, this glossy, detailed statue will decimate all other Iron Man memorabilia you have in your house through sheer awesomeness. Which means you may want to pick up the neon sign after you’ve already got the statue home and behind plate glass.

And since we’re in a statuey mood, let’s all just admire this fantastic new Black Widow Covert Ops variant statue from Bishoujo for a moment, yes?

….

….

Okay. Done.

Unlike the original version of the statue, this edition features Natasha in an alternate grey suit and wielding a stealthy knife instead of a massive sniper rifle. And, as you can tell, those are just the first of the statues, *cough*, ample features.

Before Avengers vs. X-Men there was Fear Itself. Marvel‘s previous universe spanning event incorporated both Iron Man and Black Widow as well as practically every other prominent hero to face off against a ransacking bunch of ancient Norse gods. Each of these gods manifested themselves within hammers, similar to our boy Thor‘s, which, when wielded, would infect the carrier with the god’s being. And who picked these hammers up, you might ask? Oh, just lightweights like The Thing, Hulk, and Juggernaut. So, as you might imagine, much world-shaking fisticuffs ensued. Written by former local boy, Matt Fraction, Fear Itself is an excellent jump-on point for curious Marvel readers, as well as an all around epic tale.

With epic in mind, there’s no other book coming out currently that’s better suited to the word than Prophet. Written (and occasionally illustrated) by Brandon Graham (King City), this reworking of Rob Liefeld’s original character is simply the strangest, most beautiful, unusual, brilliant comic you will read in many years. Set thousands of decades into the future, Prophet takes place all across the galaxy, following John Prophet, the last human, as he treks across Earth and other planets in search of his mission’s end. Graham has accomplished world-building on scale with Star Wars and Avatar with this book, filling his pages with dense wildlife, cultures, and equipment beyond general human imagination. Bridging sci-fi space adventure with Manga sensibilities, Prophet is a unique comic experience you won’t soon forget.

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