After much debate (and some requests) I have signed up with crowdfunding service Patreon to better support future blogging efforts. You can find my Patreon page here and more information after the jump.
Saturday, 16 January 2077
Support The Wertzone on Patreon
STICKIED POST
After much debate (and some requests) I have signed up with crowdfunding service Patreon to better support future blogging efforts. You can find my Patreon page here and more information after the jump.
After much debate (and some requests) I have signed up with crowdfunding service Patreon to better support future blogging efforts. You can find my Patreon page here and more information after the jump.
Wednesday, 23 January 2019
Seasons 1-3 of THE EXPANSE hit Amazon Prime worldwide on 8 February
Amazon saved the show last year when it was cancelled by SyFy, with Season 4 already in the can and due for release later this year (probably summer or autumn). As part of the deal, Amazon picked up streaming rights to the first three seasons, but had to wait until Netflix's global distribution deal expired before they could air them.
This will mark the first time that Season 3 is (legally) available to view in most non-US territories.
Tiamat's Wrath, the eighth and penultimate volume in the novel series, will also be released on 26 March.
Charlotte Rampling joins the cast of DUNE
Rampling will be playing the role of Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, the Truthsayer and advisor to Emperor Shaddam IV. Mohiam is a senior member of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood.
Rampling is an experienced actress with a long history in British, Italian and French cinema, particularly arthouse movies. Her recent credits include the second season of Broadchurch and the drama English Spy. In the US she is probably best-known for appearing on the final season of Dexter.
It is anticipated that the new movie will start shooting in the next couple of months for a 2021 release.
Sunday, 20 January 2019
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 1
Into every generation is born a girl with the power to stand against the forces of darkness: the Slayer. In the late 1990s, the Slayer is Buffy Summers, a 16-year-old California girl who tries to balance schoolwork, dating and friends with vampire slaying. Having recently moved to the town of Sunnydale to escape her destiny, Buffy instead finds it enhanced: Sunnydale sits on the Hellmouth, a mystical convergence with draws vampires, demons and trouble to it. Buffy is going to have her work cut out for air.
Originally airing in 1997, Buffy the Vampire Slayer's first season can charitably be called "a little rough." Joss Whedon had originally come up with the concept for a 1992 movie starring Kristy Swanson and Donald Sutherland, but the movie had gone in a campier direction than he'd planned. Offered the chance to revisit the concept, he accepted with alacrity and reworked the premise into a darker and more interesting story.
In this updated version of the premise, Buffy (played with immediate charisma by Sarah Michelle Gellar) moves from Los Angeles to Sunnydale in the hope of getting away from her destiny. Unfortunately, this backfires when she discovers that Sunnydale sits on top of a gateway into hell. This gives the series its best conceit: that demons, ghosts, vampires, werewolves and all sorts of supernatural creatures are attracted to the Hellmouth, explaining why Buffy is fighting a new threat every week.
Buffy is advised and mentored by a Watcher, a stuffy British expert on the paranormal called Rupert Giles (played with veritable aplomb by Anthony Stewart Head). She also makes two friends who quickly discover her secret: Xander (Nicholas Brendon, who shows more enthusiasm than skill in early episodes before becomes a stronger player in later episodes) and Willow (the infectiously joyous Alyson Hannigan). There's also a handsome stranger named Angel (the magnificently broody David Boreanaz) who keeps showing up at the oddest moments and Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter), Buffy's would-be high school nemesis who eventually discovers Buffy's secret and becomes another ally.
To be frank, at least in the early going, Joss Whedon and his team should be forever grateful that their casting team hit the ball out of the park for virtually every regular and recurring castmember. The core cast are all well-played and keep the show going even when the individual episode concept falters (particularly during the astronomically terrible Teacher's Pet). The script quality is seriously uneven for the first few episodes, but somewhere around the seventh episode, Angel, when we get the tortured backstory of the mysterious character, things start clicking into a higher gear. This culminates in the season finale, Prophecy Girl, where Whedon both writes and directs for the first time and completely lifts the show onto another level of scripting, directing and dialogue. If you ever wonder why Joss Whedon was A Thing for so long, this is the episode that shows why.
There's still a lot of slow going in these early episodes, which are further hamstrung by budget restrictions (Buffy was picked up as a mid-season replacement, with no time or money to build more than a couple of sets or have more than a few CG vampire dustings in the whole season), but the heart of the show asserts itself early on, as does the show's tendency to get really, really dark and brutal unexpectedly. This was key to Buffy's success: the goofy name and premise put as many people off from watching it as hooked them in, but its ruthless attitude to its characters, its surprisingly high mortality rate and its increasingly complex worldbuilding (moreso in later seasons) added grit and depth to the concept that made it more compelling.
Watching Buffy in 2019, almost 22 years after I originally saw the first season, is also an interesting experience. In some key areas the show has dated badly, but in others (such as Giles's concerns over the Internet as an eroding force on civil human relationships and the metaphors employed for male characters desiring female ones even after being turned down) it feels quite fresh. More of an issue is the show's visual quality: Buffy's first two seasons were shot on 16mm film and definitely feel a bit blurry, especially on larger TVs. Whilst Fox did organise a HD remaster of Buffy, they messed it up by using very odd cropping choices, using widescreen masters featuring boom mikes, light stands and crewmembers standing visibly in shot, over-use of DNR (leading to uncanny valley-looking smooth human faces) and a myriad other problems which, several years on, remain resolutely unfixed. For now, I'd advise skipping the remaster and going back to the DVDs (which at least can be upscaled a bit by running them through a Blu-Ray player).
The first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (***, apart from the final episode which is a strong *****) is rough around the edges but it takes a while for the show to bed in, but when it does it becomes a compelling and enjoyable watch which sets the scene for the almost infinitely superior second year. The season is available now as part of the complete Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVD box set (UK, USA).
Originally airing in 1997, Buffy the Vampire Slayer's first season can charitably be called "a little rough." Joss Whedon had originally come up with the concept for a 1992 movie starring Kristy Swanson and Donald Sutherland, but the movie had gone in a campier direction than he'd planned. Offered the chance to revisit the concept, he accepted with alacrity and reworked the premise into a darker and more interesting story.
In this updated version of the premise, Buffy (played with immediate charisma by Sarah Michelle Gellar) moves from Los Angeles to Sunnydale in the hope of getting away from her destiny. Unfortunately, this backfires when she discovers that Sunnydale sits on top of a gateway into hell. This gives the series its best conceit: that demons, ghosts, vampires, werewolves and all sorts of supernatural creatures are attracted to the Hellmouth, explaining why Buffy is fighting a new threat every week.
Buffy is advised and mentored by a Watcher, a stuffy British expert on the paranormal called Rupert Giles (played with veritable aplomb by Anthony Stewart Head). She also makes two friends who quickly discover her secret: Xander (Nicholas Brendon, who shows more enthusiasm than skill in early episodes before becomes a stronger player in later episodes) and Willow (the infectiously joyous Alyson Hannigan). There's also a handsome stranger named Angel (the magnificently broody David Boreanaz) who keeps showing up at the oddest moments and Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter), Buffy's would-be high school nemesis who eventually discovers Buffy's secret and becomes another ally.
To be frank, at least in the early going, Joss Whedon and his team should be forever grateful that their casting team hit the ball out of the park for virtually every regular and recurring castmember. The core cast are all well-played and keep the show going even when the individual episode concept falters (particularly during the astronomically terrible Teacher's Pet). The script quality is seriously uneven for the first few episodes, but somewhere around the seventh episode, Angel, when we get the tortured backstory of the mysterious character, things start clicking into a higher gear. This culminates in the season finale, Prophecy Girl, where Whedon both writes and directs for the first time and completely lifts the show onto another level of scripting, directing and dialogue. If you ever wonder why Joss Whedon was A Thing for so long, this is the episode that shows why.
There's still a lot of slow going in these early episodes, which are further hamstrung by budget restrictions (Buffy was picked up as a mid-season replacement, with no time or money to build more than a couple of sets or have more than a few CG vampire dustings in the whole season), but the heart of the show asserts itself early on, as does the show's tendency to get really, really dark and brutal unexpectedly. This was key to Buffy's success: the goofy name and premise put as many people off from watching it as hooked them in, but its ruthless attitude to its characters, its surprisingly high mortality rate and its increasingly complex worldbuilding (moreso in later seasons) added grit and depth to the concept that made it more compelling.
Watching Buffy in 2019, almost 22 years after I originally saw the first season, is also an interesting experience. In some key areas the show has dated badly, but in others (such as Giles's concerns over the Internet as an eroding force on civil human relationships and the metaphors employed for male characters desiring female ones even after being turned down) it feels quite fresh. More of an issue is the show's visual quality: Buffy's first two seasons were shot on 16mm film and definitely feel a bit blurry, especially on larger TVs. Whilst Fox did organise a HD remaster of Buffy, they messed it up by using very odd cropping choices, using widescreen masters featuring boom mikes, light stands and crewmembers standing visibly in shot, over-use of DNR (leading to uncanny valley-looking smooth human faces) and a myriad other problems which, several years on, remain resolutely unfixed. For now, I'd advise skipping the remaster and going back to the DVDs (which at least can be upscaled a bit by running them through a Blu-Ray player).
The first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (***, apart from the final episode which is a strong *****) is rough around the edges but it takes a while for the show to bed in, but when it does it becomes a compelling and enjoyable watch which sets the scene for the almost infinitely superior second year. The season is available now as part of the complete Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVD box set (UK, USA).
Tuesday, 15 January 2019
Scott Lynch's GENTLEMAN BASTARD series optioned for film
Scott Lynch's Gentleman Bastard series has been optioned for film by Phoenix Pictures, it has been announced.
Lynch's Gentleman Bastard series got off to a roaring start with The Lies of Locke Lamora in 2006. Since then, two more books have been published: Red Seas Under Red Skies (2007) and The Republic of Thieves (2013). Four more books in the series are projected, with The Thorn of Emberlain having been delayed several times but hoped for release in late 2019 or early 2020.
Phoenix Pictures have produced a number of notable movies over the years, including The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996), Apt Pupil (1998), The Thin Red Line (1998), Shutter Island (2010) and Black Swan (2010).
This is only an option and there is no major studio involvement, but this is a solid first step to getting the books on screen. It'll be interesting to see how this develops.
Lynch's Gentleman Bastard series got off to a roaring start with The Lies of Locke Lamora in 2006. Since then, two more books have been published: Red Seas Under Red Skies (2007) and The Republic of Thieves (2013). Four more books in the series are projected, with The Thorn of Emberlain having been delayed several times but hoped for release in late 2019 or early 2020.
Phoenix Pictures have produced a number of notable movies over the years, including The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996), Apt Pupil (1998), The Thin Red Line (1998), Shutter Island (2010) and Black Swan (2010).
This is only an option and there is no major studio involvement, but this is a solid first step to getting the books on screen. It'll be interesting to see how this develops.
The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin
Magic is losing its power throughout Earthsea. Ged, now the Archmage of Roke, decides to investigate and embarks on a fateful voyage which will take him to distant corners of the archipelago. He is accompanied by Arren, Prince of Enlad, a young man who is also seeking his own destiny and fulfilment.
The Farthest Shore (1972) concludes the original Earthsea trilogy, which was never meant to be a trilogy; Le Guin started work soon afterwards on a fourth book, Tehanu, but for various reasons it was delayed and not completed and published until 1990. Still, as a wrapping-up of storylines and character arcs from the three books it does thematically feel like the ending of a series.
At its core, The Farthest Shore is the story of confronting one's own demons and recognising the consequences for poor choices. In this sense the book feels like an echo of A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), the first novel in the series. In that novel Ged unleashes a dark shadow of himself into the world and has to find and confront it, which he eventually does at great cost. In The Farthest Shore the threat is more traditional, with Ged having acquired a nemesis in his adventures who now seeks revenge on Ged and domination over all the lands of Earthsea. In terms of the standard, trope-filled fantasy narrative, The Farthest Shore is the most traditional book in the series, with a callow young youth hero (Arren) learning wisdom from his mentor (Ged), who seeks out the enemy who would become a dark lord.
But this is a crude, reductionist reading of the story. As with the earlier Earthsea books and indeed much of Le Guin's work, the tone is melancholy rather than celebratory. Ged is a much older man than the last time we saw him and any hope that he may have found a life of happiness with Tenar (the protagonist of The Tombs of Atuan) appears to have been dashed. His life has been filled with great accomplishments and deeds, but Ged seems decidedly unhappy and bowed with the weight of responsibility. The decision to leave these behind and strike out himself in search of the answer to the mysteries afflicting the islands is clearly joyous. This novel, then, is the story of Ged resolving the lingering issues of his childhood and trying to find a way of achieving happiness in middle and older age; The Farthest Shore may therefore be the quintessential mid-life crisis novel, but with dragons.
As usual, Le Guin's inventiveness with worldbuilding and striking prose makes for an atmospheric and at times haunting story. Her characters are interesting, complex figures, although Arren occasionally risks blandness compared to Ged, his enemy and the dragons. The Tombs of Atuan was interesting in that it presented Ged solely from Tenar's point of view and gave us the external image of the character we spent all of A Wizard of Earthsea getting to know. The Farthest Shore gives us both, with Arren's view of Ged contrasting with Ged's own, less awe-inspired reflections.
This is therefore a sombre and at times dark book, but also one that is ultimately life-affirming, ending on a note that gives Ged and Earthsea hope for a much better future.
The Farthest Shore (****½) wraps up the opening Earthsea trilogy in fine, if occasionally maudlin, form. It is available now in the UK and USA as part of The Books of Earthsea omnibus edition.
The Farthest Shore (1972) concludes the original Earthsea trilogy, which was never meant to be a trilogy; Le Guin started work soon afterwards on a fourth book, Tehanu, but for various reasons it was delayed and not completed and published until 1990. Still, as a wrapping-up of storylines and character arcs from the three books it does thematically feel like the ending of a series.
At its core, The Farthest Shore is the story of confronting one's own demons and recognising the consequences for poor choices. In this sense the book feels like an echo of A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), the first novel in the series. In that novel Ged unleashes a dark shadow of himself into the world and has to find and confront it, which he eventually does at great cost. In The Farthest Shore the threat is more traditional, with Ged having acquired a nemesis in his adventures who now seeks revenge on Ged and domination over all the lands of Earthsea. In terms of the standard, trope-filled fantasy narrative, The Farthest Shore is the most traditional book in the series, with a callow young youth hero (Arren) learning wisdom from his mentor (Ged), who seeks out the enemy who would become a dark lord.
But this is a crude, reductionist reading of the story. As with the earlier Earthsea books and indeed much of Le Guin's work, the tone is melancholy rather than celebratory. Ged is a much older man than the last time we saw him and any hope that he may have found a life of happiness with Tenar (the protagonist of The Tombs of Atuan) appears to have been dashed. His life has been filled with great accomplishments and deeds, but Ged seems decidedly unhappy and bowed with the weight of responsibility. The decision to leave these behind and strike out himself in search of the answer to the mysteries afflicting the islands is clearly joyous. This novel, then, is the story of Ged resolving the lingering issues of his childhood and trying to find a way of achieving happiness in middle and older age; The Farthest Shore may therefore be the quintessential mid-life crisis novel, but with dragons.
As usual, Le Guin's inventiveness with worldbuilding and striking prose makes for an atmospheric and at times haunting story. Her characters are interesting, complex figures, although Arren occasionally risks blandness compared to Ged, his enemy and the dragons. The Tombs of Atuan was interesting in that it presented Ged solely from Tenar's point of view and gave us the external image of the character we spent all of A Wizard of Earthsea getting to know. The Farthest Shore gives us both, with Arren's view of Ged contrasting with Ged's own, less awe-inspired reflections.
This is therefore a sombre and at times dark book, but also one that is ultimately life-affirming, ending on a note that gives Ged and Earthsea hope for a much better future.
The Farthest Shore (****½) wraps up the opening Earthsea trilogy in fine, if occasionally maudlin, form. It is available now in the UK and USA as part of The Books of Earthsea omnibus edition.
Monday, 14 January 2019
GAME OF THRONES Season 8 gets air date
The eighth and final season of Game of Thrones will begin airing on 14 April 2019, HBO have announced.
The final season of Game of Thrones consists of just six episodes, although these are all expected to be at least partially longer than the standard 50-odd minutes in length. Assuming no mid-season breaks, this means that the last-ever Game of Thrones episode will air on 19 May 2019.
The last season of Thrones will be written by Dave Hill (episode 1), Bryan Cogman (episode 2) and the team of David Benioff and D.B. Weiss (episodes 3-6). It will be directed by David Nutter (episodes 1, 2 and 4) and Benioff & Weiss (episode 6), with Miguel Sapochnik handling the apparently "big" third and fifth episodes.
The season may mark the end of Game of Thrones, but not the franchise as a whole. HBO are already developing a spin-off prequel series, with the working title The Long Night, which has a pilot in pre-production.
The last season of Thrones will be written by Dave Hill (episode 1), Bryan Cogman (episode 2) and the team of David Benioff and D.B. Weiss (episodes 3-6). It will be directed by David Nutter (episodes 1, 2 and 4) and Benioff & Weiss (episode 6), with Miguel Sapochnik handling the apparently "big" third and fifth episodes.
The season may mark the end of Game of Thrones, but not the franchise as a whole. HBO are already developing a spin-off prequel series, with the working title The Long Night, which has a pilot in pre-production.
CBS commissions fourth STAR TREK TV series
CBS All Access has commissioned its fourth Star Trek TV series, this time a live-action spin-off series focusing on Section 31. Michelle Yeoh will star, reprising her role as the Mirror Universe version of Phillipa Georgiou. As established in Star Trek: Discovery's first season, Georgiou was the Emperor of the Terran Empire in that universe and was brought into the "prime" universe and left there, after helping the crew of the Discovery end a war with the Klingons.
Despite Discovery's own relative youth - the show's second season only starts airing next week - it has already spawned two other spin-off shows. A series set 20 years after Star Trek: Voyager and the movie Nemesis is in pre-production and sees Patrick Stewart reprising his role as Jean-Luc Picard. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon is on the writing team for that series, which promises to be interesting. Apparently it is currently planned as a mini-series with the potential to spawn a further series if it is a success (although the long-term commitment of Stewart - who turns 79 this year - is unclear). An animated series called Lower Decks is also in pre-production.
The news of Michelle Yeoh starring in a new TV show - Star Trek or otherwise - is very interesting and welcome, although there is also a feeling that perhaps CBS is running before it can walk by introducing so many projects so quickly, before Discovery itself is a proven long-term success. Still, it'll be interesting to see what comes of these shows.
Despite Discovery's own relative youth - the show's second season only starts airing next week - it has already spawned two other spin-off shows. A series set 20 years after Star Trek: Voyager and the movie Nemesis is in pre-production and sees Patrick Stewart reprising his role as Jean-Luc Picard. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon is on the writing team for that series, which promises to be interesting. Apparently it is currently planned as a mini-series with the potential to spawn a further series if it is a success (although the long-term commitment of Stewart - who turns 79 this year - is unclear). An animated series called Lower Decks is also in pre-production.
The news of Michelle Yeoh starring in a new TV show - Star Trek or otherwise - is very interesting and welcome, although there is also a feeling that perhaps CBS is running before it can walk by introducing so many projects so quickly, before Discovery itself is a proven long-term success. Still, it'll be interesting to see what comes of these shows.
Sunday, 13 January 2019
Board Game Catch-Up #2
Following on from the previous board game catchup, here’s a few more games I’ve managed to try out in the last few months.
X-Wing Miniatures
Fantasy Flight Games
This is a pretty straightforward game: one player has X-wings, the other has TIE fighters (approximately three million expansions are available to change this up, of course) and they fly around a board trying to shoot each other. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they fail and sometimes they crash into an asteroid or one another in a somewhat anti-climactic fashion.
There is a phenomenon in board gaming called “spectacle gaming”, where the quality of the gameplay itself is rendered irrelevant by how beautiful the miniatures are and how cool they look sitting on the table. X-Wing Miniatures certainly fits into this bracket: the pre-painted spaceships are gorgeous and it’s fun moving them around the board. It’s less fun when your game has been going on for ten minutes and no-one’s managed to hit one another yet because of the dice rolls, or the game ends because someone’s flown their X-wing into an asteroid and can’t avoid it because space in the Star Wars universe isn’t three-dimensional, apparently.
I was a bit disappointed by this one, but the good thing about it is that it’s been enormously popular, meaning the model runs are large enough to make the models very well-priced, so if you want Star Wars ships on your shelves for decorative purposes instead (or perhaps to illustrate a roleplaying campaign), this is one of the best ways of doing that. I would be intrigued to give Armada (which is this game scaled up with capital ships) a go, as I suspect the rules work far better with slower ships, firing arcs and other fun elements from big ship combat.
Zombiecide: Black Plague
CMON Games/Guillotine Games
Most zombie games employ clever mechanics to make for games of gut-wrenching terror and tension. Zombiecide: Black Plague has no truck with this and allows your team of heroes to run around annihilating zombies like there is no tomorrow. This is basically Hero Quest with zombies and that’s enormous amounts of fun up to a point, when the game starts feeling a little repetitive and a bit too easy. A fun and good-looking game, but not one I’d rush out to buy.
Horsemen of the Apocalypse
Ragnarok Publications
An amusing card game designed by fantasy author Mark Lawrence, with guest flavour text from authors including Robin Hobb and Wesley Chu. Basically the four horsemen of the apocalypse are rolling into town and the players have to organise things so that they are left standing rather than the other players. There’s some great tension and ideas here, but the game feels a little fiddly in the rules and the quality of the cards could be a lot better, especially given the price. Diverting but not essential.
Ragnarok Publications
An amusing card game designed by fantasy author Mark Lawrence, with guest flavour text from authors including Robin Hobb and Wesley Chu. Basically the four horsemen of the apocalypse are rolling into town and the players have to organise things so that they are left standing rather than the other players. There’s some great tension and ideas here, but the game feels a little fiddly in the rules and the quality of the cards could be a lot better, especially given the price. Diverting but not essential.
Exploding Kittens
Ad Magic/ADC Blackfire
One of the biggest Kickstarter successes of recent years, this is fast-paced comical card game where there are kittens primed to explode and players have to avoid getting blown up by them using a battery of comical cards designed for this purpose. The game is funny (in a dark kind of way), with great artwork from the Oatmeal team and allows for some interesting strategy, although it’s still a relatively lightweight game. Good for kids, parties and after-meal entertainment.
Ad Magic/ADC Blackfire
One of the biggest Kickstarter successes of recent years, this is fast-paced comical card game where there are kittens primed to explode and players have to avoid getting blown up by them using a battery of comical cards designed for this purpose. The game is funny (in a dark kind of way), with great artwork from the Oatmeal team and allows for some interesting strategy, although it’s still a relatively lightweight game. Good for kids, parties and after-meal entertainment.
BattleLore
Fantasy Flight Games A fantasy take on Richard Borg’s Command & Colours system (also used in Memoir ’44, which we discussed last time and Battles of Westeros, see below), which adds magic, gryphons and undead to the classic C&C gameplay. This is a handsome-looking game with great production quality and some added tactical depth to the C&C rules which makes for a more interesting game, but also a somewhat-longer playing one. This is a very fine game but it does sacrifice one of the main appeals of Memoir ’44, the fast setup and playing time, in favour of somewhat more depth, which arguably it doesn’t quite achieve. As usual, there are also a lot of fairly expensive expansions which you really need to keep the variety and interest up. The game has recently gone out of print, effectively replaced by the somewhat more generic Runewars Miniatures Game, which is a shame.
Fallout: Wasteland Warfare
Modiphius Entertainment
Wasteland Warfare is the second tabletop game based on the Fallout video game, following on from Fantasy Flight’s decidedly underwhelming board game from 2017. Wasteland Warfare is unapologetically a tabletop miniatures wargame whose primary goal is to sell an absolute ton of add-on models, but it cleverly includes enough stuff in the base box to actually work very well as a standalone board game (especially if you access the fan community to download more scenarios and missions). There’s a lot of fun to be had here, especially the mission objectives which are quite varied, but beware getting sucked into the money pit of spending lots of cash on awesome models.
The rules are quite decent (and a major round of applause for including range tokens in the box instead of asking people to bust out rulers and measuring tape), although I think ultimately the game might be more useful as the miniatures component of a roleplaying campaign, with Modiphius rumoured to be working on an RPG behind the scenes.
Modiphius Entertainment
Wasteland Warfare is the second tabletop game based on the Fallout video game, following on from Fantasy Flight’s decidedly underwhelming board game from 2017. Wasteland Warfare is unapologetically a tabletop miniatures wargame whose primary goal is to sell an absolute ton of add-on models, but it cleverly includes enough stuff in the base box to actually work very well as a standalone board game (especially if you access the fan community to download more scenarios and missions). There’s a lot of fun to be had here, especially the mission objectives which are quite varied, but beware getting sucked into the money pit of spending lots of cash on awesome models.
The rules are quite decent (and a major round of applause for including range tokens in the box instead of asking people to bust out rulers and measuring tape), although I think ultimately the game might be more useful as the miniatures component of a roleplaying campaign, with Modiphius rumoured to be working on an RPG behind the scenes.
Axis & Allies: Zombies
Avalon Hill/Hasbro
Axis & Allies: Zombies is a variant of the classic WW2 board game which adds zombies to the mix. This initially appears to be gimmicky as hell, but the game remarkably uses the idea to really mix the game up, causing massive land battles to take place where normally there is no combat at all in a regular game (such as the North and South American mainland, or in Africa). The result is a game that overcomes Axis & Allies’ perennial problem – the predictable opening moves of a standard game – and adds fresh life to an old favourite. The game is also excellent value for money, as you can play it as Axis & Allies 1941 (the base “introductory” version of the game) or Axis & Allies & Zombies, and it also includes a deck of cards for use with Axis & Allies 1942 (the current “standard” version of the game) to add zombies to that version as well. An unexpectedly strong game.
Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu Z-Man Games
Do you like Pandemic? Do like Lovecraft’s books? Why not mix the two together? This also sounds a bit gimmicky, but the revamping of the Pandemic rules to account of hordes of cultists and shoggoth running around works really well, with you now having to move around several classic Lovecraft locations shutting down portals instead of curing the virus, with the “outbreak” cards instead replaced by a different Old One arising, their influence impacting on the game in different ways.
Rather than being a silly mash-up game, it’s one that cleverly rewrites the rules to accommodate the theme and is a different enough game to warrant some table time alongside standard Pandemic. Nicely recommended.
Do you like Pandemic? Do like Lovecraft’s books? Why not mix the two together? This also sounds a bit gimmicky, but the revamping of the Pandemic rules to account of hordes of cultists and shoggoth running around works really well, with you now having to move around several classic Lovecraft locations shutting down portals instead of curing the virus, with the “outbreak” cards instead replaced by a different Old One arising, their influence impacting on the game in different ways.
Rather than being a silly mash-up game, it’s one that cleverly rewrites the rules to accommodate the theme and is a different enough game to warrant some table time alongside standard Pandemic. Nicely recommended.
878: Vikings
Academy Games
t’s 878 AD and the kingdoms of England are being overrun by invading Danes. It falls to King Alfred of Wessex to unite the people and rally large armies to throw back the Danes into the sea. The result is an excellent team game of strategy. Team games are surprisingly rare in modern board games, which tend to be either co-op (everyone versus the game mechanics) or competitive (everyone vs everyone), with teams often being alliances of convenience with backstabbing not uncommon (see A Game of Thrones: The Board Game or Twilight Imperium). 878 has two permanent alliances with the two players on each side cooperating (to the point of moving each other’s units around) and using their unique faction abilities to bolster themselves on the field of battle.
The result is a fast-moving strategy game with lots of interesting twists and is relatively straightforward and easy to understand.
The Expanse
WizKids
Based on the TV show and James S.A. Corey’s novel series, the Expanse board game reflects the space opera influences of its inspiration by…being a worker placement Eurogame?
The Expanse is one of the odder games based on a licenced property to emerge recently. Each player controls one of the four major factions from the TV show and books (Earth, Mars, the OPA and Protogen) and seeks to build up influence over individual planets, bases and their orbital spaces. Space battles aren’t a key part of the game, although it is possible to build new warships and blow up opponent ships, with instead the focus being on point-scoring. In this manner the game is reminiscent of Catan, Ticket to Ride or Lords of Waterdeep. However, the game’s rather poorly-explained rules make it harder to recommend than those games, which are all faster to setup and play and work the theme into the gameplay much more successfully. The Expanse's rather poor production values - a bland board and murky photography from the show - also feel a bit of a letdown given the game's not-inconsiderable cost.
Still, once the rules were better-understood the game becomes a lot more enjoyable to play, and there are some nice twists on the standard worker placement paradigm, such as scoring only when one of the scoring cards pops up. This makes timing incredibly important in the game, and knowing when to make certain events to happen for maximum impact. It’s still a somewhat fiddly game, it urgently needs a new and better-written rulebook and the theme feels almost incidental (the Rocinante crew “wild card” is rather underwhelming), but there’s enough going on here to make it worthwhile.
WizKids
Based on the TV show and James S.A. Corey’s novel series, the Expanse board game reflects the space opera influences of its inspiration by…being a worker placement Eurogame?
The Expanse is one of the odder games based on a licenced property to emerge recently. Each player controls one of the four major factions from the TV show and books (Earth, Mars, the OPA and Protogen) and seeks to build up influence over individual planets, bases and their orbital spaces. Space battles aren’t a key part of the game, although it is possible to build new warships and blow up opponent ships, with instead the focus being on point-scoring. In this manner the game is reminiscent of Catan, Ticket to Ride or Lords of Waterdeep. However, the game’s rather poorly-explained rules make it harder to recommend than those games, which are all faster to setup and play and work the theme into the gameplay much more successfully. The Expanse's rather poor production values - a bland board and murky photography from the show - also feel a bit of a letdown given the game's not-inconsiderable cost.
Still, once the rules were better-understood the game becomes a lot more enjoyable to play, and there are some nice twists on the standard worker placement paradigm, such as scoring only when one of the scoring cards pops up. This makes timing incredibly important in the game, and knowing when to make certain events to happen for maximum impact. It’s still a somewhat fiddly game, it urgently needs a new and better-written rulebook and the theme feels almost incidental (the Rocinante crew “wild card” is rather underwhelming), but there’s enough going on here to make it worthwhile.
Ticket to Ride: New York
Days of Wonder
Ticket to Ride is one of the very best light or intro boardgames around, a strong title with a fun competitive streak. There are numerous expansions and revisions of the core game, mostly bringing the game to different countries or continents and ramping up the complexity, but New York does the opposite: it streamlines the game right down and the scale with it, being set on a small board depicting New York City.
Ticket to Ride is one of the very best light or intro boardgames around, a strong title with a fun competitive streak. There are numerous expansions and revisions of the core game, mostly bringing the game to different countries or continents and ramping up the complexity, but New York does the opposite: it streamlines the game right down and the scale with it, being set on a small board depicting New York City.
Ticket to Ride is a pretty light game anyway, so a streamlined version seems redundant. But New York still works, being a fun and small game which works perfectly as a travel game, something you can bust out on a train journey. You can get a game done in under 20 minutes and it's very enjoyable. For home gaming, it's rather unnecessary (and leaves you wanting to play the original Ticket to Ride) but as a travel game it's fun and also impressively cheap.
Battles of Westeros
Fantasy Flight Games
Yet another game employing Richard Borg’s Command & Colours system, this time in the world of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. The box proclaims this to be “a BattleLore game,” which is quite thoroughly misleading, as the game has a very different ruleset and is not compatible with BattleLore at all.
This game is worthy of a deeper dive at some point, but briefly this game changes the traditional C&C rules by dumping the three sector approach (where the board is divided between a centre and two flanks) and instead making everything about the leaders. Each faction has at least 2 leader characters who are present on the battlefield and who exert control over a “zone of command” around them. Rather than ordering units in each sector, you instead order units within the zone of command. The game also randomly generates (via dice) command tokens which you can use to order remote units on the battlefield outside any commander’s zone of command.
This approach is then given further depth by each commander having special tactics cards which are mixed into the standard command deck, which adds tremendous variety to the game and to each battle.
This surprisingly elegant system immediately addresses the primary criticisms of the earlier C&C games (that they are too reliant on the right cards coming up) by giving each player much more control over the cards they can use and where they can use them on the battlefield. It also creates more interesting choices as your leaders are also combat units in their own right, but if they are defeated on the field, they can no longer issue orders, so you have to decide between throwing them into the fray or holding them back. The result is much greater and more interesting tactical decisions.
On the downside the game is rather fiddly: you have to manually glue the figures into their bases, there’s a lot of unnecessary tokens and the core mechanic of twisting the units’ flags around after they’ve moved will very quickly result in broken flag poles and flags. I just used fire tokens instead to show when each unit had been activated, which was far easier and quicker.
This game has gone out of print, unfortunately, effectively replaced by CMON Games’ A Song of Ice and Fire Miniatures Game, which has much more impressive miniatures but decidedly less engaging rules. Snap up Battles of Westeros (and its expansions) whilst you can.
Yet another game employing Richard Borg’s Command & Colours system, this time in the world of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. The box proclaims this to be “a BattleLore game,” which is quite thoroughly misleading, as the game has a very different ruleset and is not compatible with BattleLore at all.
This game is worthy of a deeper dive at some point, but briefly this game changes the traditional C&C rules by dumping the three sector approach (where the board is divided between a centre and two flanks) and instead making everything about the leaders. Each faction has at least 2 leader characters who are present on the battlefield and who exert control over a “zone of command” around them. Rather than ordering units in each sector, you instead order units within the zone of command. The game also randomly generates (via dice) command tokens which you can use to order remote units on the battlefield outside any commander’s zone of command.
This approach is then given further depth by each commander having special tactics cards which are mixed into the standard command deck, which adds tremendous variety to the game and to each battle.
This surprisingly elegant system immediately addresses the primary criticisms of the earlier C&C games (that they are too reliant on the right cards coming up) by giving each player much more control over the cards they can use and where they can use them on the battlefield. It also creates more interesting choices as your leaders are also combat units in their own right, but if they are defeated on the field, they can no longer issue orders, so you have to decide between throwing them into the fray or holding them back. The result is much greater and more interesting tactical decisions.
On the downside the game is rather fiddly: you have to manually glue the figures into their bases, there’s a lot of unnecessary tokens and the core mechanic of twisting the units’ flags around after they’ve moved will very quickly result in broken flag poles and flags. I just used fire tokens instead to show when each unit had been activated, which was far easier and quicker.
This game has gone out of print, unfortunately, effectively replaced by CMON Games’ A Song of Ice and Fire Miniatures Game, which has much more impressive miniatures but decidedly less engaging rules. Snap up Battles of Westeros (and its expansions) whilst you can.
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Wednesday, 9 January 2019
Stellan Skarsgård cast as Baron Harkonnen in the new DUNE movie
Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård has joined the rapidly-filling cast for Denis Villeneuve's two-part adaptation of Frank Herbert's classic science fiction novel Dune.
Skarsgård will be playing the primary villain of the novel, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. The ruler of the dark, industrial world of Giedi Prime and the sworn nemesis of Duke Leto Atreides, Vladimir Harkonnen is a debauched, cruel and monstrous tyrant, but also a clever and manipulative one.
Skarsgård joins Dave Bautista - who will be playing his nephew, Rabban - Timothée Chalamet, who is playing Paul Atreides, and Rebecca Ferguson, who is playing Jessica Atreides.
Skarsgård is best-known for playing Bootstrap Bill Turner in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, Bill Anderson in Mamma Mia! and its recent sequel, and Dr. Erik Selvig in four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies (Thor, The Avengers, Thor: The Dark World and The Avengers: Age of Ultron).
It is anticipated that the first Dune movie will shoot later this year for a likely 2021 release.
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