Boardgame/Kickstarter
I love Academy Games. I particularly love the the tactical World War II combat series Conflict of Heroes and the lite family wargames of the Birth of America/Europe series. I don’t play enough of the 3D deconstructive superhero Agents of Mayhem: Pride of Babylon nor the team worker placement One Small Step. I am a backer on the 3D racing game Reality Shift. So I was very excited to see Academy Games bring the 4X boardgame Stellaris Infinite Legacy to the tabletop.
Then I saw the price.
For a mere $110 you can back Stellaris Infinite Legacy and get the Standard Edition. That is the 2-4 player version but includes NO stretch goals. If you want the stretch goals you must back the Deluxe Edition at $170 which should deliver the Standard Edition PLUS expansions for the 5-6 player version as well as any stretch goals.
Sorry, that’s just too much me. For either edition. Granted, it looks like I am on the wrong side of the decision matrix here as there are already nearly 12,000 people who backed this project driving it to over $2 million in pledges.
My non-backing decision is not an easy one. I am very drawn to short (few hours) game time and the promised ability to “drop-in/drop-out” of the game. This could suit my family gaming style well. As I’ve mentioned before, this is also not a “woo is me during COVID I’m strapped for cash” kinda thing, this is more a current appraisal of my gaming condition. In my mind I have a very loose “cost to gaming” equation and the gut-check here says Stellaris Infinite Legacy does not work. YMMV.
Regardless of my feelings on cost, I wish Academy Games the best of luck here. I hope that once they get Stellaris Infinite Legacy out the door they can get back to Conflict of Heroes – First Men In Normandy 1944 and Conflict of Heroes – Blitzkrieg France and the Lowlands 1940 for my future gaming table.
Speaking of Kickstarter, Root: The Marauder Expansion (Leder Games) closes around 48 hours from the time of this posting. The funding campaign is successful (who expected otherwise?) with nearly 20,000 backers and ~$1.75 million raised.
Wargames
I was very fortunate to get a Play Tester Kit for Halls of Montezuma by designer Kevin Bertram at Fort Circle Games. Very fortunate since the game kit itself physically is a highly professional looking product. I kinda feel embarrassed because this looks and feels like a $45 game already but he sent these out for free AND paid the shipping to boot. I gotta figure out if he has a PayPal or something to throw some money his way just out of appreciation. Now I just HAVE to do a good scrub of the product to give Kevin (hopefully) valuable feedback since he has already invested so much in ME.
Last week I wondered what happened to South China Sea: Indian Ocean Region (Compass Games) that was scheduled for an early March delivery. Well…according to the developer the counters for the second edition of South China Sea were somehow delayed and they want to push back the release of both Indian Ocean Region AND South China Sea so they can be released closer together. The latest update to the production schedule on the Compass Games homepage shows April for IOR and May for SCS. Honestly, since Indian Ocean Region is a stand-alone game, I don’t agree with this reasoning. Not my decision, but not my happiness either. I guess I should be getting used to these delays as even customers of flagship publisher GMT Games (like me) are suffering delays.
Books
Stepped away from non-fiction this week to take a bit of some fictional downtime. Went back to some old sci-fi standbys, especially a few titles that I love for role-playing game inspiration.
Rocky Mountain Navy Gamer 