What board games are you BUYING?

MicroMacro Crime City - looks quite unique, a "where's Waldo/Wally?" style map that is actually a time shift of various events that you backtrack through in order to solve a series of crimes/mysteries that are coded into the map. By all accounts it's a one-and-done affair although Pegasus Spiele are putting up additional mysteries on the website. Given that I found it for only twenty quid plus a little extra for shipping it'll be some affordable entertainment for the family over Christmas.

@mezike that looks like something that was specifically made for my wife, thanks for mentioning it

mezike wrote: MicroMacro Crime City . . .

So this is kind of like a Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective but visual? That's kinda cool. My family has been doing escape the room kinds of mysteries so this might be a good fit. We like puzzles as much as games for family time.

Anyone have deep experience with this? I can't find much on it anywhere, and the demo on their web site won't function for me.

It's really new, the EU launch was at this year's (virtual) Essen. I think it's only just arrived in the UK and might not even have landed stateside yet.

For the demo you need to look for the murder victim and then figure out where they came from, who the murderer is, what the murder weapon was, and where they are now. You only need to look at the map in order to figure all of that out. It's a fun diversion but this definitely does not look like a "gamers" game.

I was supposed to figure that out just by having the map and a blank card presented to me?

Looks good. I think I'll pick this up once it appears. My local game store is running 25% off for the foreseeable future.

Thanks for the tip!

No, you were right first time in that the interface is screwed, I just figured out how to play it!

edit: Looks like they solved the teething problems with the site, the interface is now working fine.

After hemming and hawing about it for a goodly while (often a sign that I didn't really need something in the first place), I picked up Civilization: A New Dawn plus the Terra Incognita expansion from my localest FLGS. The expansion is fairly widely considered essential as a fix for the base game, but the rules largely follow the annoying FFG practice of layering on without integrating the rules into a new book, which means learning the base and then, in Yoda fashion, unlearning the parts overridden by the expansion. It's probably not bad in practice but a bit frustrating when trying to learn both at once.

My wife also wanted to paint the Aliens: Another Glorious Day in the Corps minis, so I preordered the full set for her for the holidays, at her request. It's all a bit ironic because her first foray into minis painting--which was good but she wasn't entirely happy with it--was Space Hulk, which never got finished and has never been played. Plus, she bought a second copy on the thinking that she might do better a second time (and she'd understandably enough maimed some of the minis removing them from the sprues).

ALIENS: ANOTHER GLORIOUS DAY IN THE CORPS landed with a thud on my doorstep today. I prepubbed from Gale Force 9 and got the base game as well as both expansions - for that they throw in a free terrain add on that gives models for eggs, facehuggers, computer terminals, crates and auto cannons instead of the cardboard counters.

Why would someone get this who already owns and enjoys NEMESIS ( and pledged for the upcoming LOCKDOWN sequel ) ? This is a pure co-op as well as more of a "bug hunt" as Hudson once said vs suspense/exploration . Thematically its a licensed game version of ALIENS whereas NEMESIS is arguably more closely related to ALIEN. If you just want to kill stuff, this may be more your speed than the semi co-op of the other game which while it has combat, is more quest/treachery oriented, although it too has a pure co-op mode.

The base game has 4 double sided boards, half a dozen of the movie characters, and assorted weapon/item cards. There are tokens for crates, computers, spawn points and blip tokens, which appear to operate similar to the ones in SPACE HULK. There are a half dozen or so scenarios, which can be played standalone or as part of a linked campaign.

The large expansion GET AWAY FROM HER YOU BITCH has a beefed up Ripley character, Bishop ( both intact as well as mangled ) , an Alien queen model, and more item cards. It also has a Power Loader model with Ripley inside. It also has four more double sided boards that appear to depict the cargo bay area on the drop ship.

The smaller expansion, ULITIMATE BADASSES has the rest of the characters from the movie .

Component quality overall is pretty good, as one would expect from GF9. The cards and rules have stock photos from the movies with all the well known quotes. If you get the whole shebang its just over $100, so its not cheap, a little less than the NEMESIS base game.

The only flaw IMO is that the models must be snipped from the sprues and assembled. Most are only 2-3 pieces each plus a base ( with the characters name etched in, a nice touch). A few are more complex, such as the Queen at 12 pieces. It does come with diagrams. Apparently you can buy them pre assembled for an extra fee. Once assembled I may have to get some foam or something - there are no model specific inserts.

Curious to hear more thoughts on that one. Michael has seemed to sour on it already.

Review is going up today. It sucks. Once you get past the “yay Aliens” all you are left with is an unrefined game that seems to have been signed off on as “good enough”.

Ugh, it's so hard to watch GF9 flounder about given how promising their start was (imho of course).

They really hit paydirt with Spartacus, Firefly, and ST:A. Even their tier 2 was solid with Homeland, Sons of Anarchy, and that forgotten WWE game. But between Doctor Who and this (both, notably, designed by the same person) they seem to be content to hope that mediocrity will carry a branded title.

I mean, Dune was supposed to be messy but ok and the Firefly adventures thing was an interesting concept... but I mostly agree with you.

I would argue that Nemesis is more "Prometheus" than "Alien". I have never felt like Nemesis is a bug hunt. For me it's always been run away from the bugs!

Michael Barnes wrote: They really hit paydirt with Spartacus, Firefly, and ST:A. Even their tier 2 was solid with Homeland, Sons of Anarchy, and that forgotten WWE game. But between Doctor Who and this (both, notably, designed by the same person) they seem to be content to hope that mediocrity will carry a branded title.

Couldn't agree more, I have those six titles and while the WWE game doesn't see much play (2-player which I don't usually have the numbers for) they all had interesting, different and maybe even unique rules that integrated with the theme for the time they game out - most are still great to play now.