Cancon visit and some board gaming

Well, it is Cancon this weekend. So I went out to see what was there and chat to my friends who were playing.

The miniatures gaming seemed to be quite large. Many different types. The Warhammer fantasy battle tournament seemed to be larger than the 40k tournaments, but that could have been because the 40k was broken up into different groupings, full tournament, friendly tournament and an apocalypse tournament.

Met up with some people from work and checked out the trade stands as well. Saw a few faces that I know I will see at Arc coming up so I hope that they have a good weekend and the trip is worthwhile for them.

My only purchase for the visit (well, unless I go back later as I am thinking about a few things still) were both core sets for Shadows over Brimstone. Sigh. Not cheap either. But then I did get them before my friends who backed the kickstarter. They were not impressed with me, however I did go over and we spent some time assembling my copy and even got a game in.

What can I say? The game is pretty much Warhammer Quest with a Deadlands theme. There are some nice extras over Warhammer Quest, more skills, and as it is a Flying Frog game, there was a soundtrack CD for atmosphere. The game played well and I will play another game of it soon.

However for the cost of the game, I am a little dissapointed. Only 26 Miniatures, of solid boardgame quality, so not really high detail, but very playable. There were no instructions for assembly of the miniatures in the box which lead to me unassembling things a few times. Yes, there were a lot of boards and counters and cards, which were really nicely made and produced. Overall, the miniatures were not in too many pieces, and assembly, sleaving and punching out of all of the components of the game too two of us around 2 hours to complete.

The rulebook was very clear and easily understood, which was great. The game played well and we completed the intro adventure. Made up our characters and will be taking them into a further adventure shortly. We had Rambling Rose the Saloon Girl; El Detenator the Bandido; Mr Brimingham the Gunslinger; and Marshal Wood the US Marshal. The intro game took around 90 minutes to play for us, after we did a quick rule book read through.

Overall with so many positives, why am I a little dissapointed with the game? Mostly I think it is because the cost seems quite high for the amount of content. 26 miniatures is not that many and isn't sufficient to fill some of the draws that you can make from the decks. I am guessing that this is so that in future expansion packs of critters can be sold to expand on the base game.

Also for the cost, the quality of the miniatures was average. For the cost of the game (almost as much as Space Hulk) the miniatures are not that detailed and the assembly for someone who wants it as a board game might be a little much. Well, it is better than Super Dungeon Explore at least.

Both core sets do come with a sountrack CD, however they are both the same CD. As the core sets have different themes, I was hoping that they would have slightly different music, but that is a small thing really.

Overall, I will be playing this again. Will probably eventually get around to painting it as well, and it is filling the Warhammer Quest shaped hole in my gamining life at the moment. But the cost? Yikes. There were a lot of people looking at it at Cancon, but in my time there I was the only one who I saw who made the plunge and purchased it.

Next post - Back to miniatures and painting - hopefully. :)

Cheers!