strawdonkey

I gave this a go last night, as I've not played a Shining game in years. They've changed a bit since Shining Force 3 haven't they? Not sure about this based on the demo - the combat feels woolly, I wound up being unable to see my character due to bad camera angles, and then they all started singing and it made even less sense than before...

Grizzco Slosher is probably the most interesting of the Grizzco weapons so far - the others have been super powerful and broken, this has a little more play to it. It hits like a truck and the projectile moves really slowly, so it will chew through a string of Salmonids or demolish a Stingray in one shot. It uses tons of ink per slosh though so you have to be careful. Sadly doesn't appear you can take out the missile bucket wankers with it though I may just have been sloppy with my aiming so would be delighted to be proven wrong on that! [edit] oh shit - aim for the centre rather than the buckets! https://v.redd.it/6w4z5gpcvg411

New Splatfest next weekend: Orange juice with or without bits? Runs next weekend, 23/24 June 2018! Also on now, until 1pm Monday 18th June: Fully random-weapon Salmon Run, including the new Grizzco Slosher.

Mine activated ok a couple of days ago, looks like they haven't updated the page to state that though.

I've just finished it and had a couple of games of Turf War with the Octoling. The DLC campaign is absolutely wonderful and I'm really looking forward to mopping up the bits I missed. It feels more like a New Game+ in that it gets to do lots of cool shit you probably couldn't get away with in the main campaign. About 6-7 hours to rush through. Splatoon you are the best

Expansion is available now! It's a pretty hefty download, about 25 minutes for me.

Got my Switch code- hang on Still looking forward to playing it but this has been such a mess.

Shards of Infinity made it to the table again today. I'm not sure if it's just early days but we've had a few unsatisfying experiences with it in 1v1 so far - notably that the aggressive deck doesn't work as it's very easy to stabilise with the damage prevention cards, a little bit of healing, and the inevitability of the built-in win condition. Still want to get a few more games out of it before making too many judgements but it can wind up feeling very one-sided, and a foregone conclusion long before the game ends. Fingers crossed we just had a perfect (shitty) storm.

OK, all updated. It's also been announced that the free updates will be continuing to the end of the year, rather than ending in July as originally planned: What on earth is going on with that Sloshing Machine? Heated ink has got to be against the rules. ALSO

WAIT WHAT

Given that most of the Splatoon expansion has now leaked, I wouldn't be surprised if it was available to play immediately after the conference. Anyway F-Zero something something wishful thinking.

@moosegrinder, @Pelekophoros and I have slowly been chewing through our UKGE acquisitions: Shards of Infinity Is a deckbuilder-ass deckbuilder; it keeps things moving along by having a natural time limit, as when one player reaches 30 of a specific resource (which can be accumulated across multiple turns) they just need to draw one specific card from their starting deck and they gain infinite attack and win the game. Has a few interesting mechanics in that you can purchase certain cards from the centre row and either choose to gain their effect immediately and put the card back on the bottom of the stack, or put them into your discard pile as you normally would. Not convinced this is going to be different enough from Star/Hero Realms to warrant owning both but after a few plays it seems of a similar pedigree at least. Jump Drive is basically Baby Race For the Galaxy - by the same designer and set in the same universe - and has a dreadful rulebook. Where Race has you carefully managing your hand size and balancing card draw with expanding your collection of cards, Jump Drive does away with all of that - each card you play has an "income" rating which allows you to draw that many cards at the end of the turn, and after three or so rounds you'll be drawing more cards than you're allowed to hold each turn. It's Race, but pitched up to +8 and lacking much of the nuance of full-fat Race, but as you assemble your idiotic juggernaut things get out of hand so quickly that it's hard to complain. The Castles of Mad King Ludwig is Carcasonne mixed with Alhambra and Ticket to Ride. Your aim is to build a castle out of a stream-of-consciousness collection of rooms - the start player determines how much the available rooms will cost, and then the other players pay the start player (rather than the bank) for the privilege of constructing a room in their castle. The start player pays the bank. Rooms have different functions and placing rooms in a favourable configuration can give you more points, or point penalties if you put a concert hall next to the sleeping quarters for example. For something that looks so grandiose it moves along at a fair clip, and the game can be turned on its head at the end if you've managed to achieve your personal objectives (such as building a lot of rooms of one type, or size, etc) as your hidden bonus point cards can really rack up. Feels like there's a lot of hidden depth and another not-so-good rulebook that makes a meal of explaining an otherwise pretty straightforward game. High Society is a bidding/bluffing game where you bid for cards with point values, and bid to not receive cards with negative effects on. The kicker is, everyone starts with the same amount of money - but when the game is over, the poorest player is immediately disqualified and cannot win. It's another absolutely serviceable Reiner Knizia game that is easy to learn, isn't too random and has absolutely gorgeous art in its current printing. Imaginarium looks like a cardboard cutout fever dream and the discard pile has teeth on it, which definitely means that any cards you discard have to be fed to the person sat opposite you. It's a reasonably straight-forward engine-building game where the position you place your piece on in the current turn determines how much you pay for the card you buy, and also how early you get to place your piece next turn. Unfortunately we can never play this again as we've eaten half of the cards Flamme Rouge, if you believe the UK Board Game Trading and Chat group on Facebook, is the shit. It "simulates" the final stages of a cycle race - each turn you get to pick one of the top four cards from your deck which determines how far you travel that turn; however if you are out in front you'll gain exhaustion cards which clog up your deck with low numbers meaning that you are more likely to be caught later in the race. It does a really satisfying job of allowing your two riders to attempt to manage the pace of the race and gives you the risk/reward of trying to break early and not be caught vs staying with the group and having a reliably fast finish. San Juan is one I've played on my phone quite a bit, but playing it in person brings home how similar to Race for the Galaxy it is; it has the upside of being much simpler to learn and understand than Race but offers less depth and opportunity for combos. Still to play: Code of Nine (from the no-ship Math Trade), Hive: Mosquito, Arboretum, And Then We Held Hands, Istanbul Big Box, Bloodborne expansion... we didn't buy many games but at the same time there are still a million games to play. WTB several more hours in the day.

OK, time to get this up to date. For sale or trade! Offers welcome! Postage will be extra! Ascension: Immortal Heroes £12 Two player Ascension standalone/expansion thing. Played about five times. I love Ascension but the fact I've now played close to 1,200 games of the digital version means that I can't convince anyone to play this with me! Istanbul £19 Quality resource-gathering and map navigation game. I bought the Big Box containing both expansions from UKGE so looking to move this standalone version on. Box has worn corners but everything else is in decent condition. Matcha £5 Simple set-collection/bluffing game. Kinder Bunnies: Their First Adventure Free with any other purchase Kids version of Killer Bunnies, with less death but still the same unsatisfying victory conditions. Things I'd like for trade: Expansions for Village (Port and Inn) Expansions for Race for the Galaxy (I already have The Gathering Storm and Alien Artifacts) Codex (the David Sirlin deckbuilder thing) Qwirkle Other stuff that is cool with two players (probably not deckbuilders, I have enough of those) Here's my collection to give you an idea of what I've already got: https://boardgamegeek.com/collection/user/strawdonkey

What streaming service is this on? Have read the first book and quite enjoyed it.

Ha! No way. If I'd known they'd fixed all the ticketing issues I'd have stuck around to chat a bit longer! Glad you didn't get caught in the ticket quagmire though. I bought and drank a giant coffee in half the time it took @Pelekophoros to queue for our tickets.