Tools of Hero Kind: a Boss Monster expansion

What is Tools of Hero Kind?

It’s an expansion to Boss Monster, an awesome little game I’ve previously reviewed, and which adds a number of cards to the standard decks.

I won’t go into the mechanics of the core game too much here, except to recap that players are tasked with building an eighties-style side-scrolling dungeon with which to lure heroes to their doom via a number of traps and monsters, before they reach and wound your very own Boss Monster.

Tools of Hero Kind is a very logical first expansion to the game, adding item cards which the heroes who are hoping to make it through your dungeons alive, can utilise.

As with Boss Monster itself, the packaging is again awesome, and if you’re anything like me, will make you want to get straight onto ebay and begin bidding for a classic Game Boy.

Print-and-play update: updated

I had a go at creating a small box for Weilong, a print-and-play dice game I’ve talked about previously.

I think it came out pretty well, and it doesn’t look out of place on my shelves either. The template was from good old Boardgamegeek’s files.

Like I’ve said before, making print-and-play games needs patience and a bit of commitment, but pick your games properly and you can find some nice ones to add to your collection for next to nothing.

BIG box games

Thanks to Amazon’s Black Friday, and a friend’s early Christmas present, I’m now looking forward to playing through these.

Small World is a modern classic that took around an hour to get the pieces ready and sorted into the right places in the box. Can’t wait to see what they all do.

Dominion is the daddy of all deckbuilding games, and boasts 500 cards. 500. If I was into sleeving my cards, I’d have a long night ahead of me.

Check back for reviews of these in the near future.

Awesome Level 9000: A Smash Up expansion

What is Awesome Level 900?

If you’ve read other entries on this blog you’ll know I really enjoyed playing Smash Up, going so far as to take it on holiday with me.

Knowing how much my wife loves Smash Up – she usually wins by a mile at this game – I recently bought one of the Smash Up expansions.

So far there are five – Awesome Level 9000, The Obligatory Cthulhu Set, Science Fiction Double Feature, The Big Geeky Box, and Monster Smash. Recently publisher AEG announced a sixth expansion, Pretty Pretty Smash Up which should be released in March 2015.

Although The Big Geeky Box is really not an expansion, it’s a collector’s box to keep your ever-expanding sets of cards, it does include a new faction, The Geeks.

I went for the first expansion, Awesome Level 9000, as I figured I may as well start at the beginning and had no real preference.

Star Realms (plus bonus review of Star Realms for Android)

What is Star Realms?

Star Realms is a deckbuilding game (see my post about the DC Deck-Building Game* for a short description if you’re not familiar with these types of games).

Forget boxes the size of paving stones, with enough spare slots to hold a lifetime’s worth of expansions, Star Realms comes in a small box the height of the playing cards it holds, and a depth of a couple of inches.

Don’t worry, you get a lot of cards for your money (128) and this is a great, self-contained game that feels unexpectedly weighty and strategic. But is should – it boasts a great pedigree, designed by Magic: The Gathering ‘Hall of Famers’ Darwin Kastle and Rob Dougherty, which basically means these guys know what they’re talking about.

This is specifically a two-player game, with opponents using cards to build the most powerful space-faring deck they can.