Star Wars Armada from Fantasy Fight Games.

We all love Star Wars don't we? The new film is out soon and I'm waiting to see if its anywhere near as good as the originals or the embarrassing level of the second trilogy. JJ Abrams has a reasonable enough history with Sci Fi, I really liked his reboot of the Star Trek films so my hopes are on the positive side.

Also new Star Wars film means new Star Wars toys which no doubt I will be getting some of soon enough; meanwhile I have been mulling over games that involved some more classic Star Wars themes. Quite a few of my friends have taken up playing X Wing from Fantasy Flight Games, I've played a few times and do enjoy the system, but I do like bigger ships so I went out and brought Star Wars Armada by the same company... It's been mentioned to me that its expensive, well it's twice the price of the X Wing game. It does have a huge about of parts in the box, loads of tokens, cards and playing aids as well has three rather nice capital ships (Victory Class Star Destroyer, Nebulon B frigate and a Corellian Corvette) as well has a selection of Tie Fighters and X Wings. The ships themselves are not to scale (not a new idea as battle fleet gothic was also completely out of scale) and this is apparently done so you get pleasing detail on the models. 

I've only had one game so far, but it's easy to pick up the rules, ship maneuvering is nice and easy and the main game mechanics is around orders which you choose one, two or three turns in advance depending on ship class, special officers allow you to reorder these or change some. 

Anyway more on that once I've played a few more games, for now some pictures of my fleets so far. The capital ships come painted but the fighters don't, but being me I had to do something about that.

Imperial Fleet, two Victory Class Star Destroyers and Tie Fighter escort

Rebel Fleet of Two Nebulon Bs and a Corvette with X wings

X Wings are rather nasty in the game, the Imperial Player needs to hold them off with the Ties or its all over for the Star Destroyers

Grubby X Wings, Being rebels they obviously won't wash their space ships

  

40th Birthday

Yes, this weekend was that landmark date and I celebrated in the best way I knew, spending time with friends, playing games and drinking beer (or in the case of some people red wine or elderflower cider).

Anyway first game played was a new one I received for my present (thanks peeps) called Horus Heresy. A huge box full of cool stuff. After spending a good hour setting up all the counters we attempted to play reading through the rules. This made it a somewhat interesting game which ending up with Terra falling to Horus.

The might box of the Horus heresy board game

Another gift was the another fantasy flight 40k game, Relic the 40k version of Talisman. We gave it a quick go but tiredness finished the game early. Very good fun though. Looking forwards to playing both games properly and will put up more pictures at another time.

Other games we managed to fit into the weekend were the Fantasy Flight edition of Talisman, a game about running power station ( lists more fun than it sounds), another game with little people tiles and cities( can't remember the name of that either!) And the game of thrones board game. Over the weekend we must have spent a good 25hrs over 2 days playing with breaks only for break fast and a meal at Planet Hollywood in London.

On my actual birthday I was taken out on a mystery trip by my wife, and it was... Harry Potter Studio tour really really good fun, especially after a large latte woke me up.

Filled in passport

Harry Potter Passport

Cupboard under the stairs

Great Hall

Dumbledores office

Ministry of Magic

Magic is Might

Enjoying a butter beer

Privit drive

Dobby

Diagon Alley

They had animal actors out everywhere

Massive model of Hogwarts

And finally the birthday cake