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Friday, June 15, 2018

T is for Toy Fair '18 - Esdevium Games . . . Not!

My local games company has changed its name! It's now Asmodee, and they have (or carry) several games with figures in, none were on display at the show though so I'm only showing you catalogue scans in this post, but worth the read if you're not a dedicated follower of these things.

Catan is a popular game, although - I think I'm right in saying - normally the generic or 'original' sets have wooden counters? This Game of Thrones version from Fantasy Flight Games however, has some little figural game pieces which I think are around a 15mm War-gaming compatible size?

From the same 'GoT' trope comes A Song of Fire & Ice, a joint project between CMON Ltd., and Dark Sword Miniatures, and what nice looking miniatures they are. I'm guessing here that expansion packs and extra-figures are the hook?

As well as board games, Asmodee also import a lot of the blind-bag Moshling type stuff (post's half-done, just on the back burner) and more traditional game and pastimes. They also ship-in the Heroclix figure packs from WizKids with Star Trek and DC-licensed blisters illustrated here.

While these may well be more akin to Wizards of the Coast's Star Wars range? New for this year and another one to build-on with extra sets I suspect, Fantasy Flight again, but all these are 'Asmodee' in the UK.

This looks lovely, a kind of Steampunk, Golden Compass, World War One-and-a-Half, Russian Revolution in a box! The woman with a big-cat and the armoured bear are taken straight from the Golden Compass!

Which reminds me, I finally watched the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen the other day, several extraordinary ladies - as it happens - but I found it to be very disappointing, with huge plot holes/continuity errors and an overall feel of wasted-opportunity, almost as if three unrelated, shorter, films had been stiched-together with a blunderbuss full of nails!

But back to this game, from Stonemaier (and others) the figures would paint-up well and look to be around the 28mm mark?

The Asmodee line-up for 2018 seems to fill every cell as we move from Steampunk to tick the post-apocalyptic, sci-fi, hardboiled zombie-mutant fantasy box! I don't know if the figures in Fallout (Fantasy Flight again) are metal, but they have that sculpting style, which I know some people like - for painting - but I'm not so keen on the 'Nottingham' school of chunky, over-emphasised 'fine' detailing.

Myth and legend; Eastern-style, with this one from CMON/Asmodee; that's every box ticked except prohibition-era Chicago, I think! From the illustration; figures look to be at the larger end (28mm) but it's not clear, neither is it clear how many useful figures will be found in the Rising Sun box, or need to be purchased separately?

Ah! Prohibition-era Chicago, well . . . New York! The figures look to be about the same size as the old Parker Games game Vendetta, they also remind me of the Cluedo figures I was looking for the other day, grey with coloured bases, although a couple of the games above have similar, these are closer to what I was thinking-of. I like the little 'stash' tin to keep smuggle the playing pieces in.

That's eight games/game-systems and I'd happily give house-room to all of them, sadly; games like these don't often turn-up in charity shops!

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