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Free Comic Book Day 2014 – Saturday May 3rd at Jetpack Comics in Rochester!
THE ROCHESTER, NH FREE COMIC BOOK DAY FESTIVAL
2014 FCBD IS SCHEDULED FOR SATURDAY MAY 3RD 10 – 4 PM
From Jetpack Comics FCBD Page – “Be a part of New England’s biggest Free Comic Book Day event: The Rochester, NH Free Comic Book Day Festival! As always, you can get dozens of Free Comic Books, and it takes place all over Rochester. Last year’s Free Comic Book Day in Rochester attracted nearly 5,000 people, and this year it will be bigger and better!”
This Saturday May 3rd, 2014 is Free Comic Book Day, and if you are on the Seacoast, the place to be is Jetpack Comics in Rochester, NH. With tons of great vendors and an amazing list of special guests, this is an annual event not to be missed.
Where else in one day can you do the following:
- Meet the creators of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
- Get your photo taken with the best paranormal investigators and eliminators around – The Ghostbusters!
- Walk away with more free comics and swag than you can carry.
- Buy exclusive things from the vendors.
- Enjoy some good food and quality family time.
- Be surrounded by like-minded awesome comic enthusiasts.
- And MORE!
Kali and I will be part of the merry band of Ghostbusters protecting YOU and all he visitors of FCBD from anything that goes bump in the night. If you see us please say hello and pick up an honorary Ghostbuster Sticker, some Ghostbuster Comics, and get our autographs on our personalized Ghostbuster trading cards!
Please tag all photos with us with the following hashtags –
#baystateghostbusters and or #ghostbusters
or email them to Wayne@sagesofrpg.com
Find out all you need to know at the Jetpack Comics Free Comic Book day page – http://www.jetpackcomics.com/fcbd
Reviews in a Nutshell: Rampage
Rampage
By Asmodee
Designed by Antoine Bauza & Ludovic Maublanc – Art by Pierô
Gameplay
For one to four players, Rampage is a great dexterity game of monster destruction. Each player takes on the role of a hungry giant monster who wants to destroy Meeple City, beat up other monsters, and chow down on as many meeples as possible to satisfy their grumbling stomaches.
The game begins with players putting together Meeple City by constructing buildings out of meeples and cardboard floors. Once this a done, each player picks their monster and takes four teeth along with the corresponding paw disc, monster body, and player shield. For the last part of the setup, each player receives 3 cards: a character (special goal for bonus points), a power (something awesome that your monster can do), and a super secret power (an epic ONE use power.) Each player takes their paw disc and monster body and places them in one of the corners of the board. Then the rampaging begins!
On your turn you can perform two actions from the following choices:
- Move: Your monster can move by flicking your paw disc around the board. Your monster moves to where the disc lands.
- Demolish: If you are touching the sidewalk of a building you can try to smash it down! Take your monster’s body token and, with a straight arm, hold it above the board and drop it on the building. But be careful; if you don’t land on the building you lose a tooth!
- Toss a Vehicle: If there is a vehicle in your neighborhood, you can place it on top of your monster’s body token and then flick it off to try to wreak havoc on the board.
- Breath: You can use your monster’s breath attack to huff, puff, and try to blow over things in your path. Place your chin on top of your monster’s body token and then blow once to knock things down.
Once you have completed your two actions, your monster gets to chow down on any meeples in the neighborhood, equal to the number of teeth that your monster has. Don’t forget to eat the floors! They are also worth points. If you knock down any of your opponent’s monsters, you eat one of their teeth. Any meeples that get knocked off the board are considered “runaways” who have escaped the wrath of the monsters. These runaways are placed on a special board that will eventually trigger an event. Everything that you eat goes behind your player shield and remains secret until the end of the game. The monster who eats the most wins!
Bits and Pieces
This game is really creative with its use of bits. The board is two sections; held together by a puzzle like piece. When you first get the game, some assembly is required. In order to get up and running for your first game, you need to apply stickers to some of the tokens and then apply the ruins to the board. Ruins are cardboard squares and rectangles with adhesive backing on them. The backing was a bit of a pain to remove and sometimes a little of the cardboard layer split. Be careful so that you do not ruin the ruins (pun intended.) You then stick the ruins permanently to the board. These ruins act as the foundations for your buildings and provide a bumper system to stop the paw discs from simply knocking them over.
The buildings are constructed using meeples to hold up the cardboard floors. All of the bits are awesome. They are mostly made of wood. The artwork is fun and colorful with amusing details. There is even a Bat Signal beacon on top of one of the buildings. The rules are well written and organized with a lot of funny tongue-in-cheek references that made it enjoyable to read. The game also included well designed player aids.
Thoughts
Rampage was silly fun! I enjoyed all the dexterity elements, as well as they powers which added a strategy to the game. It was fun to play; bystanders loved seeing things go boom, and when it was not your turn it was still interesting to watch what was going on. The game lasted about 45 minutes. It was the perfect amount of time for this type of game. Rampage will be the newest addition to our rotation because it is beautiful and will easily draw a crowd.
Wayne’s Rating:
Kali’s Rating: Not played yet
Additional Links
Reviews in a Nutshell: Castle Panic
Castle Panic
Designed by Justin De Witt with Art by Justin De Witt
Gameplay
For one to six players, Castle Panic takes roughly sixty minutes to play. It is a cooperative fantasy board game. An oncoming horde of goblins, orcs, and trolls advance from the forest, intent on destroying the castle in the center of a clearing. The players work together to defeat the monsters as they attack the castle from all sides by deploying swordsmen, knights, and archers. read more…
Session Report: International Tabletop Day at Langdon Library – April 5th, 2014
In celebration of International Tabletop Day and the opening weekend of the Langdon Public Library’s new 4,000 square foot addition, Kali and I hosted a day of gaming while surrounded by books. We had 15 people come and go on this day full of great games, food, and fun. Thanks to the Langdon Library for hosting us and we look forward to many more great community gaming events in the shiny new space!
Here is a list of the games we played:
Resistance Avalon
Dread Curse
Castle Panic
Rampage
One Night Ultimate Werewolf
One Night Ultimate Werewolf
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Keep an eye out on our blog for more community gaming events, game reviews, and gaming news.
Thanks to everyone who joined us!
Designer Journal – Tugboats! #1 – The Inception
One day, while working at my full-time job at an after school program, we were playing some card games. Being an avid gamer, I have always been interested in the game design process and I decided that I should start creating some games of my own. That evening I got out a pencil and scribbled down some ideas on some paper. I had a few games on the list, but one that stuck out was a card game loosely based on “Cow Pie Bingo“, where you had to play cow cards in certain areas of the field to beat the other players; sort of “War” like with a trump suit in the four fields. The game was ok, but not that much fun. We tested it a few times, and I got the idea that it wasn’t a very fun game when I asked if people wanted to play again. They kindly declined. So it was back to the drawing board and out came a set collection type game that involved suits and a little math. Living on the Seacoast I tried to pick a subject that people could relate to, but I could not think of anything that caught my fancy.
While walking around downtown Portsmouth, NH one day, I passed by Tugboat alley and the idea hit me. Tugboats. They help ships into the harbor and there are many different kinds. The next day I was armed with a regular deck of playing cards and some crudely drawn “ships” on index cards. I developed the rules: you would try to help (score) a ship by collecting and playing a certain combination of cards in front of you. We played around with different sized staring hands, drawing different numbers of cards per turn, drawing from a draw pile or from the discard, forced discards, and some action cards. This went on for a few weeks. Every chance I got I played the game with different people and changed the rules to make the game more fun. Then, once I had a game I just needed some artwork and to flush out the theme a little more because I knew my stick figure ships drawn on index cards and old beaten-up deck of cards would not cut it too much longer.
I put out some feelers to other gamer friends, and went on the search for an artist…