Last night instead of playing multiple games which is what I typically do on a Thursday night I hunkered in to do my best
Sam Beckett impersonation and played a game I'd never heard of called Time Agent.

In Time Agent you take on the role of one of the races and you're going back in time to try an alter events to make your race the leaders of the galaxy. Once you've done that then you want to shut off time travel by altering it's discovery.

Each Race varies in their start position. We did a random dram and I got the Bulrati who happen to be the current masters of the universe. Which makes playing them a bit of a challenge your first time out, and also a bit annoying.

Each race has a starting resource point and victory point position on the track. Victory points are simple enough you want the most and when you have it you want to turn off time travel. Resource point allow you to collect income each turn, which you spend on time machines, time agents or squads and a few other special things that you can do. The most important things you do with your cash is flip event. For example there are 3 time travel event, to shut them all off requires 125 credits, plus paying for the agents, time machines and of course sending them back in time costs money.

So the goal fore everyone else but me was to go back in time, find event pertaining to your race and alter them. So altering the outcome of a war for example would give someone more RP and VP and remove it from the other person(s) involved. I think you can see where this is going, as the Bulldogs everything flipped is against hurts me. With events spread out all over time and space it puts you on defense and it is really hard to cover every event.

If I played this game again I would have a better strategy as the Bulldog people. Looking at the board and the chits this game can look intimidating, but in truth the rules are simple and make sense on the first run through and there is a good deal of strategy too it.

My only complaint is the game seems to grind at the end, as all the events get turned and each race is then trying to disable time travel the game can drag. Because you really need to protect those event you've reversed with your squads . seeing how this was a first game for everyone I think a future game would eliminate a lot of that. It's also very nice their is little to no down time during play.

I would recommend that most people try this game at least once, I'm not sure if it is something you would play a lot. But I could see it being played 1-2 times a year.
Photos courtesy of BGG.

I'm back, did anyone miss me. Vacation love it, hate it when it ends. Spent the better part of 3 days just trying to catch up with work, haven't even looked at a game (board, video) in about 2 weeks. Luckily I've got game night tomorrow and I'm looking forward to playing something.

I've got plenty of vacation stories but none of them fit for this blog. Although I did get a flat just a mere 100 miles from my house in the middle of bum lick Indiana. couldn't fix the tire and apparently every place closed at 5pm. So I needed to stay over night in South Bend, wasn't a great way to start the trip.

The best part of the story is the object which causes the flat was a bone, think on that for a minute. Animal dies, decomposes on the highway and a piece of bone breaks of and bounces around for who knows how long. Then right before I get to the spot it's at it ends up angled at the exact degree it needs to impale itself in my tire. I gotta say that is some impressive luck.

Lets see whats on tap, I've got a Singstar review coming up. I've got a few video reviews i am going to try and finish off in the upcoming weeks. The first being on Pandemic, my video reviews are going to have a little twist to them so stay tuned for that.

Oh best thing yet, I got turned down for a press pass at Gencon. Yep I have this blog and write for several sites and nope no luck. Considering the "press" I saw at last years event I am quite stunned by this.

Alrighty enough ranting for now, I'll be in touch.

Things are going to be pretty quiet here for the next few weeks as I am traveling and won't return until around months end. I think once I am done with this trip I should be able to resume a normal posting schedule.

I've got a lot of content that is just a few edits away from being posted on this site, some of it written and some of it video / audio related. Hopefully June will be the month I can get back into the site full swing.

As any good gamer knows a hobby remains a hobby until it pays the bills.

Vancouver, Canada (May 12^th, 2008) – In a few weeks the railway adventure game, Ticket to Ride, pulls into Xbox LIVE Arcade – the premier destination for digitally distributed, high definition, original and classic games. Based on the internationally renowned board game, Ticket to Ride features simple rules, fast play and is expected to be a great offering for the growing casual games market which draws over 200 million online players per month worldwide.

Ticket to Ride challenges players to plan cross-country rail routes across North America and visit all the city stops in-between. Although the game can be learned in under five minutes, players face strategic and tactical decisions that vary with every turn as they connect distant cities and race to complete the most routes.

Ticket to Ride will support play with up to five people on Xbox Live or four people on the same console and supports the Xbox LIVE Arcade Vision Camera for hours of family-friendly fun.

Ticket to Ride is based on the board game by noted game designer Alan R. Moon. Days of Wonder released the game in early 2004, becoming the youngest game publisher to win the world’s most coveted game prize, the German Spiel des Jahres Game of the Year Award. With a following in over 30 countries and availability in 11 languages, the board game has an international following.

Ticket to Ride is the debut title for Playful Entertainment, BC’s first independent console video game publisher. Started just under a year ago, CEO Sean Murch saw an opportunity for a small company to challenge industry heavyweights for a piece of the interactive action.

“The industry has been dominated by the big players, but digital distribution and alternative financing are leveling the playing field,” notes Murch. “It’s a David and Goliath story.”

Working with local investment companies, Playful started building a multi-million dollar fund in April, called the Vancouver Interactive Entertainment Fund. The fund will finance video game titles. It's the first of its kind in the country and one that allows individual investors to participate directly in video game revenues.

Murch, a 15-year veteran of the traditional & interactive industry, got his start as a film & game producer working with Francis Ford Coppola, Nelvana, Radical Entertainment and Electronic Arts. His goal was to create a company that could operate quickly, fairly and decisively in the fast-paced world of gaming

Last Thursday I had my first chance to play War of the Ring thanks to my friend Todd. We had planned this for a week so i was able to briefly look over the rules which made Todd's explanation a lot easier.

I concluded from my read and Todd concurred that playing the dark forces would be an easier attempt for my first game. As he went over the rules and some basic strategies with me, he made it pretty clear that the good guys usually win by getting the ring to Mt. Doom and that while them only needing 4 points by conquest as opposed to my 10 made it seem and easy task it wasn't.

I was pretty slow in getting my special characters into play and also didn't spend a lot of early game time mustering forces. It was certainly a mild disadvantage not having a general idea of the event deck cards as well.

For the most part I thought I was doing pretty well, I was keeping the Ring from moving and my dark forces were slowly capturing cities. What I failed to comprehend is that while it certainly felt like there was no military threat I should not of left my cities and keeps undefended.

Todd built a force in the Shire and also one in the Elven wood and I had nothing to stop his forces coming out of the shire and I made the mistake of bypassing his held up forces in the wood for an easy 2 point victory spot.

This left me wide open and pretty much powerless to stop these two forces from moving into two of my locations and securing a military victory. So what did I learn about War of the Ring.

1. I simply loved it and I think I'll end up buying it, I doubt besides Todd I will find anyone else to play it but it would pain me not to own that game.

2. You can't play conservative as the bad guys. Unfortunately that is the way I play most of my war games and in this case it doesn't work. You need to eliminate Rohan fast and then move your forces up from the South.

3. Get your special characters out asap and start using their abilities.

All in all I had a lot of fun even though I suffered an embarrassing loss. I can't wait to play it again.