Birthday aliens, tanks and drills.

Well its that time of year again where I grow a year older and get some sweet new toys. This year my dad got me a nice Bosch drill! Pretty happy with that, now I just need something to make holes in. I am also getting some tanks, priests, a thunderbolt and M4 mortars for my americans. I ordered (I order my own presents, its easier that way) from caliver books, they came within a week, not bad. However I ordered the rest from Wayland 3 weeks ago, all marked as in stock, and they haven't been posted yet. They sent some response a week back saying

Unfortunately the delivery from our supplier has had a slight delay, I have been informed that it should arrive by the end of next week.

Once this delivery arrives your order will be processed and shipped as soon as possible.

I apologize for any inconvenience caused.

Maybe they meant to say it the packaged got destroyed in transit.

However surely that means what was in stock was not. In the end it isn't a huge biggie as my Wife and I are going to Europe in less than 2 weeks so I would not have been able to paint them up anyhow. When I get back they should be safely posted to Dan's office. I might contact wayland again and give them a hurry up.

The other present I got was the expansion for Eclipse, Rise of the Ancients. It makes the already epic game even better. It adds quite a few elements, most notably however 4 new alien races. The Mallelan which are equivalent to humans and are on the back of their player boards the more specialist races. There are the Exiles a turtling race which specialises in defensive strategies; The Rho Indi Syndicate which are space pirates; and the shinny bug ninjas the Enlightened of Lyra who are a mix of a defensive race who can lash out at the end game effectively. This can increase the game from a 2-6 to 2-9 player game. This is pretty epic as even a 6 player game can take 4-5 hours, luckily they added a fast play variant involving two ridiculously large pawns so two players can take turns simultaneously.

New races

Large simultaneous play markers. 

The expansion box compared to the game box

We played a game last night and added in some of the extra features such as new research, warp sectors and Chris and I played a new race each. I played the Rho Indi Syndicate and Chris the Exiles. I using my superior pirate intellect decided to take over sectors in a straight line down the middle of the map leaving me exposed to, well, everyone... I was winning but everyone quite rightly teamed up and took me down to town, I mean blew me up. Still I came second although we finished on round 8/9 due to time. Humph. I think part of my problem is I don't like being mean and attacking other players first in Eclipse, next game I think I will play the Enlightened of Lyra so I don't need to worry so much about this. All in all I am pleased with the expansion as it adds quite a bit but doesn't change the game play dramatically.

I have organised to play some boardgames with some mates from around town and am hoping to play Arkham Horror and Eclipse on Saturday so will keep you all posted.