Last night, Mrs K. and I were at a loss for anything new to watch, and not in the mood to read or do anything hobbywise, we ended up rewatching several episodes of Tabletop.

First thing’s first: gosh I miss that show. It was so simple, fun, and “pure”.

Secondly: we couldn’t believe it when YouTube was telling us the newest of these videos was four years old. It really felt like just a year or two had passed.

Anyway. I was watching with a slightly different perspective than the first time through. At the weekend we had played Munchkin with one of the kids, and we all had a really good time*. I was looking for some more games to add to the collection, that would be friendly to young children, while still fun and appealing for the whole family… and preferably not take long to play through a game or a round.

The first candidates which met the criteria were Roll For It and Sushi Go, coveniently both played in the same episode. Roll For It has a simple premise: roll a number of dice, then try to match the values on a card to score the points on that card. Sushi Go is a brightly-coloured card game where players score points for “collecting” various dishes.

No longer having to deal with The Wheaton Effect, both games were readily available for around £13 each. which made them good “impulse purchases”.

It’ll be a couple of weeks until we get to try these games with the kids, but I’m already looking forward to it. I love exposing them to new and different ways of spending their free time.

* I don’t think they really understood the game, or really read most of the cards, but they quickly developed a strategy of making monster fights harder for the other players before offering to help them in exchange for some of the treasure.

I have none, because we haven’t seen enough full information – in context – to make any informed opinions.

And neither have you. I get it, change is scary. But stop whining on the internet about AoS before you have all the information. Please? It’ll make the transition much more pleasant for you, me, and everyone else.

I’m flabbergasted by how quickly it all went from “ok, this looks like it could be fun and interesting,” to “ZOMG! The sky is falling! F-you GW! This is the most ridiculous and crappy game EEEEHHHVVAR!

And it hasn’t even been officially revealed yet. Careful; your knee is jerking so hard you might do yourself an injury.

I do have one final, parting thought to leave you with:

If you want a balanced, tournament-friendly (and 1st-party supported!) Fantasy massed-battle game that plays like a “Warhammer 9th” – basically what everyone complaining the loudest seems to be lamenting Age of Sigmar is not – then I humbly suggest you go check out Kings of War. 2nd Edition is right around the corner, with the beta rules available for free download. A number of Warhammer Fantasy armies port over to KoW with little-to-no modification or need to buy new models. It’s fast, deceptively simple, fun, well written, and actively supported. If you’re up in arms about AoS, it wouldn’t hurt to check it out.

My girlfriend and I were watching the first episode of new series of Tabletop yesterday, which introduced us to a board game called Tokaido.

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Almost immediately we both agreed it was an amazingly beautiful game. I could quite happily frame the board itself to display. The illustrator, Xavier Gueniffey-Durin, has done an amazing job.

The game play of Tokaido seemed to be that winning combination of simple to learn, but with enough depth to make it a challenge to master.

tokaido2Maybe I should buy two copies – one to frame the artwork, and the other to play? Or one to give to my sister, as I think the art would be right up her street.

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