REVIEW: Munchkin

Raksha is Crash To Desktop’s very own Malkavian, occasionally released from his sanctuary to inflict upon us his mumblings about the end being neigh, or just being out of tea bags. This time it is Munchkin that receives his most deranged visions. So sit back and hold on to your seat, this will be a bumpy ride. - Silverfuge

Munchkin is a card game based on the dungeons and dragons style games, with a sense of humour. Produced by Steve Jackson games, the game borrows heavily from dungeons and dragons, and has a heavy comical influence, making the game much more fun. The art work is done by the same gentle man who brought us the web comic dork tower, giving us art work that fits very well with the humour within the game. The object of the game is to win by reaching level 10 before anyone else in the party, via any way Munchkinable (Raksha sure does like to make these words up so bear with him- Silverfuge).

The game itself comes with one die which is used to determine the turn order, and two decks of cards (the treasure cards and the dungeon cards). The Treasure cards are usually potions or equipment that you can use, trade or sell to level up, and in some cases level up cards. The dungeon cards are monsters and curses, which are the primary tool for the game.

Warhammer 40,000 the BIG Anniversary

This game was released in 1987 and next month will be celebrating its 25th anniversary. From a simple game, it has gone on to spawn films, novels, computer games and enough fascination to consume a good third of my attic and spare room.

People often ask me what is so good about moving little bits of plastic and metal around a board and rolling dice. I suppose the answer is simple: where you see bits of plastic and metal I see representations of people or Xenos, either fighting to stave of the eventual demise of their decadent empire or fighting to fetch the “greater good” to the universe. Where you see dice, I see the winds of fortune either favouring me with the 6 needed to destroy my enemy’s tank or the 1 that means my opponent’s poxy fire power has managed to find the weak spot in the tank suit I call armour.

A friendly guide to Warhammer 40K

Warhammer 40,000, or 40k as it is also known amongst its players, is a tabletop wargame played with numerous 6-sided dice. Games usually take about a couple of hours to play through, (for most “average” sized games of 1,500 points per side) and consists of two or more players moving, shooting and attacking with their respective armies.

Bigger games take longer and it is common for games of 4,000 points to take an entire evening - The game itself is played in turns, with each player taking their turn before their opponent does, and each turn is broken up into numerous phases. These phases are movement, shooting and assault.

Savage Worlds Review

Savage Worlds is a generic system written by Pinnacle Studios, and published by Studio 2 Publishing it has won the award "The People’s Choice 2003" for "Best Roleplaying Game".

Savage Worlds is a generic system and as such tailors itself to that genre of gaming. Although the game system has uses outside of table top roleplay, (and can be used in table top war games) the difference is that on a roleplaying game, the games master describes everything, on war games the players can see the models on the table and don’t need to describe everything.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer Review

Overview

Buffy The Vampire Slayer is a TV show that I am sure most of you all know; if not here is a quick description of the show and its ideas.

Buffy is a teenage American high school student, she is an attractive yet troubled student having burned down her last school. What the rest of the world doesn’t know is that Buffy is a vampire slayer and there is only one. She has been chosen to fight vampires and demons and other nasty things.

Ok the role-play game works around that you will be playing ever the original cast, which are all given stats in the book or you can start completely for scratch with your own cast of characters. Which can be anything that you want them to be, as long as you can come up with the concept for the character, you can play it from bog standard human to a demon.

Eden studio are the creators of the role play game they decided that the game would be aimed at fans and that it would be made for the average fan rather than for the regular role-play as a result of that the gaming system is a simple system that allows people to learn it very easily.

The system is cinematic, which means that the game runs like a film rather than being rules heavy like White Wolfs Storyteller system. So instead of being bogged down by large amounts of skills and large amounts of rules its keep pretty clean cut and simple which makes for a system that is pretty fast and rolls on constantly, thus allowing for a quicker progressing storyline.

Introducing Our Table Top Gaming Writers

From Buffy to Warhammer these guys will be on hand to deliver the news, previews, reviews and whatnot to CTD when it comes to Table Top Gaming, may I introduce you to Raksha and Silverfuge.

Some of you regulars may already know these parters in crime from G3 Radio, where they host their own show (Alt Sundays 3pm-5pm), but I managed to blag con invite them over to write here some of which will be featured in their shows.

Speaking of which expect a Buffy Roleplay review up very soon.