Pick Up & Deliver 786: 
Fantasy Flight Games Catalog, Summer 2010
Welcome to pick up and Deliver, the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder as I step off the train and deliver an episode to you while I walk home. I'm Brendan Riley. 
Well, good afternoon listeners. It's a gloomy day here in suburban Chicago. The clouds are out and it looks like it's going to rain, but my apps and various things told me it was not going to rain. So it's very mysterious in the context of will it or won't it rain? 
Well, I have another treat for you. As often happens, I was hanging out with my game design partner and good friend Rob, and he had recently acquired a game at Goodwill I believe, that had that was under played. So it had all of the accoutrement inside that go with the game when it was new and when it was new was summer of 2010. So he handed off to me the Fantasy Flight Games Summer 2010 New Releases catalog. And after the rousing success of the episode in which I talked my way through the I think 2007 Fall Fantasy Flight Games catalog, I thought I would do a repeat with the newer catalog. So that's what this is going to be. I'm going to look through the catalog and talk a little bit about the state of games in 2010. What surprises me, what doesn't surprise me? Which games do I like? Which games haven't I played that I want to play? And generally just sort of commenting on using this as an avenue to chat for fifteen minutes or so. I hope that you'll stick with me. All right. 
So on the cover of the Fantasy Flight 2010 Summer New release catalog is a picture of the cover of Dungeon Quest, which has a big red dragon blowing fire at a wizard, and the wizard is holding his hands up and the fire is swirling around him as though the Wizard has some sort of invisible bubble in front of him, or an invisible shield that is making the fire divert in direction. It says, dare you face the dragon's challenge? So I presume Dungeon Quest would be one of the new releases in summer 2010 from Fantasy Flight Games. 
All right, inside the cover. Sure enough, Dungeon Quest is the first featured game. It is a Terranoth game, and it looks like it is a reimplementation or a reimagining of the classic board game of dungeon exploration. It says the classic board game. So I wonder if Dungeon Quest is a game that existed before, and this is a republication of an old game. It looks like it is a dungeon crawling game, comes with some minis and classic Fantasy Flight style cards. If you played any Fantasy Flight fantasy themed games in the Terranoth era in the say, 2005 to 2015, they all have this a very similar graphic design style, and it looks like this game has it as well. It is $59.95 and it comes out in the summer of 2010. I would definitely try this out. If somebody had a copy, I'd love to play it. 
Next up we have another summer of 2010 game Space Hulk: Death Angel - The Card Game. I have this one. It is one of the games that I would not probably consider selling or getting rid of because it would never be replaceable. This game is enjoyed by the people who enjoy it, one of whom is me. I mostly play it as a solo game. You can play two player, but I haven't found it to be more fun as a two player. Like, I think it's fun as a solo game. Space Hulk is a line of games in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. In particular, there is a game from Fantasy Flight called Space Hulk where you play as Space Marines, which are in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. They're genetically engineered super soldiers inside electronic elaborate armor, in particular in the Space Hulk game, you are playing Terminator Space Marines, which come in especially bulky, badass, big beefy armor versus regular Space Marines have smaller armor that still outrageously big by regular human standards. So in Death Angel is one of the clans of the Space Marine soldiers. 
In Space Hulk: Death Angel - The Card Game you play as a squadron of Death Angel soldiers, uh, a Death Angel Terminators who are in a space hulk, which is an abandoned large spaceship. You find a spaceship and you go in to see what's going on inside. And it turns out that inside are a bunch of Tyranids. Now, Tyranids are a sort of ooey gooey alien race that is full of death and genetic engineering sort of think. I mean, in other science fictional worlds, it would be the Xenomorphs are the closest connection, but maybe even something more like, uh, the Zerg in StarCraft. Uh, both of those would be examples of the kind of creatures that the Tyranids are in Warhammer 40,000. So what you have is an abandoned spaceship full of Tyranids, and you have a bunch of Space Marines trying to get through it. Now, the way the game plays, you lay out these cards and you and you go through and you fight them. It is very random. 
You're rolling a die constantly, and the die is not in your favor. I think generally it's a one in three success rate on the die. And generally when you fail, your warriors take a wound. And I think they can do their second wound kills them. Like you lose people really fast and your goal is to get through, I think four, uh, rooms. And if you get through the fourth room, you win and you get to meet Tim Roth. No, that's a that's a joke about an anthology movie. Um, I really like Space Hulk: Death Angel - The Card Game. It is very punishing. So most of the time you lose, but when you win, it feels incredible. It's really fun and if you ever get a chance to play it, you should try it out. 
That apparently came out in the summer of 2010 and cost twenty five bucks. Now, this was a this was in the Fantasy Flight small box card game series. And the card. It's like, um, maybe, uh, nine and a half by four or nine and a half by three. It's a sort of long, thin box. My copy. I have two games that are in that game profile. I have Bruno Cathala Citadels and I have Space Hulk. Death Angel are the two games that I have that have this sort of tall, narrow box design. 
Next up, we've got also new in the fall of 2010, so this hasn't come out yet when the catalog has. This is Blood Bowl team manager, the card game. Now this is one that I've heard lots of good things about. I never played it myself and I never played Blood Bowl myself either. I can't really get myself excited over the idea of like fantasy football, where the where you have like big teams of orcs and elves and rat people playing like super bloody football with each other. I don't it just doesn't really do it for me. I know it is a squad based, tactical, squad based game, and there are people who really, really like it. It's still in play today. They have new a new edition of it that came out maybe five years ago, and I think they're still producing teams for it, or it's still got some play there. But as far as I know, Blood Bowl team manager, the card game never got past that original printing. 
Next up, we have Tide of Iron. Fury of the bear. Tide of iron. This is an expansion for the base game. Tide of Iron, which is a a World War Two miniatures battle game. I haven't played it. I don't know a lot about it, but it looks like the Fury of the bear expansion lets you bring the Soviets in to oppose the Nazis in Operation Barbossa. I don't know, it looks like a World War Two miniatures game. Not really my bag. 
Next up, we have Battles of Westeros. A battle or game. So this uses the battle system to make a, uh. Um. What's the word? A Game of Thrones miniatures battle game. Now, this is one where I thought I was buying the game, and I opened it up and it was just a bunch of junk inside. And this is one of the times that I learned my lesson about goodwill. To make sure I opened the box and look at what's in there, because I got a bunch of junk instead of a game. I'm not sure I would have enjoyed this game or would have gotten more than one play out of it, but it was a bummer to spend three bucks on a box of junk. Um, so that's Battle of Westeros a battle or game? It looks like you can buy the base game. You can buy wardens of the West expansion and wardens of the North expansion, those for eighty, thirty and thirty altogether. So you're going to be spending one hundred and forty bucks plus tax to buy that whole set of stuff that's coming out in the summer of 2010 from Fantasy Flight. These are the base game and the reinforcement sets. The picture on here is really nice. It is the Fantasy Flight, sort of classic sword and shield and horses and banners art that they used for the Game of Thrones games that they made before the TV show was in the offing. 
Next up we have the World War one. Oh, no. It's. Oh, yeah, it's World War one. But it lasted for for a long time. It's 1949 and this is the First World War rages on. And this is the game. Tannhauser. Now, this is a game I heard about from a number of different people, because it had a really interesting movement system and line of sight system. So Tannhauser is a miniatures battle game where you're fighting in squads of soldiers, and I think there's a science fictional element to it as well. So you might have like zombie soldiers, but part of the gimmick is that you play on these boards, and the boards have these colored dots on the spaces. So when you are trying to figure out line of sight, if two spaces share the same color dot, then there is line of sight between those spaces. It's a really clever system for making it easy to determine line of sight, particularly for a board that's meant to represent 3D imagery. But it is a 2D board. Now, this is a system that was borrowed by Rob Davio and friends for his game, um, Star Wars Epic Duels, although I don't know if they used it in that. But the remake of that, which was, Unmatched, uses that same system where there's dots that tell you line of sight and tell you where you can move. It's a really clever system. And something I remember hearing about, I believe Sam Healy, who was on the Dice Tower at the time, really liked Tannhauser, and that was part of his gig there. 
Next up we have Constantinopolis. This is a looks like a Euro style game. Costs sixty bucks. It's got a boat on the top. It's the epitome of the classic idea of trading in the Mediterranean at the board game. 
Next up, we have Arkham Horror The Lurker at the threshold. This is an expansion for the Arkham Horror board game, The second Edition. It looks like it adds a scenario and some tokens and some monsters. It's not one of the big box expansions. It's only twenty five bucks. But it allows you to play some more scenarios. This is a game that never really captured my heart. I did play it a few times and I liked it, but I didn't get like deep into it, so I didn't have all the stuff. I just had a little bit of stuff, which was fun. And we played it once or twice and I was like, oh, this game's too long. Goodbye. I think Arkham Horror second Edition was one of those games where if you really understood how to play it, it would play quick or quicker, but if you were new to it, it just took forever. So did not stay in our collection. And I never got the lurker at the threshold expansion, which came out in the summer of 2010. 
Well, it looks like I've stumbled into the role playing section of the thing. We have Deathwatch, Rogue Trader, and Dark Heresy, which are all parts of the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay or Warhammer forty thousand roleplay series. I didn't even know that was a thing. Uh, it looks like you could do. Yeah, it's a role playing game where you can be one of the Warhammer soldiers. The trouble for me with Warhammer as the setting for these things is that generally, Warhammer is about fighting stuff. Like, I really liked Warhammer forty thousand as a miniatures game where you would shoot at each other and roll dice and stuff. I don't know how much I would like it as a role playing game. That said, I did play about a year of a role playing game with my current GM. This is a long time ago where we played, uh, as members of the Inquisition investigating a tyrannia infestation. Uh, it was fun. We used the Star Wars dice. Uh, it was sort of a homebrew system where we used the Star Wars dice. Uh, but the Warhammer forty thousand setting. So it was a good time. We did not use any of these sourcebooks, which all came out in 2010. 
On the next page, we have Anima Beyond Fantasy, which is an expansion for the core rulebook of Anima. This is Gaia, volume one. I don't even know what this is. A role playing game based on Anima Beyond Fantasy. Uh, we also have the Warhammer forty thousand fantasy role play game, which has the basic set, the base game, and then a bunch of different expansions as well. 
The high point, the middle of the book, which is where the staples are, uh, proclaims the fall 2010 appearance of the Lord of the rings the card game corset. This is the Lord of the rings LCG. I played this a few times and I really liked it, but I was always playing someone else's borrowed copy. And generally with the lcgs they're better the more cards you have. And I only ever had the base game, so I never really got that far into it. I probably would have started collecting it, except that they came out with Arkham Horror The Card Game, which I leaped right into and haven't looked back. I'm still playing it. We're still picking up the new expansions for that one. Um, there are similarities between the two games. I think Arkham Horror does a better job with physical space, although I haven't I haven't played very many sessions of Lord of the rings, so I only have the base idea, but there is some overlap in how they play. I remember thinking it was a lot of fun, and I certainly could enjoy it more if I came across a bin at goodwill that had all the a whole bunch of Lord of the rings cards, I would certainly buy them. 
Looks like they also had an expansion, the Brotherhood Without Banners, Chapter packs and the Kings of Storm and the Lords of Winter expansions for the Game of Thrones. The Card Game, a whole bunch of new expansion packs. Uh, Lord of the rings the card game is a LCG as well. Um, and it is one I've played a number of times. I do like it quite a bit, but it looks like in 2010 they were having new expansions coming out. I believe that is, I think Rob found a copy of the base game and that is where this catalog came from. Is a Game of Thrones the card game? Um, catalog. 
Next up we have Warhammer Invasion, the card game. This is a Warhammer Fantasy, uh, dueling card game. We have Call of Cthulhu, the card game. Each of these, we're looking at different kinds of expansions to those games. So there is a base set and then expansions. All of these are expansions coming out. Next up we have a listing for the different kinds of Fantasy Flight sleeves, as well as supply tokens and extra dice that you can order. And then we're into back catalog stuff. 
There's Rune Wars, which is a big map based game. Uh, that is, uh, sort of, um, adventure game on a map. We have Horus Heresy, which seems to be a similar thing, except in the Warhammer world, those are both one hundred dollars games. We have Battles of Napoleon, which is one hundred bucks. I don't even know what that is. It looks like it's a gaming system. We have Wings of War, which is a World War one aerial battle game, which I know that Fantasy Flight took the system from Wings of War and repurposed it into X-Wing. So if you played X-Wing, you've played Wings of War. And then in the back of the catalog, we have Runebound second edition, Dragonheart. We have Smiley Face, which I've never heard of before, and we have ingenious challenges, which is a game I just donated to Toggle Game Club. 
Finally, at the end, we have an ad for the Fantasy Flight Games Event Center, which shows where you can play games in, um, Roseville, Minnesota. Interestingly, they have a bunch of pictures of people playing games in the space and looking at the picture, there's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen fourteen fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty one, twenty two, twenty three. Like twenty three different people in the pictures and I can see one person who sort of clearly presents as a woman. Two excuse me, two people who clearly present as women and none who appear to be non-white. So I guess that's not surprising for Minnesota, or 2010, but still a bummer to see that level of lack of diversity. And then finally on the on the back, there's a little contact information for Fantasy Flight games generally and a little bit about the company. 
So the Fantasy Flight 2010 Summer new release catalog, is an amusing snapshot of what's going on in the game community at the time. It really highlights for us how quickly Fantasy Flight went from being a robust, highly productive company to one that is a small shadow of its former self, right? They used to have I mean, there were fifteen, nineteen pages. I mean, if you're counting expansions, twenty two pages of new expansions and brand new games coming out, uh, just in the summer of 2010, summer and fall of 2010. And I imagine they had another catalog for Christmas, which maybe had other new things as well. So that was really a huge deal. And now they only produce a small fraction of those games, which makes me pretty sad. 
Well, that brings me home. And thus brings me to the end of my reflection on summer 2010. Fantasy flight games. I'd love to hear what you thought of this episode. What else would you like me to see? To see me cover. I'm always looking for new episode ideas. Uh, had me head over to BoardGameGeek 2369 and share your thoughts there. 
I want to say thanks for joining me on my walk today. I hope your next walk is as pleasant as mine was. Bye bye. 
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