Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2: Angela
Neil Gaiman and Brian Michael Bendis
9.0
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Spinning out of the dramatic conclusion of Age of Ultron, dimensions collide and Heaven's most...
The Promise
8.0
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Elvis Cole and Joe Pike are joined by Suspect heroes LAPD K-9 Officer Scott James and his German...
Star Wars Legends Epic Collection: The Original Marvel Years, Vol. 3
8.0
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The Empire Strikes Back! Marvel's classic Star Wars saga continues with the offi cial adaptation of...
Trick of the Spotlight (A Series of Falling Stars #1)
9.0
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They say to never meet your heroes. What about your idols? K-Pop: a niche market turned global...
Contemporary K-Drama LGBTQIA+ Romance Suspense
Shade Kissed (Phoenix Rising #4)
8.0
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I should have stayed in a coma. I can't remember a single second of my life before waking up in a...
Urban Fantasy Romance
David McK (3791 KP) rated Two Necromancers, a Dragon, and a Vampire (The Unconventional Heroes #3) in Books
Dec 31, 2022
As if the title itself didn't give it away.
In fairness, the title should really be 'Two Necromancers, a Bureaucrat, an Elf, a Dragon, a Vampire and a Pirate fleet' to do so, but that would be a little bit unwieldy ...
Anyway, Timmy the Necromancer's 'Suicide Squad' alike entourage continues to grow in this, most notably with the addition of Spot the (baby) Dragon and with Amanda, the (ancient) vampire of the title, who has strong links to the past of some of those Timmy is working for.
As before, the result magical mayhem is an enjoyable enough read in it's own right, but unlikely to set the world on fire (we have the pyromaniac elf Avraniel for that ...)
The Valkyrie
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From SUNDAY TIMES bestselling author Kate Heartfield comes a glorious, lyrical retelling of one of...
Norse mythology Retellings Historical fiction
1) Rescuing a princess from a powerful crime lord
2) Dealing with a rampaging horde of goblins that are about to overrun a dwarf kingdom
3) Recovering the lost Sky City from a different dimension
4) The start of a war, fought over the possession of that Sky City in the first instance.
AS in the previous three entries in the series, this also seems to end with Timmy's, ummm, 'entourage' expanding ever and ever larger - I would not be at all surprised to find who was a secondary character here to become a primary character in further entries.
Of which, I assume (and hope) there will be more ... ?
Paul Kellett (118 KP) rated Shadows of Malice in Tabletop Games
May 8, 2019
Instead, you get plain cards with simple line art and either just an icon/dice modifier or a short line of text explaining the effect. These cards are items of armour, weapons or other loot, potions, skill masteries, fate effects or abilities. A selection of these make up your character. Again, there are no defined heroes, you can be whatever you fancy being.
When you encounter a monster you roll 3d6 against a chart which will define the creature's species and its strength. Creature types are things like "Avian" and "Reptilian" so you can imagine fighting a dinosaur, a giant eagle or whatever fantastic creature you desire.
This makes the game a great framework to roleplay in. You are never stuck encountering the same things again and again. On the minus side, if you don't have a good imagination, it boils down to just rolling dice and beating target numbers. If you want a game to give you a story to follow, SoM is not that game.
The rules are good, if a little heavy but after a game or two it should soon click and it's mostly straight forward. The designer has recently just uploaded a revised rulebook to BGG which streamlines a number of things.
SoM comes with 4 large landscape hex tiles plus a shadow realm tile and you can choose any number of tiles to arrange in any position around the shadow realm tile. Each tile is divided into a number of smaller hexes with varying terrain and locations printed on them. This is the world you will be exploring and, despite being tiny compared to other game boards, each tile adds about an hour to the play time.
Gameplay involves exploring the land fighting creatures, gaining loot, visiting cities to trade goods or mystic seers to buy potions while searching for the special light wells that you must take control of.
In between player turns, the shadows act. They begin confined to the shadow realm but as the rounds progress, barriers fall and the shadows are more likely to find a way out to manifest in the land. Once there they start searching for the light wells and it's game over if they get to them first .
This makes for a tense cat and mouse with your heroes racing to either get to a well or intercept the demons on route.