Just passing through...

I'm working on a big post which I hope to get up tomorrow. Meanwhile, I paid a visit to Glasgow's 2 FLGS today, in respect of a new project the exciting details of which I hope to reveal very soon.

Pleasure not entirely deferred
The latest eagerly awaited- and slightly delayed, expansion to Chad Jensen's Combat Commander: Europe series- Battle Pack 3: Normandy, hadn't made its way yet through the transatlantic distribution channels to land at the Dragon and George by the time of my visit yesterday. Just as well really, because it meant that the fact that I couldn't afford it anyway didn't leave me to sit drooling at home in hapless anticipation until I had lucre sufficiently filthy to lash out on this must-have product. Soon though, we go!

Dave- on the other hand, was able to pick up the On the Brink expansion to Z-Man Games' highly successful Pandemic cooperative boardgame. Regular readers might remember how impressed I was with Pandemic when I played it during 'Uncle' Martin's visit last xmas. So you can imagine I'm looking forward to those few more plays I mentioned- starting on Sunday with any luck, to test my positive first impressions. I am optimistic about this one.

Incidentally, I take it as a measure of Pandemic's success that in the 2009 xmas shopping season it appeared on the shelves alongside the typical family and party games- in HMV of all places, where it's still regular stock AFAIK. The last major consumer goods retail chain which I can remember stocking anything from the hobby games industry was the old Virgin Megastores. That was back in the 1990s. This strikes me as something of a breakthrough, for Z-Man Games if no one else.

Bargains, bargains, bargains!
Just down the road at Static Games, Kenny had a wee present for me: a shop damaged copy of the Battlelore expansion For Troll and Country. The troll is missing- which is why he was giving it away, but replacing that missing piece is easy peasy for a miniatures gamer.

I wrote last year about my hopes of getting back to playing Battlelore again sometime soon. The double sided preprinted map featured in For Troll and Country might make this easier to achieve because it'll reduce setup time quite considerably. I know Badger's keen to see again magic and other mysterious powers wreak havoc across the gaming table, so this might turn out to be sooner rather than later. As ever, fingers crossed I guess.

I was just about to leave with my freebie when I was pointed at a temptingly large pile of shop-worn bargain games. Kenny tried to sell me FFG's Tide of Iron WW2 tactical boardgame, but I'd seen enough reviews of the game to know it wasn't for me. Besides, I've got unplayed WW2 tacsims and/or scenarios from already much played games out the wazoo, as I noted last December. I don't need another WW2 tactical boardgame in the form of an FFG big-box game of dubious simulationist merits.

Cash-strapped as I was I still couldn't resist a copy of Risk (Revised Edition), for which I paid the princely sum of £5 because a corner of the box is bashed and torn. I suspect I'll be back in search of more bargains just as soon as I can.

And finally...
I received a geekmail the other day from BGG user James Fehr. James explained that his project was to send out questionnaires to the 2 BGG users who'd each registered the most plays of the 100 top ranked boardgames on BGG, then to compile the answers into a Geeklist. It turned out that I qualified to answer his questions about- surprise, surprise: Combat Commander. Was I interested? I was, naturally enough. The results went live yesterday:

• Interviews With 2 People Who Have The Most Plays For Each Of The Top 100 Ranked Games: 2010 Edition
• A direct link to the CC:E entry.

Even just copying and pasting 200 answers into 100 posts- not to mention sending out a number of geekmails at least that large, must've been a mammoth task. I'd like to thank James for his labours, and for inviting me to take part. I was pleased to join in. ;)