First Look: Mag Blast

As I mentioned only two post ago, Mag Blast, which I purchased less than 24
hours ago has already seen table time, and poor pun wholly intended we've had a blast with it.

It's light, fast-paced and, win or lose highly enjoyable. It's a perfect filler game, with only one major drawback that we have found so far. Your initial draw can make or break your game, with two of the three that we played yesterday lasting all of five minutes from start to finish.

So we've house ruled our way around this by introducing a mulligan style mechanic:

House Rule

If you are not happy with your initial draw of 6 Fleet cards you may shuffle them into the Fleet deck and draw 5 replacements, of which

you must choose 4 for your initial set-up.

If this still doesn't work out for you, you could theoretically drop down to 4 cards using the same method but, no more than that and even then you are really pushing your luck. That really does seem to be the name of the game though, luck.

You have to be lucky with the initial fleet that you draw, you have to be lucky with the action cards that you draw and, if you want to cause catastrophic damage, you have to be REALLY lucky! This isn't such a bad thing though (particularly in the case of the latter).

When I initially looked over the cards prior to the rules I was a little concerned just how easy it seemed to blow a ship out of the sky instantly, which can end a game just like that.

This was however an error as it's actually very difficult to achieve a "critical hit" along those lines as you need at least three cards to pull it off and, you only draw up to five every turn (unless you draw something that lets you draw more) at the most. There are still plenty of devastating attacks that you can throw out there though, for example the name-sake Mag Blast, which will happily take out the majority of fleet ships.

Overall, play is of the fast and furious variety, so if a fast-paced space skirmish sounds up your street you can't go far wrong with Mag Blast. If you're looking for deep strategy though, this really isn't going to be the game for you.

In Space, No-One Can Here You Scream PEW! PEW!

It's been a while since I paid a trip to my FLGS, mostly because times are hard in
the UK and, gaming (well professionally produced board and card games) has and have become a luxury that can't always be easily justified.

Sometimes though you have to treat yourself, and buying new doesn't have to cost you the earth. There are plenty of great games out there that are inexpensive and, nothing I bought yesterday set me back more than £20. Which when you consider the overall cost of gaming in general is more than reasonable.

The first two items that I picked up were the Rebel vs Imperium and The Brink of War expansions for Race For The Galaxy. Whilst it may seem a little lavish to fork out close to £40 on expansions (for which I could have bought a whole new game), I have been playing a lot of Race For The Galaxy solitaire of late, and getting a lot of enjoyment from doing so. The expansions also bring a lot of new bells and whistles to the party (not to mention close to doubling the number of cards in-play), so if I had to make the choice again; the expansions or a new game; I don't think my decision would be any different...

This isn't to say that I didn't buy a new game however, as sitting in the corner of an alcove on a low-shelf a little box caught my eye. Mag Blast.

Without a doubt, the thing that drew me in was the Kovalic art and, upon seeing the price-tag, I was sold. Even if the game was a bust, less than £20 for a game where every card is a full-color Kavolic piece of art is still a win in my book. I think it must be a Munchkin thing. :0).

As it turned out though, the game was actually great and in the few games that we have played so far, we have had a hell of a lot of fun. I'll review the game in more detail in a coming post but suffice to say I think it's well worth owning and if you ever happen to see a copy in a FLGS of your very own, it's well worth checking out.