Jurassic World: Legacy of Isla Nublar. Adventure 1

 With much anticipation, we've begun playing Jurassic World: Legacy of Isla Nublar by Funko Games.
This is a 12 episode (including tutorial) legacy adventure game. 

If you're new to legacy games - the game includes new rules that are unlocked as you go, bonuses and consequences dependent on your choices, all of which are permanently added or removed from the game by means of stickers, writing on components, scratching off secret panels or just ripping cards up!

I'm a big fan of the Jurassic Park franchise, dinosaurs in general, and thematic board games. So this was always going to be a must for me.

I'm going to write up the stories we create through these adventure packs here for anyone that wants to read them. But beware that this is pure spoiler territory below. So only read on if you've either already played or don't intend to play but would like to enjoy from here.

Here be spoilers

The story starts with John Hammond arriving on the Island as the Park is freshly constructed. After multiple fever dreams (the turtorial) in which everything went wrong over and over until the last dream where it all worked out nicely, he's decided this is a good idea after all.

Our first decision sets the stage for how the game will be played - we must choose where the main gate, visitor centre and genetics lab are located on the map - by placing stickers! Which areas they're in grant different bonuses. This took nearly half an hour to place three stickers.

A few other minor additions of components and rules and we're ready to start the game - John Hammond is preparing for the topping out ceremony and wants everything to be set up ready... but a helicopter bringing in park employees crashes, apparently scattering the poor employees into the jungle! Oh no!

According to the Adventure Objectives:
1. We must find the missing park employees and bring them to safety before it's too late!
(Have at least two Park Employees inside the Visitor Center at the end of Round 5)

2. Organize the press gifts for the topping out ceremony at the Visitor Center.
(Make a row or column of merchandise)

3. We can will the gaps in the donosaur genes with DNA from West African Frogs.
(Make the described DNA sequence)

Ok so we have a philosophy from the start of keeping an acceptable minimum number of people alive, while ensuring the park is pretty and the science is marginal. We can work with that.

We have 5 rounds to rescue the Park Employees following the unknown adventure cards:

Round 1 begins with looking for the chopper itself. We know it went down in the vague area of Sector 3-5... There are 6 sectors on the map so this is literally half the island it could have landed.
John Hammond prioritises by going to the Visitor Centre to check on the merchandise display, and also see if there was an helicopter remains there... and there was! He helps the one Park Employee there in to the safety (maybe) of the Visitor Center. It seems the other employees all jumped out of the chopper before it crashed conveniently next to the Visitor Center. They'll know better next time.

Round 2 suggests we go looking further into the jungle. This time it takes us a couple of searches. We have veterinarian Gerry Harding and hunter Rober Muldoon searching the jungle, with Hammond staying at the Visitor Center barking orders across the walkie talkies like a true leader. Eventually we found another employee out there, as the dinosaurs start roaming apparently loose in the jungle, we guide the employee back toward the Visitor Center. We have the minimum acceptable survivors, this is going well!

Round 3 presents a distraction. The tall Brachiosaurs have wandered in to the helipad area and decided to make this their new home, causing havoc for travel in and out of the island. We are instructed to move them out of the way before the end of round 5. But at this point we have the Tyrannosaur and Velociraptors converging on the Visitor Center... Maybe this won't be a walk in the park after all, more like running and screaming in the park.

In Round 4 our priority was certainly the fact that the Tyrannosaur and Velociraptor had both arrived at the Visitor Center, had eaten our goat, and were looking to see what else was inside. Then we're told there's more employees out there maybe? Maybe at the volcano, maybe at the lagoon? That's a lot of maybe when we're trying to survive deadly carnivores, clear away pesky Sauropods, and arrange the merchandise nicely!
Harding checked the volcano, no one there, and came back to help Hammond who was working on the merchandise while Muldoon, armed with all the weapons and survival gear, finishes gene sequencing and then goes on a one man mission to distract the monsters outside.
We realise now that the worst that could happen is that the dinosaurs could kill each other, loosing us valuable attractions for the future park. They must be separated at once! 

Round 5 - "Help! I'm still alive!" and she's deep in the jungle, but safer than the rest of us... she can stay there.

Robert Muldoon, with his arsenal of items, manages to tranquilize the Tyrannosaur and shock prod the Velociraptors away saving the assets, I mean animals, from grievously harming each other.

Hammond and harding weigh up finding the remaining employees in the jungle and by the lagoon, or clearing away the Brachiosaurs from the helipad. But we realise there is hardly enough time to do any one of these things, however we did unlock a sweet cache of new items by finishing the gene sequencing, so it's probably worth getting the merchandise all nice and tidy. And it was, lots of new items now unlocked including an ATV!

And so the adventure concludes by teaching us about research and Park budget... which we get bonus buget for all the employees we rescued... which was the bare minimum 2... but still we got some cool items for next time!

As you can see the game really did feel like a Jurassic Park story. It was nice, some things went wrong, then they really went wrong, and then we prioritised assets over employees. 

Spared no expense. Spared only minimum acceptable employees.

Hidden strength

Having a hidden ailment means having hidden strength.
Most people won't know you have either, most wouldn't understand if they knew.
The hardest part is when that hidden ailment momentarily wins over the hidden strength. When that happens all you're left with is weakness. Raw and on the surface.

Bruce the Moose

A short story I wrote back in 2003 and was published in a collaboration of local young writers called Solid Ink.


Bruce the Moose.
Bruce the Moose was a Moose. A Moose with a dream. He kept it in a closet with his skeletons for company. It was a happy and playful little dream that liked playing fetch and eating custard. A lot of custard. It was quite expensive to keep actually.
So Bruce the Moose packed his suitcase full of antler warmers and custard and took his dream to market.
They walked together down the old road. Bruce the Moose walked awkwardly, as if he had five knees, which he may have had but didn't really know because he couldn't count that high. Occasionally he fell over but his dream helped to uplift him along the way.
They sang together as they walked along, It was a beautiful song, which was surprising since they were both singing completely different songs.
When they reached the market they found that it was quite crowded. Bruce the Moose's wide antlers kept getting in the way as they waded through the crowd, so he folded them up and carried them under his arm.
Along came Jimbo the Dog. "Hello Bruce the Moose," said Jimbo the Dog, "would you like to buy some fleas today? I have pedigree fleas as well as mixed breeds at a lower price."
Bruce the Moose shook his head politely. Of course, moose can't talk.
He walked up to the auctioning stage and waited for his turn, The was a skunk named Francois the Skunk selling second hand rubber chickens, then a cow named Isabel the Cow unsuccessfully trying to take applications for the local hamburger restaurant, and finally there was Paula the Rubber Chicken, giving a speech about the oppression of her kind.
Now was Bruce the Moose's turn. He stepped up on to the stage, and fell over. Again his dream helped him up to face the crowd. He looked at their expectant faces and took out his message board, which he had prepared earlier, and raised it above his head.
It read" "Ladies and Gentlemen, I have a dream. Bids start at twenty dollars with a five dollar increment." He gazed around the crowd as they took this in.
Paula the Rubber Chicken was the first to raise her rubber wing. Bruce the Moose nodded at her and pointed using one of his antlers in his hoof. Other animals raised arms, wings, legs and tentacles. The auction became quite heated. Eventually Francois the Skunk managed to outbid everybody using the money he had made selling all of his second hand rubber chickens to Paula the Rubber Chicken.
Bruce the Moose collected the money from Francois the Skunk and handed over his dream, along with its' leash, bowl and favourite fetching stick. He said goodbye and stumbled home, stopping at the supermarket along the way to buy three tons of custard with the money he had just made.
The moral of this story is Follow Your Dreams, and You Shall Receive Custard.

The man and his chair

The man was born in a small town in the country.
The chair was born in a factory in the city.
The man's parents were a doctor and a school teacher.
The chair never knew it's parents.
The man spent his younger years traveling and studying, learning from the world around him.
The chair spent it's life in front of the television.
The man philosophized on these very facts. The contrast between his life and that of his chair's.
The chair gave it no thought at all.
And despite the great many differences, the man loved his chair.
The chair, however, despised the man.

The Jeffrey's Strange Day,

Once upon a time there was a Jeffrey

He was a perfectly ordinary Jeffrey, as much an unremarkable Jeffrey as any could hope to be. He wore plaid jackets, at least three on any given day, and he kept his Giraffe brushed, morning, noon and night.

On this day, however, something very unusual happened to the Jeffrey.

It was when his potato was singing the blues, about 6pm of course, and the news was on in the background. The newsreader was setting the stage on fire to signal the end of the evening's stories. But something was strange here. The Jeffrey felt uneasy. He looked outside at the ducks on the pond, they looked back at him suspiciously and drew their curtains. Distant thunder could be heard on the radio, part of the regular Distant Thunder Tuesdays show. The Llamas frolicked on the lawn.
“Get off my lawn” The Jeffrey whispered into an envelope and pushed it out the mail slot in his front door. The Llamas came over to the porch, opened the envelope and then left quietly to return to their home across the street. They were good Llamas.

So the Jeffrey scratched his chin and wondered what it could be that had him feeling so strange. He turned to the day's crossword for answers. 4 down: a 5 letter word for the difference between a cheeseburger and a cold winter's day in which the anniversary of a happy memory fills you with warmth. The Jeffrey smiled and wrote down the answer.

This helped a lot. He forgot about the uneasy feeling.

He ran the bath and put all the pot plants in along with the potato, which had by now cheered up and was safe to leave with the plants. The giraffe stared at him blankly, as if questioning how he could carry on like everything was normal.

But Jeffrey carried on, scrubbing the plants lovingly and giving the potato some good advice for the future. He let the water out, dried off the plants and put them back in their puts. The Jeffrey carried the potato back into the living room when the uneasy feeling struck him again. He glanced up at the giraffe, which stared back at him silently. “I understand” said the Jeffrey. He didn't, but he wanted to reassure his friend. The Giraffe stared at him for a further 32 seconds before curling up in its' nest beside the television.

The Jeffrey stared around the room. Photos hung on the walls of himself and the Giraffe from their younger days at University. On a shelf a bowl of tulips, wilted and and lifeless sat in the same position as it had for the last 5 years. The television still showed the newsreader, now surrounded by flames, singing and dancing. Thunder continued in the distance through the speakers of the radio and the smell of roast pork filled the room.

The Jeffrey had forgotten the cooking, he rushed in to the kitchen and took the pork from the oven. It was in excellent condition, he breathe a sigh of relief. Carefully he took the steaming hot freshly made meal and tucked it into bed for later. He turned the light off and crept quietly out, pausing when he remembered to go back and give it it's little pig-teddy bear.

The Jeffrey turned the radio on in the bedroom for ambient noise, Distant thunder echoed once more and he realised the terrible thing. It was Monday, not Tuesday!

The Jeffrey quickly picked up the phone and called the radio station. In seconds the radio switch over to the sounds of elephants trumpeting over the top of a young girl singing the alphabet while unable to actually remember all the letters in the right order, and occasionally adding in random dates and times in place of letters, just as it should be for a regular Monday like this one.

Jeffrey sighed and laid down beside the roast pork. “What a disaster that could have been... how very strange.” he sighed. The potato rolled it's eyes as it walked past, toothbrush in hand.

Board Game Miniatures - Doctor Who Time of the Daleks

Time of the Daleks, by Gale Force 9, is a great game, in my opinion the only actually good Doctor Who game out there. A perfect example of theme & mechanics molded together, rather than the mechanics beaten into the theme as with many other rushed licensed games.

So I love this game. And I love Doctor Who in general. So it was a great pleasure to paint the pieces in this game.

Time of the Daleks

The game consists of 16 pieces:
4 Doctors (First, Fourth, Eleventh & Twelfth)
4 TARDIS's
1 K-9
5 Daleks
1 Davros
1 Dalek Mother Ship

The Doctors:
Certainly the hardest, or most pain-staking to paint - humanoids with faces particularly are always tricky. But I've very pleased with how they came out - and to be fair the faces on the models were not the best they could have been (see Fourth and First in particular, rather flat faces)

The First Doctor I decided to go with monochrome - partly because sourcing images of him in colour is difficult, but also it sparked the idea of having a monochrome set for the 60's era of the show.
The Fourth was an experiment of shades to get the colour of the coat right, and then the scarf... I was pointed to a website that detailed the exact colours and number of stitches used in the originals (there were a few different editions of the famous scarf) but I took from that the colours and randomly filled it in myself - there's accuracy and then there's a headache. I'm pleased with the outcome.
Eleven, similarly, was a tricky one to get to colouring right on the jacket. But her came together pretty easily, and Twelve finally was a few fairly simple base colours.

The Fourth Doctor

First and Eleventh Doctors

Twelve and K-9

K-9 was an exclusive piece that comes with the first edition of the game.

The TARDIS's
The TARDIS's came in a fairly good TARD?IS blue to start with, but still I repainted, shaded, added black and white to the windows and signage, as well as including a 60's TARDIS.

TARDIS's vs Daleks

And yes, it is TARDIS's. Not Tardi. It's an acronym, Latin word structure doesn't apply.


The Daleks.
I quickly solved the dilemma of what colour scheme for the Daleks with the idea of doing "Daleks of the world" and painting with different colours from across the history of the series - bronze, green, red, white & blue and finally and all monochrome 60's edition.
I looked up different Daleks to get the exact colouring right and realised how many subtle variations in the actual travel machines structure existed. So mostly the parts were just a compromise of what worked best with the models I had, which didn't really fit any one TV Daleks exactly as it was.

Daleks of the world

Davros
My favourite character in Doctor Who - painting the travel machine and his grizzled face worked really well.

First Doctor and Davros - a combo I would love to see!

Finally the Mothership I did with the 60's colour scheme as well (I checked - Dalek saucers were in the original Dalek Invasion of Earth)

The 60's collection.

Avengers Infinity War (with spoilers)

Spoilers
Thanos demands my silence no more.
As a Marvel Fan (capitalised to show fanatic intensity) it's not really possible to say anything other than I LOVED this movie.
This truly was the culmination of every success of the MCU over 10 years.
The timing of action, comedy and sadness was perfect, the was never a time where I felt it was taking too long, nor any moment where a scene switched to another and I wasn't just as enthralled to see how the other characters were progressing.
Every hero had at least one significant action scene and many of them had some fantastic quips that were spread throughout without being forced .

I'd compare this film to Civil War, which I enjoyed a lot, but had the issue of putting so many characters together for the first time, had one major battle scene (the airport) and other scenes interspersed between some slightly slower moments. It was a decent story with a different antagonist style to most other superhero movies, and the airport battle made everything worthwhile if that was the whole movie.
But that's why I'm so impressed with Infinity War, they took the scale of characters and more than doubled that and made it work seamlessly.

The villains were shown well enough as well. Thanos clearly as a well fleshed out character, we get to know him and understand his motivation, as well as seeing such emotion in the journey that he has taken to fulfill his plans.
The rest of the Black Order were a little forgettable perhaps, in that I think apart from Maw I'm not sure they were even named on screen. But they were there throughout until their end and each showed as a formidable adversary.
I particularly enjoyed Ebony Maw's zealous verbosity. Proxima Midnight and Corvus Glaive did somewhat blend in to being the same character in a way that they were just spear welding warriors, and Cull Obsidian came across as a super grunt... But in the end the were just the extension of Thanos doing his bidding, so character wasn't really a focus there.

It was hard seeing that ending, I wasn't too surprised knowing that Avengers 4 was coming relatively soon afterwards and knowing the potential of Thanos that there would be a hard end but it was still a shock to see so many characters lost, leaving us completely at a loss for where the characters go from here.

I'll write some more specifics about some of the characters and theories in future posts.
Seen it twice now, still too much to process...