Wednesday, 31 July 2019

E14 Endorsed: Woo Long Talks - Double Feature!

It's been a little quiet from the WLT boys recently, but I'm pleased to present not just one but two new episodes from WLT this week!

The Bebop Rewatch : Session 10 - Ganymede Elegy

How do you let go of the past? What do you do about the one that broke your heart? And can love truly conquer all? It's the return of The Bebop Rewatch!! On this week's episode we break down some of the latest news surrounding Netflix's adaption of 'Cowboy Bebop' as well as dispelling some fake news.

We then dive into the emotionally charged 'Session 10' and join Jet on a journey to Jupiter's most famous moon, as he deals with love, loss and divided loyalties.

Episode 68 - Phase Four? Gimme some more!

What's that you say? Marvel Studios revealed their next phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe for the coming two years? Sounds like it's time to bring the band back together!

We have swept aside sick babies (not literally)and business schedules to bring you or take on the big Marvel news from San Diego Comic Con 2019. Rich explains some of the comic book origins of these new movies and TV shows, and we geek out about the possibilities!


Don't forget to find other great podcasts like us over at Brit Pod Scene, a collective of great British, independent podcasts; BritPodScene

Want to be a guest on one of our shows? Are you an independent artist, comic book writer or film maker and want a platform for your work? Get in touch with us at woolongtalkspodcast@gmail.com


Black, British and Nerdy! This is the home of our podcast, where we talk Movies, Comics, TV, Gaming and more. New podcast available every two weeks. Check us out!

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Tabletop Review - Pandemic: Rapid Response

Pandemic: Rapid Response
Published by Z-Man Games

Pandemic: Rapid Response is a tabletop "Save the Earth from any and every disaster possible" game built for 2-4 Players, set in the near future...the world's gone a bit downhill, cities all over the world are asking for aid: vaccines, water, power and other supplies.

YOU are part of a crack team of operatives (equipped with a knock-off Air Force One) all of whom have individual skills to bring to the table. They must put their minds together to ensure the survival and safety of all cities around the globe. However, you don’t have long. You must race against the clock (or hourglass in this case) to save each city and the people inhabiting them...

It's all a bit dystopian but thrilling nonetheless, the last hope for society flying around at 30,000 feet dropping care packages onto the cities to save them. Now that we know what's at stake, let's get down to the gameplay.

The game comes with a pretty high quality fold-out game board detailing the aeroplane, and the flight path of the plane around the outside of the board with all the city names listed.

Each character maneuvers between a number of different colour-coded rooms all adjacent to each other. Each colour room holds a different resource (Red for Medical, Blue for Water, White for Vaccines, Yellow for Power, Green for Food, Black for Waste and finally Purple for the Cargo Bay). To be able to gain these resources you need to collect the number of dice listed in the room to gain X amount of said resource. Once you have collected the correct amount of resources required by the city then you can airdrop them down out of the cargo bay.

“But wait”, I hear you ask, “I can just use any die? Doesn’t that make the game a bit pointless???”

Good question, voice in my head, which i’m glad you asked.

Each player has 6 Dice, each side of each die has a colour-coded side with the room symbol on. (who would have thought?). You roll all 6 at once and move the colour die that you have to the corrolating room (if required). Once a die has been placed you lose that die until the room is cleared down and you gain the resources available in that room. You have the opportunity to roll your dice 3x per turn (your initial roll and 2 additional rerolls...1+2=3. My maths teacher would be so proud).

Dice are not only used for resource gathering but also movement between the rooms, unlocking the cargo bay and moving the plane to each destination listed around the board. Each time you use a die you lose it for that turn or until it is removed from the board back to your stack.

Each player gets a Character card which displays your starting room in the top right hand corner and gives you a built-in trait that you can use on your turn at any time as many times as you want, for instance “when moving your character using a die, you can move 2 rooms instead of 1” or “when rolling a plane die, you can turn that die to any side that you want and use that on the board”. Some quite handy features, and there are a couple of harder to use characters that the info sheets explicitly tells you not to use until you have got your head around the game a bit.

I went in completely blind and decided to bring in a couple of novice board game players with me (namely my brother and sister - who have made me realise I never want to play a cooperative game with them every again…).

What started as fun very quickly turned into a shouting chaos that irritated my mum as she was watching Love Island at the time. But this shouting chaos was not because we weren’t having fun and were annoyed at the game. No, this was caused by us trying to do things as quickly as possible to make sure we don’t lose the game when the time runs all the way out.

The Lose and Win conditions are simple.

You win by either clearing through the deck of cards listing all of the cities around the map, providing them with the resources required and traveling to them around the map while doing so
*OR
by gaining all of the time tokens, which are given to you one at a time when you succeed in saving a city. Whichever comes first.

You lose by running out of time too many times (you have 3 chances to start with as you start with 3 time tokens, and each time the hourglass runs down you lose a token.
*OR*
by not clearing up the mess you make in the plane creating these resources, eventually tripping over said mess into the cockpit and evidently bombing out of the sky into the Indian ocean. We learned about the 2nd way to lose a bit late into the game after our plane (you guessed it) bombed out of the sky into the Indian ocean.

You need to be really ready for the game as the pace starts at 100% and then ramps up to 150%, and the game doesn’t really slow down either. You start, the timer is flipped and BOOM you’re starting. You are rolling your dice trying to run around the plane, building resources, rolling again, moving the plane, building more resources, re-rolling and then eventually passing it onto the next player after your 3 rolls.

The next player then, in my experience, does the same, but after rolling twice forgets that they can roll a third time and just stares at me blankly expecting me to telepathically recognise that it is indeed my turn. By that time we have 10 seconds left on the time and we have already lost our first time token…. I had to put the hourglass on its side to re-explain the concept of rolling dice to a 16 year old, not something that I thought I would have to do on a Friday evening.

Once we restarted the game we opted to go a bit slower to get the hang of it and work together talking about what's best to do with your teammates' dice and ensuring that we can get things done together..as a team, while it hurt us in the long run (losing the game due to lack of time) it set us up really well for game number 2 which we all wanted to jump straight into.

As game 2 starts we are back up to 100%, but this time all understanding what a set of dice is intended for...JORDAN!!! We start strong and continue to grow stronger as a team, we recognise the dice more, we work out what city is best to commit to due to how far away on the board they are, we start utilizing the character cards and their own personal effects on our turns and found that believe it or not, we were actually winning the game.

Each time we were losing a time token we were gaining another one for saving a city. We were getting so close to winning and then we forgot about a pretty large part of keeping the plane up and running. The waste management, the aforementioned Indian ocean crash of 2019 was looming. One thing I haven't mentioned yet was how waste is created and it's a pretty large element of the game.

Once you activate a room and gain the resources, waste is created by the dice that are used. You roll all of the dice used in that room and any dice that have a circle in the background generates 1 waste counter, if you get up to 11 waste counters you lose...we clearly were too infatuated with saving Tokyo at the time because we didn’t realise that we had ticked up to 10 very very quickly.

We were actually really bummed out that we failed...again! But we had a great time, the games only last around 20 minutes so we could have started up again but we left it for the night.

We have since played and won a few more times and this is still only using the basics.

There are a few more elements/rules that you can use to make the game harder will allows for a great amount of replayability.

Pandemic: Rapid Response is a fast paced, high octane tabletop game that on a basic level anyone from around 10+ can pick up and play, it's a fun coop game to play with your friends and family and for £30~ I think its a great pickup!

Kyle Mullings
Follow Kyle on Twitter



Tuesday, 30 July 2019

E14 Endorsed: TumblingSaber Podcast - Episode 185 | Trust Me On This

This week on the podcast, Kyle and Cory take a closer look at some of the toy news coming out of SDCC, then they attempt to put some sanity back into the comments being attributed to Kevin Smith about The Rise of Skywalker's final shot "melting our minds". Finally, they chat about Finn, and his familiar surroundings.

Follow the TumblingSaber team:

Kyle | Cory | Carlos | Michelle

Check out their Patreon page

Visit the Star Wars Commonwealth

Thanks for listening to the podcast! See you next week!


TumblingSaber Podcast
A Star Wars Podcast

Fandom rises, and a podcast to meet it! TumblingSaber is a Star Wars podcast by fans, for fans! We talk films, TV, comics, novels, toys, and much more!

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Monday, 29 July 2019

E14 Endorsed: Retro Inc - Episode 69 | Dudes!

It's all about SDCC this week and that massive Marvel panel!

We hope you enjoy the show and if you would like to see more content and join us for discussions, questions and some great retro fun then follow us at:

https://www.retroincpocast.co.uk

on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/retroincpodcast/
Twitter @retroincpodcast
and on instagram at https://www.instagram.com/retroincpodcast/

If there is any feedback or you would like to get in contact then feel free to message us at contact@retroincpodcast.co.uk

Talk Star Wars – Episode 177: Darth Fabulous!

In this week’s episode of Talk Star Wars, Rob and Brad are your hosts, and read a new review before digging into prototype Darth Vader figures, as well as fielding a variety of Episode IX theories involving time travel, clones and much much more!

If you want to get your questions read out on the show, why not email us at podcast@talkstarwars.co.uk, tweet us @TalkStarWars or Like our Facebook page?


Talk Star Wars

The official podcast of TalkStarWars.co.uk The latest Star Wars, Rogue One, Episode VIII and Star Wars Rebels news and rumour.

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Friday, 26 July 2019

E14 Endorsed: The Roman Pod And Cast - Episode 174 | Yoga Minister

This week Roman and Rob discuss DDP Yoga, Facebook, England’s new PM and much, much more! A proud member of the Emotionally 14 Family, The Electronic Media Collective Podcast Network and The Tangent-Bound Network.


Roman Pod And Cast

Roman LeBeau and Robert Cast are just a couple of Canadians 🇨🇦 that put our own twist on headlines and trending stories. Not to worry. We try to keep the "eh's" and hockey talk to a minimum!

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Thursday, 25 July 2019

E14 Endorsed: The Nerd Room Episode #179 | MCU PHASE 4 ANNOUNCEMENT, SDCC2019: STAR WARS & DC

Join hosts Tim, Troy, and Sunjay to breakdown and discuss the MASSIVE Marvel Studio MCU Phase 4 slate announcement from SDCC 2019! They also get into SDCC 2019 news from Hasbro (Marvel Legends & Black Series), Star Wars, and DC!


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Be sure to check out more from the Star Wars Commonwealth and follow Talk Star Wars, Tumbling Saber, Generation X-Wing, Rogue Squadron Podcast, Skyhopper Podcast, San Diego Sabers Radio Podcast, Tatooine Sons, Less Than 12 Parsecs and Retro Inc!


The Nerd Room

A Star Wars, Marvel, & DC Podcast
A weekly podcast bringing you the latest Star Wars, Marvel, and DC news and reviews!

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E14 Endorsed: TumblingSaber Podcast - Episode 184 | SDCC and Queen's Shadow Breakdown

This week, Kyle is joined by Marie and Michelle as they delve into the Lucasfilm Publishing panel at SDCC 2019, which includes news of the Rise of Kylo Ren mini series from Charles Soule. Are you looking forward to this series? What are your expectations? Let us know on any of our social media channels! We also take a look back at Queen's Shadow by E.K. Johnston and discuss this novel from early 2019. Enjoy the podcast!

Follow the TumblingSaber team:

Kyle | Cory | Carlos | Michelle

Check out their Patreon page

Visit the Star Wars Commonwealth

Thanks for listening to the podcast! See you next week!


TumblingSaber Podcast
A Star Wars Podcast

Fandom rises, and a podcast to meet it! TumblingSaber is a Star Wars podcast by fans, for fans! We talk films, TV, comics, novels, toys, and much more!

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Patreon

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Tuesday, 23 July 2019

Fire When Ready - Episode 29 - Star Wars: Outer Rim Gameplay - "Boba's the Bad Guy...Duh"

It's something a little different with this episode, and Brad and Ian are joined by Blake Harmer and Dave Mustill for Star Wars: Outer Rim, the new game of piracy, smuggling and high adventure from Fantasy Flight Games!

Scuffles with Greedo, explosions, a bounty on Chewbacca and a bold casino heist in Canto Bight are just some of weird and wonderful adventures that Han Solo, Boba Fett, Jyn Erso and Dr Aphra find themselves caught up in.

Follow us on Facebook and Instagram @firewhenreadyuk

If you like the look of this game, or even if you're just in the market for a few new bits for your existing set, why not check out our Amazon Affiliate store to do so?




Monday, 22 July 2019

E14 Endorsed: Retro Inc - Episode 68 | Wade Into The Chaos

Adam takes some time off and that means Andy and Jeremy needed a grown up to keep them in check.

Special Guest host this week is none other than the glorious leader of Talk Star Wars and Emotionally 14, Rob Wade.

The guys talk, arcades, conventions, retro gaming and Rob shares some of his favourite retro media.

We hope you enjoy the show and if you would like to see more content and join us for discussions, questions and some great retro fun then follow us at:

https://www.retroincpocast.co.uk

on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/retroincpodcast/
Twitter @retroincpodcast
and on instagram at https://www.instagram.com/retroincpodcast/

If there is any feedback or you would like to get in contact then feel free to message us at contact@retroincpodcast.co.uk

Talk Star Wars – Episode 176: Big Bad Jamboree!

In this episode of Talk Star Wars, Rob and Brad are joined by special guest Carlos Candido! The trio talk Sith Troopers, Audiobooks, LEGO builds, The Mandalorian and much more! Plus: What is Snoke’s role (if any) in The Rise of Skywalker? Hear our thoughts on this week’s Talk Star Wars, a production of Emotionally14!

If you want to get your questions read out on the show, why not email us at podcast@talkstarwars.co.uk, tweet us @TalkStarWars or Like our Facebook page?


Talk Star Wars

The official podcast of TalkStarWars.co.uk The latest Star Wars, Rogue One, Episode VIII and Star Wars Rebels news and rumour.

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Friday, 19 July 2019

E14 Endorsed: The Roman Pod And Cast - Episode 173 | Short Stampede

This week Roman and Rob discuss the Calgary Stampede, an angry short guy, selling vehicles and much, much more! A proud member of the Emotionally 14 Family, The Electronic Media Collective Podcast Network and The Tangent-Bound Network.


Roman Pod And Cast

Roman LeBeau and Robert Cast are just a couple of Canadians 🇨🇦 that put our own twist on headlines and trending stories. Not to worry. We try to keep the "eh's" and hockey talk to a minimum!

iTunes

Spotify

Stitcher

Youtube