Retro Fantasy Games

Who doesn't love them?!

I guess, those that have never played them, and well, those that are used to smoother, better thought out game mechanics in some cases.

Being born at the start of the 1970's, I have had the luxury of being able to play a lot of great board and card games over the years. Some I have forgotten about, some I will never forget playing, and would love to play again.

I have been scanning eBay for old games I remember and used to love. The hope is my friends would still want to play them, and maybe even my daughters might enjoy a game or two with me too.

I am just going to skim over some here, I might do more detailed posts on them later.

So, what did I get first?

Net Runner

I LOVED this card game back in the day, being a huge fan of William Gibson, and especially Neuromancer (if you have not read it, you really should! I might even do a post on it). It was, as far as I know the first Cyberpunk CCG/TCG (Collectible Card Game/Trading Card Game).

It's a two player game, one of you plays as a: 

Corporation, you have a massive amount of resources, lots of expensive intrusion counter measures electronics (ICE), nodes to protect, some holding Corporate Agendas win, access to groups of mercenaries and/or street samurai used to track down and kill/harm Net Runners and other nasty resources. 

The other a Net Runner (Hacker), very little resources and equipment, all you have is what you can get your hands on on the black market, keeping yourself hidden as best you can, all you can do is make probing runs on the Corporation until you find a weakness to exploit, get to the heart of a node and hope there is some Corporate Agenda there for you to steal, and then, get back out alive and undetected.

The idea of the game is for either player to score a given amount of Agenda points, or for the Corporation to kill the Net Runner.

And was it as good as I remember it?

YES! I still love it. I would play this game time and time again. Went a little mad with it, got myself at least 3 sets of eBay and even bought my friend a copy (not sure he likes it as much as me though lol). I even got my daughter a copy, I am still yet to convince her to play, though she is a big MTG (Magic The Gathering) fan.

Magic The Gathering

As we are on the subject, a good few months before I started fishing on eBay for old games I use to love, I picked up MTG on amazon, got one of those deck builder sets, think it was £20 or something. I got it to play with my eldest daughter as I thought she might like it. 

She did! We play it when ever we get the time to (spare time is as rare as a rocking horse's poop!)

And was it as good as I remember it?

Yep, still a good solid CCG, I struggle with some of the new expanded rules (remember, I used to play this in it's very first iteration). There are many ways to play it now, the Commander variant is one I have been told is good, but have never tried it, and we still play the old way.

Another thing I like about MTG is that it's 2 or more players, gets a lot more interesting the more players you have. Back in the day I think we used to have about 4 or 5 players in our games.

Dungeons & Dragons Basic Rules Set 1

So, yeah, I had to get this when I saw it on eBay, think I picked this up for £14 with postage; I think that was a bit of a steal.

I'm sure you have come across Dungeons & Dragons before, it's had many iterations, and some before this version. This however was quite probably the very first version I ever had, my first fantasy game, other than the awesome Fighting Fantasy books.

Alas, this didn't come with the original dice and the wax crayon you used in order to read them. This was done by rubbing each face of every die to fill in the numbers with wax. I think manufacturing back then was quite limited, the dice were just lumps of plastic.

The artwork in the two books is just lovely, all of it, and every page fills me with childhood memories.

And was it as good as I remember it?

No idea, not played it, and probably never will. This for me was just a nostalgia buy, and I am glad I got it.

The Fury of Dracula

This I remembered as a really great game, best with 4 players (max of 4 anyway), the idea of the game is for the 3 vampire hunters to find and destroy Count Dracula. The 4th player, Dracula, has to evade the hunters by secretly moving around Europe while doing his best to create 6 vampire spawn.

The players, as they move around the map of Europe, pick up cards and equipment to help them in their quests. The hunters, getting guns, and wooden stakes; Dracula, finding minions and dark events he can trap the hunters with.

And was it as good as I remember it?

Oh, yes! This, like many of the others mentioned here has a number of versions, this one, I think, being the first. Playing this again with my old friends was great, not only holding lots of great memories, but also just a really good, fun game to play.

More, there must be more....

There is, there are loads I would like to cover and dig into, this one post would be just too long to cover them all. So I have decided to put a hold on it here, and later post about them each in a post of their own. I think that would do them each justice.

As ever, I hope my rambling has not put you off returning, I doubt I have not shown you anything you have not seen or been aware of before your visit, either way, feel free to post a comment on anything mentioned here and I'll do my best to respond.

As ever, thanks for your time.