Robot Mayhem

Once upon a time there was a little game company in Seattle. They were called Wizards of the Coast, and before they hit the motherlode with Magic: The Gathering, they put out some board games. One of those was called RoboRally, and it is (or was) a great way to spend a Saturday evening, particularly when beer was involved.

Hasbro acquired Wizards of the Coast, and they've re-released the game. (It's been out of print for years.) Some of the changes are good—I fully support the programming boards that have a really good description of when damage locks registers, life tokens placement, etc. However, some of the changes are a little weird... They've abandoned the Phil Foglio designs for the robots (which looked great as metal figs and even better once you painted them) in favor of some generic bots in silver plastic. The boards look very generic, too.

I should probably head out to the comic shop today, in addition to kickball practice. Somebody ruined it for everybody at my shop, so they're now going to call you with nasty notes if you go 8 weeks without showing up. (There's a story there somewhere, but they wouldn't really go into it. Grrr. I hate that my fellow comics buyers continue to shaft the business that supports their habit. Evidently somebody for a while was refusing to cancel a title, but would instead take issues they didn't want and stash them in the racks...)