Has anyone else tried this yet?
http://www.go-pokemon.com/tfg/
I first heard of it on Penny-arcade; they seem to love it. It looked pretty cool to me so i looked into it a bit (there is a SORE lack of info on the internet btw), eventually i decided to buy some, so i split a case off ebay (it's not even out in Canada) with a friend.
So far, I like it quite a bit.
The game is -very- simple to pick up (my gf didn't have trouble playing it with me) but from what I've seen it does have depth to it. It consists of moving figures accross a board and spinning the base to determine which attack they use, or whether they dodge, miss, etc. You can also kill by surrounding on all sides. Victory though is achieved by reaching your opponent's goal, so one kill doesnt necessarily mean much. Stronger figures (Charizard, Lugia, Golem, etc.) will only be able to move one space so they are better suited for defense, medium ones (Zangoose, Pikachu, Raichu, and surprisingly Ho-oh) move two spaces and are quite good for offense, wheras speedsters with 3-space movement like Treeko, Ekans, Murkrow and Doduo are best suited for moving around the board, threatening to surround the enemy or reach the goal. There are also some tricksters like Meowth, Voltorb and Abra who rely on special moves to switch places with others, explode killing everything around them or teleport away respectively. (they are not the only ones with special non-damage moves though). Having a good mix is important to winning. A team of six three-space movers will have a hard time taking on a defending Charizard or Lugia for instance, while those slow movers can't reach the goal fast enough and are susceptible to surrounds and other manoevres. All in all, I like this game a lot.
The best thing about it though is the quality of the figures. They are fantastically built, and most of the designs look really cool (e.g., ekans wrapped around a tree branch, charizard surrounded by fire, zangoose sticking out his claw, etc.) Finally, if they break (one figure i got was separated from the base), it's really easy to fix them with super glue.
The downside however is the cost.
The actual price is reasonable. Considering the figures themselves are worth owning for the nice designs if you're into that, 7$ USD for 2 seems like a decent price. However, it's the way they're packaged:
There're 2 different starter sets which go for 16$, but are more or less essential, and a good deal because they come with 3 figures, a trainer figure, 3 item cards, the mat you need to play, etc. Both sets are roughly even (Charizard, Meowth and Treeko vs. Feraligatr Pikachu and Murkrow). So that's not the problem.
The boosters however, come with one visible figure and one hidden figure for 7$. The problem is that there are only about 6-7 visible ones, so if buy a lot trying to get that one figure you want you're bound to end up with tons of doubles. Since we bought a case, we couldn't even see the visibles before opening it so we ended up with 5 Eevees. (Did get some good figures to make up for that though.)
Overall, I'd recommend giving it a try if you're interested. (Geez this post turned out much lenghier than expected. Enjoy!)
http://www.go-pokemon.com/tfg/
I first heard of it on Penny-arcade; they seem to love it. It looked pretty cool to me so i looked into it a bit (there is a SORE lack of info on the internet btw), eventually i decided to buy some, so i split a case off ebay (it's not even out in Canada) with a friend.
So far, I like it quite a bit.
The game is -very- simple to pick up (my gf didn't have trouble playing it with me) but from what I've seen it does have depth to it. It consists of moving figures accross a board and spinning the base to determine which attack they use, or whether they dodge, miss, etc. You can also kill by surrounding on all sides. Victory though is achieved by reaching your opponent's goal, so one kill doesnt necessarily mean much. Stronger figures (Charizard, Lugia, Golem, etc.) will only be able to move one space so they are better suited for defense, medium ones (Zangoose, Pikachu, Raichu, and surprisingly Ho-oh) move two spaces and are quite good for offense, wheras speedsters with 3-space movement like Treeko, Ekans, Murkrow and Doduo are best suited for moving around the board, threatening to surround the enemy or reach the goal. There are also some tricksters like Meowth, Voltorb and Abra who rely on special moves to switch places with others, explode killing everything around them or teleport away respectively. (they are not the only ones with special non-damage moves though). Having a good mix is important to winning. A team of six three-space movers will have a hard time taking on a defending Charizard or Lugia for instance, while those slow movers can't reach the goal fast enough and are susceptible to surrounds and other manoevres. All in all, I like this game a lot.
The best thing about it though is the quality of the figures. They are fantastically built, and most of the designs look really cool (e.g., ekans wrapped around a tree branch, charizard surrounded by fire, zangoose sticking out his claw, etc.) Finally, if they break (one figure i got was separated from the base), it's really easy to fix them with super glue.
The downside however is the cost.
The actual price is reasonable. Considering the figures themselves are worth owning for the nice designs if you're into that, 7$ USD for 2 seems like a decent price. However, it's the way they're packaged:
There're 2 different starter sets which go for 16$, but are more or less essential, and a good deal because they come with 3 figures, a trainer figure, 3 item cards, the mat you need to play, etc. Both sets are roughly even (Charizard, Meowth and Treeko vs. Feraligatr Pikachu and Murkrow). So that's not the problem.
The boosters however, come with one visible figure and one hidden figure for 7$. The problem is that there are only about 6-7 visible ones, so if buy a lot trying to get that one figure you want you're bound to end up with tons of doubles. Since we bought a case, we couldn't even see the visibles before opening it so we ended up with 5 Eevees. (Did get some good figures to make up for that though.)
Overall, I'd recommend giving it a try if you're interested. (Geez this post turned out much lenghier than expected. Enjoy!)
