I had a gift certificate for my FLGS burning a hole in my pocker from Christmas, along with a few gift credit cards and went to bopefully score Brass and A Feast for Odin. I got the latter, but looked at Fireball Island and looked at my kids patiently waiting while reading their comic books and caved on the former and picked it up instead.
My two daughters are 10 and 7. The elder will play almost anything, and has done so for years. The younger is way more picky. Both seemed excited to play, so puchases were made and we headed home. After working together to tear off the shrink wrap, we opened it up and took a look inside.
A quick word of warning, some care should be taken punching out the components. They are not the greatest quality and some splitting occured. A leter review may address this. However, if I had to do it again, I would have put everything together while the TV babysat them, as some boredom set in. However, once it was time to play, they were raring to go. All the marbles and movable bits had them chomping to get started.
I took too long reading the rules, and should have gone over it myself and taught while playing, but done is done. A few turns in and they had the idea and we were off to the races.
The younger kid made a bee line for the gem. After that, both kids were chasing each other around the board trying to steal it from one another. I did have to explain the action cards the first few rounds to my younger child, but she was fine afterwards. They loved flicking embers at their opponents and using Vul'Kar to destroy their enemies. There was a good deal of excited cheers when someone went down and relieved gasps when a marble failed to knock down their character on a near miss.
I didn't realize until it was too late, but I missed that we were supposed to add a fireball to the scar when the gem got taken. This caused the end game to trivger about 15 minutes later than it should. However, no one seemed to care as it allowed for more carnage.
In the end, everyone made it back to the hello copter, but younger child made a strange decision to skip the helipad to try and do... something? initially when end game triggered once all 4 marbles were in the scar. This caused her to actually lose out on 13 points, as elder daughter managed to steal the gem at the final moment and I got the lucky penny instead of her. Still, she didn't seem to mind.
In the end, younger kid had 22 points, elder 24 and I smacked them for 42. Even so, there as a chorus of "can we play again!" Which was music to my ears.
All in all, it looks like I made the right choice, as I have some happy kids.
My two daughters are 10 and 7. The elder will play almost anything, and has done so for years. The younger is way more picky. Both seemed excited to play, so puchases were made and we headed home. After working together to tear off the shrink wrap, we opened it up and took a look inside.
A quick word of warning, some care should be taken punching out the components. They are not the greatest quality and some splitting occured. A leter review may address this. However, if I had to do it again, I would have put everything together while the TV babysat them, as some boredom set in. However, once it was time to play, they were raring to go. All the marbles and movable bits had them chomping to get started.
I took too long reading the rules, and should have gone over it myself and taught while playing, but done is done. A few turns in and they had the idea and we were off to the races.
The younger kid made a bee line for the gem. After that, both kids were chasing each other around the board trying to steal it from one another. I did have to explain the action cards the first few rounds to my younger child, but she was fine afterwards. They loved flicking embers at their opponents and using Vul'Kar to destroy their enemies. There was a good deal of excited cheers when someone went down and relieved gasps when a marble failed to knock down their character on a near miss.
I didn't realize until it was too late, but I missed that we were supposed to add a fireball to the scar when the gem got taken. This caused the end game to trivger about 15 minutes later than it should. However, no one seemed to care as it allowed for more carnage.
In the end, everyone made it back to the hello copter, but younger child made a strange decision to skip the helipad to try and do... something? initially when end game triggered once all 4 marbles were in the scar. This caused her to actually lose out on 13 points, as elder daughter managed to steal the gem at the final moment and I got the lucky penny instead of her. Still, she didn't seem to mind.
In the end, younger kid had 22 points, elder 24 and I smacked them for 42. Even so, there as a chorus of "can we play again!" Which was music to my ears.
All in all, it looks like I made the right choice, as I have some happy kids.