After coming back from BGG Con, I've been on fire to get Tragedy Looper and One Night Ultimate Werewolf. As if I need more hames! I already had Thunder Alley in my cart, so... Merry Christmas to me? So yeah, can't wait.
Hah, that's funny because I just made another order ($140 more~~~~) that included Tragedy Looper and One Night Werewolf.
Also ordered Roll for the Galaxy (used to be big into Race) and Zong Shi (played it at PAX with people and saw it on sale and remembered I enjoyed it).
Yeah, I got in my game stuff from Shadows about 2 weeks back. Wish I'd known the figures had to be cut out and glued together.
The game does look fun. Kind of like a Descent: Journeys in the Dark 2nd edition in play. Though I don't think there's a need for a player to play the monsters. Hard to tell, I've only glanced through the rules.
Yeah, it was a bit of a controversial discovery, but hopefully even my amateur skills will be up to the task of at least assembling the figures without too much trouble.
And you are correct; it is purely co-op gameplay; 1-6 players, with events (map tiles, room contents, ambushes/monsters/etc, loot) determined randomly. The monsters have a manner in which they act described, etc. I spent last night catching up on a few shows (Daily Show, Colbert, Person of Interest) and trying to carefully punch out all the cardboard (tiles and tokens) from the two boxes, and then baggied them up for storage. Thinking I'll want to get a sizable case with partitions at some point for better storage/accessibility.
Hopefully tonight my buddy and I will deliver the second set of games to our friends in town, as this was bought for them as a mixed Birthday/Christmas present for them.
Seeing their faces when they see the map should be pretty spectacular.
They know they're both on it.
They don't know there's a third name in relation to them on there as well.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
Ugh. Seriously. I am so depressed. I just keep looking at the box and feeling like I wasted $50. Even if the 3 smaller games inside are worth almost that much by themselves! Guess I need to start looking for a local trade for my old copy.
Origin for Dragon Age: Inquisition Shenanigans: Inksplat776
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GuibsWeekend WarriorSomewhere up North.Registered Userregular
Too bad you don't live close and speak french. I have a open once french copy of suburbia that I have been looking to get rid of. Just not my type and it seems to be shared by my kids as well.
On another note, I walk to my local gaming store to see if anything new showed up. They had received 7 wonders : Babel but their copies were already reserved. Unfortunately, no Samurai Spirits yet...
The big Marvel Legendary box keep calling me... and I was able to resist. Then I notice something, They had received some Star Realms! We LOVE Star Realms at home and I was fortunate to find a copy of the game for MSRP back when it was the hot thing and soldout everywhere on one of my business trip. I didn't knew they were finally back in stock and meant to buy a second copy so we could play with more than 2! I guess 3 and 4 player Star Realms is officially a thing that will be hapening over my house now.
I got to play Castles of Mad King Ludwig and Abyss the other day. And I was a little underwhelmed by both, although for different reasons. Neither of which having directly to do with the quality of the games themselves.
Castles of.... apparently builds on the design ideas of Suburbia, which I haven't played. In Castles of... you take turns expanding what I assume is a blueprint of a castle for King Ludwig, or maybe you're building it? Because you need to spend money to add new rooms to the ones you already have... but then you pay that money to one of the players, and only that player pays money into the bank... err... and for some reason if you connect all exits of a room to either another room or hallway, you trigger a bonus... and additionally you get extra points if certain rooms are adjacent to other rooms or lose points if the wrong rooms share a wall with certain rooms... err... well... thematically, it's all very nonsensical. It's better explained as a tile-laying game, where the tiles have special abilities that you can set up to trigger; additional VP you can score, if you lay out the "castle" just right and a (clever) auction-type mechanism to determine who gets what.
Really, the neatest mechanism of the game is the start of each round. There are five rooms available each turn, ranging from 2000 to 15,000 Marks (I think?), which you have to pay in order to add that room to your sprawling castle. The clever bit being, that you don't pay that money into the bank but instead to the starting player and that starting player has determined the order (and therefore the value) of each available room at the start of the turn. Each room that isn't bought gets money placed on it, to make it more appealing to buy the following turn. A circular room that costs you 8000, might become a great deal, if you get 6000 of those back. Anyway, each room you place gets you VP. If each exit of a room leads into either another room or a hallway, you get to trigger that room's special ability, which ranges from additional VP, to extra money to taking another turn and so on. And on top of that, each room also generates bonus VP if adjacent to specific other rooms. So once you place a room somewhere, you're likely to look for the right type of room to trigger those extra VP. There are also secret VP conditions, that every player gets to draw at the start of the game (with the option to draw additional secret VP conditions later on, if you complete the right rooms) and there are three over-arching VP opportunities (the king's wishes or some such), that everybody can qualify for.
It all is quite interesting and engaging. A fun little brain-burner... if it wasn't for the way that rooms come into play. You have a deck of cards, showing room types (I believe there are about eight in total) and at the end of the turn, you draw from that deck to see which rooms are added to the display. My secret VP condition was 2VP / 250m² room (they range from 10m² to 500m² I believe) and as you can guess, throughout the game only a small handful of those showed up. No worries, I thought, I just try to draw additional VP condition cards. Towards the end of the game, I had 3 secret goals, scoring points for each 200, 250 and 300m² room. And that is where the second annoyance comes in, people are likely to buy the rooms you want before you can. They don't really mean to. After all, they are unlikely to suss out your secret goals in 2-3 turns. They are just looking at the rooms from a different angle. Maybe they want the room's ability, maybe it's just the cheapest they can pick or maybe the just want to trigger the special ability of a room they already have and they don't really care which room they buy, as long as it fits. What it all adds up to, is this greatly unsatisfying feeling of your success at this game being largely determined by the choices of other players. Only a small fraction of which is set out to deliberately screw you out of points. It simply happens. There's absolutely nothing you can do about it. When you're the starting player you may subtly nudge the rest of the table towards picking up one room or another, but even then... you will be the last to buy from the display. You are still dependent on choices made by players who really don't have anything you do in mind. If you're like me... this is unbearably frustrating. Because on the one hand, the game seems to suggest you have some influence on how to score VP, how to set yourself up for clever combinations of rooms and so on... but really, if the right rooms don't show up, or happen to be picked up before you get a turn, there's nothing you can do about it.
It's not a bad game. But if you want your choices to be the main factor in determining how you fare, Castles of... will not really deliver that. You are dependent on other players, but have very few ways of influencing those players. I wouldn't object to playing it again, but I definitely wouldn't put much effort into winning. But what really kills the game for me, is the price. Which is about double what I'd consider reasonable for the components and the depth of the game.
Speaking of depths (pun accidentally dropped in with a hand-written apology), Abyss is kind of an odd beast. It's a Bruno Cathala game, that comes in variant boxes (5 in total), with plastic cups to hold plastic pearls in them and very nice-looking artwork and a very atmospheric board... for what is really just a needlessly overproduced card game. You draw small cards from a deck to auction off to the other players. You get to keep drawing cards, until you find one that you want and then can simply pick it into your hand discarding the rest face-down into the appropriate piles of the same colour. These cards are used as currency to buy large cards and put them in front of you. If another player wants a currency card, though, they get first pick and pay you in pearls.
The large cards you eventually buy, get you VP, and usually have some kind of special ability. The more powerful that ability, the more likely they are to feature a key. Once you have three keys in front of you, you have to place these large cards into their own "habitat" for lack of a better word, which nullifies the special abilities. Those "habitats" also give you VP and some additional VP goal, guiding you to pick up large cards of a certain type. On your turn, you can choose to do either of those things: drawing currency cards or buying a large card. You may also take a discard pile of one colour, possibly increasing your possibilities to buy large cards. There are some other elements, that I've skipped. But the core idea is basically, you pick up or buy cards to pick up bigger cards to get VP and/or special abilities, until you have too many and send them off to their own "habitat". Repeat until one player ends up with 7 large cards in front of them. Add up VP. The End.
If this sounds dull, it shouldn't. It's actually quite nice. But it is really just a card game, blown up to needlessly indulgent proportions. It also plays fairly quickly and easily. Which is something that isn't as easy to design as the rulebook suggests. It does allow for some interesting decisions and you get to react to whatever other players are working towards. It's the type of card game, that a smaller publisher or less well-known designer would have tried to push into a tiny box. And chances are, it would have generated big, long-lasting buzz. As it is, the opulent production really kind of sours me on the game. It's pretty, but useless. It doesn't even add to the theme, because the theme itself is so vaguely defined. Apparently it's underwater nations, forming alliances or some such? To gain the favour of nobles (the large cards)? And there's a council (discard piles)? The theme simply isn't coherent enough for the production design to add anything to the game other than 20$. As it is, at half the price, it's a recommendation. At full price, I can't guarantee you won't feel a little ripped off.
Well, on the bright side of my day, Maximum Throwdown: Overload was actually quite a bit of fun. Fun enough that I'm considering picking up the original game for the additional character decks.
The game is played by throwing cards into the playing area, and needing them to land touching at least one other card. Each player gets a character deck that consists of 15 cards, each having different combinations of abilities, as well as differences in how the icons representing those abilities are laid out on the card. An ability is "active" if its icon is completely uncovered on the table. However, if even a fraction of it is covered by another card, its unavailable. You score points every turn based on pips on the cards, that also must remain visible.
My wife and I played two games. In the first, my wife played Wendy from Doomtown and blew numerous holes in me playing Cthulu. Second game had my zombies tearing her mage knight thing limb from limb in hilarious fashion. Definitely going to bring it to my game night on Saturday and see how it plays with more people, as it seems like a nice quick filler all the way up to 6 (or 12, if you have both games) players.
Origin for Dragon Age: Inquisition Shenanigans: Inksplat776
Anybody out there have impressions on Dust Tactics? I'm tempted to jump on some of the Black Friday sales out there.
Unless you have a genuinely compelling reason to pick up DT, and know you have someone else who would pick it up with you, you should really not bother.
Anybody out there have impressions on Dust Tactics? I'm tempted to jump on some of the Black Friday sales out there.
Unless you have a genuinely compelling reason to pick up DT, and know you have someone else who would pick it up with you, you should really not bother.
Because it's not a good game?
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ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
Well, it's a pretty low-bar miniatures game that you play on a grid. The main point is that it's still a miniatures game, which means you're encouraged to continue buying new things. I don't think the very baseline of the game is interesting or worthwhile. Hence, unless there's something specific about it and you know you'll have people to play it with, it would likely gather dust. That wasn't intentional ...
I wanted to like Infinity but the whole three turn limit, action pool, dumping all your actions into one person who rambos up the field really turned me off, just not my cup of tea.
Also I wouldn't really call Ghost in the Shell Cyberpunk and WW2 Steampunk the same thing.
Inquisitor on
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tzeentchlingDoctor of RocksOaklandRegistered Userregular
Tell me about 7 Wonders: Babel! I didn't even know it was coming until I saw it in the store the other day. It looked interesting, but how does it change gameplay?
So The Witcher Adventure Game came out for PC today ($8).
I'm not sure what to make of it. It's colorful with great graphics and lots of polish, but I have no clue what's going on or what actions are better than others. There's also very little interaction between the different players. It seems even more multiplayer solitaire than something like Terra Mystica.
I wanted to like Infinity but the whole three turn limit, action pool, dumping all your actions into one person who rambos up the field really turned me off, just not my cup of tea.
Also I wouldn't really call Ghost in the Shell Cyberpunk and WW2 Steampunk the same thing.
Infinity is not without issues, but Dust Tactics isn't an extraordinarily high benchmark.
GitS cyberpunk and WW2 steampunk are pretty similar in a lot of ways, because a lot of Japanese style cyberpunk is ultimately rooted in the social aftermath of WW2.
The Dust Tactics models and the Infinity models are more similar than not. I could easily confuse the two. The main difference is in paint schemes - drab and camo vs. well... anime.
I could see mixing up some of the earlier Infinity models or the Ariadna models with some Dust stuff, but the later stuff and a lot of the armies are just too sleek I think.
I can't speak for the actual gameplay of Dust Tactics, having never played it myself. I do admit I find the grid system appealing but, I pretty much just pass on any miniature based games just for cost reasons these days.
Okay, big thumbs down for The Witcher Adventure board game. It's a competitive game of almost zero interaction between the players (not even competing for limited resources like most multiplayer solitaire euros) and high luck. You're basically just rolling dice until one person wins.
It's also way too easy to get stuck in an endless cycle of getting wounded (which takes up your turn to heal) and drawing "foul fate" event cards (which cause more wounds and deal you more foul fate cards). Think getting stuck on a tough monster space in Arkham Horror.
The game said the medium length game option I chose was supposed to take 20-40 minutes. After 50 minutes, I was stuck in a loop of hopelessly fucked, spent 40 more unfun minutes trying to dig myself out of the hole, none of the other computer players were close to winning, so I gave up and uninstalled it. Not even one full playthrough, would never try it a second time.
It reminds me a bit of Eldritch Horror in that you're moving around the map collecting "clues", getting 2 actions a turn.
But it's like Eldritch Horror without a point. It's definitely not co-op and and it's not competitive. You're constantly hit with "miss a turn" effects and you just keep rolling dice until the game ends.
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CaptainPeacockBoard Game HoarderTop o' the LakeRegistered Userregular
Played Skull and Roses and Sheriff of Nottingham again last night after Thanksgiving dinner. I cannot overstate how awesome and casual these games are.
Cluck cluck, gibber gibber, my old man's a mushroom, etc.
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SixCaches Tweets in the mainframe cyberhexRegistered Userregular
Brought a few games on a Thanksgiving trip this year. Dragon Slayer and Coup for quick game in between other things. Panic on Wall Street for when we could get everyone together for a game last night.
It was (as we hoped) as rousing, screaming good time.
In other news, it seems my copy of [redacted] was delivered today. I've already scheduled a meetup to play it on Sunday.
So I found that Desura is releasing the Consulting Detective cases for $4 each. We went with the first one, the killer mummy.
It seemed too obvious and too obtuse at the same time. Is the mummy case just a tutorial and the other cases more involved?
I was thinking, "It can't be this obvious, can it?" as soon as we visited the reporter. The victims had a ceremonial bowl of ashes nearby and were obviously done by someone who believed in or knew of Egyptian rituals. Monkey hairs were found in the bandages around the victims.
The reporter:
A.) Was an obvious crackpot
B.) Entire apartment was decked with Egyptian rituals, and had a strong Egyptology background.
C.) Had a dead monkey wrapped in bandages.
D.) Lit leaves on fire inside a bowl next to the corpse as part of a ceremony.
He was like the 4th location we visited. I thought there had to be more to it. But nope, he was the killer. The only problem was the judge said we didn't have enough evidence. So we went around a bunch and this thing with the Arabs on the ship came up. One was an agent for the Sultan pursuing some valuable jar artifact carried by the other. The agent was a large strong man and the evidence said the victims were killed by strong hands capable of crushing the windpipe and neck vertebrae, meanwhile the reporter looked like a wimp. The innkeeper had overheard a large Arab and Englishman discussing the ship. The jar carrying Arab was found dead with a knife in his backwhen we visited him and the agent wasn't at his address.
Do we have to resolve the Arabs' involvement in this? Nope.
Do we need airtight evidence to convict the reporter? Nope. All you need is that he was in same location for all 3 murders and that he had a VERY shakey motive for each murder. That's it. MURDER CONVICTION. Now I've seen enough fictional murder cases to know that you need opportunity, motive, and means. Your only grounds for implicating the reporter are "You were both in London - one of the largest metropolises in the world - at the time", making the assumption that he was willing to commit murder over someone opening up a tomb even though the reporter wanted to go on the expedition in the first place, and that someone insulted him in an editorial letter. That's it. The animal hairs never come into it. The necessary strength of the murderer never comes into it. Proving that the reporter, I dunno, actually killed the victims never comes into it.
Finally, I have no clue how Sherlock's score is even possible. The best you can do on the first action is get a list of passengers on the ship. There's no indication at that point if anyone is more suspicious than the others. You have no idea about the identities attached to the names. To get Sherlock's score, you have to randomly pick the reporter's name first then follow every exact lead. I didn't see anything that pointed you to the reporter at the point you get the list.
I do love Sherlock's constant jabs at Watson being a fat dummy.
It reminds me a bit of Eldritch Horror in that you're moving around the map collecting "clues", getting 2 actions a turn.
But it's like Eldritch Horror without a point. It's definitely not co-op and and it's not competitive. You're constantly hit with "miss a turn" effects and you just keep rolling dice until the game ends.
jergarmarhollow man crewgoes pew pew pewRegistered Userregular
Well now, got in some first-time plays of a couple of my new games. Both with a younger crowd (10-13), so keep that in mind.
Dead of Winter: I had a pretty good idea of the game before we started, and it did not disappoint. We were flailing around, had some early insta-deaths, and then we got some better gear (like a rifle) and were able to push to the win. Two of us completed our hidden objectives and my nephew... was the betrayer! Now these are kids who are well-experienced with The Resistance (and pretty good bluffers), so it's not like he didn't understand the concept. He was just having too much fun learning the game and helping the colony. I'm excited to see what will happen in our next game.
Descent (2nd edition): WAY old news, especially what with Imperial Assault being released, but new to me. We played the intro scenario, and I (as Overlord) got to maul a few people (especially my brother-in-law) with a giant ettin, I got frighteningly close to sending the fifth goblin to the exit for the win, but the heroes prevailed and Mauler fell to my nephew's terrifying berserker. Everybody (including me) was excited to pick their next upgrades, pack up their stuff, and eagerly wait for a chance to play the next scenario. I love the campaign system idea. Hope it stays this fun.
So yeah, I love games with tons of narrative, so these were two big winners for me. Satisfying week!
When I was a child, I had a fever... My BoardGameGeek profile
Battle.net: TheGerm#1430 (Hearthstone, Destiny 2)
Hosted a Thanksgiving Down Under party with my lovely (American) wife @lonelyahava over the weekend.
One Night Ultimate Werewolf went down an absolute treat!
Including the time that one of the guys forgot that he was a werewolf...
What can you do, though? You just gotta play on...
Edit: In hindsight, I should have done the whole, "Okay, everyone, keep your eyes closed and facepalm. Now, I'm going to go through each of your cards, and find the person who's forgotten that they're a werewolf and tap them on the shoulder."
ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
Friends and I spontaneously hit up the board room last night. We got in 3 games before all deciding to call it.
First up was Evolution. I had heard about this somewhere, but could recall nithing other than I was happy to try it myself. It's delightfully simple rules-wise. I also thought it was quite smart, with card and trait management holding more depth than we could explore in one game. I enjoyed it quite a bit, although we called it a round early after one player had a very harsh time and we knew who was where in finishing order.
Despite the somewhat bittersweet nature of our play, all of us wanted to play again. I do think it will take an expansion to add a couple of things. For starters, the hard shell trait just seems too good at overcoming predators. Similarly, requiring a larger body size than your prey made life as a carnivore tough. This seems intentional so as to not make eating each other the best strategy outright, but for the most part carnivores could scarcely eat anything because there are so many defences.
Whatever the case, I would still totally recommend it.
Secondly we played Trains.
I have little to say about it. It probably is AEG's best game, but I say that thinking it deserves a solid 6/10 at best. I found the board added basically nothing over Dominion. I was similarly disappointed that I won, buying no economy other than 2 freight trains, only a single action card, and otherwise grabbed station building and track laying cards.
It falls very flat for me, and I don't feel any of us were particularly impressed with it. Notably, waste management was an interesting mechanic, and probably the most interesting part of the game.
Lastly, we played Sherif of Nottingham.
Brilliant. Just, brilliant. It's quick, blunt bluffing and set collection, with diplomacy and bribery built-in. We loved it, and our friend who has some store credit elsewhere definitely plans to buy it.
There's just something about those little pouches and their clasp that is ridiculously satisfying. We all look forward to playing it more.
AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
Broke out Lagoon. I like it quite a bit, but it is kind of AP: The Game, since for most of your turns you have way too many options (and you can't really consider them until you know what the board is going to look like after your opponents move).
I really enjoy Trains. Part of that is just the 'I can see my house from here' feeling. But part is how important the board actually is. I played it with Dominion players and they built up a sweet multiplayer solitaire engine while I killed on the board. Now we know the board is like TTR - you have to think about what you want to take, plan how to take it (bridge cards etc) and watch other people so they don't take what you want before you can. If you play it like Dominion you will lose. If you play it like TTR while others are playing Dominion they will lose. But if everyone gets the strategies, it's a great game. One of my top 3 deckbuilders, along with Legendary and Rune Age+expansion, I think.
Just got a military victory as the Free People in War of the Ring.
Think it may be time to retire from boardgaming, go out while I'm on top.
Playing with the expansion or just got super lucky or what? Don't leave us hanging!
Hah sorry I had to run off to work! We were playing the base game as it was our first time playing war of the ring in two years (moving overseas for work will do thst to ya). Which means we knew juuuust enough strategy to get ourselves really in trouble.
First two turns I had the fellowship really hustling, moving two spaces a turn, before I got revealed on a hunt just on the other side of moria. He then hig me with a morghul blade and bad weather forcing me back into moria. At this point I threw out some event cards to split off some fellowship members to activate the northmen, dwarves and elves and get them moving down the track before limping into Lorien, knowing I had some cards to remove extra corruption there.
The shadow player smelt weakness and launched a two pronged siege on Lorien from Moria and Dul-Guldur to pin the ringbearers and things were looking really dire but a strategy card let me muster in Lorien and we prove swifter let me get some of the fellowship splt off and get fighting. A lucky series of die rolls saw the siege turn my favor.
And then we both realized that he had moved ALL the troops from Moria and Dul-Guldur (he had also been sieging Minas Tirith at this point)and thus began the mad dash of the northmen and other elves to liberate lorien and smash those two strongholds which they did one turn before uruk-hai reinforcements arrived in mass to stop them.
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Hah, that's funny because I just made another order ($140 more~~~~) that included Tragedy Looper and One Night Werewolf.
Also ordered Roll for the Galaxy (used to be big into Race) and Zong Shi (played it at PAX with people and saw it on sale and remembered I enjoyed it).
Yeah, it was a bit of a controversial discovery, but hopefully even my amateur skills will be up to the task of at least assembling the figures without too much trouble.
And you are correct; it is purely co-op gameplay; 1-6 players, with events (map tiles, room contents, ambushes/monsters/etc, loot) determined randomly. The monsters have a manner in which they act described, etc. I spent last night catching up on a few shows (Daily Show, Colbert, Person of Interest) and trying to carefully punch out all the cardboard (tiles and tokens) from the two boxes, and then baggied them up for storage. Thinking I'll want to get a sizable case with partitions at some point for better storage/accessibility.
Hopefully tonight my buddy and I will deliver the second set of games to our friends in town, as this was bought for them as a mixed Birthday/Christmas present for them.
Seeing their faces when they see the map should be pretty spectacular.
They know they're both on it.
They don't know there's a third name in relation to them on there as well.
On another note, I walk to my local gaming store to see if anything new showed up. They had received 7 wonders : Babel but their copies were already reserved. Unfortunately, no Samurai Spirits yet...
The big Marvel Legendary box keep calling me... and I was able to resist. Then I notice something, They had received some Star Realms! We LOVE Star Realms at home and I was fortunate to find a copy of the game for MSRP back when it was the hot thing and soldout everywhere on one of my business trip. I didn't knew they were finally back in stock and meant to buy a second copy so we could play with more than 2! I guess 3 and 4 player Star Realms is officially a thing that will be hapening over my house now.
PSN: Guibs25 | XboxLive: Guibs | Steam: Guibsx | Twitch: Guibsx
Really, the neatest mechanism of the game is the start of each round. There are five rooms available each turn, ranging from 2000 to 15,000 Marks (I think?), which you have to pay in order to add that room to your sprawling castle. The clever bit being, that you don't pay that money into the bank but instead to the starting player and that starting player has determined the order (and therefore the value) of each available room at the start of the turn. Each room that isn't bought gets money placed on it, to make it more appealing to buy the following turn. A circular room that costs you 8000, might become a great deal, if you get 6000 of those back. Anyway, each room you place gets you VP. If each exit of a room leads into either another room or a hallway, you get to trigger that room's special ability, which ranges from additional VP, to extra money to taking another turn and so on. And on top of that, each room also generates bonus VP if adjacent to specific other rooms. So once you place a room somewhere, you're likely to look for the right type of room to trigger those extra VP. There are also secret VP conditions, that every player gets to draw at the start of the game (with the option to draw additional secret VP conditions later on, if you complete the right rooms) and there are three over-arching VP opportunities (the king's wishes or some such), that everybody can qualify for.
It all is quite interesting and engaging. A fun little brain-burner... if it wasn't for the way that rooms come into play. You have a deck of cards, showing room types (I believe there are about eight in total) and at the end of the turn, you draw from that deck to see which rooms are added to the display. My secret VP condition was 2VP / 250m² room (they range from 10m² to 500m² I believe) and as you can guess, throughout the game only a small handful of those showed up. No worries, I thought, I just try to draw additional VP condition cards. Towards the end of the game, I had 3 secret goals, scoring points for each 200, 250 and 300m² room. And that is where the second annoyance comes in, people are likely to buy the rooms you want before you can. They don't really mean to. After all, they are unlikely to suss out your secret goals in 2-3 turns. They are just looking at the rooms from a different angle. Maybe they want the room's ability, maybe it's just the cheapest they can pick or maybe the just want to trigger the special ability of a room they already have and they don't really care which room they buy, as long as it fits. What it all adds up to, is this greatly unsatisfying feeling of your success at this game being largely determined by the choices of other players. Only a small fraction of which is set out to deliberately screw you out of points. It simply happens. There's absolutely nothing you can do about it. When you're the starting player you may subtly nudge the rest of the table towards picking up one room or another, but even then... you will be the last to buy from the display. You are still dependent on choices made by players who really don't have anything you do in mind. If you're like me... this is unbearably frustrating. Because on the one hand, the game seems to suggest you have some influence on how to score VP, how to set yourself up for clever combinations of rooms and so on... but really, if the right rooms don't show up, or happen to be picked up before you get a turn, there's nothing you can do about it.
It's not a bad game. But if you want your choices to be the main factor in determining how you fare, Castles of... will not really deliver that. You are dependent on other players, but have very few ways of influencing those players. I wouldn't object to playing it again, but I definitely wouldn't put much effort into winning. But what really kills the game for me, is the price. Which is about double what I'd consider reasonable for the components and the depth of the game.
Speaking of depths (pun accidentally dropped in with a hand-written apology), Abyss is kind of an odd beast. It's a Bruno Cathala game, that comes in variant boxes (5 in total), with plastic cups to hold plastic pearls in them and very nice-looking artwork and a very atmospheric board... for what is really just a needlessly overproduced card game. You draw small cards from a deck to auction off to the other players. You get to keep drawing cards, until you find one that you want and then can simply pick it into your hand discarding the rest face-down into the appropriate piles of the same colour. These cards are used as currency to buy large cards and put them in front of you. If another player wants a currency card, though, they get first pick and pay you in pearls.
The large cards you eventually buy, get you VP, and usually have some kind of special ability. The more powerful that ability, the more likely they are to feature a key. Once you have three keys in front of you, you have to place these large cards into their own "habitat" for lack of a better word, which nullifies the special abilities. Those "habitats" also give you VP and some additional VP goal, guiding you to pick up large cards of a certain type. On your turn, you can choose to do either of those things: drawing currency cards or buying a large card. You may also take a discard pile of one colour, possibly increasing your possibilities to buy large cards. There are some other elements, that I've skipped. But the core idea is basically, you pick up or buy cards to pick up bigger cards to get VP and/or special abilities, until you have too many and send them off to their own "habitat". Repeat until one player ends up with 7 large cards in front of them. Add up VP. The End.
If this sounds dull, it shouldn't. It's actually quite nice. But it is really just a card game, blown up to needlessly indulgent proportions. It also plays fairly quickly and easily. Which is something that isn't as easy to design as the rulebook suggests. It does allow for some interesting decisions and you get to react to whatever other players are working towards. It's the type of card game, that a smaller publisher or less well-known designer would have tried to push into a tiny box. And chances are, it would have generated big, long-lasting buzz. As it is, the opulent production really kind of sours me on the game. It's pretty, but useless. It doesn't even add to the theme, because the theme itself is so vaguely defined. Apparently it's underwater nations, forming alliances or some such? To gain the favour of nobles (the large cards)? And there's a council (discard piles)? The theme simply isn't coherent enough for the production design to add anything to the game other than 20$. As it is, at half the price, it's a recommendation. At full price, I can't guarantee you won't feel a little ripped off.
The game is played by throwing cards into the playing area, and needing them to land touching at least one other card. Each player gets a character deck that consists of 15 cards, each having different combinations of abilities, as well as differences in how the icons representing those abilities are laid out on the card. An ability is "active" if its icon is completely uncovered on the table. However, if even a fraction of it is covered by another card, its unavailable. You score points every turn based on pips on the cards, that also must remain visible.
My wife and I played two games. In the first, my wife played Wendy from Doomtown and blew numerous holes in me playing Cthulu. Second game had my zombies tearing her mage knight thing limb from limb in hilarious fashion. Definitely going to bring it to my game night on Saturday and see how it plays with more people, as it seems like a nice quick filler all the way up to 6 (or 12, if you have both games) players.
In short, a average day for her in Gomorra.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
We lost, we had fun.
Arkham horror basically.
Unless you have a genuinely compelling reason to pick up DT, and know you have someone else who would pick it up with you, you should really not bother.
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Because it's not a good game?
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
Also I wouldn't really call Ghost in the Shell Cyberpunk and WW2 Steampunk the same thing.
I'm not sure what to make of it. It's colorful with great graphics and lots of polish, but I have no clue what's going on or what actions are better than others. There's also very little interaction between the different players. It seems even more multiplayer solitaire than something like Terra Mystica.
Infinity is not without issues, but Dust Tactics isn't an extraordinarily high benchmark.
GitS cyberpunk and WW2 steampunk are pretty similar in a lot of ways, because a lot of Japanese style cyberpunk is ultimately rooted in the social aftermath of WW2.
The Dust Tactics models and the Infinity models are more similar than not. I could easily confuse the two. The main difference is in paint schemes - drab and camo vs. well... anime.
I can't speak for the actual gameplay of Dust Tactics, having never played it myself. I do admit I find the grid system appealing but, I pretty much just pass on any miniature based games just for cost reasons these days.
It's also way too easy to get stuck in an endless cycle of getting wounded (which takes up your turn to heal) and drawing "foul fate" event cards (which cause more wounds and deal you more foul fate cards). Think getting stuck on a tough monster space in Arkham Horror.
The game said the medium length game option I chose was supposed to take 20-40 minutes. After 50 minutes, I was stuck in a loop of hopelessly fucked, spent 40 more unfun minutes trying to dig myself out of the hole, none of the other computer players were close to winning, so I gave up and uninstalled it. Not even one full playthrough, would never try it a second time.
...I am so weak.
What's defines an adventure game?
It reminds me a bit of Eldritch Horror in that you're moving around the map collecting "clues", getting 2 actions a turn.
But it's like Eldritch Horror without a point. It's definitely not co-op and and it's not competitive. You're constantly hit with "miss a turn" effects and you just keep rolling dice until the game ends.
It was (as we hoped) as rousing, screaming good time.
In other news, it seems my copy of [redacted] was delivered today. I've already scheduled a meetup to play it on Sunday.
It seemed too obvious and too obtuse at the same time. Is the mummy case just a tutorial and the other cases more involved?
The reporter:
A.) Was an obvious crackpot
B.) Entire apartment was decked with Egyptian rituals, and had a strong Egyptology background.
C.) Had a dead monkey wrapped in bandages.
D.) Lit leaves on fire inside a bowl next to the corpse as part of a ceremony.
He was like the 4th location we visited. I thought there had to be more to it. But nope, he was the killer. The only problem was the judge said we didn't have enough evidence. So we went around a bunch and this thing with the Arabs on the ship came up. One was an agent for the Sultan pursuing some valuable jar artifact carried by the other. The agent was a large strong man and the evidence said the victims were killed by strong hands capable of crushing the windpipe and neck vertebrae, meanwhile the reporter looked like a wimp. The innkeeper had overheard a large Arab and Englishman discussing the ship. The jar carrying Arab was found dead with a knife in his backwhen we visited him and the agent wasn't at his address.
Do we have to resolve the Arabs' involvement in this? Nope.
Do we need airtight evidence to convict the reporter? Nope. All you need is that he was in same location for all 3 murders and that he had a VERY shakey motive for each murder. That's it. MURDER CONVICTION. Now I've seen enough fictional murder cases to know that you need opportunity, motive, and means. Your only grounds for implicating the reporter are "You were both in London - one of the largest metropolises in the world - at the time", making the assumption that he was willing to commit murder over someone opening up a tomb even though the reporter wanted to go on the expedition in the first place, and that someone insulted him in an editorial letter. That's it. The animal hairs never come into it. The necessary strength of the murderer never comes into it. Proving that the reporter, I dunno, actually killed the victims never comes into it.
Finally, I have no clue how Sherlock's score is even possible. The best you can do on the first action is get a list of passengers on the ship. There's no indication at that point if anyone is more suspicious than the others. You have no idea about the identities attached to the names. To get Sherlock's score, you have to randomly pick the reporter's name first then follow every exact lead. I didn't see anything that pointed you to the reporter at the point you get the list.
I do love Sherlock's constant jabs at Watson being a fat dummy.
games like Talisman or Runebound i guess
Dead of Winter: I had a pretty good idea of the game before we started, and it did not disappoint. We were flailing around, had some early insta-deaths, and then we got some better gear (like a rifle) and were able to push to the win. Two of us completed our hidden objectives and my nephew... was the betrayer! Now these are kids who are well-experienced with The Resistance (and pretty good bluffers), so it's not like he didn't understand the concept. He was just having too much fun learning the game and helping the colony. I'm excited to see what will happen in our next game.
Descent (2nd edition): WAY old news, especially what with Imperial Assault being released, but new to me. We played the intro scenario, and I (as Overlord) got to maul a few people (especially my brother-in-law) with a giant ettin, I got frighteningly close to sending the fifth goblin to the exit for the win, but the heroes prevailed and Mauler fell to my nephew's terrifying berserker. Everybody (including me) was excited to pick their next upgrades, pack up their stuff, and eagerly wait for a chance to play the next scenario. I love the campaign system idea. Hope it stays this fun.
So yeah, I love games with tons of narrative, so these were two big winners for me. Satisfying week!
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One Night Ultimate Werewolf went down an absolute treat!
Including the time that one of the guys forgot that he was a werewolf...
What can you do, though? You just gotta play on...
Edit: In hindsight, I should have done the whole, "Okay, everyone, keep your eyes closed and facepalm. Now, I'm going to go through each of your cards, and find the person who's forgotten that they're a werewolf and tap them on the shoulder."
First up was Evolution. I had heard about this somewhere, but could recall nithing other than I was happy to try it myself. It's delightfully simple rules-wise. I also thought it was quite smart, with card and trait management holding more depth than we could explore in one game. I enjoyed it quite a bit, although we called it a round early after one player had a very harsh time and we knew who was where in finishing order.
Despite the somewhat bittersweet nature of our play, all of us wanted to play again. I do think it will take an expansion to add a couple of things. For starters, the hard shell trait just seems too good at overcoming predators. Similarly, requiring a larger body size than your prey made life as a carnivore tough. This seems intentional so as to not make eating each other the best strategy outright, but for the most part carnivores could scarcely eat anything because there are so many defences.
Whatever the case, I would still totally recommend it.
Secondly we played Trains.
I have little to say about it. It probably is AEG's best game, but I say that thinking it deserves a solid 6/10 at best. I found the board added basically nothing over Dominion. I was similarly disappointed that I won, buying no economy other than 2 freight trains, only a single action card, and otherwise grabbed station building and track laying cards.
It falls very flat for me, and I don't feel any of us were particularly impressed with it. Notably, waste management was an interesting mechanic, and probably the most interesting part of the game.
Lastly, we played Sherif of Nottingham.
Brilliant. Just, brilliant. It's quick, blunt bluffing and set collection, with diplomacy and bribery built-in. We loved it, and our friend who has some store credit elsewhere definitely plans to buy it.
There's just something about those little pouches and their clasp that is ridiculously satisfying. We all look forward to playing it more.
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
Lots of fun, very interesting.
It is also easily the most bastardly game I have ever played, easily trumping contenders like Catan, Monopoly, and Citadels.
Can you explain this further? I'm curious how so. I'd looked at that game a long while ago, but haven't picked it up.
Damning with faint praise. (Also: completely agreed.)
Think it may be time to retire from boardgaming, go out while I'm on top.
Playing with the expansion or just got super lucky or what? Don't leave us hanging!
Hah sorry I had to run off to work! We were playing the base game as it was our first time playing war of the ring in two years (moving overseas for work will do thst to ya). Which means we knew juuuust enough strategy to get ourselves really in trouble.
First two turns I had the fellowship really hustling, moving two spaces a turn, before I got revealed on a hunt just on the other side of moria. He then hig me with a morghul blade and bad weather forcing me back into moria. At this point I threw out some event cards to split off some fellowship members to activate the northmen, dwarves and elves and get them moving down the track before limping into Lorien, knowing I had some cards to remove extra corruption there.
The shadow player smelt weakness and launched a two pronged siege on Lorien from Moria and Dul-Guldur to pin the ringbearers and things were looking really dire but a strategy card let me muster in Lorien and we prove swifter let me get some of the fellowship splt off and get fighting. A lucky series of die rolls saw the siege turn my favor.
And then we both realized that he had moved ALL the troops from Moria and Dul-Guldur (he had also been sieging Minas Tirith at this point)and thus began the mad dash of the northmen and other elves to liberate lorien and smash those two strongholds which they did one turn before uruk-hai reinforcements arrived in mass to stop them.