Speaking of Kickstarters, I backed Backyard Builders Treehouse recently. It's a retheme of Yardmaster Express with beautiful Vincent Dutrait art. Also Crash Games is on the rocks due to a business deal going bad and already have the game produced and ready to ship, and are running the Kickstarter basically to pay off their debt on the game and stay in business. Looks like a fun game and I like the other games I've played from them so it seemed like a worthy cause
Custom SpecialI know I am, I'm sure I am,I'm Sounders 'til I die!Registered Userregular
You finished, we just started!
Won January last night
Just two of us, and we luckily started with 3 each blue and yellow between us. I was medic, wife was scientist. We cured yellow pretty quick, then came COdA. Yellow by far had the most cubes (but was already cured) so we had to choose between black and blue getting the sticker. So now black is incurable! Also had to insist my wife actually destroy the initial 4 cure objective because that's what the rules said (it's even in red). So Legacy has begun.
We had some good draws, including our funded events being used at the right moments. Won our first game, took a #1 mutation on The Sneezles (our yellow disease) and put a permanent research station on Istanbul since it's centrally located.
Fun times. We would've played another game if we'd started earlier (but we had to catch up on some Grand Tour first). More disease tonight!
You finished, we just started!
Won January last night
Just two of us, and we luckily started with 3 each blue and yellow between us. I was medic, wife was scientist. We cured yellow pretty quick, then came COdA. Yellow by far had the most cubes (but was already cured) so we had to choose between black and blue getting the sticker. So now black is incurable! Also had to insist my wife actually destroy the initial 4 cure objective because that's what the rules said (it's even in red). So Legacy has begun.
We had some good draws, including our funded events being used at the right moments. Won our first game, took a #1 mutation on The Sneezles (our yellow disease) and put a permanent research station on Istanbul since it's centrally located.
Fun times. We would've played another game if we'd started earlier (but we had to catch up on some Grand Tour first). More disease tonight!
Did you eradicate it? Note that you can't name a disease untill it's first eradicated, not just cured.
You finished, we just started!
Won January last night
Just two of us, and we luckily started with 3 each blue and yellow between us. I was medic, wife was scientist. We cured yellow pretty quick, then came COdA. Yellow by far had the most cubes (but was already cured) so we had to choose between black and blue getting the sticker. So now black is incurable! Also had to insist my wife actually destroy the initial 4 cure objective because that's what the rules said (it's even in red). So Legacy has begun.
We had some good draws, including our funded events being used at the right moments. Won our first game, took a #1 mutation on The Sneezles (our yellow disease) and put a permanent research station on Istanbul since it's centrally located.
Fun times. We would've played another game if we'd started earlier (but we had to catch up on some Grand Tour first). More disease tonight!
Did you eradicate it? Note that you can't name a disease untill it's first eradicated, not just cured.
After winning both January and February the first time through, we got wrecked at the beginning of March. Our initial infection gave us about 5 red cities (guess which disease is our CODA), while we only had 1 blue, 1 black, and a couple yellow. We just could never get a handle on red and lost by simply running out of red cubes.
Our second game in March was very nearly the complete opposite. I don't even think we had an outbreak (well, maybe one, im not sure). We managed to eradicate yellow--now dubbed Freaking Minions--and therefore now have 3 diseases that we do not have to be at a research station to cure, which is awesome.
We're back down to 0 funded events though and that scares me.
I'm excited to see what April brings.
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Custom SpecialI know I am, I'm sure I am,I'm Sounders 'til I die!Registered Userregular
You finished, we just started!
Won January last night
Just two of us, and we luckily started with 3 each blue and yellow between us. I was medic, wife was scientist. We cured yellow pretty quick, then came COdA. Yellow by far had the most cubes (but was already cured) so we had to choose between black and blue getting the sticker. So now black is incurable! Also had to insist my wife actually destroy the initial 4 cure objective because that's what the rules said (it's even in red). So Legacy has begun.
We had some good draws, including our funded events being used at the right moments. Won our first game, took a #1 mutation on The Sneezles (our yellow disease) and put a permanent research station on Istanbul since it's centrally located.
Fun times. We would've played another game if we'd started earlier (but we had to catch up on some Grand Tour first). More disease tonight!
Did you eradicate it? Note that you can't name a disease untill it's first eradicated, not just cured.
Or give it a positive mutation
Yes, and we did both. After we cured, my medic went on a big tour of Africa and South America to say hi to all the stray germs.
We just played February and March back to back. On February we made a slightly short-sighted choice giving medic/quarantine specialist the co-worker relationship, which seems like it would've been great on researcher!
We focused too much on black, our COdA, and let slip some outbreaks in South America, but we won the day.
Queue March (yay, no funding!). Almost no black the whole game, but red ran rampant. At one point two neighboring red cities did some outbreak chains where, of course, we had sent the scientist to treat on the next turn. One epidemic gave us two rioting cities, one unstable city, and a scientist with two sudden scars.
We got all our cures, but had to double team APAC to get out eradication for our second objective. Won the game with a single card left in the player deck! But my wife had to leave immediately so we don't know what happens between March and April until tonight.
I've been done with Pandemic for a long time, but was excited by legacy doing something to make it interesting again.
It's working.
This game is excellent! It's everything I'd hoped for. Quick, elegant, lots of room for cunning plays and traps, negotiation around fighting or movement, etc.
I won this first game after holding onto the Brenn position when every other player but me had a victory condition--meaning they all tied and the game continued. Then, I spread my huge stack of clansmen to nearby areas with the Migrate action to satisfy multiple win conditions and let other players whittle away at me while passing. Once they'd expended their strong cards I used the cards I had saved that let me restock my clansmen and no one could stop me. Very satisfying.
I like how this draft works, too. Usually card drafting is about powerful combos, and I hate that. It actually means randomness is a huge factor, since you can't control which cards come to you and you don't know what your opponents have taken. But this draft involves cards for all the basic actions in the game, only 17, some of which overlap in function, so it makes things exciting without making them totally unpredictable.
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Iron WeaselDillon!You son of a bitch!Registered Userregular
Re: PANDEMIC LEGACY:
You get to pick upgrades even if you lose!
Currently Playing:
The Division, Warframe (XB1)
GT: Tanith 6227
I played a cool game, some family friends were stooping by and the son has made his own game, so we played it.
It's a bit minecrafty, you have health, food, crafting materials. And on your turn you pay either food or water (if you pay food one turn then water the next you don't have to pay on the third turn). Then you can either look in the forest for wood, string or food or in the mine for ruby, stone or iron. You use these materials to craft weapons, and each monster can only be killed by one type of weapon. And each weapon can only be used twice. Then you can pass an resource to the other player if you want. Every second turn a monster is drawn from the monster deck. Each time a monster is drawn it pushes the already drawn monsters closer to the board, and once a monster has been pushed three times it will start attacking, doing -n damage a turn. If you kill a monster in the queue, it leaves a gap that needs to be filled, delaying the monsters by a turn.
It's a pretty good game. The queue and the randomised monsters and resources makes the game exciting, as you're racing against the monsters to gather the right materials, and you're making decisions about what you want to focus on. We lost, but we did kill the boss (we got the ruby sword early on). Unfortunately it is a little unbalanced with the resources. Which is just because they haven't made enough cards yet. We didn't pick up any stone in our game, but stone monsters are the most common. So while we killed every other monster with our iron sword, ruby sword and bow and arrow, we couldn't kill the monster that was vulnerable to stone and so it killed us.
Monsters:
Needs stone sword to kill, it does 3 damage each turn. This is the monster that killed us.
Game is WIP, so not everything is made or coloured in.
The Boss. Which wasn't really a boss as we already had the ruby sword so we killed it instantly.
The monsters we didn't face. We were never going to face them because of the mechanic where monsters need to be pushed into the battlefield by other monsters. So the last monsters just stay in the queue.
1) more resources. Some resources need to be easier to find. That's just a result of it's half finished nature though,
2) putting the resources in a pile and just dealing the top one (in the game we did he dealt the resources into a grid and let the player pick the card. That was cool and makes the player feel like they're doing more, but it was time consuming.)
3) some additional rules. Which I felt a little iffy about, it's a simple game and extra rules like monsters with special effects would be cool (which is why I suggested it) but it might make the game clunky. But talking with him he had the great idea of a monster that can't be killed in the queue unless there are no monsters on the battlefield. And I suggested a monster that could attack you from the queue. The one thing the game really needs is a way to regain health. My suggestion was that food could heal a bit, but I think he's wanting to introduce some magic items. It's just a matter of making them as the cards don't exist yet. While we died, apparently it is possible to win, so maybe health regen isn't needed.
I only saw the game just as they were leaving (hence the suggestion of speeding the game up) but I'm looking forward to seeing them again and hearing of the progress.
I don't know how old that kid is, but I'm seriously jealous of the artwork. The One Eye Imp in particular looks great, and I like the Minecraft/Thunderstone mash-up he's got going.
The mum did the art but I think based on the kid's drawings? I didn't catch all of what they said when they told me.
edit- looking at a couple of them, I think the bear is a actual drawing, and the four handed monster is from Monsters Inc?
Played Fuse tonight. Interesting timer-based co-op dice game. It suggests passing the bag of dice around the table but there's no real point to doing that, just wastes time. We didn't even get close to winning though.
Also the expansion for XCOM. EXALT are jerks.
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BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
The mum did the art but I think based on the kid's drawings? I didn't catch all of what they said when they told me.
edit- looking at a couple of them, I think the bear is a actual drawing, and the four handed monster is from Monsters Inc?
Not only does the kid get props, but his parents get props for helping him make it too.
Maybe the picking a resource from a grid was supposed to represent mining something out of a 3x3 square, which isn't an uncommon mining pattern.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
I finally got Carcassonne to the table again so I can try out some of these expansion I never got to play. Used the base game along with Hills and Sheep along with Bridges, Castles, and Bazaars, both of them new to all of us. It was just great. It really reaffirmed why this is one of my favorite games. The big changes were the Sheep and the Bazaars, the Bazaars might be my new favorite addition. It added in short auction mechanic which really made people think about what kind of tiles they wanted, and gave you some flexibility to really go for what you need. The sheep added in a push your luck risk taking kind of mechanic which was fun.
Also got another game of Fury of Dracula, I played as Dracula this time. I think I had some lucky breaks when they were chasing me, but I felt like I did better than I expected. I was able to mature 3 vampires and take out an investigator before 2 weeks were up to get the win. Without a lucky break from an event card, I don't know if they would have been able to hem me in. The board is pretty big when the game starts! It feels like the investigators have a lot to do to figure out where dracula is, take out whatever vampires he leaves behind, gather enough equipment, etc. Dracula felt like he had it much easier.
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Custom SpecialI know I am, I'm sure I am,I'm Sounders 'til I die!Registered Userregular
P:L May
Colonel Zuko arrives to survey the scene, he is not pleased with the walking sick and their aggressive behavior. Despite his best efforts to contain COdA, The Sneezles, and Medium Pox, the world falls prey to the common cold (probably? It's unnamed).
The last bastion of hope, Istanbul, remains a shining beacon among the translucent hordes.
WHAT IS GOING ON IN THIS GAME IT JUST CRANKED UP TO 11!
tzeentchlingDoctor of RocksOaklandRegistered Userregular
Got to finally play Herbaceous tonight with some friends! There's a bit more strategy to it than I thought, but it definitely scratched that itch of "starter game to get the juices flowing." Could easily see starting off game night with a play or two of it in general. And it really is pretty in print!
+3
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Iron WeaselDillon!You son of a bitch!Registered Userregular
Colonel Zuko arrives to survey the scene, he is not pleased with the walking sick and their aggressive behavior. Despite his best efforts to contain COdA, The Sneezles, and Medium Pox, the world falls prey to the common cold (probably? It's unnamed).
The last bastion of hope, Istanbul, remains a shining beacon among the translucent hordes.
WHAT IS GOING ON IN THIS GAME IT JUST CRANKED UP TO 11!
Have fun storming the castle!
Currently Playing:
The Division, Warframe (XB1)
GT: Tanith 6227
Regarding Mansions of Madness: I've tried Escape from Innsmouth 3 times now and never got what I would consider Close to beating it.
Now that I have, like, 9 scenarios for the game, I really want to get it to the table more often.
I have people coming over Thursday. If they haven't played before I'll start with Cycle, but one way or another, the four of us are visiting Innsmouth. That was the most fun I've had so far.
This weekend @Gizzy and I managed to get in a couple four player games: Clank! and Covert.
Clank! is still great. Gizzy managed to win with twenty point artifact and a boat load of tomes. Dragon was pretty aggressive, only two adventurer's made it out. (One adventurer even died with just the 7 artifact). This is a really fun game and I highly recommend it.
Covert is fun, too. It is a neat little dice-worker placement game that sort of reminded me of ticket to ride - at least in the way of completing missions for vp. You had lots of ways of using the cards and there were a lot of interesting choices going on. I thought it was good. I again finished second behind Gizzy. This is a fun game that i enjoyed playing but it didn't blow me away. Worth a shot, though.
Regarding Mansions of Madness: I've tried Escape from Innsmouth 3 times now and never got what I would consider Close to beating it.
Now that I have, like, 9 scenarios for the game, I really want to get it to the table more often.
Took us three tries to do it. Agent Craven deserves to die after how he acted.
What's I found interesting was that, having taught a few people, I've played the first scenario 5 times now, and each time the setup was different, with different things happening. There were some repetitions, but enough different that I didn't mind playing it multiple times. The "Escape from Innsmouth" mission was considerably more predictable, about the only thing that changed was the direction of the mob. We've done "Rising Tide" once (and won) and I'm wondering if it's "more random", or "more repeat".
Gonna try the last of the base missions tonight, the 5 star one *shudder*.
For those of you who just finished or are currently playing pandemic legacy, if you are willing to part with some of the cards or objectives after you are done if you could PM me that'd be awesome! I want to make a framed board for a friend and some things are missing.
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Custom SpecialI know I am, I'm sure I am,I'm Sounders 'til I die!Registered Userregular
P:L May/June
After losing May the first time, we went with the tried-and-true Medic (Sampson)/Quarantine Specialist (River) who are co-workers. We won without too much fuss, went for cures/eradication/7 quarantines, which we finished with a decent number of cards left. Istanbul stood tall as an un-faded beacon in the dark COdA abyss.
June, we took our newfound Soldier (Jack Morrison) and co-worked him with our Generalist (Olivia). Jack was sent off to South America and Africa to handle some outbreaks of The Sneezles that were reported while Olivia handled some business in North America before traveling overseas to a sudden Asian uprising of Medium Pox. We began laying the groundwork of our military bases to help secure victory, when literally the worst thing that could've happened was suddenly reality...Istanbul faded from a player card draw.
Naturally, we were devastated! But we persevered and were able to establish a worldwide military foothold to win the day. Our last build was in the Pacific Rim, where we determined that there was exactly one card (Tokyo) left in the deck for us to draw and build with. Three cards remained in the draw as I took my last turn, hoping to draw Tokyo. I slow roll...and the first card is yellow. That means 50/50 I have Tokyo or whatever the other card is, but WE PULL TOKYO YESSSSSS. My wife's final move as Generalist is direct flight, two moves, take my Tokyo card, and build the military station.
Game over!
We Win!
But at what cost...
As a testament to Istanbul's greatness, I insisted my wife put the field hospital equipment onto the Istanbul player card so it can live on forever in our games (although, the research station still stands there now).
Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
Over on Kickstarter there's n interesting looking game called Reign. It's a political bluffing game with a slightly awkward theme (houses vying for control of a kingdom but with the houses moving between players so who exactly are the players here?).
It's only $19 (which will probably be £30 or so by the end of the campaign as the pound keeps crashing) and promises fast play for 4-7 (it claims it'll go down to 2 or 3, but I think that is more of a "technically the mechanics work at those counts"). So in a similar space to The Resistance.
Right now the rulebook is a bit sloppy in terms of language but it's been confirmed that it is not a final version, so I'm probably going to take a punt.
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
Over on Kickstarter there's n interesting looking game called Reign. It's a political bluffing game with a slightly awkward theme (houses vying for control of a kingdom but with the houses moving between players so who exactly are the players here?).
It's only $19 (which will probably be £30 or so by the end of the campaign as the pound keeps crashing) and promises fast play for 4-7 (it claims it'll go down to 2 or 3, but I think that is more of a "technically the mechanics work at those counts"). So in a similar space to The Resistance.
Right now the rulebook is a bit sloppy in terms of language but it's been confirmed that it is not a final version, so I'm probably going to take a punt.
More awkward than secret hitler? When for some reason you get picked to be hitler 3 times in a row?
Regarding Mansions of Madness: I've tried Escape from Innsmouth 3 times now and never got what I would consider Close to beating it.
Now that I have, like, 9 scenarios for the game, I really want to get it to the table more often.
Took us three tries to do it. Agent Craven deserves to die after how he acted.
What's I found interesting was that, having taught a few people, I've played the first scenario 5 times now, and each time the setup was different, with different things happening. There were some repetitions, but enough different that I didn't mind playing it multiple times. The "Escape from Innsmouth" mission was considerably more predictable, about the only thing that changed was the direction of the mob. We've done "Rising Tide" once (and won) and I'm wondering if it's "more random", or "more repeat".
Gonna try the last of the base missions tonight, the 5 star one *shudder*.
Broken Ties? Or Bonds that Tie or whatever? Yeah, good luck. Going in blind was fun so I shall await to hear what you have to say.
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Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
Over on Kickstarter there's n interesting looking game called Reign. It's a political bluffing game with a slightly awkward theme (houses vying for control of a kingdom but with the houses moving between players so who exactly are the players here?).
It's only $19 (which will probably be £30 or so by the end of the campaign as the pound keeps crashing) and promises fast play for 4-7 (it claims it'll go down to 2 or 3, but I think that is more of a "technically the mechanics work at those counts"). So in a similar space to The Resistance.
Right now the rulebook is a bit sloppy in terms of language but it's been confirmed that it is not a final version, so I'm probably going to take a punt.
More awkward than secret hitler? When for some reason you get picked to be hitler 3 times in a row?
No, I mean awkward as in it doesn't seem to work well rather than shitty
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
I finally got Carcassonne to the table again so I can try out some of these expansion I never got to play. Used the base game along with Hills and Sheep along with Bridges, Castles, and Bazaars, both of them new to all of us. It was just great. It really reaffirmed why this is one of my favorite games. The big changes were the Sheep and the Bazaars, the Bazaars might be my new favorite addition. It added in short auction mechanic which really made people think about what kind of tiles they wanted, and gave you some flexibility to really go for what you need. The sheep added in a push your luck risk taking kind of mechanic which was fun.
My son and wife LOVE LOVE LOVE Hills and Sheep. We have to try the new Watch Towers expansion that we ordered. It is in the terrible new art, but I ordered it anyway.
I am working towards a semi-complete old art collection. I am missing the Tower (which isn't great), the Catapult (which is stupid), and the very old Cathars and Corn Circles 1 tiles which are ridiculously overpriced.
Played two 10p games of Secret Hitler, with mostly people who had played it before, but it had been six months, so everyone had forgotten how to play. I finally got to be a liberal for once, after ending up fascist for 4/4 games on the previous session. And I won! Then we played a second game, and I was once again a fascist, and was cleverly able to get Hitler elected Chancellor even though two of the Liberals knew I was a Fascist (since the first checked my party membership, and the second checked the first's membership). When it was my turn as a President candidate, I was able to frame my options thusly: "I'm not allowed to nominate A or B because they're term limited, I don't want to nominate C or D because at least one of them is fascist due to an argument they've been having since they were elected on a previous turn, I won't nominate E or F because they're obviously fascists for lying about my party membership, and G just seems like he's being shifty this game, so I'm either going to nominate H(itler) or J. Which of those do you all think I should nominate?" And the table agreed on the wrong one. :evil: One thing I've noticed that seems to be helpful is keeping track of how many Liberal Policies players claim to discard. Knowing how many LPs are left in the deck can help you to take good gambles on voting in a government of the other party. If you're fascist and you know all of the LPs are gone from the deck, it's great to vote in a liberal president and chancellor. :evil:
Also got in a third play of The Grizzled. Managed to pull out the win with just a single card left between us and the Monument. One of our players got Tyrannical (take the Leader token, don't relinquish it, can't gain speeches) and we weren't able to coordinate Support to allow him to clear it for several turns. He also had the hard knock that caused him to draw two extra cards per turn. We were in sort of good shape because the Trials pile was always empty, so we could play all of our Trap cards with no risk, but he couldn't play all of his cards because most of them were Hard Knocks (and too many of those is fatal). Finally we were able to arrange Support to get the worst of his Hard Knocks cleared, which allowed us to finally eliminate the last of our cards in hand just before the deck ran out. Very tense, I am really starting to dig this co-op.
The shine is starting to wear off of Codenames for me. People take way too long to come up with clues, or try to guess at the clues, and it's easy to become embroiled in side conversations during all of that and completely lose track of the game. I'm going to try to invoke the sand timer next time someone breaks this out, maybe that will help shorten the hour-long games down to a more reasonable duration.
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GuibsWeekend WarriorSomewhere up North.Registered Userregular
edited January 2017
I'm in decision time. A reprint of War of the Ring hit the store a few weeks ago. Copies are selling well and I'm wondering if I should just buy it. The collector in me and saying to jump on it but I know It will not be brought to the table often. I *think* I already have somewhat similar games in my collection but War of the Ring seems universally praised. I enjoy the LOTR setting but it's not a favorite of mine so while I enjoy it, I'm not a LOTR guru fan.
So what is everyone's opinion on it? Worth it to buy if you already own games in the "dude on a map" combat like Star Wars Rebellion, Kemet, Forbidden stars, space hulk, etc..?
I'm in decision time. A reprint of War of the Ring hit the store a few weeks ago. Copies are selling well and I'm wondering if I should just buy it. The collector in me and saying to jump on it but I know It will not be brought to the table often. I *think* I already have somewhat similar games in my collection but War of the Ring seems universally praised. I enjoy the LOTR setting but it's not a favorite of mine so while I enjoy it, I'm not a LOTR guru fan.
So what is everyone's opinion on it? Worth it to buy if you already own games in the "dude on a map" combat like Star Wars Rebellion, Kemet, Forbidden stars, etc..?
It's still my favorite dudes on a map game and is in my top three games period. But I've only ever played first edition.
Hidden Path just launched a kickstarter for a Defense Grid board game. It looks neat, but it's $80, and I just got Orcs Must Die fulfilled. Not sure I need another minuatures <tower/trap> defense game on my shelf.
Posts
Won January last night
We had some good draws, including our funded events being used at the right moments. Won our first game, took a #1 mutation on The Sneezles (our yellow disease) and put a permanent research station on Istanbul since it's centrally located.
Fun times. We would've played another game if we'd started earlier (but we had to catch up on some Grand Tour first). More disease tonight!
Did you eradicate it? Note that you can't name a disease untill it's first eradicated, not just cured.
Our second game in March was very nearly the complete opposite. I don't even think we had an outbreak (well, maybe one, im not sure). We managed to eradicate yellow--now dubbed Freaking Minions--and therefore now have 3 diseases that we do not have to be at a research station to cure, which is awesome.
We're back down to 0 funded events though and that scares me.
I'm excited to see what April brings.
We just played February and March back to back. On February we made a slightly short-sighted choice giving medic/quarantine specialist the co-worker relationship, which seems like it would've been great on researcher!
We focused too much on black, our COdA, and let slip some outbreaks in South America, but we won the day.
Queue March (yay, no funding!). Almost no black the whole game, but red ran rampant. At one point two neighboring red cities did some outbreak chains where, of course, we had sent the scientist to treat on the next turn. One epidemic gave us two rioting cities, one unstable city, and a scientist with two sudden scars.
We got all our cures, but had to double team APAC to get out eradication for our second objective. Won the game with a single card left in the player deck! But my wife had to leave immediately so we don't know what happens between March and April until tonight.
I've been done with Pandemic for a long time, but was excited by legacy doing something to make it interesting again.
It's working.
This game is excellent! It's everything I'd hoped for. Quick, elegant, lots of room for cunning plays and traps, negotiation around fighting or movement, etc.
I won this first game after holding onto the Brenn position when every other player but me had a victory condition--meaning they all tied and the game continued. Then, I spread my huge stack of clansmen to nearby areas with the Migrate action to satisfy multiple win conditions and let other players whittle away at me while passing. Once they'd expended their strong cards I used the cards I had saved that let me restock my clansmen and no one could stop me. Very satisfying.
I like how this draft works, too. Usually card drafting is about powerful combos, and I hate that. It actually means randomness is a huge factor, since you can't control which cards come to you and you don't know what your opponents have taken. But this draft involves cards for all the basic actions in the game, only 17, some of which overlap in function, so it makes things exciting without making them totally unpredictable.
You get to pick upgrades even if you lose!
The Division, Warframe (XB1)
GT: Tanith 6227
It's a bit minecrafty, you have health, food, crafting materials. And on your turn you pay either food or water (if you pay food one turn then water the next you don't have to pay on the third turn). Then you can either look in the forest for wood, string or food or in the mine for ruby, stone or iron. You use these materials to craft weapons, and each monster can only be killed by one type of weapon. And each weapon can only be used twice. Then you can pass an resource to the other player if you want. Every second turn a monster is drawn from the monster deck. Each time a monster is drawn it pushes the already drawn monsters closer to the board, and once a monster has been pushed three times it will start attacking, doing -n damage a turn. If you kill a monster in the queue, it leaves a gap that needs to be filled, delaying the monsters by a turn.
It's a pretty good game. The queue and the randomised monsters and resources makes the game exciting, as you're racing against the monsters to gather the right materials, and you're making decisions about what you want to focus on. We lost, but we did kill the boss (we got the ruby sword early on). Unfortunately it is a little unbalanced with the resources. Which is just because they haven't made enough cards yet. We didn't pick up any stone in our game, but stone monsters are the most common. So while we killed every other monster with our iron sword, ruby sword and bow and arrow, we couldn't kill the monster that was vulnerable to stone and so it killed us.
Monsters:
Needs stone sword to kill, it does 3 damage each turn. This is the monster that killed us.
Game is WIP, so not everything is made or coloured in.
The Boss. Which wasn't really a boss as we already had the ruby sword so we killed it instantly.
The monsters we didn't face. We were never going to face them because of the mechanic where monsters need to be pushed into the battlefield by other monsters. So the last monsters just stay in the queue.
Anyway, it was a real cool game to play.
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
Steam ID
Twitch Page
Now that I have, like, 9 scenarios for the game, I really want to get it to the table more often.
1) more resources. Some resources need to be easier to find. That's just a result of it's half finished nature though,
2) putting the resources in a pile and just dealing the top one (in the game we did he dealt the resources into a grid and let the player pick the card. That was cool and makes the player feel like they're doing more, but it was time consuming.)
3) some additional rules. Which I felt a little iffy about, it's a simple game and extra rules like monsters with special effects would be cool (which is why I suggested it) but it might make the game clunky. But talking with him he had the great idea of a monster that can't be killed in the queue unless there are no monsters on the battlefield. And I suggested a monster that could attack you from the queue. The one thing the game really needs is a way to regain health. My suggestion was that food could heal a bit, but I think he's wanting to introduce some magic items. It's just a matter of making them as the cards don't exist yet. While we died, apparently it is possible to win, so maybe health regen isn't needed.
I only saw the game just as they were leaving (hence the suggestion of speeding the game up) but I'm looking forward to seeing them again and hearing of the progress.
EDIT: Mutant Mosquito looks awesome, too.
edit- looking at a couple of them, I think the bear is a actual drawing, and the four handed monster is from Monsters Inc?
Also the expansion for XCOM. EXALT are jerks.
Not only does the kid get props, but his parents get props for helping him make it too.
Maybe the picking a resource from a grid was supposed to represent mining something out of a 3x3 square, which isn't an uncommon mining pattern.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
Also got another game of Fury of Dracula, I played as Dracula this time. I think I had some lucky breaks when they were chasing me, but I felt like I did better than I expected. I was able to mature 3 vampires and take out an investigator before 2 weeks were up to get the win. Without a lucky break from an event card, I don't know if they would have been able to hem me in. The board is pretty big when the game starts! It feels like the investigators have a lot to do to figure out where dracula is, take out whatever vampires he leaves behind, gather enough equipment, etc. Dracula felt like he had it much easier.
The last bastion of hope, Istanbul, remains a shining beacon among the translucent hordes.
WHAT IS GOING ON IN THIS GAME IT JUST CRANKED UP TO 11!
The Division, Warframe (XB1)
GT: Tanith 6227
I have people coming over Thursday. If they haven't played before I'll start with Cycle, but one way or another, the four of us are visiting Innsmouth. That was the most fun I've had so far.
Clank! is still great. Gizzy managed to win with twenty point artifact and a boat load of tomes. Dragon was pretty aggressive, only two adventurer's made it out. (One adventurer even died with just the 7 artifact). This is a really fun game and I highly recommend it.
Covert is fun, too. It is a neat little dice-worker placement game that sort of reminded me of ticket to ride - at least in the way of completing missions for vp. You had lots of ways of using the cards and there were a lot of interesting choices going on. I thought it was good. I again finished second behind Gizzy. This is a fun game that i enjoyed playing but it didn't blow me away. Worth a shot, though.
Nintendo ID: Pastalonius
Smite\LoL:Gremlidin \ WoW & Overwatch & Hots: Gremlidin#1734
3ds: 3282-2248-0453
ISTANBUL HAS FALLEN!
I REPEAT, ISTANBUL HAS FALLEN!
Took us three tries to do it. Agent Craven deserves to die after how he acted.
What's I found interesting was that, having taught a few people, I've played the first scenario 5 times now, and each time the setup was different, with different things happening. There were some repetitions, but enough different that I didn't mind playing it multiple times. The "Escape from Innsmouth" mission was considerably more predictable, about the only thing that changed was the direction of the mob. We've done "Rising Tide" once (and won) and I'm wondering if it's "more random", or "more repeat".
Gonna try the last of the base missions tonight, the 5 star one *shudder*.
June, we took our newfound Soldier (Jack Morrison) and co-worked him with our Generalist (Olivia). Jack was sent off to South America and Africa to handle some outbreaks of The Sneezles that were reported while Olivia handled some business in North America before traveling overseas to a sudden Asian uprising of Medium Pox. We began laying the groundwork of our military bases to help secure victory, when literally the worst thing that could've happened was suddenly reality...Istanbul faded from a player card draw.
Naturally, we were devastated! But we persevered and were able to establish a worldwide military foothold to win the day. Our last build was in the Pacific Rim, where we determined that there was exactly one card (Tokyo) left in the deck for us to draw and build with. Three cards remained in the draw as I took my last turn, hoping to draw Tokyo. I slow roll...and the first card is yellow. That means 50/50 I have Tokyo or whatever the other card is, but WE PULL TOKYO YESSSSSS. My wife's final move as Generalist is direct flight, two moves, take my Tokyo card, and build the military station.
Game over!
We Win!
It's only $19 (which will probably be £30 or so by the end of the campaign as the pound keeps crashing) and promises fast play for 4-7 (it claims it'll go down to 2 or 3, but I think that is more of a "technically the mechanics work at those counts"). So in a similar space to The Resistance.
Right now the rulebook is a bit sloppy in terms of language but it's been confirmed that it is not a final version, so I'm probably going to take a punt.
Indeed...
More awkward than secret hitler? When for some reason you get picked to be hitler 3 times in a row?
Broken Ties? Or Bonds that Tie or whatever? Yeah, good luck. Going in blind was fun so I shall await to hear what you have to say.
No, I mean awkward as in it doesn't seem to work well rather than shitty
My son and wife LOVE LOVE LOVE Hills and Sheep. We have to try the new Watch Towers expansion that we ordered. It is in the terrible new art, but I ordered it anyway.
I am working towards a semi-complete old art collection. I am missing the Tower (which isn't great), the Catapult (which is stupid), and the very old Cathars and Corn Circles 1 tiles which are ridiculously overpriced.
Played two 10p games of Secret Hitler, with mostly people who had played it before, but it had been six months, so everyone had forgotten how to play. I finally got to be a liberal for once, after ending up fascist for 4/4 games on the previous session. And I won! Then we played a second game, and I was once again a fascist, and was cleverly able to get Hitler elected Chancellor even though two of the Liberals knew I was a Fascist (since the first checked my party membership, and the second checked the first's membership). When it was my turn as a President candidate, I was able to frame my options thusly: "I'm not allowed to nominate A or B because they're term limited, I don't want to nominate C or D because at least one of them is fascist due to an argument they've been having since they were elected on a previous turn, I won't nominate E or F because they're obviously fascists for lying about my party membership, and G just seems like he's being shifty this game, so I'm either going to nominate H(itler) or J. Which of those do you all think I should nominate?" And the table agreed on the wrong one. :evil: One thing I've noticed that seems to be helpful is keeping track of how many Liberal Policies players claim to discard. Knowing how many LPs are left in the deck can help you to take good gambles on voting in a government of the other party. If you're fascist and you know all of the LPs are gone from the deck, it's great to vote in a liberal president and chancellor. :evil:
Also got in a third play of The Grizzled. Managed to pull out the win with just a single card left between us and the Monument. One of our players got Tyrannical (take the Leader token, don't relinquish it, can't gain speeches) and we weren't able to coordinate Support to allow him to clear it for several turns. He also had the hard knock that caused him to draw two extra cards per turn. We were in sort of good shape because the Trials pile was always empty, so we could play all of our Trap cards with no risk, but he couldn't play all of his cards because most of them were Hard Knocks (and too many of those is fatal). Finally we were able to arrange Support to get the worst of his Hard Knocks cleared, which allowed us to finally eliminate the last of our cards in hand just before the deck ran out. Very tense, I am really starting to dig this co-op.
The shine is starting to wear off of Codenames for me. People take way too long to come up with clues, or try to guess at the clues, and it's easy to become embroiled in side conversations during all of that and completely lose track of the game. I'm going to try to invoke the sand timer next time someone breaks this out, maybe that will help shorten the hour-long games down to a more reasonable duration.
So what is everyone's opinion on it? Worth it to buy if you already own games in the "dude on a map" combat like Star Wars Rebellion, Kemet, Forbidden stars, space hulk, etc..?
PSN: Guibs25 | XboxLive: Guibs | Steam: Guibsx | Twitch: Guibsx
It's still my favorite dudes on a map game and is in my top three games period. But I've only ever played first edition.