Mark had to reign himself in considerably this week, what with the song temptations of the Talking Heads followed by his favourite torch song teased by Welcome to the Moon. He also tried to workshop a Gourds of Atlantis joke, but responses were–to put it mildly–not encouraging. It wasn’t a total loss, as he managed to sneak in some Norse mythology in Telestrations. So that’s… something.
Games Played Last Week:
01:11 -XenoShyft: Onslaught (Keren Philosophales & Michael Shinall, CMON, 2015)
06:21 -Azul: Queen’s Garden (Michael Kiesling, Next Move Games, 2021)
09:55 -Spirit Island (R. Eric Reuss, Greater Than Games, 2017)
11:42 -Dungeons & Dragons: Dungeon Scrawlers–Heroes of Undermountain (Vangelis Bagiartakis & Konstantinos Karagiannis, Wizkids, 2021)
13:41 -Telestrations (Uncredited, USAopoly, 2009)
19:17 -Trickerion: Legends of Illusion (Richard Amann & Viktor Peter, Mindclash Games, 2015)
20:40 -Psycho Killer (Michael Wilkinson, Escape Tabletop Games, 2020)
23:47 -Welcome to the Moon (Alexis Allard & Benoit Turpin, Blue Cocker Games, 2021)
25:47 -Yak (Michael Luu, Pretzel Games, 2022)
26:44 -Dice Realms (Thomas Lehmann, Rio Grnade Games, 2022)
32:44 -Yokohama Roll & Write (Hisashi Hayashi, OKAZU Brand, 2021)
34:54 -Stars of Akarios (Brendan McCaskell & Jonathan Thwaites, OOMM, 2022)
News (and why it doesn’t matter):
39:22 Spirit Island expansion to be funded on BackerKit; new crowdfunding options
40:55 Galactic Renaissance by Christian Martinez of Inis; the “Political Trilogy” by Matagot
42:05 Feature Game: Guards of Atlantis II (Artyom Nichipurov, Wolff Designa, 2022)
Telestrations is at its best when things go off the rails.
Also, when playing with a group of adults (rather than mixed teens/adults), I implement a house rule where you have to guess (and write) specifics about the drawing. Like if there’s a weird squiggly line you can’t figure out, you have to write it in the guess, e.g. “a mouse eating cheese next to a squiggly line”
I’ve not mathed anything out but I don’t get the hate. I often use the nickname ‘Little Fear’ in relation to Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares being ‘Big Fear’.
I presume the weakness is around the slow presence deployment on the board with only 1 a turn and nothing on reclaim turns so the escalation isn’t rapid and doesn’t hit the heights on power others can do.
That being said the on board Darkness Swallows the Unwary power is good and is certainly usable with a string of minors and occasional major so no worries there. Also with solid ability to draw new power cards you could find the need to reclaim dwindles allow a steady escalation of power. Starting powers are all useful and cost very little so can stay usable as you go with adding symbols for boosting the innate and amping up fear generation.
So not OP but not unusably poor either and I think the most interesting of the low complexity spirits. Lightning and Rocks are more straight forward and River Surges is brutally overpowered so maybe less fun.
