Had two good nights of games with my group to lament my summer semester starting and the lack of time for the next nine weeks. We started Friday with one friend’s new copy of Before There Were Stars. This is not a game. It’s a storytelling exercise with a few mechanics thrown in for “gaminess.” But… it can be a rather transcendent experience if with the right people. I was the only one who was really telling a creation myth, but the other stories fit the mythic mold. As someone who has always obsessed over Joseph Campbell and myth, I fell in love with this pretty quickly. I think that if you have the right people around this thing and the right atmosphere, it can really sing. It allows you to really see the people your playing with in a beautiful way. It is absolutely not for everyone, but my group and our extended role-playing group lean hard into the storytelling aspect of role-playing, and I’m excited to get into this again.
Oceans - I love this game. It’s gorgeous on the table and in your hands. I was the lowest scoring in this game because I just did not adapt well early on and someone really needed to limit the food source in the reef to thwart the massive translucent filter feeder with parasites feeding on either side, and I decided to be cute instead of practical. I went predatory but everyone evolved defensively then balanced their species so that there was never anything for my predator to actually eat. The deep cards are always so fun to draw and it feels like each one could swing things in your favor if you play it right. Every player’s turn is interesting because your species can be highly impacted by what others are doing and it keeps me engaged the whole time. Just a great game of building, evolving, and adapting your engines.
We played our second game of Root last night. Three-player. I was the Eyrie again vs the cats and woodland alliance. I punched the cats early and that gave me the slightest lead that let me plan for turmoil and changing my despot out for the commander. The alliance player waited way too long to revolt and both I and the cats were several points ahead of him. I don’t think he was considering his supporters as strategically as he needed to, or that he was aggressive enough early on. He staged a bit of a comeback, didn’t do enough to thwart my decree, though the cats came very close. Final score was 30-24-18. Probably won’t be able to get it back out for a bit unless it’s 2-player, but really not sure if that’s going to be the experience I want. I’m dying to play as the vagabond. Very happy I picked this up.
We topped it off with a game of Downforce. I have yet to win this game, but I don’t care. This was a particularly mean game with lots of sloooooow corners. If I’d bet better I could have, maybe, pulled out the win, but I’m not too worried about the math. A lot of surprises made it very exciting. The winner had 19, I had 12,and the bottom player had - 4.
Sigh, good nights to go out on. Now I’m just going to play lots of Carcassonne on my study breaks for several weeks.
6 Likes
Last night we continued our Imperial Assault app campaign, doing the third mission. This felt like a bit of a slog, taking about 3 hours to finish, partially due to some bad rolling, but mostly because of the mechanics that required the rolls in the first place.
Spoilers for Hoth co-op campaign mission
Neutral mission tokens are placed on the map as “shadows”, which then require a hero to take a strain to test insight, which will reveal all shadows within a number of spaces equal to the number of surges rolled. Every time there were shadows, there were HK Assassin Droids hidden in some of them, and on their turn, each figure got a shot at the hero with the least damage, regardless of line of sight or accuracy, and until you could find the right shadow containing one of the figures, you could not fight back at all. Meanwhile other nasties on the map were there to be dealt with, which typically just made it harder to try to focus on revealing the shadows. In the first area, there were 10 such tokens, with four droids to find.
So you could either stand on a shadow to guarantee revealing it, or stand further away in the hopes of getting more than one, but risking revealing none, which we often did and suffered from. It sucked to spend strain three times to finally manage a single surge result on the dice. We also tended to keep our distance after one of us discovered an explosive that would have hit him for 2 had he been in the shadow.
While an interesting mechanic and a good way to introduce more attribute tests into the game (which I feel are relatively underused in the main game), it did drag the game out and felt a bit similar to the snow piles from our previous mission: something to just drag on the length of the mission for little gain.
We failed the mission in what we think was the home stretch, all of us getting wounded. I can somewhat appreciate this, as it is the first time any of us has been wounded in this campaign, and I don’t want the missions to be a cake walk, but still this seemed a bit extreme as there did not feel to be much we could have done to be more efficient.
3 Likes
I’ve just been thoroughly slaughtered at Terra Mystica…
I’m finding that online games take a lot more focus than IRL gaming, so I’m doing a lot worse than usual (that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it!)
5 Likes
Having recently bought TM, the app is much harder than playing irl
1 Like
So, the first time I tried 7th Continent (which was shortly after the expansion Kickstarter fulfilled, i.e. over a year ago now), I did the short introductory Crystal Song curse. I flailed around, accomplished very little, took a few different statuses, got virtually no crystals, and beefed it trying to take a makeshift raft off the introductory island (I did survive, but failing that check did not put me in a good position for continuing). And I was very tantalized by that submarine that I couldn’t figure out how to operate and assumed I needed to be on a different curse to actually get going. Which is where I left things. Now that I can monopolize my table for extended periods of time, I’ve decided to get back into it. But the Crystal Song curse is really not very exciting, just a way to acclimatize you to the game, so I decided to abandon that and get going on the first proper curse, Voracious Goddess, this time two-handing it instead of using a solo character.
Well, I must say, things are going a lot better (it probably does help that I decided to activate the Prodigy and 777 difficulty decreasers, but on the other hand, the latter just stops you dying once, and while the buffer of cards is helpful I don’t think I’ve had a Prodigy card come up on a failable skill check yet.). I mapped out the island pretty fast, actually managed to figure out where the gears for the submarine are - it’s nothing to do with the Curse , got a fair bit of experience, crafted a few handy bits of gear, got my characters’ passive skill bonuses going, and got a campfire going to cook the meat I managed to hunt up before heading back over to the submarine aaand…getting off the island! 
This is what i find in general with apps and even TTS. Face to face play gives me all the information i need to know at a single glance.
Not that you can tell, but I prefer the Twilight Struggle app to the physical game. I need the rule enforcement
4 Likes
Yes, the TM app is terrible at giving an overview, while the TS app is good. All the essential information on one screen is a very important part of UI design, and the TM Devs, in particular, seem bad at it.
TTS I also always find inconvenient because I can’t see everything at once (aside from everything else I dislike about it).
1 Like
So, I have a 5-year old son, and it pains me greatly that he has so many toy cars and yet doesn’t take the obvious opportunity to play Death Race 2000. I’m starting to think he’s no son of mine.
So I got a copy of Gaslands: Refuelled, and had a solo practice game tonight. It started as a good, clean, street race.
Them the blue buggy mistimed a turn, and hit a barrier. Meanwhile, the orange (yellow team) buggy perfectly timed a corner, but spun out of control hitting a bollard, flipping his car and exploding against a giant concrete dinosaur (which was a thing in Mad Max; I distinctly remember a giant concrete dinosaur).
The explosion (only happens on a 6+ on a wreck) (and the machine gun) mildly inconvenienced the blue car…
But didn’t stop it crossing the finish line first, while the yellow car drove into the back of the blue buggy out of sheer annoyance, smashing it through the barrier and also accidentally causing it to explode.
Hugely love this game. I want to bring it when it’s possible to meet up again in Meatspace. Also, it’s actually impossible not to say ‘brrrrrRRRRRMM’ when moving the cars. Higly recommended if you have a lot of toy cars around.
14 Likes
I love the Stegosaurus skeleton!
Next time it can go sideways, get those limbs and legs in the way 
4 Likes
Sorry, I uploaded the photos from my phone and typed it up on the computer - I didn’t mean to just plonk the piccies there. I’ve written it up now. Really, really good fun. I did have a car drive under the skeleton’s chin, I was fun not being sure quite whether they’d make it or collide!
8 Likes
Gaslands is great!! We really need to get it to the table again!!!
3 Likes
Today was a solid day. In the morning we got in a game of Eternal: Chronicles of the Throne with the new-ish expansion. Fun 1v1 dueler, in the same space as Star Realms or Shards of Infinity but with a but more MtG vibe too it(which I truly appreciate!). My son took the win, but it was close, and could easily have gone the other way if I’d survived one more turn.
After my son did some school work, we finally got Godtear to the table. We just used the core box of 2 Champions (1 each), and played the intro scenario, so it wasn’t overly exciting, but it was a good way to learn the basics. Either way, my son won taking round 4 for his 5th and final point.
While it was fun, it’s easy to see that the game really needs the full 3 Champions per side, so that’s our goal for next time. Maybe tomorrow or Wednesday.
After that was a pleasant game of Quests of Valeria, which is always a fun time. My son won a close game, 25-24!
Dinner and dessert was followed up by a quick game of Unmatched, Bruce Lee vs Big Foot. I started out strong, but Big Foot ran away to rest and recuperate, and one major missplay cost Bruce Lee (me) the game.
Also, seeing this in writing made me realize that my boy won every game today! 
8 Likes
Proud parent? Or fearing for his inevitable worldwide dominion?
4 Likes
Hey, I don’t want to make you feel too bad but… how is today any different than usual? 
2 Likes
@pillbox Bit of both?? Yeah, bit of both!
3 Likes
The father of a son that is dominating the world has to be proud, no matter what…
2 Likes
I finally opened the ridiculously cheap copy of London 2nd ed last night (if you haven’t got it and you’re in the UK you can still get it for 8-12 pounds depending on the day). I wanted to play a solo two-player game to get the rules in my head.
I’ll admit I thought it looked a bit dull, but once you start playing and building your engine, it’s brilliant. How much poverty you accrue is really up to you, so there’s this lovely mechanic of balancing it against the rewards you get. Plus, you can actually have poverty, as the player with the least at the end has theirs wiped out (all other players get that same amount reduction, it’s not totally lop sided), so it doesn’t matter how much you get, as long as others have more.
I can’t stress how high quality the components are, for such a small price. The cards are really high quality, with a really nice finish and good, thick cardstock - a couple of times I tried to separate two, only to realise it was just one. I can’t wait to get a few games played.
4 Likes
Ooh, that looks stunning. And a few reviews seem to really love it. Okay, that’s on the list, especially that cheap.
Maybe not quite as thrilling as flying your snowspeeder between the AT-AT’s legs in the arcade, but looks like great fun. I played an awful lot of Car Wars in the eighties and it was wonderful, but a bit flat and fiddly at times.
1 Like
