Last night at Local Game Group:
FUSE. Not often in the mood, but when I am I really enjoy it.
Introduced Sentinels of the Multiverse to the others, who had a good time. Wraith, Bunker and Captain Cosmic vs Baron Blade, a solid win for Team Good. (Towards the end, the first time Wraith got hit in a turn, she’d throw back 7 damage, which certainly helped matters.)
And finally Love Letter, which none of us had played for a while, but still good fun.
+1000 points to the person with the Game of Thrones 2nd ed LCG playmat. Gorgeous game, daring mechanics (Military, Intrigue, Power) - but FFG absolutely refused to balance it and some factions were unplayable for years. The only one I’ve collected £100s of and then sold the lot. But the playmats are great.
Apparently a bunch of them showed up in a local charity shop - all the same, so he only bought one of them. (He hasn’t played the game as far as I know.)
Another gameless drought finally broken, this time with a first playthrough of Concordia. A solo game playing a two-hander as Red versus Blue to teach myself the game, while I wait for the Solitaria variant to arrive.
What a joy it was: I kept things simple to test the rules and directed the two sides largely apart, exploring and expanding to different sides of the board for clarity, but everything flowed really smoothly and it was easy and quick to learn and start getting into the strategy. Before the end scoring I would have though Blue would have won with more resources in their store and a greater number of colonists and trading posts on the map, but Red’s greater number of specialist cards (4 to 1 for Blue) gave them the victory by 140 points to 127.
A definite keeper and it will surely become one of my top games before long, although I doubt I will have anyone to play it with for a while.
Yesterday, we managed to get a three player game of Lords of Waterdeep going. Felt odd, as a lot of good buildings kept coming up on the market, most of which would provide rogues, so black cubes were never hard to get. Having the lord with Skullduggery and Piety specializations, I was able to make good use of this.
I grabbed the Lieutenant quest as my first action and was able to get it completed at the beginning of the third round, which gave me an extra placement for the rest of the game, but also left me with some catching up to do regarding the score. I managed by getting a number of high scoring quests, even if they were not helpful towards my lord bonuses.
After I caught up, the scores remained really close until the end when I jumped ahead with a 20 point quest. I also came ahead in the lord bonuses, so pulled off the win 189 - 161 - 161. My brother-in-law probably could have stopped me as he had a hand of mandatory quests, but he doesn’t like playing mean, and in general we try to play nice, though I did play Free Drinks once to steal a cube, which my wife then stole with her own Free Drinks card, so a little meanness still happens now and then.
A bit later, my wife and I played Lost Cities again. This time I did good every round, and my wife just could not get the wagers she needed to keep up in two of the rounds. Final scores were 231 - 121. Thought I was going to be screwed at one point when I had two wager cards on blue, but had only managed to get the 4 and 6 out, just to watch my wife play a wager and then the 7-9 over the next turns, but I drew the 10 late in the round to make it a wash.
Oof, a 10 on two wagers! The dream!
Friends and enemies, my first ever game of War of the Ring…
I liked the symmetry of the sun throwing shadow across the map… anyway. A horrible, horrible loss for the Free People.
Now, in my defence (as the player of the Free People):
I came within striking distance of victory twice (once when I fumbled on assaulting the Fords of Isen, as mentioned above, which would’ve allowed me to hold Orthanc, and again when I assailed the Shadow stronghold in the South of Mirkwood… there were only 2 orcs defending it when I attacked initially, they retreated into the Stronghold, and then my opponent played an Event that let him recruit 3 more troops there, despite the siege… my attack the following action managed to kill exactly 0 defenders over 4 rounds of fighting, and I had to retreat with a single infantry, Legolas, and a Leader. Lorien fell a few turns later).
The end came when Elrond rode north (capturing the city and the stronghold to the north), abandoning Rivendell. As I swung back towards Moria, gathering (the finally mobilized North on the way), Terry played an event that removed all my Wild-die results, which was 3 of my 4, and then captured Rivendell before I could stop him.
Gosh, what a game. Pain to setup, and obviously got lots of rules wrong, but wow. What a game!
EDIT: just cleaning up a few typos.
I really like the colours on these images. Very textured and not overly saturated. Feels like playing a board game in a pub 
That pub has quite “fashionable” lighting, so I put the camera into raw mode, which does a better job of being faithful to reality in low light than the built-in JPEG conversion. (I could improve it by picking white points and so on afterwards, but I also like the look.)
In this case, just relief, as it took me from what would have been -30 to 0.
I played a million rounds of Sushi Go with some 8-12 year olds at a birthday dinner this weekend, and then went home and started a new diary for Thousand Year Old Vampire. This guy is starting out with some pretty significant baggage, so here’s hoping he forgets things quickly!
Played the next four cases in MicroMacro Crime City: Full House . We are now halfway done, good thing the original game arrived today!
This is VERY cool, although I wouldn’t recommend playing for more than an hour. It’s tough on the ol’ peepers.
Just obtained Full House for play with the family.
Anyway… games night! Two new to me games played.
Power Grid: Factory Manager 2/6
Would not play again. Clearly trying to ride on Power Grid’s success but has nothing to do with OG PG. Has a quirky auction but didn’t like anything else
Bear Raid with someone who admitted to being an ex-stock broker. Didn’t help him though.
Simply shorting stock to buy other stock and hope others don’t boost your shorted stock. Events dictate how the stock will move depending on the pip value of dice on each company
Fantastic game that I’ll be looking to buy. Just enough fuzziness in the events to almost be random but you can still take control of a company. You can take control by squirreling dice behind your screen.
5/6 would recommend (hot take after one play)
I got a game of A Touch of Evil in today (papa got a rare sick day), continuing my Flying Frog binge. I was up against the Vampire and playing with Anne Marie the teacher, and Heinrich the drifter. Things went badly.
We got a taste for the kind of town council we were dealing with when, on turn one, the mayor flipped his lid and ran screaming through town wreaking havoc. We got no chance to calm him down as he went running into the loving arms of a succubus. He was otherwise a good man. A pity.
His wife was the next to go. She was full of dirty secrets, but made of stern enough stuff to resist the dark and even the Vampire’s bite.
Turns went by and we learned clearly that our only potential ally was with the midwife—a day drunk and relentless blowhard. We had to work hard to keep her alive as attempt after attempt was made by the Vampire to eliminate the town council. The doctor and the preacher had both shown their true colours and openly defected to the villain’s side, and our other remaining member was hiding multiple evil secrets ready to spring on us.
When we decided to start the showdown, the road was long and the Vampire was able to buff up while we limped toward it. We feared what spending more time to adjust might bring, so we started the showdown anyway.
We were swatted away like flies. All the right tools for the job cannot be relied upon when the hands manipulating them are inept. Great, big handfuls of dice were lobbed his way, and time and again they came up twos and threes to his sixes. The few hits I did manage to land were usually shrugged off by his mist form, and after we were sent limping back to the town hall, it had healed all but two of the damage we did apply.
Finally, after all that our final council member cracked like a nut and joined the fun over at the villain’s place, and piled on some extra combat potential to the Vampire while he was at it. We made a beeline back to the lair after a quick restock of herbs, but it was too late. Too many opportunities to let the darkness grow left us susceptible to a bad Mystery round, which is of course exactly what we got. After a minion rush into town hall, I popped an event I couldn’t cancel, and it pushed the darkness track past the maximum. It was too late.
Despite the preacher burning all the available books before joining the villain (devastating to my Teacher’s primary offensive ability!) and the whole town being against us, I think I had myself in a pretty good position to win. I was pretty flush with synergistic equipment and vampire-specific buffs, but my rolls were just catastrophic, and I didn’t have much in the way of damage mitigation to extend the fight.
This was a brutal slog for the heroes, riddled with constant murders and succubus minions. This kept us pretty flush with investigation tokens, but the constant blockades and very real threat of pushing the darkness track even further meant lingering in the corner zones was impractical.
The real question now, is: do I send another hapless couple in to avenge them, or do I take on a new nightmare?
What are your thoughts on the Anniversary edition’s corner terrain/building models? I was looking at the game recently (n.b. I’ve never played it), and I couldn’t fathom why they had included those models – it seemed like they do nothing and might make certain things more awkward than they would otherwise have been. Do you like playing with them better than playing without them?
Played finally Tales of the Arabian Nights So glad I did, always wanted, haven’t been disappointed. It was a blast and we had great laughs.
The other two first plays were Dune: Imperium and Inis. Won both games, Inis’ victory was more surprising than Dune. I liked both games. I like Cyclades a lot, so am not really surprised I liked Inis too.
Dune: Imperium combines 2 mechanics, worker placement, which I don’t like at all and Deckbuilding, which I am not a huge fan. Somewhat I think tough that the game worked for me, I can’t really explain why. I guess the fact, that there are enough possibilities on the board to playe your worker helped.
Also played Secrets and Art Robbery I like the chaos the former can provide and the quick nature of the latter.
They really don’t get in the way at all since the spaces are so big. If they were a hassle I definitely wouldn’t use them. They really need paint to offer any “immersion” though (which I’ll be happy to apply).
I think it’s probably safe to skip the 10th anniversary edition if you don’t care about the cosmetics, or having a box that can fit everything for it. All the content inclusions are simply professionally printed versions of free web material.
[EDIT] I’m forgetting about the Epic encounter. I have to admit this is an exciting new addition but I’m also going to guess it’s the first of many.
[DOUBLE EDIT] Let me give you a more comprehensive overview of it as a product—caught a little extra time.
In my opinion, it’s all going to come down to how you want to store it, and how much you think a little toy factor will enhance your experience.
The box is enormous. It’s not literally double-long like Fortune and Glory, but it’s not far off and it is taller.
They assert that the insert can hold everything for the game and I call BS. Even if all your hero and villain cards are perfectly straight (and I’ll wager they’re not), it’s already tight with just The Coast and Hero Pack One content. I’m confident it’ll fit everything, just not where it was intended.
the insert itself is actually of notably lower quality than prior frog offerings, with incredibly thin wells and—in my case, anyway—splits and cracks throughout.
the cosmetic stuff is exactly that: cosmetic. It’s pure toy factor and frankly doesn’t even look good with the stark grey against the sepiatone of the board. These are a worthy add if you like their table presence (which is substantial) and you plan to dip them at the very least.
the web content is all on cardstock. I don’t consider this a negative as they also seem to be a lot more involved than the commercially available villains, so the extra space is welcome. Still, be aware these aren’t produced to the same standard as the main villains, though the cardstock is fine and they all get nice tokens.
the plastic wax seals and investigation coins are fabulous. If they make them available as a buy from their shop I’ll buy more.
I haven’t dug in much but the epic villain is SO much more than a stat upgrade. I’m guessing they’ll be releasing these individually for at least $30 if they make more. Multiple decks, three pages of new rules, a separate minion sheet, a big, scary mini… it’s pretty cool on a quick pass.
In the end, I grabbed it because I like the faff and I’m excited to paint it. This is the kind of game I’ll want to organize on my own anyway, so the quality of the insert isn’t the end of the world, and the box itself will certainly contain everything in a nicely organized way with some additional effort.
Hope that’s helpful. It’s a LOT of extra money but I think a worthy buy for the right person. This is still a pipsqueak next to (the current state of) Brimstone so I’m not put off by the extra bulk.
Very helpful, thank you.
Played Brian Boru. Really enjoyed it. Trick taking with card powers with area majority. Utterly dreadful colours. 45-60 minutes with some nice decisions (sometimes you actively want to lose tricks to use the card powers). We played with 3 which was still bitey.
Would definitely play again
Very interested in this one and hope to give it a try someday.
Though for some reason, boards with scores around the outside track that don’t end in 50 or 100 bother me a little. This appears to go to 60. Ethnos is the same.
