Star Wars Rebellion - I lost as the Rebels but it was rather close. I kept the rebel base too weak
And then played Mottainai 2x and Seasons before leaving
7 Likes
Managed to get out to London to visit my buddy Nick, with whom I play Battletech: Scouring Sands cooperatively with.
Itās really good. He needs a slightly bigger table (Aces, the BT co-op system, really needs a 4x4 table, and his is 3x6ā¦ so we cut off 6" from the East and West sides of the map, but it turns out that you really need that space), but the mechanics are clean and the game is really fluid and smart once you get it setup.
The Red Raiders (our mercenary company, contracted out by the Appolakkian people to free them from the cruel occupation of the Jade Falcons) managed to destroy an ammo dump last game, but found hover tracks leading out the back of the cave network, implying that some of the supplies had already been dispatched. Wanting to hamstring the Falcons as quickly as possible, we gave chase, and todayās mission was a pincer attack: Nickās two heavy mechs (a Marauder and a Highlander) moving in from the south-west, and my two mechs (a Blackjack and a Warhammer) and a heavy tank (a Shrek AC-carrier) hidden to the north. The Falcons needed to run their hover transports to the north-east (there was a 50/50 on whether it was east or west), so the hope was that Nick would pull back some of the escorts and I would pound the transports.
That was the plan. Itā¦ did not survive contact with the enemy.
The big problem was the Falcons actually stuck to the mission (did I mention the Aces system is quite clever? It really is!). The transports sprinted every turn, slowed by their loads of ammunition, artillery, and a couple squads of support infantry (which, with typical Falcon-zeal, leapt into the fray as soon as they were revealed), and Nickās heavies were too slow to catch up. Thankfully the Highlander was very capable of laying down relatively effective long-range firepower (5 dice at long range is damn impressive, honestly!), and my Blackjack was able to take out one transport pretty quickly. The Falconās escorts (a Marauder IIC, a Howler, and a Summoner) split up, the Summoner harassing Nickās forces while the Howler and Marauder focused on the Warhammer and brought it down. My Shrek found a good place to park, went Hull Down (thematically, not mechanically), and just turned into a depleted-uranium-spitting turret that mowed down two more transports and took out the Howler. Meanwhile my Blackjack kept overheating (mechanically, not thematically) to put more shots on the heavier Clan mechs.
The final turn saw one of the transports escape (not before we grabbed its cargo, but still), and the mighty Marauder IIC brought low by the Blackjack sticking a banana in its tailpipe (read ābananaā as āinterlocked-AC2sā and ātailpipeā as āthin rear armourā). In response the Green Turkeys took out my Warhammer and Nickās Marauder.
This let us finish the primary objective, but not the secondaryā¦ we were able to pay for our repairs (both our mechs were salvaged, and our pilots ejected safely), but not much elseā¦ but the Jade Falcon commander sent us an ominous message that we will need to deal with next timeā¦ is it a trap?
Itās going to be a trap. But we dare not refuse his batchall.
6 Likes
In addition to our regularly played games that I donāt even bother recording here anymore, this weekend we played Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-Earth, which we havenāt played in some time. It was nice to get it back to the table. I pulled off the win as Sauron by having more cities under my control at the end of the game.
Tonight, I tried out Moon Colony Bloodbath for the first time. I was playing solo, and this is a rather brutal game. Starts out all calm and simple, then before you know it, half your colony is getting wiped out in one deal of the progress deck, and you just know the next time around, you are doomed. I got the 9th event card into the deck, but got crushed shortly thereafter.
Fun little game, would like to try it with other players.
10 Likes
Thereās definitely a communal shared experience of everyoneās Moon Colony going to hell together when you play with others. The robots may be murdering all of your colonists, but the rest of the table is suffering alongside you. I havenāt played it solo (Iāve only played a friendās copy), and while Iām sure that it works as a solo game, I canāt imagine it being as much fun.
9 Likes
Inis + Nemed expansion
The End of the Triumvirate - itās about the First Triumvirate and itās a sort of race to reach certain objectives. Itās fine.
Skull King with the more advanced cards, as if this game isnāt complicated enough for a freaking trick taking game - the advanced cards are actually good. This new Skull King rule set actually incentivises you to bid more. Normal Skull King is just a lame card game where you just bid zero.
Tokaido - I appreciate this more than when I played it years ago. Itās a pseudo drafting game with a cozy theme of being a tourist in Japan. Might opt for Letās Go to Japan in such cases.
Coup - CLASSSSIIIIIIIIC
Quest for El Dorado - not as cerebral as Dominion but this is just fun with its simple rule set.
The Rich and the Good - light weight stock market game. Still love this
The Gang x2
So Clover
10 Likes
While traveling Iāve been playing Habitats on BGA. maybe i should get a physical copy. I might get better scoresā
7 Likes
Is the Nemed expansion good? I have it (I got the big box), and it looksā¦ fiddley? I like the base game a LOT, and I like the new twists from the first expansion (Druids? The one that adds Islands, Harbours, and a 5th player), but even that feels like itās bolting on more rules for uncertain payoffā¦ but maybe thatās just me?
2 Likes
The dedicated sanctuaries are easy to add. 3 heroes that you dedicate a sanctuary to when you place one. These heroes then allow you to do their special action if you are present on their sanctuary.
Perhaps the best exp module other than the islands and harbours module
3 Likes
Long weekend at No-con in Virginia. 41 (non-unique) games played! Some highlights:
Lords of Xidit - Programming pickup-and-deliver. Very satisfying to try and predict where you can sneak in between other playersā actions to swipe the good stuff. You score by collecting gold, building towers, and some area majority. Those three objectives are randomly sorted at the beginning, and at the end, players are eliminated one by one as you move up the objectives, eliminating the player with the lowest score in each one. Last player standing wins.
Bacon - Our morning game, played with a full 6 each time. What a great game! Itās a climbing/shedding game played in teams. Whoever goes out first earns the right for their team to score, but how much you score is based on when your teammates go out. When you win the lead, you can choose to pass it to your teammates. So you really want to read the table, and make a hard choice of messing up your own hand to help your team.
El Grande - Full (and long) 5-player game. People jumped way out in front with some early special scoring cards, leaving me and another player in the dust. I put my sympathies to the side and stepped on the other trailing player to get myself somewhat back into the game, although the winner was going to be far ahead no matter what. Played it too defensively at the end and tied for third instead of getting it outright.
Dadada - Ugg moo WA wa wa wa. Ra RAAaaa moo UGG wa.
Pendulum - Real-time worker placement! There are three zones with sand timers of increasing length, each having two (identical rows). The timers are locks - you canāt move your workers in or out of those rows. When the timer runs out, anyone can flip it over to the other row, then any workers there can be used to actually do the action. Youāre collecting resources, points, engine-building cards, and extra action cards, which you can get more of every round. Itās a very fun puzzle that you have to really be ON for. Multiple production issues downgrade it from great to good.
Bomb Busters - Love it! Iāve ordered a copy to play with our usual Crew group, because I think it will hit most of the same buttons. A great little deduction puzzle. We only did the tutorial levels up to questionable yellows - Iām excited to see what it gets up to in the later chapters.
Captain Sonar - It had been a while! I had mostly played engineer previously, so I wanted to give radio operator another try. At first it looked like I wouldnāt have much to do - the other team moved maybe four times while we were snaking around and charging up. We had to surface fairly early on due to an inexperienced engineer, and our opponents started moving fast then. We suffered a hit, but I had an idea that they were trying to skirt just around islands, and had our captain fire in their most likely position. Direct hit. Then the shoe was on the other foot and we were the cat to their mouse, but we had advantage because weād charged up so much, while their initial silent play left them underprepared for sub-on-sub violence, and we kept the pressure up until they had to pull a very poor Silence in a last-ditch, unsuccessful attempt.
And of course, the piĆØce de resistance: Four games of Cosmic Encounter across the weekend, using the campaign rules from Cosmic Odyssey and all expansions. Very memorable games and plays, many more than I could recount here. But most of us agreed that the campaign rules were unnecessary - all you need are good friends, decent aliens, and the Rewards deck. My friend has all the expansions; Iām very happy with base game + Incursion.
14 Likes
Played Tiny Laser Heist in UKGE. Nice dexterity game where you perform a heist with a partner. Iād like to play a full game of this
Then, I manage to reach back to our club for some Friday night games. I played A Few Acres of Snow. I didnāt look up what the broken combo is, but I have some vague idea on what it is (based on the name). It was good fun. Iād like to explore this game more and then check the broken combo at some point - both as the British and as the French
11 Likes
Played a couple of games of Frosted Blooms. Itās Bruno Cathala and Ludovic Maublanc. This looks like a polyomino game but it only includes 5 unit pieces so is more precisely a pentomino game.
The game has a little bit of patch work in how you select pieces around a circle but with the ādrop a coin on ones you skipā mechanic.
There are a couple of really nice directions of pulling in this game which I think makes it stand out from others in the puzzle genre.
Firstly thereās I nice tug of war between long term goals (eg scoring large groups of tiles) vs immediate scoring per turn. If you plan well you can score really well on a single turn but you feel like youāre missing opportunities in the moment to make those plans, which is nice I think.
Secondly the game really leans into an idea that perfection in these kinds of games is impossible so why not bake that into the game and make gaps and holes a viable part of the scoring. Itās a really cool idea I think.
The game has some really nice tiles and bits as well.
9 Likes
I only managed to attend Wellycon for about 2/3 of one day this year, and I ended up playing only two different games; but I still had a nice time because those games were fun and I got to catch up with some friends Iād not seen since last yearās con (and gawk at the giant boxes full of miniatures which comprised the Thing they had purchased from another attendee).
I played Endeavor: Deep Sea in the play-to-win room (I did not win) and that took a long time; and then I introduced my friends to The King is Dead which they (and I) thoroughly enjoyed. We were going to try The Red Cathedral as well, but none of us had played before, and we decided we didnāt actually have the brain for learning it just then, so we carried on playing TKID instead.
I won the first game largely by holding on to my cards in the mid-game and getting uncontested control over the resolution of the final two regions, which was just enough to arrange things in my favour. In stark contrast, I thought I had absolutely wrecked myself just three regions (of eight) into the following game, after Iād made an early decision to put all my eggs in the Welsh basket. Theyād held the first two regions, and I needed them to take this third one as well, as they were weak everywhere else. My friends were not having it, though, and after burning way too many cards I had to let it go. After that I was pretty sure I was done for, but my saving grace was that Iād kept acquiring English influence in my attempts to maintain the Welsh majority, and I ended up strong for both factions (in fact I didnāt gain any Scottish influence all game!). In the end I was tied for influence over the victorious English, and with Wales being second in line (partly because the map had ended up in a state where everyoneās Welsh Support card had to go to the same single region, which ended up making Wales unassailable in that region) I pipped my friend by one for the tie-breaker.
I didnāt feel bad about winning, though, as everyone enjoyed it so much :). Lovely game; ideal group for it; great fun!
9 Likes
Another very busy and tiring weekend this time, but I managed to continue my year-long challenge with two quick games of Point City. The first game was a bit of a learning/remembering curve as my strategy was a bit disjointed when I was failing to find the right resource generating buildings I was looking for and totally failed to mitigate or hijack the buildings that the bot was drawing. This lead to a 47 to 40 loss, and a rethink for game two. The second game saw me almost totally try to prevent the bot from drawing any buildings, only resource games, while building up a steady and diverse range of resource-producing building of my own. This worked a treat, giving me a score of 61 points, and the bot scoring from 22 points (using the easy calculation) up to 49 (using the hard calculation). Clearly that approach is the way to go solo.
Tying up loose ends from last week, I was able to play the final two scenarios to complete my campaign of Arcadia Quest: Beyond the Grave. Scenario 5 saw the party tackle the Black Shrine and the first appearance of the Dread King and Frank. I stuck to the perimeter and saw off some minions as Ivan, Frank and Dr. Spider approached - and Seth fell into another trap! Ivan was first to reach us but Darryn, who had been rolling lots of exploding attack dice all session, one-shotted him for the first award. Frank then cornered Seth and Darryn and while Seth died after one huge attack, Darryn was able to defeat Frank for the second award. I decided to play on to complete the rescue mission, without disturbing the Dread King and defeating a few ghosts along the way. Seth escaped further harm from the Death Curse, and equipped with new Emperorās Plate armour and an upgraded Burninate spell, the party went into the final scenario in the Unholy Mausoleum.
A steady start to the last adventure with this trio defeating a few minions, with the sole aim of defeating the Dread King. Ivan reached the party first and managed to avoid a one-shot death thanks to a remarkable exploding defense roll - only for Darryn to obliterate him with his second attack. Frank was more of a challenge and hung around for three rounds thanks to some amazing defense rolls on both sides. The party dodged the ghost attacks but Dr. Spider proved a menace again - banishing both Darryn and Scarlet in one round, luckily to fill up the spawn tile - but then he banished Darryn immediately upon his return this time to an empty spawn tile. Scarlet and Seth managed to defeat Dr. Spider but then retreated to mop up a few minions to respawn Darryn. Reunited and refreshed, the trio faced the Dread King - making some lucky defense rolls and chipping down his health for two rounds. Round three saw the final blow though, as Seth hit him the Dread King in a storm of meteor fire but himself perished in the Dread Kingās dying blow. A dramatic end to a fantastic campaign and glad to get through it all completing every scenario successfully. My next campaign of Arcadia Quest will test the Pets expansion with three new heroes.
7 Likes
Iāve started my first game of UnderQuest. My character is a Kroling (a kind of bird-man) and a scoundrel (who is a nightmare in an ambush when wielding their dagger). As it turned out, the shop had a sword and shield for sale which was a generally better combination, so for the time being my dagger is stashed in case I lose the sword (or indeed the shield). My Familiar is a rooster with a giant eyeball for a head; a strange and dubious creature who gets me trinkets for amoral deeds (this felt appropriately roguish).
The quest has six stages, and in my initial session I completed the first stage (locating a fellow rogue by the name of Zolla) by finding the quest tokens required by that task. Every dungeon card you encounter has the potential to gain you a quest token if either of the half-tokens printed on the card are a match for the opposing half-token at either end of the row of previously-encountered dungeon cards. (See the photos below for a visualisation.)
Like Desolate (and other Grey Gnome games), each turn youāll draw two face-down dungeon cards; choose one to reveal; and then decide whether to encounter the card youāve seen or the one you havenāt. A revealed card which is going to give you one of the quest tokens youāre looking for will always be attractive, even if itās a tough challenge. If it wonāt, then you might prefer to chance it with the unknown card (but unlike Desolate, the effect of the card often varies depending on whether it was the initially-revealed card or the āunknownā one, which makes the unknown cards an even bigger risk).
Along the way I battled some tough creatures, including a āāstoutā consuming massā (is there any other kind?!), and the āunholy wood hag of draguā (against whom I burned a lot of my precious āgritā in an attempt to do so much bonus damage that they wouldnāt actually get a chance to attack me).
I was pretty hurt by the time I found Zolla, and things are only going to get harder as I descend to the second level of the dungeon. I managed to successfully craft myself a healing potion from some ingredients I found, but itās going to take more than that, so hereās hoping I find some powerful treasures in the lower levelsā¦
6 Likes
Itās a misprint for āstoatā. The Bishop is not pleased.
5 Likes
Yesterday was my buddy Mikeās birthday, and to celebrate he invited us to his new game shop (he opened it a month ago with his wife, Katie) to play Twilight Imperium 4th Ed with Prophecy of Kings and Thunderās Edge.
Mike is good people.
There were 4 of us (me, Mike, Ben, and Justin). We did my current favourite race selection method: every player receives (# of Players) + 1 races (in this case using the extremely handy reference cards). These are passed to each other player, who burns one of the races, so that the player is left with 2 remaining choices, and picks from those. There is also an initial mulligan (so if your initial 5 races has one or a bunch you really donāt want to play, you can burn those immediately and make sure your final selection has races you at least donāt mind playing.
The end result of this draft: Mike picked Sardak Norr, Ben took The Nomad, Justin ended up with the Arborec, and I ended up with the Firmament (which I picked from the two choices because Iāve never tried them before).
I also managed to get speaker.
We then built the galaxy, whichā¦ honestlyā¦ I think I like more than the pregenerated maps? I get that the pregens are balanced, butā¦ I kindaā¦ like the imbalance? Granted, we had a galaxy with 5 Legendary planets in the starting build (plus Mallice, plus the Fracture)ā¦ oh, and the Galactic Event was the one that gives you Command Tokens for going into the Fracture and +1 Speed while ending up there. Not a big change, but since my Faction wants to be in the Fracture anywayā¦
In a situation that is depressingly common for me in recent TI4 games I didnāt manage to score until Turn 3ā¦ I seem to have somehow forgotten how to build fleets and use those fleets to expand, and so my initial moves out into the universe were slow to the point of being ponderous. I did grab the two Legendaries near me very quickly (the Garbage Planet that lets you take and play Action Cards from the discard pile, which is great, and Primor, which pops 2 free Infantry out each turn), and an early exploration got me a Gamma Wormhole on Primor straight to Mallice, which I also claimed. Part of the issue was Command Tokensā¦ I was in a very mineral rich section of the galaxy, but correspondingly had little Influence (not none, thankfully, but I was getting 1-2 Tokens per Leadership Strategy, whereas Ben was averaging 5-7).
Meanwhile, the Sardak Norr were winning fight after fight in small border skirmishes with the Nomads, getting their entire fleet upgraded in the process. Oh, and I launched 4 missions to Thunderās Edge before realizing that the only legal places to put it were all on my side of the boardā¦ I really only needed to do 3 to make sure I claimed Majority and therefore the planetā¦ ah well. Thatās on me.
Anyway, the midgame saw the Nomads surging into a massive lead (7 to the Sardakās 4 while the Arborec and Firmament languished on 1). The final turn saw a very tight contest between the two frontrunnersā¦ I managed to get a few more points on the board, landing me around 6 final points before the Nomad was able to close it out.
Final scores: Nomads 10, Sardak Norr 9, Obsidian 6, Arborec 4.
The Firmament/Obsidian are a tricky race, a lot of Setup and Payoff that is hard to time (you canāt research your Racial Techs as the Obsidian, but the Plots and racial techs are basically useless as the Firmamentā¦ in fact, the Firmament doesnāt really have any advantages except for their Agent that lets them ignore Space Cannons, but thatās not a huge advantageā¦ I suppose if they can get their Hero, they can use it twice? ANYway, tricky Faction to play, but a neat puzzle. I can see why people (smarter than me) would enjoy them.
Either way, great game! Ran a little on the long side, but it was still fantastic.
8 Likes
I was under whelmed on Grey Gnome gamesā website by the cover but your photos on the table make that game look stunning. The adventure sounds cool as well. How long did it take you?
5 Likes
Yeah, itās pretty neat :). And while it shares some core DNA, itās a much, much bigger game than Desolate!
Iāll try to keep an eye on the time for my next session. I donāt know how long that first one was, but it wouldnāt have been representative anyhow ā I was setting up for the first time, doing character creation, and having to read the manual every time a new thing came up, so the next phase ought to be much quicker. (Especially if my character doesnāt survive it :).
Edit: BGG suggests 60ā90 minutes for a full game once you know what youāre doing, and that seems to gel with the pretty consistent 1-2h length of the play-through videos by Game-Knight, so I assume itās a realistic ballpark; but Iām guessing Iāll be taking a fair bit longer than that for my initial plays at least!
3 Likes
Apart from the demos at Expo (and fewer of them than usual, the old āsit down, play a game, buy it if you like itā approach seems to be going out of fashion and we were one of the few booths where you could actually play a full game if you wanted to) I played some old favourites and some enjoyable novelties. (And some that I just Didnāt Get.) Highlights:
dnup - climbing game in the Scout style, but clicked for me in a way that Scout doesnāt really. Probable purchase. Will try it on BGA first though.
Petiquette - I love the core idea of āplay the thing that you think fits in this sequenceā but I hate the having only six cards to specify most of the thing. Iām very tempted to build a similar game but without that element.
Rafter Five - I have never seen a theme that makes so little sense. But itās a dexterity game, you know what to do.
War of the Nine Realms - yeah yeah I was working for the publisher so bias warning. But I work for Wotan in large part because I love this game. Skirmish wargame, unique powers for each unit and you need to shift your tactics depending on whom youāre facing, and an anti-turtling mechanic Iāve never seen anywhere else. Rather than A and B fight, C wins, each time anyone deals a wound they put a point in the Blood Cauldron for their side, and the first to hit 18 points wins the game.
8 Likes
@RogerBW can play dnup on BGA if you want
4 Likes