OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

[YellowKing]

After some soul-searching, I took back Clank and ordered....SWORD & SORCERY!

This one got overshadowed by GLOOMHAVEN, but I've read and watched a lot of positive reviews. I've been craving a good old-fashioned dungeon crawler, and this one sounds like it's light enough to solo but deep enough to give that D&D feel. The minis are pretty fantastic as well.

My gaming group is LITERALLY tied up for 2018. We'll be playing Pandemic Legacy: Season 2 until the end of March, then we're doing Gloomhaven for God knows how long and still have 7th Continent after that. So I'm making sure any games I buy right now have a strong solo component and/or REALLY fill a niche in my gaming collection. This one seems to fit the bill, so we'll see how it goes.

[hepcat]

I think I mentioned my love of Sword and Sorcery a while ago. It really is a solid dungeon crawl. It’s the same folks who made Galaxy Defenders, but the rules are a bit more mature (not that there was anything really wrong with the GD rules).

I love the use of lettered counters representing story elements, and line of sight reveals for enemies.

The only downside is the content is a bit limited right now. But it would be easy enough to extend it quite a bit simply with online published adventures, and perhaps some content packs.

I really wish I’d backed it on Kickstarter instead of the disappointing Massive Darkness.

[GreenGoo]

Son and I played a second game and my wife joined us so we taught her what we knew. I came in last again.

I really need to know how to handle that corner situation, it comes up a lot it seems.

[GreenGoo]

1. You can never put a meeple on a feature with another meeple on it, whether it's someone else's or your own. The trick to the game, however, is to place meeples in such a way that they might wind up sharing a feature that someone else has claimed. You may even want to try and put more than one of your meeples on a feature to ensure you get all the points.

When you say "put more than one of your meeples on a feature" you mean put it on another partially completed nearby feature, that when completed, ties 2 separate incomplete features (with 1 meeple each) together into a single complete feature which is then scored, yes? Having more meeples than the other guy guarantees you get the points, is my understanding.

You say that you can't put a meeple on a feature (complete or incomplete) that already has a meeple on it, so the scenario above is how I understand multiple meeples can come to be on the same feature.

2. You would want a tile with at least 2 city edges to join those adjacent city edges. That all city tile you mention would work, and I believe there are plenty of other tiles that would work too, but there are so many editions of Carcassonne out their and we had several expansions mixed in so I can't be sure.

That all city tile could be used almost anywhere. Even if it's never finished you'd still get partial points.

I believe I understand your answer, and quite frankly, having played 2 games, it's the only answer that makes sense from a workable game perspective, but my confusion is that the wall ends on the 2 tiles in my illustration are not connected to anything if I place the 100% city tile in there. This situation seems to be the only one where you can play a tile that does not match up exactly to the tile(s) beside it. It's like the rules are very simple and easy to understand visually, except this one case where the rules get thrown out and a different rule is used.

3. Yep, no reason not to stack Monasteries like that. Surrounding one makes it easier to surround an adjacent one.

Ok good, that's how we've been playing it.

[coopasonic]

I believe I understand your answer, and quite frankly, having played 2 games, it's the only answer that makes sense from a workable game perspective, but my confusion is that the wall ends on the 2 tiles in my illustration are not connected to anything if I place the 100% city tile in there.

The walls are not the defining feature, they are just artwork. Each side is one of field, city, road or river and that's it.

[GreenGoo]

omfg. I didn't know that.

So walls don't have to match up, just the side of the tile? City to city, road to road, field to field etc? Roads and fields were straightforward due to their nature, but the cities, my god, so many plays unplayed because I thought the walls had to literally line up with the walls on another tile.

Well that makes a freakin' huge difference. And it makes it easier to find placed to play tiles, and thus more decision making (which is good).

Thanks very much, Coop.

[Xmann]

public service announcement!!

Go! Games is 50% off the entire store.

I found Potion Explosion, 5 minute Dungeon, Headbanz, Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle and expansion all for $80'ish

Clerk told me they had Ticket to Ride Europe, Catan, Betrayal at House on the Hill, Carcassonne, numerous Muntchkin versions, Pandemic Legacy S1, and others but they were sold out. He also told me they'll get more shipments before the store closes for the season at the end of January. They also have hundreds of wall and desk calenders for cheap. Dozens of adult party games too.

I'm going to head back to mine in another week and see what else I can score.

http://www.goretailgroup.com/locations-facilities/

For those that are not familiar, this is a store that pops up around the holidays every year and sells games and calenders.

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[Chrisoc13]

After some soul-searching, I took back Clank and ordered....SWORD & SORCERY!

This one got overshadowed by GLOOMHAVEN, but I've read and watched a lot of positive reviews. I've been craving a good old-fashioned dungeon crawler, and this one sounds like it's light enough to solo but deep enough to give that D&D feel. The minis are pretty fantastic as well.

My gaming group is LITERALLY tied up for 2018. We'll be playing Pandemic Legacy: Season 2 until the end of March, then we're doing Gloomhaven for God knows how long and still have 7th Continent after that. So I'm making sure any games I buy right now have a strong solo component and/or REALLY fill a niche in my gaming collection. This one seems to fit the bill, so we'll see how it goes.

Seems like a pretty good choice. Clank has always been interesting to me, but my backlog is huge and I'm a bit tired of the deck building mechanism. I'm hoping I get to try someone else's version instead.

Sword and Sorcery was really interesting to me but I was already deeply invested in Galaxy Defenders which is basically the same game when the kickstarter launched, and I like the sci fi theme better. Since Sword and Sorcery was released I think a rules update for Galaxy Defenders has been released which basically seems to implement a lot of the things learned with sword and sorcery. I've since moved on from galaxy defenders but I think sword and sorcery looks great. Sam on the Dice Tower seems to really love it.

[hepcat]

Since Sword and Sorcery was released I think a rules update for Galaxy Defenders has been released which basically seems to implement a lot of the things learned with sword and sorcery.

Come on, man. You're supposed to keep me up to date on these things!

<runs off to download updated GD rules>

[Chrisoc13]

Since Sword and Sorcery was released I think a rules update for Galaxy Defenders has been released which basically seems to implement a lot of the things learned with sword and sorcery.

Come on, man. You're supposed to keep me up to date on these things!

<runs off to download updated GD rules>

Ha I don't even remember where I heard they did that. I sold Galaxy Defenders a while ago because it was a little fiddly and took up way too much real estate for what I got out of it but somewhere I heard they had updated the rules this year. Maybe a podcast or something. Anyways the small changes I heard sounded to be an improvement.

Every time I look at Galaxy defenders I'm a little sad I let it go, even though I know I wouldn't have played it much more and it was taking up a tremendous amount of space. Still... I loved parts of that game.

[YellowKing]

Go! Games is 50% off the entire store.

Went by mine today and picked up the Harry Potter Hogwarts Expansion for $17. Boom.

I was tempted by Potion Explosion but ultimately passed because I found a Friday the 13th Part 6 Jason NECA figure and four horror Funco Pop Vinyls I didn't have. I also bought a really nice backgammon set for my daughter who has been wanting one. At this point my wife was already giving me the "Are you going to buy the whole damn store?" look so I decided not to push my luck.

[hentzau]

Got in a 3 player learning game of Fallout last night. Two of us (my son and I) were familiar with the property, but our third player knew nothing about the Fallout universe. It was a learning game, and we did do a couple of things wrong in the beginning that got sorted out by the first few turns, but I don’t think it affected the outcome too much.

Game was a hit with all who played, especially my son (who is not a boardgamer at all.). I’m hoping I can continue to get this on the table with him, get him more excited about playing some other games.


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[hentzau]

Couple more games last night. Pulled out Spurs with my buddy Joe (he asked if I had any cowboy games. I laughed.). We were only playing 2 player, and the game says you need at least 3 to play, but I’m not sure why, other than causing more conflict. Anyway, fun little dice roller where you are running around doing missions on a board, capturing outlaws, roping cattle, breaking horses, etc. Fun PVP mechanic where you have to pull bullets out of a bag as quickly as possible. We both had a good time, he beat me on the basis of me getting a bad movement roll right at the end. If I would have rolled one more horse, I could have had a chance.

Then I pulled out Legends of Andor. As I thought, Joe immediately fell in love with the puzzle solving mechanic of the game. We played through the learning Legend (since it had been at least a year since I played, and I think that’s a great way to teach the game anyway. We won the Learning Legend fairly handily, and he immediately wanted to try out the second Legend.

I’ve tried the second Legend twice before, and lost pretty dramatically both times. The two times before I had played with 2 and 3 players, this time I talked my daughters into playing, and that seems to have made a difference. With he extra bodies, you had a much better chance to cover the map and find...the thing that you need. The game is not perfect, it really does lead to alpha player syndrome pretty easily, because there really is a puzzle to work out to win each legend. But if you are all invested and lending ideas, it’s actually a pretty great game. We BARELY won this time, we had exactly one shot to be able to fulfill the last victory condition before the last two enemies entered the castle, and we left absolutely nothing on the table, we had pretty much expended every last thing we had to take down the big bad. Really felt great when we finally dealt the death blow to him.

Going to bring this one out again when I get back home. Needs to be played more.


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[hentzau]

Oh, and ended the night with a couple of games of Disney Codenames. The End.

[Chrisoc13]

Charterstone complete. What an awesome ride. And I'm actually looking forward to playing it again. Thoughts incoming once I organize them better. Probably will write a review for bgg and post some thoughts here.

Next up... The new #1 on bgg. Can't believe that gloomhaven made it to number one. Looking forward to giving it a roll.

[baelthazar]

Charterstone complete. What an awesome ride. And I'm actually looking forward to playing it again. Thoughts incoming once I organize them better. Probably will write a review for bgg and post some thoughts here.

Next up... The new #1 on bgg. Can't believe that gloomhaven made it to number one. Looking forward to giving it a roll.

We are on game 9 and still loving it. Without spoiling, what do you make of the claim it is a fully playable worker placement game once you finish the campaign? I think we will buy the recharge pack anyway (why not use the second board too) but it would be nice to keep playing our older village as just a normal game.

[Chrisoc13]

I can see how it is completely playable after completing it but... I don't find myself wanting to jump in and play it again. That could be because we have played it twelve times within a month. Or it could be that a big part of the interest is the planning for the future. We'll eventually get around to giving it a shot. But like you I plan on buying the recharge and playing on the back side. And probably playing a whole new one with my family while on vacation in a few months.

[YellowKing]

Just got back from an epic 4+ hour 3-player game of Spirit Island. Wow, what a freaking brain burner of a game.

Because this was only our second time playing, we decided to go easy again. Played starter spirits (Lightning, Earth, Water - don't remember their actual names). No Blight card. However, we did remove the Progression Card helper and decided to choose our own powers.

Early on our strategy was to keep the inner island clear and try to push everything to the edges. The first few turns we held our own, but I felt that we were spending more time fighting ravages than preventing builds in the first place. I pointed this out to the group, and we slowly started to incorporate more prevention into our gameplay where possible. This led to a couple of great turns where we had limited builds.

Mid-game we found ourselves in a pretty good position. Except for one small pocket of invaders, we had basically shoved the enemy onto one island board. While that board was heavily ravaged and chock full of invaders, the rest of the island was barren and not adding to our troubles. At the same time our spirits were growing very powerful and we were generating boatloads of fear.

Unfortunately we hit Phase 3 with the invaders, meaning two terrain types being built/ravaged/explored each turn. Even worse, we were running out of Invader cards which would insta-lose the game for us. We went into Fear generating overdrive, pouring all of our efforts into generating as much Fear as possible.

We were down to 3 rounds left before game end, and I performed a massive turn using two Major Powers to generate 13 Fear. This was enough to push us into Terror Level 3, meaning our victory condition was no cities on the board. We flipped two Fear cards - one stopped all Builds on lands with Dahan, and the other devastated the invaders - killing all Explorers on tiles with cities or towns.

Final turn we were left with 3 cities to kill to win. We each took one city and laid waste with our Fast powers, winning the game before the Invaders had a chance to build. BOOM!

Looking back on it, the ebb and flow of the game is really amazing. You start off feeling completely overwhelmed, but through small victory after small victory you slowly just chip away to the point where you find yourself unleashing hell. However, you never feel OVER-powered. Even with us feeling like we did everything right, we still *barely* won considering how close we were to running out of invader cards. The amount of strategic and tactical complexity the game offers with such a simple rule set is phenomenal.

We'll be moving on from Spirit Island now that the holidays are over and we're all eager to jump into PANDEMIC LEGACY: SEASON 2, but everyone left with huge smiles on their faces at such a satisfying victory. From a co-op gaming perspective, I can think of few games that were so rewarding in terms of that "teamwork" feel.

[Montag]

Early on our strategy was to keep the inner island clear and try to push everything to the edges. The first few turns we held our own, but I felt that we were spending more time fighting ravages than preventing builds in the first place. I pointed this out to the group, and we slowly started to incorporate more prevention into our gameplay where possible. This led to a couple of great turns where we had limited builds.

Gotta watch out for the coastal land cards though. Played a few times now and getting the right buffs from fellow spirits makes the difference. Somehow getting that extra shared element here or there will win the game for you.

[YellowKing]

Gotta watch out for the coastal land cards though.

True that. Fortunately we had already knocked out 2 of the 3 coastal edges, so we managed to hang on by piling everything on one island tile. Those Coastal infections can be game-changing though (in a very bad way).

We're going to try a 4-player game Tuesday night. That should be pretty epic.

I was on storm lockdown for the winter storm, so I had the "pleasure" of being stuck at work for 2 1/2 days. I only brought along HOTSHOTS (since it was lightweight and easy to learn), but we had a good time with it. I will say I think the game's a bit too easy with 4, and possibly even 3. Even though we ended with 6 scorched tiles out of 8, we never really felt in any immediate danger. I think after probably 20 games of varying player counts, 1-2 players is still my favorite with that game due to the higher challenge (assuming you're playing base rules).

We also played good old-fashioned Spades which oddly enough I had never played. That was a grand old time. After some initial getting accustomed to the rules and wrapping my head around the strategy, the trash talk started flying. My partner and I got soundly defeated, but there were some great back and forth score swings.

[LordMortis]

Spades was the game I learned to track cards from when I was like five years old. I have long since lost that ability. 40 years ago, hand by hand, everyone at the table could pretty much tell what was in every trick. Now, I can't remember if I closed the garage door by the time I get to the end of the street.

I took to the Coop theory of gaming. Aside from OctoCon, the only game I've played in a last year has been Terraforming Mars. While waiting since last April for Gloomhaven 2nd edition, today, I accidentally bought:

Castle of Burgundy
Venus Next
Close Rick Counters of the Rick Kind
Robinson Crusoe

from CSI today. Maybe I'll get to play them one day...

[Chrisoc13]

Finally put together my thoughts on charterstone. I wrote a review over on BGG for it, but essentially I loved it. We completed the game 2 players the entire way. We haven't had a strong desire to go back and continue with our village yet (too many other good games I want to get played first). But while I don’t have a big itch to play the game in our custom village a bunch right now, I must say before we even finished we had the itch to get a recharge pack and play again on the other side of the board trying completely different strategies to see what we could pull off. We had nearly 1/3rd of the index deck unexplored at the end of the campaign, think of the varieties left in that box. That itch to play the entire campaign again is not the usual for us with Legacy games. We finished Pandemic Legacy Season 1 in a matter of weeks and loved it, but… there wasn’t enough variety for us to want to go back and try again. Maybe in a few years when we have forgotten things. But the fun in charterstone doesn’t just come from discovering what is there, but from the long term strategy choices you can make with your charter. Hands down I love this game, and it may just be my the legacy game that has the most legs, but not for the reasons people think. had high expectations coming in, and yet it still failed to disappoint, in fact it surpassed our expectations. We’ve already played all the way through it once and have plans to play through it again, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets a third play in the future. The game is rewarding to play and leaves you looking forward to each and every game. It’s a great game I recommend for everyone, even those who haven’t been sold on legacy games in the past.

The pieces are beautiful, the game plays quick in under an hour, and I was engaged the whole time. I highly recommend it.

I got stuck in Boston for a day this weekend (Friday) walking around town, and I managed to find my way into one of their brick and mortar game stores. I of course had no intention of buying anything and was mostly just enjoying a break from the cold when I stumbled upon A Feast for Odin on their clearance rack. New and untouched, I was a bit shocked to see it there since the game is so popular and so expensive. It was more than 50% off and even though it isn't my favorite Uwe game I do still enjoy it and to get it for less than $50... I couldn't pass it up. I'm just glad there wasn't much else on that clearance rack that I wanted or I probably would have been tempted.

[GreenGoo]

Wife has shown interest in the board games, which is excellent. I have to handle her with kid gloves while she's learning, very touchy, but after she has the hang of things, it's much more fun.

Many games of Carcassonne have been played, with 4 out of 5 of the family participating. I could not get my autistic son to try it. He watched for about 30 seconds once, then asked a question, didn't like the answer, declared the whole thing "boring" and moved on. Oh well.

We've also played (only one so far) a game of Catan. 3 of us know the basic game now, and I enjoyed it a lot. I like it better than Carcassonne because there are more moving parts, I think. Carcassonne was instrumental in getting everyone involved though. Its simple but interesting game mechanics really made it easy to draw in members of the family.

So the board games are a hit, and I consider them to have already paid for themselves as far as family time and family happiness goes.

[Chrisoc13]

Awesome news! Sounds like a lot of fun.

[GreenGoo]

4 player Carcassonne tonight with the introduction of farmers.

Went well. Maybe 1 more time with farmers before we introduce rivers and the Abbott. I know how rivers work, but have not read about the Abbott yet. My instinct is that it'll be a straightforward points bonus on a monastery or something.

[Chrisoc13]

Farms are a must in my opinion. River is a must. I don't use the Abbott.

[YellowKing]

Just got back from a 4-player game of SPIRIT ISLAND. Played with Lightning's Swift Strike (simple to play, tons of fast powers, high offense), Ocean's Hungry Grasp (limited to coasts but devastating power to pull invaders into the sea), A Spread of Rampant Green (high fear and protection), and Thunderspeaker (Dahan mover with decent offense).

We did ease the difficulty just a tad by not playing with a Blight card, but I think we would have won pretty handily anyway. Despite the typical early game overwhelm, we were never in really serious trouble. Focused on pushing invaders to the coast where Ocean's Hungry Grasp could chew them up. Rampant Green focused on Fear powers, and was generating an enormous amount per turn. Lightning was doing the typical fast offense, and Thunderspeaker focused on more of a support role - basically just trying to take care of any problem areas the others couldn't handle.

By the time we hit the Level 3 invader cards we were already at Terror Level 2 and only one Fear card away from Level 3. Two cities on the board which we smashed easily. With builds under control, all that remained was to generate 4 Fear in the Fast phase and insta-win with a no-city victory.

I think the biggest lesson learned about this game over the past two victories is that you don't have to fix ALL the problems ALL the time. You just need to chip away at Ravages/Builds while your Spirit grows powerful enough to get ahead of the curve. It was a tough concept for me to learn because most co-op games are reactive and you're trying to stop whatever crisis is currently recurring. This game is all about prevention, so sometimes you have to let a couple of lands Ravage this turn so that you can prevent six lands from Building next turn.

The other lesson learned is to avoid the temptation to play as much as you can every time that you can. A well-timed turn where you don't do much of significance other than grow your Spirit can pay huge dividends down the road. Our Ocean guy was fairly ineffective early on because he was just spending time getting Presence on the coasts. But once that foundation was established, he was wreaking havoc in the mid-to-late games.

Fantastic game. Steep strategic learning curve but oh-so-satisfying when it starts to click.

Jury's still out on what we play next week. Not sure if we're going to hit this one again, start PANDEMIC LEGACY SEASON 2, or do another one-off night with FLASHPOINT and PANDEMIC: RISING TIDE.

[YellowKing]

Last night was my first attempt at SWORD & SORCERY solo, playing 3 characters. This game has been a little intimidating due to the 50 page rulebook and the abundance of minis which I'm trying to finish painting. However, after watching a couple of playthrough videos I felt like I could handle it.

I'm not going to go through the adventure itself (Prologue to the campaign) due to spoilers, but suffice it to say it was a nice little introductory scenario that reminded me a great deal of those old Level 1 D&D adventures.

I do want to point out that I have not yet played GLOOMHAVEN, so I can't speak to similarities and differences. However, I have played D&D extensively so that will be my main point of comparison.

Component-wise, the game delivers - particularly for the relatively low price for a minis-heavy game (I got it for $65). The base retail game comes with 5 player figures (including a wolf companion), and 20+ enemies. It also comes with a TON of tokens, close to 20 double-sided dungeon tiles, and several various decks of cards. My only complaint with the cards is that they're the miniature-sized ones that are hard to shuffle, but given the size of the game and layout, full sized decks would have been impractical.

The game bills itself as being a dungeon crawl modeled after MMORPGs and action-RPGs, and in that respect it's a slightly more streamlined version of D&D dungeon crawlers. However, I wouldn't say it's necessarily "fast" - at least not as you're learning. There are a LOT of things to keep track of, though I feel with experience you'd be able to shorten combat quite considerably.

On your turn you can do three things: Move (up to your movement rate), take one Action (there are tons of these, from trading equipment to focusing attacks to upping movement), and take one Combat action.

Combat is an interesting affair thanks to Encounter cards and Monster AI. Each enemy phase, the active player must draw an Encounter card that will typically "activate" (ready) one or more enemies. However, since this is random, you can never be sure which creatures will attack on any given turn. Once a creature is readied, the enemy AI kicks in. It has a list of behaviors that you go through in order until you reach one that applies to the given situation. In this way, a gremlin locked in melee combat and one that is 3 spaces down a hallway will respond differently according to the situation (using ranged attack instead of melee, for example).

Resolving combat is a matter of rolling attack dice (based on the weapon), applying any effects or powers, and totaling the number of Hits against the creature. The creature then subtracts from those Hits anything soaked up by armor outright, then rolls a number of blue defend dice (based on armor or being unarmored), and attempts to negate any remaining Hits. Anything that he can't defend does damage. The game comes with a nice set of custom blue and red 10-sided dice that have a ton of little symbols on them. Much like IMPERIAL ASSAULT, there are little lightning and star symbols on the faces along with hit symbols that you can spend to utilize extra powers or apply extra damage to attacks.

The really nice feature of the game that makes it fun to play solo is the Event deck. This is a pre-built deck per scenario (with some slight randomization) that gets applied after every round (once all heroes have taken a turn). Every other round the top card is flipped over and the effects applied. These could be beneficial effects such as extra Hits applied to all attacks, or negatives (reducing Hits or making certain powers unusable). There are also Day and Night cards that change the time of day (which could have game effects depending on the scenario). These events add another little layer of unpredictability to the game.

Once you start getting into the adventure, you'll hit Story Events which are placed in particular rooms and trigger events read out of a separate Book of Secrets (which acts as the dungeon master). These events may spawn new creatures, open or close spawn gates, etc. I really did feel like I was playing out a D&D adventure without the need of a DM.

So - the game is a blast to play, but I do have a couple of cons.

1. The game area is MASSIVE. I literally had to play on the floor because my table wasn't big enough for the map, all the decks, and the tokens. If you don't have a huge table, be prepared to do a lot of shuffling around. One idea I had is that the entire map layout is revealed at the start of the game. You could, if you wished, just keep , say, the current tile and its adjacent tiles on the table and only bring the others out as necessary. Not ideal since it's nice to know where the story triggers are, but you could always refer to the diagram instead.

2. The game is FIDDLY. I knew this going in from reviews, but be prepared to do a lot of "Oh, crap I forgot to do that" during your first play session. There can be 5 or 6 different modifiers to attack or defense in play at any given time that you have to consider for every combat turn. Last night I notoriously forgot to use my powers and put myself at a disadvantage on a number of occasions. I'd recommend finding or creating a "cheat sheet" to assist in remembering everything. (The game does come with a massive double sided reminder sheet, but I think it could have been streamlined even more).

So, fantastic game, particularly if you're craving a good dungeon crawl to play solo or with a group of friends without needing a dedicated DM. The only problem I have playing solo is that there is a LOT to keep up with. Having a second set of eyes on the rules or to assist in resolving combat would certainly be nice. (In fact, the game has rules for assigning monsters so that the load of controlling Monster AI is divvied out among the players, which is great).

I did NOT finish my first attempt successfully, but that was partially because it was getting late and I had to wrap things up a bit prematurely. However, it was a great session for learning the game and understanding the "gotchas." Hopefully next time I can really embark on the campaign proper.

P.S. While the Kickstarter folks have already seen some of this stuff, there are two Hero sets coming out, as well as a full expansion with a kick-ass multi-headed dragon figure.

[Chrisoc13]

Nice thanks for the write up. Sounds fun. Looking forward to hearing more. One of my complaints with Galaxy defenders is that it is fiddly. Sounds like they kept that aspect haha

[LordMortis]

Got in three games of Castles of Burgundy in on Saturday. I enjoyed it. I'm not sure I will be playing it a whole lot more but there is still a bit of strategy to explore and potential for a very interesting two player game as everything is out in the open and the game will change from what helps me most? To when do I choose what helps me most and what hurts the guy across the table most. Though it is a dice game, so you can't count on your plan.

We didn't get a chance to play any of the other new games because we were busy exploring Burgundy as best we could.

It's always good to get out and game. I had two days set aside over the Christmas break, but I got bedridden sick and missed both days.

[YellowKing]

Played a couple rounds of THE LOST EXPEDITION tonight. This is a 1-4 player card-based cooperative game in which you're trying to move an expedition of explorers from their starting base to the Lost City of Z. You'll do this by playing cards that advance the party along a 7 or 9-card track (depending on difficulty). However, along the way you'll need to manage the hazards that arise and make sure your expedition members are fed each night. As long as one explorer makes it to the Lost City, you win.

The solo game adds a few small rules changes to facilitate play, and the 3-4 player game has you playing two expeditions instead of one, so I'll just run through the standard 2-player game which is how I played.

Three expedition members are laid out, each with four health. One is a camping expert (tent symbol), one a navigator (compass), and one a jungle expert (leaf). These symbols are important because if at any time you must pay a tent, compass, or leaf resource and don't have one, the explorer takes a wound instead. If all three explorers die before you reach the Lost City, you lose the game.

Players are dealt a hand of six cards, each of which is numbered from 1-56 (I believe). They then take turns playing cards until both players have played three cards each, forming a row of six cards. This constitutes the "Morning" hike. On the Morning hike, cards must be placed in sequential order (a higher numbered card can't be placed before a lower numbered card). When all players have finished laying their cards down, the cards are activated from left to right and each card's effects are resolved.

There are three categories of card effects. Yellow effects that are mandatory, red effects that give you a choice between several mandatory options, and blue effects that are completely optional. Some cards may even have a combination of these, so that some actions are mandatory and others are optional. Actions can include gaining or losing resources, skipping or swapping cards in the sequence, or moving the expedition (usually for a cost).

Because cards play out from left to right, the trick is to "program" the sequence to minimize damage to your explorers and maximize their movement towards the Lost City. One important note: teammates can NOT tell each other what cards they have. So there is some strategy involved in not only playing cards that help the expedition, but also trying not to screw up your teammate's play.

After the morning hike runs its course, the expedition must eat a food or suffer a health loss. Then the Evening phase begins. In the Evening phase, players play the remaining three cards in their hand just as they did in the Morning phase. The key difference is that now, cards aren't placed in sequence. They're played from left to right regardless of number. This vastly narrows your strategic options.

Play repeats between Morning and Evening phases until your expedition either reaches the Lost City, or dies.

The game components are wonderful. The game utilizes giant oversized cards with colorful comic-book style artwork that I found really charming. Cardboard tokens are included for health, food, and bullets, and a couple of nice wooden tokens to represent the expedition(s).

This is a light game that plays quick (about 30 minutes for us), but I really enjoyed the programming aspects and the tricky balance between moving the expedition forward and keeping them alive. The rule set is incredibly simple, but the game itself is very challenging. And while the drawing and playing of a single hand may make it sound too luck dependent, there is enough variation among the cards that smart players can find ways to mitigate problems.

This one can be found pretty cheap ($22 on Amazon right now), so it's going on my wish list. Not something you'd build a full game night around, but as a casual filler or quick solo game, it's a lot of fun.

[baelthazar]

Last night was my first attempt at SWORD & SORCERY solo, playing 3 characters. This game has been a little intimidating due to the 50 page rulebook and the abundance of minis which I'm trying to finish painting. However, after watching a couple of playthrough videos I felt like I could handle it.

I'm not going to go through the adventure itself (Prologue to the campaign) due to spoilers, but suffice it to say it was a nice little introductory scenario that reminded me a great deal of those old Level 1 D&D adventures.

I do want to point out that I have not yet played GLOOMHAVEN, so I can't speak to similarities and differences. However, I have played D&D extensively so that will be my main point of comparison.

Component-wise, the game delivers - particularly for the relatively low price for a minis-heavy game (I got it for $65). The base retail game comes with 5 player figures (including a wolf companion), and 20+ enemies. It also comes with a TON of tokens, close to 20 double-sided dungeon tiles, and several various decks of cards. My only complaint with the cards is that they're the miniature-sized ones that are hard to shuffle, but given the size of the game and layout, full sized decks would have been impractical.

The game bills itself as being a dungeon crawl modeled after MMORPGs and action-RPGs, and in that respect it's a slightly more streamlined version of D&D dungeon crawlers. However, I wouldn't say it's necessarily "fast" - at least not as you're learning. There are a LOT of things to keep track of, though I feel with experience you'd be able to shorten combat quite considerably.

On your turn you can do three things: Move (up to your movement rate), take one Action (there are tons of these, from trading equipment to focusing attacks to upping movement), and take one Combat action.

Combat is an interesting affair thanks to Encounter cards and Monster AI. Each enemy phase, the active player must draw an Encounter card that will typically "activate" (ready) one or more enemies. However, since this is random, you can never be sure which creatures will attack on any given turn. Once a creature is readied, the enemy AI kicks in. It has a list of behaviors that you go through in order until you reach one that applies to the given situation. In this way, a gremlin locked in melee combat and one that is 3 spaces down a hallway will respond differently according to the situation (using ranged attack instead of melee, for example).

Resolving combat is a matter of rolling attack dice (based on the weapon), applying any effects or powers, and totaling the number of Hits against the creature. The creature then subtracts from those Hits anything soaked up by armor outright, then rolls a number of blue defend dice (based on armor or being unarmored), and attempts to negate any remaining Hits. Anything that he can't defend does damage. The game comes with a nice set of custom blue and red 10-sided dice that have a ton of little symbols on them. Much like IMPERIAL ASSAULT, there are little lightning and star symbols on the faces along with hit symbols that you can spend to utilize extra powers or apply extra damage to attacks.

The really nice feature of the game that makes it fun to play solo is the Event deck. This is a pre-built deck per scenario (with some slight randomization) that gets applied after every round (once all heroes have taken a turn). Every other round the top card is flipped over and the effects applied. These could be beneficial effects such as extra Hits applied to all attacks, or negatives (reducing Hits or making certain powers unusable). There are also Day and Night cards that change the time of day (which could have game effects depending on the scenario). These events add another little layer of unpredictability to the game.

Once you start getting into the adventure, you'll hit Story Events which are placed in particular rooms and trigger events read out of a separate Book of Secrets (which acts as the dungeon master). These events may spawn new creatures, open or close spawn gates, etc. I really did feel like I was playing out a D&D adventure without the need of a DM.

So - the game is a blast to play, but I do have a couple of cons.

1. The game area is MASSIVE. I literally had to play on the floor because my table wasn't big enough for the map, all the decks, and the tokens. If you don't have a huge table, be prepared to do a lot of shuffling around. One idea I had is that the entire map layout is revealed at the start of the game. You could, if you wished, just keep , say, the current tile and its adjacent tiles on the table and only bring the others out as necessary. Not ideal since it's nice to know where the story triggers are, but you could always refer to the diagram instead.

2. The game is FIDDLY. I knew this going in from reviews, but be prepared to do a lot of "Oh, crap I forgot to do that" during your first play session. There can be 5 or 6 different modifiers to attack or defense in play at any given time that you have to consider for every combat turn. Last night I notoriously forgot to use my powers and put myself at a disadvantage on a number of occasions. I'd recommend finding or creating a "cheat sheet" to assist in remembering everything. (The game does come with a massive double sided reminder sheet, but I think it could have been streamlined even more).

So, fantastic game, particularly if you're craving a good dungeon crawl to play solo or with a group of friends without needing a dedicated DM. The only problem I have playing solo is that there is a LOT to keep up with. Having a second set of eyes on the rules or to assist in resolving combat would certainly be nice. (In fact, the game has rules for assigning monsters so that the load of controlling Monster AI is divvied out among the players, which is great).

I did NOT finish my first attempt successfully, but that was partially because it was getting late and I had to wrap things up a bit prematurely. However, it was a great session for learning the game and understanding the "gotchas." Hopefully next time I can really embark on the campaign proper.

P.S. While the Kickstarter folks have already seen some of this stuff, there are two Hero sets coming out, as well as a full expansion with a kick-ass multi-headed dragon figure.

Did I miss the reference to the game title? Sword and Sorcery?

[wonderpug]

[hentzau]

Officially opened up my game room last night (even though I still have a bunch of work to get done). My buddy Tom was the only one to make it over and I asked him to pick a game. He was slightly overwhelmed by the choices, I usually am the one to pick out a game since I know what I have, but having it all laid out in front of him he was slightly daunted. And I was pleasantly surprised when he picked Star Wars: Imperial Assault.

Imperial Assault was a bit of a problem for us. #1, my friend Stuart doesn't like Star Wars, so isn't overly thrilled when I would break out a Star Wars themed game. #2, I wasn't real thrilled playing the Empire. Same problem I had with Descent, when I'm playing a game with an RPG-like feel, I have a hard time being the crushing overlord. #3, I had a hard time keeping track of the campaign, what card to add in where, when and how to add in new supplements to an already in-progress campaign. So we played it like twice, and then shelved it.

I was really excited when he suggested it, because I really wanted to try out the Imperial Assault: Legends of the Alliance app. And let me tell you , at least through the tutorial games, it's great.

Because it had been a long time since we played, we went ahead and went through the complete tutorial, including the learn to play the game part. And it was perfect. Stepped you through everything, taught you the basics, and got you through the AI for the bad guys. Figuring out the AI for the bad guys was probably the most difficult part, since it presents you with multiple situational options. But by the time we made it through the 3 tutorials we really had the swing of it. The fact that the app tracks your equipment and character skills is a really nice plus. However, we're going to take a look at the available characters and probably start over with the campaign, since the tutorial starts you off with two required characters.

So the app gets two big thumbs up from us. This one is going to go into heavy rotation for those evenings that Stuart can't make it over.

[YellowKing]

Speaking of SWORD & SORCERY, I highly recommend downloading kevinjohn3D's rules summary sheet from BGG. It's basically a replication of the included rules summary sheet, but more concise and with some player contributed rules clarifications. It vastly cut down on the number of times I had to flip through that giant rule book.

[LordMortis]

Got my retail copy of Gloomhaven. If you are looking for it, get it now if you can find it. Celofair(?) said there would be plenty to go around but I my FLGS ordered 15 copies and only got 2 and was told there would be no more. I'm so glad I happened to check for the release date again (for the second time this week alone). I'm sure the BGG #1 effect isn't going to help when it comes to scarcity and price gouging either. I don't know what retail was supposed to be but mine was $170 + tax. Big ouchee.

[Zarathud]

There is that much game in the Gloomhaven box. Worth it.

[YellowKing]

Had our last hurrah (for now) with SPIRIT ISLAND tonight. Four spirits, this time using all standard rules (including Blight card).

Going into tonight's session, I discovered that during our last big win we had played a rule drastically wrong that would have made our win much easier. When Ravaging, Invaders do damage to the land and Dahan simultaneously. We had not been applying damage to the land if the Dahan and invader "canceled each other out," which means we avoided a ton of Blight we should have taken. Needless to say, we were all very nervous going into this session.

As it turned out, our worry was unfounded. The solid strategies that served us well the last game continued to serve us well tonight, even with the slight uptick in difficulty from the correctly played rule.

Four player game. Two of us played Spirits strong in Fear generation (Shadows Flicker Like Flame and the other demon guy that can't destroy but generates Fear). One played the Ocean that can wreak havoc on coastal lands, and the other played the Lightning guy to give us some much needed early game offense.

This one played out similarly to past games, and we started to get a good feel for the rhythm. It's all about surviving the early going until you can get your Spirit in a position to start gaining ground on the Invaders. If all goes well, at some point in the mid-game the tide starts turning in favor of the Spirits. This leads to an abundance of Fear generation that accelerates the victory condition and puts you well on your way to winning.

Our group tends to stick to one game until we feel like we've gotten all we can get out of it, and that's about the point we're at right now with SPIRIT ISLAND until we get the expansion. Sure we could start playing with Invader types and higher difficulty levels, but with multiple games waiting in the wings I think we're all satisfied that we know how to beat the game on normal difficulty.

Next up is a one-off week where we check out PANDEMIC: RISING TIDE, then it's on to PANDEMIC LEGACY: SEASON 2 which should keep us busy well into the spring.

[hepcat]

170? Sheesh. I paid around 90 at my local discount game store when it first released. Sounds like some folks are profiteering.

[YellowKing]

It was around $130 last night on Amazon. I've actually been tempted to grab my own copy just to mess around with, but it's still hard to justify since the group has a copy and it's on the playlist for later this year.