OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

[Smoove_B]

Geez. I don't know if we can collectively run with an award-winning gamer. I thought we were all causal here.

I do think it's cool as hell that your family haunts a local gaming store. I wish there was something like that in my part of NJ.

[AWS260]

Geez. I don't know if we can collectively run with an award-winning gamer. I thought we were all causal here.

I'll try not to let it go to my award-winning head.

[hepcat]

Played a game of Dungeon Alliance with 2 other players this weekend and I'm still in love with this one. It plays just as well with others as it does solo. It's frustratingly fun when someone sees you about to kill a monster for its XP (both the currency of the game, and the end game scoring criterion) and makes a beeline straight for your room in order to get in on the action by giving it that last killing stroke. Thereby getting a portion of the XP you were going to get.

I was doing great at the beginning of the game...but then split my party up too much. Plus, I accidentally sprung two of the nastier traps in rooms I explored.

Then we broke out Gloomhaven for our first failure in a long time...although we did immediately replay and won it.

[Montag]

Played 3 scenarios of Gloomhaven and retired my Tinkerer. Going to try a summoner next. Will get to start at level 4. Looking forward to it.

[AWS260]

Geez. I don't know if we can collectively run with an award-winning gamer. I thought we were all causal here.

I'll try not to let it go to my award-winning head.

Visual proof of my unsurpassed prowess (we're the trio in the middle):

[hepcat]

You seem unduly wary of the bowling ball your son is holding so precariously close to your head.

[Smoove_B]

Wait...I thought your son was like 2. Did you bring a ringer in to win the tournament??

Also, awesome sig. Genuine LOL.

[AWS260]

Wait...I thought your son was like 2. Did you bring a ringer in to win the tournament??

Dude, we're all older than we'd like to think.

[YellowKing]

Got our asses handed to us in AEON'S END: WAR ETERNAL by both the Magus of Cloaks (twice) and The Hollow Crown.

This game is insanely tough with 4 players due to the slower deck building. I don't think we quite have the experience to really be efficient enough in our deck building to overcome that handicap.

Next week one of our guys is out so we'll be tackling them with 3. I'm hoping that's a little easier.

[Daveman]

Good news for fans of Warhammer Quest: The Adventure Card Game! I seem to recall there was a handful of us here who really liked it, but the game was doomed shortly after release when the FFG/Games Workship split happened. They only released the core game and 2 hastily released print-on-demand expansion characters.

Now it's coming back in a Terrinoth setting! At a glance this new version has more quests and characters to pick from, and is in FFG's own setting they're still supporting so here's hoping we'll see more content.

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/n ... terrinoth/

[Smoove_B]

I went to pre-order it on the FFG site and for a $39.99 game, they wanted to charge me $19 shipping. I'm not sure exactly if that involves white-glove setup of the first round, but I'll wait for it to show up elsewhere.

[Daveman]

Yeah that is ridiculous. I"m sure it will be readily available elsewhere. Strangely enough the only thing I've ever ordered from FFG directly was the two expansion characters for WHQ: The Card Game but the shipping for ~20 cards wasn't bad.

I had a cart of items during one of their holiday sales and bailed out because of the shipping.

[hepcat]

Excellent, thanks for the info Daveman!

And yeah, it's FFG. It's going to be available everywhere at some point. I know they often underestimate demand and print low, but hopefully this won't be THAT popular upon release.

side note: very clever of FFG to keep repurposing the art from their Descent line.

[YellowKing]

Yeah I'm in on this one as well. I'm a sucker for FFG. No matter how much they abuse my wallet, I keep crawling back to them. I really should just set up direct deposit and save the trouble.

[Fishbelly]

Good news for fans of Warhammer Quest: The Adventure Card Game! I seem to recall there was a handful of us here who really liked it, but the game was doomed shortly after release when the FFG/Games Workship split happened. They only released the core game and 2 hastily released print-on-demand expansion characters.

Now it's coming back in a Terrinoth setting! At a glance this new version has more quests and characters to pick from, and is in FFG's own setting they're still supporting so here's hoping we'll see more content.

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/n ... terrinoth/

While I prefer the Warhammer setting I'm psyched to hear this news, as I thought the game system itself was loads of fun. Thanks for the heads up!

[AWS260]

This weekend I attempted a solo run of Darkest Night. It started out co-op, but after about 45 minutes my son turned to me and quietly asked, "Can I go play Minecraft?" Fair enough.

I soldiered on alone, but the combo of heroes (Scholar, Wizard, Priest, Alchemist) didn't work out too well. We didn't have anyone good at taking out blights, which meant that even after we had acquired two holy relics, we could never remove enough blight to deliver the killing blow to the Necromancer. Sorry, anonymous fantasy village that I failed to protect.

[paulbaxter]

Board game night again last night. Played my first game of The Resistance. I guess I'm just not a huge fan of that whole genre. It wasn't bad, just not my cup of tea.

Then we had a game whose name I forget, but each card in the game staked out a controversial position. The point of the game was to guess what the opinion was of the person who drew the card, then you could try to argue him into moving to YOUR position on whatever it was. It was like having actual conversations ruined by gamifying them. Kinda sucked.

I peeked in on a group playing Illimat. That looked like fun.

Also, the hot lady was back. Found out she's married. Oh well.

[YellowKing]

Just got back from another Aeon's End ass-whooping. I bought The Void and The Outer Dark expansions and we played the Thrice Dead Prophet or whatever his name is. He's a big old meat bag that keeps healing himself.

First game we lost horribly, second game we had a better strategy and came within 6hp of killing him. Cold comfort, though, as this is the second week in a row we've come away with two losses.

One problem is the other group members, but I can't really blame them. I own the game, so I play solo a lot and have learned various strategies. They only get the game night sessions in, so they just don't have the experience yet. And me telling them only goes so far.

One of our group loves to play healers, but then never gets around to actually healing. So he focuses so much on other stuff that he ignores the one thing we NEED him for.

The other guy is so focused on economy that he often waits until way too late in the game to actually start contributing. I'm slowly convincing him that while economy is important, there's a point in Aeon's End where you have to stop buying and start focusing on deck turnover.

I'm not sure how much longer we're going to be able to bring this to the table, since the frustration level is so high among them. Which I'm fine with since I think the game plays better as a 2-player or solo playing 2 mages game.

[Isgrimnur]

I got shot down in The Speed of Heat when my wingman left me to get bounced by the two opposing players.

Came in third of four in Galactic Emperor as the eventual winner staged the map to foment conflict between myself and a neighbor, who was last place as the puppetmaster and my other neighbor picked off the stragglers.

I watched/helped a five-player group as they unsuccessfully tried to kill Hitler in Black Orchestra.

Then I played as Doctor Strange as we took down the big bad in Thanos Rising.

[hepcat]

How is Thanos Rising?

[YellowKing]

Our last week of AEON"S END: WAR ETERNAL. We won't be coming back to this one with four players, it just doesn't scale well. It also doesn't help that two of our group really just don't play it well - the guy who always wants to play the healer literally NEVER HEALS unless we beg him to. The guy that wanted to play the support mage took the opposite extreme and focused so much on support that he contributed absolutely nothing to offense. It's a game in which you really have to play your mage perfectly just for the *chance* to win, and our group just isn't getting it done.

Next week we'll be hitting LEGENDARY ENCOUNTERS: PREDATOR.

[Isgrimnur]

How is Thanos Rising?

It was fun and easy to pick up and run with it. Dice rolling to get pattern matches, each color dice has a different strength among four icons. Effects let you change dice faces like Colony. Artwork is photos from the films, with a few actor opt-outs (Starlord, Collector, ...). Collecting bonus items allows it to be co-op even when it's not your turn.

[Isgrimnur]

Another round of The Speed of Heat, where my F-4s served as distractions while the A-7s struck a SAM construction zone. My teammate actually shot down a MiG in a head-on pass, and then blitzed past everyone else on the way to the target. I got to launch one missile that failed to hit anything.

[YellowKing]

Got in three rounds of LEGENDARY ENCOUNTERS: PREDATOR. Having already worked our way through ALIEN, this was the next logical step.

However, it did not go well! We tried twice with four players at normal difficulty and got our asses handed to us. As a last ditch effort, we decided to use all the helper benefits as described in the rule book - an extra Young Blood in each enemy mini-deck, adding our defense value to our health pool, and giving ourselves two prep rounds before enemies started coming out.

Even with all that, we barely pulled out a major victory by killing the Predator with an amazingly lucky combination of cards.

I knew the Legendary system doesn't scale well difficulty-wise with more players, but I was unprepared for how soundly we got destroyed. We're going to play through the second scenario next week, but will likely have to go easy difficulty again.

If anyone's curious as to how Predator differs from Alien, it basically comes down to a couple more keywords and a new chart which dictates how many Young Bloods (Drones in Alien) are added to the enemy deck. The Brothers in Arms keyword allows you to trigger an ability by playing different characters in the same turn, and the Showboat keyword allows you to trigger an ability by playing multiple copies of the same character on the same turn. I really enjoyed this mechanic, and it made Predator MUCH more reliant on Cooperate cards.

At some point I really need to pick up the Alien expansion.

[coopasonic]

I taught three coworkers Azul at lunch today... and then came in last place.

I am not good at Azul.

[hepcat]

Just got the Exosuit Commander's Pack for Anachrony today. I've been looking for it for weeks and finally just bit the bullet and paid MSRP...and shipping.

But for 40 bucks (and another 10 for shipping), I got 30 large miniatures, two variants and their supporting boards. The box for the expansion is the same length and width of the base game...which was ridiculously huge. Thankfully it's only about half as deep.

I know it's mostly bling...but I couldn't resist on this one.

[Zarathud]

Now you just need the Anachrony organizer!

[RMC]

Now you just need the Anachrony organizer!

Plastic baggies are cheaper.

[YellowKing]

I really want Anachrony. I read about it a lot in the Solo Gamer group on Facebook, and the consensus seems to be that the automa is really good.

[hepcat]

I've yet to play it solo, although I want to soon. I've been having too much fun forcing others to play 3am games of it at Origins (thanks RMC and Zarathud), and impromptu sessions on Friday nights.

The commander's pack not only has those big, beautiful exosuit minis, it also adds a small variant for questing which just adds so much to the game. There are just tons of choices to be made while playing.

Now you just need the Anachrony organizer!

Plastic baggies are cheaper.

And plano boxes! I'm going to do that this weekend. As for the minis, the box they come in has a perfect tray fitted for them all. I don't see any need to move away from that right now.

[TheMix]

I'm starting to be spoiled by Plano boxes (and other plastic storage containers). Though they are ruining my shelf storage a bit. I had all the pieces for Folklore in baggies. I broke it out last week when a friend was in town and decided I didn't like all the bits loose on the table. So I grabbed an empty one "for temporary storage". Now it's back on the shelf... and everything is still in the Plano.

The only drawback is that the couple of extra boxes I had laying around are the deeper ones. I'd rather have the thinner ones most of the time. Unfortunately those ones were more expensive (as I recall).

Still, very handy.

[YellowKing]

Yeah, you can get a 4-pack of the thicker ones for $18, but the single thin one was $10. At least when I ordered them a week ago for Gloomhaven. They are awesome though. I've got a smaller one for my Aeon's End components and it works great. I've got War Eternal and all the expansions in the main box with room to spare. I'm hoping I'll be able to squeeze the original AE in there when I finally get around to buying it.

[Ralph-Wiggum]

I played Gloomhaven for the first time this weekend. We played scenario 2, as my friend with the game had already run through scenario 1 with a few characters on his own.

I played as the tinkerer which was fine, but most turns I seemed to be just healing our tanks. We managed to beat the scenario, mainly because we got lucky with the bosses special actions and our rogue/their character got an amazing string of bonuses to her attack which allowed her to do something like 24 damage in one turn. That felt pretty good.

Even after just the one scenario, I can definitely see how this game can grab you. Hopefully I’ll get to play again soon.

[TheMix]

Tinker is definitely a solid healer. There are a couple of X cards that you could swap in to make him even better. I finally tossed the trap card... just too hard to get it lined up.

He does have a few solid damage cards, though. Unfortunately, most of them are Tosses. If you can get into position, the flamethrower is great because it puts the d.o.t. on them. And the immobilize ranged a.o.e. can be very helpful.

But I definitely find that healing is generally my first priority.

[Ralph-Wiggum]

.We managed to beat the scenario, mainly because we got lucky with the bosses special actions and our rogue/their character got an amazing string of bonuses to her attack which allowed her to do something like 24 damage in one turn. That felt pretty good.

So about that.... we started the third scenario yesterday and at some point we realized that our modifier decks seemed super powerful. Turns out, that’s because we were all using the class specific modifier decks rather than the standard ones you’re supposed to start with. So they were all filled with kick ass bonuses. Oops! I guess we hadn’t noticed in our first game since that scenario had us shuffle curses into our decks. Once we switched to the correct modifier decks, things became noticeably tougher...

[TheMix]

Damn, why didn't I think of that! That would make things a LOT easier.

[YellowKing]

I think I'm going to start my solo campaign over and not include the +1 level difficulty for playing solo rule. It's just getting frustrating at this point. I've attempted the first scenario 5-6 times now and got my ass kicked every time. While I've improved my hand management a great deal, I just can't seem to do sufficient damage in a timely enough manner to win (Spellweaver & Cragheart). I picked that combo because I read it was one of the best 2-character combos, but I am obviously missing something.

[coopasonic]

My son and I played with the same two and we did pretty well really. The main thing is to make sure you are getting the best advantage of the Spellweavers lost cards and timing the recover all lost cards ability right. We played on easy though (mostly because my son and his Cragheart were a bit... unpredictable).

[YellowKing]

Another thing I'm going to try is to take better advantage of choke points (doorways). Browsing through some tip/strategy articles, I realized I've been playing this more like D&D (straight-forward dungeon crawl, close and attack). However, I'm beginning to realize it's more video-game like. So there are opportunities to exploit the monster AI and keep yourself out of danger.

Admittedly at least two of my losses were due to aggressively rushing into a room to deal damage, only to find myself the sole focus of all the enemy's attacks.

Mild spoilers on Scenario 1:

Spoiler:

I think this would be particularly effective in Room 2 of Black Burrow. Hang back in the first room in the corner out of sight and force the archers to come through the doorway.

[TheMix]

Unfortunately...

Spoiler:

That likely won't work. You'll run out of time. With only 12 rounds, you really can't afford to wait too many rounds. Invisibility would be useful as a means to get through the door and close some distance, without being hammered by everyone in the room. But I don't think the Spellweaver has that as an option.

Managing doors has been the biggest issue for my group. Well... probably more precisely, trying to manage focus so that one person doesn't get ganged up on.

The other thing that we are learning is that Short Rests are often far more desirable than Long Rests.