Octopus Overlords

hepcat wrote: Mon Mar 19, 2018 9:14 am

Smoove_B wrote: Sun Mar 18, 2018 10:42 pm but I'm also aggressively culling my collection and trying to make room.

I just sold my copy of Massive Darkness on ebay and I was surprised at how easy it's become to sell stuff through them. They calculated the shipping for me on the user's end (according to their location), and they allowed me to print out a prepaid USPS label (at a discount to boot). They also automatically provided tracking notices to me and the buyer after sending the package using that label. That last time I tried to sell something through ebay, it almost ended up costing me more to ship it than I made from selling it (probably because I'm clueless about shipping and did it wrong). But now it seems like an actual alternative to dragging my games to Gencon each year and making poor Zarathud and Seppe help me lug them to the auction room. Time for a spring cleaning, methinks.

I've been ebaying stuff like crazy since around November/December. So far I've been pretty picky about what I'm selling, and have been mostly pleased with the results. Earned enough money to pay for my new TV for my game room from it. And yes, it's stupid easy now. Only issue that I have run into is one customer that had a problem with the game getting damaged in shipping. I got money back from USPS, so I'm refunding him that money plus his shipping. So be careful with your packing, even though this had a bunch of packing with it, it still got dropped and busted the corner of the box.

I wish I could hire someone to sell my games for me. I'll probably just send them off to Noble Knight and take store credit. There's a few OOP older war games I'm looking for that are not cheap. I figure trading in 5 boxes to get one box makes sense, right?

I really only have one game that I'll likely never play that I'd sell, and it probably isn't worth the hassle (the game is Tannhauser.)

Blackhawk wrote:I really only have one game that I'll likely never play that I'd sell, and it probably isn't worth the hassle (the game is Tannhauser.)

Just sold Tannhauser at a local auction for $50. So, about made my money back.

I kind of regret dumping my copy of Tannhauser. But Shadows Over Normandie is a decent enough replacement.

Exploded the DeLorean in Steampunk Rally.

I was too excited to do the calculations at just how much damage I was going to take to trigger it three times.

Hee hee hee

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Blew up the DeLorean *AGAIN*.

LordMortis won both games tonight.

Redeemed myself in X Wing with a Darth Vader led TIE Squadron versus Rebels.
Used the 2 Veteran Interceptors, the Phantom, and Vaders TIE Advance.
Destroyed the Headhunter, crippled the Y Wing, and forced a ship off the board. The Rebel TIE fighter conceded the game.

Oh, and won three games of 1v1 Commander with my Yasova deck before LM showed up.

Weeknight weekend gaming continues:

Taught Steampunk Rally to another friend, managed to win and NOT blow myself up. No, not the DeLorean...

Four player commander, won a pair of games with Ghave (Abzan) versus Sheoldred, The Ur-Dragon, and Nekusar and then versus Chandra Fire of Kaladesh, The Ur-Dragon, and Damia Sage of Stone.

Finished the night with 3 five color Dragon decks battling each other and Surrak Dragonclaw.

Continued Pandemic Legacy Season 2. Split the night with a loss and a win. We're falling into a Lose-Lose-Win pattern heading into May. So far the game has felt significantly harder than Season 1, but I'm not sure if it's because it truly is, or because it demands new strategies we haven't fully grasped yet. Still great fun.

My wife just DM'd for the first time ever, leading my son and I through the opening of the D&D Starter Set adventure.

This is a woman who has never played a pen-and-paper role-playing game before, and she absolutely killed it, bringing a bog-standard goblin battle to life, describing and physically acting out a goblin struggling to draw a bow while frozen by a wizard's frost ray. The post-battle interrogation was hilarious.

I am so impressed. Everything she knows about DMing she learned from YouTube, which is apparently the go-to source for RPG knowledge these days.

AWS260 wrote: Sat Mar 24, 2018 8:27 pm Everything she knows about DMing she learned from YouTube, which is apparently the go-to source for RPG knowledge these days.

Fixed.

We played Red Dragon Inn for the first time this weekend, I would call it the Anti-Munchkin.
After using the original four, kinetickid picked up Pookie, and then the Goblins (Sapper and Archaeologist).
Games were evenly spread amongst the players, lots of fun.
But dear lord there's so much to collect for this game...

We also had a pair of games of X Wing, and Vader emerged victorious from both, including one where he faced off against the remaining THREE ships by himself.

Finished the weekend with a couple games of Commander with Nath winning both.

Retired my first charactrer in gloomhaven!

Decided to move on the character in the sealed box, rather than one of the other starting 5 characters we didn't choose.

*They* never appreciated how much of a tank and damage sink and fighter my last character was. My new character is not only designed to be support buts she's level 2 and has about zero equipment and they're both level 5.

Our first battle post retirement... didn't go so well... (however, it felt like we were playing against too tough of a dungeon and if my math is right (5+5+2)/3/2 = level 2 and we played level 3)

I'm playing a solo (multi-hand) game of Fallout the boardgame right now in order to learn it. I'm hoping to play a game or two over spring break with the kids. I'm really enjoying the game so far.

I have all of the miniatures on my painting table right now, so I've had to substitute others. Now Cyborg, Mad Max, Brainiac, and a zombie are traipsing around the wasteland looking for caps!

Blackhawk wrote: Mon Mar 26, 2018 3:14 pm I'm playing a solo (multi-hand) game of Fallout the boardgame right now in order to learn it. I'm hoping to play a game or two over spring break with the kids. I'm really enjoying the game so far.

I have all of the miniatures on my painting table right now, so I've had to substitute others. Now Cyborg, Mad Max, Brainiac, and a zombie are traipsing around the wasteland looking for caps!

I've really enjoyed the couple of times I've played this game. It's kind of brutal in the early going, but really fun. My biggest concern is that it feels like there may not be a lot of replay in this one,I've played the starter scenario twice now and saw a lot of the same things happening.

Solo it's almost impossible to get enough points to win the game before the faction "timer" runs out, I've found. I played it with two players once and the other player actually did get a win before that happened though.

Also, one of the scenarios (Pit, I think?) really needs to be reworded as it seems to contradict itself during play.

Still, it's an enjoyable piece of Ameritrash.

Yeah, I like how they use the cards to tell a story. It almost feels like a Choose Your Own Adventure story, but it also means that you have a limited number of tales to tell before you've seen them all before. And since the cards are all connected, you really can't bypass that just by creating a user scenario (not without some workarounds, at least.)

Very good night in PANDEMIC LEGACY SEASON 2. Managed to eke out two wins in a row, knocking off April and May (by the way, if anyone thinks knowing which months we won and lost in any way hints as to the difficulty - it doesn't. Depending on the order you uncover certain things, one group's hell month could be another group's cakewalk).

Midway through the year now, things are starting to get really interesting.

Taught a co-worker Whitehall Mystery (Letters from Whitechapel Lite) at lunch today. He was sooo close to getting my on the second kill, but I totally ditched him and cruised to the second kill. He was right on me at the start of the final round, but lost me again and Jack cruised to victory with 3 movement tokens left (first kill was on the river and I never used a boat token). It probably wasn't very fair going one on one with a guy that has never played this type of game, but he said he had fun and is up to play again.

He *almost* registered for BGG.CON, he was all for it but then one of his close friends scheduled his wedding that weekend in California.

Over the last few months we've played games a couple times a month (5 or 6 different people total). It's nice to have people at work that are into it.

coopasonic wrote: Tue Mar 27, 2018 2:17 pmIt's nice to have people at work that are into it.

</looks around empty home office>

Another round of Shadows of Brimstone last night. Still taking it slowly, not using any otherworlds yet, did another mine adventure. Did the Seal the Gate adventure, and got really lucky with our exploration draws, with the book in the first room and the gate in the next room immediately following. Had to face down a Goliath and a horde of stranglers in that last room. The ending was pretty epic, with my preacher running up to tank the goliath (despite the fact that he's the physically weakest of the bunch) so the ranged guys could pull back and shoot at him. Also, he had to be up there because he was the one trying to close the gate.

Before that, we had gone into town using the Frontier Town supplement for the first time. Just our luck, we pulled a Ruined Town for our first town, with the Church and General store the only two places open. This limited our options in town considerably. But I do like the feel of the new town supplement. Will be nice to have some variance in what happens when we go to down.

Next session,we're going to start adding in otherworld options, and if I can get the figures glued together I'm going to add the bad guys from Swamps of Death.

You inspired me to get back to assembling the rest of my figs for Shadows of Brimstone. I should probably avoid drinking while I do that though. Three beers in and I've glued about a half dozen pieces of paper napkin to my hands and arms. I may just try to color them with some citadel flesh paint and let 'em fall off naturally...

I will say that they can shove the alternate female figures that came in Wave 2 right up their ass. They are without a doubt the worst production I've seen. Assembly frustration on those is through the roof.

I spent 45 minutes last night assembling a single figure for Kingdom Death Monster - a human survivor. There were detailed instructions, and it still took me 45 minutes and required the use of tweezers to set pieces into place. As a result, I am pretty sure I went up a level in miniature assembly. Anyway, all I know is that Tamiya cement is the real hero here, but I've read that depending on the Brimstone model you're building (plastic vs resin) they can be absolute torture. I know when I had help putting together the first set it was insanity, but we were using Krazy Glue. I *think* the latest I read was that you should use the Gorilla Glue version of super glue. I have no idea why it's better (or different) than Krazy Glue, but there you go.

Now that it's all painted, I was thinking of setting it up and just trying to solo two characters through an adventure. Hopefully that's not impossible...

I used Gorilla super glue, but not for any particular reason. The best trick for assembling small pieces is to remember that a little spit causes the glue to set much faster.

The wife already thinks I'm off my rocker for building all these little plastic people. If she saw me licking them? I'm pretty sure there'd be a discussion.

Blackhawk wrote: Sat Mar 31, 2018 11:50 pm I used Gorilla super glue, but not for any particular reason. The best trick for assembling small pieces is to remember that a little spit causes the glue to set much faster.

What’s your take on Gorilla super gel? I’ve started using that and I love it so far. It sets faster than anything I’ve tried before.

I have used it for a while, but the choice was mainly based on word of mouth. I haven't really tried to make a careful comparison with the alternatives myself. I do know that I haven't had any hassles with it.

This weekend I tried Istanbul for the first time. Very fun! I like how you can pursue different approaches to gathering the rubies needed to end the game. It was a really good fit for my son, who like thinky strategic games but doesn't like too much direct conflict between players. He won by a mile, by single-mindedly pursuing goods and money while the rest of us were wasting time upgrading our wheelbarrows.

Later we played Quartz, a press-your-luck game about mining gems. It seems like a fun game but was kind of a miserable experience, because my son spent almost the whole time on tilt because I wasn't going easy on him. Lesson learned: choose a game that your players will enjoy.

Corralled my family (sans son) to play Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle on Saturday night. Went for Book 5, this was our third shot at this book, the other two ending in ignominious defeat. This time it was a totally different story. We pretty much crushed the game this time around, without losing a single location. I think the key to us winning was that we came up with 3 cards early in the draw that allowed us to remove "dark marks", as we call them, from the locations. By the time we played through 3 complete hands we had 2 of those cards in play, and they kept the game under control. We'll tackle book 6 in a couple of months, after my daughter gets back from college. Great fun, very enjoyable.

hentzau wrote:Corralled my family (sans son) to play Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle on Saturday night.

I wish I had a group to play this with. My wife/kids have no interest in it. And the one time I brought it up to my weekly game group they all laughed as if I had asked them to play Candy Land.

I got through the base game solo, and attempted Box 1 of the expansion over the weekend. However, solo it's just too fiddly. I could play with fewer characters, but I never had any luck playing the later books with less than 3. Trying to juggle everyone's talents and proficiencies while also paying attention to ongoing villain effects and Dark Arts cards is almost impossible.

YellowKing wrote: Mon Apr 02, 2018 4:48 pm

hentzau wrote:Corralled my family (sans son) to play Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle on Saturday night.

I wish I had a group to play this with. My wife/kids have no interest in it. And the one time I brought it up to my weekly game group they all laughed as if I had asked them to play Candy Land.

I got through the base game solo, and attempted Box 1 of the expansion over the weekend. However, solo it's just too fiddly. I could play with fewer characters, but I never had any luck playing the later books with less than 3. Trying to juggle everyone's talents and proficiencies while also paying attention to ongoing villain effects and Dark Arts cards is almost impossible.

Yeah, I wouldn't want to have to run multiple characters/hands. As it was, I kept having to remind my wife about her special ability (sudden flashbacks to her and D&D.)

me and the wife have repeatedly lost year 5. no clue how to beat it after trying different strategies.

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

Started a 200 point three way battle in X Wing.

After beating the hell out of each other on one section of the map (I destroyed three of his seven ships, he destroyed two of my seven with a single hit left on yet another) the third player has finally entered our battleground... with the Huge Ship and a pair of TIE fighters.

We are about to see how dangerous a Huge Ship can be, as to this point it has been a very pretty Hundred Dollar Paperweight.

Enjoying the hell out of this ridiculously expensive game (Yes, I bought two more small ships this weekend, kinetickid bought none and instead bought Red Dragon Inn characters, while our third bought a second Playmat and two more Huge Ships).

Played PANDEMIC LEGACY: SEASON 2 months July and August last night. Won both. We are now at an astonishing 5 wins in a row. The overall strategy has started to click with the group, and that with a combination of good character upgrades has put us in a position to win more often than not. Of course, that is always subject to change on a dime with legacy games, so I'm not at all convinced this streak will continue.

Great game. I think overall I enjoyed Season 1 more, but that's mostly because of the "newness" of the legacy aspect. From a pure game mechanics perspective, I think Season 2 is probably the superior game.

Recently I've been introduced to:
Samurai (a decades old card game I own but never got around to playing)
Harbor (by the people who made This Town's Not Big Enough for the 2-4 of Us)
Galaxy Truckers
Notre Dame

Samurai was pretty good. I was surprised at how quickly one can win (at least, the guy teaching us).
Harbor - Simple rules, complex play. I'll have to play this again a couple times to see how much I like it.
Notre Dame - another worker placement type of game. Pretty good and I'm sure we'll play it more.
Galaxy Truckers. If I never play this again it will be too soon.

I've found that Galaxy Trucker is funny. If people like the game, they adore it. They play it and immediately arrange to get their own copy. If people don't like it, though, they hate it with a passion and would rather have teeth pulled than play again. Personally, I like it quite a bit.

I just ordered AEON'S END: WAR ETERNAL. I don't have the original, but from the threads I read on BGG either this or the base set is an acceptable starting place. It was $32 on Amazon which was my sweet spot on a game I've had my eye on for quite awhile.

Coop and I are both ardent fans of the Aeon's End franchise. You will not be disappointed. Although you will go out and buy the first base game almost immediately after your first play through.

Yeah, if hep and I agree on a game, I think it has to be good. I got both base sets (and two expansions) at the same time after playing the demo at BGG.CON three times. The demo was the suggest easiest nemesis in the base box and we never came close to winning. I never played War Eternal by itself so I can't speak to it in isolation, but reputationally speaking it is supposed to be even harder. The different nemes...nemesisses? nemesese? The different bosses all play out very differently. There also a lot of different breach mages with cool and unique features that change how they are played.

After playing a dozen or so games, it has gotten easier as I have learned more about the game. It scales pretty well, but I think it is easier with two players than with four. The nemesis ramps up faster, but so do the players. Three players is uniquely interesting with the wild card player turn. That gives you a lot of options for how to approach the game.

Oh and if you hadn't noticed, if anyone asks me about it, I just can't stop talking about it.