Octopus Overlords

hepcat wrote: Sat Nov 03, 2018 7:08 pm It saves a lot of table space, trust me. And cuts down on set up time quite a bit too.

I particularly like how it makes it super clear what the initiative order is each round.

coopasonic wrote: Mon Nov 05, 2018 10:45 am 9 days until BGG.CON. I don't have a list of anything specific I want to play. What do I want to play?

Generally I end up teaching a few people Tash-Kalar and hopefully I can get a game of Letters from Whitechapel in... hmm maybe find someone that knows Star Trek: Frontiers better than I do to help me "get" the game better. What else?

If you're interested in a heavy-ish euro, I'm guessing that Pipeline will be there, since their Kickstarter will be live during the con. Capstone Games is the publisher.

hepcat wrote: Sat Nov 03, 2018 7:08 pm It saves a lot of table space, trust me. And cuts down on set up time quite a bit too.

Played our first game Sunday without the app and after that and playing around with the app a bit today I definitely plan to work it in next time.

We won our first run, but it was a close one. Two of our members passed out from lack of cards, and the remaining two of us barely managed to bring down the last couple of bandits before we would have passed out too.

The main issue was we underestimated the downside of using too many abilities that are lost on use too early in the dungeon which is what caused our exhaustion issues. I think we'll do much better in the future by pacing ourselves a bit better.

Loving the game on the whole though. I even convinced some of my coworkers to go in on a work copy of the game so we'll be starting a campaign there as well next Monday after work.

The first few games you spend wrapping your mind around hand management. But after that, it clicks and you'll probably end up winning far more than you lose. I don't think we've lost one in quite some time. But it's almost always close, I will say.

I've had a couple of fights that literally came down to the last played cards... and the RNG of the modifier deck. That's a little too close for my comfort.

I think it shows just how well designed the game is. I’m constantly impressed at how hopeless a scenario looks, only to have it turn in my favor in the final few rounds.

wonderpug wrote: Mon Nov 05, 2018 10:54 am

hepcat wrote: Sat Nov 03, 2018 7:08 pm It saves a lot of table space, trust me. And cuts down on set up time quite a bit too.

I particularly like how it makes it super clear what the initiative order is each round.

We've been using one called Gloomhaven DM. Probably similar. It tracks all the monster related stuff as well as the elements. It's so nice not having to manager the monster decks in addition to all of our player stuff.

For those looking for an online campaign tracker, check out The Arcane Library. After each scenario/session, I update our campaign and send the exported file out to the players so they can track where we're at in the story/achievements/etc..

I need to start my solo campaign back up, since it doesn't look like Gloomhaven is getting to the group table until later next year.

Had a fun night playing FORBIDDEN SKY. We lost the first game on Novice and won the next two, one Novice and one on Normal (our final Normal layout pictured here).

Definitely much more of a brain-burner than the previous two "Forbidden" titles. Where Forbidden Desert upped the challenge by adding a thirst (health) mechanic, Forbidden Sky ups it even more by adding rope fraying as well. This means that for all intents and purposes, you're playing with two health tracks. Lose your health, you die. Lose your rope, you die.

One thing we learned from our early loss (and my previous two losses at GenCon), was that ending your turn defensively (ie: in a spot safe from electrocution or wind damage) is key. Unfortunately this means you're often sacrificing actions in order to make that move to a safe area, so it's a constant balancing act. Take too long to build your circuit and you're going to eventually be overwhelmed by storms. But play too aggressively and you're going to find yourself dead before you even get started.

While some may claim that the electronic circuit is "gimmicky," I disagree. The layout and design of your circuit is a huge factor, and a misstep early on can completely change the dynamics of how the session plays out. Because your wires are rigid and of fixed lengths, you really have to plan carefully and not paint yourself into a corner or extend yourself out so far you can't get back.

As much fun as we had, we considered this a "one and done" for our group. It's a great game, but ultimately it falls into the more casual spectrum with the other Forbidden games. It's still by far the most challenging of the series, and also my favorite because of that. I plan on picking it up for the family, as I think the kids will really enjoy it when they get just a tad older.

Picked up Heroes of Terrinoth last night. It's a reskin of the great Warhammer Quest Adventure Card Game from FFG that they stopped making after they lost the Warhammer licensing. So far it appears to be exactly like its poppa, although there are a few streamlined rules.

Waiting patiently for reviews of that one, though at this point a portion of my paycheck should just be funneled directly to FF via direct deposit.

My copy came via mail yesterday as well. Not sure if I'm going to have time to get to it this weekend, but I'm going to try...

YellowKing wrote: Fri Nov 09, 2018 2:23 pm Waiting patiently for reviews of that one, though at this point a portion of my paycheck should just be funneled directly to FF via direct deposit.

Alternately, you could set up a direct deposit gaming fund at the bank with its own card, etc. $20/pay period would net you $480-520 a year. Move up or down as your gaming needs demand.

Isgrimnur wrote:Alternately, you could set up a direct deposit gaming fund at the bank with its own card, etc. $20/pay period would net you $480-520 a year. Move up or down as your gaming needs demand.

We actually thought about doing something like this for our gaming group. Making everyone chip in $20 a quarter as "dues" which would allow us to purchase new games for the group.

We abandoned the idea when we all went and bought enough games separately to feed our backlog for the next 3 years.

You could also just do what I do, which is set up a direct deposit from my paycheck every other week to the Issie Gaming Cooperative. Each month he sends me a new game. Last month it was "Card Throw: The Board Game". Basically, it's a card from a poker deck and an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper with "Target" written on it. The goal of the game was to toss the card onto that sheet of paper.

Next month's game is simply called "Nut Drop" The Board Game" and promises the same thrills as Card Throw, but with a walnut.

It's the best 75 bucks a month I've ever spent.

So I was at my FLGS with the wife today just looking over the new arrivals, and saw that they had ARKHAM HORROR 3rd Ed for $55, which is cheaper than Amazon at the moment. My wife saw me eyeing it and basically said in no uncertain terms that I wasn't to buy any more games this close to the holidays, etc. I was a bit irritated, but put it back on the shelf figuring she was probably right.

As I was preoccupied showing my son some games and walking around, I happened to glance up and she was walking away from the counter with a bag in hand and a mischievous grin on her face. Turns out she was just stalling me so that so she could grab it for me for my birthday in a couple of weeks. The caveat is I'm not allowed to open it until then.

The big surprise, however, was that the game store was giving out the promo hardcover deluxe rulebook with the purchase! So I was thrilled to get that for free, particularly considering I wasn't paying the typical game store premium for the game in the first place.

Got in a game of Heroes of Terrinoth on Saturday with one other player. It is very, very close to the same mechanics as Warhammer Quest Adventure Card Game (which it's supposed to be), but has a few streamlined rules (aid tokens go to a general pool, not a specific card, for example), and doesn't include a campaign game (just 8 scenarios).

It does give you 12 heroes from which to choose. 3 each from the healer, warrior, rogue and mage classes. It also includes two class specific upgrade card sets per class. A warrior can trade out a basic warrior card when upgrading and select from either a Knight or Berserker class. Once they do though, they lock themselves out of the class they didn't select. I can see this being an expansion focus in the future, along with a campaign mode, new monsters and new scenarios, of course.

I really like it. I'm not going to be selling off my copy of Warhammer Quest ACG, but it is nice to know there's going to a future for this version of the game.

We also played two games of Helionox: Deluxe Edition, a game I've had for a while but just haven't really given any time to. We both really enjoyed it. Enough so that we played another game right after finishing the first one (which we screwed up a few setup rules with).

It's a deck builder, but it includes movement across 5 location cards representing planets. You can build embassies to aid your movement by lowering it's cost from 2 credits to 1, pick up cargo cubes and deliver them to other locations for the chance to bank some credits or buy illegal tech (which is powerful, but also reduces your end game points by 3 if you still have them during scoring), and overcome event cards for VP. You also can buy cards from a market and use your Architect's (the game's avatars) special powers (which includes various cool down periods after use).

I like it. It's just the right amount of complexity. I would put it nearer Aoen's End in feel than I would Dominion. The only thing we had trouble with was remembering to activate inactive events each turn, and then put out a new one. Everyone does it on their turn, so it was just us being excited to take our turns and not following the clearly listed order of things on our provided game mats.

We dusted off Fury of Dracula on Saturday, for the first time in a long time. As always, my wife played the evil Count, and I played the four hunters.

At the end, it was a very, very close game. In the final battle, Count Dracula squared off against Van Helsing and Mina Harker. If he defeated either of them, Dracula's influence would spread across the whole of Europe and we would lose the game. But he was already seriously wounded, and if we could get a few solid hits in, we could end the vampire threat once and for all.

The hunters went into battle at a distinct disadvantage. Mina Harker is always vulnerable to Dracula's bite -- this is built into her character. And old Van Helsing was wounded from previous scraps, so a single hit would finish him off. Still, we managed to survive the first round, and brought Dracula down to one hit point. Whoever landed the next blow would win the game.

Unfortunately for humanity, it wasn't us. Dracula struck down Van Helsing, winning the game just before Mina Harker could land a game-winning punch.

One of these days, I'd like to try Fury with more players, so that the hunters' deduction is more of a social experience (and so that I don't have to keep track of so many cards).

I hate playing FoD with fewer than a full compliment of players. I was hoping future versions would fix the need to have players run more than one character. (I still have my 1st Edition copy with the pewter minis...)

Got out and played Terraforming Mars with Venus Next and the extra Mars Board.

Gloomhaven is something I still want to get back to be we still keep coming back to Terraforming Mars. A three player full draft game still takes upward of three hours a round even as none of smoke any more and yet our rare gaming night seems to nine hours of three rounds of TM and while every game has the same ultimate machanics I think we're attracted to the game because there is one right path to victory and while you can't really track what the other players are doing if you want the game to proceed, you do have to pay attention to how they are shaping the game. I'm guessing in a year and a half or more of owning this game I've played probably 25 rounds. Maybe more and every game takes shape differently.

I picked up Wildlands a week ago and have gotten to play it several times with 2-3 players and really like it.

It's a fantasy themed skirmish kind of game from Martin Wallace. Players control a team of 5 characters that are placed around a board (double sided, one is a dungeon with rooms and tight hallways, the other is city ruins that's more open) along with 5 colored crystals for each player. Each of your crystals you pickup or opposing player you kill is worth a point, first player to 5 points wins.

Gameplay is entirely card based. Each team has their own deck of action cards and a reference card for each character. The reference cards are very basic, showing only their hit points value (2-7, 3-4 is average) artwork and an icon that represents that character. The action cards are also seemingly very basic, showing a number of character icons (2-3 usually) some of which might also have special action icons as well. You start with a hand of 7 cards and gameplay is simply a matter of playing an action card to move, pickup a crystal or perform a special action. If you want to move that character with a crossed-swords icon, simply play 1 action card with that matching icon per space you want to move. If that same character moves into a space with one of your colored crystals (you can only pick up your own teams color) you can pick it up by playing 3 cards matching that icon. The special actions are mostly attacks. If that same character is in a space with an enemy, play a matching icon card that also features a melee attack symbol to do 1 damage to him.

Outside your turn there are choices to be made too. If someone attacks you there are special actions that can be played to block an attack, or interrupt a players turn altogether and let you play as many cards as you like, assuming no one interrupts your interrupt. The downside to this is that playing cards outside your turn means you'll have less to play with when your turn comes up. Hand size is 7 but you don't draw up to 7 at the end of your turn, you only draw 3 cards max. Playing 5+ cards on your turn might let you do a lot but you'll have little to do the following turn.

This all sounds very basic writing it out but once you're a few turns into the game you realize it's all about hand management and keeping your options open. We've had attacks where I play an attack, he blocks so I play another and so on... at what point do you accept a little damage or keep burning cards to keep someone alive?

One clever part of the game is setup. The board is divided into 42 numbered spaces. There's a deck of 42 numbered cards and everyone is dealt 10. You secretly assign 5 to your characters and that determines where they will spawn but they remain hidden. At the start of your turn you have to reveal one figure, but have the option to reveal more if you want. So characters gradually fill up the board and you're never sure early in the game when you spawn or move if an enemy is nearby or not. The remaining 5 cards you pass to your left and they determine where that players 5 crystals will go. So you have some choice of where your characters will spawn but have no idea where your crystals will be.

The game already has 3 expansions announced (one coming out next week!) and I'm hoping it goes on to do well. It's not heavy duty, you're not deciding whether you're going to play a fireball or lightning bolt, equipping armor or assigning items amongst your team, just deploying 5 guys in a dungeon and trying to grab crystals and/or kill guys. Simple and quick to play, but the hand management and trying to figure out what the other players can or might do is deep enough to make it interesting.

I picked up LEGENDARY ENCOUNTERS: X-FILES for $40 shipped at the Miniature Market early Black Friday sale. Couldn't pass it up for that price.

How is this the first I am hearing of LE: X-Files?

Crap.

Sorry, it's been sitting on my table for about a month now, but with all the STREET MASTERS I've been playing, my piles are growing larger...

I'll see if it is in the library tomorrow and actually try before I buy! There was nothing about Firefly that made it worth owning. Hopefully it's the same story here. I don't need *more* Legendary.

I've heard mixed things, but as a hardcore fan of the show, I want to believe there's something in it for me. Plus, they're using stills from the TV series and not questionable art. That alone make it more interesting to me.

We played two rounds of THUNDERBIRDS tonight. This is a co-op game designed by Matt Leacock of Pandemic fame, and based on the 1960s marionette television series. I consider it an underrated gem of a game. I talked about it in my GenCon thread this past summer which is where I first got to play it. We lost the first game on Intro level but won the second.

Like most Leacock games, it does share some genetics with the Pandemic formula. Playing as one of the six Thunderbirds from the television show, you're tasked with fending off various disasters around the globe. Each character has a special ability and unique vehicle. Players lose if Dr. No gets to the end of his track or triggers a Scheme before you prevent it. You can also lose if a Disaster falls off the end of the Disaster track. What this means in game terms is that you're having to manage two "doom tracks." Players win by resolving all Scheme cards before either of those doom tracks expire.

Resolving Disasters requires getting to the location of the disaster and rolling a pair of dice to equal or exceed the difficulty rating of the disaster. To assist you, however, there are requirements listed on each card that - if met - will give you a bonus to your total dice roll. For instance, a card may require you to roll an 8 on two dice to resolve it. However, if you have Penelope with you, you get a +2 to your total. Or if it's a land disaster and you're playing the character that specializes in land attacks, you get a bonus.

The "gimmick" of the game (and it's a beautiful one), is that each Thunderbird has a unique plastic vehicle with a limited number of slots in which the character pegs fit (think of putting the people pegs in those cars in the game of Life). These vehicles have movement limitations on where and how fast they can move, so your'e constantly figuring out the logistics of how to most efficiently get characters where they need to be to maximize your bonuses and thus have a better chance of resolving disasters.

This gets particularly intriguing when you're trying to figure out how to transfer characters around the globe. Characters can't just be left without a vehicle, so you're always having to think ahead to make sure you don't strand someone. A huge part of game strategy is not only maximizing your own turn, but also setting the board up so that the next player can most efficiently take their turn. In that sense it has a spirit of cooperation that I think even exceeds Pandemic in terms of the importance of teamwork.

I absolutely love this game. The game mechanics tie in brilliantly with the theme, and the logistical movement angle adds another strategic layer above and beyond the basic Pandemic-ish formula. Moving the vehicles and pegs around gives the game a nice tactile component. I really can't name any flaws - I've had a blast with this game every time I've played it.

Next week we're going to try it with the first expansion (generally regarded as the best of the three (!)) released. It adds a couple of new characters, an island "staging" spot which allows you to drop off characters without tying up a vehicle, and an entirely new set of disaster cards. Should be fun.

If you're in the market for a co-op that has a family-friendly theme but is still plenty challenging, I highly recommend this one. You don't typically hear a whole lot about it, but I consider it one of my favorite co-ops. Another note - you don't have to be familiar with the IP to enjoy it - I had never seen the show the first time I played. Since GenCon I've watched a few episodes, however, and it only added to the experience. Most of the disaster cards are taken directly from actual episodes, so it's really neat when you recognize them.

Wednesday's games

7 Wonders Duel
Legendary Encounters: X-Files
Vikingar
Powerships
Whitehall Mystery - lost on the last possible move.

Wednesday's games

7 Wonders Duel - I am still undefeated. The warlord in red taught me well!
Legendary Encounters: X-Files - see below
Vikingar - it was a lot simpler than it seemed at first. Lots of components but not lots of complexity. It's sort of similar to Mage Knight in that you are exploring and fighting everything you encounter, but rather than a hand of cards you throw runes to do battle which is an interesting mechanic though far more random.
Powerships - Powerboats.... in spaaaace.
Whitehall Mystery - lost on the last possible move. - neener

LE: X-Files
Shockingly it plays a LOT like the other LE games. The main change we experienced was the need to scan the offer (the bureau) to see what the cards are. On a related note, there are enemies in the offer. The other significant change is the need to uncover and retrieve evidence which has varying requirements and if not recovered have impact on the end game. Unfortunately we didn't get to the end game. Isgrimnur had an epic bad draw from an enemy that had triple-strike. It killed him outright. I haven't decided if I need to own it yet. It is not an immediate purchase.

Played a four-player game of Yokohama last night. I pursued a Church + contracts strategy, but it just didn't generate points fast enough, and I ended up coming in third. The winner focused on contracts + Customs House, and did a much better job of getting his shops and trading posts out onto the board.

I like the gameplay -- it's somewhat reminiscent of Istanbul, but with more variables in play -- but we all agreed that the visual design could use a lot of work. It's superficially lovely, but very hard to parse at a glance, with too many overlapping and overly complex design elements.

Played a solo round of Legendary Encounters: X-Files (Miniature Market cheap-ass FedEx SmartPost slower-than-ground shipping magically showed up in 2 days).

The Good:
- I like the slight complexity increase over LE:Aliens. Using Bureau powers to your advantage, managing Belief and Doubt, wider variety of card types in the Conspiracy Deck, etc.
- Replayability seems high considering Objectives have been replaced by randomized Evidence and The End cards. Also like the "Series" mode they added so you can do a little mini-campaign. Lots of variable ways included to set up the game which is nice.
- The game feels really difficult, and I like that. I was getting to where I could beat LE: Aliens pretty regularly, so this feels like a fresh challenge.

The Bad:
- Deck-building feels like an uphill climb since you're having to spend resources to uncover Bureau cards. Sometimes I felt like I was buying stuff just to do something rather than getting a card I actually wanted.
- I'm not totally sold on the Discover/Collect Evidence mechanic. While I managed to collect 2 of the 3 my first game, it's not as compelling as completing objectives in LE: Alien. The replayability factor is nice, but it came at the cost of gameplay.

The Ugly
- Well, thank God they used screenshots, but otherwise the rest of this game is FUGLY. The card text is so hard to read. TYPEFACE SHOULD NEVER BE USED IN ANY GAME EVER EVEN IF IT'S THEMATICALLY APPROPRIATE. I really don't know how that gets past playtesting. I had reading glasses on and was still struggling to sort cards. It's such a simple problem to fix, I just don't get it.
- The mat is a total disappointment. While I appreciate that it's not so "busy" that the cards get lost on it, they barely put any art on it at all. It's essentially a plain blue mat with maybe some wisps of fog. Ugh. X-Files deserves better.

So yeah, mixed review but leaning positive from me. I think the gameplay is solid as all LE games are, and it's different enough from Aliens that I'm happy to have it in my collection. The replayability is great, and the negatives I had may improve as I better learn the game. On the other hand, the art is a total letdown. Not Firefly bad, but missed opportunity. I like the orange envelope evidence cards, but the rest of them range from dull to atrocious, and all suffer from tiny typeface text syndrome.

My recommendation is to pick it up on sale like I did.

Thursday was:
Vikings Gone Wild, a deckbuilder with a beer/gold economy, building purchase, attack and defense, with upgrades to boot. A lot of different things going on. Not bad, but definitely a bit fiddly.

Specter Ops, a hidden movement game that I would have one if my die rolls hadn't been crap. As it was, it was still a near thing.

The Faceless - a creepy game about disappearing kids with magnetic directional gameplay elements, which we managed to not learn the correct rules, resulting in a loss in about 10 minutes.

War Chest - simpler than Tash-Kalar, but a fun game of abstracted combat with up to four units of different powers. I would have bought it if they weren't trying to sell it at full retail at the AEG booth.

Friday:
Steampunk Rally, a neat little race car construction, dice activation game. I managed to squeak out a win after I knocked four pieces of my car off in one turn.

Gearworks - a 3-round game of color-number placement on a grid to earn parts, complete contraptions, and earn points. Nice and light, only real rules have to do with colors and number order.

Fugitive - 3 rounds of this, a 2-player catch the thief game. I went 1-for-2 as the investigator, and 0-for-1 as the thief.

The Mind - Psychics, we ain't. Take Hanabi, take out all of the communication, and replace the tiles with a 1-100 deck where you have to play your hand, larger each round, in numerical order without speaking.

Thanos Rising - play as Avengers trying to take down Thanos and his enemies before he gets all the gems for the Gauntlet. Dice-based enemy attacks versus dice-based recruitment and attacks for the heroes.

Tash-Kalar. My late charge to tie the game was insufficient, as coop flared twice in the final round and stomped me with two end-game Legendaries.

In addition to everything Isg played above, I managed to play:

Costume Party Assassins - a simple quick die rolling, murdering, hidden identity game
Coldwater Crown - I guess you'd call it worker placement, but a very euro fishing game
Raiatea - Ummm.. Euro islander thing. I don't think any of us really groked the rules (and symbols) completely even at the end of the game, but we were close. The included references for the ritual cards did not cover all the cards...
Western Legends - sandbox... thing. Kind of like Firefly but with more western and less space. You can be a good guy a bad girl or ignore that option and mine gold and spend time at the cabaret... just watch out for those bad players trying to rob you.
7 Wonders + Armada - played with the "behind the scenes" designer, Stefan uhh something (not Bauza). Adds 4 advancement tracks where you can spend an extra resource when playing specific card colors to gain an extra bonus. Each track has a different kind of benefit, cash, naval strength, some bonus cards and... something else.

I feel like I am forgetting something, but I didn't keep very good track of my plays.

I had a chance to play Smartphone Inc. and wow, this was shockingly good! Apparently this made the rounds at Esen this year and sold out almost immediately. The guy who brought the game literally got the last copy sold there.
So first of all, I went into this highly skeptical. The theme of the game does nothing for me and the overall look of the game is not exactly stunning. One round in though and I was hooked. The game is all about manipulating the price, production and demand for your cellphones. If you lower the price of your phones enough everyone will buy them but they won’t net you many VP.

My strategy was basically to build cheap and open distribution hubs all over the world. It was working great until the last round when one player got annoyed that I kept undercutting him and dropped the price of his phones to the lowest price possible in the game. He sold a boatload, cut me out almost every region on the map and my end game points plummeted.

It’s one of only a few games in recent memory where I wanted to play a second game right after the first.

I picked up Keyforge, the latest and greatest(?) from Richard Garfield from FFG. At a glance it's a very M:TG and Hearthstone-like card game where you play creatures that duke it out with other creatures, artifacts that persist on the board and do various things, upgrades that enhance creatures and action cards that are one-time effects. In most respects, nothing you haven't seen before.

The big thing about this game is that the decks are all unique. You open a deck box and it contains a 36 card deck that's been semi-randomly created by some algorithm. Each deck has their own unique card-back and title so the larger point is that there's no deck buliding. You can't collect cards and swap them out or make your own deck... you play with whatever is in the box and try your best to figure out how to win with it. Besides some presumably basic rules like the deck will include 3 of the games 7 factions there's no promise or even intent that decks will be balanced.

So that's a gimmick of the game you'll either like or not. As someone who generally likes this style of game but doesn't really care for deck building (both the card collecting and researching aspects) I appreciate this new format. Look beyond the unique aspect and the game so far has been a lot of fun. I have 4 decks and with one exception (a deck with lots of artifcats and few creatures) they've all been interesting to play.

One word of advice... if you have a reasonable supply of tokens, chits or whatever to track 4 things the game requires (damage, aember, +power and stun effects) don't bother getting the "core set". All it has is two preconstructed decks that are found in all core sets (nice for your first game or two, presumably not allowed in organized play) a single punchboard with tokens for the game and 2 sealed unique decks. It doesn't include rules as they're online, just a brief "how to play" pamphlet that's barely needed that doesn't even have a glossary of card terms and effects. Just a big waste of money in my opinion. You can get 4 unique decks for the same money and sub in your own tokens and have the rules on a tablet.

Daveman wrote: Sun Nov 18, 2018 3:25 pm I picked up Keyforge, the latest and greatest(?) from Richard Garfield from FFG. <snip>

The only deck builder I have experience with is Dominion but I'm looking for something new and I've been tracking Keyforge for play with my son. I'm probably a good candiate for the base set that includes the 2x pre-constructed learning decks and 2x unique decks. I don't mind dropping a few extra bucks for them and the chits, but for Magic vets I'm sure you're right and it isn't needed. Thanks for your impressions.

Been trying a bunch of new games out lately, but can only remember the ones I’ve played this weekend:

1) Game of Thrones (2nd edition): I liked the integration of the theme and possibly ways to make alliances/backstab people, but I’ve realized recently that I’m not a huge fan of area control games. We played with four players and from what I’ve heard it’s best with six. In any case, I’d be up for playing it again, especially with more players, but it certainly won’t be something I want to play super regularly.

2) Indonesia: although I don’t really think I knew what I was doing for 75% of the game, I enjoyed this one. I really liked how the a merger of two companies could provide big swings in which player was likely winning. The fact that the money is hidden from other players makes it so you never really know who’s ahead, which is cool. The game was not short (I think maybe four hours?) but part of that is that three out of four of us had never played before. Would play again!

3) Keyflower: this game has everything I like in games - Meeples, auctions, and drawing stuff from bags. Perhaps not surprisingly, I really liked this one. It also went pretty quickly despite two of us not having played before.

On Saturday we tried Dungeon Mayhem, a new D&D-branded card game. It's a very light, competitive card game, as simple as they come. You play a D&D character (barbarian, mystic, thief, or paladin). Each character has a unique deck of cards that lets them attack, defend, draw more cards, play more cards, etc. Everyone has 10 hit points. Last man (or half-orc, or elf, or tiefling) standing wins.

It's... fine. There are some decent opportunities for surprises and killer card combinations, the card art is fun and funny, and it moves quickly. The overall feel is vaguely Munchkin-esque, but Dungeon Mayhem is less annoying and doesn't overstay its welcome. I had fun, but as far as fantasy-themed filler games, I would put this far below Welcome to the Dungeon.

My eight-year-old, on the other hand, loved Dungeon Mayhem. He immediately asked that we put it at the top of his holiday wish list.

coopasonic wrote: Sun Nov 18, 2018 9:00 am Costume Party Assassins - a simple quick die rolling, murdering, hidden identity game

My kids (9 and 12) really like this, which is great because it is actually pretty fun for me too. We need to get mommy to try it tonight.