Octopus Overlords

hepcat wrote: Wed Dec 26, 2018 11:27 pm

RMC wrote: Wed Dec 26, 2018 11:17 am

coopasonic wrote: Wed Dec 26, 2018 10:36 am Eight games of Aeon's End Legacy... I don't want to say anything else because it would be cruel to hepcat. Actually, maybe not saying anything is more cruel. I'm good with that.

We did play two games of Aeon's Legacy at his Ohio gathering, and I think his copy is still sitting in Chicago.

We also won a game of Manzions of Madness, which honetly was one of the best feelings in playing board games.

We played Aeon's End, not Aeon's Legacy. That's sitting on my desk at work. I'm going to get it when I go back in Friday. Then I have 4 days to play it! I think tomorrow I'm going to break out my new copy of Thunderstone Quest and try a solo game using a variant I found on BGG.

And yeah, that Mansions of Madness dirigible scenario will forever stand out as one of my best Lovecraft experiences. God I love that game.

I was thinking End, not sure why I typed Legacy.

I didn't play anything this weekend, although I got my nieces that Harry Potter Hogwart's defense game. They jumped right into it.

My parents came over for a while (they don't live local). My dad noticed my bookcase full of games and mentioned that I had an impressive number of video games. When I said they were actually board games he was definitely surprised, but I think he might have been a little happy that I do have to go out and interact with people to play them with other human beings. I am definitely a loner. It doesn't bother me (it's my preferred state), but I think it does bother some members of my family, my parents are in that group.

I didn't get into the whole solo gaming thing.

Despite having quite a few games on my wishlist, the only one I actually received was STAR REALMS: FRONTIERS. Haven't had a chance to play it yet, though.

However, in hindsight, I'm actually GLAD I didn't get more games. I was looking around at all the stuff I've spent big money on and got only 1 or 2 plays out of and realized I need to slow my roll. So I actually knocked most of them off my wish list. I'm sure the 2019 hype will get to me and I'll wind up back in the same boat as 2018, but for now I can honestly say I'm only sitting on two games I haven't gotten to the table. I'm really going to try and resist buying anything until Gen Con, which will give me a good seven months to go through my backlog. And yes I know you're reading this while singing "he's got highhhhh hopes." Yeah, yeah, I know.

We played the third STREETS OF ARKHAM scenario for MANSIONS OF MADNESS last night and had a blast. Really fun scenario and we pulled out a win with the closest of possible victories. Three of our four investigators were insane, and we somehow still managed to meet every win condition. Crazy. Next up will be SANCTUM OF TWILIGHT and HORRIFIC JOURNEYS.

Today we played a four-player, three-generation game of Caverna. I'm kind of amazed that my non-gamer mom agreed to join us, and I think she ended up enjoying it.

At the end of the game, I was the only player who had expanded their family to five dwarfs, but I ended up coming in third. My son leaned heavily into a weapons/expeditions strategy and won.

Caverna was a blast and a big improvement over its predecessor Agricola, in my opinion. Many of the basics mechanics are similar, but the overall feel and flow is more propulsive and flexible. At the end of the game you feel like you've achieved something, not just survived.

I am looking forward to playing again, but the setup is a beast because of the sheer number of bits. I have never encountered a game more desparate for a custom organizer.

So here's a weird one - I played MONOPOLY.

Back during the hurricane we were stuck inside for a week, and for some reason my kids became obsessed with MONOPOLY. Absolutely loved it (as a kid, I did too, so I can't really blame them).

So for Christmas, their grandmother bought them Monopoly: Ultimate Banking Edition. At first glance it looked like just regular Monopoly but with debit cards instead of cash. Big whoop. BUT WAIT - I WAS WRONG!!!

The Ultimate Banking Edition is actually a revamped version of Monopoly that plays much quicker and has some significant rules changes. It actually made for a fun game (well, as fun as Monopoly can get, I suppose).

The "gimmick" of the game is the centerpiece electronic card reader. With a simple tap on the scanner, it can automatically debit/credit players' accounts, handle property transactions, etc. It took a little getting used to at first, but once we played a bit it really became a godsend. It's essentially an electronic banker, so you don't really need to keep track of much at all as long as you properly input the data to update the game state. So for instance, if you land on an owned property, you tap the deed card, then tap the card of the player who landed on it and it debits their account for the rent amount they owe and credits the account of the person who owns it. Also on its default screen it shows a running tally of everyone's cash, so you always know who's in the lead.

Here's the major rules changes:

- There are no hotels, and only one house is allowed per property. Instead, each property has a rent level from 1-5. A purchased property is bought at rent level 1 with a house. Every time someone lands on the property (even the owner), the rent level goes up to the next level. The electronic banker does a great job of keeping track of the rent levels, so it's not a huge deal if you forget to move the little house token up.

- You no longer have to have full property sets to benefit from escalated rent. However, there is still a major bonus to owning them in terms of rent levels. There is also a slightly less profitable bonus for owning 2 of 3 properties. Again, the electronic banker keeps track of this so you don't have to worry about it too much.

- The Chance, Community Chest, Railroads, and Utilities have been replaced with Event and Location symbols. Event cards are a mix of Chance and Community Chest in that they can be either beneficial or harmful. They can have some pretty neat effects like having players swap properties or lowering rent levels. Also, when you draw one you tap it so that the banker can keep track of its effect. They programmed in some cool little easter eggs. So for instance, one event is called HAUNTED HOUSE which lowers your rent level, and when you tap it the scanner plays a little ghost noise. Pretty cool.

Location spaces are a way for players to control what property they land on without waiting for the luck of the dice. By paying $100, you can go instantly to any location of your choice to either buy it or raise the rent level on it. This can be used to strategically complete a color set or bump up one of your expensive properties.

When a player goes bankrupt the game ends and the person with the most money wins. Again, the scanner does a great job of telling you when you've gone bust and even knows when your owned properties won't be enough to mortgage your way out of debt.

This is a fantastic version of Monopoly and though the electronic banker gimmick takes a bit of getting used to, once everyone understands it it's a nifty tool that speeds game up tremendously. We played a four-player game in around 45 minutes, and that's with kids who were goofing around half the time.

I only had two complaints:

1. I wish they had put little slots or something to keep track of the rent levels instead of you just sliding your house forward. With dice rolls, houses just got bumped off every turn and by the end I was just relying on the scanner to keep track of it all.

2. For some reason they REALLY cheaped out on the tokens and put in little plastic colored vehicles instead. It really doesn't feel like Monopoly playing with cheap plastic pieces, so that was a disappointment.

Other than that, if you MUST play Monopoly, this is highly recommended.

AWS260 wrote: Fri Dec 28, 2018 7:40 pm Today we played a four-player, three-generation game of Caverna. I'm kind of amazed that my non-gamer mom agreed to join us, and I think she ended up enjoying it.

At the end of the game, I was the only player who had expanded their family to five dwarfs, but I ended up coming in third. My son leaned heavily into a weapons/expeditions strategy and won.

Caverna was a blast and a big improvement over its predecessor Agricola, in my opinion. Many of the basics mechanics are similar, but the overall feel and flow is more propulsive and flexible. At the end of the game you feel like you've achieved something, not just survived.

I am looking forward to playing again, but the setup is a beast because of the sheer number of bits. I have never encountered a game more desparate for a custom organizer.

I quite enjoy Caverna, and it has one of the few expansions I'm really looking forward to(forgotten folk) because I can't wait for it to add more variety.

Caverna is now the only (I think?) game I own that I haven’t yet played. I keep hoping to get it to the table but the long play time has most of my gaming buddies hesitant.

Ralph-Wiggum wrote:Caverna is now the only (I think?) game I own that I haven’t yet played. I keep hoping to get it to the table but the long play time has most of my gaming buddies hesitant.

Depends on how many players you play with. It's about 30 minutes per player. I would never play above 5 and rarely above 4. At two players it can play in under an hour by two people who know the game. My wife and I play it on weeknights still.

My other board Xmas gift was Comancheria, and I just wrapped up the tutorial game last night, including finishing the first historical era after the tutorial sets you loose to succeed or fail.

It's a bit more complex than my usual comfort zone, but the tutorial and manual are excellent. The designer has done a thoughtful job of walking a new player (me) through the systems and the overall ebb and flow of game play.

I won that tutorial game, despite losing my best warband, loaded up with supplies, to an anemic Spanish military expedition thanks to some successive "1" rolls. Now I just need to find time - and table space - to try the other historical eras.

Comancheria has one of the best AI mechanics I've ever come across. I truly love that game. Navajo Wars is great too, but Comancheria feels more like a streamlined version.

Another casual game review: DOS, the sequel to UNO.

My daughter is a big UNO fan so we were really excited to try this one out. I was pleased to find out the rules are quite different enough to feel like a different game.

In DOS, there are two play piles on which to play cards called the center row. You can’t just match color as in UNO - just number. There are two ways to do this - a single match as in traditional UNO, or a double match by playing two cards that add up to the target number. On your turn you can play a match to any card in the center row, but only one match per card. At the end of your turn. Any pile that had cards played on it is scrapped and a new center row is dealt (assuming there are less than 2 center row cards left in play).

There are bonuses if you can also match color. If you match color on a single match, as a bonus you can lay down one of your cards as another center row card. If you match all colors on a double match, you not only get to lay down a card in the center row, but all other players must draw a card.

The other major twist is you no longer just keep drawing cards if you can’t make a match. Instead you just place a card in the center row. This makes it easier for your opponent to make a match on their turn, and also greatly speeds up game sessions.

Other trappings of UNO remain - scoring at the end (this time 200 wins). You must yell DOS when you have two cards left. There are wild 2s of any color or wild numbers in each color. However, no more Draw 2s or Skips.

All in all it’s a fun variant with hands that play much faster than traditional UNO. I don’t think it will replace classic UNO as a go to favorite, but it’s a great little alternative.

Got in two games of Gunfighter’s Ball over the weekend. The second one resembled a Sam Peckinpah movie.

Played a fantastic game of Mare Nostrum: Empires tonight. I never get to play that game enough. It is absolutely awesome. Tense the whole time, everyone had a chance to win. I need to find a way to play that game more.

Finally, finally, finally got The Godfather: Corleone's Empire to the table!

My buddy Scott came over and unlike my typical gaming group, he is highly competitive. So I knew he'd be down for some cutthroat Mafia action.

We fumbled a few things early on, but all in all the rules were easy to learn and gameplay proceeded pretty smoothly.

Things started off pretty evenly, but it became readily apparent that Scott was going to win the turf wars. He kept getting jobs with combat payoffs that were sending my guys to sleep with the fishes far too often. Knowing I was fighting a losing battle, I decided to focus instead on the job bonuses as a way to counteract his territory superiority.

By ACT IV, we really had no idea whose strategy was succeeding. However, Scott had gained the crucial police chief ally who could gun down all figures in a turf. I knew the round was going to be an absolute bloodbath for me, and doubled down on completing as many jobs as possible.

At the end we totaled everything up and Scott had eked out a paltry 6-point win! I was absolutely delighted that my strategy had nearly paid off, and he was in absolute shock that the massacre he had inflicted had not been more effective in stopping my point total. While we both greatly enjoyed the game, I think the close final score cemented it as one we want to play again more often as clearly there are multiple viable victory strategies. As it turned out, only the payout from two late-game jobs (that he almost didn't bother with) were his only margin of victory.

I'd really like to play with 3 or 4 because the territory control would be *much* different with that many players fighting over the limited board. Still, the fact that it works as well as it does with 2 players is pretty impressive for a game that places an emphasis on territory control.

YellowKing wrote: Thu Dec 27, 2018 10:11 pm
We played the third STREETS OF ARKHAM scenario for MANSIONS OF MADNESS last night and had a blast. Really fun scenario and we pulled out a win with the closest of possible victories. Three of our four investigators were insane, and we somehow still managed to meet every win condition. Crazy. Next up will be SANCTUM OF TWILIGHT and HORRIFIC JOURNEYS.

I just got it a month ago and haven't played yet... Partly because I don't have an iPad or tablet anymore, just mobile phones. Is it much better to have a tablet/iPad to play?

The Mansions of Madness app is also on Steam, if you have a laptop handy.

EzeKiel wrote:I just got it a month ago and haven't played yet... Partly because I don't have an iPad or tablet anymore, just mobile phones. Is it much better to have a tablet/iPad to play?

If you're playing solo it may be OK, but I wouldn't think of trying to play it as a group with just a mobile phone.

We got in a couple of rounds of Pandemic: Fall of Rome tonight. Daveman gave a great overview so I won't go into great detail on the game mechanics. I will say that I'm continuously amazed at how Matt Leacock and company continue to come up with new variations on the Pandemic gameplay. Suffice it to say we had a blast and it may just be the best of the "Pandemic Survival Series" (Iberia, Rising Tide, Fall of Rome). It's also probably the most removed from regular Pandemic than any variant to date.

I know some players may consider dice in a Pandemic game pure heresy, but if anything I found them to be more help than hindrance. The odds are in the players' favor, and with good strategy the dice rolls are never going to be what makes or breaks you. I never once felt that I was "getting screwed over by the dice" or that they introduced an inordinate amount of luck into the game that couldn't be more than compensated for by other means.

We played on Easy both sessions, losing the first but winning the second by allying four tribes and wiping out the fifth. This copy belonged to one of my gaming buddies, but I may very well pick this up for solo play. It's the first Pandemic to include specific solo instructions (as opposed to just two-handing it), and reviews have been pretty positive. Some people have even used them to play other versions of Pandemic in "true solo" mode which is interesting.

We got in a three-player game of Everdell. It's interesting how the overall vibe differs between two- and three-player games.

Two-player is a more relaxing and gently competitive. You can definitely block and be frustrated by the other player, but the friction is occasional.

Three-player is sharper. You're much more likely to find your desired action taken by an opponent before your turn comes around. Also, you churn through the deck of cards pretty quickly. This means that you're more likely to see the card you need for a powerful combo, but it's also more likely that someone else will take that card to prevent you from getting it.

This happened in our game, when my son took the Queen that I was clearly gunning for (she has a powerful ability that lets you play other cards for free). As revenge, I played the Fool on him (-2 VPs and takes up a precious space in your card tableau). And that's why my wife, who stayed out of our little dispute, won the game.

My 9yo was given Stratego Classic for christmas and we played a bunch of that over the break. I still really enjoy that game and it lends itself well to dropping a few pieces for handicapping.

Awhile back I posted my 5x5 challenge, but never really updated it. However, when I ran across the solo gamer group on FB doing 10x10 challenges with the BG Stats app, I decided to abandon it and wait for the new year to kick off a "real" 10x10.

I designed it to hit games I felt had not gotten enough play yet, but also tried to make it feasible by including some quicker games among the big beasts.

1. Arkham Horror (3rd Edition)
2. Friday
3. Hoplomachus: The Lost Cities
4. Hostage Negotiator: Crime Wave
5. Legends of Andor
6. Nemo's War (2nd Edition)
7. Scythe
8. Star Realms: Frontiers
9. Stuffed Fables
10. Too Many Bones

Friday, Hostage Negotiator, and Star Realms are quick ones that I could conceivably knock out in a weekend (I actually have about half of Star Realms already knocked out today alone).

Arkham Horror, Nemo's War, Hoplomachus, and Too Many Bones won't be much work because I love those games and won't mind spending more time with them.

Legends of Andor and Stuffed Fables are campaigns I really want to complete, so again - no hesitation there.

And finally Scythe, probably the most difficult game on the list for me to get through as I just haven't been able to grasp it yet. However, I now have the digital edition so I'll probably just play it that way. Purists may have an issue with that, but until I learn the game better I don't feel like dealing with the set up and tear down.

We played Mansions of Madness for the first time in a long time. The first two-thirds of the game was a study in contrasts -- the investigators were separated into two groups on opposite sides of the map, with one pair facing a ceaseless stream of monsters while the other pair putzed around looking at paintings and fiddling with safes. One of the investigators was wounded within the first three rounds, and I was convinced we were going to lose early with her death. She managed to stay alive (barely), but we ended up losing on time, as the Big Bad ascended to Very Big Badness.

Mansions is lots of fun, but even with the app helping, the fiddly-ness gets annoying now and then. Still, it was a pleasure to pull this off the shelf again.

Also, my son taught us Samurai, a wonderful tile-laying game about claiming castles, rice paddies, and temples in feudal Japan. Valuable locations are scattered on a hex grid, and players take turns laying tiles with numerical values around each location. Once a location is completely "surrounded," each player totals the value of their adjacent tiles, and the highest total wins the location. The map layout and tile variety makes for some pleasantly tense decisions.

Not something I played, but board game news of note: voting for the Best Board Game Art of 2018 is live over at More Games Please. The nominees:

1066: Tears to Many Mothers
Architect of the West Kingdom
Brass Birmingham
Coimbra
Everdell
Feudum
The Grimm Forest
Reykholt
Rising Sun
Root

Ah... missed the "Art" in that last link at first. I'd only heard of two of them before now but those do look very nice.

YellowKing wrote: Sun Dec 30, 2018 5:15 pm Another casual game review: DOS, the sequel to UNO.

American Science and Surplus has a package deal of both games for $11.49 right now.

So, my son and I made a game today! Video was recorded and with my wife for editing.

The boy wanted to construct a Pac-Man maze. I've been thinking how to do this over the past few weeks, and thought about buying a large magnetic whiteboard then affix magnetic strips to blocks of wood. It would take a lot of time and a lot of expense.

After cruising the art supply aisle of Wal-Mart, I found a solution that cost less than $10 and took just a couple of hours. We glued together 9 sheets of black construction paper as the base, then glued colored tongue depressors around the border. Then I let him create his maze with other colored sticks and had him glue turn in place. When he deemed the maze complete, we then used colored tiny cotton balls as the pellets, with larger blue ones as the power ups. We cut out Pac-Man and ghosts from colored paper, and made one track for Pac-Man lives (3) and another to track the turns of power-up (10). Pac-Man gets to move 2 spaces (a grid would have been handy in retrospect and will be added to any future iteration) and ghosts move one space. Ghosts always move towards Pacman unless powered up in carnivorous mode (if you flip his Pacman, it has evil eyes and shark teeth). The goal is to collect alli of the pellets before dying 3 times. He came with 3 of doing that in our first play test.

I think if we did this again and spent time being now l more precise with maze placement and define squares to regulate movement, we'd have a pretty viable game.

That's awesome, Jeff.

Isgrimnur wrote:

YellowKing wrote: Sun Dec 30, 2018 5:15 pm Another casual game review: DOS, the sequel to UNO.

American Science and Surplus has a package deal of both games for $11.49 right now.

I live about a half mile from their Chicago store. Every once in a while they get in some cool surplus game stuff. For ages they had tons of Dragon Dice stuff, and they used to have all of these painted die-cast Star Wars figures that we first used when we started playing Star Wars Miniatures Battles (like about 20mm). Right now (and actually, for about the past 10 years it seems) they have been selling baggies filled with spaceships from the Buck Rogers board game that TSR (or maybe it was Wizards at that point) published.

As part of my 10x10 Challenge I've made it about halfway through the STUFFED FABLES campaign. Now obviously this game shines much more playing with kids, but since my kids have shown absolutely zero interest in it I've had to go it alone. And while I occasionally feel a little self-conscious as a 44-year old man helping stuffed animals guide a toddler through her bed wetting stage, I have to say the game has really charmed me.

The game is pretty easy, and I knew that going in. There's no real way to "lose" short of having all your stuffies die (which did actually almost happen to me once). Instead, you're given one of two endings (a good and an "OK") depending on whether you complete your mission before the toddler wakes up. A deck acts as a timer for this, and gets depleted as Stuffies are defeated or game events cause it to occur.

Despite the kid-friendly theme, the game rules can be a bit tricky. I screwed up a couple of major ones early in the campaign, but I've started to grasp all the nuances as I've pushed forward.

The main gameplay mechanic is a dice bag filled with different colored dice which correspond to various actions you can take. At the start of your turn you draw 5 dice, then make the best of what you pulled. White dice have a chance to give you HP, black dice are bad and increase the risk of enemies appearing or activating. Green dice allow you to do ranged combat, red dice melee combat, purple dice are wild and can be used as any color, and blue dice are neutral (can be used for actions that don't require a specific color). Obviously this randomness does have its downsides - a ranged weapon Stuffy who doesn't pull any green or purple dice simply can't attack. But that's where reserving dice and carefully working together with other Stuffies becomes key - to mitigate those bad dice draws.

STUFFED FABLES is an odd game in that thematically it targets a much younger audience than could handle the rule set. That, I guess, is where having an adult kind of hand-hold the kids comes into play. Still, I appreciate that it does have that complexity level because it has kept me quite engaged and looking forward to the next adventure.

My family played the first story of Stuffed Fables over the course of the last week. My girls (8 and 10) absolutely loved it. It’s like a streamlined version of Mice and Mystics with, due to the exclusion of cardboard pieces for the board, a lot more variety with the places you go and the challenges you face. M&M is more involved and characters get better throughout the campaign by leveling up, but I think SF may be more fun, especially if you don’t want to dedicate all your family game nights to one game for awhile.

AWS260 wrote: Sun Jan 20, 2019 11:47 pm That's awesome, Jeff.

Now he wants to create a Mario Brothers game. Not sure where to start on that one...

Jeff V wrote: Tue Jan 22, 2019 11:50 am

AWS260 wrote: Sun Jan 20, 2019 11:47 pm That's awesome, Jeff.

Now he wants to create a Mario Brothers game. Not sure where to start on that one...

Teach him plumbing.

But for the love of God, teach him that plumbing DOES NOT consist of jumping off high ledges onto various animals passing by. Stress that they WON'T produce power up balls as forcefully as you can.

hepcat wrote: Tue Jan 22, 2019 12:42 pm But for the love of God, teach him that plumbing DOES NOT consist of jumping off high ledges onto various animals passing by. Stress that they WON'T produce power up balls as forcefully as you can.

How do you know that for sure?

The same way I know that going to a construction site and hurling barrels at people below me doesn't do anything other than get you prison time.

Did any of you guys ever have the Pac-Man board game that came out in the '80s? It was awesome. Had marbles for power pellets and your Pac-Man figure could actually "eat" them as you moved it over the top of them.

I did.



(not my pic)

hepcat wrote: Tue Jan 22, 2019 12:42 pm But for the love of God, teach him that plumbing DOES NOT consist of jumping off high ledges onto various animals passing by. Stress that they WON'T produce power up balls as forcefully as you can.

No, the animal jumping is the means to an end. The power-ups come from forcefully smashing your head into bricks.

Isgrimnur wrote: Tue Jan 22, 2019 4:06 pm I did.



(not my pic)

We had it too. Not much fun really.

I had (have) this one and remember loving it:



Against a timer, you tilt the maze to roll Pac Man around and try to get the fruit to magnetically stick to his head. If you let the ghosts get too close to you they stick to your ears, which means you lose.

In my opinion the two greatest board games of all time are Mouse Trap and Which Witch.

I’ve only seen my father cry twice in my life. During his divorce from my mother, and while trying to assemble Mouse Trap on Christmas morning when I was about 9.

hepcat wrote: Tue Jan 22, 2019 10:05 pm In my opinion the two greatest board games of all time are Mouse Trap and Which Witch.

My brothers and I loved Mouse Trap and played the crap out of it. TBH, never even heard of "Which Witch" until now, our go to for something similar was Green Ghost.