Octopus Overlords

Chaosraven wrote:Speaking of Puerto Rico, I taught that to kenetickid and his wife. She was absolutely in love with it. While I have been at work, he and she have been playing Dominion and Cutthroat Caverns with the kids.

We actually just played Puerto Rico, then finished up with some games of flux. PR is a great game that gets less play due to no 2-player option.

I'll be getting my copy of Conquest of Nerath next week, just in time for my July 4th weekend of gaming!

I brought one of my Crokinole boards with me to Ravinia last night while we listened to Garrison Keillor do "A Prairie Home Companion" live. Played about 10 games against my wife and kids.

I really need to print up business cards that I can hand out to people when I take the game out. Every time I bring it to a picnic or outing like this, I'll get a bunch of people asking me about the game, where they can get a board, etc. Last night was no different. My wife has taken to calling me the Crokinole Evangelist.

I have a copy of Conquest of Nerath waiting to be played. Might try it out on Monday night. Might biggest concern with it was that there is not a 3 player free for all option with the game, that you have to play the allied game with 3 players, and one player has to play 2 of the factions. That may keep it from seeing much play with us.

Played some Descent Friday night with Guapo, Chaz and another friend. Had a pretty good time, and it only took ~4-5 hours (so I suspect we won't be seeing that game for some time). Used one of the base scenarios (something about a Naga coiled around a golden apple tree?), with some expansion cards and critters mixed in. Finished at about 2 in the morning, at which point I was completely unable to string together a coherent sentence or remember two rules which might have allowed me to get another round of kills on the PCs (forgot to bleed them, and forgot to "grapple" the guys standing next to my invulnerable Naga boss). Not that it would have mattered, since they had about 15 conquest points piled up, so I'd have had to kill everyone twice.

A few notes from the Dungeon Master's perspective:
- For some reason, the scenario book loves rooms with 3 giants. However, there are only two giant figures, so I have to use substitutes. Maybe I lost a giant somewhere?
- There are many overlord cards which are useful to play early on (stuff that allows you to fill newly revealed rooms with extra guys or stronger guys), but you don't have nearly enough overlord points to play them. My advice to aspiring evil overlords: it's fine to let the heroes breeze through the first two or three rooms while you stock up on overlord points and long-term evil cards. It'll pay off in spades when you reveal a room full of red boss monsters, then trap the heroes behind stone blocks and spiked pits. Unfortunately, I didn't follow my own advice this time, and the heroes wound up breezing through the first few rooms anyway, and I didn't have enough force to stop them.
- It seems like there really needs to be some sort of "tanking" mechanism. If a guy acquires high armor, you can pretty much just ignore him with your monsters and go for the weak guys.
- My favorite card all game was a "mimic" trap, where a hero opens a chest only to have it whack him then run away to hide behind a bunch of strong monsters. Tee hee! There really needs to be more of that kind of jackassery in the game, most of the overlord cards are pretty boring "boost your forces" type things.

I'll probably play Descent this weekend (and maybe Twilight Imperium, so it might be a big weekend). We've played twice and I've really found that you have to just keep the pressure on the heroes at all times. I'm excited to use the new treachery rules and customize my overlord deck, which will be really really good fun. I'm also not at all squeamish about discarding for threat points - I choose one "power" card then burn the rest for major threat. Spawning as much as you can as fast as you can seems to work well too.

Master Sorcerers are evil as hell.

Bizarre. We played on Sunday and I just finished telling the crew that OO has no love for Descent when Remus suggested we come here for popular opinion on how Leech is played. Mmmm crow.

The reason he asked, Sea of Blood Campaign Spoiler
I'm thinking about posting some campaign tactical spoilers because there's a point where I'm going to wonder if my players are going to want to reset. About now they should be putting the pieces together for how tough the end game is going to be on them.

baelthazar wrote:Master Sorcerers are evil as hell.

My players to lend the undead assassination weapon and get it pretty quick pretty reliably.

My gaming group quite loved Descent. In fact, while playing Twilight Imperium last weekend, my regular gaming buddy went on and on with another gaming buddy new to the table about Descent, which is weird because he never really raves on and on about any game we play.

What I played this weekend is now detailed in the Origins thread.

LordMortis wrote:I'm thinking about posting some campaign tactical spoilers because there's a point where I'm going to wonder if my players are going to want to reset. About now they should be putting the pieces together for how tough the end game is going to be on them.

I'm not sure why we would reset. Sure, things are not going well but we mostly handle anything other than the razorwings with relative ease. Given a few better weapons and those won't be as bad. The main problem with them right now is nobody can hope to one shot them so even sitting and taking a guard action to protect against them is useless.

I will say though that our party mix and start skills were not the best. Having 2 mages and no range has hurt us a lot. We have had many very nice range weapons and enhancements come up as treasure that are completely useless due to nobody using those skills. It also has closed the feats from that area on us. Not good planning on our part.

Our best ranged option was 2 black dice, one skill card, crap ability. We didn't really have a decent choice.

I also would have liked the Promo guys in the mix, figure I will pick up DungeonQuest to get those ones too.

I have also posted in the Origins thread. Plus, the kids will leave next week allowing me time for some additional gaming.

Chaosraven wrote:Our best ranged option was 2 black dice, one skill card, crap ability. We didn't really have a decent choice.

Yeah, but maybe we should have taken one of them to have full range of abilities or have Zyla concentrate on using ranged weapons rather than melee (to late to do that now).

Remus West wrote:

LordMortis wrote:I'm thinking about posting some campaign tactical spoilers because there's a point where I'm going to wonder if my players are going to want to reset. About now they should be putting the pieces together for how tough the end game is going to be on them.

I'm not sure why we would reset. Sure, things are not going well but we mostly handle anything other than the razorwings with relative ease. Given a few better weapons and those won't be as bad. The main problem with them right now is nobody can hope to one shot them so even sitting and taking a guard action to protect against them is useless.

I will say though that our party mix and start skills were not the best. Having 2 mages and no range has hurt us a lot. We have had many very nice range weapons and enhancements come up as treasure that are completely useless due to nobody using those skills. It also has closed the feats from that area on us. Not good planning on our part.

I don't think things are going horribly for you at all right now. We trade back and forth on dungeons where I get literally no points in a gaming session and where I get nearly double your points. That's about right and how the game is really designed to work. If anything, I think you are going to pick up quite a bit of steam with regards to your power versus mine dungeon by dungeon. But we'll see where that leads you.

Chaosraven wrote:I also would have liked the Promo guys in the mix, figure I will pick up DungeonQuest to get those ones too.

Like and idiot I sold off the Descent cards from DQ thinking I would never buy Descent. I kept the Runewars ones and think I still have the Runebound (awful awful game) ones. My lack of foresight was pretty idiotic there.

baelthazar wrote:

Chaosraven wrote:I also would have liked the Promo guys in the mix, figure I will pick up DungeonQuest to get those ones too.

Like and idiot I sold off the Descent cards from DQ thinking I would never buy Descent. I kept the Runewars ones and think I still have the Runebound (awful awful game) ones. My lack of foresight was pretty idiotic there.

as a precursor to descent I think Runebound was a very good game. It simply does not have the flexibility of the generations of games that followed it. All of them still use the same ideas though. Same characters and treasures. Same combat concepts.

Remus West wrote:as a precursor to descent I think Runebound was a very good game. It simply does not have the flexibility of the generations of games that followed it. All of them still use the same ideas though. Same characters and treasures. Same combat concepts.

Runebound was fantastic for introducing my kids to the basic concepts of fantasy RPG-style gaming. Ability scores, experience and leveling up, melee vs. ranged combat, magic items granting bonuses and advantages, the strategies of one-use items (like potions), etc. Sure it doesn't have the tactical depth of Descent or even something like Wrath of Ashardalon, but it's a great entry-level adventure game and they love it.

Had an awesome game of Cutthroat Caverns last night. Got kenetickid killed in the 7th encounter, as he was close in points. Then his wife refused my healing potions heading into the final encounter as that would have given me enough to beat her. Bigass dragon with an event that dropped our attacks to the next lower value. She went out pretty quickly, but I didn't have enough action cards to keep the beast from killing me. Then taught them Three Dragon Ante. I am so glad the kitchen is finally clean and the table available for games. Next up: shelving for all my games in the corner of the kitchen.

Chaosraven wrote:Next up: shelving for all my games in the every room of the house.

Fixed that for accuracy's sake.

Any thoughts about Road Kill Rally? On sale at Tanga today. Looks like fun.

I played a demo at the Z-Man Games booth at Origins last year. It's silly fun, nothing more. I didn't buy a copy, but would play if it hit the table.

Set your speed to move a certain number of spaces, and set the difficulty of the dice roll in the event of any obstacles. Your goal is to hit pedestrians, who also count as obstacles. One strategy is to shoot your fellow racers, which allows you to steal the cards they use as HP, ammo and equipment if they fail a dice roll. You can also position yourself in the road so someone has to go through a more difficult obstacle. A new tile is added whenever a player leaves the furthest tile on the track...which creates a dangerous "fog of war" for the leader. There are some tiles that require you to go fast (to jump over a broken bridge), while others require you to go slow (a hairpin turn).

I have been looking at Cutthroat Caverns...it looks like it would be lots of fun.

MythicalMino wrote:I have been looking at Cutthroat Caverns...it looks like it would be lots of fun.

It really is, in a AlmostCooperative BackStabby Treacherous Way.

I just got a few Mini Expansions (Phantom for Carcassonne, Fisherman for Catan, and River for Catan), and hope to try them out on my THREE DAYS OFF!

I played Primordial Soup. It's a neat game where you control a number of amoeba on the board. Each turn you move (either drift based on the current direction, or try to move on their own), and then you attempt to eat. Don't eat for two turns and your amoeba dies. You can also give birth to new amoeba, as well as buy gene cards that give all your amoebas a certain power.

Unfortunately, we encountered a few problems. It took us a while to understand the rules, although I think part of it was because we kept on getting distracted. Another is that there are a fair number of food cubes you have to put on the board during setup, and to a lesser degree, upkeep of removing and putting new cubes seems a bit much for whats supposed to be a short game (eg, 1 hour) - not a huge deal. Finally, the game seemed a little unbalanced - there are only 1-2 of each type of gene in the deck, and some of them seemed a little overpowered. For example, two people got the only two attack cards, while the third got the only defense card, which meant I kept on getting eaten. Admittedly, there might have been other cards that would have been useful, but that would have required looking it up . I did manage to get a nice set of cards that allowed me to move to squares a turn, for free, in any direction I wanted to, which was nice, however. Also, the turn order changes, and matters a lot, since the first person could eat up all the available food in an area of the map before the others go.

Played Puerto Rico, Settlers of Catan with the mini expansions of the River and Fish (twice), Magic, and 51st State last night with CR and friends. Barely lost in PR to CR. Won both games of Settlers (although the second one only because CR rolled a 7 on his own turn and then Kinetickid rolled a 9 on his and I rolled a 9 on mine to give me the resources I needed after having denied CR the ones he needed), took out two people in the Magic game but left myself open in killing the second for CR to storm through and butcher me, took second in the 51st State game to CR only due to an amazing run on the final turn where I generated 19 victory points to take me from being embarrassingly far behind everyone and into second. Then we looked at the clock and went "4 am!! Crap."

You will be glad to hear my streak continues. Played Settlers with Fish today, and rolled a damned 7 two turns in a row, nuking my hand of cards (which each already had my final point). TWICE. Then managed to hold on to win the next turn (kenetickid 2 points away due to the Boot, buying Development cards in the hopes of hitting either enough soldiers to steal largest army or VP).

Forgot to mention that last week we played Santiago. It's a farming game where you bid on plantations and then place them down , only if the plantation doesn't end up next to a canal (each canal is potentially next to up to 4 tiles) within one or two turns, it'll turn into desert. Players try to bribe the current canal overseer to try to put the next canal next to their tile. Additionally, plantations of a certain type are worth more when they're next to other plantations of the same type, even if they're not owned by the same player.

It's a nice, balanced game that allows for some room for cooperation as well as backstabbing (On the final turn, someone managed to put their plantation in the one spot where the front runner could earn a lot of points, which allowed me to tie the front runner), even if the theme was somewhat bland.

I got three hands of Monopoly Deal in this evening, a quick-paced card game where you win with three complete sets in front of you. Rent is paid out from either money cards you've played in front of you or by the money value of properties directly. You never get change.

There are cards that allow you to steal a single property, demand rent from one person or all of them, dependent on the color of the rent card matching a property or set that you have in play, trade properties, or outright steal a complete set from your opponent. There are cards to defend against it, if you have them. The game seems to suffer from the "I win" problem, in that someone can go from middle of the pack to game over with one turn. You draw two, play up to three cards, max hand size of seven.

It plays very quickly and seems to be a decent game for sitting around playing cards and drinking.

Is that the one you find by the UNO cards? If so, pick up SCRABBLE SLAM

Ok, upon review of the rules and bgg forum discussions with the game designers, the following are what we have done wrong. (1) when you redevelop/replace a leader you put TWO VP on your base, not one. (2) an incorporated card has a top and a bottom. You cannot send a worker to any card that doesn't have a worker icon on the bottom (production), only to ACTION locations with a worker icon. The top tells your opponents that THEY are allowed to send a Worker ONCE. (3) you may send Two Workers to your own ACTION, but not to an Open Production. (4) you may have multiples of identical Locations. (5) you cannot run out of tokens (use substitutes) (6) you update X=Y when appropriate (resources in Production, TRAITS as conditions change. Next up: my questions on 51st State Leaders - can they 'refill' their store? Can you steal from them? Is there a Maximum 'storage' for them?

Yeah, 51st State is full of fiddly rules, but in spite of that I still love it. It helps once you realize that points are never taken away from a player, only built upon. Thus, when you replace a leader, you're receiving one VP for the act of replacing him, and one for his previous value of 1 VP. The same with redevelopment. You essentially convert the card leaving play into the VP it was going to be worth at the end of the game.

As for the action/production function of locations, it's actually pretty clearly laid out in the rules at the bottom of page 6 what the different symbols mean. Don't forget that production facilities enter play with the resource they generate automatically!

Leaders can have a maximum of 5 VP's stored on them (resources get swept away during clean up, don't forget...and even though leaders have the clock symbol, they aren't warehouses...that symbol only applies to the initially generated resources per their card). They don't regenerate the resources they come into play with as they have the hand symbol on them, which means that allocation happens only when they enter play. You can hang onto those initial resources during the clean up phase as the aforementioned clock symbol means they aren't tossed during that phase.

I will say that I believe I have played it wrong in the past with sending workers to opponent's open production facilities. I think I was allowing up to 3 per opponent's facility, when it appears it's only 1 per opponent's facility per turn....two for your own, though.

I was pretty active on BGG in the 51st state forum for a while too. It doesn't help that the developer doesn't speak english and relates his rulings via others.

Chaosraven wrote:Is that the one you find by the UNO cards? If so, pick up SCRABBLE SLAM

I would imagine it's in the same area. My friend's wife actually owned it and pulled it out last night after their rugrats were put to bed for the night.

She started complaining that her husband won't play any games with her and she gets sick of playing games by herself. This is the same man that once slapped me because I wasn't playing my Axis and Allies turn fast enough.

So I might be getting more gaming time by taking games over there that can be played in a couple hours or less on weekend nights. While I don't know that she'll care for the Nightfall setting, I think the mechanics are simple enough to function as a gateway game to some of the harder stuff.

We got in a game of Ascending Empires over the 4th weekend. That game is FAR more interesting and fun when you play with the correct rules. Go figure.

Isgrimnur wrote: While I don't know that she'll care for the Nightfall setting, I think the mechanics are simple enough to function as a gateway game to some of the harder stuff.

Make sure you read the rules THOROUGHLY. There are some definitions that aren't quite clear and that have led to some knock down, drag out arguments during a game amongst our group.

Boudreaux wrote:We got in a game of Ascending Empires over the 4th weekend. That game is FAR more interesting and fun when you play with the correct rules. Go figure.

I just got all my stickers on my planets and ships, but haven't had a chance to play yet. Really want to give it a run, though. It seems like great fun.

hentzau wrote:

Boudreaux wrote:We got in a game of Ascending Empires over the 4th weekend. That game is FAR more interesting and fun when you play with the correct rules. Go figure.

I just got all my stickers on my planets and ships, but haven't had a chance to play yet. Really want to give it a run, though. It seems like great fun.

Meant to ask, have you had any problems with your board warping? I haven't taken mine out of the bag yet, and shoved a packet of silica gel in with it to protect it...I'm almost afraid to take it out!

hentzau wrote:Meant to ask, have you had any problems with your board warping? I haven't taken mine out of the bag yet, and shoved a packet of silica gel in with it to protect it...I'm almost afraid to take it out!

Nope, no problems yet. I keep it in the bag with a silica packet too. I figure if it doesn't warp here in our humid St. Louis summer, it never will.

I've been trying to get Ascending Empires out on the table myself, but no luck. I haven't seen any board warping and I transported it on a humid day in my car for an hour. I do keep the boards in the plastic bag with silica pack, like Bordreaux. I think my wife will like it, but she just hasn't met me halfway enough to get it to the table.

I did get to play Conquest of Nerath and it was freaking glorious! Something like Axis and Allies set in D&D world with awesome treasures and event cards. You can play free-for-all, but Alliance play is so much more fun, even with one person controlling an entire Alliance. We only had three players, so I got to be the good guys and the other two were evil, but I still had fun and so did they. Of course, four would be better, because you have that additional brain and less to worry about on your own, but it wasn't a huge problem. I love dicefests, and even the medium game took about 3-4 hours, so expect Risk-level sessions with CoN. But everything just clicks and it is interesting that, while the Twilight Imperium game I played on Saturday was highly strategic and extremely entertaining, I think I had more pure "fun" with CoN on Sunday. I can't wait to try it again!

I've also been playing the implementation of Ascension on my iPhone. It's pure awesome as well. I thought that the small screen would make it impossible to see the cards, but this is not the case. The hard level AI beats me pretty handily, and I haven't played with multiple AI yet. Get this game if you have an iPhone/iPad and like deck building.

Just played our first 2 player game of Small World Underground. Love what feels like a better balanced assortment of races and powers, and the relics/places give us something new to focus our fighting over. Perhaps a little too much though in our first game. There's 15 different relics/places in the game, 4 of which can be had on the 2-player map. My son got the first 3 (2 fighting-related relics and a 3rd (Scepter of Avarice) that doubles scoring from a single region) while I got an important place out of the 4th (Fountain of Youth, lets you regain a single race token at the start of each turn for whoever controls that region).

As it happened, my important place spawned on a Mushroom Forest, a space that my Royal Shrooms get double points from. The "Royal" power gave me a single "makes this region immune to all attacks/powers" token so I put it there as well. A few turns later I managed to take the Scepter of Avarice so I just kept using it on my immune region... making it a 4 point per turn, army token respawning machine. The odds of that particular combo coming up are pretty slim, but it made for heck of a game winner. If nothing else, it makes me a little concerned over the use of relics/places with anything that also makes a region immune to attack... which there are several of in SWU, more so if you add in the SW races/powers.

hepcat wrote:

Isgrimnur wrote: While I don't know that she'll care for the Nightfall setting, I think the mechanics are simple enough to function as a gateway game to some of the harder stuff.

Make sure you read the rules THOROUGHLY. There are some definitions that aren't quite clear and that have led to some knock down, drag out arguments during a game amongst our group.

Most of those arguments would be my fault. Nightfall uses too much of the Magic counterspell mechanic that I have a complusion to get the ordering/wording just right, even if it's a fiddly interpretation, so I "understand" how to play it. I keep finding things that seem wrong, and figure out that I've been playing them wrong. I've decided that I shouldn't play again until spending some quality time with the rules.

For example, the Lisaveta Florescu heals your minions each player's upkeep but she doesn't stay in play after the attack. On the other hand, the hot lesbian duo of Brynna & Taylor stays in play until DESTROYED -- so they're still around after attacking. Marcus Toth will be returned to your hand if he's DESTROYED, but not when he's DISCARDED after attacking. Having to toss Lisaveta and Marcus make a huge difference, otherwise you end up with a wall of self-healing dudes. Brynna & Taylor are awesome if you can get a few of them into play because those extra cards mean all the difference.