Octopus Overlords

Daughter, son-in-law and friend played this last night. 3 times; We lost them all. Tough game.

We then played Ravine. A survival cooperative game. Played it before and last night was the first time we breezed through easily with all of us being rescued.

Lassr wrote: Tue Jun 06, 2023 11:43 am Daughter, son-in-law and friend played this last night. 3 times; We lost them all. Tough game.

My gaming group agrees the game is just broken, which is a shame because the general design seems promising. I think we've tried it... four times? Five? It's been a disaster every time.

Possibly it's better with lower player counts? I think we played with 4 or 5 players every time. Maybe it's more balanced with just two players?

wonderpug wrote: Tue Jun 06, 2023 3:36 pm

Lassr wrote: Tue Jun 06, 2023 11:43 am Daughter, son-in-law and friend played this last night. 3 times; We lost them all. Tough game.

My gaming group agrees the game is just broken, which is a shame because the general design seems promising. I think we've tried it... four times? Five? It's been a disaster every time.

Possibly it's better with lower player counts? I think we played with 4 or 5 players every time. Maybe it's more balanced with just two players?

We decided next time to alter the rules. 1 or 2 less objectives to accomplish and see if that helps.

Our group has beaten it several times with 4. It's definitely harder with more players, but not impossible.

Fantasy Realms was the surprise hit of the cruise. Played at least 5-6 games every night. Even the wives, who typically don’t join in, both had a blast with it. Simple enough for anyone to figure out, but enough strategy and theme to remain interesting. What an absolutely stellar little game. Ordered the xpac soon as we got back.

I bought the kids the Final Fantasy TCG Starter Pack for Christmas. We tried reading the absolutely terrible instructions but couldn’t make heads nor tails of it, so it’s been sitting on the shelf. Wonder Twin 10.0b stuck it in his backpack for the trip, and we made a more dedicated effort to figure it out. Turns out it’s mostly just a MtG clone with a few JRPG’ish wrinkles. I’ve never really gotten into MtG, but we’ve been having quite a bit of fun with this Final Fantasy version. Enough that I bought a big booster pack with some Amazon credits. The kids both have over 100 hours in FF Theatrhythm (the Switch rhythm game) so while they haven’t played most of the actual FF games, they know all the characters by heart at this point. It’s been a surprisingly fun experience.

So, what did you do on the cruise other than play board games all evening?

If it was the kind of cruise OO member Brian takes, the answer would be “try not to look down”.

Fardaza wrote: Tue Jun 13, 2023 9:33 am So, what did you do on the cruise other than play board games all evening?

Way, way too much, tbh. I feel like I need a vacation to recover from my vacation.

Fantasy Realms usually only takes about 20 minutes to play. After all the craziness of the daily excursions, shopping, sightseeing, etc, we found a table and gamed for between 90 minutes to 2 hours.

I picked up a copy of My City and we tried it out this weekend, playing the first three scenarios in that first envelope. My youngest was skeptical, but he's 15 and skeptical about everything these days. Actual gameplay was engaging enough that everyone seemed into it. Just from the premise at the outset, I'd wondered if people would just try to copy each other or if the optimal placement strategy would be too obvious and similar, but everyone definitely took their own paths, and then of course the legacy elements start kicking in with round 2 and 3 that give some reasons to change it up.

For anyone who hasn't played it, My City is a geometric tile laying game (a bit like Tiny Towns), but each game after the first has additional or changing rules about scoring or placement, or otherwise changes the landscape. It's simple enough to understand easily, seems to be self balancing, and I'm looking forward to working through the rest of it.

We also got out Imperial Settlers. We'd played about half of a game before and ran out of time that day. My youngest was again skeptical, but he's the one who completely ran away with the game. Seems like a decent enough game, but I think we'll just make a house rule next time that the factions are randomly distributed.

We also got in another Frosthaven scenario. Our last dungeon dive happened to be pretty easy, but this one returned to being fairly challenging. Two of the 4 of us were exhausted before the end, but all's well that ends well. I could have met my own character's personal quest goal on this one, but decided to prioritize completing the scenario instead.

I've had Escape From Stalingrad on my radar for some time ever since the designer posted about it in one of my FB groups. However, I wound up not pulling the trigger on the Kickstarter because I was backing too much stuff already. So I was pleasantly surprised when I found it at my FLGS. Even better, I had a gift card that covered the cost.

This is a tactical skirmish campaign game in which you play German/Soviet players trying to escape a WWII Stalingrad overrun by zombies. While there is a full blown miniatures version, I bought the cheaper standee version and it's perfectly fine. The game maps are in book form (like Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion) so honestly I think counters/standees work better anyway.

There's a decent learning curve here, primarily because there are a lot of modifier rules. This plays a lot like a wargame in terms of range modifiers, line of sight modifiers, etc. so if you're used to those you may have an easier time with it than I did initially. Fortunately there are easy reference tables in both the rulebook and the summary folder, and once you play a few rounds you start to just remember them. I watched the two official gameplay videos they put out - one on rules, one on a full playthrough of the first two scenarios, and I highly recommend those vs just trying to learn from the rulebook.

Once it clicks though, it's a lot of fun. Unlike something like Zombicide, running and gunning is (usually) not your best option. Zombies are hard to put down, and every turn you're challenged with using your precious pool of action points to make the most efficient decision. Risk/reward plays a big part - running gives your character more action points, but at a cost to combat accuracy and evasive maneuvers. Slowing down gives you less actions, but minimizes your penalties.

One thing I think the game simulates *very* well is how slow zombies can suddenly form into a highly dangerous pack. The movement rules will have them constantly advancing towards you which organically creates situations in which you find yourself making desperate decisions on how best to evade. It also means you have some latitude in feinting maneuvers to draw them one way while exploiting an opening. It's a pretty simple but effective system.

Characters, items, and health carry over from scenario to scenario, and the ultimate goal is to make it all the way through the campaign with only six replays total allowed. There is an easier variant, however, which allows two replays *per scenario*. There is also some limited character leveling, with each character able to earn up to 3 special powers.

I'd recommend it due to the decent price point and the fact there's a LOT of game here (I think there are something like 45 scenarios). I also like the tactical nature of the game, with its small maps, very precise movement mechanics, and risk/reward nature. I will ding it for the rulebook - it's not terrible, but does have quite a bit of errata, Still, there are videos out there to assist and once it clicks you'll realize it's not as complex a game as it seems at first glance.

Cascadia - three player game with wife and son, I crushed them and wonder if they will ever want to play again... which is sad because I really enjoy the game. Super straightforward but with so many tradeoffs. It's a straight upgrade of Kingdomino, still a bit lighter than Queendomino.

Played a four player game of Scarface 1920, lots of mechanics, deck building, market buying, engine building, and a little area control. Started slow, but once we all got the game play down, it was really fun.

Plus found a card in the game that references one of my distant relatives. Big Jim Colosimo was a mob boss that was killed by Capone in Chicago, and he has a card in one of the decks, about when he got killed. Lol. So that is always nice.

coopasonic wrote: Tue Jun 27, 2023 11:52 am Cascadia - three player game with wife and son, I crushed them and wonder if they will ever want to play again... which is sad because I really enjoy the game. Super straightforward but with so many tradeoffs. It's a straight upgrade of Kingdomino, still a bit lighter than Queendomino.

Fwiw, my wife really enjoys Cascadia. It's become one of my favorites as well, just a great game.

Enough wrote: Thu Jun 29, 2023 4:04 pm

coopasonic wrote: Tue Jun 27, 2023 11:52 am Cascadia - three player game with wife and son, I crushed them and wonder if they will ever want to play again... which is sad because I really enjoy the game. Super straightforward but with so many tradeoffs. It's a straight upgrade of Kingdomino, still a bit lighter than Queendomino.

Fwiw, my wife really enjoys Cascadia. It's become one of my favorites as well, just a great game.

We also love Cascadia. Our seven year old is brutal at it!

Played Wormholes last night. A pretty straightforward pick up and deliver game where you set up wormholes to help you deliver people to various planets in modular universe with interesting features that affect movement. you get 2 VPs for delivering someone and 1 VP every time another player uses one of your wormholes. There are also VPs for being the first to place wormholes next to each planet, with higher points for the last few planets. End game is triggered by placing a wormhole at the last planet then everyone gets 3 more turns. Other interesting things, when you pick up passengers it's from a random draw deck and you draw to a hand size of 4. Before drawing you can discard passengers that are out of your way or whatever, those go face up in piles at the space station where others can grab them to deliver if they are headed that way. Fairly straightforward, but complicated by the various movement effects. Would play again, despite coming in last place by a LONG shot.

Sounds like some of the Sol mechanics.

Picked up The Witcher: Old World over the weekend and just finished my second game. One solo, one with the kids. It's a deck builder/exploration game set in the Witcher world. You move around, do quests, level up, and fight monsters. The winner is the Witcher who is the first to gain three monster trophies (by killing the monster) and "Meditate" on one attribute after it reaches it's highest level.

Each turn has three phases. In Phase I, you discard cards in your hand to move to different locales. This reminds me a bit of Lost Ruins of Arnak, where cards serve dual purpose to move to one of three areas (forest, mountain, and water) or engaging in combat. So you have to balance the amount you're moving with potential combat encounters (I.E. If you move around a lot, it leaves you with fewer cards for combat). Each location has a specific ability that you can choose to do or not, such as as leveling up one of four attributes, trashing cards in the market row, playing "dice poker" to get/lose gold, tracking monsters, etc.

Phase II has you choosing to either Fight a Monster or Witcher at your location, Explore, or Meditate. Fighting takes you into combat (more on that in a sec). Explore has you choose one card from either a City or Wilderness deck and do a quick "Choose A or B" scenario. These scenarios have a wide array of consequences, ranging from gaining more cards to drawing potions to starting quests. Meditating allows you to accomplish one of the victory conditions, but can't be done until one attribute is maxed. So it usually doesn't happen until late in the game, and then only once.

Combat is simultaneously frustrating and interesting. Your deck serves as your HP, so when you run out of cards you lose the combat. Cards generally have one of three abilities on them: attack, shield, or draw +/-. Many cards also have a tab that links to another color so you can play combos. So if you lay down a blue card with a yellow tab, you can immediately play a yellow card on top of it for an additional effect. Once you've exhausted your combos, you tally up the amount of shields you gain, the damage you inflict (which causes your opponent to discard cards), and any other effects, then draw up to the number of cards equal to your combat skill. If you're fighting another Witcher, then he does the same until one of you run out of cards. If you're fighting a monster, there is a dedicated face down monster deck that has two choices on each card: Bite or Charge (top or bottom). Whoever is controlling the monster chooses one option before flipping the next card, then does whichever it says. These attacks range from negligible to absolutely brutal.

In Phase III, you discard as many cards as you want, draw up to three cards in your hand, then you are required to purchase one from the market. You purchase new cards by discarding cards in your hand, ranging from 0 cost up to 2.

My overwhelming impressions were mostly just...meh. It suffers from a couple problems:

1. They basically do nothing with the Witcher theme. It has Witcher monsters to fight and Witcher locations on the map (i.e. Vengeberg, Caer Moren, etc.), but none of them have any real thematic connection to the source material. You could honestly substitute "Ye Olde Fantasy Theme" here and it would feel exactly the same. None of the quests are very interesting and do very little with unique Witcher abilities or the lore the series is known for. The combat cards are simply "Slash" or "Dodge" or "Charge". After a while, you don't even look at the ability, just the attack or shield icons, which makes combat feel like a color matching exercise rather than an epic battle. It all just feels incredibly generic, especially when they're working from such a well-developed world.

2. It's often just luck-based, depending on what you happen to draw for both combat or movement. Movement gets very punitive if you don't happen to draw the movement cards you need. For example, If you need to move to a mountain location and have a mountain card, you simply discard it to move. If you don't have that mountain card, you have to discard another card and pay a gold (which can be quite scarce) to move.

In combat, if you don't happen to draw the right cards for combos, you're pretty much screwed. Some of that can be mitigated by choices you make on purchasing market cards (and I imagine I'll get better figuring out those strategies), but so much of it simply feels like luck of the draw. Again, this feels counter to the theme of Witchers being highly trained, bad-ass mutant fighting machines. This feels exacerbated by almost always having a small hand, usually 2-5 cards. It's a constant struggle of having cards that you need that will actually make a difference in combat.

Monster attacks are equally as luck-based. You might choose have good luck and choose "Bite" attacks that do one damage and just cruise through a battle. Or you may have bad luck and choose "Charge" attacks that kill you in two turns. There's very little you can do to mitigate either one...it's just a coin flip on what you draw.

3. Lots of down time for other players. While you're moving around the map or deciding what to purchase, the other players are just sitting around. The only player interaction with quests is having the person to your right read you the text so you can choose A or B. Players do go against each other in Witcher battles, but everyone else is left simply watching until it's done.

The solo mode is pretty meh as well. The general theme is still the same (beat three monsters and do one Meditation), but it's now a "Beat Your Own Score" mode. If you complete the objectives in 6 turns, you get Y score. If you complete it in 10 turns, you get Z score. Etc. Not particularly compelling. Solo also makes a few things more difficult, such as gaining gold. There are two locations on the map where you can play Dice Poker to gain gold. With multiple players, you can also play Dice Poker against another Witcher but when playing solo, those two map spots are your only option. So you end up using a ton of cards just to get back to one of those two spots to hopefully gain some gold. Even then, it's luck of the dice whether that will even happen based on the Dice Poker roll. I ended up burning two turns just to get down to a Dice Poker spot because I desperately needed some gold, only to come away with nothing after the roll. When Solo score is based on number of turns, that's just annoying. (I have heard one of the expansions greatly improves the solo mode...for another $60).

4. There's a bunch of small, seemingly lazy design decisions that just bug me. The Gold and Copper coins are almost the exact same color. They used black text on a brown background that's really hard to read. Every playable character is a white male. Grammar issues and generally dull writing on the quests. You can only win the game by defeating the last monster, not by Meditating. So even if you're on the space with the final mob, you have to move to another castle to do your Meditation step first, then come back to fight the mob after you're done in order to win. Etc, etc. It all kinda just feels half-assed, tbh.

Maybe this one will get better as I get more used to it, but first impressions were certainly not the best. Between this and Skyrim, I have realized I need to quit buying expensive board games based on video game IP's that I love (side note: I have so far resisted the HOMM3 game). For all its faults, Skyrim absolutely nailed the theme. The Witcher...not so much.

4/8 tentacles for The Witcher: Old World

We busted out Lords of Waterdeep, Codenames, and Return to Dark Tower as palate cleansers this afternoon.

Ouch, they cannot get a good Witcher board game on the shelves, can they. The FFG one was, at best, mediocre.

FWIW, we have had a lot of fun with Deep Rock Galactic the times we've managed to get it on the table.

YellowKing wrote: Mon Jun 26, 2023 9:40 pm I've had Escape From Stalingrad on my radar for some time ever since the designer posted about it in one of my FB groups. However, I wound up not pulling the trigger on the Kickstarter because I was backing too much stuff already. So I was pleasantly surprised when I found it at my FLGS. Even better, I had a gift card that covered the cost.

I grabbed a copy of this online and am enjoying it. Even with the annoying mistakes in the rulebook that I can’t figure how they were missed.

I was surprised at how fiddly the movement rules are. I think that’s because your movement points are action points in other games, so a lot of stuff you do is covered under movement rules.

This weekend I played Pret-a-Porter, a Euro game about being a fashion designer. The theme is a refreshing change of pace, and the game itself is really solid. Money is tight, you don't have enough actions to do everything you want, and your opponents keep taking the action spaces you wanted. Good stuff.

I enjoyed it, but there are a lot of other games these days that do similar things as well or better. Thankfully it was borrowed from my FLGS's game library, so I'll just slip it back on the shelf it came from.

hepcat wrote:I was surprised at how fiddly the movement rules are.

Yeah, I think that's where the maps being small in book form helped overcome a bit of my frustration. Once you play enough it becomes fairly second nature, but in the early going being able to practice on those tiny maps definitely helped.

I do wish the rulebook was better though. Despite reading through it several times and watching the official how to play videos, I still sometimes feel like I'm forgetting something.

The more I play, the more I realize those fiddly rules are necessary for a small map, tactical game. You need to limit movement to force decisions on where to go, whether or not to attack, etc.. It really does feel like a GMT version of Zombicide.

Yes, it's very much in a war game-adjacent space. I have been slowly reading through the rules myself. I didn't back the newest KS they're doing, but I've been told the next one will be a viking-themed game in the same design style.

I've been messing around with V-Sabotage since the weekend as I wasn't really sure how I felt about my all-in pledge. Suffice to say, I'm getting ready to paint WW2 miniatures.

Man, I love me some V-Sabotage.

It would be the perfect follow up to this, after I’ve finished a few more games.

Also, ditch the rulebook and just watch this. It’s concise and includes all the corrected rules. Then just use the rulebook for table references, etc.

I'm looking at Escape from Stalingrad Z and I have a question - are you playing only Axis or Soviet characters?

Honestly, I'm sort of done with games where the PCs are Axis. Maybe that is a political statement, but oh well.

There are both Axis and Soviet characters. The premise is that when the zombie outbreak occurred, Soviet and Axis soldiers had to work together in order to survive.

You can choose your starting character, but if you play through the campaign certain characters will show up so I don't think you can avoid playing an Axis character at some point.

Yeah, pass. If this was Allies vs. Axis and Zombies maybe. Not really interested otherwise.

I think the new one (on KS right now - Escape from Projeckt Rise) is Allies vs Zombies only, but it's not shipping until May of 2024.It should be available retail (like the one out now), so unless you're into getting a deal (especially for the add-on stuff), I'll just remind you next year when it's out if you're still interested.

baelthazar wrote: Tue Jul 11, 2023 8:59 am I'm looking at Escape from Stalingrad Z and I have a question - are you playing only Axis or Soviet characters?

Honestly, I'm sort of done with games where the PCs are Axis. Maybe that is a political statement, but oh well.

You can use magic markers and crayons to mod your game so that it's the cast of Golden Girls trying to escape from a zombie infested tenement building. That's what I did. Blanche is down to 2 health, but that's so Blanche!

I hadn't heard about this upcoming release until just now, Star Trek: Away Missions.

https://www.gf9games.com/awaymissions/3 ... -missions/

Looks a lot like Warhammer Underworlds in that it's a skirmish game that's actually more about area control and fulfilling objectives for points than it is beating up the other team. Core set is Federation vs. Borg but they have Klingon and Romulan teams coming out too.

The miniatures have a slight cartoon appearance (nothing like Marvel United, but heads are slightly oversized) but I'm interested. Warhammer Underworlds is a good game but Star Trek and the setting (surveying wrecked ships just after the battle of Wolf 359) appeals to me much more.

Amazon Prime Day has quite a few good deals on board games of all types today...

Prime Day Game Sale!

Most included games are at least 30% off, with some discounted by more than 50%. The sale covers a little bit of everything...almost everything from the Exploding Kittens brand, tons of party games like Cards Against Humanity, Catan, several variants of Ticket to Ride, Pandemic, Pandemic Legacy (Season 0 and 1), Seven Wonders, Arkham Horror (several options), and a lot of classics (dominos, Rummikub, checkers, Sequence). There's a ton of stuff there, including quite a few expensive games with pretty big savings. It'd definitely worth a look.

hepcat wrote: Tue Jul 11, 2023 1:41 pm

baelthazar wrote: Tue Jul 11, 2023 8:59 am I'm looking at Escape from Stalingrad Z and I have a question - are you playing only Axis or Soviet characters?

Honestly, I'm sort of done with games where the PCs are Axis. Maybe that is a political statement, but oh well.

You can use magic markers and crayons to mod your game so that it's the cast of Golden Girls trying to escape from a zombie infested tenement building. That's what I did. Blanche is down to 2 health, but that's so Blanche!

See, I would buy that in about 1 milisecond. When I see a WWII themed game I already get "meh." Then when it's having me roleplay as the bad guys I get even more "meh."

I love Weird War 2 themed games, myself.

hepcat wrote: Wed Jul 12, 2023 2:24 pm I love Weird War 2 themed games, myself.

Have you seen Dark War? I picked up a copy last month and have been reading through it. It comes in a baggie with a printed map, some cards, the rules and a sheet of counters.

It doesn't bother me playing the bad guys in board games, but I totally get people who don't want to. There are plenty of games out there, so if you're not comfortable or not having fun playing a specific role, there's certainly no reason to force yourself into it.

I know back in the day when I played PC war games like Panzer General and stuff like that, I always opted out of playing Axis powers if I had any choice in the matter.

YellowKing wrote: Wed Jul 12, 2023 2:48 pm It doesn't bother me playing the bad guys in board games, but I totally get people who don't want to. There are plenty of games out there, so if you're not comfortable or not having fun playing a specific role, there's certainly no reason to force yourself into it.

I know back in the day when I played PC war games like Panzer General and stuff like that, I always opted out of playing Axis powers if I had any choice in the matter.

Yeah, I am usually not a fan of playing the bad guys, but I recently got Scarface 1920, and playing a nasty mob leader, and not all that bad either.

RMC wrote: Wed Jul 12, 2023 2:57 pm

YellowKing wrote: Wed Jul 12, 2023 2:48 pm It doesn't bother me playing the bad guys in board games, but I totally get people who don't want to. There are plenty of games out there, so if you're not comfortable or not having fun playing a specific role, there's certainly no reason to force yourself into it.

I know back in the day when I played PC war games like Panzer General and stuff like that, I always opted out of playing Axis powers if I had any choice in the matter.

Yeah, I am usually not a fan of playing the bad guys, but I recently got Scarface 1920, and playing a nasty mob leader, and not all that bad either.

In our next Pulp Alley campaign, I have made the decision to play a league of Nazi She-wolves, and I went through a lot of soul searching, plus asked the other players if they had an issue with it. They were actually very enthusiastic about it, to have a league that they punch and shoot without reservation.

Smoove_B wrote: Wed Jul 12, 2023 2:29 pm

hepcat wrote: Wed Jul 12, 2023 2:24 pm I love Weird War 2 themed games, myself.

Have you seen Dark War? I picked up a copy last month and have been reading through it. It comes in a baggie with a printed map, some cards, the rules and a sheet of counters.

I had not. I have some of their other games, so I'll check this out. Thanks for the heads up!