Octopus Overlords

hepcat wrote:

LordMortis wrote:I'm looking for a release date on Dungeon Run. I have my free shipping $250 worth of games waiting for that one game. So if I spend $250 on games every six months, I'm actually spending less than hepcat, so that's a WIN, right?

According to bgg.com, copies are already showing up on store shelves, so I would go ahead and put in that order. I know I probably will today.

My order is in from two days ago. I'm waiting for shipping. Merry Christmas to me.

CSI still has it listed as preorder and Plaid hat still says the release is Oct 31st, 2011. So we still wait. Most rumor mongers say Dec 7th but they don't give a reason for why the 7th is the anticipated date.

Yeesh Hep, I can't even conceive of spending $140 a month on cigarettes, but then again, I've never smoked one! Congrats for quitting!

Dungeon Run was supposed to ship out to pre-orders from their website around November 28, IIRC, and then ship to retailers about a week after that. I would say it should come out within a week or two. I think the date was something like December 8. But they had a lot of problems with delays and printing sonI don't know if this held.

Copies of Eclipse have landed in port as of a few days ago. Word is we will have them in a week or so. The retailers are selling out quickly, so if you want to avoid waiting for the reprint, grab one now.

No word yet on FFG's Nexus Ops and it looks like the updates Wiz-War and Rex (reskin of Dune) slipped to 2012. I'm looking forward to Wiz-War, I sold the old one for a pretty penny and the new version looks more aesthetically pleasing for my crowd.

I'm taking M&M, Runewars, BSG, Urban Sprawl, and Conquest of Nerath with me tomorrow. I figure my group can look them over and choose. I'll probably grab Gears of War and/or Legend of Drizzt to play if we need a shorter game in the middle.

First we played two rounds of Get to the Chopper!!!!- I've never heard so many quotes from Predator at once. For a free print-and-play game, it was a hell of a way to start the night. I am nearly certain I need to sit down and watch the movie now this weekend.

After that we had a 2 vs 2 Heroscape battle on the Long Bridge. I seriously thought I was going to see Trent Steel blow a valve. My team went 2-0, though I fully admit once again it comes down to the ridiculousness that is rolling dice. All the planning, all the thinking, all the meta-strategy and you're up against 6 skulls. I've said it before -- for a game that's tailored for 13 year olds, you've never seen a group of 30 something year old men get so involved in moving little plastic figures around.

my copy of A Game of Thrones 2nd Edition arrived yesterday. Game looks so awesome. We have next monday set to play. At least will have a 4 player game, and very possibly a 6 player. My group took a break for the last couple of months, and I think they are all itching to get back to it...and what better game than A Game of Thrones?

That's a brutal Heroscape map, Smoove.

That was the 4th and 5th time we've tried that bridge and we had lost all three times before last night. Our first army was all Marro (including a Hive) against all Gladiators and the second attempt was Sir Dupuis and 5 squads of Knights, supported by Syvarris and some other ranged attack elf mage against a veritable mix of random guys.

I still have no idea what strategy really works because so much depends on die rolling. It's a fun map to play, but it seems to always come down to what happens in the first few rounds at the center of the bridge. All I know is that Trent and RM9 have called for blood and demanded another round. I'm thinking of maybe just throwing the Hulk in there.

Loooooooooong day of gaming.

Remus West and I played a couple games of Tsuro until bb2112 showed up, then played a couple more with him. LordMortis arrived and we switched to Dominion for a couple games. Then redrun and his brother arrived and we switched to three games of 7Wonders, followed by two rounds of BANG! (with the Wild West Show events), and then 6 player Dominion (12 piles, play til 4 are empty) for at least five games I can remember, handing out 4 choices to each, 2 go in, 2 to the box, after each game all chosen were retired for the night.

And rounded it off with a 6 player game of Small World, with the Necromancer (yours truly, who overextended himself a turn early and lost, ended the game with 11 of my 14 ghosts on the board), LordMortis won with 86 to bb2112's 85 to Remus Wests 84 (didn't hear what redrun and his brother finished out with).

So twelve hours of gaming today, WOOT!

I think I ended up winning one game of Tsuro, one game of Dominion, and won as Sheriff in the first game of Bang!

3 of 17. Guess that's my 1/6 even split.

not a bad weekend for gaming.. Saturday we played Ninjato (first proper play, I think it has great potential) and Undermining (30mins of fun for 2-3, not so good for more due to bottlenecking when more players try to use one depot), then on Sunday: Urban Sprawl (third play, first time with three players. love it), King Of Tokyo and more Undermining.

My gaming day was a bit shorter than anticipated, but we got a great game of BSG. Four-players, so not the optimal number, but good.

I was Adama, and we had Ros, Helo, and Starbuck. In the initial drawn we all we given "Not a Cylon" cards. Things went pretty well in the beginning due to this, with some hits to morale. Of course this meant that, when the sleeper round hit, we were fully in the blue, so the Sympathizer (Helo) became a Cylon. He had us convinced that he had both the Cylon cards and acted like he was a "lame" Cylon with no super crisis or ability to control the fleet. So he used the Res Ship to give his unrevealed card to Ros. I appealed to Starbuck to put Ros in the brig. Ros dumped all the cards he could to prevent it. So on my turn I ran an election and took the presidency. It was a good move, he was the Cylon, but had gotten his card via the draw, not due to the res ship. Still he popped and blew up Fleet Control and the Command center.

So it was two vs. two and the Cylons cycled the crisis cards to blitz us with attacks, which managed to be all clumped in the deck. We had the entire Cylon fleet on the board! Unable to launch vipers, Starbuck tried to clean up some but the tide was too great. We lost a lot of pop from Civilian ship deaths. We also hit a dead spot with no jump icons.

At this point, low on everything and surrounded, the only option was an emergency jump - failure meant losing all pop and success meant escape. I rolled a 1. Cylon win.

Oh, and LordMortis: there's a single thing I don't have for Small World... the Tunnels expansion, which was a promo at Spiel 2011, which is rules for combining SW and SW:Underground. Now downloaded.

I played a few games with the Small World: Tunnels rules and it's really good. I like the way they use half-boards for the 2 player game. The "expansion" is free if you order anything else from the DoW website, or you can get it for free and pay shipping. Not that you really need to though unless you're a Small World fanatic. The "expansion" is little more than a set of numbered tunnel tokens that are placed on the map (easily replicated with other tokens) and the rule sheet (which can be downloaded).

Played Android for the first time last night. It was fun; there's a LOT of little nitty gritty stuff to keep track of / pay attention to, and lots of different board locations that all do lots of different stuff. But it was fun. I feel like it's a game that would really benefit from a second playthrough, with the benefit of now knowing what we're doing. But of course, I have so many more games than time, so who knows when that would be.

Daveman wrote:I played a few games with the Small World: Tunnels rules and it's really good. I like the way they use half-boards for the 2 player game. The "expansion" is free if you order anything else from the DoW website, or you can get it for free and pay shipping. Not that you really need to though unless you're a Small World fanatic. The "expansion" is little more than a set of numbered tunnel tokens that are placed on the map (easily replicated with other tokens) and the rule sheet (which can be downloaded).

Daveman wrote:you're a Small World fanatic.

Umm.

Yeah. I downloaded the pdf and toddled off to my massive extra basic lands (Magic) and cut out matching pictures to use as tunnels until it shows up.

Heh, don't feel bad... I'm a Small World fanatic. My copy arrived on Saturday after I'd played with the rules a few times Leaders of Small World is all I'm missing, but I gather that's out of print and of questionable value to the game.

I have it, but rarely sees play,

Played Quarriors with the Rise of Demons expansion on Saturday night with a group of 4. I still love the game for its light and quick gameplay that still gives me the feel of an actual deck building game in which I manage resources and purchase new spells/creatures. It really is just a fun game that's quick to learn and easy to play.

Then we got in two games of the Star Trek Deck Building Game. The more I play it, the more I find to like about it. There's some real depth there that isn't visible on initial plays. You can choose to go with a diplomatic approach to winning via ship acquisition and mission completion, or you can just build yourself a military force and win through defeating enemy ships, winning battle events and completing military based missions. I can't wait for the stand alone expansion coming in January.

On a lark, I picked up a cheap coop game that caught my eye. It's called The Isle of Doctor Necreaux. Its rating on BGG isn't that great, but I love the flavor of the game. It's 1 to 5 players (yep, there's solitaire play) and it plays out like a 40's or 50's sci fi/super spy movie. You basically select three character cards to represent your abilities then fight/survive your way through a large deck of events, monsters and traps until you reach first the scientist and then the escape pod cards. It's VERY difficult and I've yet to come even close to winning in a solo game. It's a small box game (the size of the FFG original silverline series) and it can easily be toted around, set up and broken down for a quick game when you have about an hour to waste. I don't think it's something you'd play a lot, but it would make a perfect compliment to a night of like themed games such as The Adventurers or Conquest of Planet Earth.

Chaosraven wrote:Oh, and LordMortis: there's a single thing I don't have for Small World... the Tunnels expansion, which was a promo at Spiel 2011, which is rules for combining SW and SW:Underground. Now downloaded.

CSI showed a lot of expansions and until Sunday, I hadn't realized you had bought that many. You always just talked about the basic set, underground, necromancer based one, and an additional characters based one.

LordMortis wrote:

Chaosraven wrote:Oh, and LordMortis: there's a single thing I don't have for Small World... the Tunnels expansion, which was a promo at Spiel 2011, which is rules for combining SW and SW:Underground. Now downloaded.

CSI showed a lot of expansions and until Sunday, I hadn't realized you had bought that many. You always just talked about the basic set, underground, necromancer based one, and an additional characters based one.

who is CSI?

Chaosraven wrote:

LordMortis wrote:

Chaosraven wrote:Oh, and LordMortis: there's a single thing I don't have for Small World... the Tunnels expansion, which was a promo at Spiel 2011, which is rules for combining SW and SW:Underground. Now downloaded.

CSI showed a lot of expansions and until Sunday, I hadn't realized you had bought that many. You always just talked about the basic set, underground, necromancer based one, and an additional characters based one.

who is CSI?

I think you're....



...playing with us.

Chaosraven wrote:who is CSI?

http://www.coolstuffinc.com/" target="_blank

sweeeet.

And there's only the 6 things I have on their list. (actually have a few others they don't list)

So my gaming group is getting together in a few weeks, and I am getting all the board games out, and planning on having a 12 hour open gaming event at the house.

I am even deep frying a turkey for the occasion. So if anyone is in northern Ohio(West of Cleveland) on the 17th, let me know and you are invited as well.

But here is my question, I have a good amount of board games,
BattleStar Galactica, all the expansions
Rune wars, with the expansion
Chaos in the old world, with the horned rat expansion
Talisman, with almost all the expansions
Runebound, most of the expansions
Decent, with most of the expansions
Small world, none of the expansions (Still trying to get the crew to play it)
Arkham Asylum , King in yellow expansion
Marvel Super Hero


But I am looking for something else...
I was thinking of:
A Game of Thrones 2nd Edition - Seems like a good group game with backstabbing, and fighting
Twilight Imperium - I have played it before, and it was fun..A pain to set-up, but no worse than other 'big box' games.
Maybe one of the card based games?? - Lord of the rings or Warhammer??

I am open to anything and see a pattern in my games so maybe I should try other games that might expand my library. My gaming group can be anywhere from 3 to about 12, so I like games that expand well, but we break into groups if we get everyone to make it, which is very rare. We usually have about 6 to these little shin digs.

Thanks for any thoughts, and I figured this was a good thread to ask, but if I should move this and make a new thread than I can..

RMC wrote: Marvel Super Hero

SEE HENTZAU, I AIN'T THE ONLY ONE, DAMN IT!!!

...

back on topic: take a look at cutthroat caverns if you like backstabbing and goofy fun. It can take up to 6 players so it can accommodate a decent size gaming group.

hepcat wrote:

RMC wrote: Marvel Super Hero

SEE HENTZAU, I AIN'T THE ONLY ONE, DAMN IT!!!

...

back on topic: take a look at cutthroat cavernsif you like backstabbing and goofy fun. It can take up to 6 players so it can accommodate a decent size gaming group.

Hehe...Yeah we actually played that quite a bit when it first came out. It is just goofy campy fun. I thought for sure they would have an expansion for that, but alas, it must have only sold copies to myself and hepcat as there has not been an expansion that I am aware of.

I'll look into the cutthroat caverns game.. Thanks!

BAM!

11/11/11 Enter today in the Cutthroat Caverns 'Create an Encounter' Contest and you could find your creation in an upcoming expansion like FRESH MEAT! (Yes, it will finally be here in August!!!) Think up a solid, balanced critter that makes us say, "OMG that is so nasty and cool" and you are on your way.

re: cutthroat caverns: there are at least three expansions for it: Relics and Ruin, Tombs and Tomes, Deeper and Darker. The first time we played a few weeks ago the owner of the game had at least a couple of the expansions integrated in.

Jow wrote:re: cutthroat caverns: there are at least three expansions for it: Relics and Ruin, Tombs and Tomes, Deeper and Darker. The first time we played a few weeks ago the owner of the game had at least a couple of the expansions integrated in.

AddenBAM!

Deeper & Darker introduces a set of one-use SPECIAL ABILITIES that are unique to each character. ... In addition, there are 15 New Encounters

Relics & Ruin is a larger expansion which introduces a number of new mechanics to the game. ... Then, there are the 15 new Encounters

TOMBS & TOMES follows in the footsteps of Relics & Ruins adding to the pool of EVENT CARDS and RELICS and delivering what may be the most deadly 15 new Encounters yet.

B1 and B2, Savage Arena and Errand of Evil

This is our second, double-sided Adventure Module for Cutthroat Caverns that uses a 'choose-your-own-path' style book to overlay an exciting new dimension to the game. The book comes with two all new Encounter Cards exclusive to this adventure, but fully usable in the core game as well.

RMC wrote:So my gaming group is getting together in a few weeks, and I am getting all the board games out, and planning on having a 12 hour open gaming event at the house.

I am even deep frying a turkey for the occasion. So if anyone is in northern Ohio(West of Cleveland) on the 17th, let me know and you are invited as well.
*snip*
Twilight Imperium - I have played it before, and it was fun..A pain to set-up, but no worse than other 'big box' games.
*snip*
Thanks for any thoughts, and I figured this was a good thread to ask, but if I should move this and make a new thread than I can..

I see no better option. If you have 12 hours and your friends love wargaming with a good dose of politics, diplomacy, and empire-building, then Twilight Imperium 3rd is the way to go. I think the expansions are worth getting, but that will run up the cost. TI:3rd is perfect for 6 players, and I think the Shattered Empire expansion allows for 8 players. But the game takes the better part of 9 hours+. Despite this, the time always flies by for me and I think it is the most epic gaming experience available.

Now the new game Eclipse looks to be quite epic but plays in a much shorter amount of time. I don't think it is quite the game that TI:3rd is and is certainly not shaping up to be the same wargame strategy (more of an empire-engine building game). So you might look into it, although finding a copy is getting really hard at the moment. It should release before the 17th.

My four person group had a blast with BSG. It took us about 4 hours to play, but they were 4 hours that zipped by.

Runewars is a contender, but only seats 4, which limits your group size.

EDIT FYI for those interested, CSI has Dungeon Run in stock.

Awesome. They didn't this morning. (I check every day... as if that would somehow will influence things) I hope that means I'm getting my tracking number tonight.

Edit: Ran and checked email. No confirmation yet.

Edit 2: No email but their site says "Order processed and ready to ship."

played a 4 player game of A Game of Thrones (2nd Edition)....and....I have found my favorite game EVER!!

Really, I loved it. I played as Baratheon, but Lannister ended up winning when I failed to take Highgarden from him. He then marched south and took Oldtown, and then took a knight west and took my undefended province, The Reach to win the game.

If I would have won Highgarden, I would have been able to walk into Yronwood for the win...but, I lost, and lost badly in Highgarden. I had a Knight, footman, and a siege engine, played Renly (Stannis had already been played). He had a Knight and three footmen. He played Gregor Clegane...and won in the Tides of Battle (his +3 to my +0). And his Clegane card wiped out my forces. He waltzed into The Reach for the win, claiming the Iron Throne as his own....

Good game,though.

We didn't actually play these games last weekend, but this People-Powered Gift Guide is powered by me (and the 4 year old fish).

I'm looking forward to getting Discworld: Ankh-Morpork on the table again -- it's a very approachable territory control game from Martin Wallace! I also have the sense it's going to get really nasty once the group starts to understand the underlying strategy.

Dungeon Run is on the Fed Ex truck on its way to me right now.

LordMortis wrote:Dungeon Run is on the Fed Ex truck on its way to me right now.

Ditto. I should have my copy later today. Miniaturemarket.com FTW!

edit: got it. smaller box than I thought it would be.

Read the rules at lunch. The solitary game looks like it's going to be a disappointment. I'm wondering how it's going to work amongst our group. The game is predicated on inter player treachery and that can sometimes get our group all geek heated. The goal will be to not take the game too seriously.

Oh great, another game for LM to cry about kingmakering illogical gameplay

Chaosraven wrote:Oh great, another game for LM to cry about kingmakering illogical gameplay

Or maybe I'll just start the game by playing "kick raven in the teeth."

Kingmaker games only tend to bother me in long games. There's nothing quite like the experience of playing a four to six hour game that is always decided by the whim of the third player in the last two minutes of the game.

It's a bit lighter than even I expected, but I'm not going to assume the worst until I get it on the table with at least 3 players (2 player and solitaire seem to be the least amount of fun, according to folks on bgg). I've been surprised by games I'd written off after seeing the rules before (Quarriors, I'm looking at you).

This is why I enjoy playing games with a friend who has no further goal than playing a spoiler role. He's always happy to stab someone in the back but is unreliable enough to frustrate any kingmaking efforts. He's like a dedicated Cylon sympathizer in BSG.

LordMortis wrote:

Chaosraven wrote:Oh great, another game for LM to cry about kingmakering illogical gameplay

Or maybe I'll just start the game by playing "kick raven in the teeth."

Kingmaker games only tend to bother me in long games. There's nothing quite like the experience of playing a four to six hour game that is always decided by the whim of the third player in the last two minutes of the game.

at least you'll be able to count on CR and I stabbing each other in the back at some point just before it would be ideally beneficial to the stabber and most detrimental to the stabee.

Zarathud wrote:This is why I enjoy playing games with a friend who has no further goal than playing a spoiler role. He's always happy to stab someone in the back but is unreliable enough to frustrate any kingmaking efforts. He's like a dedicated Cylon sympathizer in BSG.

On the flip side, when you're playing with someone who's going to do the exact same thing in every game you play...without fail...you eventually realize that simply sitting a stuffed animal in his chair on game nights will achieve the same effect.