Octopus Overlords

Chaosraven wrote:

hepcat wrote:Since only the mutants have enough range on their contact cards to even think about doing so, it's not that big of a deal...which I could see as justification for both sides.

Like, it's the Mutants advantage?

That's like Double advantage, extra Range *and* the ability to Sneak Attack.

I still maintain it's not really a sneak attack.

hepcat wrote:

Chaosraven wrote:

hepcat wrote:Since only the mutants have enough range on their contact cards to even think about doing so, it's not that big of a deal...which I could see as justification for both sides.

Like, it's the Mutants advantage?

That's like Double advantage, extra Range *and* the ability to Sneak Attack.

I still maintain it's not really a sneak attack.

if the rules require a toekn to attack with, allowing the Mutants to attack without the action of acquiring one, it certainly is. Seeing someone with 3+ range in tokens, you weigh the possibility of being attacked. Being attacked by someone with No Tokens is no warning. Like you see me getting my baseball bat across the street. Sure, I may not attack you with it, but you could consider it. Me pulling that bat and teleporting across the street without prep?

They're mutants, how can they possibly sneak? They're loud, they smell funny and they rarely wear quiet shoes.

If your wife has an interest in Memoir '44, by all means jump on it. It's an incredibly fun game with a ton of support out there. Somewhere in this thread (I think) I posted a link to a compendium of all of the published scenarios for M'44. It's one of those games that I will always play when asked.

hepcat wrote:Please post your thoughts on Mr. Jack after you've had a chance to play. I've been debating picking it up for literally the last 3 years.

Unboxing impressions are certainly positive. Old fashioned colored wood game pieces, lots of colorful cards and tokens on thick cardstock, distinct art style... you'd think it'd be gameplay above all else but all this other stuff really adds to the fun.

My wife, son and I played 3 games of Forbidden Island today, a game we hadn't played in a long time. I know it's considered a lightweight take on Pandemic / Defenders of the Realm, and rightfully so in a lot of ways, but I'd forgotten how much I liked it. While there's not as much going on, it has everything I like in that type of game. You're running around, working together, trying to keep the island from sinking, meeting up to swap treasure cards, and praying a Waters Rise card doesn't come up at the wrong time. What it does differently, and better in my opinion, is that the end game just builds up in excitement as the board starts falling apart and players race to get whatever treasures are missing and then assemble at Fool's Landing (and pray a Helicopter card comes up soon if no one has one in hand).

That it does all this in a $15 tin with great components, and plays in about 30 minutes is just icing on the cake.

wonderpug wrote:How complex are Memoir 44 ... The wife was intrigued by a pamphlet ad she saw for Memoir, and I've been wanting to try it for a while, but I've been worried whether she'd like the game mechanics.

Give it a try on Steam and see.

hentzau wrote:

RMC wrote:

hentzau wrote:OH! And the box insert for this game is amazing! Everything fits in it perfectly! If you sleeve your cards, you may have an issue, but I don't, so it's all good!

(Yes, I'm praising a game for it's box insert. To me, it just goes to show an extra level of detail that they put into the game.)

Ohh... I am a box whole... When I got small world and they had an instruction page in the rule book on how to put all the pieces into the correct slots... I got all tingly all over...

Amazon, has just gotten one more rickshaw on it's way to Ohio to give me my new game... Thanks for the heads-up. This sounds perfect for my gaming group.

I agree, the LoW insert is a thing of beauty. I did the unthinkable and cut out the card slots to fit the sleeved cards and it worked perfectly. I disagree, the card stock is too thin to not sleeve - not as bad as Conquest of Nerath but worse than Castle Ravenloft. Structurally the insert is still strong and now everything fits.

LoW is also very fun! Glad I grabbed this one!

Played a few games last night, 2 of which were new to me.

The first was a game I picked up on a lark called Mundus Novus. I bought it because it's by the same designer who made Shadows Over Camelot, Mr. Jack and Cyclades. That's a pretty good pedigree. Plus, it supposedly plays in 45 minutes and takes 2 to 6 players. It's small enough to stuff in my bag when travelling so it's the perfect filler game, I though to myself.

One of the gameshop regulars had already bought it and asked if we wanted to play. Since I love taking any chance to not to have to decipher rulebooks, I said sure.

The first few turns I was disappointed. I thought it was going to be a simple "get 3 or more of a kind to get points" type of game, but then I started using the development cards and paying attention to events. Both of those things affect what you can do each turn to a great degree. There's about a dozen different development cards with their own little gameplay rules, and about a half dozen events that affect everyone. Combined with the purchase of warehouses and ship cards, the game went from annoying to great in short order. I really like this one and highly recommend it.

Then another gameshop regular stopped by our table and held up a copy of Lords of Waterdeep. How could I say no since I had a copy on order already? I'll leave the details of the game to Hentzau and others, but I really liked this one too. Plays quickly (when I say about an hour in some cases, I'm not kidding) and is heavy with theme and quick decision making. I can't wait for my copy and I'm looking forward to playing again soon.

Finally, we rounded out the night with some Star Trek DBG and Dragon Rampage. Both were, as usual, quite fun.

Do you like Shadows Over Camelot? Back when I was thinking about buying it, I was told by so many ppl to not get it because it was not a good game at all.

hepcat wrote:Please post your thoughts on Mr. Jack after you've had a chance to play. I've been debating picking it up for literally the last 3 years.

Both the wife and I really really liked Mr Jack! It has a great combination of Mastermind/Clue logical deduction and more subjective mind-game deduction from the detective player trying to figure out if the Jack's players moves are suspicious clues or red herrings. It's sort of like Mastermind/Clue with someone getting to mess with the deducer's clues.

It's neat how the 8 characters all have different abilities without it getting at all overwhelming to understand them all. It's also really neat how the 8 special abilities can aid both the Jack player and the detective player in different ways.

Our first game came down to the very last "hour", or set of four moves (2 detective, 2 Jack). I was the detective and had narrowed it down to two suspects, but time was running out. My wife had made one of the suspects look like he was making a run for escape, but also could've just been a diversion. I had to choose someone to catch and accuse before midnight struck, so I did. I chose wrong, and in the chaos of the unjust accusation, Jack fled the city. I really love when games manage to capture the mood/emotions of the scenario they're trying to mimic, and this did that very well.

So yes, I can heartily recommend the game. It's that perfect blend of being easy to explain while having plenty of strategy & complexity.

When I was in the store I also saw a newer New York City variant that's supposed to be a little more complex. I stuck with the original, but from what I've read you can't go wrong with either one.

Myth, I liked my few plays of SoC, but Hentzau is the one to ask. I believe he's a big fan as it was his copy we played.

And thanks for the AAR, wonder! I may have to break down and get Mr. Jack to play with friends who don't enjoy or won't give a chance to fantasy, horror or sci if themed games.

Just remember it's only two player, though it would be pretty easy to adapt it to 3 or 4 players by having 2 players split the duties for a role.

wonderpug wrote:Just remember it's only two player, though it would be pretty easy to adapt it to 3 or 4 players by having 2 players split the duties for a role.

Being a two player game is another reason I haven't picked it up yet. I've got a lot of those in my collection....too many, it seems.

played a bunch of stuff this weekend: Small World with a newly unwrapped copy of the "Be Not Afraid" expansion, a couple games of Seven Wonders, BsG, Dungeon Petz, and a couple of others I can't recall. Good time... mostly.

The BsG game was fairly crappy, interspersed with really long delays between turns for people picking up spouses and taking smoke breaks and dominated by really bad card luck and helplesness for the humans. As Tyrol with nothing to do for most of the game, it was one of the dullest, most grueling 4-hour BsG games I've ever been involved in. As much as people seem to dislike Pegasus, I think I'm ready to autoinclude it from now on just for the variety it adds to the experience, especially for players NOT Cylon or one of the primary leadership roles. I think my biggest complaint about the game in general is that players can often go long periods without anything meaningful to do depending on the roles they selected.

Seven Wonders just rocks. Lately my gaming tastes have started wandering away from megalong affairs toward short and sweet games with depth and very little downtime and this game fills that role perfectly. Love the simultaneous play mechanic that keeps gametime AND downtime down.

Dungeon Petz is one of the more interesting games I'll probably never own due to the fact due to the fact that it feels kinda superfluous in a sea of worker placement games, especially when standing next to Dungeon Lords. Don't get me wrong - both of those games are quite different on the surface and great fun in their own ways, but under the hood they are archetypal worker placement games requiring the same type of decision making. After playing Dungeon Petz today for the first time, I enjoy Dungeon Lords more anyhow because it just feels there are more viable paths to victory. I'd definitely play Petz again but like I said, it's nothing I feel the urge to own.

I'm currently trying to reduce the number of unplayed games in my collection..

Saturday we played a couple for the first time:

Manoeuvre. two players. 19th century tactics/skirmish game played on a random 8x8 grid. each player has eight units and a deck of cards used to carry out attacks and artillery bombardments. I've had this game for ages and have been put off playing it by what seemed like too much number-crunching in combat resolution. turns out it's dead simple, my eight-year-old took to it pretty quickly and I expect it'll see the table regularly for a while (and the forthcoming fantasy themed Fury, using the same basic system, looks very promising)

Power Grid: The First Sparks. I love Power Grid but we don't play it often due to it's length and required number of players (OK with three but really needs at least four in my opinion). I was surprised how much fun this game is despite it's simplification of the PG "game engine". players are building their tribe of cavemen, competing to develop tools which will allow them to take best advantage of hunting grounds close to their home. I can see teaching this to under-tens and having them able to play within a few turns, something I seldom contemplate with PG. we played the special two-player rules which use a third phantom player, it worked well enough but I think it'll shine with three or more.

and Sunday we didn't get enough time to learn anything new so we took a couple of recent favourites for a spin: Blood Bowl: Team Manager and Undermining.

my kids start school holidays this Saturday and I'm itching to break out Monsterpocalypse (had it a couple of weeks but I'm still trying to get my head 'round it enough to teach it).. and I'm expecting a big shipment containing I-don't-know-what from my friendly online game seller any day now..

hepcat wrote: Then another gameshop regular stopped by our table and held up a copy of Lords of Waterdeep. How could I say no since I had a copy on order already?

You are such a game slut. I was supposed to teach you Lords of Waterdeep!

Hussy.

MythicalMino wrote:Do you like Shadows Over Camelot? Back when I was thinking about buying it, I was told by so many ppl to not get it because it was not a good game at all.

I like Shadows Over Camelot quite a bit, but it never seems to hit the table any longer. I think that's mostly that if I want to play a co-op (or, in SoC's case, a semi-co-op) I'll always pull out Defenders of the Realm, my go-to co-op. If you play it strictly observing the limited table talk rules, we have always found it a pretty challenging game.

I feel like we've pretty much mapped the style of the Borg out in Star Trek the Deck Building game.

And I won my first ever competitive game of STtDBG this weekend. I did it with a hand that I chapelled down 5 cards.

And we played Stone Age for a first time. I had my ass handed to me. I'm looking forward to playing it again.

hentzau wrote:

hepcat wrote: Then another gameshop regular stopped by our table and held up a copy of Lords of Waterdeep. How could I say no since I had a copy on order already?

You are such a game slut. I was supposed to teach you Lords of Waterdeep!

Hussy.

If it's any consolation, it only made me want to play more of the game. Oddly enough, I won saturday night's game with a stack of completed quests all within my Lord's bonus realm.

My copies of Lords of Waterdeep and 1812 The Invasion of Canada just arrived. I love Academy Games (the makers of the latter game) but I'm always surprised at how expensive their games are. 1812 has very little in the way of components and they charge 65 bucks retail for it. I can't imagine getting this anywhere but online considering that.

LordMortis wrote:And we played Stone Age for a first time. I had my ass handed to me. I'm looking forward to playing it again.

I liked that game as well. There are a lot of different ways to collect points which means you should always have some sort of path forward but at the same time you have to be careful with your actions to be able to take the best advantage of those paths.

I fully expect you two to bring that to the next Octocon then.

hepcat wrote:I fully expect you two to bring that to the next Octocon then.

We don't travel down there to play games we have. We go to play games you have that we might be interested in having. You want to play our games then you haul your ass up here and play games with us in LordMorti's basement or at my kitchen table.

or ask LM nicely as it is his game.

LM's mad at me because I told him I didn't like him shooting people in his yard.

hepcat wrote:LM's mad at me because I told him I didn't like him shooting people in his yard.

So come up to game but stay out of his yard and he won't shoot you.

I may actually do that one of these days. Any good gaming conventions in the area?

hepcat wrote:I may actually do that one of these days. Any good gaming conventions in the area?

Depends on our schedules.

I actually am too antisocial to follow where and when and what all the cons cover so you've have to ask the others. I just show up and game with my friends and 1 or 2 random strangers most times.

PenguinCon is April 27-29; MichiCon is June 22,23; ConFusion Jan 18-20(2013)

And umm. Conclave is in the Fall but I don't remember when.

You still okay with me staying in your crawl space raven?

hepcat wrote:You still okay with me staying in your crawl space raven?

you spelled 'spooning with your wife' wrong

You know the mark of a good game? When you want to play it again right after you finish, even if you did get your ass royally kicked. You know the mark of a great game? When, after you can't get in a second play because it's too late, you go to bed and DREAM of playing the game. That's what happened to me last night after we got done playing Lords of Waterdeep.

I know I've been singing the praises of this game for a couple of months now, after only one play. So I was really anxious to get this game on the table again after I got it on Tuesday. Last night I got to get in a four player game with Hepcat, Tommy, and Stuart, and boy, was it fun. We started around 8:30, and Tommy and Stuart hadn't played before, so we went through a quick rules explanation, and we were off and running.

This really is a game where the rules can be explained in about 5 minutes. On your turn, you place an agent, take the reward from the location, and then if you can (and want) complete a quest. Repeat until all agents are used for all players, and then start up the next round. That's pretty much it. Of course, the places you use all can change the rules slightly (like using the waterfront allows you to play an intrigue card, and then at the end of the round re-assign that agent to another location), and some quests are plot quests and they will add unique wrinkles to the rules (like the one that allows you to place one agent per round in a location already in use by another player.) The intrigue cards allow a nice bit of minor screwage with your opponents, but it's nothing major. Just enough to throw a monkey wrench in some carefully crafted plans.

Anyway...in the end, Hepcat ended up running away with the game, beating the second place player by a solid 10 points. Hep scored a couple of big VP quest rewards pretty early in the game, to give him a pretty substantial lead. Stuart came in second, bolstered by a bunch of VPs that came from somone using a building of his every round that gave him 2VPs every time they used it...those racked up pretty quickly. Tommy was pretty close to Stuart, but I was a solid 25 points behind Tommy, putting Hep about 50 points ahead of me. I was banking on completing a bunch of quests that were all tied to my hidden lord, which I was able to do, and I was able to complete the most quests of anyone, but the VP bonus of 4 per quest (24 points total) couldn't make up for the low VP totals of the actual quests themselves.

We finished the game about 10:15, including the game being interrupted by a lengthy phone call with father because it appears that my mother has a Trojan on her system. It was really tempting to just say "Dad, just take the laptop to goddam Staples, I'm trying to crush my opponents here!" But I refrained. So we're looking at a 4 player Euro style worker placement game that finished in a skosh over 2 hours, including explaining rules.

Still coming highly, highly recommended.

Lords of Waterdeep is a fantastic game and I'm expecting it to remain on the table this weekend at Redwarlords for the majority of the time...although I'm sure we'll put in some time with Star Trek DBG due to his wife's love of that game.

I'm also hoping to bust out 1812.

p.s. Roll Through the Ages was a pleasant surprise too. I had heard it was a good game but I guess the peg system threw me off whenever considering it. It's a pretty solid game! I'm going to have to start playing it on my iPad 2.

hepcat wrote:I'm also hoping to bust out 1812.

No one wants to see your cannon. Hearing your overture to it is painful enough.

Isgrimnur wrote:

hepcat wrote:I'm also hoping to bust out 1812.

No one wants to see your cannon. Hearing your overture to it is painful enough.

Welcome to Sexyville. Population: Me.

hepcat wrote:Lords of Waterdeep is a fantastic game and I'm expecting it to remain on the table this weekend at Redwarlords for the majority of the time...although I'm sure we'll put in some time with Star Trek DBG due to his wife's love of that game.

Amazon wants to sell the game to me for $32. What the hell is going on??

Smoove_B wrote:

hepcat wrote:Lords of Waterdeep is a fantastic game and I'm expecting it to remain on the table this weekend at Redwarlords for the majority of the time...although I'm sure we'll put in some time with Star Trek DBG due to his wife's love of that game.

Amazon wants to sell the game to me for $32. What the hell is going on??

Best $32 you'll ever spend, until you come to Octocon and Hepcat gives you his "Blue Light Special".

That last turn I was sweating bullets. I'm sitting there, eyeing Stuart's building which will allow me to turn a 9 VP card into 17 VP card and fully aware 3 other people are going to take their turns before me. I see Hentzau hover his agent over the space at least once and the sweat turns to ice. I just know I'm screwed.

Thankfully, he went another direction entirely and I was able to use that building to maximize my final agent's turn. But up to that point I was sitting on the edge of my chair. It's rare that I get that involved with a game. I enjoy them a great deal, yes. But I don't usually sit on pins and needles during them.

Smoove, order away. It's a quality game that's fun as heck and not that expensive.

I will be (hopefully) picking Lords of Waterdeep up this Thursday. It is 50 bucks, but I have a 10 dollars off coupon with my FLGS. Baelthazar's review of it pushed me over the edge....

hentzau wrote:You know the mark of a good game? When you want to play it again right after you finish, even if you did get your ass royally kicked. You know the mark of a great game? When, after you can't get in a second play because it's too late, you go to bed and DREAM of playing the game. That's what happened to me last night after we got done playing Lords of Waterdeep.
...
Still coming highly, highly recommended.

I really really like LoW. It sort of washes the displeasure of Rex out of my mouth (I've got to think about trading or selling Rex, it just isn't the game for me). LoW is a deep yet streamlined Euro, something I would have thought impossible. Almost as complex as Caylus with much less book-keeping and brain-burning, the resource generation of Le Havre in 1/3rd the play time, and the accessibility of Troyes without all the dice. WotC outdid themselves here!

Hent, have you gotten to play a 2-player and juxtaposed it against the 4-5 player game? I would love to hear your thoughts. IMHO, the game changes dramatically, in the two player you have more agents, less incentive to use other people's buildings (but more competition to buy or build the best buildings) and the ability complete a bunch of quests - but the competition for the quests in the inn is high. With more players you will be more likely to use opponent's buildings, because they give you more agents (or better actions) and the interplay of the intrigue cards really changes. Quests completion takes a bit more planning with only a few agents. Both "versions" are a lot of fun!

All this chatter about Waterdeep has me interested, but I still feel the need to wait and see. The pattern with these euro-style games always seems to be a ton of interest right off the bat, and then things rapidly cool off. A few months later, the bloom is off the rose.

I will be getting Mage Knight when it finally gets reprinted though. I loves me some solo gamin', since I never manage to make it to game night any more. I am starting to work on getting the GF into geek games though. Her family plays lots of "normal" games like Scrabble and rummy, so she's got the groundwork already, and she took right to Lost Cities. She didn't even sound totally against the idea of War of the Ring when I told her about it in the context of "games I wouldn't make you play". Fingers crossed!