Octopus Overlords

Boudreaux wrote:

Chaz wrote:How is pandemic? I read some pretty positive reviews of that as well.. And most on here seem to like it a lot.

Pandemic got old for me very quickly. It seems to suffer very easily from the "one player telling everyone else what to do" problem that some co-op games have. It's almost like a puzzle game, trying to figure out the exact sequence to take when fighting the diseases across the map.

Maybe it's because I'm very conscious that it might be a problem, but I don't usually find that to be a problem when I'm playing a co-op game. If I'm the most experience player, I usually try and take a back seat in the decision making process, and if everyone's equally experienced but someone's starting to try and run the show, I'll sometimes jump in and act as a spoiler to present other options, forcing everyone to speak up.

I'll check out Flash Point though. I like me some co-ops, and it's relatively inexpensive.

Pandemic also god old for us rather fast. I prefer Ghost Stories, but it takes a special group to put up with losing so often. I also love Defenders, but I found it isn't particularly quick - our games took an hour or more.

I concur with Forbidden Island - you can play it within 15 minutes and be happy. Perfect for between RPG sessions. Zombie dice is... Brainless... but fun.

As to face-to-face games, I love Conquest of Nerath. It is all the fun of Axis & Allies with none of the hassle.

So last night I set up Warriors and Traders and played a few sample turns. Reading the rules didn't impress me, but when I actually got it set up: sweet! It seems like there's some pretty neat strategy. I was worried that my euro-centric gaming group wouldn't like the possibility of wars; but now I feel more confident in breaking this out.

In W&T. there are barbarian armies and forts occupying neutral provinces. They're not hard, but raising and feeding armies is freaking hard. Battles are neat, though totally deterministic, as well:

1. We damage each other.
2. If I deal more than your strength to your unit, you die.
3. You do the same to me.
4. If you are at 0(not at a negative number), you can retreat(if the enemy is the barbarian or player advanced enough on the warfare track.

That's it. But the maneuvering can be interesting. So the euro crowd would probably enjoy this, because it's often difficult enough to take barbarian territories without declaring a devastating war on another player. To make things harder, by the 4th turn of the game, the barbarians double in combat power. Oy vey.

There's non-combatant "princesses" as well. These can claim empty territories, but you only have 4. Since every single military unit costs between 1-3 food, these princesses are important to 'hold" territories. To expand further without spending food, a player can build a fort, which "holds" a province under your control, and is worth 3 VP as well.

The tech tree is really cool too: there's three tracks: production, trade, and warfare. Each advancement doesn't cost resources, but they are still expensive: Each turn, you only get two actions:

Build a unit
Update a unit
Build a fort
Advance on a tech tree
Declare a war

That's it. Each scarce action becomes important as the game progresses. High-level techs can grant more actions, such as a trade ability to turn gold into actions, but there's often hard decisions on whether to build a soldier to take a new territory or place a tech token to greatly boost one's income power.

The last cool thing I wanted to discuss is Unification. There's 8 countries per map, and each country has several historic territories.

For example, England has:

London
Wessex
East Anglia
Wales
Yorkshire
*Calais
*Ulster

Once during the game, if England controls at least the top 5 territories, they can delcare a Unification. The *-ed territories are contested, meaning that more than 1 nation "desires" that territory. When you declare Unification, you count the countries you control on your card, and you get bonus actions: If England controls all 7 territories, they can take 9 actions in a row. Often, you won't have the resources to build units at that time, but you can take a bunch of tech advancements in a row. It's a game-changer, and it looks interesting as to when you think you can maximize this enormous 1-shot boost.

I'm now officially excited.

And really, who doesn't want to play Romania and take over Transylvania?

hentzau wrote:We just did a 3 player game of Defenders, and suffered a crushing defeat.

This scenario just plain kicked our collective ass. I'm not sure if i want to treat it like our early games, and keep trying until we best it, or just leave it as part of the campaign, accept the loss, and move on to the next one.

Tommy20 wrote:

hentzau wrote:We just did a 3 player game of Defenders, and suffered a crushing defeat.

This scenario just plain kicked our collective ass. I'm not sure if i want to treat it like our early games, and keep trying until we best it, or just leave it as part of the campaign, accept the loss, and move on to the next one.

I actually came up with a strategy that may be nuts, but it has a certain amount of method to my madness.

Since we've been playing with the same characters (Captain of the Guard, Elf Lord, and Sorceress) what if we would have had you stay put up in the McCorm Highlands, where you start out, Your Dukeness, and just stay there. Every turn spend one action petitioning the silver dragon, and since you are the duke, you get an extra action. Then use your ability to give other people your actions and hand them out to the Elf Lord and the Sorceress to go out and stomp minions (most likely ignoring quests as well, just so we can conserve our actions (unless someone had a great quest.))

It's probably a foolish idea...we're losing your mobility, and eventually you'd have to come forth to help out with a general, but it would have the best chance of getting enough favor with the silver dragon to get him to kill that bitch.

I find the basic game of defenders beatable with three players but not the dragon game. The dragon is all but impossible with 4 players. I highly recommend you either mod the game for three players or have someone play the 4th. The handicap (which IIRC is is handled in Pandemic) is too great in Defenders.

We house rule an extra two cards per player max hand size in 3 player game. This means that you gain six of the ten extra cards you could have at any given time if you had four players. I don't think that's unreasonable. If you got three extra cards then you would be concentrating almost as many cards as you have in a four player game into three players hands. That would make the game "easier", so I think two is reasonable. It makes the 3 player Dragons game doable. Still unlikely, but doable.

We were doing the Summer League scenario 3. If you haven't done those yet, they are a lot of fun, and each one introduces new units and mechanics to the game (the first one has wolf riders with Gorgutt, the second one has catapults setting regions on fire and water elementals, the third one gets rid of Sapphire and introduces a necromancer and blue undead units (deadlier, and they spawn in unpredictable ways.)

And we were playing with 2 royal blessings on the table, so we had two chances to push back generals. We used them all and still lost...

In the mood for some Defenders of the Realm, I do believe...will get that out tomorrow and get it set up. Maybe next Monday, that will be our game...

MythicalMino wrote:In the mood for some Defenders of the Realm, I do believe...will get that out tomorrow and get it set up. Maybe next Monday, that will be our game...

We hadn't played it in several months. Hadn't realized how much I had missed it. I wish that Eagle would hurry up and release the new quest pack.

hentzau wrote:We were doing the Summer League scenario 3. If you haven't done those yet, they are a lot of fun, and each one introduces new units and mechanics to the game (the first one has wolf riders with Gorgutt, the second one has catapults setting regions on fire and water elementals, the third one gets rid of Sapphire and introduces a necromancer and blue undead units (deadlier, and they spawn in unpredictable ways.)

And we were playing with 2 royal blessings on the table, so we had two chances to push back generals. We used them all and still lost...

No idea what those are. I rely on Remus West and redrun to tell me what to play and how to play it.

LordMortis wrote:

hentzau wrote:We were doing the Summer League scenario 3. If you haven't done those yet, they are a lot of fun, and each one introduces new units and mechanics to the game (the first one has wolf riders with Gorgutt, the second one has catapults setting regions on fire and water elementals, the third one gets rid of Sapphire and introduces a necromancer and blue undead units (deadlier, and they spawn in unpredictable ways.)

And we were playing with 2 royal blessings on the table, so we had two chances to push back generals. We used them all and still lost...

No idea what those are. I rely on Remus West and redrun to tell me what to play and how to play it.

Royal Blessings are tokens you put on Monarch City that you can use to keep a general from moving or to re-roll dice, or to remove taint from one location. (We always use them to keep the generals from moving.) They were published in the Dragons Expansion.

(Hmm. And you made me go read the rules, the blessing doesn't just prevent a general from moving, it actually prevents the effects from a Darkness Spreads card. We've been playing that wrong.)

hentzau wrote:

MythicalMino wrote:In the mood for some Defenders of the Realm, I do believe...will get that out tomorrow and get it set up. Maybe next Monday, that will be our game...

We hadn't played it in several months. Hadn't realized how much I had missed it. I wish that Eagle would hurry up and release the new quest pack.

I know. I really was hoping to get that before playing again...but, the "want to" to play is too strong. Right now, I have A Touch of Evil set up (and before that, it was Arkham Horror). But those games just are not what I am wanting to spend time playing.

On a side note, my two boys L.O.V.E Castle Panic.

Chris

Going to try out my copy of Samurai Battles tonight after work.

I know we'll play the Command and Colors rules set first but I'm also hoping that I have enough of a grasp of the Art of Tactic rules that we can at least try the tutorial scenario. I have to admit, a wargame with almost robo rally blind order mechanics interests me a great deal. My only concern is that it may be too busy a game mechanic. The dry erase order cards are jam packed with options and that might slow things down quite a bit.

I'll say it again, mostly because I don't think anyone else has commented on it... but the Wizards Tower expansion for Castle Panic makes the game 100% better. I played 2 games yesterday with my son and his friend. Both were losses, but they were close. The best of the 2 games saw a pretty even start, then a massive surge of monsters and bosses in the middle that we had nearly beaten back and then we drew the Troll Mage, who forces every monster to move one space forward. That resulted in 4 towers going down but thankfully most of the monsters died doing so. Not long after we were down to just the Wizard Tower but the bag was getting really empty and it started to look like we'd pull it off until... I realized we hadn't drawn any giant boulders, flaming boulders or the trebuchet yet We got them all in rapid succession, each one having a 1 in 3 chance of killing our final tower since the opposite arc was empty too. A plain old giant boulder finally got us.

oh yeah...I got the Wizards Tower when I bought the base game...and yes, the game is so much better wtih it than without it.

Just a fun game.

Built the Green White edh and wiped out two players, this guy is wicked! Joined a six player game and won with Blue edh (Azami) on infinite turns (magistrates scepter, contagion engine, sculpting steel copy of engine). Swtiched to 60 card and pulled a turn four exsanguinate for 25 (nom nom nom). So everybody trounced my zombie deck in retaliation. Heh.

Hey, Remus and LM, don't say I never did anything for you.

hepcat wrote:Hey, Remus and LM, don't say I never did anything for you.

I don't pay for an Internet phone.

LordMortis wrote:

hepcat wrote:Hey, Remus and LM, don't say I never did anything for you.

I don't pay for an Internet phone.

Then use Remus like an appliance.

hepcat wrote:Hey, Remus and LM, don't say I never did anything for you.

Thanks. Grabbed.

Dallas Games Marathon is this weekend. I will spend pretty much all day Saturday getting my geek on until the gf gets off work, closing down the beer store.

Okay, one game of Command and Colors Samurai Battles and Art of Tactic Samurai Battles later and I think the winner so far is C&C.

Seppe kicked my butt in both (a constant theme in 1v1 games with the guy) but I thoroughly enjoyed C&C's implementation of a feudal japan battlefield. The use of honor to power special cards and as a penalty when lost for retreats was great and didn't slow the game down at all.

Art of Tactic on the other hand has ENORMOUS potential to be a blast, but it's VERY fiddly and takes some time to wrap your mind around. We played with just the basic rules and we still were overwhelmed at times. The concept of simultaneous planning and action is neat and gives the game a nice, unique feel, but it's definitely not for everyone. I can't wait to try it again though.

I will say that all the components beyond the miniatures kind of suck. They're very cheaply made. The dry erase unit cards for AoT are starting lose their laminate covering in some instances. And the C&C command and dragon cards are so flimsy as to be laughable. I'm definitely sleeving those this weekend.

The setup is also ridiculous. I recommend just tossing the colored banners and getting some cheap red and yellow felt to mark your units' side when playing. I broke about 1 out of every 3 of those cheap SOB's when trying to insert them into figures. A setup that should take 15 minutes can take up to 45 minutes for larger scenarios...and that's just too much, imho.

And to add insult to injury, none of the game boards were coded which makes setup impossible unless the scenario you're playing has an image of the boards and the way they should be aligned. That's really inexcusable.

I give the game a 6.5 out of 10 as it stands right now. It may go up to a 7 or 7.5 if we can figure out AoT though. That game mechanic really is slick...I just wish the learning curve was less steep.

so, I have backed Tammany Hall ( http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/872 ... mmany-hall" target="_blank )....AT THE REQUEST OF MY WIFE!!! I was watching one of the video reviews (from undeadviking, I believe), and my wife walks by, sees the video, and asks if it is a "Gangs of New York" game. She said that she recognized the board as being New York, and heard him talking about Italians and Irish. I asked her if she would be interested in playing it, and she said, "Sure, go ahead and order it".

That is a first...

After the first game of Stone Age, where my set of 8 pics plus 4x Meeple bonus in the cards netted me 100vp, the other guys finally figured out they need to not let me take them all again, splitting them between us... Making for a closer game (if all 4 take 4 the 16 is a wash) the second game.

In the second game, my son kept blocking out the wood production He had 8 guys and either took all seven or five if he decided to buy cards.

He won by 40 pt.

Two more rounds of the Lords of Waterdeep last night, first with three players, then four. The difference in scoring and strategy between the two games was significant, all because of one less agent and two other opponent's agents clogging the board (to start). We finally had a game with the Ambassador, which added a nice twist to the first player token. If I had to teach someone, I'd probably strive for a three player game as the flow seemed just about right. With two players there's a lot of scoring and activity; four players the game slows down to a point where every agent's placement counts. Still a tremendously fun game, particularly for the ~$32 price tag. What is the Euro-style game it's based on (assuming it's a single game and not a blend of a few)?

We also managed another 4 way random Heroscape army battle, where all armies are generated ahead of time by Battleplan and then randomly assigned to players. The program does a much better job at linking up synergies than we ever did and it certainly makes for battles and teams we've never seen. I was really getting burned out on the whole Heroscape scene, but this new way of playing has really made it interesting again. As much as I enjoyed crafting my own armies, at some point it became too overwhelming. Now with just a few clicks it's all taken care of.

At its core Lords of Waterdeep is a "worker placement" game where much of the gameplay is about deciding where to send your workers to best accomplish your goals.I imagine the closest common comparisons would be Agricola, Caylus, Stone Age... Belfort is a pretty recent take on that gameplay as well. I think the significant difference in LoW is that you're working toward completing lots of little goals (the quests) compared to a large, ongoing project throughout the game. Plus there's a little interaction (besides competing for where to send your workers) in the form of the Intrigue cards.

Belfort is the only of those alternatives I've played, so take my comparisons with a grain of salt

OMG if you enjoy silly beer n pretzel games and have people willing to use Epic Wizard voices... Get EPIC SPELL WARS OF THE BATTLE WIZARDS DUEL AT MT. SKULLZFYRE. Awesome fun.

Played Lords of Waterdeep and four rounds of The Resistance using basic rules. Think Werewolf with no actual killing. All you get to go on are votes, mission failures, and table talk.

EPIC SPELL WARS OF THE BATTLE WIZARDS DUEL AT MT. SKULLZFYRE:

The game is a battle between the players (seems to be from 2 to 8), using cards.
The object of the game is to be Last Wizard Standing twice.

When killed, players take a Dead Wizard card, and each round the battle continues gets another. These cards have a Next Game ability (start with a Treasure, start with more Life, deal 2 Damage to someone, get an extra Power Die for the first round).

During a round, each Living Wizard fills their hand to eight cards and decides what spell they want to cast.
The cards have a Source (left side banner), Quality (middle banner), and Delivery (right side banner).
You may only use one of each, but don't have to use all three, as the Wizards who use only one card go before those who chose two who in turn go before the ones who chose all three. In case of a Tie, there's an Initiative number on the delivery cards.

So you come up with your combination of cards, call out 1, 2, or 3 (cards were kept hidden) and then start blasting the shit out of each other.

Oh, and according to the rules, you are required to use your best Epic Wizard Voice and read the Spell name from left to right.
If you don't use a Source, you use your own name or your characters name.
If you don't use a Quality, you can omit this, but are encouraged to use some adjective.
If you don't use a Delivery, you use any Spellcasting title (cantrip, invocation, etc)

BECAUSE if you fail to do so, the other players are allowed to come to a consensus what your punishment will be.
And let me tell you, a bunch of dorks sitting around a kitchen table using silly voices can come up with nasty game-altering or downright embarrassing shit to do to you.

But yeah, a helluva lotta fun.

Catan Junior with my son. Good game for a 6 year old who is still getting started on board game. WAY WAY WAY better than Kids of Catan which is completely useless.

2 games of Flash Point: Fire Rescue also with my son playing the beginner game. We had fun and definitely see some potential in this one. He says mommy would like it. We'll see.

Played my second game of 1989 last night. I won as communists in the 8th turn with 20 points after keeping East Germany locked down enough to score pretty big with it.

I had to look up two things on BGG later that night as they didn't feel right the way we played them and I discovered we did play them wrong, but other than that the rules becomes very easy to remember after a few turns.

My only gripe with the game is that it seems like there's a lot more prerquesite cards used. What I mean by that is events that require other events to be in place first. At one point we had a half dozen of them lined up at the end of the board and we were constantly referring to them each round. I wish they would come up with a more elegant way of handling that...or simply reduce the number of them in the game.

I have a smaller gripe with the board and the wording in some places (Tiannamen Square, for example) but I understand that they changed the name of Power Cards almost at the same time they sent the board off to the printers. Ah well, hopefully they'll let me purchase an updated board when it comes out.

After that we played a couple of games of Puzzle Strike, which I lost badly in. I love that game. It's fast, it's unique while still sharing a lot of mechanics with Quarriors, and it's ruthless. If you like head to head attacks in a deckbuilding game, this one's for you (Issie, you listening?). I may need to order a copy for myself one of these days.

Finally, we ended with two quick games of Tsuro. My god I love this one. It's easy to learn (literally 3 minutes after cracking open the one sheet rules we were playing) and it's completely addictive. You basically lay down tiles with two paths on them each turn, place your rock shaped marker at the end of the path you started on from the tile you laid down the last turn and try not to go off the edge of the board. Eventually you will connect with your opponents and they will forced to follow any paths that connect to theirs during your turn. If they go off the edge of the board, they're out. It plays in less than 20 minutes for 2 players (hell, we had it down to 10 in the last game) and goes up to 8 players. I now consider Tsuro to be one of those games every boardgamer should own. It's also the perfect gateway boardgame as I can see it getting a lot of non-boardgamers into the hobby.

I keep seeing Tsuro recommended, but your description finally put me over the edge. It will be mine his week. :)

I played a store copy last night and after the first game I told the owner to order me my own copy (they'd sold out earlier that week).

wonderpug wrote:I keep seeing Tsuro recommended, but your description finally put me over the edge. It will be mine his week.

I love Tsuro. I play it like a demolition derby, and only exist to cause as much chaos as possible, taking as many people as possible down before my inevitable demise.

Since each game lasts less than five minutes, I feel fine about doing this.

Tsuro is a decent semi strategy game, especially for quick games

Tsuro has been added to my wish list as well.

Played our first "experienced" game of Flash Point: Fire Rescue at the lowest difficulty level. I think it was easier than the beginner game, though a lot of that may have been our having some experience with the game. The added elements with the full game make it a little bit more complicated but not nearly as fiddly as a lot of games. It's not enough to slow down gameplay.

My son took the generalist who gets an extra Action Point and he focused on rescues through the whole game. I started out with the guy that gets extra extinguish points to put out most of the initial fires, then switched to the command guy and continued with putting out fires and using command APs to help my son get where he needed to go.

At the lowest difficulty level there really wasn't much need for the fire truck so we never used it. He did drive the ambulance around a bit. Also, we have 6 vistims rescued before we hit any hot spots or hazmat, which obviously made things go easier for us. We both really like the game and he can *almost* play it independently. A couple more plays and I think daddy's guiding hand will be able to let go. It doesn't help that daddy expects perfection.

We also got our first play of Ninja vs Ninja, it's a very simple tactical game and looks to be pretty boring also. It has ninjas, which is cool.

I've been debating Flash Point for weeks now. I really need to try a game using the store copy at my FLGS. It sounds like a lot of fun.

hepcat wrote: Finally, we ended with two quick games of Tsuro. My god I love this one. It's easy to learn (literally 3 minutes after cracking open the one sheet rules we were playing) and it's completely addictive. You basically lay down tiles with two paths on them each turn, place your rock shaped marker at the end of the path you started on from the tile you laid down the last turn and try not to go off the edge of the board. Eventually you will connect with your opponents and they will forced to follow any paths that connect to theirs during your turn. If they go off the edge of the board, they're out. It plays in less than 20 minutes for 2 players (hell, we had it down to 10 in the last game) and goes up to 8 players. I now consider Tsuro to be one of those games every boardgamer should own. It's also the perfect gateway boardgame as I can see it getting a lot of non-boardgamers into the hobby.

Not trying to tempt you or anything, but you have 5 days to back this on Kickstarter:



Tsuro of the Seas



Tsuro is definitely my top filler(20 minutes or less.)

Although this weekend I played The City bu Tom Lehmann(of Race for the Galaxy) and now I want a copy! It's city-building in 20 minutes, and dead simple. Unfortunately, it's only available in German, and you have to do English paste-ups to play.