Octopus Overlords

coopasonic wrote:

Lordnine wrote:

baelthazar wrote:I noticed the Dinogenics prototype. That looks pretty awesome! How is that project coming?

It’s really close to being ready to launch! Getting everything in place has proved a much larger endeavor than I originally imagined but it’s all coming together now. I found out last week that my production company has actually gone ahead and started to produce a demo set of the laser cut dino meeples at no cost. This is awesome because I wasn’t expecting to have anything other than the 3D renders at the time of launch. I should have the final price analysis of the stretch goals by the end of this week.

I’m also waiting for two video previews to come back from reviewers; they should be arriving by the end of next week.

All in all, I’m looking at a launch either July 26th or August 2nd. If you would like to keep up with the project you can check out the BGG page or Facebook group.

I guess Lordnine didn't want to pimp it himself, so I will...

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/15 ... -corporate

It looks like it is off to a slow start and could use some help.

Edit: I see that it was just opened up in the past hour or two, so not as slow as I thought. I snagged the last Park Founder slot.

And backed. Thanks for the heads up, looks good!

So apparently I won the lottery for Gencon pickup of my copy of Folklore. I tortured myself dragging the 2nd wave of shadows of brimstone around the convention last time until I could get it back to my car. Now I'm going to do it again. I guess I just don't learn.

I would like impressions of Folklore when you have a chance to play it. I was really tempted by that one but was going through some major Kickstarter overload at the time so didn't end up backing it.

Yeah, as a backer I'm pretty nervous as the development cycle for it has been...interesting. I'm hoping it's not a complete dud, but I'm not in too deep either. Congrats on winning the GenCon lottery.

zarathud and I played a demo of it at Origins a couple years ago...and we walked away decidedly UNimpressed. But I had the same experience with Mage Wars and it's one of my favorites now. So who knows, I may love it now.
They're also giving me a voucher for the 22 bucks I spent for shipping. I guess I'll just buy more of their stuff.

Played a few rounds of the intro scenario for Apocrypha this afternoon. I think there's an interesting game in there, but it's diminished by a badly written rule book, mediocre to downright awful art, and weird choices for game mechanic names. In any other game, combat would be called combat. In Apocrypha it's called assembling and evaluating. I'm surprised they don't refer to damage as pudding cakes or something.

But in spite of my complaints, I really like quite a bit of what the game does.

Character cards have 9 slots surrounding them, and you fill those slots with death cards when your character "fades" during a mission (can't draw a card when ending your turn...just like the Pathfinder ACG). 9 death cards and your character is removed from the game. You also place "fragments" in available slots to give you more options during the game. This is all separate from you deck, mind you.

Your seating arrangement is also important, as assisting another player is only possible if they're in the position of the desired trait on your character card.

I need to play it a bit more before I can make a final decision. Although it doesn't matter much as I backed it at the level that gets me the next two big box expansions. So I'm kind'a stuck with it unless I unload it at a bit of a loss.

Anyone else getting their copy of Hostage Negotiator: Crime Wave tomorrow? Mine should be coming in. I did not own the original game, so I splurged for the entire pack.

Still waiting on Massive Darkness as well. That may be a good thing, because I think they are adding the corrected cards to the US backers' boxes.

baelthazar wrote:Anyone else getting their copy of Hostage Negotiator: Crime Wave tomorrow? Mine should be coming in. I did not own the original game, so I splurged for the entire pack.

Still waiting on Massive Darkness as well. That may be a good thing, because I think they are adding the corrected cards to the US backers' boxes.

It was originally supposed to arrive on Friday but got bumped to Tuesday. That's OK since I'll be home by then to open it.

I'm going to look for Crime Wave at Gencon. I was going to back it on kickstarter when it was live, but I had too many at the time. But it's definitely something I'll buy.

Just got a notification that my copy of Twilight of the Gods has shipped. Unfortunately, it's getting here on Thursday, the day I leave for Gencon.

Hey Hepcat, do you have the original game? If so what are your impressions? The game sounds pretty cool and I'm looking forward to playing.

hepcat wrote:Played a few rounds of the intro scenario for Apocrypha this afternoon. I think there's an interesting game in there, but it's diminished by a badly written rule book, mediocre to downright awful art, and weird choices for game mechanic names. In any other game, combat would be called combat. In Apocrypha it's called assembling and evaluating. I'm surprised they don't refer to damage as pudding cakes or something.

But in spite of my complaints, I really like quite a bit of what the game does.

Character cards have 9 slots surrounding them, and you fill those slots with death cards when your character "fades" during a mission (can't draw a card when ending your turn...just like the Pathfinder ACG). 9 death cards and your character is removed from the game. You also place "fragments" in available slots to give you more options during the game. This is all separate from you deck, mind you.

Your seating arrangement is also important, as assisting another player is only possible if they're in the position of the desired trait on your character card.

I need to play it a bit more before I can make a final decision. Although it doesn't matter much as I backed it at the level that gets me the next two big box expansions. So I'm kind'a stuck with it unless I unload it at a bit of a loss.

That is... concerning. I am in the same boat. I went all in when I was high on PACG. I've lost that high and your impressions don't sound promising.

baelthazar wrote:Anyone else getting their copy of Hostage Negotiator: Crime Wave tomorrow?

Tomorrow? No. According to tracking it was shipped from Florida on 8/9 and scheduled for delivery on 8/18.

$iljanus wrote:Hey Hepcat, do you have the original game? If so what are your impressions? The game sounds pretty cool and I'm looking forward to playing.

it is outstanding. you won't be disappointed.

Well... mine still says it is scheduled for today, but the USPS near me is never reliable.

hepcat wrote:

$iljanus wrote:Hey Hepcat, do you have the original game? If so what are your impressions? The game sounds pretty cool and I'm looking forward to playing.

it is outstanding. you won't be disappointed.

It is difficult, repetitive and way too dice driven with little meaningful choice. If the dice hate you, you will lose, there is nothing you can do about it.

It's difficult, true. And it's a push your luck dice game, so of course it's driven by dice. But I disagree that it's repetitive, or that there's nothing you can do if you get a bad dice roll. The criminals are often unique and include new mechanics, making for a varied game; and you really need to utilize your ability cards and other game aspects to offset a bad die roll. But that's a common design in all games like this.

Smoove_B wrote:

baelthazar wrote:Anyone else getting their copy of Hostage Negotiator: Crime Wave tomorrow?

Tomorrow? No. According to tracking it was shipped from Florida on 8/9 and scheduled for delivery on 8/18.

Alas, my scheduled delivery date is 8/19.

coopasonic wrote:

hepcat wrote:

$iljanus wrote:Hey Hepcat, do you have the original game? If so what are your impressions? The game sounds pretty cool and I'm looking forward to playing.

it is outstanding. you won't be disappointed.

It is difficult, repetitive and way too dice driven with little meaningful choice. If the dice hate you, you will lose, there is nothing you can do about it.

Ummm, I choose...I choose.... (head explodes)

New KS stuff...



If we decide we don't want the purple/burgundy:

I dunno, man, the table doesn't look that great. I'll take it off your hands cheap...

Such a generous offer... but it does fill the space and give us somewhere to drop the mail.... I guess we'll hold onto it for now. I'll let you know if that changes.

We ordered some of these as well. Hopefully they'll look good with the table. Since this is in our family room and not our dining room, I wanted chairs that I could fold and put out of sight when not needed.

baelthazar wrote:Well... mine still says it is scheduled for today, but the USPS near me is never reliable.

My copy just arrived - it's really, really nice. Components are packaged with care inside new box and they even include a sheet to show you how to organize everything inside. Definitely impressed and glad I backed.

Smoove_B wrote:

baelthazar wrote:Well... mine still says it is scheduled for today, but the USPS near me is never reliable.

My copy just arrived - it's really, really nice. Components are packaged with care inside new box and they even include a sheet to show you how to organize everything inside. Definitely impressed and glad I backed.

Same here. Glad I opted for getting the original as well because it would be nice to take along on trips due to its size. And I'm very appreciative of the thoughtfulness that went into organizing everything. Once I've unpacked and sorted everything I'm going to open that mysterious envelope that came with the game.

So now we have a Kickstarter game gone "1.0" live in 2017 after being funding in 2012. I give you Castle Story. I have no idea why I backed it, haven't been following all of the drama for the last five years and don't even know how much I will play it. Ah, those early glory days of KS.

MonkeyFinger wrote:So now we have a Kickstarter game gone "1.0" live in 2017 after being funding in 2012. I give you Castle Story. I have no idea why I backed it, haven't been following all of the drama for the last five years and don't even know how much I will play it. Ah, those early glory days of KS.

I played around with this in multiplayer a bit today. It is vastly improved from the beta about a year ago but it is still really clunky. There are some cool ideas in place but I don't think I could recommend it in its current state.

I think it's ok. just ok though. I too backed the KS back in the beginning.. Have messed with the various versions a little bit here and there. Nothing to get excited over for me though. I think I backed it mostly because I was new to KS at the time and thought it was a neat concept. Haven't played too much though.

So for those who backed Folklore: The Affliction, all I can say is...wow.

We really got our money's worth. I'm looking over the miniatures, and while you can see the seams on many of them, they're still excellent for a table top dungeon crawl. The artwork is fantastic, the characters are cool as heck, and the amount of scenarios we get is satisfying to say the least. If it plays even as half as good as it looks, we're in for a real treat.

I was disappointed in a demo at Origins a while back, but it looks like they've sharpened things up in my brief time with the rule book. Can't wait to crack this open and try an adventure.

Did you download the Adventure Creation Kit they shared in the 8/10 upate? It's like ~390 MB of detailed documents on how to use all the materials to make your own adventures and campaigns. It feels like a DM guide - an absolute insane amount of information on how to use what's been provided.

I was also quite nervous as a backer - particularly in how long it's been delayed but the bits and pieces I've been seeing in photos from GenCon looked pretty insane.

I saw it was available in the last update, but hadn't downloaded it yet. I'm doing so now.

We get two campaign books...and the second one is actually bigger than the first. The character classes in the core box are nice (especially the Witch Hunter), but the classes in the expansion look even better.

hepcat wrote:So for those who backed Folklore: The Affliction, all I can say is...wow.

Good to know!

Received my copy of Stop Thief! today...
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/re ... escription

Coincidentally it is our family game night so we got to put in 2 full games. Game was easy to setup, learn, play and cleanup!! All pluses in our book.
This is going to be a good fill in game for when we are running late or just too lazy to setup one of the bigger games.
Game definitely needs a Thief expansion pack. We ran through all of them in the 2 games we played.
We messed up the first round of the first game because I missed the part in the rules that said the Thief moves one section at a time.. We couldn't figure out how to find the Thief because we didn't know how far he could move. Oopps..
After that the game was easier, but still very fun. Some random luck helped because after each full round when you got a new thief, the new one could spawn right near us or on the opposite side of the board.
Basically, you use an app that gives you sound clues to try to find the thief. depending on the number of players, there is a cash amount a player needs to get in order to win the game. You can't reach this in one round, so you play multiple rounds until a player gets enough money.
The thieves are worth different amounts and have different results when they are caught or during game play. there are ways to increase the reward during the game such as if the thief sets off more alarms before being caught and there are also some player cards that have the power to take money from other players.
Players move around the board using 6 movement cards. some are straight movement numbers and some have special abilities. You play the cards one at a time in any order you want, but they stay out of play until something causes you to reclaim your cards, such as the reclaim your cards, card that everyone has. They stay out of play, even if you go into the next round with a new thief, although one thief's special is to have all the other players reclaim their cards.

Some thoughts based on our game.

1) Love the fact that they gave us extra storage bags to keep the game together.
2) App definitely needs a next player/turn button instead of just clicking get clue. It was confusing at first.
3) An option of inputting player names and the investigator they are using would be nice.
4) Extra money to help in case we want to play with 6 investigators and the game goals to go with them. The app could also change color depending on the current player as well to keep it organized.
5) It would be nice if the app would rotate horizontally. That is the way my iPad stand works. We had to prop it up on the wall vertically.
Overall very happy with my pledge!!!

Sweet, thanks for the update.

Knocked out a couple games of Apocrypha. I actually like them a lot. It's very much like Pathfinder, but with some really nice tweaks. It seems like there is a lot more variety/variability. And definitely more thematic.

And I don't have any issues with the art work so far.

I'll have to play some more to really decide. Of course, that probably won't happen for a while.

I keep waiting for my stop thief to arrive. Played that game a ton as a kid and really looking forward to the restored version.

As a side note restoration games (who seem to be knocking it out of the park) just announced they are restoring fireball island. Kickstarter to come the end of this year or early next year. Can't wait.

Over the last two days, my copies of 878 Vikings and Twilight of the Gods arrived.

Also, on the 2017 front I just backed DVG's latest: Pavlov's House - The Battle for Stalingrad which they say they hope becomes the first in a series of games on 'famous last stands'.

878 Vikings should be waiting for me when I get home.

Man, you are going to be so sore...

MonkeyFinger wrote:Over the last two days, my copies of 878 Vikings and Twilight of the Gods arrived.

Don't judge Twilight of the Gods until you've got 3 or 4 games under your belt. It's a meaty card game that's got a lot of really cool mechanics that take some time to get used to. The resource mechanic alone is absolutely fantastic. You can use it gain resources AND covertly attack your opponent at the same time by laying "traps" that will eventually spring on them.

Vikings actually arrived after I got home. Cracked it open to go through the base components and manual, seems like pretty simple mechanics. Haven't cracked the expansion box yet.

Isgrimnur wrote:878 Vikings should be waiting for me when I get home.

I was pretty pleased with mine. I sprung for the plastic leader minis and the plastic buildings and I am very happy with that choice.

I am a little nonplussed about the TINY soldier minis. Having a 1.5 year old around makes those soldier minis dangerous. They are a bit light, which means easy to drop on the carpet and miss. I think, in some ways, the cubes would have been superior.