Octopus Overlords

hepcat wrote:

Smoove_B wrote:

MythicalMino wrote:ah, now see...I really enjoy Descent 2nd Edition (in fact, I have the new expansion coming tomorrow). I did not like the 1st edition, though...too many bits, I think.

Gygax give me strength, Descent 2nd edition is on sale via Amazon Prime for $35...

I'm actually very fond of it. It's so streamlined and easy to learn that it takes me 5 minutes to review the rules after a long time away from it.

If it is deemed what everyone wants to play, then I would be fine with it. I am pretty easy going about what I play. Some games I just prefer over others.

The Meeple Source had a set of baby Meeples in the Lords of Waterdeep colors. No weapons but they were very fast.

I ordered a set of those DnDeeples...and I really like those...

So a friend of mine from out of town surprised me with a birthday/Christmas present of the Mediterranean expansion for Memoir '44 plus the desert/winter map. He's coming down for a week for Christmas, so he wanted to play. Meanwhile another buddy of mine who owns the base game wants to get together and play, so I bought HIM the Pacific expansion. Depending on how Christmas money shakes out, I may also go pick up the Eastern Front and/or Terrain Pack expansions.

Needless to say, the week of Christmas break is going to be a full-blown orgy of Nazi killin!

YellowKing wrote:So a friend of mine from out of town surprised me with a birthday/Christmas present of the Mediterranean expansion for Memoir '44 plus the desert/winter map. He's coming down for a week for Christmas, so he wanted to play. Meanwhile another buddy of mine who owns the base game wants to get together and play, so I bought HIM the Pacific expansion. Depending on how Christmas money shakes out, I may also go pick up the Eastern Front and/or Terrain Pack expansions.

Needless to say, the week of Christmas break is going to be a full-blown orgy of Nazi killin!

Man, I love this game. I can honestly say I have never had a bad experience playing Memoir. Have a great time playing!

Got in another game of Legendary with my son last night, this time adding my 13 year old daughter into the mix. It was Magneto with the Civil War scheme. I let the kids pick out the heroes, with the caution that we needed to include a couple of X-Men to be successful against the Brotherhood. We had Captain America, Spider Man, Hulk, Cyclops, and Storm. Facing the Brotherhood, Sentinels, Spider-Foes and Radiation. We had a great time, took down Magneto with about a 1/4 of the hero deck left, and my son again won, squeaking out a victory by 1 point. The best part is that my daughter loved it, and wants to play again. Score!

YellowKing wrote:So a friend of mine from out of town surprised me with a birthday/Christmas present of the Mediterranean expansion for Memoir '44 plus the desert/winter map. He's coming down for a week for Christmas, so he wanted to play. Meanwhile another buddy of mine who owns the base game wants to get together and play, so I bought HIM the Pacific expansion. Depending on how Christmas money shakes out, I may also go pick up the Eastern Front and/or Terrain Pack expansions.

Needless to say, the week of Christmas break is going to be a full-blown orgy of Nazi killin!

You inspired me. Brought my entire Memoir collection with me on vacation. Will be good to dig back into. Some of it (like the Air Pack) I've barely touched.

I really like the air pack even though lots of people don't. I recently picked up the equipment pack too just because I like having the pierces look like what they are. What a great game.

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Smash-up arrived as a Christmas gift. Looking forward to addicting everyone this coming week.

Zaxxon wrote:Smash-up arrived as a Christmas gift. Looking forward to addicting everyone this coming week.

Played 4 2-player games last night. Great fun. Haven't played enough to have a good grasp on the game's depth, but it seems like the reviews calling it filler are a little harsh. There are definitely strengths to a lot of different faction combos, and counters to many of them.

Looking forward to playing this one a lot more, and am intrigued by the upcoming expansion. (Cossacks riding huge bears? Sign me up!)

Well Christmas has been great so far!

I got:
Dominion: I think almost everyone knows this one. I never bought it because I thought the art of the box looked really unappealing so I was never motivated to check what it was all about. However, when I saw Tom Vasel's top 100 he got me interested. tUrns out it's a deckbuilding game that works really well, so I put it on my wishlist. Hoping to get some time with it soon ^^. Does anyone have any experience with the expansions? Any must haves or weak ones?

Air King: This is a nice, short filler game. There are 5 planes on the left and 5 planes on the right. At the beginning of the game you get a card which tells you which 4 planes are yours. The goal is to get them across as fast as possible. Liked the review on YT and am excited to see how much fun it is.

Carson City: A game where everyone is building a Western town. It's a worker placement game mixed with a duel mechanic that can make you win or lose certain spots. Looks very cool and it also looks good on the table.

I'll probably get some more games tomorrow.. wait and see what those will be ^^. I already know I'm going to have to find a lot of time to play all of these games.

Very excited to try them all out in the days to come!

My sisters couldn't resist getting me the X-Wing v TIE Fighter game, with an extra TIE Advanced and Y-Wing. My youngest sister really enjoyed playing a demo at Octocon. We'll probably be playing it with her boyfriend for the New Year.

I have now discovered Mage Wars...and whoa...that game is too good. I have also purchased a 2nd core set, to give me even more cards and 2 additional spellbooks. My kids are even able to understand the game, especially Christian (my 11 year old). So that is great for me. My Agents of SMERSH (kickstarter edition) arrived yesterday, so I have set up a solo game of that and it is ongoing on the kitchen table.

We also played a couple more games of Yggdrasil...and lost. Actually, my two sons and I played 2 games, and then we forced my wife to play a game...and we still lost. Still waiting for the expansion to arrive to me from Europe...

Chris

Played Tsuro of the Seas, but with the basic Tsuro rules, none of the additional stuff from this new version. A good game, if a bit simple.

Also picked up Space Cadets. It's basically the boardgame version of Artemis Spaceship bridge Simulator, everyone is handling their own mini games on a timer to affect the outcome of stuff happening on a larger map.

The Christmas presents are all opened now and there are 4 new games in my collection ^^

I got:

Le Havre: From BGG: a player’s turn consists of two parts: First, distribute newly supplied goods onto the offer spaces; then take an action. As an action, players may choose either to take all goods of one type from an offer space or to use one of the available buildings. Building actions allow players to upgrade goods, sell them or use them to build their own buildings and ships. Buildings are both an investment opportunity and a revenue stream, as players must pay an entry fee to use buildings that they do not own. Ships, on the other hand, are primarily used to provide the food that is needed to feed the workers.
After every seven turns, the round ends: players’ cattle and grain may multiply through a Harvest, and players must feed their workers. After a fixed number of rounds, each player may carry out one final action, and then the game ends. Players add the value of their buildings and ships to their cash reserves. The player who has amassed the largest fortune is the winner.

Kingsburg: From BGG: In Kingsburg, players are Lords sent from the King to administer frontier territories.
The game takes place over five years, a total of 20 turns. In every year, there are 3 production seasons for collecting resources, building structures, and training troops. Every fourth turn is the winter, in which all the players must fight an invading army. Each player must face the invaders, so this is not a cooperative game.
The resources to build structures and train troops are collected by influencing the advisers in the King's Council. Players place their influence dice on members of the Council. The player with the lowest influence dice sum will be the first one to choose where to spend his/her influence; this acts as a way of balancing poor dice rolling. Even with a very unlucky roll, a clever player can still come out from the Council with a good number of resources and/or soldiers.
Each adviser on the King's Council will award different resources or allocate soldiers, victory points, and other advantages to the player who was able to influence him/her for the current turn.
At the end of five years, the player who best developed his assigned territory and most pleased the King through the Council is the winner.
Many alternate strategies are possible to win: will you go for the military way, disregarding economic and prestige buildings, or will you aim to complete the big Cathedral to please the King? Will you use the Merchant's Guild to gain more influence in the Council, or will you go for balanced development?

Seasons: From BGG: Seasons is a game of cards and dice which takes place in two phases:
The first phase consists of a draft: the goal during this phase will be to establish a strategy for the rest of the game with 9 cards that can be selected (Each card has a specific effect and earns victory points).
Once the draft is complete, each player must separate his 9 cards into 3 packs of 3 cards. He will begin the second phase of the game with his first pack of three cards, then gradually as the game progresses, he will receive the other two packets of three cards.
Next comes the second phase of play: at the beginning of each round a player will roll the seasons dice (dice = number of players +1).
These cubes offer a variety of actions to the players:
- Increase your invocation (maximum number of cards you may have placed on table)
- Harvesting energy (water, earth, fire, air) to pay the cost of invocation maps
- Crystallization energy (during the current season) to collect crystals. These serve both as a resource to rely on some cards, but also many victory points in the endgame.
- Draw new cards
Each player can choose only one die per turn. The first player will choose among those launched, then the following among those remaining and so on. At each turn, the dice indicate how many remaining cells (1, 2 or 3 boxes) the marker of the seasons ahead.
In addition, all the dice are different depending on the season. For example, there are not the same energies to a particular season. Throughout the game, players will therefore have to adapt to these changes.
At the end of the game, we add the points of victory on the cards, given the number of crystals possessed. The player with the most victory points wins.

and

Cyclades:Hades: Cyclades: Hades, an expansion for Cathala and Maublanc's Cyclades, consists of four modules that can be used individually or combined in various ways. In the Cyclades base game, players fight for domination over archipelagos in ancient Greece. They make offerings to gods to secure their favors and summon mythological creatures. The Hades expansion allows players to add Hades (no surprise there) to other gods present in the base game: Zeus, Ares, Athena, Poseidon and Apollo. Players will be able to build a Necropolis and summon undead armies when they gain favors of Hades.


I'm most intrigued by Seasons and Kingsburg so I'm guessing they'll be hitting the table first ^^. I like the others too since they're on my Want To Buy list... That list is growing every day though.. so many games and so little time (or sometimes people) to play!

Love both Seasons and Kingsburg. The Kingsburg expansion gives players a lot more control over the year end combat, so that's a good addition. Le Havre is a great game, but plays best with 2-3 players due to the potential analysis paralysis.

For some reason, I keep getting nervous about teaching Cyclades so we haven't played that one yet.

Actually, Cyclades is one of the easiest games I have ever taught

Memoir '44 was received per my Christmas list. Now to actually get out of the house so I can play it.

Cyclades hasn't hit the table here a lot as well, I'm hoping to change that in the future.

Isgrimnur wrote:Memoir '44 was received per my Christmas list. Now to actually get out of the house so I can play it.

I got Mage Wars from my in-laws. It always amazes me how they are willing to buy things they have no understanding. Netrunner was on top of my list but they must have decided that was inappropriate. Come on up to Frisco and we can play. Good luck with the roads, oh and my wife has the flu... and the kids each got a Furby for Christmas. Kill me now.

I really should get a copy of Memoir for myself. I always play with Tommy's copies...he has one of everything, and 2 copies of the base set for Operation Overlord missions, so I never really saw a need to have my own copy. But I'm betting my 9 year old son would probably enjoy it.

Net runner is up for sale at CSI for $22.

Isgrimnur wrote:Net runner is up for sale at CSI for $22.

Amazingly, I am having trouble coming up with $100 order for free shipping. I wonder if my wife would let me play Memoir 44 with the kiddo.

I ordered Netrunner, Nightfall: Crimson Siege, Twilight Struggle, Cutthroat Caverns, and the original Gloom.

Just played Cutthroat caverns this past weekend with Hepcat. Very good game, and very worth it!

You won, you bastard. THAT'S why you liked it! I was knocked out before the 4th encounter, I think.

My score this Christmas so far:

Through the Ages. I think everyone knows that one. It's rated quite high on bgg so I put it on my wishlist this year.

DC Deck Building Game. I had it on my amazon wishlist...but after reading some pretty mediocre reviews, I was going to take it off. Unfortunately, my mother got to my wishlist before I could. Oh well, it actually looks like it might be a fun little filler game. It shares a LOT of Ascension's mechanics from what I can tell.

And finally, I just ordered a copy of Darkest Night with an amazon gift card I got. I've heard some good things about it.

...oh, and a dvd copy of Get a Life, the complete series and a blu ray of Little Big Man.

hepcat wrote: DC Deck Building Game. I had it on my amazon wishlist...but after reading some pretty mediocre reviews, I was going to take it off. Unfortunately, my mother got to my wishlist before I could. Oh well, it actually looks like it might be a fun little filler game. It shares a LOT of Ascension's mechanics from what I can tell.

I had asked Cat and Mouse to get me a copy of the DC deckbuilder (mostly to score the Martian Manhunter promo card), and then Legendary came and blew me away. So, when it came in, I told them I wasn't going be able to make it into the store until after the new year, and they should to put it back on the shelf in case someone else wanted it, and when I came in after the new year I would pick it up if it was still out there. Fully expecting it to be gone.

Christmas morning, I open up a copy of the DC Deckbuilder from my wife. She was very proud, had gone down to Cat and Mouse, and they said I had asked for it before.

Ah well. I appreciate the effort on her part.

hepcat wrote:You won, you bastard. THAT'S why you liked it! I was knocked out before the 4th encounter, I think.

My score this Christmas so far:

Through the Ages. I think everyone knows that one. It's rated quite high on bgg so I put it on my wishlist this year.

DC Deck Building Game. I had it on my amazon wishlist...but after reading some pretty mediocre reviews, I was going to take it off. Unfortunately, my mother got to my wishlist before I could. Oh well, it actually looks like it might be a fun little filler game. It shares a LOT of Ascension's mechanics from what I can tell.

And finally, I just ordered a copy of Darkest Night with an amazon gift card I got. I've heard some good things about it.

...oh, and a dvd copy of Get a Life, the complete series and a blu ray of Little Big Man.

Hehe...Oh that was right, I umm did win that game. Helped make up for a very sub par performance in Shadow Hunter. As a hunter, I spent the game beating up on the neutrals and other shadow hunter, who happened to be Hepcat. And Hep beat up on me and the other neutrals. We left the shadows to sweep us off the board when the finally revealed. Still a great game as well, the mechanics were fun, and even losing was fun.

I also played Arkham, and we lost that as well, but were very close to a victory.

Shadow Hunter was a lot more fun than I expected.

Another game of Legendary with the kids. This time we lost. Going up against the Legacy Virus...man, that's a tough one. We were collecting wounds left and right, and only had one hit on Red Skull before we had used up the whole wound pile. Only 6 wounds for each player before you lose, and those go quickly.

Hep, let me know how Darkest Night is...I have been tempted with that one.

Sigh...I actually cancelled the order 20 minutes after I made it. Turns out that the counters are all laser cut and folks are reporting it takes an hour or two to get them off their sprues and then clean them (there's a significant amount of soot from the laser cutting process). I'm just not that interested in the game if it's going to be that much of a chore.

hepcat wrote:Sigh...I actually cancelled the order 20 minutes after I made it. Turns out that the counters are all laser cut and folks are reporting it takes an hour or two to get them off their sprues and then clean them (there's a significant amount of soot from the laser cutting process). I'm just not that interested in the game if it's going to be that much of a chore.

I got "Why?!" also from Victory Point Games and also laser cut. Yes, to the soot and even more so to the smell. If I hadn't seen it myself I would say you were being a dork. Any game that comes with a cleaning cloth for cleaning up after the initial setup get a big wtf from me.

coopasonic wrote:

hepcat wrote:Sigh...I actually cancelled the order 20 minutes after I made it. Turns out that the counters are all laser cut and folks are reporting it takes an hour or two to get them off their sprues and then clean them (there's a significant amount of soot from the laser cutting process). I'm just not that interested in the game if it's going to be that much of a chore.

I got "Why?!" also from Victory Point Games and also laser cut. Yes, to the soot and even more so to the smell. If I hadn't seen it myself I would say you were being a dork. Any game that comes with a cleaning cloth for cleaning up after the initial setup get a big wtf from me.

If that bothers you, don't even think about buying into Sergeants Miniatures Game. It's all laser cut like that...

Help! I'm trying to remember a game! I think it was mentioned by someone in this thread, possibly shortly before or after GenCon, but now I can't find it.

The game was a historical treatment of religious/political/scientific ideas during the renaissance or after. I seem to recall that it had cards for major figures of the time (Shakespeare, Calvin, etc.). It was not Here I Stand or Virgin Queen.

Does this ring a bell for anyone? I was hoping to look up reviews at BGG, but I just can't remember the name.

So we started the big Memoir 44 saga tonight. We decided to ditch our usual haphazard method of picking scenarios and instead play each one in order by set or expansion, starting with the original scenarios. One shot per scenario - no replays.

We're keeping track of all this via spreadsheet to decide who is truly the Memoir champion over the course of the next year. We are going to step away from that plan briefly this weekend, however, in order to merge sets and play through the giant Overlord scenario.

Holman wrote:Help! I'm trying to remember a game! I think it was mentioned by someone in this thread, possibly shortly before or after GenCon, but now I can't find it.

The game was a historical treatment of religious/political/scientific ideas during the renaissance or after. I seem to recall that it had cards for major figures of the time (Shakespeare, Calvin, etc.). It was not Here I Stand or Virgin Queen.

Does this ring a bell for anyone? I was hoping to look up reviews at BGG, but I just can't remember the name.

Maybe something from this thread?

So my parents got my son the Temple Run: Danger Chase game for Christmas, and he was dying to play it, so we broke it out last night. I was expecting the worst, and was very pleasantly surprised. It's a fun press your luck roll the dice against the timer game, where you are trying to be the last one standing in a race. You start the timer and roll the dice. Roll any dice as many times as you want, except for the demon monkeys...when you roll one of those, the dice are locked and you can't re-roll them. The number of runners you get on the dice determine the number of spaces you can move forward. If you don't hit the timer again before it goes off, you go to the back of the pack, closer to the demon monkey who is closing in on you. While you are rolling for you movement, you have to be mindful of the traps in front of you as well...land on a trap, and you're out. Once a player is out, they then keep rolling, specifically trying to get demon monkeys on the dice so they can eat the next player that much quicker. We played about 3 games of it last night, and were laughing and having a great time with it each time.

It is by no means a deep game, but if you're looking for something to play with the younger kids (or slightly inebriated adults) it's a heck of a lot of fun.

Holman wrote:Help! I'm trying to remember a game! I think it was mentioned by someone in this thread, possibly shortly before or after GenCon, but now I can't find it.

The game was a historical treatment of religious/political/scientific ideas during the renaissance or after. I seem to recall that it had cards for major figures of the time (Shakespeare, Calvin, etc.). It was not Here I Stand or Virgin Queen.

Does this ring a bell for anyone? I was hoping to look up reviews at BGG, but I just can't remember the name.

Road to Enlightenment is a game I've mentioned on here, and sounds similar to what you've described, although there's no Shakespeare card, the game's timeframe is 200ish years later.

woo hoo....my copy of the Yggdrasil expansion, Asgard, just arrived today. Tomorrow, we will defend Asgard (and probably lose)...