Octopus Overlords

Finally got a chance to play Mice and Mystics with my kids (the wife even joined us for the game), and my impressions are mixed. I like the system, the artwork, and the movement from tile to tile. Combat works great, and I really like the "wheel of cheese" timer idea.

However, I was expecting a more engaging storytelling experience. Granted, it was only the first "chapter" out of the storybook, so it's likely very basic on purpose. In the end, though, the game boiled down to "defeat all enemies, move to new tile, defeat all enemies, move to new tile, defeat all enemies..." This is what is beginning to sour me on games like Wrath of Ashardalon. Descent improves this somewhat with the campaign missions that actually have objectives and events going on besides just "kill everything that moves". I'm hoping Mice and Mystics follows that model and the later chapters and even future expansions provide for more interesting games.

Zarathud wrote:Played Through the Ages with hepcat and loved it even though my head hurt afterwards. So much going on, especially when the invasions happened after I fell behind in military. Very tempted to do a game online.

I need to play it online due to the crushing news from yesterday:Through the Ages iPad app is delayed, probably for over a year. Codito, who made the Le havre app, was in beta testing with the app. On December 1st, the license agreement expired, and Czech Edition games decided to pull the plug. No game. They're starting over with another company, and I expect it to take 18+ months. Lame.

Yeah, I saw that last night on bgg as well.

However, in the same article, the former developer noted that Vlaada was going with another developer in part because he was going to develop other titles from his catalog. If they create a Mage Knight port for the iPad, I'll personally do a Triple Lindy from the roof of my workplace.

Had a great weekend of gaming. Played some Dominion as well as Cargo Noir (a light auction style game from Days of Wonder), started a new campaign from campaign book 2 for Memoir '44, played a little TTR: Heart of Africa (2 player) and some more Lords of Waterdeep.

Then I started getting checks for my Birthday and I couldn't help myself I put in an order at Cool Stuff Inc. X-wing (2 core sets) each expansion for X-Wing, Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small, and Last Night on Earth amongst a few other things. Looking forward to having a nice back log of games. The wife and I both have Monday off so hopefully we will really get to break these games in after they arrive Friday.

Definitely need 2 core sets for X-Wing so you can customize a more with 100 point games. After a few games, you may find yourself wanting a second Y-Wing and TIE Advanced. For a storage solution, the Plano 5231 is an excellent and cheap. All of the chits fit on the top layer, with plenty of room for the ships underneath. There appears to be enough room to even fit the Second Wave expansion, depending on how the Millennium Falcon and Slave-1 footprint. It's very easy to pop open the top of the case to grab extra counters as needed.

Zarathud wrote:Definitely need 2 core sets for X-Wing so you can customize a more with 100 point games. After a few games, you may find yourself wanting a second Y-Wing and TIE Advanced. For a storage solution, the Plano 5231 is an excellent and cheap. All of the chits fit on the top layer, with plenty of room for the ships underneath. There appears to be enough room to even fit the Second Wave expansion, depending on how the Millennium Falcon and Slave-1 footprint. It's very easy to pop open the top of the case to grab extra counters as needed.

That's the one that I'm using, but I HATE the handle on it.

And I need to get a few more games of this in. I haven't played since Octocon last year.

Thanks for the advice! I've heard I might need yet another y wing and advanced tie and I can tell I'm going to really enjoy this game so I might as well go all in. If we end up dropping by a store this weekend I may just pick them up.

I like the idea of that case so I ordered one on Amazon real quick.

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So Days of Wonder have put up a Kickstarter project for a new Small World app... but it's kind of a mess. Confusing pledge tiers, vague goals and IMO overpriced high-level tiers that revolve around a deluxe edition version of the boardgame. Not to mention they say they're releasing the app this year anyway, regardless of how the KS works out.

I love the online versions of Ticket to Ride and Memoir '44, and Small World remains one of our favorite games. I hope this project gets enough support for an Android/Steam version as that's what I'd ultimately play it on. As much as I'm tempted by the thought of a deluxe edition (I love my anniversary Puerto Rico), I'm not paying $400 for wooden squares w/ stickers and some metal coins.

If I could add things individually... I'd consider the 6 player map, maybe some coins.

Daveman wrote:So Days of Wonder have put up a Kickstarter project for a new Small World app... but it's kind of a mess. Confusing pledge tiers, vague goals and IMO overpriced high-level tiers that revolve around a deluxe edition version of the boardgame. Not to mention they say they're releasing the app this year anyway, regardless of how the KS works out.

I love the online versions of Ticket to Ride and Memoir '44, and Small World remains one of our favorite games. I hope this project gets enough support for an Android/Steam version as that's what I'd ultimately play it on. As much as I'm tempted by the thought of a deluxe edition (I love my anniversary Puerto Rico), I'm not paying $400 for wooden squares w/ stickers and some metal coins.

If I could add things individually... I'd consider the 6 player map, maybe some coins.

I felt the same way. I would really love the 6 player map... But 400 is too much. Especially since I don't have an ipad so i don't care about the digital version at all.

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My 6 year old just beat me at pitch car mini 5 games out of 7 with no handicap and no experience. Damn kids.

coopasonic wrote:My 6 year old just beat me at pitch car mini 5 games out of 7 with no handicap and no experience. Damn kids.

Love Pitchcar. Glad you guys are enjoying it too.

Got in a game of Risk Express at work over lunch yesterday. We've decided to do a boardgame lunch every Friday from here on out. Fortunately, Fridays are so sparsely attended at work these days there was no shortage of meeting rooms that I could reserve.

Busted out a two-man game of King of Tokyo yesterday afternoon and I think we played three rounds in around 40 minutes. I was just learning the rules, but it seems like it would be a great game for 4+ people. While it was fun with two, there wasn't a lot strategy.

After that was a quick round of Elder Sign where we managed to defeat Yog-Sothoth without too much difficulty. Still enjoying this game a lot.

Then we managed to get a three-man game of D-Day Dice in, just using the introductory Exercise Tiger map. I was worried that adding a third player might change things significantly, but it pretty much felt like a regular two player game.

Finally, the night ended with the introductory campaign for Descent 2nd ed followed by our first foray into one of the side adventures provided by the expansion. I think we would have been better off going through Act I first, rather than the introduction into a side adventure as it was rather large and complex. There were numerous objectives to consider and the map was huge. The guy playing as the Overlord did get to use a whole bunch of new cards, so overall the expansion seems to blend in nicely. The dice mechanics are still a bit wonky to me, but it definitely keeps things moving. We still learning everything and flubbing some of the basics, but overall it's still a fun experience.

If it's not obvious, I think we're into games that feature dice.

Smoove_B wrote:Busted out a two-man game of King of Tokyo yesterday afternoon and I think we played three rounds in around 40 minutes. I was just learning the rules, but it seems like it would be a great game for 4+ people. While it was fun with two, there wasn't a lot strategy.

Played King of Tokyo with my 6 year old last night and CRUSHED him! I think the drubbing he gave in pitchcar this morning was his revenge.

I've decided that I'm going to start setting up games of Mage Knight on my kitchen table on friday nights, then play it throughout the weekend when I have some time. I'm two rounds into a solo conquest with the new expansion and the new units, action cards and monsters are great. I want to play a couple of games with the new stuff before I tackle the big bad in the expansion. But from what I'm reading, the scenarios featuring him are a hit on BGG.

Smoove_B wrote:Busted out a two-man game of King of Tokyo yesterday afternoon and I think we played three rounds in around 40 minutes. I was just learning the rules, but it seems like it would be a great game for 4+ people. While it was fun with two, there wasn't a lot strategy.

Like a lot of games, King of Tokyo gets better with more players. Most of my games have been 3-4 players and it's a blast. The real fun kicks in when players try and figure out when is the right time to be in Tokyo, and when it's important to get a certain player out of Tokyo. One of these days I'll get a 5th player in so we can see what having two monsters in Tokyo is like.

hepcat wrote:I've decided that I'm going to start setting up games of Mage Knight on my kitchen table on friday nights, then play it throughout the weekend when I have some time. I'm two rounds into a solo conquest with the new expansion and the new units, action cards and monsters are great. I want to play a couple of games with the new stuff before I tackle the big bad in the expansion. But from what I'm reading, the scenarios featuring him are a hit on BGG.

If I could, I would seriously pay money to have someone come to my house and teach my how to play. I've vowed to learn it this year, but that box is just so intimidating.

Daveman wrote:Like a lot of games, King of Tokyo gets better with more players. Most of my games have been 3-4 players and it's a blast. The real fun kicks in when players try and figure out when is the right time to be in Tokyo, and when it's important to get a certain player out of Tokyo. One of these days I'll get a 5th player in so we can see what having two monsters in Tokyo is like.

We were learning the rules (well, me mostly) but I could see where it would get crazy with 4 or 5 people. Our two player games seemed highly dependent on the cards drawn and then purchased. During one of the games my opponent purchased an acid card which meant he was damaging me every turn even if he didn't attack me. That completely changed my strategy and forced me into action. Prior to that, it was a bit more laid back.

Play the walkthrough mission and you'll find the game is actually not that difficult. All the rules make sense in the context of the game.

Getting my ass handed to me in my weekend game. I orobably should have leveled up a bit more before heading into a monster den that just appeared.

Chaz wrote:I got my fiancee to play War of the Ring yesterday. It went about as well as can be expected, given the sheer difficulty of learning that game. She wound up winning by a hair and I think had a better grasp of it by the end. Remains to be seen if she'll play again though.

I played a teaching game of WOTR with my 9- and 6-year-old last week. I've been reading LOTR to them, and we're almost halfway through ROTK, so they know the story. The Lego website has already spoiled the ending for them.

We played with open card hands and I did a lot of coaching, but they both had fun. It started out as a very military game as the Shadow conquered Southern Gondor and put Minas Tirith under threat before the Fellowship had gotten as far as Lorien. Strider and Aragorn arrived at Minas Tirith just in time to go under siege and then die in battle. Meanwhile Frodo got close enough to almost enter Mordor before he succumbed to corruption.

Tough day for the good guys!

All Netrunner, all the time. I got 4 games in as the Corp in the friendly tournament that the Dallas Games Marathon was running, getting to a 3-1 record with various decks, mostly stock. And I was one turn away from going 4-0. Out of 23 matches played, the corps were 14-9, a 60-40 split on the day. A couple of my games literally came down to a 1-turn swing.

Coop showed up during game 4, so I'm going to blame him for my luck changing. But after that, I played two games with him as corp. The first game, he got screwed in the draw, and I picked up a quick and easy win. The second game was much more hard-fought and I won on a last-minute hail Mary run on his deck that run that netted me a 7-6 win.

The wife and I played a game of X-Wing Miniatures to break in the Y-Wing and TIE Advanced that I got for Christmas. Adding those minis to the core set definitely made it more fun -- more chaos, more agonizing die rolls. In the end, my Rebels pulled out a very narrow victory against her Imperial forces, thanks to R2-D2 keeping the shields up on my rookie pilot's X-Wing.

I hadn't played X-Wing in a few months, but now I'm seriously eyeing the Millennium Falcon...

We also played a quick 2 player game of Guillotine. After Isg beat me down at netrunner, I tweaked my corp deck a bunch and got beat even worse by another guy. I was watching a pretty epic game of zombicide and at midnight when I was thinking I need to head home, one of the players asked me to take over. 2.5 hours later, on the cusp of victory we got the one spawn card that could lose the game for us. Runners activate. Game over.

I'm tired.

having a blast with netrunner myself, but it feels like i can't get in a "legit" game to save my life. Ran my first real deckbuild, a Jinteki "gank" deck, against a pretty good gamer's self-built Shaper deck that appeared to be built to generate a lot of creds with cyberfeeders and Toolbox and blow right through you. Game 1 wasn't very competitive as I didn't build enough income to arguably the poorest faction in the game. I tweaked the deck a bit for game 2, removing all Cell Portals and one other card that hadn't been doing me any good and throwing in 3 Hedge Funds. Games 2 and 3 were better, with me coming within a credit here or a turn there of either flatlining or winning by agenda advance in the final game, but I couldn't pull out a win in either.

re: the legit comment, yet another rule fuckup: throughout the series, my opponent kept playing his Cyberfeeders and Toolbox such that they kept regenerating credits whether you used them or not. The income this generated was ludicrous and I asked him during the game whether this was being played correctly and he assured me it was... according to the FAQ, not so much. 5 free credits a turn to run each turn is still pretty potent, but because he was saving up for a few turns each time he'd end up with this load of credits that allowed him to run whatever, whenever. I'm looking forward to a game where we get everything right.

Incidentally, playing a Jinteki "trick" deck like that one is pretty difficult. Unlike the other factions who rely more income and brute force (Weyland), Jinteki depends a lot more on your skill at bluffing and avoiding play patterns that your opponent can pick up on. I had some success with this throughout, but the drawback to this style is that sniffed-out traps become wastes of time and credits. Even with succesfully triggered traps and snares, a savvy runner can, by keeping his hand full of cards to tank net damage and having decent draws, can mitigate your most potent stuff. In the last game, pretty early on I got my opponent to bite on single-token Aggressive Secretary (Aggressive Secretary can be advanced. If you pay 2 [Credits] when the Runner accesses Aggressive Secretary, trash 1 program for each advancement token on Aggressive Secretary) on consecutive turns. The first one I used to wipe Crypsis, a centerpiece of that deck with so much credit generation. On his next turn, he played a second Crypsis and ran the same remote server, hitting AS again which I used to discard THAT Crypsis. His next turn had him playing Special Order, which he used to pull the third copy of Crypsis from his deck and drop that into play... oy. I only have 2 copies of Secretary in that deck, so that Crypsis stayed in play the remainder of the game. Blah.

Anyway, still tweaking...

well...I almost hesitate to mention this one, but it is what I have been playing...

Champions of the Galaxy ( http://filsingergames.com/champions-of-the-galaxy/" target="_blank ) has been "rediscovered" by me. This is a dice & card wrestling game, set in the future (current game year is 2128). If you ever enjoyed watching wrestling on TV, but ever thought you could run a wrestling promotion better, this is the game for you. I have played it on and off since around 1990-91. Tom Filsinger started CotG in 1986 or so, and has continued to release game editions every year (and for quite a while, 2 editions were released each year). Wrestlers will age, and either be upgraded or downgraded, and eventually retire. There are managers, outside interference, and about any special type match you could dream of, including Cage matches, Cell matches, Weapons matches, Coffin matches, Battle Royals, and everything in between. Basically, if you can think it, you can run it.

The game puts you, the player, as a the promoter. Tom Filsinger gives you the background and a starting point, but the game is yours. The interesting thing about the game, though, is the progression of your fed. You champions, feuds, alliances, ect are all organic. Things change, and it is up to you to run it all. The game features incredible art on one side of each wrestler card, and the game stats for each wrestler on the other side of their card. There are also charts for when you throw someone into the ropes, turnbuckles, out of the ring, or when you climb the turnbuckle to try to do a flying diving attack. Filsinger Games has been around for well over 25+ years, and the creator (Tom) is very approachable. I have actually met him in person, and he runs a Con every year in the summer for his games. CotG is not the only one he makes, either, as he also has Legends of Wrestling (LOW) which is real-life wrestlers, and many of the smaller indy feds that are around (if you are a wrestling fan, you would recognize Ring of Honor, CZW, Chikara, Championship Wrestling from Hollywood, and Shimmer).

Basically, you run the fed, the promotion. You set up the cards/shows. You determine who gets title shots, and the angles and...well, everything. But, the dice decide who wins!! Sure, some wrestlers are better stat wise than others, but very interestingly enough, the dice can hate certain characters for a time that should dominate.

The game is an on-going saga that has gone for 41 game editions, plus other game editions that cover the years prior to the 2087 start year (the Galaxian Wrestling Federation, the GWF, actually storyline wise, began in 2074, but the game itself picks up in the game year 2087). There honestly, is no end in sight. Everytime we think Tom could not write any better, he out-does himself all over again. If you like wrestling, if you like comics art, if you enjoy roleplaying even, check it out at the link I posted above. This has been in my life for 23 years, and has brought me up from many very low points in my life. It is something that I have had and played for so long.

So, yeah, that has been what I have been playing quite a bit of, again, lately. Check it out...

...and my solo game of mage knight has ended in utter defeat.

I am in the process of reading through the rule book for the expansion. It looks great, though. Very glad I got it...

Make sure you catch the changes to blocking in the expansion's rules. They're performed a bit differently now.

Well I played some X-wing finally. I thought I had enough ships already but I realized quickly that I couldn't do each of the configurations I wanted to do so off to the game store tomorrow to pick up a couple more Y wings and advanced tie fighters! I also per-ordered wave 2. $100 in wave 2 ships (falcon, slave 1, 3 A wings and 4 Tie interceptors.) I am actually finding myself wondering if it would be worthwhile to pick up two of the big ships each next wave since 2 on a squad could be interesting... but that's crazy... right? I like this game quite a bit, especially that it is designed around 2 players because the majority of my gaming time is spent playing my wife.

In our first squad building game I was beat pretty soundly. My wife played as the empire and used swarm tactics with the tie fighters. I tried to go with Luke and Wedge in X wings with a support Y wing... it was not pretty. I managed to knock down a couple of tie fighters but in the end I was simply outgunned. I need to rethink that strategy a bit but I did really enjoy it.

I also played some Agricola: All creatures big and small. Quick little fun version of Agricola, I think it is a nice addition to our gaming collection.

Edit because of that English thing.

hepcat wrote:...and my solo game of mage knight has ended in utter defeat.

Played a 3-player Volkare's quest, and lost on the first turn of night 2 when he drew 16 non-wound cards to 4 wounds and zoomed across the map. Had a good time, but barely got started building up before he stepped into the portal. Lame way to lose.

I found out this weekend that there are 14 official new missions for Zombicide. I'm going to have to break that game out again soon.

Chrisoc13 wrote:I am actually finding myself wondering if it would be worthwhile to pick up two of the big ships each next wave since 2 on a squad could be interesting... but that's crazy... right?

There's been some discussion about running a dual Falcon Rebel fleet. I think it's a bit overkill.

I think you'll do fine with 2 Y-Wings, 2 TIE Advanced, 2 A-Wings and 2 TIE Interceptors. A friend likes to run Luke, Wedge and a support Y Wing. The key is for the Y Wing to have Ion cannons to disable part of the swarm -- which creates the possibility of leveling the TIE swarm by killing it or at least evading it for the next 2 turns.

SpaceLord wrote:

hepcat wrote:...and my solo game of mage knight has ended in utter defeat.

Played a 3-player Volkare's quest, and lost on the first turn of night 2 when he drew 16 non-wound cards to 4 wounds and zoomed across the map. Had a good time, but barely got started building up before he stepped into the portal. Lame way to lose.

I'm holding off on the Volkare scenarios until I can get another player or two into a game with me. They seem to be really difficult, from what I'm reading. Besides, after this week's poor showing on my part, I think I need a couple more practice games under my belt before I even attempt that.

Zarathud wrote:I found out this weekend that there are 14 official new missions for Zombicide. I'm going to have to break that game out again soon.

Chrisoc13 wrote:I am actually finding myself wondering if it would be worthwhile to pick up two of the big ships each next wave since 2 on a squad could be interesting... but that's crazy... right?

There's been some discussion about running a dual Falcon Rebel fleet. I think it's a bit overkill.

I think you'll do fine with 2 Y-Wings, 2 TIE Advanced, 2 A-Wings and 2 TIE Interceptors. A friend likes to run Luke, Wedge and a support Y Wing. The key is for the Y Wing to have Ion cannons to disable part of the swarm -- which creates the possibility of leveling the TIE swarm by killing it or at least evading it for the next 2 turns.

I definitely underutilized the ion cannon. I didn't fully understand it (it's 360 degree arc etc) and so I never really used it effectively in that game.

As far as the two Falcons I think you are right, truth is if I want to try it with two I will probably just borrow somebodies for one game and see how it goes. I think I will just keep my pre-order how it is and if I try it and love using two I can pick up another one later.

Zarathud wrote:I found out this weekend that there are 14 official new missions for Zombicide. I'm going to have to break that game out again soon.

I played a couple of the new ones after DGM resparked my interest in the game. Roundabout was almost trivially easy... as long as you don't spawn an Abomination in the first &^%$#&^ building you open. One thing I learned at DGM was that I was missing the Abom spawns altogether. Now that I know better, pretty much every game where one spawns I just have to call it a loss and move on. Whoever thought it would be cute to put Aboms spawning on the lowest tier is a bastard. I may just go back to spawning them as Fatties.

Wanda's Revenge was a more interesting mission. I picked both to play because they were listed as lower play time (90 minutes).

I also tried the one for 1-3 survivors... NOT possible with 1 survivor.

Am now halfway through the Descent 2E campaign (is there just one?). Got together with friends over the weekend and completed up through the Interlude. So far, it's a fantastic system and I love that the scenarios are more interesting and varied than just "Kill X, Y, Z". That said, some of these quests are freaking hard. So far in the campaign I think the Heroes are 2/5, and one of those wins was sort of a gimme when the Overlord discovered he was inadvertently using a Stage II hero incorrectly while we were still in Stage I. The Hero wins have been hard-fought, come from behind victories and the Overlord wins have been complete blowouts.

Still, it's fun and I like how well the character progression is working. This is one of the big knocks I have against Wrath of Ashardalon's campaign system. Sure, you have treasure and item carryover but there's no character development or leveling. In Descent, at least you're earning XP and acquiring new abilities for the later quests. I also like the increasing challenge and feeling of going up against ever-increasing odds. Here's hoping we can find the time to complete the whole campaign in a timely fashion.

Oh, it turns out there are a lot more than 7 official missions. I just noticed the ones you were talking about... Now I have even more missions to lose.

coopasonic wrote:I also tried the one for 1-3 survivors... NOT possible with 1 survivor.

To clarify, this was one form the base game (Might Makes Right? Something like that), where you start with 1-3 survivors and capture objectives to rescue 3 more survivors. Now that I said it was not possible, I need to try it with El Cholo. He does the impossible on a regular basis. Having the skill "Starts with 2 Machetes" really isn't fair.

I heard that Zpocalypse is releasing. Anyone KS this?

Yup, I've got the base game coming in. Decided not to get the version that includes the expansion, but might wind up ordering it depending on reviews. Strangely, it's looking like my fiancée prefers adversarial games to co-op, so maybe I should've gotten that in the first place, but who woulda thunk?

Chaz wrote:Yup, I've got the base game coming in. Decided not to get the version that includes the expansion, but might wind up ordering it depending on reviews. Strangely, it's looking like my fiancée prefers adversarial games to co-op, so maybe I should've gotten that in the first place, but who woulda thunk?

I have one of the $125 kits coming including a custom character (one opened up late and I jumped on it without thinking). I think he said it's a couple weeks before it starts shipping. I watched Jeff Greenbrier teaching it at BGGCon but I didn't get it.

My budding 12 year old gamer daughter and I have picked up Carcassone and Summoner Wars.

We've stumbled through a play through of each and I think we get each of them now. I am looking forward to a few days around the table before school goes back.

Got my DnDeeples today! Seems like such a silly expense but they look so much better than those cubes, and the quality it top notch. Makes me wish I had whatever setup he's got to make my own game accessories.

Just to show it's never too early to get your kids started in gaming, my daughter (3) has now become an official part of my occasional game nights. We always let her sit at the table and watch whatever we're playing as long as she doesn't touch the pieces. She will sit quietly and in return I'll let her roll dice for me, draw cards, etc. or even "help" me make strategic decisions. It makes her feel really grown up to participate, and it has definitely kindled a spark of interest in her when it comes to board games.

For Christmas I bought her a Richard Scarry Busytown board game. It is unique in that even though it was designed for pre-schoolers and has very simple mechanics, it is a co-op game that the parents and kids can work together to beat. She absolutely LOVES it and will occasionally ask me if we can have our own "game night" so that she can play.

I'm really looking forward to the next few years having her grow up and play games with me, and as soon as baby brother gets a couple of years older I'll start introducing him to them in the same way. Moral of the story - if you don't have anyone to play with, just spawn some.