Octopus Overlords

hepcat wrote:Legendary is getting an expansion in June.. I'm still a big fan of the game and I'm looking forward to this one.

Yeah, I bought the base set, and really enjoyed it. My kids love looking at the pictures, and since all my kids are girls, they liked that there were a lot of 'girl' superhero's in the game.

Chrisoc13 wrote:My friend is a big Game of Thrones fan so for him I can see the allure, but for me the whole time I kept wishing we were playing M'44 instead. Just my opinion though.

Thanks - I really appreciate the feedback. I guess we were thinking that we like M'44 so much, if there were other games using the same rules they would be fun as well (by association). Neither one of us is particularly into GoT so I think we'll just stick with M'44.

Played Stone and Relic and The Valkyrie Incident last night. Other than missing a rather huge rule on the latter game, both were fantastic entries in the Small Box Games library.

Stone and Relic is a card game (as are all of SBG products) that plays like a tile placement game combined with a combo mechanic with effects that trigger based on placement. You also have to manage your hand in order to amass wealth cards and relics for VP at game's end. I really like this one and can't wait to try it with 4 players (it's a 2 to 4 player game).

The Valkyrie Incident is a deck builder with a much more focused drafting mechanic than I'm used to...which I quite liked. You have two phases, a barracks phase and a war phase. During the barracks phase you purchase cards for your army which go into your draw deck, not your discard pile. You pay for them with cards in hand. After both players do this, they go to the war phase and fight over three conflict cards (just regular cards from the main draw deck, or the Incident Deck as it's called in the game). Each card you win is a VP and if someone wins 2 or more of them they also get an additional location card for the battle. Both steps are repeated 3 times and then a final conflict occurs to end the game. It plays faster than it sounds and I'm looking forward to trying it with the correct rules.

The third game is Shadow of the Sun but I didn't get a chance to play it yet as it's 3 to 4 players. I'm hoping to rectify that this weekend though.

I've got Bora Bora coming tomorrow. It's by Stefan Feld, the master of the less-than-2-hour-with-varied-mechanics-and-scoring-mostly-involving-dice. I'm excited, this is the first game he's released in well over a year. However, he has *five* new games coming out this year.

....aaaannndddd my copy of Dawn of the Zeds just arrived. This is a game fest week.

Yesterday I got Nieuw Amsterdam, Polis:fight for the Hegemony, Yedo, and BullenParty. Bora Bora is on its way from Germany but I don't know when it'll get here.

I am selling my copy of Battlelore. The problem is though that it is set up in a very expensive ($40) plano, and I have to take everything out of that and then find a box to ship everything in. I have the first few expansions as well.

I got Railways of the World: Railways of the Western US set up on the kitchen table for when my kids get home from school...excited!!

MythicalMino wrote:I got Railways of the World: Railways of the Western US set up on the kitchen table for when my kids get home from school...excited!!

Let me know what you think. We haven't had a chance to get it to the table.

hepcat wrote:....aaaannndddd my copy of Dawn of the Zeds just arrived. This is a game fest week.

Mine should be here too!!!!

And I just punched out a few of the laser cut counters. To me it's almost a non-issue. I was expecting to look like I had just finished up a 12 hour shift at a Jiffy Lube after working with them, but to be honest it's not even remotely as bad as I had feared it would be. I may have to reconsider picking up Darkest Night now as that was the only thing keeping me away.

we played Railways of the World, Western US...

I think I liked this map better than the Eastern US. The Rockies are a real obstacle you have to deal with, and I like that. The game ended with me the winner, but there was only an 8 point spread between me and my 9 year old who happened to come in last. Actually, Christian (my 11 year old) would even had won if he would have been able to complete a link before Jake and take one of the Service Bounty cards, as I only had him beat by 4 points.

Good game...

I played Castle Panic with my 3-year old tonight.

She had fun drawing the monster tiles, and while I'd suggest which cards she played, I let her pick whether she wanted to discard a card and/or trade with me each turn. She got a bit bored by the end, but it was a valiant effort for such a little person.

By the way, we got our asses handed to us. Some really bad draws right at the end - a boss which spawned 3 monsters followed by drawing a monster tile to draw four more monsters. It was pretty ugly.

Fun, quick little game that I can definitely see us breaking out when we're not in the mood for something that requires a lot of set-up or brain power. In that respect it fills a much-needed niche in my game library.

Castle Panic is a fun game with adults too. Played that with a bunch of friends at John Kovalic's birthday party, there was much yelling every time someone would pull out a really sucky monster tile.

My Second Wave of X-Wing minis should arrive tomorrow from miniaturemarket. With my sis staying over from a knee injury, we might even play right away!

Zarathud wrote:My Second Wave of X-Wing minis should arrive tomorrow from miniaturemarket. With my sis staying over from a knee injury, we might even play right away!

Getting mine tomorrow too. Of course then I'm leaving town for a week so I won't really get to try them out for a while.

Sent using tapa

hepcat wrote:My Small Box Games kickstarter games arrived today. Three VERY small boxes hide three fun looking games. Can't wait to give them a go.

Mine did today as well. Almost missed the extra little goodies in the box for the older games... d'oh! And Dawn of the Zeds should be here soon.

Stone and Relic is fantastic. I liked Valkyrie Incident as well, don't get me wrong. But Stone and Relic is a really fun game.

It's been posted before, but any time I see any Castle Panic love I have to add... get the Wizard Tower expansion. I'm hard pressed to think of an expansion that does more for the base game than it. I wouldn't say it pushes the game out of "fun with kids" territory but it does make the game a lot more interesting. Plus a lot more challenging... barring really bad draws we rarely lost basic Castle Panic but I'd say we're around 40% win rate with Wizard Tower.

Short version for those who are curious:

1. Replaces one of the six towers with the Wizard tower. So long as it's up, when you discard a card you have the option of drawing from a special Wizard card deck. These are generally much more powerful/useful cards than the basic deck. Most are attacks, but some involve rebuilding walls (even a tower!) cheaply, some involve pushing back or moving monsters around, etc.
2. You then replace all of the Goblins and most Orcs with the monsters from the expansion. The resulting mix has far fewer 1hp monsters, a couple 4hp ones, and the new ones all have some special ability and/or weakness. Climbing Trolls ignore walls, Goblin Cavalry move 2 spaces per turn, etc.
3. You then secretly add 3 of 6 new mega-bosses. These all have 4-5hp and some significant special ability.
4. Adds rules for fire as well, sometimes in the form of weapons that set monsters on fire (takes one damage at the end of a turn) and sometimes in the form of fire on your walls and towers (too many fire tokens destroys a wall/tower).

Go get it!!

I've got a copy of Waldschattenspiel coming in next week! For those of you who don't know, this is a German game played with a small candle and a bunch of wooden trees spaced around the board. It's intended to be played with kids. The kids each control a dwarf pawn, and their goal is to stay in the shadows, trying to group themselves into one shadow to win. They can move anywhere within the shadows as long as they don't cross the light. On the adult player's turn, they roll a die and move the candle that many spaces along the board. If they catch any of the dwarfs in the light, the dwarf is frozen, and has to get tagged by another dwarf to move again.

This game's been around in Europe for a long time, but is only available in the US via import. I've been wanting one forever, because it's absolutely gorgeous, and because it's one of those games I want to have around when I have kids to play with. If you're not sold, try this:



Time Well Spent still has two in stock if you're now interested.

A game for kids with wooden trees and fire? Yikes.

Fire is fun for the whole family!

It's a German game. They don't mollycoddle their kids over there. Nor will I!

Well I'd prefer my house not burning down...has nothing to do with how to treat the kids I don't think. I played that game a long time ago. My problem if I were to play it again today is that I have dogs. Dogs can do surprising things that could result in at least the candles toppling. So I don't think I'd play it again at least not in my house.

You're supposed to use a tea light, and the games are short. I don't foresee too many falling candle problems. It's also supposed to be played with an adult controlling the candle.

Chaz wrote:...Time Well Spent still has two in stock if you're now interested.

I'd like to give a shout-out to TimeWellSpent. Dave, the owner, lives in Broomfield, Colorado, and is a great guy. He hosts many game days and is a great ambassador for the hobby.

And if any of the Colorado gamers are reading this, Dave delivers, for free, games to Park Meadows Mall in Lone Tree(south of Denver), once per month. You can also pick the games up at his office in Broomfield for free.

I used to use Timewellspent and I think I'll try them out, as well as using coolstuffinc more. Miniature Market has been getting steadily worse and worse. Right now I'm waiting for a replacement shipment of miniatures after they shipped me the wrong sets twice in a row. I don't know what's going on over there, but I won't be using them again.

I think Miniature Market is going through some growing pains. I stop by the retail store here in STL every so often and there are a lot of new faces lately. They're still super helpful and polite, but mistakes like that would be frustrating.

I usually use CSI. Their prices are usually solid, but more importantly, they ship from closer to me, so stuff gets to me faster. Once I've spent a load of money on games, I demand that they be in my hands right quick, or I get antsy.

That's why I used to use MM as they're located in St. Louis, which is an assured one day turnaround time for orders. However, the problem now is that they can't get an order right anymore. I'd rather wait an extra day or two and get what I ordered instead of having to send stuff back.

And that's why I don't use CSI, it's basically an eight day turnaround from there to here, particularly for the free shipping. The only OLGS on the west coast is now Funagain, and their prices are high unless I'm going for an import. Cardhaus who also used to be on the west coast just moved to Indiana. Occasionally I use TWS as well.

Shoot I was hoping to try out the wave 2 ships today before I leave for a ski vacation next week but alas the UPS truck appears to have broken down bringing them from St. Louis to here so they are going to be delivered on... Monday. Maybe. Actually when I called UPS they said they have no idea when it will actually get here. But since they didn't make it here today I won't get to play them for a week anyways so I guess it doesn't matter if they sit in the package room for a week. Bummer though I was looking forward to it tonight.

My Wave 2 order was on the same truck.

Odd, the UPS truck carrying my replacement shipment from MM also broke down in transit this morning. It lists Mechanical Failure on the tracking page.

Hey Guys..It was so weird I was driving home last night, and there was this broken down UPS truck. I got on board while the driver was talking to the tow truck driver and got a bunch of free games! I rock!!!

Lorini wrote:And that's why I don't use CSI, it's basically an eight day turnaround from there to here, particularly for the free shipping. The only OLGS on the west coast is now Funagain, and their prices are high unless I'm going for an import. Cardhaus who also used to be on the west coast just moved to Indiana. Occasionally I use TWS as well.

Cardhaus moved to Indiana? I may have to look into getting from them as the shipping to OH would be fast. Are they any good.

I've consistently gone with CSI, but their shipping has gotten a bit steeper. I was ordering from MM, but they tend to not get items as fast as CSI (sometimes a week later).

EDIT: Cardhaus is now in New Albany, IN!? That is like 30 minutes away from my hometown and the place we always used to go to see movies and shop!

SpaceLord wrote:

Chaz wrote:...Time Well Spent still has two in stock if you're now interested.

I'd like to give a shout-out to TimeWellSpent. Dave, the owner, lives in Broomfield, Colorado, and is a great guy. He hosts many game days and is a great ambassador for the hobby.

And if any of the Colorado gamers are reading this, Dave delivers, for free, games to Park Meadows Mall in Lone Tree(south of Denver), once per month. You can also pick the games up at his office in Broomfield for free.

Really? That's pretty cool and very near my house... the mall that is, not Broomfield.

http://www.timewellspentgames.com" target="_blank

(without the 'games' part you end up in apartments)

I checked Cardhaus' site as it's as close as MM to me and therefore shipping should be just as quick. However, out of 8 things I checked randomly, 6 of them were out of stock. That's not a very good sign.

They are still re-stocking from the move, so keep checking.

Broke out Castle Panic last night for the gaming group. We narrowly won the first game, got annihilated the second game, and coasted to victory in the third game. All had fun but agreed it felt a bit too easy, so I'll be picking up the expansion before we break it out again. Everyone liked it though.

Next up was a game we were late to the party on - Dominion. None of us had ever played a deck building game before so there was a bit of a learning curve. By the end of the night, however, we were hooked. Looks like an incredibly deep game in terms of replayability and figuring out the best strategy. I lost badly, but I still had a great time.

Had a gamenight on Friday;

Started with some Zombie Dice games. Managed to win one and ended second in the second game. Always a good game to get the night started. After Zombie Dice we went over to...

Kingsburg! This seems to be a winner to everyone who plays it ^^. Everyone seems to like this game. It was a very tight affair in the end as the difference between the first and fourth player was only 6 points! After Kingsburg we then went over to...

Atlantis! First time I played it and I really like it. It has some strategy and luck to it and it's one of the few games that I know of where you dan end with a minus score ^^. It was a close game again and I think this game might find its way to my collection one day. After Atlantis we moved on to...

Dragon's Gold! I'm really starting to love this. In short, everyone has 4 characters: a male knight, a female knight, a thief and a mage. In the middle of the board there are 3 dragons that players try to defeat. On these dragons there's a certain amount of treasure and hidden treasure. The hidden treasure gets added when a dragon is killed. The dragons are often killed by two-three or four players, once the dragon is killed, those players have 60 seconds to divide the treasure. If they can't reach an agreement, no one gets any treasure. This can lead to hilarious situations ^^. In the end I ended last in a very fun game! We then ended the night with...

Air King! A very clear review by Tom Vasel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_ewj3141g0" target="_blank The review is also the reason why I bought it.

All in all a very fun night ~