Octopus Overlords

Well, I can't afford more than a handful of ships, so I don't think the wife and I will do 100-200 point battles!

She did tell me that the game sounded like fun and that she would likely enjoy it!

I think I am going to grab the Starter, a Tie Interceptor (I want the Tie Advanced, but don't want to pay shipping), the Millenium Falcon, and an A-Wing. That should be a good start for this and that.

Or would it be better to grab 2 starters and then the MF or another Tie Fighter? At the current price, the A-Wing is about 1/2 another full starter.

baelthazar wrote:Well, I can't afford more than a handful of ships, so I don't think the wife and I will do 100-200 point battles!

She did tell me that the game sounded like fun and that she would likely enjoy it!

I think I am going to grab the Starter, a Tie Interceptor (I want the Tie Advanced, but don't want to pay shipping), the Millenium Falcon, and an A-Wing. That should be a good start for this and that.

For now... you will soon own them all.

The only downside if you get the millenium falcon is that with the number of ships you will have it sounds like you will essentially have the millenium falcon against 2 or 3 ships whenever you choose to use the falcon. It's lowest point total is 27, and that is with no gunners, a crappy pilot, and no weapons or upgrades. If you ever run the Falcon with Chewie, Han, or Lando (and let's be honest... isn't that why we all want it? not to run some "outer ring smuggler") you will be at a baseline of 42-46 points. Which means any time you choose that it would be the Falcon against 2 tie fighters and a tie interceptor almost for sure. And even then the Falcon would not be loaded. Those three ties would wipe up that Falcon pretty quick.

In my experience the big ships (falcon and Slave 1) are more effective when you own more ships and are running 100 point games. Less than that and they really hog all of your points and give you only one ship on the playing field.

The Falcon is the coolest model, I hear you on that. But with a small number of ships it won't be the most effective. While less exciting to look at another X-wing would better serve you in gameplay until you have more ships.

Take all of that with a grain of salt because it is just my opinion.

baelthazar wrote:Or would it be better to grab 2 starters and then the MF or another Tie Fighter? At the current price, the A-Wing is about 1/2 another full starter.

2 core sets is how I started. At CSI they were $25 a piece at the time (or somewhere around that price). Then I added advanced an Y-wings. When Wave 2 came out I went crazy and got them all, but having two core sets is really nice. Good ship/$ value, nice to have the extra movement guides, and the extra dice are extremely nice to have.

I don't think 50 point X-Wing games have the depth of 75 point games and many lists are 100 points.

At Octocon, I ran two X-Wing games at 250 points per side for 5 players total. Game time was 4-5+ hours both days. Replace cubes and disks in Eclipse with dice, measuring sticks and status tokens. X-Wing does benefit from fandom excitement and speeding up as ships get destroyed, but a similar scope game will take about the same time.

I am looking forward to speed iOS games of Eclipse without the tokens.

baelthazar wrote:Or would it be better to grab 2 starters and then the MF or another Tie Fighter? At the current price, the A-Wing is about 1/2 another full starter.

I went with the core set, an extra X-Wing, extra TIE Fighter, one TIE Advanced, and one Y-Wing. That makes it pretty easy to do 50-75 pt battles without getting nuts (two X-Wings, one Y-Wing vs. TIE Advanced and three TIEs).

From what I've heard, the A-Wings are best in a squadron of at least 2-3, not singles. I'd like to get a couple of TIE Interceptors, but I have never really been interested in the Falcon or Slave 1 for some reason (probably price). I only got the extra expansion ships when Amazon had them on sale for something like $7 each. Sometimes, I'm cheap.

See... I am buying this from Amazon, so I am limited to what they have shipping free for prime. They have the Falcon, Slave 1, A-wings, Tie Interceptor (but not Advanced Tie, boo hoo). Pretty much everywhere is out of stock on the extra X-Wings. Y-wings (my favorite) have extra shipping (no Prime).

The other online retailers are out of stock on a LOT of their minis. In fact, Amazon has the best selection.

I think I will start with 2 Cores, that will get me a nice bang-for-buck ratio. Otherwise, I might grab whatever floats my boat... er... ship. My wife and I are not min-maxers and I think she would be perfectly content with flying around the Falcon and blasting tie fighters!

My other option was Wings of Glory (much better suited for duels), but I just can't see her getting into WWI and WWII planes.

baelthazar wrote:See... I am buying this from Amazon, so I am limited to what they have shipping free for prime. They have the Falcon, Slave 1, A-wings, Tie Interceptor (but not Advanced Tie, boo hoo). Pretty much everywhere is out of stock on the extra X-Wings. Y-wings (my favorite) have extra shipping (no Prime).

The other online retailers are out of stock on a LOT of their minis. In fact, Amazon has the best selection.

I think I will start with 2 Cores, that will get me a nice bang-for-buck ratio. Otherwise, I might grab whatever floats my boat... er... ship. My wife and I are not min-maxers and I think she would be perfectly content with flying around the Falcon and blasting tie fighters!

My other option was Wings of Glory (much better suited for duels), but I just can't see her getting into WWI and WWII planes.

Yeah looks like CSI in out of stock on nearly everything. And that $27.99 price point on Amazon is about as good as it gets for the core set. With free shipping it's a good deal. 2 core sets is a great way to start. It gives you enough to really get going. Then adding a ship here or there when they become available on Amazon doesn't seem so expensive! Not sure why they are out of stock everywhere right now but as they start coming in Amazon will put most of the ships available with prime. 2 x-wings and 4 tie fighters will give you a great feel for the game. Also I sometimes run one A-wing so if you do end up picking up just one you will still have a use for it in your fleet. At least you should be able to have fun with it.

Enjoy. It's a great game. I don't get to play it nearly as often as I would like to.

Guillotine Games
Today Kickstarter Season 1 Promo Figures have started being shipped out. We expect to finish the job by the end of next week. Have a nice week end and we promised the second quarter 2013 and second quarter it is...

yay (that's zombicide season 1 for the clueless)

So far, D-Day Dice.

Tomorrow I play City of Remnants and possibly Relic!

I've been curious about City of Remnants. Let me know how it plays. I've made my major purchases until Origins, but it may be something I look for there.

hepcat wrote:I've been curious about City of Remnants. Let me know how it plays. I've made my major purchases until Origins, but it may be something I look for there.

I hear it is very very good, but I will let you know. The components are pretty much PHG fare, a little lackluster compared to the "big guns" of FFG but still pretty decent. I was irritated that one of my cards has a big crease in it. I could contact PHG for a replacement, but it is not a crucial card.

Speaking of Origins, I hope to go this year. I am only an hour away, so it would be silly to miss it!

I've been playing Firefly Cosplay poker. Ended up with two pair, Jaynes and Kaylees.

baelthazar wrote:
Speaking of Origins, I hope to go this year. I am only an hour away, so it would be silly to miss it!

Oh cool, I'll make sure to pm you with my cell before I leave for the con.

my copy of Conquest of Planet Earth + the Apocalypse expansion arrived yesterday...and I have played a few games (solo) of it so far. And I think, so far, that it is actually my favorite game of Flying Frog's (at least of what I have from them). Very thematic, lots of chaos and fun.

My "rankings" of their games:

1. Conquest of Planet Earth
2. A Touch of Evil
3. Last Night on Earth
4. (very distant fourth) Fortune & Glory

It's a fantastic game, that's for sure.

yeah, there are so many "little" things that just strike me as great in the game. Love the Human Tech cards, the Space Stuff cards, I like how the Event Cards work in this game. Really like the heroes (yeah, even Captain Fantastic!!). I also really like how a roll of "6" gives you an auto win, so no matter how down you are, you can still pull out a win. Just so many little things. Love the art in the game. And the Apocalpyse expansion is great, too. Fighting the Naval ships are crazy. Just a great, fun game.

edit: Yeah, I am gushing like a little girl in a barbie-land dreamhouse, but dammit!! This game is so much fun!!

...and most importantly, Teleportation Pants.

Checked out C2E2 after all and hung out with hentzau for a couple hours. Found a copy of The Manhattan Project for 30 bucks so I snapped it up. I've always wanted to pick that one up.

City of Remnants. Verdict: VERY GOOD! Wife's Verdict: I LIKE THIS GAME!

Our first game took us about 2 hours, but we had to stop and start for dinner. The two-player game starts slowly but ramps up very quickly and then becomes a late-game knife fight. My wife was not too aggressive and that cost her the game by a margin of only 15 or so points (which was easily just one building and a few cards). CoR feels like a strange cross between the mechanics of Agricola, Urban Sprawl, Dominion, and Summoner Wars. Bizarrely, it works very well and it not at all that complicated (once you get over the initial shock). Every action is important, like in most Euros, and you are consistently trying to make limited resources and actions work into a grander plan. Do you open up a recruitment bid (one of my favorite aspects of the game, bidding for recruits, and I hate bidding games) but then risk giving your opponent the card (how much money are they willing to spend)? What about building that nice development building on victory point square, knowing that your opponent gets the chance to move and might grab it first (then you have to grab it back)? How many cards are you willing to spend for the battle, knowing that another battle might come next and find you with no card?

There are a lot of random elements in the game, but we liked that, as the luckless aspect of some Euros can get stale and calculating. One of the most feared and irritating parts (but it works well) is the Yugai Control Units. The Yugai are the "conquering bastards" of the universe and their YCU are sent to these refugee words (the setting of CoR) to police the gangs. But they land randomly from card draws, so you don't know if your perfect plans might go awry because you did not plan to repel the YCUs (you can also bribe them away, if you have money). A nice tense way to level things out.

We also like (but totally missed) the synergy of some of the buildings. For example, we had a Recruiting Center than allowed the owner to roll a d6 and on a 3+ draw a free recruit from the deck. Also, we had a Slave Trader, where you could remove a gang member card in your deck from the game and gain an immediate $6000 (a nice sum). I loved the thematic aspect of that - the game is recruiting desperate men and women into the game with promises of prosperity and protection, then promptly putting them in chains and selling them to slavers off-world! Now that is dark and evil, but captures the horrible situation of the universe under Yugai domination.

I will say that the rules are a little vague (I've heard this about Mice & Mystics too) and really need some clarification on exact mechanics (i.e. how many cards can I play per turn and other small questions). The "how to play" video on PHG's website is good, but it doesn't cover some of the little rules questions we had.

Overall a real winner! I did have some damaged cards, so I have to email PHG for some replacements.

Taught a lot of people how to play a lot of games today. Love Letter, Fluxx, 7 Wonders, Smallworld, King of Tokyo, Alhambra, Tsuro, Werewolf.

hentzau wrote:Taught a lot of people how to play a lot of games today. Love Letter, Fluxx, 7 Wonders, Smallworld, King of Tokyo, Alhambra, Tsuro, Werewolf.

And when you say you "taught Fluxx" you really mean you didn't do anything! Well, you laid down some cards.

baelthazar wrote:

hentzau wrote:Taught a lot of people how to play a lot of games today. Love Letter, Fluxx, 7 Wonders, Smallworld, King of Tokyo, Alhambra, Tsuro, Werewolf.

And when you say you "taught Fluxx" you really mean you didn't do anything! Well, you laid down some cards.

No, actually taught it. The two girls playing weren't the brightest bulbs in the chandelier.

Wow... just wow... I mean how do you teach a game with no set rules? We usually just say "ok, you draw cards, you play cards, you try to get keepers to match the goal," then begin.

Fluxx is one of my least favorite games, however. I really DETEST Space Fluxx. I will, however, tolerate a game of Cthulhu Fluxx.

Not a big fan of Fluxx either, but it's a good game to introduce non-gamers to gaming with. Plus it's quick to play...had lots of folks coming by looking for easy and quick games to play, and Fluxx and Zombie Dice fit the bill.

Today was a rough one there. I was working from 10-4 today, and we were pretty short handed. I was working the game library and floating helping folks run/learn games. I was also supposed to run the Netrunner tournament (I found out there today). One problem...I've never run an official sanctioned tournament, and I've never played Netrunner. But we managed to find someone to take that over, so that was good. The problem? They found out I knew how to play Munchkin. I taught/played 4 games of Munchkin today. Ugh.

On the plus side, they treated me very well for running games all weekend. Fed me every day, had lots of snacks, got some game promo stuff, admission to the convention, plus $75 credit at the game store sponsoring it. So I picked up Zombicide for $15. No clue if I'll keep it, since the theme doesn't really interest me much. But I couldn't pass it up at that price.

Made it through Chapter 3 of Mice & Mystics yesterday with my two older boys. We definitely had better luck from the die rolls this time around, except for my oldest who ended up being captured twice. He was pretty bummed about that until I revealed that he had won the "Scaper" achievement and the "Poisonmaster" achievement at the same time, so he had something to crow about again at that point. We ended up climbing into the final chamber to face Captain Vurst, and in the first two turns of the game were able to hit him for two damage and then launch a grape at the tabletop which defeated all the enemies there. The rest were easy to mop up and we claimed success!

Really looking forward to progressing further, and we're saving all of our search items and abilities to keep things going in "campaign" mode. So far this has been a lot more enjoyable than the D&D box games.

hentzau wrote:On the plus side, they treated me very well for running games all weekend. Fed me every day, had lots of snacks, got some game promo stuff, admission to the convention, plus $75 credit at the game store sponsoring it. So I picked up Zombicide for $15. No clue if I'll keep it, since the theme doesn't really interest me much. But I couldn't pass it up at that price.

If you aren't into the theme I would sell it without even bothering to open it.

Yes, leave it shrinkwrapped until you play a game or two. I have way too much invested not to bring it whenever there's a chance of getting it on the table.

More Suburbia and then Snowdonia.

Two more games of Kemet.. I’m convinced this is the best light-euro-wargame I’ve ever played. Fast, fun, strategic.

Archipelago, with a full five players. I definitely think this one gets better with more plays. The movement and tile placement rules are really vague in the rulebook. I need to print out the BGG guides for that stuff. I might try the new solo expansion I picked up a few weeks ago as well.

Troyes once. I’m once again reminded how much deeper this game is than all the other dice-rolling games like Alien Frontiers or Kingsburg. They’re good, Troyes is great.

Pax Porfirana again. Great game, the 2 new players want to play it again soon.

Terra Mystica. After nearly 20 plays, this one is definitely in my top games 5 of all time.

This weekend was a blast.

I started to teach Hentzau Pax on Saturday at C2E2 but quickly realized that that was NOT the place to attempt to start such a complex game. Hopefully I'll get in a game this week sometime though. I'm itchin' to play again.

Anyone played Exodus: Proxima Centauri? Have a friend who just picked this up cheap over the weekend. Reviews comparing it to TI3 and Eclipse have me intrigued.

Had a fun and lengthy game of Tales of the Arabian Nights last night. However, we ran into a slightly annoying mechanics quirk related to the Magic Lamp and Blessed status.

The Magic Lamp allows you to gain any status -- which means you can use it to ensure that you always have Blessed status at the beginning of your turn. Blessed allows you to pick any result for a die roll -- which means that you can use it to avoid losing the Magic Lamp on a bad roll (each time you use the Lamp, you have to roll to find out whether you lose it and therefore face an Vengeful Djinn). Together, this means that you never have to risk facing that Djinn, which takes the risk out of the risk-reward equation.

I avoided complaining to the person exploiting the quirk -- I am married to her, after all -- but we'll definitely establish a house rule to prevent this in future games.

I would post about that on BGG. I'm betting there's something we're either missing in the rules about that scenario, or someone already encountered it and has a simple fix.

I'd just play it that Blessed can't modify the roll for the lamp. I don't care how blessed you are, ain't nothing beats pissed off djinn.

I just want to say that Colby Dausch of Plaid Hat Games is a fine individual. I had several of my City of Remnants cards with production creases (very bad ones, unfortunately). I contacted him regarding the matter, within a day he had contacted me back and promptly this morning (two days later) he had sent me a package of replacements! That is how business should be done!

Right now the wife and I are playing Relic and having a great time! She even wants to let it sit and come back to it (which shows me something). It IS a bit too long for what it is, but I still think it is fun anyway.

SpaceLord wrote:Two more games of Kemet.. I’m convinced this is the best light-euro-wargame I’ve ever played. Fast, fun, strategic.

Awesome, I just found this at MM and bought it solely because I thought I remembered some of you praising it. Risk...averted.

still having a blast with Conquest of Planet Earth (and I have only played solo games at that). I have never played it without the Apocalypse expansion, and to be honest, I don't think I ever could now after playing with it. I also bought the Santarri race mini-expansion, and it arrived today. Pretty fun(ny) mechanic with them. Not to mention the "Well-Armed Redneck" Resistance Hero card that came with it (there were I think 10 cards total, along with the Alien Race card).

For those of you that play the game, do you use any of the optional rules? This game is pretty easy to fit your own skill level. After several plays, I was starting to win much more than lose (in fact, I won 4 games straight with the basic rules). So, I decided to flip the Resistance board to the "Brutal" side, and I use the Tech Locations Add to the Tech Breakthrough Die Roll rule found towards the back of the rule book. I also start out with 3 Resistance Counters on the "center" board (the board that starts with the Capital location card), and 2 Resistance Counters on my player board.

The two games I played using those variations were pretty epic (at least in my mind). The last game I played, I was playing as the purple octupus guys, the Arbiters or whatever they are called. I made it up to 7 conquest tokens, but was not able to gain that last one. Then, the Humans began to really fight back, and at one point, I had ZERO saucers on the board, with Rangers in my landing zone. The score ended up with me having 3 Terror when those pesky humans managed to reach the end of their tech track and build that damnable Super Cannon!!

Just an awesome and fun game...it is games like this that makes me glad I am a gamer, and it also makes me wonder why I waited so long to finally pick it up!!

Is the only options left to get Terra Mystica Fun Again games? Seems a little steep on that route. I am guessing that the next printing is about completely sold out.

Just picked up my copy of Terra Mystica from my FLGS (and used a 50% off coupon I'd been saving). The owner confirmed what seems to be the case with the Z-man edition... not enough copies are here for everyone. He only got 4 copies to cover the 7 he'd ordered, and according to posts on BGG some folks are getting emails that their preorders aren't going to be in this lot.