Octopus Overlords

hepcat wrote:

hentzau wrote:This is the reason why I didn't like Descent in general. I just couldn't get cutthroat enough, and when I did, the players didn't enjoy themselves.

I didn't have that issue. To the contrary, the players enjoyed it when I was running the game as a story driven RPG with miniature style combat, not as a head to head board game in which I only want to win at any cost.

Yeah, that's what I said. Although poorly.

Ah, sorry. I misread "and when I did" as "and when I didn't". My mistake.

Descent seemed to work best in the middle ground and failed when we failed to find the middle ground.

If the players weren't able realize a solution to a dungeon (or gain an advantage after a series of dungeons in the campaign) then it was demoralizing and there felt like little reason to play but if you (they/we) weren't challenged then the game had no sense of satisfaction. Descent needs a sense of winning/competition more than it needs a sense of RPG, IMO.

In virtue of this, when we found overlord-y bits too powerful, we would house rule/interpret them out in future games but still play competitively.

hepcat wrote:

hentzau wrote:This is the reason why I didn't like Descent in general. I just couldn't get cutthroat enough, and when I did, the players didn't enjoy themselves.

I didn't have that issue. To the contrary, the players enjoyed it when I was running the game as a story driven RPG with miniature style combat, not as a head to head board game in which I only want to win at any cost.

Yeah, the guy who loves to overlord is very cut throat and can not play games if he cannot 'win' them. He has destroyed it for everyone else. He will not play via theme, just the most broken monsters he can find.

If we need to get our heros someplace, he always takes large monsters that block the path, and can stun, etc..

And with 4 players, he gets a few nasty red monsters, and man those things suck. Plus he manages to use his cards fairly well, so he can make his monsters move farther when needed, etc..

So I have shelved the game for now. Maybe when the gaming group evolves I will pull it back out.

I found Descent (are we talking 2nd Ed?) to work fairly well as a competitive game, but that my players got fairly frustrated at early foibles that turned out less serious in the end. For example, a second turn knock-out of a weaker character or blocking. Once they realized that the game is supposed to be close and not be D&D, things worked better. I prefer Mansions of Madness, at any rate, for a similar experience.

I got Ogre assembled in one afternoon. It nearly killed me.

I found Descent (are we talking 2nd Ed?) to work fairly well as a competitive game, but that my players got fairly frustrated at early foibles that turned out less serious in the end. For example, a second turn knock-out of a weaker character or blocking. Once they realized that the game is supposed to be close and not be D&D, things worked better. I prefer Mansions of Madness, at any rate, for a similar experience.

I got Ogre assembled in one afternoon. It nearly killed me.

baelthazar wrote:I found Descent (are we talking 2nd Ed?) to work fairly well as a competitive game, but that my players got fairly frustrated at early foibles that turned out less serious in the end. For example, a second turn knock-out of a weaker character or blocking. Once they realized that the game is supposed to be close and not be D&D, things worked better. I prefer Mansions of Madness, at any rate, for a similar experience.

I got Ogre assembled in one afternoon. It nearly killed me.

have never played Mansions of Madness. Watching a couple of videos on it not to determine if it will make it to the table.

-Ertic

I wish I could enjoy mansions of madness, but I don't. Between the ridiculous set up time and the numerous errors in the first printing (which was then repeated in the first major expansion), I just see it as a massive waste of potential. The puzzles are neat two, maybe three times. But after that they just become annoying. I like the stories in the game but it's just too much crap to wade through for that. I'm hoping FFG's upcoming eldrich horrors is better.

hepcat wrote:I wish I could enjoy mansions of madness, but I don't. Between the ridiculous set up time and the numerous errors in the first printing (which was then repeated in the first major expansion), I just see it as a massive waste of potential. The puzzles are neat two, maybe three times. But after that they just become annoying. I like the stories in the game but it's just too much crap to wade through for that. I'm hoping FFG's upcoming eldrich horrors is better.

Hep,

I have yet to play any of the Cthulhu type games. I recently bough Betrayal At House On The Hill, but its still sitting in the shrink wrap; Damn you Wheaton!

I also have my eye on Eldrich, and may pull the trigger on that next week.

hepcat wrote:I wish I could enjoy mansions of madness, but I don't. Between the ridiculous set up time and the numerous errors in the first printing (which was then repeated in the first major expansion), I just see it as a massive waste of potential. The puzzles are neat two, maybe three times. But after that they just become annoying. I like the stories in the game but it's just too much crap to wade through for that. I'm hoping FFG's upcoming eldrich horrors is better.

Eldritch Horror will be hard to compare with Mansions of Madness, being a co-op with events more like Arkham Horror. But all I have seen indicates EH scratches the same itch as AH, but without the need for constant rules consultation (or a designated rules arbiter). For that, I am extremely excited. I do hear that EH is a bit sparse in the card selection, but that will likely be "fixed" in a few months by numerous expansions.

Played a couple games of the collectors edition of Hanabi, tiles instead of cards, which makes it more like a dominos game. 18 with 3 players, 17 with 4 players.

Then, I played Jack against a 3-person team of investigators in Letters from Whitechapel. I got dogged pretty well on night one, which let them ID my home neighborhood. Night 2 was almost a cakewalk. Night 3 was supposed to be a quick jaunt, but they dogged me halfway across the map before arresting me one move from home. So my record for the game is Investigators 2; Jack 0.

my second copy of the core set for the Star Wars LCG arrived...so I will be putting together a few decks for my son and I to play. Also, this weekend, I will have my two boys create their characters for the Star Wars rpg (from FFG). I have a story set up to play through, next week (4 day weekend, woo hoo!!)

Played 3-players in Infiltration and didn't make it out the door. Coop walked out with the win.

Coop got one move away from beating us at Letters from Whitechapel.

And we just fought to a tiebreaker win for coop on Tash-Kalar.

Played a game of Seasons and Terra Mystica. Both are sweet games that are simple to learn. And they have a lot going on once you know the game so you keep learning new things.

Played a game of Seasons and Terra Mystica. Both are sweet games that are simple to learn. And they have a lot going on once you know the game so you keep learning new things.

Zarathud wrote:Played a game of Seasons and Terra Mystica. Both are sweet games that are simple to learn. And they have a lot going on once you know the game so you keep learning new things.

Oh know... my repeat post virus is spreading...

I totally forgot about Seasons. I am currently making up a "wish list" for relatives. If you play mostly 2-player, would you choose Seasons or Terra Mystica to put on it? TM looks interesting and ticks a lot of boxes, but almost everyone says "it does not come into its own without 4 players." I thought about Mice & Mystics, but I have tons of co-op dungeon crawls, so that seems superfluous.

coopasonic wrote:spent most of yesterday checking out the vendors stuff. Isgimnur wandered in after work, 5 hours later and we played Spartacus, then joined SpaceLord for Glass Road and then Isgrimnur left and Spacelord and I played Tash Kalar.

Spartacus I still like a lot even if Isgrimnur decided to push a stranger to victory. We only played from 7 to 12 but I led from the start drawing the big target. We only had 1 gladiator come up at market and he never got into the arena. All starter gladiators all the time.

Glass Road is not really my sort of game, but I found it interesting. It was very much a learning game for me so my performance wasn't good. I can do better! It's not a game I am going to go out of my way to play.

Tash Kalar was more my style, but Spacelord got screwed on cards and by the 3rd turn I had a pretty dominant position that he just couldn't come back from. The flare cards that are supposed to help keep the leader from running away are a good idea, but aren't always enough... or sometimes even useful. I'll definitely play more if I can find opponents (I haven't bought it, but I probably will).

This morning is the meetup for the virtual flea market. I unloaded 4 games ahead of time, that only leaves 23 to unload in the space of one hour with hundreds of other people milling about trying to do the same thing.

I think I played 4 more games of Tash Kalar over the con and have yet to lose (poor Spacelord). I like it, but I think it should be a $30 game (Z-man was selling it for $65, CSI has it for pre-order at $45) or include more decks. Definitely need more decks. As Isg was placing pieces, most of the time I knew what he was going to summon. There will be expansions of course, but if they are more then about $7-8/deck they are overpriced. I ended up teaching the game to 3 other groups that I saw learning from the rules as I was walking buy. That's a good sign I like a game. Any game that has me interacting with strangers when I am not even playing must be good.

Island Fortress is a lighter euro. I liked it better than Glass Road, but that's not saying much.

Suburbia still Suburbia even with the expansion, Suburbia, Inc. The border tiles are an interesting twist, but they don't change the game. Also SpaceLord broke the game... a lot. His score was close to the sum the other 3 players scores.

Infiltration I played once before and I bought it on that play. I still like it, but it was much lighter than I remember. I guess that's good from my end. That means it is more likely I'll get to play it.

Mage Wars is still awesome. I played with SpaceLord and my Beastmaster made mincemeat out of his Warlord. His bodyguard was being very difficult until I teleported and tanglevined him away. SpaceLord conceded at that point as my upgraded Steelclaw Grizzly with 9 attack dice was about to take a swipe with 4 of his closest friends. I got the Druid vs Necro expansion Friday and got the starter decks put together but didn't get to play it.

SpaceLord and I played one game of Android: Netrunner. I lucked out on stolen agendas from R&D and HQ, which is good because I had no way to get into his remote. Apparently you need a breaker that isn't Crypsis now!

Isgrimnur mentioned our play of Letters from Whitechapel. That is probably my game of the con. From an action perspective, Jack has it a bit on the light side, but it is pretty intense as you watch the detectives try to track you down. Knowing what I know now I think I could have done much better. I didn't really get a few things until we had played a night and then my eyes opened and the gears started turning as I quickly turned into my avatar. Unfortunately it was too late as they already knew too much about my home base location from the first night. I still managed to make it to the 4th night and it was a race to my lair. A race I lost... it was a lot of fun and intellectually stimulating. Too bad it's out of stock and out of print and neither DGM or the DGM guy with the biggest library have it. I hope a reprint is coming!

SpaceLord and I played some soccer(field hockey?) dexterity game with magnetic pieces you controlled from under the playing surface that was amusing. I won 10-9, SpaceLord actually sort of worked out how to do controlled shots but it was too late. Then we moved over to Tumblin Dice which was also kind of fun. SpaceLord won handily.

Level 7: Omega Protocol is X-Com Enemy Unknown crossed with Descent. Very cool tactical combat and SpaceLord wouldn't stop talking about how cool the Overlord's dashboard was.

We played something else that was sort of Love Letter-ish but more complicated and strategically confusing. No idea of the name.

Powerboats... why of why did I sell my copy. I should have sold Formula D instead! Yeah, of course it's out of print, but if you can get it and you like Formula D, do eet!

Isgrimnur and I demo-ed Devastation of the Indines with the designed doing the rules explanation. I am not really sure why Tom Vasel is so high on that game.

I may have played a few other games that I am not remembering right now, but that's enough!

coopasonic wrote: Level 7: Omega Protocol is X-Com Enemy Unknown crossed with Descent. Very cool tactical combat and SpaceLord wouldn't stop talking about how cool the Overlord's dashboard was.

I owned the base game at one point, but after trying it solo once I felt there wasn't enough there to merit owning it. I subsequently sold it at an auction at Origins. It sounds like the expansion clears up some of my issues with the base game though.

hepcat wrote:

coopasonic wrote: Level 7: Omega Protocol is X-Com Enemy Unknown crossed with Descent. Very cool tactical combat and SpaceLord wouldn't stop talking about how cool the Overlord's dashboard was.

I owned the base game at one point, but after trying it solo once I felt there wasn't enough there to merit owning it. I subsequently sold it at an auction at Origins. It sounds like the expansion clears up some of my issues with the base game though.

It's a wholly independent game from the Escape game. At the airport, more reports coming tomorrow.

baelthazar wrote:I totally forgot about Seasons. I am currently making up a "wish list" for relatives. If you play mostly 2-player, would you choose Seasons or Terra Mystica to put on it?

Seasons, no doubt. Seasons is a drafting and resource management game. That mechanic easily scales along with the number of players. Terra Mystica is a Euro where you want to be crowded because of the building discount, but not blocked out. The board will not give a lot of tension in 2 players. 3 players is good, but I really expect it to shine at 4 players.

My son, Jacob, and I, played a game of Star Wars LCG tonight. He was a Smuggler/Jedi deck, I was Scum & Villainy....

He came oh so close to beating me. It came down to the last Edge Battle on the turn right before the Death Star Dial would turn to 12...and he lost the Edge Battle. If he would have won that Edge Battle, he would have won the game. I was silently cheering him on to win. It is sometimes tough playing games with him, though, because I want him to win, but I want him to earn the win, not me handing him the win. He made me proud, though, as he was making me think he was going to pull out the win.

I redid his deck, making him a straight smugglers & spies deck (this one: http://www.cardgamedb.com/index.php/sta ... -main-r317" target="_blank), only I added an additional "To Arms" and "Raise the Stakes" pods.

We also sat down and he created his character for our upcoming Star Wars rpg campaign I have been working on. His character?

He named him Shaddaraq. He is a human smuggler from Tatooine. His parents (who were moisture farmers) were killed when he was 10 years old in a Stormtrooper raid (reasons for the stormtrooper raid are unknown). He wandered the Jundland Wastes and somehow (barely) survived to stumble upon the small palace of Tietoo the Hutt, a small Hutt crime lord. The Hutt was impressed with the fact that the kid somehow managed to survive in the Wastes, and "took" him in, making him a slave. As the kid grew, the Hutt began to train him as his own smuggler, and by the time he was 15, he was running smuggling jobs on his own in ships that belonged to the Hutt.

Shaddaraq is now 20, and the Hutt has "supplied" him (and the rest of the party) a ship, The Ravager. Shaddaraq is indebted to the Hutt, though, and must pay the Hutt a percentage of any of his earnings from jobs he takes, and must be available to Tietoo at a moments notice. The campaign will begin during the last half of his first smuggling job on his own, coming out of Hyperspace at the virtually uncharted moon, Smuggler's Paradise...and that is when the fit hits the shan!!

I have the story in my mind...just need to figure out HOW to get it from my mind to the paper...any tips from you GM/DM's out there?

SpaceLord wrote:

hepcat wrote:

coopasonic wrote: Level 7: Omega Protocol is X-Com Enemy Unknown crossed with Descent. Very cool tactical combat and SpaceLord wouldn't stop talking about how cool the Overlord's dashboard was.

I owned the base game at one point, but after trying it solo once I felt there wasn't enough there to merit owning it. I subsequently sold it at an auction at Origins. It sounds like the expansion clears up some of my issues with the base game though.

It's a wholly independent game from the Escape game. At the airport, more reports coming tomorrow.

Ah, I just assumed they were going to keep expanding the original Level 7. Omega Protocol actually sounds cool. Why couldn't THAT have been the game I saw and purchased at Gencon in 2012?

Our gaming group had a 5 player Terra Mystica and a 6 player Power Grid going at the same time. I was in the Terra game - good times. Managed to pull off the win with a temple emphasis. One guy was clearly out in the lead early on, but I saw he was money dependent and I kept working to deny him access to the money bonus and the power move.

The Power Grid game went really well. It was a three way tie at the end with powered cities and money being the tie breaker.

It was a good night.

So, my 11-year-old son was building his Christmas wishlist this weekend and stumbled across the Legendary Marvel deck building game, which he's decided he wants for Christmas. While he's played enough of my game collection to be better informed than most, I'm sure he knows nothing about this other than "deck-building game" and "Marvel superheroes".

I'm not a huge comics guy so I've avoided Legendary, Sentinels of the Multiverse and their ilk to now, but from the limited research I've done this morning Sentinels seems to be the superior game. In particular, the emphasis on playing a single character vs. the group/team approach in Legendary is much more his style - they adore the character-building aspect of Pathfinder. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how well the generic non-Marvel setting will go over vs. a game with The Avengers. Any thoughts on these two side-by-side?

Legendary is a deckbuilder and Sentinels is not.
Legendary has the licensed characters. Sentinels has recognizable takes of licensed characters.
Legendary is too easy solo. Sentinels is too hard solo.
Legendary is a lighter game. Sentinels is more fiddly.
Sentinels seems to have more replayability with the combinations of Villains and Environments. Legendary plays pretty much the same regardless of the Villain and Scheme.
Legendary you play the team(s). Sentinels you play one character (or more but they are individuals).
Both are heavy as hell with all the expansions.

To me neither has anything at all like the deckbuilding in pathfinder.

If I could only have one of them I think it would be Legendary because it can be fun solo. Sentinels really can't.

coopasonic wrote:Isgrimnur mentioned our play of Letters from Whitechapel. That is probably my game of the con. From an action perspective, Jack has it a bit on the light side, but it is pretty intense as you watch the detectives try to track you down. Knowing what I know now I think I could have done much better. I didn't really get a few things until we had played a night and then my eyes opened and the gears started turning as I quickly turned into my avatar. Unfortunately it was too late as they already knew too much about my home base location from the first night. I still managed to make it to the 4th night and it was a race to my lair. A race I lost... it was a lot of fun and intellectually stimulating. Too bad it's out of stock and out of print and neither DGM or the DGM guy with the biggest library have it. I hope a reprint is coming!

Looks like the reprint is on it's way to the warehouse per FFG. Yay!

More people need to play this game.

I will be purchasing a copy as soon as it's available. And then I will sit down and try to figure out a way to make it a forum game. Obviously, the mod will have to play Jack.

coopasonic wrote:Powerboats... why of why did I sell my copy. I should have sold Formula D instead! Yeah, of course it's out of print, but if you can get it and you like Formula D, do eet!

Not sure if you'll thank me, but my go-to local distributor apparently has one copy in stock for $42.

TheMix wrote:

coopasonic wrote:Powerboats... why of why did I sell my copy. I should have sold Formula D instead! Yeah, of course it's out of print, but if you can get it and you like Formula D, do eet!

Not sure if you'll thank me, but my go-to local distributor apparently has one copy in stock for $42.

That's pretty good considering I just sold my copy for $50. I think I would prefer an English language version though. There's no text in the gameplay, but it could still be helpful.

So, my son (Jacob) beat me in Star Wars LCG, using the Smugglers & Spies deck (I was playing as the Imperial Navy). I only had to remind him a couple of times about abilities, and help him a bit with the very last turn.

He had Han, Chewbacca and Lando on the table, then played the Blackade Runner. Took out the last two objectives he needed for the win. The Death Star Dial was at 11, so my next turn, I would have won.

Tomorrow, we plan on playing again (him, again, as the Smugglers), but I will be using the Sith Deck I have built.

We both are really loving this game, though.

Jacob and I played our game of Star Wars LCG. He played the Smugglers & Spies deck, I played a Sith deck. He did pretty good, actually, even though the Dark Side won. He ended up with 2 of the 3 objectives to win. What helped the DS was controlling the force. Palpatine came in late in the game, but Vader did come out somewhat early (I started the game with a Vader in my hand, then the next turn, the 2nd Vader was drawn). Force Choke and Force Lightening was just too much, along with the Dark Memories cards. Sith are tough in this game, especially when it is very easy for that deck to control the Force.

I am thinking about a LS Jedi deck, to counter the Sith control Kenobi and Yoda could counter Palpatine and Vader, I think...

We are for sure loving this game. Looking forward to the Balance of the Force and the new cycle to start up in January...

well...Jacob beat me pretty badly in our Jedi vs Sith game. I was the Sith again, he was Jedi. I had a hard time getting my cards out to play for the first couple of turns, allowing him to roll in and stomp me. Now if I could just get him to play the Dark Side sometimes, too.

Yesterday we had a 5 player long game of Spartacus and an equally long game of Duel of Ages II. Really enjoyed both. Then we broke out the Flash Point and played two straight games as it turned out to be a bigger hit than I expected with that crowd. Good times all around.

I'm in st Louis, ran to miniature market for a black Friday sale. That was awesome. Picked up castle panic for $14, halo risk, formula d for $20, a box of zombies for zombicide, a third core set for xwing for 20 and the base set for pathfinder adventure card game for around $20. Played a game of formula d and enjoyed it still. I was pretty happy with my miniature market haul. They also tacked on some free games for my brother. Dent and ding sale mixed with black Friday was good to me.

Chrisoc13 wrote:I'm in st Louis, ran to miniature market for a black Friday sale. That was awesome. Picked up castle panic for $14, halo risk, formula d for $20, a box of zombies for zombicide, a third core set for xwing for 20 and the base set for pathfinder adventure card game for around $20. Played a game of formula d and enjoyed it still. I was pretty happy with my miniature market haul. They also tacked on some free games for my brother. Dent and ding sale mixed with black Friday was good to me.

Dang. If I would have known about it I may have made the drive down yesterday. I'm at my folks, about an hour and a half away. Of course, probably would have spent as much money in gas as I would have saved. And I have everything you mentioned there, save Risk Halo.

Yeah for some reason I keep buying different versions of risk. Not sure why, I never end up paying them. But I do love halo... and risk is my favorite childhood game.

My brother grabbed the dominion starter bundle for 22.50 - base game and prosperity plus alchemy. Then I had fun talking my sister in law into buying games, I think I convinced her to spend close to 2 hundred dollars by the end. But she got a lot of games for that much. It's always more fun getting other people to spend their money.

They also had a five and ten dollar table set up but those games were far from impressive.

I really like Tales of the Arabian Nights, but never really thought about how it scales with large numbers of players. Which is how I found myself in a six-player game that stretched waaayyyyy later than any of us had planned last night. I won't be repeating that experiment any time soon. (But props to my 8-year-old nephew for seeing it through. I never would have made it past 1 AM at that age.)

I too love TotAB. But 3 to 4 is the most I'll go. That's the sweet spot for the game.

anyone ever play Horus Heresy from FFG? If so, what are your thoughts about the game?

MythicalMino wrote:anyone ever play Horus Heresy from FFG? If so, what are your thoughts about the game?

I have heard it has nice minis but has HUGE gameplay problems. I would give it a pass or at least do some deep research on BGG.