Octopus Overlords

Played a game of Concept with my family Sunday evening. I won it from a contest that my FLGS was running. This isn't normally a game that I would pick up myself, but I have to say that the family and I had a great time playing it.

With Concept, people place tokens on a board filled with various symbols, and based on the symbols that are chosen, you try and figure our the word or phrase that they were trying to convey to you.

For example:



This is the one that I won the contest with.The "?" starts the idea of what you are trying to convey, and you use little colored blocks to continue out the idea. If you want to add another element to what they are trying to do, you start off with a "!" and a new color.

Recommended as a fun, light party game that can be played with up to 10 people. Biggest problem is that everyone needs to crowd around a board to play. The rules for scoring seem kind of tacked on, and after our first game we just took turns drawing cards and having folks try and figure out what we were trying to convey.

That's what I came up with too, but it feels like a stretch.

coopasonic wrote:That's what I came up with too, but it feels like a stretch.

A stretch? I think it's brilliant! (if that's what it is)

I guess there is only so much...

Yes, that's what it is. I happened to sign onto Facebook like 2 minutes after the posted it, and was lucky enough to be the first responder. Then was lucky enough to have my name pulled to win the game.

coopasonic wrote:I guess there is only so much...

Spoiler:

holiday violence on a rooftop

I saw the last one as "tall building" rather than "rooftop".

Either way we got the Concept.

Finally going to play some games starting tomorrow at Origins. Missions are written. Minis packed. Very excited to get away from work and stop sleeping all the time.

Introduced my kids to "Hey, That's My Fish!" this weekend. It is pretty clear I haven't worked out the strategy yet. I lost a 2 player game to my 8 year old, then we both lost a 3 player game to the 4 year old. Fun little game though, even if the setup is a pain in the neck.

coopasonic wrote:Introduced my kids to "Hey, That's My Fish!" this weekend. It is pretty clear I haven't worked out the strategy yet. I lost a 2 player game to my 8 year old, then we both lost a 3 player game to the 4 year old. Fun little game though, even if the setup is a pain in the neck.

If you want to skip the setup, it's available on iOS and Android.

My oldest ended up explaining That's My Fish while visiting the FLGS booth at the Chicago Toy & Game Fair 2 years ago -- fun game with a bit of decision-making about how aggressive you want to be in blocking. You can ramp it up or down to keep the kids happy. And they will enjoy getting your penguin eaten by sharks in the app!

Picked up Splendor last week, and have played about a half-dozen times. What a great little engine-building game. Barely a page of rules and only 3 really distinct actions throughout the entire game, but tons of agonizing decisions and options. My wife has really taken to it, and most of our games have been super close - one person will eke out a win the turn before someone else would have done it. We won't talk about the crushing 15-4 drubbing my wife gave me last week.

I just ordered a copy of the second print run of The Mushroom Eaters. It's a game about taking a shamanistic psychedelic mushroom trip. The board unfolds as the game progresses, and is meant to be viewed through 3d glasses. The initial print run was 50 copies, hand-made by the designer. This next run will be not much bigger, and still mostly hand-made.

Yeah, this one will definitely take the cake as weirdest damn game I own.

Chaz wrote:I just ordered a copy of the second print run of The Mushroom Eaters. It's a game about taking a shamanistic psychedelic mushroom trip. The board unfolds as the game progresses, and is meant to be viewed through 3d glasses. The initial print run was 50 copies, hand-made by the designer. This next run will be not much bigger, and still mostly hand-made.

Yeah, this one will definitely take the cake as weirdest damn game I own.

Nate, the designer, is a friend of mine. He's definitely an interesting guy: He's made 3 games of note: one about being in a prison, another with a black metal theme, and a 3rd about shrooms. You can't say he's stuck in a rut, hah.

Yeah, I'd love to pick up Cave Evil, but the price is a sticking point. Which is silly considering I just paid slightly less for Mushroom Eaters. I guess I figure that the theme/gameplay for Mushroom Eaters is more unusual, while Cave Evil has an interesting theme but standard (if well-done according to reviews) gameplay. Also, I think I can get my wife to play Mushroom Eaters, but no way she'd be into Cave Evil.

If anyone wants to send me Cave Evil for my birthday though, that'd be cool.

Boudreaux wrote:Picked up Splendor last week, and have played about a half-dozen times. What a great little engine-building game. Barely a page of rules and only 3 really distinct actions throughout the entire game, but tons of agonizing decisions and options. My wife has really taken to it, and most of our games have been super close - one person will eke out a win the turn before someone else would have done it. We won't talk about the crushing 15-4 drubbing my wife gave me last week.

Splendor is just elegant. It deserves the Spiel.

SpaceLord wrote:

Boudreaux wrote:Picked up Splendor last week, and have played about a half-dozen times. What a great little engine-building game. Barely a page of rules and only 3 really distinct actions throughout the entire game, but tons of agonizing decisions and options. My wife has really taken to it, and most of our games have been super close - one person will eke out a win the turn before someone else would have done it. We won't talk about the crushing 15-4 drubbing my wife gave me last week.

Splendor is just elegant. It deserves the Spiel.

Cool. Never heard of it before this and now I have a copy showing up in a couple of days.

If you're interested in getting a copy of Dead of Winter sooner rather than later, you might want to preorder one on the Plaid Hat site. Apparently they got 3000 copies printed, then ran into a delay on the other 7000. So they're shipping enough to cover preorders to the European distributor, and the rest to cover US preorders.

According to a BGG post by the Plaid Hat guy, there should be about 700 copies coming to the US that aren't spoken for yet, so you can still preorder. After those are gone, you'll be waiting on that second batch of 7000 to be printed and shipped over, so it might be a few extra months. Just sayin'!

Completed my Origins 2014 update, complete with pictures!

Super excited about a new acquisition today. I managed to find a copy of Robinson Crusoe & The Adventure on the Cursed Island at my local game shop. Even better, they were having a 15% off moving sale on top of the discounts off of retail. Wound up nabbing it for $56 after tax.

Will probably not get a chance to play until next weekend, but that gives me some time to absorb the rules and watch some gameplay videos.

My gaming group is really into hardcore cooperative games like Ghost Stories, so the more difficult to win, the better. This should be right up our alley!

Awesome, nice deal. Robinson Crusoe is such a great game, and while it can be as brutally difficult as Ghost Stories it also seems to be much easier to see where in the game you made a bad decision. I rarely want to immediately play Ghost Stories again, whereas I almost always want to play again to try something different in Robinson Crusoe.

Also, for any others with the game, the designer (Ignacy Trzewiczek) just posted a free new scenario based on the search for Dr. Livingstone. Haven't had a chance to try it yet but the new ideas he's put into this one are really interesting.

I picked up Phantom Leader last week and played my first couple of missions over the weekend. I really like the game design -- very clean and streamlined while still offering tough decisions. Once I'm more familiar with the ordnance options, I suspect it will move even more quickly.

My first mission was a cakewalk, largely because I over-prepared and spent way too many Special Operations points on way too many fancy rockets and bombs. Also, I forgot to apply the weight penalty of my target location. The second mission was a farce, albeit a harmless one -- the enemy defenses kept missing my planes, and my planes kept missing the target. I damaged, but did not destroy, the tank depot I was targeting, while just one of my four planes took a hit.

I'm definitely happy with the purchase.

Chaz wrote:If you're interested in getting a copy of Dead of Winter sooner rather than later, you might want to preorder one on the Plaid Hat site. Apparently they got 3000 copies printed, then ran into a delay on the other 7000. So they're shipping enough to cover preorders to the European distributor, and the rest to cover US preorders.

According to a BGG post by the Plaid Hat guy, there should be about 700 copies coming to the US that aren't spoken for yet, so you can still preorder. After those are gone, you'll be waiting on that second batch of 7000 to be printed and shipped over, so it might be a few extra months. Just sayin'!

Does anyone know how the 3000 copies are allocated? I had pre-ordered from Cool Stuff Inc., and I'm wondering if my order will be part of the 3000, or the delayed 7000. Since I've still never received my pre-ordered Marvel Dice Masters I'm a bit gun shy.

I emailed CSI to ask, but have never heard back from them.

I've got no concrete info, but I kind of assume the ones that are on the boat would go out for retailer preorders too. I can't really imagine that they managed to pre-sell that many copies direct from their site.

I checked the local distributor that I use.

They show as having 3 copies. Assuming this is the correct game.

Edit: And it appears that it's not. So ... nothing to see here.

I called Cool Stuff Inc. and they have pushed back their expected date to receive Dead of Winter to September/October. It appears that the 3000 copies of the game are not going to other retailers.

So I hopped onto the Plaid Hat Games site and pre-ordered there. Here's hoping it will be fulfilled, as it's one of the few games my wife has expressed interest in playing.

There was a post on BGG that sounds like they'll keep the orders open until they presell the incoming allotment. So if you were able to place an order, it sounds like you'll be good to get one in this shipment. *fingers crossed*

Had a big session on the weekend.

Zombicide started the day with 6 of us. Might have been too many for an early scenario as we were never in much danger as murder machines near the end.

Pandemic did what Pandemic always does. Beat us on the very last turn.

A lot of Coup which I now love madly.

Boss Monster - love the art, not sure I like the game.

Beers and werewolf with some folks that didn't seem to get it. When the Hunter takes out the Seer on the first turn - things are not going well.

Finally got a chance to play my first proper game of Robinson Crusoe last night. I attempted a couple of solo sessions earlier in the week to get a feel for the rules, and watched a lot of gameplay videos, so I was pretty well prepared.

We did very well starting out, throwing wood on the bonfire and managing to have a roof up before the weather started moving in. However, some unlucky Event cards forced us to skip a couple of production phases and had us burning actions gathering food instead of focusing on building.

Once we got that under control and started focusing on builds, I hit an unlucky dice roll streak. I wound up failing to build 7 items in a row, which really devastated our chances. When a branch fell and crushed our roof in Round 6, we knew our days were numbered. A final violent storm moved in and, being at the total mercy of the elements and with no food, we died of exposure.

All in all, however, I think we did very well considering our circumstances. Had I not failed so many dice rolls I think we probably would have won, as the inventions I was making would have shored up our food supply and given us weapons to hunt furs for shelter. I'm optimistic for the next round.

The game went over REALLY well, and the guy I played with totally fell in love with the game. Had it not been getting so late, I think we would have definitely given it another shot. Great purchase, and one of the few games in my collection I could see myself playing solo.

The bonfire mission is a bitch. I found the next few missions easier. Events or failures will sink you. Crusoe is one of those games where the story of how you lost compels you to try again.

Zarathud wrote:The bonfire mission is a bitch. I found the next few missions easier. Events or failures will sink you. Crusoe is one of those games where the story of how you lost compels you to try again.

I think I'm going to get this on the table next week. Been a long time since I've played.

We're now 0-4 with Crusoe, but it hasn't dimmed our enthusiasm for it at all. We came literally within 1 wound of winning on our final game. So close! I've seen most reviewers say the bonfire scenario took about 6 tries before they beat it, and I think that sounds about right.

Last Saturday of the month game day!

2 games of Pandemic - 4 players, we won first, second - we played w/ the bio-terrorist, 3 other players, we still won, couple really close calls w/ the bioterrorist and one of the diseases though. Makes 3 times total I've played this and won, and 3 times total in 2 other coop games, we won. I seem to be lucky or do well w/ coop games.

Puerto Rico - now I finally Know what this game is! 5 players, I ended up in 4th (not even close to first).

Shadowhunters - played 4 player (2 hunters, 2 shadows), I was a shadow - the Vampire. They took the other shadow out quickly but I was doing decent, but then I just couldn't hit to save my life. Bad luck got one of the hunters, the other was about 2 points from death but managed to finish me off first.

Then we played a couple 3 player games (1 H, 1 S, 1 Neutral in one game, 3 neutrals in the other, just trying to shake it up). 3 neutrals, we all lost. I was the hunter in the other game, one - the Neutral player screwed up a bit, she needed the player to her right (the Shadow) to win, but killed the shadow.

Dominions - now I finally know what this game is too! We didn't have time to finish it, as far as we got, I won by 1 point! Not sure I would have won if we had continued. 3 player game, the third player was playing screwy, no real chance of winning (not her game, she didn't really understand it well, so was playing a goofy strategy to try and screw w/ us).

All and all, very fun day! So incredibly glad I found out about this and that I decided to skip a 5 hour round trip car ride to cousin's kid's graduation on the other side of the state! (OK, I wouldn't have minded going, but hadn't realized til I looked it up that it was about twice as far away as I thought it was).

YellowKing wrote:Once we got that under control and started focusing on builds, I hit an unlucky dice roll streak. I wound up failing to build 7 items in a row, which really devastated our chances.

Sometimes going the safe route is faster in the long run.

coopasonic wrote:Sometimes going the safe route is faster in the long run.

Yeah, we started realizing that in the last game. In our early plays we tried to throw wood on the bonfire as often as possible for fear that we would not have enough by Round 12. What we didn't take into consideration is that if you can't SURVIVE until Round 12, then the point is moot anyway.

Last game we stopped worrying about the bonfire and focused on our shelter and roof situation. Turns out we still had plenty of wood towards the end of the game because we had a solid foundation and weren't throwing wood away due to weather every round.

The one thing I like so much about this game compared to a lot of the other co-op games I have is that the "decision tree" is much bigger, and changes constantly due to events popping up. I have a lot of co-op games that every round is almost preordained because we all know the obvious strategy to take to succeed. While that element of luck may be frustrating to some, and definitely makes the game harder, I find it very rewarding since it forces everyone to really think about every single move vs following a rote strategy.

It finally happened. A game popped up (Legendary: Villains - had no idea it was even a thing) that I want and I don't have anything in my wishlist to put in the cart with it to get free shipping. I may actually have to suppress my impulse to buy immediately!

Technically I could get Tash-Kalar and Battlelore, but those are both "maybe someday" games. I want to see how Tash-Kalar is expanded, if ever (and it still costs too much). Battlelore I would buy, but it wouldn't get me all the way to free anyway.

Also how does a game like Villains get released without me hearing about it. You people are asleep at the wheel! I guess it is too mainstream?

Saw that at the FLGS today. I resisted getting it though because I was already dropping about $60 on some stuff for my current project.

So Legendary is good? I always overlooked it. How is it with 2-players?

I guiltily ordered Dead of Winter. I just could not resist.

baelthazar wrote:So Legendary is good? I always overlooked it. How is it with 2-players?

I guiltily ordered Dead of Winter. I just could not resist.

Have you played Sentinels of the Multiverse? It's the lighter, deck-builder version of that. It plays pretty well with two, but it is fairly light and semi-co-op. I am a fan.