Octopus Overlords

Lordnine wrote:My copy of Flash Point arrived earlier this week. It was part of the Amazon board game sale. It’s quite enjoyable if you like a somewhat chaotic experience. Things can go from perfectly safe to a raging inferno in just a couple turns because of how fire and shockwaves spread.

Also, the figures look nice painted.

My daughter and I yell out a resounding BOOM when a shockwave occurs. It's a mandatory part of the game of course.

I got to play Letters from Whitechapel with my wife and mother in law last night. I was Jack. Things were a little rough getting started, because I probably didn't do a great job of explaining that the board clears after each night, and they're basically separate events. They were also pretty lost about how to go about tracking down Jack. It took them a while to figure out "start at the scene of the crime and work out.

By the third night, they'd started to get dialed in a bit better. I spent a lot of time on the second night weaving through the tight alleys on the east side, before hitting the main street and booking it back to my hideout in the south east. That threw them for a while, but I only just barely made it back in time. There was a really close call where I wound up sitting directly next to a cop, who fortunately only looked for clues in my location. The fourth night was a squeaker too. I didn't have far to go, but the cops had a good idea where my hideout was, so they were clustered around. I managed to stay a step ahead though, and made it home for the win.

I wasn't expecting things to be quite so nerve-wracking as Jack. It's genuinely tense watching the cops close in on you, and you have to have a good poker face to not give any info away as they discuss where you might be, accidentally naming exactly where you are in the process. I think this game would work incredibly well as a Watch It Played episode, with a camera on the board that shows the audience Jack's path along with the cops' positions.

So yeah, thumbs up from me, and I'm looking forward to trying it again with the cops having a better idea of what to do, as well as trying it as the cops myself.

Chaz wrote:I wasn't expecting things to be quite so nerve-wracking as Jack. It's genuinely tense watching the cops close in on you, and you have to have a good poker face to not give any info away as they discuss where you might be, accidentally naming exactly where you are in the process. I think this game would work incredibly well as a Watch It Played episode, with a camera on the board that shows the audience Jack's path along with the cops' positions.

This is exactly why I like playing Fury of Dracula as Dracula so much. The wild swings between nervousness and outright glee as you listen to the hunters discuss your location, get really really close to you, and then talk themselves into accepting your misdirection are the highlight of that game.


On a separate note, I started the main Descent 2ed campaign with my sons this weekend. We got through the Intro and the first quest in the book. It's much more involved but so much more interesting than the Pathfinder ACG game we were playing before. I know the pace of skills/loot is quite a bit slower in Descent, so I'm hoping it keeps them interested and involved. I'm almost playing the Overlord more like a DM than an outright opponent. I want it to be challenging for them, but more than anything I want it to be fun.

I don't think Descent would be as feasible without the new gaming table in the basement. We can finish an adventure and leave everything out for next time, or even set up the next quest and have it ready and waiting to go. If I had to pack and unpack the box each time, it'd be much harder to motivate myself to get it out on the table.

I played Dead of Winter.

It's certainly got a lot of similarities to BSG, with the crisis mechanic and the way to sabotage it. Some of it's streamlined.

It's shorter, which is nice. We didn't end up having a traitor, and the game was on the easy side (we only started having some difficulties in the 4th and 5th rounds). There's a lot less mechanics (locations are mostly just to pick cards), as opposed to BSG where locations are substantially different. The theme isn't as good (although it's hard to beat BSG for theme, given how closely tied it is with the show). It doesn't feel as if you're really fighting Zombies (the way it might in, say, Last Night on Earth), especially given how easy it is to abandon a location (if you no longer need it) surrounded with zombies without any more difficulty than an empty location.

I did like that there were a lot of available characters.

Question: if a crisis failed, are we allowed to look at the cards? (while it wouldn't be as useful as in BSG, I suppose you might be able to deduce some stuff based on where the cards originated from)

Chaz wrote:I got to play Letters from Whitechapel with my wife and mother in law last night. I was Jack. Things were a little rough getting started, because I probably didn't do a great job of explaining that the board clears after each night, and they're basically separate events. They were also pretty lost about how to go about tracking down Jack. It took them a while to figure out "start at the scene of the crime and work out.

By the third night, they'd started to get dialed in a bit better. I spent a lot of time on the second night weaving through the tight alleys on the east side, before hitting the main street and booking it back to my hideout in the south east. That threw them for a while, but I only just barely made it back in time. There was a really close call where I wound up sitting directly next to a cop, who fortunately only looked for clues in my location. The fourth night was a squeaker too. I didn't have far to go, but the cops had a good idea where my hideout was, so they were clustered around. I managed to stay a step ahead though, and made it home for the win.

I wasn't expecting things to be quite so nerve-wracking as Jack. It's genuinely tense watching the cops close in on you, and you have to have a good poker face to not give any info away as they discuss where you might be, accidentally naming exactly where you are in the process. I think this game would work incredibly well as a Watch It Played episode, with a camera on the board that shows the audience Jack's path along with the cops' positions.

So yeah, thumbs up from me, and I'm looking forward to trying it again with the cops having a better idea of what to do, as well as trying it as the cops myself.

Oh wow that seems like something my wife would love to play with me. We had a blast with Mr. Jack years ago because she loved the theme.

Mr Jack = 30 minutes, Letters from Whitechapel = 2+ hours. Keep that in mind. It also plays better with more than 2. The detective side needs chatter, both to work out a plan and to keep Jack entertained.

It took us 2.5 hours for our game, and that's with my really stuttery rules explanation (I haven't played or taught it before, so I went slowly), and allowing for usual game interruptions and my mother in law being a slow player.

It's definitely a step above Mr. Jack, I think. That one's more of a puzzle, this one's more actual cat-and-mouse. It probably does benefit from having multiple players running the cops, but two would work just as well as any other heads-down strategy game. Especially if you ham it up as Jack by cackling wildly and goading the cops on their turn. You know, like ya should.

Well my wife and daughter would play the cops. Sounds perfect.

I was told, and have since come to agree, that the sweet spot for LfW is 3-4 players. Any more than 3 investigators, especially with a strong leader (for good or ill) will marginalize players beyond that. Not to mention the combinatorics of discussion draws out the game even more with more players.

I'm about 6 games into the Descent 2ed campaign with my kids, and my opinion so far is that this game is really stacked in the Overlord's favor. They are perhaps not playing with the most advantageous pair of heroes (they're both ranger/thief types with pet familiars), and their choice of tactics sometimes leaves a lot to be desired. They tend to want to stand up and fight when avoiding combat and accomplishing their goal is more important. Still, it's taken conscious effort on my part not to completely crush them at times.

Based on the mix of master/normal monsters you get with each number of heroes, it seems like having 2 heroes is toughest and having 4 would be easiest. I think I'm going to have to pay more careful attention to the monsters I select, as some of these can be really overpowering against their hero types. My oldest son gets frustrated very easily, so providing challenge and occasional loss without turning him off the game completely is interesting.

Quite enjoyable so far though. I've played through the first half of the campaign before, but have never done the second half with the more varied missions. Will be interesting to see how long we can keep this momentum going.

I haven't played Mr Jack or Letters, but I've played Phantom of the Opera (which I think was made by the same people who did Mr Jack?). It's a neat, short little logic game, where the player playing the detective is trying to deduce who is the Phantom while the Phantom tries to avoid being identified before the end of the game. Each player alternates choose and moving one of the character. At the end of the round, the detective learns whether or not the Phantom was active (that is, at the end of the round, if he's in a room alone, or if he's in a darkened room possibly with others). The detective ideally wants to move the suspects so that half of them are alone and half of them are with others (thus being able to eliminate half of the suspects from suspicion) while the phantom wants to try to make them all alone or all with other people, thus reducing or preventing the elimination of any suspects.

Defiant wrote:I haven't played Mr Jack or Letters, but I've played Phantom of the Opera (which I think was made by the same people who did Mr Jack?). It's a neat, short little logic game, where the player playing the detective is trying to deduce who is the Phantom while the Phantom tries to avoid being identified before the end of the game. Each player alternates choose and moving one of the character. At the end of the round, the detective learns whether or not the Phantom was active (that is, at the end of the round, if he's in a room alone, or if he's in a darkened room possibly with others). The detective ideally wants to move the suspects so that half of them are alone and half of them are with others (thus being able to eliminate half of the suspects from suspicion) while the phantom wants to try to make them all alone or all with other people, thus reducing or preventing the elimination of any suspects.

That's a pretty accurate description of Mr. Jack.

Played my first game of Eldritch Horror this morning, with the 4-year-old. I assumed (hoped) that he would get bored after a bit and let me finish it by myself, but he stuck it out and ended up solving most of the mysteries. We may have fudged things a bit here and there, but we played it more-or-less straight. After a couple of hours, we won, and my son had learned a new word -- Amnesia. Which he now believe means having no face (that only makes sense if you've seen the card).

Big group gaming day this weekend.

Coup, Shadows over Camelot, Love Letter, Alhambre, Gloom, Galaxy Trucker and maybe one or two others I forgot as the beers kicked in....

Good day.

Star Realms, Splendor, Power Grid, and Alien Frontiers for me. Others in my group played Kingsport Festival and Sentinels of the Multiverse.

Got in a great 5 player game of Dead of Winter. We lost, horribly. It was glorious.

My mom-in-law apparently does not do well with games where the deck is stacked against you. I tried teaching her and my wife Crusoe, and she hated it. From about turn three, she was like "well, all these things are making things hard, so we may as well just give up. Why even bother?" It didn't help that I mis-played a particular counter (mostly because I couldn't find the rules about it in the horribly-organized rulebook), but still, frustrating. She just isn't able to laugh at the absurdly awful things going on.

Come to think of it, she always seems to get a bit cranky when she's losing a game, and kinda gloaty when she's winning. Too bad there's no good way to play a game around here without including her. The really sad thing is that that means I probably won't even bother trying Dead of Winter with her, and it's not supposed to be a great two-player game, so I don't know when I'd get to play it.

Missed hentzau's game of Dead of Winter due to major analysis paralysis for two players in our game of Nations. One player in particular was trying to min-max a few loopholes in the game resulting from our misreading of the Unrest rules. While I like what Nations tries, it's just too much work for not enough reward. I've decided that next time I would just rather accept the work of playing Through the Ages instead.

I was able to get King's Forge on the table. It looks like a simple dice-roller, but there's some interesting decisions behind using dice to gather resources as well as to craft an item at the end of the turn. You can press your luck and gather more dice for later, or save the dice to have a better chance of success that turn. There is also an interesting tension between going first and last. Going first is helpful in that you're the first in placement for gathering, and crafting items. But going later permits you to build a "better" item and "steal" it if your roll is better than another player. And each time a player crafts an item, the next available item becomes available to be crafted. While a few players were initially skeptical of the luck factor, it played very quickly and was well-received.

Hepcat taught me Impulse, a space-themed card game which has many elements of Glory to Rome. The game manages to speed up gameplay while introducing a spacial control mechanic. By exploring a face-down sector of space, you place cards onto the table face-up and then trigger their effects every time a transport fleet moves onto the sector. This allows you to put a combo on the table that you can repeat, so long as you can defend and move around the sectors. It includes the same mechanics of boosting cards and converting them into points. Once I

We also finished a quick game of Star Realms. I've been playing on the iOS, but I really do enjoy the feel of playing the cards. When you're playing against a person, the game ends up less one-sided than when playing against the AI.

Watched the last few turns of Russian Railroads and Imperial Settlers, which both looked like fun games.

I picked up Ticket To Ride on our recent vacation and we played it for the first time this weekend. The kids had the hang of it by the middle of the first game which I won handily. Moat_Boy eked out a victory over Moat_Girl in the second to put an end to my winning streak. I sucked major wind in that game and failed to complete two destination tickets. Ouch.

Overall a major thumbs up by the crew. Hopefully we can persuade Moat_Woman to join us for a game in the future. It seem like a game she wouldn't insta-hate.

I broke down and ordered a copy of A Study in Emerald. It looks like an absolutely deranged mishmash of things going on. I like any game that simultaneously contains elder gods, Sherlock Holmes, blimps, zombies, vampires, assassination (via bombs), hidden identities, double agents, and a really cool scoring mechanic.

The Detroit crew seemed to get into Study of Emerald at the last Octocon. It seems to be a game you need to play a few times to really enjoy, so it has been neglected in hepcat's collection of the new hotness.

Yeah, I'm kinda dubious about my ability to get it played enough to really really justify owning it. Still, it's probably going to hold its value fairly well, so I can sell it down the line. I wish it was a better 2-player game than it apparently is, but oh well.

Reached the Interlude of the Descent 2ed campaign I'm running with my kids. After taking it easy on them the first two quests, and having them win, I challenged them harder in the 3rd. Descent quests are divided into two parts - the side that wins part 1 usually has a small advantage in part 2. I won part 1 and decided to not hold back in part 2. The little wankers still managed to beat me. So now going into the Interlude it's Heroes 3, Overlord 0.

I've discovered (or perhaps reaffirmed) that my oldest son really does not handle losing well. He's playing with his younger brother, and if anything happens that doesn't go his way (or his brother doesn't follow his "advice" to bad effect), he gets petulant and whiny. For an almost-13-year-old, it's childish and rather disappointing. Even bad die rolls will have him sulking for a few minutes. I understand the frustration, but he's being a terrible sport. I'm not sure how to deal with it. I've always thought of games as being tremendous teaching tools for all sorts of competitive and social situations, but that doesn't appear to be working here.

Boudreaux wrote:Reached the Interlude of the Descent 2ed campaign I'm running with my kids. After taking it easy on them the first two quests, and having them win, I challenged them harder in the 3rd. Descent quests are divided into two parts - the side that wins part 1 usually has a small advantage in part 2. I won part 1 and decided to not hold back in part 2. The little wankers still managed to beat me. So now going into the Interlude it's Heroes 3, Overlord 0.

I've discovered (or perhaps reaffirmed) that my oldest son really does not handle losing well. He's playing with his younger brother, and if anything happens that doesn't go his way (or his brother doesn't follow his "advice" to bad effect), he gets petulant and whiny. For an almost-13-year-old, it's childish and rather disappointing. Even bad die rolls will have him sulking for a few minutes. I understand the frustration, but he's being a terrible sport. I'm not sure how to deal with it. I've always thought of games as being tremendous teaching tools for all sorts of competitive and social situations, but that doesn't appear to be working here.

For each example of such behavior, "ground" him from the next part and let the better behaved child control.

Boudreaux wrote:I'm not sure how to deal with it. I've always thought of games as being tremendous teaching tools for all sorts of competitive and social situations, but that doesn't appear to be working here.

Not that you asked for my advice, but it's something that I've also noticed in my (now) 8 year old. I switched our focus to play games that are either cooperative in nature (Forbidden Island, for example) or that have a 3rd party "AI" that makes decisions randomly against either player (Catan Junior or Castle Panic). I don't know if it's helping to deal with the competitive desire to win at all costs, but it's made playing games (and winning and losing together) a bit more enjoyable. I'd like to think it's building to a point where she can lose with grace, but I just don't know.

There's also some unofficial Descent 2.0 co-op rules and you can now purchase the co-op packs directly from them, if you enjoy the game but not the win/lose nature of hero vs. overlord player.

Every time he whines or sulks, his party loses a point of Morale. Good sportsmanship raises morale. Morale is represented by tokens that can be spent to buy a reroll. If he doesn't have any morale when he loses morale it's damage to a character in the party. The party is so depressed the rogue has taken up cutting.

coopasonic wrote:The party is so depressed the rogue has taken up cutting.

Had a few good games of Ultimate Werewolf yesterday at a labor day party. I was able to use my new art pack deck from the recent KS. Really enjoyed it. The group really started getting into it by the second game, fun was had by all.

And my great board game purge of 2014 has commenced and has been a smashing success, half over. Lots of new room and now I can focus the games I kept. Probably dumped off 20 games so far on Ebay. After shipping I'm not making much off of them (except games like Attack Wing or KS exclusives) but that really wasn't the point anyways. They are going to people who want them and clearing up space in my collection/head.

I ended up not being able to pull the trigger on Memoir '44... I had it out and was taking pictures of it when I started thinking how cool the game is... and now it is back in my closet.

Smoove_B wrote:Not that you asked for my advice, but it's something that I've also noticed in my (now) 8 year old. I switched our focus to play games that are either cooperative in nature (Forbidden Island, for example) or that have a 3rd party "AI" that makes decisions randomly against either player (Catan Junior or Castle Panic). I don't know if it's helping to deal with the competitive desire to win at all costs, but it's made playing games (and winning and losing together) a bit more enjoyable. I'd like to think it's building to a point where she can lose with grace, but I just don't know.

Interestingly, cooperative games are what he asks to play 95% of the time, I think it's partly because he likes to try to be the "star" of the team, partly because he can't stand the thought of going head-to-head with other people and losing. We've played a ton of co-op games with him and they're usually fun, but...there are so many other great games out there, you know? Even the games that he asks to play that are competitive, they're usually ones that he's so good at he can reasonably expect to win. Learn a new game where he might have to lose a few times before he figures it out? No way.

Chrisoc13 wrote: I ended up not being able to pull the trigger on Memoir '44... I had it out and was taking pictures of it when I started thinking how cool the game is... and now it is back in my closet.

Good man. Bring it to OctoCon and I'll be sure and find time to play with you.

hentzau wrote:

Chrisoc13 wrote: I ended up not being able to pull the trigger on Memoir '44... I had it out and was taking pictures of it when I started thinking how cool the game is... and now it is back in my closet.

Good man. Bring it to OctoCon and I'll be sure and find time to play with you.

I'll have to try and take you up on that. I haven't played it in quite a while but I do rather enjoy the campaigns, and I like that it is an accessible war game. It was realizing that if I ever regretted my decision there would be expansions I couldn't get again that caused me to put it back in the closet (like the air pack).

I still find myself wanting to get the new D-Day map pack despite the fact that I haven't played Memoir in years.

Chrisoc13 wrote: And my great board game purge of 2014 has commenced and has been a smashing success, half over. Lots of new room and now I can focus the games I kept. Probably dumped off 20 games so far on Ebay. After shipping I'm not making much off of them (except games like Attack Wing or KS exclusives) but that really wasn't the point anyways. They are going to people who want them and clearing up space in my collection/head.

Do you have a list of games you are getting rid of somewhere? If there's anything left I'm interested in you wouldn't have to go through the trouble of ebay or shipping.

Archinerd will also hoover up copies of unused RPGs. I think he's nesting.

Awesome.

I have to go back and cut down the Mice & Mystics adventures down into shorter sessions for my 5 and 7 year old daughters.

You can't tell in the picture, but he and I were just the referees. The players for this game were Baby Panda, Cat, and Lion, three of his stuffed animals. He would speak for them in a ridiculous high-pitched voice. It was cute for the first 15 minutes, and exceedingly tedious for the next two hours. The kid was having fun, though.

Archinerd wrote:

Chrisoc13 wrote: And my great board game purge of 2014 has commenced and has been a smashing success, half over. Lots of new room and now I can focus the games I kept. Probably dumped off 20 games so far on Ebay. After shipping I'm not making much off of them (except games like Attack Wing or KS exclusives) but that really wasn't the point anyways. They are going to people who want them and clearing up space in my collection/head.

Do you have a list of games you are getting rid of somewhere? If there's anything left I'm interested in you wouldn't have to go through the trouble of ebay or shipping.

Next time I'll be sure to mention them here. The ones that are not sold yet already have bids on ebay so I can't change it now. The only one left to go up is Myth, but it is going to be for a pretty penny because it is a kickstarter with all the bells and whistles, and honestly it isn't a great game so I would suggest against getting a copy of it ha. But next time that isn't a bad idea. Heck for all the trouble shipping is and the minimal money gained selling them (unless they are miniatures or KS exclusives) I would likely just give them to someone who is interested rather than going through the ebay or BGG trouble next time.

Chrisoc13 wrote:The only one left to go up is Myth, but it is going to be for a pretty penny because it is a kickstarter with all the bells and whistles, and honestly it isn't a great game so I would suggest against getting a copy of it ha.

I am going to be selling my KS copy cheap at BGG.CON because I would feel bad charging much for it.

Myth: Kickstarter's cautionary tale.