Octopus Overlords

Zarathud wrote:Spent tonight unboxing Wrath of Ashardalon and the Cosmic Conflict expansion for Cosmic Encounter (now with 7 players!). I won't get to play Wrath until Tuesday.

I've got both of those coming on Tuesday myself!

Just an FYI, if you want to sleeve Wrath of Ashardalon, the Mayday Green label sleeves do not equal the Fantasy Flight Games Green label sleeves. The Mayday ones work, the FFG do not. Thankfully, I needed the green sleeves for Cosmic Conflict, or else I would have been stuck with 3 packs of extra sleeves.

The gaming group came over last night so I got in a couple of games of Pandemic and the old gaming classic Survive!

Later that night, I put in my order for Wrath of Ashardalon and the new version of Survive. Will have to wait of ordering Battle Cry for another day.

No board games this weekend, we were rearranging the living room bookshelf playing hotseat Heroes III

Around round of Heroscape, defending a castle siege. Tul-Bak-Ra can get bent.

We also managed to play the first two scenarios for the Castle Ravenloft board game. It was a lot of fun and probably the closest thing to a PnP RPG experience that I've had in over a decade. My only observation was how difficult the game was. For a while during the first scenario I didn't think we were going to be able to win. But the challenged definitely improved the overall experience, so that's a bonus. I think after we burn through the remaining 12 or so scenarios, I'll pick up the new D&D game. I also saw that they are releasing one based on Drizzt this coming Fall. It seemed expensive at first, but now that I see just how much play time we're going to get out of it, I'm impressed.

Smoove_B wrote:Around round of Heroscape, defending a castle siege. Tul-Bak-Ra can get bent.

We also managed to play the first two scenarios for the Castle Ravenloft board game. It was a lot of fun and probably the closest thing to a PnP RPG experience that I've had in over a decade. My only observation was how difficult the game was. For a while during the first scenario I didn't think we were going to be able to win. But the challenged definitely improved the overall experience, so that's a bonus. I think after we burn through the remaining 12 or so scenarios, I'll pick up the new D&D game. I also saw that they are releasing one based on Drizzt this coming Fall. It seemed expensive at first, but now that I see just how much play time we're going to get out of it, I'm impressed.

I do love me some Ravenloft. I think the thing I like best about it is the easy setup and length of game. Anytime I can get in two games in a 3 hour period, I'm all over that game. I have Wrath of Asharamalamdingdong that I picked up this weekend, I may break it out tomorrow night for our Monday night gaming session. But I'm also tempted to give Defenders of the Realm another try tomorrow. We've played a game the past two Mondays in a row, and the game has made us it's bitch every single time. Despite not even being close to winning in either game, I really want to keep at it. It has to be possible to win!

It does set up and play rather quick (once you're used to the rules). My only complaint is that there are a million pieces that are scenario specific. So in practice I have bags of things that will only be used once. Now that I realize that, I'm going to organize them a bit better to speed up the game play.

We were laughing at how much it really was like playing D&D (to a degree) and I think it really cemented the excitement for Mansions of Madness next month.

It does help get your D&D itch taken care of. But going to D&D Experience a couple of weeks ago has me jonesing for more real D&D. Wish my daughter wasn't so busy with school and we hadn't lost our fifth PC to a move.

Gaming convention weekend!

Wooo!

Played:

Conquest of Planet Earth: The Space Alien Game - a cute homage to 50's-era SciFi films. The look of the game is great, and campy. The play is pretty cool, with dramatically different cooperative and competitive game modes.

Finally played Titan. Whew, what a long, epic game. I can see Analysis Paralysis being a problem here. Was pretty fun, though.

Played two more games of Chaos in the Old World, and I like it more each time. With experienced players, it's a great, epic struggle, with many game decided on the last turn.

I also picked up Wrath of Ashardalon this weekend, and got a game in!

It was fun, but strange, in that the Encounter cards were often harder than the monsters placed on tiles. The Treasure cards are pretty sweet, which I hear is an improvement over Ravenloft's weak treasure. Looking forward to more games!

hentzau wrote:But I'm also tempted to give Defenders of the Realm another try tomorrow. We've played a game the past two Mondays in a row, and the game has made us it's bitch every single time. Despite not even being close to winning in either game, I really want to keep at it. It has to be possible to win!

At Origins, the booth's Defenders of the Realm ratio was about 1/3 games ending in a win -- something that's projected to turn into 50/50 with a little practice.

SpaceLord wrote:Conquest of Planet Earth: The Space Alien Game - a cute homage to 50's-era SciFi films. The look of the game is great, and campy.

This was on my radar, but I read a review where it was compared to a slimmed down version of Cosmic Encounters. That seemed a wierd comparison, so what's your sense?

Zarathud wrote:

hentzau wrote:But I'm also tempted to give Defenders of the Realm another try tomorrow. We've played a game the past two Mondays in a row, and the game has made us it's bitch every single time. Despite not even being close to winning in either game, I really want to keep at it. It has to be possible to win!

At Origins, the booth's Defenders of the Realm ratio was about 1/3 games ending in a win -- something that's projected to turn into 50/50 with a little practice.

SpaceLord wrote:Conquest of Planet Earth: The Space Alien Game - a cute homage to 50's-era SciFi films. The look of the game is great, and campy.

This was on my radar, but I read a review where it was compared to a slimmed down version of Cosmic Encounters. That seemed a wierd comparison, so what's your sense?

No, it's not like CE. There's different alien races with different powers, the ships do look like the disks in CE, but that's about it. There's not as much negotiation. I only played 1.5 games, and there weren't any direct battles.

Big gaming weekend here for once, got together with some friends for a couple games of Innovation, and a couple games of Settlers of Catan - the "Simply Catan" version, not the original. It's definitely spruced up a bit, and pretty good if you're willing to play the beginner's setup for every game. I don't think I'll be replacing my standard version though. Innovation was fun as always, and scored what I consider the best coup for games - upon completion of the first game, one of the other players immediately asked to play again.

Last night we wrapped up the weekend with a game of Mystery Express. The game seems to really drag on a long time for what it is, and I'm not sure what I can do to make things go faster. Our game was over 2 hours, and it really seems like you should be able to wrap it up in 90 minutes or less. I'm going to attribute it to extra time spent thinking and people just not thinking about what they want to do as their turn approaches. Still, even with the long duration it's a fun game.

Multiple games of 7 Wonders with Redwarlord and his wife this weekend. Then a game of Ascension and a great game of Cutthroat Caverns. All winners according to everyone.

I also played a couple of games of Race for the Galaxy and finally got to try one of the tutorial scenarios for Earth Reborn. I absolutely love the way orders are handled. It's a fantastic blend of boardgaming and miniatures and I'm really looking forward to playing through the rest of the scenarios someday soon.

Lords Of Vegas and Witch's Brew on Saturday then Isla Dorada*, King Up!, Poison and WarCraft: The Boardgame* on Sunday.

"*" games were first plays for us. I like Isla Dorada but it does get very back-stabby and I'm not sure my kids will want to play it often. I found WarCraft horribly complex to teach my son but simple enough to play once we got the hang of it. I enjoyed the game but I feel it'll play better with three or four players.

Question for those of you who have played the new D&D board games like Ravenloft - what can you tell me about the suitability for younger kids? And by suitability, I don't mean complexity or length, I'm more interested in whether they have any "objectionable" content like particularly bloody or violent images, names, or descriptions of anything. I mean, it is fantasy D&D roleplaying so I expect a bit of that, but I'm curious how prevalent it is. Are there any Daggers of Ripping Out Your Spine and Making a Necktie, that sort of thing?

I'm intrigued with these for playing with my two older boys (5 and 9) as an intro to D&D and role-playing concepts, but I'm still somewhat sensitive about the violent imagery. I still wince whenever they want to play a game like Ghost Stories, which includes cards with labels like "Blood Drinker", "Bleeding Eyes", and "Bone Cracker" (and the pictures to match). With a plain PnP RPG I can make the imagery and concepts as tame as I want, but I'm intrigued by the board games as I think they might take to them a bit more easily.

As a comparison, they have played and enjoyed Runebound, and I didn't find anything objectionable there.

I've played Castle Ravenloft several times with my seven-year-old and none of the content struck me as objectionable. The miniatures aren't at all gruesome and the cards are text-only - they include italicized "flavour text" which you could skip or rephrase if you don't like what it says, but it all seems harmless to me.

(mind you, my seven-year-old plays Ghost Stories too, but he's been thoroughly desensitized to blood drinkers, bleeding eyes, bone crackers and their ilk by his older brother)

I'd say you'll be OK. There are some references to ghosts and things in the cards, but nothing that you can't gloss over.

freelunch wrote:The miniatures aren't at all gruesome and the cards are text-only - they include italicized "flavour text" which you could skip or rephrase if you don't like what it says, but it all seems harmless to me.

Well, the pre-painted miniatures in Castle Ravenloft do have ghouls gnawing on an arm. But no worries, they're unpainted. Your kids probably have already seen more graphic stuff on the TV. I don't recall anything disturbing or gratuitous except for dealing with the subject of the undead.

Then again, my 4 year old picked up my pre-painted Bone Cyclops figure and was saying hi to the "little dude." If I had left her to play much longer, I'm sure it would have been playing house with the Orcs and Kobolds.

I'll check again when we open up the box tomorrow night while the wife is partying with the local Alderman.

Once I get over traveling and having the flu for 4 days, I'll try to write up my impression on Conquest of the Planet Earth. My wife and I really loved it, and it has a crazy competitive game that is both tense, silly, and amazingly mean. Lets just say my wife nearly bit me when I nuked two of her highest value conquered regions, then used my superior speed and flying ability to leap over and steal her other conquests for the win. It spurred her to coin a new term for me - "Leech-Breed!" She screamed, quite unexpectedly, "Get your own conquests you $%&@ing Leech Breed!" It was a good game!

Smoove_B wrote:Around round of Heroscape, defending a castle siege. Tul-Bak-Ra can get bent.

Anyone make it to one of the Mansions of Madness preview sessions that FFG was sponsoring at game stores over the weekend?

hentzau wrote:I'd say you'll be OK. There are some references to ghosts and things in the cards, but nothing that you can't gloss over.

Yeah, I just went through the cards and probably the most objectionable one I could find was an attack labeled "Circle of Death" a wave of shadowy, pulse-stopping energy blossoms from the center of the room.

Most of the descriptions are simply things like "A creature emerges from the corner to attack" or "An unseen monster comes out of the shadows and attacks".

The cards themselves really aren't all that descriptive or violent. That being said, if they have active imaginations I can see some of the monsters, traps or cards being a problem but I don't think any of them are objectionable.

I don't see the Wrath miniatures as a problem at all. As Smoove mentioned, the text descriptions aren't bad and D&D remains a great way to expand your kids' vocabulary. Their imagination provides the most risk -- it's hard to imagine anything but a messy splatter when the Dwarven Warrior does 3 of 6 points of damage to the Kobold Hero in one strike after rolling a critical hit 19 while wielding a Vorpal Sword in her Giant Gauntlets.

I like the new mechanics -- we pulled a Long Hallway that caused us to pull a second tile. We picked up the dungeon exit, leading to the Kobold Hero attacking us supported by 2 environmental effects (bad luck + rolling stone trap) and an Orc Archer that also activated the Orc Archer we bypassed to get to the exit. The Dwarven Warrior took 2 damage from the rolling stone, but only 1 arrow hit (2 damage + 1 damage for the miss). The Kobold Hero ended up missing only because the Dwarf had leveled up, but things weren't looking too good until that critical hit. Treasure is MUCH improved now that there are lots more items -- and useful ones, too.

They've added rooms that open up into multiple tiles. Some of the creatures are much tougher, inflict more varied conditions and even have tactics like getting help by triggering unexplored tiles (from the bottom of the pile) and creatures before attacking.

hepcat wrote:Anyone make it to one of the Mansions of Madness preview sessions that FFG was sponsoring at game stores over the weekend?

I looked around and didn't see where they were sponsoring the preview. So no. Otherwise I would have. I have until the end of this week to preorder and still get my shipping for free.

(and the list is easily found now... and I would not have commuted to Lansing to see it but they did have a spot in Livonia. )

Tanga has At the Gates of Loyang on sale for $17. I know nothing about this game, read no reviews of it, but bought it immediately. Why?

Because it looks so cool standing next to Agricola and LeHavre!



1853 is next!!!

Heck, my wife has spent more than $17 for junk that just sits on a shelf, and I don't even get to play with those.

We played Carcassonne with a couple expansions (after sorting out a bag with over 200 tiles in it), including The Plague (minipromo from Spielbox). I squeaked out a win by only one point. When Remus showed up, we switched over to Kingsburg (with expansion) and played the most competitive game of it I have ever been in. Remus and kenetickids wife were tied, with kenetickid and I one point behind them, and trailing us was the fifth player, by only two more points. Remus won by virtue of a single resource block (given to him by his Governor power). Phenomenal amount of fun, plus we kept remus up too late.

Loyang isn't bad, but it isn't the same sort of magic of Agricola or Le Havre. And it is very very fiddly. The rules are also a bit confusing, so be prepared for a bit of FAQ diving for clarification. I would love Poseidon, but I just don't see how my wife would like something that dry.

I want to say one thing. DAMN THE ASHARDALON MINI IS HUUUUUUGE!!! I thought the Bone Dragon mini for Castle Ravenloft was cool, but Ashardalon takes the cake!

baelthazar wrote:I want to say one thing. DAMN THE ASHARDALON MINI IS HUUUUUUGE!!! I thought the Bone Dragon mini for Castle Ravenloft was cool, but Ashardalon takes the cake!

The prepainted Dragon mini would cost you more than the board game -- $65.

My only disappointment is the decision to include Grells. Not only is it a goofy monster, prepainted Grell minis cost $8 apiece. And they look like they're fragile. There's no way I'm ever justifying buying 3 of those.

Today Tanga has Campaign Manager 2008 on sale for $10 (plus $6 shipping):



Does anyone know anything about the game? It seems vaguely hokey, but I'm into politics and I'd love a good campaign game (and I could use another 2-player game). Is this any good? Should I just get 1960?

El Guapo wrote:Today Tanga has Campaign Manager 2008 on sale for $10 (plus $6 shipping):



Does anyone know anything about the game? It seems vaguely hokey, but I'm into politics and I'd love a good campaign game (and I could use another 2-player game). Is this any good? Should I just get 1960?

IN!

I believe that someone around here was extolling the virtues of this game a while ago. I've played 1960 and will probably get it someday. But for 15 bucks with shipping, I think I can afford to add this one to my collection as well.

On a side note, Z-Man Games is really amping it up. They're on track to rival FFG someday if they keep up the level and quality of output they've been trending towards.

El Guapo wrote:Does anyone know anything about the game? It seems vaguely hokey, but I'm into politics and I'd love a good campaign game (and I could use another 2-player game). Is this any good? Should I just get 1960?

It's a lighter, faster, more simplified version of the game mechanics in Twilight Struggle and 1960. I already own both of those and didn't see much point in getting CM2008. But, for $10 it's probably a good intro to those types of games.

1960 is probably a deeper, more strategic game, but it's going to run you $30+. Even it has some flaws, things I notice mostly because I constantly compare it to Twilight Struggle, which is a masterpiece.

ooh, the rules for Mansions of Madness are up!

http://fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_conte ... sLoRes.pdf" target="_blank

Boudreaux wrote:

El Guapo wrote:Does anyone know anything about the game? It seems vaguely hokey, but I'm into politics and I'd love a good campaign game (and I could use another 2-player game). Is this any good? Should I just get 1960?

It's a lighter, faster, more simplified version of the game mechanics in Twilight Struggle and 1960. I already own both of those and didn't see much point in getting CM2008. But, for $10 it's probably a good intro to those types of games.

1960 is probably a deeper, more strategic game, but it's going to run you $30+. Even it has some flaws, things I notice mostly because I constantly compare it to Twilight Struggle, which is a masterpiece.

Interesting. I already have Twilight Struggle but not 1960. Even if TS is the better game (and I'll readily accept that it is), it'd be nice to have a political game. Especially since according to BGG the play time for this runs about an hour - that could be a good appetizer or dessert to a longer game.

I'm inclined to pick it up, I think.

Jow wrote:ooh, the rules for Mansions of Madness are up!

http://fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_conte ... sLoRes.pdf" target="_blank

Yes, they are.

El Guapo wrote:

Boudreaux wrote:

El Guapo wrote:Does anyone know anything about the game? It seems vaguely hokey, but I'm into politics and I'd love a good campaign game (and I could use another 2-player game). Is this any good? Should I just get 1960?

It's a lighter, faster, more simplified version of the game mechanics in Twilight Struggle and 1960. I already own both of those and didn't see much point in getting CM2008. But, for $10 it's probably a good intro to those types of games.

1960 is probably a deeper, more strategic game, but it's going to run you $30+. Even it has some flaws, things I notice mostly because I constantly compare it to Twilight Struggle, which is a masterpiece.

Interesting. I already have Twilight Struggle but not 1960. Even if TS is the better game (and I'll readily accept that it is), it'd be nice to have a political game. Especially since according to BGG the play time for this runs about an hour - that could be a good appetizer or dessert to a longer game.

I'm inclined to pick it up, I think.

The hour playtime with even half the gameplay of TS would be enough to sell me on it.

I wonder the degree to which states are blank slates vs. the degree it takes into account their actual political leanings - like, is it possible to have Obama sweep the south while McCain carries New England and New York, etc.

I would assume (and this is purely assumption based on reading the text on some of the cards shown on BGG for the game) that states reflect their real life political leanings for that time period at the start of the game.

What I really want is War of the Ring. But it's out of print, and I can't find it anywhere.

SpaceLord wrote:What I really want is War of the Ring. But it's out of print, and I can't find it anywhere.

We may be able to make an arrangement. I have a copy that I never play -- not enough time or open space these days. Send me a PM if you're interested.

Or, you can wait for the War of the Ring reprint, supposedly coming later this year.