Octopus Overlords

Over the weekend I introduced two games to my group: Power Grid and Bang! The Dice Game.
Both went over really well! Power Grid I played years ago a few times, but the amount of rules almost sunk the game. I even printed out cheat sheets. I think we got one of the turn order rules wrong, but we discovered it at the end and vowed to try it for real again next time.

Bang! The Dice game was an unexpected hit, even though we were only playing with four and one of the player does not like luck-based games. Deceptively simple, it really engaged the group quickly. Those character cards make the game go a long way I think. We need to play this with 5+

ChaoZ wrote:Over the weekend I introduced two games to my group: Power Grid and Bang! The Dice Game.
Both went over really well! Power Grid I played years ago a few times, but the amount of rules almost sunk the game. I even printed out cheat sheets. I think we got one of the turn order rules wrong, but we discovered it at the end and vowed to try it for real again next time.

Bang! The Dice game was an unexpected hit, even though we were only playing with four and one of the player does not like luck-based games. Deceptively simple, it really engaged the group quickly. Those character cards make the game go a long way I think. We need to play this with 5+

Bang! The Dice Game got a lot of play at the last OctoCon. Great little filler game. We played with at least 6 one time. The more players the merrier.

I went out and bought it the next day.

I've been itching to try bang the dice game, perhaps at octocon.

I like it, mostly because it infuriates Trent Steel. While they do include rules for three people, I think four is the absolute minimum from what I've seen and I bet it's a blast with six. It's definitely quick and there's a bit more strategy to it than just chucking dice (which was a bit of a surprise) but I do think it's a solid game.

Smoove_B wrote:I like it, mostly because it infuriates Trent Steel.

Pissing off certain players in our group is the main reason I still own Archipelago.

Monday night Tommy brought over Heroes of Normandie and we gave it a spin. Have to say, I really liked it.

For those not in the know, HoN is a squad based game set in WWII. Each unit in the squad is represented by a cardboard token with a ton of symbols on it. There are LOTS of symbols in this game, but about a half dozen of them are used all of the time, so you don't need to memorize each and every one. The game is played out on a larger map board that consists of multiple square map board sections, each one about 1' square. For our games we played on a 2x2' map. Any terrain effects are printed right on the map board using the exact same symbols.

Game is played in 3 phases: Order, Activate, and Supply.

Based on the scenario, you will have certain number of orders you can give to your units each turn. You have order number blocks you place on top of your units, including one that is blank. The blank one is a bluff, to keep your opponent guessing which units will actually activate. Took me a few minutes until I remembered that this same mechanic was used in Heroscape. In the Activate phase you take turns activating units, and when you activate them you can basically do one of two things, move or attack. Attacking is a simple matter of determining range and line of sight, then adding up modifiers from your unit and any terrain modifiers, rolling a D6, applying the modifier, and then seeing if you beat the to hit number printed on the unit token. If a unit is hit, it will either be eliminated outright, or will flip over to a less effective version of the unit. Any unit that didn't move during the activation phase can then take a movement during the supply phase.

One thing I didn't mention was the hand of cards each player has. You hang onto 4 cards that you can play at specific times through the game. One may give you an additional order that you can issue to a unit. One may allow you to ignore a hit. One may give you bonuses on your to hit roll. Or allow you to shoot and move. Those sorts of things.

The game includes about a dozen different scenarios that you can use, or you make up your own. We played the intro scenario to learn the rules, and then played "Saving Private Rex", where the allied unit had to find the general's dog and get him off the board. The problem was, the dog would run away from the sound of gunfire, so the damn thing was running all over the place. It was a very fun scenario, with lots of surprises in it...my favorite being when my motorcycle/sidecar team (did I mention there are vehicles?) charged straight at the allied jeep that was about to escape with Rex in it. The jeep was on the other side of a hedgerow, so Tom wasn't so concerned about what I could do...until I played a "Go Straight Through!" card, which gave me a chance to ignore any terrain obstacle with a vehicle. The motorcycle burst through the hedgerow, and had the ability to fire while moving, so I opened fire on the jeep and blew it to hell and back. Unfortunately, that didn't stop the unit that was IN the jeep, and the next turn was able to get the dog off of the map. So he won a marginal victory, but my Germans lost no units while he lost 2 units and jeep. All for a damn dog.

Game plays very quickly, we got in two games (including rules explanation) in 2 hours. Highly recommended for someone wanting a Kelly's Heroes type game.

I've been looking at Heroes of Normandie since last Origins, but I've held off because of the upcoming Cthulhu based version. It was supposed to be a simple expansion, but they kickstarted it and turned it into a full game in its own rights.

That's a day one purchase for me when it hits retail later this summer.

I've been playing a fair amount of Roll for the Galaxy and Five Tribes recently.

I've never played Race for the Galaxy before but I picked up Roll for the Galaxy after reading some really strong reviews and I have to say I really enjoy it. Dice games generally have too much luck, but there is so much luck mitigation with Roll for the galaxy that it doesn't bother me at all. I especially like the explanation the game gives for why you are rolling dice- to see what the citizens of your empire want to do. Pretty fitting explanation really. It's quick, with plenty of action and lots of paths to victory. I'm a fan. Played it 3 times so far, looking forward to many more plays.

In terms of Five Tribes, I have a habit of picking up the new Days of Wonder games on a fairly regular basis. Usually they do not disappoint (with the exception of Cargo Noir which wasn't really a bad game, it just wasn't a good game). Relic Runners which I picked up last year was light but surprisingly full of strategy once you played it a bit. It flew a bit under the radar and hasn't received much hype but it was actually rather fun, I will keep it in my collection.

Anyways after that divergence a bit about five tribes. It has a mancala mechanic and is a worker displacement game rather than worker placement. I didn't think much of it but it received so much good news and good reviews that I pulled the trigger on it lat week. I've played 2 games so far, only 2-player games, and it is indeed a very deep game. Light on the surface but wow with 2-players it has so many options for what you are going to do. it's hard to know who is winning at any given time. The scoring system is a bit of a points salad. You can focus on claiming tiles, buying Djinns, getting palaces or oasis, or going to the market. There are so many options you can't get them all so it is important to focus on all of them. The turn order is determined by auction, which fits the game well since you can see moves and they might be worth paying a lot for.

The downside to the game is that so far especially in two player games it has a serious tendency to allow for AP. If someone like to fully analyze every bit of information about the move they are making they will likely have very long turns as there are just too many implications of every move. At some point you jut need to make a move and hope it is the best.

I truly enjoy the game. It is the deepest game from DoW other than Memoir '44. It's family friendly but very good for gamers as well. And of course since it is a Days of Wonder game the component quality is beyond what you would ever expect. The pieces are fantastic, there are nearly 100 wooden pieces for the game, and of course each player has their own rules summary sheet and quick reference sheet for the Djinns. DoW also manages to of course again make a fantastic insert. Many companies could learn from the amazing production of their games.

Oh we also managed to win a game of XCOM. On easy though. I like the difficulty settings. Too often co-operative games have only hard, harder, hardest, impossible. They don't scale down to easy well. I prefer that for myself (hence the reason I enjoy Robinson Crusoe so much) but when playing with non-gamers, or people who don't love crushing defeat it's nice to be able to turn down the difficulty so it fits them. Not a walk in the park, but not one that requires extreme precision and a good dose of luck as well. On easy it felt like XCOM was beatable without complete precision but still fun. On harder levels so far it has been impossible, so for people who still want that it is available.

On a related note I finally decided after playing Caverna again last week that it was time to invest in a new organization method. I had been using a plano for the pieces and bags for the tiles, but it was still unwieldy to set up. So I ordered the tray organizer from the broken token. Sure it was expensive but having just put it together it makes the game so much easier to play and set up. Sometimes it's worth the money to have a well-organized game. I've only used one of their organizers before for eclipse, and it was well worth it then too.

Edit- Five Tribes has enough strategy and difficulty that it is perhaps the only game besides Memoir that DoW has shipped with a strategy guide for the game by the designer.

Also there is an interesting series of threads on BGG regarding the development of the game by Bruno Cathala:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

I found them to be an interesting read.

Chrisoc13 wrote:The downside to the game is that so far especially in two player games it has a serious tendency to allow for AP. If someone like to fully analyze every bit of information about the move they are making they will likely have very long turns as there are just too many implications of every move. At some point you jut need to make a move and hope it is the best.

It's even worse in games with 4 or 5 players, because so much changes in between your turns, unless you happen to bid a ton to go earlier. Often you have to wait until your turn to assess the situation, there's no point in making advance plans that rely on a specific move on the board. By the time it's your turn, that move won't be there. The upside is that as the game goes on, there are fewer moves left, which helps a bit.

Also, In the games we've played the ones who bid low and don't spend a lot on turn order tend to win.

Twilight Struggle (first) and Splendor (second, first win).

Boudreaux wrote:

Chrisoc13 wrote:The downside to the game is that so far especially in two player games it has a serious tendency to allow for AP. If someone like to fully analyze every bit of information about the move they are making they will likely have very long turns as there are just too many implications of every move. At some point you jut need to make a move and hope it is the best.

It's even worse in games with 4 or 5 players, because so much changes in between your turns, unless you happen to bid a ton to go earlier. Often you have to wait until your turn to assess the situation, there's no point in making advance plans that rely on a specific move on the board. By the time it's your turn, that move won't be there. The upside is that as the game goes on, there are fewer moves left, which helps a bit.

Also, In the games we've played the ones who bid low and don't spend a lot on turn order tend to win.

Interesting. In the two player game you can have up to four turns in a row so that's when the AP really turns on. I've only played 2 players but in 2 players you get two bidding towers. Also I bid high a lot and it hasn't hurt me. I've even bid 18 twice and won that game still. Just depends on what is available I think. Certain Djinns are worth bidding very high for.

Finished up with a 2nd place finish on my first game of Castles of Mad King Ludwig.

Isgrimnur wrote:Twilight Struggle (first) and Splendor (second, first win).

Your first game of twilight struggle? What did you think of it? I really need to play more, but as soon as the digital version comes out, I'm hoping to rectify that.

It was definitely a complex game with a lot of decision making. I liked it. We did screw it up, though, as we didn't perform the opposing player's event when using cards for ops points.

Played my first game of Shadows of Brimstone using Table Top Simulator (does that still count as board gaming? ).

We won pretty easily. First because we got pretty lucky on draws and found the two clues with the first two encounter tokens. Second, I screwed up and drew Encounter cards instead of Darkness cards from the Darkness track advancement. Hard to know if the Darkness cards would have been harder than the Encounter cards.

But we ended up with everyone healed up fully. And only a few corruptions from dark stone. Only the Scout got the XP to level though.

Isgrimnur wrote:It was definitely a complex game with a lot of decision making. I liked it. We did screw it up, though, as we didn't perform the opposing player's event when using cards for ops points.

Woah. That's a pretty big screw-up. Changes the complexion of the game completely!

But easy to do on the first play through. There's a lot of rules to remember.

hentzau wrote:There's a lot of rules

Seppe and I made the same mistake on our first play. If you're not familiar with Card Driven Games it's a pretty odd mechanic and seems wrong. But after a few plays, you realize that a large part of the game's appeal is the trying to figure out just how much you want that one card knowing that you're giving something to your opponent in the process.

hentzau wrote:

Isgrimnur wrote:It was definitely a complex game with a lot of decision making. I liked it. We did screw it up, though, as we didn't perform the opposing player's event when using cards for ops points.

Woah. That's a pretty big screw-up. Changes the complexion of the game completely!

But easy to do on the first play through. There's a lot of rules to remember.

Sadly, not my first play through. I've played a few times with the physical game. Just forgot. One time we pulled Threat cards instead of Encounter cards. You'd think I'd learn. I'm not sure whether it made it easier or harder. In looking at the Encounter cards that had been played vs the ones in the Darkness, it might have been somewhat of a wash. Pretty sure that both the Encounter cards that we pulled ended up with Attacks. Whereas only one of the Darkness cards would have been an Attack. The other boosted Void creatures... and we only ran into them once, I think. So it changed the game a bit, but I'm not sure it made it much easier.

He's talking about twilight struggle and issie's game, I think.

Indeed.

I always thought it was weird that Twilight Struggle and 1960: Making of the President (which I believe share a designer) are so different in that regard. in Twilight Struggle, playing an opponent's card for ops points triggers the event and there's nothing you can do to stop it. In 1960 the mechanics are almost identical, except that opponent events do NOT trigger automatically. The opponent has to use momentum markers to trigger it, and there is also the option to use your own momentum to prevent that. Accounting for opponent events is such a big part of TS that I always wondered why they ditched it in 1960.

Chrisoc13 wrote:Interesting. In the two player game you can have up to four turns in a row so that's when the AP really turns on. I've only played 2 players but in 2 players you get two bidding towers. Also I bid high a lot and it hasn't hurt me. I've even bid 18 twice and won that game still. Just depends on what is available I think. Certain Djinns are worth bidding very high for.

Two player Five Tribes is nice because you can actually make plans and build a decent strategy. You can set yourself up for later plays. With more players, the game situation changes so much between your plays that it's really hard to make any advance plans. You kind of have to play tactically and try to figure out your best option when it's finally your turn again. Some people are not very good at that.

Boudreaux wrote:I always thought it was weird that Twilight Struggle and 1960: Making of the President (which I believe share a designer) are so different in that regard. in Twilight Struggle, playing an opponent's card for ops points triggers the event and there's nothing you can do to stop it. In 1960 the mechanics are almost identical, except that opponent events do NOT trigger automatically. The opponent has to use momentum markers to trigger it, and there is also the option to use your own momentum to prevent that. Accounting for opponent events is such a big part of TS that I always wondered why they ditched it in 1960.

Chrisoc13 wrote:Interesting. In the two player game you can have up to four turns in a row so that's when the AP really turns on. I've only played 2 players but in 2 players you get two bidding towers. Also I bid high a lot and it hasn't hurt me. I've even bid 18 twice and won that game still. Just depends on what is available I think. Certain Djinns are worth bidding very high for.

Two player Five Tribes is nice because you can actually make plans and build a decent strategy. You can set yourself up for later plays. With more players, the game situation changes so much between your plays that it's really hard to make any advance plans. You kind of have to play tactically and try to figure out your best option when it's finally your turn again. Some people are not very good at that.

yeah I could see that. I think tonight we will be trying it with 4 players. I'm interested to see how it goes.

First up was The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, or TLOTRTCG!

I started with the Spirit deck and my buddy started with Leadership, and we won the first scenario fairly handily. He really liked the game, so we attempted the second scenario. This time around we weren't so lucky. I chose the Tactics deck and he went with Lore, just so we could see how all the decks played. I had no problem handling the combat, but we were hurting on the Willpower front. So much so that we just couldn't keep the staging area clear and lost due to our risk meter maxing. I'm very confident we could have beat that scenario with a different deck combo, so we'll try that next time.

Then it was time to break out the surprise - Imperial Assault! He had no clue I bought it, so when I turned on the Star Wars score he was completely baffled. Then I revealed the box and he went rather insane. Total geek meltdown.

We played the tutorial mission which seemed horrendously overbalanced in favor of the Rebels, so we started to think perhaps the game was going to be too easy. However, once we got into the first Campaign mission things started to make a bit more sense. He still won the mission handily, but not before I left his Wookiee begging for a bacta tank.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the best strategies for the Imperial side, but we both had a lot of fun and my buddy agreed that TLOTRTCG will probably get short shrift in favor of Imperial Assault for the near future.

As far as the miniatures go, I got all nine Stormtroopers and the three Probe Droids painted. I've been holding off painting the rest until I can find a good storage solution. Some folks on boardgamegeek have suggested a tackle box to carry minis and components, so I may check some of those out and see if I can find something that would fit the bill.

This could be a possibility...

(I was going to link you to the FuzzBoxes over on the Warstore, but they appear to be backordered.

hepcat wrote:He's talking about twilight struggle and issie's game, I think.

Well crap.

I'd even figured out that you were talking about Isg's game. But for some reason I missed it when I read his comment.

I do love Twilight Struggle, but I have nobody who wants to play it and it takes WAY too long for a two player game. Also, I think everyone screws up the "carry out the opponent's event when you use the card for ops" rule the first time you play. This is why the Space Race is important (but also limited) - it is the only way to dump a disastrous opponent event card from your hand (you do not fire the event when using the card for the space race).

My wife and I played another round of Hyperborea. I really have to say, for a short, sweet, and streamlined game, it feels as good as Civ. I have to put it up with Caverna and Arcadia Quest for top contenders in my library.

Played another session of Shadows of Brimstone. The Marshall, Saloon Girl and our Scout Tainto walked into the Mines in search of a Gate to the Other Worlds. Around the corner, there was a room with an ominous hole, a crumbling wall hiding a Gate...and an open Gate. The Marshall lagged behind with his broken arm from the last adventure (rolling a ton of 2s for movement), and the other side of the Gate was protected by a shocking defense mechanism. After running (or stumbling) to the Control Center next room, the Marshall activated the panel enabling a do-over on the next exploration token. That allowed us to trigger the final battle in the next room. Of course, that battle turned out to be pretty crazy -- a Harbinger (and Hell Bats), Night Terror and 6 Elite Stranglers.

We then played an introduction scenario for Sentinels Tactics. Hepcat was easily squeaking by the 2 heroes (Wraith and Bunker) and collecting objectives, except we finally hit him enough to not just drop him but bounce his unconscious body right in front of Bunker in Turret Mode. The beat-down turned pretty ugly.

We also tried Tiny Epic Defenders. It was a light coop that was definitely improved with the themed Meeples. The game starts out rather easy, with the main challenge to pay attention to the card distribution and get ahead of the ruination. Once the mini-bosses come out, there's an interesting trade-off from sacrificing your hero's HP to acquire artifacts. The last two turns really turn nasty -- the players take 1/4 of the turns and then the big bad shows up. We were able to reduce him to 2 of 10 HPs before our inability to protect the plains led to the ruination of our Capital.

We broke out Skull and Bones for 2 quick games, and hepcat was finally able to bluff his way to victory after a quick loss. The key is to guess whether the other players are trying to win, or prevent the win. It turns out it's often easy to read hepcat based on how he places the bid tiles. One of my favorite memories of GenCon 2013 was one of hepcat's frat buddies just getting into his head (with hillarious results), while one of the owners of our FLGS just pushed the limits of bluffing with bold bids and excellent reading of the other players.

I was also able to convince everyone to try Diner, a real-time card game about being a waiter at the local restaurant. You have a stable of tables to seat (claim), serve (score), or send to the counter (discard). The goal is to score the highest tips from tables served, but unserved tables at the end of the game count as negative points. You're trying to grab the right meals from the kitchen, keep track of your tables, and gauge how the other players are doing. That's all in real time, aided by mandatory table talk and the circulation of tokens in order to act. When you take a moment to think, options fly by and action tokens accumulate in front of you. If you have AP and end up with all the action tokens, another player can steal an action token from you. It's pretty hectic, and not for everyone.

I had played Sentinel Tactics over the holidays with some friends back in Ohio, but that had been a learning game in which I devoted most of my time to referring to rules. But this time around I was able to just sit back and enjoy it, and it was much more fun than I remembered. It really does capture the feel of a superhero battle. I think I'll pick up the expansion for this as it's constantly on sale on Coolstuffinc.com.

A town visit and a mission is the perfect way to play Shadows of Brimstone, imho. Anything else can be too long. 3 to 4 hours is just right. I was surprised that we didn't pull any monster encounters in the rooms before the boss battle though. But sometimes that's the way the dice roll.

I just ordered a starter set for Star Trek Attack Wing. They've really ramped up the ship pack releases the last few months. I'd avoided jumping into the game as I was afraid that the game wouldn't sell well enough to merit that amount of support from Wizkids, but there's about 2 dozen packs I believe. And with the release of a Tholian ship, I can no longer resist.

hepcat wrote:And with the release of a Tholian ship, I can no longer resist.

Well...

Resistance is Futile...

YEAAAAAAAAAAH!

hepcat wrote:
I just ordered a starter set for Star Trek Attack Wing. They've really ramped up the ship pack releases the last few months. I'd avoided jumping into the game as I was afraid that the game wouldn't sell well enough to merit that amount of support from Wizkids, but there's about 2 dozen packs I believe. And with the release of a Tholian ship, I can no longer resist.

Nice. I had a decent collection for attack wing at one point, including one of the DS9 models. It was a lot of fun, and gave lots of options, but since I already had a rather big X-wing collection I decided it was too redundant and sold off the attack wing pieces. But it was fun to play. Not as balanced as X-wing (all ships have a formulaic cost not taking into account powers or firing arcs) but it works well and is fun. I especially like that any ship can have any captain. Very Star Trek like since there are so many episodes of federation pilots flying other ships. Other than the Borg I really enjoyed the game. The Borg on the other side I found to be far too overpowered. Of course that fits the Borg, but it just wasn't fun to play.

I also noticed the big Borg cube for sale at the game store earlier this week. It looks good! Tempting for sure. They release expansion ships for Attack Wing at a furious pace, as in 3 new ships a month . Not to mention the promos and blind boxes, there certainly are a lot of ships to explore and plenty of content.

You'll have to let us know what you think of the game when you get it.

Tried 5 tribes yesterday with some non-gamers (my wife's friend and her husband came over), might have been a bit too ambitious to bust out five tribes. It's simple on the surface but not simple in practice. All the same they expressed interest in trying it but didn't grasp the game at all really and simply made haphazard moves instead the whole time. It was decently fun, but a bit too heavy for a first time exposure to modern board gaming. I should have gone with my trusted and true Jamaica instead. One of those mistakes you sometimes make with non-gamers who express interest in trying a game. So I didn't really get a chance to try out Five Tribes with four players as well as I thought, perhaps in the future. They also brought their copy of Sorry! which was much more their speed... so we played that afterwards. Eh, not the worst old game and the company was good. Next time they want to play a game I will try something a little bit simpler or perhaps play the variation I read about of sorry where you start with a pawn out and a five card hand.

Moving my Hands in the Sea Plug to the Kickstarter thread...

Got in a great game of Shadows of Brimstone last night. First game we've played since December. Three 3rd level characters, the Marshall, the Scout, and the Preacher. Played the Escape mission, had a ton of combat encounters. Finally got to the last room before the entrance, and spawned a dual encounter. Then failed two darkness rolls that ended up spawning two additional pulls of critters to fight. Ended up being an epic fight that saw us going through 6 night terrors, 20 void spiders, and 6 stranglers before we could clear the room. My preacher dashed for the final room, and made the roll that allowed us to escape with having only 3 more darkness advances spaces left. It was a real close one.

Once again, the Marshall just cleaned up on kills and experience. The priest did really well as well, but the scout didn't do nearly as well as the other two of us.

Well after all the raving, I went ahead and ordered Dead of Winter. I found it at Barnes & Noble for only $50 (after coupon code) which certainly beats the $100 it is going for on Amazon right now. Now the trick will be finding 3 or 4 people willing devote the time necessary to play it regularly.

You won't regret it. Very fun game.

I picked up XCOM on Thursday. I was kind of shocked to open up an FFG game, spend five minutes punching out the small number of tokens, and be potentially ready to play. Usually it's 45 minutes of token punching and sorting counters, then another hour and a half reading the 40 page manual. I'm hoping to get through the tutorial tomorrow.

And we tried our first game. My wife had my mother in law play, which I figured was going to be an issue, but we tried anyway.

We played through three rounds of the tutorial. While I like the idea of the tutorial in the app, holy hell is it a slow way to learn the game. It seemed like it was intended for everyone to learn together, but that just meant I was sitting there either reading through huge blocks of text, or trying to skim and summarize it. The tutorial was also a bit foggy on certain things, so then I had to go hunting through the rules to try and find the appropriate section anyway, especially when it came to card effects.

The kicker is that at its heart, the game is actually pretty simple. If I had either gone through the tutorial on my own or had a rule book to read, I think things would've gone much smoother, or at least faster.

After playing it, I like it in theory, but now I REALLY wish I had a rule book I could go through to iron out some rule questions I have. I guess I'll be going through the rule portion of the app section by section. Kind of stinks that the way they did the app means that you don't get the benefit of having a rule book, but also don't get the benefit of a keyword search or hyperlinking. I guess it's a reasonable first attempt.

Played a game of Garden Dice this evening. Cute little dice roller with quite a bit of strategy.

No rulebook is my one huge complaint of xcom. And it is really something I dislike about it. The tutorial is an awesome idea, if it were in addition to a real rulebook.