Octopus Overlords

Monthly game day yesterday. Played Mysteries of the Abbey - the guy showing us how to play made a flawed deduction early on and screwed himself up, which allowed someone else to win. Only 1 revelation was made (my kid, so she got second place). Gave me a headache for some reason, gotta stop playing those complicated deduction games.

Francis Drake - first time every played - leapt to first place in the first round! Learned that was not necessarily a good thing. Ended up last. Enjoyed the game and got the admiral in round 1 and 2, so I set my ship up for the big 8 pt ship - but not matter what I did, the guy to my right always went before me so he got the gems. That was the story of most of my fights, so though I did decent in every other way, I only had 1 gold and 1 silver in my hidden treasure. Everything else had 7=8+ treasures.

Pandemic - won (never lost the board game).

And Scole (? pepper heat measuring term) - game about planting peppers. We ran out of time just before we would have finished. I was just about to score a big recipe - wouldn't quite have won, but would have been a lot closer. I was a bit slow getting the hang of it at first, but was doing better by the end.

Zenn7 wrote:And Scole (? pepper heat measuring term) - game about planting peppers. We ran out of time just before we would have finished. I was just about to score a big recipe - wouldn't quite have won, but would have been a lot closer. I was a bit slow getting the hang of it at first, but was doing better by the end.

Scoville.

Spamtacular.

What did I do yesterday instead of playing boardgames? I spent two hours cleaning out a closet for boardgames.



I have a problem.

The Dallas Games Marathon has a 1k library. The guy that runs it has more than that in his personal collection, and added a second story to his house to house them all.

You're fine.

You do have a problem, but that problem is lack of shelving.

I'm actually getting worried about the size of my collection. When I got engaged, I had mine down to about 30 games from a high of around 125. They all fit nicely onto shelves in the closet behind the clothes rack. The nice part of that was that adding new games was kind of a stealth action because they weren't really visible.

Since then, I've gotten back up to about 60 games owned, and I've got a half dozen kind of hanging out in my computer room. I'm not certain they'll fit in the designated shelving area. I should cull some out, but there's not a lot I want to get rid of, and the ones I do aren't in demand. I don't think anyone's super interested in the first Pathfinder card game set with just the second adventure pack, but I sure don't want that massive box anymore.

I'll probably sell off at least a dozen at Gencon. I found out at their last auction that there a lot of folks at the convention who will pay almost full retail on popular used games. I paid for my hotel, meals AND 2 or 3 new games last year because of that.

My biggest concern there would be compression weight. The boxes on the bottom aren't going to fare well with all the pressure from above.

Sadly, that is an issue. But I just couldn't figure out a reasonable alternative.

What I've done with some of mine is twist them out of line so there's pressure on the vertical box walls near the corners rather than centered over the hammock of cardboard across the top.

It's not a perfect solution, but it might buy you some time.

Hmmm...thanks, that sounds like a good plan!

Yeah, when I have multiples stacked, I try and keep like-sized games stacked together, then rotate them a bit where they aren't the same.

hepcat wrote:Sadly, that is an issue. But I just couldn't figure out a reasonable alternative.

Muscle racks (or a similar product). I fond some at Lowes that were thin enough to fit my fairly small closet. You should see how many games are in there and how high they are stacked.

http://www.samsclub.com/sams/muscle-rac ... 2550118.ip

I have to turn sideways now to get in there to grab a game, and even if my fat ass were smaller, I doubt I'd have the room for one of those racks.

I think the best option is buy one of those racks and hire one of you smaller guys to be a game master that lives in my closet and just hand me whatever I feel like playing when commanded.

You need Wall-E style storage with a vertical conveyor belt of shelves.

What's the point of being a bachelor if you can't put game shelves in that massive dining room? Your friends would lend you their power tools....

I think I'm just going to sleep in my game closet. Pull a few Ignacy games down to keep me warm. Put a copy of Duel of Ages II under my head as a pillow.

Played a 3 player game of Elder Sign last night with the Gates of Arkham expansion. Adds a couple of great new mechanics, including double sided locations, gates, skills, and memberships in secret societies.

All new locations are deployed face down. You make your initial move to the face down location, and when there you can interact with that location first in various ways either for free or by spending trophies. You then flip over the locational, and resolve the mystery.

Gates pop up any time that an other world location is revealed. You put one gate on the other world and a matching gate on a location in Arkham. That location is now inaccessible until you close the gate in the other world.

Skills are permanent modifiers to how your character works, like allowing you to heal other people, flip over locations before you visit them and the like. You gain these skills at places like the university.

Memberships in secret societies give you bonuses to completing some specific tasks and additional rewards when you complete some tasks.

One big change we observed was that we spent trophies way more than in the base game. In the base game we would normally hang onto trophies to buy elder signs at the gift shop. On the streets of Arkham, that's not possible. You have to earn all of the elder signs you get from adventures. Instead trophies are spent at the locations to give you some specific bonus.

I really enjoyed all of the new elements. Added a new punch of variety to the game. We lost, horribly, but still had a great time doing it. Highly recommended addition.

Yeah, I preordered that expansion because I love Cthulhu Yahtzee so much. Still one of the only games I enjoy solo. I read through the rules pretty quick and it seems rather straight forward. Now I just need to modify my storage situation (a never ending battle) as I'm nearly certain this stuff won't fit in the Plano cases I have.

In other news, an official expansion for Fallen was announced and they're taking preorders on the site, shipping summer 2015. There's also a sale on the base game through 3/22, 20% off, which IMHO is quite a steal.

I use shelves but if you have something against shelves then you should pallet stack.



If you have nothing against shelves but don't want to hang any yourself, then make a gazillion different size wire racks on the cheap at Bed Bath and Beyond.

Growing up we put a one shelf all around my bedroom, about 12 inches from the ceiling. It made for an awesome 10'x11'x10'x11' game shelf.

Bought.

I'd been trying to delay purchasing (mostly because the house is all torn up right now). But with the sale, I'm in!

LordMortis wrote:I use shelves but if you have something against shelves then you should pallet stack.

The game box storage isn't a problem. Well, it's a problem but I'm talking about organizing all the little bits, cards, chits and counters. Stuff like this:



Organizing the game bits after opening the box is part of the hobby. At least, for me. Figuring out ways to store things to help speed things along for setup and cleanup is part of the obsession.

You are not alone. My current obsession has been The Broken Token.

Smoove_B wrote: In other news, an official expansion for Fallen was announced and they're taking preorders on the site, shipping summer 2015. There's also a sale on the base game through 3/22, 20% off, which IMHO is quite a steal.

I have the base game already, but I went ahead and put in an order for the expansion bundle. Thanks for the heads up. It's a solid game I look forward to playing more of.

hepcat wrote:It's a solid game I look forward to playing more of.

Yeah, I ordered the bundle without hesitation. It's a great game and more is definitely a good thing. I'm also a bit intrigued by the idea of a multiplayer version that he's allegedly working on, but in practice I'm worried it would be chaotic. I really like the head-to-head nature of the game as designed. It works really well.

The only thing I found a bit jarring when Seppe and I played a few weeks ago was the occasional disconnect in the stories that arose from the hero's choices on story cards. They sometimes didn't really match up. But we explained them away as the hero's journey not necessarily playing out in a chronologically correct manner. It certainly didn't hurt our enjoyment of the game.

I do think more equipment is the most important addition from the expansions. There was a little less than I'd have liked in the base game. But that's easily addressed via the expansions they've mentioned (and have now started to put out).

Yeah, I guess that's to be expected with the highly random nature of the story and whatever minions the boss ends up using, but it's still entertaining as hell. I've only played as the dungeon lord so I don't have a perspective on hero gear but as long as everything is balanced I'm all for it. As is the case with any of the Fantasy Flight Cthulhu games, more cards = more gooder.

Man, somebody needs to talk me out of buying Hornet Leader. I made the mistake of watching a couple of "let's play" videos of it on youtube so now I'm all pumped up to shoot some MiGs and drop bombs, but I probably shouldn't be spending 90 bucks on a single player(!) board game.

Is that the one where there's also a Cthulhu expansion, or is that Phantom Leader?

I've been wanting one of these for a while, but haven't convinced myself.

Hornet Leader has the Cthulu expansion, which also looks pretty awesome as it comes with "Insanity" rules and nuclear bombs.

I'm thinking that getting Hornet Leader without the Cthulhu expansion is missing an opportunity.

I really should play my copy of Phantom Leader at some point.

I was very excited Monday to open up my CSI order with the latest X-Wing ships and realize that I had no outstanding order with CSI and I hadn't even placed an order since November!

Today I got a "back in stock" notification for Dead of Winter. X(8) caught me watching it on Tabletop asked about it. He LOVES co-op games, "Daddy, is that a game where you 'verse' each other or do you play on the same team?"

My order of Dead of Winter was canceled by Barnes & Noble.

coopasonic wrote: Today I got a "back in stock" notification for Dead of Winter.

Where is this at? And is it reasonably priced?

CSI, MSRP ($60) and sold out in under 2 hours.

Easiest way is to get your FLGS to order it for you and wait.

I sold my copy of Dead of Winter for an ungodly profit a few months ago. I found it a good game, but never really had the chance or desire to play it.

I ordered a couple of historical simulation games to use for teaching and history club purposes (actually got my job to pay for them, nice). Both were from academy games - Freedom: The Underground Railroad and Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear. I really love the quality of Academy Games stuff, very nice and durable.

Can anyone think of other games with realistic depiction of history? Freedom is nice because it is co-op (although the theme is a bit jarring and disturbing, trying to have fun but also realizing you are simulating slaves escaping). My groups could range into the 20s, so I either need multiple copies or play them as "teams." Even though I do medieval history, I am not averse to games from other time periods. They do need to be easy to learn and easy to play, because I may use them in courses with non-gamers.

Obviously the "command and colors" games from GMT are contenders. The problem is that those games are SO expensive and you have to get the expansions in a series (you can't skip expansions). The expansions are often sold out, so that sucks. Memoir 44 is also good, but doesn't really lend itself well to more than 2-players at a time.

Washington's War from GMT is a bit expensive, but it perfectly shows how the colonists had to fight as guerrillas in order to survive. It's an absolutely gorgeous game to boot, with tons of historical text in the cards.

Also, 1812: The Invasion of Canada and 1775: Rebellion from Academy Games are incredibly simple to learn, but capture the history of the periods they depict quite elegantly.

I should've sold my copy of Dead of Winter for an ungodly profit. I got it in the first round of Plaid Hat preorders, and I still haven't gotten to play it. Honestly, I don't know when I'll get to, since I don't really have a game group, and it's not really my wife's kind of game.

and....the expansions bundle of Fallen is pre-ordered.

Man, so excited!! I love that game!!

Let me know if you ever want to offload that copy of DoW, Chaz! Preferably for not an ungodly profit...