OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by hepcat »

Slowly working my way through the Pathfinder ACG first base set again. I'm finally on adventure pack 3. I've decided I'm going to finish the first one solo this summer, then work on the second base set (which I already have).

On a side note, I hate it when I open a board game I haven't played in a while and realize I'm missing 1 or 2 tokens/cards/whatever. I had that happen with Eldritch Horror when I decided I wanted to try a game with the Mountains of Madness expansion...only to discover I was missing 2 of the clue tokens for it.

I filled out a missing component form on the FFG site, so we'll see what happens. :(
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Chaz »

Yesterday, I had a moment of weakness and put in an order for Specter Ops, the Merchants & Marauders expansion, and Alchemists. Of course, it sounds like it's going to be a few weeks before Specter Ops comes in and the order ships, but still.
I can't imagine, even at my most inebriated, hearing a bouncer offering me an hour with a stripper for only $1,400 and thinking That sounds like a reasonable idea.-Two Sheds
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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Chaz wrote:Yesterday, I had a moment of weakness and put in an order for Specter Ops, the Merchants & Marauders expansion, and Alchemists. Of course, it sounds like it's going to be a few weeks before Specter Ops comes in and the order ships, but still.
The Plaid Hat website says they have it in stock and are shipping, although it may take a few days extra to get through all the pre-orders. Something about Specter Ops just didn't grab me, but I'm not one for those "hide-and-seek" style games.

I saw that Clockwork Wars is getting near the finish line. Part of me really likes what I see, but another part of me worries it is more fluff than substance (and the designer is new, which is a mixed bag). Empires: Age of Exploration Deluxe (Age of Empires III reboot) is also coming in the next two months, but I am scratching my head as to why it has a $125 price tag. I owned the old version, but traded it away - a move I regret.

I am probably going to get D&D Temple of Elemental Evil for my b-day. I was going to spend twice as much on Assassinorum, so I am thinking about what to add to my cart to get free shipping. I am sorely tempted by Armada, but the report (made here) that you need either two core sets or to wait until the expensive expansions come in to have a full game is scaring me off. I could also grab some of the character packs for Imperial Assault. Of course I never got the expansion for Eldritch Horror, so that may be a good pick.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by hentzau »

Had a fairly busy 4 days of gaming. Went to Little Wars on Friday with my buddy Tom and played some Sergeants Miniatures Game with the creator/owner of the company. Saw some really great wild west gaming layouts there, including a huge Duke Siegfried showcase wild west game. Would have liked to have played in one of the DMH games, but it didn't fit my schedule. I thought about throwing out a pick-up game of DMH, but there were a couple of other wild west games going on at the same time (including a recreation of the opening scene of The Wild Bunch) so I didn't bother. Oh, and played a quick game of D-Day Dice as well. Still love that game. Still mourn losing my Line for Life on it.

Sunday night after watching the TableTop episode featuring Concept, my family wanted to play. I have to say, I like the concept of Concept much better than the execution. But my kids like it, so...

Last night I broke out an oldie, Tales of the Arabian Nights. It had been forever since I played it, and I had forgotten how much I enjoy that "game" (game in quotes, because it is barely a game...it's more an experience.) I don't think Tom was very taken with it, though. I think he got bored about an hour and a half into it. I won, thanks to a timely Encounter that swept Stuart (who was two spaces away from Baghdad and the win) off to a far deserted island. I was able to drag my diseased blessed body into Baghdad to squeak out a win right in front of him.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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I played Kids of Carcassonne 5 times with Z(5). With a little coaching he has the strategy (what there is of it) pretty well down. We started him off with Hisss and then Monster Factory and now this. Soon we will be playing tile laying games that don't suck... crap, are there any tile laying games that don't suck?
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Chaz »

El Guapo, Nick Aragua, another buddy, and I finished up a VASSAL game of A Study in Emerald last night. It had a bit of a slow start, but I chalk that up to a combination of it being the first game for all of us, and the game itself seeming to have an exponential growth curve. Nick picked up the Zombies card early, so they were the ongoing threat, and they ultimately ended the game. I had the team assignments pegged by about halfway through. That made things really interesting for me because I was way in the lead, and Nick (the other Loyalist) was trailing by a wide margin. I had to delay ending the game to try and push some points his way. Ultimately, he managed to end the game via zombies, and had some hidden points, so the Loyalists came out ahead. Then I beat my teammate by one point for the win.

It was a pretty cool game. I definitely want to play again. We play weekly on VASSAL in two-hour blocks, and we were able to get through the entire game in two sessions, including a lengthy rules explanation and the usual VASSAL shenanigans. That's pretty fast compared to our four-session play of Britannia recently. Thumbs up.

We did have to put a stop to some secret negotiations that were going on among the revolutionaries via Steam chat. I'm pretty sure secret negotiations aren't really intended, but you can't trust revolutionaries anyway.
I can't imagine, even at my most inebriated, hearing a bouncer offering me an hour with a stripper for only $1,400 and thinking That sounds like a reasonable idea.-Two Sheds
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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Yeah it was a fun game. We should do another play sooner rather than later since none of us really knew what we were doing, so a replay would go better / smoother (and we would more closely follow the rules - first session we had some illegal zombie placement as it turned out). And once we have the options down it *should* go pretty quickly. Probably should've spent more time cranking the revolution track - the war / revolution tracks seem like good ways to elevate the entire team.

I'm just bummed that the game ended right before I got to have Cthulhu eat Cairo.

FWIW there weren't really "negotiations" - Dave said he was going to do something in Paris, I asked him what he meant, and that was the end of it. Agreed that there shouldn't be any text chatting, though.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Chaz »

One of the many neat things about the game is that there are a bunch of ways to end the game, usually ending the game is going to be someone's conscious choice, and the team play heavily influences when and why you'd want to end or not.

For everyone playing along at home, the short-ish version:

There's two teams, Loyalists and Revolutionaries. At the beginning of the game, everyone gets secretly assigned a team. There's no guarantee that the teams will be even. At the end of the game, you total up scores based on your teams, because they score points for slightly different things. Then, you check who's got the lowest score. That player's entire team is immediately eliminated. Of the remaining team, the player with the highest score wins.

It turned out that at the end, there were at least two or three different people who were planning on ending the game in various ways. I'd had a plan, but I was blocked from doing it, but it turned out okay because if I'd done my thing, my teammate might have wound up with a low enough score to eliminate me from the game. As it was, I was able to win because he scored a batch of points at the end.

As the controller of Cairo, I was very glad to hear that Cthulhu chowing down was thwarted by...zombies?
I can't imagine, even at my most inebriated, hearing a bouncer offering me an hour with a stripper for only $1,400 and thinking That sounds like a reasonable idea.-Two Sheds
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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I picked up aSiE a while back and have played it about 3 or 4 times. The only issue I have with it is that sometimes you can see Wallace forcing a non-thematic mechanic onto the game for the sake of balance (hiding royalty, for one), and some of the rules are kind of fiddly (how you assassinate other agents is pretty confusing for new players). But other than that, it's a fantastic game. I am curious to see what they're going to do with the 2nd edition that's coming out. Supposedly they've streamlined it quite a bit.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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I'm basically holding out hope that the existing version winds up being the better one, since that's the one I own and all. I kind of dig that it's sort of a mess.

I agree that it's weird that you use bombs to hide royalty, but I get that introducing another resource type specifically to hide them would've gummed up the works quite a bit.
I can't imagine, even at my most inebriated, hearing a bouncer offering me an hour with a stripper for only $1,400 and thinking That sounds like a reasonable idea.-Two Sheds
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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Anyone here have Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game? I had written it off as a clone of the Marvel version of the same game system, but I've been hearing that it's actually quite different thanks to being very thematic and punishingly difficult. Reviews seem to be mostly glowing.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Isgrimnur »

I tried to convince Brian to get it, even recommending a game store in his area, but seeing as the card sleeves would stick to unpleasant places on his new friends, it seemed like a nonstarter. :)
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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It's a "deck" building game. Deck. With an "e".
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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I decided to eschew Assassinorum (ouch, sounds painful) and get Temple of Elemental Evil and Kemet. I wanted to buy all the Imperial Assault extras, but I couldn't justify spending $7-10 each for one mini and some extra cards to use in Skirmish (which I will likely rarely play). I look forward to getting all the cool elementals - they are (along with the undead) some of my favorite D&D beasts.

I picked up Kemet on a whim. I had been wanting it and I have some history students wanting to game this summer. This has a, albeit loose, historical theme and I have heard it is easy to teach (these students think Risk is a "real" boardgame). I look forward to playing it!

Hopefully, I can convince the wife to play Imperial Assault today. I've been really excited to get into it more deeply and I intend to run a 4-5 person round of it in a couple of weeks, so I need the practice. We are all Descent players, so I think it should be easy enough, but there is just enough nuance to make it a slightly different experience.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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hepcat wrote:Anyone here have Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game? I had written it off as a clone of the Marvel version of the same game system, but I've been hearing that it's actually quite different thanks to being very thematic and punishingly difficult. Reviews seem to be mostly glowing.
I have it, but have only played it solo so far. It is harder and much more thematic than Marvel. There is a Predator game coming later this year that can be mixed in for extra fun. It plays very similarly, but there are a few tweaks that make it more interesting. The bad guys that are revealed come out face down and you have to spend fight to reveal them or they reveal when they move to the end of the track and they start doing damage. Players have health and can die and there is healing. They really turned it into a different game.

Initial sorting and organization of the cards is a freaking bitch.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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FFG's got a preview of the new 40k game based on the orders system from the Starcraft board game, Forbidden Stars. It's early yet, but this looks pretty solid. I'll probably be picking it up at some point.

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/n ... st-sector/
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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Chaz wrote:FFG's got a preview of the new 40k game based on the orders system from the Starcraft board game, Forbidden Stars. It's early yet, but this looks pretty solid. I'll probably be picking it up at some point.

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/n ... st-sector/
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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Chaz wrote:I'm basically holding out hope that the existing version winds up being the better one, since that's the one I own and all. I kind of dig that it's sort of a mess.

I agree that it's weird that you use bombs to hide royalty, but I get that introducing another resource type specifically to hide them would've gummed up the works quite a bit.
Plus it seems like there aren't a *ton* of things to do that don't strongly suggest your alignment. Each side gets points for collecting cities, so there's that, but even there most cities' cards help only one of the revolution / war track, so that's a tip-off too. If you made loyalists collect some sort of "hiding" resource that would be another giveaway.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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coopasonic wrote:
hepcat wrote:Anyone here have Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game? I had written it off as a clone of the Marvel version of the same game system, but I've been hearing that it's actually quite different thanks to being very thematic and punishingly difficult. Reviews seem to be mostly glowing.
I have it, but have only played it solo so far. It is harder and much more thematic than Marvel. There is a Predator game coming later this year that can be mixed in for extra fun. It plays very similarly, but there are a few tweaks that make it more interesting. The bad guys that are revealed come out face down and you have to spend fight to reveal them or they reveal when they move to the end of the track and they start doing damage. Players have health and can die and there is healing. They really turned it into a different game.

Initial sorting and organization of the cards is a freaking bitch.
Would you say it has legs? Or is it limited by being objective based? i.e. once you play through the ones that came with it, it's kind of over?
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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There are the scenarios to play through and then you can play randomized.

There is also variation in the roles you take and the characters you include. I think it has good replayability, especially if you like it and then add in Predator. There are so many games that are the same game over and over and we still play them. I think there is plenty of variety here.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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Barnes and Noble is running what I think is an annual clearance sale in their brick and mortar stores. I've been to a few in my area and there's some hidden gems to be found. Started out at 50% off but they must have increased that to 75% because I just picked up Descent 2nd Edition for $19.99. Highlights of what I've seen include Memoir 44, Shadows over Camelot, Star Wars card game and expansions, some Small World expansions, etc.

I did some online searching to find Descent 2.0 and hit a few false positives (and they don't mention the clearance price online), but eventually got a text reply from a store that had it with the $19.99 price.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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El Guapo wrote:
Chaz wrote:I'm basically holding out hope that the existing version winds up being the better one, since that's the one I own and all. I kind of dig that it's sort of a mess.

I agree that it's weird that you use bombs to hide royalty, but I get that introducing another resource type specifically to hide them would've gummed up the works quite a bit.
Plus it seems like there aren't a *ton* of things to do that don't strongly suggest your alignment. Each side gets points for collecting cities, so there's that, but even there most cities' cards help only one of the revolution / war track, so that's a tip-off too. If you made loyalists collect some sort of "hiding" resource that would be another giveaway.
Well, while the resistance guys use the bombs to blow up the old ones, the loyalists use the bombs to blow up the people looking for the old ones. I can live with the abstraction.

I got a bit lucky with the zombies, because I was able to play the same card twice in a row: zombies, "freemasons" as a free action to discard the rest of my cards - forcing a deck reshuffle, and then the zombies just happened to come up again as one of the top four cards. I should have held off a turn though and let Cthulu eat Cairo. Then I would have totally won.

Also, we didn't get any vampires on the board this time. I guess there's a vampire card?
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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Daveman wrote:Barnes and Noble is running what I think is an annual clearance sale in their brick and mortar stores. I've been to a few in my area and there's some hidden gems to be found. Started out at 50% off but they must have increased that to 75% because I just picked up Descent 2nd Edition for $19.99. Highlights of what I've seen include Memoir 44, Shadows over Camelot, Star Wars card game and expansions, some Small World expansions, etc.

I did some online searching to find Descent 2.0 and hit a few false positives (and they don't mention the clearance price online), but eventually got a text reply from a store that had it with the $19.99 price.
Ooh shit, I better hit the local Barnes and Noble. Even though I'm probably never going to play the damn thing. But 20 bucks is just about low enough for a "maybe I'll get to play this after I retire" game.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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NickAragua wrote:
Daveman wrote:Barnes and Noble is running what I think is an annual clearance sale in their brick and mortar stores. I've been to a few in my area and there's some hidden gems to be found. Started out at 50% off but they must have increased that to 75% because I just picked up Descent 2nd Edition for $19.99. Highlights of what I've seen include Memoir 44, Shadows over Camelot, Star Wars card game and expansions, some Small World expansions, etc.

I did some online searching to find Descent 2.0 and hit a few false positives (and they don't mention the clearance price online), but eventually got a text reply from a store that had it with the $19.99 price.
Ooh shit, I better hit the local Barnes and Noble. Even though I'm probably never going to play the damn thing. But 20 bucks is just about low enough for a "maybe I'll get to play this after I retire" game.
If there was a B&N near my office, I'd swing by for the same reason. No dice though, so I'll just play your copy if you find one. :D
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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NickAragua wrote:
Also, we didn't get any vampires on the board this time. I guess there's a vampire card?
There is a vampire card, and it sounds pretty awesome. Basically it lets you turn your agents into vampires, which (1) makes them essentially immortal (duh); (2) turns them into killing machines (they can assassinate agents, and I think old ones, regardless of whether their agent card designates them as being able to kill); and (3) lets them steal enemy agents by converting them into vampires. It also gives a loyalist player points.

There is also a card out there which will kill all vampires and zombies, though, so I guess you have to keep an eye out for that.
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Just made a quick jaunt to the B&N near my office. All they had was a copy of Legendary Encounters: Marvel. In light of the fact that I had earlier voiced interest in the Alien version of that game franchise, I was all set to miraculously find a copy of that game right next to it for 15 bucks too.

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Daveman wrote:Barnes and Noble is running what I think is an annual clearance sale in their brick and mortar stores. I've been to a few in my area and there's some hidden gems to be found. Started out at 50% off but they must have increased that to 75% because I just picked up Descent 2nd Edition for $19.99. Highlights of what I've seen include Memoir 44, Shadows over Camelot, Star Wars card game and expansions, some Small World expansions, etc.

I did some online searching to find Descent 2.0 and hit a few false positives (and they don't mention the clearance price online), but eventually got a text reply from a store that had it with the $19.99 price.
Damn - it's too bad the only B&N in town closed down a few years back.
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Picked up Legendary Encounters Aliens on the way home from work this afternoon. Good Lord, would it have killed them to make even a small effort to sort the cards before putting them in the box? I just spent an hour sorting them...and I'm still not done. :shock:
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Went by a B&N last night, and they didn't have anything approaching a clearance section. :(
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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Isgrimnur wrote:Went by a B&N last night, and they didn't have anything approaching a clearance section. :(
Ditto. Couple tables, but no games.

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coopasonic wrote:Initial sorting and organization of the cards is a freaking bitch.
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Our B&N had a number of titles, but I already owned most of them - Memoir 44, Small World, etc. They also had a copy of Winter Tales, but with a 3-player minimum and reviews not really blowing me out of the water I decided to pass.

I have a feeling most of the good stuff had been snagged before I got there - I went late on a Sunday and I'm guessing they had that stuff out all weekend.
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coopasonic wrote:
coopasonic wrote:Initial sorting and organization of the cards is a freaking bitch.
Oh, I remembered you saying that and knew it was going to happen. I was just confirming that it is, indeed, a bitch. :wink:

I downloaded a 1 page card manifest for the game from Boardgamegeek. That has helped a lot. I thought I was missing about 3 or 4 cards last night, but after checking the manifest, I realized they just had a few oddball cards that you have to refer to the tiny labels on the bottom of the card to find.

Now, bring on Legendary Encounters: Predator!
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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hepcat wrote:Picked up Legendary Encounters Aliens on the way home from work this afternoon. Good Lord, would it have killed them to make even a small effort to sort the cards before putting them in the box? I just spent an hour sorting them...and I'm still not done. :shock:
I've heard great things about this game and every now and again I've thought about buying it. Would love to hear your impressions if you end up playing some solo sessions.
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gotta watch out, also, Hep...because one of the characters do not have a typical deck. I forget which one, but one of them has more cards of one cost, and less cards of another cost. When I was sorting my copy, I thought that they screwed up. But searching through the BGG forums, I found out that they designed that character that way.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by hepcat »

Which character are you talking about? I had no issues with sorting the character decks and just paid attention to the names at the top of the card. I don't recall looking at anything else on the cards, so maybe that's why I didn't have any issues.
$iljanus wrote: I've heard great things about this game and every now and again I've thought about buying it. Would love to hear your impressions if you end up playing some solo sessions.
After a solid two hours or so of sorting over two days, I FINALLY was able to play a solo game last night.

I played with two characters instead of one, just in case. The only problem I had with it was that after my second Pilsner Urquel (my new favorite), I was a bit tipsy and started having trouble remembering which deck I was discarding to. Hardly the game's fault though.

My impressions.

I like it. A lot. It captures the theme better than I would have expected. It almost feels like an Ignacy game in that regards, i.e. the mechanics are extremely thematic in their execution.

What makes it work so well for me are two things:

1) When a card comes from the hive deck each turn and starts the progress towards the combat zone, it does so face down. You have no idea whether or not it's good for you (some of the cards in that deck are required for your objective), or whether it's that damn facehugger.

2) But wait! You can scan each space (or room) as an action as those cards progress. THAT is my favorite thing. In the Marvel version of the series, you often have turns where you have some attack points...but not enough to do anything. In LE:A, you can spend those points to scan a room so you can see what's coming. And you really DO need to do that. Knowing what's about to show up in front of you is huge as the next player can then decide whether or not they need to deal with it, or they can do something else.

I won my game, but only after getting one of my characters killed off (the damn synthetic). And that was just the intro scenario based on the first movie.

I love the objectives and the way they change up the game quite drastically at times. For example: to kill off the main baddie last night, I had to find the airlock card that allowed me to send the big bad TO the airlock before I could kill him. Thematically it was perfect. It really did feel like the final moments of Alien with Ripley trying desperately to force the alien into the airlock and out into space.

But as much fun as I had solo, I can't wait to try it with the secret agenda cards and the alien player advanced rules. I love the idea of a hidden bad guy role in the game. And the concept of having a former ally in the game return as an alien if we can't stop a facehugger from turning him or her is too good to pass up. Of course, those things don't exist in a solo game. So I'm hoping to get in a game with 3 or more in the near future.

In short, I give it 4 out of 5 stars after one play. Hopefully it won't drop after a few more games. But I really am quite taken with it at the moment.
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$iljanus
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by $iljanus »

Ahh Pilsner Urquel. It's a nice beer, goes down easy but has some flavor. Sounds like you had a lot of fun with it. Was there a lot of record keeping or did you find the deck management reasonable?
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by hepcat »

No record keeping was required and hand management was a breeze.

Played another game last night. This time one based on Aliens. I won with a scout, but I think I'll up the difficulty for any future solo games. It wasn't as close as I'd have liked. Thankfully, they offer ways to up the difficulty level easily.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by baelthazar »

$iljanus wrote:Ahh Pilsner Urquel. It's a nice beer, goes down easy but has some flavor. Sounds like you had a lot of fun with it. Was there a lot of record keeping or did you find the deck management reasonable?
Sierra Nevada has a nice Pilsner style. I think it is called "Nooner." I like it greatly!

I might try to solo Temple of Elemental Evil today if I get enough grading done. It is MOTS compared to Wrath of Ashardalon (but Legend of Drizzt was a deviation from the theme) but they added some nice campaign rules and the new monsters are pretty interesting. Overall, I was happy with what I saw in the box.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Chaosraven »

Played Talisman with the Woodlands expansion and the Nether deck expansion.

(and we are now out of table space for the boards.... )

Woodlands is the 4th corner board (like Dungeon, City, and Highlands) with 5 new characters

The object is to make it to the end of the board to Meet Your Destiny
When you enter the Woodlands, you choose a Path (of the 3 faceup)
Each Path has an ability that affects you during your journey through the region
If you leave the region, you must discard the Path
If you make it to the end space you do whatever it says on the Path, perhaps gaining a Destiny
Destiny is a special Power/Ability you will keep as a player across your characters.

The new aspect of the game is Light and Dark Fate (the gold and black sides) actually make a difference.

Light fate is used to reroll your rolls (as before)
Dark fate is used to reroll OTHER players rolls.

The character is:
Lightbound (if more Light fate)
Darkbound (if more Dark Fate fate)
Unbound (if equal amounts)
Fateless (if no fate)

This matters for cards that have effects based on which you are
(example- a place that gains you a Light fate and a Craft if you are Lightbound, a Dark Fate and a Strength is you re Darkbound)
If you are Unbound, nothing happens, Fateless MUST do the lower portion of any card.
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