Octopus Overlords

Check out the Borg giant cube in play.



If you're a Star Trek fan and you don't mind a game that's not painstakingly balanced for competitions, but you do love games that create a great story each time you play, you'll love ST:AW.

hepcat wrote:Check out the Borg giant cube in play.



If you're a Star Trek fan and you don't mind a game that's not painstakingly balanced for competitions, but you do love games that create a great story each time you play, you'll love ST:AW.

Dear Lord that is huge! (Yeah, yeah, that is what she said.) But only 60 bucks for that? Some of those Star Wars models are a lot more than 60 bucks for smaller models than that...

Well, that was the sale price at coolstuffinc's booth. The MSRP for both of those pieces is around a hundred.

hepcat wrote:Well, that was the sale price at coolstuffinc's booth. The MSRP for both of those pieces is around a hundred.

Ahh.. Okay, that makes sense then.

hepcat wrote:Check out the Borg giant cube in play.



If you're a Star Trek fan and you don't mind a game that's not painstakingly balanced for competitions, but you do love games that create a great story each time you play, you'll love ST:AW.

And the paint job on that cube is flawless.

Heh, yeah. Not a lot of work goes into an all grey exterior.

Check out this guy's modified cube. Granted, it's the smaller one, but it's still very cool.

I played mysterium. A 7 player game with me as ghost (although two of the investigators were more drunk than playing). Two of the investigators were very good at narrowing to what I was hinting at, but the others, not so much. While they managed to get their own sets right in 6 days, they managed to completely miss the last one even with two extra days.

Also, the cards can be maddeningly difficult to make clues out of, sometimes.

I know this should be in the bargain section of the forum, but since only board gamers would really want this one, I thought I'd drop it here.

Artscow is having a deal on 10 customized dice bags for 20 bucks and free shipping. Some fine folks over at BGG have created a ton of great game themed dice bags. All of which you can find here.

Coupon code: UP4GRABS
Expires on: 08-7-2015

Have they fixed the Borg at all? I haven't played attack wing in roughly a year but the Borg were horribly unbalanced then. Terribly not fun to play or play against.

I like attack wing... It's fun... But x wing is the much more balanced and I must say in my opinion vastly superior game in terms of pure balance and forethought into the product.

I will say that while x wing has missions and they are a lot of fun, they are not near as fun to play as the star trek ones since the star trek ones follow the episodes so much.

I only recently bought into the Borg faction and haven't had a chance to play any of them yet. However, they do look to be a bit overpowered for their point cost.

As I mentioned earlier, I play ST:AW for the stories. Winning is almost secondary when I'm shooting around the map, trying to remember how the Jem'hadar reacted to an opponent in the episode which the mission is taken from. I'm fully aware that X-Wing is balanced better and is a much better tournament level game. But I play ST:AW for the the same reason I play Star Trek: Fleet Captains: it's about the experience.

hepcat wrote:I only recently bought into the Borg faction and haven't had a chance to play any of them yet. However, they do look to be a bit overpowered for their point cost.

As I mentioned earlier, I play ST:AW for the stories. Winning is almost secondary when I'm shooting around the map, trying to remember how the Jem'hadar reacted to an opponent in the episode which the mission is taken from. I'm fully aware that X-Wing is balanced better and is a much better tournament level game. But I play ST:AW for the the same reason I play Star Trek: Fleet Captains: it's about the experience.

And Hepcat loses a lot, so well...

Love ya man!

I wish I could argue with you. Seppe beat me at 5 games in a row one time. I think he realized how demoralized I was and subsequently let me win a couple the next time we played. I rely on the compassion of my friends for my mental well being sometimes.

Oh yeah attack wing is a good game. The missions make it a great game for fans. I don't disagree with that.

Played Netrunner:Android with my son. It was our second try at it, the first being like a year ago. We watched a good youtube video on how to play it and consulted the web a couple of times about specific card rules, but I feel like it's starting to click now. I love the fact that the game is assymetric. Sometimes when getting started in a new game you only realize something is a good strategy after you see it working for your opponent, and by then it's tool late to catch up. In Netrunner you always just have to try your own things.

paulbaxter wrote:I love the fact that the game is assymetric.

“You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means”

Played the voyages of Marco Polo - it's a dice rolling worker placement game where you put your dice on different locations on the board to acquire resources, contracts or the ability to move which allows you to travel across the Asia putting trading posts in different cities (that give you access to new abilities (randomized in each game) where you can put your dice/worker). You also have two goal cards that give you extra victory points for putting trading posts in certain cities.

Each player has a special ability which isn't balanced at all (some of the abilities are far, far more powerful than others). Also, there's a lot of randomness for a euro-game (I'm not even talking about dice rolling - the placement of city bonuses can help someone who's got goal cards for certain cities a lot).

Also, one can be successful while ignoring half of the game (I did very well despite ignoring contracts and half of the resources entirely, and didn't have a powerful special ability). Still, despite the lack of balance, it was still fun.

Additionally, I played specter ops. More complicated than Scotland Yard, it's still easy enough to learn, though the rule book is poorly written, leaving some things unclear. We played a five player games with an agent and four hunters but one of those hunters was a traitor. The agent did get some useful cards that allowed him to pull some tricks, like leaving a decoy or throwing a flash grenade. We manged to box him in early, though (using the car which gives better views to box him in, and a motion detector that helped to pin him down). The traitor element doesn't work so well in this game, though, as the best the traitor can seem to do is not see the agent. There doesn't seem to be any way to really sabotage the other hunters (until they reveal and can act against them but then that also leaves them potentially vulnerable).

Yesterday, took kid to a local anime convention (her first one, she was extremely excited, I was only there cause we didn't know anything about it and not comfortable leaving her there all alone). I spent most of the day in the open gaming room. Got into a Munchkin event, where I was 4th of 5 players to get to L9, but managed to be the 1st winner (they played for 2nd place as well), because, of course with the others there (including the first guy who was there for 5 turns... then we set him back 4 levels), everyone had burned their good stuff stopping the people before me.

Kid didn't play but I had to go find her so she could pick out a prize (she picked out some pokemon plushie - they had 4 prizes, all anime related).

Played Zombie dice (first time, slightly more interesting than your usual family press your luck dice game) and I think it was called Dragon Slayer - you get 3 dice for you and you pick 1 of 3 different difficulty dragons to fight (3 dice). You need to roll the dragon's head, tail, body/wings on the 3 dragon dice, an entertaining press your luck game with an added, interactive element that after you were done, the other players could challenge you, you'd have to win one more round. You could refuse the challenge, but then the challenger got 5 points and you only get 1/2 your points. Made what would otherwise have been a boring day fairly entertaining.

Tonight we played Ticket to Ride (she got a copy at some charity sale where they had no clue what it was worth and sold it for $.50 - an excellent condition copy with the cards all sorted out and the pieces all put in zip loc bags! - awesome deal!). First time we'd played it since she got it for me for father's day. We'd only played once before (and I played once on Steam copy) - we had fun, she won by 3 points. We had routes that were strongly overlapping.

Started a game of Imperial Assault this weekend. Long and short of it is it seems like a better thought out version of Mansions of Madness with a persistent campaign and character leveling. Or if you are not familiar with MoM, it’s a tactical RPG in a box.

We played the first mission and a side mission. I was the Imperial player (DM) and completely wrecked the heroes in the first mission which made me feel kind of bad. I eased up just a hair and things shifted completely the opposite way in the side mission they chose and I couldn’t even keep units on the board.

Turns out one of the Rebels ability (Quick Draw) to interrupt my activations, combined with lucky rolls is utterly devastating. She was shooting Storm Troopers dead before they even got to fire. Moving forward, no sympathy for the Rebel scum!

This weekend I played Survive: Escape from Atlantis with a 5-year-old and a 72-year-old. What a stellar family game. It went over much better than the last time I tried with the 5-year-old; he now thinks that seeing his swimmers eaten by sharks is funny, not upsetting. Time for a family screening of Jaws!

Played with my Pathfinder Adventure Card Game group yesterday. We're working our way through the Skull and Shackles set. We finished up the first scenarios a couple of weeks ago, and tackled the next two yesterday. The first one we sailed through with no problem. The second stymied us though as the win conditions for the scenario are that you have to close every location. With a 30 card timer, that means you have to be really lucky to get a henchman near the top of each deck in order to have the time. Needless to say, that wasn't in the cards for us.

After two failed attempts to complete that one, we set it aside in favor of something else. I petitioned for Francis Drake, which I had just picked up at Gencon. We played through the game in about 3 hours and when it came time to score hidden victory points gained from treasure, I was ahead and won the game. What ensued was a 30 minute discussion about why the other players didn't really like the game. After listening to the complaints patiently, I realized suddenly that most of the problems they had with the game could be summed up thusly: "Any game that hepcat can win must be broken.".

hepcat wrote:Played with my Pathfinder Adventure Card Game group yesterday. We're working our way through the Skull and Shackles set. We finished up the first scenarios a couple of weeks ago, and tackled the next two yesterday. The first one we sailed through with no problem. The second stymied us though as the win conditions for the scenario are that you have to close every location. With a 30 card timer, that means you have to be really lucky to get a henchman near the top of each deck in order to have the time. Needless to say, that wasn't in the cards for us.

After two failed attempts to complete that one, we set it aside in favor of something else. I petitioned for Francis Drake, which I had just picked up at Gencon. We played through the game in about 3 hours and when it came time to score hidden victory points gained from treasure, I was ahead and won the game. What ensued was a 30 minute discussion about why the other players didn't really like the game. After listening to the complaints patiently, I realized suddenly that most of the problems they had with the game could be summed up thusly: "Any game that hepcat can win must be broken.".

Yup, exactly.

I do take some solace in knowing that people feel they can argue that point in front of me without apparent fear that I'll initiate violence. I must be a somewhat nice guy.

hepcat wrote:I do take some solace in knowing that people feel they can argue that point in front of me without apparent fear that I'll initiate violence. I must be a somewhat nice guy.

Your actually just smaller than the rest of us.

Played a game of Istanbul last night. Been looking to try it for some time. I really like it. You are a merchant trying to collect red jewels and you have assistants you take with you to do your tasks. You can only do tasks when they are with you do you end up leaving a trail of assistants as you try to build a chain of events which lets you build a temporary engine of sorts to gain money or supplies which you then change for jewels.

I've been looking to play this game for a while and I have to say I really, really enjoyed it. A game that will go high on my wishlist to be sure.

hepcat wrote:Played with my Pathfinder Adventure Card Game group yesterday. We're working our way through the Skull and Shackles set. We finished up the first scenarios a couple of weeks ago, and tackled the next two yesterday. The first one we sailed through with no problem. The second stymied us though as the win conditions for the scenario are that you have to close every location. With a 30 card timer, that means you have to be really lucky to get a henchman near the top of each deck in order to have the time. Needless to say, that wasn't in the cards for us.

After two failed attempts to complete that one, we set it aside in favor of something else. I petitioned for Francis Drake, which I had just picked up at Gencon. We played through the game in about 3 hours and when it came time to score hidden victory points gained from treasure, I was ahead and won the game. What ensued was a 30 minute discussion about why the other players didn't really like the game. After listening to the complaints patiently, I realized suddenly that most of the problems they had with the game could be summed up thusly: "Any game that hepcat can win must be broken.".

How do you like the second pathfinder 'expansion' compared to the ? I have played a ton of the first set, but have not played anything of the second set.

I got in several games of crokinole, so that was good.

And I picked up "Flick 'Em Up" from my FLGS. I'm not sure why, though. I have a really hard time finding people to play me in flicking dexterity games like that.

Rococo, cod-designed by one of my favorites, Mattias Cramer, is a eurogame about making dresses. It also has a really interesting “deck-building” mechanic. The twist is that your deck is never more than 10-15 cards, and you never shuffle it. You choose from your draw pile, and don’t reuse any of the chosen cards till your draw pile is empty. There are three levels of workers: apprentices, journeymen, and master tailors. The lower two worker types can’t perform every action, but have much better bonuses. When a new card is purchased(only by a master), it goes directly to the player’s hand. You’re collecting materials to then use to make dresses. I’ve played it 10 times or so now, and I need to get it to the table more often.

I’ve also been playing Viceroy a lot, which I recently received via Kickstarter. It’s a lot of fun. It’s something of a mix of Among the Stars, Seven Wonders, and Splendor, with some light negotiation thrown it. It also has some of the best art I’ve ever seen in a game. I highly recommend it.

RMC wrote:
How do you like the second pathfinder 'expansion' compared to the ? I have played a ton of the first set, but have not played anything of the second set.

I'm not a fan of the ship mechanic...yet. It just feels tacked on as a way to enable mass movement during some scenarios, give one or two extra cards at the end of each scenario, and to add another enemy type. It just seems odd that your ship is always at your location on each turn, no matter what player is up, unless it is specified that it is docked by the scenario rules.

But the other stuff is pure PACG, so I'm good with that.

Played a bunch of Legendary: Predator and some Star Realms and Firefly Shiny Dice. Will likely play some Krosmaster and Crossfire tomorrow

How was Predator? I spent a few hours this past weekend unpacking and organizing my copy on prep for a game day next Saturday.

We got crushed playing 2 player Predator 1 scenario (as humans), then we had really good rally on Predator 2 (as humans). Since then it's gone either way. Had a lot of fun and the objectives once again feel quite on theme much like Alien did. Amazes me how they take a few words and game mechanics and relate a feeling from the movies with it. The 'Marked' ability that represents the Predator has you in it's sights is also quite simple yet effective.

Haven't tried the competitive version yet, was hoping to have more than the 2 of us for that and my other gamers have been busy.

Harkonis wrote:Played a bunch of Legendary: Predator and some Star Realms and Firefly Shiny Dice. Will likely play some Krosmaster and Crossfire tomorrow

The 80s Crossfire where you shoot little ball bearings at each other?! I always wanted that one.

In alphabetical order

Caverna- A farming/mining game. I mostly concentrated on farming, although I did do some work in my caverns (making dwellings and a couple of mines and one or two other rooms). I did really well with my farming (both in terms of the veggies and in terms of the animals). I did less well in the cavern portion, as I didn't quite understand it as well, and didn't do the expeditions at all as I didn't really understand it (I probably shouldn't have said midway through the explanation "Hey, lets just start it, I'm sure I'll pick the rest up when we play"). I'm not sure I like that it's hard to build things apart from dwellings and mines (there's only one location plus expeditions that allow you to build those other tiles). I also disliked that there were so many types of rooms (and only one of each) - too easy to overlook some - I would have multiple copies of fewer rooms.

It's highly rated on BGG (#3 board game), and while it's certainly a solid, quality game, I'm not sure it quite deserves a spot that high up. Though it does support 1-7 players, which is nice.

Chinatown - Last time I played this was about five years ago. It's a tile placement/area control game where you want to build businesses in Chinatown. Each turn you get several spaces of property on the board, and various tiles of businesses. If you have several adjacent properties and several tiles of the same type of business (up to the max size of the business, which goes from 3-6) you can build a larger business that gives you more money each turn.
Most of the gameplay involves negotiation, which allows lots of tense situation as well as backstabbing. It works very well, as the game is easy to learn, but very hard to master because of the social element.

At times, some of the negotiations got very tense. Eg, I was doing well (either in first or second position), with my main place a five business with room for 6 locations, and someone had obtained one of the neighboring properties as well as the same business tile. He was willing to trade it, but he wanted a lot for it (several properties and some business tiles) in part because I was ahead of him. But I try to measure trades in how equal they are (I sometimes throw in some stuff in a deal that's tilted my way, because I want to make sure they'll be inclined to trade with me in the future).

I calculated that while I would benefit from the deal, he was getting more out of the deal, and by walking away from it, I wouldn't lose out too much (Instead of getting an additional 60K a turn, I'd be able to earn 40K a turn) and would be in a better bargaining position for negotiating with others. they were annoyed, because they were counting on that deal. And the following turn, I got a position neighboring my main business, but I didn't have the appropriate tile. I ended up winning a very close victory, earning just over what another player had earned.

Mysterium - I played this again. Even though I had anticipated it a lot, and it is fun, it does feel more lightweight than I was hoping for. It's also a real pain to set up (it feels like there could have been a better way to design it).

Penny Press - fun light-to-mid level game. You play a newspaper trying to print out newspapers covering stories in five different beats. The value of stories are determined by the number (and "size") of stories currently in that beat (randomly chosen) and the amount of interest in it by players (how many different stories are being covered by meeple reporters). On your turn, you can move about your reporters to/from stories or your can publish the stories (hoping your stories cover the real estate of your newspaper without taking up too much room). It's very simple to teach, but also fun and interesting. I think the main issue I had with it was that it felt a little short (I was surprised at how fast it ended). Also, it's possible for one person to be further along than others (one person published his third paper the same round someone else finished his first, though the person who finished his third paper didn't win).

Defiant wrote:In alphabetical order

Caverna- A farming/mining game. I mostly concentrated on farming, although I did do some work in my caverns (making dwellings and a couple of mines and one or two other rooms). I did really well with my farming (both in terms of the veggies and in terms of the animals). I did less well in the cavern portion, as I didn't quite understand it as well, and didn't do the expeditions at all as I didn't really understand it (I probably shouldn't have said midway through the explanation "Hey, lets just start it, I'm sure I'll pick the rest up when we play"). I'm not sure I like that it's hard to build things apart from dwellings and mines (there's only one location plus expeditions that allow you to build those other tiles).

It sounds like you may not have had the right number of boards for the number of players you had. Be careful, they are two sided. One space you may have overlooked is the Clone action, which lets you copy (almost) any other action space.

Also, expeditions are HUGE. A level 7 dwarf is one more way you can furnish a room. In the first game we played, only one person in our group went on expeditions and he pretty much ran away with the game.

Lordnine wrote: It sounds like you may not have had the right number of boards for the number of players you had. Be careful, they are two sided. One space you may have overlooked is the Clone action, which lets you copy (almost) any other action space.

We did have the clone action, which I did use once or twice to build (and the one time I had placed my dwarf on the furnish any room early on, I didn't realize that the second furnish room only allowed you to furnish a dwelling, figuring it could funish any room, and so I had wasted my furnish any room on a dwelling).

Edit: Part of it may be that I'm more used to games like Puerto Rico, where either it's easier to do a build action, or everyone takes the action at the same time. Or games like Lords of Waterdeep, where it's not easy to build a building, but there aren't that many to build.

Also, expeditions are HUGE. A level 7 dwarf is one more way you can furnish a room. In the first game we played, only one person in our group went on expeditions and he pretty much ran away with the game.

We played a 4 player game, and two people went on expeditions, I concentrated on farming and someone else concentrated mostly on caverning(?). The caverning guy won, and I got a close second, so I did reasonably well.

Got in several games this weekend, had a mini-game day over at my church. Hepcat, Zarathud, Archinerd and Seppe all showed up, along with a couple of various and sundry. Didn't win a damn thing all day.

First up with a game of Chtulhu Realms. Fun, light game from the creator of Star Realms. My son actually ended up eeking out a win in that one over Hepcat.

Then did a 4 player game of Flick 'Em Up with my son and our pastor and his wife. This game is everything I was hoping it would be, lighthearted, fast, fun flicking game. Components are great, rules are easy, and it just looks fun on the table. And I just realized I have to take back my statement about not winning anything, my son and I beat our pastor and his wife, shooting down 3 of their lawmen with them only taking down one of ours.

Then my pastor and his wife wanted to play Imperial Assault. Well, that was really his wife's doing...she's a giant Star Wars nerd, and loves Star Wars games. Had fun with that one...pulled a random side mission out of the deck and it was the Rescue Luke Skywalker mission, so they were all excited they got to play with Luke...until they opened the doors to the garage and Vader stood revealed inside. Rebels managed to win this one on the last turn. Very fun game, but I need to review the rules because a) I'm not sure I got the reinforcement rules correct and b) I still don't really understand the overall campaign rules.

After that my pastor showed my his copy of Journey: Wrath of Demonsand we played through the first scenario. Very fun little skirmish co-op game with a ton of absolutely beautiful minis. Made me sad that the Shadows of Brimstone minis aren't like those.

A quick dinner break, and my son wanted to play a game of Exploding Kittens, so I humored him. Then we got in a 5 player game of Colt Express, which Seppe won. At one point there were 4 of us all on and in 2 cars just punching and shooting the heck out of us, and Seppe is at the far end of the train just calmly stealing all of the loot he wanted to. Love this game. Highly recommended.

Then we played a couple of games of 2 Rooms and a Boom. Enjoyable enough, but I never really truly understood what was going on. I'm not the proper audience for these types of social games. Cash and Guns, yes, but games in the werewolf genre don't work well for me. I'm way too trusting.

Finished up the day playing Archinerd's prototype game. Very, very fun abstract 4 player chess type game. Reminded me a bit of Bosworth. Game needs a couple of rule tweaks, and I think he has a winner on his hands. Just needs a publisher!

Had some friends in town for a wedding so of course we found some time to play a few games.

Played Roll for the Galaxy twice. It was the first (and then second) time for them. I think they really liked it even though I beat them both times.

We also played Istanbul for the first time. The game started slowly as none of us really had a set strategy yet, but then snowballed with tons of stuff happening in the last two turns (4 out of the 5 players ended with at least 4 gems out of the 5 needed to win). It was fun, although it will take a few more times of playing it before I could say whether the game has legs.

Finally, played a bunch of games of Avalon. It's a Camelot version of Resistance (which is sort of a distilled version of Werewolf for 5 - 10 players). Everyone liked it and despite the fact that I lied through my teeth in almost every game, they kept believing me so I was on the winning team in all 5 games we played. But now they'll never trust me again.

Oh, there was some interest in the P&P copy of The Dice Must Flow at the event, and folks were asking for a link. I don't remember paying that much for it, he may have upped his price since I ordered months ago.

hentzau wrote:
Finished up the day playing Archinerd's prototype game. Very, very fun abstract 4 player chess type game. Reminded me a bit of Bosworth. Game needs a couple of rule tweaks, and I think he has a winner on his hands. Just needs a publisher!

I really want to try this one. But I thought Archinerd said it was for 4 players only, and I was having trouble getting exactly 4 people together at any one time. I'm hoping he brings it to Octocon though so I can try it there...or maybe even another game day before then.

I got a chance to finally play Ashes on Saturday with seppe and another member around here who's board name escapes me. I was pleasantly surprised by it. I had some second thoughts on it while reading the rules for it after I picked it up at Gencon, but it really does play like a cross between Magic and Mage Wars. I love the use of dice as a resource, the way conjurations are handled and the light hand management aspect. My only complaint is that it can run loooonnnnggggg. Especially for new players.

Two Rooms and a Boom is my first foray into social games like that. So we started with the basic rules. That's probably why you didn't enjoy it as much. Once we added the advanced rules, the character types people selected made it a lot more fun, in my opinion. I was laughing my ass off over your power as the dealer to make people always tell the truth if asked, versus the next guy who cursed me to being mute. I can easily see this one being a hit with 10 to 15 people. That each game lasts only about 15 minutes in total is another selling point.

Finally, I don't think I'll whip out Francis Drake again unless there's at least 4 players. With 3, there's no real struggle for resources/destinations. That kind of reduces the importance of provisioning, in my opinion.

Oh, and I loved Colt Express. Anything that even remotely resembles RoboRally is a winner in my book.

I need to check out Journey now!

Played some more Ashes: Rise of the Phoenix Born on Wednesday at an open game night at our local FLGS. About 3 turns into the game, an observer to our game who actually had studied the rules beforehand noted that I was playing it wrong. Instead of everyone taking one turn, and then going to the recovery phase; everyone is supposed to go around the table taking turns until everyone has passed consecutively. That made a HUGE difference in the game and made resource management so much more vital. I liked the game while playing it wrong, but now I love it! Can't recommend it enough!