Octopus Overlords

whoa, those are some nice crokinole boards!

I've never played on a heavily painted/graphic laden board before. I wonder how much of a distraction it would be?

Neuroshima Convoy. I was the humans and was drawing dead by the final city. I have yet to find any enthusiasm for the Neuroshima games.

I have the original version of The Convoy by Ignacy. I wasn't even aware they'd remade it as Neuroshima: Convoy.

Coop got it on Day 1 of the con as a free giveaway. It wasn't available on day 2 when I arrived.

We got slaughtered in Alien Legendary Encounters. The perfect organism showing up will do that to you.

Just demoed Sol: Last Days of a Star with the designer. It will be up on Kickstarter in January. It's pretty good, despite my last place finish.

I'll have pics and links later.

Let me know if you get a chance to check out Gloomhaven. According to the KS updates, he's down there.

We muddled through the intro game of Tragedy Looper. It was certainly challenge to learn. I will have to ponder as to whether or not to circle back around to it.

Finished off the night with a round of Bad Medicine, a party game of drug naming and pitching to the others. If I actually went to parties, I might be tempted to purchase it.

Played Shadowrun: Crossfire (still loving it, can't wait for the expansion), Dead of Winter and Legendary Encounters: Predator, a tad bit of Epic

TheMix wrote:Let me know if you get a chance to check out Gloomhaven. According to the KS updates, he's down there.

Didn't see any sign of it. Maybe he was just there to play games or was demoing in the main room which is impossible to find anything specific in.

I should have asked you guys to look for Tiny Epic Western while you were there and give me a report.

coopasonic wrote:

hepcat wrote:Let me guess: you evolved yourself a flying carnivore?

Flyers are size limited. A flying carnivore could be hard to feed.

Pack Hunting

What's that? A game about the last half of the last inning of a tied ball game? Eh. Might be OK.

WRONG! This game was great!

Bottom of the 9th. Bases loaded. Two outs, and a reliever that still has some of her stuff. Who's going to win?



Great, great game. Bottom of the 9th by Dice Hate Me Games.

I looked at and passed Baseball Highlights: 2045 because of the 6-inning game and multiple "starter team" packs nature of it.

Got my copy of the Kickstarter for Bottom of the Ninth last Thursday. It looks a bit deeper than I expected. Also received my copy of the second edition Kickstarter for Rise of Cthulhu the same day. I played that Saturday and it surprised me with how good it was.

Sunday morning, my 5-year-old decided to make a game. He drew the pieces, I cut them out, and then we laid them out on the kitchen floor to play. There were player markers, houses, cars, dogs, trees, wood, coins, a bank, an ax store, a gun store, a crane, and zombies.

The goal was to cut down trees, collect wood, trade it for coins, collect enough coins to get the crane, use the crane to lift a giant boulder, find the diamond car underneath the boulder, and drive to safety. All while being attacked by zombies.

It was pretty fun.

Saturday, I played a couple of games of Mistfall with two players. We failed to win even the intro scenario, unfortunately. It's a tough game. But from all accounts, it takes a few games before you wrap your mind around the strategy of winning. I am disappointed that it has some card errata already, but it's still nothing compared to the Pathfinder ACG series.

I guess it's a testament to how much I enjoy this one that I whipped it out again on Sunday for a solo game.

I played a couple of games of 7 Wonders Duel this weekend. It you've played 7 Wonders it is easy to pick up, although there are some differences.For one, it's just two players. Secondly, all the cards are laid out on the table in a pyramid-like shape (although the shape changes for each age) with some cards face up and others face down. On your turn, you can either take a card to add it to your civilization, sell a card for money, or build a wonder. If the card you picked up "uncovers" one ore more of the face down cards, they get flipped over and are available to be taken.

Like 7 Wonders, many cards have resource requirements to build. If you don't have those resources, you can always buy them from the bank (not your opponent). You pay the bank 2 gold + 1 gold for each of that resource your opponent has more than you. So you can really make it hard on your opponent by stocking up on one resource, although there are cards that can mitigate those costs.

The other main difference deals with the Science and Military track. For both, the game can be won outright before you end the 3rd age. Each time you get a military card, you move a token along the military track towards your opponent (the number of spaces you move depends on the number of shields on the card). When your opponent takes a military card, the token moves back towards your city. If you reach the end of the track, you have destroyed your opponents city and win the game. Similarly, in science, you can win immediately by collecting 6 different science symbols (there are now 7 total in the game plus a wild-card symbol). So, unlike in the base 7 Wonders, you can't just forgo military or science completely and still do well. Certainly ratchets up the tension.

There are some other differences (e.g. you each get 4 potential wonders to build at the start of the game, etc.), but those are the main ones.

Tl;dr version: I really like the game. Its one of the more in-depth 2 player specific games that I have which was definitely a weak spot in my collection. I think I'll get a lot of play out of this game. If you like 7 Wonders and really want a two player variant with some slight differences, definitely pick this game up.

Finally managed to get a game of Epic Spells Wars of the Battle Wizards: Duel at Mt. Skullzfyre and found it to be quite enjoyable. I think I need to read up a bit on some of the rules, but for the most part you just follow the cards. Managed to win by casting a Delicious Chicken spell while wearing the Pumps of Power. I'd say if you're looking for something that plays relatively quick, this works quite nicely. There's actually a bit of strategy but not enough that it ever feels serious. I'm actually considering picking up the expansion as by all accounts it seems to add even more insanity.

Smoove_B wrote:Finally managed to get a game of Epic Spells Wars of the Battle Wizards: Duel at Mt. Skullzfyre and found it to be quite enjoyable.

Seppe has this and we played it on Halloween. I agree, it's a blast.

I built shelves!

I don't think I can approve of sideways boxxery.

Nice shelves, and a nice collection. Although your filing system mystifies me.

I got to play Tash-Kalar with the Nethervoid deck. I like it! It's a nice change from those tired old base game decks. One day I will play with the expansion deck from last year...

AWS260 wrote:Nice shelves, and a nice collection. Although your filing system mystifies me.

It was basically "I've been hanging closet rods and shelves all day, I'm tired, I'm just tossing these up here in random order" filing. Though really, I don't know that I'll ever get much more organized than that.

I'm normally not for sideways-boxing either. I decided to try it because I'm kind of tired of having to move up to three games to get at the lower ones in the stack. So far, I don't actually hate it. I keep most bits in baggies anyway, so there should be minimal shifting of stuff. The bigger boxes on the bottom shelves bug me though. There's no good way to stack those.

Codenames. I’m not really a fan of party type games but this one was surprisingly fun. You have two teams with a 5x5 grid of word cards set at the center of the table. Each team leader has access to a blueprint of spy locations, represented by the words on the table. Each team leader must give (exactly one) word and a number to their team to describe words on the table. If their team picks correctly, their colored spy gets put over the word, otherwise the other team gets a shot. Ideally you want to give a hint that applies to as many words as you can but if at any time a team accidentally uncovers the assassin they lose immediately.

Since that might be a bit hard to visualize, imagine these words are on the table.

Plane - House - Leaf
Play - Acorn - Elephant
Student - Game - Maple

The team leader could say Tree 3 to indicate that he wanted his team to choose Leaf, Maple and Acorn. The danger comes from if one of your team members thinks that houses are made out of trees and chooses that word instead.

Dammit, Jakarta! Would you people freaking wash your hands every once in a while???

hentzau wrote:Dammit, Jakarta! Would you people freaking wash your hands every once in a while???

Surely you meant to say St. Petersberg. They must greet each other by coughing in each other's faces or something.

wonderpug wrote:

hentzau wrote:Dammit, Jakarta! Would you people freaking wash your hands every once in a while???

Surely you meant to say St. Petersberg. They must greet each other by coughing in each other's faces or something.

I'm pretty sure he meant Madrid. Basically a cesspool of bodily fluids.

I'm missing something.

Isgrimnur wrote:I'm missing something.

Thank you.

Do you guys say "Oh no! Germ infested Cold Cuts!" when you draw Kolkata (get it Cold-cut-a)? Or am I the only one? I mean really, India has a Delhi in it already... it isn't much of a stretch.

Isgrimnur wrote:Thank you.

Indeed. Ditto.

I was trying to figure out the relevance there.

TheMix wrote:

Isgrimnur wrote:Thank you.

Indeed. Ditto.

I was trying to figure out the relevance there.

Well, it's also because Hentzau is famously racist against Indonesians.

baelthazar wrote:Do you guys say "Oh no! Germ infested Cold Cuts!" when you draw Kolkata (get it Cold-cut-a)? Or am I the only one? I mean really, India has a Delhi in it already... it isn't much of a stretch.

Most of our group's jokes revolve around what kinds of diseases are being spread in Bangkok.

El Guapo wrote:

TheMix wrote:

Isgrimnur wrote:Thank you.

Indeed. Ditto.

I was trying to figure out the relevance there.

Well, it's also because Hentzau is famously racist against Indonesians.

They prefer Carrom over Crokinole. I think I'm justified.

Chaz wrote:I built shelves!

We should play Napoleon's Triumph sometime. When are you coming to Octocon?

I'd love to play that, since I never have. When's Octocon moving closer to me?