Octopus Overlords

I'm waiting for my Battle Foam insert for Heroes of Normandie to ship so I can get to organizing. My buddy has Shadows and between the two boxes, I think it's like 37lbs of cardboard chits and tiles. I totally agree with you on the theme - though I'm also pretty much down for anything Cthulhu. Add WW2? Terrific.

There are some issues with the release though - I don't know if you have an updated printing but my buddy said he was missing a few tiles? He was also saying corrections/updates/fixes were provided but only mailed to KS backers. He tried getting them directly from DevilPig but was told they aren't available via retail sale yet.

I'll have to check the BGG site for info on that as I haven't heard anything. I hope my printing has everything!

hepcat wrote:I've been over the top so far this year. Buying a couple of games a month almost. Although some of that is because a few kickstarters have shipped very close to each other.

But I think I'll sell off a bunch of games at Gencon again this year. I was looking around at my collection last night and there's at least a half dozen I haven't played in years...nor do I find any desire to do so now.

As for Shadows Over Normandie, it's right up my alley. Weird War II is one of my favorite settings in a game. I also like that there are 3 factions in the game. U.S. Rangers, Black Sun (German cultists) and The Deep Ones (monsters). It feels like you're playing the opening of Hellboy, to be honest. And since that's one of my favorite movies, I'm excited about that.

Wanna set up a Shadows Over Normandie night soon, hentz? Since you already know Heroes, it should be a snap.

Sure. Just need to figure out a free evening, but I'd be game.

hepcat wrote:I'll have to check the BGG site for info on that as I haven't heard anything. I hope my printing has everything!

I just asked; he said the small dragon has the wrong stats on it and the grenade (explosion) template is missing. The grenade template is something you can use from the Heroes of Normandie set (it's identical).

...which I don't own. I'll just print one out if they're available online though.

hepcat wrote:...which I don't own. I'll just print one out if they're available online though.

Or I'll scan Tommy's for you, or ask him to scan it if you need it. Just let me know.

Hmmm...appears they're not as important in SoN considering that there's no redirect roll. In SoN, you simply choose an interspace, perform the action, and every surrounding space gets a +2 attack.

I found the templates online though and printed out a copy. Thanks though!

Something to buy at GenCon!

Got glory to Rome to the table. I really enjoyed it. I ended the game because I thought I was going to win but alas I was unable to. Hoping to get it to the table again soon.

I didn't play anything today, but we were out of town and I picked up a copy of Doomtown: Reloaded new for $20, plus my eldest bought a copy of Boss Monster for us. I'm hoping to spend some time with them soon.

You'll be able to get a lot of doomtown reloaded stuff cheap in the coming days. AEG is dropping the line. I own quite a bit of it, but it's just too tough to get players into it. It's got a lot of little rules that don't often make a lot of sense. I love it in spite of that, but I think I'm dumping my copy at Gencon. The game of thrones lcg is just easier to play, but still gives me the same satisfaction.

Played Shadows over Normandie last night. I think I'm in love...again.

Played Ra for the first time today. Happy to finally play it, really enjoyed it. Glad it's a new part of my collection. I was hoping to make it an Egypt night and play imhotep next but the group didn't go that way. Next time.

12 hours into a game of Twilight Imperium 3. I could have won but jumped the gun to claim Mercatol Rex with 4 Dreadnaughts...but missed the line saying I also needed a station. Lost the 2 points which is just BRUTAL in the long war (14 VP) and 6 players. Got piled on hard afterwards. Now I'm just 3 points away, with 2 in the bag from a 5 tech public objective. Just need to get the Bureaucracy card and get lucky tomorrow. I'm two players after Speaker (1st player) who is in last place. My brother in law is up next but playing a spoiler. Sigh.



If I don't close it next turn, any of 4 players could win the following turn.

played first game of Rebellion, had a lot of fun. Will post more when I'm not exhausted

I need to get rebellion to the table. Had it since launch. Have yet to play it.

Chrisoc13 wrote:I need to get rebellion to the table. Had it since launch. Have yet to play it.

I introduced Tom to Rebellion on Thursday night. It was a learning game for both of us, because I had only played it once before right when it came out. We had to call the game after about the 4th turn because my dog got skunked in my backyard.

My brother in law as Jol Nar pulled a master move to win at TI3.

The Speaker took the Bureaucracy Strategy -- a clearly pre-arranged move as one of the other players was trying before I arrived to convince my brother-in-law that he HAD to take Bureaucracy in case the Speaker "didn't get the Strategy" at the same time his wife was texting "a friend" -- most likely the Speaker who was delayed.

So my brother-in-law took Assembly to guarantee no one could switch the Speaker (1st player) and then used a Mercenary to force the Speaker to trade Strategies after I chose Diplomacy to protect a key system. The next player chose a Strategy that my brother-in-law blocked with an Action Card, then used another Action card to make his home system unattackable.

On the next round, he played an Action Card to get two activations. He used the first to attack a player who had a bonus -1 to VP for winning, which he would lose if anyone killed his ships. On his second activation he triggered a build -- and used the tech to cannibalize his units into trade goods to remove EVERYTHING from the board outside his home system. Except 2 mercenaries who counted as victims. They were immediately attacked and the -1 VP bonus to win passed around. Still, as Jol Nar he had accumulated over 20 trade goods from getting attacked and controlling trade. When the unit liquidation was added in, there was no way to stop him claiming 4 VP from 2 Public objectives by turning them in for 20 influence and 20 production. The game ended with an implosion and most players being 1-2 VP behind.

Friday night I had an impromptu two player night. We played Millennium Blades, which is a card game about people playing a card game. It's an interesting meta game. I'm horrible at set collection games usually, so I was having trouble keeping track of that aspect of the game. But the actual card play was interesting.

Then we played Game of Thrones 2nd edition LCG. I'm trying my hand at deck building with this one. My Lannister deck proved to skew too heavily towards higher cost characters, so I need to go back and tweak it some more.

Finally, we played the intro scenario for Shadows Over Normandie. I really dig this one. I'm a huge fan of Weird War settings (supernatural horror and gritty war combined) and this one is all about the Weird War setting. There are three factions in the game. The Allies are represented by US Rangers working with a group called Majestic 12 (think military version of the X-Files); and their enemy is split into two camps: German cultists/spellcasters working under Hitler named The Black Sun, and the Deep Ones, amphibious creatures from the deep working for the Old Ones.

The game is missing some of the rules from Heroes of Normandie (firing arcs and opportunity fire, for example), but it still captures the feel of an old school wargame while being a little easier to get into. I got a few rules wrong, but I quickly found the answers to what I did wrong on BGG. The rulebook is pretty awful, but that's par for the course with a game that originates in another language and is then translated for the English speaking world.

My Deep Ones swarmed the Rangers who had become lost behind enemy lines and stumbled into their swamp, and managed to prevent them from escaping, but only barely. I had a great time with it and I'm sure I'll bug Hentzau to play since this feels like a game he'll love. I can't wait to introduce spells, tanks, giant monsters and heavy artillery into the mix.

I ordered the first expansion as soon as I got the game, and that includes necromancers and new cultists. They really support the hell out of Heroes of Normandie with new expansions coming out frequently, so I'm hoping they do the same for SON. I doubt I'll get HON as I've invested pretty heavily in Tide of Iron over the years, I and I really don't feel that the games are different enough to warrant having both in my collection. But since Tide of Iron never went Weird War, SON fills that void.

Yeah, I do want to try it out. I love Heroes over Normandie, but finding time to play is problematic. Stupid real life.

Make sure you bring it to the next OctoCon. I want Tommy to take a look at it.

How can you not love a game that lets you pit a tank against a Shoggoth?

I took Machi Koro for a few spins over the weekend. It's a nice filler game -- super-fast to set up and easy to understand -- but it ends up feeling a bit dry, despite the cute card art. I'll see if there are some variants on BGG that can spice things up. I also want to try it with a third player, but have not yet convinced my son that he would enjoy it.

Oh, and I played Pokemon for the first time in my life.

I wouldn't play Machi Koro with less than 4. You really need the competition for the cards to make it a good game, IMO. And even then, it's not that great. I was really excited for the game but ended up being left kind of meh once I had played it a few times.

Two great games last night. Finished November in Pandemic: Legacy. It was our second shot at November, and we handled it quite well. Probably one of our easiest games, too. We actually spent a couple of turns with the win in our pocket just to help us set up for December. So next week we end it all...we are going in with no federal funding, but two shots to take down December. I'm a little nervous, though, got to admit.

Because we finished that so quickly I broke out base Castle Panic, no expansions, since it had been a while since we had played. Now that was a completely different game, it was an absolute nail biter. End of the game, we had an Orc and a Troll inside the inner ring. We're at the end of the deck, about 4 cards left. Barbarian and Push Em Back are gone. Two towers remain. Tom's turn, he depletes the draw deck but can't do anything to the critters in the keep. They rotate, and the troll kills itself taking down tower 1. Tower 2 is two spaces away from the Orc. I pick up the deck and shuffle. Stuart has 2 cards in his hand, I have 2 cards in my hand. Meaning he (with discards) can see 4 cards, and I can see 4 cards. It all depends on the shuffle. We need to pull a Barbarian or Push Em Back. I do 8 full riffle shuffles, and give the cards to Tom to cut, and he hands the back uncut. I trust you. Stuart draws, and the first card was the Barbarian. BAM! The screams of exultation were quite loud, I tell you.

We're going to try Dead Panic again tonight. Turns out we screwed up a couple of rules.

The first was minor - we thought you had to be in the same space to trade items, but you can be adjacent. Probably wouldn't have impacted our game at all.

The second was big - we didn't realize you could only draw Cabin cards while in the cabin. We definitely abused the hell out of that one.

So we couldn't in good conscience put this one to rest without playing through it again the correct way. I'll let you all know how it goes!

[Edit] And we're back! Join Terry, Jay, and I as we escape the walking dead!

So this time with a little more knowledge of the game under our belt, we focused on what was important - getting those radio parts! Luckily a survivor appeared right out of the gate, and one of our crew found a flare gun which allowed us to call for a second survivor.

Jay and I had amassed a small arsenal of weapons, so we were fending off the horde while Terry collected radio pieces. With clever use of a meat poncho (aka Zombie Muck), he was able to snatch one piece out from under their noses. I found a rope and was able to have him run out and grab another piece so I could yank him back in. We now had two of the three radio parts, but the zombies had turned into a horde and cabin walls were coming down right and left.

At last the final survivor appears, is quickly eaten, and drops the third radio piece. The problem is the guy with the radio has nothing but a crossbow. Terry decides to go for it anyway. He makes a beeline for the radio, winds up fending off a couple of zombies to make the call for the van, and gets lucky as the van arrives only a couple of spaces away.

Now we're at a point where Terry just needs one turn to get to the van. He'll have to fight off two zombies to survive, but he has no injuries and a crossbow so shouldn't be a problem. Game's practically won, right?

WRONG! Event card shows up and the zombie horde rushes. All zombies move an extra space. Now instead of fighting 2 zombies, he needs to fight off 5 of them.

You could have heard a pin drop as he start his rolls. This means either a relatively easy win, or Jay and I will have to face Zombie Terry (with all the radio parts) and almost every other zombie in the game. A nearly impossible task.

Terry fires his crossbow and takes out one. Four left. He decides to go hand-to-hand to avoid losing the crossbow. Loses and gets bitten. Three left. Hand-to-hand again. Loses and gets bitten. Two left. One more injury he dies. One crossbow left (as a club). Hand-to-hand again, he wins and pushes the zombie back. One zombie, one roll - in a last ditch effort he uses the crossbow as a club and.....SMASHES ITS SKULL IN.

Path to the van is open. Terry jumps in and a couple of turns later Jay and I fight our way past a few stragglers to hop in and win the game!

Fun session that played out just like a zombie movie. The designers did a pretty good job replicating the feel of a zombie attack - they never stop coming, and you quickly learn that fighting them all is just a waste of time. It all comes down to holding them off long enough to gear up, then getting the hell out of Dodge.

Next up we'll be tackling Robinson Crusoe! While I've beaten four or so scenarios, Terry and Jay don't know what they're in for on the Cursed Island. That one should keep us occupied for awhile.

I'm about 3 games into my copy of Star Trek Frontiers and it's certainly living up to the challenge presented by its predecessor, Mage Knight. Good Lord, I can't win at these games. But I guess that's why I keep going back to them.

Picked up a Warmahordes battle group for Skorne this afternoon on a whim. It's a pretty decent deal. Got the digest size rules for the new MK III rules set (full set of rules minus the fluff and in a compact size), as well as 4 great minis, tokens, dice and a small map for 40 bucks. The hardcover rules are still 60 bucks, so this was a better choice for me. I don"t need all the fluff as I still have the MK II rules.

Offhand, it looks like they're adopting some of the Malifaux scenario driven gameplay. I like that. Now they just need to add a campaign mode like Malifaux has done with their most excellent Shifting Fates rule book.

We had an evening of 4 player DiceMasters, lots of fun.

Played boys vs girls. Players, not characters.

Dragons breath weapons are sooooo uncool.

Seekrieg 5 - Battle of Jutland. The Brits did not fare well.

Ooh, that looks good.

It is a crunchy wargame. Lots of dice rolls, lots of modifiers, and lots of potential for things to go horribly, horribly wrong. 2 minute turns

It was the HMS Lion, HMS Princess Royal, HMS Queen Mary, and HMS Tiger leading the way as I followed in the HMS New Zealand and HMS Indefatigable. We were up against the SMS Lützow, SMS Derfflinger, SMS Seydlitz, SMS Moltke, SMS Von der Tann.

The Princess Royal took a magazine hit 3 turns in and detonated. The Queen Mary ended up taking 20 hits, a fair number of which failed to penetrate, but eventually got rattlted to death at the end of it on turn 11.

I took some hits. While disengaging, the NZ was at a 50% chance to fail any speed or heading changes. The parting shot on the Indefatigable left her with an 80% chance of propulsion failure.

Been getting a lot of new games to the table. Learned imhotep. Love it. Its short, but full of difficult decisions and chances to really mess with other people's plans. Nice components. Easy to teach. This is a great game. I think it should have won over codenames (having played both a fair amount) but both are good games so can't complain much.

Also played grand Australia hotel. Your actions available are determined by dice and you're running a hotel. It's a fairly typical euro which I rather enjoyed. One thing I didn't like about it is the insane downtime. Play essentially goes clockwise and then turns around and goes the other way. Which means with four players you can go first and then eighth. The wait is just absolutely long. But it is a fun game.

Scythe should arrive this week. Can't wait.

Looking forward to getting back to our Malifaux campaign this Saturday. And hopefully playing a bigger game of Shadows Over Normandie with customized armies. I wasn't joking when I said I wanted to see a tank take on a Shoggoth...

Played two games of Scythe this weekend. Had friends from out of town visiting and they liked it so much they insisted we play a day after the first game, which doesn’t happen very often. So that is a pretty good recommendation. The first game ran a little long (about 5 hours with rules explanation for five players) but we cut that time almost in half for the second.

Wow five hours. I'm going for no more than two haha. Guess we will see.

One of the people we were playing with is not the fastest at grasping new concepts or thinking ahead. It was more like four people combined would do all their moves in 10 minutes or less and then he would take a 10 minute turn by himself.

Lordnine wrote:One of the people we were playing with is not the fastest at grasping new concepts or thinking ahead. It was more like four people combined would do all their moves in 10 minutes or less and then he would take a 10 minute turn by himself.

ah ok. Mine finally arrived this weekend. Can't wait to play it.

We had an epic nearly four hour game of Robinson Crusoe last night. Three players and we took the dog per the rule book recommendations.

This was the first time playing for Terry and Jay, and I had not played in about a year, so we spent about an hour just going back over the rules and setup. Some fan made a nice cheat-sheet PDF that is available on Z-Man's site, so we went through that thoroughly as well. Jay played the Cook, Terry played the Carpenter, and I was the Explorer.

The game started off well - our explorations paid big dividends, and we fairly quickly found an island tile with natural shelter. Our biggest problem was food, as our tile only had wood. However, we acquired a +1 food token that kept us afloat, and some early hunting with our pistol allowed us to scrape by. I also created a Shortcut item which allowed us to pull a food in from an adjacent tile during the Production phase.

Around Round 4 or 5, we had everything in place to make a push for victory. The woodpile we needed to create to win was a little low, but we were surviving and had a Level 3 roof, Level 4 palisade, and managed to craft a Bow which put us at Weapon Level 4. We survived the next few rounds quite handily, even when bad wintry weather started to roll in.

Then......disaster struck (as it so often does in this game). Our camp got hit with a landslide, and we were washed from our camp. It destroyed our roof and palisade, and we were essentially back to square one - not even a shelter above our heads. Terry threw up in his hands in defeat, but upon a closer look at the board I realized that if we could survive just one more night, we would win. We needed two wood for the pile, fire was already invented - if we could survive one night, we would instantly win on the Production phase of the next round.

We started doing calculations on how many wounds we would take in a worst case weather scenario with no shelter, taking into account we may also get hit with lack of food, etc. We then did everything in our power to ensure against this worst case through a combination of resting and gathering. We figured out what it would take, then hit the Weather phase. Jay rolls - and of course, it's the worst case. No fear, we planned for this. We each wound up taking 5 wounds. Morale was pushed to negative three but no matter - we had survived! WE WIN!!!!!!!!!!!

Not so fast. We still have an Event Card to turn over for the start of the next round. A mere formality! Instead, it's a flood. Halve all produced resources this round. Half of two wood is one wood. Game over. We needed two wood, we can only get one wood before the Action phase, and there's no way in hell we can survive another night. WE LOST BY ONE FREAKING WOOD DUE TO ONE FREAKING CARD! AAAAARGHHHH.

All in all, however, we couldn't walk away upset. We had put ourselves in a position to win - almost an easy win, by this game's standards - and had only been screwed over by the randomness of the landslide and the flood. So we feel confident we'll get it next time. Still...........one wood.......ughh........

YellowKing wrote: Around Round 4 or 5, we had everything in place to make a push for victory. The woodpile we needed to create to win was a little low, but we were surviving and had a Level 3 roof, Level 4 palisade, and managed to craft a Bow which put us at Weapon Level 4. We survived the next few rounds quite handily, even when bad wintry weather started to roll in.

You should have known at this point it was all over. The island doesn't make it this easy without having something special saved up for you.

I'm still a little miffed at Portal Games for releasing a new edition of this already.

hepcat wrote:I'm still a little miffed at Portal Games for releasing a new edition of this already.

You do understand you don't have to buy it, right? I know it goes against all we hold dear, but it's an option.