I’ve banned new games from
being purchased in 2014 to allow us a year to play through all the games we’ve
already got – and there are a fair few of them, though a very modest collection
compared to many other gamers. If a
brilliant, must-have game emerges this year I’ll just have to wait to see if it
survives a few months of fair reviewing and the cult of the new to become a
lasting classic, and if so I should theoretically have no problem picking it up
in 2015 anyway.
My
birthday came and went in May, and a couple more titles got added to my list as
presents, which I wasn’t sure we’d be able to crowbar in this year at all: X
Wing miniatures game base set, Twilight Struggle, DC Heroes Deck Building game
expansion Heroes Unite - which is really more for my son than me, since we play
that game nearly every day now - and Eldritch Horror. Not tried X Wing or TS yet but I did get a
solo run through of Eldritch Horror, which left me eager to try out Arkham
Horror again.
I
was also invited to an old RPG playing friend’s stag do where we went knife
throwing (tricky), tomahawk throwing (exactly as fun as it sounds), tried
archery (turns out I’m a bit of a Legolas, scoring three bulls-eyes in a row in
one round) but primarily drinking and playing board games out in the
countryside. Great fun, great bunch of
lads, and also got to play a few new games I wouldn’t otherwise have had the
chance to, see Bonus Plays below.
A Touch of Evil: The
Supernatural Game
Easy
coop win against the Siren with Sam as the student of the occult and me as the
witch I think. I got the amulet which
lets you use spirit instead of combat and boosted my spirit with allies and
church visits and a raft of investigation - I was gaining three a turn. Found the lair early on and some uber
powerful elders joined us; the siren didn't really have it in her to stop us. We also had the best/luckiest crop of event
cards ever. Great game, but there's a
lot of fiddliness, tokens and upkeep, and remembering this has made me leery of
Shadows of Brimstone, especially if they're using pen and paper in that one
too...
Players = 2
Expansions = The Coast,
Allies, Madness, HP 1
Games played in 2014 = 1
Rating in 2013 = 10
Rating in 2014 = 9
Claustrophobia
It was the mission where one of the ‘good’
guys has been possessed and you have to go kick his arse and then take him back. Sam was the trogs, I was the condemned, and
as it played out it was an easy win for the heroes. I lost one Blade dude only, you know the
disposable fast, spindly types. There
was some scenario rules confusion until we found the right demon card
representing the possessed dude, thanks to BGG for the clarification. This is really a great game, and I’m excited
for the expansion material. Love that Croc
the designer has supported it so well with so much extra free downloadable
content, just like Richard Launius does with his games. It’s really quite a simplistic game but ruthlessly
tactical, it plays very fast, and it really does look fantastic. Highly recommended game for two players.
Games played in 2014 =1
Rating in 2013 = 8
Rating in 2014 = 9
Dungeons & Dragons:
Castle Ravenloft Board Game
Without
time for a full on campaign, we abandoned the copious house rules we have for
this game and just set up a scenario.
Though we did have all the treasures shuffled in from all three D&D
games, and used the optional doors, treasure chests and monster tokens. Sam took Thorgrim the cleric and I was Alissa
the Ranger and we attempted one of my favourite scenario combos. Start off easier with the official Search for
the Sunsword WOTC bonus scenario, waste the baddies, grab the Sunsword, and
then set off on the Hunt for Strahd Part 1.
We battered the first scenario, clobbered Strahd’s henchman – the flesh
golem – eventually, but were weakened by the Grey Hag turning up and vaping us
with repeated lightning bolts. And when
Strahd finally showed the Traps they started springing, and we ran out of XP to
cancel them. Until we were being
alternately beaten by the self-healing Strahd, nipped at by his minions, and
lightning’d by the Hag. Our powers and
items ran dry and though we had a couple of opportunities to take him down and
we were even 1 damage away from finishing him, I, in typical fashion, fluffed
my rolls and he knocked us both out and claimed victory over our sorry
arses. I’m not ashamed to say we used
three healing surges, though they were little consolation by the time it came
around to spending them, since we lost one a turn for three turns!
Players = 2
Games played in 2014 = 2
Rating in 2013 = 10
Rating in 2014 = 10
Dungeons & Dragons:
Wrath of Ashardalon Board Game
Free
the captives! We swapped roles this time
with me as the cleric and Sam as the fighter, and we opted out of taking on
Ashardalon (might have been an option if we hadn’t just had our butts kicked by
Strahd in Castle Ravenloft) in favour of going after the rather humorous, frightened
villagers, whose AI cards are a lark.
With hindsight, if I were to house rule this scenario it would be to
have all the villagers act every turn instead of rolling to see who, if anyone,
acts. That would ramp up the chaos
considerably! Another close finish –
though we didn’t use any healing surges, the villagers were getting massacred
as soon as we found their prison chamber.
The two guardian grells started chomping on them straight away whilst we
tried to distract the Duergar Captain boss.
But a conga line hoard of monsters had been growing in the darkness
behind us. We sniped them along the way,
and I threw out two blade barriers and minced a whole bunch of them thanks to a
lucky treasure draw, but they were still legion by the time we reached the
final battle. As the monsters chopped
away at our luckless villager friends, we chopped away at them, and the
chop-off finally fell in our favour as we brought down the Duergar captain and
his two grells, the rest of the monsters departed, and a traumatised Alek (sp?)
cowered quivering behind us, the only survivor of his town. But our heroes were too busy celebrating
their rare victory to notice his twitching PTSD nervous breakdown.
Players = 2
Games played in 2014 =1
Rating in 2013 = 10
Rating in 2014 = 10
Eldritch Horror
Actually
got this as a birthday gift, so it lies outside the ‘no new purchases’ rule,
right? Right?? Anyway, I set it up for a solo run through to
get the rules down, and they were very familiar indeed – in fact I was
expecting some correlation to and with Arkham Horror but I just didn’t realise
how much they had simply lifted wholesale from the source. At first I thought this was lazy,
particularly with all the reused art and token design, but I guess it adds
coherence to FFG’s own Lovecraft themed universe. And when it comes down to it, the gameplay is
the thing, and this game is quite enjoyable.
I get that they’ve themed encounters more to each Ancient One, which is
nice, though it really impedes the variety of encounters you will have from
game to game. My first attempt was an
abortive solo effort by the soldier Mark, who made very little progress and was
soon smashed into cosmic dust by the Ancient.
My second effort was again with a single investigator (to see if it
really works that way, you know, just like it does not in Arkham Horror :P),
this time the sailor Silas, and though he was crippled early on, my replacement
investigator – the martial artist – came along and nicked all his stuff, which
I thought was a nice touch and added continuity to their story, just like how
HPL’s protagonists built on the successes and failures of their
predecessors. I harvested as many clues
as I could, chanced some lucky rolls, and happened to be in some lucky
locations, whilst a lot was happening all around the world which I couldn’t do
much about. But in the end I was able to
complete all my mysteries and seal the Ancient One away until next time with a
loosely snatched victory. I like this,
and look forward to playing it with a group to gauge opinions. It is certainly more likely to see table time
than Arkham Horror, until it bloats itself up with expansions of course. Oh, and I didn’t find the world map very
impressive at all, particularly in comparison to the far superior efforts of
Fortune and Glory and Tales of the Arabian Nights, but this is a small
complaint.
Players = 1
Games played in 2014 = 2
Rating in 2014 = 7.5
Bonus
Game Plays!
Resident Evil Deck Building
Game
I
mistakenly thought this was still on our to play list (it wasn’t) and we had a
bit more time left so we broke out a quick game of Resi Evil. Sam was Leon, a stalwart choice if you cash
in on his awesome pistols combo, and I was loads-of-life Chris, who starts with
120HP but cannot heal. A couple of
reckless early explores from Sam saw Leon go down a few times, whilst we both
raced to grab the higher cost ammo really early on (not normally a tactic
either of us pursue). I stuck to my
strategy and plodded along and Leon’s recklessness cost him dearly as I built
up my deck. By the time I ran into
Uroboros he didn’t stand a chance. I
often wonder what the expansion packs would add to this game, especially now
that they are no longer being printed.
But as a self contained little game, Bandai have (and have since
abandoned) a little winner with this one, just like Uncharted: The Board Game.
Players = 2
Games played in 2014 = 2
Rating in 2013 = 8
Rating in 2014 = 9
Sentinels of the Multiverse
I
actually managed to finally get in a game of Sentinels of the Multiverse this
month. A mate invited me round to his
house to introduce me to a couple of his gamer mates (they’re more into war games
and role-playing than board games) primarily to show them 1066. And since my new decks arrived we had two
games going at once, which was great.
They had some interesting feedback, some very useful, some a bit whacky
and game-changing, but they all said they enjoyed it and would play again.
One
had to leave early so with three of us left we broke out Sentinels, which I’d
spied upon walking in and hoped to crack open.
Really
enjoyed it! Very interesting design, I
really like how each of the hero and villain decks are unique and I especially
like the environment cards that introduce new events. There was a fair bit of book-keeping, but no
more than Arkham Horror for example. We
played against Omnitron the Sentient computer, Ross was Haka the ethnic Hulk
dude, Al was Ra the Sun God, and I got Legacy, who I thought was a Superman
type character from the pics, but who actually turned out to be a passive
support type almost Cleric/Healer character.
Since that’s a role I don’t usually play it was a little bit duller for
me than it could have been I think, but actually with the buffs I was giving
the other guys I was vicariously inflicting as much damage as either of them each
round. I had one Ongoing card which
actually attacked but it got cancelled right quick by the baddie’s special
ability.
We
took a bit of a beating and the wounds were stacking up, but we stayed on top
of every event and droid that came out and stacked any leftover damage onto
Omnicron, eventually leading to his defeat.
Quite tense, very enjoyable. Wish
the DC game was like this! Still not
sure if I’d pick it up though, since we have the super hero theme covered. And as much as I admire their all new hero
designs, they’re so obviously rip offs of other mainstream heroes it just lets
it down a bit.
Also
discovered we’d been playing it slightly wrong after the fact, by not flipping
over the villain’s ability card every turn, but using both sides at the same
time, which made it more difficult! But
we weren’t playing the advanced ability either (not sure if that would have had
too much of an impact though: +1 damage one turn, -1 the next or something
similar).
Players = 3
Games played in 2014 =1
Rating in 2014 = 7.5
DC Deck Building Game:
Heroes Unite
After
how eagerly my little one tucked into the DC Deck Building Game this was an
inevitable purchase, so I picked it up from the UK Games Expo for £25, given
that it’s an expansion, and not technically a new game. Ahem.
Anyway. £25 is actually more than
the £20 I paid for the basic game, but worth it for the amount of play it’s
already seen. I generally don’t like the
cards as much as the basic game, and I don’t recognise half of the characters,
though at 4 years old and as a massive fan of Batman: The Brave and the Bold my
boy is developing an encyclopaedic knowledge of the DC universe. He also always asks whose baddie the villains
are, so we have to sync up the heroes with their nemeses, which is an
interesting narrative decision for him to make so young, a pretty much ‘it must
be canon’ attitude. Don’t know where he
gets that from. Anyway, the art is
great, the gameplay is more of the same, and it’s definitely worth a look if
one wanted to expand the variety of the base game, though I’m not brave enough
to mix and match anything more than just the super heroes and super villains
just yet. I think the Crisis expansion
pack is a must buy too.
Players = 2-3
Games played in 2014 = 30+
Rating in 2014 = 9
Gunslinger
At
the UK Games Expo we were sat down in the Hilton bar where James Fallows gave
us a run through of this little gem from the old Avalon Hill catalogue. Looks like it could be another Hamblen great
like Magic Realm, we just played the very first introductory scenario with Doc
Holiday versus the two thugs, though we just decided to play it as a free for
all instead, with no special abilities.
Barely scratched the surface of the game to be honest. It was basically three of us facing off
against each other, slowly moving towards each other in some salty old saloon
and weighing each other up whilst chewing cigars and drawing a bead on each
other, Ennio Morricone’s riff from Fistful of Dollars tinkling away in our ears. Then the rolling and shooting started as we
bluffed each other out and tried to keep our targets in our field of
vision. I alternated targets whilst Sam and
James drew down on me, but then after some tumbling and misfiring they started
shooting each other, so I joined in and we took down James’ poor cowboy, who
tried to hold onto his bubbling innards as he rolled around on the floor. Sam and I had some wounds too and as he
unloaded on James to finish him off I drew down on Sam and prepared to open
fire. As he darted out of my line of
sight the unfriendly woman from the Hilton came over and told us to clear off
because it was no longer gaming time. ‘Could
we just finish this game?’ ‘No.’ I really hope they find a more welcoming
venue next year. Anywho. Great little game, interested to see more of
it, and I’m especially intrigued by the RPG and character development aspects
of it.
Players = 3
Games played in 2014 =1
Rating in 2014 = 7.5
7 Wonders
Been
wanting to try this for ages but never able to get up the numbers, or find
anyone with the game. So it was the UK
Games Expo to our rescue again, and we had six guys altogether, some clearly experienced,
who instantly set about on their strategies whilst the rest of us muddled
through and tried to defend ourselves with armies once we realised how
important they were (i.e. after getting our arses repeatedly kicked). Lovely components, lots to keep track of,
quite difficult to pay attention to what everyone else is doing with six
players, and it sort of felt like there were two games going on, one on our
side and one on ‘theirs’ and sure enough this is how the scores panned
out. With me and the guy opposite doing
pretty well in our respective mini games, whilst the guys on either side of us
battled and squabbled with each other and generally lost out. I came second and the guy opposite wiped the
floor with all of us. Liked the tableau
effects and the card art, really like how the game seems to scale for players
very well, and I can see what all the fuss is about. I’d happily play this again, but not one I’d
add to the collection any time soon.
Players = 6
Games played in 2014 =1
Rating in 2014 = 7
Cargo Noir
Always
loved the look of this game and fondled the box a few times in my FLGS, so I
was eager to try it out when somebody turned up with it. It’s really a bidding game and with three
players it ended up being rather weighted.
The guy who owned it knew what he was doing whilst me and the other guy
just bluffed our way through it and ended up bidding against each other far too
often, letting the leader increase his lead and gather tons of cargo, so we
lost by a good margin, with me placing last, having been unable to buy my next
two ships until after the halfway point.
The components are nice, art is great, but I’m not sure if I really
enjoy bidding games, as it all just feels so… arbitrary, and that bidding and
blocking each other is the main interaction.
Maybe I just need more experience at it.
Players = 3
Games played in 2014 =1
Rating in 2014 = 5
Coup
Super
fast playing card game where you start with two cards, get one action a turn
and have to be the last man standing.
You bluff out what action your cards allow you to perform: Duke can take
3 gold, assassin can attack another player (make him lose a card), Captain
blocks assassin, ambassador lets you swap cards, etc. You can use gold to attack other players
too. Anyone can challenge you to reveal
what card you really have and if you’re blagging you lose a card, and if you’re
not they lose a card. I got knocked out
pretty early by assassination and had nothing to defend myself with, but it was
fun to watch the conclusion, and the whole thing played out in about ten
minutes with 7 or 8 players. Apparently
it’s like Love Letter but more enjoyable.
I thought it was neat for a party game, but tbh any parties I normally
go to don’t really usually involve gaming.
Would happily play again as it plays so fast.
Players = 7
Games played in 2014 = 1
Rating in 2014 = 6
Last Night On Earth
This
was the first time I’ve played this with 6 players and it scaled nicely,
everyone had fun and got into it making their own sound effects and narrative
embellishments, including the two zombie players, who played their cards with
glee and moved their zombie minis with the required amount of groaning SFX. We randomly picked Defend the Manor House and
I was worried that the guys who hadn’t played the game before would think it
was a crap shoot as I’ve only ever seen the heroes lose this scenario. I was Becky the nurse – I got bitten a few
times and started to ‘Feel Strange’ and was all ready for turning into a zombie
hero and getting a replacement character when a friendly hero removed the
feeling strange card and the priest made it over to me to give me a first aid
kit. Suddenly I was back on fighting
form and hitting the gun store to stock up on ammo and guns and blow some
undead meat away. I was able to play an
early Faith on the priest and soon he found a crowbar and machete and was
unstoppably whacking zombies left, right and centre, pretty much becoming the
hero of the day. The guy next to me
playing Johnny couldn’t roll for shit, and sat in the gun store looking for
revolvers, firing them, rolling a 1 and losing them, and then searching again,
but he was laughing whilst doing it and seemed to be enjoying the general
frenzied fray. The chap who owned the
game was playing Sally and spent almost the first half just searching and
stocking up, pretty much out of the action, whilst the rest of us fought for
our lives. We kept racing to the middle
to lure zombies out of the manor house, then rushing back out to the buildings
to search for more supplies. I felt the
inevitability of defeat the whole game, but slowly and steadily the sun track
marker climbed down, and even though Johnny eventually got eaten by a zombie
hoard, and then Sally sacrificed herself by accidentally covering herself in
gasoline and igniting herself and a bunch of walkers, we were keeping them at
bay. After a final push where the biters
only needed one more zombie in the manor to win the game, we all charged out of
hiding and fired our weapons and smacked a few of them upside the head and then
the sun came up. The hero victory was
jubilant with us all shouting for joy as the zombie guys were going “nooooo…”
and everyone else in the room was looking over and wondering what the hell was
going on – but really wanting to join in I reckon… Great game.
Goes back up to a 9 again, you just really have to have the right crowd
for this game.
Players = 6
Expansions = None
Games played in 2014 = 2
Rating in 2014 = 9
Rune Age
Had
some spare time at a gaming event and even though I’ve already checked this off
the to play list, I thought it would be a good, easy one to teach, so we tried
this out with 4 players, with me basically teaching three noobs how to play the
basic Dragonlords scenario, the race to beat the big bad, with the expansion
races thrown in, but no mercenary cards to keep it simple. For the first time I tried using Forced March
to pare my deck right down and ended up with just seven high power, non-Gold cards. The guy sat next to me was pretty savvy and
was trying to convince everyone to gang up on me, even though he was hoarding most
of the neutral cities, and there was much back and forth attacking between us
all trying to take them off each other.
The two other guys picked things up slowly but steadily, and to be
honest, they probably should have ganged up on me from the outset. I took out a few of the Dragonlords and harvested
their rewards, and before the event deck could reshuffle I was ready to take on
the big baddie king dragon and handily kick his arse. It played long, probably a couple of hours,
but everyone was engaged, and everyone said they’d be happy to play again if
they had time. Still loads of life left
in this game with just the base and expansion pack, a nice complete little
package that never quite plays the same way.
Players = 4
Expansions = Oath and Anvil
Games played in 2014 =1
Rating in 2013 = 8
Rating in 2014 = 9
Here follows the rest of
the games we want to get through this year, slowly but surely we’re getting
there....
1 1. Arkham Horror
2. Call of Cthulhu: Collectible Card Game
3. Constantinopolis
4. Dark Darker Darkest
5. Descent: Journeys in the Dark
6. Descent: Journeys in the Dark (Second
Edition)
7. Doom: The Boardgame
8. Dungeon Command: Sting of Lolth
9. Dungeon Lords
10. Dungeoneer: Vault of the Fiends
11. Eclipse
12. Fortune and Glory: The Cliffhanger Game
13. Gears of War: The Board Game
14. Gloom of Kilforth: A Fantasy Quest Game
15. HeroQuest
16. Lord of the Rings
17. Lords of Waterdeep: Scoundrels of
Skullport
18. Magic Realm
19. Omen: A Reign of War
20. Race for the Galaxy
21. Return of the Heroes
22. Space Crusade
23. Space Hulk: Death Angel - The Card Game
24. Tales of the Arabian Nights
25. Talisman
26. The Ares Project
27. The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game
28. Twilight Struggle
29. War of the Ring (first edition)
30. Warhammer Quest
31. When Darkness Comes
32. X-Wing Miniatures Game
33. Zombies!!!
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