Part 1: No more new games - play what you’ve got!
Part 2, Return of the Living Deck Builders
The Not Nearly As Thumbed Part 3, Hang On – Some Of These Aren’t Even On
The List
Part 4, But You Can’t Just Throw Away Gifts, Obviously…
Part 5, Part 5, Fortune and Zombies, Kid
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. 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.
So here follows a list of the games we’ve managed to play recently to try and
get through the remaining part of our games collection. Looks like we’ve caught up a bit but if we’re
going to play everything by year’s end, we’ll still have to try to fit in
multiple games in one session, or maybe see if we can have some day
sessions.
However…
Everything has fallen apart a bit.
Unfortunately, staying abreast of and involved in the gaming hobby has
led me down some dark pathways and has supplied me with way more information
about new games than I was able to contain without bursting at the seams and
breaking my own code! That’s right, 9
months in and I couldn’t even last until Christmas. Bad enough that I’ve bought expansions (e.g.
DC Crisis expansion – rather excellent by the way), but no, I had to go and
blow the whole thing and purchase not just one but TWO new board games in the
past week alone!
What? Why you looking at me like
that? We moved house last week too,
okay? I’ve been under a lot of pressure! :D
Anywho. Here are the ‘irresistible’
culprits:
Shadowrun: Crossfire – thank you very much, Rahdo, your stupidly
infectious enthusiasm alone pretty much broke me on this one.
Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game – an Alien themed card
game? Seriously how on earth was I supposed
to resist this? They couldn’t have held
out on releasing it until Christmas???
Only had a chance to run through them a few times solo so far and I have
to say they both appear to be pretty excellent.
More detailed rundown once we get the chance to table them ‘properly.’
Ah well, at least I lasted as long as I did. In any case, these other old games still need
playing through before the year’s out or we’ll have achieved absolutely nothing at all. Unless you count the great time we’ve had
going through our entire back catalogue of games, but, tsk, you know, who
counts THAT?
Sorry for all the Caps but I think this one off (ahem) situation
warranted it.
So, in case any of you are not disgusted enough to have clicked away
already at my craven weakness, here is what we gone done playeded recently:
Dungeon Command
We have Tyranny of Goblins but have discovered that they seem to be the
weakest and least balanced of all the armies; whoever plays them loses so we
left them out. First match was in a dungeon
- Undeath (me) versus Gruumsh (Sam).
Sam’s orc powerhouses were quickly outmatched and whenever he was able
to field any big guys I brought them down in short order with various sneaky
necromantic effects. Then we played on
the outdoor tiles with Drow versus Cormyr, wherein Sam’s Drow douchebags racked
up a swift and tidy victory against my erstwhile heroic bastards. I kept hiding out in the trees and popping
out of cover to try and bust some heads, but his ranged attacks kept peppering
me as I did so and before long my warriors and knights were tripping over each
other to see who could get slaughtered first.
For some reason, the miniature skirmish fantasy theme of Dungeon Command
doesn’t really appeal to me that much.
As with Magic the Gathering, I just don’t enjoy the abstract nature of a
bunch of semi random monsters getting together to fight a bunch of semi random
monsters with next to no background on how or why or when, etc. I think I just prefer questing heroes on
adventures in this kind of milieu - games like the D&D Adventure System
games, which is why I bought the Dungeon Command games in the first place of
course. Or maybe it’s because DC is
missing the variable mission goals of other similar skirmish games like Descent
2.0. That said it just feels like a lot
more fun than Descent 2.0, and the dice-less card play just feels neater, with
tons of cool and surprising effects, instead of having to roll that bloody
‘miss’ die in Descent.
DC can be a bit swingy too, and once you’re losing it’s hard to pull
back, though not impossible. The tiles
and miniatures are excellent, the game play is fast paced, and overall, despite
my reservations, and expectations that this would simply be expansion material for
the Adventure System games, Dungeon Command is one of the better miniatures
games available, and I hope WOTC look to supporting it in future, like they are
going to do with the other D&D board games.
I put together a more detailed review here:
Sam says: “I think Dungeon Command could be
slightly better with scaling throughout the game. There’s too much luck
with the creatures you draw early on and it can create a really one sided game.
I really do enjoy it though.”
Players = 2
Expansions = Blood
of Gruumsh, Heart of Cormyr, Sting of Lolth, Curse of Undeath
Games played in
2014 = 2
Rating in 2013 = 8
Rating in 2014 = 8
I got a 40 point quest that I ignored for most of the game, but with the
Undermountain expansion you get tons more opportunities to play Intrigue and
draw and gain more Intrigue, and I was getting ridiculously big handfuls of the
stuff, including ones which allowed me to draw three more Intrigue, until I had
about 9 cards in hand. I was just
playing them down every time I could and not really bothering about quests yet. Sam and his missus (she doesn’t usually like
games except for LoW, and it’s very easy for non-gamers to pick up) rushed
ahead of me and were squabbling over first place every turn. I played Revealed Lord so they couldn’t ‘get’
me, and they just played mandatory quests and attacks on each other instead. Eventually I’d amassed enough stuff to start
going at my quests and I kept using Intrigues to play extra pawns onto my own
buildings. Since they didn’t want me to
get my own building benefits and were avoiding my places I just scooped up the
extra dudes that were sitting there. At
one point Sam (cheers dude) reminded me there was a building in Builder’s Hall
which allowed you to play 3 Intrigue cards at once.
Expansion definitely gives the game the boost it needs to stay in
rotation for us, and I look forward to trying out the corruption business with
Skullport next time we play. We might
even opt for the long game with both expansions mixed in too.
Sam says: “I think LoW is better with more
players and it’s a bit of a party game more than a full on geek session. I
really enjoy playing it though and I think the expansion adds some more depth
to it.”
Players = 3
Expansions = Scoundrels
of Skullport: Undermountain
Games played in
2014 = 1
Rating in 2013 = 8
Rating in 2014 = 7.5
Tales of the
Arabian Nights
I looked at the 9 rating for this game after playing it and thought it
needs addressing. Tales of the Arabian
Nights is a 10. Every single game is
unique and interesting and provides a crazy tapestry of interwoven stories that
allow you to - for example (as in my case) - end up as a divorced sultan beast
gourmet. The graphic design,
presentation, replayability and depth of encounters, theme and just overall
gorgeousness of this game cannot be overstated.
One of the most beautiful games in my collection. It’s not a game you’ll play every day, it’s a
long game unless you opt for a lower Story/Destiny point winning condition, you
have to have a house rule about the unwieldy amount of statuses you can have
(ours: three at a time maximum, first in first out), and there are those who
would, albeit heretically, tell you this is not a game. Well, they’re wrong because it is. We’ve had games that have come down to the
nail and we’ve been a turn away from winning when someone has snatched defeat
from the jaws of victory. Or
whatever. Or we’ve had games like this
one, where I was racing ahead the whole game and still won at the end. But the utterly insane misadventures
befalling Sam’s Aladdin throughout the game were equally hilarious to my own,
and we actually got to explore a few places of power this time around, which is
always new and exciting. The Litmus test
is really this:
There is a ’Storm’, and you choose to ‘Drink’.
Player A will say ‘Drink the Storm?
That’s stupid, this game am suck.’
Player B’s hero will see the storm coming and start drinking heavily,
and in doing so will enjoy the game’s 1,001 delights.
Sam says: “I would say that this is not a
board game in the conventional context. Yes there is a board and it’s a
game but really when it comes down to it, it is a story which you play.
I’m a little put off by the abstract nature of some of the encounters and the
time it takes to resolve an encounter but this does add a plethora of variety
which is great in anyone’s opinion. There is a heavy amount of luck in
this game but there never seems to be the inevitable “you’re dead” encounters
which often go hand in hand with luck based games.
I enjoy the way you start from humble beginnings and
essentially level up as the game progresses but it still feels a bit like when
one person takes an early lead it is difficult to catch up. I also enjoy the way that you constantly have
a goal with the quest cards and city cards so you never feel like you are just
wandering round.
Even though I lost I still had fun playing this which
mostly comes down to your character’s story. There isn’t much player
interaction which is a negative for me but I still take pleasure in finding out
what is happening to the other players.”
Players = 2
Games played in
2014 = 1
Rating in 2013 = 9
Rating in 2014 =
10
Call of Cthulhu:
Living Card Game
I didn’t buy into this game too far.
In fact it was a CCG not an LCG back when I bought it, and it felt like
a re-themed Magic the Gathering at the time, which wasn’t something I was looking
to get into, having jumped from the Magic train many years ago. We played CoC CCG quite a bit at the time, I
bought an extra expansion pack or two, but our real interest lay in the broader
experience provided by Arkham Horror, rather than the Vs battle game which this
turned out to be.
So it was that we dusted off the box for this little old card game. I was the investigators, Sam played Cthulhu
and his cronies. We had a quick recap on
the rules, not too complex thankfully (we just have so many card games now it’s
hard to remember how many cards you start with in your hand, usually 6 I
reckon). We fed our domains some
resources and off we rolled. It’s a lot
of fun! Investigators are fragile little
things which often go insane or dead, but they also have plenty of tricks up
their sleeves to pull the rug out from underneath Hastur’s feet so to
speak. Every time Sam sent one of my
guys screaming off into the hills, I managed to retaliate with, for example, a satisfying
Shotgun Blast which would take out some nasty hell spawn with good old hot
lead. We competed hotly for progress
tokens on the various stories, and the bluffing back and forth about what we
may or may not have in our hands reminded me a little of the Star Wars LCG Fate
battles too.
It was really hand wringing stuff trying to decide whether or not to
activate a story’s special ability once you’d achieved it, sometimes it would
pay off, other times it would bite you in the ass. Wiping out your opponent’s creatures along
with your own, only to see him replenish them entirely on his next turn, well,
that can be a soul sapping experience!
Sam says: “This is one which disappeared off
our radar for a long time and having played a couple of games back to back I
can’t understand why.
This game covers so many bases when it comes to what I
look for, including but not limited to; resource management, player
interaction, forward planning, multiple challenges in fights (means you can win
without just being the strongest), boons/detriments from successful completion
of a task (all players can receive a bonus or get screwed over) and great
artwork.
This is actually a really fun game to play and although
you are in direct competition with your opponent you can still take pleasure in
seeing them pull out some awesome combos. None of your characters are
safe - even the strongest - and the game can swing from dire straits to success
based on the draw of some cards. I would
actually like to play this again sometime soon. Shame about our stupid ‘play
everything’ rule!”
Players = 2
Games played in
2014 = 2
Rating in 2013 = 7
Rating in 2014 = 7
Lord of the Rings
This is the non FFG edition. As
usual I had to again look up the feature card distribution rules for 2 players
and a couple of other rules which I should just write down somewhere. But once the rules faffing was over we
embarked properly on our adventure. I
have to say I really like this game. The
theme, the art, the coop, the events, the resource management. I’m not overly fond of all the pieces, the
big plastic ring, the athematic white cones, the unimaginative iconography
(black dots, oh and white dots too), and the breakfast cereal gift quality
minis. But the John Howe art rescues
that. And the gameplay really captures
the feeling of the hobbits struggling against the corrupting influences of
Sauron and the One Ring. It’s tricky to
learn, but simple to play, and even the easy setting provides a good challenge,
especially if you haven’t played in a few years. Case in point – we had a bad run of events
early on and actually failed Moria, which I can’t remember ever doing
previously. I was Frodo, and Sam was
Sam, and we quickly palmed the ring off onto him. Churning through our hands pretty quickly
didn’t help, and failing Moria meant we raced along the Corruption track. We actually managed to reach Mordor and even
make some serious headway on the side tracks, picking up more allies and life
tokens, but we only made it to 55 points along the main track before we fell to
the power of the ring. Sauron ate up
Sam, who was still the Ring bearer, so Frodo turned home alone, in
failure. I honestly would have been
happy to have another go and see if we could bag a win, but we still have many
other board games to play through yet.
Players = 2
Games played in
2014 = 1
Rating in 2013 = 8
Rating in 2014 = 7
Talisman 2nd
edition
We have all the 2nd ed expansions except for Dragons. In fact I only bagged the Talisman Adventure
(I think, could have been the Expansion? The one with the Halfling) a couple of
years ago on eBay, shuffled it into the game, but haven’t touched it
since. So despite my having played this
probably hundreds of times as a youngster, there were actually a few cards that
appeared in this game which I’d never seen before, such as the mysterious
Halloween event, and the Strength 3 Berserker who you can’t actually kill, he
just wanders off after the fight. We
left aside the City and Timescape expansions just for brevity, but added in the
Dungeon for shits and giggles. A fatal
mistake I now feel…
We drew 4 heroes each and chose our faves. Sam was the Warrior of Chaos, I was the
Elf. Despite having drawn the superior
Monk, Minotaur and Valkyrie, I always used to love being the Elf when we played
Talisman when I was a kid. I clearly
thought at the time that nipping around the Woods spaces in the Outer Region
was the Best Thing Ever. With hindsight
he’s pretty under-powered compared to the other Talisman heroes. But 2nd edition Talisman is not
about balanced heroes, or economical power-mongering. It’s very much a ‘roll’-playing. And roll we did. For once the fates were with me as I
Monopoly-moved my way around the board, gathering early allies (prince and
unicorn), magic items (belt of strength), and a nice axe to craft a raft with
and sail to the Middle Region (once I’d had my fun nipping around the Woods
spaces of course). I reached the
Wizard’s Cave and the quest was to deliver a Magic Item so I traded straight
away for a Talisman and was well on my way, I just needed to focus on boosting
my stats. Sam’s poor Chaos Warrior
meanwhile, was not having much luck.
Despite gaining a familiar early on, he was unable to get much else, and
kept getting wailed on by low level monsters.
Licking his wounds he escaped to the Dungeon and I pretty much forgot
about him as I dominated the Middle Region’s denizens and eyed up the Portal of
Power. My arrogance was to be my
downfall though. Whilst I meandered the
Runes, Oasis and Hidden Valley (which soon filled up with Crafty monsters I
couldn’t beat individually, let alone as a gang), Sam’s Chaos Warrior found a
torch and sped his way through the Dungeon right through the Treasure Chamber
and rolled a 6. He hopped up to the
Crown of Command and won the game. We
did play out the final few moves, but he consistently rolled 4-6, and I
couldn’t pick the lock on the Portal of Power so it was game over.
My previously super high rating of Talisman is based (like my HeroQuest
rating) on the fact that this game really ushered me into the world of board
games, and it would easily have been a 10 when I played it as a child and
teenager, when the art and gameplay was simply mind blowing to me and my
friends. I distinctly remember that the
kid who originally owned it (the guy who actually ended up selling it to me)
used to horribly misplay Blizzard.
Instead of lasting two rounds, all of our characters had to circle the
entire outer region twice (i.e. two ‘arounds’) before he’d let us discard it! Great days.
:laugh:
Though now I would rarely choose to play it (if ever), I see it as a
game that could interest my little one in a year or two. And despite all I’ve said, we had a really
good laugh at the ridiculous turn of events, and twist ending that this game
provided. It also didn’t outstay its
welcome as it usually does.
But since neither of us had the appetite for another session, we moved
on to greener pastures and broke out another game instead.
Players = 2
Expansions =
Dungeon, Adventure, Expansion
Games played in
2014 = 1
Rating in 2013 = 9
Rating in 2014 =
6.5
The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game
I need to organise this game better.
I have a massive cardboard card-holding box, but the notion of putting
together decks for each scenario is beyond daunting. So we decided to just go back to the three
core scenarios and break out our Dain-led Dwarf synergy decks which had fared
so well throughout the Khazad Dum cycle.
Remembering how fricking random it can be and how certain cards and
especially shadow effects are simply game ending, and also remembering how our
experiences of play-testing this and the next cycle for FFG went south quite
fast, and just generally being burnt out on the game overall, we were both
pretty reticent about playing through it.
So it was pleasantly surprising that after a few turns of figuring out
how to play it again we settled back into the swing of it and soon found
ourselves strategizing across each others’ cards and across the table about the
different lands and foes we had to take on.
Our fairly hard decks made short work of most obstacles and we pretty
much cantered through all three scenarios, with the usual wobble round about
when our prisoner (mine of course, Thalin in this case) got taken in Escape
from Dol Guldur. We soon rallied, pasted
the Black Rider and raced to freedom.
And, I hold my hands up here, it was very enjoyable. I remember what I fell in love with about the
game when it was first released, and how beautiful the card art is, and I
started to think about how it might be nice to get back into it and start
collecting the newer cycles. But then,
is that ‘outside of the game’ deck building really any fun for me? Not really.
And I’m not optimistic about certain scenarios they may or may not have
released yet. That said, overall it’s really
quite a stellar game, and though some of the existing scenarios are pretty
dull, or badly play-tested/designed, the ones that work well, and especially
the ones that scale well to the number of players, those are real winners, and
industry leading in their creativity and sheer fun.
Players = 2
Expansions =
Mirkwood + Dwarrowdelf Cycles
Games played in
2014 = 3
Rating in 2013 = 8
Rating in 2014 = 8
HeroQuest
HeroQuest was kind of a chore,
it really is more of a light RPG, and I seem to remember this now having had to
GM it all the time over the years. Sam agreed to be GM this time but he
was bored, and as the heroes I was pretty bored too. We played The Trial,
which is a replacement for the incredibly easy original introductory quest The
Maze which came in the original quest book. We chose The Trial because it
has a ton of different monsters in, so you get the gamut of the bestiary.
Battered absolutely everything I came across. Cleared the room.
Searched for everything. Repeat ad nauseum. This game has
really been hugely out-stripped by modern dungeon crawlers. I never
thought I'd say this, but even Descent is a better game. Those
rose-tinted spectacles of nostalgia are a little cracked now. I'm sure my
boy would get a kick out of it, but I'd have to work up my stamina to get to
the point where I could be bothered running a campaign for him. I totally
get why they put 'ages 9+' on the box, and there's a pic of a bunch of 9 year
olds on the back. I can't see it being 'fixed' or any more interesting
with the US rules where monsters have extra body points either.
The furniture and minis and map
were absolutely mind blowing when I was a kid, and my favourite Christmas ever
still remains the one where I unboxed HeroQuest. But if I had to be brutally
honest, it's dropped from a 9 to about a 6, and that's probably being generous.
If it wasn't in such a shit state I'd probably consider eBaying it.
Although, again there is always that possibility that my son would enjoy
it. I developed quite a complex set of
coop campaign rules for HeroQuest so maybe we’ll break them out together
sometime.
Players = 2
Games played in
2014 = 1
Rating in 2013 = 9
Rating in 2014 = 6
Space Crusade
Space Crusade was slightly more
successful than HeroQuest, surprisingly (I remember I much preferred HeroQuest
when I was a young un). We tried the
rules as written with the first mission (kill the dreadnought), in which Sam
took in one squad of Blood Angel space marines, which my aliens utterly
annihilated before he’d explored the whole board.
So we reset and he took in all
three squads of marines – sort of competing them against each other because of
the points system - and this time it was a lot more interesting. There was constant action, back and forth
shooting and fighting and slaying. He
was obviously able to cover much more ground and whilst he broke down my forces
I was able to whittle away his squads one marine at a time. By the time he reached the dreadnought it
really could have gone either way. I
only had a couple of gretchin left to defend it, but he only had a couple of
injured captains remaining (his Blood Angels had been decimated) and I thought
I was going to wipe him out. But the
dice went against me and he knocked ED209 down and legged it. I threw a couple more event cards at him but
he successfully reached the docking bays and completed the mission.
But then we totalled up the
points, and though one of his squads had done ‘well’ according to the score
chart, the aliens achieved an epic points victory. The decimated Blood Angels scored so low
their commanding officer had to go back in on a suicide mission to redeem
himself! I could see us actually having
a bash at a proper campaign game of Space Crusade sometime. But I just don’t see when we’d choose to do
that over a game of Doom, Gears of War, or Sedition Wars instead.
Again, another one for the boy.
But two games ticked off and
that list is starting to look actually doable!
Players = 2
Games played in
2014 = 2
Rating in 2013 = 8
Rating in 2014 =
6.5
Doom: The Board
game
For the first time we played the first online scenario: Blood in the Shadows, by
ex-FFG designer Kevin Wilson. And we
threw in the expansion content, just for good measure, knowing it would
probably be a while before we play Doom again.
It’s a long time since we played so it was Universal Head’s rules
reference to the rescue to get us back into the swing of things. I took the Invaders whilst Sam sent in his lonely
marine to face off against the odds. I
took an even mix of expansion and base game monsters to give maximum spice and
we began. Sam was up against it from the
off, racing to escape my casually spawning supply of alien dudes whilst arming
himself with whatever he could scavenge.
Spoiler: the encounters in this scenario are pretty
dumb. One has you jump through an acid
bath and back (taking 2 damage) to get a medi-kit which heals 2 damage! So Soldier Sam was taking some unnecessary
extra damage on his travails. As he
nipped through the teleported and searched for the blue key to make good his
escape I had some of the bigger monsters smash up (with Smash cards) the main
room which had a bunch of blocking obstacles.
Once they’d cleared a path I could manoeuvre pretty much wherever I
wanted to. Time ticked on and Soldier
Sam was taking frags every other turn, whilst occasionally blasting away my
poor little beasties. Whilst he was off
exploring a random corridor I stacked up the bad guys next to the blue door
leading to the final area. He’d need to
blast through them to get away, so with his last life remaining, he valiantly
teleported into their midst and threw some grenades… And missed.
It was space marine soup for dinner that day. I always remember Doom as being quite
complex, and though we had to look up yet another Line of Sight rules set, it
actually played a lot quicker and faster than I recalled. It’s a fun romp, and I think has the edge
over Descent because of its speed and ferocity.
Aside from a few skill cards and alien abilities you’re not getting
bogged down by referring to a tonne of treasure cards and surge abilities and
so on. Good fun, took a while to play
through (even though it’s a fairly short scenario), needs some proper campaign
play to get through those scenario books.
There’s also a load of fan content available for it too, and I’d like to
play through the original Doom map levels that some BGG genius put together
some time. It does feel a little clunky
compared to newer offerings however, and I think Gears of War wins out in terms
of component art, tension, cooperative play, and general innovation.
Players = 2
Expansions = Doom:
The Boardgame Expansion Set
Games played in
2014 = 1
Rating in 2013 = 8
Rating in 2014 =
7.5
Dungeons & Dragons: The Legend of Drizzt Board Game
Sam played Drizzt for the first time - presumably I’d played him every
other time, on the occasions when we actually allowed him in the game because
of his game-breaking awesomeness. I took
Bruenor for his excellent head-butting ability (take 1 damage to do 1 damage)
and nifty stances. We decided to go
balls-deep and immediately chase after the big bad balrog/balor dude in the
final adventure. Without time to get
into a campaign game using our copious
house rules, we just settled on drawing Castle Ravenloft monster tokens to
populate tiles (essential), and shuffled together all the treasures from all
three D&D games (essential). Oh, and
we threw in the Vierna Do’Urden promo which a kind BGGer donated to me some
time back, because, heh, what are the chances she’d turn up anyway?
So in our first tile Vierna Do’Urden turns up, shortly followed by the
‘draw 4 monsters’ token from Legend of Drizzt, which sort of set the scene for
the rest of the adventure. Trolls jumped
out at us, along with Dinin, and the Underdark sent everything it could at our
brave adventurers in order to wipe their sorry faces from the world of
Faerun. We ran and ran, and fought and
looted, and levelled up and hooted, got suited and booted, then battled and
rooted, before finally bumping into the balor himself. Not taking kindly to our invasion of his home
and slaughter of all his scurrying little friends he whipped and sliced at us
whilst we ran around looking for some water elementals to kill so we could
place their watery remains on his throne which would deal a shit ton of damage
to him. Obviously. Despite burning through our healing surges
and most of our HP, with careful use of our accrued XP we kept the traps and
nasty encounters at bay, and ran circles around him, eventually smashing up the
elementals and placing their water trays on his throne. The balor stomped towards my Bruenor who was
sitting on his throne taunting him for the showdown, with Drizzt nipping at his
heels with his twin scimitars of death.
As the monstrous demon raised his flaming sword in order to strike down
furious vengeance upon my stubborn old dwarf, Bruenor flung himself headlong at
the gigantic evil monstrosity and did what any self respecting dwarf king would
do in the same circumstances: head-butted the evil balor in the nuts,
vanquishing him from the material plane and back to the abyss from whence he
came. Whooping and victory! :)
Love these D&D games, so tense, and quick playing, with as much
depth as you want to add to them, great components, and such elegant
simplicity. I have a bunch of Kick
Started dungeon crawlers en route at some point in the future, and they will
all have a long way to go to reach the dizzy heights of the D&D adventure
system games’ pure monster bashing fun.
Roll on D&D AS Game Number 4 next year…
Players = 2
Expansions =
Vierna Do’Urden Promo
Games played in
2013 = 5
Games played in
2014 = 1
Rating in 2013 = 9
Rating in 2014 = 9
Return of the
Heroes
Sam wanted to take the dwarf for a spin, but the only thing I could remember
about this game is that the dwarf is an inordinate slowpoke and should be
avoided at all costs. So he went with
the fighter instead, and I took the mage.
There is no really comprehensive rules reference for this game
unfortunately, and having set up and aborted this game just a few weeks ago, I
flailed through the official rules (oh god I forgot how bad they are - written
from the perspective of the characters, with no way of referencing any rules –
Argh!), the re-written fan rules, and the couple of fan reference sheets
available, and still couldn’t find the few rules I needed to look up during
play. Luckily a few ancient BGG posts
came to our rescue for rules lookups, and I was occasionally surprised to find
myself contributing to said rules discussions from years ago. Anyway, to the game. Those tiles are beautiful. I love the simplicity and elegance of it all,
with counters explaining everything you need.
Although the counters are not as pretty as the tiles, they do sort of
fit the Euro/fantasy design style, what with the wooden ‘experience cubes’ and
‘gold/wood coins’. And it’s a compelling
game once you get going. I wasn’t really
looking forward to giving this a whirl, and it was close to trade pile
consideration. I’ve also never properly
played through the Under the Shadow of the Dragon expansion, which I have, but
which we didn’t use. But once we were
moving around, looking for secret paths, uncovering adventure tiles and
missions and bad guys and NPCs and forgetting to draw replacement tiles from
the bag but remembering a little later, we were both racing along at a clip to
power up and take on the Nameless. We
opted for most of the intro game set up rules, which meant the Nameless was the
Shadow, and we both got our suggested characters’ quests. Also noted the subconscious slight
similarities to Fantasy Quest’s Sagas.
:whistle:
Sam’s fighter was levelling up faster and I was struggling to keep up,
even though I finished my character quest first. Once I discovered the stubborn old broomstick
I thought I’d start closing the gap, but it backfired on me a couple of times,
taking me far from my goal. So I made a
stab at walking towards the nameless with my shiny new boots. However, Sam’s fighter pulled a fast one and
using the Land Swap teleporter device he yoinked the Nameless’ very homeland
from under my disbelieving eyes and placed it right next to him. I turned on my heel and raced back in the
other direction, using the broom stick this time to try and make up lost
time. But it was too late. The brave fighter wandered through the token
guardian (he would draw the strength guardian being the fighter and all
wouldn’t he?!) bodyguard and sauntered up to the Nameless Shadow. A quick, bloody and brutal battle ensued,
with the Nameless Shadow going down like a sack of lead balloons. The land was saved from evil and the heroic
fighter returned home to riches and glory.
Meanwhile the disappointed mage wandered off into the swamps to make
himself a new home away from the stress and hubbub of medieval social life, and
the scurrilous accusations of laziness and cowardice from the mean peasants and
goodwives.
It’s a good, fun game, will be great for my little on when he’s older,
tons less random than Talisman, with a much more streamlined combat and
levelling system, and nice sturdy Euro rules to it. Definitely a keeper, though somewhat dwarfed
by more modern fantasy adventure offerings such as the Lord of the Rings LCG.
Players = 2
Games played in
2014 = 1
Rating in 2013 = 7
Rating in 2014 = 7
Space Hulk: Death
Angel – the card game
I remember how punishing that die is.
Well, this time it treated us okay.
We printed off the essential Universal Head reference sheet to remind us
what the hell we were doing and then chucked all of our poor space marines into
the meat grinder that is Space Hulk.
This is so much better than the board game, even if the pieces aren’t as
nice. The Aliens swarmed all around us
and picked off our dudes one by one, as we worked inexorably towards our
objective. It’s interesting how the objective
mechanics of this game fed into Gears of War.
Some of the game elements in SH: DA I just don’t like. My guy moved last turn so now he can’t move
this turn? Yeah, it’s not that thematic,
and makes it feel very much more puzzley than anything. Which isn’t a bad thing for what it is, and
as a balancing mechanism it works great.
We actually managed to beat this scenario with all of our leaders
intact, having sacrificed most of our regular dudes to the brood lords and
their cronies. So, a precious victory
over a usually savage little game. At
£19.99 this is great value for money, and I often think about picking up my own
copy for solo play (since this is actually Sam’s game).
Players = 2
Games played in
2014 = 1
Rating in 2013 = 8
Rating in 2014 = 7
Descent: 2nd
Edition: Regular Version Vs. Forgotten Souls
Having played through a rather disappointing campaign of 2nd
edition there was much that we enjoyed about it, but that it all came down to
“who can roll the least number of Xs?” made it a bit of a damp squib. The race aspect was new and interesting for a
while, but definitely removed that sense of dungeon crawling. The smaller maps meant you could get through
more scenarios than 1st edition, but the scenarios were less
fulfilling. The character progression
was pretty cool, and that the Overlord could tailor their deck too was great. But since Descent essentially became a
skirmish battle game with variable objectives, it just didn’t feel like the
dungeon crawler we wanted it to be. So
it got hugely relegated. We never broke it
out for any of the one-off scenarios because playing without the campaign
seemed completely pointless, and we were in no hurry to fire up a 20+ hour
campaign of a slightly average game. We
did not go back to 1st edition either. The quests were long, I spent quite some time trying to make 1st
edition fit into a coop/solo mode which we played to death, but the D&D
Adventure System games beat Descent 1.0 and 2.0 outright as far as we were
concerned.
Until Shnar came out with his very compelling review of the new
retro-fitted-cooperative expansion for Descent 2.0. So after finding it fairly cheap online (it’s
an expansion remember, expansions don’t count as new games :P) we played a
quick, boring scenario of the ‘regular’ Descent 2.0 rules (the asinine one
where goblins run off the map whilst a cave troll gets wailed on by heroes –
Sam’s heroes beat the game in two turns) to refresh our memories on the mechanics
and then settled down with the Forgotten Souls rules. Instantly it was more compelling, with mini
goals on each tile, and nasty little monsters with sneaky tactics cards lifted
almost directly from the excellent Gears of War mechanics. Our two heroes were up against it straight
away, and every tile was hard fought for as we progressed through the dungeon, improving
slightly over the course of the adventure with the new levelling-up rules,
which it has to be said are slightly clunky and unintuitive – clearly a result
of the retrofitted coop game design rather than building new rules from
scratch. Once you get your heads around
it though it starts to play pretty fast, and you’re soon agonising over the use
of hero abilities, and pretty much getting stomped. We made fairly significant progress over the
2-3 hours that we played but not nearly enough to approach a win, and we were
slaughtered on a creative but fairly unwinnable encounter which came up about
two tiles before the final encounter.
Overall, we enjoyed this a lot more than regular Descent, and this is
probably how it will see the table again next time. And I’ll certainly be looking at the next big
box expansion if it’s going to follow the same coop format that FFG have been hinting
at.
Does Forgotten Souls save Descent 2.0?
For us, it’s a yes.
Players = 2
Expansions =
Forgotten Souls
Games played in
2013 = 10
Games played in
2014 = 2
Rating in 2013 = 6
Rating in 2014 = 7
(caveat: with Forgotten Souls)
Bonus Game Plays!
Shadowrun:
Crossfire
Seeing loads of mixed reports on this on BGG and was very interested in
the theme of the game and the look of the coop deck builder mechanics. Difficulty doesn’t usually bother me too
much, though I do like a chance at winning.
But some of the rants about it being impossible were concerning. So as discussed in my last blog I gave it a
try anyway solo by printing off the demo cards – a very clever way to get
people suckered into the game. I managed
to beat it a few times with just two runners and enjoyed it so much I had to
introduce it to Sam. So we had a couple
of runs at it. We lost the first time
pretty badly (he was Ork Mage, I was Human Samurai), caught our breath,
complained a bit about the difficulty, then set off again and won the second mission
(he was Troll Decker, I was Elf Face).
I’m not a fan of playing multiple characters or hands in games as I find
it athematic (must have just read too many Fighting Fantasy game books when I
was a kid) so I’d ideally be looking to play this with just one hero per player
And then of course I had the aforementioned total mission fail of picking
this one up from my FLGS, so I ended up blasting through it solo. The full game is much, much harder, and after
four games I’ve had one successful Abort and three full arse-smashing Losses. I’m holding back full judgement until we’ve
had more multiplayer plays, but so far it’s pretty brilliant, the card art is
amazing, I love the theme and mechanics, even though I’m not massively
enamoured with the whole deck building movement (it just seems like some of the
best thematic games happen to be deck builders). Glad I picked it up, in spite of letting
myself down! :D
Players = 2
Games played in
2014 = 11
Rating in 2014 = 7.5
Eldritch Horror
Received this as a birthday present some months back and tested this out
in solo mode with a single hero a couple of times to see how it plays. It definitely needs more players, and much
like Arkham Horror, it suffers with a single investigator, thought it’s
slightly more playable that way. I set
out with the sailor Silas, who soon went insane/dead and was replaced by the
martial artist. She went after his
corpse and nicked all his loot with the whole ‘loot a dead investigator’
mechanism, which was actually pretty cool.
Due to a good run of clues and, well, luck, she was able to put a stop
to Azathoth’s cheeky attempts to devour the universe. I also had a play-through with my favourite investigator
from AH, Mark Harrigan, who seems pretty weak in this game, and soon got
roasted by the old ones. I’ve since
shuffled in Forsaken Lore and look forward to the extra variety it will provide. Look forward to tabling this one properly,
because at the moment it definitely seems easier to handle than the gigantic
table eating monster that is Arkham Horror…
Players = 1
Expansions = Forsake
Lore
Games played in
2014 = 2
Rating in 2014 =
7.5
DC Comics
Deck-Building Game: Crisis Expansion
I’ve mentioned this game a few times before, it was going to my trade
pile at one point but then my four year old’s widened eyes at the cover image
of Batman made me reconsider. So glad I
did, we’ve played this as a family tons of times now, along with the Heroes
Reunite version, which is basically more of the same, but with a load of
characters I’ve never heard of. So the
Crisis expansion was a no brainer – coop, more cards, more villains,
crises. Everything is an improvement for
me. The Crisis mode is quite
challenging, and takes it from a 30-45 minute lunchtime game into an epic
hours-long slog to save the world.
Indeed, it’s taken us a few days to play out some games. As a family game it rocks, because we’re all
working together, and occasionally even my non-gamer wife will get involved and
join us to fight the baddies. But I’d
love to give this a proper go with gamer friends and see how it holds up. Thematically it makes tons more sense that
you’re actually now fighting and defeating villains rather than adding them to
your deck. Though I never really had a
problem with that previously (I sort of saw it as adding ‘experience’ to your
deck instead of having the Penguin turn up and help you), it’s quite satisfying
to literally Kick a villain out of the game.
The Crises themselves are imaginative and do strange things to your
deck, which makes puzzling out how to defeat them quite challenging, especially
when some of the Crisis villains are very difficult to defeat too. We’ve chalked up a single victory so far, but
it’s added loads of mileage to the game for me and I’m always happy to break it
out for the little one. So it gains half
a point for the Crisis expansion, maybe more if it holds water with my gaming
buddies too.
Players = 2-3
Expansions =
Crisis Expansion (Pack 1)
Games played in
2014 = 10+
Rating in 2013 = 7
Rating in 2014 = 7.5
Pathfinder:
Adventure Card Game
Still chasing the dream on this one.
I actually soloed Valeros all the way through the Rise of the Runelords
campaign and it was really good fun.
There’s very much a strange point where you’re racing through the
scenarios just to build your deck between adventures, because that’s the most
fun bit - but that’s actually a very compelling goal to strive for. Once you get past the abstraction of the
gameplay – monsters wandering off whilst you’re fighting them, only to reappear
later on, loot just lying around all over the place, etc. – there’s a campaign
style game here that has I think revolutionised board and card games. At the very least it’s at the crest of the
wave of the demand that players have for games with characters who they can
level up and come back to game after game.
And it needs to be praised highly for this. Like the Lord of the Rings LCG some of the
scenarios are hit and miss, and they are mostly chase the villain down and kick
his arse. But I enjoyed kicking the arse
of every single villain in this game!
And it definitely switches the game up in the later expansion
packs. So much so that I’m genuinely
excited for what they come up with in Skull and Shackles, which originally I
was going to pass on due to the pirate theme.
But which I’ll now be picking up next year (once all the adventure packs
are out – I don’t like waiting around for my game to be complete). It was great to be able to take one hero all
the way through the game, and I had to completely but fairly contentedly go
back on my perma-death rule once I reached those later levels, because there
was no way I was going to go back through and play 23 hours’ worth of
adventures just to get to the point where I made that bad roll again. I actually don’t really like most of the 11
heroes in the game – gnome druids and dwarf paladins or whatever are a bit
freaky to me after being raised on 1st and 2nd edition
AD&D, but mainly because of the art.
So I might end up picking up a couple of the new Class decks to add some
much needed variety to the choice of heroes, and to pick up some more classical
favourites. Anyway, this was the main solo
non-play-testing game I’d been playing recently, running alongside all the
other multiplayer games we’ve been playing through in the collection, and it’s just
a really, really good one.
Players = 2
Games played in
2014 = 8
Rating in 2014 = 8
Netrunner: Living
Card Game
A mate at work brought his copy of this in and we played a game at
lunchtime and have decided to give it a go on a semi-regular basis. It’s the usual glossy FFG affair with great
art and presentation. He played the evil
corporation, and I was the hacker. I’m
not familiar enough with the lore or terminology to tell you which ones though,
it was very much a learning game. And
that unfamiliarity definitely led to a thematic disconnect for me. Some of it made sense, but whereas the Lord
of the Rings LCG has you travelling to lands and attacking enemies, or the Star
Wars LCG has you attacking enemies and objectives, Netrunner sees your decker
hacking through facedown software programs to somewhat arbitrarily (though I’m
sure tactics in this will solidify with experience) attack your corporation
opponent’s card deck, card discard pile and hand of cards. I blindly played down what cards I could and
he took it easy on me, guiding me through a few basic tactics. Soon enough I played a program that could hack
his archives (discard pile) as though it was his HQ (hand) and scored some big
rewards which won me the game. Victory
felt more accidental than glorious, so I’m going to hold off on serious
judgement until we’ve played a few more games, but it doesn’t feel as amazing
as its position in the BGG ranks would indicate yet, especially since usually
with games like this I can quickly get a clear sense of what’s what. I look forward to eating my words on Netrunner
in the near future, but for now I’m glad I played someone else’s copy rather
than purchasing my own, because it was high on my wish list for sometime.
Players = 2
Games played in
2014 = 1
Rating in 2014 = 7
Here follows the rest of the games we want to get through this year, slowly but surely we’re getting there....
1. Arkham Horror
2. Constantinopolis
3. Dark Darker Darkest
4. Descent: Journeys in the Dark
5. Dungeon Lords
6. Dungeoneer: Vault of the Fiends
7. Magic Realm
8. Omen: A Reign of War
9. Race for the Galaxy
10. The Ares Project
11. Twilight Struggle
12. War of the Ring (first edition)
13. Warhammer Quest
14. When Darkness Comes: The Nameless Mist
Preference List for 2015:
1. Eclipse
2. Through the Ages A Story of Civilization
3. Mage Knight Board Game
4. Robinson Crusoe: Adventure on the Cursed Island
5. Invaders
6. A Touch of Evil: The Supernatural Game
7. Fortune and Glory: The Cliffhanger Game
8. Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game
9. Claustrophobia
10. Defenders of the Realm
11. Dungeons & Dragons: Castle Ravenloft Board Game
12. Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of Ashardalon Board Game
13. Tales of the Arabian Nights
14. Nations
15. Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game
16. Gears of War: The Board Game
17. Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords - Base Set
18. Star Wars: The Card Game
19. Call of Cthulhu: Collectible Card Game
20. Descent: Journeys in the Dark (Second Edition): Forgotten Souls
21. Return of the Heroes
22. Space Hulk: Death Angel - The Card Game
23. Revolver
24. Rune Age
25. Dungeons & Dragons: The Legend of Drizzt Board Game
26. The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game
27. Resident Evil Deck Building Game
28. Uncharted: The Board Game
29. Dungeon Command: Sting of Lolth
30. X-Wing Miniatures Game
31. Sedition Wars: Battle for Alabaster
32. Doom: The Board game
33. Lords of Waterdeep: Scoundrels of Skullport
34. Agricola
35. Eldritch Horror
36. Innovation
37. Shadowrun: Crossfire
38. Thunderstone
39. DC Comics Deck-Building Game
40. Dominion
41. Flash Point: Fire Rescue
42. Space Crusade
43. HeroQuest
44. Runebound (Second Edition)
45. Talisman
46. Lord of the Rings
47. Forbidden Island
48. Dungeons & Dragons: The Fantasy Adventure Board Game (Trade pile)
49. Zombies!!! (Trade pile)
Top 20 most wanted or forthcoming games:
1. Kingdom Death: Monster
2. Shadows of Brimstone
3. Mice & Mystics
4. Super Dungeon Explore: Forgotten King
5. Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game
6. Shadowrun: Crossfire
7. Warfighter
8. Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game
9. Fireteam Zero
10. Pathfinder: Skulls & Shackles
11. Merchants & Marauders
12. Archipelago + Solo expansion
13. Android: Netrunner
14. Tokaido
15. Lewis & Clark
16. XenoShyft Onslaught
17. Alien Uprising
18. Wtich of Salem
19. Myth
20. The Ancient World
