|
Post by Plum on Apr 4, 2019 9:32:08 GMT 1
Oh, speaking of witch hunt - has anyone been following the Blood on the Clocktower kickstarter? It seems to be a hugely overproduced and overpriced twist on werewolf that I normally wouldn't give a second glance... except that Quinns from SUSD called it possibly his favourite game ever?! Which seems bonkers to me. I mean, I love Resistance, One Night Ultimate Werewolf, Coup etc but regular werewolf always left me feeling underwhelmed (granted a lot of that stems from a multi-hour game with player elimination). Any thoughts?
|
|
|
Post by Zejety on Apr 4, 2019 14:14:05 GMT 1
My starting occupation was Bosporus Traveller (With each new cattle you place, you can buy 1 spices for 4 silver or 1 silk for 3 silver), so i just focused on covering that one's silver cost and spending the other resources I picked up along the way.
|
|
|
Post by Zejety on Apr 4, 2019 14:22:29 GMT 1
Oh no, Plum, now you've made me visit Kickstarter! I've tried and failed for ages to find a decent-priced version of Evolution Climate in Germany. I guess I'll have to back Oceans now.
|
|
|
Post by Plum on Apr 4, 2019 14:34:19 GMT 1
Hot tip - Evolution was recently made into an iOS app. I've not actually tried it myself so I can't say how good it is, or whether it includes Climate, but that might be of interest to you My current kickstarters are Spirit Island: Jagged Earth (because I love love love Spirit Island), Clowdus Collection: Neolithic (because I love love love the original Neolithic but it has terrible homemade production values), Age of Civilisations (because I love love love small box civ-tableaux building games) and Tsukuyumi: Full Moon Down (because I love love love asymmetric dudes on a map strategy games). Of those, I am very confident that two will be excellent (since I already have the base/original game), one will likely be excellent (Tsukuyumi's first edition was very well received and reviewed) and one might be excellent (but will more likely be ok) but is cheap enough that it's worth the chance.
|
|
|
Post by Zejety on Apr 4, 2019 14:42:28 GMT 1
I've also played Evolution at chatcon! Oceans shipping costs to Germany are upsetting me. Currently backing Blood Rage digital edition (for the physical promos) and Catacombs
|
|
|
Post by lemmingrad on Apr 11, 2019 14:20:08 GMT 1
Arkham Horror LCG - The Circle Undone - Wages of Sin So new scenario, continuing the misadventures of Rita Young and Diana Stanley. A comparison point can be made to Undimensioned and Unseen, where you need to hunt down and clue to death otherwise invulnerable monsters. This scenario continues the thematic mechanic of having locations turning Spectral, which I like to compare to the Otherworld of Silent Hill. And it has a gimmick where you draw from 2 different encounter decks, depending if you’re at a normal or spectral version of the location. Also lesson learned, if you have the opportunity to stall the agenda by a round, you do it. Just say we had a rough round to recover from after as everything turned Spectral. Diana proves to be incredibly tanky, as she cancels and ignores as much of the encounter deck and enemy attacks as possible. She probably cancelled at least 20 different effects. We met 3 out of 4 objectives. We came close to 4, but we got stuck with multiple enemies, and it required an easy Ornate Bow shot from Rita that he had to not miss... which of course I drew the autofail. This defeated Diana. My cousin was rather sassy “Of course, the only damage I couldn’t prevent was yours Will...” Btw, 6 out of Diana’s 7 health was due to me autofailing to hit his enemy. Guess I should invest in Oops(2) arkhamdb.com/card/51009So I just evaded, used Rita’s ability to move as a reaction to the resign point and got out.
|
|
|
Post by lemmingrad on May 17, 2019 19:25:57 GMT 1
|
|
|
Post by Plum on May 20, 2019 10:13:06 GMT 1
Bleh my editor messed up! Yeah that sounds super fun, though I'm curious as to how well they're going to balance it. I feel like these things either end up incredibly difficult or incredibly easy :/
|
|
|
Post by lemmingrad on May 29, 2019 4:53:06 GMT 1
So finally played Gloomhaven again, although we may need to replace our third player.
So tried to do Operation Get Brute retired by doing 2 Swamp Locations.
So our team was Music Note, Two Mini and Brute. Unfortunately our 2nd swamp scenario was that one our Secret Class, Sun and Scoundrel couldn’t handle due to regenerating Harrower Infestors (not good for our half the time low damage melee group) and long range poison imps and serpents.
We made it to the last room before we all exhausted. He were short of killing an Imp and Viper. We’re just gonna write it off as we really don’t want to do that scenario ever again.
As for how the play went, the lvl 4 music note song was amusing for making all enemies attack on disadvantage. That said, the bottom action would be really nice to use for the bless and curse everything in range. I have recently read some player will spend the first rounds doing that, and use stamina potions to return them, so by the time they take their first rest, the enemy deck will be full of curses and the players blesses. The two mini especially.
Pandemic Season 2
Yellow Team is the first to complete the campaign, scoring the 2nd best ending and only 1 death. We will probably meet again in July to start Betrayal Legacy.
The Captain is Dead: Lockdown
The sequel box to The Captain is Dead. The standees are fully cut to fit the artwork this time, at the trade off of being less compact and symmetical.
I will say it’s also a hell of a lot more rules to remember than regular CID, enemies especially having a phase after the alert phase.
Having only 1 game under my belt, can’t say whether I like this as much as CID yet.
|
|
|
Post by Plum on May 29, 2019 10:47:40 GMT 1
Yeah, some scenarios are just sucky with certain teams. Sometimes we'll just let it slide, other times we'll skip it for now and come back with a different team later to try again. Forgotten Circles is available soon which should respark our love of the game. If suffered somewhat when one of our long term players moved away and the new player that joined just ... isn't very good. He makes bad decisions, exhausts himself, plays selfishly etc. He's a nice guy and we're trying to advise him but we don't want to cross the line into quarterbacking so it's slow going!
Unrelated, I finally got Arkwright to the table last weekend, playing the full waterframe version. Ohhhh that was a brain-burner and I made several sub-optimal decisions over the course of the game that came back to haunt me, but at least now I know. Very much looking forward to the next play! Only sour note was that I suspect one of the players was cheating. There's so much going on in the game that you can't really monitor what everyone else is doing and you just trust that they're paying the right amounts for actions. I've noticed the player in question make 'mistakes' in the past, always in his favour. "Oh, I did I take $10 too much? Sorry, honest mistake", "Oh, I get the wood OR the stone, but I don't get both? Oops, honest mistake", "Oh I have to pay exponentially more for each upgrade, not just the base cost each time? I missed that rule...". It's never particularly significant and it's certainly not worth causing disharmony at the table over, but it annoys me and short of watching him like a hawk (impossible in a game like Arkwright, with so many moving parts) there's not much I can do. Also he's been through a really tough time of late (health complications, split from his wife etc) so if winning makes him feel better then maybe I should just let him have it, and consider a close second good enough
Actually, now that I think about it, since his life has spiralled down the pan recently, maybe the little moments of cheating make him feel like he's in control. Like when people shoplift worthless items, or bully other people - maybe it's about trying to feel empowered
|
|
|
Post by flagrantangles on May 30, 2019 13:59:16 GMT 1
Speaking of Gloomhaven, I've been playing it with a couple of friends for a while now and we've been having a lovely go of it. That said, we did fuck up the rules for a bit in ways that made things way easier for us.
One thing that we have found frustrating is that when you retire a character, all of their money evaporates. I'm willing to admit we may be wrong about this, but I dislike this dynamic. You could maybe make an argument that the given character uses the money to buy a nice house or something but that feels shallow. Anywho, my friends and I have started using a retired character's money to buy enhancements for that character. Does anyone else do this or something similar?
|
|
|
Post by Plum on May 30, 2019 15:28:29 GMT 1
Yeah, when we retire a character, we liquidate all of their assets and spend the gold on enhancements. This does relate to one of the niggles that we do have with the game - there's no free trading between characters. In theory, you're all mercenaries who work together but not enough to hand your sweet Skullsplitter Axe over It's a weird rule but we've gotten used to it
|
|
|
Post by Plum on May 30, 2019 15:28:54 GMT 1
UK Games Expo tomorrow whoop whoop!
|
|
|
Post by flagrantangles on May 31, 2019 0:20:29 GMT 1
We tread a middle path with the items. We're pretty good with trading items between each other while we're adventuring because it doesn't make sense that we wouldn't. We do not, however, allow us to trade a retiring character's goods to their former teammates. We figure this is good enough. I am a bit bamboozled though. It feels like the design intent is to severely limit gold but we feel like we rarely ever have gold to buy things with and we certainly don't have money to enhance very often.
|
|
|
Post by Plum on May 31, 2019 22:45:32 GMT 1
We tread a middle path with the items. We're pretty good with trading items between each other while we're adventuring because it doesn't make sense that we wouldn't. We do not, however, allow us to trade a retiring character's goods to their former teammates. We figure this is good enough. I am a bit bamboozled though. It feels like the design intent is to severely limit gold but we feel like we rarely ever have gold to buy things with and we certainly don't have money to enhance very often. I think it's more that when you've retired 4-5 characters each, if you simply passed all goods on between characters, you'd have accrued a fortune. The arbitrary reset means each one has to start from the beginning. They do at least give you a starting lump of gold that gets bigger as you increase prosperity
|
|
|
Post by Plum on Jun 7, 2019 14:28:08 GMT 1
Another game of Arkwright planned for tomorrow and I picked up a second hand copy of Sidereal Confluence at Games Expo over the weekend, so looking forward to trying that (as well as some RPG bits and pieces)!
Games Expo was great. I didn't actually buy that much, but I had loads of demos (Museum, Cloudspire, Letter Jam, Second Chance, Starlight Stage, Faeries... um lots more that I can't remember right now!) and had a great time looking around the smaller independent stands. My friends also had a great time with the evening entertainment so I might go along to that next year, though I'm usually exhausted after a day in the halls! And in terms of unique visitors, I think it's now the third largest show in the world, beating Origins (though with an extra day, that still wins on total visitors).
Bring on Gencon!
|
|
|
Post by lemmingrad on Jun 9, 2019 19:20:55 GMT 1
So, based on a misunderstanding, I found a copy of T.I.M.E. Stories at a discounted price due to box damage. I had thought my cousin was looking for a copy, but was actually looking for the expansions discounted. So, I guess I'll keep this copy for myself. Arkham Horror LCG So, lots of stuff announced (next expansion, The Dream-Eaters based on Lovecraft's Dreamlands. Also spoiled, there will be Cats of Ultuar allies), but I haven't had much play time otherwise (I'm actually 2 packs behind on the current expansion.) Did play around with the new cards, setting up a standalone play of "The Guardians of the Abyss Part 1:The Eternal Slumber" (I still haven't played "part 2:The Night's Usurper" yet.) Basically I had a convoluted Lola Hayes deck trying to use the new card Telescopic Sight (add a snipe option to your 2 handed firearm), with the plan otherwise to hide behind Barricade(3)(so enemies can't enter her location), and hilarity as the ally Mr. Rook suicides himself to tutor my deck (this being standalone mode, my deck was XP heavy and had 5 basic weaknesses along with Lola's 2 signature weaknesses. Basically Mr.Rook search 9 cards to tutor 1 card but also draw all weaknesses resulted in him dying right after.) Basically tons of setup, and the only benefit I had with the group was blockading enemy hunters from chasing them. By the time I got my .45 Thompson ready to snipe enemies, they just blasted the final boss with Shrivellings to death.
|
|
|
Post by Plum on Jun 9, 2019 19:37:06 GMT 1
I realise the below will make no sense to anyone but I was damn proud it and get to brag a little My Arkwright plan was executed near perfectly! By the end of the second round I was earning £100+ for shipping forks and lamps (sell all shares -> grab inventor asap -> level 2 bread, level 3 forks+lamps at the start of turn two). At the end of round three I bought all my shares and had two full decades worth of stock pumping which was *just* enough to push me into the 600s at game end. I also finished with 150+ excess cash, so clearly I could have switched from shipping a little earlier. Room for improvement! Also played a couple of rounds of Tiny Towns which was fine. Not amazing, not bad... I don't need to own it though
|
|
|
Post by lemmingrad on Jun 20, 2019 0:08:25 GMT 1
So, bought hundreds of coin capsules to encase my ingredients of Quacks of Quedlinberg. They’re a tight fit, so likely will never leave again. But after years of Arkham Horror LCG with coin capsule encased tokens, it’s nice to have. I’ll be encasing them tonight. Arkham Horror LCG Finally continue my blind playthrough of The Circle Undone: For the Greater Good (play Hot Fuzz clip “The Greater Good.”) So we have a cultist generating doom scenario, except they both are aloof so you can’t efficiently kill them, but they drop their doom on the agenda anyway. For once, my Rita Young’s Track Shoes actually trigger. Normally they should, cause you’re rolling 6 agility vs 3 as Rita, and my luck tends to draw -4 or autofail for some reason. But it was required as I definitely had to run from one end of the map to the other. Also I very much missed Will to Survive. Survivors are just dirty cheaters. The highlight play of the game, to finish the last act, we needed to find 4 keys to use on the Puzzle Box in the same location. The last key was being held by a Cultist. So my plan was to move in, Sleight of Hand an Ornate Bow as a fast action, Shoot the Cultist killing him and taking the key, then move to my partner’s Diana Stanley and we win. I drew the autofail on the bow shot. So I had to get creative. There was 2 cultists in that location, so I evaded the other one, and used Rita’s reaction ability to move after a successful evade. The Diana stole the show by using Seal of the Elder Sign to autodraw the Elder Sign and pass the Parley check instead. Next scenario, Union and Disillusion, I skimmed over the cards, and noted the gimmick is there are Circle tests that test versus your total stats added together. The highest one being Test(20) I am planning on cheating it by taking Stroke of Luck, which is as long as I don’t know the auto-fail, I auto-succeed.
|
|
|
Post by lemmingrad on Aug 8, 2019 5:32:46 GMT 1
Finished The Circle Undone campaign the other day. The Arkham community seem to be unaniminous that the last scenario ties it all nicely, and really drives home the existential horror that is Azathoth. And its endings got very dark. Reading the other endings, the “you lost the campaign” ending is especially nicely written. I do wonder what Star Slayer would think of this game’s depiction of the Blind Idiot God. As a whole, the most fun that the Circle Undone does compared to previous campaigns, is the encounter deck design. Mind you, my Diana and Rita duo basically cheated the encounter deck, so it probably could’ve been a lot rougher, but hey, it was fun to say nope. I look forward to the next campaign, The Dream-Eaters.
|
|
|
Post by lemmingrad on Sept 22, 2019 19:44:22 GMT 1
So, Dream-Eaters is out next week, some people got their pre-orders directly from FFG early.
In the meantime, after breaking open my Return to The Path to Carcosa box, got inspired by a location card.
The past couple days, I’ve been working on Final Fantasy 6 inspired 16-bit sprites of the Arkham investigators. I am eventually gonna print them out and use The Captain is Dead to make standees.
I think once I get my mock screenshot done, I’ll leave the rest to do as my own version of the Inktober challenge, but instead a sprite per day instead of an inked drawing.
|
|
|
Post by Plum on Sept 23, 2019 12:44:15 GMT 1
We took a diversion from AH to play through Aeons End Legacy for a few weeks, but I'm looking forward to getting back into it! First though, I need to get through D&D, Blood Bowl, Gloomhaven and a different D&D - busy week!
|
|
|
Post by Zejety on Sept 23, 2019 14:39:13 GMT 1
Who's gonna be at Spiel this year? I'll be there on the Thursday
|
|
|
Post by Plum on Sept 25, 2019 9:16:39 GMT 1
Not me I was tempted but I didn't get anything organised in time and it's too late now for my bf to get any time off work. I've been so busy recently that I didn't even follow along with Gencon - I'm completely out of the loop as to what is good!
|
|
|
Post by lemmingrad on Sept 25, 2019 14:16:01 GMT 1
|
|
|
Post by scymrian on Sept 26, 2019 19:44:04 GMT 1
I saw on Discord that Burgun is making his board game debut (Kickstarter). The game reminds me of Flash Duel but different, which is obviously something I can get behind. Plus, the theme is probably more attractive to my partner. Nice inexpensive price point, too, so I'm almost certainly in for the basic Game + Expansion tier ($18! Man I love a small box game).
|
|
|
Post by lemmingrad on Sept 26, 2019 20:39:48 GMT 1
And Made them into standees. "Alas Poor Yorick" didn't make the cut.
|
|
|
Post by Plum on Sept 27, 2019 10:01:34 GMT 1
I saw on Discord that Burgun is making his board game debut (Kickstarter). The game reminds me of Flash Duel but different, which is obviously something I can get behind. Plus, the theme is probably more attractive to my partner. Nice inexpensive price point, too, so I'm almost certainly in for the basic Game + Expansion tier ($18! Man I love a small box game). At first glance, this sounds very much like a Nidhogg x Harry Potter boardgame, which is absolutely something I'm interested in lemmingrad it's possible that you love AH too much... we might need to stage an intervention
|
|
|
Post by Southpaw Hare on Sept 27, 2019 14:24:48 GMT 1
This week, I organized my copy of Millennium Blades. The lack of such organization has been a pretty huge barrier to playing it - in order to setup a game, we would previously need to take out every single card in the game and organize them into set stacks on a big table. After plucking out the sets we needed, we usually just left all the rest on the table while we went to play on another, different large table. This was terribly inefficient. I have now instead made a bunch of file tabs out of index cards that label every set, such that they can be picked out and placed back in the box while leaving the unneeded stuff in the box. Took several hours, but worth it. Considering all the manual prep time it originally took to make the money in that game too, I would say that this game requires some of the most manual assembly time out of any game I've owned in order to function correctly. Is it worth it? Probably, although it's not an easy 'yes'.
Myself and two friends also played a game of it. Turned out really great. The game was close the entire way. My one friend pulled off a pretty crazy combo with Gol'lim from the Game of Rings set in all three tournaments. Meanwhile, I summoned Exaltius in the final tournament for the ultimate win.
I have a Late Backer version of the new big expansion coming, and I also ordered a copy of the last mini expansion which I apparently don't have. Must have come out after I ordered all the others.
|
|
|
Post by Plum on Sept 27, 2019 16:26:38 GMT 1
Myself and two friends also played a game of it. Turned out really great. I really like MB. I love how you can just sell off your entire deck between tournaments and build something completely new, or abandon winning altogether and double down on collecting card sets while playing a straight meta-deck for bonus points. Or forget all that extra fluff and nonsense and just spend the whole game crafting the perfect tournament deck, dominating your opponents and winning through clever card combos. Or go for a mixed approach, never appearing like a threat but steady scoring in all aspects lets you steal the win from the pro collectors and card players
|
|