Chad, Ryan and Adam discuss the various ways a game night can go wrong for the average group, outside of a poorly designed game. Playing with other humans certainly comes with its own array of considerations, but have you ever had a night wrecked by the theme of a game or the gaming environment? We discuss a few things to look for and your best bet to avoid a negative gaming experience.
After the contest break we discuss Arkham Horror, both the second and newly released third editions. Both games feature investigators looking to defend the city of Arkham from one or more existential threats, but how each game goes about it is quite different. We list the differences and similarities as well as our likes and dislikes with Fantasy Flight’s flagship Arkham Files product.
Finally we wrap up the show with some of our recent plays, including Holding On; The Troubled Life of Billy Kerr, El Grande, Chronicles of Crime (our newest giveaway game), and discuss a few new releases!
After we make our draw for the winner of our Brass: Birmingham contest (sponsored by Mr. Dice Guy Games) we break out our feature game of the episode, Decrypto! This 2018 release takes on the popular Codenames word-guessing genre, with 80% less words and 80% more strategy. Find out why this game may take the cake in the wordplay genre.
Finally we wrap up with our usual “what did we play recently” section, featuring Discover: Lands Unknown, Secrets, Space Alert, and Chad has a pity party about Chronicles of Crime.
The second half features A Fake Artist Goes to New York, a big social deduction game in a box the size of your hand. This drawing game gets everyone involved with its approachable theme and ease of play, and doesn’t require any artistic skills short of drawing a line for players to contribute. Find out what we think!
Finally we wrap up with some games we’ve played and want to play, including Ultimate Werewolf Legacy, Pandemic Legacy Season 1, Neanderthal, Discover: Lands Unknown, and more!
Don’t forget to get your entries in for our Brass: Birmingham giveaway! Details buried in the episode somewhere.
]]>Just in time for Halloween, Adam, Ryan and Chad discuss board games where players take on the role of villains, whether required by the game’s theme or mechanics, or where players are just encouraged to become evil masterminds in their own right. We start with the more obvious hidden traitor and one-versus-many board games, and move on to the more obscure as we try to identify which genres are more prone to bring out the evil in their players.
Starting the second half of the show we feature Werewolf, a hidden role game where hapless villagers attempt to rid themselves of a hidden population of werewolves embedded within their village’s population. Find out why this psychology experiment from the ‘80s is still one of the most popular party games around, and how Chad hosts his online variant (which Adam and Ryan may prefer to the in-person version?)
Finally we wrap up with some games we’ve played at a local 24-hour convention and a few games we’re looking forward to, including Twilight Imperium 4th Edition, Stockpile, Pandemic Legacy Season 1, Tiny Epic Quest, Hunt for the Ring, The Mind, Concept for Kids, and more!
]]>We take on the topic of “variable player powers” and how that broad categorization applies to games from Cosmic Encounter to Vast: The Crystal Caverns, and everything in-between. Is there a hard line between variable player powers and asymmetric games? We certainly don’t have the answer.
As you may have guessed, our feature game is also asymmetric - Root. This recent hit has been the talk of the town, and your three hosts had a chance to play it together. Hear about that game (and Chad’s subsequent games since) went, our views on asymmetric games, and what our opinions are on this cutesy woodland creature wargame.
We close the show with some games we’ve been playing recently, including Detective: A Modern Crime Story, Gloomhaven, and Chad’s 5 hour Through the Ages match.
Don’t forget to find Mr. Dice Guy’s most recent discount code buried within!
]]>Our feature game for the episode is Gloomhaven, a game that Ryan’s recently started and Chad has been solo’ing for awhile now. This massive release from two years ago is still wowing dungeon crawlers with its massive tomb of quests. Find out what works and doesn’t as your two hosts reflect on their recent plays.
We wrap up with some games we’ve been playing lately, including Seal Team Flix, Pax Porfiriana, and Detective: A Modern Crime Story. Speaking of Detective, see if you can find the discount code for Mr. Dice Guy hidden in the show!
]]>Afterwards, we discuss a recent co-operative hit, Black Orchestra! This game puts players in the role of German citizens during World War II, attempting to assassinate Hitler from within Germany’s ranks. What does this game bring to the standard “4 actions then event” co-op genre? Listen to find out!
Finally we wrap up with some recent plays, including Tiny Epic Galaxies, Star Trek Frontiers, and a few roll’n’writes.
]]>Ryan, Adam and Chad take advantage of the recent GenCon released to talk about innovative design in board games. Is the future of board gaming bright, or just full of derivatives? Can’t it be both?
The feature game for this episode is one of the most innovative and popular releases from 2014 - Dead of Winter. This zombie game stands apart from the others as the first one to really “get it” (according to Adam) - find out what makes it so unique in a sea of flesh-eating clones.
Finally we discuss some games we’ve played/are going to play, including Factory Funner, Dungeon Lords, Black Orchestra, Seal Team Flix, and Pax Porfiriana.
]]>They announce the winner of the #OnlyAzul giveaway contest and also discuss some of the things they heard about regarding GenCon 2018.
The feature game got the episode is classic game Power Grid, there is a small addition to the segment “Adam Struggles to like Twilight Struggle” and the boys talk about Skip Bo, The Lost Expedition, some of the Graphic Novel Adventures, and what they want to play in the future.
]]>Also featured this episode is Descent: Journeys in the Dark 2nd Edition as well as a touch of Imperial Assault. This one-vs-many board game is the epitome of the dungeon crawling genre, but how does it hold up to today’s standard of gaming? We highlight the gameplay of it’s close cousin, Star Wars: Imperial Assault and dote on the app integrations recently released for both titles.
Finally we wrap up the episode with a summary of some games we’re playing and looking forward to play, including one of the newest Unlock entries, Ryan’s current obsession with Carl Chudyk, and Adam’s newfound love for Through the Ages.
Don’t forget our Azul Twitter Giveaway is still going on, sponsored by mrdiceguy.com - check our website for more information on how to enter!
]]>Today we’ll be talking about a problem near and dear to all of our hearts - shelf toads. The games that do little more than collect dust on your shelves, but you can’t bear to part with. What games are more prone to the “shelf toad” status? How can we get them back to the table? We discuss this and more in our mid-July episode.
We take a break to announce our newest sponsorship partnership with Mr. Dice Guy, a local Canadian online game store. Check them out at mrdiceguy.com, and listen for details on how to win a copy of Azul in our twitter giveaway!
Our feature game of the episode is Through the Ages, where we talk about both the first and second editions, why this is a shelf toad in Chad’s collection, and what you can do to get a chance to play this great civilization-building game.
Finally we wrap up with some recent plays, including The Big Book of Madness, Twilight Struggle, Deception: Murder in Hong Kong, and the latest Terraforming Mars expansions.
]]>The featured game is Azul, the tile laying abstract game designed by
Michael Kiesling, that is the number 1 abstract and the number 1 family game on boardgamegeek.com at the time of recording.
We finish off the show talking about Adam’s attempts to like Twilight Struggle, Chads first foray into Shadowrun, and Ryan plays a go-getter in Pursuit of Happiness and talks positively about a game hes already forgotten existed.
]]>After that we discuss Eclipse, our feature game of the episode. This euro-space-hybrid is soon up for its second edition kickstarter, so we spend some time enumerating how great the first edition is! Space battles, research, exploration, and colorful dice - we’ve got it all!
We wrap up talking about some of the games we’ve played and we’re hoping to play - Legacy of Dragonholt, The Shipwreck Arcana, Twilight Struggle, Incursion, Arkham Horror TCG, and more!
]]>We move on to our feature game, Sheriff of Nottingham. This game has players as merchants attempting to transport and/or smuggle goods to their market stalls for sale all under the watchful eye of the Sheriff, who you can negotiate with, bribe, or otherwise threaten to get your way at the inspection gate. See what Adam and Chad think of this highly-regarded game as we break it down.
We end the show with a few hits of what we’ve been playing lately, including Dice Forge, Photosynthesis, Dungeons & Dragons, Snow Tails, Jaipur, and Super Motherload, and try out a new segment, “What do you WANT to play?”
Make sure to check our our website, ofdiceandmen.ca, and join our new BGG guild, #3302!
]]>After the half we talk about one of the newest entries into the collectible game sphere, DropMix. Harmonix’s latest money maker, DropMix is a game that uses cards, a custom peripheral, your phone or tablet, and music tracks to allow players to compete, work together, or just pretend they’re a DJ for a night. Find out what we thought of this head-bob-inducing game!
We finish off the show talking about some of our recent plays, including Adam’s 3-hour foray into Dungeons and/or Dragons, Ryan’s recent play of Above and Below, and Chad’s canoe trip in Lewis & Clark.
Finally, we say our farewell to our gracious host and local community radio station, CJTR. We’ll be continuing our show via the magic of the internet, but no longer will we be broadcasting with the station. We are eternally grateful for the support and start that CJTR has given us and hope you’ll continue to enjoy their programming and ours in the future.
Image credit: Eric from What’s Eric Playing! whatsericplaying.com/ boardgamegeek.com/image/3798873/dropmix
]]>After the break we feature Space Alert, another game part of the Vlaada Conspiracy. This real-time co-operative board game has players in the role of space cadets, tasked with keeping their ship in one piece as they get warped to random galaxies in the name of science! A colorful game that takes 15 minutes to play and has a lot of replayability in the base box, only to be extended by the expansion’s campaign content.
Finally we discuss some games we’ve been playing lately, including Four Against Darkness, Gloomhaven, Clank! In! Space! and the classic Connect 4!
]]>Staying on point, Chad and Ryan feature Rising Sun, the most recent ‘dudes on a map’ game released by CMON and Eric Lang. Where do we think it fits in the Eric Lang Dudes Trilogy? Listen to find out! Afterwards Ryan agrees with Chad on Decrypto, swarms some Protoss in Starcraft The Board Game, and blows up some post-apocalyptic wrecks in Gaslands. Chad defends a mediocre earth in Level 7: Invasion and robs a small bank with the help of his friends in Burgle Bros.
Of Dice and Men is broadcast live on 91.3 FM CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be May 6th at 8 PM CST.
]]>After the break we stick with the dice theme and discuss King of Tokyo and King of New York - two games that take the dice-rolling set-collection aspect of Yahtzee and turn it into a slug fest between monsters battling for control of their city. Finally Adam learns how to play cards with a Shopkins game, Ryan rolls some fancy custom dice in Quarriors, and Chad attempts to figure out what his coworkers are getting at in a game of Decrypto.
(Image credit: boardgamegeek.com/image/3262707/king-tokyo)
Of Dice and Men is broadcast live on 91.3 FM CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be April 22nd at 8 PM CST.
]]>At the half way point we transition to Terraforming Mars, our feature game for this episode. Terraforming Mars is a fantastic engine building game centered around the theme of, you guessed it, making Mars hospitable to humans. We talk about all the little things that make this 2016 release a stand-out game in a galaxy full of cardboard and cards.
Finally Adam crashes a kid’s birthday to play some snake game, Ryan comes up with the party game hit of 2018, and Chad goes on a terrible rant about Spirit Island.
Of Dice and Men is broadcast live on 91.3 FM CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be April 8th at 8 PM CST.
]]>Afterwards we feature a game that has been both rethemed AND repackaged, Shogun - the area control game where attacks are few and far between and battles are resolved with a cube tower. Listen to why this game from 13 years ago is still one of the better area control games out today.
Finally we reflect on some of the games we’ve played recently, including an epic defeat in Battlestar Galactica, some difficult spirits in Spirit Island, and killing the same lion over and over in Kingdom Death: Monster.
Of Dice and Men is broadcast live on 91.3 FM CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be March 25th at 8 PM CST.
]]>Adam, Ryan, and Chad do their best to get you up to speed with some of the latest trends in board game design as we play “Make Up a Game”! Chad, with the help of boardgamizer.com, comes up with some goofy board game constraints, Ryan describes the mechanic in more detail, and Adam comes up with an entirely off-the-cuff idea for a game! Not only is it a fun way of learning more about some trendy game mechanics, but also a source of inspiration for aspiring board game designers!
After that, we discuss the card game that inspired our impromptu design session, Snake Oil. How does Snake Oil and games like it supplant go-to party staples like Cards Against Humanity? What’s involved in convincing a high school cheerleader that he needs a tube of Laughter Grease? Why isn’t Adam in marketing? All that and more in our feature game discussion!
Finally we wrap up with some games we’ve been playing lately, including Here I Stand, A Fake Artist Goes to New York, and Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar.
Of Dice and Men is broadcast live on 91.3 FM CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be March 11th at 8 PM CST.
]]>In the second half, we finally have a serious talk about Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition, two of the three hosts’ favourite game. Chad gives an “after the first game” perspective while Adam and Ryan plead their case, after which we hold a quick burial for the game, never to speak of it again. Or at least the 3rd edition. We finish the episode off talking about CO2 (currently on Kickstarter), Gloomhaven’s helper apps, Keyflower, Azul, and oddly enough, Cribbage.
Of Dice and Men is broadcasted live on 91.3 FM CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be February 24th at 8 PM CST
]]>After we’re finished feeling better about ourselves, we discuss the 2011 release Dungeon Petz by Vlaada Chvátil (or at least a member of the conspiracy). Listen how using imps as workers fundamentally changes the worker placement game, and learn the best way to ensure your pet doesn’t grow too large, get aggressive, and injure your stable workers in an attempt to escape its cage and mutate out of existence. Yup, that all happens in this game.
Chad finishes the episode off talking about Assault on Doomrock, Fog of Love, Terraforming Mars, and Ryan reflects on a recent play of Modern Art.
Of Dice and Men is broadcast live on 91.3 FM CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be February 11th at 8 PM CST.
]]>Of Dice and Men is broadcast live on 91.3 FM CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be January 28h at 8 PM CST.
]]>Of Dice and Men is broadcast live on 91.3 FM CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be January 14th at 8 PM CST.
]]>Our featured game is the End of the World RPG published by Fantasy Flight Games, where the three of us played ourselves doing our best to survive a zombie apocalypse (which our guest Chad GM’d). We also feature clips from our recorded session, and discuss why the EotW is a great starting point for new players.
If you’re interested in hearing the entire End of the World RPG session we participated in (from character creation to finale) you can check out soundcloud.com/user-101644760/sets/end-of-the-world-rpg
Of Dice and Men is broadcast live on 91.3 FM CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be December 31st at 8 PM CST.
]]>Maybe it’s because of the hype that I set up for myself (although Man vs Meeple played no small part in that), or my experience with the very successful video game franchise of the same name. At the end of my first game there weren’t a lot of adjectives I could use to describe my experience other than “… this sucked”.
I owe you an explanation. Fallout is a recently released board game based on the video games of the same name, where players find themselves doing their best to survive and thrive in the wastelands of the United States of America. You’ll find yourself controlling a Super Mutant, Ghoul, Wastelander, Brotherhood member, or Vault member while you navigate the radiated landscape and avoiding various threats while trying to complete story-based objectives.
That doesn’t matter.
The game mostly revolves around a major narrative tied to one of the four scenarios that come in the base game, where players side with either of the scenario-specific factions in an attempt to ultimately control the wasteland through influence. The quests progress through a neat “story deck” where after resolving a particular chapter of the story you’re told to ‘stage’ certain numbered cards which provide the next chapter and options to progress.
That doesn’t matter.
Another unique part of the game is the level system. Much like the video games characters can progress through the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system, gaining perks and tokens as they gain experience in the game through killing enemies and progressing through the various quests. As players gain experience the unqiue level system takes longer for players to level up, once again mimicing the video game experience.
That doesn’t matter.
Combat is another mechanic that is inspired its digital ancestor. When you fight an enemy you roll custom six-sided dice that resemble the V.A.T.S. system from the game, looking for symbols that match your target’s weak spot. Those same dice will hand out wounds representing your quarry fighting back during the struggle, and are also used for the various skill checks in the game.
That… well, you get the point.
The reason why none of these things actually matter is that there’s no player agency in this game. The whole reason most players play the Fallout video games is to forge their own path - you decide if you back the Institute or the Railroad, the Brotherhood or the Mutants. That entire concept, the whole reason players are motivated to forge their own path in the wasteland, is reduced to a random card draw.
The game revolves around “agenda cards”, all with various goals on them that award victory points for certain conditions. Conditions ranging from “explore most of the map” and “hit max level”, or, more commonly, rewarding you for the progress of one of the two scenario factions.
The first recommended scenario has you siding with either the Railroad or the Institute. Except, you don’t get to pick sides - you back which ever side you draw the card for. You, as a player, don’t get to make the fundamental choice that plays such a huge part in the video game franchise, but instead play according to whatever random card you pick up during the game. You’re no longer playing the game, rather you’re just doing your best to live up to the destiny a deck of 24 cards decided you should have.
This is particularly jarring when, playing as a huge lumbering Super Mutant, you’re required to tiptoe around Megaton to gather information. Even more so when you’re playing The Pitt scenario and you’re forced to side with the slavers.
You also don’t necessarily start with a faction alignment. You could get half way through the game, draw the card for the weaker faction, and suddenly everyone else is 3 points ahead of you in a 9 point game. Or, just as bad, you could draw the same faction alignment as them and suddenly you’re playing a semi-co-operative game but no one knows it. Randomly picking up a card that suddenly gives you half your points is a game-breaking design flaw.
Furthermore, the game almost mocks your lack of choice by making you role-play the encounter cards (cards your draw for random experiences in cities & bunkers) - you’re required to make a choice against a narrative without seeing the result, which is the exact opposite of how you’re expected to play the quest cards.
“Play without the Agendas!” the internet says in defense of their beloved IP board game. First off, we’re way past the point at which major releases of board games should require house rules out of the box. Secondly, there are so many other problems with this game.
Even if you could pick the path of the story, the paragraphs you read are just short enough to avoid painting enough of a narrative worth pursuing. Playing multiplayer? That quest goal that was just given to you in confidence by an NPC can be completed on the next turn by another player on the other side of the map. Enemies are little more than a hindrance that you kite around the map, killing when you need them. One quarter of the bunker narrative cards have to do with saving pets. The level system isn’t much more than a reroll tracker - if you have a letter that corresponds to a check, you get to reroll those three fancy custom dice. You get your letters via a random draw, not according to your achievements in the game - you draw two, pick one. The combat and resolution system is basically Yahtzee, except with only three dice, and less than three rerolls.
First PostHuman, now Fallout - I’m still waiting for a well-done post-apocalyptic board game. Let me know if you find one.
]]>Note: Unlike our main podcast, these clips do feature explicit content - listener discretion is advised.
]]>Of Dice and Men is broadcasted live on 91.3 FM CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be December 17th at 8 PM CST.
]]>Afterwards, Ryan and Adam regale us with stories of the cold war with our feature game, Twilight Struggle. Hear why this one time BGG juggernaut is still worth a play in today’s post-1990’s climate. Ryan wraps up the episode with a few suggestions for those who want a taste of the mechanics without the 4 hour playtime, and a recent recap of his first plays of Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn.
Of Dice and Men is broadcast live on 91.3 FM CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be December 3rd at 8 PM CST.
]]>After the break, we played so many games these last few weeks! Ryan and Adam feature Unearth, the dice-chucking light strategy game by Brotherwise Games. Adam focuses on his 14-hour game of Twilight Imperium, Chad ruminates over his custom Dread RPG/Psycho Raiders hybrid, and Ryan loses control of Japan in Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan.
Of Dice and Men is broadcasted live on 91.3 FM CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be November 19th at 8 PM CST.
]]>For those who aren’t aware of the game, First Martians is basically a retheme of the Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island game. Both games feature exploration, resource management, story events, scenarios, campaigns, and co-operative play. The main difference, of course, is the location and theme of the games; Robinson Crusoe takes place on various islands, whereas First Martians consists of various scenarios on Mars.
This is all fine and dandy, but brings us to the first point of contention (of many) concerning this game. There are a few that have accused First Martians of being “less thematic” than its predecessor, and it’s easy to understand why - most of the events that happen to you in this game take the unique perspective of a communication log entry. Instead of simply saying “the oxygen supply is busted” you’ll instead get some sort of quip from the engineer saying someone tripped over an extension cord.
While I do agree with the sentiment that the ‘lightheartedness’ of most of the dialog in this game doesn’t seem to match up with the hard sci-fi theme of doing your best to survive on a distant planet, I was curious how this related to Robinson Crusoe’s events. To be honest, Robinson Crusoe wasn’t much better - the events don’t have much more than a one liner of “It was a freezing night” or “Out of food sources”. So where’s the disconnect?
For many, I think the hole between the two games is in the underlying theme. On a cursed island, anything can happen - bad weather, predators, cannibals, you name it. If it shows up on a card, it’s realistic. Contrast that to the thought of a manned mission to Mars; there is a lot less room for imagination for something that should be a precision operation. Others have described the space agency you fly under in First Martians as “the McDonalds of space travel”, and with the antics described in some of the random events generated by the app it’s not hard to see why.
Speaking of the application, it feels like somewhat of a missed opportunity. The app mostly serves two purposes; guiding you through each phase of a round (of which there are many), and keeping track of the event & adventure decks. The event deck appears to function the same as Robinson Crusoe, where on top of the pre-randomized scenario events you may also add more events through adventures you see throughout your game. For example, you may roll the rover and injure your leg in the process; later on that leg injury may force your player to miss an action in a future round.
This system works well, and was already proven by Robinson Crusoe using the card system in that game. The app attempts to make that phase of the game “easier” by digitizing the event deck on players’ behalf. I have experienced two problems with this:
Because the event deck isn’t a physical thing, players don’t have an connection with it. The neat thing in Robinson Crusoe is seeing that green-backed card and wondering which of your previous misadventures was about to come bite you in the ass - with the deck now nonexistent, players lose that connection to the events and it becomes one of the many random things that go wrong on your piecemeal planetary habitat. I no longer worry about or care about what event is next.
There are still tonnes of cards and dice in First Martians. Even though they managed to automate the event deck and adventure decks, they managed to introduce a bunch of other decks for damage, research, technology, 12 dice, and various other things so you end up with even more piles of cards than Robinson Crusoe! If you’re going to automate the randomness out of the game, automate all of them!
I’m sure, if you’ve heard anything about this game, you’ve heard about the mess the rules were. I’m not going to harp on it too much as many others have talked about it at length, but I’ll make two points. The first being that they’ve since re-released the rules as “The Almanac”, which I highly recommend reading for anyone attempting to play this game. It was released as an ‘optional supplement’ but it’s anything but - it’s a 60+ page document that has all the rules you actually need to know to play the game.
My second point is the fact that this isn’t their first rodeo, and in fact they faced this exact same problem with Robinson Crusoe, to the degree where they hired an external resource to re-design their rulebook when they printed the 2nd edition of the game. One would think they had learned from their mistakes, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.
All these transgressions aside, the worst offender in my opinion is the graphic design of the game and its components. They’ve fixed the rulebook, they’ve modified some of the events in the application (which is a nice benefit of having an application for your board game), but without a total reprint of the game itself they won’t be able to fix the confusing design decisions they’ve made on the cards, components, and game board. Let’s list them off, shall we?
The scenario sheets each have their own design. While I can appreciate the variety they tried to introduce to the game, for a game that’s already confusing not having any consistency between the missions just adds an extra layer of interpretation that isn’t needed. Robinson Crusoe also had this, but still had a level of consistency that made sense.
Another problem is the extra information on the cards. In this case these are the skill cards that each player receives for their character. Despite their visual appearance, there is no dependence between the three skills - you can use and/or acquire any of the three cards without needing the others. Why they felt the need to have the name of your other two skills is beyond me, and only serves to confuse - I spent time looking up why that information was printed, and of course couldn’t find anything one way or the other in the original instruction book.
Here’s some damage cards, that have a very similar graphic layout. The problem here is they’re actually relevant to the card, sometimes. The actual effect of the card is the dark shaded part, where it says “The first player suffers…” or “This part is now broken”. But what part are they referring to? Two points if you guessed “Working Bay”. So you only have to pay attention to the snippet of information that’s half way up the card that it pertains sometimes.
A facility and an upgrade card that function the exact same way. Here’s the problem - they’re designed completely different. The tile has greenhouses 1 to 5, numbered appropriately (and with a percentage graphic for some reason?). Each greenhouse on that tile needs to be built (the left hole), and can hold one plant (the middle hole). Growing seeds into plants is the track on the right hand side of the tile. The card, however, has greenhouses 6 to 10, which only have to be built once to hold 4 seeds, in spots 1 to 4. Confusing? Add the fact that this is one of the first additional buildings you build in the tutorial mission, and you’re in for a rough first play.
Here’s another tile facility. Can you guess what happens when a part breaks in the Garage Hall? From top to bottom; you can’t use the rover as part of your action, you lose an oxygen from the main supply track at the start of a round, your vehicle breaks if you use it as part of your action, and you have to reroll successes on adventure rolls. If you take a look, there actually kind of is an iconography to this (circles pertain to current actions, squares pertain to dice), but again it’s something that can’t be found in the rulebook or is immediately apparent, adding to the confusion.
Another complaint is the reuse of the oxygen and power symbols - oxygen and power are both parts that can be broken, items that you can have in inventory, and a quantity you keep track of along the top of the board. In the case of the tile above, you would need to consume an oxygen ‘part’ from your part supply to make sure that you don’t lose oxygen from the bank every round - the only differentiation is that weird circle around the symbol.
… I actually like First Martians, and have sold my copy of Robinson Crusoe with the Voyages of the Beagle expansion. Most of what’s outlined above just adds to a massive learning curve to play the game, but once you get over that hump (which took about 3 games for me) there’s a great hard sci-fi adventure game here. It’s just a real shame that it’s such an uphill battle to get there. If you’re already a big fan of what Robinson Crusoe does and the sci-fi theme doesn’t grab you, I don’t think there’s a real reason to jump ship. But if you’d rather fix an oxygen line to your habitat than make sure there’s a roof on your tent, and you’re willing to wade your way through the crappy rules and graphic design, there’s a solid game here with 16 scenarios that are fun to play.
]]>Race for the Galaxy is our feature game for this episode, after which we discuss Adam’s nihilistic view of Candyland, Ryan and Chad rolled their own civilizations, and Chad likes 80% of Vast: The Crystal Caverns.
Of Dice and Men is broadcasted live on 91.3 FM CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be November 5th at 8 PM CST.
]]>Our feature game for this episode is Psycho Raiders - Ryan was betrayed by a mechanic and Chad lit someone on fire with a blow torch. Ryan turns some tricks in the forest, Chad one up’s The Martian by growing plants without using his own by-product, and Adam is warmed by the glow of the others’ recent gaming experiences.
Of Dice and Men is broadcasted live on 91.3 FM CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be October 22nd at 8 PM CST.
]]>Shortly following, Roxanne blasts us through Galaxy Trucker as our feature game, Ryan wonders why no one cheats at NMBR 9, Chad takes little solace in a recent Game of Thrones “win”, and Roxanne highlights her experiences with Unlock!
Of Dice and Men is broadcasted live on 91.3 FM CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be October 8th at 8 PM CST.
]]>Of Dice and Men is broadcasted live on 91.3 FM CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be September 24th at 8 PM CST.
]]>7th Continent is an exploration game, in a way no other board game has approached the subject before. The generic plot, which is only changed slightly by the particular curse you choose to break at the beginning of the game, is that you’ve recently returned from an expedition of the 7th Continent to discover that most of your fellow explorers have died or disappeared, and the sinking feeling that you’ve been cursed - destined to return to the continent to attempt to break the spell. As a player, you pick which of the curses you want to be afflicted with (or more than one if you’re feeling particularly daring), it tells you which of the hundreds of cards you should begin the game on, and you play.
The entire game revolves around one basic mechanic, a type of push your luck where you pick an action, draw a certain amount of cards (in most cases you can choose to draw more than the minimum to increase your odds of success), and see if you come up with the required number of successes.
That is almost the entirety of the gameplay.
As I attempt to explain the mechanic it’s shocking how simple this game is. There isn’t much more to this game than the push your luck mechanism - there’s a bit with inventory management, and another bit about your action deck / stamina (which I’ll get to later), but that’s pretty much it. You could realistically teach this game to a new player by saying “pick an available action, and decide how many cards to draw. That’s it.” So how can this game have such a hold on me?
Perhaps it’s the exploration aspect of the game, which I feel 7th Continent has mastered out of pretty much any board game I’ve played. Every thing you do in this game has a thrilling amount of uncertainty. When you look for the next area of terrain to move to, you could be greeted with anything from exhaustion to a grizzly bear - and those are only two of the more-than-100 possible terrain-based random events that can occur. As you clear away the fog hiding your next path, the continent unfolds in an amazing mosaic of illustrated cards, all blending into one another as you realize how vast (or how small!) the area you’re in actually is. You don’t know if you’re going to step into a tropical forest, a glacier, a desert, or find the coastline a mere two cards away from your starting position until you get there.
At least, you won’t know it the first time. Others have aptly described 7th Continent as “TIME Stories-esque”; a game where starting over is both hampered and improved by the fact that you’ve been here before. You’ve seen the starting island, you know where the best part to get to the next area is, or which actions are the most valuable, and you’ll probably make it past those first three terrain cards with little difficulty. Also like TIME Stories, you pretty much need to restart in order to progress in this game. You often won’t realize until it’s too late that the path you took is a dead end or the food you were looking for doesn’t exist - all information you’ll pass on to your predecessor, the next character you take on this dangerous journey.
Yet even then, you won’t have the same experience between plays, which is different from “flip the same 60 cards over again” gameplay of TIME Stories. Those random events are unique and varied enough to drastically change the end result of each game you play. The first game of 7th Continent I played, I didn’t even make it off the introductory island, dying of starvation while waiting for an animal to hunt. The second time I played, I managed to swim to a new area with the assistance of a life jacket (found in a random event), but perished shortly afterwards. The third time I managed to build a raft to set sail as opposed to swimming to shore, and ended up in an entirely different area because of it. I gleaned enough information from that 3rd play to have a good handle on how to beat the first curse, but wasn’t able to make it to the end. The fourth time I played, I cheated death a number of times, barely surviving on raw meats, until I was ultimately maimed to death by a grizzly bear after realizing the “optimal way” I was heading was a dead end.
All four of those stories were from the exact same starting place, with the only change being the characters I played with (which changes some of the available skills, but not by much). So those doubting the replayability factor of this enormous game have little reason to worry. Even when you start to realize that certain blocks of numbers are generally reserved for specific things (i.e. the early 100’s are status effects) you can’t be sure what you’re about to draw - there’s 5 of each status effect card for example, some of them with varying results. Pair that with more than 1,000 cards in the game and you’ve got a long way to go before this game starts to get monotonous.
On top of that, 4 games in and I’m still discovering things about the continent. In my most recent play I came across some parchment outlining some of the history of the continent - a stick figure drawing of a conflict and some idol worship, labelled “3/4”. I have no idea what the hell this is. Is it part of another curse? Is it some cool flavour text the designers threw in? Will it unlock some sort of hidden terrain upon completion? I honestly don’t know, and I won’t know until I play the game again. The game before last I came across a tertiary puzzle I have no idea how to solve - next time I see it, I might have a better idea from some other thing that happened to me.
The game plays like a masterfully written choose-your-own-adventure book, which speaks to the Fighting Fantasy inspiration the designers have often referenced. In this case, instead of a paragraph of text and one to three options of how to proceed, you get a snippet of flavour, an amazing illustration, and anywhere from 6 - 10 available actions from your terrain, your skills, your items, and the events in play. Actions are chosen from any white-box icon available on either the current terrain card, skill cards in hand, or items built. There are 29 action icons listed in the game, although these have little relevance on the game other than indicating which items may be beneficial when attempting them; those matching items will have the same icon in a brown box indicating they can be used. Think of it as a shorthand for asking the GM if your skill / item would help your roll.
You win this game by overcoming the particular curse you started out with, and you lose the game by dying. Your health is represented by the number of cards still available in your “action deck”, a shared deck of cards that’re used for those “draw cards to see if you succeed” tests I mentioned above. Once that deck is depleted, you’re now in “sudden death” mode - any time you perform a test, you use the discard pile; if you draw a curse card, the game is over. The odds of this happening are roughly 1 in 7 to 10 (depending on the number of players), and adds a really tense dynamic to the game. As soon as you’re even close to death, you know it’s time to start searching for some food (one of the only ways to regain action cards).
Acquiring states in this game generally lead to depletion of said action deck. If you acquire a new state (tired, freezing, worried, paranoid, etc) and it has a particular symbol, you discard a card from the action deck for each previously-acquired state your character has. In that way, the worse off your character is, the closer to death you get.
The thing I enjoy most about 7th Continent is the emergent story that seems to ooze from every action you perform. Each skill card and each item you use just seems to make sense. In one game, we had upset a Giant Rockworm (expansion content) by killing one of its young. Luckily it hadn’t noticed us yet, so we took the time to craft some crude weapons - a bow and a club specifically. Ferdinand was terrified of the beast, so Mary took some time to calm him down before we approached the beast, to ensure we would have a better chance of success. Finally prepared, we launched our offensive with bow and club in hand, and managed to force the giant away from our location so we could proceed to explore the island without threat of attack. All of this came from the same 5 actions of “decide how many cards to draw, and then draw them to see if you were successful”.
Possibly the only negative I could come up with for this game is the obscene playtime - one of my games lasted 6 hours across 3 sessions and I still haven’t beat the first curse before dying - but the designers have an answer for that as well. The truth is, even though it will take you several hours to finish a particular curse, the game wasn’t actually designed to be played for more than an hour or two per session and comes with a “save” mechanism - within a few minutes you can have the entire game packed up and put away, with everything important saved in the box to resume a few minutes later. What’s more, the game is actually designed to be used this way - when resuming you only put the card you were standing on back in play; all events, terrain, and otherwise discarded cards are placed back in the box, ready to be rediscovered. This is important as it resets aspects of the terrain, like hunting grounds (more game to hunt!), weather (expansion content), and events that may have previously blocked your path. While you could realistically exploit this mechanic, the slight overhead in packing and unpacking is enough to make it impractical.
I can’t say enough about this game! The artwork, the theme, the mechanics, the variety, the replayability, the ease-of-play, this game has got it all. There were rumors that this game was never going to hit retail after its kickstarter delivery, but luckily the designers recently announced a 2nd printing kickstarter with even more expansion content for the end of September - make sure to keep your eye out for it, because that seems to be the only way you’ll be able to acquire it.
]]>Oh, also Dominion is our featured game. Forgot about that one.
Of Dice and Men is broadcasted live on 91.3 FM CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be September 10th at 8 PM CST.
]]>Of Dice and Men is broadcasted live on 91.3 FM CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be August 27th at 8 PM CST.
]]>Of Dice and Men is broadcasted live on 91.3 FM CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be August 13th at 8 PM CST.
]]>This War of Mine is a kickstarted board game based on the successful video game of the same name. Both games start with the statement “In war, not everyone is a soldier” and has the player(s) controlling one or more survivors in the middle of a city under siege, doing their best to weather the storm and hopefully come out the other side. Although modeled after a real-life civil war, the events and scenarios in the games have been abstracted enough to feel as though they could happen anywhere, attempting to drive home the fact that these survivors aren’t any different from you or I. They just found themselves in an increasingly terrible situation which they now have to deal with.
The board game adaptation stays pretty true to its predecessor. The game is broken out into several stages; daylight (in which characters tend to their shelter) and late-night scavenging (where it’s safe to leave the shelter to attempt to find supplies), with a few standard steps in between each stage (event, feeding, defending, day resolution). The mechanics involved in these stages aren’t anything complex; the day phase isn’t much more than co-op worker placement, the exploration is a push-your-luck card flip.
Before I dive too much into the Book of Scripts, where all the meaningful part of this game occurs, there’s the issue of the rulebook. The designers of This War of Mine took a specific action to make this game “playable out of the box” which is a pretty big feat. They attempted this by making the Journal - an instruction book of sorts, but designed to be read as you play the game, not in advance. While this is a novel approach, as someone who is used to the board game rulebook status quo (as they put it) I found it somewhat off-putting.
First thing you’ll see, after reading “all you need to do is flip through this book to play the game, let’s begin”, is one of the most complicated setup diagrams I’ve ever seen for a board game. Not exactly encouraging to new players, which is where I think the Journal format immediately falls short. I wouldn’t recommend this rulebook to someone who’s never read a modern game rule book before, which kind of defeats the whole point of the format. If you still require modern rule book interpretation skills, then you should probably just follow the format of modern rule books!
Since you don’t have a complete reference guide to what everything on the board means, it requires a certain amount of trust that things will be explained to you in time, when it becomes relevant. That said, after three plays there are still components on cards that I’m not entirely sure what they’re used for - I can only imagine when the scenario comes up that it’ll be explained. Either that or I’ve missed something along the way and have been playing wrong - I don’t really have a way to check.
Furthermore, the Journal only really tells you enough to play through the “happy path” of the game - any edge cases that you may run into are handled by FAQ sections in the Book of Scripts. The Book of Scripts is where all the narrative of the game comes from, similar to Tales of the Arabian Nights or Above and Below, but buried in its 1500 entries are little grey sections that pertain to certain aspects of the game. Have to clarify something during the Day phase? Flip to section 300 in the book. Not having this reference in a separate rulebook is one thing, but if you need to clarify something that isn’t in the phase you’re currently in you’re going to have to flip through the Journal to find that phase or play “Guess what number I’m thinking of between 1 and 1500”. One of the first things I did after the first play of this game was use the promotional postcard we received as a kickstarter backer to write down all the journal FAQ entries.
The above is what makes This War of Mine a board game. This game isn’t really about the game however, more so the experience. There’s several references in the rules where the game designers ask you to play the game as though it was an RPG; where you are characters going through an experience rather than trying to “win”. There are several points in the game where you’ll run into events that cause you to reference the Book of Scripts, which is the collection of narrative passages that pertain to the character or characters experiencing them. The severity of these paragraphs differs greatly - one card can have you trading goods with friendly civilians, while the next can have you coming to terms with seeing a pre-teen shoot someone in the head.
The game does give you ample warning in most cases that what you’re about to read may be of an aggressive nature, so you do have the option of skipping past the more discretionary paragraphs, but those paragraphs are kind of the point of the game? This War of Mine, above all else, was created to shed light on the plight of civilians trapped in a war they didn’t ask for. A lot of the stories contained within the Book of Scripts are inspired by interviews with survivors of real-life events. People died of illness, starved, killed themselves, were shot by both sides, and none of them really had the option to “skip the paragraph”, so I can’t fault them for including the uncomfortable parts of war - the whole game is about that.
Therein lies the problem however. This War of Mine is still a game. It does remind me quite a bit of other story driven games like Tales of the Arabian Nights, where the most interesting part of the gameplay is in the random, unexpected narrative that emerges from the gameplay. My problem with Arabian Nights is that the narration is a much better experience than the game itself, as if the fact that there’s a board and tokens is more of a nuisance in the way than a necessary part. I think This War of Mine suffers a bit from that, although much less so.
The shelter-management day phase is a basic worker placement, the scavenging night phase is a push-your-luck, and both are mildly interesting - although my gut feeling is that they’re ‘solvable’, as though there’s always an optimal way to play and you’d only vary if dire circumstances required it. If that was the only part of this game, I’d be telling you to avoid it. Fortunately, those phases are interesting enough that players are still invested in performing the less exciting actions while waiting for the story points to hit. Because of how the game is structured, those story points can hit at almost any time, giving extra value and uncertainty to the gameplay.
I think another problem that can’t be avoided with this style of game is the stark contrast between playing a board game and reading a book. Games like Above and Below and other narrative games suffer from this effect - there’s a sharp right turn between rolling dice and moving chits, and making a decision based on an immersive story. This is even more the case in This War of Mine, as you transition from simple actions like “roll a D10 to see if you make noise” to “SOMEONE HAS A GUN POINTED AT YOUR HEAD” in a matter of seconds. The stark contrast between the two modes of immersion makes one of them seem less important. I’m not sure it’s a problem easily solved, but it can be viewed as a problem nonetheless.
As a kickstarter backer I of course received a bunch of stretch goals and also picked up two of the additional expansions that were offered (Memories and Incidents). The expansions follow a format that I’m not a fan of for board games - each of them is basically a stand-alone scenario, and the components aren’t intermingled with the base game decks unless you’re specifically playing that expansion. I’ve only played the base game so far, and I’m sure those expansions will come in handy if/when I’m interested in spicing things up, but I’m more a fan of the Eldritch-Horror style expansions where the additional content can be mixed into the base game content.
I think it’s pretty easy to sell This War of Mine as a unique experience. As a board game it’s not going to be able to stand up against the greats from this year or last, but if you approach it as a unique lite-RPG with a really hard win condition it’s a lot more palatable. That said it still promotes itself as a game, has game mechanics, and is sold alongside board games so it will be compared and probably not come out on top. I wouldn’t recommend This War of Mine as a hard co-operative game to play, I’d recommend it as an interesting story-based game that engages you to succeed against the odds.
]]>Of Dice and Men is broadcasted live on 91.3 FM CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be July 30th at 8 PM CST.
]]>Of Dice and Men is broadcasted live on 91.3 FM CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be July 16th at 8 PM CST.
]]>Above all else, once you’re done with the game please pass it on to another group who you think would enjoy playing - we want to share the experience with as many others as possible!
]]>Of Dice and Men is broadcasted live on 91.3 FM CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be July 2nd at 8 PM CST.
]]>First, a quick summary of the format of each game. I played Exit: The Game - The Abandoned Cabin, rumored to be the best of the series. The Exit game came with a booklet full of random puzzles and clues, and uses a “decoder disk” to allow players to come up with 3 digit combinations for the various puzzles in the game. By changing the position of the 4 disks you can uncover a “solution card number” which will either tell you that you’re wrong (and slightly mock your incompetence), or ask you to verify which puzzle you’re unlocking; if the code and puzzle line up, you get a solution card that gives you more clues to gain access to different puzzles until you eventually reveal the “you win!” card. Exit also provides “hint cards”, 3 for each puzzle, that range from a slight hint to giving you the solution straight-up. If you’re ever stuck on a particular puzzle you can reveal a hint card to assist, but doing so will detriment your “star rating” at the end of the game.
Unlock! follows a similar format, but uses an application on your smartphone to handle the hints and solution cards - any time you’re stuck you can ask the app for a hint giving it a specific card number, or if you think you have a 4-digit code you can type it into the app to validate your guess. The app also keeps track of a timer; you have 60 minutes to solve the Unlock! puzzle. At least you start with 60 minutes; any incorrect code guesses or other penalties will subtract 3 minutes from your available time. If you do run out of time you can of course continue to solve the puzzle (it would be absurd to ask you to restart from the beginning), but you’ll get a lower rating. In addition, the app adds some nice ambient noise to your game experience and also allows for audio clues, something that would be impossible without an app.
Unlock! also relies pretty heavily on an “item combination” mechanic - throughout the course of the game you’ll be expected to combine “red” items with “blue” items by adding their numbers together and looking for the resulting card. If you have a red key numbered 10, and a blue door numbered 20, you’d attempt to use them together by revealing card 30 (assuming it exists). Unlock! prevents accidental combinations by indicating which cards you should’ve used to get to the newly revealed card, which works quite well. There’s also a few red-herring cards; if you reveal their numbers, you suffer a 3 minute time penalty.
One last mechanic on Unlock! relies on hidden numbers in the images; if you can discern a number in the background of an image you can reveal it from the deck to uncover other clues and progress.
I did thoroughly enjoy both series of games, although I’ve admittedly played Unlock! more (having solved all 3 available scenarios). Both games capture the experience of an escape room rather well, other than the idea of having physical puzzles. Also, just like escape rooms, once you “solve” the puzzle there’s no point in attempting it again other than to see how quickly you can do it.
My biggest gripe with Exit: The Game is the waste of cards. Sure, they’re all needed for the way that Exit works, but after seeing how well the app is integrated into the Unlock! experience it feels like there was a better way to do things. The puzzles in Exit require players to rip up, bend, and otherwise permanently alter the components in the game, making it unusable after the initial play. The Abandoned Cabin comes with 86 cards between the solution deck and the help cards; all of which are completely unusable after the game is played exactly once. I felt off about that before I even got my copies of Unlock!, but now that I see how reusable Unlock! is it bothers me even more.
Unlock!, while gaining points in the re-usability department, does suffer from a bit of meta-gaming as a side effect of how it’s set up. Unlock relies pretty heavily on the item combination mechanic - adding a red card and blue card together is a main way to progress in the game. That also immediately reduces your decision space; if you only have blue cards, you won’t be wondering if they’re supposed to go together. To compound that issue, because the decks in the first three Unlock! games don’t go higher than 99 you can immediately eliminate any possibility of numbers that would add past that - the #70 red key will never go with the #40 blue door.
Another gripe with Unlock! is the use of hidden numbers. While somewhat neat and reminiscent of physical escape room puzzles, someone with a visibility impairment (or who just plain doesn’t see it) would be unable to play this game without assistance. Fortunately the Unlock! app does provide hints specific to hidden clues, but it comes at a cost, which is somewhat unfair if you simply can’t see things the way they intend it. Of course, there’s a few false positives as well, and you waste time convincing other players that the 13 they see is just a smudge, not an actual number.
That said, I did prefer the complexity of the puzzles in Exit: The Game a bit more than Unlock. Our run of The Abandoned Cabin took us 92 minutes, and there were several points in which we were stumped and felt like we needed clues to proceed. In Unlock!, two of the three scenarios took us less than 45 minutes which is perfect for a short lunchtime game but also less challenging. The last Unlock! scenario we played, The Island of Dr. Goorse, was the hardest of the three and was on par with The Abandoned Cabin with puzzle complexity.
To me, the perfect escape room game would be a blend of Exit’s puzzles with Unlock!’s application, which would be entirely doable. Unfortunately, that doesn’t exist, so I’d have to give the edge to Unlock! simply for the re-usability. I fully intend on shipping my copies of Unlock! to friends and family and they can have the same experience I did, whereas Exit: The Game sits on the floor of my car, still there after last week’s game night.
]]>Of Dice and Men is broadcasted live on 91.3 FM CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be June 18th at 8 PM CST.
]]>Of Dice and Men is broadcasted live on 91.3 FM CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be June 4th at 8 PM CST.
]]>In The Captain Is Dead Episode 3, you and your crew have been boarded by hostile aliens who’ve taken over your ship, disabled all your systems, and locked you into the infirmary. Each crew member will take 4 actions attempting to restore control of the ship until they’re either eliminated, or have managed to get rid of the alien invaders. The base game differs from Episode 3 in that in the base game you start with full control of your ship and most of your systems functioning, facing a combination of external and internal threats - Episode 3 starts with everything disabled and all threats internal.
It’s not that I think The Captain is Dead is a bad game by any means. It has a really neat theme that invokes past memories of Star Trek (even including their own version of a Redshirt), a unique vector-based character art style, supports up to 7 players, and has Faster Than Light-like attacks, strategy and system failures (a reputable indie video game). All these things at face value seem like a great idea, and if nothing else the game executes on them as promised.
If you peel back all the layers however and analyze the gameplay of this co-operative game, the experience begins to fall apart a bit. At its core, TCID isn’t much more than a “flip and fail” game; where you take your meager 4 actions to do the best you can to keep the ship and its crew together, and then at the end of your turn something terrible happens to undo most of your work. The game does give you some ability to mitigate the bleak future, but more often than not the resources you use to either peek at or completely cancel an “alert” just put you a step further from the victory condition.
“But Chad,” you reply, “isn’t that just like basically any other co-operative game?” To an extent, you’d be correct. Pandemic, the kingpin of the genre, has a very similar playstyle other than the fact that after the first epidemic you can at least have some level of knowledge as to what may be coming your way. Other than that it’s a similar situation; take 4 actions, flip a bad card, hope you survive. So why does TCID rub me the wrong way despite following the classic formula?
I think part of it is that classic formula; the fact that this is the 5th or so time I’ve seen this style of co-operative game (See also Ghost Stories, Eldritch Horror, Legendary Encounters, Forbidden Desert, and countless others) definitely doesn’t help the situation, but The Captain Is Dead can hardly be blamed for that. Yet, I’d gladly go back to any of those games listed, while TCID sits on my “sell” pile.
The thing that sticks out for me is that the game feels like it requires perfect conditions in order for it to be won. I’ve played it about half a dozen times now, and in all but one situation the game was hopeless - we hadn’t moved the “you win” condition even once the entire game. After the first game or two everyone at the table came to realize that most of their characters were straight-up unable to contribute to the win condition simply because they either couldn’t hold the 7 cards needed (average hand size is 5 or 6), or had the skills required. In fact, the one game where we managed to move the win condition 3 of the 5 times required, only one character was in a position to do so, and we assigned them to that role.
As in most games, we played with random character assignment, which has the potential to doom the game from the very beginning - that just doesn’t feel right. The games were fun, we enjoyed moving about the ship trying to stay away from the aliens on board and slowly repairing systems from within, but once that realization of the futility of the situation sinked in it felt like it was all for naught. Sure, you could house rule your way around it and/or make sure you pick the required characters, but there’s something about that that just doesn’t sit well with me. I’m fine with co-operative games being hard, I’m not fine with them being impossible.
That said, this game does have a lot going on in the theme, artwork, and “indie” department (up until recently it was only published through The Game Crafter, and now the base game without the two expansions will be produced by AEG), and if you’re looking for a difficult co-operative game that plays up to 7 players there’s worse games you could pick. That said I would recommend checking out Star Trek Panic (6 player co-op with a 3D Enterprise you pilot to complete 5 missions), Legendary Encounters (5 player Alien-themed co-op deckbuilder), Space Alert (5 player co-op real time game with a similar theme), or XCOM TBG (4 player real-time co-op based on the video game franchise) instead. Let’s give it a 5 out of 10 - Mediocre, take it or leave it.
]]>Of Dice and Men is broadcasted live on 91.3 FM CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be May 21st at 8 PM CST.
]]>Step one of any board game collection is buying games. The effort required in that purchase can range from picking the prettiest box you see at your local game store, to spending hours watching/reading reviews and analyzing the game’s entry on BoardGameGeek. I personally trend towards the research side of the equation, mostly because as my collection has grown to a point where new games have to fight for a place on the shelf (more on that below).
There really is no set rule of thumb when it comes to what games you should purchase - it really comes down to personal preference. If you and your group are big into zombie games, buy zombie games! There’s a few things I look for when considering a game however:
Those are the main factors for me, but most of them are rooted in one golden rule: are you going to play it? Unless you’re collecting for the sake of collecting (as many do for specific franchises) the value for your dollar is actually getting your purchase to the table.
After you’ve got a few opportunities to play your new game, you probably face a decision - do I keep it? This becomes more of a problem the more games you have; at first keeping something on your relatively empty shelf isn’t a big deal, but as your collection grows you’ll probably reach a tipping point where your game boxes exceed the space for them.
…probably not keeping this one…
This process is actually somewhat similar to the purchase process. It’s a simple matter of identifying if you’ll play the game again. Often when it’s time to make some room I’ll glance at my collection one game at a time and ask “Do I actually want to try playing this game again?” Often through acquiring and playing other games you’ll find a board game that does a mechanic better or explores a theme in a more interesting way. Sometimes after exploring a certain style of game you figure out it’s just not for you. A few games I’ve gotten rid of recently:
Again there’s no right way to do this, but the golden rule can be generally applied. On the flip side there are games that I’m keeping because they do something unique or the game is hard to find. Each collector will have their own criteria, and that’s why our collections are unique and meaningful.
]]>Of Dice and Men is broadcasted live on 91.3 FM CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be May 7th at 8 PM CST.
]]>First Martians is the re-theming of the popular Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island. But it’s more than just a new (albeit recently-overused) paint job of the Red Planet - the game comes with 16 scenarios, 10 of which are part of two separate 5-scenario campaigns, and 6 standalone scenarios. AND it involves app integration! I’ve always been a big fan of what Robinson Crusoe has done for co-op games, this sci-fi re-imagining is bound to be great.
It feels weird listing this game that was funded in October 2015 as an anticipated 2017 release, but here we are, waiting for a (probably June) delivery. 7th Continent raised over 1.2 million euros to create a card-based exploration game that consists of over 1000 cards and 1000 hours of gameplay. With rumors of the game never hitting retail after the kickstarter fulfillment this game will be a hot item later this year.
Another successful kickstarter (clocking in at more than 620k GBP), This War of Mine is the board game adaptation of the popular indie video game of the same name. The video game’s claim to fame was having players manage a group of civilians just trying to survive in the middle of a civil war. The video game is full of moral and life-or-death decisions, and the board game boasts the same with a “book of scripts” reminiscent of the Tales of Arabian Nights story book; 1900 unique story scripts total.
The next notable entry in the legacy genus of board games, Charterstone claims to be an “additive legacy experience” in which players will slowly build out a village over the course of 12 games, eventually ending with a fully complete worker placement game that can be replayed over and over again. Charterstone is being developed and released by Jamey Stonemaier of Scythe and Viticulture fame, and has a deservedly large amount of hype.
Speaking of legacy games - not a lot is known about this sequel to the currently ranked #1 board game of all time, but you can bet that there’s a lot of people chomping at the bit to get it. Based on what little has been shown so far, Pandemic Legacy Season 2 seems to take place on what’s left of a particular continent. On a board that’s reminiscent of Seafall’s open waters dying to be explored, players are charged with supporting what’s left of humanity after the events of Season 1.
Continuing with the video game adaptations, Dark Souls turned a lot of heads on Kickstarter with its detailed miniatures but lack of gameplay information. Now that the release date is imminent, reviews of Dark Souls seem to indicate that there’s a good game to match the high quality miniatures from the popular video game franchise. The video game has a distinct gameplay design that seems to be echoed in the board game; unforgiving boss battles that can be bested once you learn the pattern, and a unique stamina - health management system. I didn’t back this game on kickstarter, but the more I hear about it the more intriguing it sounds - one to keep an eye on.
]]>Starting with a quick party game, A Fake Artist Goes To New York (hereafter referred to as Fake Artist) is a fun party game for 5 to 10 would-be artists. This is one of my favorite drawing games in that it’s completely accessible to even the most unskilled artist; you are only required (and allowed) to draw one line on your turn. The idea of the game is that everyone except one person knows the thing they’re supposed to be drawing as a group, and in a style similar to Spyfall players are required to root out the “fake artist”. Each round plays in about 10 minutes and makes for some hilarious artwork you can keep afterwards.
On a more serious note, The Grizzled (which we’ve talked about in our Theme podcast) is a co-operative game in which players play as french soldiers in World War I. This isn’t your standard military game however; the theme is keeping each other alive and sane while the horrors of armed conflict happen around you. Despite the macabre theme The Grizzled is a great co-op game that fosters communication and teamwork in a way that most other co-op games dream of. The “At Your Orders” expansion adds missions to the game, spicing up the replayability and challenge.
For Sale is a light-hearted auction game of real estate buying and selling. Players find themselves entering the housing market bidding against each other for properties, which in the 2nd and final round are subsequently flipped for (hopefully) a profit. The winner of the game is the player who made out with the most cash! For Sale is a nice light 20 minute game that can be played around a conversation without being too intrusive, but the auction provides enough player interaction to make the game interesting.
On the opposite end of “unobtrusive gaming”, Love Letter is an engaging game where you attempt to guess what cards other players have in an effort to eliminate them from the round and deliver a love letter to the princess. While the theme may be uninteresting to some (and it’s been rethemed a dozen times), the way each of the 8 roles on the 18 cards play against each other creates a surprisingly deep game. Players will find themselves naturally drawn to the card-elimination and guesswork of the game and even though players can be eliminated, rounds themselves often don’t last more than a few minutes during which you can spectate the mind games between your opponents.
Hanabi is a co-operative puzzle game where players have to play the cards in their hand in order from 1 to 5 across 5 different suits. Sounds simple? How about we add the fact that you can’t see your own cards! Players have to give each other clues about the suit or number of each of the cards that other players are holding within a tight allocation of clues; the game is as much a memory game as it is an optimization puzzle that easily keeps the up to 4 players engaged.
Race for the Galaxy is easily the most complicated game on this list, but the replayability, mechanics, and theme make it well worth the investment to learn. RftG has each player attempting to lay claim to the galaxy by controlling a number of planet and tech cards, each of which augments their further actions. In addition the game has an interesting action selection mechanic - think of something like Puerto Rico’s role selection, but everyone selects the roles simultaneously. The game is full of cryptic symbols that, once understood, make for a smooth experience despite the complexity of the interaction between cards in your tableau and the actions played. Add the 6 or so expansions available and you’ve got a great game that rewards multiple plays.
No Thanks is another unobtrusive card game for up to 7 players. No Thanks gives players a hand of cards, and the option to take a card in play, or say “No Thanks”, passing the card onto the next player (and reducing the value of the card by 1 using a chip). The idea is that you want the lowest score at the end of the 30 minute game, managing your -1 chips as well as the cards you eventually are coerced into picking up. The rules of the game are simple and the game stays out of the way enough that it shapes up to be a fun social activity.
While I haven’t played Condottiere, Adam and Ryan insist that it should be on the list, so I’ll do my best to summarize it. Condottiere is a bidding game where the objective is to control 3 adjacent or 5 total provinces of Italy. Control is gained by increasing your bid (military power) or playing cards that mess with the game state in various ways; think of how the flare and artifact cards work in Cosmic Encounter. The winning player then gets to claim the province, and also decide which province will be next up for grabs. There’s definitely elements of bluffing and negotiation present in this area control game, and at a 6 player 45 minute game it seems to scratch a lot of the same itches that large strategy games can, but in half the time.
]]>Of Dice and Men is broadcasted live on 91.3 FM CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be April 23rd at 8 PM CST.
]]>There are over 1,300 entries in the BGG database that feature Worker Placement as a mechanic, including many entries in the upper echelons of the ranks of BGG. WP has emerged as one of the leading mechanics in crowdfunded games as well, and it has become a genre which could easily consume most - or even all - of a player’s time. There’s even a WP game set in an office building entitled “Worker Placement”, which might be the point at which the mechanic unofficially jumped the shark, so suffice to say that it is a very popular genre.
Worker placement is a mechanic in which players use “workers” - which may be meeples, dice, cubes, resources, or other figures - to take actions on their turn. There are many variations on the mechanic, but the core idea that workers go to a space and take an action is always present, or else it’s not a worker placement game. Many WP games include resources that the players gather in order to then take more complex actions, and a hallmark of the genre is that there are many different strategies that players can pursue in order to win.
The variations may occur in many different areas other than the obvious differences in themes and external appearances. There is often - but not always - competition for various spaces that allow the players to take actions. Players can often add workers to their pool to take more actions, whether as a temporary or a permanent measure. Some games feature a track that includes its own progression as the game ensues, whereas others provide a more open “sandbox” feel that leaves the game up to the whims of its players. Even the end game may be varied, as some games have a fixed number of rounds, whereas others tie the end game condition into one of the action spaces, for example.
It should be noted, however, that WP is not an absolute definition, nor is it undisputed. For example, one of my favourite games - the 2014 “bag-builder” Orléans - is not itself listed with WP as a mechanic, though both of its large expansions are. I myself do not see how it can be justified as a WP game, considering how the “workers” function - they are taken from an individual pool from which you draw and assign on your own to spaces on your own board, which lends me to consider that it is correctly labeled on BGG as a “deck / pool building game”, which then makes me think of this…
It’s not hard to understand why WP games are so popular now from either the perspective of the designers or the players. There’s an instant familiarity with the mechanic in merely using the phrase “worker placement”, and that comfort provides an easy access point for new players to learn the game more quickly. It also means that designers can experiment more with different aspects of their designs, as they do not necessarily need to be as concerned about the difficulties that players may have with the basic mechanical concept of their game.
The similarities inherent within WP games do present a problem, however: with so many WP games out there, it can be difficult to set one game apart from the rest. There are three areas in which I see WP games distinguishing themselves: mechanics, theme, and replayability.
Mechanics - The central mechanic of placing workers and taking actions is always present, but the ways in which that happens are widely varied, and the ways in which secondary mechanics are incorporated requires innovation to differentiate the game from the many other WP games. Some games feature a set sequence of events or fixed number of rounds, whereas others are wide open in how the actions can occur and when end game happens. Some games are more directed and deterministic, whereas others remain wide open for a longer time, though both paths can provide a surprising amount of agency for the players.
Theme - Although this might be the most obvious way in which WP games are distinguished, many of them are relatively indistinguishable from one another. Many games start with a description that starts with something like, “So, you’re in a medieval village…”, and would be mostly indistinguishable from each other to the average person. That said, there are a few very unique themes that do stick out and make the games and the experiences memorable, and it’s fun to really get into a game for its theme and not just its mechanics.
Replayability - One thing that can happen in some games is that they become stale with the same setup from game to game; if there is no variation in setup, it is much easier to “solve” the game (or at least to feel like it is solved) and to use a dominant strategy. To combat this possibility and to increase the replayability of the game, most WP games incorporate some element of randomness, but the ways in which they do so - dice, cards, location tiles - vary. The trick is to create a game which is not the same each time, but that is also not too randomly determined so as to thwart the player’s attempts to think ahead.
Of those three, I would say that I prioritize mechanics and replayability much more than theme, as I find that even a dry theme can be enjoyable if the game works; in the same vein, if the game does not work or feels too repetitive, even a great theme cannot save it from itself. At the same time, I should be drawn into the game by its theme - or at least its presentation.
I really enjoy worker placement games, as they provide not only a familiarity within the basic mechanic, but also variation with the many different ways that other elements of theme, mechanic, and replayability are implemented. It is one of my favourite genres of game - if not the most - and I feel as though I have a lot left to explore not only within the genre but within each game.
I am looking forward to playing and replaying many of the games from this list in the near future, and I am particularly excited to see what happens with Charterstone when it is released (hopefully) later this year. I am also interested to see if there are any other innovations that make a difference to the genre, or whether it has reached its peak. My suspicion is that it will increasingly be incorporated as a part of a more complex game (like in Mombasa) and that much of the future innovation will be in that regard.
Or maybe I will have to work on designing the next major innovation in the genre myself - I have an idea with a theme that might work, so it’s just a matter of designing the other three games I have in progress first. Until then - or as that is happening - I will keep on enjoying the genre and exploring its established boundaries, even as new ones are surely already on the way.
]]>Anachrony is a worker placement game with a time travel theme - you can borrow resources from yourself in the future, which in later rounds you’re then required to pay back (or face penalties). I have actually played this game solo since the kickstarter package arrived but not with others - the reason is that one of my game groups was actually playtesters for this game. Which is super cool and feels good to have a retail copy. The problem is two other people in my play group also went in on the kickstarter, so there’s three copies between the three of us, which makes it a bit hard to schedule when my group (or at least myself) leans towards learning newer games.
Assault on Doomrock is a co-operative “monster fighter” game in which two to four heroes with their own unique abilities and powers take on 3 separate hoards of monsters in an attempt to overthrow the head bad guy on Doomrock Mountain. Another game that I have played solo (and BGG actually lists it as “best with 1 player”) that I’d love to try with a group. It’s has a really cool abstract combat mechanic that I’d love to explore with other players; there’s no board used in the game - hex, grid, or otherwise. It does take awhile to play, but there’s a short game option too. It’s also ridiculously hard. Someday…
A deckbuilder with a baseball theme! Baseball Highlights: 2045 has players managing their batting and fielding line-up through a card drafting and playing mechanic that requires you to counter other players while attempting to score runs of your own. Normally the theme wouldn’t really do it for me, but this game has mechanically enhanced pitchers and robotic base runners, so it’s awesome. Had fun playing it solo and learning the rules, would love to have a 4 player tournament of it. The game itself only takes 45 minutes to play with two players, but once you have a round-robin like tournament it breaks into the two hour range.
An expansion for the excellent Shogun game which I picked up locally for something like $15. Shogun is one of the only area control games that I actually enjoy playing with a really unique blend of bidding, bluffing, turn order, and battle mechanics. The base game is pretty much perfect as is, so I hesitate to see if this adds or removes from the experience of the game. The main reason I haven’t played it is because I’m generally teaching the game to at least one new player, and when doing that I try to stay away from expansions - especially in larger games like this.
Star Trek: Fleet Captains has you Admiral-ing either the Federation or Klingon fleets through a head to head battle of several ships (I think 20 per side!). Haven’t done much more than ogle the various Federation and Klingon ship minis on their super cool heroclix bases. This seems like it’ll be a great game, the problem is having exactly two or four players for it. Although to be honest I haven’t really tried yet either, need to learn how to play.
This is my most recent acquisition, an asymmetric cave exploration game where each of the up-to-5 players has their own unique game mechanics and objectives that play off one another. The Knight has to slay the Dragon, the Dragon wants to escape the Cave, the Goblins wanna kill the Knight, the Thief wants to steal stuff, and the Cave wants to trap everyone inside. The downside is each player has their own unique set of rules that need to be taught independently (or so I’ve heard). The good news is there’s a solo mode for each player I believe, so that’ll let me learn how best to convey the game to other players once I’m ready… 5 solo plays later.
Have played this a few times solo, and it’s best described as “Eclipse in 60 minutes, also with ants”. You control a colony of ants exploring, controlling, and ultimately fighting over The Great Meadow with other players and NPC caterpillars. Just like Eclipse, there’s strong exploration, upgrade, combat, and settling aspects to the game. Lots of cool things going on in this game, just need to make some time for it at the regular lunch hour group.
Got this in a math trade, and it was on my “should I?” list for awhile. The idea of this game is that you’re in a race with fellow engineers, but you’re assembling your vehicle mid-race to attempt to have the most bad ass and quickest vehicle to cross the finish line. Cool concept, cool steampunk theme, and it comes with a boatload of fancy dice. Another one for the lunch hour that just needs to be queued up.
I had originally played The Captain is Dead at one of the public game nights in the city. The premise is that the captain of your spaceship has been killed in some way, and it’s up to the various members of the crew to maintain the ship and steer it to safety. Think of it as a turn-based Space Alert. I picked this up from a fellow boardgamer unopened, which was nice, unfortunately, I thought that the standalone Episode 3 box had the components to play Episodes 1 and/or 2 as well, which is not the case. Episode 3 instead focuses on aliens who’ve boarded the ship and have thrown you into the ship’s brig - you have to do your best to escape and regain control of the ship using various tools and skills you pick up. I think I will give this a try in the near future to see how it compares to Episode 1. (Also, the game itself has been picked up by AEG I believe, and should be seeing a retail release as opposed to having to order it directly from thegamecrafter.net)
]]>Of Dice and Men is broadcasted live on 91.3 CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be April 9th at 8 PM CST.
]]>Don’t get me wrong, London Dread is a fairly creative and enjoyable entry into the Real Time genus of board games, but as I sit making sure the box is in good enough shape for sale tomorrow it forces me to reflect where this game might’ve gone wrong. It had everything I enjoyed; a 60-minute-ish playtime perfect for lunch gaming, an HP Lovecraft theme, real-time co-operative gameplay forcing players to coordinate in a stressfully fun manner, and custom dice! And at the end of the day I would still give the game a solid 7 out of 10 - “Good game, usually willing to play”.
There’s a lot of things that London Dread does right. At its core it’s an “encounter-based” game; encounters are presented to the players, they gear up and/or choose players best suited for the encounter, and then attempt to overcome the challenge. Players of the Arkham Files series, Mage Knight, TIME Stories, and other story-based games will be quite familiar with this general setup. Where it gets turned on its head is that these encounters are presented to you in real time, at a pace dictated by the players, all in a timespan of 8 to 12 minutes.
At least one of these is a needed plot card (or Chad shuffled poorly)
All investigators have the option of “revealing” any of the 24 face down cards on the game board, of which each presents a challenge that must be overcome lest more “dread” gets added to a tracker, making the end game more difficult with each progression. Furthermore, unrevealed cards are worth two dread on their own, with no hope to resolve them. “Well,” you ask, “why don’t the players just not reveal anything and let the game ride?” Two reasons - one is that a completely unrevealed board is worth 24 * 2 dread (48) in your first of two rounds, and as soon as you hit 50 dread you automatically lose the game. Secondly, investigators are required to reveal and resolve specific story events, between 4 and 6 in each round, in the order that they’re revealed and at a certain point in the gameplay (failing to do so also loses you the game).
Once cards are revealed players are required to “go” to the cards in order to encounter them. This is also done during the real time phase, by programming a well designed and sturdy ‘clock’ with action tiles or movements to other quadrants on the board. Basically your standard “movement/action programming” mechanic like you’d see in Space Alert, Robo Rally, or Lords of Xidit, but with a bit of a resource-management twist; you only have 12 tiles in front of you, two of each numbered 1 through 6.
“Was that South Location 6 at 2 AM, or East Location 2 at 6 PM?”
If you wanted to do three different things at “Location 1” on the board, you’re somewhat SOL (with a minor exception) meaning you have to not only coordinate who goes where with your fellow investigators, but who can go where. In another clever twist, each of the numbers has an arrow on its flipside, so moving to one of the other quadrants on the board (which you will likely have to do) also forces you to consume one of your precious action numbers. The clock also dictates when actions are resolved, so if you hope to meet up with a fellow investigator you need to communicate when you’re taking the action - you’ll often hear “Let’s both meet at location 3 at 8 PM”.
London Dread takes the encounter resolution one step further. When your investigator goes to solve an important story-centric encounter they’re required to randomly play one of their 6 “personality” cards; cards that reflect past experiences and traumas of your individual character. They may draw strength from prayer, or recall an important detail about a past experience, or potentially reveal a trauma card which reduces the skill you bring to an encounter by as many as 3 points (which can be devastating). While this does introduce a bit of randomness to a critical part of the game, it’s one you can easily mitigate by having other investigators help or by bringing items along with you. The coolness of this little deck of 6 cards isn’t to be understated - it’s amazing when the Soldier character can draw on previous combat experience to one-shot an encounter or when the Professor miserably fails at a spiritual encounter because of past ritualistic failures.
Efficient killing machine, or PTSD victim? Let’s find out!
In addition to that, when the story-based encounters are resolved you actually advance the story, unlike many encounter based games where successful resolution often amounts to “k, you get to keep playing now”. The back of each story-based card has some flavour text explaining the next step in the chapter, and even gives you different results based on the success of your encounter adding a nice dash of replayability and reconnecting the results of actual gameplay to the narrative.
“Man, this game sounds great! What’s the problem with it?” you ask in bewilderment. I have two main qualms with the game I think, let’s start with the big one first. The success or failure of the current story you’re playing is based on a die roll. In a game that truly rewards planning and coordination with your fellow players - in fact, you can safely say that’s the main mechanic in most real-time co-operative games - having the entire engaging experience come down to “did you roll 7 successes?” really feels like a downer.
Spoiler, but it’s the very first card you’ll see in the game, so it’s alright.
Let me explain a bit further - a “story” in the game is broken into two normal rounds of real-time and resolution, and if you survive those you go to the “end game” of the story. In the end game each player is asked to survive a number of specific encounters on their way to the “antagonist” of the story, which if passed successfully grant you additional dice. Once 3 encounters are resolved you face the Antagonist - there’s no epic story here or final battle, it’s basically an anti-climatic success check based on how well or poorly you did leading up to this point. If you gained 30 dread over two rounds you’d need to roll 7 successes between all the players and their built-up dice pool. If you succeed, you win, else you fail and have to replay the whole story. Also worth noting is that players can be eliminated during this “end game” phase, which is a pretty devastating blow to both the player and the team - the one player has to sit back and watch as the rest of the group tries to futilely make up for the 4 dice they just lost.
There are other games that do this, most notably Black Orchestra, a game which I adore. In Black Orchestra you play as various high-ranking German officials attempting to assassinate Hitler from within the Reich - you prepare various assassination plots which are resolved with the roll of a die pool. The difference there is that the game isn’t over when you fail that roll (although it may be a major setback), the dice are prominent throughout most of the game, and it serves as a spectacular vehicle for tension; despite all the planning and coordination that has gone into that point, the last part of its successful execution (pun intended) is simply left up to fate.
This was an actual roll, which went typically poorly
You don’t get the same sense of tension from London Dread. I think it’s because in that “endgame” phase all the planning and coordination and resolution you just fought at is slowly chipped away during these specific end game encounters, and you’re left with an hour of stressful real-time gameplay boiled down into a handful of dice.
Other nitpicky things include the fact there’s only 4 stories (although they’re all highly replayable, but if you cared about spoilers you really only have 4 hours of unique content), the conditions in the game are limited to two (which in the genre is abysmally small) and don’t actually do anything, and the main game board warped possibly the worst out of any game board I’ve ever owned.
Despite that there’s a fun and fairly unique game in here, and I think a lot of people could have a really good time with it. The theme is unique even in a genre that’s filled with derivative works, it’s a fresh set of mechanics on top of the not-yet-overused real-time gameplay category, and other than the board the component quality and artwork is outstanding. I’d be surprised if this game didn’t come out with expansion content, it could certainly benefit from a few more stories. I’m not saying you shouldn’t play London Dread… but maybe you should convince your friend to buy a copy first.
]]>I would’ve never believed her… had I not had the dreams myself.
I had a feeling we wouldn’t be able to take on a force of this magnitude ourselves, so I leaned on a bounty I had gone soft on earlier in exchanged for an unnamed favor. It was time to collect, and Skids was more than willing to oblige. He didn’t say as much, but I have a feeling he felt the same lingering terror that Gloria spoke about.
The first portal we came across proved to be no trouble to close from within. After dispatching of the unsuspecting cultist I can only assume was responsible for opening it, Skids had gone in himself with the usual disregard to his safety I had observed and somewhat grown to admire. Minutes later he stepped out of the other side, visibly shaken as the rift in reality silently closed behind him. Thinking that was that, our group sent word of our success to each other in the party.
We resolved to meet in South America to celebrate our success, which was weird considering none of us were particularly fond of the continent. Once we arrived it was as if snapping out of a subconscious state - something in our minds had driven us to a remote location in the Amazon, and it was here we noticed another Gate. But this one was different; on the other side weren’t alien vistas, but rather a hazy familiarity that we all independently recognized. I was the first to arrive, and also the first to explore this new land. Here’s hoping there’s a way out on the other side.
Tony Morgan
The lady burst into the restaurant, going on about demons and dreams and the like, her voice quickly switching between whispers and shouts. The boss was quickly on the phone with the cops and I tried my best to calm her down into a booth to avoid her frightening the customers any more than she had. Gloria, she said her name was between breaths, was quickly taken away. Most would’ve left it at that and chalked it up to another strange day in the service business, but there was something about her that… made sense.
I later tracked down the institution Gloria ended up at and found her in a chair, staring blankly out a window overlooking a stark forest. “The books”, she said without me announcing my presence, “they’re the cause of all this.” Gloria told me of her writings over the years, of her adventure with two other men and their attempt to save Earth from The Dreamlands. And then she handed me a book that appeared to be in a foreign language, but flipping through its pages it was one I strangely understood. “The Book of the Dead” it was titled.
I spoke with Gloria of my own dreams, ones of a lone man taking on all sorts of other-worldly demons in various vistas, which she reconciled with her own accounts. We spoke for hours, and I left having earned her trust and a call to action; to reach out to one Skids O’Toole.
Agnes Baker
Skids, as he demanded to be called by all who tended to him, was one of the more difficult souls we’ve had at the monastery in awhile. When he was lucid, he was a belligerent fool demanding to be let go, insisting that he had important work to do. More often than not he was reduced to a delirious state, speaking of the “Madness from the Sea” and “The Dreamlands”. I haven’t shared this with the rest of the staff because of the madness of it, but my own dreams are starting to become more and more vivid with Skids’ descriptions. Obviously a side effect of working with such a troubled mind.
He often references one Tony Morgan in either state, demanding to speak with him. Assuming it was the closest thing to a next-of-kin that we’d receive from Skids, I had our office look into it. Turns out Tony had been committed himself around the same time as Skids, albeit in another hemisphere. Tony was found in a comatose state, completely unresponsive but still breathing of his own accord. He was found by a local gravedigger in Australia and promptly checked in to a hospital for observation and care. It turns out Tony is a well known bounty hunter; given Skids unknown background and general demeanor I can only imagine they were acquainted through conflict.
Sister Mary
There wasn’t much left of Dad when I finally got around to seein’ him. A man I had grown to admire despite his distance, one that was viewed in the community as a strong, solemn man. Susie was always convinced that he would eventually catch something from his gravediggin’ job, despite my reassurances that he doesn’t actually handle the corpses. He was proud of his work, even though didn’t often talk about it. “Somebody’s gotta do it” he replied, knowing full well that people wanted to hear about it just as much as he wanted to talk about it.
So to see him in this state, restrained twice over to make up for his strength, violently pulling at the straps and yelling incoherent nonsense into the emptiness of the sterile room… I knew something had to have pushed him past his point, and that something was big. When he noticed my approach he suddenly became calm and a look of hope glinted in his eye. I did my best to listen to him; he implored me to seek the void, the Dreamlands, and that I was the last hope of the world. Any other person would’ve wrote off his words as lunacy (and several doctors had already), but I left that room determined to put an end to whatever had taken my dad away from me.
Hank Samson
There had to be an explanation for this, I thought to myself. My analytical mind wouldn’t let me rest until I could reason with the recurring nightmares - always the same visions, monsters pouring out of rifts between realities. Normally I’d write these occurrences off to a scary movie from my childhood or a night of intoxication, but the dreams were recurring and relentless.
Normally I’m not a fan of the soft sciences but I leaned on some resources I had from earlier in my college days and learned of the theory of dream portals; links between the dream world and our own. After exhausting every viable cause this seemed to be the only reasonable hypothesis worth pursuing, so I find myself now traveling to South America. There was recent news indicating more and more were falling into an unresponsive comatose state for inexplicable reasons, which lined up with the theory of the effects the dream portals could have on the human psyche… wish me luck!
Kate Winthrop
THEY ARRIVE JUST AS I AWAKEN, AN ODD SENSATION FOR ONE WHO WATCHES OVER THE DREAMLAND. THEIR ACTIVITY AND INSATIABLE VIGOR SURPRISES ME IN A LAND THAT HAS NOT SEEN NEED FOR ACTION IN MILLENIA. AN ARTIFACT IS FOUND, A MOVEMENT IS MADE, A FIGHT ENSUES. ALL FOR NAUGHT. THE PORTALS I USED TO GAIN PASSAGE TO THEIR MORTAL WORLD CLOSE AS GRADUALLY AS THEY OPEN. THEIR REALITY IS MINE NOW, LIKE SO MANY BEFORE THEM. THEIR SOULS LOOK TO ME FOR RESPITE. I REPLY.
ΥΠΝΟΣ
]]>Of Dice and Men is broadcasted live on 91.3 CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be March 26th at 8 PM CST.
]]>Taking into consideration how many games are coming out each year (almost 5,000 worldwide according to BGG!) it’s easy to see how the industry is growing, and with it a lot of designers are being challenged to come up with innovative games that stand out from the crowd - and for the most part they deliver. While in a finite universe there really can only be so many different ways to play a board game, where the magic comes in is how game designers mix those mechanics together and mash them up with various themes that makes each game its own unique experience.
Even before board gaming I’ve always had a collectors’ mindset; video games, graphic novels, movies - anything geeky really and I had to get my hands on it. I know this isn’t necessarily a healthy reason to get into the board game hobby since it’s pretty easy to sink a ton of cash into it, but if you’re into collecting unique items it’s safe to say being able to research and curate your own board game collection is an entertaining way of scratching that itch.
I’ve always been a fan of being able to teach others; it’s previously manifested itself in the form of technical presentations and talks, but since then I’ve grown really fond of being “the rules guy” for board games. It also plays into the fact that I have the collection, but the skills that are required to properly teach and present a game to new players are very transferable to the real world, and helps develop social and presentation skills.
I’m (maybe not so) secretly an introvert - I don’t mind operating in social contexts, but I feel more comfortable sitting at home with a nice game or TV show keeping me company. I do much better when there’s a common thread that holds the conversation together, and board games are a great way of getting everyone on the same page. No longer do you have to pretend you know anything about another’s career industry, or worry about being able to contribute to idle chatter about local sports team - everyone at the table is focused on eradicating the blue cube disease or killing the monster in the room.
One thing I’m not a big fan of is idle activity; sitting in front of a TV for any extended amount of time makes me fidget. When it comes to gaming, however, I can sit for hours. Games (both video and board) are engaging in a way that keeps me entertained and occupied, not to mention the well studied health benefits of keeping your mind active compared to more idle activities.
]]>For those who haven’t played Power Grid, the card game or the older board game, here’s a quick summary. Each player plays as a CEO of a power company, looking to generate revenue by providing power to different cities. The board game consists of 4 phases per turn; auctioning on new power plants (each of them requires a certain natural resource and provides an amount of energy), building the power structure in one or more cities, buying natural resources from the marketplace, and finally generating energy (and by proxy, income). The winner of the game is the person who, in the last round of the game, is able to successfully power the most cities on the board.
The Power Grid Card Game doesn’t vary a lot from this formula, but it does have one major omission - the map. The second “building the power structure” phase is completely omitted from the card game, which seems to be the main complaint about the card version. It’s easy to see that the map in Power Grid plays a major component of the strategy; blocking optimal routes and the unlock of the 15 and 20 spaces all play into a large component of the game. Not to mention the primary way of expanding the main board game is by purchasing more maps. That said, it is also the longest part of the game. The time spent doing mental math in the game (most seasoned board gamers will use “mathy” as the first adjective for Power Grid) to ensure you can maximize your turn is most felt during the “houses” phase, so it makes sense that it gets cut in this 60 minute variant.
That said, most of the other phases remain intact. The power plant auction is almost identical, the resource market is slightly tweaked but along the same idea, you power your plants by consuming natural resources, which in turn generates revenue, and the revenue determines turn order (which is another huge strategic component of the game). Heck, they even kept the paper money! I think describing Power Grid The Card Game as a faithful adaptation of the original that can be played in 60 minutes is a very fair assessment.
Unfortunately, for most of the players at the table, the sentiment at the end of the game was the same - “I don’t mind this, but given a choice I’d much rather play Power Grid”. With the absence of the building phase it seems like the most important part of the card game is the power plant auction, which switches the focus of the game from being a money-management player-blocker to an optimal auction position game. I found the marketplace was very rarely in contention, at least not as much as it is in the board game version; even by maxing out your capacity for natural resources other players can almost always obtain the things they need at a higher price. Paying the higher price somewhat handcuffs you in the auction phase, but because you only pay for two things (power plants and resources) instead of the three (houses) the impact of spending more money is lessened.
So, in conclusion, I think I’d place Power Grid: The Card Game firmly in the “6 - OK game, some fun or challenge at least, will play sporadically if in the right mood” camp. You’d be hard-pressed to find another auction or marketplace game that fits into the 60 minute timeframe (save maybe Ra), but the omission of the map makes it a not-quite-complete game.
]]>Of Dice And Men is broadcasted live on 91.3 CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be March 11th at 8 PM CST
]]>I moved to Regina eight years ago, putting a two-and-a-half hour drive between me and my gaming buddies. That first year or so was a real dry spell. My bloated collection gathered dust… neglected, though not forgotten. Instead of playing games, I spent my spare time engaged in other aspects of the hobby, such as reading up on games I had never tried and buying games I would never play.
I eventually stumbled onto saskgames.com, an initiative started by a local fella named Matt who saw value in connecting gamers in the province. From its humble beginnings, SaskGames is now run by a team of ambitious volunteers who, among other projects, partner with a number of venues in Regina to host regular public gaming events.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back around 2010, I had mentioned in the forums of the SaskGames website that I was relatively new to Regina and wasn’t playing nearly as often as I used to. To my surprise, this local fella named Matt sent me a private message asking if I wanted to join him for a beer sometime to see if we might get along enough for him to invite me to his place to play games with his group. Being a paranoid introvert, I naturally responded with, “Yeah, that would be great! We should do that sometime!” and then never went ahead with making plans. Thankfully, though, Matt is a persistent fella and, a year or two later, we finally had those beers together. I met him on a Tuesday night at a Boston Pizza during a public gaming event. So there I was, sitting among a bunch of people who were playing games I’d never seen before… I didn’t play anything that first night but I knew I was definitely coming back again.
Fast forward to today, and I now play games far more often than I did before moving to Regina, largely because I regularly attend these public gaming events. For those who, much like me as a youngin’, never before considered playing games with people you don’t really know, it might be useful for me to pass on what I’ve learned from my experience.
I’ve met most my friends and acquaintances in Regina through public gaming events. It’s become my strongest social circle here. Sharing a social hobby like gaming has definitely helped build and maintain those relationships.
Tabletop gaming tends to attract people who have a complete lack of social grace. I think it’s because, for some, the rules of a game create a structure for socialization, replacing the need to understand the rules of just hanging out and being normal. Sheldons do exist…
It used to be that, if I was interested in trying newly released games, I had to buy them myself. Now I can let other suckers (read: gamers) buy them instead!
A lot of games really flourish once players become experienced with them. Strategies become uncovered; rivalries develop. One thing I’ve noticed about public gaming events is that the new hotness dominates, but is so quickly and fickly replaced by the next hotness. It’s a constant revolving door of games appearing on the table. You get fatigued after a while learning new rules each time you sit down to play.
Overall, I’m glad that local fella named Matt wore me down and got me to join him for a beer. Since then, I’ve enjoyed many a beverage with many a gamer over many a game. Have I always had a fantastic time at these events? No, I wouldn’t say that. I have had the displeasure of sitting down with sore losers and sore winners, alike. I’ve witnessed rudeness, passive aggressiveness, offensiveness, condescension, or just a complete lack of awareness that others are feeling uncomfortable with obnoxious behaviour. People who act like that can definitely sour a game session. Because, in the end, aren’t the people you’re playing with more important to whether or not you have a good time than the game you’re playing?
Luckily, my experience at public events skews much more towards playing with fun and generous people. Many are quirky, but that just makes them the endearing kind of social rejects. Like the Goonies. Like me.
]]>Players: 2 to 8+, Playtime: 15 mins, Complexity: Low
Codenames is a spectacular little word game that we’ve talked about a few different times in the podcast. The idea is players are broken into teams and presented with a grid of 25 random words. Two people (one from each team) are designated as “clue givers” for their team and have to give a one-word clue followed by a number; the number is the number of cards on the table that the one-word clue pertains to. From there their team attempts to identify the words that the clue giver was attempting to allude to, without guessing the wrong word. Picking the wrong word can result in anything from simply ending their turn to losing the game if they’ve picked the dreaded “assassin word”.
The fact that I’ve just explained the entire ruleset in that paragraph makes Codenames a great game for casual gamers, and having players divided into teams makes for some fun social icebreaking. It’s also a great word game in that you’re not at a disadvantage for not having a large vocabulary unlike games that require you to spell or come up with words on the spot, making it more accessible for all to enjoy. Coming in at under $30, the game is a great addition to anyone’s collection.
Players: 5 to 10, Playtime: 30 mins, Complexity: Medium
The Resistance is one of the purest “hidden traitor” games available. The basic idea is that one or two players at the table are secretly spies (determined by random card draw), and are attempting to undermine the success of the game. If they’re able to do so 3 of the 5 rounds, the spies win. Throughout the course of the game the good guys are attempting to successfully complete 3 of their own missions, but in doing so they have to (unknowingly?) interact with some of the players at the table, which may cause their mission to fail. Using this information, the good guys attempt to root out the bad guys and win the game.
The Resistance plays in about 15 to 30 minutes, longer if your group flies fast and loose with the accusations (which is half the fun of the game). I prefer the Avalon version since it also adds some player roles to spice up the gameplay a bit. Coming in at 5 to 10 players, it’s a perfect game to play around a pub table when everyone’s got a few drinks in them and aren’t afraid to throw wild accusations at each other.
Players: 1 to 5, Playtime: 15 mins, Complexity: High
If for some reason you enjoy games that stress you out, Space Alert is the game for you. In Space Alert, you’re given 10 minutes to deal with a multitude of threats that attack your spaceship both inside and out, by playing movement and action cards in real time while a MP3 soundtrack makes crazy noises and throws more threats your way. After the 10 minutes is concluded, you reset everything and “resolve” your actions step-by-step to see exactly how well you did, more often than not ending in crippling failure as your ship explodes because someone forgot to wiggle the mouse preventing the on-board computer from going into standby.
Space Alert is a complex co-operative game, but comes with a cleverly designed tutorial to ease people into the full game over the course of 7 sessions. Since the game itself only takes about 15 minutes for a full round, it’s a fun one to fail at and then try to do better right afterwards.
Players: 2 to 4 (or 8 with deluxe version), Playtime: 20 mins, Complexity: Low
For the causal card game fan, Love Letter is a great suggestion. The game is simplistic in that you’re only given two cards on your turn, and are required to use one of them, with all of the rules on that card on the bottom. The goal is to either eliminate all other players or end the round with the highest numbered card. You eliminate players in a number of different ways, through guessing which card they hold in their hand to comparing values and removing the lowest card. Rounds are quick (5 minutes max) so eliminated players don’t miss out on a lot of the action.
The 4 player game only comes with 16 cards, making it very portable and easy to break out during some downtime. The main mechanic in the game relies on card counting, and becomes a clever game of playing the odds which get more and more intense the further into a round you get.
Players: 2 to 4 (or 6 with expansion), Playtime: 60 mins, Complexity: Low
Survive is actually a re-release of an older game, Escape From Atlantis, which is a decidedly cutthroat classic where you need to rescue your individual meeples from the island of Atlantis before it sinks and is consumed by a volcano. Where it gets cutthroat is that there’s only so many boats in which to leave the island, that you will probably end up sharing with other players; it’s then up to the other players whether they want to rescue their pawns while also giving you points, or to suicide the whole vessel into a sea creature or whale. Oh, yes, also, there’s sea creatures, whales, and sharks that each player takes turns controlling to destroy one another’s chances of winning.
If your playgroup is capable of playing a direct conflict game without holding grudges after the fact, I think Survive deserves to be in every collection. In every game I’ve played, there seems to be this careful tension in the air when the game starts - as soon as the first meeple is killed, the game is on and there will be blood.
]]>Of Dice and Men is broadcasted live on 91.3 FM CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be February 26th at 8 PM CST
]]>While deckbuilding has become one of the more prolific mechanics in recent years, there are many flavours and sub-types within the genre. At its core, the concept of deckbuilding is as such: players start with the same (generally meager) collection of cards, and throughout the game have the opportunity to improve their “deck” by acquiring other cards in an effort to build a better set and win the game. This same basic concept exists in all deckbuilding games, but as you’re about to see, game designers can take it in all sorts of directions.
Dominion is a classic example of deckbuilding and is often considered the “shining example” of the genre. Even 9 years later (being released in 2008) you’d be hard pressed to find a game that is as diverse or enjoyable. And it’s easy to teach to boot - a player’s turn consists of Action (playing an action card if you have one), Buy (acquiring a card from the “market”), and Cleanup (discarding your hand and drawing a new one).
One of the neatest things about Dominion is the realization that in buying victory cards (the cards that win you the game) you are also diluting the ratio of other action and purchasing cards in your deck. While you could go heavy into victory cards, you’ll soon be overtaken by other players that focus on increasing their available actions and buying power.
The base game of Dominion comes with 500 cards consisting of 25 different “sets”, of which you’ll only see a unique combination of 10 sets every game - that’s almost 3.3 million possible combinations. If, for some reason, you get bored with the base game (or if like others you crave more player interaction) there’s 10 expansions for Dominion adding anywhere from 10 to 25 new sets of cards each.
Legendary is an extremely successful series of games from Upper Deck - yes, the same company that used to sell you hockey cards. It all started with Legendary: Marvel featuring characters from all over the Marvel universe, and has since extended to the Alien, Predator, Firefly, and other franchises (even Big Trouble in Little China!).
The Legendary system is a leader in the “combat” type of deckbuilders; games where the deck you’re constructing is later used to combat threats from the main game board and possibly even other players. In these types of games it’s often important to balance cards used to acquire assets with cards that deal damage. Legendary Encounters is a co-operative game (based in the Alien cinematic universe) so players have to work together to tune their decks to combat the xenomorphs.
There are several map-based deckbuilders as well, but Lewis & Clark is probably one of the first. Among a bunch of other unique mechanics, in L&C you use your deck to traverse North America from the east cost to the Pacific. The path across the continent is wrought with difficult terrain which requires you to change your deck strategy mid-game a few times to successfully overcome.
There’s a few other map-based deckbuilders, notably the renown Mage Knight (currently #13 on board game geek) and the recently released Clank!. In all of these games the goal of your deck isn’t to gain victory points, but rather to put you in a more advantageous position on a shared board, usually to traverse specific types of terrain or face specific threats.
PACG is one of the first games to have a player’s deck of cards represent the player themselves; your health is equal to the number of cards in your deck, and the contents represent the items, armaments, and abilities of your character. This type of game is probably most similar to Magic: The Gathering and other Living Card Games where there is an amount of deck pre-construction before a session of the game, but in the Pathfinder card game you can acquire cards as you play through the location decks.
The Pathfinder Card Game has gone through a few iterations, now on their 4th iteration with Mummy’s Mask. The game also has a great app implementation. If you’re not a fan of the RPG fantasy theme, the newly released Arkham Horror: The Card Game is a similar game in the Lovecraft / Arkham Files universe worth looking into.
The last one I’d like to mention is Paperback, which many describe as a Scrabble killer. Paperback is a word-based game where instead of acquiring cards players acquire letters, which they used in later hands to spell larger and larger words to acquire even more cards and points. Another game with a killer app implementation, Paperback is a unique entry into the genre and definitely worth a look.
]]>I was unreasonably excited to try 10 Candles after reading the excellent review on Shut Up & Sit Down. I had been trying to get into the RPG scene for the last few months or so, starting with a deep dive into the End of the World Zombie RPG published by Fantasy Flight. That first attempt was stopped short because I felt I didn’t have enough time to craft the experience I wanted; this is something that is immediately addressed in 10 Candles and makes it an excellent noob-friendly way to dive into your first role playing game.
For most RPGs, it’s the responsibility for the Game Master (GM) to craft the scenes and situations in which the players will be playing, constrained only by the theme, universe, and/or system of the RPG you’re in. It’s almost as if you take on the role of game designer, crafting an experience you hope your players will enjoy. The level of involvement required for a GM varies on a case-by-case basis, but of the GMs I know there’s a few that have spent dozens of hours creating a world that will work for a half dozen game sessions (about 12 hours of actual gameplay).
This is where 10 Candles is different. As a GM you’re strongly advised to do no prep work whatsoever. As role playing games go, 10 Candles is generally considered a “lite” RPG - something with a lot less structure and number crunching than your normal dungeons & dragons or pathfinder style of game. In most lite RPGs, you simply roll a number of regular six-sided dice and hope for some level of success (generally rolling a 6); no addition or subtraction of your stats against a target’s stats or the like. 10 Candles has this system for “conflict resolution”, but the result of resolving the conflict is that the winning player controls the narrative of the story for a few paragraphs.
Player: “I look around the side of the building”
GM: “Alright, let’s do a conflict roll”
Player rolls 10 dice, gets absolutely no 6’s
GM: “You failed your roll. As you look around the side of the building you catch a glimpse of some… what look like shadows?… dancing around the generator outside, which is already sputtering from a lack of fuel. The shadows seem to be doing their best to pick away at the outer shell of the generator in what looks like an attempt to sabotage it”
GM extinguishes one of the lit candles, ending the scene
At its heart (and like most RPGs) 10 Candles is an improv game. Everyone at the table should feel comfortable spinning their own tale of what their character is doing in the scene. The beauty of it is that the players, not the GM, control most of the story at the beginning of the game; they get 10 dice to roll which dramatically increases their odds of success. As each scene rolls on the players slowly lose dice, and as the game progresses the GM slowly gains dice, which gradually shifts the control of the story from the protagonists to the antagonist. With each extinguished candle the hope and ability and ambition of the characters is ripped away and placed firmly in the hand of the GM controlling Them.
Another unique aspect which we appreciated was the “end of scene ritual”. At the end of every scene (of which there’s up to 10, one for each candle) there’s a phase of sorts where players around the table - including the GM, generally on the antagonists’ behalf - make statements that are true. These can be things as large as “we reached the outpost” or as small as “the batteries are dead”, but the key here is that it moves the story forward. It’s a great mechanic for preventing your party from being stuck in the same scenario for 10 scenes. The “truths” are also equal to the number of lit candles so as you approach the peak of the story and conflict there’s less sweeping changes you can make to the narrative, maintaining that idea of players losing control as the game progresses.
Also a twist with 10 Candles is that it’s a tragic horror RPG, not a survival horror RPG. Each of the player characters will be dead at the end of the 2 to 3 hour session. This adds a bit of an angle to the story; players are expected to play as if their characters will survive the scenario, but also challenge and ultimately kill them. This focus is important since the players themselves control such a large part of the story, it would be easy for them to craft winnable scenarios and give the GM a harder time than usual. Quite different from a standard RPG where the players are actively trying to achieve various forms of “victory”.
The candles themselves have a few roles in the game. They indicate how much of the game is left - a candle is extinguished after the end of every scene (which ends as soon as a player fails a roll). Playing in a dark room by candlelight really helps embrace the “world is dark” theme inherit in the scenarios. Also you set your character sheets on fire, representing the slow death of the individuality of your character as they shift towards their survival instincts in this dismal existence. (We didn’t actually burn anything as we were playing in our office and were unsure of the fire alarm situation).
If you have 10 tea light candles, a dozen dice, a few friends, and the $10 PDF of the game from Cavalry Games, you have all you need to enjoy this amazing light RPG.
These things are true; the world is dark, and we are alive.
]]>Of Dice and Men is broadcasted live on 91.3 FM CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be February 12th at 8 PM CST
]]>The first time I had heard of KD:M I had given the 2012 Kickstarter campaign a cursory glance and concluded based on some game shots that it was some sort of weird greco-roman fighting game - statuesque figures fighting a single bad guy on what amounted to an uninspiring grid of squares. Also the base pledge came in at $100, which was a no go for me (oh how I wish for the days that $100 was too expensive for a game). It appeared again a few years later at a local public gaming group when someone had busted it out. Again, the plain board and almost abstract? gameplay really didn’t catch my eye and I walked right by it. So what happened in the last few months that made KD:M rocket to the top of my must have list?
First, it didn’t go away. Any time I flipped to boardgamegeek.com it was sitting in a solid position on “The Hotness” list, a list generated based on a few things like page views, submissions, and so forth. The buzz for this game just didn’t go away for whatever reason. Some may attribute it to the late Kickstarter timeline; pledging in 2012 meant you got a game in 2013, which actually ended being somewhere in 2015 (and some of the expansions even later) - when people finally got the game the forums and session reports and submissions skyrocketed, bringing it to the forefront of popularity and helping snowball the momentum.
Second, they know their audience. This is very clearly a “boutique” game, one that will never be mass produced simply because of the content in the box. In that they get two things, maintaining their own artistic license (more on that below), but also creating the image of a “high-end” game. The high end price tag is definitely justified in the amount and quality of miniatures in addition to the volume of content you get in the box, at the same time creating the appearance of a “collector’s edition” game that anyone who considers themselves collectors of the hobby will at least consider. Coincidentally those same collectors are often the ones who wouldn’t hesitate dropping the cash required.
Third, the session reports sounded ludicrous. Here’s a snippet from a BGG session report:
Now a second hand-story of a man with no second, or first, hand after his initial hunt; Tiresias the (H)armless. An antelope cleanly kicked his arm off on his first outing and he lost the other foraging in the same showdown phase. Usually, a survivor with two missing arms isn’t going on another hunt again, they sit at the settlement and are the first to be sacrificed when the game demands you lose population, but for reasons we shan’t go into, Tiresias’s player faced a year when he was happy to lose and not happy to risk anyone of value. Poor, armless Tiresis was sent with other crippled, weak survivors to hunt a level one Phoenix.
On the way he gained +1 Luck from an event. Amazingly, they triumphed and his Accuracy was boosted. A settlement event then gave him a Fighting Art (Monster Claw Style) that, among other things, boosts Accuracy and Strength when fighting unarmed. Unarmed fighting was all Tiresias was capable of at this point, of course, and with this Fighting Art and his earlier stat boosts (which meant he would hit on a 4+, Crit on a 6+ and inflict double wounds on a crit) Tiresias had transformed from dead weight to deadly. He kicked and bit his way into glory, Mastering unarmed combat and teaching his skills to the settlement.
So now the game had implanted itself firmly in the “must have” spot of my perpetual board game wishlist. I start my usual process of researching and come across a few things that, for some, would deter them from pursuing the game further, but they managed to drive my resolve eventually culminating to me hitting F5 repeatedly on the kingdomdeath.com homepage, waiting for the Kickstarter link to go live on Black Friday of 2017.
The artwork is definitely an acquired taste. What starts as near-hentai levels of anime soon deforms to what most have labeled “body horror” - parts (often sexual organs) being in places where they shouldn’t be, extra arms coming out of unnamed orifices and the like. Enough to turn anyone away, and obviously the reason why this won’t ever be a “mainstream” game. This also automatically disqualifies it from public gaming events, gaming with your family, and probably a sizable portion of your friends. But… it’s different. It’s not the same fantasy / sci-fi artwork we’ve seen a dozen times from a dozen well known publishers - there is not another game in your collection that will match this, and there likely never will be. Even the self proclaimed “horror genre” games don’t come close to the horror you see here, and if that genre appeals to you, this is the game you want.
The theme is a different yet similar tone of hopelessness and despair that you find in most modern Arkham Files games, although by all accounts it seems to nail the “resistance is futile” flair that Lovecraft had much better than the pulp fiction adventures of Eldrich and Arkham Horror. This theme is echoed in gameplay almost entirely through not-quite-controllable randomness; attempting to birth a child can end in character death, tracking down a beast to hunt can drive your entire party insane, taking a hit to the head can result in decapitation, all on the result of a die roll.
The campaign, which lasts up to 30 two to three hour sessions beginning to end, can come to a grinding halt with one toss of the die.
Now, veterans of the game will tell you that “one die roll ending your campaign” is hardly the whole story; odds are you were inadequately prepared and/or had a series of bad luck rolls before that to put your campaign in a dire state. But they won’t dispute the fact that it can (and sometimes does) come down to one terrible flick of the wrist.
Don’t get me wrong, there is a game here. In what looks like the “Rated M for Mature” bastard child of Monster Hunter and Dark Souls (two video games of their own infamy), you find yourself in strategic battles, intense monster tracking, and engaging settlement management. You have to know what you’re getting yourself into though - it’s not a simple “oh, we failed, I guess we’ll have to try a bit harder next time”, but more of a “goddamn, we just lost one of our best defenders to an antelope’s chest cavity, our settlement is screwed“ And yet it might not be - it’s just as possible that you survive and thrive despite that setback, as it is the hand of fate wiping you from existence. That’s where the thrill, the challenge, and the incredible stories of the game come from.
The game comes with its own share of criticisms, as any game does, and most of them are valid (and explained extremely well by Shut Up & Sit Down). The gratuitous use of breasts in the art style crosses over to juvenile at times, the loss of control emulated by random events can leave players feeling helpless, and some parts of the game seem almost like red herrings, a useless waste of time and resources that will do little to prepare you for the campaign (which, in a game that is all about being prepared, can be devastating). Perhaps the thing I’m most worried about is the time cost. As Paul (from SU&SD) put it - the real cost of this game isn’t the money, it’s the time. It’s not the fact that you’ll be playing KD:M for a minimum of 60 hours (assuming a perfect campaign with 2 hour sessions), it’s that you won’t be playing anything else for 30 sessions. I’ve heard people say “KD:M killed my board game collection. I play nothing else.” And I’m afraid of that happening to me.
In any case, I’ve committed, and I’ve got til at least August to play some games before my soul is consumed. :)
]]>For those unaware, the Arkham Files line that FFG maintains currently consists of 5 games: Arkham Horror (the oldest of the bunch), Elder Sign (affectionally dubbed Cthulhu Yahtzee), Eldritch Horror (a refined version of Arkham Horror), Mansions of Madness (think Betrayal at House on Haunted Hill meets Saw), and the newest Arkham Horror: The Card Game. All of these games are quite unique games (oddly enough they all involve rolling dice of some sort), but ultimately contain the same storyline; you play as investigators with an attunement to the occult, preventing a cosmic being from devouring all that is good on Earth. Of course the source material for all these games are the collective works of H.P. Lovecraft and fellow authors in the Cthulhu Mythos, a sci-fi-horror writer from the 1920’s that has inspired a good majority of current day horror.
Let’s break down the newest additions to the family!
The Dreamlands is the next big-box expansion for Eldritch Horror that allows players to battle evil in the oft-referenced Dreamlands in Lovecraftian lore. As with all big box EH expansions, this provides a side board that opens up new locations for players to explore provided you’re fighting a specific Ancient One and/or using a specific Prelude card during setup. In amongst the usual new conditions, spells, items, artifacts, and encounter cards you’ll find two new Ancient Ones and a neat new gate mechanic - dream portals that can leak onto random locations on the main board. Also, you can travel to the dreamland side board when taking a rest action, and that’s just thematically cool.
Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition gets its first legit expansion (let’s be honest, the first two tile packs were just so the uninitiated could play catchup) with Beyond the Threshold. Not only do you get two new characters and a new monster, you unlock two new scenarios in the companion application required to play the game (bringing the total to six, or nine if you own everything). You also get a handful of new room tiles, obviously required for those new scenarios, and more spells and conditions to play with to augment the other scenarios. While enjoyable, MoM 2nd Ed suffered the same fate as Eldritch Horror’s base game in that it felt a bit incomplete with a limited number of conditions and spells, so here’s hoping this breathes more replayability into the game.
AH:TCG has been the new hotness since its release in December of last year, and this is the first deluxe expansion for the game. The expansion comes with the first 8-scenario campaign, but only the first few scenarios along with some new characters and player cards to beef up your decks. Which is good because I killed the 5 characters in the base game already. Of course, being a “Living Card game”, you’re fully expected to buy the other scenario packs as they’re released to eventually build up to the full campaign, but this should give you enough to chew on until they’re leaked.
]]>Of Dice and Men is broadcasted live on 91.3 FM CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be January 29th at 8 PM CST
]]>I actually only purchased 8 games this year, so it’ll be a short list, but I can definitely give my thoughts on them (in no particular order)
This is by far the most played of my 2016 collection, not only because it’s a great game, but because it’s garnered the most interest from other gamers. I’ve reviewed Mansions of Madness, but for a quick summary: you play as a group of investigators trying to resolve a particular mystery of a supernatural nature. The unique part of this game is that the “bad guy” is controlled by a free app you can install on your phone, tablet, or computer and drives the story forward by unleashing horrifying events and monsters your way.
The game is a great way to get some Lovecraft-ian action into your game nights and has a very low barrier to entry; individual players get two actions on their turn which include “move”, “fight” and “touch icon on screen”. Fans of the 1st edition might not appreciate how simplistic and streamlined they’ve made the 2nd edition, to the point where it feels like a different game. While it is one of the lightest games in the Arkham Files catalogue from Fantasy Flight, the flavour text they’ve poured into the app along with the unqiue experience makes this a game worth getting. Just don’t mind the +$100 price tag.
Oh look, another Lovecraft game. What can I say, I’m a sucker for the lore. In any case, I was a bit hesitant to get into another Living Card Game after my experiences with the Lord of the Rings LCG (spoiler: I didn’t like it), but the campaign-based gameplay along with decks that evolve with your character assauged my concerns and I dove in. I do plan on writing up a more detailed review, but the TL;DR is I enjoyed it!
Perhaps the character deck progression in Arkham Horror LCG is a bit overstated from the media surrounding the game, but the issue I had with LotR LCG was that the entire game was basically in finding the right combination of cards (of which you were only constrained by deck size) and then shuffling and flipping cards over to see if you won in what amounts to a complicated game of War. That isn’t entirely removed from Arkham Horror LCG, but the game is more geared towards the scenario; you enter the first “act” with a deck of cards representing the assets and flaws your character has access to and then, pass or fail, you progress through the other acts in a campaign, taking advantage of experience as well as detriments that you acquire along the way. The campaign style gameplay speaks to me in a way that the “see if you can make these 30 cards work” didn’t in LotR LCG.
Captain Sonar definitely wins the “most unique experience” award of the year for me. Think of Battleship, and then imagine your team are all on the submarine, and you have to all coordinate your actions to move, power, and ultimately destory the other team’s ship. Now do it at the same time as the other team.
While this isn’t the first real time game that’s been released, it’s definitely one of the most tense (rivaling prehaps Space Alert). Whether you’re playing as the Captain barking movement orders to your crew, the First Officer prepping the various stations of your sub, the Engineer managing the damage and repair of the ship, or the Radio Operator who’s entire purpose is to listen to the other team to deduce where they may be, you’re in for a really engaging time. This is one of the few games you’ll seriously feel like you need to take a breather after playing a session, and that’s a good thing.
Millennium Blades is the immediate runner up to the “most unique experience” award; the game’s entire MO is to simulate the lifestyle of a professional CCG player (think Magic the Gathering or Yugioh). It definitely achieves that (at least to the best of my limited experience) by producing two distinct phases - the market phase and the tournament phase.
During the market phase, which by the way is a real time 21 minute affair, you’ll be tasked with buying cards from the market in the form of unrevealed “booster packs”, purchasing revealed cards that other players have sold to the aftermarket from their own decks, and trading with your fellow CCGers to attempt to construct the best tournament deck around. While a tournament deck is normally 60-ish cards, Millennium Blades abstracts this away to about 11 or so cards, only 6 of which you can actively play in the tournament phase. The tournament phase is a head to head competition to get the most points, with which your rank eventually translates to Victory Points and wins you the game.
There is a lot going on with Millennium Blades, particularly with the 500 or so cards that come with the base game (most of which you won’t actually see in one playthrough), meaning the replayability is through the roof. Couple that with a tonne of tounge-in-cheek references to your favorite sci-fi and video game franchises and you get a great experience. Keep in mind this is tuned to those who enjoy CCGs however; if you don’t enjoy swingy last-minute “oh I didn’t realize that card even existed and now I lose” gameplay this might not be for you.
I picked up Dragon & Flagon because it’s a movement programming game (which I enjoy), plays up to 8 players (which is good for large groups), and it’s themed around a bar fight (a fairly unexplored theme). There’s some cool concepts in there, like how taking larger actions consumes more “time” which affects if/when other players can perform actions before you, and how just because you planned to throw that mug at Adam across the room doesn’t mean that he didn’t move out of the way in your drunken stupor.
In practice, Dragon & Flagon is a bit fiddly of a game - while most things can be justified, the fact that you have to justify how things work while playing is a bit of a red flag (to be honest, I find this with most of the Engelstein games). But if you can look past all that, it’s a fun one-hour-ish romp in a tavern with up to 7 other friends.
Games I haven’t played enough to comment on: Seafall, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle, Not Alone
Expansions I played this year: TIME Stories Prophecy of Dragons & Under the Mask, Eldritch Horror: Signs of Carcosa, Betrayal at House on the Hill: Widow’s Walk
I should preface this by saying that I’m also including latter releases from 2015.
If I were to name my absolute favourite game, I would have to strongly consider War of the Ring. This dramatic retelling of the Lord of the Rings epic is pretty much the best fusion of theme and strategy I’ve experienced.
Like many 70s babies, I grew up a Star Wars nerd so I was thrilled to see Fantasy Flight Games was releasing a board game clearly inspired by the aforementioned classic, except now set in a galaxy far, far away. Instead of the Free Peoples and the Shadow, players take on the role of the Rebel Alliance who are making surgical strikes from their secret base, or play as the Galactic Empire who seek to crush the Rebellion in one swift stroke as their authority spreads to oppress more and more star systems. Each session becomes a unique space opera that borrows some familiar story beats from the Original Trilogy, but re-imagined in new and exciting ways based on player actions.
The only flaw in my mind is that battles are made needlessly more fiddly due to some extraneous card play. I’m not sure how that part got through play-testing.
I love punk game designer Nate Hayden, whose design topics have included prison economies, cocaine smuggling, death metal necromancers, and vision quests while tripping on mushrooms.
His wonderfully perverse Psycho Raiders is essentially Texas Chainsaw Massacre played out as an old-school Avalon Hill hex-and-counter war game. A group of campers are trying to drive, run, hide and escape from the titular Psycho Raiders whose goal is straightforward: kill them all. The game has near-infinite narrative possibilities, which is something I appreciate.
The rulebook can be a bit more confusing than I’d like, so that’s a bit of a drawback. But the rulebook has a centrefold of a woman in her underwear, sporting a gas mask and a machete, standing in front of a faux-wood panelled wall, so…
Scythe had everything going for it right from the get-go: an accomplished designer and Kickstarter veteran with a strong pedigree of past success; INCREDIBLE art and visual design; an intriguing theme re-imagining post-WWI Europe as being filled with armies utilizing giant mechs…
But it didn’t stick its landing perfectly for me, though I think that’s due to my expectations that this is a conflict game. It is not. It is much more a resource management game in which you directly or indirectly earn victory points from any and all actions you take.
It’s a game I’m happy to play, but not one I felt needed to stick around on my own shelf.
With over 60 plays, Mage Knight Board Game by top designer Vlaada Chvátil (I’m glad I’m typing that and not saying it) is easily my most played game. Star Trek: Frontiers is essentially 98% the exact same as MK, with the main difference being that its pasted pictures of Picard and Dukat over top of the previous generic fantasy imagery. I even still use MK language while playing the game: Dominion starbases will also be mage towers in my brain.
The game is still great, but it definitely loses a lot of points with me due to unoriginality.
I once read the original 7 Wonders described as like being part of a knitting circle. I thought that was apt. You really have limited affect on most of the people sitting at the table (assuming you’re playing with 5-7 players). You just happen to all be doing the same activity and can compare results in the end.
Taking the basic foundation of 7 Wonders, which in itself is fine, and making it a 2-player game was a good idea. It now feels much more like direct competition and less like multiplayer solitaire.
The production is chintzy and the setup for each round is a bit goofy, but I generally like it.
I’m not the target audience for a game like this, though. I can see fans of more abstracted strategy games eating this up. Me, I want to be a Psycho Raider and torch some campers with my flamethrower.
Mysterium (Dixit meets Codenames), Black Orchestra (let’s all get together and kill Hitler), Talon (tactical space minis combat without the minis)
Expansions: Firefly: The Game - Kalidasa (this game has one big bastard of a footprint now), Dead of Winter: The Long Night (adds some cool options that add a lot to the narrative),
]]>That’s about all I liked about it.
The reason I don’t like The Long Night is because it wrecks one of the fundamental things that makes Dead of Winter a successful and unique game. Dead of Winter succeeded as a zombie board game because it wasn’t a zombie board game. It was a board game about a group of randomly assembled survivors trying to survive against all odds and come to grips with their own success conditions. Sure, the “odds” in the game were zombies, but save a few crossroad cards you could’ve probably subbed out the zombies with wolves or raiders or some other aggressive force and got more or less the same enjoyable game.
Almost everything The Long Night adds to this winning formula is focused on the Zombies. Raxxon: super zombies. Improvements: mostly dealing with zombies. Bandits: not zombies, but fiddly weirdness nonetheless (why do you know what they looted? And why can you share a location with them?).
The 2nd game I played with the expansion where we had to survive 8 rounds? Almost every location was zombie infested, and we had two survivors stranded at Raxxon, which we only went to because we randomly got Blue from an event and his searches are improved at Raxxon. Last turn of the game, we had no idea how we were going to survive - no food cards, no weapons to go searching, low morale - everyone is on edge. Blue does a search, and finds a portable force fields and nuclear flashlight that auto-kills all zombies at a location and prevents more from spawning. Game over.
It wasn’t about people deciding whether their personal objectives were more important than the main objective, or whether someone was holding out because they were a betrayer, or that we had cleaned out the grocery store in earlier rounds and were desperate for a food source. It was because we found an OP weapon and accessory geared exactly towards dealing with zombies.
As for the part of the expansion that I was looking most forward to - more content. I realized after a few games that I now had too much content. With 60 playable characters the odds of you drawing Sparky were much lower, and I found that would dilute the attachment of the players to their characters. Everyone remembers drawing Sparky for the first time, or the mall santa, or the ninja. Those are characters you look forward to getting and that come with baggage from your previous games. Now they’re one of the 60, and the odds of you getting them is much lower.
The volume of crossroad cards is of concern as well. With a stack of crossroad cards that’s reminiscent of the Store Deck in Millennium Blades combined with the dilution of the character deck, the odds of you triggering a character-specific crossroads card is quite low, meaning you have a measurable portion of effectively “blank” crossroads in play, which dilutes the rate at which you may trigger crossroad cards - one of the best parts of Dead of Winter. As it was in the base game we only triggered a crossroad card maybe once every 3 turns, doing it any less than that seems to be a waste.
Taking others’ advice on the BGG forum, I split my crossroad deck into a character-specific deck and an event deck, and had players draw from both every round and trigger one. That meant almost every event card was triggered, and rarely was there a triggered character card - now we increased the crossroad rate to once per turn. Instead of being a unique thing that may or may not happen on your turn depending on whether you did an action or not, it’s now a given thing that WILL happen - it was actually more of a surprise when one wasn’t triggered. (I realize this is a house rule I’m reviewing, but I mentioned it in case others are tempted to try.)
And my biggest pet peeve of all - both of the major modules, Bandits and Raxxon, add new steps to the colony phase. Neither of those modules are mentioned at all on the player aids that list out exactly what happens every round. Not even as a footnote. I understand they’re both optional modules, but you could’ve at least put notes about the actions in brackets or in small font or a different color or something! Between this and the lack of acknoledgement of people with the base game in the rule book (concerning mixing cards, the only guidance in the rule book is basically “it may change the balance of the game. Figure it out”) it’s as if Plaid Hat completely forgot about the loyal supporters of the original game.
Look, DoW the Long Night is a great buy for those of you who haven’t bought the original game. The improved location boards, 30 new characters and tonnes of new crossroad cards are totally worth it. And you have the option of just opting not to include any of the modules that transform the game from a interesting survivor story to a zombie-fest. But for those of us who already have the original version, I don’t think this warrants your time at all.
(Images from BGG user The Innocent, under license CC BY-SA 3.0)
]]>The components in Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition are of the quality you can expect from Fantasy Flight; high quality artwork, detailed plastic miniatures, and solid cardboard tiles and tokens. The die cutting on my particular set of tokens was a bit off, but nothing that would ruin the game by any stretch. Any fans of the Arkham Files series of games from FFG may recognize a lot of the artwork - some of the items, investigators, and monsters have been recycled from previous games (including MoM 1st Edition and Eldritch Horror).
The recognizable bases for the monster minis from 1st edition make a return here, despite the common complaints about them. I actually didn’t mind them in the 1st edition of the game since all they covered was a picture of the mini on the stand, but for 2nd edition the monster tokens have artwork on them (similar to the tokens in Eldritch Horror) which you will literally only see before you bury the tokens in their holders, hiding the artwork. Since there’s less hidden information on the back of the tokens (monster special attacks are now part of the app), there’s really not a reason to hide the art assets - I would’ve liked to see a new monster stand for this.
The Conversion Kit allows you to use the monsters and investigators from your 1st edition copy of the game and big-box expansions in the 2nd edition. It’s quite easy to swap everything over, mostly requiring you to replace the original monster tokens with the newly provided tokens. The main change in the tokens is that most monsters lose any special attack text they had, instead getting replaced with flavor text; I believe the idea behind this is the app will manage any monster special attacks as required. Otherwise each monster still has a horror and evade rating although they’re managed differently compared to 1st edition (more on this later). Replace the monster tokens, mix in your investigator minis with the new ones provided in 2nd edition adding the corresponding investigator cards, and throw together your map tiles and you’re ready to go. I have both 1st edition and Call of the Wild, and this process took a little over 30 minutes (mostly because I mistakenly glued a lot of monster tiles in place when attempting to attach the monster figures to their bases.
The 2nd edition gameplay is mostly managed by the free app available for iOS, Android, PC, and Mac. You pick one of the four scenarios, select your investigators, grab your starting items, and set up the first room (after some sweet voice-acted introductory narration). Many have already reviewed the gameplay of the new 2nd edition, so instead I’ll try to highlight where the game differs from its original version.
First off the promise of an accelerated setup definitely holds true; starting the game isn’t any more complicated than finding one map tile and placing a few tokens on it. A drastic improvement over the 1st edition. The process of customizing your investigator has also been removed; you no longer have the option of selecting two of the four character cards to tune your selected character - you get one card per investigator and it outlines all your stats and one ability (or starting item).
From there it’s up to each investigator to take their two actions - move, interact, attack, or trade - and then signal to the app that it’s the “keeper’s” turn. Already this is a lot more streamlined of a game than its predecessor, and for me started the feeling that this is a “lighter” game than the previous version. Standard things like mid-turn mythos cards and horror checks have been removed to favor a more streamlined experience. While I’ll be the first to admit that remembering those horror checks during gameplay in the 1st edition were quite fiddly, not having them at all makes the game feel a lot less heavy (which may or may not be a good thing depending on your personal preference).
The Horror checks do make a return however during the Mythos phase. The app will issue an event which may or may not happen depending on if investigators are in certain areas of the map or have certain conditions met (like proximity to a monster or each other), followed by a Monster phase where each monster will activate individually with a movement and potential attack, and finally by forcing each investigator within range of a monster to make a horror check against the “most horrible” monster within 3 spaces in the same room. Once that’s completed the next round begins with the investigators taking their actions once more.
Skill checks have also been revisited, instead of rolling a D8 and trying to get under whichever stat you’re testing, you instead get a number of D8 dice based on your stat (similar to Eldritch Horror). The dice are custom dice, I think similar to the dice in Elder Sign, that have either blanks, clue icons or successes; one clue token can be discarded to convert a clue icon to a success.
The damage system has also changed, I think for the better. Throughout the game you can receive mental or physical damage in the form of face up or face down cards. Both count against your character’s limits, but face-up cards can come with additional effects like becoming dazed or restrained. Also, once you’ve reached your character’s limit in either health or sanity, you will become wounded or insane and reset your count; effectively giving you a 2nd chance but with a serious detriment to your character (or, in the case of insanity, changing your personal win condition!). If you hit your limit a 2nd time, your character dies and the game is over for everyone at the end of that round.
Overall, the 2nd edition of Mansions of Madness is a fun, accessible iteration of the Arkham Files franchise. I dare say it might be the lightest game of the series (in terms of complexity), barring possibly Elder Sign - and I actually found that a bit disappointing. MoM 1st edition to me is an epic game, one that requires an unspoken contract of investment between the players that is instantly formed when you sit down at the table and see a sprawling mansion full of unexplored mystery - a battle between the one player who holds all the keys and 4 investigators doing their best to overthrow their dastardly plans. Unfortunately, those traits are also what make the 1st edition of the game so hard to get to the table, so I can definitely see the appeal of this lighter, accessible version.
Gratefully the theme of the game hasn’t changed much despite this; it’s still a occult murder-mystery type of game that doesn’t hold any punches. You will be intrigued by the introduction of each scenario, there will be events and monsters who’s actions make your skin crawl, and you will feel like you’re unraveling a mystery with each exploration token. I definitely appreciate the new writing that’s been done for the app and look forward to experiencing each scenario (and hopefully future app updates with new scenarios!)
My biggest beef with the game is the lack of physical content, which seems like a weird complaint since most of the game substance is within the digital app. That said, there’s 24 monster figures, but only 7 or so types of monsters (cultists, deep ones, deep one hybrids, ghosts, riots, hunting horrors, and star spawns). In addition, there’s only 6 different statuses (two of which you only get through maxing out your character’s damage) and 6 different spells - this version feels like it suffers from the same fate as Eldritch Horror in that it won’t feel complete without another card expansion. I think after a few plays you’ll be seeing the same few cards, which will annoy some players. Particularly since the evaluation of spells requires you to draw a new copy of the spell - it’s entirely possible you see every Wither card in one game.
If I hadn’t already had MoM 1st edition and an expansion, I would feel pretty ripped off paying as much as this game’s MSRP for the seeming lack of content in the box. Granted, there’s a lot of content in the app itself reducing the need for some of these things (and I’m sure the price of the game helps offset the cost of development of the free app), but after coming across the same 7 monsters and 4 status effects game after game I imagine it will start to wear thin after awhile.
MoM 2nd edition also feels like a different game from its previous version. For better or worse, it’s no longer the sprawling monstrosity of a battleground between the keeper and investigators, but rather a light-ish co-operative explorefest that has players thinking “well I hope we figure out what we’re supposed to do?”. It’s almost as if the urgency of the mystery is removed, simply because you aren’t able to visualize the possibilities of the mansion’s various corridors - it’s entirely up to an app. You can’t look at the board and wonder what might be in the garden shed, or why there’s a ladder down into the cellar; instead you click on a token and see what happens.
In the same breath, the battle with the keeper is missing as well. There’s no other player that you’re trying to outwit, no one with that intimidating hand of mythos cards and trauma poised to strike with every room you step into. You don’t feel as successful progressing through the scenario against an app as you do overthrowing the keeper’s plans to get that next clue, only to find that they tricked you into a corner as they spawn a Cthlonian at the only exit.
It’s not a bad game, and it’s definitely going to find a place in my collection as a more accessible way of getting some Eldritch action. But it is a different game, one that people in love with the 1st edition may not necessarily like.
]]>Days of Ire: Budapest 1956 is a game that takes place during the week of revolution in October 1956 in Budapest, Hungary. In the first decade of the Cold War, Russia attempts to expand their influence by rolling into Hungary with their tanks and asserting their dominance over the small nation. But of course, you as a rebellious youth aren’t going to let some foreign power take over your country without a fight! Rally your fellow countrymen to make a stand against the soviet and pro-soviet forces invading the capital and ensure Hungary maintains its independence!
The game can be either a solo or co-operative 3 player game where the revolutionary players fight against an AI deck, or a one-vs-many 4 player game where one player controls the Soviet and Pro-Soviet forces against up to 3 revolutionary players.
I’ve played both the solo/co-op game and the 1-vs-many game, so I’ll try to give a solid picture of each.
In either mode, the revolutionary players play the same; their goal is to ensure there isn’t more than 4 soviet events in play by the end of the 7th round, or if they’ve managed to completely drive out the pro-Soviet forces from Budapest. The demise is the same as well - the Soviets will win if any revolutionary player takes too many wounds, or the morale of the Hungarian forces drops to 0.
Revolutionary players are given 4 actions to divide evenly among themselves (at all player counts - a solo player would get 4 actions and a 3 player game would have one player with two actions), with which they can resolve events, rally the sleeping masses to join their side, attack the enemy forces, construct barricades, and perform some general hand management.
Of all these things, “resolving events” is probably the most important since having more than 4 events on the board in the 7th round is a loss (and since resolving an event usually results in a bonus). An example of an event may be “Soviet Red Star installed on public buildings”. Obviously as a revolutionary trying to kick the soviets out you probably don’t want all your infrastructure marked up with soviet propaganda, so to resolve this event you’ll need to gather two “Information” and two “Ammo” - let’s say you need the information in order to co-ordinate a graffiti campaign and the ammo to back you up in case you do get caught. If you can gather those resources and move to the location where the event is taking place, you’ll remove the event (discarding whatever cards required to satisfy the resource cost) and get a bonus for removing it (in this particular case you’d get to increase your morale twice).
Resolving these events can be done with cards in your hand - some of the cards are just straight up resource cards, while other ones may double up as both resources AND actions you can do on your turn. You can also pay the cost to resolve an event using fighters - there’s two “inactive” fighters on each location on the board, and activating them gives you access to their particular abilities, whether it’s just extra (permanent) resources you can use to resolve an event or a unique ability you can use once per round. Not only are they a permanent resource supply, but you can also move them around the board as well, using their abilities as needed.
Of course, it’s not that easy to overthrow a military superpower - there will be soviet tanks and your own pro-Soviet countrymen getting in your way. Tanks and militia are controlled by either an AI deck (referred to as General Zhukov, an actual general in the conflict) or a Soviet player, doing their best to inhibit your movement and actions while also inciting new events that you’ll have to deal with if you hope to win and repel the red menace.
In a one-vs-many game the Soviet player also controls the media - deciding which headlines are actually released to the public (and by extension, which events are actually executed throughout the game). In a style similar to Twilight Struggle, the Soviet player has two classes of headlines; pro-Soviet and pro-Hungarian. The Soviet player can use the pro-Soviet cards as either headlines (evaluating their event) OR for their command value, not both. The pro-Hungarian cards can either be evaluated which will cause an event that will help the revolutionaries, but also give the Soviet commander some precious Command Points to work with. There’s also another cool Twilight Struggle-esque mechanic where certain headlines and events can trigger different effects on other cards going forward if/when they’re played; a headline you played in the first round might make a card you play in the 5th round more (or less) powerful than usual.
Once the headlines are resolved in a turn, the Soviet commander uses their pool of accumulated Command Points to put those events we talked about earlier into effect, generally getting some sort of bonus or hurting the revolutionaries as a result of putting events into play. The Soviet player can also use CP to deploy more tanks to the board, increasing the odds of players getting injured while performing actions.
In addition in a one-vs-many game, the Soviet player also controls the “State Protection Authority” - the militia and snipers tasked with quelling the civilian uprising. Using a clever discard mechanism the Soviet player has access to 8 or so action cards that allow them to deploy, move, and attack with militia to hurt and terrorize the revolutionary players.
Both teams of players have their draw limit controlled by either the Soviet’s Supply rating or the Revolutionaries’ Morale rating, making manipulating those tracks extremely valuable for both sides.
I’ve only got a print and play version so I can’t say much about the component quality of the game, but I can comment on the artwork - and it is amazing. It really captures the Soviet Propaganda era of graphic design on all the cards in the game. The headline cards, which feature actual headlines from the era, look like 1950s newspapers and the event cards use photographs from around the time of the Hungarian revolution. The board itself looks like a strategic planning session you’d find in the bunker of a hidden revolutionary base, with a map of Budapest and the particular areas of interest highlighted with photos of the location and tied together with pins and red string (which actually illustrate adjacency in a clever way). The additional trackers for game length, morale, and support are all incorporated in a aesthetically pleasing way, and it looks great on a table.
To be honest, when I was first approached to playtest this game I didn’t think much of it - the title and pitch of the theme makes it sound like a war game which doesn’t really tickle my fancy. Then the mechanics were explained to me as “Twilight Struggle vs Pandemic” and I was intrigued. I do feel that is a good description of how the game plays.
The Twilight Struggle part comes into play with the Soviet player, really having to make a trade off with every card played; do I use this card for its really good effect, or discard it for it’s excellent Command Point value? With the pro-Hungarian headlines, it’s a debate of “I don’t really want them to have access to this powerful event, but it does give me a bunch of CP I can use to play events…”
On the other side, the revolutionary players follow the point-to-point movement similar to cities in Pandemic, as well as having to do some critical hand management. Resolving an event plays very much like curing a disease in Pandemic; needing the right set of cards and having to be in the right place, except that you’ll be doing it constantly throughout the game and with militia shooting at you. Revolutionary players also have the issue of deciding whether their cards are more valuable as resources to resolve events, or for the actions on those cards; they can’t be used for both. This is where that careful hand management comes into play.
I’ve got about 6 games in now, at various player counts and with both modes of play. I’d have to say for one and two player games I really prefer the co-op mode, and three & four player games I prefer the 1-vs-many mode. The co-op mode is quite challenging with a cleverly written AI deck that follows similar patterns to what a Soviet player would be doing. Because there is no player controlling the militia units, the AI is slightly more aggressive with those units, but in a challenging and fun way.
The 1-vs-many mode becomes a mind game between the team of revolutionaries and the soviet player, and doesn’t play like your standard 1 vs many where the “gm” is encouraged to go easy and make sure everyone is having fun - this is a legit head to head strategy game where both sides don’t feel like they have to pull any punches. The only reason I didn’t prefer it for two players is that it’s fun as the soviet player to listen to the banter between the revolutionaries and try to take their strategies into account; playing against one revolutionary player has a bit too much downtime between each player’s turn and doesn’t encourage active discussion between the teams. I guess if you’re into intense player-vs-player gameplay that would work for you, but I prefer a bit of socializing in my boardgaming.
One of my favorite things about this game is the fact that I didn’t even know there was a Hungarian revolution (blame my standardized Canadian education). This game brought to life an entire chunk of history I was previously unaware of, and did so in a memorable and interactive way. The artwork definitely helps with that, evoking memories of cold war propaganda, and the actions of the revolutionaries rallying their countrymen and banding together to take out soviet tanks and overcome terrible events adds a sobering tone to the game while still providing an engaging experience.
In summary I’d give this game a solid 8 out of 10 - Enjoy playing and would suggest it to others. The only thing that might be a miss with some of my gaming groups is the theme - despite the amazing box art it does come across as a wargamer’s game even though it’s pretty far from the truth. Only other thing I might like to see is a bit more content in some of the decks like the Event and Headline deck (and who knows, maybe that’ll be a stretch goal). It’s not that it’s been an issue in the 6 games I’ve played so far, but you do go through the majority of those cards in every game and I could see that getting stale at some point. The cards themselves do have a bit of flexibility in the order and placement that they may get played, but there’s only so many times you can cut down Stalin’s statue before it starts getting old
That said, I think the artwork and history lesson alone are great reasons to own this game, and luckily it also has a fresh blend of mechanics from other popular games which makes for an engaging and fun experience every time.
]]>The tagline of Exosuits, Time Travel and Cataclysmic Future should be enough to grab you, but in case you’re looking for a more indepth overview of the theme…
Anachrony takes place in the distant future where what’s left of humanity after a gigantic unknown disaster is suddenly visited by… itself? We send ourselves a message back in time to let us know that there’s a big meteor about to strike the earth (again, apparently) and we should be doing our best to plan for it. Also the meteor itself contains large deposits of Neutronium, which allows us to master time travel (hence the message from the future). Armed with this knowledge of our fate, we do the only reasonable thing and fight over who’s got the coolest pad that everyone should migrate to post-cataclysm.
A bit unexpected, right?
At its heart, Anachrony is a worker placement game. Groan… you’re thinking, not another worker placement game! Yes, I can understand your cynicism - I have more than enough of those in my collection. That said, Anachrony approaches the mechanic in a few very interesting ways, and is unique enough in its approach to justify its own spot in your diverse collection.
The idea is that the World Capital is the place to get stuff done, but it’s also the target of the aforementioned meteor, so everyone is scrambling to do as much there as they can before there is no more world capital. You’ll be fighting other players over the coveted Construct, Research, Recruit, and Mine actions, as well as control of the World Council (first player token). But here’s where it gets interesting…
The beginning of each round you have to decide how many actions you’ll be taking in the shared World Capital. You decide this by “activating” between 0 and 6 Exosuits and of course, activating more exosuits will cost you more “energy cores”, having you make the trade off between immediate actions and core shortages later in the game. Using less suits in a round nets you more water - the currency in the game - so you need to balance your income needs against your world capital actions. All players decide how many exosuits to activate simultaneously, adding a bit of “Hmm, am I going to lose anything by taking less actions than Jeff?” consideration to the decision.
On top of that, you need workers to take the actions. There are four classes of workers in the game, all of which are better at certain actions than others, so managing which workers you use when becomes important. This also makes the Recruit action more important as only certain types of workers will be available each round, and if the player to your right gets there first you may be left with the bottom of the barrel employee you don’t really want. Of course, your workers are human, so they’ll need to sleep a bit and get watered every so often, which adds a bit of worker management in a similar vein to Above and Below.
To improve your civilization, you’ll be primarily constructing buildings and super-projects that provide facilities to produce resources, water, and ultimately travel through time. A lot of these buildings actually contain worker spaces of their own, which you can use throughout the round without the cost of an exosuit to make your civ self-reliant instead of having to depart to the world capital every time you need something. Which is pretty helpful since it’s about to be struck by a meteor.
Oh, I haven’t got to the coolest part - the actual time travel! If you ever thought “how would they implement time travel in a board game?”, here’s your answer; loans. Every round you have the option of loaning yourself 0 to 2 resources in order to advance your particular corner of civilization; you literally send it back in time from your future self. Need a scientist worker? Just warp one back! But wait, how do you know you’ll have a scientist in the future? That, my dear reader, is a problem for Future You. Future You will be responsible for building a time machine (one of the four building types you have access to in the game) and taking an action to warp back those previously loaned resources, which also nets you some VP since you’re such a good citizen of time travel. Conversely if you don’t fulfill your debts to yourself you will be losing points in the end game.
Of course time travel has a price; the more you warp things back and don’t resolve those debts the more likely you are to cause time Paradoxes - once you’ve created enough paradoxes you’ll straight up spawn a time Anomaly in your civilization’s habitat. If you ever wondered what a time anomaly would look like, you can imagine it as a swirling void of terror that can only be satisfied by one of your workers holding a box of resources and jumping into it. Also it’s -3 VP and eats one of your limited building spots, which is a pretty big deal.
Once the meteor does hit the World Capital (which happens roughly after the half-way point of the game), it’s evac time - you do your best to lure the existing world capital population to your particular civilization by fulfilling certain goals specific to your civilization’s leader. Generally things like “have a bunch of workers” or “build habitats” or my personal favorite of “have two anomalies in your civilization on display”. If you can meet your civ’s requirements you’ll gain your last big chunk of VP near the end of the game. The trouble is, the place where you need to go to do all these things has just been hit by a meteor - the available worker placement actions on the main board disappear as people use them, as the world capital collapses around you. Once the old world capital collapses, the game comes to its conclusion, and you and your fellow splinters of humanity compare VPs in an effort to be crowned the new world capital.
While I obviously can’t comment on the final product since it’s still a kickstarter, I can give my impressions of the game in its current state, and it’s a damn beautiful game. The futuristic cataclysmic theme drips off the artwork on the main board, and the iconography makes for a really easy-to-understand and language-independent game. And I’ll be damned if those minis don’t look amazing! The coolest thing about them is that they have a slot for your worker tokens, so when you dispatch workers to go do things at the world capital, you actually put them in their exosuit when placing them on the board. How neat is that?
My favorite part of Anachrony is the time travel mechanics they’ve added to the game - a really clever way of capturing the idea of sending things to yourself and then making yourselves perform the action of sending those same goods back later to fulfill that promise works really well. On top of that, the flow of the game is really smart - each action you take is clear and concise, and only takes a few seconds to execute. The complexity comes in when tying all those actions together to achieve your overall goal.
I think a good measure of a solid worker placement game is having more than one path to victory, and Anachrony does exactly that. Your actions will definitely be blocked by other players as in any worker placement game, but you never feel like you’re completely blocked out of the game - there’s always another option or another strategy you can pursue.
On top of that, there’s a decent amount of replay value in that each of the 4 paths play a bit differently with their “evac” conditions, and even within that you have (currently) two available to choose from per path. The available buildings and super projects is shuffled each game and you definitely won’t see all of them, and the random allocation of both workers and resources makes for a different game every time. The kickstarter also comes with two modules (I’ve only played one of them) that change the game quite a bit as well, so there’s no reason to be bored with this package anytime soon.
I’ll easily give this game a 8.5 out of 10 (Excellent game, will probably suggest it and never turn down a game) - the only thing preventing it from being a full 10 is the longer playtime (30 minutes/player, which rang true in our playtests), which would prevent it from being a game I’ll “always want to play”. Several other players in my play group have also backed this game based on our experiences in playtesting, putting our money where our mouth is, so that should be a pretty ringing endorsement. I fancy myself a collector of diverse board games, and I’d be remiss in not having this unique time-travelling worker placement game on my shelf. I hope you’ll consider backing this wonderful project on Kickstarter!
]]>It’s not to say that storytelling games are new - they’ve been around in one form or another for decades. Great examples include games where storytelling is an explicit focus, recent classics like Tales of the Arabian Nights or Agents of SMERSH come to mind. Others include games that ship with a storyline, RPGs in a box like Descent: Journeys in the Dark or Mice and Mystics both involve a lot of flavor text to help set the mood of the game and encourage their players to slip into the roles of their characters while playing.
Look further down the rabbit hole and you’ll find games that are so thematic and engaging that you can’t help but imagine the circumstance you’ve found yourself in. I’ve found myself explaining to others the circumstance in which my investigator found themselves detained in Arkham with a gaping leg wound and a touch of insanity. Or how about the feelings of your house sheep as you and your significant other “take a family planning action”? Even the terms in which two settlers found themselves bickering over the recent sheep-to-brick conversion rate.
Even euro games are trying to get in on the fun, with additions like Above and Below blending classic worker placement and engine building mechanics with an engaging “exploration” action which uses random paragraphs of flavor text to immerse players in the world your refugee villagers have found themselves in.
It’s no wonder the recent wave of story-driven games has taken such a successful hold on the general board gaming populous. To the point where Pandemic Legacy holds a firm grip on the top spot on Board Game Geek! Another successfully story-driven game, an eagerly awaited 7th Continent had 12,000 backers raising over $1.8 million CAD.
Of course this genre of gaming comes with its own problems. Like a movie or storyline-heavy video game, once you’ve experienced a story it’s hard to be surprised the 2nd time, since you know what’s coming. Unlike a movie however, some of these games can’t easily be re-experienced – in a format where you’re expected to have your choices tested, your gameplay go much smoother the 2nd time around.
TIME Stories actively embraces this with its time-travelling gameplay; you’re basically expected to fail the first time you play a scenario. Once you fail, however, you’re sent back to the start of the game, armed with the knowledge from your previous “run”; the choices you’ve made, the items you’ve found, and the goals you’ve uncovered. This makes for a very unique (and very engaging!) board game experience.
Unfortunately, once you’ve “solved” a scenario, it’s fairly trivial to play through it again. Part of the reason TIME Stories works the way it does requires players to go into each scenario with little-to-no knowledge of what’s coming up. Short of attempting a “speed run” for your own personal challenge, there’s no value in partaking in a scenario more than once. Luckily Space Cowboys has committed to delivering a scenario once a quarter for the next year at least, so there’s always something to come back to.
Other games have an even bigger problem; the controversial “Legacy” format that requires to permanently alter the board. Risk Legacy was one of the first examples of this, but it’s definitely become more well-known with the recent Pandemic Legacy release.
Legacy games require players to permanently alter their personal copy of the game. This is often done by placing permanent stickers onto the board or cards, adding or removing components, and even destroying cards and playing pieces. These actions are often done without advance notice; usually triggered by some in-game condition such as “When all minor cities are founded” or “Before you start your 2nd game”. As you can imagine, playing through the game once will effectively remove the element of surprise that the Legacy games thrive on.
But the biggest offender of legacy games seems to be the concept that a board game is “consumable”. Unlike most board games that can be re-played as often as you’d like, legacy games can be “finished”. This concept seems to ruffle feathers across the community, but the common defense of “$80 for 12 to 24 hours of entertainment” seems to hold up well, particularly if you split the cost amongst the players.
In any case, these story-driven epics are definitely gaining popularity, and despite the changes they introduce to the “norm” of board gaming I find them a welcome addition. Now if you’ll excuse me while I camp outside Comic Readers waiting for A Prophecy of Dragons :)
]]>For some this doesn’t happen at all. They’re satisfied with their five to ten gateway games, maybe have that one box of Power Grid tucked away for when their guests are looking for a greater challenge. I write from the perspective of a collector; someone who’s collection has far outgrown the ability to play in any reasonable quantity. Everything from Candyland to Twilight Imperium grace our shelves, stacked in a particular order to pay homage to difficulty, or number of players, or playtime.
Sitting in my unfinished man cave, said collection on rickety wooden shelves in the corner, the latest Eclipse expansion sprawled out on the table (it has to be sorted and compartmentalized of course), I pause to reflect on my acquisitions. What is it that drives me to back the next kickstarter, to troll BGG’s hotness list, to check into comic readers or tramps weekly in anticipation of filling that one gap in my assortment of game mechanics and themes that I didn’t realize I had?
Having not-so-recently become a father of two, my gaming habits had turned from a bi-weekly affair to appreciating the art of solo board game design. Mage Knight and Robinson Crusoe could have (and have) kept me entertained for months as I became accustom to my new responsibilities and lack of spare time, and yet my collection refused to slow down.
Here, among my sprawling collection, I propose to myself that board gaming is as much about the game as it is the experience. It must be the same feeling that keeps a car collector or antique hunter going; the experience.
The hours spent on Board Game Geek trying to identify that next game; is it a mechanic that is under-represented in my collection? Perhaps there is room for another zombie theme? What does Rahdo say about it? This thread of gamers on /r/boardgames played it at GenCon; what were their thoughts? All the while my mind trying to decide if it’s worth adding to wishlist; even then, where on the list does it go?
Once the decision has been made, the hunt begins. Thank Lovecraft that we have two decent stores that are up with the times; checking locally around release date is usually a fruitful endeavor. If we miss the boat there are more than enough online retailers both here and abroad that would be OK with taking our money and they often do. Beyond that we’re at the mercy of those who had the foresight to purchase the game before us… I’ve both overpaid for Tobago and overtraded for Xia (and countless others) to get those coveted games, more than happy to extend the offer in order to get that rare gem.
Then perhaps the best part; the unboxing. The first time you see the components in person, get to admire the artwork of the cards and the board, read the rulebook and soak yourself in theme and imagined interaction. The strategies playing through your head; why science seems more valuable than military, imagining your friend plotting to take family growth and how you’d need to get there first. The quality of the components; separating the power tokens and faux marble into their own player piles and bagging them individually for ease of setup of House Greyjoy in those future games that may never come.
And the chits! Those wonderful sheets of cardboard tokens just dying for you to punch them out. I swear it’s more satisfying than bubble wrap! I almost died of bliss punching those hundreds of tokens of ancient wonders and civil buildings in Sid Meyer’s Civilization. Not to mention the perverse, OCD-like satisfaction of organizing everything into their own logical groupings (obviously not lost on Upper Deck when they packaged Legendary Encounters).
I think the other unspoken part is the secret joy of being “the boardgame person”. If anyone needs to know anything about a game, they can ask me. Every “muggle” I’ve got into the hobby I count as a personal victory (much to my wife’s chagrin) and I enjoy sitting at the top of my own little board game empire, checking in every so often to make a suggestion or arrange a game night. Despite my penchant for always forgetting “one little (major) rule” I’m heralded as a rules guru among my boardgaming peers, and never turn down the opportunity to teach a new game to a new group. Each chewsday challenge seems to fit nicely between “love” and “belonging” in Maslow’s hierarchy.
All of this before even sitting down to play! If we refer to the oft-quoted “$10/hr” ROI of entertainment it’s not hard to justify most of the items in my collection even before they get to see the dull light of a board game table. The best part of board gaming is the shared, in-person experience with your group, but a close second is the hours that are poured into making that experience a reality for your friends.
]]>Wait, I know! It’s been two months since I cracked open a board game… I should solo a game of Arkham Horror! And, great idea upon great idea, I should take notes and write up my first deliciously witty session report! (Never mind the fact that I can’t tell a story to save my life.)
So that was my stupid idea last night. I’m not going to follow through with my session report. I gave up on that idea during the game. Instead, here’s a session report about a guy who’s too lazy and unimaginative to write a session report.
The players: Kate Winthrop, the sexy scientist, and Darrell Simmons, the sexy photographer. Shub-Niggurath, the sexy floating red mouths, has come to make their lives considerably more difficult.
So, setup, I grab the investigators’ items. Ho, ho!! Darrell has drawn a Press Pass. How perfect! This story is writing itself! And… some dynamite. Uhh… I’ll figure out how to spin that later.
At this point, I still have no idea how I’m supposed to go about writing one of these things. From what perspective should a session report be told? Kate’s? Darrell’s? Shub’s?
I draw the first Mythos card to get this lonely party started for reals: “Headline: Help Wanted.” The newspaper is offering a retainer to the first investigator to take the time during an interdimensional crisis to gain secondary employment. Awesome! Now Kate and Darrell are both working for the paper. I can write this sucker from the perspective of the editor! I watched about 20 minutes of Spider-Man 3 between episodes of D, so I can channel that J Jonah vibe. This is too easy!
two rounds later, both investigators lose their retainers in the upkeep phase
Dammit!
two rounds later
At this point, I look back at my notes to see the phrase “nothing interesting happens” about a half-dozen times already. I mean, there was stuff happening – like Darrell diving off a bridge to avoid some drunk college douches in a Model T, or Kate buying a motorcycle out of a stranger’s car trunk (?) – but I didn’t want to have to tie everything together. I wanted a tight, concise story (you know, the exact opposite of what I’m doing now). I was having trouble deciding what was worth using and what was superfluous.
twenty rounds later
All right, lots of tangible stuff for a clever storyteller to weave a tale with now!
The Southside Strangler struck, eventually killing three of my allies. On the same Mythos card, a Maniac was added to the board, who Kate later killed without use of a weapon. (Note: I’ll have to write that one as by strangulation since everyone loves such ironic twists.) Later on, a Zombie appears where the Maniac was previously killed. Perfect! It can be the Strangler risen from the dead! Kate kills the Zombie without a weapon. (Note: I’ll have to write that one as by strangul… wait, how do you kill a zombie without a weapon?) Kate was later arrested for impersonating a customer at Ye Olde Magick Shoppe. (Good thing she wasn’t caught choking a man to death in the streets in front of the police station earlier on or her fine might have been greater than $2.)
Meanwhile, Darrell’s collecting clues with his press pass (wait, wasn’t this prick fired like five minutes into the game?) and sealing open gates like a motherhumper. He also bought a .45 Automatic, which I think was the only weapon either of them had throughout the game, apart from Darrell’s dynamite he started with, that I guess his employer at the newspaper must have supplied him with:
“Simmons! We need some shots of that floaty mouth thing for the front page! But it’s pretty hairy out there. Better take this.”
“Dynamite?”
“Yeah, to keep you safe.”
“To keep me safe? You’re giving me dynamite to keep me safe?”
“Yeah, and if you want to keep pocketing that $2 retainer, you’ll go and get me those shots! If you don’t think you can handle it, there’s plenty of sexy scientists in this town who would kill – literally strangle a man – for $2. In fact, “Help Wanted”… that’ll be our first headline!”
Apart from that, Darrell’s journey was relatively uneventful, despite the fact that he was the only one doing anything actually directed towards winning the bloody game. So I could write a slightly intriguing story about Kate doing much ado about nothing, or I could write a slightly dull story about Dynamite Darrell’s other-wordly adventures. Either option sounded like a lot of work on my part, and I had enough work ahead of me putting this mammoth bastard of a game back in the box at 1:00AM when I was finished.
At about this time, I realized I didn’t have it in me to be a session reporter and I stopped taking notes. Too bad, really, because what an ending! Shub finally devoured Kate, defeating me with just one doom token left on the track! (She had a great combination of spells by this point that gave her a strong attack without costing her sanity.)
A satisfying end to a great game, and an abrupt end to a meandering blog entry.
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