Hyper Active

hyper

Hyperborea is something new to me and maybe you too. It’s a “bag em up” conquest game with a bit of worker placement thrown in for good measure.

The game sees you and up to five chums squaring off on a smallish random hex map trying to get the highest score by a number of routes.

You start on your home city with three dudes and three cubes of six possible colors drawn from your opaque bag.

Now it’s up to you to shape your destiny by allocating the cubes to a variety of actions each costing particular colors. The actions range from movement to attacking, building temporary defenses, point scoring , increasing your supply of cubes or teching up to open up more actions for your cubes to power.

It takes a little bit to get your head around and you’ll see mechanics similar to Lords of Waterdeep, Dominion and a number of other games in there which help you along. A few turns in it will all make sense. Even the icons which are plentiful are all very logical.

The game is map based but it’s not really an area control game. Not in the usual sense. There are a limited amount of ruins which yield one shot resource tokens and cities which offer free operations like move a unit or advance a tech. The further inland you venture the better the options but the more exposed your dudes are to attack. It’s a bit king of the hill right in the centre with the best operations available to your brave minions.

This is a very interesting game. You’ll spend your first few games (I reckon) figuring out optimum moves with the other players constantly drizzling on your parade. They don’t rain accept with deliberate malice (game two onwards).

There’s also a stack of ways to earn points in the game all valid. Taking victory tokens, killing neutrals (ghosts), killing enemies, researching Technologies and so on.

A cool feature which I applaud is the ability to set a short, medium or long game. There are three conditions that end the game (getting 6 tech cards, getting all your men on the board, exhausting the point token pool). A short game is when any one of these is met. Medium you have to complete two and Long sees you reaching for all three end game goals.

Just like Eclipse players can be Johnny generic or pick a specific race with some special traits. Haven’t tried this yet. I will.

Presentation wise its shiny. Good solid pieces. Lovely artwork. Nice platicky pieces, each a different shape and colour per player. I picked it up second hand but unplayed for a great price and i’m glad I did. This is a neat game. It needs more replays and with different numbers of people but I’m eager for more. Always a good sign

Huzzah

Vic.

November 18, 2015 0

Friends with Benefits

“Mod it Monday”

Over the years I’ve come across a number of tweaks and mods for games that IMHO improve them quite a bit. These are usually decent games to start with but some clever folks have applied brain power and made them even better. I’m now going to share a few of those and hopefully like a new graphics card In your PC, breath some new life into some old games

First up is the venerable Settlers of Catan

A complaint sometimes wheeled out (mostly by LOSERS) is that’s when someone gets ahead it’s real hard to come from behind (feel free to insert appropriate oh errs or giggities right there). The welfare rules are clever and make this game a real close run race. I don’t play Catan anymore without them. Here’s how it works

First you’ll need a number of welfare tokens. An ordinary deck of cards works well.

dec

After each roll for resources, every player who didn’t get a resource gets a card from the deck (a welfare chit if you will). During a player’s turn they can cash in the cards at an exchange rate of what their score currently for one resource of their choice. That’s it.

So early on since you start with two points resources cost two cards each. As you progress the exchange rate will get higher as you score. It’s a real equalizer. Play a few games this way and you’ll see some interesting possibilities like holding back and making a sprint for the finish with welfare chits. It really makes for an interesting game.

Tell you what, don’t trust me (sound advice), try it for yourself and let me know what you think

Huzzah!

Vic

November 16, 2015 0

is there anyone there?

Ever remember the expression “we’ll see” when you were young and asked for ice cream on the way to somewhere? I had one of those moments.

Me : “Is mysterium worth buying?”

Gaming chum : “Hmmm, I’d Try it first”

Mysterium was a game that was mentioned to me some time back and I had a vague idea of how it worked. It sounded suitably different. I got to play it last Thur…. Ever play Dixit? Well then you’ve pretty much played mysterium. It uses the same mechanic of pictures to impart obscure messages. It’s a fun game. Mysterium is a fun game but. That’s it. It’s a bit of fun. It’s never going to blossom into a serious gaming relationship. It looks nice but it’s shallow. It’s a bimbo game 🙂

Mysterium sees you and up to five chums solving a Cluedo style mystery like regular scooby doos. One player takes the role of the ghost/GM and has to guide the others via a spread of crazy ass pictures to pick their associated killer, location and murder weapon.

Once everyone has done that it’s onto the final guess round where you need to figure who did for the ghost, where and with what. All working under the harsh regime of mistress egg timer.

It’s a lovely looking game. It’s got a nice bit of replay in there and it’s easy to pick up. It does however commit the heinous crime of being coop. To me if a game is going to be coop just like the coaches son it needs to work twice as hard to make the cut. For me it didn’t work. I prefer Dixit.

This is a fine gateway game and will appeal to new gamers. At least for one of two games. It will appeal to kids too and families and so on. There was a lot of hype around this game which can often be a bad thing.

The hype didn’t live up to the execution. I’ll play it again but I won’t rush out and buy it.

Huzzah!

Vic

November 12, 2015 0

Happy 6

Jay McKeown is the director of BroCon. A yearly three day cornucopia of board gaming, cosplay, console gaming and all things gaming gaming (yes I said it twice). He’s a Regular at thur night games, is despicably young and has a super power of inhaling rules and being right about them far too often

I caught up with Jay (wasn’t hard) and asked him what makes him happy about gaming and gaming cons

Jay. When did you first start gaming ?

I got into gaming big when the Lord of the Rings movies came out. I started buying the DeAgostini Battles in Earth magazine and that in turn brought me to our LGS for the first time. As I got older Warhammer took over from there, and after several years of that the cheaper options of board games, X-Wing and console gaming took over. Gaming evolution at its finest…sort of.

How did you become involved in Brocon and why do you do it?

In the con’s debut year they wanted to run Warhammer but had nobody knowledgeable in the subject. So I did my thing and invited myself onto the committee and it sort of stuck, and then grew to the point where I am now running the whole show. Running cons it the best and worst thing you can ever do in my opinion, and that’s why I am still here…that and nobody else wants to do it, ha.

What’s your favourite bit ?

Of gaming? Winning…no, really though, it’s that intrigue of seeing where any given game might go. I’m a sucker for the mechanics. Of running a con? The moment it begins and the moment it ends; they each have their charm.

Cosplay is quite a specialist area. What attracted you to it ?

Honestly, it was already there when I showed up. But it is one of the largest parts of the con and shows perfectly just what a con is all about; having a laugh with your friends, everyone else’s opinion be damned. It demonstrates perfectly the sort of comfort zone that nerd events of all kinds have brought about.

What is it that people love about gaming ?

I reckon the escapism of it all. It’s great not to have to worry about real life for a few hours and be at ease.

You attend a lot of conventions What makes a good games convention?

I am going to echo what many of con regulars have figured out as of late, and that’s having plenty to do. The shininess of the whole spectacle will tide you over for maybe an hour or two, but when you are paying €15-30 for a weekend depending on the con, you want to be entertained from start to finish. And that includes trying to appeal to as many different types of people as possible, not just niche groups.

If your house was burning down what would you save?

Blasphemy inbound, but it would have to be the Playstation. It is the most expensive thing to replace.

If you had a grand only to spend on gamying what wouldn’t you buy ?

I can’t really answer that question for marketing reasons; I may need some sponsorship for the con down the line somewhere. I can tell you what I would buy though; War of the Ring and Forbidden Stars. Best games of the year for me.

What’s going to be the next big thing in gaming?

Honestly, not a clue, and the whole thing about gaming is the here and now is good enough until that comes.

November 6, 2015 0

More 4X

I got to play Forbidden Stars last week. It’s been on my list of want to plays for a while and I’m delighted I did. One of my gaming group bought it and it’s a cracker.

There’s a number of mechanics melding into this heady brew. I can see hints of a Game of Thrones BG, Starcraft, Armada, Chaos in the Old World and something all of it’s own.

Each player gets to choose between Chaos (fighty), Eldar (zippy), Orks (tough) and Space Marines (balanced) and after a very nice board setup round have to venture out and recover four objectives tokens that the other three players have gone out of their way to put as far away from your starting positions as human/eldar/ork/choasey possible.

Players get a mix of smaller ships and ground troops and like any good 4x (well this is more a 3x as you can see all the sectors before you head out) have to spread out and dominate sectors, gain resources, build more stuff and upgrade their tech.

A bit like Game of Thrones players place action tokens on sectors to build there, move there, upgrade their stuff or grab extra resources from. Unlike GOT players can stack multiple orders on a sector and the orders are resolved in reverse order. This MAKES the game. I might decide to build in a sector but another player after me, decides to move there and their order is resolved before mine, so they move in, knock seven bells out of me and take over my stuff at which point my build order kicks off but because I’ve lost my factory I can’t execute it…. It makes the game very tactical and timing and bluffing are key. (all orders are placed face down)

Battles are neatly done. Units produce a number of battle dice which can show either attack, defense or moral icons, these combined with attack cards give results that aren’t just bring more guns and you win dependent. Units act as you would expect from the 40k universe. Chaos are all out attack with little defense, Eldar are good at dodging attacks and so on.

Attack cards and event cards can be upgraded leading to some very powerful abilities as the game progresses again all race specific and all nicely thematic

Unusually for a 4x game there’s no rules for alliances. Simple because, well, there aren’t any. You don’t have time for such nonsense. It’s kill kill kill and if you have time, kill some more. You’ve got objectives to collect and so does everyone else. The objectives alleviate another issue with some 4x games. There’s very little turtling. Granted you can but you won’t win by staying at home.

Something I have to mention is the build quality. This is a very pretty game. It’s Fantasy Flight so you’d expect as much. Like Imperial Assault it comes in a big box with some lovely (aching to be painted) miniatures (not as much so as Imperial Assult but nice all the same).

Rules are straightforward. You’ll get it pretty quick. One thing I loved about this game was how easy it was to read the position of everything. You need to collect 4 objectives to win. That dude has 3 collected you have none, you’ve losing. Stop him and get your own game in gear.

I spoke about Eclipse recently. This is a very different animal. Whereas Eclipse is more about the economics and upkeep, Forbidden Stars ecomic model is simple and descrete. Get resources, Build stuff, get it out there, try to avoid getting it destroyed.

For what you get the game is relatively fast. we got our first four player done in under four hours, but we were learning bits as we went. Battles do slow things down a little bit but I suspect more play will see subtler actions, more posturing and less fights but on second thoughts I doubt it. One of the things I really like about the game is fighting is a positive. In too many others games, getting into a number of battles rather than avoiding a fight spells disaster. Not so with Forbidden Stars. It’s par for the course. I lost a number of battles but it was by no means the end of me. (As usual my old chum Hubris was the end of me)

I really liked this game. It’s one of the newer Fantasy Flight premium style games which cost a bit more but give you a lot more and are worth the extra investment. If I was to knock the game the only real fault is that it’s a max of four players. I can understand this as the game would drag on with more, but I fully expect to see an expansion just like Chaos in the old World that will add a fifth. You mark my words.

All in all, a fine game, well worth the entrance fee

Again well done Fantasy Flight, keep em coming

Huzzah!

Vic

November 3, 2015 1

First they get the guns,

Cash and Guns or more password securely correct Ca$h and Gun$ is a reprint of a classic push your luck game called the same thing but with a few less rules.

The game sees you and up to seven chums (so it’s eight player in case math’s is not your thing) standing around a haul of loot and initiating a Mexican stand off each turn to see who gets the pick of the goodies. (unless you live in Mexico in which case it’s just a stand off)

It goes like THIS

Each player starts with a character with a special ability, maybe they can survive four rather than three shots, maybe they get more points for collecting diamonds and so on. they also get a foam gun. Foam so they don’t pistol whip each other.

Each turn a random spread of loot is laid out with one for everyone and having feasted their beedy gangster eyes upon it, the players secretly choose from their limited stack of bullets, half of which are blanks half of which are the real deal. the Don then shouts GO! (but not too loudly because the kids are asleep) or something suitably gangster and everyone points their gun at someone else and freezes. the Don now gets to change whom one person is aiming at and on the Dons second call players can drop their character down to indicate they are chickening out (wimps). Those left standing get to find out if guns pointed at them contain blanks or live rounds (not ideal) and take appropriate wounds.

Anyone not chickened out or shot gets to pick in turn from the loot in front of them. Rinse and repeat for a number of rounds. The loot varies from money to paintings and diamonds that are worth more the more you have in your stash at the end. It’s possible to exit early if you get three wounds so caution and guts determine the winners (and of course the money more accurately)

It’s pure party game. I’ve played this a number of times and it’s bigger cousin cash and guns live and it’s good fun. The gun mechanic is elegant the rules simple. It’s pure filler. My only gripe with the game was the absence of the undercover cop rules from the original (which can be easily retrofitted to the game) which made the original a much more interesting and paranoid experience. All in all worth having and really good to introduce non gamers to gaming.

All good

Huzzah!

Vic

October 30, 2015 0

Bad Planning

I first played Survive! on a PC way way back and it was called last days of Atlantis or something like that. I liked it. It was good clean water based fun. One of the reasons it faded from my view like retinal afterimage was I had played the computer version and I had played it against bots. Fast forward with suitable sound effects to near present day and I get to play it at the last Knavecon with the expansion making it a six player water polo mosh. It’s a great game. Well ok let’s hold on. It’s at least as good as The Downfall of Pompeii. If you liked that game and it’s game play style you’re in familiar territory for sure.

It’s the last days of Hanoi and everyone’s partying like it’s 1999. You need to get your best and brighest off the sinking island across shark infested water from the centre slowly shrinking centre island to the welcome corner islands. To help you in your endeavor you have row boats that take three peeps, friendly dolphins and the good old reliable breaststroke. Hindering you, you have Sharks, Krakens, Squids, limited time and worse still other survivors who will happily make a raft from your bloated body to row ashore.

In hindsight it may have been a bit foolhardy to settle an overpopulated unstable island surrounded by monsters. I’m convinced it was all a royal stag party dare that went horribly wrong.

The centre island consists of a random blob spread of hexes that come in three types. Sand which is the first to go, jungle the second lot to sink and rock that stands hero steady like a hob knob dunked in tea to the biter end.

Once the centre island is laid out players take it in turn to place their soon to be hopefully survivors. Each hex can accomodate up to three dudes and the aforementioned dudes have values written under them which in turn are worth points at the end if they survive so it’s key to get the high value guys to shore.

Players during their turn can move surviors either by boat if they have the most dudes in it or more slowly swim for it. You get a limited amount of movement points per turn and there will never be enough to save all your guys. In addition you get to move the monsters (preferably away from your guys and evil cackle towards other players). Each turn the island shrinks by one tile and once all the tiles have sunk it’s game over, full stop, count your points. (especially tough if you have some high point guys almost home)

The system is very neat and straightforward. There’s no ambiguity on rules. Monsters cover all posibiliteies Sharks can eat surviors in the water but not in boats. Krakens destroy boats and their survivors. Octipi do something something. Dolphins can give your swimmers a three hex boost towards the shore.

Is it fun? hell yeah. Getting your VIPs to land and inducing the monsters to block or destroy a flotilla of other player’s dudes is crush your enemies best. I had a lot of fun playing this game. It’s quick to learn and teach. It’s simple and it’s fast fun. forty minutes to an hour will see you done depending on numbers. There’s little down time because you’re constantly watching other players for where they’re heading to or where they’re directing the monsters

I’m going to make it my business to pick up a copy of this sometime soon. It’s that much fun.

Huzzah!

Vic

October 28, 2015 0

Humble Bundle

Some great digital versions of a number of old Games Workshop games (back when they did games) on humble bundle this week. Very good value

https://www.humblebundle.com/weekly

October 27, 2015 0

International Knavecon Day

Knavecon. Storming the ramparts so lesser gamers may follow.

October 22, 2015 0

Relax it’s Knavecon 7

Knavecon 7 is go, but relax… it’s not until next year the 30th April. For now let’s get some games in, drink some coffee and keep the gaming faith

See you all face to face end of April gamers

Huzzah!

Vic

https://www.facebook.com/events/936895246346748/

October 21, 2015 0