The Gathering in the house!

It wouldn’t be a Knavecon without the guys from The Gathering in Limerick. I Dropped in yesterday evening and we agreed a loose soon to be less loose plan. The guys are going to be bringing some really nice toys to the party

Pegasus Bridge

Anyone who went to conclave will remember this incredible Bolt Action scenario. They guys are going to be running it at the con

Expect a showing of BattleTech and Magic the Gathering on the day too

The Gathering is running Magic on the Sunday as well so if you’ve down for Knavecon make a weekend of it and jump in to the MTG competition on the Sunday as well

Can’t ask for better than that!

Huzzah!

August 20, 2014 0

There are Four Lights! – Thur part 1

I should have known better, WE should have known better than to get involved in a game picked by Krystian from The Boardgame Guys. His last head wrecker was Dobble and I’d only just recovered from that. Krystian subjected us to Cockroach Salad.

http://www.boardgameguys.ie/productdisplay/cockroach-salad

Cockroach salad just like Dobble is a simple game which consists of a stack of cards which are either Tomatoes, Peppers, Lettuce or Cauliflower (or cockroaches). Now it took me a bit to get my head around the rules, mostly because my mind was going “Is that it?”. This is a weird game, it shouldn’t work but it does. The deck of maybe a 100 cards is split amongst all the players and your goal is to get rid of your hand as quickly as possible. Now the fun starts. Here’s the rules if you don’t understand them give me a ring and I’ll try to explain them as best I can 🙂

You lay a card and call out what it is so Pepper, Tomato, Cauliflower, Lettuce or cockroach. Easy so far..

Now if the card you are laying on has the same type as the previous one you have to call out a different veg e.g. you play a tomato and there’s one already below it directly you call out say Pepper or one of the other four vegetables (yes I know tomatoes are not vegetables). Still with me?

Now if a cock-a-roche appears it has a vegetable with a cross through it so you can’t call that one out for a bit at all. Losing you?

On top of this you only have 3 seconds to call out your veg and it’s a recipe for a lot of effin’ and blindin’

Screw up and call the wrong one and you take the stack of cards that’s built up.

I liked it. It’s Not a game you could keep playing, it messes with your head in the same way as “yes, no and yeah” does, I reckon a few too many games of this and your synapses would be rewired irrevocably and you’d have to communicate purely by mime and clicks.

Great kids game. Once again we have a polish game that’s great for kids and adults (brain damage accepted). It’s going to be at Knavecon and I reckon I’ll be getting a copy. As one of the guys said last night (and I’m paraphrasing), “in hell there’s people playing this game as punishment.”

Huzzah!

Vic

August 15, 2014 4

Last thur a DJ saved my life*

*Not actually true

But we did play Skull and Roses.

Skull and Roses is the simplest game outside of alternative kicks until one person passes out. I’ve never done it but I would love to grab a stack of beer mats and make the game with a pen in a pub and have it played with noobs. Probably work better if I knew a number of noobs, I went to pubs and I owned a pen but there you go

Since we had a noob last thur and we had over the six player mark two copies of skull and roses fitted the bill. It’s a great warm up game and a great game to introduce non gamers to gaming (not that our new guy was a stranger to gaming). S+Rs is the very essence of poker. There’s elements of prisoners dilemma, bluff, beer mats, you name it, it has it all (insofar as those three mentioned just now). Could you play it for money? yes you could. Would I? absolutely not. Gambling and gaming are two very different things.

There’s something special about skull and roses that brings me back to it time and again. It’s probably the simplest gateway game for people. I tend to play it in two phases with new players. Play with only one card in front of you and the first player calls a challenge. Give people a few rounds of this then introduce the concept of stacking more cards OR calling the challenge. Play a few more rounds of that then take it away and have people wanting more. I’ve found this game a great filler at poker nights too, especially if you want to recruit new players. Watch their little faces and see how they react when you explain about bluffing.

I once hosted a game of Diplomacy at a con in UL many years ago with a buddy of mine and seven complete newbies sat down and as I explained the rules I said “obviously none of the agreements are binding”… I spotted two good gamers straight off the ones with the slight grins. I spotted one Really good gamer, the one who didn’t react but completed screwed over everyone else very quietly and succinctly

Selling someone a deal or bluffing is grist for the mill when it comes to gaming. I think it’s one of the key skills you need to learn in life. Doubly so if you plan on being and evil overlord and let’s be honest… whom doesn’t dream of that!

Huzzah!

Vic

August 13, 2014 0

More from last thur and How to be a Good Evil Overlord

Since the village up the road has been suffering biblical floods (probably for sinning) it seemed appropriate to play lords of waterdeep. That plus I didn’t give that much thought about this preamble

Lords of Waterdeep was the darling of Knavecon 1 and 2 and it’s still a crackin game. Truth be told it had been a while since it hit table and i’d forgotten how good it it. It’s very good. Event without the expansion the base game if wonderful. With the expansion it’s a bit longer but it’s sublime.

I’ve ranted about this game before. I probably mentioned that for a pretty simple worker placement game it punches way above its weight. There’s something special about LOWD i have played it a few dozen times and I’m always more than happy to play it again.

Oh and the fact that I left everyone IN THE DUST from the get go helps a lot. Usually when i play this game someone who shall remain Drax goes out of his way to rain on my parade. The gaming gods were in a good mood and from early on i stole a march on the other players. I landed two 25 point missions in quick succession and the others were hard pressed to catch up. At one stage a player was heard to say “this game is over were fighting for second”.

Much as you might think this is a wonderful position to be in.. It’s not. It’s too public. If you’re going to become an accomplished evil overlord the trick is not to do it visibly. Being and Evil overlord is all a out snatching away victory from someone at the last moment. You’re never going to break a spirit if they know it’s coming. Your opponent has to believe they’re winning or at least that victory is in their grasp before you AT THE VERY LAST MOMENT take it away by the smallest or if you prefer largest margin.

Winning a game early is just no good you take your opponents hope and that’s a tragedy. If your going to excel at being an evil bastick pace yourself, don’t expect instant results, be content to be a BIT evil and be comforted by the knowledge that one day you will rule the word (evilly)

Huzzah!

Vic

August 11, 2014 0

Magic 7

Seven has always been viewed as a special number. A lucky number, a magic number and funny enough it’s also the mostly likely outcome of rolling two dice.

Seven players on the other hand are a different story. There aren’t all that many games (at least in my library) that will entertain seven together for the whole night without dragging the holy hoop out of things with downtime. There are a few alright Battlestar, eclipse (with the add on), seven wonders but the night took it’s own course when two of the gamers drifted off together like teenagers at a disco to play Magic the Gathering

Let’s talk about the first game we played

Resistance

Resistance is a mafia type game (werewolf) but without elimination and untidy ripping out of throats. The game will happily support up to ten

It’s fast it’s simple and it’s great fun. Sometimes it’s really really good other times it’s just really good.

At the start a number of cards with rebels (good guys) or spys (not good guys) are dealt out so no one is quite sure of whom each player is (just like werewolf). In the games we played (resistance is like pastilles it’s impossible to have just one)(game) I wasn’t once a spy but do you think I was believed to be a good empire fearing rebel? NOOOOO. “Typical spy talk”, “Vic’s a spy”, “look at the big spy head on him” no one actually said at any stage.

So the good guys lost every game and the spy’s were failing missions in their sleep. It was a disaster and all because no one believed me, even the new guy. I blame myself insofar as I don’t actually blame myself I just need to change tack and reduce the amount of backstabbing I do so one day people will believe me when I make a deal..,, and I can then quickly backstab them

Definitely a game for ten at Knavecon

Huzzah!

Vic

August 8, 2014 0

Take My Money Already

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite_sec.asp?eidm=269&esem=1

I’ve been a HUGE fan of the X-COM games right back to the Laser Squad days. The Gallop Brothers created something wonderful that has never lost it’s appeal.

Fantasy Flight are now releasing a boardgame version of X-COM (albeit at co-op game). I find it hard to believe they won’t do anything but nail it as they have in the past with other licenses.

Hurray Up and release it, the safety of the world depends on it!

huzzah!

Vic

August 6, 2014 0

on an X-Wing and a prayer (just an X-Wing really)

Ok I’m hooked. X-wing fever has caught hold. A sure sign is how my browser (on a number of PCs) seems to think I want squad builder when I press any letter on the keyboard.

Being silly season, we were only four last Thur and when deciding on what to play nearly everyone said “X-wing!” And so it was

No 100 point battles for us. 200pts a side? PAH! It was a full on, leaded, tackle out, no holds barred, stomp a man when he’s down 300pts a side! A real mans game and we were real men

Now X-wing is great. Lovely fantastic super but it DOES take time to setup. I reckon we were well over half an hour just setting the whole thing up powered by multiple coffees , co-operation (still getting over that) and good cheer (Drax didn’t make it), Well worth the set-up entrance fee

The Imperials (not me) took

2 x FireSprays
1 x Tie advanced
1 x Lamda class shuttle
3 x Tie interceptors (maybe it was 4)
1 x Tie Defender
1 x Tie Phantom

All top class ships none of your tie fighter muck here. All kitted out with CD players, air con and cruise control. In other words we have the models let’s throw them out there and see what happens.

On the rebel scum side (me)

6 x X-wings. Count them
The falcon
1 x Y Wing
1 x A wing

The rebels had gone heavy missile so it was going to be noisy and fast.

Our team in the grand tradition had ignored each other during squad design and just picked our ships as the mood took us

The plan from the rebel side was to hang back and let rip with all the missiles so it was slow movement across the board whereas the imperials were straight in with the absolute bare minimum of kissing.

Initial fire from the rebels was sketchy scoring very little damage while the imperials were de-shielding left and right. I immediately took the smart route of blaming my team mate for his obvious lack of commitment and our current misfortune.

Funny enough this seemed to pay dividends and Vader in his tie advance took a nasty paddling from his young fella and his equally nasty smuggler bud.

Having seen Vader cause a lot of trouble in earlier games I was determined to fix his wagon. Another round saw him wink out and the falcon started a slow steady tour of the battlefield with Luke side by side

At this point everyone was close up and it quickly degenerated to shillelagh law and their were wigs on the green. The tie interceptors menaced while the two firesprays lumbered around surrounded by a pride of x-wings. The x-wings harried the Firesprays like a pack of rabid dogs and eventually brought both of them down with very little damage to themselves. The A-wing cashed in its chips pretty quick. Doing what it always seems to do. Zoom around looking flashy but quickly getting smacked down like the dog in foghorn leg horn.

The phantom was a nasty contender combined with someone who knew how to use it (i.e. Not me). It started to take a toll but couldn’t hope to compete with the massed forces of all those x-wings.

Meanwhile the falcon was knocking out ships for sport. The 360 degree turret fire on it was devastating along with the re-rolls. The lamda shuttle overshot and proved hard to get back into the fight. It’s a sluggish beast and we half expected to hear beep beep beep sounds as it turned and manoeuvred.

By the time it had got back in the fight the falcon had hovered up the opposition. Once the phantom cashed in its chips it was all over bar the shouting.

The shuttle proved small beer and Luke doggedly pursued and smacked it down

At the end we had three serviceable x-wings and a perfectly fine falcon, the imperials were nowhere to be seen. (so we couldn’t’ actually see them)

The killers of the night had been Luke and the Falcon. The phantom and tie defender had been nasty but again that’s the beauty of this game. The same combo up against a different (for fun lets say better) opponent would prove a different prospect.

Make no mistake this is a fantastic game. Id go as far as to say this is the future shape of table top. Yes yes that’s heresy but I’m seeing a trend where players are for one reason or another (kids) becoming less connected with full on games like Warhammer and are drifting to fast tabletop fixes like x-wing. But Hey! That’s gaming, it’s a cauldron that’s constantly stirred by new innovations and it’s great to see x-wing doing so well. If fantasy flight continue to deliver expansions as good as the ones to date this game will be around for a very long time to come and I for one am more than happy with that

Huzzah!

Vic

August 4, 2014 0

Burinating the Peasants!

gianthay

When I was a kid I used to watch British wrestling on Saturday mornings. Giant haystacks eh.. Other fellas and that was grand and dandy. It was a diversion, I knew it was all made up and I was nonplussed by the whole thing

Now I have some gaming buddies* who LOVE wrestling or more accurately watching others do it OR they did like wrestling when they were younger. I never really got it maybe that’s why I’m nonplussed by luchador. It could also be that it’s a bit too simple and samey or a couple of games are not enough to appreciate it. Either ways it’s not beeping my jeep

Luchador is a dice based combat game where wrestlers duke it out in a small cardboard ring WWE style. It’s small, portable and fairly cheap. It’s ok. It’s just ok. Bit like bread ,grand but nothing to get exited a about

lucador
You can play tag team matches too which is the standard game plus a couple of extra rules for tagging out. When I see rules written like you must high five or it doesn’t count I groan internally

Each round players simultaneously throw four wrestle dice onto the ring which is around 10″ square or if you think in metric 10″ square go google a conversion

The idea is to land your dice inside the ring and hopefully knock your opponents out. Only dice in the ring count. There is Zero skill in this just blind luck

The dice have a number of sides

Hit
Miss
Pin
Block
Counter

Misses miss. Counters change an opponents hit into one for you. Blocks block a hit and pins can happen if the opponents energy is low enough.

You can reroll pins.

Get a hit and you roll a damage dice and hopefully reduce your opponents energy a bit. Get two hits and you can roll a special move that May or may not do a lot of damage.

The game comes with a number of wrestlers all of which are slightly different to each other insofar as Duff original, Duff lite and Cherry Duff are different to each other

I would really like someone to tell me I’ve played this wrong or there’s an advanced set of rules that make it better but for me anyhoe I wasn’t gone on it. I thought it was as skillful as a national lottery game and just plain dull.

I’m sorry but not for me

I can barely Huzzah!

Vic

July 30, 2014 0

Never tell me the odds!

I’ve spoken before about X-Wing miniatures game. It’s a cracker. Fantasy Flight have really nailed it with this. It’s Skylanders for grown ups.

When I say they’ve nailed it they’ve gotten everything right.

Gorgeous pre painted scale models of the ships – CHECK!
Great game play – CHECK!
Captures the feel of Star Wars – CHECK!
it doesn’t stray near episodes 1-3 – CHECK!
It’s relatively inexpensive – CHECK!

The more I play this game the more I like it and to be honest I had better, I’m pot committed on it having been swayed by the beauty of the models. Between myself and my x-wing buddy (there are no buddies in gaming) we’ve amassed a good collection of models and last Friday night was a chance to get in a few games.

I’d picked up a few new models from the second and third waves over the last few months and they’d sat gathering dust on my gaming shelf. Time to crack them open!

Coming to the party were the B-Wing and the New Imperial Phantom. I’d played a few small games of it at Brocon and had a thirst for more. The games at Brocon were straight out of the starter kit, One X-Wing versus Two Tie Fighters.

If X-wing were a Massive Multiplayer Game then the B-Wing would be a Tanker. A slow slugger than can take one for the team. It’s dog slow and gets stressed very easily. You can equip it with a range of missiles and it can really pack a punch.

In hindsight showing my hind was a mistake

Now the phantom is a fighter in MMO parlance. It’s nimble. It can deal out a paddling like it was making butter but it can’t take too much abuse. It’s also got a natty cloaking device which is new and despite what you might have in your head about how that should work from watching too much Star Trek it’s more a big move boost than a cloak in the traditional sense

Now I’m no expert on x-wing so were still at the learning as we go stage as far as what’s a good squad build. In gaming I find this the sweet spot, where the game is new enough that you’re not sick of it or stuck in a rutt but you know the rules well enough that you don’t make basic mistakes.

For the first few games I took a tie fighter (backstabber)(who’d have thought) and the phantom whilst my opponent took a B wing and an A wing

Just like him I love the A wing. I’ve never seen it do anything outside of running around excitedly like a my little pony but it does look real purdy. I’ve two of them now so they can run together all giggly and no doubt fall down a bit.

The combo of tie and phantom was fantastic. In retrospect my higher pilot value for both ships was what did it. The four attack dice on the phantom coupled with a high pilot value was devastating. In the three games we played I was able to deploy last then zoom in with both and take out the A wing then dance around the B wing like it was a fat mall cop

In fairness I was fantastically lucky with dice rolling. At one stage I rolled a crit on my first shot at the A wing and scored two hits directly on the hull taking it out effectively with one dice

The same went for evades. I was having a great few games up until the last where cockiness showed me what a B wing can do up close and personal

After that it was a few A wing v Tie fighter battles. All good

X-Wing is impressing the hell of me. It’s been a slow grow since I haven’t gotten to play it that much. It is essentially a two player game and that doesn’t fit well on thur nights.

My next port of call with this adventure will be X-Wing on VASSAL

If you haven’t looked at VASSAL you need to have a google. I’ll be doing a full report on it soon

For now Huzzah and happy gaming

Vic

July 29, 2014 2

Always wash your Gi before an assasination

Ninjas didn’t Actually wear black. Think about it, if you’re going to sneak up on someone and kill them you’ll stand out like a bad guy on CHiPs if you’re dressed completely head to toe in black. and you unlike everyone else is wearing a mask. Brought to you by BroScience.

Ninja Dice is a nice little filler game, players take it in turn to be the Ninja and break into an increasingly difficult set of houses which consist of a number of guards, locks and citizens all of which must be overcome either through stealth or violence. Now while the ninja is stealthily doing this the other ninjas are obviously helping him…. NOPE, they’re trying to cock block him big style. Stop there I’m sold

The game is very new, I’m not sure you can get it yet except via kickstarter but it’s worth looking for.

The first player takes a number of black House die and rolls them, in the first round this is four dice but in the next three it will be five then six as the houses become harder to break into. These house dice have symbols for locks, guards and citizens or multiples of these.

The crafty ninja now rolls their white action dice and try to match up with symbols on the house, So if they roll keys it opens a lock, sneak icon they can match them with guards and citizens, Throwing Stars against guards and the wildcard ninja symbol that’s anything you like.

Ninjas get to hold and reroll whichever dice they like but there’s a time limit which I’ll explain badly later.

So far so Yahtzee but there’s a couple of dice I didn’t mention (drip feeding the rules you see). The ninja can also roll a (can’t remember the real name so I’ll make something up) Abundance dice that you put with a sneak/star/lock/wild dice to give you four of them.

In addition to all this the aforementioned palsied ninjas are flinging arrows at you. the DIRECTION the dice lands in (in a similar fashion to an artillery dice in warhammer) determines whom gets hit. The weasel like ninja breaking in has a final symbol he can roll a catch arrow one that stops him from being skewered by an arrow.

Since the arrows are flying nilly willy it’s quite possible to hit another spectator ninja. Hitting someone will reduce their score by one and it’s the DICE of the other players you’re aiming at, not as we first though the players themselves who squirmed and moved through the first half of the game to avoid incoming fire.

If a spectator ninja rolls an hourglass symbol they lose their dice and if all the spectators roll them it’s time up for the thieving ninja.

If the main ninja succeeds in breaking into the house they get a score for what they overcame and a bonus if they did it stealthily rather than with ninja stars. They can at any stage of course wimp out and leave the house but they lose out on score. So it’s a push your luck game.

This is a great little game. I’m going to try and pick up a copy. It’s quick, it’s simple and the whole position on the dice is a nice mechanic.

Dice are all in now, Marvel Dice Master, Luchador! Mexican Wrestling (more on that in another post). Quarriors! eh… not so much. But anyway, this is a nice little filler dice game and it comes in a rather natty holder. It’s gets a solid two thumbs up from me.

Should have a couple of copies to play at Knavecon come the day

Huzzah!

Vic

July 24, 2014 0