Hello Group, I’m an evil overlord
Hello Victor !
I guess it all started with Avon from Blakes 7 then Darth Vader and before I knew it I couldn’t stop trying to bend people to my will.
It’s a textbox story but I digress….
It was Thur night and we decided (well I decided) we would have another pop at Descent, having gone to the trouble of painting a few of the models and more carefully reading the rules. Someone had to be the evil overlord and funny enough I jumped at the chance. Being the evil character is always more fun in games. it’s more fun to be a werewolf in werewolf, Dracula in Fury of Dracula, Jack the Ripper in Letters from Whitechapel, the list goes on.
Descent unlike say Dungeons and Dragons is a competitive game. The overlord is actively trying to murder the adventurers not entertain them. We played the first scenario “The Fat Goblin”, there was a small group of adventurers and here’s where I found the first flaw in Descent. It sometimes doesn’t scale well. From the off the good guys were under pressure. Goblins were half inching the crops, spiders were harrying them, dice we’re betraying them it was a hard slog and things went from bad to really really bad in the second half
Descent adventures are played in two halves, act 1 and 2. The second being tougher than the first. In this case armed with
- Years of experience as being and evil overlord
- A relatively new group of gamers
- A slightly broken scenario
- a better command of the rules
- Tips on how to be Ireland’s next top Overlord
I wreeked havoc in the second act
The game doesn’t allow for the adventurers to die, they get knocked out and can recover, HOWEVER if an evil overlord wedges them in a spot with say oh I don’t know a Shadow Dragon and bunch of Poisonous giant spiders and just hammers them into unconsciousness every turn, they’ve had their chips and it’s an early shower for the party. That’s what happened. They we’re too small a bunch and they were overpowered early on. So much so that the Fat Goblin in the scenario could swan about and complete his evil plans without the unwelcome attentions of the adventurers. Game Set and Match to the Evil Overlord. Evil Chuckle.
I’ve since checked into this and it seems this scenario is the one in the whole game that doesn’t work well with a small group. It’s just unfortunate we had to pick it and I do hope we revisit the world of Descent again soon, it’s too good a game to be consigned to the shelf of no return.
Next up was a game I’ve successfully avoided playing for a long time
Agricola
I don’t particularly have a problem with this game, I did play it briefly once and it made some sort of sense to me. Having played a few other games since it now reminds me a bit of Lords of Waterdeep and maybe Farmsville 🙂 No that’s unfair it’s a fine game. It rates very highly in BGG and it is fun to play but I need to play it a good bit more before I get my head around it
That said… I did WIN the game with my limited knowledge of it but my insistence on blocking the most experience player whenever possible.
Agricola is a worker placement’s worker placement game. It couldn’t be more work placement if it tried. The game starts with each player having a small holding (oh err missus) and slowing trying to increase the size and composition of their farm to score points. A dozen or so locations on the map allow you to gain resources and spent resources to improve your farm. As the game progresses more and more options open up and it’s a juggle between feeding your family and improving your lot. Eat the cows? Upgrade your house to Stone? Build an oven? While this is going on everyone else is doing the same. The interaction comes when someone takes a space that you desperately needed that turn.
We played the standard game without the extra cards but all in all it’s a solid game, very playable. Personally I’m more of a direct attack sort of person but this is fine. If you want a bit of both btw I highly recommend Wealth of Nations with the War Clouds expansion
Then is was all over bar the banter
More of that soon
Huzzah!
Vic
Victor Gannon Games 