Bob is going to be GMing the next email diplomacy, looking for signups for it….
Thur Night Gaming – Being a Drax Report – Wounded Knee Special
It was a dark and stormy night and a few brave souls ventured out amid the flying debris to lock in battle. We started with a ‘quick’ game of Dominion while we waited for everyone to arrive but this quickly degenerated into a ‘long’ game of Dominion and onto (for me anyway) a ‘terrible’ game of dominion. I’ve since considered burning spy, thief and militia as the time sink cards they really are. Boris won it with Brian close behind and me nowhere to be seen
Next up with the real meat and potatoes. I’ve had a hankering to play CONAN the strategy boardgame for a long time
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/27848/age-of-conan-the-strategy-board-game
BY pure concidence the same bunch of players were assembled last night that attempted the game last time. Now, Conan is a complex game, once you get into the swing of it it’s fine but it’s standard Fantasy Flight, lots of tokens, lovely artwork and a solid game. I’d be lying to say interest was low after the last attempt but we set to and with the conan soundtrack in the background we all attempted to wear the jewelled crown of aquelonia upon a troubled brow. If you haven’t seen the game it’s a bit different, it’s a bit like warrior knights with a few twists. Conan features but he’s a force of nature that you nudge in a certain direction rather than directly control. As the game continued it become more and more competitive and as we got to the half way mark it was looking like everyone was onboard for the long haul and due to the complex rules it WAS a long enough haul.
I don’t recommend attempting this game without someone to guide you and looking up half a dozen tutorials on youtube. It’s a hard game to get to grips with. Even with a good lash of it last time we struggled with some parts of it using the age old technique of we’ll figure that bit out later.
All in all this is an excellent game. There’s a good bit to it and a lot of ways to win. I’m eager to have another lash of it having figured out all the rules. Once you get into the swing of it, it can tip along at a nice pace. Nice level of player interaction and back stabbery.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating and everyone stayed the course so we didn’t finish until 2am and the winner was a little in question, I reckon it was Borys, he reckonded it was me but no-one had a bad time…. Except maybe Brian On…..
There are three areas you can score points for Mastery of Treasure, Women and Monsters….
In the third age you can attempt to steal a march and end the game by getting Conan to your home kingdom and crowning him king of your realm. It’s risky enough. Basically you declare which area you claim mastery of and show your points tokens you’ve gained through the game, if you’re highest in that area you win. So effectively Brian invited Conan to his kingdom and claimed to have the highest rating in Women in the whole world. 12 in this case, way higher than Bory’s 3 and Brian F’s 2 but…. Not as high as absolutle Babes from Aquelonia whom I had tokens for to a total of 15….
Conan was displeased, he beheaded Brian, marched off and his kingdom failed. Not a happy bunny J
Great game, I recommend it, let’s play this again since we can now
More of that next Thursday
Huzzah!
Thur Gaming – Easter Special
Gaming Tonight
My house 8:30
Who’s game?
Bastardcon Lite 27th April – IT’S ON!
Bastardcon returns for it’s sixth rerun this time with a different slant to it. Entitled Bastardcon Lite, we’re planning a laid back relaxed day of gentlemanly board and card games. Warhammer will not be the main feature this time.
Set you calenders and organise your affairs, it’s all happening on the 27th
Expect
- X-Wing
- Lords of Waterdeep
- Mansions of Madness
- Imperial 2030
- Historical Tabletop
- Last Days of an Empire
Plus a stack of other stuff, probably more than we can get through in one day, but we’ll give it a lash!
All welcome
New Bloodbowl League
Right Gents,
who’s interested in an OPEN bloodbowl league? Have been thinking about it and I spoke to a few players from the current one and they’re all in favour of playing a second league in parallel. HERE’S a suggestion. What about an open league? where you get to play as many games as you like but you take your best scores and after a set amount of time you compare them?
Hold on now! don’t run away, it’s not as crazy as it seems and I have had several sentences to come up with a cunning plan. The idea would be that you would play on the BB open league against your “friends” and develop you team. You would keep a record of your wins and most importantly keep a note of the DIFFERENCE IN TV for the matches you won. You would get the points different if the team was ranked higher than you and HALF the TV difference if they were lower than you in TV.
You then simple keep the three best scores and after that set time I mentioned above you add all three best matches together.
All you need is the PC game and some friends who play….
THUR night – pope Fran special
So anyhow. It was looking like a small group but within a short while we had a solid five and talk turned to galaxy trucker which is due out on the iPad soon. Having both it and the big expansion we quickly decided to give the cardboard version a lash
It has been a long time since it saw light and it took a wee while to re familiarize myself and the group with the rules. I’d forgotten how funny they were. In short you need lots if everything and every component is important
Galaxy trucker is a game about frantically constructing a spaceship from a dwindling set of parts before the other guys do and having hammered it together after a fashion (and of course cursing yourself and others for not attaching some useful systems) piloting it into the unknown and hopefully arriving in one largish piece before the others do.
Some skills lend themselves to this game very well. Those in the architectural or kitchen design area have an unfair advantage. So too those with knowledge of electrical systems. In short not me.
It’s important to realize and I can’t stress this enough. PLAYING is the reward. All those who take part are the real winners and the score may say different we were all winners that night… Just some more than others
The game rattled on to a fine old hour with some stupendous losses of ships and some radical designs all held together with one or two lynchpins.
Great game. Great gaming and let’s forget about silly old scores. I think everyone will agree we all won that night
Huzzah!
Games Night – Pope Fran Special
Back to Regular board games tonight (probably) my house 8:30
Drax report to follow….
Through the Ages online
THIS is a work of genius. A buddy of mine at a wedding recently alerted me to the online version of this game. I had been threatening to learn how to play it for years but never got around to it despite having played a full game of it a few years back. My impression of it then was a fantastic game and now…. well I have nothing but respect for it. It is the ultimate work placement game with a large dollop of cock blockery thrown in for good measure.
In essence it’s a civilization type game without a map. And while a game like this shouldn’t work (where’s the map?) it does in spades.
The online version features several flavors of the game. The community of players are friendly and great fun to plan with and in a lot of case are Extremely good at this game.
There’s an online league which I haven’t tried yet. It can be played on any device you care to mention.
For those of you looking at the basic graphics and wondering what the fuss is about I recommend you give it a lash and come back to me
http://www.boardgaming-online.com/
MrTimewalk
Thur Night Gaming – A New Hope
Thur Night and it was time finally for an epic battle of X-wing
We got to play a big game of x-wing last night here’s the rundown
The Bad
Takes a bit of setup, partly we were learning the game and partly there’s a lot of pieces and of course we were playing a large game 175pts, so lots of models, add-ons etc. The game NEEDS a good storage system, if you look on boardgamegeek you’ll see a lot about storage solutions. End of the day it’s a fantasy flight game so if you like your tokens you won’t be disappointed. Also it’s quite easy to mix up pieces and cards if you’re sharing sets. Myself and Kieran’s sets are not so much married to each other as a bit engaged. Again I don’t see this as a big problem as chances are you’ll be using your own models in the future, or one set, as it was a bit battle and we wanted the maximum amount of models on the table it was quite the orgy of cards and tokens. The game was long. Again we we’re learning it and it was a big battle. Took a good 3.5 – 4hrs to finish but we DID finish it and it was excellent all the way through, especially towards the end
The Good
It’s a great little game. It’s snappy, there’s a nice bit of strategy to it, guesswork, luck, planning, all that sort of good stuff. It’s simple, the manoeuvre dials are clever and on top of that the models are GOREGOUS. Have a look at the big photo. The millennium falcon is a work of art as is slave-1. In fact all the models look really well and they’re pre-painted. Very important. You don’t need to get the expansions for it, you could quite happily play with the base game (or two). I really really like it. The models all act the way you would expect. The tie fighters are agile but fragile, the falcon is a tough cookie, the y-wing can take and give a pounding. The tie interceptor is nice and fast. The a-wing didn’t make it but lurked in the background.
The game is balanced, the point system is simple and concise.
The game itself
The Imperials took a mix of middle of the road and elite pilots (vader) while the rebels went mostly elite (han solo, Chewbacca) and a few extra weapons The imperial went straight in (well a bit to the right) and let rip with everything on a lone x-wing taking it out first turn for very little return fire. Swung around and lined up with the converging rebels and it was wild west stuff. The Y-Wing dishing out a lot of hurt while the falcon hung back and took pot shots. The imperials concentrated on the fighters and started to take them out whilst the rebels concentrated on slave-1 (a slippery beast). Y-Wing was destroyed followed by a tie fighter and it was looking very good indeed for the imperials UNTIL the falcon slipped up behind it and let rip with everything doing some serious damage to it. The show on the other foot slave-1 slinked off hoping to avoid further damage persuaded by an x-wing. Vader took out another x-wing and 4 Tie fighters harassed the falcon. The last part of the game saw slave one avoid damage and the falcon eventually cornered and taken to pieces.
GREAT GAME
I would recommend it. I would also recommend a smaller game and I think next time we’ll go with one of the scenarios from the manual.
Thanks to all those how took part and I reckon next week it will be to normal programming!
Huzzah
Victor Gannon Games 