Conclave Eve Thur – Being a Drax Report

Had a small group on Thur so we played those games you never get a chance to play normally. In this case we got to play

QUARRIORS!

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/91536/quarriors

For some reason ‘got to catch them all’ keeps coming to my head when I see the adverts for this game but it couldn’t be further from the reality. Quarriors is a fair bit like Dominion with Dice

Possibly a bit unfair but there you go. I LIKE dice games. I like liar’s dice, I really like roll through the ages and I WANT to like Quarriors but it’s doing a damn fine job of evading my love. Granted we had too few to really give it a lash but it doesn’t seem to scale that well. I reckon it’s a full cast or no game.

Just like Dominion you start with two ‘hands’ of dice, this time in a bag, representing money. you draw six dice roll them and depending on what turns up you pay ‘qudditiy’ (gold) to power them or use your GOLD to buy creatures and enhancements. it then becomes a bit like Magic the Gathering where you attack your opponent and they defend possibly sacrificing their creatures.

Creatures surviving a round score glory (points) and the first to a set point target wins. it’s all harmless fun and the skill is in picking a winning strategy whilst defending against your opponent. NOW here’s the thing, I reckon we must be missing something because it’s all a bit weak. you build the biggest creatures you can afford and attack your enemy. Rinse and repeat. Fastest to get to the highest score wins. There was a distinct lack of strategy in this game so I’m going to hold off my opinion (It sucks) for now. As I said I like dice games (this one sucks) and want to like this so watch this space.

next up was ASCENDING EMPIRES

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/37919/ascending-empires

Now THIS is more like it. I must admit I had no idea about it outside of the fact that it was a 4x game and it had spaceships in. As the saying goes, you had me at spaceships.

Ascending Empires is a very different game. You move around the map land troops, conquer planets, fight battles, carve out an empire. All standard stuff but movement of the ships is achieved by flicking your little round ships. If they collide with an enemy both ships die, if you outnumber your opponents ships within a certain range you destroy him.

Ships can be converted to troops to land on a planet, to build structures and to summon more troops. Structures can be used to score end game points or allow research of better stuff.

I LOVE this game. its simple, the flicking mechanic works perfectly. The board could be better. The joins between sections are a bit iffy in places and can affect your flick but it didn’t when we played it.

I’m going to bring this to Conclave (and possibly everywhere I go) and show it off. It’s a cracker and I’m surprised it didn’t make a bigger splash when it was released.

It’s no longer in print but there’s a few copies out there so you’ll get it secondhand easily enough.

So after Conclave tomorrow it’s back to thur and more Huzzahs

Huzzah!

Vic

June 14, 2013 0

My Thur Rages on – Being a Drax Report

Spartacus a big favourite of the group (and more importantly me) was supercharged on Thur with the addition of the first expansion for it “The Serpents and the Wolf”

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/134466/spartacus-the-serpents-and-the-wolf-expansion-set

spart

The group had been watching this with anticipation so when it was released we pounced on it like a starving cat in a lifeboat. first up, it’s good, it’s very nice indeed. This is definitely worth getting and they’re giving away a promo card (or two) with it.

I’d put money on it (not mine) that if they reprint the original this would be included, it screams “should have been in the original box but we were saving money to make the base version popular”

For your dolla you get two new dominus (it’s now six player), a stack of new gladiators and slaves, some very small rule additions and most importantly the ability to field teams of two v two. THIS is the whole sizzle of the expansion and not wanting to wait I forced the first match to be a 4 player.

The rules are that if your influence is 10 or over you can call a Primus (a 4 player) and an intrigue card can force this too. it makes for some very hairy races to the finish.

The game plays a tiny bit slower and you tend to analyse the 4 player moves a bit more carefully but it doesn’t slow it by much and I believe you would be back up to normal speed for the game pretty quickly. Because of how the game works even with six (and we had six on thur) it doesn’t leave people waiting too much, we flew through intrigue and market. With six in the running anything can happen.

The only thing I was unsure about was you can’t stab your team mate in the back unless you have a specific gladiator but I think a house rule would fix that. We’re ALL about the backstabbing on thur nights 🙂

This is a cracker of an addition. if you’re a fan of the original it’s pointless me saying but GO get this. it’s well worth the entrance fee. Oh yes and it’s NOT suitable for kids but it says that clearly on the box (as I’m sure an actress may have said to a Bishop)

a few rounds of Zombie Dice rounded out the evening. I didn’t win that either but I’ll still

Huzzah!

Vic

June 7, 2013 1

Sunny Thur Gaming – Night of Horror- Being a Drax Report

Well we finally got to play Mansion of Madness after several Thursdays of false starts and it was as good as I had hoped and more. The Mansions of Madness is a very nice model/map game set in the HP Lovecraft universe. 1920’s, unspeakable horrors from beyond, maniacs, tommy guns, hats. It’s got it all. The game itself in essence is a dungeon romp in the tradition of heroquest and it’s ilk but it’s very clever and the setting is magnificent.

Unlike say the excellent role playing game, this is competitive with the GM trying to kill/drive insane the investigators whilst the investigators are trying to solve the mystery against the clock. The game contains a lot of clever ideas and unlike some others games like this none of these are superfluous or counter productive. Despite being story driven the game has a fantastic replay value. Each of the six scenarios that come with the games have multiple branches so it’s quite possible to play the same scenario over and play a very different game.

A lot of thought has gone into this game and it’s obvious from the start. Like all FF games the quality is superb. like all FF games there are a LOT components, in the case of MOM there are a L O T of components and separating them out is a chore. Once bagged and tagged there is NO air in the game box.

The rules are excellent, straightforward and fast. The one thing against it is the setup time. It took us a LONG time to setup however if we all shut up talking shite (we could hardly do that) and got on with it I’d say we’d be up and going in under a half hour. what IS nice in setup is the invetigators have to setup the map whilst the GM sets up the pieces within.

SO how did it go?

The investigators stumbled in the house of lynch learning the rules as they went (which turned out simpler than we thought) and immediately did the thing demanded of all horror movies/games. Split up and go separate ways (possibly with candles and night dresses). Within a very short time axe weilding manics, zombies and other assorted bad stuff was all over them like a Brian. In fact one luckless investigator was like a maniac magnet, you couldn’t leave him alone in a room for five minutes to search but an axe wielding maniac would splinter the door and come for him. Despite the best efforts by the GM (me) to drive them mad, hack them to death I was unsuccessful but more importantly so were they and the time ran out for them and in the case of the scenario I picked that was all she wrote for the hapless investigators. Queue Thunder and Lightning and manic laughter.

Overall this is a fantastic game, definitely one of the better games I’ve played in a long time. We seem to be having quite the run of good games lately with Spartacus, Waterdeep and this.

More of this sort of thing I say

and now that I’ve learned the rules (mostly)

It’s going to be hitting the table again soon

Hail Cthulhu !

May 24, 2013 2

Listen Here Partner Thur – Being a Drax Report

It was high noon (8:30) and the folks in the homestead had fixed a mess of food (put on the coffee), reckon it was time to play Way out West

But before any of that could happen we had to play

Letter of Marque
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/29096/letter-of-marque

I got this as a swapsee and I can see why it was swapped to me. It’s grand in a sort of Bread is grand kinda way. I had not strong feelings about it one way or the other and I’m sure it will hit the table again. it’s a bluffing/guessing game with a bit of card counting. nothing special and it has ships in which is always good. it’s very quick and we flew through 2 or 3 games of it before the main event.

WAY OUT WEST
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/884/way-out-west

Soundtrack from Good the Bad and the ugly – CHECK
Coffee – CHECK
Cowboy quotes – CHECK
Spittoon – eh no

I like this game and want to play it again. It’s pretty past. there’s a LOT of in your face aggression (although we may have taken this a bit far as there wasn’t a whole passel of development, just a few wounded cowboys and a lot of cattle and tumbleweed at the end). It’s a semi worker placement game for want of a better term. it’s not so much about cock blocking other locations on players although this does play a part, it’s more about and a lot of fun for that russeling cattle, muscling in on other players patches and generally causing mayhem whilst trying to maintain your own economy.

It’s great fun, it really is and the cowboy theme works really well. The rules are very straightforward although the original ones in the box are a bit confusing and a better set can be downloaded from BGG.

There were shootings, stagecoach robbery, rebranding of cattle, sheriffs killed and banks robbed. Not bad for the first turn. Newton got behind and being the decent group we are we picked on him continually for the whole game until he was eliminated. Always kick a man when he’s down just in case.

Drax (an expert in cattle and cattle prevention) started to slip ahead but was brought under control by the combined agreement of The enemy of my enemy is my friend for this turn or at least until he does what I want and then he’s my enemy again. Cattle swapped hands a lot, there were a LOT of shootouts, truth be told I don’t think a single turn passed without one and in the end… I think drax won it. Strong cattle management and stronger muscle and bully tactics won the day

So after that and with a little time left we had a lash of half Tishu (500pts).

Great game, team Awesome split and fought against each other and despite some nice play by the weaker half of team awesome , good prevailed and I won (I mean my team won). Drax lost. Cosmic Balance was restored

More of that next Thur

Huzzah!

May 17, 2013 0

Micturating Thur – Being a Drax Report

As Renée Zellweger famously said in the movie Jerry Maguire “You had me at Cthulhu”*.

SO, I decided to have a crack at Mansion of Madness once again. All pieces were laid out the instructions carefully studied and it was quickly brushed aside when players arrived. This is going to elude for a while. I’ve settled on a plan to set it up with a friend of mine not on a Thur night and do a play through to get the hang of it. It’s just too good a game to ignore and too good a game to get wrong, so bare with me.

First up of the night was

Alien Frontiers
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/48726/alien-frontiers

The tagline on the front is “Do you have what it takes to colonize a new world?”. Based on my performance in last nights game I would have to say NO. it’s a nice little game. Can be quite quick and involves some nice cock blockery. Had been a while since we’d played so took a few rounds to get back into the swing of things i.e. cock blocking. I didn’t win. but since Drax didn’t come thur night due to some dentistry issue (I can only assume he had his fangs removed by the vampire council) it didn’t matter.

It was then straight into

Lords of Waterdeep
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/110327/lords-of-waterdeep

This is the game that just gives and gives. It’s very much more than the sum of it’s parts and I love it to bits as does everyone who’s played it so far. It’s proving to be the game of the year so far for me anyway. Again no success like some of the newer players but it’s all about playing and not about winning*

*(it’s about winning)
**(and drax losing)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tichu

Last of the night was a ‘quick’ game of Tichu. Our newest member picked it up like quicker than a student would pick up a half smoked fag. The new team awesome after a tichu fail and a 1,2 win against never got off the stocks and with a shortened end game (500pts) and a late finish 2am. We had to concede defeat. We didn’t have to LIKE it but we did have to concede it.

BTW If you haven’t played tichu yet, you really are missing out. Incredibly awesome and relatively simple card game

SO more of this short of thing next thur and a hearty

HUZZAH!

May 10, 2013 0

Spot Hidden Thur : Being a Drax Report

Well after a thorough read of the rules we were all set for Mansions of Madness. After a full half hour of talking rubbish, drinking coffee and talking more shite, ohhing and ahhing the models, looking at all the extensive cards we agreed it looked like a fantastic game, so we put it away and took out Spartacus with a promise of revisiting MoM real soon. Maybe even next thur.

So it was we had at it with Spartacus once again.

I Totally confused Borys a couple of times during the game, once by being nice to Newton and the second time by flipping a coin to decide something (I hand’t actually said heads or harps I just flipped a coin and said, NO, can’t do it but thanks for them money). The way to go in this game is definitely be the host. a couple of unexpected wins by some underdogs and somehow I convinced people that Borys was Bad and I was good and I cruised home to a handy victory. It was only at the end they copped what I was up to by selling everything i owned and having and unassailable bid for host pushing me over the line. Great game but I think we’ll let it sit now until the expansion arrives

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/134466/spartacus-the-serpents-and-the-wolf-expansion-set

With a tired bunch we decided against K2 but that’s going to be a definite for another night so it was

Kingdoms
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/119/kingdoms

This is a game that can go terribly right for you or terribly wrong. It’s a wee bit too random for me, but then again I have never won a game of it so I would be critical.

a very early lead by Brian couldn’t be stopped despite our best efforts so some embarrassingly low scores crept in at third and fourth positions.

SO, next week DEFINITELY it’s Mansions of Madness

Huzzah!

May 3, 2013 2

Bcon Lite Thur

Great night of gaming last night, we we’re joined by a newly driving gamer whom I hope will make it out to us again, but not win so much.We’re a friendly bunch of gamers and the thoughts of aggressive play, cock blocking another player or backstabbing was abhorrent to us 😉

So first game of the night along with coffee and fancy cakes was

Lords of Waterdeep

This is a fantastic game, I’ve mentioned it before on the blog but it combines worker placement with very direct player interaction. There’s something a bit special about this game, it’s very much more than the sum of it’s parts. It’s fast, component quality is excellent and it’s fairly tense and exciting. Nothing like edging past a player at the end to steal a victory. Not that I’d know about that as I got hammered every which way in the game last night. Borys took and early lead with Paul doing suprsingly well and me slowly bringing up the rear. Drax and Kieran battled it out with Drax sneaking ahead with the normal *gentlemanly* behaviour we’ve come to expect. At the end of it we didn’t really care who did it, could have been Borys probably was in face however the real battle was between myself and drax and I won it! took a photo of the win and then somehow Drax magiked a card from under his section and realised… “Oh! look another 4 points putting me . . . ., ONE point ahead of you vic?”. It’s a stupid game, played by stupid people 🙂

After that we HAD to have a crack at

Through the ages

I’m a HUGE fan of this game. it’s a bit fiddly, it take a while to learn, and it’s a long game especially with new player but WOW, it’s incredible. The more you play it the more you like it. There is a Lot going on in this game. It’s best in my opinion to play it online to learn it properly because a full cardboard game of it can rattle on for quiet a few hours. we game it three of those and it still only got 2/3 of the way through. Like every time we’ve played no-one wanted to quit but we were forced due to time contraints. In the end Boris was ahead but it was such a good game that was neither here nor there. I reckon it will have to come out to play a Bcon. The jam biscuits btw in the picture are not part of the game as such.

So good nights gaming, everyone happy

See you all at bcon

Huzzah!

April 26, 2013 3

Nearly Bcon – Thur

Numbers were low due to a mother-in-law audit for one of the players so we started with Canal Mania

Canal mania is all about building… well canal’s funny enough in the 1800’s and NOT railroads although that distinction was missed more than once during the game. Even though it’s a fairly straightforward game and we’ve played it before it took a while to remember so we smoothed over the lack of knowledge with lots of “this is straightforward” and “we’ll figure that out later” and a typical “AH, shit we forgot about THIS” and “We’ll play that rule from now on”

It’s a lovely little game, there’s something about it, I can’t put my finger on it, but everyone who have played it have been impressed with it. It’s quite a gentle little game with a certain degree of cock blockery however the games tend to be close and competitive

Off the bat I was left trailing way behind and despite my best efforts I couldn’t catch up, the real action was up from between Kieran and Drax with Drax leading the way with Kieran never quite getting past… until the last turn… bad luck drax 🙂

Next up was

Kingdoms

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/119/kingdoms

Reiner Knizia games are like Marmite. Not great.

Ok that’s unfair they’re a bit like madonna records, all the bloody same

I tried this one on the iphone and didn’t really like it, HOWEVER it’s a whole different story face to face. Simple game but takes a bit of learning to get a swing of it. Possible to score big in the game and scream ahead but again one game doesn’t tell all. it’s quick and it’s nasty, so perfect for the group

Remember B@stardcon Lite is on the 27th make sure to come along on the day

Huzzah!

MrTimewalk

April 19, 2013 0

Bcon Warm up Thur – Being a Drax Report

I’m still a big fan of Spartacus, it’s great value on Amazon at the moment, so we had a bit of that

Instantly Drax and myself were at each other throats for no good reason (there doesn’t need to be a good reason)

I wound up with Batiatus again who’s always short of money and my betting was woeful for the whole game. Drax on the other hand was pulling money out of the nether left right and centre, I thought for a while he had the pieces from the second copy the game under the table.

The trident made an appearance early on (which had been devastating in the last session) but appeared to be made of foam rubber this time as the wielder died in every battle. QUITE a bit of backstabbing went on, in fact there were no alliances and nothing was freely done the whole game, just the way it should be.

No decent gladiators appeared and then suddenly Borys was off like a rat out of an aqueduct and he slipped into the lead that couldn’t be stopped despite the best efforts of everyone.

Next up was the long titled DC COMICS DECK-BUILDING GAME

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/125678/dc-comics-deck-building-game

It’s not bad, a bit Ascension a bit Dominion but a bit simpler. the primary resource seems to be arse kicking or Power as they politically correctly put it. If you’ve played either of those two games you’ll pick it up in under a minute. Art work is nice, game play is not bad. I’m not a huge fan of this type of game I freely admit although I know some in the group would have whole nights of them if they could.

I find them too solitary, I much prefer being able to stick it to someone and shout HA! in their face, but I digress.

Just like Dominion you start with a small amount of power cards, buy more and better ones and try and defeat villains to gain score. There’s a set of super villains that you need to defeat (buy with kick assing) and once they’re all defeated it’s count your few points time. unlike dominion there doesn’t seem to be the same variety of possible game types by changing the setup decks. It does have the half eaten biscuit sensation of wanting a bit more so I’m going to reserve judgement until I’ve played it again.

Aquaman is in there and of course no-one picked him for the whole game

Last up of the night was the classic

Settlers of Catan

Since finding them we’ve been playing the welfare rules variant

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/150443/the-famous-welfare-variant

I highly recommend it as it makes for a less random game.

Some Awesome start spots and some absolutely terrible ones so an interesting game all in all.

I got a near monopoly on stone however the game will still very close from start to finish. It was Drax that got over the finish line but everyone else had 9 points pretty much and were DEFINITELY going to win next turn 🙂

Some good chat about upcoming Bcon and a look at what we’ll be taking with us to play

Spartacus is a defo

So more of that next thur

Huzzah!

April 12, 2013 6

JUPITER’S COCK! It’s a Drax Report

We got to play Spartacus the boardgame last night. It’s a cracker! NOTHING to do with the fact that I beat Drax repeatedly and went onto win. It’s just a very nice game. I feel it incumbent on me to make a joke about the above card so here goes, “There is nothing more reassuring than having jupiter’s cock in your hand”. So that dealt with onto the report

The Game

Spartacus is a game of bloody combat, behind the scenes manipulation and all around cock blockery. You hire gladiators and slaves, organise games and try and gain prestige from your actions while keeping others down. Balance the books by betting on matches (you can’t bet against yourself btw), hiring slaves and playing intrigue cards. Gain new equipment, slaves and fighters in the markets. take opponents down a peg or five with intrigue and reaction cards. Fight epic matches and become the people champion. All good Thursday night stuff.

The Good

The setting is excellent, it really captures the feel of the TV series (I’m told), it’s not a set of mechanics with a theme bolted on

The Gameplay is fast and direct, none of your solo play rubbish here, it’s direct and nasty, lot of options for cock blockery (pardon the pun)

The pieces are nice and solid (not up to the standard of fantasy flight but more than acceptable), plus there’s some nice pics of the slave girls

Gameplay is fast and straightforward, it’s great fun getting into the arena, just as much fun watching and betting and downright awesome watching an opponents gladiators being crushed.

Lot of routes to win

The Bad

It really needs the full four to play in a balanced way. It’s possible for one person to get ahead with a wrecking ball of a gladiator and dominate the games HOWEVER that may have been down to our lack of imagination when it came to screwing up other players

Would have liked to see a bit higher quality printing, it’s all fine but could have been better

Session

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/128671/spartacus-a-game-of-blood-treachery

It started easy enough with a few starter gladiators and early on I won a bid for a trident (weapon) which proved devastating throughout since I could attack from a bit of range and dance away from counter attacks. Drax went for a javelin which unfortunately for him did very little. Mid-game I had a decent hero who was causing mayhem with his trident and Armour and beating all others in combat. Then as is the way the others turned on me and started to hit me where it hurt my purse. With no slaves I had to release a few of my fighters from their contracts and only some lucky betting kept my house ticking over. Drax on the other hand with his large stock of slaves and nice abilities was coining it. Boris slipped the clutch late game and only my jupiters cock (think humiliation card from lunch money) stopped him from winning along with SHOCK co-operation from Drax who’s normal rule of the enemy of my enemy is my friend unless it’s Vic was relaxed for a round.

All came down to a final match where I picked up a javelin and Drax and my champion entered the arena. Early on drax landed a few choice blows and my guy was reeling. It was looking like I would be leaving feet first when a chance throw from my Javelin wounded his hero and turned the tide a little. After that I did better and managed to beat him to a standstill winning the game

Make no mistake this is a GREAT GAME. it’s simple and fun, I’d rate it up there with Pirates cove or above, simple, fun and very enjoyable

An expansion is due out soon which will make it even better

I can’t wait

Huzzah!

March 29, 2013 2