Trees Down Thur – Being a Drax Report v1.1

aeropress-hero-260

Coffee Coffee and more Coffee was the order of the evening, at least for me. I have a coffee problem, actually I don’t I have any issues with coffee, more correct to say I have a STOP coffee problem. In my quest for awesome coffee my radar has pinged several times to the shape of the Aerobie Aeropress coffee maker. I finally bought one and tried it out. It’s very impressive.

http://aerobie.com/products/aeropress.htm

If you squint at the picture you’ll see it’s effectively a large syringe that forces air and boiling water through the grinds up against a paper filter and out into your cup. It makes damn fine coffee, way better than drip filter, it’s cheap, easy to use, easy to clean and unexpectedly it’s not a gimmick. It does use more coffee than normal but I found I was making a pot of coffee with the machine and not drinking all of it so it balances out. If I had a larger group of gamers I’d go back to the pot but for a few or just one this is just perfect. so now.

Truth be told I can’t remember the actual name of the Thur, I just tend to differentiate them as best I can. It was Thur and after a long week of travel it was time to game, we we’re not found wanting.

First up for me was a quick game of Netrunner. It’s surprising how after nearly a dozen games I’m still not 100% there with rules. Okay maybe it’s not.. it’s probably a good thing I’m not involved in law enforcement.

I found myself still referring to the rules for a couple of questions. But I’m getting there and I still prefer being the evil corporation than the runner. surprise.

After that we had on offer some very nice new games but opted to play once again A Study in Emerald. This game hasn’t worked for everyone, it can be over very quickly indeed if you’re not careful and some people don’t like the whole card drafting mechanic. I think it’s awesome and the fact that it’s getting a lot of playtime speaks of it’s quality.

aSiE is a game you need to play a few times to get your head around, it’s also a game that changes every time you play it. Thur’s game had a LOT of agents on the board, the most I’ve ever seen. We also figured out a couple of rules we hadn’t come across before, again no surprises there. As we become more familiar with the game we’ve started to become a lot more devious in our play, specifically in how we hide our secret faction. I was in the dark with a couple of players as to whom they worked for up until the very end. I was also on the losing end from the start to the finish. I can’t imagine why but a lot of people we’re picking on me 🙂

BUT I still enjoyed the game from start to finish. It’s a great game from a great bunch of people and I wholeheartedly recommend it. I’m also excited about it’s longevity, there’s a pile of mechanics like vampires and zombies that haven’t appeared or played any major part in the game YET. Looking forward to seeing those in the future and I’m confident just like Imperial 2030 this is a game that will be hitting the table often and long into the future

Next up was Android Infiltration

The biggest enemy in this game is not the NPC, not the traps, but the timer. AGAIN we all, well most of us bar one sneaky player, got caught by the timer and very very quickly. I’m not sure we’ve ever gotten to the second floor and I really am starting to think we are not cut out to be cyber thieves.

We got into FOUR rooms of a possible sixteen +, four, just four and the game ended but not before one keen player nipped out the elevator shaft and triggered more alarms and got us all arrested. well played that cyber thief.

Android Infiltration is a nice little (and short) game. I’m going to revisit the rules on the alarm, we keep getting hit by it, I’m sure we’re (against all odds) getting the rules wrong, we have to be. I’d blame certain players in the group but they’re weren’t even there so I can’t. But I will. Great game, surprising more fun than it thought it would be. This one is going to appear again and again I reckon

After that is was the normal warm down of Turtles, discussions on what’s going to happen at the next Knavecon and what games we want to play next

More of that sort of thing soon

Huzzah!

Vic

April 12, 2014 0

Clock Forward Thur – Being a Drax Report

“Did you know I’ve lost weight since I started gaming with you guys”

I very much doubt that and how we’re all not washing ourselves with rags on the end of sticks is beyond me.

Two cakes AND donuts from Dungeons and Donuts which as you know are the best Donuts in Ireland. Yes they are.

Good start

Krystian from boardgamerguys was in Limerick this week so he swung by to join us for gaming. He brought along a few games for us to try. You might remember he and his wife were running the Dobble demos at Knavecon 3

First up was Fauna which I had heard of before but never tried. It had the essential trinity of ingredients

Polish
Kids game
Can be played by adults

Well in truth I’m not sure if it’s a Polish game as such but this version was in Polish and I’m sure kids would love it.

It’s a sort of Top Trumps/Trivial Pursuit map based game. Unusual I hear you say.

Players start with six betting cubes which they use throughout the game. A game last up to a certain score (in this case 80 with six player) and a number of rounds are played until someone crosses that finish line. In this case by Krystian, but we claim foul as the game was in Polish, Krystian is Polish and several other reasons I’m sure we can come up with.

Each round an animal is shown with it’s vital statistics hidden, say a White Rhino and players take it in turns to place betting cubes on

the map where they think the animal lives
The weight of the animal on a scale
The height/length of the animal on a scale
the length of it’s tail on a scale

Sounds like a kids game but it’s not bad at all. during a round you can bet on one of the four above or pass, once everyone is passed the actual details are revealed and scored accordingly. You get points for being bang on and half points for being close. If you get it bang on or close you get your betting cubes back for the next round otherwise you start the next round at a disadvantage.

It’s quite a tactical game with a lot of cock blockery, quite fast and a surprising amount of fun. There’s a great reply value as there are hundreds of double sided animal cards and we only went through a half dozen in our game.

I could see myself playing this again, possibly in polish.

Next up was a revisit to Infiltration with the correct set of rules for the alarms learned.

I like this game. The whole get in, steal as much as you can and get out makes for a great tense game. The game designers only missed two things in this game

We’re way too greedy to leave before we’ve filled our boots
We’re way to spiteful to allow another player win

NEAR the end and it was not that close, rather than let me win, one of the players decided he’s end the game for EVERYONE including himself so no-one won.

I have to applaud that sort of play

Another Polish game which I’ve quite forgotten the name of Forjaf or something like that. Again the magic trio ingredients we’re in place. I’m really liking the whole Polish vibe. They really know their games

This is a simple bluffing game with a clever swap feature. It’s sort of unusual as well as the idea is to knock one player out, that’s it, no winning for anyone, just one person losing. I like that too. As you know it’s not about the winning its’ about the others losing

We rounded off with a bit of Coup then time to talk rubbish, finish our coffees and go home

More of that soon and more of MrSaturday’s 40th

Huzzah!
Vic

April 4, 2014 0

MrSaturday Turns 40 – a Drax report in a number of parts

If you’re going to do a review on Twilight Struggle then you have to use a picture from Doctor Strangelove, it’s a rule. I checked.

A glorious weekend of gaming stretched out before us in a very nice location in Connemara, no 3G, no Laptops, just good buddies, a stack of food, (None of it good for you) and a horse load of games…..

MrSaturday successfully beat Jesus by 7 and we celebrated in true gaming style. I’m going to split this big event up into a few smaller snippets and look at the games I got to play.

First up was Twilight Struggle

Let’s cut to the chase, I want a copy of this, it’s awesome, there’s a good reason it’s number one on the boardgamegeek list of games, I have it set-up on VASSAL, anyone who wants a game let me know. So without any prejudice let’s begin

TS is a two player only game where players take on the roles or either America or the USSR and duke it out in the cold war from the late 40s to the fall of communism. The game is essentially map based where players use influence to turn countries around to their ideology. Each turn of which there are ten consists of drawing a set of eightish cards from a communal stack and picking one event to kick off that turn. The other player doing likewise. Then the rest of the cards are used either for their resource value or card event. All of the events are actual historical events, like the Berlin wall coming down, the bay of pigs and so on and all have effects on influence around the world or just screw with the other players plans.

The cards available to draw from get added to at certain turns along the way so middle era and late era card stacks get added as the game progresses. Resource are a number on the top let hand corner either Red (USSR), White (USA) or two colour (either) and these can be spent to up your influence levels in different countries, usually ones that border your other countries. Up your influence enough and you’ll be in charge of that country. Coup actions, realignment and just increasing influence will change both your influence and the influence of the enemy in a specific country so it’s a juggle to protect your interests and screw up the opponents with limited resources.

If you’re Russia as I was, you generally burn Red or Red and White resources but it’s possible to use White only resources belonging to the Americans but you also have to kick off the event which is in favour of the Americans as well. I found myself trying to pick the lesser of two evils several times when I wound up with a number of American cards.

As the game starts the only areas open for business are Europe and Asia but as the game progresses through the three eras, South America, Africa and The Middle East open up and cause more headaches. The game is very much a zero sum game with one score track that runs from +20 USSR to +20 USA. As you score which itself is an event card you play, you advance the track in either direction. Get to +20 for either and it’s game over. A few other late game events can cause the game to end as well. I found myself scratching my head (it may have been the company I was keeping) to figure the best way to manage things, do I dig my heels in in one place and give the opponent a free ride in another region? Go for this event and screw him up here but leave myself open to a coup?

While this goes on a few other slider mechanics are being affected, a big one being the conflict track. Not necessarily a bad thing as it scores you points if you’re ahead but it also ups the defcon level and it’s game over man if you reach the highest one. The space race is also another recipient of influence and getting ahead at this allows you to see what you’re opponent is going to do in advance. So all in all a plate juggling affair with limited resources.

I have to say I really liked it, it’s surprisingly fast for such an epic period. It says 3 hours on the box but I reckon we got through it quicker than that on our first game, but we did have an advisor whom unlike us knew the rules and had managed the world a few times. The game definitely needs a few play throughs so you understand what can happen. Even thought it’s pretty much the same thing each game, events can change or not happen and it should stay pretty fresh. The artwork, components and cards are of high quality and although it’s not a FF game it does have a great solid feel to it. It is a longish game but it’s well worth the investment in time. I found myself waking up the next day with the game going around my head and thinking about new angles I could have come at. All in all a cracker

More to come, what this space

Huzzah!

Vic

April 1, 2014 4

Omega Thur – Being a Drax Report

Omega Protocol is a futuristic version of Descent with some nice mechanics and big guns. What’s not to like?

Level 7 Omega Protocol to give it it’s full name is a fairly simple game that plays in a similar fashion to Heroquest/Space Crusade/Descent. You have an ‘overlord’ how controls the bad guys and a team of marines in a variety of flavours played by everyone else who must complete missions in a hostile environment full of clones and aliens. All pretty normal in a days gaming. What makes it a little different is as each marine takes an action they generate adrenaline points which at the end of the turn are handed over to the overlord to carry out their action. So the more you do in the marine turn, the more action points are available to the overlord to mess up your day.

The marines start with a number of different types available to them, soldier, recon, heavy weapons guy and so on. They also get to kit out their guys with a variety of equipment, weapons and armour before the mission starts. Then it’s off to zombie land and fighting their way to the objective which has thoughtfully been put in the furthest room by the overlord and in the case of this mission back again to a lift again conveniently at the other end of the map.

Movement, opening doors, interaction and shooting takes adrenaline points which are finite depending on whom you choose. The heavy weapons guy plods along armed to the teeth whilst the recon dude can run and jump like a happy elf. The overlord does their best to throw speedbumps in the shape of clones and aliens at the marines to slowdown and hopefully kill them along with some other unusual stuff like dropping a ceiling on them action points depending.

All in all it’s good fun, the adrenaline points handover is novel and we encountered a few room types we’d never seen before in this type of game (the noisy rave room was good). We of COURSE got a few rules wrong and it was a bit easier on the marines than it should have been. We also in tune with the group left one of our men behind who much to our surprise also survived. “No man left behind” is more of a Guideline than a code. We also threw in a few clichés like “Game over man” but since we had messed up the rules a little it was more of a stroll then a hard struggle.

Would I buy it? No. If I didn’t have descent I might but since I have I won’t. Just like Descent is a re imaging of Heroquest this is very much a re imaging of Space Crusade. The models are nice, not out of this world but nice. We didn’t get to see some of the nastier aliens but got a good ghost story about them. I’d definitely be on for playing it again. Shooting aliens is always fun, no-one lost an eye, then is was time for MrSaturday’s 40th

Huzzah!

Vic

March 31, 2014 0

Wet Thur – Being a Drax Report

“You’re over thinking it….”

Quote of the night last Thur.

I said it before and I’ll say it again, quite recently, a Study in Emerald is a great game…. A Study in Emerald is a great game.

But before all that there was a warm up…

“It’s a kids game and it’s Polish, but it can be played by adults…”

“Shut up and take my money already”

Kosmiczna Misja (Am I pronouncing that right?) is a kids game where you build bases on planets and score points for complete ones. It is deceptively simple, a child could play it (ho ho) and for €5 it’s a steal. Four of us sat down and played it so if we had only played one game we had gotten value for money for it already. We played three games. It’s SO simple. The game consists of 30+ tiles shuffled face down, with three drawn and visible at all times. Each tile consists of a quarter of a planet with varying amounts of half bases, full bases or aliens on them. When it’s your turn you roll a dice and depending on how many bases already built on your partially completed planet you draw a card and place it to hopefully complete and score a full 4 section planet. The aliens are there to add +1 to your dice roll and the half bases make it awkward to complete a planet as you have to have a matching other half base against it. That’s it.

All in all it’s like a cut down version of carrcasonne. It’s fast, it’s simple and there’s just the right amount of cock blockery to make it fun. This is a super kids game and a perfectly acceptable adults game. Since it’s so quick there’s a real go again vibe to it

We’re fortunate in our group insofar as we have a good* group of people who actively seek out new games and bring them along for the group to try and that not everyone likes the same type of game. Kosmiczna Misja is something we would never come across in the normal run of things and it would have been a pity to have missed out on such a simple game. If our Polish connect is back home anytime soon I’d say he’ll return with his bag stuffed with copies of this.

It was meat and potato times now with everyone suitably warmed up so we partook of the main course. Once again a Study in Emerald.

I’ve spoke about aSiE before, it’s a great concept based on a great story, developed by a great designer so it should be well… great. It is. This was played at Knavecon but it didn’t go down a storm, It takes a bit of getting into. There’s a number of elements in the game and we discovered a few more of on Thur as we played. The whole use of agents and some deeper and more devious strategies.

I really love this game, it’s got everything, it’s semi-map based, it’s got worker placement, it’s got card drafting, it’s got alliances, teams, double crossing, bluffing, a magnificent setting and superb re-playability. It’s like someone tried their best to get all that’s good in gaming and pack it into a game and what’s more they did it very well indeed. Nothing is superfluous, there are no simple routes to winning and it changes every time we play. A real desert island game.

When we played on Thur we realised a few things we hadn’t before. How to use agents properly, how to appear to be of one faction, how to steal victory. Having played it there was a real urge to play again but time prevented us. I wouldn’t be at all shocked if this appears next Thur and next weekend at a gaming buddies 40th

Get your hands on this game, you won’t be disappointed. oh yes, I actually won it as well so win win.

Huzzah!

Vic

March 24, 2014 0

The Thur after the Knavecon Before – Being a Drax Report

There was still a bit of a buzz from Knavecon 3 in the air as we sat down to game some more, like sharks that can’t stop swimming or they’ll DIE, we’re like gamers who can’t stop gaming our we’ll DIE probably of boredom. Once you’ve warmed you brain up with gaming it’s hard to step away from it. It’s like a mental workout you get addicted to without the sweat or foot rot. But I digress.

I’ve never understood Mexican Standoffs in movies, I get the idea fine, just the way they play out , two parties are aiming guns at each other and it’s gets all tense. Why doesn’t one person just pull the trigger before more people are added into the equation? It’s like an overlord gloating when they have the hero trapped, just kill him, be done with it. So with that in mind we sat down to play a game I’ve wanted to play for a while Ca$h and Gun$

Cash and Guns (because I refuse to keeping type $) is a simple push your luck and bluff game. It’s a bit like Letter of Marque but obviously better.

You start the game with a hand of 8 cards that consist of 2 bangs, 1 bang bang bang and 5 click cards. Each round Random money cards are drawn out to form the pot and players secretly pick one of their bullet cards from their hand and at an agreed 1,2,3 GO! all simultaneously point their gun at another player. The players now confronted get a chance to chicken out (taking a shame token for their trouble) and those left resolve their bang, bang bang bangs and clicks acquiring wounds if they’re unlucky. Those left unwounded share the pot. Rinse and repeat for 8 rounds and you’re done.

Click cards do nothing, they’re just there to bluff with, bang does a wound and bang bang bang cards do a wound but go off before regular bang cards and stop the regular bang cards from happening. Use them wisely. Three wounds and you’re out of the running. Most money at the end wins.

So it’s a bluffing game and it’s good fun. There’s a couple of advanced rules ALL of which should be added, particularly the hidden cop in the ranks which adds a werewolf type slant to this simple and fun filler game.

Now I didn’t Have a copy of the game and it’s impossible to get so it was carefully (not) crafted with playing cards, sticky labels and a selection of kids toys as guns. Didn’t ruin it but when it comes back in print I’ll definitely get a copy of it. It’s fun, it’s simple and nothing beats a stand off and having someone back down when all you had was a click in your gun

After Knavecon, we’d all loaded up on games from a variety of sources and decided to have a lash of something else short, POO!

Poo is a gentlemanly game of monkeys throwing their faeces at each other in the hope of being the least splattered. Nice. It reminds me of Lunch Money but a lot less sinister looking. You get a hand of cards and chuck attacks and counters at each other. It’s fine, it’s relatively fast and we’ll probably never play it again. We might I don’t know. It’s a silly game, but it’s meant to be obviously and it’s hardly diplomacy but it’s a filler and that’s fine.

The real meat of the night was Imperial 2030. This is still a cracker of a game. We must have played it a dozen times now but it’s still fresh and it’s still really satisfying.

Despite repeating the mantra of “you don’t own the country you just invest in it” people still thought they owned the country and well they lost.

EVERY time and I do mean every time we play this game we find a rule we’ve played incorrectly. EVERY time. This session was no exception. It’s funny how despite playing a game slightly off it’s still a great game. Maybe that’s the mark of a good game. Bit hard to test though.

This time around when we played the game had a lot more conflict going on. Countries rose and fell. Ones that were doing badly at the start under let’s be honest, poor management, shot ahead later on. Just like every time we play it the game ends abruptly, but not it has to be said in a bad way.

There was anger, there was tears, there was backstabbery but that’s only to be expected. At the end one of the players, not me, won, it was close, it was bloody close, I should have won it had another round gone on. But I didn’t and I have to live with losing the game, for the rest of my life. I don’t really want to talk about it, it’s only been days since it’s happened and the pain is close. we WILL play this game again and vengeance will be well, anyone’s, there’s no shortage of vengeances waiting for an airing at my table

Right then, get back to what you were doing, reading rules maybe

Huzzah!

Vic

March 12, 2014 0

So that was Knavecon 3 eh?

Knavecon 3 was a big success! If you didn’t make it to this one, you missed out! but don’t worry like we said before Knavecon is here to stay and there’s going to be one every six months. We’ll be announcing details for the next one soon enough.

The first official Knavecon had 20+ people, the next 50+ and we’re delighted to tell you that the last one had 100+ attendees! By my careful maths and graphing I believe Knavecon 4 will have no less than……… 2.4 million attendees.

It was a great day of gaming, myself and Dec despite a busy BUSY time got several games in and got to meet a host of new and cool people from around the country. The venue was good, the games were good, the people were out of this world but of course we’re going to do our best to improve it for the next one. I reckon another fifty Knavecons and we’ll have the formula just right 🙂

I left around 3am after doing a podcast with the lads from Wee Gamers but a dozen plus hardened gamers were still going strong after I left. I understand it finished around 4am. So that’s a solid 18 hours of gaming!

The Podcast is right here BTW. Some people reckon it’s like listening to Morgan Freeman and Clint Eastwood talking to Ian Paisley if all three of them we’re on helium and not doing this podcast.

There’s a raft of people to thank for the event,

The Traders as ever who hauled a lot of gear from far and near to the event. A special thanks must go to those who organised competitions and gave out prizes. The Wee gamers for their invaluable help. The OldHammer boys who going by the success of their first game are going to be regular crowd pullers. Those who lifted, carried, assisted, advised, supported and helped out in so many ways.

Most importantly our thanks to the attendees. Now this is something that blows me away. There were over one hundred attendees on the day, a lot of whom I’d never met before, all of whom I handed over games to and ALL of whom went out of their way to ensure they we’re returned in perfect condition. I didn’t lose a single game, counter, token or card on the day…. as far as I know.

From start to finish last Saturday all I heard was laughter (and some evil cackles), everyone I’m fairly sure had a good time, they took part in the spirit of the con and they got stuck in and revelled in what they enjoy. Better still players both old and new started proper gaming for the first time and we’re hooked.

I’ve chatted with the other organisers and we agreed, it was a lot of effort to create Knavecon but it’s what we love and for us it didn’t seem like work and it certainly wasn’t a chore

Knavecon 4 is coming, it’s going to be bigger, it’s going to be better and we want you there

Huzzah!

Victor

March 7, 2014 0

Delving Thur – Being a Drax Report

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

February 10, 2014 0

3 weeks to Knavecon !

One of the lads who shall remain nameless (Drax) got a great 360 photo of Knavecon 2.

February 7, 2014 1

Descent Thur – Being a Drax Report

It’s become a tradition on the Drax report not to show people faces in the pics, it’s not that we don’t want to be identified and have our kidney’s stolen it’s more that we don’t want one of the lads wives to be kidnapped and forced to cook cakes for their gaming night, as she does for ours. Thur was no exception. Millionaire squares. far too good for the likes of us.

After a bit of a mix up detailed in an earlier post I finally received my copy of Descent, second edition. I’ve quite fancied this since the first edition. I’ve always been a fan of Heroquest type games and this seemed to be the grown up version of it. It is. It’s rather good. It’s got expansions and I want them all

I’ve played two games of this now and I really like it. It’s a Fantasy Flight game so the production quality is superb. The Cards and map pieces are very high quality as you would expect but it’s the models that really shine. After last weekend at MrSaturday’s my love for painting has returned and I’ve started to paint up the models for this game. I’m very impressed with them. For plastic, the detail is superb. Like Mansions of Madness the models are good and chunky, more so truth be told than MoM and you get a fair selection of them in the base game. About two dozen or so. They are about Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle game size so you could use those in your games if you wanted to, although the base size is a good bit smaller for Descent characters.

The rules are very straightforward, pretty much what you would expect and if you’ve ever played either Heroquest or Space Crusade then you’ve a head-start.

The game is in essence a dungeon bash where a team of adventurers work together (the first question from the team btw was do we HAVE to work together, can’t we just stab each other in the back?)(it was a proud moment, I’ve taught them well). The team work together and try and complete a quest whilst another player (guess who that was?) plays the evil overlord trying to thwart their efforts.

Each game consists of two halves of a predefined quest, act 1 and act 2. The second act being a bit tougher that than first. In between Act 1 and 2 you can visit the local shoppe and buy ice cream, breakfast rolls and Warhammers.

The game scales nicely so depending on how many players are in the party more numerous and or tougher version of monsters will appear.

There’s a fair bit of variety in the quests, rescue these guys, defeat those guys, defend against these slavering guys and so on and if you like you can play the whole thing as a campaign with leveling up and all that sort of good stuff along the way. There’s also a number of expansion which I’m sure we’ll never get to but would be nice to have.

This is the second edition of the game and a lot has been simplified from the first edition. There’s now a very concise and easy to understand set of rules to follow. A lot of thought has been put into how the game works and it really shows through, at no stage did anyone not know what to do or where to go after just a quick explanation.

The combat system is very neat, each weapons has a specific colour of die associated with it and have the potential to deal a range of damage accordingly. players roll specific coloured shield dice depending on their Armour to counteract this and theirs a few extra abilities throw in for good measure. Combat is fast and nasty, it’s quite possible to be knocked out in your first battle if you don’t work as a team or you rush in without backup.

There’s a nice variety of characters to start with (eight) and the game features a fine variety of monsters to go up against.

This game demands more play and the fact that I’m taking time to paint up the models (never done this before) should speak volumes of how good it is. This is a lovely game and I’m eager for another lash of it.

Next up was Turfmaster

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/384/turfmaster

There’s been a bit of a racing theme going on for the last few sessions and I’ve had an urge to play horse racing for a good while now, don’t ask me why, maybe it’s the whole xmas racing thing but we’ve already had “the Really Nasty Horse Racing game” and now we have something a bit more serious, Turfmaster.

The first thing that strikes you about the game is the box, it’s very simple and austere with a drawing of a jockey in mid-flight. Very IBM. So I was expecting dull, complex and not very fun at all. not so! Turfmaster is a cracking little game and it’s got expansions. It’s also like hens teeth to get for some reason which is a pity.

Unlike The Really Nasty Horse Racing game this is purely about winning races, nothing at all to do with odds or types of horses. Everyone starts with a single horse (1-8 players) and it’s a straight forward race to the finish. Points are awarded for coming first, second, third and forth and the highest points after three races decides the game.

The rules are very simple. Each player starts with a finite amount of cards which dictate how far forward they can move every second round. They play them simultaneously with the other players and the pack (is that the right term?) is adjusted accordingly. Every other round it’s determined by dice but the player who changes each time can decide to slow or speed up the race to their best advantage.

The set of cards used for the game must all be played through over the course of the three races so it’s quite possible to wind up with fast cards for the first race and have to nurse your horse through the second and so on. It was very neat. I found myself slipping into first then running out of steam half way around the track. Whilst others were hanging back and attempting to storm forward late in the race.

The game is very simple and functional graphically. It comes with pre-painted metal horse and jockeys which are lovely to play with and add a good bit to the quality feel of the game. We had a large group on Thur so we got the game in it’s fully glory.

I liked it. It’s simple but it plays very well and there was excitement from start to finish in the game. Just a quick tip, read the rules carefully, it’s possible to make a school boy error from the start and spend the rest of the race playing catch up 🙂

All in all a good nights gaming. Hope to see this game at Knavecon, It and Descent are winners

We finished with a bit of Coup and Skull of roses

More of that soon

Huzzah!

Vic

February 2, 2014 0