Much Dishonour

HARA-KIRI -Death of a Samurai

The first thing that strikes you about age of war is the size of the box. It’s small. Not micro small bit smaller than your thought when you ordered it.

It contains a simple set of rules (check), seven dice (check) and a dozen or so cards. That’s fine. I’ve worked with less and had lots of fun so let’s jump in with no pre conceived notions.

The game is all about capturing fortresses belonging to various sizes clans. Well let’s be honest (ha) this game is about scoring more points than your opponent. You just happen to do it this time via this dice based fortress capturing mechanism.

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Each turn a player takes all of the dice and rolls them. It turns up a collection of archers. Horsemen. Spears, horsemen and Dyamos (best spoken with a Japanese warlord voice). Having done this you look at all of the fortress cards in the centre and nail your colours to the mast and declare your affection for assaulting one of them. Once picked it’s no takey backey. Each castle has an entry fee of a certain mix of the aforementioned dice faces. It may be that you have the right ones off the bat or you may decide to reroll in which case (and here’s the rub) you remove one dice from your pile and reroll the ones you want to.

So you may you may not liberate a castle in your turn and add to your collection. Each of the castles is worth a certain amount of points and a complete set in one colour (a clan) is worth a little more.

So far so solitaire. In addition to being able to assault the centre properties you can also attack ones that belong to other players If you have an extra dayano to spare.

So it’s an exercise in naval gazing and dice rolling. Did I mention Reiner kniza designed it.

It’s fine. The few times I played it went on and on and on but I think that was more because we played it with three players. Bump up the players and it trots along.  It’ll happily seat six

It’s a simple solid filler game with the right amount of players. It only a tenner or so. So if your looking for a filler you could do a lot worse (masquerade for example)

Now excuse please much dishonor if I don’t play again

Huzzah!

Vic

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Over by xmas – Diplomacy Turn 2

Some surprise moves right there, shocked stunned, on the plus side no-one lost anything

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Austria: Supp 5 Unit 3 Build 2
England: Supp 3 Unit 3 Build 0
France: Supp 5 Unit 3 Build 2
Germany: Supp 3 Unit 3 Build 0
Italy: Supp 5 Unit 3 Build 2
Russia: Supp 6 Unit 4 Build 2
Turkey: Supp 4 Unit 3 Build 1

turn2winterbuild

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Diplomacy 1901 – Round 1 Results

Spring 1901

It never fails to amaze me that every game of Diplomacy is different. Here’s the opening moves to our captive game

spring 1901move

After the move here’s how it’s all looking. I’m disqualified from commenting on Diplomacy on the basis that I’m “a bit rubbish” but my good friend* Handsome Bob will be doing an analysis of how it’s all playing out.

I already have my bet made as to whom is going to win, but even after one round I’m not so sure….

Huzzah!

Vic

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One more Click, JUST one more

bricks

Hate is a strong word and probably a bit inaccurate. Best to say I’m Annoyed with Limerick Gaming for bringing to my attention. Civ clicker. Just like Ring Virus (the J horror movie rather than anything else that just materialized in your head) I’ve just spread it again.

Civ clicker is a clever solo game all playable on a web browser. You collect resources and try and build an empire.

Remember rogue on the PC from years gone by? It’s like that. Deceptively simple but very playable and mono sodium glutamate addictive.

You start with a couple of biddable followers and commence mining stone and chopping wood as well as raising crops by clicking on the requisite buttons. Later on as you build houses your follower numbers grow and they can take over the boring roles of farming and resource harvesting

It soon becomes an exercise in Heat and pressure as you need to keep your lads fed, housed and safe from wolves and bandits. As the game progresses more building types open up and you get to build stores for the various resources as well as raise armies to attack neighbours (AI) and steal their land (another resource)

Before long you have a dozen different professions for your minions and your spinning a dozen plus plates any of which could hold up or worse still damage parts of your hopefully exploding empire.

Later on you find yourself raising hundreds if not thousands of soldiers, feeding multitudes, raising temples to various gods and then foolishly you undertake to build a Wonder…..

pyr

This is a mistake. Believe me. This will consume you. Building a wonder is glacially slow. The hour hand of a clock might as well have yackity saxs playing in comparison. And so it continues. You raise armies expand your lands and population. Your nation measures in the hundreds of thousands if not millions and still the wonder creeps slowly ever so slowly forward. You throw resource after resource at it morbidly wondering if you’re turning grey while its progressing (you are).   Traders drop by and rob you blind so you can push it that one percent on.

Eventually you complete the wonder and… Well you can find out yourself

The game continues but at this point I was done. It’s clever it auto saves (on the device you’re on) and for a screen of effectively just numbers it is incredibly addictive.  The obsessive compulsion you suffer from will feed on this. be warned

Now, I’m good, I got out I finished my wonder but you haven’t, you haven’t even clicked once yet.  If you choose to go down the route of Civ Clicker considered yourself warned.  It’s over

Huzzah!

Vic

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Goat Sucker Sucks

Cute_chupacabra

Rock Paper Scissors given enough iterations has some skill to it and can therefore be classed as a game (as opposed to a simple method for picking the starting player in a proper game) chupacabra on the other hand has no skill and simple masquerades as a game.

I told you I wasn’t a fan of Steve Jackson games. I warned you but would you listen? Chupacabra and ( goat sucker in English)(Ho ho hilarious) is a dice “game” that comes in a similar cardboard tube just like zombie dice.  That’s pretty much the high point of the game, it comes in a cardboard tube

One of the selling points of the game is the dice glow in the dark. Fantastic until you realize it’s stored in a cardboard container so the dice don’t pick up any light in there so when you take them out they glow as much as a sad emo.

Chupacabra-game

Now to the game itself. You have about two dozen identical dice which have a variety of faces. Chickens, goats, cows, scary eyes and double chickens.

The dice are split between all the delighted players and everyone rolls. Groups of animals are …. Sorry was yawning there … Ok.. Put together and you wind up with herds of cattle, goats etc. For each of the eyes you rolled you can attack another farm and steal their dice.

The trick is you have to take a particular animal herd in total. So if you have three attacking dice you can only capture a heard of goats of size three or less. Chickens are easy (that sounds all wrong) and you get a two for one deal with them. Cows something else. I can’t remember but it doesn’t matter.

Anyhoe you in turn attack others and rob their stuff accumulating more dice. That’s it. I played a number of games of it and it came down to those who got lucky and got a few more dice than others got ahead and couldn’t be stopped. End of. Just to confirm the definition of madness I played a few more games and nope that was it. This is beg thy neighbor with dice and even as a kid I wasn’t s huge fan of it.

Now this will work ok for kids. For a while. Zombie dice is way better.

Maybe a different set of rules would work with this. Even if they were just “peg the dice at each other until someone loses and eye”

Chupacabra is a bad game. You’ll be a bad person if you buy it and not in a good way.  I’m hoping someone can correct me, but I don’t think so.

I want the precious minutes I spent playing it back.
Huzzah!
Vic
** Email Scanned by Elive’s Virus Scanning Service –
http://www.elive.net **

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So it Begins…. Diplomacy 2014. Spring 1901

spring1901a

Welcome ladies and gentlemen to what could prove to be the best game of 2014!   Seven players who may have started as friends are now joined in the titanic struggle that is email Diplomacy.

The leaders are as follows

Eoin “Spartan” Kearney Austria
Paul Clancy Russia
Conor Hoary England
Kieran Fitzgerald France
“Patrick” Drax “O’Sullivan” Germany
Joe “Dread Pirate Joe” Morris Italy
Tony Gleeson Turkey

We have a fine mix of experienced and new players.  One things for sure, they’ll never be the same people they were by the time this is over

The ultimate winner will receive a prize of an exclusive Knavecon T-Shirt and a copy of 30 Seconds, but more importantly very public bragging rights.  Turns will be once a week, results and maps posted on the site and my good friend* Bob Burke  will provide a running commentary on how it’s all progressing.

Let the games commence!

Huzzah!

Vic

2

It’s all about that Base, bout that base, No zombies

winter

I MAY have lied earlier when I said I was done with zombie games for a bit. A week or two is a long time and not really scientifcally measureable, so chances are I actually told the truth and I’m not over my sabbatical, but seriously this is my last zombie game for a while.  no takey backys

I got to play a game I’ve had my eye on for a while now and is as hard as something very hard indeed to get your hands on. (air as an e.g.) Dead of Winter.

Dead of winter is the first in a series of games by Plaid Hat, the first one is set in a colony that’s holding out against the zombies in, you guessed it a zombie apocolypse in (bonus points if you guessed it) the Dead of Winter.

It’s a semi co-operative game which with the gamers I play with means not co-operative at all. At all.  Each player starts with a secret (they might be a loner, a traitor, a something else I haven’t seen, I only played one game) and to win they need to complete their objective which may not be in conflict with the overall health of the group.

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When I played I was secretly the loner so I had to complete the overall objective which everyone else had to, but when it was complete I had to be the only one alive in my group (no followers). I didn’t win btw we were swamped by Zees mid game

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Each player starts with their own little group, a leader and one follower and this may grow as time rolls on. Each of the players have their own party trick, a skill at fighting and scavenging and a number which indicates how tasty they are to zombies. if you wind up in a room with zombies and you have a higher number than your companions they get eaten first. So were dealing with zombies with a descerning palate. (if indeed they have a palate left)

Each turn your group of survivors muck in and try to help the colony survive, this could be by scavenging food, fuel, weapons, building barricades, taking out the trash (it’s true), killing zombies or contributing to a group problem (well the solution to it one hopes)

The game plays a little like Battlestar Galactica insofar as there are bad things that happen every turn and sometimes as a group you have to deal with them, keeping in mind you don’t really know what everyone’s secret agenda is, so there’s a fine level of paranoia throughout.

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Also like Battlestar you have a number of resouces (weaknesses) that you have to keep an eye on. Morale being the big one. It this runs to zero it’s game over man and it’s very easy for this to happen. Losing survivors and various dilemas affect it and it’s hard and costly in resources to get it back up.

All in all it’s a BIT like BS with you and your ‘team’ juggling limited resources and rearranging the deckchairs whilst keeping a storm eye for traitors in your midst. It’s brillant.

it captures the feel (I imagine) of a desperate struggle. It starts off easily enough but within a very short time you’re making hard choices and both the time I played it and the game I observed it was rock hard. it was also hugely fun.

I can see why this game sold out so quickly. If you can lay you hands on it before xMas you’re doing well and the manufactures have a lead time of a number of months before a reprint. It’s going to sell again like hotcakes. I find a lot of zombie games, slow and repetitive, not this, this is the business. The model they have for the game is going to be reused. I understand the next themed game is going to be set in space and I can see it working perfectly.

If you can get this game, get it. If you don’t like it I’ll buy it off you

It’s a winner. Now excuse me while I some followers I need to arrange accidents for (evil chuckle)

Huzzah!

Vic

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The Wheels on the Zombie go round and round

zombbus

The zombies on the bus go round and round, round and round

Now it’s in your head isn’t ? The wheels on the bus. Going round and round. My seven year only once said “Daddy! Think of a horse…, are you thinking of it? ” “yes” “HA! Mind control!”

That’s got nothing to do with the second expansion for zombie dice but it did spring into my head so tough luck

Zombie Dice 3. The school bus is a one dice expansion did ZD but it’s a big dice. It’s a ten sided one and it represents a yellow school bus that’s gotten mixed up in the zombie dice apocalypse.

It’s the NRA dream as the kids are packing heat so it’s no McBrains on wheels.

There are a number of new dice faces besides the normal blast and brain. Actually there’s a nice mix up with these two in the shape of a face with three brains and a shotgun blast and brain together (playing hard to get)

The big old school bus dice can be substituted for the third dice after the first standard round. Did that make sense ? Doesn’t matter I’ll confuse you by saying the wheels on the bus go ……

max1

The new faces are

Yield : all shotguns become brains
Stop : (possibly hammer time) that’s it, the ride is over and so is your turn
Tyre thread : get run over and lose a brain and you can’t use the bus again that turn
Dead end : all runners are trapped and become brains

It’s nice. I like the extra possibilities. You can at any stage jump off the bus and use the normal three dice if you like. It’s possible to score highly with the bus if you’re lucky. It’s possible to lose badly. I couldn’t tell you what the odds are if you do go bus or not. It’s fun. It adds to an already fun game

I’m not a big fan of Steve Jackson games (the games not the company) but this series is good. It’s simple. It’s fun and it’s great for a warm up

Again it’s expensive but it’s up to you to decide if it’s worth it

I’ll have it at Knavecon. Try it see what you think and remember the wheels on the bus ….

Huzzah!

Victor

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