I’ve had a copy of Iron Sky gathering dust at home since Knavecon 4, it’s about time I whipped it out and played a test game. Can’t say I’ve watched the movie but it looks good enough to warrant my attention. Huzzah etc.
Much More Dishonour
I’m big enough to admit that occasionally I get the odd rule wrong (waits for shocked muttering to stop) when playing a new game. Occasionally.
When a game has a about five rules and you’ve missed about four of them that’s gross negligence. In the case of Art of War these proper rules make an OK game into a very nice game indeed.
On the plus side when you get a rule wrong and then correct it you get value for money because you’ve gotten to play two different games! So… I’ll leave it there *cough*….
Age of War. Great game. Read the rules. Stay in school
Huzzah!
Vic
Much Dishonour
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.
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
Another Year Over – Winter Builds Diplomacy 2014
Builds now in for Diplomacy. Turn 3 coming this Friday…..
Over by xmas – Diplomacy Turn 2
Some surprise moves right there, shocked stunned, on the plus side no-one lost anything
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
This week – I will be mostly learning the Rules for…… GIANTS
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/38862/giants
Worker placement, nice production values, giant heads, what’s not to like?
Diplomacy 1901 – Round 1 Results
It never fails to amaze me that every game of Diplomacy is different. Here’s the opening moves to our captive game
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
One more Click, JUST one more
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…..
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
Goat Sucker Sucks
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.
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
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So it Begins…. Diplomacy 2014. Spring 1901
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
Victor Gannon Games 