Thur Most Foul – Being a Drax Report

“He’s Hardly gone back to the scene of the crime to hide in plain site has he?”. Thus ended my promising career as Jack the Ripper in the game Letters from Whitechapel

It’s a deduction game in the vein of Curse of Dracula (highly recommended) and Scotland Yard (no idea). One player takes the role of Jack and has to commit a number of heinous murders whilst the others take the roll of the police and try to apprehend him

Jack has to be sneaky (check) and resourceful (check) and more importantly in last nights game sneak past the Sauron like view of inspector Drax (no check).

I’m a huge fan of Fury of Dracula having played it many times and always enjoyed it. Although the rule book looks daunting this is a simpler affair but no less fun for that. Apart from the theme it could be easily played by youngies so maybe scotland yard which is quite similar could be substituted for this.

It’s a cracker of a game. It’s brain meltingly hard for the police who are constantly scanning for traces of jacks movements or where his hideout might be (he has to return there after each murder). I got to play Jack and I loved it, sneaking, backtracking, leading the police in the wrong direction, epic stuff.

The game is back in print with some minor tweaks (not to the rules) and it’s definitely one that will be replayed again and again, like say next thur

After my swift demise it was a revisit to Notre Dame

No not that Notre Dame, the other one

Notre Dame is pure worker placement. I liked it when I played it first and I like it a bit more. I did NOT like scoring 58 points and having Drax score 59. That aside it’s still a nice solid game, a little different and it certainly need a number of plays before you get the swing of how it works and more importantly what’s going to come up. Like Whitechapel this one will definitely make a reappearance , losing by 1 point aside it’s a very interesting game, theme works and it’s the right length of time to play. I like it, not as much as Whitechapel but I still like it

More of this sort of thing next thur I say

Huzzah!

Vic

July 19, 2013 0

Winning Legend Thur – Being a Drax Report

It’s a rare thing for me to win a game let alone ALL the games in a night. Some people may claim a mistake in the rules but we all played by it and haters have got to hate 🙂 But I digress

First up was

Sultan

I swapped, well let’s be honest I pawned off a game of mine (silk road) for this and letter of Marque. Never trust a gamer. Doubly so if you think you’re getting two for one. Sultan is a simple bidding game where you attempt to score points for bidding with a limited set of ‘coins’ for various valued gems. get sets of them and they become worth more. it’s a plain and simple filler game. it’s quick and if you can be bothered card counting you have an advantage. BORING. it may never see the table again. oh If I’m swapping it to you, it’s a GREAT game, well worth swapping something for 🙂

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/31612/sultan

Next up was

Lords of Waterdeep.

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

Lords of Waterdeep is a VERY good game. Having played it a half dozen times I’m eager to play it again. For some reason the gods (one of the one that probably likes me) gave me good luck in this one and I was able to sneak ahead and stay there pretty much to the end. Usually I lose this game so I think I took the group by surprise by sneaking ahead and they probably thought it was a fluke. it wasn’t 🙂

Great game, I’ve spoken about it a before

https://mrtimewalk.wordpress.com/2013/04/26/bcon-lite-thur/

Get this game it’s a winner.

Finally we decided to have a crack at

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/25554/notre-dame

I had read the rules carefully for this so we had no idea how to play it and having handed the rules over to Drax and put on more coffee we shakily made our way into the game. Notre Dame is a worker placement game in the classic euro sense. You attempt to gain as much influence as possible (score) through a variety of methods. Placing workers in your boroughs and hiring professionals to assist you (sets of which change round by round). The big negative is rats (the plague) which you have to control before they overun and reduce your influence. It’s a lovely little game

Card Counting – YES

Worker Placement – YES

Rats – YES

All those who took part (and lost to me) were eager for more of the same (apart from the losing to me bit), never a bad sign

so I reckon next thur we’ll be visiting notre dame. Practically no quasimodo jokes were harmed in the playing of the game

Huzzah

Vic

July 5, 2013 0

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

Zombie Dice

Have been trying to find games I can play with my 5 year old (have to think of the next generation of gamers) and I think this could be a hit

1. it’s cheap €12

2. It’s easy to play

3. It’s quick

4. It’s got Zombies in

More importantly he’s OK with the fact that the players will be the zombies in the game. He inquired and I had no idea why zombies LIKE brains but he didn’t press the matter.

If you haven’t played zombie dice it’s a very simple push your luck filler game. Well worth a look. It’s also out on iOS but that doesn’t capture the whole feel of the dice.

June 4, 2013 0