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Chicago Express keeps delivering, every game is fun, different and tense. Everytime I play it, I'm surprised at how different the game develops despite the complete lack of luck or any hidden information. Sometimes a company is good, sometimes a company is bad and it's always difficult to know if making the game go longer or shorter is to your benefit.
I think I should pick up German Railways or Continental Divide or another game like that.
I finally had a fun, non-explosive game of Blood Rage. There were not any big blunders and we hate-drafted heavily so scores were close and the game was tense. I hope the game can stabilize like that.
Tried 51st State. I thought I would love it because I liked the idea of building and attacking and such, but deep down I think it's as euro as it gets. The attacks are a red herring: Sure, you can destroy a building, but its owner also gets something back so it all ends up being very similar to taking a positive action. It's a very "feel-good" game, there are not really any bad options and it snowballs very hard. Found it quite dissapointing.
I also played Elder Sign again, this time with the expansion. I found it as dull as I did during my first game, if simply because out of the hour it takes to play the game, less than half is actually spent playing it, the rest is spent on the physical act of rolling die.
Played a 2P game of the new version of Through the Ages this past weekend . Had not played the old version. Overall, I like what I see so far. We played the stripped down version - no Age III, stripped the nasty cards out of the deck as instructed. Probably took us til halfway through the game to figure everything out and play correctly. Still need to go back and re-read the rules. Its about as heavy a Euro as I've seen, not counting some Ameritrash titles. And I can now see where NATIONS attempted to streamline stuff. While I think TtA is a more complete game, NATIONS is both faster as well as a bit more engaging, as players have less downtime since they alternate actions rather than doing all at once.
I can now see where 3, is the ideal number of players. Four would drag due to downtime, even with experienced players. 5 would be fucking insanity so I am glad there is no option for that . And I am glad there were only 2 of us as far as having a new player.
The iOS port has been in development hell, which is too bad - this would be an excellent candidate.
That is Defenders of the Last Stand. Excellent game! Smelly Clash of Cultures plastic & ugly fonts notwithstanding. Also, Pete, FYI, one major rule omission from the manual: you can't attack a boss if there are minions in his space.
As an aside, the models look like shit. Nothing like advertised. Casting was shitty. Chad Hoverter did the model sculpting...been chatting with him today.
I don't think he's happy.
They're also too big. They should've been 15mm scale.
It isn't often I play other people's games anymore, but I played a friend's copy of Zombicide: Black Plague. We did the first scenario with three players, everybody controlling two characters. I had the nun and the elf. It seems pretty fun, very straightforward hack-and-slash play with SUPER simple enemy activations and some SUPER questionable omissions of content. Only two vault cards, really? No weapon that can actually beat the Abomination included in the base game? Lots of keyword abilities not on any of the characters in the base game? Ugh. He had Wulfsburg, but I felt like the whole time that there were things missing. Maybe it's psychological, knowing that it is a full product line.
But I did like it, the medieval setting was cool and I liked the overall flow of it. I liked that RUNNING AWAY was OFTEN a good idea because the zombies clump together and the heroes are fairly squishy unless they find armor/shields. The friendly fire rules are great, and they did result in one character death as one of the others whiffed a couple of crossbow shots into a melee. That's fun stuff.
Advancement mechanics are good, they feel like a video game. I also like how advancing levels escalates the game, I actually think that is kind of a brilliant way to up the stakes. Too many other games don't scale the difficulty with advancement, it works really well here but I do wonder if that can get gamey with players sandbagging until everyone is close to leveling up. We didn't do that, but it seems like it could be done.
Also PLASTIC CONSOLES THAT YOU STICK PEGS IN. Hallelujah. Along with paper money and spinners, that is something that automatically adds one star to any game.
But I am ready for this new trend of elaborate internal boxes/trays to end. My friend wanted to put all of the figures back in the trays, I would have been happy throwing them into a baggie
I'll probably pick it up to play solo and with the Hellfire Club gang, especially since you can do 6+ with it.
The main problem I have with Black Plague is the "rich get richer" aspect that was not there in the older boxes. The best weapons in BP now have minimum level requirements to use them. That means when you're stuck on 5XP and find a Chaos Crossbow, instead of thinking, "Finally! Now I can level up with the rest of the team," instead you have five people telling you that you need to give it to Dave who's at orange already because you can't use it.
Also the base box and Wulfsburg don't have any variety in zombies- they all do the same thing, just more or fewer activations. No toxic or berserker zombies to really mix up the tactical elements. I kind of hated the peg boards (which are at least not as awful looking as the Massive Darkness ones). Speaking of MD, though, obviously there's added value in Black Plague if you get that with the kickstarter exclusive crossover pack.
I'm with you on the boxes of trays, though. All my Zombicide minis are poured into a Blood Rage inner box inside the main box.
You can play Zombicide that way. Instead of players leveling up at six points, the group levels up at 36 points, etc. There may already be missions done that way, I'm not sure (there are over 100 and some do change the base rules in similar ways).
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