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CaptainTwietie wrote: Still running a year long campaign with.... (drumsticks ruffling) Heroscape. Spend over the years some 750 euro's on it. Best game-investment ever.10 players with each an army. Everbody plays with my stuff.
They are fighting a civil war on a fantasy world. They can conquer land, earn money and expand their army. That 's a meta-game-experience, oh boy.
I _need_ to see the rules for this!!
I thought about doing something like this myself, where you'd start with a few lieutenants for your various generals, and a limited unit pool that expands over time. Maybe Taelord and Minions for a 400 point army for the Utgar guy, and then Raelin and some Sentinels for the Jandar guy. Toss in Runa and Concan, etc... As Einar expands his territory he can have Kaemon Awa lead some Tagawa Samurai Archers. You could make a world map with locations marked, and write down the name of the battlefield that is in that swamp/castle/whatever, using some of the great resources on Heroscapers.com. I think the overarching rules system was gonna be something like how Dragon Force worked on the Sega Saturn.
A buddy of mine and his family went camping in upstate New York over the Labor Day weekend, so we spent a few days at his place in the Park Slope area of Brooklyn.
Unfortunately, my son was sick the first two days with some stomach virus. Fortunately, my buddy had Warlock of Firetop Mountain on his shelf.
I had actually never played this Fighting Fantasy title. While my wife and daughter were out about town, I read this aloud to my son and he made the decisions. We were slain by four zombies in a room (with some fifth corpse in the background).
I have no idea how far we got as we didn't map our way. Probably went in circles to our doom...
EDIT: Maybe this should be in the 'What Books have you been reading?"
Space Ghost wrote: Rum & Bones...The attack effects both 2/3 of each ship. One would expect it to effect both crews fairly equally. HOWEVER, last night we rolled triple 2's, where the to hit was a 3. So my opponent escaped damage, and my dudes all got hit for double-damage. The Kraken literally killed my entire crew and 2 heroes, leaving one hero at the stern. I conceded, but I loved it.
Played on Sunday myself and loved it as well.
Something sounds off with your Kraken roll though. Did you roll for each zone? Because a Triple-2 roll would just leave one zone safe for your opponent. But the rest should have still suffered.
Sounds like I screwed it up. I just rolled a single roll for all zones.
I went over to Uba and Engineer Al's for some gaming last night. Josh Look was there and we sat down for a night of chucking dice, shootin the shit and just having a really great time.
Played Risk: Star Wars last night - go to the Star Wars thread for the details. On a scale of Jar Jar Binks to Boba Fett....it's fucking Boba Fett.
After that we sat down to the arena battle game, Ultimate Warriorz! Nobody is talking about this game or playing it. I think MOST people on this website should take note. Yes the name is dumb and the fucking cute "Z" at the end of Warrior makes me hate it just a little bit, but it's a fun dice chucker. The game last seven rounds and each person has a unique creature to send into battle. You simply play a card, move based on initiative and then toss dice. Each character has a couple special cards, but all of the attack cards are different for each warrior. The smaller monsters are harder to hit, but have low health, while the big ass dragon has a ton of HP but is easy to hit. You win by killing everyone or by causing the most damage. The game last 7 rounds and you can finish it in about 20 mins. If you like King of Tokyo, but hate how people can be non-confrontational and still win...then buy Ultimate Warriorz. It's all fighting, all the time. Like every Matagot game it's gorgeous. The box turns into an arena and the cardboard standees look great. Game plays up to 8 and is perfect for when everyone is drunk at the end of the night.
Played Splendor. My usual strategy of playing just 3 colors didn't pan out this time, as another guy was gunning for the same white cards that I was. I was a little slow, and ended with only 10 points.
Evolution with 3 new players. People were playing tons of high food cards, there were a lot of Scavengers, and my big Pack Hunting Carnivore ruled the roost. This was one of the highest scoring games I've seen. I had 99, even after all of us put 15 food tokens back in to keep some tokens in the game. In a lot of my early teaching games the scores were pretty close, but the next highest was 20 or 30 points behind. The guy who got in 3rd loved it. The couple (whose first night it was there) seemed to like it, one of them even took a picture of the game in the middle because she thought it was cute. They left at 9:15 after the game, saying that they had to get up early for work. I hope I didn't scare them away. I'm still impressed with how the game feels a bit different every time. This was the first night I've seen Ambush come up, because just about everyone had Warning Call and 3-4 species.
Played 3 live Summoner Wars games back to back for the first time in awhile. I've mostly been playing on the app lately since it's easier to find opponents. Jexik v. Ret-talus, Sera Eldwyn v. Mad Sirian, and then Sunderved v. Mugglug. Games flew by, as I usually gunned for the Summoner before our draw piles ran out.
Then some two-player Hanabi. We did terribly, but laughed at our misfortune.
Then there were two tense games of 6p Avalon. Everyone always seems to think I'm Merlin when I'm good, which was good in the first game. In the second game I was a bad guy but pegged who Merlin was about halfway through. Whenever people would say he was bad I couldn't help but smile... surprisingly they still took me on the last mission though. I still prefer this to One Night Ultimate Werewolf since a lower proportion of the time is spent in the "night phase," but I appreciate both games. I also recommend not using Percival and Morgana. I've enjoyed the game a lot more since I started doing that. Mordred/Oberon/Lady of the Lake with 7 is one of my favorite ways to play though. Mordred means that Merlin has to keep looking for that last spy, Oberon means that the spies are looking for someone too (although it can be really frustrating to actually be Oberon), and the Lady of the Lake adds a few more discussion points for everyone to chew on.
Doggy play date so all kinds of craziness... played two games of Splendor. Legit great game, I'm moving the rating up on BGG from a boring 7. Hits a perfect spot where the game is fast but there is real chance to go for a short or longer term strategy.
Last night we played two 6 player games of Spartacus. We had 2 new players, and the rest of us were seasoned veterans. Still, it was the first introduction to the new expansion for the group (I played it at Origins in an epic 7 player match with several Fatties.)
The first game saw a lot of coaching to the new players, and one of them ended up leading Glaber to victory. He's probably my favorite Dominus to play. I had the new Dominus, Calavius. I think Calavius sucks since his second ability is extremely limited in scope. It only fires if the Host Dominus loses influence during the Arena phase. That doesn't happen very often! I much prefer playing a Dominus who is in full control of an ability to generate influence (like Glaber!).
For the second game, the player controlling Seppius took a VERY bold run at victory on the SECOND turn of the game! He knew it wouldn't fly and only did it because he had a truly epic hand of cards and felt that not trying it would be shameful. We beat him down hard, poisoning the wine of his one ready gladiator. Then I hit him with Shameful Ludus, and the best part was that one of the new players hit him with Twist the Knife right after that!
The festival cards were well liked, and the boasting mechanic of the new expansion also went over pretty well. One player actually did lose two influence due to his boasted gladiator getting beaten. At one point I played a festival card that granted me 8 gold if the host declared a primus. I offered to split it with the host and the battle was on...
Second game of Cthulhu Wars yesterday, two new players and one guy owned the game and had played a few times. I had Crawling Chaos and let the others pick first. I think that was a mistake; CC definitely felt very easy to play as and has some great defensive moves if you try to target him. I was kicking ass by the mid game and the others ganged up on me but it was far too late. Total time about 2 hours and I won 41-35-30-20ish. Black Goat and Cthulhu really struggled this game. The Goat player didn't get his power engine running and didn't do much whereas Cthulhu wasn't aggressive at all early and by the late game Nyarly and Hastur could kick his ass pretty easy. Everyone seemed to like the game and I had a great time playing it. Last game I was Yellow Sign and barely had a chance to attack, as CC my gameplay was way different. I like the game but still need more plays before I decide to throw more money at it next month with the expansions. On the other hand I'm around 40 games right now and don't want to acquire more so adding more factions and neutral options to a current game seems like a good way to extend the life of it without having a new game on the shelf demanding attention.
Third game of Study in Emerald, had 5 and two new players. I was a Loyalist and two others were clearly on my side by the halfway mark. One of the new guys had trouble picking up the strat and he ended up on the Restorationist side and lost. Its a tough game for noobs but I still like it alot. The card variety is great, the different and shifting ways to scores is great, and it reminds me a bit of Glory to Rome where some of the cards and actions seem overpowered but taken as a whole there are so many great cards none of them are overpowered. Kinda long at a little over 2 hours but the player turns were pretty fast. Still a favorite.
Last game is Successors, a favorite of ratpfink here on the forums that I had a chance to play against. I first tried this about 4 months ago or so at a con where he taught it. The game somewhat aims to be a multi player Hannibal RvC and doesn't really succeed for me. I liked it alot my first play and after my second try last week I have to lower my rating. The card draws each round are pretty limited in action terms and are mostly used for ops and activating generals or building units rather then the events like in Hannibal. The royals that provide points for a possible win are stolen by some of the cards and often are extremely difficult to use effectively and are some of the better cards. Instead it feels like everyone is playing their own little game of conquering territory in one corner of the map for the first half of the game, and during the second half everyone aims to grab a couple of VP provinces from each other and maybe a handful of battles occur. For the time spent on it (maybe 3-4 hours on average) I would far rather play Hannibal itself, both for the different combat system - Hannibal uses battle cards whereas Successors uses two dice rolls, and for the greater player interaction. Successors also has the odd rule where a defeated army is permanently removed from the board and displaced until the next round of the game instead of retreating. Battles are pretty high stakes by the middle/end of the game as a result and can be devastating if you lose a general (you only have 2 main generals) early in a round. Losing a general on the map is huge and leaves your territory pretty vulnerable to all of your neighbors and the displacement rule I feel discourages fights and is not something I appreciate on a fun level in the game. It probably is accurate for the time period but it makes the game far more non-confrontational. Maria is by far a better multi player wargame for me and I suspect Friedrich is as well if I ever get a chance to play it.
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