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jeb wrote: TTR:SWITZERLAND came out of retirement and we had a bloodbath over routs to Austria. So many bottlenecks on that tight map. I think vanilla TTR is a little weak unless you have 5 players, but I've never had a bad game on the Swiss map.
The India map is full of very short, crucial routes that result in a lot of anger. It's pretty fun. And it has Switzerland on the back.
The following user(s) said Thank You: jeb, aaxiom, JEM
It finally arrived, and I tried the tutorial and first mission of the new WHQ card game, which I usually call WHQTACG.
Seems like a good game, but I need more games to internalize the mechanics. Card games have always felt procedural to me, but this one is much, much less so than the LOTR LCG. Some really clever things, like how an attack 1 Retreat Inflict Inflict creature means this is a (relatively) lethal archer that is weak in melee. Even with the absence of map, I found my characters trading enemies (and risk), which is more to say than most dungeon crawlers out there.
Another game of Fury of Dracula with my game group the other night, and another clear loss for Dracula. I keep seeing things on TOS about Dracula being overpowered and winning all the time, but in the 6 games I've played so far, he's only won once (I'll take some minor satisfaction in saying that the win was the only time I've played Drac). So I'm of the opposite persuasion at this point; that Drac could use some more help.
In this case, the Drac player really fooled us to begin with, preventing one player from moving to Paris and putting some sea storms over around Spain. I thought he might be bluffing, but regardless we were starting to move that direction when we were able to use an event to reveal the 5th space of the trail, which sure enough was Valona. So he had been farting around in Eastern Europe the whole time. But thanks to an extra movement event and fast horses, we were able to pretty quickly get back over there. His mistake, I think, was not to bolt to sea at some point while we were still unsure of where he was. We were able to surround him, and started a 2 on 1 fight, but he came out of that relatively unscathed while nearly defeating Seward. But still, at that point he couldn't escape our net, and couldn't make it to Castle Dracula, and we kept pounding on him, eventually killing him early in week 3.
Kingdom of Heaven (MMP) - Third Crusade scenario. The jury is still out for me on this title. Feels clunky and too siege driven. I can't get the hang of when/how to use 80% of the events. It may end up being one if those CDGs I can never win at (I'm looking at you Unhappy King Charles). But with or more play I might grow too like it we'll enough. I want to try the Muslims vs Mongols scenario.
I'm the Crusaders in this scenario and finally crossed over from being the hunted into "time to kick some ass" territory with two very large Crusader armies showing up. Now I get to claw back VPs. Shades of playing as the allies in a Battle of the Bulge game.
Last edit: 12 Jan 2016 05:33 by Hadik. Reason: Correction
Good war gaming (ok maybe TS isn't a War game) start to the year. Played the Jihad in Labyrith last Wed. Unfortunately George Bush turned both Egypt and Iraq and won.
lasr Friday I played the US in Twilght Struggles. I won against a fairly new USSR player on turn 7,
Finally, I solo my first turn in ASL. The US 101 took out a Germany unit in Close Combat. I think I'm getting the hang of all the Prep Fire, First Fire, Final Fire stuff.
I've been playing SURVIVE: SPACE ATTACK quite a bit lately. This is such a cool update to the classic game. Sure it adds a tiny bit more complexity, but the heinous fuckery, and sky high fun factor are still present in the design. I love popping into a fighter and cruising around or manning a laser turret to clear a swath of alien scum. Each turn there are lots of delicious options and you're almost thinking more about killing other people than escaping! Or maybe that's just me. Great update. I dig the Sci Fi theme and think that fans of the regular Survive should snatch this one too.
The World of SMOG: On Her Majesty's Service - If you can get past the Steampunk setting, which is just window dressing, there's a pretty damn fun game underneath. You need to buy and sell goods to earn money to buy keys and then leave the market with the necessary goods. The literal twist is that the market is made from a bunch of gears that rotate and the buy/sell price and goods available is whatever points towards your side of the board on each gear. And when you buy something you cover up that spot with a marker making that good no longer available (it can be uncovered later by an action) and rotate the room ninety degrees.
Meanwhile there's some NPC type characters that move around the map and provide bonuses or penalties if you share the same spot with them. They are moved by whoever has the first player maker. The other perk to the first player marker is an additional action each turn but you don't get the free coin every turn that everyone else gets.
The actual goods part...Whatever, just buy low and sell high. The real interest, and what I'd consider the game, is the board manipulation because this is a race game, you need to collect four keys and four specific goods then get to your exit space before the other players complete theirs. So making effective use of your actions while attempting to slow down your opponent's as well as being in competition for the first player bonus action is huge.
Played Rattle, Battle, Grab the Loot last night. Man, I wanted to like this, but it's just not very good. It's got great artwork and feel to it, and it sure seems like it will be a hoot, but it's plagued with a main event that just isn't that fun and drags everything down.
In each adventure there are some NPC ships (dice). Each player contributes the ships (dice) he wants to send. All are mixed up and dropped into the box lid. So far that sounds like fun. Unfortunately at that point it becomes this tedious game of millimeters and positioning, with a measuring stick and everything. The kind of people who like goofy cards and dice are immediately kind of turned off by this, and the people who'd enjoy this aspect won't like anything else. It's like that dumb card combat system in FFG's first go at DungeonQuest, which completely went at odds with the rest of the game. What should be a light, rollicking time suddenly bogs down.
In addition, the part that isn't that combat just isn't that great. There are funny upgrades and such, but they aren't enough to salvage the game.
It's a huge disappointment for me, but probably a good one to have. I'm a big ol' Portal fanboy and bought this one as soon as I could because of that. So it's a valuable lesson learned.
Good to hear Lego. I almost bought Rattle Battle yesterday. MM had is onsale for like $20 or something crazy. I hemmed and hawed and then just decided to pass. Sounds like I made the right choice.
I played a game of Epic X-wing last night- we went 400 points a-side. I played imperials with a raider with ordnance and a carrier sporting 2 bombers, they were supported by 7 TIES including youngster with Intimidation and Howlrunner- Echo was also present but was accidentlly mowed over by the raider mid game after only shooting a transport a few times. . My opponent surprised me showing up with two transports with slicer tools and a bunch of B-wings with the stressing cannon, supported by some Higher pilot skill aces to take out my raider.
We both had clever strategies - me: use my ties to cut his agility down and then take out his ships- Him: Stress my ships and use slicers tools to finish them off. Neither strategy worked as well as hoped. He took Youngster out fairly early with bad dodge rolls on my part and clever Ion cannon use on his and one of his transports took a crit destroying is slicer tool pretty early. So we most slugged it out. we had a 6x6 board but played in a 3X3 for 98% of the game. I personally love epic, so much wackiness and plotting going on. My opponent is an excellent pilot and was impressive to watch dodge my raiders arcs and took out much of my Ties to 2 of his hawks and a dead Poe., looked bad and then my raider finally lined up some shoots taking out B-wings two turns in a row as his transports and my carrier went down in flames around it.
I released my bombers at two separate times- getting some good shots in- I liked the docking aspect protecting my bombers, as they tend to get destroyed before they can get a shot off. The carrier also had an ordnance expert on board that helped.
We played for about 3 and a half hours and all that was left was my raider with one (1) hull point on the rear (0) on the front and a single Academy pilot with 1 hull point.
Ha, I did the same thing in my recent epic game (use the Carrier to protect bombers). I think that's really the only use of docking. Fly by and drop a bomber out the back to pound the shit out of Rebels.
I think the Raider is my favorite ship in the game.
Man, I gotta get caught up with X-Wing...that new stuff looks so bad ass, love that carrier. I understand that Kallus comes with it, love that they're including Rebels stuff.
I'm thinking about just getting back up to current with Imperial and Rebel and leaving S&V for a rainy day.
I just got in an ENORMOUS box from Eagle-Gryphon containing Empires: Age of Discovery. It's almost as big as Cthulhu Wars. Cripes. Will probably solo that up tonight.
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