Barnes on Games presents Theel, Mann and Campbell on Games- Review Corner Showcase

Chapel wrote: P.S. I didn't forget to send you Razzia, just been too lazy to hit the post office. Should be on it's way this weekend.

Ditto for me (different game).


Spellfire renders any argument about publishers being Gatekeepers preventing chaff from hitting the market invalid.

mikecl wrote: I think Kickstarter is giving us a lot of beautifully crafted, gorgeous looking, half-baked games. These are games like Fallen or Chaosmos which look great and don't reveal their flaws until a few plays in at which point you discover fatal flaws that make you put the game permanently on the shelf. For me, it was the Final Battles in Fallen which invalidate the entire rest of the game because your drawn battles are totally random and have nothing to do with the preceding adventures. So my very buffed up Magic User who had dominated the game wound up pulling final Strength challenges and lost badly. And it happens a lot because there's a compete disconnect between the two halves of the game. A gamer came up with a small fix (it needs more) than should have at least been part of the original rules.

I apologize if I steered you wrong on Fallen Mike, but I don't wholeheartedly agree with this. First of all, I've never been in a game where more than two back to back were a stat a character was weak in. Typically it evens out.

Some of it depends on the Dungeon Lord you are facing as their decks are not identical. There's some strategy there and you have to be able to compensate for that.

Another thing is that you need to be saving your equipment to burn on those tests that you may not have much of a chance on. There's a subtle mind gaming going on when the DL draws a Strength test in the Final Battle against a hero with poor strength. Since the DL chooses how much to commit against a particular challenge first, he needs to decide if he's going to blow through Fortune or a strong monster. He needs to decide if he's going to burn Fate cards and increase his dice pool. If he lays off knowing you don't have a big pool, you can come in strong using equipment and fate to augment your roll. Sometimes you need to know when to just tank it and let the bad guy win, much like a BSG crisis check. That's why it's best of 5.

Some of the heroes also have the opportunity to increase skills in a more jack of all trades fashion, that's something to leverage if you're particularly worried about the Final Battle and luck halting your progress.

The game to me is all about experiencing the narrative while trying to build up your tools to win in the Final Battle. Sometimes luck will work a bit against you but in 9 plays now I've never felt like someone was cheated.

charlest wrote: I apologize if I steered you wrong on Fallen Mike, but I don't wholeheartedly agree with this. First of all, I've never been in a game where more than two back to back were a stat a character was weak in. Typically it evens out.

I don't feel misled for a second. Truth is I'd already bought the game at that point. Maybe the Final Battle deck wasn't shuffled adequately form its new state but two games in a row where I was the Hero, I drew three completely off-my-skill cards in the Final Battle which is when it occurred to me they don't have a lot to do with the rest of the narrative which is pretty disappointing.

A gamer suggested a variant where you pull cards equal to the level of the highest monster plus the skill level of the Hero -- says for instance Level 3 monster plus Level 3 Hero for six Final Battle cards. Lay them all face up. The side whose darkness track is in this favour chooses first and then players alternate choosing -- the point being, you get to choose. I think it's an excellent rule, but the game needs something else too, to bridge the disconnect.

I felt that flaw should have been discovered on playtesting and the user-suggested rule should have, at the very least, been included in the final product which was my point about the kinds of beautiful sloppy eye candy you get in a Kickstarted product. Nothing wrong with your reviews Charlie. At the time I totally agreed with it too because I love this type of choose your own adventure and I didn't run into this problem until the fourth and fifth plays.

VonTush wrote:

Chapel wrote: P.S. I didn't forget to send you Razzia, just been too lazy to hit the post office. Should be on it's way this weekend.

Ditto for me (different game).


Spellfire renders any argument about publishers being Gatekeepers preventing chaff from hitting the market invalid.

Everybody is always down on Spellfire. I'm convinced nobody played the expansions. The game is better than people give it credit for.

I always enjoyed it as a goofly little game. It was actually the only game outside of GW that I played a bit of back in HS, we played it more than Magic.
Though there was some downright goofy shit going on in that game. Like the characters who you had to ask permission if you wanted to cast a spell. The ones that trigger to real world events, like if the sun is down the character is more powerful. And some of the artwork is just very memorable, but not in a good way. Mainly the photos of people dressed up in costumes. I should pull my cards out I still have kicking around some day.