Octopus Overlords

With all of the arbitrary imaginary items you could have picked, fins, a snorkel, scuba tank, Swimmies, you went with knife?

I backed pretty much everything on the Tide of the Dragon project. Like Smoove, I keep going back to Street Master because it's just so streamlined and tight compared to what came after it. I mean, I enjoy Altar Quest, but the games take forever and the pace is so much slower. Brook City I've never been a big fan of. It just felt like the game would reach a point where you knew you were going to win, but you just had to wait for a specific card to appear. Sometimes that could take an extra hour or more.

hepcat wrote: ↑Thu Aug 19, 2021 2:25 pm My copy of Hour of Need is sitting in a warehouse in China right now. And I don't expect to see it before Christmas...maybe even later.

I may just put a knife in between my teeth and start swimming to China.

Holy crap, hours after I posted this, an update came through from Blacklist Games that they'd booked space for shipping! Looks like they're on the boat within the next week or two (fingers crossed)!

Unfortunately, I'm already somewhere off the coast of Chile as I write this. So it's both too late for me to stop, and apparently too late for me to learn geography.

I played a fantastic game of Oath this week.

Thanks to a clean sweep in our previous game, the Chancellor started out controlling a large majority of the map, and his win condition was to control the most sites. He would be nearly impossible for the two exiles (including me) to topple.

I made an early attempt to fulfill the Vision of Sanctuary, which lets an exile win if they control the most relics. But that was easily thwarted, and I spun my wheels for most of the rest of the game.



The other exile hatched a successful conspiracy to steal the Grand Scepter, which let him become a Citizen.



And now the struggle was on. It was clear that the Empire would meet the victory condition, but if the Citizen played his cards right, he would be the ultimate winner and not the Chancellor.

In the last turn, the Chancellor started a titanic battle with his own Citizen to retain power. To ensure victory, the Chancellor pulled his forces from every site on the map into the battle. This wouldn't endanger his rule, since he wore the Bandit Crown, which gives the owner control over every unoccupied site.



The Chancellor won, but it was a pyrrhic victory, with his armies left decimated. And then I realized: if I attacked now, on the very last turn, I could wrest that Bandit Crown from the Chancellor, giving myself control over almost every site on the map and winning the game. And so I did.

It was an amazing game: a successful conspiracy (which is very hard to pull off), vicious infighting between Chancellor and Citizen, and a come-from-behind victory by an exile who took advantage of that infighting. Not every game of Oath sings, but boy when it does...

I want to play Oath so bad!!!! But I haven't gotten my copy yet and my friends don't seem to like it enough to play their copies, sigh.

Yeah, Oath is a love-it-or-strongly-dislike-it proposition, and while I love it, I absolutely can understand how many people won't enjoy it. And you need a group that will commit to multiple playthroughs to get the most out of it.

I think you need a group of 4 to get the best dynamics out of Oath. I love what it promises and the stories that can emerge. But it is kinda mean and tense — and we have to figure out combat.

Zarathud wrote: ↑Sat Aug 21, 2021 10:36 pm — and we have to figure out combat.

We did. We yell at each other for 15 minutes and then we get tired and take a nap. It’s an elegant mechanic.

We're just finishing up our Mansions of Madness content (sadly, the last that will ever be produced for this edition, R.I.P.), so we needed a quick filler for tomorrow night.

I decided to break out ALIEN:FATE OF THE NOSTROMO again and give it a whirl with four players to see how it handled.

The game still has some issues IMO. Perhaps the biggest is there seems to be many opportunities for "dead turns" where you simply don't have anything to do. Whether that's because you're boxed into a dead end by the Alien or just don't have any scrap within reach, I found myself several times throughout the game just forfeiting actions. The best action-based cooperative games force you to make hard decisions because you'll never have enough actions to do what you need to do. This one too often strays in the opposite direction.

My other complaint is it's super easy to get screwed by a bad card draw or concealed encounter. There is *some* mitigation available, and one could argue that walking blindly into a concealed encounter is your own fault, but you don't always have a choice.

However, I will say that with a higher player count the game can provide a somewhat brutal challenge, and reveals some subtle strategies upon repeated plays. True to the movie, the game is very claustrophobic. You really have to take advantage of crafting items, because simply trying to avoid the Alien while you complete all your goals is an exercise in futility. And it can be extremely satisfying to think there's no way possible to win, and then pull out just the right circumstances to do so.

Good example from last night - I had a goal to have all players in the Workshop, which is a dead-end room. I get them all down there, and as luck would have it the Alien boxes me in. Now I've got all four players stuck, and the only way out is through the Alien which will cost me 2 morale I can't afford to lose (and will still leave me with 3 trapped players). So it was Parker's turn, and he is able to generate 1 scrap per turn for an action. I used my first action to generate a scrap. My second action I initiated a trade with Dallas and got two more scrap. For my third action I crafted an Incinerator, and for my final action I blasted that Alien motherfucker back to his nest, opening an escape route for the entire team.

It's turns like those that make me forgive some of the game's weaknesses. I still don't think it's a *great* game based on comparable weight games such as Horrified and even Back to the Future, but it has its moments. Will be interesting to see what the group thinks of it.

YellowKing wrote: ↑Thu Sep 02, 2021 9:07 am We're just finishing up our Mansions of Madness content (sadly, the last that will ever be produced for this edition, R.I.P.), so we needed a quick filler for tomorrow night.

Wait, what?

https://www.dicebreaker.com/games/mansi ... nsions-ffg

There are no more expansions or DLC in the works for horror board game Mansions of Madness: Second Edition, publisher Fantasy Flight Games has confirmed.

Yup, made me angry to hear that as it’s in my top 5 games of all time. However, the fan made stuff is actually supposed to have quite a few gems. You have to install Valkyrie to use it though.

Quick update on the ALIEN: FATE OF THE NOSTROMO group session.

Overall it was a big success. We pulled out the win after a fairly rough start. And having four minds at the table revealed some strategies and item uses I had never thought about before that greatly heightened my appreciation of the game. While the rest of the group had some of the same criticisms as I did, we still all had a good time and felt sufficiently challenged even without the Ash variant.

Prior to that we finished the last of the Mansions of Madness scenarios. To date our group has played every bit of official content made for the game, and while we were sad to see it go I think we got our money's worth. Path of the Serpent was a lot of fun, and our last by-the-seat-of-our-pants victory was a fitting end to the saga.

Last night we played one of the stand-alone scenarios for Robinson Crusoe: Mystery Tales. This is the horror-themed expansion for Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island.

If you're a Crusoe fan, this expansion certainly adds a ton of content - not only is there a 5-scenario campaign and 2 standalone scenarios, you get a lot of new mechanics. Stone is now a gatherable resource, new invention cards, 10 new player characters (that can also act as NPCs), new adventure decks, new event deck, cultist enemies, insanity, etc.

However, if you thought base Crusoe was hard, you're really in for a butt-whipping with this one. We have not tried the campaign yet, which is a bit more forgiving in terms of player death, but the standalone was BRUTAL. You're tasked with finding and destroying 5 monster lairs, and even though they even removed the weather die mechanic from this scenario so that you don't have to worry so much about shelter, we got our asses handed to us trying to fight the cultists that guard each lair. Trying to do that while also making sure you have food for the night seemed nearly impossible.

We're very experienced Crusoe players, having beat all of the base game scenarios + the Voyage of the Beagle expansion + the official DLC scenarios, so we weren't going into this as newbies. Quite honestly 3 of the 4 of us are ready to shelve this already and move on - I enjoy difficult games, but I enjoy the ones where, after a loss, you feel like you could have won if you had just changed your strategy just a bit. With Crusoe, due to the random events and dice rolls, it often feels like you're fucked in some way no matter what you do.

Finally got around to trying Marvel Villainous today. I was quite surprised at how complex it is, and how looooooong it takes it play. Granted, first games are always slow, but it took almost 2.5 hours for three of us to finish.

It was WAY too much for the Wonder Twins 8.4, with one of them bowing out 45 minutes in and the other one making a valiant effort at sticking it out for the full game, but not really understanding quite what he was doing. I came within one turn of winning three times with Hela, but I either drew a bad hand with no allies, or got stuck with a random Fate hero each time. Little B 12.6 actually ended up winning with Taskmaster.

Seems like it could be a fun game with a group that has lots of patience and is very strategically minded. I thought it really dragged, as you spend half the time waiting for everyone to puzzle out what they're going to do with their turns. The rules were frustratingly vague as well, with lots of generic "this" and "they" language that made it very unclear exactly which location or character it referred to. We also figured out midway through that Wonder Twin 8.4a was playing Thanos completely wrong, as we were spawning Infinity Stones in as standalone items to a location rather than drawing new Allies to attach them to. So that was fun.

I'd like to give it another go as a 1-on-1 duel rather than a full group, and see if it fares any better. First impressions were mostly meh, with sheer luck of the draw playing a much more significant role in the final outcome than I would have liked, and the rules being really difficult for us to parse.

Disney Villainous is one of my favorite games, and rarely do 3 player games take longer than an hour for us. I know they changed some of the mechanics for the Marvel version, so that may add to the length of time. The Marvels version is on my list to pick up.

There are guides available as to the difficulty of each character. Some are much easier to play than others.

FWIW my family loves disney villainous and we all hated our one and only play of marvel villainous. Took way too long and the shared fate pile was a downgrade. You didn’t get the feeling of being the villain you were playing as much as the Disney version.

I played Ankh a couple of times, thanks to a friend who has the all-in pledge. It's a clever take on area control with a strong emphasis on controlling tempo and making the most of losing battles, wrapped in a mythical Egyptian theme.

The weirdest part of the game is the catch-up mechanism. About 2/3 of the way through, the two players in last place "merge," becoming a single, slightly stronger god. I thought this would be annoying, but it's actually pretty fun to have someone else to bounce ideas off of.

The production is beautiful and over-the-top. Maybe too over-the-top with heaps of gods to play and mythic beasts to recruit, each with their own special power. The core design is tight enough that it's important to track and plan around everyone's abilities, which can be difficult when everything changes every single game. I think there's plenty of strong gameplay in the core box, making the various expansions and Kickstarter exclusives very much optional.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Sun Sep 12, 2021 8:52 pm There are guides available as to the difficulty of each character. Some are much easier to play than others.

As an aside, that was something that Spirit Island did that I loved- labelling the complexity level of the characters. I wish that caught on in more games.

I picked up Railways of the World recently in the hopes of getting my family to try a train game... and it worked! We played a three-player game on the Mexico map, and I think everyone really enjoyed it. At the end, the 11-year-old won because he was able to grab a couple of quick income boosts and avoid taking too many bonds. My wife played really well and came in second, while I made a series of increasingly poor decisions. Great fun, and I hope we'll do it again soon.

AWS260 wrote: ↑Sat Sep 18, 2021 10:24 am I picked up Railways of the World recently in the hopes of getting my family to try a train game... and it worked! We played a three-player game on the Mexico map, and I think everyone really enjoyed it. At the end, the 11-year-old won because he was able to grab a couple of quick income boosts and avoid taking too many bonds. My wife played really well and came in second, while I made a series of increasingly poor decisions. Great fun, and I hope we'll do it again soon.

Love this game. But it never hits the table. Probably been 5 years or more since I had a chance to play.

Got to play one round of Twisted Fables and one round of Sanctuary: The Keepers Era on Sunday. It was the first time playing each game so time ran a little long, with experience I think we could have played 3 or possibly 4 games in the same time frame.

First game up was Sanctuary. The game consists of 6 different factions to chose from and each faction has a pre-configured deck that you play. There are options for mixing and maxing factions and actual deck building but we stuck with the pre-con decks for the first game. We each randomly chose a faction to play, and each faction deck has a themed mechanic.

My friend’s faction was all about dealing direct damage to your opponent bypassing defense but often at the cost of damaging yourself as well. The faction also has the ability to heal itself of damage to offset the self-inflicted damage. It’s not an overly complex faction and the deck synergy is there you just need to be able to strike a balance knowing when to strike or heal. The faction also has two powerful passive abilities that come in to play in the third round that allow you to deal one damage and heal one damage once per turn every turn. The idea of damaging your own health, however was anathema to my friend and it was obvious he really disliked the faction he chose. Every other turn he would play a card that would invariably deal self-damage and state, “well that makes no sense”, or “that’s a strange effect”. I will say he stuck with it though, through the game and finished rather than quitting or switching decks. Early game he came out strong and rocked me on my heels but he was so frustrated with the mechanics he didn’t capitalize on his advantage and allowed me to recover. He has mentioned in the past that he was a very proficient MTG player so I thought he would enjoy Sanctuary, hopefully he warms up to some of the other factions.

My chosen deck was based on destroying your own cards for “on-death” effects and then recycling them out of your discard and back to your hand. There were some really interesting synergies and long card chains that can be played which was a lot of fun. In two separate rounds I had 4 or 5-chain plays allowing me to clear his board of units to allow me to use my attackers or generate direct damage effects and in one round I managed to chain several cards off of his cards “on-death” effects. To add insult to injury I won the game by manipulating his board to cause him to kill himself for the last point of damage.

The game is of a similar vein of other CCG’s (MTG, Hearthstone,) with some twists. It incorporates lanes (ala SolForge or Might and Magic Duel of Champions) and rather than having a single life pool each player has four sanctuaries to protect, two with four health and two with six health that offer passive bonuses as well as other quirks and variations. I found the game quite fun although a little lighter than say MTG in depth or strategy, decks are only 28 cards plus one guaranteed champion card you can play from the side board, but still enough that I am looking forward to keep playing and exploring some of the other modes, like campaign or deck-building.

I will write about Twisted Fables later, rather than create a wall of text.

I won the exact same way with the same faction my last game

The factions in Sanctuary are quite decisive and you definitely need to learn how to use them. You need to know which cards are in your deck and how they work with each other even before your first game which is really difficult. Second and third plays really open up the game.
The same goes with using the actual sanctuaries, where to place them which ones to target asap and so on.

Last game I played, we used the factions that are printed on the playmat. Basically the green demon type guys against the lion tribe. We also used the 'Echo' variant where when your leader dies they still have a lingering effect. It really shakes up the gameplay as well. For the lion tribe, when his leader died he would permanently add +1 damage to all his units sooooooo I never killed him . My leader just respawns and can be played again. He's basically a wall with 0 damage and 5 health.

I like both games but tactically Sanctuary definitely stands out. If I want to have a quick fun game I would probably go TF. If I want to have a more brainburnery and AP inducing game I would go Sanctuary.

Now I just need to pour all of that into a video

I think Little B 12.6 must have know I've been in a board game funk lately, as she asked to play two very quick, light games tonight (first time in over a month). First was Machi Koro, which I think is meh but she's undefeated so she loves it. Second was Quests of Valeria, which I really enjoy as a compact, quicker alternative when we don't feel like setting up LoW.

A quick rules question on QoV. Are you required to use the "Hire Power" when you recruit a Citizen from the tavern? Or is it optional? The rules say "When a citizen is hired into your Guild, you gain the Hire Power immediately", but doesn't say whether or not you're required to use it. That could make a very significant difference in the game (we played it as optional).

Last night I got to play Glory to Rome for the first time, thanks to a friend with a print-and-play copy. It lives up to its reputation - really fun and swingy. I found it slightly less chaotic and more strategic than Innovation, which I love.

And now I'm googling to figure out how to make my own PnP copy.

Another out-of-print classic this weekend: Fresh Fish (the original one, where you're delivering nuclear waste and board games). What an unusual game. I won't even try to explain how the road-laying works, because it took me about half the game to catch on, despite a very good teach. I've never played another game like it, and I quite enjoyed the experience.

RMC and I were at Origins Thursday through Sunday. It was the first convention I've been to in almost 2 years. I still can't believe that.

The convention itself was noticeably down in numbers (of course), and the vendor hall was about 1/3rd the normal size, but we still managed to fit in quite a few games.

I think my favorite was half a game of Xia: Legends of the Drift. But that's just because I always enjoy that game.

We also played a demo of Mike Gnade's The Few and the Cursed. RMC enjoyed it quite a bit too and ended up buying a copy along with an expansion for a bundle price. We immediately retreated to the open gaming room (thank god we bought tickets for that since we spent most of our time there, I believe) and played a full game afterwards. It's a fun adventure game (one of my favorite types) with a decent deck building core.

A game that surprised me with its crunchiness was Blood Red Skies. It's basically the plane game Wings of Glory, but with some really well thought out mechanics for tailing, diving and other things. The planes are all on swivels so you move them through 3 states: advantaged (climbing), disadvantaged (diving) and neutral (straight on flying). You can't attack from disadvantaged, for example. So you want to manage the state you're in closely....however, being tailed will toss you straight to disadvantaged if you don't have a wingman covering you. It sounds all very elaborate, but it really works well in play.

We tried the new sixth edition of Car Wars too. They've simplified the game a bit to cut down on time and rules referencing, and it makes things a bit more fun. And more importantly, it still feels like Car Wars.

Speaking of Car Wars, the only purchase I made was Apocalypse Road, the sequel to Thunder Alley, a great racing game from GMT. It's a bit more in depth than Car Wars, but it has some fantastic racing mechanics that I really enjoy. Add in the weapons and it's a win/win for me.

Saturday night we played Unearth, which I thought was actually Excavation Earth. While Unearth is fun, it wasn't the deeper game I was expecting from David Turczi and his cohorts. Unearth is definitely a lighter, filler game.

Finally, we spent some time playing games in the hotel bar. Imperium (RMC trounced me in it) and Sanctuary saw some table time. And I was able to drink. So...win/win again.

Anyone giving that new World of Warcraft version of Pandemic a shot?

I've always heard how amazing Pandemic is, but have avoided it because the theme doesn't interest me in the least. WoW adds a theme that really grabs me, and it's been getting some good reviews (the Dice Tower guys really liked it). Interestingly, I find the theme, art, and lore of WoW absolutely fascinating, even though I don't really enjoy the actual game very much.

Debating picking up a copy, but waiting to see feedback on the solo mode before making the leap.

Skinypupy wrote: ↑Wed Oct 06, 2021 9:30 am I've always heard how amazing Pandemic is,

Who the hell ever said Pandemic was amazing? I mean Pandemic Legacy was groundbreaking, but Pandemic is... umm, yeah amazing is not the word for it. It's popular mass market co-op alongside the Forbidden island/desert/skies games. Competent? Sure. Endless variations? Yep. Amazing? Yeah, no.

Also $70 for a Pandemic variant? I guess that license was expensive (yeah, I saw the minis).

coopasonic wrote: ↑Wed Oct 06, 2021 9:43 am

Skinypupy wrote: ↑Wed Oct 06, 2021 9:30 am I've always heard how amazing Pandemic is,

Who the hell ever said Pandemic was amazing? I mean Pandemic Legacy was groundbreaking, but Pandemic is... umm, yeah amazing is not the word for it. It's popular mass market co-op alongside the Forbidden island/desert/skies games. Competent? Sure. Endless variations? Yep. Amazing? Yeah, no.

Pandemic always seems to be spoken of very positively, but I'll admit that I don't pay a ton of attention to it (again, no interest in the theme). Maybe that is just the legacy version and the regular game is meh. :shrug:

Also $70 for a Pandemic variant? I guess that license was expensive (yeah, I saw the minis).

I've come to view board games kinda like video games. $60-70 is the standard price of entry for most games, with some higher (the Gloomhavens and Middaras of the world) and lower (smaller card games, etc.) exceptions.

I would argue Pandemic is amazing in terms of a gateway game - I know at least a handful of people who got into the boardgaming hobby solely due to Pandemic. Sure, the mechanics have been so widely adopted these days that experienced players may find it dull, but there's no arguing its impact on the hobby. It really took co-op games from super-niche to a major sub-genre of boardgaming.

Keep in mind that there are three tiers of board gaming:

1) Honorary Parker Brother tier (Monopoly, Clue, Uno, Life, etc)
2) The I Watched Tabletop tier (They know that there are better games than the stuff that was on the shelves in the 70s, and they prefer those, but don't board game as a hobby)
3) The I Need Help tier (Multiple sagging shelves covered in games that cost more than some cars, deluxe boxes with room for dozens of expansions, games that were trendy two years ago and now have dust, and whole stacks of must-have crowdfunded games still in the plastic wrap.)

The majority of people on OO are tier 3 (including me, although I'm on hiatus.) For them, Pandemic is OK. It doesn't have the same appeal for somebody who lives for boardgames, but don't forget that we're a small niche outside of the core boardgaming world. It's why our games are on Kickstarter instead of the shelves at Wal-Mart. But for anybody in Tier 2, it's a great game and a staple (along with games like Carcassonne, Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride, and so forth.) For anybody in Tier 1 it's a mind-blowing experience. For taking to play with relatives/friends, for introducing Tier 1ers to modern games, and for just having fun with non-Tier-3ers, it's fantastic. It's also a good solo game if you like to multi-hand.

Side note: My browser wants me to correct Carcassonne as 'Carcass one'.

Yeah if you are asking me to choose between Monopoly, Game of Life and Pandemic, yes, Pandemic is a freaking brilliant game. If it is Catan, Pandemic or Ticket to Ride... It's probably my last pick. If it is Pandemic, Letters from Whitechapel or Aeon's End, we can burn Pandemic to keep warm while we play a good game.

I picked up HORRIFIED: AMERICAN MONSTERS yesterday. Haven't had time to give it a whirl (and probably won't until this weekend), but at least it's in hand. Overall looks like the same game, just some slightly more complex monster mechanics. Looking forward to it.

Do they have Mothman? My daughter is obsessed.

Ray Bloody Purchase!

I mean….BAM

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Wed Oct 06, 2021 11:40 am It doesn't have the same appeal for somebody who lives for boardgames, but don't forget that we're a small niche outside of the core boardgaming world. It's why our games are on Kickstarter instead of the shelves at Wal-Mart.

I just saw Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion at Walmart for $50!! And this in a town of only about 30,000 people.

So 30,000 times 50? Damn, you’re gonna be rich!