Another boardgame night, another loss to Cthulhu and his fellow elder Gods

 

So, we had our 5th loss this year, which means, going back to last year, that we have played 14 games and only won twice, very bad record. We have recently decided to each play two investigators in an attempt to boos our chances of succeeding, so far it has clearly not helped.  This time around we each lost a few characters and were soundly trounced by an epic monster that sped the doom track at an alarming rate. We lost our previous game due to a different epic monster that could only be stopped by a specific magic artifact, an artifact that did not appear in time for us to have a chance to win. In fact we failed to even complete one mystery.

The challenge with this game is the extremely random nature of the game. By this I mean not so much the random skill rolls or the random monster draw, but the instant kill draws that one can make. Things that instantly kill you without even a chance to avoid such a fate or the epic minster that pretty much guarantees that the players will lose. This lessens the fun of the game. While I accept randomness in games it is still nice to take actions and gather items that will somewhat mitigate the vagaries of fate. While it may emulate the nature of the source material it makes for an annoying game.

We also played yet another game of Sentinels of the Silver age and then pulled down a game that we may have played once  or twice, Star Trek the deck building game.

Bad rule book but an okay game. We played this after losing in Eldritch horror. It was late in the night when we started and I really did not feel that much like gaming; I was tired and still annoyed by Eldritch. In the end it was a good way to finish off the night as the nostalgic nature of the game did much to offset the ill feelings conjured up by both the rule book and the previous game. 

First miniatures game of 2026 - Pulp Alley

The original plan for the game

So, I ran a Pulp Alley game at the OMG Library meeting on January 11th. The picture above is what I set up at home as I plotted out the game. I brought along my usual assortment of leagues and one of the players brought their own  league of shapeshifters. It was a quiet day at the library with only five of us showing up, just right for four teams and a ref!

The modified layout, with walls and a different major plot point.

The major plot point, was a wild eyed high  priest performing a summoning ritual. Each of the leagues started with a plot point, each plot point needed to be placed in a specific location to disrupt the incantation. Once placed the league would be able to close with the high priest. To add some extra challenge, cultist kept showing up to engage the leagues. The game was a variation of the Fantastic Device scenario.

The plot points were placed by completing a normal plot point challenge. Competing leagues could interact with a placed plot point to disrupt the enemy leagues and to gain points. In theory this meant that leagues should guard their placed plot points.(or prevent the plot points from being stolen prior to placement) Not everyone went after the other plot points and for the most part they congregated in the centre of the table. 

It was a tough battle but the playing of a parlay card part way through turn 6th sealed the deal and ended the game.