Boardgame night, not a good time for our cooperative efforts!

  

This was one of the two games that we played the other boardgame night. We played three games of Sentinels of the Multiverse and one game of Eldritch Horror. We only won one game, the third Sentinels game that we played that night. The first two game the villain was Warlord Voss who beat us soundly. In the second game my second hero got to finish her first turn before we lost. Our fourth hero never got  a chance to play.

Our third game had us go up against Akash Bhuta. She gave us quite a struggle until Fanatic got her 'special' cards. Akash had a lot of limbs in play when Fanatic managed to set up one of her ongoing cards that wiped out every non character card in play, inflicting 148 points of damage to Akash Bhuta 200 HTK. Then Fanatic followed up with 25 points of damage due to her reduced hit points vs her starting points. After that, the rest was easy.

Boardgame night August 24th

 

Two cooperative game played the other night (well actually 3 as we played Sentinels twice) The first game, Atlantis Rising went the way I expected, we lost, spectacularly! We have only played this game twice but neither of the games made me think that there was ever a chance for us to win. 

Twilight Imperium the original version

 

So, I left the room for a few minutes and when I returned this game was sitting on the table. But I decided to call the bluff and agreed to play the game. Now to be fair have has decided to try and select games that we have not played before, or at very least that we have not played for quite some time. I think this is the first edition and includes 3 expansions. 

Boardgame night

 

Well, the monsters beat us, first time this year. We went up against 4 of them, well 5 as the Monster and his Bride were 'one' of them. Dracula, The Mummy and The Creature from the Black Lagoon rounded out the group. We dealt with Drac quick enough, and the Monster and the Bride became more human, but the last two defied our efforts to defeat them. The Mummy was especially tough this time around.

The other game we played was Imperial Stars II. It is a fairly quick play 4X game. Some issues with the rules at first but got the hang of it quick enough. We did not have that much time, but we did get to have a big space battle that pretty much devastated both empires.

Axis & Allies a surprise game to be played

 

A blast from the past, we pulled out a copy of A&A Europe the other night, pretty much on a dare. We had already played two games of Sentinels of the Multiverse and were casting about for another game to play when we settled on this one. Now, we have played a lot of games of the original version over the years, but not recently. We somehow went with this game thinking it might not be quite so long and as we were starting to play at around 10pm short is what we needed. 

Well it did move fast enough and strangely it was fun to play. It has different challenges than the original game and different features such as the Eastern oil fields and convoy spaces. Both of these were fine additions and shook up the regular flow of the game rather nicely. The Germans made one error at the start of the game that wound up having ramifications later on and made it very difficult to win the game. In the end we called it a night at around 1AM without a clear winner, but withe the understanding that is was going to be nigh impossible for the Germans to win.

Our game play of A&A the other night inspired me to pull out my copy of A&A and zombies. I set this up and played it solo to learn the rules. It is to say the least an odd entry into the A&A family of games. As I write this I am only a couple of turns into it and already there are a lot of zombies on the board and they are having an impact on the living nations.

Yellow zombie figures

Zombies can appear from special card draws, but the majority appear from dead infantry. If you have ever played the regular A&A game then you know that there are a lot of infantry in Russia and Germany.

Yes that is 7 zombies in West Russia. At the start of a players turn they draw a card and place zombies as indicated by the card, then they must roll 'zombie dice' for each zombie in a territory that contains their troops. There is only a 1 in 6 chance of killing something, but enough zombies in a space, say 7, may well disrupt your plans. As the living defender you do not get to fight back in this opening phase and should they kill any infantry those dead infantry will become zombies. 

When you attack a territory that has zombies in it, the defender will roll 1 'zombie die' per zombie in that space. Again there is a 1 in 6 chance that the attacker or defender will be bitten(killed). The dice in the game have replaced the 6 with a skull. Should you roll a skull in normal combat a zombie has been killed.

So the game is still being played and I have yet to decide if it is any good, but it does look to be much faster play than any other version that I have played. We shall see...

Recent boardgame nights

 

So I have not been doing nothing but I admit I have not been posting nearly enough. I have been playing board games on a weekly basis, usually 1 or 2 per session. However we did manage to get  4 games done in one night. Three of the four games were quite fun, the fourth, Red Shirts has been relegated to my get rid of pile. Could have/should have been fun but was really, really not at all fun. Badly written rules did not help.

Just the other night we got in a second  playing of Eldritch Horror (and of Zeppelin attack!) Of the Call of Cthulhu games I do rather like this game. It is fast play which is a shock for a Cthulhu game, has a nice thematic play to it and was actually fun. 

The beast that did us both in, in our first game. Not a really tough beast but it hit us both at the wrong time!
 

Zeppelin Attack! is another fun, very quick play game. A deck building game focused on fleets of zeppelins dueling it out. While I lost both games it was still entertaining! 

Recent boardgame night

 

So, the other night we got together for another board game night. This time around we decided to try a new game (to us) Horrified as well as yet another game of Sentinels of the Multiverse. The game features many of the classic Paramount monsters from the 30's, 40's and 50's. 

Hamlet The village building game & Sentinels of the Multiverse

 

So, another board game night. This time we tried out Hamlet, prior to playing our usual Sentinels of the Multiverse game. I have a lot to say about Hamlet, but I am not certain that I want to waste that much time on this game, as I already wasted enough time playing the game. One thing I can say is that at least it was better than Darkest Night! 

Another boardgame night Small World & Sentinels of the Mulitiverse

 

So, we pulled out Small World, a game that neither of has played in quite a few years (decade+?) I cannot understand why this game has not seen much action. We also played a couple of games of Sentinels of the Multiverse.

Most recent board game night, Sentinels (again) and Space Hulk Death Angel card game

 

So, we tried out yet another new to us game, Death Angel. It is another cooperative game, we seem to play a lot of these, that pitted our group of eight space marines against hordes of Genestealers. Neither of us had played this before so we were playing with little knowledge of the game. 

Another board game night Sentinels of the Multi verse & Darkest Night

 

So another board game night, another disappointing evening, well maybe just not that great... We played Sentinels of the Multiverse and Darkest Night. The Sentinels game worked out to be another slow slag as the villain git some lucky card draws that stymied our attempts to defeat her. However we are nutters and kept playing even though it was going nowhere very slowly. Ultimately we called it a day after 3 out of the four heroes were knocked out of the game. 

For no good reason we selected Darkest Night (1st ed) for our second game. Never having played this before there was a learning curve involved not aided by the rule book. The rule book is a mess and much of the rules and the enemy counters are not really all that intuitive. The game is for 1 to 4 players. Regardless of the number of players you always use four characters. We each selected our two hero characters, selected our powers, placed our standees in the starting space (the monastery) and settled back for what worked out to be a painfully slow death. 

The game has simple mechanics and apparently lots of optional powers for your characters (I only got one power boost for one of my characters but I did have two decks that promised more powers) So I went through the game pretty much as I started. There is a lot of dice rolling in this game, a lot, rarely for good reasons, usually to avoid death. These dice rolls have a target number which all too often is 4 or 5 (many 5+) Often you will find yourself rolling only 1 die which all too often will result in a failure. Each turn you will encounter a random event (which is usually bad) Then you get one & only one action. With this action you can move one space, search, attack, rest etc. Then your turn ends. This worked out not to be all that satisfying. Each turn the evil necromancer tries to track you down to attack you. He also places random nasty encounters like vampires and spies. The pressure is on the players and we never felt that we had a chance to defeat the evil. 

In the end we failed. The necromancer placed four encounter tokens in the monastery and mercifully the game ground to an end. 

I had heard good things about this game, but in further review it seems it is a good game if you have the add-ons. Well it is not a good thing that the base game is so bad that the only way it is fun to play is by spending more money. 

Apparently there is a second edition that includes all the expansions and while it fixes a lot of problems I think I will give it a pass.

Space cadets away mission boardgame

 

So, a couple of days ago we sat down to play our usual board game, Sentinels of the Multiverse but we also took out and played Space Cadets away missions!

War of the Ring latest great game that we have played

 

So, on a dare and a whim we decided to play this game. We probably should not have tried this game without at least one of us having at least glanced at the rules... Well neither of us had played this before nor even opened the rule book so it was a slow slog of a game. First was the challenge of going through the rule book, then quite a lot of prep work to set up the game, then the actual trying to figure out what we should be doing with our faction. It took some time.

There are a lot of options in this game and a lot of variables, enough to wreak havoc on any plans that you might make. The dice determine what actions you can do. Each turn you role a certain amount of dice, the Good side starts with 4 while the Evil side has up to 7 dice but you are allowed to allocate dice towards the hunt (for the one ring) Each dice face has a unique action associated with it but the rub is that you may not always get the results you need right now. The dice actions are resolved one at a time and in alternating order. So even when resolving the dice actions there is a certain amount of strategy as you may want to delay some actions until you see what your opponent has done, but then again hesitate and they may do something that directly impacts on your side. Choices, choices.

Each player also draws 2 event cards each turn. These cards can trigger events, or allow you to recruit more forces or effect the game in some way. They also can be used in combat, the bottom part of the card grants a bonus to your forces when engaged with the enemy. So do you use the card for a special event or save it for battle? Between the cards and the dice we were presented with a wide array of options every turn. 

So it was a slow game as we carefully negotiated our way through the rules and tried to figure out a game plan. We set a time limit for the game (thankfully) as the time just rapidly ticked away. (We also interrupted play for dinner) In the end we called it a game around 12:30 AM. At that point we had a pretty good grasp of the rules and what we wanted to accomplish. 

So, I have said that it was a slow slog but, it was a fun slog too! This game has a very high replay factor going for it. It was always interesting always challenging and always fun!

Check out THIS review by Shut Up & Sit Down for more details, and opinions that I agree with, I think they covered it very well!

Undaunted Battle of Britain

 

So with two games under our I think it is fair to say, that this is a very fun, quick game! A simple deck building game creates challenges for the players when it comes to executing their plans. It also dictates how long a plane may stay in the air. If you decide not to draw extra plane cards into your hand(max of 3 cards per airplane) you may find your plane tumbling out of the sky all too quickly when they take damage. However sometimes you just get the perfect chance to go on the offensive and need to postpone adding plane cards to your hand in favour of quick action. Your choice. 

The second game sees us at Dunkirk where the Germans are presented with many ship targets to fulfill their victory condition; they must sink 4 of the 6 ships. It was a tight game with the Germans eking out a victory despite being down to just  one stuka.

Some pictures from the first game:

Couple of never played by us games, Race to Adventure & Zeppelin Attack!

 

I have the role playing game Spirit of the Century, and these two games more or less build upon the theme of the RPG.  The RPG is an anything goes game of pulp adventure where you run into lost empires, talking Apes and crazy inventions, not to mention mad scientists.

Boardgames day, this time, Camelot the court, Star Trek deck building, Flash Point and of course Undaunted Normandy

 

 So we squeezed in 5 game plays this past Thursday. 

Another board game day, Dungeon Lords, Spectre 007 and Undaunted Normandy

 

 

A three game day that did not last too far into the wee hours of the night! 

A four board game day! Spectre the boardgame, Run Fight or Die, Last night on Earth and Sentinels of the Multiverse

So we managed to play a few new to us games plus an old favorite the other day. We wound up playing two zombie games, the semi cooperative Run, fight or die and the competitive Last night on Earth. Much preferred the latter game as it offered a bit more involvement as Run, fight, die tends to just be a simple random lightweight game. I really do like the Flying Frog games, they look great, they typically are very thematic and are easy to play.

 

Terraforming Mars

 

So, I played a two player version of this game last week and well it went on for a long time, a very long time, and upon reflection, well, I think we broke the game. So the game is supposed to last maybe 2 hours, ours lasted closer to 7 hours! It was the first time that I had played the game, not certain how many times my opponent had played. The game is actually a fairly straightforward game, the rules are not complex and the game play is fairly intuitive. There is a large degree of randomness as the game is driven by a deck of 208. Every turn you receive 4 cards which you may keep by paying for them or discard if you do not want some or all of them. These cards do offer up ideas on how your corporation will develop in the game what point gathering strategies you can employ, what attacks you can make on your opponent etc. There are also 2 tracks (temperature & oxygen) and 9 ocean tiles, that once the tracks are completed and the ocean tiles depleted the game will end. Part of the problem with the game is the game ending conditions.

You see, there is not a strong incentive to end the game (beyond the insanity of a 7 hour game), nor does the game force you to meet the game ending conditions. Yes you advance along a chart that gives you money and victory points, but you can also get those items from the cards you draw. Also, while the game has a turn tracker, the turn tracker only applies to the solo game forcing an end after 14 turns. In the regular game there is no such mechanic. The mini game of building money/VP engines is terribly tempting and can supplant the whole terraforming theme of the game. 

This is a problem. 

It is also exacerbated by the fact that some cards have victory points on them and many of these cards once played will be hidden so only the owner will know how many victory points they have. Thus one is further incentivized to gather as many victory points as you can and since you have no way of knowing you opponents total you are de-incentivized to end the game as you may not know how well you are doing.

Despite all this the game was entertaining (newness factor) but I am not certain if the game will work for me and my regular player(s).

This weeks played baord games Dead of Winter, Sentinels of the Multiverse, Eminent Domain

 

 So a couple of nights spent playing boardgames this week saw a new game for us played and the return of an old favorite.