Rootshaker's friends raced into the evil chapel and were immediately challenged by huge, angry wolverines! The evil Treant Nockmorton was nowhere to be seen!
Sturv, Hagis and Reagan clanked up the corridor, trying to catch up to the Treants and Cortahl the Elven Warmage. Cort peered into the chapel, using the doorframe as cover and let fly with his first spell at one of the dire wolverines.
The wolverines tore into Rootshaker's friends, but soon Rootshaker joined them, dealing punishing strikes to the wolverines with massive wooden limbs.
The rear wall of the chapel contained a bas-relief scultp of a giant tree taking over the world. In front of this was a raised dias with an 8' high altar. Obviously some large-size evil here!
Reagan and Hagis paused so that Reagan could prepare them for battle by laying the magical strength of a bull upon them! This choice would prove pivotal in later parts of the encounter.
As the fight with the wolverines continued, Nockmorton his presence felt by opening a door in the bas relief and heading over to an un-noticed floor trapdoor. Cortahl, who had been focused on the wolverines, moved to attack the evil Treant, but a fireball came streaking from behind the bas-relief to strike Nockmorton, Rootshaker, and the dire wolverines. This fireball also burnt Cort slightly as he rolled to the ground to avoid the worst of it.
Cort changed his plan and fired back at the arcane caster behind the bas relief. Reagan moved into the room, taking up a position to fire into the room behind the bas-relief to also engage the sorceress.
The fireball had weakened some of the good Treants and the wolverines. Soon, there was but three of the good Treants and no wolverines and Cort urged Rootshaker and company to engage Nockmorton before he escaped.
Hagis moved to engage the evil Treant and Sturv moved up to and healed Cort. Reagan, displaying pinpoint marksmanship, scored a critical strike with his crossbow that blew right through the creatures Protection from Normal Missiles spell.
Nockmorton realized that he could not escape the grappling hands of 3 Treants. He took out his huge sickle and began laying about him, slaying one of the Treants immediately.
Reagan dropped his crossbow, ran the length of the room, up the dais, and then chraged down the corridor at the arcane caster, drawing his glowing magic longsword! Hagis, encumbered by his armour choices, lumbered after Reagan. Cort tried varieties of spells against the enemy arcane caster, finding several ineffective.
Meanwhile, Rootshaker lost another Treant friend, but eventually Nockmorton was downed. Sturv went to hammer upon the downed Nockmorton to convince himself that there was no stratagem of evil being employed here.
Reagan's charge took him into a room at the end of a short corridor behind the bas-relief, but a stone door swung closed behind him, plunging the room into darkness except for Reagan's blade's green glow. The green glow revealed a creature of legend - a Naga! His sword lashed out, scoring the creature, who in turn tried to command him and then to use unseen forces to unsuccessfully push him into her deep pit.
Reagan swung with a vengeance, slashing open the creature with a viscious swing, a critical strike! This drove the creature down and out of sight into her pit, allowing Reagan time to fall back to the door, shouting for help and putting his shoulder into trying to open the door.
Hagis, having lumbered down the Corridor, and Cort having nimbly raced past, both heard Reagan calling for aid. Cort and Reagan helped as Hagis bunched his magically-enhanced muscles and, with a ferocious shout and a huge effort, the three managed to push back the locked, wizard-held stone door! This huge effort, only possible because of the Bull's Strength earlier allows Cort and Hagis to join the fight with the ferocious snake!
Is Nockmorton dead?
Can Rootshaker survive another hit?
Is the Naga in her pit fortifying herself for another clash?
Can Reagan, Hagis and Cort handle the Naga, even if Sturv arrives to help?
These questions will be answered in the next installment....
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Ground Zero Games East Coast Convention Pre-Registration Open!
http://www.warpfish.com/gzgecc/
This year, this fun gaming convention has been moved to Owego, NY which is only 4 hours or so south of the Canada-US border at the Ivy Lea bridge, a short jaunt down I-81 to near Binghampton, NY.
The convention will be held February 26th to 28th, 2010.
I'm running an event Saturday Evening called "Stargate:Rough Men". For those interested, other events I'm in include the Traveller-themed Defense of Steelport Saturday morning run by my friend Mark Kinsey, Kra'Vak Around The Clock Friday night run by Mike Sarno, probably Geezers! Shut It! run by the crazy English cancer geneticist (and I'm not kidding with any of those tags) Dr. Stuart Murray on Saturday afternoon, and Bush War run by Mark Kinsey on Sunday morning.
I expect, as per usual, there will be a variety of gaming done by the Ottawa contingent after hours - card or board games until we are too tired to function.
The schedule and summary of games can be found here.
The convention always loves new people and with it so close to Ottawa and Kingston and Toronto, there's not such a good excuse as in other years to miss out!
The precis of my event:
"We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm." - Winston Churchill
An SG team has missed a second radio contact while on a covert reconnaisance operation to penetrate an alien complex that intelligence suggests is also of interest to the Goa'uld.
SG-21 (the player team) has been tasked with attempting to quietly locate the missing covert operations team and then assisting them in completing their reconnaisance mission. If the missing SG team cannot be found or is not operationally capable, SG-21 may be required to take the lead in completing the original mission.
This mission may be a combat search and rescue op, a quiet rendezvous and support op, or a recovery op and any of these may involve a direct action component. The situation is fluid, intelligence on the ground at the target is very minimal, and the risks are unknown....
... which is a pretty normal day at Stargate Command. This probably also explains why SG team members are volunteers!
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Game Reviews: Space Beans, New England, Monty Python Fluxx and Wettstreit der Baumeister
Wettstreit der Baumeister (Contest of the Master Builders)
This german (and I mean including the rules and game aids, but translations are available on the net) boardgame accomodates 3-4 players.
In this game, you auction for tiles (visible or sight unseen) and build up a hand of them (to a minimum 3), then lay them down to build your city.
The objective is to build a complete, tower-bookended city with good high value tiles, a symetry (by tile count on either side) around the city center, and a church on either side of the city center. There is also a bonus for having both your book-end towers with the same valuation (both 2s for instance).
Scoring is based on the sum of your tile values plus bonuses if you qualify. The church distribution bonus is 5 points and the symetry bonus is 10 points. Individual tiles vary in worth from 1 to I think 9, but common values seem to be in the 3-6 range. I'm not sure what the tower match bonus was as I never qualified when we played it (and I blew symetry because apparently I can't count).
Some of the tiles have coin icons on them (1 or 2). That increases your income each turn. The normal income is 2-5 per turn from a D6 with a 'kapow' result. The 'kapow' is interesting as it yields no money, but does give you one use of 'The Saboteur'.
In place of your per-turn build action, you may use a Saboteur to attempt to destroy an enemy tile in his city (or pilage one from his hand if the hand is too thick). If you destroy his tile, you can (if done at the right time) doom his symetry bonuses and create an unfinished city, which also somehow affects your score (forget how). In the variant we played, you could bribe the Saboteur to leave you alone.
Your success with the Saboteur depended somewhat on your die rolling ('kapow' is always successful, 2-5 values have to beat the number of shield icons in your city, which are provided at a ration of 1 or 2 per tower segment).
The game ends when either the unknown tile or known tile stack runs out.
Having played this once, we didn't know the tilesets. There was a lot of 'unknown' tile bidding, but if it makes it around once to the auctioneer (who may bid), he has to then disclose the type of tile. This means you have to risk bidding at least once before seeing the tile and try to guess whether his pricing is exploitive or if he's trying to get something critical (or just something cheaply). The Saboteurs didn't come up that much, although we did see one used and bribed away. Another appeared, but late in the game your builds might be more important than nuking another guy's tile (maybe).
It was generally fun and we all agreed we'd like to see it again.
Fun: 3.5 of 5
Strategy: 3 of 5 (I think there was more than we saw, so I'm giving it a 3)
Speed of Play: 4 of 5 (other than auctions, which are as fast or slow as your players, it played quickly enough)
New England
You have 4 families of new world colonists vying for having the best developed system of farms and settlements. Initially, each player places their three double-width tiles (a farm, a settlement, and a field). There is track that is a mixture of resource tiles and development cards (the mix varies at the whim of first player each round). There is a track where bid tokens are selected (which determine initiative but inversely the cost of the tiles and cards you'll buy).
You can buy 0-2 tiles/cards per round, they must generally be put down immediately, and resources must be deployed by similar coloured double-width tile (sheep with the green one, corn and tomatos with the black one, bricks with the brown one).
Development cards allow you to develop these resources which start face down if you match a geometry of layout that conforms to the development card. This is the major source of VPs.
Extra VPs are collected for those that have the most barns (function of barn is to hold a dev card unplayed for later) or most settlers (a dev card can contain a settler instead of a geometry for development and these are worth 1 VP and 1 cash unit/turn).
There are also some ships you can get and having the most of them (or being tied) lets you add to the purchase track when your turn in the initiative rolls around. That can be handy if you've got the low cost, late acting initiative as the selection can be rather picked over by then.
Note that there is an asymetry of development cards - brown has some really high value ones (6 and 10 value, 3 and 4 tile geometries) whereas black and green are 3 and 6 values with 2 and 3 tile geometries. If you did like I did and wait for the 4 tile green for 10 points, you'll find IT IS NOT THERE. Not that I'm bitter.... :)
We enjoyed this game. Post-facto understanding of the increased value of brown geometries would probably shape a different strategy as to which enemy tiles you tried to impede growth of (and which of your tiles you tried to defend more). Brown is important to impede and cashing quickly (with 2 geometries) in black and green isn't a bad plan.
Fun: 4 of 5
Strategy: 4 of 5 (lots of elements to manipulate - board control, resource control, turn order)
Speed of Play: 3 of 5 (might get faster once you become more familiar with it)
Monty Python Fluxx
Fluxx is a fast card collecting game. In essence, you try to collect a set of 'keeper' cards that match a victory condition to win. That sounds simple, but then we get to the fun part - the rules are pretty dynamic, including the victory conditions.
You start with (I think) 5 cards and a rule in play that is draw 1 play 1. As people are forced to play, draw 1 play 1 may get replaced or augmented by other cards that impose higher draw counts, higher play counts, hand limits, and so on. I've actually played original Fluxx and seen draw 7, play all, hand limit 0.
There are keepers (which you mostly want as you tend to have to match particular sets to win), creepers (in this Monty Python variant, which you don't want and often block winning), and rules and goal (victory condition) cards. Most of the time you have to collect a combination of goal cards (some victory conditions can be 'empty hand, no keepers' for instance). I saw one come out in our game of this Monty Python variant that required you to have the unladen swallow and the coconuts keeper cards so that you could have cocunut-laden swallows (the victory condition).
The fun is that when you work towards a particular condition in play, somebody is likely to yank the rug out from under you. It's fun to make others throw away half their huge hand when you have a small one, for instance.
The Monty Python version has a lot of really, really silly cards that are hilarious if you've seen Holy Grail or the Life of Brian. One we all enjoyed was 'set aside your cards, draw 5, recite 0 to 5 lines of contiguous script dialogue from the Holy Grail involving at least two characters, play a number of cards equal to the number of lines you can play'. Another was 'the number of the counting shall be 3'. All 5s were, of course, right out and any 5 on any other card was treated as a 3.
Lightweight, fast, and hilariously good at bringing back memories of the movies and evoking a sense of the silliness and humour the movies brought. Most of us would gladly play this again.
Fun: 4 of 5
Strategy: 2 of 5
Speed of Play: 5 of 5
Space Beans
Space Beans is a 'bean' game (Bohnanza and others are from this line). It has space themed cards (caricature Aliens, Star Wars, and Babylon 5 art is seen on cards), but it essentially has the same mechanics as the other bean games.
The cards have the space art, a colour (I recall seeing yellow, orange, red, green, blue, purple and grey cards), and a number from 1 to 9. Value distribution is not even with there being more 4-6s than 1-3s or 7-9s.
You have two collections - one public, one private. You will be handed some cards by the player after you when he's done his turn. There are initially 3 hands of cards if there are 4 players, for instance (in this instance, the first player has cards and passes off when he is done). The card hand you could be handed could be anywhere from a handful of cards to zero.
If you play against my friend Jean-Pierre, you can pretty much bank on either zero or several of the same colour that are useless to you.
You may augment this hand of zero or more cards on your turn by drawing 0 or 2 cards. Not 1.
Then, you play a card into one of your two collections (must play a card, may be able to do so). Assuming you can, you're okay and pass remaining cards on to the player who precedes you in turn order. The game takes some getting used to in this aspect as you are passing cards one way while the turn order goes the other.
If you can't play a card, you have to 'cash in' a collection (you can do this of your own accord or when forced to). When you cash in a collection, the value of the collection is the highest card value which matches the number of cards in the collection you are laying down. So, if you have 3, 4, 7 down, the value is 3 because you have 3 cards. If you had 3, 4, 7, 8, 1 down, you have 5 cards and no 5 value card, so the collection is worth ZERO. You keep the card matching the collection value (if it wasn't zero value) and this removes it from th game and adds it to your score pile.
You can play as many cards as you are able in a turn, but you are restricted to ONLY contributing to a single collection in a round.
When you cash, you have to cash your public collection. That then makes your private collection public (flip over cards face up). You can cash it too. As far as I know, there is no limit to the number of collections you could cash in a turn, but you can only ever contribute to one so a maximum of 3 cashings seems unavoidable (and the third collection won't be worth more than 1).
The trick to the game is passing as little useful stuff to the person you pass to as humanly possible. Forcing them to cash in collections before they get big, when they will either be worth little or nothing, is intensely satisfying to you and frustrating to them. Passing them zero cards is funny. I know because JP did this to me about every second round while laughing. The rest of the time, he handed me two or more cards of the same colour and not one I'm collecting - the other strategy issue here is trying to figure out from what you hand the other player and what he plays what his private collection colour is. Then using that knowledge to their detriment!
The objective is to form long, valuable collections and then cash them. It sometimes works out that way. The other approach is to cash many short collections, which might be more practical.
Great fun, allows you to mess with your friend's minds, good value for the money I think.
Fun: 4 of 5
Strategy: 2.5 of 5
Speed of Play: 5 of 5
This german (and I mean including the rules and game aids, but translations are available on the net) boardgame accomodates 3-4 players.
In this game, you auction for tiles (visible or sight unseen) and build up a hand of them (to a minimum 3), then lay them down to build your city.
The objective is to build a complete, tower-bookended city with good high value tiles, a symetry (by tile count on either side) around the city center, and a church on either side of the city center. There is also a bonus for having both your book-end towers with the same valuation (both 2s for instance).
Scoring is based on the sum of your tile values plus bonuses if you qualify. The church distribution bonus is 5 points and the symetry bonus is 10 points. Individual tiles vary in worth from 1 to I think 9, but common values seem to be in the 3-6 range. I'm not sure what the tower match bonus was as I never qualified when we played it (and I blew symetry because apparently I can't count).
Some of the tiles have coin icons on them (1 or 2). That increases your income each turn. The normal income is 2-5 per turn from a D6 with a 'kapow' result. The 'kapow' is interesting as it yields no money, but does give you one use of 'The Saboteur'.
In place of your per-turn build action, you may use a Saboteur to attempt to destroy an enemy tile in his city (or pilage one from his hand if the hand is too thick). If you destroy his tile, you can (if done at the right time) doom his symetry bonuses and create an unfinished city, which also somehow affects your score (forget how). In the variant we played, you could bribe the Saboteur to leave you alone.
Your success with the Saboteur depended somewhat on your die rolling ('kapow' is always successful, 2-5 values have to beat the number of shield icons in your city, which are provided at a ration of 1 or 2 per tower segment).
The game ends when either the unknown tile or known tile stack runs out.
Having played this once, we didn't know the tilesets. There was a lot of 'unknown' tile bidding, but if it makes it around once to the auctioneer (who may bid), he has to then disclose the type of tile. This means you have to risk bidding at least once before seeing the tile and try to guess whether his pricing is exploitive or if he's trying to get something critical (or just something cheaply). The Saboteurs didn't come up that much, although we did see one used and bribed away. Another appeared, but late in the game your builds might be more important than nuking another guy's tile (maybe).
It was generally fun and we all agreed we'd like to see it again.
Fun: 3.5 of 5
Strategy: 3 of 5 (I think there was more than we saw, so I'm giving it a 3)
Speed of Play: 4 of 5 (other than auctions, which are as fast or slow as your players, it played quickly enough)
New England
You have 4 families of new world colonists vying for having the best developed system of farms and settlements. Initially, each player places their three double-width tiles (a farm, a settlement, and a field). There is track that is a mixture of resource tiles and development cards (the mix varies at the whim of first player each round). There is a track where bid tokens are selected (which determine initiative but inversely the cost of the tiles and cards you'll buy).
You can buy 0-2 tiles/cards per round, they must generally be put down immediately, and resources must be deployed by similar coloured double-width tile (sheep with the green one, corn and tomatos with the black one, bricks with the brown one).
Development cards allow you to develop these resources which start face down if you match a geometry of layout that conforms to the development card. This is the major source of VPs.
Extra VPs are collected for those that have the most barns (function of barn is to hold a dev card unplayed for later) or most settlers (a dev card can contain a settler instead of a geometry for development and these are worth 1 VP and 1 cash unit/turn).
There are also some ships you can get and having the most of them (or being tied) lets you add to the purchase track when your turn in the initiative rolls around. That can be handy if you've got the low cost, late acting initiative as the selection can be rather picked over by then.
Note that there is an asymetry of development cards - brown has some really high value ones (6 and 10 value, 3 and 4 tile geometries) whereas black and green are 3 and 6 values with 2 and 3 tile geometries. If you did like I did and wait for the 4 tile green for 10 points, you'll find IT IS NOT THERE. Not that I'm bitter.... :)
We enjoyed this game. Post-facto understanding of the increased value of brown geometries would probably shape a different strategy as to which enemy tiles you tried to impede growth of (and which of your tiles you tried to defend more). Brown is important to impede and cashing quickly (with 2 geometries) in black and green isn't a bad plan.
Fun: 4 of 5
Strategy: 4 of 5 (lots of elements to manipulate - board control, resource control, turn order)
Speed of Play: 3 of 5 (might get faster once you become more familiar with it)
Monty Python Fluxx
Fluxx is a fast card collecting game. In essence, you try to collect a set of 'keeper' cards that match a victory condition to win. That sounds simple, but then we get to the fun part - the rules are pretty dynamic, including the victory conditions.
You start with (I think) 5 cards and a rule in play that is draw 1 play 1. As people are forced to play, draw 1 play 1 may get replaced or augmented by other cards that impose higher draw counts, higher play counts, hand limits, and so on. I've actually played original Fluxx and seen draw 7, play all, hand limit 0.
There are keepers (which you mostly want as you tend to have to match particular sets to win), creepers (in this Monty Python variant, which you don't want and often block winning), and rules and goal (victory condition) cards. Most of the time you have to collect a combination of goal cards (some victory conditions can be 'empty hand, no keepers' for instance). I saw one come out in our game of this Monty Python variant that required you to have the unladen swallow and the coconuts keeper cards so that you could have cocunut-laden swallows (the victory condition).
The fun is that when you work towards a particular condition in play, somebody is likely to yank the rug out from under you. It's fun to make others throw away half their huge hand when you have a small one, for instance.
The Monty Python version has a lot of really, really silly cards that are hilarious if you've seen Holy Grail or the Life of Brian. One we all enjoyed was 'set aside your cards, draw 5, recite 0 to 5 lines of contiguous script dialogue from the Holy Grail involving at least two characters, play a number of cards equal to the number of lines you can play'. Another was 'the number of the counting shall be 3'. All 5s were, of course, right out and any 5 on any other card was treated as a 3.
Lightweight, fast, and hilariously good at bringing back memories of the movies and evoking a sense of the silliness and humour the movies brought. Most of us would gladly play this again.
Fun: 4 of 5
Strategy: 2 of 5
Speed of Play: 5 of 5
Space Beans
Space Beans is a 'bean' game (Bohnanza and others are from this line). It has space themed cards (caricature Aliens, Star Wars, and Babylon 5 art is seen on cards), but it essentially has the same mechanics as the other bean games.
The cards have the space art, a colour (I recall seeing yellow, orange, red, green, blue, purple and grey cards), and a number from 1 to 9. Value distribution is not even with there being more 4-6s than 1-3s or 7-9s.
You have two collections - one public, one private. You will be handed some cards by the player after you when he's done his turn. There are initially 3 hands of cards if there are 4 players, for instance (in this instance, the first player has cards and passes off when he is done). The card hand you could be handed could be anywhere from a handful of cards to zero.
If you play against my friend Jean-Pierre, you can pretty much bank on either zero or several of the same colour that are useless to you.
You may augment this hand of zero or more cards on your turn by drawing 0 or 2 cards. Not 1.
Then, you play a card into one of your two collections (must play a card, may be able to do so). Assuming you can, you're okay and pass remaining cards on to the player who precedes you in turn order. The game takes some getting used to in this aspect as you are passing cards one way while the turn order goes the other.
If you can't play a card, you have to 'cash in' a collection (you can do this of your own accord or when forced to). When you cash in a collection, the value of the collection is the highest card value which matches the number of cards in the collection you are laying down. So, if you have 3, 4, 7 down, the value is 3 because you have 3 cards. If you had 3, 4, 7, 8, 1 down, you have 5 cards and no 5 value card, so the collection is worth ZERO. You keep the card matching the collection value (if it wasn't zero value) and this removes it from th game and adds it to your score pile.
You can play as many cards as you are able in a turn, but you are restricted to ONLY contributing to a single collection in a round.
When you cash, you have to cash your public collection. That then makes your private collection public (flip over cards face up). You can cash it too. As far as I know, there is no limit to the number of collections you could cash in a turn, but you can only ever contribute to one so a maximum of 3 cashings seems unavoidable (and the third collection won't be worth more than 1).
The trick to the game is passing as little useful stuff to the person you pass to as humanly possible. Forcing them to cash in collections before they get big, when they will either be worth little or nothing, is intensely satisfying to you and frustrating to them. Passing them zero cards is funny. I know because JP did this to me about every second round while laughing. The rest of the time, he handed me two or more cards of the same colour and not one I'm collecting - the other strategy issue here is trying to figure out from what you hand the other player and what he plays what his private collection colour is. Then using that knowledge to their detriment!
The objective is to form long, valuable collections and then cash them. It sometimes works out that way. The other approach is to cash many short collections, which might be more practical.
Great fun, allows you to mess with your friend's minds, good value for the money I think.
Fun: 4 of 5
Strategy: 2.5 of 5
Speed of Play: 5 of 5
Session Report: Doug is in town!
Doug came up to Ottawa so we could attend the Ottawa Woodworking Show (Nov 27th, 2009). I can happily say we both saw a lot of cool stuff, including some stuff made by one of the instructor-assistants at Rosewood Studios where we took a good course in hand tools in September. We also managed to escape without purchasing any equipment beyond the budget, although it was a close-run thing at times. I did really like the look of the 68" long, 115/230V, 6" Jointer from Steel City ($800) and their 13" helical cutter planer ($770).
This led into a night of gaming at bitHeads with my friends there. This time it was Lorry. There was no Shane, no Chris W, no Ax, and no Slobo, Dan, Louis or Richard. For some reason, I think Slobodan might have showed up, but I'm vague on that (they say the memory goes when you get old). Lorry was pretty exhausted due to some crazy work on debit/credit stuff on Canada Post's new Point-of-Sale system.
It ended up that we played games with Lorry and hung out until about 2 am chatting. Again, the memory fails me as to the games, but I seem to recall Lorry particularly sucking. We showed Doug a new game he'd never played and he owned us, then we played something else and I was in good form.
This led into a night of gaming at bitHeads with my friends there. This time it was Lorry. There was no Shane, no Chris W, no Ax, and no Slobo, Dan, Louis or Richard. For some reason, I think Slobodan might have showed up, but I'm vague on that (they say the memory goes when you get old). Lorry was pretty exhausted due to some crazy work on debit/credit stuff on Canada Post's new Point-of-Sale system.
It ended up that we played games with Lorry and hung out until about 2 am chatting. Again, the memory fails me as to the games, but I seem to recall Lorry particularly sucking. We showed Doug a new game he'd never played and he owned us, then we played something else and I was in good form.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Session Report: Busy Weekend Of Gaming, Gary Turns 44
This weekend was a busy weekend of gaming.
Game 1: Ticket To Ride Europe with Dice (Doug, Lorry, Tom - Winner Doug by 1 pt. over Tom)
Game 2: Pandemic (Doug, Lorry, Tomb - Virulent Disease/5 diseases): Human win, Field Operative curing two diseases.
Game 3: Pandemic (Doug, Lorry, Tomb - Mutation/5 diseases): Human loss - very fast and nasty combination of outbreaks, little mobility of characters or cards, fast mutation.
Game 4: Pandemic (Doug, Lorry, Tomb - Mutation/5 diseases): Human win - retask of epidemiologist to medic part way through helped a lot in containment of serious situation. (Note: Intersection of sets of 'Players who have seen epidemiologist card' and 'Players who have said boy is she ugly!' = 100% overlap)
Game 5: Mystery of the Abbey (Gary, Doug, Shelly, Tomb - Victory was for Tomb): Find out who killed Brother Adelmo by visiting crypts, libraries, scriptorum, chapel, the Abbot, interrogating other players, visiting confession and attending Mass regularly.
Try to glean more info about other people's eliminated suspects, from a list of 24, while keeping your own information close to the chest. Suspects have 5-factor identification (Beard/Clean Shaven, Hood/No Hood, Fat/Thin, Order (Benedictine, Franciscan, Templar), and Rank (Father, Brother, Novice)).
Go to the Abbot to make revelations about one of the factors or make an accusation, but being wrong is minus points.
Each Mass, cards change hands. Scriptorum visits produce cards that can allow filching from other players. Crypt cards (from the crypt) allow extra moves. When you run into other monks, you can query them and they you, but you can plead a vow of silence if queried (making the finger to lips motion).
Build up an intelligence picture on the perpetrator, but note that you can ask two other players the same question and think you've gotten two bits of data, but due to card thefts and passing, you might be obtaining data about the same target from both due to the interval in between (think submarine warfare and 'contacts').
Like Clue, only a bit more engaging. Good for wives and non-hardcore gamers.
Game 6: Lost Cities (Doug, Tomb) - Victor Tomb on the strength of a good final hand and screwing Doug in a colour he'd laid down two multipliers on.
Game 7: Galaxy Trucker (Doug, Tomb) - Doug won, but he had not been held to construction timings and I had helped him build his ship optimally (his first time). Next time, the gloves are off.
Game 1: Ticket To Ride Europe with Dice (Doug, Lorry, Tom - Winner Doug by 1 pt. over Tom)
Game 2: Pandemic (Doug, Lorry, Tomb - Virulent Disease/5 diseases): Human win, Field Operative curing two diseases.
Game 3: Pandemic (Doug, Lorry, Tomb - Mutation/5 diseases): Human loss - very fast and nasty combination of outbreaks, little mobility of characters or cards, fast mutation.
Game 4: Pandemic (Doug, Lorry, Tomb - Mutation/5 diseases): Human win - retask of epidemiologist to medic part way through helped a lot in containment of serious situation. (Note: Intersection of sets of 'Players who have seen epidemiologist card' and 'Players who have said boy is she ugly!' = 100% overlap)
Game 5: Mystery of the Abbey (Gary, Doug, Shelly, Tomb - Victory was for Tomb): Find out who killed Brother Adelmo by visiting crypts, libraries, scriptorum, chapel, the Abbot, interrogating other players, visiting confession and attending Mass regularly.
Try to glean more info about other people's eliminated suspects, from a list of 24, while keeping your own information close to the chest. Suspects have 5-factor identification (Beard/Clean Shaven, Hood/No Hood, Fat/Thin, Order (Benedictine, Franciscan, Templar), and Rank (Father, Brother, Novice)).
Go to the Abbot to make revelations about one of the factors or make an accusation, but being wrong is minus points.
Each Mass, cards change hands. Scriptorum visits produce cards that can allow filching from other players. Crypt cards (from the crypt) allow extra moves. When you run into other monks, you can query them and they you, but you can plead a vow of silence if queried (making the finger to lips motion).
Build up an intelligence picture on the perpetrator, but note that you can ask two other players the same question and think you've gotten two bits of data, but due to card thefts and passing, you might be obtaining data about the same target from both due to the interval in between (think submarine warfare and 'contacts').
Like Clue, only a bit more engaging. Good for wives and non-hardcore gamers.
Game 6: Lost Cities (Doug, Tomb) - Victor Tomb on the strength of a good final hand and screwing Doug in a colour he'd laid down two multipliers on.
Game 7: Galaxy Trucker (Doug, Tomb) - Doug won, but he had not been held to construction timings and I had helped him build his ship optimally (his first time). Next time, the gloves are off.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Boardgame Review: Descent - Journeys in the Dark
Boardgame Geek Link
This game is a cross between and RPG and a boardgame about dungeon delving. One player takes the GM role and the others are the party adventuring into the dungeon. The GM attempts to thwart the players with his cards and his action tokens and the players attempt to stay coordinated, stay alive, pulverize monsters, and achieve a dungeon-specific scenario (in the one I played, it was kill the giant at the end of the dungeon).
This sort of game would be familiar to anyone who has played dungeon-crawl board games or RPGs. Someone opens a door, someone goes through the door, monsters are seen, fights ensue, treasure is looted from the room, traps go off, more monsters are fought, etc.
There seems to be a variety of monster quality levels and special abilities and that makes for some interesting decisions. The Ogre, for instance, possesses formidable knockback as well as good damage dealing. The hell-hounds had area-effect conic firebreath.
Combat is by means of customized dice. You roll dice, which differ in face values by their colour. On the dice, you can get hearts (wound points), numbers (range for effects), lightning bolts (special power activators), nothing (blank!), and probably some other icons I forget. A typical roll for a character with a sword might be three dice of differing colours and might generate 6 damage points, 1 range, and 1 power activator. The power activators can be used to trigger powers on items your character is carrying (such as +1 damage or the like).
Of course, being a dungeon delve, it comes with gear you buy at the start and magical and loot you find along the way (plus money). These items take the form of armour, weapons (ranged or melee) with bonuses to damage, magic items which increase magical attacks, and other special ability items. One example of the later was a magic item that let me spend a fatigue to heal two life for another player.
Characters have some skills which let their characters do extra things or have bonuss. In our run through, one character could spend fatigue points to charge and do more damage. My character had bonuses to defense from parrying and from willpower.
Each character also has variable statistics for fatigue, life points, natural armour/defense, and for what dice they use in melee, ranged combat, or magical combat. They also have special powers - my character was sort of a whirling dervish who could trade fatigue for wounds or wounds for fatigue on my turn.
The characters try not to get killed, try to efficiently kill the monsters and limit the DMs respawn locations by keeping line-of-sight to as much of the explored area as possible. The DM in turn tries to find out of the way spots to spawn in monsters and throws traps to slow down and attrit the party.
The players have control of their tactics, their character's gear distribution, and where they want to go at junctions in the dungeon. The GM has control over which of his cards he plays or discards and whether he spends his action tokens piecemeal to bleed the party along the way or saves up for crushing waves at more distributed intervals.
The game also has a campaign system and this apparently lets you run an entire campaign with the same (barring dying) characters. Even more like an RPG, but on the light side and with very sort of simple dice mechanics and a focus on "open door, whack monster, get loot".
Not sure if the game would sustain my interest over the long haul - different monsters, powers, items would help (and there are a lot of expansions). But it isn't a full fledged RPG and its rather one dimensional play (dungeon crawl, shoot-n-loot) would probably get tiring after a time. Still, as a one off or short campaign, it might make for some excellent fun.
Fun: 3 of 5
Strategy: 2 of 5 (there are tactics, not much strategy)
Speed of Play: 4 of 5 (for games of its ilk)
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Session Report:: [Olostin's Hold] Bugbears and Body Bags
The party stood before the stone door to the bugbear lair. The mage was tired and a bit mentally fuzzy; Being up all night takes a toll.
The warriors Dhallon, Hagis and Reagan put their shoulders into the surprisingly well-crafted stone door, but to no avail despite their best efforts. This led to a discussion and a search for other entrances, while Hagis and Dhallon went back to the building with the tools to acquire some pick-axes.
Just as the two warriors arrived back, distracting everyone, a Bugbear opened the door and stuck its head out. Hagis raced up to jam the door with Dhallon right with him. Jastra and Reagan moved up behind but could do nothing with the Bugbear in the way.
The Bugbear tried to flee, and Jastra chased him down and skewered him, striking deep into the major artery in his leg and finishing him off as he tried to get through a door to a room full of his cohorts.
The fight was on! Three Bugbears hurled Javelins, swung morningstars, and grappled with Hagis, Dhallon and Jastra, with Murklane adding fire support. Reagan watched the party's rear with Sturv, only to find himself being overrun by another four Bugbears!
Sturv and Reagan fought a holding action against the four Bugbears, while Dhallon, Hagis and Jastra finished off those in the sitting room. Hagis joined the fight in the hallway, wrestling with the last of the Bugbears until it was put down by a bolt from Reagan's crossbow.
Exploring further, the party found various small bits of treasure including a nice table with a map of the Calling Horns area upon it as well as some small amounts of loot found on the individual foes.
Pushing on, the party discovered a cloak room with a few odds and ends and another passage, leading to a room with a Hill Giant!
Hagis talked his way past the Hill Giant, convincing him to let Hagis pass through to the secret door. When Dhallon went to follow, the Giant started to wind up for a swing and Jastra leapt upon him, blades flashing and slashing. The Giant howled and the fight was on.
A brutal battle was joined in the small space, with Reagan sinking multiple bolts into the angry Giant, and Hagis, Dhallon, and Jastra all swinging and dodging, trying to avoid the wrath of the lumbering creature. Soon, the giant was bloodied, but he would not go down quietly!
With one big swing, he connected solidly with Dhallon. Moments later, the backswing smashed Dhallon's ribs, cracking obsidian armour plate and knocking the warrior into the far wall of the room, lifeless - slain by the massive blunt trauma!
Hagis, in a fit of rage, hacked down the badly wounded Giant to avenge his comrade.
The party looked to aid their comrade, but quickly realized Dhallon was beyond any aid, slain outright. The party endured a period of shock and grief, then sought out a way to transport Dhallon's body for a twilight burial outside under the auspices of Lathander as soon as this was feasible. A wheelbarrow was fetched to help bear the body.
A somber group contemplated their next step - leave the current locale with the intent of burying Dhallon and returning or press on and finish cleaning out this den of brigands and monsters. The feeling was that Dhallon would have wanted the group to press on, to carry the fight to the foe, and to win a victory in his name.
Pushing on one room further, a huge store of high-quality spoils were found, although little of the collection easily portable - statues, saddles, armoires, carpets, and such like. A suit of magical full plate was discovered, complete with a skeleton. Magical everburning torches were discovered, handy if they don't start fires! And another door to a side passage was discovered...
Down the side passage, two more doors were found, one replete with sound of Bugbears chatting animatedly, the other as silent as death. The Hagis, Jastra and Murlane, healed by Sturv, prepare to take the Bugbears unaware, with Regan in support and Sturv holding the rear.
Jastra spent the moments following the tragedy by beginning working on an epic poem about the life and death of Dhallon Thores. Dhallon had been a good and true companion, if with a somewhat flexible idea of equitable division of spoils. Jastra had enjoyed Dhallon's pragmatic sensibilities and lovely knitted goods as well. Dhallon would be missed....
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Session Report: [Olostin's Hold] The Leafy Strangler
Jastra's Journal (Supplemental, Hagis recording)
The elf-chick G-string likes to keep a journal, so I'm reading it and helping her out. I like to doodle on the pages, flightless bids are my favorite, but I like drawing trolls too. The elf-chick won't mind; She's unconcious.
We let the tree-chick go. She merged with her evil tree. We didn't get any loot. It was boring. We went to find our Dry Cleaner and the Knitter. They were digging a whole together - I assumed they were pre-planning a grave.
The hole was boring too. We headed back to the little shack and I kicked the door in. We poked around the place and the next thing I know, the elf-chick is busy getting eaten by some sort of plant-thing. We beat it off her, but it messed her up pretty bad - I can see her ribs poking out. The Ranger might be able to do something, the rest of us slept through first-aid training in the militia.
We're trying to figure out what to do now. The elf chick is kinda cute and her singing helps us in fights, so maybe we shouldn't let her croak. I'm watching Dhallon to make sure if there's any move to divy up her stuff, I'm in on it.
Dry Cleaner tells us the new dagger is magical, which is handy. Have to make sure Dhallon doesn't scoff it.
Where's our Cleric? Oh right, they left him behind. I'm surrounded by idjits.
Session Report: [Olostin's Hold] Around The Cavern and into The Grove
Jastra's Journal:
We helped Hagis down and Murklane climbed down himself. After getting Hagis down to the cavern floor, we noticed that the root system we climbed down had been rigged with various forms of noisemaking devices. One supposes a form of primitive alarm, but with no one seemingly paying attention to the noise.
The group moved off to investigate the strange grove, gardens, and building. First up was the building, being the most obvious sign of inhabitation. It proved to be an odd structure, with no windows and padlocked doors. Dhallon tried to force the lock and then Hagis and Dhallon tried the door, but to no avail. Lacking a locksmith, the group was stymied.
As we approached some of the gardens around the grove, we were challenged by an elemental of the earth. It obviously wanted some particular voice command to let us pass, but we had no idea what that might be. It quickly moved to engage Dhallon and battle was joined. Jastra's rapier did little to it, due to its lack of vulnerable points. Hagis and Dhallon did some damage, but both took a goodly pounding. Murklane fired some arrows and contributed some damage to the battle. Reagan, using his full barrage of Magic Missile spells which bypassed the things resistance to physical attacks ended up being the key to the destruction of this gaurdian.
Next up was the grove. It seemed to have a number of trees of huge proportion. From the largest hung several who appeared to be mercenaries. Jastra thought to climb up and let them down to examine them more closely, but this proved unwise. The evil tree sucked the life out of her, using a dessicating or enervating effect which drained her of vitality and life-sustaining water. She drank down her entire waterskin in an attempt to rehydrate. Selecting a different approach, using rope, she fetched down the two corpses.
After examining the corpses, the remaining investigtion seemed to be investigating the various odd gardens. Cacti, giant ruddy sunflowers, pines covered with a sick looking moss, a series of trees that looked like dead treants, and some plants which looked like ragweed. Unfortunately, our group is singularly unversed in the lore of plants and animals, so little was to be discovered, other than another corpse, this one with an interesting dagger with a jewelled scabbard and a belt full of money. Myrklane felt it necessary to point out that the money was community property, which seemed a strangely obvious thing to say.
Further investigation revealed a locked crate concealed in one of the gardens, padlocked. It contained a female creature, of perhaps elfin appearance, who seemed reticent to answer questions. Perhaps not the brightest of creatures, the suspicion was she was a wood spirit. She herself confirmed this and indicated the bugbears had locked her in this crate. This, however, was not the whole story as there is no way that bugbears turned everyone in Olostin's Hold into shrubberies and trees. Jastra pressed her further and discovered that she was, in fact, the victim of an Evil Treant. Treants are powerful creatures, so perhaps its magics could explain some of the corruption we are seeing.
The thing most perplexing is what could corrupt such a goodly forest-warden? Time? Human predation upon woodlands? Bitterness at not having an ent-wife? Perhaps our investigation would reveal the cause, assuming we can locate the Evil Treant.
We elected to free the forest-spirit, so that she could attempt to cleanse the grove of its evil and perhaps so she could provide us with further information if we must fight Bugbears and Treants.
We are low in magic, quite a few of us are injured. Something tells me recharging our magical batteries and perhaps retreating to our cleric to have him heal us may be the order of the day, before meeting a powerful creature like a Treant or a tribe of Bugbears....
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Boardgame Review: The Halls of Montezuma
Well, tonight I got a chance to try out GMT's Halls of Montezuma.
BoardGameGeek Link
This is a 2-player, partially card-driven/partially dice driven game with a strategic map, a tactical process for resolving battles, and a variety of victory conditions that mix military and political outcomes. I'd guess a full game might take 4-6 hours to play once you knew what you were doing.
This is no Advanced Squad Leader with all supplements nor is it SFB with full rules from all sources and all options in play. Still, it is fairly meaty. The rules were a tough go. The quick start card helped, but was missing some really key lines. Figuring out what counters went where was a bit of a lag at the start, as was reading some of the stuff on the map.
Neither Lorry nor I knew much about the 1846-1848 period - I knew a bit about the context of the Alamo and why it was so pivotal (mostly by buying time), but that was about it. So, unlike Napoleonic Wars, 1960: Making of A President, or Twilight Struggle, my historical background was weaker on this one. But the other three games turned out to be good, so Lorry bought this one and we thought we should try it out.
There's a good game lurking in there. I'm sure of it. It's heavy, not the easiest to learn, the rules badly need a FAQ or living rules release, the index needs redone, and cross-references need added in quite a few places. Some actual rules fixes or clarifications are also needed. A lot of that stuff can now be pulled off board game geek or ConSimWorld.
But even the turn and a half we did were interesting (we chatted a lot about other stuff which distracted us).
I moved across the Rio Grande on my first action with a smaller force than the US defending Ft. Brown (and they had fieldworks). However, my Zapaderos (sappers) nullified his earthenworks and I managed to score better casualties despite weaker overall firepower (better luck with the dice) and evicted him from Ft. Brown. I then proceeded to try to reinforce, bringing attrited units up to full strength and adding one infantry regiment. I also started converting his fieldworks into a full fortress. That was my good luck this turn.
Lorry, on the other hand, came back at me by sending General Kearney and a small force over to Alte California to capture it for the USA, by way of the Disputed Territories (not currently disputed because my units had all been tied up in the attack at Ft. Brown).
He then got very lucky and rolled high enough to get the USA to declare war at the end of turn one. That's very bad for Mexico - before that, the US fights with one hand behind its back and hte Mexicans have initiative. I'd expect war to normally be declared by player choice or event card by turn 4 on average, but turn 1 was pretty unlucky for Mexico.
The war adds a huge pile of units to the American reinforcement pool and gives both sides bigger hands of strategic cards to work with. More crucially, in the pre-war period, only Mexico can generate reinforcements each turn. Once the war starts, there is an automatic reinforcement every turn plus the US can take a voluntary card based one they were ineligible for beforehand.
We didn't play much further. His reinforcements appeared near Ft. Brown so he had two moderately large forces facing my now-outnumbered single force. My fortification wasn't going as well as hoped - he'd probably get to attack first. Additionally, my baggage train had been left vulnerable in Matamoros and he could have swept around the end and taken it with ease, putting me out of supply before the critical battle for Ft. Brown.
It had the feeling of a very fun, meaty game. We didn't get to explore the taking of states very deeply or the US amphibious options for deep strikes nor what implications the unstable Mexican government had.
The game is interesting because basically it boils down to Mexican political will. If a game end condition arises (dice roll at turn end or perhaps with an event card or a sudden death condition differing for each side is achieved), you look at the political will track for Mexico. If their rating is high enough, they win. If it is a bit lower, a draw ensues. If it is lower than that, they lose. So the US goal is to inflict damage to the Mexican political will. The Mexican goal is to shore it up.
The polticial will is influenced by gaining or losing territories, winning or losing big battles, some events, and the number of Mexican provinces in revolt. Political changes like Santa Anna returning from (and possibly being sent to) exile and change of leaders in Mexico can impact the political will indirectly and influence how the game plays out. Revolts untended tend to spread over the turns but require actions and probably units to quash.
So essentially, the Mexican goal is to keep a stable government, not lose political will quickly, and quash revolts, occasionally kicking the US player for a victory in battle probably helps (and forestalls their adventurism). The US player wants to encourage bellicosity (helps declare war sooner), capture various disputed territories and Mexican holdings, keep the Mexicans out of Texas, not lose battles, and to wait for and/or encourage Mexican state revolts.
You get the feeling even from our short experience that the first game phase involves a few small forces, a few leaders, manouvering and trading back and forth provocations (Crisis phase). When actual war breaks out, the gloves are off on both sides. When the Mexican government collapses (and it may), Mexico is fighting with an extra 100 pound gorilla on its back (similarly a pile of revolts will do that).
The event cards teach you a bit about the conflict and the rulebook includes a deeper look at the events that underlie the cards. I drew Indian Raids twice which brought some annoyance to the US player (they can cut supply lines and increase Mexican political will because they weaken the US). There are certain turn-by-turn pre-ordained events and random ones that come up by card, giving the game an interesting feel.
If we can sort out the unresolved/broken/poorly worded parts of the rules, spend some more time playing this to be faster at it, I think there is a really great game lurking underneath.
Even in our short game, I felt like there were interesting event cards, good tactical possibilities for fights, strategic issues of supply and troop dispersion (for revolts and to counter flanking moves), and political considerations all to factor in. That first round attack was to try to generate some positive political gains, which it did (adding more than 10% to my political will total). So the game integrates a lot of interesting aspects.
I look forward to playing this one again.
Speed: 2 out of 5 (imperfect rules, meaty subject matter)
Strategy: 4 out of 5 (provisional, must play through full game, lots of seeming depth)
Fun: 4 out of 5 (fun might be higher if the rules hadn't been challenging)
BoardGameGeek Link
This is a 2-player, partially card-driven/partially dice driven game with a strategic map, a tactical process for resolving battles, and a variety of victory conditions that mix military and political outcomes. I'd guess a full game might take 4-6 hours to play once you knew what you were doing.
This is no Advanced Squad Leader with all supplements nor is it SFB with full rules from all sources and all options in play. Still, it is fairly meaty. The rules were a tough go. The quick start card helped, but was missing some really key lines. Figuring out what counters went where was a bit of a lag at the start, as was reading some of the stuff on the map.
Neither Lorry nor I knew much about the 1846-1848 period - I knew a bit about the context of the Alamo and why it was so pivotal (mostly by buying time), but that was about it. So, unlike Napoleonic Wars, 1960: Making of A President, or Twilight Struggle, my historical background was weaker on this one. But the other three games turned out to be good, so Lorry bought this one and we thought we should try it out.
There's a good game lurking in there. I'm sure of it. It's heavy, not the easiest to learn, the rules badly need a FAQ or living rules release, the index needs redone, and cross-references need added in quite a few places. Some actual rules fixes or clarifications are also needed. A lot of that stuff can now be pulled off board game geek or ConSimWorld.
But even the turn and a half we did were interesting (we chatted a lot about other stuff which distracted us).
I moved across the Rio Grande on my first action with a smaller force than the US defending Ft. Brown (and they had fieldworks). However, my Zapaderos (sappers) nullified his earthenworks and I managed to score better casualties despite weaker overall firepower (better luck with the dice) and evicted him from Ft. Brown. I then proceeded to try to reinforce, bringing attrited units up to full strength and adding one infantry regiment. I also started converting his fieldworks into a full fortress. That was my good luck this turn.
Lorry, on the other hand, came back at me by sending General Kearney and a small force over to Alte California to capture it for the USA, by way of the Disputed Territories (not currently disputed because my units had all been tied up in the attack at Ft. Brown).
He then got very lucky and rolled high enough to get the USA to declare war at the end of turn one. That's very bad for Mexico - before that, the US fights with one hand behind its back and hte Mexicans have initiative. I'd expect war to normally be declared by player choice or event card by turn 4 on average, but turn 1 was pretty unlucky for Mexico.
The war adds a huge pile of units to the American reinforcement pool and gives both sides bigger hands of strategic cards to work with. More crucially, in the pre-war period, only Mexico can generate reinforcements each turn. Once the war starts, there is an automatic reinforcement every turn plus the US can take a voluntary card based one they were ineligible for beforehand.
We didn't play much further. His reinforcements appeared near Ft. Brown so he had two moderately large forces facing my now-outnumbered single force. My fortification wasn't going as well as hoped - he'd probably get to attack first. Additionally, my baggage train had been left vulnerable in Matamoros and he could have swept around the end and taken it with ease, putting me out of supply before the critical battle for Ft. Brown.
It had the feeling of a very fun, meaty game. We didn't get to explore the taking of states very deeply or the US amphibious options for deep strikes nor what implications the unstable Mexican government had.
The game is interesting because basically it boils down to Mexican political will. If a game end condition arises (dice roll at turn end or perhaps with an event card or a sudden death condition differing for each side is achieved), you look at the political will track for Mexico. If their rating is high enough, they win. If it is a bit lower, a draw ensues. If it is lower than that, they lose. So the US goal is to inflict damage to the Mexican political will. The Mexican goal is to shore it up.
The polticial will is influenced by gaining or losing territories, winning or losing big battles, some events, and the number of Mexican provinces in revolt. Political changes like Santa Anna returning from (and possibly being sent to) exile and change of leaders in Mexico can impact the political will indirectly and influence how the game plays out. Revolts untended tend to spread over the turns but require actions and probably units to quash.
So essentially, the Mexican goal is to keep a stable government, not lose political will quickly, and quash revolts, occasionally kicking the US player for a victory in battle probably helps (and forestalls their adventurism). The US player wants to encourage bellicosity (helps declare war sooner), capture various disputed territories and Mexican holdings, keep the Mexicans out of Texas, not lose battles, and to wait for and/or encourage Mexican state revolts.
You get the feeling even from our short experience that the first game phase involves a few small forces, a few leaders, manouvering and trading back and forth provocations (Crisis phase). When actual war breaks out, the gloves are off on both sides. When the Mexican government collapses (and it may), Mexico is fighting with an extra 100 pound gorilla on its back (similarly a pile of revolts will do that).
The event cards teach you a bit about the conflict and the rulebook includes a deeper look at the events that underlie the cards. I drew Indian Raids twice which brought some annoyance to the US player (they can cut supply lines and increase Mexican political will because they weaken the US). There are certain turn-by-turn pre-ordained events and random ones that come up by card, giving the game an interesting feel.
If we can sort out the unresolved/broken/poorly worded parts of the rules, spend some more time playing this to be faster at it, I think there is a really great game lurking underneath.
Even in our short game, I felt like there were interesting event cards, good tactical possibilities for fights, strategic issues of supply and troop dispersion (for revolts and to counter flanking moves), and political considerations all to factor in. That first round attack was to try to generate some positive political gains, which it did (adding more than 10% to my political will total). So the game integrates a lot of interesting aspects.
I look forward to playing this one again.
Speed: 2 out of 5 (imperfect rules, meaty subject matter)
Strategy: 4 out of 5 (provisional, must play through full game, lots of seeming depth)
Fun: 4 out of 5 (fun might be higher if the rules hadn't been challenging)
Thursday, August 6, 2009
The Forgotten Realms
I remember when I first got the boxed set of the Forgotten Realms campaign setting for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons®.
I had never heard of Ed Greendwood (an Ontarian, surprisingly) or the Forgotten Realms. This was the 'new direction' the game appeared to be taking as the Old Gaurd at TSR drifted away - names like Gygax, Mentzer, Otus, Mohan, etc. fading away. With them was fading the Greyhawk setting. It was time for something new to open out some new frontiers and to generate some new income for TSR by allowing them to sell a new line of campaign-related products. Greyhawk was getting pretty long in the tooth by this point.
The Forgotten Realms was a place where you didn't just have hack and slash adventures and where the heroes weren't all knights and noblemen - common folk ended up becoming some of the greatest heroes. And wherever you looked, their was legacy of past civilizations, past races, past communities, and past disasters. There was a sense of age to the world and mystery. There was a sense that there would be lots to uncover and lots to discover in the games played in this world.
We are many years beyond this point now. Advanced Dungeones & Dragons® gave way to 2nd Edition, then Skills and Powers, then eventually 3rd Edition, D20, the revised 3.5 Edition and now very lately 4th Edition. Greyhawk is now a dead world as far as product goes. The Forgotten Realms has endured through the years, expanding to include a vast expanse of world space and diverse settings like the Horde (Mongol), Kara-Tur (Orienal), and Maztica (South American). It and the later Eberron campaign world are the current focus. Planescape and Spelljammer seem to have come and went in the intervening period.
But now, the Forgotten Realms has had so many parts of its geography and history filled in, it lacks some of what it had when the first grey boxed set came out: Possibility. The original set gave you a big chunk of the world, but it clued you in that there was a lot more of it. Even of what it did present, it presented chunks with tantalizing references never to be further developed, leaving the aspiring GM plenty of plot hooks he could exploit and create adventures for and the aspiring player many things to wish his GM would develop for his game.
Eventually, I migrated my gaming out of the Forgotten Realms. A few characters I had there were at retirement points, others were dead. Some crazy things had been introduced in the penchant of the publisher to fill every space with a campaign supplement (Ravensgate, it is at thee I am staring with contempt!) - Arch Magi giving rides to children at a fair, Spellfire, Gods rampaging around and impacting the game world directly and without subtlety. These things all seemed to eat away at the air of mystery and sensibility that the original boxed set seemed to present. Eberron was also coming on the scene and it had some pretty slick products and some very interesting and ground-breaking character options.
But now, these many years later, I find myself drawn back into a 3.5 Edition Forgotten Realms game: Olostin's Hold. My friend Doug had a lot invested in this world and has parleyed that into an ongoing game that gives me an excuse to see (or at least talk to) some of my oldest friends on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. Sometimes there is more chatting and side conversation than actual D&D gaming. But even so, the game itself is interesting.
Despite all the silly things they've thrown into corners of the world, despite all the stuff they've published, there are still a lot of opportunities unplumbed. The game world is huge and lots of the supplements have laid out adventure possibilities as rumours of no more than one or two lines of text. So there is still a lot for a GM to develop for his own game.
And of course, this has inpsired me to want to run an adventure or two in the Forgotten Realms. I have my own game world of 20 years which I'm very happy with. Many of the players would have characters for it too, but not all. But Doug's game has some momentum right now and I don't want to disrupt that and I don't want to try to distract by running my game interspersed. Instead, I think I could have my fun presenting adventures within Doug's game and allow it to keep up its momentum. Momentum is not a trivial matter in the sustainability of gaming over time and over distance.
So once again, the mysteries of the Forgotten Realms have sucked me in. My urge to get out the pen and start penning adventures from those short summary lines or even from collections of varied short references to places is high.
Until Swords Part....
I had never heard of Ed Greendwood (an Ontarian, surprisingly) or the Forgotten Realms. This was the 'new direction' the game appeared to be taking as the Old Gaurd at TSR drifted away - names like Gygax, Mentzer, Otus, Mohan, etc. fading away. With them was fading the Greyhawk setting. It was time for something new to open out some new frontiers and to generate some new income for TSR by allowing them to sell a new line of campaign-related products. Greyhawk was getting pretty long in the tooth by this point.
The Forgotten Realms was a place where you didn't just have hack and slash adventures and where the heroes weren't all knights and noblemen - common folk ended up becoming some of the greatest heroes. And wherever you looked, their was legacy of past civilizations, past races, past communities, and past disasters. There was a sense of age to the world and mystery. There was a sense that there would be lots to uncover and lots to discover in the games played in this world.
We are many years beyond this point now. Advanced Dungeones & Dragons® gave way to 2nd Edition, then Skills and Powers, then eventually 3rd Edition, D20, the revised 3.5 Edition and now very lately 4th Edition. Greyhawk is now a dead world as far as product goes. The Forgotten Realms has endured through the years, expanding to include a vast expanse of world space and diverse settings like the Horde (Mongol), Kara-Tur (Orienal), and Maztica (South American). It and the later Eberron campaign world are the current focus. Planescape and Spelljammer seem to have come and went in the intervening period.
But now, the Forgotten Realms has had so many parts of its geography and history filled in, it lacks some of what it had when the first grey boxed set came out: Possibility. The original set gave you a big chunk of the world, but it clued you in that there was a lot more of it. Even of what it did present, it presented chunks with tantalizing references never to be further developed, leaving the aspiring GM plenty of plot hooks he could exploit and create adventures for and the aspiring player many things to wish his GM would develop for his game.
Eventually, I migrated my gaming out of the Forgotten Realms. A few characters I had there were at retirement points, others were dead. Some crazy things had been introduced in the penchant of the publisher to fill every space with a campaign supplement (Ravensgate, it is at thee I am staring with contempt!) - Arch Magi giving rides to children at a fair, Spellfire, Gods rampaging around and impacting the game world directly and without subtlety. These things all seemed to eat away at the air of mystery and sensibility that the original boxed set seemed to present. Eberron was also coming on the scene and it had some pretty slick products and some very interesting and ground-breaking character options.
But now, these many years later, I find myself drawn back into a 3.5 Edition Forgotten Realms game: Olostin's Hold. My friend Doug had a lot invested in this world and has parleyed that into an ongoing game that gives me an excuse to see (or at least talk to) some of my oldest friends on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. Sometimes there is more chatting and side conversation than actual D&D gaming. But even so, the game itself is interesting.
Despite all the silly things they've thrown into corners of the world, despite all the stuff they've published, there are still a lot of opportunities unplumbed. The game world is huge and lots of the supplements have laid out adventure possibilities as rumours of no more than one or two lines of text. So there is still a lot for a GM to develop for his own game.
And of course, this has inpsired me to want to run an adventure or two in the Forgotten Realms. I have my own game world of 20 years which I'm very happy with. Many of the players would have characters for it too, but not all. But Doug's game has some momentum right now and I don't want to disrupt that and I don't want to try to distract by running my game interspersed. Instead, I think I could have my fun presenting adventures within Doug's game and allow it to keep up its momentum. Momentum is not a trivial matter in the sustainability of gaming over time and over distance.
So once again, the mysteries of the Forgotten Realms have sucked me in. My urge to get out the pen and start penning adventures from those short summary lines or even from collections of varied short references to places is high.
Until Swords Part....
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Boardgame Reviews: Roll Through The Ages & Race For The Galaxy
Roll Through The Ages
on BGG
1-4 players, 25-45 minutes to play, dice-based VP collecting game. Custom dice generate food, workers, various trade goods, money and disasters. Player choices include when to reroll dice (risking disasters or trying to get what you want on the dice), where to allocate workers (building wonders or producing cities which give you more dice), whether to seek food (feeds cities and avoids penalty points), trade goods (money in another form), or money. Money and trade good help you buy 'developments' - things like leadership, irrigation, religion, empire, etc. each of which affects either how disasters impact you, how you produce extra goods or food, how you can reroll dice, or things of that sort.
Played 3 games. Kinda liked it, but got annihilated by enemy dice rolls that generated negative points. You have to watch carefully for when your enemy is going to suddenly end the game on you (having bought five developments or all wonders being built).
Speed: 4.5 out of 5 (fast playing)
Strategy: 3.75 out of 5 (there is some strategy, but you need the dice to cooperate)
Fun: 3.75 out of 5 (was fun, but sometimes the dice just hate you)
Race For The Galaxy
on the BGG
2-4 Players, 60-90 minutes to play, card based game where you are trying to build synergistic engines of productivity. Players use cards from their hand to pay to lay worlds or developments. Developments are things like 'mining robots' or 'star marines' which give benefits to your military rating or production or consumption, whereas worlds tend to offer places to sell things (cycle cards for more cards or VPs) or production centers to produce goods.
This game involves picking which phase of a turn you might want to execute - explore (cycle cards out of the deck into your hand), develop (build non-world developments), settle (settle worlds), trade + consume (cycle cards and produced resources for more cards and/or VPs), or produce (have your production worlds generate goods).
When you've played 12 cards in front of you into your 'tableau', the game ends. The game also ends if you run out of VP tokens (12 pts of VP per player in initial pool).
The point of the game is to get an engine going whereby you can perhaps produce and then sell to great advantage one of the four resources, or where you can play plenty of military planets and facilities cheaply, or where alien tech becomes 'your thing', etc. Whatever gets you to the most VPs the fastest.
The game seems to be a modified version of the popular San Juan card engine. I think it offers more options for strategy, but is also a fair bit more swingy. If you draw well, you can really get a powerful engine going fast. If not, you can somewhat affect this (one of your explore options lets you cycle deep into the deck but you can only keep one card) but it can be tough straights to be in. If you choose a strategy that's a non-starter (military build up, for instance, and you don't draw military worlds), you can languish in the lands of card starvation and VP starvation.
Played 2 games. Got trounced soundly in both. Part of it was card luck, part of it was choices that (retrospectively) would have been better differently. Jury is still out on whether I could have know at the time to go another way. Have to play it a few more times before deciding I'm not fond of it or the random factor is too big.
Speed: 3.5 out of 5 (Not bad, but later in the game you can have a lot of cards to watch)
Strategy: 3.5 out of 5 (It seems like there is strategy, but your draw cards and strategic plans can not mesh well sometimes leaving you languishing in agony)
Fun: 4 out of 5 (The game is flavourful and expansions add a fifth player and actual invade-and-capture of military planets)
on BGG
1-4 players, 25-45 minutes to play, dice-based VP collecting game. Custom dice generate food, workers, various trade goods, money and disasters. Player choices include when to reroll dice (risking disasters or trying to get what you want on the dice), where to allocate workers (building wonders or producing cities which give you more dice), whether to seek food (feeds cities and avoids penalty points), trade goods (money in another form), or money. Money and trade good help you buy 'developments' - things like leadership, irrigation, religion, empire, etc. each of which affects either how disasters impact you, how you produce extra goods or food, how you can reroll dice, or things of that sort.
Played 3 games. Kinda liked it, but got annihilated by enemy dice rolls that generated negative points. You have to watch carefully for when your enemy is going to suddenly end the game on you (having bought five developments or all wonders being built).
Speed: 4.5 out of 5 (fast playing)
Strategy: 3.75 out of 5 (there is some strategy, but you need the dice to cooperate)
Fun: 3.75 out of 5 (was fun, but sometimes the dice just hate you)
Race For The Galaxy
on the BGG
2-4 Players, 60-90 minutes to play, card based game where you are trying to build synergistic engines of productivity. Players use cards from their hand to pay to lay worlds or developments. Developments are things like 'mining robots' or 'star marines' which give benefits to your military rating or production or consumption, whereas worlds tend to offer places to sell things (cycle cards for more cards or VPs) or production centers to produce goods.
This game involves picking which phase of a turn you might want to execute - explore (cycle cards out of the deck into your hand), develop (build non-world developments), settle (settle worlds), trade + consume (cycle cards and produced resources for more cards and/or VPs), or produce (have your production worlds generate goods).
When you've played 12 cards in front of you into your 'tableau', the game ends. The game also ends if you run out of VP tokens (12 pts of VP per player in initial pool).
The point of the game is to get an engine going whereby you can perhaps produce and then sell to great advantage one of the four resources, or where you can play plenty of military planets and facilities cheaply, or where alien tech becomes 'your thing', etc. Whatever gets you to the most VPs the fastest.
The game seems to be a modified version of the popular San Juan card engine. I think it offers more options for strategy, but is also a fair bit more swingy. If you draw well, you can really get a powerful engine going fast. If not, you can somewhat affect this (one of your explore options lets you cycle deep into the deck but you can only keep one card) but it can be tough straights to be in. If you choose a strategy that's a non-starter (military build up, for instance, and you don't draw military worlds), you can languish in the lands of card starvation and VP starvation.
Played 2 games. Got trounced soundly in both. Part of it was card luck, part of it was choices that (retrospectively) would have been better differently. Jury is still out on whether I could have know at the time to go another way. Have to play it a few more times before deciding I'm not fond of it or the random factor is too big.
Speed: 3.5 out of 5 (Not bad, but later in the game you can have a lot of cards to watch)
Strategy: 3.5 out of 5 (It seems like there is strategy, but your draw cards and strategic plans can not mesh well sometimes leaving you languishing in agony)
Fun: 4 out of 5 (The game is flavourful and expansions add a fifth player and actual invade-and-capture of military planets)
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Session Report: [Olostin's Hold] Villagers Take Root at Calling Horn
Jastra's Journal:
We repaired the wagons after the ambush by the brigands. They were savvy enough to build swinging log traps to disable our wagons but not smart enough to recognize we weren't people to be trifled with. One nasty fight later, the road between Olostin's Hold and Calling Horn was safer.
Then, with newly repaired wagons, we proceeded to Calling Horn. Of course, even the most jaded among us was a bit surprised to find everyone in the village turned into a tree or a shrubbery... even inside buildings.
We found a couple of actual bodies in the Blacksmith's place and happened upon a heavily armoured Troll who seemed game for a go round. He was a tough foe, but we've dealt with Trolls before. Our heaviest fighters, Dhallon and Hagis, kept it busy while the real damage was done by Murklane the Troll Hunter, Reagan of the Sorching Ray, and your fine scribe, singing a ballad about hunting trolls on the moors as my most excellent keen magic rapier slashed off random facial features.
Eventually we put the foul beast down, though it did inflict some horrible wounds on Murklane and I. Nothing the power of Lathander, Morninglord and enemy of evil, couldn't resolve, by way of his servant Sturv Amblecrown.
The interrogation of the troll was short. They're not the brightest creatures. Sturv seemed to think we had to let the troll go. Murklane, a follower of Gwareon Windstorm, really had a serious problem with letting the troll go, but Sturv was adamant. He seemed to think that he was honour bound to let the creature go if it answered our questions.
That moment of tension was passed as Murklane reluctantly relented, threatening the troll with a slow and fiery death if he was ever see around human lands again. This outcome satisfied Sturv, but left Murklane rather put out.
We continued our search of the village, in the hopes of locating a clue to the oddity of a village full of greenery instead of people. At one house, Dhallon found a Dog. As is their wont, the Dog seemed to want to lead us to someone after we fed and watered it and freed it. Knowing Dogs know better than most, we elected to follow the Dog.
Off down to the woods, leaving Hendric and Sturv behind with the merchants, the remainder of our party travelled following the Dog's nose. Hagis, Dhallon, Murklane, myself and Reagan figured we could handle whatever the Dog was headed towards.
In the base of a tree, we discovered a strange passage to the underworld. We entered into a large underground cavern, complete with its own grove and at least one building. Now, despite being well travelled and educated, I had never heard of such a thing. Reagan too professed ignorance of any similar thing. A true wonder, but one tinged with the feel of the sinister.
We began to climb down, with Dhallon and I climbing down first to secure a safe zone so they others less talented at climbing could let themselves down. The building we could see seemed blocky and lacking in windows, which was odd and hinted at the need for a sturdy, defensible structure or at least at the mindset of the builders. The grove would, for the moment, remain a mystery.
We repaired the wagons after the ambush by the brigands. They were savvy enough to build swinging log traps to disable our wagons but not smart enough to recognize we weren't people to be trifled with. One nasty fight later, the road between Olostin's Hold and Calling Horn was safer.
Then, with newly repaired wagons, we proceeded to Calling Horn. Of course, even the most jaded among us was a bit surprised to find everyone in the village turned into a tree or a shrubbery... even inside buildings.
We found a couple of actual bodies in the Blacksmith's place and happened upon a heavily armoured Troll who seemed game for a go round. He was a tough foe, but we've dealt with Trolls before. Our heaviest fighters, Dhallon and Hagis, kept it busy while the real damage was done by Murklane the Troll Hunter, Reagan of the Sorching Ray, and your fine scribe, singing a ballad about hunting trolls on the moors as my most excellent keen magic rapier slashed off random facial features.
Eventually we put the foul beast down, though it did inflict some horrible wounds on Murklane and I. Nothing the power of Lathander, Morninglord and enemy of evil, couldn't resolve, by way of his servant Sturv Amblecrown.
The interrogation of the troll was short. They're not the brightest creatures. Sturv seemed to think we had to let the troll go. Murklane, a follower of Gwareon Windstorm, really had a serious problem with letting the troll go, but Sturv was adamant. He seemed to think that he was honour bound to let the creature go if it answered our questions.
That moment of tension was passed as Murklane reluctantly relented, threatening the troll with a slow and fiery death if he was ever see around human lands again. This outcome satisfied Sturv, but left Murklane rather put out.
We continued our search of the village, in the hopes of locating a clue to the oddity of a village full of greenery instead of people. At one house, Dhallon found a Dog. As is their wont, the Dog seemed to want to lead us to someone after we fed and watered it and freed it. Knowing Dogs know better than most, we elected to follow the Dog.
Off down to the woods, leaving Hendric and Sturv behind with the merchants, the remainder of our party travelled following the Dog's nose. Hagis, Dhallon, Murklane, myself and Reagan figured we could handle whatever the Dog was headed towards.
In the base of a tree, we discovered a strange passage to the underworld. We entered into a large underground cavern, complete with its own grove and at least one building. Now, despite being well travelled and educated, I had never heard of such a thing. Reagan too professed ignorance of any similar thing. A true wonder, but one tinged with the feel of the sinister.
We began to climb down, with Dhallon and I climbing down first to secure a safe zone so they others less talented at climbing could let themselves down. The building we could see seemed blocky and lacking in windows, which was odd and hinted at the need for a sturdy, defensible structure or at least at the mindset of the builders. The grove would, for the moment, remain a mystery.
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