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.
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