Sentinels of the Multiverse

I am currently in a card game obsession phase.  Absolutely in love with a lot of well designed card games.  My two current favorites are Netrunner and Sentinels of the Multiverse.  Of the two I feel there is a small preference for Sentinels because of the fact that it can be played with more than two-players, and it is even more fun and engaging with the increased player count.  So lets dive in and examine this absolutely wonderful game, the greatest cooperative, fixed deck, comic book themed game in the multiverse.

The game takes place in a series of turns, each one has three distinct components:  The Villain Turn, the Hero Turns, and the Environment Turn.  Each of these distinct types of turns can be further broken down in a few stages.  Each one has a specific "Start of.." and "End of.." turn phase, that really only matters for triggering various effects and abilities.  The Villain Turn also involves drawing and playing a card from the Villain deck.  You will also most likely be dealing with Villain specific powers that relate to either the beginning or end of the Villain Turn.  This type of triggered ability seems to be common across all the Villains in one form or another.

After you've resolved the Villain Turn you then proceed to the Hero Turns.  These also each have the "Start" and "End" phases, as well as the following in order sequence:  Play a Card, Use a Power, Draw a Card.  This can be a simple and straight forward sequence of events, or a complex interplay of abilities and triggers depending on the hero.

The third turn, the Environment Turn, is quite similar to the Villain Turn.  You trigger and "Start" and abilities, then draw and play an Environment card, then trigger any "End" abilities.  After that you head back to the beginning and do it all over again.  This repeats until you've either lost, by all the heroes being incapacitated, or you've won, by reducing the villain's hit points to 0 or less.  The basic rules and framework of the whole thing are quite simple and elegant.  All the complexity comes from the variety of cards and abilities associated with each of the heroes, villains, and environments.

The variety of all of these different decks is perhaps my favorite element of this game.  When you count the expansions and the couple of promo decks you have 15 heroes, 13 villains, and 8 environments.  While all of them operate similarly enough to not require any extra learning curve when switching between them; they also all feel very distinct and flavorful.  You have heroes that are just plain damage dealers, heroes that build up to complicated combos, and heroes that help other heroes shine.  You have villains ranging from criminal masterminds with armies of underbosses and thugs, to deadly mercenaries with impressive arsenals of devices and weapons.  The environments range from the Ruins of Atlantis to a Mars Base.  Each one is fun and interesting in its own right, which is quite impressive.

So far I have played in I believe 6 games of Sentinels, with two of those being solo play throughs to just test out new decks.  The game does not have formal single player rules, so I was basically playing the roles of two actual players, but it was still somewhat enjoyable.  The game really shines in the teamwork and interaction with other players though.  You really feel like a band of valiant superheroes, all working together to take on the big and bad evil villains that threaten the peace and safety of the world.  The game definitely gets easier with more players, and the more the merrier is always true in the majority of board games IMO.  But I can still see it being fun with 2 or 3.

Now let me see if I can remember the participants in each of the games I've played in.

Game 1:  Me, John, Emily, and Armaghn.  We faced the "easy" villain Baron Blade, a sort of mad scientist type.  The heroes that we fielded were the Wraith (kind of a female Batman), Ra (Egyptian themed fire god),  Expatriate (chick with lots of guns), and Fanatic (holy/angel themed hero).  We won, but it was kinda tough.

Game 2:  Same players.  The bad guy this time was Akash'Bhuta (or Osh-Kosh Bagosh as we nicknamed him), a giant tree creature.  Wraith and Ra were played again, but this time they were joined by Nightmist (spellcasting supernatural private eye chick) and Legacy (kind of a Superman type).  We won again, this time a little easier.

Game 3:  Me, John, Emily, Armaghn, and Gabe.  We faced Grand Warlord Voss (Thanos/Darkseid type).  We had Bunker (Iron Man-esque), Ardent Adept (hippie bard music powered type), Ra, Tachyon (combo between the Flash's powers and Reed Richards intellect), and Unity (Gadgeteer chick).  Another tough battle but we won.

Game 4:  Just me.  I faced off against the Deadpool-like Ambuscade.  I used Haka (maori warrior brute type) and Mr. Fixer (Luke Cage/Ninja).  I barely won, and I'm pretty sure I shouldn't have, I probably forgot to do quite a few things by not paying attention.

Game 5:  Me again.  I faced off against the giant evil robot Omnitron.  I had Absolute Zero (kinda a tech using Iceman) and Tempest (Storm-like powers in an alien form).  Stopped at about halfway through in order to start up a game with actual other people, but it wasn't looking great for me.

Game 6:  Me, Emily, Armaghn, and Ron.  We had to face the infectious Plague Rat.  We fielded Haka, Legacy, Visionary (psychic hero), and Mr. Fixer.  We won pretty handily.

As you can see, I'm not the only one who really enjoyed playing and was willing to do so multiple times.  I'm definitely looking forward to more games, and I really think I could do an interesting spin off or two using similar ideas.

September Game Day

Another month has passed and another NWARPG Game Day has come (yay) and passed (aww).  This month it was another Benton County one, out at Gamer Utopia in Rogers.  The last one at their current location, by the time we get back that direction in a couple of months they will have moved into a new store. I kind of liked the old mall location, for the extra stuff conveniently located around it in the same building; but hopefully the new location will be even better.

This Game Day saw a good number of RPGs being played, and a decent smattering of board games as well.  There were some familiar faces that had been missed at the past few game days (I'm looking at you John), as well as the vast majority of the regular crew of wonderful people who I've come to know and enjoy at these and other gaming events over the past few months.  I did not really pay much attention to numbers or counts or anything, but my guess is that we were at least at the 25 mark and maybe upwards of 30 people there playing various games.

I had a truly wonderful time playing in a Dungeon World game.  As usual I absolutely love playing in any of the Apocalypse World based systems a hell of a lot more than I have enjoyed my short forays into running them.  As a player this system just really works for me and I have a ton of fun with it.  It also helps that I've played with great groups and great GMs every time.  This time of course was no exception.  Chris Colbath ran a very fun game, which saw our party of six adventurers undertaking a perilous quest to find and destroy the Corrupted Master.

Our party was composed of Baldric the bard, Mouse the halfling thief, Wolf the half-elf ranger and his bear companion Bear, Lux the paladin, "Horcrux" (not the actual name, but that's what the GM kept accidentely saying so it stuck) the elven druid, and Galadiir the elven mage (ME!).  It was quite an impressive party with lots of varying powers, skills, and alignments (shhhhh, I was EVIL!!)

I totally hammed up my character by dubbing him Galadirr the Unsure and playing him as being totally uncertain and in doubt about everything, including his own magical abilities.  I was constantly "hoping this works!" when casting a spell, and pointing out to the paladin that "the gods don't actually exist"  I also did a terrible take on a British accent, and cracked jokes as often as I could; so for me at least it was a ton of fun. Lots of others were laughing, so I think it was fun for most if not all.\

Our group faced an attack by goblins right off the bat as we were camped out on our journey to find the Corrupted Master (CM).  We handily defeated the foes, thanks in large part to my amazing fireball casting skills.  I'm not entirely certain I believe the stories that they rest of the party put forth about my fireball hitting them as well, I think they just are too embarrassed to admit falling into the camp fire.  After defeating the goblins we made haste to the secret mountain fortress of the CM, which I had never seen before because I definitely had not served an intern-ship with him back during wizarding school.  Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

After defeating another horde of goblins, and more party members stumbling into random fires that totally were not my fault, I consulted with the most trustworthy sort of individual (a demon) and learned of the secret passage into the tower that I totally did not already know about at all.  We managed to sneak inside and find our way to the CM after only some minor difficulties involving illusions, big scary spiders, fire traps (not my fault!), zombies, and paladins walking directly into the path of innocent wizard's fireballs.  An epic battle ensued, and after some hard fighting, and a fireball landing on the party that was NOT cast by their own wizard, I managed to just barely kill the CM right as his teleportation ritual finished and the body faded away.  The evil wizarding tower was now under new management!!

As I said it was a ton of fun, and hey only 3/5 of my fireballs hit the party!  I rolled well enough on a lot of those castings that I wish I'd taken the empower magic ability, I would have been doing a whole lot more friendly fire damage!

The other two RPGs that went on were a Pathfinder Society scenario (with 5-7 players I believe) and a game of All Flesh Must Be Eaten, a zombie RPG, with 5-6 players as well.  I was busy in my game, and was bugging the board game players when I was not; so I didn't pay much attention to either one, but we have such high quality GMs and players at these events that I'm sure both were a ton of fun.  Sadly the Marvel game did not end up happening, the GM ended up being late and leaving early because of health issues I believe.

As far as board games went I got to play in a few, and there were a ton going on that I saw but didn't participate in.  A group of 5 or so players were unfortunately cursed with having to play Cosmic Encounters, and while they seemed to have fun I'm sure inside they were crying.  ;)

A couple of folks played the new Fantasy Flight Star Wars mini game, that looked like fun and I'll have to try it out sometime.  A few games of Jungle Speed happened, with Emily winning them all I hear.  War of 1812 was played at least once with a group of five, and from the conversations about it afterwards I think everyone had fun and is looking to play it again.  Another one I'll have to try sometime.

I was able to play a 2 player game of Pandemic with Bobby, which we lost due to outbreaks.  Also got to try out Formula D for the first time.  I was trying to be careful and not hurt my car for the majority of the race, which doesn't lend itself to a winning strategy; so I lost that one as well, but it is a very cool game that I think does a great job of capturing the flavor and theme.  Which is something I'm always interested in seeing and learning from.

The big highlight of the board games for me was getting to playtest a game of my own design.  My election satire card game was played for the first time and I was super happy with the result.  No, it wasn't anywhere near perfect, nor was it the greatest idea ever.  But it was somewhat enjoyable, and I think most of the people there saw potential for a decent game to come out of it after more testing and refinement; which is all I could possibly ask for at this stage.  The two big problems were the balancing of the numbers, which I 100% admit were largely arbitrary and just thrown out there to see what would work, and a need for more interesting and dynamic choices at various points in the game.  I got some really good feedback and was super grateful to the group that was willing to try it out.  Looking forward to fixing some things and trying it again.  Thanks Bobby, John, Taylor and Josh!

EDIT:  Oh after I posted I remember that Anders and Chris did quite a bit of discussion about their "Pirate LARP" game, and may have played through some of the mechanics.  Another awesome example of the great community of gamers we have here in the area.  Chris mentioned an idea of making a website that would be a central hub for all our local game design stuff; which I think would be awesome.

Tannhauser: A Second Take, Looking For A Third

So I broke out the very first Fantasy Flight game that I ever bought for out board game day this last Sunday, Tannhauser.  This is a tactical miniature combat board game with some cool mechanics and a really cool theme.  The theme is Weird War II, or basically alternate history World War II with crazy supernatural stuff and magic and creatures.

The game plays out in a fairly simple manner.  You have tow sides, Nazis and Union (this world's version of the Allies).  Each side has 5 characters, 3 heroes and 2 troopers.  On a given turn you activate each of the characters individually, one at a time and alternating between the factions.  Each character can do both a Move and an Action.  The Action can interrupt the Move, so you can run up to a door, shoot through it, and continue on by.  You have various stats that determine how far you can move, how well you attack, how good your defense is, etc.  You also have up to four pieces of equipment that give you abilities, powers, and bonuses.  In general you're rolling a pool of d10s equal to your stat and aiming for a DC equal to an opponent's stat.  There are of course a ton of little details; but no one of them is overly complicated and they are easy enough to handle when they come up.

In the past me and my friend Jeremy has played this game quite a bit.  We found it to be really enjoyable and  a nice challenging game.  The expansion adds a new faction that is way overpowered, but we really enjoyed the base game.  Unfortunately I had not had the chance to play it in quite some time.  Also on a down note, this time when I finally did break it out we were not completely able to replicate the fun.

We had five players for this game.  The game can handle up to 10 people technically, with each character on a side being played by a separate player.  We had 2 Union players (Bobby and Anders) and 3 Nazi players (Me, John, and Tim).  We split up the characters as each team saw fit, and proceeded to play.   From the very beginning some huge inconsistencies in the rules and the powers became readily apparent.  The whole game was quite unbalanced and the Union was on their back foot from the get go.  This was in large part due to the use of various items and abilities that we never used back in the day; hence why it was quite surprising and unexpected to me.

There were quite a few very valid complaints and problems pointed out, and Bobby and Anders did not seem to be really enjoying themselves.  I was quite disappointed.  I was especially disappointed to hear Anders say that it kinda put him off on his plans to make his own tactical miniatures game.  I also am planning my own game of this style, but I took the failings as a guide on how to do better.  I hope Anders takes the same sort of lesson away and continues with his game.

On the good news side though, I was reminded of the fact that there is a whole revised rulebook for the game, so I spent the $5 to download it.  After reading through it I was very happy to see the various changes.  Combat is streamlined.  Overpowered abilities and equipment have been fixed.  Smoke grenades actually work like you would expect, and give you some defensive bonuses.  Almost every single one of the complaints we had seems to be fixed or at least helped out.  I really think the game deserves a third chance and I hope I can convince the group to give it that chance.  I'll keep it around for future board game days and Game Days, and we'll see.

Risk Legacy

Today we played our second game of Risk Legacy.  I did not win this time around, so it was a terrible game :)

If you haven't heard about Risk Legacy, it is a very interesting and unique game for quite a decent price.  I heavily advise looking into it if you're a fan of Risk, or even if you are not such a big fan.  It plays quite differently than the old school game that it shares a name with.

The basic overall structure of the game is the same as the old one.  You have a map of the world, divided up into continents and countries.  You march your little plastic men across the world, killing enemies and capturing territories in order to bring about your victory.  You still get new troops each turn based on the number of countries you hold, still roll 3 dice to attack and 2 to defend, still get one free move for reinforcements, and still get a card for capturing an enemy held country.

The details are where the differences start to appear.  First, the biggest difference and my favorite one is the play time.  This version plays in about 45-60 minutes, as opposed to the 4-5 hours of normal Risk.  How does it accomplish this amazing feat?  Well victory is no longer about world domination, it is about gaining four Red Stars (victory points).  To make things even faster and easier everyone starts with a capitol HQ, which counts as one Red Star, and if you haven't won a game yet you get a bonus Red Star token, so you are halfway to victory.  This makes for very quick games once you realize it.  Heck all you have to do is capture one other player's HQ and then turn in 4 cards for an additional Red Star token and you've won.

Another thing that really makes this Risk version unique, and that I also really like, is that the game is constantly being changed and customized to your group as you play it over the course of the 15 game campaign that it is intended to be played for.  You end up making changes to and adding lots of cool stuff to the map, the cards, the rules, and the game itself.  Both as a reward at the end of each game and as a result of various conditions and triggers being met you will do things like add custom named cities to the board, increase the value of various territory cards, name continents, change the continent bonuses up or down, fortify cities, add powers to the various factions, and even change the basic rules of the game.  By the end of 15 games you will have a very unique and highly customized Risk game that has been shaped and formed by the creative minds and hard efforts of your gaming group.  A gaming artifact of extraordinary personal value.

Of course a certain type of gamer will not be able to accept the coolness of this unique feature of Risk Legacy.  Those who hold the physical components of their games to be sacred and inviolate have shown themselves to be utterly aghast at the concept of such travesties as WRITING ON THE BOARD or TEARING UP CARDS.  The horror!  Why even the owner of our copy is unwilling to actual destroy any portion of the game, even when it instructs us to do so.  We will just be setting aside anything that should be "destroyed".  Which is totally fine by me.  I don't really feel that there will be much to gained from physically destroying game pieces.  Doing things like naming cities and continents, and recording your name on the victory track are enough for me.  I founded the city of Asgard in Scandinavia first game, and the city of Spiel-ville in Northern Europe the second game.

There are a plethora of other minor things that make this game different from classic Risk.  Each player plays a faction with specific plastic minis and special powers (well only one power right now, but there will be more later).  If you've won a game and don't get a bonus Red Star token any more, you get a missle token that you can use to change a die in any combat to a 6.  There are things called Scars that can make certain territories harder or easier to defend.  You only start with one country at the beginning of the game, so there is lots of expanding into empty territories at the beginning of the game.  And more interesting changes should be coming up as we open some of the various boxes and envelopes in the box.  Like if either John or I win the next time then we will open the envelope that says "Open when someone signs the board for a second time."

I have to say I'm really a big fan of this game so far, and I think my opinion will only go up as more facets of it are revealed.  I love the super fast play time, I love the customizing, and I love the cool theme and flavor of it.  It still has the same failing of any Risk game to some degree, in that victory can largely be determined by being the first one to trade in a good set of cards for a large chunk of troops.  But that is not going to be the only way that people win.  John won this one by saving his cards and trading in for that fourth Red Star token.  I think the game will promote people playing harder and taking more risks, since games can go from a stalemate to a victory so quickly, easily in a single turn.

August Game Day

Oh my I have so many things that need to be written up for this blog.  The latest Game Day, Smallville at Magpie, Mage Knight board game, Dresden Files, my Mecha game and my new project, Risk Legacy, the Mistborn RPG, and 1989: Dawn of Freedom.  I'm going to type up as many as I can in this current sitting, so I can have them easily available for release over the next few days.

First up the latest Game Day.  It was this last Saturday, the 18th, at the Clubhouse at the Creek.  It was a ton of fun, and I was very happy to get a chance to playtest my Mecha RPG.  I ran a quick scenario for five players, and I think that for the most part people had fun.  I tried out quite a few new things that I added to the game on the fly, and most of it worked.  I love the system that John Wick uses in Aegis Project where players get to add details to the mission and the location of said mission.  This I stole whole cloth and am not ashamed to admit it.

I tried using my step up die system instead of building pools of D6s for all the mecha systems, and I do not think that it worked out all that well.  I definitely prefer the feel and ease of the pools of D6s.  The mental strain to energy points system also was a bit rough.  I love the concept, but I don't like my execution.  I'll probably drop the whole concept, I think the theme of the game is moving away from the one that inspired the mechanic anyway.

There were tons of ideas and questions, lots of good points were made.  I definitely need to have limits on how many points you can put into a given system, and come up with ways to customize both the pilots abilities and the mechas systems.  The initiative order also was rather slow, which is something I hate about the D&D style, one at a time initiative.  The Aegis Project has everybody roll at the same time.  I like that, but the more I steal from that game the more I can't help but think, "Why am I not just playing John Wick's game?"  That question is one of the main reasons that this game is going on the back burner for me right now.

At the same time that my game was happening there was quite a lot of other activity happening in the room, which I was very happy to see.  I got there a little late, and the whole place was filled with games in progress when I walked in.  Made my heart all warm and fuzzy :).  There was a game of Arkham Horror, the Winterwall Old School D&D game, and a Serenity one shot.  Had to have been about 15 or 16 people playing, and everyone seemed to be having a ton of fun.

After my mecha game I ran off and grabbed some lunch, while I was gone I think some games of Resistance, Munchkin, and Canvas Eagles all started up.  Apparently Anders tried to start up a game of Battlestar Galactica, but without me there to help push it it didn't happen.  I'll be making sure it gets played at a Board Game Day or Game Day in the near future.

I did get a four player game of Dungeon Lords going once I got back.  Resistance I think was on their 14th or 15th game or something ridiculous like that at the next table btw.  :)  We had a good time with Dungeon Lords, and I think everyone liked the game.  It is one that I enjoy, but I always feel bad about because it has one heck of a learning curve and an experienced player will usually blow any new folks out of the water in it. I was the experienced one and everyone else was a newb, btw.  A good number of other folks that spectated found the game to be interesting as well and I am quite certain I can get another round of it in at the next Game Day if I remember to bring it.

Overall things seemed to wind down and the crowd thinned out fairly quickly.  I think this was a combination of a lot of games happening right up front, like 4 or 5 at once; and the fact that Resistance kept 4-6 folks tied up for quite some time.  Not a bad thing on the whole or on Resistance in particular, don't get me wrong.  Just observing and hypothesizing about the observation.  I'm really looking forward to the next Game Day, I always do.  My hope and promise to myself it to present a game of my own design at each future Game Day, whether it be a totally new one or just a revised version of one I've already shown.  Very excited about that as well.

Last Night on Earth Review

Last Night on Earth.  What a roller coaster ride playing that game was.

First of an explanation of how this game works.  In it you are on one of two teams, humans (or as I like to call them Breathers) or zombies.  You play through some sort of scenario/mission which usually has the humans trying to accomplish a specific goal, like gather 12 supplies which was the goal in our game, and the zombies are pretty much looking to eat all those tasty, tasty brains.

The game is played in alternating turns for each team.  On the Zombie turn the hordes of mindless undead are represented by one or two players (or in our game 3).  All of the zombie players do each of the steps in the turn together.  First you move the Sun Track Marker, which counts down the rounds in the game until the sun rises and either the humans celebrate surviving or the zombies show up in force and swarm the remaining humans; just depends on the scenario.

Then you each draw until you have 2 zombie cards, which give you nice advantages like more zombies, more movement, better attacks, etc.  You then roll to see if new zombies spawn.  Roll 2d6 and if you roll more than the number of zombie on the board you get more this turn.  In our scenario however we skipped this step because zombies automatically spawned each turn.

Next, move the shambling hordes towards their delicious targets.  Most of the time the zombies move one space, though cards can improve that.  After movement if any zombies are in the same space as some humans they get to chow down.  Combat involves rolling one or more d6s versus the humans two or more d6s.  The person who rolls the highest number wins, zombies win ties.  If the human gets a higher number but no doubles the zombies is Fended Off, basically the fight ends with no one taking any damage.  If he wins and gets doubles he kills the zombie.  If the zombie wins he does one damage to the human.

Finally you roll a d3 to see how many new zombies you spawn if you do get to spawn new ones.  Add new zombies in at the various designated spawn points on the map, distributing them as evenly as possible.  You also have an option of trading in two possible new zombies in order to draw a Grave Weapon card.  These add interesting weapons to the zombies that give them cool and usually powerful advantages.

After that the silly breathers get their pointless turns in an attempt to deny zombies their rightful dinner.  Each of the human players is playing a Hero character.  Each Hero takes their turn in sequence, each one finishing their whole turn before the next goes.  First up there is a Move Action.  You roll a d6 and can move that many spaces.  Alternatively after rolling you can decide to Search an area for useful stuff.  Next up is Exchange Items.  All heroes in the space with the active hero can both give and receive items via the Hero whose turn it is.

After that you break out the guns and do Ranged Attacks.  You get one shot a turn and the card gives you the details on what your roll means.  Next you Fight Zombies, using the same combat method detailed above, and then the next person does all that for their turn.

Okay so lets look at what I thought about the game.  To start I have to say that we played a game with 8 players, and the game is meant to only have 6 players.  We had an extra human and an extra zombie player.  Since this was my first and only game of LNoE I can't speak with authority on the game speed, but it really seemed to move slower than it probably should.  Other players were saying that it was not normally this slow.  It was really bad in this particular game though.  There was a TON of downtime and the game took so long that people were yelling for it to end during the last hour.

Other than that the game seemed okay.  I played on the zombie side, so I can't really say what the human play was like.  I have to say that the zombies were fun from a thematic point of view, but in general there was not much there.  I really feel that they could just be automated by the game system and you could just have human players.  Yes, it was fun to be the zombies and try to eat brains, but I don't think that that side of gameplay would hold up for multiple plays.  There just really wasn't enough there.

The various Heroes that were available to play all looked fun and cool, and gameplay for the human side seemed like it would take a good amount of thinking, planning, and tactics.  I'd give that side a try for sure.  In the end this isn't going to become my favorite game of all time or anything.  But I will definitely give it another chance, and I think it will be improved by trying out the human side, playing when I haven't been awake for over 26 hours, and possibly imbibing some alcohol while playing.  That always helps.

Freedom Sunday XVIII (July 15, 2012)

Had a good time playing board games yesterday up at Bear's by the Maul.  Managed get in three rounds of gaming before my exhaustion kicked in and I had to head home and get some sleep.

First off me and a couple other folks got to play a couple of rounds of a new game called D-Day Dice.  I found it to be an interesting, but apparently rather difficult game.  We were playing without actually having the rules on hand though, so we may have been doing it all wrong.  I blame John.

The game works very like Roll Through the Ages if you are familiar with that one.  You roll a handful of custom dice and you are looking to build pools of resources by getting the die face results that give them to you.  The dice can yield Troops, Courage, Stars, Tools, or Skulls.  You have six dice to start and have to lock two down immediately after your first roll; but then you get two more rolls to try and manipulate the other four dice into the combinations you want.  The dice are red, white, and blue; two of each color.  If you get the same type of die face on each of the three colors you can get some nice bonuses out of that, or if you get a "straight" of one of each die face you can also get another reward.

You are building up these resources in order to try and accomplish a thematic World War II combat mission.  The one we tried to do was the landing on and taking of Omaha Beach.  The method for accomplishing the mission was to basically move up the beach, through various zones to the bunker, and then take out the bunker.  This is made challenging by various elements.  There are minefields and zones in the path of machine gun fire.  There are some zones that require certain Specialists (that you recruit with the Stars you roll) in order to go into and pass through them.  Also, every zone has a troop cost that you have to pay each turn you spend in that zone, and the cost rises quickly the further up the beach you get.  Making everything worse is the fact that you can only stay in a given zone three turns max, and some of them even less.

The various resources help you overcome these obstacles.  Troops gives you warm bodies to soak up the various forms of damage and attrition that come flying at you.  Tools give you a currency to buy various items that give you bonuses and reduce penalties.  Courage is spent to be able to move over zone thresholds as you go further up the beach.  As stated above Stars let you buy specialists that give you some cool abilities.  Skulls are just evil, the cancel out one other die that you have rolled; unless you can get lucky and get the one of each color trio.

It was a very quick playing game, we went through the scenario twice in a short amount of time.  The speed was helped out by the fact that John is apparently terrible at the game ;).  We died before we got past the second set of zones on the beach both times.  It feels like one of those games that will be very difficult and just require sheer perfect luck until you figure out the best combinations and strategies; and then it will be fun and challenging, but doable.  I look forward to playing some more, this time with actual rules.

This was followed up by a game of Core Worlds, a deck building game of space conquest.  The game has a really cool theme in my opinion, each of the players plays a periphery bandit/barbarian kingdom that is fighting its way towards the center of the old and waning Galactic Realm; trying to reach and take the core worlds.  Mechanically the game reminds me a lot of both Barbarossa and Eminent Domain; because of the combination of deck building and combat, but if you know about Dominion, you'll at least know the basics.  Your aim is to get the most Empire Points, you do this by adding cards to your deck, and then using the cards you draw each turn to conquer worlds and gain resources; which you then use to do the same thing on bigger and bigger scales.

The game has ten turns and each turn has five phases.  First you draw cards.  Then you build up energy.  Energy is your main resource for the game, it is how you buy cards into your deck, play cards onto the table, and activate special abilities on some cards.  Each of your planets generates a set amount listed on the card, so the more you conquer the greater your energy production.  You also have a couple of Energy Surge cards that you can spend when you have them to get some more energy.  These cards normally give you +1 but you can get +2 if anyone else at the table produces more energy than you from their planets, which is a nice little catch the leader mechanic.  You also have the ability to discard two cards to get +1 energy.  In the two games I have played we have been allowing people to do that last bit as many times at they want.  After the last game I was looking at the rules and realized you can only do it once.  Oops.  The interesting thing with energy generation is that you are doing it before you get to see what cards are available to purchase/conquer this turn.  So you have to make decisions about whether to keep more troops or to discard a couple for more buying power, stuff like that.

Next you deal out the cards that are available for this turn.  As you progress through the game you will draw from a new deck for these cards every other turn, so you are constantly introducing newer and cooler cards; which is nice.  Also cards only stay on the table for two turns max.  If they aren't taken the first turn they are out they get a +1 energy token as an incentive on the next turn, and then the turn after that they are discarded.  You draw up to a certain number of cards based on the number of players, and if necessary you keep drawing until you have both planets and non planet cards equal to the number of players.  This makes sure everyone at least has some chance of getting stuff they want.

Then you start going around the table and spending actions and energy to accomplish stuff.  You'll be conquering planets, deploying troops and starships, and drafting (buying) new cards out of the middle into your deck.  You can conquer or buy only once each time if comes around to you; but you can deploy as many units as you want each time as long as you have the resources to do so.  Conquering planets requires some combination of Fleet and Ground strength.  You basically declare you are attacking a given planet, then discard cards from your warzone (the area on the table where you have played down units) that have Fleet and Ground strength equal to or greater than the defense strengths of the planet.  Then you take it and put it on your warzone, hurrah a new planet has joined your growing empire.  After everyone has used up all their actions/energy or passed there is a quick cleanup and discard phase and then a new turn begins.

Overall I like the game.  I'm a fan of deck building and I love sci-fi and spaceships type themes.  The thing I didn't like about the two-player game was that there felt like there were a ton of cards that I was never going to see or use because of how few cards were drawn each turn; but that was fixed in the larger game.  The rising costs to buy and conquer things can be a bit unforgiving if you don't manage to keep up with the momentum; but I don't think that it is in any way impossible to catch up, just sometimes difficult.  There is definitely plenty of room in various places for analysis paralysis, and you need to go in turn order at those specific places since you are all competing for a common pool of resources.

The five player game took quite a while, but I think the time would be cut in half once everyone knew the game and knew what they were doing.  I went into the five player game with a distinct strategy, get robots and vehicles and then get the world at the end that gave bonuses for robots and vehicles.  I accomplished this, and won by one point, but I felt like I didn't do it as well as I could, and that dumb luck had its fair share of my accomplishment.  Looking forward to getting more plays in and seeing if I can get better at it.

Finally we played a four player game of Last Will.  I've reviewed that already over here, so not going into much detail on it.  I played a terrible game, making stupid choices and having a lot of incidents of "What the crap am I doing being this stupid?".  Despite my own advice against properties, I decided to give them a try, and failed horribly at using them.  I was doing things a turn or two before I should have, or picking sub-optimal choices all over the place.  In my defense I had been up for about 20-21 hours straight at that time.  But I still enjoyed the game, and tried to make clear that my anger was only at myself not at anyone else or the game.  Anders played a really good game and totally kicked my butt, and he deserved to do so.

Looking forward to next week.  I think I saw an expansion to Tanto Cuore there, and if I did then I ABSOLUTELY want to play that soon.  I <3 that game.

Last Will Board Game Review

A few Sundays ago I played a board game called Last Will. Here is an excerpt from BGG that explains the theme of the game:

“In his last will, your rich uncle stated that all of his millions will go to the nephew who can enjoy money the most. How to find out which nephew should be rich? You will each be given a large amount of money and whoever can spend it first will be the rightful heir. Visit the most exclusive theaters or eat in the most expensive restaurants. Buy old properties for the price of new ones and sell them as ruins. Host a huge party in your mansion or on your private boat. Spend like your life would depend on it. Spend to become rich! If you're the first to run through the money on hand, you'll receive the rest of his inheritance – oh, and win the game.”

Sounds fun doesn't it? I sure found it to be quite well designed and a lot of fun.

For starters the art in the game is very well done and a theme that I particularly enjoy. I'd call it Victorian or Dickensian I guess. You know top hats and corsets, gaslights and horse drawn carriages. There are quite a few cards in this game and pretty much every one of them has something nice to look at on it.

The board exhibits good graphic design, with an appealing look, nice, easy to understand layout, and plenty of space for what is there. The individual player boards are nicely arranged as well, and heck there are even little wooden top hat meeples!

The game rules were, in my opinion, fairly easy to learn and understand, and the strategies seem both deep and varied. This is obviously a very good thing.

The game is played out until the end of seven turns or someone spends all their money, whichever happens first. If no one wins before the end of seven rounds, then the winner is the player with the least money and property values. If someone goes bankrupt on a previous round, then you play out that round and whoever is furthest in debt by the end of the round wins.

A turn takes place in five distinct phases. The first phase is setup, and is nice and quick. Basically fill the 8 card slots on the main game board with the designated type of card; and there are icons on the board to tell you which type goes where.

Next up is planning. There are eight different planning options on the board in a 4 player game, I think there are less with less players. Each option has four components to it: Card Draws, Errand Boys, Actions, and Turn Order. Each plan has different combinations of the first three, i.e. Four card draws, one errand boy, and two actions. The turn order portion is determined by how far to the left in the line up of planning spaces you place your token. The plans to the left go before the plans to the right; but the plans to the right have the advantage of getting you more stuff. You pick a plan and place your token on it, and then immediately draw the designated number of cards from any of the four main card decks (more on them later).

After that you, in turn order as determined by the planning track placement, place your Errand Boy tokens (the awesome little wooden top hats). You will have either one or two errand boys on a given turn, and each player takes turns placing one at a time until everyone has placed all of theirs. You have a good selection of options for what to do with them. First, the biggest variety of options are the various face up cards that you dealt onto the board during setup. You can place an errand boy on one of them to immediately take it into your hand. These cards range from being exactly the same type of cards you get from draws, to special more powerful version that you can only get this way, or even wild cards. There is one spot for getting an expansion to your player board. Your player board starts with five slots for cards, and this allows you to add more slots. Each player has a color coded space that allows them to just draw a card from a deck. There is the real estate market, where you can go manipulate the price modifiers for the four different types of buildings. And one person, if they don't really want to do anything else, can just go to the opera and spend $2.

The next phase is the Action Phase. Remember back when you got actions from your chosen plan? Here is where you spend them. You can play cards from your hand or activate cards that are already on your player board. Most cards will take at least one action to perform, and many will have an option to spend more actions to get more benefits out of the card play. Each card will explain what type of actions are needed and what you get from spending them on the card itself. This phase looks fairly straight forward, but the majority of the strategy and planning is in this phase. The other two are mostly just worker placement. Here you have to plan out the use of the limited resources of Actions and Cards in order to move towards your goal as quickly and efficiently as possible. Lots of interesting approaches can be taken.

Finally you have an End of Round Phase. Here you discard down to two hand cards, depreciate properties (more on that later), reset any activated cards on your player board, clear unclaimed cards from the main board, reclaim figures, move the turn marker, and pass the first player marker to the left.

Now, to understand all the things you can and might want to do during a given turn you need to know about the different types of cards in the game. There are four main types of cards, in four main decks: Events, Companions, Helpers and Expenses, and Properties.

Events are white bordered cards that represent one time expenses and experiences. They will be things like going to the theater, taking a sailing trip, going on a carriage ride, having a fine dinner, etc. Each will take one or more actions to play, and are played directly from your hand. Almost all will result in your being able to spend a certain amount of money. Many of them can be enhanced by either spending more actions to cause the expense to go up, or by attaching companion cards to the event to also make the expense go up. The card will have the details as to what particular companions can come along, and how many actions are necessary to bring them. These cards ended up being a huge portion of my strategy, and one of my favorite ways to spend money.

Helpers, Expenses, and Properties all are black bordered cards. To play them you have to have an open space on your player board. Most will take an action to play down to the board, and can then be activated for further effects later on, usually by spending more actions. Expenses work like events, except they stay in play and can cost you money each turn. Some will just drain money without having to spend actions, and some will require one or more actions to activate. I also really found that I'm a fan of non-action costing Expenses.

Helpers give you cool bonuses and advantages. Some of them also cost you money, which is nice, but even if they don't you will always get something cool; like extra actions, or being able to activate things without spending actions, or giving bonuses on buying or selling properties; stuff like that. The one that gives extra actions is VERY nice.

Properties are one of the main ways that you can get rid of large chunks of money. You're best case scenario is to buy the property at a high price, then sell it again later at a much lower one; losing as much money as possible on the deal. You can affect the prices via the real estate market and by special abilities from cards. Also, as long as you don't pay the maintenance cost on property, most of them will depreciate in value at the end of each turn; further adding to your loses. Which remember is a good thing. The other thing you can do instead of letting the property depreciate, or on the ones that don't depreciate, is to activate the property and pay the maintenance costs. This is another good way to spend money each turn, and you can enhance the amount spent with extra actions and companions, just like with events.

Properties are however a double edged sword. Sure you can lose a good amount of money on them, via depreciation or maintenance, but you also have to sell off all of them before you can declare bankruptcy, go into debt, and win. So if you are getting near the end of the game; you should probably start ditching those properties. Also, because of the short number of turns, you won't get to pay those maintenance costs very many times, or allow is to depreciate naturally for every long if you want to ditch it before the game ends. When I played I was the only one not to have any properties when the game ended (in round six with me winning btw :) ). I think properties CAN be good, you just have to avoid the temptation to hold on to them for too long. And remember, when you sell that property you are probably going to get a decent amount of money back, even if you sell at quite a loss, and you will have to plan for getting rid of that money quickly if you want to win.

The last type of cards are slate (blueish color) bordered, and these are the companions. There are four types: Dog, Horse, Guest, and Chef. There are also a couple of wild cards that can be any of them; and these are available face up on the board, not from drawing. As I've stated in the descriptions of the other cards, these are used to enhance the amount of money you spend on events, expenses, etc.

Technically there is one more deck of cards, the special cards, but they can't be drawn up the way the other ones can. You can only get them by claiming them off the main board with errand boys. These cards will be both white and black bordered; and will tend to be slightly better versions of the same type of cards from those respective decks.

I'll wrap up with my thoughts on the game in general. I've already stated how I loved it aesthetically, and that I found it to be well designed and have deep strategy possibilities. All very good accolades in the games metaphorical cap (or top hat). Properties are a double-edged sword and may or may not be worth it. Events seem to be where it is at, at least in my opinion. I loved that there are lots of different paths to victory that you can take though; and none is really the right way.

I think that you don't have to be too caught up in picking the right plan during the planning phase, both because you can always get something good no matter what order you go in the turn; and because everyone gets to be first player once or twice.

Top hat meeples rock!

Overall this was a great games, that was tons of fun, and I look forward to playing it some more. I will probably buy it at some point in the future, and that is about as strong a recommendation as I can give I guess.