Boardgames

[P4: Gritty Reboot]

First game of Eldritch Horror tonight. I trekked the globe trying to stop the apocalypse, but it was too late. Azathoth awakened and devoured the world!

 

[Hot Heart]

Hey, I think that's who we banished in Elder Sign. Nice job dropping the ball!

[Hot Heart]

Hmm, this doesn't seem to have shown up on the forum's feedburner thing, so if you did miss it, and because this is my thread now, here is my OFFICIAL review of Firefly: The Game. Credit to P4 for the series name.

[P4: Gritty Reboot]

Nice review. I find board games are much harder to get right from a design perspective than a video game. You have to make a game that is fun for 2-8 people to play, for hours on end, while sitting in uncomfortable chairs. And often they're not even doing anything; they're watching their friends take turns--and that needs to be fun too, somehow. You have to make rules that people can read and understand blindly, and then in turn teach their friends to play without putting them to sleep. And they have to be able to reference the rules later when they get confused. 

 

A video game can be stupid and you'll still play it, because you have nothing else to do and it kills time. But a board game requires a mental investment that means only the really good designs are going to stick around on your shelf. At least without gathering dust.

[Hot Heart]

Thanks. That's a really good point actually. Though, I think it can also go back to that theme/mechanics balance. I tend to remember the experience or 'feel' of a game over figuring out the mechanics and thinking, "Hey, that's smart." And then there's that time commitment. Some games you can setup and go very easily, I think a lot of the most popular ones work that way, whereas others require not just a mental investment but a...physical one.

 

I think the main 'flaw' with Firefly is that it tries to do too much, which is what makes for a tricky to follow rulebook in the first place, and those slightly too long 'off-turns'. Of course, I really like all that it does, but if you then try and explain it to people, that's tricky. However, it looks like they've built a really strong foundation for other things so that the PvP elements can be worked in and whatever else they have planned. It's kinda cool to see what variants people are coming up with, too.

 

And I think the rulebook tries to be a little too 'conversational' at times, so it isn't always clear. For one, people are still confused as to whether an Alliance Ident Card allows you to remain 'Solid' (have formed a good reputation) with the Alliance guy when you have a warrant, simply because the rulebook says you cannot become Solid with him while you have a warrant but nothing about already being Solid. Common sense to me says that no stiff-collar Alliance guy is going to think highly of you if you're an obvious outlaw, but people aren't convinced... You'd hope some things are instinctive, as great game rules are, but yeah...

 

Of course, these guys also made items that allow you to 'reroll test results of 1', where a test result = base skill point score + die roll, which seemed silly because no one would bother attempting any test with no skill points to start with. Then they released an item that adds a skill point and carries that condition, so it became pretty clear they meant 'may reroll die results of 1'.

 

Hence, why I'm trying to supplement the rulebook with a basic guide with examples and stuff.

[deanb]

So had my first after-hours session at Travelling Man (chain of board game/comic-type shops in UK). We played Red Dragon Inn first. Basic premise is you're all heroes drinking in a pub on a boat(I think we're only on the boat due to expansion) you have a board with 1-20 on it and two pieces, one being for your drunkenness and your other fortitude, if you're more drunk than you have fortitude left, or end up skint from gambling and similar acts, you're out the game as unconscious or thrown out. You draw to full hand, play a card, buy someone a drink then drink your drink(s) and make the appropriate changes to fortitude and drunkenness. I played a dwarf, and apart from the slight wording changes I didn't seem to have much in the way of special abilities like others do (my housemate was a druid so could change forms, guy to the left could "Mark" people and one of the lasses was a pet rabbit and could go into drunken rage).

It took me a while to kinda get the grasp of it, I think we might have had a few too many players (we had expansions so had 9 of us) to keep on top of it all. I still don't fully grasp the Gambling aspect of it, especially since what seemed like my unique card had quite a lot of not very clear text on it that actually got passed around a few times to fully grasp what was going on (though I think there was some minor contention by the lass I'd used it against). I got taken out by a combination of bankruptcy and drunkenness (a special drink you pay off to pass to someone else, they ganged up on me on penultimate round. Ended up a draw cos kraken killed all who remained).

 

We then played, though didn't complete, Sentinels of the Multiverse. Villain was Omnitron, my hero was Omnitron X. Who was quite fun to play given I could pretty much continue drawing and playing cards well in excess of everyone else. Though I'd only just got quite fully decked when we got told to pack up, from discussion on way home I think we'd have won in that round. It was certainly a game where you've really got to pay attention. I think we also needed a tad more space than we were afforded (we had to split our Red Dragon Inn group into two, the others played Bang. Could have done with whole table). Our main struggle was the Environment which was The Block, and we had a couple Prison Riots which took a while to deal with while trying not to get fucked by Omnitrons attacks (usually we blew his weapons up before they fired). I'd be up for giving it a proper spin though.

 

I think we're having a board game party of sorts (btw that Red Dragon Inn is such an obvious contender for a drinking game, especially if you assigned an IRL drink to each in game drink. Ale, Wines, Rum, coffee, water,..holy water..) on Saturday so likely to play more then, and each Tuesdays for this Travelling Man gig.

[Hot Heart]

Ha, yes, Sentinels of the Multiverse is a lot of fun...as long as you're au fait with the fussiness of the rules (destroy vs. discard, playing a card vs. putting it into play, order effects, etc.) Omnitron-X is a great hero once you get him all setup, though can be tricky against Omnitron because of the Nemesis bonus and 'x damage per turn, destroy all equipment' thing. The Block is a really fun, chaotic environment, too. I love when other characters start coming out and messing things up or causing calamitous chain reactions.

 

Red Dragon Inn sounds interesting. Will have to look into that.

[deanb]

A picture of the Red Dragon Board so you can understand the Drunk and Fortitude

 

Red Piece is Fortitude (which drops from some drinks, but mainly from brawls and similar.) and clear is your drunkenness which increases with your drinks. Some drinks can reverse drunkenness, like coffee, and some heal you back up. There's also "chaser" cards. So "Elven Wine with a chaser" which means if you've an extra drink card (or in a drinking contest you draw an extra card) you have that too, and so on until you've ran out of chasers. My most was three in a row which I split my drinks.

[Hot Heart]

ME AGAIN.

 

My friends like to play some games after our badminton session, but one wasn't coming this week (he joins after the sports bit), which meant there was 4 of us. Not that I dislike the guy, but I'm more fond of the games that seem to have a maximum of 4 players (and I think Firefly would work better with 4, which is how it was originally released) as opposed to what we have to play to accomodate 5. Anyway, I usually pass on the invitation, but not this week. So I tried a couple more new (to me) games.

 

Relic Expedition is a game that my friend kickstarted, so I think he also had some expansions but opted not to use them in case things got too complicated. It's a fun little game where you explore a jungle that is laid out as you move, via hexagonal tiles that you randomly lay in place everytime you reach a border piece, and the aim is to collect 4 relics either with the same symbol on them or the same background colour and then 'get to tha choppa' via extraction tiles marked with an H. Along the way, though, you'll need different equipment and items to traverse certain terrain and there are animals that can cause different detrimental effects. To combat these, you can use supplies you draw blindly from a bag or there will be items that also pop up (bananas stop monkeys stealing things from your backpack, a tranquiliser dart can stop a panther or a boar). However, you are limited to a maximum of 8 items in your backpack (though you're free to drop things at your current location if need be without using up an action), so you can see how things might get tricky when you start loading up with relics.

 

A turn usually consists of rolling a die that governs how many actions you get, and is made up of (I think) four 3s, a 2 and a 4. So, obviously, most of the time you will get 3 actions and considering how close our game was, they can be quite critical (to use the helipad for teleporting between H tiles or when you have all the relics requires at least 3 actions, for example). When animals start appearing, then another die is rolled at the same time to determine what, if any, of those is moved. An animal is moved 1 or 2 tiles, but cannot go over quicksand (or a player can ditch them in the quicksand to get them off the board) The player whose turn it is, gets to start but then it goes round the board as to who gets to move any others (each only moving once per turn), so sometimes you'll have to try and clear them from your path rather than setting them on others.

 

Things started a bit shaky as a couple of critical animal placements were missed in the early stages, but we soon got it in hand and everyone went their separate ways through the jungle. Some of the others got fortunate with finding the special areas (there's a cave, a mountain and a river, all of full of relics, that can only be accessed when the special starter tile gets placed and a player has the right gear) whereas I managed to build what can only be described as 'donkey kong country'. Fortunately, it earned this name through an abundance of monkeys and bananas so I got through. It could've been worse though. The owner of the game placed 3 new tiles in one turn, all of them panthers, and then panther came up on the die the next turn so the rest of us set them on him so that he had no chance of fending them off (it was hi-larious).

 

A boar did get me early on, but no one was around to capitalise and I managed to continue on with only the loss of a turn setting me back. I had a bit of luck as I uncovered more matching relics and stayed well stocked up on the necessary supplies, even managing a cool vine-swing over quicksand. I was poised to win the game on my next turn when one of the other players spotted an H on the mountain section where he could see the relic he needed and so he was set up for victory. Unfortunately, a roll of 2 set me back the space I desperately needed and my friend got the victory right before I could.

 

Overall, though, I enjoyed it. A fun little game to break out every now and then, and in terms of balance, I think 3 of us were pretty much even (until panther-time right towards the end that is).

 

Then we played Black Gold, with I think only me not having played it before. To be honest, I was apprehensive about this. It looked like a sort of oil version of Power Grid (I guess 'resource management' is a genre?) which I am not too fond of. A few of the subtleties of the rules went over my head early on, but I think I really got the hang of it about halfway.

 

To try and explain it, well...umm, there's a train track where you have a train along with a black, big oil company one that keeps moving forward every turn (game ends when it reaches the end). Early on, moving the train forward a space only requires 1 movement action, but further up you need 2 and then 3. The reason you want to keep moving forward is because to the right of that is all the terrain where you're driving a truck around and building oil derricks and you need your train further ahead or at least parallel in order to transport your oil ready for the auction phase. In some cases, you can always pay the leading player to transport it for you if they're far enough ahead when you aren't (a rookie mistake I made a couple of times).

 

The truck stuff shares your movement actions, so you have to be wise about your driving around to find suitable places to drill for oil and getting your train to keep up. At the same time, there are different types of spots for oil and they can yield different numbers of 'oil spurts' (little plastic geyser things that represent the units and can all clip together in the top of your derricks). Most you can sneak a peek at when you're adjacent, these can be cheaper for 2/3/4 (I think) or the most expensive for 4/5/6 and then one inbetween is a gamble with either 2 or 5. The idea is to try and get set up with many because even though you only take 1 spurt from each derrick at the end of each turn, that means a lot less having to move around and paying to build them, and when they're dry they're gone (and there are bonuses for how many you have at game's end).

 

With the oil you produce you then move over to different markets where the value for each fluctuates and you use 'sales licences' which are cards with a value of 1 or 2 to bid in order to win the ability to sell your oil there instead of everyone else. This where people can find that if they don't win and have more than 2 spurts in that market then they get sold for the base $1k each.

 

What governs the number of moves and sales licences and other things you can get (bonus spurts, for example) are cards drawn at the start of each turn with varying attributes. One may give you 6 sales licences and 6 moves, another could give you 5 sales licences and 8 moves, or 2 and 14, it really can vary. They are all laid out and then the player whose turn it is, gets first pick, with it going round the board after that. (Before that they also would've rolled the die to determine which way the markets move).

 

In terms of gameplay, it took a little while to click but I managed to put together some sort of seat-of-the-pants strategy which involved hoarding sales licences while allowing just enough moves to maintain 3 derricks simulatenously supplying oil each turn, weighing up who was going to try and win what auction and never putting more than 2 spurts into a market that I had no intention of winning (but ready for when things took an upswing). What was a real kick though, for a long time, is that whenever I peeked at a derrick spot or gambled on one, I always got the lowest value.

 

Fortunately, there was a major upset for one player, who could've started getting a comfortable lead, as he got called on a bluff during an auction and couldn't foot the bill with his sales licences (meaning he lost a lot of oil and half of his sales licences) whereas I always played it very shrewdly. When it got to the last auction, when people were spending something like 15 sales licences to earn $21k, I netted a whopping $37.5k with 7 sales licences.

 

And this clever on/off bidding strategy effectively won me the game by a few thousand dollars (I think I got $82.5k and the next closest, the owner of the game, was on $79k). Though, I will admit that I had some advice at certain points, but I think I did pretty well off my own tactics once I got my head round it.

 

Overall, though, I can't say I particularly 'enjoyed' the actual playing. I mean, I think it is cleverly designed and the theme all fits, but like Power Grid, it can be pretty exhausting. It took a few hours to get through (admittedly, a lot was probably me weighing up everything as a first-timer, but there was plenty of the necessary 'mechanics process' each turn) and as much as I cleaned up at the auctions, they were a little too tense and serious for my liking. I mean, there's being a dick to other people when you get the opportunity handed to you, and would be a fool not to take it, but to be so calculating and devious...I feel wrong.

[P4: Gritty Reboot]

Medium-heavy economic games are not my thing either. I will play Acquire any time though.

[Hot Heart]

Hmm, played a game of Firefly with four friends last night and that did take around 5 hours, even with mostly experienced players, most likely because we randomly picked out the toughest story card (Niska's Holiday). It didn't help that we couldn't start playing until 8pm, and then others needed to eat inbetween, which meant the guy who meant we started late got really tetchy when things weren't going his way and he fell far behind. After his final setback, he quit and we just ended the game there; though one player was 2-3 turns from victory, I think.

 

It was partly his own fault because he wasn't quite prepared enough both for the first goal (which can keep killing 2 of your people if you fail the fight skill test even after passing the 3 Misbehaves beforehand) or in getting hold of a pilot and a mechanic so he could Crazy Ivan away from the Reavers, but it didn't help that the other players seized every opportunity to screw him over with the Reavers, and losing crew can really set you back. The only thing keeping him in it was a medic and a medbay, to roll (and then reroll) to save crew from death. Though he did get very unlucky with the Hands of Blue and Reaver Raid Misbehaves cropping up after reshuffles (first is based on Ariel, second is based on the first bit of Serenity; both unpassable without River), which cut short his attempts, along with some die rolls (the 1/6 chance of failure kind).

 

Of course, there are other little factors in there. Since 5 players means people are snatching up crew and supplies left, right and centre, so certain things may become scarce or require a lot of travelling. I mean, I delayed from attempting the goal in order to really bolster my crew for that last skill test, and a few other niggles saw that take 4-5 turns longer than I would've liked, which put me a fair bit behind, too. Though after that first hurdle, my theory was that I'd be all set up to breeze through the rest. Which I was, but then...so were 3 other players, already.

 

I would strongly recommend that you show newer players the Misbehave deck before playing so they get an idea of what sort of things can pop up (Keywords are key, not just skill points), give them an overview of what the different supply planets offer (on the side of the box, or get them to flick through the decks), and show them the tips on the back of the rulebook (or explain how a pilot and mechanic help against Reavers and Cry Babies work against the Alliance).

 

Or I'll get my starter guide finished if some people would help with the 'newbie/complete beginner' feedback...

[deanb]

Played a few games last night;

 

[unknown Game..Can maybe check with my housemate]

Premise was it's a post-apocalyptic scenario (of your choice, we went with nuclear). You're playing through a year of the community, essentially taking turns to do a weeks worth of actions and decision making. Each turn you draw a playing card (they're split into suits, for the seasons) which relates to a set of instructions, so something like "A new person has arrived in the camp, who are they" or "Someone has left the camp, what caused them to leave" (Nicolas Cage arrived at the camp, and promptly died a few weeks later after schizophrenic Johnny Blaze episode and a freak lightning strike). You have a sheet of paper in play which is the community map/history. So each turn you're building up the map with structures you build and places you visit and find. It's less a board game and more of a structured role playing game. Though without too much structure, one major comment we had upon winding the game down mid-way through was it felt very unfinished. As you're playing you can draw black dice to yourself indicated "contempt/tension" with a decision made by another player for the community, but nothing was done with it. i.e "if there's mroe than 5 contempt tokens in play, then blah-blah happens".

We felt it was quite interesting, my housemate got the name off the guy that brought it along so she could look into it. I think we might take it and refine/make-up some rules for it. Oh we think it'd probably also work better for a group of 4 instead of our 8. Meant long time between your turn, and 4 would make sense given weeks in a month.

 

Werewolves of Miller's Hollow

I quite enjoyed this, was one of the few successful Werewolves despite being called out almost immediately by another player. Basically you each get given a card at the start that defines your role; werewolf, villager, defender, hunter, witch, fortune teller, thief etc. During each day you carry out your action (with a Narrator guiding play and instructing who to opens their eyes when) then you're either dead the next day or not. And you can vote as a village who you think the werewolf is.

It was quick set-up, quick to play and the varied cards meant the gameplay and tactics changed quite a lot between play. I also think I've played something very similar in primary school (that involved winking though). We found Defenders would always die on the first round. Pretty much every way possible too. I was hunter twice which ended well for no one as I was lynched both times and chose my vote as my victim. Wrong both times.

My only complaint, which I raised in-between rounds and was quickly resolved, was that due to having your eyes shut your hearing is quite good, and the Narrator tends to have the natural habit of talking to the person whose turn it currently is to be awake, kinda helping you pinpoint who it is. Hence my successful round as a werewolf. 

 

 

Cockroach Poker

This is a bat. You pass cards on to people telling them what is on the card(can tell truth or lie), they can choose to say you're lying/telling the truth(guess correctly and they get the card, fail and it ends up in front of you) or look at it and pass it on to someone else telling them what's on the card. Pretty simple to pick up and play, just an issue if you have someone not quite paying attention who tries to pass off the card to the originator. Loser is the person who has a set of 3 cards in front of them.

 

Machine of Death

You have to kill 4 people (might change with how many people are playing) in creative ways based upon how the Machine of Death says they'll die, and what tools you have at hand for the job (be it rolling pin, robot spare parts, a cat, etc). It's mostly a story-telling game, convincing the GM (not sure there's a name for the role) that your plan with the three items will work, then you have 60 seconds to execute it by rolling the dice based on the difficulty the GM defines each stage of the plan. The arbitrariness of the difficulty was really my major issue with the game. Could have just made everything have a difficulty of 2 and hey we'd have breezed through easy peasy. If the item cards or method of death had some kind of scoring on it then might have seemed a bit more rigid in the rule set.

 

The Resistance: Avalon

Really disliked this game. Just seemed ridiculously complex, way too many phases of play to many cards and tokens to keep track of what was going on and all along you're meant to be figuring out who's who, but as a long game instead of almost immediately like Werewolves. As best I got from it the only folks who really do much anyway is the Assassin, who can kill Merlin though not until the end and...well that was it. No one else seemed to be able to do anything special. I was both good and bad lancelot but apart from meaning I know who the other Lancelot was meant nothing. Especially when at the start of the second round I was declared as bad lancelot before we'd even started which kinda threw everything and everyone off on how the game was meant to play from there. The Lady of the Lake also made everything pretty screwy too and I still don't understand the point of that action. TrjnRabbit is telling me it's pretty easy, but while the cards are easy enough to go "this is what happens here", the actual interactions between each of the phases of play and the characters is/was hardly explained.

 

 

Aye, Dark Overlord

Another I wasn't keen on. One player is the Dark Overlord who has set you with a task and you've got to explain why it wasn't done while passing the blame on to someone else. Another story game. I lost on this one, but I think largely due to it just grinding and wanting the game done and dusted with. Much like Machine of Death it seemed another one where the GM/Overlord, just decided the difficulty on a whim. I think there was more to the game than how we were playing it though since the descriptor text had highlighted words and all the cards had a variety of symbols in the top corner (of which only the skull symbol was introduced as meaning something).

 

We also played CAH (with another guys deck, had the expansions as well as his own custom cards) and wound up back at ours for a couple rounds of Sentinels of the Multiverse. I played Unity both rounds, first against...abaddon or something (dark angel type dude) who we lost against due to "Apocalypse" practically resetting us to zero, and then against Spite, who we slugged it out against but eventually won through but on our last legs. Unity was quite hard since first round I had loads of bots but all the Equipment was on the bottom, and second round it was reverse (Though at least Equipment can do interesting things. Bots stay in my hand)

 

So yeah, at the end of this I think I've found I'm not a huge fan of games with loosely defined rules or story-telling games with no overall eventual aim.

 

With regards to Firefly guide: I ran a word count. 11,000 words man.

[Hot Heart]

With regards to Firefly guide: I ran a word count. 11,000 words man.

 

Hey, I cover nearly everything you need to know.

[deanb]

Is there even 11,000 words spoken in the Firefly show?

[Hot Heart]

Umm, yes! Joss Whedon is very fond of people talking. There are probably 11,000 words of dialogue in Serenity alone (the pilot or the film, doesn't matter).

[P4: Gritty Reboot]

Dean, have you played the original Resistance before? I think starting with Avalon is a mistake, especially with the alternate roles like Lancelot. The most I would do is Assassin/Merlin with a new player. That said, it's highly group dependent and certain sessions can be duds if the "wrong" teams are selected. 

 

---

 

I have set up on my "solo table" (really a family desk, my wife just doesn't know it's my solo gaming table yet) a game called RAF, a solitaire wargame from 1987. You can play the whole battle through September 1940, or just certain turning points of the offensive. The rules are taking me some time to grok, as it uses some conventions you probably haven't seen in other games, even heavy wargames.  I set up the game, went through the rules, and played the August 11 raids in probably 3 hours. I think it will get much easier to understand as I go.

 

The Germans started with some light raids on a military base and Kenley Airfield, the latter of which was successful and damaged some Spitfires on the ground. The final raid of the day was a major run with Ju-88s and Me-110s attempting to take out Weymouth Port. I spent a lot of squadrons but fended it off. Looking forward to finishing the "Hardest Days" campaign, but it will take me some time to complete.

 

[deanb]

I've not played the original Resistance (though it was there).

 

Also not sure why but that RAF board pic is reminding me of some not-normal board game played in my childhood that I think we couldn't fully grasp the rules of, only got played once. It's annoying me no what it was.

[deanb]

Tabletop Day is on 5th April this year http://www.tabletopday.com/

[deanb]

http://www.vassalengine.org/ - So I'd be up for giving this a shot at some point.

 

They have at least one game I recognise (though it's limited) 

http://www.vassalengine.org/wiki/Module:Sentinels_of_the_Multiverse

 

http://www.vassalengine.org/wiki/Category:Modules - more

[P4: Gritty Reboot]

I'm always happy to play Vassal, though schedules can be tough to sync. Play by Email is always an option though. Might be fun if we could get a PBEM game of something relatively simple like Acquire or Axis & Allies going in the forums (though those two can be played on dedicated PBEM websites instead of finagling with Vassal).

[Hot Heart]

I had a look at Vassal after P4 first mentioned it, but I had no clue how to make it work. Hi, I am dumb.

Edited January 20, 2014 by Hot Heart

[TheMightyEthan]

something relatively simple like... Axis & Allies

Suddenly I feel very inadequate in my board game adventures. I think Axis & Allies might be the most complicated boardgame I've ever played.

[deanb]

So happy you're all getting your cardboard on. Soon this site will be called "Roll 6 or Die".

 

 

 

Oh god now I see it!

 

(I was just kinda blasting backwards through the thread for ideas)

[P4: Gritty Reboot]

I'll move the discussion of play by email to the event planning forum.

[TheMightyEthan]

I have reason to believe I'm getting Firefly The Game for my birthday. I'm super excited.