Tabletop year in review - 2015

Well, we are at the end of the year and I thought it would be interesting to do a review of my tabletop gaming over the last year.

Full analysis below:

The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game	32
Ticket to Ride	22
Yomi (second edition)	20
Zombicide Season 2: Prison Outbreak	16
Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game	12
Aliens: This Time It's War	10
The Agents	9
Battle Line	8
Mistfall	8
Dungeons & Dragons: Castle Ravenloft Board Game	5
6 nimmt!	4
Forbidden Island	2
Get Bit!	2
Monopoly Deal Card Game	2
Castle Panic	1
Tsuro	1

Wow.  154 plays spread out over 16 games in 2015.  Given my "gut feeling" that I didn't get anywhere close enough time to game, that number is a lot higher than I would have expected.

I won't talk about every game on the list but did want to talk about the games where I had over 10 plays (on the basis that these are the "best" games I played in 2015).

Lord of the Rings: The Card Game

No surprise that this is leading the pack.  I got this game in May and immediately fell in love with it.  It's a brilliantly thematic game which combines the deep deck construction that you see in games like Magic but without all the issues that Magic has.  The only reason it didn't get more plays is because its quite difficult for me to get hold of the expansion packs.

I fully expect this game to continue getting a lot of plays in 2016 particularly as the game works brilliantly as a solo game which makes it relatively easier to make it to the table.

Ticket to Ride

This is a really fun entry level Euro which I primarily play at work with some colleagues during lunchtime.  This really should have more plays but sometimes, its hard to find the time to play - particularly when everyone is busy.  Regardless, I expect this game to continue to get a lot more plays in 2016.

Yomi

Another great game which I rate extremely highly.  Part of the reason that this has so many plays is that you rarely play just once when you play - normally going for a best of 3 or best of 5 to determine a winner.  We even managed to get several multiplayer games which is an interesting twist on the normal 1v1 mode.  Although I prefer the 1v1 mode, it was fun to try out the multiplayer. 

Unfortunately, the rest of the group doesn't like this game as much as I do and its likely that the number of plays in 2016 will drop significantly.

Space Hulk: Death Angel

Got this game in February and managed 12 plays.  This is actually surprisingly low given how much I enjoy playing this game and how quickly the game is to setup and play (relative to other games on this list).  Part of the reason for this is the overall lack of time I have to play games.  Another part of this is my buying Lord of the Rings in May which coincided with when I started to play this game less often.

Despite this, I very much enjoy this game and it will like see more plays in 2016.

Aliens: This Time it's War

This is a fun two player game which is actually available for free as a print and play game.  Of the 10 plays this year, 4 of them were solo.  This was either using the variant solo rules or with me playing the game 2 handed.  While the solo rules are okay, my preference is to play 2 handed with me controlling both sides.  The other 6 plays were with my main gaming buddy on the odd occasion where our game group session only had 2 players showing up.

Both my friend and I enjoy this game as it manages to capture the theme extremely well and it is likely that this will see more plays in 2016 (although I don't know if it will make over 10 plays if I don't play it as much solo).

Lord of the Rings LCG - Hunt for Gollum

Gandalf has requested your assistance in the search for the elusive creature known as Gollum. Your search begins in the Anduin Valley between Mirkwood Forest and the Misty Mountains.  You make your way along the banks of the Anduin River, a likely place for Gollum to find food.

The quest starts off really thematically in terms of the mechanics.  As you start your search for Gollum, if you quest successfully, you draw 3 cards and keep 1 of them.  This card is in addition to the card per player you draw as part of the questing phase which means that you are burning your way through the encounter deck.

Mechanically though, this really works well as it really feels as if you are searching for something in the encounter deck.

While making the staging area more dangerous, it does have a minor advantage in that you can possibly dump really dangerous encounter cards.  Overall, not sure if its a net positive or negative from a difficulty point of view but I love it mechanically.

Rumors have led you to the eaves of Mirkwood Forest, where the Woodmen whisper of a new terror in the night...

Mission 2B on the other hand feels really odd.  The story has you going to Mirkwood Forest.  However, mechanically, the only difference with Mission 1B is that you draw an extra encounter card at the beginning of the mission.  This is counterbalanced by the removal of the extra card per questing phase that was present in Mission 1B.

This is further exacerbated with Mission 3B which has no additional story beats but simply introduces an additional mechanism where only Heroes who previously found a Clue to Gollums location can quest.  Thematically, this could have been really interesting if the story supported the mechanics.  However, the story fails hard.

In effect, you spend the entire quest searching for Gollum.  You never actually find him but you spend all 3 missions searching for him - and without any story beats, the quest ultimately falls flat and feels boring.

Extra Cards
Despite the failure of the quest itself, I am glad that I bought this adventure pack.  The pack comes with some extra cards - some of which are extremely fun and useful.

To start with, you get Bilbo Baggins whose power lets the first player draw an extra card.  I used this ability to create a new deck focused on deck draw which has been extremely successful even with the limited cards that I have.

In addition, this adventure pack introduces a new type of card called Songs.  The Song of Kings, which is available in this pack, gives the hero it is attached to the Leadership resource icon.  This is pretty cool in that you can give it to a non-Leadership hero and he ends up with the ability to pay for cards from 2 different pools.  When couple up with Steward of Gondor, which grants 2 extra resources per round, you can build a deck that is extremely flexible in paying for whichever card you happen to have in your hand.

Game Night! - 4 December 2015

Wow - it's been a while since I managed to get to a game night.  Due to some unfortunate issues outside my control, we only had 2 people at the last game night - and one of those was me.  Regardless, we made the best we could and managed to get in several games.

The Agents
We started off with 3 games of The Agents.  As I promised back in September, I managed to get revenge and won all 3 games.  Woot!

With that said, I'm not convinced that this game works as a 2 player game.  It seems like it really suffers from a runaway leader problem.  In all 3 games, I got to an early lead and managed to use that lead to boost myself to victory.  With more players, the runaway leader is handled organically as you have more players out to wreck the leaders formation.

Regardless, I did have fun as the core mechanics are interesting.

Aliens: This Time its War
My friend was keen to get this back on the table.  It's one of the rare games where he has a good record against me versus other games where I normally beat him and he probably needed a pick-me-up after I drubbed him in The Agents.  On the other hand, it could just be because this is a fun game.  :)

As before, I played the marines while he took on the xenomorphs.  I managed to get a really strong start in the first game which I was able to use to get the win.  Unfortunately, my friend managed to get revenge in the second game and beat me to even the score at 1:1.

Which was a good time to move onto -

Battle Line
Given that there were only 2 of us, we naturally got Battle Line back on the table.  Definitely one of my favourite games as its a game with simple rules but with amazing strategic depth.  We generally save this game for the end of the day as the mix of heavy thinking required to do well in this game can really wipe you out.

I had a really good draw in the first hand to the extent that I didn't even bother grabbing any tactics cards.  My opening hand in the second game wasn't as good which meant some tough choices as we played through the game.  I still managed to win though.  :)

Co-op Hearthstone

I recently mentioned how impressed I was with the Tavern Brawl mode in Hearthstone.  The most recent Brawl actually introduced a completely new way of playing - co-operative!

The game basically revolves around you and your "opponent" trying to kill an enemy which has 95 health.  If either player dies, then both players lose.

The enemy is setup to switch to each side so that your minions can attack it.  On its turn, it can either power up its attack, attack each player, attack 3 random enemies or destroy a minion.

What's cool about this co-op mode is that the pre-built decks have a lot of cards which benefit both players.  As a result, provided the other player knows what they are doing, you can actually setup some really nice combos.  Unfortunately, this does depend on the other player knowing what they are doing - not always a guarantee in any co-op game.

Overall though, it was a really fun mode and I hope Blizzard bring it back at some point.  Either way, I continue to be impressed with Tavern Brawl and how it changes up the games mechanics.

Lord of the Rings LCG - Ninjadorg fan made content

As I've mentioned before, I've been playing Lord of the Rings card game recently and been having an amazing amount of fun with it.  The game does a fantastic job of bringing the world of Middle Earth to your tabletop using nothing but cards.  This is especially true for those who are serious fans of Tolkien (this isn't actually me as I've only read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings) as the developers have done a really good job of turning theme into mechanics.

However, what brings the game to life for me is the opportunity to go on a grand quest over several different games - with each game building a different chapter in that quest.  You can see some of that in my previous posts about the game on this blog.  I had some difficulty getting the Adventure Packs for this game so while I was still hunting for them, I decided to try out some of the fan made scenarios on BGG (and really, there is an amazing amount of fan created content for this game).

I started out with ninjadorg's fan made scenarios.  Ninjadorg has created an amazing amount of content for different games and is a really well known member of BGG so his scenarios seemed like a good starting point for fan made content.

Overall, he has done a really good job of coming up with interesting twists to create interesting scenarios.  And throughout this, he was able to weave an ongoing story into each mission so that the overall story develops as you progress through his scenarios.  This is a really good way to entice players to keep playing through the scenarios as you want to see what happens next.

Ninjadorg has also managed to explore the gamespace really well.  His first scenario is actually really basic and easy.  However, with subsequent scenarios, he really mixes things up well and introduces different twists in the mechanics to make that scenario interesting and challenging.

I really have to give kudos to Ninjadorg for coming up with a set of interesting scenarios that come together to make up an interesting story while at the same time introducing new challenges for your decks to face.

Hearthstone - friendly PvP

I recently got a surprise when I found out that one of my friends read this blog (Hi!!).  Luckily, I hadn't said anything bad about him.
:D

My posts about Hearthstone got him interested in the game as well.  As a result, he recently installed it and has started learning the game by playing against the practice bot.  Not sure how far he has gotten but he did say that he was still in the process of unlocking all the basic characters.

I actually came across him the other day online while he was playing.  Figuring that he might have a custom deck by now, I built up a deck using just basic cards and challenged him to a match.  After wiping the floor with him, I found out that he was still using just the basic decks and hadn't yet built his own deck.

Boy, do I feel like an a$$hole!

Game Night! - 30 September 2015

We had another group of 4 with 2 newbies.  With that said, the 2 newbies seemed to pick up the rules to the games we played pretty quickly and seemed to enjoy themselves so there is hope they might come more regularly.

The Agents
Once again, we started with the Agents.  This was primarily because the game was already out as the host and I tried to sneak in a quick game while we were waiting for the 2 newbies to arrive.  Unfortunately, we didn't get very far but as the game was setup anyway, we decided to start with this game.

The host managed to get the win (his first win at this game!) with some good combinations of missions and agents.  Grrr - I shall have my revenge next time!

Castle Ravenloft
Next up was Castle Ravenloft.  This turned out to be a good choice as one of the newbies had played cRPGs before so was quite keen to play a mini's based board game.  We took on Klak as we wanted a boss to go up against but at the same time, wanted a mission that wasn't too hard given the 2 newbies.

Good choice as we ended up winning the game without using a single healing surge!

I ended up playing the Rogue - the first time I've played the Rogue.  I have to admit, the rogue is better than I first gave her credit for.  Her ability to disarm traps more easily seemed too situation specific to be really useful so I never really ranked her.  However, she has some nice abilities which make her useful outside of her ability to disarm traps.  Would play again!

Castle Ravenloft - Flesh Golem!

Felt like a dungeon crawl for my Sunday Mini Game Day this week so ended up pulling out Castle Ravenloft.  It's a fun game which is pretty simple and quick to play (approx 1 hour) so good for a quick dungeon crawl experience.

More details of my session on BGG here.

Game Night! - 28 August 2015

It's been a while since my last game night so it was good to get another one in last Friday.  We had a group of 3 which, while not great, is actually a decent number for several of my games.

The Agents
We started off with two games of The Agents.  Three players is probably the best player count for this game as it means that each player can effect each other player.

I managed to get a win in the first game but lost in the second game.  The second game was interesting as I lost due to some bad valuation play by one of my opponents.  The board was setup such that the player who won was getting a stackload of points each round from a combo which I couldn't impact.  The other player was also unwilling to destroy that combo as he was getting 4 points off it each round (whereas the winner was getting approx 7-10 points off it).

That player also makes this same valuation mistake.  He overvalues points to himself instead of valuing actions based on the relative swing in the game.  If he had destroyed the combo board position, he would have gotten a +3-6 point swing in his favour even though he wasn't getting the 4 points.

I would complain except that this kind of bad valuation allows me to beat him most of the time as well.
:)

Monopoly Deal
This was actually my friends game which he had been playing 2 player before I showed up.

I managed to win both of the games we played of this.  The play of the night though was when one of my opponents played a house on one of his full sets.  I managed to steal the entire set, built a hotel on the set and then played double rent.  I managed to get $60M in one round and managed to wipe the board clean for one of my opponents.

Legen-wait for it-dary!

Yomi
Last game of the night and we went back to our current favourite - Yomi!

As there were 3 of us, we decided to try out the 2 vs 1 variant of this game.  However, rather than the standard hero, we decided to try out the Deathstrike Dragon.  I took control of the Dragon while my opponents picked Geiger and Zane.  My main opponent on this game picked Zane while the other player, who was relatively new to Yomi, went with Geiger.

And I basically wiped the floor with them.

To be fair, that Dragon is amazingly powerful.  Granted, I did get some good reads which really helped me but even so, the Dragon is powerful to the point of being overpowered.

Still - 3 wins.  :)

Hearthstone - tavern brawl

I've been playing some more Hearthstone recently - particularly at the weekend.  This is primarily a result of a new play mode that Blizzard recently introduced.  Tavern Brawl.

Tavern Brawl is a mode that is only available at the weekend but does a really good job of mixing up the game.  Mechanically, Tavern Brawl changes gameplay by introducing one key change to the way the game plays.  Each week has a different change and so far, there has been a really good mix of changes.  One week, they gave you custom built decks where, other than a couple of spells, the entire deck was comprised of portals which gave you a random minion but with a reduced casting cost.  Another week, the game started you off with 10 mana instead of having to build up your mana round by round.  As you can imagine, with just basic cards, I got owned pretty badly during that brawl by people who had access to every high cost card in the game!

All in all, I have to give credit to Blizzard.  They have done a really good job of giving you different ways to play the game and keep your interest up.

Lord of the Rings LCG - Escape from Dol Guldur

The Lady Galadriel of Lorien has asked you to investigate the area in the vicinity of Dol Guldar. While doing so, one of your allies was ambushed by Orcs, captured, and is now held in a dungeon cell...

As with Anduin, the last quest in the core set does not start off easily.  One of your heroes starts off captured - which basically means that you can't use him/her and you don't get any resources from him.  Depending on which hero gets captured, this could put a serious dent in your efforts.  The quest itself involves you going in and rescuing your trapped hero before escaping from Dol Guldur.

In the first mission, you have to sneak into Dol Guldur itself.  This means getting 9 progress tokens and capturing one of the 3 objectives.

It's also the first time in the game where you really benefit from playing with 2 decks instead of just 1.  With just 1 deck, you only have 3 heroes and the loss of one hero is equivalent to a third of your force.  A major blow.  On the other hand, with 2 decks, you have 6 heroes and the loss of one hero, while a blow, is not anywhere near as significant.

It the loss of that hero that makes the first mission such a challenge.  This is compounded by a limit of only 1 ally card being played each round so it isn't easy to cover the loss of that hero with ally cards.  This is possibly not a huge issue if you are playing 1 deck as you probably couldn't afford more than 1 ally each round anyway but if playing 2 decks, this really slows down your progress as you have to carefully consider which ally to put into play.

No major twists beyond the above - but in fairness, the loss of one hero can be devastating depending on which hero gets captured.

Finding a hidden entrance to the dungeons of Dol Guldur at last, you attempt to make your way through the caverns beneath the hill, searching for your imprisoned friend. The denizens of this labyrinth stand in you way, while the jailors protect the prisoner.

After sneaking into Dol Guldur, you have a chance to rescue your trapped hero.  This happens as soon as you put any progress onto the main mission.  Rescuing your trapped hero is massively important as, the moment you rescue him/her, you get to use that hero from that point on.  In other words, this lets you get back up to full strength to face the rest of the quest.  Mechanically, you need to get 15 progress tokens and collect all 3 objectives to proceed to the last mission in this quest.

Naturally, the mission isn't as straightforward as that.

The moment you rescue your trapped hero, the jailer is awakened and enters the staging area.  And when I say jailer, I don't mean the pitiful guard they left at the dungeon.  I mean the Nazgul of Dol Guldur.  This is a massively nasty beast!

The Nazgul of Dol Guldur adds 5 threat to your staging area.  If you don't engage him, trying to quest past him is extremely difficult.  However, he also does 4 damage and has 3 armour and 9 health - so trying to defeat him in combat isn't easy either!  Even worse, if you draw a card with a shadow effect when he attacks, he gets an insta-kill of 1 of your characters.  At this juncture, the only appropriate response is - OUCH!!

Granted, you don't actually have to kill the Nazgul to get to the last mission - but with a staging threat of 5, you probably find that you need to engage him simply so that you can actually make quest progress.  The only positive thing is that he only engages you if you have a threat of 40 so at least you will probably be able to pick and choose when you want to engage him.

Given how dangerous the Nazgul is in combat, it shouldn't be a surprise to learn that I didn't engage it until I could play the Gandalf ally card that round.

Following a thread of sunlight you discover a cavern opening leading out through the side of the hill. Stationed outside the cave-mouth, however, is a large group of orcs.

After rescuing your trapped hero, all that remains is getting out of Dol Guldur itself.  This last mission is relatively easy.  All you need to do is get 7 progress tokens.  Provided that the Nazgul is not in play at that point, you win the quest.

The main twist in this last mission is that an Orc Guard comes out every round.  However, the Orc Guard is really more of an annoyance than a real threat.  It only has 1 attack and 1 hit point so it's easy to defend against and/or kill.  With that said, if you have other enemies that you are facing off against, the addition of that Orc Guard can be extremely annoying as you simply run out of characters that you can use to defend and/or fight the Orc Guard.

I suspect that the main threat in this mission was supposed to be the Nazgul itself as you can't complete the mission unless the Nazgul is not in play.  Effectively, this means that you have to defeat the Nazgul sooner or later.  In practice though, the high threat of the Nazgul meant that I always dealt with it during the second mission.  This effectively resulted in a little of an anti-climax as this last mission always ended up being rather easy as all I had to do was go all out in getting 7 progress tokens.  I could quest with every character I had and not worry about defending as I wouldn't need to go through the combat phase if I could get 7 progress tokens right off the bat.

Quest thoughts
Despite the anti-climax, this is another really fun quest with loads of thematic cards.

The way the game handles one of your heroes being captured is inspired.  Literally losing one of your main heroes at the start of the quest immediately puts you on the defensive and also really makes you think about the construction of your deck.  Bear in mind that losing a hero also slows down your resource pool so having expensive cards in this quest can simply mean that half your cards can't be played as you never have enough resources.

It also makes you think about which heroes you should take to the quest.  I have been playing this quest with the decks I used to defeat Anduin but if I were to build a new deck, I would build a deck with all weak heroes so that it is hard to be critically impaired by the loss of a major hero.  Hopefully, the reduced starting threat will give you enough time to get more allies onto the board so that you have a solid group of characters by the time you start facing off against the enemies in the game.

Interestingly enough, this means that out of the 3 quests in the core set, arguably 2 of them involve you picking "weaker" heroes to have the best chance of success in the quest.  This is actually really clever design to make you think about your deck construction instead of simply auto-picking the "strongest" heroes.

Game Night! - 3 July 2015

Due to a conflux of some unfortunate situations, game nights have been a bit of a rare breed recently.  Regardless, I did manage to get another session in last Friday.  Woot!

Yomi
We started off with our current favourite - Yomi!

After going up against Onimaru last time, I actually thought he was a pretty intriguing character.  As my friend was interested in trying out another new character, I took the opportunity to try out Onimaru.  And he really is a ton of fun to play!

Unlike other characters, Onimaru doesn't actually have any combo points.  He makes up for this by having massively damaging attacks.  Basically, with Onimaru, getting hit at all is going to hurt.

Meanwhile, my friend tried out Zane.  Not really sure what to make of Zane.  Looking at his cards and abilities, I couldn't immediately discern what strategy he would adopt and judging by the way my friend played - I don't think he knew what strategy to adopt either.

Ultimately, a 3-1 win to myself as I pasted the floor with him.
:)

Aliens: This time it's War
My friend really likes this game as he is on a winning streak against me (now having won 2 games in a row).  He normally plays the Aliens and believes that the Aliens have an advantage in this game as they can see what the Marine player does before deciding how to react to it.

I'm not sure that is the case but it's getting harder and harder to put up a counter-argument as he managed to get another 2 wins.  That now makes it 4 in a row!  Inconceivable!!

Interestingly, we came up with an issue with one of the cards.  One of the cards allows me to kill off 2 of my marines to clear out all Aliens in the current battlefield.  I played that card and then played another card to prevent one of the marine kills.  My friend was of the belief that this meant I didn't satisfy the condition on the first card (2 marine kills) hence I couldn't kill all his Aliens.  Naturally, I disagreed (or I wouldn't have played the card).

After the game ended, I posted the query to BGG and it turns out that my friend may have had the correct interpretation.
:(

Battle Line
We ended the night with 2 games of Battle Line.  This is one of my favourite games so it was great to end the night with it.

The match ended 1:1.  The second match was a doozy as it went right down to the wire.  I didn't actually get very good cards but it shows the strength of this game that, even with poor cards, I was able to push my friend down to the wire before he was able to beat me.

Great strategy game with simple rules but fantastic strategic depth.

Lord of the Rings LCG - Journey down the Anduin

Emerging from Mirkwood Forest with an urgent message for Lady Galadriel, you must now make your way south along the Anduin River in order to reach the forest of Lorien.  As you leave the forest behind, you notice that you are being pursued, and thus quicken your pace...

Unlike Passage through Mirkwood, Journey down the Anduin, the second quest in the Core set, does not start off easily.

As you approach the location of a small raft stashed on the riverbank, a fearsome Hill Troll emerges from behind a grouping or rocks, and attacks!

Yup!  Right off the bat, you are facing off against a Hill Troll!

It has a ton of hit points so isn't easy to kill.  It can also do 6 damage with each attack so it can kill most heroes and allies in one hit.  Lastly, the Hill Troll will engage if you have a threat of 30.  Which isn't actually that high - so unless you deliberately picked weaker Heroes, it's entirely possible that you will be facing that Hill Troll on your first or second turn!

Interestingly enough, this actually means that your best chance of success in this quest is to actually start off with weaker Heroes.  The lower starting threat gives you a couple of turns to build up your forces before you engage the Hill Troll and success or failure fully depends on you using those initial turns to setup to defeat the Hill Troll.  In this regard, from the cards in the core set, it's pretty critical to have Gandalf in your hand as, without his help, it's significantly more difficult dealing with the Hill Troll.

After defeating the Troll, you are able to board the raft and embark upon a river voyage.  As you depart, your enemies pursue, harassing the small vessel as you attempt to navigate the river...

As your enemies harass the raft, it is difficult to maintain balance and effectively fight them off.

The second mission is actually really fun albeit really nasty if you aren't set up properly.  To progress through this mission, you need to get 16 progress tokens.  The main challenge from this mission is that you are drawing an extra encounter card each round.  Luckily, any enemies you encounter won't engage you on their own although you can still engage them.

The extra encounter card means that it is difficult to make quest progress as the staging area fills up quickly.  More importantly, some bad luck in drawing encounter cards can location lock you and make it impossible to collect progress tokens via questing.

In this regard, Northern Tracker and Legolas are tremendous assets.  Northern Tracker lets you put progress tokens on locations even without travelling to them.  This is great for helping to clear locations from the staging area which helps mitigate the risk of location lock.  Meanwhile, Legolas gets you 2 progress tokens each time he gets a kill.  This is immensely helpful as those 2 progress tokens aren't hampered by any threat in the staging area.

The ongoing harassment from your enemies has forced your raft to the shore, and you must now confront their ambush head on.  If you survive this attack, the path to the Golden Wood should be open before you...

What better way to end a quest than with an epic brawl!  This last mission in the quest basically sees you being attacked by a swarm of enemies.  Questing at this stage is only relevant to the extent of minimizing threat gain (and remember, you die if your threat hits 50).  Progress in the mission itself is reliant on you killing all enemies!

Nothing too tricky in this last mission - its basically a straight up brawl to end the game.

Quest thoughts
This is a really fun quest.  It's also quite difficult as you need a party with good questing ability to deal with Mission 2 as well as good combat ability to deal with Mission 3!  Which is a great setup as it means you really think about how to setup your deck.  I initially took on this quest with the party I had from the first quest and got TPKed immediately.

However, once you recognise that threat management is critical in this mission, with the initial Hill Troll as well as some encounter cards which punish you if your threat is over 35, you can build your deck differently to give yourself the best chance of victory.  Which, naturally, is exactly what I did.  My subsequent two games, with a customised deck purpose built to defeat this quest, managed to pull off consecutive wins.

I also love one of the location cards in this quest.  Banks of the Anduin is a location card that recurs each time you clear it.  Which is a brilliantly thematic way of showing your journey down the Anduin itself.

Overall, a fantastic quest which shows the importance of deck construction if you are looking to defeat the quests this game throws against you.

Lord of the Rings LCG - Passage through Mirkwood

Mirkwood has long been a dangerous place., and recently one of King Thranduil's patrols has uncovered disconcerting signs of a gathering menace in the vicinity of Dol Golder.  A party of heroes, controlled by the players, has been assembled to carry a message through Mirkwood, down the Anduin, and eventually to Lorien, to warn Lady Galadriel of the imminent danger.

And with that, the core set of Lord of the Rings starts off the Shadows of Mirkwood adventure path.  The core set itself only contains the first 3 quests in the adventure path - the remaining 5 quests being released via expansion packs.  I'm still playing through the core set but so far, I already know that I will be buying more, more, more!!

Just so you know, the text in italics is taken directly from the game.

Passage through Mirkwood
The first quest, Passage through Mirkwood, sees you build out your party of heroes to take a warning to Lady Galadriel.  This quest sees you travelling through, as the quest title suggests, Mirkwood forest.

You are traveling through Mirkwood forest, carrying an urgent message from King Thanduil to the Lady Galadriel of Lorien. As you move along the dark trail, the spiders gather around you...

The quest actually starts off pretty easily as you would expect with a quest ranked as 1 star difficulty.  For reference, later quests can go up to 7 stars in difficulty (or possibly even higher in later expansions).  Granted, there is a forest spider that you immediately need to deal with.  With that said though, the first location you can travel to actually readies one of your characters so you can quest and immediately reuse one of your heroes to deal with the spider.  Beyond that, the first mission of this quest is fairly standard with little in the way of surprises beyond the cards in the encounter deck and collecting the 8 progress tokens to complete this mission is fairly straightforward.

As you move through Mirkwood, hounded by spiders, the forest path forks before you...

The second mission of Passage through Mirkwood is really more like a placeholder than a real mission.  Requiring only 2 progress tokens to complete, you often only spend 1 round before you move onto the last mission.

The trail winds into one of the darkest, most tangled parts of the forest...  You sense that a foul, dark presence is hunting you, and you move quickly in an attempt to avoid its evil.

Which brings up the first real point of interest about Passage through Mirkwood.  There are actually two different Mission 3's for Passage through Mirkwood and which specific mission you deal with is random.  This represents the choice of path you took in the second mission and is a nice thematic way of giving you some variation in the first quest.

Beorn's Path - You attempt to follow a secret, hidden trail to avoid the enemy.

Probably considered the easier of the 2 available options for Mission 3, this mission sees you needing 10 progress tokens to progress.  This is relatively straightforward task albeit requiring several rounds to complete.  The slight wrinkle to this Mission is that you can't complete it if Ungoliant's Spawn is in play.  

Which is very interesting from a thematic point of view.  Your team is trying to escape from Mirkwood Forest using a secret trail before they get noticed by Ungoliant's Spawn - one of the nastier creatures in the encounter deck.  If you can do so, great.  However, if you do get noticed by Ungoliant's Spawn, then it will hunt you and you need to deal with it before you can leave.

In the lore, Ungoliant is a massive spider deity (I think) and one of the oldest entities in Middle Earth.  Shelob is probably the most famous of Ungoliant's spawn - Shelob being the massive spider that accosted Frodo and Sam in their quest to destroy the One Ring.

Don't leave the Path - The shadows grow darker, and you realise that a foul presence is aiming to draw you from the path.  You must defeat it to pass this way.

It should be obvious by now but the foul presence hunting you is the aforementioned Ungoliant's Spawn.  Ungoliant's Spawn is a pretty nasty creature that can potentially kill off an hero or ally with each attack.  At the same time, it has a pretty high defence and 9 hit points so it can take a lot of punishment.

And you have to kill it.

Quest thoughts

All in all, as expected for the first quest that players will encounter, Passage through Mirkwood is a relatively simple quest that most players should be able to defeat relatively easily.

There aren't a whole lot of wrinkles with the quest design and a fairly straightforward approach is often enough to complete the quest.  Half the time, all you need is solid questing ability.  In the event where you need to deal with Ungoliant's Spawn, the use of Gandalf together with other allies is often enough to deal with Ungoliant's Spawn in one round.

Granted, there will be occasions where a run of bad draws will make things tough for you (such as drawing Ungoliant's Spawn before Mission 3 or having to encounter Hummerhorns - the other nasty enemy you might face in the encounter deck).  However, overall, it's a relatively simple mission as evidenced by the fact that the mono-sphere decks in the core set can all beat this Mission.

Lord of the Rings LCG - the spheres

So, last week, I talked about Lord of the Rings LCG - the new card game that I'm currently addicted to.  This week, I'm going to talk a little bit about how the spheres (ie deck types) in the game differ from each other.

I'll also be honest and say that, primarily, this is for my benefit so that I have a record of what each sphere is good at in case I ever forget.  :)

One last caveat - I'm still learning the game so the notes below only represent my understanding at this moment in time.  Don't take anything you see below as gospel!

Spirit
The rulebook says that the Spirit sphere is about the strength of a hero's will.  And this is very clearly reflected in the deck makeup itself.

This deck is, by far, the best at questing, which uses willpower.  Eowyn, one of the heroes, has a willpower of 4 - the highest of the heroes in the core set.  Furthermore, her special ability allows you to discard 1 card in order to temporarily boost that willpower even higher when questing.  When it comes to making actual quest progress - this sphere is hands down the best.

Other strengths of the deck include its ability to manage threat and treachery.

Threat is a measure of how dangerous you are perceived to be.  If you have a low threat, you aren't considered dangerous and enemies will tend to leave you be in favour of attacking higher threat targets.  Also, some event cards only trigger if your threat is high enough.  Lastly, if your threat ever reaches 50, you are eliminated from the game.

From this, you can see that threat management is an important part of the game.  By managing your threat, you can control when, and whether, you engage enemies.  The Spirit deck has various cards which can be used to lower your threat and give you more time and options for how to deal with encounter cards.

Lastly, the Spirit deck includes options to let you cancel the effects of a treachery or shadow card when dealt from the encounter deck.  Both of these cards have negative effects and the ability to cancel them can mean the difference between having your hero take damage versus having your hero die.

Lore
Lore is billed in the rulebook as the power of the mind and intellect.

From a mechanics point of view, Lore is really good at card draw.  Thematically, this simulates intelligence by giving you more options.  As with all card games, your options are heavily impacted by the cards you have in your hand.  Card draw abilities give you a better chance of drawing the card you need to deal with the threat that is facing you.

Other strengths of this deck are healing.  There are a lot of cards which can heal damage on your characters.  Particularly critical as the death of a hero means that you will be getting 1 less resource per turn which in turn, impacts your ability to play any cards that you do draw.  Alternatively, the healing ability an help keep your allies alive.  Like all good fantasy stories, allies are critical - particularly as your 3 starting heroes will not be able to defeat the quest on their own.

Tactics
Tactics basically boils down to combat prowess and the ability of your team to hit enemies with swords, axes, bows etc.

From a mechanics point of view, this deck is probably the simplest to understand.  Most of the cards are combat related - either allowing you to do a preemptive strike on enemies, increasing your damage/defence value or pumping up your hit points so that you can take more punishment.

Unfortunately, the nature of the deck also means that its a very poor choice if you are building a mono-sphere deck (at least in the core set).  The problem is that it is very hard to quest using this deck.  As a mono-sphere deck, your questing is almost wholly tied into Legolas ability to kill enemies (which grants quest progress).  If you don't draw enemies or aren't able to kill the enemies you do draw quickly enough - events can quickly spiral out of control with defeat following soon after.

On the other hand, the nature of the deck also means that its a great complement to other decks if you are building a dual-sphere deck.  For example, pairing Tactics with Spirit gives you the questing ability of Spirit together with the martial prowess of Tactics.  Theoretically, this covers all your key bases while playing the game.

Leadership
Leadership is basically what it says on the tin - the ability of your heroes to lead and inspire others.

As you can expect, mechanically, there are a lot of cards which can be used to help other players.  This can be in the form of defending for another player, attacking another players enemies or just helping other players with questing or resource generation.

That last point about resource generation is actually fairly critical.  One of the decks key strengths is the ability to speed up resource generation (for either yourself or another player).  Normally, each hero only gets 1 resource per round.  With 3 heroes, this means that you often need to wait a round or two before you can use any of your high cost cards (which can cost 5 or 6 resources to play).  As you can imagine, speeding up resource generation lets you put your more powerful cards into play quickly which can be critical.  One of the missions in the core set in particular starts you off with a major threat and getting cards into play quickly to deal with that threat can be the difference between success or failure in that quest.

The last key ability of this deck is readying.  There are various cards which let you ready your characters so that they can effectively act twice in each round.  Normally, each character can only act once and that extra action - if used correctly - can make a huge difference by allowing you to continue clearing enemies from the board while still making quest progress or defending from attacks.

In the core set, this is actually one of the most powerful spheres.  You would think that it would only really shine when playing with 2 players (given the number of cards which benefit other players) but in practice, even a mono-sphere Leadership deck did extremely well in the game.

The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game

The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game is an LCG published by Fantasy Flight Games.  And its a damn fine game!

I posted in the past about some of the problems I had with Magic.  Despite my specific problems with Magic, one of things I liked was the feeling of building your own deck from a pool of cards and then testing that deck against other decks.  This is part of the reason why I have been enjoying Hearthstone.

Lord of the Rings LCG is another great example of a game which gives me that deck construction feeling while avoiding the pitfalls that Magic has.

Land as mana
As with Hearthstone, Lord of the Rings LCG avoids the issue with having land as mana by giving you 1 resource for each Hero at the start of each round (you normally have 3 heroes although this can depend on how you build your deck).  If one of those heroes dies, then you don't get resources for that hero.

Again, this removes a major source of irritation from the game while still forcing you to consider whether you will have enough resources to play the cards you want to play.

Living Card Game
The LCG format which FFG have adopted differs from CCGs like Magic in that there is no random distribution of cards.  If you buy the main core boxed set, you know exactly what cards you will be getting.  Similarly, each expansion of the game has the exact same cards in it.

This removes one of my biggest complaints about CCGs.  I hate the idea of buying booster packs in the hope that you get a useful card.

Co-operative
And this is where we get to what makes this game fascinating for me.  Unlike other CCGs, Lord of the Rings LCG is actually a co-operative game.  You build your deck and then take it up against a pre-built encounter deck.

This is a brilliant idea and frankly, I'm surprised that this hasn't been done more often.

Each pre-built encounter designed by the developers can be designed to have a different challenge.  This also forces you to build your deck differently for each challenge as an "uber deck" is unlikely to be structured in the right way to beat a particular challenge.  At the same time, the game is open enough that you will have different ways to beat that challenge.  And the LCG format of the game means that you have the cards and options that you need to defeat the game - its just a question of whether you can build the right deck (well, you also need to actually play the deck and win with it).


Overall, another great game which I have only just started to get into.  The game was first published in 2011 so there are already a million expansions and adventure packs that I can choose from.  All I need now is time...

Hearthstone - redux

Way back in January, I posted about Hearthstone.  Can't believe I started playing this game in January although to be fair, I don't actually play that often.  Partly, this is due to time.  The other reason for this is actually related to the nature of Hearthstone as a CCG.

To be fair to Blizzard, they have done a good job of creating a CCG where you can play and have fun even without spending money.  However, if you do spend money (or spend a ridiculous amount of time grinding in order to build up your deck), you will have a better deck.

What this means is that I have gone into games and never had a chance simply because my opponents had significantly better cards.  Again, to be fair to Blizzard, they have done a good job of making even basic cards semi-competitive.  But semi-competitive doesn't count for much when you are being destroyed by other players.

What this means in practice is that the game is only worth playing at certain times.  Primarily, playing in the evenings from the second week of the month onwards.

That may sound odd but both of those relate to the type of player playing at that time - specifically, people playing that match those criteria tend to be more casual (like myself) and hence, you are more likely to run into a similar level deck to yourself.

Play in the evenings
Most people have work and family commitments etc.  This tends to take up most of the day and hence, the "casual" players tend to only be online in the evenings.  Fairly obvious but if you play during the day, you are going to be playing against relatively hardcore players who will have uber decks (relevant to mine).  I know this for a fact from playing during daytime at the weekends as well as playing it briefly once when I was off from work due to sick leave.

My advice - do something during the day.
:)

Play from mid-month onwards
This might sound odd but will make sense once you realise how the ranking system works.

The game actually starts you off at rank 25 and you have to work your way down from there (so rank 1 are the best players).  However, each "season" only lasts a month and at the end of the season, your rank is reset.  Not completely reset as you get a bonus based on the rank you achieved in the previous season (so I tend to start each month at rank 23).  What the reset means though is that at the lower levels at the start of the month, you are playing against people who should be at a higher level than you but aren't simply due to the rank reset each month.

By skipping the game at the start of the month, you avoid that group of higher level players and will have a more enjoyable time overall.


One last point to mention - even if you follow the above, you will still get owned on a semi-regular basis by people with amazing decks.  This is just a problem with the game community in that there are groups of people who should be high level players, but they actually deliberately delevel themselves so that they can play low level decks and pwn them.  This is actually a well known problem in the community but there is currently nothing that can be done about it.

On the plus side, a game doesn't take that long so even if you get destroyed, you can quickly get into another game.

Game Night! - 15 May 2015

Woohoo - another game night!

Didn't get a lot of games in as it was a short game night.  Still, had a lot of fun so that's a definite tick in the win column!

Aliens: This time it's war
We started out the night with a quick 2 player game of Aliens: TTIW.  I was the marines again while my friend played the Aliens.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to pull many Ops cards and this allowed my friend to wipe out my marines with alarming ease.  To an extent, this is one of the problems of the game - it is very heavily reliant on luck and there isn't much you can do to mitigate that (unlike say, CCGs where you can build your deck to have more card draw etc).  Unfortunately, this makes it 2 wins in a row for my friend.
>:(

Really need to put a stop to his run the next time we play!

Yomi
We wrapped up with Yomi - our current favourite.

I continued with Setsuki while my friend tried out a new character - Onimaru.  Onimaru is an attack heavy character who can't do combo's but is very card efficient in doing damage to make up for it.  As a result, he doesn't need to win combat too often in order to kill off other characters - particularly for Setsuki as her health is only 70.

This resulted in a very nervy game as each move had to be carefully plotted to try and outguess what card he was going to play.

Ultimately, I managed to out-play my opponent and racked up 2 wins.

Darksiders II

After a long slew of Star Wars games, its time for something a little different.

Darksiders II is a 3rd person action game where you play the part of Death, one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse.  The story of the game basically involves you trying to restore Humanity who were wiped out in the first game (I think).  What this entails is you running around several different realms doing various quests and wiping out everything that moves.  The game is basically a spectacle fighter.  Gameplay is a mix of fighting and platforming/puzzling.

And it is actually a pretty good game.  When talking about Jedi Academy, I mentioned how the game was well paced between action and puzzle sections and Darksiders II manages to pull off the same feat.  You get a good mix of action and puzzle and, just like Jedi Academy, the puzzle sections aren't too difficult so that you are never too far away from another adrenaline rush.

With that said, playing this game did remind me of why I don't normally play spectacle fighters.

I'm very objective focused in games like this.  Unlike others, I don't spend that much time trying out the various different combo's.  Once I find a combo that works, I tend to repeat that same combo unless I come up against an enemy that the combo doesn't work against.  After a couple of hours though, I always feel bad and jump into the menus to look at the controls.  However, after seeing the massive menu of combos, I always just think - nah, can't be bothered!
:)

Battle Line

Battle Line is a fantastic little game by Reiner Knizia.  Basically, its a 2 player game where you play opposing generals facing off on a battlefield.

It's also one of the few games which I have rated as a 9 on BGG.  Yes, the game is that good.

What makes the game so much fun is that, while there is a small element of luck involved as the game involves card draw, the winner is often determined by the player who plays their cards best and not necessarily who draws the highest cards.  This is a direct contradiction to the views of one of my friends who believes that luck is highly important in this game as you need to draw high cards.  Worth mentioning that he has never beaten me at this game.  :)

Anyway, this principle of playing your cards well was illustrated perfectly in a recent game I had.

The initial draw didn't give me any high cards.  However, I did have a stack of 1's and 2's which gave me the potential for getting straight flushes or three of a kind from the start.  I played them early and set up a potential charge to win 3 flags in a row.

What made this game fascinating though was mid-way through the game.  At this point, I could see my opponent setting up his own 3 flags in a row in the middle of the deck.  I had only one way and that was to try to race and get my own flags won first.  Luckily, he didn't grab any of the tactics cards which might have stopped me from completing my sets.

One round before he won, I was able to get my flags and get the win.  Tight tense finish which shows the importance of strategy in this game.

Game Night! - 24 April 2015

Another game night and another round of last minute drop-outs.

We went from a potential 4-6 people the day before to 4 people on the morning.  By the time I arrived (first to arrive!), we were down to 3 and not long after, we were just 2.  Unfortunately, I wasn't expecting just 2 so hadn't taken the right games.  Still, I did have Yomi which is a perfect 2 player game so it wasn't all bad.
:)

Yomi
After beating my nemesis last time with Setsuki, I naturally picked Setsuki again.  He, on the other hand, went back to Grave as he was hoping to get revenge on me for beating him last time when he was trying out Lum.

I promptly went on to beat him 4-2.
:)

To be fair, there were several extremely close games.  The last game in particular stands out for me as I expected to get crushed.  He managed to get off to an extremely good start as he managed to get in two throws with double King follow ups.  Setsuki doesn't start with much health so that put me close to deaths door pretty early on.

I changed up my tactics and was able to dump my hand on numerous occasions to get back into the game.  In the end, it came down to a final round where whoever won combat was pretty much going to get the win.  I won. :)

The Agents
I had brought The Agents with me this time just in case we had dropouts.  I didn't expect to be just 2 but we figured that we would try it with 2 players to see how it goes.

The game is still fun (managed to win both games!) but the limitations of only having 2 players really does start to show itself.  Good as a last resort but I'll be honest and say that 2 player The Agents isn't my preferred choice of game.

Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast

Despite my intention to play the Star Wars games in their correct order (ie order of release), I somehow ended up playing this game after playing Jedi Academy.  In my defence, the naming conventions for these games is extremely confusing!

In any event, I didn't play this game until after Jedi Academy.  Which is a bit of a shame as I think I would actually have enjoyed it more if I played it before Jedi Academy.  But I am getting ahead of myself.

Jedi Knight II continues the story of Kyle Katarn from the previous Dark Forces games.  You start off with no force powers as Kyle has rejected being a jedi and the start of the game actually has you playing it as a standard FPS.  A couple of missions later, events transpire to force Kyle to take up the lightsaber again at which point you start to gain access to your force powers.  Naturally, you start off underpowered and need to build up your levels again before you get access to the full suite of powers.

The FPS gameplay mechanics in this game are actually fairly solid and have held up well.  What amazes me though is how difficult the game is.  Not just in terms of how tough the bad guys are but also how rough the puzzles are.

Not long after I started the game, I had to actually stop and check my settings to make sure I was playing on the Normal difficulty (I was).  I then had to stop regularly (once each level) to check an online FAQ to find out how I could make progress in the game!

It's been a looong time since I've had to check online FAQs.  Not a particularly great feeling. :)

My next surprise was finding out that, not long after getting the lightsaber, I wasn't actually having much fun with the game.  I suspect this was due to me coming to this game after playing Jedi Academy which seems to have a tightened engine - particularly in relation to the lightsaber combat.  Possibly, it was also having to play the game with an "underpowered" jedi (in relation to my powered up character in Jedi Academy).

Ultimately, I didn't finish the game which is a shame.  I understand the game was well reviewed when it came out and from my limited time with it, I can see that it is a good game.  Just not one I had the drive to finish.

Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy

First off, a quick note to let you know that I will be changing my blogging schedule starting from next week.  Instead of posting 3 updates across my blogs on Sunday, I will be using the below schedule.  In brief, this will allow me to spread out my posts as well as work load.

• Meister Hobbies - Sunday
• Meister Speaks - Tuesday
• Meister Games - Thursday

And now - back to your regular scheduled program!

After several negative posts about some of the older Star Wars games, I finally have good news!  Jedi Academy is a great game.

Granted, as you would expect of an older game, the graphics are fairly basic.  However, what works for this game is the feel of being a jedi which the game manages to capture really well.  It's just a whole passel o' fun to run around with your lightsaber and block blaster shots while carving up stormtroopers.  

The game also tries to mix things up by having a mix of puzzles and combat sections.  The puzzle sections are fairly basic though which in this case, is a good thing.  Basically, the puzzle elements do a good job of mixing up the gameplay so that you have a continuous cycle of ramping up the action before a brief pause to recover before the action ramps up again (which is a key element in designing a good game).  This means you never get bored with constant combat but at the same time, the puzzles are simple enough that you never get stuck on them and can get back to the action quickly.

The only nitpick complaint I have is that the keyboard makes it hard to play with my force powers.  I had the powers mapped to the number keys but in an action game, by the time I reached over to press the right number, the enemy had already moved out of my crosshair.  In practice, this meant that, outside of Healing and Force Field (which are generally activated outside of combat), Force Push was the only ability I used as it is a useful ability when facing Sith and they combat grab you (Force Push can break the grab).

Overall, a really fun game and one I definitely recommend.

Game Night! - 27 March 2015

Game Night again!

Unfortunately, we had a last minute drop out which impacted our plans a little.  Luckily, I had a perfect 3 player game which was able to fill the gap nicely.

Yomi
As with last time, we started off with Yomi.  There was 1 new player so we only played 1-on-1 games (with me helping the newbie playing with rules on the first game).  I did manage to get in 2 games myself though - one against the newbie and the other against my Yomi nemesis (as he generally beats me).

I was playing Setsuki this time.  Setsuki is a super fast ninja who benefits from dumping her hand which is a fairly cool concept.  This really threw my opponents for a loop as my attacks being so fast meant that they could only realistically beat my attack by using dodge or block.  Naturally, they then had to worry about me pulling a throw and dumping my hand on them again!

A couple of good reads meant that I won both of my games although it was a close thing in both cases.

The Agents
This was another game I got via Kickstarter.  I didn't actually pay for the full game though.  I only bought the PnP option.  After getting the pdf files, I then cut them up and got them professionally printed online.

The final result is a close-to-commercial product which looks pretty good.  Not perfect as the card alignment isn't perfect but pretty good quality none-the-less.

The game itself is a card game with a pretty unique mechanic.

Each card represents a secret agent and has a different top and bottom.  Each time you play a card, one side faces you and the other side faces one of your opponents.  This basically means that each time you play a card, you are benefiting one of your opponents as well as yourself.  As you can imagine, this makes the game an interesting calculation of which side to play to maximise your benefit while minimising any benefit your opponent gets.

We only managed to get in one game but we had a ton of fun - with major laughs throughout the game.

The game had a really close finish too as all of us were within touching distance of winning.  One of my opponents ended up 1 point short and he was desperately trying to figure out how to get that one extra point to get the win.  Luckily for me, he didn't manage it and I was able to win on my next turn.

Booyah!

Castle Ravenloft - Klak's Infernal Artifact

Haven't played Castle Ravenloft in a while but an upcoming game night put me in the mood for a dungeon crawl so I whipped it out recently to have a quick play.  And promptly got my ass handed to me by Klak and his infernal artifact.
>:(

Clearly, this was unacceptable and there was only one recourse.  Revenge!

Naturally, if this was going to be revenge, I had to use the same team as last time.

A fighter, a mage and a cleric walk into a dungeon

Things started out fairly innocuously with just a simple wolf threatening us as we entered the dungeon.

Pah - puny wolf

Naturally, the wolf tried to flank the fighter but its fangs proved no match for his strong armour.  Our cleric was then able to get the drop on it and take it out.

Flank attack!

As we moved deeper into the dungeon, we adopted standard PC marching order.  Fighter in front with the mage bringing up the rear.

Little did we know that the dastardly monsters had anticipated such a strategy!

Behind you!

Our first real test was a stone gargoyle.  No matter what we tried, we just weren't able to penetrate its defence.

Fighter needs food!

Ultimately, our pitiful attempts to deface the gargoyle were laughed off with ease.  And things really took a turn for the worse when the gargoyles mate showed up and wasn't appreciative of our attempts to deface the original.  Alas, this proved too much for the poor cleric who promptly keeled over with fright.

Alas poor cleric, we hardly knew ye

Nevertheless, one healing surge later and the cleric was back in action.  Not just back in action but also venturing further into the dungeon.  At least, that is how he described it. At the time, it looked like he was running for his life.

Nevertheless, progress was made. More importantly, the laboratory was found! Klak and his infernal artifact finally making its appearance. Which can only mean one thing.

Cue dramatic dungeon lighting!

The fighter charged forward and, using his Brute Force power, dealt a devastatiing blow to Klak which left him at deaths door!

Take that!

It didn't take much longer for Klak to fall as the fighter pressed his advantage.

And that!

At this point, despite our best efforts to roll poorly when attacking the artifact, we were able to hold out to get the win.

Final board position

Tabletop Simulator

Surprisingly, I fell into a trap which I have previously always avoided.  Early Access.

Buying games in early access always seemed like an odd idea to me.  Why would you buy a half-completed game at full price?  Never seemed to make sense.

However, as you probably guessed from the title, I actually purchased Tabletop Simulator despite it being an early access title.

I've been aware of this title for a long time now - ever since it first got kickstarted.  However, in line with my general policy for games (ie wait until the game gets finished and released), I passed and kept moving.  However, I recently got reintroduced to it when I say a couple of people on Youtube using the game to play board games remotely.

And, despite it looking a little finicky, the software looked really impressive.

In brief, the "game" is really just a physics simulator.  It gives you lots of different pieces, as well as the ability to create mods for other pieces, which you can use in board games.  The amazing thing is the amount of mods which have already been created for various different games.

The nature of the game - it being a physics simulator - is really what overcame the early access label for me.  The game was stable and the physics seemed to work such that you could easily use it to play various different board games.

What is also cool about Tabletop Simulator is that, once you spend a bit of time learning how, its actually fairly easy to create your own mods.

By way of proof - Imperial Battle Line.

Battle Line is a great little card game by Reiner Knizia.  There is already a mod for the original game on Steam Workshop but there wasn't a mod for the Star Wars retheme of the game.  Seeing as I always played with the Star Wars retheme - it was a no-brainer for me to create my own mod.

I'm also pretty chuffed that, after being uploaded on 18 March, I currently have 61 subscribers.  Taking out my brother and myself, that still gives me 59 strangers playing that mod.

Cool!

Star Wars: Dark Forces II

This is almost going to be a repeat of last weeks post.

As part of the Star Wars humble bundle, I also got Dark Forces II.  After giving up on Dark Forces, I decided to try out Dark Forces II to see what that was like.  However, unlike Dark Forces, I have never played Dark Forces II before.

The first thing which hit me when I loaded up DF2 was how old the game looks.  Specifically, this came out during the period when CD-ROMs first started to gain popularity in the PC gaming market.  In particular, during the period when every game came out with filmed cutscenes with bad actors and cheap sets.  And boy oh boy, does this apply to DF2!

Here - check out the opening cutscene for yourself!



In terms of the game itself, I didn't get very far.  Unfortunately, it suffers from many of the same problems as Dark Forces in terms of the mechanics feeling very old and dated.  With that said, even from the little I played, I can see how it evolved the formula from the original Dark Forces.

Star Wars:Dark Forces

I picked up Star Wars: Dark Forces recently as part of the Star Wars humble bundle.  I actually remember playing this game when it first came out.

In brief, it was one of the better Doom clones.  Not that it was better than Doom but because it tried to do something different with the Doom formula.  Rather than just running around a map killing everything, you actually had specific missions that you needed to complete.

Despite this, I never actually finished the game so I was fairly excited to load it up so I could give it another run through.

The game itself was first released in 1995.  And unfortunately, it shows.

Playing this game really shows how far FPS games have developed over the last 2 decades.  Possibly, if I had completed the game in the past, the nostalgia value may have been enough to make me keep playing.  Unfortunately, I got bored of the game really quickly and uninstalled it after two levels.

Worth mentioning though that I did enjoy the game when it first came out.

Also makes me wonder - would I enjoy Doom if I played it now?

Space Hulk Death Angel - First Game!

Came back from my Chinese New Year holiday to find this box waiting for me.
:)

My Chinese New Year present (to me from me)

This is a game which gets a lot of praise on boardgamegeek, particularly for solo play, so I was very keen on getting my grubby mitts on it.  Luckily, I had done my homework beforehand.  I had already watched some gameplay videos as well as reading the rulebook so was ready to dive in the same night!

For clarity, I have put notes on game rules in italics.

Background
By way of introduction, the is basically a card game version of Space Hulk.  For those unfamiliar with that great game, you play the part of several squads of Space Marine terminators who are sent in to investigate and clear out a Space Hulk - basically a spaceship which has been infested with all manner of nasties.

Each squad is comprised of two terminators - one experienced terminator and one relative newbie.  In a 1 player game, you get 3 squads so 6 terminators total to clear out a Space Hulk.  Should be easy right?

If none of that makes any sense, then you can think of it as you being a squad of space marines sent in to clear a spaceship of Aliens.  And yes, Aliens is an awesome movie!

Things get off to a bad start
Drawing my 3 squads at random and then placing them into formation, also at random, I get my 3 stronger terminators all facing left with the 3 weaker terminators bringing up the rear and facing right.  Not necessarily a bad thing - unless you draw a load of genestealers all in the right hand column.

Really?  C'mon, this is my first game!

This gave me immediate problems as I had to think long and hard around how to deal with the genestealers.  The problem with the initial setup was that I couldn't bring much firepower to bear on the genestealers.  Still, I managed to kill off one of them before they got their round in.

Each round, you can give one of 3 orders to each squad of terminators.  Attack lets them attack in the direction they are facing.  Move lets them shift up or down the formation and/or change direction.  Support lets them add a support token to any terminator - useful as support tokens let you reroll when attacking or defending.  Each squad also has slightly different abilities on each of their orders.  For example, some squads when moving let the terminators move to any position in the formation rather than just shifting up or down.  Last thing to note is that you cannot give the same order to the squad in consecutive turns so planning ahead is pretty important.

Naturally, I roll a zero for one of the genestealer attacks.  :(

Genestealers get a kill unless you roll higher than the number of genestealers in the attacking swarm.

Alas, poor Valencio.

Genestealer onslaught
Round 2 sees the genestealers attacking down the right flank en masse.  A clever bit of movement and support puts Brother Goriel in the line of attack with a support token and Support command in tow.  Which was a good thing as this was the only way I survived without taking more losses!

I put this particular squad member in the line of fire as his squads support action lets him defend extremely well with the use of a support token.  In brief, the support token lets him survive the genestealer attack unless he rolls a zero.

Brother Goriel's support action and token let him survive the genestealer onslaught

The Teleportarium
By the end of round 2, we managed to move out of the void lock and found ourselves in the Teleportarium (with 2 less genestealers thanks to two support tokens on the door).  Despite this, I was fully expecting to lose another terminator to the genestealers, I decided to pull a desperate move.  I put two of my squads on support and put support tokens on two of my strongest terminators.  The last squad activated the Teleportarium and teleported the entire squad to a different room.  Using up the two support tokens and due to some lucky rolls, my entire squad survived and made it through.

Each room has 2 blip piles.  Normally, you need to clear all blips in one of the blip piles (each blip being one genestealer who you then have to kill) before you can move to the next room.  The Teleportarium lets you clear both blip piles but with a risk - each terminator has a one in six chance of immediate death.  However, if any terminator has a support token, he can use that token to avoid rolling the dice.  Note that clearing the blip piles don't impact genestealers which are already out on the board.

Unfortunately, I still had the issue of the swarm of genestealers about to wipe out another of my terminators.  With only a two in six chance of surviving, I didn't have high hopes of my terminator surviving.

Luckily for me, Brother Omnio managed to hold the genestealers at bay!

What a roll!

The Generatorium
After teleportation, my terminators found themselves in the Generatorium.  Useful as I could see me needing that to deal with the swarm of genestealers hounding my terminators.

As my terminators were still badly positioned to deal with the genestealers on my right flank, I immediately move a terminator to the control panel and activated the Generatorium.  Another lucky roll later and I was able to clear out 4 genestealers on the right flank.

The Generatorium lets you kill up to 4 genestealers if you successfully make an attack roll - which has a 50% chance of happening.  Pretty handy if you need to clear out genestealers.  The risk is that, if you don't make the attack roll, the terminator who activated the Generatorium dies instead.

With my more powerful terminators still facing the left flank, they were able to manage the threat from the left relatively easily and, with some good attacking and maneuvering, we were soon able to reposition our group a bit more effectively in preparation for the final room!

The Genestealer Lair
We get to the final room and are assaulted by a pair of Brood Lords.  All I needed to do was kill them and I would win (and my first ever game too)!  Of course, with the remaining genestealers grouping up, that was easier said than done.

Each room, including the final room, is randomly drawn from a small pool to add a bit of variability to the game.  In this case, I had to kill the Brood Lords.  To make this harder, the genestealers all group up in each flank and you have to kill all other genestealers in that particular swarm before you can kill the Brood Lord.

Luckily for me, Brother Claudio is close to the first Brood Lord who is only protected by one genestealer.  Activating his ultimate attack, he charges in and wipes out the swarm.  Unfortunately, this heroic charges costs him his life.

Brother Claudio, when attacking, can automatically kill upto 3 genestealers within range 1.  This doesn't take an attack roll so there is no risk that he won't kill upto 3 genestealers.  However, there is a one in six chance (if you roll a zero) that this heroic charge will kill him.  Naturally, I rolled a zero.

Alas, poor Claudio.

Brother Claudio was able to kill off the Brood Lord on the left flank.  Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do about the Brood Lord on the right flank who promptly ripped Brother Omnio apart.

Alas, poor Omnio.

I was now down to 3 terminators - but only had one more Brood Lord to kill.  Setting 2 move orders allowed my squad to reposition so that Brother Leon, who could shoot 3 times, was able to attack next.  This put Brother Goriel in danger from genestealers on the left flank but I figured this was a risk worth taking.

Desperate times!

Assuming the worst, even if Brother Leon and Brother Goriel died, I still had Brother Zael who could attack next turn.  And after attacking this turn, Brother Leon would have been worthless next turn so I figured if he was going to be useless, now was a good time for him to be cannon fodder.

Don't tell him I said that.  :)


Utilizing his attack, Brother Leon opens fire.  Which is great as, if I get lucky, I can use his ability to shoot 3 times to end the game here and now!

Crap.

The endgame
As expected, during the genestealer attack, Brother Goriel is taken down by the genestealers despite a heroic effort on his part.

Alas, poor Goriel.

In the meantime, Brother Leon continues his amazing streak of not rolling skulls.  Luckily, this was exactly what I needed during the genestealer attack!

Woot!

I'm now down to two terminators and am moving into the final round.  Due to good positioning the round before, Brother Zael is now in position to open up with his flamethrower.

The flamethrower is an awesome weapon.  Normally, each attack can only kill 1 genestealer and that is if you make the attack roll (50% chance of success).  On the other hand, the flamethrower kills a number of genestealers equal to the number you roll on the dice.

In effect, it all came down to this roll.  If Brother Zael couldn't kill the Brood Lord, he would likely be killed by the genestealers on the left flank while Brother Leon would likely be killed by the genestealers on the right flank.

Brother Zael for the win!

A critical hit with the flamethrower wipes out the entire genestealer swarm and gives me the win!

Woo hoo!!!

Final thoughts
What a game!  And, coming down to the last die roll to determine victory or defeat, what a way for my first game to end!

This is a really great game and its easy to see why it gets such plaudits on boardgamegeek.  Granted, I got massively lucky several times but at the same time, I felt that I also made some good decisions which allowed me to benefit from that luck.  All in all, a great game which I can't wait to play again.