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.

No new post this week!

No new post this week as I'm off on holiday.  Regardless, it's been a busy week so haven't had much time for gaming.

See you next week!

Aliens: This Time It's War (redux)

Managed to get in another solo game of Aliens: This Time it's War recently. While the game is very tactical, as opposed to strategic, I have to admit that I really like the game due to the cinematic situations that develop naturally while playing the game.

Game report below.
*******************************************************
The Aliens got off to a slow albeit steady start. They were never able to massacre the marines but were able to kill off at least 1 marine per round. This meant that, relative to the movie, they were slightly behind (Apone didn't die until the marines were escaping by way of APC).

However, in the mid-game, the Alien player managed to pull off another dropship disaster which helped to thin down the marines. The murder of Ferro lead to an additional 2 rounds in the Dropship Evac stage which gave the Aliens a chance to recover and get some kills. Particularly helpful was the lack of operations cards during the same period.

Moving into the final stage on the Sulaco and things were pretty tight. The marines still had Ripley, Bishop and Newt. By now, the Alien player was starting to feel pretty good albeit the marines did have a pretty decent handsize as the marines were unable to play many operations cards during Dropship Evac.

These cards were promptly discarded to power the Sentry Gun! Woohoo!

However, the joy was shortlived as the Aliens threw down an Alien Swarm and managed to kill off poor little Newt. Advantage to the Aliens!

However (again!), a lucky draw in the second round of the Sulaco (after poor little Newt got eaten by a passing Alien) allowed the marine player to field the Powerloader. Together with the Sentry Gun and other ops cards, the marines now had 13 power on the Sulaco stage! Firepower FTW!

The last couple of rounds were brutal as, in desperation, the Alien player threw everything he had at the marines. Two security doors dropped to delay the marines final escape - pushing back the turn marker back twice in the final rounds. However, this would only delay the inevitable if they couldn't pull any Alien cards to overwhelm the marines firepower. With the lack of marine kills, the Nuke counter was also ticking perilously close to zero!

Aliens kept coming at the marines in waves. Some were devastated by careful controlled bursts by the marines. Others were blown apart with grenades. Despite this, the Aliens kept coming - knowing it was their last chance to take out the last surviving marines before their timely escape.

Ultimately, despite Bishop being torn in half, the marines were able to keep the Aliens at bay and scrape out the win. It was a close call but, in the end, the combined firepower of the Powerloader and Sentry Gun proved too much for the Aliens to deal with.

Hoo ah!

The Bureau: XCOM Declassified

I got this game as part of the Humble Bundle a while ago but didn't have a chance to play it till now.  Which turned out to be a good thing.

Unfortunately, the game isn't very good.  To be fair, it's not bad and it has a couple of interesting ideas.  It's just very very average.

With that said, there are two things about the game which are bad.  Naturally, I'll talk about that here.
:)

Voice Acting
If I was being generous, I would describe the voice acting as wooden.  Most of the lines are delivered flat.  Those that aren't flat are delivered in a gritty annoyed tone - mainly because those lines are being delivered by the main character.

To be fair to the voice actors, I'm not sure if the bad voice acting is due to poor voice actors or if its down to poor voice direction or poor writing.  Which brings me to my next point.

Writing
The writing in this game is atrocious.  And I mean really really atrocious.

To illustrate how bad, let me give you an example from near the start of the game.  At this point, you have gone through the first mission and have just gone to your new XCOM base.

As you explore the base and talk to people, you very quickly realise that they are still scrambling to get the base fully operational as there are a lot of signs of chaos.  Corridors are blocked with boxes.  Entire sections of the base are unreachable as they haven't been powered up yet.  Also, someone tells you that they are scrambling to get the base operational.

While you wander around, someone tells you that one of the scientists has gone missing.  In addition, he took a bomb with him so people are concerned with what he might be up to.  However, agent Nils, one of the agents who helped you in your first mission, is tracking him so hopefully, we will find him soon.

At this point, you get a call from that other agent.  He says that he tracked the scientist to the morgue and that there is no way out other than through the main door.  He tells you to hurry.  You tell him that you are on your way and then hang up.  Then, you say in a really anguished and desperate voice "Hang on, Nils!"

Wait, what?  Why the anguish?  Did Nils get shot or something?  As far as I know, he was just tracking a scientist, found him and was now waiting for me to go over there.  Why the (melo)drama?

This moment is a perfect example of narrative failure.  I'm actually fairly forgiving of plot holes and will breeze over most of them without question as long as I'm having a good time.  However, occasionally, the plot is so badly written that it pulls me straight out of the story.  At that point, I start asking questions instead of enjoying the story and unfortunately, things just fell apart for this game once I started doing that.

By the way, the reason for the melodrama is that agent Nils goes into the morgue after the scientist, who turns out to be an Alien Outsider and promptly gets killed by said Alien Outsider.  Natureally, your main character knew agent Nils would go in on his own despite Nils not giving any indication of this during the call.

You see what I mean about poor writing?

Bioshock 2

Well, that's me done with Bioshock 2.  Unfortunately, when I say done, I don't mean I completed the game.  I mean I won't be playing any further.

The main problem is that I keep running into a save game issue where my save file keeps getting corrupted.  I've restarted the Ryan Amusements level 4-5 times now and at this point, I just can't be bothered restarting again.

In addition to the save file problem, which I could probably get around if I was determined enough, I'm also not enjoying the game that much.  Primarily the reason is that the game itself is too similar to Bioshock - to the extent that I feel like I'm playing Bioshock 1.5 rather than an actual sequel.

The main issue I'm having with the game is actually the narrative - or rather, the fact that the mechanics of the game go completely counter to the games narrative.

In Bioshock 2, you are supposed to be a Big Daddy.

If you're familiar with the game, you will know that Big Daddy's are big monstrous creatures who are fully encased in deep diver suits.  They are big, hulking creatures which are extremely dangerous and extremely hard to kill.

Unfortunately, none of that translates to the actual gameplay.

In game, you are completely squishy - in fact, as squishy as you were at the start of Bioshock when you were just a normal plebby human.  In addition, you don't even feel like a big monstrous creature when moving around.  You zip around just as if you were a normal human.  The game tries to sell how big you are by adding in some sounds but the problem is that it doesn't work because the only thing that is different Bioshock is the sound.  For example, if you drop off some crates onto the floor, you hear a big clang as you land.  But the screen doesn't show how ponderous you are.  It feels like they took the animation from Bioshock and just added in the extra sound effect.

To be fair, I'm probably nit-picking here.  However, the net result is that I never felt like a Big Daddy and I just could't get past that in my mind when I was playing.  Unfortunately, I just wasn't able to immerse myself in the experience.