Game Night!
We had 5 people turn up so did a repeat of the games that we played in the last Game Night!
Get Bit!
To get ourselves warmed up, we played 3 games of Get Bit!
As always, we had a ton of fun and at one point, were told by "The Man" that we were too noisy. Oops! If nothing else, I guess this proves how much fun we were having!
Also - I managed to win one of the games! Woot!
Castle Ravenloft
As with before, Castle Ravenloft was the main event of the evening.
I actually had some reservations as I'm not convinced that 5 player Castle Ravenloft works - my main concern being that with 5 players, there is too much downtime. This is actually based on a previous experience with playing Castle Ravenloft with 5 players. This time around, things seemed to go a bit better in that the players didn't seem bored during the game. With that said, I'm still not 100% convinced that the game works with 5 (yet).
We took on the Flesh Golem again as four of the players were involved last time when we lost that mission. As such, we were eager for revenge.
We initially tried to calm down the golem but halfway through, we realised that we likely wouldn't have enough time to do so and switched to trying to kill it instead. It was a close thing which ultimately came down to a final dice roll. Our fighter needed to roll a 9 to kill the golem. This was our last chance as, if he failed to do so, we would lose as we were out of healing surges and we had PCs down and out.
Our fighter rolled an 8.
>:(
Thursday, March 3, 2016
Thursday, February 4, 2016
Game Night! - 29 January 2015
Another game night so soon? Be still, my beating heart!!
Making up for a shortage of game nights in recent months, we decided to have a double in January. Good thing too as last week only had a turnout of 2 people. We originally had 5 people scheduled for this weeks game night but only 4 showed up.
Get Bit!
We started off with a simple game of Get Bit! Or rather, 3 games of Get Bit!
As always, the game went down extremely well and was really popular with the group. It's actually been a while since I played and I have to admit that this is a pretty great filler game. It's quick, fun while having just a little bit of brainpower needed and at the same time, it's always amusing to pull arms and legs off the little toy pirates!
I lost the first game but did manage to pull out a win in the next two (as usual, we played with my house rules where the game ends as soon as 1 person is eliminated). To be honest, I'm still not sure how I managed to win twice!
Castle Ravenloft
We then moved onto the main event of the evening - Castle Ravenloft.
This is a game which I always enjoy playing even though it's a relatively simple dungeon crawl. We decided to take on the Flesh Golem which the others hadn't faced before (but which I had in a previous solo game). The Flesh Golem is a really good mission and can end in a really exciting manner as you end up in a running fight through the dungeon.
Unfortunately, due to the way the cards played out, we drew the Flesh Golem only 2 squares away from the Start tile. This didn't give quite the running battle I had initially hoped for.
It was a close battle but we did end up losing. :(
Making up for a shortage of game nights in recent months, we decided to have a double in January. Good thing too as last week only had a turnout of 2 people. We originally had 5 people scheduled for this weeks game night but only 4 showed up.
Get Bit!
We started off with a simple game of Get Bit! Or rather, 3 games of Get Bit!
As always, the game went down extremely well and was really popular with the group. It's actually been a while since I played and I have to admit that this is a pretty great filler game. It's quick, fun while having just a little bit of brainpower needed and at the same time, it's always amusing to pull arms and legs off the little toy pirates!
I lost the first game but did manage to pull out a win in the next two (as usual, we played with my house rules where the game ends as soon as 1 person is eliminated). To be honest, I'm still not sure how I managed to win twice!
Castle Ravenloft
We then moved onto the main event of the evening - Castle Ravenloft.
This is a game which I always enjoy playing even though it's a relatively simple dungeon crawl. We decided to take on the Flesh Golem which the others hadn't faced before (but which I had in a previous solo game). The Flesh Golem is a really good mission and can end in a really exciting manner as you end up in a running fight through the dungeon.
Unfortunately, due to the way the cards played out, we drew the Flesh Golem only 2 squares away from the Start tile. This didn't give quite the running battle I had initially hoped for.
It was a close battle but we did end up losing. :(
Thursday, January 28, 2016
Game Night! - 22 January 2015
Another game night! Just two players again but we do have more players scheduled for our next game night.
Aliens: This Time its War
My friend wanted to start off with one of his favourites - a game which he has been able to win several times recently. ;)
We played two games and as before, I went with the marines while he went with the Aliens. Given his recent success, I was determined to get some wins. My friend, on the other hand, was looking to get the night off to a good start. Unfortunately for him, luck was not on his side and I managed to get 2 wins.
What was most hilarious though was when I killed the Alien Queen and my friend tried to get revenge by destroying my Power Loader. I informed him that the Power Loader can't be destroyed by the Alien player at which point he expressed shock at how unfair the game was. Coming from someone who previously claimed that the game was unfairly balanced in favour of the Alien player, this was music to my ears!
Battle Line
We followed up with one of our combined favourite games. Battle Line is a great game which is simple to learn and play but has massive depth. And as per usual, I won all 3 games.
:)
Talking with my friend, I did realise why. Primarily, he isn't good at risk assessment. There was one situation where he started off with two 1's and then split them up into separate war zones. This was a bad idea as he could potentially have had three 1's which, while not the best hand, would have at least forced me to potentially commit something better to that battlefield. Instead, he split up his hand and allowed me to defeat the other two battlefields more easily.
Red7
A new game. This was actually a game my friend had purchased and I was looking forward to playing it as I had heard good things about it. Unfortunately, my friend didn't really understand the rules so the first game we played was a complete farce as the rules, as he understood them, were clearly broken - a fact which I promptly proved to him by exploiting the flaw to get an easy win.
At this point, it was pretty obvious that we didn't understand the rules so I jumped onto BGG and downloaded the rules to read myself. I only skimmed the rules but got enough to let us play almost correctly. We played 2 more games with the new rules and we both ended with 1 win each.
I have since reread the rules properly (taking my time so that I didn't miss anything!) and we did miss a pretty important rule about card draw. This was a shame as the rule would have changed the game significantly and added a lot more skill to the game. As it was, I didn't really enjoy the two games we played as the game felt so random. Hopefully, I'll get a chance to replay the game again at a later date using the proper rules.
Aliens: This Time its War
My friend wanted to start off with one of his favourites - a game which he has been able to win several times recently. ;)
We played two games and as before, I went with the marines while he went with the Aliens. Given his recent success, I was determined to get some wins. My friend, on the other hand, was looking to get the night off to a good start. Unfortunately for him, luck was not on his side and I managed to get 2 wins.
What was most hilarious though was when I killed the Alien Queen and my friend tried to get revenge by destroying my Power Loader. I informed him that the Power Loader can't be destroyed by the Alien player at which point he expressed shock at how unfair the game was. Coming from someone who previously claimed that the game was unfairly balanced in favour of the Alien player, this was music to my ears!
Battle Line
We followed up with one of our combined favourite games. Battle Line is a great game which is simple to learn and play but has massive depth. And as per usual, I won all 3 games.
:)
Talking with my friend, I did realise why. Primarily, he isn't good at risk assessment. There was one situation where he started off with two 1's and then split them up into separate war zones. This was a bad idea as he could potentially have had three 1's which, while not the best hand, would have at least forced me to potentially commit something better to that battlefield. Instead, he split up his hand and allowed me to defeat the other two battlefields more easily.
Red7
A new game. This was actually a game my friend had purchased and I was looking forward to playing it as I had heard good things about it. Unfortunately, my friend didn't really understand the rules so the first game we played was a complete farce as the rules, as he understood them, were clearly broken - a fact which I promptly proved to him by exploiting the flaw to get an easy win.
At this point, it was pretty obvious that we didn't understand the rules so I jumped onto BGG and downloaded the rules to read myself. I only skimmed the rules but got enough to let us play almost correctly. We played 2 more games with the new rules and we both ended with 1 win each.
I have since reread the rules properly (taking my time so that I didn't miss anything!) and we did miss a pretty important rule about card draw. This was a shame as the rule would have changed the game significantly and added a lot more skill to the game. As it was, I didn't really enjoy the two games we played as the game felt so random. Hopefully, I'll get a chance to replay the game again at a later date using the proper rules.
Thursday, January 21, 2016
The Long War
Welp - kinda disappeared from the blogosphere for a while. Hopefully, I'm back to normal now and can start up my blogging again.
Part of the reason for the delay is due to XCOM - specifically The Long War mod.
Over Christmas, I purchased the XCOM enemy within DLC which was on sale at Steam. Fair warning - Steam sales are dangerous! I didn't get very far in the game before I got bored. To be fair, part of the reason I got bored was because I was itching to try out The Long War mod.
If you've never heard of it, The Long War mod is pretty much considered THE essential mod for XCOM. It changes up the game massively - so massively that I'll leave the detail to the link above. However, in brief, you have new classes, more soldiers, new equipment, a new tech tree and tons of voicepacks and maps added to the game (strictly speaking, the maps weren't added but recycled from the special missions which in the past, weren't used for normal missions). Naturally, to take into account all the new toys and skills you have - the difficulty in the game has been ramped up massively.
What is really impressive about the mod though is the way it forces you to change how you play.
Soldiers now suffer from fatigue after a mission and need a rest before going back out into the field. And the missions come thick and fast so you really don't get much chance to rest! This means that you are constantly cycling through soldiers so you have to focus on building up a great squad rather than relying on just a couple of super soldiers. The fatigue mechanic also makes SHIVs (robots) useful again - in the base game, they were just a waste of time and its great to now actually use them regularly. This is combined with an increase in the base squad size from 4 to 6 soldiers so that you don't feel punished by including the SHIV in your squad (bearing in mind that SHIVs don't gain experience).
This design philosophy permeates through the whole of the mod. Another example is that fighter kills are now tracked and fighter pilots gain experience and get better as a result of this. Suddenly, choosing which fighter to send out on an intercept has much more meaning.
The one big problem that I can currently see is that The Long War really is a long war. You have so many tactical battles that progress in the game slows to a crawl (which is further exacerbated by a slowed research speed). To be fair, this isn't a problem if you love the tactical game and are willing to spend lots and lots (and lots) of time on it.
In my case, with the lack of time I have to game, I can see me taking months to play through this mod. Hopefully, it doesn't impact my blogging schedule too much!!
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