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. :(
Thursday, February 4, 2016
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!!
Thursday, December 31, 2015
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:
Full analysis below:
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).
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