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Mining for Horrors (A Shadows of Brimstone Topic)

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05 Oct 2016 13:02 #235561 by R.P.Kraul
Nice to see when other people get into this game. Brimstone is not without its flaws, but it's a hell of a.lot of fun.

1) I don't think you really need to remove stuff so much as just ignore it. IIRC, there are certain scavenge cards that reward gold & xp. So if you're playing one shot, scavenging is even more risky--and it's already pretty risky in a campaign game. As to the benefits of playing one shot: missions for low-level characters can be insanely difficult, which makes them a hell of a lot of fun (your mileage may vary).

2) The other base game is a great value. It adds four more character classes and a lot of new monsters. The tentacles repeat, so you'll end up with a lot of those. If you do have both core sets, the things you want to keep separate are scavenge cards, loot cards, and encounter tokens. Always use only one set of those--never combine them. The other stuff you can just combine.

As far as other expansions that add a lot, I love the deluxe enemy expansions. The Void Monsters and the Scafford Gang are both superb, and they both add enemies with ranged attacks, which is relatively rare among Brimstone Monsters. There's a deluxe Flesh Stalker pack that also looks fantastic, but it's part of 2.0 shipping (some copies were available on FFP's store for a while, but they were gobbled up quickly).

The town expansion is excellent. It includes Bandits, yet more ranged enemies. It also includes a series of missions that take place in the town, and it improves the town aspect quite a bit.

Cynder is a nice expansion, and quite an unusual and dangerous setting. Unfortunately, there aren't yet many Cynder-specific enemies, other than the Lava Men, which come with Cynder. There's also Belial, which is also part of 2.0, so it's not easy to obtain yet (I've bought some larger Reaper Bones minis to use as demons in Cynder, but that's a story for another day). As a result, I would set Cynder as a lower priority.

If I were prioritizing them, I would say 1) Swamps, 2) Town expansion, 3) Deluxe enemy expansions, 4) Regular enemy expansions, 5) Alternate other worlds, such as Cynder and Trederra (there's also an upcoming Derelict Ship expansion).

3) FFP sell supplental card packs. These are worth having, as they add artifacts, items, etc. They're pretty pricey, though, at $10 for 15 cards. I took advantage of a Labor Day sale, where it was buy two, get one free. That ended up being $40 for six packs. Not too bad. Keep your eye on their store for holiday sales (the stuff mentioned in #2 above, however, you can get much cheaper from Miniature Market and other online retailers).

FFP also sell resin minis, and so far, these have been exclusive to their store. The inventory appears to be pretty low right now, but they should add a bunch of stuff soon (hopefully). The resin minis are much better than the ones in the core boxes. I've especially found that the saloon girl, the rancher, and the lawman are really bad, so I replaced mine with resin. There are also some new classes available in resin in sets (you get male and female for each class for $16), but the inventory for those is depleted at the moment. If you haven't gone down the resin path, just be aware there is a lot of prep work involved--you have to scrub them thoroughly (I used vinegar and then degreaser). They are a pain in the ass to glue (superglue only). But they paint up nicely. You will find these and some other things under the "Preview" category of FFP's store.
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05 Oct 2016 13:11 #235562 by JEM
If you're just playing one-shots then no more expense is needed, I think. If you get into it, then the other main box and Frontier Town will give most of everything. That's an additional $100 though. The only supplement deck I got was the new Growing Dread cards, for variety- though you get a mix with the two base sets anyway. While I'm really tempted by the additional artifacts; a) I don't like spending $12 on 15 cards and b) a lot of good gear can be bought in the Frontier Town expansion.

The rabbit hole goes deeper, but 2xBase+Frontier Town is a solid bunch of stuff. If you can add some Trederran Raiders for $13 then sure.
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05 Oct 2016 15:03 #235566 by RabidWookie
I really wanted to love this game, but I can't escape the fact that it's devoid of meaningful decisions. Warhammer Quest was too, and that was fun in it's day, but in a world with games like Imperial Assault I can't justify getting into such a mindless game.
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05 Oct 2016 15:59 #235575 by JEM
The primary appeal of this game for me is the sense of ownership of a character, and being there as that character progresses through the overall story of the game. I think Trederra adds a lot of tactical play to the game, but it's never been the focus for me.
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05 Oct 2016 23:13 #235602 by RabidWookie

JEM wrote: The primary appeal of this game for me is the sense of ownership of a character, and being there as that character progresses through the overall story of the game. I think Trederra adds a lot of tactical play to the game, but it's never been the focus for me.


This game reminds me of the Pathfinder card game; great character development but nothing meaningful to do with that character. Flying Frog is notorious for making games that focus on dice rolling and cosplay photos instead of gameplay.
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06 Oct 2016 07:44 #235612 by JEM
There are no cosplay photos in Brimstone. Hey, I hope you enjoy your Star Wars game! I like some of those too.

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06 Oct 2016 14:48 #235680 by RabidWookie

JEM wrote: There are no cosplay photos in Brimstone. Hey, I hope you enjoy your Star Wars game! I like some of those too.


Imperial Assault is great but I'm still looking for my grail game; a fantasy dungeon crawl with the character building of Warhammer Quest, but also meaningful decisions and the furniture/trap/treasure searching aspects of Heroquest. I thought Dungeon Saga was going to be it, but apparently it's a whiff.

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06 Oct 2016 14:50 #235681 by Mr. White

RabidWookie wrote: Imperial Assault is great but I'm still looking for my grail game; a fantasy dungeon crawl with the character building of Warhammer Quest, but also meaningful decisions and the furniture/trap/treasure searching aspects of Heroquest. I thought Dungeon Saga was going to be it, but apparently it's a whiff.




boardgamegeek.com/thread/1037089/dungeon...-be-realistic-review
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06 Oct 2016 22:13 #235716 by RabidWookie

Mr. White wrote:

RabidWookie wrote: Imperial Assault is great but I'm still looking for my grail game; a fantasy dungeon crawl with the character building of Warhammer Quest, but also meaningful decisions and the furniture/trap/treasure searching aspects of Heroquest. I thought Dungeon Saga was going to be it, but apparently it's a whiff.




boardgamegeek.com/thread/1037089/dungeon...-be-realistic-review


What does AHQ do better than WHQ?

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06 Oct 2016 22:51 - 06 Oct 2016 22:51 #235717 by Mr. White
I attached a link to a review well worth reading.

It has everything you requested in your grail game, particularly the meaningful decisions. Like the reviews states...every decision is meaningful.

We enjoyed the challenge and theme far more than comical nature of WHQ. Particularly because each fight was a threat and not just popcorn to munch through. AHQ is as close to board gaming in the true Old World as has ever been made.

PM if interested in seeing the rules.
Last edit: 06 Oct 2016 22:51 by Mr. White.

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07 Oct 2016 00:13 #235725 by RabidWookie

Mr. White wrote: I attached a link to a review well worth reading.

It has everything you requested in your grail game, particularly the meaningful decisions. Like the reviews states...every decision is meaningful.

We enjoyed the challenge and theme far more than comical nature of WHQ. Particularly because each fight was a threat and not just popcorn to munch through. AHQ is as close to board gaming in the true Old World as has ever been made.

PM if interested in seeing the rules.


I read the review, but it said nothing of meaningful tactical combat or meaningful choices. It sounded like a more grim version of WHQ.

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07 Oct 2016 07:32 - 07 Oct 2016 08:19 #235729 by Mr. White
There's the furniture to fight in and around, doorways causing single square funnels, weapon resources to manage, traps and secret doors to search for, more variance in dungeon layout, more pressure to press on rather than leave and hit the town.

I dunno, man, I guess I need to know more what you mean by 'meaningful choices'. AHQ is a more tactical game for sure.

EDIT: I forgot to add, that besides character advancement, you actually roll-up and create characters rpg style. You aren't assigned a card with pre-baked stats like in WHQ. I find generating my own characters and watching them develop (or die) to be more fulfilling than pre-gens...in rpgs or boardgames.
Last edit: 07 Oct 2016 08:19 by Mr. White.

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07 Oct 2016 08:42 #235734 by JEM
In exciting, non Heroquest related news, we'll be getting to play Brimstone tonight. Our regular game is scheduled for next week but we have another player who's been wanting to try the game out so three of us are going to sneak in an additional adventure.
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07 Oct 2016 09:00 #235737 by Mr. White
Sorry for derailing this thread, but I want to point out something.

Any of these games can be a great time so long as there's an enthusiastic cheerleader. I'd love to play in one of Jem's Brimstone games...
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10 Oct 2016 08:43 - 10 Oct 2016 08:46 #235851 by JEM
So, we are going to be switching from Brimstone to an RPG (or at least mixing them around depending on player availability) towards the end of the year. On that subject I'd reached out to a player from our last RPG and it turned out she was really interested in playing Brimstone. I thought it would be fine- usually we have five players and I think six will work just as well. Two of our regulars were unavailable on Friday but three of us plus our new player (who took the US Marshal) went into the Targa Plateau to close down some horrible thing or other by way of finding five journal pages.

We're all level four, and we started the new character at level 3- I didn't want her to be committed too far into a level progression without getting a feel for the game. It turns out that not having a heal-spamming nun running around makes the game a fair bit trickier. Our gunslinger popped almost all of his sidebag tokens, including the ones in the expedition chest.

Fights for me are pretty tactical because I have gear options other than just shooting a gun. If I can get in melee I can roll four attack dice, but some monsters cause corruption hits if you stand next to them, or like the custodian robots who shock every adjacent player for three hits on their turn. Whereas if I equip my scout bow I only roll two dice, but get double the critical hit chance and +1 initiative, so sometimes it was worth trying to go before the enemies.

The final fight was with a Harbinger, though that model is too big for the box, so I proxied with the Goliath. We spread out to avoid everyone getting hit by the sweep attack at the end of each round. Our new US Marshal dropped to 1 hitpoint before chugging some herbs and bandages to keep in the fight, but she did end the mission with a mutation (slippery skin, handy for escaping monsters) which is kind of the "Welcome to Brimstone" moment for any character.

So we might have six of us playing in future, which I think should be a good time.
Last edit: 10 Oct 2016 08:46 by JEM.
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