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20 Dec 2015 11:07 #217839 by ChristopherMD
Splendor - Hadn't played this before. Its okay. I would play again, but wouldn't request it.

Guns & Steel - This I really liked. Its like a civ game where the tech tree is the game.

Fury of Dracula 3rd - This game bombed so hard I'm selling my copy because I know it'll never hit the table again. We ended up not even finishing it. Went from boring where nothing happens to frustrating where Drac would always escape. Dracula player was just hiding until the Fury ability would kick in later. I didn't hate the game as much as the other hunter did, but I won't ever bring it out for another group and risk the same thing happening.
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20 Dec 2015 11:16 #217841 by Gary Sax

Mad Dog wrote: Fury of Dracula 3rd - This game bombed so hard I'm selling my copy because I know it'll never hit the table again. We ended up not even finishing it. Went from boring where nothing happens to frustrating where Drac would always escape. Dracula player was just hiding until the Fury ability would kick in later. I didn't hate the game as much as the other hunter did, but I won't ever bring it out for another group and risk the same thing happening.


I hate it when this happens. It's understandable and I get it, but it sucks if the game just happened to have one horrendous showing, for whatever reason, but now will never be played again. I had a similar thing happen with Cosmic Encounter at my house. I still own it, but I doubt anyone will agree to play it with me again after the single, terrible session we played.
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20 Dec 2015 12:03 - 20 Dec 2015 12:03 #217842 by Da Bid Dabid

Gary Sax wrote:

Mad Dog wrote: Fury of Dracula 3rd - This game bombed so hard I'm selling my copy because I know it'll never hit the table again. We ended up not even finishing it. Went from boring where nothing happens to frustrating where Drac would always escape. Dracula player was just hiding until the Fury ability would kick in later. I didn't hate the game as much as the other hunter did, but I won't ever bring it out for another group and risk the same thing happening.


I hate it when this happens. It's understandable and I get it, but it sucks if the game just happened to have one horrendous showing, for whatever reason, but now will never be played again. I had a similar thing happen with Cosmic Encounter at my house. I still own it, but I doubt anyone will agree to play it with me again after the single, terrible session we played.


This is the reason I'm really torn up about upgrading my 2nd to a 3rd edition despite the changes sounding great.

We also had a similar first experience with Cosmic, and is why I traded it... included in that deal was Spartacus which prolly has a similar chance of bombing - but managed to escape that fate and is likely the local favorite game. *shrug*
Last edit: 20 Dec 2015 12:03 by Da Bid Dabid. Reason: Format
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20 Dec 2015 13:57 #217846 by stoic

DukeofChutney wrote: Played two games of Ares Project, still a favourite of mine. I tried a turtling and deep strike strategy with the Terrans with beat the space wizards two times in a row. Turns out building tonnes of cheap turrets and upgrading them with tech buffs is a good way to hose invading armies.


I bought Ares Project on Black Friday. I've been reading the instructions. I can't wait to play this with my son.
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20 Dec 2015 16:49 #217853 by Rliyen
A few weeks ago, I had my friends over for boardgames. The first game we inevitable play is Battlestar Galactica with the Pegasus expansion. It was me (Helo), my wife JoAnn (Starbuck), Trish (Adama) and Nathan (Zarek). When the Loyalty cards were given out, I was a Cylon. This filled me with much glee, as they were already hamstrung off the bat. Let me preface the summary of this fiasco as saying that this game was the SHORTEST we'd ever played and it just so happens that the Crisis cards were in my favor.

The initial setup was going okay. The raiders were being taken care of, my turn of not being on the ship came and went. Then, it went south real quickly, as Scar appeared on the board and the basestars were churning out raiders as fast as they were being put down. So, Starbuck headed to CIC to try and take out the basestars that were on the board, and ended up damaging the Pegasus more than she damaged the basestars. There are civilian casualties because of Scar and then the fleet jumps 1 distance.

This is where the shit hit the fan, because the first Crisis card that came up was Cylon Ambush. Two turns later, another Cylon attack card came up with Heavy Raiders. At this point, I've been acting normal, only frakking up the skill checks so much. When I saw what was on the board, I just had to act. I excused myself from the table, for the apparent purpose of getting a drink, and turned on the cabinet CD player. In the tray, was the OST of the BSG First Season. When it got to be my turn, I hit the play button and the Cylon intro theme played.

“Oh, shit,” was the refrain from the table as I returned, drink in hand, smirk on face, and revealed my Cylon Loyalty card. I resurrect and inwardly smiled when I saw my Super Crisis Card: Cylon Intruders. You see, they already had several heavy raiders on the board, and no piloted Vipers to deal with them. In my subsequent turns, I activated the Cylon Fleet space and moved those Heavy Raiders into boarding position. By the time the fleet was nearing to jump, two Centurions were already on the Galactica and halfway to blowing the locks. Before they were able to jump, I played my Crisis card and at that time they didn't have enough to pass it. So, two more Centurions boarded a heavily damaged Galactica. Zarek was in the Armory, but he wasn't doing much good. Starbuck joined him later and did just as well at stopping them. The fleet jumped a whole 1 distance. I moved back to the Cylon Fleet space and kept activating the Heavy Raiders. Humans vented into space, Cylons win.

We finished the game in about an hour and a half.
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22 Dec 2015 03:44 #217969 by Space Ghost
Played Acrobats and [/b]Waldschattenspiel[/b] with my 3 year old -- she liked both. She really got a kick out of moving the candle around in the latter. I read her the rules and she was fascinated with the fact that the light would "freeze" the dwarves. She promptly made all but one dwarf get frozen and then worked on trying to have one hero dwarf rescue them all. Acrobats also went over well, although she got pissed off when she knocked over the arch.

Played more Ghostbusters -- overall, I think this is getting a bad wrap. It is easily as good as the new Star Wars Risk game (probably much better). The art is great as it is done by the artist for the comic books (Schoening). The trapping/deposit mechanic is good and the need to keep the tougher ghosts tethered with a proton stream without letting them get out of range makes it feel unlike other games. Additionally, even though the ghost movement is stupidly random, it is appropriate and it makes it feel like one would guess the ghosts move -- erratic. The game is extremely loyal to the source material -- most of it the Real Ghostbusters cartoon from the 80s.

We played some more scenarios tonight -- finished off our fight against Slimer, which was pretty damn hard. Then, we played the zombie taxi driver scenario where the zombie taxi drivers can hijack Ecto-1; it was pretty ridiculous. Probably will move onto the next campaign next week; look forward to getting to Samhain, Sandman, and the Boogie Man after that.

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22 Dec 2015 08:28 #217978 by charlest

Space Ghost wrote: Played Acrobats and [/b]Waldschattenspiel[/b] with my 3 year old -- she liked both. She really got a kick out of moving the candle around in the latter. I read her the rules and she was fascinated with the fact that the light would "freeze" the dwarves. She promptly made all but one dwarf get frozen and then worked on trying to have one hero dwarf rescue them all. Acrobats also went over well, although she got pissed off when she knocked over the arch.

Played more Ghostbusters -- overall, I think this is getting a bad wrap. It is easily as good as the new Star Wars Risk game (probably much better). The art is great as it is done by the artist for the comic books (Schoening). The trapping/deposit mechanic is good and the need to keep the tougher ghosts tethered with a proton stream without letting them get out of range makes it feel unlike other games. Additionally, even though the ghost movement is stupidly random, it is appropriate and it makes it feel like one would guess the ghosts move -- erratic. The game is extremely loyal to the source material -- most of it the Real Ghostbusters cartoon from the 80s.

We played some more scenarios tonight -- finished off our fight against Slimer, which was pretty damn hard. Then, we played the zombie taxi driver scenario where the zombie taxi drivers can hijack Ecto-1; it was pretty ridiculous. Probably will move onto the next campaign next week; look forward to getting to Samhain, Sandman, and the Boogie Man after that.


I finished the Slimer campaign thus far. I find it to be OK. Very average I would say but not terrible. Certainly a Zombicide derivative.

What it has going for it:

-Fast setup
-Great art/presentation
-Interesting scenarios
-Cool ghost collection/stream basic rules

What it struggles with:

-Repetitive
-Absolutely no variety of monsters in retail edition
-Can become boring when playing multiplayer (solitaire isn't as bad) because your actions are so limited
-Minis are hard to tell apart at times
-A bit bland overall
-Very little asymmetry between the Busters (in comparison to its peers)

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23 Dec 2015 10:06 #218076 by metalface13
I wrote up my thoughts on Warhammer Quest Adventure Card Game in its own thread, but that wasn't the only game I played last weekend. Although it was the game we played the most. We also played Mage Knight, Tides of Time, Warhammer Quest Adventure Card Game and then some kids games Diamonster, Labyrinth, and My First Carcassone.

I went into this weekend fully expecting to play a lot of Mage Knight, as that's what we've focused on in previous get togethers. Mage Knight has been my favorite adventure game since we first played it a little over three years ago. It's huge, epic, has lots of variation in set up, scenarios, heroes, etc. I like that it's a bit of a brain burner too. You've got to figure out how to best use your hand to accomplish the goals you want. It can be a bit exhausting especially as the game goes on, but all of that just adds to the feel of an epic quest for me. This time though, Mage Knight fell a bit flat for us. It's been over a year since we've played it and it's not exactly a set of rules you can just jump back into and get the feel of things. We usually play the standard Blitz scenario to get the hang of things, maybe with a thing or two from an expansion to get us going and then try out a different scenario the next day. This time we decided to just dive in and play the new Shades of Tezla expansion. Shades of Tezla adds a new druid type character and two factions of enemies. The Dark Crusaders which are pretty much undead and the Elementalists which are like the forces of nature. We played the full co-op scenario that sees you fighting both forces. When the red city gets revealed it becomes the Necropolis where the leader of the Dark Crusaders lives surrounded by his minions. Likewise when the green city is revealed it becomes the Hidden Valley where the Elemantalist leader lives with his cronies. The goal of the scenario is to defeat both in 3 Days (ie 6 turns). Oh and all the magic glade spaces had a green monster and brown monster placed on them. So there are enemies everywhere and they are pretty tough.

It all proved to be a bit too much, with new units, new abilities and the scenario conditions. It was a real drag and we were both soured by the experience. Sometimes it just feels like you need a phd-level of knowledge of the rules in order to play. We were constantly having to try and look things up like how to fight multiple enemies, how do the different spaces work, what classifies as an "assault" etc. Also, how does anybody actually beat these co-op scenarios? The bosses are insane.

It's for these reasons and WHQAC's own merits that WHQAC is my new favorite adventure game. It's just so much simpler to play. Now that I've given it some time though, I kind of feel like we didn't give Mage Knight a fair shake. It really wasn't fair to just dive in and expect to have a good time. I'm sure we would have had more fun if we had played the standard scenario with a new hero or some new units mixed in with the old ones. I still consider Mage Knight to be the ultimate deserted island game. There is just so much game there. Lots of different scenarios, seriously if you count all the competitive, co-op and solo versions of each scenario in the new Shades of Tezla expansion there are over 16. Also if you're playing regularly the rules aren't such an issue. It would also be a fantastic PC/iPad game if the burden of record keeping and rules enforcement was on the CPU.

Tides of Time was OK. A short little drafting game where you pass hands of cards back and forth to build a little tableu of a kingdom in front of you.

For the kids games, Labyrinth is a challenge when you have two frenetic 6-year olds (my brother has twins) jabbering and crawling all over you. It really makes it hard to remember the two clear spaces you managed to find. Diamonsters has really great illustrations and My First Carcassone was the first Carcassone game I've played in years, but it was a nice way to play the game with kids.
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24 Dec 2015 00:13 - 24 Dec 2015 00:14 #218160 by cdennett
I took this week off from work as my 8 year old son is with me until shortly after Christmas and I wanted more time with him. A couple of days ago my son is asking me to play a game, I said OK and asked what he wanted to play. He started reaching for Castle Ravenloft when I stopped him and said let's try out Space Cadets: Away Missions. I've had my Kickstarter copy on the shelf unplayed for a couple of months now and figured I could finally get it played. After getting through the intro scenario without much difficulty, be went to the Slave Pens one. We were running one cadet each (he was the captain, I was the professor) and our first attempt ended with us dying trying to get back to the elevator. We reset and played it again later that day, and this time found ourselves right outside the elevator when we hit the first Alert token pull...a fucking Sentinel. Enemies were piling up around us, though we lucked out having half of the map gated by hatches. I end up opening the elevator hatch to get the Sentinel out of the elevator (so we can escape next turn) and pray we survive. The captain was taking all the punishment and ended up with 1 health left. OK, so now it's all up to the Alert tile draw...and we get panic that kills us both (as we're down to 1 O2 each). Gah!

Started up another game today, same scenario, but this time we opted for two cadets each. Ended up being much easier, though we did find the elevator early and we were almost to the Alert draws, so things could have turned nasty in a hurry. Regardless, third time was the charm, and I think I enjoyed having more options with the characters.


I come upstairs later tonight and find this (totally not involved at all):


I guess he wants to play again tomorrow...

I'll just say I wasn't really sold on the game based on the Kickstarter campaign or even reading the descriptions from those of you that had played many times through its prototype phases. I really bought into it to support the people on this site and hoped that it was decent. It had a good toy factor and I like playing co-ops with the family more than competitive. Even after reading the rules, I was starting to wonder if this was all hyped up because everyone here like's Al. But, after playing that mission 3 times and seeing how things worked, what a great game this is. Sure, it's got a lot of randomness and isn't always going to deliver a razor's edge performance, but the mechanics and how the overkill works into it, I'm really digging it. The fun-factor on this one is really high. My only complaint is the "gaminess" of the aliens moving on the unexplored tiles (going through hatches that may be there), but in general it plays pretty damn smoothly.
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Last edit: 24 Dec 2015 00:14 by cdennett.

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24 Dec 2015 08:27 - 24 Dec 2015 08:27 #218169 by Columbob

cdennett wrote: I'll just say I wasn't really sold on the game based on the Kickstarter campaign or even reading the descriptions from those of you that had played many times through its prototype phases. I really bought into it to support the people on this site and hoped that it was decent. It had a good toy factor and I like playing co-ops with the family more than competitive. Even after reading the rules, I was starting to wonder if this was all hyped up because everyone here like's Al. But, after playing that mission 3 times and seeing how things worked, what a great game this is. Sure, it's got a lot of randomness and isn't always going to deliver a razor's edge performance, but the mechanics and how the overkill works into it, I'm really digging it. The fun-factor on this one is really high. My only complaint is the "gaminess" of the aliens moving on the unexplored tiles (going through hatches that may be there), but in general it plays pretty damn smoothly.


This was more or less my position as well, I supported the KS campaign out of solidarity with people I've never met in person, but I was also confident that a coop game that supports up to 6 would get played over here, and it does (mostly 2 players, but I've also played it with 3, 4 and 6). It's also a very solid design, nice components, and fun too, plus I won't be out of new scenarios to try out anytime soon. Hopefully by that time the expansion will be ready.
Last edit: 24 Dec 2015 08:27 by Columbob.

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24 Dec 2015 09:51 - 24 Dec 2015 09:52 #218172 by repoman

I was starting to wonder if this was all hyped up because everyone here like's Al.


I hate Al.

Warning: Spoiler!
Last edit: 24 Dec 2015 09:52 by repoman.

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24 Dec 2015 11:49 - 24 Dec 2015 11:51 #218180 by Da Bid Dabid
I was able to play Twilight Imperium last night with quite a few of the Shattered Ascension mods. I will post more in depth when I get time in the latest TI thread, but it was a 10 turn game with Mentak winning at the end. I was 3rd with Barony and both myself and 2nd place made a bid that almost won but came up short in the final round. It was a great game.

Before all the players showed up and during a break in the game I got some Luchador! time and as always it delivered. In the matches I played Hogan and Warrior had an epic tag battle vs Andre and Taker which was the longest match I'd ever seen, Hogan ended up being the MVP and defeating me and my partner. My Undertaker defeated Sgt. Slaughter and HBK destroyed my Stone Cold. A final match I was dominating HHH with Brett Hart, but one of our players returned from running an errand, and the game was tossed away to return to TI.
Last edit: 24 Dec 2015 11:51 by Da Bid Dabid.
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24 Dec 2015 16:13 #218197 by Jexik
Played my first four games of X-Wing. Damn. I've never played an aerial combat game before but I love it. It probably doesn't hurt that I saw episodes VII and IV on Monday.
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25 Dec 2015 01:24 #218211 by hotseatgames
Big game day today...
1. First tried my latest prototype of Tales of Dread, which went over well. Hopefully this game sees the light of day.
2. Then played 2 player Nexus Ops. Game ran long but was fun. I lost by two points.
3. Then a game of Labyrinth, which I had never played before. I got trounced, and I can't say I cared for it. Just didn't seem all that interesting.
4. My friend just got Mansions of Madness, so he brought it over, we punched it, went through the rules, and played the first story. I ran two investigators. We both thought it was pretty cool. Things went well, despite my misinterpreting one of the clues which cost me some time. In the end, I ran out of that precious time and had no chance of winning. But I'm looking forward to him bringing it to a future game night, which is likely happening Monday night. That same game night is also supposed to be the introduction of Fury of Dracula, which I think the group will like.

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25 Dec 2015 19:28 #218226 by repoman
Christmas Day gaming. My step-daughter and son-in-law are both Volunteer Firefighters with the local station so I got them Flash Point Fire Rescue. We played it tonight and while it doesn't stand out as anything special it is a competent and smooth co-op. But of course the great part was playing as a family and having some laughs. It's too bad the building collapsed before we rescued seven people.

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