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Thrillingly, I won on the last turn when my roleur (in 3rd place) played his final 7 and slipped ahead of the exhausted 1st and 2nd place riders by exactly one square, crossing the finish line.
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Roland the fed was my best character. He gets a free clue and/or a free dollar whenever he is low on either. His skill was Credit Rating, which he could tap once per turn to pay up to $2 of any cost. He starts with an ally, and I drew Duke the dog, which increased Roland's max sanity by one. More importantly, Roland started with a flamethrower and a magic staff, so he was loaded for monster-whacking from the start. In every single fight, he killed his opponent on the first round, whether it was a lowly cultist or a proto-shoggoth. Thanks to Roland, monsters never had a chance to build up on the board, and the terror factor never rose above 1.
Mandy the researcher ended up being my best gate sealer. She started with a decent magic sword. She sealed three gates during the game, though one got burst later on. Mandy also joined the Sheldon Gang.
Diana the former cultist didn't start with any good gear, but she did find a magic mask that let her use her Speed value to Sneak or her Sneak value for Speed. She also started with a one-shot spell to Bless someone, but saved that until late in the game. Diana had some bad luck and eventually got sent to Kingsport to prevent a rift, and she also failed at that.
Rex the reporter is a swingy character. He starts out with curse that doesn't evaporate on its own, but he scores an extra clue token every time he gains clue tokens. I had him focus on his personal story early on, which cost a whopping 10 clue tokens, but once achieved, the first player got a free clue each turn for the rest of the game. He got rid of his curse early on, at the risk of turning into a deep one. He had to return to Innsmouth after martial law to successfully put down a fishman uprising, and his Sneak skill plus clue gathering was perfect for that job.
We lost. We made pretty good progress on sealing the gates, but that was after wasting a number of turns on pursuing personal stories for the characters, which also cost 20 clue tokens. We were kicking butt in the second half of the game, but got hit twice with mythos cards that added 2 doom tokens instead of a gate. We went into battle with three blessings and two well-equipped characters, but Cthulhu regenerates a doom marker every turn, so it was lengthy but unwinnable final battle.
One reason I wanted to play Arkham Horror solitaire is that I want to find the right game balance that still allows me to play all boards. I love the idea of a big sandbox where anything can happen, but that also opens up an extra potential threat on each board: the Dunwich Horror, the Deep One uprising in Innsmouth, and the rifts of Kingsport. Dunwich stayed quiet, but I had to deal with a rift and the Deep Ones. That, plus the personal stories, was a big distraction from the essential job of sealing gates. I want to find a better balance, because a couple of new friends expressed an interest in trying Arkham Horror sometime, especially since one of them is a big fan of the Cthulhu mythos.
The conventional wisdom is that Arkham Horror plays best with one extra town and one herald. Maybe I can accomodate all four boards by throwing a guardian (good guy equivalent of a herald) or institution in the mix. I have also toyed with a house rule where Kingsport spawns clue tokens at the rift encounter locations. The Lurker at the Threshold is also a herald that tends to be more helpful than harmful.
At any rate, I left Arkham Horror set up on my gaming table, and plan to play at least a couple more times in the next week, testing for balance. Back when I first got Arkham Horror, our gaming group played it a lot and eventually we were winning about 90% of the time. With Dunwich, our win rate dropped to 50%, which I prefer. Although the Epic Battle cards are fun enough to make the final battle entertaining, I would also like to see more games that are won by sealing or closing gates.
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I've been playing through the narrative campaign in Days Gone By expansion for the Walking Dead : All Out War. Really digging the game, although I keep forgetting rules.
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- Legomancer
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- D10
- Dave Lartigue
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With the plague upon us, though, I figured there was no better time to dig into it again. I got rid of my cards long ago but signed up for MTG Arena, which is like Hearthstone but with Magic. I'm having a ball.
Oh it's full of people playing the same three net decks and such, and I don't care about the meta or anything, I'm building my dumb themed decks (my first was the 101st Airborne -- all flyers -- which has now been improved to the 102nd Airborne) and throwing them out there to sink (more frequently) or swim. I've got cards galore and the game keeps throwing more of them at me. I've spent a grand total of five bucks already and that was just so I can maybe do some drafting later on.
Magic really is one of my favorite games I ever played and I thought it was behind me forever. But it's back, baby, and I'm pretty stoked about it.
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- Legomancer
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- Dave Lartigue
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- Sagrilarus
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- D20
- Pull the Goalie
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I put Warriors of God up and Tommy Nomad took me up on the offer. His first play of Warriors of God in spite of having been toying with it for years. As I always do I found art from whatever Vassal game I have going that goes onto my PC background, and boy oh boy are there choices for the 100 Years War. This time I went with the Seige of Orleans, with Joan swinging the flag. Alas, I had to crop. But I wanted something different than what I've used in the past.
I love the guy in the upper corner with the rock.
Tommy is in the Netherlands, my first time going abroad for an opponent.
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- Disgustipater
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- D8
- Dapper Deep One
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I haven't played against Azathoth in a really long time, so I had forgotten that its presence means that characters will have more time to acquire good gear, or madness and injuries if things don't go well. In fact, both things happened this game. Nearly everybody ended up with impressive combinations of weapons and spells and nifty items, and the team ended the game with 5 permanent injuries and 8 permanent insanities. Instead of having characters go to the hospital or sanitarium in a proactive way, they flung themselves heedlessly into peril and got smacked down hard at times.
Akachi had a so-so game. She never seemed to be in the right place at the right time, and was the only one with unimpressive gear. She even got both Tainted and Jinxed. By mid-game, she was sent to Kingsport to deal with rifts, and she struggled with even that task to the point where she needed a little help dealing with the second rift. During the very first encounter of this game, she had a chance to meet Duke the dog, the only ally I found in the previous game, but he ran away.
Luke was the big damn hero of the game. He sealed three gates and was even in possession of the Great Seal at the end of the game. (A weird encounter yanked him out of Arkham and dumped him in the Strange High House in the Mist, in Kingsport.) He's a natural, because he starts out with that handy Gate Box and picks up a clue token every time he enters an Outer World space.
William started out the game thematically going to the Graveyard for a clue. By the time he left (two turns later), he had ironically acquired Necrophobia. Then he kept running into undead. Late in the game, he made a foray to clean up Innsmouth and also acquire a surplus of clue tokens, just before he got Devoured.
George had an even rougher game. He got his hand broken early in the game, and was dragging around a nice magic sword that he couldn't even use anymore. Eventually he traded the sword to Luke for a nice one-handed magic cane. Late in the game, he also got a broken ankle and was left hobbling through the streets while a couple of dangerous flyers were in the sky.
Michael always starts out as an ideal monster whacker, aside from his lack of ability to deal with monsters with physical immunity. He ventured out to Dunwich during midgame to head off a problem with the Dunwich Horror. At one point, he tried to whack one monster too many and ended up with Amnesia, losing a distressing quantity of clue tokens. Now that he could only retain four clues at a time, he re-dedicated himself to pure monster whacking, and eventually killed a total of 11. He even managed to lay hands on partial elder sign from the Egyptian exhibit and managed to seal a gate with it despite his amnesia.
In the end, gate bursts kept me from sealing for the win. We had five sealed gates and Luke heading for the final one with the Great Seal, but Azathoth showed up and that meant no final battle, either.
I've learned my lesson now that all four boards is just too hard. But I really want to play with the full sandbox. So here is my new house rule when playing with all four boards: the first time a Mythos card makes reference to either Kingsport, Dunwich, or Innsmouth, that is the only board that is allowed to pose an additional threat (rifts or Dunwich Horror or deep one uprising). That one extra threat should be enough to create some extra pressure without making the game impossible to win outside of Final Battle. And though I do enjoy the Final Battle cards, I don't think that every game should end in Final Battle.
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- hotseatgames
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- D12
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It was my first time as Vagabond, and my girlfriend's first try at Duchy. The game started out pretty much as expected, with the Duchy and Vagabond keeping pretty close and the other two trailing.
I was helping the Corvids by giving them cards and started scoring a lot of VP that way. The River Folk player was thoroughly distressed because nobody bought any services. I am convinced that this is the least fun faction in the game, and that they should never even come out of the box unless there are 6 players and whoever is playing them knows exactly what they are in for.
Corvids were trailing, but had an explosive turn in which they gained about 10 points and pulled ahead, stopping at 29 points. It looked like they had it locked up, but I was able to play cleverly, gaining 7 points to beat them by a single point. Ha!
TLDR, fuck the river folk
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- Jackwraith
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- Ninja
- Maim! Kill! Burn!
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However, there is a way for the otters to play against that. It just takes a very experienced Riverfolk player.
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It's an interesting adventure game with a strange appeal: abstraction of typical genre tropes combined with lavish art that allows the player to take its queues and flesh out the world & events for themselves. The personal quests also help with the narrative framework, providing brief paragraphs to tie the keyword chase together. These remind me of the "personal stories" in the Sands of Al Kalim expansion for Runebound.
It was a nice way to spend the afternoon indoors, sequestered from the rain and COVID, & avoiding the usual display screens for the day (aside from my nerding out on Insta )
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