All posts by Darren

A Horror From The Past

Blast from the past

So after the internets melt down yesterday when the new Star Wars trailer was released (I played my part in that for sure, go watch the Kevin Smith reaction video) it decided to remind me via Facebook of a gaming horror!

Cthulhu Realms on paper should have been one of my favourite games. I LOVE Star Realms the game it was based on. Heck it was created by the same designer.

However I didn’t like the game. I felt the icons on the cards it used just got in the way, slowed things down.

Star Realms has a pace to it. A flow. Cthulhu Realms with its over reliance on icons disrupted that flow. Each card you played you were having to decode what it did by referring to the rules or player score board. It slowed things down a lot. Yes if you played the game a lot that would disappear. But this put me off trying to get to that stage.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom. I did like the multiplayer formats it introduced. And these work well in Star Realms. 

Luckily the mistakes made in Cthulhu Realms were not repeated in Hero Realms.

So there I’ve worked that bad memory out of the system. Thanks Facebook!

Star Wars The Last Jedi Teaser Released

star wars

The above says it all really. Where have the years gone?

Currently in the US (Orlando I believe) they are into the second day of a Star Wars orgy Star Wars Celebration. They have so many big names there taking part, original cast, new cast, behind the scenes people, memorabilia the lot. And it’s all live streamed ^__^

Just now (as I write this) they have released the official teaser for Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Spoiler alert! It’s frickin AMAZING!


We were also spoilt with the poster also, OMG how cool is this?


Finally they did a touching tribute to Carrie Fisher.

The Computer Loves You

new arrivals

Way back in 2014 I backed the reboot/update of an “old” rpg called Paranoia. (You can read more about the game after all the photos, where I blatantly steal the publishers words.)

It was estimated to be delivered for June 2015.

Yesterday I finally got my Director’s Commentary level pledge. Yep a wee bit over due.

So I thought I’d celebrate its arrival by showing off its content here.

So that level included “the complete Paranoia Box Set, special Ultraviolet Kickstarter Edition”. Which means I get this neat A5 white box with the logo in white. I like this design a lot. 

Inside the box are found four A5 books. These make up the rules (game master and player), missions, and a guide to Alpha Complex.

I like the size. The binding seems ok. Although some have on the Kickstarter comments section raised concerns about the binding. 


There are also four wipe clean boards for players to record their characters on. Although I doubt I’ll use these. I have a PDF of the form, plus copies in the forms pack. So I’ll just print copies off and use them.

We also have cards to use in the game. They aren’t the best quality and will be getting sleeved. But I still like these better than the Munchkin Letter cards (which long suffering readers will remember I dislike). 


There are also five dice included. And the publisher is getting a lot of heat for these. Rightly so. I’m ok with the red computer die, but the four little player dice. Dire. It’s not the end of the world but still, I’d expected better. I’ll be replacing these with better normal sized ones.


I thought I’d include some pictures from the back of the books and one from the Interactive Screen, that hint at the humour of the game.


I did buy two add ons for the game.

The first being two forms packs for the game.

The second item was the Interactive Screen or otherwise known as the GM screen.

I also got special PDFs of the rules “with annotations from the designers so I can see what influenced their writing, along with a … MP3 file in which the designer’s talk about the design process.”

Over all I’m happy with what I’ve received. Yes very relieved that the Kickstarter has finally delivered. Now it’s time to do some reading and recruit some agents to do the computers dirty work.

A Big Copy and Paste Job From The Kickstarter Page About Paranoia…

Quick aside: I’ve done this bit to save people time so they can find out more about this release of the game. I don’t usually copy and paste this much, and I feel cheap and dirty for doing so. But I also save time in not having to paraphrase it etc.

“Paranoia is a roleplaying game set in a darkly humorous future. In Paranoia, a well-meaning but deranged computer desperately protects the citizens of an underground warren from all sorts of real and imagined enemies. You play one of The Computer’s elite agents. Your job is to search out and destroy the enemies of The Computer. Your worst fear is that The Computer will discover that you are one of these enemies.”

“Paranoia: A light-hearted game of terror, death, bureaucracies, mad scientists, mutants, dangerous weapons, and insane robots, which encourages players to lie, to cheat, and backstab each other at every turn.”

“The all new, rebooted Paranoia box set has been designed to be played almost immediately from opening the box. It offers fast, manic game play through the use of streamlined mechanics and substantial components including Computer Dice and high quality cards (my note not as high quality as we were lead to believe from this) to represent equipment, mutations and much more

Paranoia now offers a thoroughly modern roleplaying experience, allowing you to get into the game even quicker:

  • Streamlined, simple rules with new card play that allows maximum carnage while allowing you to concentrate on the action (and survival).
  • A 21st Century approach to Alpha Complex – Terrorists have taken their proper place as the greatest threat now but Commies are still lurking in the background, and the Computer’s benevolent surveillance capabilities are as all-encompassing as they were envisioned in 1984 (Paranoia’s original release!).
  • …
  • Minimum effort, maximum fun – with the simplified game system and card decks, you will be able to get into Paranoia within 10-15 minutes.”

Monthly Meet Up – Mar 17 

Fenland Gamers, game night

“Can you come out to play an hour earlier tonight?” I asked Jonathan in the playground.

“Sure” he replied.

So an hour before the Fenland Gamers monthly meet up (which is every second Wednesday of the month) Jonathan and I met up to play a couple of two player abstract games.

First to the table was my latest arrival Onitama.

The presentation and components are stunning for this game. The autumn brown tones fits so well the “theme” of the two competing martial arts schools. The box a welcome break from the normal boardgame fare is long and rectangular, with a magnetic clasp. The board is a playmat, which I love. The player pieces are a solid plastic and look great. The cards used in the game have a nice clean design, with thematic text on. Yeah I love how this game looks. Visually it’s great.

The game can be explained and learnt in under five minutes. But there is a lot of depth there underneath. You are having to think several moves ahead. Also keeping an eye on the moves your opponent has and will be getting.

By only using a random subset of the card pool each game for the player moves there is a lot of variety and replayability.

I can see the chess like reference that others have said about the game. It certainly does have that feel to it.

The games are quick to play. Jonathan and I played two games (that I won) in fifteen minutes.

So did Tom Vasel choose wisely for his Dice Towers Essentials line? You bet. Tom has found a classic here, and the publisher has done an amazing job on the presentation front. This is in such a great size box you can easily see it being taken in a bag on holiday or carried to the pub to be played. I can see this being played in parks and pubs, just like chess. 

We followed up Onitama with a game or two of Santorini. 

In our first game Jonathan’s win was tainted, because technically I should have won. He had failed to notice my next move was to win and built a ground floor building instead of a dome. I went “wow I’m surprised you didn’t go there”. Then Jonathan saw the move, I allowed him to retake his go. As you do in friendly games. Jonathan had been too busy trying to avoid my pieces to have notice the correct move. It was a game of avoiding each other’s pieces. I had Medusa so could build on top of his pieces if I was above them to remove them from the board. Whilst Jonathan had Bia. Which meant if he moved into a space and one of my pieces were in an adjacent space in the same direction of movement they two would be removed from the board. It was an interesting dance, that saw me building ontop of one of his pieces to remove it, a minor victory, but Jonathan went on to get the win.

We squeezed in a couple more games before it was time for the monthly meet to start. But both Onitama and Santorini are prefect examples of two great abstract games that are quick to learn, quick to play, and great as “filler” games when you have the odd ten minutes to fill. The only problem they have is you always want to play one more game!

Before the meet Gavin and I had arranged, well discussed with possibly a commitment to play Dice City.

I had recently part exchanged the base game along with my Dice Masters collection for Gavin’s copy of  Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small. So we were both keen to get it to the table. I wanted to play it again (with the All That Glitters expansion), and Gavin wanted to play it after his weekend opportunity to get it to the table fell through.

So Gavin, myself and Katie set up to build cities in Dice City. While Jonathan, Chris and Edmund tried saving mankind in  Pandemic: the Cure (I think with the expansion).

While waiting for us to finish our game of Dice City the other group had a game of Colt Express. A game that splits our game group. Gavin doesn’t like it (hence why he traded his copy away), Jonathan isn’t keen on it, while Chris and myself enjoy it.

I liked what All That Glitters added to the game. It wasn’t making major rule changes, just gave a new end trigger, some new cards and a universal resource. You’d not really know it wasn’t part of the base game.

Katie took a military route for her city. Which thankfully wasn’t turned towards attacking Gavins and my cities, or stealing our resources. She instead concentrated on stopping bandits.

Gavin had a little military. So was doing the odd raid against bandits (also for going attacking neighbouring cities). But his main focus seemed to be buildings that generated victory points (vp). So when he activated those buildings he was getting upto five vp a time.

Me? I was generating a resource creating engine. Which did nab me two ten point trader ships. That did counter some of Gavins vp grabbing each turn. I was also going for as many high value vp buildings as possible. I did trigger the end game by completing two rows of buildings.

Gavin with his vp engine won the game.

After our game of Dice City, we were then waiting for the train robbing to finish. So we broke out a “filler game”. 

The one I chose was Council of Verona. Which was handy because I had just got the Corruption expansion. An expansion that had proved rediculously hard to get in the UK and expensive. Luckily on the off chance I had looked back on Amazon and found it at its normal price, but shipped from the US. Why this nice little game of bluffing and deduction is so hard to get hold of I don’t know.

Naturally we played with everything, the Poison and Corruption expansions.

Tokens and corruption cards were played. I thought my plans were working. 

Poisons killed, corruption cards bluffed, agendas failed to complete. I poisoned Juliet! Our game ended in a three way zero point draw!!!

I liked how Council of Verona played with everything included. The new levels of bluffing or manipulating the game board. Wow. 

Our final game of the evening was a six player game of 7 Wonders. For me this is the maximum number of players I’d play the game with. (The minimum I’d play with is four.)

Chris won the game, I came in second just. I beat Gavin into third place by a point.

7 Wonders was a great way for the evening to end. Bringing everyone together for a game. Plus it plays reasonably fast for the player count. 

A great evening of gaming once again! We are so lucky in our club that everyone (including me!) are so nice and relaxed. There is competition when playing but it’s not the be all and end all, and no one is a dick about it. We have banter but it’s friendly and not a hint of nastiness. Great people. 

Looking forward to our next session.

Come and watch our phone call

rant

It finally dawned on me while trying to watch the latest Board Dames Hangout on YouTube what I hate about these “content creators”/YouTubers doing these Hangouts. It’s like watching both sides of a telephone conversation. In fact it’s exactly like that.

You are watching (sometimes live if you are online at the right moment) a phone call. And it’s fecking boring.

“Ah but Darren it’s not like a phone call because we can talk and ask questions in the chat room.” 

True, but it’s you mostly talking amongst yourselves whilst the YouTubers chat inanely about boardgames to each other over their webcams. Sometimes there might be the odd acknowledgement of the chat room, or answering a question. But the majority of the time they are just making insipid statements and agreeing with each other.

Look I love board games, I love talking about them with my friends. But these hangouts are about as interesting as watching paint dry.

I thought my life was mundane and that my opinions were uninformed and inconsequential. But compared to some of these YouTubers I’m leading the life of James Bond and I’m channeling Einstein.

What I don’t get is why people like these things. Are they wannabe NSA?

“They are like live podcasts”

Yeah with crappier production values and no editing. Edit these down and you might get 5 minutes of real content. And that constant flicking on Hangouts between cameras on the faintest of noises. So bloody annoying. Sometimes it gets unwatchable.

“You’re just jealous because you don’t do one/haven’t been invited/ no one reads your blog/insert reason here”

Maybe so. I can’t rule that out if I’m being brutally honest with myself. I can say it’s not. But is it? Or am I just a hateful person who likes to voice that part of his black little heart to the world?

I do lay awake at night wondering how the heck some of these folks have followers. I have theories, and none of them include “they are creating compelling and insightful content”. One or two have the words generic and bland. 

Which brings us back to describing these Google Hangouts. There that’s tied things up nicely. 

What do you think of these Google Hangouts by “popular” boardgaming YouTubers? 

QOTD: What’s your favourite abstract game?

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With the arrival of a new abstract game to my collection called Onitama, it reminded me of the other abstract games I have in my collection.

It’s certainly a genre I enjoy playing. And you could make a reasonable argument that it’s under represented.

Like every other game in my collection the abstract ones don’t get enough love and table time. Plus it doesn’t help that they are usually two player. I have some great two player games and they are harder to get to the table than you think.

I took the text for the above image from the following BGG link here. 

So currently my favourite abstract game in my collection has to be Santorini. It can be taught and learnt in under 5 minutes. Games are quick. With the god powers and the Golden Fleece expansion lots of replayability and variety. Plus it looks stunning. Our game group fell in love with it instantly. It even plays well with three players.

So what’s your favourite abstract game?

 

Dethroning King Joffrey The People’s Uprising

Fenland Gamers, Game day, game of thrones

Unable to avoid the rabble any longer, King Joffrey had to muster his forces yesterday to try and quell the revolt.

But before armies clashed, clandestine deals had to be done over in Chatteris between Gavin and myself. Gavin and I had been talking a day or so earlier and fallen into a deal where for his copy of Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small I would hand over in exchange my Dice Masters stuff and my spare copy of Dice City (yeah I ended up with two copies of the game this week, an opportunity arose last weekend to get the base game along with the All That Glitters expansion for £15). 

Once we had verbally come to our agreement I was straight on to my FLGS The Hobbit Hole to secure the copy of the second expansion for the game Agricola: All Creatures Great and Small – Even More Buildings Big and Small (rolls off the tongue doesn’t it?)

So after goods were exchanged in the car park Gavin and I paid John a visit in his establishment, and our FLGS. I picked up the expansion, plus the latest Netrunner data pack. And somehow walked out also with a copy of Suburbia Subdivision (a tenner!). Gavin didn’t leave empty handed either. He had bought some boosters for Dice Masters.

 

Life stuff had dwindled the forces opposing the tyrants rule down to just three armies against him.

The battle field had been decided A Game of Thrones the boardgame (second edition) using the A Feast for Crows expansion. It was a bit scarey, our first game without our “game master” Jeff. Luckily Jakub was more familiar with the rules than us. But still we would need to dive into the rules from time to time to clarify a point or two.

I was the Starks once more. So I was going to sweep down from the North. Diego was the Lannisters and moving out from the East. Jakub was the Arryn stuck between Diego and myself. That left Jonathan as Baratheon, and an auto victory point until that was stopped somehow.

Round one and Arryn attacked me! Wait that isn’t part of the plan or deal! We all attack King Joffrey. The King can’t be allowed to hold on to his throne. At least the Lannisters were staying on message. 

It would take two rounds before that Baratheon auto point was silenced for good.

Whilst fighting a rare guard action defending the North against invasion from the Arryn betrayers, I did manage to get a force together to sweep down and take on the tyrant. A rather successful foray I will say capturing Kings Landing (and completing a secret objective). 

There was some to and fro between Arryn and Lannisters as a side distraction to the Lannisters having a go at Baratheon.

These skirmishes outside of our coup attempt were down to trying to complete secret objectives. Curse them for stopping our upraising from totally crushing the Mad King Joffrey. 

Jonathan had admittedly given up part way through. He had three objectives he wasn’t able to complete. And if I had to criticise this expansion that would be it. Get stuck with secret objectives that you can’t do and that’s it you are screwed and can’t do anything about it. There should be some mechanism that allows you to dump a plan and redraw. Maybe add a penalty for doing so, such as loose an influence token, or military unit. I can see a house rule being added.

King Joffrey was on 4 points. While the rest of us were going to reach the magic total of seven victory points at the same time from our house objectives. So taking into account any secret objectives that could also be completed that turn, Jakub won with 10 points, Diego got 9, and I got 8.

The tyranny of King Joffrey had come to an end. There was a new King on the Iron Throne. A new date has been set to try and bring his rule to an end. We underlings of Westeros are very fickle, and like to keep our despots on their toes. 

Viva la Rebellion! 

Bluffing And Lunar Bases

FEG@WL, Fenland Gamers, game night

Back after it’s break for a charity all night gaming session, it’s FEG@WL.

The three amigos met up to enjoy alcohol and good games. Or it could be the other way round. 

Our gaming started off with my game of the month for March, Mint Works.

I thought I was out of the running after turn one when Jonathan and Diego got two strong buildings straight off. But turn two I was going first, bought a one cost building and flipped it for a five cost using the swap meet location. I had the vault which with two plans gave me four points, plus the crane and iirc the landfill for eight points. The other two just didn’t get going and finished on four points each. I’m calling this a surprise victory. Jonathan had the Assembler from turn one. That’s a powerful card, autobuilding so so good.

Perudo, Liars Dice doesn’t matter what you call it, it was our second game of the evening. House of Borgia (which we like) had reminded us that Perudo is a fun game. So it was only a matter of time before we had it back to the table. Dice and cups, it doesn’t get simpler than that really for components to a game. Well maybe just a deck of cards.

But this bluffing game is just so much fun. Which you can tell from Jonathan’s thinky, bluffy face below.


It’s just one of those one more go type games. Rounds are fast and fun. We ended up playing three rounds of the game. Diego won one, I won two. Jonathan came close to winning but sadly didn’t. 

I feel guilty (I think that’s what I’m feeling, I’m not sure, I’ve not felt this way before) about writing about this next game we played. The reason is unless you backed the game on Kickstarter you won’t be able to get a copy! 

Oh the game? It’s one that has been in my pile of shame for about a year (minimum, since the Kickstarter completed basically) called Lunarchitects.

Why can’t you get a copy? Well it’s complicated. Lunarchitects is a rethemed updated version of Glen More (which is an impossible game to get in English).  And that’s where the complicated bit comes in. This wasn’t an official update, and it gets murky over whether the original designer gave his blessing etc. At one point Glen More’s publisher promised a reprint of the English version of the game (which I believe they still make noises about) but hasn’t happened yet. But the designer of Lunarchitects I think as part of heading off any legal stuff restricted things to Lunarchitects so it wouldn’t be hitting your nearest FLGS, and would only be for the backers of the project.

I also don’t think I’ve ever seen any copies up for grabs on the Facebook selling and trading pages I’m a member of. 

The production values for Lunarchitects is good. One of the nice touches is the insert. It organises everything perfectly. The tile organiser is even removable. 

If you like Glen More, then you will like this simple. We played with the suggested default end of round and game scoring. But you can change this. Which is a nice touch that changes tactics in game, and adds to the replayability.

Your starting tile is double sided, and you get to choose which sides starting bonus you want. Again a nice little touch.

The end of round scoring worked better for me. With it triggering when the last player to take their turn passes the start line.

The only thing that seemed a little messy the ending of the game and final round.

The iconography was simple and easy to pick up on the tiles. 

There is even a little expansion included that we didn’t play with. There is a fair bit of replayability and variety in this game.

Yeah we enjoyed the game. I surprised myself in winning! I wasn’t generating nearly enough resources as the others to buy tiles. So was going with free stuff. But still I was able to pull off combos, trigger tiles extra times. So it’s good to see that there can be a variety of tactics based on tiles bought to win by, and not just a who can get a resource engine going the quickest.

Another great evenings gaming, great company, great beverages. ‘Nuff said.

Do I have to tell you how I finished off the evening? Regular readers will know already. Oh ok I know you want me to admit it ended in an orgy of spiced lamb flesh and chilli sauce. It was greasy and I loved it! There I said it. Feel better?

Tomorrow it’s time to end the tyranny of King Joffrey in A Game of Thrones the Boardgame.

I hate waiting…

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I hate seeing happy people post photos of the Kickstarter that I also backed. I’m like “where the feck is my copy?”

Somehow it’s seems like the last two or three Kickstarters I backed that started shipping I’m the last in the queue.

Paranoia the rpg I backed hasn’t even started posting my pledge level yet. Ok that’s like nearly two years behind schedule . But still I wish they would email out more updates instead of forcing me to visit the Kickstarter comments section to glean any news on shipping. 

Sagrada has started to ship. I’m not holding my breathe on this one. The awful Shipnaked are sending this one out from the US. My recent experience with them hasn’t been good. They were slow, behind schedule. And never sent out any shipping notice (which I hear they are once again repeating, or sending them after the stuff is delivered!)

So despite the comments/email updates and lack of shipping notices I sit hopefully (one of the few times in life I’m an optimist) by my front window waiting for the delivery to my Nan next door. 

Well I’m not having it delivered to mine! Nan is in all day. So I won’t miss the delivery and have to go through that dire process all parcel delivery companies have of rearranging delivery or trying to locate their hidden depot for picking up.

But I wait expectantly, hoping the universe will pleasantly surprise me with my Kickstarter somehow defying the laws of package delivery and turn up mysteriously on Nan’s doorstep.

Would I rather they say nothing about shipping and it just turns up? There would still be those annoying happy photos. So I’d know. And we’d be back to me hating these random people on the internet that I’ve never met and don’t know, and waiting for a delivery.

Maybe the answer lies in the bottom of a good mug of coffee.