All posts by Darren

Grp2: When last we left our heroes… #9

D&D, D&D Grp2, post mortem, RPG

Exploring the chamber they were in the party noticed some murals depicting sacrifices and statues coming to life.

Further exploration of the chamber revealed a pool with a satchel in it. Upon trying to retrieve it the pool of water came to life.

The living water was in fact a water genasi called Samson, who seemed confused about where they were, or how they got there.

Further exploration of the caves lead the party to a chamber with two large pools of water.

After fighting some glowing fungi that temporarily blinded the party by emitting a bright flash of light, they came across a scene in the connecting chamber reminiscent of the cave art they discovered earlier.

The party seeing the living statue decided retreating was the better course of action to take.

The party was left making their way back to Adele’s.

Post Mortem

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following part of the post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this part of the post and join me in a future one.

Work shifts meant that our D&D session was bought forward a day to the Friday.

I was still at work, but it was an early shift. So I’d been up since 4am. Tired? You bet.

We were unable to use the normal setup of two tables at our regular hosts. Which meant table space was a premium this evening. None of us had as much space as we’d have liked.

Tonight we added a sixth player to the group Jamie, who is playing a druid (?) water genasi called Samson.

I think the introduction of the new character went fairly well.

Having six in the group should mean having enough at a session to go ahead even if one or two can’t make it.

My Session Notes, & behind the screen

The encounter with the Strobing Fungus was surprisingly challenging for the party. I think being temporarily blinded didn’t help. Or the relative high hit points that the fungi had.

I’m glad the party took the opportunity I gave them to retreat instead of engaging with the Bloodstone Sentinel. With two cult fanatics and Shigmaa behind it ready to join in the attack. This would have been a tpk level encounter. I’m sure more than one of the party would have died if it had gone ahead.

The monsters the group are encountering I’m deliberately not naming as I want them to come up with their own names for them. Unless there is a good chance they would know about the creature then I’m happy to name the creature.

There wasn’t much chance to drop more than one of the secrets and clues. However there was the opportunity to at least forewarn what was ahead.

Luckily I think some of them can be used in the next session.

Which means we have a main story arc in progress potentially that is all about stopping the return of the demon prince Ibraxus from the realm of Choul. This will mean possibly a heist being done on Kartan, Tower of the Arcane and going deep under the city making their way to the second of the two lowest arches in the City of Arches, the Gateway to Choul.

In the meantime we have the Esme rival to Adele plot line to develop, plus the bounty hunter one.

Plus this ticking time bomb…

I don’t roll for initiative I shuffle up a “deck” of initiative cards and hand them out. Copying the initiative system used in such systems as the mutant year zero engine and Alien RPG.

I find it speeds up combat a little. It does have some advantages over rolling for initiative.

There was a comment made that they didn’t like this way of handling the initiative.

I need to think about this. I’ll probably switch to rolling for initiative with my monster initiative pre-rolled. A small speed up on my side.

As a whole this wasn’t a session that I got much from. It felt a bit flat. Maybe that was because I was tired.

Now to plan session 10.

Gloomy outlook for Rhino

Game day, LCG, Marvel Champions

Usually a mid week day off means no gaming. It’s rare others are free. Luckily the planets align from time to time that I’m able to do some gaming with Diego.

This morning was one such cosmic event.

Our mornings gaming started off with the latest addition to the collection, Marvel Champions.

Having learnt my lesson from that ass whooping from Ultron on Sunday.

It was time to take on an “easier” villain from the core set.

It was time to face Rhino.

Iron Man was benched, and replaced by She Hulk as a playable character. Mainly because Iron Man (although popular) is a slow build character. He starts off weak and builds up.

Swapping between the two is quick and easy (both decks have the same basic and aggression cards). So if Diego had really wanted to play Iron Man then he could have.

So after Diego had chosen who he wanted to play, I chose a hero that had one of the other aspects. It was hard not to play Doctor Strange (I love the comic book). But I resisted and chose another favourite.

We were using the default, out of the box decks for our heroes, and also the suggested setup for the villain.

I think Thor would be a good match up against Ultron because of his once per phase ability that triggers against minions.

Yes there were a couple of misplays by Diego and myself. But that didn’t get in the way of enjoying ourselves.

I enjoyed playing Cap. He certainly is able to mitigate a fair bit of damage either with his shield boosting his defence or with one or two other cards. Plus he can hit hard, and I like the allies he has in the deck. But you need cards in hand to power his hero ability or for Wonder Man to swing in.

Rhino was much, much easier than Ultron.

I think that our victory was made easier by having characters that matched up well against Rhino. Not sure it would have been as easy with say a character that is slow to build up.

I’m definitely going to go this route of starting off with Rhino when I visit Nathan. Then if he likes the game see if he wants to do either of the campaigns that I have.

Next to the table was Gloomier: A Night At Hemlock Hall. This is the latest addition to the Gloom family.

There is only one family (the Hemlocks) in this version of Gloom. So you are choosing four family members per player from a common pool. The remaining cards (if not a five player game) are then flipped and used to add unwelcome guests and/or stories to the game.

Otherwise this plays just like Gloom.

I’m not entirely sure I should have been the first player. Had I really had the worst day so far out of the two of us?

Sadly my day did get worse because Diego won.

Our final game of the morning was a quick game of Smitten

And what a final game.

We won!

At my fifth attempt and Diego’s first we built both pictures.

I had a great morning playing games with Diego. And a big thanks to him for being an amazing host.

Marvel Champions Coverage

LCG, Marvel Champions

In the last week since getting my grubby mitts on Marvel Champions I’ve started consuming media about the game.

Which got me thinking how best should I cover the game on this here ol’ blog of mine.

A lot of the YouTube stuff is reviews (especially from a solo players pov) with some game play. We all know I don’t review.

I like continuing the trend of other games I play of visually showing factions/characters for each player.

So I came up with the following as an example based on Sundays game I played with Jeff. I think I upped my game on this one visually and got a little comic book vibe to it.

It’s going to be a while before I even think of doing any deck building for the game.

I definitely don’t play solo. All my game play will be casual multiplayer with others.

So what can I add to this space that isn’t being done better elsewhere?

Do I stick to just a general game overview as when I play it?

What do folks want to see?

D&D Grp 2 Session 9 Planning #2

D&D, D&D Grp2, RPG, session planning

Ok let’s do this next bit one more time with feeling…

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign/session. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.

Our session nine is this Friday evening. I’m going to be pretty knackered as I will have been up since 4am that day, with no chance of a little snooze before hand.

However in the meantime I still need to do my prep.

The party were left at location 3.

I have a new player joining this session. Which takes the group up to the maximum size I’d personally run with. They will be playing a water genasi. Luckily there is a water source for them to be found at in location 7.

However plot wise I think I can explain why they are there. During the week (in-game time) that these chambers were revealed the water genasi also went in to investigate and came across these pools of water and got trapped there by the cultists. I need to work on this a little.

The great thing about the City of Arches as the basis of the setting is it allows any species to be present in the game. So I don’t need to find a reason for them to be there, it’s just accepted that the city is a diverse mix of species from different realms.

I’m going to attempt to create my own monster cards so that I can have the stats easily to hand as I do now with the Gale Force 9 cards I have.

See you laters.

Smitten with Ultron!

Game day

Sunday was a day off, and I was lucky enough to be able to do some gaming with Jeff.

We started off our afternoon of gaming with attempting to stop the machinations of Ultron in Marvel Champions.

That morning I had went through the heroes making sure they were all at their original deck list, so we could pick any character and just play.

For this battle of brawn and wits Jeff played Tony Stark/Iron Man, and I played Stephen Strange/Doctor Strange.

It all started off so well. Then Ultron went. Before I knew it Strange was down to four life, drone minions were massing in front of him. The only one that managed to land any damage on Ultron was Iron Man.

The drone minions, not getting a chance to reduce the threat tokens. We just got overwhelmed with the drone minions and unable to keep on top of them.

Using that wondrous and miraculous tool of hindsight we both came to the conclusion that our choice of heroes possibly weren’t the best for going up against Ultron.

I looked at the She-Hulk deck (not made up because the aggro cards were in use in the Iron Man deck) and she along with Captain Marvel might have been better choices for going up against Ultron.

After Ultron royally kicked our butts I introduced Jeff to Smitten.

We played three games back to back. Games that got shorter and shorter as we did worse and worse!

But boy does Smitten have that just one more game thing going for it.

Our final game of the afternoon was a game very few people have ever played, Camels Ordinarily Sit Down Carefully.

Apparently I knew the games designer! It was Jeff.

If you can get over Jeff’s use of penny sleeves, Camels for short isn’t a bad game.

Obviously as a prototype some of my feedback such as the graphic design of the cards, iconography (needs it) were quality of life things that don’t affect gameplay.

However one or two, such as having more interaction between cards so you can do combos, more random event cards, even introducing mulligans, or adjusting counters based on player count, are suggestions that do affect game play.

It’s nice that like Streets of Commonville (I think fitting up the designers in game persona for the crime a win) I can boast I’ve beaten the games designer at their own game.

I had a great afternoon playing games with my friend. I’m glad Jeff was able to make it.

rolling dice, playing cards, and exploiting any misplay made by others aka just another club night

Fenland Gamers, game night

Friday evening was another really well attended club night.

It saw the return of a missed member, new members attending for the first time, and regular faces.

If the head count was accurate then there were seventeen like minded individuals gathered round tables, rolling dice, playing cards, and exploiting any misplay made by others.

Surely it won’t be long before we break into twenty plus members attending a club night.

You already know that Gavin and I have entered into a deal that sees me exchange hard earned mullah for his copy of Marvel Champions.

My first game of the evening was the latest Stonemaier Games release, the tenth anniversary co-op micro game for two players, Smitten, with Jonathan.

The art on one of the Smitten cards reminded me of a card in MtG. A quick search found the card I’d been thinking of, it was Arcane Flight. Take a look at the two cards side by side below, what do you think?

Am I the only one that sees a similarity?

The game does play really fast. And very quick to learn.

I love the limited communication you are allowed.

I was definitely getting some The Mind vibes whilst playing Smitten.

For me this is another great example of what can be achieved with just eighteen cards, like Love Letter.

Smitten might have just become my go to two player filler game.

Jonathan and I failed. But we enjoyed ourselves.

My second, but the others I was playing with first game of the evening, was Wingspan.

I used the official app for the final scoring instead of the supplied score pad. Probably the first time in actual anger.

It worked well, very little overhead in using, with the only setup being selecting which expansions if any you are using, and player names.

I really like that quick setup and straight into using.

It didn’t change the final result with me coming in last.

My final game of the evening was a couple of games of Sushi Go! Party.

Because we were all experienced gamers we went with “gamie” oriented menus.

Game 1 Menu
Game 2 Menu

These were fun.

I love how the different menus just shake things up depending on what sort of game you want, or who you are playing with.

If you just look at the wins and losses, then the evenings gaming was a bad day at the office.

But that doesn’t tell the full story.

I had a great evening gaming with friends, did and saw some cool turns.

And that’s the more important thing. Winning is just icing on the cake.

Marvel Champions Assemble!

LCG, Marvel Champions

Last night Gavin dropped off his Marvel Champions stuff that he has decided to part with.

Obviously I’m not going to play this game solo.

However I will hopefully get to play it at club nights. But more importantly on my visits to Nathan.

I know he will love the theme. Plus I think there are at least three or four of the heroes (see the list below) that he would love to play.

The Heroes Assembled

Mind you I think Nathan would also love the LoTR Card Game as well. Which was the lcg I had been close to getting before Gavin presented this opportunity to me.

And so begins the “gotta get ‘em all” madness to the various expansions.

Which Wingspan Expansion Should I get?

expansions, Stonemaier Games, Wingspan

With the imminent release of the third expansion Wingspan Asia for Wingspan I thought I’d give my ill informed opinion on which of the expansions to get.

Please remember I’m not a reviewer, I don’t get early access. So I’m basically saying I haven’t played Wingspan Asia yet. So my opinion on that at the moment is based on currently released information such as the rulebook.

Also please remember I do not play games solo. So I won’t be making any comment about the Automata. Besides with the app why would I play it solo with the Automata with all that setup?

I’m also not going to mention the Swift expansion as that is included in every copy of Wingspan now. It was only released as a separate expansion for those of us that had an early printing of the game.

My final disclaimer these are not in-depth looks at each expansion, they are brief summaries hopefully justifying why I selected that particular expansion for that particular thing you are looking to add to Wingspan.

I want a great engine builder…

Wingspan the million plus selling hit board game.

Ok technically not an expansion.

I really like this game. I think it’s still Jonathan’s all time favourite game (it’s not it’s in his top two!). I haven’t done my paired comparisons for a while to determine my top ten list, but I’d be surprised if this was outside my top five.

I’ve played the game with all player counts (except solo – see previous comment above about this). I’ll never ever play Wingspan at five players again. There is too much downtime, it takes forever to play. It’s just not an enjoyable experience. The sweet spot is three or four players.

I love how your actions get more powerful but you get less of them as the game progresses.

Great theme, beautiful looking game, easy to teach. Ticks all the boxes.

I just want more of the same…

You have Wingspan and just want more. The European expansion gives you just that.

It adds more birds to the game. European birds naturally, an extra card tray for storage, purple eggs, bonus cards, goal tiles, food tokens, etc.

There are a “variety of new powers, including “round end” powers, powers that increase interaction between players, birds that can cover multiple spaces to make future actions more profitable, and birds that benefit from excess cards/food.” I consider these minor changes to the game. And not nearly as big game changer as my answer to the next bit.

I want to shake things up a little…

With the introduction of the Oceania expansion the core game play hasn’t changed. But we get a new food type nectar, new player boards, new dice, plus the usual more eggs, cards, etc.

This expansion is a much bigger impact on game play, although in my opinion not a massive one, with the nectar.

It changes things up, adds new end gaming scoring opportunities, makes it “easier” to get birds out.

If you had to get only one expansion…

This was a hard one to answer, but in the end I think it has to be the Oceania expansion for the same reasons I gave above.

I only play two player…

You can play Wingspan as a two player game. And it’s perfectly fine as a two player game.

However the new Asia expansion “is a stand-alone game for 1 player or 2 players (Duet mode).” That comes with everything (“1 duet map, 6 goal tiles, 30 duet tokens”, tokens, dice, player mats, etc) for two players.

Obviously I’ve not played it two player yet. But if I only played two player, or the majority of my gaming was two player, then this is the version I’d get. In fact I will be buying this as Nathan’s Christmas present.

I want to play with more than 5 players! Why?

I think we know from previous comments in this post where I stand on playing five player Wingspan.

So imagine my horror to see “A new Flock mode is also included to expand the base game of Wingspan up to 6 or 7 players”.

To support this new mode of play the expansion includes a “1 turn-order dial, 1 round-end goal board”.

Be warned “Plan for a Flock mode game to last about 2 hours on your first try—longer if there are inexperienced players in your group.”

I obviously don’t know how long a “normal” game with experienced players takes in Flock mode, but it does “require 2 simultaneous active players to speed up gameplay…” But I’m guessing it won’t be much under two hours.

I don’t know how this plays naturally. You know I’ll try this once. I’m a sucker for punishment.

However if you want to play Wingspan at the higher player counts this is the way to go.

Or you can…

Just do as I do get them all (obviously not the Asia expansion but it will be added), shuffle all the cards together and play with everything.

Ok the draw decks are massive (especially sleeved)! So I normally select one of the card trays (until the storage box comes out the current available expansions just about fit in the trays sleeved) and that is the one we play with that game.

The big advantage is that with (currently) 356 cards the likely hood of the ravens being a problem is greatly reduced.

For a new expansion I’d get a random 180 cards and mix in the new cards so I get to play with the new cards. I’d only do this once I’ve played a new expansion a couple of times.

I suppose this everything in, including the kitchen sink approach should be given a name. Let’s call it Ultimate Wingspan. Although cluster mode might be appropriate.

Well I hope the above has helped.

D&D Grp 2 Session 9 Planning #1

D&D, D&D Grp2, RPG, session planning

Do I really need to keep saying the following on these types of post? Shouldn’t it be taken as a given?

But just in case here is the boilerplate disclaimer.

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign/session. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.

I’ve been looking through the pages of my copy of kobold press’ Tome of Beasts 2, and I’ve been really enjoying the experience.

The art for the monsters is amazing, and brings them to life. And really fires the imagination.

I am building up a menagerie of creatures I want the players to encounter. I already have the monster and npc stat cards from the Monster Manual in my DM folder that I plan to use, or can fall back on for a random encounter or two.

I really should look into getting the pawns that kobold press sell to go with this book. I think the only problem I have with this sort of product is you usually only get one of the monsters. Which isn’t very helpful when you want to run multiple of the creatures in an encounter.

Talking of 2D standee stuff there are also a couple of Wizkids 2D standee products I want to get my grubby hands on. Those being the Player Character Pack, and the Shipwreck Isle set.

At the last session Anthony very generously gave me three pre-painted Wizkids minis, the Viper Vine, Witchfire, and Gate Hellknight.

As pre-painted minis go I quiet like the look of these. The paint job isn’t going to win awards. But they are perfect for the table top. And more importantly I don’t have to paint them.

I believe these minis are for Pathfinder and the Maze of Death adventure (?).

So I need to get the Pathfinder stats for these minis and then convert to 5e.

But the players will be seeing these sooner than later.

Grp2: When last we left our heroes… #8

D&D, D&D Grp2, post mortem, RPG

With a free week the party spent the time on some self improvement, studying, practicing, and even some research.

Outside the streets of the lower reaches were a buzz with the news of a heroic party rescuing a family from a collapsed villa in the Second Reaches.

Outside on their way to Adele’s Emporium the party were approached by Esme a rival of Adele. Who tried to bribe the party to spy on Adele for her.

At the Emporium the party found a note on the door saying Adele was in the Second Reaches investigating the ruined villa.

So the party made their way to the Second Reaches looking for Adele.

Eventually they found Adele, but not before upsetting a few locals and attracting the attention of an officer of the Silver Talons.

At the ruined villa they met Adele coming out of a cave entrance that had been revealed when the villa collapsed. While talking to Adele Tantalos joined them. He’d been helping Adele.

Adele and Tantalos left to return to the emporium to research the newly revealed chambers.

The party entered the tunnel and immediately went up some steps into a chamber that they soon discovered had two young unkept, spooky looking children at the end of it.

We leave the party in the chamber having defeated the spooky children.

  • Behind the screen
  • Session notes

Post Mortem

Yep it’s that part of the post where I share my thoughts on the session and ideas for future ones. So I need to say this.

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following part of the post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this part of the post and join me in a future one.

The session itself was about two hours of play, and about twenty minutes of finishing off character levelling up.

It would have been nice to have a longer session, but time constraints with my dog-sitter put a dampeners on that.

For this session I had used the Tome of Beasts 2 from Kobold Press for most of the potential monsters to use in the encounters.

I do like this book as an alternative to the Monster Manual. It really does make encounters feel fresh and mysterious. Especially for the players.

For the NPCs that the players encountered I used the newly arrived Monte Cook NPC cards plus my Pathfinder ones I had already been using.

I love the art on these cards, plus the extra info on the back of them.

That extra info on the back really does help during the session to help (however poorly) flesh out the NPC at the table. And I don’t have to make up a name either.

During this session I did feel like the DM who says no.

Like pointing out that a red Slaad is from a different plane and wouldn’t be known on this one.

I really like to say yes and see where we go with it. But it was hard today because the choices being made were based on information that the characters would not know.

This was a very heavy role play session. Something I’m not great at. So not sure this was a fun session for the players.

For me and I’m not sure if the players felt this way too, that they were being railroaded to the ruined villa and the mysterious chambers it revealed.

There was a hook to go after a wanted criminal they could have done instead.

For the map for the mysterious chambers I used the goblin caves map from the “old” D&D starter set. It seemed the right size to start exploring. Although in future I’d love to use larger more complex dungeons.

In the meantime with this repurposed map I have to populate it with appropriate monsters, which for this dungeon is using appropriate monsters from the tome of beasts 2. Well ones that look really cool.

This was also the first session that I used the DM Screen from the Dungeon Kit instead of the DM Screen Reincarnated. No one even noticed the switch!

Anyway now to start planning session 9.