My days off this week and I was ill with a cold. So instead of recharging my batteries and even gaming on one of them I was instead suffering, drinking hot lemon, and quaffing orange juice.
But enough of the life stuff what you are really here for is my session prep notes. Which means I need to copy and paste the usual non-effective disclaimer/spoiler alert stuff first.
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.
With Adele having done some research she will be all about stopping the return of the demon prince Ibraxus from the realm of Choul.
In the Sly Flourish City of Arches document (available to Patreons only) a lot of the notes I need for this are on page 32. They are part of another adventure idea. But the Choul stuff is perfect for my needs. They give a nice broad strokes over view which will see the party going through one of the arches to Choul.
I’d forgotten I had the Dungeon Tiles Reincarnated which will make providing a battle map for each of the floors of Kartan, Tower of the Arcane easier if needed.
I had looked at the battle maps but not found anything suitable I can use.
Naturally the party will be required to go “Down, down, deeper and down” into the depths of the City of Arches. It sounds very dungeon delving. But I don’t think it is in this case.
I’ve been doing an initial scan of the Monte Cook NPC cards for suitable cards to use as wizard NPCs for when/if the party visit Kartan, Tower of the Arcane.
I have updated (again) my checks sheet. The sheet I clip to my DM screen.
We all know how I feel about roll/flip and writes.
But when I look at my collection and the games I have in that genre. It just amazes me how that genre has grown over the years since I first played Qwixx.
The level of complexity that the genre covers is pretty broad. My early forays into the genre after Qwixx the most complicated it got was Rolling America. Then things got a bit more complicated and combo like with That’s Pretty Clever.
Since then that complexity has jumped considerably with the addition of board game like elements such as rondels, and modular boards. Which when added to players also using multiple player sheets the complexity of some can be very daunting when first seen (I’m looking at you Three Sisters and Twilight Inscription).
We even see very limited player interaction with one or two of them.
The latest addition Welcome to the Moon has an eight game campaign! The current plan I have for the game is to play a taster game of the first adventure with other fans of the genre at Fenland Gamers. Then see if there is any interest in playing the campaign.
Some of my additions in the last year or so have fast become my favourite games in the genre (starred games). Each offers something unique from the others. I can’t wait to play any of them again as they are such fun.
There are still three games I need to get to the table (question mark) and one that I’ll pass on (red X) as it really didn’t gel with me.
There is one more to add to the collection, the follow up to Three Sisters, and third game in a trilogy (first being Fleet the Dice Game), Motor City.
This won’t be arriving until late December if I’m lucky, but more likely January. There was a printing issue with one of the dice that meant a delay as it was reprinted.
When Motor City arrives Three Sisters grows by a third pad! As part of the Kickstarter they added a rock garden pad. It’s going to be interesting to see if it’s a step too far, or if it takes the game to an even higher level.
It’s been a couple of days since the last post. So thought I’d write one of these still alive posts letting you know what’s going.
The D&D session 9 post mortem will be up in the next day or two. I’m just gathering my thoughts about it at the moment.
There are plans in place for me to visit Nathan in a couple of weeks time. I have a weeks holiday. Which is the first holiday since March. Which means I now have a week off each month for the next five months.
Nathan’s birthday was mid week. And he’ll be getting his birthday present when I visit him. Oh forgot to tell you what the present is. I got him a copy of Alien Fate of the Nostromo. It’s a game he nearly bought on his holiday in America, and regretted on his return that he hadn’t. So that made the decision what to buy him easy.
I finally got a laminator. Which means my planned project of laminating the player sheets in the roll and writes I own will actually start. But I also plan to use it for D&D stuff.
Which reminds me the flip and write Welcome to the Moon has joined my collection. Excited to get this to the table and try the eight map campaign.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
