Grp2: When last we left our heroes… #7

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

After the epic battle with the minotaur skeleton and zombies the party decided they needed a rest to recover.

So after setting up watch and closing the rooms door the adventurers settled down for a rest.

However a couple of hours in Vas heard a shuffling sound coming from the hallway.

With the aid of Draynol (?), Vas investigated the noise.

Much to their horror they saw a mummy shuffling down the hallway.

Returning to the room and shutting the door, they alerted the others and quickly prepared to fight the mummy now bumping against the closed door.

A fight followed with the mummy trapped in the doorway and on fire.

After defeating the mummy (now a pile of ashes) the party settled down again to recuperate.

Fully rested the adventurers made their way to the attic. But not before Vas demonstrated his ability to throw a grappling hook was equal to his searching skills. Very poor.

As soon as the party entered the attic they were attacked by a small nest of stirge. Which were quickly dealt with.

Further in the attic they came across a rift/portal and a watch. As Babs was examining the watch a red slaad emerged out of the rift.

During the subsequent fight Draynol (?) got injured by the slaad. There was a gash on his arm.

Our heroes managed to close the rift by breaking the watch up into five pieces.

It was time to head back to their lodgings to rest, and make plans on what to do next.

We leave the adventurers at their lodgings.

Post mortem

Before I pontificate my thoughts on the session I need to do that legal bit first.

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.

Much of the session was made up, sorry decided, as I was setting up!

It was in my index card holder that I had the pathfinder watch card, that struck me as I saw it and read the brief description on the back would make a great artefact to be the reason the rift was open. And by breaking it up into its five pieces a great way to deactivate the rift.

My original plan was to have shadows in the attic. But as I was getting the minis out that I needed for the session I saw my red slaad and thought I’m going to have the slaad come out of the rift.

The slaad worked well, plus it did land a claw on Draynol(?) which means he has been infected. A future plot point to explore. Definitely a ticking time bomb.

The stirge were part of the original Saltmarsh adventure. I hadn’t planned on using them. But on the spur of the moment I thought why not, especially as their hp were so low.

I threw the mummy at the party as a surprise and to show the players that taking a rest is not a safe thing to do. It was a spur of the moment thing decision. But it worked out well.

This session was nearly a full head count. Anthony couldn’t make it. So this initial encounter with the mummy was a good way for Luke, Mark, and Lizzy to get used to working together.

There was an unexpected plot twist that Shane came up with that I will probably run with. Shane playing Babs (as well as his own character Jeb) had the crystal orb that they found cause Babs to act strangely. Its effect broken when she lost possession of the orb. A nice twist I thought.

I thought considering the fact the party had taken on mummies, slaad, etc. that they had earned leaving up to level three.

Now to somehow plan for the next session.

Railroad Ink on iOS

apps, iOS

I think it’s fair to say I like roll/flip and writes.

After all I have one or two in my collection.

However there is one that has been on my wish list for a while, and instead of purchasing a physical copy I bought the digital version.

That game being Railroad Ink.

Having played the app version of Railroad Ink I will never purchase the physical version! That’s despite loving the game.

I admit that I’m going to miss that physicality and joy of rolling dice. However I can see I won’t miss drawing the different train tracks on the pad.

I’ve only played the app as a solo game.

I’ve not played it online against others, or even taken part in the daily challenges against others scores. At the moment I have no interest in doing so either.

My actual games have been on my iPad and iPhone. And it looks and plays brilliantly on both.

For me this is a great game to play when I have a spare five minutes to pass away. Although that five minutes somehow turns into much longer.

This app version of the game does have that “just one more game” magic baked into it. I think the fact games are so quick helps a lot. Along with the “I know I can beat that score” pushing you to try again.

I love the aesthetics of app. The pastels and “hand” drawn look. Obviously the art is way way better than anything I can draw in real life.

The Railroad Ink app is fastly becoming one of my favourite iOS ports of a physical board game.

What Scythe Expansion Do I Get?

Scythe

This post is the result of watching a video by “Board of it” on YouTube where they did a buyers guide for Scythe.

I liked the video. It was interesting to hear their opinions/review of each of the expansions at the end after they explained all the expansions.

Now I think everyone knows how I feel about Scythe by now. But just incase you don’t I’ll state it again here. For the record and umpteenth time, I love it. It’s my favourite game of all time.

So what I’m going to do in this post is assume you have the base Scythe game and then provide suggestions based on possible reasons why you might want to add an expansion.

I’ll give a SPOILER WARNING now for Rise of Fenris. I’m not going to spoil the game but for one of the answers I have to talk about a specific part of the game. I’m sorry. I can’t answer the question without revealing the little bit of info I have to spoil.

I want to play more than 5 players

To play more than five players you need more factions. There are two expansions that offer more factions.

If you only want more factions and nothing else then your only option is the Invaders from Afar expansion. This adds two new factions Clan Albion and Togawa Shogunate. Fortunately their faction symbols are already on the games board!

If you want more factions and have other game play options then you should get Rise of Fenris. Like Invaders from Afar, Fenris adds two new factions to Scythe. Plus you get the campaign and modular options.

I want more factions

This question is slightly different to the previous one because it doesn’t assume you want to play more than five players. But more that you are playing with up to five players and want more variety in the factions you play.

The answer is basically the same with the addition of get both for the ultimate in maximising your faction options.

I want to play a Scythe campaign

There is only one option here, as there is only one campaign expansion for Scythe, and that is Rise of Fenris. This is an eight game campaign that can be reset and replayed. Plus it can be used as just modules to change things up with the core game.

I want more of the same

This screams out the small box Scythe Encounters expansion that adds thirty two new promo encounter cards to the game. Which reminds me you can also add in the original promo packs that Stonemaier sell. These original promos were part of the Kickstarter I believe. They add more encounters, factory cards, and objectives.

I want to change things up

Obviously all of the above replies do this to some degree. However other expansions might be up your street too.

For starters The Wind Gambit introduces airships to the game, which are given an aggressive and non-aggressive ability randomly at the start of each game. But a bigger game changer are the resolution tiles that change how the game ends.

Or you could get the modular board that means the map and faction locations are different every game! Plus it introduces a new drafting element to setup, and tighter maps at lower player counts.

Finally as pointed out in another response above the Rise of Fenris can be used as modules allowing you to change elements of the game, like have a more aggressive game. So even if you don’t want to play the campaign it’s worth getting to use as modules. Plus it also includes a way to play Scythe as a co-operative with the Desolution module.

The Complete Rulebook has a couple of unofficial variants (team play, and a tweak to the end of a game). But these barely make up half a page.

I want to pimp out my copy of Scythe

There are a lot of third party accessories that can be bought to pimp out Scythe. However for this post I’m only going to cover the official ones.

Currently Stonemaier sell the following to pimp out your copy of Scythe:

  • Metal coins
  • Metal mech miniatures
  • Realistic resource tokens
  • Board extension – so the larger hex side of the board can be used
  • Neoprene playmat
  • Complete rulebook
  • Legendary Box to hold the core game and expansions in one single box.

I hope this “guide” helps.

Vampire Thursday! Battle for OP Kit 1.1

game night, Rivals, Vampire the Masquerade Rivals, vampire the masquerade: rivals, Vampire Wednesday

Last night saw three of us compete for the playmat from the first organised play kit of season 1, plus a promo Freddy Usher vampire card.

For this “tournament” we used the new Prague City Deck from the Heart of Europe expansion.

We were using the tournament rules scoring for our games (see below).

Scoring from VtM Tournament Rules

The winner would be the player with the highest score at the end of the evening.

I know Diego and myself were playing our own created decks. I think Marcin said he was also using a deck he created.

Below are our chosen leaders for the evening.

Our leaders for the evening

Our first player was chosen randomly using the bgstat at the start of each game. Naturally for the first game we would also be placing our “Haven, starting vampire (Leader), and Agenda face down. Only after each player has placed these 3 cards are all starting vampires and Havens revealed. Agendas remain face down until a player chooses to flip theirs face up.” VtM Tournament Rules

Game 1

Rivalries: Diego was mine, Marcin was Diego’s, and I was Marcin’s.

Wow the City deck was so mean this first game.

After two rounds all four of the Second Inquisition Team-X Operatives were out in the street. That’s two aggregated damage, discarding a card , plus! losing a prestige point each turn.

Not only that but hardly any mortals, vagrants or citizens came out. It was event after event!

We were finding it hard to build up cards in our hands, and thus options on our turns.

Sometimes this sort of thing happens in games like this. You just don’t draw the cards you need. In our case it was the City deck doing its worst. It could easily have been not drawing the cards we needed from our libraries (as well).

You just have to accept this sort of thing happens. Get through the game, and cling on to the hope that the cards will be kinder next game. Although sometimes the cards do really hate you and don’t improve.

Whilst both Diego and Marcin had revealed their agenda cards I hadn’t. Mine was a mystery to them. Although Diego suspected he knew what it was.

This was a slow game thanks to the mean street.

No mortals or citizens meant I wasn’t burning them and able to create wraiths. The couple that did appear got turned into retainers by the other two.

I wasn’t hitting my mill cards.

I had plenty of prestige thanks to the couple of high blood potency valued cards in Diego’s library. So I was in a good place on that front.

Eventually after the constant Second Inquisition battering we were taking Diego was able to deliver a knock out blow to Marcin’s only remaining vampire and get the win.

I never revealed my agenda. The mystery carried over into our next game.

Game 2

Rivalries: Marcin was mine, I was Diego’s, and Diego was Marcin’s.

This was a much quicker game.

Diego had a good start from the off. The street was a bit kinder to us.

I was able to create a wraith on my leader. But thanks to Diego that didn’t last long to have any effect.

But in reality I wasn’t able to get my pieces into place to put my game plan into action. Diego wasn’t allowing me the time.

Marcin wasn’t able to stop Diego delivering the knockout blow to me.

It was back to back wins for Diego and a commanding lead.

I still hadn’t revealed my agenda in this game.

Game 3

Rivalries: Marcin was mine, I was Diego’s, and Diego was Marcin’s.

This game took much longer to play than the previous one.

I needed to slow Diego down. So some of my early turns involved playing cards that in reality should have been played on my rival. But they had the desired effect.

We did get an early Second Inquisition that was joined by a second. But Diego took one out. Otherwise the street was fairly kind.

There was even a nice number of mortal and citizens building up in the burn pile.

Mid game Marcin had Diego on the ropes. Barely holding on. Victory was looking imminent for him. My earlier actions to slow Diego down had been too effective!

I needed to intervene.

Ok what I did was something I was going to be doing eventually. It just had to be sooner than I wanted. I had wanted to play a ritual or two to take advantage of the pile of bodies in the burn pile, and increase my havens secrecy. But keeping Diego alive was more important.

My intervention emptied Marcin’s hand of cards, stopped him playing particular cards. Just making it harder for him to attack Diego, and if he did so not do lots of damage.

It worked.

Diego was able to hang on in there, stabilise and build up again.

Whilst Diego and Marcin traded blows, my mill plan kicked in on Marcin.

I had a handful of cards. Lots of options.

Diego was going in for the kill on Marcin.

Luckily pointing out that Diego’s attacking party wasn’t as boosted as he had hoped meant Marcin’s last vampire survived by a single blood.

Which is how that surviving vampire was left at the end of Marcin’s turn after the Second Inquisition had done their one point of aggregated damage.

Being the opportunist I am I had a chance to grab victory by a knock out! I know, not my battle plan. But still never look a gift horse in the mouth. And it would have been rude not to take advantage of Diego’s hard work.

So in a rare move for me I moved into the street and did a mental attack on Marcin’s vampire to deliver the knock out blow, and grab victory.

Guess what? I still hadn’t revealed my agenda.

At the end of the evening and three games, once all the dust had settled, points tallied up, the victor and winner of the OP Kit 1.1 Playmat was Diego. However with there only being three of us we all got a promo Freddy Usher vampire card.

Final scores per game, agenda points in brackets

This was a fun evening of playing Rivals. I think we had everything you could see in an evening.

I’m looking forward to our next chance to play.

D&D Grp 2 Session 7 Planning #1 

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

Well thanks to life finding a way to throw obstacles in the way we are finally going to be having our next D&D session in our City of Arches based campaign this coming Sunday.

Which means I have some planning to do.

But first I’ll give the boiler plate spoiler warning.

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 that out the way let’s get on with the show.

This session should see the attic explored within the haunted house. Which will be the final encounter of this adventure based on the Ghosts of Saltmarsh.

Here the party will find a dreadful incursion (you can read more about adding these here on the Sly Flourish website) that is the source of the monsters they have been encountering, and needs closing.

So I can still use most of my prep notes from the previous sessions but I need to come up with hooks for what’s next. They had one at the start of this adventure. But will they remember it?

I finally caved and got a copy of The Wild Beyond The Witchlight.

The main reason is because I was after some Harengon (rabbit folk) NPC stats.

I’ve got the idea in my head that within the City of Arches is a community of Harengon. The only Harengon NPC stat blocks are for a brigand and sniper.

I want a stat block more in line with a commoner. I understand why there isn’t. However that doesn’t help me. Granted I don’t really need a stat block for an NPC unless they get into combat. So I might just try and come up with a generic Harengon stat block to have on hand.

The other advantage is that there are more monsters I can call upon, a fey trinkets table to roll against, and a feywild domain to visit!

I think with the monsters thrown against the party so far once this adventure has come to an end they will advance a level.

Anyway that’s it for now.

New bgstat Challenge Created

bgstat, game challenges

The tail end of last week the idea for a new bgstat challenge hit me.

I can’t remember exactly what sparked the idea. It might have been a YouTube video, a conversation, who knows?

What is important is the idea popped into my head.

The idea being to set up a challenge to get my worker placement games back to the table.

I have one or two in the collection. Which isn’t surprising I really like the mechanic.

So I went into the bgstat app to setup a new challenge.

Sadly the bgstat app doesn’t allow you to filter games by mechanic. Which meant I had to go through each listed game (or just the ones I wasn’t sure if they counted) on the bgg website to check, and add a “worker placement” tag to the game info.

From there when setting up the new challenge I was able to just select my tagged worker placement games.

The surprising bit for me was I had eighteen games that had the worker placement mechanic in them.

3×3 of the games making up the worker placement challenge

I set the challenge date for next year. One less challenge to think up in the new year.

However…

Those that “read” the barebones bgstats posts I put up at the end of each month know that I have nearly completed the “Play 40 New to me Games” challenge.

It’s very very possible that September will see me complete that challenge.

Then the question becomes do I start the new challenge early or concentrate more on the remaining challenges?

There is a little overlap between this new challenge and the current ones. And by a little I mean the odd one or two games at most.

The list of games in the worker placement challenge

In all likely hood I might start the new challenge early.

But I can see future challenges being based around mechanics.

I just wish there was an easier way to set them up. It’d be amazing if I could filter on game mechanics, designer, publisher, etc. But that’d be a big change to the apps database to hold all that info. Which might upset bgg.

Whilst I’m discussing my wish list of features I’d love to see in the bgstat app I’d love to see the bgg rank of the game, and be able to filter on that, and see that on the 3×3. How cool would a challenge of playing all your games in the bgg top 100?

And talking of ranking I’d love them to add in the ability to rank your owned games using paired comparisons. Similar to what I did in Python a few years back and still not updated. Seeing that on the 3×3 as an option would also be super cool.

I’m sure others would find this stuff of use. I’d even pay extra to have these features! That’s how much I want them.

Anyway enough of this day dreaming. See you in the next post.

#RPGaDAY2022 Day 31 aka The Final Day

#RPGaDAY2022

Here we are.

The final #RPGaDAY2022 post.

We made it. Just.

Let’s get this show on the road for the final time this year.

“When did you first take part in #RPGaDAY?”

This will have been my fourth #RPGaDAY that I’ve taken part in since I came across it in 2019.

I can’t remember how I stumbled across it.

It was probably a trending topic on Twitter or something that I clicked on and thought “that sounds like a fun thing to do”.

But I’m glad I did come across it. They have been an interesting and fun thing for me to do.

With that final answer it’s time to close off this years #RPGaDAY and say the following…

See you next year for the 10th Anniversary #RPGaDAY.

August 2022 Gaming Stats

gaming stats, stats

It’s that time of month once again to share with you my gaming stats for the month just gone.

As I write this post I am in my third week of the new job role. Which I am enjoying. But I’ll talk more about that in other posts I’m sure.

In the meantime let’s just get on with the post.

My Top 9 Games Played in August

Now for the stats.

Bgstat app stats for August 2022

The full list of games played.

Full list of games played in August 2022

Finally the progress (if any) on the current challenges.

Challenge progress

#RPGaDAY2022 Day 30

#RPGaDAY2022

“What should #RPGaDAY do for its 10th anniversary next year?”

I have to say the last few days of #RPGaDAY haven’t been fun for me. As the posts have shown I’ve not had much or anything to say on the days probing insightful question.

This is my fourth year (wow that’s surprised me) and I enjoyed the previous years much more.

As the the gallery below shows those previous years that I took part in were different.

They used single words that I found much more open to interruption and less restrictive. And yes I did find some days harder than others to write. But I feel I had a better writing experience.

So for me I’d love to see a return to the “old” format.

Flashback to August 2016

Blast from the past, flashback, gaming stats, stats

I’ve parked the delorean back in August of 2016. So let’s look at what games I played back then.

My top 9 played games of August 2016

Well it looks like I was still playing the lcg Ashes Rise of the Phoenix Born.

I love the worker placement game The Manhattan Project. So it was a no brainer that I got the card game based on it The Manhattan Project Chain Reaction. It’s fairly light and quick to play.

I’ve also been known to enjoy a game of 7 Wonders. Despite being able to play 7 Wonders as a two player game, it’s a kludge at best. Now 7 Wonders Duel is an amazing two player game. So good that Nathan loved it, and has his own copy.

Continuing the two player game theme this month seems to have I got the great two player hand management game Odin’s Ravens to the table.

And a big surprise I actually played a couple of physical games of Star Realms. That is such a rarity.

I enjoyed New Bedford but can I ever forgive it for bringing Nantucket (the worst game ever) into my life?

And here is the complete list of games played I played back then.