it’s now time to play and buy Master of Orion if you haven’t. Silicoids, Meklars, Darloks (and espionage) are now in the game. It’s fucking READY TO ROLL.
Given it wasn’t Spring and like the third nice day (without snow) here so far this year, given I didn’t have tons of crap to do, given I hadn’t had unprotected sex a few times awhile back, I’d be playing all weekend. All I was able to do last night was play until I passed out in front of the computer. 
Master of Orion is in early access and I jumped on that fucking space pysse bandwagon right away, they couldn’t take my money fast enough really. Last weekend I spent most of Sunday powering through a game and I have thoughts and feelings. If you don’t want to read it all here is what I think: they’re not done, but the game is fun and is a solid base from which to build the new MOO. The economy part works and is not annoying at all, the space combat needs some work but is pretty fun to watch. You don’t make a lot of choices during it (like games such as Star Hammer or BFG), but it’s FAST which is the most important part. Multiplayer will be unbearable turn angst and will never be played by normal humans.
I started off this game missing the Meklars, who are my go to race in MOO. My secondary has always been Humans because they always have an extremely strong trade and diplomacy aspect. As long as you can keep your fleets sort of large, you’ll be in the game and be able to stay out of wars until you are ready to crush everyone.
So comparing the game to Master of Orion 1 and 2, they leaned heavier on MOO 2 than 1 for the galaxy design and management of systems. Each system is a dot on the galactic map connected to other dots via star lanes. You can only move from one system to the other via star lanes and not directly (at least at first). This is quite a change from MOO1 where you can just move your ships anywhere (even to the furthest star in the galaxy) if your ships have the range. I do not mind this.
Systems, like in MOO2, are solar systems with multiple planets and not just one dot like MOO1. Ships move around these systems, not freely, but from object to object. So they can move from a planet to an asteroid to another planet or to the star gate. Fights take place at these locations and not, again, freely within the star systems. This was good. While not as simple as MOO1, it works.
Colony managment does not use the sliders of MOO1, which is something I was hoping they’d keep in. However, they have these little people that you can move from FARMING, INDUSTRY, SCIENCE. These little people may be members of your race or other races after you conquer them. Some racial bonuses apply I think, so ‘collecting’ the other races to help you in science or manufacture is appealing. Think a Human empire with Meklar building stuff and Psilons in science! It’s clearly presented overall and works. You can easily see when people are pissed off and not working as the little guys sit down with a protest sign.
Colonies gain pollution, and while this is a somewhat annoying feature, it’s easily seen and dealt with. You can see planets with bad pollution from the galactic view so it’s clear when things have gone wrong without having to drill down into the system.
Building stuff is in your typical queues where you can line up ships and planetary upgrades, up to 5 items at a time. Building is slow in the new MOO so far and I really think they will change this going forward. It takes a long time to get a bunch of ships made for example, and in that time I usually have 2-3 science upgrades.
Science. It’s a tree we’ve seen over and over, and not much different there. They do an interesting thing with some of the techs in that when you discover it, you choose between two applied technologies rather than getting both. This is a trade opportunity with the other aliens who may have the other applied science. You tech up FAST in the game compared to production. They will likely balance this out. I got up to TITAN ships before I mercifully ended the game for the Mrshaan, so not all the way up the tree.
Ship building is easily done, but I did not see a way to point ships to another ‘gathering’ system as they are built, they have to be moved manually. Like the other games, ships are organized into fleets which move together at the slowest ship’s movement rate. I don’t know how fleets are auto merged, but what I think is that it happens most of the time when ships are at an object together, which is sometimes good, sometimes bad.
Ship upgrades and modding is extensive, but frankly in the first play through I didn’t do much here. I made some bombers and some large fighter carriers. Otherwise I just did stock upgrades (which are nearly automagic) when I got tech advances. Sub-optimal? Yes.
Combat. This is the one thing that the designers brought from MOO3– real time battles and they did it far better in the new MOO. You can choose to auto-battle and for many fights, just like in Total War games, will be handled this way. The important battles though, you can fight out in real time. While moving ships around is possible, I just pretty much ‘went straight at them’ 90% of the time. There are asteroids and other objects in space, and you can hide behind them to dodge shots, but really there’s so much stuff flying around that getting in close and just blasting everything is the way to go. It’s pretty satisfying to see your ships blow the crap out of everything so I’m liking it. As a Total War fan, I prefer the real time option to anything else. This ruins multiplayer though, so I will say right now that just like MOO2 and 3, multiplayer will NEVER be actually played, and was a waste of time for them to add. The only way to do multiplayer is the way Illwinter did it for the Dominions games. You give your armies orders and in between turns ALL battles are resolved which you can watch, but not control. This makes Dominions games PLAYABLE in multiplayer for people not sitting intheir dorm rooms for a full week, instead of not.
Planetary invasions don’t look finished, but it’s exactly like MOO1. Your guys land, they fight and whoever wins, wins. My only issue here is that marine transports can be tough to build, and even if 99% of your marines survive the attack, you don’t have those transports anymore and the marines sort of disappear into the aether.
The Races
Not all the races are in the game yet, but you’ve got your ‘humans with animal heads’ races represented already (Alkari, Mrshaans, Bulrathi, Psilons, Sakkra). They are cartoony and silly and that’s just fine. The Mrshaans are just ridiculous. What I liked is that the race’s ambassador shows the emotion that they have for you with their body language– whether pissed or afraid or happy. Very Civ 4 like and Good stuff. Some people may be put off by the space kitties and doggies, but that’s MOO. Space kitties suck in a game like Twilight Imperium or REX which are otherwise DEAD SERIOUS, but since MOO is campy all around, it works.
The only thing good about MOO 3 was the 3d art for the races. I think the races are OK in newMOO compared to that, but they could use some tweaks.
Mid and End game management
My biggest complaint about MOO1 and 2 is that the galaxies were too small. Espeically in MOO2– it felt fucking tiny even in the huge galaxies. While I played only a medium sized game last weekend, it felt pretty big and meaty. I want the shorter games like that to play for a couple of days, but I mostly want the MASSIVE galaxies that take months to conquer.
Management of big empires can be a bitch but I think it will work well in MOO and I certainly was not annoyed while playing the first game. There is a queue of work items that need your attention before the turn can be run. This helps direct you to where you need to make decisions and after that you can do your other stuff. You will never forget to change your tech or deal with a REALLY polluted planet for instance the way it’s set up.
Of course, near the end of the game you are basically running and adding fodder too a few big fleets and that’s what you want to focus on, I think that the new MOO caters to this by allowing you to just do what’s absolutely needed, and forgetting the rest. Autobuild is there, so you don’t need to work too hard on colony management if you don’t want. Like Total War games, I want to get to the fucking fighting and not dick around with my colonies, especially when I have a massive empire. I want the money and fleets pumping out, and let me get to the dropping of bombs on the Silicoids and destroying the fleets of the Psilons.
The designers just released a long list of stuff they are going to work on.
I like the game, looking forward to playing again (will be waiting until the next big patch) and one of the things I like is that these guys are not saying they want to make the best game ever, they want to make the best version of MOO ever, and here’s to that. There is competition these days to MOO, but it’s Sins of a Solar Empire, Galactic Civilization and Endless Space and those are all complete trash none of which I would play over MOO 1 or MOO 2.
I’m also looking forward to Maurice!Bastard playing and reviewing the game.
There will be a Master of Orion board game this year. Do I mean Eclipse? No, it’s an actual MOO licensed game.
This along with the remake of the PC version should be a … year for MOO.
Fantasy Flight is going to town with the Star Wars license and most of the stuff has been great if you like Star Wars a lot, which I don’t, at least in it’s licensed form. Everything outside of the (good) films seems to get super cheesy and overused. The fact is, compared to 40K or even something as generic as Forgotten Realms, there’s not a lot going on in Star Wars, so any user of the license has to stretch out everything– to the point where most of the LCG cards are just artified frames from some of the films. For example, a stub fighter to stub fighter battle game makes sense but the rebel capital ship fleet vs the imperials? It’s no contest at all and just seems ridiculous. It doesn’t help that every goddamn thing from the prequels sucks horribly as well because there at least are different factions instead of just two.
And of course, licensed games nearly always suck (there are notable exceptions!) so FF has an uphill battle with everything they make for Star Wars anyway and has done a great job so far. That said, Star Wars Rebellion looks like it could be good, with an interesting design that reminds me a bit of the old LoTR board game (very old) and Dune (with the Duels expansion). It may be one of those rare games like Star Wars Epic Battles, that both captures the feel of the films and is a good game to boot.
Ah so long 2015, it was a good year for gaming. Not the best ever, but very good. This is going to be a long post. I think this blog is now 5 years old as well, wow.
Board Games and such
The first best is Blood Rage. I can’t get enough of the game and having it only a short time, I’ve already played it 11 times and will pretty much play any time. While the set up time is a bit long and the boxing back up time is ridiculous, Blood Rage has been worth playing every single time we’ve busted it out. I sleeved all the cards and now store it in a huge pelican case. While I won’t knee-jerk everything that CMON comes out with, Blood Rage was a design and artistic triumph of board games. I wish I had bought it at Gencon AND gotten my kickstarter stuff later because we lost a couple months there waiting for the boats to come in from China. It was a long wait.
I’m tired of worker placement games. I think during a game of Keyflower this year my eyes went blurry and it wasn’t from drink but from the ‘oh shit I’ve played this same thing before with different rules.’ While some of the new stuff looks and plays great, like Caverna, Tiny Epic Galaxies and Euphoria– I’m just real tired of that type of game. Sure, Caylus is one of my favorites, but I don’t remember when the last time was I brought that out to play. There’s just too many of these games and people keep buying them.
Dead of Winter was my second favorite game this year. Excellent psuedo co-op game that plays very smooth and is easy to teach, even to non-hardcore gamers. While the premise with these zombies has been done to death here in 2016 now, Plaid Hat did a fine job with this one. Co-op games are usually crap, but because everyone has their own goals to fulfill to win, it doesn’t fall into the pandemic trap where one player ACTUALLY plays the game while everyone else just sits there.
The new Epic Spell Wars was cool, but it hasn’t hit the table much. I got in one game of Moongha Invaders, and it was good, but Blood Rage pretty much hammered everything else to the side.
Arcadia Quest was played quite a bit, and while it’s not my favorite game, it has a certain appeal to it for the DOTA in all of us. I’m definitely interested in playing more (but not too much).
Talisman is still going strong, but we’re not. I’ve played only twice with the Woodlands and there are more expansions out than number of plays for our group. While Netherealm was awesome, Deep Realms was too difficult to figure out and I haven’t even purchased the Harbinger expansion yet. I am happy they are coming out with a new main board expansion though; that may be very cool and I’ve always hated a few bits of art on the 4th Edition main board (which Fantasy Flight did not produce originally). One of these days we are going to do a series on how to play Talisman, i.e.: which expansions to use and which to leave out. It’s a great game, but it’s over the top now to play with all expansions (not including dragons) that we keep buying.
Video Games
My favorite this year went along with my splurge purchase of a 3DS XL. Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate is completely amazing and hellaciously addicting. It’s a shame it’s only on handhelds. It has a message in the beginning to take breaks from playing it for a reason. I’ve played mostly single player, but I have gotten in on some 4 player monster hunting and it’s great fun.
I’m still playing Darkest Dungeon, even though I just haven’t gotten it yet in terms of how to ‘win.’ I’m getting used to losing a lot of guys and on top of that, running away a lot more. Other than that, I haven’t gotten very far at all sadly, but I keep playing– and playing. It’s great!
Fallout 4 is more Fallout. It’s not a ‘holy shit WOW’ type of game like Skyrim, but there’s a lot going on and it’s been pretty compelling so far. I meant to play it more during holiday, but I didn’t get too much time in. Being able to make gun modifications is a pretty addicting part of the game, though I’m not totally sold on the Minecraft stuff yet.
Other than Fallout and Darkest Dungeon, I played a shitload of Dungeon of the Endless in 2015, which is amazing and beautiful in all ways. Rebel Galaxy has gotten some solid play, which is also good Privateer style fun.
My biggest disappointment was probably the much hyped Endless Legend. Absolutely GORGEOUS art style and aesthetic, even the UI is great, but I hated the gameplay. I’m just not a CIV-style person. Others will love this game.
I guess if I was to pick a runner up game of 2015 it would be Far Cry 3. I know it did not come out last year, but 2015 is when I got around to it. Great shooter, one of the best I remember and a redemption of the franchise after Far Cry 2.
There are a lot of video games out worth playing. Far, far, far too many to even scratch the surface to discuss. I would be like talking about TV shows you’ve seen– there’s just that many out.
Miniatures
When AT-43 was tanking and everything was on sale everywhere, I had just had a kid, so there was no way I could take advantage of it. That said, this year I spent some cash on it and got a large UNA army and filled some gaps in my Red Blok and Therian armies. I got to play once, but this is one I want to expose people to more since I have all the shit and it really is a great game.
Age of Sigmar was a catastrophe. It killed my desire to play Warhammer 8th Edition (for now) which is sad since I was closing in on finishing painting my minotaurs as the capstone to my beastmen army. 8th did not get enough play this past year, and that’s got to change.
We did get some Necromunda in recently, but I think 2015 was not the best year for miniature games and especially sad to see the death of what I think is one of the best rulesets for big midieval style battles- 8th edition Warhammer
RPG’s
This was the year of Runequest 6. Despite some trainwreck sessions I’ve had with the game, I am pretty much convinced that Runequest 6 is the best fantasy RPG for the style of play I want in a serious campaign. While Lamentations and 13th Age are fantastic and will absolutely get played, Runequest 6 just has so much going for it and so many possibilities in a campaign setting. If you have the 6th Edition books, hang on to them as it’s going to pull a Marvel Heroic Roleplaying next Spring and will start to get rarer and rarer. Hopefully I’ll be able to get this together in 2016.
13th Age is my Roll20 game, and we have yet to scratch the surface. On Roll20 it’s a TON of prep though, so when there are weeks when people can’t get it together (myself included), it’s demoralizing.
Feng Shui 2, though I’ve only run 1 session so far, is excellent. Something to bust out for a couple session runs from time to time. I’m not happy the architects are out of the setting, but as a GM, that’s easily rectumfied…
And lastly I need to mention another game I really liked running this year: Into the Odd. Extremely rules light and heavy on the weird. The character generation alone is inspirational and takes 2 minutes. I’ve got this shitty print out of the rulebook that’s stapled and is coming apart from abuse so I need to get a real copy someday. I went so far as to support the author on Patreon so yeah, love it.
I got all the 5E books, liked the DM’s guide but the PBH is just too huge to use as a rules reference. I have not yet PLAYED 5E which I hope to change in 2016. It’s not my D20 of choice, but it’s good and with the OGL now out, it will be deluged with content.
2015, see you later.
We haven’t done a game review on here for awhile, mostly because I’m lazy and Maurice!bastard had unprotected sex.
Amidst the river of shit that gets published to the iphone, there are a few, and I mean few, great games. Implementations of classic board games aside, there’s very little of worth that’s original on the iphone. Especially sad is the fact that there are incredibly few 4X strategy games of any worth at all. No one has even been able to copy MOO properly, usually taking that basic, clean premise and layering it with a bunch of shite or half-assing it with no diplomacy or trade. Rebuild 3 is not in that river of shit, Rebuild 3: Gangs of Deadsville is a great little 4X game for your phone!
What it is
This is a zombie game, which there is the first facepalm in even considering buying it. However, I’ve learned my lesson that no matter how fucking played out a genre or trope is, it can still be handled in a way that makes an enjoyable game– AKA: Dead of Winter–an amazing game at what could probably be called the end of the zombie craze we’ve just lived through since 2008 or so. Or maybe it’s the beginning of a new one?
Rebuild 3 is a 4X game. It has elements of Civ and all the various 4X games you’ve played and loved in the past.
Rebuild 3 is an RPG (a bit), with character leveling, character interaction and plot advancement based on character choices.
Rebuild 3 has a plot. While the ‘levels’ are like Dungeonkeeper where you conquer a thorp or town with your gang and then move on to the next one.
This sounds like a recipe for disaster does it not? An RPG 4X with an overarching plot? Dangerous, yes, but this game works.
You start the game with your avatar that ends up being a 100% badass at just about everything. This is your character, and I think if he or she dies it’s over (this never happened to me so it may not be possible).
The first phase of any of the scenarios is survival and expansion. Like All good 4X games, before you get to any factions you will be assailed by non-aligned ‘creeps’ in the form of hordes of zombies. You spend the first phase cleaning out zombies and building a big wall around the spaces you want, especially hospitals, workshops and the like. During this time you increase the size of your gang by finding lone or coupled survivors around, they will have certain skills that you will be able to use.
Each survivor has a core skill among as set of skills. This will denote them as good for fighting, building stuff, research and the like. You can train these artificially in a school once you find one and kill the zombies in it, or assign the characters to do something and they will get better at it.
Once you fight off nearby zombies, you will encounter other factions. These are pretty quirky and have different goals (they are not generic at all) and things that they do. They can be destroyed or you can fulfill missions for them and ally. Alliances and enemies only last on the map that you are currently on, so the situation can change if you meet them later in the game.
Eventually you get to some huge maps with many other factions, some of which will be destroyed by others or zombies before you can get to them. It’s quite fun to race to see who can wall off and defend areas in the cities first.
Items! Since there are characters in the game, they naturally have to be equiped right? Well there are tons of items in the game: various weapons from crowbars to miniguns, tool boxes, medical kits, zombie traps, etc. All either built or found out in the city. It’s part of the addiction to kit your guys out to become super searchers or mass zombie destroyers. While not complex, this is a great part of the game.
The campaign involves your gang trying to solve the mystery of the zombies and destroy factions that stand in your way to do so. You end up having to take over more cities than I can remember, with a giant showdown at the end in what I think is Vancouver. The game builds in complexity as you go along, sort of easing you into destroying other factions as well as the different zombie types. I tell you straight I ‘finished’ the game, but I didn’t exactly win. There are some multiple endings going on here that may add to the replay-ability.
Cons
I have a 5S, so the screen is pretty small. This would be much better on a 6+ or an ipad. On a 4S I would be hard pressed to even bother with this frankly, the form factor is just so small and the text is tough to read.
Replay-ability is there, but it’s not great. Ever since finishing the main campaign, I haven’t started up one of the city conquest games yet. The main campaign is LONG so this may explain it.
Summations
Rebuild 3 will get it’s zombie meathooks into you if you let it. This gets the highest possible score here at Mraaktagon of a 1. If you have an iphone, buy it. You will like it if you have a big enough phone that is.
The races look good. Voices are cartoonish (not like the old game wasn’t cartoonish though…)
There are many, many flagrant kickstarter horror stories and scams (look up “Ken Whitman” and you’ll get a fuckin face full with just one guy), but there are many that are much, much more subtle in their failure that people don’t really bitch about, because they only sort of suck, or only sort of failed to deliver the goods. Here is a list of failed kickstarters for me and some of these are real questionable —but not overtly failures. Have they failed so far to deliver on time? Fuck yes. Are they scams? Possibly. This does not include a list of kickstarters I backed and then never even used the games or stuff yet (like Bulldogs!, Wasteland 2, Planetary Annihilation (the pre-titan version) as those are MY fault and not the fault of the creators.
Double Six dice roller, estimated delivery: August 2014
This kickstarter was 10$ for a set of D12’s that have D6 dots on them, or have the FATE +/- on them. This kickstarter still has not delivered and has been so long in coming that, since I don’t even play FATE and likely never will again, I don’t even want the dice I ordered. FATE does not suck for some people, so I have friends I can give them away to at least. Using them for other games is a possibility. Apparently this will ship at some point? Fucked.
Journey Wrath of Demons, estimated delivery: July 2014
All I wanted was to follow this because the mini’s looked cool and get a T-shirt. It never came. What’s more, when I tried to set my order for one as a backer, they only had SMALL sizes left. Since this kickstarter looks like it failed for all of it’s backers, why would they care about a little thing like a tshirt…
Exalted 3rd Edition: Estimated delivery: December 2013
This is incredibly late and so far a failure, but apparently this too will get delivered some day in the far future because otherwise it looks like a huge fucking scam to me. They had a debacle early on with one of the developers having health problems, but as a the producers of the product, you give that guy a rest and move to another developer who can deliver, which even after months and months stretched into years, doesn’t look like it happened. It’s so incredibly late that the market for this type of game is gone. I got a beta version of the rules on the internet (not even sent to backers!!!!) and I can say for sure I will never, ever play this except goofing around (and who has time for that when there are so many other good RPG’s to play?). 2nd edition Exalted captured the imagination certainly, but the rules were just a horrible, horrible mess. 3rd Edition looks like a slight step up, but why would anyone want to bother with something this grossly complex in 2015? After reading the rules, I commented that stunt descriptions BEFORE the die roll is a horrible design decision that has since been changed in other stunting games, but was shouted down by the fan boys. You can imagine what sort of lickspittles are surrounding the designers when you get this sort of jagoffery from just internet fansies.
Martin Wallace’s Moongha Invaders, estimated delivery July, 2013.
This was a game that had 500 copies made a mess of years ago and the kickstarter was going to bring it back to the masses. As a Wallace game, it had high marks all around, but so far, it has never come and now it’s ridiculously late.
Tabletop Forge
This tanked and the guys said so. However, we got FREE memberships and assets to Roll20, so they hooked up backers solid. Can’t complain about this one really.
Star Citizen, Estimated delivery: Nov 2014.
This is the big one– so far this is the big scam that has THOUSANDS of people on the hook for what looks like vaporware. There is tons of ‘content’ for this game: ship designs, 3d models, a semi-playable combat engine (didn’t work when I installed it), info on planets and trading but this game is nearing a full year late–and I really don’t think it’s ever going to actually come out. Every time I see a youtube video or read a kickstarter backer post I think more and more that while this turned out to be a scam, they didn’t mean it to be in the beginning. Something is very, very wrong with whatever this team is doing. It’s constant press about nothing–in a way much like Master of Orion 3 was. Maybe someday this will deliver, but it’s not looking good. When you back a game that hasn’t started development, be VERY wary. For example while Banner Saga shipped and looked great, but is one of the worst games I’ve ever played, with some of the worst sound design imaginable–that was 50$ blown. I think Star Citizen will be case in point why you do not just give people a bunch of money to do whatever they want with it before there’s anything. Since they already have your money, they will do as they will and won’t focus on shipping a product to compete in the marketplace. While I think this group is working on something, it’s obvious more and more from every single update or youtube video that it’s far off the rails and a fuckstarter.
I haven’t been posting for awhile, sort of the end of summer, after Gencon blogging blues (and I’ve been playing a lot of Planetary Annihilation to boot). As penance, click the broad and it will take you to an interesting iOS game I’ve been looking at picking up. After the fun for 20 minutes but ultimately totally boring Fallout Shelter came out, I’ve been looking for a good 4X game in that style and I found it! That’s the subject of a different post altogether.
This is long but yeah… Titans?
