Cardboard – Page 10

What have I been playing?

I had a busy busy couple of weeks and didn’t get much gaming in, but in my idle moments I have been trying (actually trying) to win FTL: Faster than Light and have failed again and again, which is the point I guess. It feels like an SNK fighting game. You get the hang of it and can beat the computer opponents with relative ease– and then you hit the boss and you are fucked forever (see Samurai Shodown 2 or King of Fighters 97 as examples). I’m waiting to see if anyone I know that has it has actually won it– because on easy– well, it ain’t. While the AAA titles can be awesome, FTL is case in point that almost all the PC gaming gold resides almost solely in the camp of the indy developer.

That said, I’ve finally uninstalled Rome Total War 2 (my box has my games on a small SSD so I have to free up space), because it just crashed too much– blue screens, other crashes and I just really do not like the direction they’ve gone with the fights. Even the biggest battles are over in 5-7 minutes and it all just turns into a big mob. It has some great things about it and the graphics look really good but I just ended up going back to the Napoleon expansion to Empire Total War, which if you haven’t played, is fantastic. I expected to be playing Rome Total War 2 for months and months, but that was not to be unfortunately.

Sure BF4 looks really good, but I just didn’t end up buying it. I feel like just playing Bad Company 2 would scratch that itch just fine (and it’s on Steam).

Talisman. Maurice!Bastard gifted me Talisman on Steam and I got in a game last night. It was– interesting. I think it’s a completely viable means of playing the game, and interface wise they did a fine job, but is Talisman the type of game that you want to play on the computer rather than face to face? I really don’t. I’d rather just bust out the boards and cards and go to town. Even if we only play once or twice a year that way, it’s OK.

The bad things about the game are that it’s a computer version of Talisman first of all, and second the art is terrible. Given that the 4th edition art was not great in the first place (I would be great if Fantasy Flight put out a new base set with new art so it could match the quality of their later expansions), the computer version is even WORSE in some areas– some of the pieces look like they took a photo of an employee and ran some photoshop filters on him and slapped it in the game. Pure garbage. Overall I’m going to give it a go. Since I’ve played hundreds of times, the base set is really not that exciting. If they get some expansions, that may be cooking with gas– but of course that will lengthen the game.

One thing that came up last night to haunt me is that I drew the Monk and the bastard asked me what I would do to fix it in 4th edition. Here I go to great length about it, but short version is that since the new version of Talisman allows players to collect CRAFT trophies as well as Strength (2nd edition allowed only Strength trophies to be collected and traded), there is no way to fix the Monk as he was originally– he would simply be the most powerful character in the game. So what did FF end up on? A guy who can’t use weapons and armor and adds +3 to his rolls in combat. Really you have a 5 STR character who can have a spell early on. Granted they tried to make up for this character’s weakness by piling on the FATE counters, he’s still one of the craptacular characters in the game (like the Elf and Dwarf).

Now what have you been playing?

Fawesome Blood Bowl mod

Since Games Workshop has really not supported Blood Bowl for the last 10 years or so, it’s been tough to get miniatures and gear for the game. As the fans of Blood Bowl are absolute fanatics, it stands to reason that they would make stuff to be able to play the game, but this is crazy awesome. Cubes for every position with their stats on the top of the cube. No idea where skills are at, but this looks extremely playable– though still no replacement for miniatures. I have a massive BB collection along with ‘storing’ teams of other people so I don’t have the issue of needing to hunt and peck on ebay for models at whatever expense the market will bear, but if I did, this looks like a great alternative (and I remember still as a kid playing with the cardboard stand ups from first edition).

Eclipse is getting new ships

Oh Eclipse is great, but the ship pieces are a bit shite, especially since they came from some other game years ago. The company is planning a couple of ship packs in the colors for the races and here’s the first one:

Gencon 2013 blatherings

Holy shit was it crowded. I’ve been there many years in a row (I think close to 20) and I have never, ever seen Gencon that crowded before. All the parking lots were full, the entire con area was packed with people. Normally you’ll see the same people around, the same security guards, the same cos-play nerds or larpers or insideout jelly doughnuts, but this year it was such a WAVE of humanity you’d never see the same people twice unless you went to the same type of regions in the gaming hall.

As this was Matt and Steve’s first time to the Con since it was in Milwaukee, I had some things to prove since I had been talking up Indy since it moved there– that it was and is far better than Milwaukee as a location for this large of a convention. Milwaukee’s downtown is pretty but let’s face it, it’s got shitty hotels and it’s dangerous at night right in the area of the new convention center. What’s more, though I didn’t remember this much, Matt said that Milwaukee never welcomed Gencon as a city much, only tolerated it.

Indy is different for sure, the bars nearby all go into full fucking nerd mode when the con starts with odd menus and drinks. There seems to be a Warmachine bar and a Pathfinder bar–likely some others. The people on the streets and in the attached mall (which is an actual mall, unlike the one in Milwaukee that is about as dead as you can get without being closed down) are confused by the gencon nerds, but not alarmed– they know there is a big ass nerd convention going on in the city and welcome it. There are random gaming posters in shops, taxi’s hang dice from their rear view mirrors and so on. All worshiping the nerd dollar descendant upon the town.

What’s more because the hotels are all connected (and quite nice) there is a massive and I mean massive party scene. Remember the White Wolf parties circa 1996/97 at the Hilton with the kickboxing and tons of beers and drinks and chicks? That’s going on every night of Gencon full on everywhere.

So what were we up to? I got in late Thursday night and headed into the con messing around the crowded ass retailer hall until the 4PM Shadowfist tournament, which had a great turnout with 20 people. I didn’t make the finals this year– but I played a REALLY crap deck and still pulled out a very lucky win in a game. My other two Swiss games did not go well, but were fun. I got to see what seems to be the trend after the endless big bruisers returning from the smoked pile of years hence: endless big bruisers unturning and attacking over and over again. Otherwise there was a TON of Ascended on the table this year compared to last. I counted four decks including mine. After a poor showing in the last couple years for the transformed animals, that was great to see. Mouth got to the final with his Bonechill deck but came in second. We need to tune that fucker to win next year. Matt’s deck was just not up to par and Steve’s relied on Infernal Army– while a big scary site-taker, is still basically a thug and got targeted for events or taken over more often than not. Matt cornered some of the design team for Fist for awhile and gave them a probably undeserved earful about some of the issues with the game. I guess I’d be happy if the Architects were back in the game and they didn’t have so many fucking NERD cards!! Just slapping a nerd head on a previously created painting to fulfill a Kickstarter reward is not anyone’s idea of a card they want to look at. Fuckn’ A. What’s more, we encountered TWO decks where the player had centered their deck around a card with their picture on it. This was terrible. Otherwise, time will tell whether the new cards make a good effect on the game or if they are overpowered. It certainly LOOKS like the dragons got a big boost.

Other than Shadowfist, we got in a few games of Seasons– which is excellent! It’s in the Glory to Rome/Race for the Galaxy vein, but the dice/action mechanic put it into the fun zone. While I wouldn’t say it’s better than Glory to Rome, I would play it over Race for the Galaxy and 7 Wonders any day (though both of those are excellent games as well). Also we got in a horrible game of Eclipse where no one was attacking until the very end. While I love the game, we’ve played so much I need a break from that one for awhile.

Shit that I saw. My Little Ponies was fucking everywhere at the con. For good reason, it’s a good show, but I think next year it will fucking EXPLODE even more. There’s a CCG coming out that will likely be a Pokemon rip off (which is fine) that I’ll have to buy for my kids and I saw some odd mission based game. It’s certainly a franchise worth gaming up and while we look very much down upon the bronies from a high level and urinate– it IS a really good show for kids (and adults forced to watch it). Even though it’s about female multihued ponies, the plotlines are excellent and much better than sitting through a five episode fight in Naruto…

A line at Fantasy Flight. Yeah.. was this necessary? They have some popular games for sure but a line? I think they are doing good work with the Star Wars license but… I am so fucking sick of the Star Wars license….let it go away again for a few years so we can like it again– it’s just been beaten to death.

King of Tokyo– I think the game is finally getting it’s due after a cult release as I saw it everywhere in the con and there was both a massive playset (with child sized monster stand ups) and a massive tournament going on. This is a great game for beer and pretzels in the BANG vein and really good with the kids– even if they cannot read.

D&D Next? Where was it? Matt got the new book (which is chock full of art from the old sets) but I didn’t see anything special– especially compared to something like Lamentations of the Flame Princess–which is awful special (module called Fuck for Satan for instance). I don’t know where WOTC are going to go with this next– but it’s nice to see all the Basic D&D and AD&D books reprinted beautifully after all these years. Too bad AD&D fucking sucked.

Bolt Action. I tried this out last year and I think it’s starting to get some traction. There were five table setups this year for demos and the game looks great. I splurged and filled out my 1000 point brits with a Cromwell and another infantry unit. I feel it’s a mash up of EPIC 40K and AT-43 and that’s a good thing. So many tanks….

Here is my hoard of loots from the con.

New Cosmic Encounter expansion was probably the biggest score. I picked up another box of On the Edge (10$) and the On the Edge survival book which from what I’ve heard is EXCELLENT shitter-reading materials. Fist was cheap at the con this year. I scored a box of Empire of Evil and a box of Critical shift for 60$ total. If we are going to go Zman only for playing going forward, I needed these— and I still needed them. I was looking for some Blood Wars but it was nowhere to be found. Also, Dreamblade was in just a few nooks and crannies…if you were ever thinking of picking that shit up at all, the end is nigh and I bet in the next 4-5 years the prices for stuff starts climbing and climbing…

I did pick up some random stuff for Epic 40K– Razorbacks and Ork dreadnoughts. I’m itching to get that played again.

It was a great con, much better than last year when I had that coughing crud people had for a couple months at a stretch and hadn’t slept for weeks. It was all still a blur but that was due to self-imposed sleep deprivation and the demon drink. I hope Matt, Steve and mouth can come along next year as we could all get into some Roleplaying games in addition to the other crap, which was sorely missed. Even with 3 days at the con– it was not enough gaming!

Now we’re looking DIRECTLY down the barrels of Saints Row 4 and

Gencon 2013 prep

Gencon, a whirlwind of a day and a half (usually) of everything gaming– you really feel like you are at the center of the gaming world for a weekend and in a lot of ways, you are. We’re going to have D&D NEXT on display, lots of stuff from Fantasy Flight, Ascension tournaments, a Shadowfist expansion around (for kickstarter people and lord knows whatever else is there for exposition and purchase.

This year I’m heading down Friday to hit the “Classic” Shadowfist tournament and there will be a ton of Wisconsin folks in there (by ton, I mean 6 or 7) expats and current residents of the horrible Walker “please international business, rape my state” regime.

Fist aside, I’d like to get in some games of Seasons, try out some miniature gaming (likely hit the AWESOME Bolt Action tables they had last year) and with Mouth, Matt and Fryburger all being at the con, this should be fairly legendary.

One thing about Gencon is that it’s very much what you make it. You could walk around and around the vendor hall the whole weekend and feel lonely and fat and just overwhelmed with all the shit there for sale and all the fucking people talking, but the real deal is getting in and playing games you’ve never tried before, playing with friends you see only once a year and talking shit about various nerds and their hobbies. Oh and drinking and ripping on star wars and getting fat.

List of stuff I’m looking for and going to play:

Various Dark Elf warhammer bits

Another box or two of On the Edge core

Lamentations of the Flame Princes modules (Fuck for Satan, the God that Crawls and Better than Any Man especially)

Visit Bully Pulpit and tell them Carolina Death Crawl is an awesome game.

Exalted – pester them about 3rd edition and then stand around and talk to my players about the 2nd edition campaign we haven’t touched for years but all jones for (except the combat)

Play some Cortex or FATE (to make sure we are doing it right)

Play some Lamentations of the Flame Princess (i.e. OD&D)

Weekend nerdifications and Talisman ruminations

Excitement! Battleblock Theatre was released onto a very expecting public recently and I had the good fortune to NOTICE it on XLBA in order to que it for download. Needless to say, anything related to the Castle Crashers team is likely to be pure gold– and it is. I had to peel myself off the TV to stop playing (due to crying and screaming of childrens). Unfortunately, the game is too difficult for young kids without any experience with Contra or Mega Man– but the skills built in Battleblock will carry a child through a lifetime of side scrolling gaming. While my daughter said she will never play the game again due to her failed jumping at all times, I will likely build a level just for them in the level editor to ease them into the genre.

That said, the height of nerdery this weekend was (finally) a game of Talisman 4th edition with the City expansion. While the city was the worst of the 2nd edition expansions, Fantasy Flight has done good work bringing the board into the 4th edition paradigm. Essentially, if you have a lot of gold, you go to the city to buy stuff or get transport to where you need to go. It’s much easier to get around in and still has a jail as well as three guilds that can be joined (no Sheriff). Just a few games back I was complaining that there were ways to accumulate tons of gold but no good place to spend it that was readily available. Sure you may have gotten lucky and pulled a trainer and the like from one of the decks, but until City came around, gold was only used for healing up lives lost and buying a horse when available. With all the expansions, the Adventure deck is so gigantic it’s rare that you will see the same cards at all in many games. We have not, since the second expansion or so, flipped the Adventure deck– and this happened quite a bit in the older versions of the game. This makes games more surprising, but you certainly can’t count on some of the core items (Wand, Ring, Unicorn, Runesword, Warhorse) coming up. With City, you now have more control over your item build for your character. It will be easier to say” ‘for this game, I would like to get X and Y objects to help me win’ and go and get them rather than just hoping they will come up. The new full plate is pretty cool (4+ armor save and +1 strength).

Comparison with 2nd edition’s City brings up the question of “advanced” careers in Talisman which were not included in the new City expansions. As Talisman was a GW game and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay has a career advancement system, 2nd edition Talisman added in the idea of advanced careers that can be purchased to upgrade your hero. There were not a lot of choices here but there were two in particular that were a bit of rapening if used correctly. First was the High Mage. Any high-craft hero could become the high mage by simply depositing a magic item in the city. This gave a character two (!?) spells per turn and added and additional 2 craft. Remember, unlike the new addition, players could not turn in defeated monsters for Craft so that 2 Craft is pure gold in 2nd editions. What’s more since 2nd ed. Talisman Dragons added a ton of magic items to the game, it was an easy thing to get some shitty magic trinket and suddenly be the most powerful spellcaster in the game with a quick trip to the city. Most underpowered/low tier characters would immediately attempt to do this as their first set of moves in the game. While still not on par with the Monk (who is laughably underpowered in 4th edition), Astropath or Prophetess, the High Mage was boss of almost all the other characters since the 2 craft bonus put him above all of the craft-attackers like the Ghoul, Wizard or Sorceress. All that said, I do not miss the advanced characters. It was a neat idea for the game, but wasn’t built into the entire system (I could easily see a talisman clone where the entire character leveling was choosing new careers) so felt like a bit of a shoddy addon– a much loved shoddy addon mind you.

I hope to get another Talisman game in this year– the next purchase in that line is Talisman Dragons which seems a bit overly complicated for what it brings to the table. What next for 4th edition? It’s got to be Timescape. There’s no other place to go!

New Elder Sign expansion means new Elder Sign Expansion for the iphone (plus blood bowl)!

Fantasy Flight announced a new expansion for the excellent Elder Sign (which is a lighter, better version of Arkham Horror) which means, soon, we will get it on the iPhone. While I don’t know anyone that actually owns the cardboard version of the game– just about everyone has the iphone version to be mentally raped by Cthulhu and friends while riding the bus to work.

…And an expansion for the Blood Bowl Team Manager game is coming soon. I’ve had a bad experience with the Team Manager game after a couple plays that I felt I automatically lost because I went last each game so I’m skeptical if it will be worth it as it never hits the table. However, the expansion DOES include the Dark Elves so there’s that. Everyone knows the Dark Elves are the best.

Our year in board gaming 2012

This year I didn’t get a ton of gaming in compared to previous years. That said, the games I want to play have narrowed quite a bit as what we don’t have is TIME, so faster games are getting played more. Gone are the weekends where we could conceivably play something for two days in a row or for even 8 hours straight. Anything over 4 hours is really never going to hit the table again unless it’s either really good or there is some exceptional circumstances.

End of the summer and Fall was slower for gaming as usual, but there was some fervor for a few games that made people really want to get out and push some wood on cardboard. Mostly, that fervor was around Eclipse, which is the clear winner for best game (and most played) over the course of this year. I got in 18 games of it, and seeing as most Risk-like strategy games I own have been played maybe 3-5 times ever, that’s saying something. The game is almost perfect for the 4X space genre and really, my complaints about it are the mediocre alien art rather than anything to do with the game itself. The first expansion is also excellent. While Eclipse games can sometimes be a bit boring if all the players turtle up or get a bad draw (or are eliminated)–it’s due to lack of experience on how to rack up the points. While totally dominating the 4X space genre (bye bye Twilight Imperium), Eclipse by no means takes the place of Cosmic Encounter as both the best sci-fi board game and best board game ever made but shit– it’s close.

Other than Eclipse, Glory to Rome is my second favorite for the year. While an older game, it had a reprint this year and it kicks ALL sorts of ass. It’s what we all wanted Race for the Galaxy to be and just didn’t know it at the time. There are just so many paths to victory, and while you are trying to set up your own stuff, like Race for the Galaxy, there’s much more interaction with other players. I think this will get played an absolute TON in 2013. Easy set up, easy to play, difficult to win and a Knizia level of nastiness makes for a total winner.

Second tier games that I liked but got pushed out by the two above: King of Tokyo is the first of the equals here. I love this game and will play it any time but it’s really light, doesn’t have much strategy and I can see some people not liking the randomness of it. There are some tough decisions to make in the game, but at it’s surface, it seems all about just rolling dice. The dice are a factor however, so this is why I like to play 3-4 games in a sitting to even all that random out. Secondly is the Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards: Duel at Mt. Skullzfyre. This is a fun little game but with too many players, say 5+, the turns take forever and because you have to win 2 rounds the game can take 3-4 HOURS to get through. Sitting down to just play a single round is well worth it. While light and not very strategic, the art and getting to yell out the spells makes it a solid game to play when you don’t have a ton of time.

The last two are games I wanted to like, but am not sure about. First is Blood Bowl Team Manager. While a solid concept, I became frustrated in two four-player games where I was the last player to go on the first season of each game, limiting my play options. It seemed impossible to catch up in either game and made me think that this is a serious design flaw. While I love Blood Bowl, and Team Manager is a cool concept, I can’t see this hitting the table due to this balance issue. In contrast, In Nexus Ops, the players after the first get a bonus to their cash to balance out the power of the first turn. Team Manager has no such fix and from my few plays at the wrong end of the table, it needs it. Secondly: Feudality by Tom Wham. This is also a fairly light game with a lot of randomness to it. I’d describe it as Catan with fighting. While enjoyable to play, the same dice issues that I have with Catan creep up in Feudality and it doesn’t seem like you can knee-cap the player closest to winning easy. I don’t expect it to hit the table all that much.

Games that fell by the wayside this year a bit. First off is Warhammer Fantasy Battle. I hate to say it but I only got in a few games this year while painting a lot more than I usually do. I assume I’ll get in another game before the end of year, but this SHOULD have been played a lot more than it was. Sure I could have packed up my shit and gone to the GW store any given Sunday for a game, but it’s tough when you have a basement set up with a table.

Secondly, I only got to play Cosmic Encounter FOUR times this year. That’s a crying shame and has to be rectified in 2013.

I did get in some old stuff this year that proved to be pretty awesome. The first was Epic 40K, the third iteration of the Space Marine rules– yes the ones that TANKED after 6 months of support from GW. I was surprisingly pleased with the rules and wish now that I had played it a lot more in the heyday (if there was one) for this ruleset. Bolt Action uses these rules (essentially), so if you are looking at a modern iteration, that’s where to go. Following the old GW vein, I was coerced into playing 40K, a game I rather loathe since the new ‘mass close combat’ style rules came out, but in it’s 2nd edition which still has some tactical depth for the scale with individual models rather than moving globs of models en masse (which is ok for EPIC scale, but 28 mm skirmish? No).

Shockingly, Advanced Space Crusade got raised out of the dust and played. This is one of Games Workshops pinnacles of design with both a campaign game and tactical game wrapped in one. While not something I could play a lot of, it’s a solid experience and one of GW’s best 40K offshoots.

So that was 2012– what is there to look forward to in 2013? First off is Talisman City. Fantasy Flight is tackling one of the more difficult to design expansions to Talisman. If the success of Dungeon is any indication, I have a lot of confidence that City will be excellent. Talisman has a ton of expansions at this point and I’ve played with all of them but Dragons, which looks like a lot more work than integrating the rest of the expansions. Moongha Invaders is the next on my list for 2013– and a kickstarted I’ve supported. Other than that, there’s not too much that’s coming out next year for board games that I know of now. I’m sure there will be something to grab at my hard earned cash and if not, there is always Eclipse…

Talisman fart-candle

Holy crap: Dreadball makes their $$$

Who could have possibly imagined that a space version of Blood Bowl would get 750K+ in a kickstarter? We all know nothing can top the gameplay of Blood Bowl for fantasy football gameplay, and while the Dreadball miniatures are nice and the graphic design is sharp, I do not have high hopes about how it will play in comparison to Blood Bowl and it looks a bit like Milton Bradley’s Battle Ball… Woah though– 750K… simply amazing.

I regret not getting in on it– but it was late in the game before they added T-shirts– and I’m only in the kickstarters for the fucking tshirts!!!