Category: Cardboard

Board Games and the like

Cosmic Conflict is on sale for you to go and buy

xenophile
Ready for Love!

It’s not quite around in stores (at least around here) but FF posted that the expansion is for sale.  Now that this is out– will there be another?  Really only your cash on the galactic barrel-head can determine it.   I read the list of aliens, as well as the list of previously published aliens that didn’t make it in and my only slight sadness is no Silencer this time.

Here is the list of (non Lucre) alien powers that are still out there to be included in a new expansion.  The bold ones are Aliens I absolutely think should be in the game. (thanks boardgamegeek’s ‘Barney Bustoffson’):

ANOMALY Changes Luck – Mayfair
ARISTOCRAT Picks Hand And Draws Flares
AURA Makes Others Reveal Hands
BERSERKER May Challenge Everyone – Mayfair
BOOMERANG Challenges Challenger
BUSYBODY Can Replace A Challenge Card – Mayfair
CONNOISSEUR Draws Double Cards – Mayfair
CRYSTAL Tells Allies Number To Commit
DELEGATOR Assigns Main Players
DEMON May Replace Offensive Player
DIPLOMAT Can Negotiate 3-Way Deals
DOPPELGANGER Gets Opponent’s Cards
GHOST Uses Tokens From Warp – Mayfair
GORGON Freezes Others’ Tokens – Mayfair
GRIEF Gets Cards In Sympathy – Mayfair
INSECT Copies Opponent’s Power
JUDGE Assigns Extra Win/Loss Terms
LASER Makes Opponent Play Blind
MAGNET Attracts Or Repels Allies
MESMER Can Change Own Artifacts
NEGATOR Reverses Decisions
OBVERSE Switches Signs – Mayfair
PAVLOV Can Reward Or Punish Opponent – Mayfair
PENTAFORM Has 5 Life Stages – Mayfair
PHANTOM Has Ghost Tokens – Mayfair
PROLONG Can Extend Challenge – Mayfair
QUEUE Selects Order Of Play – Mayfair
SCHIZOID Changes Goal Of Game
SERPENT Leads Others Astray – Mayfair
SILENCER Stops Communication By 1 Player
SKEPTIC Doubles Risk Of Challenges
STING Switches Dying Tokens – Mayfair
SUBVERSIVE Lures Opponent’s Allies – Mayfair
VAMPIRE Uses Eliminated Tokens – Mayfair
WITCH Casts Spells
WORM Repositions Cone
WRACK Tortures Opponent
WRAITH Keeps Tokens Off Board – Mayfair

Some More Cosmic Expansion Info

xenophile
Love the Hate

Fantasy Flight posted more info on the Cosmic Conflict expansion to the greatest board game ever made with the release of info for a new alien: Xenophile!  Other than the self-referential artwork comedy of an alien blubbering over one of the most hated alien powers in the game (aptly named HATE), I think the power is pretty solid as it’s after card reveal and add OR Subtract– given that you’re going to have at least one enemy colony in your home system during a game, this gives quite a bit of flexibility in the face of Anti-Matter, Loser, Magician, etc. Here is a link to the info page.  Hopefully this is out soon while we’re still stuck indoors due to old man winter.

NEW COSMIC ENCOUNTER EXPANSION

Queen's Blade Mellowna
Mellowna says YAY!

Wow, I can’t believe I missed this last month!  Looks like we have Lunatic (new), Claw (new), Filth and Empath confirmed as part of the new set of 20 aliens (bringing the total to 90!) as well as another set of planets and ships in JET BLACK for 7th player slot.   Not that I needed another reason to play Cosmic Encounter, but there it is: I’ve never played a 7-player game unless player 7 was the Advisor variant (who could still win).  I just feel bad for many of the other board games slowly going to dust in my basement region.  They have emotions and they are crying (except for Calyus and Agricola).

Which aliens are you hoping for? I was really hoping for the Filth and that’s in, but for me– Silencer, Aristocrat, Vampire, Terrorist.

Talisman Sacred Pool – There can be only one!

We finally got a 5-man game with the new Fantasy Flight expansion to Talisman 4th edition: the Sacred Pool.  Starting characters were Rogue (Scott), Highlander (moi), Valkyrie (Cain), Vampiress (Jeff) and Gypsy (Chris).   None of the new characters were selected even though the Magus and Dark Knight were drawn.

I was the Highlander and pretty much everything went my way during the game, however, tactically (and I know some may roll their eyes at this because it’s all just random rolls right?), my goals were to get at least one strength increase from the main board before hitting the Highlands, then, if possible, clip a few magic items off the craft ladies (Rogue, Vampiress or Gypsy) on my way to the Dungeon, barring death, then head up to the Middle and Center region FTW.  I was able to slip through the Highlands and crush the Eagle King: getting the one-shot teleport item as a reward.  I then hit the Vampiress and grabbed a +2 craft Sword off of her, which really helped during my decent into the dungeon (highlander ain’t the smartest bloke to start).  The hapless Highlander wasn’t able to beat the Lord of Darkness on the first try– but that just gave him an excuse to rush right back into the dungeon for more beatings.

During this time, both the Gypsy and the Vampiress fell prey to the Highland ICE BRIDGE space in comical fashion and were replaced by the Prophetess and the Ghoul.  The stack of cards sitting on the ice bridge  space was a veritable mountain of goodness, but no one else attempted it during the game.   This brings up a  key point with Highlands and Dungeon–I very much prefer to play the game with the published variant stating that once you start to go into one of the side boards, you have to declare that you are leaving to go the other direction– and then you cannot switch to go back through the board until you have exited the board itself.  Without this rule, no one would ever land on the Ice Bridge space on purpose.  Since the Highlands are relatively easy for weak characters, there should be some danger in getting to the relatively weak Eagle King.

We didn’t get too into the newest mechanic from Sacred Pool, the quest reward deck. I think only myself and one other person were able to pull from the deck during this game.  That said, I love it.  It’s simple and builds on the importance of the Middle Region.  Next time we play, I want to combine the Quest Cards with the Warlock’s Quest ending card and see how it works with a deluge of quest reward cards hitting the table.

Anyway, the Highlander made it to the middle and a Battle Royale was drawn which pulls all characters to the middle for a throw down if they have a Talisman on them.  This eliminated all but the Valkyrie who was summoned to the Crown of Command space only to be struck down by the highlander (after some spell chicanery that might have let her win with a little luck).

WHAM

Z-man is putting out an updated version, a direct reprint mind you, of Tom Wham’s Kings and Things.  The rules are available here.   If you’ve played this game with me, first you must know I am a huge Tom Wham fan (I’ve only met him once personally and I became a fan of his beard as well) and try to pull out his stuff whenever I can get it to the table because even if people hate the games (I had some players absolutely despise The Great Khan Game by turn 2 when I busted it out) we have a lot of fun.  I’ll be the first to admit that his games are not the greatest games in the entire world–but for my personal taste, they are favorites. What Wham games are the best at doing for me and for many, many others is sparking ideas about making games.  I am absolutely convinced that without Wham, and especially his best game from Dragon Magazine, King of the Tabletop, we would not have Magic the Gathering, Settlers of Catan, and certainly no Nexus Ops (which I see as a direct decedent of KOTT) and ultimately, no Shadowfist.

While I advise anyone that likes a good ameritrash sluggathon ala Nexus Ops to pick up Kings and Things, I’ve always felt that the little innocuous magazine game version (King of the Tabletop) was more elegant and ultimately more playable.   What Kings and Things has that King of the Tabletop does not is a big map made up of Hexes (yes like Catan).  You can move armies around this map to explore and control these hexes, turning the game into area control.  What King of the Tabletop has is a big mess of Chits that represent land.  When you acquire it, either through conquest or exploration, you bring it in front of you.  When someone wants to attack, they just pick their player and line their forces up on the land they want to attack.  This simplifies the fact that most of the rest of the game consists of piles of different THING chits with numbers on them, and these are big upside-down stacks that get, well, real messy–and very messy if you try to place them all (upside down) on a hex board.  What’s more, because in Kings & Things your dealing with a map and not some abstract set of ‘lands’, some players can stay out of the action if they corner themselves up or shield themselves with another player in an Australia/Risk type maneuver — in King of the Tabletop, any player can attack any other player whenever it’s her turn because it abstracts movement.  This makes, in my humble opinion, for a more dynamic game for the whole table.

And the art– sadly, with Dave Trampier leaving the gaming industry many many years ago, we are not going to be blessed with his artwork in this new edition (a few of the chits look very similar though), but overall it looks good and I expect the production values will be top-drawer.

That said, I hope this is just the beginning of Z-man putting out Tom Wham’s games as from what I’ve seen on his site, he’s got quite a few up his sleeve.  Bring us a new version of THE GREAT KHAN GAME with some cards that won’t be destroyed in 3 plays!

Revisiting the Race for the Galaxy

We played quite a bit of Race for the Galaxy a few years back, but with the DELUGE of games of the board coming out in the last few years, it hasn’t hit the table overmuch. I consider it a great game, but not one of my all time favorites. I think after the two games I lost last night, I now know why: there’s no real player interaction at the level of play our group plays at. If we played hardcore Race all the time, we may be able to card count and estimate the optimal action card to play by reading the other player’s tableaus, but when you play a few times a year, you can get by really well by just picking a strategy (military, get 12 cards out the fastest, or Consume) and playing whatever you think is best tactically for that strategy based on your cards in hand–not really factoring in the other player’s goals or tableau at all.

Since we aren’t card counting or really looking at each other’s tableaus, Race boils down to a mutual solo game where the actions of the other players may help (say if you wanted to develop and colonize in the same turn and can anticipate which you should play), but are rarely detrimental. Again, this view of the game would vary drastically at higher levels of play, but even casually playing Race’s parent game, Puerto Rico, you are forced to plan around the role selection step a great deal more to score points FTW. In contrast to Puerto Rico, with Race, there is often so much going on with the other players abilities to score points, and very little you can do to impede their progress except work out the Nash Equilibrium to determine if you absolutely need to play the cards that don’t immediately score you points (Produce, Consume: Trade, Explore).

That said, Race for the Galaxy is still a great game (I’m not sure the most recent expansion has helped it however) and will hit the table from time to time–but when you have greats like Nexus Ops, Cosmic Encounter and the like that have tons of player interaction, it’s tough to get this to the table.  Theme and art never fail to impress.