Category: Cardboard
Board Games and the like
Sons of Anarchy board game
I was looking at Blood Rage’s successor: Godfather by CMON. Area control, destruction of business and gangsters, etc. Seems great but shit man it doesn’t fit the theme well. The 5 families in the movies had issues from time to time, but to constantly be in conflict would have sunk them all very quickly, especially since the gangs of New York had shrunk to a minuscule amount compared to the era of the Dead Rabbits and Native Americans who numbered in the thousands. I was thinking it would need to be FAR closer to something like Republic of Rome or Dead of Winter, where you work together, have your own goals, but also have serous external threats that could sink everyone in the game. If the Sicilians wiped themselves out like portrayed in the Godfather game, we’d be watching ‘mafia’ shows centered around the Irish gangsters, Polish, Jews or Greeks or any of the post WW1 immigrant groups instead.
That said, if you’ve looked at Godfather and are interested in that type of game MUCH cheaper: have a look at Sons of Anarchy. 14$ on Amazon, it’s a steal currently (which probably won’t last) and after a single play so far, I can say it’s well worth that measly amount. The components are solid, nothing felt cheap either in the plastic and none of the sturdy cardboard was de-laminated at all.
More importantly, the gameplay is smooth and gives interesting choices for the players. You start with a gang of prospects and full gang members and have a goal of having the most cash at the end of six turns (cash is analogous to glory in Blood Rage except you can spend it). The game has locations, randomized at the beginning of the game, that the gangs can exploit for guns or cash or contraband, but you have to be the only gang present to do so. If other gangs are present you can bribe them to move out or duke it out on the streets. Fighting can be as tame as just a barfight style beatdown, or the guns can come out which can, at the right moment, nearly wipe out an opposing (or even both gangs). You have to balance your muscle and economy at all times, and attempt to get an economic engine going of areas that you persistently control.
Like Cosmic Encounter, each of the five gangs in the game break the rules in some way, such as not having to pay to move gang members to other locations during a throw down, or bonuses when you are the first player in a round.
Despite the almost immediate dismissal of a board game based on a show or movie, Sons of Anarchy is a solid area control game and the theme works well, as the biker gangs aren’t as concerned with ‘business’ as the Sicilians of the Godfather game would be, so the catastrophic violence seems quite a bit more appropriate. The price (right now) is certainly right.
Dungeon Degenerates!
I was one of the proud backers of this game TOTALLY ON THE ART ALONE and did so with no regrets. However, we have here an interesting game on our hands in addition to being a beautiful one! The art is basically gamer porn if you love Aly Morrison and John Blanche stuff from GW of old. Chaos Marauders feels like a strong influence for the art style, both ooze theme, but this shit goes to 11 in metal.
If I was to compare this game to anything I would say it’s like a coop version of Tom Wham’s Search for the Emperor’s Treasure with a much darker backdrop and a bit more complexity in a few areas. If you’ve never played SFtET that’s OK, it should become obvious what type of game this is with a brief description.
You are a group of escaped prisoners from the city dungeon of Brutellburg in the province of Wurstriech. Wurstreich is getting worse and more dangerous all the time. The party can choose to fulfill various missions (or not) as you run away from the law and various monsters. These missions lead to other missions and then you have a long story arc for your party through the game. You level up(sort of) and buy new gear as well.
The rulebook is a bit daunting. I read through it as a PDF a while back but didn’t have the game in front of me so very little STUCK up inside the brain. I have given it a go solo and here are a few things to look for in your first play.
- Paths can be used, but you cannot fast travel (force march) on them until they are explored
- It’s very important to understand the threat / town level system for the game as it determines encounters (the meat of the game). Which spaces have their distinct threat level and which share with their territory is critical to note.
- Roads and paths are ‘spaces’ so you draw a danger card every time you move on to one. (I know this seems obvious but…)
- Combat – note that most combats you are rolling 5 dice. 2 are defense, 2 are offense and one power die. It’s a straight forward system similar to Search for the Emperor’s Treasure. There are LOTS of conditions and effects to track as well as ‘approach’ effects such as ambushing.
- The Danger cards are worth reading and re-reading about as they have some things that will seem odd at first. the TAGGING of the main threat number is critical as that’s the deck you draw from. At it’s most complex, it is an encounter (card) draw, plus an Epic monster, plus normal monsters that are NOT of the area you are in. You need to know how to match the threat level on the card to the threat level on the space or area you are in. This is the most complex thing in the game, so study it closely for faster play.
- You SPEND your XP when you rest and you SPEND your gold when you rest in a town area for loot. Your XP does not accumulate to level you up, you level up by buying skills.
- Read and re read the hand of doom rules.
Tuesday night will be the first play through with people (though my kids may force my hand earlier) and I’ll post feelings then on more than just the presentation.
Last I want to say this. I got Massive Darkness and this within a few weeks of each other. Both are Co-op Explore/Kill/Loot/Mission games. Dungeon Degenerates I actually set up and played immediately and will do so again asap. Massive Darkness — I doubt it will get busted out even with the kids until Xmas or something.
The Mraak plays talisman
The Blood Rage Box
I like Blood Rage– a lot. Sometimes I wish it was chits and small wood pieces though because for a time, I was carrying the fucker around in a PELICAN case with all the miniatures having to be removed from their original boxes every time we played. This meant that set up and especially take down time was prohibitive for most gaming nights. Since the game needs to be played more often that was no good– just really damn unacceptable don’t you think?
Matt got me the laser cut box insert for Blood Rage (the go7gaming one) for my birthday last month and I slapped it together in an hour or so last week. The only thing weird I did was get some different while glue per the recommendation in the instructions, rather than just using elmers. I used a damp paper towel to clean off the excess glue. While the construction was tricky in some places, the instructions were easy to follow all the way through, with just a couple DUHHHH’s along the way.
Here are some pics of the work in progress and final.
Here we have the start of the process with the Clan boxes complete at the top of the picture. Each clan has a box and it’s LABELLED (see below) for ease of putting away. The clan boxes go on the bottom of the BR box.
Close up of the clan boxes with the Snake clan up inside already.
In the back is the big monster box that will also support the board. In the foreground is the excellent card holder that stacks and then is placed sidways in the box. It holds sleeved cards no problem (you did sleeve your cards right?)
On the upper right are the smaller monster boxes before I placed the dividers in.
Close up of the serpent clan box. This fits everything related to each clan from all expansions.
This is the final result. Cards are in the upper right, a token box with a lid in the middle and you can see that this layer of the box is dominated by the monsters and gods. The clan boxes are below and support the level you see.
Overall, I am quite pleased with this insert. My BR box has taken a beating so far, but seems to be holding together for now. Best thing is that the pelican case has gone back to the basement!
Older person birthday
I decided to have a party at my house instead of going out to a bar (a gaming bar that is) all day this year. It worked out well. My old place was too small to ever have anyone over, but the new place has a bit more space and we had multiple games going at once! We played a lot of stuff and people got drunk and the kids all sang me the cat licking the birthday cake song instead of the regular birthday song. I did get the regular birthday song sung to me but in GERMAN earlier in the week so it’s OK.
We played a great game of Quartermaster 1914– very tense and fun. I missed out on a game of Secrets, but played Ethnos and A Study in Emerald instead. The capstone to the night was a seven player Cosmic Encounter game with what I think is all new Aliens (Nanny? Cloak?) on account of me getting the Cosmic Eons expansion for my birthday that day. As always, Cosmic proves to be the best board game ever made. Can’t ONLY play just that one game, but it’s just the best.
Meanwhile, the kids all got to playing DCC with my now 7 year old running it. He has not begun to understand that it is not a competitive game so put the hapless first level guys against an AC 18 Owlbear that ripped off limbs on a whim…
Pictures:
Ruminations on the Talisman Bounty Hunter
I did a long write up on the fallen from grace Monk years ago, focusing on the fact that with the new version of Talisman, where your characters can easily gain Craft by sending in trophies, the Monk would either be the most powerful character in the game or, as he is now, one of the worst and just how difficult it must have been to design him so he retained his original flavor but wasn’t totally broken. Basically he got nerfed so bad no one would ever select him if given a choice, as there are few characters worse than the monk these days.
However, I’ve been really pleased with the FF Talisman design team’s designs. I think Fantasy Flight were AMAZING shepherds of this very difficult brand and game since many of us are utter fanatics and I, for one, had a tough time letting go of 2nd edition. Fate has won me over, gaining craft from trophies has won me over (not totally…) and even dealing with the Balkanization of players with all the boards is OK if you don’t play with all the boards.
One of the designs I want to discuss is the new Bounty Hunter from the City Expansion; despite the fact that he looks like a gladiator. I’ve been in one game vs him and feel that he is a very strong character, but one that does some things absolutely new to Talisman that especially effect experienced players.
First let’s talk about trophies in 4th edition. Since your Craft and Strength stacks are extremely vulnerable in the game to Spells and some adventure card effects, it’s best to not have a stack of either until you absolutely need it. Tactically, this means turning in trophies at the very, very, very last moment to gain the Craft or Strength from them–right before a roll vs a monster where you absolutely need it. Also, psychologically, the other players are looking at your stacks of chips (you are using poker chips right?) to see how close you are to going for the win. If they don’t see a stack, they will assume you are weak and fiddle around rather than attacking you or going for the win themselves. This is crucial, and the designers know this. It takes a bit of play to know when to turn in your trophy stacks, but the basic concept is simple– don’t walk around with a large stack of craft or strength unless you have to. Turn in trophies as a surprise when attacked or attacking another character FTW!
While the Bounty Hunter seems only slightly annoying to new players, advanced players quake in fear in that he attacks your trophy stack rather than your Strength and Craft stacks because they will be sitting on as many as possible for as long as possible. With him on the table you can’t be holding onto a huge pile of trophies because there is always the chance that he will drop on in and help himself to them. This means players in a game with the bounty hunter will be spending their trophies ASAP, leaving their stacks of craft and strength vulnerable to spells and other effects. The Bounty Hunter is a very meta-esque card that also can work for noobs that don’t even hoard trophies to protect their (future) stat increases.
The Bounty Hunters other special effects are gold when he wins battles which with the addition of the City board, actually helps rather than gold accumulating uselessly late game. Note that he also wins stand offs against monsters and other characters, in combat and psychic combat, so his first goal in a game is to get the Full Plate armor. We don’t play quite enough to determine tiers for characters in 4e like we did in 2e, but I feel the Bounty Hunter is way up there, especially if he can get some sort of mobility control to start grabbing those trophies.
Martin Wallace – Handful of Stars pre order
This is based on a Few Acres of Snow / Mythotopia except in SPAAAAACE. Looks great and while I need to pare down the boardgame collection quite a bit, I’ll be making space for this one.
Buyers Guide to Fantasy Flight’s Talisman
Howdy. I’ve played a lot of Talisman. Hundreds of games with the Games Workshop 2nd edition and maybe a tenth of that with Fantasy Flight’s version. They came out with more expansions than the number of times I get to play in a year for a bit there, but now that FF and GW have ended their long, fruitful relationship, Talisman will again be in limbo and eventually prices will start to rise and things will become scarce. Here is a list to help you spend your ducats.
The following list and thoughts are not for collectors, but may help you determine what may be sought after by players. For the completionist, just buy everything. If you didn’t get the print on demand stuff– ouch! I would AVOID Deep Realms unless you are the most ardent collector. However, the Nether realm Expansion is fantastic.
For players, if you are new to the game or new to this version of the game (from 2nd or 3rd editions), here is what you really need to buy, what you sorta need to buy, and what you shouldn’t buy.
CORE game
Make sure you are getting the Fantasy Flight version of the game and not the Black Industries version. The FF box is ‘less black’ than the Black Industries version (see above). If you do end up with the Black Industries version, you will need to purchase/find the upgrade kit with the fate points and stuff in it. These will likely be SCARCE. Obviously, you need the core set, but in my opinion it’s not enough for the full experience of Talisman. The base set doesn’t have enough characters, nor spell cards and the adventure deck is too small.
ESSENTIAL EXPANSIONS
The following are what I feel are the absolutely essential expansions to Talisman. There are very few of these that you actually need to have to get a good experience forever with the game. This will likely run you about 100$ retail.
#1 The Reaper expansion
This is stuff that really could have all been in the core game. While you can leave the actual Reaper and his rules in the box, the cards and characters in this expansion flesh out the base game enough for me to say, “yes, you are really playing Talisman.” By far, this is the most important expansion to the game, with the absolutely essential adventure, spell and characters as well as the Warlock Quests. If you get only one expansion, Reaper is it.
#2 Frostmarch
Frostmarch is the first of the “more stuff” expansions that fits very well with the core game, Reaper and Highlands for a base set to play with forever. It has few new rules (unlike Firelands or Harbinger), just cards and spells and a few more characters. Because this is just ‘more stuff,’ one could argue that it’s not essential, but if you are going to expand your Talisman and have Reaper, this is the next one that you will want to get, especially if you are going to play without the Board expansions and keep your Talisman SANE.
MauriceBastard: Meh, I can’t think of anything great about it, I bet there are some good items in the pack but I don’t associate them with it, I most likely just assume the good items in this pack come from The Reaper.
#3 Highlands
Highlands is an ‘extra board’ expansion that has a lot going for it. Why this instead of Dungeon? First, it does not offer a pathway to the Crown of Command, so players will still need to go up the normal method. What happens when you have a lot of boards in a Talisman game, and especially if you include Dungeon, is that players scatter all over the place and have no interaction with each other at any time during the game. Sure they may cast spells up against each other late game, but the concept of landing on another player is totally moot if there are four separate boards (and deep realms) in play. Characters like the Thief and Sorceress become fairly useless in these situations and once someone gets rolling and chooses to chase down the other characters to destroy them, it’s a lot more difficult with all the boards. You have to decide on whether or not you have the table space and also want to have your players all over the place by picking up the board expansions. If you are going to get one, Highlands is the one to get first. It has few special rules that effect the base game, critical characters to the game (Valkyrie and Alchemist for example) and does not have that egress to the Crown that Dungeon has, while still giving brutally strong magic items if you win the board.
MauriceBastard: Makes the outer region of the main board almost completely useless as this area is good for starting characters.
With the core set and the essential expansions, you have 28 characters. Fantasy Flight, compared to GW, were REAL stingy with the characters they put out in each expansion (compare 8 in 2E’s Talisman: Adventure to FF’s expansions at on average 4 each), probably because they came with miniatures instead of having them sold separate, so this is not a massive list. However it covers the basics: varied strength attackers, shitty trick characters (elf/dwarf), and the all important craft attackers (ghoul, wizard) and lastly, spellcasters.
| Chivalric Knight Cleric Dread Knight Magus Dark Cultist Knight Merchant Sage Alchemist Highlander Rogue Sprite Valkyrie Vampiress |
Assassin Druid Dwarf Elf Ghoul Minstrel Monk Priest Prophetess Sorceress Thief Troll Warrior Wizard |
NON-ESSENTIAL, BUT GOOD TO GET
#4 Sacred Pool
This, like Frostmarch, is another ‘more stuff’ expansion with more Adventure, Spell and characters to include in the game. Because it has rules that do not mess with the core gameplay, I place this as one of the best expansions to get. What’s more, if you are trying to stick with just the main board, this is a good one to get after Reaper and Frostmarch. I like all of the characters that came with this one.
MariceBastard: Ya again the items that are worth it in this pack I attribute to The Reaper.
#5 Dungeon
The 4E Talisman Dungeon expansion is far and away better than the 2nd edition one, with awesome monsters, great magic items, good characters and a means to get to the Crown of Command to boot, circumventing the entire randomness of the middle region with a straight up combat instead. Many players B-line it to the dungeon as soon as they feel strong enough to farm it for goodies and strength/craft. Unlike the Highlands, the Dungeon is not an easy board to make it through, and many characters will die if they go in before they are ready (usually after 2-3 stat upgrades). That said, Dungeon is not an essential expansion because it’s a new board section and while some people may like it, the fact that you can circumvent the inner region’s perils and get the the crown of command changes the game drastically, adding to the sad fact that more boards = less player interaction.
MauriceBastard: Fine. Allows a end round run to the center for overpowered heroes which is a needed mechanic late game.
#6 Nether Realm
The Nether Realm expansion is one of those funky print on demand ones and when it came out, I thought that was the end of support from FF for Talisman (i.e.: no new expansions). The components were very good quality and this expansion is fantastic. In the new victory condition, instead of a Talisman, the players must kill a certain number of Nether Realm creatures and get to the Crown of Command. The creatures are represented by a Nether deck that has some of the nastiest stuff I’ve ever seen in the game! This win condition also promises a shorter, tighter game, so I like it a lot. This expansion also adds back in the Pandora’s Box card for the inner region, using the NetherRealm cards in place of Adventure cards! Once out of print, this one will be very expensive, but if you can get it no for 15$, it’s great.
MauriceBastard: Great shit, excellent way to change up the center region for extra challenge, make sure to exclude The Dungeon so you can’t end run the mosh pit of the center.
#7 Blood Moon
Like the Reaper expansion, the Blood Moon expansion has a guy that goes around and does stuff to people independent of the characters. This is less optional if you are going to play with everything from this expansion than the Reaper is. We’ve played with both the Reaper and the Werewolf and that was a clear mistake that slowed the game to a crawl. This has some interesting characters and most importantly, it has the HORRIBLE BLACK VOID card which makes the first trip to the Inner region even more dangerous than before. We play that once the void is drawn, it goes away for the game and at that point no other characters can be drawn. This gives both players going through the dungeon or up the inner region method a bit of pause about hitting the Crown of command space.
In addition to the Werewolf mechanic, Blood Moon introduces the Day/Night cycle to the game with +1 and -1 vs monsters during this time. This is one of my most hated mechanics that has been added to Talisman. Don’t bother with it.
MauriceBastard: We’ve entered the arena of where expansions stop working when you are playing completionist, while there are some good cards here the day night and werewolf shit becomes too much to keep track of if you play with reaper as well.
#8 Talisman City
There are a lot of options that open up in the City, and a lot of strange new cards. I like the pets and I like the fact that with the City expansion GOLD actually starts to have value again where normally it was pretty useless mid to late game. You can pay to win using the City, with very powerful cards on sale. We’ve enjoyed this expansion but you have to make a choice: do you go the standard Highlands/Dungeon configuration or do you remove one of those, or do you make the game board MASSIVE and play with all three. Frankly I would probably play with Highlands/City at this point and leave the Dungeon out.
MauriceBastard: Overpowered shit galore the Alchemist will gape you.
The NON-ESSENTIAL
#9 Firelands
While this has some interesting cards and characters, because it fundamentally changes some of the rules of the game with the firelands tokens, and does not mix well with everything else (if you play with EVERYTHING, the firelands cards won’t do much in the game), you do not need to get this expansion. “Destroying spaces” is a mechanic we started to see a lot more of in nearly all the later expansions.
MauriceBastard: Great expansion that needs to be played without other shit to help keep shit manageable, extra punishing late game.
#10 Woodlands
We have only played with Woodlands 2-3 times. It is another big board to add, so you have to decide which to play with and which to leave behind. Most of the time I would choose to leave the Woodlands in the box except that it’s new and we need to find out what the designers were trying to do here! The board comes with a new mechanic where players draw Fate cards, which are quite cool, but it’s yet another mini game– and since Talisman tends to be beer and pretzels, some players are not keen on it’s complexity. If you use Woodlands, I would use it alone with just the main board for a few games and see how you like it. There are some really interesting and cool characters in this set like the Leywalker and Spider Queen. The art in this expansion is superb.
MauriceBastard: Shite, feels completely shite / haven’t played it enough because there tons of great content already so who wants to bother with Woodland.
#11 Cataclysm
This is really new, and I’ve only gotten one game with it so far. What I like about it is that it’s Fantasy Flight’s artists going to town on the main Talisman Board. They inherited the main 4E board from Black Industries and the art on it, while OK, was not up to the normal Fantasy Flight standards. Just compare the older main board with all the art on the other boards and you can see the difference.
Cataclysm fundamentally changes the game in that none of the spaces you are used to going to are going to be on the board at first, nor will they end up in the spaces that you normally get to them. Depending on the card draw, there may not be any place to heal, there may not be any place to get FATE points back or buy stuff. I think the best way to play this is to play without the city, with the Dungeon and possibly the woodlands/highlands. Since this is an expansion late in the development of the game, it will be very hard to divorce the content enough from player’s sets to see how it stands on it’s own. Overall I would say this is probably a good buy to get, event though the characters in it are a bit trash; much like Harbinger, there’s nothing that great except for the Barbarian and maybe the Scavenger. The Arcane Scion is powerful, but I hate the art on that card.
While cool and a bit of a must have since it’s the last blast we’ll ever see of FF’s Talisman, it’s not essential.
Mauricebastard: A last gasp at keeping Talisman fresh, a honest attempt to switch some shit up a lot, played once and it seems FINE.
#12 Dragons
I do not own this expansion, but probably will someday. The brilliance of the 2nd Edition Dragons expansion is that it was just a set of cards that went into the main deck which shifted the way the game played without fundamentally restructuring the entire experience. You knew there were dragon problems in the 2E game because dragon cards kept coming up and destroying you and stuff on the board.
FF went full bore on the Dragon’s expansion and it’s a totally different game, one which I would not play with any of the other expansions, including none of the other game boards. There is a lot of book-work between turns and Dragons will be a slow slow game compared to normal Talisman. This one is almost in the Don’t Buy section, but not quite. It does make for an interesting game if you are prepared for it.
MauriceBastard: FUCKING BROKEN EXCEPT WHEN PLAYED BY ITSELF WITH THE BASE, a way to switch shit up if you are playing weekly, a attempt to spice shit up that fails in a completionist “play with all expansions” game.
Mouth: My dragons is still sealed, and I think I may have only ever played it once, and maybe just the heros [sic], which were Meh at best.
PROBABLY DON’T BUY THESE
Only two on this list.
Harbinger
Totally forgettable. The characters in it are pretty dumb and I just don’t even want to integrate the adventure cards from this, let alone the added mechanics. I may comb this for adventure cards to add to my CORE SET+, but probably won’t play with the rest. Collectors only.
MauriceBastard: Unsure what this one is, I own it and have played it once I think, fucking can’t remember what it is, expansion fatigue has set in fully, old man who plays once or twice a year.
Deep Realms
Collectors only. It’s just a total mess in play physically– it just doesn’t work well with another board between boards. We tried it once and it’s been in the box ever since. I’m not even sure I would recommend ever playing with the boards you need all together to make this work.
MauriceBastard: Shitcakes with a side of diarrhea.
The End papers
There wasn’t and there will never be a Talisman Timescape expansion for 4th Edition. Instead FF decided to make Relic which, yeah, no interest at all. We will never have the Astronaut, Space Pirate, Cyborg or essential ASTROPATH to round out the what used to be the top three characters in the game (from 2E :Prophetess, Monk, Astropath).
I also make this post with some emotional feeling that FF’s run is over despite at the same time thinking: THANK the GODS since there was just too much coming out for the game for awhile there (right around Firelands I was overwhelmed). I’m proud of what Fantasy Flight and John Goodenough did with Talisman. They did right by the license, for the players and obviously it was lucrative to some extent! I was happy to support them by buying (nearly) every single expansion the day it was released.
With the end of the Games Workshop relationship we are absolutely at the end of an era with Fantasy Flight (though that could be said when they were sold to Asmodee too). They will be putting out some great individual games for sure (like the new Game of Thrones: Iron Throne), but their Golden Age is over as they will never have a license so rich with possibilities and an amazing board game back catalog as the Games Workshop one: not Star Wars, not Warcraft, not anything. Lament though we might, what we need to do is pick up the GW licensed stuff that we want right quick!
Maurice!Bastard:
Talisman has become a pick and choose your expansions game, different from v2 of Talisman which played WONDERFUL when you used everything. Version 4b can’t be played in total, or perhaps it can if you are 16-24 years old and don’t have true responsibilities and can focus fully on playing epic turn maintenance cluster fuckery. Now some people want Talisman v4 to be like v2, to have a “complete” version. A version that includes the best expansions that play well together. A version that you keep “shuffled” together and play over and over, ignoring the expansions that add too many new rules or to much turn maintenance bullshit. Fucking just play v2 if you want complete. Perhaps my picks for a complete V4 would be:
Base
The Reaper
The Frostmarch
The Sacred Pool
The Dungeon
The Highlands
Mouth:
For the small boxes… The reaper, is essential. Frost March and Sacred Pool are also good… More endings and the warlock quests were good additions. The blood moon is a little Meh and managing the whole day/night mechanic is tedious. Firelands is cool, but the flame shit and destruction of everything is again tedious, but can prove both beneficial and Terrible all at the same time… I think it’s a keeper. I have no experience with the harbringer.
For the big boxes… Dungeon and Highlands are both great, borderline essential. City is better than the original and makes gold worth having, but not essential.
Other… The neither realms is cool, and brutal… It’s good. No knowledge of the deep realms.
Also, I purchased the conversion kit for the original black library release of talisman. This gives you a complete second set of cards for the base game so it matched the ff version. I selectively added duplicates of the adventure deck cards to the base game. Basically adding all of the monsters and events… And I think some of the bad cards like the poltergeist and hag. I did not duplicate any of the magic items or bags of gold… But I would have to check to be sure. This was necessary when 4ed come out, as the base set was not balanced enough for a good play through, deck cycling was too frequent, and monsters scarce because people were holding them for trophies. I think it was also good for the first few expansions… At this point I could probably take all of the duplicate cards out since the adventure deck is massive with only half of the expansions in use.
Gamehole con and Game of Thrones: Iron Throne
Gamehole con in Madison is growing. Though a local Wisconsin con, it’s very professionally run an organized, with good swag and lots and lots of gaming. This year was definitely bigger than last year. It seemed a little crowded last year, but it was actually crowded this year. We were there on Friday and Saturday for most of the day. We got in a meh 5E game (it was for new players, so we probably should not have signed up) and a game of the new Game of Thrones: Iron Throne FF game on Friday. Saturday was all Tom Wham, with 2 games of Felician Finance and a 5-player game of Feudality (with my 6 year old kid). I got some food poisoning on Friday night, so felt like shit for part of it. The food trucks at the con were great (I don’t think my food poisoning was from them).
Game of Thrones: Iron Throne
Matt picked this up the day it came out in stores. Iron Throne differs from FF’s CCG and strategy board game takes on the game in that it uses a modified version of Cosmic Encounter to resolve the conflict in Westeros. It’s not heavily modified, so Cosmic Encounter players will have little problems picking it up. People that have never played CE before may have a bit of a brain shift as there is no map to fight over and the win conditions are different from many of the other GoT games.
How does it play? We got in a single game on Friday and I can speak to the changes from CE but not too much on how a big 5 player knock-down drag out game will be as we only had 3 players. First, your planets in Iron Throne are your characters and they can get killed. Second, you have a faction and a leader of that faction chosen from your characters. Depending on the leader, your faction will have a different uber power.
Unlike CE, your goal is not to put your influence on characters (planets) but spread all 5 of your influence to other player’s faction boards. While this is similar to CE, it’s worth noting that, as far as I can tell, there is no way to remove influence once it’s placed.
Characters each have 4 power on them to start (like CE ships). This can go down and up, but unlike CE, if the power on a character ever goes to zero, that character is out of the game. They can no longer attack or participate and their character cards in your deck only count as a zero attack card. Power flows back and forth from the faction’s leader to the character based on what’s happening in the game. Factions usually have 24 power between the leader and characters, but this can change.
The Flares from Cosmic are now included in a faction specific deck that each player has. The faction deck has your attack and negotiate (called Truce) cards like CE, but has a set of what are essentially Flare cards that are tied to each character in your faction. Each attack of defense must involve one of your characters, and in each encounter, you can play that character’s ‘flare’ card, or that of your leader, to effect the outcome. The powers on the cards are pretty wild. My favorite during the game (as Baratheon) was the Onion Knight who allowed me to change my played card for any attack card in my hand instead.
Other than picking your faction, you have to choose one of that faction’s characters as your leader. That character cannot die, and his or her ‘flare’ cards are always playable. The rest of your leaders can be killed during the game.
Challenges work similar to CE with some subtle differences. Offensive and Defensive allies can choose to join either side with one of their characters, and the helped player can decline the help (rather than the other way around in CE). Attack cards and Negotiate cards are in the game, but no other types (no Kickers for example). The number range caps out at 20, and doesn’t hit the higher numbers like 30 and 40 that CE does. This means that what you bring in terms of character power is a lot more important at times than the cards played.
Truces and Negotiation work a bit differently in Iron Throne as well. If your opponent plays an attack card and you tried a Truce, you lose but you get to take a hostage from all the players on the winning side.
Hostages are cards taken from another players hand or their deck. Sometimes you will get trash, but other times you will grab a character card or one of the high attack cards. In our game, Dan was sitting on Matt’s 20 attack card the whole game. Hostages can be traded as part of a deal or any type of discussion. Hostage character cards give leverage over characters, as they can be used to do 4 damage to that character, which in most cases will take that character out of the game. This is good to do to the clear leader, but in Iron Throne, as in CE, your enemy today will be your friend tomorrow, so ham-stringing a potential ally later in the game may not be the best idea.
There are also mechanics to reduce a factions overall power by cutting down the crowns that they have in their pool, either on their leader or on their characters. This is a bit like removing ships from a game of CE, except it has the added effect of making characters more vulnerable to being killed.
The main factions are all represented in the game, and there is a good sense of asymmetry with the leaders and the different flare cards that characters have. This is not as variable as CE, but I think that’s just fine. The factions are internally diverse, with 5 potential leaders within each faction (so about 25 ‘aliens’ included in the game). No, it’s not a new DUNE, but Iron Throne is a keeper.
Felithian Finance
We got in on one of Tom Wham’s game sessions during the con and played Felithian Finance. Great game, should be officially published! It’s essentially a stock market game which seems super boring to even imagine, but it’s not. It reminds me of a goofy version of Sid Sackson’s Acquire with a lot more randomness and fun. Where Tigris took Acquire’s concept to mechanical perfection, Felitihan takes the abstract concept of ‘companies on a grid’ and turns it into something definitely Wham-esque.
The basic play is buying stock (secret or open) and then starting or increasing the size of companies on a board. Dice are rolled and if the number comes up on top of a company, it starts paying dividends. Players get the stock price (which they control to some extent) and dividends (which they don’t control) at the end of the game. The game has a lot of interesting choices and is very quick for the depth– only about 45 minutes each game we played.
