After a pretty long wait, backers got an email from CMON about the OTHERS, which is a game by the design team that brought you such games as BLOOD RAGE (my pick for 2015’s best board game by FAR). It’s a big game with a lot of miniatures as is CMON’s purview. It’s been a bit late, but like Blood Rage, not terribly so. The game is apparently on the boats from the China manufacturers as we sit here. With Blood Rage, I actually TRACKED the boats coming in as I was peeved that I did not pick up a second copy at GENCON and had to wait months to actually play it. I was overly excited and Blood Rage, as many of you know because I’ve made nearly everyone play it, was worth the wait.
The Others I just can’t tell yet how great it will be, but fuck…while I was amazed at the Blood Rage kickstarter and vast amount of stuff you get– the OTHERS is ridiculous. I couldn’t afford to get all the add ons either. And where would I put them? The boxes do look great though…
The (addon) good guys.
I’m a huge sucker for Adrian Smith’s art. Look at that shit!
Free RPG day was good this year. Perfect weather and two places in town that were hosting it. There was TOO much good stuff to choose from so tough choices had to be made. We ended up getting SLUGS! of course, which is a ridiculous Lamentations of the Flame Princess spoof (yes, it has some good monsters in it, but the intro– teeing off on all non DIY publishers in a Donald Trump style diatribe must be read to be believed), The Derelict, a Cthulhu adventure, the Nights Black Agents/13th Age combo (the 13th Age adventure looks pretty good too) and the obligatory Dungeon Crawl Classics adventure. All of it kick ass stuff that will get some use (except the Nights Black Agents– we don’t play that) even if we just read it.
Why attack the Xmas slug? Why???
Talisman
After the whirlwind of game and comic shops in the morning, Keneda (in town for the weekend), Sensless, Okyo and I got together and play Talisman with the Cataclysm expansion– with the new board only and not any other big boards. This meant no dungeon, no city, no Highlands and no Woodlands.
We did include the REAPER expansion cards (not the reaper himself) as I feel this expansion at least is absolutely essential. There were a few Frostmarch and Sacred Pool cards included cause we were sort of drunken by the time we started sorting to no ill effect.
Cataclysm, being a new main board an all, has some surprises. Gone are the standard places visited for healing, FATE and buying stuff. Instead there are areas where you draw new cards called “denizens” who represent effects from the old board, but randomized around. If the denizen originally belonged in the space you drew her, she will stay, otherwise they are one-shot cards. For example if you draw the BARMAID in the graveyard, she won’t stay but she’ll stay if she’s in the Tavern or Village. Cool stuff.
We also played with the new crown of command as the goal rather than the random center cards, which is more deadly for everybody as the person on the crown can be killed using it as well.
We played at first with only Cataclysm characters (draw one rather than the usual three and choose), then when one would die, replacements were randomized from the whole deck of characters as normal (draw 2 and choose, die again, draw only one, die again and you’re out!)
Pyssed up again, post pestilence, pre shart.
Here were the first set of characters:
Sensless: MUTANT
Me: Black Knight
Okyo: Arcane Scion
Keneda: Scavenger
This was a LONG game, about 1.5 hours per player. Why? We got drunk and were at least slightly drunk the whole time– with the game initiated via a shot of Jeppsom’s Malort for all and then beers. There was a lot of side saddle talk and wandering outside. Luckily no pinners or it would have ended prematurely with unconsciousness.
Despite the drunkeness and length, there was some excitement at the table. I’ve ripped on 4th edition despite it being my preferred edition of Talisman on account of it’s lack of deadliness, mostly due to FATE points saving the day all the fucking time, but we had more characters driven into the mud this game than any recent games I can remember. Cataclysm has some nastiness and by the third turn or so, an event came along and ripped all the fate from all players, so things were very risky risky.
After fate was gone, there was TOADAGE. The mutant met the wizard denizen and was promptly toaded. He lived long enough to land on his ‘stuff’ space and encounter the wizard again– and get TOADED again. There was another wizard that finally put the hapless toad-mutant to rest–and was replaced by the Barbarian!
More Toadage ensued as my black knight was toaded by the same Wizard denizen as the Mutant and didn’t survive; becoming toad-meat for a giant spider. A lucky draw got me the ELEMENTALIST.
Without FATE, we were all running weak and lifeless with no easy access to the chapel or city and naughty instead of nice denizens about. Pestilence came at just the right time and took out the Barbarian and Scavenger for their trouble. Keneda was on her last character–the Assassin.
The mid-game was long– maybe 3 hours long and the arcane scion was slowly building up, but refused to go to the middle. I got pumped quick with the Elementalist (not hard to do) and made a run for the middle, got lucky making it up but suffered badly at the Lich (replaced death on the STRENGTH side of the center region) and had only a single health going into the crown of command.
The command spell destroyed the Assassin and another character I can’t remember that replaced the Scavenger, but it wasn’t enough for my Elementalist, especially after the sharting. Right before the final turn to get to the middle, Okyo gambled and lost and had to run to the bathroom. He came back and despite the Elementalist at the crown of command, despite the humidity and Malort and Schlitz and underwear in the outdoors trash can, the Arcane Scion made it to the crown of command with a single life left as well and won the combat handily vs the Elementalist for the final win.
It was a good, albeit slow game. Cutting out all the expansions was a really good idea for this one, as there was a ton of new stuff in Cataclysm. I think I’d like to play it a few more times with just that set, the base adventure deck plus
Since in Cataclysm, no one knows where to go to get stuff until the denizens come out, it’s tough to get healed, get fate and buy weapons/armor. This is quite a shift from the old board where you know just where to go to get refilled.
a winner is you.
Tobal 2 and Virtua Fighter 5
We played a surprising amount of both VF5 and Tobal 2. I just couldn’t get the hang of Tobal again, even with Ill Goga and Gren and failed miserably. My timing was WAY off. Matt, however, was all over it with Epon whopping ass.
Despite my love for Tobal, VF is the better game, with a shocking amount of incredibly nuanced characters and simply the best fight engine there is. It still looks GORGEOUS and caused a lot of yelling (same with Tobal) when the physics or throwing engines showed something spectacular (guaranteed throws and some of the reversals in VF are amazing to watch). Fighters are a million times more fun when you are all sitting around playing, on a console or arcade machine. This is why EVO and all those cons have such a strong following. Playing online is OK, but face to face with the crying out and yelling is where it’s at.
I’d like to imagine this day was like a typical Saturday in 1996-2000 or so, before everything changed. Those four years were (sad as it seems now) formative madness to the extreme.
This site has some teaser images of an Ork and Human Thrower from GW. It’s about time. It looks like these are all going to be Forge World minis, so I’m already wincing at the price. I do need a second painted Human blood bowl team, so there’s that.
After 19 years, it hit the table again. Read that again– 19 years. I found a penny in one of the Necromunda boxes that was shiny new– from 1996. It’s amazing that:
This hasn’t been played forever
I still have all this stuff and it hasn’t been destroyed somehow
it’s in pretty good shape
and I remember the exact point when we stopped playing it and I packed up the hive terrain from the ping pong/gaming table for good wonder if that would be the last time we played and it was.
Enough reminiscing. We played for about 10 hours yesterday, with breaks for lunch and dinner, but only got in about 3-4 games per player– so i’m not of the mind Necromunda is a short game any more– it can take a long time. I would really not recommend more than 2 games in a day as it’s just too much to process and plan between games in addition to the shootings themselves.
Set up of all the terrain. Luckily I had enough bulkheads!
Since I had them painted, I played as the Cawdors again. The models are OK, but unfortunately the Cawdors are a bit of a close combat gang– and none of the ganger models have close combat weapons!
Here is my initial buy for the Transanal Eviceration gang.
Leader with Chainsword, bolt pistol and frag grenades.
Heavy with Heavy Stubber
Heavy with Flamer
2 Juves with Autopistols (and knives)
Ganger with Shotgun (manstopper, scatter, solid)
Ganger with Lasgun
Ganger with 2 autopistols and frag grenades
2 Gangers with Autoguns
This gives you 5 gangers to harvest your territories, a leader who can hammer in close combat and a second back up close combat guy, along with a lot of stuff to flush people out of cover (frag grenades, flamer, shotgun). While I do believe the heavy stubber sucks, it’s only 120 points, can shoot across the whole board, and you will get a lucky roll from time to time to make it worthwhile. No one has armor, so don’t bother with the heavy bolter until later. The flamer is amazing (but we forgot that it requires an ammo roll after every shot…).
Lasguns are the most boring weapon in the warhammer universe, but they are super reliable and shoot far. Autoguns are nearly as good with their +1 to hit at close range, but they go out of action far easier.
My territories were crap, but I did get Vents which lets you place guys around the board after set up– yet I NEVER remembered to use it.
In the four games, overall my leader had the most ‘kills’ with the flamer heavy second most. The leader was able to get into close combat with a bunch of enemies in two games and tore them up (except for a lucky juve) and that’s because of the chainsword. Swords are cheap and allow parrys, which cut down on some of the swingy rolls your enemy might have against you. Well worthwhile.
There were three other gangs getting on on the good shootings:
Hate Boat– a Delaque gang of unpainted (but primed) minis
Vaginal Force 1 – Eschers (obviously)
The Crustables – a Van Saar gang represented by the excellent and drool worthy miniatures from the new Dark Millenium 40K box set. If you have any interest in Necromunda, these are definitely worth picking up. They would do in a pinch for any gang, but would especially fit as Cawdors with their masks.
The first game was the Hate Boat vs the Crustables and I’ll admit that my grip on the rules was loose. Things were going against the Hate Boat after the Crustables got into good shooting position far above their cover and they got to explore the falling rules fully. Hate Boat had to make multiple bottle rolls, but in the end it was Crustables that bottled out on their first roll!
Lots of guys having a lie down.
My first game was being ambushed by the Crustables, a fitting beginning for Transanal. Luckily, I was able to position a few groups of my gangers to ambush the Crustables. After a few turns it was obvious that the Crustables ambush was turning into a bloodbath, with 3-4 gang members on each side out of action, including the Crustable’s leader who had been burned by a flamer. After a turn or 2 more, the Crustable’s bottled out and ran for the vents.
Ambushed! note the mix of AT-43 and 40K terrain.
My heavy about to get beaten down– cause he can’t hit with that stubber!
Couple things to remember about Necromunda that I had forgotten. First your gangers aren’t the bravest and will run away pretty quick when things go south nearby. Second, shooting into cover is pretty difficult. You can start to have to take bottle checks when a mere 2-3 of your guys are out of action.
The Crustables gang leader crawling through a pool of his own blood and urea after getting hit with a flamer.
A good time for sure and a game that should probably be played a bit more than once in 20 years.
Arcadia Quest is a monster of a game that tries to fit the glory of MOBA’s into a board game, and does a great job. The last month or so we secretly had a ‘meeting of the four’ so that we could play Arcadia Quest rather than something else for our board game night in order to push through and finish an entire campaign. Overall I think it was a good time, and it’s certainly a fun game, but a small issue both campaigns I’ve played was runaway leaderism. If you do well in the first scenario, you will be set up to do well in the second, etc. We ended up with two players that had very strong Guilds and two that did not. One of the weak guild players ‘won’ the game by doing the final strike on Lord Fang, but he had zero other medals and got the ‘middling victory’ description at the end.
The scenarios were generally good. Only one broke down into a complete slog as players tried to complete a final PVP quest to win the game. Guilds were able to stay away from each other enough to keep the scenario going long after all the monsters and treasure had been destroyed. That was a late night. The rest of the scenarios were short and fun (unless you were one of the players getting their ass kicked!)
So having played about 10 scenarios, including a full campaign, I have to say the game holds up well. It’s not my favorite game, and the first couple times I played I really didn’t like it at all due to the single activation per turn thing. Arcadia has grown on me but certainly not enough to back the new kickstarter. Like Talisman and Republic of Rome, it’s a good game to pull out every once in awhile, but once you start, you are in for a long, long haul to finish a campaign. It does fulfill a certain Necromunda/Mordheim style itch though…
Continuing plowing through a bunch of boxes of stuff, in addition to AT-43, I have a largish Necromunda collection squirreled away, apparently on the hopes that it will get someday played again. That said, back in the mid-90’s we really got into Necromunda (or so we thought), playing 20+ games with the gangs on an old Ping Pong table set up in our tiny 3rd floor apartment. As a any good Arbitrator, I desktop published a one-sheet after each week of games. The name of the the ‘village’ the gangs were fighting over was “Poop Town” which for years had lived in peace due to pretending there was a plague outbreak were now (in 1996) plagued with Underhive gangs! If I remember correctly we had Orlocks, Van Saar, Delaques, Cawdor, and the Goliaths. I have gang sets for all of these as well as a ton of Eschers (thanks mouth), plus Spyrers and even Arbiters.
Pooptown Gazette!
Small blurbs had the following titles:
“Escher not raped by Cawdors” – Any time there is an all-woman gang and members get captured, it begs the question, what is happening to them right now? Since the Cawdors are ‘redemptionists’ they apparently have no interest in sexy female underhive residents with guns.
“Van Saar Deficates” – Since the Van Saar leader was taken out in the first turn of the game vs the Delaques, I decided it must have been while he was going to the loo.
The newsletter included advertisements for local brothels and a lot of phrases about hating the Delaque gang; the “G-Dawgs” which were played by Duvall. A lot of the stuff referenced the players could interact with in certain ways if they asked about it.
My only painted gang!
Frankly, these skirmish ‘grow your warband’ type of games are my favorite miniatures games. Starting with Chaos Warbands in college, then to Confrontation (the GW game that came out in White Dwarf) then on to Necromunda, Mordhiem and finally Legends of the Old West, which I have collected a ton of stuff for, but have yet to play the main issue being that you need more terrain than miniatures to make it interesting.
Necromunda is no doubt a great game and show the strength of the 40K 2nd Edition rules (that also went on to handle Gorkamorka). People can scream “Hero hammer!” from the rooftops, but that’s just what the core 40K evolved into.
And more ridiculousness. I have a big box of Man O’ War miniatures, rules and chits and have never actually played it. Got it for pretty cheap many years ago. You can see the fleets, I think it’s Empire, Elves and Nurgle with a bunch of sea monsters and flyers mixed in.
Man o War crazyDetail of some of the models.
They’ve definitely been well cared for since I got them, EXCEPT, again that I’ve never played it. I think I snapped up the deal on account of some of my college friends cutting up and painting pieces of wood to represent ships just in order to play. The game (in 1993 or so) was just that good.
Matt and I made the trek to Gamehole Con yesterday in Madison, WI and it was a fine time. Due to no planning on my part, we didn’t get into any scheduled games, like the bolt action tournament or any of the 5E or other OSR RPG games. However, for me this was just a ‘check out’ year to see what it was all about, so walked around and painted stuff and I busted out BLOOD RAGE and got a few games of that in.
It is not a huge con, maybe twice the size of say Plattcon or Hooplacon. Yet it is a huge OSR con–there were tons of Dungeon Crawl Classics, Swords and Wizardry and other OSR stuff going on. If you count 5E as in the OSR style, the entire con was mostly OSR RPG’s. Absolutely there were Pathfinder games there, but they were in the minority.
We spent about 3 hours at the free painting table where I found an old Talisman Rogue and just had to paint the fucker. They had BOTH of the Kevin Dallimore painting books there was well, so I was able to pour over those. Matt got stuck on painting some sort of samurai and though he spent awhile on it, it was still not finished. The lady that runs it had a ton of great tips so highly recommended.
Matt about to explain why he had already lost the 5 player Blood Rage game.
Stuff I saw:
Tom Wham. He was running Feudality and Dragon Lairds at the con.
Lots of Bolt Action. The tournament brought at least 20 people playing. I should have brought my shit… (and painted it beforehand…)
Rob Heinsoo. One of the designers of 13th Age. He was running a game that we didn’t get into– needless to say it was sold out months ago.
One really fucking hot girl. No joke.
Otherwise it was extremely well run and organized. They really have their shit together and I will be definitely attending again. Likely I will run something next year as well.
So this was one that I had to absolutely back on account of Studio McVey (miniatures) and Adrian Smith (art). Regardless of the game design or how the fucker played, this was getting my cold, hard cash way up inside it.
Thankfully, after 3 plays, all of which I’ve lost badly, I can say that Blood Rage is a good game, I’m not going to say it’s great until I have near a dozen plays, but it’s good. Certainly it’s on part with Chaos in the Old World, and while that has a solid appeal and hasn’t gotten played enough, the miniatures alone make Blood Rage a clear champion at the moment.
First, the miniatures are shocking to behold and fun to play with. The plastic is tough and a bit bendy (not like say GW’s hard, easily paintable plastics) and I can’t imagine any of them breaking without something crazy happening. It is most excellent to slap down one of the big ass monsters when you play their upgrade (or later, when you fuck people with the Troll or Fire Giant) because the miniatures are so damn meaty. I finally opened all the monsters and with the exception of the wolf man, which is just OK, all of them are really awesome sculpts.
In terms of the clans, I have all but the Rams opened up. I like the Wolves and the Ravens best. Serpents (the female one) are also swell looking. When on the board, it’s all about the silhouettes and that’s where I think the Boars and bears get a bit muddled. Painted though, who knows, they will all look good.
Gameplay. This is the important bit as this could have just ended up as a game that sat on my shelf and looked good instead of something that got busted out frequently (as frequently as a game can with all the competition these days). It’s a very tight game. It feels very short, even though the games are just under 2 hours. You will feel the Agricola pinch as you just can’t get everything done that you wanted to by the end of the game. Battles are fast and decisive (first time you get your huge monster blown off to valhalla the same age you put them on the table is an eye opener and most importantly, can involve everyone in the game. Taking turns is relatively fast, though there is some brain burn that comes in during the 2nd and 3rd ages. In terms of turn-angst potential, I would say the draft part (that happens at the beginning of each age) will take the longest and with five players, it may be a very long drafting stage.
Strategically, I don’t have much to say yet. My first game I just middled around to little effect. The second game I went Loki as in, lose a lot, steal rage, steal honor, get points for your dead stuff and I still lost. The third game I went Frigga/Tyr and just destroyed everyone in nearly all the battles I was in. Yet I still lost! What I think is important is the balance across all things. You need to win battles, you need to complete quests, you need to get your clan stats up to the VP levels (think tech in eclipse) and you need to draft so your opponents can’t bust out with tons of points. Overall it’s a game that begs to be played, a lot.
So the kickstarter came with a ton of stuff. If you are buying this retail let me tell you straight that you won’t need anything except the base game to have tons of fun. All the extra monsters are great, but most games you will only see about 4-7 monsters out of the whole group anyway. The mystics are neat, but not essential. The GODS expansion is one I may be playing without going forward (need to play it more). Basically two of the gods occupy areas on the board and change the way battles are handled. I’ve only had Tyr and Odin on so I can’t comment on it much but it seemed a bit unnecessary. It may grow on me later though. The five player expansion is only good if you consistently have five. For me, based on our gaming group attendance, it was mandatory to have. The sixth clan, the boars, are simply extra, and you cannot play with 6 players with it (balanced at least) however the box comes with some neat minis that replace the counters in the game with the critical one being the token that shows where Ragnarok is going to hit next. This one is probably the least important to get.
All in all, it was one of the best kickstarters I’ve ever backed– I even followed the fucking boats as they made their way through the med into the atlantic and to Georgia…Blood Rage and those kickstarters like it, despite being almost pre orders, just prove that not everything is like Star Citizen or Exalted 3rd edition (ie – FUCKED).
This past weekend we played a long 4 player game of talisman in real life. One of the players, let’s call him Matt to protect the guilty, was new, and being a 4 person game, it took a long time. During and after the game, there was remarking about how much of a monster Talisman 4th edition has become and while 2nd edition became ‘fixed’ in about 1993 with the final Dragons Expansion, the Fantasy Flight version keeps going and going and going. This is a good thing but the question out of last night’s game was how many Talisman expansions are too much, not to own or to exist, but in actual PLAY during a single session? There’s nothing wrong with having and Fantasy Flight creating tons of expansions, but like Cosmic Encounter, we don’t play with all of them all the time and over time, with about 75 games of Cosmic under my belt, I can tailor the playset to what group of players I have*.
First, let’s talk about the boards. The boards are big and beautiful and take up ALL your table space. You cannot physically reach across the boards to move your character without being Kareem Abdul Jabar, and most tables can’t even fit the entire five-part board upon them. In terms of gameplay, the worry that I had with the release of the Highlands expansion; that players would be all over the place and not interact or attack each other, has come to pass in spades with both the City and the Woods boards added to the Dungeon and Highlands. The main board simply does not get much attention except in the beginning of the game or when someone is going for the win the standard way. What’s more, since the means of getting to the middle can be so crippling the normal way with the Vampire on one side and Dice with Death on the other, players nearly always opt to go through the dungeon board which means you can get to the middle WITHOUT a Talisman!
Due to the size of the world, spell casters (Wizard for example), with their ability to reach out and touch someone, have really gotten a boost because it’s easier for them to hit and not get hit back since the strength characters have to give chase all over the regions. One of the main strategies to win is to try to kill off players that may be a threat (like the Wizard, Prophetess, Alchemist as some examples) as an early high-strength character (like the Warrior or the Troll), but when players can run to all sorts of different boards from the outset, some of which are more balanced to the character’s power levels than the main board is, it’s tough to bring a character to ground without the correct items in hand.
Comparing this to 2nd Edition where there is a main board, a dungeon board, a city board and the Timescape board all off to the side and not connected to the main board (physically at least) a lot of the action still occurred on the main board. The city had brutal cards in it so was a get in and get out sort of place, and the Dungeon was so stringent with what you can take in there (no horses, horse and cart, horse FOLLOWERS and the like) that it was usually only used for escape. Timescape is very difficult to get into early game since there is only one way in via the enchantress in the city. Once the adventure cards start dropping, there are typically gates all over the place.
What I want to do is look at the most basic Talisman needed for fun play and see what can reasonably be added to that to make a fun game and not a huge chore to play. The only required sets are the base set and the Reaper expansion (whether or not you actually use the reaper in play is irrelevant, the cards that come with this expansion are essential), everything else I consider non-essential, not that I would ever play with just the reaper expansion and the base set! I’ll do a series of posts in the next month or so on what expansions add and which detract and dilute.
*(with some n00bs at the table, I use 4 planets per player, all the aliens and Hazard cards and that’s it, with experienced players we go 5 planets, throw in tech, satellites and everything else).
