MRAAKTAGON – Page 59

Runequest 6 Essentials -free PDF

With D&D 5 going free in PDF form others are following suit with free PDF’s. The king of fantasy BRP (basic role playing, which powers Cthulhu and Elric) RUNEQUEST in it’s 6th version has come out with it’s own set of rules in PDF format.

This is a great set of rules that I wish I had played more when I was young enough to play a ton… (i.e. 1984) and when it was heavily supported in White Dwarf. The character creation rules may be a bit longer than normal to get going with, but the combat system is something to experience.

A Study in Emerald – First play

Sacrilege, I know, but I hated Arkham Horror. Played once with 6 players and it was a fucking disaster mess that took forever and got nowhere. I was hoping every single turn that the game would be over. I’m not sure if it was the Fantasy Flight version or what, but it sucked… bad.

Since then I have shied away from the cooperative ‘vs the board’ type games like Battlestar Galactica, etc. just assuming they would try to emulate Arkham and be crap. While I did dabble on the iphone with the excellent FF created dice game XXX, that’s about it.

Now let’s talk about a Study in Emerald. It’s a Wallace game, so I’m biased a bit from the outset, but let me tell you this is a fantastic game that really turns both deck building (which are mostly all CRAP) and cooperative play vs the board into an extremely compelling experience of fuckery. Like Bang or various werewolf games, the players don’t know which side they are on at the beginning of the game and cannot know for sure until there is a reveal. Players must watch the other player’s movements in the game to determine which side they are on, and may take action with false or misleading information.

That said, this is not all mental fuckage, the game mechanics are extremely solid for something so chocked full of stuff. Part of the game is bidding, part tile buy, part area control and some light combat. All of it adds up to what at first seems an insurmoutable pile of special rules, but the play is actually quite smooth and easy– offering tons of tactical and strategic choices each turn. While this is not a review of the game per-se (especially after a single play) this game got my gander up from a gameplay perspective.

The theme of the game– a sort of Cthulhu/Sherlock Holmes mash up with all sorts of late 1800’s references and characters works really well when at first you’d think it would be completely stupid. One faction are the loyalists to the Royals who are actually various Cthulhu monsters and the other are revolutionaries trying to free the world from these insidious alien powers. You play as agents involved in a shadow war to either help or hurt the “Royals.” I found it familiar yet strange and mysterious at the same time.

On the cover are two men standing over a tentacled body and the word REVENGE in German is written on the wall behind. To me, this is a game made as revenge for all the people that had to sit through Arkham Horror before a Study in Emerald came along.

Gibbes

Hateful Eight

Tarantino is doing another film, servicing what is still an under-served American genre (at least at the moment): the Western! Django Unchained was excellent and many of Tarantino’s films have felt like Westerns at their core so this is….

…uh well that got fucked hard.

Gencon! signed up for….

…Nothing.

We were looking at Dungeon Crawl Classics, Feng Shui 2, 13th Age and everything was instantly booked within 5 minutes. Is it because these things are pretty cool and a lot of the other events fucking suck? Sure, but within 5 minutes? Ridiculous.

That said I’ve hung up my Shadowfist cards for anything other than casual play and that’s freed me up for an ALL RPG GenCon weekend– All RPG if I can get in any games that is. A weekend of wandering around the main hall like a zombie being touched by all that fat flesh has it’s appeal, but I’d much rather get some serious butt-rot from sitting in a chair slinging the fucking poly’s after spending my budget in the main hall the first hour of the con.

Godzilla was Godlike!

Growing up with the monster movies of the 70’s, there have been a lot of modern versions that have not done Godzilla or big monster movies justice in the recent past, including Cloverfield (an OK movie) and especially the Matthew Broderick fronted american version of Godzilla (1998). Meanwhile in Japan, Toho has been cranking out descent Godzilla movies, while certainly B movies, scratched the same itch the 70’s movies did.

Now, given that there hasn’t been an attempt in Japan since 2004 to put another entry into the franchise, and with the moderate success of Pacific Rim (wasn’t terrible, but wasn’t great either), there’s been room for another run at a series. And I say franchise because that’s what Godzilla is– it’s never a single movie, it’s always a series of movies that are judged individually and as a whole so this one is the start, and it was awesome. Godzilla movies are made up of three things: some ecological message telling people that the path we are on of consuming the earth and meddling with atomic forces is extremely dangerous, second, some human drama that ties into the monster part of the film and last, Godzilla fucking everything up everywhere and destroying stuff in awesome fashion for usually half the film. This movie does all of those things in spades. I was a bit worried about the last one, but it was ALL there, just not quite as early in the film as the typical formula.

Godzilla destroying the original American reboot Godzilla from Godzilla: Final Wars

What the new Godzilla did is combine the seriousness of some sort of horror and disaster movies (both the reactor meltdown in Japan and the tidal wave in India are represented in this film, so this hits close to home) with the fun of Kaiju monster battle and mass destruction. It does not pull punches, there is mass chaos, death and destruction in the film including many of the characters–yet it’s also very fun to watch and has some great battle scenes with Godzilla. When you see buildings collapse into rubble, you know there are people inside–unlike some of the Japanese movies, the director makes that clear, but also makes clear that if the main issue of the plot is not dealt with properly MILLIONS will die.

Secondly, nothing is more important than the physical design of Godzilla himself. This could be the one thing that tanked the 98 American movie: that wasn’t fucking Godzilla. I think every single fan of the big guy will say this fucking version in 2014 is undoubtedly Godzilla himself. He has the dog face, he has the girth to his body and the way he fights is spot on. Godzilla has to be awesomely powerful looking and…I hate to say this as a man, lovable at the same time. They nailed it.

All in all, an amazing film, highly entertaining and I cannot wait for the fucking next one– and since the movie will well clear half it’s cost the first WEEKEND of it’s release, this is likely forgone conclusion.

For Steve

Interesting: revised version of Dungeon Quest coming Fall

Fantasy Flight makes some excellent games and they keep alive many of the games that are the best ever made, such as TALISMAN and Cosmic Encounter. They have done right by these two certainly because they themselves know what players want out of those games. There have been a couple reprints/revisions of classic games that missed the mark. Warrior Knights, so beautifully created with such awesome pieces, was saddled with a terrible version of Wallenstein/Shogun’s action system and amounted to the players playhing VS the game system itself rather than each other. Another beautiful but flawed revision of a Games Workshop classic released just a few years ago was Dungeon Quest. The main issue with the revision being that the combat, extremely simple and deadly in the first version of the game by GW, was rebuilt heavy– very very heavy. Well, there must be life in this game since there is a revision of the revision coming this Fall that I will definitely pick up. I got to play the original only a couple of times at a convention and it’s a rush in and grab the loot before dying game. Since DQ is elimination, the key to such games (such as King of Tokyo, Love Letter and Epic Spell Wars: Duel at Mount Skullsfire) is that they are extremely short and simple–which does NOT mean bad. Simple (that is also good) is also very difficult to do in terms of game design. Take Warrior Knights (new version) vs Shogun. The first is very difficult to learn and especially to play, where Shogun, after the first turn of action selection and resolution, is easily grasped by players and it becomes about who can WIN the game against each other rather than who can learn to play the game system better. I’ve got high hopes for the new DQ.

Oh and there’s the final BOARD PIECE for Talisman.

Age of Wonders 3: Nope

I had high hopes for this one and it does have some quality to it, but after less than a week, I uninstalled it from my computer. It’s quite pretty and does exactly what you expect in updating the Age of Wonders series. I found it similar to Kings Bounty if comparing to new games. Certainly it’s worth checking out when it’s on sale, but for full price do not buy it. I was going to post some screen shots, but I uninstalled the game so fast I didn’t even take any.

I have one major issue and that’s all artillery/siege weapons. Stuff that throws rocks, tanks, cannons, etc. Given that these units have specialized functions in the real world, you assume that since they are not magical at all, they might just have the same specializations and weaknesses of their real-world counterparts. You’d be wrong. Flame Tanks can take massive amounts of punishment and dish out fire over a wide area even after moving. From what I’ve seen they are the best units in the game and can be spammed and spammed (unless you are against stuff that is immune to fire). However, It was the catapults that caused my quitting of the game. Catapults ALSO can take massive amounts of close combat and ranged damage, and can also move and fire their weapons at a hex NEXT to it (thus being in close combat). There is no reason in the world to not have all catapults and siege engines for your entire army. You don’t even need heroes.

While I appreciate the update graphically, like nearly all the fantasy strategy games outside of the Dominions series, Age of Wonders missed the mark.

Exalted 3 Comic released to kickstarter peeps

Exalted 3 will someday come out. Gencon is looking impossible, but if you kickstarted the book you will have gotten a comic via drivethru to check out in the mean time. Since the lead developer is apparently not going to die (this was a consideration due to health issues), we will likely see this relatively soon, but Gencon: no.

The comic is good, it’s not GREAT, but it’s a good read and does not descend into some of the cheese that the Exalted COMIC book did (there was good stuff in there too). One thing of note is that people that kickstarted at a massive level to the new version got to contribute a character to the comic , so the writers/artists were dealing with some fanboy’s wet dream from the outset. Given that, it turned out really well compared to the horrible vanity shadowfist cards we’ve seen since Zman gave up the game.

I’m still excited for this fucker, but if it sucks, it’s only postponed my Exalted game using Marvel Heroic (cortex+) system.

Here are a couple of pics.