Category: Cardboard

Board Games and the like

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).

after four hours of talisman!
after four hours of talisman!

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)!

unseenFantasy 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…

Holy crap: Dreadball makes their $$$

Dwarf Dice

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!!!

Dreadball Kickstarter

The diaspora of ex-Games Workshop employees continue to put out games of the miniature variety.  If you remember White Dwarf from the early 2000’s you’ll recognize the designer on this one: Jake Thornton.    Anyway, futuristic ball game, Orks and Humans.  Could it possibly compete with Blood Bowl?  Visually, it certainly looks striking.  Have a look for your own self below:

oh and goblins.

Ruminations on buying stuff for games

As a high school/college lad (and an embarrassingly long time afterward) I was far too languishing poor to buy a lot of gaming stuff; but oh boy did we used to play.  We would make boats for Man o’ War out of balsa wood, we played with pieces of paper representing units in Warhammer, made terrain from toilet paper tubes and furniture rubbish, wrote our own adventures for WFRP and Paranoia and so on.   What we had rather than cash then was time– and quite a lot of it compared to at least my current count (hell 1 hour free from other stuff is a long time these days) .  Granted we could have been working during this time to buy more stuff for the games, but you know, it was in between classes or those idle weekends right at the beginning of a college semester when all your homework was long done so why not throw down a 15 hour game of Adeptus Titanicus or two?  Or play Talisman every single day (sometimes twice)?

These days I cannot wholly complain as I’ve gotten in a good 50 hours of Warhammer Fantasy Battle in the last year as well as a much smaller amount at the boardgame table, but the long swaths of time like back in the day just cannot be spent without planning  months in advance.  I think it’s because of this lack of actual play that makes those of us with heaving masses of other real life responsibilities buy stuff– sometimes lots of stuff–for games we know we may never even get a few games in.

Case in point for me personally was an Epic 40K fever over the Holiday, where I dropped 100$ or so on miniatures and terrain.  I have one buddy that played it back in the day but no group to get into it– an certainly the game is dead as dead can be from the publisher so it’s a game with no real future at all (that said all of the incarnations of the game are pretty great).  Yet, I see buying stuff for a game sort of like buying a lottery ticket– if you have the lottery ticket you can DREAM about winning and pressing random people onto your personal yacht that goes to your small country in Africa where you can hunt the most dangerous gameof all and drive ATV’s all over manicured English Gardens: if you have the gaming stuff you can DREAM about playing and in this stage of life as it were, I think that’s all you can be sure about doing– the play sometimes is just too much work to get to.

This does not just apply to miniature games– Starcraft 2 was a complete bust for me as I just didn’t have time to get involved in the game online early on nor get a group of friends to play with– and if you get on it later all you will do is get your ass kicked constantly and no one cares about it because the next big thing is already out.  As for board games– I played Advanced Squad Leader (Starter Kit 1) last night and while it is a cracking great game I realized after checking ebay for the second starter kit (ouch that’s $$$) that I had only played three times in two years.  Now ASL is a SUPER heavy, and it takes awhile to get back into the swing of the rules (it does play extremely smoothly once you get going and I still heap praise on it as an incredible design) but is it worth it to buy and expansion when you haven’t even gotten your plays worth out of the initial set?  It may be if I can sit and think OK, I have X game expansion in the bank– I can think about setting up a game whenever, and can read forum posts about it, etc. because I have all the tools I need to possibly play it, it makes thinking about playing it just that more fun.   Twilight Imperium 3, a game I still am on the fence about whether it’s a pile of shite or not, tempts me whenever I see it to pick up the new expansion, even though we’ve only played 3 times and some of my play group abhor it.  Just like a lottery ticket, it may be the fantasizing about playing is worth the price of buying it and by buying it we may be scratching an itch for actually playing that we no longer can have at our stage of life.  As pathtic as that is, that may be the long and short of the reasons for a random splurge on something that logically won’t hit the table more than once or twice, if ever.

That said, anyone up for a Necromunda campaign!?