Re: What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Played Mezo for the first time in a few years tonight and remembered why it's been so long because... The brain-! It burns! Like a lot of Kolossal games, there are so many little variations of rules to remember. A lot of people have trouble with the vocabulary (Exile means return a unit to a player's reserves, while Smite means send it to Xibalba, etc.) but I find that the easiest part of it. Once you know the language, it's set. But it's remembering things like the turn order at the start of ages for different actions (Is it the person who has the most VP? Or the person who has the fewest?) that just constantly throws me. And the rulebook is a little dated in that respect, since it doesn't emphasize some important points that are otherwise contained in blocks of text.

Anyway, we played a 4-player with the base gods, since we had two new players and two that hadn't played in a couple years. The aspect to it that I love the most came out in force, as it's one of the most highly-interactive games that I own, even in the DoaM sphere, since almost every action you take can be messing with the position of an opponent, whether it's their dudes or their god or their pyramids/glyphs. You are always deeply enmeshed in what's happening (i.e. zero "downtime") because every action that someone takes can and will impact you. In the end, Ixchel came out on top, but the scores were tight, like usual, finishing 81-79-78-67. I came in second with Au-Puch. I don't think I used my ability to repeatedly Smite particularly well. But all three people were eager to play again, so next time we'll open up the whole roster of gods and see what happens.

Back to Cthulhu: DMD. We tried episode 5 of season 1, twice, with The Man Himself (Cthulhu) being the GOO. After some confusion about the mechanisms (There are five members of two families on the board. You have to get three members of each family onto the boat where you start in order to summon the GOO. If more than two of each family die, you lose.), I checked on BGG for an answer and discovered that this is considered the most difficult episode of the season and popular wisdom is that it's not doable without at least 3 investigators. So, I'm glad we didn't try it with Black Goat...

For the first attempt, we took Adilah (Name an investigator as your Focus for the rest of the game. Whenever one of you Rests, the other heals one Stress or wound) to share our limited health resources and I decided to double down on that with Jakub Peters (When you kill an enemy, heal 1 wound or Stress on an investigator in your space (it may be you.)); not least because Jakub also has Swiftness to get around the map (and move family members) faster. But that also meant we had two Brawlers and no Marksman, meaning all of our combat bonuses had to be up close and personal. As with the game, in general, I THINK there's an advantage to disrupting the ritual and getting the GOO on the board early enough to where you can take it down without being driven insane, but I'm never quite certain of that, since we usually disrupt the ritual. But this one is so difficult to execute (after you get the six people on the boat, someone has to go all the way back to the other side of the board to launch said boat), that in both attempts, Cthulhu made it to a red space and arrived of his own volition. In this first attempt, we had five members on the boat and then were both driven insane.

So, we tried again, this time with some more offense in mind. We had Gary Peters (Dynamite: At the end of your turn, place or move 1 Dynamite within 2 spaces. You may discard a Dynamite as a free action to do 2 wounds to an enemy in that space.) because we'd had crowds of enemies in many spaces (A lot of "All enemies move 1 space toward you" cards in the Mythos) and, as his ability ramps up, he can clear many targets at once with a free action. Plus, he has Swiftness. We also took Ian Welles (When attacked, if you are dealt any wounds, deal 1 wound to that enemy and heal 1 stress), since he also has Swiftness and is a Brawler. This combo worked out better but we still couldn't disrupt the ritual before Cthulhu made it to a red space. However, even though Ian went insane in the last turn, we had some better discovered items and Gary was one (1!) madness result away from killing Cthulhu with his next attack because the latter was on 1 health in his final phase, but we fell to insanity again.

We're trying again tonight with, again, just two investigators, but might opt for a slightly less challenging GOO. Popular opinion is that Yog is the weakest of them, which kinda pains me to know, since he's among my favorites in the HPL mythos.

I will confirm that this is one of the hardest scenarios in the game and that it can be completed with two investigators if you're either lucky or pick the right investigators/elder one. I took my son and I a couple of tries before besting it, when we win probably 80% of the time across scenarios.

Been playing more Captain's Chair. I think it's more different from Imperium in some ways than first glance; the way that they collapsed the identity of land into a two different things, ships (beaming) and locations (points and the equivalent of prosperity) and that one of those things is contested in a neutral zone fundamentally turns the economy of the game on its head a bit. I think in a good way, all told, for 2p. Still growing on me.

My partner and I are almost done with the Earthborne 2nd campaign. Had a blast, we finished the final missions so we're just tooling around now doing side quests. I reviewed it on BGG but no one reads expansion reviews ( boardgamegeek.com/thread/3542231/delving-the-arcology ).

Cthulhu: Death May Die, episode 5. Again. And we lost. Again. This time we even had three investigators (Rasputin, Mary, and Huikong) but I got talked into using Tsathoggua instead of one of the easier ones like Yog or Ithaqua and we got him down to three wounds and couldn't close the deal. We sat there for a few minutes afterwards and tried to analyze why this episode is so difficult and thought that it might be two things: 1. The number of advancement symbol cards in the mission deck seems higher than others. In the first 10 cards we drew, nine of them were advancements and it's been similar every time that we've played, such that the GOO has hit a red space and come to the board in all three plays, whereas they've done that and come to the board before we could disrupt the ritual in the other four episodes only once. 2. The map is extremely linear. Unlike, for example, episode 4 where there were alternate paths that you can take to avoid enemies, on this map it's one path, beginning to end, so you'll often end up with crowds no matter what you try to do.

Next time, we're using Yog. I just want to get past this one and finish the season so we can move on to another one.

I've never played that game, although I've heard enough good things about it to know it must be good. So, I don't really know how these "seasons" work... but if this scenario sucks so bad, can't you just skip it?

The seasons are kind of like a campaign, but not. They're loosely associated missions that nominally tell a story, but so loosely that they're all pretty much one-off situations, which is why we've been using different GOOs for almost all of them. Typically, if you wanted to tell a story about the Big Bad, it would remain the main villain through all six episodes of the season. But, again, you're not really disrupting a story or making anyone feel like they're missing anything by skipping episodes or playing them out of order or just picking one to the one you run that particular game day. So, yeah, we could skip it. I'm just trying to solve the problem of why it's so hard, so I'm willing to have another go at it with a GOO that is generally easier than the ones we've been using and, by the same token, likely wouldn't bother trying it with those that are considered far more difficult, like Black Goat/Shub-Niggurath.

I imagine this scenario has its own thread on BGG with people bitching about it. The second mission of SEAL Team Flix ended up being harder than we originally intended, and we never heard the end of it.

Yeah, it does. There's a game report page that someone set up on Google docs. The win percentage for this one (season 1, episode 5) says everything:

docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UYWDgCO-...28980#gid=1699428980

Last night we started with Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the Funko one), with me running the insidious Sawyer clan since it's my game. I chose scenario D which has the trespassers needing to take 6 pictures of different situations within the house and grounds. I thought this would be really hard for them.... it was not.

On their literal first search action, they found an item they needed for a photo, and the character who had the camera was already in the necessary room. They knocked out two pictures right then and there. They also were extremely lucky with their rolls, causing the Old Man (the only Sawyer available from the start) to lose most or even all of his actions many times.

My strategy has generally been to not spend Fear tokens to play a lot of cards during the Trespasser turn, instead spending 6 combined with certain cards to raise the Panic meter. The panic meter is how you get more Sawyers on the board, which is crucial to do as quickly as possible. I got Grandpa out, and eventually the Hitchhiker. I always throw Grandpa in the Foyer since that is where he is the most annoying, and the hitchhiker actually spawned in a space with a trespasser, who he started effectively slashing up with his straight razor. Unfortunately, by that time they almost had all 6 photos and that same trespasser had a hammer which was used to take a lot of actions away from the Hitchhiker.

Three of the trespassers managed to escape, and Leather face never even got to come out. Everyone liked it but I had hoped to really kick all of their asses. Next time!

One of the others brought Unmatched Adventures, the cooperative unmatched set. They also brought one normal set, the one with Spider-Man in it. So, Spider-Man, Nikola Tesla, and Golden Bat, whoever that is, took on Mothman. Mothman had assistance from the Blob, the Jersey Devil, and Skunk Ape, whoever THAT is.

This game is pretty great, and Unmatched has always impressed me with how clean the design is. The cards are so well tuned, and the AI is very simple. We dispatched the Blob pretty easily, as we chipped away at Mothman's health. The Jersey Devil proved to be the most annoying, since they can peel so many cards off of your deck at the end of the round if the "Doom" track is too high. Tesla (played by me) was very close to death, having only 4 cards left in their deck, but they ultimately dealt the final blow to Mothman for a narrow victory. Good game!

I like Adventures, with the tacit admission that I like regular Unmatched more, but they did a good job of creating a co-op version. And, yes, we've found the Jersey Devil to be, by far, the most annoying of the lieutenant enemies.

C: DMD. Victory. Yes, we took Yog because it's hard to deny that he's the easiest GOO. The main reason is that his cards only summon Cultists and Wilbur and one of his main abilities is to summon duplicates of whichever monster at the same color normal gate. So that means you end up with a ton of Cultists who are easy cannon fodder at a certain level of Sanity for the Investigators... and Wilbur, whom there is only one of. If we had drawn any of the Deep One Mythos cards, it would've been a bit more challenging, but we didn't. So, we had Cultists swarming the board and I was killing them in droves with Tony and Ruth was sneaking past them and stabbing them in the kidneys every time she did so and The Kid, who had maxed out Arcane Mastery, was blasting chunks out of Yog from two spaces away. The Kid was almost insane (one step away; I had traded her my Tranquilizer to prevent her end) and Ruth and I took some wounds in that last round, but it was, by far, the easiest attempt we had made at episode 5. Next time, we wrap up the season and then move on to season 2. Maybe for episode 6 we'll try out Nyarlathotep for the first time...

Had my friends over yesterday for a farfeque and board games. It was me, my wife, Nate, and my friend Kelly surprised by showing up. After eating all the things and catching up we started to play.


First game was Masters of the Universe: Clash for Eternia (Yes, I finally cracked the shrink wrap on that puppy. Shut up). We played the second scenario, first one to 5 VP wins. Nate played He-Man, Kelly played Stratos, JoAnn played Orko (whyyy?!?!? I liked his toy! He was a top!) and I played the baddies: Tri-Klops, Evil Lyn, and Mer-Man.

Boy, did I choose poorly. Mer-Man, especially, since I didn't read his abilities before playing... He's a setup THEN smack you down type hero. I also underutilized the other characters I had since I was unfamiliar, but I think I'll do better next time.

Anyway, the game ended as about as well as Filmation episode could, with the forces of good triumphing over the forces of evil. Orko was beset by Tri-Klops and a minion and was getting gang beat, then he fought back and Endless Hatted Tri-Klops into the shadow realm. He-Man's best maneuver was picking up Mer-Man (complete with the Bernthal meme NONONONOWAITWAITWAITWAIT!) and throwing him into Evil Lyn. Mer-Man, severely wounded He-Man, and Evil Lyn finished off He-Man. That was my only VP. Orko, He-Man, and Stratos grabbed objectives and Mer-Man was knocked out. The End.

The last game was Monster Mayhem. I played the zombie, Nate played the Werewolf, Kelly the Mummy, and Jo playing the Poltergeist. Randomness occurred, a lot of FU cards were thrown about, and Nate dominated by scarfing up his and other monsters' victim. By Round 4, we had NO victims left and it was a free for all amongst monsters. Nate trounced Kelly and he ended up in the double digits for craving points. Kelly came back, said fuck it, and then blew all her dice to beat down Nate. However, Nate played Rend and gave him a higher total, which caused Kelly to add all her dice together and declare (joklingly) that she had 27 to his 7 and to suck it.

I was the last one to move, and I was fully going to go after Nate, but he played Loved One, which negated my attempt at moving. He won....AGAIN.

All in all, a really fun time. Now, to get my many many other unplayed games to the table.

Finally got another play of Molly House in; this time with 5. And... I don't know, man. I mean, I can see the depth in it and especially how it might work with a group of experienced players (aka the Root problem) but it still seems like the rules are overrun with niche cases (when X happens, you discard to the Gossip pile, but if Y happens, you discard to the Safe pile, BUT if Z happens...) Certainly, those things will become more of a reflex with more plays but it leaves me feeling like they kept running into flow issues and created new rules to handle that lack of flow before the game got stuck in an irredeemable situation. According to the development logs, they reworked it from the ground up a couple times and I'm wondering if it was because they kept running into unsolvable problems and this final version was the least of all evils. At the very least, all four players (one of whom had played before) expressed interest in trying again. Unlike our first game, where we took the whole five weeks to get the community Joy over the bar, this time we did it in two. The Community kept spitting out really good cards for our festivities (Mollies and high Desires, like 8s and 9s), which meant that it was gaining big numbers, as well as the bonuses for the type of party. The player who had passed on most of the festivities because of lack of cards (at least he said so) made a come from behind win with the last Christening. Even with the Minor and one Major indictments impacting the rest of us, he still would have finished in first place. I'm still willing to give it a couple more tries, but this is definitely the Cole Wehrle (co-)production that I'm least enamored with so far.

And we have completed Season 1 of Cthulhu: Death May Die. Episode 6 felt significantly easier than Episode 5. However, the game is still a challenge with only two investigators, as it was one turn away from a loss at the end. I played Dali (aka Salvador) who has one of the best primary skills I've seen yet, with the ability to reroll all dice once for each roll I'm attempting (not against me.) Combine that with Arcane Mastery and he's pretty reliable. I was teamed up with Gonk, who has 4 actions per turn, but only 2 max health (rather than the typical 5.) This episode has the return of the Fire Vampires as the dominant creature, who hadn't appeared since episode 1, so that was a cool wrapup. I picked Nyarlathotep as the GOO, without knowing that he's been assigned as the "fire god" of this version of HPL tales AND that he's accompanied by Moon Beasts, when this episode's ritual is all about phases of the moon, so that turned out to be totally thematic, albeit the first time I've seen Nyarlathotep connected with fire (none of his Thousand Forms have that connection and, in fact, some stories say that he has an enmity with Cthugha but whatevs.)

With Gonk's extra action, we were able to manipulate the moonlight to our advantage and disrupted the ritual after Nyarlathotep had advanced twice. We also didn't draw the Fire Vampire card in the Mythos deck, so the lone FV on the board stayed stuck in his starting space. Unlike the previous episode, all of the items and companions in the Discovery deck were useful and didn't have the condition of which clan you were connected to before and so forth. However, in the end, I ended up dying to put wounds on the GOO and Gonk was one wound away from death and out of stress when he put the killing blow in. We were also surrounded by Cultists and Moon Beasts, so it was doable, but it was close. Episode 1 of season 2 has us off to Chicago and dealing with Tcho-Tcho and an Elder Thing...