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Mycelia Board Game Review

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Outback Crossing Review

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31 Mar 2019 15:41 #294794 by BillyBobThwarton
Regarding warped boards to FI, were they that way from the beginning?

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31 Mar 2019 18:11 #294797 by hotseatgames
Today my girlfriend and I played Codex for the first time in a very long time. We took the opportunity to try 2 new colors, since I acquired blue, white, black, and purple from Charlie.

After a bit of rule book fumbling (I don't care for the rule book. It's way too hard to find something and in desperate need of an index), we got going. I was black and she was blue, and she started churning out units while I spent time gaining workers and upgrading my hero. I was not taking full advantage of my skeletons until a couple of rounds in. I also sacrificed two of them, which I think is a decision I should have made more carefully.

We spent several turns chipping away at each other, but she had more units, doing more damage, so it became obvious I was going to lose. I made a final push, attacking with everything, which took her to 3 points of life on her base, and then she killed me the next turn. It was fun and I hope it's not so long before we play again.
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31 Mar 2019 18:44 #294799 by Colorcrayons

BillyBobThwarton wrote: Regarding warped boards to FI, were they that way from the beginning?


Yes. Straight out if the shrink wrap.
I'm likely just unlucky there, as I don't see a consistent overabundance of complaints about that.

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01 Apr 2019 11:31 #294827 by mezike
It's been a couple of slow weeks for gaming with lots going on at home and not being able to get to the club, however we did blow the dust off Blood Bowl: Team Manager which I had pulled out of storage for our 2012 night the other week but didn't get played, and also got in some Xia and Spirit Island over the weekend.

It's been a long time since I last played BB:TM, and it was kind of predictable in the way that it played out. The Dwarves were completely useless, the Elves cycled through their deck like crazy and kept stealing the ball at the last moment, and Orcs managed to injure themselves as much as the opposition. The most amusing moment was when the Elves ended up with the Death Roller and a star player who was able to take away its cheating tokens. With a hard focus on team and league upgrades they pranced into victory. Honestly though, I was starting to get really tired of it towards the end. I think it's had its day.

Xia I started with the intention of loading up on shields and going mining but a lack of interesting planets saw me going heavy on exploration instead. I fluked into several gates just at the time that a title came up for gate-jumping. Six FP in one sweep stuck my head out into what turned into an unassailable lead, especially with all the exploration tokens I had accumulated giving me a quick ship upgrade. Between us we pulled every single tile into play and I traversed the entire system end to end on a lowly D8 engine; I've not yet seen the point in loading out with a larger one when the navicomp gives a solidly reliable performance boost on the D8.
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01 Apr 2019 16:52 #294842 by Msample
GMT East AAR

Arrived at the diner early Friday AM and had breakfast with Bill Ramsey and Andy Lewis. Bill kindly bought me breakfast in the hopes he'd be spared the worst of my typical abuse.

Gaming proper started off with my Fascists squaring off vs James Terry's Commies and Mike Johnson's Democrats in CATACLYSM. All of us had pretty hot dice early on, passing Stability Checks and early game political checks at a rapid clip such that by turn 3 ( 1938-1939 ) Total War had broken out. In the Pacific, my Japanese had plundered all but one Chinese Resource and had repelled a Soviet attack into Manchuria. However in Europe, my Italians succumbed to a British invasion via Sicily and soon Americans had launched an attack via Denmark. After some hard fighting in west Germany, Hitler ate some cyanide and the game ended at the end of the third turn, or maybe it was the fourth at the most.

A quick game of FIREBALL ISLAND followed with me, Bill, Ben Hull, and Jeromey Billones. I was the last to board the escape helicopter and had the most loot for the win . Its a throwback ( reprint ) to the 80s, with little figures collecting/stealing treasures from one another while trying to avoid marbles being rolled/flicked from above by other players. Probably best played late at night and/or drunk. Stein sagely predicted it might make good WBC Juniors fare. We didn't use any of the expansions .

A five player game of JOHN COMPANY . Me, Chad, Dave B, Scott Muldoon, and Dr. Rob took the helm of the East India Company. Since Chad and Dave hadn't played, we stuck with the 6 turn game, which removes some of the late game chaos due to the company deregulating. Between that, some conservative play and an early game event sucking up a good amount of treasury coupled with almost everyone having multiple shareholders unwilling to be left holding the bag if it went under, we decided to keep the company solvent . The scoring was very tight - 14,12,12,12, 11 with Dr. Rob squeezing out the win thanks to me granting him an office on the second to last turn he ended up retiring from with a little spare cash to buy a hovel in Ireland for 2 VP .

Friday wrapped up with SPACECORP. Me, Chad, James, Jeromey set out to explore the Solar System. I jumped out to an early lead due to some production and contract fulfilment and held a late game push from the others

Saturday dawned and I had nothing arranged. I brought the enlarged ANGOLA counters Bruce had mounted on 1" plastic tiles to show a few people and before I knew it a game broke out. My red commies were paired with Tom Gregorio's heroes of Cabinda facing Andy Freemans FNLA scum and Tom Drueding's UNITA South Africa backed agitators. The set up featured a democratic owned south coast while the commies had a clean line to the hinterlands, Novo Lisboa and a good buffer to the north. Tom dug in on the plateau facing UNITA and stymied them before withdrawing to Novo Lisboa which changed hands several times. We inflicted enough losses such that FNLA had drawn all four Major units. Air units almost never bombed but rather engaged in dogfights. Cabinda held til turn 4 , which is pretty good . The turning point came when Andys FNLA death star came down the coast and drove into a RPG infested town. A massive volley sent two tanks ( not mere armored cars ) and his Major Armored car unit up in a fireball. That pretty much blunted the FNLA threat and we hung on for a concession at the end of turn 8. The enlarged counters on the standard map worked surprisingly well, but the blown up map is being worked on. It will be sweet when it comes out.

Chad and I faced off in a Combat Commander tourney scenario I hadn't played before, board 73 featuring a mixed force of Elite and Line Germans holding off American Line troops backed by mine clearing engineers. The Mines had little effect on Chad's Americans, but my SSR supplied Panzerfausts ( 2 hex range, 12 attack ) made getting in close a rather dangerous affair. He cleaned out on strong point. However his other axis of attacked suffered when a green officer called in an artillery mission on top of his own position, breaking him in the process, LOL. He forged ahead, but the final nail was a PF shot that broke his Veteran engineer and killed the Hero, then the Time Trigger caused the PF to re-appear ready to fire the very next phase, killing the Engineer.

We finished the night with THATS PRETTY CLEVER, a roll and write dice game where you use various colored dice to fill out a scorecard . The kicker is that you can use 3 of 6 dice each turn, but the other players get to use one of the dice you passed on.

Sunday dawned with Chad and fighting over the fate of Middle Earth in WAR OF THE RING. Our last game a few years ago had been a nailbiter, with Chads 10 VP Shadow military victory trumped by Frodo dunking the ring at the same time. We switched sides and the game started off with a lot of Muster and Event dice on both sides. I slowly consumed most of Gondor thanks to Denethor watching too many reruns on his Palantir TV and masked Dol Amroth with a big Southron force. I then turned my attention to Rohan, as the Minas Tirith victors marched East, overran Edoras which had been abandoned via the Path of the Woses. Those sneaky bastards had to be rooted out from Minas Tirith which they had liberated.

Meanwhile the Ringbearer had a mostly uneventful trip south. Gandalf had absorbed an early 3 tile but Chad arrived at Minas Morgul with only 2 Corruption. However some event cards I had recently drawn shaved off the various meat shields Frodo had conned into accompanying him on his little adventure and with Gollum as his guide, he soldiered on. We both had all four Special Hunt Tiles in the bag and he drew one of his on the first step. Then Shelob came next and rolled...a 6! He was now at 8 Corruption but had only two spaces left and plenty of low value tiles; plus an early peek by Aragorn had discarded two Eye tiles. However, the next tile was an Eye tile; with four dice in the pool, Frodo trudged off to clean toilets in Barad Dur while Sam was left doing unspeakable things as the Orcs new cabana boy in Cirith Ungol.

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02 Apr 2019 09:19 #294868 by Gary Sax
Damn, that's a hell of a con lineup. Not playing 40 thirty minute card games.

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03 Apr 2019 21:37 - 03 Apr 2019 21:48 #294934 by Ah_Pook
Played Dungeon Twister Prison for the first time and I don't know how I feel about it. The game seemed like it has interesting/fun ideas and systems, but the tiles seemed designed to suck all the possibilities and fun out of the game and stymie you behind locked doors and pits every single second. Just a first impression but I'm glad I got a real good deal on it. Might be going on the pile pretty quick if the solo game isn't fun.

Also played Drakon, which was suggested after Dungeon Twister as a vaguely similar feeling game with way less overhead and way more fun. Man Drakon is pretty great is all. Definitely going to have to pick that up at some point.
Last edit: 03 Apr 2019 21:48 by Ah_Pook.
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03 Apr 2019 22:05 #294935 by Jackwraith
Went to the weekly FLGS game night and ran into some new people again who wanted to try Villainous. So I took Evil Queen vs Prince John, Maleficent, Jafar, and Dr. Fusilier. I had a horrible draw with EQ, getting multiple Take That!s and Take A Bites with no heroes to play them on. It took me a while to get all four Ingredients in play and then I had to wait on the Magic Mirror because no one was Fate-ing me, as they could see that I wasn't a threat. Meanwhile, Maleficent had four Curses in play three times before being Fated and foiled. I got the Huntsman out and played him to the Dwarfs' Cottage and then got the Mirror out and played Snow White. All I needed to do was get around to my turn again and my 3 Poison would win the game with the one Take A Bite card I'd retained after multiple turns of dumping my hand just to have things to play. John was stuck on 16 power, Maleficent had run into multiple heroes, and Jafar had made no progress at all (I keep forgetting when warning new players about the tougher heroes that Jafar is one of those that can be slotted with Captain Hook and Ursula.) Dr. Fusilier had the Talisman in hand and had Rule New Orleans in the Fortune Pile... but he was sitting in the Emporium and had to move out when he played the Talisman. It would have been an auto-win since there were only 3 cards in the pile. Next turn was mine and I held out the apple...

Then we switched to Raiders of the North Sea, which someone else had brought. With five players it drags a little, but I still enjoy it. The Euro-y nature is overridden by the flavor of the cards and the chance to do desperate lunges at the end for the left over harbors with Valkyries.. I came in third, though. I'd like to play it more often and maybe try out an expansion or two. I'm also tempted by Architects of the West Kingdom, but I have too many games to play already (This shall be my new mantra.)

One of the new players was a woman who was talking about games that her husband loved that she didn't like to play. The primary culprit was Arkham Horror, because she said it just took too long. Apparently, when they first tried with just the base game, it took 12(!) hours. TWELVE HOURS! I guess they were playing with his mother, who plays very slowly, but even so. TWELVE! And now he's added in all the expansions, of course. So, I was thinking to myself that she wouldn't be interested in a lot of what I'm usually hauling around, but someone asked what her favorite games were to play and she said: "Well, one of them is Wiz-War." People across the table said my eyes basically bulged out of my head when I said: "Oh, yes. We need to play Wiz-War." So, next week, that's going in the bag.
The following user(s) said Thank You: hotseatgames, WadeMonnig, Vysetron, n815e

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03 Apr 2019 22:07 #294936 by Jackwraith

mezike wrote: It's been a long time since I last played BB:TM, and it was kind of predictable in the way that it played out. The Dwarves were completely useless, the Elves cycled through their deck like crazy and kept stealing the ball at the last moment, and Orcs managed to injure themselves as much as the opposition. The most amusing moment was when the Elves ended up with the Death Roller and a star player who was able to take away its cheating tokens. With a hard focus on team and league upgrades they pranced into victory. Honestly though, I was starting to get really tired of it towards the end. I think it's had its day.


I can see where this would be the case if you're still playing with the base teams. But if you're able to locate them, the expansions open up amazing amounts of replayability. Some of the other teams are really, really entertaining even if they're not wrecking balls like the Undead. I love playing the Goblins just for the absolute chaos they can unleash and occasionally even win with. I love BB:TM and will likely never part with it.
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03 Apr 2019 22:21 #294937 by Frohike
I ditched my Dungeon Twister set & never looked back but Drakon, in hindsight, fits pretty well with the type of games that get played at my house. I think Tom Jolly & I are on the same wavelength. I wrote a review for it, back in the day when I tried my hand at reviewing & realized I just could not get my diction to wrench itself out of its own ass (part of why I never clamored to write reviews here).
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04 Apr 2019 07:28 #294943 by stormseeker75
I've got a copy of Sudden Death to trade if anyone is interested in a BB:TM expansion.

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04 Apr 2019 08:47 - 04 Apr 2019 08:47 #294952 by charlest
While I've been playing a decent amount of Journeys to Middle Earth between regular game nights, last night we stuck to oldies.

We split into two groups and I took the opportunity to get Vengeance back out on the table. I sucked hard, unable to finagle the more Euro-aspects of the design into a consistent point stream, but I had a fantastic time. I really love how explosive this game can be and how much of a rush it can give you.

For instance, the one new guy stepped into his first den and cleared the whole thing out in a single roll. It was ridiculous and he scooped up a bunch of points as well as triggering one of the achievements.

I did have a shot at redemption in my final combat as I entered a bar looking for the leader of the biker game that had left me for dead weeks earlier. I left a trail of dead in my wake and made it to the final room, but ran out of steam and receive a couple of jabs to the ribs before peeling out and sneaking away. I would have scored a massive 12 points on that final den but couldn't muster up the juice.

We also played a two player game of Space Hulk: Death Angel, which only took me about 4 minutes to re-figure out after multiple years (I was surprised at how many rules I remembered). We died horribly of course.

Five player game of Root was the longest game of the evening. I was the Cats and up against Riverfolk, Lizards, Vagabond, and Birds. The Vagabond won but just by a hair. We gave him a good beating at the end but needed to jump on him a bit quicker.

I tried to rush an early dominance victory and nearly had it, but the Lizards and Birds combined to beat me down in the three clearings I needed.

Closed out the night with Just One and One Night Ultimate Werewolf.
Last edit: 04 Apr 2019 08:47 by charlest.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Msample, mezike, hotseatgames, Frohike, Hadik, DarthJoJo

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04 Apr 2019 10:16 #294964 by Legomancer
So I can now confirm that the minimum player count you want for Western Legends is 4, but that minimum works pretty well. 5 is probably best, though I think 6 is fine too.

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04 Apr 2019 11:42 #294981 by cdennett
After being constantly bullied by this site to try Hellapagos, I got it out the other night with just 4 of us, but despite the small player count it still delivered on the TWBG hype. First game I got dealt two guns, a bullet, and the flashlight. I used the flashlight on the first round and saw a bullet on top of the deck, which I quickly snapped up, meaning on turn 1 I had a gun and two bullets...this was going to be interesting. As expected, everyone were carebears from the beginning of the game, and despite our weather cards coming up as "0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 3, hurricane," we managed to get all the way I think to round 5 before someone needed to voted to die of thirst. One of the guys had both the first player and the crystal ball that lets him vote last, so without hesitation I shot him, for which I received a water bottle. Despite my protesting that someone needed to die, they both voted to get rid of me (as we were short two rations), for which I consumed my fresh water bottle. Two turns later hurricane pops up and two of us could escape provided someone died before we consumed rations, looking at my two remaining compatriots, I decided to shoot the guy with the axe and fishing rod who never dug into the deck as he was always helping the group, and consequently was less likely to have the sheet metal. The look of indignation meant I was going to pay for this later, but I lived!

So we played a second game, and this tie around with the flask, axe, and good weather cards we quickly built up the raft to 3 seats and by round 4 or 5 were able to get enough stuff to get three of us off the island. And while one of the other guys, who had declared he had a gun and bullet was debating who he should shoot, I played my gun and bullet without hesitation to shoot the only other guy I hadn't shot yet. The guy with the gun (who by the way did also have the sheet metal) decided to shoot me anyways. Turns out the remaining survivor also had the voodoo doll and brought back to life I had killed and they all sailed away without me.

We then broke out Coup, to which the meta continued against me. Hadn't played it in ages, and it was OK, but I'd rather play Masquerade.

We ended the night with a game of Rhino Hero Super Battle but made the mistake of not using the "hard" side of the bases and we completed the tower without anything falling. Next time need to go to the hard side to hope for some more mayhem.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Jackwraith, mezike, hotseatgames, Frohike, charlest, WadeMonnig, DarthJoJo, Ah_Pook

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06 Apr 2019 11:13 - 06 Apr 2019 14:14 #295079 by Ah_Pook
Played an 8p game of Hellapagos last night where the Stars aligned and 7 people survived. At the end of the round we had 7 boats and 14 food and water, and the one lady at the table had a gun and a bullet. There was debate about trying to go another round and get everyone out, which I said seemed unlikely. The lady with the gun was talking about killing herself so she could die a hero and everyone else could live. A guy at the table told her to suck it up and be a man about it, so she said fuck you and shot him and the rest of us sailed away. It was a pretty good game.
Last edit: 06 Apr 2019 14:14 by Ah_Pook.
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