- Posts: 1773
- Thank you received: 2444
Bugs: Recent Topics Paging, Uploading Images & Preview (11 Dec 2020)
Recent Topics paging, uploading images and preview bugs require a patch which has not yet been released.
Please consider adding your quick impressions and your rating to the game entry in our Board Game Directory after you post your thoughts so others can find them!
Please start new threads in the appropriate category for mini-session reports, discussions of specific games or other discussion starting posts.
What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- hotseatgames
- Away
- D12
- Posts: 7176
- Thank you received: 6290
Before I get into how the game went, I'll comment on components. On the whole, components meet the high standards of an Awaken Realms title. Everything is well done and looks nice. I will say I actually don't think the models are as nice as the ones in Lords of Hellas. I am not sure why... they just seem to have less detail. The ONLY real gripe I have is the rule book: it's square, and white text printed on black in a very small font. Reading these square books is a pain in the ass, and the white on black causes more eye strain than is necessary. Please publishers, no more square rule books.
There is a fully cooperative mode, but I chose to play two characters in a normal game as though it was semi-cooperative. Normally each player would have a secret objective that is unknown to the other players, so for this test I chose objectives that wouldn't step on each character's toes. I had the Pilot, who wanted the Nest to be destroyed and the ship to end up back on Earth, and the Mechanic, who wanted to discover two Intruder weaknesses.
You all start in the center of the ship, in the "Hibernatorium." Basically cryo-sleep. You have fuzzy memories and thus can't remember the layout of the ship. This is a good conceit for having to explore and figure out where everything is. The Pilot headed towards the front of the ship to check the current destination, and the Mechanic headed to the engine rooms to check on them. You can't hyperspace jump successfully without two functional engines, and the ship starts out heading to one of four possible destinations. Some secret objectives have players deliberately sabotaging these ship elements.
In fairly short order, the Pilot discovered the Nest and was promptly attacked by a Creeper, which is a second stage alien. A fire broke out and spread to several rooms, including the one that the Pilot was in. As long as you escape the room before the end of your current "2 actions" you will not take damage from the fire.
The Mechanic got to the back of the ship and checked two engines. One was just fine, and they repaired the other one. You take a "repair / break" action and you have to tell other players if you are switching the engine's status, but you don't have to say if you just broke it or fixed it.
The Pilot managed to kill the Creeper and got to the flight deck and determined that the ship was in fact headed to Earth. With the Nest on fire, the Pilot's secret goal would be achieved.... as long as the Pilot lived long enough for the hibernation chamber to re-open (this happens half-way down the timer track of 15 turns).
The Mechanic wound up with a Larva inside of him. This sounds bad, and it is... but it's not necessarily a death sentence. Somewhere on the ship is the Surgery Room, and you can cut the larva out of yourself. But where was it? The Mechanic started wandering and stumbled upon the Laboratory. This is where you research samples and can discover Intruder weaknesses, aka the Mechanic's secret objective of uncovering two of them.
This game handles the Intruders in a really clever manner; at the beginning of the game you shuffle a deck of Intruder weaknesses and deal three out to the "Intruder board." If you analyze the following items, you uncover each weakness: a character corpse (the game starts with one so no one has to die to do this), an Intruder carcass, and an Intruder Egg (currently all of these were burning in the Nest... could one get saved in time?)
Further, each time you fight an Intruder, you never know how much health it has. After you cause one or more injuries, which are tracked on the model, you draw a card from an Intruder deck. If the card indicates a number of injuries that is higher than the current injuries, it lives.
Things weren't going great for the Mechanic; some scuffles caused them to get two Contamination cards in their action deck. These have secret text on them that indicates if you are Infected or not... you can survive the whole game and even achieve your objective, and STILL lose if you wind up infected. There is a special scanner that you slide the card into (it has translucent red plastic that makes the text show up). The Mechanic nervously tested one of their cards in order to dispose of it... if it said Infected, it would mean instant death due to the Larva inside them. CLEAN! Whew.....
The Pilot circled back around and met up with the Mechanic. The Pilot helped the Mechanic out by researching an Intruder carcass. It was just a waiting game at that point for the Pilot, but there was an adult Intruder literally hanging out in the Hibernatorium which would make it impossible to use.
The Mechanic decided to venture in there to pick up the Character corpse that had been sitting there the entire game, but when they tried to escape, the Intruder took a serious bite out of their arm. They dropped the corpse, but at least they got away from the Intruder for now.
That Intruder actually left the Hibernatorium, and at this point there was only two rounds to go before the cryo chambers would open up. It was looking good for at least the Pilot. The Mechanic wound up in the Laboratory when, out of nowhere, the larva burst out of their chest, instantly killing them. Oops.
It was at this point that I could have proceeded on as normal, but there is an alternative mode in which the first player to die can control the Intruders. This dramatically changes the Intruder action steps, and I figured I should test it since it's likely to be needed in my group. The Pilot had to survive ONE more round....
The Intruder formally known as the Mechanic got to draw 3 event cards and choose one to enact; while they can't win, they really just have a goal of making sure no one else wins either. One of the events literally caused so many fires that the ship blew up immediately.
GAME OVER, EVERYBODY DIES.
I thought this was hilarious, and the gameplay is great. There is a lot of room for fuckery, BUT you have to be willing to accept that your character may die in extremely arbitrary ways, i.e. the wrong card came up and boom you die.
More later when I get a proper game in.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
I will hold off on a review for now, because I feel like I need a couple of more plays to get a feel for the strengths and weaknesses of Coma Ward. Based on one scenario, it does seem like there is a fundamental flaw in the dice-rolling mechanism. You roll Xd6, where Xis your relevant attribute ( usually Strength or Dexterity), net of bonuses and penalties from equipment or other factors. 1, 2, or 3 is a failure, while 5 or 6 is a success. 4 is "suspense", which means each 4 gets re-rolled with one extra die. So while you can potentially succeed beyond your normal capabilities, you are more likely to fail at, well, everything.
Everytime you enter a new room or explore an existing room, you roll your Focus to avoid getting a hallucination. Since you need at least 3 successes and your maximum Focus is 5, this means that there are a lot of hallucinations in the game. Pretty quickly, players will be hallucinating almost all the time, rapidly spiraling into madness. But the hallucinations are the major source of fun in the game, leading to all sorts of interesting encounters and sometimes even causing normal rooms to be replaced with room-sized hallucinations.
I won't spoil the particulars of our encounter, but it gave each of us a secret victory condition, and mine at least made the game competitive instead of cooperative. The game rapidly spun out of control after the scenario kicked in, and we both lost. The game has some great ideas, but probably didn't get enough playtesting. One definite improvement over Betrayal is the fixed map layout. The Coma Ward room tiles cause plenty of variability, but the overall layout is defined. Betrayal often goes off the rails after the haunt starts, just because the house is either too big or too small when the omen roll triggers the haunt.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- Jackwraith
- Offline
- Ninja
- Maim! Kill! Burn!
- Posts: 4370
- Thank you received: 5697
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
Finally got in some Arkham the next day. Played two sessions of Blob, both a bit smaller than that first night and both with my support Carolyn Fern whose only job was healing horror and sealing the worst tokens out from the bag. We didn't win either attempt, but it is a really good scenario. As you might guess, the inspiration is drive-in horror movies of the '50's, which feels a little weird in the Arkham setting, but I loved the dedication to the premise. Every single treachery card is some aspect of the Blob, and every single enemy is a sentient separation of the Blob, except for a handful of latecoming Mi-Go who are studying it. It lacked the cross-table cooperation of Labyrinths of Lunacy, the first epic scenario, but allowed the tables to play at their own speed. No one had to wait to advance to the second and third acts together, so the play was smoother.
And that was it for gaming. Only two sessions, but that was five hours of play. Got to see and chat and play with a lot of friends I hadn't seen since Arkham Nights last year, won the massive printed Cycles of Eternity map for Eldritch Horror and immediately trade it since I don't play Eldritch, and saw a husband and wife team take first and second in the costume contest, the husband edging his wife, perhaps because he was willing to go topless as Silas Marsh. Good times, excited for next year.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- Erik Twice
- Offline
- D8
- Needs explosions
- Posts: 2300
- Thank you received: 2650
Hands down, this is the game that best captures economic theory. It's the best, clearest representation of classical economics, from economies of scale to the bussiness cycle. However, it's slow as molasses and I would wager at least two hours too long.
This makes it a hard game for me to gauage. I do respect it and I like it. It's the only game I've ever played where I've felt my background in commerce gave me a sizable advantage. But spending ten minutes to negotiate a 3$ advantage in a trade is complete nonsense. When we tallied our scores I had put an insane amount of effort into what amounted to less than a 0,1% of my score. Was it worth it? Well, I needed those 3$ at the time but I can't see it being justificable in the realm of game design.
I kept thinking about how cool it would be to have a game with player-controlled inflation and loans and how practically no one would be able to understand it.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- Posts: 1460
- Thank you received: 1206
Started with Divinity Derby which I won with a couple of good gambles on last place and Disqualified. Old school pictionary where you roll dice and go around the board. The answers sometimes crack me up because this version is so old. Like "Color Television" and "Tavern" and the mention of Carter as being president.
Then a round of the card game GOLF and finished up with Stoner Parking Lot which is always a Riot.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- Posts: 845
- Thank you received: 703
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- Posts: 1897
- Thank you received: 1268
mezike wrote: Oh, how I wish I could be playing Technobowl. It’s not even on the shelf any longer because I can’t find any willing opponents. Such a brilliant game.
There is a very nice implementation on Tabletop Simulator. I'm down for playing online.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
the_jake_1973 wrote:
mezike wrote: Oh, how I wish I could be playing Technobowl. It’s not even on the shelf any longer because I can’t find any willing opponents. Such a brilliant game.
There is a very nice implementation on Tabletop Simulator. I'm down for playing online.
I have TT simulator so I am totally up for it. Based on my previous plays you will find me eminently beatable yet gracious in defeat. Timezone might be an issue though as I'm GMT so five hours ahead? Feel free to PM me and we'll see what works.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
There's just not many games where you can have Persephone leading a band of infernal warriors, a hydra, and the dragon of Thebes into a swamp to recover crystallized essence of dead gods.
Opponent pulled some neat shenanigans using the sirens to pull my units away from Persephone so I couldn't guard her. He almost killed her too but I kept reinforcing and resummoning my troops. I also sacrificed Andromeda by throwing down a bunch of chains on one of the enemy units and then using her as a shield for Persephone. Ultimately I grabbed the fourth Oomphalos before he could kill my divinity.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- Michael Barnes
- Offline
- Mountebank
- HYPOCRITE
- Posts: 16929
- Thank you received: 10375
I really want to give that a go but it looks like it’s not very accessible for non-backers.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
Unfortunately it's Kickstarter only. I backed the 1.5 reprint thing due to a few people whose opinion I trust really raving about it (Scott here on TWBG has been talking it up for a long time).
Storing it is the biggest challenge. I have two Conan/Coffin Boxes, plus two big square boxes. Takes up a third of an entire shelving unit.
It's like the complete opposite of Wildlands though. It's still a French AT game with a Euro hand management thing, but every single unit has special abilities. That's really the shtick, it's about drafting a skirmish force that synergizes and then executing that plan. With hundreds of units you see different abilities each and every game.
This also ties into why I really don't like Wildlands at all, as I find the lack of special abilities/powers really bland. But I'm an Earth Reborn guy so I guess that's expected.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- Legomancer
- Offline
- D10
- Dave Lartigue
- Posts: 2944
- Thank you received: 3873
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.