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16 Oct 2016 16:48 #236261 by Grudunza
Had a chance to play some of Star Trek: Ascendancy with the venerable engelstein and his son last weekend. We started late and knew we wouldn't have more than an hour or so to actually play, but we wanted to at least get a feel for the game and learn how to play. It is a pretty solid 4x-y type game, and I like the way the factions have a little different feel, though we really didn't get to the point where those differences played out too much. It was just starting to get interesting with moving into each other's territories and forming tentative alliances and a little bit of combat (with Geoff's Klingons taking a stab at my Feds, who returned the favor later). I love the way the individual fleets work, but again, we only barely got to experience building anything with that.

The strict three player thing is a little odd, but at the same time, with 4 or more players, this would probably be too much for most time schedules. I think if our 3p game was played to conclusion it easily would have been 3-4 hours. Another thematic/mechanic win for GF9, though it seems like it must have a pretty particular and limited audience with its length and weight, even among Star Trek gamer nerds. I'm looking forward to playing a full game at BGG.con in a month, but I doubt I'll pick it up and don't know when I'd have a chance to play it again after that.
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16 Oct 2016 19:43 #236266 by hotseatgames
I continued my trend of teaching my girlfriend games so she can beat me. Tonight I taught her Betrayal at Calth, and gave her the Ultramarines. Scenario 1, of course, which involves getting as many marines off the opposite end of the map as possible within 6 rounds. But none of that was necessary, since her unit armed with a missile launcher completely destroyed two of my units. She then whittled down the rest of them in short order until I conceded. Per usual, I rolled like shit. I never once rolled a shield when I needed it.

My new strategy, which should have been obvious, is that if the opposition has a missile launcher, you simply MUST get a unit adjacent to it to prevent it from firing. Or kill it before it can fire. It's devastating.
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16 Oct 2016 23:48 #236272 by 40 oz
A pretty good weekend of gaming. Started out with Talisman with the kids using The Cataclysm board. I thought it was an interesting evolution of Talisman with the use of Denizens and starting relics on the board. Toward the end, I thought the board got kind of cluttered up with the denizens piling up. But, it was great to have a new board and some new figures. The Black Knight mini is pretty cool.

The recent Eldritch Horror Megathread inspired me to get it to the table. Wife and I had two runs at it and didn’t finish either game (got too late), but it was great to get it back to the table.

Today ended with Smash Up with the kids followed by Survive. Survive really is a great game.
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17 Oct 2016 08:45 #236279 by charlest
My family was out of town this past weekend and a number of things coalesced into awesomeness.

First of all, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IDW sewer crawl game is actually good. Like, really good. I expected this to be another Ghostbusters stripped down mainstream game with a $80 price that was mismarketed.

It's not.

This is every bit as complicated as Descent and Kevin Wilson knocked it out of the park. It reminds me of Dragon Tides (a Bruce Lee game I reviewed months ago that no one's heard of), Descent, and Earth Reborn. Yet it's TMNT. Who would of known?

Playing the bad guys is a blast. You get a card based deck to activate your Foot clan members, or thugs, or Old Hob, or whatever. You play two cards on your turn and they give you symbols that you spend to move, attack, or build up defense (think Earth Reborn's symbol system where you can power up one attack by spending extra of the same symbol or break them up for multiple attacks).

The turtles roll action dice which give them their action symbols and line up their dice in front of them in a horizontal line. The dice on the far left and far right (you get to choose the order of your dice) are also shared with the turtle sitting to your left and right. This adds discussion and strategy and is excellent.

When you attack there's custom battle with hits and misses. You can re-roll all dice this game with Focus resource tokens. Turtle dice are asymmetric! Donnie has more defense symbols Leo is the only one with a double Katana, Mikey has lots of movement, and Raf has lots of range attack (throwing stars/sais).

Each turtle also has a deck of special abilities and missions will let you choose a couple. They are thematic and asymmetrical and tie closely to the character. You will want to strategically pick yours based on your mission.

In one game I had to get past some huge Foot bruisers in the sewer and hack/lockpick a door to escape. I took mostly leap/jump skills to move past them (figures project a threat zone that slows you down, just like Techno Bowl). So my dudes were catapulting around. Mikey even threw Donnie over the bad guys.

The scenario system is crazy and very similar to Dragon Tides. While combat and maneuvering feel like a Dungeon Crawler, you don't explore and the maps are only a couple of (large) tiles. You're really playing through scenes in a comic. You play through three linked scenarios with wins/losses determining the branching narrative path to the next.

So in the first comic book we started out by ambushing some thugs robbing people in an alley. Then followed them back to a safehouse where they were meeting with Old Hob. From there we ambushed their black market shipment at a warehouse (and narrowly lost).

Awesome, amazing stuff that shocked the hell out of me. My AT buddy pre-ordered a copy. We love it.

It also has the most interactive terrain of any game like this I've ever seen (Dragon Tides comes a close second). Some maps have hand rails and the Turtles can glide down them and attack off them. You can climb up to rooftops or take fire escapes down. You can hop ontop of a trash can or throw it at someone. There are scenarios with security cameras that summon more Foot if you're spotted (you need to destroy them). Just awesome.

We played through the first two comic books (about 5ish hours total) over Saturday and Sunday. Had to rearrange schedule Sunday so we could fit in an extra session we liked it so much.

Everything else wasn't quite as good this weekend. Gorechosen was close. I got in two games with different people and it rocked. The first one my head exploded early in a 3-way free for all. I won the second game in a 2 player with us each controlling two guys. I love the card activation system here too. So much drama packed into the game.

Fire in the Lake is what we did Friday night. We enjoyed it and the ARVN snuck out a dirty win due to the U.S. becoming a little too overzealous in knocking out VC. I almost won as NVA.

Godfather: A New Don is a dice based area control game that plays in 45 minutes. It's pretty damn good and fills a niche that likely means I'm going to hang onto it. Very solid game.

Lots of Mission: Red Planet lately which I like, although five players is too many.

Project ELITE was pretty good but I don't think it was quite great. Trying to decide if I like it more than Escape and If I'm going to hang onto it or sell it. Was definitely enjoyable though and don't regret backing it.

We also played more Animals On Board which keeps hitting the table. This will likely be one of my most played games in 2016.

Another Euro, Via Nebula, came back out. Think this was my 6th play and I really like this one too.

I think that's it. Don't think I've forgotten anything.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Almalik, Columbob, Jexik, hotseatgames, Colorcrayons, scrumpyjack, stoic, Feelitmon, JEM

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17 Oct 2016 09:10 #236283 by Josh Look
Awesome news about TMNT! I backed "The Works" version with the idea that it sucked I could flip it. I'm a huge Turtles fan though, would much rather it be good and keep it. Can't wait to get mine!
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17 Oct 2016 09:12 #236285 by Mr. White
Is April O'Neil a playable character? If not, any female characters? Would go a long way with the kids...
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17 Oct 2016 09:20 #236291 by Gary Sax
You had a hell of a lineup there, Charles.
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17 Oct 2016 09:30 - 17 Oct 2016 09:31 #236293 by JEM
Friday was epic Brimstone. Saturday was a short afternoon for me this week. We played some Roll For It to start with, while waiting for people to arrive. Some of that group wanted to play Spyfall so four of us set up Terraforming Mars and got into that. Three of us had played before and it took maybe 5-10 minutes to explain the game to the new player. I didn't feel like I had much of a card engine going- some turns all I could do was lay one tile and pass, but it turns out that laying tiles helps. I was able to grab the Gardener milestone from a player who either wanted the money for other reasons or just forgot to take it first. That five points won me the game. At the end of the game I was back on TR25, while the leaders were at TR37. I was able to snag 2nd on at least one award, but the big hits came from my cards (12 points, including four from puppies) and tiles (16 points) which boosted me to 64 points and a 4-point margin win. If the game had gone one more round, someone else would have won (with enough money to lay two cities and a forest his next turn) but ironically he pushed the game end dropping three ocean tiles per turn.

I'm looking forward to getting into the corporation powers and drafting cards now that a bunch of us know the game.

After that, we played Underground with the same group. I really enjoyed it. I wasn't really sure on what to do strategically but the game made a lot of sense. I came in joint 2nd in a tight game, losing by 1 point.
Last edit: 17 Oct 2016 09:31 by JEM.
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17 Oct 2016 09:33 - 17 Oct 2016 09:36 #236294 by charlest

Mr. White wrote: Is April O'Neil a playable character? If not, any female characters? Would go a long way with the kids...


They sent me the Works version and she is a playable character in the KS extras. In the retail game she's an Ally, which means in a scenario or two she gives you an ability/effect. There's no mini for Allies though.

She is supposed to appear in retail in an upcoming expansion. Casey Jones and Splinter are the same, they're in the KS version but will be appearing in retail expansions as playable characters in the (near?) future.

I'm staying away from playing with the KS extras until my review is up, then I will give them a shot. The Casey Jones mini is taunting me.


It's funny, because I picked up Ghostbusters at retail (hemmed and hawed over backing it) and only had very light expectations, but was disappointed. It's not a bad game, just very bland and very light. Not much interesting going on. Sold it at a loss.

I would never have picked up this game, and yet it blows me away. I even considered painting some of the minis this weekend but didn't end up having time.
Last edit: 17 Oct 2016 09:36 by charlest.
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17 Oct 2016 09:46 #236295 by Egg Shen
Played a 3 player game of Star Trek: Ascendancy this weekend. It's really great. Actually, it's nearly flawless. The way the map system/building works is really friggin cool, each race feels unique, the pace of the game was spot on, and most importantly it all felt like Star Trek. I think the game was engaging from the word, "go" and I don't have a problem with players taking their turns all at once. Yes there is downtime, but it's kind of essential to being able to properly process and strategize your turns. I dunno...it didn't bother me in the least. I can't wait to play it again. This is easily the best thing that Gale Force 9 has ever produced.
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17 Oct 2016 09:50 #236296 by Gary Sax
What a great year for games it has been. Terraforming Mars and Ascendancy sound awesome and there has already been some terrific stuff coming out. Enough to wash away some cynicism about the hobby from me. I've even played a lot of games this year (esp. Armada)!
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17 Oct 2016 10:13 #236301 by Colorcrayons
Hey Charles, I would love to play ninja turtles with the family. What would you rate the weight of the game? Good for adolescents?

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17 Oct 2016 10:38 - 17 Oct 2016 10:38 #236311 by charlest

Colorcrayons wrote: Hey Charles, I would love to play ninja turtles with the family. What would you rate the weight of the game? Good for adolescents?


It is not a light weight game. I'd put it at a 6 on a 10 point scale. I think most kids could handle it but you'd have to sort of help them with the overhead maybe. Strategy isn't overly complicated or deep, but there's a lot of peripheral stuff like terrain cards that explain the rules for the terrain you're playing on, multiple types of enemies with slightly different stats, turtle skills spread out on cards, and scenario objectives.

If they could handle Descent with more terrain special rules added on then they'd be fine.

One negative I will say is that downtime could be a problem for some when playing with 4 or 5 players. I think 3 players may be the sweet spot (2 turtles each, you always have to have 4 turtles in play) as turns are similar to Star Trek: Ascendancy in that you do ALL of your stuff when you go. You don't go again until each other turtle has gone once and the bad guy has reacted with two cards after each turtle. So it would be a long time if everyone was playing slow. I can see some people getting frustrated if they sit down in a five player first game with everyone learning. It's a game that's not kind on AP either since you're spending multiple symbols on your turn.

We were flying through turns though because we don't have AP and I hate spending too much time optimizing. Hit a dude in the face and get on with it.
Last edit: 17 Oct 2016 10:38 by charlest.
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17 Oct 2016 10:38 #236312 by barrowdown
I got a game of Warhammer 40k in for my league over the weekend. I was straight up stomped 6-0. The game type rolled was Relic, which places an item in the center that both sides want to remove off their own board edge. My opponent was playing Eldar Corsairs and had a lot of units with Infiltrate making it an ideal game type for him. He offered to reroll the scenario, but I told him I was okay with the game.

Most of his units had the ability to double move because of jetpacks/jetbikes, etc, which made it difficult for me to catch up with. In addition, all of his units could flee whenever a charge was declared against them, so I had to be literally on top of a unit before even attempting to charge (and then failed literally every time to get the new longer charge distance required). I rolled poorly in my psychic phases and managed to only do 1 wound the entire game. I still had fun just chucking dice, but at no point was I even really in the game.

My division had another player added because there were not enough players to create a third division. The extra player was waiting around during our game and I offered to play against him after I was quickly slaughtered. He said he did not want to play as I only had 1,500 points and he only plays 1,850-point games and it wasn't worth it to trim his list down to play (1,500 points is all that is required to participate in the league).
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17 Oct 2016 10:47 - 17 Oct 2016 10:48 #236314 by engineer Al
Had a great weekend of gaming. Saturday was game day at the neighbor's and we played Roll for the Galaxy which is always fun, Around the World in 80 Days which I had never played before but enjoyed immensely, and Codenames which is the worlds best party game. I also played some other "be the best thief in the world" game that did not capture my attention well enough for me to even remember the name of despite having tons of "special dice".

Sunday had the Luce's over and played Black Fleet which is the best pirate game ever, and then Dungeonquest which makes me laugh every time. My character spent the entire game walking back and forth in a two tile Hallway that he couldn't seem to get out of. GOOD TIMES!
Last edit: 17 Oct 2016 10:48 by engineer Al.
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