I’ve banned new
games from being purchased in 2014 to allow us a year to play through all the
games we’ve already got – and there are a fair few of them, though a very
modest collection compared to many other gamers. If a brilliant, must-have game emerges this
year I’ll just have to wait to see if it survives a few months of fair
reviewing and the cult of the new to become a lasting classic, and if so I
should theoretically have no problem picking it up in 2015 anyway.
Pathfinder Adventure Card
Game: Rise of the Runelords - Base Set
We
started from scratch after losing key heroes in our last attempt at the
campaign, and so we set about bashing through Perils of the Lost Coast. Sam was Kyra, I took Valeros. We plowed through the first two scenarios but
it came down to the wire in scenario 3 with the big baddie Black Fang, with me
having to back away on the brink of death with no cards in my deck and Sam going
in on the last turn with one final roll of the bones. But he nailed it and we made it through. Pretty tense.
Not sure how we're going to slot this campaign in with all the other
games we're supposed to be playing though this year though.
The
simplicity of the game quickly shows up after repeated plays, but it’s a nice
easy game to come back to and the delayed release of each expansion works
nicely for us. I’m going to give Skulls
& Shackles a miss because the pirate theme doesn’t interest me as much, and
I’m not sure what kind of new stuff they’re bringing to the table with it,
mechanically or otherwise. Not that
you’d necessarily need it with this type of game, where more is usually good -
one of the biggest failings of the LOTR LCG for us was that the attempts to
make each expansion scenario really different, though admirable, more often
than not fell flat, with some adventures feeling positively un-play-tested -
and we actually play-tested a lot of them!
The quicker release schedule of PAG will suit fans, and maybe the third
set will be more thematically interesting, though I’m not at all familiar with
the Pathfinder universe. So far it’s
been cool albeit generic enough fantasy, though I’m not a fan of their goblin
art, or the papyrus sheet background which each image gets, and the card layout
itself from a design point of view, well, yeah, it might be clear to read but
it looks like a prototype to me. It’s a
shame WOTC don’t release a similar game because with the D&D brand and
worlds/settings it would be ace. Luckily
we’ve got the adventure system games for that.
:P
Games played in 2014 = 3
Rating in 2013 = 8
Rating in 2014 = 7.5
Flash Point: Fire Rescue
Not played this in a while so we broke
it out and actually convinced my staunchly non-gamer sister who was staying
with us to join in. The rules are simple
and fast playing – although we opted for the basic game so as not to overwhelm
my sister’s non-gamer brain - and it didn’t take much time to pick back up at
all. The family friendly coop theme
makes me think of Forbidden Island, as does the simplicity, though FI has seen
more play time. We set up in 5 minutes
flat, scanned the rules, and quickly managed to rescue a few peeps with my
sister carrying all the animals out of the building, and me mostly catching
false alarms, much to the others’ mirth (I make for a very lazy fireman
apparently, who spends most of his time outside the building smoking fags). Then the fires started breaking out in force
and smashing the building up at the same time.
Before long we suffered two casualties to the smoke and flames, but we
had rescued the requisite 7 victims to win the game. Undeterred about the game actually ending we
carried on to rescue the final victim just to see if we could. And we did.
All in it took less than 30 mins and was good, family friendly fun. My sister tried to hide the fact that she
enjoyed herself enormously and then let us get back into the nerdier games
where we get to blast things and slay monsters.
Great components, and clear gameplay, reminded me how glad I am to have
Indie be the producers of Fantasy Quest.
Games played in 2014 =1
Rating in 2013 = 7
Rating in 2014 = 7
Invaders
I chose the invaders and set off straight
away from turn 1 in earnest attacking Eurasia (and because my opening hand held
a whole bunch of cards which get bonuses when played into Eurasia) where the
battle raged the whole game. An early
Revenant, coupled with the Black Goo made sure Sam was on the back foot early
on. I piled up the baddies in Eurasia
and boosted them with some alien hybrid children, activated most of my
strategies, and piled through towards the finish. There was a hiccup on the penultimate turn
when Sam retaliated with some missiles and took out my big guys, bringing my invasion
temporarily to a total stop, but then I brought in the Lucifer tripods to
Africa to drain what was left of his deck and bag the win.
Love this game. The sci-fi horror theme is gritty and nasty,
Chechu’s artwork is brilliant, easily equalling if not bettering his stunning
Wild West imagery for Revolver, the gameplay is fast and tactical, but tense
and exciting. Really this game deserves
way more attention and notice, and should have made a bigger splash than it
did. I also realised how this game and
Mark Chaplin’s designs - alongside Magic: the Gathering and its ilk of course –
have influenced my own ‘asymmetrical card decks’ design template for 1066,
Tears to Many Mothers.
Games played in 2014 = 1
Rating in 2013 = 10
Rating in 2014 = 10
Revolver
Continuing the Mark Chaplin theme we
loaded up our revolvers and shot through two games with Sam as Ned and me as
Colty, Sam was smacking me up left and right in the first game as I made a
pitiful stab at the Mexican border and by the time we reached the train, Colty
and his remaining henchmen were gunned down right quick. I’d felt overwhelmed the whole game, so
played again with the same sides to see if the bandits were outmatched. Still felt overwhelmed the whole game and
made another paltry go at the Mexican border, since I started with 3 cards
which removed tokens from it. But as
usual, that tantalising victory mirage never came to pass, and I got shot to
bits the whole game through. Made it
through to the final couple of turns at the 3.15 with just Colty left. I gambled big time and took the rarely played
desperate act of derailing the train, destroying everything except Colty and a
trusty pistol, Sam had 4 cards left to hit me in the final turn but couldn't
bring any of them to bear, so the gamble paid off and I bagged the victory in
the closest game possible. Love this
game too, but it just squeaks underneath Invaders in rating because Invaders
has more options available in a given turn and feels more epic. Plus Invaders is weirdly kinda sorta the
sci-fi horror themed game which Revolver began as when it was Aliens: This Time
Its War. Which is so meta that my chest
might burst just thinking about it. But
there’s a space for both (well, all three) in any self-respecting gamer’s
collection. Ooh, and it takes about 25
minutes to play this once you’re a dab hand.
Games played in 2014 = 2
Rating in 2013 = 9
Rating in 2014 = 9
Return of the Heroes
We went about setting everything up for
a Heroes’ Return (Of The) with a couple of the expansion heroes, but I slowly realised
with growing dread that I couldn't remember any of the rules, and that the
reference sheets I'd printed from BGG didn't help in that regard (been spoilt
by Universal Head's more comprehensive pdfs), and after about twenty minutes of
poring over the rules, both official and printed fan-rewritten versions, we
started to feel like it was far too much effort, so we packed it back up and
cracked on with Robinson instead! I’m
going to have to get this back to the table for a few solo plays to get the
rules down properly before we break it out again…
Games played in 2014 = 0
Rating in 2013 = 7
Rating in 2014 = ?
Robinson Crusoe: Adventure on the Cursed Island
After playing the latest session this
goes back up to a 10, just really a perfect adventure game. I can’t even remember any issues all that
time ago from learning the rules now, and once you have them down the brutal
narrative and deliciously painful decision making come to the fore, guiding you
through a really great and terrifying island experience. We played Volcano Island and made an epic
start, exploring like crazy with me as explorer and temple-raider and Sam as
soldier taking care of hunting duties.
Battered through the first three temples and grabbed a ton of really
good treasures (including all the Indiana Jones homages) and barrels, with loads
of wood, and thanks to Sam’s sharp shooting we had fur and food coming out of
our ears. We put down a shelter with 1
roof and never rolled more than 1 rain the whole game. Steadily moved across the island to the far
end, easily built the 'jolly' boat – it was more of war galleon with the amount
of wood we had - and bagged a tidy win with 40+ points. Or did we?
Whilst counting the points I suddenly realised we'd only explored 5 of
the required 6 tiles, meaning that we'd survived, but failed the objective! As that gigantic ash cloud moved ever nearer
to our shocked heroes, the end credits rolled.
We’ve played all the contained scenarios now, and I can’t wait to give
the online King Kong scenario a go too.
Also keeping an eye on Ignacy’s games and eyeing up Stronghold as a
potential future purchase. He’s up there
with Vlaada as a truly brilliant game designer, and I’m excitedly looking
forward to seeing what he does with The Witcher franchise in board game form. Robinson am hard…
Games played in 2014 = 1
Rating in 2013 = 9
Rating in 2014 = 10
Resident Evil Deck Building Game
I drew Barry, Sam was Ada, and we hit
the mansion hard. I died twice mulching
through the lower level stuff, levelling up my magnums ability, whilst Sam
tinkered around with his deck, pulling in the higher gold cards and taking two
magnums to block me. Once he’d levelled
up his ability to look at mansion cards and put them to the bottom before exploring
I tried to bite back my cries of ‘that’s broken!’ but didn’t, and instead cried
‘that’s broken.’ But through my early
exploring I had already managed to bag the other three magnums and some crucial
yellow herbs, and by this point it was too late. I was averaging 75 damage with a magnum most
turns, and pared my deck right down with many shattered memoriesesies. Facing Uroboros for the third time I took him
out with a gigantic revenge blast using a magnum and gattling gun for the
victory. Scores about 42 to 27. This is a great deck builder, with a cool
theme, and I’m oscillating about picking up the expansion stuff for it,
especially since it has now been discontinued.
Wouldn’t know where to start with the expansions though, and, somewhat
refreshingly, there’s a shit ton of variability and replayability in the base
game anyway. Some of the character
abilities seem a bit off, and some way more powerful than others (don’t think
Wesker has lost a game in our circle), but having been raised on Talisman 2nd
edition, I’m quite resilient to this sort of design idiosyncracy/flaw/ idiosyncracy.
Games played in 2014 = 1
Rating in 2013 = 8
Rating in 2014 = 8
Star Wars: The Card Game
Over the months of steadily shuffling
the games around on my shelves as they get played this title somehow shuffled
down to the bottom spot in a big stack, and I think for that very reason alone
(i.e. being harder to physically get at) it circulated out of our regular
playing cycle. Which sucks, because it’s
a great game! So with a Herculean effort
we heaved the boxes above it out of the way and pulled Star Wars out for a
game. My 4 year old is going to
absolutely love this game a in a few years as he’s currently going through the
same sort of absolutely mental Star Wars fandom which I went through at his
age. Indeed, just last night he was
babbling about Obi Wan and Yoda in his sleep.
:)
Sam took the Jedi, I was the Imperials,
and it took us a while to get the rules straight again. My fault mainly because I kept thinking I was
remembering things but wanting to see it written down somewhere, and though I
was usually correct it wasn’t much fun for Sam watching me sift through the
rule book. Need to print a proper crib
sheet for this bad boy.
Rules lookups aside, the game itself
didn’t take long. After feigning a
couple of rubbish early turns I started to bring in the big guns, with a
resources overload and my star destroyers started going after the Jedi
objectives just to pass the time. I’d
destroyed three objectives compared to the Jedi’s one before the game ended in
annihilation for the Jedi.
The Pod system works well for more
casual gamers (and us) but can lead to imbalanced decks. I love the art on the cards, and am so glad
they didn’t just go with stills from the movie.
Also the expanded universe stuff doesn’t really bother me as I’m a fan
of the Clone Wars cartoon series, which is actually better than the prequel
movies for a bunch of reasons, including better acting of all things!
Games played in 2014 = 1
Rating in 2013 = 8
Rating in 2014 = 8
1066, Tears to Many Mothers
I remember
Ian Hislop on Have I Got News For You once saying he had an idea for a Pokémon style
collectable card game but with important historical figures and dates on them
instead of cartoon monsters (this was at the height of Pokémon mania). I wonder if this had an influence on my
designing a history based card game…
In
any case playing and testing continues, prototypes are available in
competitions on BGG and over at my blog, and the beta version is winging its
way to publishers now. There’s been a
reassuring susurration of interest from people who are into gaming and history
and potentially teaching themselves, their friends and/or their families a
little bit about one of the most important battles in English history. If this gets traction I’ll continue with the
Agincourt battle follow up game. My plan
is to move through a few of the major historical battles and eventually tackle
the first and second world wars through the major battles and in a similar
format. By that point the games would be
multiplayer instead of just two player head to head, and we will have campaign
rules for the major battles which reach through the entirety of each war. In theory.
But war gamers generally prefer to use minis rather than cards, so this whole
thing might end up going nowhere fast!
:D
Games played in 2014 = 50+
DC Deck Building Game
Finally,
I need to say a little more about this game, as I was perhaps a little too
harsh on it last time, or just not positive enough. Alongside Star Wars, my boy is currently
Batman-mental too, and when he saw the box for this he wanted in. So we started playing a very basic version
with no hero abilities, mostly just adding up our power each turn and going
after one super villain each game… And
it has been absolutely brilliant! He’s
learning his maths and we’re getting to spend even more quality time with him away
from the TV and watch him get terribly excited when, for example, Blue Beatle
turns up, who is one of his favourite guest characters from the rather
brilliant Batman: The Brave and the Bold.
Or listen to him pronouncing vulnerability (vunabeeyatee). I’d hoped he might get interested in games
through something like HeroQuest and am face palming about how simple it was to
grab his attention and help with his numbers, and also grow his already relatively
encyclopaedic knowledge of the DC universe through this game, which has really suddenly
revealed its true, great potential.
Expansion sets, Mr Hyra? Oh, go
on then…
Games played in 2014 = 10+
Rating in 2013 = 8
Rating in 2014 = 10
BONUS GAME PLAYS!
The
following games are titles outside of our 2014 games list remit, which we cheekily
played at the Bolton GNOME games day (big shout out to the organisers of said
event). This was great because we got to
try games we were interested in but would usually have to buy.
Mice & Mystics
Onto
the wish-list with this one. We played
the first scenario with some chap called Richard who was learning the game with
us, and had some helpful pointers from the friendly bloke who actually owned
the game and was photographing the event.
Though we took a while to get going and learn the rules, we beat the
adventure with one 'page' to go and it was a great, fun, easy to play (once you
know how!) coop dungeon crawler which will be a fantastic fit for families
playing with their children and reminded me strongly of the book Redwall, which
I think I read when I was about 8 or 9 so I only remember in vague terms. We skipped over the story segments for
brevity, but these will really help flesh out the experience for families
playing together. Lovely minis, tiles
and components too.
Games played in 2014 = 1
Rating in 2014 = 7.5
Citadels
This
is an interesting and quite ingeniously devised city/VP building card game with
nice art (and controversial nudity - zoinks!), fast playing turns, cunning
tactics and devious treachery, and low-ish overall game time where you’re
constantly guessing at your opponent’s moves to maximise your own. Actually really enjoyed this as a sort of filler
game, though I could see how it could go long.
Worth picking up for less than £20, but not sure it would get much play
in our collection as it's just not meaty enough. Another top bloke James Fallows taught us the
game, and soundly kicked our arses too – thanks for that James if you’re
reading! You’re going to teach us Magic
Realm next time whether you like it or not…
:)
Games played in 2014 = 1
Rating in 2014 = 6.5
Lost Legends
James
taught us this one too. It’s a very
mathy card-based dungeon crawler, more mathy than Thunderstone maybe, and by
the same designer Mike Elliott, though it’s perhaps less intuitive and a little
more complex than TS. As always,
familiarity with the cards helps, and as with Thunderstone I’m not a big fan of
the level of abstraction, though you don’t quite have that whole TS situation
where a dagger, a torch and an iron ration go wandering into a dungeon. Great art, nice game, just don't feel the
need to add this to my collection as it's a bit too abstract for me personally. This has nothing to do with James kicking our
butts again either…
Games played in 2014 = 1
Rating in 2014 = 6
Here follows the rest of
the games we want to get through this year, slowly but surely we’re getting
there....
A
Touch of Evil: The Supernatural Game
Arkham
Horror
Call
of Cthulhu: Collectible Card Game
Claustrophobia
Constantinopolis
Dark
Darker Darkest
Descent:
Journeys in the Dark
Descent:
Journeys in the Dark (Second Edition)
Doom:
The Boardgame
Dungeon
Command: Sting of Lolth
Dungeon
Lords
Dungeoneer:
Vault of the Fiends
Dungeons
& Dragons: Castle Ravenloft Board Game
Dungeons
& Dragons: The Legend of Drizzt Board Game
Dungeons
& Dragons: Wrath of Ashardalon Board Game
Eclipse
Fortune
and Glory: The Cliffhanger Game
Gears
of War: The Board Game
Gloom
of Kilforth: A Fantasy Quest Game
HeroQuest
Lord
of the Rings
Lords
of Waterdeep: Scoundrels of Skullport
Magic
Realm
Omen:
A Reign of War
Resident
Evil Deck Building Game
Return
of the Heroes
Robinson
Crusoe: Adventure on the Cursed Island
Space
Crusade
Space
Hulk: Death Angel - The Card Game
Star
Wars: The Card Game
Tales
of the Arabian Nights
Talisman
The
Ares Project
The
Lord of the Rings: The Card Game
War
of the Ring (first edition)
Warhammer
Quest
When
Darkness Comes
Zombies!!!
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