Moon Colony Bloodbath solo play

 

So, we played three games of this last night, lasted until around 1 AM (we started late) so naturally I had a go at it this morning solo. Last night of the three games I played I won, tied and lost, so you know pretty even competition. In the solo game you are striving to get the 13th event card or as close as you can get to it. So far in our two player games we have yet to make it to that card, but we have been close. In today's solo play I made it to the 9th, 10th and in the last game the 11th event card. 

While there is of course a lot of randomness to the game, I feel I also made a few critical mistakes. I failed to restock my blood banks that would have staved off some colonist casualties. There were other errors, but they were mostly in hindsight. It is a game of choices and while they may seem sensible at the time sometimes, well, they just don't work out, and maybe some colonist suffer that might not have suffered had you chosen a different path.

A nice touch for solo playing is the extra starting card the you add to the deck.

It is a fine example of the sense of humour of the game creators.

Again this is a great game whether played solo or with others. There is humour in the 'frustration' of watching your plans, and colonists, sucked into the void, crushed by robots, irradiated by reactor leaks, starve to death etc etc.

New arrivals

 

So a few things arrived this week and one item was found at a flea market.

First arrival is this new paint shaker. This is a new device that is hands free, which is the main appeal. Saw it on Painting Panzers and it looked good. The big question is, is it actually any good? I have not yet tested it as I am going through funk phase and not interested in painting (also my painting table is a mess) 

It is an adjustable hands free unit.

I have been looking at Moon Colony Bloodbath for a while now. The art work drew me in first then the concept. Intrigued I watch a review by Shut Up & Sit Down and that was it, I needed the game. So here it is all ready to play.

We gave it a proper test and after the first try, played two more games right away. It is more fun than it should be, all your plans and attempts to settle the moon are all for nought as disasters and robots will inevitably destroy your colony. Great fun!

Dragons Down board game

 

So, Dragons Down is a really long game to play. We started around 8pm and finished up some time after 1 AM. Yet in its way it was a fun enough game. We played scenario 4 which saw us declare at the start of the game what we hoped to achieve, gold, fame, spells and or epic treasures. It reminded me of the old careers board game. 

So we dealt out the tiles and took turns laying them out to create our board. My opponent wound up with all three of the civilization tiles, which I thought was something of an advantage, but in the end it was only sort of an advantage. Take a look at the board, note how we managed to divide the board making it difficult to move east west. I started the game in the lower left tile, where the monster is in the picture. It might be tough to see, but if you can expand the image you will see that I can only advance on the six tiles to the left, then I hit a dead end in the caves to the far left. I could not reach the actual civilization in the civilization tiles even though I could at least touch the Sanctuary tile. To go north or east I would have to go south and slowly trudge through the mountain tiles! I chose not to do that. My opponent had far more tles that he could travel through and explore, many options. Thankfully I had luck on my side.

My hero

My opponent

So, while I did not have any easily accessible civilization tiles I did get lucky with sites.  At one point my opponent revealed a site, but because of the board layout he was unable to explore it, but I was able to and did. I also got lucky by finding two sites in one tile, with another right next door. This led to a lot of looting, which helped with my pregame victory conditions, as did the fame in actually locating these sites.

He did manage to get close to my hero, but this also meant that he was too far away to get back to civilization before the end of the game

I ran into some challenges, in this case 13 enemies ganged up on me, eight Orcs and 5 juvenile dragons!

For maybe half of the game I had two curses on me courtesy of two epic treasures.. One prevented me from sneaking or going on alert, this made it harder to hide from monsters.  The other curse was a monster magnet, that meant if any monsters were rolled for any surrounding tile, I would see those monster show up in my tile. What a revolting development that was.

In the end I was able to dodge (hide) from most of the encounters, but I did fight two epic battles that drained me a lot. Thankfully I had enough wounds/cubes to absorb most of the damage, but it was close. Fortunately I was able to retreat from the enemies to lick my wounds, and spent three turns just healing and hoping for no wandering monsters to find me, they did not.

So in the end, while my opponent suffered a penalty I was able to touch part of a civilization tile and not take any penalty when I retired. In the end it was all the treasure sites that gave me the victory. Out of the four points that we had to spend before the start of the  game I had put two in fame and two in epic treasures. I never did get any more money nor spend any money than what I started with. As for spells I found three near the end and never had a chance o learn any of them. 

Final Girl, finally played!

 

So, I have had this game for a few months now, even had it all set up, but just never got around to playing it, until now...

Final Girl Camp Happy Trails!

This works out to be a fine solitaire game with plenty of potential variety, be it within the scenario or due to there being many add on scenarios. Camp happy trails is a riff on the Friday the 13th movies, you are the hero trying to defeat the homicidal villain and safe some campers.

Well into the game, many campers have been killed by Hans, but I have saved 5 of them! Hans is the red meeple, I am the purple one.

The game presents you with many decisions to make. You can perform actions based on cards in hand, but fail to many actions and you will run out of time, if you run out of time you will be hampered in getting actions for your next turn. Also what do you do in a turn, do you save campers, gather equipment and weapons to counter the villain do you combat Hans or try to elude him? However you can rarely if ever do all the things that you want to. meanwhile Hans may move and or attack the campers or, gasp, you!

It took me some time before I actively attacked Hans.

After I took the fight to Hans.

Horror level low, well armed but outclassed by Hans. I was reduced to 9 health and when flipped the token indicated no extra life, I was dead, but Hans was reduced to 2 health!

It was a tough but fair game. I had my chances but also dealt a tough blow at the start of the game. The initial event forced me to only be able to rescue one camper at a time, this put quite the crimp in my plans.

I plan to try this adventure out again real soon before trying out some of the other movies.

New to us boardgame Black Forest

 

So, just after I finished ranting to a friend about how I disliked worker placement games what should my regular boardgaming partner bring over but a worker placement game! However this was not that bad. Unlike other such games each player only has one worker which therefore eliminates the whole nightmare aspect of trying to get your extra workers before your opponent does. 

In the two player game you add a neutral third worker who can be moved around by either player, usually to interfere with the plans of the other player, but with so many options available each turn the Prescence of this third worker is not a game breaker but can be a nuisance!.

The game was fun and easy to learn. It has an intriguing resource wheel (well actually two per player) that tracks what resources you have and has an interesting mechanism to show the interrelationship between raw materials and finished glass. (required to build more advanced buildings) The game sees the players pretty much playing their own game with only limited interaction. The players are trying to develop their demesne, by increasing their flocks, constructing buildings and completing jobs.  

I found it to be a nice game, much like Eminent Domain. Both players just keep working on their plans without the other player attacking and ruining their plans. A very pacifist game.

That same night we also played another game of 5 year mission.

Boardgame night, Dragons Down

 

So, we finally got this off the shelf and onto the table. It is a reworking of the old Avalon Hill game, Magic Realm. This edition is very shiny, lots of large tiles, poker chip size tokens and fancy accessories.

For our first game we decided to play the introductory scenario using just the mountain tiles. I bought the fancy edition that comes with metal coins, fancy character boards and weighted chips. 

I was the Human barbarian, while the other player chose a Dwarf knight.

As for the game it was a mixed bag. The game was fun to play but we had some issues with the rulebook. Nothing so serious that it ruined the game, just sometimes a challenge to locate information. We started late so by 1 Am we decided to call it and we both retired our characters after about 18 turns. We both had fun and will definitely try this game again, soon.

Board game night

 

So, we played a trio of games on Monday, including a first go at Thunder Road Vendetta. We also brought out some other fun games that do not make it to the table often enough, Zeppelin Attack and The Cards of Cthulhu.

All these games are lightweight but lots of fun, and quick to play. It had been a while since we last played The cards of Cthulhu and we foolishly thought we could play it without reviewing the rules in detail. As a result we cheated ourselves a bit, making it a bit more difficult for us to win, but win we did, no no harm no fouls.

Zeppelin Attack is a  deck building game of two fleets of zeppelins duking it out. It was a battle of my ice commander vs a simian mastermind. Tracking ones score as the game is possible, but neither of us made any effort to do that. By the end of the game we both thought that the other player had won su we were bot wrong.

The start of the race after all vehicles have had a chance to move

So, the game started off well for me (I was the blue team) but I made a few crazy decisions, fun ideas but still a little mad. I got it into my head to try and take out some of the enemy, and some of my own, by racing to the forward edge of the board. Once one vehicle exits the map via the front of the lead tile, the rear tile is removed from play taking with it any vehicles left on it. In this case the small vehicles of both teams were removed.

Brilliant right!?! So when my medium vehicle got shunted off the board I decided to try that stunt again to even up the odds by removing my opponents medium car. Well, I had the movement that I needed to do this all I had to do was navigate through one perilous area. It worked out to be an oil slick which caused me to careen off the map! Bereft of vehicles, that was the end of my game.

Boardgame night

 

Well, it started off as a tough fight, but in the end we were able to defeat the two Fey enemies. It is often a tough choice to go with the Sentinels team as they have low hit points and we often get quite pummeled by the villains. I used Ra and Fanatic from the original box, it has been a while since I used them, they really do perform differently than the new definitive edition. I had to get used to this change as I have been playing the new version a lot lately. 

We also played Invincible the deck building game. I really do like this game, not certain why as it is an odd game, but it is fun.

Boardgame night

 

So, we had one of our rare losses of Sentinels of the Multiverse the other night, it wasn't even close. We went up against Apex and his werewolves and just never stood a chance. In retrospect perhaps we should not have selected two werewolf heroes...My two characters Ra and Tempest were the first to fall, then Alpha leaving Haka as the last hero standing. Thankfully we decided at this point that there really was no chance of winning and ended the game. 

The worst part, for me, was that I was able to reduce Apex down to 1 hit point before that card you see poking out from under his card healed him. That may seem like it was close, but it wasn't he was never going to down. Not certain what we needed to do to put him down for good, but we were not the team to do it.

We also played a couple of games of Star Trek. It is a lightweight game, but one that I am beginning to enjoy more with each play. (and not just because we won)

Boardgame night

 

So, we brought this game out again, I am not certain why. There is an old idiom about insanity; "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results". However when we sit down to play Eldritch Horror we really do not expect much but sudden death after hours of play. We certainly have low expectation of ever winning this game. (we have just not this year) But it does make me want to amend that old idiom. Why do we play this game?

This game went on for three or four hours before a random card killed two of the characters and severely weakened the other two.(it was a lose d6 wounds/Sanity with no way to prevent it) It is the challenge of this game that regardless of any planning death can just reach out and smite you. We do not mind the vagarities of the dice rolls, failing a task even when you have lots of dice and some rerolls, that is what can happen in any game involving dice. It is the random unpredictable disaster that can occur because of a simple card draw. We have played this game where the first mythos card drawn has spelled doom right away for the entire game, or the ever enjoyable first card draw that has us spend clues to avoid some doom before we ever had a chance to obtain a clue.

Yet we still bring this game to the table, six time so far this year. Again, we do not mind a challenge, not much point in playing a coop game if there is no challenge, it is just the unreasonably way in which this game screws you over.

We also played a game of Sentinels of the Multiverse (our 23rd game this year) It certainly presented some challenges but we lost no heroes and all it really took was time to defeat the villain.

These are our characters from Eldritch Horror. First up my characters

My co-players characters.

More board games, just what I needed...

 

So, I have acquired a few more board games over the last couple of months, starting with some used games that I found at Hotlead in March and culminating with a new game this week. As some may know, I have quite a few games already so more games is a little crazy but then again so am I.

These three games came from the bring and buy at Hotlead, all used, more or less and all were inexpensive. 

Campaign was a game that I had owned in my distant youth, I had played it a few times but it never really captured my imagination. I have my doubts about it being all that good to my addled adult mind, but nostalgia and a low price convinced me to buy it. The box is not in the best of shape but the map is and all the components are there and intact!

History of the World is a game that I already own, in an earlier less plastic fillet edition. Again this was low priced and in good shape. In fact once I opened it up I found that it had never been played, nothing punched out and all pieces still in bags. I do not really need all the plastic armies but the larger cards are a lot better for aging eyes. I have always liked this gameit is fun to play, well balanced and no one can be eliminated from the game unlike some other multiplayer games.

Quartermaster General 1914 is a game that I have never played, but is a game that intrigued me. It has a 7.5 rating on BOARD GAME GEEK and the subject matter appeals to me. Again this game is in great condition, intact and was selling well below market price.

War of the Worlds is a deck building game that I was blissfully ignorant of until I recently stumbled upon it. I have a weakness for War of the Worlds and I had picked up a solitaire game of it a while back. My primary board game opponent and I do play a lot of deck building games so I figure this one should fit in well enough. Hope to get it on the table sooner than later.

Fate of the Fellowship was picked up last month. I had been searching for this game since first I heard about it last year but I could not find any available copies. Thankfully these new fangled online stores often have a wishlist system that will alert you when an item is back in stock. So I was alerted to the restock, but by the time I logged into the store website they were out again. However it did prompt me to search some other stores and lo and behold I found a copy at a local store that was less expensive than where my wishlist had been. The game is based on the Pandemic system, a system used in some other games that we play and apparently has a good feel of the subject.

Dragons Down just arrived yesterday. It is a modern version of the old Avalon Hill game magic Realms. This copy is the weighted version which means it has some fancy upgrades to the base components, like metal coins, extra set of dice, fancy character boards etc. It was the only version that I could find for sale (another tough to locate game) but it is quite spiffy looking. This one will probably hit the table next week once we have had a chance to learn the rules and maybe watch some videos.

Anyways, that is some of the new board games that I have picked up recently in he meantime our Invincible campaign continues.

More Sentinels of the Multiverse

 

This one took a while. It was our second game of the night.In our first game it was Fanatic and Captain Thunder aided by Absolute Zero and Dr Manhattan. I have forgotten the other details, but I do remember that a low hit point Fanatic delivered 27+ points to bring down the villain.

Terrorform started with 200 hit points and had some help from the environment to keep our heroes at bay. In the end we managed to flip it which reduced it down to 86 hit points. That helped. It was a combined effort of Omnitron and Haka (the only two heroes still standing) that unleashed enough damage to drop Terrorform.

Board game night

 

So, we got together Easter Monday night to play some board games. This time around we played two games of Horrified D&D and one game of Sentinels of the Multiverse. We had a bad time of it in the first Horrified game and won the second game with no cards left in the draw desk! 

The first game we played a warrior and a thief vs the dragon and the displacer beast. For the second game I switched to the cleric and we swapped out the displacer beast for the beholder. It is an amusing game but does have some weak spots in the rules.

I also find that the map is not the clearest map, the art sometimes overrides playability. It sometimes take me a few moments to figure out where the spaces connect. Also given that they numbered most (if not all) of the spaces would it have killed them to mark the items with location numbers?

Anyways, the second game was much better, not because we won, but because the rules and board did not annoy us as much.

Our other game that night was Sentinels of the Multiverse. It was setback and Guise (original edition) with Haka and Argent Adept (Definitive edition) vs Ambuscade (Definitive edition) at Wagner Mars base.

The base worked out to be a really bad location for Ambuscade and great for us players! At one point the base prevented any damage from being inflicted which allowed us to buff so that when we finally eliminated the 'offending' environment cards Haka had built up a very large amount of potential damage that he launched at Ambuscaded, thus ending the game.

Recent board game night: Invincible

 

So, Noah brought over a new to us board game, Invincible The hero building game. We do play a lot of superhero games and this one had intrigued me for some time (I was very close to buying it myself) so I was fairly happy to him show up with it.

For the first game we used only 3 heroes, that changed to 4 for the next two games.

The game is pretty straightforward and easy to play. It does convey some feeling that you are in a comic book fight and it offers plenty of options through random car draws and random colour chit draws. Yes there is a lot of random elements to the game, but you can mitigate this to some extent buy selecting the right powers and using certain cards to gain you new coloured cubes.

Your selected powers are enabled by placing coloured cubes blacks are wild, but draw 5 black cubes and your hero crashes.

My characters crashed a lot (drew 5 black cubes) 

So, we lost the intro scenario but then won the rematch and the next chapter in the mini campaign. It was an amusing, lightweight game that I would happily play again.