GenCon Loot

At the end of the day, Slaz was able to ninja for me everything I asked for.  M2E rules, Neverborn deck, Miss Step, and Tara were all grabbed before anything sold out.  He managed to get one of the few WWX release Lawmen to add to that collection when it hits my hands from the Kickstarter, and he also managed to score the limited L5R RPG book.  I was certain something would get missed in all the chaos and given the limited releases of some of them, but he got them all.

I guess I'll forgive him for the Steam Summer Sale now.

I haven't had enough time to go into much of the new loot yet, but I did get a pleasant  surprise while Gencon was going on.  The new Battlestar Galactica expansion, Daybreak, came out already.  I managed to grab my copy from Huzzah Hobbies, get it all set up, and get my first game with it.  We had six players, giving us a chance to try out either the new Mutineer loyalty card or the new way to use Cylon Leaders.  Dan wanted to play Athena, so we opted for the Cylon Leaders choice.

Without going to much into detail, I have to say that so far this is easily my favorite of the expansions.  They took three pieces of the game that I thought always missed their potential - the Treachery deck, the Cylon Leaders, and the Sympathizer card - and improved upon them.  Add in 12 new characters, a couple new boards, and a new victory path (I actually really like Earth over Kobol, but it had mixed reviews in our game) and you've got a great box.

More detail to come on this later.  It might not be on this blog, but rest assured I'll let you know where it comes up if you're curious.

GenCon 2013

We are less than a week away from GenCon launching, the greatest event of gaming.  I have to say, the anticipation is killing me.  I can’t wait to… oh, wait.  I’m not going this year. 

For a number of reasons, I’ve had to put off my trip to GenCon for a year.  The birth of my son is the major reason.  He’s not even two months old, and as much as I would love to bring him to Indianapolis and cart him around, I know it’s just not feasible at this point.  His mother would be angry with me – either for taking him and exposing him to the con-crud, or for leaving him (and her) behind and not letting them go to the convention at all.  It’s a fight I can’t win whichever way I go, so as a wise man once said, “You can’t lose a battle you don’t show up to.”  Better to put off the plans for another year.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not excited this year.  I’ve already found my ninja-shopper and given him money, and let my friendly LGS-owner know what I would like him to order for me.

So what am I getting?

First, the ninja-ing.

Slaz has been generous enough to not only pick up whatever I give him money for, but also drive by my house on his way back home from GenCon to drop it all off.  The man gets mad props.

From me, he’ll be making a brief stop by three booths: the Wyrd booth, the AEG booth, and the Battlefoam booth.

At Wyrd, he’s grabbing only a few things this year.  Enough to hit what I think I want immediately, and the rest I’m holding until later.  With M2E coming out, there’s plenty to consider.  But in the immediacy, I only asked for the following:

Nightmare Tara

Evidently there’s some controversy about this model which, near as I can tell, stems around people who have decided they’re not going to buy it still complaining that they’re not going to buy it.  It seems to me that’s a central theme of capitalism – if a manufacturer creates something you do not want, you can vote with your dollar and exercise your right NOT to buy something.  Similarly, if you like something, you can vote with your dollar and exercise your right TO buy something.  Personally, I really like the sculpts in the box, the Nothing Beast especially.

I have a suspicion about the Nightmare box.  I honestly believe that the Nothing Beast is probably the only unique sculpt in that box.  Once the actual release hits, everything will look the same except the Nothing Beast.  When I first saw the box, that’s what I thought the case was.  I still believe it is.  And as soon as I saw the box, I decided it was worth it to pick up.  Nightmare Chompy was the only nightmare model in the Dreamer release back several Gencons ago, and that went over fine.  Why should this be such a controversy?

Regardless, I didn’t intend to get into that whole deal.  End result: I like the model, and I’m buying it.

M2E Rules Guide

Kinda need it for the game, or at least you need to have one between yourself and your opponent.  Strategies and Schemes are within.  All the updated rules since the last Open Beta are within.  Plus, lots of art, I’m sure, and a ton of fluff.

Arsenal Pack: Neverborn

The only Arsenal Pack I’m picking up from GenCon is the Neverborn one.  Eventually I’ll be getting five of them, but I’ll hold off on the other four and pick them up from my LGS.  It just means for the short-term, I’ll be playing only Neverborn.  No problem there – I love the new feel for all three masters.  Lilith is fantastic, Pandora’s actually fun to play against (until I figure out how to make her real annoying… I have some ideas), and Zoraida’s got a new feel to her as well.

Miss Step

This is a free goodie that will be stuck in my bag thanks to the fact I’m buying at least $100 from them.  I don’t like Archanists, but it’ll give me something else I can throw into my bin of “cool miniatures” that one day I want to paint up.  Might have to go through that bin at some point and see what all I have in there.  I think I have a Dead Justice box set.  Might open that up finally and paint up the Death Marshals to work with Tara.  Oh, and that would get me a painted Judge too, since I’m missing that guy.  Hmm… sounds like a good idea after all.

Okay, so after hitting Wyrd, Slaz will be checking out the AEG booth to try to grab a limited-run RPG book.  Evidently they’ve got a small book they were going to put in PDF only, but decided to put into print for a limited number at GenCon.  Most of them will be given away to people involved in a particular event, but there are some they said would be sold, if I read them right.

Secrets of the Empire: Naishou Province

It’s been a while since I’ve run L5R for my group.  My son was born at the end of June, and we’ve been on hiatus since then.  Eventually we’ll get back to the game, and I hope getting books like this will spark my enthusiasm to get back to it faster.

Finally, Slaz will head over to the Battlefoam stop.  Wild West Exodus, a miniatures game I backed from Kickstarter, will be released soon and they have a couple of prerelease models available.

US Marshal McClain

He’s an Outlaw and Lawman model (wha??) and looks pretty sweet.  I don’t know how much of WWX I am going to play after all is said and done, but I’ve got a lot on my way and I like this model, so it’ll be another nice piece to have painted up if nothing else.  Since it sounds like he’s a GenCon exclusive, I figured it’d be my one shot to grab this version of him.

I mentioned there were other things I was asking my LGS to order too.  I won’t go into as much detail, but I’ll be picking up the Arsenal packs for Outcasts, Guild, Resurrectionsts and 10 Thunders, as well as the new Battlestar Galactica expansion from Fantasy Flight Games.

Also wondering whether I should pick up the new Lilith box.  I don’t have any other way to get Barbaros, and I really like him.  I think the new Cherub is miles better than the old one.  I think the new Terror Tots are better than the old ones.  And the new Lilith sculpt, while not as good as the alternate metal one, is still pretty solid.  It might be one of those things I pick up a month or two down the line once I’m set with everything else.  But I was surprised to see that there was a box set I was tempted by, especially since I own all the metal versions already.

For those off to GenCon, enjoy!  Hope to make it out next year.

Fearsome Foursome Festivus - Third Annual

When I was in college, I had a group of friends with whom I would game extensively.  We’ve kept in touch after graduation remaining very close.  Unfortunately, life and distance keep us from being able to see each other very often.

In no particular order, we have Adam, Josh and Serious Mike (he had to be differentiated from me somehow, and Adam enjoys assigning nicknames to people).

Josh speaks quietly and is a great sport for ribbing and teasing.  Which works well, because Adam and I certainly enjoy picking on everyone.  Josh always comes with great game ideas, but sometimes (and mostly accidentally) says and does some of the funniest things in games.

Adam likes to joke and hates when people try to tell him what he should be doing.  To the point where if someone suggests that he should do something, often he’ll do the opposite just to show them that in fact, he would do something different.  His usual stance is to avoid being serious in games, though he can come into streaks or games where he takes them quite seriously.  Just got to make sure he’s prepped for it ahead of time.

Serious Mike understands rules, numbers, and efficiency.  Very early on in our friendship, it was fun to see him come up with the most efficient method to achieve a result and explain it to the group, and then watch Adam do whatever he could to not do what Serious Mike suggested.  He has a dry and sarcastic sense of humor.

I don’t remember which of us it was that first suggested it, but three years ago we decided to pick a weekend in the Spring and head to a hotel somewhere centralized (in New Jersey, as the case turned out), bring a bunch of games, and just pretend we were back in college again playing games all weekend.  We’ve managed to do so every year now for three years.  This past weekend was the most recent one – the Fearsome Foursome Festivus, or the Fearsome Foursome Reunion Tour.

So what did we end up playing?

Zombicide

This is one I am quite familiar with.  By the time I arrived on Friday night, Josh and Adam had already played this one a few times.  We went for dinner and then got a few more games in.

At one point, Adam was trying to put together the board (which, for those who have tried, know it involves a healthy amount of cardboard).  One of the pieces on he put down made no sense where it was.  Josh deduced that Adam must be reading the instructions wrong so he took it from them, but after reading, he made no changes.  Knowing that both Josh and Adam must be wrong, I took the instructions and found that indeed, they were incorrect.  Adam laughed at how little either Josh or I trusted him.

But an example of our lack of trust for him followed later that same game!  Adam has no idea how to play games (at least that’s the opinion I have in my head despite all evidence to the contrary) so at one point Josh and I were getting excited about how close we were to winning and told Adam what he needed to do in order to get us to a full victory.

Now it’s worth saying that Adam does actually know how to play games just fine.  Unfortunately for Josh and me, he also hates people telling him what to do.  So instead of following our instructions, he took the car his character was in, drove over one of my characters, killing him, and then hopped out of the car and shot another of my characters.  I proceeded to drive over both of his characters.  While we were engaging in a battle in the streets, Josh’s two characters up and fled the scene, escaping and winning while my last character was pulled down by zombies.

Good times.

Gauntlet of Fools

Serious Mike joined us for the next game, Gauntlet of Fools.  This was the only new game for me this weekend.  At the beginning of the game, four characters were selected and each was given a random weapon.  We went around bidding on characters.  You could steal characters from other players, but to do so you had to add a boast to them (“I’ll play the Monk with the Throwing Stars, but I’ll do it while juggling!”)  Each boast provided a different mechanical disadvantage to the character.  Once all players had characters, you head into the dungeon to defeat monsters and collect gold until the monsters kill the last player.  Then whoever has the most gold wins.

Overall it was a decent game.  We were getting tired by the end of it, and most of us were not really paying much attention.  At one point I had a hungover, juggling, one-hand-tied-behind-my-back, hopping-on-one-foot barbarian head into the dungeon.  He got killed pretty quick.

Level 7

The guys wanted to try out Level 7.  We went through the first two adventures, the first time with Adam and I escaping through the elevator while Josh and Serious Mike were captured in the medical room as the Lockdown began.  The second game we all escaped as we got the aliens and guards to start fighting in the first few minutes of the game.  That gave us the breathing room to get everyone out by the end.  Wasn’t easy, but it was a lot of fun.

Flashpoint

This game has become a staple of our Reunion Tours.  Josh is the one who introduced it to me back at the first outing.  He had one expansion that I do not currently have (though I will be getting it soon).  It brings you into a two-story house.  We played two games, the first we managed to win but barely, and the second we rescued everyone we could.  Then, for absolutely no reason, we decided to try to get Josh into the house on the second story and cut the house down around him so it collapsed.  Adam took over the Captain to force Josh to move while Serious Mike and I ran around the outside of the house with chainsaws cutting down the supports.  We managed to get him killed – it was fun.

Iron Kingdoms

Serious Mike ran us through the introduction session of Iron Kingdoms.  It was pretty good – I had already played through it once before at GenCon, so I generally let the other guys make the decisions about the game while I moved around and helped out.  I picked the magic character – the first time I tried using one – and he was quite good.  Blasting out spells and being able to boost hit and damage was fun.

The session itself was pretty linear (as expected for an intro).  With the exception of the fact that this time we essentially opted not to open a biscuit business like we had the first time I ran through this campaign, we did everything almost exactly the same.  The boss fight felt a little tougher, but Serious Mike was playing the villain a bit smarter and healing him for 6 or so wounds every turn.  With an armor of 19, it was tough to take him down.  We ended up doing so by surrounding him and removing his shield from the equation.

Later, I ran the group through a second Iron Kingdoms session – one I had written a while ago and just left the notes in my book.  It involved a lot of negotiating, some history, and then a small fight.  We ended up passing out at 2:30 in the morning and leaving the session unfinished (which cut out two more fights).

Quarriors

Finally, we played Quarriors.  Since last year, I had picked up two new expansions – one that introduced Locked Dice and one that introduced Quests.  Overall, neither of those expansions really added much to the game.  They brought in some needless complexity while not really adding anything of value.  The best way to play Quarriors, I think, is to use the base game and first two expansions.  They don’t really add too much more in the way of rules, and don’t muck things up too much.

Overall, due to external circumstances, the weekend did not go as long as normal and I felt we got fewer games in than usual.  Hopefully next year I’ll have a little more freedom to get some time off from work and get out there early on Friday rather than losing about a half a day there.

Moving Through Subterra Bravo

I ended up playing a few more games of Level 7 over the weekend.  We have been going through, one level at a time, trying to beat them missions before moving on to the next one.  With seven missions in the game, plus one in the most recent No Quarter magazine, we have a total of eight missions to climb through.  To keep the suspense, we’ve been holding off reading the new missions until we’re ready to play them so they’re all new to all of us.

We started with Level 5 this time through.  We had four players, the maximum the game allows.  During this mission, we had to find suits from guards and use those to bypass the security checkpoint to escape.  The only way we could get suits from guards was to have the Hybrid aliens go to town on a couple of guards, then sneak in afterwards and hope the suits were not too ripped or bloody to use.

We started by splitting up to try to explore as much of the board as we could.  Laura managed to peak ahead and find one of the Hybrids early in the game but was in a tight spot.  The Hybrid was being escorted by two guards, and unless the Hybrid got jacked up on Fear, it wouldn’t try to kill the guards.  Laura pumped her fear up high, but that also had the unfortunate side-effect of luring a Clone right on top of her as well.  The Hybrid went crazy and killed the guards, triggering Lockdown.  Meanwhile, Laura fought back against the Clone in her corridor.

We tried to get to her to help her, but weren’t able to do so.  Laura ran in to grab the two suits and found only one was useful still.  Before she could use it, though, she got cornered and mauled.  As Lockdown had already started, she was out of the game.  Mary was still recovering from being sick, so she bowed out and let Laura take over her character.  We had three characters left to get off the board.

We started exploring farther away, trying to build out the facility a bit more and get a useful network of vents.  Brian discovered a second Hybrid and it killed off its two guards as well, dropping two more suits.  Rather than run for the suits, he jumped into the vents and ran to a far side of the hall and let the Hybrid start hunting the guards and the rest of us.

I took a trip through the vents as well, dropping in behind the first suit and grabbed it, pumping up my speed to get back into the vents after grabbing it.  Fortunately with my Flashlight I wasn’t afraid of the vents and my fear stayed under control.  I dropped out back by the elevator and escorted Laura off the map (each suit could account for two characters).

Alone, now Brian had more activations between the Hybrids going and could more easily lure them where he needed them.  He ran along, dragging the Hybrids after him, until he found a vent and jumped back to the two suits that had dropped when he unleashed the second Hybrid.  One of them was safe and he dove back through the vents and found his way to the elevator up.

Three survivors out of four.  Not too shabby.

We racked up another game, moving on to Level 4.  This time we had finally moved out of the lower levels where the aliens were more powerful.  Here, the guards held the advantage, but at this point they were already wary of the attacks going on below.  It seems the guards and aliens were already going to start by attacking each other.

We had to explore the facility to find the way to the Incinerator Control Room.  Unfortunately the Control Room was not attached to any of the rooms we could find.  The only way to reach it was through traveling through the vents.  We had to find a map of this level of the facility and use it to drop into the Incinerator Control Room and use that to activate the Incinerator room, opening the shaft there to allow us to reach the next level.

To make matters more interesting, as we went through the facility, Hybrids would be coming up from the lower levels.

We were lucky in that the Clones were not quick in coming out, and in how quickly we were able to find the map.  Shortly after I grabbed the map, a guard found me and started shooting.  I ducked away and jumped into a vent to escape.

I used the map to get to the Incinerator Control Room while Laura found the Incinerator itself.   She got cornered by a Hybrid and a few guards.  While the guards and the Hybrid were fighting each other, she snuck away and joined me in the Incinerator Control Room.

I tried to flip the switch to turn on the machine, but with seven dice, I couldn’t roll six successes.  Laura tried and also failed.  Brian jumped into the vents and joined us, finally flipping the Incinerator on.  Lockdown was triggered, and the vents became a dangerous place to travel.  Every time someone went through the vents, they took two dice of damage.

I looked at my hand – I had three cards and one armor.  The only way I would die going through the vents to get to the exit (the Incinerator Control Room was not attached to the rest of the board, so I had to go through the vents or spend a long time trying to link up the parts of the map) was if I rolled two double-fists.  No problem.  I picked up the dice and tossed them… bringing up the exact roll I needed to kill myself in the vents.

Laura and Brian were better off, both heading through the vents and dropping into the Incinerator and escaping that way.

Two survivors out of three.  Not bad.

I’m getting a little nervous about the game’s replayability.  There are eight missions (including the extra one from No Quarter) and we’ve successfully finished four of them.  While it would be fun to redo some of the old missions, my favorite part is coming in to a mission blind and trying to feel out how to solve it the first time.  It fits the feel of the game to be coming in to these missions blind, and I’m worried that once we get through all the missions, their appeal is going to drop.

I hope they continue to release new missions from time to time.  There’s a lot of potential with this game.  Atmosphere-wise it’s fantastic.  The game-play is pretty high too.  Just need more missions!