Board Games on Tuesday

Last Tuesday came and went and I was able to make it out for a night.  Between my wife’s birthday last week and our anniversary next week, finding time to game is a bit tough in September.

Since I’m still on the post-Gencon gaming cycle, I packed my car with some of the new board games I had and hit the road.  I had Mage Wars, hoping to get a game in with Dan, and I brought Level 7, Zombicide, and Flashpoint.

When I arrived, I quickly had a group of four people (led by Skill-less Brian) who wanted to give Level 7 a try, so we started there.  Since none of the other three had played it yet, I dropped us back to the second mission.  The first mission is alright, but it’s a pretty watered-down mission just designed to show you how the game works.  The second level was where things started getting fun.

In this mission, the power to the elevators had been cut off.  We had to find three generators, activate them, and then book it back to the elevator before things went to hell.  Of course while we were doing this, Clones and Guards would start swarming, trying to find us.  At the beginning of the mission, the Guards and Clones would play nice with each other, but if the Clones ever found a knocked down Guard, they would kill him.  And if the Guards ever outnumbered the Clones in a space, they would kill the Clones.  Then all hell would break loose.

We started this game out and I tried to influence the other players as little as possible, just to see how things would go differently.  The last time I had played, the players were very careful about avoiding the Threat, but in this game, we had quickly dropped our available Threat Pool from 5 down to 2.  At that point, we were all very careful about what we did and managed not to trigger Lockdown from pulling too much Threat.

Additionally, this time we were far more careful about setting up our vents.  By the end of the mission, we could jump along almost the entire board through the vents.  This proved instrumental in our escape, as we were able to find the three control panels and turn the elevator back on, then jump in the vent and drop back near the elevator at the end of the game.  However, it was also a huge danger earlier in the game as the Clones could also travel through the vents and would often drop on whoever had the most fear and kill them off quick.  Before we had gone around the turn cycle a half dozen times, we already had three of us die.

The game stalled in the middle as we struggled to get away from the Clones and bring our fear under control, but the Guards moved in and helped us out with the Clones.  Two of us were headed in one direction, luring the Clones and Guards away while the other two of us were exploring fast and furious for the last panels.  Finally we reached them and jumped into the vents to make our way back to the front.  The Guards that had spawned cleared out chasing the Clones and we jumped into the elevators, moving on to the next level.

After that, Dan had finished his game of Warmachine.  There were three of us ready for a game (Dan, Skill-less Brian and me) so we played Zombicide with more-correct rules.  I say “more” because we still did not play it completely correctly, though we came much closer.

We tried mission one, where we have to find rice, canned food, and water, and we have to find five different objective points on the board.  We each racked up our characters and started playing.  Dan took to exploring while I took to clearing out zombies and Brian split between the two early on.  With all the zombies in the buildings, we became swarmed quickly, especially with an early Abomination hitting the table.  It wasn’t long before I was surrounded by a swarm of zombies (already in the Orange experience level) and killed.

I started laughing at how ridiculous the whole thing was and one of us made the comment of how much the difficult ramped up from 4 characters down to 3, since you have less activations before the zombies go again.  Which made us think… we were supposed to have more characters?  Sure enough, the rules for three players were two characters each, so I pulled up a second character and joined the fight.  Brian was quickly overwhelmed and killed so he took a second character.  Then I was killed again, as was he, while Dan kept skating for each of the objectives.

Without support, he got mobbed by about 80 walkers and killed.  His new character lasted one more turn after that.

Had we started the game with all six characters on the board at once, it would have been a much different battle.

Still, two very fun games, both of which I am ready to pull out again.  I have to say I am very pleased with my Gencon haul this time around.  Level 7 was an excellent purchase, and Zombicide arriving from the Kickstarter was a great boon.  Add in Flashpoint, Mage Wars, and Timber Peak and I’m calling this the Gencon that had the best stuff.  If I had managed to get the IK RPG, and if Wyrd had the Misaki or McHammish box out, I would be in a huge dilemma of what I wanted to play most right now.  But until 10 Thunders becomes more varied to play, and until the IK RPG comes out, I’m on a pretty big board game frenzy.

Mage Wars - A First Try

 

I spent some time over the weekend reading the Mage Wars rules and getting the spellbooks set up with the suggested starting books for the Wizard and the Beastmaster.  My wife and I were looking for a new game to play after work yesterday and she surprised me by suggesting Mage Wars.  She’s not usually keen on learning whole new rulesets, so I figured this may be a window of opportunity and we pulled out the game.

So a little background about what Mage Wars is – it seems to me to be a combination board game/card game.  You each play a different Mage (there are currently four options: the controlling Wizard, the healing Priestess, the swarming Beast Master, and the attacking Warlock), create a spellbook from all the spells the game comes with (and there are a ton of spells), and then go back and forth casting spells, summoning creatures, and fighting until one mage is defeated.

Sound like Magic?  It sure did to me.

Of course, I always liked Magic.  It just got too expensive to keep up with.  The idea of mages slinging spells, summoning creatures, enchanting the battlefield, etc. appeals to me.  The collectable nature of Magic cards does not.  Mage Wars resolves that nicely by giving me the opportunity to customize my selection of spells and tailor my style of play based on the type of mage I selected.

The rules to the game are actually pretty easy.  Every turn you increase your mana (magic-casting resource) by your current Channel value.  You look through your spellbook and pick out two spells you want to cast, be they creature summons, attack spells, walls, enchantments, etc.

Every creature (including your mage) gets an activation.  You get a wooden token to represent whether a creature has activated.  If it’s starburst side up, the creature can activate.  Once you activate them, flip it to starburst side down.   On your activation, you can either do a full-round action or move and do a quick action (which could be a weaker attack, a quickcast spell if you are a mage, or another move).  Additionally, once per turn your mage can use a quickcast action.  So if you’re about to activate a creature and want to give it a buff, your mage can interrupt with a quickcast of the buff and the creature can move in for the attack.  This wouldn’t take your mage’s activation yet.

When your mage does activate, he behaves like all the other creatures except that he can also cast those spells in your hand.  So he could use a full-round spell (like summoning a creature into his space) or he could move and use a quick spell.  With the free quickcast he gets for the turn, he can get both spells rolling each turn.

The game gets more complex as the individual creatures, spells, and mages come in.  There are a lot of loaded keywords, special cases, and new rules on the cards.  To me it felt more like playing a Warmachine or Malifaux type game where the rule system was fairly standard, but the models themselves brought the complexity.  The spells didn’t have quite as many special rules as those games tend to have on them, but there were a lot more spells being thrown about.

The game feels like it’s going to be much more an investment to play than I expected.  Not in terms of monetary investment – for what you get it’s actually not bad.  But it feels more like a game that you can’t play casually.  If you play it, you play it.  I can see a lot of gaming areas taking the approach of this becoming a game with its own group that plays it pretty consistently.  You create your own spellbook based on the rules, hone it, refine it, and keep going.  In that way it feels like a CCG – you come with your mage and deck and give the game a whirl.  One person might be trying a creature rush while another might take the same mage and play a slow attrition build.  But the game itself does not seem like it could take place in a rotation of other board games to just pull out from time to time.

The other piece that makes it less likely to hit a rotation with my current group of board gamers is that it is only a two-player game.  There are variations where you can play more than two mages at a time, but generally they require the purchase of a second copy of the game so you have enough spells for the other two mages, and so you have enough room to make sure people aren’t walking all over each other.

My wife and I tried a quick game just to understand the rules.  She took the Beast Master and I took the Wizard.  The game started out slowly as we both had to take a good 5-10 minutes reading our spellbook to try to figure out what spells we would want to take.  I imagine that time will shrink once we know what’s available.  But the turns themselves went pretty quick after that.  Move and attack.  Shoot my bow.  Cast my spell.  Okay, we’re done?  Now back to the spellbook for a while.

We called the game early, but we both had a great time and are looking forward to the next match.  There are things we learned from our game that would change how we play next time.  Early on I was building up a strong defense and my wife tried a few weaker creatures and sent them in, but they got chewed up.  I pressed the advance and she figured out how to raise tanglevines on my two advance creatures to bypass them and attack my strong archer.  I fought her off again, and it wasn’t until she was almost out of creatures to cast that she dipped into some of the enhancing spells that the Beast Master’s spellbook provided.  Then, in a single turn, she killed off two of my big creatures, pressed to where my Wizard was, and put me in a spot of bother.

Meanwhile, I spent a lot more time building up defenses for my Wizard than I probably needed.  By the time I was pushing the offense to Laura, I had a high Armor value to reduce wounds coming in, a Defense that could stop one attack a turn, a barrier that would wound anyone coming in, and an enchantment that would bounce an attack back on the attacker once.  If I had been more aggressive early, I could have been teleporting my creatures into Laura’s Beast Master and forcing him back.

Overall, a great match though, and we’re looking forward to the next one.  This game will likely make it out to game nights to see if I can find an opponent for a while.

Fantasy Football Launch 2012

Football season is gearing up.  I guess it’s been going on for a little while now what with the preseason and all, but they’re about to launch into the actual regular season.  This year’s got a bit to be excited about: RG3 is in town and the Redskins have a good receiving core.  Dez Bryant is proving the Cowboys a classy organization.  And Tom Brady’s got some solid weapons around him to make another run for the title.

 

This year I’m in three different fantasy football teams:

There’s the long-standing league I am in with my friends around home.  This is going into the fifth season.  I ended in second place last season (the league is rapidly becoming one in which nine players fight for second place and one player takes first), so I’ve got nowhere to go but down.  I’ve made the playoffs every season so far, so I just need to stay in the top four to keep that streak alive.

I’m heading in to the second season of my family league too.  This one is getting a late start, drafting next week.  Last year this league had 14 players, though a few stopped paying much attention as the league went on.  We’ll probably drop a few players before the draft and might have a more manageable number.  Despite starting at a pretty pathetic 0-5 or something last year, I managed to make the playoffs though I was bounced by the top team from the regular season.

And the third league this year is with my coworkers.  A lot of them have never done fantasy football before, so their draft was kind of hilarious.  I spent a while trying to teach them better ways to draft, and talked to them during the draft about better decisions they could make, but it still resulted in some funny picks.

So for the two teams I have already drafted, here’s how my early teams look:

Home League (Drafted 9 out of 10)

Michael Vick (QB, Phi),Nick Foles (QB, Phi), Marques Colston (WR, NO), Vincent Jackson (WR, TB), Eric Decker (WR, Den), Stevie Johnson (WR, Buf), Chris Johnson (RB, Ten), Adrian Peterson (RB, Min), Kevin Smith (RB, Det), Willis McGahee (RB, Den), Toby Gerhard (RB, Min), David Wilson (RB, NYG), Rob Gronkowski (TE, NE), Matt Prater (K, Den), Chicago (DST)

This league allows for two keepers with the following stipulations: they take up the draft position of the previous situation, they cannot have been kept the previous season (by anyone), and they cannot have been picked in rounds 1 or 2.  If you picked up the player off waivers, they count as a 10th round draft pick.  This season I kept Eric Decker in the 9th round and Rob Gronkowski in the 10th.

I’m nervous about my QB situation.  I did not get any of the big names early and so I held out until I was the 9th QB off the board in the 8th round.  I wanted to swing back around and grab Andrew Luck to back him up, but he was gone before I got another draft.   Nick Foles has been doing pretty well in the preseason and there’s the advantage that if Michael Vick isn’t playing, Nick Foles will be.  We’ll see how the season plays out, though.  I may well be dropping Foles for someone else down the road, but I should have a few weeks before I have to worry about that.

Work League (Drafted 6 out of 10)

Cam Newton (QB, Car), Hakeem Nicks (WR, NYG), Brandon Lloyd (WR, NE), Pierre Garcon (WR, Was), Jeremy Maclin (WR, Phi), Reggie Wayne (WR, Ind), LeSean McCoy (RB, Phi), Jamaal Charles (RB, KC), Adrian Peterson (RB, Min), Jonathan Stewart (RB, Car), Toby Gerhart (RB, Min), Kevin Smith (RB, Det), Aaron Hernandez (TE, NE), Matt Prater (K, Den), Detroit (DST)

Ended up with a very solid team in this league, again because I think a lot of people did not know how to draft better for Fantasy Football.  Two players were huge fans of their own team (Green Bay and New Orleans) and drafted heavily from their own teams to the detriment of their Fantasy teams.

Once again, I’m a little nervous about my QB situation, though not as much as my other league.  Add to that the fact I’m pretty sure I’ll have an easier time finding a good backup in this league than in the home league and I’m pretty happy.

Drafting in both leagues was an unusual experience.  I found a few solid RBs early in the draft, but pretty quickly the quality dropped off or the RBs had huge question marks next to them.  There were a lot of solid WRs and in my second league, not picking up a WR until round 4, I still ended up with Hakeem Nicks and Brandon Lloyd to lead things off, with Jeremy Maclin, Reggie Wayne, and Pierre Garcon to back them up.

Looking forward to seeing how the season goes, both in the regular season and in the fantasy season.  September’s just around the corner!

A Weekend of Gaming

Had quite the weekend for games.  Coming off Gencon, everyone is itching to get their new toys out on the table, so from Friday through Sunday I had plenty of games being played.

On Friday night we had a bunch of folks over to play some of the new board games we had bought.  We led off with a couple games of Smash Up, the game Dan picked up from AEG.  Three of us were playing and I finally got to play the game beyond the initial demo game.  My first game I used Ninja/Tricksters.  I started out slow as the Zombie/Wizards picked up 13 points in a flash while I was held to 8 and Dan’s Dinosaur/Aliens were down below that.  I managed to sneak my Ninja-way in to another location and bump my points up high, then started dropping my guys onto a spot where if your guy is killed there, you gain a VP.  Being assassins, I was able to drop my own guys on the location and then assassinate them, grabbing the last two VPs and pulling a victory out of the game.

My second game I was Dinosaur/Zombies and stayed up near the front in points for a lot of the game, though I couldn’t really get much in the way of minions on the board.  It didn’t matter in the end as I was able to drop King Rex, a 7 strength beast (highest in the game) and add Augmentation to him for +4 strength and knock down a location, grabbing the most points too.  The next turn my zombies resurrected King Rex and I Augmented him again, dropping another location and sealing the game for me.

Overall it was a pretty fun game.  It’s fast enough that I don’t feel too invested.  I can’t help but feel that over time certain combinations will emerge as the best in the game and there won’t be much to be done against them.  Still, a fun diversion.

By the time we finished the second match, we had a few more players and busted out Flashpoint for a couple games.  The first one we did not use the Driver/Hose Operator and the building erupted in a massive inferno that we had no way to keep under control.  At one point literally half the board was in flames as we were struggling to save the people.  In the end the building collapsed on us and we lost.

But we lost with enough time to start a new one.  This time we got the Driver/Hose Operator.  It is clear why the game designers suggested one way to ramp up the difficulty is to remove the Driver from the game.  He was able to hose down a quarter of the building at a time, keeping us relatively safe while we went through to save as many people as we could.  In the end this time we managed to save everyone but one with only a couple of dangerous flare ups.

Some of the people had to head out at that point and we were left with four, so Flashpoint went away and we picked up Level 7.  The last game we had played of it, we really messed up the rules and won the scenario far too easily.  This time, armed with a better (but not perfect) understanding of the rules, we redid the second scenario.  The lift had just stalled and we pulled ourselves out of the elevator onto a new floor.  Clones were still coming through the vents and the guards were hunting for us.  We had to find three command consoles and restart the lift, then make it back to the lift to head up to safety.

Our map was quickly flooded with all the cloned aliens and guards.  They wandered the halls searching for us and often we had to hide away in a corner and hope they passed.  The aliens and guards ended up getting in a fight finally, and they started battling throughout the halls distracting each other enough that we could sneak through and find the panels.  I was the bookworm, so I was sent out to trigger as many as I could.  I snuck past the guards and made it to one panel, but they were hot on my trail due to my high threat (stupid event cards!).  I jimmied one panel, and then Dan jimmied a second one on the far, largely unoccupied, side of the board.  I yelled for the others to run for the lift while I ran to the last panel.  I triggered it and the other three took the elevator up.  Several groups of guards were behind me and I tried to run past them, but as I opened the first door, the mowed me down with machinegun fire.

So ended the tale of me, though sacrificing my life so that the other three could get out seemed oddly fitting for the game Level 7.  I’m really looking forward to getting this game out there again.

By this point it was late so we called it a night.  I got one of my 10 Thunders Archers painted up for Saturday and went to sleep.  I woke up early-ish and finished a second 10 Thunders Archer, packed my Malifuax bag with my 10 Thunders and Guild, and headed out the door.

Bill was running a Dead Heat Achievement Day going from 11AM to 8PM.  All day, all Malifaux.  Each player got a pack of achievements and had to declare a faction.  They could play other factions, but only counted the points from their faction towards the “best in faction” awards.  I chose 10 Thunders, eager to get Jakob on the table.

We had seven players show up through various times (six of us stayed the whole day which was awesome).  I managed to get five games in over the course of the day.  They are a bit in the past, so I don’t remember all of them.

GAME ONE – SLAZ – JAKOB (10T) vs. KAERIS (Archanists) 30 Stones

Since I had my Ten Thunders Archers painted up, I wanted to give them a whirl.  I took Jakob, Hungering Darkness, two Archers, an Illuminated, a Beckoner and a Depleted.  Slaz was bringing Kaeris with Willie, the Rail Golem, Iggy, and a few Large Steampunk Arachnids.  I had to escort my Supply Wagon while he had to reach his Claim Jump.

We were both trying out new stuff, so it was more just a random testing game.  The Archers were largely ineffective against the heavily-armored crew.  I did manage to kill Willie quick, not wanting to deal with him going after my wagon.  He charged the Rail Golem into my lines and dared me to deal with him.  I managed to knock him down to 2 wounds left before the Hungering Darkness went.  The HD activated and knocked him down to one wound remaining, then used Heed My Voice to have him charge Iggy, landing him in his own lines.  Finally the HD walked up nearby and at the end of the Activation Phase took the last wound from the Golem, killing him and having him blow up in Slaz’s own lines, damaging everyone around him.

I cleaned up after that and managed to grab an 8-2 victory.

GAME TWO – SLAZ – LUCIUS (Guild) vs. KAERIS (Archanists) 25 Stones

Everyone else was in the middle of a game at the moment, so Slaz and I took a quick 25 stone game to pass the time.  I pulled out Guild with Lucius, four dogs, a Watcher, two Austringers, and a Drill Sergeant to his list of Kaeris, Willie, Rail Golem, Iggy and a Large SPA.  This time we had Shared Line in the Sand.  I won the flip and chose to be the attacker.

The Rail Golem was much harder to deal with this time.  I was able to get my models out grabbing objectives quick and trying to kill off his minions that weren’t Rail Golems.  I was doing pretty well, though he managed to roll the Rail Golem into part of my crew and kill off the Austringer, two dogs, and the Drill Sergeant without batting an eye.  I managed to kill off everything else, losing my other two dogs in the process, and then spread out to grab all my Line in the Sand markers.  I pulled a 7-2 victory in this one.

GAME THREE – BO – JAKOB (10T) vs. JAKOB (NB) 35 Stones

Mirrored masters, me taking Jakob, Hungering Darkness, two Archers, an Illuminated, Depleted, Beckoner and Stitched Together.  He took Jakob, Hungering Darkness, two Depleted, an Illuminated, Beckoner, Tannen and Graves.  He had Treasure Hunt and I had Claim Jump.  He got one of the Depleted up to the Treasure on the first turn, then gave the Depleted Reactivate.  My Hungering Darkness moved up and Heed My Words him to move back off the Treasure before he Reactivated so he couldn’t grab the Treasure easily.  My Archers moved up and finished off his other Depleted and at the end of the turn, he was down by both Depleted.  On the second turn, one of my Archers killed Tannen with a Red Joker damage cheat, and I started pressing on his crew.  The tide of 10T was too much for Jakob and I won the game, 6-0.

GAME FOUR – BO – LADY JUSTICE (Guild) vs. JAKOB (NB) 30 Stones

This was a much closer game, though I don’t remember much of it.  I had Lady J, a Warden, the Pale Rider, two Witchlings and two Dogs.  He took Jakob, the Hungering Darkness, a Depleted, an Illuminated, the Beckoner, Tannen and Graves.  I had Treasure Hunt and he had Contain Power.  He managed to reach my Treasure marker quickly and sat on it while my crew tried to fight him off.  Lady Justice did a bit of damage, then got smacked with the Red Joker, nearly killing her.  She fled after the Hungering Darkness resummoned (he was resummoned three times during the course of the game) and managed to keep alive the rest of the game, which was good since I couldn’t get to my Treasure either.  I managed to hold him to one point with his Kidnap and we both got the rest of our schemes, bringing up a very tight 4-3 victory.

GAME FIVE – BEN – JAKOB (10T) vs. PANDORA (NB) 35 Stones

I brought back the same 35 Stone list from before with Jakob and the Hungering Darkness, two Archers, a Stitched, an Illuminated, a Beckoner and a Depleted.  He had Pandora, the Primordial Magic, Brutal Effigy, and the four Twins (Lelu, Lilitu, Tuco, and Graves).  I had Turf War and he had Line in the Sand.  The game started out strong, I thought, as I nearly dropped Graves early, but he saved him and Lured my Illuminated in to his death.  I was able to turn it around killing off Lelu and Tuco while putting some wounds into Lilitu.  My Archers dropped soon after, as did my Depleted, but I was able to kill the Brutal Effigy and Primordial Magic leaving him with Lilitu and Pandora against Jakob, the Hungering Darkness, a Stitched, and the Beckoner.  Pandora moved out and killed the Beckoner and Jakob while my Stitched rushed for his side of the board.   The game went on to turn seven buying him a chance, but Lilitu died to the Stitched and I ran into his deployment zone to break Hold Out.  I ended up winning the game 4-0.

 

At the end of the night, we tallied up points.  I took first place and best in 10T, as well as getting a painting prize for one of my Guild Guardsmen.  I pulled Miss Terious from the prize box, then took a Scheme Deck I knew Dan really wanted to give to him, and a small Malifaux tape measure.  With the prize money I bought myself a Witchling Handler, an Exorcist, and a pack of fences to add to my terrain box.

 

Sunday involved a little more gaming as we drafted our Fantasy Football team for our home league, but I will probably talk about that in a different post when I talk a little about how this year is panning out so far for Fantasy Football.