by Bobby Warren
And we have less than a month left in the year! Wow, did things fly by this year.Once again there was no miniature gaming this month and I didn't get in a game of DreadBall, either. I still really want to play Warmachine or Hordes and I should also be getting my copy of Deadzone soon. I'm also expecting several other Kickstarter projects to arrive soon, including Eminent Domain: Escalation, Flash Point: Fire Rescue - Extreme Danger with Dangerous Waters, and Snowdonia with Snowdonia: Jungfraubahn & Mount Washington.
This month I played 34 games a total of 48 times and recorded playing seven expansions a total of eight times. I played 11 of the games in October. Four of the games and two of the expansions were new to me.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 7/11
My Rating: 8
Hilary, Mike, Rob, and I played this without any of the expansions, though we did use the madness and injury cards from The Dunwich Horror. We ended up beating Azathoth by sealing six gates.
It didn't see play for me for such a long time because Elder Sign filled the niche. It's possible that Eldritch Horror might see a lot of play if it plays like a streamlined Arkham Horror.
Times Played:4
Last Month Played: New to me
My Rating: 6
It really is just Bang! with dice. Our first two games had the deputies sitting on either side of the sheriff, which made it hard to take him down. The next two games were with four players and it played pretty well with that many participants.
It's not a great dice game, but it is fun and plays well with at least four to seven of people. The Renegade is still a hard role to win with.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 6/12
My Rating: 8
Four players. I grabbed the six and seven early on and was close to grabbing the eight and was blocked. By the end of the game there were only three numbers left so the game dragged on and on before it ended.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 1/11
My Rating: 8
This is a game that Mike and I used to play regularly which fell out of the rotation for almost two years! The big score difference was when I was able to score a large road with wells while I was able to stop him from scoring his large castle. We need to play this on a more-regular basis.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 1/09
My Rating: 8
Nico brought this and we played it. I forgot about gold being bonus VPs and passed my last turn early because I didn't think there was anything I could do. I am not sure it would have made much of a difference in the end, but I was annoyed at myself for forgetting it. The four of us were all within two points and Nico managed a well-deserved win. I suspect I will do better during the game if we play it again soon.
Times Played:2
Last Month Played: 1/06
My Rating: 8
Mike wanted to play this again and I was amenable. We played a couple of games with different factions each time. We split the initial two-player starters and it was as fun as it was when we played it when it came out. I need to pull out my chips and build some stacks to play against Mike.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 9/13
My Rating: 7
Five players and I really sucked during this game. I would like to play with dealing all the cards to the players when playing with five since it allows the players to know that all the cards are in play.
Times Played:2
Last Month Played: 9/13
My Rating: 8
Mike and I took on the Sword Beach scenario and lost. We then attacked it again and managed to pull off the win. I really prefer this with two players as it is more of a challenge. When you add the third and four players it makes it easier to beat the game.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 10/13
My Rating: 7
We played the Enduring the Elements scenario and beat it. We barely lost the first part and then beat the second part.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 9/13
My Rating: 8
Expansion Played:Unseen Forces.
Doom tokens were few and far between during this battle, but it was still deadly as Rita Young and Mark Harrigan both died during the game. Marie Lambeau and Wilson Richards survived the whole encounter and were joined by Amanda Sharpe and Bob Jenkins as they survived to prevent Tsathoggua from coming through and destroying Arkham.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: New to me
My Rating: 7
Mike and I broke this out and played against Azathoth. He played Leo Anderson and I played Mark Harrigan, who went insane, and then Diana Stanley who was around for a couple of turns until we lost.
It took us about two hours to play, including set-up and we only made a couple of minor errors. I am looking forward to try exploring the game a little more..
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 4/13
My Rating: 6
Mike and I played with Rob. My opinion of the game hasn't changed. It really isn't anything special, but I will play when Mike wants to play.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 7/13
My Rating: 8
On a whim I grabbed the mint-tin that is the travel edition of the game as I was leaving for a Saturday of gaming. It turned out when we were gathering to play, we needed a quick game to play and this was the choice. Eric hadn't played before, so it was also a great chance to introduce the really good game to someone new. Nico walked in while we were playing and now he wants a copy of the travel edition.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 10/13
My Rating: 6
We played a four-player game with the recommended set-up for the cards for the players and I removed a couple of cards from each stage of the Winds of War deck. In our game Nick won because he was the last player on the last turn, which we knew would happen because the game end card was the last one. I suspect this could be a problem when this happens.
The game is still missing something and owning both is something I now regret.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 10/13
My Rating: 7
We played yet another two-player game. It's always a good little filler for us to play.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 7/13
My Rating: 8
Expansions Played:Power Up! and Halloween for all the games.
The new expansion is out and it's great to get some engraved dice. We had both of the two characters from the Halloween expansion and their power decks have some interesting gift abilities, which they give to other characters.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 6/12
My Rating: 7
Mike pulled this out because the iOS version was released and we needed a refresher on the game play. He, Hilary, and I jumped in and the game play came back to us fairly quickly.
I ended up in a great position because one of my initial quests allowed me once a turn to place a worker on a site which another player already chose plus I was able to complete the quest which gave me an extra worker so I was in a position of power the entire game.
Maybe the next time the game hits the table we will play with one, or both of the expansions from Scoundrels of Skullport?
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: New to me
My Rating: 5
It uses the 7 Wonders card drafting, but the cards are equipment and spells for the characters. Each player has a different character and at the end of each "age" which delve into a dungeon and fight monsters.
The fighting the monsters part of the game really slows the game down and it takes quite a while to finish. The rule book is also really poorly written according to Ben and Nico who read them. The card backs for artifacts and spells could be easier to differentiate. They are darker than the colors from the game boards.
Times Played:4
Last Month Played: 10/13
My Rating: 8
November's first game was really close. Both Mike and I were one hand away from the victory. He ended up winning. Lucky bastich. :)
In the second game, Mike was closer to winning than I was on the last hand. He laid down four Al Capones while I had the other four and a Raid. I drew the cards I needed to go out, played the Al Capones and the Raid and ended up with the easy win because Mike scored nothing. Skill, baby. Skill. :)
Game three was another luck fest. In other words, Mike won.
Game four was a skill fest. Guess who won? :)
Times Played:3
Last Month Played: 10/13
My Rating: 8
Mike, Jerry, and I started a campaign with the Attack on Sandpoint scenario. Mike played the Kyra the cleric, Jerry played Harsk the ranger, and I played Sajan the monk. We had a fairly simple game which ended with about 20% of the Blessing deck left over. It was made easier when Harsk the Ranger discovered the lead bad guys, Ripnugget and Stickfoot, on the top of one of one of the decks and we went and cleared out everything else before sending a buffed Ranger on the Gobbo villain.
I also set up a couple of teams for four and five-player campaigns at the store. We almost never have the exact same people around to play, so I drafted a five-player and a four-player team to play. We had five players, so we played. The team is Amiri the barbarian (Michael), Ezren the wizard (Nico), Harsk (Nick), Kyra (me), and Sajan (Eric). We also played the first scenario of the Attack on Sandpoint scenario. We lost the first one and re-played it and won it a second time.
I'm looking forward to the Pathfinder Dice Arena game which is on Kickstarter right now which is being done by the guys from Fun to 11 who did Castle Dice.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 7/13
My Rating: 8
Played with Rise of the Demons, Quarmageddon, and Quest of the Qladiator.
We played a four-player game and Nick hadn't played before. Nico ended up winning and we thought the world might end because he never wins. :)
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 7/10
My Rating: 8
I've been wanting to play this again for a while. Even with five players the Eastern US map is pretty open. It is my least-favorite of them all. In the future I will likely pull out the Europe or England map to play, depending on the number of players.
It had also been so long since I played that I forgot that I replaced all the plastic in the game with wood. The trains were replaced by discs and the empty city markers by brown Catan city pieces. I also added green pawns to mark cities with Service Bounties and cylinders in the player colors to mark cities with hotels.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 1/13
My Rating: 7
We had a rarity in this game. I managed to win by setting up Mike to have three of his rats showing at the end of his turn. Generally, this will not happen when we play, but the tiles laid out in such a way that I was able to leave the little buggers exposed and there was nothing he could do about it.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 10/13
My Rating: 7
With Roll Through the Ages: The Iron Age now running on Kickstarter, we played this again.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 10/13
My Rating: 6
I taught it to Anne, Kevin, and Michael.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 6/12
My Rating: 7
Expansions Played:Cursed!, the Grand Dames of Small World and Be Not Afraid....
One of the main reasons to bring this game along, I wanted to try my Royal Bonus tiles out. I forgot to grab them, not that they will fit in my storage box for the game.
I found myself enjoying the game less than before, but this might be because I was tired and it was a five-player game at the end of the day. I dropped my rating a point (to a respectable 7) because of this. We'll see if my feeling changes the next time we play.
Times Played:2
Last Month Played: 10/13
My Rating: 9
A four-player game that I managed to win even though I didn't manage to claim my personal goal. During the game I kept ahead of everyone on the score board, but never was able to get my income or reputation up, and even had a negative reputation during much of the game. On my last turn I could have kept the cash to get the +10 population for the goal, but I was able to spend the money to gain 20ish population, plus I scored two of the four open goals.
In our second game of the month, I thought I was doing pretty well as we closed in on the end because I was going to be able to grab two of the face-up objectives and score my secret one. However, Nico went for the high scoring during the game and ended up with a fairly easy win.
We're all hoping to see the expansion when it comes out.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 3/11
My Rating: 8
Mike and I took on Greg and Felipe. It was a back and forth game which they won because they were ahead when Greg had to leave.
Times Played:2
Last Month Played: 10/13
My Rating: 8
Expansion Played: The GenCon 2013 promo map for both games.
We played a couple of games on the AEG promo from GenCon. The second game was the second time the Subway Excavation card showed up in one of the games I played. I decided to make a cash-heavy deck initially and managed to be the only person with that card and a fairly trim deck. I managed to take the Excavations with the rest of my deck and manage to build into enough of the other players' locations to pull out a victory.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: New to me
My Rating: 6
An okay dice game with route connection included, but it is nothing special. Hilary appeared to win the game early when she placed one building in New York the first turn and another in Boston the second turn. When we reached the end, she was the winner in large part to being the high scorer in three of the four good which scored. During the game Mike managed to get one building and I never managed to roll enough of the right results to get one built.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 10/13
My Rating: 7
I decided to try collecting lots of resources as Max did in the game last month. It took me a while longer to get rolling, but by the end of the game I was able to score a few extra points to tie Nico for the win. Of course, Nico messed up (his words, not mine) on the penultimate turn and that meant he left two workers on the Tikal wheel. That meant he won the tie and the game. It was a tight and fun game.
This is another game which I really am looking forward to seeing the expansion. We haven't played it as much as Suburbia, but if it wasn't for that game we probably would have played this a few more times.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 10/13
My Rating: 7
Mike and I taught Rob how to play. I suspect Mike liked it better with three because of the wider distribution of Loki tiles and reduced likelihood of one player getting unlucky enough to draw a clear majority of them.
Times Played:3
Last Month Played: 8/13
My Rating: 8
After not being played for a couple of months, it was played both at Mike's and the store.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 4/12
My Rating: 8
Rob and I played this while waiting for other people to show up. Maybe Mike and I should play this sometime when we play Mystery Rummy 4?