by Bobby Warren
The consecutive months of playing Warmachine at least once has ended. The league died as player interest either dried up, their availability was spotty, or the army list choices just didn’t work. I hope to continue playing, though I’m more likely to play Khador than Menoth.On the board game front, I played a lot of games I really like, though most of the new ones were just okay while a couple of them were super dogs.
The lowest rated game I played was a new one at a ‘3’ and the second-lowest rated was another new one at a ‘4’. The highest rated was an old favorite. I also have a lot of ‘8s’ on the played list, which is a really good thing.
In January I played 34 different games a total of 52 times and six expansions accounted for nine recorded game plays. Five of the games and three of the expansions were new to me, and I played 14 of the games and two of the expansions in December.
Times Played:3
Last Month Played: 12/2016
My Rating: 7
I taught the game to Mike Mc. and Jeff. I had the Appalachian Federation, Mike Mc. had New York, and Jeff had the Merchants Guild.
Later in the month, I played T. who got the Mutants Union and I had the Appalachian Federation again. He was able to destroy locations at will, so I focused on rebuilding them for the VP, and rushing for the end. He was able to stay ahead and finished with the win because he had far more locations built.
Mike wanted to play again the next time I saw him, so he and I played Nico. I had New York, Mike had the Appalachian Federation, and Nico had the Mutants Union. I made a few deals for VPs and I also had a feature that let me get VPs for razing buildings, and raced for the win.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 5/2015
My Rating: 7
Mike and I played this again. We got in the initial three mini games at the Game Depot and ended up playing the world series at his house in the evening.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 9/2016
My Rating: 8
Three of us took on the second challenge and managed to beat it just before Holmes advanced all the way to the end. At one point we deliberately played a wrong card to make the required number harder since the target was impossible for us with the cards played and the remaining cards in the deck. It’s a really clever game.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 12/2016
My Rating: 8
A fast run through the dungeon. As we got about 1/3 of the way through the game it was obvious that the only way I could win was grabbing a small artifact and pushing the end of the game. Even with that, Mike was close to beating me out of the dungeon. He ended up not making it out and I ended up being the last one standing, but didn’t make it out of the dungeon because of the dragon countdown.
I’m really looking forward to the Sunken Treasures expansion due out in a couple of months.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: New to me
My Rating: 3
This is a bad dice game. The rules pretend there are real choices, but really it is just chucking dice, maybe passing some to a neighbor who will check them and likely pass them back to you. Then, when a ‘winner’ is found, everyone can try and attack the winner, prolonging this brutal, pedantic game.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: New to me
My Rating: 4
This had too much going on to be fun. It just reaffirms my sneaking suspicion that a sports game trying to simulate leagues are usually doomed to be underwhelming.
The sub-standard tracking using cheap plastic cribbage pegs in poorly-punched board made playing the game less bearable. Like the game itself, someone got cute and over-designed a solution instead of keeping it simple.
Times Played:2
Last Month Played: New to me
My Rating: 7
This is a terrestrial version of Among the Stars with developing a sprawling farming complex replacing the building of a space station.
This has several of advantages over the interstellar-themed game. First, the set-up is easier because there is no construction of the card pool. All the cards of each of the four types are shuffled into their own decks.
Next, the players draw six cards each round, determining their own mix of cards to be used in the draft. The only rule for the mix of cards is they have to draw from at least three of the four types of cards.
Also, while building the locations the players don’t have to score every card as it is played. Some score immediately, but that is tracked by victory point tokens and not by constantly updating a score board.
Finally, there is a harvest phase at the end of every round. Resources are spent to generate money, victory points, and resources for future rounds. The game also introduces upgrade tiles that can modify how a card works.
We played the two-player game which changes the way card drafting works by laying out a tableau of six cards, each playing choosing one and playing it, then replacing the two cards with new ones until all 12 cards have been selected. We both enjoyed the game, though I don’t see myself buying it as long as I still own Among the Stars.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 10/2016
My Rating: 7
The monster attacked, the players ran, and Nick’s group was fastest on their feet and they would have gotten all three of their tokens out on the same turn if we didn’t call it at the beginning of the turn because no one else was even close to challenging him.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: New to me
My Rating: 6
This is the card game version of Russian Railroads system. I liked this more than the board game, though the coins and spending them add a chaotic timing element that slows the flow of the game down.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 12/2016
My Rating: 8
A four-player game that T. won.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 12/2016
My Rating: 7
We played a five player game. One of the scoring tiles was for most ships and I gave up on that right away to focus on the other three. I was not that successful and ended up in third place.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 12/2016
My Rating: 7
We talked about how often we have played this game and I would have sworn that the game was almost 10 years old, but it is only five. Sometimes time doesn’t fly as fast as it seems. That, or I am more senile than I thought I was.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 2/2015
My Rating: 8
Expansion Played:Power Up! for the game.
I ended up stuck in New York without being able to leave because of a card in the queue and was the first eliminated since I wasn’t all that healthy before going in. Just before I was eliminated, Jeff got an upgrade that let him web those he attacked which reduced their re-rolls.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 12/2016
My Rating: 8
Expansion Played:Power Up! and Halloween.
Four of us. The pumpkin won.
Times Played:5
Last Month Played: 11/2016
My Rating: 8
My copy arrived early in the month, before Mike, Nico, or Jerry got the KS copies. I picked mine up from the house at lunch on a Friday and took it over to Mike’s so we could play with some of the new characters. He, Jerry, Damian, and I played and Mike won with the Toghor, the dragon.
The next day, Nico and I played two games. He won with Raffi while I played Lotus. Game two had me winning with Blossom over Thereon. Mike and I also played a two-player game with me playing Tosh and him playing Travis. This was a quick game.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 12/2016
My Rating: 9
Five people, one master trader. Me.
And by master trader, I mean lucky. At the end of the first year I had three empty spots. I flipped the next three cards over and got an addition 14 points of ship value and ended up with four of one good and one of another. It put me at the front with Nick and I managed to hold onto the lead for that win.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 10/2016
My Rating: 8
Nothing I was collecting went right the entire game and we went into the last hand with Mike just two points shy of winning while I was over 40 points behind. Once he laid his first meld down, it was a race. I needed to get all the Al Capones and go out while he just needed to go out. In the end, I had seven of the eight Als and the deck ran out. Stupid game. :)
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: New to me
My Rating: 6
Mike picked this up. We played using just the basic game and it felt like a programmed exercise more than a game. Mike also has the expansion and he thinks it might fix that feeling.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 12/2016
My Rating: 8
Mike, Damian, Matt and I played this one Friday night. Everyone thought I was clearly in the lead, but I knew that Matt was probably going to be a little ahead of me. He ended up winning by a fairly large amount.
I’m looking forward to playing this again.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 4/2016
My Rating: 8
We played a game using just the base set, though it was a later printing which had the annoying clear disease cubes. It came down to the next to last turn and we needed the Government Grant to be one of the cards that was drawn. Otherwise, we would have lost.
Times Played:2
Last Month Played: 12/2016
My Rating: 8
Michael and I won our second game using five epidemics, not because Mike tried shaming me in last month’s comments, because we played before I posted. Honest!
Then I won the next time I played with Mike, Jerry, and Damian with five epidemics.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 9/2016
My Rating: 8
It was a Pandemic month! I was happy to get this version played again as well as getting the others played. We ended up with the win on this version as well.
Times Played:5
Last Month Played: 12/2016
My Rating: 8
Expansion Played:Empty Graves for one of the games.
We finished the first adventure and then started the second one, and the first scenario beat us down. The rules for the scenario could have been better explained.
The next time we got together we didn’t beat it, though we ended up with enough cards in our decks to meet the winning condition if we were able to beat the boss. This was a game where we were the victims of poor luck with the villain being at the bottom of the two decks they ended up being in during the game. We disliked the scenario so much that we called it a win and moved on to the next scenario.
Times Played:2
Last Month Played: 11/2016
My Rating: 8
I taught the game to Mike Mc., Johnathan, and Jeff.
Mike Mc. managed to score the most points and won the game, cursing me for showing him a game that he wanted to buy, breaking his resolution to buy fewer games. It was January 2. :)
Damian was also interested in the game so Mike G. dragged the game out and we played with him and Jerry before Pathfinder one Friday.
Times Played:3
Last Month Played: 11/2016
My Rating: 8
Expansion Played:Qwixx Gemixxt for two of the games.
We played this at the end of the night after being smacked down by the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game. It was a screwy game.
We also played a couple of times at the Game Depot, once with and once without the expansion.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 12/2016
My Rating: 8
Mike and I played this. I really need to bring it on a Saturday and see if that group would like it.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 7/2010
My Rating: 8
It was great to get this played again. We played using the pyramid template and I ended up with the win, being the most experienced player.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 7/2016
My Rating: 8
We played this with five players, and that was a mistake. It took a long time to get through the game and the pirates came up so fast that four of us lost all six of their cannons and the eventual winner, Mike M., was the one who had a soldier before the first round of pirates attacked.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 3/2014
My Rating: 8
Mike and I played this on Thursday evening. It had been a while since we played. I made sure I grabbed engine number 5 to get the extra coal and started using my extra worker to advance the surveyor. I petered out at the 11-point station and by the end of the game Mike’s surveyor had caught up with mine. Mike won fairly handily because he built more than me and I focused too much on laying track at the end when I should have worked on building the last station.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 10/2016
My Rating: 8
I won this four-player game, though if Matt and Damian weren’t new to it and Mike had played it recently, then the results would have been different.
Times Played:4
Last Month Played: 12/2016
My Rating: 7
It is a decent game but still a little clunky in execution. If it were in a large box I wouldn’t likely be bringing it along with me, but it is in a really good sized box to pack in the game bag so it will see more play than if it were in a larger box.
Times Played:2
Last Month Played: 12/2016
My Rating: 8
We played a couple of times during the month and Nick ordered a copy so one more person in the group owns it.
Times Played:1
Last Month Played: 12/2016
My Rating: 8
Expansion Played:Wulfsburg.
I’ll record using Wulfsburg when I play a scenario which requires components from it and I’m using the zombie wolves.
We played one of the quests from the Zombicide web site, B6: “Run, you fools!” Grom, Thalia, Bob, and Troy were the heroes and Evil Troy was the Necromancer behind the undead shenanigans. Things were progressing well, even though Evil Troy escaped once. We’d investigated one of the vaults and a couple of the buildings and moved back to the tower and we were going to explore to the other. We were set up to go there, and I was holding the stairs, ready to ignite the Dragon Bile when runner zombies got an extra activation, jumped into my spot and killed me dead. That was the end of the scenario.