Author: The DM

I’ve only had a copy of Arkham Horror for a short time.  Our friend Dave (Morik) has brought his collection over several times, and I’ve joined in games varying anywhere from 4 to 8 players.

I’ve had a few opportunities to play this recently.  A few days after the birth of my daughter, I found I had a little bit of free time, but nobody to play a game with.  I broke out the base Arkham Horror (which is all that I own.  For now, that’s enough) and tried it single player.  I’m beginning to think I would have been better off controlling at least two heroes to play.

I selected my hero randomly, Harvey Walters, and the threat, Yig.  The game went well, and I had a lot of fun.  That’s not to say I survived.  In fact, I was slaughtered rather handily.  I’m using an app to track the encounter cards, as that speeds the game up a lot.  I survived a lot longer than I expected, as everything went wrong rather quickly.

A few days later, three of us got together and played.  Travis documented this play pretty well, and I’ll not repeat him.  We had fun, and we made a few mistakes, but we did triumph.

On Tabletop Day (March 30), Jamie and I got together with a few good friends of ours, and decided to give Arkham Horror a shot.  Our first mistake was trying to start the game so late in the evening.  We never got ahead of the curve, and 6 gates opened, awakening Ithaqua.  We were so tired, we conceded that we could not defeat the elder god, and called it a night.

Last night, however, I got together with Jeff, James, Travis and Robert, and we decided to tackle mighty Cthulhu.  It was a close battle, but a few random bits of luck were on our side, including an environment effect that kept the terror level from rising that stuck around for a while.  We sealed our sixth gate with 3 empty spaces left on Cthulhu’s doom track.

I enjoy this game a lot, but I think I’m ready for a short break from it.  Next week, I think we might stick with the theme, and play Mansions of Madness or Elder Sign, probably Mansions of Madness.

In an only peripherally related note, I haven’t mentioned the Call of Cthulhu LCG in this post.  I don’t own it, but learned it several months ago.  Shane Porter, a newcomer to Legends, brought a copy in and let us borrow it.  Jeff and I played it a handful of times while we had it.

Shane returned several times, and joined us for quick games, frequently before heading to work, and he became a regular friendly face.  We ran into him at GenCon, where he was attending with some (if not all) of his children.

Shane left home on February 8 2013, to go to work, and never arrived.  He has been missing ever since.  His car was found near the river, and I fear the worst.  His situation has been on my mind a lot for the last several days.  Our thoughts are with him and his family, and we hope he returns home safely.

As I play the games that I list as unplayed, I’ll go back and talk about them.  Or if I add any games alphabetically that are earlier than my current point in the list, I’ll at least make note of them.

That’s what this post is.  I have added Aloha: The Spirit of Hawaii and a couple of the ARC: The Time Travel game decks to my collection.  I’ve not played either of these, but I’ve watched review videos.  I’m kinda looking forward to trying ARC.  Not so sure about Aloha yet.

Anyone have insight on these two games?

Game: Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small
Publisher: Z-Man Games
Designer: Uwe Rosenberg

And I’m back from my brief, self-imposed, blogging hiatus.  As noted in my previous post, I’ve now welcomed my daughter into the world, and can once again breathe normally.  This all came up on us pretty quick at the end, as they decided to try to induce her two weeks early.  The idea was, we’d go in on Tuesday night, they’d give her some meds, and let her rest until Wednesday morning.  Then they’d begin the induction.

To that end, I took several small games with us to the hospital, including Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small.  I’d only gotten it a week before, and we hadn’t gotten to play it.  Agricola is one of those games that’s “Been on our list” since 2009.  We’ve just never gotten around to getting it.  So when I was finally able to pick up a copy of this two-player spin off, I was happy to do so.

We didn’t get to play any games on Tuesday night.  There just wasn’t a good place to play anything, so we both amused ourselves with some IOS games, including starting a game of Stone Age that we’ve now been playing off and on for the last two weeks.  Wednesday, the opportunity just never presented itself.  The induction quickly turned into an emergency Cesarean Section, so I’ve been officially a parent since 12:21 that day.

Needless to say, the last two weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind.  We came home on Friday, and went through a few minor tribulations (minor unless you’re a first time parent).

*ahem* Sorry about that… 275 words in, and I’ve barely talked about the game at hand.  We finally got to play Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small last night.   The game went well, despite a few distractions.  The distractions made it a bit difficult for her to follow the rules, as I tried to explain them while learning them at the same time.

The game takes one of the elements of Agricola, and makes it a game in itself.  In A:ACBaS you are building a farm to contain animals.  It, like Agricola, is a worker placement game, where you spend your workers to complete tasks, hopefully before your opponent takes the actions that you want to take that turn.  The general goal is to fence in pastures and build stables to hold as many animals of four different kinds you can, over eight turns.

It may have just been the distractions we were having, but I feel the rulebook kind of starts in the wrong place.  It starts out telling you how to fence in the animals, before it tells you how you even get the fences.  Again, I need to look through it again, to get a feel for how concise it is.

Like most first games, where nobody has played it before, it was a little rocky, with us both taking actions that didn’t really benefit us, and building a few fences that ended up not making sense.  Despite that, by the 4th turn, we had a pretty good handle on what we were doing, and enjoyed it quite a bit.

The games has 4 types of animal, 3 types of construction resources. As each turn progresses, you add these animals and resources to the game board.  As your workers take various positions, you claim those animals and/or resources.  You can also take actions to build fences and buildings, provided you’ve collected the resources to do so.  The larger the pasture you’ve built with those fences, the more animals you can hold.  At the end of each turn, if you have enough of each type animal (2), they breed, giving you an extra animal.

After eight turns (signified by running out of extra fences in the supply, a simple mechanism that I really like), the game ends, and you total your points. You get bonuses for having large herds, lose points for not diversifying, and also get points for the buildings you have built, as well.

Even with the learning curve, we completed the game in about 40 minutes, and enjoyed it quite a bit.  I won, by about 4 points, but we missed one of the details of scoring bonus points for animals, so really, it could have been anyone’s game.

I’m a big fan of worker placement, but I feel it can be a tricky beast at 2 players.  It’s hard to limit the actions available in a game made for 4 players, with only 2 people playing.    This game, being designed for 2 players, seems to hit that contention fairly well.  There are two ways to get stone, and two ways to get wood, but one is notably better than the other.  There are more actions available on the board than there are total workers, so some unused actions will build up as turns progress.  This may not sound very limiting, but several of the actions will gain you animals, and if you don’t have a completed pasture built for those animals, they’ll just “run away”, leaving you with a wasted worker.

We enjoyed this, and look forward to playing it again, now that we have a better understanding of what we’re doing from the start.  I will add comments to this post as we get more plays, with any additional thoughts.

[bgg id=119890]

I would like to introduce you to the next generation of
potential gamers. 🙂 Meet Betty Jean

So, I’ve been bad about keeping up on my journal of my collection. I do have an excuse, though. The last few weeks, I’ve not gotten to do much gaming. I’ve been getting our house ready for a new addition.

As I type this, I’m sitting in the hospital room, while they get everything ready to induce my wife. Our first child, a daughter, is on the way.

After things calm down a bit, I will be resuming my thoughts on each game in my collection. A note about my posting order. I’m going through my collection alphabetically, but will backtrack when I add games that I’ve already passed alphabetically. So, in theory, my next review will be Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small. I picked this up specifically to play with my wife, and while I have a captive audience, I’m gonna try to get in a game or two.

More soon, and I’ll warn you, there will be pictures of my daughter.

It’s amazing to see Apples to Apples as such a mainstream thing.  I remember when Out of the Box and John Kovalic first released the little party game.  We tried it right about the time it was releasing at a trade show thirteen years ago or so, and was taught the game by one creators. (more…)

I owned a bit of Netrunner in the 90s, but I don’t think I ever played it.  We didn’t have much luck pushing any CCGs that weren’t Magic or Pokemon.  I have no idea what happened to my collection. (more…)

I heard about [bgt id=39339] shortly before they announced Android: Netrunner.  I was attracted to the future noir setting, and liked the idea of a murder mystery where the actual “solution” to the game isn’t predetermined.  It took quite a while to get it to the table, and sadly, I’ve only gotten to play it once.

In Android, you play one of several detectives set in a dystopian future.  You’re investigating a recent murder, but you have personal baggage to deal with as well.  Each character has its own flavor, its own personal quests, and its own way of dealing with the investigation.  Each player is also given two suspect cards.  One is the suspect that they are trying to prove is guilty, and one they’re trying to prove is innocent.  As you find evidence, you may choose which suspect it applies to, and if it’s incriminating or exonerating evidence.  As the game progresses, you will draw cards that will either further your own quests, or hinder your opponents progress and quests.  Each character has a balance “light and dark” that affects what types of cards you can play.

The game has a fairly high learning curve and there are a lot of bits and tokens to keep track of.  Our first play was a bit rocky, but I enjoyed it quite a bit.  I’m not sure Jeff and Allen enjoyed it quite as much, but I would certainly like to play it again. Hopefully, I can get this to the table again.

I very much enjoyed the setting of Android, and like it equally well in the Netrunner game.  I hope to play Infiltration soon, and also would like to pick up some of the novels.

The games on this morning’s “Unplayed Games” list have both been “kinda played”.  Each was picked up after a  brief demo, and never got played after that.

Before I got heavily interested in board gaming as a hobby, I was primarily an RPG guy.  One of the perks of being a game retailer is the “trade show”.  Each year, we visit the opposite corner of the state, and spend a weekend with other retailers and game manufacturers.  In 2008 (I believe), one game that I tried at the trade show was [bgt id=336568], which led us to pick up a copy.  It’s never made it back out of the box.  The demo of the game was fun enough, but I’ve never found anyone interested in trying it.

At GenCon 2010, we spent a lot of time at the Mayfair section of the distributor area.  Their demo program at GenCon that year let you get various “resource badges” for demoing different types of games.  We spent the better part of an afternoon there, playing Gangsters, Journey to the Center of the Earth and several other games.

While we were there, I only every SAW Atlantis played, but we picked it up because it looked like fun and it seemed like a good two-player game.  We punched out all the pieces while waiting for a “Celebrity D&D Session”, and I don’t think we’ve ever opened the box since.

As I work my way through the list of games, I will be making posts like this to make note of games that I haven’t played yet.  I will also be noting if I plan to play them and/or any other thoughts I have on them.  They won’t be full reviews, though.

Advanced Civilization/Civilization – I picked this up earlier this year, and it’s been high on my list to play.  It’s difficult to find 5 to 7 people who have 6+ hours to play, though, so I’ve not had a lot of luck getting this to the table.  I found a website at rol-play.com and joined 3 online games there.  I’ve discovered that I’m terrible at it, but that’s ok.  It’s a fun game, but I’m leaning toward this one not making it to the table.   I think I’d rather play 2 or 3 shorter games with friends.

Advanced Heroquest – I loved HeroQuest in my youth.  It was one of my first introductions into RPGs and board games.  Over the years, it was replaced by Warhammer Quest and more recently Descent Second Edition.  Advanced Heroquest was traded to me by a friend a few years ago, and I’ve never gotten around to playing it.  I’m not sure it’ll ever make it to my table, but I like the look of it on my shelf.

I would love to hear peoples’ opinions on these two games, as I’d be happy to play them, but I really want to optimize my gaming this year.