What I Played Today: December 16

Space Hulk: Death Angel, Dance Central, Thunderstone

Games with friends this evening, which was a good time. Space Angel hit the table again, because I hadn’t played in a while, and although the game seemed to be going pretty well, it started going downhill pretty fast once we plodded towards the last room, in which we lost when the broodlords appeared and sliced through the remaining six members. We managed to last longer than we thought we would, but it still was a matter of six on one, which never goes well for the Space Marines.

Then a marathon session of Dance Central to get the Dance Battle badge, which requires 10 dance battles in one session. I realized about 8 songs in that I probably could have done this alone, but we were too far in as we matched 1-for-1 on wins. I eventually flagged late in the game and started losing more than winning, but it was a fun time, if a bit exhausting.

And onward to Thunderstone, which hasn’t been played in a while. It was fine, featuring some neat cards, but it also got really awful at points because of the inclusion of death traps in the deck. There are two kinds of traps included in this little addition, pit traps, which might kill a hero from your hand if you don’t have a rogue in your party, and boulder traps, which will unequivocally kill three heroes at random from your deck. The difference in severity between the two cards is a huge fault in design to me, and the fact that there are three boulder traps included means that without a doubt, you are going to lose nine heroes. In a five player game, that is 45 heroes DEAD, in an environment that only supports 78 heroes in total, assuming no one levels a hero. That is nearly 60% of all available fighters killed by this horrible, horrible card. It also makes no sense from a flavor point of view, how is the boulder rolling into the village and slaughtering great warriors who weren’t even involved in tripping the trap. I’m sorry, but I really hate this card; in the wrong environment, it makes the game impossible to win.