What I Played Today: March 12

Sentinels of the Multiverse, Dungeons Petz, Death Angel

For some reason, people tend to really like Sentinels of the Multiverse. It's a pretty fine game, and every time I show it off, people like it. This was a two player game, with each of us controlling two heroes each, and we just happened to pick the two of the fiddliest heroes there are, Visionary and Absolute Zero. Now, Zero can do a lot of damage if you give him a chance, and we did alright. It got a little rough near the end, in which Baron Blade started swinging like mad, and I thought three heroes died in one volley, until I realized that he had been hit with a debuff. This game needs tokens or dice or something. There are not enough materials.

Then a game of Dungeon Petz, which I lost the heck out of. It got bad when during round two, a player managed to win both the exhibition with a fun pet, then turned around and sold it for 18 points, and it just went downhill from there. I think I just start allowing the variant in which a card of a specific color will always provide the resource attached to it if you want, because when you go all in on a particular monster hoping to sweep an exhibition and don't get any of the icons you needs? Blows.

Then I played a game of Death Angel, in which we lost, but only by one die roll! That's a victory in my book. We started losing guys way too early, and one of my teams was knocked out by round 2, which was not helpful. There was a great bit where we traveled twice in one turn, first into a room with an artifact, then into the final room almost immediately when the genestealers spawned. "Hey guys, there's an artifact over there that might help -" "NO TIME! RUN!"

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.

What I Played Today: October 5

Saboteur, Coloretto, Space Hulk: Death Angel, Zombie Dice, Apples to Apples

Spent some time at the game shop tonight, playing a lot of quick, light games, and also Death Angel. Started with a rousing game of Zombie Dice while waiting for people to get their act together so we could play some games. I lost. Then I put Death Angel on the table and tried to explain the game as much as it needed to be explained, which my fellow players thought wasn’t quite enough. So, it was touch and go for a bit, and with one team getting tagged out early in room 2 (which is just unfortunate, luckily we were in a game shop so there were other things going on), we struggled in vain but eventually fell in the last room. Too bad, it seemed to leave a bit of a bad taste in the player’s mouth.

Then we got out Coloretto, which I had heard about but hadn’t actually played, and it’s not bad. It’s a light game where you do one of two things on your turn, draw a card and add it to a stack, or take a stack. Each card is one of seven colors, or wild, or just free points. When the deck finally runs out, you score three colors based on a Fibonacci scale, and the rest of the cards you have are worth negative points. It’s a bit clever, and the strategy required in larger games is a bit tense. We played a couple of games, and I think I won one, but I definitely felt like I was losing throughout.

The there was a game and a half of Saboteur, and against all the odds in the world, I was the saboteur every single round. Worse yet, I also lost every single round. I don’t know if we were playing it wrong last time but man was it all too easy for the good dwarves to dig their way to the gold. There just seemed to be a lot more straight and narrow cards…I doubt this is true, but maybe the decks were actually different? Naw, couldn’t be.

Then, as a mild sedative to end the night, we played some Apples to Apples, and the new player scored maybe eight greens, while everyone topped out at two max. He is a master of psychology, that one. There was a weird moment when the card to match was “Irritating,” and both the cards George W. Bush and Democrats hit the table. It was a bit uncomfortable because everyone at the table could count at least half the players as relative strangers, and everyone’s political alignment wasn’t exactly obvious. Luckily, the guesser took the high road and invalidated both of them. Still, a bit tense.

What I Played Today: October 2

Sam and Max: Reality 2.0, Space Hulk: Death Angel, Castle Ravenloft, Neuroshima Hex

Finished up the next episode of Sam and Max. It has a solid middle, but the final part of the game takes place in a callback situation, which was a neat bonus, but not exactly the most exciting conclusion. Still, I look forward to completing the season soon.

Also did some two-player gaming tonight. Space Hulk: Death Angel hit the table, and it went really well. Well, in terms of the game being intense…we didn’t win, but we were three good die rolls away from it. The game is vicious, but we saw some interesting cards and it was pretty tense. Of course, Wolverine continued to rock the joint, although his brazen attacks got him killed…twice. But I think the game went well, although I did take a bit too much control of the game.

Then it was into the Castle Ravenloft, as we chose to fight the Frankenstein, in which you can defeat him by either killing him, or pacifying him by showing him some random objects. We collected the items we needed quickly, and although we constantly got the strongest monsters, the Lance of Faith from the cleric and having the Holy Avenger made him a powerhouse. We got lucky with the items (“Show him some fire! That will soothe the savage beast!”) and we won with one healing surge left. I also like the Frankenstein’s abilities…he works to try to get to the entrance instead of concentrating on the players, and if he gets there, he deals damage to players every turn, which is a neat mechanic. Our Frankenstein didn’t make it too far before we calmed him down.

Then a light game of Neuroshima Hex, in which I was doing so well before my army ran out of steam and collapsed. It’s interesting what can happen based on how your “deck” is shuffled, and while I got a lot of strong focus early on, eventually attrition took out the forces I needed to get the job done, and got taken out by the very powerful net men that my opponent had. I also just really like the mechanic where you are forced to sacrifice some of your forces each turn…so that there is some variety even though the armies are set.

What I Played Today: September 27

Rowboat, Space Hulk: Death Angel, Cortex

The group that I failed to get together with yesterday (because of sleep) got together tonight, and we played some games. I showed up a bit early after work, and we played one of those games that was being demoed last Tuesday. I instantly wanted to hate it, even though it isn’t that bad. Oh, it’s not good, but it’s not terrible. It’s this weird trick-taking game…you lay out 4-12 cards (based on the suits), then each player gets the same number of cards, and goes through the line, playing cards that match the suit and try to get a high number. The game gets weird where, after you get your hand, you have to bet how many you think you’ll win. Go over, and you get some points, but also a liability that could lose you a lot of point, go under, and you lose a lot of points. First to 200 wins. It’s a weird dynamic, intriguing. Then there are these stupid one-time play cards, that let you instant-win a hand, or look at your opponent’s hand, and damn it feels like too much. It’s also a game that could obviously be played with a standard deck, but they made their own with dolphins and oars and whatnot. Okay, I’m siding on dumb here, but the betting mechanic is pretty interesting.

Got to play Death Angel with some more people, two others, which meant that we had the full complement of Space Marines, and after some fumbling with the rules, it went a lot better for the bros. Having a lot more teams to fire or activate doors and control panels really helps, and while having more guys makes the groups of genestealers pile up really quickly, we took advantage of some abilities that allowed us to stack up the aliens, and then shut them down. The fact that the blippiles are the same size late in the game no matter how many marines are in play, but they come pouring out in groups of 5, meaning that you’re traveling more often. We won after acquiring a huge pile of 17 genestealers, but pushing the button to launch them into space.

Then we played a one-shot of a RPG using the Cortex system, which I hadn’t realized was so versatile when I used it when I played the Firefly RPG. For one thing, the character creation system is fast…we had character ready to roll in five minutes. You just plugged some numbers into your attributes, some numbers into your skills, and pick some complications and an equal number of benefits, and bam, character. The conceit was the zombie apocalypse, and I played a lazy bike messenger, whose bike became the hugest liability on the planet when you are traveling in groups. It started simple in the suburbs, with a kid biting his mom and then it escalates greatly (my character vomits), then we went to a hospital and found a couple of survivors (my character vomits), and then we were on the road, heading north out of the city. There was this odd moment where we were free of zombies for about two hours as we calmly and quietly made our way to a cabin in the woods (my character stepped up and rode his bike to get a tire), but eventually the owner of the cabin showed up, and the small town nearby became overrun and we had to handle it. (my character vomits). I had to go home right then, so the bike messenger is probably dead now, but it was an interesting time, especially playing a character that is hugely uninterested in fighting zombies, or even helping.

What I Played Today: September 18

Minecraft, Space Hulk: Death Angel

Apparently there’s this hot new indie game out there, getting the attention of Penny Arcade and a lot of other sites, and the amount of attention it is getting is enough to cause the website hosting it to go down and the owner to say, “Yeah, okay, fine, you can all play for free this weekend only, but stop wrecking my shit.” So, download and try I did!

The game is Minecraft, which creates a huge world around you full of trees and mountains and pigs, and basically says, okay, go at it. You can pretty much destroy everything, and so you start doing so quickly...tearing apart trees to get wood, digging huge holes into mountains to create a little home for yourself, getting ores and various other sundries to prepare yourself against the creatures of darkness that come out at night.

It’s a interesting sandbox game, there is so much space to explore, and I have spent hours already, digging a huge dungeon that I live in, just going deeper and deeper to see what is down there. (Answer: more rocks) I am still unnecessarily terrified of the night creatures, but mainly because their voices carry through the very walls...you can hear them even when you’re safely 300 feet underground digging hallways. It’s distracting. I did find this weird cave system which leads to a magma waterfall, so that’s neat. I’ll probably try to play it as best I can while it’s still free, but I already find myself saying, “Okay, now what do I do?”

I also picked up Space Hulk: Death Angel, the coop card game by Fantasy Flight that I was really excited about. I played three times today, and I must say I really like it. The choices you have to make each turn are simple, but deep, the mechanics make a lot of sense, and the overwhelming dread builds slowly as your space marines get picked off one by one. I haven’t won yet, mainly because once you lose a space marine, it’s a downhill slope from there, but I keep wanting to try, see what I can do better, see how the different teams synergize, and already want more cards. Which I’m afraid I never get, because it’s a Silverline game, but it also has apparently sold out already, going for over $100 on Amazon for some reason, so maybe it’ll be pretty popular. But I want to play with friends now, because there’s an added “Hey, better you than me,” mechanic to some of the events.