What I Played Today: August 1

Core Worlds, Descent

I managed to go to the same store and play the same games with the same people. Weird. Weird thing.

The second encounter of that quest we started yesterday in Descent, which went...poorly for the Overlord. The Overlord had to kill this dragon, and instead of doing that, he decided to have the only character who could hurt the dragon to turn around and hit with a sword. That's definitely an idea...but then we tore his minion apart in a turn and stole his sword and ran away. It was sad to watch.

Then a game of Core Worlds, which I did not win. I don't know, I'm pretty cool with Core Worlds. Of the deck builders that decide having a whole lot of extra bullshit is a good idea, it's probably the best; tight game play, varied execution, lot of means to victory. Much better than Star Trek Deckbuilding Game, which the other table was playing for a good two-and-a-half hours. Man...screw that game.

What I Played Today: July 31

Core Worlds, Descent

Apparently Core Worlds is a really popular game in this group that I have latched onto, and they finally showed it to me, and it is officially alright. Not super great, just...alright. It's a deckbuilder where you build up an army to take planets, and as the game progresses you get better and better cards in play from a number of decks. Eventually you get to the final deck and it has some specific planets that give specific amount of points based on what you bought. It's interesting, especially considering I never had a deck to speak of, since I buried most of my deck and kept most of the cards I bought in play.

Then an encounter in Descent. We had to find a book and run away. There were zombies. Not sure what I think from the player side. I can see this being fun...but I'm just not sure. The conversion kit is amazing though, since everything is compatible with the new stuff.

What I Played Today: July 27

Sentinels of the Multiverse, Descent, Race for the Galaxy, D-Day Dice

The Source! It is a fun place for games. I got there early, because I always do, and some people who don't seem to have friends but play in a public place anyway (?) were setting up Sentinels of the Multiverse for two players. I told them it was impossible, so I joined them and easily killed Baron Blade. That guy is a pushover. One thing I missed the first time I fought him is when he turns, you pull out all of his mobile defense platforms, but you throw them in the trash instead of into play, which makes them useless. I don't get the point of this. But the game went well.

Then some people I knew showed up and I thought I would get to play Descent (second edition) with them. But I guess not, because the table was full. But since I had also bought the game, I set it up and played with four other people. I had a lot of misgivings about the game, about all the changes made and how little seems to be included with the game. But after playing, I think it works. The first mission is not the grandest, but the way the game works in general, it feels fun, and that's the important part. Now I just need to check out the other quests.

There was some screwing around, I don't remember if I played anything, but I did play a game of Race for the Galaxy, which I lost, like usual. I like this game, I just don't like how hard it thinks it needs to be. The iconography is so hard to describe to other people that it makes it difficult to get onto the table. But it's fast and easy and interesting. Everyone go play this dumb game.

Then I cracked my copy of D-Day Dice, which I bought that day because it was available and I have no impulse control. I was super dubious about this game as a multiplayer game, since it started as a pretty focused solo game and adding more people could only make it worse, and I was wrong! The game is actually really fun with multiple people, as you work together to keep each other alive, plan your route, determine who gets what items, it's a cool team feel. One thing we didn't do right is the trading rules, as I misread one of the specialists, so we ended up trading stuff we couldn't, but other than that...pretty fun! The tutorials were kinda dumb as heck though, as they eased us into the game a little too much. I shouldn't have to wait for the third game to get the benefits I really need, game. But enjoyable.

What I Played Today: May 28

Dominant Species, Descent

It was a full day of gaming! Dawn to dusk. A couple of long games. First, Dominant Species, which I had always wanted to try, and it is very well-designed, I like it! I had ended up early on in the tundra, which is worth crap for points by themselves, but if you manage to survive the hostile environment (the resources around the tundra are constantly in danger of being evaporated), you can make a lot of points at the end of each turn. Of course, my plan became quite obvious in the middle of the game, and the whole table turned against me and let the clear leader move into my territory. This turned out to be a bad idea when the leader managed to use a card to blow up most of my pawns and managed to jump to the lead, which was never met again. The game ended in a weird spread, with three players within a point of each other, while the winner was 30 points ahead, and I was 30 points behind. Obvious, I made a mistake…it was my fault. But whatever, it is a very strategic game and I like it quite a bit.

Descent was also played, and…my head wasn’t completely into this. I ended up with the magic user again, but the game just kinda stagnated for me after a bit. The overlord played quite well, managing to spawn and overload on us a couple of times, and when we were almost out of time (some players had a hard deadline that we were right up against), I accidentally triggered a trap that managed to drop a rock on our fighter, ending the game. It was…anticlimactic. I don’t know, I wait impatiently for the second edition, it promises to fix a lot of problems. Primarily the goddamn length. The game heavily favors the overlord making the game last as long as possible, and that just….wears on the morale of the party.

What I Played Today: Finishing Out the Year

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Battlestar Galactica, Descent, Alibi

Man, December is killer for doing things every day. Family obligations always getting in the way, parties making you a bit foggy-headed so you forget what you happened to play that day, those kinda things, so I’ll talk about four experiences that I clearly remember happening last year.

While my sisters were in town, I still got to play a lot of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood because they apparently liked watching me play it, which rocked because I still got to play a lot. It was a pretty typical experience, and the only thing that I really have to comment on is that in one match, I ran into a player who had the name “taqweenie.” Which resembles my usual tag not a small amount, and it took some small investigation to convince myself that he was not making fun of me. It’d be a really ineffective way to make fun of someone, now that I think about it.

On Thursday night, I ditched my sisters and went to play a game of Descent, which went fine. I realize that my experience with the campaign mode makes me a bit languid towards the experience, as I found myself paling. I also did die four times, so that may have influenced my lackluster experience. But I did have fun, and we won pretty effectively, mainly due to picking some top-tier dudes and an inexperienced overlord. We did set him up to kick our ass a number of times, clustering around a chest, for example, but a dude with 5 armor really got him down during a round when he had 10 monsters on the field. They continued to play after I left, which I couldn’t even imagine, because it was already midnight.

New’s Year Eve saw a couple of parties, first a gamer party, where I cracked out the new hotness that is the Battlestar Galactica: Exodus Expansion. I like some of things this adds, although it is pretty execution happy in some cases, which can cause some stupid moments. But the pursuit board really works, I think, and the added loyalty cards add a nice dimension. I’m still on the fence about the Ionion Nebula, just because I saw it go so wrong for a couple of players, but I like the idea behind it a lot. Part of the problem is that we kept adding players until we were at tipping point at 7, with a Cylon leader (who I still am not sure how to approach) and a lot of time waiting for your turn to come around again, as well as a lot of mechanics that nobody has played with. There was a weird scene when the second turn, the only Cylon on the table was randomly killed by an ally and had to reveal, but that just put the pressure on pretty thick. We were kicking ourselves throughout, losing a lot of ships and the population dropped to 4 before the sleeper phase, where, wonder of wonders, I got the Cylon card again. Having neatly already gotten every title, President, Admiral, and CAG, I proceeded to set two ships on fire and then jump us way early, prepared to use my character’s reroll to really bone everyone. It was a decisive victory for me, and even the Cylon Leader lost as she was hoping the humans would win. I’d really like to play this again with only 4 or 5 players, because it was just too hectic the way we played.

At a second party, a friend of mine brought a game called Alibi, which is a huge stinker. It’s a high-concentration Clue, without the board and instead with a hand of cards that you ask another player about, then pass off cards. The only problem is that pretty much every question you ask in going to provide absolutely useless information. As there are over 20 different card types, and each of those has three cards a piece, each with a different symbol or name. We played for about half-an-hour before we declared it quits and just flipped the cards. It is not a party game and it does not play well with a large number of people. Thumbs down.

What I Played Today: June 4

Descent: The Road to Legend

And so ends the adventures of Landric the Wise and his party of adventurers, after the world was slowly destroyed by the Overlord’s minions and the heroes decided, “Eh, so the world’s gonna end eventually. Let’s get a pizza.”

Here’s what happened. We got into the game where we left off, running around hoping to get a few more tricks before the end of the copper campaign, and in attempting to get to a place to buy some special equipment, two more cities are burned to the ground, which is depressing. So, we decided to jump down a dungeon to gain some experience and push us to the next level.

The dungeon turned out to be harder than we thought, as we lost two heroes to the forces of darkness pretty quickly. It was suddenly decided that maybe this was not the best idea, as we realized it wouldn’t uptick to the next campaign level without letting time pass, which means if we wanted to try to kill a lieutenant, we had to do it now. So we gave up on the dungeon, and went back to town, and considered the ramifications of trying to kill the lieutenants.

We realized it couldn’t be done. The Overlord would just run away. It was a option, and he wasn’t afraid of breaking the siege, he could just come back later. Then it came up that maybe we didn’t stand a chance, and maybe we were kinda done with this whole Descent campaign thing, and maybe we are all satisfied with the experience and we can stop playing now.

So we quit. Barely made it to silver level. It’s a definite boar of a game, and I’m glad we made it this far, but I’m not exactly sad to see it go. I had been starting to dread having to play the same game every couple of weeks, and now that this commitment is off my schedule, I can start thinking about playing other things. Plus, it got me closer to the people in my gaming group, so I can enjoy playing other games with them. All in all, it took a while, but I’m glad I tried it. Now I don’t have to do it again.

What I Played Today: May 28

Descent: Road to Legend

OMG I died so many times! I had a big dumb target painted on my head and the third level of this particular dungeon was ridiculously hard. The party is finally in a position of “oh shit we’re doomed.” Here’s how it went down.

We assembled for the Descent campaign as usual, and sat down to continue storming through the dungeon that we had entered to try to kill a ghost. We were in the second level, and found a library with a ghost that was so so easy to kill. It was a cakewalk, although the overlord was learning, knowing just how easily we could kill his monsters and setting up some walls of enemies to keep us from his monsters. It wasn’t that bad, although the archer got killed somehow. But it was no problem, we unlocked the door, and it was down to the next floor, where our quest was.

This quest was hard. First, there were two areas, which we hadn’t even seen yet in Descent. We jumped in to find a room full of master monsters and a good altar, which did...something, we didn’t know. There was also a long hallway that we had trouble getting around, and a real elephant of a monster who could soak a lot of damage even at cooper level that took up most of our first turn. But we handled, and although a couple of blood apes were spawned, my wizard torn them to shreds and we had the room mostly clear.

Then the bad happened. The overlord was saving up his threat, and pulled a group of beastmen DIRECTLY BEHIND ME! They jumped around the corner and killed me pretty much instantly. These guys tormented me the entire dungeon, suddenly leaping out from behind a corner and tearing my guts out. I got killed four times, three times from beastmen, and one time from some crazy dark elf. The rest of the group didn’t fare much better, as the boss of this dungeon had the worst possible ability. Most of the time, the overlord can’t spawn a lot of monsters, having to instead spent a good chuck of his currency between spawns. However, this penalty was gone while this boss stood, and he had an entire room that we couldn’t see into, as well as an ability to level up his monster to their harder versions, and we were literally drowning in monsters, who kept killing me! We eventually took out the boss, and the door popped opened, and I immediately ran for the exit, because I could not afford to die again. Luckily we were able to get out of there alive, but not without huge losses and falling very behind.

There was also a lot of rules arguing...with both the overlord and the party sniping over rules, whether we could roll the dice the way we do, whether a particular card interacts with another, whether we all had to leave through the dungeon exit or could just port back to town...it got a little tense at the table near the end. I did contribute to the mess, as I kept on bringing up alternate representations of rules that we already had clearly established. I need to stop doing that to keep things moving. Still, looking forward to getting to the next stage; we are so close to the silver level.

What I Played Today: May 15

Descent, Jenga, Time’s Up

It was back to the Descent campaign after a month off. Luckily it was easy to get back in the groove, and the adventurers started to really kick the Overlord around. We quickly ran through the dungeon we were currently in, although I ran into a bit of trouble when the Overlord kept dropping traps on me. I managed to survive though, and once we back outside the dungeon, we were prepped to beat the crap out of a lieutenant, only to realize that the Overlord really wasn’t going to let us. All the lieutenants ran away from a fair fight, breaking all the sieges that could potentially happen. Realizing we couldn’t just chase after the lieutenants all day, we entered another dungeon to kick around a Manticore, and called it quits for the day. It still seems to feel like curtains for the Overlord, as he can’t get a leg up. He even upgraded one set of monsters, only for us to tear them like paper as well. Kinda sad.

Then I went to a party and played some party games. We played Time’s Up, my favorite “guess the thing” party game, and Jenga, which was about as fun as it always is. I didn’t lose though, so I guess that’s something. One note though: organized gameplay around drunk people is pretty tough. At one point the Jenga tower went flying.

What I Played Today: April 10

Descent: The Road to Legend, Civilization Revolution

Today was Descent Campaign day, and it went a lot better...for the Overlord. The game started with a city being razed to the ground, which is just too bad, and with three lieutenants fast approaching the cities, it’s become clear that we are pretty screwed at the moment, so we’ve got to start killing some lieutenants. We went through a couple of encounters, which were pretty easy considering, although we took a few hits, and then we went into the dungeon from hell. We only barely made it through the first floor.

This was because it was a level from the Tomb of Ice expansion, an expansion specifically designed to slow the heroes down. You have ice on the ground that will randomly stop you, frost on your weapons that could potentially destroy them, and stealthy creatures that make you randomly miss. It is a bitch of an expansion, with only the addition of the feat cards making it easier for the heroes. But this particular level was practically covered with ice, with a boss monster that could frost multiple heroes at once, and the key was hidden in a block of ice that took us three turns to break through.

I also died for the first time! The overlord managed to spawn a couple of beastmen behind me, which I have absolutely no defense against, and it took two swipes from them for me to fall over. And that’s AFTER I played a card to increase my armor. Man, beastmen are scary. Hopefully next week we can get past the next two floors of the dungeon in a reasonable amount of time.

Out of boredom I also lost a couple games of Civilization Revolution. After playing Civilization IV, I’ve forgotten some of the basics of the game, mainly, that warriors are much harder to build in this version of the game, and you should really leave some defense units behind, and the nearby civilizations are a lot closer than you think. There was a moment where Germany, who had been pretty cool so far, just saw the perfect opportunity and took one of my cities in an instant. Like Germany does, the bastards. I even saw his troops moving on my position and didn’t think to reinforce because I was more used to the less expansionist-happy civilizations in the computer games.

The console version is a pretty good streamlined version of the series though. A lot less to worry about, which makes it easier to track what’s going on, and the bonuses are a lot more interesting and varied between civilizations. I’m looking forward to V, because it’s clear from the previews that they’re taking a lot of elements from this version and expanding them.

What I Played Today: March 20

Descent: Road to Legend, Rock Band, Ghost Stories, Dominion

We started the advanced campaign of Descent today, and it went really well. I was given the magic character, a slow but powerful character, and got the skill that allowed me to use another player as my starting point, which means that I was never anywhere close to the front line. I took a total of 2 points of damage the entire game. It was great. The randomly generated dungeons in the game are fairly creative; each stage has a special thing to keep track of, and they are great little vignettes. We had an odd one with two named creatures, which really helped us get quite a few experience points, but the overlord caught up with a few quick kills on the last floor. It took a long time to get that far though, so we called it quits before we could go to the market to train our next skills.

Then I got to play some Rock Band, a few new songs. It was fun, but that’s really I got to say about it. Then I got an opportunity to play Ghost Stories. I use the word opportunity because the game continues to be the most difficult and frustrating coop games I’ve ever played. In it, you play a monk in a village that is constantly being besieged by ghosts from all sides. Each turn another ghost shows up, and you can either attempt to attack it by rolling a group of dice, or use one of the villagers to get a benefit. Each monk has a special power to move more effectively, get better attacks, etc. The game is brutal, with the monsters coming every single turn and we got behind really quickly and fell apart, including the death of two monks before the village was finally overrun.

To unwind from the slaughter, we played a couple of games of Dominion. I play this game so often that it’s hard to have a new comment...although I have found that I try to trash at least four or five cards a game if I have the option to. I just like slimming down the deck, being able to get what I want. I also bought a lot of provinces in the second game...every single one in fact. No idea what I did right, but it was a pretty impressive thrashing. I only lost a province from a saboteur.

What I Played Today: March 14

Descent, Various

I played a few video games today, nothing really interesting to talk about. Passed Shadow Complex with 100% items, did some more walking around in Final Fantasy XIII, killed some fatass in Overlord, in all, just killing time until tonight’s attraction, playing an introductory game of Descent to reacquaint the group to the rules before we started the Road to Legend campaign.

We played a quick game of Dominion before getting started. I won, but I couldn’t tell you how, except that laboratories are awesome. We then took a bit to get started, picking character classes. I played a tank, a character I wasn’t familiar with who was able to move whenever they interrupted on the overlord’s turn. The dungeon was an odd one, where the whole center area was wide open and filled with ranged attackers. We started to clean up the center room and trying to decide which room we were supposed to move into, and so we picked the one closest to the door, only to be greeted with a master giant, which would take us probably a good six or seven turns to kill.

We tried to get some good gear by opening a nearby bronze box, only to find that the box didn’t contain any treasure, and we’d have to run back to town in order to get a good treasure. I was seemingly intent on destroying the giant, which was a bad plan, and so I didn’t try to run back to town until it was too late. We abandoned the giant to run across the dungeon to the other room...only to find that we couldn’t actually get into the room except through the room that giant was in. It was a terrible trap, and we had run out of time, as the overlord had played a card that drained his deck fast. So, we lost, which is fine, because at least we knew how to play, and learned about some awesome combos that could really help if we can replicate it in the campaign game. So, it was fun, if a bit of a low-morale game.