What I Played Today: January 13

Castle Ravenloft, Yomi

Castle Ravenloft hit the table again, and I had forgotten how fun and tense this game is. We played the same scenario twice, mainly because we lost so badly the first time, dying twice before the big boss Strand showed up. We just got really unlucky on what monsters showed up. It’s a major point of contention that a monster will act immediately after you’re staring it in the face, meaning there’s no way to know how screwed you are when you explore a new room. All you know for sure is that it’s better than being screwed by the encounter deck, because at least you can kill a monster. If an environment or trap shows up, you can quickly find your team diving.

But the second time went a lot better, because of a couple of things. First, cleric. He always helps and it sucks how often he is almost required to keep your hit points in check. Second, our big bad was the zombie dragon, who terrifying and huge, but also not very good in tight spaces, meaning we could trap him and just take potshots until he eventually died. With his trapped, we took down Strand alone, me doing five damage on a critical hit, which really sped things up. After Strand poofed into mist, it was simply a matter of shooting the zombie dragon in a barrel, and we won.

I also picked up Yomi at the store, which is supposed to be a fast-paced game that simulates a battle in a fighting game. I’ll have to take the designer’s word for it. It has a bunch of weirdness. The name is stupid when he describes what it means, the rules page is too short with a lot of ambiguous questions, we had to look up how to do combos because it was not clear at all, and it was just a bit plodding, but eventually we broke through.

Each player gets a standard poker deck that has been modified with way too many words. Each card has two abilities, one on each side, and it can get overwhelming. But once you figure out what decision you need to make each turn, it works pretty well. You play a card face down, and then reveal. Whoever wins the paper-rocks-scissors of attack types deals damage and can go into a combo, playing additional cards to add damage. Afterwards, you can discard some cards from your hand to draw aces into it, and then you go again until somebody dies. I kinda like it, and if only the full game didn’t cost a full hundo (and I would be rebuying stuff I already have), I would more readily consider picking it all up.