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.
Showing posts with label Castle Ravenloft. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Castle Ravenloft. Show all posts
What I Played Today: October 6
Dominion, Castle Ravenloft, Summoner Wars
Played a couple of games of Dominion tonight, using mostly the base set and Intrigue. I took away the first game easily. The second game was closer, but I managed to get some sweet cards from the Black Market such as the Smithy that my opponent couldn’t use and complained about every time I played it. (To be fair, I was pretty excited every time I saw the Smithy.)
Then it was time to go into Castle Ravenloft. First was the gauntlet of death, in which we had to kill 20 monsters before they poured out of the dungeon and killed the townsfolk. We did pretty well, mainly being held that my rogue’s dagger barrage recharged twice, which helped me kill a great many monsters. We completely ignored one wing of the dungeon though, which made the last few monsters hard to spawn without spawning way more than we could handle, but it went well.
And then we fought the Howling Hag. I like the design of this level a lot…each hero is stuck in a random corner of a 5x5 grid of tiles, and must work their way to the center to try and stop a ritual, while each new tile revealed could bring the hag herself down on the group. She doesn’t hit very hard, but she pushes and teleports players away, which is a problem when you can only attempt to stop the ritual if you start and end your turn on the center tile. It’s clever, and requires a lot of teamwork and a bit of luck. Unfortunately both adventurers met their end when a crushing wall trap spawned in the center room…and of course the hag misses with both her attacks so we die against the wall.
Then a game of Summoner Wars, and I continue to not get it. Oh, I understand the game, but the universal appeal of this is not universal to me. The game is sticky, in which your forces and your special events are based on what you draw, but you are going to go through your full deck every time, and it’ll come down to who ran out of cards in the best position. Let’s just skip the middle of the game then if that’s all that matters. I played the low cost goblins, and unfortunately drew all my 0-cost forces early, where they were slammed by the dwarven forces. I accidently buried my two berserkers in order to ramp up to buying the Eater, in hopes of getting him next to the Dwarf summoner and unloading with a goblin rush (increases dice rolled based on number of allies next to target), but my Eater got walled in constantly, unable to keep the murder up at the end of the game, and I lost badly.
Played a couple of games of Dominion tonight, using mostly the base set and Intrigue. I took away the first game easily. The second game was closer, but I managed to get some sweet cards from the Black Market such as the Smithy that my opponent couldn’t use and complained about every time I played it. (To be fair, I was pretty excited every time I saw the Smithy.)
Then it was time to go into Castle Ravenloft. First was the gauntlet of death, in which we had to kill 20 monsters before they poured out of the dungeon and killed the townsfolk. We did pretty well, mainly being held that my rogue’s dagger barrage recharged twice, which helped me kill a great many monsters. We completely ignored one wing of the dungeon though, which made the last few monsters hard to spawn without spawning way more than we could handle, but it went well.
And then we fought the Howling Hag. I like the design of this level a lot…each hero is stuck in a random corner of a 5x5 grid of tiles, and must work their way to the center to try and stop a ritual, while each new tile revealed could bring the hag herself down on the group. She doesn’t hit very hard, but she pushes and teleports players away, which is a problem when you can only attempt to stop the ritual if you start and end your turn on the center tile. It’s clever, and requires a lot of teamwork and a bit of luck. Unfortunately both adventurers met their end when a crushing wall trap spawned in the center room…and of course the hag misses with both her attacks so we die against the wall.
Then a game of Summoner Wars, and I continue to not get it. Oh, I understand the game, but the universal appeal of this is not universal to me. The game is sticky, in which your forces and your special events are based on what you draw, but you are going to go through your full deck every time, and it’ll come down to who ran out of cards in the best position. Let’s just skip the middle of the game then if that’s all that matters. I played the low cost goblins, and unfortunately drew all my 0-cost forces early, where they were slammed by the dwarven forces. I accidently buried my two berserkers in order to ramp up to buying the Eater, in hopes of getting him next to the Dwarf summoner and unloading with a goblin rush (increases dice rolled based on number of allies next to target), but my Eater got walled in constantly, unable to keep the murder up at the end of the game, and I lost badly.
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.
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 14
Castle Ravenloft, Saboteur
Went to game night tonight, and played a couple of board games. I walked in with my Castle Ravenloft board game and a drew a bit of attention, so I set it up and started playing. The group seemed to enjoy the game, but they did observe that it was pretty brutal, which is just the nature of the beast with both coop games and Ravenloft. We did pretty well, considering, although it took a remarkable amount of persuading for the cleric to actually heal me even after I had died. (No, man, we still got healing surges.) But a well-placed fireball took out the majority of the monsters we needed to kill all the objective monsters, and so with one last shot, we won with full healing surges. The response was mostly positive, if a bit muted.
We then moved on to Saboteur, one of the first games to really use a hidden traitor mechanic, in which you play a team of dwarves trying (or not) to get some gold by digging paths. But there is a lot in the way, with a bunch of dead-end cards, an ability to take out your opponents, and the game just generally being a jerk. The non-traitors never won a round when we played, because even when we identified the saboteurs and shut them down, we still didn’t have the resources we needed to get to the gold.
There was a particularly good case of a saboteur in the third round, in which one of the players just started throwing down broken gear, loudly proclaiming that he couldn’t let the player in the lead (his wife) win. He seems so intense about it, and I just assumed he was just being a bit of a jerk. I was the saboteur that round, and I was playing the game I usually did when I was in the traitor role; playing it smooth and pretending to be helpful until the best time to screw everyone. He was already busy breaking everyone’s gear, so I just waited until a late moment to break his gear and the gear of the fifth guy, leaving everyone but me unable to add to the field. However, after some fixes, he threw down another breakage on someone who was clearly not a traitor. He had me fooled, I just assumed he was being unsportsmanlike, but turns out he was on my side, and we prevented the miners from winning for the third time in a row.
I do think that other games have definitely done this mechanic better (Battlestar 4 Life), because there are plenty of situations where the people who are trying to complete the goal just won’t be able to do it because they don’t get the resources they need, but it was still a simple way to do the traitor mechanic. Could be simpler, but early games have it rough.
(NOTE: I realized when posting that I already had the game Saboteur on my labels list, which I found odd since this is the first time when I played the game about the dwarves. Then I remembered the game about Nazis in Paris for the Xbox, which is completely different. So let it be stated that this one is about dwarves.)
Went to game night tonight, and played a couple of board games. I walked in with my Castle Ravenloft board game and a drew a bit of attention, so I set it up and started playing. The group seemed to enjoy the game, but they did observe that it was pretty brutal, which is just the nature of the beast with both coop games and Ravenloft. We did pretty well, considering, although it took a remarkable amount of persuading for the cleric to actually heal me even after I had died. (No, man, we still got healing surges.) But a well-placed fireball took out the majority of the monsters we needed to kill all the objective monsters, and so with one last shot, we won with full healing surges. The response was mostly positive, if a bit muted.
We then moved on to Saboteur, one of the first games to really use a hidden traitor mechanic, in which you play a team of dwarves trying (or not) to get some gold by digging paths. But there is a lot in the way, with a bunch of dead-end cards, an ability to take out your opponents, and the game just generally being a jerk. The non-traitors never won a round when we played, because even when we identified the saboteurs and shut them down, we still didn’t have the resources we needed to get to the gold.
There was a particularly good case of a saboteur in the third round, in which one of the players just started throwing down broken gear, loudly proclaiming that he couldn’t let the player in the lead (his wife) win. He seems so intense about it, and I just assumed he was just being a bit of a jerk. I was the saboteur that round, and I was playing the game I usually did when I was in the traitor role; playing it smooth and pretending to be helpful until the best time to screw everyone. He was already busy breaking everyone’s gear, so I just waited until a late moment to break his gear and the gear of the fifth guy, leaving everyone but me unable to add to the field. However, after some fixes, he threw down another breakage on someone who was clearly not a traitor. He had me fooled, I just assumed he was being unsportsmanlike, but turns out he was on my side, and we prevented the miners from winning for the third time in a row.
I do think that other games have definitely done this mechanic better (Battlestar 4 Life), because there are plenty of situations where the people who are trying to complete the goal just won’t be able to do it because they don’t get the resources they need, but it was still a simple way to do the traitor mechanic. Could be simpler, but early games have it rough.
(NOTE: I realized when posting that I already had the game Saboteur on my labels list, which I found odd since this is the first time when I played the game about the dwarves. Then I remembered the game about Nazis in Paris for the Xbox, which is completely different. So let it be stated that this one is about dwarves.)
What I Played Today: August 30
Castle Ravenloft: The Board Game
After about a month of waiting for the game to actually get released already, I finally got the Castle Ravenloft board game, and they did a pretty good job, I think. The system has been crushed down to its simplest element, roll a dice, compare it to a number, and then see what happens, and the game controls pretty well. The production value is just right, although the box is pretty tall…it almost looks like they didn’t plan to include so much stuff.
It does work better with a party, I found after a first foray solo, in which my character woke up next to the good Baron and knew he needed to get the hell out of there. Unfortunately, the level was crawling with monsters and I couldn’t even get close to killing them fast enough to avoid them, and my ranger eventually fell to the onslaught. It was at this point that I realized this game was vicious, which is good for a coop.
But the two player game went a lot better. Sure, there were still a lot of monsters on the board, but with two people to take care of them, and the fact that they weren’t attacking every single turn, really helped. It was still tough, as we both sat with 1 hit point when we finished the game (I had a means to heal us, but still.) It was tense, and it was with a couple of cancellations of the vicious encounter cards that helped us win the day. (That’s a good mechanic, by the way. Using experience to get rid of potential threats.)
There are some issues with the rules, as they went with pretty instead of clear…even though they are short, I still had issues with what happened when and if I was setting up correctly, which is unfortunate. But I like it, and I like all the additional goodies that I got that go with each of the adventures. It looks expandable all to hell, which I like, and I think I’ll be playing it more for sure.
After about a month of waiting for the game to actually get released already, I finally got the Castle Ravenloft board game, and they did a pretty good job, I think. The system has been crushed down to its simplest element, roll a dice, compare it to a number, and then see what happens, and the game controls pretty well. The production value is just right, although the box is pretty tall…it almost looks like they didn’t plan to include so much stuff.It does work better with a party, I found after a first foray solo, in which my character woke up next to the good Baron and knew he needed to get the hell out of there. Unfortunately, the level was crawling with monsters and I couldn’t even get close to killing them fast enough to avoid them, and my ranger eventually fell to the onslaught. It was at this point that I realized this game was vicious, which is good for a coop.
But the two player game went a lot better. Sure, there were still a lot of monsters on the board, but with two people to take care of them, and the fact that they weren’t attacking every single turn, really helped. It was still tough, as we both sat with 1 hit point when we finished the game (I had a means to heal us, but still.) It was tense, and it was with a couple of cancellations of the vicious encounter cards that helped us win the day. (That’s a good mechanic, by the way. Using experience to get rid of potential threats.)
There are some issues with the rules, as they went with pretty instead of clear…even though they are short, I still had issues with what happened when and if I was setting up correctly, which is unfortunate. But I like it, and I like all the additional goodies that I got that go with each of the adventures. It looks expandable all to hell, which I like, and I think I’ll be playing it more for sure.
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