What I Played Today: March 6

Speedrunners, One Night Werewolf, The Last Banquet, Avalon

There was a game night! I went and ate some pizza and had fun. Speedrunners was being played pretty much throughout the evening. The game is fine. You run. Although now that the game is more popular, there are user-made levels you can choose from, and guess what, they are all terrible. Just universally not very good. And of course the most popular one involves a dick joke, because gamers are the worst.

A couple of games of One Night Werewolf, one of which I lost because a revealer saw me and I happened to be a werewolf, and one in which I THOUGHT someone was definitely a werewolf, only to find out that the robber just kinda lied their way out of the whole mess. I did manage to find the Tanner pretty easily though.

Then I finally got to try The Last Banquet, which everyone except me ended up liking! The Last Banquet is a large party game where everyone splits up into two teams and tries to position their assassin next to the king using any number of powers that move people around. For what it is, the game is fine, a fun party game with a lot of movement and some goofy roleplaying. As a game, there is not enough substance. There's very little that the king can do to prevent getting killed, every person can take at most one or two actions, and everyone seemed to take a long time figuring out which one of two actions they were going to do. It also is a pain to play at a real table, since there is so much motion. I think it's best suited to be played with a circle of chairs, so that motion through the middle is easily handled. But, for people who don't play a lot of games, this is a really good bet, I think. If you happen to run icebreakers for a company, consider The Last Banquet.

Then a fretfully stupid 5-player game of Avalon. I figured out what the badguy pairing HAD to be to make sense, but for some reason didn't act on it in the final turn, because I got confused, so the spies won. As they always do in a five player game. Never play Avalon with five players.

What I Played Today: January 3

Screencheat, Speedrunners, The Resistance, One Night Werewolf, Coup

I went to hang out and play games today! Console games plus lying games is good for all!

Screencheat is a shooting game in which all the avatars are invisible, so you need to look at other people's screens in order to figure out where they are. It also features a number of goofy weapons, such as a laser crossbow and a hobby horse. I like this game because the maps are bright and colorful (so you can tell what quadrant someone is in) and it's just kinda silly. I managed to figure out the best way to win King of the Hill. Because nobody knows where I am, the best strategy is just to trundle into the hill and swing your arms wildly, hoping you kill whoever wanders in there. Works wonders.

Also played Speedrunners, which is a...racing game? In which the avatars run as fast as possible around a circular obstacle course, and anyone who doesn't keep up with the lead player eventually gets eliminated when they fall of the screen. Last one who managed to stay on the screen wins the round, best to three wins. You have jumping and ducking and a weird grappling hook at your disposal, as well as any items you pick up Mario Cart style. Once we figured out how to play, it became really fun, as the level design is really good, providing a solid catch-up mechanic that doesn't feel forced with alternate paths with better resources and tons of obstacles that fade the first time they are hit. Plus, once someone is eliminated, the screen starts to slowly shrink, making death that much closer. It's pretty clever, a real hit at the party, although the music can get a little annoying.

There is an expansion to The Resistance, which basically adds a bunch of stuff that is in Avalon, but ALSO some new stuff, like the Hunter module, which adds a chief player to each side, and a hunter that is trying to find the chief, as well as a few new rules, which adds a ton of information to be gathered and hidden. We stumbled through a couple of games, trying to understand what exactly these rules mean, and see what everyone should lie about. I was a spy in the second game, and I bungled it up pretty severely when, in an attempt to try to secure the special victory condition because it sounded fun, I let the second mission pass and ended up outing myself when I had to fight to get on the team during the third mission. Whoops. Next time I should just play normally.

Also played some One Night Werewolf, which is fun! We didn't play with a lot of new roles that came in Daybreak, because we had several new players, but the new roles seem really fun! The witch is fun, as they force one more role change, and the Prince is a nice odd variant that offers a good cover role. I managed to blow the game wide open in the second game when I revealed that I was no longer a werewolf, that guy was, and we bagged both wolves. There was going to be a third game, but then pizza showed up. Boo pizza.

And a few games of Coup, which I guess I have never spoken about! I have played so many games of it that I thought it was out forever! So, there is a deck of five roles, three copies of each, and you are dealt a hand of two cards. You are trying to eliminate all other players by revealing their hands. There are a number of actions, most of which you are only allowed to do if you have a certain role in your hand, but there's nothing stopping you from trying to take that action, and if nobody challenges you, you do it anyway. However, IF they challenge you, you lose a card, but if you were legally allowed to do it, they lose a card instead. So it's all about bluffing what's in your hand and figuring out if someone starts lying. Short and sweet, pretty clever. I had a really good last game in which I was stuck with two Contessas (the Contessa is only good for blocking the assassinate action, a cheap action that can force someone to lose a card, but requires the Assassin), and so instead of trying to use any old action, I just gained one coin a turn, an action that can't be blocked or challenged by anyone. Because I wasn't claiming to have ANYTHING, everyone ignored me until the end, where I had enough gold to kill without being blocked and only one opponent I needed to eliminate. At this point he changed tactics and starts stealing my money, and I was almost done for until I realize that he probably doesn't HAVE the role that allows him to steal, and finally challenges him to win. I almost let him win too. Man, that was dumb. I am dumb sometimes (all the times).