Forum: Public Forum

Tim,

Thanks for the post, I was beginning to feel a bit lonely on this thread.

We did read the DOOM scenario last time and I definitely remembered the storyline with the buggy; which we won on the last roll. There was a huge spider/drider thingy that we had to defeat before driving through the exit hatch. We just got a bit confused about the Blue key storyline and indeed ended-up blasting things; which is usually a good thing to do in the DOOM universe.

I may have missed one game, but I always find it hard to say no to DOOM. Ah... the nights spent circa 1992 playing DOOM with PCs running on DX-66 processors 66MHz and only a couple of MB in RAM mind you! The last ones before the Pentium.

And yes, it was Guards! Guards! that I had forgotten. I remembered the title being a repeated word with an exclamation mark, but that was it. Not enough to fire-up a search for the name on the web.
Mixed reviews indeed, well this is a franchise game, so people who know about Discworld seem pretty happy with it and those who do not mention a pretty poorly written rulebook. On the plus side the designers seem active on the www.boardgamegeek.com forums and answer the rule-questions.

I am not into Discworld at all, so I guess this is not for me. A corollary could be my wife and Arkham Horror. She is not into the horror genre. She finds the game decent but complicated and does not "get" the 1920s background, the monsters and the Old Gods concepts.

I should get the Black Goat of the Woods expansion for Arkham Horror tomorrow at the shop, so I may attempt to inflict an Arkham overdose to those present on Monday. Then again, if there is a DOOM scenario on offer, I might elbow myself in at a gaming table.

Laurent,

So, Laurent waxes lyrical about 486 DX66 processors and the original Doom Computer game. That was almost the last time I played computer games. Doom & DoomII are actually still on a hard disk in my PC. Along with DoomEdit, for making your own WAD files. (Maps) Somewhere I have our old office building as a map, with the office dragon-lady as the end-boss. The board game does evoke the spirit of the old game.

Ah, the days of milk & honey. Of course, neither Doom nor DoomII would probably run on my current PC. (Both DOS-based)

Len

66MHz? Luxury!

When I were a lad we played shareware Doom on a 25MHz 386 in a window half the size of the screen that chugged along at 2-3 frames-a-second when the action hotted up. And we were thankful for it!

Actually I still play it. Thanks to the fine work of the guy at Zdoom.org, Doom not only runs on Windows machines but has added functionality that many of the newer WAD files make good use of.

But yeah: I find that although the board game uses Doom3 imagery, in terms of gameplay it is actually a lot closer to the frantic run & gun style of 1&2. I wonder if the rulebook had made this a bit clearer then maybe we wouldn't have had the great wailing masses complaining that the game was 'broken' when they tried to play it as a straight tactical shooter - and maybe that rumoured 2nd expansion would have appeared.

Never mind, I suppose I will just have to make my own Arachnotrons...

Yes, indeed, the competitive exams system in France tends to mix well-educated rich kids with others of humbler background. And one of my mates had a DX2-66.
That was a blast for DOOM and DOOMII indeed.

I agree with the pace of the board-game, it feels more like DOOM and DOOMII despite the DOOMIII background.

Laurent,

I managed to make it down to one of the Monday sessions to play Fiasco a story telling game I've wanted to play for a long while.

Game 1 - Artic Research Base
The setup - 3 players
Three main characters, Hans the nightcleaner who was stealing drugs from the base's drug researcher/manufacturer Dr Helsinki who was working for Director Kawasaki to make syrom-x to sell to the Russian Military. The main location is the Research base, the main object is a child's doll. Director Kawasaki needs to find the drug dealer.

Act 1 - Scene 1
Director Kawaski meets with Dr Helsinki to say they need to up the testing, the small supplies they're lacing in the food supply are not strong enough, they need to up the dosage. The Russian miliatry want results.

Act 1 - Scene 2
Dr Helsinki ran a test of syrom-x on Bill the day-cleaner (Hans friend) only to find that when the subject drank a hot fluid it reacted with syrom-x (which usually makes people mellow and suggestive) in to a vicious but suicidel maniac.

Act 1 - Scene 3
Hans finds Bill's body and suspects that the drug that he has just sold to some drug lords may end up killing everyone they sell it to, and starts to get paranoid. The 5ft tall, Director Kawasaki also comes across the body realising that the Russian military will not be pleased with progress.

Act 1 - Scene 4
Director Kawaski meets with Dr Helsinki to tell her his fears about the military. But it gets worse she has found a whole batch of syrom-x has gone missing along with a doll called Guinevere where the formular is hidden. Now Dr Helsinki is also paranoid and decides she needs a body guard.

Act 1 - Scene 5
Dr Helsinki asks Hans to be her body guard, he makes some lame excuses about having to clean some dirt and calls the drug lords to find out what kind of situation he's got himself into.

Act 1 - Scene 6
After being put on hold for 5mins (if this was 24 it would happen over the advert break) he finally gets through. Although one of the drug lords has died from drinking tea whilst injecting syrom-x the rest of them are too mellow (from syrom-x) to care. Infact they want him to get more and he'll make a tidy profit from doing so.

The twist - this is where things take an unexpected change.
A wild animal is on the loose. Someone is watching and waiting.

Act 2 - Scene 1
Flash back - Dr Helsinki gives Bill's dog some of syrom-x.

Act 2 - Scene 2
Hans the cleaner goes back to Dr Helsinki to say that he will be her body guard, this will get him closer to syrom-x. Dr Helsinki asks him to find Guenevere the doll as it contains the formular. Knowing that he has it hidden in his quarters he agrees he'll find it for her in exchange for money.

Act 2 - Scene 3
Hans goes to his room to get the doll. As soon as he finds it Director Kawasaki jumps out of his closet and tries to grab the doll off him. At the same moment a rabid dog that smells of earl grey jumps onto Director Kawasaki. Hans runs away to the sound of Kawasaki screaming "Why is your tongue so rough". Whilst Hans was running he hears something inside the doll, something that sounds like a rolled up piece of paper.

Act 2 - Scene 4
Dr Helsinki waits for Hans's return. Hans tries to blackmail Dr Helsinki with the formular. Dr Helsinki injects him with syrom-x and escapes whilst Hans is all mellow.

Act 2 - Scene 5
Hans keeps injecting himself with more of syrom-x and decides he'd like a cup of tea.

Act 2 - Scene 6
Director Kawasaki knocks the tea from Hans's hand and starts explaining how syrom-x interacts with hot beverages. Hans tells him to chill out an injects him with syrom-x.

The Aftermath - this is where we learn what becomes of the characters.

Hans the cleaner becomes dependant on syrom-x and ends up covered in blotches, scars and boils. Children mock him in the street.

Dr Helsinki is caught by the Russian Military.

Director Kawasaki uses torn fragmants of the formular and sets up a new research base on the opposite side of the world trying to create syrom-y.

Overall I thought this was pretty good fun to play. I don't think the story would win any awards but at the time it was pretty hilarious, especially when things seemed to tie in together or someone threw in a curve ball. I would definately play it again, infact I did. Game 2 write up to follow.

Fellow board-game players.

Enough people for two tables yesterday.

Carcassone.

We had not played that one for a while. A nice little game that can go either way for everyone depending on the order the tiles are picked-up and the deviousness of the opponents of course.

Fiasco.

We had two tables playing, David has given the story of his. I will attempt to give a similar review of our story of our failed double-cross in criminal endeavours.

Ticket to Ride.

Ian had his copy and we played a three player game. I got confused with the "no double railway" rule (we usually play with five players), then again I mistakenly believed I had connected New-York. Kind of a fiasco of its own on this one for me I suppose!

Pandemic.

We had not lost at Pandemic for a while. Reassuringly, this has been corrected. The human race got wiped out by a wave of outbreaks in South America and Africa involving the yellow disease as well as outbreaks of the mutation, yeah!
As usual we got to say: "We were doing so well until...", which is the mark of a typical Pandemic.

Laurent,

The fiasco story,

Ours was set in a quiet little town in the South. We chose an undefined Mississippi location, there was a lake, a marina and an island.

Silvain Beaumont and Sacha (I forgot her surname) were partners in crime, trying to get rich quickly such as by stealing a suitcase full of cash. Silvain had had problems with the judicial system in the past but had been well defended by Archibald Slick, a very dodgy lawyer who gravitates in high society to sell drugs. Drugs that Archie gets from his friend, Pastor Jebediah Williamson, who in turn uses his church and associated charities to run a drug smuggling operation from Mexico. On the side, some of those "poor immigrants" females, rescued by his church - a posh church on Main Street nonetheless - can act as "escorts" for rich gentlemen. Did I mention that the pastor and Sacha were old acquaintances? Rumours say that they had a one night stand, involving an "untoward object" an non-described sex toy.

Silvain Beaumont is the owner of a boat, a "party boat". Archibald Slick has managed an invitation for himself and an escort to attend a party for the sixty-fifth birthday of Senator Bartomeus, a powerful local politician. The senator has requested of Archie the usual drugs to entertain the guests, as well as some "late night stimulant" for him to use with the younger ladies invited at the party on his island in the middle of the lake. Archie asks Silvain about using his boat for the weekend to impress a lady, a married lady from Mexico, Esmeralda Mendez. He needs a quiet and discrete crew, which Silvain agrees to provide.
Silvain and Sacha have heard rumours of a drug deal, but (the scene was judged a failure) somehow could not pinpoint it. Sacha suspects that the pastor is up to something but could not "pump him" for information.
Archie needs a fake escort at the last minute, a lady to play the role of Esmeralda Mendez, in order to fool Silvain in believing his boat will be used only for pleasure (and not a drug deal). He turns to Pastor Jebediah, who somehow fixes him up with Sacha. When meeting at the Blue Parrot Club at the marina to get access to the boat, Silvain is surprised to see that "Esmeralda Mendez" is his partner in crime Sacha!

We then decided to cut the story short and went straight to the aftermath.
The drug deal was a total fiasco (the end rolls were pretty bad).

Sacha found out about the pills and the drugs while on the boat, she messed with them. The senator died by popping the wrong pills. Archie and Jebediah's "business" went down the tube. Archie lost all his powerful political allies and made dangerous enemies of them, he had to flee to South America. Sacha and Silvain pulled out of the story with a suitcase full of cash as per the objective, but certainly not according to plan! I cannot remember exactly what happened to Jebediah but I think it was slightly bad.

An interesting and funny game, unconventional to say the least. As we discussed it later, this should work best with a group of people who know one another. Players also need to be pretty imaginative and quickly so. There is no actual winning conditions, the use of dice is clever at the beginning at it randomises the storyline pretty well. It also forces people to make-up some stories that can be pretty hilarious. However, I did not really get the so-called scoring thing for the acts. Maybe this is to avoid having everybody with the same outcome (average instead of strongly positive or negative).

Laurent,

Game 2 - 4 Players. It suprising how the dynamic of the game changes with 4 players. There's more breathing space for multiple storylines. Here's the results.

Inside a garage two small town greasers, Sodapop and the Leader discuss how they’ve never won a single car race in their entire carrier. Perhaps this is because between them they only have three arms and three legs. Sodapop lost his leg many years ago but has never told anyone why. The Leader lost his arm in a car accident. However, if they took Bob Klint, he has the fastest car in town, out the equation, they would have a good chance of coming first. If they think of a good plan things will go well for them.

Bob’s sister Betty lives in the attic of the local school. There’s two things she loves, her 100 feral cats and the local greaser gang the Whippets. When her feral cats go missing she decides to impress The Leader with a huge graffiti mural on the entire west side of the school building so he will let her be in their gang and help them find all her cats. The leader had a crush on Betty anyway, so quickly agrees to the plan. Plus this way he can get closer to Bob and sabotage his chances to win on race day.

When Betty returns from the meeting she finds her brother waiting. He can’t believe that she’s being hanging out with the Whippets. He tells her that he’s not to see them again. She disagrees firmly and walks away. Betty never seems to do what he asks.

On hearing they have to find 100 feral cats for Betty, Sodapop hatches a plan. All they need is access to Bob’s car for a few hours, a few of the cats plus some tools from their boss. The boss would never let them use his tools, they are like children to him. So they decide they will steal them.

The Leader tells Betty they need to borrow Bob’s car and now that she’s in the Whippets officially she had better help. She agrees. Much to the Leader’s disappointment she picks Sodapop to act as her boyfriend which will keep Bob distracted whilst she gets the keys.

Betty and Sodapop head to the school attic where Bob is drinking tea. On spotting Sodapop, Bob’s face drops. He mumbles that he hasn’t seen Sodapop since that time in the woods. Both of them stare into middle distance. Betty takes her chance and steals Bob’s car keys.

Flash back – Young Sodapop and Bob are in the woods. Bob is trying to impress Sodapop with a shotgun with a distinctive etched handle. Two Mexican’s, Juan and The Mute, want to have a go with the gun but when pulling it away from Bob it goes off accidently blowing Sodapop’s leg clean off.

Present time - Back at the garage Sodapop and the Leader work on building a hidden cage in Bob’s car. When he reaches 46 mph the latch will release 20 feral cats into the car, thus distracting him long enough for them to win the race. Despite working on the car for many hours they never notice the strange breathing lump under an old sheet on the backseat.

The leader of the Whippets drops the car back at Bob and Betty’s. He doesn’t realise that Betty has been hiding in the back seat all this time. She is upset to find that they were going to use her pet cats to attack Bob when he was driving. She tries to save the cats but they end up escaping again, she confesses everything to her brother.

Bob goes to conform Sodapop, but on the way learns that Juan and The Mute have entered tomorrow’s race. They decide then and there to put their differences aside and team up to stand against their common foes, Juan and The Mute.

Bob, Betty, Sodapop and the Leader spend the night drinking and making plans. Bob greases his hair and becomes a fully-fledged member of the Whippets.

It is race day.

Betty goes to spy on Juan and The Mute, wearing a mask and with a cat on her shoulder. She sees a one of them holding a shot gun with an intricately carved grip. Juan spots her and shoots her arm clean off, the Mute laughs silently. Betty runs back to the rest of the Whippets and whilst getting bandaged up she tells them about the shotgun. It’s the same one that blew Sodapop’s leg off.

Bob and Sodapop decide they need weapons and go see Jim Jim Jimmy Jim a veteran of the Mexican war and arms dealer. He also only has one arm. Bob asks for a gun but Jim says he can’t get one that quickly, he’s only got a grenade for sale and his own gun. Sodapop pushes him over and they steal both and run away. Sodapop celebrates by letting off a few rounds and in the excitement Bob pulls the grenade pin. He now has to keep hold of it until it’s time to use it.

They all get in the car ready to race. Sodapop and the leader are both sat in the driving seat and Bob and Betty are in the back. Betty holds the gun and Bob’s hand still holds the grenade.

The race starts.

It is a close call between them and Juan and the Mute. At the last minute a stray cat wonders across the finish line. For them to win the race Sodapop would have to run it over. Betty puts the gun against his head and says, ‘if you hit the cat I’m shooting you’.
Time seems to slow down.

Sodapop heads straight for the finish line. Betty shoots. The bullet takes Sodapop’s ear off and ricochets round the car. Bob lets go of the grenade and puts on his seatbelt. The car swerves. The grenade bounces of the seat and out the window. Seeing the grenade the Mexicans swerve too. The Whippet’s car hits a tree. Sodapop flies out the windscreen, greeting the tree face first. Betty swiftly and smoothly gets out the car completely unscathed and walks across the finish line feral cat in hand. Press photographers gather round, Bob is in the background of many pictures. The leader of the whippets gets out the car and heads towards Sodapop who’s looking at the unexploded grenade, considering what a waste it was. It explodes.

Ending montage of freeze frames.

Bob spends the rest of his life touring the local bars telling of the story, no one believes him until he show the press photos with him in the background.

The leader, no without any arms spends the rest of his life learning to drink with his feat.

Sodapop completely limbless spends the rest of his life in jail for stealing his bosses tools, he never rats on the leader of the Whippets.

Betty becomes and international celebratory and lives the high life for the rest of her days.

as of the 2nd week in december the board games night is moving to a tuesday due to the new store manager (keiron) changing the day that the store is closed

Fellow board-game players,

After a long wait, I finally got The Black Goat of the Woods from our FLGS, Vague Connections.

I will set-up my copy of Arkham with this expansion for Monday. According the reviews, we are in for a very hard game. If we play it, we shall designate a few investigators as having already infiltrated the evil cult featured in the story line so that we can experience the new game mechanics of "cult encounters" and "corruption cards".

Laurent,

Fellow board-game players,

We had two tables worth of players yesterday, at least for the first half of the session.

BSG: Pegasus.

When I arrived, Dan had set-up a Battlestar Galactica board-game with its Pegasus expansion. I would have joined, but I had brought an Arkham game I wanted to play.

Arkham Horror with Black Goat of the Woods.

Having read the cards beforehand, I knew this was going to be a tough game; drawing Abbhoth did not help either as its spawns are very tough.
Adam was playing Monterey Jack, the archaeologist and again proved that this character is not a good monster basher contrary to his looks on the picture. He just does not have enough sanity and his Will scale is set at the perfect average 0 to 5. Considering the Black Goat of the Woods expansion imposes a lot of hexagon tagged monsters to be in play - with its hexagon-only additional monster cup - and adds an extra Dark Young for a total of four; poor Monterey Jack cannot afford to lose even one horror check against said Dark Young.
We had Ian playing Diana Stanley the reformed cultist, well not so reformed after all as the character had a "One of the Thousand" Cult Membership and had a nifty collection of corruption cards.
I was playing the salesman, Bob Jenkins.
We did not have any amazing equipment, but a lot of useful cards to counter terror level increases and monster surges; not enough of these in the end of course.
Crap rolls and repeated monster surges led to our doom. Monster surges are bad when playing with Abbhoth as the Great Old One; and even worth when playing with Abbhoth and the herald mechanics of the Black Goat of the Woods expansion.

The game should have been a bit easier with four players because we had to draw two monsters per gate: The standard one, plus one from the "hexagon only" monster cup.

The corruption cards mechanic is fun. To ensure that it was in use, we did the following:

• One third of the players are cult members (one in our case).
• The additional four location cards from the expansion are put on top of the location decks and drawn without shuffling. We would have shuffled the deck as usual after the four cards had seen use (this did not happen).

The former ensures that the cult encounter deck sees some use. "The Woods", "The Black Cave" and the "Unvisited Isle" have a strong likelihood of gate opening. The latter increased the likelihood of having an invitation to join the cult. Adam joined the cult half-way through the game and I was sort of forcefully "invited" from the activation of a "Speak to your Friend" corruption card. However this happened near the end of the game so my Bob Jenkins was never really corrupted.

We did not play with the difficulty level cards.

Mag Blast.

Ian had brought Mag Blast and the three of us (Adam, Ian and I) had fun blasting one another's space armada with all sorts of funny noises as required by the rules; in the end a simple game full of fun. Bad card draws can be fatal and a strong original fleet can decide a game very quickly at least with only three players as was the case yesterday.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and all that.

I shall be away on holidays at the end of the week and back only after Christmas. Therefore, as a gamer, I shall not back at the shop until Tuesday, January 8th, 2013 which shall be my next board-game session.

Try to post on this thread about what has been played to attract new players.

Please remember that next Monday (December 3rd) will be the last time the session is on a Monday. The one after that will be on Tuesday, December 11th and our weekly board-game gathering shall remain on Tuesday nights after that.
See with Kieran, Vague Connections owner, regarding the shop opening dates and time around Christmas.

Laurent,

After the untimely end of the BSG game (due to cylon infiltration; aka. sick people leaving) we opened up a fairly new acquisition, Android:Netrunner

A 2 player card game that pits a hapless cyber criminal against the woefully over powered Megacorps of the the wonderfully colorful Android dystopian future.

Game 1 saw the tinkerer (beginner deck, played by 4 game veteran of netrunner) versus Jinteki (again the start corp, but this time by a N00b). After explaining all of the rules several times both players had fun but inevitably the Megacorp lost out as 3 agendas were quickly stolen by the hacker.

Game 2 switched things up; the hacker switched to the anarchist deck and the corp to the NBN media megacorp (players remained the same for the sake of santiy, the rules are quite complex for a beginner; even for an experience MTG/Yuh Gi Oh player). The anarchist and NBN corp player very different from the others and familiarity played in to the hackers hand again. The Megacorp tried the same tactics as Jinteki and found the hacker more interested in letting things burn than breaking through it's l337 ice. After a fairly close game the anarchist stole the win by rifling through weakly defended Megacorp archives (the partially hidden discard pile). Not a moment to soon as NBN had tagged the runner to light up like a Christmas tree and was about to send the goons round for a thorough beat down.

More netrunner next time hopefully.

For those of you in to your CCG's netrunner is a mix or MTG and Yuh Gi Oh style play from Wizards and Fantasy Flight games. The art work is pretty (and girl friendly, according to my wife) and the game play (once you get over the initial complexity) is really well balanced. The complexity for me adds a depth of choice that I found challenging.

>>> So long chums

Matt,

Oops... while I have added Netrunner to the Game page, I totally forgot to mention it being played in my previous post.

Thanks for adding the blurb on what it is and how it is played. When adding the link I was surprised to read that Netrunner is only a two players game, considering the big box format.

Laurent,

So was my Mother who purchased it for my birthday present. She was sadly disappointed to find the whole family could not join in. I have added Android: Infiltration to my Christmas list for such purposes. Who'd have thought my mother was a budding cyber-hacker. The contents of the box is 2 packs of cards that would fit in standard card protector boxes, a selection of tokens to represent game state and money (a pencil and paper would suffice) and a thin rule book (which will soon be dwarfed by a giant e-version if the game ever takes of/has expansions to cover all the rules interactions).

last monday night board game night before the switch to tuesdays. well this was a bit of a disappointment as only adam and myself turned up. so we had a bit of a chat before leaving and hopefully more people will turn up next tuesday as the board games night moves.

ian

Hello,

This is proof, undisputable proof, that people do not come to simply play games, but come to bask in my aura.

Laurent,

This message has been typed from Summer time, well late Spring as you are in late Autumn too.

wow what a turn out the shop was so packed that we had to turn people away due to H&S issues. word had obviously gotten round that a certain european member that frequents the store was not going to be there. much drinking and merryment was enjoyed
in all seriousness there were only 4 of us( adam, tim, new owner keiron, and myself). game of Red November to start which saw all hands go down after a good start then being unable to stop the missiles going off with mear minutes till rescue. then on to a game of munchkin, and a fairly civil game at that not too much back stabbing and a fairly close game come the end, all players were at least level 7+ when only going to 10.
next week - not sure what is happening but games will be played fun will be had. come one come all

Fellow board-game players,

Tomorrow shall be the day to play again for me.

I propose to bring a game of Arkham Horror. What about another bout of Black Goat of the Woods?

Laurent,

fine by me will bring a couple of small games myself

Fellow board-game players,

Late update, but update nonetheless.

Arkham Horror - Black Goat of the Woods

Five players for a game that was meant to be doomed. We decided to play with the difficulty level cards from Black Goat of the Woods. We drew the second toughest one, "Ye Liveliest Awfulness" having everybody cursed at the beginning of the game, but with a +2 for the end score.

As we played it before, we decided to have some of the players already cult members: two out of five. Unlike last time the cult members collected corruption cards only for themselves and did not set-up on a crusade to recruit everybody to the cult of the Black Goat in the Woods.

We played with Nyarlathotep as the Old One and surprisingly won, for a final score of 23, which is pretty decent for a five-player game when looking at the league tables on the Arkham Horror wiki.

Next session: As I had been away for the whole of December, I still have an Arkham craving, thus I shall bring the game with a set-up for a King in Yellow game.

Would you be interested in running an Arkham Horror scenario?
These are variant set-up with a background story. They can play with the base game or require expansions.

Laurent,