Forum: Public Forum

Tim,

The fourth player of the apocalypse.

Indeed there were four of you playing CitOW as the distinguished owner of Vague Connections corrected me too. You have to excuse my lapse of attention as I was in Arkham playing a mentally weak character, this must have clouded my own vision.

I will need to have a go at Chaos in the Old Worlds at some point in the near future.

Next session's offerings.

Well, some of us think we shall give Arkham Horror a break now.

Conservatively on offer on Monday.

• Jerusalem
• Red Dragon Inn and Red Dragon Inn 3
• Mwahahaha!
• Whatever else being brought by anybody.

I have owned Red Dragon Inn 3 for a while but never actually played it. If too many new-players want to join, we could play Red Dragon Inn to learn the game. These are not technically expansions, but games on their own on the same theme and using the same game-mechanics.

Jerusalem is a good game we have not played for a while, best enjoyed with the full complement of four players.

I have updated the game page.

Laurent,

Fellow board-gamers,

Correction to the offer for tonight, I shall bring only Jerusalem.

Laurent,

Fellow board-gamers,

Last night, we had to share the show with the Flames of War people. So our board-gamer pool was too many for a game of Jerusalem but not enough to split in two games, so we played a game of Pandemic with the On the Brink expansion of course.

Pandemic.

The game is designed for two to four players, so in order not to run out of player cards too quickly when playing with with six players, I decided to try a few tricks:

• Put in all the special-event cards instead of the usual "two per player" rule from the On the Brink expansion.
• Draw only one card per turn instead of two.
• In order to ensure to keep the game "manly", six epidemic cards, of the virulent strain variety, were added. The maximum is seven for really really tough games.

As it turned out, the game was pretty well balanced. We won it, but as usual during the very last round of drawing cards. I think only one card was left to spare.

We made a mistake at the beginning by having a re-shuffle when the first mutation occurred, but I think we got things back to normal after two epidemic cards being drawn. We managed to go through the full pile of infection cards (those we use to infect the cities), so we re-shuffled them. I think this happened because of the high infection rate (3 or 4 for most of the game).

I have only noticed that the last two infection rates are 4 and 4, thus making not much sense to have the last epidemic card beyond risking an outbreak. I think the last rate should be 5. Note that we can have more epidemic cards than the maximum infection rate would allow. The rules state seven cards as the maximum for a four player game.

Arkham Horror.

We have managed to avoid playing it this week.
Will we avoid it again at the next session?

Next week.

• Runebound has been mentioned, pending someone spends the time to set-up before the start time, as this seems to be an Arkham like game when it comes to preparation.
• Mwahahaha! will again be on offer.

Or as usual, whatever we may decide to play on the spot.

The game page has been updated.

Laurent,

I enjoyed pandemic, it's now on my ever growing lists of games I desire to personally own, the petri-dishes from the on the brink expansion where a nice touch.

Hopefully, one day Ginge will get in Space Alert for me and we can have a game of that.

Until then I'm up for trying most games that come my way.

Thought this video would suit the thread. (a little bit of naughty language)

I will be bringing a loaned copy of carcassonne along with me tomorrow if anyone would like to play?

Fellow board-gamers.

A busy session with three tables gaming.

Carcassonne.

An interesting tile game, a bit like Settlers of Catan, quick to learn, not so easy to master.

Settlers of Catan.

After a couple of games of Carcassonne our table played one session of Settlers.

Mwahahaha!

I was not playing there, and although some players were new to the game, fun must have been had.

Blood-bowl.

A game, very likely part of the current tournament at Vague Connections took place at the back of the shop.

Next week.

Definitely a game of Arkham Horror with one or two expansions, depending on the number of new players really.
Also, the usual "Whatever people might bring..."

Laurent,

Fellow board-gamers,

The weekly review of activities starts here.

Settlers of Catan.

In order to kill time until the Arkham Horror players showed up, Ian and I played a Settlers of Catan game, which Ian won. This was followed by a quick second game adding Mark and Matt, also won by Ian thanks mainly to the dice keeping on rolling 6s and 10s.

Bloodbowl tournament.

As it has happened over the past few weeks, the Vague Connections Blood-bowl tournament was on at another table.

Arkham Horror.

Three expansions were added:

• The Curse of the Dark Pharaoh.
• The Dunwich Horror.
• The Innsmouth Horror.

Technically "we" won, but only one investigator was alive for the last two rounds needed to knock down the Old One. Actually six players but virtually only five as per the rule that says we counted as five because of more than one board expansion being added. The game was not really memorable, full of pitfalls and bad luck. At five or more players, we get two monsters appearing per gate, but as luck, or lack thereof, would have it, we ended-up with monster pairs where one was easy to evade (tough or impossible to kill) and the other tough to evade (complex to kill, all sorts of immunities). We were also lacking a character specialised in monster killing, so had to wait for them to move around and split a bit. This led to having too many gates being opened at the same time and the Old One awakening three to four rounds early.

This time we have finally concluded that Arkham Horror must be selectively expanded, and at most a game should have:

• One board expansion.
• One card expansion.

More than that and gates tend to open too much on the standard board (even the board expansions add additional gate cards on the standard board) making the game not as interesting as it should be.

Next week.

It has been advertised for a while so it should happen at some stage: Runebound should be played.
Nothing else has been etched in stone, so again: "Whatever people offer" for another table or two.

Laurent,

Are we cheaters?

I've looked at the rules again regarding the Ancient One. They say (p19):

"Each round, players first get an Upkeep Phase, then take turns making attacks on the Ancient One, keeping a running tally of the total number of successes they’ve scored as a group. Each time they accumulate a number of successes equal to the number of players or higher (for example, 4+ successes in a 4 player game), they remove 1 doom token from the Ancient One’s doom track and reset the success tally to 0."

We were playing a 5 players game (6 players minus 1 for the expansion) I'd say even if people die it was still a 5 player game, meaning we needed 5 successes, rather than the one. Also I don't think I had enough clue tokens to fight the necessary minimum of 4 rounds, hmmm.

Hello,

I have also lurked on the BoardGameGeek boards for answers.

Yep, we were.

End fight.

This thread clarifies the number or players.

We were tougher on ourselves than was needed when we removed the remainders though. Technically the number of successes can be determined at the beginning of the combat, except of course if special game mechanics apply to a specific Great Old One.

The all-expansions game.

Some people say "All-expansions games" are possible and show it. Others, like us, have decided that the game is more likely to stall and the expansion boards hardly ever activate when too many are used.

Laurent,

Fellow board-gamers,

Sorry for not showing-up yesterday, I was still coughing too much and not really in any shape for gaming.
I assume the game session went on as planned.

I will post more on next week's offering once I have dropped back at Vague Connections on Wednesday for the Legacy of Fire game.

I have changed "fortnightly" to "weekly" in the short description of the thread as we have been playing weekly on Mondays for a while now.

Laurent,

Since Laurent wasn't there to play and can't give his usually summary I thought I'd give it a go.

Runebound

We played Runebound, and to be honest I wasn't that impressed. We were playing with 5 which may have been the problem as the forums seem to suggest no more than 2 or possibly 3 at a push. It was like we were all playing solitaire but trying to share the some of the same deck of cards. Seemingly neither cooperative or competetive (except for getting to XP or items first) the other players seemed only to slow down your single player experience.

It's one of the first games I've played at the monday session that I've not thought about buying. I don't think I'd play again if I could avoid it, unless someone points out something I'm missing in playing the game.

I did have to leave slightly before the end game, so maybe it got more exciting afterwards and maybe someone won.

Still I think we all had a good time in general, even if I didn't really think much of the game.

Hey guys - is board-gaming still going?

hi tim yes it will be, know laurent has not been around due to moving and other stuff to set up a game page but it is on

I can't make it this week, but will hopefully be back again next week.

Fellow board-gamers,

Last Monday we played Arkham and DOOM the boardgame. I played DOOM with two other "marines" against Tim who played the forces of hell.
We lost, but not by much.

I think the Arkham people lost too.

Next week event is on, we have not decided what will be on offer, so as usual, show-up and have a look.

Laurent,

Fellow board-gaming luminaries,

DOOM

This was the first time that the game had been played ‘in anger’, as it were. Generally I thought it seemed to work out okay. Whilst the vocal detractors of DOOM claim that the game is ‘broken’, the more considered viewpoint is that there is a good game in there – it just needs a little ‘massaging’ to coax it out.

So anyway we played the first scenario in the rulebook with 12 of the most egregious Event cards removed, a 2-card draw for Hell and a host of minor tweaks. The end result was that the marines got to the final room and dished out some major punishment to the end-of-level bosses before admitting defeat.

I wonder if the marines had taken a slower, more defensive approach – and used some of that absolute mountain of small-arms ammunition that they’d stock-piled - then perhaps this could all have ended very differently?

Marine Specialists Red, Green or Blue are invited to comment!

Re: Next week's event is on, we have not decided what will be on offer

Well I’m happy to bring Doom (or Chaos in the Old World) if there is some interest in it being on offer. It is kind of difficult to get feedback on this though. Hmm if only there was some kind of central ‘messaging / commenting’ technology that everyone had easy access to...

Another epic game of Chaos in the Old World – with one small rules blunder on my part. Indeed a 50+ Victory Point Tie is resolved using Victory Points first and then the ‘Threat’ Number. Oops, my bad. This means that congratulations are in order for Slaanesh, our new and no-doubt leather, zip, spike, tattoo, piercing and chain-clad Winner. Khorne gets runner-up place.

This also means that, iirc, Slaanesh has been on the finishing line in all 3 games we’ve played so far, winning two of them.

Meanwhile on the other table there was an exciting game of Be Very Loud. It seemed like everyone was winning.

Fellow board-game players,

Back to normal.

Tomorrow, I shall resume my attendance to our weekly board-game session.

Games to play.

From what I have heard when dropping by Vague Connections earlier today, I think the following should happen:

• Ian is bringing Citadels.
• Tim could be tempting us with DOOM the board-game again.
• I shall also bring Cuba with obviously the El Presidente expansion.

Laurent,

In fact I am play-testing an exciting, thrilling and positively nail-biting scenario for Doom at this very moment!!! . If all goes well then I will bring it, if not... then I guess I won't.