Tag: games

Tried out the fairly new deckbuilding game, Mistborn, set in Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn world. At a game meetup we played cooperatively but were defeated. The game mechanics have a lot of similarities with Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle, but inflicts a strict turn limit to defeat the boss. I dislike this mechanic because it tends to be quite punishing and in this case highly unbalances the game when scaling up to 4 players. Because there are only X turns available and you get stronger each turn you take each player will now be only X/4 as strong by the time the turn limit runs out. This is a fundamental issue with this game because you realistically cannot do any damage to the boss until you reach a minimum level of strength. So I think cooperative mode probably plays better with 2 or 3 players. You can also play it competitively instead.

Jess and I replayed the first scenario of Peacemakers: Horrors of War. We were victorious in bringing about a peace negotiation. It’s still a very unusual game of having minimal power to achieve your ends. Will eventually need to proceed to the later scenarios and see how they differ.

With friends we played Call to Adventure. This is the “story-arc generator” game. Your character begins with an origin, motivation, and destiny and then you cast lots to let fate decide if you are successful in achieving your goals along the way which shape your character’s story. I won.

At another game meetup we raced our cars around the track in HEAT: Pedal to the Metal. I lost. I continue to really enjoy this game. The mechanics are pretty simple and turns move fast, but I have yet to see anyone “solve” the game with a definitively winning strategy. And it comes with a ton of variations to layer in to keep it fresh. That and it’s a game in which you need to play aggressively to win, but playing aggressively doesn’t mean targeting and attacking other players. I typically adopt defensive / cautious play styles and this game pushes me to change that without feeling like I have to choose someone to pick on–which I don’t like doing.

Despite my hopes from last month, I did not get much game playing in this month either.

Played a session of The Guild of Merchant Explorers at a board game meetup. I won.

Played a scenario of Mechs vs. Minions and introduced the game to friends. We ran the gauntlet and succeeded in reaching the other side while subduing the minions along the way. Victory.

After playing Creature Comforts at a board game meetup last month I thought Jess would enjoy it. So she found it under the Christmas tree. We played with friends and I won after a very productive final turn bringing in 29 points in just the one turn.

Tallying up the blog posts gives us 63 games played in 2024.

I got even less game playing in this month than last month. Hopefully I’ll be able to turn that around next month.

Jess and I completed Quest 10 in Kinfire Chronicles: Night’s Fall. We didn’t manage to destroy the giant moth monster, but we escaped without dying and reached our objective. So kind of a draw.

At the board-game meetup I played Creature Comforts. A very cozy game about collecting little luxuries and comforts to prepare your woodland-creature home for the long winter. Make the coziest home to win. I lost.

Had a friend over and played Wyrmspan with Jess. Jess won handily.

Didn’t get much game playing done this month. Too much going on with birthday preparations and Halloween I guess.

I made it out to one game night and one afternoon of games at a friend’s house.

At the game night I first played Flamecraft. I’d played once before when the owner first got it and brought it to a game night–which was probably at least a year ago. It’s got really cute artwork about dragons and the town they inhabit. I had thought the girls would like it, but the gameplay can be a little challenging and I deferred adding it to my collection.

On each turn you choose from a variety of actions to collect resources or help grow the town. It’s competitive, but not adversarial. There are several actions you engage in which require you to give other players resources or points and it’s not a zero-sum game.

I had a difficult start, but had two turns where I was able to really capitalize on fortuitous situations on the board and pulled out a sound win at the end.

After Flamecraft I played Zoo Vadis. I knew I wasn’t going to care for this game from the beginning as it’s a wheeling/dealing negotiation/backstabbing game which just isn’t my jam. But I go to play and this is what people wanted to play. Unsurprisingly I lost.

You play as a group of animals in a zoo and your goal is to negotiate with the other animals to get your group promoted up to the premiere animal enclosure.

At the afternoon of games we started by playing Apiary. I played part of a game previously to take over for someone leaving, so this time I got to play through from the beginning. It’s a bit of an odd game–sentient space bees building out spaceships–but, it has solid mechanics (as can usually be expected from Stonemaier Games).

I made a run for points via the “Queen’s Favor” track and chalked up another sound win for the month.

After Apiary I convinced a group to play The Stifling Dark. I got this from a crowdfunding campaign in December 2023, but hadn’t gotten around to playing it yet. It being October it seemed like a good time to give it a go.

I originally backed it because it’s a bit of a table-top incarnation of an online game I’d been playing with friends for a while called Phasmophobia. Team of investigators need to go into a haunted location and avoid being killed by the ghost while completing some objective. So same concept, but here someone has to play the ghost.

Having not played before (which I warned everyone about) it was a learning experience and the game ran quite long. I played as the ghost stalking and attacking the investigators who were trying to escape the abandoned sawmill. The team managed to get the gate powered up and one of them made it out alive, but I got the rest–which counts as a win for me.

I think the game could easily be shortened by skipping the “Act 1” evidence-collection phase and instead dropping the characters in the map and randomly drawing an objective for them (with some balance adjustments to the ghost as well). That would probably get a game down to under 1.5 hours. Our game, with learning, making mistakes, looking things up, and trying to make sense of it all, ran for ~4 hours–which was a bit much.