Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Just an afternoon this time

After the previous weekend's full 12 hour marathon of gaming, we kept it to a more respectable few hours when L's friend D came over on Saturday the 23rd of May.
After a yummy big Asian feed up at the China Bar, we launched into some gaming.  I piled a bunch of our games on the table, and we started with Tsuro, which D had not seen before.
As always, Tsuro impressed with it's beautiful presentation and fun gameplay.  A couple of games were had.


D then introduced us to Saboteur, a great little game where you are dwarves trying to mine your way to the gold, but someone is trying to foil you - or maybe isn't, as the role of saboteur is randomly assigned, and there is a chance that none of the players are it.  I was the saboteur for the first two rounds, and had a great chuckle as L's naturally aggressive gamestyle drew the attention to her, allowing me to succeed with my nefarious schemes! Muah ah ah ah ahhhh!


Then we got to the main game.  D is a longtime Catan player who introduced us to the original game, so we wanted to share our new Egyptian themed Catan with her.
The game went well, but experience won over enthusiasm in the end, with D securing a comfortable victory over L, Kr and myself.

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

For a whole day!

So the new local FLGS ran a whole day of board-gaming a few Saturdays ago.  On May 16th, the game day called GateCon was an opportunity for Kn and I to get there fairly early and play as many games as possible - to be joined by L and Kr later in the afternoon.  Also there were LnK who were running the D&D 5th Ed demonstration game.

Kn and I paid our gold coin to access the game library and then started with one of our own games brought from home... 

Boss Monster
We bought an expansion for this a couple of weeks before, and this was the first chance to use it.  Lz joined Kn and I as we broke out the "Tools of Hero-Kind" expansion which adds new cards to the game.  The 'Items' give the Heroes some new powers as they enter the dungeons but if they die in a room you (the 'Boss') get to keep and use the item yourself.  In our game they provided a nice little touch, but didn't throw out the game balance or anything.  It was amusing that 'The Fool' hero managed to get an item that allowed it to get through Lz's dungeon and cause a wound to her.  That was a first!


Smash Up
We borrowed this from the game library as Kn and I had been keen to have a go since we saw it on TableTop a few days before.  
A card battle game, you randomly put together two factions as your side and then attempt to invade bases with your minions.  When the base is destroyed you gain points based on how many of your minions were on it at the time.  It's a pretty good game, and I was very happy with the performance of my Pirate UFO's.  Kn enjoyed his Ninja Dinosaurs as well.      
We had another game in the afternoon when L and Kr joined us at the con.  


King of Tokyo
Another game that we had seen on Tabletop, and we could borrow from the game library.  Just like SmashUp we were lucky to have found another 'con goer who had experience with this game and could run us through the rules so we could jump in quickly.
Having selected our giant critters we jumped in and started battling it out.
Rolling dice, pushing your luck and working to a strategy all come together for a fun little game.  I managed to buy a heap of added ability cards which helped in the end to secure a win.  Kn loved it enough that we had a second game right away, and then another game later in the afternoon once Kr had joined us.
 

Dominion
Kn took a break from the board games to try some D&D 5th Ed (doing a good job as a Dwarf Fighter) and so I joined in with some others who were setting up a game of Dominion, which looked interesting.
Dominion is a 'deck building' game where you have your own stack of cards that you draw from and add to during your turn, buying new cards to improve your deck and get extra victory points.  At the end of your turn you shuffle your deck again and deal yourself a new hand for your next turn.
It was ok, an interesting concept - and very Euro, with a nice Medieval theme, but I'm not all that taken by it.  Maybe just not enough Ninja Pirate Dinosaurs eating cities.


Munchkin - Legends
Kr and L had joined us by now, after lunch, and it was time to bust out my Munchkin board and get to kicking down doors.
I was hoping for a few more players, to get the back stabbing really going, but there were just four of us this time.  Still had a good game though, and it was nice how the board was received.


Camel Up. Cup? Up.  I guess...
Is it Camel Cup or Camel Up?  Will we ever know?
Great game of racing camels around the pyramid and betting on who will win the sections and overall places.  Interesting mechanism where the pyramid is used as a dice cup to roll out one die at a time to move each camel, the player having to decide how to bet based on the previous players' turn with the camels and then if they want to move a camel or not.
The board is beautiful, the camels are well done - including their stack-ability as they share spaces around the track (hence the Camel Up confusion) and there are nice cards and coins, and the pyramid dice dispenser is a great touch as well.  Fun game.


Smash Up - again
As mentioned before, we had another go at Smash Up so L could have a go.
Kn was on to his third D&D character by now, as Krl worked on his total-party-kill skills.
 

Takenoko
It was really late now, 9pm heading towards closing time at 10pm.  But L and I wanted one final game, and jumped at a chance to try out Takenoko (another Tabletop game).
The lateness was the biggest hurdle as we got our head around the gameplay, but it rapidly became clear that this is a very elegant game with some nice strategy decisions to work with as you build the garden, tend to it and look after the dietary requirements of the panda.
We didn't get to finish it, but we'll happily have another game when the opportunity is found.
 

The End
That was a big day of gaming.  The kids did very well, and we all had a great time.