Halloween 2014

Mansions of Madness - First impressions...

 I got to play the boardgame MANSIONS OF MADNESS by Fantasy Flight games for the first time on Sunday evening. I really enjoyed it. There were four of us there - Aneurin, Kes, Neil and myself. It was Aneurin's game, and he was the "keeper" - running the adventure and controlling the monsters etc... 

I have played two of Fantasy Flights other Lovecraftian themed games previously:

 

ARKHAM HORROR - which is a very long game, has a huge variety of expansions - and ultimately I found to be quite tedious.

 

ELDER SIGN is a much better game than Arkham - essentially it is a dice rolling game, you have to roll the correct sets of symbols to complete tasks to stop the big bad beasties from taking over the world. I got ELDER SIGN OMENS for Carolyn's Android device - and sold my copy of the boardgame immediately - the game works much better as a solo game app - and is much more thematic too.

 

The artwork on all 3 of these games is very nice indeed - and a big chunk of it is the same in all 3 games - artwork is expensive, so I can see why Fantasy Flight did that.

 

There is new Fantasy Flight boardgame with a Lovecraftian theme called ELDRITCH HORROR which folks are saying replaces Arkham as a better game... I haven't played it, and I'm not really tempted by it now that I've played MANSIONS OF MADNESS....

Right from the start of the game, as a player you are immersed in the creepy horror theme of the game. In the scenario we played, the three investigators were searching a sinister mansion in a race against time, looking for clues as to the whereabouts of a missing lady... we found a dead body, which one of us was mysteriously compelled to eat a part of... a running flaming zombie..which we had to fight, and that left parts of the building on fire... there were axe wielding maniacs who were trying to take samples of our hair for some unknown black magic ritual... one of us was killed by a maniac - and two of us went completely insane! - In the end things were looking pretty bad for us - but in the last turn Kes managed to pull off a crazy last minute dice roll using his special ability, and he killed the main maniac guy. The decisions you make in the game create a horror story which you really feel you are part of. The mechanics of the game are pretty easy to pick up - and I really love the little puzzles you have to do to open doors and re-wire circuits to try and get the lights to come on in darkened rooms. It's not good to be in the dark. Not in a house like this......

Aneurin was really lucky to get his copy of Mansions of Madness for half the retail price off ebay...It is quite a pricey game brand new - but there's a load of quality components, and the figures that come with the game are great. He's suggested we try and play once a month - sounds good to me - this is by far the best horror themed boardgame I've played to date - Can't wait for the next game!!

 

 

Kes pulls off his crazy dice roll!!

 

 

Northumberland Summer 2014

Podcast round-up!

I find myself listening to a lot less music these days and a lot more podcasts and audio books for some reason...not really sure why. Here's what I've been listening to lately:

Podcasts about boardgames are featuring heavily at the moment... The best and most excellent by far is THE SECRET CABAL GAMING PODCAST. I enjoy every minute of this super show, and as the show is pretty long - that makes it even better for me!! - This is where to go for the best discussions, views and fun stuff about everything boardgame related.

Next up is THE DICE TOWER podcast - Tom and Eric are excellent presenters, and this weekly podcast is the best place for well informed, up-to-date news about boardgame releases as well as other boardgame related stuff - as this show comes out weekly it is a lot more concise than the Secret Cabal - but good it is indeed!

A few other boardgame related podcasts worth a mention are THE SHUT UP & SIT DOWN show and BLUE PEG PINK PEG - both are good fun, and I especially like the later as they concentrate on talking about boardgames that work well for couples - and it's always good to get new ideas for games that Carolyn and I can play together. THE LITTLE METAL DOG SHOW is pretty good too - but episodes seem to be coming out a lot less regularly at the moment.

Also boardgame related, (but we're talking retro and obscure boardgames here!) is the FLIP THE TABLE podcast - always hilarious!! And GAME NIGHT GUYS in which Brian and Curtis play games and chat about what they've been up to in their everyday lives... all good stuff.

Kind of gaming related is the KEN AND ROBIN TALK ABOUT STUFF podcast. Ken Hite and Robin Laws are both writers and creators of roleplaying games. Their podcast is related to this, but they talk about all kinds of interesting stuff, historical, factual, fantastical....and any other random stuff they are interested in.... I especially like the section of the show called "Ken's time machine" in which they discuss what devious methods Ken would use to change a real life historical episode...and what the possible outcomes would be. I haven't had the inclination to do any roleplaying since I was a teenager - but this show appeals to me on many different levels. Very interesting, and laugh-out-loud funny!

The zombie survival audio drama WE'RE ALIVE has finished now at the end of it's 4th season. (No spoilers here! - but you can download all four series from their website for free!) - What a great show that was... the We're Alive void has now been filled for me with the audio serial WELCOME TO NIGHTVALE. A humorous dark kind of supernatural/sci-fi/Lovecraftian radio drama which defies description (all though I've briefly tried!) and is very good indeed!

A couple of podcasts that I really enjoy, but have both really slowed down in episode production are the M.R.James related show A PODCAST TO THE CURIOUS and the Clark Ashton Smith related show THE DOUBLE SHADOW (which I'm hoping hasn't ground to an actual halt)... but the inspiration behind both of these podcasts, and still my favourite podcast of all time is the ever quality consistent and regular H.P.LOVECRAFT LITERARY PODCAST. Chris and Chad have finished working their way through all of Lovecraft's stories and are now reading their way through all manner of early 20th century spooky tales that were mentioned in Lovecraft's essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature". This show is superb in every way.

Mam Tor - Derbyshire

X-Wing - Rebels win again...

And we're off... Ice planet space mat looks great!!

My Tie Advanced and 2 Interceptors all destroyed in the second round...

Ties closing in - nice formation flying... but ultimately futile...

It's the end for the B-Wing...

Oh dear....

Aneurin tries hard not to look too smug....

Bye bye Tie.

Well - this was my 3rd game of X-Wing. I was The Empire again, fielding Darth Vader in his Tie Advanced, 2 x Tie Interceptors and 3 Tie Fighters. Aneurin had a Y-Wing, a B-Wing and Luke and Wedge in their X-Wings... it was 150 points each.

I was completely destroyed with not much effort on Aneurin's part.... I put this down to:

1 - I don't know how to design a good squad yet.
2 - I don't know how to play the game very well yet.
3 - Aneurin is good at 1 and 2.

The Ties seem pretty useless in small numbers... It seems they are only really good if you have a load of them and you can fly them well in formation to swarm the rebels.

I've just ordered the new Tie Phantom and Tie Defender to bolster my Imperial Squads - hopefully this should give me some more interesting options!

But ultimately I need more practice!!!

It was good fun though - and thanks to Aneurin for coming over to my house to thrash me!

We finished off the evening with a game of Marvel Dice masters - which I haven't quite got the hang of either. Nice quick fun.... (but I need more practice at that too!!)

AMID THE ASHES - post apocalyptic print and play boardgame...

I was handed a flyer for the AMID THE ASHES print & play boardgame at last years UK games expo... I put it to one side and forgot about it until a few months ago, I looked at the images on the website (as you can see here) and thought the game looked quite promising.. and the artwork is really very nice indeed. So I set about crafting my own copy of the game - I downloaded the PDF from :

http://www.soloendeavour.com/amidtheashes.html


...I printed out the tiles and resources onto white card, which I stuck to thicker card and covered with sticky-back-plastic (£1 a roll from ASDA)...and at this years UK games expo I bought various wooden bits (coloured cones and cubes - these can be ordered from various sources but I got mine from Boardgameextras) and some dice from The Dice Shop.

The terrain tiles are placed in three different zones - so I backed these tiles with 3 different coloured card backs - green, yellow and red.

The rules state that the tiles should be shuffled and then set out upside down - turning them over as the map is explored. Someone on boardgamegeek suggested that this was a bit fiddly and drawing out a grid to place the tiles onto might be a good idea. So this is what I did: A large roll of craft paper, a ruler, a few coloured pencils and some sticky tack to stick it to the table top....

I have played the game twice so far. The first game was with 2 players, myself and Kes. Kes of course won. In the 2 player game there was a little bit of interaction between the two sides, but we felt that there would be much more interesting stuff going on with more players.

The second time it was a 4 player game with myself, Dave, Kes and Karl. Kes won again.

 

The start of a 2 player game.

2 players - starting to explore the apocalyptic wasteland....

2 players - fighting over objectives...

The start of a 4 player game.

4 players - just starting to get in each others faces! 

Combat!!

4 player game - the end is nigh!!

So after playing the 4 player game of AMID THE ASHES the other night, three situations came up that didn't seem to be covered clearly by the rules.

1 - If a unit is moved onto a space where there is a mutant, does combat with the mutant take place in the combat phase, or at the beginning of the next turn (in the "fight mutants" phase) if the mutant is still in the same space?

We decided to play that combat takes place in the combat phase because otherwise it would be possible to move into a space with a mutant and then move it away from yourself in the "mutant movement phase" - and this didn't feel right.

2 - In the combat phase how is ammo spent? Do players role dice then go back and forth spending ammo until there is a winner? Do players commit before a dice role how much ammo they are going to use?

We decided that both players in a space should role dice first, then the attacker would commit how much ammo they would spend, the defender would then have a choice whether to use up ammo (if they have enough) to win the fight - or to lose that battle and save their ammo for a future combat.

3 - Is it possible to complete a mission when another player is already occupying a landmark building? Because the action phase occurs before the combat phase, according to the rules it is possible to use a move action to move onto a building that another player is already on, and then use another action to complete a mission and return your units to the bunker before any combat happens. The rules do not state that to complete a mission the landmark building must be free of other players or mutants.

This was the most contentious issue for us on the evening. As the situation came up in the last part of the game, 2 players thought that missions could be completed without combat - justifying that thematically this represented the units sneaking on to the space and running away. The other 2 players felt that this didn't seem right and combat should take place - thinking that a player should be in full control of the space to be able to complete the mission. In the end, as the game had been quite long, we decided on the first option - but this did lead to some disgruntlement from 2 of the players as they said they would have played with different tactics from the start if they had realised this.

I've started a thread on boardgamegeek, and emailed the designer about these three points, so I'll be very interested to see what response I get.

So I've played the game twice now. I enjoyed it both times - the rules are not heavy (but could do with a little bit of clarification in a couple of places as I've mentioned) - and there seems to be a lot of replayability and interesting stuff going on here.

I absolutely love the artwork. More fantastic post-apocalyptic art by the designer Phillip M Jackson  can be found over at http://jollyjack.deviantart.com/gallery/36748958/Post-Apocalyptic-Projects (be aware the artist also does manga style sci-fi ladies with big boobies - just in-case that's not your thing)...

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/143521/amid-ashes

http://www.soloendeavour.com/amidtheashes.html