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Category Archives: Board Games

Posts about our weekly game nights.

Descent: Journeys in the Dark (second edition)

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Widow Targa, Rune Master (Steve)
Grisham the Thirsty (Evil Mike. The dwarf looks like a Santa dwarf)
Ashrian Spiritspeaker, Berserker (Owen)
Avric Albright, Disciple (Ben)

Mike Byrd ran us through a couple of games of Descent 2nd Edition. We had played the first edition many times. We found a lot of things had changed in second edition. For one, the game seemed to move faster, which we liked. One thing we didn’t like was that we hardly got any treasure or items.

Our first scenario was simple. Kill the Ettin leader before too many of his goblin cohorts got off the board. The game starts. Ben goes first and immediately cheats. We love Ben. Part of the fun is catching him doing these cheats that he is hardly aware of. Evil Mike and I take a bunch of damage from goblin archers. We blame Ben and his cheats. Owen gets first blood by killing one of the many, many goblins.

Ben gets riddled with arrows. (There is some justice in the world after all.) Mike’s dwarf is like a tank and keeps the big monsters busy while we chew into the goblins. The big Ettin tried to pick up Evil Mike’s dwarf and throw him. His dwarf was way too strong…or too stubborn, I forget which.

Turn 6. Ben discovers his character has “Reach’. Had his character not had reach, Ben would have tried to use it sooner.

I was able to get the final damage on the big Ettin leader and stop the goblin horde. Yeah, I’m a hero!

Our second game was not so glamorous. We simply had to stop the goblins from destroying some crops. (Is this what heroes do?) To make it more challenging a band of Barghests blocked our way to the fields. We punched a hole in the line of Barghests. Ben tells Owen to run ahead to the crops. Owen listens to Ben and his character goes down under a hail of goblin arrows. (Why did Owen listen to Ben?) Later when the rest of us arrive at Owen’s nearly dead body, Ben heals 2 of the 10 damage. (Go Ben.) My healing potion heals the rest. Owen turns around and takes another fist full of arrows for 8 more damage. Good thing we had Owen to stop all those arrows or one of the rest of us could have been hurt.

Owen recovers his wounds. He and I hold off the remaining goblins while Evil Mike and Ben grab the crops and store the crops for winter. Yeah, we’re farmers!

Mike is going to continue our adventure in two weeks. Looks like we might not stay farmer heroes for long.

Chaos Steve

2013-02-05 18.59.17 2013-02-05 19.00.18 2013-02-05 19.38.54

The Legend of Drizzt…Again

D&D
We sat down and played Legend of Drizzt again. This time we tried adventure #4. Although I can’t tell you the backstory, I can tell you that our destination was a tile containing a Drow glyph. Once that appeared, a random evil villain (probably someone like Mike) would appear.

After only a few rounds we were battling a Drow Duelist (whom we all hate), a Drider, and a Hunting Drake. Ben actually rolled a 20 while battling one of the creatures. This meant he could level up if we had 5 XP in our defeated creature stack. We didn’t. Later in the game, once we had killed a few more creatures, Owen rolled a 20 and his character leveled-up. He was the first to do so in the three games we had played.

We reached the Drow Glyph tile and the evil assassin appeared surrounded by a plethora of creatures. Ben used one of his powers and killed five of the creatures in one blow. Owen’s character finished off the Assassin.

Our second game, Adventure #10, was something quite different. We were trying to escape the catacombs. Instead of drawing event cards we would draw “end” tiles that plugged up the exits on tiles. This game seemed more exciting. At one point we were down to just two available exits. Luckily the next tile we drew had three exits! We continued through the catacombs battling creatures all the way.

We had one exit left when we drew the broken door tile that signaled our way out of the catacombs. We easily fought our way to freedom after that.

Chaos Steve

Some pictures from the game…
Legend of Drizzt (5)  Legend of Drizzt (7) Legend of Drizzt (8)

Dungeons & Dragons: Legend of Drizzt Board Game

D&D
As usual I’m way behind in getting our games updated on the web site. This game actually took place a week ago Wednesday. We played the Dungeons & Dragons: Legend of Drizzt Board Game. It’s a cooperative game for 1-5 players. In it, each player picks a character, a scenario is decided upon, and then you pretty much start playing. I’m simplifying the set up a little, but not by much. There are lots of cards and chits and things to remind the players what powers and abilities their characters have. Play is pretty easy too: players move about the games tiles, sometimes revealing new tiles, sometimes fighting monsters, all the while waiting for the special tile to be revealed that announces the climatic final room.

Here’s how our games went.

Game One Goal: Find the evil assassin and claim the Crown of something or other <insert a suitable cool name for the crown. Let’s call it the Crown of Ultimate Power!>

This first game was a cakewalk for us. The monsters were easily defeated and at no time were we really in trouble.

“Let’s play a harder scenario!” someone said. “Yeah, something with a dragon!”

Game Two Goal: Find and kill the shadow dragon. Let’s call him Mike—Mike the evil shadow dragon. Not to be confused with Mike, who was playing the game as a player.

Since I went last on during the first game AND I killed the evil assassin—I think his name was Mike—I got to go first. It was disastrous. I ended up drawing double monsters that did damage to everyone. Plus a volcanic vent did damage to everyone. Now everyone was wounded and blaming me. I mentioned how it will all be worth it when we killed Mike, the evil shadow dragon.

Ben went next. A dreaded drow duelist appeared. (One appeared on my turn too.) Now they BOTH get to attack doing even more damage…again…to several characters. Somehow everyone says this is my fault.

On Mike’s turn he kills both drow duelist! And there was much rejoicing.
Legend of Drizzt
Later, on another one of my gloriously bad turns, I roll two 1’s in a row (on a d20) trying to kill the drow wizard. In this game, just like in D&D, rolling high is good. Rolling low is not so good. Monster birds attack both Owen and I. This is followed right up by another drow wizard that hits us both again for more wounds. I’m at zero health. This is not good.

Thankfully by my next turn, Owen had healed some of my wounds. So I did what any self-respecting hero would do—I ran. My encounter card was to draw a monster and then I’d be moved to the start tile. We considered canceling it but Mike said he could take on the single monster that would appear by him. My monster card was to draw 2 monster cards. I drew a goblin archer and a huge feral troll! I died on the start tile.

Next turn the dragon tile was drawn. We’re doomed!

The dragon attacked Ben four separate times and missed each time. I can’t explain it either.

During the game, you earn experience points. If you roll a 20 when attacking a monster you level up, but it costs 5 XP. You can also spend XP to cancel encounter cards. After spending untold points to cancel encounters, Owen finally rolls a 20 during a battle (the first 20) but we don’t have enough XP for him to level up.

I had a chance to kill the dragon and be the hero again. I missed the dragon, but I did kill the drider beside him. This gave me a treasure card which was “Fortune Follow Thru”. This allowed me to do an automatic wound to the dragon—and kill it! Die Mike, the evil shadow dragon!

Yes, once again I was the hero. I’d like to thank all of the little people, my minions, who helped, in a small way, to make me the hero I am today.

Chaos Steve

History of the World

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The week Mike showed us how to play History of the World. Oh, we’ve played this games lots of times over the years, but this week Mike took it to a whole new level.

The game started normally with all of us vying for the best empires of the current epochs. Points were scored, names were taken, enemies noted. At the start of the third turn Mike realized we hadn’t changed the point counters on the territories after the first epoch. Crap. That meant our scores were off. After some memory gymnastics we were able to recalculate everyone’s turn two score and continue on. Had we not discovered our error when we did, the world would have ended day sooner.

My game was going fine even though I could not seem to win an epoch and thus get a special “I won an Epoch Counter” worth extra victory points. Things went completely south during the fifth epoch. The defining moment was when Ben gave me Chola for epoch 5. You’ve all heard of Chola right? Exactly. No one has ever heard of them. That’s because they suck! My points for the epoch dwindled.

On epoch 6 Mike got the 2/2 Incas and Aztecs and still rockets up the scoring track to 179 scoring 42 points.

Here’s a chart of our point progression throughout each epoch. As you can see… What? You don’t see a chart? Then complain to Mike why our site won’t let my upload images! [Edit: See my constant whining worked. Here’s the chart.]

History of the World

As I mentioned earlier, Mike took the game to a whole new level by winning it with 246 points. Ben slithered by me to take second with 198 points. I was third with 195 points. Owen was last. Well not just last—way dead last. He had 175 points. This fulfilled the prophecy he proclaimed at the beginning of the game where he claimed First Loss.

Chaos Steve

Rails of New England, part II

This week we finally got back to our Thanksgiving Rails of New England game. We were about halfway through when we stopped last time.

Mike and Owen quickly became the kings of the Depression. Whenever the economic indicator turned to Depression, they earned tons of cash. I wasn’t doing too badly, but my big money came during times of Prosperity. Unfortunately so did Mike’s. But back on the fortunately-side,  we had several Prosperity turns in a row just before the game ended.

Ben did pause the game a few times to let us know about a rule or two he had forgotten to mention. One such rule was explained to us on the very last turn of the game! And this rule we would have probably been used throughout the entire game! Oh well.

Owen and Ben, mostly Owen, were hit by a few events that cost them revenue. One turn it cost poor Owen $40. That doesn’t sound like much, but that was probably more than half his earnings that round. Neither Mike nor I were affected by events the entire game. (Go us!)

It became clear as the turns quickly dwindled that you had to be careful what you spent money on. You wanted actions that would give you a positive cash flow by the end of the game. This was made slightly more difficult because the game could end at any time certain conditions were met. This could cause the game to end sooner that you might have planned for.

At the end of our game, it was hard to tell who was in the lead. Unfortunately for Ben it wasn’t too hard to tell who wasn’t in the lead. I wanted the game to end before we hit another Depression turn where Mike and Owen would earn big money. Mike almost ended the game for me which would have cost him money, yet gain him very little. (I would have been very happy.) He came to his senses though and let me end the game—which cost me a little money to do, but I had to do it. Darn Depression.

Here’s what our scores looked like at the end of the game.

 

Mike

Steve

Owen

Ben
Property

85

113

92

99
Cash

210

222

242

73
Depots

48

51

48

60
Bonuses

35

40

0

25
Loans

-20

-20

0

-20
Total

358

406

382

237

We determined two things from the score. 1) Ben over bought on depots, thus costing him money. 2) Never, Ever, take out a loan!!  We didn’t learn of the -20 penalty until Ben enlightened us during scoring. Ben strikes again!

I think if Owen had not run into some hard times with the events, he would have been the hands down winner. As it was, he still did well, coming in second.

Chaos Steve

 

 

Railroad Tycoon

This week we played Railroad Tycoon. Evil Mike is on vacation out in Las Vegas celebrating his 20th wedding anniversary, so the “just” Mike came and took his spot. We played Railroad Tycoon in a record time of less than two hours. I can only surmise that it’s been Evil Mike holding us back all this time.

The game started out very well…for me. I went first and got the 5 points for shipping the first cube to a city with a service bounty. There was no stopping me, although there was “passing” me. Mike passed me in just a few turns to take over the lead. Mike never looked back and we never caught up to him. He was a Railroad Tycoon machine. He wasn’t just in the lead; he was WAY in the lead.

Meanwhile the rest of us would-be rail barons meandered our way through building tracks and scoring a few measly points. Ben and I were building up around Chicago. Mike and Owen were fighting over the east coast, with Mike winning that battle and Owen bemoaning the fact. I was also on the east coast, but only to connect to New York. Connecting to New York helped me get a big line bonus and my Rail Baron objective. To meet those goals I had to build a rather expensive piece of track through the mountains. Maybe that’s why I ended up with 13 loans at the end of the game. (No “maybe” about it.)

At the end of the game, Owen had the most money with $51,000. He did not have the Rail Baron objective that would have given him points for it though. Still, we all completed our Rail Baron objectives. Those 13 shares really hurt my final score. Mike did win with 78 points. Ben sneaked passed me to take second with 56 points—twenty-two points behind mike!  I had 54 points and Owen had 51 points.

We had a great time and didn’t miss what’s-his-name at all. (Hurry back Evil Mike!)

Chaos Steve

Rails of New England

Last week on Thanksgiving eve we started a game of Rails of New England. The name implies that it’s a train game. While it does have tracks and train depots it is really more a business management game where location is key. Players build businesses in various cities to generate money. Each round the game has an economic condition (Prosperity, Normal, & Depression) which affects how much money is generated. Building depots on the cities where your business are helps “connect” them. Connected cities earn you more money. If you haven’t figured it out yet, the key to winning the game is money. There are also special actions, state subsidies, and special routes that players may claim during the game. Most of these generate even more money. Money, money, money.

In a couple hours we got about half way through the game. (This includes going over the rules.) Like many games we play, the rules and bits of this game make it appear complicated. It’s really not. Once you get a few simple concepts down, you’re soon on your way to building a business and railroad empire.

We stopped the game on a high note—a year of prosperity where we all earned lots of money. We’ll pick the game back up where we left off in about two weeks. Until then we’ll be planning and strategizing our next moves.

Who am I kidding? When we get back together, we’ll spend the first 30 minutes remembering how to play the game. Then it’s all luck and bickering for the rest of the evening.

Chaos Steve

Navegador

I always like to get last week’s write up finished before this week’s game. With that in mind, here’s what we played last week…

…Navegador. If you’ve ever wanted to be a Portuguese entrepreneur during the Age of Discovery, this is the game for you. This was our second time playing the game.

I crushed the opposition with 119 points. Ben came in second with 101 points. Mike squeaked by in third place with 83 points. Owen, who was having a bad night, can in forth with 82 points.

Chaos Steve

Railways of England and Wales & Lancaster

(It’s time for me to play catch-up and write about a couple of games that have come and gone.)

Railways of England and Wales

A couple weeks ago Ben, Owen, Mike B. and I played Railways of England and Wales. This is an expansion of, sorts, to Railway Tycoon. I say “of sorts” because you use a completely different board—one of England and Wales. As many of you may know, Owen and Ben are both from England, so the board was very familiar to them. For us U.S. folks, I think they should provide an extra map of the board. Once the game gets going and there are tracks all over the place, a lot of the city names are covered up. This causes us (me) to repeatedly ask where the city of Flumbuckets is or ask if Splurgleville is close to London or not.

Our game was unusual is a couple of respects. One, Owen sold shares like they were how you win the game. (They are not.) He may have broken some previous share record having 15 shares by the end of the game. I think the closest person to him had 5 shares. Still, in true Owen fashion, he did not come in last. The second distinction was that Mike B. did so poorly. This was Mike’s first game using this map, but Mike usually rises above any disadvantages like this and does very well. I think we can all blame Ben.

Ben seemed to have a plan from the very beginning. He set up his delivery machine around Flumbuckets, Splurgleville, & London. Even late in the game, when deliveries may become scarce, he was still making 5 and 6 city deliveries. Ben eventually went on to win with 76 points. I came in second with 63 points. I blame my second place showing on the other players, who simply refused to help me win. Owen came in one tiny point behind me (amazing) with 62 points. And poor Mike B. was last with 58 points.

It should be noted that we played this game because Evil Mike was missing. He likes these delivery-type train games, but normally doesn’t do well in them. We wanted to spare him the embarrassing last place finish, instead bestowing it on Mike B.

Lancaster

The following week we played Lancaster. It could be said that some people buy games based upon the number of bits inside and the weight of the game box. I’m not pointing any fingers, but that’s how Ben decided to purchase this one. It turns out that his approach appears to be a perfectly good system to base game buying upon.

What is Lancaster? Stealing the text from BoardGameGeek, who probably stole it from the game box: in 1413, the new king of England, Henry V of Lancaster, has ambitious plans: The unification of England and the conquest of the French crown! Each player takes the role of an ambitious aristocratic family. Who will be the best supporter of this young king, and the most powerful Lord of his time?

So that’s it then? We’re to become powerful lords. We do this by careful placing our knights (and their cannon-fodder squires) in various locations on the board. When knight placement is completed, the most powerful knight “wins” that section of the board and gains some advantage for their lord. This advantage might be gold, more soon-to-be-dead squires, more knights, or maybe an improvement to the lord’s castle back home. Some of these advantages score victory points immediately while others score them at the end of the game. There is also a parliament phase of the game where the lords can enact laws.

It all seems so simple. Unfortunately, just like the previous game I talked about, I blame my poor showing on the other players. There are things you can focus on to score points at the end of the game. You most likely can’t focus on all of them, and splitting your focus could end of in disaster. (See Steve’s finish for verification.) For most of the game our point scoring was pretty equal. But good planning throughout the game can cause big points at the end of the game. (See Steve’s finish for verification.)

Mike won with 51 points. This really surprised him. It probably surprised Ben too, who thought he would win. Ben came in second with 47 points. Owen was third with 41 points, and me (Steve) was last with 38 points. (Darn those other players!) We all enjoyed the game and look forward to our next time playing it.

Chaos Steve

Navegador

Ben brought a new game for us to play this week called Navegador. It says that this game is inspired by the Portuguese Age of Discoveries in the 15th-16th century. I didn’t realize the Portuguese had an age of discovery, but then I’m American. So what did those Portuguese do back in the 15th and 16th century? Apparently they contracted men, acquired ships and buildings, and sailed the seas. While on the seas they establish colonies in the discovered lands and traded the goods found there in the market. All this gained them certain privileges that gained them victory points. Ok, maybe they didn’t gain victory points, but we did. We each started with only two ships and three workers. From this we endeavored to expand our empire (and gain victory points.)

A couple of interesting things to note about the game: The market is where you sell goods from your colonies (driving the prices down). Your factories process the goods into marketable items (driving the prices up). Your clever use of factories and colonies can get you tons of money. Workers and ships are an integral part of the game—you must have them. As the game progresses they become very expensive unless you invest in buildings that lower their cost. This is another game where on your turn you have more things you want to do than you can do.

Ben had played this game a couple of times before and offered many helpful hints and suggestions…of which he followed none. Those of us who did follow them ended up somewhere at the bottom of the victory point totals. Score one for Ben’s insidious and crafty game playing. Oh, and he tried to cheat several times, But Mike called him on it. We love Ben. He’s so predictable…except when he’s being insidious and crafty. And even then, we should have known better.

My game started off fabulously well and I was soon rolling in the pazoozas, or whatever the Portuguese called their currency back in the 15th century. Owen and Mike went after colonies to score the big victory points. Ben and I cornered the sugar market and built factories.

Victory points are only scored at the end of the game. This makes it a little hard to judge just how well you are doing compared to everyone else. Especially since everyone else is most likely going after different ways to score points. As our game came to a close, Owen thought he had done poorly, but ended up being only 9 points off from the winner. Mike followed Ben’s suggestions from the beginning of the game and came in last. (What did we learn here?)

Ben won with 82 points. I came in second with 76 points. Owen had 73 points and Mike had 71.

We liked this game. Even with all of the pieces and options available on your turn, it’s a pretty easy game to pick up and play. Of course, learning the nuances of winning may take a little longer—especially if you listen to Ben.

Chaos Steve