Leaders of Small World

Since I've had this tradition to tally up any expansion purchases for board games, let's add Leader's of Small World to the pages of this blog. No idea when I'll get to use this expansion in an actual game.

So it's coming

This can have an entry of it's own.

My pre-order of Kingdom Death has been shipped.

It's been quite a while since I bought any new games. But today I walked home with Love Letter in my bag.

Cataclysm

I've been stalling the acquirement of The Cataclysm expansion for Talisman.

After all, Talisman gets rarely played these days and I somehow find this expansion a little dubious. I mean, are we going to see a new line of expansions that are expansions on top of expansions? Probably not, but this way of expanding game feels a little cheap. The Cataclysm could've been a stand-alone expansion and that would have been perfect, but now it's pretty much alternate centre board, while original centre continues to be mandatory.

Oh well.

The figures were, as far as board games go, gorgeous. They have been improving in quality for quite a while, and now the details are so sharp that models like Scavenger, Arcane Scion and Barbarian wouldn't gather dismissive looks if included in a full fledged miniatures game. Barbarian's sword is worthy of mention: it's not a flimsy, flaccid rubber baton that melts in the sunlight, as often longish, unsupported appendages are on board game figures.

Figures do 'suffer' from gigantism yet again when compared to earlier Talisman figures. Maybe it's because of the magical radiation that The Cataclysm brought.

Rules for new characters were a little off. Scavenger and Arcane Scion look to me like they're hideously overpowered. Black Knight also has the potential to be the premiere player character killer with little danger for himself, and yet his starting Strength / Craft ain't bad at all.

And that was pretty much everything. There were two plastic bags of cards, and of course the main board.

For the heavy price that this game expansion came with, I can't help but feel a little underwhelmed at least when it comes to physical content. And actual play experience, oh, let's wait for a year or two... (hopefully not)

Harbinger

Yesterday I bought the Harbinger expansion for Talisman.

I don't have a good reason for why I did it, since I haven't even played with the earlier expansion either.

The figures are beautiful - at least for Talisman figures.

I didn't look into content yet, but I find it an interesting possibility to play with more NPC's than actual adventurers. Reaper, Werewolf and now the Harbinger of Doom.

But that's it. No more jello for me.

Coupon update

Another one I seem to have forgotten to write up here.

Since I had earlier filled the board game discount voucher with stamps, I had to use it right away.

I got Talisman: Deep Realms with the coupon. Whee.

Two out of three (Dead of Winter)

A few days ago I bought a new board game. The only reason for buying it was to fill my gift card voucher for local gaming shop. Well, of course I was interested in a semi-cooperative survival game, too. But the main reason was the voucher...

I feel so ashamed.

Anyway. The voucher is filled up now, no more spontaneous random board games for me.

The game in question is Dead of Winter: a crossroads game.

It's a zombie apocalypse game, which is somewhat of a over-used genre. I guess the genre itself will soon rise as a zombie to have vengeance upon other game background setting, spreading its disease and multiplying in the process. Perhaps it has already happened?

But this write-up serves as the purchase post as well as details about two first games played.

First was a two-player game to get in touch with the rules. In two-player variant game isn't semi-cooperative at all, you got no personal goal to achieve. And considering the game mechanics it'd be quite foolish to include the secret objectives. First player would always be able vote the other player into exile.

Rulebook recommends the "We need more samples" scenario as the introductory victory condition, so that's what we played. One of the players had the ninja survivor in the initial group, which eased the game immensely. Other survivor group had the cook with them, so two seemingly most difficult aspects of the game were already taken care of: killing zombies and providing food for the colony.

Despite having good survivors for the job, we did manage to get some people killed. Note to self: it's not a very good idea to bring four survivors to a single location and cause some noise there. That's just asking for trouble. No, not asking... that's demanding for trouble in harsh tone, stressing every word.

Frostbite also surprised us with its lethality, as the gangrene that kicks in doesn't stop until the survivor is dead, or the frostbite is cured somehow.

Well, we did win that game, though, and we even had a couple of morale points and rounds to spare.

Game 2:

Next day it was time for three survivor groups to duke it out, this time with secret objectives.

Main objective was again "We need more samples", but because of three groups we needed nine samples now.

There were doctor and the nurse in one group, sheriff and waitress in another and janitor plus construction worker in the last one.

It wasn't a very good start when the colony failed in the very first crisis they faced, which was Zombie Surge. Colony got six survivors and every non-colony location got one. Second round's crisis was even more zombies, and had it failed colony would have gotten eight zombies and non-colony location one additional zombie. That one was thankfully prevented.

My own personal objective was to complete main objective and have four any items cards in hand. Not too hard to complete, I thought. Sheriff also felt like a good candidate to grind some zombie samples. I guess he mauled the zombies too badly to be used as any kind of a sample, though, because he scarcily succeeded in extracting samples from even half of his kills.

Starting from round three everything started to go all kinds of wrong, when illness crisis card was failed, and after that we got a starvation counter. Construction worker and janitor both eventually died to exposure, and doctor was bitten by a zombie. She was alone in a non-colony location, though, so nobody else contracted the disease.

Doctor/nurse group started attracting a lot of other survivors to the camp. And worst of all - a lot of helpless survivors. We were already starving! Either we'd need to win really fast, or the colony would need to go full cannibal holocaust, which would surely drop morale to zero and below.

Victory was not that far away, though. When morale was at 2 we already had eight samples. Only one more roll of 4+ from killing a zombie, and we'd do it. But no. Doing some quick maths only some random effect from Crossroads cards could give us a chance at victory, since we had continuous morale drop going on from starvation token.

So all was lost. Disease run rampant, hunger tormented the colony and zombies were coming in from doors and windows. Colony died, and all survivors lost.

Or did they?

Now departed doctor and the nurse group had been cleverly playing their betrayal victory. Not even once had they given wrong cards to fail at crisis, and they hadn't attacked anybody. In fact they had only rescued a lot of people... helpless survivors, even. That were eating the morale away. That did raise some suspicions, but on the other hand situation was so very desperate that it didn't feel that disadvantageous for the colony to fish in additional survivors, who might have an ability that would let the game continue for that one critical turn...

So, the colony lost. But a tyrannical despot of a small traitorous group of survivors barricaded themselves into the hospital (or library?) and won the game.

Victim of some marketing tricks

Well, yet again I wanted another stamp on the Fantasiapelit board game coupon.

This time it meant I bought both expansions for Small World that were released just this month: the Royal Bonus and Leaders of Small World. And, well... also one expansion for the Small World Underground. Though I don't have Small World Underground myself.

But!

Here is a catch. All the races and special powers in the Spider's Web expansion are playable in the original Small World board, too. At least I didn't find any game term from the expansion rules that were exclusive to Underworld only. So... why not? I got another stamp.

Yaaay.

A stamp.

An arm and a leg. And a kidney.

It was a terrible thing to do to give me a board game coupon at the local gaming shop, where after ten stamps I get a discount voucher.

I already get fixated on completing every conceivable collectable set, and this was no exception.

So instead of one expansion, I came home with three expansions for different, just to get more stamps. And because I knew that eventually I would buy those expansions anyway, so why not get all of them right away?

Well, eating something other than macaroni with salt for the rest of the month might have been a good reason.

First I got the Woodland expansion for Talisman. Usually I review new purchases a little, but I think I'm skipping on that part now. Too many packages to look into in any kind of detail. But I did take a look at the new characters for Talisman. Fantasy Flight Games has been steadily moving away from the mundane and traditional hero archetypes for Talisman, but Woodlands raised the bar there. Ancient Oak (treant) and Leywalker (who escaped from Avatar?) seem a little weird. Not entirely bad design choice, just weird.

All characters, however, do have interesting token mechanics. They're first characters that come with bits and bobs other than their character sheet.


Next expansion was the Festival Season for Dungeon Lords.

I took only a quick look through the various tiles, but what I saw filled me with dread. It seems that adventurer parties will consist of four heroes, and there is an extra battle round. There were also entirely new type of adventurer, the bard. Bards temporarily increase hit points of party members.

Considering I've only played four games of Dungeon Lords by now, I think I'm not going to force anyone to play with Festival Season just yet, and only add the game elements in to the base game that work without difficulties.


Last and least, I got Unfortunate Expeditions expansion for Gloom. I got all expansions for Gloom now, but I've heard that the Cthulhu Gloom is compatible with original Gloom...

What trolls and imps and... oh my!

Actually this should have been written in Thursday 4th of September, but I felt moral obligation to write last games of Warmachine in first.

But anyway, I bought a new board game last Thursday called the Dungeon Lords.

Idea seems weird and lovely twisted - you're the evil overlord building underground dungeon, and some annoying goodie good heroes are attempting to do good things (ie, loot your treasures).

Rules look really complex and deep, probably a little bit too complex for random gatherings. I have this fear that Dungeon Lords needs a dedicated gaming group. But we'll see.

Also I thought that there would have been imp miniatures you can paint to match player colors. Well, yeah, there are imp miniatures, but there's not much point in painting them, since everyone uses same stack of imps.

Idle curiosity killed the wallet

Today I was waiting in at a local gaming shop for some time for players to arrive. I was going to play both Relic and Warmachine, and towards the end of Relic I actually had to simultaneously play both games. But more of that later. What happened before those games was an expansion for Gloom.

I bought the Unquiet Dead deck. Unfortunate Expeditions would have been next expansion to buy if I had followed them in order, but game mechanics from Unquiet Dead seemed more interesting, more fun and more depressing.

Quickly looking through the deck I noticed that it didn't have an extra family in it. Oh well. It'd be unlikely anyway to get in a six player game, not to mention seven players if Unquiet Dead had an extra family.

More about the actual games a bit later.

Tragic mistake

Well, damn.

I bought a new expansion for Gloom.

Unwelcome Guests was its name.

I guess I'm becoming the penniless poet.

This post looks a bit like a poem, doesn't it?

Ifrit sultan or iFrit sultan?

Yesterday I was playing Warmachine at the local gaming shop. A curious sight caught my eye, though.

It was the Firelands expansion for Talisman. Well, my greed knows know boundaries when it comes to expansions for games I own.

After taking a quick look through the contents, it feels like Firelands expansion dilutes with additional expansions even more than the previous ones. That's not entirely a bad thing, but I'm pretty certain that Firelands plays a lot more aggressively as the only expansion than with 500 extra adventure cards, give or take.

But on the other hand, changes to the board probably stay on the board a lot longer with additional content.

Characters seem fun, and it pleases me greatly that Fantasy Flight Games didn't raise the bar yet again when it comes to too powerful heroes.

Variant endings had two hidden cards and one normal card, which was a bit unusual.

Miniatures are once again quite good looking for a board game. Now, if they would only re-do the original fourteen and a few of the first expansions' characters...

The Feeling of Dread Within These Walls

Because Santa had been kind enough to write me a gift card to local gaming shop, I went and bought the Unhappy Homes expansion for Gloom.

Not much else to say, except that I was delighted to see that ducks become a little more important story element now, and not only that... Penguins, too!

The expansion has 45 new actual playing cards, the remaining ten are the new family and a house for every family in the base game. I hope this means that even in four player game the deck wouldn't need to be reshuffled so many times, and repetition that we encountered in playing two games in short order would be much less.

I hate my life and want (my family members) to die

It's been a while since I bought any new games.

Yesterday, however, such a thing happened.

I've disliked actual card games for some time now (I'm a sucker for all kinds of tiny bits in games, and while cards can be part of a game, I don't like it too much when they are the game) but now I bought one.

I got the basic set for Gloom. The goal in Gloom is to make life as miserable as possible for the members of your in-game family before they finally die, and at the same time try to make other players' in-game families as cheerful as possible.

Such a disturbed goal for a game was enough for me to win my distrust of card games.

Oh boy. I can't wait for the loved and loyal family dog to die of consumption.

Shopping Spree

Today I bought Talisman: The City expansion.

A painting update for characters will probably come some time later as per tradition.

A few quick pointers that I noticed while skimming through the contents:

- No new spells. That's actually a good thing. Spell deck is already bloated.

- Two "revealed" and one "hidden" alternative ending. All of them actually look playable, though Assassins Guild is a bit difficult if you play with onnly two players and you need to take a life from a player of certain alignment...

- Too cheap warhorses.

- Good enough characters. And by good enough I mean that not too many of them look superior, though Bounty Hunter and Elementalist do have some advantage from early on thanks to their high strenght. None of the characters are crazy spellcasters, though! That's a good thing.

- And my favourite: more trinkets! I liked the Trinkets mechanic from Highlands and have been a little disappointed that no trinkets have found their way into the basic adventure deck. Well, now there are plenty of spaces and even card draws other than in Highlands where you can get them!

Hero onslaught

And now I got my greedy little fingers around A Touch of Evil Hero Pack 2.

Not much to write, though, since there's not too much unexpected content in an addition like this. The four heroes look nice, though Jack Sp... sorry I mean Jack Fellows, the privateer, is a bit boring rules-wise, and Sara, the Bright Witch may (or may not) be a little too powerful. Depends a lot on Shadow Track, really.

Also included are one card to each Corner Location in the Shadowbrook map and three mystery and event cards each.

New villain, the Reaper, has it's own minion chart, unlike the extra villain in Hero Pack 1. Reaper also looks lovably dark and thematic. Shadow of Death and Wither really stand out as well-thought and flavorful special rules.

But until I get stuff painted, this was all for A Touch of Evil Hero Pack 2.

A Touch of the Coast

I finally got my filthy hands upon the new expansion for A Touch of Evil: The Coast.

And, truth be told, the more I look around, the more I'm enthusiastic about the expansion. It's more than just "another playing board" that offers nothing actually new to the game if you already own Something Wicked.

No, this one has loads of stuff crammed in.

First, of course, the Hauntings. Hauntings add yet another sweet, supernatural layer to the game. They are manifestations of vengeful spirits that may or may not be in league with the Villain. They are kind of... totally separate things. Like mini-Villains. They're not minions, so they don't stop Heroes movements any way, and there can even be a minion and a haunting in the same space.

Rewards for banishing Hauntings are generally awesome, though they usually just detract you from the main focus - Villain.

New coastal village, Tidewater, functions wonderfully different than the actual Shadowbrook town, too. Instead of drawing events you draw village encounters, which can be good or bad or just... something. I bet they make the village feel alive.

Board, Hero and Villain art are yet again top-notch. Flying Frog has really found the perfect artistic style for this game. Very Tim Burtonesque, and still sets the mood.

New Secrets for town elders looked promising and fun (two that really made an impression were one where Town Elder became stark-raving mad, and one where a lycanthrope has bitten him or her.)

Well, these thing came from the top of my head. At least with a quick look The Coast looks like it's a little bit better expansion than Something Wicked, though my philosophy regarding expansions to games I own is "the more the merrier!"

Spycraft in a cyberworld... why not?

Finally some random writings.

Some time ago I got two expansions for When Darkness Comes.

I bought Spycraft and This Is Not Happening... boxes. Though Spycraft is somewhat of a stand-alone game.

Considering the price tag I guess I didn't do a good trade, because I'm more interested in the horror theme of When Darkness Comes. I can mostly mix and match elements from both sets to the original.

However, the new elements seem actually quite nice and will surely expand the gaming experience of When Darkness Comes. For instance, there will be a good pool of outside encounters now in the form of vehicles, civilians, "foil", street encounters and even human thugs. Also monsters from This Is Not Happening look like they will fit right in, except for the weird techno ball. Traps from the same expansion also look good and refreshing change of pace if included in horror setting. Who knows what kind of dark magics and such are present when there are undead around?

I hope these will, in a way, fix the problem of streets being mostly "safe zones".

One thing I consider is making adversaries from This Is Not Happening to work like those from Nameless Mist. That would make Willpower more of a game element than just a curiosity.

Also PSI from This Is Not Happening needs to be converted to Willpower, probably.

Now I'm only missing the two "main" expansions. I wonder if I'll actually get them ever if this games goes out of print or something soon. There hasn't been support for it for ages...

Dancing to the sound of Evil

Uh, well.

I'm not sure if this is worth a blog entry, but I bought the Touch of Evil Special Edition Soundtrack.

Why?

Because it had extra gaming cards. I thought there were more, but really, there were only 2 of them.

Quite a high price for just two cards. Maybe I need to listen the CD a couple of times to make me feel a little less stupid. The music isn't exactly bad either.