Half the dungeon, post-smite.

Since my Sunday gaming group is waiting for after Christmas to kick off our upcoming campaign, Hardarian Blackleaf, Ale, Mr. Wizard Nickelbane III, and Elfin John continued their Quest (tm) to become Heroes (tm).   The story was thin but the cardstock terrain was thick as... well... cardstock.   And so the smiting commenced!

We ran through a couple more pretty generic quests this week - find a good wizard then go kill the evil one.  Considered we played Are You the Traitor? beforehand (which features a good/evil wizard mechanic) I suppose there was a theme running throughout the evening.

At this point the party is getting pretty well equipped.  The one oddness to the game is that it follows the D&D trope of "the wizard can't use cool equipment."  So while the dwarf, elf, and barbarian all have shields, helms, and armor (the barbarian even has artifact armor) and good weapons, the wizard is stuck with a weak magic cloak he found and a pointy stick (read: quarterstaff).  He's been collecting some interesting magic items, but he's still the weak link of the party and will crumple if the monsters get to him.

The gargoyle smites Elfin John!

Camp is still the name of the game.  Moondog has been the best Zargon of the group hands down.  Among his achievements is composing the soundtrack known as "march of the mummy."  We always know when a mummy is coming at us.

Moondog missed this week, so I tried to add my own twist this weekend with moonwalking, "Thriller"-singing chaos warriors (and completely silent zombies, just 'cause).  Unfortunately I fell short of Moondog's greatness.

There are only five more quests left, but we're taking our time.  Hero Quest is a fun game to play for nostalgic reasons and we don't want to take it too seriously or risk getting burnt out.  But as a occasional diversion it's still two thumbs up.

The Heroes(tm) on a Quest(tm)

While my role-playing group is between campaigns, we're filling our weekly sessions with boardgames and one-shots.  Last week was a blast from the past: Hero Quest by Milton Bradley.  I couldn't find the doors and a few figures were MIA (the elf in particular) and had to be proxied, but the old school charm remained.

Matt took on the role of the vile Zargon for the first two quests, leaving Chad, Wayne, and me to take on the mantles of the Elf (Elfen John), Wizard (Mr. Wizard), and Barbarian (Thud).  The Dwarf (Ale) was thrown in for good measure.  For the third and final game I took over behind the screen and Matt claimed the Dwarf.

We fully embraced the camp of the game, with "Zargon" reading the boxed text before each adventure with as much melodrama as could be mustered.  As casually as we treated the game, our role-playing roots came through and there were a few more descriptions than dictated by the adventure book as we stomped around the dungeon, hacking up orcs, goblins, and other minions of Chaos.

Wayne Nukes the gobbos

The first adventure was a fun re-introduction to combat, but things got interesting at the end of the second quest.  When you enter the prison room of the NPC you have to save, all of the monsters remaining in the dungeon are immediately put on the board and start activating while you try and get him to the exit stairs.

It was actually a lot of fun, but you could tell we were all MMO players of various experience.  Chad immediately blew a spell to walk through the nearby wall and defensive buff himself to block the choke point, while I ran to the other.  Wayne and the Dwarf provided support as we just held up the lines while our escort got the heck out.

Then we slaughtered all the goblins and took their stuff.

Even though as a group we enjoy the role-playing side of our weekly game, it was fun to have a weekend of mindless hack and slash.  We decided to keep the characters around and break the game back out from time to time whenever a role-playing game is canceled at the last minute.  Maybe I'll finally have the chance to see all 14 quests that come with the game.

Maybe I'll even be able to find the doors.

Bellevue WA. June 30, 2009 - Privateer Press is pleased to announce Grind, an extreme combat sports board game for two players ages 14 and up releasing this October. In Grind players customize a team of steamjacks—10-ton, steam-powered mechanical robots—and battle to move a large, spiked ball into their opponent’s goal. The game comes with several highly detailed plastic components, including six Runner steamjack figures, four Crusher steamjack figures, 32 interchangeable weapon arms, two spiked pillars, and the Grinder ball. Also included are a full-color game board, 11 tokens, and custom dice.

I hardly ever played the initial Grind release - it just didn't pique my interest enough.  If I was going to be getting my Warmachine miniatures out to play, I'd rather just play a game of Warmachine.  It wasn't that the concept of Grind wasn't interesting, but it seemed to be cobbled together from the existing Warmachine rules and so suffered from a rule system that wasn't really designed to support it.

Grind Box Art

For the most part I'm interested in seeing how this new version of Grind plays.  By breaking Grind off as its own game, Privateer Press is free to design rules from the ground up to focus on the type of play they want Grind to have.  Warjacks can be armed with weapons geared specifically to use in the Grind arena instead of appropriating Warmachine weapon systems that were not designed with Grind in mind.

I've talked about my dislike for custom dice in my Mosnterpocalypse reviews, and that unfortunately applies here as well.  I'm trying to hold back from passing judgment until after I see the rules but the use of these custom Action Dice is a little off-putting.  If the game's good it can overcome that though, so I'll wait and see.

Finally is the sticker shock.  Grind is going to retail at $70.  That puts its competition up in the range of some of the more premium board games - games like Arkham Horror ($60), Battlestar Galactica ($60), Shadows over Camelot ($60), and BattleLore ($80).  That's some stiff competition for a first foray into the board game arena.

Since we already have games like Arkham and Last Night on Earth, Grind will have to be really good for my gaming group to pick it up.  I'm willing to wait and see how it plays, though.  Hopefully Privateer will have some demos running at GenCon.

La Corse, the game MVP

First, our Pirates game. Normally in a free-for-all someone inevitably gets teamed up on, either accidentally or purposefully.  To prevent that we teamed up, having each player on a team bring all the points worth of ships, islands, and treasures that they would bring to a normal game.  Chad and Wayne brought a small, powerful fleet but Pat brought three solid gunships and I brought a nicely crewed La Corse and three gold runners.

My first impression was that we were going to get slaughtered, but with the open table my gold runners made a huge impact.  Those ships got us a quick lead by running to and from islands quickly, letting us place a fortress by turn three.  Chad and Wayne got overconfident and didn't coordinate, which resulted in Wayne overextending his flag ship and getting whittled down my La Corse.  Pat's gunships swooped in after loading some treasure to hammer Chad and Wayne's fleet until I was able to use my empty treasure runners to screen Pat's ships for their last gold delivery.

Paradis de la Mer

After the game we all remarked how fantastic having a fortress was.  It wasn't even the cannons that they support so much as the ability to claim an entire island worth of gold quickly as well as let ships dump off their treasure without having to return all the way to a home island.  Considering as long as you don't let your opponent sack them they effectively cost you nothing and there's no reason not to bring a couple just in case you can build one in-game.

Our last observation was that there were certain crew types that were almost auto-includes depending on a ship's roll in your fleet.  One of my biggest complaints about Pirates is that it's a move or shoot game - you can't do both.  Unless you have a captain on your ship that is.  And helmsmen grant additional speed that can be a godsend to some of the slower gunships.  Even smaller gold runners are vastly improved by the inclusion of a 1-point explorer who lets them explore wild islands for free.

Last Night on Earth Game Setup

After our Pirates game we switched to Last Night on Earth, which is probably best described as Zombie HeroQuest for those who remember that old Milton-Bradly board game.  At first glance the zombies don't seem to stand a chance with their 1-space movement compared to the d6 of the survivors and the weapons the survivors can find, but that's not necessarily the case.

The zombie player gets special cards to play each round (while survivors only get their equivalent for staying put and searching buildings).  These cards let the zombies move faster or perform better in combat, as well as causing traditional zombie genre events in the game; for example the Bickering card that can be played on two heroes in the same space to make them miss their next turn.

Last Night on Earth Greens

Heroes can get some weapons that are pretty nice, but each weapon has a condition for which it will run out of fuel/ammo or break - anywhere from 1/6 to 1/3 chance after each combat/use.  Take for example the revolver, which can shoot a zombie from 3 spaces away (a moderate range).  It hits (kills) on a 4+ on a d6 but if a 1 is rolled the revolver runs out of ammo and is discarded.  In our three games, four revolvers were found.  Every time a revolver was fired, a 1 was rolled.  Every. Single. Time.  On the other hand the few times the shotgun or chainsaw came out they caused massive damage before going away.

From a theme perspective Last Night on Earth does a fair job of mimicking many zombie genre stereotypes.  Our first game had a single player killed early before the survivors organized and went on a rampage, dropping zombies left and right.  However as soon as their weapons ran out and the zombie players had a good draw on zombie ability cards the tide turned and the survivors were quickly overrun.

As mentioned The event cards are very thematic - like the Bickering card above, the Shamble card that lets zombies move faster, and the Unnecessary Sacrifice card that the zombie player can play to make one survivor take a hit for another.  In addition zombies are fairly easy to fend off in melee (assuming you're not vastly out numbered) but actually killing one without a melee weapon is extremely hard.

One nice feature is that there are rules for having two zombie players, which is the reason the zombies come in two colors.  As mentioned above when I played the zombie player in the first game, I took out one survivor quickly.  Instead of him sitting out the rest of the game I gave him control of half the zombies and switched the game to the two-zombie-player version on the fly.  I was nice to be able to keep the player involved after the death of his character.

Overall I think I prefer the cooperative play of games like Arkham Horror but Last Night on Earth was a good time.  Chad mentioned he'd probably be looking into the expansions and we'll probably play again our next board game night.