Monday, December 28, 2015

Game Report - Brewers vs Engineers


Since returning to blogging I have not written up too many game reports. I've gotten out of the practice bringing my camera with me on game night. Additionally I've been focused on playing and improving my games of Guild Ball, so have not done a lot of analysis and thinking during or after the game. All that said, I made a point of packing up my camera a couple weeks ago and bringing it out to a game with Ben. Ben had just picked up and assembled his second Guild Ball team, Engineers, and was looking forward to learning how the team worked. I've been working to figure out how to play my Brewers better and specifically how to get some solid use out of Spigot.

A bit of time has passed since this game and I've already run an entire tournament plus played a couple other games in the interim. I'll be trying to remember as much as possible from my game, along with some of the drivers behind my decisions.

Setup

Ben used a very basic Engineers team with Ballista, Mainspring, Ratchet, Salvo, Velocity, and Collosus. I think this is a great way to start out with a new team, getting the feel for the basic team players before expanding your selection with Union players. You should be able to get a solid feel for the role each player on a team fulfills and then be able to make smart choices on where to substitute and swap out. Ben Deployed in a fairly standard line across the board, keeping Collosus in the center of his line. I had the kick-off so this made sense to me.


On the Brewers side I decided to also role out with a fairly standard Brewers setup. Tapper, Scum, Spigot, Stave, Friday, Hooper. I needed to figure out how to use Spigot more effectively, and was hoping to find the rumored damage dealer I've been hearing Hooper is. I kept Friday in the line as she's a fantastic striker, and of course no Brewers team is complete without Stave. I had the kickoff so chose to kick with Stave. I like using Stave for my kick-off as it allows him to move up the field before the game starts. This gives his impressive threat range for his barrels a solid grasp on the center of the board. I'm also not concerned with his poor kick stat as he has enough to place the ball over the mid-line. I'm starting to set the ball centered on the mid-field line, knowing my scatter (minimum 1 inch) will always carry the ball across. This becomes tricky if your trying to kick at an angle, which I do not regularly do. In this case the ball flew straight forward, halfway to Collosus. I was comfortable with a plan for knockdown to spring the ball from from whoever ended up holding it.

I drew out my Guild Plots and chose Sideline Repairs, Don't Touch the Hair, and Knee Slider. Against the Engineers I was expecting a lot of ranged knockdown coming my way, along with a fair bit of damage over time. I suspected I'd be able to score with Friday and considering I only had a single striker, the Knee Slider would come in handy to return back toward midfield after a goal. Don't touch the Hair is always a solid choice, and I planned to move aggressively into Ben's line and engage as many Engineer as I could. This would give me an opportunity to slow down some of his attacks.

Turn 1

Turn 1 left me feeling a bit like I was playing my Union team. Ben moved forward with Collosus and his team, providing me the opportunity to use Stave to knock down and push Collosus close to my lines. This opened up multiple options for charging in to attack Collosus. I was not expecting to take him out on Turn 1, but aimed to put a fair bit of damage onto him. Following my initial knock-down and push I began moving my additional models into position to provide bonuses from Ganging up. Scum shifted over and Friday moved up the field and his Collosus with Dirty Knives, penalizing his defense and preparing him for the charges.

I started the attacks with Spigot walked in and rolled a bunch of dice on his single attack. 5 for the attack, 2 for ganing up, and an additional 3 for Collosus being knocked down and -2 defense from the knives. I only realize after the fact I should have had more due to Spigot's Floored trait granting extra dice against targets whoa re knocked down. After rolling and removing failures and armor, I was left with two full playbook results and a single success on the second wrap. Not horrible on a single influence attack. I left Collosus with damage and moved on through the turn. Hooper came in next with a charge, rocking 14 dice on a charge. Although he did fairly well, I  shorted myself several dice overall. The calculation should have gone:

  • 6 dice base TAC
  • 4 dice on the charge
  • 1 dice for knocked down (def 2 to def 1)
  • 2 dice for dirty knives (-2 def off def 2)
  • 3 for ganging up
  • Total of 16 dice
Even with the 14 I rolled I was able to dump a load of damage on him due to Hoopers Shove the Boot in trait. At the end of the battle it was enough to take the guy out and score me my first 2 points in the match.

I knew that going into Turn 2 I had to hold off Ben's shooting and also get the ball  from Mainspring, shoot, and preserve my own team. I also figured that Ben would be looking to blow up Mainspring considering this was his first game and I'd ended the turn with model's grouped up nicely enough for it to have good impact.


Turn 2

Turn 2 started with Ben activating Ratched and tossing out a grenade along with overclocking his totem. This set-up the bug for a nice explosion and solid effect against my grouped up team. I used Friday's Shadow like to bounce into the bug and her low momentous tackle to grab the ball away from him. Ben played Protect your balls but wasn't able to grab the ball back. This left Friday able to move across the field and take a shot on goal, scoring and then Knee Sliding over to cover Velocity. Ben kicked the ball back out onto the field, leaving it sit near Ballista and Salvo, resting on the ground so it wouldn't get knocked free by a thrown barrel.




Following that action the score was sitting at 6 - 0 in my favor and Ben felt he needed to try and balance things out. He moved Mainspring forward, attacked for a point of damage on Spigot, then blew himself up. This did some damage and dumped fire out on three of my players, but also gave up an additional 2 points to me for an 8-0 score. This left me 1 goal out from winning the game. I activated Stave with the intention of putting out the fire and knocking Ben's models around a bit. I was successful in knocking Ballista away from his team, causing Ben some challenges in getting him back into position to support the team via momentum generation. 


Ballista needed to get back into a better position so Ben stood him up and walked him back toward the scrum. He finished up his turn knocking down Stave and popping his legendary play in the hopes I'd start wracking up some damage. Unfortunately for Ben this was not my first time facing Engineers and I had already accomplished a lot for the turn. I didn't have a driving need to re-position and suffer the damage and was able to suffer out the remainder of the turn staying still in the minefield. Ben continued through his activation, activating Salvo and pushing my models around a bit for some minimal damage. He left the ball laying in the open field, hoping he had blocked it out enough with Ratched, Ballista, and Salvo to keep me from getting anyone to it. I chose to complete my turn by moving Spigot through the minefield to block out Velocity on Turn 3, hoping to get initiative but positioning in case I did not. If Ben got initiative I had Velocity covered by two players. If I got initiative I had Spigot positioned so I could make a run to retrieve the ball with Friday then jump back into Spigots Football Legend aura to make the shot on the goal. Ben took the last activation to move Velocity toward the ball and hope to provide some additionl protection against my team grabbing the ball and shooting.

 

Turn 3

Turn 3 started with Ben taking the initiative but surprising me by activating Ratchet and tossing some grenades out. I suspect this is due to his inexperience with Engineers, as he only slowed down a couple players I already had late in my activation order. I'm not sure if he missed the goal threat from Friday or simply underestimated her ability to get to the ball and score. I am aware that Ben had been suffering knockdowns from Stave through the game, and he may have been trying to mitigate Stave's threat range on the board, spotting that I'd given him 2 influence.


I activated Friday and using her shadow like dodge plus sprint was able to slip through his lines and grab the ball. Friday thenThis left Friday in a tenuous position, engaged with Velocity but also in football legend range. Despite losing dice from engagement and having a blocked line to the goal (we played this incorrectly), I decided it was worth the chance to win the game and made a 1 die roll. I ended up making the goal and winning the game.






Monday, December 21, 2015

Rise of the Kage (and Docks of Ryu) Review

Today we're going to look at Rise of the Kage and it's first expansion, Docks of Ryu. I received this game and expansion together a year after backing the kickstarter. Overall the kickstarter was a success, delivering only a month after the expected delivery date. Considering I received them together I wanted to review both the core game and expansion with the same review. The expansion does not change the game, it simply adds two new boards, 3 new ninja's, 1 new boss, and 3 new guards. All that said, let's get onto the review!

What is Rise of the Kage, Who makes it?

Rise of the Kage (RotK) is a stealth themed miniature board game for 2 - 4 players. One player controls a Boss and guards while the other 1 - 3 players control 3 Ninja's infiltrating the area to accomplish a hidden mission.
  • Game: Rise of the Kage (and Docks of Ryu expansion)
  • Company: GCT Studios
  • Website: http://www.riseofthekage.com/
  • Players: 2 - 4
  • Play time: 45 minutes 
The combination of the base game plus expansion delivers a load of models to the owner, with the kickstarter delivering double models for each guard and ninja (alert/unalert & detected/stealth).  Players will choose 1 boss and 3 ninja's for the opposing sides, with each of the 3 game bosses bringing a specific set of guards to the game. These guards are assigned to each boss from a set of 9 different guards, split evenly between 3 levels of expertise.

How's it play?

RotK is a stealth game that also uses a fair bit of combat between the Ninja's and the Guard players. Each turn will begin with the Ninja's charting their movement on the board by placing footstep markers starting with each Ninja. The Ninja's do not need to complete their movement, but they can only move along the path as specified, including needing to double up on steps in a square if they wish to retrace their steps. Once this is complete the Ninja's will activate in initiative order and attempt to complete a number of actions along their defined path. These actions include searching objective markers, opening doors, sneaking past guards, and even fighting those same guards. Each Ninja has a variable number of force and stealth dice, defined by their specific characteristics. Force dice must be used for force actions (i.e. kicking down a door, attacking a guard) and Stealth dice must be used for stealthy actions (i.e. picking a lock, searching an objective, sneaking around). Ninja's can always add extra dice to their tests, but if a Stealth dice is not included then the test makes noise. Additoinally, any time a Ninja fails a test they make noise.

Noise is important for the guard and the Ninja's want to strive to be as quiet as possible. Each instance of noise will generate a noise token which the guard player will subsequently be able to use as additional actions for the guards. Furthermore, the first time each Ninja generates noise will advance the guards alarm meter and the time until morning track will advance if any Ninja makes noise. If, at points during the game, the alarm or morning tracks ever reach the end the Ninja's lose the game.

Every mission requires the Ninja's to sneak through the board searching to gather objective tokens on the board. Once a number of these tokens are collected, specified by the Ninja's random mission, the Ninja's will roll a dice and hopefully trigger the escape condition for the mission. The dice will be rolled upon collection of subsequent objectives until the escape condition is met. At that point the Ninja's will determine the specific exit (one of the 3 Ninja deployment points) and need to move to that exit point. A secret selection of the objectives will be traps, triggering when the Ninja's successfully searches the objective token. The traps cause noise and can damage the Ninja's. Regardless of being a trap or an objective, the Ninja searching an objective (successful or not) will draw a card from the Ninja equipment deck.

Once the Ninja's have completed their turn the guard player will draw a hand of cards from the guard deck and proceed. During the guard turn action tokens (number determined by the threat level) will be allocated to guards to perform actions. Guards can move around the board, attempt to detect hidden Ninja's, call for help, and attack detected Ninja's. There are a large array of choices provided by the guard deck as well, ranging from extra movement or attacks for the guards to limiting the movement of the ninja's to recruiting extra guards to the board. Before ending the guard turn there is also the opportunity to recruit new guards to the barracks locations.

Play proceeds back and forth until the Ninja's have succeeded or failed their mission.

What's innovative or different? What's fun?

RotK uses a couple of fairly innovative mechanics in the game. The first and most innovative of these is the Ninja's path used at the start of the Ninja turn. Placing these footsteps on the board and then proceeding along them is a pretty interesting part of the game. It requires the Ninja player to really plan out what they are doing and determines so many portions of the game. Overall it's one of the mechanics in the game I really enjoy.

Other mechanics this game uses are action points and action cards for the Guards, and hidden missions for the Ninja's. The combination of the hidden mission plus the random & hidden exit spot really combine to raise the challenge level for both the Ninja and the Guard players.

Overall the game has a high level of challenge and works as a puzzle to figure out.

Overall quality of the game

I'll start by discussing the quality of the models and components in the game. The game boards for both the core game and the expansion are very nice. They are a woven linen type material, suitable thick without being unwieldy, and fold up in quarters. They fit nicely in the box even after I had to cut the plastic for better box control. The cards for the variety of decks initially seemed good but over ~10 games I'm finding they are just a bit too thin. The cards are starting to wear a bit through shuffling, and a small number of beginning to peel at the corners.

The models included in the game are very nice. GCT has discussed their choice to use a softer "rubbery" plastic for the models so that they stand up to rough use in a board game. Specifically they wanted to assure the models could be "swept" off the table into a box without the danger of pieces breaking. Considering that they were able to achieve an impressive level of detail on the models. The models need a bit of a hot-water dip to straighten out staves and such, but overall the detail is very good, nearly reaching the level of a war-gaming model.

Box control is a bit lacking in this game. GCT made an attempt to provide molded plastic inside the box to hold all the components, but unfortunately was unsuccessful. Once the models are taken from their bags they will not fit into the space provided. I ended up needing to cut the molded plastic then store the different models in separate bags, using the enlarged space.

I'll discuss the rules and rule book last. Overall this is the worst rule book of any game I've played to date. Furthermore, the rules are incredibly convoluted and confusing, requiring an inordinate amount of work to figure out and learn. This game is much easier if one person puts in the work to learn to play then teaches everyone else. At certain points the language is so obscure that its effectively no help at all. As an example of this, I'll share:
"If during a ninja's search action, the search token is revealed to be a trap then the guard player performs a force test against the ninja, modified by the reaction value. If successful, the ninja sustains a wound. The token is still added to the ninja player's mission pool. When a trap is revealed it always generates a noise token."
This is particularly obscure when you look at a Ninja's reaction value and realize this is typically a positive number. So what's being modified here? I and my locals are guessing this means the Ninja's armor is increased by the reaction value since a "better reaction" should protect the Ninja from traps. That's certainly not clear from the wording. 

Recommendation and thoughts

I like this game, but I am really like challenging games. I feel like the game is more difficult for the Ninja's than necessary, being very slanted toward the guards winning. Furthermore, I feel the guard action deck is excessively large and could have been reduced by half and still viable.

Although I enjoy it, I will have a very hard time getting it onto the table in my gaming group. Overall my group feels that the bias against the Ninja's and unclear rules are too much of a barrier to cross to play the game. This becomes especially evident where there are other games on our shelves with cleaner rules. Unfortunately, I suspect even an errata or FAQ from GCT will come to late to save this for my gaming group.

As much as I wanted to give this a positive review, I cannot. Rise of the Kage appears destined for a solid layer of dust at the bottom of my gaming library.

Monday, December 14, 2015

Guild Ball - Brewers Team Review

The Brewers have been a tougher team to get my hands around than the previous teams I've reviewed. I used them briefly (less than 4 games) in the era prior to the kickstarter arriving and really liked them. I thought I had a good handle on how they played at that point in time, and expected to jump right back in once I got them painted. Now that my team is painted and I'm putting them on the table, I found myself mistaken at how they played. I've dedicated a solid two dozen games to working out the team and I feel like I have a decent handle on the basics. I will say in these opening comments, the brewers are the team I'm having the toughest time winning games with. I can see their strengths and they are fun to play, but they just don't quite deliver what I want them to do in game, specifically for my play style.

Brewers Team Overview

The Brewers are intended to a team focused on melee damage second to the Butchers, if the prevailing interwebz information is to be believed. There is a very nice article on the Muse forums that has been re-represented in an article on the Ozball blog that shows the distribution of team characteristics.  My own experience differs in a couple areas to this in some specific ways.

The Brewers as a team are very good at knocking down opponents. Many of the players have knockdown results as a first or second choice on their playbooks, often as a momentous result. Brewers also have a fair bit of damage to serve up, but I find that it's actually a bit behind the damage capability of a solid damage focused union team. Many of the damage choices the Brewers have are not momentous or the damage support options (such as Commanding Aura) are not momentous or easy to reach.

One of the areas I find the Brewers do succeed is in pushing the opponent around the field. My experience with the team indicates their strengths to be knockdowns and pushes overall. Unfortunately I have not found a way to turn this into a scoring solution as effective as goal scoring or take outs. Many of my opponents are aware that the sides of the board are a dangerous place to be when facing the Brewers, thus choosing to congregate closer to the middle of the field.

Tapper

Oh Captain my Captain...... Tapper is the only captain in Season 1 who does not have a legendary play. In place of that he gets one of the more interesting heroic plays in the game. Tapper has the ability to convert a single momentum into two influence once per turn, then allocate those influence to a friendly guild model within 4 inches, including himself. This means he is very capable of generating his own momentum via attacking then generating additional influence to finish beating down an opponents model. Tapper has a decent damage spread in his playbook, along with the typical Brewers easy access momentous knockdown. He also brings along Commanding Aura, via playbook and directly paying for the ability. His commanding aura is just shy as useful as Blackhearts (in the union), bring a bit harder to reach and non-momentous. Despite that, he is able to use this ability to support his teammates when they are dishing out damage.

Scum

Brewers bring a cat to the field as their mascot, a cat who will forever be in the shadow of the playtest version of itself. This cat may not do the crazy attacking damage the playtest cat did, but she is an amazingly fast model. Shadow like plus Unpredictable movement combined with a 6"/8" move make this kitty very capable of zipping around the board. She's a good little ball carrier, combining UM with her 5+ defense and being able to be called across the board by Friday. Often the toughest choice is when to give it the ball vs keeping it close to Tapper for his extra influence generation via Tappers Tactical Advice.



Friday

Friday is the Brewers in team striker, and she operates very similar to other strikers in the game. 6"8" move, 3/8" kick, a 1 success momentous tackle, shadow like, and a heroic play which replicates super shot on other strikers. Friday picks up some extra defense from being near Spigot, which she prefers do to his Football Legend trait anyway. While within 4 inches of Spigot she can jump up to a 5/11" kick if she's used her heroic play, plus has a 5 defense. This makes her a real danger for snap shots as well as straight shots on the goal. Like some other Brewers, Friday has a playbook that is "shorter" than her TAC, making it possible to wrap playbook results pretty easily. She is able to dish out some damage, but really wants to be throwing out dirty knives when not positioning to shoot on the goal. Overall she is one of my favorite strikers in the game, although she is a tier down from Flint and Mist.

Spigot

Spigot tends to play the role of damage dealer or bruiser in my Brewers team, although he appears to be built with a heavier focus on support. He's got Football Legend (extra kicking) as a trait, Tooled Up (extra damage) as a character play, and Times Called (extra movement) as a heroic play. He can pretty quickly trigger Balls Gone via his playbook, a quick way to get the ball and also has a single success momentous tackle. Overall he seems ideal in a support role but for some reason I always find myself not using him that way. At the St. Louis Open I watched a number of Brewers players using him to buff their team, which really showed me where I was using him wrong. I just have not been successful since then in changing how I use him. I suspect my overall win ratio with the team will jump once I can train myself to focus on Spigots support abilities in place of his damage track in his playbook. Spigot is one of my favorite models in the Guild Ball range, I really like both his spilling tankard and his broken bottle.

Hooper

Talking with Mat Hart recently I was presented the idea that Hoopers role on the Brewers team is one of enforcer, bruiser, and damage dealer. Here's another sign that I just do not understand the team as I should, as Hooper often is one of the models I cut from the line-up to replace with another option. Hooper is very resilient with Tough Hide and a decent damage track combined with a 3+ def and 1 armor. His playbook has damage in it, which get's increased due to his trait adding +1 damage to playbook results on a knocked down target. My challenge here is his first two (of 3) damage results are non-momentous, forcing him to grab at least 5 successes in order to deliver momentous damage. His knockdown is on 3 successes, higher than most other Brewers, and he has a momentous push on 1 success. Overall, Hooper is a good player but I'm finding I prefer Stoker or a Union choice over him most of the time.

Stave

I would argue that Stave is the poster player of the Brewers team. He is certainly not very fast on the field, but has one of the largest and most noticeable impacts on the game of any player in a team. Stave has access to the very solid momentous knockdown as the first choice in his playbook, but this is not what he really does best. Stave's signature barrel is really what people will notice, to the point of often forgetting he has a playbook at all. Stave is able to hurl his barrel 6 inches, causing a 3 inch AOE on impact which can knock down and then push models hit. The combination of knockdown plus the 4 inch push is incredibly useful for a variety of uses including springing the ball free from hard to tackle models, making target models more vulnerable, and for positioning opposing players to your teams benefit. Stave projects an 11" - 13" threat zone on the table, threatening careless models on the flanks of the field with being knocked into the crowd for a fairly easy take-down.

Stoker

Stoker is one of my favorite models on the Brewers team, but that has a lot to do with how much I enjoy painting up fire. Stoker is a bit maligned in the general Brewers community, which is something I'm not sure I competely understand. This misunderstanding may be why I have trouble winning with the team however. Stoker brings a couple abilities to the table which are fairly unique, adding extra damage to play book results on a target with the burning condition and extra influence if positioned near Stave (Tactical Advice: Stave). This ability mitigates his fairly low influence stat, allowing him to contribute 2 influence to the team in place of 1. Stoker also has access to the same Magical Brew trait that Hemlock brings, permitting him to shed conditions for free once per activation. Aside from this Stoker has 3 different character plays which all apply the burning condition in different ways. He can simply light someone on fire, light someone on fire and do damage, or light a terrain feature on fire along with anyone in it. Add to this a 1 success momentous double push (in a short playbook) and Stoker can move the opposing players around the board very effectively.

Union Additions

There are 5 season 1 Union players who will play for the Brewers team, Gutter, Hemlocke, Rage, Fangtooth, Avarisse & Greede. I have primary focused on playing pure Brewers guild to get the best feel for what their models do. I can see some real benefits to swapping in Rage or Gutter as a damage dealer to the team. I can also see times when having Hemlocke on the team will be good, simply to toss out some poison and blind affects. I'm not confident that A&G contributing a 7th activation can be best used by the Brewers, although I'd love to hear a strategy for that. Fangtooth fits in nicely, adding in additional knockdown. His biggest downside will be the risk of slowing down an already slow team with his aura.

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Easily Distracted

Wow, it's been a fair bit since I posted to the blog. I find it equally interesting that the delay came after a write-up about a particularly disappointing game I played. The Halloween SDE game did not kill my gaming, nor did it kill my blogging, no worries there. Really the gap has been caused by a couple reasons.

First among those was work and holidays. Since November 9th I've been booked solid with work as I try to negotiate some new deals and prepare for 2016. This year has been much different from previous years, caused by the first dramatic change in my professional responsibilities within the past 8 years.  I took on a new role earlier in the year, effectively a demotion due to a corporate acquisition, and I'm struggling to adapt to the new role. Overall it's very frustrating and counter-productive to be at odds with the corporate practices, especially in an organization where the corporate objectives counter the corporate practices. Add to that my daughters birthday, Thanksgiving, and my own birthday and things have been a bit hectic.

I also spent some time traveling over the past month. This is not anything new to those who've read the blog for a while, or those who listen to my podcasts. The difference here was this was weekend travel for pleasure. I attended the St Louis Open, a Guild Ball tournament nestled on the tail end of the Warmachine Weekend convention. I had a great time meeting up with Mat Hart (Guild Ball creator) and JamieP (Guild Ball lead play tester) along with my Guild Ball Tonight co-host Phil. I also had a chance to grab some great games with a host of other Guild Ball fans through the weekend, although did not get to play in the tournament itself.

Basically all this means is I'm easily distracted. I'm finding it ironic that I'm having trouble sitting down and getting back in the groove of writing. It seems every time I get going something pops up to stop the progress and derail me. I do mean ironic because it's not a consistent distraction. Overall it's been very frustrating, as I have a series of partly written articles waiting to be completed and posted. Since the last post I've gotten in a number of new games learning my Guild Ball Brewers. I'll have a team review coming up for them once it's finished. I also got in more games of Rise of the Kage, enough to finally write up a solid review of the game. I've been playing a bunch of Blood Rage, which deserves it's own review as well. This is all before talking about new Guild Ball tactics and specific models and model combinations I want to write about.

So, I'm back on track as of the publication of this post. The blog is not dead, there was just a short delay.