All the Games

I have recently returned from Gencon 2016 and found myself in a place where I am conflicted, overwhelmed, and incredibly blessed all at the same time. I'm finding myself the embodiment of "The Golden Age of Gaming", with too many games and not enough time nor groups of friends to play them all. It's a strange place to be, as my collection sis beginning to resemble one of those board-game box walls you see behind certain Internet game reviewers.

I realize how blessed I am overall with 3 regular gaming groups (2 weekly and 1 quarterly) plus a family that plays games. In addition to that I have a wider group of friends who enjoy games but do not play regularly, only when we sporadically get together. This leaves my choices of games split into multiple categories, my hard-core gaming groups, my family games, and party or lighter games my extended friends would enjoy. I can be fairly honest in saying Gaming itself has become my hobby. This is a shift from being focused strictly on miniature games where the "hobby" was defined as the gluing, building, painting side of the game activities.

Readers may wonder what type of expense my current game hobby carries. I've been very aware of this and watched it fairly closely over the past two years.  Kickstarter has helped a great deal in managing the overall expense of collecting games to play on both the board game and miniature side of gaming. I'll occasionally have spike of expense in a month where a really exciting kickstarter is coming to a close or where a lot of stuff is released all at once. Those months can push my totals up to $200 - $300 spent, although they are not overly common. On a regular basis, outside the spikes, I'm spending $50 - $100 per month on games. Add in a spike for Gencon or Adepticon then  two big kickstarters a year and I'm averaging a yearly gaming expenditure around $1800. Keeping in mind that's just to put new games or game accessories in my hands, not including any travel or lodging for events or such.

I don't think that's too bad. I could even take time to look at what I'm playing and how often to try and figure out if I'm getting that much value from my spending. I could, but it wouldn't make much sense. Overall I have the overwhelming feeling I with I had more time for games simply because I'm not playing all the games I want to play enough times. This begs the question, what are all the games?

All The Games

Miniature Games

Guild Ball is a tabletop skirmish sports game played with teams of 6 models. It's my primary miniature game currently, the one I play regularly and attend competitions for. I am also a pundit for the game company (Steamforged), which means I give demo's of the game, run tournaments, and generally support the local Guild Ball scene. I am really loving nearly all aspects of Guild Ball and it takes up a lot of my gaming time. I am regularly getting at least 1 game a week played and traveling for competitive Guild Ball events on a monthly basis.

Wrath of Kings is a steampunk fantasy army scale game played on an open table, typically 4x4 or 6x4. I have two armies for WoK, a Goritsi army comprised of Werewolves and Vampires, and a Shael Han army comprised of Monks and naked monk-women..... and a Dragon. I enjoy this game as it's mechanically light but tactical enough on the table to provide room to dig in. I have enough models to construct multiple different forces without adding anything new. I still pick up the random new model or book when it's released, but overall I don't spend much here. My group was playing a game every other week at the beginning of the year but this was sidelined due to involvement in a campaign board game (Kingdom Death to be mentioned below).

Arena Rex is a small scale skirmish gladiatorial game I've recently picked up. this was a kickstarter I was not involved and was exposed to at Adepticon 2016. The models are fantastic but I did not look closely at the game play during the convention. Mid-July 2016 I learned that a group of friends I see a couple times a year had picked up the game and dove in fairly heavily to learning to play. Keeping this in mind I gave the game another look and decided to pick up a force. I grabbed 7 models and a mat and was satisfied. At Gencon 2016 (early August) several people in both my regular local game groups became hooked and picked up multiple forces across the group. Although I was a bit earlier to the game they jumped in and it looks like a game we'll start getting to the table locally. Overall it's a very quick game lasting approximately 20-30 minutes per session. This means it can be a quick to play side game or one where we get multiple games in a fairly short period of time. I've gotten limited number of introduction games played but expect this to ramp up fairly quickly.

Dead Zone by Mantic just released a new version of it's rule set, making some key changes to how things work. My friend John has almost everything for this game and I tend to borrow his models when we grab a game. It plays fairly quickly, although not as quickly as Arena Rex. The new rules  seem to have streamlined the game a bit and we had fun trying out our first couple games. I only get to play this when John brings his set to the store and we have not predetermined on another game, but I would not mind getting more games in. I see an opportunity to use my 40K Eldar models as stand-ins for the Asterian forces in Dead Zone, which would be cool to see on the table.

Psudeo-Boardgames

Currently I have five (six) games in my roster which fall under Pseudo-Boardgames. These are games with models that should be built and painted, some level of character or force customization, and are played primarily on a board of some type. I have 2 more "campaign" style games coming toward the beginning of 2017 which fall into this lot as well.

Aetherium is the game I consistently claim to be the best game of 2015, along with one of the best games not enough people are playing. Aetherium had a successfully kickstarter and released in 2015 with its starter box and 2 full factions of models. This Cyberscape miniature board game plays like a tabletop miniature wargame within the confines of a board game. 2016 saw the release of a third faction, with promises for 2 additional factions by the end of 2017. This is a highly tactical game thats a ton of fun to play and not overly complicated to learn the basics. I would love to get more games of this in, and expect that will happen now that 3-player games are easier considering 3 different factions in game. I believe Aetherium suffers from a lack of major distribution limiting exposure to a wider audience.

Kingdom Death Monster is an intense campaign style board game with some amazing miniatures as part of its line. This game pull's no punches when it comes to providing a high risk immersive experience to the players, very much targeting mature gamers. Violent death, horrible injuries, dismemberment, and soft-core porn style models combine with beautifully sculpted miniature for both the players and the horrible monsters they are fighting. This is one of the best games I've played in 2016, although the mature material, assembly and painting requirements, high price point, and limited quantities put this game out of reach for most gamers. The base game will cost $400 if you picked up one of the retail copies, $650 and more for the majority of people trying to buy a copy on Ebay. It's a campaign style game where you and your friends will play multiple sessions across weeks (likely months) before you reach the end of the game. Our group has completed one full campaign and are looking forward to playing our next campaign in the fall.

Drakerys is a new game to my collection which I kickstarted in conjunction with my daughter. We chose to go with the base armies, Humans vs Orcs plus added in a fantastic dragon which caught my daughters imagination. Subsequent to a demo at Gencon 2016 my wife decided to jump on board and chose the Elf army for herself. This is more heavily on the tabletop war game side of gaming than the board game side, but comes with some nice pre-printed mats (cardboard and neoprene) for playing the game on. This keeps the game partially in the board game space as I cannot see playing without the provided mats. Drakerys is firmly seated in the classic fantasy realm with magical elemental vortexes set-up at the start of the game which are used to summon elementals who serve in your force and fuel the magic spells cast by the army wizards. Additionally there is a massive dragon which can be hired into your force or can work as a dangerous neutral element on the battlefield. This is newly in my collection but I'm looking forward to getting more games in, even if its just with my family.


Star Wars X-Wing and Star Wars Armada fall firmly into this category due to being played on an open table (often on a space printed mat) but not requiring any painting or assembly of the models used. I picked up both of these games to play with a combination of my daughter and a couple key friends who played them. On both fronts the drive to play these games has dropped off but I'm not yet committed to selling off my collections. To be fair, my collections are fairly conservative in relation to some other games so if I get these games on the table twice a year with either my daughter or key friends then I feel like I'm ahead. 

Super Dungeon Explore has been in my collection for a long time, and was once among my favorite board games. I place this in the Pseudo-boardgame category because of the level of painting required to get this on the table. Painting up the SDE models makes such a difference in the enjoy-ability of the game I think it's necessary. The Forgotten King update for SDE was released in 2015 and changed my opinion of the game overall. I am very disappointed in that update, but am hopeful that the 2.0 update coming early 2017 will remedy the issues injected in the game with Forgotten King. There are signs that Soda Pop Miniatures has heard the complaints from the community and are taking strides to fix things, but only time will tell. Although I'm not searching for time to play this, I'd still step up to playing an original version game and look forward to seeing how they fix the 2.0 version of the game.

The Board Games

Zombicide is one of the games I wish saw table time more often. My family and I began playing through Zombicide last year, starting with the introduction mission of the first box set. We had backed the season 3 kickstarter which included both the base set and the expansion set. This was a great deal of fun, leading to us picking up the season 2 set (base plus expansion) as well in preparation for completing the mission thread in the season 1 rule book. Suddenly our regular play dropped off and now it's been a couple months since we've sat down for a game. This is a game I continuously look to get back on the table with my family as we all enjoy playing it.

Forbidden Stars is a Warhammer 40K based strategic control game with a semi-variable sector of space. It has Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines, Eldar, and Orks all battling for control of a sector which has recently become available via clearing warp storms. I had a fairly low expectation for this game due to it being 40K based, but was very wrong. This fantastic title from Fantasy Flight games has a great deal of depth to it as ships track through the open void creating paths for planetary assaults to be launched into enemy territory. I picking this up with the idea that if I played it once a year it was worth the purchase. I'm averaging 2 games a year at this point and am enjoying the game. I'd love to see it on the table more, but I'm getting the value I expected.

Castles of Burgundy falls into a category I like to call the "Damn you Adam" set of games. A couple times of year I get to take working vacations to New England (Northeastern USA) and get games with some friends in the area. Inevitably there is a couples game night with my friend Adam, who tends to introduce me to a new game (or 3). This typically results in my heading out and purchasing a new game. Castles of Burgundy is a Euro-style game where your worker placement is trying to picking up specific territories which can score you points. There's a fair bit of strategy and overall the game is determined by your strategy playing the game (little or no luck). This is a game that's a lot of fun but I have not tried it with my local group yet. My wife and I have also not decided to try it as a 2 player game, although we should.

Fireteam Zero is a light campaign game with limited character development but lots of monster killing goodness. The game comes with 4 heroes, 2 sidekicks, and three families of monsters which scale up across 3 levels (base, elite, boss). The heroes are part of Fire Team Zero, an elite commando team sent to investigate mysterious and suspected supernatural situations during World War II. Each monster family has it's own set of stories tied to it to play through. I had decided that I was not going to start introducing this game to my family or local group until I had the models painted up (considering it was a fairly small number of models to paint). Painting took much longer than expected, only recently completing. I have played through the initial mission of one monster family twice now and the game looks to be a lot of fun. Now that everything is painted I'm looking forward to seeing this on the table.

Xia is another "Damn Adam" game which was originally a kickstarter yet I picked up retail. Xia is a space exploration game with randomly laid tiles and pre-painted spaceship miniatures. This is a very fun game which some of my locals have compared to the video game FTL. The components for this game are absolutely fantastic which only enhances the already excellent game play. This is one of those games that my gaming group enjoys when I bring it to game night, but also a game that only makes it's way out periodically. There's an expansion coming in 2017 that will likely spur some increased play right after the release.

Tides of Infamy is a pirate themed exploration game with random sea/island tiles laid out in a random map each game. Players have 3 pirate ships which they sail out to discover islands, goods, and fight each other over goods. My wife absolutely loves this game with my daughters enjoying it as well. This makes it a very nice family game to pull out for an hour on a weekend afternoon. There are two styles of combat resolution for the game, both using a deck of cards. The first plays like the card game War, while the second is more akin to Poker. We're playing this as a light game so have stuck with the War style combat resolution. A lot of fun overall.

Blood Rage is one of the best recent games to be released, second to Aetherium last year simply because I'd choose a game of Aetherium over Blood Rage where possible. Blood Rage is a viking themed battle game that includes giant monsters, area control, card drafting, and card based combat resolution. It's an exciting mix of game mechanics that comes together for an incredibly thematic fast paced game. It's easy to teach to new players and has depths of tactics for experienced players which shift with every game. This is also a game where it's incredibly difficult to have a run-away win. Players feel like they are in the game all the way to the end, with a constant possibility to jump back ot the lead with just a couple moves. A great game that doesn't get played enough simply due to the pure quantity of good games on the market.

Scythe is the new hotness from Stonemaier Games, a kickstarter, a "Damn Adam" game, and one of the top rated board games from Gencon 2016. This is a fairly pure eurostyle game set in a post-"Big War" alternate history setting. This is a simple game to learn and a difficult game to master. The basics for game play are making a choice on the "action" playmat between 4 zones of actions. Each zone has a top and a bottom action which can be completed. Top actions are things such as producing resources or moving game pieces on the board. The bottom actions are things such as deploying a Mech or Building a new structure. There are 5 factions in the game, each with their own "faction" playmat and unique faction abilities. The "faction" and "action" playmats are randomized each game, providing a tremendous variety of gameplay even if you get the same faction. Overall a really great game and one that's good enough for me to start considering other Stonemaier games.

Thoughts

I am blessed to have the disposable income and understanding family that let's me obtain, own, and play all these games. I'm blessed to have the available leisure time to do so much gaming. A big part of the second has to do with a combination of multiple groups of great friends plus making time to exercise my gaming hobby. I set aside specific time each week to join friends at a local store and game. This is similar to TV time for most people, I just cut back and don't watch as much TV.

I'm both intrigued and mildly concerned that I cut off my board game list with at least 4 additional games plus a category of party games still to go. I felt this overall article was getting pretty long for reading. I'll definitely revisit the part game portion in an article of it's own, as I think readers would be interested in a list of good games for 5+ players.

I often consider my experience gaming and my contacts in the gaming industry with an eye toward moving my career and livelihood into that space. I've not yet found a way to maintain my current lifestyle and income level moving into the board and tabletop gaming space. Although it's a large industry it's still made up of low margin and small increments of income when compared to the executive management of IT and IT Consulting space I'm currently in. It's staying as my retirement plan for now.

Rome Rise to Power

The Group Games - Front Line No Komrades, Dark Dealings, Nevermore, Evil Baby Orphanage, Libertalia, New Salem

Machi Koro

Takenoko

Xenoshyft

Guild Ball - Must Take Players?

I struggled to determine how to classify and tag this post. On the one hand I'll be talking about tournament strategy a bit. It'll be a look a Guild Ball player who is quickly becoming a key choice for tournament players. On the other hand I'll be discussing how the idea of a "must take" player annoys me. After everything I decided to jump in and start writing, then made the decision after reading what came out. It ended up as I suspected, more ramble than either tactics or soap-box.

Don't those two look familiar?

I've been playing in a number of Guild Ball tournaments this year. I've tucked a total of 8 under my belt since January, averaging a bit more than 1 per month. In between those events I've also run 3 tournaments including the (to date) largest tournament in the US. The Guild Ball tournament scene is maturing in a very short time and trends are starting to emerge. One of those trends I've found myself partaking in, despite my annoyance. Avarisse and Greede have been showing up in more tournament teams with each passing event. This has to make one wonder what this player (these players?) do so well that they make it in so many lists.

Avarisse & Greede

Avarisse & Greede are a single player choice for a team roster who bring potential two players to the table. Through a unique ability called Detach on Avarisse a second player can be put on the table during a maintenance phase, making this player into two different models. Once detached Greede acts on his own and generates his own influence. Should you want to recombine them Greede has the Attach ability to combine the two players back together.

Starting with Avarisse we look at his card and see a typical big guy stat line with 20 health and a 3+/1 defense and armor combined with Tough Hide on the back of his card. We also see a single influence, but this is off set by detaching Greede for a second influence (while detached). A movement of 4 inches is not overly impressive, but the jump to 7 inches on the sprint/charge becomes respectable. Combined with his TAC of 6 we see a model that really wants to be charging.

Avarisse shines when you look closely at his playbook. The majority of his playbook is momentous and it's easy to focus on the top end results with both damage and double pushes. Considering he has a short playbook (TAC 6 playbook 5 long) this seems really good, but it's not the strength of the playbook. Non-momentous knockdown on 2 successes is really good when it comes to counter-attacks. Momentous Singled-Out is the gem of this playbook though. Adding 2 additional TAC to other models who attack the target is an amazing ability. This can really increase the effectiveness of other playbook plays and triggered character plays.

Switching to the smaller of the pair we take a look at Greede. First we should focus on the very impressive 5+ natural defense on his card. This spikes up to 6+ when he is within 4 inches of Avarisse. Overall Greede is slow with a relatively low TAC, a very low health of 4, and Crazy to increase his TAC. This means that his playbook is very long to match his Crazy triggered TAC of 8. Greede, who is already vulnerable to taking a hit during a counter attack, becomes even more fragile if you use Crazy to get decent attacks. It's unfortunate that there are so few decent momentous results on his playbook, making the choice to attack with him not one of the better choices. Along with his defense Greede's kick stat really stands out on his card. A 4/4" kick makes him very reliable kicking, but only over a short distance.

What's the big deal?

Sure, knockdown, pushes, and Singled Out are all good plays. Sure, Avarisse is a big guy with lots of health and tough hide. Is that enough to see them showing up in most tournament lists? Are people truly making incredible use of a 4/4" kick to get those crazy snap-shots? I'm fairly certain that none of this is the reason. The reason these are being added into so many lists is for the extra activation. Activation control in Guild Ball may not be as important as other games, but it can be critical in the early turns for specific game plans.

Typically use for Avarisse & Greede runs in a similar fashion regardless of the team they are playing on. During the first maintenance phase Avarisse uses Detatch to offload Greede onto the table behind him, typically in range of the friendly goal.  Avarisse may get an influence or not, and at some point during the turn he trundles up the board toward mid-field. During the turn Greede will move back within an inch of the friendly goal and hide there for the bulk of the game.

The usefulness here is to force use the extra activation to force your opponent to commit to their game plan and move up the board before you have to commit. This can give an advantage to any team who's plan benefits from taking the last activation or an uninterrupted final activation. Any Shock & Awe style game plan almost requires A&G on the team to assure maximum effectiveness.

Condition play focused teams such as Smoke led Alchemists, Alchemists teams with Venin, Hunters, and Fillet led butchers all make use of out-activating their opponents. Forcing conditions that cannot be removed before the end of the turn converts immediately to near guaranteed damage. Combining this with heavy momentum generation can deliver a devastating combo hit to a team as the conditions wear them down lining up multiple early turn take-outs.

First turn aggressive scoring focus teams such as Fishermen, Pin Vice led engineers, Masons, and Union or Mortician teams including Mist benefit from the final turn activation. These teams tend to aim for scoring late turn 1 to minimize the ability of an opponent returning a goal during the turn using the goal kick to get the ball down the field. If these teams can capitalize on the goal with initiative on the following turn they can retrieve the ball and possibly convert a second fast goal early on turn 2.

Aggressive take-out focused teams such as Butchers, Brewers, Masons, Morticians, and Union have a trickier time making the most out of the last activation. These teams typically need a way to increase their own threat range or to pull a target model toward them. Gutter and Minx can be great for this, as can Puppet Master (Obulus), Lure (Cosset), and Times Called (Spigot). Take-out plays can be particularly effective utilizing a final activation due to the amount of momentum typically generated. The momentum typically results in grabbing initiative on turn 2, allowing the team to do more damage or complete a take-out in the first activation of turn 2.

Thoughts

I don't like the whole philosophy behind must take characters. Aside from taking Masons I'm seeing A&G being added to lists partly to counter other lists taking A&G. I'm adding A&G to specific lists to compliment my strategies in the early turns. Once I'm into late turn 2 or later I'm using Avarisse to deliver Singled Out onto key targets along with an occasional knockdown. A&G activation control and Singled Out really compliments a Captain Rage led union team just as nicely as any Union team containing Mist.

I believe other people are starting to figure out how to use these two, specifically the strength that Avarisse brings with a single success momentous Singled Out. I've talked on Guild Ball Tonight about how I was having trouble figuring out how to use them well. Early on I was not getting a lot of value from the dynamic duo but have begun to learn how to use them over the past couple months. It's entirely feasible that others are following along the same track I am, learning how to use them well in similar timing. I hope this is the case as I'm sometimes seeing A&G in teams I'm not sure are the best fit. I'm still unsure if the extra activation is so strong in play that it needs to be countered. If this is the case it's a sad day for Guild Ball as A&G become must-take models and we'll start seeing team diversity decreases throughout competitive events.

It's getting Dusty around here!

Things have been quiet around here since February, it frustrates me to look at that. It's not that I haven't had idea for articles, it just life has piled up on lack of motivation.

A variety of reasons put me in a situation where I decided to jump into online college courses at the end of last year. The program I've decided to do requires I take some very basic level college classes. This is not a bad thing, especially for those students who've just completed seconday school (High School) and are entering college for the first time. These students have no real-world experience and are early in their lives.

I'm a fair journey away from those students, having worked in my career field for 24 years already, with the past 13 years as an executive for consulting firms. I'm also an autodidact who loves to read, lending to being very well-read across a wide span of material and subjects.

So.... one of the courses I just took was a Freshman level English Composition class. This is a basic university level writing class which I'm confident is supremely helpful to new students. It was completely frustrating to me, and really killed my motivation for casual writing on my blog and elsewhere. My professor acted determined to treat all students in the class as if they were at the same experience and skill level, and the level she chose was that of a recent high-school graduate. During the class my attempts to break out of this mold during discussions or in private correspondence was not effective. That ratcheted my frustration up to fairly high levels, which ended up being unleashed in my class assignments.

I ended up with high marks (A) in the class, which I'm happy with. At least it's now out of the way and I shouldn't need to take a similar class again. I was concerned about this course of study and if I would run into this type of instructor in my classes. Much of the coursework required for this program will be entirely review for me, and at a level that's below my current education and capability levels. I'm anxious about facing similarly frustrating instructors and classes moving forward and this class has only increased that anxiety.

Regardless, the blog is back and I have a series of articles about Guild Ball, Games, Book reviews, and all things DTP coming up. First full length hobby article back will be up Monday morning, talking about a recent Guild Ball tournament I attended.

Ciao!

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.

Assault on Von Drakk's Manor - Super Dungeon Explore

Halloween has recently passed and I spent the night with a group of friends playing one of my favorite games, Super Dungeon Explore. Well, it was one of my favorite games but we'll return to that. My wife and I put together a full spread of snacks and food to sustain a robust party of gamers, invited over 3 other couples, and proceeded to conduct our assault on the evil Von Drakk. In this game I was playing the consul, which raised the ante for the group as I have never been beat when playing consul in SDE. We had 1 gamer with SDE experience, his wife and mine who have played but are not experts at the game, then 4 friends who have read the rules but not played the game before. Looking at a 7 hero game I knew we'd need some modifications, but I've had ample experience with 1st edition SDE and felt comfortable making those adjustments.

Setup

I made some adjustments to the Forgotten King rule set for this game based on the increased number of heroes and my own experience playing. I used the Von Drakk manor tiles, with the first board set-up on the graveyard side as the outside courtyard for the manor, then 5 additional tiles on the manor side to represent the manor itself. The manor tiles were set up as a T, with the wings set off the tile closest to the courtyard, off the second tile the heroes would encounter.

On the monster side, I ran a full set of Skeletons, Necromancer, and two Dust Mages. I had 2 spawning points of Witches, skull bats, and spiders. I also had the paired spawning point from the Stilt-town Zombies box set. The Zombie Shacks were set-up as the spawning points for the first two tiles, followed by the Witches and Spiders in the wings, finishing with the Skeleton gravestones on the final two tiles of the manor. I chose Von Drakk (of course) as my dungeon boss, then used the following as the mini-bosses:

• Death Specter
• Captain R
• Succubus Vandella
• Shadowmode Candy
• Gruesome George 

Lastly I had 16 rattle-bones as my creeps, which I deployed the full complement of with initial board setup. The full Creep deployment was one of the changes I made to the FK rules, not completely understanding how creeps deploy with the explore cards. This let us use a full compliment of creeps in the game, with limited re-spawns later during the game. 

Our intrepid heroes dared Von Drakk's wrath with a very solid party assaulting the manor. We had Princess Ruby leading the charge flanked by the Sister of Light and the Paladin. Support was provided by the Glimmerdusk Ranger, Hearthsworn Dwarf Warrior, Hexcast Sorceress, and the Royal Warden planning to collect some overdue taxes, thus justifying the invasion of poor Von Drakk's privacy.

The table was set-up, party chosen, food served, and drink made plentiful. All of this added up to the making of an exciting night of SDE for our group, and after a basic primer/reminder on the rules we dove into the game, expecting a play time of around 4 - 5 hours for completion.

The Game

In order to speed along the game and provide a fair chance to the players, I made a modification to how activation would work in the game. We would have 2 heroes activate in sequence, then switch to the Consul activation with a choice between spawning monsters or activating 8 skulls worth of monsters and all the creeps. Considering I had Skull Bat's on the board and they are insignificant, I chose to activate them with the associated witches from their spawning points in place of waiting for heroes to wander onto their tiles to activate them. Loot was still awarded for each kill of a significant monster (not a creep or had the insignificant trait), with a limit of 3 loot per 2 heroes activation. Once Mini-Bosses and the Dungeon Boss was spawned, they would also activate for free during the Consul 8 skull activation in line with the FK ruleset.

The heroes set to work with gusto, launching immediate attacks on the poor rattle-bones and zombies greeting them. During their assault on the welcoming committee I took the opportunity to fly in some witch reinforcements from deeper in the manor. The heroes proceeded strongly in the opening turns, slaughtering rattlebones and zombies and collecting a fair bit of loot for the party. In fairly short order the party faced their first tough decision, determining the profitablity of attacking and destroying the grabby house spawning point or continuing to remove random enemies from the board. The party held off, cleaning off the bulk of the monsters on the board tile and only putting some damage on the house itself. Once they felt secure and prepared to face the first mini-boss, they began an earnest attack on the house.

Unfortunately for them I had also taken time to prepare. One missed attack left my grabby house with only a single wound remaining, the perfect time to respawn a nearly full spawn, take the final wound on the grabby shack from the spawn, and spawn out Greusome George. In concert with this I brought in my witch reinforcements and turned some of the heroes into toads, weakening the onslaught of the party. Grabby zombies kept the party in place, preventing them from moving over and delivering a transformative kiss to the toad, returning him to his dwarf form. We realized at a later point in the game that I had been performing the paired-spawning point spawns incorrectly, only applying the spawn wounds to the individual spawning point instead of to both. I blame this on mixing up 1st edition, FK classic, and FK arcade mode rules. Regardless, I set to work with my spawn of critters, intending to hobble the party on this first board and set them on their back feet as they progressed into the manor. Overall this was a fairly epic opening battle, as I have come to expect from my experience with 1st edition SDE. I was able to kill one of the heroes (the paladin) and nearly took out the dwarf (in toad form) before the party took down George and his cohort, using the princess coin to bring the Paladin back.

As the final swings were taken on George and he was getting eliminated, I began to prepare the next wave of challenges for the second board of the manor. Spiders moved forward with the remaining rattle-bones, and witches began to line up their swoop by attacks to transform new heroes into toads. The party had been suffering from some flank attacks I launched through one of the secret doors linking the deeper manor with the courtyard entrance. They quickly moved to block access to that door, and sent forays through themselves, sniping at my back lines as I prepared. This forced me to adjust my strategy a bit, shifting some of my skull bats and other skeletons to guard the secret passages deeper in the manor.

The party milled around a little bit and spent time on their cleared board grabbing a treasure chest and fending off small skirmishes of monsters, preparing for the next battle. This milling around and farming was something I had not experienced previously in SDE. I felt it would be a bad idea to spawn my second tile with minimal or no monsters just to add the damage and spawn a mini-boss, so I began to launch waves against the party. Frustratingly, after clearing the first battle the party had killed so many monsters they were all nearly full of equipment (4 slots each, 28 pieces of loot/treasure) to the point they were starting to discard loot as it was picked up because it was not optimal. My own mighty monster spawns were only at a single static defense star due to only a single mini-boss having been killed.

I was at a disadvantage and would need to rely on my Consul experience and solid tactics to swing the battle my direction. I knew I needed to kill off a hero before the party could spawn and face my second mini-boss, weakening the party through that action. Idealy I wanted to kill the paladin with his healing potions, or Princess Ruby with her buffs. I had to settle for launching an all out assault on the Dwarf, sending in 2 Rattlebones, 4 zombies, and a vomiting Pudge zombie. I also parked my voodoo doctor (shamble priest) nearby and used his ability to make all the zombies attack a second time. Everyone but the priest had mob, the attacks resulted in:

• 2 rattlebones attacking 1 time with 5 blue dice each
• 4 zombies attacking 1 time with 5 blue dice each
• 1 pudge vomiting for 5 blue plus 1 red dice 
• 1 vodoo priest making all 7 of those do the same attack again

That assault should have killed the Dwarf and possibly left me needing to put damage on at least 1 other hero. Instead it had almost no effect due to the loot the party had piled onto the players. The damage that was dealt out was restored by the paladin, then the paladins potion was quickly restored (with a second potion due to the potion bandoleer) in the next round. The party proceeded to quickly chop through this wave of monsters, kill off the witches, and take out another spawn plus Shadowmode candy in fairly short order. At this point we all were tired and realized 4 1/2 hours had passed and they party had only gotten to the second tile of the map. We called it at a draw, as neither the heroes nor I as the consul could truly say which way the game would go. The party felt confident in camping out tiles until they had optimal loot, and I was formulating strategies to blow up my own spawn points to gang up on the party with multiple mini-bosses.

The Aftermath

Prior to the release of FK I was averaging 2 games of SDE a year, with some occasional spikes to 3 or 4. I consider this one of my favorite games, and have spent a lot of time painting the models and convincing people to play. It has always had some issues but I have had tremendous amounts of fun as both the Consul and a player. I really looked forward to the release of FK, both for an update and optimization of the 1st edition rules and for the introduction of cooperative play.

I am still pending my review of the cooperative play so will leave full comments for the review. This was my first game of FK Classic, which is the updated version of the 1st edition SDE rules. At the end of this game my immediate reaction was a desire to sell off my entire SDE collection and cancel my current kickstarter pledge for the next expansion. I was frustrated and hugely disappointed as the game we played on Halloween was not the game I have grown to love over the years. In polling my players who had played this before, they also ranged from disgusted to not being willing to ever play this again.

As a balance, the players who had never seen SDE previously thought the game was fun but far too long and in need of something to make it a bit better. They had more fun from the group playing than the game itself, with the game actually taking some of the fun out of the group (but not enough to ruin everyone's enjoyment).

I've decided not to sell my stuff and am taking a couple weeks to back off and consider how to "fix" the game to better represent the SDE I loved. I may just revert back to the first edition rules using the updated FK edition cards, but I'm not sure overall. I'm especially frustrated that this experience mirrors the complaints on the SDE forums. Specifically that the game takes too long (now), the party has no incentive to move forward through the dungeon, and ultimately it becomes a simple dice rolling exercise while the party grinds away at the monsters.

 I'm open to comments from any readers out there. Do you have thoughts on my game or any suggestions on where things went badly? Any thoughts on how to "fix" it or even feedback on what I'm missing that your seeing in your FK games.

Blood Rage - Initial Thoughts

Last week I received a comfortably large box containing my blood rage kickstarter rewards. These arrived the day before Thursday gaming night, giving me a great opportunity to bring it out and play with the group. Since then I've also gotten 2 games in with my wife and feel pretty comfortable with a first look. As with most of my games, I'll wait until I get a solid half-dozen games in before reviewing it.

Unboxing

Cool Mini or Not (CMoN) kickstarters are known for delivering enough miniatures to be nearly disturbing in the volume. Blood Rage does not deliver as many mini's as Zombicide, but still put 84 models on my table. This does not include the very nifty kickstarter exclusive 3D tokens that replace the cardboard counters in the game. All of this was delivered in a single box for the core game, plus 7 additional boxes of various sizes for the expansions. These additional boxed (I'll post pictures with the full review) look like retail release boxes, although considering all the extra's are labeled Kickstart Exclusive they would not normally have a retail release.

This is probably an appropriate place to talk about the kickstarter length for delivery. Overall I am very satisfied with this kickstarter. The communication was acceptable between the end of the campaign and delivery and the shipping was tracked, with notification once the box was in the US shipping system. Original anticipated delivery was September 2015 and I recieved my box and the full compliment of backer rewards mid-October. The only portion of this that was a bit frustrating was CMoN selling the core game (no kickstarter exclusives) at Gencon. This meant I had to watch people who picked up the core game at Gencon play the game for ~2 months prior to my getting my copy.

Quality

Blood Rage met my expectations in terms of quality, both on the board and the models. I was expecting the models to be the same material and level of detail as Zombicide models, which they are. The board is a very nice quad-fold board made of a solid material that should hold up well under repeated play. The rules for the game were very easy to read and understand, letting us quickly jump into playing the game while making it quick to search for answers when questions arose. Additionally the game was simple enough that after a single read-through I was able to quickly teach the game to my wife, who picked it up after just a single game. The simplicity of the rules is an excellent sign of solid game design when compared against the depth of tactics and strategy in the game.

Initial Overall Thoughts

I'm enjoying playing Blood Rage, and everyone who's played so far seems to have enjoyed it as well. During our game night we had 2 players form outside our group ask to join us, both having anticipated the game and not had a chance to play. All 4 of us enjoyed our game and picked things up very quickly. The only area that things seemed a bit unbalanced was not drafting our "Gifts of the Gods" cards on turn 1. During the game your supposed to draft these cards but the recommendation is to not do so during the first turn of the first game (to give you a chance to learn about the cards themselves).

Blood Rage plays quickly, clocking in at approximately 30 - 45 minutes with experienced players. I do think the game is better with the expanded selection of Kickstarter Exclusive monsters, adding some really good choices to the game. The exclusive models more than double the monster choices in the game, adding many additional abilities, tactics, and strategies to the game. I'm not sure what CMoN's plans are, but I would hope that alternate retail sculpts for each of these models end up available for sale at a later date.

As mentioned, I enjoyed the game and look forward to playing more.

Rambling about the Huzzah Hobbies Guild Ball Fall Scrimmage event

I spent some time last week talking about my return to a game champion role (in this case a Pundit) along with a bit of venting over my frustration getting support from my local store. I want to return a bit to that post with an after action discussion on how my event went last weekend.

I'll start out by saying the event was a smashing success. I am very thankful to Huzzah Hobbies for letting us use the space in the store for the event. Even being pushed to the "back room", we ended up taking over half the room with Guild Ball games. That right, we ended up with approximately 20 people coming by during the day to demo and play Guild Ball, with 9 of those being brand new converts to the game. I ended up running numerous demo games all afternoon and at one point we had 7 concurrent games of Guild Ball running.

The Demo

We had a couple people come through during the day who already had a team they owned (although they had not played a game yet) or had an idea of the team's they wanted to try. I made a decision to limit the demo's to Fishermen and Butchers, using the demo cards. I think the only part I missed in my preparation was printing out a set of Quick Start rules for people to reference and take away with them. I'll do that in the future.

I had some beautifully painted Fishermen and Butchers to put on the table, so the demo player got to use actual models. In place of the recommended 2x2 table for demoing, I used the full 3x3 field giving players a full experience. Players used the demo cards from the quick start rules, plus played to 6 points, giving the ball to Ox for kick-off and using the standard quick-start demo set-up.

I was especially pleased that my daughter jumped into a demo early in the day. Not only did she enjoy the game but then she came back later in the day and had convinced another players daughter to try a demo as well (picture to the right). I've since received reports that Dad and Daughter are doing well and daughter is rabidly digging through the Guild Ball story to find a team that appeals to her. As for my daughter, she preferred the Butchers to the Fishermen and is looking forward to our next game. In her words "Scoring goals is boring..... well more boring than beating people up!". Oh no... what have I done?

Games Played

There were two ideas I combined into the Fall Scrimmage event. The demo's were important but equally important was some casual play for both new and experienced Guild Ball players. I really liked the idea of combining these two aspects because new players who just got a demo can jump directly into playing some games. Too often I've experienced demo days where a new player gets a demo then walks away, often to buy a team but does not return immediately to play games. Combining the casual play with the demos gave new players an opportunity to jump right in and reinforce what they learned in the demo. It also kept the energy up and showed new players there was a lot of interest in this new game. I was also able to keep an eye on the games and match-make players for new games, keeping everyone playing different players and teams where possible.

I faced a challenge on two fronts in relation to the match-making/casual play. First, new players who just received a demo don't have teams to play. Second, Guild Ball is new in our community so many people only have a single team.  I solved this by producing a double set of cards and paper-dolls/standees for all 8 teams currently in the game. This provided a great opportunity for players to try out teams they were interested in and check out how they played. It also gave those players without teams the ability to grab some standees and play some games. It really worked out well and was very much worth the effort in putting these together.

We had a fantastic turn-out of players during the day and everyone seemed to have a really good time. There were a ton of games being played and all the guilds were represented on at least one table during the day. I even got to take a spin against the Engineers at the end of the day, my second game facing them.

Game Mats

I want to take a moment to talk a bit about game mats for Guild Ball. Thank you very much to local Guild Ball pundit Maurice, who brought out some additional mats for games. Without his help we would have been short a couple spaces for people to play. We had a couple copies of the official Guild Ball mat, specifically the full field design. This mat looks fantastic and the neoprene material makes it an absolute pleasure to play on. Anyone who has not picked one up yet I recommend these highly.

 We also had two different mats from Mat's by Mars. These are vinyl mats, but also very nice and work incredibly well as both secondary mats and more economical primary mats. I absolutely recommend them as well, and plan to pick up more as I broaden my collection to support larger events.

I do not have a copy of the proving ground official mat, which is the one that marks out both a 3x3 and 2x2 field. After running the demo's over the weekend I am considering picking one up for future demo's, but only when I plan to run the smaller demo's on a 2x2 board.

Photography and Models

We were particularly privileged to have an amateur photographer stop by for a demo game and to hang out. He brought his fancy camera with him and grabbed some great pictures of models and games during the day. I was particualy pleased to see that when I get someone with a good camera who knows what they're doing, my models actually look pretty good:

Beyond that I thought I'd share some of the other pictures he took: