Big League in a Day

I've recently condensed the Big League experience down to a single day event for my local community. This went over fairly well in my local group and lot of people in the global Guild Ball community expressed interest in how I accomplished it. Here's a write-up on what I did and what I would change.

General Idea and Objectives

Steamforged Games released the campaign rules for Guild Ball in the Season 2 rulebook, The Big League. I’ve run the Big League for my local group twice so far, with a very positive reception for the rules. There are some rules which have become dated due to the changes with the Season 3 update however the campaign holds up under the changes very well. The general idea behind the big league is one with some Guild Ball game play and some behind the scenes “wheeling and dealing”. The league rewards three different types of players, competitive players looking to win games, more casual players looking for key game moments, and players who mostly ignore win/loss in a game but enjoy the intrigue behind the scenes.

The success of the Big League campaign format for my gaming group encouraged some work to bring the Big League to a single day casual event. The typical big league is run over several weeks, ideally equal to 1 week less than the number of players in the league. The effort to boil this down to a one-day event required that I keep my eyes on a couple key goals:

• Restrict the experience to 3 rounds of games
• Maintain the capability and feeling for P-1 weeks Wheeling and Dealing (i.e. favours)
• Maintain the capability and feeling for P-1 weeks of league card expansion (i.e. campaign points)
• Maintain the 3-fold aspect of Competition/Big Play Moments/Intrigue with the limited timeframe of a single day event.

What did I do, what changes did I make?

In preparing for running a Big League in a Day I faced the challenge of distilling the “feeling” of a 7(ish) week league down to 1 day across 3 games. I also had my objectives to keep in mind to capture the same enjoyment for the players. I spent time thinking about those two goals and came up with the following changes.

First I decided to add favours at the start of the day prior to game one. This is a change that has been very positively received in my normal Big Leagues and it would similarly kick-start the wheeling and dealing for the BLiaD. I also decided to increase the access to guild plot card from the start to 2 plot cards. This would give people aiming for those “key play moments” access to more cards from the start. It would also help spur accumulation of campaign points starting in the first game. I knew I would have to increase the speed players would be able to gain campaign points and favours, so I also adjusted for round 2 and 3 on both those fronts.

One of the impacts to favours in the Big League is based on the win-record (League points) of your opponent. Playing an opponent with more league points you get a chance to earn more favours. Additionally, if you beat that opponent you gain an additional increase in favours earned. A traditional Big League where everyone optimally plays everyone else in the league opens opportunities for this to happen. I feel this is an important aspect of the system for a couple key reasons. First, it’s the best opportunity for intrigue focused players maximizing the currency they use in the league. Second, it creates key moments for all players in the league where favours and behind-the-scenes deals can lead to an upset, unseating a league point leader with an unexpected loss. Other players in the league can feed favorable deals to the lower ranked player to beef up their team through the judicious and creative use of favours. I needed to find a way to keep this aspect of pairings in the event despite the event being only 3 rounds. I achieved this by pairing based on favours spent, not on league points or a win/loss/points record. I also added an additional way to spend favours, Match Fixing, where the instigator could choose two players to be opponents in the upcoming round.

Lastly, I looked at the overall balance of the day across three rounds. I decided to adjust some of the escalators along with building in an increasing Longshanks Tax on favour expenditure. The adjusted escalators made sure there was not one all-decisive round during the day which would be the only round that mattered. Players would need to pursue their chosen objective all three rounds to achieve their desired result. The Longshanks tax assured that the escalator on favours stayed balanced through the day, despite having more to spend each round.

After all that planning and thinking my final set of rules resulted in the following:

Event Start:

• All players start with 5 favours
• Maximum 5 favours can be spent in round 1 W&D
• Players can build their plot deck from:
• Season 1, 2, 3 plot cards
• Common Big League plot cards
• 2 selected Guild Plot Cards

Round 1

• 3 league points for a win / 0 league points for a loss
• 1 favour for a win / 3 favuor for a loss
• 1:1 campaign points earned from plot cards
• +1 favour Longshanks Tax for player trades, 0 for all else

Round 2

• Max 8 Favour can be spent in W&D
• Player Trades & Campaign points: +1 Longshanks Tax
• Match Fixing for round 3: 3 Tax + LP difference between higher LP and lower LP
• 5 league points for a win / 2 league points for a loss
• 2 favour for winning a game / 4 favour for a loss
•  +1 Favour for playing an opponent with more LP / +2 Favour for winning vs more LP
• 2:1 campaign points earned from plot cards

Round 3 & Post game 

• Max 15 Favour can be spent in W&D
• Player Trade, Plot Card Trade, Campaign Points: +2 Longshanks Tax
• Sponsorships: +1 longshanks tax
• Match Fixing: same as round 2
• 7 League points for a win / 3 league points for a loss
• 3 favours for winning / 9 favours for a loss
• +2 favour for playing opponent with more LP / +4 for winning vs more LP
• 1:1 campaign points from plot cards

I also restructured the Campaign points to plot cards table slightly. I started the day with each player picking 2 plot cards, then incremented by 20 cp up to 100. After 100 I incremented by 15 CP per card. Here's a look at the restructured table:

How did the day go?

Overall the day went very well, with all the participants having a great time playing 3 casual games of guild ball. Despite the moderate level of interest for my area, only 5 players attended on the day, necessitating me to play as to avoid a bye. I’ confident this turn out is primarily attributed to a combination of more competitive than casual players in my areas plus competing events on the same weekend plus people schedule conflicts. I say this based on the feedback I’ve received from people who had intended to attend but didn’t (i.e. scheduling conflicts) and my general observation of who did and did not show interest in this event.

Leading into round one, things went very smoothly, with everyone generally understanding how the BLiaD would work, assembling their decks, and grabbing sponsorship's. Early moves were made to buy campaign points for favours early on, a couple players aiming to get access to an additional guild plot card. Round 1 played out without a hitch, although some general confusion about how the big-league plot cards and similar cards across seasons 1, 2, & 3, would work. These were quickly resolved and we accumulated the results to move into round 2. The end of round 1 did see wheeling and dealing timing advantages come into play as players who had finished their games first jumped into spending favours to grab specific players (Tater) and sponsorship's before other players had finished their games and moved to Wheeling and Dealing. This is something to be watched but did not upset anyone in my event.

The escalation of points in round 2 led to some key purchases for round three. One player came late to Wheeling and Dealing and spent their favours to match-fix themselves vs the other League Champion contender. Due to the small number of players and a desire to avoid same-match pairings, this resulted in the entire round 3 pairings being determined by that player. This was not necessarily a negative thing but was an interesting result to see. The overall escalation of points resulted in the desired outcome that all 3 rounds were important to the end of day awards, along with keeping the final post-round-3 wheeling and dealing phase as part of the determination factors.

What (if anything) would I change?

After the event, I asked for feedback from the group along with sharing some of my observations and thoughts. Based on all that feedback I would make some adjustments to the format. I would pull forward the earning escalation (2:1 campaign points) from round 2 to round 1, then create another level of escalation in round 3. I’d keep the longshanks tax largely the same, although I’d add a tax of 1 favour for sponsorships to round 2. I’d set round 3 to contain no escalation (1:1 campaign points, standard favours), but maintain the higher longshanks tax for the round.

I think that those changes would speed up the attainment of favours and campaign points, opening increased access to those parts of the league people are looking for. The escalated league points should be watched to assure than no single round is a decider, but all 3 rounds matter for the league champion.

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Improving "The Best 4 days in Gaming" with Geek Nation Tours

This year my family and I attended Gencon 2016 with Geek Nation Tours. Yesterday I wrote about my background with Geek Nation Tours and the Head Geek Teras. I also talked about why we (my family and I) chose Geek Nation Tours for our Gencon 2016 trip and how the lead up to the convention was improved being part of the tour. I also talked about the madness that was our trip to Gencon, starting nearly a week before the actual convention. I want to talk about and review the actual Gencon experience through the filter of being part of the Geek Nation Tour experience. As you can tell from the title, I certainly have a favorable view on GNT and what they bring to the table for this type of event.

Arrival - Tuesday before Gencon 2016

We set out from Chicago mid-morning on Tuesday, stopping at the Albanese Candy Factory for some gummy bears and then grabbing lunch before arriving at the JW Marriott in Indianapolis mid-afternoon.  We knew our tour guide, Alex, would be at the hotel but were not sure how many people were showing up early and what the schedule was. We unpacked our car onto a bellhop cart then left it with the Valet, heading into the hotel to get checked in. Alex was easy to spot, camping out right as we entered the hotel and easy to find. He was familiar with us as part of the tour once we introduced ourselves and was as cheery as I've experience Teras to be each time we've run into each other. Although Teras was not going to be leading this tour, Alex made the matching first impression and things were off to a good start. He even knew our specific details and mentioned he'd already checked on our cot, which we were unsure we'd be able to get with our room. The tour guide knowing those types of little details is a very personal touch, and just overall a nice thing to encounter.


Just prior to heading to the desk to check in, Alex mentioned there would be an informal dinner and get-together that evening with the other tour arrivals, and asked if we thought we'd be attending. I nodded, mentioning that we'd be trying to locate friends who were in town early, but might be dropping by, I wasn't sure. Following that I headed out to check into the hotel and get up to our room. Even though we were on a tour, Marriott was very accommodating and added a note to my file as a Marriott Gold Member, giving us Concierge lounge access due to my hotel status.

Pre-Gencon Gaming

There is a gaming group in Indianapolis known as the Kentucky Fried Gamers. Each year they coordinate a pre-gencon gaming day on the Wednesday before Gencon for their club. Geek Nation Tours has partnered with them for a couple years now and gotten tour participants access to the gaming. This is a really fun set of games, with a great group of gamers, in two fantastic venues. We chose to take part in a "still in development" role-playing game known as Playthings, being run for us at Scotty's Brew Pub downtown Indianapolis. Although the traditional drinking spot for the 501st Storm Troooper brigade, there were no Storm troopers in attendance on Wednesday. We (my wife, daughter, and I) did have a fantastic time playing in a private session of Playthings. It was a lot of fun as we got a chance to role-play living toys (i.e. Toy Story) with the game developer.

Geek Nation Tours events/dinners

One of the really great parts of Geek Nation Tours is the nightly dinners they host for the tour group. Each dinner at Gencon was scheduled with a pre-dinner gaming time, followed by the dinner itself, followed by more gaming. These events not only provided a fantastic and reliable gathering point for the end of the day but also a quieter spot for gaming with friends. These dedicated gaming spots are particularly hard to find at Gencon, with the post-convention evenings filling up every available spot (table, couch, chair, and even floor) in the hotels surrounding the convention.This year GNT set up an opening and closing dinners in the JW Marriott hotel bar/lounge restaurant, a dinner at the local Brazilian steak hour Fogo De Chao, and 2 dinners at the in-hotel Italian restaurant.  Each of these nights also featured speakers from gaming companies (CMON, Osprey, Mantic, Steamforged, etc) and open gaming with tour provided games.

Of particular note was the opening and closing dinners. The opening dinner featured a couple of benefits to tour participants which really set it apart. First, GNT tour guide Alex went and collected everyone's tickets and badges for us, saving tour participants from standing in the long Gencon lines to pick these up. All our necessary Gencon entry paperwork (badges and tickets) was delivered to us at dinner, along with a set of Geek Nation Tours branded T-Shirts, Bowling Shirts, and Yoga pants for the women. Then, over dinner, tour participants were treated to short introductions and presentations from industry insiders such as Ronnie Renton, owner of Mantic Games, talking about new releases and the hosts of podcasts such as the D6 Generation and the Nerd Herders. Following dinner, GNT had the podcasts hosts split off to smaller groups for dedicated role-playing sessions for the tour participants. This was used as a mixer for the tour, giving everyone a chance to be introduced to the other attendees. Likewise, the end of tour closing dinner was attended by the founders of Steamforged games, who gave insight into their first Gencon experience along with talking about their upcoming releases and a number of spoilers for Guild Ball, Dark Souls, and a new paint line.

Throughout Gencon these nightly dinners were a fantastic place to meet back up with the tour participants each night. This was also a great fall-back for dinner plans should something go wrong or plans be lacking, along with a comfortable and quiet(er) environment to grab some games. Each night the dinners were attended by different personalities from within the game industry who spoke about their experiences (Dave Taylor) or talked about what their companies were releasing (Osprey, CMON) along with giving demo's of their games. The more intimate dinner environment provided ample opportunity to connect with these company reps and "industry insiders" on a personal level for each of the tour participants.

"Save me GNT!!!"

We had one experience at Gencon 2016 where Geek Nation Tours really shined, although through no undue effort nor expectations of their own. A group of friend had pulled together some last minute plans to grab dinner at the RAM restaurant, a venue famous at Gencon for completely redecorating their venue and reprinting their menu in tribute to Privateer Press Warmachine. This is a notoriously difficult reservation to get during Gencon, with very long waiting time for a table. Our group had called ahead and had a reservation for 10, and we headed out to check in and eat. The whole group was excited, including my 17 year old daughter and one of our friends teenage niece. Upon arriving we were told that we'd have an hour wait despite our reservation, and we settled into 2 separate tables in the bar area (away from the actual bar). Our group was showing up and finding each other over a period of 20 minutes, with the first group including the teenage niece grabbing the first tables. My wife, daughter, 2 friends, and I were with the second portion of the group, getting there 5 minutes later. When we arrived the waitress had already taken the first set of drink and appetizer orders. We settled into the tables and as we began to order, my daughter was singled out by the waitress and told she could not sit with us and would need to leave the bar due to being under age. Despite being a fair distance from the actual bar, and despite other clearly underage people at the next table (and elsewhere in the bar), we decided (irritably) that we'd step outside of the bar area to wait for our table. My wife, daughter, 2 friends, and I stepped outside to wait.

After a long wait our names were called and we were led to our table. The restaurant was understandably packed, but we'd had a reservation and things were looking up. The hostess proceeded to lead us to a table with 6 chairs around it. This confused us, as our reservation was for 10. On inquiring (not me, the person who had made the reservation) why the table was only set for 6 we were told that we could squeeze 2 more seats in to make it for 8. We repeated the question on how squeezing 8 people was supposed to accommodate 10 guests, per our reservation, to be told by the hostess and the just arriving waitress that we'd have to squeeze further to make everyone fit. We were also told that if that was not sufficient for us we'd have to wait at least an additional hour for them to put together another table. As our group grew increasingly frustrated we were confronted by the waitress asking why we we couldn't just wait another hour and go back to our tables in the bar (which we'd already vacated and had been grabbed by other patrons waiting).

At this point my wife, daughter, and I were disgusted with being treated fairly badly. I understand they had no need of our patronage, being filled to capacity during Gencon. This type of behavior by restaurant staff was frankly despicable, and we will not return in the future to that establishment. We all realized at this point that we had a very good alternative, although we could not invite our friends along. We (my wife, daughter, and I) could retire to the Geek Nation Tours dinner at the hotel Italian restaurant, and be welcomed as valued guests into a friendly environment where we were not squeezing and people actually wanted us around. We decided to leave the restaurant and catch up with our friends later that night for a more enjoyable gaming experience.

As expected, the Geek Nation Tours dinner was fantastic. The food was good and we enjoyed ourselves far more with the service than we would have in the over crowded RAM and the simply rude and entitled wait staff. This stark contrast in dinners was something that really stands out as an unintended plus to the GNT planning and group as a whole.

That personal touch

Geek Nation Tours really added a personal touch to the whole Gencon Tour, demonstrating their dedication to making sure everyone on the tour enjoyed themselves and didn't miss anything. Tuesday evening following our arrival we (my family and I) were hustling and bustling getting situated and trying to figure out who was in town. As I know a lot of people in the game industry this was a hectic time trying to track down who was in town, who wasn't, and where everyone was. During this time I received a couple text messages from a number I didn't recognize, all of which were asking where I was and if I was going to make it out to dinner. At the time I disregarded those messages while trying to get my own coordination completed. It was only later that I realized, reading through these pings and check-in's, that the messages were from Alex, our tour guide. He was concerned that he'd seen us check in, then we'd disappeared and had not joined him and the other early tour participants for dinner and games. This is one of those things that becomes incredibly touching when you stop to think about it, as it was unsolicited and completely unexpected.

My wife talks about some of the ways our tour guide Alex really improved the overall Gencon experience personally for her. Following our arrival on Tuesday through the end of the tour on Monday, Alex made a point of greeting her by name whenever they ran into each other. He recognized her each time they passed and made a point of stopping to chat and check in with her. This may seem like a small thing, but when you consider Gencon had over 60-thousand unique attendees and the Geek Nation Tour had 20 or more participants, this is impressive. Alex spotted her not only in the hotel hallway and common areas, but also in the very crowded Gencon vendor and gaming halls, then made a point and time to chat with her about how her day and convention was going. This personal touch was the type of attention she really enjoys, adding a touch of brightness with each encounter.

Tour participants and guide

I would not feel this review was complete if I didn't take time to talk about the tour participants and our tour guide Alex.  I have to admit up front that while I have a bit of a public persona due to hosting a couple different podcast (Gamers Lounge, Guild Ball Tonight, Hobby Sofa), I'm not exactly what people would call a "joiner". My wife tends to be the friendlier person when it comes to making connections and such. Add to that my typical convention experience (Gencon and Adepticon) has me running around meeting up with different groups and friends throughout the convention. I'm rarely lacking in activities and this found us (me more than my wife and daughter) ducking out of some of the GNT dinners and events to catch up with other friends during the convention.

Even considering all of this, my wife made some friends and all of the tour participants were particularly welcoming. On our first night we greeted a couple who were looking fairly "new" and just a touch lost, inviting them to join us for a demo of an unreleased game I'd gotten my hands on. (Shadow Games by Steamforged Games). Throughout the convention my wife and daughter met up with that couple during the other dinners and both wives have built a bit of a connection following the tour.

The other important part of talking about people on our tour is Alex, our GNT Tour Guide. Alex was fantastic as not only a tour guide but also as a person to drink and game with. He appears well connected in within the gaming industry as a whole, and it was interesting to see him connected to many of the same gaming industry connections I have. We had a very enjoyable time chatting about various topics throughout the tour, and it was only at the very end of the tour he realized I was the host of a podcast he listened to. Perhaps only other podcasts hosts fully understand this, but it's sometimes refreshing to be a bit "incognito" and unrecognized for a time, as often being a recognized host can color (positively and negatively) peoples reactions to you. Alex (as mentioned above and here) was a champion throughout the tour, which would not have been as enjoyable or excellent without him.

 Thoughts and Review

 Every single encounter I have with Geek Nation Tours increases my overall appreciation for what they do and how great they are. After taking part in 2 tours and one off-tour event I can honestly say that one of my first considerations for trips is GNT. I say trips, not just conventions, because my daughter and I have looked at going with GNT to New Zealand for their Hobbit tour. During Gencon a number of our friends took notice of our experience (specifically the RAM dinner) along with one or two sneaking into some of the after-dinner gaming and access to industry insiders. They were all as impressed as I was, and asked a lot of questions about cost and how it works. Cost is not going to be fixed for each person and each tour, but I will say that my total trip for the three of us with GNT ran around $5K. We felt that this was well worth the money we spent when considering everything included.

I look forward to future tours with GNT, and highly recommend them to anyone looking to make a trip. Even if you're not typically considering going with a tour group, look at the GNT packages and you may find one that fits your needs!!!

http://geeknationtours.com/

Pre-Gencon 2016 with Geek Nation Tours

This year my family and I decided to take the trip to Gencon 2016. This is not an insignificant undertaking, trekking 3 of us nearly 600 miles across the country for a 7 day visit to one of the largest game conventions in the world. Of course we decided to make things a bit more complicated in a couple ways. First, we realized the week before Gencon my 17 year old daughter got an unexpected week off. This opened up the opportunity to leave for our drive earlier than expected, allowing me to attend a Guild Ball tournament the Saturday before the event. I checked my hotel points (thank you work travel) and realized we had enough to cover a couple contingencies. We subsequently decided to add an additional 2 day excursion to Chicago onto my trip to play Guild Ball due to my daughter having never been there and Chicago being one of my wife and I favorite cities in the US. This resulted in a 9 hour drive to Indianapolis, an all day Guild Ball tournament, a 3.5 hour drive to Chicago, 2 days of sightseeing, then a 3.5 hour drive to Indianapolis to check into Gencon. Gencon runs Tuesday until Sunday for us, then a 9 hour drive back home on Monday.

Let's talk a little about Gencon tickets and lodging. The Gencon experience begins in January of the year prior to attending for most people. This is when the initial badges go on sale along with Gencon housing opening up and becoming available. Attendees who wish to stay anywhere approximately close to the convention center have approximately 5 minutes to get online on the specified day and log into the system to wait in a digital queue hoping to get a hotel room. This is an absolute nightmare, and I don't actually know anyone who ends up getting decent rooms out of this. Most of the attendees I know pay very high prices for rooms which are typically a couple blocks away from the center. Months later this exercise begins again to grab up event tickets for events you want to participate in. Make sure you know the time and date to jump online to get lucky on some placement in a digital queue and hope the 1K or more people ahead of you int he queue don't buy up the event tickets you want.

All of this is not to say Gencon is not an excellent experience. There are some specific frustrations that build up which are typically alleviated once you attend this monstrous event. Once we experience Gencon and return home it's the joy of the actually long weekend gaming that we remember, not the frustration in the beginning. 2016 was different however, we found a way to improve the overall experience. Geek Nation Tours.

My background with Geek Nation Tours

I've been somewhat familiar with Geek Nation Tours for many years, initially encountering Teras (the Head Geek) when he started advertising a geek focused tour company at Adepticon. He is an incredibly nice guy, even for the notoriously pleasant Canadians, and we spent time talking about podcasting and 40K. At the time I thought the idea of his venture was cool but was not convinced it was for me. My Adepticon trips are well covered on the lodging, travel, and activities front so I didn't see the need for a tour company.

Teras and I stayed in touch through the years, often catching each other briefly at Adepticon and Gencon. In 2014 I ran into the first challenge I'd had with Adepticon registration, missing out on both the discount room block and logging into the registration late and missing out on events and the VIG registration. Working through my frustration I decided to reach out to Teras and see if he had rooms left. I ended up joining the 2014 Adepticon tour, getting my VIG registration and solo-room for the same price as my basic late registration room cost would have been. In addition I was able to take part in some of the tour activities and dinners which were an absolute blast!!! After missing 2015 I ended up with some oddball plans for Adepticon this year so things did not work out for me to take part in the Geek Nation Tours group. Despite this, Teras had opened up one of his tour events to Adepticon attendees, the Industry dinner, which I was able to attend and really enjoyed.   

Geek Nation Tours @ Gencon 2016

My experiences with Geek Nation Tours left no doubt in my mind that when it came to Gencon I wanted to attend as part of their tour. My wife and I mapped out the budget and set out in late 2015 to make this happen. A basic Geek Nation Tour package for Gencon includes lodging, dinners each night, your Gencon badge, and transfers (taxi/shuttle/etc) from the airport if your flying in. The lodging pricing is set based on a double-occupancy assumption, with an option to pay a bit extra if you want a room to yourself.  This is a well prepared package which Teras and his team has set-up and works for most everyone who travels in. Of course I am a special snowflake and had to muck up the works on this, but isn't that half the fun???

We had 3 people traveling to Gencon together, my Wife, my 17 year old daughter, and myself. We wanted to share a room and planned to drive to Gencon. We also wanted to have all three of us be able to take part in the tour activities, particularly the nightly dinners and gaming. I reached out to Teras and we were able to work out those minor changes to the tour package, doing lodging as double occupancy for my wife and I as full tour members and a discounted tour rate for my daughter as she didn't need lodging costs covered. We came to an agreement on pricing, I gathered up the money and sent it off to him, and we were registered for the Gencon 2016 tour. That's when the real fun began.

Ok, let me first comment on one of the biggest motivators for us to join the tour. Having planned tours for as long as he has, Teras and Geek Nation Tours is able to reserve excellent hotel rooms at the events attended by the tours. At Gencon he has a reserved room block each year for his tour in a hotel adjacent to the convention center. This is incredibly important to both my wife and I as we prefer the convenience of walking straight into the convention from our hotel. This year the rooms were at the connected JW Marriott, with only a short walk across a catwalk (air conditioned no less) to get into the venue. These are some of the toughest rooms to get (and most expensive), and we didn't have to think about it at all. Once we signed up with GNT we knew we'd be at our preferred hotel location.

That special GNT touch

It was after the actual tour registration that we started to experience the true value and benefit to being part of Geek Nation Tours. The first nice touch was an email from Teras containing three badge codes and a  nice set of instructions on how to use them. Our Gencon badges being part of our tour cost, these codes let us log into the Gencon system and add our badges to our accounts. The process was incredibly easy and now we knew we had both badges to attend Gencon and a good hotel room at the event.

Over the next couple months we got fairly regular updates as Teras learned more information about what was going on at Gencon. He made sure to send out reminders to all the tour participants for early reviews of events and other types of activities. He also monitored the coordination an annual practice where GNT and the Kentucky Fried Gamers team up for a day of pre-gencon games. As part of the tour we were given access to this game day on the Wednesday prior to Gencon, and Teras helped us stay abreast of the news and register for those days events.

Along came the dreaded day of trying to register for Gencon events. The week leading up to this day Teras went to extra efforts to set-up a dedicated Facebook group for tour participants along with keeping everyone reminded and up to date on how registration would work. The morning registration would go live the tour facebook page become a general group chat for participants discussing and coordinating events they would want to do together. Everyone on the tour was very friendly and there was an active discussion. Hints and tips for getting desired events were freely shared and then registration went live, with all the tour participants commiserating as our wishlists of event processed. The whole experience became fun opposed to the typical drudgery watching your digital queue number tick down.

Once this was complete we continued to receive regular updates for our tour right up to our arrival in Indianapolis. As this post is getting a bit long I'll split the review up into 2 articles. Come back tomorrow (or go to the next post) for "Improving "The Best 4 days in Gaming" with Geek Nation Tours"

Rise of the Kage - Revisit

Last December I wrote a review of the board game Rise of the Kage and it's associated expansion, Docks of Ryu. I shared this review to Board Game Geek in February of this year, receiving a couple replies. Anyone interested can go back and check out either of those links for my original review. In summary, I felt there was a good game potential but was unable to recommend the game due to imbalance between the two sides and nearly incomprehensible rules.

In March of this year (2016) an update set of rules (2.1) was released for the game. Along with requests from the company and recommendations from others who support the game I was interested to see if things had been fixed. I agreed to work on my gaming group to get this back in circulation with an eye toward revisiting my earlier review. It's took several months but I've gotten two games in with the new rules, one as the Guards and one as the Ninja's.

What is Rise of the Kage, Who makes it?

Nothing in this section has changed since my review, the game is still a stealth themed board game with a host of miniatures. It's listed as supporting 2-4 players, with 1 player taking the role of the boss and guards while the other 1-3 players take the role of the Ninja's.There are 3 Ninja's and 2 Boss's in the base game, with another 3 Ninja and a Boss in the expansion plus 1 extra Ninja from the kickstarter. Ninja players will pick 1 Ninja from each of 3 clans to settle on their team of 3.

• 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 

I'm not in complete agreement that this is a game for 2-4 players. The refinement of the rules for 2.1 have further convinced me that this is a 2 player game that can accommodate up to 2 additional players for a maximum of 4, but plays ideally with 2 players.

Whats changed with how it plays?

Some of the basics for how the Ninja's work within the game have changed. First, the Ninja equipment cards have been clarified to be placed "into play" either face-down or face-up on the Ninja play mats. This limits the amount of cards they can have "in hand", additionally making even face-down Ninja cards targets for some guard actions. A second change, which is a fairly major change to the game, is the removal of the "pathing" originally required. Now, instead of predetermining the path the Ninja's will take, the Ninja's can take up to 6 squares of movements with an additional 2 upon sacrificing dice on the turn. This removal speeds the game up marginally without removing any key portion of the game. Overall the pre-pathing was an innovative touch but not necessary for the feel of the game.

Noise tokens work the same as before in relation to the Ninja's, but have changed in how they function for the guards. First, only a single noise token may be used on each guard for an extra action. This limits the blitzing of several noise tokens on guards that could occur previously. Additionally, Noise tokens are required in order to play guard cards during the Ninja turn. This significantly limits what the guards can do in reaction to the Ninja's. Although Noise tokens can be saved over rounds, there are other changes in place that create an environment where stockpiling is not the best choice.

Guard cards is one of the largest changes I saw in the 2.1 rule set. Guards now only receive a single card at the begining of the game. Following this first turn, Guards can onlyl draw new cards by purchasing them at the start of the Guard turn with either noise tokens or guard action tokens. In this way a limit on the guards power has been put in place, restricting guard resources by providing the 3 choices of:

1. Buy guard card to play
2. Take actions with a guard on the table
3. Recruit new guards to the table

The guard deck is still a massive deck, despite some limited trimming of the cards with the 2.1 rules. Although this will ensure nearly endless replayablity it also means that the guard have a hard time digging for cards they may wish to play.

Quality: The 2.1 Rules

The cards are still a little thin but the boards and models continue to be wonderful. I'm happy with the plastic quality, despite needing to rebend some of the weapons with hot water. What everyone should be focusing on for this revisit is have the rules been improved?

 The rules have undergone a significant improvement in both clarity and streamlining. There are clear sections that walk through the set-up of the game, with pictures that help clarify the process and explanations where you would expect them to be. The step by step process of a turn is much clearer to understand and it's finally clear what a Ninja and Guard can or cannot do during their activation. The rules have been split into basic and advanced rules, with some sections (such as guards becoming alert) being added to the advanced section. This provides two levels of play for easier access to the game.

There are minor areas where we still struggled to find a reference to how a specific action or situation would be resolved, but overall the game has cleared things up tremendously. Additionally, there is an index which is pretty good (although could still use some improvement). A lot of work appears to have gone into improving the original rules, with clear evidence that the public was listened to during the process.

Recommendation and thoughts

I still like this game and believe I could get it onto the gaming table with new players for at least a first try. It's a challenging game but is no longer completely one-sided in favor of the guards. It's moved to being a mid-length game for 2 players who want to face a challenge.

I'm not confident there's enough improvement to overcome the initial bad feelings my gaming group had toward this game. In the current age of gaming it's tough to recover space on the table after a poor first impression. My own group does not have any other stealth style games to compete with Rise of the Kage, which increases the chance of this being played. In those groups who have another alternative and were disappointed in the original, I'm not sure the changes are enough to recover from the early misstep.

I can't say this is making it to circulation in my group, but I can say it's back to being an option. This is an improvement and completely due to GCT taking the time to rewrite the rules for the game based on community input.

Book Review - Legacy of Shadows by Craig Gallant

I got Legacy of Shadow's shortly before the release thanks to the very fine folk at Winged Hussar publishing. I have been waiting for this novel since I first heard that Craig Gallant would be branching out to write his own series. I was not aware he was writing Science Fiction, but was excited to see what he put out regardless of genre. I've enjoyed Craig's other novels which were written in the Wild West Exodus universe, and really wanted to see what he would do once "outside the sandbox".

The Basics

This is Craig's first published foray writing for his own created universe. I've reviewed and am a fan of his previous work within the Wild West Exodus universe and am excited to see what he would do with his own. Authors of "sandbox fiction" can struggle when writing without the provided frameworks and guidelines of established canon. Legacy of Shadows gives us the opportunity to reengage with Craig on new ground, as if it was his first time out (again).

• Book: Legacy of Shadows
• Author: Craig Gallant
• Publisher: Winged Hussar (ZMOK)
• Pages: 275 (in paperback)

This is an excellent place to make a point about the book description on Amazon.

Skip the Amazon book synopsis!

I'm not sure what happened on Amazon, but the synopsis has two large issues. First, it's not accurate for this book. Second, it contains some spoilers for the book as a whole. 

Synopsis

Let's take a look at what the publisher provides as the synopsis:

Two men of earth stumble upon an artifact that bestows upon one of them control of and responsibility for an ancient space station that stands as the last bastion of freedom in the galaxy. He does his best, with the support of his friend and others he meets along the way, to fill the office until a suitable successor can be found, while the forces of galactic oppression move to use his presence as an excuse to crush the station. He battles determined enemies, betrayal, and his own inner demons to defend the position blind luck put him into, but in the process, he might have started a process that might destroy every human in the galaxy.

I like this synopsis, very straight forward and gives a good overview to the book opening. I thought I would take a turn at writing my own synopsis of the book:

Legacy of Shadows is a literary buddy film set to the backdrop of hardcore science fiction drama. The story opens with our two protagonists engaged in a frantic car chase ending in an explosive conclusion and alien abduction lifted straight from the big screen. The story rushes headlong into a well crafted buddy film narrative culminating in a massive battle ripe with evil galactic overlords, monstrous alien soldiers, space demons, and powered-armor soldiers fighting high-tech giant robots. 

My Thoughts

I took the time to read through this novel twice prior to writing this review. My first read through was voracious, devouring the novel in a fairly short time. My second read was leisurely, taking notes and annotating sections I particularly enjoyed or had questions about. This is a very well written book where the authors writing opens a window into the scenes playing out inside their head, inviting you (the reader) in to watch the story unfold.

I enjoyed the way Craig (the author) plays with well accepted American movie tropes, flipping several on their head. We have the dual-ethnicity (black / white) buddy team at the opening of the story, yet the aliens in the wider galaxy are horrified by the white character and accepting of the black. We have an entire race of warlike space daemons, horns and all, who end up as brave crusaders against the evil galactic empire. Overall, very little of this story is predictable, despite early appearances. Craig masterfully crafts a story where not even expecting a "reversal from expectations" will serve to predict the story. Despite the twists and surprises the overall story is easy to follow and understand.

Conclusion

I rarely read a novel more than once due to a variety of reasons. I picked out additional depth and details in this story on my second read through and was more pleased with the story afterwards. This is an excellent book and excellent start to an engaging future series. I strongly recommend anyone who enjoys science fiction or general buddy-film style stories pick up Legacy of Shadows.

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.

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.

Libertalia Board Game Review

I am a fan of the Wil Wheaton you-tube show Table Top and occasionally come across some game gems I was not aware of prior to watching the show. Libertalia is one such gem, a game that was not only fun to watch on Table Top but has since become a favorite game in my collection. I asked my wife to watch the video simply to get a good laugh at the interplay between Seth Green, his wife Clare Grant, Wil Wheaton, and Karen Gillan of Doctor Who fame. Watching the game play my wife suprised me by asking me to pick up a copy of the game, which she thought looked like a fun game the family would enjoy playing. I jump at the chance to grab games my family will play, so quickly ran out to get a copy for the house. So, what's Libertalia you ask.... continue reading!

What is Libertalia, Who makes it?

Libertalia is a pirate themed board game for 2 - 6 players. Play proceeds over 3 cruises (rounds) with each cruise broken down into 3 day/night segments plus a return to the harbor. Players are dealt identical hands of 9 cards from a deck of 30 possible choices. These cards comprise the choices for the crew looting the islands on the cruise each day. Let's take a look at the basic's of the game before jumping in:

• Game: Libertalia
• Company: Asmodee Games
• Website: http://us.asmodee.com/ressources/jeux_versions/libertalia.php
• Players: 2 - 6
• Play time: 45 minutes 

How's it play?

Libertalia starts with laying out the board, having each player choose their pirate captain (technically just choose a color) and then dealing out the hand of cards. One player will shuffle their 30 card deck and draws 9 cards. While this is going on, another player will randomly draw 6 sets of loot tokens from the "Booty Bag", each set equal to the number of players, and place them on the board so everyone can see what booty is available each day. After all this, the player who drew 9 cards will read them out and everyone will build an identical hand of cards. Everyone is now ready to play.

Play proceeds across 4 phases (Sunrise, Day, Dusk, Night) per day, 6 days, then a single return to port. During the Sunrise phase everyone chooses a card and places it on the ship, which are then revealed and ordered from lowest to highest "rank", comprising the ships crew for the day. During the Day phase, each member of the crew will process any Day powers printed on the cards, from lowest to highest rank. Dusk sees the highest rank process dusk powers then choose a booty token from those available on that day of the cruise, proceeding through this step to the lowest rank crew member. Following this players will place their crew member cards into their pirate den and then process Night powers for all crew in their dens. This concludes one of the 6 days on the cruise/campaign and play proceeds to sunrise on the next day.

Following the completion of the Night phase on the 6th day the ship returns to port and players resolve any port powers for crew members in their pirate dens. Den's and graveyards are then discarded, loot is tallied and then returned to the "booty bag",  and end of cruise scoring takes place. New loot is drawn for the next cruise, 6 more cards are drawn to form the next hand, and play proceeds until 3 cruises are complete.

Each player begins each cruise with 10 doubloons, and can earn more doubloons through abilities on their crew members. Scoring comprises adding the total doubloons at the end of a cruise, moving the score tracker, then resetting to the starting 10 doubloons for the next cruise. It's important to note that only 6 new cards are dealt during the second and third cruise, indicating your hand can be comprised of additional cards held back during earlier cruises.   

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

Libetalia is a game of perfect knowledge, where each player is using the same set of cards and resources within the game. This means it becomes a game of remember what your opponents have played, anticipating which card they will play on which day, then bluffing which card you will play when. There is a fair amount of strategy in determining the best time to make use of different crew member powers, contributing to a variety of ways to earn the most doubloons during a cruise. Additionally there is strategy involved in holding back specific crew from earlier cruises when they may be able to benefit you more in later cruises of the game.

There is also some thought and fun in picking specific types of booty at specific times. One piece of booty, the Sabre, allows you to murder one of the crew members in a players den to each side of you. Another, the Spanish Officer, kills off your own crew member before they make it back to your den at the end of the day. These two selections are useful in cases when you pick them up and also when you can force your opponents to choose them by taking an earlier pick of booty during the dusk phase.


Anyone who is a fan of pirates will also enjoy this game. The crew members on each card are a lot of fun to read, and the flavor text is very in theme with a variety of pirate movies and books. My own group and family thoroughly enjoy declaring "AAARRRRR" when revealing our played cards, taken directly from the Table Top play through of the game.

Overall quality of the game

I want to take a moment to talk about "box control" for this game. Box control is what the producer has done to help organize and coordinate the contents of the box and board game components. Libertalia is a game containing 6 decks of 30 cards each, card board money tokens in 3 denominations, a bag of loot tokens, 2 central play boards and 6 individual player boards. Additionally there are flags and player tokens for each of the 6 players to track score and mark out-of-play cards. Asmodee has done an excellent job with forming the interior of the box with a mind toward excellent box control. There are places for each of the decks and all the components, keeping things nicely organized and easy to get out of the box and set-up to play.

The game quality is excellent across the board, with a nice thickness to the card decks, thick cardboard on the booty tokens, and a fairly durable pirate ship board. The rule book is very easy to understand and the layout is excellent, both on the text being easy to read and follow and containing many excellent pictures and diagrams.

Recommendation and thoughts

I love this game, my family loves this game, and 3 game groups I've played with also love this game. What is more interesting, my mother-in-law who only likes a few games (Yahtzee, exploding kittens, Quarriors) really enjoys this game and has requested we bring it on vacations to play. Overall this has enough complexity to keep hard-core games like me entertained and engaged while also having a simple enough game-play that lighter gamers such as my wife can enjoy playing. I am pleased to see how seamlessly the game combines those two play styles allowing both types of players to be involved in the same game sessions without becoming frustrating.

This game has a strong recommendation from me.

Guildball - Union Team Review

I've been playing with the Union team for several weeks now and feel I have a good handle on them and how they work together. I thought this was a good time to review my second Guild Ball team and share what I've learned. I'll again refer people over to Docbungle at Miniature Musing's of the Bear and his character write-ups, found using the Team Talk tag. He has also handled Union already, without the overall team review.

Union Team Overview

The Union has been billed as the "Dirty Tricks" team from early in the kickstarter, and earns that reputation in the story of the game. On the table I can see how they live up to that reputation, although I think they obtain it in a unique fashion. I find that the Union is similar to the Masons, where the team functions as a machine built upon the player components used to build it. Union teams can be built to operate in a number of different ways, each of which approach winning a game of guild ball in thier own way.

The variety of choices within the Union combined with the large number of players makes the Union one of the more difficult teams to fully grasp on the table. It's possible to put together a Union team that can dish out nearly as much damage as the Butchers, then play a different union lineup in your next game which scores goals and maneuvers nearly as fast as the Fishermen. It's possible to play a game with a lineup that dishes out up to 3 different conditions in a turn (Bleed, Poison, Knockdown), and also leaves clouds of smoke on the table to provide cover. The magic to the Union comes with deciding which tactic to take then insert the requisite team members to build out a team to deliver.

One of the largest differences I see between the Union and other guild teams is how it approaches synergy. On other teams the players tend to have abilities that combine together to strengthen one or two players on the team. This creates strong combo's across a whole team, where each team's player combined to form a greater than the sum result. The union is exactly the sum of it's parts (players). I find combinations of plays within the union are fairly straight forward additions of each individual player to reach a desired result. On most teams there are lynch pin players who can be taken out to break apart a strong combo, but those players are often tough to get to, or tough to take out. The Union suffers from a situation where each player contributes exactly what they contribute, minimizing the risk of a lynch pin player, but reducing the overall team effectiveness as players are taken out. There is not really a quick drop of a set of plays stopping to work, but a gradual weakening of the entire teams play style.

This effect of an overall weakening vs lynch pin play can be a boon and a curse for union players. In a situation where the union player knows the roles of each of his models intricately it becomes very tough to stop that player from achieving his/her goals. There is not really a place to maximize efforts to reduce that players success in the game, but you have to wear them down over the whole game. In the converse situation where the player is not yet familiar with what their team does, the whole team will not work well. The Union team becomes clumsy and each of the model's can tend to get in the way of each other, hampering a final positive result of play combinations.

Let's take a look at the individual players and their roles on the field.

 Blackheart

The team captain for the Union is one nasty character to tangle with. Here we have a Pirate Captain turned Mercenary King turned Guild Ball captain, who holds his own with dirty tricks on the field. Blackheart has abilities that give him very good mobility while also bringing a great sword to play for beating down his opponents. His playbook is interesting, with very light contributions at low levels of success, and incredible momentous plays with 5 and 6 successes.  He can really dish out the damage if he can get the hits, with all of his 5 & 6 success plays combining damage with another effect such as Tackle, Knockdown, or dodges. Blackheart also have the Commanding Aura play, allowing him to raise an aura which buffs the damage and TAC of other players on his team. I spoke about his role in the Union Brute squad in an earlier article on this blog.

Coin

I can make the argument that Coin is functionally the best mascot in the game. He may not be the best sculpt or the most fun with his rules, but he makes the most significant contribution of any mascot in Season 1. Coin has a trait (Bag of Coffers) that allows him to give a model on the team (including himself) one additional influence plus a single free use of Bonus Time once per turn. He only needs to be within 4 inches of the target model, and can do this at no cost during his turn. This is an amazing ability that is only restricted from Blackheart and Rage within the team (due to Blackheart being a captain and Rage's Maverick). Additionally, Coin has a really good move stat along with a 2 inch reach, making him a real threat to players on the table.

Rage

Rage is arguably one of my favorite players in the game, not just on the Union team. I started out liking his sculpt but favoring other models in the game. The more I use Rage in the Union and other teams the more I like him overall. Here I will discuss his play's in relation to the Union team as a whole. Rage is incredibly influence efficient, combining free charges with furious and free attacks with berserk.  This means Rage can use his single influence to reliably pump out 4 attacks a turn, most of which will produce momentum when used. Berserk only gives a free attack upon damage, so the first and third hit Rage does will always include some sort of damage in order to maximize his abilities, and most of his damage plays produce momentum. Added in, Rage causes the bleed condition on models, leaving behind a reminder why he is a nasty character to deal with. Check out the previously linked Union Brute Squad article for a discussion on how he works best.

Decimate

Decimate is a lot of fun to use, finding her way into two different Union play styles overall. Decimate has some really good movement stats and abilities (Second Wind) which combine with her mid-field (3/6") kick stat to make her a contributor to a Union scoring team. She also has a playbook which becomes downright scary when combined with abilities that increase damage, such as Blackheart's Commanding Aura. Decimate truly shines as a momentum generator, easily producing one momentum per influence and occasionally able to produce 2 per influence spent. The only challenge I find with Decimate on a team is she needs a lot of influence to make her excel, often looking for 3 and 4 influence from the team pool. This influence is always well spent, but limits the activities the rest of the team will take. In this way Decimate moves the Union team to resemble other teams where multiple models are grouped together to super-buff a single model to achieve results. That tends to be counter to Union game success.

Gutter

Gutter seems to be the most hated player in Guild Ball currently. I am not sure she deserves the amount of bile she draws, but she is a very good player. In Gutter we have the third member of the Union Brute Squad, along with some very useful abilities. Gutter has a good move and kick, allowing her to contribute to a football scoring team, although she really shines for damage dealing. Scything Blow lets her trigger one of the very few plays that affect multiple models and push out at least 3 damage to all targets. Her high TAC plus ability to heal when damaging AND ignore armor make her a real threat on the field.  Finally she brings Chain Grab, an ability to reposition enemy models to locations that better suit the needs of the Union. All of this combined make her a high priority target for other teams to hate and take out.

Mist

 Mist is also climbing the charts as one of the more hated models in the game. Mist is the Union striker, along with clocking in as one of the best strikers in the game. I've written my soap-box stance on if Mist is overpowered in an earlier article, and will not rehash it here. Mist brings high movement and strong goal scoring to the table as any striker should. He can quickly reposition where he is and fills the role of striker exceptionally. This means that he only threatens on that axis of the game, bringing nothing useful for combat and damage dealing. Mist does his job well and only his job. I like to have Mist included on all my union teams, as he adds another threat component to my damage dealing Union which my opponent needs to contend with.

Hemlocke 

Hemlocke is the single player in Guild Ball that I could support an argument portraying her as "broken" or "not working as intended". Hemlocke is the only player with a natural 6 defense, making her incredibly resilient. She brings some intriguing and "out of the box" abilities to the team, applying conditions, hobbling the opposing models, and having a good movement and moderate kick for goal scoring.  Overall it appears that Hemlocke was a collection of moderate abilities which were all cool, that all grouped together to becomes far more than was intended. She looks like a behind the lines player who can buff/debuff/harass players. She ended up being a player who can sit inside a scrum nearly untouchable and move the ball to score while completely hamstringing opposing players. The only thing Hemlocke is clearly bad at is dealing damage, although even on this side her ability to dish out poison makes her a secondary threat.

Snakeskin

Snakeskin brings an intriguing "sideways" playstyle to the  Union, earning her a key place on the team. She is an overall defensive player, scaling her defense with abilities such as Charmed Male, Nimble, and Clone. She is another mid-range movement and ball handling player, contributing the the Union scoring team. She also brings along an easy application of poison to enemy players. These abilities combine to create a very versatile "swing" player on the field, able to withstand enemy focus and quickly disengage after dealing some damage.

Avarrisse & Greede

Avarrisse and Greede are the only player in the game who brings two players in a single model. This is not only unique from a modelling perspective, but also the particular play ability that you are going to include them on a team for. A&G are also the only Union player that can play for every guild in the game. At the start of every turn, A&G can choose to separate into 2 players who each bring influence and an activation to the team. This means that the Union could achieve 7 players to activate on the field, guaranteeing them the ability to out activate their opponent.  In the event that the two are separated and in base contact during a maintenance phase, they can choose to recombine to a single player and model and moving forward as a single choice. Avarrisse is a "big player", bringing a low defense but a load of wounds to the table. Conversely, Greede is a small model who's hard to hit but only has 4 total wounds before being taken out. Greede, once taken out, cannot be returned to play. Greede can only be taken out while separate from Avarrisse however, providing him protection from VP hunters. There are a number of tactics that can be employed with this player, none of which are direct or easy to walk through. Success in using A&G comes down to putting in a fair bit of time to learn how to use him and get the best use from them on the table.

Fangtooth

Big and ugly and the model I like least in the entire game of Guild Ball. I have read several comments from other players on how much they love the Fangtooth sculpt. Overall he has been my least favorite sculpt in the game, but that's personal taste for you. Fangtooth has earned a reputation of being a "not so good" choice for union teams. He brings an aura that creates slow terrain, but it affects his own team. He has the most wounds in the game but no armor and a low defense.  His heroic play buffs him but damages his own team. All of these make him a tough model to play with on the team. Fangtooth also brings some of the easiest Knockdown results to the Union, along with some real damage dealing potential. He is resilient along with being able to generate momentum on some key playbook plays only he has easy access to. Overall I believe Fangtooth is a very situationally good player, who is a moderate choice in some situations and a very good choice in others. I do not see where he is a bad choice once you learn how to avoid his "gotcha" plays. Considering that, he is one of the few "gotcha" choice players in the game.

Mynx

I'd like to be able to talk about Mynx, but I have not assembled or played her yet. She is in my queue of models to build and paint. Once that's done I'll be getting her on the table to try out.