The Wags group welcomed this week a new player, ececec. Unfortunately I arrived late and missed the two opening games of Dominion (with various expansions thrown in). All I know is that ececec beat Kozure bay single point in the last game.
We set up Panic Station. Ececec wanted to give it a try and I think we all wanted to give it another shot as well. Since last week's game, I realized a few things... First, the game DOES have a backstory that makes sense of a few of the game's odd mechanics. Apparently, the aliens are immune to traditional bullets so the players are searching for bullets specially developed by the decimated inhabitants of the ship to combat the aliens. Secondly, the androids are linked to the human's psychi so that's why they both get infected simultaneously. Whatever.
This session was not like the earlier sessions. Shemp was the infected one, but he decided to lay low for a while. So much so that I literally had no idea who I couldn't trust and just one turn before I thought I could win the game for the humans no one else was infected (and as far as I could tell, no attempts had been made either). I started looking around the table in case the host card has been accidentally left out of the game.
I then committed a grave error. I ended my turn in the hive, with all the gas cans I needed, but without any actions left to actually burn the hive. In swoops Shemp. I deflect the infection with a gas can, but then have only two left. Over in the other corner of the map, ececec does a heat scan and it's revealed that I am still human. He then trades a gas can with my android. On his turn, Kozure does the same. My turn again, oops! Let's move the critters and sure enough 4 of them come into the hive (1 in 4 chance of that happening!) and my human is pulverized. We then spend a few rounds coordinating a run by Kozure and Ececec to get my gas cans and burn the hive while avoiding the swarms and Shemp. A well placed grenade thinned the swarm nicely, and Kozure succeeded in putting the hive to the torch.
Again, I had fun,despite the somewhat clunky rules and thematic oddness/ blandness. It does keep you guessing, and it's pretty challenging for both the humans and the infected. I think it would play better with more players, and I look forward to trying it again.
We then finished with a session of Kings of Tokyo. Ececec picked up on it quickly, and luckily didn't seem too bothered when he was eliminated mid game. Kozure's mekadragon, equipped with those damned Wings and Acid breath destroyed us all.
It's just about a perfect game for what it is.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Cans of Gas Stave off Alien Infection + I Have the Stupid (Panic Station x 2, High Society x 2)
Last week (November 17th) we played Panic Station, twice, plus one other game. Evidently that other game stands out so well in my mind that I've completely forgotten what it was . I'm sure Agent Easy will be along shortly to correct the record. [edit: Agent Easy recalled that it was High Society]
[edit - added "High Society"]
High Society
This is always a fun, quick game. The first game, Agent Easy and I came very close in terms of points but he had slightly more money remaining.
The second game was tight - Agent Easy and Pablo were tied for points and for most money remaining, so it came down to highest purchased item value.
Such a clever little game.
Panic Station
What to say about panic station? Traitor mechanic, exploration, high-tech weapons and equipment, explosives, sci-fi setting... what's not to like?
Execution, it seems.
I wanted to like this one, I really did, but the weird "why is this done this way?" moments started to pile up about half-way through the game and never really went away.
First up, why can't humans use guns? The "in-game" explanation is that they're carrying the flamethrower, so they don't have the "room". OK, fine. They have the flamethrower to purge the alien nest. Sure, I can buy that. But... why do they have to find or trade for the fuel to actually use it INSIDE the facility they're supposed to be purging?
OK, only androids can use guns. I can also accept that, if you assume that the androids have built-in weapons that cannot be detached. But the upgrades are detachable - indeed, they START detached... once again, INSIDE the facility they've been sent to clear out.
Also, equipment teleports back and forth between team members of the same colour, but not between team members of other colours. In addition, if the human gets infected, the same-colour android gets infected as well, and vice versa. Say what?
If a human/android goes down, all their equipment disappears. Huhn? It's possible to lose the game because you can't possibly get enough fuel cans because your team mates got eaten by a parasite and apparently their equipment evaporates when your vital signs disappear?
Too many shaky "plot-points" that might have been 'hand-waved' with better background story writing, or better yet, avoided altogether with better rules writing.
Also, once again, the future is white ... except for one human who may or may not be Asian (Raven). They couldn't fit in a single visible minority? [edit: judging by surname "Ramirez" would seem to be Hispanic, so not entirely WASP] To top it off, all the androids look identical and are the stereotypical bald female hottie with silvery no-iris eyes.
The art is lazy. Actually, I take that back, the equipment art and the station location art is fine. The humans, androids and parasites are lazy. Compare:
Picture of "Alien Parasite":
with picture of "Japanese beetle Larvae":
You're using barely modified images of insect larvae as your evil swarming Alien/Body-Snatcher-esque take-over creature? Did someone on the production team have a bad phobia-generating incident on their lawn?
Okay. Deep breath.
I'm giving this one at least more try before I pass final judgment because people seem so crazy about it on BGG and usually the chattering masses aren't completely wrong, at least at BGG.
So far, though, not very impressed.
Now, to be fair, I screwed up the first game because I (and no one else) forgot the vitally important (but thematically none-too-intuitive) rule that people can avoid being infected by trading a gas can (... wait, what?) so I thought everyone was infected when in fact only three people were infected. I tried to make the case for ending the game early when in fact there was at least one viable human left.
In the end, the infected still won, but the experience was somewhat tainted.
Not to be outdone by my stupid mistake in the first game, I then nearly made the exact same mistake in the second game, fortunately it was spotted and corrected before it did too much damage.
UNfortunately, a strange (though probably not entirely unusual) combination of card trading around mid-game utterly confused both Shemp and Agent Easy making it look like I thought I was uninfected when I was, or was infected when I wasn't (I was actually infected), so a long period passed where Shemp and Agent Easy thought I was playing very stupidly, when in actuality I was really doing the only logical thing, which was to stay away and keep my infected guys out of danger (and being forced to trade back the stolen gas cans) because I had no infection cards left.
Not so! (This time.)
What had happened is that I had tried repeatedly to infect Pablo, only to be given a gas can each time, with the net effect that I had taken all of his gas cans. By reasoning out loud, Agent East figured out what had happened, but this clued Shemp in at the same time. Fortunately for humanity, some canny play by Pablo and Shemp allowed the humans enough time to search for more gas cans and win the game by burning the nest. Cleanse it with FIRE!
Humans 1, Aliens 1.
Now if I could just remember what the other game we played was, I could close down this blog entry in peace. [yeah, it was High Society]
[edit - added "High Society"]
High Society
This is always a fun, quick game. The first game, Agent Easy and I came very close in terms of points but he had slightly more money remaining.
The second game was tight - Agent Easy and Pablo were tied for points and for most money remaining, so it came down to highest purchased item value.
Such a clever little game.
Panic Station
What to say about panic station? Traitor mechanic, exploration, high-tech weapons and equipment, explosives, sci-fi setting... what's not to like?
Execution, it seems.
I wanted to like this one, I really did, but the weird "why is this done this way?" moments started to pile up about half-way through the game and never really went away.
First up, why can't humans use guns? The "in-game" explanation is that they're carrying the flamethrower, so they don't have the "room". OK, fine. They have the flamethrower to purge the alien nest. Sure, I can buy that. But... why do they have to find or trade for the fuel to actually use it INSIDE the facility they're supposed to be purging?
OK, only androids can use guns. I can also accept that, if you assume that the androids have built-in weapons that cannot be detached. But the upgrades are detachable - indeed, they START detached... once again, INSIDE the facility they've been sent to clear out.
Also, equipment teleports back and forth between team members of the same colour, but not between team members of other colours. In addition, if the human gets infected, the same-colour android gets infected as well, and vice versa. Say what?
If a human/android goes down, all their equipment disappears. Huhn? It's possible to lose the game because you can't possibly get enough fuel cans because your team mates got eaten by a parasite and apparently their equipment evaporates when your vital signs disappear?
Too many shaky "plot-points" that might have been 'hand-waved' with better background story writing, or better yet, avoided altogether with better rules writing.
Also, once again, the future is white ... except for one human who may or may not be Asian (Raven). They couldn't fit in a single visible minority? [edit: judging by surname "Ramirez" would seem to be Hispanic, so not entirely WASP] To top it off, all the androids look identical and are the stereotypical bald female hottie with silvery no-iris eyes.
The art is lazy. Actually, I take that back, the equipment art and the station location art is fine. The humans, androids and parasites are lazy. Compare:
Picture of "Alien Parasite":
with picture of "Japanese beetle Larvae":
You're using barely modified images of insect larvae as your evil swarming Alien/Body-Snatcher-esque take-over creature? Did someone on the production team have a bad phobia-generating incident on their lawn?
Okay. Deep breath.
I'm giving this one at least more try before I pass final judgment because people seem so crazy about it on BGG and usually the chattering masses aren't completely wrong, at least at BGG.
So far, though, not very impressed.
Now, to be fair, I screwed up the first game because I (and no one else) forgot the vitally important (but thematically none-too-intuitive) rule that people can avoid being infected by trading a gas can (... wait, what?) so I thought everyone was infected when in fact only three people were infected. I tried to make the case for ending the game early when in fact there was at least one viable human left.
In the end, the infected still won, but the experience was somewhat tainted.
Not to be outdone by my stupid mistake in the first game, I then nearly made the exact same mistake in the second game, fortunately it was spotted and corrected before it did too much damage.
UNfortunately, a strange (though probably not entirely unusual) combination of card trading around mid-game utterly confused both Shemp and Agent Easy making it look like I thought I was uninfected when I was, or was infected when I wasn't (I was actually infected), so a long period passed where Shemp and Agent Easy thought I was playing very stupidly, when in actuality I was really doing the only logical thing, which was to stay away and keep my infected guys out of danger (and being forced to trade back the stolen gas cans) because I had no infection cards left.
Not so! (This time.)
What had happened is that I had tried repeatedly to infect Pablo, only to be given a gas can each time, with the net effect that I had taken all of his gas cans. By reasoning out loud, Agent East figured out what had happened, but this clued Shemp in at the same time. Fortunately for humanity, some canny play by Pablo and Shemp allowed the humans enough time to search for more gas cans and win the game by burning the nest. Cleanse it with FIRE!
Humans 1, Aliens 1.
Now if I could just remember what the other game we played was, I could close down this blog entry in peace. [yeah, it was High Society]
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Maria x2
I'm a few weeks behind, but I wanted to post this before tomorrow's game night so I will keep it short.
Over the past two weeks we've played Maria, the successor to Friedrich. It apparently plays best with three, which is very useful in our group (Friedrich is best with four).
In a nutshell, although we've only played the simple version so far I really like it. Movement is a logistical challenge for the players that aren't playing Maria since units must maintain supply and supply is slower than the troops. Combat is very interesting because the board is separated in regions and each region has a traditional card suit assigned to it. During combat, only cards from the appropriate suit can be used. This has the interesting effect of encouraging players to pay attention to where battles have been fought, because if a suit is exhausted by an earlier battle it can be advantageous to try to take advantage.
Anyway, the full game apparently introduces politics and different armies that change the dynamics substantially. Looking forward to trying it, though it will be hard to find the 5 hours to commit to it.
In our first game, I played France and managed a win on the very last action of the last turn of the game. Similarly, in our second game I won on the last action of the last turn as the Prussians. In both games, I was extremely lucky with my card draws so I can't claim any particular prowess at the game! So far, each power seems to play quite differently (the supply situation for the prussians is much more difficult than it is for France, it seems to me) which is nice to see.
Anyway, highly recommended even at the basic game.
Over the past two weeks we've played Maria, the successor to Friedrich. It apparently plays best with three, which is very useful in our group (Friedrich is best with four).
In a nutshell, although we've only played the simple version so far I really like it. Movement is a logistical challenge for the players that aren't playing Maria since units must maintain supply and supply is slower than the troops. Combat is very interesting because the board is separated in regions and each region has a traditional card suit assigned to it. During combat, only cards from the appropriate suit can be used. This has the interesting effect of encouraging players to pay attention to where battles have been fought, because if a suit is exhausted by an earlier battle it can be advantageous to try to take advantage.
Anyway, the full game apparently introduces politics and different armies that change the dynamics substantially. Looking forward to trying it, though it will be hard to find the 5 hours to commit to it.
In our first game, I played France and managed a win on the very last action of the last turn of the game. Similarly, in our second game I won on the last action of the last turn as the Prussians. In both games, I was extremely lucky with my card draws so I can't claim any particular prowess at the game! So far, each power seems to play quite differently (the supply situation for the prussians is much more difficult than it is for France, it seems to me) which is nice to see.
Anyway, highly recommended even at the basic game.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
