Boardgames update

One advantage of having my son home for the summer, apart from having someone to do some of the dog walks and the washing up (oh, and the pleasure of his company of course!!!!) has been the chance to play a few board games.

He was keen to try out  Star Wars: Rebellion and we've played a couple of games of this.  In game #1 (which to be fair was pretty much a chance for him to get to grips with the rules) he played the Empire and we then switched sides for game #2.  Incidentally this was the first time I've actually played the game as the Empire.  In both cases the Rebels won although we both had to rapidly relocate the secret Base as the Stormtroopers closed in.  It's an interesting game in that both sides have very different tactics and the use of named characters makes it very 'cinematic, even if some of them are a bit obscure.  There's something very satisfying about sending Grand Moff Tarkin in off on a mission or capturing Princess Leia.

We've also played a game of Conan which I think he was less than impressed by.  Partly this was my fault as we were playing a scenario in which various baddies begin the game in huts (In the Clutches of the Picts).

I had assumed that they wouldn't be deployed until they were spotted which made the game extremely challenging for the Heroes (by which I mean pretty impossible!) as there is a time limit.  In fact they all should have been deployed from the start apart from the Princess who is there to be rescued...my fault!

The other challenge with the game is the badly written and laid out rulebook...I'd forgotten how inept these are but things improved once I went over to the online updates rulebook which I'd downloaded to my Kindle.  Hard copies of the rules are due to be sent out to Kickstarter survivors soon (hopefully).  I'm not sure he was that impressed with the game...we may give it another go but I think it may be another round of Twilight Struggle instead, which he is much better than me at!!!

Bits and Pieces (and storage solutions)

There's been a bit of a lull in posting for the last few weeks but I've been busy in the meantime with some games and a spot of semi successful building.

My paints (mostly GW paints as they're easy to get) tend to be chaotically chucked in a large storage box which means it can take ages to find the one I want.  I came across a Kickstarter deal for a self-assembly storage box from Warmage.de and rather rashly bought one

There were various options for GW or Vallejo style paints and varying sizes so I went for the standard GW one.   There were also options for a lamp, brush storage etc which I left out.  Building things, and any form of DIY in general isn't my thing...I'm very much of the "get a wee man in" school of DIY but I thought I'd give it a go and actually it wasn't too bad... the various stages are shown below and it all seemed to work!

The only bit that I still haven't got to grips with is the locking mechanism which consists of 4 pegs which slide through and twist, locking the lid.  For the life of me I can't get these to either go all the way through and/or twist but it may be that I'm being too gentle.  If all else fails a couple of elastic bands work just as well, even if they aren't as aesthetically pleasing.  Despite the fail on the locking device, which may well be down to my construction techniques rather than the design, I'm pleased with it and it should help organise some of the clutter.

I've also managed to fit in a few games.  I've had a couple of games of Conan, both of which were very enjoyable.  I played the same scenario twice, once as a player and once as the Overlord/umpire.  In the first game we nearly succeeded in escaping from the clutches of some evil Picts with the Princess and the head of their leader but fell down at the last hurdle as the turn limit counted down.  On the second outing (as Overlord this time) the players took their time getting organised but managed on the very last turn to escape the village and win the game.  In both games the mechanics worked really well and there weren't too many uncertainties in the rules.

There's a review of Conan in the latest Tabletop Gaming magazine which praises the game mechanics but is very critical of a couple of points.  The 1st of these I definitely agree with which is the lack of a campaign system or even an attempt to link the scenarios together.  Players acquire treasure from chests etc in each scenario and it would nice for these to have some meaning beyond an immediate fix of health points.  This shouldn't be too difficult to introduce if wanted though.

Their 2nd criticism is a bit more complex and is around the generally racist and sexist tones of the Conan universe.  Undoubtedly the books are both racist and sexist and the scenarios certainly suffer from a lack of strong female heroes apart from Belit.  The Princess figure only seems to exist to be rescued.  A number of the enemies also suffer from racial stereotypes as well.  Now, as a dyed-in-the-wool lefty I do get the issues that this throws up but I can't help but think that a game set in the Conan world needs to reflect the books.  Perhaps more effort could have been made to challenge some of the stereotypes though.  Food for thought perhaps.

Interestingly I bought the game as a Kickstarter and I happened to see it (without all the Kickstarter bonus bits and pieces) in Static Games in Glasgow today at an eye-watering £92!!  When did everything get so expensive!!???


Finally last week I had another game of Star Wars Rebellion and despite starting earlier than usual we still didn't quite get to a conclusion.  Still excellent fun though.  I really enjoy the mission section which does give a very cinematic feel as you despatch Princess Leia or Boba Fett etc.  on missions to stymie the enemy or gain rewards.  By the end of the evening I'd managed to increase the Rebels reputation and was only a few points from a win, but the Empire had a fleet sitting in the system adjacent to my Secret Base (which luckily remained secret) and I suspect they would have discovered it in a turn or 2 so a very close ending.

Finally...a game of Conan!

Waaaay back in October last year I received the Conan game from Monolith games which was part of a Kickstarter that was funded in Feb 15, was due to arrive in October 15 and eventually arrived on the back of a lorry a year overdue.  To be fair the delay was mainly due to the huge amount of extra bits and pieces that the producers introduced during the Kickstarter campaign which netted them a staggering $3,327,757.

The 2 boxes which came with the basic pledge

I blogged about the game itself here, back in October.

Since then I've painted a few of the figures...the game came with a huge amount of miniatures including a number of major  heroes and villains from the books as well as assorted Picts, pirates, guards and monsters to fight against (including an impressive giant snake and a hideous tentacled thing...with extra tentacles thrown in for free!).  I think it's safe to say I won't be needing any fantasy figures for a while!  I hadn't actually managed to play a game though (I'd hoped to have a go over xmas but we got distracted by Twilight Struggle)

Some of the heroes

 

 

...and a giant snake

 

Last night I finally managed to actually play the game and tried out the 2 player scenario provided in the main box.  The games have up to 4 heroes pitted against all the baddies who are controlled by the Overlord.  In this scenario Conan is on his own racing around an inn trying to find the correct priest (out of a group of 5) who will lift a curse, while fending off a growing number of Bossonian Guards and Thak,  a giant man-ape, all of whom have decided to stop off at the pub while on a lunch break.

The game mechanics are nicely managed...each player has a character sheet on which he/she places a number of gems.  These are then allocated to actions such as movement, attacks, re-rolls etc.  A sensible player also hangs on to a few gems to aid defence when it's the Overlord's turn to attack.  The drawback is that you only get a limited number of gems back each turn and they are lost permanently when a hero is wounded so careful planning is necessary.

The Overlord has a similar set up using an arrangement called 'The Book of Skelos'...I can't help thinking that should be written in capitals and accompanied by a roll of thunder...

The Book of Skelos is a plastic tray that is set up for each scenario.  Units are shown in the bottom row: the cost to activate a unit increases from left to right but once a unit has acted it is moved to the right hand side and everything slides along to the left.  This means you can, in theory, keep reactivating a unit but the costs will be very high and you'll run out of gems.  The tile with the Raven on it is an event tile which is scenario dependent.  In our first game the result of activating it varied depending how many priests Conan had interrogated (or killed...it amounted to much the same thing!)...either bringing in more guards, giving some a bonus move or unleashing Thak!

The mechanics worked well and were all pretty straightforward.  There has been some criticism of the 2 rulebooks  and I'd agree they could be better laid out but a good read-through and watching some of the helpful playthroughs on YouTube made it all pretty clear.

 

In our game Mike, playing as Conan quickly checked out one of the priests and killed a guard before getting a bit bogged down in slugging it out with a growing number of Bossonian Guards.  It seemed quite difficult to kill the guards and I need to check that I haven't missed something but they had a knack of fending off Conan's attacks.  This did come at a price though as I had few gems left after defending to actually do much but nevertheless Conan was slowly whittled down, losing gems/health as the game progressed.  Mike tried raiding a couple of chests in the hope of finding a handy health potion but only came across Explosive Orbs which, while they were entertaining, weren't what he needed.

The guards have clip on coloured bases to distinguish groups

Damn...another Magic Hand Grenade!!

With hindsight Mike should have concentrated on working through the Priests as killing guards didn't gain him anything and the Priests held the only way of winning.  Towards the end of the scenario Thak was activated and headed off Conan who had finally identified the correct Priest, lifted the curse and was about to make his escape...sadly a massive punch from Thak did 8 hits which Conan wasn't able to stop and he died on the steps of the Inn.

The gem allocation system is pretty neat and forces the player to carefully look after their dwindling supply of gems.  As this was a single-hero scenario we didn't get a feel for how it would play with multiple players but I suspect this would add a lot as players don't take individual turns to act but can coordinate and switch between actions.  It would be good to try this next time.

Dodgy boilers, games and Conan

It's been a chilly week or so since our boiler decided to spring a leak a  couple of weeks ago. I'm no expert but I guessed that having water dripping out of the bottom of the boiler probably wasn't a good thing.   Luckily we're insured for this kind of domestic disaster, since I have no practical skills whatsoever, and an engineer duly came out and diagnosed perished washers.  He then helpfully turned the heating off.  To be fair the thought of water dripping its way through the electrics had worried me a bit and it was a relatively mild couple of days till the next engineer was due back armed with a packet of washers.  Of course it wasn't the same one as before and he immediately diagnosed a different set of problems including a new pump... and  a few more days delay.

This coincided with the weather turning a bit colder and the arrival of Storm Angus.  I'm not convinced by this new thing of naming every breezy day although  did like the approach they took in Scotland a few years ago where they ignored the official name and renamed it "Hurricane Bawbag" (it's a Scottish thing....)



We even resorted to lighting the coal fire and discovered that one of our dogs turns into a quivering wreck when he sees the flames.  The other dog lies in front of it looking quietly smug about hogging all the heat.  We also had a night away visiting our son in Cardiff and stayed in a hotel near Bristol.  I've never been so glad to see a bathroom with a real, live, working shower and bath!!!

The 3rd engineer turned up today and, after a bit of sighing and swearing when he found more leaks than expected eventually managed to stem the floods and get it working again.  It's amazing how reliant we are on the assumption that when we turn the tap on hot water will come out of it!

I took part in a large multi-player game of Memoir 44 down at Guildford a week or so ago.  This was the Sword of Stalingrad set which allows multiple players and a CinC on each side who doles out the precious order cards.  The Soviets are further hampered by having to plan their orders a turn in advance to reflect the helpful meddling of Commissars.  Despite the Germans having a good start and making early gains the Soviets proved tough to dig out of the built up areas and it ended as a narrow German victory (or a close draw according to some of the Soviet players!)



I also managed a game of   Star Trek Ascendancy, the strategic game in the ST universe which sets the Federation, Klingons and Romulans exploring and colonising planets before eventually bumping into each other and either learning to live in peace and harmony or kicking off in a blaze of photon torpedoes and disruptors.  It was a fun game although it took me a few turns to work out what I was doing.  Luckily the other players had played before so kindly coaxed me through the first couple of turns.  The nature of the game also means that it takes a few turns before players encounter each other, giving me a chance to sort of work out what I was doing.  It was a fun game that seems easy to pick up but with quite a bit of depth in the tactics.


I've also finally started painting some of the Conan figures from the recent Kickstarter.  There are 2 big boxes of figures which is quite daunting but I decided that I would aim to paint the main heroes and villains and leave the minions unpainted for now.  I may get round them or alternatively give them an ink wash and leave them as they are.  On first glance some of the figures look a bit lacking in detail when they're straight out of the box but undercoating seems to bring out a lot of detail and the figures are very nice to paint.  I undercoated these in brown  and they're pretty much done.  I'm still undecided what to do with the bases.  The game is played on a series of gridded tiles which feature a lot of brown terrain and I think adding flock and tufts etc to the bases would look a bit odd on  a 2d surface so I may just leave them brown.

What is best in life?

Having 2 great big boxes full of Conan goodies arrive finally, that's what!

Way back in Feb 15 Monolith games' kickstarter for Conan was funded with an expected arrival date of October 15.  It was my first Kickstarter but even so it was pretty obvious that, because of the hugely successful campaign for funding and the never ending stream of Stretch goals, it would take a bit longer.  So, a year later it has finally arrived....and there's a lot of it.

Both boxes

The stretch goals box

...and the main game

I went with the Barbarian level pledge which was the 'standard' level.  Today a huge box containing the game arrived,  along with another large box just for the extras.   So far I've just peaked inside but what I've seen looks excellent.  More to follow when I get a chance to go through both boxes....

Conan

 

You might have seen assorted postings on various sites about the forthcoming Conan kickstarter from Monolith Board Games.  I'm not normally tempted by crowdfunded  projects but this one caught my eye, not least due to the huge amount of stuff that comes with it.

Monolith had been looking for $80k and as of today had reached just over $1.7 million!   I went for the basic Barbarian package at $90 which includes the game plus stretch goals and these seem to be being added on a daily basis at the moment.  There are also a range of more advanced packages up to $135 for the more extravagant customers.

 

 

The game itself looks excellent and pits one player controlling the baddies against 1-4 players taking on the roles of the heroes. It does seem to be a brave attempt at capturing the feeling of the books and comes with a huge number (74 in the basic game) of very nice looking figures and scenery items as well as boards, card decks etc.  The potential for using the items in a range of other games looks very good too.

 

 

Details of the game can be found here.  The Kickstarter ends on 11th February with the game itself expected in October so time's running out!