Kingdom Death - Surviving the Lion

Kingdom Death – After assembling all the core game monsters and basic survivors I was able to get a basic paint job on the models needed for the First Story. My play group has been anxiously waiting to play this game since I backed it on Kickstarter several years ago. So it wasn't hard to get three more players to join me on the first adventure into the nightmare realm of Kingdom Death.

The rulebook throws you right into the game it functions very similarly to a modern video game which walks you through the basic actions and teaches you through experiencing the game with minimal reading of the game rules. Essentially follow the walk through and you learn the basics of the game, this is brilliant because it makes teaching the game really easy. (Not to mention I didn't have to remember a bunch of rules right off the bat.)

After naming our characters we followed the instructions and set up the Lion AI deck and began the showdown. (Note: we didn't catch the adjustments needed to fight the various levels of creatures until we were deep into the battle. Fighting a 25 wound lion is way harder than fighting a 10 wound lion.)

 Right off the bat my character got mauled and I thought it was going to be the end for me. Luckily my compatriots were able to roll multiple critical hits to bring the Lion down to a more managable number of wounds. I recovered and got back into the fight. Miraculously we survived out first encounter and looted the corpse for useful materials.

The next stage of the game is the settlement phase. This is where you go back to your camp and spend resources to build things or innovate cultural events. The innovations allow you to move the story forward and grant access to new gear and abilities. We rolled up our settlement and have a total of 12 people. (It seemed like overkill at the time, but you do need every body you can get) Once of our survivors had to stay at the camp staring as the lanterns to gain insight. Which meant that player made a new survivor from the pool we have to go on the next hunt. We built a skinnery and bone smith with our initial endeavors as well as crafting a vest from the body parts we had.

Each settlement phase you fill in a timeline box and at various stages trigger a story event. Which you do immediately. The core rule book has a ton of these events and it feels like a choose your own adventure book when you have to flip through the pages to find your event. 

After the settlement phase is the ideal time to end your gaming session. You fill in what you have and make notes for the next time you get together.

Since it was still early and everyone was enjoying the game we moved on to the Hunt phase. During this phase you pick a monster to hunt and set up the hunt board per the description on that monsters showdown phase. The survivors move along the track revealing cards at each stage. The cards are events that can help or hurt the survivors as well as actions the beast may take while you stalk it. Once the monster and survivors meet in the same space you move to the showdown phase.

Each showdown gives you a layout to set up the monster and terrain cards. The terrain are heavy cardboard chits with a card that describes what it does. You then deploy your survivors according to that map and begin the showdown. The monster goes first and flips a card to see what it does. After it takes it's action the survivors take theirs. You can move up to your movement and then take an action. We pretty much just took turns swinging at the lion attempting to kill it. Each time you hit you flip a card from the hit location deck it lists the effects of your strike. These include critical hit events as well as what happens if you fail to wound. (Hint the lion doesn't like being poked in the ass). Each time you wound you remove a card from the AI deck when the deck is gone you've killed the monster.

This beast went down fairly easily and we salvaged some useful bit that we took back to our settlement. During the settlement phase we experienced an earthquake that gained us another founding stone. We took our body parts to the Bonesmith and made an axe and sword. We also made vests out of the useful hides we gathered. (Note the nifty paper towel vests one of my buddies created, a subtle reminder i still have a metric ton of minis to assemble and paint)

Some of our survivors aged and began gaining weapon proficiencies. Which seem like they'll help us in the long run. We also triggered the Screaming Antelope story event which gave us a new monster to hunt.

Eager to see what this beast will be like our brave survivors start the hunt for the Screaming Antelope. This hunt is much different and causes our survivors to spend all their survival during the hunt phase chasing down the Antelope. Eventually we catch it and begin the showdown.

The beast swallows one of our survivors in it's maw and dismembers her. It rams me and smashes my jaw three times and leaves me bleeding out on the ground near death. Our other survivors wound it, but as it eats the other arm of the survivor it swallowed it heals back up. Things are looking grim as we slowly reduce it's health and it vomits up our armless companion. It's next charge swallows our axe wielder and dismembers one of his legs. We fail to hurt the beast and it took his other leg. Outraged we began throwing our stones (not the best idea) and crit the thing to death. It vomits out our friend who will have to retire when we drag him back to the camp, but survived so we get the endeavor point to spend.

As it's now very late we decide to call it quits and make our notes for the settlement phase where we'll begin the next session.

Overall my group loved the game. It's really fun and the mechanics are very clever. The co-op aspect of the game really shines with the comradely and I can't remember the last time we laughed so much during a game. The stuff that happens is just insane. I like the fact that you play a settlement rather than a character. It opens up the opportunity for new people to sit in as well as making it easy to keep up if someone gets hurt or removed from the game early. I'm pretty sure it would be a good idea to rotate around the survivors to keep all of them around the same level but right now we're just going to wing it.

Game Review - Cathedral

Review – I've never heard of the game Cathedral before opening in up on Christmas day. That said I was pretty impressed with the box and the contents. The gameboard and pieces are all nicely stained pieces of wood as such this game would look very nice on a coffee table as a conversation piece. 

The rules are fairly simple players alternate placing thier buildings on the board attempting to claim space and deny your opponent areas to place their pieces. The first player to put all their pieces on the board wins. If neither player can play all their pieces the player with the least number of pieces left wins.

It feels a little like chess and a little like Blokus, while feeling unique from either of them. 

I played a few games with my wife and she really liked the game it was simple and easy to play. It only took a minute to explain the rules and we played eight or nine games the first night we tried it. So I can honestly say this is a good strategy game that can be played with just about anyone. 

Tenzi Review - A Dice Rolling Game

Review – I received an interesting little game this year called Tenzi. Prior to receiving it I had never heard about the game which is rare as I like to try and keep up with any game that is out there.

The game itself comes nicely packaged in a tube with 40 dice (all D6's) in four different color combinations. The tube is a little odd as I think a bag would be better but for what it is it works. Also included in the game is a simple instruction sheet explaining how to play and the story of the creators. The story is nice as it's a simple garage packed game that caught on and got decent distribution. Two ad agency guys decided to make a game, came up with this and started selling it out of their garage is the short version.

To play you'll need to round up 2-4 players that are old enough to understand how to roll dice and match them. Each player gets ten dice and rolls them. From the initial roll each player picks one die and then trys to match the rest of his dice with that roll. First player that gets the same result on all ten dice wins. Simple right?

In practice the game is really fun (although a bit to random for some people) and I can see busting this out at gatherings and as a time killer. The basic game is easy and fast, just roll and roll until you get all ten. The extra rules include a variation where you can steal dice from your opponents if they match your chosen number. This variation gives a bit more player interaction and is my favorite.

For most hardcore gamers though you probably already have 40+ dice and can play this without buying the game. Although the dice are very nice and come in some interesting color combinations, so you might want to pick this up just for that.

Christmas in October ... Kickstarters Deliver

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Random – After what seems like forever some of the Kickstarters I've backed are finally deliverying. Honestly it's pretty crazy when these massive boxes show up at the house. This has been a great week as two arrived at the same time.

First to arrive was my Bug Hunt Coridoors, this laser cut terrain replicates the station from the Aliens movie and is going to look amazing once I have time to sit down and paint it then assemble it. Looking at the sections it seems that if I build everything first I'm never going to be able to get a brush into all the nooks and crannies.

The box was massive and smells interesting, the wood doesn't quite smell like burnt wood but slightly different. Each piece is bagged with all the compaonents needed to assemble it and there is an extensive print out of how to put everything togther. For a project done by a single guy in his garage I'm really impressed with the quality and can't wait to put this together. If you haven't seen it yet Rob Hawkins did an amazing display board using these parts for Sedition Wars. I'm considering doing something similar however this project is going to have to wait until my marines are complete.

Next up Zombicide Season 2 arrived. I couldn't really pass this one up as the few games I've played with the core game have been really fun. With the Kickstarter you go a pretty decent amount of freebies for backing the expansion so I jumped in. As with the other project this was a huge box full of stuff. I like the though C'MoN put into the packaging for the shipping box. They had nice styrofoam spacers that kept everything from moving around and a nice cardboard box to hold all the Stretch goals. Little things like this show they continue to learn from each kickstarter project, and their business model of using Kickstarter as a preorder system is working for them.

Evil Baby Swag

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Card Games – The rest of my rewards arrived the other day from the Evil Baby Orphange Kickstater. This was delayed by quite a long time due to the extras, but I'm glad to have all the rewards in hand. 

In the box I received a plushie Ceasar, the three Evil Baby Special Figures, a Evil Baby Fate Deck, 2 expansions, 2 minibooks, and a special tin. Overall not a bad haul for a relatively small investment. I've enjoyed the core game much more than I thought I would and I'm looking forward to adding in the expansions and trying it out.

The plushie is pretty cool and will look nice on my bookshelf next to my other weird toys (so long as the little ones don't try and claim it for their own). It's a little smaller than I imagined it to be but the overall construction is pretty decent quality for something made to sit on a shelf. If I gave it to my kids to play with most likely the felt details would tear off as they are only held on by glue.

The expansions came packed in a larger style box that is of a much better quality then the crappy little box the core game came packaged in. The cardboard is of a heavier stock similar to what most nicer boardgames are packaged in. The additions of more babies, action cards and time nannies as well as another keyword seem to add another layer of depth to the game.

The miniatures are tiny (to be expected they are babies...) and come on a single sprue. The level of detail is on par with the rest of the Wyrd plastics. It still feels like the detail needs to be deeper, however the models are identical to the concept art. They should be fun to paint once I get back into Malifaux.

I was a little bummed about the tin, it will fit everything from the core game and the expansions when they aren't sleeved. However, if they made the tin 1/8" wider  on all sides it would fit sleeved cards (which is really a necessity if you intend to play the game often, as the cardstock for the cards themselves is on slightly flimsy side, not as bad as Super Dungeon Explore but not as high as Magic the Gathering).

Also included in the box was a little history book, coloring book, poster, themed fate deck/playing card deck and some bonus cards exclusive to the Kickstarter. I'm not sure how I feel about all the Chotchkies considering those are the items that caused such a massive delay in the delivery of the final shipment. While they are neat essentially it's just more junk for my shelves and I probably would have preferred Wyrd stick to what they know and perhaps add more models, improve card quality, throw in some card sleeves or create a more functional box.

Monster Mash – King of Tokyo Review

Boardgames – Earlier this week I had a chance to try out King of Tokyo, a kaiju themed dice game designed by Richard Garfield of Magic the Gathering fame. At first blush I looked at the game and thought ok this might be fun with the kids but there can't be any depth to it, right?

After doing a few test games for the Judge Dredd campaign my group is getting ready to run, we sat down and tried out Kings of Tokyo. While there is a board, it's not really a board game more of a yatzee style press your luck game with a board element and cards. In the box you get a bunch of special dice, several cardboard monster stand ups, victory/health counter with dials, deck of cards, boatload of green energy cubes, and a board that denotes Tokyo and Tokyo Bay. The art is fun and vibrant which fits the theme of this light hearted game.

Game play is simple, each player rolls dice and can re-roll any combination twice. On the face of the dice are the numbers 1-3, a heart, a claw and a lightning bolt. To score your looking for three of a kind or better with the numbers. The claw allows you to attack the monster in Tokyo (note if you hit the guy in Tokyo, he can out to flee and you are forced to move in) if you're outside or all other monsters if you're inside Tokyo. The heart allows you to heal if you're outside Tokyo and the lightning bolt gives you cubes which you can use to buy powers. The Powers are represented by three cards shown face up next to the board each has a cost in cubes and you can buy one at the end of your turn. The Powers allow for crazy stuff to happen and certain dice combinations to become more important to you.

You win the game by either being the first to score 20 victory points or by being the last monster standing.

In the first game we played one player got the freeze time power and was able to take consecutive turns while another got a power that let him cancel out damage. As more and more powers stacked you were able to do crazier things based on the die rolls. Eventually the player with freeze time was able to score 20 VP by staying in Tokyo and racking up points for every extra turn he took.

In the second game the powers that showed up were signifcantly weaker but some allowed you to trade energy to change a die whatever you wanted it to be. With this power I was able to just beat the snot out of the other players by focusing on doing damage. Good times ...

After playing the game a few times I have to say I'm impressed. The mechanics are really simple and easy to pick up. We wrapped up our games in about 20 minutes, including teaching time. The components are solid and being cardboard keeps the price down to an impulse buy level ($30 MSRP). I can see playing this with anyone and not just my gamer buddies which makes the game infinitely more attractive.

Cards Against Humanity...

Over the weekend I had a chance to play Cards Against Humanity, essentially a new adult themed take on Apples to Apples with sick and twisted phrases thrown into the mix as well as some interesting category options including pick two and build a haiku.

The game is very bar bones sticking to black and white print with a simple helvetica typeface there's not a whole lot to review. The printed cards are of good quality with the box being pretty solid. Checking on their website you can download a pdf and make your own set if you choose to, although just buying the printed version seems like a better idea.

I played this at a bachelor party and the level of depravity for the wining answers was quite absurd. We had about 11 guys around the table so the game did take a little while to wrap up, however it was a good time and much like Apples to Apples the game passes quickly and is usually a ton of fun. It suffers from the same problem as other games in this genre in that if you get a shitty hand of lame answers there's not much you can do except to throw off crappy answers and hope for something better.

This is a party game I feel I should have in my stable to play with most of my groups of friends. Not exactly family friendly but in the right group tons of fun. Of course I suppose you could bust it out to play with grandma and Aunt Mable if you're a horrible person looking for awkward moments.

Not quite Football ... Dreadball Review

Boardgames – Last night I had the opportunity to try out Dreadball, Mantics latest fantasy sport game. I've never been a big fan of Bloodbowl and never really got the whole concept of reenacting a sport on the table top. I honestly always just assumed a video game would provide a better translation of sports to simulation. As such Dreadball never made my radar and I passed it off as a "cheap" version of the GW original. (Which to be fair is essentially how Mantic started, sure they have their own rulesets now but most people use them as the generic to GW's name brand)

Now that my baggage is out of the way, lets talk about the game. Essentially Dreadball is like Lacrosse mixed with Basketball. You have three scoring zones per side and can throw the ball into the scoring slot. The game lasts 14 rounds (7 per player) unless there is a tie at the end then you go to sudden death and cannot replace players, first to score wins. 

Each player gets 5 tokens that can be spent to activate players or buy special cards. You can only ever spend two tokens on one player and a card if you have it. When you activate a player you can move, run, slam, pick up the ball or attempt to score. If you attempt to pick up the ball or score and fail your turn ends. 

My friend who ran the demo for me picked up just the base set with some acrylic tokens from the kickstarter. In the base box you get two teams, a board, deck, rule book, roster sheets and cardboard chits. This is more than enough to play a few one on one games and have some fun. The minis are on the small side similar to what comes with Zombicide so you can't really mix and match with the rest of the Mantic line. The sculpts are clean and fairly well detailed for the size they are.

I enjoyed the demo and from what I can gather this game "fixes" any of the oddities that cause issues in Bloodbowl. Not being a fan of Bloodbowl I can't really go into details about those issues other than the fact that Dreadball encourages you to play the sport as opposed to creating a team designed to injury your opponents. The card system also introduces some fun elements to the game without being overpowering to the core rules. Apparently there are a ton of reference sheets on Boardgame Geek that simplify them game which we had on hand for the demo.

If you're looking for a two player game that can support league play for a reasonable price Dreadball might just fill that niche. It's not something I have a strong desire to own but if I were to pick it up I can see it getting a decent amount of table time. I'm going to wait until more teams are released to make up my mind as none of the existing teams really draw me in.

Game Night Review ...

During my regular weekday game night I had a chance to try out two very different games, Star Fluxx and Zombiecide. What follows is a short review of each.

Star Fluxx, yet another installment of the popular card game franchise. Star Fluxx has a Sci-fy skin applied to what I believe is essentially the same game as ever other version. Essentially Fluxx is a card game where almost every card played changes the rules of the game. You begin with the starter card that states "draw one, play one" from there players take turns drawing cards and playing them each of these cards played is either a rule, goal, keeper or creeper. The goals state what you must have in front of you to win, creepers prevent you from winning (unless otherwise stated by the goals), and rules change the game.

For example at one point we were drawing five cards, playing four, discarding to draw three and hand a hand size of one. The next turn we drew one, played four and three cards hand size. As you can see the name Fluxx comes from the constantly shifting goals and rules. 

The game is fun, can be very fast or drag on all night. More or less it comes down to luck. You can have all the parts you need to win in hand but only be able to play one per turn and then the rules change and you have to discard and someone plays a new goal. Overall it becomes very random as any strategy quickly gets thrown out the window because the rules change with each player. I'd play it again but don't have any desire to own it.

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Next up is Zombicide, this game was a huge hit on Kickstarter and is in the process of wrapping up its campaign for season two and some other expansion packs. I missed the boat on this the first time it came around, partially because I was skeptical of Kickstarter at the time and partially because there were several similar games being kicked at the same time and I had my doubts about which would be better. While I missed out on the extra stuff and if I want to get the cool add on figures from ebay will pay a hefty premium; I'm happy I waited. I was able to pick up the core game for $67 off amazon and there are enough components in that box to keep me busy for a good long while.

Since it was getting late we decided to just play through the tutorial (which we did twice because the first time around one player killed everyone before we got past the door). The mechanics are pretty smooth and are easy to remember after two play thoroughs. Essentially each survivor gets three actions, which allow them to search, fight etc. After all the survivors activate the zombies go using autopilot. They move towards survivors and attack if they're in the same zone. Rinse and repeat til the survivors are dead or accomplish the mission objective.

I really like this game based off the tutorial and I'm looking forward to playing through a full mission or linked campaign. If you don't already own this and like zombies or like true co-op games then you should run out and pick it up.