Once again, I decided to put my money where my mouth is, and instead of simply opening the Event Deck for Journey Into Nyx, I went to an FNM and tried it out. Last time I went 4-0. Let’s see how I did this time.
Note: This is not about the Street Racing version of the game. This is purely about the Formula version, where everyone is playing basically the same car.
Formula D is just what it says on the tin. Its Formula cars racing. But you don’t have to like the sport to enjoy the game. I definitely don’t like the sport, but I do enjoy the game very much. Same applies to other people I’ve played with. Its a push-your-luck game with a strong feel for the theme.
This is a book from a series of books called Popular Culture and Philosophy. Although many of those books are based on very good properties, mostly they feel like novelties and are not very compelling to me with the exception of Monty Python and Philosophy, which I haven’t read, and this one. Shouldn’t have felt that compelled, but anyhow.
The subtitle of the book is “Raiding the Temple of Wisdom”. Apparently, there wasn’t much to loot there.
I’ve been meaning to write on Oceanhorn for a long time. But for some reason I have been postponing it again and again.
Oceanhorn (published for iPhone and iPad) is often compared to The Legend of Zelda: Windwaker and not without a reason. Everyone who has ever played a Zelda game is right at home with this one with similar items, game structure and elements. Even the outlook of the game feel like playing Zelda and the marvellous music by Kalle Ylitalo, Kenji Ito and Nobuo Uematsu work with the same level. Continue reading
Summer started a bit early this year. Granted that we haven’t actually seen a typical winter. But still. I say this because summer is the mandatory time to go to a cabin for a weekend of gaming.
Last weekend we drove to Kuru for the first session of Dungeon Crawl Classics DMed by our guild member and fellow admin Sami Villa. What follows is my game session debriefi as well as a review of the game from a player’s perspective.
As always we started with the creation of characters. In Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC from now on) each player starts with a handful of 0-level characters (we started with three) created at random.
I saw a couple openings of the Born of the Gods Event Deck. So, they were informative on the contents and did throw around a couple of suggestions, but to me, that’s not a real review. So, I bought the deck and took it out for a spin today at the FNM.
I’m totally the wrong person to review PC games, because I don’t play a lot of them. I have, however, played through the previous Thiefs multiple times and on all difficulties, so I from that angle, I am the right person to review this.
This is based on one playthrough on the lowest difficulty level. I finished all the chapters, played a couple of them twice (because of reasons I’ll get to later) and finished all the sidequests. I have 21 achievements out of 37, but these include finishing the chapters.
Also, I was more than a bit under the weather when doing this, so that might have an impact.
Also, spoilers. Nothing major, and I’m not giving away anything gameplaywise, but still, some minor story spoilers.
What? It is almost three weeks since I wrote about getting back to painting. I have been meaning to write a follow-up post since. It seems that I should get cracking on it right now.
In the last miniature painting post I said that I was excited to try out the new technical paints from Games Workshop. And I was right to be as my first impressions from them have been really positive. Once I managed to get them I have found it hard to not to use them.
The paints I did try out. Note that Ryza Rust is NOT a technical paint.
One of my pet peeves with boards games is too much randomness in games which take a long time. With high variance, its possible that I spend most of a long game doing pretty much nothing. This has happened to me in Arkham Horror many, many times, where I feel like I can’t contribute at all after taking an early hit and then spending most of the game half-dead and without equipment. Also, I very much dislike games where an early mishap means I can’t ever catchup.
However, this applies only to long games. In short games, which will be over shortly anyway, this is actually beneficial. Losing early doesn’t mean I’ll be just an onlooker for the rest of the game, which can last for hours. I might have things to do, but if I know I will never catch up, that’s not going to make the game fun for me.
… and then there’s Zombie Dice.
In Zombie Dice, you are a zombie and you are out for brrRRAAAIIINS!! Gladly, these are not the stupidest zombies. They have the ability to somewhat discern the dangers presented by their prey. On the other hand, that doesn’t really stop them that often.
The game is played with thirteen dice, six of which are common prey (green dice), some are pretty dangerous (yellow dice) and some are vey dangerous (red dice). Each dice has brains on some of its sides. This is what you want. You’re goal on each of your turns is to collect as many brains as possible without taking too many hits from shotguns (another one to three sides of the die, depending on the color). The dice also have footprints on them on some sides. Those you reroll.
By Lauri Maijala
Your turn goes as follows: Take three dice at random and roll them. Move all the brain dice to one side and all the shotgun shots to another side. Then replenish the dice randomly and roll again. You can stop after any roll and get points equal to the number of brains you have. However, if at any time you get three shotgun wounds, you lose all your brains and its the next player’s turn.
So, all in all, a very basic push-your-luck game. However, since this only takes minutes, its great. Basic strategy is pretty simple, but there definitely is decision making. It isn’t just a pure luck game. You need to know when to roll the dice and when to stay where you are.
I like it. Its quick, its fun, it has nice flavor. Not very in-depth, but no need for that in such a short game. It doesn’t take much room, so you can take it pretty much anywhere, although the container is pretty big and awkward compared to the contents, but its also a great tool for the game.
Caveat: I haven’t actually read the game. This is purely based on one session of gameplay and reading discussions on the net.
Spoiler: This game is garbage. It might have some good hidden intentions, as Ville thinks it does, but despite that, its just awfully designed. It might sound fun, but it has huge fundamental flaws, which are apparently only addressed by the designer by telling people to deal with it. So, I’m dealing with it. I’m telling you how much this sucks.
The basic idea is this: You have a squad of soldiers, who are out there in space killing things. You actually compete about killing things. Its very minimalistic, with basically just two attributes, the Fighting Ability FA, and the Non-Fighting Ability NFA:
Lets start from the beginning. Yesterday we played our first session. We were instructed to make our characters. First, only name, reputation and distributing ten points among the two attributes, with maximum of eight in one of them. So, I gave my character the name Pjotor Azarov, had him have the reputation of a coward, gave him 2 in FA and 8 in NFA. I thought, maybe I can be a medic or something.
Then, I was told I’m the sergeant of the squad, because I have the highest NFA. Ok. I can work with that… I thought at the time.
We were given weapons. I got some basic rifle and a sidearm.
Then, I was told my goal was to keep everyone alive and see to it that our squad follows the orders given by our superiors. Except, I need to compete about the kills as well. This isn’t actually my mission, but since the game only feedback is that I get levels by killing more things than others, this is clearly what I need to do. Ville seems to think there’s some hidden genius behind this, which might be true if the rules in general weren’t such a mess.
The first encounter pretty much revealed all the problems with the game. Since I have a very high NFA, I can generally choose how each encounter begins. Since I have my sidearm, which works close range, while others don’t have any weaponry that does pretty much anything at that range, in order to win in the killing contest, I need to bring those fights to close range. All the time.
Obviously, this isn’t very logical. Why would my character do this, if there wasn’t a poorly conceived rule behind it? Instead of trying to do anything valuable, my character needs to shit on other characters time and time again. However, since the system is – again – so poorly conceived, this isn’t actually helping me. Its just giving me false hope.
Since my FA is so low, I can’t actually hit anything. In the meantime, the other characters will have time to get to better positions and then – since they have higher FAs and more efficient weapons – can beat any of my attempts at getting the high kill score. I just don’t stand a chance.
The other encounters we had were basically the same. I took us to close range, they moved into better position. Killing ensued.
If I had known how the system works beforehand, would I have made my character differently. Definitely. However, this has another problem. This would have lead to much more homogenous characters.
Since NFA is basically useless for more than one character, everyone would max out on FA. Of course, then some poor soul would need to take the bullet, so that the squad doesn’t get ambushed every time. That character would then be forced into uselessness. NFA is good for US, while FA is good for ME. In a game where you are in a situation, where you are supposed to compete, this isn’t good. You can’t spread your wealth if everyone else is keeping theirs.
Now, I do have an out. Each player has a strength. You can use this strength to immediately resolve a situation. Then you get to kill all the threats in the encounter. Sounds nice, but since my weaponry is so poor, I can’t get the kills I need even this way, because the other characters can easily get more in a normal encounter. Also, they have strenghts they can use. You get only one in the beginning, and you only get more by levelling, in other words by killing more than others.
So, basically, I’m screwed. I don’t have incentives to play the game the way it says I should. I don’t have the tools to play the game the way it should be played. Every avenue I have is just poor. I basically have the following options:
1. I keep doing the same thing: I bring battles to close range and hope for the best. However, since the other players can get new weapons and become better at using them at close range, this options is quickly closed, if isn’t already. Since I have the poorest FA, anyone can easily best me at close range.
2. I can go for promotions. The thing is, I can’t really control this. You need to expend a strength to get a promotion, but I can’t get strengths by killing, so I have to rely on purely on luck. I don’t have any control over this.
3. I try to get the other characters killed. This doesn’t really work either. Since my FA is so low, I can’t take them on directly, but since I don’t have any other venues to do this, that’s my only chance.
Basically, I’m screwed. I don’t have any room to maneuver and I don’t have any tools to work with. I did some reading on the subject, and as others had come seen the same problems, they had apparently come to these conclusions:
1. The game is supposed to be played as a team, where people just let everyone level. Well, the system doesn’t support this in any way. It only encourages the competition, so if this is what we are supposed to do, why would we be playing this game?
2. The game is fundamentally PvP. Okay, seems about right. However, again, I don’t have the tools to do this, since I apparently can’t use my higher rank to mess with them and I can’t attack them directly due to my low combat capabilities.
Its a poorly conceived board game in the guise of a RPG. My capabilities are pretty much useless to me and if they somehow became useful, that would put the other characters in a very poor position.