I have continued playing the Lord of the Rings LCG solo over the past week. I finished playing through the Passage Through Mirkwood 10 times and started on Journey Down the Anduin. I’ve made some changes to my deck, and I’m not sure if I’ll need more for this next quest. I also realized I was doing my scoring wrong.
Board Games
Eclipse first impressions
My gaming group and I had been interested in Eclipse since it first came out. With it going out of print so quickly and the price tag, we hadn’t pulled the trigger yet. When researching games, we had put Sid Meier’s Civilization and Eclipse in the same category, but thought that Eclipse would be more appealing partially due to the sci-fi theme. Then Myriad Games’ game share program came to the rescue. It’s basically Netflix for board games that you can either pay for each month or can get free if you buy a certain amount from the store every month. It’s the perfect way to try out Eclipse. So how did it go?
Lord of the Rings: The Card Game – Solo Style
So due to a little miniature game burnout and other life reasons, I haven’t gotten to The Only Game In Town to play Warmachine for quite some time. We’ve been having our every-other-week board game nights and playing video games, but I had started to feel like I was missing gaming a little bit. Eventually I decided that I wanted to do something, but trekking out to the store still doesn’t work very well. Enter Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, the living card game from Fantasy Flight Games.
Kickstarters: Rivet Wars, Realm Works and Wild West Exodus
I feel like I’ve been bombarded by a number of gaming related Kickstarters I’ve been interested in lately. It’s a much different way to get involved with a game, but I’m still having fun with it.
I have purchased a number of games that started off as Kickstarters, Cards Against Humanity, Zombicide, and Evil Baby Orphanage. They all ended up great and we could have gotten more stuff, gotten the game earlier and gotten it cheaper if we had backed. This makes me want to back anything that looks interesting, which may end up poorly.
Extra life – Gaming for Childrens’ hospitals
This weekend my wife, friends and I will be having a gaming marathon for Extra Life.
If you aren’t familiar with it, it is a 24 hour gaming marathon which works like a walk-a-thon. You get people to pledge money to you for how much you games. It started off as a video game thing but has expanded to board gaming as well. Extra Life partners with the Children’s Miracle Network and all proceeds go to a hospital of your choice, in our case a hospital where one of our friends works.
Inspired by The D6 Generation, we decided to join in ourselves and will be hosting a marathon with our friends this weekend.
If you are somehow able, get in on it yourself. Start your own Extra Life page or donate to someone who is. The D6G guys are giving away some prizes for donating so give them a shot.
We hope to play some board games like Arkham Horror and Zombicide. We’ll be rocking some The Secret World and SWTOR and hopefully some party Wii games. If some of my Warmachine people show up I might be able to get some of that in.
Check out our page here.
First Impressions: Mansions of Madness
We finally got in our first game of Mansions of Madness this weekend after it’s been taunting us for a few weeks.
We figured that we liked Betrayal at House on the Hill and we liked Arkham Horror so we would like this. I was a little apprehensive about the predefined stories for replay value but I figured we’d at the very least get a handful of good games out of it.
After reading the rules, the game did remind me of a combination of Betrayal and Arkham but with a little bit of Descent thrown in. Because the Keeper(Overlord) is controlling the story but in a competitive way against the players, you get that same feeling as Descent, but with a better story. All these impressions were confirmed during the game.
We had a blast playing the game.
After playing through once, I can see how the choices made by the Keeper can make a story different when played multiple times. Since there are 3 different winning conditions, the orientation of the house and some of the rooms isn’t really that big of a deal. This made me think that we really can get 15 unique plays out of the game.
The game did seem like it was a little more linear that we had anticipated, I’m just not sure why we thought it would be different. The group entered the house which thematically, told them to go to a very specific room. When they went to that room, it thematically told them to go to another room and so on. If they didn’t get there fast enough, the story cards which were counting down, forced the story on them, which was cool. Even though it was basically room A->room B-> room C, the story itself was fun and made up for it in my opinion.
One problem we had was the fact that there was no epilogue. The game ended, and nothing in the game had me tell the back story to the players. I won’t spoil anything, but in my choice for the back story as the keeper, there was a really cool reason for the goings on in the house, which the players never would have heard if I hadn’t read it to them. Just seemed kind of odd.
As to whether or not the game is balanced, I can’t really say and don’t really care. Even though there is a competition and a winner, I think that it is all about the story. In this game, I was way behind as the keeper and didn’t come close to achieving my goal. I think that playing against 4 players made it more difficult than it would have been against 1 or 2 but I can’t really say for certain at this point.
Initial Review:
Check this game out if:
- You like Betrayal at House on the Hill(can be played with 2 people, is a longer game)
- You like the theme of Arkham Horror
- You like the overlord component of Descent
- You like Battlestar Galactica(even though it isn’t a traitor game, it had a similar feel to it which I can’t pinpoint – it was by the same designer)
- You like thematic games
Skip this game if:
- You want a quick(under 2 hours) game
- You don’t like the Arkham theme(that’s most of the draw)
- You want something balanced and competitive
- You don’t like railroaded theme