I just played Lords of Xidit with my family and I still consider it an underrated game. Yes, it has the problems inherent in a programming game, namely that one wrong move or one interfering player can mess with your whole strategy, but that’s kind of the point of a programming game. The rules are clean, the production is great, and we had a good time playing as a family so it’s a win in my book. Tomorrow night, Mission: Red Planet.
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Thinking of DMing a Call of Cthulhu RPG again (after a mere four years away). Got the quick start guide, and a bunch of stuff lined up to buy (keeper rulebook, investigator’s handbook, keeper’s screen, keeper’s deck), plus my previous edition stuff which is no longer that relevant, but is apparently easy to convert.
Does anyone have any recent experience and recommendations?
I picked up Fireteam, which is Barnes & Noble exclusive stripped-down, boardgamey version of Kill Team. And it was … great? My son stood up in excitement while playing multiple times, and I’m really enjoying painting the minis. So I bought some Tau fellas, because Fireteam comes with stats for four squads who aren’t in the box, but for which you can buy the models. And now I have The Itch.
My current hope is that I can maybe just not. If I get some new boardgames, maybe dive into Star Wars: Rebellion, that could distract me. If that doesn’t work, perhaps I’ll be content just making some terrain against a possible future fall into Games Workshop thralldom. But, as a teen, I fell into 40k moderately hard. And I AM demographically suited to a mid-life search for youth.
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No European distribution for this one, so you lucky bastards will have to enjoy it for me.
You can order it from Beziergames.com
They ship it to Germany (with horrendous cost) but that’s Europe I think 
UK Shipping to my place in Glasgow. (~£44 total)
It’ll be another £15 on top of that for importing, IIRC. There’s a flat £8 handing fee that cannot be avoided, and then 20% of the package value.
I hate to brag, but I ended up winning by 73 points tonight. Demon and Dragons, and while my two opponents got into dealing out the Insane Outcasts early, I got on the bandwagon soon after, and somehow kept knocking out the double-Ghoul turns, resulting in them picking up two Insane Outcasts each time. I added insult to injury by picking up the Demogorgon, consuming Insanes in my deck to power it, resulting in more Insanes being dished out to my enemies, and we all had Myconids so that resulted in even more being spread around. One opponent ended the game with one promoted card, and nineteen Insanes in his deck. I finished with two big promoting turns (66 total promotion value at the end of the game), with the Orcus and Demogorgon both promoted, plus two dragons, plus another 20 or so cards I promoted throughout the game. We ended 152-79-65, and that’s not only my personal highest score, it’s the highest score I’ve ever seen.
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Still own but have yet to play this, but your post is helping my devious plan of getting it on the table take shadowy form…
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I miss this game. I need to get it to the table again.
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I reviewed the Smash Up: Disney Edition core set.
It’s actually pretty good (if you like Smash Up, of course).
Another Tyrants game.
It was a close game, and it proved to my opponent beyond a doubt that you don’t ‘need’ to stick to one particular strategy. His deck efficiency was fairly high, he purposefully did not buy cards he could have afforded, in order to keep his deck slim, so of course I beat him on deck value, 39 to 23. I made the most of promoting, buying a bunch of necessary cards, including Zuggtmoy which lets you devour a promoted card to promote two cards, so I won there, 32 to 7. Sites he won out over me, including control and sometimes total control of the three major sites, 32 to 18. Trophies was close, but he just edged into the lead, 16 to 13. In terms of VP, I never got total control of a major site, so it was a murder, 28 to 0. 106 to 102, and if I had just one more big promotion it would have been mine, but we approached the game totally differently. I focused (accidentally) on influence and buying cards and promoting, he focused on power, territory, and a slimmer deck.
Frenchies in Trenchies, or as stick-in-the-muds call it: Storm over Dien Bien Phu.
One of the most important sieges of the 20th century, the French in Indochina decided to hold a fortified position using an air bridge to supply it, while surrounded by thousands of extremely irate Vietnamese. Spoiler Alert: It Did Not Go Well.
The Viet Minh player used his first-turn assaults to his advantage.
A couple of seemingly innocuous moves and my replying pathetic artillery, and he took Gabrielle with an assault, losing two platoons to eliminate four of mine. That turned out to be worse for him, as he went on to try again.
And lost two platoons for nothing. Beatrice is a harder bitch to crack. My mortars, artillery, and fighter-bombers started picking off his spent units and whittling them back to their holes. First turn ended with some Viet Minhroads (sorry) made, but the French getting into position and handing out black eyes.
Though I inflicted more than twice the losses I took, the VM get 1-3 units at the end of each turn, not counting scheduled reinforcements, so it really is a game where you have to inflict as much damage as possible while taking as little in return as you can, because French reinforcements are much more scarce.
It’s a mostly modern design, with alternating impulses which maintain a quick tempo, area movement, cards offering special abilities, streamlined rules for fire/move/retreat, but then you have tiny counters with NATO symbology, which actually works fine, but what doesn’t work that well are the unit designations and the fire/defence/movement values, the latter of which are kind of important. The counters could and should have been twice the size, as apart from the start where you’re assigning them to the correct area, many of them are identical so can easily be stacked for easier movement and counting. As I enter my fifth decade of life, I find to my horror my eyes are just no longer sharp enough to be picking out a number that is a few millimetres in size, under uncertain lighting, on the other side of the table. Wargame design has moved on leaps and bounds, but wargame visuals really have not. The game is still great, it puts so much weight on gambling on dice rolls, yet managing units to facilitate their success, that it constantly goes from triumph to horror and back again.
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War room.
What if the axis and allies developer had an unlimited budget and wanted to make a game that required two tables just to fit the board? Then you’d get war room. We played the new Africa scenario with 3 players, though it’d probably work better with 2.
The hour and forty minutes worth of “harsh rules” tutorials would suggest the game is significantly more rules heavy than it plays out in practice. I’d say you could teach this at the table as most rules are pretty intuitive.
John company 2nd edition.
I quite liked the 1st edition despite its rough edges. The 2nd edition fixes most of those problems, and adds other features too. A significant improvement
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I am still waiting for my copy of John Company 2nd Ed. So I am happy to hear it will be worth the wait and investment. When did you receive your copy?
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It’s my friends copy, and he sent me a screenshot of it a week ago. Presuming it was produced in China, Aus and NZ might get it quicker than America and Europe due to proximity and less shipping delays.
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I read the Tyrants AAR but somehow missed the Storm over Dien Bien Phu. Interesting notes…I have the Kim Kanger Dien Bien Phu: the Final Gamble, which I am waiting to try.
I finally got Tyrants to the table, but it didn’t pass muster with my family. I do see where a 2nd Edition with some real improvements would be fascinating, but the game didn’t match my high expectations. I was sort of expecting a deckbuilding Chaos in the Old World where everyone’s awful, but I didn’t get enough Drow theming from our play of the game. Now I need to go buy some Drow minis…
I read the Tyrants AAR but somehow missed the Storm over Dien Bien Phu. Interesting notes…I have the Kim Kanger Dien Bien Phu: the Final Gamble, which I am waiting to try.
Final Gamble is as excellent as it is long, second only to Tonkin in Kanger’s oeuvre. SODBP has the advantage of being playable in an evening.
I finally got Tyrants to the table, but it didn’t pass muster with my family. I do see where a 2nd Edition with some real improvements would be fascinating, but the game didn’t match my high expectations.
Opinions cannot be wrong. But.
It’s been some 40ish years since I was a member of the Ark-La-Tex Wargaming Society playing PanzerBlitz, PanzerLeader, SquadLeader, and various Yaquinto album games like Fast Attack Boats. The itch to dive back into physical wargaming finally became too overpowering. So after some research, I landed on Undaunted Normandy as a good candidate to introduce my eldest son to wargaming. For $30 US and free shipping from Amazon, resistance was futile. Hopefully we’ll get in a scenario or two this weekend and report back.
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My opponent wiped the floor with me in our first game of Tyrants, he made much better use of the Demons than I did, and even devouring my own Undead cards to slim my deck didn’t work. 97-80. Second game I destroyed him with Aberrations and for once, made excellent use of Drow cards. 100-75.
I forgot how much of a table hog Jaws of the Lion is, but it’s still got us hooked. We got off to an awful start, bogged down by the first mob, unable to move quickly enough for most of the scenario, and got wiped in the last room as we headed for the exit. I still can’t seem to stop taking too many single-use cards.
Turncoats is ace. Three factions, four actions, and you get to manipulate which faction is ‘yours’. Players can decide when to end the game, and you can immediately grasp the simple rules, then become aware you need to watch your opponents like a hawk. It’s its own bag, which is a bonus.
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