Guardians is great. Red Rising is an inferior version of Fantasy Realms.
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Inferior but still decent and more likely to attract my young teen readers is fine for a cheap game. But it’s good to know other options which improve things exist.
Come to think of it, I understand there are a few different Fantasy Realms-alikes these days. Anyone have a favorite?
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I appreciate Eldritch Horror can create an epic feel, but at 1+ hour per player, it’s officially Too Long and needs to be retired. The game can drag (and it did) when you’re using every reroll you have just to get an average result and not fail every check. It was a long death spiral for 6+ hours.
A quick trio of races and I won two of them handily, for a change. Slowly bled players until we were down to 3P, but even at 3 it remained a tight experience (up until the last straight where I destroyed them). Lining up another championship.
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I think I need to load elder sign back on an iPad…
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Interesting, I don’t think I’ve had an Eldritch Horror game take more than 3 or 3.5 hours. Of course, setup is a bitch
With 6 players? I don’t mind EH but it balloons severely, whether you’re winning or losing, in my experience. With more players it takes even longer to wear everyone down, unfortunately.
Had three 5-player games, but no 6.
One took 3 hours, one 4 hours, and one under 2 (but we died quickly in that one 
)
We’ve never won a high player count game, so that may have something to do with it.
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Well, I’m firmly coming to believe championships are the only way to play. Very rarely do we sit down to play Heat for a single race anyway, so we might as well do the full thing, and it’s very, very rewarding. With 5P, I came last-first-last in the 1961, with the first race proving so tight my slipstreaming got me nowhere at any point. I followed up in the second race with a huge lead, pulling off 14/15/16s on the straights with upgrades, and handling the corners with more upgrades and sponsorship bonuses. I cruised that win, and it was between 4 of the 5 who would win in the last race. I spun out on the first corner and never recovered.
Couldn’t resist, and for a change it didn’t cost the Earth.
Gloomhaven: JotL. After some interruptions and a hiatus and the odd game with a rotating cast of newbs, we’re back at it with two originals and a new player, and after failing this last time, we somehow managed to squeeze past this scenario. We bogged down in the first room, our new Cragheart didn’t have the AoE attacks needed to splat the mob, so we had to whittle them down before I plunged in and made the best of it. We did at least stay tightly grouped as a team (because we had no fucking choice) so we made the most of the Voidwarden’s poisony heals and pushed through to the second room. At this point I was down 3 cards already, which is not great when you have to breach a room, breach another room, flip a switch, head back, and escape, all the while dealing with enemy mobs.
Second room was peak Hatchet time, multiple enemies across difficult terrain, and I flung six axes in two turns, the Voidwarden eliminated an enemy outright, and the Cragheart finally got in an AoE attack. We then pushed the remaining enemies back and rushed the third room. The Voidwarden, normally a backline/caster, suddenly decided breaching was the name of the game, and promptly popped these two cards, top and then bottom:
So the enemy mob waiting for us in the last room all turned on each other, killing four of the seven. The remaining three jumped on some mines and died. That was it. Room done. The Cragheart got looting (and also flipped the switch), and me and the Voidwarden made a run for the exit. The last enemy spawns we stunned, immobilised, or otherwise killed, and fled, while our Cragheart dawdled behind us playing Scooping up Coins. The Voidwarden was almost killed fleeing, discarded his last spare card to negate a critial hit, and I was also completely out of cards by the end.
We will never have as close a finish again.
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Wait…how was Fire & Stone?
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Quite good! Looking at it overall, I think it could have been a small box game, as it doesn’t have a sprawling, expansive board and there isn’t a massive amount of room for manoeuvre…but I suppose that’s fair enough, because it’s a siege. There’s a lot of back and forth and attrition, and I think the game is at pains to dampen down outlier results and channel outrageous moments into merely mildly positive ones, mainly to keep the game on course (e.g. max casualties from artillery are strictly limited, for instance, but that’s fair enough as thanks to the battle geography, you’re not lobbing shells into vast concentrations of men). On the one hand I resent the guard rails, but on the other, it does keep the game firmly channelled into being a representation of a siege and not, as someone once put it, Artillery Logistics: The Game. Card-driven, but with standard actions available and bag draws for sapping, pleasing production, thoughtful design. Really pleased with it overall.
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Shit. I just bought the Leviathan 40k box, because fucking nostalgia for Space Hulk (which, honestly, I didn’t even love back then) and a bunch of minis which looked easy to build and fun to paint lured me in for the first time since original 40k. But I kind of had my heart set on retconning the emperor to be Jeff Bezos so I could have Amazon Primaris marines (to be painted up like their delivery trucks). But, man, Jimmy Space is hard to top.
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Sebastian Bolt is going to be my new username somewhere.
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That’s super cool. I still k own nothing about this game; I haven’t even watched or read a review. I feel like I’m missing out at this point. I need to get on the Heat bandwagon.
It’s worth a try.
Dragon Castle. The digital version made me pine for the real thing, so I broke it out and was reminded of why I like it so much. Simple, satisfying gameplay, a raft of purely optional scoring conditions, and chunky pieces.
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Even though it’s CMON, I think we can classify it as a hidden gem at this point as it seems largely forgotten. Had it come out any other year than with Azul I think it may have made a bigger splash.
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Some of CMON’s best stuff have been games like this; relatively low key compared to their minis campaigns, but Dogs of War, Modern Art etc are great. And yes, Azul stole Dragon Castle’s thunder because it’s marginally easier to play.
Got my new tracks played.
San Marino was torture with a 1-corner meant we were all hurting immediately, even with 8 heat this race (+1 for the weather, +1 for the event). it’s a twisty course, and we all had an unpleasant time navigating it. We were all scrabbling for position on this one, every single turn, and the tide slowly changed over the second lap until I won. The Zandvoort was a different matter, with two decent straights and some more permissive corners, but the others were all still in teeth-clenched loins-girded bowels-loosened mode for tight corners. I cleaned up again.
If anyone would like my proofs from my printing to get these courses printed themselves, let me know. They’re great.
Did an all-day Gloomhavening, and we got four scenarios played; three wins and a loss. Our new Cragheart is doing quite well, albeit having him occasionally drop a fucking boulder on you, only to receive a lovely poisony heal from our Voidwarden is something I get rightly salty about. In truth, I’m good at optimising movement and attacks, but I’m still not very good at synergising my own cards and taking advantage of elements (even when I generate them). Delicious level up choices next session though.
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So I am hanging out to get my hands on the new Lorcana game - thinking of getting a starter deck for each of the household members and a booster box to create some deck building.
With a family of 5, any suggestions on how to do a TCG without it costing the world?
Thinking everyone gets a primary Color and rights on them?
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I don’t know how Lorcana works or how many different factions there are, and I also don’t know how old your household members are, so I’m not sure I can offer much. But the strategy you have, of getting everyone a starter and splitting up a booster box, is a great strategy for most TCGs. In some ways, this replicates “sealed deck” scenarios that some TCGs would use at tournaments, where everyone starts from square one.
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