Sunday, March 23, 2008

Hour of Glory :Session Report

I just finished my first play of Hour of Glory against another person. Previously I have only played against myself. My opponent was my son, a demon game player.

I took "Sneaky" Harris and my son the "bad guys".

Harris breached the entrance and moved to the southern door of room 2. He breached it and entered the room. He soon spyed out the room grabbing some intelligence.

Meanwhile the commander was coming down the corridor.

Harris left room 2 and headed west towards room 1. He reached the east door of the room breached it and went in moving towards the northern door.

The Commander was closing in. Harris collected some intelligence before the Commander came into the room. Harris dived for cover getiing out of sight. The Commander walked right over to where Harris was hiding and spotted him. A fight commenced and ended with the Commander laying on the floor and Harris opening the northern door and leaving the room.

Harris made the best of the time, he headed up the western corridor. He reached room 4 entered and collected the intelligence and left just as the Commander was waking from his knockout blow.

Harris headed north to room 7, he reached the door just as the Commander raised the alarm. A Guard opened the door Harris was preparing to breach, fists flew in a blur and once again Harris won out. The guard was left on the floor. Harris moved into the room opened the files and grabbed the intelligence he needed.

The Commander meanwhile was approaching the other door to the room and opened it. He moved into the room spotted Harris. Harris dived out of the room back into the corridor he was sprinting for the exit!

The Commander started running south down a parallel corridor, he caught a glimpse of Harris as they passed the matching intersections. That was enough he raised the alarm once again. Two guards came in through the entrance.

[i]Note : Was unsure if raising the alarm was valid. The rules say you cant raise the alarm until the gaurds from the previous alarm have left the building. However the only guard from the previous alarm was knocked out.[/i]

Harris reached the bottom corner and was held up by an oncoming guard. The fight went badly for Harris he went down.

The Guards thinking he was dead started leaving, the Commander was still coming.

Harris came round and moved towards towards the exit, but made a bad miscalculation. He was under pressure, the Commander was moving up behind him and he went too far towards the intersection. A Guard on his way to the door spotted him.

Knife vs Rifle Butt. Rifle Butt lost. The Commander closed in. Harris sprinted past the Guards' collapsed body and slipped out of the exit with 18 minutes in hand.

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Him!

My son, otherwise known as "him". Had been thinking about Carcassonne. He's mad about dragons and had seen something on the web about the Princess and Dragon expansion. I told him I dont have that expansion but it sparked his interest.

I brought my copy of Carc' back from work where it's been living for at least six months (a good lunchtime game).

Anyway I decided we'd play without the farmers and not use the River. I laid out the starting tile and off we went.

2 to me.
5 to him.
2 to me.
4 to him.
8 to me.
6 to both of us.
12 to him.

And so it went on, backwards and forwards but he kept getting consistently more points. How does he do this to me every single time. I seem in incapable of beating this kid!

I'm just hoping he never asks to use farmers or I wont stand a chance.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Well and Donkey

Today I played a game of Carcassonne during the lunch break at work. We used the free print and play expansion called "Well and Donkey". You can download this expansion from the Carcassonne page at BoardGameGeek.

Well and Donkey is a small set of extra tiles. Theres an interesting mix of fairly standard tiles. There are also 2 special city tiles that feature a Well and a Donkey on each. These special tiles dont score you points but rather allow you to poison cities. When a city contains a Well and Donkey tile it scores no points at all.

This has a tremendous effect on the way you build cities. We stack these cards in their own pile, it's not worth shuffeling them into the decks as they are obviously home made. However in the deck, there are only two city killers. So if you take one, you dont know if you'll be able to use it to kill your opponents city.

In the first few turns players are reluctant to start cities because the W&D tiles are still out there but at the same time you want to build cities for your farmers. It's a nice balancing act. And if two players get a city of more than one tile then players start grabbing the W&D tiles to poison their opponents or to protect their own cities.

It's a nice and simple expansion and if you like the base game I reccommend you try making up this expansion.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Hour of Glory Finished!

Last night it happened after two weeks I finally managed to get round to completing the epic that has been making my copy of the game Hour of Glory.

This game has been a work of love for me. I dont often print these games out using the full colour feature of my printer, for the simple reason that printer ink costs more than gold!

But when I first set my eyes on this game I fell in love with the theme. It justified in my eyes at least a full colour print job. I'm really happy with how it's come together it looks sweet.

I've posted a pic' of it in the Print and Play guild over at BoardGameGeek. Unfortunately my phone-camera skills do not do it justice.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Sweet!

It's been a blummin long time. Today I finally got a game of Carcassonne played. It is months since I played this game.

I have the "River", "Count" and a the free Print and Play "Well and Donkey" expansions for the game. Today however because time was short we played a quick three player game with only the very base set.

It went well, and for the first time I finally got a handle on playing farmers properly. I was placing the farmers and then joining the fields. This is a technique one of the other players introduced me to by "kicking my butt" in previous games. It didn't all go my way and he still ended up with more farmers in the main field than me, but I at least felt that I gave him a run for his money.

The "River" has proved a good expansion, and as it doesnt change gameplay we usually incorporate it.

"The Count" has been used a few times but basicly we've found that no one wants to use it, so it kind of gets ignored. Perhaps it works better with 5 or 6?

"The Well and Donkey" is also well recieved and plays well into the basic game. It basicly just add a few extra tiles that arn't in the base game, but it's main feature is that it contains a couple of city tiles that make a city worthless. It's a really neat feature as it stops players trying for that huge city and this in turn makes farmers much more important. It's a great expansion, and free too! Where can you get it? Follow the Carc' link above, log into BoardGameGeek and you'll find it in the files section.

Monday, March 10, 2008

Making a game

Last night and half of yesterday afternoon was spent in making some of the components in the game Hour of Glory. This game is a little unusual in that it is available in both full boxed version and as a Print and Play download.

I'm obviously working on the Print and Play version. I'm really happy with how the game is coming together and how it looks. It's themed on a covert insertion into a military stronghold in WWII. For two to four players, one takes the role of the Germans/Austrian guards and sentries while any other players take the part of the agents attempting to break in and steal intelligence.

The rules and components are facinating. I've never seen a game that caught my attention like this one, and I am desperate to finish making it and give it a try. Sadly that day is while off yet as there are a lot of boards and components...

Saturday, March 08, 2008

Zombie in my Pocket, session report

I just made up Zombie in my Pocket (a Print and Play game) and decided it needed to be played immediately. I went through the short set up and was ready to go.

I laid the first tile, the foyer ( I laid this tile 90 grees anticlockwise because of the shape of my play area).

Bravely I set forsth looking for the totem that is causeing the zombies to leave thier earthen beds. I went West and found myself in the Kitchen. I gained a health by consuming some munchies I found there.

Thinking this mission was extreemly simple I went West again and into the Dining room, where I found a candy bar and gained another health. I now knew this mission WAS really simple, especially as the dining room allows you to exit into the garden, so I now know where I have to go to once I find the totem.

I went west again and found myself in the Family room. Here things started to take on that slightly smelly odour of extreemly painful incidents. I was pounced on by zombies who did me 3 points of damage, ouch.

West again into the bedroom, oh no! More zombies, still smarting from the last attack I decided to back away slowly and shut the door, but they still got a swipe in, ouch.

North and I found myself in the Storeroom. More Zombies and found a Chainsaw!

The storeroom is a deadend so south was my only choice. From the Family room I had a choice east or west. I went east back into the Dining room and put the chainsaw to good use.

North again and found myself in the bathroom. Chainsaw came in handy once again. But this room is a deadend.

I went south again into the Dining room and found me some more zombies. East again back into the Kitchen and gained a desperately needed health by eating all of the Kellogs Corn Flakes.

North and I found myself in the Evil Temple. Took out some more Zombies and gained myself another chainsaw! Just in time as the other had just run out of fuel.

South into the kitchen, Zombies!

West into Dining room, zombies! The clock is heading rapidly to the midnight hour.

South, kicking open the door into the garden... Only it's not a garden but the Graveyard!!! This was both the source of the Zombies and place where the totem had to be buried, but there were four zombies here and the chainsaw was empty... I went down under the weight of numbers.

Zombie in my Pocket

I've been looking at a Print and Play solotaire game called Zombie in my Pocket. It looks like a fun little card playing game of investigation and survival. And of course it looks like it'll fit in your pocket!

I'm going to be making this up this afternoon and running through a good number of games prior to reviewing it tomorrow on the Print and Play podcast.

Thursday, March 06, 2008

David & Goliath

Today I played my first game of David & Goliath with the lunchtime group at work. The game was quickly picked up and everyone actually got quiet. In this game you look at your cards, then look at the cards on the table and try to guess at what other players have in their hand, once you have a handle at that you look back to your cards and make a decision about what to play.

We had plays made to both improve own scores and to ruin other players scores. That shows the true "neatness" of this game. The fact that after one hand everyone got-it.

The game has now gone down well in my family and at work. It proves that this game deserved its 1998 SDJ award!

Monday, March 03, 2008

Chainsaw Warrior Session

Todays game of Chainsaw Warrior was the first time I ever get to see the big bad guy, sadly it didn't work out for the best.

Setting up went fairly well. I maxed out my Reflexes and got average scores for the other stats.

For equipment I got the Poison Coated needle, Steel Gloves, Automatic Rifle and Flare Gun. Of course I was also packing the Laser Lance.

I started rolling through rooms. An odd occurance was that in every one of the empty rooms I entered I did not find any wandering zombies!

Experience has shown that it's not worth risking your next, so I used the Assault rifle at every opportunity and ammo ran out pretty quickly. I meant a mutant and took a big 6 for radiation damage ( ouch! ). I hit a chasm and had to back out of the building. Unfortunately I only got 1 extra equipment point but this turned out to be the helmet that protects you from the zombie venom.

As I neared the end of the first deck, I passed into night time. At last I got to use the Flare gun, this was the first time I ever used that. It's actually quite a nice bit of kit as it allows you to bypass 5 rooms for each use and it has 3 uses. This got me through the first building and into the second. Thats fifteen rooms and once again I did not meet a zombie in any of them!

A second mutant once again hit me with another 6 radiation points, nearly killing me.

A mere 6 or 7 rooms later I met "Darkness". I only had 2 shots left in the Laser Lance ( the other was used to smash a door ).

I took two shots both missed. Then it was HTH. To win, darkness had to roll double 1 and I double 6. A few rolls later, one of us was dead, and it wasn't "Darkness".

Sad aint it.

Email from a Games company

I just received an email from the games company that I sent my prototype to. Seems that they havn't played it yet, but are impressed by what they've seen of it.

That makes me happy, look at me in my happy self!