The games we play, with a focus on board and role-playing games (but not excluding video games and other leisurely pursuits)
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
12.31.2003
WOTC to close all retail stores
Full story here.
So I'd wanted to go back to the Wizards of the Coast gaming store at Twelve Oaks Mall in Novi for a while now, and I got Dann to come along with me. Before we left, I did some research -- the one in Twelve Oaks? GONE. So we looked up the other locations on the Wizards web site and headed for the other one I knew about in Sterling Heights.
Well, suffice it to say that that one is gone too.
So we come back dejected, and an hour later or so Dann laughs. Fark has a story about how Wizards is closing all their retail stores. I must have just missed them posting it before we left.
Overall, this blows. Not because I loved WOTC or anything, but their stores had the best collections of games (board, card, and otherwise) of anything else around. I love the Underworld and Ryders, but they're out to sell comics and models, respectively -- not games.
If lucky, one of the other three store may still be open for another sixty days. I'd like to get one more shot at them before they go away for good.
1:38 AM
7.28.2003
Finally, some gaming news!
The Usual Suspects spent a weekend on the lake a few days back. Dann busted out Wizard on us and then it was officially on.
Wizard is a trump/bidding game akin to Oh Hell but with a few twists. Added to a standard deck are 4 Wizard cards -- basically all powerful, even beating trump, and 4 Jester cards, which are non-winning cards. On each hand players look at their card(s) and guess as to how many tricks they can win. You must guess correctly -- if you bid 3 tricks and win 4, you will lose points. The game becomes tricky because with each hand, the players are given n + 1 cards. As per usual, most points at the end of the game wins.
Along with Real-Time Strategy games, I'm not very good at bidding games. But this was still a nice twist on old standards. The Wizards and Jesters make it possible to pull out tricks in the end or to put tricks on other people so as to mess their bids up. With four people playing, the later hands have you holding over a dozen cards, which can be complicated in making your bids.
Wizard rates 3.5 of 5 stars.
2:39 PM
6.30.2003
Oy, nearly two months without a post! We haven't done any real board gaming in this time, but I did have an anecdote to share.
Julie and I were in the local gaming store the other day when I saw one of the rerelease copies of the classic Talisman game sitting on a shelf. Julie dismissed it as one of those "Takes 24 hours to play" games, but I had fond memories of owning the game. That's right, memories of owning the game -- I'd never played it with anyone, since my brothers were not interested and I didn't have a lot of friends at the time.
Now if I still had that copy of the original, it would be worth probably three hundred bucks. Unfortunately, I think my Dad probably had it thrown out when he systematically purged the house of old unused stuff a little while back. I'd love to have another copy of the game, but not for 75 bucks retail.
2:35 PM
5.5.2003
My lovely wife gave Dann the Zombies!!! 2 Expansion for his birthday, and so we gave it a go. The game was devised to help alleviate the "This game won't F!#^!*#^ END!" syndrome that happened with the original game, which ended up boiling down to a lot of zomibe killing, dying, and then using cards to make ten more zombies show up. So, very quick into the game, the Army Base card showed up, with the Second Helipad to follow. This sped the game up a bit, but we still ran into our self-imposed time limit. We didn't see a lot of New Cool Things from the expansion, which was disappointing -- I think there's a conflict between the effort to end the game quicker and playing long enough to bring in the new tiles and cards from the expansion. Another problem is that the action cards in the expansion set are cut a little bigger than the originals -- sloppy. More play with this set is required to see if the rest of the expansion material really pulls its weight.
Right now, I'm going to give Zombies!!! 2 Zombie Corps(e) two of five stars, but that number may change after a few more plays.
6:57 PM
3.12.2003
Over the weekend the Usual Suspects played Season 2 of the Buffy board game -- this one ended pretty quickly, as the victory condition was to destroy the Judge's arm. Since the game always ends up being a mad dash for the corner artifacts, this one was a no-brainer (tho I as Buffy took a pretty good beating from two vampires).
With the extra time, we played some more Settlers of Catan, which Julie (who readily admits that she does not like nor does not play games very well) cleaned up on us. Settlers is not a new game to us; I'll officially review it at a later time.
5:57 PM
2.26.2003
Played a little more Monopoly: the Card game last night while watching the Pistons/Kings game. Donald whupped our butts.
By the way, I have several copies of the Buffy Board Game I wrote about yesterday, so if you'd like to obtain one, I'll sell it to you for retail price + shipping (if necessary). Lemme know -- since the game's out of print, you'll have a tough time obtaining it otherwise.
4:37 PM
2.25.2003
Last Sunday, the usual suspects got together to try out Buffy the Vampire Slayer: the Board Game. Like the Monopoly card game, BTVS is able to keep the flavor of the the show while also presenting a pretty deep gaming experience.
The game is set up with a "good versus evil" premise -- one player plays as the forces of darkness (vampires, demons, etc.) while all the rest play as Buffy and the various other "good" cast members. Characters move around the board (a representation of Sunnydale) collecting weapons, artifacts, and "help" cards, all the while looking towards the goal of the game -- which essentially boils down to killing the enemies. Dice rolls determine a character's success in magic or battle; each character's stats are based on who they are in the show (so Buffy has mucho life and fighting skill, Willow magic skill, and Xander no skills in any) although these can be augmented by artifacts and the like.
There's a deceptively large amount of strategy to the game. Vampires take damage if caught on the streets of town when sunrise comes about -- at the end of our game, we had to plan how to "trap" the Master (vampire) between us so that we all could get our licks in. It is possible to trap a vampire in a position where they cannot move when sunrise happens -- which is an instant kill.
Since most of the Good players are underpowered, it would be foolish to just go after evil minions or the Big Bad at the start of the game -- they're just too weak. Cooperation is essential to the game.
Problems I noticed with the game are minor -- the "sunrise" condition comes about very rarely and often only for one player's turn; some of the spell/item/help cards are a bit ambiguous as to how they work. My initial feeling was that overall, Evil has a huge advantage -- evil can summon minions, and even if those minions are killed, eventually the Evil card deck must be reshuffled, allowing them to be summoned again; also, there seems to be a pitiful few ways of healing good chracters. It took a suicidal attack by my character (Xander) and a good dollop of luck to finally kill the Master to end the game.
The game has plenty of replay value. It comes with four "games" based on the first four seasons of the TV show; for each game there are slightly different victory conditions. "Kill or Sire Buffy" is almost always the Evil victory condition, and "Kill the Big Bad" is usually the condition for Good, altho "Stop the Mayor's Ascention" and "Stop Angelus" are in there as well. While there's only four seasons worth of games, there are mods for later seasons available online by fans of the game.
All things considered, most games based on a television license usually stink. Here's one that broke the mold. 4 of 5 stars.
3:48 PM
|
|
| |
|
|
|
