26th September 2019
Thursday night and time for the next session of WFRP. The 'Enemy Within' campaign continues. Our party are still in Altdorf, investigating the conspiracy that murdered the Grand Theonogist. The party have just learned that four individuals have been captured and after some 'interrogation' have confessed to the murder. Unsure what this means for their investigation, they suspect that these are four innocent scapegoats who have been forced into confessing. The party decide to look into matters. It turns out that the 'Knights of the Fiery Heart' have captured the four suspects. The party then managed to track down where they are being held. As the party are headed to the cells, they notice that there are a lot of people on the streets of Altdorf. Rumour has spread that the 4 suspects are all 'Ulricans' and anger is rising amongst 'Sigmarites'. The tension is palpable. Meanwhile, the party speak with the captain responsible for the four prisoners. He informs them that the four were captured after they had received an anonymous tip. The party convince the captain to be allowed to question the prisoners. The first prisoner proudly admits that he was one of the ringleaders and was responsible for the explosion. He names 'Brother Karl' as the chief organiser of the conspiracy. The party then speaks to a second prisoner who claims he is innocent and had nothing to do with anything. The party are quite convinced of his innocence. They question him further but he is evasive and cannot answer many of their questions - to the frustration of the party.
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24th September 2019
Tuesday night at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking. The 3rd and final game of the night was Port Royal. Read my blog about it here. 24th September 2019 Tuesday night gaming at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking continues. The second game of the evening was 'Bang! The Dice Game'. A hidden role game driven by push your luck mechanics. Let's see how this goes? What's in a game? Bang! The Dice Game comes in a small portable package. Components include:
How's it play? First there's set up.
What are the hidden roles? There are 3 types of hidden role in the game. The number of each role that appears in a game will depend on the number of players, except there is only ever 1 sheriff.
And we're good to go. Playing the game is quite straight forward.
Dice and their meanings
So we now know what we do with the dice. But what do they mean. The 5 custom dice all have the same symbols on their faces instead of numbers.
But what about the arrows? There are 9 arrow tokens in the supply, when the last arrow has been taken by a player; then Indians Attack! When this happens, characters immediately take damage equal to the number of arrows in their personal area. Then all the arrows are returned to the central area. Overall Bang! The Dice Game is a little unusual for a hidden role game. There is very little need for questioning amongst players. As is the fact that one role is revealed to all players, putting a big target on the sheriff player's back! The deputy players and possibly renegade players will need to protect the sheriff. That's not the sheriff's only problem, the sheriff needs to figure out who is an ally and who is an enemy and not attack their deputies. Deputies need to identify other deputies if possible (If there are other deputies). But their 2 main objectives are protect the sheriff and attack anyone attacking the sheriff. Outlaws have it easy really, they can concentrate on attacking the sheriff. Outlaws can try a protect other outlaws, but well they're outlaws! Renegades are in a tricky position, they want to get rid of the sheriff, but need to eliminate outlaws first. Bang! The Dice Game is a 'lighter' hidden role game and is quick to learn and play. It serves well as a filler game. 24th September 2019 Tuesday evening is here and we're at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking for games night. It was an evening of several short games. We begun with 'Sushi Roll', this game is a follow up to the rather good 'Sushi Go!'. Will Sushi Roll live up to expectations? Let's see. What's in a game Sushi Roll comes in a largish box and a whole bunch of components. These are solidly made and of a good quality.
How's it play? We begin with set up:
And we're ready to go.
Overall There's a lot to like about Sushi Roll. There's a pleasant tactile sensation to be had when you slide or hand the conveyor belt tile over to another player. The same is true when using chopsticks to snatch away a die from someone else's conveyor belt. The theme fits the game perfectly. The mechanics with the dice is very clever. You can see what dice are coming your way, but since the dice are rolled again, you don't know exactly what you're getting. It does a very good job of replacing the card mechanic from Sushi Go!. No need to try and memorise cards now! Everyone I've played this game with, preferred this version to its predecessor. It's less portable and takes a little set up time, but it feels more tactile, it's a little more 'open', therefore giving players more choices to make. The scoring and pudding tokens make it a bit more 'user friendly'. Meanwhile the chopsticks and menus lend the game a bit more strategy. So, is it worth getting Sushi Roll if you've played Sushi Go!? In a word; yes! 22nd September 2019
Sunday afternoon, 'The Sovereigns' in Woking. No 50 Fathoms today, so board games were the order of the day. The final game of the afternoon was Concept. Read my blog about it here. 22nd September 2019 Sunday lunchtime at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking. Unfortunately 50 Fathoms is still on hiatus. Instead we shall play some board games. The first board game of the day was 'Roll Player'. Have you ever enjoyed creating characters for an RPG more than playing them? Then maybe, just maybe, Roll Player is the game for you. Roll Player is sort of a set collecting, dice rolling, worker placement game that's all about creating what is ostensibly a D&D character. The main of the game is that players use dice to generate their stats, but it's not a case of just rolling the dice. What's in a game The components for Roll Player are of a good quality.
How's it play Firstly there's set up: This is fairly straightforward.
Taking dice After a player takes a die, they must place it on to their character sheet board. When doing this, there are 3 things they need to bear in mind in order to maximise their scores.
Market cards There are several different types of card available to but from the market. When a player takes a market card, it is placed alongside the character sheet board in it's specified spot.
A new row of market cards is dealt every round. Endgame Play continues for 18 rounds until all 6 stats have 3 dice. Points can earned from several sources, these include:
Overall Roll Player is a game with an intriguing theme. Because placing a die has so many consequences, play slows down quite a lot when both choosing and placing a die, so there feels like there is a lot of downtime between turns. Apart from this, the game fine to play and when you complete Roll Player you will have an interesting character. My first Roll Player character was: 'A concentrating, knowledgeable, intimidating, dedicated, honest, famous, chain-armour-wearing, blessed-mace-wielding, druidic, elven chosen one who's good at sleight of hand. His name is Derek!'
21st September 2019. It's Saturday evening round at Matakishi's and that can only mean games night! So here we have 'Machi Koro Legacy'. As the title suggests, this is a legacy version of the very good Machi Koro game. Spoilers!!! Don't read any further ahead if you want to play Machi Koro Legacy! What's a legacy game? Glad you asked. A legacy game's unique feature is that it is actually a series of play-throughs of the same game. After each game concludes, something changes, is added or removed from the game and that change carries over to the next play-through of the game. Thus you have (In theory.) a game that constantly changes and evolves according to player input. Machi Koro Legacy is played over 10 games. We played games 1-5 in one night and in total all 10 games were played over 3 evenings. I'm going to blog about all of the games in this post. Since at the time of writing, these blog posts are about a month behind the actual plays. If you don't know anything about Machi Koro, you can read my blog about it here. Have you read it? Good! Now you know all about Machi Koro. The Basics The original Machi Koro has 2 expansions, 'The Harbour' and 'Millionaire's Row'. Generally we play Machi Koro with The Harbour. As you would expect, the core mechanics of Machi Koro remain unchanged for the 'legacy' version. If you didn't actually bother reading my blog about the main game: Here's a quick recap.
The legacy game I can't really blog about the game in my normal format because the components and rules change throughout the game. So I'll just go through it as best as I can. I'm not going to extensively talk about the original, I'll try to just talk about any differences between 'original' and 'legacy' versions. Personal game board This is immediately different. In legacy, each player is given a game board that has the following:
Diamonds are a new currency introduced in Legacy. Players can start a game with diamonds or acquire them during play. Some landmarks and cards can use diamonds for a benefit. But the main use of diamonds is to spend them to re-roll dice rolls. Double sided establishment cards These are an entirely new type of game introduced in Legacy. When a game is concluded, a new type of card is added to the market from the next game onward. These cards are 'double sided'. One side tends to be blue/green and the other red or occasionally purple. The player who just won the concluding game gets to choose which side is used, these cards have tick boxes which can ticked to indicate which side was initially chosen. During later games, it is possible that a stack of double sided cards can be flipped over to their other side. If this occurs, then it also affects all copies of that card in players' areas! (See below for how 'flipping' can occur.) Traveller die Another new introduction to legacy is the 'traveller die', a blank six sided die. What's the point of a blank die you may ask? Well, it doesn't stay blank for long. As games are completed, stickers are added to die. The traveller die is now rolled along with the normal dice. The following stickers are added to the traveller die: Turtle, yokai and moon princess There 3 travellers each have their own little figure that moves along cards as dictated by the rules for the traveller die.
The sea Another new addition to legacy that appears later in the game is 'the sea'. This is depicted by placing 3 cards in a column in the market area along side the establishment cards. Then, each player receives a boat figurine in their colour and a 12 sided die is introduced into the game. What does this all do? Well, read on:
Islands When the sea has been introduced, islands are next. Islands work in the following way.
During one of the latter games, the players will acquire rockets for their ships and in the 10th and final game, they will travel to the moon in an endeavour to return the moon princess home.
Right that's about it for what's in the game and rules. I've missed out some bits about some cards being removed from play and so on, but that I think is most of it. The 11th game Once the 10th game has concluded. The remaining cards can be used to make up a new game of Machi Koro. Having a functioning game afterwards is a nice touch. Overall I think this blog post I've written about Machi Koro Legacy is going to be the longest blog I've written about a card game so far. I guess a legacy game can complicate things quite a lot and there's quite a lot to process here. Additionally, I will state that this is the only legacy game I've ever played and I have nothing to compare it to or measure it against. I guess I'll just go through the things listed above and blog my thoughts about them. Town square cards I actually quite like this idea, it gives players a meaningful decision to make immediately and can lead to an asymmetrical game start (See below for more on this.). Landmarks As your small fishing settlement advances through civilisation to fulfil its destiny of becoming a 'space power', it's only natural that its landmarks will change over time. So thematically I understand it, but from a game play perspective, I'm ambivalent towards it. This is partially I think, because I didn't find them particularly interesting or useful. Especially since there's so many of them (10 communal and 12 player landmarks.) and they only hang around for a maximum of 3 games. Diamonds Diamonds have several uses in legacy. Some landmarks allow players to use diamonds for extra turns or for extra cash. They can also be used in conjunction with island cards to acquire establishment cards. But probably the biggest use of diamonds is for re-rolls. The original Machi Koro gave players a re-roll once per turn in the form of a landmark that they could purchase. Legacy take this a step further by giving players the ability to spend multiple diamonds to gain multiple re-rolls. This has a low impact in the early games, but a high impact in the later games. When a players has 8 diamonds, they spend a long time pondering their many potential re-rolls. I don't actually mind the game slowing down that much (I'm used to it.). I dislike how easy it is to just mitigate so many bad rolls. Having to deal with bad rolls is part of what makes Machi Koro what it is. Double sided establishments The idea of having dual-function establishments seems like a reasonable idea. It can change up the dynamic of the game a little and doesn't seem to have a negative impact. If only there was a better way to implement them other than the yokai (See Below.). Travellers Legacy adds 3 travellers to the game, as well as an extra die and extra rule to deal with it all. The problem I have with this is that all it does is introduce an extra random element and no game play element. When travellers do move, most of the time it has minimal or no impact on me or the decisions I made.
The sea When the sea was added into legacy, it introduced a fiddly and slightly confusing set of mechanics to the game. Not only that, they're completely alien to Machi Koro's 'style' and lack any elegance. You might as well have added a copy of 'Monopoly' to legacy, they're so different. Furthermore, when the sea was added to legacy was when the game started to really slow down. All those extra little rules and extras just dragged it down. It seems that the combination of the sea and diamonds is not a good one. Island cards The island cards are quite an interesting proposition.
The moon track is essentially an extension of the the sea track. Everything I've said about the sea, applies equally here. So that's it. As I explained earlier, this is the only legacy style game I've played. And to be honest, in regards to Machi Koro, I don't think it adds much to the experience of playing it.
Sure, it adds some interesting ideas to the mix and it was nice seeing new cards. But it also adds a whole lot of unnecessary stuff too. Additionally, the changes that occur throughout the games feel very small, the choice that the winner makes after every game feels inconsequential. I don't regret playing Machi Koro Legacy at all; it provided us with 10 games and 3 evenings of entertainment. But during those games I never felt that I was playing something superior to the original. 19th September 2019
It's a Thursday and this now means it time for WFRP, our playing day has changed. 'The Enemy Within' campaign continues. Our brave adventurers are still in Altdorf and investigating the death of the Grand Theonogist. During the last session, the party realised most of their leads have met with suspicious and nasty ends. They only have 1 living lead left: An agitator called 'Mayer Gauss'. The party have discovered that he as an associate of the deceased 'Batrek Steelfist'. They also know that Mayer tends to appear at the speaker's corner close to the university district every week or so. Over the next few days they visit speaker's corner frequently without success. They also investigate all the local pubs and drinking establishments. Mayer is recognised, but no one has firm details about him. Finally, party investigate some colleges to see if Mayer was a former student, but he was not an alumni at any of the colleges they visited. Then on one morning, the party are leaving their townhouse and their is a buzz on the streets. After a bit of chatting, the party discover that a rumour is circulating the city: The assassins have been caught! 17th September 2019
Gaming Tuesday at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking continues. Our 2nd and final game of the night was 'Noctiluca'. You can read my post about it here. 17th September 2019
Tuesday has come back around and we're at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking. We began the evening with 'Cloud 9'. You can read my blog about it here. |
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