Game Review: Smallworld Underground

Hi folks!

Time for my next game review. Smallworld Underground is definitely one of my personal favorites. The game is fast, has enough depth to not to be boring, but is easy enough to be relaxing. Oh, and it has the "rotflmao" effect built in.

You have a map with different territories. You get points by occupying these territories, which auto-leads to conflict with other players. Remember it is a small world. Smallworld Underground also has some new stuff in it, like unique locations and artifacts. The "races" you can pick to play with are just hilarious. Oh, yeah, you start the game by picking a race that has a previously randomly assigned bonus ability. Later on you can send your race into decline to pick a new one. The declined race will still generate you points, but you can't play with them anymore. In the case you send your second race into decline you will loose the first one, but of course get a new active race as well. 

That's it basically. An easy to learn and play game that is very amusing. A good game to introduce your non-geek friends to. Give it a try, you won't regret it!

by: Mephistopheles

Game Review: Chaos in the Old World

Hi folks!

I continue my game review column with Chaos in the Old World. This is definitely a high-end strategy game which I suggest for experienced players only. It's has enough depth to satisfy any geek demands. 

You play with one of 4 different gods, each has it's unique abilities and cards. The goal is to either score 50+ points as the first player or to win by dial advancement. Each god has its own unique way to get dial advancements. You can score points by dominating territories (you need to have a certain amount of figures + chaos cards there) or by ruining them. To ruin a territory it has to accumulate at least 12 corruption counters which are generated mainly by cultist figures. While you are trying to achieve all this you also have to defend against other players and try to weaken the stronger players. Since everybody will do the same the game is always very exciting. For starters Nurgle and Khorne will seem to be stronger in the first few games, but believe me the game is very well balanced! Well sort of, since in our playgroup Tzeentch is the eternal 2nd place...

So this is a technical challenging, difficult game with lots of depth and strategical options. The good part is, that despite all this it doesn't take too much time. I would say that this is maybe the "king of board games" like v:tes would be the "king of card games".

by: Mephistopheles

    

Game Review: Seven Wonders

Hi folks!

Here is my first game review on a board game. Seven Wonders is an easy to learn and fast to play game that 3-7 players can play. Most of the games I know have a cap on 6 players. The game itself is basically an economic and farming game which is based on drafting cards. There are three turns altogether. The drafting rules are actually the same than the good old booster draft rules.

Once you’ve picked a card you can either put it in play, build a part of your wonder or thrash the card to score 3 gold pieces. The goal is to score the most points at the end of the three turns. This can of course be achieved in different ways and each wonder you pick contributes with different abilities to your strategy.

As I mentioned before it is an economic and farming game. There are cards you need to pay for, either gold or resources (and there are many of them). Of course there are cards that once put into play will generate you resources every turn.

On the first glance it pretty much looks like a low-end game that is no good for us gaming geeks, but once you played it a couple of times you will find that the game has some depth in it. I geek terms it is still an easy game though, but a funny one. People who already have played drafts will have an advantage. You will notice that you sometimes have to hate draft cards and either build them into your wonder or thrash them, but you have to make sure that a certain player won’t get that card.

Overall this is a cool game. It is great to relax between/after high-end games like Chaos in the Old World and it is also great to teach it to your non-geek friends, relative or girlfriends, since they might find it enjoyable, too.

by: Mephistopheles

Upcomming Event: Cantina Constructed

Hi folks!

Event Name: Cantina Constructed
Date: 23.07.2011
Location: Budapest, Cantina
Format: Normal constructed, 3R + F
Registration: from 10-11
Fee: 1800 HUF or 5 €

by: Mephistopheles

Frankie's Birthday Party

Poll Result: Group 6 is...

Hi folks!

Here are the results of my latest poll. As you can see most of the people aren't happy with Group 6. I think that there are many flaws in the latest Bloodline set, since many Group 5-6 clans are basically unplayable or at least a zillion times weaker than the group 4-5 crypt of the respective clan.

by: Mephistopheles

Group 6...

Call of Cthulhu: first Asylum Pack

Hi folks!

As you could read in the previous post, Móni and I built a Syndicate - Yog-Sothoth and a Hastur - The Agency deck to start this game with. What I forgot to mention was that we also bought the The Spawn of the Sleeper Asylum Pack. After the first few test games we thinned our decks to the minimum of 50 cards. At this point the decks became very unbalanced. The Agency seems like a much stronger faction than The Syndicate and two of the expansion cards for the Hastur faction are just insanely strong. The Erich Zann + Terrifying Visage combo is way stronger than anything Yog-Sothoth had to offer.

So we agreed to build new decks. Móni, maybe because she was disappointed by the human forces, wanted to try a deck with Ancient-One factions only, so she picked a Hastur - Cthulhu combination. I stayed with my original plan to build a Shub-Niggurath + Miscatonic University duo. After a few test games these decks seemed to be much more balanced. Note that we don't have enough cards yet to build mono-faction decks.

This game provides something I really missed since I stopped playing magic: the gathering years ago: namely card combos. It's not the same in v:tes. So far I noticed and played one really cool card combo from my second deck (Y'Golonac + Celano Fragments):

Of course there are many other combos in this card game, but this one is my favorite so far. Another thing I noticed is that the golden rule for card games also do apply to coc lcg: card advantage! Let the opponent discard cards is good. Draw cards yourself is even better!

Enough for today. This weekend we will celebrate Frankies birthday with a massive board gaming at my place so I will report what games we played and what my impression of these games was.

by: Mephistopheles

Call of Cthulhu LCG acquired

Hi folks!

I've just finished playing the second round of Call of Cthulhu with Móni (my wife to be). The game seemed very interesting in the shop and we are both fans of Lovecraft, so it was a must have. The rules are quite simple and easy to learn so we started playing almost right away. 

I had chosen a deck built from the Hastur (my fav.) and The Agency fractions, because it seemed like a good choice for a control deck with early defense. The only difficulty was to keep an eye on the Heroic vs. Villainous rule (you can't have both in the game). 

Móni went for a The Syndicate + Yog-Sothoth deck. In the first game I managed to out speed her in the first couple of turns and win 2 quests. Unfortunately for me I wasn't fast enough and Móni could overwhelm me with stronger cards. She laso won 2 quests, so the next player to win a quest would win the game. In the early game I almost only had Agency cards so I played a card that said neutral characters can't be committed to a quest (Móni had 2 neutral characters in play by this time). I felt save, but only for a short time. Móni played an awesome Syndicate character, which' name I don't remember and managed to win that last quest just before I could do so in my next turn.

We played the same deck in the second turn. I managed to create an early 4th domain with the Eldritch Nexus  and could also play a Gentleman's Club that allows you to draw a card per turn (paying 2 for it). I drew cool Hastur cards and could lock Móni down from time to time. This game was much slower than the first one and very balanced. We once more had 2 quests done each. This time I was the man in luck, since I drew Hastur himself whose ability was enough to get my last quest done. We both played and used some cool combos during this game.

All in all, this seems to be an awesome game! I look forward to many more rounds of Call of Cthulhu LCG.

by: Mephistopheles

Hun Fragment extended

Hi folks!

I came to the conclusion that I will give up my original idea to keep Hun Fragment as a v:tes only blog. Since I play less and less v:tes and more and more boardgames I will add those to this blog turning it into something like Mephistopheles' Gaming Blog. This also means that I will keep bloging during the summer since I quite often play boardgames. 

by: Mephistopheles

/I'll make some changes in the design and the header picture will be either changed or editet/

On vacation

Hi folks!

There will be almost no post on this blog until September. This means this blog is dead. I'll pick up the usual work, but until then sunshine + beach + beer > v:tes.

by: Mephistopheles