Friday 3 January 2014

Games in the holidays

Got to try a few new games and some more familiar ones over the past couple of weeks.

First, Super Dungeon Explore. This is a dungeon crawler with a kawaii/ chibi facelift. I played the dwarf, because then I don't have to worry about fancy stuff like magic and can just concentrate on rolling sixes. Our party was rapidly overwhelmed by hordes of undead with baby dragons, but somehow we pulled off a win. It was a real grind to get to that point, however. This may have been due to the baddies having extra health, essentially requiring each one to be killed twice. The cuteness (Sparkleburst arrows, anyone?) is quite superficial, and there's a solid dungeon crawl engine underneath. Decent components, but the casting mold lines on the figures would bug me if I was going to paint them.
wow! such beard! so cute!

such horde! wow! so undead!

much axe! such outnumbered! wow!
The next new game I played was Tannhäuser. This is a skirmish boardgame (which Neil Shuck would term a 'hybrid game') set in a Great War which has dragged on thirty years into the late 1940s. Weird World War 2, except it's still 1, if you follow. We had a straight-up deathmatch, with my Union troops (square-jawed American pulp heroes) against his Obscura Korps (Nazi-occultists-but-there's-no-Nazi-party pulp villains). Very Hellboy-esque. I tried to follow the Principles of War and concentrate my force, but concentrated troops are grenade fodder, and we found out how nasty grenades are rather quickly. Also, heavy automatic weapons can't go on overwatch. Indignant splutter! It was all over on turn four, and my sole survivor beat a hasty retreat the way she came in, with no baddies killed. We're not sure we were playing correctly, and I'd like to try some of the scenarios other than deathmatch. A quality board, decent pre-painted figures, and a nice line-of-sight system are good points. The board 'squares' are multi-coloured circles. If your circle and your target's circle are the same colour, you can see each other. Simple.
Turn 1. "Push left, boys!"

Turn 2. "Overwatch! Don't let that guy chuck a-"

Turn 3. "Did we have a Plan B?"

Turn 4. "Run away!"

The Union prepaints

Obscura Korps prepaints

My third new game was a lightning-fast game of Cthulhu Dice, which I won. Iä! Iä!

I had another couple of rounds of Zombie Dice, and a four-player game of Race for the Galaxy- still a really solid game.

And that's what I did in my holidays.

PS: But soft! What is this the postman brings...

4 comments:

  1. I'll be interested to hear what you think of Tannhauser after a couple more games. I'm really looking forward to seeing what is in that box though. Open it! Open it!

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    Replies
    1. Should I open the box? Maybe I'll leave the box closed. There's probably nothing fun inside it.

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  2. And... you're busted using the inexplicably popular "doge" meme in a blog post. But you ain't wrong, those Super Dungron Explore figures are pretty "kawaii".

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