Board Game Review: Mage Knight Board Game

So, without any further ado, let's get this review started!

In Mage Knight, you play one of four powerful warriors known as "Mage Knights" as they journey into uncharted kingdoms in search of power and prestige for the glory of the great empire from which they hail.  Even as you start the game, your Mage Knights are already in possession of vast amounts of physical and magical power so as to rival the strength of armies.  As you journey into this unknown land, the heroes will lay waste to marauding bands of orcs, delve into perilous dungeons, topple wizards from the tops of their towers,  and storm heavily fortified keeps.  As you do so, you will gain in power through increasing your fame (experience for leveling up), finding and hoarding spells, artifacts, and magical power, as well as learning new skills and abilities.  Not only that, but the actions that your character takes will have an effect on  your reputation among the common folk living in the land.  Certain actions, such as destroying one of the many bands of orcs that you find scouring the countryside, will increase your renown among the people, making it easier for you to persuade the people to join your army in support of your conquest.  Other actions, however, such as claiming a wizard's tower or keep as your own or , even worse, pillaging a defenseless village, while giving you a more immediate gain, will raise doubts among the townsfolk as to the righteousness of your cause, making it more difficult for you to recruit them or acquire other goods and services from them.

The game has a lot of fiddly bits to deal with, and as such is rather difficult to approach for the first time.  In fact, it is so complex that the nice people over at Wizkids were nice enough to provide two separate rulebooks;  One to guide the players through their first game, providing the rules and examples for various aspects of the game as they are likely to come into play, and another with full explanations and clarifications of the rules, as well as additional rules for more advanced aspects of the game that the players can sink their teeth into once they have a firm grasp of the basics, as well as some additional houserules/scenarios can be used to modify the game further.

As of the time of writing this, I have played the game three times, and while we have gotten through to the point of finding our first major city (the end-game condition for the "First Reconnaissance" scenario), we have yet to play through an entire game of the "Full Conquest" scenario.  Therefore, I have not yet even begun to experience some of the later aspects of the game, but I've been holding back on this review for long enough, and I have a good enough idea of what to expect in the later game to speak my piece for the time being.


Warning: Massive Explanation of Rules!  Skip ahead if you just want to hear what I thought of it!

The board is made up of a tiles, that represent a region of land that is revealed as the players journey as the players push the boundaries of the map, exploring and expanding the play area as they go.  Each tile is actually composed of seven hexagonal spaces arranged in a "flower" formation, meaning that each time a player explores, he uncovers a handful of new pieces of terrain and points of interest.  This makes exploration much quicker than simply revealing the map a single space at a time, and it also presents the players with more choices to make, as each region will likely present at least a couple of points of interest, such as a group of orcs (which presents an easy way to acquire fame and renown), unexplored dungeons (which presents greater risk (the player doesn't know what they'll be fighting until they have already committed to battle, but offers greater rewards such as greater fame and an artifact or advanced ability if they are successful)  , or an enchanted glade (where they could recover some of their wounds as well as boost their stores of magical energy for the next turn).

Now, the more interesting aspect of the game is that the majority your hero's abilities spells and artifacts are represented by a deck of cards.  Each player starts with a deck of 16 cards that vary slightly on which character you choose, and at the start of each turn a player draws up to their maximum hand size in cards.  The maximum hand size starts at five, but there are ways to increase this as you progress through the game.  Most of these cards are quite simple, as in their basic form, they will commonly provide a player with units of movement, attack, block, and influence, and heal, which the player will need to utilize effectively in order to achieve their goals.  Almost all cards in your deck can have a special effect that can be used through meeting certain requirements (typically spending mana of a particular color).  There are also other cards in your deck that can be used to gain and store additional mana, allowing you to give more power to your other cards.  Additional cards can be added to a player's deck in the form of Advanced Action Cards, Spells, and Artifacts.  Also, when you are wounded in battle, the damage you take is represented as wound cards that are added to your deck, and when drawn, clog your hand and cannot be removed unless your heal them or spend a turn resting (which puts them in the your discard pile to be shuffled into your deck at the start of the next round.

The turn order is determined by the players picking a card for their initiative from either the day or night decks, depending on the current phase that the upcoming round will be  (each round represents a 12 hour day or night).  Picking a lower initiative will give you a slightly better special bonus for choosing to later in the turn order.  The game progresses around the table with each player taking their turn until one of them runs out of cards to draw and actions to take.  That player can then spend their turn calling the end of the round, and once all the players have taken their turn for the last sequence of initiative, the round ends and all of the players' cards are reshuffled into their deck and a new round begins.

The goal of the game is to acquire the most fame at the end of the game.  By acquiring fame, you can also level up your character.  Leveling up will allow you to increase the size of your army, reduce the damage you take in combat, increase the amount of cards you can draw into your hand at the start of your turn, and give you new action cards and other special abilities.  At the end of a game, you gain additional fame depending on how many special cards you have in your deck, locations you have conquered on the map, and units you have in your army.  Some scenarios have alternate scoring methods, but I have not explored them yet.

There are of course all sorts of other fun fiddly bits in the game, but I'm hoping that can provide you with a decent idea of what the game is like.

End of Basic Explanation of Rules.  

As stated at the start of the review, the game has a lot of fiddly bits, and is a bit overwhelming when everyone in your group is playing for the first time.  The first time we played it, we spent three hours going over the rules before we even started our first round.  However, once players have achieved an understanding of how the game works, the time it takes to start playing decreases pretty quickly.  Still, the game takes quite a while to play, given that a full game is normally six rounds, and a round takes about fifteen minutes per player at the table, even after everyone has gotten acquainted with the rules.  Despite the length of the game, the game does a pretty good job of keeping the players engaged.  The deck building aspect of the game really helps in that department, as having a random variety of cards into your hand forces the player to consider their options for each round they take, as well as builds anticipation for the possibility of drawing one of those really cool cards that are in your deck and would be just what you need for the next round.  Including new equipment as spells as part of your deck also helps in this regard as prevents players from being able to spam their favorite card every single round, and have to plan around what they currently have in their hand.

Another thing that is something of a mixed blessing is that all of the enemies on the board are stationary.  While this may seem like a step down in some senses, it actually helps the game considerably, as it helps maintain the momentum of the game.  An example of how monster movement can hurt momentum comes from Arkham Horror, a game of similar length and genre.   In this game,the monsters need to be moved around the map, and quite a few of them have special forms of movement that frequently require rule look up, and wastes valuable time that the players could be spending actually playing the game.  By cutting out monster movement, Mage Knight cuts out an element that is both unnecessary and time consuming, decreasing the amount of time it takes to move between one round and the other, thus maintaining the players' interests.

When playing games of this nature and length, it seems the most prevalent question is why we aren't just playing a Tabletop Roleplaying game, which is what these exploration/adventure themed board games seem to be trying to emulate.  In the case of Mage Knight, Mage Knight is attempting to offer a fairly unique experience on a level that would be difficult for the person running the game to manage effectively.  Additionally, Mage Knight, despite its length does a good job of creating an experience for that sort of adventure over only one or two evenings, whereas a full campaign of the same scope would likely take a couple of months to handle.  That being said, a Mage Knight is a pretty cool concept for an RPG campaign, though I doubt many GMs would be up for the task, given how many D&D campaigns seem to fall apart when they get to an Epic Tier power level.

In summary, among the games that I currently own, I believe that this one will be my personal favorite.  However, I would not recommend it at a party where players are expecting to play more than one game over the course of the evening.  Still, if you and some friends are ever able to  devote the majority of a day or possibly a couple evenings towards playing this game, I would definitely recommend it.

Mage Knight Review Delayed...

While I said that I'd be putting out my review today, as it turns out, the game is still pretty long regardless of whether you have a basic grasp of the rules yet or not, and we didn't have enough time to complete the full game.  So one thing that I will tell  you is that the game is a pretty long one, so you'll likely need to be either playing with only two players, play with a shorter number of days, or start in the early afternoon and just devote a day to playing the game.  Still, I've been enjoying the game enough to keep playing it thus far, so despite it's steep learning curve and lengthy playtime, the overall feel of the game has been pretty good.

I'll be playing again tonight with only one other player, (which is the recommended number, according to board game geek) and we'll see if we can plow through an entire game so we can get a proper opinion on the game is a whole.  (There are some aspects to the game that we haven't even seen yet!)

Coming this Monday: Mage Knight Review

Despite our group having a whole lot of new games to review, we haven't had enough time yet to sit down and play them all.  Last Friday we tried out Mage Knight, which I got at Pax and played through the introductory scenario, but I think another full play through of the game is in order after stumbling our way through our first game before I can give an accurate review.  So far, it looks the game has potential to be a regular staple for our gaming group.

Board Game Review: Bull's-Eye

My first review coming out of PAX is Bull's-Eye, which is independently designed by a DNA Family Games, a small company independently owned and operated by Doug and Nilda Loriz, who are both passionate about playing and making games.

The goal of the game is to accumulate a total of 100 points.  Similarly to Scrabble, the primary mechanic for obtaining points is to assemble the letters that are in your hand into words, and are awarded points based on the value of the letters.  However, unlike Scrabble, it is not always ideal to have the highest value words, as there are tiles that you can land on that allow you to draw cards that have various effects, ranging from putting everyone else back five places, moving you up as much as ten, or giving you immunity being hit by the negative effects of a future card draw.  This gives the player more options to weigh, and adds a layer of tactics to the game beyond simply making the biggest word.  Another difference is that rounds are timed and everyone is assembling their words at the same time and after each round of play the players get to draw a new hand rather than being stuck with the same consonants that you can almost never use.  There is also an advanced mode where a dice roll determines how many letters the word can contain, adding an extra level of challenge to the game.  The average time for a diceless game is 15 minutes, whereas the advanced game is roughly 30 minutes.  

I really enjoyed Bull's-Eye as not only was it very fast paced, my spelling skills gave me a slight edge over my friends who attended PAX with me, who can typically beat me in a typical board game where tactics are normally the dominant factor.  Having a good vocabulary of words and how to spell them is a definite asset to the game, and I can see it being very effective as a teaching aid for both teachers and parents.  (A good house rule for parents is to let the kids spell words of whatever length they want, but have the adults follow the restrictions of the die roll)  It also makes for a good party game as it is both fun and quick, so players don't have to dedicate the entire night to playing it.  

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to purchase a copy of the game before leaving PAX, and the game is not yet in circulation in Canada.  However, I let Darrell at Lost Atlantis Games know about it, and given his interest in acquiring rare and difficult to acquire games, I may hopefully be able to pick up a copy from my local gaming store sometime in the future.

Back from PAX

Just got back from the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle, and there is so much to talk about.  I have yet to sit down with my friends to begin to play through the plethora of games that we purchased over the course of the weekend, not to mention the games that we tried out and didn't purchase.  I'll try to make a series of blog posts over the next couple weeks filled with reviews of all the different things I found there.

Dear Internet

Guess where I'm going at the end of the month?





...No, it's not a photography class.

And now for the downside

I'm noticing that the pen sensitivity on the Samsung Galaxy Note isn't as good as it should be right off the bat.  While it is supposedly capable of higher levels, the sensitivity is automatically set to less than optimal levels of sensitivity, and the thing doesn't come with a way to adjust it.

I've spent the majority of my day so far trying to Root the device it to adjust the sensitivity settings and ended up almost bricking it.  Now I need to go back and unroot it so that I can try again from square 1, or at least manage to fully boot it up.

Drawing with a phone? Absurd!

Sorry about the month between my last two posts.  I've been both busy with my new job and distracted by shiny new things.  However, at last it seems the shiny new things have ultimately brought me back here.

I've recently acquired a new Samsung Galaxy Note, which has me all all exited.  My last phone was a blackberry flip phone that I got when flip phones were already becoming something of an antiquity.  Now it's like I'm entering a whole new world of awesome.  The phone is a bit large, putting it mildly.   This thing is like the classic xbox controller of smartphones.  I don't really mind, as I've got big pockets.  

But in all honesty, the size was actually one of the reasons I bought it.  The other reason, which goes somewhat hand in hand, is the stylus that it comes with, and fits nearly into a slot in the back of the phone, similar to a Nintendo DS.  The stylus, combined with the large screen pretty much means that I now have the perfect mini digital canvas.  I just bought the Sketchbook app, and after a little bit of getting used to the interface, I have come to the conclusion that this surpasses the digital painting capabilities of my 3DS by far.  For one thing, my smartphone possesses pressure sensitivity, so I can make lines that vary in terms of both width and thickness.  Also, the screen is probably larger than both 3DS screens combined and with better resolution, so I have  twice the canvas to work with.  In terms of software, Sketchbook offers much better brush and later customization than Colors!3D.

In Summary, aside from lacking the gimmick of being able to paint in 3D, Sketchbook on the Galaxy Note trumps Colors! on the 3DS.  Also, I can create my pictures and post them via the same device, which is another plus. 

Anyhow, here is the result of a half hour of sketching.  Enjoy.  :D

Video Production: 1st Semester

In Fall 2011 and Winter 2012, I took a couple of Video Production courses at UFV.  During for the duration of the first and second semesters of this course, the class was divided into groups of four.  My team was composed of Cameron McCuish, Donna Flello, and Mike Racine.  Of all four of the groups, ours was the only one to really work together really well as a team, without running into any conflicts.  We were also the only group to continue on to the second semester with the exact same members.

Not all of the projects that we produced were good enough to bother with putting up on the internet.  Some of the ones that we actually did put up are still probably not all that good.  Regardless, I had a lot of fun working on making them, and I hope you enjoy watching them on some level.

You Saw Me?

Directed by Michael Racine

This was one of the first projects that we actually spent any serious amount of time in creating and editing, and managed to achieve some decent results with.  The script for this was pre-written for us to interpret as we saw fit.  Everyone had a turn giving the script their own unique spin, but Mike's interpretation was probably the most fun to make, as I got to do some maniacal laughter, throw some fireballs around and do a "death" scene.  We did all the filming for this one in a single morning with just Mike Cameron and Myself, because Donna was unable to make it that day.  It was also the only one that we bothered to put onto youtube.  Mike's explosion effects got some notice from some of our friends in the Computer Information Systems department.  

Interview with a Half-Elf

Directed by Myself

This was my individual project for the first semester of video production, and was also the first video project that I both wrote and directed.  I had fun writing this one, as I got to poke fun at the misconception that people who play roleplaying games have a loose grip on reality.  We borrowed one of Mike's places of work for an afternoon to work on it.  Unfortunately, there was some traffic which interfered with the audio and the microphone was acting wonky, so the sound quality didn't turn out so well.  My favorite part in this movie in both creating and watching was Mike's "Song of Soothing".  While I had devised the lyrics on my own, Mike created his own melody to go with it.  I did a pretty good job in implementing what locations and skillsets I had available to me for this one.  The soundtrack was originally composed of parts of The Battle of Evermore, and Misty Mountain Hop, by Led Zeppelin, but youtube's content filters forced my to alter the soundtrack.  Fortunately Mike was able to quickly mix me up a new soundtrack that I could easily switch into the movie, but it was so much better with the original music.

(On a side note, The Battle of Evermore syncs up really well with the Battle of the Last Alliance in the intro to Peter Jackson's Fellowship of the Ring.)


Every Breath You Take (Stalker Music Video)
Directed by Cameron McCuish

This was Cameron's individual Project for Video Production 1.  Cameron actually shot Mike's lip sync on the same day that we were filming Donna's individual project.  We didn't really have a script for this, as it was pretty much Cameron and us making things up as we went along.  Probably one of the reasons why Cameron decided to do this for his movie was because of some creepy death-stares I gave him while we were filming previous projects. Apparently I can be pretty creepy when I want to.  I also started a running gag where I would occasionally flap my arms and make squawking noises while we were shooting this film when I thought that a particular shot was done, or I messed up my lines.  I ended up ruining at least a couple good shots that way.  Yay, me...


Past Tense

Directed by Michael Racine

Our group project for Video Production 1.  This was the biggest movie we made in that semester, and of all the movies we did, probably took the longest to put together.  I wrote the screenplay for this one, which jokingly got me a bit of a reputation in our group for giving myself the simplest lines.  It was pretty fun to make, and we pretty much designed it so that we could experiment with a couple special effects, such as greenscreen and transporter effects.  The best special effect that we dad in the movie was actually near the beginning of the movie, where we used the natural motion blur of fast moving objects to disguise a black wine box for a video camera.  I'm surprised that nobody really picks that up until we point it out to them.

During the first semester, our group got to learn each other's strengths and areas of expertise, which really helped us to put out some quality work in the second semester.  Mike was undoubtedly contributed the most to this group, as he already had a decent amount of skill in film-making, as well as access to a lot of professional gear.  His official role was Director of Photography for Semester 2.  Cameron was able to quickly pick up technical information from Mike, and ended up being our group's editor and 2nd cameraman.  Donna's eye for getting everything just right made her the ideal choice for directing, as she made sure we had at least two perfect takes of every shot.  Since there wasn't a writer position in the second semester, I ended up in the official role producer, as I had the most time available to me where I could handle details and keep everyone coordinated with one another.  Another major reason as to why I ended up as the producer was because it allowed me to spend more time in front of the camera, because for some reason, I had the most talent and enthusiasm for acting in the group.

It's a shame that Donna hasn't put her individual projects on youtube yet, because she was able to get some of the best acting out of all of us.  Probably my best work as an unprofessional untrained actor was in her videos.  I'll keep poking her every couple months until she uploads her stuff.

Stay tuned for 2nd Semester.  We get better at this, trust me.

Alright, so where were we?

I managed to find a job for July/August painting houses, so that means I'll be able to get back to blogging in my off hours.  I'll try to make a new post twice a week, most likely trying to maintain a schedule of Thursdays and Sundays, as I will most likely have the most content and time on my hands.

So far, my board game review has received the most attention and positive feedback of all my posts, getting reposted by Lost Atlantis Games may have helped with that.  While board gaming is not my biggest hobby, I think I'll try to put more of these up there, assuming my gaming group can get a steady supply of new and interesting games.  I probably won't be reviewing board games that are already staples of most board game groups, such as Settlers of Cataan, Munchkin, Ticket to Ride or Carcassone.  If you still really want to find out more about the aforementioned games, Wil Wheaton has a pretty good web series called Tabletop, where he plays board games with other celebrities within the geek community.  

I probably won't post another D&D 5E recap until the playtest is over, in order to deliver a summary statement on what my thoughts on the game and where it stands in relation to previous editions of D&D and tabletop RPGs as a whole.  While I am involved in multiple Tabletop Roleplaying games at the moment, I don't think my blog is the best venue for posting recaps of sessions.  Again, if you want to see that stuff, you'll probably want to check my main group's forums, here.  However, if our group is trying out a new system for the first time, or I have something big and long to say about RPGs that I want to share with people both inside and outside the group, I'll be putting that up here as well.

I've stared to develop an idea for a board game in my mind, so I may be putting some of the details on here, depending on how/if it develops.  There's also been some talk in my group about working on a card game that we dreamed up the concept for as a group, and that may get further mention on the blog as well.

I'll also be putting up links to some of my digital artwork and youtube videos from when I was taking Video Production at UFV.  You'll probably be seeing some of that on Thursday.

I'll close with a couple shout out to a couple of my friends' blogs.  The first, is Ryan Domingo's Blog, What I Mean By "Hmm...".  His blog is what really insprired me to create my own.  He's been trying to maintain a posting rate of 1/day, and has been doing a decent job at that so far.  The content that he covers is quite different from my own, and largely focuses on music and movie reviews, as well as sharing his explorations regarding his development as a unique individual.  The other, is Fox Tails and Phoenix Down, which is where James Abrahams and his wife, Jacelyn, occasionally post bits and pieces from their life.  The overall gaming related content has decreased as of late, but that's understandable, as James is married now, and gaming has become a less significant factor in his life.  He is still trying to keep gaming as a regular aspect of his lifesyle, and is currently running a Warhammer campaign for our group.  However, his schedule is much busier as compared to other people in my close circle of friends, so he is typically unavailable for more spontaneous events.  James still has a passion for Lego on a hobbyist level, and is has been making some pretty rad things as of the past year.  Keep an eye on his blog in case he shares any of his creations on it.

I started this post, expecting it to be a quick "hey guys, I'm back!" but it looks like I managed to fit a fair bit of content in here after all.

Gone hunting. Be back in 2 weeks!

I've come to the realization that my current state of joblessness between the Winter and Fall semesters means my free time would be better spent pursuing a job that can earn me a steady income for the next two months than working on my blog and other creative pursuits.  I do have a fallback position lined up, however it is not really suited to my skills and personality.  I'll probably only be silent for a couple weeks at the worst, so you probably won't even miss me before then.

When I get back, you can expect to see another D&D 5e play test report, and I'll also begin posting some of my own creative work on here for people to see.

On a related note, does anyone know of any job openings that involve customer service?

Board Game Review: Panic Station

The other day I took a trip up to Lost Atlantis Games, located at C3 - 32386 Fletcher Avenue in Mission (The website is fairly new, and not every game that he has in stock is represented yet).  This is an awesome place to go for great Board Games.  The owner, Darrell, is an awesome guy and possesses an almost contagious sense of enthusiasm and passion for board games, which, in my opinion, is the best reason for going into the business of selling board games.  He has a vast knowledge of many different board games, and does a pretty good job of keeping a finger on the pulse of the board game industry.  He even stocks a handful of very rare titles that are almost impossible to acquire in North American markets.  In addition to his regular stock, Darrell also has an extra shelf full of different games from his personal collection which he is willing to open up and show off and demonstrate the mechanics in order to help give players a good idea of how the games play.  His eventual goal is to grow the business to a point where he can relocate to a larger store that could provide a larger stock of games and have extra tables so people can try out games before and after they make their purchase.  At the moment the store is rather small, occupying the space of a single office, and can at most fit up to six customers at a time.  I really hope his business succeeds, as the Abbotsford/Mission area needs a good board game store like Lost Atlantis.

On this particular trip, Darrell showed me a handful of games that all looked quite intriguing, and would all likely be well received by those that I regularly play with.  All the games I mention here were all games that Darrell had just gotten in recently, and are not on the website yet at the time of my writing this.

There was Quarriors: An interesting hybrid between a deck building game, and a dice game, with a monster battling game  à la Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh.  Another Game was Space Alert:, a real-time cooperative board game where the players assume the roles of the crew of an Spaceship exploring the final frontier, and having to react to events as they occur as they occur as narrated by soundtracks that feature shipwide alerts and blaring red-alert klaxons.  There was also Lord of the Rings: Nazgul, an intriguing twist on the typical games that feature the epic struggle between good and evil from Tolkien's masterpiece novels.  Instead of the playing Frodo, Gandalf, Aragorn, or any of the other heroes from the story, the players get the play the black robed ringwraith servants of Sauron, working to bring about the defeat the free peoples of Middle Earth and cover the land in a second darkness before the ringbearer reaches Mount Doom.  Dungeon Petz also looked pretty awesome, as it had the hilarious theme of raising and breeding monsters to sell to evil overlords of various tastes for them to put in their dungeons.

The game I eventually settled on was Panic Station.  The reason that this game stood out to me was that it was a sci-fi thriller game, which was designed to evoke a feel similar to the movies from the Alien franchise, including the most recent addition, Prometheus, which the majority of our group had seen and thoroughly enjoyed.  There are some differences of course, but these make for a more interesting game.

The players are playing a group of human troopers and their loyal android companions as they explore an abandoned military base, each player is gets 1 human and 1 android to control.  Humans wield flamethrowers, androids wield guns.  Of course, the base is not entirely abandoned as the players will quickly find out.  It has fallen host to an infestation of alien parasites!  The only way stop the aliens from overrunning the base is by reaching the alien hive, hidden in the bowels of the station and destroying it.  With Fire!  A player needs to have three tanks of fuel in their inventory to provide adequate juice to power their flamethrowers and destroy the hive, and each player already begins play with a tank of fuel and a random item.  

Now with a team of 4-6 players, the most immediate thought is to trade all of the fuel to one player right away so that they can go and destroy the hive.  Easy right?  No.  As  you explore the station (rooms are cards that are randomly drawn, and then placed on the map as the players explore the station) in search of both the hive and new gear, one of the players will inevitably become host to the alien parasite, and will begin working against the humans, trying to infect their former teammates and keep them from obtaining their goal.  The way that the infected go about infecting other humans is by trading infection cards in a secret trade that must occur when a player enters a room with 1 or more characters belonging to another player (each player starts with three infection cards, which they cannot trade until they become infected) the only way that the humans can defend themselves from infection is by trading their fuel to the infected at the same time that an infection card is being traded to them.  The infected gets to keep the fuel, but the infection is nullified.  So the only way to survive infection is by trading your means to win the game, and if the infected end up with all the fuel, and the humans have no way of getting more, the game is practically over.  

The humans can try to destroy the infected using their androids' guns, however, the infected still have access to their inventory, as they did when they were on the human side, and so, are able to hold their own.

My group ended up playing through twice over, and each time that we played, the infected ended up winning by whittling the humans down to one or two people without enough fuel to be able to win.  

While it is understandable that we took about three times longer than the 30-40 minutes posted on the box, as we were all just learning how to play for the first time, the second time around still took us well over an hour.  I think that's more of a reflection of our group's playstyle, rather than an inaccuracy on the game's part., as my group seems to enjoy the amount of intrigue going on around the table.  The infected players did a good job of operating under cover and throwing misdirection around being thrown around, so the other players were often unsure of which players were and were not infected until it was too late for them to save themselves.

When I bought the game, I also bought a survival mini-expansion which added a handful of new equipment cards to add a little extra content to the game.  Included among these cards was the antidote, which was a very interesting card, as it could be used to cure a player from their infection.  The only problem was that the antidote does not protect the trader from being infected themselves, so such a trade is likely to merely switch which players are infected.  The only real use for the antidote is as a self-sacrifice gambit where the targeted infected happens to have a stockpile of gas from either before they became infected or from previous infection attempts, and having been cured of the infection, are then able to torch the hive and win the game.  

In terms of difficulty, the game seems to be weighted in the favor of the infected players, so it is quite difficult for the uninfected humans to actually win.  The game comes with some optional rules to adjust the difficulty, such as decreasing the infection cards each player has, allowing the host infected to use their host card as an infection card, or changing the amount of gas cans needed to burn the hive.  Some other ideas that we proposed were to have killed players return their inventory to the equipment draw deck (the deck has a tendency to run out by the late game), or to allow the antidote to provide defense against infection to the person trading it.

As a whole, I'd say that this game succeeds at bringing across the feel of a science fiction thriller movie in the form of a board game.  If you liked movies from the Alien series, or even Invasion of the Body Snatchers, I would definitely recommend this game.

D&D 5E playtest impressions: session 2 - Clerical Errors

Since we had another session of the D&D 5E playtest adventure, I'll be posting another recap of the session along with any additional discoveries or impressions that I got.  This session was a bit shorter than the previous one, and there were fewer initial discoveries.  However, there was one small detail about the rules that we discovered and had a major effect on how we were playing the game.  I will go into detail on this discovery during the session recap, and yes, this post's subtitle is, in fact, a pun that relates to this discovery.

Recap and In-game discoveries.

Having cleared out the Kobolds from their cave, the Adventurers set off at about midmorning to slaughter the  residents of one of the other caves.  They were intimidated by the general aura of death and decay emanating from the second cave they approached, and opted to try another one first.  The Dwarf Cleric noticed that one of the other caves had seemed to be dug out by goblins fairly recently, so they decided to try see what was behind cave number three.

Rounding the first corner, they managed to get the jump on a goblin hallway patrol, killing most of them before they could react.  The remaining one gave a shout of alarm, and ran around another corner.  The Rogue and Wizard immediately gave chase, and found themselves in a room similarly that was, similarly to the kobold common room, filled to the brim with 22 goblins.  The goblins had also managed to take advantage of the alarm to hire a mercenary Ogre from an adjacent cave.  The wizard cast sleep on the goblins in the room.  However, unlike the room with the Kobolds, a few more of them were able to resist, and the Ogre was merely slowed.  The remaining goblins were also a lot more clever than the kobolds were in the first session, and while some of them charged into combat, others stood back and attacked with shortbows, while yet a few others, went about waking their enchanted buddies.  Under normal circumstances, the situation would have been bad enough to have required the party to flee the cave, and develop an alternate strategy, however, we were following an improper understanding of the rules, which I will now go into detail on.

As is foreshadowed in the title of today's recap and impressions, we made a bit of a mistake with how we interpreted the Dwarf Cleric's Defender Feat.  The way the feat is described in the text is as follows:

While you are using a shield, when a creature within 5 feet of you is attacked, as a reaction you can give the attacker disadvantage on the attack.

The way this we interpreted this for the first session-and-a-half was that as long as the other party members were adjacent to him, incoming attacks would be at a disadvantage (roll twice, take the lower result).  We realized that there must be something wrong with either the rules or how we understood them when we were over halfway through the combat with the 22 goblins and their Ogre pal, and the party was able to hold their own.  When I asked the Cleric to read out the exact wording of the feat, the word "reaction" rang a bell in my mind.  In a previous 4th Edition campaign, we had a moment where we had to look up exactly what was meant by reactions and opportunity attacks, and I recall that before that there was some confusion in some of the players minds in terms of how exactly those worked.  Sure enough, when I looked up "reactions" in the How to Play document, I found this little revelation:

When you take a reaction, you can't take another one until the start of your next turn.

So unless stated otherwise, the cleric can only grant disadvantage on one incoming attack to an ally per turn. After that, the rest of the fight became a bit more dangerous for the players, as they were actually taking hits from time to time.

While we didn't retcon the entire fight, I did retcon the last round of goblin attacks, and resumed the combat from there with a better understanding of the game mechanics.  Now that the goblins were reduced to 13, the fight was still manageable, but now the players were actually taking some hits.  The Wizard and Rogue were actually forced to fall back a bit after having taken a few hits.  In the end, the heroes emerged bloodied, yet victorious.

They opted to return to town to restock supplies and spend some of their hard-earned treasure.  There was a small bit of rp, involving a surly innkeeper who gave them the stink-eye for paying their 1 gold each for room and board in 100 coppers each, as well as a drinking contest between the two Dwarves and the Elf (The fighter won, of course).  The next morning they bought a healing kit, a handful of health potions, and some armor before setting out for day three of their adventure.

They returned to the goblin cave to find that the goblins inside had moved out in the party's absence, so they decided to try yet another cave.

Entering the fourth cave, they came across a row of severed heads, of various races, placed in little niches along the wall.  The elf spotted that one of the heads was not, in fact, a severed head at all, but the head of an orc lookout that was watching the entrance through a tiny hole in the wall.  The retreated back to just outside the entrance to the cave, and within a few moments, were charged by a band of eight orcs.  The wizard did some serious damage to the entire group of them with his Burning Hands spell, and the group was able to handle them with minimal difficulty.

Summary Impressions
The fact that we did not understand the rules may have had an impact on our impressions of the first session. So on that note, remember that unless you have an ability that states otherwise, you can only make one reaction per turn.

We still hate how many different denominations in currency there are.  Having to nickel and dime how much money the party is getting as loot is a real hassle, and wastes time that could be spent doing actual adventuring.

Also, due to the fact that we are playing with pregenerated characters and do not have access to any character creation rules yet, we don't have a clear idea yet of how the mechanics handle the "Ivory Tower" design philosophy (one of the major things that I dislike about D&D).  However, given that starting combat feats are tied to themes that help show how the feats are intended to be used, it seems like they are trying to make the game easier for less combat mechanics oriented players to build decent characters from the get-go rather than having feats and skills that are pretty much newb traps.

Edit:
I forgot to restate my fascination with how fast the combat seems to be flowing compared to previous iterations of the system.  I'm going to try running the next session with a battle map to see how fast things are when you are actually moving units around in a physical space.

D&D 5e playtest impressions

This being the first post on this blog, I would normally tell you all about myself and what you would expect to find here, but for the time being, I'll just post whatever I want to post.  I'll be adding some of my art and videos at some point in the near future, so people can take a gander.  In the meantime, I'll dump this massive wall of text that I spent an entire morning on last week.


I also posted this massive wall of text on the Wizards of the Coast board for Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition playtest experiences. This reflects my own thoughts as DM for the first session of playtesting, as well as the impressions that I received from the Players.

Pre-play impressions
Starting off, we noticed a few things that this game seemed to mix and match a number of elements of what previous editions of D&D were trying to do. The magic system for wizards and clerics were reverted back to the Vancian system, similarly to how they had been in pre-forth edition. An interesting development with this, however, was that most spells that would be considered 1st level spells (magic missile, etc.) were melded in with the level 0 or "at will" cantrips. This meant that the wizard could pretty much always have at least a basic magical attack, such as magic missile to resort to. There was initially some worry, as this sparked fears of a retern to "linear fighters, quadratic wizards" balance issue, and whether or not that will become an issue in the full game or with power creep from future game expansion remains to be seen. It did however, increase the approachability for beginners toward certain classes, such as the fighter and rogue were largely self contained on their character sheets as to what they were capable of, and were more 

Additionally, a number of the stats that we were familiar with seemed to be character sheets of previous editions seemed to be absent. Reflexes, Fortitude, and Willpower seemed to be missing, along with specific places to put your skills, as they had become bonuses to certain attribute checks as defined by your background and occasionally your class. Overall, however, this surprisingly made the game easier to read and understand, as you weren't quite as swamped with numbers as with previous editions. It did make performing checks a little more work for the DM, as I had to declare both what attribute and skills were required for a particular check. However, my experience with a variety of previous iterations of D&D as well as other RPG systems meant that I could easily declare what should be added to a check off the top of my head. The character backgrounds were an interesting new addition to the core game, as it provided some extra personality and realism to the characters as their skillset was now a direct reflection of who they were before they joined the adventuring party. The fact that they turned some of the more mundane skills, such as trades, connections, and endurance into a simple feat that you get with your background was a good idea in my opinion, as those skills (with the possible exeption of endurance) are not going to come into play all that frequently in the middle of a dungeon crawl. 


In play experience. (if you don't want a gaming story, skip to the next section) 
We decided to try playing without a battle map, just to see if it could be done with the new system. I did, however, draw a simple dungeon map as they explored the caves, just to give them a rough idea of location and positioning, and that seemed to suit the party just fine.

When the party fist arrived in the canyon, they took a quick looked around at the large grassy area at the base of the canyon, searching for signs of monsters. With a high tracking roll, they discovered a wide variety of different humanoid monster tracks all over the place, going every which way between most of the caves. There was evidence of battles and bodies being dragged off the field of battle. Eventually, they decided to pick a cave and begin exploring it. Conveniently enough, they randomly picked the one with all the kobolds in it. 

The party rogue managed to notice the kobolds lurking near the entrance, preventing a surprise ambush, and the party made short work of them. The fighter really exelled here in melee combat, as regardless of whether he hit or missed with his axe, he was guaranteed to kill a kobold. The rogue managed to remain hidden behind a bush and picked off one or two with some thrown daggers (sneak attack wasn't much of a bonus, as she could kill a kobold with a single hit regardless. The wizard picked off one of them with a magic missile, and the cleric, while not getting as much raw killing power as the fighter, managed to fare decently, and disadvantage that he gave to enemies attacking the adjacent fighter proved to enable rather than make the fighter redundant. The kobolds, as expected were a cake walk, as this encounter was likely put in just to familiarize the players with basic principles of combat in D&D.

The adventurers then proceeded into the kobold cave, the dwarven cleric taking point. He managed to notice the pit trap and stop before he could fall in, and the group all attempted to jump the pit. Everyone in the party, exept for the Elf Wizard had enough strength to jump the pit without a running start, however, the Wizard needed a running start, as well as a quick change of direction without losing momentum. I decided that that would be a dextarity check to change direction at the last second. He failed, and ended up slipping and falling into the pit trap, alerting the kobolds and rats. The three party members at the top of the pit were able to fight off the rest of the kobolds With the cleric providing defense for the fighter and rogue, and the rogue was able to hide behind the cleric for the majority of the fight, while being able to quickly reach around him to stab the odd kobold in the face. The fighter was still the major damage dealer, but ended up taking a hit despite the extra defense provided by the cleric's shield. Meanwhile, the Wizard disbled the closing mechanism for the trapdoor, thus discouraging the rats from trying to cross, and trigger the pit trap with their combined weight. He also attempted to carve out some handholds to climb out using his magic missile, but the . 

With the kobolds defeated, the fighter and rogue tried dousing one of the kobolds in oil, lighting it on fire, and then throwing it at the rats on the other side of the pit. The fighter failed his throw check, throwing the flaming kobold into the pit, much to the irritation of the Elven wizard. There was some minor rp regarding the Wizard trying to shortchange the dwarves on the looted silver to reaffirm his elven superiority complex, only the cleric was entirely oblivious to this, but the fighter wasn't bothered enough to care, and the rogue was willing to let it slide for now, content in the knowledge that she could pretty much pick the wizard's pockets at any time. 

Content to leave the rats hissing and squeaking on the other side of the pit, the party journeyed on until they approached the kobold living quarters. The rogue snuck in, to take a better look, doing a quick headcount of all 48 of the kobolds in room, and reported back. Their solution was to set up a trail of crumbs from the rats to the kobold quarters, hoping that the rats would attack the kobolds, and hopefully give them enough of a distracion to even the odds a bit. The rogue set up the trail, and set up one of the planks in the guard nook to fall over the pit when hit with a rock, and everything seemed to go well, as the party managed to stay hidden around a corner while the rats followed the trail of crumbs to the kobold communal room. Unfortunately, the kobolds were not particularly bothered with a surprise visit from their pets, and a pair of them just shooed the rats back down the hallway. The party did sucessfuly ambush the two returning kobolds, reducing the amount in the big room by a small amount.

It was then that the Wizard pulled out his level 1 sleep spell, and knocked all but 6 of the 48 kobolds that were in the room unconscious. The kobolds were too stupid to try shaking the others awake, and were once again, made short work of. The wizard did, however, take enough damage to knock him down to 3hp. The party then proceeded to coup-de-gras the remaining sleeping kobolds in the room, including the whelps. And decided to cook up some rations and call it a day. There was some irritation, when they found out that they were unable to use their hit dice for recovery, as the dwarven cleric was lacking a healing kit. They didn't set up a proper watch either, and were consequently ambushed by the kobold chieftan who returned to find the party resting among the slaughtered remains of his tribe. He nearly killed the Wizard, and the Cleric and Fighter took some damage from him and his armed guards as well, but they all managed to survive. The rogue was, once again, able to remain hidden behind a heap of junk and only lost her sneak attack bonus once during the fight. They did, however succeed in killing the chieftain, and went back to sleep without setting up a watch again. This wasn't a major problem, as the kobolds that showed up during their long rest fled the caves at the sight of the mass slaughter. Waking up, the party looted the rest of the now abandoned cave, and people got money.
Hooray!

Observations from play.
The game doesn't really need as many denominations of currency at the base level, as it just makes counting up and dividing the money a tedious process and runs counter to spirit of simplification as shown by the majority of the alterations made to the new edition. 

While the game seems to be going back to traditional vancian magic, it seemed to be balanced for the most part, as the non-magic classes got really useful things that he can do even at first level, and with each level up, both the rogue and fighter get special abilities that only serve to make them more awesome. 

The only major balance issue that slightly bothered me was that the Wizard's sleep spell turned the encounter with the room of kobolds into a cakewalk, rather than a legitimately threatening encounter, and burning hands not only finished off the Kobold chieftain (didn't bother me that much, as he only had 4/44 hp left), but also all of his remaining guards. This wasn't a huge problem for me, as the encounter in the kobold common area was intended to be handled using clever thinking, and kobolds are already incredibly weak to begin with. I'm hoping that this won't become a major issue, as the Wizard will probably end up not being able to insta-kill enemies with his magic missile in the other caves, and will probably need to start using his more powerfull spells more judiciously. 

The fact that skills, attack power and defenses didn't automatically become more powerful with each level gained seemed like an interesting development, as it means that certain tasks and certain enemies can remain a potential challenge for the players for a greater amount of time. 

I am curious regarding whether most class abilities gained will increase in overall damage potential, as the HP was still increasing by 1dx/level. 

I also found it interesting that certain elements of d&d combat, such as opportunity attacks were left out of the core rules, but that makes sense, as it streamlines gameplay, and keeps the game rolling at a steady pace. We're probably still going to see opportunity attacks in some form, as they will probably be incorporated as an ability for at least one of the classes, so if you really love opportunity attacks, you probably won't be too disappointed. Additionally, if you really liked having 4e style powers as a martial class, I'm pretty sure there will be a way to swap out a class ability for powers. I also noticed that the 2/day bonus attack ability that the dwarf fighter got at level 2 looks suspiciously similar to an encounter power in terms of effect.

Overall, the party seems to be fairly balanced at low level, with each class being able to both feel unique as well as have their own time to shine, but I'm a little cautious about whether this will remain true in the full game when players will have access to higher levels and the ability to customize their characters