One of the games I picked up in my vacation was the recently released The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey by Reiner Knizia, published by Cryptozoic. The game box said "1 to 4 players," which drew my attention. There are some informative reviews at BoardGameGeek and I thought it would be both an interesting solo game and something to attract new gamers.
Essentially, this is a cooperative game where players roll dice to complete goals on the board. This has led to comparisons with Elder Sign, although I am not sure yet about how close the two games are. Dice may be allocated to goals and unallocated dice are re-rolled once. Players also have two types of cards they may spend to complete goals: company cards represent the dwarves and Bilbo and may be recovered in some situations. Resource cards are gone when used. Failing to complete any goal pushes you towards losing the game. Finishing all the goals on the two game boards, which are played sequentially, is required to win. There is a sizable random element in the roll of dice and in event cards that are drawn at the beginning of every turn but the game still offers significant choices such as which dice to allocate or re-roll, when to spend each resource and which goals to complete first.
My first solo game ended very quickly, as I was too stingy with my resources and lost the game while completing only four goals on the first board. On my second game I managed to get to the second board, but lost the game with two goals to complete. Lesson learned: the card that allows you to ignore an event is a very important resource! I finished my third game, with a total of 18 victory points -- although it felt like I was going to lose again with a couple of goals to complete.
Conclusion
I liked my first solo matches of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. It is easy to forget to draw an event card every turn as you are considering your options. Now I have to play this with more players to see how the cooperative aspect of the game works, especially regarding the use of the shared resource cards. I am also curious to see how the expansions will work with the base game.
Sunday, July 21, 2013
Saturday, July 20, 2013
A quick vacation update
I'm back from a 10-day vacation trip to London, Bath (and also a quick visit to Chawton)... lots of good memories and I hope to go back there some day.
I also managed to visit some game shops (most notably Orc's Nest) so I burned most of my gaming budget for the year in physical products, instead of the PDF ones I can more readily get from Brazil. These include products I learned about through Solo Nexus, like Rory's Story Cubes, Elder Sign and Advanced Fighting Fantasy, along with boardgames like Pandemic (the revised 2013 edition) and Twilight Struggle.
Hopefully, these new toys will push me back into updating this blog :)
I also managed to visit some game shops (most notably Orc's Nest) so I burned most of my gaming budget for the year in physical products, instead of the PDF ones I can more readily get from Brazil. These include products I learned about through Solo Nexus, like Rory's Story Cubes, Elder Sign and Advanced Fighting Fantasy, along with boardgames like Pandemic (the revised 2013 edition) and Twilight Struggle.
Hopefully, these new toys will push me back into updating this blog :)
Saturday, June 8, 2013
Dino Hunt
Today I picked up a box of the old Dino Hunt game by Steve Jackson Games. Designed as a sort of "edutainment" game for kids, it gets you traveling through time to capture dinosaurs. The cards bring some scientific information about each dinosaur besides its name and picture.
Dino Hunt also includes a solo variant where you try to reach the highest score in ten game turns. Different dinosaurs have varying point values and to capture you roll one die. Roll low and you can have various negative effects. I particularly liked the fact that each dinosaur card has its own table of outcomes for the roll of the dice. So for instance, rolling a 1 for a small creature might just cost a bit of energy, while a large one might end your turn prematurely. You also draw a special card at the beginning of each turn, acting like a random event system.
As I played a solo game, I realized that the mechanics could be adapted to the theme of academic publishing, although I agree with anyone that dinosaurs are a much cooler subject. It is just that the trend to "publish or perish" has been catching up really quickly here in Brazil so I guess I cannot help thinking about it. Instead of a team of time-traveling archaeologists, the player would be the head of a research lab at a university somewhere. Instead of dinosaurs, the cards would represent academic journals, having an energy cost and impact factor. The hunt roll would become the peer review roll... maybe in my next vacation I can sketch something along these lines.
Dino Hunt also includes a solo variant where you try to reach the highest score in ten game turns. Different dinosaurs have varying point values and to capture you roll one die. Roll low and you can have various negative effects. I particularly liked the fact that each dinosaur card has its own table of outcomes for the roll of the dice. So for instance, rolling a 1 for a small creature might just cost a bit of energy, while a large one might end your turn prematurely. You also draw a special card at the beginning of each turn, acting like a random event system.
As I played a solo game, I realized that the mechanics could be adapted to the theme of academic publishing, although I agree with anyone that dinosaurs are a much cooler subject. It is just that the trend to "publish or perish" has been catching up really quickly here in Brazil so I guess I cannot help thinking about it. Instead of a team of time-traveling archaeologists, the player would be the head of a research lab at a university somewhere. Instead of dinosaurs, the cards would represent academic journals, having an energy cost and impact factor. The hunt roll would become the peer review roll... maybe in my next vacation I can sketch something along these lines.
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Crowdfunding rewards and other updates
About a week ago I got an update from the Deluxe Tunnels and Trolls kickstarter saying that some of the rewards like postcards, bookmarks and such had been mailed to the backers. "Oh, cool, in a month or so they should arrive," I thought. Surprisingly, I got them today, twelve days from the postage date!
In other news, Fields of War has released a FAQ for their Border War game, of which I wrote a short review/playtest. The FAQ is written like the letters section of a magazine, which makes it fun to read.
In other news, Fields of War has released a FAQ for their Border War game, of which I wrote a short review/playtest. The FAQ is written like the letters section of a magazine, which makes it fun to read.
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Review: Raptorz
After the conversation in the comments for the previous post, I decided to finish the post about Raptorz that has been sitting in my drafts list for about one year.
Raptorz is a game by Rebel Minis in a partnership with Two Hour Wargames. It is meant to be played with the 15mm figures from that company, but for now I have been playing with MapTool, and also with the pieces from the free Patrol: Lost print and play boardgame. The PDF version (which I own) consists of a rulebook and a set of room and corridor tiles, created by PaperMakeIt.
The game uses some mechanics from other products from Two Hour Wargames. Therefore, people familiar with Rep, reaction tests etc. will be at home. One important difference is the usage of a more abstract movement system, where figures move from section to section rather than measuring inches. Sections can be rooms or corridors and some abstraction must be adopted about them, too, especially when fights happen on narrow corridors.
Here is a shot of a game playing with the Patrol: Lost pieces. Note that in Raptorz, you set up the whole board before play. In this picture, I was using a team of three soldiers: leader, marine with rifle and marine with squad automatic weapon. The dice mark the possible enemy forces (PEFs) and their Rep. I had to decide beforehand which tiles belonged to each of the sectors 1-6 referenced by the rules.
Another shot a few turns later. Up to this point I had met two PEFs but both resolved into nothing but nerves. Then I rolled doubles three times in a row, thus spawning three new PEFs. One of them appeared behind my marines, just as they approached a dead end... talk about ambushes!
At this point, I thought it would be better to start moving back to the entrance, even if I had not scouted the whole map. My soldiers fired at the PEF that had appeared behind them, and it was resolved as six raptorz!
Although my soldiers were able to defeat this group of enemies, they lost one marine in a later battle and eventually were overwhelmed when another PEF resolved as 10 raptorz. Still, a fun game that lasted around one hour.
The rules for Raptorz are only seven pages long, which means you can start playing in minutes. The downside is that the text is very, very concise, and requires some interpretation (which may vary according to the experience of the reader.) For instance, here are the conventions I've adopted:
1. The game states that PEFs are resolved only when they share a section with marines. However, some weapons may fire up to two sections away. Therefore, if a marine opens fire against a PEF, it is first resolved. However, a figure or group that fires when active does not move. Also, if the PEF resolves into raptorz, the whole group may move when next active -- there is no roll to check how many enter the room.
2. There is a recovery table that seems to allow a marine who went out of the fight to regain consciousness. However, it is not mentioned in the rules text. The way I play is, if a marine goes OOF but does not suffer other hits until his next activation, he gets to roll on the recovery table.
3. If a marine is in a Confrontation against multiple aliens, I resolve all of them before carrying out a Fall Back result. If any of the aliens reaches melee range, the marine cannot fall back.
4. If raptorz and marines remain at the same room when a turn ends, I run a new confrontation test when either group activates again. I use the confrontation test #1 if the marines activate or confrontation test #2 if the raptorz go first.
Raptorz is a game by Rebel Minis in a partnership with Two Hour Wargames. It is meant to be played with the 15mm figures from that company, but for now I have been playing with MapTool, and also with the pieces from the free Patrol: Lost print and play boardgame. The PDF version (which I own) consists of a rulebook and a set of room and corridor tiles, created by PaperMakeIt.
The game uses some mechanics from other products from Two Hour Wargames. Therefore, people familiar with Rep, reaction tests etc. will be at home. One important difference is the usage of a more abstract movement system, where figures move from section to section rather than measuring inches. Sections can be rooms or corridors and some abstraction must be adopted about them, too, especially when fights happen on narrow corridors.
Here is a shot of a game playing with the Patrol: Lost pieces. Note that in Raptorz, you set up the whole board before play. In this picture, I was using a team of three soldiers: leader, marine with rifle and marine with squad automatic weapon. The dice mark the possible enemy forces (PEFs) and their Rep. I had to decide beforehand which tiles belonged to each of the sectors 1-6 referenced by the rules.
Another shot a few turns later. Up to this point I had met two PEFs but both resolved into nothing but nerves. Then I rolled doubles three times in a row, thus spawning three new PEFs. One of them appeared behind my marines, just as they approached a dead end... talk about ambushes!
At this point, I thought it would be better to start moving back to the entrance, even if I had not scouted the whole map. My soldiers fired at the PEF that had appeared behind them, and it was resolved as six raptorz!
Although my soldiers were able to defeat this group of enemies, they lost one marine in a later battle and eventually were overwhelmed when another PEF resolved as 10 raptorz. Still, a fun game that lasted around one hour.
The rules for Raptorz are only seven pages long, which means you can start playing in minutes. The downside is that the text is very, very concise, and requires some interpretation (which may vary according to the experience of the reader.) For instance, here are the conventions I've adopted:
1. The game states that PEFs are resolved only when they share a section with marines. However, some weapons may fire up to two sections away. Therefore, if a marine opens fire against a PEF, it is first resolved. However, a figure or group that fires when active does not move. Also, if the PEF resolves into raptorz, the whole group may move when next active -- there is no roll to check how many enter the room.
2. There is a recovery table that seems to allow a marine who went out of the fight to regain consciousness. However, it is not mentioned in the rules text. The way I play is, if a marine goes OOF but does not suffer other hits until his next activation, he gets to roll on the recovery table.
3. If a marine is in a Confrontation against multiple aliens, I resolve all of them before carrying out a Fall Back result. If any of the aliens reaches melee range, the marine cannot fall back.
4. If raptorz and marines remain at the same room when a turn ends, I run a new confrontation test when either group activates again. I use the confrontation test #1 if the marines activate or confrontation test #2 if the raptorz go first.
Conclusion
Raptorz is another alternative for a quick and simple solo or cooperative "dungeon hack" with a sci-fi theme. There is room for experimentation -- for instance, trying to add ranged enemies, traps and random events. The room-to-room movement keeps the game fast and allows playing with little regard to scale of miniatures.
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