Gamesday - August 20th - Rolins Gaff

Descent - Tomb of Ice - Quest 2 - Cousin Durnog

Overlord - Violet
Heroes - Rolin, Dan, Douglas and Aaron

Violet enjoys playing the Overlord. More than playing the Hero. She finds that when she plays the Hero, others tend to dictate what her character should do. As the villian, she can do as she pleases.

In this quest the Heroes hearts have been stolen by a vengful giant of the Durnog clan, called Kanther. The hearts have been frozen in ice. In a week the heroes will die. Kanthar is strengthened by the hearts and is too strong to take on whilst the hearts are still frozen.

The giant starts in the first room with the heroes and as he is too strong to fight directly, he becomes weaker as the heroes hearts are freed, this effectively means that he chases and/or blocks the heroes in and around the dungeon.

We are a melee heavy party with no hero effective at ranged combat and only myself with magic. The dungeon itself as with most of the tomb of ice quests is quite small.

The game was tense and exciting and went to the wire again, in fact to the last few rolls. Violet needed to kill two characters in what turned out to be the final turn. Mine had 1 hit left, Douglas I think had two, and Violet rolled a few misses that turn too. But Dans character freed the last hearts by smashing the Ice they were entombed in, which inflicted enough wounds on the giant to kill him and end the quest.
Phew....great game, well played by all, and a good start to Games day.


When Darkness Comes - Scenario One - Out of the Frying Pan

This is a game from Twilight Creations, that has been never played, sitting on one shelf or another since I bought it many years ago. Its a Modern-Day Horror setting featuring of course all forms of undead.
The game system can be played with or without a Games Master. With and its a simple roleplaying game, without its a semi co-operative boardgame. We played it as the boardgame.

When Darkness Comes board is a tile-based and there are 15 of these tiles in the set. Each tile features a building, such as a school or store. So in each game the map board cofiguration will be different.

The first core set, called The Awakening, deals with the undead (zombies, mummies, vampires, etc). The objective of the game will depend on the scenario. Some may include finding and defeating a big bad guy, finding a certain object, defusing a bomb, etc. The characters (pre-generated or created) have 7 attributes with specialized skills.

 That will determine the amount of dice rolled for a skill check. The mechanic for skill checks is a poker variation instead of using straight high roll. Players try to get a ace high, one pair, 3 straight, 3 of a kind, 4 straight, etc.

The rules out of the box are without doubt...awful. However the Twilight Creations website has an updated rules set that I downloaded some days prior to Games Day. This set is essential to play.

The scenario objective was quite simple, kill as many undead as you can without inducing panic in the town. The players must co-operate to survive but the first to kill 5 undead or collect 30 victory points, wins the game. This creates the atmoshere of the game, help another player too much and they win, not help them and they die which lowers your own chance to survive.

Everyone apart from Rolin enjoyed the game. Rolin felt it was too random in that events, encounters, weapons and allies are determined by drawing disks from a bag which are placed unknown on each tile when the map tile is moved onto. This could mean that a building might have a weapon in it or a nasty zombie. A weapon is essential for most characters, and if you do not find one quickly you are screwed....or are you?? You could always nick the weapon from one of the others....

This also was the basic starter scenario, which can be changed anyway. Why not have the players start with a weapon next time we play. I think the game has potential and I found it fun and amusing to play. It encourages players to make up the story as you go along, as encounters are revealed.

I eventual made the 5 kills, though Violet was accumulating victory points and nearly made the 30 required too.

The game comes with some unpainted minitures, which I intend to paint and I will start to pimp it soon in other ways. Also there are expansions.....

Carcassonne

Last game of the day. Played with the River starting tiles. I won with the Farmers again. At the end of the game but before the farms and products were counted the victory points were as follows -

Douglas - 114 / Violet - 79 / Dan - 56 / Rolin - 49 / Aaron - 38

After the farms and products -

Douglas - 114 / Violet - 89 / Dan - 76 / Rolin - 121 / Aaron - 126

Rolin and I shared many of the farm points, but I clinched a few extra cities which gave me the win. A fun, interesting game as always.

An enjoyable Games Day all round. Violet as the Overlord and enjoying herself at it was the highlight for me.