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.

Descent - Journeys in the Dark - The Tomb of Ice

Quest One - Cauldron of Tears

OverLord - Violet

Heroes - Andrea, Gavin, Linda and Aaron

This is an interesting smallish quest. The first time that Gavin, Andrea and Linda had played the game and the first time that Violet had Overlorded against anyone other than me.

The basic story is that a Medusa aka "the Old Crone" has turned most of the villagers to stone, and they can be turned back to flesh by the Heroes killing her and using her magical iten the Cauldron of Tears.



After the intial scrapes with beastmen and lava beetles we came up against Shades, which having the stealth amd ghost ability proved difficult to kill, especially for my Melee based character.

The game lasted a long time (6 hours) considering the size of map, but it was most players first game. It went right to the wire. The heroes having only 1 conquest token remaining as they enered the lair of the Crone. However I used my Taunt ability (which forces most monsters to attack my charcter, which has the most armour and hit points), so that the others could eventually deal with her.

Apart from a few rules queries the game ran fairly smoothly and I look forward to the next. Violet makes for an interesting Overlord, and as her rules familarity grows so will her confidence and therefore i shall assume nastyiness!

ASL - Heroes at Leros - FT166

Pete and I continued this after a week break. The British push for the building objective whilst trying to stop the German reinforcements from reaching the building as well.

Helped with some good luck, which included the building defenders MMG breaking, I managed to get some units into the building to Close Combat a half squad defender with a leader. This turned into a melee. In Petes last turn he did not get any further units into the building and I broke the just rallied squad with some hero and leader directed fire. The melee ended up in mutal slaughter. The only survivors being my squad that had been prisioners.

My last turn, Pete failed to rally his broken squad in  the building. This left the building being denied to me wby an 8-0 leader. I advanced everything against him, and though the germans fired with everything to stop my boys from getting adjacent to the 8-0, enough did to get a 6 to 1 CC on him, and kill him to win the building and the game. So a last die roll win.

I enjoyed the game but not the scenario itself. Though I won, it was through some errors in the scenario setup by Pete and throgh some good rolls at key times on my part. Pete put his foxholes adjacent to the building, which was outside his setup area. Neither of us twigged until turn 3, by then to late to shift them. These foxholes gratly assisted the British assault on the building. Without them I would have been shot to pieces.

I would give this scenario a poor rating as it does seem to be poorly designed in other places too.

A one star scenario.

ASL - Heroes at Leros - FT166

ATTACKER - British - Aaron Sibley
DEFENDER - German - Pete Phillips

November 1943. British are to attack and take the large building on level 4 on board 9. They have 5 turns to capture the building, and travel over half the board against elite Germans. The Germans end up with 11 squads, the British end up with 14. This scenario looks very tough on the British and the ROAR rating of 0 wins for the British and 4 for the Germans seems to suggest as such.

Pete and I played using VASL and Skype. The Intial setup -

However I queried the dummies being in crags and open ground, and Pete had incorrectly placed those units. There was some minor adjustment, but the defence was essential the same. After three British turns and some weird rolls on the dice the situation is as such -

The British have cleared a path to the building and are within a hex of it with some of their forces. German reinforcements arrive. They will need to face British firepower to reinforce the buildings defenders of 1 squad and a half squad.

Situation near building after the German turn 3 -

We had to stop at that point with two turns to go. Looks like a German win as the building must be controlled.

Not a bad scenario, but not a patch on the prior one FT165.

Escape From Colditz

Germans - Aaron Sibley
British - Violet Willis
Polish - Rebecca Smith
Americans - Cameron Sibley

Bought this game at a boot fair some years ago for a single pound. Been meaning to play it for a while and I took it out of storage today, as I have fond memories of it from when I was a child.

We agreed on a time limit of 2.5 hours and set the alarm on my phone to go off after this time had past. The first allied player to make two escapes in that time would win. If not then the Germans win. I made a rules mistake as I used the guards to block the doors, but I noticed this error after about 15 minutes of playing, so I agreed that when the alarm went on the phone, that the allies could have an extra 30 minutes.

Also there was no looking at the time either, so this created a very tense atmosphere as no one was sure how much time remained.

The Allied players quite quickly picked up the essential civilian equipment required, but once they started gathering the escape equipment (rope, wire cutters, passes and keys), I kept on slowing them down with arrests inside the castle courtyards.

Rebecca finally managed to get one POW out and though I chased he managed to escape. Cameron and Violet cooperated on the chapel tunnel as the alarm went on the phone. I reset the alarm giving the Allies the further thirty minutes as agreed. I also agreed that once that alarm went too that I would press the snooze button, which would give them an extra ten minutes, to make up for rules reading, tea breaks, loo dashes etc...

The arrests kept racking up, I captured Violets tunnel escapee, but just then Cameron gave Rebecca a move to card, which allows a POW piece to move directly to a room on the map...the alarm went, snooze button pressed. Rebecca rolls the dice and her POW just moved by the card clears the walls using rope. Then Violets go, then mine...Rebecca wanting everyone to hurry up. My guard gets to within one space of Rebecca's escapee. Cameron then goes and is nearly free with one of his POW's.

Rebecca's go... She is 16 spaces away from the escape point....she rolls double six followed by a 4, exactly the roll required for a deserved win...with a few minutes to spare!

I really enjoyed the game, it had a good sense of theme and mounting tension. We made some rules mistakes which we will not make next time, but everyone had fun playing an old classic.

Arkham Horror - The King in Yellow

Great Old One - Shub-Niggurath
Investigators - Joe Diamond , Sister Mary - Aaron Sibley
                    - Bob Jenkins, Kate Winthrop - Rebecca Smith

Played with the Tattered King Herald and treating the King in Yellow play as a touring performance. This means that the intial encounters and mythos are exclusively based on the King in Yellow expansion. This makes for a tough game.

Arkham takes up alot of table space, and the time taken to play the game is extensive. This one took nearly 6 hours to play. Rebecca and I played two investigators each, as 4 investigators is the optimum amount.

Shub - Niggurath was within one space of activating, the play was in its second act (if the third act is seen, the investigators lose the game) and the citizens of Arkham were being terrorized. However the last gate on the board was closed for a tight, but satisifying win. Rebecca became the First Citizen of Arkham and our overall score was 16.

I was intending to do this solitaire, but Rebecca asked to play and as it is a cooperative game, she did not need to read any rules. She seemed to enjoy the game, got into her characters and played well. Looking forward to doing this again.

ASL - For Honor Alone - ASL 82

End of German Turn 2 Movement

12 Squads of German infantry arrive on the west edge, with the aim of slowing down the French turn 2 and 3 reinforcements. French HMG is malfunctioned in the building.

The French forward trench line is reached..