Five of us this week with an excellent attempt at
this time with the newly acquired expansion
by FryxGmes
So corporation and prelude cards were dealt out, this was what we picked:
Player
DA
LP
MA
MC
PH
Corporation
Prelude 1
Prelude 2
Prelude 3
MA got an extra prelude card because of his corporation.
We drafted our starting cards this time and play then got underway.
When we normally play this, the heat goes right up, so we concentrated on other aspects and the heat didn’t go up. Oxygen was the first to be achieved with water a close second. Venus didn’t enter into it, which was a pain for MC who had invested heavily in Venus.
At the end of the game, the game ended.
Mars got Terraformed! – We have proof:
Final scores
DA (Blue): 83
LP (Red): 84
MA (Yellow): 55
MC (Black): 47
PH (Green): 59
Biolord Walsh held off buying non-affiliated cards too long before realising that some cards are better than none. Meanwhile Valken had amassed a pretty unbeatable armada, which was, indeed, unbeatable.
LP played as white
MC played as purple
The scenario today was
Our hapless space heroes had barely taken a few space steps before the scenario reached tier 3, effectively nobbling us both harshly.
However, LP was able to limp his way to a treasure and limp back to the escape pods without too much fuss.
MC sort of floundered about not moving much at all, got a treasure and then got pummelled into the ground.
To round of the evening we had a crack at
by Space Cowboys
this time using the Orient expansion from
Basically MC won in the end.
A delightful, if unexpected evening, thank you LP for making a nice mistake (he was jet-lagged so no giving him a hard time about it).
Three players tonight.
The most voted for game with all of 1 vote was
by Repos Production
Cards were dealt out, drafted, played and discarded right the way through the game until its conclusion.
Which was:
Player
DA
GN
MC
Army VPs
-2
12
3
Coin VPs
5
3
4
Monument VPs
10
10
13
Blue VPs
17
5
20
Orange VPs
7
0
0
Purple VPs
6
13
0
Green VPs
0
1
1
Total Score
43
44
41
The process was repeated with different monuments with the end result being:
MC Played as
GN played as
DA played as
Biolord Walsh was first to fall to the might of High Director Valken, leaving her and Overlord Newburg to slog it out. However, the High Director’s regenerative capabilities, coupled with the high number of Outposts meant that Newburg eventually succumbed to Valken’s might.
Horray for MC!
A warm welcome to GN as we embark on combat and conquest in the Kropulu sector with
by Fantasy Flight Games
DA played as the Terran Arcturus Mengsk
GN played as the Protoss Tassadar
MA played as the Terran James Raynor
MC played as the Zerg Queen Of Blades
PH played as the Zero Overmind
The various factions quickly started claiming their neighbouring planets with Raynor and Tassadar the first to come to blows.
The Queen of Blades benefited from quickly controlling 3VPs worth of conquest areas, but suffered from the lack of resources. Particularly once Raynor started his invasion of Abaddon.
As time went on, time quickly became approaching midnight, so various attempts to speed the game play up were made. If one action had no consequence to the subsequent player then play would continue while the faffing went on. This worked quite well but did result in two simultaneous battles taking place between Raynor vs Tassadar and The Overmind Vs Mengsk. The Queen of Blades took this photo while waiting for things to conclude:
Unfortunately for James Raynor, a series of losses left him with no active forces, and it was only through his Terran ability to move his last surviving base was he even able to stay in the game. As it happens, even if he had been eliminated, the end of the game had already been triggered.
With many factions meeting their special victory conditions Phase III came into being but two players beat the rest to the punch by having 15 Conquest Points.
At the game’s conclusion (at 00:15 am), The Queen Of Blades and Arcturus Mengsk both had 15 Conquest Points. However Mengsk, being the sly politician that he is, was able to secure more resources and so attained victory.
Well done DA.
Tassadar and The Overmind both had 11 Conquest Points and the remnants of James Raynor had 9.
Another excellent play of this game!
DA Orange
KV White
MC Purple
PH Blue
As the quad of quarrelsome questers quickly queried the quintessentially quietest routes. They spent an inordinate amount of time stumbling over cleaning bots and making an awful lot of noise. That as okay, though, because as fast as the Clank! built up, the Boss cards dutifully put it all in the bag. In the very first boss attach, the first row of the campaign card was filled causing widespread pain.
MC was first to access a computer and get a successful hack in. PH and DA managed to purchase the two teleportation chips, leaving the keys for KV and MC.
Once the second row of the campaign card filled up and the first of the bounty hunters joined the fray, things really became much more fraught. KV was first to leave the ship…by keeling over dead. MC made it safely off ship with the 10VP loot. DA was next to fall, not quite close enough to be rescued. This left PH with a final mad dash to the exit. Something he did eventually manage with the 20VP loot.
Final scores:
DA 33 #Deceased
KV 37 #Deceased
MC 77
PH 87
Well done PH!
Next up we battled it out amongst ourselves with:
by White Wizard Games
This time we each picked a Command Deck to start off with:
DA
KV
MC
PH
And so there was much flinging across the space table of space damage to one another with MC quickly being hammered down to 9 Authority before being pretty much forgotten about.
As the heavy-hitters hit each other heavily, slowly reducing their Authority levels, each punch became that much heavier.
DA was the first to fall, having being the greatest perceived threat by the table. This left MC the opportunity he was waiting for so he annihilated KV and PH in a single turn.
Well done MC!
Those command decks really give a new flavour to this game, and it was good.
On Friday 1st of June 2018, I returned to the UK Games Expo at the NEC in Birmingham.
I had a very specific list of things to get.
First up, I managed to get ahold of the Terraforming Mars expansion
which provides two alternative boards on which to play to increase game diversity.
Next up, I picked to the two Abyss expansions and
making Abyss a 5-player game with more stuff to do.
One particular item I really was hoping for was
thankfully I did find a copy, which I believe was the last one available in the entire Expo! Even one of the guys at the stall I purchased it from thought they’d already sold out of it (they only brought 4 copies). I then spotted it and didn’t let go.
Another expansion was for King Of Tokyo
so that all my monsters now have power cards, not just the ones from the expansions I’ve already picked up.
I then picked up a second expansion for Terraforming Mars:
which also allows the terraforming of Venus by using another terraforming tracker (this one’s not mandatory so shouldn’t extend the game time too much).
At the Dice Tower booth I picked up two promo cards:
Which was very nice. I even saw Tom Vasel in one of his hats.
After a little more wandering we stopped for lunch.
Then made our way to the DogEared Games booth, where I spotted the guy who sold me the StakBots decks last year. This year he got me interested in playing Colour Chess against his colleague.
After completely destroying him, we picked up a copy:
Back to awandering we spotted the Catan Sheep
Giant version games, including 7 Wonders, Ticket To Ride, Colt Express and Takenoko
We visited the good people at GeekNSon and picked up a couple of items.
The Wargaming section was most impressive, all those sets are amazing, particularly the Battle Of Hoth
During the wanderings I also picked up
and
The we once again passed this stand
and bought a copy.
In the Catan section we had a sit down to play
with two chaps called Gavin and Garath.
During the game we used our newly acquired GeekNSon Dice Tower
So many people came over to ask where we got it from.
Gavin won.
We did some more wandering and saw some stuff:
The family zone with games to be played on nearby tables.
The GeekNSon Crew:
And just a few games stalls:
The last game we picked up was
Shortly before it closed, we made our way out.
That was a lot of fun!
For a closer look at the things we picked up check up the video I did on the subject:
Four players this week.
While waiting for PH, we had just enough time for one round of
A nice, simple game we got into really quickly. But then PH turned up and AL won the round.
To properly christen Denis, we played
AL played as Arcturus Mensk
MC played as Tassadar
PH played as Arcturus The Overmind
SF played as Kerrigan, Queen Of Blades
Poor SF did his best with this one, but this was a little beyond his gaming experience, but still managed a decent innings.
The usual progressions of planet and resource acquisition took place, while SF’s excellent starting planet scored him loads of points.
In the third age, AL attained his secondary goal.
Well done AL.
Wyrmberg Games 