Category: Syndicated

by TheGargoyle
Well, he canceled the current KS and wrote he will rework the game core and come back with something more solidly demonstrating what is special about it and what is new. And looking at his other solid designs, I am sure he will come u…

Watch the review of Thunderbolt Apache Leader by marcowargamer on youtube. It was what made me purchase it, because the actual game itself has more structure than the others by being tile based during the combat phase. Sadly I am still waiting for a da…

**Paperback** and **Waggle Dance** are favorites of us for exactly that situation: 2P, 30-45 minutes (ok, sometimes up to 60 with paperback, but not often) and not too brain-burning.

thanks! it was a bit hard, because I had to memorize cards over four heroes when they were dealt, but despite a few blind plays (where I misremembered what the cards did) I was able to take down Plague Rat anyway. Strategic peaking in the card selection screens on some of the “discard a card” environment cards helped a bit 😉

I actually have no mouse – but double tapping does not work, neither does double click with the pen. Normally the pen behaves quite like a mouse (which is why I don’t have one – just no need for a mouse normally).But it totally could be that Windows ha…

Steam version on a Surface Pro.

anybody else having problems to enlarge cards in the update when playing? Before a double click or tap would open the card with full text, now it doesn’t anymore.

by TheGargoyle
You probably want to read http://blog.kicktraq.com/why-you-should-take-kicktraq-trends… and then look at the projection instead of the “trending”. The projection looks far from good, essentially it boils down to “if nobody can resta…

It is one of my favorite scenarios. I usually have a few decks pre-built in boxes with some dice and a prebuilt scenario that I like to play together, and Into the Pit is my go-to scenario for my Dain-Gimli-Bifur dwarf deck. The snipers are useful to h…

The upcoming spirit Merry could work great there.

wow, I didn’t know about this automatted overlord – looks sweet, I think this could make Descent 2E a viable game for me, for solo play or coop with my wife. No idea yet wether it could find a place aside Gears of War and Galaxy Defenders, but due to i…

Ra. Because sometimes I just want to see the world burn.

**Legends of Andor** is quite big. But if I really go for the Valkyrie KS, that board probably will beat that.

for me probably **San Jan**, or maybe **Wiz War**, allthough that is more a game I still look at – but rarely play 😉

by TheGargoyle
Just adding my voice to the “prepainted for moderate price increase would be great” crowd. If I would try to paint them, I probably would paint my desk and myself more than the miniatures.

**Zeppelin Attack** is another deck builder that concentrates on beating up your opponents. It is a bit slow sometimes, but quite quirky in it’s take on deck building. And of course the deck builder that does it all – **Runeage** – has competetive modes. And well, **Paperback** has attack cards which provide conflict if you want that in your word based deck builder. Yeah, kinda weird idea, but fun nontheless. Especially if people just play it casually, lots of table talk can be had from someone failing to come up with words and you can set up special “legal word” rules for the event.

**Legends of Andor** is high tension right until the end. Never ever had the feeling the tension dropped towards the end, on the contrary, it heats up the more you get to closing and losing. And in the bigger legends (3 and up) the ending is a real ending, often with some end boss to fight (3 and 5) or some impending doom to prevent. **Lord of the Rings LCG** is great, too, because the game nicely keeps up the tension and the endings keep up well, if you survive a game, it really feels like you accomplished something and the story of the scenario nicely wraps up. But in the case of LOTR it highly depends on the scenario you are playing, there are some duds where you only have to survive middle game and the rest after it is mostly rolling with the events, but those are rare. I personally love the Khazad Dum stuff, because those adventures have nice endgames, are damn hard, but not too hard, and far less fiddly than for example the stuff from the Ringmaker cycle with the time mechanic. **Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on a Cursed Island** felt the same when I played it, nice curve and suspension building up and the scenarios give you a defined goal to work for, so the ending shouldn’t feel like a “whimper”. I can’t tell, though, because I lost hard 😉 **Space Hulk: Death Angles** gives a nice high-tension game all throughout the game, and the end game often can be “scraping by with a marine closing out the last location”. Definitely great endgame if you actually make it that far. **Gears of War** again has very nice end games in those missions where your bruised COGs have to fight that last wave of locusts. If you really make it out alive, it feels great. I don’t think I ever had the feeling that the last few rounds where easy or predefined in outcome. **Shadowrun: Crossfire** has you on the edge of your seat up until the last card you play, winning a game feels really great, it’s just a very rare occurrence. It might be a bit of a letdown if you get a bad card draw streak in the mid game, though, because there can be situations where you know you have lost and can’t really catch up to the crossfire events, but in those cases I usually try to go for controled aborts and play again. Which can be it’s whole own kind of puzzle to solve.

Outch. Mine didn’t arrive, yet, but that does not sound exciting.

by TheGargoyle
Ents! I don’t care about the rest if there are Ents 😉 (ok, the signal is cool, too, because tutors are always cool)

My favourite by far is deckbuilding in any gorm or shape. Games that include deckbuilding as a mechanic have a big plus with me. I don’t see myself burning out from that mechanic ever – sure, some game might overstay its welcome with me, but not the me…

Mage Knight, because of the play time it needs. Need my wife on a girls day and night out to be able to break it out and whenever that happens some other game comes up and begs me to be played again.

yes, he is really good. In the right deck the “comes into play exhausted” doesn’t really pose a problem, especially since he already collects a resource that round and already can soak up some archery damage. And afterwards he can do some really good blocking and every two rounds do double duty (or make a booming ent do double duty). I really like him even just as a 1-of in some decks, to have some cheap attacker and defender to bring out, even if there are no other ents in that deck.

For card games it definitely was Magic the Gathering (and it is hard to get more complicated than that 😉 ). For board games it was probably Legends of Andor, but you get eased into the game by playing an in-game tutorial scenario. And it’s rules aren’…

by TheGargoyle
I really like this card, could go into my Elrond deck (currently sporting Elrond, Glorfindel and Frodo) to give me repeatable threat reduction. This might even replace Glorfindel there, because it is just one threat higher in costs, b…

by TheGargoyle
Actually this “variant” is just what the upgrade “Fundamentals” is giving you if you add it to your character. It is a quite useful 5-Karma upgrade. Only that with Fundamentals, you could also add your main color if you want to. But I…

yeah. In a fight between Conan and Hellboy, Hellboy definitely would win. He is the guy bringing the oversized guns to a sword fight 😉

Man, Hellboy! That makes me glad I skipped the Conan fundraiser, because really, Hellboy vs. Conan, Conan wouldn’t stand a chance.

I think a combination of Elrond+Hero-Gandalf and a third one (probably Glorfindel due to the high threat, or one of the hobbits) could do most of the scenarios. I currently run a Elrond+Glorfindel+Frodo list that can easily go into secrecy range and has enough oomph to take out almost everything I throw at it. But stuff like battle or siege quests might be problematic and if it doesn’t get it’s digging-engine going, early heavy enemies can easily whipe it out. So it won’t be a “one deck to rule them all” but could at least be “one deck having a chance to beat most of them if it turns lucky” 😉

By far my most-played and highest-ranked solo game is **Lord of the Rings LCG**. I love the thematic scenarios (and yes, I love to make hilarious theme-breaking combinations like going with a Rohan tactics deck filled with eagles and ents into the cave…