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Darryl’s evil overlord beat up Phil, Mike and Alex ‘s attempt to find a peacemaker pistol. Even Luke sky walker was no match for his machinations .
Bruce hosted a night of post apocalyptic perils for Mikes DeaD of Winter. Phil, Alex and Darryl joined in. The first game finished before the second turn with a defeat for all players. The team needed to get plenty of survivors for the VP. So they did not hold back on playing survivors. This would have been okay but each time a new character tried to move they rolled for exposure and got bitten. Morale was low in the colony. Then Phil drew the Prison guard and then tried to move safely using fuel. However the secret event card said that if he moved a prison revolt occurred and he needed to roll 4 times or eight for exposure. This of course caused more survivor characters to die and the team lost. Phil wamost upset because Blue the Chimp had a flamethrower and a drone and was looking like an interesting new character.
Second game was better. This time Alex had the chimp and turned him into a banana demanding vampiric demonic super weaponised search monkey. He even bit Phils character and scared away bruce’s from the laboratory.
Together the team were able to get plenty of survivors especially using a secret tunnel to the grocery. With so many mouths to feed they only had one starvation counter just in the penultimate turn. Then quickly it was looking like the end and probably a solo win for Phil. However DARRYL who in fact was the traitor tried to unsettle things on the final round of the final turn. This allowed the other players to redraw their failing secret victory cards . Alex drew one that allowed him to join in with phils victory. But at least Mike and bruce were on the winning side. Well done team colonists under the benign leadership of phils politician.
We played the secret of sentinel hill scenario. Phil, Mike, Darryl, Alex and Bruce.
We played on extra hard settings with no clicks unless next to an icon and duke the dog requiring an action to be used. Probably not the best idea as we are not very good at mansions but players were insistent.
We arrived too late to stop the ritual by one turn and then attacked the big monster. Unfortunately by then most of the party were insane and Alex had turned traitor. The big monster was badly wounded by the battling players surrounding it when Alex lobbed his dynamite into the fray. This wiped out most of the party and those left standing were killed through double insanity or double wounds in the mythos phase except Phil’s ashcan Pete. Even Alex was killed which robbed him of victory too being some satisfaction as ashcan fled the scene defeated. So all the players lost and evil was defeated but Alex had the satisfaction of seeing his side win.
A tough scenario but quite thematic and fun. I think being allowed to click on the question marks to identify the requirements such as a silver key or holding two pieces of evidence personally is needed in these closely timed scenarios to save wasting time walking up to them and missing a valuable turn. Especially as players are limited to completing their own turn before another player can aid them.
We played two games linked with a famous Conan.
The first was Conan from Monolith Games the new strategy battle game. Phil played as overlord whilst Mike was Conan, Darryl the wizard, Alex the Thief and Bruce took Belittle who unfortunately had left her crew behind. The heroes needed to rescue the princess and slay the evil shaman.
The players advanced rapidly into the pict camp with the wizard scouting out the western huts using his teleport skills. The thief entered the eastern hut and slew two hyenas and opened the chest. A good start. Conan cleared a path to the shamans hut supported by belit.
Conan then killed the shaman whilst belit held a look out outside the hut. The thief stole in and grabbed the shamans head. The wizard teleported into the giant snakes hut and discovered the drugged princess asleep therein. The snake bursts out of the hut enraged by the death of its master and encountered belit. It was thus blocking conan and the thiefs escape. However the thief grabbed the head and raced off table in one speedy move using his evasiveness. Now the players only needed to rescue the princess.
However there remained the small matter of the giant blocking snake and hordes of enraged Picts coming from all angles. The snake had sunk its deadly teath in to poor belit and was squeezing the life out of her turn by turn with its huge coils. Even as Conan arrived it was too late for belit who was also being attacked by Picts. The wizard proved unable to harm the beast and belit could only scratch it. Conan nearly killed it but it was not enough and belit was defeated. However her attack from beyond skill finally killed the beast opening up the way for Conan to reach the princess and escape off board.
Victory for the players. Well done.
Thoughts. A good introductory scenario for new players and certainly was a fun game. The encumbrance for the princess makes sense for balance but thematically Conan should be able to carry her with his armour and a weapon, he had to cast aside his leather armour to do so. Still it made sense that the wizard would be reluctant as when carrying her he could not cast his spells so waited for Conan to arrive.
Belit without a shield and her guardsmen is not really that much fun to play especially for an introductory game. If I was to do it again I would give her at least one guard or the option to switch with another character. There is a discussion about point values on the board game geek site. I think Valeria might be a good swap especially as belit gets to play in the next scenario. Probably belit would be more fun with items from the chests but got blocked by the snake and then the thief ran off with the shamans head leaving his friends to their fates!
Next Mike cleverly suggested another Conan game. Sherlock Holmes the card game based on the books by sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Bruce won that when he found mikes collection of villains hiding out in moriartys country mansion.
Played my first 2 Solo play-throughs of Conan by Monolith Games which arrived in the post this week. The monster figures, cards and maps look great. The mechanics are good and very clever but I did struggle with some of the rules that were not explained very well. It also seemed the Overlord can use lots of gems thus extra dice on Guard for the Blocking Snake and thus effectively trap the Heroes indefinitely which is quite tricky when there is a time limit and they need to exit the playing area. Still it was a lot more fun second time round when I worked out how to search for the Princess using Teleport. There is a French FAQ and some advice on BGG so I think I have it now.
My first rules questions:
1 Does the scenario start on turn zero then so that on the Overlord turn he moves the tracker to state that turn 1 begins? Makes sense but odd. The heroes arrive quite exhausted so maybe they rest up on their turn zero? Or should it start on turn 1 with the Overlord effectively having passed and just restored fatigue to the level shown. Maybe start on turn zero as explained in setup.
2 Teleport could be better explained. It is in fact able to go adjacent which means through walls, yes. Is it a move? No. But it can be added to movement. Can it be done during a Cautious phase. No.
3 Should the Overlord set a Guard limit to make it more fun for the players? Probably not but 4 orange dice make even Conan’s mighty strikes feeble. Tried limiting it but then the Monsters just die. The overlord can easily get 4 gems back but poor Conan will miss his next go to do so and can’t move out being blocked. I suppose it is up to his crew to distract the overlord too whilst he is doing this.
4 Wall wrecker is only wooden walls and wooden doors.
5 The flaps are annoying as its hard to see where they are on the map. They slow people and block line of sight which is fine I guess.
6 Where is the wound tracker? I think it is the turn tracker as explained in setup.
