Isolation Gina Con

     As this coming March weekend would have been Toon Con 2021, or at least the anniversary of last year's convention. Rachel and I decided to have an isolation Toon Con, guess it would be a Gina Con instead, don't think that will be catching on anytime soon. 

   Photosynthesis was first, I don't even think we have played it with a full set of four players yet!? Pretty sure we had three players. This is why I have been a bit more diligent about tracking my games on board game geek, win/lose, play time, factions played, all sorts of good statistics. Hopefully this will get us to move some of our older games we don't get to as often.

    Rachel gravitates towards cutsy and nature themed board games, even though most of them can be very cutthroat in their game play, looking at you Root. In Photosynthesis, players take turns planting trees to make a beautiful forest of vibrant colours (yellow for spring, green for summer, orange for fall and blue for winter). Each round the sun give off sunbucks for you to spend on buying more seeds or trees, shooting out seeds from your trees or saving them to get bigger trees or survive turns in which your opponent shades your trees for 0 sunbucks from that tree. (or if YOU shade your own tree)

First turn, start with 2 small trees on the board

        Trees have three sizes, small, medium and large, they also shade, 1, 2, 3 spaces away and give sunbucks equal to their size. Each turn the sun rotates around the board, players are required to think ahead to make sure they aren't being shaded and have the sunbucks to buy the larger trees and cut them down for victory points. The middle of the board is normally the best place to plant as it would give you the most points if this was a three player game, but it's counted as a 3 leaf space instead for only 2 players. The more leaves on the title the more points, which get less as players take points from that pile. It doesn't get too crowded with two players, with 3 or 4 players, oh boy! let the thick tree trunks hit the flooooooor!

Close to the end of the game, pretty tight!

    Rachel ended up winning 71 to 69, we were very each to another tree to be cut down each. It's also a bit unclear when the game ends, we decided it was before the sun icon instead of on the sun icon on the far side of the board. It's a small rule, but we still both get the same amount of rounds anyways so I think either is fine.

    Next up was Hellboy The Board Game, last year at Toon Con Rachel didn't play this, she wanted to catch up with some nursing friends in Saskatoon. We played the tutorial, which I played a couple days before to refresh my memory on the rules. I wish I went through the rules a bit more thorough as I missed a few things that would have really changed the game. Liz might not have had to burn the WHOLE board if I had remembered.

    Naturally, being the only playable female character, Rachel was Liz Sherman and I was Hellboy. Though it was the tutorial, Jon decided it was too easy, so he forgot two things to make it more HARDCORE! The copy of Hellboy I bought was from the Toon Con auction last year, all the figures were painted by the previous owner, who did a great job on them.

The first room was such a cake walk I didn't even feel the need to take a picture of them.

This guy, is where it went downhill for Hellboy

    Final room, armed frog monster takes a swipe at Hellboy. I roll a complication, removing my highest dice of 2 leaving me with one defense. OUCH! 6 damage for Hellboy. This is where I should have realized that I didn't use the requisition credits, a Lucky Charm that ignores damage from a single attack or effect would have been handy! 

The OTHER rules that Jon decided for some unknown reason to ignore, is that the Boss Monster has runes for the specific monster. Using the right colours makes the boss function properly, instead, Jon had ALL the cards in the Boss Behaviour deck. Probably should have noticed something weird when a range 1 boss would be trying to shoot at us sometimes AND summon minions. This made what should have been a pushover Boss, into a Boss Rush mode, trying to kill all the different types of bosses at once!
    

Hellboy can heal in combat if he rolls a B.P.R.D. symbol on the blue die.

That turned out as you'd expect it to!

  

  With Hellboy rolling as good as a square wheel. Liz had to finish off the boss herself, Immolating the room to burn up all the enemies. After a few rereads and rerereads of the rules, we made the call that damage that was suffered, didn't have to go through the enemies resilience, turning it into straight damage. If that is the case, Liz's Immolate ability is deadly, good thing Hellboy is resistant to fire damage, just not armed frogmen damage.

Rachel's victory pose with Hellboy's "urn"

    Hellboy took a while to play through, with some supper and cookie breaks between playing. Not as massive as Toon Con, but I am glad I got to introduce Rachel to Hellboy.

On the other side of the hobby, I did finish painting the Dread Pageant for Warhammer Underworlds. This should sate my desires to buy the new models for.....time.

 

You can look this fabulous on the battlefield.

Next on the Hobby Desk

    The Bladebringer is on the desk, I keep finding adjustments that I need to fix with the Seeker Chariot that I bought used, but shouldn't be too much work to modify it to work. Fiends are also getting their new winter coats on. With the baby on the way, it might be a bit hit and miss on the blog for a bit... more so then normal. Due date is technically April 3rd, but who really knows?!