January Games

    What a better time to talk about my January Games, then a week into February!

  At the beginning of January, I was able to brave the cold and walk to my brother's apartment for a game. Shawn, my eldest sibling was interested in playing King of Tokyo or Mice & Mystics. In the end we played Mice & Mystics, thinking that the other game would be quick enough to play if we had time. I have taught this game several times, always starting on Chapter One, which does do a good job of getting you into the action, but it was getting a bit much to play it over and over. 

My brothers, Shawn (left) and Nathan about to play Mice and Mystics

    We agreed to play Chapter Two, this scenario the heroes have escaped the dungeon and are holed up in a tree. It happens to be a city for white mice that live in the castle. The mayor, Linera is troubled by the resent disappearance of the rangers that have been sent out for supplies, specifically her daughter Lilly. 

     Lilly is located on the final tile, ensnared by a mousetrap and fighting off cockroaches. The heroes need to cross the courtyard they just came from to enter the castle again. This means evading the hungry Old Crow. If anyone, heroes or minions, rolls a 1 on their movement the Old Crow deals a wound to them without their defense roll. Shawn played Tilda, Nathan Filch and I Nez. Filch can carry an extra weapon in his tail, which we all tried to search for on each tile to no avail, we did find some armour for Nez though. Tilda deals more damage while beside allies that are wounded and Nez's hammer is most optimal on a space adjacent to minions. 

Moments before this rat rolled a 1 and was scooped by the Old Crow

    The first tile was quick to give us a Surge, normally cockroaches steal cheese from the heroes in lieu of damage. These roaches were GREEDY - meaning they added the cheese to the minion cheese wheel, making surges more frequent, moving out page marker closer to failure and changing the foes we face later in the game.

The roach behind the centipede desperately trying to get into base contact to eat our cheese

Lilly's epic slap fight with a roach comes to an end

   Lilly and the cockroaches, were both unable to hit each other for the entire game. But once the prospect of rescue was presented to the ranger, she became fired up, and one shot the boss, a centipede called Skit-Clak. After cleaning up the rest of the rat minions, the heroes freed her. One more cheese slice on the minion cheese wheel, and we would have lost. 

Can't kill a roach, but can one shot a boss!

    Shawn was interested in continuing our campaign, this meant we get to carry over one item from this Chapter. Nez was gifted by Filch a suit of Fishscale Armour, which is plus one defense and the ability to swim better but will attract Brody's attention. Brody is a cat that appears as a boss occasionally. This chapter did have a side quest that we could encounter him, but we opted not to do it due to time constrains. Lilly will be used by Rachel, the next time we play, it is on one of the "new/ forgotten" games to play for this year.

    Played Between to Castles of Mad King Ludwig, no pictures, I loss, but did get 52 points on both castles. Talk about consistency! My friend Shaye and I are running two nights of D&D  for BBBS using the Essentials Kit for small one shot adventures. Playing in Roll 20 and only once a month, this was the first session. I had two players, one was a big and other was his "little". Little is a relative term, he was actually 15, original, we played for younger groups and made the classes more accessible. Hopefully we will get more kids out, as Shaye's group was a parent, a "Big" and one "little" or combine the two groups.

    On Monday I was solo parenting and decided to play through Robinson Crusoe - Adventures on the Cursed Island. I read through the rules a bit silly, only reading what I needed to to play and not looking into weather, which plays a large part of the late game. It was pretty fun, Friday and Dog were my companions, though that nasty Sea Lion wasn't not interested in playing nice! Yowch! The rules in the version I have are poorly laid out, I found some online that look much better, might print them to make it clearer.

This was a Greater Danger Sea Lion, dealt 4 wounds!

    The following evening, Rachel was up for a quick game, she wanted to do Lords of Waterdeep. She likes to reread the rules before playing, so it was a bit too involved for her mind at the time. Instead, I suggested Machi Koro, which took slightly over an hour.

    My fruit and vegetable market was my big ticket roll, but it also meant that Rachel got to roll her Tuna boats, twice for two of them! That's a lot of dough! Rachel was slow to start, she focused on red shops, that would take money away from the opponent, which trigger first. So as long as I spent my money, she wouldn't get much from me. I would focus on blue and green card, oh, besides a couple red and one purple that took money. Both only had one landmark to build by the end, I just got a good roll. Next turn, I am sure I would have lost. 

    I frequent board game bliss from time to time, they have some pretty good sales, harder to find items from indie developers and of course Shadows of Brimstone still in stock! I split the order with my co-work/friend John and my brother to get free shipping or as I would call it, my excuse to buy more stuff! Runewars is being phased out, so they were only $11 buck for some sweet looking skeletons. We all need more skeletons! The Doctor/Nurse character pack I figured it would be more enticing to play for Rachel, being an actual nurse. And demons are cool? I don't have a good answer for the succubi besides MORE Shadows of Brimstone! Mr. Cabbagehead's Garden was the original reason for ordering, as my eldest brother Shawn, wanted it for Christmas, and seeing as his birthday is in March. I thought I would buy it early while it was in stock. The game is two player or solo, so it's also a good distraction for the pandemic world we are in. 

    On the last Saturday of the month, I invited my co-worker friend, John, to play Everdell with Rachel and I. He hadn't played it before, the mechanics of the game are like most worker placement games, with the addition of using the cards in the Meadow (the 8 cards in the middle) as a shared community pool that all players can access and retrieving workers is up to the player by preparing for the season. Next time I teach it, I think I will give some tips to build constructions, specifically green ones as they activate after the first and last seasons.

Snapped a quick picture as we were about to clean up.

Next on the Hobby Desk

    Started painting up the Final Girls expansion of Don't Look Back by Black Site Studio as part of the Fembruary painting challenge. Got one mostly done, I'll post them once finished the four of them.

Scurry of paws

After finishing up the Chaos Marauders, I decided on finishing off the 16 figures for Mice & Mystics as a bit of a palette cleanser. I started them in October of last year, but when I started the #minivember challenge they got bummed off the paint table.

The whole gang!

BUGS! I looked up reference pictures for the spider right before bed, don't do that!

Rat pack

Collin, Filch, and Maginos

Lily, Tilda and Nez

But here they are now, not a big project, but I enjoyed getting them off the desk and back into their proper game box. I babysit for a foster family ever once in awhile, this might be a good game to pull out for them as it also includes story elements as you explore the dungeons. The premise is that an Evil Sorceress turned the King's court into rodents, now they need to undo the spell and take back their kingdom.

I decided to play a solo game to refresh my memory of the game as it had been close to a year since I played and even then I don't think we had the rules down right.

Starting out in the dungeon, 3 Rat Warriors attack the party.

Collin missed the rat, but gained cheese to use his abilities.

Cheese lets the heroes use abilities, it's gained when making attacks or defense rolls. The enemies gain them for the same, but theirs is added to a clock. If the clock fills up, the timer (Page marker) is moved up which usually means stronger enemies when exploring new rooms  tiles and a surge happens, usually a tough enemy will appear.

Nez rolls 4 dice if he isn't in the same square as his enemies, but has poor defense and agility.

Filch removes one defense die from enemies if he is higher on the initiative tracker

The party explores the sewers, falling directly into the rushing water, a full movement is needed to escape out of the side. The more mice out of the water, the easier it is to get out.

Filch saving himself.

Collin takes on all the roaches, they wounded him a bunch and he was being swept away in the current.

Colin wasn't able to move due to more enemies being on his square, he tried to kill one to make it even so that he could move. That didn't work out. Nez dove into the water and smashed one roach so that Collin was able to move next turn.

Trade in 6 cheese to Level Up! New ability!

Roaches needed to be cleared out before leaving the area.

Around this point, I noticed I was playing the roaches wrong, they don't wound characters. They still cheese when they wound and if the character doesn't have cheese THEN they wound.

Greedy Roaches, these ones steal cheese to add to the clock.

Which filled up and summoned the Centipede!

With Filch removing defense dies, I tried to get in some hits but to no avail.

Nez strolls up to do damage, but the Centipede retaliated with 3 wounds!

Luckily, Tilda was able to finish it off, wounding herself from the blade though.

In the courtyard, a crow circles above, trying to make the mice it's meal. Rolling a 1 on movement would give them an unblockable wound.

Nez tries to take out a rat before fleeing into the tree.

I really enjoy this game's system, makes it fast to learn and it's easy to figure out the AI for the enemies.This first Chapter is basically a tutorial, learning about flipping the room tiles, surges and optional quests (which I ignored this time.)

Coming Soon!

With the self-isolation going on, it's hard to pick what to do next. the Star Breach soft cover rule book has just started to be delivered to backers (only one delivery person) . Doubt it will be here very soon, but I should look through the rules and figure out a warband for when it does show up. I also have some figures from Militron that I was going to use for Necromunda/ Star Breach. Excited for them to show up!