February Round Up

     Note for next time, I need to start making my blog entries when stuff happens instead of at the end of the month. Much easier to break it up in bite sized chunks for me and my memory. Oh also need to take pictures of my games. 

    To start this month off, Rachel picked out one of the new games she had on her list, Targi, to play together this month. My elder brother,Shawn, gifted it to us for Christmas this year. We both enjoyed the game, really tight game mechanics specifically for two players. Targi uses a grid of 16 cards with players picking one of the border cards to dictate which rows and columns will be their actions for that round. Opponents can't take actions across from pawns already played or where the thieve is placed.

Standings at the end of the game.

    Usually, I would be able to get a row or column to either get resources I needed or block Rachel, but this would come at the cost of not getting the right column as Rachel would play her pawn on the column. We did pretty well, scoring 37 for Rachel and 32 for me, there was a couple times I miss read or interpreted resources and gold as interchangeable when they aren't. I will also note that we started the game on my birthday during a nap, then continued the next day after work and during another nap, Rosalind woke up from a nap before scoring which made it more tense to find out who won!

    Sunday BBBS D&D had a new participant. The party went to investigate a disappearance at a farmhouse. When they rolled up on the house they noticed a cellar at the back of the house. Alright what do you do? I throw dynamite! Is what the new player cried out. Not worrying about details in the moment, I said okay you chuck the dynamite. Orcs came out to check out the explosion. Which is where we stopped. I don't want to go too off the rails with random stuff to happen, but I appreciate integration. The players are new and have pretty simple characters for ease of use, so this made me discuss this with the player after the session. Did they sneak in somewhere to find dynamite? Phandalin is a mining town, dynamite or a fantasy resource similar to dynamite could exist in this world. Or maybe this character's rogue character isn't just a rogue, maybe they are an arcane trickster, a blend of wizard and thief. It's a nice way to workshop this idea.

Squirrel plotting near tree.

    Rachel and I played through the expansion of Photosynthesis: Under the Moonlight, which adds in, you guessed it a moon cycle. I picked this up with my order from Board Game Bliss in January without really looking at reviews, because CUTE ANIMALS! What could Rachel want more in a board game? The game now has the sun and moon cycle and moving around forest critters to collect said lunar rays. Rules stated to randomize the critters, Rachel got the turtle, slow but can dig up babies for bonus victory point objectives and I got the squirrel, fast to basically never miss the movement of the moon and can eat seeds that the opposing player plants. Both were fun to play, there is a total of 8 forest critters to play. We played Moon and the Forest Animals with Moonstones, but could have played with The Great Elder Tree instead. 

If a tree falls in the forest does the turtle care?

    Rachel went to visit her mother in Fort Saskatchewan to help around the house. I feel so helpless when she leaves with Rosalind, not only does she take care of our child, she is a domestic, a nurse and daughter for her mom. They have been travelling a lot as a daughter/mother duo, Rachel has shown great strength and determination when it comes to taking care of Rosalind, I have the bar set high for when I start my parental leave at the end of March. 

    While away, Rachel gives me repairs and such to do around the house. We have multiple pets that makes it a bit difficult to leave our house for super long, luckily we have my brother, Nathan, who isn't as allergic to our cats, who will come to take care of them almost every time we leave.  Another reason why I stay home. Work, cats, and house. 

    Besides fighting off entropy of our rest shack, and feeding our somewhat domesticated lions, I was able to play a couple games of Robinson Crusoe: Adventure on the Cursed Island. 

    The first tutorial game we played on Family Day with my brothers, Shawn and Nathan, I read the much thorough and competently written rules and thus picked up a bunch of rules that I didn't use or know about. This game went pretty smooth, that is until the Carpenter (me) found a venomous snake in his boot, getting sick and bringing the morale of the survivors all the way down. We all died on round 6 due to lack of health care on the island.

    On Sunday that weekend, we were determined to beat the first scenario. Focusing on the goal of making a 10 piece wood pile and making a fire to signal our rescue. We took it a bit too cautious to begin, assigning two pawns on exploring, gathering and building which meant that we would guarantee our success, but would make our progress slower and have no extra events happen. This could be rewards now for a punishment later, something we kept taking our last game, which is probably why we lost. For the most part they are hinderances. 

    Castaway, the first scenario, eases you into game mechanics, adding weather slowly, first just rain on rounds 4-6, then snow and wandering animals from 7-12. On the second last night, our island was hit with a devastating snow storm. We were forced to discard food and wood to help keep ourselves warm for the night. The next morning, before actions, we were to have the stockpile ready to signal the rescue, but we were one wood short. 

    Between games Adventures on the Cursed Island, Shawn came over to play Marvel Champions: The Card Game. I enjoy this game, there is a lot of replay value in the base set. Each player selects a hero and creates a deck based on four archetypes, then picks a villain to face as a group. Your options for heroes are Spider-man, Iron Man, She-Hulk, Black Panther, and Captain Marvel. With it being a Living Card Game, money will get you even more! Three villains are in the set as well, each having a bit different AI. 

    I played Black Panther, who is a "build up" type character, starting out weaker, then as he gets upgrades he can activate them all at once. Shawn was Captain America who discards cards to throw his shield around. While the players are heroes, the villain will just attack them, but as they switch to alter egos, the villain will scheme, which acts like a timer. If they scheme too much, they will succeed in their plans, adding minions or power up. 

    That is about it for playing, I was pretty busy painting this month. Originally, I thought I would do the Final Girls Expansion to Don't Look Back because it is Fem-bruary. Time to focus on the female miniatures! Okay so I didn't quite completely focus on just females, as I just painted all the miniatures in the core box as well, but that's still 7 minis. Working on some terrain for this setting to take a proper picture of the gang, for now, have one on top of my basing material container.

The whole gang with two killers, Jason is kitbashed from a Hal Gordan heroclix.

      

    I would also like to take this time to mention that I will be taking commissions for eyes. HA! I kid, he looked pretty good without the whites so now I don't want to make it even worse.

    I also finished off my Character of the Month, name and backstory to be determined with her own post and better photography.

Wizkids Female Pirate

    

Next on the Hobby Desk

    I spend a whole month neglecting the Corpse Wrack Mausoleum, time to get it done! The new Kill Team: Nachomonday is really catching my attention. Chaos and Corsairs! Could just run those two without buying the compendium. Might wait to see the price tag. 

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.