Boisterous Exuberance: November 2018

Saturday, November 24, 2018

Post-Thanksgiving update (11/24/2018)

Sporadic still, as my wife and I worked most nights to get our house ready for Thanksgiving. Now that it is done, I can get some more time to play, and hopefully work on my basement, where I'll FINALLY get some space and time to work on my hobbies again!

Games Played

Ticket to Ride: One game with my wife and her uncle and cousin. I decided to just go for the longest destination tickets I drew, and started with a Santa Fe-Vancouver one. When I completed that, I drew again, and kept Montreal-Vancouver. When I finished that, I added a few small paths to extend the longest route... and ended up winning, ending at 106 points. Second place was Marina, at 102.
Settlers of Catan: One game with my wife and her uncle and cousin. I put my initial settlements touching at least one of each resource type, with a second wood available. My one settlement got blocked from expanding pretty early, but the one closest to me was able to create a lot road chain, and get some new settlements. Those became cities in no time, and before I knew it, I was sitting at 10 points. I think Kristina and Vaidas tied for second, at seven apiece.
Catan Dice Game: This was a game I played against Christian, as he tries to get into gaming, and I show off new things. We played both versions, with him winning one, and me winning the other. This was my first time playing this, and it was pretty fun- something fun and easy I could get for traveling.
No Thanks!: One game with Christian. This is NOT a two player game, but we tried it out, because Christian was interested in the designer. It ended up being still moderately interesting, but definitely not something I'd play with only two again. I think I'd like it with three or more though, definitely.
Warhammer 40K: Kill Team: Two games with BK. First game, I ran the Starstriders against the Harlequins... and was not ready for that matchup at all. He didn't fail a charge all game, and the end result was I was forced into a Leadership test turn two, that I failed, and lost. Second game, I ran Grey Knights against Necrons. We shot at each other from behind cover. I managed to fail EVERY armor save I took, and then failed EVERY injury test I take. Seriously. Every single one. I roll box-cars on my Leadership test, and lose. I still enjoy the game. I definitely think the Starstriders kind of stink.... but I'm not 0-4 in this game. Maybe I'm the one who stinks?

New Arrivals

Counterfact Magazine, issue 9, titled "War in the Megacity". It will be an interesting one. I remember discussions about the viability of invading a city with a population of 10+ million, and the challenges armed forces would face in this scenario. This game examines some of those.
Kings of War: Vanguard. This is a skirmish miniatures game set in the Kings of War universe. I have never played the full game, but Mantic has done okay in the rulesets I have played with (Dreadball and Walking Dead). This looks interesting. I'll have a post about this in the future, showing what I ended up getting (looks like four warbands?).
The newest release from Privateer Press' mini-crate, Lady of the Feast. Very nice looking model, but I don't play Circle, and likely won't for some time.

Miniature Assembly/Painting

None. I assembled three beds, a dresser, several tables, and painted several rooms. Does that count?

Reading

Actually, nothing gaming related lately- I've been working on reading Anna Karenina, by Tolstoy. Probably the best chance I have of ever finishing a Tolstoy book. On part three, of eight. Has been very interesting so far.

Tuesday, November 6, 2018

Summary since my last update (11/6/18)

I am running a bit behind, and had a big gaming weekend this past weekend, so I wanted to take this chance to catch up on things before trying to keep this actually up to date through November :)

Apologies for the wall of text!

Games Played

One game of Warmachine - I played a 75 point game against Joey, using my Maelok Blindwater Congregation list against his normal Ossrum Hammer Strike list. Big changes for me were that I swapped out my Bull Snapper and Totem Hunter for a Boneswarm and Boil Master and Spirit Cauldron, which worked out very well- my Bull Snapper frequently doesn't get a whole lot done other than the occasional use of its animus- this was a light beast which came out and swung like a heavy. I also included a Bone Shrine, but it was killed before it could do anything. I ended up winning by assassination, but I was winning the attrition battle as well, and could have eventually taken it through scenario, I think.
Played a bunch of games at our yearly gaming retreat in Deep Creek Lake. This is where a bunch of us go out, drink some beers, and play a bunch of games. I got to play quite a few new things, which I'll list out here.
One game of Cards Against Humanity- this was just a good relaxing time with a lot of crude humor. My team (Rob and I) tied for first, and lost the sudden death round :(.
Two games of Warhammer Underworlds. I taught the game to my brother, Matt, and used the Stormsire Cursebreakers both times, first against my Steelheart Champions defensive warband, and then against a starter deck with the Thorns of the Briar Queen warband. I lost the first game, and won the second. Matt seemed to enjoy it- he went out and bought Magore's Fiends, and we'll find Nightvault on sale for him to buy. Success!
Two games of X-Wing 2.0. I had played quite a bit of X-Wing 1.0, and loved it, but I was starting to see several problems as well. I was quite happy to have a new edition come out, and was overall pretty happy with how they went about getting that new edition to us. I played two games of this, both using a Boba Fett/Guri list (Guri was one of my favorite pilots in 1.0). I lost against Ben, who took a Rebel list of Wedge, Luke, and someone else. I struggled to get the separation I needed to maneuver, and he just took me apart. The second game, I played my brother and his Soontir/Darth Vader/Academy Pilot list. Here, I managed to get some good positioning, and took the victory. I think I'm definitely a fan of this game, although it still feels a bit clunky to me for the moment. I think that's just unfamiliarity with the changes, so I suspect it will fade in time.
One game of Root. This was a fun game where each player is an alliance or empire of forest creatures fighting for supremacy. Each faction has different capabilities and a different path to victory. I played as the Woodland Alliance, who use guerilla tactics to make combat very costly for their opponents, and try to sway the Sympathy of areas to our cause. I started off pretty slow, but jumped to a lead near the end, almost winning. This caused everyone to target me, which set me back a bunch, but gave Dan an easy path to victory, which he took. Definitely a game I would play again.
Two games of 40K: Kill Team. I was using my Rogue Trader kill team without the Rogue Trader herself (as we weren't playing with the Commander rules), which the internet has told me is a pretty underpowered set-up. They were right, it turns out. I played a game against my brother's Grey Knight kill team. I killed zero models, and got tabled. I then played a three player game with Dan's Deathwatch kill team and Rob's Genestealer Cult kill team. I got tabled (although I did kill a single model), and lost. Overall, I really really enjoyed the system. I just need to buy one of the real kill teams until we actually play with Commanders, haha.
One game of Millennium Blades with Rob and Matt. This is a game I have owned for some time, but have never sat down to learn the rules enough to play. We finally did so at the gaming trip, and played a game! This is a CCG 'Simulator' board game. You buy cards which represent packs, sell them, build decks, and play in tournaments. It abstracts the booster pack to just the best card in the pack, but does a very good job of creating that CCG 'feel'. Took us quite a while to play, but I suspect more experience would make this a decently fast playing game. In the end, I was leading basically the entire game, and won two of the three tournaments. Unfortunately, Matt had saved his money most of the game, and bought the victory points he needed to snatch victory from me.
One game of Discover: Land Unknown. This is one of FFG's Unique Games, where no two copies of the game will be exactly the same. Here, we are adventures on an island where we explore an attempt to accomplish certain objectives. We managed to accomplish the objectives, but misinterpreted some cards and continued to play after we had actually won, haha. Overall, the game was decent, and did a good job getting us engrossed in the exploration. I'd probably give it another go.
One game of Salem 1692. A game of hidden witches, voting into player elimination, and baseless accusations. Honestly, not my favorite implementation of this, and we ended up having to get a moderator to handle the hidden action part, because it was so clunky. The Witches ended up winning because one of the human players, while a human, targeted and eliminated another human player. That makes the witch's job a lot easier, and when another player became a witch... well, that was good night.
One game of Codenames: Deep Undercover. Four rounds, I think. This is the adult version of Codenames. Pretty fun around a bunch of guys who are drinking. Much immaturity and crudeness. Would do again.