One other tool suggestion for Gloomhaven: I’ve been using the Gloomy Companion page. You select the scenario and the scenario level and it will run all the AI decks for you. It’s just a replacement for the AI decks. Our laptop takes up about the same amount of space as the decks.
It reduces setup time. It also does all the calculations on the cards for you. So instead of saying Range +2 it will just say Range 4. It also has reminders of special abilities like Damage Reduction on all the cards. You still need to setup the monster sheets to track HP, though.
Finally got my copy of Gloomhaven. Good God that is a lot of cardboard.
I was wondering how well it plays with 2 players? I have a friend who plans to bring his to game days, and I was hoping to play my copy mostly with my wife.
Would probably be great but you might want to play 2 characters each in that scenario. Or be really careful picking out 2 characters that go well together.
I’ve played mostly 2 player and it’s a good time! I think party comp might be an issue, but we started with Cragheart and Tinkerer, and so far it’s good.
I was wondering if anyone has looked at something like this Boxthrone Kickstarter. I was interested in it because holding my games in book shelves is getting to be annoying. However, I am not a huge fan of getting hardware from Kickstarter.
To follow up, what is everyone doing to handle storing their games? Especially with a large selection, how do you manage storing while still making sure your games are easily available?
I got my Gloomhaven yesterday as well. I had already bought and assembled the Broken Token organizer for it. Punching everything out and getting it all packed away still took 3 hours. Very excited to figure out what all of this cool stuff does!
Only 18 hours to go until our second Gloomhaven session. We’ll return to town and do some stuff there, before moving on to Scenario 3 or a side dungeon we unlocked. Weee!
I played Descent for the first time last night. We played with 4 players, using the app as the DM. It started a bit slow, with some downtime getting the board set up as we explored, and our group didn’t really work together properly at first. But it picked up as we went along, and although we “won” the map by running away from danger like little children, it ended up being quite a bit of fun. At the end, we gained exp and gear, which is all saved in the app, and now I’m looking forward to playing it again.
So, my Kingdom Death Campaign came to an end on year 6. Some bad luck on a certain encounter forced me onto an early fight with the Kings Man. While I had a full antílope armor set, he hits like a truck and slowly my characters were dying. Got him to 3 HP, but the last character standing hadn’t learnt the necessary fighting art yet and could not overcome the challenge.
After that I was left with only three alive survivors, so I tries to get back on foot by hunting a level 2 lion, which I almost achieved, but again got killed at 2HP left (had I had a fourth character I would have killed it).
So I’m really looking forward to starting a new game and going a better job of going for useful gear early on (specially support items).
Finally got in another play of Time of Crisis. Wow, what a game! There is so much to love about this game:
Everyone starts on their own until someone gets the emperor, and then it becomes an all-against-one game to depose them. Shifting alliances is one of my favorite mechanics.
Building a deck and then choosing which cards to play from it. This gets rid of the random element of deck-building, and adds in more interesting decisions and planning.
Barbarians constantly threaten your provinces, throwing a wrench in carefully-laid plans. Not only do you play against the other players, but also against the game. Of course, towards the middle of the game you can start to recruit them, and they can actually help you too.
You get lots of points for being emperor, but usually only for a turn or two (and then you’re deposed). If you build provincial upgrades early, you can make just as many points – even if you’re never emperor.
Though you can get screwed by the dice, but it is in the other players interest to keep you moderately strong. The emperor is much easier to depose with three players working together than two.
Getting votes to take over provinces is usually pretty easy (2+ on each dice is a success, plus exploding 6s), but its not guaranteed.
Speaking of exploding 6s – there are exploding f**king 6s! One of the best dice mechanics ever.
The crisis roll at the beginning of each turn draws in all the other players and keeps them engaged throughout the game. This almost always results in cheers and groans every turn.
Plenty of mechanics to counter turtling. Add mobs to a players provinces to wear them down, start pretender empires to remove support from the emperor, or even use praetorian guards to bypass all defenses and assassinate him.
Even though I have only played this game a couple times, I think it is one of the best of the year. The three hours we played went by really fast, and we probably could have played again if we had time. Don’t be turned off by the bland art and theme – this game is really something special.
