Boardgaming in 2018!

Please tell me by “novellas” you mean stuff from the actual Lovecraft and his ilk, and not some twaddle published by some dude working for Fantasy Flight.

-Tom

They had the lot on 75% off clearance the winter right before the license lapsed. A similar clearance was how I nabbed the complete Warhammer Invasion set, and I was going to pick up Conquest similarly, but the shipping is ridiculous from their store, especially since they’re literally just a few miles away (but I don’t drive, so delivery would have been the way to go). So since a friend was going to drop in at their HQ, I asked if he’d pick it up for me there in person. Apparently they didn’t have it on the shelf there, but he went ahead and bought it online for me instead…and has never remembered to bring it over to my apartment… >.>

Nope. Definitely twaddle, but I like twaddle. I have very low literary standards.

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/arkham-fiction/products/deep-gate/
https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/arkham-fiction/products/ire-void/
Plus Alan Bligh is a pretty darn good creator of twaddle. (He’s also the author largely responsible for the Forge World Horus Heresy books, which are amazing.)

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/arkham-fiction/products/dance-of-the-damned/

I am currrently reading the Bligh novel and honestly I am enjoying it more than a lot of the actual Lovecraft I have read. Blasphemy I’m sure, but hey, I don’t really like Star Wars that much either, so nerd conventions be damned.

To be fair, it’s not like H. P. Lovecraft was the greatest of writers. And I understand that Fantasy Flight Games have hired some interesting people to write their fiction.

Also ordered this sweet bag for holding the chips. :)

Lovecraft lore seems potential cool and nearly omnipresent in gaming nowadays. Yet every time I try, the actual reading of Lovecraft is an act of torture for me. It is so horrifying to read that I am driven insane by the unspeakable horror of the horrible unspeakable horror. I did buy a few HP Lovecraft “inspired” author works off Amazon at one point, but never read them. Maybe that is the best middle ground between FFG novellas and actual Lovecraft.

Don’t forget the coin capsules! 🙂

Fortress of shame!

Board game one day sale by HARFORD BOARDGAMES

Also, I got to play Dominion finally, liked it a lot!

Let those boardgames free! Also take off the shrinkwrap. And punch out all the pieces. Hurry! They’re suffocating in there!

-Tom

Okay, I can help you appreciate actual HP Lovecraft in two easy steps:

  1. Go back in time to when you were a dumb teenager.
  2. Read a bunch of Lovecraft.

You’re welcome.

-Tom

I never found it that hard to read, or at least not any harder than anything else from the time (Tolkien, etc).

I mean it’s not Martin or anything, but things weren’t written that way at the time.

I went all in on Arkham: LCH as well! My “all-in” however is:

  1. The wooden artist’s case from Hobby Lobby (ech)
  2. Broken Token organizers for said case
  3. Sleeves (as explained upthread, my AH: LCG cards get warpy and clicky without sleeves)
  4. plastic coin thingies for the chaos counters
  5. a cool stand-up pouch for a chaos bag
  6. a playmat

Also, I got your back, merryprankster. HP Lovecraft’s writing is twaddle. He was and remains a terrible writer who happens to have created a very cool little mythos/alternate reality version of the 1920s. (He also was occasionally a good plotter, though even there he’s overrated.) So if you want to grab some game-themed writing, go ahead! I can promise that even if the plots aren’t as good as Lovecraft’s best, the actual writing and prose is likely to be executed far, far better because – once again – Lovecraft was a terrible writer.

I’m afraid I can’t really disagree. But you don’t read Lovecraft for the language. You read it for the imagination. It’s source material. You know, like the Bible and stuff. It’s not supposed to be well written; it’s just supposed to be Important!

So, here are a couple of things that have been pulling me away from Arkham Horror LCG lately:

I’m currently on the upward trajectory of the Chick Parabola for all of them.

-Tom

Yeah, “canned tutorial” was my impression of the base campaign as well.

My impression of the scenarios:

Summary

#1- Simple cakewalk. Of course you want to start with an easy one, but considering there were only 3 scenarios total, was disappointing the one-third of the game was a tutorial formality.

#2- This one SHOULD have been an escalating search across town, but it’s over way too fast. It also feels like it punishes you for playing it the way it tells you to (combing the town for clues to discover cultists and force them out of hiding). It’s way more beneficial to concentrate on killing the most powerful fighting cultist than it is trying to kill as many as possible. By far our most successful strategy was ignoring the clue searching and staying put, building up until the hunter showed up and taking him out. Then treat any remaining time as a bonus and do whatever cultists you can. It’s more effective, but a lot less fun and exciting in not going with the staging.

#3- Stumbles over the line of “difficult” into “annoying”. One of the forest locations was a LOT more difficult than the others (I think the one where you got stuck and had to pass a check to leave?) and your entire campaign run could be tanked simply by drawing it instead of the easier ones. Then there’s the aforementioned realization that you would have been better off killing the hunter in scenario 2 than three of the weaker cultists, even though the game had heavily hinted that you were supposed to be shooting for quantity.

The Carnevale of Horrors was the only other one we played. That one was a lot better, but we were mostly playing these for the first time story surprise and the idea of replaying with different decks wasn’t very appealing. Then we realized the price point for everything going forward would be $15 per scenario and we decided to bail out early and sell it.

I would revisit it if it went the Mansions of Madness route and just made it an app-driven affair with new scenarios as $5 DLC.

(geez, except even Mansions of Madness doesn’t seem to be going down the route. Less $40 boxed expansions with only 2 new scenarios, more $5 DLC scenarios!)

I’ve seen a couple of reviews for Mummy’s Mask that suggest it is a terrific iteration of the PACG rules set. Would be interested in hearing more…

I think Apocrypha is the best iteration of the design so far, because they don’t have to emulate Pathfinder with the constraints this involves. (Though, of course, the quality of the emulation of Pathfinder is one of the cool things about PACG). There’s a lot more that changes from scenario to scenario and there’s a huge range of ways to manipulate your dice for better successes rather than always just rolling more.

Coming to terms with the FFG pricing model I see. My advice, capitulate or get out now.

Played our first game of 7th Continent last weekend - two players (me + wife.) We just did the recommended first curse and didn’t do so hot. Then I had the brilliant realization that we weren’t adding a card from each check to our hand, which kind of made things a bit more difficult. We started over and are doing much better now, thank you! Saved the game after we made a decent amount of progress so we’ll see how it goes in the 2nd foray.

I can see that being rather difficult since it’s the only way to get new skill cards (and most items). Some of the character specific cards are extremely powerful - for example Victor Frankenstein’s monster creation card. Puts 25 cards back into the action deck.

Yes, it was pretty bad! I was wondering how to actually get the skill cards but figured it would come up in gameplay. Was trying to set up quickly to squeeze in a game while we could.

My other pretty terrible rules interpretation was playing Darkest Night for the first time last year. I played some games by alternating individual hero turns with the necromancer. Was wondering why the game was so damn brutally hard until I figured out I was doing it wrong.