6361

I haven’t played Sentinels yet, but I would definitely steer clear of playing Firefly with non-board gamers unless maybe they just really loved the TV show and/or movie. There is a ton of stuff going on in it, and lots of little things you need to pay attention to. King of Tokyo or Pandemic are much better choices, and should be much more accessible to non-gamers.

6362

I was in my local game shop, ass to elbow with the rest of the stinkers, making the most of their Yuletide sale. Twenty percent off the top. I saw the gray box on its side. Light blue letters announced its name. Android. Not : Infiltration or : Netrunner, and Google had nothing to do with it. This was the original. Designed by a fella who’d done a Lovecraft pastiche a few years ago. I’d heard of it. It was some kind of futuristic crime n’ punishment simulator. Cyborg private eyes track down a murderer. A coworker had been talking it up in the most downbeat way possible. “It’s…complicated. It’s really complicated. There are so many rules. So many pieces. I can never get my friends to play it with me. But, it’s good?” On a whim I gave the box a new home. Merry Christmas to me.

Once home, I put on a New Retro Wave playlist and started opening up the box. The cellophane fell off like wraps on some floozy with a belly full of jake. I pulled off the lid…and groaned. There was Android, all laid out before me like a Christmas goose, one of the good ones from Sidney’s. It was a little intimidating. There was more cardstock in there than an Atlantic City casino. The game needed a clock and a calendar. My old lady and I started punching out tokens and were done by the end of the night. The rulebook was a good forty pages, easy, but I plugged my nose and dove in.

I started getting my head around all the components, or tried to. The detectives were supposed to be chasing leads, clues, snitches around the city, hoping for enough evidence to pin the murder rap on some dumb perp. The board was comprised of a dystopian sprawl, a moon colony, and a jigsaw puzzle. The puzzle wasn’t just abstract art, it symbolized a conspiracy that was behind the murder…maybe. The saps that played the game took the role of investigators, and a big chunk of the game pieces were dedicated to each investigator. They had hopes, they had friends, they had minefields from their past. This was no simple murder investigation. It went much deeper than that. An investigator could solve the bloody murder and still lose the game. While each player was in control of their investigator’s strengths, every other player was in control of that investigator’s weaknesses. Kicking your fellow player in the can meant you were more likely to squeeze off some beneficial card, or maybe put a happy ending on your hard luck story.

There’s more to it than that, of course, there’s more of it everywhere. I think I might be over my head on this one. Time to round up some friends and start treading water.

6363

Sounds like fun. Will be interested to hear how it turns out.

Does anyone have a great “take my games from here to there” solution? I’ve been stuffing my games in a backpack the last few weeks to go to my game group, but it doesn’t really work great, and it barely fits 3. A generic storage bin or even packing box of the right size could work, but they seems a little unwieldy. I’ve heard of some folks using the squarish duffel bags as well.

6364

A suitcase. Seriously, a good piece of wheeled luggage has worked best for me so far.

6365

I use a couple of these: http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/90149148/

Not perfect but cheap and still really good if you want the duffle approach.

6366

Ha! Great intro, Djscman. I’ve been curious about Android for a long time, but I know better than to buy games that take more than a couple hours to play. I wonder if they originally pursued the Bladerunner license with that game (since FFG are very license heavy and were scooping them up during that period). Seems clearly to have been created with the film in mind…

6367

Excellent, Mr DJ South Carolina Man! Looking forward to Issue #2.

-Tom

6368

I have played Android exactly once. I had a fantastic time. I do not expect I will ever get to play it again.

As for the problems some people have with the theme, I imagine it this way. Picture the players as competing directors. Each wants their leading man or lady to be the star. Each wants their ending to be the happy one. So you’re not playing the detective pinning evidence on innocent people, you’re a director trying to influence the story the way you want it to go. Just my two cents.

6369

The clerk at the friendly local game store (which is a big competitor to the FFG Center a few miles away (I haven’t been there yet)) who is in a position to know some FFG employees said exactly that when I bought it: originally they wanted to make a Blade Runner game, thought they could afford the licensing, then found it was far too expensive. The Android universe seems to have worked out well for them as original IP, they’ve managed to get two spin-off games and several novels published in it, and who knows what else they have in the future. The universe doesn’t seem all that original, though, just Blade Runner and Shadowrun and Robocop and Ghost In The Shell and several other sources poured into a blender, pureed, and watered down. As Blizzard is to Games Workshop, to make an analogy. Still, I’m looking forward to playing the base game this Saturday, and hoping that Santa uploads Netrunner to my stocking server this Christmas.

6370

Got a round of Pathfinder in at my local game group with new players. Discovered it isn’t exactly the easiest thing to explain (go figure with 20+ pages of rules) quickly, but decided to go with the whole “here’s the basics, let’s play and learn on the way” method. Also discovered it can really take a loooong time to setup. Need to work on a better strategy for splitting up the work there. Everyone said they had fun, but the first two or three rounds seems like folks whose turn it wasn’t kind of tuned out a little (not surprising with all the explanation going on ). Hopefully will be able to break this out again on another night.

I almost missed out on playing Sentinels again. They started up while I was getting all the cards from Pathfinder put away, but managed to jump in during the first turn. It was a lot of fun, and can definitely see how the different character/villain abilities change the way you play. It’s also pretty simple to learn. Just a lot of card text/effects to keep track of once things start going. Putting this one on my wishlist too.

Can Sentinels be played solo? BGG says it’s 2-5, but is it one of those things where you could play solo, but just need to do more than 1 character? I’m sure it’s not as fun, but something I’d need to consider.

Also finally got to play Ascension. I’m generally pretty awful at deck builders, but this one is a little more straightforward than the others I’ve played, so it was easier to pickup. I actually won too, which I think is a first for a deck builder. Was kind of funny how many people walking by (mostly Magic players) said how much they loved playing Ascension.

And thanks for the few suggestions about ways to carry games around. Much appreciated.

6371

I’ve played Android once in a 4p or 5p game. Once was enough to know I don’t want to ever play it again. It’s so very, very long and so very, very boring. It’s been years since I played it, but I remember none of us really achieved much, even though we finished the game. We also had to continually refer to the rulesets, as I seem to remember there being caveats about everything.

The people on the BGG forums who defend it always say it gets better if you’re ‘in character’ and read the flavour text. But the favour text is rather poor and I don’t think any amount of being “in character” could help the game – you’d probably have a lot more fun spending that time playing a neuromancer tabletop RPG. At least then everyone is in character and you don’t spend hour methodically moving bits of cardboard around. I think the people on the BGG forums that defend this game simply love to use their imagination, and in this case they’ve imagined a completely different game from the one in the box.

We all had an issue with the theme of “pinning” the evidence, but none of us really cared about that. We played the game as it was.

6372

Sentinels can be played solo but the game is explicitly designed for 3 to 5 heroes so you would need to run three heroes plus keep track of the environment and villain decks. It’s doable and the most fun I have personally had with a solo tabletop game (though I have no explicitly solo games of that sort), but it’s a lot to run all by yourself and way more fun with more people.

6373

Thanks for the info. Are any of the expansions or add-ons considered essential? Seems like they all add heroes and/or villains and/or environments.

6374

Not for a first run, no. The base game is solid and you’ll get a lot of play time out of it. If you find yourself playing regularly then the expansions are all worthwhile.

6375

I don’t think there’s a bad one in the bunch, but my favorite (which I didn’t expect to like so much) is Infernal Relics. Shattered Timelines also has a lot of fun thematic stuff going on.

Edit: Oh, yeah, Mike is right: None are essential in terms of changing the gameplay for the better. Base game is totally strong.

6376

I’ve played Android about 5 time snow. After I played it the first time, I shelved it and decided I would never play it again because it was too damn fiddly. It came out again a year later, and I saw things to like in it. I was initially interested in all of the narrative elements, but in the end it was the solid design that got me to play it 3 more times.

The setting, though, and the “writing”—execrable.

6377

Im glad they kept the “world” for other games. It’s fairly generic cyberpunk but it’s a great fit for Netrunner. I’d like to see continued game development and a game like Android but given a radical Eldritch Horror style makeover could be great.

Tom M

6378

What drew you back to it and what depth was revealed after you replayed it? Did your fellow gamers also like it, or are they at your mercy when it comes to game choice? :)

6379

Ascension is still, to my mind, the king of deck-builders. But note that with each successive add-on, it gets a little more complicated, a little more fiddly, a little less snappy. This isn’t a bad thing at all, because it gives advanced players a way to branch out. It’s got a lot of complexity that you can eventually grow into.

-Tom
6380

I’ve played Android three or four times, and I’m closer to the Pod end of the spectrum, but it is a game I want to love. I dig the setting and I don’t mind the pulp style writing. I love the idea of being in a murder mystery game (not really solving a murder, but sort of being inside the story of a murder mystery), but I rarely found the game mechanics satisfying. They’re either too abstract or too seemingly inconsequential to the game as a whole.

But, I know Dscman, and I think he will really enjoy it. I just hope he has like minded players to play with. That can help a lot.