Board Games Night - Cascadia

The Monday Evening Gaming Association (known informally as MEGAforce) tried a new board game last night, Cascadia.

The game at the scoring phase.

The aim of Cascadia is to create the most sound ecosystem using habitat tiles and placing wildlife tokens on them.

There are five different habitat types (mountain, forest, prairie, wetlands and river) and the hex tiles usually contain more than one type. 

There are five wildlife types as well (Grizzly Bear, Roosevelt Elk, Red Fox, Chinook Salmon and Red-tailed Hawk), and the habitat tiles have icons to indicate which wildlife token can be placed on it, but only one token per tile.

Five cards are drawn at the start of the game to determine the points scored at the end, so using the recommended starter cards we got points for placing pairs of bears in adjacent tiles, for placing long 'runs' of salmon or for placing hawks not adjacent to other hawks. Some of the other cards impose quite tricky conditions for scoring.

There are always four tiles and four wildlife tokens for a player to choose from, drawn and placed in pairs. These are usually taken in the pairs but can be placed separately in a player's ecosystem.

Once each player has placed twenty tiles the game finishes and points are totted up. 

Firstly the points from cards are added.  I adopted a fairly scatter-gun approach to placing my wildlife and definitely didn't make the best of it. I did benefit from trying to make large habitat zones which did my points total a lot of good.

All in all a great game. The concept and play is simple, but there are hard choices to be made when choosing and placing stuff.

I'll currently place this firmly in A tier, though I suspect once the more complex victory cards are used it might edge into S tier.

Cascade is produced by Flat Out Games, Grim had a Kickstarter version of the game.  The rules include a solo version, and works for 2 to 4 players in group play.  There seems to be some sort of campaign or quest system in the back of the book, but I didn't explore this.  There is some good scientific information about the habitats and creatures used in the game as well, making it informative as well as entertaining.

Oldhammer Elves part 2

I've actually finished painting something!

I'm aware that we're nearly a quarter of the way through 2024, and I've not actually posted anything newly painted this year. This is probably because I've been so caught up in thinning out the minis that I've not allowed myself the time to get any finished.

The First Elven Unit

Back in July I showed the unpainted models for the first unit of elves for Team Good. I've had to revise that slightly. The elves were a mix of 'Wood' and 'High' elves, and didn't quite work as a unit for me. I got part way through them and stopped.

I've managed to obtain a few more old school elves since, and I now have enough for six of this more Sylvan style. I thought I might as well finish the three I'd started before beginning anything new (besides, I'm also part way through painting something for Team Evil).

A (Very) Reduced Model Unit

4210/13 Bow 9, ME 31 (02) - Sylvan Elf, ME 31 (01) - Sylvan Elf

That tactical rock needs some lighter tones.

Initially I painted the grip and tips of the bow as metal, but I though that some sort of horn or ivory might fit wood elves better, besides, I've seen compound bows like this at the Royal Armouries.

So here they are. Individually each one was a joy to paint, and I think that's significant. My dwarves were each painted as individual models with no intention of them being a unit. Perhaps I need to be a bit looser in approaching the elves as well?

I enjoyed keeping to the vague brief of "the greens and browns of the forest" while avoiding having them too uniform. I can't really give exact paint recipes as everything tends to get mixed up on my wet palette, but I gave each elf light green hose and a dark green jacket or tunic. The collars were all reddish brown, based around the rather nice Vallejo Model Color Orange Brown. 

I feel that the contrast between hose and jacket on ME 31 (01) could be greater, and perhaps ME 31 (02) is a bit dark overall. I may go back and touch up a few details at a later stage, but for now I'm calling these done.

The bases were textured using Geek Gaming Scenics Plains of New Zealand mix.  I added more grass tufts to bring out the 'nature' side of the elves.

Oh, and I'm experimenting with my photography again.  I've gone back to my fold up light box, this time using my newer phone.  I think there's an improvement, and I like the effect of the blue background. I think I need to find something without the fabric texture though, as the camera has tried to focus on this and my eyes don't pick that up until I enlarge the pictures.

Birthday Zombies!!!

As is the custom, T'Other One had complete freedom of choice for the Monday game nearest his birthday. He chose Zombies!!!  from Twilight Creations. The object of the game is to be first to reach the helicopter, while, obviously, avoiding being eaten by zombies.

The town layout is drawn randomly from a tile deck, there are event cards to play, giving equipment or hazards for the other players and health and bullets to be found in many of the named buildings. We've played this a few times, notably for T'Other One's stag do. 

This time we added the Mall expansion. The Mall is discovered somewhere in the town, and the helicopter pad is on the top of the Mall. It has its own tiles and event deck.

The helipad is revealed (lowest left) and it's full of zombies 

'Eaten' players respawn in the town square tile, meaning it's a long plod back towards the helipad, we ruled that respawning at the entrance to the Mall was better. I think all of us had to respawn at least once.

There was a good bit of card play, such as doubling the number of zombies on the helipad (snigger),  but by eleven o'clock we were sort of helping each other by clearing zombies out of the way.

T'Other One's yellow pawn about to respawn. So close. Gosh, I wonder why there are so many zombies on the helipad?

In the end Grim (blue) managed to get through. 

Zombies!!! is a fun Beer and Pretzels game with many expansions. I suspect that regular play needs these expansions to add something fresh, we certainly enjoyed the new cards.

Every time I play it I think the mechanics could easily be adapted to exploring an infested space station, a sort of more random Space Hulk type game.