MEGAforce Boardgames Night: Villagers

With MEGAforce down to two members recently, Grim and I tried out Villagers. There's a two player version which was ideal for us to learn the game.

What is Villagers?

Villagers is another game from Haakon Hoel Gaarder, designer of MOON, and is available from Sinister Fish Games. The conceit of the game is post Plague Europe. Settlements are struggling to rebuild and need to attract new workers. 

There's a stream of potential new villagers travelling along The Road, and players take these and try and fit them into their village.

The winner is the village that to amasses the most gold by the end of the game.

Gameplay 

Players start with one Founders card, the farm around which the new village will accumulate, eight gold, and a hand of five Villagers cards.

The game consists of Draft phases, where players alternate taking Villager cards into their hand, either from the face up cards on the Road, or face down from the Stacks placed above the Road and used to restock the Road during the Draft Phase. There are no restrictions on which Villagers you can draft, but you might not always be able to add them to your Village straight away.

Players can draft two Villagers, plus an extra one for each red Food symbol in their Village, to a maximum of five.

Once the Draft Phase is over, the Road is cleared and restocked from the Reserve (the cards not yet in play).

The Build Phase is where you add Villager cards to your village from your hand. 

Players take turns to build two cards, plus one per Build symbol, again to a maximum of five.

Example Hay Suit

Villagers mostly build up in chains, for example; Hayer, Grazier, Milk Maid and Fromager (see above), requiring certain existing cards which they are placed upon. The chains all fall into a series of suits, Grain, Hay, Wood, Ore and Grapes (two more are available in larger games with more players). Some Villagers also require Unlocking; in the chain above, the Milk Maid requires the Cooper. Ideally, you already have the relevant Villager in your village, which earns them two gold. Alternatively, you can call on the skills of an unlocking Villager in another player's village, but you have to pay them. As a last resort, you can pay the Bank if no unlocking Villager is in play, so Unlocking is a problem that money can solve.

There are three types of Base Villagers, Miners, Hayers, and Lumberjacks. Up to three of these can be built in addition during the Build Phase by swapping them for cards in the player's hand. These don't add gold or anything, but are vital to build those chains of villagers.

Play then continues with more Draft Phases and Build Phases until a Market Phase is reached.

There are two Market Phases. The first when the first two left hand Stacks are exhausted and the second when all the stacks are exhausted, signalling the end of the game. These are where you actually collect gold. Some gold will have been placed on Villagers during Build Phases and some Villagers have gold symbols. The Second Market Phase also allows you to collect Silver, which is simply a way of differentiating gold collected at the end of the game, it's worth just the same (this sounds odd, but it works fine in practice). Silver is often dependent on other cards in your village, such as the Peddler, who gets three silver for every two gold symbols in your village.

Extras 

There are Solitary Villagers, such as the Priest, who don't belong to any suit. They are mostly used to add Silver in the Second Market Phase at the end of the game.

There are also Special Villagers, who either have a one off effect, like the Tinner, who automatically unlocks all Villagers that you build for the Build Phase when she is played, or permanent, like the Monk, who replaces any one Villager in a chain.

The game part way through. We are in the Build Phase just prior to the First Market Phase.

Briefly, top row, l to r; First Market Phase card, four Stacks, three piles of Basic Villages. Next row, l to r; The Road of six Villagers, the Refresh pile and the discard pile.

Below that are our villages, arranged as we saw fit. You can see some of the chains building up.

My village, with a very creditable 171 gold.

Grim's winning village with 186 gold.

Summary

Villagers is a great fun game. Of course, there's more to the rules than my brief description above, you'll have to play to find out.

I did find the art style a little jarring, it works wonderfully for Moon, for this game I'd have preferred a more 'Medieval' style, but that's just me.

If you like a game with more interaction with other players, there are expansions that introduce various Villagers who can effect other villages (in the base game the Apprentice can do this, but I don't think any other villager can) among other extra effects.

I'll give Villagers an 'S' Tier ranking, just behind Moon.  It looks to have a lot of repeat playabilty and there's a real sense of the different crafts relying on each other to thrive.

MEGAforce Boardgames Night: Gloom

The most recent MEGAforce games night saw three rounds of Kingdomino, wherein each of us won one game, followed by a game of Gloom.

We have played this before, but I've not discussed it on here, so here goes.

Gloom

Gloom is a card game, the aim of which is to heap Misery on your weird Gothic family before bumping them off.

You can also play cards that add Hope to your opponents' families, reducing their Misery scores or even preventing that character from being killed. 

Each turn you can, usually, make two Actions, usually playing an Action Card, and then redraw up to a hand of five.

It sounds pretty grim, but there's a dark humour to it; the cards include such oddities as 'surprised by topiary' and 'mauled by manatees' and the descriptor, unless detailing additional game effects, can be grimly amusing too.

Card play often includes some additional effect; you might play a card on an opponent to add Hope to one of their characters,  but they get to draw extra cards from the deck, or even your hand. Or a card adding Misery  to one of your family might also cause you to discard your hand,  or portions of it. 

But the really clever part is the design of the cards. They are printed on transparent plastic. This means that values added to a character cover up and replace existing values (and make scoring much easier to calculate).

Here you can just see the red Misery scores, but they are covered by the grey 0 and black Hope scores gained from the "blessed by the bishop" card. When properly stacked, you only see and use these top values.

There are other details, such as icons which can grant bonuses when certain deaths are inflicted, such as the heart on Samson's card above, and there are cards which negate or alter others.  I used 'smoke and mirrors' early in the game to prevent Grim inflicting a death on one of his family. 

Strategy 

You can only play a death card on a character with some Misery, and death cards must be the first played in your turn. There are, of course, exceptions to this with certain cards. 

It can be worth killing off another player's characters if they have a very low Misery score to prevent that player harvesting more Misery later.

There seems to be a system in the placement of the three possible Misery/Hope positions. I've not examined this closely, but it felt like the bottom spot came up on Action Cards less often than the others.

Winning 

The game ends when one player bumps off all their characters,  at which point all players add up the top Misery scores for their deceased characters. 

The three deceased members of my family at the end of the game. 

Gloom plays well and can be great fun. This time we emphasised the story element by narrating how the various action cards play, which certainly added to the fun.

It's not a game I'm desperate to play every time, but I'll certainly enjoy another go if it's suggested, earning it a solid place in A tier.

Gloom is produced by Atlas Games and available from them and many other online retailers.

More 7TV - MEGAfilms Studios First Pilot?

The whole of MEGAforce tried a quick game of 7TV recently. 

As T'Other One and I have only played once before, and Andy and Grim were completely new, we kept it simple. 

Set, Cast and Script 

T'Other One had set up the terrain, some of his excellent Deadzone stuff along with some scatter from the Aliens game. 

He'd also sorted a couple of casts, Colonialist oppressors and the poor innocent Xenos, mostly taken from his Aliens; Another Day in the Marine Corps, but including three domed helmeted creatures, apparently from Venus, for some firepower. The aim was simply to amass the most Victory Points. 

The Studio ready for action

And Action!

The game started gradually, with an early casualty on the Human side when one of the Grunts was set on fire with a Ray Gun and then immolated by the Xenos Queen's Fiery Breath. 

The sneaky humans managed to bag a couple of the objectives and gain revenge on the Venusian who had burnt the trooper earlier. 

The action hotted up, with Xenos creeping nearer. One even scuttling in to shield it's Queen who was Distracted (overacting diva). The second Xenos climbed up to the gantry to tackle the trooper there, leading to a protracted scrap that sadly remained unresolved by the end of filming. 

The shielding Xenos avoided the attention of the human star and survived to fight the human co-star, but after a bit of a scuffle, fell to his knife. Adding insult to injury, the human was unaffected by the dying Xenos' Acid Blood.

"Get me my Agent"

Coming to her senses, the Xenos Queen clambered up to grab an objective, then stole the scene to advance down the gantries towards her rival. Another fiery breath proved ineffective this time, as the director shouted "Cut". MEGAfilms had only booked the studio until 10.30, so filming was stopped. 

Tallying the VPs, the plucky Xenos had one point more, which counts as a draw. What swung it our way was the human star and co-star each having a status at the end. 

Did the Reviewers Like It?

Well, what a game. We're still learning, so there was a lot of looking up rules, and mistakes were made, but I think the rest of MEGAforce really enjoyed it.

Unfortunately, we never got into the Finale where the action really hots up. Unfamiliarity slowed us down, alas.

We've already determined to replay this game (the studio bosses thought the script had promise, but needs more pizazz, so they've called for it to be re-filmed) so hopefully things will go faster.

I haven't yet got to grips with any strategies yet. Simply throwing Plot Points in to boost very risky rolls probably isn't the best, and I'm sure I could make more of the various presence strikes (the various non-damaging attacks that apply status effects). When we used them they were nice, but they often seemed harder to use than straight up melee strikes. I suspect they'll come into their own when used against higher Health cast members.

When I discussed my first game, I may have seemed somewhat ambivalent. 

I still maintain that 7TV is one of the best skirmish systems I've played. I'll admit that I'm currently struggling with the meta, but, as T'Other One said, once we find the right setting, it'll click.

7TV is available from Crooked Dice 

**EDIT**

T'Other One has kindly shared his photos, showing a bit more of the action. 

Early stages, see those sneaky humans grabbing objectives

Inconclusive melee

First casualty

Marine in cover faces the approaching Venusians

Whoosh!  Good job those barrels don't hold fuel

And here's the two casts.  We actually removed one trooper and one Xenos.  We never used the Special Effect that brings the Horde on, it does sound like a fun ability.  I suspect it would have seen use in the Finale.

Human Cast, Star, Co-Star and two different types of Extra

Xenos Queen (Star), Xenos', Venusians and (unused) Xenos Horde

Champions of Midgard; MEGAforce Board Games Night

A Viking Saga

Grim brought another new game along recently: Champions of Midgard. 

Each player is a Viking leader vying to become the new jarl of the township. This is achieved by racking up Glory.

The best way to gain Glory is by defeating Monsters, either the Trolls that constantly threaten the town, the Draugr that lurk nearby threatening villages, or the legendary Monsters found overseas.

But to do this you need Viking warriors (dice of different colours) and you get these in various ways by placing your worker meeples.

Worker Phase

There are various locations about town that grant resources such as food, coin or wood, or the various warrior types, swordsmen, spearmen or axemen.  Some locations allow you to build a private ship or hire a public longship.

Placing a worker meeple in a location blocks it for the rest of the current turn. Once this phase is over, combat begins. You did remember to place meeples where you want to fight, didn't you?

Fighting Phase

Players then assign Viking warrior dice to fight. Only one player per target, and no fighting among yourselves!

Combat is straightforward, the monster has a set offense (the number of warrior dice it automatically kills) and a set defence (the number of hits required to kill it).  The warrior dice are thrown and the results applied.  The dice have some blank faces, and shield results block kills from the monster.  Swordsmen are the weakest warriors, and axemen the strongest.

The game plays over eight turns, and although T'Other One and myself were new to Champions of Midgard, we'd all got pretty fast as play went on.

There are lots of nice details, such as Destinies, which grant extra Glory at the end for certain achievements, as an example, I had Draugr Slayer, and got extra points for killing the most undead. 

Runes are one off special abilities and the Merchant's Quay provides new goods each turn.

My favourite bit is fighting the legendary monsters, such as Fenris Cubs or Lyndwurm. They are all found overseas, so you need a ship. There are a couple of public ships available or you can build your own. The ships are equipped with warriors, but they also need meat to feed them. A deck of cards represents potential hazards on the way, such as storms or whirlpools, and these can rob you of meat or warriors. Then the survivors get to fight the Monster.

The board at the start of play. T'Other One won with just short of 100 Glory! Grim and myself trailed around the 70s.

Final Thoughts

Champions of Midgard is a great fun game. At it's heart it's a resource management game, but there is enough 'dressing' that it really feels like a Saga. The artwork, especially the board itself, looks great, my only complaint being the horned helmets. I thought we'd buried that bit of Victorian nonsense back in the eighties.

Component quality is good, with wooden meeples (deluxe versions are available with horned helmeted meeples, just wrong).

I'll definitely put this in S Tier, it provides a great evening's entertainment.  I grew up reading the Icelandic Sagas, so this is just my sort of game.

Champions of Midgard is designed by Ole Steiness and produced by Grey Fox Games, and there are a couple of supplements introducing more Jotuns and Valholl and a couple more options for expeditions.

Space Hulk; MEGAforce Board Game Night

The recent MEGAforce evening saw a return to a Games Workshop classic from 1989,  Space Hulk.

What is Space Hulk?

The game pits small squads of Terminator Marines against Genestealers in the cramped confines of an abandoned  drifting spaceship. 

The Marines have storm bolters and heavy flamers while the 'Stealers just have speed and very sharp claws. 

There are lots of great rules features, such as putting Marines Overwatch (and the attendant risk of bolters jamming), the use of 'blips' to hide the number of 'Stealers out of direct line of sight, and the time limit on the Marines turns, that give the game the right feel.  Its fast and deadly, and if the Marine player doesn't move fast, it goes very badly very quickly.

I've played this before, many moons ago, using T'Other One's nicely painted minis, complete with metal Terminators (rather than the plastic ones), but it was Grim's first go. We shared control of the five Marines, and our objective was simply to disable a terminal with a flamer shot. T'Other One had hordes of stealers trying to stop us.

Ready for Action, the flamer burst marks the target room

One Marine down

Two Marines down

Victory! (for the 'Stealers)

The mission didn't go well for us, T'Other One did a great job of keeping up pressure from multiple directions. Eventually we lost the Heavy Flamer, and with it, any chance of winning. The remaining Marine fell the following turn.

I could blame our bad luck with the Command Dice (a d6 for extra Action Points) or T'Other One's good luck with the blips, but to be honest, he kept us on the back foot (boot? claw?) from the start.

Take Two 

But Space Hulk is a pretty quick game to play, especially the early missions, so we tried again.

This time we had better luck and forged ahead. There were fewer 'Stealers and we managed to burn the launch controls, albeit at the cost of one of the marines who opened the final door and selflessly stepped into the room to allow the flamer to fire. His sacrifice will be remembered.

Only one 'Stealer to hold off, Victory is ours!

Over recent years we've played quite a few old GW board games, many of which I remember with fondness from back in the eighties and nineties, and mostly from my collection. But they've generally felt clunky and a lot less fun than the newer generations of games.

But Space Hulk stands up very well. It's still a slick rule set, simple enough to grasp, but with lots of potential for tactical thinking. It's also exciting, and captures the tension of a beleaguered crew beset by swarms of enemies.

There were a couple more editions, the most recent with some amazing minis, but the first edition is still, to me, the best.

I usually give a tier ranking for our board games,  well,  if you're looking for a tense fast paced action shoot em up, then definitely S Tier.  What it does,  it does very well. 

I'd go as far as saying that I prefer it to Aliens, mostly down to the less complex rule set. It doesn't have the cooperative side that Aliens has though. 

GW released a couple of supplements, introducing Librarians with psychic powers and Genestealer hybrids with weapons, but the base game is enough for me.

Somewhere in the loft of shame I have my own copy, perhaps it's time to get it out and get it painted.

Camel Up; MEGAforce Board Game Night

After a virus that seems to have robbed me of nearly a month, I can finally get back to gaming and hobby stuff.

The most recent MEGAforce meeting was my first evening out in ages.

Grim brought along a game called Camel Up. A game where the idea is to make the most money betting on camel races in a desert. 

The game is simple enough, although the instructions seemed to overcomplicate it a bit. As is often the case, a quick skim of the rules helped, but actually playing was the best way to learn*.

The game is played over a series of legs and finishes when the first camel crosses the finish line. Players have the opportunity to bet on each leg as well as the final result. They can also use the dice to move camel(s) and there are oasis hazards that generate money and move camels back or forwards.

There are a couple of features that make Camel Up great fun. Movement is controlled by five different coloured dice (corresponding to the camels). A cardboard pyramid holds these dice and is inverted to roll one when the camels are moved. Once all five dice have been rolled, that particular leg is done. The race carrys on, with the camels continuing from where they are, but there's a chance to gain or lose money depending on what bets have been placed during that leg.

The other fun feature is The Stack. Camels sharing the same space are stacked, and the meeples are designed so they easily do so. Camel Up indeed! Stacks are moved as a unit, meaning some camels can end up being moved several times in a leg. 

The game at the finish. White wins! Both white and yellow are top of a stack. My money was on blue at the back (which did get me a small payout).

Overall, another great fun game that deserves placing in A tier.

Play time was a bit under an hour, it's sure to speed up now we know the rules, and I'd happily play again.

There are betting strategies that we were just getting the hang of, and Grim's placement of his oasis raked in a lot of cash for him.

It's also taught me that I probably should keep my betting to imaginary races rather than real life.

*We made one small mistake regarding movement of stacks combined with an oasis. The proper rules look to be even more fun.

Last Night On Earth; MEGAforce Board Game Night

While editing my recent post about Hanabi and Sushi Go, I realised that I forgot to post this regarding the previous MEGAforce meeting, so here it is.

The most recent MEGAforce meeting was the closest to Halloween that we'll get, so T'Other One suggested a game of Last Night on Earth, which seemed appropriate.

The game usually plays with one player running the zombies and the rest are the survivors. Unlike Zombies! which we played a while ago, the survivors are working together to achieve an objective.

For this particular scenario there were two zombie players, and Grim and I ran a couple of survivors each. The goal was to keep the manor house in the centre of the board as free from zombies as possible. The zombie players were trying to have nine or more zombies in the manor house at daybreak.

Now I'm not a great zombie fan, and a lot of the references, tropes and in jokes pass me by. I am a fan of good games though, and Last Night On Earth IS pretty good. 

Game Play

The cards all feature photos of the game designers and friends either as survivors or made up as zombies. Items are photos of those things. The minis are well done and are instantly recognisable from the cards and T'Other One has done a great job of painting the survivors to match the artwork.

Game play is straightforward, with the chance to search locations (draw cards), move, and, of course, fight zombies.

Fighting zombies is risky. The survivor rolls 2d6 against the zombie's 1d6. Merely beating the zombie only drives it back; to destroy it, the survivor must also roll doubles. The secret is in getting equipment to help.

Zombies and Survivors have their own event decks, which can give the survivors equipment, or can be played to help or hinder.

The game does give the feeling of being beleaguered, those zombies just don't stop, and can be nasty, especially in numbers.

At sunrise we'd managed to keep the zombie numbers in the manor below nine, but this was at the cost of three out of the four survivors. We ended up drawing out the zombies (they have to move up to survivors in adjacent spaces), but only the nurse survived.

If I were a bigger fan of the Undead, Last Night on Earth might squeeze into S tier, but since I'm not, and most of the references are lost on me, I'll stick it in A tier due to the great game play, atmosphere and the great touch of using photographs of the designers.

Hanabi and Sushi Go; MEGAforce Board Game Night

We played a couple of different card based games recently, Hanabi, by Antoine Bauza and Sushi Go by Phil Walker-Harding.

Hanabi 

We played on 4th of November, so Hanabi was very appropriate. It's a cooperative game involving a group of firework manufacturers putting on a display.

Unfortunately, all the labels have been lost, so we have to rely on clues from each other, and hope to get the display ready before an oncoming storm.

This works by each player having a hand of five cards, but players never see their own hands. All the other players do, and this is how they can give hints. The cards are one of five colours (white, red, blue, yellow and green) and one of five numbers. The fireworks must be built up in numerical order, must be a single colour and there can only be one of each colour.

On their turn, players can give a hint to another player by telling them which of their cards are a particular colour or number, or discard one of their own cards, or play one of their cards. The number of hints are limited, but can be bought back by discarding, and playing a wrong card brings the storm closer.

We played a couple of games, scoring 14 the first time, and 18 the second, out of a maximum of 25.

Endgame, apparently this score is 'Excellent; the crowd are delighted'

A great fun game, with a straight forward mechanic, but requiring a good bit of thought (and, apparently, a better short term memory than I possess). 

Definitely A tier.

Sushi Go

A fast, fun card game where the object is to build a meal over three rounds, making sure you have enough puddings at the end of course.

We've played Sushi Go quite a few times now, and it's a good one to have handy to fill in ten to twenty minutes at the end of an evening.

When I first played, this was my first experience of 'pick and pass', where the players swap hands each turn. Thus you know what each hand is after a while, and strategies can be built around denying players cards that might benefit them.

Some dishes are worth points on their own, some are worth more in combinations, and some require other cards.

Puddings are played through all three rounds, but are only applied at the very end, gaining or loosing points for having most or least puddings.

While I don't like Sushi, I really enjoy this game. Part of this is the speed of play, there always seems to be time to squeeze in a quick game. Partly for this reason it earns a solid A.

Two good A tier games*. Hanabi is great for getting the mind working. Sushi Go for a quick game.

Both games are available from various online retailers, and at least one chain of UK booksellers stocks Shushi Go.

*Don't let that put you off, both are very highly recommended, but they don't quite provide the gaming experience that I get from, say, Moon.