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Author Archives: Chubby Unicorn

Lanterns: The Harvest Festival

Lanterns is a tile placement game. The starting Lake Tile is placed in the center of the table with the red side facing the first player. 7 different colored Lantern Cards are separated into stacks and placed off to the side; the Favor Tokens are also set aside; Dedication Tokens are separated into 3 stacks by type and set aside; the Lake Tiles are stacked to create a draw pile. Each player then draws 3 Lake Tiles. Players then receive Lantern Cards matching the color that’s facing them on the starting Lake Tile. First player will get a red Lantern Card.

There’s also a little boat token which can either be given to the first player or used to mark the last tile played to help with distributing Lantern Cards.

Each turn players will place Lake Tiles and gather Lantern Cards. As long as there are cards of the color available, everyone will receive at least one card beginning with the active player. If a stack of Lantern Cards runs out, players who would have received that color, receive nothing.

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Pathfinder Rise of the Runelords: Crow Bait

This is the play-by-play version of the previously posted story mode.

If you discard more than one card as the result of a combat check, bury one of those cards.

  • Seoni – Rin figurine
  • Seelah – Saber figurine

Locations:

  • Farmhouse – Seoni start
  • Wooden Bridge
  • Woods
  • Guard Tower- Seelah Start

Seelah opening hand:

  1. Chain Mail (favored card type
  2. Blessing of the Gods x3

Seoni starting hand:

  1. Lightning Bolt (favored card type)
  2. Frost Ray
  3. Scorching Ray
  4. Blessing of Pharasma
  5. Sage’s Journal
  6. Force Missile

Seelah 1st turn

At the start of your turn, encounter a Bandit Henchman – Combat 8

Recharge a card of your choice. Recharged Blessing of the Gods

d8 (+4), used special to discard top card for a d6 (Standard Bearer), rolled 7, total 11, Bandit Henchman defeated

Encountered Battered Chest – Strength 8

d8 (+4), used special to discard top card for a d6 (Magic Half Plate), rolled 3, total 7, Battered Chest banished.

Drew Mirror Image

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Pathfinder Rise of the Runelords: Crow Bait (story)

While Seoni and Seelah had been dealing with the mess at Habe’s Sanatorium, Sandpoint developed a ghoul problem. On top of that, it seemed the guard tower was besieged by bandits. Seelah went to help the city guard, while Seoni headed to where the first ghoul was sighted: the farmhouse.

Seelah quickly lost track of how many bandits she’d fought. One had damaged her chain mail, which she had discarded during a lull in the battle. There had also been an ogre, and she recalled the troubadour showing up briefly after that battle. Between two of the bandit skirmishes, Seelah had met a guide, who could prove useful if she needed to explore the woods again. The woman waited patiently inside the guard tower, while Seelah continued to battle with her longsword and her newly acquired quarterstaff, wondering if there would ever be an end to these bandits.

Seoni had heard of Shalelu Andosana, but she hadn’t expected such a strange encounter. Shalelu had told her she would soon find tools she may or may not find useful, then she’d left. Shortly after that, Seoni had found two sets of thieves’ tools. She’d discarded the first set as it didn’t look well cared for, but the second set had been in much better condition, so she’d tucked those away for later. She’d also left the crossbow behind since she was not trained in such weapons.

That was when the zombie showed up. Glad to be versed in ranged spells instead of relying on hand to hand combat, Seoni quickly incinerated the undead creature. Then froze the mercenary who tried to get the jump on her.

The farmhouse was certainly turning out to be an interested place, but she still hadn’t seen any signs of a ghoul.

She looked down at her toad. “I don’t suppose you can sense ghouls, now can you?”

The toad croaked, and Seoni took that to be a negative response.

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Pathfinder Rise of the Runelords: Undead Uprising

This is the play-by-play version of the previously posted story mode.

When you defeat a Zombie Minion Henchman, randomly select an open location and shuffle the Zombie Minion into that deck.

  • Seoni – Rin figurine
  • Seelah – Saber figurine

Locations:

  • Mill – Seoni start
  • Village House
  • General Store – Seelah Start
  • Habe’s Sanitorium

Seelah opening hand:

  1. Greatsword
  2. Chain Mail (favored card type)
  3. Troubadour
  4. Blessing of the Gods

Seoni starting hand:

  1. Blessing of the Gods
  2. Frost Ray (favored card type)
  3. Blessing of Pharasma
  4. Blessing of Irori
  5. Toad
  6. Force Missile

Seoni 1st turn

Encountered Locked Stone Door – Dexterity 13

d6, discarded Blessing of the Gods for another d6, Seelah discarded Blessing of the Gods for another d6, rolled 12 (one 2, one 4, one 6)

Locked Stone Door shuffled back into location deck

Drew Sage

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Pathfinder Rise of the Runelords: Undead Uprising (story)

Not long after they returned to Sandpoint, the local sheriff asked Seoni and Seelah to look into another strange matter. People were reporting zombie sightings at an alarming rate. Other townsfolk had seen patients of Dr. Habe lurking about as well. Worried that the two might be connected, the sheriff asked that they help with the investigation. After so much turmoil, the local guard was spread a bit thin, so Seoni and Seelah agreed to help.

Seoni decided to start with the mill since the most recent sightings had been there, which Seelah and her troubadour headed for the general store. There had been reports of trouble in that area, and she wanted to see if any new weapons had been shipped in.

Seoni was a little surprised to find a stone door at the mill and even more surprised when it turned out to be locked. She attempted to unlock it, but had no success. She asked her toad for suggestions, but as usual he didn’t have much to contribute to the conversation.

“Perhaps we should simply search for another way in,” the Sage suggested as she joined them.

They began to search for another entry point. Seoni saw a discarded short sword, but left it where it was along with an elven chain shirt. She needed to focus.

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Qwirkle

Qwirkle is an easy family game. Everyone gets 6 tiles, and you take turns laying them on the board. A line (horizontal or vertical) can be by color or shape. So a completed line or Qwirkle can be 6 green shapes (each shape must be different) or 6 squares of the same shape in the 6 different colors. You cannot repeat a color in a shape line. You cannot repeat a shape in a color line. That’s the most important thing to remember.

When you take your turn, you can only play in one direction (horizontal or vertical), but you can play as many tiles as you want/can in that direction. You then replenish your tiles from the tile bag.

If you don’t have any moves (perhaps the player before you took your move), or don’t want to make any moves, you can trade in 1-6 tiles. Hopefully your new tiles will be more useful.

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Kooky Kalooki

Several years ago my husband and I stumbled upon Kooky Kalooki while we were out shopping. It says it’s a Jamaican card game, and since his mom is from Jamaica, we thought it would be a great gift for her. Despite never having heard of the game before, his mom quickly became the expert (9 times out of 10, she wins).

If you’ve ever played Phase 10, it’s a little like that, but more complicated. Everyone starts on Round 1, so everyone is dealt 9 cards and is trying to get 3 sets (more on sets later). If I’m the only one who gets 3 sets, I move on to Round 2 and get 10 cards for my next hand while everyone else is still on Round 1. So once you play a few hands, you can all be working towards different goals (the tricky part for whoever is dealing is remembering how many cards everyone gets). Now, in the rules you’re supposed to play 9 rounds or to a certain amount of points, but we play until someone completes Round 9. The way we play always takes longer.

For each Round you need a certain number of sets and/or runs:
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Ogres and Elves

Friends of mine were getting married, and even though they had a small ceremony, we wanted to get them something. They have a young daughter, so we thought we’d get them a family game. We considered Best Treehouse Ever, but it was out of stock on Amazon. I did some searching and stumbled upon the Family Pastimes games. They’re cooperative games with rules for 5-7 years old, 7-12 years old, and 12+. We really like cooperative games, but there aren’t many that are for younger age groups. I ordered one game for them, and put Ogres and Elves on my wishlist. Then Christmas came around, and Ogres and Elves was one of my gifts. I had completely forgotten about it!

First of all, it’s not exactly quality craftsmanship. The board doesn’t lay quite flat and the pieces are cheap cardboard. If that’s the sort of thing that’s going to bother you, just skip this one. I wasn’t thrilled when I was punching out the tokens (several stuck), but I still wanted to play the game.

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Bit Boxes

We have a problem. We own a lot of games (some might say too many), and despite having a limited amount of room, we keep buying more games! We’ve reorganized several times because you can only stack games so high before it becomes a serious hazard. The more classic games (like Sorry!) that we’re more likely to play when our son gets older have been put into totes in the garage, and games we rarely play are tucked out of sight in the hard-to-get-to cabinet.

It wasn’t enough.

Then we found Bit Boxes on Kickstarter, and it looked like the perfect solution.

As most game enthusiasts know, a board game box is designed to accommodate the size of the board. This means there’s often a lot of wasted space in the box. In fact very few games utilize all of the box space. This means games often take up a lot of space on our shelves, cabinets, and closets. Too much space, really. Bit Boxes help solve that problem.

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X-Men Under Siege

This is the final entry in a seven part series on superhero games. This entry is about X-Men Under Siege.

This is a board game from the 90s, so it has that “classic” feel to it. There are 18 figurines of the different characters to choose from, and each character also has a small board listing Fighting Skill, Durability, and Intelligence and special abilities. The Fighting Skill number tells you how many dice you get to roll in a fight, Durability is how many dice you can roll to remove Hits from your character, and Intelligence determines how many cards you can have (total Intelligence of your 2 smartest characters). You begin the game with 2 characters with the chance of getting a third.

The board consists of 6 levels of the Mansion, and each level has a certain number of rooms to explore. Along one side of the board is a number line which is used for battles. You play cards to move your characters to different levels and rooms to explore. Each room has a small square which you flip over during exploration. If the square is blank, nothing happens (you keep the square since it’s worth points later). If the square says “X-Men” you get an additional character (if you don’t yet have 3). If the square says “Evil Mutant” you flip over an Evil Mutant (EM) card. You place the small square at the bottom of the number line and the level marker to the number indicated on the EM card. Some of the numbers have a red blood mark on them. If you lower the EM’s HP to or past that number, you receive a token (worth points later). When you defeat the EM, you keep the EM card (worth points later). If you manage to clear enough rooms (the level indicates how many), you have cleared that level and get the level marker (worth points later) along with any remaining room tokens. Each room square, blood token, EM card, and level marker is worth 1 point at the end of the game, and the player with the most points wins.

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