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Author Archives: Chubby Unicorn

Superhero Games

This is the first in a seven part series on superhero games.

Superheroes are kind of a big deal in our house, so much so that we had to hide our 17 month old son’s too-small Superman costume in order to stop him from demanding we put in on him. And the amount of Spider-Man merchandise we have is ridiculous (thanks to a certain grandfather).

This means we like superhero games. Admittedly we have a leaning toward Marvel, but in general if it’s a superhero game, we’ll check it out. We won’t get into video games, but I will say we have a preference for the Lego Superhero games. As for tabletop games, not counting pre-existing games with a “new” superhero twist, like Spider-Man Chutes and Ladders, we have four different types of superhero games: deck building, card, dice, and board.

We have:
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Indigo

Space Cat had recently acquired Indigo, and since we knew we were going to be having a 4 player game day, we asked her to bring it over.

It’s a fairly simple game, a lot like Tsuro. You lay down tiles which lengthen various paths. Instead of moving your ship down the path, you move gemstones. The goal is to get as many gemstones as possible by getting them to your goal area. The tricky part is that in a 4 player game, you share your goals with other players. So if I manage to get a gem, that means I’ve also given one to an opponent.

In placing tiles, you can’t directly connect two goals, and if you create a path that makes two gems run into each other, those gems are out of the game.

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Pathfinder Rise of the Runelords: Trouble in Sandpoint

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

After a character encounters a Wrathful Sinspawn, roll a 1d6. On a 1 discard the top card of the Blessings Deck

  • Seoni – Rin figurine
  • Seelah – Saber figurine

Locations:

  • Village House – Seoni start
  • Catacombs of Wrath
  • Glassworks
  • Shrine to Lamashtu – Seelah start

Seelah opening hand:

  1. Blessing of the Gods x2
  2. Magic Half-Plate (favored card type)
  3. Longsword +1

Seoni starting hand:

  1. Blessing of Irori
  2. Force Missile (favored card type)
  3. Toad
  4. Blessing of Pharasma
  5. Amulet of Life
  6. Sage’s Journal

Seelah 1st turn

Encountered Trapped Passageway – Wisdom 9

d8, used special to discard top card of deck for a d6 (Blessing of the Gods recharged), rolled 12 (one 4, one 8), Trapped Passageway defeated

May immediately explore again

Encountered Blessing of Pharasma – Divine 5

Take 2 points of damage because of location

Discarded Blessing of the Gods x2

d8, used special to discard top card of deck for a d6 (Cure), rolled 5 (one 2, one 3)

Drew Troubadour

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Pathfinder Rise of the Runelords: Trouble in Sandpoint (story)

“Is that a toad?” Seelah asked as she joined Seoni at a table at the local tavern.

“It is.”

“Why do you have a toad?”

Seoni glanced at Seelah. “What if I told you it’s a magic toad?”

Seelah paused before answering. “Then you should take it with you when we go looking for the wrathful sinspawn. The sheriff has reports of the creatures coming up from tunnels discovered at the village house, the catacombs, the glassworks, and the shrine to Lamashtu. I was thinking I’d head to the shrine.”

Seoni couldn’t say she was thrilled to be enlisted for this expedition without being asked but decided not to argue the point. “I’ll start at the village house.”

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Terra Mystica on Tabletopia

This is the third in a four part series on Terra Mystica. In today’s entry I’ll talk about playing Terra Mystica on Tabletopia.

Professor and I have played around with Tabletopia a few times. The first full game we played with it was Dinosaur Island. It took a little getting used to. Thankfully there’s a feature that lets you have hotkeys to zoom in on different parts of the game, which also helps with moving around a larger game space. Once you get the hang of the clicking and dragging, that’s no big deal, though I do think that lengthens game play a bit. There’s a little bit of an issue with pieces locking into place. I was trying to put three workers on a space, but apparently there wasn’t enough room to lock them all in, so one locked on the space and the other two went flying across the board! It was really funny, but I can see it getting frustrating.

We also played around a little with Terra Mystica, which I found easier to navigate. It could be because I’d already played another game with Tabletopia, and I’ve played Terra Mystica multiple times, but the biggest thing was that I didn’t feel like I needed to zoom in. I could move my pieces and get my resources and see everything at once. I really liked that.

We were able to play a full game of Terra Mystica with President Gamer and Shutter, who now live across the country from us. This was really exciting, since it had been almost a year since the last time we’d gamed with them. We sent them the info on Tabletopia and Terra Mystica and set up a gaming date.

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Terra Mystica App

This is the second in a four part series on Terra Mystica. In today’s entry I’ll talk about using the Terra Mystica App. It is available forr Android or iOS, but my review will be based on using Android.

Professor discovered the Terra Mystica app and played a game against an AI, then we played a local game together.

Right now the app only has easy AI opponents, but they’re working on adding medium and hard. The game also has tutorials, but since we’ve played the board game, we skipped those.

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Terra Mystica

This is the first in a four part series on Terra Mystica.

When Amazon first debuted their New and Interesting Finds feature, I decided to try it out. Somehow through clicking through various games I liked, I stumbled upon Terra Mystica. It sounded interesting, so I added it to my wish list. Then Christmas rolled around, and my husband bought it for me.

I couldn’t believe all the little pieces inside! My first thought was, “President Gamer would love this!” The more pieces a game has, the more he likes it. The rules seem a bit daunting, but after playing it a couple times, we got it down.

What I really like about the game is each player gets their own little board, and that board tells you most of what you need to know about the game. It tells me how much it costs to build each building, what my income will be at the start of each round, what I can do with the resources I get, etc.

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Pathfinder Rise of the Runelords: Local Heroes

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

Find an ally and close the location

  • Seoni – Rin figurine
  • Seelah – Saber figurine

Locations:

  • Academy  – Seoni start
  • Waterfront
  • General Store
  • Woods – Seelah start

Seelah opening hand:

  1. Blessing of the Gods x2
  2. Magic Half-Plate (favored card type)
  3. Longsword +1

Seoni starting hand:

  1. Blessing of the Gods
  2. Force Missile (favored card type)
  3. Acolyte
  4. Burglar
  5. Invisibility (favored card type)
  6. Sage’s Journal

Seoni 1st turn

At the Academy if you encounter anything other than a spell on your first exploration, you get to go again.

Encountered Mercenary – Combat 10

Adventure path adds +1 for an 11

Force Missile – d12 (+4 ), 2d4, rolled 15  (one 2, one 4, and one 9), total 19 Mercenary defeated

Attempted to recharge Force Missile – Arcane 6

d12 (+4), rolled 10, total 14, recharged

Encountered Frost Ray – Arcane 6

d12 (+4), rolled 11, total 15

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Pathfinder Rise of the Runelords: Local Heroes (story)

After the goblin attack, Seelah and Seoni agreed they needed a bit of a break. The locals were clamoring to thank them for their defense of the town, and it actually seemed as though they had time to see what Sandpoint had to offer.

Seoni decided to take her acolyte Amy to the Academy, though she wondered why Buck was tagging along. She’d have to keep a close eye on him in case his fingers got sticky.

Seelah headed to the woods. Before she could really relax, she wanted to do one final sweep for enemies.

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Yggdrasil Play by Play

Yggdrasil is one of our favorite co-op games, and we especially like that it’s based on Norse mythology. Usually we play a 2 player game, but we’ve played with up to 6 people. Maybe it’s just the way we play or our strategy, but we think a 6 player game is much more challenging than a 2-4 player game. I don’t think we’ve managed to win with 6 players. When you play with fewer people, the game can be different every time depending on which gods you play as.

No matter which gods you play as, we’ve found a few strategies that work for us:

  • We work to remove all the Fire Giants from the white bag and continually fill it with Vikings. This way when the Valkyries are sent back to the beginning, we don’t have to travel down the whole line of islands to find a bag with Vikings.
  • No matter how many people we play with we get weapons for more than just 1 enemy. In a 3 player game I’ll have two +3 weapons and one +1 or +2 weapon. That way we can help each other, especially when the shuffle puts 3 Surt cards in a row, for example.
  • We always try to have what we call “Elf Insurance.” We like to have an Elf we can use just in case we need it.

So it’s no surprise that we mostly visit Midgard, World of the Elves, Dwarven Forge, World of the Dead, and Asgard. We only go to the Ice Fortress when a Frost Giant really needs to be taken out, and I don’t think we’ve ever visited the World of Darkness because we never trade anything.

This time we played a 3 player game.

  • Space Cat: Odin – draw the top 2 cards of enemy deck and chooses which to encounter then places the other card either on the top or bottom of deck
  • Chubby Unicorn: Freyja – can perform two actions in the same world
  • Professor: Frey – can perform a total of 4 actions

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