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Pathfinder Rise of the Runelords: Thistletop Delve (story)

Though they had defeated Gogmurt, the threat had not yet died. They’d sent their allies off to try to find more information, but it seemed Nualia, who was supposed to be dead, was the true source of trouble in Thistletop and Sandpoint. They decided to search the goblin fortress again as well as the Thassilonian dungeon, the warrens, and of course the throne room of the Thistletop fortress.

Seoni and Seelah decided a fresh set of eyes in the goblin fortress would be better, so Seelah headed off in that direction. Seoni, with the Sage by her side, set off for the Thassilonian dungeon.

Seelah was a bit surprised her greatsword had been so effective against the rat swarm she’d encountered upon entering the goblin fortress. She finished cleaning her sword and moved farther in. It wasn’t long before she found a man who looked to be a mercenary.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Orik Vancaskerkin.”

The name sounded vaguely familiar. “What are you doing here?”

“Being a distraction.”

Seelah raised her sword. “Then you’re working with Nualia.”

That brought an end to the conversation, and they attacked. Seelah quickly dispatched him and turned to leave. If he was a distraction, then Nualia wasn’t in the goblin fortress.

“Wait!”

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Sentinels of the Multiverse plus expansions

This is the sixth in a seven part series on superhero games. In this entry I’ll discuss Sentinels of the Multiverse plus expansions.

Sentinels is another favorite of ours, and once again we have a lot of expansions:

  1. Rook City
  2. Infernal Relics
  3. Shattered Timelines
  4. Wrath of the Cosmos
  5. Vengeance
  6. Villains of the Multiverse

We also have several mini-expansions: Celestial Tribunal, Final Wasteland, Omnitron IV, Silver Gulch, Guise, Scholar, Unity, Ambuscade, Checkpoint, Miss Information, and Wager Master.

In this card game you choose a Hero and you’ll play with that deck throughout the game. We usually play a two player game, so we each choose two decks. You also choose a Villain Deck and Environment Deck. The Villain goes first, then the Heroes, and finally the Environment. As you turn over or play cards, you follow the instructions on the card.
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Legendary Plus Expansions

This is the fifth in a seven part series on superhero games. In this entry, I’ll discuss Legendary plus a bunch of its expansions.

Legendary is our favorite deck building game, which explains why we have so many expansions:

  1. Captain America 75th Anniversary
  2. Dark City
  3. Fantastic Four
  4. Guardians of the Galaxy
  5. Paint the Town Red
  6. Secret Wars 1

Professor and I play this game quite a bit, so I’ll just explain the 2 player set up. You choose 5 Heroes (each has a 14 card deck) and shuffle them together to create the 70 card Hero Deck. Each Hero has at least one icon on the card indicating the Hero Type. This is important to look at when you’re choosing your Heroes because if Iron Man is the only Tech Type Hero you have, it’s going to be difficult to use some of his special abilities. Also, some Villains and Masterminds attack you unless you have a certain class of Hero or a Hero on a certain team (like Avengers).

You choose your Mastermind and Scheme, which will tell you what has to be in your Villain Deck (Villain Groups, Henchmen Groups, Bystanders, Scheme Twists, and Master Strikes). The Mastermind plus its 4 Mastermind Tactic cards and the Scheme card go in their indicated locations on the board. The rest of the “villain” cards are shuffled together to create the Villain Deck. There’s also places on the board for the rest of the Bystanders, Wounds (30 in the base), and SHIELD Officer Maria Hill (30). Each player gets a 12 card starting deck (8 SHIELD Agents and 4 SHIELD Troopers).

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Heroes of Metro City with Sidekicks and Storylines

This is the fourth in a seven part series on superhero games. This time it’s about Heroes of Metro City and the expansion Sidekicks and Storylines.

We’ve written about this game in a previous post.

This is another deck building game, but it isn’t tied to an existing superhero universe (like DC or Marvel). You’re “creating” your superhero. To start, you get to name your hero. Each player’s board has a place to write this in using a dry erase marker. Sometimes Energy Cards give an extra boost to characters with certain elements to their names (gender, animal, etc.), so you want to pick those before deciding on a name.

Each player is allotted a certain number of points to spend on cards at the beginning of the game to start building a deck. The fewer the points, the harder the game is going to be, but we’ll get to that. Some cards give you specific powers, some energy, and some give your character a “story” (hence the expansion name).

The goal is to defeat the Archenemy, but there are also Minions and Villains to deal with. Each of these has an attack that can trigger when you roll the dice. If the dice are always trying to kill you, this will be a rough game. If you’re really lucky at rolling dice, you just might save Metro City.

The premise of the game sounds awesome. I get to create my own superhero and fight bad guys.

The execution…
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Dice Masters

This is the third in a seven part series on superhero games. Today’s entry is on Dice Masters.

To start with, we have 5 starter packs:

  1. Uncanny X-Men
  2. Avengers vs X-Men
  3. Justice League
  4. The Amazing Spider-Man
  5. Age of Ultron

And we’ve bought a lot of booster packs which give you more Character cards and dice.

Each starter set is basically the same. You get three different types of dice: Basic Action, Character, and Sidekick. You also get three different types of cards: Character, Basic Action, and Color Reminder. Finally, you get two dice bags which are okay.

You decide which three Basic Action cards you want to play with (they give you extra abilities during the game), then assign those card to three different colors (like Blue, Pink, and Green). You then place three dice of the same color on each of the cards. During the game you can buy these colored dice which then give you the chance to use the ability on the Basic Action card.

Each player gets 8 white Sidekick dice which go into your dice bag.

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Pathfinder Rise of the Runelords: Approach to Thistletop

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

The difficulty to defeat monsters with the Goblin trait is increased by 1d4

  • Seoni – Rin figurine
  • Seelah – Saber figurine

Locations:

  • Goblin Fortress – Seoni start
  • Nettlemaze
  • Woods
  • Treacherous Cave – Seelah start

Seelah opening hand:

  1. Cure
  2. Chain Mail (favored card type)
  3. Longsword +1
  4. Spiked Chain

Seoni starting hand:

  1. Masterwork Tools
  2. Force Missile (favored card type)
  3. Blessing of Pharasma x2
  4. Amulet of Life
  5. Sage’s Journal

Seoni 1st turn

Encountered Sling – Dexterity 5

d6, rolled 1

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Pathfinder Rise of the Runelords: Approach to Thistletop (story)

With rumors of a renewed goblin attack, Seoni and Seelah decided to head towards Thistletop and investigate. They’d been told by reliable sources that the goblin Gogmurt would most likely be the source of any new troubles. Unfortunately, they were only able to narrow down his possible whereabouts to the goblin fortress, the nettlemaze, the woods, or the treacherous cave. Seoni thought the goblin fortress was the best place to begin their search, but Seelah thought that would be too obvious. She wanted to explore the treacherous cave. Instead of arguing about it, they decided to split up.

The goblin fortress was suspiciously quiet as Seoni entered. She noticed a sling on the floor, but was much more interested in the battered chest. She used her masterwork tools to open the chest and found a blast stone and a potion. She wasn’t sure how useful the stone would be, so she stored that in her pack for later. She decided to hold on to the potion for the time being.

She continued on, on alert for danger which appeared in the form of a plague zombie. Thankfully she had her force missile ready, but didn’t put enough power into the spell to defeat the zombie. Her amulet of life absorbed the damage her foe would have dealt, and she was pleased to discover the potion she’d found was able to banish the plague zombie.

She was storing her amulet and spell back in her pack to recharge, when a noise caught her attention. She turned to find Amy and the toad behind her.

“I apologize for the delay,” her acolyte said. “He wouldn’t let me carry him.”

The toad croaked then hopped over to Seoni. She picked him up.

“He does seem a bit picky about people, doesn’t he?”

The toad croaked again.

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One Night Revolution

I was pretty excited about this game. It’s like One Night Ultimate Werewolf (ONUW), but there are a few interesting differences.

In this game each player makes their “secret” move in turn which can make it harder to figure out who’s who. However, once everyone has made their move, you take an identity token from the middle of the table. You can either be truthful or take the “wrong” token. It can be risky taking a different token than your actual identity because that tells at least one other player that you’re lying.

The game says you only need 3 people to play, but I would recommend playing with a lot more people. We played with 4, and it felt like we couldn’t really bring out the intrigue. It basically became “you’re lying”, “no I’m not” with the other two players deciding who was more believable. So you could tell when it was time to vote who was going to die.

I think that with more people, you could have more accusations and discussions, and I hope we get to play with a larger group to get a better feel for the game.

DC Deck Building Game, Crisis, and Heroes Unite

This is the second in a seven part series on superhero games. Today’s entry is on the DC deck building game, the expansion Crisis (pack 1), and Heroes Unite.

First the base game.

In this deck building game, you get a Super Hero card. These cards are larger than the other cards and give you a special ability to use during the game. For example, Aquaman lets you put any cards with cost 5 or less you buy or gain during your turn on top of your deck. So Aquaman doesn’t suck.

During your turn, you use the Power indicated on your cards to buy other cards/defeat Super-Villains. In the beginning you don’t have a lot of Power because all you have are Punch cards (+1 Power), but as you build your deck, you become more powerful. Also cards you gain might have special text on them which can allow you to pull off some nice combos. It can be important to have cards with Defense capabilities because some of the attacks can be pretty rough.

This is a semi-co-op game. The goal is to defeat all the villains in the Super-Villain stack, so in that respect you’re working with your fellow players. During the game you can add villains to your deck, and some of these cards attack your fellow players. Also, at the end of the game, each card has a victory point value, and the player with the most victory points is the winner. So in that respect you’re also fighting against each other.

Now the expansions.
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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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