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Tag Archives: Kickstarter

Stellar Armada

Stellar Armada is a small and pretty simple game. Professor and I played several games. We each had a card which represented our ship, tokens to place on the card, and dice. Each ship has Engines, Repair Systems, Energy Beams, Missile Launchers, Missiles, Shields, and a Reactor. The goal is to destroy your opponent’s Reactor using Energy Beams and Missiles.

Each turn you have energy equal to your Reactor’s status. You begin with 6. At the beginning of the game it makes sense to divide your energy between your Engines and your weapons. Each point you put into your Engines makes it more difficult for your opponent to hit you. If I put 3 energy into my Engines, that means my opponent has to roll a 5 or 6 for weapons in order to hit me. That still leaves me 3 energy to use to fire my own weapons. If you have damaged systems, you might want to use your Energy to repair them (your Reactor can’t be repaired). I usually went after Professor’s Missile Launchers, so he had to spend points to repair those in order to use them.

We had a little trouble keeping track of how many points we put into Engines, so we ended up using extra dice for that.

This game relies heavily on luck. Amazingly the dice didn’t hate me, and I often rolled high on my attacks. This meant Professor was often spending his energy on repairs, and if I managed to damage his Reactor, he was working with fewer and fewer energy points. In that respect the game can be frustrating. There’s not much you can do with 2 energy points. I’m not sure this one will see a lot of play, and we’re unlikely to pull it out again unless we have 4 players.

It’s a very quick game. We played several games in under 30 min, so it’s definitely good if you don’t have a lot of time.

Aeon’s End

Aeon’s End is a co-op deck building game (we do tend to like those). The little twist to this one is you don’t shuffle your deck unless a card instructs you to do so. Your cards are discarded in a particular order (you have some choices here), and then you simply flip your discard pile over and it becomes your deck again.

Each player chooses a character (Breach Mage) which will determine their starting hands and decks. Each player also receives a player number token, 10 life, and breaches. The breaches are arranged based on the icons at the top of the player mat.

Along with trying to defeat the nemesis and not die, players need to try to protect Gravehold (or at least win before Gravehold falls). Gravehold begins with 30 health.

You choose your nemesis, which gets life points equal to the number on the nemesis mat. You then build the nemesis deck. Some cards are specific to a nemesis and others are random basic cards. These cards are divided into Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 cards. Each Tier is shuffled separately and then stacked to make the deck. This deck is not shuffled after that. Final set up for the nemesis is determined by the instructions on the nemesis mat.

Finally you build the supply. These are cards you can purchase during the game. Gems = money, Relics which have various effects, and Spells to attack with. The supply consists of 9 unique piles of cards in some combination of Gems, Relics, and Spells. These can be chosen randomly. The rule book also has suggestions for starting supplies.

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How do you find out about new games?

Chubby Unicorn and I were talking about games recently (shocking, I know). The topic of where we find out about games came up. We’ve mentioned that we’ve backed a few games through Kickstarter (as evidenced by the Kickstarter tag), but how did we find out about those games?

Some of those came from just browsing Kickstarter itself, specifically the Tabletop Games section, but in general the basis is BoardGameGeek.com. The site is a wealth of information, and there are many folks who delight in posting about upcoming games. One source I enjoy is the BoardGameGeek News blog. I also “subscribe” to many games on the site, which means when a new forum post is made I’ll get a notification on the site. Often this will just be folks asking rules questions, but you will also find rumors of a new expansion or new game from the same publisher.

The better source of information is usually direct emails from the Publisher/Designer/Game Company. Most of these folks have a mailing list you can join and they do NOT abuse it (at least not the ones I have been on), generally only sending emails out when they are working on a new game, prepping for a kickstarter, or the like. These emails are often the first time I hear about a new game or expansion.

Lately, the news updates from the Tabletopia on Steam have also been showing me some new games and piquing my interest.

To summarize, I find out about my new games through:

  1. Newsletter Emails from publishers/designers/game companies
  2. BoardGameGeek News on BoardGameGeek.com and subscriptions
  3. Tabletopia Announcements through Steam
  4. Browsing Tabletop Games on Kickstarter.com

What about you?
Where do you find out about new games?
Let us know in the comments.

The Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game

The Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game is another game we backed on Kickstarter (Kickstarter campaign).

It is a quick (< 30 minutes) co-op game where Harry Dresden (the protagonist of the Dresden Files book series, by Jim Butcher) and his friends/allies defeat various fiends, overcome obstacles, take advantages, and solve cases.

In game play terms, one person is Harry Dresden, and then everyone else picks who they like. However, in a 2 player game, each player takes 2 characters, but then shuffles those 2 decks together (a la Smash Up). Harry decides who goes first, at which point the game is afoot!

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The Game Anywhere Table

A while back we backed the Game Anywhere Table on by Transforming Designs. Like most kickstarters, it did not make its anticipated delivery date (Dec 2016). There were a few delays, during which they made some upgrades and tweaks (all of which were VERY well communicated); they are on target to have delivery complete for the tables by end of July (accessories are a different story) and are working on a larger one.

I’ll cut right to the chase: this table is great for gaming on. Being able to fold it up and put it away when not in use is also great. It means we have a designated table for games, without it taking up a lot of space.

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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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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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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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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.

Pursuit of Happiness

This is a worker placement game we backed on Kickstarter. Once we finally received the game and all the pieces, we were excited to play. Unfortunately this game has not lived up to our expectations. We’ve played it a few times, and it’s just not a game we really enjoy.

I think of it as trying to be a more realistic version of The Game of Life, but I don’t think it quite accomplishes that. Each round represents about a decade of life. You start as a teenager which means you can’t get a real job (only temp jobs), and you can’t get involved with a partner (if only! think of all the drama that could be avoided!). You can get involved in projects and get items/activity cards. Certain projects are one turn only while others are long term. In order to progress in long term projects, you have to spend time on them. Some activities are like that as well. If you spend more time on that activity, you can get more rewards.

After the first round, jobs and partners are available. As long as you have the resources, you can get a job which seems simple. Partners also require different resources depending on the one you pick. And this is where we run into problems.

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