Elephant Trek of the Rings
I arrived extra late this week, and everyone was involved in games (as usual) when I got there. But I was able to use the time I had to un-build a deck I had been using for solo LotR LCG play and was ready to teach it to Chris when the time came...
Lord of the Rings: The Card Game (LCG) [BGG]
Chris is a CCG guy. In fact, for a very long time [until he was clearly the primary "other" Chris (as in, "a dude who is not me and is named Chris") in the group], he was known as "Magic" Chris (because he plays and judges Magic: The Gathering, of course, not because he has experience as a stage magician or any real control over dark powers or anything... that I know of anyway). So I was very interested in giving him a chance to finally play the Lord of the Rings LCG and seeing what he thought. Josh joined us as we played through the first quest (Passage Through Mirkwood) using three of the preconstructed decks.Chris took the Spirit deck, Josh took Lore, and I had Leadership, and in playing, we had little-to-no trouble with the quest. In fact, we finished the first phase of it on the very first turn, throwing lots of characters and willpower at it and then getting a relatively benign staging draw. We didn't really slow down until we hit the third quest card, where we randomly chose the "Don't Leave the Path!" card that has every player choose a spider from the encounter deck or discard pile.
I pulled Ungoliant's Spawn out, since we had to defeat it in order to complete the quest, and even chose to encounter it myself. I chump-blocked it for 2-3 turns while pinging it for a few point of damage, and then Josh finally drew and played a Forst Snare to neutralize it for as long as we needed. A turn or two later, I drew Gandalf and used him both to deal direct damage and then to attack it and get the win!
Time: 44 minutes
Score: Heroes of Light (Chris* - Spirit, Josh - Lore, & Norton - Leadership) - Win (94 points); Passage Through Mirkwood - Lose
Ratings: Chris 7, Josh 8, Norton 9
While "Passage Through Mirkwood" is a pretty nice introduction to the game, players with almost any experience will find it too easy to give any real challenge. I didn't really have time to ask Chris what he thought, but I hope that he'll continue to give it a chance and see all else that it has to offer.
I'm also planning to write two reviews for the Lord of the Rings LCG, the first of which will cover basic gameplay using the preconstructed decks in the base set. Later on (probably after an adventure pack or two), I'll write another review covering things like deckbuilding and how the expansions affect the game, so keep your eyes open for those as they come out!
Star Trek: Expeditions [BGG]
I've been pretty interested in Star Trek: Expeditions since I first heard about it last year in several people's Origins & GenCon reports. I'm a moderate Star Trek fan, and while the Next Generation is definitely my favorite of the shows, I enjoyed the original series a lot and liked the alternate timeline movie that came out a couple of years ago (despite all the plot holes, Keith), which is actually the official thematic period of this game. Plus, I just wanted to see what both Reiner Knizia and Wiz Kids would do with the IP.Anyway, I picked it up using a gift certificate from my birthday and finally got it to the table last week. Keith and Kenny joined me, but we played with all 4 characters (Kenny took Bones, Keith took Uhura, and I played Kirk and Spock since I had read the rules). We also chose to use the moderate difficulty because it's usually more fun to be challenged or even lose than to win easily in a coop game.
We started off a little slow, I suppose, as we were feeling out the system and figuring out which actions were the most useful to take. And while I don't usually do this in my session reports, I think that I need to go into a little depth about how the game plays in order to give y'all a little bit more frame of reference to understand my thoughts about it.
Basically, to win the game, the players have to complete three different quests (concerning the Rebels starting a civil war, an Energy crisis affecting the planet's ecology, and the Political struggle to get the planet to join the Federation and not the Klingon Empire) before you run out of time. Each of the 3 quests have 3 stages, which branch out based on how sucessful you were in completing each stage. So if you don't do so well in stage 1, you'll go to stage 2b next (where stage 2a would have been a better result), and if you then do really well on 2b, you'll probably go to stage 3c last (since 3a and 3b are associated with 2a, and 3d would have been a bad result on 2b). I hope that makes sense, because it's one of the coolest things about the game, where your performance (or timing) in a quest has a real and meaningful impact on how that quest plays out later on.
Players usually run around the planet revealing quest and other mission cards, eventually attempting to complete them based on their abilities, skills, equipment, crew, and the help of other characters. But meanwhile, a Klingon Warship is closing in on and attacking the Enterprise in orbit! The "bad things" in the game are governed by a deck of stardate cards, which advance time, do random little things, and make the Klingons attack. The Klingon vessel is very effective up close (and not too shabby at range), but the Enterprise can always back up if it wants to. Unfortunately, backing up will cause you to lose points from your final score. But getting blown up makes you lose, so you have to balance out how much damage you're willing to take to hold your ground.
In our game, we did fairly well in our quests (finishing on the 3B version of all three, with 14 political, 14 Ecology, and 12 Rebel points), but we had to give up quie a bit of ground in the space battle, falling back all the way to the -6 space, which meant that we lost 6 points from each freaking quest. Our final score was 22, which officially earned us all a commendation on our Star Fleet records, but the breakdowns of each quest read like this: "Politics: The planet remains neutral. Rebels: Civil war erupts and the rebels occupy and control parts of the planet. Ecology: The ecosysem is permanently damaged and many people die."
So it didn't sound like we did very well. But I suppose that it's meant to be a hard game, and the situation is sort of Kobayashi-Maru-ish, where a great deal of success isn't really expected.
Time: 105 minutes
Score: Humans (Ken* - Bones, Keith* - Uhura, Norton* - Spock & Kirk) 22 points, Klingons - Lose
Ratings: Ken 7.5, Keith 7.5, Norton 7.5
First of all, I had actually tried to play Star Trek: Expeditions solo a time or two using 1 and then 2 characters, but didn't think that it worked very well. The game just doesn't seem to be well-suited for anything less than maybe 3 characters, but it's fiddly enough to manage that running 3 or 4 characters alone seems to be an undue burden.
And since I just mentioned it, I think that fiddlyness is definitely one of the game's biggest weaknesses. There's a lot of manipulation to do with revealing and replacing mission cards, rolling dice, managing your hand of cards, and keeping up with all the other tokens and stuff in the game. And then to attempt a challenge, you have to total up your ability score, all the crew bonuses, any bonuses for items or other characters, and then roll and add the dice as well. It's not hard math or anything, but when you're trying to plan out moves or decide on using cards from your hand, it's just a lot to keep up with and make sure that you don't forget anything.
Kirk, Uhura, and Bones aboard the Enterprise!
The branching quests was a great idea, and I can't wait to play it again to see how different they play out when we do better or worse in each track. The extra mission cards all seemed to be really cool and thematic, and I enjoyed their impact on the game as well.
If I had one last complaint, it would be that the definition of success in the game is a little wonky. Technically, if you complete all three quests before running out of time or getting killed, you have "won". But "winning" can still end in the Klingons taking over, civil war raging and taking many casualties, and the ecosystem being devastated. Based on the results of the quest tracks, I'd say that a more reasonable breakdown of success would be something like:
- 0-10: Miserable failure. Though you escaped with your lives, it will be difficult to live down this mission for the rest of your career.
- 11-20: Mitigated failure. The planet is questionably better off than if you hadn't come, but no one is handing out commendations for your performance.
- 21-30: Marginal Success. While the Federation didn't accomplish all its goals here, you did a good job in managing a nearly-impossible situation.
- 31-40: Complete Success. Well done! You have averted disaster and a commendation is put in your permanent files!
- 41-45: Amazing Success. Your performance is among the best that Starfleet could offer, and you earn the Silver Palm!
- 46+: Legendary Success! You recieve the Starfleet Medal of Honor and the mission is forver recorded for Starfleet cadets to review in their studies.
I actually got this in the mail on Tuesday just before I went to game night, so I was anxious to get it played before the end of the night. I've mentioned the game and its Kickstarter campaign a couple of times so far, which I've been really interested in due to its theme.
If you've ever played Dirty Santa (or Yankee Swap or Chinese Gift Exchange or whatever else you might call it), you've played the White Elephant card game. Basically, each player is dealt a certain number of cards, all of which are gifts that you will be bringing to a series of White Elephant gift exchanges. Because you are a total cheapskate, your goal is to avoid having to
actually shop and spend money on the people on your "real" gift list, so you're going to try and collect gifts that they'll like from these exchanges. There are 5 suits/colors in the game, each tied to a particular person: your Mother-in-Law (red), the Crazy Neighbor (orange), Fluffy the Cat (yellow), a Random Stranger (blue), and Great Uncle Irwin (green). Everyone is given a Gift List at the start of the game, indicating which 3 of these people you need to have a gift for. Your final score will be the sum of the single highest-value gifts you have collected for each of these 3 people by the end of the game.
In each round, everyone places a gift (one of their cards) out face-down on the table. The first player chooses a gift to open, turns that card over, and pulls it to them. From then on, other players will have the option to either open a new gift (flip over a new card) or steal a face-up gift from someone else. When you steal a gift, you place your hand on it until another new gift is opened, because it can only be stolen once in any turn. You play until all the gifts have been opened, and then everyone places the gift they ended up with under their Gift List card. You then play another round with a whole new set of gifts, and repeat for the indicated number of rounds based on how many people are playing.
Time: 19 minutes
Score: Josh* 20 (tie) Kenny* 20, Chip* 19, Stacy* 19, Keith* 18, Norton* 14
Ratings: Josh 7, Kenny 7, Chip 7.5, Stacy 7, Keith 6, Norton 7.5
I have to admit that I am more than a little relieved that I actually liked White Elephant. I've already talked a lot about it here, and I desperately want to support designer Brian Kelly both because he seems like a great guy and because I love the theme so much. (I don't know what I would have done if the game had sucked... Thank goodness I don't have to worry about that!)
The White Elephant card game was a lot of fun, and I'm really glad that I've already backed it. It is, however, very light, and is probably aimed more at families and non-gamers than anything else. But I'd still say that we still had some fun with it as a light closer at game night. And it would also make a great game for gamers to play with (or give to) their families, friends, and coworkers. I'll continue to play it as much as I can over the next couple of weeks, and I'll let you know what else I think of it later.
And even though Brian is still going to clean up a few areas of the card design, it's already worth the price of admission just for how awesome they look. Take a gander at these pictures, and I encourage you to strongly consider helping Brian make this game a reality by supporting it on Kickstarter! There are only 12 days left!
Other Games Played
Alien Frontiers
Time: 105 minutes (really?)
Score: Brad 7, Sean 5, Shawn 5, Stacy 4
Ratings: Brad 8, Sean 7, Shawn 9, Stacy 8
Ascension with Return of the Fallen Expansion
Time: 31, 31 & 90 (???) minutes
Game 1: Ken 84+, Chris 84-, Steve 80
Game 2: Chris 79, Josh 72
Game 3: Shawn 90, Stacy 78, Sean 67, Brad 66
Ratings: Chris 10, Ken 8, Steve 7.5, Josh 8, Shawn 10, Stacy 9, Sean 10, Brad 9
Carcassonne
Time: 30 minutes
Score: Josh 226, Chris 201
Ratings: Josh 7, Chris 7.5
Cartagena
Time: 20 minutes
Score: Chip 6, Josh 3, Stacy* 3
Ratings: Chip 8.5, Josh 7, Stacy 6.5
Macao
Time: 155 minutes
Score: Ken 70, Chip 68, Keith 51, Steve 28
Ratings: Ken 8.5, Chip 8, Keith 8, Steve 7
Troyes
Time: 47 minutes
Score: Chris 39, Josh* 19
Ratings: Chris 8, Josh 8
Valdora
Time: 48 minutes
Score: Chip* 135 (tie) Stacy* 135, Josh* 121
Ratings: Chip 7.5, Stacy 7.5, Josh 8
* First play for that Person
Posted by Chris Norwood at 7/11/2011 4:15 PM 
Categories: Game of the month, Gaming Weblog, Hypermind BoardGamers
Tags: Lord of the Rings LCG White Elephant Star Trek Expeditions
Categories: Game of the month, Gaming Weblog, Hypermind BoardGamers
Tags: Lord of the Rings LCG White Elephant Star Trek Expeditions
Nice write-up on ST:E. I've played solo, but did so four handed and it worked well (if a bit tough to manage) - maybe it was always intended to be played with every character.
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That's definitely my impression of the game. I guess that it's also pretty thematic to always have an away "team" rather than just one or two crew members. But the possibility for solo play was also one of the reasons that I bought it, so I'm a little disappointed about that.
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I'm impressed that you guys liked Star Trek enough for a 7.5 each. I was excited to get to try it when there was a demo copy at my FLGS, and after one shot, I gave up... I may eventually try it some more and review it and such, but I was horribly disappointed with it after the first shot.
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Yeah, like I said, I'd probably rate it upwards of an 8 if it weren't so incredibly fiddly. But what did you find so bad about it?
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Hard to put a finger on it (hence no review). Yes, fiddliness was a problem, but there was also a general lack of engagement between me and the game. Also, I wasn't really keen on the "you win, but..." thing. I'm really a black and white you win or lose person when it comes to co-op games. It's fine to add victory points and such (like in LotR), but the game should be challenging on it's own without that.
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It definitely seems to be a game where, at some level, you have to sort of bring your own fun to it. By that, I mean that players have to come to the game wanting and expecting to really experience the theme, imagining the cinematic arc of your actions as they would have played out on TV or in a movie. Because on a purely mechanical level, ST:E isn't really all that compelling. It's challenging and all, but if played just "by the numbers", I can totally see how it wouldn't have been very engaging at all.
Our group was pretty into it, though, both in discussing the cooperative elements of the game and in taking moments every so often to collectively imagine how the story was developing. And really, I think that may be why solo play for this game scares and disappoints me a little, because it's really hard to step back and get that big cinematic picture when you're running all the elements of the game and having to manage 3 or 4 characters yourself.
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I agree with you on this, Chris - as much as I liked it, a lot of the fun depends on you bringing it to the game yourself. It's a prefectly good co-op, and it has some neat little decisions to make, but I think for me the high point of the game were the two times Spock drew one of those 'take a click of damage if you are alone' cards, and was saved by Uhura being with him. 'Perfect timing for an onset of pon farr,' as we said. I can't see that being anything like as much fun in a solo setting.
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