Sentinels of the Java Kingdom & their Legacy of Care
Okay, it's catch-up time. I've got 2 weeks of game night reporting to do and another game night looming this evening! Let me do what I can to remember what's happened and give a few thoughts...
~~~ January 3 ~~~
VivaJava [BGG]
I've been really excited to get prototype to the table ever since I first heard Chris at Dice Hate Me Games talk about it. It's got a coffee-industry theme, which I've found is not a particularly big draw among my game group, but also brings a lot of innovative elements to the table. It's really designed for 5-8 players (even though it does have a 3-4 player version included), and its core mechanic involves dividing up into teams each turn to produce a new blend of coffee that will enter the market. The strength of the blend will determine the spot it has there, and even though it will degrade some each turn, it may continue to give you points for a number of turns afterwards.
Instead of creating a new blend, a team could instead choose to research their coffee-making powers, increasing in a number of various tracks that will give them extra beans or be more selective about which beans they include in new blends or other such stuff.
The main thing I was doing with the game was being a blind beta playtester, to see how well the written rules were working to teach the game. And for the most part, they did pretty well. I had a few notes, but generally understood the game about as well as I do most published games (making the mandatory mistake or two in teaching/playing the first time). The worst thing at this point was really just the formatting of the rules, which made it really hard to look things up quickly when we had questions.
As far as actually playing the game, however, I did very poorly. The game went over fairly well, but I think that my fumbling over rules and spending too much time looking through them may have had a negative impact on our play. Hopefully, I'll be able to get it back to the table tonight (with some new tweaks, by the way) to get a better feel for the actual gameplay.
Time: 71 minutes
Score: Keith* 23, Chip* 23, Rory* 20, Shawn 20, Norton* 16
Ratings: Playtest
And if you missed it, of course, one picture of this game was my Picture of the Week last week. With some help on Twitter from Dice Hate Me Games and the designer, T.C. Petty, it even went to the front page on BGG! And even better than that, the picture also helped stir up some interest in the game itself, which jumped up to #10 on the Hot List at one point! Woo hoo!
Risk: Legacy [BGG]
After brewing it up all over the place, we sat down for our next installment in the Risk: Legacy campaign. Unfortunately, we've got a bit of a dysfunctional situation going on surrounding Australia, where both Keith and Sceadeau have major cities there that they can use to start the game. Neither is willing to just write it off (despite even some moves to make it less attractive from some of the new Scar cards used this week but which I won't spoil further), so they each started in their own city there. Keith then started the game by moving over and wiping Sceadeau out, but pretty much devastating himself in the process.
I could and should have started over in Asia, so I could have swooped in and won the game on the first turn, but something between not being fully aware of that option and thinking that it would have been a really weenie thing to do made me start over in South America instead. Chris started in Europe and worked for a couple of turns to shore it up, while Kenny took Africa and then started (for some unknown reason probably most related to many, many games played 20 years ago) to pick on me rather than Chris.
As in at least 1 or 2 other plays of the game, Chris should have won when he turned in a few cards, took his 5-army bonus from holding Europe, and blazed a trail for Australia. But as has been his luck before, the dice turned on him completely and he came up way short. However, depleting Keith's defenses set the stage nicely for Kenny who, after conquering my base on the previous turn, turned his eye east and rolled to a quick victory by grabbing both Sceadeau's and Keith's bases to get the win.
Time: 39 minutes
Score: Kenny 4, Chris 2, Norton 1, Keith 0, Sceadeau 0
Ratings: Chris 6.5, Norton 6.5
As I mentioned in my initial thoughts on Risk: Legacy, it's still Risk at its core. And perhaps even worse than that, the changes they made in tying the win to Victory Points make it sort of weaker than real Risk. It certainly makes it quicker, but it has also (in our games, at least) also promoted this rather uninteresting series attempts by one player after another to just make an all-out run for the win, the result of which is quite random and dependent on whether or not the dice are with him. So, in general, it's been far less strategic and a lot less satisfying.
And in our game, I'm really afraid that it's turning into "the player starting closest to Australia will win". Because if Sceadeau and Keith continue to start there, that's 2 victory points waiting to be taken once they devastate each other.
Kingdom of Solomon [BGG]
This was the first 4-player game of King of Solomon that I'd played, so it was cool to actually see the Tribute space in play (which gives 1 of each resource to the player who chooses it). Keith used a really neat strategy based almost entirely on selling to the market, and he would often even use 3 of his workers to claim the Tribute, then selling all that he got from it for 25 points or so.
I don't remember what I did, but I'm pretty sure that it involved being High Priest. And even though I made a huge run at the end, Keith was still just a little bit too far ahead to catch...
Time: 119 minutes
Score: Keith* 167, Norton 164, Matt* 144, Stacy* 140
Ratings: Keith 8. Norton 8, Matt 7, Stacy 8
I wrote my full review after playing this game, so check it out for lots more information about Kingdom of Solomon!
~~~ January 10 ~~~
Acute Care
I managed to start off last week with a playtest of Acute Care. Brad was totally new to it, but Sceadeau had been involved in the total violation of my first version. Sort of to continue to test out the same approach he took last time, Sceadeau made it his business to systematically ignore as many patients as possible. But in some crazy twist of fortune, he continually drew Complication cards that didn't apply to his patients. I'd strategically choose to ignore one little patient on a turn and get hit with something bad, but the worst that his 4 nearly-critically-ill patients would do was complain about needing a new newspaper to read!
Still, we managed to win.
Time: ??
Score: Nurses (Brad*, Norton, & Sceadeau) - Win; Acute Care - Lose
Ratings: Playtest
I'm definitely starting to see a few specific cards that I'm going to remove or change, but otherwise, I'm liking how Acute Care is working out. The timed events (assessing the patients, going to lunch, and prepping for shift change) add both a nice pressure and some nice flavor to the game. The complication cards, even when they don't actually hit to do bad things, at least make it feel more dangerous to ignore patients. Sceadeau wasn't crazy about the scoring mechanic that I've chosen, but it's a start, and I think in general, it's pretty decent.
More than anything, I just don't know how much harder I need to make the game. We were mostly tit-for-tat all game long, but then won convincingly due to a couple of cards that gave Quality Keys at the end. The auto-loss is set at 5 Deficiencies, but I haven't come close to that yet. And despite feeling like we're under a lot of pressure, I don't know that it's actually too difficult to win right now.
My assumption is that I need to make the "hard" mode really hard to appeal more to gamers, but then I also wonder if that would totally turn off the more healthcare-centered people that I'm also targeting. But I'd still have "easier" levels to play, so maybe that's okay. I don't know, but I'll keep testing it and thinking about it...
Sentinels of the Multiverse [BGG]
The only game I actually took pictures of last week was Sentinels of the Multiverse. No one else had played it before, and I realized a little too late that I really needed to review the rules a little bit more myself before trying to teach it again.
We chose to fight Citizen Dawn on her "actual" home location of Insula Primalis. For heroes, we chose: Tempest (Adam), Fanatic (Brad), Absolute Zero (Chris), Haka (Sceadeau), and Bunker (me). Right from the start, we had a big question about a card in the Fanatic deck, but thankfully, we interpreted it correctly. One of the biggest challenges to playing Sentinels of the Multiverse defintely seems to be this almost-constant need to interpret cards and understand card combos. But while the cards and rules could certainly stand to be a bit more clear, I think we also made it more complicated by reading a little too much into some of the effects, since the designers have been pretty clear that the most obvious interpretation of the cards is almost always its intended effect.
As far as the game goes, we didn't really have that hard a time with it. It was pretty cool when CItizen Dawn got all glow-ey and invincible, and when a T-Rex jumped out and ate one of her minions that we were trying to keep alive (since she loses her invincibility when a certain number of minions are in play). The volcano exploded all over us a time or two, minions and dinosaurs came and went, and Haka went off on Citizen Dawn and splashed damage all over the rest of us to nearly knock her and some of us out. In the end, we took her out with me at just 1 health remaining and some others pretty seriously wounded as well.
Time: 56 minutes
Score: Heroes (Adam* as Tempest, Brad* as Fanatic, Chris* as Absolute Zero, Norton as Bunker, and Sceadeau* as Haka) - Win; Citizen Dawn - Lose
Ratings: Adam 7, Brad 7.5, Chris 7.5, Norton 7.5, Sceadeau ?
Once again, and while I still have some question about the balance and overall quality of the mechanical gameplay, Sentinels of the Multiverse was just a blast to play! I'll probably always play the "Advanced" version of the villains in 5-player games from now on, but theme-wise, the game continues to be spot-on. I'm still early on in the "discovery" phase of being surprised by what villains, locations, and even the heroes can do, so I'm a little concerned that it will lose a little once I've gotten through that, but it certainly seems to have a ton of replayability to me right now.
Kingdom of Solomon [BGG]
In this play of Kingdom of Solomon, I went pretty clearly for a Temple-based strategy. I think that I took 5 temple tokens to secure being High Priest, but then built several other temple sections for points, especially in the last turn or two. The "big move" that clinched the game was when I, as the starting player, claimed the Altar space (which lets you be start player). That let me complete all but one space in the temple and have first shot at constructing one of the small buildings, as well as knowing exactly how many resources I could sell at the market.
Time: 52 minutes
Score: Norton 176, Sceadeau* 142, Brad* 81
Ratings: Norton 8, Sceadeau ?, Brad 7
As I said in my review (and in addition to another excuse for a shameless self-linking), I'm really impressed with the viability of different strategies in the game. And while every player will probably do at least a little bit of everything, there's a ton of room to specialize in one or two areas and work out the balance that you want to explore that game.
Other Games Played
I don't really have time to list all the stats for these games, but here's what else was played over the last 2 weeks...
Airships
Asara
Ascension
Bazaar
Belfort x2
Carnival
Eminent Domain
Jab! Realtime Boxing
Kingdom Builder x3
Lancaster x2
Mondo
Pandemic
Yspahan
* First play for that Person
Posted by Chris Norwood at 1/17/2012 5:25 PM 
Categories: Gaming Weblog, Hypermind BoardGamers
Tags: VivaJava Risk Legacy Kingdom of Solomon Acute Care Sentinels of the Multiverse
Categories: Gaming Weblog, Hypermind BoardGamers
Tags: VivaJava Risk Legacy Kingdom of Solomon Acute Care Sentinels of the Multiverse
We misplayed Sentinels a little, actually. I'm pretty sure we never had "super sayjin" Dawn play additional cards like she's supposed to every turn.
I've played a couple of games since (one two-player with Kat in which our four heroes took down Dawn again, and one three-player thrashing of Grand Warlord Voss). Even having looked through all of the various decks (mostly to read the flavor text on them, but still) the game is still surprising and fun. Some combinations of heroes result in crazy-overpowered situations (like Jay and Shawn noted when my Legacy pumped up their Fanatic and Ra to ridiculous levels of damage output), but mostly the game comes down to recognizing the threats and dealing with them accordingly so far. Haven't tried any advanced rules yet, but I could definitely see them becoming useful as more people become savvy to what the heroes can do.
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Yeah, I think that I noticed that we hadn't been drawing extra cards for her when I was putting it up that night, but didn't bother to mention it since we were already done. As you pointed out earlier, we also didn't count her as a Citizen for the purposes of flipping her back over, so it maybe sort of balanced out.
Sentinels is definitely one of the games that I'm really aching to play more right now, if for no other reason than to explore it a lot more and see all the other heroes (I still haven't seen Legacy or The Visionary), villains (need to face Grand Warlord Voss and Baron Blade), and environments (I've only played in Insula Primalis).
And as long as the game is as fun and thematic as it's been so far, I don't necessarily care about it being all that well balanced or "hard enough". As I've heard a couple of other people say, it's thematically appropriate for superheroes to win the day!
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After playing the one game with him, Legacy apparently really depends on his teammates. He doesn't really do much of anything on his own, although if teamed up with some bruisers (Ra) he doesn't need to.
Visionary's the only one I haven't seen in action yet. Haven't taken on Blade or Omnitron, and Wagner Mars Base is the last environment. We could have let Atlantis kill Voss if we wanted to.
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