Game(s) Played:
It's a new year and 2018 marks SWAGamers' 5th year of existence in holding boardgame meet ups. Without realizing it, time has really passed us by and nothing has made this realization more hard hitting than us coming back to host our meet ups in McDonald's where it all began. I still remember Jimmy having long hair, a lot of our now young adults were still teens and some of us (ehem, ehem) were a few stones lighter. (link for evidence)
We start the year with one new comer to the group! Things are looking up
Session – Legendary
Game: Legendary
Designer: Devin Low
Players: 1 – 5 Players
Playing Time: 45 minutes (This Play: 150 minutes – 2 games)
Main Mechanisms: Deck Building
Player(s):
I was busy teaching Belfort at the first table so I got Gideon to break out and start teaching Legendary. To get things rolling, I think this type of setup is going to be necessary otherwise it will take too long for all the tables to fire if I'm the only one going round to teach each game. It ended up dovetailing quite nicely since I ended my rules explanation for Belfort right as Legendary was starting and I could jump in as a 5th Player.
Gideon teaching our fearless heroes all about Mr. Sinister's nefarious schemes
And so we had the X-Men face off against Mr. Sinister, a Mastermind we have yet to encounter on our adventures as SWAGamers. True to his comic book origins, Mr. Sinister likes to capture people and in Legendary, he grows stronger as he captures more and more bystanders. And even as we grew stronger, Mr. Sinister kept staying ahead of us every step of the way, seemingly always just that little bit stronger than what we needed to hit him. It didn't help that whenever we had garnered enough firepower to strike him, he would use his Master Strike to make us discard our cards and disrupt all our best laid plans.
Eventually it became a problem when we needed 16 to hit Mr. Sinister
We badly needed to get that first hit on Mr. Sinister to reset his strength back down to 8 and Meng Yoe was all prepared with 16 power in his hand and all we had to do was survive until his turn which we did. Then just like a good cliffhanger episode of a drama series, Meng Yoe flips over the next Adversary card for his turn…
For the uninitiated, Meng Yoe unfortunately drew the 8th Master Strike which is the "Evil Wins" condition for the Scheme we were playing "Crush Them With My Bare Hands"
And so with uncanny frequency, evil triumphs once again in our adventures in Legendary.
With the usual flair and pomp, our "hero" holds his head in anguish. My camera wasn't fast enough to immortalize a picture of him with his head on the table.
Results Of Game(s)
Winner – Mr. "Discard Your Cards" Sinister
LOSERS – Gideon, Meng Yoe, Sean, Edward & Justin
We really should have brought Cyclops along instead.
Session – Legendary
Game: Legendary
Designer: Devin Low
Players: 1 – 5 Players
Playing Time: 45 minutes (This Play: 150 minutes – 2 games)
Main Mechanisms: Deck Building
Player(s):
This time we reloaded our team with Ruby Summers, Phoenix & Professor X, a veritable powerhouse of mutants with psychic powers to go up against the Shadow King, a relatively unknown supervillain of pure psychic energy. We let Wolverine tag a long too as he seems to have a pretty good life time win rate against bad guys. Still, according to the lore, this villain seems to be nigh unkillable and can only be locked away in another plane for a period of time until someone unwittingly releases him into our world again.
One of the times Shadow King is imprisoned… Maybe we should have brought Psylocke along too
Thankfully, things went a lot different than our previous outing against Mr. Sinister although it was a close thing. I managed to chain a few of Rogue's "Strength" icons to power up her attacks and claim first blood against the Shadow King before he could dominate too many of our heroes. Edward then used Ruby Summers' Extinction Blast to blast the Shadow King onto his last legs.
Ruby Summers, child of Cyclops and Emma Frost, just like fan fiction only official
Meng Yoe then proceeded to announce, "I will save all of you…" and promptly didn't because he of course jinxed it. It took him another few turns but he finally got it and the Shadow King was banished back to whichever plane he came from.
And so the world is safe from the evil machinations of Shadow King once again thankfully before Selene with 27 power escaped
Results Of Game(s)
Winner – Gideon, Meng Yoe, Sean, Edward & Justin
LOSERS – Shadow King
We took turns reading "Driven Mad By Power" and laughing after that
Session – Belfort
Game: Belfort
Designer: Jay Cormier & Sen-Foong Lim
Players: 2 – 5 Players
Playing Time: 120 minutes (This Play: 180 minutes)
Main Mechanisms: Area Control & Worker Placement
Player(s):
I taught Belfort to Jimmy and his friends who were new to the game. I had the time to shift back and forth between my game and theirs in between turns but in hindsight perhaps I should have sat in this one because it ran a bit overlong. Personally I'm still not too sure why this happens, maybe because there is a fair amount of math involved in making sure you have enough resources for buildings, enough money for tax, cards, gnomes and entering guild buildings… okay, maybe that IS the problem. I still play with the Resource Guild Buildings only because the Interactive Guild Buildings that let you disrupt other Players like steal their resources will only drive you up the wall, especially after you have budgeted everything to the T.
It still looks really pretty
I won't say Belfort is a good gateway game but it does teach a Player new to area control style games very quickly that sometimes area control is not about being king of the hill but having a finger in every pie (a very apt description for Belfort in particular, since the city is built like pie slices). Budgeting is also a very crucial skill and Belfort is particularly punishing if you do this wrong as you can lose whole turns this way.
Results Of Game(s)
An incredibly surprising result for first time Players
Winner – Jimmy (47 VPs) "Player Order Changer"
Second – Jane (42 VPs) "Build Non-Stop"
Third – Luke (40 VPs) "I Dunno How He Came From Behind"
LAST – Irene (33 VPs) "This Part Of Belfort Is MINE"
We are actively trying to get new Players into our groups this year but boardgaming is not a hobby that has taken my social circles by storm yet. Still, it is no small victory that we've managed to keep our group going for 5 years now. Next month, I will probably try to get some of my lesser played games to the table so look forward to that.
Until next time, keep calm and play better.
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