Without really realizing it, our little boardgaming group is already a year old, having first met at the local McDonald’s on the 11th of August last year. Despite rounding out at only about ten meet-ups, personally I’m really glad to have been a part of this group, which is really about spending time for myself outside of family & work commitments. The myriad of emotions ranging from downright seriousness, conniving backstabbing, hilarious laughter & shovel loads of fun I got from boardgaming has literally kept me sane.
So I’m working on a logo to put on our session pictures, the reason being more for the coolness factor & less on the copyright concerns (I’m not conceited enough to think people would want to use my photos). Notice I said "working on" as I’m still a novice at photo editing & can’t seem to make the white parts of my logo file transparent. The logo itself is still a work in progress. I was actually thinking about having a big "K" & with "KFCgamers" within the "K" (similar to Kainan’s jacket logo from the manga series Slam Dunk) but clearly my skills are not good enough.
Game(s) Played:
Rune Age
Lords Of Vegas
Session – Rune Age
I arrived later than usual as Padawan Minigeek needed to be patted down for her afternoon siesta. Gideon, Adrian & newcomer, Sean, were already in the middle of Rune Age so I sat down to watch & take in the rules.
Player(s):
Adrian
Gideon
Justin
Sean
[Game 1]
On the surface Rune Age looks like a mash up of Dominion & Thunderstone where you use Gold to buy Units then use those Units to attack Cities / Strongholds which gives you Influence then use those Influence to get more Gold, closing the loop in the great economic circle of Rune Age.
What’s different is that there are different types of scenarios to play (four in the rulebook) & in the scenario we played, the Players’ objective is to be the Last Man Standing, in other words, you get to attack each other! Something of an unusual novelty in games these days.
Here we see Gideon (Waiqar the Undying) duking it out with Adrian (The Daqan Lords) & his multitudes of Footmen
Damage Tokens! Each Player has 20 life & is eliminated when it hits zero
They were playing the Runewars scenario & surprisingly no one grabbed any Manticores even though it was suggested right there in the rulebook’s strategy tips
[Game 2]
We decided to do Round 2 of the same scenario plus me, bringing us to the maximum number of 4 Players. I picked the Dwarves of Dunwarr as my faction but played poorly, not fully taking advantage of my dwarves’ abilities to amass Gold quickly but instead buying clunky big units that need Gold to trigger their abilities.
The Event Cards which are usually mean & require Players to achieve something or lose life for example, tore into our life totals early on by requiring us to successfully siege another Player or lose 4 lives. Adrian suffered early onslaughts from me then Sean put him out of his misery having built a vicious combo using The Latari Elves that enabled him to destroy opposing units with impunity, whilst being immune himself.
I managed to deal some very slight damage to Sean & Gideon but Gideon was the next to fall to Sean’s elfish onslaught, having trashed his Gold cards to ensure he had a full hand of units most of the time. I did not last much longer as Sean destroyed most of my elite units & I was in the midst of rebuilding & usually had only have a hand of units to defend against Sean.
Time Taken: 90 minutes
Results Of Game(s)
[Game 1]
Winna – Gideon
Second – Sean
Dead Last – Adrian
[Game 2]
Winna – Sean
Second – Justin
Third – Gideon
Dead Last – Adrian
Rune Age was unusual for me in that I normally don’t go out of my way to play games with Player elimination but it was somewhat refreshing to do so. I did think that the game doesn’t really compensate for Player order & whilst Sean had efficient hand management, it didn’t help that he was the start Player either.
Session – Lords Of Vegas
Lords Of Vegas, like its theme, is actually a game of chance & probabilities. Scientifically speaking, there shouldn’t be anything like a streak of bad or good luck that runs through a whole game & yet somehow it felt like million-to-one chances were a dime a dozen in Sean’s favour, which is to say he scored nine times out of ten.
Player(s):
Adrian (Blue)
Gideon (Yellow)
Justin (Green)
Sean (Red)
Sean started first & you can see he was in good control of the gold casino at top left (pic below) despite only having 2 dice to Gideon’s 3, until I jumped in with the corner casino & became boss for a while.
I enjoyed a good spread all over the board whilst Sean aggressively sprawled wherever he could
This reroll was absolutely hilarious. Instigated by Gideon, he actually ended up rolling lower (& me lower still) allowing Sean to take control with his measly 3 pair
I took an early lead by sneak attacking casinos which basically involves building an adjacent different coloured single casino, rerolling to 5 or 6 then merging it with the bigger casino to become boss but this usually lasts only as long as the next reroll then I will lose out due to sheer quantity of dice. Sean was a big believer in sprawling (something I usually won’t risk) & actually lost two lots to new owners.
Adrian was the more isolated one amongst us but I was really aggressive & stymied him a few times. He should have gotten more points from his grey casinos but sadly a fair few of the grey cards were stuck underneath the game over card. Gideon took a really long time to come on to the scoreboard. If fortune favoured Sean, then Lady Luck certainly deserted Gideon. None of the colours came up when he was boss of casinos & he lost rerolls even when the odds were with him. His allocations were also a little spread out making it difficult to consolidate.
End game
Time Taken: 90 minutes
Results Of Game(s)
Winna –Sean (44 VPs)
Second – Justin (32 VPs)
Third – Adrian (9 VPs)
Dead Last – Gideon (5 VPs)
Rating: 7/10
Playing against Sean reminds me of the movie Just My Luck, a chick flick I had to endure in my dating days. Sean would be Lindsay Lohan while Gideon would be Chris Pine. Whilst it was still fun, particularly during the reroll phase or when someone landed a sweet lot, it felt a little weird to see the odds being tipped so strongly in Sean’s favour. Whilst Lords Of Vegas also does not compensate for Player order, I’m not certain having a higher starting amount of money would have helped in this scenario.
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