So, today is a big day for me as it is the launch of my new You tube channel. 3 minute board games is about doing summaries of games in about 3 minutes. There are a lot of long reviews, play through and how to play videos for board games. But no one is doing short summaries. That's our goal, make videos about games in a short time frame. We will be running a patreon to support this project, pop along and check it out here. https://www.patreon.com/user?u=9257332
Here are the first four videos, watch em, like em, hate em, subscribe :)
Anachrony is a beast of a board game, a massive worker placement game that deals with a unique setting in the distant future, time travel, mechs and cults. It's a really neat game and I highly recommend it. Anyway, this is one of the first games i've done almost entirely with the airbrush for base colours. And boy did it save some time. Just check the video below
Anyway, here are the final products, and I went for quite different styles with each fig.
The yellow based dude is very basic, almost entirely airbrushed with very few brush details. The blue squidy thing has a lot of brush effects and the first time I've ever tried doing a "verdigris" effect on a model. The lower half of the model is supposed to look like worn old copper with that blue verdigris effect, and the top slightly rusty. The green dude is a very standard brush job with warm greens and tans to look as organic as possible. Probably the most time intensive of the models. The red dude was all about the contrast between red and yellow, and he actually looks pretty boss in person.
And finally, the black dude, who is literally airbrushed, washed and given a little bit of electric blue for flavour.
Quick update today on Star Wars Rebellion. Rebellion is a great game, one of the best two player lite wargames on the market, and is very comparable to War of the Ring. A lot of very small models, so I didn't go too crazy on the details. All I want is for them to look good on the table, not under a zoom lens.
The Rebels were almost all done in a "brown scale" from a deep brown to beige. Now a lot of rebel units are almost white in the canon, but I wanted the pieces to look like a coherent faction, when opposed to the Imperials who were done in a "grey scale" I personally think a few painters forget that they need to be game pieces first and foremost, and while painting units accurately is all well and good, it makes them slightly annoying to play with. I think I nailed a good contrast between the two factions here.
All of Zombicide is now finished ALL OF IT! I am so glad I decided to stick with the "monochrome" zombies and only paint the survivors seriously. I feel pity for anyone who spent hours and hours and hours on painted hundreds of disposable zombies, when they just end up looking like a blurry pile of blobs on the board anyway. This was a beast of a job, even with a gazillion short cuts.
So, I finally decided the paint something for the first time in..... i dunno.... forever! Almost entirely motivated by the fact I got my airbrush working again, so base coating and undercoating is now rather painless. I put a poll up on the solo-boardgamers group and asked "what game should I finish off doing", because I have about 10 in partial completion and just haven't finished them off. Until today. All airships were base coated using an Airbrush, which made them take less time to paint than one of the mechs. Anyway, enjoy!
Put simply it's a deduction game. One that can be played in a group or alone. In a lot of way's it is like an old school "fighting fantasy" book, asides from you a never told what the next entry will be and the choices are not binary. The backdrop of the game is HP Lovecrafts Arkham, a city any reader of this blog will be familiar with. You are graduate students at Miskatonic university investigating a series of unusual events in the city, with each event being a separate case. You are given a briefing of what the case is, a map of the city, the local newspaper and a phone directory. You must move from encounter to encounter solving the case. This is the meat of the game, there are virtually no "mechanics" and no dice rolling whatsover. You read the encounter, make notes of each one, and then decide where to go next. The locations of the game are in the directory and each location pertains to an entry in the case file. For example, say you come across a package that was dropped on the street. You see a mailing address on it, deciding that this is your best clue, you go to the directory and look up the address. That would inform you of what the next entry is. You can go to as many entries and locations as you feel you need to, but the game is a race against the clock and the goal is to solve the case perfectly. At the same time you are investigating, Professor Armitage, your mentor, is also solving the case, and he will do it perfectly. He ask you questions about the case when you feel you have solved it and your score is based on how long it took you to solve the case, and how many question you got right.
Armitage will then tell you exactly how the case was solved.
If this all sounds a little familiar, it is because the game borrows it's core system from a Sherlock Holmes game. Normally, i'm not kind to games that lift systems from other games and reskin them. But in all honesty, the system is a tiny part of the creative effort in this game. The real work is in world building and creating the cases and stories. How it played Normally in co-op games, i try not to be too vocal, but I couldn't help myself this time. In future i'll dial down my insistence at doing things my way :) We divided up responsibilities so that one player had the casebook and read the clues, one had the directory, another the map, and the fourth the "list of allies" page. Each turn we rotated the components clockwise, so that the same person was reading each time. The rules say the current "lead investigator" makes the final call for what passage to read, but that really didn't become an issue. We, after some banter and debate normally settled on one or two primary targets each turn. And decided as a group where to go. The bit that tripped us up was knowing when to stop. We felt we had a pretty clear idea of what had happened and the last two entries we went to added nothing much asides from making us feel we had gone on to far. I guess, that because the game doesn't have a fixed ending, knowing when to call it quits takes some experience. I'd also say that each case has very little replay value, so while the game will come with 10 cases or so, once you've played a case, it would be very difficult to replay it.
Still, it actually felt like we were solving a case and that clues were being followed. And while we didn't score the perfect 100 points on our first outing, 65 seemed like a good first effort. Especially as we missed out on a 25 point question that we had deduced from partial information, but gotten slightly incorrect. The team enjoyed the experience, and feel a second attempt would be warranted.
Although one of our players is a designer, and was critical of the fonts in some sections being quite difficult to read. I concur, while gothic fonts are probably timely to the game, they are a pain to read.
Spoilers below, How our case went. (highlight page to read) Don't read this if you wish to play game one. We started out by going to the crime scene. Big mistake, while criminology 101 might say going to the crime scene is the best plan for starting a case, that doesn't take into account that the victim was screaming "the trees are alive". We encountered a Dark young and freaked out.
As a first encounter, this had the team saying "well that escalated quickly", it was a little bit too much mythos in the face for a first entry, or first case for my liking. Dark Young are a big bad, revealing them in an entry that would be quite logically the first one read was a distraction. I would have preferred if it was hinted at, rather than shown so dramatically.
From there, we went to the hospital to talk to the victim, who was in bad shape with something cracking her open from the inside. We then went to the forensics guy, found the victims address, went to her place, and found the offenders address. Discovering the evil seeds and ritual blade. Finally, we went to the diner and missed the exchange but rushed to the train station. Feeling the last clue we spent was a waste, we then wanted to checkout the library about some goo, which also told us nothing new. So we called it closed.
What we thought was that the offender had attempted to put a seed in the victims chest, but had chickened out and redressed her. We got the order wrong, but were definitely on the right track, but those 25 points hurt our final score a lot. We got implantation, instead of extraction. So close.
Mansions of madness is a unique game. Its mix of dungeon crawling, horror themes, exploration and unique scenarios, make it a really different experience to other games, and I feel it is the Arkham series game that best captures the feeling of the short stories. Usually, you cannot win by fighting the monsters and the game is best played when the investigators hurriedly run around in a panic to desperatly stop the horror before it overwhelms them.
And as you know, I paint my boardgames just to make the gaming experience cooler. My mantra with boardgames is to paint them well enough that they look ok on the table, but simple enough that it doesn't take a lifetime to paint. After all, they are paying pieces first and foremost.
However, for this project I had an extra set of criteria. Monsters in mansions have little data cards that you are mean't to slide in and out when you deploy a new one, as each card has different stats and specials on it. I find sliding those cards a pain in the butt, so I wanted every single monster in a group to be virtually indistinguishable from the others. Note, I left the Mansions monsters box open and they got dusty. I'll sort that out at some point.
Take these maniacs as the first example. Yep, they are in a slightly different body position. But I did my absolute best effort to make sure the models looked as close as possible, right down to the blood spatter. Also, another plug for GW's "blood for the blood god", it's simply the best "blood" material i've worked with in painting by miles. I love how it looks on the denim jeans, as that is how blood looks on jeans.
The cultists were painted as identically as possible. Normally I mix up race in my models, as I don't like seeing a swarm of white dudes only in all my games. But the setting, and the concept of "matching" didn't really work this time around.
The Shoggoth's got fully covered in a glossy sheen, but asides from that, they are basic black with a tiny bit of highlighting. The eyes are only real "painting" on the figures. It goes to show that even minimal effort can yeild fine looking models for table top play. You don't need a golden daemon sword quality figure for a boardgame to look a lot better.
I'm so so on these guys, but i'm really happy with how the human heads turned out. The key idea for the monsters, along with "matching" was to make them colourful and easily differentiated from other monsters. This is why I went with quite a vibrant colour palette over the whole series.
Of course, to balance out those bright colours, other figures got more homely looking schemes. The nightgaunt's in particular, are mentioned in the stories as being featureless. So i thought painting them a dull grey would work.
The zombies were another large batch that needed to match. I used some of the GW corrosion technical paint to give them a dirty look as well. A hate how they are all waving like gormless fans though. It's not a pose I would have chosen for them.
The wizard was my least favourite model in the range. He's just a bearded dude standing with his mouth open. I wanted him to be a little bit cooler, so I custom made some tentacles and put them growing out of his mouth. This way, instead of standing there gormlessly, he looks like he's about to explode and become a Dark Young.
Finally, my favourite models in the set, The Dark Young and the Crawling ones. The Dunwich Horror itself is an odd figure, the face and the tentacles are kinda cool. But the Dark young is such a nice figure, it feels very solid, as the plastic they use is a bit floppy on thinner parts like arms and weapons. He's just a big ball of awesome. The crawling ones had more effort put into them than many of the other figures, because i like them so much. I used wet-blending on the torso to tentacle section, so it looks like the humanoid torso is organically growing out of the sludge at the bottom. Total paint time for these figures was low, and the key was making them functionally good, rather than works of art. Virtually anyone can paint to this level with a small amount of practice. So I say again, don't be dissuaded from painting your games, even an average to mediocre paintjob is 100 times better than bare plastic.
Bring fire and bring shell and heap all upon the pyre. With flame and gun we shall make an end to the withered husk that is human life. And in the blazing furnace of battle we shall forge anew the iron will of a yet stronger race. –Warhammer 40,000 So Fantasy Flight Games have announced a real surprise here, and a game I think a lot of people didn't know they wanted. But now it's been announced, all I can think is "Is this really the first time we've gotten to play a grand strategy 40k game?" Let me be blunt. I love the 40k setting, I think it's really evocative and compelling. I prefer 30k for personal reasons, but the whole Warhammer 40k experience is one of my favorite IP's ever. It's one of the few settings that gets me interested in a game before I even look at the content of the game. That said, I've given up on Warhammer 40k itself as a wargame, it just doesn't do it for me anymore. But I'm always on the lookout for ways to enjoy the setting without having to play 40k itself. So this game is a something i'm really excited about.
First up, FFG have provided us with teaser information, but not a lot else. What we see so far is pretty exciting though. Yep, that's fleets and troops on the map and who doesn't want Eldar, Chaos, Marine and Ork fleets to move around.
FFG made Twilight Imperium 3, one of the great "Space Empire" games, and the initial impression of Forbidden Stars is a cut down version of that. Which is good, for all TI3's majesty, it has a long play time. The board design is modular, and I cannot adequately express how good a decision that is. Variable boards simply add replay value like few other modifications to a game can. The zoom in of the board shows an unusual art style. And it appears that each sector receives orders, rather than each region like many other games. The game also reports to be objective focused rather than annihilation focused as well. This is good, as games that focus on defeating the enemy in their totality can drag on, far past the point where someone can actually fight back and win.
The combat system seems to borrow ideas from both Horus Heresy and Starcraft by FFG. During combat, you will play combat cards that have a certain benefit. However, if you match the combat card to a specific unit, you gain an additional advantage. It's a curious mechanic that, depending on how cards are drawn, can be either very random (if you draw before the fight and get perfect cards) or very strategic (you plan your moves based on the cards you have in hand to take advantage of them). I'm curious to see how this is implemented in the final game. Another interesting mechanic, which is very thematic, is the "Warp storm" shown below.
This storm is impassable, but can be moved. There are multiple Warp Storms and you take turns moving them around each turn. This can be huge as smart placement can open up attack lanes, or make vulnerable systems impenetrable, bad placement can leave you vulnerable as well.
It's a curious mechanic, but a clever one that really suits the setting. Can I just say, I like seeing games that embrace a setting, rather than shoe-horn game mechanics into it. The four factions are a good choice, Ultramarines, Khorney Chaos, Iyaden craftworld and Evil Sunz Orks. I'm not sure if I like that they picked specific chapters/warbands/craftworlds or not, I guess it depends on how thematic and varied the play styles are.
Because if the only difference between Orks and Ultramarines is the pieces, I will feel a little let down. I hope they play quite differently, as that adds to replay-ability as well. The game is still a long way off, Q3 of this year...... which by FFG standards means the end of this year. So they will be doling out information over the next few months. Still, interesting news, lets keep expectations managed :)
XCOM the Boardgame is an app assisted board game set in the XCOM universe and was developed by Fantasy Flight games. It's designed as a co-op game, but it can actually work well as a single player experience, if you are insane a like mental anguish and having information overload that is. So, I took on the challenge of playing it solo, i've done that 4 times now and won twice and lost twice. The first time I attempted this report on my 3rd play through, I took a bunch of photos, and then found the camera data card in my computer........ so this is attempt four. In all it's glory. I'm always cagey about session reports, as i think they always soudna little like Rimmer from red dwarf, talking about the time he rolled a 3 and a 1 in a game of risk. Anyway, here it is.
One of the refinements i made after my first attempts was to optimize the layout so that everything was easy to find in a hurry. Several of the actions in the turn have less than 10 seconds, so knowing where things are in crucial. It's also important to remember to use you cards, so i placed all the "timed phase cards" right in front of me. The mission is "domination", which appears to focus more on the air-war than other missions, my HQ was in Australia (which allowed me to zap 1 ufo a turn) and the Aliens were a reasonably easy assortment of outsiders, Sectoids, Sectoid commanders, Mutons and Muton Elites. The game was set to normal difficulty. Each turn will have two images, one from the end of the timed phase, and one from the end of the resolution phase.
Turn one - And so it begins
I drew an unusual assortment of tech cards, and decided to go for dollars to keep me in cash for the whole game, so selected elerium and UFO power. Combined, these would give me $4 extra a turn, which would be helpful. Arc thrower was also there and as far as i'm concerned, it's a must have. That said, no floaters or thin men in the enemy deck, but alien special powers truly suck. UFO power and Arc thrower are obtained! Crisis cards were laughable this round, Elite soliders don't get an extra dice and discard all salvage. Awesome, none of either of those. I slightly overspent this turn on Air and Space defence, thinking more aliens would be attacking later in the turn. But i figured that it would be good to stay on top. as it stands, the Satellites stuffed up and left a UFO alive.... The base was attacked by a Muton and Muton elite, and it took 3 rolls to kill the Muton. So i figured letting the base take 1 hit was better than losing 3 troopers. Which turned out to be a great move as the mission went horribly wrong. I passed the first check, then boom. An Outsider kills 2 soliders and the mission is failed for now...... I also forgot to increase panic by 1 in the lowest panic continent, oops. So after turn 1, things are looking pretty solid asides from some casualties in the troops.
Turn two - More incompetence from squad command.
Turn two i was focused on getting good tech and rebuilding squad command, so i really dipped into emergency funding to get the extra resources. Light activity in the skies again meant a minimal commitment there, and with troops training to be elite and out on the skyranger, I could commit few troops to the mission and base defence. Xenobiology is a great tech card as it allows you to get that extra tech a turn, and with arc thrower i wasn't too concerned about Outsiders not being salvageable. Firestorm also popped up, and it's a very useful card. Along with the Australia commander card, that's 2 dead UFO's a turn. Firestorm and Elerium tech's obtained this turn. Crisis cards were moderately annoying, increas panic in North America by 1, exhaust the Satelitte uplink and players cannot roll more than 3 times against each task. Space command again failed at the first step leaving two ufo's in orbit, and i remembered to increase panic this time. My base defender took 3 rolls to kill the sectoid, so i let the outsider damage the base again. 2 hits on the base, i think you can afford to take 1 a turn without getting too panicked, plus i am short on troops, despite buying 2 this turn. However, the mission again turned out to be a graveyard. Both soldiers died on the first roll, and with no satellite uplink or weapons tech, i was in trouble. After turn 2, XCOM is holding steady, things aren't out of control, but i'm not that well set up. The big thing is I now have an extra $4 a turn to spend.
Turn 3 - Squad command finally does something.
Ok, so far so good, but my soldiers need some toys to fight the aliens or they are going to keep dying. Money isn't too tight so I spend six credits on tech and raid the emergency funding hard. I have about $20 to spend, which is a lot in XCOM. The new techs on the agenda are Alloy cannon and light plasma, to help out the troopers. It's a clean sweep on the techs and i'm feeling good, despite spending all my salvage and six credits to get them. The air war heats up a little, and I commit a modest amount to it. It's a good turn in the skies as we nearly clear them for the loss of two interceptors and two satellites damaged. Base defense is again poorly done, and the 2 troopers struggle to kill the Sectoid Commander. I let the Muton Elite damage the base and trigger the invasion special, which does nothing. Also, no crisis cards this turn as the sole crisis "kill two soliders" was dealt with by the skyranger. Finally, the mission is one and my Squad Commander is saved from a summary execution. Winning the mission also reduces panic and grants me two additional troopers. Asides from being a little short on interceptors, things look really good heading into turn 4.
Turn four - Holding steady, gaining power.
Emergency funding is cleaned out, but that's ok. Our job here is to keep powering up for the final mission and making our troops as good as they can be. It's a full trooper tech selection, with Plasma Cannon, Plasma Sniper and Blaster Launcher. I think all 5 of these is overkill normally, but my other options were average at best. I used xenobiology to get Hyperwave comms in the timed phase to immediately reduce 1 continents panic by one. Both normal weapon tech's are obtained and my soliders are over the moon. I balls up a little by only having 1 satelitte this turn, as i forgot the crisis card was "spawn two ufo's in orbit". I spent my money on buying new interceptors, instead of placing satellites, oops. Base defence is easy this turn, with the 3 aliens all dying under a hail of good dice and new tech. The squad commander also rockets through a mission that reduces panic. Good round by squad command, and heaps of salvage for next turn. The only major issue this turn is those 4 UFO's in orbit.
Turn five - Final mission, the push to win, oh god, what's that in the skies.
Things really heat up in the skies this turn with 9 UFO's heading to Asia in one turn (the eight above, minus one from the Australia card) I'm confident, that with two missions complete, that the final mission will be up this turn or next. So I continue to gear around that. I use xenobiology to get arcangel armour, and promptly gain more salvage for my tech rolls. The amazing UFO navigation is available, as is carapace armour. Cards that should really help me with the final mission (3 alien dice rerolls!) Crisis cards are manageable, panic up in Africa by 1 and resolve the invasion critical effect. Not too scary. The Air and Space battle goes remarkably well..... sort of. I kill most of the UFO's on the board by interceptor command is in dire condition at the end of the turn with only 2 serviceable fighters. Base defence goes smoothly, with the sniper and heavy not even having to roll to kill the Muton due to our awesome weapons tech.
Three soliders are committed to the final mission, and in retrospect, that was probably a mistake. I should have gone all out on it. The outsider dies under a hail of tech upgraded weapons, but I need 3 success on the next task. Two obtained, but 3 alien dice rerolls all end in a dead squad. While we are looking good to win if we survive this turn, the state of fighter command is really worrying. Africa becomes the first nation "in the red".
Turn six - We need to nail this now!
At the start of the turn i reduce panic in Africa by 1. This turn is all about survival and letting the strike team win the final mission. I discard two techs looking for "Shiv", but find Interceptor repair. Xenobiology brings that too the table immediately and two more fighters arrive at fighter command! I fumble a bit this turn as it's a hectic one and don't make all the best decisions. I get revive as a tech, but fail to keep a support around to utilize it. No matter, just no one die this turn. I had to discard 3 techs and spawn 2 ufo's thanks to crisis cards. This game can't go much longer as Elerium, Xenobiology and UFO Power go in the bin, great techs, but i need to win this turn. The alien UFO fleet turns up in force, and despite that, Fighter command has a blinder of a turn, keeping the air above North America clear and reducing the alien fleet. There are some panic increase, but it's still very manageable. Base defence is again very smooth thanks to easy to beat aliens and weapons technology. The final mission comes down to 1 roll of 3 dice, and another roll of 2 dice, thankfully, I have 3 alien dice rerolls. And you know what..... i use all of them on the second roll. Final mission nailed..... but as a solo game, you can't really 5 five anyone in victory.
In the end, I felt I had good control through the whole session. getting Elerium and UFO power early on really helped, despite losses in fighter and squad command, I could just afford to buy dudes back.
And while those big UFO swarms mad me feel I could be in real trouble, some good rolls on those turns really did help keep me in the game. My advice for XCOM players is this. Sort your economy out early and don't overplay on the first few turns, and don't be afraid to skip a mission for a turn or take some damage on the base. Once you have a small number of resource providing cards, the game becomes a bit easier to manage. And while I had Elerium and UFO power, revive, interceptor repair, alien construction, xenobiology, defence matrix all save you money over the course of the game. Once you are set up, you can then push to complete missions and build your squad for the finale. Oh, and take the time when it is offered. "Pick a mission" and "emergency funding available" have long timers, use the extra seconds to think about your next tech purchase or what timed cards you have available. I recommend XCOM solo to anyone who really likes a formidable mental challenge under pressure.
