Since I haven't posted a photo for a while, here's a Spore creature I made over the weekend.
It's a Killer Tangelo!
Wednesday, February 11
Spore Creature Creator Video
Tuesday, February 10
GEW9: Weekend Six / SSG@B&S
(That's Game Every Weekend 2009)
The BFF's son, Yehaw McK, was here for the weekend, and lots of gaming was done! There was a Magic tournament on Saturday that all four 'boys' were going to, and in preparation, there were a few practice games Friday evening to start the weekend. I am not a Magic player, I've tried it a couple times, I understand the concept, and have learned from trying it (as well as a couple other CCGs) that I do not enjoy deck building. If someone builds a deck for me in a CCG that I really like the concept of, like Deadlands, I'll definitely give it a go, but CCGs are not really for me.
So Saturday, after packing them each an awesome (if I do say so myself) snack bag of apple, box of animal crackers, package of cheese crackers, a couple string cheeses, a couple slim jims (none for the budding vegetarian), and a bottle of water, I sat down for a little Spore. OK, a lot of Spore. They were gone for HOURS! I've been concentrating on 'finishing' my first creature, he's in space, almost 3/4 'done'. Saturday, I did a few errands to raise enough bucks to increase my travel length and energy hold, and journeyed as close to the center of the universe as I could get. I did meet the Grox, and yes, they killed me. But one benefit to getting killed far away from home, you reappear back home. The guys all reappeared back home eventually, too, but none had won anything, which is surprising. Yehaw McK usually wins something in Magic tournaments, and often, a couple more do, too. The BFF consoled himself by buying Hunting which we'll have to try another weekend.
Sunday was our regular Second Sunday family gaming day, and The BFF and Yehaw McK had planned a nice Dungeons and Dragons day, but our printer wouldn't cooperate with the on-line creation sheets. So we switched to a card game day. We hadn't played Race For The Galaxy with five players yet, and we all enjoy that game. We also brought out Lord of the Fries, which I got for about six bucks a few weeks ago, when the 'other' Big Box Hobby and Gaming store had 75% off a few games.
Lord of the Fries was originally a Cheap Ass game (sorry, Mom, that's just their name). We have a few others on the shelf, but we haven't played many of them. I do love the cheapness and black-and-whiteness and lack-of-bit-ness of their games, such a change of pace from the heavy bits I usually love, I need to see about getting them to the table. This beautiful color version was put out by Steve Jackson games in cooperation with Cheap Ass games, and it has a lot of extras added beyond the original game. You are Zombies. What could be better than that? You are Zombies working in a fast food restaurant, feeding the humans, probably fattening up their brains for later consumption! There are eight different restaurant menus, all players (3-8) play off the same ones. You have to alter the deck (which are ingredients like meats, drinks, buns, sauce, etc) depending on which menu you're playing, so there are always some ingredients that are more rare for each menu. You deal out all the cards, 'make' the recipes on the menu, and the 'shift' is over when someone is out of cards. If you can't make the recipe called for, you give away a card, which is the biggest strategy in the game. In the beginning, you want to gather more cards to your own hand to be able to try for a bigger recipe (bigger recipe = more points!), but there is a time in the game that you don't want any more cards given to you, because the points in your hand count against the points you've earned from your recipes. We played a practice shift, and a whole game which consists of three shifts, and we all quite enjoyed it. Since two had never played before, we didn't use the timer, which is used to put a little pressure on the deciding player, deciding whether to roll for the recipe (when they would get all the cards that are passed), or pick a recipe they think no one else can make but them (then cards would pass to the left). We had all five of us playing only one of the 'shifts', and it sure does make a difference in how many cards you get, and how long it takes to get back to you. Since you only control the order being placed after you completed one, there are rounds that you don't get to put down too many points on the table at all. At one point, Rawk Star only had completed one menu item, with three cards, and he ran out of cards and stopped that round. He hadn't been able to make any more recipes, so he had given away all his cards. Very fun game! It played ok with three the first time we tried it, better with four or five, I will be excited to try it with six-eight sometime just for fun!
Gathering Storm, the expansion to Race For The Galaxy, adds a couple extra ways to get victory points, a solo game (which we haven't tried), and enough new worlds and other cards to play up to five players. The basic play of this game, if you haven't read about or played it yet, is you have a hand of cards, and you want to get some of them onto the table into your tableau, you also use your hand cards to 'pay' for what you bring out. Each turn is played in five stages, with a separate set of seven cards to determine what stage you want to play. This is a very cool game mechanic, and I don't know any other game that has something like this. Every player decides what stage they want to play in, and all put out their stage cards face down to be revealed at the same time when everyone is ready. All players get to play each stage that is revealed, but only the person(s) who played that particular stage card get to use the bonus for that stage. Even with five players, there were turns where only two of the five stages were able to be played, part of the strategy is trying to guess what stage everyone else is going to play. The cards you get into your tableau are going to give you victory points at the end, and/or give you an advantage during the game. The game stops at the turn that someone lays down their twelfth card, or someone picks up the last victory token (which we have never had happen in any of our games), and then everyone adds up their scores. The cards you bring to your tableau can work together in so many ways, the more expensive to bring out, the more they will probably help you. There are many strategies to play, mine is, see what starting world you get, and what you get in your first hand, and see how you can make it work together. I don't really enjoy trying to play military, but if that is what my starting world and starting hand lean towards, I have learned that I will get myself behind if I fight against my starting cards. And you can't get behind. It is a race after all. ;p
This is one of the best games I've ever played. It seems complicated at first with all the stages, they even give you huge cheat sheets to help you keep up, but it really ends up being much less complicated after you've played it a few times. The complexity is part of the beauty of it, trying for the most Alien cards, because you have the card that will give you bonus points for all of those Alien cards, but still trying to do it fast, because someone will definitely get twelve (or thirteen) in their tableau before you do! The BFF and son tried a modification after all of us who had to get up Monday morning had hit the hay, they went to sixteen in the tableau instead of twelve, and they enjoyed that as well.
The BFF's son, Yehaw McK, was here for the weekend, and lots of gaming was done! There was a Magic tournament on Saturday that all four 'boys' were going to, and in preparation, there were a few practice games Friday evening to start the weekend. I am not a Magic player, I've tried it a couple times, I understand the concept, and have learned from trying it (as well as a couple other CCGs) that I do not enjoy deck building. If someone builds a deck for me in a CCG that I really like the concept of, like Deadlands, I'll definitely give it a go, but CCGs are not really for me.
So Saturday, after packing them each an awesome (if I do say so myself) snack bag of apple, box of animal crackers, package of cheese crackers, a couple string cheeses, a couple slim jims (none for the budding vegetarian), and a bottle of water, I sat down for a little Spore. OK, a lot of Spore. They were gone for HOURS! I've been concentrating on 'finishing' my first creature, he's in space, almost 3/4 'done'. Saturday, I did a few errands to raise enough bucks to increase my travel length and energy hold, and journeyed as close to the center of the universe as I could get. I did meet the Grox, and yes, they killed me. But one benefit to getting killed far away from home, you reappear back home. The guys all reappeared back home eventually, too, but none had won anything, which is surprising. Yehaw McK usually wins something in Magic tournaments, and often, a couple more do, too. The BFF consoled himself by buying Hunting which we'll have to try another weekend.
Sunday was our regular Second Sunday family gaming day, and The BFF and Yehaw McK had planned a nice Dungeons and Dragons day, but our printer wouldn't cooperate with the on-line creation sheets. So we switched to a card game day. We hadn't played Race For The Galaxy with five players yet, and we all enjoy that game. We also brought out Lord of the Fries, which I got for about six bucks a few weeks ago, when the 'other' Big Box Hobby and Gaming store had 75% off a few games.
Lord of the Fries was originally a Cheap Ass game (sorry, Mom, that's just their name). We have a few others on the shelf, but we haven't played many of them. I do love the cheapness and black-and-whiteness and lack-of-bit-ness of their games, such a change of pace from the heavy bits I usually love, I need to see about getting them to the table. This beautiful color version was put out by Steve Jackson games in cooperation with Cheap Ass games, and it has a lot of extras added beyond the original game. You are Zombies. What could be better than that? You are Zombies working in a fast food restaurant, feeding the humans, probably fattening up their brains for later consumption! There are eight different restaurant menus, all players (3-8) play off the same ones. You have to alter the deck (which are ingredients like meats, drinks, buns, sauce, etc) depending on which menu you're playing, so there are always some ingredients that are more rare for each menu. You deal out all the cards, 'make' the recipes on the menu, and the 'shift' is over when someone is out of cards. If you can't make the recipe called for, you give away a card, which is the biggest strategy in the game. In the beginning, you want to gather more cards to your own hand to be able to try for a bigger recipe (bigger recipe = more points!), but there is a time in the game that you don't want any more cards given to you, because the points in your hand count against the points you've earned from your recipes. We played a practice shift, and a whole game which consists of three shifts, and we all quite enjoyed it. Since two had never played before, we didn't use the timer, which is used to put a little pressure on the deciding player, deciding whether to roll for the recipe (when they would get all the cards that are passed), or pick a recipe they think no one else can make but them (then cards would pass to the left). We had all five of us playing only one of the 'shifts', and it sure does make a difference in how many cards you get, and how long it takes to get back to you. Since you only control the order being placed after you completed one, there are rounds that you don't get to put down too many points on the table at all. At one point, Rawk Star only had completed one menu item, with three cards, and he ran out of cards and stopped that round. He hadn't been able to make any more recipes, so he had given away all his cards. Very fun game! It played ok with three the first time we tried it, better with four or five, I will be excited to try it with six-eight sometime just for fun!
Gathering Storm, the expansion to Race For The Galaxy, adds a couple extra ways to get victory points, a solo game (which we haven't tried), and enough new worlds and other cards to play up to five players. The basic play of this game, if you haven't read about or played it yet, is you have a hand of cards, and you want to get some of them onto the table into your tableau, you also use your hand cards to 'pay' for what you bring out. Each turn is played in five stages, with a separate set of seven cards to determine what stage you want to play. This is a very cool game mechanic, and I don't know any other game that has something like this. Every player decides what stage they want to play in, and all put out their stage cards face down to be revealed at the same time when everyone is ready. All players get to play each stage that is revealed, but only the person(s) who played that particular stage card get to use the bonus for that stage. Even with five players, there were turns where only two of the five stages were able to be played, part of the strategy is trying to guess what stage everyone else is going to play. The cards you get into your tableau are going to give you victory points at the end, and/or give you an advantage during the game. The game stops at the turn that someone lays down their twelfth card, or someone picks up the last victory token (which we have never had happen in any of our games), and then everyone adds up their scores. The cards you bring to your tableau can work together in so many ways, the more expensive to bring out, the more they will probably help you. There are many strategies to play, mine is, see what starting world you get, and what you get in your first hand, and see how you can make it work together. I don't really enjoy trying to play military, but if that is what my starting world and starting hand lean towards, I have learned that I will get myself behind if I fight against my starting cards. And you can't get behind. It is a race after all. ;p
This is one of the best games I've ever played. It seems complicated at first with all the stages, they even give you huge cheat sheets to help you keep up, but it really ends up being much less complicated after you've played it a few times. The complexity is part of the beauty of it, trying for the most Alien cards, because you have the card that will give you bonus points for all of those Alien cards, but still trying to do it fast, because someone will definitely get twelve (or thirteen) in their tableau before you do! The BFF and son tried a modification after all of us who had to get up Monday morning had hit the hay, they went to sixteen in the tableau instead of twelve, and they enjoyed that as well.
Labels:
Game Every Weekend 2009,
GEW9,
SSGatBandS
Monday, February 2
Super WoW Review
#1 I don't I would have liked or even understood the game if I had never played the online MMORPG. I will even go a step further and say that if you've never played it online, you may even want to skip this review, as I would definately NOT recommend this game to you.
WoW is known for it's artwork and details, and that's the first thing you notice on the box, and the insides are even better. The core set, which is what we got, has everything needed for both players to start (it's only a two player game, tho I would guess that expansions could add more players). There is one of three random boards, and three random characters each, in two of three teams, Horde, Allaince, and Monster. We hot Horde and Monster, and a green foresty playing board. I wish we would have gotten the cool iced fucia board, it was purty.
Each of the six total game characters that you get have a card to represent them, with stats and specials, and two cards of things they can use, a weapon, instant action, buff, or heal ability. In one of the ways to add to your game, you can get extra cards for their abilities, and make your own 'deck' for each of your characters. Some cards are unique to the type of team, or to the species, or to the specific character (that might only be for the Legendary characters), and other cards could be used by anyone.
Whenyou buy more boosters, you get more cards, and I can really see how you could make a great team with abilities that really compliment their strengths.
The figs themselves are just georgeous! Very detailed and painted so well they don't look machine made. Since we got Monster, we could recognize things we had actually fought against in the game, like a harvest gollum, very cool. The figs have separate bases that are intended to go together. With maybe half of our figs, the dude went into the base just fine, but the others just wouldn't stay, so we abandoned the bases after a while. The bad part about this, is that one of the things that you keep track of with the base is the health, which can fluctuate every turn. We ended up having to use other means, which was annoying. The other thing you keep track of with the base is the round that the character can next play. This worked well, we just set the base next to the card for the character, but still would have been better if it was attached to the fig!
The round, and counting the round is the most unique thing about this game. Most of the other parts reminded us of Battle Lore, or other games, but we've never seen this technique. The BFF pointed out that this makes the board game more like the MMORPG. What happens is that when your little dude does something, anything, he has to 'pay' for it by clicking ahead on the round counter, and then he has to wait until that round to do anything else. Did that make sense? Well, it took me a few times to hear this before it sunk in. There are spaces marking 1-10 across the top of the board, telling you which round you're on. When you use a weapon, it would cost 2-4 'clicks' (depending on how powerful it is), so if you used the weapon on round 3, and it cost 2 clicks to perform the action, you move it to 5, and that character cannot do another action until you have gotten to round 5.
And remember to click it before you do the action! It's way too easy to forget, but it was our first time.
Our game went well, we both enjoyed the game play of it. Like most games when we're trying out the starter set, I wished for more choices of cards and characters, but I really see the potential in this. The BFF let me play Monsters, because he thought that would be the stronger team (he always wants me to win the first time we play to make sure that I want to play again-which is funny, because him winning just makes me want to play again more so I can beat him!) The Monster team should have been stronger, but my Legendary Drunken Panda couldn't roll for crap, and gave the other team double points when he was killed. '<
Overall, it's a keeper. Even though I can see it getting expensive with buying more boosters! At least each booster has the same team, which helps grow the troops. I want to figure out how to get another board without having to buy another whole starter set, I want that iced fucia!!!
Edit 2-4-9: I confused myself with the title, but I figured it out, this is the game we played during the Super Bowl!
WoW is known for it's artwork and details, and that's the first thing you notice on the box, and the insides are even better. The core set, which is what we got, has everything needed for both players to start (it's only a two player game, tho I would guess that expansions could add more players). There is one of three random boards, and three random characters each, in two of three teams, Horde, Allaince, and Monster. We hot Horde and Monster, and a green foresty playing board. I wish we would have gotten the cool iced fucia board, it was purty.
Each of the six total game characters that you get have a card to represent them, with stats and specials, and two cards of things they can use, a weapon, instant action, buff, or heal ability. In one of the ways to add to your game, you can get extra cards for their abilities, and make your own 'deck' for each of your characters. Some cards are unique to the type of team, or to the species, or to the specific character (that might only be for the Legendary characters), and other cards could be used by anyone.
Whenyou buy more boosters, you get more cards, and I can really see how you could make a great team with abilities that really compliment their strengths.
The figs themselves are just georgeous! Very detailed and painted so well they don't look machine made. Since we got Monster, we could recognize things we had actually fought against in the game, like a harvest gollum, very cool. The figs have separate bases that are intended to go together. With maybe half of our figs, the dude went into the base just fine, but the others just wouldn't stay, so we abandoned the bases after a while. The bad part about this, is that one of the things that you keep track of with the base is the health, which can fluctuate every turn. We ended up having to use other means, which was annoying. The other thing you keep track of with the base is the round that the character can next play. This worked well, we just set the base next to the card for the character, but still would have been better if it was attached to the fig!
The round, and counting the round is the most unique thing about this game. Most of the other parts reminded us of Battle Lore, or other games, but we've never seen this technique. The BFF pointed out that this makes the board game more like the MMORPG. What happens is that when your little dude does something, anything, he has to 'pay' for it by clicking ahead on the round counter, and then he has to wait until that round to do anything else. Did that make sense? Well, it took me a few times to hear this before it sunk in. There are spaces marking 1-10 across the top of the board, telling you which round you're on. When you use a weapon, it would cost 2-4 'clicks' (depending on how powerful it is), so if you used the weapon on round 3, and it cost 2 clicks to perform the action, you move it to 5, and that character cannot do another action until you have gotten to round 5.
And remember to click it before you do the action! It's way too easy to forget, but it was our first time.
Our game went well, we both enjoyed the game play of it. Like most games when we're trying out the starter set, I wished for more choices of cards and characters, but I really see the potential in this. The BFF let me play Monsters, because he thought that would be the stronger team (he always wants me to win the first time we play to make sure that I want to play again-which is funny, because him winning just makes me want to play again more so I can beat him!) The Monster team should have been stronger, but my Legendary Drunken Panda couldn't roll for crap, and gave the other team double points when he was killed. '<
Overall, it's a keeper. Even though I can see it getting expensive with buying more boosters! At least each booster has the same team, which helps grow the troops. I want to figure out how to get another board without having to buy another whole starter set, I want that iced fucia!!!
Edit 2-4-9: I confused myself with the title, but I figured it out, this is the game we played during the Super Bowl!
Sunday, February 1
GEW9
The BFF twittered* this week: "Declaring '09 "Games Every Weekend 09." CoC CCG, Gametap, Zombie RPG's, party games, L4D, game convos, and other sorts of extreme nerditry." To which I whole heartedly agreed! Being this is only the fourth weekend of the year, I think I/we have successfully gamed every weekend so far, especially since he's adding computer games in there. With also the added bonus, that since he only works four days a week, Monday is still officially 'the weekend'. ;p
So thanks to a couple '$10 off a purchase of $30 or more' coupons, we each purchased a game yesterday at our local Big Box Hobby and Gaming store. (I don't need to give them extra advertising by mentioning their name, I do prefer to support local shops, but you can't turn down a free $10) The BFF picked up World of Warcraft minis, and I bought Humans!!! in my never ending quest to own all games Zombie related!
We plan to game this afternoon, or as he put it, play a game during the stupid-bowl, so we'll have to see whose game gets played first!
*Yes, I twitter too, but not as well as he. Feel free to follow either of us if you are in the twitterverse.
So thanks to a couple '$10 off a purchase of $30 or more' coupons, we each purchased a game yesterday at our local Big Box Hobby and Gaming store. (I don't need to give them extra advertising by mentioning their name, I do prefer to support local shops, but you can't turn down a free $10) The BFF picked up World of Warcraft minis, and I bought Humans!!! in my never ending quest to own all games Zombie related!
We plan to game this afternoon, or as he put it, play a game during the stupid-bowl, so we'll have to see whose game gets played first!
*Yes, I twitter too, but not as well as he. Feel free to follow either of us if you are in the twitterverse.
Labels:
Game Every Weekend 2009,
GEW9,
purchase
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