Catching Up on Games (9/17/24)

Unmatched Adventures: Tales to Amaze

My brother isn’t a fan of head-to-head games, but recently, Unmatched released a co-op expansion, so now all of us could play. I played the Golden Bat, the obscure Japanese superhero. He had some interesting tricks and was quite the tank. I ended up soaking a lot of hits from the boss (Mothman) and going toe-to-toe with him for most of the game.

We ended up winning by a slim margin!

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A Game of Thrones: LCG 2nd Edition

My friend is a big fan of Game of Thrones (just the shows, he doesn’t like reading), and after I had introduced him to card games, he looked into the LCG and found a good deal on the entire collection. But before going all-in on it, he wanted to try it out with just a core box.

We played with the suggested starter decks, so it was 2 houses each. I had a cheeky starting hand and chose The Queen of Thorns as my single starting card. I was able to get another character right into play with one of the Plot cards, so I wouldn’t have been totally screwed if I lost an immediate military challenge. The Queen was able to bring in 3 or 4 characters for free during the game, a huge swing in my favor. I won in the end, but my friend also had a decent amount of power accumulated.

It’s a fun game, and it’ll be interesting to see what constructed decks feel like. There’s a LOT more death and destruction compared to the L5R LCG, though there are clearly some shared design elements.

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Unmatched: Slings and Arrows

This time, we pulled out the new set. Poor Oberon got nuked very early. I spent the rest of the game trying to run away and survive. In the end, I dealt a killing blow to the enemy but at the cost of my last health. We both died together! But technically, according to the rules, my opponent won because the tie goes to the active player. But I won the moral victory!

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Middle-earth CCG

After a long wait (including a delayed game day), it was finally time for 3-player MECCG. My deck was full of dwarves and dwarfy things to do. Treasures, a dwarf faction, and dwarf rings (a bit of a lofty goal for a starter game, but I figured finding one ring might be okay if things line up). My brother wanted to find treasures, so I made his deck with elves (because I had a bunch not being used in the other decks) along with some good Major/Greater items and some rings along with Gandalf. For my friend, I gave him a Man deck with Gondor and Rohan characters with lots of Factions to recruit and Return of the King which I pulled from a lucky pack to go along with a copy of Aragorn from a lucky bulk lot that was gifted to me (for the cost of shipping). My friend likes the movies but otherwise isn’t really drawn to fantasy, so I figured a human-centric deck would be more appealing.

The dwarves had a rough go, getting constantly attacked by orcs and undead. On the upside, we killed a lot of them for points! Sadly, we lost Balin early, one of the only sages in the deck! Once I had enough points (I think we had played to 20 since these weren’t random starters but basic constructed decks), I called the council. For fun, I played Scorba at Home, which was intended to be an end-game goal for the dwarves if we got that far.

Everyone enjoyed it, even my friend, though I think he was only just getting the hang of it by the end (this was far outside of his experience). It was around 3 hours in total, which isn’t too bad. The first few rounds were pretty slow so I could walk through each step for the other two players. On the other hand, we didn’t play to a full 25 points in a 2-deck game, so it could have easily been over 3 hours even if we all had a better grasp of the game. Still doable, but I’m not sure it’ll see a lot of 3-player games. I’m planning on rebuilding the dwarf deck for a 2-deck solo game to give them a better shot at slaying a dragon.

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Pokémon TCG

Since Star Wars: Unlimited is still not back in print with the base set, and the second set saw some ugly gouging on release (even retailers were price-gouging their own customers; gross), I went looking for something actually in print and available to get into. I’ve played the Pokémon games off and on over the years ever since the first one, and my friend actually grew up on the anime, so it seemed like a no-brainer. There was even a starter box on sale for about $7!

Since we’ve played plenty of games before, including some head-to-head games, we opted to skip the scripted tutorial and just shuffle up and play with the starter decks. The rules are incredibly simple, especially compared to a lot of the card games we’ve played before (L5R, BattleTech, MECCG). We picked it up very quickly. The starter decks are good for learning, but they’re pretty bad decks. Still, we enjoyed it, and that was enough for me to start buying more (but with at least some restraint).

After playing, we opened some booster packs for fun. There just happened to have been a recent set focused on the original 151 Pokémon which both of us were most familiar with. I finished opening the packs at home and took a photo of the rares, of which only one is actually worth anything.

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The Witcher: Old World (with Mages)

We all enjoyed The Witcher last time, so my brother chose it for game day, but he also opted to play a Mage instead of a Witcher. We didn’t use any other expansions since we hadn’t played it much yet and it had been a while.

We remembered it being a long game, but not as long as it was this time. It was over 4 hours, and when I failed to defeat my last monster (by a single hit!), we had to end the game early and my friend declared that I had won. We just didn’t have time to keep going.

While all of us really enjoy the game, we weren’t prepared for it to be so long that we couldn’t finish. That’s a problem. We might look into ways of speeding it up some. Part of it, honestly, is the random encounters you have to resolve if you don’t fight. There’s just too much reading. It works great if you’re playing solo but like other narrative-heavy games (Near & Far or Now or Never), it adds a lot to the game’s length, easily 30+ minutes of just reading.

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Winds of the North (playtest)

Winds of the North is my solo Viking game that I’ve been working on for a couple of years now. It’s closing in on being finished, but I recently released a playtest update. For more information about the game or to playtest it yourself, head here.

For this playthrough (which started earlier, but I wasn’t taking pictures the whole time, and I don’t remember when I started it. Sometime shortly after releasing the update), I chose Survival and Combat as my primary Skills. I wanted to do some hunting, and you need to be ready to fight the bigger beasts. The new Combat system is fun but brutal. It actually will need some balance adjustment. So far, other than minor fixes or adjustments, it seems like the game is in a great place and nearly ready for the final touches.

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Castles of Burgundy (with Vineyard)

We’ve played Castles of Burgundy several times, but this was the first time with an expansion. Vineyards was okay. It doesn’t really change things up much, it’s kind of more of the same but with a secondary board for the vine tiles (which arbitrarily take up more space than entire buildings?). It’s a very safe expansion but also easy to learn and play.

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Pokémon TCG

What I originally hoped to do with SW:U was buy a booster box, then play in short sealed-league-style sessions. We build sealed decks (6 packs each), play and adjust our decks a couple times, then trade between our pools to adjust the decks some more. Then, we could do it all over again with the other half of the booster box. Well, SW:U still isn’t a great option yet, but luckily, Pokémon has a solution!

The Build & Battle Stadium boxes allow us to do exactly what I wanted but even better, and for less. It comes with 2 sealed decks (40-card decks) with 4 packs to each deck and 4 additional packs (12 total) along with dice, token upgrades, and energy cards so you can customize the decks however you want. So, we opened and played the decks (technically, you would open the packs and customize the decks when playing in official sealed tournaments, but this is “kitchen table” we’re playing), then opened our packs to modify the decks. I had also bought a boxed set on sale that had some promos (that I later discovered can be used in an official solo/coop mode) and a playmat (along with packs because nearly every Pokémon product has booster packs in it).

Sadly, I later learned that the Build & Battle Stadium boxes were recently discontinued because for some reason, they don’t sell, even though they seem like a great way to play the game. Guess I’ll just stick to the individual Build & Battle boxes in the future, though some Stadium boxes are still around for discounted prices.

For my deck, I ended up dropping my grass Pokémon and focusing on fire. I had gotten a few really good cards for fire: a second Magma Basin, a Kindler, and Simisear V. I also opened a Moltres. A lot of the grass cards got swapped for trainer cards. Both of us had luckily opened a playable Pokémon V.

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The White Castle

With the Matcha expansion for The White Castle around the corner, I wanted to get this played again. I still love the game. The tightness is actually really satisfying. And the variability can make each game of it play out very differently, despite there only being a few paths to victory. In some games, money might be tight, in others, resources might be tight, and in others, some actions might be limited. In this session, the setup resulted in few big combos between the types of workers.

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Pokémon TCG

One of the benefits of having Pokémon to play is that it’s a quick game, being only 15-20 minutes for sealed play. So it’s easy to get back to the table. After customizing our decks last time, we played the new decks a couple of times. I won both (my first Pokémon wins since we started!).

We then opened the remaining 4 packs, 2 each, and customized the decks further. I didn’t do too much to mine, but my friend decided to experiment. He is now running I think 4 different Pokémon types? I made sure to explain that 1 or 2 types are recommended and that he probably has too many, but he’s decided to run with it anyway. After we play some next time, we’ll pool the cards we’ve opened and make some last adjustments to the decks. After that, I might buy a few singles and make some constructed decks. But I’ll also buy another Stadium box so we’re ready for another mini sealed league.

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Let’s Go! To Japan

It wasn’t really planned, but the game day ended up being a bit Japanese-themed with The White Castle, Pokémon (an actual Japanese game), and Let’s Go! To Japan. We played with the Passports expansion again since it’s really easy to throw in and adds a bit of asymmetry.

I’ve been really enjoying the game and have been tempted to buy a copy to play at home. It’s a really satisfying experience for 30-45 minutes.

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Museum (with Archeologists and Cthulhu Relics)

If Let’s Go! To Japan is a satisfying experience for 30-45 minutes, Museum overstays its welcome a bit at over 2 hours. Both games are drafting/set-collection card games, but Museum is just a lot slower. I think slightly smaller museum boards and a lower points threshold for endgame would have been better. And while 2nd Edition made a number of improvements and cleaned up some things, there are still more than a few areas where wording could have been clearer, or there’s some minor error or omission. The player aids especially could have been better.

Archeologists is fine, but it does complicate the game by preventing you from drafting from any continent. And the return investment on the added complexity is maybe not quite there. Some of the bonuses for recruiting archeologists are incredibly weak or situational. So far, it seems like the best one is getting Prestige each time you take a card from the continent during your Explore phase.

The Cthulhu expansion seemed neat but only worth getting into if you were going to focus on it. My brother ended up focusing on it but the points for it didn’t make up for how much he lost by not playing normal objects. He was in a distant third.

Overall, it’s still a fun game, but I wish it were shorter. This would alleviate a lot of the randomness of the card draws. Sometimes you just can’t find the civilization or domain you need, or your opponents get more beneficial Favor cards while you have to settle for the secondary effect on yours, or the Experts help your opponents but do nothing for you. Let’s Go! To Japan also has randomness in the card draw, but being able to go for a walk with any card helps. It’s also such a quick game, a bit of randomness doesn’t really matter that much.

I might have given Museum an 8/10 back when we first played, but I think it’s a 7 for me these days. Good, and worth revisiting every once in a while, but not a favorite. And sadly, the publisher is now gone and won’t have a chance to revise the game any further.