Legendary Encounters: Alien tips on selecting your Avatars

Legendary Encounters: Alien can be a difficult game to beat. Over the next few posts I figured I would go over some tips and strategies for the game that I have come up with. For this post I am reviewing Character Avatars because choosing the right roles to play can have a huge impact on how the game unfolds. I’m going to go over how I feel about each of the roles in the game:

(Feel free to debate/criticize bellow.)

I feel avatars are best rated on three factors: 1) Special cards due to how they work and which HQ cards to purchase 2) health due to how long they will last against the aliens and 3) Armour which isn't as important until traitors or Alien players pop up.

Commander: This Avatar is good, his armour is low at 4 but his health is high at 11. He can soak up damage nicely. The Report For Duty card he starts with allows him to gain a 3 point card. This works well for building up a stack of cards and in most scenarios this player can build a deck aimed at helping the team. However this player must remember to purchase some higher level cards instead of just overloading their deck with mid-level cards. I find this character can have a fat deck which is a bad thing in a deck building game. Good cards tend to come less frequently and card combos become less likely.

Executive is another leadership oriented Avatar with slightly better armour of 5 but one of the lowest health scores in the list at 9. That small difference can cause early player death. I feel that the Welcome Aboard card is better than the Commander’s card in that it allows purchased cards to be placed on the top of the draw deck. It allows the player to guarantee that new cards can be used on the next turn. However this is only useful if it is backed up with some purchase power. I would still take the executive over the commander because of the rapid card deployment.

Medic If you are playing a 3+ player game without a medic you probably won’t win. This Avatars
Battlefield Medicine card’s ability to heal strikes will become vital in the later stages of the game when things start going sideways. This player will need to build a deck of Survival cards and focus on keeping the team alive. The armour of 5 is great but the health of 10 means players will have to focus on keeping the medic alive. Make sure you also buy attack based survival cards because you need to help kill Aliens too. Survival cards also seem to be the best cards in each scenario in my opinion. Again if you have 3 or more players someone should be playing this role.

Priest The absolute worst avatar in the game. While he does have decent armour at 5 his health is garbage at 9. The included Violence isn’t the answer card allows him to have huge purchase power to gain cards but he will likely focus on gaining Survival Cards that should be going to the medic. The player will also likely forget that violence is actually the answer and waste time purchasing too many cards without actually killing Aliens. This character is just part of the terrible concept that made the third movie bad. Don’t play with this character unless you want the game harder than necessary.

Gunner Thematically I love this avatar. The gunners are my favourite characters in the second film so I love this avatar for that. The armour sucks at 4 but with a health of 11 they can soak up the damage. The card Lets Rock! scales from being a lowly Strength based attack card to a decent attack card as you advance through the objectives but it lacks some of the impact I think it should have.

Mercenary The other Strength based character. As an avatar they have identical value to the Gunner with armour of 4 and health of 11. The special card Ready for Anything makes for a better character though. It allows the player to convert purchase power to attack. This may seem merely okay at first but in a five player game with all coordinating you can have a 14 attack hand with sergeants and base cards. This blows the Gunner away easily. However you must show some restraint and remember to also purchase more powerful cards as well because the coordinates and the special card won’t always be available.

Scout My favourite intel based character. His armour of 5 and health of 10 make him a well rounded character. The Reconnaissance special card allows a free scan of any room. This is fantastic for scouting rooms as it doesn’t eat up attack allowing the player to save attack points for surprise face huggers and the like.

Researcher Another Intel based character with armour 5 and health of 9. The included Thirst for knowledge card allows a player to draw cards equal to the objective number. This becomes a cool ability if the player can live to objective three, but that's difficult with that low health score. This ability could edge out the Scout in some scenarios but only if a small deck of great cards can be built with the starter cards purged. However for most scenarios this character usually doesn’t become great until late in the game whereas the scout is immediately useful and stays useful throughout the game.

Technician A decent character with armour 5 and health of 10. The role card Right Tool for the Job scales purchase power to the current objective. By objective three you should have already built a decent deck of cards so this is not as useful of an ability. It works a bit for the theme but overall it's a bit mediocre. The only real edge for the character is it is the only 100% tech character from the start but that's not much of an edge. The alternate tech, the Synthetic, is more of a jack of all trades character.

Synthetic An interesting character with low armour of 4 but huge health at 12 allowing this character to soak up damage. The Versatile programming special card doesn’t seem as useful as it only allows a player to draw a replacement card. But it does allow a player to trigger any card type special ability so this player could focus on building a varied deck to play back-up for everyone else or fill any role that wasn't selected by the other players. I think this is one of the more useful characters due to the high damage capacity and ability to trigger any card special.

My top characters are Medic, Mercenary, Scout, Executive, and Synthetic in that order.

In a five player game I would have the Scout lead as first player to scan rooms, followed by the mercenary to kill aliens, third medic to heal damage, fourth Executive to build the other players up for the next round, ending with the Synthetic to do random stuff. As you go down from 5 eliminate the Synthetic for a 4 player game. In a three player game eliminate any class other than medic that doesn't fit the players style. 2 player or less games tend to be easy so chose avatars based on your play style.

My next post will be tips how to play each film scenario so check back soon.

Battle of the Sexes board game review

A few weekends ago we went to board game night at a friends house. Four couples total played games until 4 in the morning. The hosts decided to play adult themed games and it was a blast and can’t wait for the next one. However as sometimes happens there was a problem in the night.

Our problem was with the first game we played: Battle of the Sexes.

It looked like fun in a men vs women prove who is superior kind of way. Basically players must answer trivia questions about opposite gender topics. The concept is very dated and wrapped up in lame old timey sexism. Many of the questions couldn’t be answered by either gender. Unless players are as OBSESSED as the writers are with the 50's ideal of gender roles you won’t be able to answer many questions. You know where guys are always fishing and watching baseball and the women are in the kitchen and shopping.

The game is presented in such a way that men should feel ashamedly “girly” for knowing the answers to the questions they answer and women should feel the helplessly ditsy female with their questions. The "hahaha the other gender don't know stuff" element of the game gets old fast and descends into a game with no movement. Battle of the Sexes is just bogged down by an outdated way of looking at gender roles. The concept behind the gender role separation was insulting to our group. The women consisted of my car girl wife, a motorcycle riding lawyer, a woodworking business owner, and the hostess who loves fishing (the game was rigged in her favour!) And the number of cooking questions for the guys was insulting in a world where men are iron chefs. Yes I know what a béchamel sauce is… I had to give 3 out of 5 of the mother sauces and the only other I could answer was hollandaise.

The trivia element suffers in that the game rules force you to work at making your opponents feel dumb. The player who reads the trivia cards lead with whichever of the three questions they want and the responding player must answer them to move. The obvious strategy for the reader is to lead with questions your opponents don’t know to throw them off their game and shake confidence. I don’t know about you but I can be kind of an ass so I really don’t need a poorly designed couples party game to help start fights and make my wife resent me.

Finally the game suffers from a fatal flaw of trivia games: Not enough variation in theme for all players to participate. If a player doesn’t have the specific world experience in the absurdly limited scope of trivia in the game they will not be able to participate. It hits a downward spiral of making the player feel dumb to the point of completely sucking out the fun for the night and even people with my limited capacity for empathy can feel the blahness. This is the kind of game that pushes players away from the hobby.

To sum up the players at the table disliked Battle of the Sexes. It suffered from a poor design of the trivia element that seemed geared to make players feel stupid. The game also suffered from a weirdly outdated sexist model of gender separation that really didn’t fit with the equal partner relationships of the players involved. We gave up playing this without finishing, boxed it up and started playing the other games. Thankfully the remainder of the night picked up to face hurting laughter. I do not recommend this game at all. It is tedious, bland, and it is just fodder for relationship strain.

Trivial Pursuit Bet You Know It Game review.

I had forgotten we actually owned this game until the wife pulled it out this weekend. Trivial Pursuit Bet You Know It isn’t a game we play all that often. I’m a little on the fence about this particular game. Personally while I do enjoy trivia I find I’m not that hooked on trivia games in general. This edition of trivial pursuit does have strengths going for it but it does have some weaknesses. Overall while I'm not the biggest fan of this game I do still have fun playing it and I think it is better than most other trivia games.

The game works basically like any other Trivial Pursuit, roll a die to determine which categories you can move to, answer questions to collect wedges of all 6 colours (categories). Answer one final question for the win.

The first thing I really like about this edition is that there is a card keeper. 4 cards are placed in the keeper with only their topic showing, for example poisons, or Harry Potter, or kids in the hall etc. Players select the card they wish to answer on their turn. I find that this gives players more control of their game experience and is more interesting than the old usual trivia game mechanic of answer whatever card is next. I find with other trivia games that players can hit a rut of cards outside their scope of knowledge and that they end up falling behind. It can get frustrating. The card selection also adds a bit of strategy in that selecting the right topic for the right category can be vital to getting wedges. Also selecting cards in order to prevent other players from getting their easiest categories can be important too. This gives players more control and influence on their game experience making for a more solid game.

The flow works well because each player answers a single question then play proceeds clockwise. I’ve encountered a few trivia games where players answer until they get a question wrong. That is toxic for game night when one player or team dominates the actual play while the remainder are sidelined until an error occurs. I wish more trivia games followed the single question format.

The “Bet You Know It” aspect of the game is where I really don’t know how I feel about it. The point of it is to accrue tokens. These tokens can be spent at the end of the game to purchase the right to choose the topic and category for the last question (if you can’t afford it the other players choose for you.) But, the whole betting on your friends knowing or not knowing something seems crass. It can get demoralizing when everyone dumps huge stacks on “wrong” when your chance to answer a sports question on soccer comes up. Even more so when everyone laughs while sweeping up huge piles of winnings, jerks. Of course it can also be gratifying to get the answer right and rake in the chips like my niece did. I have to admit that the gambling aspect is great for keeping everyone involved and paying attention during every players turn. It is also a great motivator to get to know your other players knowledge base better. What you really gamble on is whether this element will introduce fun and quirky banter or if it will bring down friendships in bitter ego mutilating grudge bets. I guess it all comes down to player personalities.

Players can also spend the chips to buy wedges. This really helps move the game forward for players who really aren’t strong in a category. I find that this can bring the game towards the conclusion efficiently. Although I was surprised that people didn’t purchase wedges as often in the game. I think that it’s partially because players do want to prove themselves (even though having loads of chips proves you know the other players well) but I think it is more so people could save for the last question costs.

The game does suffer a bit from some proof reading issues. We found cards that really didn’t match up with category or topic. One example was the entertainment question: “What animal was first used in experiments on blood transfusions?” That is not an entertainment question, especially in a game with a science category.  This was too far from an isolated incident as there were a few questions that really didn’t fit either the topic or category listed in any way. It was frustrating, it hurt the flow of the game and took players out of the fun.

I would recommend Trivial Pursuit Bet You Know It for groups who are really into trivia games but who are also willing to put themselves through the harsh reality of discovering how much, or how little, faith the other players have in your knowledge. It can be fun for trivia buffs and it does work better than most trivia games I’ve encountered but it also suffers from some issues with improper categorization of questions.

Board game resources

Today I thought I’d talk a little about the resources I use to find new board games. “But Matt” you exclaim “Aren’t you just pointing us to your competition!” Alas no, the only way for me to have competition is if I were to be paid to be doing reviews. So far I have amassed exactly $0 from my reviewing. I review board games because I like to, I like playing board games, and I’d like other people to find board games to love. Besides finding people more help to buy board games inevitably leads to them buying more games, in turn supporting the companies and getting them to make more games. That’s a win for me.

So first of all is TableTop. Both my wife and I really enjoy this web series; So much so that we backed season 3. Using this series I was able to introduce more players to newer board games in an entertaining and informative way. The format of the show is designed well to intro gamers and non-gamers alike. What I love most is that the game is played after a quick introduction to it. Watching celebrities play a game and learn makes me feel less like a dunce when I finally get a chance to play it with friends. Being able to watch a play through in an entertaining manner is a great way to learn a game. Sometimes that’s better than some random guy on the internet blathering on about a game… like I do… but random internet dude can still be informative!

 Another series I've recently gotten into is Shut Up & Sit Down. Two unabashedly geeky gamers Paul Dean and Quintin Smith come together to do reviews of games. They do podcasts, video reviews, playthroughs and blog type reviews. I love the theatrics they put into their reviews. They dress up and act out in attention grabbing ways. They are fantastic at going over both the good and bad in each game giving viewers a better grasp of whether or not you would like them. I also like that they don't always agree on a game and each reviewer will argue their position in a way that helps you understand their game preferences and if your own preferences match up. If you are looking for second opinion on any game I've reviewed you really should check this show out.

The Dice Tower is another review site to check out. Tom Vasel and friends are a group of board game geeks who review board games. I particularly like their top 10 lists. Pick a style of board game and they’ve done a top ten list. They’ve even done top worst lists. The strange thing is that all three guys do a top ten together so it’s really a top 30 list, but they sometimes overlap in their lists or disagree with each other. The debates they have on their videos are where you can get to know which of the guys most reflects your likes and you can decide whose advice best fits your playing preference. I keep going back to his reviews of Twilight Imperium and thinking I should redo mine. Also every time I see this I get the urge to build myself a dice tower. One day I will...

Mission Fun and Games is my local board game store. Well not really…it’s a little bit of a drive our to St. Albert but it’s worth it. They do have a webstore but going in the location is a fantastic experience. The move a while back put them in a better location; the feel of the shop is geekier and has upped the fun factor. The Sunday open gaming is a fantastic service where you can go in and try out the huge selection of store copies of games. The ability to try it before you buy it has me going back. The owner, John, did a play through of Castle Panic with the wife and me before we bought it. I think everyone at that store has happily spent an inordinate amount of time helping us select games. In particular both of his daughters were extremely helpful with my wife, who is very tight on the game budget and quite indecisive about games. That's not exactly a bad thing, I would spend all my money on games then starve to death... nullifying the point of buying games.

A board game store should look like a Castle!

Hopefully you readers will get a little help in finding more games with these guys. Maybe you could suggest some more places for me to look, as I’m always in the mood for more board game talk!

Lazy board gaming attempt two.

Attempt two at weekend board gaming went about as well as attempt one. We moved it to a Saturday thinking people might be more willing to come out. The time frame of 1 to 6 meaning people didn't have to get up too early and people could still go out after. Well it was just Nikki, Victor, Nadine, Pattie and me.

We started by chatting a bunch as most game nights go. Victor and I talked zombie games while the wife and Nikki kept talking shopping, family or some other boring topic. I went to my mind palace and ignored it. I saw that company brought their own beef jerky and needed to run out and get my own from the corner store.

We finally started playing with Legendary Encounters: Alien. For some reason we decided to randomize our role cards and we ended up without a medic. We played the second movie and made it to the final objective when things quickly went sideways. I was the first to die from a brutal strike, followed quickly by Nadine and Nikki. Pattie was the last player alive. We hoped for a Ripley ending but she was overtaken by a hoard of acid xenomorphs.

After that we played Scotland Yard. Pattie was our Mr. X… or Mrs. would be more appropriate. After a rough start of having to remind players of some nuances of the game we managed to have a very frantic chase and much heated debate. We didn’t manage to catch her until the very last turn.

The last game at our event was with Betrayal at house on the hill. We didn’t manage to trigger the haunt until the 8^th or 9^th omen. Most of the board was played and we had managed to collect the items we needed already before the haunt even started. Poor victor was the traitor and he really didn’t have a chance with his zombie hoard. I probably could have made the game even easier for us by healing Pattie before the haunt started but I was worried she could have become the betrayer… so I hid my medic bag from view and let her slowly lose health with the grave dirt card. It was a jerk move and I ended up not being able to get to her after the haunt started. She had to spend the last half of the game fleeing from zombies and hiding in a corner. We still won.

It was at this point we decided to move the game to Nikki and Victors. They had to get home to feed the dogs and let them out. We ordered pizza and played a few more games.

Here we started with Pandemic. We actually had an easy time with it because we managed to cure the red and black diseases quickly. Victor was the medic and cleaned up the diseases fast. The blue disease was cured and eradicated in a single turn. However we barely cured the yellow disease because we had a hard time collecting those cards. Even though there was a single yellow disease cube on the board. The last player managed to cure the disease and eradicated it on the same turn.

We followed up with Smallworld. I snatched up the ransacking skeletons but they weren’t much use. People kept going into decline and I wasn’t able to use them to their full effectiveness. I think I held them longer than I should have. I also should have targeted those pillaging kobolds and beat them into submission. Nikki easily swept the win with them instead. For some reason people target Victor every game of Smallworld and ignore Nikki. She always wins and he always comes in last.

We ended the night with a game of Castle Panic. Nikki was the second player and she managed to pull the “extra four monsters,” the “extra three monsters,” all monsters advance and a boss all in the same draw. Luckily she pulled a boulder at the end which killed the boss and gave us a chance. Half the walls and a tower were down before I even got a turn. We pulled the win though because we kept getting some helpful Boulders come smashing in and killing monsters.

We ended the night tired and happy. I went for what I thought would be a relaxing drive home… until I noticed a red truck was following us. He made every turn we made and kept on the bumper. I swung onto a utility road before our place and parked. He slowly drove past me then pulled into the next entrance for the utility road and parked. We sat there for a bit then I decided to cut into the neighbourhood and drive around to get to our house from the other direction. The guy got out of his truck and watched me go. After I parked and made sure my wife got into the house I went out back so I could cut through the alley and come out to see his license plate. By the time I got there he was speeding out of the area and I couldn’t see his plate. I might be paranoid but it was very odd. And I just realized I left my hickory sticks at their house and I'm very depressed now.

Anywho we are thinking of trying to go to open gaming at Mission Fun and Games one of these Sundays. Either we will try to convince people to come or we will just go on our own. I recently got the wife into watching The Walking Dead so I might be able to convince her to get Dead of Winter on our next board game purchase. We shall see.

The Adventurers Pyramid of Horus board game review

Way back in 2013 my wife discovered something at GameALot, a game called The Adventurers: Pyramid of Horus. This game brings up all the old feelings of Indiana Jones, The Mummy, or mummy serials from way back in the day.

I love the style of the box art

The theme of the game is that a group of adventurers are exploring a tomb and collecting treasures. Your goal: collect as much treasure as possible and escape before the ceiling collapses and you are sealed in with the mummies.

Each player selects a character with a special ability, for example: David Gore –the trigger happy Canadian or Rasputin –the psychic Russian. There are 8 in all. Each character has a special ability which can be used once per game. Deciding when and where to apply the ability can be tricky, you really don’t want to waste it… or pass up using it when it would have helped you most.

A very successful Canadian Adventurer

I love the game because while it does rely on luck, all of that luck is heavily influenced by your decisions in the game. To begin with: for players like me, you seem to have a mummy’s curse placed on your dice rolls, you aren’t that bad off. Each turn a single player is made the Dice Keeper. That player rolls the five dice and all of their players determine their movement from that dice roll. This is great when the niece, who the gods favour, rolls but players groan in agony when it is my turn to toss. This balances the luck by no single player being left behind due to bad dice rolls.

Now how these dice rolls are affected by player choices in the game is when players determine their Wound Load Level (WLL for short.) As you play the game you gain cards, wounds and treasure cards. Every wound you take and every piece of treasure you pick up effect this WLL level. A player without wounds or treasures can count dice with 2 or higher showing, while a player with a WLL of 10-12 can only count dice with 5 or higher showing. Your decisions in the game, such as where you search for treasure, how often you search and even which direction you move in can affect the WLL.

Another thing to affect dice rolls is deciding to pick up idols. These valuable treasures enhance your end score nicely but each idol is cursed. Carrying an idol makes you unable to count its corresponding coloured die. So do you pry open the Horus tomb for that precious idol? Or do you think you will need to count that extra die for your escape from the temple?

Enter the temple

Of course what is a temple raiding game without danger? At the end of each turn the Dice Keeper selects a random stone block from the box and causes the block to land on its number. If a player is on that space they take a wound and move to an adjacent space. If the player cannot move they are crushed and lose the game. If the blocks land in such a way that there is no path to the exit all players behind that line are sealed into the tomb and lose the game.

Well, this is your home now.

There are other dangers and each is in its corresponding area of the tomb. At the entryway is the cobra nest- a pit of deadly snakes where low value treasure can be found as well as helpful treasure hunting items. The next area is the scorpion pit where precious jewels can be found among the poisonous arachnids. The center of the tomb is the crocodile pit, where adventurers can find golden treasures below the murky green waters. Finally there are three mummy corridors filled with ancient sarcophagi each laden with treasure. Within these corridors are alcoves holding precious idols with powerful curses. Beware each hall is guarded by a restless mummy whose mere touch will harm you.

The mummy will win

While I personally enjoy the game it does come off as a little less mature then it could be. It just feels a little kid geared even though I feel it can still be fun for adults. Strategy elements are in the game but they are also a little overshadowed by the luck of dice rolls and card draws. The theme doesn’t fit with true archaeology so it is not educational. It seems to fit more with very old school bad archaeology concepts of grave robbing and temple desecration. So players who are looking for an educational game or a more strategy driven game probably won’t enjoy it as much. I’m pretty much a big kid who idolizes Indiana Jones so I love this game.

So sum up The Adventurers: Pyramid of Horus is works for balancing luck with player decisions in order to bring a rounded game experience. This game is geared more towards families and easy fun game nights but still can be a blast for Mummy and Indiana Jones movie fans. The game is really about players deciding which gambles to take and when to cut and run for the exit to score points. I would recommend this for family board game nights and for groups who just want some old school collapsing temple raiding fun.

Lazy Sunday gaming was a bit of a flop

This room is feeling lonely without you!

The wife and I had planned a lazy Sunday board gaming day for friends and family to hang out at our house. We planned this for the 8^th. I was hyped up for the day as we had 15 people talking about coming out. We ran out to the board game store and picked up a game for a large group, then stocked up on snacks and drinks. The day came and 3 people showed up.

The brother in law came with the niece. The sister in law ended up having to work. My other niece’s husband showed up for a bit but left early to pick up my niece from a baby shower.

We tried out our new game, Masquerade, for a few rounds. I’ll review it once we get some large group plays in. We moved on to The Adventurers for a while then everyone went home. And I just realized we’ve had the Adventurers forever and I never did a review. Check back next week for that one!

Jerks not coming to my party.

To be honest I’ve been feeling pretty blah about it and have been in an antisocial funk since then. But the wife has convinced me to try again. After all the people who did come seemed to have some fun, and I’m always happy to see them. Most of the people who didn’t come had reasonable issues prevent them. My brother was on course, my sister and niece had tickets to the Indiana Jones exhibit, friends from out of town couldn’t make it in for the weekend, and for some friends it was their weekend with the kids.

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So we are trying again at the end of the month. We tried timing it for when people don’t work so we will see how this goes. I shortened the list of invites because some people just didn’t seem interested. My wife wanted it moved to a Saturday so we could have a quiet lazy Sunday. We figured a 1 to 6 timeframe would work so we wouldn’t be interfering with date night plans.

If one of our friends is reading this and wondering why they didn’t get the invite it’s either because all of the planning happened on facebook and you aren’t on there or I didn’t realize you were the board gaming type. Feel free to shoot me a message for the info.