Ticket to Ride: Asia - trying to win!

Tonight we had our first play of Ticket to Ride: Legendary Asia - with its new routes, layout, stations, locations and mountain rules. These were unusual in that if you had a two red mountain route, you have to have two red cards, then place two plastic trains THEN give up an extra two plastic trains because of the difficulty of trains to get over/around/through mountains. This has the effect of emptying your stash of plastic trains quicker and as usual if you get down to 3 trains then the game ends on the next round. So you have to think carefully about how many mountain routes you will take; except this board covers a lot of countries north and south of the Himalayas! The other side is another Asian map, except it is designed for team play - although I suppose you could still use it for 2 players games. Another nice thing in the box are 4 bamboo slotted ticket holders for team play that can also be used for 2 player. Very nice.

Oh, and Anita won. Again.

First play of Mansions of Madness

This evening at Brians involved us playing a game of Mansions of Madness, a Call of Cthulhu based roleplaying board game. I was a little late turning up which meant I missed the game set up and character selection, although apparently game set up can be quite long, so possibly that was a blessing. Any how, when I arrived, the board pieces were set up for the scanrio that had been selected and everyone had chosen a character. I had been given a Professor character who was pretty good. Each character has a Sanity value as this game is based on not going mad whilst solving the scenario. Or dying either. Dying and/or going mad are pretty bad in this game. 


So the four characters started in the main entrance of the Mansion and we split into two groups of two and started to explore. Tom, the games owner was the game DM as such and controlled the bad guys whilst we stumbled about. The idea behind the game is that there are a number of clues that we have to discover, put into the right order and then solve the mystery. There are also locked doors and items to over come, basements to delve into, mysterious rooms and locations to examine. 


There is also a clever sub-game puzzle system; some rooms have a pile of cards to look through to turn over one at a time if we were to search the room - sometimes this would uncover a puzzle that would need to be completed before any more cards can be unturned. These little puzzles were great - they might involve sliding tiles around, rewiring a circuit etc to complete the puzzle. Depending on your characters intelligence depends on how many turns you got to complete the puzzle. Also there were items such as a locked cabinet that needed a key to open, but if you found an axe, like we did, you could bash it open! 


The DM as I thought of him had lots of creatures and Cultists (humans basically) to place on the board and attack the characters. Basically the night progressed by the two groups search around for clues and solving problems and taking out the occasional cultist and creature. Unfortunately each creature comes attached with it a Sanity check - every time we came across a creature we would have to roll a die and have a modifier attached which affects the die roll (the more hideous and scary the creature, the more likely you will fail the sanity check). If you fail the check, your character gains a token and if your limit is reached, you go Insane and can be affected by the DM - come under his control and/or do crazy things. 


After a while, it started to become clear the DM was up to something and we needed to get to the basement. But although we were making a path through the bad guys - Sanity checks and our healthy were taking their toll. Eventually we lost the game - partly down to me miscalculating a Rewiring Test and failing it. 


It was a good game, made better by the great artwork, fantastic miniatures, loads of counters and great mini games - unfortunately it has a really long play time; starting around 8:30, we finished very late. 

The Mansion laid out and the Investigators proceed inside

Hello Professor! Urk, my mind!

Sold some games!

Sold some games! Zombies!!! went to Brian after the 3 hr fiasco the last time we played it; I didn't really like it and didn't think that the game wasn't amazing. Pandemic although good, didn't really work with us as a family; the couple of or so times we played it we found it frustrating and annoying. The thing we love about Euro games is the not knowing who has won until right at the end, right up to the final count. Even then things can change in some games. But Pandemic you can see the end coming like a brick wall at 60 mph. You can see the fact you are going to loose and nothing can be done about it, but you have to keep playing otherwise why play. And the fact no one wins if the game wins makes it a bit frustrating. So, it's going to a better home where it might be loved more.

And bought a new one! Ticket to Ride: Europe 1912 expansion.... should be fun over Christmas!

Guurrrr! Zombies win again!

I'd been bugging Maya to play Last Night on Earth again - and finally we set up again, she wanted to get back at me for losing the last time we played. We swapped sides this time around, I played the Heroes with Johnny the Quarterback, Jenny the Farmers Daughter, Sally and Jake Cartwright the drifter and Maya played the zombies. I had a few ideas how to play with the Kill the zombies scenario - somehow I had to kill 15 zombies! And it almost worked, I had some decent tools and weapons and I was picking off a few, especially with the shotgun, until it ran out of ammo. Urk! It then turned into a slog - unfortunately first down went Johnny under a pile of zombies then Jenny. Jake got trapped in the Hanger and Sally was blasting zombies with a pistol in the hospital; it was a race against time, with only a few turns left, I had to take out 4 zombies. A pistol shot to the head took out one; Jake took out another; but then I ran out of time!! Zombies win again ahgahgah! Great game - next time Roshni wants to join in with the fun so we'll try it next week.