RogerBW's Blog

On a somewhat muggy day in August, five of us played two big games.

The first was Eldritch Horror, which I tried at a Stabcon a while ago. This time it was against a custom enemy, the King in Yellow further modified by the game's owner: instead of Gates, we had Performances (of that certain play), and a custom deck to deal with them.

We started off spread all over the place. Two of us were near the first two performances, and went to nail them down.

One of us did well. I was Lost in Time and Space.

I ended up being dumped in London, then in the South Atlantic. This seemed much more convenient than mundane rail or sea travel.

Things progressed. We stayed more or less on top of them, though had one of our investigators devoured as another's Dark Pact came to payback time. (We'd sent the guy with the Pact on a couple of suicide missions, but he'd survived them. Not the next one though.)

But rather to my surprise, and contrary to my previous experience, we did actually manage to win. I didn't get a lot of add-on cards so I ended up mostly being a clue generator for the others; I think this is a game where you have to leap into encounters early on, risking terrible things happening to you, or resign yourself to not doing much in the late game. Still fun though.

After lunch, on to Firefly with all current expansions (Kalidasa's not available yet, though a few copies were sold at GenCon). We played Another Man's Treasure, with Blitz setup based on Silverhold, so we all started out pretty fighty. I began with Monty and the Artful Dodger at Meridian. Everyone else took standard Fireflies, thinking of the precariousness of non-stashed cargo; their leaders were Murphy, Burgess, Nandi and Malcolm.

Even with card holders, things got a bit cramped. Next time I'll set up the table extension. (I thought I had…)

Simon and River both showed up at Persephone at the start of the game! That hardly ever happens these days, compared with the original game. But the player who was there turned in Simon for the bounty.

I got reavered and lost my own bound bounty, but mostly did all right, making enough money to buy cargo off Lord Harrow and ship it to my Haven. I just had to get back home to do it.

But Murphy got the cash to convert to parts and drop off said parts before I could reach my base. (I forgot that Havens weren't allowed to be on Supply planets, but I don't think it made a huge difference in the end.)

Nobody did any piracy, which was a pity. I came second with a single goal. One unfortunate player drew the Alliance Cruiser five times while flying.