RogerBW's Blog

This Meetup-based boardgames group skipped a meeting due to absences so some of us got together locally.

We started with A Tale of Pirates, clearly a gimmick-component game but quite fun nonetheless and with impressive table presence. Each player has a 30-second sand timer and places it in one of the holes on the ship (raise/lower sails, change course, repair, load cannon, fire cannon, lookout; when the timer runs out, that action happens, and you put your timer somewhere else. Various environment cards like ships and rocks, specified by a scenario, are scattered around, and have to be got through before the overall timer runs out. Damage is represented by "corks" that occlude the holes. So it's a bit like Kitchen Rush, also from 2017.

This is, alas, an app-driven game, and one that has no way to say "we've finished the mission, end the countdown now". We only played the first stage, and it seemed interesting but not so much as to be compelling, even though the app could easily be replaced with by a book of mission setups and a timer.

There may be more complexity later (for example those slots next to the cannon look as though something should ehgage in them).

Then on to Sentinels of the Multiverse: Definitive Edition: Nightmist, Setback, and Captain Cosmic, versus Citizen Dawn in Rook City.

Nightmist definitely got into munchkin mode towards the end - particularly because of the Amulet of the Elder Gods, which not only gave +1 to spell number, but allowed me to redirect any incoming infernal damage to someone else at the mere cost of a card in hand. Combine that with several cards which let me do infernal damage to myself, and Master of Magic to let me manipulate the spell number, and I was handing out damage in 5s by the final turn…

The foil cards come out looking quite odd when photographed in some lights (the centre of the glowing circle, and Dawn's eyes, are foil here).