Archive for Mike Amos
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Mike Amos
United States
Minneapolis
Minnesota
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I headed over to Minneapolis's Boardgame Madness last evening, a great event put on by [user=binge gamer]Binge[/user] and other assorted accomplices. It's 3 days of gaming in a local hotel's conference room. I've been twice before but I think this was my favorite trip to date. I didn't expect much but it turned out the room was packed, there had to be 30 - 40 people at least.
I was very fortunate because when I got there a table had just freed up and the refugees of the previous game were kind of milling about. I quickly invited them to join me at the table and play a game, they were kind enough to oblige me and we looked at what I had brought with me: Quarriors!, Alien Frontiers and Betrayal at House on the Hill. Fortunately the two gentlemen with whom I was speaking seemed to like the games I brought. I'm afraid I'm terrible with names so I've forgotten them, which is a shame as I'd like to look them up.
Quarriors!
We opened with a little Quarriors!. We we had four players, one of our players , who's name conveniently started with "quar" was the most familiar. I was a tad embarrassed as I realized I had utterly forgotten the details of the game. I mean, I know it's dice building, but stuff with you quiddity, spend quiddity to summon monsters then try to keep them around for a turn but that's not quite enough to play it. Forntuntately our "quar" player explained it.
The game got rolling and it turned out we had about the lowset power set of card possible. We had a lot of three and four cost cards and a couple sixes. We had one player go for the portals immediately, our newest player got creatures out right away and bought creatures whenever possible, "quar" player just couldn't get anything to summon at all, and I went for the axemen creatures.
It turned out that the quick summons of our newest player took the day. It was agreed that they game may have played differently with some heavier monsters out there but given that no one had much stength we weren't able to kill off his low level monsters to stop the points building. My axemen managed to score me a few token points but I just didn't get enough of them out to matter. The fact that our newest player got a a couple of the eight defense knights out at critical times also helped.
This game leaves me a tad frustrated. I really, really want Quarriors! to be awesome but I'm increasingly convinced that it isn't. I think it flaws can be overlooked once all players are familiar with the game but I think it's flaws are just too great to make it worthwhile for most people to bother playing it enough times to understand the game thoroughly. I had not previously rated this game but I'm going to set it to a six. I like it and am willing to play past the bumps in the road but it will never be a great game to me and I just don't see it hitting the table a bunch.
Panic Station
Panic Station was owned by our winner from Quarriors! and several people wanted to play, enough that a second game started next to us while our game was in play. I've heard of it in a remote way but it wasn't a game I had keyed in on in any way.
As it came out I began to get a bit excited. It seemed like a simple paranoia game, between Werewolf and Battlestar Galactica in complexity, right where I would like to find one. The rules were a little cumbersome and it's clear that the rule book needs another revision but I was still excited. The gist is that you all have some infection cards in your hand and as you move around the base, trying to burn out the parasite infection, you have to trad items whenever you pass someone. The infected will pass their infected blood and the uninfected with not. If you pass a gas can as they pass infected blood, you remain uninfected.
As we played several rules and mechanical issues came to light. We reached a point where we knew who was infected and had isolated them and simply needed to get three gas cans to the hive to win. At that point we just had to wait for the game to end as it took a couple turns to get everything in place. It was honestly a little frustrating and it felt like the designers had built a good kernel of a game but the more rules they added, the worse it got and the worse it got the more rules the added. I'm not above giving this one another go but I can't say I will be looking to play it or that I want to buy it.
Betrayal at House on the Hill
Finally, we got out Betrayal for two plays. Both plays had four players and both plays ended up lopsided, the first was partially due to luck and partially due to the haunt and the second I would say was entirely luck.
In both games we opened with the usual exploring and got some of the stat rooms out immediately which was nice. We had one player find lots of good equipment, armor, and axe, a medallion. So inevitably he became the betrayer, all geared up. The haunt was where the house floods from he basement. There is a row boat on the top floor that must be moved to the tower or another room for the heroes to win.
Unfortunately the boat is placed in the attic which was at the end of an obnoxious dead end we had created. To get there you had to go over the collapsed room which landed me in the basement. Our person who did make it to the boat had to get a luck tile (2/4 chance) to get the right room in a place where he could reach before drowning. It didn't happen. If it had, the fact that two of us were in the basement to begin with and thus drowned before we could get out, causing us to lose, didn't help. This haunt has two issues I find truly frustrating: the water if far too aggressive, making it all but impossible to move and causing damage way too quickly and there is a direct conflict between the traitor tome and survival guide. The survival guide says that the betrayer is effected by the water penalty the traitor tome says he is not.
The second haunt was slightly better. Again, we roamed around. Again, one person was getting over geared. As it turned out the haunt revealer wasn't the betrayer. I was! I was psyched, I think this is my first time. My body was immediately destroyed but I had bats, oh boy did I have bats MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I got to place some bats immediately, but not a lot, just enough to put those sniveling kids on point. They sent their overgear brute, Ox down to the organ room to beat on the organ. I sent more bats, managed to get several to latch onto the profession, unfortunately none latched onto Ox. Ox then went and took my stuff (right outside the organ room) which had some gear to bump up mental stats. He took my gear and played the organ, driving my beloved bats away. It was then simply a matter of time before they mashed the couple of my beauties that remained. I would have won if it wasn't for those meddling kids.
For five hours of gaming at some random hotel conference room, it was a really good time and I'm really glad to have made the trip. I'm not really good about making these because I've had a mediocore experience or two but this more than made up for it. It also reminded me of where I seem to fit in the gaming world. While I like Euros, I'm clearly not your 18XX player, I like lighter Euros (Stone Age, Alien Frontiers) or slightly heavier Ameritrash. I'm ok with that. That seems like a nice landscape to me.
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Mike Amos
United States
Minneapolis
Minnesota
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My BGG SS sent me a nice surprise, an additional game. He's been super generous already and certainly owed me nothing but was kind enough to send along a copy of Sultan, a game I had never heard of. It looks like most of the geek has never heard of it. It's from Queen games, has nice box art and seems to have good components. I'm not sure if they got a deal on the box size but it's ridiculously oversized for the game. I'm fairly certain it could easily be less than half the size and still store the game very well.
Inside the box you'll find 5 decks of money cards with colored backs and values 1-15, one deck of extra points cards with values form 2 points through 20, 5 player shields, a double sided board, a cloth bag (classy) and plastic gems (11 clear, 10 yellow, 9 red, 8 green, 7 blue {from memory so I think that's correct}).
The way the game plays is that you shuffle your money cards. Each player (we'll talk about special rules for 2 and 3 players in a bit) draws five cards to his hand. The start player draws four gems from the bag, places three of them on the bidding board, throwing one back in the bag. Starting with the start player, each player places one face down card on one gem as her bid. When this is done all the cards are revealed, whomever has the highest bid wins the gem. The gem is placed behind the player shield, start privileged rotate and we repeat. When all five cards from your hand are gone a new phase starts with a fresh five cards. When all the cards are gone the game is over.
Scoring begins by looking at the number of sets you have (like colored jewels). I don't have the numbers in front of me but it looks something like: 4 jewels for 5, 5 jewels for 10, and 6 jewels for 20 points. These are distributed in the form of cards with a picture of gems and a number. Then the value of each jewel (blue - 5, green - 4, red - 3, yellow - 2, white - 1) is added to the bonus points for your final score. Scores are compared and I WIN! well, if I'm not playing, then whomever has the highest score wins (hint: ME).
That's all there is too it. It's a very simple game. It also works with two and three players, a great niche for a blind bidding game. For three players you simply use a fewer gems, for two they have a pretty innovating solution, you shuffle two decks together, with the 13, 14 and 15 cards removed. You place two bids per round. This usually means you each get an unchallenged gem and you duke it out over one but there will be times where a gem goes unwanted and unloved and is then kicked back to the bag.
We sat down and cranked through a two player game and had fun. It was quick, like maybe 15 - 20 minutes. It wasn't stand up and shout kind of fun but we enjoyed it. There are moments of tension when your hope that card you laid down will get you the gemstone you want. There was enough room in the game for us each to have a different strategy. I went for cheap gems in large sets where my wife went for the more expensive gems and through my neglect of expensive gems got some nice sets of her own. In the end she won the day but I foresee this coming out again soon.
EDIT: changed to reflect Kendahl's correction below.
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Mike Amos
United States
Minneapolis
Minnesota
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A friend of mine got Last Night on Earth largely because of the theme, he and his wife fancy zombies. I don't really care enough about them to be bothered. Being new to gaming they were blown away by the number of pieces in the game. As gamers you'll see it as a pretty sane amount, there are hit tokens, cardboard character sheets, board pieces, 14 zombie minis, 7 hero minis and a couple decks of cards. The quality is good but not quite exceptional, my biggest gripe would be that the cardstock is arguably too heavy and makes then a chore to shuffle.
My first two games were with both couples, four players. With four players each zombie player gets a pool of 7 zombies to which can be thrown at the heroes indefinitely, you can never send and eight but dead zombies recycle to your pool. There hero players get two heroes to operate apiece. This is pretty manageable for zombie and hero players. If it hurts anyone it's the zombie players who need to be synched up for maximum kill power.
There's a hero phase and zombie phase in each turn. The Zombies determine if they will summon more zombies, they max out their hand, march on the players, then summon when appropriate. Zombies are designed to be dumb. The only real choice a zombie player has is whether or not to use cards and the player is incentivized to use them by the promise of a never ending supply so even that choice is a mirage.
On the hero turn the hero moves, does ranged attacks then melee attacks. The number of moves per round are determined by the dice. The ability to perform a ranged attack is determined by proximity to zombies but more often on whether the player has a gun or not, which is determined (usually) by the player forfeiting her turn to draw a random card from the hero stack and hope to get a weapon. There is some but not a lot of incentive to go on the offensive with melee weapons as the loss of one may leave you unarmed and swarmed. Instead melees are best used for defense.
The basic scenario says that the heroes win by killing 15 zombies (indicated by a very nice tracking board) before 15 turns have passed or they have lost two team members, it was this scenario that we played as couples. In this setting the zombies won twice. My friend indicated the scenario as impossible but I thought otherwise. I borrowed the game and did a trial run of a strategy, and it worked. My wife and I tried last evening and again, game breaking - also - not very fun.
With this fruit of forbidden knowledge (that any of you would find twice as fast as I did) this game seems unplayable. The designers foresaw this moment though and included other scenarios, where you have to hunt for specific items or limit the number of zombies in your immediate proximity. These would limit the game break-i-ness but not eliminate it, which is probably good because then you're left with nothing but the mercy of the dice and cards, which is unfortunate.
I don't see Last Night on Earth as a game that I will ever buy or really care if I play it again. I feel like the zombie player is stuck executing a program that was done better in the D&D boardgames and isn't fun to play. I feel like the heroes are almost in as dire straits. Despite the glossy finish, it's not a game that rewards thinking or playing.
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Mike Amos
United States
Minneapolis
Minnesota
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I wanted to do a recap post to point to when my box arrives so I can point the inevitable geeklist post to it so other people can play along, maybe even offer suggestions so here are the clues again followed by my thoughts:
Clue 1: Two items are from my list
Clue 2: two of my gifts are named after cities
Clue 3: Two are from my SS's home and one is from much, much further away
Clue 4: Paupers, rabbits, chickens, farmers and spades
Clue 5: IP expired, Rio Bravo, W1K, Delicious Bard, Book of Tobit
Clue 6: Beta, 1984, Omnino Revocaret, Kabal i Hjerter, RH: PoT
Clue 7: title included "Acclaimed?": C.C.R., P.S., T.T., T.N., B.A.
Clue 8: St George, St Nazaire, St Paul, Nino Fidencio, St Balthasar
Clue 9: Occitan, Saxon, Hakka, Barsoomian, Gaulish
Clue 10: 4,5,6,7,8,9. : 1,3,2,3,3,2. : 2,5,1,1,1,5. : 3,4,3,5,4,4. : 4,2,5,2,2,1. : 5,1,4,4,5,3.
What I think:
There are 5 items in clues 4 through 9 so I operated under the assumption that there are 5 items I am guessing at. My santa did confirm that order does not matter, meaning item 2 in clue 4 may not refer to item 2 in any other one. There are six items in clue 10, so I think it may just be a message. My list of ten games referenced in clue 1 is : Martian Dice, Dixit, Hive, King of Tokyo, Star Fluxx, On the Brink, Prosperity, Roll through the ages, Werewolf, Confusion
I interrpret clue four as items that are iconic in the game. Clue 5 as talking about the publisher. Clue 6 as being more vague but possibly movie references. clue 7 as being about awards. Clue 8 seems to just be hints. Clue 9 appears to be languages, possibly appropriate to the theme of the game.
I decided fairly early on that Martian Dice was one of the games. It's on my list, it is produced by tasty Minstrel (Delicious Bard), chickens are iconic and Barsoomic would relate. The clue Omnino Revocaret is about recalling so I'm interrpreting it as a Total Recall reference. I've failed to track down and award references for this game.
I also think Dixit is one of the games. Rabbits are iconic to the game. I can't decide if the Book of Tobit or W1K clues are tied to this. Book of Tobit has a reference to Asmodeus and Asmodee publishes this but it's a picture game and I've found reference to WIK being a website called Worth1000 that is a picture website. It should also be noted that a google of W1K turns up Mayfair down the way too but that may be a red herring. Tn may reference Tric Trac Nominee.
Later I began to consider that Carcassonne may be one of the items. It would relate to Farmer, rio Grande (Rio Bravo clue), St Naizaire, Occitan
I've also considered the possibility that Dice Town is one of the solutions. It is also produced by Asmodee, there is the clue Spades and Kabal i Hjerter which means clubs and hearts, St Balthasar is the patron saint of card players and it's a town name. That's about as far as that thread goes.
Clues I don't even think I know what to do with:
Paupers - I assume there is a game where you start out poor and try to get richer, but there are a lot of those.
IP Expired - I googled for a meaning of this and got nothing. I assumed it was a reference to a boardgame that predates the web and websites or just a boardgame that the company has let the page lapse.
Beta - I looked for movies called beta and got nowhere. I considered that it may be a reference to Beta Max but got nowhere. I thought about Alpha but that went nowhere.
1984 - A book that was later a movie, it's about a controlling government and someones attempt to not give in. I've tried to make puzzles out of the names. I've thought about the resistance but I can't make a more complete clue out of it
RH: PoT - appears to be Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, the one with Kevin Costner, Alen Rickman and Morgna Freeman.
All of clue 7 - I just never felt like I made traction here
St. George - the dragon slaying soldier
St. Paul - I assume this is a refernce to the city that is literally like 2 blocks from my house. Fantasy Flight is based there.
Saxon - language spoken by one of the germanic tribes, the folks who beat the Normans to England but then lost to the Normans
Hakka - a chinese language, I tried to think about "chinese" games but didn't make much group. I went around in circles on Tsuro, Wok Star, Go but never got anywhere.
Gaulish - another germanic language but my general impression is that they stayed in central Europe.
all of clue 10 - interesting that it is six sets of six, also interesting that the first set isjsut 4-9 sequentially.
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Mike Amos
United States
Minneapolis
Minnesota
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Subject: Clue 10. Your final clue!
4,5,6,7,8,9.
1,3,2,3,3,2.
2,5,1,1,1,5.
3,4,3,5,4,4.
4,2,5,2,2,1.
5,1,4,4,5,3.
Enjoy and Merry Christmas,
your Secret Santa.
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Santa has posted my final clue. I've not even had time to digest it but I will. I did some thinking today about what they could mean but haven't taken the time to ploy my crazed ramblings into blog format so look for that.
Thanks to my Santa for ten wonderful clues. I will enjoy sifting them between now and Christmas.
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Mike Amos
United States
Minneapolis
Minnesota
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Subject: Clue 9
Occitan
Saxon
Hakka
Barsoomian
Gaulish
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per the comments in the last post, I'll not go under the assumption that these are all in the same order. I've got limited time tonight to think about this but tomorrow I'm going to take some time to work up all the clues and try to connect the dots a bit. For tonight abbreviated analysis I assume these are all languages going in....
Occitan - Had to wiki this one and got back that it's a collection of languages spoken in southern France, makes me think of the last clue set that contained a region in southern france.
Saxon - One of the early tribes of Europe (anglo-saxons anyone?). The whole lot were part of the Germanic tribes, most of whom seem to have found there way to modern day England before the Normans went and made a mess of it.
Hakka - Had to wiki this too, it's a very early Chinese lineage. Found out about their martial arts while I was there, I need to go look up Hak Mai, there are apparently a couple movies about it and I've not heard of it before.
Barsoomian - presumably a reference to the fictional language of Mars, I think it was the John Carter of Mars series which I think has a new movie adaptation coming out soon. I'm going to run this clue together with Delicious Bard and chicken to say I think Martian Dice is in there. I can't quite piece it together with the initials yet though. I think my movie title thought was probably going in the right direction too. We'll see though.
Gaulish - More of the Germanic tribes. These folk ended up in what I think of as Central Europe although Europeans might take issue with my concept of geography and, well, history too, but I'm American so I doubt they expected much from me in the first place.
Definitely need some time tomorrow to work up a process to help me work through all these great clues.
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Mike Amos
United States
Minneapolis
Minnesota
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Subject: Clue 8
I am very much enjoying your posts about these clues. The hits and the misses
St George
St Nazaire
St Paul
Nino Fidencio
St Balthasar
Santa
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I'm glad my Santa is having as much fun as I am.
This one is interesting. Places or people is the first question in my mind
St. George, slayed a dragon, I've seen a ton of paintings on this one. Wikipedia tells me he was decapitated, they do like doing that to saints. Also a city in Utah
St. Nazaire - a commune in France with quite a long history
St. Paul - well, I live 1 block from St. Paul but also he did a famous letter writing campaign in about AD 30 or some such. It occurs to me that Fantasy Flight and several other game companies are based in St. Paul.
Nino Fidencio - and unofficial saint from Mexico who did faith healings essentially.
St. Balthasar - one of the three wise men who brought frankincense, gold and myrrh. They were from Persia. Also the patron saint of card players....does this tie back to spades, hearts and clubs?
So, I'm going to run with the fifth item and I'm going to assume that order matters. I see a string of card suits and I see them as associated with Asmodee games which makes me think Dice Town maybe. If I go with that line of reasoning then maybe I can divine what BA means in clue 7. The name of the designer begins with a B and ends with an A. If I assume it's about awards (based on the "acclaimed?" title) then I see that it won the Best Party Game Award from The Dice Tower but I can't intelligently link that back to BA. It looks like it won Boardgame Australia, maybe that's something
If I try to apply this to to item four I don't get much of anything. Still sticking with the idea the order matters, delicious bard is tasy minstrel, farmers seems like it has to mean homesteaders but I can't tie Mexico or TN in at all.
Same for item three...hmmm, I don't know that I trust my logic at this point.
Sun Nov 27, 2011 10:59 pm
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Mike Amos
United States
Minneapolis
Minnesota
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Subject: Clue 6 (Whoops!)
Beta
1984
Omnino Revocaret
Kabal i Hjerter
RH: PoT
I am glad you are enjoying the teasers.
Santa
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RH: PoT appears to be a reference to Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. The movie from the '90s featuring Kevin Costner, Alan Rickman and Morgan Freeman. What is significant about this, no idea.
Kabal i Hjerter appears to be Norwegian (per google) for Solitare, Hearts. Is my Santa Norwegian? Is my santa sending me a standard deck of cards and if so do they relate to the spades hint and the IP expired hint (afterall cards wouldn't have a website)? Does this break my idea of the movie tie in or am I overlooking the obvious?
Omino Revicaret is confusing me a bit but that's googles fault. The first time I ran it through Google Translate it came back at latin with something about recall but now I'm getting back that Omino is "Little Man" and that Revicaret doesn't translate. I'll have to do some more digging here.
1984 makes me think of the Orwell book. It's been years since I read it. I've not linked it directly to anything. It may be a reference to Confusion but I feel like that is an awfully big assumption.
Beta makes me think of Beta Max the failed video cassette format. It also makes me think of Beta Test. More thinking is required.
EDIT just got google translate to say Omino Revicaret is "at all recall". Based on the RH: POT hint, it makes me wonder if these are movie hints and we're talking about Total Recall here, the movie that takes place on Mars. Can we link this clue to Chickens, Delicious Bard and a game from much further away?
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Mike Amos
United States
Minneapolis
Minnesota
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I've had a great Secret Santa season. My BGGSS was super on the ball and sent me a lovely box post haste. I parked the box for a couple weeks as I had a lot of other stuff going on. Just yesterday I fished it out and went through it. I got some great stuff: 500 card sleeves, ZimP, Munchkin Waiting For Santa and one wrapped gift that will remain so until the 23rd or so of December when I'll have to leave town to celebrate with family.
My DTSS contacted me last week with apologies for being behind. I didn't feel he was behind at all, but the box is now on its way. Santa has taken the time to offer me some teasers as to what is in the box and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. I've been working on each clue but wanted to collate them somewhere for easy reference.
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Subject: On the sleigh
Hello,
I was able to slip your presents alongside all the other parcels on the next sleigh to cross the oceans to beautiful Minnesota. The land of vikings and Green Giants, a perilous place indeed. I strapped some kevlar to my reindeer and gave them my blessings.
I thought you might like some clues as you wait for those reindeers to dodge your native monsters on their way to you.
1. Two of your presents are from your list.
More clues later,
Santa
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Subject: Clue 2
Hello again,
two of your gifts are named after cities,
Santa
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Subject: Clue 3
Two of your gifts are from my home. Another gift is from much, much further away.
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Subject: Clue 4
Paupers, rabbits, chickens, farmers and spades.
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Subject: Clue 5
IP expired, Rio Bravo, W1K, Delicious Bard, Book of Tobit.
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Subject: Clue 7. Acclaimed?
C.C.R.
P.S.
T.T.
T.N.
B.A.
==============================================
Those are all the clues to date. Below are my thoughts so far:
Santa said across the ocean so I'm inclined to believe my SS is from Europe but Asia and Africa are distant possibilities.
Two of my gifts are from my list, I'm assuming he's referencing my DT list which contained: Martian Dice, Dixit, Hive, King of Tokyo, Star Fluxx, Pandemic: On the Brink, Dominion: Prosperity, Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age, Ultimate Werewolf: Ultimate Edition, Confusion: Espionage and Deception in the Cold War.
Two of your gifts are named after cities - there are a lot of options here and I'm hesitant to try and use this clue much until I narrow things down a bit more. I don't think this clue necessarily refers to the same two games the previous clue did.
I'm not sure how literal to take the Home clue. Is it literally Santa's home, is it Santa's home country, home continent or is it a reference to something like Martian Dice as being from a "long way away"?
The most recent three clues all have five items in a list which is making me start to think that there are five items in my box. The first clue I think it about something iconic in each games, but I could be way off, it could be word association or references to something. The second one I think is trying to tell me who the publishers are:
IP expired - I haven't solved this one yet
Rio Bravo - a reference to Rio Grande, wikipedia has these two phrases cross indexed
W1K - a google of this term turns up Mayfair in the third result. Could be coincidence, or not
Delicious Bard - this seems like it has to be Tasty Minstrel
Book of Tobit - I wikipediaed this and learned a great deal about the Book of Tobit one of the first things I learned was that it contains a reference to demon Asmodeus which I take to be a reference to Asmodee (not ignoring that it could be asmadi).
The most recent clue is very interesting to me, first, we skipped a clue number, is this a typo? Second, it says "acclaimed?" in the title which is interesting. So, what are the initials? At first I thought they were the designers but I've had no luck with one. It occurs to me as I type this that maybe they are initials of an award each game was up for.
The hunt is on, I don't know if I'll unravel these clues before the box arrives but I want to have them solved before I open it.
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Mike Amos
United States
Minneapolis
Minnesota
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I've heard the hype about Quarriors! lately and I have to say that it really grabbed me. I like Dominion, I really like Thunderstone for a while. I always hated all the shuffling involved. I know that chip versions have become popular for just this reason. Quarriors! seemed like the natural next step in the process.
I'm trying to limit my games budget very considerably as well as trying to make sure everything on my games shelf sees the light of day at least annually but preferably more often. So I fired up the ol' Boardgamegeek trade finder and looked for people to trade with. I found a kind soul that would swap my BSGfor his Quarriors!. This worked out because BSG was a dud for me personally and for my group.
Last eve I sat down with Quarriors! and walked through a two player game on my own. At first is was just a bit of a confusing mess. There is a lot of text on several of the cards and each die can usually turn up quiddity, some special power and a couple different versions of the monster. Additionally, you need to formulate a strategy to understand which monsters are going to go in the right direction for you. Finally, you have to think about spells, which operate a little differently than monsters but are often useless without a monster to tie them to.
I'm still learning the game but it seems there are three threads that run through the monsters and spells:
 High attack value - some monsters are built to kill, further, some spells enhance their ability to kill. Often the best rolls of the monsters and spells also give extra Glory for kills. multiple players trying to run the high attack value, or what I'll call Horde, could ring up points fast or force a stalemate depending on how the dice land. In a two player game this could be interesting, in game with more players this is likely to end the game very early.
 High Defense value - just as some monsters want to kill, some would prefer not to be killed and will buff and support one another to make sure this doesn't happen. Unlike the Horde there aren't extra points for Stronghold strategy but it can stall an inadequate Horde and win the game
 Chains - this is the classic Dominion approach and the leader of this approach in Quarriors! is the Portal. Any die that has a good probability of bringing out more dice ore rerolling dice will lend itself to this. There are a couple monsters or spells who can also contribute but it looks like this is more of an early game strategy that most people graduate from.
There're probably more and I know there is an expansion on the way that will add corruption to the dice and thus a new strategy but this seems to be a good starting point.
Armed with this information I sat down with my wife tonight for a two-player game of Quarriors!. My wife is often my reality check. Frequently I'll be in love with a games theme or mechanics but I can quickly tell from playing with her what I have totally overlooked. Additionally, she often surprises me by acknowledging that a game is really good, a game that for one reason or another I thought she'd dislike. Her tastes are more flexible than I sometimes give her credit for but she has a very low Crap Threshold, lower and more aware than mine.
I began by explaining the game. I usually work backwards: win conditions, scoring conditions, how to set up scoring conditions, basic turn layout. I found that Quarriors! was a little tough to explain using my usual approach. It was just obtuse enough that when I said "you win by having the most Glory Points and you get Glory Points by summoning a monster and have it survive until the next round" that there were too may questions left to have that phrase make sense. None the less, we got through the explanation with my reassurances to her that it makes more sense when you play it.
We started playing and, as is often the case with deck builders, the initial going was slow. I managed to summon a couple assistants while she went in for bigger monsters with her Quiddity. I got an early lead that she easily recaptured when her larger monsters came out soon, unchallenged by my wimpy assistants. I then went if for my own monster hunt. Being more familiar with the monsters I was able to synergize. She saw what I was doing and synergized right back with a high attack monster and monster with some unclear card language but that made it look like he was worth twice as much attack in the initial attack but lost that bonus for the second attack. Then I had a big turn, I rolled out with a 5 glory and 7 glory monster and squashed her two monsters in the process. Those 12 points ended the game just as I think she was hitting a stride.
I've heard complaints from people that this game may end too quickly and I think we saw an example of that. Just as strife was setting in, it ended. I do feel like having an awareness of the cards was really beneficial to me and that will only compound as I play it more and introduce more people to the game. I also see that the value of culling those early dice can probably not be overstated. I would like to see some kind of player powers added for those times when the dice just screw you. I saw Laura roll hands that were mostly monster dice and just end up with nine Quiddity, seven was the most anything cost so this seemed like a useless some of Quiddity.
So far the game is getting a lukewarm reception. I want to like it. It seems like it has great potential. I want it to be a game that is light, quicker and with a lower barrier to entry than Dominion/Thunderstone/et al. So far it's not delivering that. It takes about the same amount of time, the lack of familiar theme doesn't provide any easy hooks into know material. The volume of text on the cards and the number of different things a given die can turn into makes it more intimidating, not less. It think it will be fun to play with experienced people, the challenge will be getting people to play a game of this weight enough times to be called "experienced".
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