Mid-Year Report

The year is half over, so I thought I'd look back on my most-played games at this point of 2010.

As I looked at the totals, I couldn't miss an obvious conclusion. The year 2010 is the year that I found Looney Labs games. While the games are not universally loved by gamers (largely because of their chaotic nature), they are fun and quick-playing.

In some ways their quick play makes for an unfair comparison. I'll obviously get more plays out of a Looney Labs game that take 15 minutes to play than a GMT or Fantasy Flight game that takes seven hours. Because of this I have to give a special recognition to GMT's Here I Stand, which I've only played once this year (plus once in December 2009). At this point it would win the 2010 best "new-to-me" game.

With that caveat, here's the list (through June 30th).

1. EcoFluxx (which I've only owned for about a month, but I've played 11 times)
2. Chrononauts (another Looney Labs game, which I've played 9 times)
2. Farkel (a traditional dice game that I've also played 9 times)
4. Early American Chrononauts (Looney Labs' retheming of Chronauts, which I've played 8 times)
4. Hive (which I've also played 8 times, although about half of these were on the iPhone app)
6. Killer Bunnies REMIX (which was the Friday night game of choice for much of the winter and was played 6 times)
6. Long Shot (which is moving up fast, with 6 plays, having been the Friday night choice for the last couple of months)
8. Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age (which I don't even own a physical copy of, but I've played 4 time as an iPhone app)
9. Descent: Journeys in the Dark (a fun dungeon crawl that I've played 3 times, and I think will be played a lot more this year)
9. Scrabble Slam (which I played 3 times with Gillian's family in Jamaica)
9. World Cup Card Game 2010 (which is lots of fun, but probably will be stuck with 3 plays at the end of the year, since the World Cup is almost over)

Descent: Into the Dark

Al and Steven came over last night for a full four-heroes game of Descent. Al took Byrah the Falconer, Steven took Grey Ker, Andrew took Landrec the Wise, Patrick took Mordrog, and I played the Overlord. They took on the first quest -- Into the Dark -- plowing through the dungeon without much trouble. Andrew's hero (who has very powerful magic attacks, but was short on armor) died once, and Patrick barely survived being surrounded once by beastmen and skeletons. But the group came through just fine -- killing the master giant at the end of the quest without much danger.

The consensus on BoardGameGeek is that the heroes should win most of the quests in the basic set. And that's fine with me, as I view Descent more as a cooperative roleplaying game than a test of wits. I also understand why the rules have the heroes lose all of their weapons and armor between quests. The heroes were so powerful by the end of the quest that they were killing a roomful of five monsters before the monsters knew what hit them.

We hope to continue playing throughout the summer, and Patrick plans to paint the figures once school lets out.

Descending Farther

Patrick and I were alone for gaming Friday night, and he wanted to give Descent another try. We had decided that we weren't familiar enough with the rules to have him control two heroes, so he only took one. The game's rules scale the strength of the monsters (and the Overlord's available cards) to the number of heroes, so in theory being the only hero shouldn't prevent you from winning. As it turned out, though, Patrick gave up before leaving the dungeon's second room.

The problem was that I was able to spawn monsters as fast as Patrick could kill them. In retrospect, I think that Patrick probably should have ignored the "speed bump" monsters and should have kept moving (literally) towards the "boss" monster. The rules are set up so that the heroes automatically win when they kill the boss monster -- thus Patrick was really just distracting himself from the real goal.

I've got to find a storage solution for this game. As is typical for a Fantasy Flight production, it has dozens of tokens and plastic minis. (The photo above, posted to BoardGameGeek by Johannes Albani, gives you some idea of the number of pieces.) The game frequently slowed down while I searched for a particular figure or token.

Patrick is interested in painting the minis this summer. They come in plain plastic, but many people use model paint to spruce them up.

Sunday Descent

The boys and I finally had a chance to try out Descent yesterday. I had ordered the game back in March. We were all excited about trying it, but didn't really have a chance until yesterday. We had hoped to try it on Saturday with Al and Drew, but once Steven and Jeff were available, we decided to switch to another Fantasy Flight event game, Twilight Imperium.

Descent is a dungeon crawl game with 3D pieces that clearly owes a lot to Milton Bradley's 1989 classic, HeroQuest. Up to four players take the role of heroes, while another player controls the dungeon's monsters. I had picked up Heroquest in a trade in the fall of 2007 (in exchange for the WWI plane combat game Sopwith). The boys and I tried HeroQuest a few times and enjoyed it, but the copy I traded for was missing a few pieces. Descent also has more variety in terms of heroes, monsters and quests.

We had a good time playing yesterday. The game bogged down a little bit, as each of the boys was trying to control two heroes. This was probably a bad decision since we were still learning the rules. I think we will definitely enjoy the game once we're up to speed on the rules.

Special (and Not-So-Special) Delivery

The good news is that Descent: Journeys in the Dark (which I ordered on February 15th) arrived yesterday. Amazon Prime comes through again. Hopefully I can skim through the rules this weekend.

The bad news is that the Advanced Squad Leader Starter Kit #1 still hasn't arrived. (See my February 8th post.) I was hoping to have it show up this week, so that Andrew and I could give it a try this weekend. Al volunteered to come over and help us up the learning curve. I'm not optimistic, since Multiman Publishing posted this message at their web page:

Maryland was hammered with snow over the past weekend, with our office receiving over 30". Since this is more than Maryland may see an entire winter, you can imagine the problems the state has clearing roads and getting back to work/school. So, we are likely to be closed the first few days of this week.

Please be patient as we strive to ship preorder copies of Doomed Battalions, Journal #8, and the recent rush of orders for the Winter Offensive Bonus Pack.

Thank you,
MMP

I'm especially concerned for two reasons: (1) Even though the storm ran through Maryland on the 6th and 7th (and the message is dated the 7th), the message wasn't actually posted at their web site until the 15th. (2) They are likely focused on getting their new products out the door, so a lowly single order for an old product may sit in the in-box for awhile.

I'll just have to hope for the best.