Archive for Chris Funk
-
Chris Funk
United States
Springfield
Ohio
-
I picked it up from a Kickstarter project back in October and it finally arrived on my door this week. I had spring extra for the Golden Core and Golden Axe expansion, too.
So, the box was opened and I noticed my box was open and after a quick parts count, I was missing a bark piece. Mayday was quick to respond, though, and I have the spare being sent as I type (Thanks again, guys, for the quick response on that one!) After I laid everything out, here's what I had:
One stump, one axe, 9 cores, and 36 bark (well, 35 until the extra geta here)
And the Golden Axe and Golden Core:
You start by putting 4 pieces of bark on each core and then stacking the cores on top of the stump stand. You want to try and rotate each core a little bit, just for fun and to not make it possibly too easy. Then you grab the axe and start tapping.
Each player gets two taps and the object is to get the bark to fall off while not knocking off the white core segments. If you knock a piece of bark off, it's +1 points but if you knock a core off, it's -5. You can choose to tap as hard or as soft as you want and you can tap to move a core and get the bark or tap to make it harder for the next person in hopes that they knock some cores off. Since the game plays 2-7 per the box, the rules say that with more than 4 people, it's best to only use one tap per player to speed the game along.
The game ends when there are no more bark pieces and everyone counts up.
In my PWM session, I played four people and we actually managed to get all the bark off and not knock a single core over. The end result was actually pretty neat to see:
In the end, Me#4 had 17, Me#2 had 12, Me#3 had a measely two, and I had 4
The Golden Axe changes the game play a little. Instead of taking two taps with the regular axe, you can decide to take one swing with the Golden Axe. This makes any piece you knock off worth double points. While this makes the bark worth 2, it also makes the cores worth -10!
The Golden Core is similar except the bark and core are worth double. If you combine the Axe, you could use the Golden Axe to knock off a Golden Core bark for 4 points and possibly knock off the Golden Core itself for a whopping -20.
It's a fun little change-up to the game and you can decide to mix the Golden Core and barks along with the regular pieces or just put all the gold in one ring. Put the Gold Core at the top for extra laughing at other's misfortune.
All in all, a great game for kids, fun divesion for adults, and I know it'll be hitting the table at game night on a regular basis. I recommend picking it up because you need something quick and silly like this after playing a 3-hour epic game of 18XX or Arkham to break up the evening and whet the pallette for the next heavy game.
-
Chris Funk
United States
Springfield
Ohio
-
Finally, I was able to find a copy of this in the US that didn't cost me $60USD + shipping. CSI's booth at GenCon had it on fire sale on Sunday afternoon for $40USD. I had a real limited budget for buying at the con, but when I picked up the box and saw the price, I think it had an enchantment on it because I must have blacked out and when I regained consciousness, I had just handed the nice register girl two Andrew Jacksons. Those sneaky bastard at CSI. Employing the Dark Arts isn't fair.
After a week, I finally sat down last night and cracked the manual and popped my chits. If you have a dirty mind, I should probably restate that to say "I extracted all of the tiny cardboard pieces from the manufacturer's die-cut boards." The manual itself is very well written, easy to read, and does a good job of explaining the rules as you progress through the game phases. I had very little issue setting up the board and after re-reading a couple sections after looking at my cards, was off and running on the first turn. You also have to decide which side of the map to use. Summer is easier, winter is harder and each side had a difficulty setting that limits the number of climbers that can be on any given space at one time.
I had set up 5 players, blue for myself, naturally. I chose the summer board and decided normal difficulty would be best. I liked how each player had the exact same decks and they were color and symbol coded on the backs. There are basically three types of cards: climb, rope, and aclimate. Climbs make you go up, ropes make you go up or down, and aclimates hearten up your climbers for the harsh moutain ahead of them.
The system is simple, easy to understand, and throws in a little push-your-luck. You start by drawing 6 cards and then pick three to play. Everyone turns their cards up and you count everyone's climb and rope cards (only the up points, not the down) and see if anyone has the most points. If someone does have more points than anyone else, they're seen as taking more risk and get a handy-dandy risk token. The risk tokens are numbered 0-2 and will cost the player those many points in movement or aclimation. Deciding to go for the horns and throw down more movement and pick up a token will depend on the numbers on three of the tokens that will be face-up. If a 0 is out there, you can press it with the ability to pick up the 0 and take no risk penalty but as those 0's run out, the 1's and 2's will eventually make that choice harder. The more people taking the 1's will make the 2's more prevalent and so forth. I like this idea because you want to try and guess how much others will move so that you can tie them or be under as ties for first don't force a risk token pick.
Once that's all decided, the first player starts to use his hards to advance each individual climber up the mountain or give them aclimation points from their cards. You can pick either, but you can't split up the numbers on a single card between them. That means you can use a 3 to move one climber two spaces, but the last point will be wasted unless that climber can use it. Same with aclimation cards; If you play a 3, that climber gets all three points. The biggest rule that you need to pay attention to that if you have movement cards to play, one of your climbers must move. You can't leave them both where they are and say "He'll use the 1 and move 0". Sometimes, this may mean moving to a space you hadn't intended or was unfavorable so you need to guage the effect of your cards on the climbers when you're choosing them to try and make sure you don't get forced down a path you hadn't planned. Purple-Me did that and one of his climbers spent most of his time stuck at the foot while his other climber made a mad sprint for the summit.
As you climb higher, the spaces get harder and harder to climb and use more and more movement points to get ahead. These spaces have a yellow number on them and to move into that space, you will spend one movement point PLUS the yellow number. For example, if the space had a yellow 2, you'd need to spend three total points to move into it. When you reach the top altitude, it gets even harder. When you consider that every player will have to play through their entire deck of cards before it's reshuffled, those rare 3's being used earlier may mean your climbers move very slowly towards the end of the deck and that is never good to blow them all early on. You want to guage the size of your draw deck and plan ahead to avoid standing a climber on a rather desolate piece of hillside while the weather beats away at them.
Points are awarded for climbing up the mountain. Once you get to the 6000ft. elevation, you will gain 1 VP for each climber and every space you climb upwards will net you one more until you finally reach the summit, which will net you 10 VP. You do not lose any points by going up and then using ropes to go back down. Your VP remains at the highest point level you reached. Unless your climber dies, that is. Climbers perish if their aclimation level drops below 1. That's what makes the summit so valuable. not only do you have to plan your move up, but you need to plan the move back down just as carefully to make sure he doesn't pass out and climb towards the bright light at the end of the tunnel.
If one of your climbers makes it to the top but dies on the way down, they drop to 1 point and are normally out of the game. There is a family version that adds in a rescue card, but I think the suspense is rather limited with this, even though it's a one-time use.
You also have two tents, one for each climber. They're used to escape the effects of the changing weather at various altitudes of the mountain. I'll hold on talking about how the tents are used after I get through the weather effects. The tents cost the number of movement spaces for the space you want to build them in. For instance, if the space cost 1 + a yellow 2, to build a tent on there, it would be 3 movement points. The tents are permanent after being built, so you really want to try and get at least one pretty close to the summit so that you can shelter your climbers before the final ascent to the top or keep them alive on the way down. The tents are shelters and will help increase aclimation while shielding from weather conditions.
At the end of the turn, you'll look at weather track and, unless you have your climber in a tent, your climbers may be affected by harsh conditions. There is a meter one the type of weather that tells you what areas are affected. If your climbers are under 6000ft., they're safe but once they cross that barrier, they can and often will be hit by some negative conditions. You'll see 6 days of forecasts so you will have plenty of time to move your guys higher, build tents, or rappel down below the elevations affected. They range from sunny and a 0 modifier, to slightly snowy/windy and -1, to stormy and -2. When you get to the end of a turn, you look at the spaces for each climber and if the space has a red number, you subtract that number from that climber's aclimation. Then you'll figure if any climbers are in the elevation affected by the weather and subtract that many more.
This is where tents come in. If your climber is in a tent of your color, regardless of which climber built the tent, they ignore the minuses from terrain and weather and gain aclimation. They're integral to keeping your climbers alive before and after the summit climb because your climbers only get points if they survive until the end of the game, which is 18 days marked by the weather track.
After the 18th day, you tally up your points from both climbers and declare a winner.
It's very simple to learn, easy to explain, and while the concepts and game mechanics really tie together wonderfully, they aren't hard to comprehend by new players. The components are nice and I love that each board has a normal and a hard variant and that the board flips to a winter side for even more challenge with the same normal and hard difficulty. I can see this having a lot of replay based on how much you want to torture/challenge yourselves. Also, choosing to mix the summer and winter weather tiles meant for some truly unpredictable weather conditions to add more difficulty to even the easy board.
So, how did all the Me's do?
Purple-Me managed 7 points after one climber tried for the 10 only to get stuck without rope cards and die of exposure. So smooth Purple-Me tumbled to his death and was stuck with a single 1 VP tombstone. Curvy Purple-Me had made it to 6 VP.
Green-Me had 12 and managed to get Curvy Green-Me to the summit back down at the detriment of leaving Smooth Green-Me halfway up the mountain.
Blue-Me managed to plant a tent right below 8000ft. and got both climbers camped in it for 16 points. Just goes to show that even though my guys didn't reach the top, they got more points working as a team.
Red-Me Won handily with 18 while is was a near defeat as one climber had made it to 8 with a tent, his other climber jumpe dto the top and only had 2 points of aclimation left. He had no ropes left, so the next weather cycle could quite easily have taken him out had there been one more turn.
Yellow-Me ended up with 14 in a very lackluster performance that I can only describe as a paltry excuse for Columbia Sportswear commercial. This one apparently had the guy's mother air lift him to 6 points and dumped him out from 6850ft. and the 100ft. fall dug him head first into the sand, which is where he spent most of the second half of the game.
I'm very impressed with this one and glad I finally got my hands on it. If you can get a copy, you'd be well advised to do so. Because we shouldn't ever forget about Poland, especially in board games with this gem.
-
Chris Funk
United States
Springfield
Ohio
-
I'm always a fan of games I can play solo as they are a great primer for playing those same games in a group. Death Angel is actually a great simple and inexpensive game that plays as good with 6 as it does with one.
My first plays with this were a struggle, even with the enhanced player aids and forums here on BGG as the rules were written by people with BDSM as a side job in the evenings. Whether I have a new playtest game to try out or a full production copy, the rules are my first stop and I'll take the time to read the full book and then have it handy to work out the questions that will always pop up as you play. When I read these rules, a little part of me died every time I had to stop reading and fast forward to a different section and then have to come back. it was like a Choose Your Own Adventure book.
"If you want to read a wholly unrelated section, turn to page 18. If you want to blindly read forward, turn to page 11."
I think the hardest thing I had to figure out from the rules was actually the major and minor spawns. I got that the major was yellow and the minor was white. What I couldn't put 2 and 2 together on was what it actually meant. It took some time on the Geek to figure out the math and how the spawns actually work. I don't know if anyone else had this issue, but man, it was a stumbling block. After reading the rules a third time, I finally found where the two pieces of the key were hidden but I really shouldn't have had this much problem with a fundamental part of the game.
Rules set to the side, I decided to bring out Team Purple, Team Red, and Team Yellow. Purple was a no brainer as flame throwers and aliens are a match made in napalm heaven. Within a few minutes, I had my teams laid out and they had some beasties to fight.
The game plays extremely quick, especially solo, and I find it a great lunchtime game. I do like the choices of making sure that you balance movement, attacking, and special abilities to try and make the fullest use of your team. I actually like the speed and frequency that your marines die at the drop of a hat (or die roll). Yes, it sucks when your flamer dies in a could of red mist and limbs, but that's the lesson you learn to make sure those critters don't flank you.
Did playing it this way help when I had new players? Heck yes, although it was more of a fight because of the rulebook and we found out that we still had a couple rulings wrong. This is honestly a good game with one glaring flaw: The ability to explain how to use it.
Now, why would I pick this game to be the first in learning to play games by myself and controlling multiple imaginary people? Because solo play basically emulates that very procedure and this is one of the many games I learned to play alone while sitting in my living room with my wife watching TV and also because when I went to GenCon, it was a game I took with me solely for the purpose of playing by myself while I waited for the halls to open. And it was sitting on my desk, staring at me.
I have K2 staring at me right now as well as a couple other games I picked up at GenCon so as soon as I get to Playing With Myself some more, I'll have some new posts.
|
|
