Game: Formidable Foes

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garea37 — 2008-11-20T14:00:52+00:00

Precalculated table to make the game easier. 2 of 2. I'll upload the PDF to the files section when it's ready for all number of players.

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garea37 — 2008-11-20T14:00:18+00:00

Precalculated table to make the game easier. 1 of 2. I'll upload the PDF to the files section when it's ready for all number of players.

Thread: Re: Two player game question

dougadamsau — 2008-07-16T23:24:18+00:00

Found it!

Thread: Two player game question

dougadamsau — 2008-07-16T03:04:04+00:00

What is the wisdom increase factor for a two player game? I couldn't find a counter for it, and couldn't see it in the two player rules.

Thread: Mais uma Jogatina Campinas começa

tiagoaob — 2008-02-27T15:48:54+00:00

Sabado, 23 de Fevereiro, dia de mais uma Jogatina Campinas. Como já eram 15:30 e ninguém havia chegado, eu e meu irmão iniciamos o ritual sagrado de fazer aparecer mais jogadores, que é se sentar para jogar um jogo.

E o pior, funcionou . Acabei de ler as regras e o Marcelo chegou. Colocamos os jogos que o Marcelo trouxe na prateleira de jogos e recomecei a explicar o jogo e então chegou uma verdadeira cambada. De uma vez: Sumaré, Sol, Harue, Paola e o marido dela.

Resultado, levamos o jogo com o tabuleiro montado para os fundos da casa, onde seria a jogatina mesmo. Nos dividimos em duas mesas. Marcelo, João, Sol e Sumaré foram jogar Prophecy, enquanto eu, Harue, Paola e o maridão ficamos com Formidable Foes.

Expliquei novamente as regras (pela terceira vez, para pessoas diferentes) e então começamos a jogar. A Harue começou seguida de mim, e inicialmente, todos os jogadores foram crescendo sempre juntos.

Não vimos muito potencial para o jogo sair disso no começo, começou a mudar quando eu parei para pegar fichas de poder e fiquei para trás na corrida, logo outros se seguiram e rapidamente já estava tudo bagunçado.

Como me esqueci das regras de monstros poderem carregar jogadores, a vantagem de ser o jogador mais burro foi parcialmente perdida, mas mesmo assim, muito aproveitada.

A Harue se destacou na frente, tendo sempre muita sorte nas roladas, enquanto eu ia sempre atrás de monstros que rendiam mais dinheiro, ainda que fossem mais difíceis de derrotar (com coração verde) ou não me dessem tanta sabedoria. A Paola e seu marido estavam um pouco perdidos, mas mesmo assim, foram capazes de se virar.

Indo sempre atrás de mais dinheiro, eu consegui ser o primeiro a chegar em sabedoria 50, pois consegui encontrar primeiro os baus de tesouro e subi muito minha sabedoria.

O jogo estava terminando e a Harue, para minha sorte, estava bem afastada dos monstros grandes. Assim, ficou ao meu cargo matar o Furunculus e o marido da Paola acabou com o Principe. Desta maneira o jogo acabou. Como a Harue não conseguiu pegar nenhum tesouro e nem matar nenhum dos chefes. Eu consegui ganhar, mas sem muita folga.

Depois desta, como já tinha chegado também o Glauco e a Monica, o pessoal desta mesa resolveu jogar Munchkin Bites!. Eu cai fora rapidinho e fui preparar o lanche para o povo. A mesa de Prophecy ainda continuava.

Thread: Re: Need English manual!?

Tim Synge — 2007-12-31T10:03:46+00:00

Rio Grande have updated their website and, in the process, have made the excellent decision to put pdf files of their rulebooks available for download.

Here's the link at time of writing - if this doesn't work, go to the website, search for the game and download the rules from the game page.

http://www.riograndegames.com/games.html?id=88

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snoozefest — 2007-08-24T20:39:25+00:00

English version.

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pethulhu — 2007-07-16T19:36:20+00:00

from the side of the box :-)

Thread: Re: Can't play the game!!! Need English rules......heeeeeeee

Scoopex — 2007-07-14T15:56:58+00:00

Hi Scott!

Should you send me it also?

Thanks in Advance

Peter

Thread: Re: Can't play the game!!! Need English rules......heeeeeeeelp!!

Omararnaout — 2007-07-01T08:56:27+00:00

Many Thanks

Thread: Re: Can't play the game!!! Need English rules......heeeeeeee

DenverWolf — 2007-06-28T21:20:29+00:00

I sent you a copy of the rewritten and clarified English rules that I've prepared. Hope it's helpful.

EDIT: grammar

Thread: Can't play the game!!! Need English rules......heeeeeeeelp!!

Omararnaout — 2007-06-27T16:34:04+00:00

I got the German version of the game and can't find the rules in English anywhere. Please can anyone help.
Just in case i'll leave my e-mail address:

omararnaout@hotmail.com

Thanks a lot,

Omar

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HiveGod — 2007-06-24T22:38:54+00:00

Custom adventurer tokens so everyone can tell who's which color, solving a common problem at our table...

Thread: Corrected Rules Available?

Aldaron — 2007-06-23T16:04:03+00:00

Are there corrected English rules available anywhere? The RGG English rules are inexcusable.

Thread: Re: Need English rules

jtamplin — 2007-06-21T12:21:39+00:00

I would like a copy of your translated rules. My email is jat@jaet.org.

Thanks.

Thread: Re: First Time Pitfalls? Teaching Tips?

friedemann — 2007-06-13T11:16:20+00:00

Hi,

at www.2f-spiele.de is a FAQ special to Formidable Foes ind english, too.

I do think Mik is not totally right with taking the power chips. In General I will say, if you get 6 or more just take them, because the advantage of this is that big, that you can handle almost every disadvantage against it.

The problem with the first game is, that the gamers do not realise, that there is a shortage of power chips, because this shortage comes up in the second half of the game and newbies often just fight themselfs empty with chips and are disappointed, when they later do not get enough of them and look at the others win the game.

Another problem with the first game is, that a lot of gamers think that after the first third they know what will go on and think this is boring and of course this game would be boring if the game will be all that you see in the first third, but later on there is the power chip shortage, the dumbest player action and the spells are getting much more powerful. So if you played it once you than see that the first third is needed to equip yourself for the game, to just keep contact in the middle and then storm the game in the last third.

Have fun

friedemann

Thread: Re: First Time Pitfalls? Teaching Tips?

atholbrose — 2007-06-12T18:02:45+00:00

Cool! I was really hoping to play Formidable Foes at Geekway, so it's good to know at least one game of it is going to happen.

The game is full of things it's easy to forget or that it's hard to tease out of the rules. Here's what I can remember messing up:

One power chip from every combat goes into the supply. (We forgot this one game, and it was a hard slog, let me tell you!)

If a monster with extra power (in the green heart) dies of fright, you must still pay chips for that extra power.

People always seem to forget to use the master-and-student. Even just following someone smarter can be a big advantage!

You cannot cast a spell after you've rolled the dice; rolling effectively ends your turn.

The rules about what happens when monsters move around are kind of bizarre and not very intuitive. Here's an executive summary from the crib notes I use to teach the game:
The monster picks up any one player it finds in a chamber or the hallway and carries them along. If a monster carrying a player moves through a chamber with another monster, it leaves the player behind with that monster. The monster chases any number of players down hallways. The monster must stop in a chamber if it is carrying/chasing 2 or more players; however, it can drop multiple players off with a monster if there’s another chamber beyond that one for the monster to move to. Monsters cannot use teleports.

Thread: Re: First Time Pitfalls? Teaching Tips?

Great Dane — 2007-06-12T15:43:22+00:00

One of the most common pitfalls for first-time players is to pause a turn to accumulate "strength markers" (not sure that is the correct term, but it's the ones you need to pay when the monster rolled better than you).

I have often seen players doing this at a time where everybody is close together, and what happends is that everybody else will kill off all the weaker monsters leaving the pausing player with either too strong monsters or maybe even too weak monsters.

It is best to pause to gather strength at atime where you are away from the others and have a good sized monster within easy reach, but which is too far away from the others, so that you know you have a good target next turn.

Best number of players?
The more players the longer it will take before you have your next turn. How bad this is depends on the players. First time it may be too bad as everybody is having fun watching the other players killing monsters. But after the first few hundred monsters it begins to be pretty boring to watch...

Thread: First Time Pitfalls? Teaching Tips?

ynnen — 2007-06-12T15:28:32+00:00

I'm going to be demoing several RGG games this weekend at Geekway to the West, so as I gear up and read over the rules, I've also been skimming BGG for player aids. Alas, there aren't any for Formidable Foes.

So, after reading the rules a few times, I'm trying to figure out the best approach to teaching the game to others.

Any tips? Tricks? Things easily overlooked?

Is there a number of players this works best for?

Thread: Need English manual!?

ever4ever — 2007-06-11T20:22:22+00:00

Several Months age I Got this in German Edition. I am very poor in German. Anyone who has English Edition, please send manual by mail. I am very anxious to play...........

Thread: Re: End of game question?

Axelfudge — 2007-06-07T14:08:51+00:00

Thanks,

I realized my massive oversight last night. I was going to delete this question as I finally realized what we did wrong but I'll leave it up in hopes that no one plays this game entirely through to discover they were supposed to put monsters 1-4 on the starting rooms.

OOPS!

Thread: Re: Fatally Flawed?

atholbrose — 2007-06-06T19:18:47+00:00

Friendless wrote:
The kid argued that in fact he'd revealed one of the intersections and should place choose how it was oriented[...]
Wow. A month late, I know, but I feel like I should add: you don't get to choose how the intersections are oriented. They're placed on the board randomly and just flipped over when revealed. The kid could've been screwed in any case.

Thread: Re: End of game question?

atholbrose — 2007-06-06T18:55:21+00:00

Four of the tiles start on the board, in the first four rooms, so those four plus the 49 unrevealed rooms with power chips is 53 total.

Thread: End of game question?

Axelfudge — 2007-06-06T16:30:56+00:00

Heya,

Played this for first time last night and I like it. Certainly not the greatest game ever but I got it for $19 CDN and that certainly made it easier to swallow the horrible rules. (thumbs up on the FAQ BTW!)

My question is regarding the end game.

It says that once Ferunkulus and Fieso (monster 49 and 50) are defeated the game immediately ends and any remaining treasure chests remain on the board.

However, you only put 49 power chips in the chambers and there are 53 tiles. If I understand that correctly that means that 4 tiles will never enter the game? So, how is it possible to always have monster 49 and 50 on the board when the final stack is randomly shuffled? and for that matter what if chamber 49 results in just a treasure chest coming out. That would mean monster 49 or 50 would NEVER come out.

Do I understand this correct or am I really missing something obvious.

Please help, your my only hope!

Thanks in advance.

Thread: Re: Need English rules

Carver — 2007-05-11T09:07:41+00:00

I bought my German language copy at Essen, so found myself in the same boat. I've not yet it on the table (due to the generally poor reviews of this game) But I did translate the French rules into English. I'll happily send them to you if you wish but have to stress that not yet having played the game I've no idea whether there are any problems/ambiguities in them.

(Should you send an e-mail via the Geek requesting these please be sure to include your own e-mail address because it isn't possible to reply via the Geek with attachments)

Thread: Re: 'The Ass-Hat Chafes' or 'Victory to the Least Incompetent!'

coffeedream — 2007-05-03T18:31:40+00:00

HuckmanT wrote:
Very funny, sir! I liked your digression about the "glorified home invasion" stuff. I always think the same thing.

Especially true of the urinating orc monster...#32?

Thread: Re: Monster carry rule and accomodating 5 - 6 players

xombe — 2007-05-03T16:54:56+00:00

If you start the turn as dumbest player on the weakest monster (wm) - and he's way-too-weak for you to benefit from killing (probably because you were stuck there by the last guy to hold 'dumbest player'!)

Try this:
Before you choose your action, pick yourself up with the weakest monster, move through a more appropriately strong monster's room (which causes you to get hung-up on that monster and the weakest continues on without you). As a coup de grace - if possible - continue the weakest monster over another player and into an empty room (or right into a room with another player if he's already there). This locks him up to either frighten the thing to death or take chips on his turn (unless he's dumbest player by then).

As long as you can do this within the wm 3-room movement limit, and no other monster is in the room you end the wm in, everything works in your favour.

Now you can choose the action/battle and kill the nice heavy monster you hung yourself up on.

Thread: Re: Fatally Flawed?

Christine Biancheria — 2007-05-01T16:09:32+00:00

No, you don't just take all the chips and do nothing else. I mean, pretty rapidly, people have to take a turn because there won't be any. When they do something and move, more chips will hit the display. For the most part, you either take chips or go do something meaningful like fight a monster, in which case you will use some, returning one to the supply, and maybe reveal new areas, causing more to go to the supply. So you couldn't really get in too much of a position to just take the chips and do nothing else. You have to react to what other people are doing.

Thread: Re: Fatally Flawed?

xombe — 2007-04-29T15:46:58+00:00

Friendless wrote:
There's absolutely something wrong with the game if one player can stalemate all of the others. The problem is that you can't take chips unless other people are using them up. If people are using them up, they're not taking chips. The people who use the chips move ahead with their wisdom, the people who take the chips move ahead with their power, and then the people who have the wisdom have to sit around waiting for the people with the power to spend the chips. How is advancing wisdom making a mistake?

In this particular game the only other player spending chips was me because I'd got just enough, but the kid was sitting to my left and able to take the chips out of circulation. Three other players could do nothing. I want to like the game but that's just boring, and those players have refused to play again.

Edit: got confused and wrote the wrong thing first time

I don't see how the game is stale-mated.

Someone could spend one or more "move a monster" magic cards to move monsters onto the kids space, forcing him to fight them on his turn. Unless he "scares it to death", he will gain 1 wisdom each fight even if he doesn't win...and he will also be forced to spend some power to the supply. Then the next player takes those chips. The next plays normally, possibly providing chips to the supply. Then you take chips he produced. It's now the kids turn. There are little-to-no chips to take...so what does he do now?

It sounds like this kid was just a bad sport and yes, you can ruin alot of games by playing to make everyone else's experience suck...but then, who'd play with you again if you exhibit that behaviour?

I mean the kid could have tailed you to gain experience quickly as well. It sounds like he chose not to as a form of "sulking"

Thread: Re: Fatally Flawed?

Friendless — 2007-04-18T07:13:00+00:00

There's absolutely something wrong with the game if one player can stalemate all of the others. The problem is that you can't take chips unless other people are using them up. If people are using them up, they're not taking chips. The people who use the chips move ahead with their wisdom, the people who take the chips move ahead with their power, and then the people who have the wisdom have to sit around waiting for the people with the power to spend the chips. How is advancing wisdom making a mistake?

In this particular game the only other player spending chips was me because I'd got just enough, but the kid was sitting to my left and able to take the chips out of circulation. Three other players could do nothing. I want to like the game but that's just boring, and those players have refused to play again.

Edit: got confused and wrote the wrong thing first time

Thread: Re: Fatally Flawed?

DaviddesJ — 2007-04-18T06:00:10+00:00

Friendless wrote:
Christine Biancheria wrote:
The kid played smart.

Nonsense. If taking all of the chips and doing nothing else is smart, it's a really really awful game.

I think your argument is wrong. What happened is that in this situation it was smart to take the chips, because that was the way to capitalize on the mistakes by the other players, who didn't take enough chips. Only taking chips wouldn't have worked if they had played better, and in that case it would be a dumb rather than smart strategy. There's nothing wrong with the game if you can exploit the mistakes of others by doing something that wouldn't normally work.

Thread: Re: Fatally Flawed?

Friendless — 2007-04-18T05:53:26+00:00

Christine Biancheria wrote:
The kid played smart.

Nonsense. If taking all of the chips and doing nothing else is smart, it's a really really awful game.

Thread: Re: Fatally Flawed?

Christine Biancheria — 2007-04-16T14:13:46+00:00

I agree with Werbaer: the solution is to learn a lesson and play better by taking chips earlier. Sometimes, it seems, in FF games, you can get put out of the running somewhat by not planning ahead (like in Power Grid, too). The answer is foresight, I think. The kid played smart.

Thread: Re: Wisdom of "50" question

Henning — 2007-04-16T13:20:14+00:00

POvidiusNaso wrote:
I think the consensus - which seems correct, and has more appeal - is that the high monsters get die rolls, as if one could potential improve to 51 or higher.

Thanks to all who put in a couple cents.

This consensus is correct. The idea of the Wisdom barrier at "50" is, that the brains of the player characters have a natural limit and cannot get more wisdom at that stage. This means that they MUST fight the final monsters and can only use their spells as an advantage.

Have fun!

Henning Kröpke
(for 2F-Spiele)

Thread: Re: Transference

Henning — 2007-04-16T13:08:06+00:00

The Transference spell can be used to leave the monster you are standing on at the beginning of your turn.

Have fun!

Henning Kröpke
(for 2F-Spiele)

Thread: Re: Need English rules

Henning — 2007-04-16T12:58:54+00:00

The English edition of "Fürchterliche Feinde" is distributed by Rio Grande Games named "Formidable Foes".

Have fun!

Henning Kröpke
(for 2F-Spiele)

Thread: Re: Rules in english

Henning — 2007-04-16T12:54:01+00:00

The Rio Grande version of Fiji is completely in English, including the English rules!

Have fun!

Henning Kröpke
(for 2F-Spiele)

Thread: Re: Rules/Description and Review

MJC Douai — 2007-04-09T22:03:07+00:00

I believe he has to abandon the game then. We agreed to stop the game if nobody is able to kill the remaining monsters. Then the player with the most gold wins.

Thread: Re: Fatally Flawed?

Werbaer — 2007-03-26T10:32:25+00:00

The 'fix' is to know that you'll need quite a number of power chips in the endgame, and grab them early in the game while there are plenty of them.

Thread: Re: Rules/Description and Review

DaviddesJ — 2007-03-26T06:36:28+00:00

friedemann wrote:
The player who was taking powerchips early and having enough for the end game battles wins. So where is the problem he catched up because of playing wise in getting power chips.

What if he refuses to kill the last monster, and just causes the game to continue forever rather than allow the leader to win?

Thread: Fatally Flawed?

Friendless — 2007-03-26T03:45:45+00:00

We had some friends over last night and following a democratic voting process we chose to play Hameln. Then my son pouted until we agreed to play Formidable Foes instead. My son is 10 and said "Friedemann Friese's games are always fun!" which is the sort of argument you'd hear only from the kid of a gamegeek. So we went through the rules and played Formidable Foes.

It took some careful reading to figure out where all the power chips went all the time, but I think we got it right. I found that the monitoring of which rooms were revealed when was a bit messy. We'd always notice one that had been missed and have to go back and fix it up and figure whether someone was owed that power chip or not.

It was after one such reconciliation that the kid got annoyed. We noticed that Scrabblette hadn't done her revealed rooms and fixed it up quickly. The kid argued that in fact he'd revealed one of the intersections and should place choose how it was oriented, but I told him to shut up and get on with the game because I was sick of all this backtracking. That left him in a position where he was unable to reach any monsters. Then he became the dumbest player and fell far behind.

He then adopted a policy (strategy?) of taking power chips every turn and doing nothing else. I knew from reading here that that could cause a problem and warned him that doing that would starve the rest of us of power and break the game. Technically, though, it actually meant that he would be the only player able to fight monsters. He was so far behind in his wisdom, though, that he wasn't allowed to fight monsters, so no amount of threats from his dad could force him to release the grip on the power chips.

By now it was late in the game and all of the monsters were out. All players except the kid and I had used up almost all of their power chips and were unable to defeat any more monsters. I had 4 power chips, the kid had 20 or more. I'd defeated Prince Fieso and had to defeat Furunkulus to end the game. Furunkulus has an excess chip requirement of 3, so I needed to score 1 or less in my combat against him. If I failed, no players would have been able to do anything until the kid got himself to 49 wisdom and went and fought Furunkulus.

Technically, the game wasn't broken. But the prospect of waiting for the only player who could do anything to have multiple turns excited nobody. I rolled a 1 in my combat, defeated Furunkulus and the game ended. I won with 30 gold, the kid was last with 7.

This game came very close to sucking. If I'd scored a 2 we would have been sitting around looking stupid for 15 minutes. I can see that the kid's "strategy" might have been useful to help him succeed in the game, but I don't want to play a game where one person can benefit by forcing everyone else to be bored. I think next time we play I'll point out this problem beforehand, and if people don't agree to not play that way, I just won't teach it.

OK, so other than the sucky flaw, it was a fun game. It was interesting trying to organise the dungeon so that only I benefitted, and figuring out the best way to use the spells I had. It's not a dungeon crawl, it is a resource management game, but it has some of the flavour of a dungeon crawl and I liked it. As my sucky kid says, Friedemann Friese's games are always fun!

Thread: Re: Question-Order or Monster Placement

morgand — 2007-03-20T05:49:37+00:00

That's kindof what I thought. The monsters get tougher as you get deeper into the dungeon, rather than an even distribution. I suspect this will shorten the game a bit, too, since players will generally be closer to their next targets. Thanks for the help!

Thread: Re: Question-Order or Monster Placement

Curfew — 2007-03-20T02:20:32+00:00

morgand wrote:
We couldn't figure out how exactly the monsters are selected. During preparation, the monsters are sorted into 4 piles, with 1-4 being facedown in the first pile, 49&50 and three treasures facedown in the last pile. The second and third piles are face up.

My question is this: Do monsters 5-23 and 24-48 enter in order as the rules seem to imply? ("Monster 5 should be on top and monster 23 on the bottom") I believe that, since the pile is face up, and the monster placement rules state that the required number of monsters are to be taken from the draw pile then shuffled face down and placed, the monsters should be taken from the second and third draw pile in sequence. This should tend to make the early monsters weak, and the later monsters stronger.

Our experience when playing with the opposite interpretation (I lost the argument and so, apart from #5 being first, and #23 being last in the second pile, the other monsters were randomly drawn) was that some of the early monsters were waaaaayyyy too tough. Furthermore, a great deal of unneccesary traveling was needed, since the monster strengths were pretty evenly distributed around the map.

Still, even if we played it wrong, I think we all had a good time (me especially, since I crushed everyone by 17pts)

You take the first 1-4 monsters and mix them up and place them in the first 4 rooms...

then after someone has killed the first monster (normaly #1) they will see into more rooms.... say they see into 4 rooms... then you will take monsters #5-8 and mix them up and randomly place them in those 4 rooms, etc... rather - rinse - repeat. So normaly if you only see 1 new room.. then you will just take the top most monster in put it there..

Thread: Question-Order or Monster Placement

morgand — 2007-03-20T01:51:00+00:00

We couldn't figure out how exactly the monsters are selected. During preparation, the monsters are sorted into 4 piles, with 1-4 being facedown in the first pile, 49&50 and three treasures facedown in the last pile. The second and third piles are face up.

My question is this: Do monsters 5-23 and 24-48 enter in order as the rules seem to imply? ("Monster 5 should be on top and monster 23 on the bottom") I believe that, since the pile is face up, and the monster placement rules state that the required number of monsters are to be taken from the draw pile then shuffled face down and placed, the monsters should be taken from the second and third draw pile in sequence. This should tend to make the early monsters weak, and the later monsters stronger.

Our experience when playing with the opposite interpretation (I lost the argument and so, apart from #5 being first, and #23 being last in the second pile, the other monsters were randomly drawn) was that some of the early monsters were waaaaayyyy too tough. Furthermore, a great deal of unneccesary traveling was needed, since the monster strengths were pretty evenly distributed around the map.

Still, even if we played it wrong, I think we all had a good time (me especially, since I crushed everyone by 17pts)

Thread: Re: So, umm, yeah...

atholbrose — 2007-03-05T19:06:06+00:00

Well, look at that. Thanks for pointing that out. I thought I'd been back and forth over the rules pretty completely -- I've typed up a two-page summary of the rules for use in teaching people how to play. (And I'd thought the hardest thing was summarizing the monster carry-chase-and-drop-off rules.)

It's just really difficult when the rules say one thing in one place and one thing in another place, and both places are trying to say the same thing but don't quite, depending on how you read it. Well, at least Formidable Foes' rules aren't as bad as Funny Friends' in this respect.

Thread: Re: So, umm, yeah...

Greendan — 2007-03-05T17:33:36+00:00

Awesome, I think I'm straight on that now. Thanks for taking the time to write such a complete response.

Me (The Obsessive Gamer) and My housemate (with an english degree) were going nuts trying to figure that out!

Thread: Re: So, umm, yeah...

HiveGod — 2007-03-05T16:46:36+00:00

The exceptions for the green heart monsters are 'hidden' under 'Tougher Monsters' on page 7. Specifically the last two sentences... It would have been nice if they had included these two little rules (in bold) with the rest of the battle rules.

The game is MUCH better when played by all the rules--the hard part is figuring out exactly what they are.

Chris

Thread: Re: So, umm, yeah...

atholbrose — 2007-03-05T12:23:51+00:00

HiveGod wrote:
[...]
• Monster dies of fright (no die roll)
- Pay green heart power chips
- Pelt = one less gold
- Draw spell
[...]
‘LUCKY ROLL’ of -1
- NO GREEN HEART
pay 0 power chips and get +1 gold
- GREEN HEART
pay one less power chip and get
+1 gold
[...]

I didn't read either of these rules this way.

If a monster drops dead of fright, you're not expending any power to defeat it, so you shouldn't have to pay any power chips. The monster just dies.

Also the rules for lucky rolls explicitly state "the lucky player does not have to pay any power chips".

It'd help if the rules weren't so frustratingly vague!

Thread: Re: So, umm, yeah...

HiveGod — 2007-03-04T21:53:18+00:00

Here's what you're missing:

You can't defeat the monster unless your wisdom is greater than or equal to the monster's strength AND you can pay the required power chips.

Otherwise the monster survives, whether you fought it (rolled the dice) or not.

It breaks down like this:

Monster too weak to give wisdom gain

(e.g., monster's strength plus wisdom advancement tile is less than or equal to your current wisdom)

• Monster dies of fright (no die roll)
- Pay green heart power chips
- Pelt = one less gold
- Draw spell

Monster is juuust riiiight

(e.g., your current wisdom is equal to or greater than monster's strength AND
monster's strength plus wisdom advancement tile is greater than your current wisdom)

• Roll dice: (red - green)
+ number in green heart =
power chip cost

‘LUCKY ROLL’ of -1
- NO GREEN HEART
pay 0 power chips and get +1 gold
- GREEN HEART
pay one less power chip and get
+1 gold

• Pay power chips:
ONE TO SUPPLY, remove rest from game
- Take pelt (keep secret)
- Draw spell
NO SPELL for monsters 43+
(bluish halo around green heart)
- Gain wisdom (monster level + wisdom advancement tile = new wisdom)

• Unable to pay required power chips
- Turn in all power chips
- Gain 1 wisdom
- May move 1 space away

Monster TOO STRONG!!!

(e.g., monster's strength is greater than your current wisdom score)

Flee (start of turn ONLY)
- Pay 1 power chip
- Move x2 or move/battle as normal

or

Fight
• Roll dice: (red - green) =
power chip cost

‘LUCKY ROLL’ of -1
- pay 0 power chips (NO BONUS GOLD)

• Pay power chips:
ONE TO SUPPLY, remove rest from game
- Gain 1 wisdom
- May move 1 space away
- NOTE: The monster stays put, alive and well!

So in terms of fighting (or not) a monster that is stronger than your wisdom, the question becomes:

- Pay one power chip and take a normal turn (flee)

or

- Gamble on getting a Lucky Roll, pay nothing, gain a wisdom and get to step out of the room (fight)?

Hope this helps!

Chris

[edited for ichor spray]

Thread: So, umm, yeah...

Greendan — 2007-03-04T21:08:17+00:00

Just got this one and we're all really bemused how the Wisdom/monster strength thing works. We're missing something.

Let me explain: You're on a square with a monster, and to fight it you roll the dice subtracting the little dice from the big dice. Simple enough. So where does the Wisdom/Strength thing come into it? Seems to us that you could have a wisdom of 1, and fight a monster of strength 50 and still win?

Which I'm really hoping means we're missing somthing, otherwise it's just rolling dice?

Thread: Re: 'The Ass-Hat Chafes' or 'Victory to the Least Incompeten

HuckmanT — 2007-03-03T04:40:51+00:00

Very funny, sir! I liked your digression about the "glorified home invasion" stuff. I always think the same thing.

Thread: Re: 'The Ass-Hat Chafes' or 'Victory to the Least Incompeten

atholbrose — 2007-03-02T23:01:26+00:00

Thanks for the great session report. I love this game, and can't wait to play it with a big rowdy bunch. When we play at home, I think we play a little too nice.

Thread: Re: 'The Ass-Hat Chafes' or 'Victory to the Least Incompeten

baditude — 2007-03-02T19:40:48+00:00

HiveGod wrote:

The final tally was 20, 20, 19, 17 and (I forget).

12

fun game despite my dismal showing! At first it seems like there are a lot of obvious choices...but once the green stamina bits start to get scarce the tension definitly ramps up.

Thread: 'The Ass-Hat Chafes' or 'Victory to the Least Incompetent!'

HiveGod — 2007-03-02T18:43:18+00:00

Five of us sat down to play Formidable Foes--Engineer Dave, who does his best to knob everything up to 11 and see what flies apart; Torin the Smartass, who can not only get your goat, but sell it back to you at twice the price; Jas, aka The Tokyo AI, a cost-benefit number crunching juggernaut; Eryn, He Who Owns Die Macher and the Polka Soundtrack We Play It To; and Me, He Who Is NOT Making Change With the Bank, In First Place or Otherwise 'Most Dangerous Player' Right Now.

After a not-so-brief and chaotic 'overview' of the rules for Eryn in which everyone chimed in with 'yeah-buts' and 'wait-don't-fergit-thises' we moved to character selection.

As always, no one selected red, the 'elf man-chick', especially after it was pointed out that red is, indeed, some kind of man-chick with a serious case of dude-face. The same discussion occurs everytime we play and no one has picked red yet.

Then began the usual fanning out into the dungeon, kicking in of doors and slaying of hideous monsters. Which leads me to an aspect of the dungeon crawl theme that has always bothered me:

How does it look from the monsters' point of view? Well, there you are, in your home, a pot of stew bubbling fragrantly over a cozy fire, kids frolicking at your feet, you and the missus clinking earthenware mugs of sweet mead when ALLASUDDEN--the front door splinters off it's hinges and a motley crew of armed and armored thugs rush in, skewer your wife, stomp your children, spill dinner frickin' EVERYWHERE and when you go for your sword to do nothing more than defend home and hearth you get opened up guggle to zatch and as you lie there, choking on your own gut-blood you get to watch, through the drawing of the dim curtain of death, the invaders smashing all your furniture in a vain search for a few coppers.

'For the love of GOD,' you think, 'You could have just ASKED...'

Dungeons crawls are just glorified home invasions.

But I digress.

So we did a whole bunch of the above. One major difference this time was the amount of bad mojo we were projecting at each other and the dice as they were handed around the table.

You see, whenever I go to Las Vegas on business I get put up in the big hotel-casinos, even though I don't gamble. (Too good at math, as Penn Jillette would say.) So every day I have to walk through the maze of the casino floor to get out of the building and off to work. On my most recent trip as I was noticing just how unhappy the people parked in front of the slot machines looked (endlessly pressing the levers like a rat getting an intermittently scheduled jolt to the pleasure center) I was overcome with an almost Tourette's-level of desire to press my palm into someone's back and whisper, 'Bad luck,' in their ear. I fought the urge all double-plus hard and made it through the weekend without getting my ass kicked. Of course I told my friends about this and it's become something of a constant at our gaming sessions. And let me tell you, as silly as it sounds, it sends chills down your spine when the person handing you the dice presses them into your hand while looking very seriously into your eyes and whispers, 'Bad luck.' Creepy in a 'Thinner' kinda way.

So we did a lot of that, too.

Anyway--the mini-climax of the game occurs right after monster number 23 gets played and the Dumbest Player (or the 'Ass-Hat') gets revealed. Now, the piece really is called the 'Dumbest Player Tile' and whoever is wearing it truly is THE DUMBEST PLAYER. As everyone will point out to you pretty much constantly.

"Hey--who's THE DUMBEST PLAYER?" someone (probably Torin) will ask.

"I am," you're forced to reply.

[cue laughtrack]

As usually happens, someone flips over the Dumbest Player Tile and sees the other side. "What's this? Who's that chick?"

"Oh, she's the prize. Some faerie."

"She's got a lazy eye. And a dead tooth. And why does she have her hands up? What is she dodging? Is that a freeze frame with a stobe?"

The one good thing about being the Dumbest Player is that you get to drive the weakest monster around. You can send it off to screw with people, slow them down or drop them off with something really nasty, or (the most popular choice in my group) take someone really, really far away from all the action. I chose to use this power to ride the weakest monster around the dungeon like my own personal donkey as I fell further and further behind.

As we edged into the second half of the game the screw-factor magnified exponentially. People were resting and taking power chips out of the supply purely to keep the next person from being able to do ANYTHING. This was met with much cruel laughter and silent tears. Language slewed to the barbaric so hard it would make an entire aircraft carrier battlegroup blush.

So there I was, Dumbest Player, clearly in last place, but with a Gatesian mound of power chips (and a couple of extra power chip spell cards) that I hoped would give me good position for the endgame.

When the 49 & 50 monsters come out (Furunkulus and Fieso, respectively) you are officially in the endgame--upon their death everyone counts up their Victory Pelts.

When they popped out the jockeying began, everyone trying to maximize their turns and position themselves for one-turn-kills of the two big baddies to end it and shut everyone else out.

The game became very, very tight here as everyone realized they were within striking distance of the win, if only they could fold space and time with their mind and see the way through.

And in this, I was the least incompetent.

We managed to trick Torin into going after Furunkulus even though he was dangerously low on power chips. "You'll make it if you get the Lucky Roll," we chided, "C'mon--gamble a little!" and then, "Bad luck," as he was passed the dice.

He blew it.

On the coattails of his failure I managed to weasel in and slay Furunkulus who was probably just wandering around the dungeon, lost and forlorn at the slaughter of all his friends and the fact that Dave was wearing Fieso's skin like a disposeable diaper.

The final tally was 20, 20, 19, 17 and (I forget).

And now the fun really began as I won on the power chip tie-breaker and everyone deconstructed the final two turns and found out that, hey, anybody could have pulled it if only they hadn't sucked...

It's like this: everyone figured out that instead of all going for the optimal play and choking on it, they each had a secondary play they could have made that would have secured the win for them. So really, it was anybody's game.

I was at 10 going into the last two turns, only taking it up to 20 by killing a 4 gold monster and then the Furunkulus (6 gold).

And that is the story of how a veteran ass-hat wearer was declared LEAST INCOMPETENT!!!

Chris

[edited for incompetence]

Thread: Need English rules

Farseeker — 2007-03-02T16:44:57+00:00

We recently received Furchterliche Feinde as a gift. It's the German version and contains no English rules. So far I have been unable to find English rules. Can anyone either point to a source on the Net or post rules in English?

Image

dougadamsau — 2007-01-16T22:06:01+00:00

The entire game board

Image

dougadamsau — 2007-01-16T21:32:48+00:00

Monsters and an adventurer on the board

Image

dougadamsau — 2007-01-16T21:29:07+00:00

The wisdom track

Image

dougadamsau — 2007-01-16T21:26:30+00:00

One of the adventurers

Image

dougadamsau — 2007-01-16T21:24:45+00:00

Close up of the board, showing intersections and chambers