![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Last reviews of 2012
Jan. 3rd, 2013 07:41 pmLiveJournal's epic fail over New Year has meant I didn't manage to complete my 2012 reviews and stats summary before the start of 2013.
So, let me rectify...
Olympia was just as much fun as ever, and the Shetland Pony Grand National remains a highlight of any year. Plus, spending the whole day with my mum is always a good thing.
Then there was the traditional Second Christmas in Rustington, and the New Year Gathering in Edinburgh, both of which introduced me to new games!
Village - excellent game, which survived my family playing in three teams of couples (there was much discussion but only a couple of moments of disagreement). It's a resource allocation game - you send your people out into the village to do various jobs, which earn you resources or points or special abilities. What makes it interesting is that the key to winning is in orchestrating when and where your villagers die, and there's a very cool time-passing mechanism that determines this. This game will definitely need to be played again.
Notre Dame - also a resource allocation game where you send your pieces out onto your section of the board to gain resources and points. This one has cards involved, whereby you select actions from your hand and then pass the rest around to other people, so you have to be careful about what you keep and what you pass on. It also involved pesky rats that have to be kept under control in order to maintain your position.
Fresco - yes, you've guessed it, a resource allocation game (I like them!). This time, you play a master painter, sending your apprentices out to buy or mix paint, complete sections of the cathedral ceiling or paint portraits for money. What makes this one particularly fun is that you have to determine what time you're going to get your apprentices out of bed, and if you roust them too early too often, they may quit!
Falling - a very frenetic card game where you play goblins randomly falling out of the sky. It's not turn-based, meaning you can play cards at any time (hence, frenetic), and you have to orchestrate things so that you hit the ground last. Not really my thing - I prefer time to consider what I want to do when playing games.
Asteroyds - having said that, though, this game ought to be the most horrifying thing ever, but I actually really like it. You have to navigate your ship through a starfield full of asteroids, which all move around, based on the values of coloured dice that are thrown each turn. You have 50 seconds to figure out where the asteroids are going to go and plan out your ship's moves. When the time runs out, all the asteroids are shifted around and you then discover whether you have navigated correctly or if you've ended up crashing - again. It's lots of fun, and I get better every time I play.
Catacombs - this is a collaborative games where a group of adventurers goes up against an evil overlord, having to fight their way through several rooms of monsters to face the big bad guy at the end. The way this works is that the monsters are set out on a cardboard surface, with various wooden blocks embedded in it, and you have to flick your character piece up the board to hit the monsters. I'm quite good at the strategy, but less so at the flicking. In the game I played, the adventurers were pretty much toast at the end of the first half, but then I passed my wizard character over to Simon H and went to bed - when I got up the next day, I discovered the adventurers had totally smashed the evil overlord's forces in the second half (sorry, Lizzie!).
So, let me rectify...
Olympia was just as much fun as ever, and the Shetland Pony Grand National remains a highlight of any year. Plus, spending the whole day with my mum is always a good thing.
Then there was the traditional Second Christmas in Rustington, and the New Year Gathering in Edinburgh, both of which introduced me to new games!
Village - excellent game, which survived my family playing in three teams of couples (there was much discussion but only a couple of moments of disagreement). It's a resource allocation game - you send your people out into the village to do various jobs, which earn you resources or points or special abilities. What makes it interesting is that the key to winning is in orchestrating when and where your villagers die, and there's a very cool time-passing mechanism that determines this. This game will definitely need to be played again.
Notre Dame - also a resource allocation game where you send your pieces out onto your section of the board to gain resources and points. This one has cards involved, whereby you select actions from your hand and then pass the rest around to other people, so you have to be careful about what you keep and what you pass on. It also involved pesky rats that have to be kept under control in order to maintain your position.
Fresco - yes, you've guessed it, a resource allocation game (I like them!). This time, you play a master painter, sending your apprentices out to buy or mix paint, complete sections of the cathedral ceiling or paint portraits for money. What makes this one particularly fun is that you have to determine what time you're going to get your apprentices out of bed, and if you roust them too early too often, they may quit!
Falling - a very frenetic card game where you play goblins randomly falling out of the sky. It's not turn-based, meaning you can play cards at any time (hence, frenetic), and you have to orchestrate things so that you hit the ground last. Not really my thing - I prefer time to consider what I want to do when playing games.
Asteroyds - having said that, though, this game ought to be the most horrifying thing ever, but I actually really like it. You have to navigate your ship through a starfield full of asteroids, which all move around, based on the values of coloured dice that are thrown each turn. You have 50 seconds to figure out where the asteroids are going to go and plan out your ship's moves. When the time runs out, all the asteroids are shifted around and you then discover whether you have navigated correctly or if you've ended up crashing - again. It's lots of fun, and I get better every time I play.
Catacombs - this is a collaborative games where a group of adventurers goes up against an evil overlord, having to fight their way through several rooms of monsters to face the big bad guy at the end. The way this works is that the monsters are set out on a cardboard surface, with various wooden blocks embedded in it, and you have to flick your character piece up the board to hit the monsters. I'm quite good at the strategy, but less so at the flicking. In the game I played, the adventurers were pretty much toast at the end of the first half, but then I passed my wizard character over to Simon H and went to bed - when I got up the next day, I discovered the adventurers had totally smashed the evil overlord's forces in the second half (sorry, Lizzie!).
