Participants

• Mark
• Logan
• Bailey

Rules missed

• When the market is refreshed, put the tiles in reputation order. After season two, remove any 1 reputation tiles during refresh

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About the game

From Boardgamegeek:

You are the head of a respected but troubled family estate in mid-19th century Victorian England. After several lean decades, family fortunes are looking up! Your goal is to improve your estate so as to be in better standing with the truly influential families in Derbyshire.

Obsession is a game of 16 to 20 turns in which players build a deck of Victorian gentry (British social upper class), renovate their estate by acquiring building tiles from a centralized builders’ market, and manipulate an extensive service staff of butlers, housekeepers, underbutlers, maids, valets, and footmen utilizing a novel worker placement mechanic. Successfully hosting prestigious social activities such as Fox Hunts, Music Recitals, Billiards, Political Debates, and Grand Balls increases a player’s wealth, reputation, and connections among the elite.

Each turn, players choose a building tile representing a room or outdoor space in and around their 19th century British country house. The tile chosen dictates the event that can be hosted and the guests to be invited. Players must carefully plan, however, to have the proper staff available to service the event and support guests as needed. The reward for success is new investment opportunities, permitting further renovation of the estate (acquisition of more valuable/powerful building tiles), an increase in reputation in the county, an expanding circle of influential acquaintances, and a larger and highly-trained domestic staff.

Throughout the game, a competitive courtship for the hand of the most eligible young gentleman and lady in the county presents specific renovation and reputation objectives. The player who best meets these objectives while accumulating victory points will win the hand of the wealthy love interest and the game.”

Gameplay

A mix of luck and strategy will deliver victory in the final courtship, allowing you to capture your love interest, and likely the game.

Players each start with the same set of improvement tiles. They must then navigate their way through 4 seasons of courtship. Each season rewards the winner with extra VPs and an additional powerful card added to their hand. Each improvement tile and card in the player’s hand have a reputation level that must be reached to use them. So increasing reputation is an important part of the game and can earn lots of extra VPs.

Final Thoughts

We played the builders market refresh incorrectly, so some advantages of gaining very powerful improvements for cheap, would have mitigated by the higher cost of those improvements. The cards are very thematic with their flavor text which matches their characteristics with the benefits they provide. Anyone who enjoyed the series Downtown Abbey, will enjoy the theme of this game. Very much looking forward to playing it again.

Participants

• Katey – winner (cave)
• Sean
• 3P
• 4P

Rules missed

• Cave includes the number of crystals added to the number of treasure when determining the number of omen tokens to draw at the start of its turn.
• Goblin tribe suffers malaise whenever rage reaches 0 – all tribes lose 1 population.
• Goblin tribes discard assigned monster cards when scattered.

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About the game

From Boardgamegeek:

“Vast takes you and your friends into the torch light of a classic cave-crawling adventure, built on the concept of total asymmetry. Gone are days of the merry band of travelers fighting off evil. In Vast, you will become part of a new legend… Any part you wish!

Play as the classic, daring Knight, the chaotic Goblin horde, the colossal, greedy Dragon, or even the Cave itself — powerful, brooding, and intent on crushing the living things that dare to disturb its gloomy depths. Each role has its own powers, pieces, and paths to victory…and there can be only one winner.

As the ultimate asymmetric board game, Vast: The Crystal Caverns provides a limitless adventure, playable again and again as you and your friends explore the four different roles in different combinations. Play one-on-one in a race to the death between the Knight and the Goblins, or add in the Dragon and the Cave for deeper and more epic experiences, different every time.”

Final Thoughts

Katey and I began this game with our kids, Avery & Emmett, but they lost interest as we slowly learned the nuances of the game, so we finished on our own. Because Vast is an asymmetrical game, it can take a bit of getting used to, and you might need multiple playthroughs to learn all of the characters (we played twice). But once you have it down, Vast is a pretty cool game. The balance seems well-tuned; in our second game (we each played two of the characters in the suggested 4-player setup) the cave won, but both the knight and dragon were arguably one turn from victory. We both liked the rock-paper-scissors element of play – the goblins are trying to kill the knight, the knight is trying to kill the dragon, the dragon eats goblins, and the cave is trying to collapse and kill everyone (we didn’t use the thief). Vast was lots of fun and Katey and I are looking forward to playing again, and checking out the various expansions available.

Participants

• Andrew – winner
• Mark
• Sean
• Robert
• Brian

Rules missed

• not a misplayed rule, but we did forget that a number of zombies are added to each location equal to the number of survivors at the location at the end of the round – this led to 2 or 3 of Mark’s survivors being “overun” (that’s dead) at the end of one round

BGG clarifications

• none

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About the game

This “mostly-cooperative” game features players as members of a colony of survivors trying to live through winter during a zombie apocalypse. The players will have a shared colony objective detailed on a scenario card, plus each player will have their own secret objective, too. In our game the colony objective was to collect a variable number of dead (re-dead? extra dead?) zombies.

The game is “mostly-cooperative,” because one of the players may have been dealt a betrayal card, which means they will be secretly working against the best interests of the colony. This element means that you can never be to sure of the motivations of the other players, which can lead to suspicion, and sometimes a player being voted out of the colony, which has benefits or penalties based on whether the player exiled was the betrayer or not.

During a turn, each player rolls dice and uses equal to the number of survivors they control +1, and uses those dice to perform actions around the game board. Survivors can travel to locations around the colony, search those locations, battle zombies, use items, clean up the colony, contribute cards to each round’s “crisis,” and more. Many actions can expose players to wounds, frostbite, or dreaded zombie bites. Crossroads cards are an interesting feature of the game. At the beginning of your turn, another player will read a Crossroads card for certain gameplay “triggers.” If, during your turn, you perform actions that trigger the card, it is read out loud, and you, or the other members of the colony will have two or more story choices to make that will affect the game in a variety of ways.

Each scenario has it’s own victory conditions and predetermined number of rounds. The game ends when the victory conditions have been met, the final round is completed, or when colony morale reaches zero (in our game’s case, our morale reached zero, which led to Andrew revealing himself as the betrayer and claiming victory based on his win conditions).

Final Thoughts

This game does a great job of simulating survival in a freezing zombie apocalypse. There is always another crisis to manage, and more and more zombies to deal with. It’s very thematic, and the Crossroads cards provide a bit of story to enhance gameplay. The possibility of a betrayal player creates a great deal of suspicion and tension around the table. It might be best to play this game with people you know well.

Participants

• Mark
• Sean
• Katey – Winner
• Frank

Rules we Missed

• None found so far

BGG Clarifications

• Being able to move up to one band means you can also move within a band.

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About the Game

This area control game plays well with 4 players. Rules are simple. On you turn, you have the option to purchase a card. Each card has a number of actions points and an event. Events can only be used by the factions shown on the card. Once you have chosen your card, you can either use the action points or the event. The action points allow you to move/build your fleets and establish influence in different areas. If you use the action points each faction shown the card has the option to use the event based on the order of the initiative track.

Once a scoring round is initiated, your influence and fleets are used to see who has control of each sector. Points are awarded based on this. The person in last place gains control of the Rocinante. this catch up mechanism gives the player extra options to use during the scoring round.

Final Thoughts

The theme of the game is nice for those that are familiar with the books or television show. However prior knowledge in no way affects gameplay.

The catch up mechanism works well. In our case the person in last, up until the 5th scoring round, won the game.

This game was a long one since we were learning straight from the instructions. Future games should be much quicker, since all the rules were very straight forward.

Participants

• Katey
• Sean – winner

Rules missed

• When taking the graveyard or morgue actions in Paris, you may choose any number of cards drawn (0-x). The first few rounds, we only chose one card to collect resources from, and discarded the others.

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About the game

Abomination: The Heir of Frankenstein is a worker placement game set in Paris 20 years after the events of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The game is very thematic. A player’s “workers” are scientists and assistants. Most of the game is spent collecting “resources” players use to work towards assembling a creature and attempting to bring it to life. The resources needed for this macabre task are muscle, organs, bone, and blood (as a gruesome “wild” resource, players can substitute animal parts which results in fewer points). Players will also need to purchase and charge leyden jars that are used to roll dice that can bring body parts to life or damage your creature. One interesting aspect of the game are the 3 dials at the bottom of each player board, representing your character’s Humanity, Reputation, and Expertise; all 3 earn points at games end. Reputation will eventually attract new scientists and assistants to your cause (more actions), and Expertise is needed to assemble more difficult body parts, but the Humanity dial is much more interesting. Players need to carefully consider various methods for acquiring parts for their creature lest they themselves become a monster. There are a variety of event and encounter cards used to enhance the narrative during the game and slightly alter game play each round. Abomination is a neat new twist on basic worker placement. If you’ve played other worker placement games, it’s pretty easy to learn to play. It’s 2-4 players, and suggested play time is 90-180 minutes.

Final Thoughts

Abomination: The Heir of Frankenstein is a great addition to our library. The game is oozing (see what I did there?) with theme and atmosphere, and managing the dials was a neat puzzle to solve at times. Like many worker placement games, it can take several turns to build momentum, and late rounds can feel full of “filler” actions, but that may have been because we played with only 2 players. Katey and I really enjoyed Abomination, and we’re looking forward to trying it again, with different characters and/or additional players. Until next time!

Participants

• Mark – Winner
• Curtis
• Alain
• Robert

Rules we Missed

• Building complexes using executive actions on blueprint cards: The corresponding tech must exist on someone’s board in order to build or increase the size of a complex. If the existing tech’s level is toolow to build a complex of the desired size, you can boost it by sending colonists to the working area.
• If you develop only 1 tile twice, treat each of the movements separately.
• If you gain a discovery or research tile, resolve it immediately by paying any associated cost, then place it in your play area (put Discovery tiles face down).

BGG Clarifications

• When 2 players have the appropriate tech tile, the player who uses the tile chooses who gets the benefit
• If a tech tile is used twice on the same turn, the owner gets two oxygen

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Final Thoughts

Like all of Vital Lacerda’s games, this game has a learning curve. The rules take a while to learn, but they all make sense and seem logical as play progresses. This is a long game but turns can be quick, since you can take one action and one executive action each turn That said, the best turns are ones that can string multiple actions together by moving tech tiles or completing your personal goal. As someone who also likes The Gallerist, I would recommend this game.

Rules we Missed

• First player to complete an era gets a resource
• Some technology cards have a requirement that your neighbor has a specified technology

BGG Clarifications

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What did we miss

• You can change the color of die. Draw a card of the original color. I think the only way to do this is using a tech tile.
• It is enough to “own” a Mission Card in order to activate it, you don’t need to have a ship there. From page 10: “If you choose to activate a card with an activation mission, you must respect the following conditions … You must have a robot or ship on this card.”
• After taking an Advanced Technology tile, immediately replace it with a new tile from the deck.
• When an Advanced Technology tile is ejected, immediately place it on one of the 3 Advanced Technology spaces on your player board (limit 1 tile per space). The space you choose determines the maximum VP this Advanced Technology tile can earn during end game scoring. This maximum starts at 4 VP, but each of your Mission cards that are ejected from the Space board that you place beside this space increases this maximum by 2 VP. Each Advanced Technology tile not ejected at the end of the game, and each Advanced Technology tile that is ejected after all 3 spaces are occupied by tiles can earn you a maximum of only 4 VP at the end of the game.
• If you can not pay the cost of a ravager card, you can sacrifice a victory point
• Each hex can only accommodate up to 2 different player’s Ships.
• f you must place 1 Damage cube on a damaged action (an action which already has 2 Damage cubes), you must place the cube on a die in the same-color supply. This die is damaged! If during Sequence B, you must roll a damaged die, you lose 1 VP, and the Damage cube returns to the supply. Damaged dice are only ever found in the supplies
• When the endgame is triggered, finish the round in progress, then play a final round. During this final round, if you are required to perform Sequence B, you can instead simply pass (but only in this final round!). Even if there are still dice in players’ compartments, the game ends after this final round

Some FAQs from BGG

This is more of a clarification for the Neutralization mission card

– When the card ejects, the owner of the card receives the benefits listed on the left, while everyone with a ship docked on the card receives the benefits listed on the right. This means if the owner still has his/her ship docked on the card then they will receive the benefits listed on both sides of the card. IF the card only has one space for benefits listed (not split to left and right) then the owner and everyone with a ship there receives the benefits listed and the owner only gets the benefits once, i.e. the owners docked ship doesn’t provide any extra benefit of still being there, therefor this is one reason for the above question “Can you move ships off mission card?”.

Can you activate a mission card you control without having a ship there?

– I believe the answer is yes, I haven’t seen a clarification on this but I am not sure there needs to be one. The rules state, “You must have a robot or ship on this card.”

See: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2243008/moving-zero-black-angel-and-not-placing-mission-ca

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