Anyone scope Legion Of Honor (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/39941/legion-honor) from CoA yet?
It's another one of those narrative style games capable of solitaire (although this one has a competitive system by default).
Instead of running any number of WW2 machines or squads, as has been done so often before, this one has you taking the life of a French soldier in Napoleon's Army attempting to move up the ranks (and survive??). I was fenced at first but after seeing the many attractive components and cards in this unboxing vid, I'm near buckling.
I've seen it, and it looks MAHR-velous. But (1) I'm tapped out, and (2) Napoleonics aren't really my schtick, so I'm going to defer to someone else for taking lots of pics and sharing with the rest of us :)
Actually mine should be in next week.... been looking forward to it. I should also receive Shadows of Malice as well..... Have to say, it looks very promising!
PE
Quote from: PanzersEast on January 17, 2015, 10:27:24 AM
Actually mine should be in next week.... been looking forward to it. I should also receive Shadows of Malice as well..... Have to say, it looks very promising!
PE
I'm in the middle of my first
Shadows Of Malice solitaire game right now! O0
It certainly lacks in artwork but at least the cards are all cut evenly. One thing that burns my ass is paying $50 to $80 for a beautiful fancy ass game and having a deck of cards with six slightly different lengths.
As for gameplay, it has been fun thus far in my two-character/three hex tile game. It's not at
Mage Knight Board Game levels of awesome but it's somewhat similar in the wider strategy scope. The monster randomization, and especially their Ability cards, can give surprises you hadn't planned for. :coolsmiley:
Quote from: Nefaro on January 17, 2015, 08:41:09 PM
Quote from: PanzersEast on January 17, 2015, 10:27:24 AM
Actually mine should be in next week.... been looking forward to it. I should also receive Shadows of Malice as well..... Have to say, it looks very promising!
PE
I'm in the middle of my first Shadows Of Malice solitaire game right now! O0
It certainly lacks in artwork but at least the cards are all cut evenly. One thing that burns my ass is paying $50 to $80 for a beautiful fancy ass game and having a deck of cards with six slightly different lengths.
As for gameplay, it has been fun thus far in my two-character/three hex tile game. It's not at Mage Knight Board Game levels of awesome but it's somewhat similar in the wider strategy scope. The monster randomization, and especially their Ability cards, can give surprises you hadn't planned for. :coolsmiley:
I picked up Fortune and Glory a while back and thought I would not like it, and I was right.... I love that game. I've had 2 play throughs now with base game and will now introduce the expansions. I have A Touch of Evil on a trade and I am pretty sure I will like it as much..... good fun!
PE
Quote from: PanzersEast on January 18, 2015, 05:15:57 PM
I picked up Fortune and Glory a while back and thought I would not like it, and I was right.... I love that game. I've had 2 play thoughts now with base game and will now introduce the expansions. I have A Touch of Evil on a trade and I am pretty sure I will like it as much..... good fun!
PE
I got
Fortune & Glory months ago. Did a quick paint job of the character minis, but still haven't played it. Guess I've not been in an Indiana Jones mood yet. Having done some of the other FFG games, it will have many similarities except for all the thematic bits. Of course, that's why we play those (along with the solitaire option). I would like to pick up the
Red Hand expansion.. because everyone likes fighting Crazed Cultists about as much as Nazis. Not so much the Mob.
Of the earlier FFG adventure games I've played,
A Touch Of Evil is definitely one of the best. I picked up the
Something Wicked expansion in an FLGS back when it was out of print and hard to find but still haven't played it with that expansion. The gothic horror theme is something I generally enjoy, despite not liking FFG's use of live actors instead of artwork in this one. The hidden town elder stuff is a great mechanic!
At the rate I'm buying boardgames, I'll never catch up on my backlog. :idiot2: Thankfully I haven't been spending much on PC games lately. Perhaps because I play them less than I used to, some of that time being replaced with tabletop gaming & painting. New boss same as the old boss. :P
Also... I didn't expect to see my back-ordered copy of
Dead Of Winter arrive for a month or more. I must've had some sixth sense that another shipment was gonna show up in Plaid Hat's stock again soon because they just shipped me one last week. ^-^ So if you're aching to see what all the commotion is about, there may still be some stock left for order on Plaid Hat's site. I'm sure they'll run out soon again too, just like all the others, because no store fronts have even restocked it yet.
As for Shadows Of Malice, I think it has some good points. Notably the randomized monsters & specifically the many different special abilities they can have from the Ability Deck.
But I also think the many different low-numbered die rolls are a hindrance to the combat system. You'll be using d6s like crazy, which is no big deal by itself, but you'll be using many of them in screwy lower denominations like d6, d2, d3, and d* (which is a 0-1 roll) to modify the main d6 rolls up or down. Having to use the different sized dice of different colors, mixed together for your combat rolls, and then having to convert them into their proper results is a needless annoyance IMO.
SofM just screams for custom dice for all these different ones, not just for looks but to ease the die roll interpretation work load. There are a couple user-made custom die faces for download on BGG but I don't think that I will be playing it often enough to spend the time and money making that happen.
You...you...f-ers...
Like I need another game I won't play.
Ran games of Slapshot! for Columbia at a local con this weekend, picked up one of DVG's iterations of "Down in Flames" as well as "King of New York" on ding-n-dent, and I've got to come home to THIS?
Ordered immediately...
VIVE L'EMPEREUR!
Best,
Jim
"Cyrano"
:/7)
"Joinnnn Usssssss.."
(In my best Chaos Cultist voice)~~>
(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi5.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fy163%2Fmj12commando%2FChaos%2520Gate%2FM9%2FChaosGate26.jpg&hash=76304f030ddcf7a5fa16967a3c09ac62c0ddc8a2)
Quote from: Cyrano on January 19, 2015, 04:53:42 PM
You...you...f-ers...
Like I need another game I won't play.
Ran games of Slapshot! for Columbia at a local con this weekend, picked up one of DVG's iterations of "Down in Flames" as well as "King of New York" on ding-n-dent, and I've got to come home to THIS?
Ordered immediately...
VIVE L'EMPEREUR!
Best,
Jim
"Cyrano"
:/7)
(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.comicvine.com%2Fuploads%2Fscale_super%2F11111%2F111113173%2F3207582-muahaha.jpg&hash=666d5c2fd30aeb46a0254ff7a3ab4364b25dc4b7)
I was trying to decide between Fortune and Glory and Shadows of Brimstone: City of Ancients...Nefaro's posts before the holidays pushed me to the latter but the former looks rather cool. I watched Table Top's video of the game, it looked like a LOT of fun. But Shadows of Brimstone...I've glued the minis together but have YET to play it. What else is new.
I have not picked up Shadows of Brimstone as of yet.... but Fortune and Glory is a real blast to play, and I have not introduced the expansions yet and there is a lot of user created content (I am looking at doing my own Indiana Jones Expansion). Believe or not, I still have A Touch of Evil + expansions to play as well so that one is going in.
I purchased Boots on the Ground on clearance for $18.00 at Miniature Market.
Shadows of Malice and Legion of Honor are new ones I have not had a chance to open up, but looks rather good. I will post an AAR of Legion of Honor here soon as well.
PE
Quote from: Banzai_Cat on January 20, 2015, 10:23:16 AM
I was trying to decide between Fortune and Glory and Shadows of Brimstone: City of Ancients...Nefaro's posts before the holidays pushed me to the latter but the former looks rather cool. I watched Table Top's video of the game, it looked like a LOT of fun. But Shadows of Brimstone...I've glued the minis together but have YET to play it. What else is new.
I think they're both good, in slightly different ways. Having enjoyed the old Warhammer Quest, Shadows Of Brimstone was a no-brainer for me. I'm a sucker for dungeon crawlers and RPG-Lite Phatlootz.
After gluing together both core sets of SoBS and painting a few figs, I was also a bit burned on the thing and only did one short game, with no gates to the other dimensions. Assembling those minis put me in a bit of a sour mood about it at the time, because some of them were poorly fitted and I was disappointed with the fine details on many. I can tell the gameplay is fun and I haven't even experienced all it's facets yet. Just decided to take a break after all the hours spent assembling, trimming, and painting. I have yet more trimming, puttying, and painting to do, if I want to improve the look further. Shit's big. ;D
Similar to SoBS, there is a user-created solitaire variant for Descent 2nd Edition that uses cards to control the keeper. It looks good. I plan on printing out the cards & such to give it a go eventually. Probably after revisiting SoBS. But I even had fun doing regular Descent solo. The presistent characters in SoBS reminded me of it. The custom dice and varied player powers are the biggest draw for me. It doesn't hurt that there is a ton of relatively affordable expansions with many nicely detailed minis available for it. For that reason, I haven't planned on picking up the Star Wars version anytime soon.
I have yet to play Fortune and Glory for the first time. Want the Crimson Hand expansion, I should remember to add it to any future CSI order. F&G really just reminds me of Arkham/Eldritch Horror with an Indiana Jones theme and FFG's mechanics from A Touch Of Evil. Not a bad thing, but I feel like I'm already familiar with how the game plays due to enjoying AToE so no hurry.
I should be getting Dead Of Winter in today and Legion of Honor around Thursday. My tabletop gaming overload resembles my PC one. I need to start thinking about selling or trading off a few of my less played ones. :smiley6600:
When I saw the Table Top play of Fortune and Glory I knew I'd love it when Wil Wheaton felt the need to have a disclaimer at the beginning of the game, sorta apologizing for the swastikas. It's not that I like Nazi symbology, but I do admire their balls for publishing it. :)
Quote from: Banzai_Cat on January 20, 2015, 12:46:17 PM
When I saw the Table Top play of Fortune and Glory I knew I'd love it when Wil Wheaton felt the need to have a disclaimer at the beginning of the game, sorta apologizing for the swastikas. It's not that I like Nazi symbology, but I do admire their balls for publishing it. :)
I did LOL when they ridiculed Felicia Day for rolling the Nazi invasion of England. :crazy2:
Quote from: Nefaro on January 20, 2015, 12:43:33 PM
I should be getting Dead Of Winter in today and Legion of Honor around Thursday. My tabletop gaming overload resembles my PC one. I need to start thinking about selling or trading off a few of my less played ones. :smiley6600:
Welcome to the club! ;D
Shadows of Malice is a very good game. I like some of the innovative mechanics in the game like the creature generator. I put this game right up there near Mage Knight, the minimalistic graphics are fine and the components are good quality. Overall, this game has really surprised me..... alas, I am going to have to break away and start my Legion of Honor AAR.... these late nights are starting to get to me as it is the only time I have to play.
PE
Quote from: PanzersEast on January 22, 2015, 10:17:27 AM
Shadows of Malice is a very good game. I like some of the innovative mechanics in the game like the creature generator. I put this game right up there near Mage Knight, the minimalistic graphics are fine and the components are good quality. Overall, this game has really surprised me..... alas, I am going to have to break away and start my Legion of Honor AAR.... these late nights are starting to get to me as it is the only time I have to play.
PE
My first game of Shadows Of Malice was fun but not as much as some other solitaire games I've played in the past year or two.
One thing that bothered me were all the different lower numbered die rolls in combat that required you to divide various d6s in different ways. Had to add extra dice with different colors for it too. I had rolls where I was tossing 2d* (0-1 from a d6), 1d2, 1d3, and the 2d6 for the group combat roll, along with a -1d*, and 1d6+2 for the monster attack that round. Then I'd have to recalculate all those different die bonuses & penalties if the monster switched targets when fighting more than one of my characters banded together.
If ever there was a game that desperately needed custom dice, it's this one. I'm guessing they used the fractional dice to keep the math from becoming burdensome but it just creates a different kind.
The random monsters were kinda cool, but I don't think it's due to the generation tables as many people propose. It's due to the variety of special Ability cards each one can get. That's what really adds the flavor to the randomized monsters IMO. Other games should do something similar. Even if they have set monster types, the varied abilities is quite nice and keeps them from getting too repetitive.
SoM's a good game. Not in the highest ranks of my favorite co-op games but it's worthwhile. Maybe it will move up after a second play?
Quote from: Nefaro on January 22, 2015, 10:47:37 AM
My first game of Shadows Of Malice was fun but not as much as some other solitaire games I've played in the past year or two.
One thing that bothered me were all the different lower numbered die rolls in combat that required you to divide various d6s in different ways. Had to add extra dice with different colors for it too. I had rolls where I was tossing 2d* (0-1 from a d6), 1d2, 1d3, and the 2d6 for the group combat roll, along with a -1d*, and 1d6+2 for the monster attack that round. Then I'd have to recalculate all those different die bonuses & penalties if the monster switched targets when fighting more than one of my characters banded together.
If ever there was a game that desperately needed custom dice, it's this one. I'm guessing they used the fractional dice to keep the math from becoming burdensome but it just creates a different kind.
The random monsters were kinda cool, but I don't think it's due to the generation tables as many people propose. It's due to the variety of special Ability cards each one can get. That's what really adds the flavor to the randomized monsters IMO. Other games should do something similar. Even if they have set monster types, the varied abilities is quite nice and keeps them from getting too repetitive.
SoM's a good game. Not in the highest ranks of my favorite co-op games but it's worthwhile. Maybe it will move up after a second play?
I'm going to go back and play through but I thought the system to be refreshing. One thing that I did not like is the player avatar tokens.... I thought it could have been a mini or a stand up.... but minor. I also agree that custom dice would have benefited for this game far more, however the large with smaller dice was a very good idea (although multicolored dice would have been nice). I see on BGG that someone has already made custom dice stickers for the game, so maybe in an expansion we will see this?
The manual is very well done and explained in pretty good detail and is concise (Hello DVG, please take note looking forward). I guess for me I thought the system is refreshing, with the imagination when playing and the minimal style I like and thought it worked well wit this theme.... being a light entity. Will play some more, but my first impression has been positive.... don't get me wrong, this is not Mage Knight..... but is up there imho.
PE
It's still not as "fiddly" as all the tokens in Sentinels or having massive amounts of DRMs to pour through. I just thought the later combats became a messy affair due to all the various versions of d6s. I would rather they have just gone with the plain 'ole d6 dice pool (aka buckets o' dice) than have you divide various sized (and colored in my case because the pairs of size & colors wasn't enough to include negative ones) by two or three and all that jazz.
Like I said.. still better than huge DRM lists to check every time.
I saw the dice sticker print-offs on BGG. If I expected to play SofM often, I'd go that route. But I think it'll only be an occasional foray. Stuff like Darkest Night and Mage Knight BG will still get higher priority. I may use some colored wooden tokens or something similar for the avatars, though. I didn't get mine mixed up but I only used two characters and was extra careful to get them right because the counters looked so similar.
Played a couple of Campaign seasons with Legion of Honor this weekend.... rule book is not too bad, however could have benefited from a more detailed turn by turn reference.... overall I was wounded in my second campaign season leading a counter attack.
PE
I just want to make sure this game gets the credit it deserves for taking aesthetic risks.
Of course there's this thing:
(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FIFc31qA.jpg&hash=1ba6d99620949a0eb4dc035f004505f948e88558)
Which, I gather, is the bit that gets the "mature audiences only" disclaimer at the front, but then there's this:
(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2F672R4Ie.jpg&hash=f92c18352ffc67150b00da280c5a54e308aec519)
Complete sucker for LaSalle in the world of Napoleonics, but, then, this:
(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FmK0xMfc.jpg%3F1&hash=caec576858c8e2c38ad0ad157ea8e47f69f5363a)
An utterly pointless bit of ephemera that, my wife correctly points out, should be in French, but I will find a place for on my wall.
This thing plays as well as it looks and feels, I'm pleased. Yes, some of the graphic design, especially in the rulebook, tripped me up a bit, but it's a trade I'll make every time.
Best,
Jim
"Cyrano"
:/7)
I began reading the rules but it's not been progressing very quickly with all the other stuff I've been juggling.
At first glance, the game doesn't look to have many cards. But I think they're just pretty thin. I haven't taken them out of the shrink yet so I have no idea. Probably going to sleeve them all if they're as thin and chip-prone as they look.
The components are pretty nice, however the cards are extremely thin. After a couple of play throughs I can say it is a unique experience, however for a solo game it is very boring. I found myself losing interest in the game about half way in because it was a simple turn card adjust sliders.... turn card adjust sliders...... I think in a group setting this game would be a lot more fun, solo this game is not very good and is just a turn card and adjust sliders with very little input from the player.....
PE
The amount of decisions to be made is a concern for me, after briefly glancing at the rules.
Quote from: Nefaro on February 09, 2015, 11:28:03 AM
The amount of decisions to be made is a concern for me, after briefly glancing at the rules.
To be honest there basically are none.... it is a just draw the card and adjust the counters. For example, you can draw a card that has you doing an action in battle, you can do that action at a risk of injury or wound, however you could choose avoid with a possible disgrace.... that is it. I simply found it boring and uninteresting to the point where I did not care what happened to my character. The art work and thematic aspect was very good, just the mechanics and solo game play I found lacking and traded my copy away for Across 5 Aprils.
PE
I can perhaps see how the Push Your Luck race might be okay in a group but it does sound like the solo game would be lacking without such competition.
I have many other unplayed games lined up before it so I probably won't see it in action anytime soon. Because the rulebook reading was going at a glacial pace so it was bumped down for the moment.