not sure how I missed this post, but this is a game I have been dying to play

Also I think that mansions of madnesss game might be an Expansion to Arkham Horror Dimnos

I can definetely recommend it. My friend was in the lead but then smashed into the end of a traffic jam going 250km/h while I carefully maneuvered around it, getting shot at from the audience as soon as I reached first position. In the end, another friend won cause he got lucky with the dice when speeding through the turns...even my orbital laser couldnt stop him. Very nice game and deeper than one might thing at first glance.

That rally game sounds amazing as a board game.

Well, buy it then, it´s worth it :)

Plus, you guys don´t have to import it as I had to ;)

And I just played it, it is a stand alone game based off of the Arkham Horror game. I like it better then the original because it is a more fluid

Bought some new stuff this week.

Thunderstone: Wrath of the elements is a really nice expansion though for some reason the european box is total shit while the US-box is aweseome in terms of storage space and spacing. Played it a bit solo already and I like it (btw, Thunderstone is really fun solo and works quite well).

And I finally got my hands on the Resident Evil Deck building game. And...well, the cards are really horrible, quality-wise. The started warping as soon as I got them out of the shrink-wrap.
The game itself is...okay I guess, it´s not as good as Thunderstone or Dominion (and possibly Graxia and Ascension which I haven´t played) but it´s still kind of fun. A lot of luck is involved since you can´t see which enemy you´re gonna face. Maybe you´ll be walzing in with 75 Attack and only face a single zombie and the next round you only have two pistols and a knife to fight Nemesis...then again, you don´t HAVE to fight if you don´t want to OPEN THAT DOOR!

And yes, Master of unlocking is an action-card.


With a little luck, I´ll get Claustrophobia too this week :)

You going to get Doomgate Legion and Dragonspire expansions Ox? The Dragonspire one is pretty cool, and a couple new heroes in it pretty much bend the rules in terms of leveling (one maxes out at level 2 and another at level 4)

Also speaking of card games have you tried Race for the Galaxy yet?

I´ll get Doomsgate and Dragonspire sooner or later I guess, I first have to really implement TS as one of our more regular games ;) That and Dragonspire isn´t out in german yet.

I do own Race for the galaxy and even though I´ve only played it about 3 or 4 times I´d call it my favorite card game along with 51st state and Thunderstone. Really nice mechanics but most people I play with don´t really like games with little interaction so...yeah, we never play it.
Plus, it´s a lot of icons to teach to first-timers :D

I still want Defenders of the Realm in german cause one of the most dedicated members of my player-circle fucking LOVES pandemic, so I guess I should be able to make her love Defenders too :D

If they like Pandemic they will love Defenders, it is way more involved, and if you get the dragon expansion for it is almost too challenging

Sadly, Defenders didn´t get a german release yet according to the gamestore-dude where I got my copy of Claustrophobia today. Really slick, great box (sadly it was damaged but at least I got it cheaper that way along with another Thunderstone-Promocard (?)...whatever. Guess I´ll try it out tomorrow but I already simulated the first and third scenario...really nice. Very fast, very combat-oriented and most of the time, the demon-player seems to be at an advantage. Whatever he rolls, he can do something useful with his dice even if it is just reserving one for the next round or getting more cards and summoning-tokens.

Just for fun, I´ll describe the two scenarios I´ve played. The whole game takes place in the hell-dorado world which I´ve never heard of before but it´s pretty simple. It´s the 15th century and deep below New Jerusalem, ancient tunnels where discoveres. Early expeditions never came back so the awesome Redeemer-Guy ventures down there with a bunch of convicts and discovers...yeah, well, it´s just hell again, but I like the theme.

In Scenario 1, the Human player takes control of 3 survivors led by the Redeemer, following a faint breeze of fresh air, hoping to find the exit. A simple scenario but it teaches the game quite well. It takes about 10 Rooms to reach the exit so the Demon player has plenty of opportunity to mess things up for the humans. Still, my emulated human player won in the end because the hired blades can slip past enemies most of the time and it was enough to save 2 of my 4 guys.

Scenario 3 is a quest to find the leader of the Hordlings, a Soulcollector demon deep within his lair. It uses the same mechanic as the first scenario but the demon can spawn a shitload of Hordlings on the way to the central chamber. This time, Demon-Oxblood won very easily even though the human Brutes defended the Redeemer valliantly :P


Overall it seems to be a really nice game, great production value, nice prepainted Miniatures, easy to understand and very fast gameplay...I like it :)

I just got a small stack of Thunderstone promo cards in the mail

New Stuff!

Conquest of planet Earth: Great simple, fast and fun game. You take on the role of 1 of 10 alien races and try to wreak havoc on earth. Melt brains, raise the dead, deploy the blue lasers and activate the giant robot. In Conquest for planet earth, you can. :) Btw, as with A touch of evil, it includes well working VS and Coop-Variants as well as a nice Solo variant.


Innovation: Yeah well, what else needs to be said about Innovation. Civ-Building with cards. Not good looking but plays very well. There´s SO much you can do even if you only have 5 available actions max. Great game, I´m really glad some tiny gameshop 60km from here had it.


Yomi: Now, I´m not as crazy as to pay 100$ for the complete game (10 decks) so I payed them 15$ and got the Print to play version which I´ll hand over to our trusty printer from work who said he´ll help me out there :)
For those who don´t know the game, Yomi is basically a 2 player Fighting Videogame in card-form. Some might call it a glorified version of Rock-Paper-Scissors but imo it´s really well designed. I would urge anyone to try it out online for free, just google Yomi Online, you can play other people or against a training AI...just read the 2 page-rules first :)

Innovation is the one where you have a 1st through 10th ages right? And if you have the most of an icon in play you get to do the cards benefit?

I wanted to try Yomi, I may look to see if it is being demo'd at Origins this year

If you like Yomi you may want to look up the game En Garde, it is a fencing card game, pretty easy mechanics. Also Red Dragon Inn which is a barfight card game where you have to balance your stamina and drunkeness, get too little stamina or too much drunkeness and you lose.

Jupp, that´s Innovation. Just pray nobody uses the Fission-Dogma since that whipes everything off the board along with your score :D

As for Yomi, do try it out, it seems to be a lot of fun. Found the adress for the official online-version: http://www.fantasystrike.com/dev/

Never heard of en garde but I do own Red Dragon Inn which is a lot of fun, especially if the players ARE a litte drunk ;) Strangely, they seem to sell some kind of travel-version over here, everything seems to be smaller than in the US-version but this way I can always take it with me so that´s ok.

I thought the fission dogma just wiped the cards in play, not the score?

*searches through his Innivation Cards*

Ah, there.

It wipes all hands, boards and scores, it leaves only the achievements.

Just went to the Cardstore in town to get some sleeves for my Yomi printouts...those things are fucking expensive! 7 Bucks for 80 Sleeves. Rather good ones, sure but man...that would cost me 50 bucks for all 560 cards!

Oh and I finally bough Space Alert, always wanted to get that and for 20 bucks? Yes please.

Okay...I seem to need about an hour to "build" one Yomi-Deck from the print-outs...good thing I still have a shitload of DBZ-Cards from back in the day to use as bases...but the sheetcost is gonna kill me if I don´t find non-clear cheap ones...hm.

Two decks done, eight to go.

I remember now why the wording of that game frustrated me, the achievements are where the game is won am I correct?

Normally yes. There´s two way to win:

-Have the target number of achievements (six in a two-player game I think)

-Have the most score when the Age 10-Pile runs out

So you can basically try to force the cards to run out if you have a lot of score but no achievements.


It seems like I´m running out of dummy-cards for my Yomi project...guess I´ll have to use older Magic cards after all...it´s not lile someone will give me money for them...but maybe I should keep the ones from the first german edition, they might be worth something I guess.

5 Decks done...I´m beginning to get better at this...hm.

I´m still itching to take Innovation and Conquest for a spin but I guess the "good" weather will work against me there...stupid humans and their fondness of that huge fireball... ;)

I played Innovation with partners, it ended up being very one sided because my partner and I pretty much controlled 3 symbols from the get go, they were desperately trying to get fusion into play

Played 7 Wonders and Stone Age

7 Wonders is a pretty fast paced card game where you are trying to accumulate victory points by playing a card from your hand, then passing the hand to the left or right and playing the next hand you get in the next turn.

Stone Age is a resource management game where you scramble against other villages to gain huts, farms, more villagers, various resources, and tools. It is pretty much a foot race that has a decently steep learning curve.

I think Stone Age can cause the same problem Agricola does: New players don´t realise they´re losing badly until the very end. Still it´s a nice game and 7 Wonders is an absolute favorite around here, mainly because it´s so fast.

Some new additions to my collection:

Dungeoneers: Rather light and fast card-based dungeoncrawl, very streamlined and pretty handy to carry around since it fits in a normal deckbox.

Dungeon Raiders: Even more streamlined and simple but kinda cute in it´s own way because of that. 5 Floors of 5 Rooms each. Your only goal: Grab as much treasure as possible without suffering the most wounds. Players have to play together to beat monsters but everyone has to try to come out on top at the end so you might want to set off that trap that costs the richest player some treasure and stuff like that. Simple filler-fun.

Alien Frontiers: Finally Germany got another batch of those and I even got those little promo-rockets and the mind control helmet-cards as well. I know AF is some kind of hype-game right now but it IS really appealing. Simple and kind of elegant with easy to understand goals and tactics. Partially luck-based because of the dice-rolling but the multiple placement-options negate a big chunk of luck as there´s always something useful you can do with your dice. The Tech-cards add another layer to the game as they allow you to manipulate your dice(ships) and mess with other players. At the same time, the card-mechanic is ballanced out by the fact that other players can steal them and if you want to unleash the more powerful card-effects, you have to get rid of the card and it´s out of the game. Since there are only 2 copies of each card (24 cards total), losing a card can have a major impact on your strategy.
Though the game seems to reward the quick builders, I already saw a game where the last-ranked player really muscleled his way through the ranks on the last 3 turns and won by one point. Pretty cool game, a definite recommendation.

Aaaand new stuff again.

Roll through the ages: I like dicing for ressources so this should be fun and it´s pretty fast too

Ohne Furcht und Adel: Also known as Citadels in english. I bought this on a whim since I´m always looking for good entertaining card games :)


Btw, finding out that your Girlfriend is into boardgaming is one of those beautiful moments in a relationship :)