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Category Archives: Overview

Overview of a game or game session

Splendor

This game is recommended for people who like 7 Wonders. Since we love 7 Wonders, we decided to try out this game.

First, game play is nothing like 7 Wonders, but like 7 Wonders, your strategy can easily be foiled by the plays of others.

20150524_164023930_iOSSince gold coins can be so useful, they tend to disappear quickly at the beginning of the game, and some players hoard them. The first few times we played everyone reserved a card and took a gold coin on their first turn. This strategy can work out well if you choose the right card to reserve.

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Castle Panic plus Wizard’s Tower and Dark Titan

As a group we’ve played Castle Panic several times, and we’ve enjoyed the Wizard’s Tower Expansion, so when we saw the Dark Titan expansion, it was an easy buy.

We had to do a refresher on the game because we’ve played Dead Panic more recently and, while similar, there are some very different aspects to game play. As usual, there were times in the game when things looked really bad. We had several Mega Boss monsters out, things were on fire, there were plagues. It was craziness! We prioritized keeping the Wizard’s Tower intact because the wizard cards were helping us to keep monsters with special kill zones in those zones (i.e. the Gargoyle). President Gamer relied on the regular Castle cards over the Wizard’s Deck, while the rest of us took a mix of cards. We managed to light Agranok on fire, but unfortunately a single fire can’t kill him since his last two HP have to be taken at the same time. Thankfully when we lit him on fire, we were also able to move him back, giving us more time to destroy him.

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Castle Panic and Wizard Tower Expansion with guests

Guest Players: Broadway, Mermaid, and Smurfette

For my birthday, I had a few friends over, and we ended up playing Castle Panic (one of my favorites!).  The Professor and I were the only ones who had experience with this game, and we suggested we play with our cards face up on the table.  This let us talk out a lot of the strategies and answer questions the new players had about their cards.  We had some unlucky Monster draws at the beginning of the game (Giant Boulders, Flaming Boulders, Plagues, and Draw Additional Monsters), but found the Wizard Deck to be extremely helpful in dealing with the repercussions.  Smurfette also had a few awesome turns that helped keep the monsters at bay.  Things were beginning to look bleak, though.  We had three walls left (all had been rebuilt at some point and one reinforced), and just two Towers (one being the Wizard Tower), but we managed to pull off a win.  Mermaid thought it was fitting that I dealt the final blow, it being my birthday and all.

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Oregon

  • Space Cat – Yellow, Coal Mine
  • Chubby Unicorn – Green, Church
  • The Professor – Red, Store

The game begins

The game begins

It had been awhile since The Professor and I played Oregon, so I actually used the rule book to go over the game.  I think the scoring is the most difficult part because it varies so much from building to building, and sometimes you can score multiple times (Churches allow for this), and other times you only score once (Groups of Farmers).  Despite this, game play is fairly simple, and we picked up on it quickly.  The Professor started out with an early lead, but Space Cat quickly came from behind and left us in the dust. 
Mid-game

Mid-game

No matter what we did, we just couldn’t catch up to her.  The Professor had a chance with his coal and gold, but despite the 40 extra points he gained from that, Space Cat was still ahead.
We beat Space Cat... briefly

We beat Space Cat… briefly

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Dead Panic

We really enjoy playing Castle Panic, so when Dead Panic came out, we had to have it.

Game play is similar to Castle Panic in that zombies appear and move in the 6 arcs and players use cards to kill the zombies before they get to the inner ring (the cabin). However, there are a lot of differences. This time players are on the board as tokens (rather than just being defenders of the castle) and can only attack zombies within their token’s range. The Cabin Cards are similar to the deck in Castle Panic except when this deck runs out, that’s it. You’ve searched the entire cabin, and there’s nothing left to find. Another new element is the Bait token. This gets passed around during the game because whoever has the Bait token is the player the zombies will come after. In Castle Panic players place new monsters at the end of their turns, but in Dead Panic everyone takes two actions, an Event card is drawn, and then new zombies are placed and moved. Winning is different as well: in this game the goal is to assemble the radio, call the van, and get everyone into the van. Once all players who are still alive (someone might get turned into a zombie along the way) enter the van, the game is won, even if the cabin is completely destroyed.

For this play through, the cast is as follows:
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