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Pathfinder Rise of the Runelords: Undead Uprising

This is the play-by-play version of the previously posted story mode.

When you defeat a Zombie Minion Henchman, randomly select an open location and shuffle the Zombie Minion into that deck.

  • Seoni – Rin figurine
  • Seelah – Saber figurine

Locations:

  • Mill – Seoni start
  • Village House
  • General Store – Seelah Start
  • Habe’s Sanitorium

Seelah opening hand:

  1. Greatsword
  2. Chain Mail (favored card type)
  3. Troubadour
  4. Blessing of the Gods

Seoni starting hand:

  1. Blessing of the Gods
  2. Frost Ray (favored card type)
  3. Blessing of Pharasma
  4. Blessing of Irori
  5. Toad
  6. Force Missile

Seoni 1st turn

Encountered Locked Stone Door – Dexterity 13

d6, discarded Blessing of the Gods for another d6, Seelah discarded Blessing of the Gods for another d6, rolled 12 (one 2, one 4, one 6)

Locked Stone Door shuffled back into location deck

Drew Sage

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Pathfinder Rise of the Runelords: Undead Uprising (story)

Not long after they returned to Sandpoint, the local sheriff asked Seoni and Seelah to look into another strange matter. People were reporting zombie sightings at an alarming rate. Other townsfolk had seen patients of Dr. Habe lurking about as well. Worried that the two might be connected, the sheriff asked that they help with the investigation. After so much turmoil, the local guard was spread a bit thin, so Seoni and Seelah agreed to help.

Seoni decided to start with the mill since the most recent sightings had been there, which Seelah and her troubadour headed for the general store. There had been reports of trouble in that area, and she wanted to see if any new weapons had been shipped in.

Seoni was a little surprised to find a stone door at the mill and even more surprised when it turned out to be locked. She attempted to unlock it, but had no success. She asked her toad for suggestions, but as usual he didn’t have much to contribute to the conversation.

“Perhaps we should simply search for another way in,” the Sage suggested as she joined them.

They began to search for another entry point. Seoni saw a discarded short sword, but left it where it was along with an elven chain shirt. She needed to focus.

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Qwirkle

Qwirkle is an easy family game. Everyone gets 6 tiles, and you take turns laying them on the board. A line (horizontal or vertical) can be by color or shape. So a completed line or Qwirkle can be 6 green shapes (each shape must be different) or 6 squares of the same shape in the 6 different colors. You cannot repeat a color in a shape line. You cannot repeat a shape in a color line. That’s the most important thing to remember.

When you take your turn, you can only play in one direction (horizontal or vertical), but you can play as many tiles as you want/can in that direction. You then replenish your tiles from the tile bag.

If you don’t have any moves (perhaps the player before you took your move), or don’t want to make any moves, you can trade in 1-6 tiles. Hopefully your new tiles will be more useful.

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The Game Anywhere Table

A while back we backed the Game Anywhere Table on by Transforming Designs. Like most kickstarters, it did not make its anticipated delivery date (Dec 2016). There were a few delays, during which they made some upgrades and tweaks (all of which were VERY well communicated); they are on target to have delivery complete for the tables by end of July (accessories are a different story) and are working on a larger one.

I’ll cut right to the chase: this table is great for gaming on. Being able to fold it up and put it away when not in use is also great. It means we have a designated table for games, without it taking up a lot of space.

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Kooky Kalooki

Several years ago my husband and I stumbled upon Kooky Kalooki while we were out shopping. It says it’s a Jamaican card game, and since his mom is from Jamaica, we thought it would be a great gift for her. Despite never having heard of the game before, his mom quickly became the expert (9 times out of 10, she wins).

If you’ve ever played Phase 10, it’s a little like that, but more complicated. Everyone starts on Round 1, so everyone is dealt 9 cards and is trying to get 3 sets (more on sets later). If I’m the only one who gets 3 sets, I move on to Round 2 and get 10 cards for my next hand while everyone else is still on Round 1. So once you play a few hands, you can all be working towards different goals (the tricky part for whoever is dealing is remembering how many cards everyone gets). Now, in the rules you’re supposed to play 9 rounds or to a certain amount of points, but we play until someone completes Round 9. The way we play always takes longer.

For each Round you need a certain number of sets and/or runs:
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Ogres and Elves

Friends of mine were getting married, and even though they had a small ceremony, we wanted to get them something. They have a young daughter, so we thought we’d get them a family game. We considered Best Treehouse Ever, but it was out of stock on Amazon. I did some searching and stumbled upon the Family Pastimes games. They’re cooperative games with rules for 5-7 years old, 7-12 years old, and 12+. We really like cooperative games, but there aren’t many that are for younger age groups. I ordered one game for them, and put Ogres and Elves on my wishlist. Then Christmas came around, and Ogres and Elves was one of my gifts. I had completely forgotten about it!

First of all, it’s not exactly quality craftsmanship. The board doesn’t lay quite flat and the pieces are cheap cardboard. If that’s the sort of thing that’s going to bother you, just skip this one. I wasn’t thrilled when I was punching out the tokens (several stuck), but I still wanted to play the game.

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Bit Boxes

We have a problem. We own a lot of games (some might say too many), and despite having a limited amount of room, we keep buying more games! We’ve reorganized several times because you can only stack games so high before it becomes a serious hazard. The more classic games (like Sorry!) that we’re more likely to play when our son gets older have been put into totes in the garage, and games we rarely play are tucked out of sight in the hard-to-get-to cabinet.

It wasn’t enough.

Then we found Bit Boxes on Kickstarter, and it looked like the perfect solution.

As most game enthusiasts know, a board game box is designed to accommodate the size of the board. This means there’s often a lot of wasted space in the box. In fact very few games utilize all of the box space. This means games often take up a lot of space on our shelves, cabinets, and closets. Too much space, really. Bit Boxes help solve that problem.

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The Broken Token Organizer for 7 Wonders

Our board game collection takes up a serious amount of space. Most game boxes have an excessive amount of empty space inside (aka “slack fill”). Regardless of the reason (plastic/cardboard trays are the usual culprit), the wasted space makes the boxes bigger. It is also rare that the publisher leaves room for expansions, which means that you have your original game box, and each expansion. For our 7 wonders collection, this was a large stack of boxes. It also meant that when we wanted to play 7 Wonders, we had to get all the boxes, open each up and collect the various cards and extra bits from each one, creating a lengthy setup (and tear down) process.

Enter the The Broken Token Organizer for 7 Wonders (aka the Wondrous Organizer).

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X-Men Under Siege

This is the final entry in a seven part series on superhero games. This entry is about X-Men Under Siege.

This is a board game from the 90s, so it has that “classic” feel to it. There are 18 figurines of the different characters to choose from, and each character also has a small board listing Fighting Skill, Durability, and Intelligence and special abilities. The Fighting Skill number tells you how many dice you get to roll in a fight, Durability is how many dice you can roll to remove Hits from your character, and Intelligence determines how many cards you can have (total Intelligence of your 2 smartest characters). You begin the game with 2 characters with the chance of getting a third.

The board consists of 6 levels of the Mansion, and each level has a certain number of rooms to explore. Along one side of the board is a number line which is used for battles. You play cards to move your characters to different levels and rooms to explore. Each room has a small square which you flip over during exploration. If the square is blank, nothing happens (you keep the square since it’s worth points later). If the square says “X-Men” you get an additional character (if you don’t yet have 3). If the square says “Evil Mutant” you flip over an Evil Mutant (EM) card. You place the small square at the bottom of the number line and the level marker to the number indicated on the EM card. Some of the numbers have a red blood mark on them. If you lower the EM’s HP to or past that number, you receive a token (worth points later). When you defeat the EM, you keep the EM card (worth points later). If you manage to clear enough rooms (the level indicates how many), you have cleared that level and get the level marker (worth points later) along with any remaining room tokens. Each room square, blood token, EM card, and level marker is worth 1 point at the end of the game, and the player with the most points wins.

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Pathfinder Rise of the Runelords: Thistletop Delve

This is the play-by-play version of the previously posted story mode.
The difficulty to acquire items and weapons is increased by 2

  • Seoni – Rin figurine
  • Seelah – Saber figurine

Locations:

  • Thassilonian Dungeon – Seoni start
  • Throne Room
  • Warrens
  • Goblin Fortress – Seelah start

Seelah opening hand:

  1. Greatsword
  2. Magic Half-Plate (favored card type)
  3. Longsword +1
  4. Blessing of the Gods

Seoni starting hand:

  1. Blessing of the Gods
  2. Scorching Ray (favored card type)
  3. Blessing of Pharasma x2
  4. Blessing of Lamashtu
  5. Sage

Seelah 1st turn

Encountering Rat Swarm

Encountered Rat Swarm – Combat 8

If Rat Swarm is not defeated by at least 4, it is shuffled back into location deck.

Greatsword – d8 (+4) and 2d6, used special to discard top card for a d6 (Standard Bearer), rolled 9 (two 1s, one 2, one 5), total 13, Rat Swarm defeated

Seoni 1st turn

Encountered Potion of Glibness – Intelligence 4

Increased to 6 because of Thistletop Delve

d8, rolled 1

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