F@#$ Dungeon Lords

Dungeon Lords

Vlaada Chvátil has some tendencies I've noticed in several games.

First, lots of humor.
Second, simultaneous play.
Third, two main phases to the game.
Fourth, steep steep learning curves.


So, Dungeon Lords fits in for 1, 3 & 4, but it doesn't play simultaneously like Space Alert or Galaxy Trucker.


Plot:  An irreverent twist of a dungeon crawl!  You're the ruler of this cave/dungeon/castle/whatever, simply defending yourself from a scrappy group of adventurers who have set aside their differences to work together for a common cause.

Thematically it works quite well, especially with the irreverent tone and D&D inspired jokes.  It reminds me a bit of Villains by Necessity.  Eve Forward's book turned tropes on it's head, by making the stereotypical villains the protagonists in a world were Good triumphed over Evil one too many times, throwing the world catastrophically out of balance.

I digress.  I bring up VbN, because it was also really really funny.

Mechanics:

Woo boy.  Where to start?

Ok, the game round is called a year.  All year you plan and recruit and plot and intimidate locals and so on, waiting for the adventuring party to stumble upon your lair.

A year has 4 seasons; you build in spring, summer and fall, and fight in the winter.  Fall, spring and summer are your build phase, and winter is your resolution.

So here's the board.

so those varying colored rectangular trios?  That's where you play you minions

First row:  Get food, adjust your evil reputation, dig tunnels, and mine for gold.

Second row:  Get imps, get traps, get monsters, add a room to your dungeon.

So you get 3 minions per season, and it's worker placement.  You place a minion in the top most available slot, then when every has played all their minions you resolve what they do.

BUT WAIT!  You announce your intentions of playing a minion with a action card (secret until everyone has chosen), but two of your choices are always blocked.  There's really no easy words to describe how this works, so through the magic of MS PAINT....

so the red circle highlights the action cards you can't play (recruit monsters and adjust reputation).  The entire table knows you're locked out and won't be playing there.

Now this is important, because there's only 3 spots per action type and it's a 4 player game.

Again, this is important.  Because figuring out what your friends are gonna do is pretty much the game, so knowing that Blue is locked out of monsters and reputation means that no matter what, you can safely play on monsters and reputation.

This changes turn to turn...

The hot pink circle is where you arrange your moves to be made.  Resolve them Left to Right.  Slot 1, you bring back to your hand, and slots 2  & 3 move up to the locked area, replacing the previous locked actions.

So you may be asking yourself, well, why wouldn't I just keep playing recruit monsters (or whatever) in slot 1 so I can play that every turn?  

And I'm very glad you asked that.

In general, it's better to not be the first one into the action area.  They're all balanced differently, but slots 2 and 3 will either get you MOAR stuff, gets you a better selection, or is overall less risky.

So the actions:

Get Food:  Some monsters need food to recruit them.  Also once you recruit them, they will require upkeep, which would be more food.  It's also used to recruit imps and a couple traps need food.

Better Your Evil Repuation:  Some monsters make you moar evil by recruiting them and the better Get Food plays cost you an evil.  Reputation matters for two reasons.  At the end of the year when the adventurers line up to invade your lair, the tougher ones go to the moar evil person.  Also if you pass a certain threshold, a Paladin notices you and leads the party.  Paladins are the biggest, meanest father rapers of them all!

Oh yeah, sometimes you can peak at "spell card" when you play here.  Spell cards are combat events that probably hose you if they happen.

Dig Tunnels:  Expand your underground lair by assigning imps to dig some tunnels.  There's rules on how you can make additions, but this is already going to be a long ass post.  Read the f@#$ing rules if you're that curious.

Mine Gold:  Send some imps to mine gold in your tunnels.   You spend gold in a lot of ways, but your biggest expenses will be rooms, traps and taxes.  Rooms and Taxes are explained down a couple paragraphs, but taxes occur twice a game.  Failure to pay all you owe earns you -3 VP.  A winning score is less than 30, so taxes are kind of a deal.

Get Imps:   Besides digging tunnels and mining gold, imps also work a room in your dungeon.  Explained further with rooms.

Get Traps:  AT LAST!  We arrive at something that actually thwarts those meddling kids and that stupid dog too!  You acquire traps here, there's like a dozen of them that do various kinds of mayhem.

Get Monsters:  Pay their purchase cost which is food and/or evil year 1, and exponentially moar complex year 2.

Get A Room:  This one is tricky.  You resolve in 3-2-1 order, or last to place their minion there gets first choice.

Slot 3, pay a gold and buy a room.
Slot 2, pay a gold and buy a room.
Slot 1, get a room for free.

But, there's only ever two rooms.  So getting into slot 1 is a risk.  If it pays off, FREE ROOM!  If not, WASTED ACTION.

In year 1, all rooms are some kind of extra benefit you spend imps to activate.  Spend 3 imps and get [1 resource] is pretty typical.

In year 2, rooms will either give you end game VP's or some benefit for fighting in them.

There's also a couple of paragraphs on where you can and cannot play rooms, much like tunnels.

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So you play 3 minions on those slots 3 times before the adventurers come.  In between seasons some book keeping type stuff happens.

- some adventurers queue up to fight everyone.
- previously queued adventurers get assigned to each player
- you can spend unplayed imps on rooms
- taxes and pay day.  You pay taxes on your dungeon and upkeep on recruited monsters.  Bad things happen if you don't.
- maybe something else that I'm overlooking.  tee hee.

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Winter is Coming.

Combat is one big hot mess.  I'm not going to explain all the details here.

Every monster has abilities documented with a shorthand code.  Like a standard attack only hits the guy in front.  But some monsters can attack anywhere.  That gets a special symbol.  Some monsters attack everyone.  That's another symbol.

I've only played twice, but I'm intimately familiar with Race for the Galaxy, so sometime in the distant future, this short hand will make sense to me.

Each adventurer also has an ability.  Rogues lessen damage from traps, mages set the spells off you failed to peak at when you had a chance (see about 9 paragraphs above...), clerics heal damage from traps and monsters, fighters shove their way in front, and paladins do all of the above.

Again, this is overwhelming, but I've played RftG enough to teach it comfortably.  I will overcome!

So there's two places to fight.  Tunnels and Rooms.

Tunnels you get 1 trap and 1 monster.
Rooms you get 2 monsters and 1 trap, but you have to pay a gold to use the trap.

The combat timeline goes like this:

1. Traps go off, assign damage, lessening it if there's a rogue in the party.  
2. Check for a fast magic spell.  It's a symbol on the event card you didn't look at when you had a chance.  If it's fast magic and are facing the proper amount of magi, it occurs and bad things happen.
3. Monsters Attack.
4. Check for slow magic.  It's a different symbol on the event card you didn't bother to look at when you had a chance.
5. Cleric's heal damage done this round.  Couple caveats.  If you kill an adventurer, he can't get healed.  Also Clerics can't heal legacy damage.  Anything that makes it through the round sticks for ever.
6. Fatigue and conquer.  So remember that event card?  It has a fatigue rating on it.  Assign damage based on that.  If there are any surviving heroes, they conquer that area of your dungeon, rendering it useless.
7. Repeat for 4 rounds of this fun.  Well not if you TPK.  Then you can skip rounds

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Scoring

This is another points salad game.  Literally everything you do effects your final score.

You get points for defeating adventurers and paladins.  Regular adventurer is 2 points and a paladin is 5.

You get points for having unconquered rooms (not tunnels.)

Some unconquered rooms get you additional VPs.

Then there's series of ~8 things that can earn you additional points.  Like most tunnels, most rooms, most imps, most monsters, etc etc.

You get docked points for having conquered areas in your dungeon and failing to pay your taxes.

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Tactics?

Ok I've played twice and won once, but that win required two trips into the way back machine and a couple crazy lucky room draws.  I'm still pretty much Zoolander at this game.

but...

Pay really really close attention to the locked out cards.  Have a really good reason to risk being action blocked.  One, maybe two wasted actions can be overcome, but too many more than that and the adventurers are gonna woop you.  It's way way better to settle for something sub-optimal than get denied.

If you are forced into a choice between paying taxes and not getting a monster or using a really good trap, well you're probably screwed anyways.  But get the monster/trap.  Stopping the adventuring party will be worth more than the -3.

Done correctly, fighting the paladin is a viable strategy.

The tunnel room might be unbalanced.  It's cheap and directly effects 3 VP items.  Unconquered rooms, tunnel king, and room king.  There's probably a trade off with taxes, taxes are based on how big your dungeon is.  But in both games I've played, the guy who had this room won.


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Review:

So far so good.  I think there's plenty of good choices to keep it interesting for quite a while.  Sure it can go stale with me like the twice mentioned Race for the Galaxy, but I think we'll get plenty of replay out of this game.

That's the news and I am outta here.

F@$ AquaSphere

AquaSphere

Plot:  Back Off Man, I'm A Scientist.

You and you're competitors are sharing an undersea research facility.  You need to do the most research...never mind.  Thematically this is a threadbare setting only used so you don't have to call items "generic point gathering apparatus number one".

Gameplay:  AquaSphere is a worker placement "point salad" game.

INTERLUDE - POINT SALAD

A points salad game is a game where every move earns you points in a variety of ways.
Named that, because game play is like working your way through a salad bar.

 Stefan Feld, the designer, is notorious for these types of games.  Castles of Burgundy is his most successful (per BGG's rankings), but he has 10 games in the top 300.  I haven't (and won't) break down the top 300 for a stupid blog post that 6 people read, but 10 sure seems like a lot.

I kinda despise the points salad label, especially if it's used as a pejorative.  There's plenty of games where every action furthers your game that aren't labeled "points salad" and investing in an economy to later clean up in victory points instead of just always earning points is semantics.  You're still searching for optimization.

END INTERLUDE

The game board consists of six pieces centered around a central core.   Each game piece is similar but has slight differences (the wild card robot changes).

So you have two main actions, ready a robot or place a robot.

There's 7 types of robots (color coded)

- black robots are miners, they acquire a rock asset.
- blue robots are submariners, they acquire submarines.
- green robots build lab upgrades
- red robots acquire bonus cards
- pink robots shoot squids
- yellow robots acquire "time".  Time is better described as action points.  More on that later.
- white robots are wild cards, they train an additional robot of the above 5 colors based on your location when you play them.

Readying a robot is mostly moving up a tech tree.   By picking a path you eliminate some robots from your pool, so planning ahead is important.  The tree changes round by round, so the same choices won't remain for the entire game.  You can also spend three "time" to ready any robot you wish.

oh yeah, minor blip.  You can only have two readied robots at one time.

Playing a robot is, well putting a robot into your current area.  You're allowed to move around first, which costs time.  The robot goes onto a board spot and can be displaced into a holding pen.  The robots further stay in the holding pen until enough (6?  I think?) enter then pen, and then may return.

When a pen is filled to capacity, duplicate player's robots return to their tableau into the unready position costing you points.  Don't take this personally, it will happen and it will happen multiple times a game.

You're also capped on efficiency by your lab.  Let's say you play a squid shooting robot, or a mining robot with your basic lab.  If there's 3 squids or rocks, you can only take 2.  So you need to upgrade!

Subs are also complex.  You start with one.  You have to pay time to build more (and the resource investment ends up being a lot for anything more than a handful of subs), but they increase your time income and "robot in play scoring cap"


Scoring

This is complex and interwoven.  Take a quick bathroom break if you need to.

So literally everything earns you points.  The simple act of readying a robot earns you a point.

Shooting squids earns you triangle points immediately based on how many squids you shoot that action.

Buying subs and cards earns you points immediately based on what round it is (late game acquisition earns you more victory points than earlier).

Subs also increase your "robots in play" cap for end of round scoring, and if you build 6 subs (maximum) you earn end of game bonus points.

Cards can give you some VP engine.  Really, cards are way beyond the scope of this review.  They give something that helps you.  Like a VP engine, a free robot a turn till the end of the game, or a one time resource bonus.

Yellow robots acquire time, which is end game points.

Miners get rocks; rocks score triangle points during end of round scoring but you also have to spend one (or a readied robot so generally a rock) to pass periodic scoring barriers.

Lab upgrades make your lab better (MOAR squid shooting, cards or rocks!) and/or send out additional robots onto the game board, possibly displacing control of that area.  

The robot displaces to an area labelled A-F.  That letter is important, because at end of game you get triangle points for each letter in your lab.  Additionally, you get MOAR points for upgrading your lab 5 times.

White robots are just ready an additional robot.  I said just, but this is actually pretty nice.  It keeps you in the round longer and can be used to duplicate an action (not a trivial consideration.)

At end of round you earn some income.  Timing is important, because part of income phase might be readying a robot from a card, and readied robots score points.

So you score for readied robots and robots in play and rocks on hand.  It's important to note that you score rocks first, before spending them on barriers.    You also score for area control.  If you control more areas than anyone else you get some points.  If you control an area with live squids, you lose some points.

After scoring you reset the tech tree and populate the game board with time, rocks and squids,

End of game is more of the same, except now you don't have to spend rocks to pass barriers.


Review

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(I think you'll find I'll use that emoticon a lot)

Ok, mostly positive.  I've played this game a half dozen times and am still intrigued.  That puts AquaSphere in the top 25% of games I've played.

I just have doubts about the long term replay.

Lab Upgrades are super dooper important.  The end of game points are really lucrative.  The additional robot launches are really lucrative.  The game play upgrades might be lucrative but vary pretty wildly in actual effects.

Rocks are really important too.  Paying for a barrier with a robot costs you both actions and points.  Plus, rocks score triangle points, which can be LOTS!

Shooting squids, getting cards and time are circumstantial.  They all could be good paths or depending on how your game is going, they can be ignored.  Everyone will probably do each of these a little bit regardless.

Subs are not worth the long term effort.  It's pretty important to a second one early.  It's not an entirely bad move to place a third.  But anything after that you have some harsh diminishing returns.  In practice the additional time income and increased scoring cap is not worth what you spent to get them.

So in a "points salad" game with 6 typed plays, 2 are must do's and 1 is an ignore after early, almost trivial progress.  So, like half the games actions are dictated by that.  I'm not sure I like that, I have to play more to make up my mind.

F@#$ Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Thar be spoilers ahead!  Don't read if you don't want anything spoiled!

The final word first!

I liked, but did not love this movie.  There's quite a a bit to like, but I know of people who are on their 4th viewing, and I am completely dumbfounded.

The Good:

Well, this is probably the most important part, but the new characters were good.  I liked the concept of Finn the defected Storm Trooper, and if he said some hokey lines and was altogether goofy, whatever.  His debut was a good start, I look forward to seeing more of him.  Same with Rey and Poe.

I'm going to praise, praise, praise, the direction of Kylo Ren.  He might be the best villain the Star Wars films have dreamed up.   It's certainly arguable that Darth Vader was more interesting, but he didn't really get interesting until the very end of Empire.  I love everything about Kylo Ren, including the tantrums and the inability to defeat the good guys in the film's climax (something that has been criticized in various forms by the nerds).

The backgrounds and action shots were also terrific.  Early in the movie there's a scene with a wrecked Star Destroyer on a desert planet.  And it's a gorgeous back ground.  Later in the movie, there's a simultaneous ground assault and air combat scene.  It's busy, but not overly so, and more to the point, there's a reasonable explanation on why that shot was necessary, beyond "Boy this would look cool!"

The Bad:

The over all story was a retelling of A New Hope.  This went beyond parallels, and dove straight into tropes.

Now maybe that's ok.  But, after about the 6th or 7th eye roll it did start to annoy me.  To the point, that the huge surprising spoiler...wasn't.   Kylo Ren kills Han Solo about 20 minutes from the climax.  By that point, Han had completely taken on the Obi Wan role of mentor to the new kids.   So when he walked onto the platform to confront the big bad guy, I knew that he was dead.

and The Perplexing:

Zomg, at the nerd criticism.

#1:  Kylo being too big of a wimp to defeat Finn/Rey at the end.  Jeebus, get a life.  There was, no, I repeat, no way he was going to kill the new characters at the end of movie one!

#2:  Rey is a Mary Sue.  For those that don't know, Mary Sue is a super competent young woman.  Great at absolutely everything.  Mary Sue, also is more of a young adult/fan fiction trope; not a movie cliche'.

Now, maybe there are Mary Sues entering movies.  I can't say for sure having no interest in watching the Hunger Games or the Divergent series, but both of those were Young Adult novels first.

Now is Rey a Mary Sue?  Maybe.   But more to the point, I don't care.  The movie, in my opinion, adequately explained why she's good at fixing stuff.  Every named character in the Star Wars universe is a crack shot and pilot.  And someone in a movie named The Force Awakens was going to be a force user.  So there.

So if this is your primary criticism, you had better find a way to hate on James Bond, Jason Bourne, or pretty much every other super spy ever.

The Legacy:

If you look at this movie as a Star Wars relaunch, it was very effective.   It does have me caring about Star Wars again.  The primary characters are intriguing and I am very much looking forward to the new release.