A Sunday Gauntlet

I've decided to give myself some goals tomorrow, so that this plan doesn't go completely to waste. 
1.  I intend to beat the next gym leader (#5 I think) in Pokémon X. 
2.  I intend to assemble the 3D pieces of my copy of Ogre. 
3.  During #2, I intend to try to catch up on Sleepy Hollow.  This is limited to during Ogre assembly time, though, so there's no guarantee that I'll get fully caught up.
4.  Bonus goal:  Beat the next gym leader after item #1 (so, 6th gym leader, if I recall correctly). 

I mean, I'm just really far behind on Pokémon X, so I need to get kraken!  Wait.... 

P.S.:  5.  Bonus goal:  Rock Smash until I finally find an Old Amber.  I stumbled across a hint that this might only be possible in Glittering Cave, so I'll try there.  

Spite for Spite

As I mentioned previously, I've been enjoying Sentinels of the Multiverse.
To give some context for what I'm about to describe:  The rule book actually gives difficulty ratings for the various villains.  The base game contains two difficulty-1 villains and two difficulty-3 villains.  I've beaten them all, though the difficulty-3 villains are, of course, harder.
The Rook City expansion contains two difficulty-2 villains and two difficulty-4 villains.  One of the difficulty-2 villains, Plague Rat, does seem to go into that spot, though he's closer to the 3s than to the 1s, I think.
The other difficulty-2 villain, Spite, remains unthwarted, at least in any game that I've played against him.  His Drug cards combo to make him a real pain.  The most annoying is the one drug that reduces the first damage that he takes each turn.  The way that the game normally plays, the best way to deal with that is to use a one-shot card to eat that, then use a power to do damage.  However, Spite has another card that damages a hero whenever that hero uses a power, in addition to making that player mill 5 cards.
Spite has 5 of these things.
Strangely, one of Spite's Drug cards whose name I actually remember - Demon's Kiss - is the least annoying because it merely does damage to every Hero target.  Yes, that's the good one.
In strategizing about this, I think that the best approach is actually to use a team of just 3 Heroes (the minimum), because his damage reduction card works at H-2, which would be 1.  That way, rather than trying a one-two punch, each hero could just know that their damage is -1, with a +1 on there if they happen to hit twice in one turn.
The moral of the story is that I might just have to ignore the printed difficulty ratings.  ;P

A Few Random Thoughts about Sentinels of the Multiverse

So, in a recent post, I mentioned that I've been playing a lot of Sentinels of the Multiverse lately, at least when out and about playing board games.  As you may already know, I particularly like cooperative games, but I thought that I'd mention here a few things that have been running through my brain lately. 

I like that characters aren't completely useless after they die are defeated.  This is actually common among modern board gamers:  Player elimination is generally considered a bad thing.  I do like one particular game series - The Red Dragon Inn - that requires player elimination, since it's last man standing, but, in my experience, by the time that one player is finally eliminated, the game isn't terribly far from the end.  In Sentinels, since the game-wide lose condition (some villains have additional ways to defeat the heroes) is the defeat of all of the heroes, there must be some threat that one of the heroes will go down; unless a single hero's defeat meant a loss - which wouldn't work thematically - this would have to happen.  While it doesn't seem to be a perfect solution, I can't think of anything better automatically, and it works thematically. 

I like that all villains flip, and flip differently.  They did this cool thing where every villain basically has two "forms" that (can) both come up during battle.  However, what I like even more is that each villain has a different way to flip.  In the base game alone, the four villains have either three or four (depending on how picky you are) different ways to flip:  Omnitron flips every turn (spending half the game in each form), Baron Blade flips when he's "defeated" the first time (as he jumps into his power armor), and Citizen Dawn and Grand Warlord Voss each flip when the heroes have fought their way through their mooks.  I also had a chance recently to fight against a promotional villain who flips when he gets his cloaking device out of his deck, and flips back when he loses it. 

Fanatic and Visionary:  Challenging or Underpowered?  These are two of the heroes in the base game (out of ten), and the two that have given me the most chagrin.  Visionary just dies at the slightest provocation:  Since she has no healing or damage reduction, she basically has to luck into either of two rather flimsy defenses:  One that takes a very small amount of damage for her, and another that makes her invulnerable, but prevents her from doing anything at the same time.  Fanatic, on the other hand, has a teeny bit of healing, but deals herself so much damage during the game that it's very negated.  In both cases, I'm trying to decide whether the hero is just challenging to play, or should just be played by someone who doesn't mind being defeated a third of the way in. 

Those are just a few thoughts that I thought that I'd share.  Overall, is good times. 

Defenders of the Realm

I recently got a chance to play Defenders of the Realm, and I'd like to share my thoughts briefly.

The gameplay is quite fun. I tend to enjoy challenging cooperative games, and this one doesn't disappoint.  The base game comes with a variety of adventurers, and there are several adventurer expansion packs.  Most characters have simple abilities that still add a lot to the game.  For example, I forget the Dwarf's first power, but his second power lets him re-roll failed dice against dragonkin - the hardest monsters to kill - and his third power reduces his damage per turn by 1, which, among other things, allows him to stay in a spot with 1 enemy at the end of his turn without taking any damage at all, so that he can finish them off on the next turn.  I had a lot of fun playing the Eagle Rider and questing all over the board.
Pro tip:  The movement mechanics of the cards are a lot easier to understand once you realize that the top-left symbol always ignores color.  (Really, the portal mechanics were the most confusing.)  Between the character variety and the quests, there's plenty of replay value in the base game alone.

Ascension in Brief

Recently, I got a chance to play Ascenscion:  Chronicles of the Godslayer.  It's awesome.  It's a deck-building game like Dominion, but with notable differences:

• no dead cards - Victory points (aside from ones on separate tokens) are included on most purchased cards, so it's like every card is a Harem or Nobles.  
• unlimited actions & buys - One is free to play as many cards as one has during the turn, and may similarly buy as many different cards as one can afford.  
• fluidity within a turn - One can go action-buy-action or buy-buy-action-action or whatever.  This mostly works well because of the nature of the cards included in the game.  
• no repeat attacks - Instead of purchasing attack-type cards to include in one's deck, attacks come in the form of slaying monsters.  When a monster is slain, its gives a Reward, which sometimes includes effects that hurt all other players.  Then, the monster is removed from play.  This would be the equivalent, in Dominion, of having to trash an Attack card to get its attack effect.
• 2 types of currency - Runes basically act like Coin in Dominion, but there's also Strength, used separately for killing monsters.
• The cards keep changing! - Instead of fixed stacks of 7 standard card types plus 10 stacks of cards that vary by game, the available cards throughout the game change continuously.  

I might do a more thorough review in the future; as this one stands, if you're not familiar with Dominion (or at least Thunderstone), then this probably makes no sense.  However, I stand by my review on the grounds that I'm overdue for bed.  Also, Ascension is awesome.