I know, I know, it’s been weeks since we’ve posted our supposedly weekly Scrying. It’s definitely not an issue with the writers. They’ve been submitting their scryings through the slot on my door every Friday just as they should. I just keep running out of time and, by the time I find myself in front of my trusty laptop, the weekend is already nearing an end. I vowed to not make the same mistake this week, so I carved out time specifically to make sure the Scrying arrived on Friday night. Jump past the break to see if I made good on my vow.
Hollow Knight
I bought Hollow Knight on my Switch yesterday after it dropped below $10, far earlier than I was expecting. My roommate played through it earlier this year, and seeing some of the late game sequences initially scared me off, mainly because I get frustrated with games too easily. But, after hearing more and more acclaim for Hollow Knight, I remembered that I also had a similar apprehension with Celeste, which ended up being one of the best platformers I’ve played. “Maybe Hollow Knight will ease me in, like Celeste,” I thought. Then I got to the first boss in the game and immediately got my teeth kicked in. It’s gonna be a rough go, at least for a while, but I’m determined to find out why people are claiming it as one of the best “Metroidvanias” ever. Tall words, considering the subgenre’s namesakes.
-Tanner Hendrickson
Legendary Encounters: Alien and Phantom Doctrine
Hello there, friends.
This weekend, I’m taking a leaf out of my fellow writer’s books and feeling the physical fiber of Upperdeck Games’ fabric. Game over, man. It’s Legendary Encounters: Alien.
Being sadly sans friends within a convenient radius makes boardgaming or card-gaming a tad hard. So, when this rocked up on my doorstep, I was thrilled. And remain so. Base game, six hundred cards deep, big old rubber-backed game mat; the four films explored through a deck-building mechanic and themed decks. The art is lovely, too.
This should be a good old time. If you’ve had any experience with this edition, or any of the other Legendary Encounters games, I’d love to know any thoughts and tips.
Otherwise, it’ll be more Phantom Doctrine [I’m just glad you didn’t review it for us. Not sure I could handle a score that didn’t mesh with the competition -ed.] and a return to Westwood’s old Blade Runner adventure game, because if there’s one running theme this weekend, it is dark nights and rain-slicked locales.
Have a fine one!
-Alex Connolly
- Legendary Encounters: Alien for tabletop via Amazon, $43
- Phantom Doctrine for PC via Steam, $36 (on sale)
- Phantom Doctrine for PC via GoG, $36 (on sale)
Hop on Pop
[This is actually last week’s scrying for Tof, but it was too good to let lie. I’m hoping they’re back up on their feet, though -ed.]
Tof is sick as a dog this weekend, so they’ll mainly be playing “try to sleep while small children jump up and down on you.,” better known in the format popularized by legendary American game designer Theodore Geisel Seuss as “Hop on Pop.”
-Tof Eklund
Bearbarian and holedown
[This is actually Nick’s scrying from 2 weeks ago. You see what problems laziness causes? Hmm? Anyway, he’s still playing these, so on we go -ed.]
I’ve been playing a lot of Barbearian on my iPad. It’s a real-time combat game with some explosive and very fun action that reminds me a lot of Diablo III [never heard of it -ed.]. You’re a pissed off berserker that got abducted by some weirdos and now have to best the various challenges thrown at you while trying to figure out how to get home. The game progresses through a series of portals to different worlds where you face vast hordes of creatures looking to kill you. The upside is this sets up some massive charge attacks that send the corpses of said foes flying in all directions, which is quite gratifying. The game’s great and is made even better by the ability to micromanage its difficulty (speed, loot value, and damage received) and user interface.
My iPhone game of choice at the moment is holedown. It’s a ball shooting game by the dev that made rymdkapsel. You are a space miner looking for precious metals within asteroids, moons, planets, and so on. You fire balls to get to your loot and as you collect it you’re able to unlock upgrades that help you mine even better. It’s a clever idea for a well-trod genre and is compellingly executed.
-Nick Vigdahl
- Barbearian for iOS Universal, $9
- Barbearian for PC via Steam, $15
- holedown for iOS Universal, $4
- holedown for Android, $4
18xx or, maybe, Brass? And some D&D
Yes, I’m the most boring damn gamer in the world, which means, this weekend, we’ll be playing 18xx again. Which one? I’m not sure, but we only have 3 guys in the group able to show up tonight so my guess is 1846, 1889, or 18MEX. All three work well with 3-players and have a shorter playing time. By short I mean 4-6 hours instead of the usual 6+ hours. We’re not the quickest gamers, so a well-oiled group would probably finish a bit quicker, but we like to enjoy our train-induced backstabbing like a fine Scotch: sipped, not gulped. I recently received my Kickstarted version of the new Brass as well. It’s super pretty, but Brass works best with 4, so I’m not sure we’ll get it on the table. 18xx is the safer bet.
In other news, I will be playing some D&D this weekend, too, via Roll20. We’ve moved into Bryn Shander in our Against the Giants campaign and I can’t wait to pit my kids and their friends against some super hard-hitting giant action. Should be fun.
In my spare time….oh, who am I kidding. That’s all the gaming I’ll get in this weekend.
-Dave Neumann
I’m mostly running around old Rainbow Six games in Lone Wolf mode, with levels full of tangos and very limited ammo, so it’s a little bit tense. Still digging through Cultist Simulator and kind of back into an Into the Breach groove too.
Congrats to @AlexConnolly on LE: Aliens. Despite some of the ‘special’ art, it’s a really good game. When I bought it, sleeving was a must, as the finish on the cards was not very hardy. You can mix and match characters, you don’t have to stick with the character sets for each film’s scenario.
After several years of hunting, I finally found one of my grail games, which I rate very highly indeed.
I shall be getting it played ASAP. A game of deceit, treachery, blackmail, theft, deception, espionage, and manipulation. I love it. Combines the kind of social deduction shenanigans you get with Dead of Winter/Homeland but where every player’s real motives are hidden.
First stop: Sleevetown.
This is going to sound utterly banal, but how do you sort your cards in the box? By movie deck or card type?
@AlexConnolly
I briefly owned Legenday Encounters Aliens. Before playing I sleeved all my cards in green and sorted them. This took roughly three decades. I don’t remember how I sorted them. I played a game with my wife; she knows nothing about the movies and I am a fan. We both enjoyed the game. I particularly liked how alien cards came in to play face down; the added explore mechanic is much preferable to the vanilla Marvel version. When the game was over, I had to re-sort everything, which took a few years off my life. I got an offer for a trade on BGG shortly after and it was too good to pass us, so Alien left me rather quickly. I do think the game is really good but I also hated the set up and tear down. I still own Marvel Legendary and some expansions but it never gets played for the same reason. I hope you enjoy!
This weekend I will be playing F1 2018 on my PS4, which just released today. Not looking forward to Australia to start the season; I’m terrible on that circuit.
I’ve busted out prison architect on iPad after missing it first time round. There’s a bit of a learning curve, but the free trial gave me plenty of gameplay to decide if I wanted to go to the trouble of learning the game.
I’m enjoying the design aspects, and the emergent stories. I built a new supermax style prison block to try and control my high risk inmates, and what do you know, someone got shanked to death on the first morning. Looks like we’ve got a top dog that no one is gonna mess with. Off to solitary they go.
At the bottom of each card, IIRC, in the world’s tiniest type, it gives you the group for that card for your sorting pleasure. Some decks you go by card type (e.g. strike deck), and some it’s by film. Certain film decks also have additional cards that go into the other decks, but that’s for when you play. Hilariously, some of those additional cards are identical to some of the generic cards, the only diff is the text on the bottom.
Yeah, I thought I’d be ready to roll for a game the eve I received it. What a fool. What an absolute fool.
I’m at Dragonflight Con in Bellevue, WA, this weekend, so lots of boardgaming.
Highlight today was Palace of Mad King Ludwig.
Wasteland Express Delivery Service bright and early tomorrow (Gulp - I mean today) and who knows what else?
Lost by $200. Two hundred fucking dollars.
The third place guy was $2000 behind us. One day, I will win an 18xx game.
I’m back to playing Into the Breach after the Mac release. That’s most of my gaming time.
For short bursts on the phone, it’s either Meteorfall (the Demon update, currently in beta, makes a good game better), Ganz Schon Clever or Noch mal (Noch mal’s the better app, but I think Ganz Schon Clever is the better game), or, for some stupid reason, Legend of Solgard.
Moral victory is yours.
Played the brand spanking new expansion for Time Stories last night (Friday) (yes, the expansion came out on Friday–we are totally addicted over here) Brotherhood of the Coast (it’s pirates!) and got in one run. So we have not finished it. But so far, so great. All the usual rules apply, but the new ones include sailing and upgrading your own ship, hiring crew, and searching for barrels of rum to sell. All while trying to investigate why 4 other agents did not come back from their mission to the same era.
As one of our group said last night, I feel like the game ruins every other game for me because there’s truly nothing else like it.
Currently having fun with Horus Heresy: Legions the poor man’s Hearthstone in Warhammer40k (actually Warhammer 30k, since the Horus heresy plays 10k years earlier during the very formative Horus rebellion)
It has most of the stuff you could expect from Hearthstone or Elder Scroll Legends but with more SPAIIZ MUHRINES!
it is a bit rough on the edges but since I am heavily invested in the source material I like it way more than the overpolished turd that is HS.
Also, the HH:L version of HS’s Arena (I think its called arena) is way more forgiving than the HS one. in HS you are preparing the deck from random cards (or your collection) cannot remember.
in HH:L it is a choice from 4 Commanders (2 of each side of the conflict) and then you are presented with 3 Decks per Commander which you then can take into the Arena until you lose 3 times (or win 12 games)
I like that wayyyyy more than the old HS model. The balancing may be a bit rough around the edges but since everyone is using the same preconstructed decks / commanders its more luck and skill based and not based on theorycrafting and wallet.
The wallet strategy can be used in the standard battles where you are going against some other person with your purchased/won/ looted cards.
Currently I am showered with Cards and Coins from Dailies and Achievments…and the Purchase options are fair in my book.
TLDR:
Not as polished or expansive as the current HS, but also way more streamlined, faster(?) matches and fun if you are a Warhammer 40k Lore Nerd
PS:
I wish there was a countdown for my round timer…I know its 30 secs or so but only the last 10 secs are counted down and result in hectic panic…since not all cards are known by heart (also special abilities from cards which seemingly every other card has)
Still Jet-Backpack deep into Horus Heresy: Legions and still loving it. Especially the themed focus each Legion and Warmaster (hero) have. Which can be good and bad but in the nearly-ragequit moments I try to remember the game uses the tried and true Rock-Paper-Scissors-Meltabomb-Orbital Bombardment model…which can work both ways.
For example, the Salamanders Deck is all about being some tough-as-nails Mothecough with many units having the Survivor X ability by default, which revives the Units after death with X amount of HP…in a game where the lifespan of units is seldom more than 0-2 rounds another round can be godsent…or binding another tough unit of the enemy to really kill the unit for good.
The Death Guard flavor is Poison which kills enemy units who got hurt by this unit after their next turn…even big bad Tanks arfarfarf so the Salamandars are a bit weak against Death Guard Poison due to Poison destroying Units and bypassing the Survivor ability.
Another nasty example was fighting against a Chaos Legion Unit which specialized in destroying Vehicles and Structures…and my starting Hand of Raven Guard cards was filled with Landspeeder, Tanks and fortified Bunkers @.@;
but I still won that game…I will remember that game forever…bad for my blood pressure the whole 15 minutes but I won…
I like it when games do that.
Are you in a lodge? I’m not sure it’s worth using my event tickets until I’m in a lodge.
I’m giving this game a go and I expect it might get a week or twos play. It’s more of the same hearthstone/MTG but it’s done fairly well, and of course the theme is what got it’s hook into me.
Hearthstone and MTG are very different, though. I fact, I’m pretty sure my TCG spectrum has those games at each end; the closer to MTG the greater my interest.
It’s definitely a hearthstone clone on that scale then.
When I’m thinking of TCGs I’m thinking of MTG, spellfire, vampire:tes (we used to call that jihad, times change), and rage. That’s why in my head I bracket MTG and hearthstone together as I see hearthstone being inspired or derived from MTG more than the others.
I am in a Lodge, a very small 2 man Lodge called “Raven Guard” …guess my favorite Legion heh…
The Player contributes points to his lodge during Events. The Events seem to run two weeks and based on the effort/success every lodge member will get a chest at the end of the event season which increasing rewards.
Not much more you can do with lodges right now aside from Lodge Chat and practice matches between Lodge members (without rewards just for fun)
If anyone is interested in joining my Lodge send me a Message here on Stately Play with your online handle and I sent you an Invite.
The Event battles are fun as I said earlier preconstructed decks with specific flavors. I am in constant need of tickets.
While I am ok with buying themed decks I am interested in for the hefty price of 11.00€ I am not planning to spend any other real money on the game since gold/gems/tickets can be earned (slowly) …I am an adamant opponent on consumable IAP
Definitely a HS clone. Not at all related to MTG.