After the Miscatonic Museum we visited a Fortress

Yesterday we continued with our Arkham Horror LCG campaign.
According to schedule we entered the Miscatonic Museum in the third scenario of the Dunwhich Legacy campaign. As always, to avoid spoilers scroll down to the [END OF SPOILERS!!!] tag.

This scenario kept us on our heels, as they is only one enemy to fight in this scenario, but this fiend comes back again and again and every time he does come back he becomes stronger (even gets massive at some point). We collected the two clues at the Entrance and got the attention of the guard that let us in and tagged along with Skids (played by me). We struggled a bit with getting the clues from the Security office, as Skids is the best investigator with just Lore 3.... But Flashlights, Streetwise and last but not least Duke helped a lot with this. The first Exhibit Hall we explored forces every Investigator that enters it to discard two cards at random. Zoey lost her last cards by this effect and then drew an Arcane Barrier for a treachery card, locking her in.

Damn Arcane Lock!

Surely Agnes could free her, but doing so she would also loose two cards at random. Finally Ashcan Pete was able to enter the Exhibit Hall, discarding the Arcane Lock, only to put another into the same location in the following Mythos Phase... Unfortunatly for us I drew an Elder Spawn token for a skill test just when I had no Assets left other than the poor museum guard and so we got a gravestone token for our chaos bag. Yay!
The Hunter kept coming back and got pretty big pretty fast. We were able to fight it off every time, but it got harder with each defeat and we knew, that if we would loose this scenario, it wouldn't be because the Agenda would running out, but because at some point we wouldn't be able to deal with this shadow anymore!
Luckily for us the fourth Exhibition Hall was the right one! The Hunter engaged us (gaining his thrid token in the process, getting massive) and hindered us to investigate the location. Unfortunatly we had to collect all eight clues from it to win the scenario.

The found the right hall!

Zoey had a hard time dealing with the beast, as the most of her skill cards were discarded by multiple treachery cards. But she managed to hit the beast with her Machete at least once.

Zoey facing the Hunting Horror in the Restricted Hall

Agnes tried to shrivel the Hunter, but also without success, but ultimately inflicted one point of damage because of the retaliation of the hunter. Well... what should I say? Desperate times justify desperate measures. Skids was standing in the Museum Hall and threw a package of dynamite into the Exhibit Hall, inflicting 3 points of damage to friend and foe alike. This almost killed Agnes, but definatly killed the Hunter. Now it was time to get those clues! In the following Mythos phase we prayed that the Hunter would not come back and got lucky. Then, using all tools we had available (and last but not least the upgraded Rite of Seeking from Agnes) we collected all clue tokens in theRestricted Hall and therefore found the Necronomicon. Then we argued what we should do with it. In the end we decided to destroy this unholy book (which hurted me a lot, as I would liked to have it for my Skids deck). Everybody gained 4 XP and nobody received a trauma! Zoey finally got her shotgun and Agnes aquired the second updated Shrivelling. Pete took a Burglary and Scrapper and for Skids I chose the second Sure Gamble.
Next time we hop on the Essex Country Express!

[END OF SPOILERS!!!]

After we finished our game of Arkham Horror, we played Fast Forward: FORTRESS by Friedemann Friese. When you open the bos you see a deck of cards and a Zip bag. That's it. No rulebooklet, nothing. And that's the charm of the game: You learn the rules by playing it! Every now and then when you draw a card, there is a rule text on it, which is depüloyed in the middle of the table and these rules are now in effect. The rest of the cards are used to play the actual game. I was a bit suspicious, but the concept of the game really works!  Fast Forward: FORTRESS is a fast paced card game, where a single games lasts for 5-15 minutes. I won't spoil any rules, as you should discover them for yourself (which is part of the fun), but if you like fast paced games I can definatly recommend this one! We played five games and are roughly through half of the deck.
After you have finished the whole deck, you can restore the right order and experience the whole thing with other people (or the same ones)!

A shadow skulks through Mordor

I know, I know... I'm quite late to this party!
And yes... the sequel is already out for a while. But I bought this game 13 month ago and I wanted to finally play it before I dedicate myself to other Videogames (and man... I have a lot of them in my gaming backlog!).

For those of you, thast don't know what I'm talking about: I'm actually playing Shadow of Mordor on my PS4. As far as I can tell this game has nothing to do with any of the LotR books, but plays in the same scenario, some time between The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. An ranger from Gondur, who held watch on the Black Gate got killed together with his family by the Black Hand of Sauron. But he didn't found peace, but is trapped in a shadow world, where he meets an old elven spirit, which is also trapped in here (conjured by the Black Hand). They are certain, that they have to avenge their deaths, so that they finally can find peace, so they combine forces and start their search for the servants of the Dark Lord.
On their way they slay uncountable amounts of orcs and even take part in the power struggles of their captains until they finally find clues where their tormentors can be found.

Shadow of Mordor is an action RPG and it satisfies a lot of things I like in this genre: Combos, fast paced combat, an upgrade system for weapons and skills (even if it only small, but you take what you can get) and a good story, which runs a bit in the background (well.. at least how I play it). What I really like is, that all locations of collectible items are shown on the map and must only find the spot, where to pick them up. And even this is a lot easier than in other games of this genre (e.g. Tomb Raider, where you have to make big detours sometimes, just to get to the spot where the shiny object of your desire is located).
I'm already somewhat into the game, having collected all collectibles and finished 29 of 30 side missions to upgrade my weapons. I've done 18 of the 20 Main missions (no spoiler, these statistics can be seen In-Game right from the beginning) and at the moment I take preparations to get the Platinum Trophy for this game, which is quite easily obtained. Well, at least if you take a look at the trophy table. There is one that I'm not certain if it really is that easy and three others, that take some prep-time, but the game is fun enough that I'm willing to try to get them, even if I'm told myself that I would stop playing for trophies, now that I have a lot less time to play than before the birth of my son. But honestly: (and now comes a bit of a spoilerish thing, so if you want to avoid that, just skip to the next paragraph): Branding the 5 Captains, which are the bodyguards of a warchief, so that these are loyal to you know and when the cowardly warchief finally appears, after you laid waste to his stronghold or killed enough of his followers let all his "bodyguards" turn on him sounds just too much fun to not do it!

Well, Isaid that my gamingbacklog is somewhat huge. That is true! I won't start to write about my Steam-Library (well, almost every dedicated videogamer who has a Steam account knows what I'm talking about!), but also on my PS4 there are a lot of games that want to be played!
The next game I will definatly tackle is Final Fantasy XII - The Zodiac Age. This is a remastered version of the old PS2 FFXII game, which I (and as a FF-Fanboy I'm ashamed to say this) never finished! So I still have a debt to settle with this game. But after that... well, december was kind to me: Not only because of christmas, but it's also the month of my birthday and some friend of mine and I have the tradition of secret santa for New Years Eve. And I got three games I had on my list for quite some time: Elex, Nier: Automata and The GotY Edition of The Withcer III! Also, I still haven't played Resident Evil 7 (which also got a GotY edition... 1,5 years ago this wouldn't have happened to me!) so there are a lot of games that are waiting for me (beside all those other games, especially some nice KS-games that got delivered last year...). And 2018 will come with some more games, that I have to play, starting with the new Gods of War for PS4.

So, also videogame wise 2018 will be a busy year for me!

Something strange is going on in the Arkham University

Hi all!


Finally we were able to continue our Arkham Horror Campaign.
For those of you that don't know what the Arkham Horror LCG is: It is a narrative card game that plays in the Mythos by H.P.P. Lovecraft. Each player (one or two (or up to four with two core sets)) represents an investigator in the 1920's. All investigators had encountered or experienced something strange in the recent past. So strange that they can't help themself but believe in the supernatural, or at least investigate it.
The deck of cards each player has represents the skills, abilities and tools the investigator owns. But each investigator also has his own weakness, which can probably hinder him or her during gameplay. The main aspect of Arkham Horror is not a single scenario, but a campaign of eight scenarios, which could be lenghtened by some available side scenarios. In each scenario in a campaign the investigators learn more and more about whats going on around them, solve puzzles and fight enemies, both mundane and supernatural. Between scenarios investigators may spent earned XP to buy new cards to strenghten and develop their decks. But the world is full of dangers and if an investigator gets too much hurt, or if he/she sees too many horrible things that let them doubt their mind, they can get a trauma, which weakens them for future scenarios.


So, back to our playthrough: We played the scenario "Extracurricular Activity".
Again, if you have not played this scenario by now and still want to play it and therefore want to avoid any spoilers scroll down until you see the [END OF SPOILERS!!!] tag.


We spent our XP's and setup the game. Zoey improved their Beat Cops and also got some extra ammunition for her .45 caliber, Agnes aquired the Book of Shadows and a Bind Monster spell, Skids got the upgraded version of de Luca and Ashcan Pete... I totally forgot what he got! Shame on me!
So we started the game and while the other three investigators went to the library and the Humanities Building, I thought that Skids should go to the Students Union to maybe ask some of the students if they have seen Prof. Rice. That was a bad mistake! While the others got some strange happeneings and encountered a Whippoorwill, Skids was enganged by a Yithian Observer. My bad luck of the first round, where I only found one clue, because a drew an autofail continued when I had to spend two actions to flee from the abomination (drew a -4 the first time). Time went by and we collected clues left and right. Then we got the info to look for the janitor. Last time I played this scenario I managed to shuffled him to the last three cards of the encounter deck. We drew cards, discarded clue tokens to discard more cards and the Experiment already appeared when we finally found Jazz. It was the last but three card. The others decided right then, that I'm forbidden to shuffle any deck in this game like... forever!

So we had a tough decision to make: The Experiment (with its whopping 18 HP) was on it's way to the Dormatories and we had to decide to look for Prof Rice and run for it or try to stop it. I didn't took part in this discussion as I knew that the Prof. wasn't there anymore (we played The house always wins beforehand). Luckily the others decided to fight! It was a tough battle and only because of a Dynamite Blast from Skids and the relentless effort of Agnes and Zoey was Pete able to finish the beast off! Not before time, as the best woukld have walked right into the dormatory in the next Mythos phase....


 [END OF SPOILERS!!!]




After our visit in Arkham we played a game of "Once upon a time" where I was able to jump in in the middle of the fairy tale, because Sven wasn't able to continue and made a steamrolling victory as nobody was able to stop me. But we had a good laugh. This game of storytelling is really, really good, if you play it with the right people and don't play it too often.

We closed the evening with a game of "Fantasy Realms", which is not the next installment of White Wizards Realms series (Star Realms, Cthullu Realms and Hero realms), but a simple and yet intriguing card game by Wizkids, where you have a hand of seven cards and every turn you must decide to either draw a card from the common deck or take one of the cards from the open discard pile. Then you have to discard a card from your hand to said discard pile and as soon as the discard pile contains ten cards the game is over. All cards have a basic score value and some sort of bonus and/or penalty. And here it is where the game gets so interesting: The relation between the cards and to get as much bonus and as less penalties as possible to maximize the score out of your seven cards is challenging, especially because there aren't all cards in play (as the common deck would not be depleted). I got this game last year in Essen on the SPIEL 2017 and I'm really happy that I bought it. Could even be the best game I bought last fair (from a pure cost-benefit ratio). But this game was won by Maik (who plays Ashcan Pete in our Arkham campaign).


All in all it was a fun evening and I'm looking forward to wednesday, when we four delve into the Miscatonic Museum to get hold of the Necronomicon!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone!

The new year is already three days old and I still hadn't had the time to write a New Years entry in my blog. Such a shame!
I hope that everybody had a great New Years Eve! Mine was really good. As the past few years I celebrated the change of years with my wife and some of our best friends. We started having some nice food from the raclette grill, watched a short film I have to see every New Years Eve (it's called "Dinner for one" and is some sort of tradition in Germany) and then we had our secret santa we do every year. And what should I say? A friend of mine gifted me the Witcher III GotY Edition for my PS4! I was absolutly stunned when I opened my present, as I never would have guessed to get such a great game! Well, I haven't played it by now as since my son was born I don't have as much gaming time as I used to have. But now as I own it... Well, I do have to play it! And I'm really looking forward to it!

Afterwards we played a game of Concept. But as we played it with a group of friends which stoick together for quite some time now and which also form our Pathfinder RPG group we decided to write our own Concept cards with terms that we link with our friends. It was a blast! Have you ever tried to describe things like "Critical Hit" or "Blacklight Miniature Golf"? Not as easy as it seems. But funny as hell! 23:55 we decided to end the game, as one of my friends was in lead with 22 points and the first runner up had 6 or 8...

The next morning after breakfast we decided to play a round of "Eat, poop, you, cat", because we didn't manage to play it the night before. Eat, poop, you, cat or "Das lustige Heftspiel" as we call it (the funny notebook game) is something we play more or less regularly and we have these big Notebooks we use for it. I'm not sure but in every book there are at least something  like 10 games at least and it's always a blast to look through them again before the start of a new game. Unfortunatly right now I don't have any pictures at hand that I can show you, but I will make sure that I will take some of the great pictures that have been drawn, as we have to friends in our group of six that can paint really, really well!

Last but not least I started my playthrough of "Shadow of Mordor" yesterday (yes, yes, I know: I'm quite late with that one too!) on my PS4. I'm only 6 or 7 hours into the game by now (I didn't had to go to work yesterday and also had some free time in the evening) and so far I like it. I think the Nemesis system is quite clever and I created some new captains until I finally got the combat system right. Since then I'm somewhat of a menace of the Uruks in Mordor. Well, let's hope that it will stay this way! But I won't continue this game before tomorrow evening as today I have my regular boardgaming group and we plan to take on the second scenario of our Dunwhich Legacy playthrough.