Saturday 10 November 2012

Friday Night Gaming

More Descent and Hexing in East London
The valiant E.L.F gamers barved to foul weather and crazy drivers to  go dungeon delving once again in their Descent 2nd Edition Campaign. But could the Heroes pull back some honour having lost both parts of the previous encounter at the Masquerade Ball or will the Half Dragon Lieutenant of the Overlord crush them in a canyon before they even get to the second encounter?
Small board, big monsters, scared heroes. Who will win? there's only one way to find out, FIGHT! 
So with some trepidation the heroes began slaying Giants like it was going out of fashion.  As the canyon began to fill with boulders blocking the way to the heroes exit, up stepped Trenloe to smash rocks and spiders alike allowing the rest of the heroes to slither their way to a stunning (and unexpected for the Heroes) victory in the first encounter. 

This was a tricky game for the players as if any player ended his turn blocked in they would all lose, bringing some great moments of tension as the players mentally worked their way through the required order of actions to avoid an unintentional loss. The heroes are finding this incarnation of Descent a lot harder now that I have a full understanding of which creatures to choose depending on whether I receive reinforcements. If I receive none then it is best to take the Monsters that give me the largest number of figures then split them up to cause maximum disruption. If I receive a new model at the start of each turn it is best to choose the largest hardest model available as the heroes will need to double up to take out one a turn and keep moving along the map.

this was the make or break moment, a few fluffed rolls and the game would go to the Overlord,  then Trenloe got involved...
So with their first encounter under their belts the heroes set off to tackle to (unintentional) camp, Yoda voiced Belthir, the Half Dragon Lieutenant as he tries to kill the Guards at the Silver Mine. 

As the players had won the first encounter they got to go first and their goal was to defeat my Lieutenant, whilst I had to kill the four guards on the map. Despite a savage opening salvo which pinged Belthir for half his health I had drawn what was the perfect hand of cards for this encounter as I could heal my Lieutenant (only one of these cards in the 15 card deck) and had a frenzy card and two that allowed me to add a surge to my rolls. When you combine these cards with the fact I had chosen Ogres as my extra Monsters (they spend surges to add +3 damage, as Will would say 'that's big game') it allowed me to force the game and, with some shutting down of the one man tank Trenloe's movement, it all came down to a long range shot to take out Belthir when he was down to only two health. Lucky for me it was just out of range and Belthir cut down the last Guard (I had a terrible feeling I was going to miss and then get tanked next turn). Win for the Overlord! This bagged me my second relic (the first one was not great) and I can now equip my Lieutenant with an evil shield. 

The evenings session produced two extremely tight games with just a few cards or rolls swinging thing my way. I'm looking forward to the nest FNG in two weeks so that we can ply the Interlude encounter, the first of the larger maps we will play in this edition where the players will really get to open up on a few different monsters.

Once the dust had settled we cracked open one of my favourite fast paced, screw your neighbour card games Hex Hex. For anyone who has never played it, you are trying to gain points (called Voice) by being the player to pass a Hex to another player who has no way to pass it to anyone else and is thus Hexed. What makes the game so fun is that whilst you start with one Hex in play, as players defend themselves passing the Hex around they will have the chance to create new Hexs, add damage to Hexs and even add a compulsion to a hex forcing players to only pass it in one direction (most cards are explicit in the direction it will pass the Hex). Two particular cards, Hex Hex and Grab, create an additional level of tension. If a Grab card is played you have to grab a Stick from the middle of the table (there is always one less then the number of players) causing a mini scrum to occur as players scramble to not be left empty handed. If Hex Hex is played the round automatically ends but the last player to put their hands in the air and shout Hex Hex loses three times the normal Voice for being Hexed.

We managed to play two full games (each consisting of a number of rounds equal to the amount of ayers plus one) with Nic taking the first and I just managed to squeeze a win out of the second. But you don't really play Hex Hex to win as much as you play it for the moments of players screwing each other over. In one round I ended up hexed but had a card called Spite that allowed me to suffer any number of Voice in order to force another player to suffer double that! Of course I used it to ensure I didn't come last rather than pick on the player in front. In another players flew across the table to grab a stick when another player played a Hex Hex card causing rather red faces when they realised they hadn't been listening and had now been hexed. Once the players are familiar with the cards the game flows really quickly and players don't take it personally when they get hosed, as next round they'll get their own back.

The final game of the evening  was a four player Small World game. This game doesn't see much play in its non digital form of late (an discussion for another time), so it was refreshing to break it our and take over some regions. the opening turns saw the players avoiding attacking each other due to the races that came up, allowing my Peace loving Leprechauns to pull in an average of 10 to 12 gold per turn. Unfortunately, Nic had a very strong late game as he snapped up a large number of Homunculi and scooped up handfuls of coins each turn towards the end of the came. When the dust settlred the scores came out as Tom hitting the Mid 70's, Rob up in the 90's and Nic and I drawn on 113 each! I felt lucky rather than robbed so it was a good result for me!

Will and Rich squeezed in a game of Netrunner but I let them discuss their experience in another post as I missed quite a lot of the game. 

Overall another great Friday Night Gaming and I can't wait for Will's birthday weekend when we can get in two days of gaming!

8 comments:

  1. I think i'll decline on commenting on that one game of netrunner too much as in playing it i realised just how much i didnt know, so i went back and supplemented my initial skim over the rules with a full read. Definitely got a few things wrong and didnt know a few other things that give both players more options and whatnot. Im feeling much better prepared for next time however!

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    1. Well I'm looking forward to trying it out anf may even pick up a copy if it is as fun as it looks.

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  2. I'll bring it to wills bash, im itching to play it more! and i fancy trying the corp.

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    1. Thanks chief, hopefully we can get some articles for the hobby side going soon as well. Will be nice when more people have time to stick up some posts about what they are up to.

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    2. If i was up to more i'd post it! I could post about how ive been getting on with Halo 4 so far, how ive been procrastinating and not getting any painting whatsoever done. magic tournie write ups maybe?
      I would like to try and squeeze a few more games of 40k in, im curious about trying out some of the rules we've not touched yet (allies, fortifications).
      if anyone has any days theyd be free to squeeze a couple in, lemme know, ive got over a day of lieu hours accrued and a hankering to take that and a few days holiday for a half week off to chill and game soon.

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    3. You can put up any post you like if you like. I like to hear about the Magic stuff as I've been playing around with the App on the iPad. I'll see what my calendar looks like but doubt I'll be able to get a game in until after Will's shindig. I like the idea of having a day of Fortifications games.

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  4. Should have said 'You can put up a post about any topic you like'.

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