A webcomic about board games and other geeky things.

Ain’t No Rest For The Wicked

February 27, 2017 Rachel 11 Comments

This happened to us. We tried solving the case we were working on in Mythos Tales, but we did not finish in time and we had to go to the restaurant. Within 15 minutes we realised where we had to go! Of course we didn’t really leave the restaurant and we enjoyed a lovely diner for multiple hours and finished the case later that evening. 😉 But there was this constant nagging feeling of curiousity of how the story would progress.

A post shared by Semi Co-op (@semicoop) on Feb 26, 2017 at 2:28pm PST

We’re loving the game so far, although there are quite some errors that are a little frustrating. Locations that you apparently could have visited, but they were not in the directory or on the map – so you could not have known. Nonetheless it’s a lovely puzzle mystery game that has quite more depth to it than its older brother Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective. Which has a new standalone expansion Jack the Ripper & West End Adventures which we’d love to try after finishing Mythos Tales.

Yesterday we played Eldritch Horror again, which we like to play 2 or 3 times a year. That actually is more than enough for us. We now have The Dreamlands expansion and we must admit that it’s a really interesting addition to the game. NOT JUST BECAUSE OF THE TERRIBLY CUTE TENTACLE KITTY ICON. It does some interesting things with adventure cards in which you have to make choices, followed by die rolling tests instead of purely rolling dice and see if you make it or not. We also think that we’re now officialy done with Eldritch Horror Expansions, we now own Forsaken Lore, Mountains of Madness, Signs of Carcosa and The Dreamlands. We feel like that is enough. Besides the practical fact that our awesome chest is full, we don’t feel like the game needs more.

Do ever take games with you to a restaurant, if yes, which one?

Too enthusiastic?

March 6, 2017 Rachel 10 Comments

A post shared by Semi Co-op (@semicoop) on Mar 2, 2017 at 6:58am PST

This is quite a recurring problem for me. I try to prevent working on comics in the weekends (or limit it to one day instead of the entire weekend), but when I’m swamped with work during the week… it just happens. Especially around a deadline for a project I’m not really available for playing board games. It’s a silly thing when you’re making a comic about board games, but don’t actually have time to play board games thanks to the comic. Don’t worry, I/we still play enough games to get ideas and inspiration for more comics. 😉 Today’s comic is number 102 by the way – we passed 100 strips! Hurray!

What we did play again last week was Steampunk Rally and that game is quickly becoming a favorite of ours. It’s fun, quick and has that same ‘relaxed’ vibe as Roll for the Galaxy. It’s competitive, but players get to do their own thing without feeling a ton of pressure from the other players. And every time it’s unclear who’s actually going to win the game right up to the last turn. Really a game we would recommend checking out if you’re looking for a shorter, lighter game with a cool theme that scales up nicely to eight players.

Do you have any creative/fun/interesting plans for a board game related project you’re working on right now?

Behind Z Scenes

March 13, 2017 Rachel 8 Comments

Hit Z Road is a pleasure to the eye. With its vintage looking box (that shows and decribes a totally different game), the amazing game pieces like the car keys and the bottlecaps and its overall grungy look just makes you want to play the game. The eye for detail is simply amazing.

The random game pieces like the car keys, makes us wonder about the development process of the game. I imagine that random items laying around the house were used for making a prototype for the game. And I guess that could have been quite inconvenient for mrs Wallace. And since I don’t know if there actually is a mrs Wallace, you see the most famous mrs Wallace there is in pop culture in this comic. 😉

We’ve been experimenting with epoxy resin for a project and all the sudden Heinze had the bright idea to fill up the mold we had laying around of the Hive pieces. That resulted in lovely glass-looking Hive pieces! And this gives us the opportunity to experiment with a three player version of Hive.

Custom Hive pieces

Do you have any good ideas for a 3-player variant of Hive?

Business Proposal

March 20, 2017 Rachel 14 Comments

A post shared by Semi Co-op (@semicoop) on Mar 9, 2017 at 1:10pm PST

Cat cafés are popular. Tabletop games are popular. This should work, right?! … but then again, it wouldn’t.*sigh* Unless you’d like to have chewed-on cards and like having game pieces scattered all over the floor. 😉

So what have we been up to? Nothing board game related. Project deadlines fill up our nights and the moments when we can play board games have become quite a luxury the last few weeks. Boooo! So nothing new in our board gaming life.
We did play Marvel Dice Masters again, which has been quite a while. It’s still a fun game, although I sometimes tend to overthink my actions which makes it more of a ‘thinking’ game than it needs to be.

Returning to the tabletop café subject. Our FLGS serves coffee, tea and drinks and has a lot of demo games which you can play at the store, but it isn’t a real board game café. To be frankly, we actually don’t have any ‘experience’ when it comes to board game cafés, so we’re interested in your knowledge and experiences!

Have you ever visited a board game café, if yes: which one? Tell us about it! 🙂

Cthulhu’s Reign

March 27, 2017 Rachel 19 Comments

Lord Cthulhu is doing very well in the world of board games. Looking at the Lovecraft related games released last year, a lot of them were actually really good games and we own 3 out of 6. Arkham Horror: the card game, Mythos Tales and Tides of Madness. We still have to play and receive the last one though. While doing a little research for this comic I was rather surprised to see that there is a Cthulhu Monopoly. Did anybody play that? Not something I would think of to add to a game collection… unless I was a collector of Cthulhu games of course. 😀

In totaly unrelated Cthulhu news, we’ve finished the Imperial Assault: The Bespin Gambit campaign! Unlike the main campaign, the rebels won this time. And just like in the main campaign it was quite a strain for the imperial player to put up a fight against four rebel players. It’s just a much harder game for the imperial player and that is a problem of the game. We enjoyed playing through two campaigns, but it’s just very stressful for one player of the group and it’s a nice little puzzle for the rest. So as a group we’re happy to play some other games now.

Which Cthulhu/Lovecraft themed games do you own?

Show & Tell

April 3, 2017 Rachel 8 Comments

For this comic I dived a little into the history of Marie Curie and she truly was a compelling person. I knew she was a scientist and was involved in research on radioactivity, but that’s about it. I never knew about the awesome stuff she’s done! I was happy to discover that her vehicle in Steampunk Rally, the Petite Curie, was actually based on the mobile X-Ray vehicles she invented to help wounded soldiers in WW1. Fascinating!

A post shared by Semi Co-op (@semicoop) on Mar 29, 2017 at 2:05pm PDT

I already wrote a little about Steampunk Rally in an earlier blog, click here if you’d like to read it.

A friend introduced us to yet another game in the Android Universe: Infiltration. And that was not was I had expected! It’s Ocean’s Eleven the game, only NOT cooperative and it’s quite hard. The game is about you and your competitive burglars/hackers/runners that are breaking in a building that has many floors. A player has multiple actions he or she can perform and they can of course.. move to a higher floor in the building. The new floors you enter aren’t necessarily harder, the problem is that time is ticking and before the alarm counter reaches 100 – you have to be out of the building or you’ll get caught. The higher you go, the further you have to go back to escape. This strongly reminded me of K2. Trying to reach the top, isn’t always a good strategy – it’s sometimes better to head back in time and let other players push their luck… and see them fail… 😉

We love games that are ‘historical’ with a creative twist! Do you know other games that do this?

Semi Co-op’s Exercise Guide

April 10, 2017 Rachel 8 Comments

Letters of Whitechapel! The game that is incredibly hard for the player that steps in the shoes of Jack the Ripper while being chased by a mind hive of detectives. And when you’re playing against ‘smart’ players, chances are great that you won’t last long. We’ve played the game at least 4 times and only once did one of us manage to win as Jack The Ripper. And that was really, really, really close. I believe we had Jack surrounded. Imagine the stress for the Jack the Ripper player… and that’s we think it’s a perfect addition for your exercise schedule! 😀

I played Cottage Garden for the first time this weekend and it’s a fun game. I wouldn’t say it’s mind boggling, but it’s a perfect light game to play with a cup of tea while having some good conversations. It really feels like a longer and more eleborate version of Patchwork. I didn’t do as well as the other players who had played it more often, but I really didn’t care. I was just filling up nice gardens and was having a good time. Maybe I’ll get more competitive next time. 😉

What other games would be a perfect addition for this exercise guide?

CAT-tage Garden

April 17, 2017 Rachel 4 Comments

A post shared by Semi Co-op (@semicoop) on Apr 16, 2017 at 12:20pm PDT

While we were playing Cottage Garden last week, the idea for this comic quickly came to mind. 😉

It’s been busy, so I don’t have a lot to share with you guys this week, except of course this crazy D&D book Dungeonology a friend of ours ordered:

It’s filled with things you can open! Envelopes, little booklets and the giant pop-up map in the middle is crazy cool. It’s hilarious to see such a thing as information about D&D in a book that reminds me of a few books we had as kids.

What other games have cats in them?

Tabletop Day Achievement Badges!

April 24, 2017 Rachel 4 Comments

April 29th is this year’s International Tabletop Day! And to promote a day when people meet up to play board games (yay!), we’ve made some achievement badges you can print and give to other people or yourself when they/you deserve it. A thank you badge for your host of the day, a badge for excellent role playing, a badge for playing a ton of games, saving the world and many more.

Print it on normal paper, photo paper, magnetic photopaper, sticker paper, make actual pins/badges/buttons – whatever you think is cool, be creative and we would love it if you would share some pictures with us. 😀

You can download a printable PDF (letter/A4) by clicking here

Question time! What badges should we include next time?

Gloomy discovery

May 1, 2017 Rachel 12 Comments

A post shared by Semi Co-op (@semicoop) on Apr 29, 2017 at 3:57am PDT

The Gloomhaven kickstarter for the second printing has nearly ended, only 17 hours left. So if you want to prevent the situation above, you can still make sure you get a copy. -> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1350948450/gloomhaven-second-printing/

The shirt Heinze is wearing a shirt from the YouTube channel Actualol. If you like board games and you don’t know it yet, you should definitely check it out.

This weekend was International Tabletop Day and the badges we published last week have reached a lot of people! Yay, thanks everybody for sharing, I really appreciate it. 🙂

We’ve not played a ton of games on Saturday, only two plays of Flashpoint and some Lost Legacy. And that’s mainly because we played a lot of games on Thursday and Friday like Mysterium, Ticket to Ride: Nederland, Bang!, Pocket Madness and Bloodrage.

I believe this year’s Tabletop Day was a great success and that leaves me with the question:

What games did you play on Tabletop Day?