Webcomics from Semi Co-op

A webcomic about board games and other geeky things.

Achievement Badges #ITTD2018

Achievement Badges #ITTD2018 published on 6 Comments on Achievement Badges #ITTD2018

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International Tabletop Day is an initiative of Geek & Sundry and is a day to celebrate board gaming! G&S will be streaming board game plays live all day on various channels like YouTube and Twitch and throughout the world, events are organized where people can come together to play games. 

Like last year, we thought it would be a good idea make some fun badges again that you can use and share with other people on International Tabletop Day on April 28th! Print them as stickers, magnets, on plain paper or make actual buttons of them – whatever you like! You can award them to yourself or even better: to friends or people you’ve just met during this day of playing games. It’s a quirky fun little thing we’d like to gift to the board gaming community. (A special thank you to Jake Alexios for the idea for the first player, persistence and the spice of life badge!)

You can download a print-friendly .PDF file here or the *.PNG file here.
We’d greatly appreciate it if you would tag us on any social media channel when you post pictures of the badges, we’d love to see them in action! 🙂

On April 28th, we’ll also be announcing the winners of our giveaways on our social media channels! If you have no clue what I’m talking about, you might want to check out our Facebook, Instagram and Twitter account to check it out. We’re giving away a signed notebook, a shirt and a tote bag from our merchandise store we’ve opened last week. Also, a little reminder that our 10% sale on everything will end tomorrow on April 24th.

And last but surely not least, the first video of the Subterfuge game Heinze has been playing for season 2 of ‘Clash of Creators’ a while ago has been published. Click here to see the video of everybody’s video diaries combined which was made by G-Club Channel! He did an amazing job on merging all the videos of 10 players. We can’t wait to see the other ones. 🙂

What achievement badges should we make for Tabletop Day 2019?

7th competent

7th competent published on 3 Comments on 7th competent

We hope you all had a great International Tabletop Day! We had a lovely time with most of our gaming actually taking place the day before on King’s Day, on with the birthday of the Dutch King is celebrated. We had an eight-player gaming day playing Muse, Ca$h ‘n Guns, Magic Maze, Robo Rally, High Society and Metropolys.

On ITTTD we got a nice surprise from a reader named Fred who had sent us Century Golem Edition as a thank you! It’s is such an amazing looking game with giant cards, metal coins, big plastic crystals and great art that almost make you forget there is a light but very fun engine building game underneath it! The first game we played, it seemed a pretty solitaire game but in the second game, we started blocking each other and waiting until certain Golems were bought by others so we could grab some extra bonus points. We’ll probably be playing this a lot in the future, so thank you Fred!

Another game we’ll be playing a lot the coming weeks is 7th Continent! If you’ve never heard of it, 7th Continent is a gigantic choose-your-own-adventure survival game in which you explore a continent trying to rid yourself of a curse. It has hunting, item crafting, a leveling up system but mostly it has a huge world for you to discover. I love discovering things in games and will not rest until every stone is turned over and every secret has been revealed! Alas, 7th Continent does not reward that type of playing. Every action you do requires you to discard a number of cards representing an amount of energy that action took, things like eating allow you to take back some cards, but hunting is a costly affair. This means you can’t just wander around and follow all the small leads on the map, I have to ignore them which is… gnnnnnnhh, very very hard! It’s still a great game but we’re figuring out the balance between exploring the great unknown and actually being able to win the game.

What games clash with your personality?

Little Big Problem

Little Big Problem published on 13 Comments on Little Big Problem

(You can get all the shirts you see in this comic at our Threadless store!)

We were discussing this situation a while ago and I think I actually would be slightly bummed that my miniature wouldn’t match anymore after the character finds a new amazing weapon. 😉

Talking about a completely different role-playing game: Hush Hush Projects was very kind to send us the game Fog of Love, thank you!). It’s best described as a romantic comedy simulator in which players play a couple and have to deal and react to all kinds of different ‘real life’ situations. It’s about finding a balance between your own goals in life and combining that with a life with your partner. We’ve played the tutorial last week and we can’t wait to crawl into the skins of some slightly awkward characters again and see if their relationship is doomed or they turn out to be a good fit.

Other games we’ve played last week were Century Golem Edition and we’ve continued our campaigns of Pandemic Legacy Season 2 and Gloomhaven.

It’s almost time for the UK Games Expo and we’re really looking forward to it. Our schedule is slowly filling up with all kinds of fun things. Counting down the days! … And trying to finish all the work that needs to be done before then. Oh dear.

Is it important to you to have a miniature that actually looks like your character in role-playing games?

Board games according to cats

Board games according to cats published on 3 Comments on Board games according to cats

Cats have opinions too! … and ours like to let theirs known often. 😉 Overall our cats behave quite well when we’re playing games, except around the time when we’re about to feed them. They get a little rowdy then and sometimes jump on the table.

We’ve been continuing two of our campaign games last week, Pandemic Legacy Season 2 and The 7th Continent. We really have a power team playing Pandemic and that’s so much fun. Next up is, August!

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With 7th Continent, we’ve decided to limit the play time to 60 – 90 minutes. And in those last 30 minutes, we stop at a point that would be ideal as a saving point! This means that we stop at a point that we’re still curious about what’s next and prevents that we stop playing because we’re done with the game and don’t want to play anymore. 🙂

And friends of ours now have Bärenpark, so we’ve also finally played that! I must say it’s a smart game and the Tetris-element is smartly integrated into the game. It surely isn’t the first game to do that, but it really works in this game. And to be honest, I personally like it better than Cottage Garden for example. I think it’s satisfying to see the growth of your own park and that it stays on the table, while in Cottage Garden your garden board gets reset multiple times during a game. Also, the theme of a bear park is just fun! I think that the most simple play mode of the game would even be great to play with kids.

So, all the printed matter for the UK Games Expo is done! It’s sent to the printer and will be here well on time, hurray! I’m dreading the deadlines of work-related things I have before the UKGE, but nonetheless, I am looking forward to it! Can’t wait to meet all kinds of new people, meet friends again and to try out some of the new games on the market.

What would your pets think about certain games?

Board Game Revolution!

Board Game Revolution! published on 12 Comments on Board Game Revolution!

The good thing about logging your plays of board games is that you know how many times you’ve actually played it! …The bad thing is that you’re confronted with how little times you’ve played certain games. 😉 And sometimes I’m convinced that we’ve played a game more than ten times, but it often turns out that we’ve played it only five times or so. I would like to say that we would like to improve on the numbers, but lately, we’ve been getting new games a little quicker than we can play them. It’s amazing to discover all these new games, but it can also be frustrating that we don’t have the time to play certain gems a little more often. The 10×10 list (playing 10 games, 10 times in one year) is, of course, a wonderful way to achieve this! Although I think I would prefer a 20 x 5 list in our case. We should make this for the summer!

The UK Games Expo is coming closer and for those who are attending, we have some news! We’re going to be guests in the No Pun Included live show on Saturday night at 9 PM together with Tom Vasel from The Dice Tower and Rahdo from Rahdo Runs Through. Efka and Elaine are funny people and there will be music, so it’ll be a great evening and we’re looking forward to it! Exciting times!

Which of your games would probably start a revolution?

Century of the Golem

Century of the Golem published on 2 Comments on Century of the Golem

 

Century Golem Edition is one of those games we enjoy every time we play it! The art just simply makes us very happy and the game is a nice little puzzle in which players try to build an efficient gem economy. We’ve only played it with two players and I’m curious how it plays with three or four people. Thank you again Fred for gifting us this game!

Last week was crazy and both of us have been working non-stop on deadlines, so we actually played zero games. None! That’s quite rare for us. We’re flying to the UGKE on Thursday and we’ll only play a game of Pandemic Legacy before that, luckily we’ll probably play a ton of games in Birmingham next weekend! We’re bringing a limited edition Apollo sticker for everyone that comes and says hi! So don’t be shy we love to talk to as many people as possible!

After UKGE hopefully, things will slow down a bit but it seems we’ll be busy until summer, so we might need an assistant golem, or a dishwasher golem or maybe a board game golem that makes sure we keep playing enough games!

 

What golem do you need in your life?

UK Games Expo 2018

UK Games Expo 2018 published on 7 Comments on UK Games Expo 2018

We are utterly spent, but very content. THE UK GAMES EXPO IS OVER! We had a wonderful time and were super impressed with the atmosphere and everybody demoing games and running events. The main two halls were big enough to never be bored for three days, plus it had a lovely open gaming area, but if you felt like a change of scenery the nearby Hilton was like a tiny convention on its own.

We’ve played a lot of games, ranging from unpublished prototypes to games that have been out for a while. Of the unreleased games, we really liked Holding On: The Troubles Life of Billy Kerr by Hub games, Ruthless by AlleyCat games and Heroes of Tenefyr by Broken Mill games, which all will have Kickstarters or be released this year so keep an eye out. We’ve also played The Captain Is Dead, which is a fun co-op Star Trek parody, and Rising 5, which is a cool co-op game in which you’re trying to solve a Mastermind-like puzzle. We also bought and were gifted some games by publishers so the coming weeks will, deadlines allowing, be filled with trying them all and see if they’ll be nice comic material. 🤓

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But enough about games, the best part is meeting new people and friends at cons. Last year at Essen was our first con experience which led to a lot of new friends so the UKGE was like a great big reunion! We hung around with Actualol a lot and had a great time playing and chatting with readers, content creators and the Netrunner crew out of Enschede who had come out in force to the UK!

Next, to these general short encounters, we also did two big things with awesome people. We took part in an epic Crystal Heart roleplaying session DM’ed by Eran of UptoFourPlayers about a party of Syn agents, played by Behind The Box, Mike and us, trying to win in a Gumbo cooking contest! It has probably been 10 years since we played a proper pen and paper RPG, but everybody had a great time and Eran always made sure you would know what to do and what the options were. Aviv joined us near the end and quickly drew this amaaaazing sketch of the final battle.

No Pun Included invited us to join there musical panel show which was a ton of fun too! Tom Vasel, Jon who Gets Games and Rachel squared of against Rahdo, Actualol and Heinze to see who would be the best at guessing which games were the subject of ten songs written by Elaine of No Pun Included. We had a great time and as far as we heard everybody had and hopefully the video will be online soon (don’t worry, we’ll let you know) so you can see Rachel’s epic winning move!

Have you ever been to a convention? If so, what is your best memory?

Crystal Heart: Exotic Ingredients

Crystal Heart: Exotic Ingredients published on 2 Comments on Crystal Heart: Exotic Ingredients

Ok, this is probably the ‘biggest’ Semi Co-op comic I’ve ever made (and please don’t get used to it, haha) but I just NEEDED to include a map of the island.

During the UK Games Expo, we played a Crystal Heart role playing session, lead by Eran from the webcomic Up To Four Players! We’ve mentioned it last week in the blog post, but we wanted to give this awesome experience some extra love. I could just turn the whole crazy fun session into a comic book, but since I’m not going to, I’m going to leave it at this little snippet for you to enjoy. And if you like it, you should really go and check out Up To Four Players’ their Crystal Heart comic on www.uptofourplayers.com to learn about from their Crystal Heart setting using the Savage Worlds system.

We’ve played this session together with the fantastic people of Behind the Box and Chris and Lindsey have also shared their thoughts on the Crystal Heart session in their UK Games Expo Overview video. For me, this probably also was the highlight of the weekend. Eran is a brilliant GM and I would love to join another session one day. And Chris, Lindsey and Mike were fantastic players, it was lovely meeting you and making this awesome gumbo with you all. 😉

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Switching from fantasy to sci-fi, we were baffled to hear that Fantasy Flight Games have announced that they’re pulling the plug from Netrunner! Even though we aren’t really active players anymore, we’re always up to date on the game and events due to the amazing active Netrunner community in our city. Hopefully, it’s not really the end, the timing of it all seems just wrong.

It’s almost time for Gen Con! Or, in our case: Gen Can’t because we’re not going to be there. Nonetheless, we’d like to wish everyone that is going a very good time!

What was your most unfortunate event during an RPG session?

Warming up

Warming up published on 3 Comments on Warming up

At the UK Games Expo, we discovered we were one of the few who had not played the game The Mind yet! We were looked at in disbelieve and we really needed to play it according to multiple people. Vic brought a copy of the game along with him and together with Sam we finally played The Mind. We only just met them both and it turned out that Vic and Sam are incredible The Mind players. We won the first game we ever played, which apparently is not a very common thing. 😉

It’s all about subtle nonverbal communication. Each player is dealt a hand of cards with numbers ranging from zero to one hundred. Players cannot speak to each other and need to lay down cards on the table one by one, trying to lay them down in chronological order from low to high! But you don’t know what cards other players have in their hands. It could be that you have a 7, which is a low-value card, but does somebody else have an even lower card that? Do you need to put it down on the table immediately or will you slide it to the center of the table slowly, giving other players a chance to put a card on the table first? The game starts off relatively easy with players having only a few cards in their hands and it slowly progresses each level with players having more cards in their hands.

There is not much to share about our board gaming life right now, because it’s been on hold due to work-related projects on my side and Heinze’s master thesis on the other. We will be playing Gloomhaven again tonight after three weeks, that’s a start! … we’re going to play so many games this summer to make up for June. 😛

What’s your favorite nonverbal communication game?

Judging a gift by its cover

Judging a gift by its cover published on 7 Comments on Judging a gift by its cover

It actually was my birthday last Friday! I’ve now joined the cool 30’s gang. 😉

Whenever we go to birthday parties of our (gaming group) friends, there is often something a lot of the gifts have in common: the wrapping paper! Our comic and gaming store Comicasa has had this wrapping paper for as long as I can remember now. At one point we even gift-wrapped an already gift wrapped gift with a different wrapping paper just to make a friend think we didn’t get him a board game or comic-related gift. This wrapping paper deserved to get its own comic. I’m not sure if it is common in other countries that something you buy can be gift wrapped, but here in the Netherlands, it’s a service provided by most stores.

In other really cool news, the amazing Musical Live Show of No Pun Included we were part of is now online! Elaine and Efka did an amazing job and you should totally check out the wonderful performance of Elaine, singing these funny songs about board games:

Does your local game store have a ‘signature’ wrapping paper?
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