Posts authored by Rachel

Gaming Valentine

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It’s almost Valentine! And any board game can be romantic… with a little rhyming skill as we’d like to show with this week’s comic! And who knew that Cragheart from Gloomhaven had a soft side to him? 😉 In 2016, we’ve published our first board game poems which were about Netrunner and Eldritch Horror.

Last Friday there was a board game night at our local bouldering hall! We had a blast and played thematic games like K2, The Climbers and other fun games like Sakura and Dinosaur Tea Party. People were enthusiastic about the game night and they’re thinking about doing this on a more regular basis! Yay! It’s so great to see people get enthusiastic over playing games and having a great time. 🙂

This game night made up for our lack of playing games this week because I was simply too busy with work. We did play a game of Arraial last night and this time we did not forget the 2-player rule to take out eight cards. Last time we played it, we were already wondering why the rounds took so long, whoops!

This week we’ll continue our Gloomhaven campaign and hopefully, Heinze and I manage to squeeze in some more board gaming time.

 

ICYMI: The latest extra comics, sponsored by CoolStuffInc.com:
#017 – Ready to Ride

Share your board gaming poems with us in the comments!

Input Error

Input Error published on 1 Comment on Input Error

In programming games like Lords of Xidit, there’s a big chance that some things don’t go as planned and that your entire “plan” falls apart.

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Lords of Xidit can be quite unforgiving on this part. If, for example, another player first takes away the last of the units and then walks right up to that enemy you planned to defeat, you end up just walking one step behind that player without getting anything. We personally didn’t really mind, because the rounds play out rather quickly – better luck next time! We really enjoyed our first play, the game really surprised us and we are looking forward to playing it again. The only downside to this game is that it requires at least three players, so we can’t “just” play it whenever we want.

So we managed to squeeze in some board games last week! We played a game of Fog of Love and for the first time, lost the game! David and Roxanne both were really unhappy in their relationship. We’ll see if our characters are more in tune next time we play the game. A friend of ours also brought a game called “Castle Flutterstone”, it meant for children, but that should never stop you from playing something, right? In this dexterity-game, you launch fabric bats at the cardboard castle, or rather, you try to shoot them through the windows. Like this.  It’s fun and silly and will keep you entertained for at least ten minutes. 😉
We ended that night with an amazing game of Clank! in which one of the players delved deeper into the dungeon to grab the most valuable artifact of the game WHILE THE OTHER PLAYERS HAD BOTH LEFT THE CASTLE. And despite this act of foolishness the player managed to escape on the very last turn with only one health left. And… he… won. I would describe that as the best first game of Clank! experience one could have, period.

We also played our second game of Rajas of the Ganges and this game really elegantly fixes the problem of counting up points for 10 minutes after the game is over. By turning the victory condition into a race it retains all the fun of a worker placement game but it adds the excitement of a racing game.

ICYMI: The latest extra comics, sponsored by CoolStuffInc.com:
#016 – Nowhere to run

What was the last game that pleasantly surprised you?

Expanding Fog

Expanding Fog published on 2 Comments on Expanding Fog

These are just some of our suggestions for some Fog of Love expansions. We are looking forward to the Alpaca one in particular. 😉

 

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Last week we rearranged our living room and in doing so, wanted to create a little more storage space for board games – without having a wall filled with boxes from top to bottom. So we decided to create a place in which we could store games and as a place to chill on or just use as extra seating when we’re having friends over – and this is what we’ve done!

We don’t think it’s necessary, but you could make the ‘seating’ more spacious by attaching a wooden panel to the top and side and combine that with some support beams behind the cabinet. That way you can easily make the furniture look fancier and you can make the seating less narrow. And if it looks cluttered, you can always add some doors. 🙂 You can also make some interesting corners with old fruit crates, like this!

We’ve had a busy week again and only played Azul, Root and Lords of Xidit. Azul is always fun to play and with Root, we finally tried the factions that come with the expansion. It was clear how to play the Riverfolk, but we couldn’t get a grip on the Cultists. They somehow stayed far behind on the scoring track, so we might have to look into some strategy guides to figure out how to play them better.

Lords of Xidit was a real surprise and had been on our to-play list for quite a while! It was a way “lighter” than we thought and we simply loved the scoring at the end of the game.

ICYMI: The latest extra comics, sponsored by CoolStuffInc.com:
#014 – Darkest secrets
#015 – Math checks out

What would be your suggestion for a Fog of Love expansion?

Sparking Joy with Marie Kondo

Sparking Joy with Marie Kondo published on 3 Comments on Sparking Joy with Marie Kondo

… But what if all board games spark joy?! 😀

 

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We’ve purged our collection a little last year and gave away some games we knew we would really not play again. But I will be honest that I have a hard time letting go of most games, even if we haven’t played them for over two years. Now, we do have the luxury that we have space for a lot of board games, so there’s no dire need to be very selective. But the whole Marie Kondo hype did get me thinking about it.

I’ve been a little under the weather last week, so we’ve played not too many board games. We did play one hysterical game of Gloomhaven in which our strategy was to RUN. I think we only took out maybe 5 of the 18 enemies on the board, but we all made it!

We also played our first Exit game! To be more precise, The Sinister Mansion. It was a fun experience and had some creative puzzles in there. At this point, I still prefer the Unlock series – but I really need to play more of the Exit games to form a fair opinion.

 

ICYMI: The latest extra comics, sponsored by CoolStuffInc.com:
#013 – Critical Lol

 

Do all the games in your collection spark joy? 😉

Until Distraction Do Us Part

Until Distraction Do Us Part published on 3 Comments on Until Distraction Do Us Part

Browsing Instagram, looking at #boardgames, for example, can be very nice and inspiring but also slightly addicting – so it’s important to keep in mind that it’s also fun to actually play games. Don’t fall for the infinite scrolling trap! 😉

 

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Last week, we finally revealed what we’ve made and send to our $10 patrons – and it was… a pocket dice tower! Most dice towers we see are quite large and we liked the idea of making a Semi Co-op dice tower, so Heinze put on his inventor’s hat and designed a dice tower that fits in a deck box, it weighs only 40 grams and can it can also be used to transport/store up to fourteen dice! We engraved them with some fun illustrations and personalized them with the patron’s names.
Everybody we’ve sent it to really liked it and we really enjoyed getting creative so we’re already brainstorming about what to make for the December surprise of 2019!

Also last week, we finally, finally started our Charterstone campaign! Hurray! Our BGG Secret Santa gifted us Charterstone more than a year ago, but at that time we were playing three or four other campaign games. We’ve finished two of those now, andnow felt like we were ready for Charterstone! The first game took a little long, but that was due to the tutorial, the actual player turns were really quick and we all excited to play it again. We’re playing the game with four players and probably won’t add any automas.

Last week we received a copy of Judge Dredd: The Cursed Earth from Osprey Games! We’ve played it once so far and noticed that we find it way harder than The Lost Expedition, the game on which this game is based. We’ll certainly play it some more to form a good opinion about it, maybe we did something wrong or maybe it really just is that hard! 😀

To prevent us from endlessy scrolling on Instagram, what game should we definitely play?

The Golden Standees 2018, Part 2

The Golden Standees 2018, Part 2 published on No Comments on The Golden Standees 2018, Part 2

And we present part two of the Golden Standees!

It’s very handy to be able to think of your own awards and we used this power to also award Root with a Golden Standee for its meeples! Not the best, but the cutest meeples! 😀 Potatoes, potatoes, we just wanted to award both games. 😉
Cerebus turns out to be a little more under the radar than we thought and isn’t for sale yet. It’s a game we picked up at Essen and we think it’s a really fun semi co-operative game. Granted, none of the people we play games with, hold a grudge when you push them in front of Cerberus in the last moments of the game as you’re running towards the boat. In the end, it’s a game and nothing personal.
Heinze is always looking forward to being creative with laser cutters or 3D printers, so it’s perfect you can just buy & play the single Keyforge decks – a perfect excuse for him to get crafty!
And then there’s the final award for Martin Wallace. A name we’ve been seeing a lot on big titles lately. We think that’s an achievement that certainly deserves a reward.

The holiday season is definitely over and that’s a shame. Although I had hardly any time off due to work, between the family visits, Heinze and I tried to play a lot of board games and we did! We even played Great Western Trail, twice! This game has been sitting on our shelve for a very long time and we even called it our Great Western Fail. With us being the fail-factor because the game truly is really great and not even as complicated as I thought.

Last week, we also played Rhino Hero: Super Battle, Dragon Castle, Mysterium, Unlock: The Elite (a mini-scenario), Nemeton, Lost Cities, Gloomhaven and we finished our Near and Far campaign! Great times and so many different games – I love it!

ICYMI: The latest extra comics, sponsored by CoolStuffInc.com:
#010 – Christmas Spirit
#011 – Shared Joy
#012 – New Year’s Resolutions

What Golden standee should we award in 2019?

The Golden Standees 2018

The Golden Standees 2018 published on 4 Comments on The Golden Standees 2018

Another year has passed, and thus it’s time for part one of the Golden Standees! Our silly awards for cool board games! Next week we’ll award another four awards to some lucky winners. 😉

2018 has passed by incredibly fast and it has been an amazing year for Semi Co-op! Not only did we publish 52 comics (+ 2 sponsored comics) on our website, but we also made 11 extra comics for the CoolStuffInc.com newsletter, which we also published on our social media channels. Crazy! We also launched our merchandise store and our Patreon page this last year! We’ve visited three board gaming conventions meeting all sorts of amazing people and made unforgettable memories.  We also logged 327 board game plays! We’ve been investing more time in our Instagram account, publishing 286 updates and we’ve gained over 3000 followers in a single year!

So, that’s about it. We’d like to thank all our readers for their precious time, their likes, shares, comments and overall kind words. We’d like to thank all the game designers and publishers for their generosity, every time somebody has sent us a game, we jump around the house a little. We’d like to thank the game designers who commissioned and trusted us to make a fun sponsored comic of their game. We’d like to thank other board game content creators for their creativity and for the awesome online community. And of course, we’d like to thank our Patrons for their awesome support! <3

We can’t wait what 2019 will bring, we’re excited and have many fun ideas in store for y’all if time allows us.

What’s your favorite game of 2018?

Puntastic

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We present… a Semi Co-op version of “Dinosaur Comics”! If you don’t know Dinosaur Comics, then you’re in for a treat! The comic has been around since 2003 and the art hasn’t changed at all since the first comic. With the release of Dinosaur Island and Duelosaur Island, Heinze was screaming for me to draw this comic and I got to draw our characters in dinosaur suits, worth it! 😉

So we have only played Duelosaur Island, (disclaimer: which was gifted to us by Pandasaurus Games), and we really like the game. It looks really good, it plays fast and the outcome and score surprise us every time. If you are looking for a fun two-player game and you’d like to build your own dinosaur park, this is one we’d certainly recommend. We assume there is a lot of overlap with its big sister, Dinosaur Island, but we recommend you do look up some reviews first instead of taking our word for it.

It’s the Holiday season and that means there will be more time for games! Yay! We’ve got quite some gaming days planned with friends this coming week, so that’s going to be fun. 🙂 And hopefully, Heinze and I can tackle some games we still need to play from Spiel.

A few weeks ago, I made a fun Semi Co-op art commission for Calvin, which I can now finally share now that he’s gifted it to his girlfriend! Tadaaa: https://twitter.com/ithayla/status/1077007259564036096 It’s based on the Netrunner card AstroScript Pilot Program, his girlfriend’s favorite card. With our own history with Netrunner, drawing this was even more fun and I’m glad everybody seems to love it. <3

ICYMI: The extra comics, sponsored by CoolStuffInc.com of last week:
#009 – Great expectations
#010 – Christmas Spirit

Any suggestions for good human-related puns? 😉

Santa’s Secret

Santa’s Secret published on 2 Comments on Santa’s Secret

I’m sure there are a lot of people that are ok with staring at pretty gift-wrapped gifts under the Christmas tree, patiently waiting until Christmas night to open them op. But I assume there also are a lot of people who find it quite a challenge trying not to somehow find out what’s in it. 😉

 

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The last two weeks of 2018 are a go! It’s such a weird idea that it’s almost 2019 already. Last week we’ve been busy rounding up the last things we needed to send out to our Patreon backers and we hope everything gets delivered swiftly. There was a little delay due to a semi-broken laser cutter at our local fablab, but in the end: all is well! And we can’t wait to hear what our patrons think of the surprise that we made for our $10 tier patrons. 😀 We’re really happy with the results and we’ll be sure to share them here once we know they have received it. 🙂

Speaking about Patreon. This coming Friday, it’s December 21th and that means it’s time for our Winter season raffle! If you support us on Patreon, you automatically have a chance of winning one of the following things:
– A cameo in one of our comics
– A winter themed sketch (and we encourage you to think along with how it should look like)
– A t-shirt or tote bag from our Threadless store

We’re really thankful for all the support we get and would like to give a little something back to you in this way. 🙂 If you can spare a buck a month to support our contribution to the board gaming community, we would be very grateful (and you might even win something cool!): https://www.patreon.com/semicoop

We’ve had little time to play games last week, so we only played another scenario of Gloomhaven (my character is now level 7, whoooh!) and we played Wildlands. Wildlands really is a game that keeps surprising us and we’re slowly learning the important strategic differences between the different factions.

ICYMI, these are the extra comics that we published on social media, sponsored by CoolStuffInc.com:

Extra comic #007 – Surprise!
Extra comic #008 – Rookie Mistake

Do you secretly already know what’s laying under your Christmas tree?

Wanna play?!

Wanna play?! published on No Comments on Wanna play?!

I think this has happened multiple times in the last few years. 😉

 

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Last week, we received another package of our Secret Santa! It was Dinosaur Tea Party! Yeaaaah… I mean: “Oh jolly, I was anticipating on adding that fabulous looking game to our collection ever since I first laid eyes on it!” The game itself basically is a fancy version of Who is it?, only this is way more fun in my opinion. The game works best if everybody at the table wants to go along with the theme and speak with an accent and behave like posh dinosaurs. If you just want to play the game for what it is and don’t want to play along “in character”, the game might be a bit dull. But for most of our playing groups, this will work just fine as a nice opening or closure game on game nights.

So this year’s BGG Secret Santa was another success! Now we just have to give our target a good experience as well. Looking forward to that!

Last week we played fewer games than the week before, also due to a busy weekend. We played Ruthless, Cerberus and Dinosaur Tea Party. And that’s it! Hopefully, we’ll have a bit more time this coming week.

We also did a test run of the kids RPG system we’ve been working on since this Summer, it’s not finished yet, but if you’re interested, we’ve posted a small report on Twitter – click here to read it.

ICYMI, these are the extra comics that we published, sponsored by CoolStuffInc.com:

Extra comic #005 – Werewolves
Extra comic #006 – Rainy Day

 

Are you participating in a board game Secret Santa this year?
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