Posts authored by Rachel

The Blinding

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Board games have gotten so creative! And Nyctophobia is certainly one that deserves a mention. It’s also a game design with a story, it was designed by Catherine Stippell, who wanted to have a game she could play with her blind uncle. In this game, there is only one player who can see what’s going on on the table and he or she is a crazy hunter with an ax. The other players wear blackout glasses and can’t see what’s going on. They can only feel the game board while they are trying to make their way out of the maze and reach the safe zone.

We haven’t played the game, but we’re certainly intrigued by the concept of the game and the story behind it and we’re hoping that we can check it out at Spiel in Essen this year. 🙂

This weekend we also tried the game The Climbers at our FLGS. We only had a vague idea what to expect and it was a fun game to play! To us, it scratches the same itch as Santorini and Junk Art and therefore it’s not a game we will get for our already very big collection – but I do see us playing it at the store while enjoying a nice cup of tea. It looks fun and has a nice light strategic element to it. After playing a game called The Climbers we totally felt like climbing ourselves and went bouldering at our local bouldering hall. 😉

What’s your favorite horror themed board game?

#superBlessed

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From the few times that we played D&D in the past, this is something that happened to us and probably to others too. The DM is setting up a scene at the beginning of a session and players are enthusiastic and immediately react to – anything that could be important for an upcoming quest. And when players are convinced that something is up, there can be this typical chaos at the table of people looking up if they can do certain things or asking if this or that is possible. I have nothing but respect for DM’s in these kind of situations (overall respect btw, being a DM is hard work!). 😀

But so much for today’s comic! In case you missed it, we’ve launched a new thing last Thursday! Sponsored comics, meaning that game designers/publishers or whoever has a cool board game related project can commission us to make a comic about it! These sponsored comics will be published on our website as an extra comic and will not replace our weekly comic on Mondays. So that means more content for our readers and a way for us to produce more content. We already have another fun comic in store for you this coming Thursday, so keep an eye out for that! If you’re interested in commissioning a comic, you can always contact us through social media or send us an email at info@semicoop.com and we’ll send you more information.

Back to board games! The few spare moments that we’ve had last week, we’ve spent on playing Root. There is so much to discover in that box and we want to get a grasp on all the different factions before we start playing it with friends. It’s an exciting game and so far we’re having a lot of fun with it. And I can’t wait to make Root character fanart of our cats, I love the art style. :’D

What’s the biggest misunderstanding you ever had during a game?

Decision Tea

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Tea Dragon Society and Dinosaur Tea Party are two games that are on our ‘Need to check these games out at Spiel’-list! They are two totally different games, but they share the same incredibly niche theme. 😀 We can’t wait to organize a high tea game day with these two games and of course Marrying Mr. Darcy. We will totally cramp up our pinky finger because of holding it up in the air while sipping tea for so long. CAN’T WAIT. Preferably in cosplay. We’ll post a picture on Instagram when the time comes. 😉
We noticed that the list of games we want to check out on Spiel is growing rapidly. Luckily we will be there for the entire convention this time, so we might actually be able to look at all all the games on our list in real life. This is probably a terribly naive thing to think – we’ll see!

For those who don’t know, every week we try to post something extra on our Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/semicoop) with the weekly comic updates, like the sketch of that week’s comic or other sketches I’ve made. By becoming a patron and you’ll receive a notification when we post something new so you’ll never miss anything!

And this coming Thursday we’ve got a surprise and an introduction of something new here on the website for you all! Definitely check back later this week, we’re excited because we’ve been working on this for quite a while already!

Dragons or Dinosaurs?!

One of a kind

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A few months ago, Fantasy Flight Games presented a new concept of theirs: unique games! Firstly announced was Keyforge. A card game of which not a single deck is the same. There is no deck-building, there are no booster packs, none of that. You buy a Keyforge deck and that’s it, that’s your deck! The decks even have their own unique card backs and a unique name. We’re really intrigued by this concept and are really looking forward to trying it. Later, FFG presented another unique game, Discover: Lands Unknown. This clearly is a step up being a board game instead of a card game with unique character combinations, environments, tools, etc.

And now we’re very curious how far FFG will take their new unique games concept in 2019. 😉

Last week we’ve been mostly playing Root. There is so much to discover in that box and we’ve been really enjoying it so far. We played a co-op game against the Mechanical Marquise and that almost felt as if we were playing Pandemic. And we finally continued our Gloomhaven campaign, our 13th game – hurray! My character is now level 5 and is able to do some really powerful stuff. Good times.

Are you excited about unique games?

Build like a REAL mortal

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Original art of Santorini is made by the amazing Lina Cossette and David Forest – http://mrcuddington.com. 

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Santorini, ah, where to start? This game has it all. It has the looks, it has strategy and variety all in one box! The first day we bought the game, we’ve played it nine times and we even played in the train back home and it has hit our table often since then. It’s a game that requires basically no setup and it just plays really quickly. The goal of the game is simple: try to be the first player who moves one of their builders to the third level of a building. The simplicity is the charm of the game.

But if you do feel like you need more variety, there are God cards that can give players powers that influence the game. Most of them change the dynamics of the game completely in a surprising way. All in all, we’re already quite certain this game is going to be a game we’ll be playing for a long time.

Patreon update

It’s been only one week since we launched our Patreon page and we’ve already passed $100! That is so amazing and means that the monthly costs for the Semi Co-op web server and the software I use to draw the comics in are paid for by our readers! <3 Thank you all so much!

We also want to experiment a little with giving a behind-the-scenes peek into making a comic, like posting sketches on our Patreon page, so keep an eye out for that later today!

What is the most terrible expansion you can think of?

Semi Co-op is now on Patreon!

Semi Co-op is now on Patreon! published on 2 Comments on Semi Co-op is now on Patreon!

Some of you have been asking about it for quite a while and we have exciting news: We’ve launched our Patreon page! If you like our comics and you can afford it, you can now financially support us for the work we’re doing! We have some fun things like winning one of our merchandise products or winning an appearance in one of our comics as a ‘thank you’ for our patrons in our Seasonal Raffle. By supporting us with only $1 a month you already take part in the raffle. The higher the patron-tier, the more raffle tickets you get. You can read all about it and the different levels of pledges and their rewards on our Patreon page: http://patreon.com/semicoop.

Why start a Patreon now?
I’ve been drawing a Semi Co-op comic once a week for over three years now and that hasn’t always been easy. I’m a freelance illustrator (/animator) and often I have to spend my weekends on making sure there is a new comic every Monday. I started out wanting to learn about drawing comics and cartoons and because we had all of these great ideas for comics about our biggest hobbies: playing board games. With now, almost 180 comics, Semi Co-op’s audience is growing bigger and bigger and people have been asking if they could support us financially. I’ve been holding off accepting money for a personal project like this, but with my work-life getting busier and busier I feel like I don’t always have the time to draw a comic the way I would like and I long for some free time in the weekends so I can play the amazing games that you just can’t play on an evening.

Let me be clear that this Patreon is not an all-or-nothing, in the foreseeable future we will continue making a comic for our readers every week as we’ve been doing for the past three years! 🙂 But the money I receive through Patreon could maybe give me the financial freedom to spend one workday a week on Semi Co-op. That is the first big goal. Meaning I have more time to actually play games during the weekends, which will give us more ideas for funny comics and prevents me from slowly burning myself up by simply stated: always working. Being so busy I also lack the time to explore the possibilities of Semi Co-op and animation, which is something I’d love to play with more. And there we have the second goal of the Patreon: explore the realms of animation with funny animated board game sketches. 😀

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We know that supporting us financially is not possible for everybody and that doesn’t make them less precious readers to us. That’s why we think it’s important that there will be no exclusive content for our Patreon backers. There are perks to being a patron, but no exclusive comics, earlier published comics, etc. We appreciate every reader and if you’re not able to become a patron, we’re just as happy with your likes/shares on social platforms. Spreading the word about our silly niche comic is just as valuable to us and we thank you for that.

Thank you for reading and thank you for your support! <3

What game do you need an extra for?

What Cthulhu thinks I do

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It’s Lovecraft day, so we couldn’t let that pass without a big strip about the Arkham games, which are one of our favorite game series. We agree that Cthulhu is used in a lot of games nowadays, but there is something really fun about your character going insane because he can’t find a book in a library.

Past week we’ve finally played Century: Golem and Illimat with four players instead of the usual two and luckily both games are just as fun with four as with two. Osprey Games also sent over the expansion for The Lost Expedition which is called The Fountain of Youth. This expansion comes with four little expansions which you can add to your game and so far we’ve played one game with two included expansions. We think The Lost Expedition is something a lot of people will like, even if it is just to enjoy the art by Garen Ewing.

Today we’ve also received Root and we can’t wait to try it! Looking at our social media, it seems everybody has already played it so we’re curious to see if it lives up to the large amounts of hype it has been getting.
Something we are certainly hyped about is Essen! We’ve booked our hotel and we’ll be there for the full four days for the first time! We’re excited about meeting new people and our friends from previous conventions and trying a small amount of the 1300(!) games that will be released at Essen. Our good friends Chris and Els are also coming along so we’ll have a blast! If you are coming to, don’t forget you can make your appreciation of Semi Co-op know by wearing our merchandise! 😉

Which Cthulhu based game is your favorite?

Owlcat

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And… we’re back from our two-week break! I’d like to once again, thank JJ Sandee and Jonathan Ying for their amazing guest comics. 😀 I actually had time to play some board games the last two weeks! That was refreshing. 😉

Not some board games, quite a lot actually. From the top of my head: Arkham Horror the Card Game, Bargain Quest, Sheriff of Nottingham, Illimat, Hive Pocket, Santorini, Agricola: All Animals Big and Small, London, Eldritch Horror, Escape the Dark Castle, Race for the Galaxy, Century Golem, Small World, Odin’s Ravens and Jaipur!

This week’s comic is about A Fake Artist Goes to New York, a fun little party game by Oink Games. One player is the Question Master and thinks up a theme and the exact subject of the drawing that players have to draw. The Question Master hands out cards to all the players with the subject written on the back, except to the player that will be… the fake artist! He or she gets a card with an X written on the back but has to pretend like they know precisely what they’re contributing to the drawing. The Fake Artist only knows the given theme, like animals, food, etc. All players get to draw to two lines on the picture and then, everybody has to point out who they think was the fake artist that round.

Something completely different: We’ve been seeing a lot of pictures of Root all over social media and we can’t wait to receive our copy! We’ll probably receive it within two or three weeks. Exciting! Even Heinze’s brother in Australia already got his copy and was teasing us with pictures. 😉 … soon!

What’s your favorite party game?

Guest comic by Jonathan Ying

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Hi, dear readers! We’re taking a break and thus, like last week, we have a guest comic for you! It’s made by Jonathan Ying, the designer of Bargain Quest! We love Bargain Quest and so do all the people we have played it so far. Bargain Quest second kickstarter has launched today, so if you’re interested in the game, you can get yourself a copy of the game… and the new expansion! Click here to see the Kickstarter project. We’d also like to thank Jonathan for the amazing guest comic. <3 We want our characters to always be dressed like this in the future. 

Having guest comics has been really cool, it has given us time to catch our breath and to see the creativity of others. Next week, we’re back with the ‘normal’ Semi Co-op comics. For now, a few words from Jonathan Ying:

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Hi everyone! This is Jonathan Ying! I’m a game designer and sometimes illustrator. I’m a big fan of Semi Co-op and was super excited to get the chance to do a guest comic! This particular one was a blast to draw and it covers a discussion I often consider regarding immersion and roleplaying in gaming! You can see more of what I do by going to my website jonathanying.com! Happy gaming!

What game do you find the most immersive?

Crocodile-Cyborg illusion

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Whenever I play Clank! in Space! I can’t help myself and I see a crocodile in the pawn for the boss, Eradikus. Personally, I think cyborgs are slightly boring, so I just keep referring to it as a space crocodile. I’m wondering if anybody else has this silhouette-of-a-crocodile issue or is it just me? 😀

Last week we’ve finished Pandemic Legacy Season 2! In our first game of December. Everything went very very smoothly because we accidentally had perfectly prepared the board for this finale. We didn’t know what was going to happen in December, but nonetheless, we made all the right choices! We had a ton of fun with Season 2, we did find it slightly easier than Season 1, but that could have been because we just had an amazing team of player characters and all of them lived to see the end game. We also played at least five practice games before starting the first game of January to get used to the new gameplay. We’ll definitely be playing Season 3 when it comes out, we can’t wait how the story continues or what gameplay they come up with. Anyhow, we really recommend any of the Pandemic Legacy games. If you like Pandemic, this experience is worth your money.

For now, we’re happy that the coming months we finally have more time to just play other games! We have so many games on our shelves that we’d love to play more and try with four players. And after summer is over, we’ll give Charterstone a go.

And before I forget, a fun announcement! The coming two weeks I’ll be taking a break from making comics! Now I understand that’s mostly a nice thing just for me, but there’s also a fun part for you! We take our ‘A new comic on Mondays’ very seriously and are proud of ‘never-missed-a-single-week’ streak in the past three years. We’ve asked around if anybody was interested in doing a guest comic for us and we got responses. And thus the coming two weeks we will present you with two awesome guest comics! One made by a fellow local artist and Netrunner player, Jan Jaap Sandee and one made by Jonathan Ying, the designer of Bargain Quest. We’re really excited and thankful for their support.

Lord Eradikus’ silhouette… space crocodile or cyborg?
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