With the Golden Standees behind us, it’s time for ‘normal’ comics again!
We’ve started Pandemic Legacy Season 2 and won the January game – a good start of the game! … And then we played February, which started out amazing for us but soon turned into an avalanche of horrific outbreaks. We obviously didn’t win, but we’ll have our revenge soon. We’re really loving the game so far, it’s different from Season 1 in a very interesting and challenging game. We’re really curious what’s going to happen further on in the game. 🙂
We’re trying to finish some campaign games we have laying around which we’re just playing with the two of us. Finishing Legacy of Dragonholt felt good and we’ve paused our Arkham Horror LCG campaign in absence of the last scenario pack and so we decided it’s time to finish Mechs vs. Minions. We’re now down to the final mission! Which is looking like it will take us a few tries before we can beat it. After we’ve finished Mechs vs Minions it’s time for us the finally start playing the Tail Feathers campaign. And we still need to figure out with who we want to play Charterstone or if we want to play it with just the two of us, but we’re not sure if we’ll get a full game experience with just two players.
Summing it up: we’ve been playing Mechs vs Minions, Pandemic Legacy Season 2, Kingdomino, Mysterium and Battlecon! Quite a varied menu of board games if I say so myself!
What game would certainly improve with the addition of some animal characters? 😉
HAPPY NEW YEAR! May the dice rolls be in your favor in 2018!
2017 has come to an end, and so we present your part two of the Golden Standees: The People’s Choice awards! Contributed by readers and we asked Colin and Aileen from TinyWoodenPiecesto make an award and they did an amazing job! It’s great to see them in action again. <3 We would like to thank all of our readers for the fantastic past year. We can’t wait to get started with 2018 since we have a lot of great ideas we want to explore and present to you and the world.
2017 is almost over, so it’s time for our third annual GOLDEN STANDEES! The award show where we give out very niche awards to things we enjoyed this year. If you curious about the previous winners take a look the 2015 and 2016 editions.
We wish you all happy holidays and an epic New Year with lot’s of good times, but don’t forget next week…
the People’s choice golden standees!
We would love to see what games or which content creator you think should be given a golden standee! On Twitter, we’ve had some fun discussions about awards, but it isn’t real until you’ve submitted it! We will share all awards on our social media accounts and make a selection to be published on the website. Don’t be afraid if you feel like you are not “creative” or don’t have art skills! We’re looking to have fun and we all know that a simple stick figure drawings can be just as funny as a great cartoon. You can also take a cool picture, everything is welcome. Remember that we are looking for ‘funny’ awards, not the award for “Board Game of the Year”, etc.
The final deadline for contributing your own award is December 29th 2017 and you can send it to goldenstandees@semicoop.com.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to drop us a message. If you don’t have any experience with graphics software, but you do have an amazing idea for an award and want to draw it on paper – that’s fine too! You can just scan your drawing and mention your award name and the winner and we’ll make a fancy Golden Standee for you. If you want to do this, I do advise you to download and print an image of the Golden Standee from the URL above to make sure you are using the right dimensions.
We can’t wait to see what creative ideas you come up with!
We have some free time the coming weeks so we’ll be playing more Legacy of Dragonholt together, which just decided to crank up the intensity and slap us in the face about a wrong decision. We will also have some gaming sessions with friends playing Eldritch Horror (does that game ever get old?) and Pandemic Legacy Season 2. Behind the scenes we’re also planning for 2018 which will have a ton of great Semi Co-op things for you to enjoy!
Our gift from our Board Game Geek Secret Santa arrived last week and oh my… IT’S CHARTERSTONE and The Game Extreme. We’re actually not familiar with The Game, but the first time we played it, it became immediately clear that it is a very challenging little co-op card game – great fun! We’d like to thank our Secret Santa once again: thank you for the amazing gifts.
But let’s get back to the beautiful white box. Right now it’s just displayed in our house for us to stare at it and we are cracking our brains over when we’re going to play it and with who. We probably want to finish Pandemic Legacy Season 2 first and then get started with this beauty.
We’ve been on a roll with Arkham Horror the Card Game last week! We’ve played the first four scenarios of the Dunwich Legacy campaign and we are loving it. Our team of investigators does seem to be a little overpowered though. The combination of Rex Murphy and Zoey Samaras is just devastating. Rex finds clues very very easily and monsters almost perish at the sight of Zoey. We’ll probably try this campaign again with other investigators and see how it goes then. 🙂 But first, we have two more scenarios to go and we probably have to wait a while for the last scenario pack since it seems to be out of stock everywhere.
What game are you hoping to get from Santa this Christmas? 😀
PS. Don’t forget that you can submit your own Golden Standee for our People’s Choice awards! More information on how to submit in this blogpost.
Digital and analog games aren’t that far apart and are sometimes really much alike in theme (and also in gameplay, sort of). So we have some tips if you love one of the listed games above! If you like Kitchen Rush, you’re bound to like the digital game Overcooked. It’s a hilarious frantic co-op game in which you have to prepare and serve meals as fast as possible! … Oh wait, that’s the same as Kitchen Rush, right? Correct, only without sand timers and more fire! 😉 If you like Junk Art: try Tricky Towers, a great Tetris stacking game… with physics! And if you like the never-ending storyline of Gloomhaven, Divinity is right up your alley with about 100 hours of gameplay. And you get to talk with cats and other animals.
So our BGG Secret Santa gifts have arrived, but we won’t be able to pick them up until tonight! Exciting! We can’t wait to see what we got! 😀
Do you know more digital and tabletop games that are almost the same?
So we’ve finally played Great Western Trail…! Sort of. We started playing, loved it, but there was this weird snowballing effect going on with Heinze’s score and the train and that’s when we discovered that we overlooked one of the rules that you have to place one of your workers on a station spot after claiming the bonus tile. We had no choice but to stop playing at that point because the ‘damage’ was done. We did really enjoy all the gameplay elements and can’t wait to try Great Western Trail again!
Yesterday was Heinze’s birthday and although I actually managed to gift him non-boardgame related things (such a challenge!!), he did, of course, get some games. We now own Raptor and Jaipur! Both very fine games. We’ve played Raptor yesterday and that game is hard and fun! Since it plays so quickly, you can easily play it multiple times in a row. But you can always just check the video by No Pun Included that is mentioned above. We can’t wait to try Jaipur tonight. Since we’re both very busy lately we haven’t had the time to play longer games, so it’s great to have a few more short games to play in the evening with a cup of tea.
For the people who don’t follow us on other channels, we’ve published another video last week. We’re huge fans Blade Runner 2049 and the baseline test just screamed to be Semi Co-op’ed. And so we did. 😉
The golden Standees 2017 – Information
Like mentioned last week, it’s almost time to present our third edition of the Golden Standees Awards! And like last year, we would like to offer you a chance to contribute an award! That means we will certainly share your award on our social media accounts and that there is a chance you’ll be published on our website. You don’t have to be an artist to participate! We’re just looking for fun awards and we all know that a simple stick figure drawing can be funny (for example, XKCD!). Or take a cool picture. Everything is welcome. So if there is a game, publisher, game designer, website, YouTube channel you would like to award, this is your chance! Remember that we are looking for ‘funny’ awards, not just an award for “The Best Board Game YouTube Channel”, etc.
The final deadline for contributing your own award is December 29th 2017 and you can send it to goldenstandees@semicoop.com.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to drop us a message. If you don’t have any experience with graphics software, but you do have an amazing idea for an award and want to draw it on paper – that’s fine too! You can just scan your drawing and mention your award name and the winner and we’ll make a fancy Golden Standee for you. If you want to do this, I do advise you to download and print an image of the Golden Standee from the URL above to make sure you are using the right dimensions.
We can’t wait to see what creative ideas you come up with!
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Which reviewer has convinced you to buy the most games so far? 😉
Great Western Trail is a highly appraised game by many people and it’s even on number 11 of the Board Game Geek ranking list! … It’s totally taunting us standing there on one of our shelves. It’s been at our house for multiple weeks now, but we just haven’t had the time to tackle this big and great game, But we really really want to, because the game mechanics seem so interesting. Hopefully: SOON! 😀
Until then, we amuse ourselves with shorter games on normal weekdays like Pandemic Legacy. We tried beating the practice game again last week, and we lost AGAIN on the last turn. It’s definitely bad luck and not our lack of skill. 😉 We’re going to try again tonight and we hope to beat this monster and finally get started on January. I’ll let you know next week if we finally beat it or not.
The end of 2017 is nearing and that means it’s almost time for Semi Co-op’s Golden Standees! And like last year, we would like to invite our readers to participate in the People’s Choice awards! 😀 We really enjoyed giving people a platform to express their cool ideas and creativity. Remember that you really don’t need drawing skills to participate – stick figures or a photo can be really funny as well.
More info on how to participate in the blog post next week.
Remember that we added an item to the Jack Vasel Memorial Fund Auction? It raised far more money that we could have imagined and we’re so grateful that we were able to help other people in such a fun way. We’ve made a custom Semi Co-op avatar for Ashley and this is the result!
Do you have any unplayed games in your collection that you really want to play but you just lack the time?
In the game Near and Far there are artifact cards players can build and one of them is a singing skull! Whenever a player visits the Saloon, that player gains 1 reputation. It’s quite a handy card to have and combined with my character’s talent Piano Playing (gain 1 food when visiting the Saloon), it’s a hilarious idea.
So we picked up The Networks at Spiel in Essen and after playing it a few times with two and even four players, we can really say we like this game! The artwork fits perfectly with the slightly sarcastic and funny theme. It’s a hit in our gaming group. 🙂
The end of the year is coming near and that means Board Game Geek’s Secret Santa! 😀 Members of website Board Game Geek who signed up, get assigned a victim for which they have to buy a (board game related) present! Our Santa has already been doing a great job, sending us fun messages and a series of questions. It kinda makes us feel bad that we haven’t really contacted our ‘victim’ yet. But no worries! This Santa has been very busy and will certainly step up their game – soon!
Do you ever sing or quote songs during a game?
(We tend to hum Star Wars tunes during Imperial Assault… a lot. )
PS. Heinze just noticed that our previous comic about Near and Far also contained singing… false singing. We’re not sure why this is a returning theme in our comics about this game.
During a game of Magic Maze, players are not allowed to talk to each other during the most important parts of the game and that can be quite tricky in a real-time cooperative game. There is however… a DO SOMETHING pawn! Players can put it in front of another player to catch their attention and notify them that they are probably missing something important and should … do something! What makes this such a tricky game? Well, there are four hero pawns on the board and every player has a certain action they can make all the hero pawns do. For example: one player can move any of the character pawns to the north, another player can move them to the east, etc etc. Just thinking about that already made my head hurt. I imagine it is a little more relaxed than Escape: The Curse of the Temple though, in which players can constantly scream at each other, need to roll dice (the noise!), while neurotic music is playing on the background.
We haven’t played the game yet and we’re not sure if it is a game we would enjoy. Nonetheless, this gameplay mechanic of a DO SOMETHING pawn made for an excellent comic idea. 😉
Our item in the Jack Vasel Memorial Fund Action is a blast! The highest bid is $200 so far and THAT IS AMAZING! We’re so thankful for the generosity of people and we’re grateful we get to help people who need it in this way. If you’re interested, this is the link to the auction item: https://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/230490/item/5749356#item5749356 The auction ends tomorrow.
PS. I’ve been swamped with work since Essen, so I haven’t had a chance to work on our animated Semi Co-op project. Hopefully, I can block time in my schedule to get some serious Semi Co-op work done in December. 🙂
What’s your opinion of hastily real-time cooperative games like Magic Maze and Escape?
Azul is one of the games we picked up at Spiel this week and we love it. The first turn we didn’t really know how it was going to be ‘a game’, but when we reached the second turn… it hit us and we saw the many choices you can make! Will I take this tile just to prevent other players from getting it? If I take this, then that… etc etc! We can’t wait to play this with more than two players.
This week we realized that the Jack Vasel Memorial Fund Auction is running! So we decided to offer something to the good cause: a custom avatar or selfie shot with us… plus we’ll send you a signed fridge magnet of the image! There is already an outstanding bid of $130 – maybe we can drive up the price even higher. 🙂 We would like to say that we are already astounded by the generosity of people, it’s an amazing to see the bgg community at work. Click here to see our auction item and if you’d like to participate in the bidding for a good cause! The auction ends on November 14th.
And we’ve started Pandemic Legacy 2! We’ve been so excited to get started with this game ever since finishing Pandemic Legacy last year. Alas, we lost our first prologue game (SO CLOSE!) and thus we decided that we won’t start with the first ‘real game’ and will keep playing the practice session until we win and are familiar with all the new rules and actions. We’ll keep you posted on what we think of the game, spoiler free of course. 😉
Any good anecdotes about the behavior of your pet(s) while playing a board game?
