Posts authored by Rachel

Don’t forget to be awesome

Don’t forget to be awesome published on 2 Comments on Don’t forget to be awesome

Hank Green, whom you might know from the VlogBrothers Youtube channel (which he runs with his brother John) has launched a kickstarter project for a card game: Wizard School! It seems like an interesting co-op game with a popular and fun theme. A gameplay video can be found here. There are still three days left to back the project, so you can still reserve yourself a copy of the game if you’re interested!

A little explanation about the comic: Hank and John Green also run a podcast together, Dear Hank & John, in which they answer questions, give advice and tell each other facts about either AFC Wimbledon or the planet Mars, so we’ve been fascinated about the idea of combining those two things in a game.

There are so many kickstarters nowadays! It’s fascinating to see how quickly the tabletop industry is growing. Although I love digital games, I very much enjoy the interaction with other people while playing ‘analog’ games, so I for one welcome this rise of tabletop games. The little free space left in our house, unfortunately, doesn’t. 😉

What do you think is the most interesting tabletop kickstarter project at the moment?

The anatomy of a turn in Epic

The anatomy of a turn in Epic published on 4 Comments on The anatomy of a turn in Epic

A couple of weeks ago we’ve received our Kickstarter copy of Epic, the card game by White Wizard Games, the creators of Star Realms. And we both think the game is a lot of fun! Basically all the cards give you this ‘Whut?! Wow…’ feeling the first time you see them. They are, as promised, EPIC! Alas, we humans don’t stay impressed too long by awesomeness and get used to things quickly. So nowadays it almost feels normal to summon something like a gigantic dragon, dinosaur, demon or even King Kong and let them fight an army of zombies. Or to just have the entire battlefield be swiped clean by an apocolypse. 😉

Beside its epic contents, the game is also smart. And I like that there are many ways to play it. You can shuffle up all the cards and take 30 random ones and play those as your deck. You can do a drafting session with the other player(s) with thirty random cards per player or you can just play one of the four factions. It just doesn’t matter, the game works fine either way! Our preference slightly leans toward drafting our own decks, but when time is limited – thirty random cards work fine as well.

We’ve played Epic with a third player once now and that totally changes the game, it takes a lot longer and the game requires a lot more brainpower than with two players. And this is not a bad thing, I was suprised by the difference. It’s just yet another side of Epic that seems to work very well.

What’s your favorite drafting game?

Tic Tac Toe Legacy

Tic Tac Toe Legacy published on 10 Comments on Tic Tac Toe Legacy

Last week was the worldwide release of Pandemic Legacy! And there’ s quite a hype for it in the board gaming world. Pandemic was (again) number 1 in the People’s Choice Top 100 of Dice Tower this year. The previous Legacy game, Risk Legacy, was received very well. I’m personally not a big fan of Risk and I didn’t want to dedicate to that many play sessions of Risk, so we skipped that one. I can’t wait to try the concept of Legacy with a game like Pandemic.

The idea of  the Legacy series is that  a ‘storyline’ is added to an excisting game. Unlike the original games, the Legacy games have an ending. After each play something changes and what this is is, depends on the outcome of the played game. You might have to draw things on the board, put stickers on it or add additional cards to the game.

Heinze and I are both quite exited about the game, although we’re not yet sure how we’ re going to organise it. We’d like to play it with a group of friends, but since you need to play the game at least 12 times (I’m not sure, probably more), it will be quite a hassle to organise it with a group without it taking us more than a year to finish it. Or maybe we might just have to play it with the two of us, but we enjoy playing the game with a group a little more.

Of what game would you love to see a Legacy edition?

The Weird West

The Weird West published on 13 Comments on The Weird West

At our FLGS (friendly local gaming store) we met somebody who is a big fan of Doomtown and has very balanced decks of all the Doomtown outfits (factions). He invited to us to come play Doomtown one day and so we did. I’ll be honest: the first time it reminded me of trying to understand all the different terms in Netrunner. Only instead of runs, stimhacks, ice breakers and agendas I had to get a grip on dudes, posses, deeds, upkeep, booting, shootouts and many more terms. But what a game! We played the game with four players and it was a lot of fun. I love the poker element in the game, it just makes it completely different than other games and it’s smoothly integrated into the game play.

Since we don’t own Doomtown ourselves and we’re pretty deeply invested in Netrunner, this is a game we like to play at a more casual basis. To be exact: we’ve played it only two times now, but I’m already looking forward to grabbing a my leather boots, long coat and cowboy hat to go out and play Doomtown again.  Yeeehaa!

And for the folks in the USA: the base game is less than $20 on Amazon, lucky you!

What collectable living trading card game do you play at a more casual basis?

Om nom nom.

Om nom nom. published on 11 Comments on Om nom nom.

Introducing Mariecke and Willem in the comic! You might see them more often in the future.

As the comic already implies: we like to dress up the game days we organise a little. We don’t see all of our friends as often as we used to, so we like to make it a little more special when we do. The last time we had a High Tea while playing Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, and that was excellent. And apparently it also makes us better detectives! We scored 75 points and answered all the questions correctly in the fifth case.

A photo posted by Semi Co-op (@semicoop) on

What themed food + games day should we plan next? 😉

Sweet Dreams?

Sweet Dreams? published on 4 Comments on Sweet Dreams?

I really like Urbion and I’m quite disappionted that the game is no longer available. I believe we picked up the last copy at our friendly local gaming store a few years ago and since then, I wanted to gift it to at least four people – but alas: it was nowhere to be found!

Urbion is a nice little card game in which you have to establish balance in city districts by making sure that there are as many positive dreams as negative dreams next to a so-called City card. There are also Chaos cards in the game which will try to throw of the balance, to give you a little challenge. It’s a simple game, but it’s one of those tiny (solo) games I grab while I have to wait a bit during cooking. And although the artwork of the game probably doesn’t work for everybody, I love it! It’s different. It’s colorful and it nothing like other games (except the other games from the Oniverse series of course). And I had a lot of fun making this ‘comic’ in the style of Urbion. 😉

If you’re interested, there are are two games that are set in the Oniverse that are available:
– Onirim, gameplay wise, this game is closest to Urbion.
– Sylvion, which is a tower defense like game.

What games do you know with a very ‘alternative’ artstyle? 

Dead of Wi-… Trust

Dead of Wi-… Trust published on 5 Comments on Dead of Wi-… Trust

Ahhh… Dead of Winter. This game has been the cause of quite some distrust at the kitchen table. Dead of Winter is the pure definition of semi co-op gameplay. I love it.

What I think is genius about the game is that, besides a possible traitor, every player has his/her own personal secret objective in the game. Even if the group survives and finishes the main objective of the game, the player that didn’t meet their personal objective still loses the game. These personal objectives can be quite tricky to achieve without looking like a traitor. They vary from things like hording important goods like food and medicine to having a large following of survivors. These personal objectives make it possible for the actual traitor in the group to go about their treacherous behaviour without being noticed immediately.

The last time we played the game I was the actual traitor and prevented the group of winning the game in the last round. I was called a dirty traitor and other less kind things. So if you’re okay with possibly upsetting your friends and distrusting each other, you should definitely give the game a go. 😀

Do you know any other cool semi co-op games?

What about Wiggins?

What about Wiggins? published on 3 Comments on What about Wiggins?

A photo posted by Semi Co-op (@semicoop) on

The latest addition to our game collection is Mr Jack Pocket. Basically a very smart two player cat and mouse game in which Jack the Ripper tries to stay out of sight of Sherlock and his team or tries to outsmart them while being seen. It’s a quick portable game that takes about 15 minutes and worth checking out if you’ve never heard of it and are looking for a smaller game with a smaller price tag for two players.

Now, about that team of Sherlock… my first reaction was: What about Wiggins?! We’ve played a few cases of Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective and in that game the team clearly exists of Sherlock, Watson and Wiggins!

I tried to draw the comic a little in the style of the artwork of the game, but I somehow ended up channeling the art style of Tiny Wooden Pieces a bit as well. Check out their great comics about board games if you haven’t already. 🙂

What’s your favorite Sherlock Holmes themed game?

Le voyage dans la lune

Le voyage dans la lune published on 4 Comments on Le voyage dans la lune

The first time we played Eldritch Horror with friends, we came across the card with this text and we were all like: “What the?”. And that’s what I personally love about Eldritch Horror. The game is loaded with unexpected story elements and your investigators go through the weirdest and most terrible of things. That’s if they manage to stay alive, of course. We probably lost the game more often than we defeated the Ancient One.

It’s not a game we play too often, it’s one of games we want to plan a day around. To take our time and read aloud all the cards and use (silly) voices and use heavy accents to set an atmosphere. You just want to end up with that character that has taken on a dark pact, has hallucinations and has been lost in space and time and in a ‘friggin forest on the moon. It’s just good story. Until you flip over that Dark Pact card of course, because that means something terrible will probably happen to you.

Hah, now I feel like playing the game again!

What’s your favorite story game?

Board gaming jargon

Board gaming jargon published on 5 Comments on Board gaming jargon

The board gaming world has, like most things, its own jargon. It can be slightly confusing if you’re new to board games. First there’s the easiest: games categorized by their game mechanics. That’s something you’ll learn and reconize quickly. Then there are the acronyms, which you’ll mostly find online, but I often find myself puzzled not knowing which game they’re talking about. The games mentioned in the comic:

ONUW: One Night Ultimate Werewolf
A:NR: Android: Netrunner
KONY: King of New York
TTR: Ticket To Ride

And then there’s this series of abstract games (which can be combined?!)… with rather interesting names: Gipf, Zèrtz, Dvonn, Yinsh, Pünct and Tzaar. These names always remind me of Ikea furniture, so well, just imagine them naming the games in combination with Ikea furniture. 😉

Oh, and for the Shut Up & Sit Down fans – yes, those are the ‘abstract games’ versions of Paul and Quinns, from their video review of Tash-Kalar.

On Instagram we challenged people to build the hightest and/or most impressive tower made out of dice – if you feel like stacking some dice: feel free to join in! It’ll be lovely to see other people their creations.

What acronyms do you know and/or use for certain tabletop games?
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