Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition

D&D 4th Edition!

Ziggy Williamson: D&D 4th Edition, we’re playing a homebrew campaign. We’ve been playing this for a couple years now. We meet whenever we can, but every year we play a game at DragonCon, drop-ins are always welcome, and we always put the most work into the DragonCon game. As you can say, I have pages of notes. We’ll be playing this game all weekend. The setting is called Dead’s End. It’s sort of a mish mosh of Tolkienesque normal D&D fantasy tropes with a late 19th-century American West. There are a lot of fantasy-Western mixups. Ours is less cowboys and more “There Will Be Blood.” The main character is Wesley Persico, who is an elf who left his family’s canned peach business to start prospecting for oileum in the west. We have a Mexican vampire priest named Padre Ignacio, so it’s a Western fantasy. We’ve been playing it for awhile, and we’re actually making a board game based on it.

Kingsburg!

Will: This is Kingsburg, it is a dice allocation game. There are two or three games similar to it in the gaming universe, like Alien Frontiers, which was kickstarted a couple years ago. You roll the dice, and there are advisors and you plug your dice into the advisors to get certain resources and it is all culminating in an attack that these monsters are going to come at the end of every year and you have to be built up to sustain it, and you get victory points over the course of the game. Kingsburg 28% off!

Infinity, the Game!

Mark/Nathan: [Infinity, the Game] This is a 28mm miniature skirmish game set in a Sci-Fi world. It’s a Spanish game that’s been around for about 8 years. It’s been growing by leaps and bounds. The company’s had 25-75% growth over the last 5 years, which is amazing, and when you consider that they’re in Spain, having economical success like that is fantastic. It’s for exactly one reason. They love the people who play their game. I just told them, “Hey, I love playing your game, I’m going to do demos at DragonCon.” I literally just send an e-mail to somebody, they didn’t know me from anybody. They sent me $200 retail worth of stuff to just hand out to people for free. All these posters, all kinds of stuff. You roll dice, you put your little toy soldiers down and roll dice, someone gets shot and nobody gets hurt.

Battlestar Galactica!

Michael: Battlestar Galactica is a cooperative traitor game. With the setup we have now with 5 players, we’re going to have 3 humans and 2 Cylons, but the roles are hidden, so we don’t know, just like the TV series, you don’t know who the Cylons are. The Cylons are trying to get the humans to lose all of their resources, like food, fuel, morale, population, possibly destroy Galactica if they can. The humans are trying to get to their destination, which in this case is the planet Kobol. Once they reach the distance and make one more jump, then they’ve beaten the Cylons, otherwise the Cylons win. Get Battlestar Galactica 24% off!

Boss Monster!

Misty/Keith/Myola/Joshua/John: This game’s called Boss Monster. What you’re basically trying to do, you’re trying to build the biggest dungeon, to kill the most souls, and whoever kills ten souls first wins. Boss Monster 24% off!

Star Trek Catan!

Paul/Joe/Nick/Jane: Star Trek Catan is Catan in space, with a few little tricks. Standard Catan is a little empire-building game, kind’ve. You basically put little starbases or cities down, you build roads or starships between them, and you get resources whenever you have a starbase next to a number that gets rolled. And you use those to build different things. The objective is to get as many victory points as possible. Normally, you get those by building outposts, starbases, or various development cards that say you can have points. There’s still Longest Road, called Supply Route, and Largest Army. The only interesting new thing would be the Captain cards. These offer you little abilities that you can fire once a turn. McCoy does, “Whenever you buy a development card, you can look at the top 3 and choose one.” Other characters do interesting things like that too. There’s Sarek, Chekov, Rand. They’re all fun. That’s really the big difference. The rest is just a new sheen on a classic game. Get Star Trek Catan 21% off!

Ascension!

Rachel/Ricky/Hollis/Frank: Ascension is basically a deckbuilding game. You have money, which are Runes, and military, which is Power, and the objective of the game is to get the most Honor. That’s all the little tokens here. You can beat monsters with military Power and buy heroes with money Runes, and they do all kinds of really cool stuff. At the end of the game, you add up the number of actual tokens you have and stars at the bottom of the cards, and that’s your total Honor. Get Ascension 8% off!

Ninja Catgirls!

Trace/Zachary/Derek/Jessica/John: Space Pirate Amazon Ninja Catgirls. We all have crew, we’re competing to get 10 loot, which includes poolboys. You send your people against different challenges… garden mazes, or hired mooks and they use their ninja skill or their space pirate skill or whatever against whatever the challenge is. It’s definitely competitive, probably about a half hour. Get Space Pirate Amazon Ninja Catgirls Here!

Bohnanza!

Talia/Misty/John: We’re playing Bohnanza. You play by picking cards and planting beans, and then trading, and then you just go along with the deck and you go through the deck, and you win by collecting coins from the beans. Whoever has the most coins after you go through the deck 3 times wins. Get Bohnanza at 18% off.

Twilight Sparkle’s Secret Shipfic Folder!

Andrew: This is Twilight Sparkle’s Secret Shipfic Folder. The best way I’ve heard it described is, it’s kind’ve like Fluxx. You have 3 types of cards… ponies, ships, and goals. Basically, on your turn, you play a ship with a pony onto the board, shipping an existing pony and if it matches the goal requirement, you get a goal. The first person to get the total goal amount, like 5 points, wins the game.

Warhammer: Chaos vs Dark Angels!

Brandon: Warhammer: Chaos vs Dark Angels is strategy set in a gothic, futuristic environment. It’s turn-based, you and I take turns back and forth. Goals could be either utmost destruction or objective-based. There’s a lot of different strategical ways to play. It’s not just smash your opponent. It’s certainly more of a narrative, it’s certainly a game that has one of the best forced narratives that I’ve ever seen. We play by rolling d6’s and using the comparative chart. Get Warhammer with free shipping here!

Greed!

Elizabeth/Stephanie/Ray/Ethan/Jay: Greed is a game of investing in holdings to get a lot of money, using thugs and cheap rental properties. You win by having the most amount of money at the end of the game. Get Greed Here!

Shadow Hunters!

Daniel: Shadow Hunters. You’re trying to kill your opponent without knowing who they totally are, and trying to figure out who they are as you kill them. It’s a game of hiding who you are and trying to figure out who everyone else is while avoiding things. In normal games, you have HP and everyone can see it. In this game, you don’t, you have a damage tracker that you move along, and when you hit your character’s HP, you die. So no one knows your maximum HP, they just know how much damage you’ve taken. So, as you play the game, there are defensive cards, offensive cards, and investigative cards. Investigative cards help you find out who’s on what side. There are three basic factions: Hunters, Shadows, and Neutrals. Hunters have to kill Shadows, Shadows have to kill Hunters. Neutrals just kind’ve do a various odd amount of everything. You win by either killing all the opposing faction or completing the special objective of the Neutral. And since no one knows what your objective is and who you are, you have to figure this out and you work as a team as you try to kill people, either opponents or not. You need at least about 4-5 players. Get Shadow Hunters Here!