Lurker > SeabassDebeste

farnsworth

Wordle 458 4/6






right
alien
alive
alike

12. Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/291457/gloomhaven-jaws-lion

Category: Cooperative
Key mechanics: Point-to-point movement, dungeon-crawler, campaign, hand management
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 6
Game length: 90-150 minutes
First played: 2020
Experience: 10-15 plays (covering 10-12 scenarios) with 2 players

Jaws of the Lion is a cooperative campaign game. Each player controls a fantasy character (guard, ax-thrower, etc) through a variety of scenarios where you travel through dungeon areas and smash hordes of enemies such as living corpses or monstrosities, all represented by miniature figures or cardboard standups on hexes.

The game's core loop involves a simultaneous card selection phase, in which each card is used either for its top action (generally combat-related) or its bottom action (generally support- or movement-related). Between rounds you can level up your character, get combat cards, or gear to improve your strength.

You may have heard of Gloomhaven, BoardGameGeek's #1-ranked game overall. It was an unexpected smash hit in 2017. I've never played and likely will never play base Gloomhaven (especially physically), but Jaws of the Lion is a not-quite-sequel. The primary innovation in JotL, as I understand it, is that the maps for each scenario are right in the scenario book - i.e. you can just open up to a page and place your minis right on that scenario book. It's really clever and helps cut down on the setup.

But my god, there is still so much setup. Characters. Attack cards. Attack modifier cards. Equipment cards. Enemies, each of which have their own attack cards, plus a deck of enemy attack modifier cards. Counter chits. (So many counter chits! Hit points, status markers, trap indicators!) Scenario over, time to go shopping? Break out the marketplace deck! This is by far the biggest drawback to JotL, and it's the primary reason it hasn't been played a ton more in my household. It's also quite a table hog; while the map itself isn't that big, you need all sorts of zones just to store all these counters and cards - not to mention your player board and the glossary nearby.

But the game itself is very neat. The central feature of it is hand management; you really want to bash your enemies, but you need to get into range and figure out how to mitigate damage that's done to you. You need to figure out how to do this rather quickly without running too much, because you also have a built-in turn timer, wherein you have to lose a card every time you refresh your hand. While it's far from the most attractive game for me, JotL also looks quite nice on a table - I don't have a lot of games where I've got a miniature player figure facing off against these nicely printed standup monstrosities.

The writing is mostly hackneyed, but you're slaying demons, who cares? It's fantastically exciting to get a new card, and the game constantly foists choices on you about which card to take when you level up; which card to bring on your adventure; which card to use this turn; and which purpose to use that card for. So many choices!

Again, the biggest thing stopping JotL from hitting the table more is that it feels like work. Sadly I get some dread thinking about the time invested in setting it all up, and all the trouble of tracking monster movements and hit points, and inevitably we lean some other direction instead. But I'm still pretty interested in finishing this campaign, and it still fits a cool, unique spot in my collection as my only dungeon-crawler.

admittedly i did not particularly like the show at all before eren became a titan - i found the tone and characters both rather grating

yeah, S4 is a little divisive and it really takes things in a different direction, but S3 took AoT from something i kind of tolerated/found intriguing to one of my favorite shows i've watched since the pandemic began!

Wordle 457 6/6








had TRIBE, TRICE, and TRIKE as remaining options so i tested

i remember k-on blowing up right after haruhi suzumiya.

it looks like you dropped attack on titan during its best season. the answers arc begins in S3 and it totally reframes the show. my favorite part of it is that it's a mystery/lore show that unfurls deliberately and clicks into place, rather than its action sequences (which can be very good, though not always)

mulan

i guess i shouldn't be surprised that we had to relive all of morgana's experienced again too, but there were some nice lunges in there and it wasn't too long

lucille
iago
haymitch

Wordle 456 3/6





mogul
freak
stink

had a fun time hanging and chatting yest, (if only for a very short percentage of your stream) - fav game ever, so it's a trip watching it!

Wordle 454 5/6







i got it in the right number of tries, but yeah, that was a bullshit word.

that said a parer is a thing. it is not a person, but rather an instrument, like a knife

zelda

Wordle 453 3/6





three 3s in a row!

Wordle 452 3/6





slime
youth
thyme

put in a pure tester guess, but it paid big dividends so i'm not apologizing!

hey, i see this topic but didn't feel like i had time to address it. my mom passed away the years ago from cancer and my dad has memory loss and diminished function, so i think i can relate to what you're going through. it sucks and there is nothing good about it, but it sounds like you're strong, and we're here for you to talk to.

kiki

bit of a down episode this time, but still okay. has this series or its predecessor ever had a sex scene that wasn't extremely uncomfortable? i guess that one arguably takes that dubious "crown"? my wife was very, very excited about this one

if there waa genuine affection (from a young girl to an old man) on alicent's part for viserys, it seems like that has ended now

best part of the series continues to be viserys and rhaenyra scenes. loved viserys finally getting pushed past his limits and taking control of his household, lived rhaenyra acquiescing... but with terms of her own.

no way otto is 100% done... right...? but he's unlikely to be around in the post timeskip era...?

next week it looks like viserys is finally biting it :(

this show is rough. no elrond reaaally hurt here.

elendil (?) is cool though

soon(?)

lion King

13. Magic Maze

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/209778/magic-maze

Category: Cooperative
Key mechanics: Real-time, limited communication, map exploration
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 5-10 minutes
First played: 2018
Experience: 30+ plays of 10+ scenarios with 2-5+ players

In Magic Maze, each player helps to control a party of four consisting of an elf, a dwarf, a barbarian, and a mage - represented by pawns - in a complex shopping mall. Each queste must discover their weapon, exploring the map by sending the appropriate quester to a respective edge of a tile, and then, once all weapons are secured, to send the questers each to their special exits.

The main catch is that you don't control just one pawn - you control all pawns, but you only get to move any pawn in one of the cardinal directions, and only one player gets to perform each special function such as exploring or going up escalators. Talking can only happen during special breaks, though you can shake a pawn to get someone's attention. Different scenarios slightly alter the rules and add further complexity or tiles.

Very few games can be as silently infuriating as Magic Maze. The game is deceptively difficult to play given how insanely simple each rule is. The game is visually noisy to the point that even without the pressure of a timer or playing without communicating, it's actually pretty difficult to decipher at times, giving a "Where's Waldo?" type of effect. And that red "ATTENTION" marker can be used hilariously passive-aggressively.

The game also very deliberately plays against natural player/human instincts. It feels really natural to want to control "your" character, but no matter where you're sitting, you're actually responsible for all of the characters. Because each revealed square mall tile contains so many walls, you may see a path for a pawn to go - but you're depending on other players to move that pawn like three times just to traverse half a tile! And sometimes you can get so fixated on what's going on with one pawn you forget about another, or you're so mesmerized by two players being in sync you forget that it's your responsibility to continue the motion. Or the ATTENTION marker gets thrown in your face and you have to frantically check all of the pawns to see which one you have to move... or if you're responsible for resetting the timer so you don't get a game over.

While 4p is the "canonical" MM experience, this is certainly one of those games that will be easier with 2p, and can arguably be as fun or more fun. As I said, there is a large component of unintuitiveness in Magic Maze's controls. But of course, when you touch the pawns often enough and your mind actually locks in... it's pretty amazing. And because it's easier to enter that zone with 2p, a lot of my most fun/least frustrating experiences have come at that count.

hercule

but i do like ed a lot too!

Mobilezoid posted...

I still love how some of them are lookalikes to famous anime heroines. One looks exactly like Hanekawa from Monogatari, another like Renge from Non Non Biyori, and the cat-girl in this has the same voice actress as Nya-tan from Etotama, who is THE cat-girl as far as I'm concerned.

i don't think i know a single one of the "famous" references

monogatari i think i've seen somw of (senjougahara?) but i don't recognize hanekawa

tag

Wordle 448 3/6





flick
leafy
lofty

woot woot

now that's a high school girls show i actually have heard a lot about and might be interested in watching

grave of the fireflies

so i've beaten like 4 FF games, seen the 9 mainline star wars movies, read the hobbit/LOTR and seen the 2001 trilogy, read/watched the mainline harry potter series, and watched 2 seasons of stranger things. back in the day i also read a lot of star wars EU stuff and might have had some paraphernalia in video games, toys, etc but none of them is really worth chatting here

seen a few episodes of WOT and expanse a

my rankings:

ELITE
harry potter books
LOTR films
ff6

VEEY GOOD
star wars 3, 4, 5
ff7, 8

GOOD
the hobbit
ff4
stranger things
star wars 6, 7, 8

MEH
harry potter films
LOTR books
star wars 1, 2

HILARIOUSLY AWFUL
star wars 9

Wordle 447 5/6







hokey
fetch
their
small (cowardly test guess for these/theta/theme)
theme

yeah big mouth didn't have a bad reputation, just hideous characters. so maybe that's what you meant...?

the hideousness sis indeed serve a thematic point though - it kind of is meant to feel disorienting, and if you can get past the ugliness of the world then you are also lowering your barriers enough to keep in its overall crassness and grossness and it hurts harder

rick and morty is also pretty hideous, though there i assume ita main purpose is to be easier to draw since there are so many insane concepts in it

Wordle 446 6/6








tapir
afoul
glade
black
clash
class

Robazoid posted...

Personally, as someone who is on pace to write a hundred thousand words ranking anime for an audience of maybe two dozen people, something lots of people would call an absolute waste of time, Im a firm believer that anything can have meaning so long as it matters to you.

absolutely! i obviously have heard of SAO, haven't seen but that was enjoyable to read!

the show is fucking gross and i hate the art

but yeah i am a fan! andrew in particular quickly reaches the ross geller "so bad he's good" territory

okay, reading the strict definition it doesn't seem as bad. even the power fantasy stuff didn't seem awful. it's the "average dude with a little girl's body" and "oh, MMORPG world time" stuff that seems particularly offputting

walter white

this whole isekai genre sounds pretty iffy

away from home this week, but totally should've brought my switch since there's a bit of downtime!

14. Bloodbound

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/130877/blood-bound

Category: Team vs team
Key mechanics: Hidden roles, social deduction
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 10-20 minutes
First played: 2015
Experience: 30+ plays over 12+ sessions with 6-12 players

In Bloodbound, each player is a vampire-cultist looking person, randomly assigned to one of two clans. A player also has a rank, one to nine, which is associated with special powers. The leader of a team is the team with the lowest rank. The game centers around a dagger, which is either passed to another player or used to stab another player. Getting stabbed means showing damage, which people can use to deduce your rank/clan. The game ends when someone is killed. If the killing player successfully killed the leader of the opposite clan, their clan wins. If they killed anyone else, then their clan loses.

I love the concept of these social deduction games. The endgame is so decisive - either you successfully killed someone, or you didn't. That's not to say it's always climactic, since the last few moves once most everyone is revealed can be a technicality, but the process of getting there is always cool.

There's also just something cool about the turn structure of Bloodbound - you don't go in a circle, and it's not entirely freeform. Instead, the player with the dagger is the active player. And that player determines who plays next, either by passing the dagger - a way of either deferring responsibility or conferring trust - or by stabbing someone, obviously an aggressive move that also gives information to the table. It's a very direct way of getting other people involved in the game, and I love the in-your-face but also nothing-personal player interaction in the game. The game also allows for other players to intervene in a stab by offering to take their rank token (and thus both reveal their rank and use their one-time player power) - though the stabbed must accept the offer.

Bloodbound doesn't entirely cast you into the dark and make you stab completely at random. At the beginning of the game, you get to see the color (but not rank) of one player sitting adjacent to you. (Naturally, this information can be obscured by a special role.) And when players get stabbed, they can take two damage tokens in an order of their choice - a question mark or a color (of their team). The tokens they are allowed to take are determined by their rank, so even before you've hit the rank token, you've got some information.

I find Bloodbound best at six or eight. Higher than that, and the game can often be determined by which leader gets arbitrarily targeted first, and it takes longer to get everyone involved. However, everyone's ability to get involved in the conversation to deduce a leader, or to offer their rank token as tribute, keeps the game pretty engaging still. And the runtime doesn't get too much worse.

I first played Bloodbound on the day I'd say that I really started playing hobby games. Remains one of the neatest social deduction games in my eyes.

Wordle 445 4/6






groan
flier
ruble
leery

completely don't mind a longer write-up!

truman

i have no inherent interest in watching high school girls, especially being sexualized, so the latest large swath (and... it seems like a large percentage of anime in general) have not been of note to me

glad you liked kiki's delivery service though!

Wordle 444 5/6







ashamed i wasted a guess on #3, first time i've done that in quite some time

finished episode 2, and that one wasn't quite as bad. still think everything involving galadriel is pretty trash, but love elrond and durin and all their scenes. orc scene was okay, a rare bright point in bronwyn's storyline.

Wordle 443 5/6

viserys is so incredibly magnetic as a screen presence. i love every scene he has, but partivularly those with rhaenyra

i also am liking alicent a lot. i think she genuinely wants to do good, but I'd bound to do her father's will and is limited by her lack of direct political power. the way she exerts influencer on viserys is great.