SurfMonkey's Museum Tour Ends in Super Villain Battles

It is the Lovecraft time of year. SurfMonkey came over for our monthly gaming session. We started out with one of my new favorites, Elder Sign. The weather outside was frightful and so were the monsters inside...the Arkham Museum that is...

 SurfMonkey started out with the magician Drake, and I began with Ashcan Pete and poor Duke, of course. Wow! They did not live very long. The We Need Help adventure proved to be devastating as we attempted to unlock our red die. Before we knew it, SurfMonkey was playing Harvey Walters and I was playing Gloria Goldberg.

 Then I was playing Carolyn Fern and SurfMonkey was playing Bob Jenkins.

 Well, none of these poor souls were a match for Yog-Sothoth. He devoured us in record time.

From the rainy streets of Arkham, we then proceeded to the Ruins of Atlantis where our heroic alter egos were pitted against the evil Baron Blade. 

The Baron gave our heroes a titanic battle, but in the end...

 The Baron was brought low by the combined forces of good! Take that, villain!

 SurfMonkey stayed with Bunker and Tempest for our second game. I opted for two heroes I hadn't played before: Fanatic and Ra.

 This game also marked my first foray against a new villain for me: Omnitron. What a cool villain! Love the melding of its theme and mechanics. Brilliant!

 This battle did not goes as well as our tussle with the Baron. By the end, Bunker and Tempest were down...

 Ra had been vanquished...

 Only Fanatic with a single thread of life stood standing.

She blasted Omnitron with Wrathful Retribution. Then with the help of Bunker, two Rounds later, she blasted Omnitron and its swarm of drones out of existence with Wrathful Retribution again! An awesome end to an awesome battle!

 We capped off our night of excellent gaming with a cup of Zombie Dice. Ahhh...the comforts of gaming, how I love thee.

Until next time, faithful readers, may the cards and dice fall your way and may you play, play, play.

A Sign of Good Times

My gaming group, the Starshield Gaming Society, met for our weekly gaming session at Zoltar's Man Cave. Because of the size of our group, we broke into two groups after a scrumptious late dinner of Chinese food.

While four of our number circled around a table for a rousing game of Agricola, the other three of us huddled around the other table and entered the Arkham Museum.

My group consisted of Iczer and Mage and, of course, myself. Both Iczer and Mage were excited to play Elder Sign again, and I love this game! It goes without saying, I was itching to try my luck against yet another Great Old One.

We set up quickly. We randomly dealt out starting Investigators. I started out as Amanda Sharp; Iczer with his old standby, Mandy Thompson; and Mage was the magician Drake. I revealed our main enemy off of the top of the Great Old Ones, and it was Ithaqua, the Wendigo spirit.

We were off and running...for our lives.

Ithaqua's ability punished us pretty badly. Before the game was over, Mandy was devoured and replaced by Jenny Barnes.

This game was the first time in multiplayer that the Great Old One awakened! We had to take the fight to him, and boy, did we get out butts kicked. We were devoured pretty quickly. 

After losing, we decided to take another run at another Great Old One for redemption. Iczer kept Jenny Barnes, Mage ended up with Kate Winthrop, whose ability of preventing monsters entering on Mage's turn proved to be in valuable against Shub-Niggurauth, Monster Master. I was playing Marty McGlen, criminal extraordinaire. 

The game was pretty intense. It came down to my having to take an adventure that would yield our final Elder Sign needed to lock away the Black Goat of the Woods. My two companions had cleared the monsters at the expense of their sanity after having failed to Complete the Adventure. I swooped in fresh from the lobby where I had bought our penultimate Elder Sign. The roll came down to the final dice roll, and I was successful! We locked him away. 

Overall, our experience was a fun one. Cheers of victory and groans of defeat; high fives and forehead slaps abounded. It was a rip-roaring good time at the beginning of autumn, which for me is traditionally the Lovecraft time of year. 

I look forward to taking another run at a Great Old One in the near future with the leaves falling around us and the chill in the air creeping into our bones.

Thanks for visiting, good reader, and until next time may the dice fall your way and may you play, play, play.

Starshield Boardgaming Knights Search for the Elder Sign Only to Find a Death Angel

This past Monday at our weekly gaming session we, the Starshield Gaming Society, came together to prevent a great extra-planar evil from breaking through the veil to our world. This fearsome Great Old One was poised to enter our world through a gate in the Arkham Museum. Were the efforts of the Starshield Gaming Society and their Investigators enough to prevent the unthinkable? Read on and see...

Here is the initial setup with Midnight approaching...

I was playing Vicent Lee. Here he is with my Dreamlands Trophy...

Victory against the Great Old One, Yog-Sothoth, was ours. The world was once again safe...

From the haunting and terrifying realm that is Arkham, Massachusetts to the tense terror of a floating Space Hulk we went...

This was my first game using the new Marines from the Expansion Pack. Playing with 7 players (14 Space Marines), was pretty awesome. We played with the 6-player beginning location and that seemed to work just fine. I felt challenged and the Event Cards kept things interesting.

We lost several of our brothers before packing up the game for the night. We still had the 3rd and 4th locations to go, but the night was growing late and many of us had miles to go...

I hope to return soon to the floating hulk to finish what we started.

The more I play these two games, the more I find myself wanting to play them. Good, good stuff...

Thank you for reading and until next time, may the dice fall your way and play, play, play!

Starshield Boardgaming Knights Stop by the 7 Wonders and see the Sign while fighting Quarriors

On Monday night, the Starshield Gaming Society assembled for our weekly game night. We opted for boardgames this week to give Weezoh time to prepare his Realms of Cthulhu  campaign beginning next Monday. As I have obtained several new tabletop games in the past months, I was all for it.

Of the various games I brought, it was my two newest that hit the table but not before we sat down to a game of 7 Wonders. I, of course, was stuck next to Iczer who tries to "starve out" his immediate opponents by not building resources they can use. Frustrating but a valid strategy. 

However, it didn't serve him well this game as Zoltar and I pummeled him. 

In the end I ended up tied for second with Grez. I was happy with that finish as it is my highest 7 Wonders finish yet. 

From 7 wonders we divided our eight members into two groups and broke out Quarriors! and Elder Sign. Since I was the only gamer there who had played the game, I was in charge of teaching and playing Elder Sign, which was fine with me as I enjoy that game immensely and had only played solo once before and wanted to see how it played in multi-player. It took me about 15 minutes to set up the board and explain the rules. Then we were off to lose some Sanity.

The first group was Zoltar, Grez, and Mage. I pulled Joe Diamond. The other characters were Mage: Mike McGlen , Zoltar: Darrell Simmons, Iczer: Mandy Thompson. 

We played against Yig. Thankfully, we were able to shut him down with 10 Elder Signs before he awakened. There were, however, a few tense moments in the middle of the game. Turns out I was playing a few things incorrectly because I hadn't read the rulebook well enough and didn't want to stop the action to look up a couple of questions. The way we were playing just made the game a little easier to beat, but did not take away from our enjoyment of the game.

 After that game, I was joined by Weezoh: Monterey Jack, April: Jenny Barnes, Grez: Vincent Lee. We worked to keep Yig asleep. There were many more tense times in this game, with Lee dying and being replaced by Amanda Sharp. We, too, managed to prevent Yig from awakening in the 13th hour. It was a close one. 

Overall, the games went smoothly, and I believe everyone enjoyed both Quarriors! and Elder Sign. As for me, I love Elder Sign the more I play it. I just really get caught up in the theme and the tense suspense brought about by the dice and the advancing clock. Even after I realized we had been playing Focusing wrong and allowing removed dice to be returned to the pool after successfully completing one Task, I was happy with my experience with the game and the Starshielders.

Hopefully, on our next round of boardgames, Elder Sign will hit the table again, and we will play it completely right. That could only make it even more intense. Looking forward to it.

Thanks for visiting magehammer's Gaming Table, and Until next time, may the dice fall your way and play, play, play!

Elder Sign: An Unboxing and First Solo Session

Elder Sign finally made its way into my life on Saturday. It wasn't until Sunday that I was able to sit down, crack it open, and play a game. The wait was a long one but in my estimation, well worth it. 

First of all, I was happy to see that the trend begun in Rune Age of providing zip lock baggies for storage was continued with ES. All of the components are, of course, top notch and visually appealing.

After popping the components out of their casings, I sat down for a game. Now, first of all, you have to know that I am a huge fan of the Mythos. I have Lovecraft's complete tales on my Kindle. Every fall we Starshielders pull out a Cthulhu RPG and let it take us through the dead season, winter. This year it is going to be Realms of Cthulhu by Reality Blurs, a game we have played in the past and which works really well for us. Weezoh also owns Munchkin Cthulhu, Arkham Horror, and Mansions of Madness. In addition, I am reading Fantasy Flight's novel Ghouls of the Miskatonic by Graham Mcneill, an excellent read, by the way! 

To say we enjoy us some Lovecraft is an understatement. My anticipation for this game was great. 

For my first game, I revealed a character at random to play. It was the doctor, Vincent Lee. His special ability is to restore a point of Stamina every turn.









The Great Old One I pulled was Shub-Niggurath. 

His special ability is particularly difficult. Having to roll an extra Terror icon is...well...a terror. I set up the Arkham Museum, turned over a Mythos card and was off and running...for my life. 

The game flows smoothly once you get the hang of the rules. The clock mechanic is brilliant and adds to the tension in the game. Knowing when to Focus dice and when to use Spells and Items, provides enough decisions to make me a happy gamer. Not to mention trying to decide which Adventure Card to attempt based on the Rewards of the card add a nice level of decision-making: "Do I go for more Elder Signs or should I go for this Adventure which will provide me with more Items and Spells..." I love those kinds of decisions. 

I didn't gather many Elder Signs in time, and the Old Goat of the Woods awoke. I fought against him valiantly, and in the end defeated him in the nick of time. I was almost out of Trophies.

What I Didn't Like: You have to read the rules on this game carefully! Very carefully. Important rules to for effective gameplay are in a single line at the beginning of a paragraph. I believe most of the complaints about this game revolving around this game being too easy actually come from people missing some little rule nuance here or some important reference there.

The rules could be a bit clearer in places like defining a Turn. I also wasn't sure about how the dice work when fighting the Great Old One. Is it possible to regain dice after succeeding on its Task bar? I hope the next time I play, I manage to play the game as it was meant to be played.

What I Liked: Everything else. With 48 Adventure Cards, 8 Ancient Ones, 16 Investigators, I see a lot of replay ability for me.

What I Loved: The theme on this game, the flavor text, the artwork, the tension from not knowing how the dice are going to fall; all of these things make this game a blast for me. I immersed myself in the rooms of the Arkham Museum and toured its stuffy and dangerous rooms. I reveled in my journey to Yuggoth.

For me games are about setting, conflict, and tension. Elder Sign has that in spades. I look forward to playing it again and again.

Until next time, good reader, may the dice fall your way and may you play, play, play. 

I Just Peed a Little...

I have this on Pre-order but want it now! Wow, does it look awesome!

Looking Forward to This One as Well...

Click on the awesome picture to go to the site for more information.


I think I may have to go sell some more Magic the Gathering cards soon with all these awesome Fantasy Flight games coming out oh so soon!