Coming Out of the Shadows (Shadows of Malice)

We all have upcoming games that we're particularly excited about. I can't wait for Clank! Legacy to drop next and to get it to the table with my gaming group. At some point I'll also need to pick up the Temple of the Ape Lords expansion for the regular Clank! game as it's the only expansion I don't have yet. Sleeping Gods, which was recently on Kickstarter, looks really amazing and I want to look more into that when it hits retail.

Today, though, I became extra excited about a game because it was unexpected! When I first got into the hobby in 2013 and I was looking for games to play solo, there was one game that I always really wanted to try but it was out of print: Shadows of Malice. Whenever someone posted about the game on the BoardGameGeek 1-player guild (please join!), I would read it with a fierce jealousy! I had resigned myself to the fact that it was a game that I just wouldn't be able to play, it was just too expensive and rare to pick up used.

My Board Game Apps

I've begun tutoring a student in grade twelve English and so I have been trying to motor through Hamlet this past weekend. Deciphering Shakespeare has taken up all of my solo gaming time, so there's not much new to post about here. As I threw down a quick game of Onirim on my iPhone this morning, however, I thought it might be interesting and helpful to share with you the board game apps that I use. I know that using the words "board game" and "apps" in the same sentence could be considered heresy in some board game circles, but that is not a camp that I reside in. 

Watch Out for Wayward Wizards (Playthrough of Kingdomino)

King Leopold knew that he could not rule the land forever. It was time to prepare his son, Prince Leopoldo (apparently they were running out of royal names), to take over the throne in a few short years. For reasons unknown to him, his son had grown up spoiled, entitled, and lazy. The king needed some sort of test to see if his son could live up to the task of leading the people and helping the kingdom to flourish. 

After several weeks of thinking and planning, the king called his son into his see him in the throne room. As the prince stood up from his respectful bow, the king laid out the plan before him. Leopoldo would be given a large chunk of land and twelve years to prepare and grow it. If the king was satisfied with the growth of this new kingdom, his son would be given rule over all the king's holdings. The prince bowed quickly and practically raced out of the room to begin his preparations for gaining the kingship.

YEAR ONE

"Things are already going poorly. I knew that the people would need wheat for baking and feeding the animals we would later raise, but we found a surprise when plowing one of our new fields. Turns out there was a sinking swamp just below the surface. Thanks for this little piece of paradise, Pops." - Leo

Fantasy Bookkeeping (Review of Unbroken)

There are not that many solo-only games that get released (only Friday comes to mind off the top of my head as another option), so when one is created, it's a pretty big deal for the solitaire gaming community. Unbroken had some really stellar hype when it came out on Kickstarter and I jumped on that hype. Yes, the hype has turned into straight up drama as the shipping issues and customer service problems has been quite the distraction from the actual game. Now, I received my copy several weeks ago and I feel like I've played it enough to get a good sense of the game. So, what do I think?

Mae'el's Escape (Playthrough of Unbroken)

Mae'el slowly opened one eye. She couldn't believe she was capable of opening an eye - she should be dead. If she weren't so good at hiding, she would be. Like the rest of her adventuring party. She peered out from behind the giant mushroom she had used as a hiding place. The stench alone had kept her enemies from searching too closely here. Growing up in the slums where refuse was regularly dumped into the streets had paid off this time. Nostrils of steel.

Handing Over the Keys to the Kingdomino

One of my favourite things about the board game hobby is our eagerness to share our love for games with others. I was surprised two years ago to end up with a student teacher who was even bigger board game nerd than I was and now we still get together to throw the dice and shuffle the cards. My current student teacher is not a board game geek...yet.

Last night we had parent/teacher interviews and there are usually bits of time where we don't have any parents booked and so we have some time to kill. Well, I brought along one of my favourite games, Kingdomino, to introduce her to!

We had a prep today while the kids were at music, so we played a quick couple of games to figure out the rules. This game is just so colourful, bright, and beautiful!

Back to the Drawing Board

Thursday night we had a grand old time doing our first three player playtest of our game, which, is tentatively named Donisi. Donisi is Latin for "vibrations" and describes the threads of memories that players draw from to build their decks. At point the game was called The Enders, but the story has changed enough from there that we made a switch recently. My firefighter and board game nerd neighbour came over to try out the game with Aaron and I and we learned (at least) four important lessons.

Lesson Number One - Aaron is an amazing artist
Poor Aaron has only had me buttering his biscuits lately about his artwork, but on Thursday he got to hear it from someone else. Don't get me wrong, I've tried to make it very clear to Aaron how amazing his work is, but he doesn't always believe me. When Brad, my neighbour, saw Aaron's stuff, he was so impressed. He was even more impressed when he found out this is the first time he's done anything like this. Aaron, you rock. Whether we have your final artwork in the game or not, it's been an amazing inspiration and grounding point as we've built this game together.

An example of Aaron's work - the stone shifter (a work in progress).

The Thiefiest Thief

It's important to be self-aware. Knowing yourself is the key to growing as a person. I'm well aware of the fact that I am a sore loser. The worst way to lose, though, is to lose at your favourite game. Especially when I lose to Brennan every. Single. TIME! 

My dashing character.

To practice for our upcoming campaign in Clank! Legacy, two of my closest friends (both of whom I've known since kindergarten) came over to revisit the rules in a normal game of Clank! I have the Upper Management Pack, so we chose characters from there but just played on the base game map (the hard side).

Top Ten Solo Games of 2019

In response to the most recent podcast by SoloSaurus where they shared their top 10 of 2019, I jumped over to Pub Meeple's ranking system to sort out my personal top ten. They show you two games at a time and you simply choose one or the other. In the end, they rank them from 1 to whatever. I used Pub Meeple last year, but I didn't realize that you can just upload your BoardGameGeek collection and start sorting those! I sorted through 52 games in about 10 minutes with this program. Very nice.

When making my decisions on Pub Meeple, I basically thought about two criteria:

• Do I love this game?
• Do I love to set this game up?

I didn't want to make this crazy intensive or based on my reviews, but more just on my gut feelings! I think this year the feasibility of playing the game had more impact, which may show why certain games dropped a spot or two while others moved up the list.

So, without further ado, my Top Ten Solo Games 2019

Solo-ser

Aaron having our game on Tabletop Simulator makes it really easy to jump in and play a quick game to see how things are going. I did this last night. A few observations from my disappointing loss last night:

• I feel pretty proud of the uniqueness and variety of the cards. This time I went a mystic/magic/arcane focus and one of the first cards I picked up were the Levitating Boots. They allowed me to give a -1 to all enemy melee attacks. This saved my life a few times when I was surrounded by giant Rat Warriors. I also acquired the Charm of Absorption which allowed me to get an extra point of XP for each enemy defeated. On the round where I scorched 5 enemies, that gave me 10 total XP. That made for a fun little shopping spree!
• The game, at least this first mission, is pretty balanced. This first mission is a little easier than the follow up ones, but it's still very possible to lose (as I made apparent this game). There are certain ebbs and flows to the game. Things start to seem easy on round 9 when you've built up a nice deck, but then round 10 comes and the enemies hit the next threat level and all of a sudden you're swarmed by new spawns.
• Gnome Hunters don't care if you're levitating. I was able to fend off the assassins and warriors pretty easily, but when four hunters pulled a card that gave them a +1 attack if I was within two spaces, well, my 6 health level and 0 block cards couldn't handle that.

Should be having a meeting with that mysterious publisher this week. Will keep you posted!