[GameStorm 12 Report] Part Two - Thursday

Thursday is always the warm-up day for the convention. We get there in the late afternoon after having driven across the state and having made our annual pilgrimage to the wonderful FLGS (not so L) Game Matrix. After check-ins, getting stuff tucked away and getting our bearings with a sweep around the convention we then set out to our various scheduled games. Unfortunately I was full of fail Thursday and forgot to take my camera with me and so have few pictures to show for itt.

THE ADVENTURERS by AEG

I have to say that I am not overly thrilled with this game. The setup looks nice - figures, 3D game pieces, color map, snappy character cards, etc - but it plays on such a random basic level with so little actually going on that I don't see a lot of replay value in it.

If you are not familiar with the game, it is all about tomb raiding. Each player selects two characters, each played one at a time and having different special abilities like stamina, swimming, etc. You play your first character until he dies and then bring in your second character in once certain conditions have been met in the game's overall flow. Each character has the same number of action in a turn, which are reduced by the number of treasures you carry (encumbrance). Actions are spent to move spaces or perform actions in the form of searches and such.

The first room/obstacle is a a hallway with sliding walls on either side. Each player may spend his actions moving through this area, searching for treasures (drawing cards), or peaking at some hidden tiles to assist in an upcoming challenge. At the end of each turn, there is a draw of cards to see which of the two wall pieces moves and how far until they utlimately close, killing any characters still in the hall at the time.

At a certain point, a rolling boulder is released and moves, by roll of a growing number of dice each turn until it closes off the escape at the end of the game track. This boulder serves as timer for the game as well as an obstacle and potential lethal trap for characters in the game.

The scond obstacle and as far as I goth with either of my characters, is the Lava Room. This is an area with many tiles over the spaces. You can move to one of these spaces and check to see if they are treasure or a trap. If they are a trap you die. I never made it past this second obstacle. Both my first and second characters died to the traps here ending my time playing The Adventurers in a short 3-4 turns.

FORTESS AMERICA

I am posting this under Thursday because the game started at midnight and ran until 3AM Friday morning. I am sure lots of you remember this oldy but goody. I had a great time with it and the people I was playing with were a lot of fun. I lost, but only after fighting the good fight for three hours straight.

Not a lot ot post except that I found the games dynamic movement system as well as the varied objectives and tactics for the three atackers made this a really interesting game. The American player gets reinforcements by random cards drawn in varying numbers based on how well he does.






OUTPOST
Not a game I played in myself, but from where I sat in my Fortress America game it looked like Iken and Chris were having a great time. The table was very lively playing this bidding game with the theme of trying to outfit and run a space colony.

What was funny is toward the end of the night I saw the group having to pull out calculators to help their failing minds deal with the math of the buying and selling in a game that doesn't allow you to really make change.