GAME: Ninja All-stars
TEACHER: Bricktown
START TIME: 6:30
DURATION: 90 minutes
# OF PLAYERS: 2
URL: https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/164448/ninja-all-stars
1. Bricktown
2. NeikeDjour

I'm in for Yomi

Star Wars: X-wing

Every since I picked put his game, I have really only played the competitive 1 vs 1 play of the game.  I feel like building 100pt squads and playing in that fashion takes a lot away from the game, always trying to squeeze in one more ship at the sacrifice of filling in any of those upgrade slots.  I had not taken the time to play the scenarios that are included in a lot of the big box expansions, which showcase more thematic play.  But then came a fan made campaign called 'Hero's of the Arturi Cluster' which has rekindled my fasciation with this game.

http://dockingbay416.com/campaign/

In this mission based campaign setting, you play the role of rebel pilots that level up as the game progresses.  As you gain experience, you spend it on things like new skills, outfitting your ship with torpedoes and missiles, modify your fighter with more shields or better engines.  As you progress from a rookie to a hardened veteran of the rebellion, you can access new fighters and unlock even deadlier pilot skills.  Now those empty upgrade slots get filled out and your personalized star fighter feels a little more whole.

But beyond the individual progression, there is a solid cooperative aspect that I find this campaign brings out.  Go into combat with your friends, up to 6 pilots, and take it to the empire.  The campaign can be scaled to accommodate 2 to 6 ships, variants to change the difficulty and additional content is continually being play tested for it.

I give this game 4 exploding death stars out of 5

Kingdom Death Monster

I love this game.  The dark horror survival might turn some people off to this game but I think they would be making a mistake not getting to know this game.  I like all aspects of this game.  I feel like this is the fantasy style version of what xcom is.  The game is played in three stages.  First you take your unsuspecting villagers on a hunt, where they leave the marginal safety of their homes to venture you and bring back food and materials.  As they cautiously progress through the hunt track they encounter random events, opportunities or just rotten luck.  Then, after going through the unknown, you meet up with your prey.  Boss battle ensues, here you get to do a bit of tactical combat against an AI deck driven monster and the hits start coming.  Will you get a couple of lucky rolls and end this beast early or will it start relentlessly tear through your survivors.  The usual kind of onslaught of broken bones, head trauma, being torn limb from limb or even the dreaded decapitation.  You really can't be sure who will come back in one piece or come back at all for that matter, nothing is certain until the beast goes down.  Finally, you head back to your village if your lucky enough, resources and food in tow.  Now you get to do my favourite part of the adventure, building up the village.  Do we create new armour so our next hunts survivors have a fighting chance of all coming back alive or do we improve our living conditions building homes and places to sleep.  Do we develop culture that unlocks new upgrades, new tools, breeding new survivors so that last hunts victims have replacements.. so many choices, all fleshed out with some story background from the game. 

I really like the uncertainty of the survivors, attachment in this game ends with sad emoji    Things will eventually get better as you start to advance in the game but the first few turns can really leave a new player partially discouraged as your survivor (insert awesome name here) gets dragged all over the encounter map by a raging lion only to die and leave you wondering why you wasted your favourite name on that guy/girl.  The story book is a big pit of unknown which is the way it should stay.  Reading ahead and making all the best decision is not the way to play this game, the game actually says what if you can't decide which side to rule in favour of, then choose what is worst for the survivors... awesome    This 'let the chips fall where they may', 'no takesie backsie', 'make a choice and stick with the outcome' is what more games need. 

I give this game 4 and half returning survivors out of 5 

in for Wok Star

I could take the 1 - 2pm slot and do dice masters

i'll take the 3rd spot in romance redux

Can I get a spot on boss monster

Can I get in on nautilus industries

Feed the addiction Dana... It's all good 

Confirming for AQ