Bunker Project Log

We had a group of five, but VitaminZ was stranded at work, so we busted out the 4-Player max Pandemic. No offense Z, but we are lucky we started with this game, because it was truly awesome.

The first thing to know is, this is a strictly coop game. The players must work together to defeat four different diseases rampaging across the globe. At the same time, each player is forced to carry out the spread of infection at the end of each turn.

Each player is given a different role at the beginning of the game, which grants him/her special powers against the spreading doom.

Each player’s turn is composed of up to four actions. These actions are mundane, like moving around the map, or special, like discovering a cure for one of the four diseases.

The currency of the game is information in the form of player cards. Which are acquired two at a time after all four actions have been used.

These can be used to travel around the map, or to discover cures. Gathering five of the same colored card allows you to cure that disease. The player with the Scientist role only needs four.

The infection phase is the last part of each player’s turn. At this point, infection cards must be drawn, equal to the number specified on the infection rate chart.

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For each card drawn, an infection cube must be placed on the respective city. This is where the fun begins!

If a city already has three cubes, and you must add another, an outbreak occurs. This causes every connected city to gain a cube. If one of those cities has three cubes, a chain reaction occurs, causing that to outbreak.

In the example below, New York is just begging for a blue outbreak, and Bangkok is ready for a red one.

Every time an outbreak occurs, the outbreak track is increased. At eight outbreaks, the game is lost!

To make matters worse, epidemics are mixed in with the player cards, and are resolved as soon as the player draws one.

These are major setbacks. The first effect is to increase the infection rate track. The second is to pile three disease cubes on a city pulled from the bottom of the infection deck. The third, and most devastating, is the intensify step. Every infection card in the discard pile is shuffled, and then put back on the top of the infection deck, ensuring that already infected cities pop up again and again.

The long and short of it is, the odds are against you, and each move is precious. A calm situation can very rapidly spiral out of control.

What is great about the game is the type of teamwork it inspires. Because every player has a unique role, they must be used appropriately. Red5 was the scientist and could discover cures at a lower cost, so we constantly traded cards with him, often brokered by Markus, who was the Researcher. Mrs. G was the medic, who tirelessly traveled around cleaning up cities on the verge of outbreak. I was the Operations Expert, and honestly… didn’t have much to do. My power was to build research stations without requiring a card for the corresponding city.

Since the map isn’t that big, we didn’t seem to need it that much.

My real role, as unluckiest player on the planet, was to ensure that we got epidemic’d and outbroken nearly every turn. (Everyone needs a core competency!)

And yes, we lost… horribly… on easy.

Anyway, Pandemic is damned good, and if you want to play a team game with tough odds and a pertinent real-world theme, this is for you!

I’ve been on the lookout for 2-player games to play with Mrs. G. The problem is, I’ve been really obsessed with theme lately, and she just wants simple rules. Luckily, Mr. Jack has both, with lots of decisions to boot.

In a nutshell, Mr. Jack is played by two players, one trying to catch Mr. Jack, the other trying to get Mr. Jack out of the city.

There are eight characters on the board, one of whom is Mr. Jack in disguise.

Only the player helping Mr. Jack knows who Mr. Jack really is. In this game, Mr. Jack is Dr. Watson.

Mr. Jack, hidden!

The game is played over the course of eight turns, denoted by the turn counter on the right side of the board.

On each odd-numbered turn, the eight character cards are shuffled.

Then the first four character cards are revealed

The inspector chooses one character to move first. Then Mr. Jack plays the next two. Finally, the Inspector moves the fourth and final character.

On the even numbered turns, the remaining four cards are revealed. In this turn, Mr. Jack chooses first, followed by two for the Inspector, and the final for Mr. Jack.

At the end of each turn, the player helping Mr. Jack must reveal whether Mr. Jack is seen or unseen. By flipping the Mr. Jack card to the appropriate side.

Seen

Unseen

Characters that are within one hex of a light, or any other character are seen, everyone else is unseen.

In this turn, Mr. Jack was unseen, which means that any character in the light is exonerated, and are flipped over to their white side.

Each character has special abilities, each one powerful enough to foil virtually any plan you can think up.?

John Smith can turn swap a single lamp at the beginning or end of his movement. This could make a whole slew of characters seen or unseen in a single stroke.

Jeremy Bert, the reporter, can move the manhole covers, opening or blocking a quick exit.

The manhole cover, not actually covering a manhole.

The detective moves the police blockades. There are four exits on the map, and two blockades.

From my limited plays, the broad strategy is for the inspector to keep everyone in the center of the board, away from the exits, but split between seen and unseen. Mr. Jack wants to spread everyone out to the periphery (and thus, the exits) whilst keeping everyone in the same state of seen or unseen.

I have only played four times, and botched the rules the middle two. The fourth I played after explaining the rules very well, and it was tough. (This might have something to do with the kibitzing amongst the three people I was actually playing against.) I won the game, but only when the kibitzers walked away. 🙂

Mrs. G creamed me though. (Even after her brilliant opening move of placing everyone in the light, hee hee.)

I picked up this groovy table and chairs set from my favorite place… Unique Thrift Store, for $100. They were beat to hell. I spent this weekend taking them apart, washing the… DNA… or whatever it was encrusted all over them, buffing and polishing, and finally reassembling. One chair probably won’t make it, unless I whip out the JB Weld.?

All in all, I’m pretty happy with how they came out.

In other news, I got the PS3 Eye of Judgement during an Amazon DotD a month back. It will be out and ready for play from any nerd nerdy enough to try it out.

For those of you not in the know, Eye of Judgement is a CCG assisted by the PS3 Eye doodad. When you play a card, it actually instantiates the character on the card. Here’s a video review.

Okay, I’ve got 21 minutes to post this before Mrs. G catches on and puts me to work…. so if it’s sloppy, tough.

Anyway, Mrs. G and I took Lost Cities for a spin. This is one of the most often recommended couples games on the Geek. I was also recommended this by a Bunker attendee who shall be known as “THE”.

The idea behind the game is that you are sponsoring expeditions. These are represented by color-coded cards numbered 2 – 10, as well as 3 “investment” cards for each suit. The cards themselves show a progression of the expedition to the goal. The 2 card shows the beginning of the trail, and the 10 shows the final achievement.

Each player starts with 8 cards, and then takes one of two actions, either laying down a card on an expedition (in ascending order), or discarding a card. Once the action is complete, you draw a single card from the deck.

Here I have played my cards in three expeditions.

The game ends the second the last card is taken from the draw pile.

The complicated part of the game is the scoring. You tally up each expedition, and subtract 20 from the total. The 20 represents the costs to mount an expedition. From there, you multiply the result by one plus the number of investment cards played at the start of the expedition. If the expedition was negative, then the multiplier is applied to the negative number. Ouch!

Here’s how you would score the pic above:

Red Expedition: 34 – 20 = 14
Green Expedition: (21 – 20) * (1 + 1 investment card) = 2
Blue Expedition: (34 – 20) * (1 + 1 investment card) = 28
Total: 44 Points

Here is a more disastrous example:

Green Expedition: (27 – 20) * (1 + 1 investment card) = 14
White Expedition: (19 – 20) * (1 + 3 investment cards) = -4
Blue Expedition: (16 – 20) * (1 + 1 investment card) = -8
Yellow Expedition: (16 – 20) * (1 + 1 investment card) = -8
Total: -6 Points

The game is fast, and often it is hard to keep track of who went last, and whether or not it is your turn… or maybe it is that way because Mrs. G is a spazz.

Because of this, I suspect we will play it again. Yet another great filler between epic 2-player Twilight Imperium plays. Boo-yah!

(And I went 10 minutes over.)

At some point over the holidays, Fantasy Flight had their annual blowout sale on their cheaper games. Quicksand was one of the… few… that I ordered. You can’t beat $5.

The game is simple enough. There are six different characters who are in a race to get to the temple at the top of the board.

You move these characters by playing cards from your hand.

You can play as many cards as you want, as long as they are all the same. The only exception is the Mask card, which can stand in for any adventurer. You may move an adventurer one space for each card played.

The catch is, the owner of each character is kept secret, and you can move any character you have cards for. Half of the game is moving characters in order to fake your opponents out. Quite often, the character you are moving as a ruse, belongs to someone else!

Luckily, you have one non-movement option, and that is the quicksand card. You can use this to flip over an adventurer. In order to get the adventurer out of quicksand, you must spend a card of that adventurer’s color to flip them over first.

In the games I have played, it is a slow burn. Everyone moves cautiously in order to keep all of the adventurers tightly packed. It isn’t until halfway up that you have a good handle on who is who. Then, as soon as a single adventurer makes it to the upper left turn, the Quicksand cards begin to fly.

Here you can see the classic Quicksand ending. This was a 3-player game with Pottse, Mrs. G, and I. Green has just won, and I am lamenting how close I was. Note that yellow, blue, and black are all clustered at the end, even though no player controlled them.

And the final reveal:

Overall, this is a great filler. Very simple to learn, quick, and devious for the more devilish players. I have even managed to get the more “Focus-Challenged” ADD Bunkerites to play multiple games.

During the Christmas season, Target had the “Express” version of three popular boardgames: Scrabble Express, Sorry Express, and Monopoly Express. I picked up Scrabble Express right away because it looked good. Sorry I had no interest in, and I have an intense hatred of Monopoly. (Mainly from getting savagely beaten at it by my dad in my tender years.)

However, when Target did their usual clearance thing, and priced these games at $2.50, I had a hard time stopping myself from buying it for two fiddy. I immediately took it to lunch and gave it a test run.

I was hooked.

Basically, this a “press your luck” game. Each player rolls the dice and decides which to place on the circular board.

There are three kinds of dice.

The Cop Dice (the other faces are blank, or has a “Pass Go” face.)

The Property Dice

The House Die

You start with the Cop and Property dice, and receive the House die when you complete a color set (just like in real Monopoly, where you can build houses once you own a complete set of properties.)

Each time you roll the dice, you must first place any Cops onto the board. If you place three, your turn is over and you lose everything. (I’ve seen a player’s turn ended on the first roll.) You can roll as many times as you want, as long as you have less than three.

After your roll, you may place any of the dice that you like on the board. However, each dice on the board is removed from play, narrowing the number of properties you can complete. Certain dice also have the “Chance” question mark, which serves as a wildcard and allows you to complete a color set. You must carefully choose which dice you will use and which you will leave behind.

Once you are satisfied with your rolls, you tally up the score and pass the dice to the next player. The first person to $15,000 wins.

Here is an unusually high scoring (and game winning) turn:

The Green section counts for $3000.
The Blue counts for $3500
The incomplete Pink counts for $300
The Houses are counted at $1000 each, for $4000
The Hotel roll is worth $5000, but only counts if the player already has 4 houses.
Total: $15,800

I have only seen one person successfully roll a Hotel, this was Mrs. G (of course… she of the demonic luck.)

Here is an example of a standard turn sequence:

Roll 1

I first place the Cop. I decide to keep the high scoring Green die, and the cheap Brown. I would have preferred Blue, but the goal is to get the House die in play as soon as possible.??

Roll 2

Another Cop. At this point, I am one Cop from losing everything this turn. Luckily, I got the second Brown, completing the color and allowing me to roll the House die.

Roll 3

This is a useless roll. The house die has netted me a “Broken House”. Luckily, I have no houses to be broken. I have already placed a partial color set (the Green) so I would rather keep the dice to complete that. I end up placing nothing.

Roll 4

I have rolled a House on the House Die. I take one of the four house markers and place them in front of me. I also decide to take the Waterworks for the Utilities set.

Roll 5

Another House, as well as the Electric company. My Utilities are now complete.

Roll 6

Boo! A Broken house! The booby prize is another Green for the set.

Roll 7

Another useless roll. I can’t claim the Hotel because I only have one House.

Roll 8

Oops… there’s that third Cop.?

And here’s how much I score for the turn… a big fat Zero.

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Had I stopped at roll 7, my total for the turn would have been:

The Brown section counts for $600.
The Utilities counts for $800
The incomplete Green counts for $800
The House counts for $1000
Total: $3,200

This isn’t the deepest game around, but perfect for lunch. I think it has just enough choice to keep it interesting, and just enough luck to make it fun. (It’s as much fun watching your opponents roll as it is to roll yourself.) I keep it in my car just in case.

Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find it anywhere, and am assuming it is a seasonal product. If you happen to see it somewhere, and are intrigued, make sure to pick it up. It is rare!

Before Bunker Horror’s showing of The Host (which was 3/4 Cool, 1/2 boring, and one more 1/2 too Korean for us ugly Americans) I suckered the crew into playing “For Sale”, an Uberplay card game that comes highly rated on the Geek (I would have put a link here if those weiners weren’t currently down for maintenance.)

Gameplay is exceedingly simple:

1) Each player gets $14,000 in coins:

2) A number of house cards equal to the player count are drawn and laid out on the table for auction. (There are eight in the picture below to give you an idea of what the cards are like.) The number on the house card defines it’s relative value. There are 30 houses, with the values 1 – 30. 

Players bid on the highest valued house in the auction. Bidding continues until a player passes. At this point that player takes the lowest value house left, and throws half of the bid amount (rounded down) to the bank. The winner of the bid takes the final, and thus highest valued house. This entire bid amount is thrown to the bank. The winner of the bid draws another set of houses and is given the first bid. Play continues this way until the house deck is depleted.

3) A number of Check cards are drawn equal to the player count and laid out on the table. There are 30 check cards valued from 0 (Void) – $15,000. There are two of each amount.

In this phase, each player picks one of their houses and lays it face down on the table. When all players have put down their house, they are revealed simultaneously. The player with the highest valued house gets the highest valued check. Next highest house gets next highest check, and so on. As you can see from the checks above, the highest valued house in this set would get $15,000, and the lowest valued house would get absolutely nothing.

Play continues as with the house cards, stopping when the check deck is depleted.

4) Finally, the check amounts are tallied and and added with any coins the player may have left from the auction phase. The player with the most money wins.

I must admit, I remember very little about playing, other than I lost… badly. Z, the new Boardgame Lord won handily. I barely kept up, and half of the time couldn’t figure out who was getting what cards. I just let everyone else take over.

I like this game for it’s speed and ease. Theoretically it will be a good opener. I don’t know if it really sparked anything with the group though. (Possibly due to the fact that I ambushed them with it in the first place.) 🙂 Will I play it again? Definitely! Will anyone else? Not so sure about that one.

As I’ve mentioned numerous times before, I have a big wet one for Days of Wonder games, and I had been wanting Cleopatra and the Society of Architects particularly badly.

Luckily, Tanga decided to run it on the now infinite Tangathon so I snapped it up. Amazingly, on the day it arrived I was able to assemble a quorum of dorks (and Mrs. G) to come out and play.

And… upon explaining the rules, Mrs. G decided to run far far away. I know not why… they are easy:

On each turn, you either:

1) Take one of the three “Market Stalls”

2) Build something from the quarry (that pile of stuff on the right):

To build things, you assemble resources that you acquired from the market stalls on previous turns. For example, to build a Column Wall you need 1 Artisan, 1 Wood, and 1 Stone.

There are two versions of each kind of resource, clean and “corrupted”.

Here are the two versions of the Lapis Lazuli resource. The one on the left is clean, the one on the right is corrupted.

For every corrupted resource you use, you acquire a Corruption Amulet.

Corruption Amulets are immediately deposited in your “Pyramid of Corruption”.

As you build pieces of Cleopatra’s temple, you are awarded Talents.

Each piece has a standard Talent payout, as well as modifiers. For example, when you build a doorway segment, you get an extra talent for each Column Wall connected to that doorway. These modifications force you to think carefully about which segment you build, and where you should place it.

As each type of piece is completed, Cleopatra moves closer to the temple. On the fifth completed type, Cleopatra reaches the door, and the game ends.

At this time, each player’s corruption is revealed and tallied.

The player or players with the most corruption, is fed to Cleopatra’s Crocodile, and immediately loses!

From there, the player with the most Talents is named the winner.

In our game, VitaminZ, who had spent the day bragging about how corrupt he was going to be, was squeaky clean. He made it through several rounds of building without any corruption cost at all. Then, he went on a rampage, getting about 20 corruption in the course of two turns. The rest of us played it cool, not really revealing how much we had collected. In fact, I was totally surprised by each player’s tally.

The only rules problem we had was related to the Column Walls. There are only nine, but the temple looks like it needs eleven to be completed. What we found was that the two spots on each side of the doorways do not, in fact, can not be built. Scoring modifiers start on each side of the temple.

In the end, Marcus had as much corruption as Z, and both were fed to the crocodile, even though they had tons of Talents. (Hee hee hee!) I came next, but was safe.

Unfortunately, sneaky bastard Red 5, had amassed a ton of Talents of his own. and won the game by four or so.

I didn’t mind losing… at least it was fair and square, unlike other sessions that I am still bitter about.  

Here are some very dark videos of what a Bunker Party is like. I have the whole gamut here. Be prepared to squint.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf2-ekPaMgE]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TzCFrhzbu0]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrHvPGosVaw]

The night started out with a lot of Guitar Hero III. I haven’t checked yet, but I have a feeling that quite a few gamerpoints were scored on my account. Yay for the new 360 wireless guitars!

I managed to wrangle a few suckers into playing Starfarers of Catan.

NatX and Stub dug through the Bunker Storage and managed to find “Ark of the Covenant”, a Carcassone variant that, according to them and Casper, was better than the original.

While all of this excitement was going on, Pottse sat and played Portal from his stopping point of Level 15. He finished in time for some Taiko Drum master. I was very glad to get it out there.

Amazingly, there does exist someone on the North American continent who can finish a song in Beatmania. These guys ended up shredding songs on hard mode. I have finished 1.5 songs on easy.

Zertz was played. I have no idea what happened. I coerced them into playing and ran. This is the type of game for me to get hella pwned on.

Then Dystopia really started in earnest. I managed to sit down for about two 10 minute sessions before getting up to do something or other. When I came back, my seat was always gone. Time to expand the lan!

Once Singstar kicked in, it didn’t stop. Since Pottse left early, Reebs had to stand in as attention whore of the night. The highlight of the Singstar festival was Reba and CW’s rendition of “Fallin'” by Alicia Keys. This was stored digitally, and will be deployed at a politically opportune time.

Vitaminz and CW

Finally, the Dystopia game broke, and the players oozed into the theater to watch the continuing Singstar saga in a glazed-over zombie stupor.

At 4am, I did the unthinkable, and actually had to shut down the party. I hated doing it, but I knew there would be kids running around in the early AM, and Mrs. G, who never made it down to the Bunker for whatever reason would be in a vindictive mood.

Now, we wait for Rock Band, and then all hell breaks loose!

Check out the slideshow for more excitement.