Bunker Project Log

Much like Kyle Reese, I was in love with this game even before I played it. First, it is by Days of Wonder, which gives it a ginormous amount of points right out of the gate. Second, it is damn beautiful and oozes theme, which I have been needing lately. Finally, it is a co-op game, where my ineptitude and complete lack of luck will drag the entire group down, not just myself all by my lonesome.

Sort of.

You see, this game is mostly a co-op game, except for the traitor.

At the beginning of the game, eight loyalty cards are shuffled and handed out to the players. One of them, however, is the Traitor card, and whilst the loyal knights are working to save Camelot, the traitor is secretly working against the group, plotting their ultimate demise.

Now, the game allows a maximum of seven players, so there is always a chance that their is no traitor. But, as you are forbidden from telling anyone your loyalty, you can only guess at who is on your side… unless of course you are the traitor!

So, how can this possibly work?

First, there is only one way the Knights can win the game. This is by having a majority of white swords on the round table when the twelfth sword has been placed. Swords are usually acquired by completing quests.

Conversely, there are a bunch of ways the knights may lose:

• The moment the seventh black sword is laid on the round table
• The moment all of the loyal knights are dead
• The moment the twelfth siege engine is placed in front of Camelot

Here we have seven siege engines…

On each turn, the player is required to take a heroic action. This can be to move to a quest, participate in a quest, or heal thyself. The majority of these actions require cards that are acquired only at the round table, or by completing previous quests.

Here are some examples of the white hero cards. The most common are the “Fight” cards numbered one through five.

Once the heroic action is complete, the player must now perform the “Progression of Evil” phase. This is how the game fights back.

For the Progression of Evil, the player must choose the least painful of the following choices:

• Take a single point of damage (your character starts with four, and dies at zero)
• Add a siege engine to the front of the castle
• Draw the topmost black card from the black deck and resolve its effects

Here are a few of the black cards. The more common ones negatively impact the status of the various quests. There are also special cards that have particularly dire effects for all of the knights.

Of course, the Traitor may choose the most painful choice, but should do it as subtly as possible, the point is not to be discovered!

There are several quests that the heroes may embark on. These are all related to the theme. Below is the Excalibur quest.

In this quest. The players on the quest merely discard a white card each turn to move Excalibur closer to the “good” side of the river.

If the players successfully move the sword to the good side, they are rewarded with two white swords for the round table, and seven white cards to share and one health point for each knight currently on the quest.

The player who liberates Excalibur by playing the last white card receives the sword and gets a combat bonus as long as it is in the knights possession.

There are black cards that move Excalibur the other way when drawn. If the sword is moved all the way to the “bad” side of the river, the sword is lost forever, two black swords are placed on the round table, and each knight currently on the quest loses a health point.

To add insult to injury, when quests are completed, regardless of success or failure, the corresponding black card now adds siege engines to Camelot when revealed.

Thus, sometimes, it is prudent to wait to complete a quest.

Other quests involve playing fight cards in sets. Below is the Picts quest, in which white cards must be played in ascending order from one to five.

If at any point four Picts are placed on the board (as a result of playing a black Picts card), the battle is lost, resulting in the placement of a black sword and two siege engines.

I have played this game twice. In the first, Mrs. G was the traitor. She crushed VitaminZ, Markus, Pottse, and I with siege engines once she was revealed.

The second time, I was the Traitor. This is an unfortunate, and somewhat complicated position to be in if you are the one explaining the rules! Luckily for them, I am a softie, and they were particularly crafty. They won the game by causing themselves to lose a quest! The strategy was, they needed to get twelve swords on the table to complete the game, and they currently had seven. If they dillied any longer, their chances of losing the existing white swords increased.

As a final note, when the Traitor is revealed, s/he loses corporeal form and becomes very powerful.

As his/her turn, the revealed traitor may steal a white card at random from any other player and discard it. Then, they may place a siege engine or pull the top black card from the deck and resolve its effects.

I heartily recommend this game. It has a lot of coop, and wondering who the traitor is really adds to the fun. Finally, the glee of the traitor is enjoyable.

Here is Mrs. G at her best.

As I have said before, beware the Mrs. G!

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.

?

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.

It’s been a long stretch of months. I’ve spent a lot of time in the hole tearing this thing apart and putting it back together. Now it’s time for the reveal of the ultimate grayness… Bunker 2.10.0!

Thanks to a very fortuitous Craigslist listing back in November, I procured two more Dell E521’s. In order to accommodate them, I pulled out the surface on the back wall and moved it to the right. there are now five machines. On each side. If we were organized enough, we could balance our team games so that a single team were on each side.

My Pa came out and helped with the wiring and gave me ideas for the in-wall panels. Ultimately I chose this groovy thing with a door so I can open and close it at will. Jammed up in there is the USB hub and all the excess wire.

Closed.

As exciting as this is, the real upgrade for _me_ was the removal of the FRICKIN CABLE BUNDLE!!!

For whatever reason, this really bugged me. I had actually gotten the entire ten machine upgrade finished, when the OCD kicked in. I wouldn’t feel right until I ripped it all apart again and got rid of that thing.

Now, everything is routed up to the ceiling and over, then drop down the right-hand wall. I still haven’t gussied up the exit.

That shouldn’t be a big deal… I just haven’t gotten around to it.