Renegade Game Studios

November Writing Challenge Day 15: Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated (no spoilers)

I’m blogging every day this month. Some will be game-related, but this challenge is different than my most recent play-a-game-and-blog-about-it challenge. I’m writing a single post every day: no topic guidelines, with some posts being a collection of random thoughts. Click here to read yesterday’s post.

I haven’t had much luck with legacy games. I played a friend’s copy of Charterstone once and I enjoyed it, but not enough to join in for the rest of the campaign.

I’m nearly finished with Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 and I’ve got my fingers crossed for finishing the campaign by the end of the year. My Pandemic Legacy group consists of me, my stepdaughter, and her boyfriend. We only play when she’s back from school, her boyfriend visits, and we’re not doing anything else. I’ve never made it a priority to play the game; it’s more important to me to spend time together, chatting, sharing a meal, or talking about what she’s learning in school. But it’s a great game and I can’t wait to finish it since I plan on hanging up the map in our game room.

I was so fired up to get Mechs vs. Minions when it was released. It’s still the best board game deal I’ve ever scored, thanks to Riot Games’ “gift” to the board gaming community: $75 (and free shipping!) for a game that should easily be $200+. Unfortunately, my three-person group only got to the third game when one player decided he didn’t like programming games. I was bummed since I liked the game up until that point and figured the best was yet to come. We were about to unlock the boss monster, too! Ugh. It’s sat on my shelf ever since, but after I finish Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated I’m going to make it my mission to finish Mechs vs. Minions.

Which brings me to Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated. I’m a big fan of Clank! and all of its expansions and last year I wrote an overview of the series. When the Game the Game production team asked me to play Clank! on an upcoming episode, I was thrilled. We played Clank! with the Acquisitions Incorporated Upper Management Pack and the Temple of the Ape Lords expansion. You can watch the episode above or here.

It was a fun episode to film and it confirmed how much I enjoy the game. While deck-building isn’t my favorite game mechanism, I do like when board games feature deck-building, like Trains or Tyrants of the Underdark. Clank! ranks right up there, too. I love how it combines deck-building with press-your-luck and dungeon crawling.

Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated has everything I love about the base game and expansions: it’s a race to get your artifact and get out, all while battling monsters and grabbing gold, market items, and more. Without giving away anything, the legacy game has been a fantastic experience so far. My group of four players finished our fifth game tonight and after every game so far we’ve had the same reaction: we can’t wait to see what’s next.

The game has been so good, in fact, that two of the guys in my group ordered their own copies. I’m curious to see how everything in our completed campaign compares to their other games, from the different paths we took to the way characters developed.

Big thanks to Renegade Game Studios for the copy of Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated.

Play These Games Featuring Pie on National Pi Day

Every March 14th math geeks everywhere celebrate Pi Day, dedicated to everyone’s favorite irrational number, 3.14. From wearing Pi-centrific clothing to eating pies priced at $3.14, there are plenty of ways to celebrate the big day. For us board gamers we can play games that feature pies, whether sweet or savory. Check out these three (sorry, I couldn’t find 3.14 games) games for a fun way to celebrate 3/14.

Pie Town

Pie Town

Pie Town

In this worker placement game, you and your opponents use dice to select actions and bake pies for victory points. You collect ingredients for your pies, hoping to bake your secret recipe for more points. Of course, you’ll need to add more workers to keep up with demand and make more pies and eventually you’ll try to guess your opponents’ secret recipes as well. While the artwork and components are solid, Pie Town fell flat with me. Perhaps your pie-loving group will enjoy it more than I did.

New York Slice

New York Slice

New York Slice

While I do love me a good ol’ slice of apple pie for dessert, my favorite pies are of the pizza variety. I like ‘em all, from a simple cheese slice to a pizza with all of the toppings (and anchovies!).

The components in New York Slice are absolutely perfect, from the thick cardboard slices to the rulebook menu. Leave this out on the table and it can be easily mistaken for the real thing. I love the I-cut-you-choose mechanism, which typically involves some tough choices. Can you force your opponent to take something you don’t want? Or will they choose something just to spite you? Either way, don’t play New York Slice on an empty stomach; your stomach will be grumbling within the first few turns.

My Little Scythe

My Little Scythe

My Little Scythe

I wrote about my love for My Little Scythe over on Geek & Sundry, so let me just recap here. You’re in this My Little Pony-inspired world, trying to win a friendly tournament. One of your goals is to make pies: gather enough apples, then bake your pie. If you later travel into a space with an opponent, it’s time for a pie fight! Just like the original Scythe, you have a combat dial that you can modify with cards. There are several ways to win the game and no matter which route you choose, you’ll have a fantastic time playing My Little Scythe.

November Daily Game Challenge: Arboretum

This is Day 24 of my Game-and-Blog-Every-Day-in-November Challenge. Search my blog for “Daily Game Challenge” for previous entries.

Arboretum

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My friend Meeple Lady was in town for the holiday weekend so my wife Michelle and I met her at Game Haus Cafe for an afternoon/evening of good games, good food, and good company. We have a lot in common, from our backgrounds to our love of board games and it was blast playing games, eating, and hanging out.

She’d just picked up a copy of Arboretum at Game Empire and I couldn’t wait to play it. I love Zany Penguins and Arboretum reminds me of it, but with a spatial element that’s really fun and puzzle-y. Everybody starts with seven cards and draws two, then plays one to their arboretum (tableau) and discards the other face up. Play continues until the draw deck runs out.

The trees are scored according to their paths, but to score them you must have the most of a particular tree to score it. So, in the photo above I had five blue spruce cards in my arboretum, but I could only score them if I highest point total of blue spruces in my hand. It’s an awesome game that’s surprisingly think-y and the card art is gorgeous. There’s tension on every turn as you decide which cards to play and discard. It seems like you’re always having to discard cards you want to keep.

Meeple Lady told us there were two copies left at Game Empire so on the way home Michelle and I stopped by and bought our very own copy. It reminded me of the last time we all hung out last December, when we played Azul. Michelle and I also loved that game and bought it a few weeks after we’d played it.

I’m already looking forward to our next meetup with Meeple Lady: not just for the good times, but for the next game she convinces us we need in our game library.

Every Night Is Game Night: Clank! Sunken Treasures

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Technically, my Every Night Is Game Night: My Daily Play & Blog Challenge is over, but I missed a few days so I’m writing about other games I played during May. This is post no. 28, so I’ll write three more and consider my quest completed. What are you playing these days? Tweet me and let me know!

My buddy Daryl loves deck builders and when he bought Clank! I was curious to see what all the fuss was about. After two games, I knew it would be a fine addition to any game library.

While the theme to Clank! is a well-worn one (adventurers going into a dungeon to grab treasures while avoiding a dragon), the deck-building mechanism used for combat, movement, and more is a fresh take on the genre. You know the drill: each player draws five cards from their deck and uses the money to buy additional cards from a general supply. There are also combat symbols so you can fight monsters and movement symbols that allow you to explore the dungeon.

The fun happens when it’s time to see who’s been burned by the dragon. Whenever a “clank” happens, you add your colored cubes into a bag. When a card with a dragon icon is revealed in the general supply, then it’s time to reach into the bag and randomly pull out cubes. Each cube of your color that’s pulled means you take one point of damage.

Finally, I loved how the push-your-luck mechanism was used in Clank! Once you’ve grabbed your treasure, you may race back up to the surface for bonus points and safe haven from the dragon. It’s a blast watching your opponents scramble through the dungeon as the dragon’s attacks become more frequent and more damaging. Evil laughs abound during this part of the end game. Muahahahaha.

At my Thursday night gaming group I played the Clank! expansion, Sunken Treasures. While I enjoyed it, there wasn’t much new to the base game. There’s an additional push-your-luck element with the scuba gear and diving into the water for more treasure; you can still go underwater without the gear, but you’ll have to come up for air (go to any non-water space). A nice touch, as were the new cards, but nothing totally game-changing about it.

Sunken Treasures isn’t a must-have expansion that improves the game significantly or adds new layers of depth (like Tuscany did for Viticulture), but Clank! fans should enjoy it. I did.