Tottering textual towers!
Good morning and welcome to another Monday Morning Meeple! Or should I say Tuesday Evening Meeple...
We're very excited this week, because we're able to open the store back up to customers on the 2nd December. I've been working flat out for the last two days to ensure the store is spick and span and full of games, and I'm certainly looking forward to seeing some of your lovely faces as we fast approach Christmas! We've kept ourselves well stocked for the festive season too, so there are plenty of exciting games available, both new and old.
As for gaming this week, my time has been mostly devoted to Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion, in particular, a specific (and frustrating!) scenario that we've been trying to overcome. It's taken five attempts, but eventually we were victorious. More on that below. Plus, a pre-Christmas mountain of RPG books swept in just before the end of the month, leaving me with a pile of reading that's extended beyond my bookshelves and spilt across my decks here at home. Fortunately, I'm doing an office reorganisation soon that will see some additional bookshelves being added, which is definitely needed!
On the table...
In between playing Commander on Monday nights and running various online events for the TCGs we support at the store, my attention this week has been primarily focused on Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion. I went over this game last week, so I am not going to go into much more about it (save reminding you that I highly recommend in - seriously, play it!). While I've been tempted to break out Under Falling Skies again, Gloomhaven took precedence due to the fact we've been trying to complete scenario 9 of the campaign since the end of the previous week.
Without spoiling too much, this scenario encompasses a boss fight that is particularly tricky and can end up with your characters being swarmed if you progress too slowly, but also denied the chance to perform long rests to heal up and determine what comes back to your hand if you rush ahead into even more enemies. As I said in the opener, it took us five attempts to finish this scenario, but we did beat it in the end and without dropping the difficulty level too, which I am fairly proud of! However, our win, though exceptionally satisfying, came down to pure chance on the turn of the initiative order, with the boss dying at the beginning of it's turn to a wound my Hatchet had put on it earlier in the game. At this point my Hatchet was exhausted and Elizabeth's Voidwarden was down to the last round and on only one hit point, so the boss pulling it's lowest initiative card and dying before any of the other monsters were able to attack was a pure fluke.
The toughness of this fight has highlighted something about Gloomhaven though, and that it the fact that certain character combinations do seem to have a tougher time of it. When we tried out the game for the first time, we had picked the Red Guard and Hatchet. I kept my choice, while Elizabeth swapped the Red Guard for the Voidwarden to progress further into the campaign with. However, I do feel that these two aren't the best match up. The Hatchet generally performs ranged attacks and has limited hit points, with both them and the Voidwarden being fairly squishy characters. The Voidwarden's main mode of attack is to influence the actions of the monsters and other characters on the battlefield, forcing attacks, and also acts as a healer. However, a lot of her most powerful attacks force other characters to perform melee attacks and we have found that the Hatchet doesn't really want to place themselves next to monsters too often. The Hatchet generally has lower initiatives on their cards, meaning they go earlier in the round, and if left next to monsters will expose themselves to a hefty amount of damage in order to pull the Voidwarden's attacks off. The Voidwarden also has a lot of combo actions across the top and bottom of their action cards which can often see them not moving on a turn. As the Hatchet is a very mobile character, this can see the two becoming separated a lot if you aren't paying attention.
The pairing of these two characters isn't disastrous, but it definitely has meant that we have to pay much closer attention and strategise more. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does make some of the more difficult scenarios frustrating. I'm not alone in thinking this either. After checking reddit and Board Game Geek following some of our more frustrating loses (after scenarios 4 and 9) there are plenty of other players who have commented on both the difficulty of specific scenarios and about the need for additional strategising with certain character pairings. Something to bear in mind if you're planning on starting your own campaign of Jaws of the Lion soon!
On the shelves...
Oh, my! The shelves are certainly groaning this week. That's because last week saw the release of a number of books, including: Tasha's Cauldron of Everythingâthe new rules book for D&D; Jonathan Hick's new game, Those Dark Places; Mansions of Madness Volume 1 for Call of Cthulhu; and Celestial Realms for Legend of the Five Rings. Plus, Cthanta Claus dropped a bevy of RPG goodness on me with A Cold Fire Within, a Pulp campaign for Call of Cthulhu, the player's guide for Mothership, and Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, which is one of Goodman Games' Original Adventures Reincarnated reprints. Oh, yes, and the latest Shadows of Esteren Kickstarter dropped books one and two of Fateforge, a Fifth Edition setting, which I had added as an add on. And the boxed set for the OSR style game of rodent adventures, Mausritter, also landed too. Phewâlots to get through here, and I think I'll only look at a few of them, otherwise we'll be here all day! I'll touch on the others next week.
Tasha's Cauldron of Everything
The latest D&D supplement, this book has been receiving a good shredding on social media recently. Ostensibly a new rules supplement for the 5th Edition line, Tasha's basically gathers together much of the unpublished Unearthed Arcana material from D&D's website, plus adds in a lot of the subclass material that has been published broadly across the rest of the line. You'll see the Artificer brought over from Eberron, and they have republished things like the Druid's Circle of the Spore from Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica.
Where the book has received the most flak is for the adjustments to D&D's long standing history with the Race/Class mechanics. There has been a vocal outcry from groups who argue that this parallel's racial stereotyping in real life. D&D has use the Race/Class system throughout most of it's history, so decoupling this from the rules was always going to be tough. The rules in Tasha's go some way towards this, but many have suggested it isn't enough. There is still more work to do and some argue that the new rules present bland attribute and bonus adjustments without dealing with some of the more serious underlying issues with this aspect of the game.
Still, Tasha's does have some good stuff in it. The DM's guidance has some pretty inventive puzzles in, enough to get your own imagination flowing, and there are some nifty magic items and spells included to bolster those from the other books. I particularly like the magical tattoos, which remind me of those you could obtain in the PC game Planescape: Torment. Planescape is my favourite of all the D&D settings and I hope that they will visit this in a future book, as I am starting to get bored with the Forgotten Realm's rather generic medieval high fantasy setting...
Overall, Tasha's is worth picking up if you want all that Unearthed arcana material and all the class options collated into one source. If you were hoping for a big revision to the Race/Class rules, you will be disappointed. If you're a DM, the new options are worth investigating. However, with the book split between player and DM options, unless you fall into both categories I think you might find this supplement a little disappointing, especially at it's reasonably hefty price tag. At the cost of a full rulebook for a different game, you might be better off dipping you toes into something newâpersonally I'd recommend Call of Cthulhu or Blades in the Dark for something a bit different (both atmospherically and mechanically!
Those Dark Places
This is the latest in Osprey Games' growing RPG line, with Righteous Blood, Ruthless Bladesâtheir Wuxia RPGâcoming out in December. Those Dark Places is a "industrial" sci-fi/horror themed game. When it says "industrial" sci-fi, think the aesthetics of Blade Runner, Alien and other 1970s/80s sci-fi movies. The game revolves around you being crew members on corporate space missions, with you playing small groups of characters tied into a 25 year contract with the company, at the end of which you get paid and retireâif you can survive that long. Your ship has all the equipment you need, you carry an ID chip that allows you to make legal purchases (though the cost is subtracted from your pay out!), but you have limited access to any real weaponry during your travels, because you are couriers, miners and so on.
The system at the heart of the game is the new ODDS system, which stands for one die determines success. You roll a d6, add your stat and any bonuses, and then see if you roll over 7. If you do, you succeed. If you don't, you fail. And if you roll exactly 7, then you partially succeed and some problem will come back to haunt you later. It's neat, streamlined and easily teachable to new players. And I like it a lot. The book, which is split into a player and GMâor General Monitorâsection, with an adventure at the end. It runs 128 digest-sized pages and does a fantastic job at cramming a lot into such a small space. However, the text is written in a kind-of "read aloud" style that can be a little grating to read by yourself, though a lot of the analogies in it can be used at the table for explaining the rules system.
Overall, I'm impressed by this little book. While I have similar RPGs in my collection, such as ALIENs (which I love!), this allows for a more expansive approach to this genre, allowing me to invent all kinds of situations for my players. I hope to be able to get to play this one soon.
Mausritter
Yes, that is a mouse hole in the cover...
Originally a self-published OSR style game available via itch.io, Mausritter has been picked up by Games Omnivorous, an interesting avant garde indie games publisher, and turned into a fantastic hardcover and beautiful boxed set. You can also still pick up the core rules as a Pay What you Want PDF too! I managed to pick up one of the 500 limited edition boxed sets at its release, despite it being so popular that Games Omnivorous' website crashed completely, pushing the release back by a day or so!
First, this boxed set is very well produced, coming in a very sturdy box that contains the rulebook, GM screen, Honey in the Rafters adventure, a pad of character sheets, and several punch out sheets of dry erase equipment cards, as well as a branded dry wipe marker pen too. The game runs on a variant of Into the Odd and uses an interesting inventory mechanic, whereby you have a set number of "spaces" of stuff that you can carry each item takes up a certain number of those spaces. This may be familiar (games like Lamentations of the Flame Princess have similar systems), but Mausritter actually makes you use little equipment cards on your character sheet to represent how your equipment take up space. What makes it unique though is that conditions that you acquire, such as being hungry or injured, also take up slots, so the more conditions you pick up the less stuff you're able to tote around. This makes sense and is a neat little system that was one of the things that drew me to this charming gem of a game.
The game draws its influences from a range of sources, including Ghilbi's Arrietty, Beatrix Potter's Tales series, the Mouse Guard comics and Mice and Mystics. I was surprised not to see the Redwall series of books, which I loved when growing up, and which would be a prime influence over the style of game I would run if I get this to the table. The game then puts the players in the role of mice adventurers, fighting against cats and other creatures that would seek to do them harm. It includes rules for magic, rules for creating mice warbands and fighting against warband scale creatures, rules for hirelings, rules for creating construction. In fact, there is an absolute ton of content packed into the rulebook's 44 pages, including multiple random tables and even a sample adventure site. Plenty to keep even the most adventurous rodent going for a long time to come.
Did I mention you can pay what you want for this in PDF? You deserve to treat yourself and check it out...
Thatâs all for now!
Thatâs all Iâve got time for this week, otherwise I'll be writing an essay! Check out the âcoming upâ below for a hint of whatâs coming out next week that I am excited for and will hopefully be discussing next Monday. Plus, since youâre here, why not comment and let me know what youâre excited for? Got something you want to share with the world? Then hop over to our board game and RPG groups over on the Meeple Games Facebook or our Discord and let us know there. We want our community spaces to be used more, so if there is a new release youâre just loving at the moment, or a game youâre just really passionate about, we want to hear about it!
Coming upâŚ
This coming week promises some exciting new releases. There are new Arkham Horror: The Card Game expansions releasing that are definitely on my radar, plus the long awaited Age of Sigmar: Soulbound RPG is coming out too. In the meantime, I have this huge mountain of RPG books to overcome and I'll hopefully touch on a few more of my ill gotten gains next time too.
Oh, yes, and we're opening back up again, so do come down to Meeple Games and say hi! And why not pick up a game or two while you're thereâit is Christmas soon after all...
Looking for any of the games mentioned?
Then check out Meeple Games! If we donât have what you want in stock, then just give us a shout via email or Facebook and look to order it in for you.