Wednesday 30 November 2011

29/11/2011: Thunderstone

We were meant to be playing Dungeons and Dragons with Dan tonight, but he had to work, so...

This was an interesting game. For Monsters, we drew Undead: Doom, Humanoid and Abyssal. A lot of those guys - and certainly the first 3 that we drew - were horribly powerful. However, for Heroes we drew Dwarves, Outlanders, Feyans and the wizards that begin with S, I can't remember the name now. We didn't use them all that much. We also drew two Edged weapons and Goodberries, amongst other things...

Now, remember last game where I promised myself I wouldn't make the same mistake of trying to equip Dwarves with Edged weapons before I'd actually bought any Edged Weapons? So do I. I remembered it so well that the first chance I got I went straight for one of the Outland Warriors, who's effect is significantly different: 3+ for a basic attack, and then you can destroy a Food card for an additional 3+. As I rarely use Iron Rations in any game, I had no problem with destroying them, and the added Militia and Dagger combos that I drew - to be fair I had some good hands - meant I took an early lead with killing monsters. Careful use of the subsequent experience points meant that I got to upgrade the Warrior card, which was great because subsequent levels rely on drawing monsters in your hand to give the Outlanders a bonus to their already substantial attack. Combine this with the fact that by then I'd already got a some Dwarves and Edged weapons, and there were small times when I couldn't do a huge amount of damage in the Dungeon.

Dave was trying to employ a similar tactic but at the same time was throwing away all his militia cards. I can see why you'd want to do this - making your deck faster is never a bad thing - but militia can be useful sometimes, especially when you get them in numbers and can equip them with daggers. In some situations it would work, and I don't think that this was one of them. He also missed some opportunities to attack the dungeon, either because he'd missed the effect of some of his cards or there were points where he wasn't concentrating (there was a text conversation going on at the same time in the early stages of the game.) The most interesting thing he did was use the Banish spell to send the Archduke of Pain - which to be fair neither of us had a hope of beating at that point - to the bottom of the Dungeon. A risky move, considering that it's worth a whopping 8 victory points and it if' it's at the bottom of the Dungeon there's no chance we'd have been able to fight it again before we found the Thunderstone. In the end it wouldn't have made much difference, and since the game ended before either of us really got to grips with Wizards, Banish was probably the best thing he could have done at that point.

We were moving through this Dungeon a lot more quickly than we ever had before; I think this particular combination of Heroes had swung the game much in favour of the players. However, only one of us could win. And for once, that turned out to be me, simply because I'd killed more monsters. Also, Goodberries give you victory points as well, I had a couple of those. We had about the same number of top-level Heroes. The final score was 56-34. Quite a comfortable win for me, and certainly not usual; I was quite please with this!

Ah, and I misread one of the rules. 'Spoiled' does not mean that you destroy whatever it is the card is supposed to 'spoil.' It actually means you get to pick up one of the associated cards. As it happens, it didn't matter so much, as we were both playing to the same interpretation of the rules so no one was cheating. Something to keep in mind for next time though...

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