Greater Tioga County Area Gaming Group

This forum is for use by groups of folks who want to help organize their local gaming groups. If you have some people in your area and you want to organize game play at the table you can post to this forum!
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Vardaen
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Re: Greater Tioga County Area Gaming Group

Post by Vardaen » Thu Jul 09, 2015 4:27 pm

Well we had a chaos filled night of gaming last night. Seven folks over, one was a newbie present just for a one shot, the other was her second time, and the house was full of extra kids up way to late.

With 7 people we didn't know what to play, I'd love a suggestion for games for large groups that isn't Apples to Apples or Cards Against Humanity.

So we tried Nightfall: The Coldest War expansion.
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NF only says 2-5 players, but we had enough starter decks to play 10 so what the hell right? Holy crap that was too many players. With 3 people having never played it or only played it once long ago, that was tough. Then another 3 who only played it a few times, then me. Two folks ended up having to leave early, and we started late, so not sure how much fun they had. The rest of us, down to 5, pressed on, and with 5 it was much better. One thing poorly done was we used only cards from the expansion, and no base set cards, that was a mistake I think.

Still, we had some good times, and plenty of smack talk.

The MVP or Largest Hated Card was "All Fears Revealed", we played it wrong allowing the person playing it to also target minions, which over powered it some. It just kept wiping the table of minions so no one was able to build up.

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When it was all over Eilandor won the epic long game (we ended at 1am starting around 10pm).

Eilandor 7
Me 8
Amaris 11
Princess Magnet 12
Ginger Snaps 14

Next time we play NF I want to try the Easter Skies set, which has great reviews, and drop all the variant options on it we can and only play with 5 or less people from the start.
"He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom." - Gandalf
J.R.R. Tolkien, Council of Elrond, The Fellowship of the Ring

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TetNak
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Re: Greater Tioga County Area Gaming Group

Post by TetNak » Thu Jul 09, 2015 4:40 pm

7 people is tough. There might be a Battlestar expansion that lets you play up to 7. 6 is a real sweet spot with that game.

I know Arkham Horror plays up to 8, but I do not recommend it. We tried before and it took over an hour to get to the 8th player. And by that time we were almost dead anyway.
"Kings have no friends, only subjects and enemies."

- King Stannis Baratheon, First of His Name

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Re: Greater Tioga County Area Gaming Group

Post by TetNak » Thu Jul 09, 2015 4:40 pm

With 7, I honestly suggest playing 2 games instead.
"Kings have no friends, only subjects and enemies."

- King Stannis Baratheon, First of His Name

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Vardaen
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Re: Greater Tioga County Area Gaming Group

Post by Vardaen » Thu Jul 09, 2015 5:06 pm

We shouldn't hit 7 most of the time, 6 is our core, but we could have hit 8 last night. We ere thinking 2 games, but we could have also done some party games, where you have teams, like Crainium, or Loaded Quesitons or Pictionary, I may have to pick up something just for these occasions like Resistance.
"He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom." - Gandalf
J.R.R. Tolkien, Council of Elrond, The Fellowship of the Ring

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TetNak
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Re: Greater Tioga County Area Gaming Group

Post by TetNak » Thu Jul 09, 2015 5:15 pm

I hate party games. Anyways, anything over 6 players is tough for normal games.
"Kings have no friends, only subjects and enemies."

- King Stannis Baratheon, First of His Name

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Re: Greater Tioga County Area Gaming Group

Post by Vardaen » Thu Jul 09, 2015 5:21 pm

I don't mind them from time to time, with teams you get some co-op and adversarial stuff going on. Resistance has gotten good reviews from gamers, something similar to Werewolf I believe. I may have to pick it up for such occasions to split the difference.

I prefer we advance our LotR Campaign or PF ACG Campaign, but a little time out from time to time is okay too.
"He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom." - Gandalf
J.R.R. Tolkien, Council of Elrond, The Fellowship of the Ring

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Re: Greater Tioga County Area Gaming Group

Post by Vardaen » Thu Nov 19, 2015 2:47 pm

We won!

I haven't posted here in a long while, since Jul, but our local group has been playing weekly (for the most part) since then. We've done various games like Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride, Abandon Ship, Lost Legacy, Exploding Kittens, and other just low key games along with Pathfinder Adventure Card Game and LotR LCG by Fantasy Flight.

We had been getting our arses kicked by LotR for a while but last night after a false start we finally won!

We started the new Lost Realms Delux box which is the start of the Angmar Awakend Cycle. It all takes place, as expected in northern Eriador. We started last night by hunting down an orc war party headed west from the mountains toward Bree-land. It had a good mechanic of Side Quests, which would pop up and give you other things going on, you could focus on the main quest but the side quests did terrible stuff or you could go after the side quest but let the main one linger.
Image We managed to get a good start, and had great card draw and resource generation (except for our tactic deck which couldn't seem to get its resource gen going).

Me: Erestor, Galadriel, Celeborn - This deck draws 4 cards each turn instead of 1, but at the end of each turn you discard your whole hand. So it was about getting cheap things our fast. Silvan elves that bounced in and out, and things that got a boost from discarding cards. I really enjoyed questing for 20 points a few rounds later into the game.

Eilandor: Gloin, Treebeard, Elrond - This deck is all about exploiting Gloin. When he takes damage he also gains resources. So you puts lots of attachments on him that gives him health, use healing, and take the big expensive stuff in your hand and play it since you have a ton of wound going on Gloin over and over again. It quested, it fought, and it healed. All around decent support deck.

Pat: Boromir, Beorn, Bifur - The combat deck. It was supposed to load Boromir up with attachments so he could use his ready ability over and over again and just crush stuff. That never really happened. It did get out a fair number of Ents, and Beorn did his defending thing nicely. It also drew a crazy number of cards with new Legolas ally and a card that let us draw when side quests were defeated. At the end Pat had more cards in his hand than in the deck! But not enough resources to do anything with them. That was disappointing. Still, it was okay and I think it just had a bad shuffle.

All in all we followed the ally Iarion around the area near Bree, did battle with orcs, and won the day! Now we head to the Weather Hills to look into why the orcs were roaming so boldly about in the populated lands, while Iarion heads to Fornost for a meeting of the Rangers.
Image Image Image
"He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom." - Gandalf
J.R.R. Tolkien, Council of Elrond, The Fellowship of the Ring

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Vardaen
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Re: Greater Tioga County Area Gaming Group

Post by Vardaen » Wed Dec 09, 2015 4:00 pm

Last night our normally board/card game group took the plunge into RPGs. It was only 3 of us, myself and Eilandor included, as a few folks ended up canceling. Our third member never played and RPG before it was his first time!

We took the plunge into the Lone Wolf Adventure Game...
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Since we didn't have a great amount of prep time we dove into the pre-made started adventure along with using the Pre Gen characters. If you watched the You Tube video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ-2tLLE7yY, of TetNak's LWAG game you might be familiar with the characters that were in play.

We had Bright Shield and Dawn Thunder as our party, and myself as the Narrator. I wasn't sure how the opening adventure was going to play, having heard that it wasn't very good, but in fact I think it was just right. It was very much an A to B to C sort of adventure, and it eases you into the rules very very slowly, which for anyone playing here could have been difficult to accept, but for a new to RPG player it was just right. We actually completed the whole thing in one session about 2 hours of play time. The party was successful in locating the missing caravan and saving the merchants held by the bandits. I will say it could have used a bit more combat, and I was going to toss in a bit more just to spice things up but since we were running up on our time I decided not to.

I think we all agreed it was a good time, and by the end of the session our newbie was in the swing of things, playing in character and mixing it up good with everyone else. Having the PDFs also helped set the mood, as I was able to print out images for the various scenes and I had them music for various scenes. When I hit the 'fight music' everyone knew it was on!

All and all a good time, and welcome departure from getting our arses kicked in LotR LCG. We plan to try out the second premade adventure with a larger group using the master rules and kicking it up a notch.
"He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom." - Gandalf
J.R.R. Tolkien, Council of Elrond, The Fellowship of the Ring

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TetNak
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Re: Greater Tioga County Area Gaming Group

Post by TetNak » Wed Dec 09, 2015 4:57 pm

You could run the adventure I made up as well, if you wanted to do something else
"Kings have no friends, only subjects and enemies."

- King Stannis Baratheon, First of His Name

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Re: Greater Tioga County Area Gaming Group

Post by Vardaen » Wed Dec 09, 2015 7:43 pm

Eilandor already saw it so no surprise to him. The book has worked out well. We had a good time with it, and the new guy was eased into it, that was really helpful.
"He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom." - Gandalf
J.R.R. Tolkien, Council of Elrond, The Fellowship of the Ring

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