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nonstoptabletop board game blog
Sat Oct 17
“Nothing Ventured …” A look at the risks and rewards of challenging the Lord of Darkness in Talisman: The Dungeon • • • • “So,” the thief’s voice rasped out from the shadows of the dark alley, “a troll, a cultist and a swashbuckler walked into the bar —” Quiet sniggering erupted from the other shadowed figures. “— No, seriously,” he said. “I’m not joking.” A tall robed man held up a hand, and silence fell upon the small gathering. With a comfortable gesture of command, he motioned for the thief to continue. “As I was saying, they came into the tavern, and the cultist — all legs and eyeliner she was — drops a musty old tome on the table and orders a round of drinks for everyone in the room.” “And you’re sure it was the book,” the tall figure asked. “Indeed, my lord. She proclaimed it loud enough for all to hear. She said she’d won the Book of Lore from the Lord of Darkness himself, besting him in a contest of darkest sorcery.” “Boasts do not proof make,” the tall man said. “That’s why I asked the ferryman, my lord. He said he’d just rowed her over from The Temple, where she had appeared magically in a puff of smoke and brimstone. He said he could hear dark laughter rolling from — well, from whatever sent her there.” “Intriguing. Where is the cultist now?” “Errr … well, I’m a bit shady on that part, my lord.” “And why is that?” the tall man asked, his voice thick with menace. “Well … it’s just that the drinks were free, and I was thirsty.” “You got blind drunk and passed out in the corner again, didn’t you, rogue?” “Y-y-yes,” the thief admitted, stuttering. “But, I didn’t fight the farmer this time!” Talisman: The Dungeon offers a high-risk / high-reward alternative route to adventurers seeking conquest and glory in the world of Talisman. Rather than engage in the time-honored journey deeper toward the center of this world of peril, a player now has the opportunity to consider another path, one that offers the opportunity gain experience and power in struggles against the powerful denizens of The Dungeon. If the encounters are not fatal, these challenges will often shape the adventurers into powerful heroes, ready to test themselves in the fires of the Inner Region. Many a questing character, though, will wade into The Dungeon merely for this crucible effect, often backtracking once they feel they’ve seen enough to test their mettle elsewhere, or when they realize they aren’t ready for what The Dungeon holds. Many adventurers who journey into the dark confines of The Dungeon have no intention of following it through to the Treasure Chamber at its end, fearful of the overwhelming might of the Lord of Darkness who lurks there. For some, the thought of throwing down with a Strength 12 / Craft 12 demigod is not worth whatever bounty the Treasure Chamber may yield. And, while it is certainlypossible to enjoy and benefit from The Dungeon without challenging the Dark Lord, those who shy away from this conflict are missing out on a great opportunity to make a push for the Crown of Command, no matter how convincing the bout’s outcome. It is easy to fixate on the most potent potential benefit of putting the smackdown on the Lord of Darkness: Instant teleportation to the Crown of Command. However, by no means is the chance for that devastating shortcut the only valid reward one should consider. Eking out even the slimmest victory can make almost as much difference. Consider some of the rewards of the Treasure Chamber: A Book of Lore that not only adds +1 to the user’s Craft, but allows the bearer to draw one spell at the beginning of each turn if his or her Craft allows. Or, a Clockwork Owl that gives its owner the powerful ability to move any number of spaces up to its die roll, instead of the full distance. These kinds of items can be huge difference-makers in the final rush to the Valley of Fire. Even if a character bests the Dark Lord by a tiny margin, the victor will still earn powerful treasure and teleport to a space in the outer region — emboldened, empowered and ready to pursue any tried-and-true means of reaching the Crown. Now evaluate the risk of battling the Lord of Darkness: While the whole of the journey through The Dungeon is harrowing, this single combat ultimately poses no worse threat than any other. Assuming the character has at least two life left at the beginning of this battle, he will do no worse than to lose a single life and be banished to the Crags — escaping The Dungeon without having to cut through its various nasties during a retreat to the surface. Assuming the character is in possession of some sort of armor, the risk is even more mitigable. Obviously, there are some basic tactics one should consider in using The Dungeon as a path to glory. While neophyte characters have ventured into The Dungeon and emerged as masters of battle, it is far more advisable to attain at least a couple of raises and some useful equipment before plumbing those depths. Treating The Dungeon with the same respect one reserves for the middle region, at least, will make sure that those who make it to the Lord of Darkness are likely to be in a condition to make it a fair fight. Additionally, it’s a good idea to hold on to spells or one-use items that can boost the hero’s effectiveness or diminish that of the opponent when planning to face off with the Dungeon’s master. While spells and allies can’t fight in an adventurer’s place in this challenge, a little augmentation can go a long way. So, while some will cower and swear that only a fool would dare challenge the Lord of Darkness, it may just be that you’d be a fool not to.

“Nothing Ventured …”

A look at the risks and rewards of challenging the Lord of Darkness in Talisman: The Dungeon

• • • •

“So,” the thief’s voice rasped out from the shadows of the dark alley, “a troll, a cultist and a swashbuckler walked into the bar —”

Quiet sniggering erupted from the other shadowed figures.

“— No, seriously,” he said. “I’m not joking.”

A tall robed man held up a hand, and silence fell upon the small gathering. With a comfortable gesture of command, he motioned for the thief to continue.

“As I was saying, they came into the tavern, and the cultist — all legs and eyeliner she was — drops a musty old tome on the table and orders a round of drinks for everyone in the room.”

“And you’re sure it was the book,” the tall figure asked.

“Indeed, my lord. She proclaimed it loud enough for all to hear. She said she’d won the Book of Lore from the Lord of Darkness himself, besting him in a contest of darkest sorcery.”

“Boasts do not proof make,” the tall man said.

“That’s why I asked the ferryman, my lord. He said he’d just rowed her over from The Temple, where she had appeared magically in a puff of smoke and brimstone. He said he could hear dark laughter rolling from — well, from whatever sent her there.”

“Intriguing. Where is the cultist now?”

“Errr … well, I’m a bit shady on that part, my lord.”

“And why is that?” the tall man asked, his voice thick with menace.

“Well … it’s just that the drinks were free, and I was thirsty.”

“You got blind drunk and passed out in the corner again, didn’t you, rogue?”

“Y-y-yes,” the thief admitted, stuttering. “But, I didn’t fight the farmer this time!”

Talisman: The Dungeon offers a high-risk / high-reward alternative route to adventurers seeking conquest and glory in the world of Talisman. Rather than engage in the time-honored journey deeper toward the center of this world of peril, a player now has the opportunity to consider another path, one that offers the opportunity gain experience and power in struggles against the powerful denizens of The Dungeon. If the encounters are not fatal, these challenges will often shape the adventurers into powerful heroes, ready to test themselves in the fires of the Inner Region.

Many a questing character, though, will wade into The Dungeon merely for this crucible effect, often backtracking once they feel they’ve seen enough to test their mettle elsewhere, or when they realize they aren’t ready for what The Dungeon holds. Many adventurers who journey into the dark confines of The Dungeon have no intention of following it through to the Treasure Chamber at its end, fearful of the overwhelming might of the Lord of Darkness who lurks there.

For some, the thought of throwing down with a Strength 12 / Craft 12 demigod is not worth whatever bounty the Treasure Chamber may yield. And, while it is certainlypossible to enjoy and benefit from The Dungeon without challenging the Dark Lord, those who shy away from this conflict are missing out on a great opportunity to make a push for the Crown of Command, no matter how convincing the bout’s outcome.

It is easy to fixate on the most potent potential benefit of putting the smackdown on the Lord of Darkness: Instant teleportation to the Crown of Command. However, by no means is the chance for that devastating shortcut the only valid reward one should consider. Eking out even the slimmest victory can make almost as much difference.

Consider some of the rewards of the Treasure Chamber: A Book of Lore that not only adds +1 to the user’s Craft, but allows the bearer to draw one spell at the beginning of each turn if his or her Craft allows. Or, a Clockwork Owl that gives its owner the powerful ability to move any number of spaces up to its die roll, instead of the full distance. These kinds of items can be huge difference-makers in the final rush to the Valley of Fire.

Even if a character bests the Dark Lord by a tiny margin, the victor will still earn powerful treasure and teleport to a space in the outer region — emboldened, empowered and ready to pursue any tried-and-true means of reaching the Crown.

Now evaluate the risk of battling the Lord of Darkness: While the whole of the journey through The Dungeon is harrowing, this single combat ultimately poses no worse threat than any other. Assuming the character has at least two life left at the beginning of this battle, he will do no worse than to lose a single life and be banished to the Crags — escaping The Dungeon without having to cut through its various nasties during a retreat to the surface. Assuming the character is in possession of some sort of armor, the risk is even more mitigable.

Obviously, there are some basic tactics one should consider in using The Dungeon as a path to glory. While neophyte characters have ventured into The Dungeon and emerged as masters of battle, it is far more advisable to attain at least a couple of raises and some useful equipment before plumbing those depths. Treating The Dungeon with the same respect one reserves for the middle region, at least, will make sure that those who make it to the Lord of Darkness are likely to be in a condition to make it a fair fight. Additionally, it’s a good idea to hold on to spells or one-use items that can boost the hero’s effectiveness or diminish that of the opponent when planning to face off with the Dungeon’s master. While spells and allies can’t fight in an adventurer’s place in this challenge, a little augmentation can go a long way.

So, while some will cower and swear that only a fool would dare challenge the Lord of Darkness, it may just be that you’d be a fool not to.

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Thu Sep 3

Recently my cousin/life-long best friend Hugh visited for the weekend, and we managed to get in a couple of (increasingly rare) Warhammer Fantasy battles.

I fielded my newest army, Chaos Daemons (of Khorne & Tzeentch), while he unleashed a shambling horde of undead led by fearsome Vampire Counts.

In the first game (not seen here), a Lord of Change led my forces and fortune did not smile on me as one bad die roll after another sealed my fate. I watched unit after unit fall to calamity, and the deal was sealed when the Lord of Change himself was ripped into the warp on an unlikely miscast followed by snake eyes on the miscast chart.

So, it was with little hesitation that I totally changed the primary philosophy of my force, punting the Lord of Change in favor of the more straight-forward brutality of a Bloodthirster of Khorne.

Hugh’s army remained unchanged from game to game.

In the first tilt, we had terrain equally dispersed across the battlefield, including a ruined Chaos temple in the middle. As both of our armies are really about just getting to grips with the opponent, we cleared the middle of the table for the second game and decided on blind deployment, using some large game boxes to shield our deployment zones from the opponent.

Once the dividers are removed and you see our respective deployed armies at the beginning of the video, the arrayed forces are as described below.

The Chaos Daemons are on the left side of the screen. Starting with the unit closest to the camera, they are:

• 5 Flesh Hounds of Khorne, led by Karanak
• 20 Horrors of Tzeentch, led by a Changeling (my lone painted unit in this game)
• 1 BloodThirster of Khorne
• 10 Horrors of Tzeentch
• 20 Bloodletters of Khorne
• 2 Bloodcrushers of Khorne, led by a Herald of Khorne on a Juggernaut who is also the BSB (3 cavalry models total in unit)
• 5 Flamers of Tzeentch

The Vampire Counts are on the right side of the screen. Starting with the unit closest to the camera, they are

• Direwolves
• Big ol’ unit of Zombies
• Big ol’ unit of Skeletons, led by a Vampire Hero
• A Vampire Lord leading a unit of Black Knights
• A unit of Fellbats
• A unit of GraveGuard led by a Vampire Hero
• The Black Coach
• A unit of Ghouls

I won the roll for first turn and elected to let Hugh make the first move. He, of course, shuffled his host en masse toward my army.

When it came to my turn, I had a difficult choice, but elected to throw caution aside and charge the Dire Wolves with my Flesh Hounds and the Black Coach with my Bloodthirster. The greater daemon was within his charge range by just a half inch. If I had failed, it pretty much would have been the whole game right there.

As it was, my primary goal was to stop the Black Coach from charging in and ripping apart any of my units with impact hits. It had been nasty in the first game. Also, I anticipated dispatching the coach quickly and, hopefully, would find the Bloodthirster behind Hugh’s battleline where he could wreak havoc with a rear charge.

To cement this, I would bait his other units with my biggest blocks of infantry, the Bloodletters and Horrors.

In close combat, the Bloodthirster didn’t do quite enough wounds to destroy the Black Coach, but the Flesh Hounds mauled the Dire Wolves, overrunning into the unit of Zombies (where they would grind away for most of the game)

During Hugh’s turn, his Lord + Black Knights charged my block of 20 Bloodletters. His Vampire Hero + GraveGuard charged my Herald + Bloodcrushers and his Vampire Hero + Skeletons charged my large unit of Horrors.

His Ghouls shambled forward and his Fellbats moved behind my battle line. His aim, I believe, was to dispatch my Flamers with these units and then have two decent units available for rear charges.

On to close combat:

My heart sank when my best unit from the first game, the Herald + Bloodcrushers, miscalculated in the combat against the Graveguard. My herald declared a challenge, but the Vampire Hero with Killing Blow dispatched him, even doing overkill wounds on the unit, which the rest of the GraveGuard (also with killing blow) finished off. I believe the final wound may have been a failed daemonic instability check. At any rate, a great many points, around 20% of my total, went bye bye in a hurry.

I was pleasantly surprised, however, to watch my Bloodletters weather the charge from the Black Knights. I believe they lost a rank, but they stuck in there, and since the deadly charge turn was out of the way, it would be a much more fair fight from that point on. (Note, my Bloodletters are notoriously difficult to rank up, so rather than remove casualties, I marked them with a six-sided die counting out the fallen from each rank.)

Similarly, I was pleased to watch Hugh’s face when my Changeling declared a challenge against his skeletons. He knew something was afoot and accepted with his unit champion. As the changeling gets to pick and choose from his opponent’s best stats and trade with him for the fight, he easily dispatched the champion. Hugh knew his hero would have to accept the same fate or run to the back ranks to hide in the next turn. The rest of the Horrors and Skeletons just began grinding away at one another with somewhat equal degrees of ineptitude.

The Bloodthirster finished off the Black Coach and the Flesh Hounds absolutely tore through the zombies (although, frustratingly, not enough to eliminate them).

All in all, at the end of the turn, I couldn’t feel too bad, even having lost the Bloodcrushers. I had weathered his charges admirably, had an unengaged Bad MoFo Greater Daemon behind his battle line, and was looking to punk another Vampire Hero the next turn with my Changeling.

I began my next turn maneuvering in supporting charges — one from my Bloodthirster slamming into the Black Knights from the side and my smaller unit of Horrors joining their painted brethren with a flank charge against the Skeletons.

My Flamers hopped back up on their hill and tried some shooting, but that would wind up being somewhat depressingly ineffective overall.

The supporting charges were terrifically effective, with the Black Knights being dusted completely except for the Vampire Lord who led them and the Skeletons being largely butchered (mostly by combat result) after my Changeling played his dirty trick in a challenge against the Vampire Hero.

The comedic moment in this round of combat came when my unscathed Flesh Hounds continued their onslaught against the large Zombie unit but, even after combat result, found themselves engaged against a single rotter.

A single, frickin’ zombie, holding up my stupidly dangerous unit of daemonic dogs. It was maddening.

During Hugh’s turn, his Vampire Lord defiantly stood up to a half-strong unit of BloodLetters and the BloodThirster himself while the GraveGuard and Ghouls maneuvered to give support.

This frightened me more than you might think because the GraveGuard, with their killing blow ability, could get a lucky strike against the BloodThirster, putting him down despite his embarrassment of wound points.

Meanwhile, the Fellbats swooped down on the Flamers in a skirmish that would go down in legend and song as, well, a pointless sideshow with no discernible impact on the larger battle.

Ultimately, the GraveGuard and Ghouls rallied to their dark Undead Lord, but they were hopelessly overmatched against the bloodthirsty daemons of Khorne. The lucky Killing Blow never came, the Bloodthirster destroyed the Lord in a challenge and would join the Bloodletters in wiping out the pesky Ghouls and GraveGuard.

Obviously, the battle was well in hand as the Flamers would finish off the Fellbats, and the Flesh Hounds would bite the head off the lone remaining shambler and turn to position themselves to accelerate the demise of the Skeletons, who were now boringly grinding away against the units of horrors in a battle of close-combat lightweights.

At the end of the day, the cries of “Blood for the Blood God, Skulls for the Throne of Khorne” were bordering on, well, just bad hospitality, and we decided that with two wildly different games of Warhammer under our belts, we’d spend the rest of the weekend enjoying less competitive games of Descent, Arkham Horror and Runebound.

Still, Lord Khorne was most pleased. Most pleased indeed.

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Wed Aug 19

The NonstopTabletop.com Review of Space Hulk.

Second in a series exploring dungeon-crawl-themed board games, this review goes back to the future to look at the once and future Games Workshop classic.

At a Glance: High quality components, rich atmosphere, easy to learn rules make Space Hulk (in any edition) a must-have for virtually any gamer’s collection.

Reviewer’s Score: (On the Boardgamegeek.com 1-10 scale) 9.0

Designer: Richard Halliwell
Publisher: Games Workshop
Number of Players: 2 (easily adaptable to 3; less easily adaptable to 4+)
Play Time: 45 Minutes

This comprehensive review of Space Hulk (2nd Edition, with mention of 1st Edition and the just announced 3rd Edition) clocks in at just under 30 minutes. For convenience, viewers should feel free to slide the playhead forward to any of the following subtopics:

03:51 - Overview of Game Components
11:40 - Board Set-Up, Scenario Description
12:33 - Action Points & Command Points
13:16 - The Basic Strategies
13:49 - Converting Blips to Genestealers
17:15 - Marine Shooting and Going on Overwatch
21:35 - Overwatch Activation during Genestealer Turn
23:59 - An Example of Close Combat
24:59 - The Flamer in Action
27:11 - Final Evaluation

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Sun Jun 7

The NonstopTabletop.com Review of HeroQuest.

20 years too late? Maybe. However, I’ll be reviewing a series of dungeon delving games — and no game made better sense to start with than this classic.

At a Glance: Lavish components, archetypal characters and an easy-to-grasp rules set make this a perfect introduction to the dungeon crawl.

Reviewer’s Score: (On the Boardgamegeek.com 1-10 scale) 7.0

Designer: Stephen Baker
Publisher: Milton Bradley (in cooperation with Games Workshop)
Number of Players: 2-5
Play Time: 90 Minutes

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Sun Mar 22

Sunday afternoon was game day for me and my crew, and we threw ourselves in headlong for an afternoon of SORRY! SLIDERS, ROBORALLY and PANDEMIC.

After a fun time was had by all with the first two games, Shea Stanley (upper right), I (lower right), Billy Littlepage (lower left) and my wife, Becky (upper left) sat down for the main event, Pandemic.

The roles were drawn and assigned:

Shea = Scientist = White Pawn
Josh = Operations Expert = Green Pawn
Billy = Dispatcher = Purple Pawn
Becky = Medic = Orange Pawn

We were excited because we have found the Dispatcher + Medic combo to be advantageous in accomplishing the goal of curing the four virulent plagues. The medic’s ability to treat diseases efficiently (including for free once a cure is discovered) combined with the dispatcher’s ability to move another player’s pawn during his turn makes for expedient disease treatment and helps prevent nasty outbreaks. Meanwhile, the scientist would try to make good use of his ability to execute cures with fewer resources while I’d be able to help with cure-finding by building research stations.

The early draw presented the greatest challenges in the Middle East with the black contagion, and in South America with the yellow illness. North America and Europe had a bit of the blue bug while the red disease was yet to show itself.

The game got started with me, the operations expert, trying to get a feel for the conditions in North America and treating the disease present there while the dispatcher moved south and the medic headed toward Europe, quelling illness where it was spotted. The scientist caught a flight to the middle east to begin battling the really aggressive black plague.

The dispatcher helped in this regard by using his ability to move the medic to another occupied city and the fast-treatment specialist further assisted in the control of the illness ravaging the Middle East. Shea (scientist) was also assembling a decent collection of black resource cards and lacked only one to find a cure for that illness.

Again, the dispatcher helped by sending my character, the operations expert, over to join the scientist in a location where I could share one of my black resource cards (I believe this was Istanbul) and build a research station. There, the scientist would be the first to cure a disease, finding the right course of treatment for the black illness.

Feeling like things were in good hands in the Middle East now, the Medic caught a flight to South America to begin treating the strains of disease in that region. Even as infections flared up around the world — including the first cases of the red disease in Asia, the team began building momentum.

Utilizing the same research station that the scientist had used, I was able to employ my impressive collection of yellow resource cards to cure the yellow plague.
The dispatcher and medic combined their abilities and efforts to aggressively administer the cure for the yellow plague in the south, quickly eradicating that illness.

Soon after the team pooled its efforts to stamp out the last traces of the black bug, ensuring that we would not be further troubled by that ailment, either.

Thus far in the game, the blue disease had been a wide spread, nagging issue — but one that had been kept largely in check. There had been only one outbreak in Chicago that was quickly contained and several smaller infections across North America and Europe. Additionally, the red flu was likely to present a nasty propensity for outbreak if we didn’t move quickly to extinguish its couple of hot spots.

The dispatcher had been assembling an impressive array of resources with which to treat the red disease and was closing in on a cure. In the meantime, the medic flew to that corner of the globe to treat the occurrences of the sickness while the dispatcher completed his research. The scientist and operations expert, meanwhile, did their part to keep the blue bug from spreading out of control.

Excitedly, the dispatcher drove from Miami to Atlanta and rushed into the research center there to confirm the test results. A cure for the epidemic in Asia was a reality!

At this point, a quick taking of stock indicated that the medic had the best shot of treating the blue disease with three of the five needed resources. As luck would have it, the operations expert had two blue cards to share, and the dispatcher assisted in coordinating the first exchange, in Madrid. The second would have to follow in the next round in New York, and we could tell we were going to be in the absolute 11th hour because the player card deck was about to expire.

Our hearts fluttered as we realized that Billy (lower-left) would draw the last player cards, but a quick scan of the rules told us that the game would not end until a player went to draw player cards and could not. That meant if the operations expert could zoom to New York first and erect a research center, that there was hope the medic could join him there, receiving from him the last bit of needed knowledge (blue New York card) and developing a cure for this last, widespread illness.

In truly heroic fashion, every member of our CDC operation played their role, making sure the needed parties got to the necessary locations and all special skills and abilities were brought to bear. As the time ticked toward zero on the DoomsDay clock, the medic rushed into New York’s hastily established research center, collected the samples from the operations expert and raced to the lab where she and her assistants developed the curative medicine for the blue plague.

Even though we played with the introductory difficulty to assist our mostly inexperienced crew, and further simplified things by playing with cards face-up, this was an amazingly tense game that came down to the absolute last possible moment.

The greatest sense of satisfaction comes from the fact that each member of the team really played his or her role, with each person curing one of the four illnesses.

As would figure, MVP probably belonged to the dispatcher, with the medic a close second, but the scientist and I didn’t feel for a minute like second fiddles. We made sure that we were in the places we needed to be to give us all the chance to pull out a victory, and we did … by the skin of our teeth.

This type of victory was also better appreciated because three of the individuals at the table, in our inaugural game of Pandemic on New Year’s Eve, lost when we ran out of player cards looking for one more cure.

Now that everyone is finally accustomed to the game, the next one will certainly be played at the normal level of difficulty, but I couldn’t have asked for a better final act on this excellent game day.

Pandemic is an excellent cooperative game that fills a great niche in being a common-goal game that is playable in a reasonable amount of time and without a lot of rules overhead. The gamers at the table ranged from neophyte to hard core geek, and it seems an equally fun time was had by all.

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Wed Mar 18

RoboRally has certainly captured my imagination of late, as I’ve enjoyed the puzzle-solving aspects of the game, but my pure solo runs through the various boards were not very compelling, for all of their educational value.

When I sat down to play a solo game Monday night, I decided I’d try to mix it up a bit, including three other “guard” robots on the board that would start on the objective flags and be randomly programmed.

In this post I’ll describe what I did as well as my thoughts for what I might try next time. I certainly welcome your comments and suggestions.

- It was a three flag board, so I chose three ‘bots, placing one on each objective flag.

- I decided each bot would get three random program cards per turn. (My thought was that this would be manageable, keep them in a pretty tight range of their defended position, and it also made sure that I was still dealing out cards in multiples of 9, keeping things somewhat neat in that regard)

- I activated the guard ‘bots program cards in registers 1,3, and 5, making sure that I could be affected by their actions in the beginning, middle and end of my turn … and, again, it worked with the multiple of 3.

- I decided that the guard ‘bots would be affected by “Invisible Fence” technology, keeping them from running off into pits or off of the board.

- If a guard ‘bot were to receive a program card that propelled it into a pit space or off the board, I would simply treat it as if it ran into a wall (This turned out NOT to be ideal, and I have some ideas on improving it)

- Guard ‘bots could be damaged (and, potentially destroyed) by lasers and other “damaging” board hazards, including the weapons on my bot as well as “friendly fire” from other (stupid) guard ‘bots.

The board I chose for my experiment was one of the beginner boards from the Avalon Hill edition rule book, utilizing the Island grid and a docking bay.

The guard ‘bots displayed different movement characteristics early on, all of which would limit their early impact. One began wandering off into a corner of the board, one played merry-go-round on the conveyor belts and one was exceptionally unpredictable and hesitant to range far from its home post.

I was able to make the first flag with limited difficulty, and the guard bots also did little to impede my approach to the second flag (although I had a little miscalculation involving the “turning” conveyors that slowed me down a bit).

To this point, the only noticeable effects of the guard bots had been 1) A single laser shot from the confused bot in the corner, which I repaired on the objective marker and 2) To make the game a little less monotonous and 3) affect my card draws, as they were “stealing” cards that would have been mine to use in a simple solitaire game.

However, as I began my run for the third flag, two of the guard ‘bots began converging on the corner of the board where I was maneuvering to get back “inside” the island. Again I found myself under laser fire, and suffered one point of damage. I rammed one of my antagonists and was able to position a wall between my Twonky and another laser happy guard ‘bot.

Things looked a bit hairy as I found myself with very few beneficial move cards in the center of conveyor belt centrifuge, but the guard ‘bots began to veer off and I received a fresh batch of program cards and zipped to the final objective.

Overall, while it will never rival a game with actual thinking opponents, I’m not entirely displeased with this approach to a solo version of RoboRally. There is still plenty of room for improvement however.

To that end, here are my thoughts for what I might try next time.

- Guard ‘bots will no longer simply mimic a “wall” effect when a program card propels them toward a pit or off the board, instead they will immediately UTurn and move one space. This should make for a much more dynamic experience.

- Guard ‘bots will begin play with one randomly selected option card (discarding any that do not make sense with the random movement).

As for the video, I recorded it with my laptop as an afterthought as I set up for the game, and I’m not sure it lives up to what I normally strive for with my nonstoptabletop.com session videos, but I do believe it offers a decent glimpse into what the random movement of the guard ‘bots looked like.

You’ll also note in this video my custom player program sheet and custom docking bay board which I use to “upgrade” elements of play of my second edition copy to third edition conventions. You can download my RoboRally Upgrade Pack for owners of previous editions from BoardGameGeek.com by following this link:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/40708

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Sun Mar 15
I recently came into a copy of the second edition of RoboRally. I was actually excited to have an opportunity to land this version (at a very reasonable price from a fellow BoardGameGeek.com user), because I prefer the art by Foglio, the metal models and high quality boards. However, I soon realized that there were some aspects of the Avalon Hill edition that I would prefer to have, chief among these the handy Player Program Sheets. I was very surprised that these weren’t readily available online, so I decided to knock out my own. I downloaded the AH rulebook pdf from the WOTC site and figured out what elements I’d need. I did a quick google image search for an industrial-looking background texture, the caution triangles for the damage track and the red octagon image for the power down module. I scanned the player turn sequence from my rule book and inverted its coloring in Photoshop. The font used is the “Blade Runner Movie” font available for free online. It probably took me about 30 minutes to knock this out, and given the time involved and the awareness that I am no graphic artist, I’m happy with the results. If you click on the image above or this link, you’ll access a large 10.5x7 inch version saved at 200 dpi for printing. You can just right-click and “save link as” on either of those links to save the file to your computer. • • • • Right-Click and “Save Link As”to Download the RoboRally Player Program Sheet

I recently came into a copy of the second edition of RoboRally. I was actually excited to have an opportunity to land this version (at a very reasonable price from a fellow BoardGameGeek.com user), because I prefer the art by Foglio, the metal models and high quality boards.

However, I soon realized that there were some aspects of the Avalon Hill edition that I would prefer to have, chief among these the handy Player Program Sheets.

I was very surprised that these weren’t readily available online, so I decided to knock out my own. I downloaded the AH rulebook pdf from the WOTC site and figured out what elements I’d need. I did a quick google image search for an industrial-looking background texture, the caution triangles for the damage track and the red octagon image for the power down module. I scanned the player turn sequence from my rule book and inverted its coloring in Photoshop. The font used is the “Blade Runner Movie” font available for free online.

It probably took me about 30 minutes to knock this out, and given the time involved and the awareness that I am no graphic artist, I’m happy with the results.

If you click on the image above or this link, you’ll access a large 10.5x7 inch version saved at 200 dpi for printing. You can just right-click and “save link as” on either of those links to save the file to your computer.

• • • •

Right-Click and “Save Link As”
to Download the RoboRally Player Program Sheet

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