Spirit Island, Sleeping Gods (kinda, but not really?), Star Wars Armada, and TIME Stories Revolution

 Spirit Island, Sleeping Gods (kinda, but not really?), Star Wars Armada, and TIME Stories Revolution

Time for another gaming weekend recap! This time, I got to enjoy a whole bunch of games at my buddy Biff's place along with Cushman who was good enough to drive in and visit. These are two guys who were at the core of the first gaming group I formed when I moved to St. Louis nearly a decade ago. The group has dwindled to just us three, but we still get together at least once, if not twice, a year to RP and get in some board games. It's always a good time because it gives us a chance to catch up, share some about our respective artistic endeavors, and get into some games.

Anyway! For this weekend, there were some plans as to what we'd play, and I packed accordingly. I had Armada and Kill Team with me (the former to play with Biff and the latter to play with Cushman), figuring we'd only get in one match of each, but no complaints here. I get in a decent amount of Armada at home and I'm still feeling my way into Kill Team, having not yet played with the rules of the newest incarnation. I brought Spirit Island because Biff suggested I do so; he knows it's my favorite game, he enjoys it, and he thought Cush would like it too. I packed Nemesis because I was pretty sure that would go over well with our group, as well as Sleeping Gods and Villainous (those latter two on the suggestions of Cushman after he got a chance to look at my game shelf). He thought Sleeping Gods looked really cool and he thought Biff might appreciate the asymmetrical design of Villainous if he could get past the Disney theme.

Cushman had brought TIME Stories Revolution, and I had grand plans of us getting into UBOOT. But I really wanted to walk into the weekend knowing how to play just about everything I brought. Even if I hadn't played a thing before, I wanted to be familiar enough that I could teach the games decently well, ensuring a smooth experience. When we get together for these weekends, we don't cram EVERY SINGLE GAME into the weekend the way we used to; we catch up a lot and sort of take our time. So the more I know before we start, the more we enjoy the weekend instead of slogging through a lot of rules. All of that to say that I was trying for a couple of days before coming here to get through the UBOOT rules and playthroughs, and my brain just wasn't having it. I think I literally need to learn the game and the app with at least one other person. So I abandoned plans to bring it with me. It's a real damn shame because I was convinced this was the moment we'd finally play it! I even said as much not too long ago! But I just couldn't reconcile how much time we'd have to spend on this and decided not to bring it along.

Sorry, UBOOT - you stayin' home. Again.

After some brief discussion, we decided to open the weekend with Spirit Island. Biff had played it before and enjoyed it, and we both thought Cushman would like it, too. So it felt like a pretty easy pick. I usually make it a point to make my Spirit selection last so that everyone else can play whatever they'd like and I can provide a decent complement to round out the party. In the case of our first game, Cush decided to try out Lightning's Swift Strike and Biff chose Ocean's Hungry Grasp. I figured that gave us plenty of offense, but I also think that, in general, the standard game of Spirit Island allows more leniency with regards to party builds. So I thought it could be fun to turn a strength into an obscenity by heaping on a little more offense. So I decided to play as Keeper of the Forbidden Wilds. Believe it or not, I've never actually played this Spirit before! I've wanted to, but as I most often pick a Spirit that rounds out a party, I don't often pick a Spirit I've not played before. It's a bad habit I've fallen into: I want people to have a good experience with the game, so I pick the Spirit that gives us the best chance of winning. But ultimately, that's not necessarily what gives people the best experience with the game or its scope. I think, generally, people want to do cool things with the Spirits they're playing, but also enjoy watching other people do cool things with the Spirits they're playing. I know that's a big part of what I enjoy about the game! Anyway, just a little food for my own thoughts.

I really enjoyed playing as Keeper! It can be a bit slow out of the gate, but I already knew that was the case. In spite of that, I also thought that it came into its own before I anticipated that it would; we basically had the game well under control the whole way through. I still enjoy playing Spirit Island at just about any level, but truth be told, I'm not inclined to play without an Adversary or Scenario with the exception of introductory and teaching games. I think the Event cards really help add some volatility and unpredictability, but at the end of the day, I think there's very little that can go so wrong that it'll cost any skilled players the game.

Cush had so much fun with the first game that he was ready to dive right back in, and far be it from me to decline such an opportunity! Cush decided to try out the Thunder Speaker while Biff chose Stone's Unyielding Defiance. I thought a second standard game would be good before jumping into any complicating factors that would ratchet up the difficulty. Both of them are experienced gamers and would've been fine, I'm sure, but I always think that the Spirits play so very differently that 2 standard games is a good rule of thumb before exploring any other new stuff in the game. I decided to play as the Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares so as to provide more fear for the group. Plus, while I wouldn't be able to kill any Invaders, Stone's Unyielding Defiance would help us handle any excess of Blight.

So we got into it! We leaned HARD on Stone's protection for the entirety of the game. I mean, I knew we'd be relying on it, but not as early or frequently as we did. Event cards did what they were supposed to do, which was mostly screw up our plans and make our Defend efforts redundant. I'm fairly certain that we never really hit a turn wherein we couldn't at least redirect our Slow Powers so they at least did something, but there were definitely a number of instances in which we had gone out of our way to set ourselves up to gain a turn on the Invaders only to have the rug pulled out from underneath us. But anytime that happened, frustrating though it could be, we knew we always had Stone's net underneath us to prevent the island from Blighting. Ultimately, we were able to get a good Fear engine going and set up for a big turn that would've seen 5 Cities killed to win us the game. We killed 2 of them in the Fast Power phase, knew they weren't going to build any more, and then we'd finish the rest of them in the Slow Power phase. We drew into a Fear card that allowed us, at Terror Level 3, to each remove an Invader of our choice. So the Cities went out with a whimper instead of a bang; they never made it to the Slow Power phase and we won before the Invaders could do anything at all. A little anticlimactic, but still a satisfying win.

It really hadn't occurred to me just how hard I work to keep the island Healthy when I play. I think it's obviously important to keep Blight off the table when possible, but it can easily lead me into situations where I get caught in a loop of my own design: I'm working so hard to prevent Blight and Defend the land that I'm constantly Reclaiming cards that'll help me Defend the land, but won't actually allow me to gain a step on the Invaders and prepare for future actions and turns. Also, I have kinda conditioned myself to think loss is that much more likely once the island has flipped from Healthy to Blighted. So I bend a lot of my energy toward making sure that doesn't happen. Sometimes, I'm certain it's to my detriment. I mention that because I don't think I gave it a lot of thought, which means I don't think so much about it when I'm teaching the game. I'd learn later on during this weekend that I pass on a lot of that fear of a Blighted Island when I teach the game.

It's actually really funny, because it's very much akin to how I have taught Eldritch Horror: I sort of set people up to expect a difficult game that is likely to end in loss. I try and stress that so expectations are set in a way that can allow us to have fun and not necessarily focus on whether we win or lose. But sometimes, the result is that I stress it a little too much. The last time I taught Eldritch Horror, I had said multiple times that the game could really turn on a die roll or a Mythos card, and hadn't realize how much I'd set up the expectation that we'd lose. We won that game on turn 3 or 4. Everything - and I mean everything - broke our way, and we'd spent way more time prepping to play the game than we had spent playing it. It became a running joke amongst us that the game is really only hard for me. And I'll be the first to admit that I was very nearly disappointed that we won! It suddenly became more important to me that the game prove me right than it was for us to win! Utterly ridiculous, I know. I'd apparently rather go down with the ship than see it succeed in spite of my warnings. I mention all of this because, again, it comes up later in the weekend. But for now, let me return to our current proceedings: our third game of Spirit Island!

I mean, he's not wrong about anything he has said here...

No, seriously, we couldn't get enough of it. I am always ready to play another game after I play the first when it comes to Spirit Island, but it often takes enough time that the second game doesn't happen. In this case, we had all weekend, and it turns out that Biff and Cush like the game quite as much as I do. So we decided to just stick with it. But it was time to amp up the difficulty, and so we randomly selected the Habsburg Monarchy. Given that Habsburg offers an additional loss condition as well as Escalation, I figured we'd just start with Level 1, which basically allows Towns to move around after the Invader Build step. Cush had been eyeing Shroud of Silent Mist and I sang its praises as being a lot of fun, so that's what he chose. Biff decided to play a more fully support role and selected River Surges in Sunlight. The last time I had played as Volcano Looming High was as a step in my ongoing campaign against the Tsardom of Russia, and it had gone poorly. I thought we could use some offense and since Volcano fit that bill, I decided to break it out again.

This game felt closer than the first two because we were down to only one Blight on our island card pretty early and they kept threatening to pile on more, but it just sort of never happened. Seriously, the Blight came fast and furious, but we all sort of peaked at the right time and were able to tread water while making very, very small inroads. I know Cush had a hard time generating Energy off of "Slow and Silent Death" because all 3 of us kept killing the things he was trying to feed off of. I was exploding pretty regularly to try and keep things under control, but I was starting to hit a point where I was concerned that a bad Event card or something might take what little remaining Presence I had off the board. Hapsburg and events kept piling on buildings, so we kept kicking victory down the road as we tried to keep the island Healthy. Again, it's possible that we worked so hard to keep the island Healthy because of what I described up above. But we also thought it was important because we were starting to run into some problems with Escalation that carried over into the third Invader stage when they began hitting two terrain types each turn. It was getting to be a lot and the clock was still ticking. Ultimately, we managed to turn a corner and win the game with 3 Invader cards left in the deck.

We all had a good experience, but I know Cush felt limited in what he could accomplish because it felt like he was always (as a Spirit) running away from Blight and damage, and so his mobility was used mostly to protect himself instead of having more of an impact on the game (again, from his perspective, even though Biff and I both thought he had served well in his role). I had a lot of fun with Volcano, despite never really building up to "the big stuff" because I couldn't keep the knucklehead stuff off my desk, so to speak. I could let some things slide, but I was probably more reactionary in this game than I needed to be. The result was that I could hold my own and gain some ground from time to time, but I was never really threatening to do the BIG stuff that Volcano sort of promises as a Spirit at a glance, if that makes sense? I think I want to keep playing this Spirit, but I honestly couldn't tell you why! I enjoy the hell out of it, but it doesn't cut into my top 3 Spirits (which are, in no particular order, Many Minds Move As One, A Spread of Rampant Green, and Heart of the Wildfire). But for whatever reason, I would really like to get back to it sooner than later.

We were all having a lot of fun playing Spirit Island, but decided it was time to try moving onto something new. After all, there was no reason we couldn't come back to Spirit Island if we wanted. So I suggested trying out Sleeping Gods.

I had already read the rules for the game so I'd at least have passing familiarity with them, and Cush was the one who had suggested bringing it after seeing it on my shelf. This group has played a bunch of campaign games together, so I thought this might be a good time to break out Sleeping Gods. We started with the tutorial and then didn't get any further. Don't get me wrong - I'm very much looking forward to the game! But it seems as though there's quite a lot of narration in this game, and while I'm very interested, we decided this wasn't the weekend for it.

After we packed up Sleeping Gods, Biff and I decided to get into some Armada. I've obviously been playing, but he's not played in some time and had come up with some ideas to get back into it. I set up with the latest version of my Hell Kite fleet and he set up with the following:

Biff's fleet (60/390/400)

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Acclamator II-class (71 + 14: 85)

· Chart Officer (2)

· Thermal Shields (5)

· External Racks (4)

· DBY-827 Heavy Turbolasers (3)

Acclamator II-class (71 + 14: 85)

· Chart Officer (2)

· Thermal Shields (5)

· External Racks (4)

· DBY-827 Heavy Turbolasers (3)

Acclamator II-class (71 + 14: 85)

· Chart Officer (2)

· Thermal Shields (5)

· External Racks (4)

· DBY-827 Heavy Turbolasers (3)

Armed Cruiser (37 + 38: 75)

· Obi-Wan Kenobi (28)

· Auxiliary Shields Team (3)

· External Racks (4)

· Swift Return (3)

4 x ARC-170 Starfighter Squadron (4 x 15)

Most Wanted

Hyperspace assault

Solar Corona

Basically, his idea was to bull rush me with the Acclamators and win in a war of attrition. I was confident that I could evade his ships, but he had also already planned on going second and had bid accordingly. As I only had a 1 point bid, Biff chose to go second and I was forced to choose between his three objectives. None of them were particularly appealing. I definitely didn't want to hand him Most Wanted, knowing that he would already be trying to keep his Consular flagship out of my reach. And Hyperspace Assault was extraordinarily unappealing, given that I definitely had no interest in him dropping an Acclamator into my flank without having to work for it. That all but left Solar Corona. I didn't love the idea of deploying everything before him, given that good deployment of Acclamators is half the fight. But it felt like the best choice and I also thought it might provide an opportunity to trip him up and use the Solar Corona against him by splitting up my fleet and bringing some flankers to bear from such a direction that he would have to shoot into his own Solar Corona.

You can see our deployment above (with the exception of my Consular at the far left, as it had already moved by the time I thought to take this picture). I had deployed pretty centrally with the intention of being able to change tack depending on how Biff deployed his Acclamators. Those were my primary threat, as his Consular Armed Cruiser could do some damage, but since I was going first, I thought I could erase the Cruiser before it got a chance to unload. Either that, or it would steer clear of my guns and I could just keep it honest and out of the fight. I wasn't worried about the ARCs because there was no apparatus to push them any further or faster, which meant I could get the drop on them with my V-19s and chew some clock while my Y-Wings dropped some ordnance on the Acclamators.

We spent a lot of time discussing deployment. Partially because it had been so long since Biff had played, partially because we agreed that a fleet such as his will win or lose on deployment. I thought I had probably deployed at too sharp an angle because if he set up in the corner at which I was pointed, then all he'd have to do is turn in, and it would be difficult (if not impossible) for my Venator and far left Charger to fly wide. They'd have to cut back the other way. But of course, that might throw them directly into the teeth of the oncoming Acclamators (assuming the Acclamators are going fast enough and aren't approaching me one at a time). Biff then considered the possibility of deploying the Acclamators all the way on the other side of the board (on my right and away from where my guns were pointed), thus giving him time to set up his fleet for an approach he liked as well as basically guaranteeing that his placement of the solar corona. My concern with that move is that it was very much at odds with his goal of bull rushing my fleet. Additionally, I'm happy to keep his ships at arm's length while tossing red dice at him. To say nothing of the fact that starting at such a big distance would mean his ARCs are basically useless, as they'll never actually reach the fight from their deployment position.

Ultimately, what ends up happening is Biff ends up splitting the difference and deploying closer to the corner to my left, but still a little bit central. This gives me all the opening I need to ensure I can keep his ships at arm's length while chucking red dice at him (or blue and black dice per my Venator's SPHA-T). I haven't yet decided whether or not I'm going to split up my fleet, but I figure I can make that decision after activating the Charger on the far left and my Venator. They're absolutely going to keep flying in the direction they're going, swing wide, and flank the far Acclamator and maybe get his flagship while they fly by.

You can see that I do, in fact, end up splitting up my fleet (this picture was also taken after I'd already moved my flagship Consular, accelerating it to avoid taking a double arc from the oncoming Acclamators). My mistake in this round was not putting down my SPHA-T token. I just wasn't thinking about it. But I should've put it down, confident that I'd have at least one target to shoot. But ultimately, I should've been confident that I could shoot that Acclamator to my right, knowing it was the ship my two Consulars on the outside to my right would be harassing as they came around that right flank. But I don't. We exchange some light fire, but nothing terribly meaningful. I realize at this point that I didn't set myself up with a squadron command from my Venator. So, you know, that was dumb. But I'm also confident that I can get in a bombing run with my Y-Wings and my V-19s can still jump the ARCs. So it's not ideal, but I can take advantage of a situation.

We get through the second round, and then hypothesize about what will happen going forward. But Biff and I are both convinced that the game is basically over. That Acclamator on my far left cut in hard and Biff was trying to get it to where my Venator was instead of where it was going to be. Once he did that, it was basically over. I was first player, so he'd never get guns on me again when I cut out wide. He'd be shooting into the solar corona, so he'd lose his first accuracy each time, and finally, one Acclamator was clogging up the middle, forcing less-than-ideal activation order and some friendly ramming amongst his fleet. So we decided to call it. We debriefed after the game and talked about how things had gone wrong and thought we might revisit it later in the weekend, but just didn't get back to it.

That was the last thing we played on Saturday evening. But we opened Sunday morning gaming with TIME Stories Revolution - A Midsummer Dream! Cush and I had gotten the opportunity to play a bit of TIME Stories Revolution before it was released at GenCon back in August 2019. We liked the original game, so the updates made it different, for sure. But we were interested enough that Cushman went out and bought his own copy. He and I had played the Hadal Project story maybe a year ago, so we were looking forward to trying out this new story. We got it to the table, reviewed the rules, and dove in. This story takes place in "6951 AT: Discover a strange world filled with marvelous creatures, illusions, and cunningly distorted locations. In this unique adventure and this alternate reality, nothing must be misunderstood unless given kindly and respectfully." As Biff pointed out, given that we're in an alternate reality, it's not really a *TIME Story.* I found myself agreeing. Though I enjoyed the game and the story, I also felt a little bit as though it was a good idea/story that was shoe-horned into the game's premise. There's a good chance there's a resolution written into the overarching storyline, right? After all, whether one likes their stories or not, they do pull the narrative strands together into one tapestry, so perhaps there's a plan here of which I'm unaware. And while I like the game, I'm not so invested that I'm really keeping track of any sort of overall story being told. So it doesn't bother me much, but it is a thing I think about once it is mentioned.

That said, it was fun! I got to play a leprechaun who can create a rainbow bridge and teleport friends, and she also has a really fun "snap card." I won't get into details and spoil it for anyone who hasn't played this scenario yet, but she's a lot of fun. Cushman took the sprite and Biff took the satyr. I will say that I thought the mystery we were trying to solve didn't feel like it gave us much in the way of clues; it felt like we were stumbling through and just exploring whatever we thought we maybe hadn't explored yet. And I was fine with that! But I also get how that's not necessarily the game people want to play, since it can definitely feel as though it's not really a matter of good detective work so much as luck and perhaps running through the game several times.

That said, I do think the magic in this system is really good! And while it never feels good to lose, I kind of appreciate that it's a possibility, since I never really felt that way in the first version of T.I.M.E. Stories; we never got it all solved on the first run, but we always knew there were future runs. In our case, we ran through a bunch of locations and were definitely not efficient in our run. We stayed in some locations too long, and some of our encounters kept us just a bit longer than we had planned. But I also had a great time! I didn't think the plot of the story was brilliant or anything, but I enjoyed exploring the world, and I'm still just always a fan of the way they provide a tableau for exploration of each location. I just think it's real damn cool. And I really enjoyed my character! Again, I had a fun "snap card" (which is basically a card that each player receives and keeps face down; it provides some background or history, or in some cases, provides a sort of side quest or objective), so that also gave me something to pursue in addition to the main game. Honestly, we were still missing information by the time we lost, so we weren't entirely certain of what we were supposed to be doing. I think part of it was probably that we missed something, but some of it was probably the order of locations that we visited. We did skip one, maybe two of the starting locations. But we had unlocked new map pieces, knew we were up against the clock, and worried that we'd end up in a "plunger situation."

**SPOILER ALERT FOR CORE T.I.M.E. STORIES SCENARIO, ALSO KNOWN AS "Asylum 1921 NT"**

If you've played the very first scenario that came with the very first T.I.M.E. Stories game, you're probably familiar with the plunger. Basically, it's a very involved red herring in the scenario that is a complete and utter time sink. As the players are in an asylum, it can be difficult to know who really knows something versus someone who is experiencing a delusion. So it feels like the players are onto something until they find themselves walking around a plunger for absolutely no reason. It makes for funny recaps and stories, so that's cool! But woof, it really puts one on the alert for other time-wasting red herrings, and it can be easy to miss clues that way. So it didn't feel as though we had a ton of guidance in this story. But I know I was happy to basically bumble through the story until we were basically out of Azrak (the resource that allows us to travel through time, attempt challenges, etc.) and knew we were about to lose.

**END SPOILER ALERT**

We decided not to try a second run at A Midsummer Dream, preferring to save that for another time. But I know I'm really looking forward to attempting a second run at that scenario in the future! Aaaaaaaaand then we went back to Spirit Island. Yep, that's right. It basically turned into a Spirit Island weekend with a total of 6 games played! My next blog post will detail the second half of that endeavor, so I look forward to sharing our final 3 games of Spirit Island with y'all!