Um, yeah. No minis painted this week. Hardly surprising, though. I'll get back to that next week!
Our guests arrived on Sunday evening, so we decided to kick the week off with something we all know and love: Aeon's End: War Eternal
(Image by BGG User TRChance)
Elevator Pitch: Pick a boss to fight, pick some mages to fight it with and then build your deck fast enough to win the arms race against the boss.
moment: Getting that perfectly aligned shot that finishes the boss.
moment: That stupid cultist healing himself, just before we could kill him.
Impressions: Aeon's End is a great game at all player counts. It's one of the few games that I have played excessively solo and even taking out my solo plays the various editions taken together amount to one of our most played game of all time. So of course we were happy, when A. suggested we'd crack out Aeon's End.
We chose to play against Hollow Crown, which is a boss without hitpoints. Instead of damaging the boss directly, you have to take out all the cultists that support the thing.
As mages we mixed base game and War Eternal, so that we had more to choose from. In the end, we set out to hunt the Nemesis with Reeve (great for doing minion damage), Xaxos (can do a bit of everything), Gex (as a supporter) and Jian (Damage with a capital D).
As we played a total of 5 games of Aeon's End over three days, it's a bit hard to recall the particulars of a single game, but I do remember that we all needed a bit to get back into the groove of working together efficiently. The four player game is definitely a totally different experience from the two player game! We had no card destruction in the market and no real high damage spells, so we relied heavily on getting the good breaches open fast and charging Jian's ability to sling spells double-time.
While managing our mages' health was going on ok, we took heavy damage to the City. I don't recall the exact number, but I do know we finished off the boss with Gravehold well in the single digits. That was a close one, but we did it! Yay, us!
Meeple Verdict: 
loves going there!
Challenge Progress: Diversity, Mechanics and Flavour of the Week challenge
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Gaming continued on Monday afternoon. After the successful beat-up of the Nemesis on Sunday, we thought we'd break out the new iteration of the series (Aeon's End: The New Age), because neither of us had played this before and we were interested in finding out what the expedition mode would bring to the table. We played two games on Monday and two on Tuesday, but I will just cram it all together into a single section here .
(Image by BGG User offdutyninja)
Elevator Pitch: Aeon's End mini campaign mode. With story. A tiny bit.
moment: Going into Destroyer mode and ripping the Nemesis a new one 
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moment: Triple Nemesis turn right at the beginning almost lost us the fourth game before we really got started. Wow, that felt punishing...
Impressions: We played the scripted expedition, with the only exception that we put all mages into the pool (except the ones in envelopes, because we didn't know about them, yet) to choose from. We ended up all choosing from the new set, though .
So we had Claudia (supporting act with potential to deal some nice damage early), Tarquen (healing and support), Qu (shapeshifting mage who can either be really good at economy or dealing damage, depending on her current form) and Sahala (mainly for dealing damage).
The campaign is nicely done, with a bit of narrative to keep everyone engaged. The story is nothing spectacular, but it was interesting enough to keep reading the snippets between battles. I also learned a new euphemism that is just adorable: "We retreated in different directions." I guess that truly means everyone was running away as fast as they could and without giving a damn what happened to everyone else .
Anyway. We used the suggested market setups throughout the campaign, focusing heavily on stuff that allowed synergies with each other. Like the Pearl that gives more Aether when someone else discards a Pearl, the Bauble that can either trigger someone else's spell or focus a Breach. Also, the key to us winning all four games certainly was the Tethered Dart, that can wander around the table, if it is cast from an open III or IV Breach.
Many people say that four players is the hardest player count for Aeon's End. I'm not goint to dismiss that statement out of hand, but I would rather say, it is the player count that relies most heavily on teamwork. And you need to find players that are willing to lean heavily into teamwork. Because there will be games, where one or two player might feel like they didn't really do much. That is only true if you play with the mindset that only dealing damage is making a contribution. But the supporting staff is just as important, it just doesn't look that impressive. We are a group that can appreciate support. In our second game, we played against a boss that heavily leeches the economy of the group (unless you just accept that his second stage will be tough). So A. and myself pumped everything into discarding powers and keeping the ritual down to allow the other two to push the Tethered Darts around and finish off the boss. I didn't cast a single spell that did damage and I had only two Breaches open at the end of the game. But we kept the ritual down to Level 1, which made the second boss stage a piece of cake. But our friends didn't make us feel left out, they supported us by discarding their Pearls to boost our economy and taking hits and they whooped when we could discard a power or push back the ritual.
And game 4 was a damage dealing fest for everyone, because the boss demanded mainly that. So we got our Breaches open fast and Qu was in Destroyer mode most of the game and everyone just lobbed as much damage as fast as they could. That was a neat finale, although storywise, I'm a bit puzzled, why the second boss wasn't the final boss instead. We won all four games, although every single one teetered on the brink of catastrophe for at least a few turns. But that's also a great thing about this game: Winning just feels good and deserved.
It is an awesome game at four players if you are into this kind of thing and we had a blast in every game. It is an absolute group favourite and we'll continue to have fun with Aeon's End!
Meeple Verdict: loves going there!
Challenge Progress: Diversity challenge only
~~~°°°~~~
Monday evening I also introduced my friend to Watergate, because I thought it would be something he'd like. Spoiler: Turns out, I was right!
(Image by BGG User Hipopotam)
Elevator Pitch: A political thriller turned into a card driven game with simple rules, but packs a lot of punch.
moment: Snagging away one witness after another as Nixon and securing the momentum marker just before Nixon could as the Editor.
moment: Having sniped away one witness after another as the Editor and having that momentum marker taken away from under your nose as Nixon.
Impressions: I have already talked a bit about Watergate on this blog before, so suffice it to say, I think it is a brilliant design. We played a tight game all around, with A. playing as the Editor and myself as Nixon. Nixon lost his third game, cementing my feeling that it is a tad harder to win as Nixon. But it was a close one and might have gone either way. I was a bit unlucky with the final evidence markers in combination with my hand cards. But we both enjoyed the back-and-forth of the game. It feels tight and well-balanced and M. read a bit of the background info to us, when we played a card and he found something particularly interesting.
Very good game and well deserved of its winning the Golden Geek Award! Bit of a shame that it got no mention on the Spiel des Jahres recommendation list, though 
.
Meeple Verdict: loves going there!
Challenge Progress: None. Just for fun!
~~~°°°~~~
Tuesday evening, after our games of Aeon's End, it was again time for a fast and fun two player game to conclude the evening. This time we played Skulk Hollow, another asymmetric game. I just love those!
(Image by BGG User zombiegod)
Elevator Pitch: Shadow of the Colossus as a board game with cute artwork and great production value. Yes, I do know that SotC doesn't have fox heroes 
.
moment: Jumping onto the arm and disabling it with one hit as the Foxen. Smashing pesky Heroes as Grak.
moment: Getting my poor Heroes smashed by Grak. Being slowly beaten up by pesky Foxen.
Impressions: Skulk Hollow is made by the same designer who did the great Roll Player. It is a quite different game, but both have in common that they are very well and thoroughly designed games that know exactly what they want to be.
Skulk Hollow in asymmetric, card driven, tactical combat game. One player plays as the foxen Heroes the other one is one of four different guardians. Giant creatures that feature their own decks, boards and win conditions. The win condition for the Foxen is always to bring down the guardian, by jumping onto it and defeating every single part of it. When a body part is destroyed, the Guardian player can no longer use the attacks associated with that part. Similarly, the Foxen player has several units at their disposal that they can bring onto the board, but once a unit is killed, it goes into the discard pile and is removed from the board until it is called again.
The Guardians and Foxen demand very different play styles. I think I played too aggressively, sometimes moving in, even when I couldn't do damage that turn. But the Foxen are just too squishy to risk that. In the end, I had destroyed the foot and one arm and whittled down the head, but a final gaze killed off the eight Foxen and won Grak the game.
Meeple Verdict: loves going there!
Challenge Progress: Diversity challenge.
~~~°°°~~~
Having finished our first expedition in Aeon's End, we continued a game session we had started two years earlier. Yep, that's right. We haven't continued the campaign for two years, but now decided it was time to dip into it again: The City of Kings.
(Image by BGG User flaeryn)
Elevator Pitch: The Kings of the free people have to stand together to rid the world of an evil invader! They do that in a decidedly WoW style puzzle-y adventure game.
moment: Each enemy is a challenge. Working together as a team to overcome that challenge is so satisfying.
moment: We had to reset the game twice, because we bungled the setup...
Impressions: We had a bit of trouble to get back into the rules and bungled the setup so much that we had to reset. Twice.
But then we were finally good to go and play Story 3 of the campaign.
A lot of the things I said above about Aeon's End at four players is also true for The City of Kings. That's possibly a reason, why we enjoy both games so much 
.
Everyone in City of Kings has their role and they have to play it. The damage dealer has to be good at dealing damage, the healer at healing, the tank needs health and someone has to collect all the ressources you need to progress the story and to build camps, traps and barricades.
We seriously underestimated the importance of these one-time buildings in our first game and only learned how useful they can be in our second or third game.
Thankfully, we remembered, even though we hadn't played for almost two years! We stumbled into the last boss a tiny bit underprepared. In hindsight, we should have stalled a bit, done a few more quests and maybe beat up another monster or two.
Oh, well. As it was, we progressed the story to the last chapter and encountere the penguin boss. I emphasize the penguin thing, because the random special effects he got were all fire related. So he dropped frost and fire tokens and would explode in a firy explosion once he was defeated. So we had to time everything, so that no-one (or at most one) of us would explode with the penguin.
We made heavy use of camps and traps during that fight and the tank and damage dealer would, well, tank and deal damage. The healer was keeping both healthy enough and I was collecting ressources to build new traps and camps. Also, everyone who was able to put some nice debuffs on him. I love debuffing enemies 
.
With this strategy, we managed to kill him with just enough health left, that his final explosion didn't kill the squishy characters and we won the scenario!
We was a bit rusty, we noticed that. So we hope it doesn't take us another two years to continue...
Meeple Verdict: loves going there!
Challenge Progress: Diversity and Mechanics challenge.
~~~°°°~~~
So Thursday we wanted to play something with painted minis and A. suggested Dark Souls: The Board Game. I'll never say no to that, so we decided on a mini-boss to beat (The Winged Knight) and got out these minis!
(Image is my own this time)
Elevator Pitch: Tactical combat in the world of Dark Souls. With Mimics.
moment: Beating that darn Mimic (see below).
moment: "This is the first room. If the chest is a Mimic, we're probably toast." - "But there's loot inside, right? I'm sure we'll be fine!" Famous last words...
Impressions: So, final game of this post! Another coop, who would've thunk, eh?
We actually encountered a Mimic in our very first encounter and that meant we had to fight it with our starting equipment... 
Lo and behold, we actually managed to win, it took 1.5 hours and we drained all our ressources, but we did it. Ok, admitted, the first level 2 encounter wiped our weakened group then, but really, everything after the Mimic felt like a piece of cake .
We all had fun, so we will continue later today with a Main Boss event. I'll probably say a bit more about the game in my next post once we have wrapped that up.
Meeple Verdict: loves going there!
Challenge Progress: Diversity and Categories challenge.
Wow, what a great week of gaming. And it was awesome to see our friends again! They are staying 'til Sunday, so I expect we'll still get a few games in before they are heading back home! 
Between all this gaming, I also finally finished another book (the fourth volume of the Askir saga). It took me about two months, which is far too long for a book of this kind. I never thought the first volumes were masterpieces, far from it, actually. But they felt like the RPG games sessions of The Dark Eye and I liked that cozy feeling. But in this volume, nothing ever happened. His meta plot stalled horribly and the bits and pieces that actually did anything led nowhere and were overall pretty boring. I was close to giving up a few times, but then something egged me on nevertheless. So I trudged through and I'm done. Will be a while until I pickup vol. 5, though...
Categories Challenge (Normal) COMPLETE 
95% Categories Challenge (Hardcore)
61% Categories Challenge (Insane)
Mechanics Challenge (Normal) COMPLETE
Mechanics Challenge (Hardcore) COMPLETE
58% Mechanics Challenge (Insane)
Flavour of the Week
69% Explore Diversity (100 x 1)
Magic Number 16/25 
72% Time Travel challenge 18/25
40% Books 6/15 
35% XBOX360 games finished: 7/20 :thmubsdown:
