Smash Up the Awesome Review

Smash up is an awesome game, it says so on the box. It plays very easily and fairly quickly. There are 8 factions in the box, you take two of them, shuffle them together and that forms your deck. Next you place bases in the center of the table. These are the spots that you are trying to destroy. Then you take turns playing 1 minion and action each turn. Once a base gets to a certain level its destroyed and players earn points based on how much strength their force had at its destruction.


This is a Base card. The top left number is the required strength to destory it. The large numbers in the middle are the points its worth once destroyed. 5 to the winner, 3 to second place, and 2 to third. Each base also has a special ability written at the bottom of it.

Next up the Factions

Aliens
A very "Mars Attacks" feel to their art work. The Aliens are average in their minion strength, don't have a lot of kill actions, but do have the ability to send a lot of minions back to their owners hand. They can choose their own minions or their Enemies.

Wizards
The Wizards have some of the lower strenghts in the game. But they make up for this by allowing their side to play multiple actions a turn and draw a lot of cards. While they won't likely do the heaviest lifting on your side they will support your other faction quite a bit.

Ninjas
The Ninjas are masters of trickery and Death. They come with the most kill actions of any faction. And they have some neat tricks that allow them to swap their minions in play with ones from their hands, or even add new ones as a base is being destroyed to claim more Victory Points.

Dinosaurs
The Dinosaurs have the least amount of trickery, but back that up with the most power. King Rex here is the strongest minion in the game. Im not sure what else to say... they have lasers too.

Pirates
Right behind the Ninjas in kill power are the Pirates. The Pirates have some ways to move minions around to different bases, both theirs and their enemies. They also have ways to keep their minions in play after a base is destroyed.

Robots
Every faction has 10 minions and 10 actions, except the Robots, they have 18 minions and 2 actions. In place of the other actions they get Micro-Bots, 1 strength minions who have bonus effects on them. Robots have a lot of ways to play muliple minions a turn, and their 2 actions let you draw more cards for each minion on a base. The Micro bots all tend to have stacking powers as well.

Tricksters
These guys I had the most trouble understanding. What they do is play Action cards that remain in play on each of the bases. These things offer either a bonus to the Trickster or a penalty to their foes. They also have ways to make people discard cards from their hand while they draw cards. They are a very Control/lock-down based faction.

Zombies
The Zombies discard pile may as well be their hand. They have an amazing ability to play minions and actions from there as though they were in their hand. And given the right circumstances can drop an entire zombie horde in one fell swoop.

So I have played 5 games now. And thus far I have not seen a single combonation that looks unbeatable. I did hear that the Robot/Wizard combo was a poor one, due to the Robots having very few actions and Wizards wanting more. But I would like to see it on the table again to be sure it wasn't just a bad draw. To this point this is easily my number 1 Gen Con purchase. Its fun, fast, and easy to learn. The Rulebook is rather hilarious, and does its best to make the rules as clean as possible. I would fully recommend this game. It only goes up to 4 players so if your group is far too big for that be warned now.

They gave these away at Gen Con

At Gencon I spoke with the AEG creative director and he told us that a new expansion was already in the works and would be released either at the end of 2012 or beginning of 2013. With 4 new factions: Ghosts, Steampunk, Russian Bear-Cavalry, and Plants(little shop of horrors) This expansion gives you the ability to play a 6 player game... Im not sure the game works well at that level though. But, I can tell you right now that I will be getting it as soon as humanly possible.

A Crap Load of Swag

So here are the pics of the things I picked up at Gen Con.




Some Privateer Pick ups

Storm of Shadows

A new round of Plastic Arkham Characters

Some new stuff for A Touch of Evil

New Infinity Models

evil baby orphanage, and the Dragon Age RPG

My new board games

The awesomeness that is my new Malifaux dudes

Gen Con 2012

Im back from Gen Con safe and poor. I have pics of all the games and stuff I picked up, but those are on my camera and that is not with me. So Gen Con: The Photos, will be a later post. Lets get started

Wednesday: 5am I got my car packed up with Ellen and Rockett and drove it over to Mike's place. By 6am we were on the road. 10+ hours later we rolled into Indiapolis. Wednesday was decent. We played a few board games, had a light dinner and called in an early night.

Thursday: 10am the doors to the Con Hall open and I literally ran to Wyrd. I was really disapointed to find out Mei Feng's box set would not be there until Saturday. But shrugged, grabbed the book, Rail Golem, Metal Gamin, and Willie. Then we proceeded to hit a bunch of nearby booths, like Battle Foam, Flying Frog, and then looked at PP but saw the line was likely around 498 hours long and stretched all the way to Ohio. We ran around picking things up, I spent nearly 50% of my weekend budget in like 2 hours Thursday. It started to Pour so we met up with my Brother and ordered Pizza. I got sick so, we went back to room and played Last Night on earth. I passed out early.



Friday: I awoke feeling 100% better. Apparently I moaned in pain in my sleep, must have been me fighing my stomach bug! We hit the con floor for a bit then went off to try the IKRPG. We got in early sat down at the table and our Demo was being run by, Doug Seacat. No joke, it was awesome. I played the Arcane Mechanic who had a trusty Steajack, since we were an odd number of people Mike took over running my Jack. Ellen was the Magic Investigator, kind of like a Harry Dresden almost. Laura was an Alchemist Thief, and Chris was a Big ass soldier Troll. We ran through the adventure and I think everyone one of us loved the system. My biggest gripe of the entire weekend is that they only had like 300 books, and those were gone in like an hour. I plan to buy it as soon as it releases. Later Mike got a Copy of Level 7 and I got Smaash up (Smash up deserves its own blog post). We then met up for our True Dungeon. I've done True Dungeon before. Its fun, but very over-priced. We ran through the dungeon and with the exception of an annoying girl who was with us for half the dungeon until her parents came and yelled at her for something which made her leave and the rest of us cheer, It was a blast. Just not a $38 blast. It was more like a $20 blast. I ran the druid and did way better then I thought with my Druid Spells, getting 7/8 leaves correct to cast my spells. After that it was Dinner and Level 7. That game is kind of freaky.



Saturday: We awoke really damn early to go to the "Hickman's Killer Breakfast" That was a waste of $10. Mike could not hear anything and left after like 40 mins, and the rest of us felt the jokes got old and the entire thing just kinda ran too long so we left too. At noon we went on an awesome Brewery Tour around Indy. We hit 4 breweries and got rather drunk. The bus dropped us back off around 4pm, and we hit the hall for before Dinner so Mike could get Mage Wars and I could get Mei Feng... Except Mei Feng never came. Wyrd pretty well F***ed up their Gen Con this year. I vented a lot on this already and am over it. But this was a prety big botch in my eyes. After Dinner Ellen got Sick, (I swear it was someone almost every night, Mike had migranes and vertigo wednesday) But she felt better in like 2 hours so we made it back to the Hall and Played Flash Point. An AMAZING (Check that out ok, amazing in all caps. this game will blow your god damn mind and then give you cookies!) game where you play firemen trying to save people in a burning building. Its 100% co-op and about 314159265359x better then it sounds. I know right now you're thinking, firemen... really dude? I know this becasue I did the same thing. But then you play it and the game just rocks! This was the #1 surprise Gem of Gen Con. (Smash up is #2, but that game sells it self) So we put out fires until we felt like we might pass out.



Sunday: We hit the hall one last time, I thought I might make it home with some cash, but blew all I had left Sunday on Dice, Warmachine, and a few odds and ends. We rolled out around noon, stopped a lot on the way home to break up the trip. We got back to Mikes around Midnight, I dropped Ryan off around 12:40, and got home a bit after 1am.

This Gen Con rocked!!! A few mis-steps in events we did/didn't do. Should not have done killer breakfast, should have done MEGA robo-rally. (I have pics, words, can't do it justice) But this was an awesome trip overall.

Pics will come later.

Resser love

Pics from the new book

25 Stone Tuesday Tussle 8/7

So I lied, the next update is before Gen Con. Bill ran a 3 round 25 stone tournament last night, ended up with a great showing with 12 people there. I of course took Ressers.



Round 1 vs Bo and his evil Vicks.
I have played Bo 2 times before both with Marcus, thing did not go well for me in those games. This time I had a better Master with me though and Nicodem came to play. We had Shared Supply Wagon, I called Grudge on a Ronin who I dubbed; "Stabby Pony Tail Ho" and Hold Out, since I figured he'd be forced to protect his wagon he would have trouble coming to my Deployment Zone. The game went fairly quick, we finished in about 45 mins. Highlights - Sword Vicki destroyed the dead rider, who only made 1 attack that game. Unfortunatly (for not me) the Vicks were then in range of Nico who kept them paralyzed for the remainder of the game. The Grave spirit and Nico then then took turns bouncing Decay's off the Vicks (unreal how well that little guy can cast spells sometimes) Eventually the Vicks Fell, I killed my Grudged Ronin with a Slow to Die attack from my Crookedman. Both our Wagons made it into the center untouched and the game ended. I got 2 for Grude, 2 for Hold Out, and 3 for Supply Wagon. He got 3 for Supply Wagon, 0 for Thwart (ballsy call) and 0 for Stake a Claim... This one was rough, he just forgot to put the Convict on the Terrain, and I forgot it was a scheme for him, should have been 7-5, but it ended 7-3



Game 2 vs Dave and Zorida
We got Shared Deliver a Message, which made me cringe. I took Seamus with Sybelle and some Belles. The game featured a ton of killing and a large play mistake by me. On turn 4 I had Sybelle and Belle ready to deliver the Message but wasn't paying attention to that, I instead used Seamus to try and Kill Tuco, forgetting that he had Slow to Die and botching the turn. He then delivered the message right there. I did manage to wipe almost his entire crew, of Lilitu, Lelu, and Tuco. We both ended up grabbing both our schemes, I had Kill Protege Lelu and Stake a Claim, he had Stake a Claim and Kidnap. I ended up losing 8-6.

Game 3 vs Hugh and Kirai
We flipped Shared Plant the Evidence. I called Breakthrough and Eye for Eye. He called Grudge and Assassinate. I decided Nicodem could handle Kirai and took the old guy. I ended up with a clear line to Kirai on turn 2 and had both Crookedmen and Nico start blasting them. On turn 3 I had killed the Seishin and Lost love and had Kirai down to 3 wounds. She booked it away from them but landed near my night terrors who then finished her off. It was kind of amazing. From htere I just started to clean up his crew. The problem then became Eye for Eye. I ended up with 2 models left after forcing most of my crew to kill each other, but it was too many and I ended up winning 6-2.

So I ended up with 6 tournament points, a differential of +6, and 19 total VPS. That was good enough for 3rd, and very close to 2nd (Second place when 2-0-1 so he had 7 tournament points) It was a good time, im looking forward to the next one.

Blunders in Malifaux

I don't want to pin this squarely on Marcus, at some level I have to just not understand him. But I am pretty good with most other masters I play and while I really want to be good with Marcus he just doesn't click for me. So im 7 games into my Marcus foray and in those games I have lost 4, tied 1, and won 2. Not great by my usual standards. Now the upside is Im having a good time regardless. I would like to see Marcus live longer as he is fun to play with, but as I've seen even 8 soul stones can't keep him upright long term.



So with Gen Con around the Corner Marcus will be given a breather. the Next time he hits the table will likely be when I get around to painting his alt sculpt up. I really like that model.

So I am taking Ressers with me to Gen Con. In my C4, my new bag of fun wonders I have managed to fit 2 full crews. One for Seamus and one for Nicodem. I went ahead and spent the extra dough for a custom cut tray, here is what I will be bringing to Gen Con.

Nicodem + Avatar
Seamus + Avatar
Dead Rider
Grave Spirit
Bette Noir
the Hanged
6x Mindless Zombies
4x Night Terrors
3x Punk Zombies
2x Rotten belles
2x Drowned
2x Crooked Men
2x Canine Remains
Molly
Madam Sybelle
Necrotic Machine

And as luck would have it Bill has decided to run a 25 stone tournament tonight. So I will be bringing this exact bag of wonders for tonight to see how well it can handle it.

Next update likely will be after Gen Con when I have tons of new Malifaux and other toys to brag about. At the moment I plan to gran Mei and all her buddies