After Action Report – Thursday Night Gaming @Paradise Perks, August 15, 2013

Thursday Night Gaming at Paradise Perks was light on attendance again this week.  There were 15 – 20 people this time.  We were missing a group of regulars so that had a lot to do with it.  For all I know they went off to Gen Con.  I doubt it, but you never know.

I played two games this week.  They seem to go together thematically as well.

The first game was Nefarious.  In Nefarious the players are Mad Scientist who are try to create inventions that will help them to take over the world.  The inventions are worth various amounts of victory points depending on their cost and effects.  The player who has the most victory points after 20 victory points is reached by a player wins.  In the event of ties play continues until one player has a clear victory.

Game play is fairly simple.  The players have four choices of actions each turn.  They are Investing where the player adds minions to his play area for the chance to get residual income in future rounds, Inventing where the player pays to build one of their inventions, Research where the player draws a card form the blueprint deck plus gets $2, and Work where the player gets $4.  Once all of the players have chosen an action all of the player reveal them at the same time and then take the action. The game continues until the victory conditions are met.

In order to make things more interesting two world rules are drawn at random at the start of the game.  The two world rules we had were Overpopulation which requires all the players to discard one blueprint card if they have more than one in their hand at the beginning of the round and a charity card, which gives the players a blueprint card if they do not have one and/or $2 if they have no money at the end of the round.

I started the game with three blueprints for inventions all of which cost more than the $10 I had to start with.  I had to get rid of one immediately because of the world rule.  I focused the first round on getting more money and an additional blueprint in hopes that it would be cheaper so I could do something while trying to make more money to be able to actually build inventions.  With such a bad start in the game, I thought that I was doomed to losing the game.  As the game progressed however, I found that continually getting the high cost inventions was actually helping me more than hurting me.  I was actually in the lead.  Unfortunately, I was not able to really get my money machine going and had a little too much difficulty getting the money to continually buy things so I was not able to close the deal on a victory fast enough and came in second out of six players.

Continuing the theme of mad scientists and mayhem I played King of Tokyo next.

I am not sure was the allure of this game is for people.  I think a lot of it has to do with the theme.  In King of Tokyo the players are monsters trying to destroy Tokyo.  The one who can reach 20 points of destruction first without being destroyed wins the game.

Again game play is simple.  The players take turns rolling six dice taking the results that they want rerolling the ones that they do not want twice after the first roll.  After the second reroll the effects from the roll take place.

The dice have the following symbols:  1, 2, or 3 points of destruction which are given to the player if they get a set of three or more in their turn, Energy which give one energy point for each one rolled and can be used to buy mutations, Healing which heals one point of damage to a monster for each one rolled, and Whack which causes one point of damage to the monster in Tokyo if the player is outside Tokyo or one point of damage to all the other players if the player is inside Tokyo for each one rolled.

The players are divided into two groups the player or players inside Tokyo and the players outside Tokyo.  If a player is inside Tokyo their attacks affect everyone outside Tokyo and they get 2 points of destruction per turn they remain in Tokyo, but they cannot heal any damage they take.  They may retreat from Tokyo when they take damage from another player and the player that damaged them then takes their place inside Tokyo.

The players outside Tokyo on the other hand only damage the player inside Tokyo.  The big thing that they can do that the player inside Tokyo cannot do is heal with the Healing rolls, which is important to their survival.

My game of this went horribly wrong for me.  I was only able to take three turns before my monster was wiped out by the monster inside Tokyo.  I was not able to get enough energy together to get a single mutation before my untimely demise.  I was not the only player knocked out at that point, but I did have the fewest points of destruction at the time which put me in last place.

My stats for the event were not that spectacular but I have to live with them.

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	Avg.
Nefarious	1	-	1	-	-	-	-		2.00
King of Tokyo	1	-	-	-	-	-	1		6.00
Totals	2	-	1	-	-	-	1	-	4.00