#221: Altar Quest, Cthulhu Death May Die and A Potpourri of Short Topics of Yesteryear Extravaganza
Timecodes
Altar Quest Overview 01:01:40
Altar Quest Review 01:06:03
Batman Gotham City Chronicles Look Back 01:26:59
Cthulhu Death May Die Look Back 01:32:48
News with Tony T 01:39:33
Potpourri of Short Topics of Yesteryear Extravaganza 02:20:19
Secret Santa 02:59:10
Opening Banter and Reviews
Feature Review: Altar Quest
In Altar Quest, each player chooses to play as a hero with their own cards and equipment. The players choose a quest deck to undertake, a threat deck to serve as the main enemy forces, and a sinister villain deck. Each of these decks are fixed and require no assembly, but can be mixed and matched to create a wide variety of combinations. In addition the enemies in the chosen threat deck, the danger of lurkers is always present in every quest. Lurkers are represented by a deck of various types of enemies that add to the variety of enemies heroes must defeat in the game. While heroes attempt to complete their quest before drawing the attention of the almighty villain, the unstable magic of the altars constantly affect the game. The altar dice are tied to the mystical powers known as "rhunes," which can enhance cards in different ways. Each time an altar die is used (either by the heroes or the enemy), that die is rolled to create an ever-changing mix of rhunes to draw upon. Inspired by the modular deck system that was introduced in Street Masters and Brook City, Altar Quest is an epic fantasy adventure game that provides a deep game experience whether as a one-off game or an engrossing campaign.
Designed by Adam Sadler and Brady Sadler
Published by Blacklist Games
Lookback Review: Batman Gotham City Chronicles
In Batman: Gotham City Chronicles, one villain faces off against a team of heroes in one of multiple scenarios. Each hero has their own character, and they control this character by spending energy to perform actions (such as Melee and Ranged attacks, defusing bombs...) recovering more or less energy at the beginning of their turn depending on their stance. If the hero gets damaged, energy moves to a wound area, and if they lose all of their energy, then they're out of action for a while to recover their strength. Each hero has differing strengths for their abilities, and these strengths are represented by colored dice with different values; the more energy a hero spends on an ability, the more dice of that color they can roll. The villain controls a team of henchmen and iconic villains of the Batman universe, and these characters are represented by tiles on their command board, with the characters costing 1, 2, 3, etc. energy to activate as you move left to right down the line. Once a character is activated, they move to the end of the line, boosting their cost to the maximum value should you want to use them again immediately, and decreasing the cost of the other tiles. The game-play in Batman: Gotham City Chronicles is based on that of Conan, with revisions to character abilities, the addition of two different types of dice (w/ five types total), and a modified two-player set-up, the Versus Mode, in which each player has a command board and their own team of tiles that they can draft, with heroes facing off against villains.
Designed by Frédéric Henry
Published by Monolith
Lookback Review: Cthulhu Death May Die
In Cthulhu: Death May Die, inspired by the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, you and your fellow players represent investigators in the 1920s who instead of trying to stop the coming of Elder Gods, want to summon those otherworldly beings so that you can put a stop to them permanently. You start the game insane, and while your long-term goal is to shoot Cthulhu in the face, so to speak, at some point during the game you'll probably fail to mitigate your dice rolls properly and your insanity will cause you to do something terrible — or maybe advantageous. Hard to know for sure. The game has multiple episodes, and each of them has a similar structure of two acts, those being before and after you summon whatever it is you happen to be summoning. If any character dies prior to the summoning, then the game ends and you lose; once the Elder One is on the board, as long as one of you is still alive, you still have a chance to win. The episodes are all standalone and not contingent on being played in a certain order or with the same players.
Designed by Rob Daviau and Eric M. Lang
Published by CMON
Gaming News by Tony T
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