Board game day makes me(eples) happy

(post title inspired by e.e. cummings)

Board game day!

Last weekend I traveled back to my old stomping grounds in the southbay to see my friend Mr.C (who used to be a neighbor of mine in the southbay area before I moved to the Sacramento area, it's terrible when you move away from nearby gamers with similar tastes).  Last weekend was something we've been planning for awhile, and finally got our schedules to match up!

so I arrived late on Friday and had a night of catch up ad conversation, and stayed over so that we could get a full day of game fun on Saturday.  Scarfed down breakfast and rushed off to the board game area.

 Mr. C. has a, shall we say,  LARGE selection of games.  So we could be playing anything...

First up Mr C picked was a space dungeon crawler called "level 7 Omega Protocol"  by Privateer press.  Boardgame geek says it's like SpaceHulk but with some more options, but as I've never played SpaceHulk (but have often heard about it) I'll take their word for it.

The setting: Govenment has a secret laboratory / facility to study and experiment on the Aliens, who inconveniently break loose and take it over for their own alien nefarious ends.  Aliens everywhere!  so enter the commandos from Disco team (I was told that they're called Disco team because they're "stayin' aliiiiiiiiiiive")  to kick ass and chew bubble gun, and guess what?

Best Sci-fi movie EVER!

we played the first scenario; 3 commandos go in to get some intel and get out alive with half their number at least.  I played the commandos and should of done more Schwarzenegger impressions from Predator..

if you want more info on the game there are better sites for that, but some thoughts:
If you like dungeon crawl game then you'll like this one.  I find these games kinda same-y in that you do this process over and over: 1) prepare/position everyone to open the door 2) open the door and deal with whatever mind blowing horrors are in that room, 3) secure the area / flank and brief search for loot, heal if needed 4) prepare/position everyone to open the next door....

game table

Close up shot: Mr C went to the trouble of painting most of the game pieces because...actually I have no idea, but they look cool!

I happened to kit out my commandos perfectly; what? poison gas?  here's a guy whose immune.  what? tons of aliens?  here's the guy with the machine gun with a bunch of stabilizers and strafing fire.. Oh no we're all bleeding?  No worries as everyone has a med pack.

however the mechanics are great!  There's a great swapping mechanic that's one of the major crux of the game: Every time the commandos do something they get 1-2 'adrenaline' tokens (to a max number) placed on that character, and at the end of the turn all those markers are given to the alien player as resources to use against the commandos... neat!

took about 4 hours, and we stopped when it was obvious that the all three commandos were likely to leave intact and with the intel.

break for lunch and then on to one of my favorite games; StarWars rebellion, again playing with the expansion as Mr. C. had yet to experience that joy.  We did the mandatory 'playing the SW movies in the background.'  I played the rebellion as Mr. C. is a dictator at heart...

"The Rebel fleet near Sullust is of no concern"  

Gosh, I do like that game.  However it does require a bit of poker face / bluff to it, and there are moments with high drama that have to be down played in order not to tip your hand; usually when the rebels are about to complete an objective but the empire does something unexpected and prevents it.  The rebel player can't let on that his plan was RUINED because it'll tip the Empire player off to watch for it in the future.  Or when the Empire has a force big enough to wipe out the secret rebel base if only they knew where it was....

Play it cool Stew, Play it cool...
(might need to enlarge the pic to read the text)

and after two games with the expansion I'm not sure those green dice are worth anything.  They rolled A LOT OF BLANKS in our game...  : )

Game ended with the rebel base moved to a new secret location, making me 2-0 for the day.
And with that it was too late and we were too tired to start another game, so it was time to pack up and head off, back to responsibility and respectability. 

Thanks Mr C for the fun day!

so enough blabbing about Sci-fi board games and back to painting historical miniatures for me.

Thanks for reading.