thepoz

I really didnt have much hope for this game but I was wrong. I love the large dice that change with each season, the cards are very nice in both art and the thickness of them. The game play is easy to learn and there are very few cards that you have a hard time understanding. The advanced cards make the game higher scoring but dont really change the game. I would recommend this game to all types of gamers.

If I have anything bad about the game as a whole, is the board that you keep track of your energy and summoning cards number on. The boards could have been bigger or made with punch holes to keep the markers in place. This is not enough to keep me from liking the game

Well tonight we dragged out one of our favorite games and one my wife loves to play Defenders of the Realm. Now as the members of the round gamers we started out eating my wives fresh baked chocolate chip cookies to get us ready to play. They were still warm out of the oven and really really very good. The night was already a good night.
We started as we normally do as each player was dealt two random heroes and you picked one of them and here is the starting heroes

Barbarian-Debbie
Seeker-John
Shaman-Mike
Captain of the Guard-Frank

As a little back round about the round gamers, we are 3-6 vs. defenders of the realm, and 1-5 against the dragon only game. So we decided to just play the normal game today.

The game started out a little strange for us as only Frank was happy with his quest and moved on it. Debbie fulfilled her only quest on the last turn of the game, John never finished a quest and Mike Failed to make the rolls on his two attempts leaving Frank and the only member to complete any quests and he got one that let him stop a general from moving and the other moved two heroes to his location.

Early War

The game saw all of us moving around the board looking into our quests but only Frank managed anything early, and the rest of us seemed to be hunting orc’s as they continued to grow on us. John as the seeker looking at the top darkness spread card at the start of his turn keep moving to keep the taint off the board by killing the spots the minions would appear. Mike move a failed his first quest and Debbie was killing whatever needed killing. This was starting to get out of hand as three of the evil general’s had started to close on Monarch City and we had a plot card that let us only draw one hero card each turn. Before we knew it Gorgutt and Varkolak were one move away from Monarch city and we had very few attack cards. Debbie, Frank and Mike had a combined ten dice against Varkolak while John had no black cards at all so they took the shot. Frank lead the charge and Mike rolled next and of course and normally happens with our group Debbie had to clean up the rolls and finished off Varkolak.

Middle War

After the battle with Varkolak we still had Gorgutt one move away from Monarch City and Balazarg along with Sapphires two spaces away.
We looked at our quests and cards we noticed that Debbie had nine dice against Sapphire which included a couple of purple cards. The group looked at everything and decided that we would take a few minutes and eat some more cookies and then Debbie would attack Sapphire alone and the other three would go for Gorgutt.
We only had six taint on the board, but our danger was we were almost out of Orc minions. Mike cleared out a couple of green minions and moves into the space with Gorgutt and cleared it for the rest of us. We took a scare here when the second darkness spread was drawn and it was an Orc patrol and that would take us out of green minions when I reminded everyone that the general was the only thing to move on the second draw and that saved us for the moment.
Frank then moved into Gorgutts spot and Debbie moved against Sapphire. Debbie rolls very good dice but it took all nine of hers before she finished off Sapphire.
John now moved to Gorgutt’s location and attacked. With my normally bad rolls I let both Mike (five Dice) and Frank (four Dice) to roll against him. They left Gorgutt with two hits remaining and I had five dice. I rolled the two hits and no ones so Gorgutt goes down. We take our bonus cards and prepare for the wars end.

Late War

The late war starts with Balazarg moving again and is now only one pace away from Monarch City. Our brave heroes shout out for the glory of our king and move to Balazarg’s location. Not wanting to give the evil general any change to move. Debbie plays a special Purple card that lets her look at the top five cards of the darkness spreads deck and can either discard them or put them in any order. This was a game saver as two of the cards had Balazarg moving into Monarch City, which of course she discarded.
That play alone let Debbie take her turn get into Balazarg’s location and clear out the two minions that were there. Mike takes his turn and defeats a couple more green Orc Minions and moves to Balazarg location. His darkness spread cards don’t hurt us but adds a taint for a total of eight. Franks takes his turn killing three undead minions before arriving at Balazarg’s location. Darkness spreads has us placing two Orc minions that will cause an overrun and not enough Orc minions left GASP!!! John to the rescue as he has a purple card that cancels the placement of one set of minions. The rest of the darkness spreads are non factors.
John’s turn he moves in and challenges Balazarg who will be the victor? Mike Rolls four dice, then Frank rolls three Dice and Debbie rolls three dice and look here Balazarg has two hits remaining and John has four dice, but a reroll as well. He rolls the dice and gets…………………three hits, what’s this John getting three out of four hits that never happens. We save the realm, let the feasts begin. We start eating more cookies

What a great game is was and a nice victory for us, we have now won four out of then games or 40% .
Thanks Debbie for the Great Chocolet Chic cookies

This is one of those games that comes along and you dont know what to expect and then it turns out to be a gem.

This is one of the easiest games I have ever taught anyone to play the game is fun and no two are ever the same. The random events can change the game at the start of any players turn taking you from leading to last place.

The random rolls for the gaining of resourses is truly done very well with the possibility of ganing extra stuff when rolling eights or doubles. This is also the way to get victory points. Each player then gets he/her choice of any tile to gain the resourses from it and then can either attack another kingdom or a player or simply go visit the king or queen to gain or lose a victory point.

I highly recomend this game

Rise of the deamons was the first expansion for Quarriors and it was OK. I do not think it added much to the game with only twenty new dice and nineteen cards. Of the new dice sixteen where the corruption dice and in my opion do not always end up in the game enough but did add a little chaos to the game. The new dice do not fit into the metal box well.
The second expansion Quarmaeddon is much better.

I played King of Tokyo at our last club meeting it was the first time I tried this game. The game was very amusing, and as we had five players it seemed that players could heal up and stay in the game. I was the King which by the way was a giant ape (King Kong) I must assume that they did not have the rights to the names of the monsters as all had a odd name but you knew who they were meant to be. The dice are larger than normal dice and easy to read. The rule are simple and anyone could pick up this game very easy.

Defenders of the Realm

As the players gathered this day we decided it was once again time to defend the realm from the evil in the world. This would be our second attempt to save a realm from the clutches of the four evil dragons.

Once again we took to defend the realm with the Cleric, Elf Lord, Chaos Mage and Paladin. We had gained some valuable experience fighting them in the previous realm and we were determined that they would not beat us again!

As the Dragons moved into the area we started out for only the importance quests that would help us to defeat the dragons. John the cleric’s quest would stop one of the generals (dragons) power in combat from working this would allow us to have an even up battle with one of the dragons and this was our most important quest at the time. The down side of the quest is that you pick how many dice to roll for it and all non six’s are wounds. John the Cleric choice was four dice. He rolled one six and three misses so he suffered three wounds.

In the mean time the Chaos mage was trying to clear out a pack of three black dragon imps and missed them all that inflicted 3 wounds on him as he retreated he lost another wound to the green imp in the space that he moved to leaving him only one action next turn.

As things again turn gloomy for us when the Green imps are starting to get to the over run point Mike the Paladin draws a special card that allows all hero’s to regain all lost hit point. We attack the green imps with a great slaughter and we get them back under control as we prepare to attack Onyx.

The great Black Dragon Onyx is our first target and the three of us attack without the support of the Chaos Mage. In a battle of epic glory we destroy Onyx and his fall is a great victory for our heroes as it is the first dragon ever slain in the realm.

The four great heroes now start to talk about dragon hunting and which dragon should be next. At this point we are doing well with only three taint on the board and no problem with out of control imps but we do notice that we have five raging fires on the board so we count up our red cards. Yep the next dragon to attack is going to be Brimstone. We start to head to his current location and as three of us get there Brimstone realizes he may be in trouble and start to leave but the special card held by the Chaos Mage prevents any general from moving. The Mike the Paladin leads the attack on Brimstone and John the Cleric uses his quest card to stop Brimstones combat special and thanks to four hits rolled by Debbie our Elf Lord Brimstone goes down in a ball of flame. The people of the realm now have some hope.

As our brave heroes now have a renewed confidence plan out what is next. They decide that we have to clear some of the imps out of the realm and that we need to gather the equipment (cards) to do anything else to the dragons. So off they go attacking the evil in the realm and clearing both taint and flame. While our heroes are off doing this Sapphire moves closer and closer to Monarch City. We now have what we need to deal with Sapphire so off we go to take down the Big Blue. We are there and we attack Sapphire and John the Cleric rolls his six dice and misses, a huge gasp goes up but again a special card is played to allow the Cleric to reroll all failed dice and he gets 3 hits. As with our group we rely on Debbie the Elf Lord to roll good dice and she does it again and we scratch Big Blue Sapphire.

That leaves just Hemlock to deal with and we have ten green cards between the four of us so we decide to go for it. John the Cleric is the first to arrive and he clears out all of the imps, but the green imps start to spread again and the taint is now at five. So we keep on with our plan and in comes the Paladin and his darkness spread cards add two more taint and more green imps into play. This is getting close but onward and upward. The chaos mage teleports into our location and plays a special card that allows him to move any hero to his location so he drags the Elf Lord. Now we face the last of the dragon hoard and we start the combat, The Cleric, Chaos Mage and the Paladin all roll and guess what. We need the Elf Lord Debbie to do it again we need three hits on her four dice to win the game or we are DOOMED. You guessed it DEBBIE COMES THRU AGAIN. Getting the three hits we need.

Let the party begin as the kings banquet is in our honor as we have defeated the four dragons.

BLOOD BOWL TEAM MANAGER

This was the season of Foul’s. The games had large numbers of cheat tokens including one player that had six of them in one match. In addition a Chaos beastman had two that turned out to be six more star points for a total of nine.

Frank as the manager of the Orc team
John as the manager of the Chaos team
Mike as the manager of the Skaven Team

In the first week of the season the Blood Bowl League decided to have an extra match giving us four for the week. In the first match the Skaven team won a victory over the Chaos team. In the second match we had Chaos team beating the Orc team. Match three saw the Skaven team run pass the Orc team. In the additional match the Orc team muscled by the Chaos team

Week one Scores
Orc’s 6 Fan Factor
Chaos 6 Fan Factor
Skaven 5 Fan Factor

As we enter into the second week of the season the reports are that violence is at an all time high in Blood Bowl matches. The games this week saw thee players injured and two tossed out for penalties. Our recap of the matches for the week Match one the Chaos team taking it to the Skaven team who seemed to be ok with that. The second match the Skaven team made a comeback to defeat the Orc team. Our third and final match saw the Orc team defeat the Chaos team.

Week two scores
Skaven Team 14 Fan factor
Chaos Team 10 Fan Factor
Orc Team 7 Fan Factor

The Third Week of the season finds that the Referee’s have a contract dispute and were calling penalties just to call them. The first match between the Skaven team and the Chaos team ended in a tie, but only because one of the Chaos beastmen were ejected from the game. Match number two The Orc team stunned the Chaos team as the star player from the chaos team with six cheat markers had two refs’ whistle him from the game. Lastly the Chaos team defeated the Orc team to end the week’s matches.

Week Three Scores
Skaven Team 16 Fan Factor
Orc Team15 Fan Factor
Chaos Team 11 Fan Factor

We could call this the start of the Cup game week as the Teams played for the Spike Magazine Cup. Our first match finds the Orc team smashing the Skaven Team. Our second match the Skaven team runs right on by the Orc team. Our third match the Chaos team murders the Skaven team. The Spike Magazine Cup goes to the Chaos team, followed by the Orc team and coming in third (LAST) was the Skaven team.

Week four Scores

Skaven Team 25 Fan Factor
Orc Team 21 Fan Factor
Chaos Team 20 Fan Factor

The Blood Bowl Week has arrived and all three teams were for the big game. The differences in the teams were becoming more apparent as the Chaos team had five star players and six team upgrades and the others only two or three of either. Now to the action of the week. Match number one the Skaven team out scored the Chaos team. While in the second match the Skaven team out ran the Chaos team a second time. However in the third match the Chaos team crushed the Skaven Team. In the Blood Bowl the Orc team ran away with it as all of their players were at this match and did not play in any others. The Chaos team and the Skaven team tied for second. The season looked to be going to the Skaven team but so many fans came out to see the Chaos five star players and two freebooters. As well as the large coaching staff and team upgrade that the Chaos team stole the season.

Final Scores
Chaos Team 44 Fan Factor
Skaven Team 37 Fan Factor
Orc Team 28 Fan Factor

DEFENDERS OF THE REALM

What’s Black, Red, Green and Blue and is coming to visit the realm again? DRAGONS!!! This will be the fourth time the group of dragons have attack the realm twice they have had their way and once our bravest hero’s defeated them. The realm once again is looking for some hero’s to defend them. (we always draw 2 hero’s at random and keep one) The hero’s who responded tonight were

Frank the Monk
John the Ranger
Mike the Eagle Rider
Debbie the Captain of the Guard

For those who are new to our adventures (the round gamers) our games included some homemade chocolate cookie (Yummmmmmmmy) you have to feed those hero’s.

Attacking the realm today were a mean set of dragons
Brimstone the Red
Onyx the Black
Hemlock the Green
Sapphire the Blue

John was the first player and set out to get the green imps in green areas with his +1 to hit them. Mike and the others moved towards their first quest to get us going. Mike was the first to fulfill his quest and got the Amulet of the Gods (+1 to combat rolls).
By the end of the second turn Brimstone had moved twice and was burning up the realm with his fire breathing ability. In addition Sapphire had moved one step closer to Monarch City.
Our brave hero’s put there heads together and decided that the red menace had to go so Brimstone became the target. Brimstones combat special ability is to reroll any hits you get against him makes him a hard target. Now the attack was on John managed to get one hit, Mike added two more and Frank got two more and we had our best dice roller left to go in Debbie who GASP MISSED. Mike tosses down a special card that allows Debbie to reroll all her dice and she manages to finish off Brimstone. Scratch one Dragon and that helps against the blue imps and Sapphires hit points is reduced by one.
The game was getting tense as the Blue imps seemed to be getting out of hand when Debbie played a Cavalry sweep special card, and Mike’s plus one on the die rolls ended that threat for now. We look at the other threats, we had that down to 3 fires and 4 taint
Now it was time for another dragon to die, but which one? Looking at our attack cards it is close between Onyx and Hemlock but Onyx is closer to Monarch city so we go after him. We waited to all of us were there but that cost us a quest card as Onyx tried to get out of our way and move closer to Monarch city but Frank stopped that with one of his quest cards. Onyx is a tough dragon as his combat ability is he parries and counterstrikes on a one or two. Now onto the battle John rolled first and as is normal with him he rolled three ones or twos and took three hits. Mike got one hit but took a hit. Debbie was the hero again scoring four hits before Frank got the Death blow but took a wound in the action. During the following darkness spreads phase the card flipped told us to reveal a hero card and any hero on that color space took a hit. Mike and John suffered another point of damage. We all breathed a sigh of relief as Debbie played her special card that healed all wounds.
Now the game is getting interesting as Sapphire is one step away from Monarch city and Hemlock and his green horde are getting up there in numbers. We take the time to reduce the green horde some but another darkness spread wounds John and Frank. Then the second darkness spread card moves Sapphire to Monarch city but frank plays his special card that prevents him from moving then plays a second one that allows him to take any card from the box and he returns the prevent the dragons move card back.
The game status has the red minions growing the most but under controls eight taint and four fires. Nothing to worry about right now so let’s go get Hemlock. Hemlocks special combat abilities force us to discard half of one color hero cards. John loses his specials, Frank his (ugh) green, Debbie her black cards and Mike his Blue cards. The attack is on and down goes Hemlock as Mike lands the killing blow. On the down side the next darkness spreads cards have Sapphire move but Frank prevents that again and adds two more taint and a fire. Debbie draws a special that removes some minions from the board and pushes back any one dragon; Monarch City is a little safer.
We plan the attack on Sapphire, as we have two special cards that keep us from drawing any darkness spread cards we head for Sapphire, but with ten taint on the board we plan on getting rid of some of them on the way. Frank takes his turn stops on his way to Sapphire but fails to remove any taint but no darkness spread cards either so he is the first to arrive at Sapphire and kills the only minion with him. Mike is up next and battles a couple blue minions and removes a taint before getting to Sapphire and again we play the card that keeps us from drawing any darkness spread cards. Now it is John’s turn who shoots a couple of green minions out of the way and removes a taint taking us down to eight left on the board. Debbie is the finial player but John must draw his darkness spread cards which result is the addition of four Taint. No NO NO NO it can’t be we lose to taint.

Kingdom Builder

I bought this game at Gen Con, and have played it several times at home and at our club meetings. This is a fast game that is fun for all players even non gamers. My wife even likes this game and she is not a big gamer. We played it with three players and it is just as enjoyable as with four players
The games ten different ways to gain victory Points towards winning the game makes for great replay ability.
We have yet to repeat the same three victory conditions. I am looking forward to the expanison to add even more to his game.