[8:40 AM] Most of us have arrived and we have started to set everything up: live-streaming computer, Nespresso machine, PlayStation 4, Redbulls in the fridge, and our first board game.
We also took the opportunity to highlight the amazing prizes donated by our sponsors this year:
[9:15 AM] Our first game of the day is Dungeon Degenerates: Hand of Doom!
Dungeon Degenerates: Hand of Doom takes place in the Dark Fantasy Realm of the decaying Eastern Provinces of the Würstreich. Players take escaped criminal adventurers on unsavory missions through four distinct regions, each with their own monsters & encounters. As the players explore the Würstreich, danger levels rise continuously across the map. Players must complete their mission before the Hand of Doom descends on the board, unleashing evil magic on the land.
Adam will be DMing this one for us with the following players as our intrepid anti-heroes:
Ross: Diego the Corpse Burner
Josh: Olaf the Hinterlander
Scott: Floyd the Void Witch
Kevin: Mick Jagger the Bog Conjurer
[11:00 AM] As you can probably tell from the character types, this game is intentionally weird. We are a group of prisoners who escaped captivity to go on a deranged quest to steal a magical, severed head and either return it to its owner, some guy’s cousin living in the woods, or sell it on the black market. Our gang of degenerate adventurers has thusfar slaughtered local law enforcement while escaping our starting town, rescued a group of settlers from undead monsters only to then massacre the settlers and steal their stuff, and we’ve just recovered the severed head. The group is now about to decide where to go with our “treasure”.
One of the more unfortunate creatures inhabiting the world of Dungeon Degenerates: this “sex dwarf” made a habit of harassing Kevin and whacking him bloody. Kinky.
[1:30 PM] Our adventure wrapped up shortly afterwards. We decided to bring our head friend home to the swamp! We journey across a rickety bridge, got ambushed by the law (no doubt annoyed at us for killing their comrades and a few innocent civilians), defeated them and barely escaped with our hides intact. After a few more swampy encounters, we made our way to a sacred tree and returned the magical severed head to his home. Next up? Hanabi!
[2:15 PM] Hanabi is a classic for our group. Playing with Scott’s deluxe set, we took turns giving each other clues to try and complete a group fireworks experiment without knowing what cards/tiles were in front of us. It’s a great way to build bonds (or tear them apart when someone doesn’t play the way you want them to… Scott!) and have a blast. After a few games, we’re moving on to a popular title this year, Jamey Stegmaier’s Tapestry! From the publisher:
Create the civilization with the most storied history, starting at the beginning of humankind and reaching into the future. The paths you choose will vary greatly from real-world events or people — your civilization is unique!
In Tapestry, you start from nothing and advance on any of the four advancement tracks (science, technology, exploration, and military) to earn progressively better benefits. You can focus on a specific track or take a more balanced approach. You will also improve your income, build your capital city, leverage your asymmetric abilities, earn victory points, and gain tapestry cards that will tell the story of your civilization.
Our civilizations:
Scott – The Militants: A society rewarded for, as you guessed it, conquering nearby lands and dominating people.
Kevin – The Heralds: People known for over-acheiving and then boasting about their progress to all in earshot!
Adam – The Craftsmen: Master builders (not brewers) capable of handling a tool as well as becoming one with ease.
Ross – The Leaders: Nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah leader! Leader…. Leader!
Josh – The Architects: The coolest sounding name of the factions in play with the weakest power. Josh has been dead last since the game began and so far shows no signs of speeding up.
[4:30 PM] Our game is well underway with a bit of jockeying for position: Kevin started the game with an early lead before losing ground to Scott over time. Ross seems to have shown the greatest understanding of the game which has translated to mediocre mid-game “success” while Adam and Josh sit in 4th and 5th place respectively. Presumably biding their time, possibly not.
[6:30 PM] That’s a wrap on Tapestry! Final scores were:
- 299 – Josh
- 273 – Adam
- 220 – Scott
- 183 – Ross
- 179 – Kevin
Big congrats to Josh who managed to breach a 150 point difference in two Eras. It’s an intense game with lots of mechanics that ping-pong off one another. Since each player progresses through their own culture’s Eras, I (Kevin) was actually finished a good 45 minutes earlier than the others since I had not budgeted my resources well. In the meantime I had opened up my laptop to keep up with the gaming, and updating this blog!
We’re warming up our Pot roast dinner, packing up the game, and starting up our next one – Keyforge! A game generously donated by our sponsor Asmodee! Stay tuned for more updates!
[7:30PM] Ross squeaked out a victory with his new Keyforge deck from Asmodee, vs Scott’s new deck. This is a super fun one-on-one card game where the game can quickly swing from one person’s side clearly dominating to the other player fully wiping them out and jumping ahead. Meanwhile Kevin, Adam and Josh played a random trivia game on PS4 to keep themselves busy.
Now onward to the first of our Halloween-themed games this year… Tower of Madness!
[8:45PM] Tower of Madness is like Yahtzee meets Kerplunk! with a little bit of Cthulhu theme sprinkled on top.
Like this. But not like this.
You play Lead Investigators moving through different locations and trying to roll the perfect set of 5 dice, forced to lock at least one before rerolling the rest. Anyone who doesn’t manage to get the perfect “straight” they’re looking for is forced to pull a “Horror tentacle” from the middle (a crisscrossing plastic piece in the middle of the table, holding up a ton of differently coloured marbles). Drop a white or blue marble and no problem, they’ll help you along the way. Drop a red Insanity marble, and you’re that much closer to going insane. Drop a green Doom marble, and when three are out, everybody loses. If the investigators manage to hold onto their sanity and “solve” each location in the deck, whoever solved the most places wins.
Near the end, Scott went mad when his fourth red marble came out and he valiantly did his best to sabotage the rest of the game. Ultimately, Adam knew Ross was a threat to his points and managed to drive him insane to take him out of the running, to win the game. Not all good guys can be good guys.
[10:45 PM] Sticking with the spooky crazy theme of Hallowe’en, we decided to become fortune teller mystics, gathering in a mansion in order to solve a murder in the game: Mysterium! If you’ve ever played Clue, this is hands down a better version (And cooperative no less!). The victim’s ghost, reenacted by Josh, was able to communicate clues to us about the murderer, the location, and the weapon by using colorful cards, but while keeping dead silent, in true ghost fashion… We made it to the final seance weaker than we would have liked, which at least gave us a shot at deciphering the murderer. Unfortunately, based on the limited information we had available, Adam was the only one to guess the correct combination and sadly, a majority was required and the murderer got away…
[11:00 PM] … which is why we decided to play again! (And because the first time was so much fun!) Kevin took a turn as ghost and gave us such killer clues (pun intended) that we unanimously chose the right suspect and pegged them as the killer. (The Doctor in the Crypt with the Vase, in case you were wondering.)
[12:45 PM] After some time spent away from the table and on the couch playing Rocket League, perennial Extra Life favourite, we returned to the table to return to our stream of spooky games and play Betrayal Legacy.
Betrayal Legacy is a lot like one of our raffle prizes this year, Machi Koro Legacy, in that its a legacy game. The latest craze in board games for the last 3 or 4 years, legacy games are usually story-based campaigns where every game you play you’ll destroy cards, sticker cards, add new rules and generally alter the entire game from one to the next.
Betrayal Legacy is the legacy version of another game called Betrayal at House on the Hill that we’ve played several times as a group before. Each game, we are five explorers in a Haunted House wandering around, exploring the house (whose walls and rooms seem to shift each time we turn). Inevitably one of us will be revealed to be a traitor, at which point either the humans will win, or the traitor will lead the House to consume the intruders and forever leave a mystery behind in their tracks…
[3 AM] We don’t want to spoil anything in this very story-driven game, for anyone considering checking it out. But we CAN say that after playing a quick tutorial game, Josh turned out to be the traitor in our first full game and the good guys managed to thwart him by burying a certain “item” in a certain “place.” But that’s all we’re allowed to say…
[2 AM] Daylight savings time, you tricky devil…
[2:01 AM] It’s time to kick ass and chew bubblebum, and we’re all outta bubblegum! After all the board gaming, we decided to take a break and move over to the PS4. We spent a mayhem-filled 45 minutes playing Broforce, a co-operative side-scrolling run-and-gun platformer about an under-funded, over-powered paramilitary organization supported by the likes of Brobocop, The Brominator and Bronan the Barbarian that responds to global threats with excessive force. The key lesson learned was never trust Scott, because he doesn’t wait for anyone else to get to the choppa!
After an explosion-filled good time, we moved onto another PS4 classic, Patently Stupid, a game about getting rich quick by developing and pitching a new product. While Adam prepared the breakfast chow mein, the rest of us tried to design the best solution for a problem we’ve all faced: that every time we throw a party, Matt Damon shows up!
[4:15 AM] After breakfast, it was back to board games with a game called Space Base, a dice game where players draft ships into their Space Base to create the best base! This game plays like a mash-up of Catan, Machi Koro and Splendor. Adam ended up taking home an absurd and statistically-improbable win after cashing in on a big gamble that the other players would roll 10s, despite there being an only an 8% chance doing so. It seemed like all we did was roll 10’s, and the game was over practically before we started!
[5:30 AM] A quick break back to the couch for some more PS4 in between games. There’s always time in our schedule and our hearts for some more Rocket League! RENEGADES!
[6:00 AM] With two hours to go, we turned to another new and family-friendly favourite of our group, Camel Up. This is a game about five racing camels, where you have to suss out which ones will place first and second in a quick race around an ancient pyramid.
The game involves pushing your luck, because the earlier in the race that you place your bet, the more you can win — but you better be careful, because camels don’t run neatly! If one lands on top of another, they can carry each other toward the finish line, which creates some pretty hilarious and unexpected leap-frogging situations. As if that wasn’t enough, there are also two cRaAaZy camels running in the opposite direction, which can seriously mess up even the best-laid camel’s plans! Whenever they hop onto each other, our group delights in shouting “That’s a camel up!” On this day, Kevin ended up being the wisest gambler at the track.
[6:15 AM] Our final board game of the marathon is a thrilling cat-and-mouse chase with asymmetrical goals called Pyramid of the Pengqueen. One player (Ross) plays as the Penguin Mummy trying to catch tomb raiders, while the other players try to steal as many treasures as possible from the Penguin Mummy’s pyramid.
The game contains a double sided 3D magnetic game board which conceals tomb raiders’ movements, but makes a satisfying CLACKING sound whenever a player’s piece is caught and gobbled up by the Mummy. In the end, Ross’s Mummy was able to find us seven times, which triggered the end of the game in his favour. He’s no doubt the greatest Pengqueen to ever defend its pyramid.
[8:00 AM] A few more PS4 games of Thats You! and Knowledge is Power took us to the end of this year’s marathon. We closed it the same way that we closed last year’s event, by live-streaming a prize raffle as a way of thanking our generous donors for their support. In the end, six names were chosen, and we’ll be contacting those donors directly to figure out how to get their games to them. That’s a wrap for this year, bringing our total raised for children’s hospitals to approximately $55,000.
A huge thank you to Asmodee Canada, Boardgame Bliss and Roxley Games for their support of our event, and an even bigger thank you to all of you who supported us and who continue to follow along on this crazy journey. We’ll see you next year!
Days of our Extra Lives 