A Win for the Whinger

Shot with new 'phone sorry about the reflection

Last week for Android and I played a different character again. This time Floyd the 'droid, an investigator both helped and hindered by being bound by three directives which are presumably a nod to Asimov's famous Laws of Robotics (The philosopy behind which is beginning to be debated more seriously as we enter an era of increased use of military robots or drones). The game was once more engrossing. This time the murder scenario's own variations of the rules included the repositioning of leads followed on Earth to locations on the moon where possible, and a slight easing of the time restrictions on traveling between the two via the Clarkian "beanstalk"

At the time we broke for an excellent pizza lunch I was unsure of who was in the ascendancy. My opponent, this week playing Rachel the greedy bounty hunter, appeared to be doing well for favours but I was unclear about what was unfolding as far as the suspects were concerned, especially as my own placement of leads had included a lot of bluff early in the game to avoid tipping my hand early.

In the end I think we had both successfully misled each other but Crabro had misunderstood the purpose of alibi tokens and the two he had placed were having the opposite effect to that which he had intended. Had he not made this mistake it could have been a very different outcome but as it was Floyd won by 46 points to 36 with both of us steering our own plots to a happy conclusion but also both my hunches having been correct.

Rachel had considerably more success with bonuses from uncovering the conspiracy and gaining favours, especially as Floyd had been restricted to owning only two for part of the game and had therefore been spending them quickly.

I very much enjoyed the game again but Crabro feels it is time to move on to his new purchases and sell Android on...possibly to me as I am reluctant to say goodbye to it despite the unlikelihood of being able to play it with either the Saltdean or Hove groups. Looking forward to all the new games, which include Battlelore, Jambo expansions and Dominant Species.

Sometimes sanity is not enough

Caprice's player board and sanity indicator

Don't read anything into the fact that I keep playing damaged women. Yes, another Tuesday games day dedicated to an epic game of Android. This time we returned to our first choices of investigators to see if our greater understanding of the game would mean we played them differently. I think we did, but in my case I possibly still strove too hard to maintain Caprice's sanity, to the exclusion of wider movement and following leads. Crabro, playing one-plot Raymond again, got stuck into fitting up his suspect with gusto and eventually it sank in that I wasn't going to be able to recover the situation. Caprice remained outrageously sane though, and this meant that she got full benefit from her plot points. Unfortunately Raymond's single plot provided the same number of points (14). When scoring, Crabro removed all the points from my own suspect with great glee. Apparently they were all the same value and therefore all equal to highest/lowest in strong and weak areas of evidence at the point where these are removed during scoring. We both saw our innocent hunches proved correct. Raymond's rocketing round the board with dropships paid off while Caprice not only never left Earth but mostly hung around the Levy University area. At least she succeeded in obtaining all the favours of Daniel (the love of her life) and several 3 point Jinteki tokens. As usual I didn't get much out of the conspiracy theories. End result: another absorbing narrative experience, but this time a win for Crabro by 38 points to 34...unless he unearths another rule which overturns this later, as before.

Tuesday Games Part One

The last three of the weekly games days with my regular opponent Crabro have featured Android, the Fantasy Flight cyberpunk detective game by Daniel Clark and Kevin Wilson, the co-designer of Arkham Horror. Given the publisher and designers involved it was of course bound to have a lot of bits and high production values. It can be bought for a surprisingly low price given this pedigree but that is possibly because it isn't by any means to everyone's taste, being a long game with a fair degree of rules complexity.

Spotting it for around sixteen pounds (a very low price for a game like this these days) my friend snapped it up but we quickly realised that it was going to be difficult to table it on a group games night, not just because of the theme (science fiction is definitely not popular with all the group), but for the sheer length. Having had a look at the components and knowing the theme, I was very keen, and we both read the rules and did some research on Boardgamegeek. One surprise was that Scott Nicholson, in one of his video reviews had given it a very definite thumbs down, something I had not seen before. However, we were encouraged that despite its three to five player listing there were comments to the effect that a two player game was not only feasible but an enjoyable experience.

Android times two

Since this new blog is intended mainly to log games sessions and comment on hobbies, I intended to start with a brief report on my recent experiences with Android, the game, however I couldn't resist first of all trying to blog remotely using another Android...

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