Projects – Page 75

Spotlight: Akash’Bhuta

First Appearance: Sentinels of the Multiverse: Infernal Relics
Who she is: A mountain of a nature based antagonist
Initial Side: Chaos-Bound Creator
Innate Power (Initial Side): Whenever an environment target enters play, play the top card of the villain deck. Whenever a villain target enters play, discard the top card of the environment deck.
Advanced Power (Initial Side): Reduce damage dealt to villain targets by 1.

Villain Cards that Begin Game in Play: None
How she flips to her other side: When the environment trash is shuffled into the environment deck. This can happen more than once in a game.
Nemesis: The Argent Adept
Second Side: Avatar of Destruction

Innate Power (Second Side): Whenever an environment target is destroyed, play the top card of the villain deck. Whenever a villain target is destroyed, discard the top card of the environment deck.
Advanced Power (Second Side): At the end of the villain turn, Akash’Bhuta deals the (H) where H is equal to the number of heroes minus 1 non-villain targets with the highest HP 3 melee damage each.

Most Fiendish Ongoing Card: Entomb: At the start of the villain turn, Akash’Bhuta deals all non-villain targets (H) psychic damage. If all active heroes take damage this way, destroy this card.
Most Fiendish One-Shot Card: Rejuvenating Entropy: Destroy (H) equipment cards. Restore all environment targets and primeval limbs to their max HP.
Most Fiendish Villain Target Card: Living Rockslide (10 HP): At the end of the villain turn, this card deals each non-villain target (H) minus 2 projectile damage. When this card is destroyed, Akash’Bhuta deals herself 10 energy damage.

How to Defeat Akash’Bhuta: Even though Akash’Bhuta has a lot of hit points—the most in the game with 200—you’ll want to concentrate most, if not all your attacks, on other villain targets. Whenever Living Rockslide, Ensnaring Brambles, Arboreal Phalanges, and Mountainous Carapace leave play, they deal damage to Akash’Bhuta, so you get a two for one scenario with this lot. Entomb isn’t too bad of an ongoing card, but you can’t have any hero (like NightMist or Visionary) avoiding or redirecting damage or else it’s a death sentence for any other hero. Akash’Bhuta’s one-shots all have global effects that are pretty good, but you can’t avoid these. Outside of canceling discard effects, you have no other recourse. You should avoid heroes that rely on equipment and ongoing cards.

Spotlight: Apostate

First Appearance: Sentinels of the Multiverse: Infernal Relics
Who he is: The fallen angel of the Multiverse
Initial Side: Infernal Emissary
Innate Power (Initial Side): At the end of the villain turn, Apostate deals the hero target with the highest HP (H)—where H is equal to the number of heroes—minus 2 melee damage and (H) minus 2 infernal damage.
Advanced Power (Initial Side): At the start of the game, look through the villain deck for the Tome of the Unknowable and put it into play. Shuffle the villain deck.
Villain Cards that Begin Game in Play: Condemnation (11 HP): At the end of the villain turn, Apostate deals the hero target with the highest HP 3 melee damage. Reduce damage dealt to this card by 1.
How he flips to his other side: When he would be reduced to 0 or fewer HP and there is a villain relic in play, destroy the villain relic with the lowest HP and he flips.
Nemesis: Fanatic

Second Side: Dark Corruptor
Innate Power (Second Side): When flipped to this side, restore Apostate to 20 HP. At the end of the villain turn, Apostate deals the hero target with the lowest HP (H) minus 2 melee damage, then regains (H) plus 2 HP.
Advanced Power (Second Side): Whenever a demon card is destroyed, play the top card of the villain deck.

Most Fiendish Ongoing Card: Apocalypse: At the start of the environment turn, destroy all cards in play other than this card, character cards, and relics. Then, destroy this card.
Most Fiendish One-Shot Card: Profane Summons: Reveal cards from the top of the villain deck until (H) minus 1 relics are revealed. Put them into play. Shuffle the other revealed cards back into the villain deck.
Most Fiendish Villain Target Card: Relic Spirit (9 HP): At the end of the villain turn, each relic regains 1 HP. When this card is destroyed, move (H) minus 1 relic cards from the villain trash into play.

How to Defeat Apostate: You have to plan when you lower Apostate’s HP to zero or lower. He can’t have any relics in play or else he flips. In fact, he flips instead of taking the last few hit points of damage even if he’s on his second side. So, you have to take out relics. But you don’t have to worry too much about Demons.

Still, you don’t want too many Imp Pilferer’s in play because they’ll wreak havoc on your ongoing and equipment cards, and you can’t deal as much damage to Apostate if Fiendish Pugilist is in play. But Relic Spirit gets the nod for most fiendish demon because she has to stay in play—or else more relics come into play—and she heals other relics making it even more difficult to defeat Apostate.

Then there are relics. Many of them have nasty effects, but the worst of these have to be Condemnation, Tome of the Unknowable, and Runes of Malediction. The first one deals the most damage, while the other two have a nasty habit of putting more villain cards on the table. Knock these out first, and then take on the rest of the relics. After that, turn your attention to Apostate.

Guillotine

Designer: Paul Peterson
Publisher: Hasbro
Date Released: 1998

Number of Players: 2-5
Age Range: 10 and up
Setup Time: less than 5 minutes
Play Time: 20-30 minutes

Game Mechanics:
Hand Management

Game flow:
Guillotine takes place during the French Revolution, and you’re an executioner. You goal is to post a more impressive score of royal heads than your opponents.

There are three rounds to Guillotine because there were three days of execution by means of the guillotine during the French Revolution. There are 50 noble cards, each one has its own point value and belongs to one of five different groups of nobles (Royals, Clergy, Military, Government, and the Wrongly Accused). At the beginning of each round, you deal 13 nobles in a line. The noble on the far right is at the head of the line.

Each player is dealt four action cards with which they can manipulate scoring (based on which group a noble belongs to) or doctor the line of royals. On a turn, a player can play an action card (optional), they take the noble at the head of the line whether they played a card or not, and then they draw one action card from the deck (unless another card tells them otherwise).

Play continues until there are no nobles left in the line. You draw for the next day, or if the round in question was the third day, the game’s over, and then you tally points.

Review:
With such a morbid premise, Guillotine has to use comic devises to lighten up the game. It does this well. You’ll find yourself laughing at the funny cartoons adorning each card. The action cards work well, and what they do matches the off-beat comedy. You gotta love “Let Them Eat Cake” which moves Marie Antoinette, the royal sporting the highest point value, to the head of the line.

But like most card games, Guillotine relies on luck, and as a result, there isn’t a lot of strategy involved. Even so, there are opportune times with which to play an action card, so Guillotine does reward experience and some skill.

Verdict: A quirky, thematic card game with a wicked sense of humor, Guillotine lets you get your hands dirty and heads rolling, and while there isn’t much in the way of strategy, you still have to have some skill.

Quiz Answers: Timeline Bruno Cathala

Bruno Cathala has built a nice collection of games over the past ten years. How well do you know Cathala’s work? Let’s see how we did.

All 6 correct) You’ve led your caravan to the promise land, and now you’re the new sultan in town.

4-5 correct) You’re luck was good but not good enough to conquer Dice Town.

2-3 correct) You would’ve scored better but someone stabbed you in the back.

0-1 correct) Did you run into Mr. Jack in a dark alley or something?

Timeline: Bruno Cathala

Bruno Cathala has had a couple of hits with Days of Wonder, but he’s had some other great games, too. Can you name these games in the order in which they were released?

X-Men: Under Siege

Designer: Richard Borg
Publisher: Pressman Toy Corp.
Date Released: 1994

Number of Players: 2-4
Age Range: 10 and up
Setup Time: 10-15 minutes
Play Time: 60-90 minutes

Game Mechanics:
Cooperative Play
Dice Rolling
Variable Player Powers

Game flow:
Evil mutants have invaded the X Mansion, and you have to clear the school of all danger. You assume control of two X-Men and during a turn, search up to two rooms. You have variable hand sizes, based on how intelligent your smartest mutant is, and the cards in your hand dictate which rooms you can search.

There are two types of cards: room cards and X-tra special cards. Room cards represent the room you can search. X-tra special cards can allow you to quick response (move an X-Man you control from one room to a room where another X-Man you control is fighting), add another X-Man to your team, heal your X-Men, or even deal damage to every X-Man on a given level.

You search the X Mansion and all its six floors (or levels): the Attic, Second Story, Ground Level, Basement, First Sub-Basement, and Second Sub-Basement. Each level is color-coded, and each room starts the game with a token (matching the floor level’s color). If the token you draw is blank on the other side, you clear the room. If the token has something printed on the back of it, you have to deal with whatever’s printed.

Most tokens have “Evil Mutant” on their back, but a few have “X-Men” printed on them. If you find an “X-Men” tile, you can add another X-Man to your team and clear the room. If you find an “Evil Mutant,” you’re going to have to defeat the villain in order to clear the room by rolling special six-sided dice.

These dice have four possible outcomes: X-Men, Marvel, Evil Mutant, and blank. If you roll an X-Men, you deal one damage to the evil mutant. Marvel deals two damage to Evil Mutants. Results of Evil Mutant damage the X-Man rolling the dice. And naturally, nothing happens when you roll a blank.

Each X-Man has a fighting ability, endurance, and a special effect. Fighting ability shows how many dice the X-Man rolls in combat, while endurance is how many hits they can take before they get knocked out. Special effects further separate the powerful X-Men from the not so powerful.

The game’s over when all the rooms are cleared. Then, you count up your points with a point given for every room cleared, evil mutant defeated, level earned (you cleared enough rooms in a given level), and blood blots (special chips earned in combat).

Review:
X-Men: Under Siege is special to me because I played it a lot with my family when I was young, but I’ll try to be fair. There aren’t too many strategic elements in this game. The only true choice you have is how you control your X-Men each turn. Do you split them up and search two rooms? Or do you not trust them on their own and only search one room?

You may not have two room cards in your hand. Most X-Men have an intelligence of two and that’s your hand size. So, it pays to have an X-Man with a high intelligence. You’ll have a lot more options and with that being the case, intelligence is an overpowered stat.

Blood blots are too fluky to depend on for consistent scoring. Longshot’s special effect allows you to reroll blank dice—and this helps with getting blood blots—but it could just as easily get him hurt.

Despite its shortcomings, X-Men: Under Siege mimics the feel of the X Mansion, and you get to kick Magneto’s tail—hopefully.

Verdict: A faithful representation of the X Mansion and each X-Man’s ability (for the most part), but there isn’t too much strategy involved and the set up and play time hurt too.

Bob’s Burgers Spoilers: Week of December 15, 2014

Tina sets Five Traps
Tina feeds each of her Thundergirl troop mates a different false address for a cookie lead. Where ever the rival troop shows up revealed the identity of the mole.

No One Listens to Bob
Bob – and sometimes Tina – may be the voice of reason but no one listens. Linda thinks she’s turning dumb because of her new blonde hair, but Bob insists that Linda hasn’t been paying attention to anything but her hair and that’s why she acts a fool. All Bob can do is sigh as Linda counts the ways of how blonde hair turns you stupider.

Enter Gretchen. She’s the one who died Linda’s hair blonde, and now she’s dyed her hair from blonde to brunette. Gretchen acts as vapid as Linda, bumping into things and not paying attention, while she’s convinced she’s smarter because of her dark hair. Bob sighs again.

Pearls of Wisdom

Response to Tina quitting Thundergirls
Louise: 13 is 40 in Thundergirl years.
Linda: But 40 is the new 38.
Gene: And 38 is rowrrrrr.

Once Tina dons her Thundergirl uniform after quitting
Louise: What? No, Tina. You just got out. Now you’re going back in. You’re like the Brett Favre of Thundergirls.

Burgers of the Day

Cajun Gracefully Burger
Blondes have more Fun-Gus Burger (comes with mushrooms)

Geekly TV: December 15, 2014

Grimm

Kyle’s Review

This week’s episode of Grimm had to be the strongest of the year. Like the couple wesen that came before it, this wesen of the week wasn’t malevolent, he was sick.

Grimm tapped into the Ebola crisis of western Africa and added a wesen only illness to the mix. Like Ebola this wesen-centric disease works fast and is usually fatal. The Grimm crew only has enough ingredients for one vaccination –similar to the experimental Ebola vaccine of which there were only two made – and when the wesen-gone-wild finds out he infected his wife, he sacrifices himself to save her.

Not only was this episode topical, it reached a level of depth that Grimm hasn’t seen since its second season. We also get an idea of how the Austrian royals fit into the Portland side of the house. It’s nice to see Adalind strike an uncomfortable alliance with them. She certainly wouldn’t hide her disdain for them – it’s just not her style – and Renard’s alliance with the resistance proves just as shaky.

I’m even warming up to the Sergeant Wu storyline. He sees definitive proof of the otherworldly wesen this week, and unlike others before him, he doesn’t handle the information well. It’s unbelievable when everyone either is a wesen or Grimm, or they accept this other world. Let’s hope for more Wu freak outs.

Grimm has always had pretty good cliffhangers, but they must’ve taken a note from the DC Comics TV shows. This year’s mid-season finale had some key figures getting kidnapped and revealed the repercussions of Nick getting his Grimm back: Juliette may be a hexenbeast—Yikes!

Verdict: A strong showing for Grimm’s mid-season finale that leaves plenty to work with after the hiatus.

Constantine

Kyle’s Review

Constantine took another big step forward this week. John runs into another one of his former mates which built up his past and added weight to the character, and I liked how we got two dueling stories this week: John and Zed.

Zed got the shorter end of the stick. She faced her dark past, but her half of things wasn’t as well developed. You have to buy her leaving headquarters to get some random art supplies. Then, she investigates two – count them one, two – places in the vast confines of the magic shack and those two places just happen to help her evade her pursuers. She still gets captured with a syringe to the neck, but the guy with the needle must have been made of vapor to get that good of a drop on her. It was all too convenient.

But John had another great outing. He heads to Mexico and meets up with Anne-Marie from his past. She’s since gone to a convent and became a nun, but there have been some strange dealings with babies disappearing. Anne-Marie contacts John via astral plane radio, and John comes running. The ensuing confrontation reveals a heap of information about the characters’ tangled past, what’s been going on behind the scenes thus far, and saw several elements from the Hellblazer and even the Swamp Thing comics leap onto the small screen.

I won’t spoil it here, but John gets a taste of his own medicine with the end’s cliffhanger.

Verdict: The narrative may have had its ups and downs this season, but Constantine goes into its midseason hiatus on a high note.

Check out our Constantine spoilers page here.

Bob’s Burgers

Kyle’s Review

This week’s episode of Bob’s Burgers is titled “Tina, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” and as the name implies, Tina goes undercover. Deep undercover.

At the beginning of the episode, Tina has to quit Thundergirls because she turned thirteen, and thirteen is forty in Thundergirl years. Unfortunately, Tina’s ex-Thundergirl troop has a mole in their ranks, and Tina’s former troop master enlists Tina to uncover the culprit.

The two other stories braid into this main storyline: Linda feels old and dyes her hair blonde, while Gene wants to help Tina by checking Thundergirl trash only to find trash fashion or as he likes to call it trashion. Louise complicates matters more by forming the Mole Patrol. She joins Tina’s troop and when that doesn’t lead to results, she joins the rival troop 257, but it’s Tina who solves the mystery. She might not want to admit it, but Louise looks up to her awkward, older sister.

As far as the Thundergirl sting is concerned, let’s just say that a pinky swear of eternal friendship was broken, and the episode turns nuttier than a Banana nut-fudge cookie with macadamia nuts. And it’s just as delicious.

Verdict: Tina makes a great spy and Louise reveals her humanity in this solid episode.

Read more about Bob’s Burgers with our spoiler page.

Quiz Answers: Strange Games 3

Mr. Bacon’s Big Adventure

Sail the Sausage Sea and wander the Wiener Wasteland while avoiding the Gristle Grotto and Mr. Bacon might just make it to the Great Frying Pan.

Darkies in the Melon Patch

A Snakes and Ladders clone with some very offensive artwork.

The Nacho Incident

You sell Mexican food in Canada.

Devil Bunny Hates the Earth

You are a Taffy Machine tasked with attracting squirrels to get stuck in your works which prevents the Devil Bunny from destroying civilization.

Constantine Spoilers: Week of December 15, 2014

You have to Protect Innocents at Any Cost

As Anne-Marie and John make their getaway from a demon, John gets shot in the shoulder by Anne-Marie of all people. She reminds John of something he said earlier in the show, “You have to protect the lives of innocents at any cost.” Then, she leaves John as bait, while she runs for freedom with a baby in tow. It’s nice to see John get played.

Anne-Marie has Guilt

Anne-Marie bares as much guilt as John, but she doesn’t carry the lost soul of Astra on her conscious. She curses herself for turning John toward the dark arts. In the comic she’s an elderly woman, but Constantine casts the young and easy-on-the-eyes Claire van der Boom. It doesn’t make as much sense that a younger Anne-Marie would introduce John to black magic, but Boom gave a good performance, and the inclusion of this shared past helped this week’s story.

Don’t we Know Anne-Marie from Somewhere

Yes. Constantine shared that Anne-Marie was there in Newcastle with John, but in the comics, she made her debut in the same issue of Swamp Thing: Growth Patterns as a little known magician named John Constantine.

What the Heck is an Invunche?

Invunches are hideous demons – that made their debut in the pages of Swamp Thing – with a nasty vendetta streak. Constantine ends its mid-season finale with one hunting down the wounded John Constantine. This doesn’t look good.