Game report follow-up: T.I.M.E Stories The Marcy Case 1992 w/ C & R spoiler-tastic

We were extremely well-drilled from having played the Asylum the morning before. Cathy and Royce took turns managing the Item Deck. I managed the turn tracker and interpreted rules and general oversaw everything running smoothly.

Run #1

We started at the City Entrance and Cathy decided to save the copper fighting the zombie. I told her to fire her gun once here I think. She received a shotgun afterward! I went for the car boot while Royce tanked the zombies that you must fight. Trapper the Dog joining Royce for this fight only but stayed with Cathy for the rest of the game. I eventually liberated the convict (after checking out the dead policeman) and got the jury-rigged rocket.

Evoking zombie tropes, we elected to go to the police station first. We got a Marcy for our trouble, a cassette (I think), keys and the Gatling gun. I got that by shooting off the lock. Going into the room with the zombies is never palatable, especially when you have plenty of health packs.

The High School was next and Royce spoke to the gun nut and the guys hanging around. Cathy spoke to the fisherman and chose not to trade med kits to get him but she did go and siphon some gas. I was going to negotiate with the leader guy but we agreed to just threaten him instead and got to see where the Bunker was.

Royce really wanted to check out Bunker but myself and Cathy wanted to explore Hotel first. I received another Marcy for my trouble while Cathy shot up the lift and checked out upstairs rooms. She had the keys from the police station so found the helipad but we couldn't use it yet.

In the Forest Royce checked out the cabin and received another Marcy and something else here, the ax maybe. Cathy found a tape. I was attacked by the convict but just gave him all my handgun bullets, 5/6 were left. We went deeper into forest and found two bullets and two medkits, a picture of a couple and fought the big zombie.

The Church was the last of the mundane locations; Cathy spoke to the nurse, then went with Royce and got imprisoned by priest. I gave the picture to the man and received the lab location. We eventually got out of the fight in here. We had generated 7 noise tokens and for a moment I had thought we had to fight an undead wrestler but in fact we received a stroke of luck and nothing happened,

The Laboratory came next and Cathy received a scientist ally after fighting off some zombies with the help of Trapper. Royce got the antidote, which was a relief as we now had 3 girls we thought were Marcy who each had one infection token. I took both tapes and spent some time listening to both of them. We were able to rule out Hotel Marcy right there but did not have the other Marcy one of the tapes referred to.

Royce finally got to go to the Bunker and we had less than 10 TU left. We had every code crossed off, with the scientist with Cathy eliminating two and the other two codes we read were old somewhere (we checked the base cards and they were indeed months old). Myself and Royce unlocked the last Marcy who was referred to in the second tape. Cathy operated radio and lost 5 TU, then I reminded them of the +3TU token we got in Asylum which we used and then lost another 5TU, bringing us to 0 left. With our last action we read the correct one and received the state token required to get onto helipad.

Run #2

Same set up except this time we chose to start in the Police Station, finding one Marcy and everything else here. Neither the Church nor the High School were essential as we had the map tokens from last time so we skipped those entirely. We then went to the Forest and got the other correct Marcy girl. The Lab allowed us to get the scientist again and get the antidote. The City Entrance wasn't mandatory, Royce was against it but I wanted the convict after having skipped past his two ambush attempts. The Bunker was our last stop before the Hotel and Helipad and we got another Marcy for the laugh and the correct radio transmission.

In the Hotel we skipped past the Marcy there, into the lift and checked out the two rooms properly. I had the adult magazine from the last run so unlocked the safe which contained a note eliminating the Police Station Marcy, leaving just Forest Marcy. The Helipad beckoned and I gleefully flung the scientist at the zombie horde and we used the jury-rigged rocket to signal the attention of the helicopter. We handed them the Forest Marcy and won the game.

This being our second run we received 40 MP and 17 more for having that many TU left, allowing us to choose the pink token for the first time and a blue token to replace the one we lost from before. We still had the green token from last time. Cathy was excellent and on-form as the journalist lady, constantly moving toward things that appeared to require investigation while Royce jumped toward combat, having all the close combat dice. Having played it before I knew it was Forest Marcy from the beginning but insisted that we check everywhere and everything. I'm glad I didn't have to veto the River as the others did it out of hand as being too far away. Cathy did say we should just go there and check it out which we never got around to doing. They took TU loss seriously. We were a bit more liberal with guns but altogether clocked up a total of 10 noise tokens roughly, 7 and then like 3. We were lucky not to have met a horde or any other distractions in the Street encounters. I showed them afterward how brutal the River can be. Onward to the Prophecy of Dragons, maybe in another month or so. The other expansion is out already I think too.

Marcy Case still the best but there were a lot of things about Asylum I loved (and some things I hated).

Reviews of some shite I've enjoyed/hated over the last few months #6 T.I.M.E Stories The Asylum

Cathy chose to be anxious girl, Royce picked the bitter old lady and I chose the erotic lady. We found everything we needed in the Day Room, notably the painting being a big hint later on. We went to the promenade first and Cathy received a croquet mallet after a game went awry while myself and Royce couldn’t do much with the locked gate and the strange dancing man.

The dormitory came next and Royce released the man in the bed and fought him to death, I looked out the window overlooking the park and Cathy acquired a load of items from the lockers.

In the infirmary we were told to go see Dr. Hyacinth and one of the nurses asked us to meet her in the Dormitory. Royce of course got embroiled in the male orderly attentions, so I saved him from that. We went there first and got her items then went to the good doctor who led us through a tunnel to the Park.

In the Park Royce got in a fight with a man with a gun, Cathy inspected a kiosk and I found the greenhouse. Cathy received the gun for helping defeat the man attacking Royce. In the greenhouse I fought the Manticore, Cathy discovered a hidden item and Royce discovered the dead body with another item.

We elected to go to the catacombs next and bypassed the gate with the pentagram and instead ended up stuck in the labyrinth or whatever followed by the tomb and dead end. This was roughly where we timed out.

Second run: It was lightning fast except our going to the man who wanted the plunger. Cathy chose to be the cannibal girl instead of the anxious girl second time around but myself and Royce stayed put. I knew about the plunger from the other guys talking about it but elected to say nothing and we lost time but we were flying it. We decided to fight the doctor this time and thus got stuck doing the long tunnel to the park but from there we went to the greenhouse then back into the catacombs eventually and found the gate with the pentagrams. We felt stuck right there and then as we had done absolutely everything until we eventually figured out the riddle.

This brought us to the final section which was also easy to resolve as we glided past the encounter or two and had just the right thing to get a mission successful after choosing not to assist the demonic girl with her ritual.

We received 30 points for completing it on our second run and had 3 time units to spare for a closing score of 33, making us first class agents. We got the blue and green tokens and all agreed that it was excellent. Cathy was brilliant, helping me manage the cards and whatnot and remembered where almost everything was. Royce was also a really good player as he was enjoying every minute of it.

Definitely better than Prophecy of Dragons, I loved the creepy artwork and setting. The characters were really cool too. We’re going to play MARCY Case tomorrow morning hopefully so I’ll have to keep mum about which is the right one. When we find one she’ll probably die within a few turns anyway without the antidote. If Cathy and Royce are as good as they were today at looking for every single hint and clue and exploring every option and location we should make it after a few runs.

For my amusement #2 Judgement Day 2016 Day of Reckoning 1

Cao Cao vs Caflena (c) Women's Championship 4:04

Cao made a hugely spirited effort to take the championship clean but Caflena got herself disqualified by attacking the referee with a Caflenafaction.

Freaks! vs Outsiders (c) Tag Championship 12:12

ET and Blackjaw fought a highly technical battle before Oz was tagged in and dealt a lot of damage to ET. Big Boy Joe was tagged in and managed to fight back the Outsiders' efforts. ET was tagged back in and failed to capitalise on the champions but Joe eventually managed to wear down Blackjaw and forced him to tap out.

Nulk Wulken vs. The Goldsmith (c) (w/ Killalot 2.0) Intercontinental Championship 3:46

Nulk tried to fight the Golden wrestlers but was completely overwhelmed as 2.0 took advantage of the limited rules and stayed in the ring, allowing the Heartbreaksmith to get the pin.

Harpo vs. The Blacksmith (c) Earth Championship 4:15

The first of the two major title bouts, Blacksmith attempted to fight the King of the Ring but was dominated early on. An early leg drop weakened the iron man and left him pliable to a number of clown up combinations. The champion was finally pinned and Harpo gained his third world championship.

Optimus Prime vs. Adolf Hitler (c) US Championship 2:55

Though hotly favoured to win, the Fuhrer was outmatched by the very on-form Transformer who dealt out three Autobot Piledrivers and managed to win.

YUGOSLAVIA vs. The Aryan (c) European Championship 1:00

Once again the highly technical champion was tipped to win but the 'gigantic dinosaur who happens to wrestle' defeated the Aryan by drawing him out of the ring and defeated him by countout, winning the European Championship and depriving the Nazi Empire of all the gold.

Savage-Feaster vs. Black Attack! (c) Hardcore Championship 2:40

S-F broke every single item he could off Black Attack! and used a brass knuckle attack to almost defeat the champion but was ultimately counted out in a surprise swerve.

Waste vs. The Blacksmith (c) Necut Championship 15:00

Two early Brainbuster DDTs netted two early wins for Waste, while four Jackhammers by Blacksmith left the score at 2:1 to Waste three minutes in. Seven minutes in Blacksmith managed to equalise and looked good until Waste bounced back utilising a Freakish Elbow and a simple headlock submission, leaving it at 5:3 to Waste. Blacksmith recovered with a sharpshooter on Waste to bring it to 5:4 at ten minutes in.

Multiple German suplexes on the outside led to a DQ and a countout bringing it to 5:6 to Waste. Blacksmith managed to get Waste counted out bringing it to 6:6 with only three minutes left to go. A freakish elbow brought Waste to 7:6 but Blacksmith levelled it again with another sharpshooter.

Blacksmith pulled ahead with around a minute to by executing the Jackhammer and Waste brought it to 8:8 with half a minute to go and almost managed to knock out Blacksmith to win but botched the finish by attempting to pin him, resulting in a draw. There was talk of screwing Blacksmith out of the title afterward, it's all very confused at the moment.

Reviews of some shite I've enjoyed/hated over the last few months #5 T.I.M.E Stories The Marcy Case and Prophecy of Dragons

The Marcy Case

I had the opportunity to play this a few months ago at my brother's house. The other two guys plus my brother played the Asylum one first then when I was over at some point they offered to bring me in as the new green agent for The Marcy Case!

I had no idea what I was getting into when the board was being set up and the lovely colourful pieces were brought out and the base cards were laid down in panorama.

The Marcy Case started out with zombies! This was a major surprise to the others who had played Asylum first and myself too I guess - it was not foreshadowed at all - save the girl save the world.

The artwork is gorgeous. From the base cards to 1992 in Wisconsin the game was beautifully presented. It had a very The Walking Dead Vol 1 feel to it.

Mechanics were lovely and simple, 1 Time Unit to move, take a test to potentially do nothing but as the timer is going down every turn planning is vital.

Tests were really cool, combat skills were there but I enjoyed the use of the investigation skill, which is present in other games (Elder Signs comes to mind) but is perfect here as every card has flavour text.

One of my favourite aspects of the game was that everything mattered, every location we entered with three or four cards laid out in panorama meant one or two agents to a card to check out what it was. Clues, info, potential encounters with some form of reward for our time. This being a zombie apocalypse there were some areas where splitting up was not ideal - the chaotic hotel, police station and of course the forest - where various different things happened where being alone was not the best choice. We walked away from every encounter wondering what was next and more importantly wanting to find out what happened next.

We went in quite trope-savvy but the game threw enough curve balls at us to forget what kind of game we were playing. Every little clue mattered in the end and ultimately we failed one run by a particularly brutal noise encounter (I think we lost our last 10 TU in one go) and another run we had the wrong conclusion. I think we finished it on our third run, which was fairly hit the ground running and go again yet we still had to take our time doing certain parts. Note-taking became essential toward the end.

Prophecy of Dragons

I entered this one a bit more of a veteran. I had read a spoiler-free review which slated it but he liked T.I.M.E Stories generally so I tried to go in with no expectations. The base cards seemed to be a bit fudgier this time, it was a bit harder to take in that the King of Algueria needed to be reached, something about guilds and temporal faults as opposed to Marcy is important to history/the future, go get her.

We blazed past that into Algueria, a fantasy town layout greeted us on the locations map. We started in the bar and immediately tropes or trope aversion seemed to come into play - if something seemed scary, they're actually friendly and so on. This would come up again throughout. Almost straightaway we were being handed potential red herrings and threads of things we may never be able to fulfill, all with a paltry 25 TU to play with.

The Market seemed like a good second location to go to for the latest news and gossip and to relieve ourselves of the gold weighing us down. This came to pass but it felt too RPG/gamey - equip up now for the dungeon you know is coming. We were also told early on that three sigils would be needed to get into the castle so us being thorough we aimed to get them all (this was wise in the end).

Various people and cards (we were thorough so I think we 3 or 4 of a potential 6+) informed us they could get us to the castle. That was what we wanted to do ultimately but it felt too video gamey - the final boss/dungeon will wait there forever (OK, maybe not with TU involved) and here are several different ways of getting there, all into the inevitable funnel. It reminded me of Fallout: New Vegas where they provided 3-4 different ways to solve various quests (Ultra Luxe rescue quest: put Med-X in Wine, cook imitation human flesh, trap the chef in pantry, cause chef to have breakdown, cook human flesh yourself with high enough skills etc).

The result was only one choice mattered, making the other five kind of redundant. Different yes, but ultimately redundant.

We had the brother/sister thief/assassin combo, the dwarf (and later the paladin instead) and I was the cleric. This informed our choice of 'funnel' as we went for the thieves guild route, which we ran out of time doing. We also lacked the lockpicking kit and vowed to pick up that and every random tool and utility we could from the various merchants (looking at you cat man).

So we grabbed all the tools, the three sigils, breezed through thief route to castle and came up to the three portals. We lost time doing one and were left with less than 10 TU so we were glad the second one was right but almost drowned getting there. Luckily one of us had bought the water-breathing potion and found a no-kidding convector which brought out TU right back to 30+. We had to spend our blue token of +3 TU to make all that happen. The second half of the game commenced and we broke up for a few days, arranging to meet again 4 days later to finish the game.

On reuniting we immediately tore into the castle and were still left wanting for challenge. We eased through the library and the archives and then the banquet hall without spending too many TU - I encountered a particularly annoying time sink in the banquet hall, it was cute and different little trap but it felt more like a nuisance than a proper terrifying. Some more red herrings were collected on the way. W proceeded to the guard room and sure enough that was the path to the final encounter.

The final encounter was different for us and challenging but not crippling. We decided to start around the edges and took out some of the other henchmen before tackling the main boss. This turned out to be a mistake but we didn't cop that until the final challenge. It was mentioned in the archive and perhaps at the very start if the mission to watch out for temporal faults and what not but we thought little of it until that real pain of a final challenge. We only had myself as the cleric and our paladin equipped with a magic-enabling item to roll on the final test which just felt needlessly brutal. Sure enough we failed after some tremendous Murphy's Law lessons learned. We all felt out of steam and pissed afterward, unlike Marcy Case where it was like 'let's look at all the clues this time and get it right' we just felt dejected. It was all down to chance and the dice, which sucked.

We BLAZED through the last run we did in about 30 minutes or less, getting right back up to the final boss who we killed outright and then completed the final challenge with some careful magic rolls from our paladin. We had burned up every single reward token in the prior run and were legitimately pissed and just burnt out at the end - glad to be finished but it had none of the satisfaction of the Marcy Case.

There was no riddle as in Asylum (I look forward to playing that with my group) or investigation and sense of danger in the Marcy Case. The first half in the town just felt light on plot and flavour. There were people telling us about the dragons coming to destroy us all and whatnot and the artwork is GORGEOUS, my gods it's such a pretty game but damn it had none of the punch of TMC or even the Asylum. I haven't played the latter one yet but I will in about two weeks and I'll make my mind up but I can foretell it'll probably be Marcy>Asylum>Prophecy.

For My Amusement #1 : CAW Survivor Series 2015 results (delayed)

I was playing a bit of WWE: Day of Reckoning 1 over the last few weeks and I decided to amuse myself by making a few PPV cards and playing through them. Some of the 'feuds' emerged somewhat naturally from my own imagination but also from what happened in a few playtest matches here and there and I decided to build on them into a storyline.

Survivor Series 2015

The Pincer Memorial Survivor Series has most of the golden 16 participating as usual.

1. The Blacksmith vs. Harpo

Despite the best efforts of the World Champion B'Smith, Harpo dominated the opening match and went on to snatch the victory after the Clown Up Combination.

2. BBJ vs Caflena

Once again the favourite going into the match was crushed, with BBJ forcing Caflena to tap out.

3. Disciple vs. Adolf Hitler

The Raw General Manager A-H was not the favourite going into this match up and a spirited Disciple landed the 450 and sealed a win.

4. Oz v.s ET

A huge disparity in size marked this match up and ET was very unlucky in being unable to outreach the great lumbering Oz. A number of Jackknife power bombs sent ET to the ER.

5. Savage-Feaster vs. The Goldsmith

The debut of the Savage did not help him and Goldsmith proved to be too cool, landing numerous Golden Chokeslams.

6. Cao-va vs. Killalot 2.0

This could have gone either way but 2.0 defeated Cao on all fronts to seal a win with the Torture Rack.

7. Aryan vs. Nulk Wulken

The reigning European Champion Aryan attempted to go far in this competition but was unlucky to draw the strongest man in the world and lost to Nulk.

8. Black Attack! vs. Blackjaw

Arguably the best match in the qualifiers, it went back and forth for over 10 minutes with Blackjaw almost beaten by the Black Claw and the Bear Hug but he managed to rally and drop the Steel Edge and win.

9. Harpo vs. BBJ

Once again the legendary clown dominated the bout though BBJ gave a good bit of resistance before succumbing to the leg drop.

10. Disciple vs. Oz

Speed once again went down to raw power as Oz defeated Disciple.

11. Goldsmith vs. Killalot

There were suspicions that HBS would walk over his junior partner in the former Smith Alliance but 2.0 lifted him for the Torture Rack and won.

12. Nulk vs. Black Attack!

Power met power and incredibly the oil man continued to impress after defeating the strongest man.

13. Harpo vs. Oz

Though he looked strong going into the bout Oz quickly gave into the power of the Clown Up Combination.

14. Killalot vs. Black Attack!

An energetic display by the steel man was simply not enough with 2.0 falling to the oil man after a long match.

15. Harpo vs. Black Attack!

Bloodied and exhausted, the two finalists faced each other and hopes for an epic final match were dashed when Harpo continued to steam roll while the oil man would have to fight for every advantage and would ultimately lose to the clown.

Iggy Pop - Sunday | #PostPopDepression

February Post

Itzacon was very good, better than Warpcon. The games were miles better anyway, was too tired to go out. Definitely next time. I have been to Itzacon 1,2,3,5,6,7,8,10 and 12.

Nice to go out canvassing. Strong hope for a modern candidate, not more of the same from Galway West.

No luck with job search, we'll have to start again in earnest at the beginning of March.

Writing course is fine, not exceptional but I guess I had no expectations.

Theo is doing well;

End of report.