Team South aka SAGE

[Rolf]

Welcome to the official thread of SAGE (South Area Gaming Enthusiasts)


Our name:
Formerly known as Team South, this informal group was formed so that tabletop gamers who live south of the big city could have a regular gaming fix to supplement the once-a-month OGM.  However, we also welcome gamers irrespective of their location. 


Our base of operations:
Unfortunately, at this time we don't have a fixed venue for gaming, so everything is pretty much scheduled on the fly, and is subject to people's schedules/availability.  Details are posted in this thread of course.


Our badge:
We don't have an official badge yet, but we are looking for a mascot who will work for free and looks good in a French maid outfit.


Our motto:
To boldly go - no wait, that's taken.  Suggestions welcome



edit Jan. 25 2009 - renamed thread to include SAGE
edit Feb. 05 2009 - moved to Clubs, Groups & Communities section and changed opening description

[Victor Kh'BaHzur]

I'm good to go.

   Just txt me if you still want to meet.  I can bring Navia Dratp if you haven't tried it yet (we can park ourselves at the Hobbes and Landes there )

Darth V

[kantoboy]

ahhh...not today for me. next time.

[Rolf]

Vlad texted last night, he's still trying to work his sked around.  Sadly there's no contact info for dmnyo...

[Rolf]

Vlad texted - he's good to go.  Will wait for other replies here for the next hour, then will coordinate with you guys via text ok?

[Gerald]

How'd your meet go guys?  Kwento naman!   

[vladsee]

There were only 4 of us who were there - Vlad (thats me), Rolf, Vic and Miko.  Rolf, Vic and I met at ATC first for lunch at a Japanese resto before proceeding to Rolf's house.  I brought the games namely I'm the Boss, Modern Art, Settlers of Catan, Arkham Horror and Descent for us to have options on what to play.  We decided to play Descent.  Miko joined us for that game which lasted the whole afternoon until I had to leave around 6pm.

It was more of a "learning game".  It was only my 3rd try at the game while it was the first time for the other guys.  Despite having tried it twice before, it happened around Dec last year and I can barely remember the rules.  I never got to finish it even then and committed a lot of mistakes too.  At least for the game last Sat, setup and gameplay went slightly faster thanks to the plastic trays which organized the hundreds of markers and counters and my vague recollection of the gameplay, mechanics and the board setup. 

As I expected, we only cleared out the first room and ended the game there.  I can say that I have a better grasp of the rules now and can run a faster and smoother game especially with vic, rolf and miko if given another go at it. 

My comments on Descent....

Descent is truly a "gamer's" game and may not be suitable for casual gamers.  The rules are heavy and takes time to digest.  The gameplay will probably take half day at least to complete a dungeon.  At its most basic - its purely a dungeon crawl.  One guy has to be the overlord, an evil dungeon master whose sole aim is to destroy the Players by sending the various monsters and traps in the dungeon at the player's way.  The other players are the adventuring heroes whose goals is to kill the monsters and loot the treasure. The game gives you 20 pre generated characters to choose from all of whom have different skills and powers.  This may appeal to D&D fans who don't care for the roleplaying.   

The action is non-stop as soon as the players enter.  Its combat all the way and the bulk of the rules are geared towards fighting, moving and exploring your way in the dungeon.  The only break players take is when the overlord decides not to spawn any nasty creatures that time or saves the devious traps, curses and dark charms for later.  Players also take a break when they teleport back to town by activating the glyphs found in the dungeon and do some "shopping" of weapons, skills and potions.  Otherwise, its hack and slash all the way to the final boss encounter at the end.   

I would like to play it again and to finish at least the starter dungeon this time around.  I'm also interested in getting the expansion - Road to Legend as this allows a campagin type of game compared to a single dungeon crawl adventure of the basic game.

Rolf, Vic, Miko... would be interested in getting your feedback too! 

Vlad

ps.  Thanks especially to Rolf for providing the venue and to all the guys for giving it a try and their paitience during the game.     

           

[Victor Kh'BaHzur]

Okay, the subject line is from the wrong era, but it fits!

   First off, I'd like to thank Rolf for being the gracious and generous host of Team South's first game meet.

   Thanks also to Vlad for bringing his games.  Even though we were only able to play  Descent, the option to play other games was nice.

   Warning: this post is long and rambling... if you can actually read what I've posted all the way to the end, then give yourself 100 exp!


DECISIONS
   
   Having met up at ATC, we convoyed to Rolf's house.  Rolf had a table that was just  perfect for tabletop gaming - a long table that was flanked by plain, no-back, benches on either side of the long sides of the table (ah, brings back memories of public high school life).  Vlad brought out the games he had brought, which were: Descent, Arkham Horror, Modern Art, Settlers of Catan, and I'm the Boss.

   I had brought Navia Dratp, and the two cheese wheels... er... Express games.  I just realized that we should've had a photo op of all the games brought then.  Oh well... next time then.

   Rolf was interested in playing Arkham Horror, but Vlad's copy was still pristine - none of the game pieces have been punched out!  And the thought of all the game pieces just rattling about in the box afterwards didn't sit well with any of us.  Vlad suggested that we might as well try out Descent and we were game.


SETUP

   The game box is humogous!  That alone would intimidate the faint of heart.  But being staunch gamers, we soldiered on.  As the game pieces were being set up (prompting Rolf to utter "we're going to fight all that?!" when he saw how many monster pieces there were), we waxed nostalgic about D&D (specifically the boxed sets - of which I have 4 of the 5, minus the boxes they came in).

   Since there was only three of us, Vlad was to play the Overlord and suggested that we play 2 characters each.  Having never played the game, and my experience in Runebound being a distant memory, I just picked two babes - one that looked like she was strong in magic (Andria Runehand), and the other in melee/range (Lyssa).

   Rolf had beaten me to the Chun-Li lookalike (Red Shadow?), and his other character (Bogran?) was one that he seemed a bit familiar with (he has the interesting ability of getting additional damage if he can attack an enemy where he starts out of sight of the enemy's line of sight - basically he "pops in" to attack).

   We randomly picked the abilities of each character, and Red Shadow got a familiar - a rat.  He should've called it Remy, but I don't think he's watched Ratatouille. :p

   We then equipped them as best we could, although I had actually wasted money on Lyssa by acquiring a weapon that I wouldn't use.

   Vlad explained to us the turn sequence of each player, and then the options when we chose to "ready" a character - frankly a reference card would've done wonders.

   I think it was at this point that Rolf exclaimed "Tara, let's play D&D na lang!", and I can't really blame him since the complexity at the start can (and will most likely) turn away those less dedicated.

   Miko, Rolf's friend, showed up and he got to use Bogran.  I decided to keep playing 2 characters since I felt we needed all the help we could get.

   From there Vlad read us the introductory story (made him feel like a DM reading from a module) - something to do with getting some thing or other from a giant (I don't think any of us were really paying attention).  Choosing our marching order (Red, Lyssa, Andira, Bogram), we started the game.


GAMEPLAY

   For this adventure, the dungeon was composed of 6 rooms, with five of the rooms identical - a 6x6 grid square area with passages sprouting from the middle of a side and was 2 grid squares wide.  The final room was the boss room and it was much maybe around 10x10 grid square area (not that we ever reached it).  The rough map looked like this:

▓        ↑
    │          N
▓─▓
  ││ │           
□─▓─▓─▓
  │

   The dungeon entrance was at the West most part of the map.  I'm not sure if the map is supposed to be shown immediately or if it's built as you travel along (as based on my one experience playing DOOM: The Boardgame).  I just assumed that the rough layout of the dungeon was shown to us in the introductory story.

   Spawning from the start glyph, Red opened the dungeon entrance and stepped inside.  The first room had a pit in the middle of the room, and rubble to the north of the pit.  There was also a beastman waiting east of the pit!  Red's rat skirted the rubble and encountered another beastman on the northern side passage - thankfully the rat was immune to any monster attack, and was primarily used for reconnissance.  This prompted me to play the FF7 battle music from my phone.

   Since my memory of what happened each turn is rather hazy, I'll just summarize what happened in that room.  We were able to kill the 2 initial beastmen even as 2 more beastman and a skeleton archer revealed themselves.

   As we defeated one of the new beastmen and the skeleton, the Overlord was able to take control of Red for one turn.  Red stabbed Lyssa bringing Lyssa's Life down to 2 points (I had forgotten to use Lyssa's ability of forcing a re-roll of one of the dice)!

   The Overlord also spawned 2 hellhounds, and although we were able to take care of the remaining beastman and one of the hellhounds, the other hellhound was able to attack and Lyssa was killed.

   Spawning in Town, she joined the group as it polished off the surviving hellhound, so she promptly ran to the treasure chest that was found at the northern side passage in order to open it.  Red was able to loot a health potion from one of the beastmen.

   The game actually ground to a halt the moment we got to open the first treasure chest.  We couldn't find any rules regarding the equipping of the runes (the treasure) and even though Rolf did a quick check on the internet, we ended up having to just discuss the possible logic of its use.

   Now that we were equipped with runes, we were able to storm the second room.  There were 2 beastmen waiting and the Overlord spawned 2 magic users.  It didn't take us long to polish them off.

   Being wounded yet again, Lyssa went to Town to replenish her lost HP, and Bogran decided to go to Town as well.  Since Red needed to exchange items with Bogram, she too entered the town glyph, leaving Andira and the rat.

   The game stopped again when we were in Town, again there was no rules regarding selling items back to the town.  Rolf recalled reading an errata regarding the selling of the treasure found (the rules stated it was worth 500 coins, but the errata brought it down to 250).  Although the assumption was that all items sold would be half the price listed on the item card, I countered that it wouldn't work for items that were worth 25 gold, since there were no 10 or 5 gold denominations (only 25, 100, & 300).

   Having sold items and replenished stock (I bought 2 more health potions for Lyssa), we were ready to go back into the dungeon.

   It was at this point that Vlad had to leave since he needed to be at Makati by 7pm.


COMMENTS/OBSERVATIONS

   As we started the game, I commented that it reminded me of a previous observation I  had of another Fantasy Flight game, namely Runebound.  Both games are sorely in need  of a quick reference sheet/card.  Then again, Fantasy Flight is not the only one guilty of  this, Formula De also needs a quick reference sheet/card - something I should work on prior to the upcoming OGM.

   Although I do agree with Vlad that it will appeal to D&D fans, you can still roleplay the  characters.  In fact, without really slipping into an obvious roleplay mode, Rolf, Miko, and I  were doing minor roleplaying already - with Miko the most obvious in the way he moved Bogram - he avoided direct combat as much as possible.

   Despite the fact that we didn't get to play far in Descent, I enjoyed it far more than Runebound, and I too would love to finish the adventure.  Alas, once I start working, my only free time will be Sundays.  At least I've gotten another game notched into my belt.



   I'd like to suggest that in future Team South game meets, the participants pool their  resources to purchase refreshements/chips  (this is actually a practice that Tobie's  gaming group, TROPA, does every time they have a gaming session).    Admittedly, I didn't  have any spare cash to contribute then (ah, the perils of being a free-lance artist), so kudos to Rolf for treating us out for merienda (might as well applaud him for it  ).


Darth V

[kantoboy]

sounds like fun. sayang, i couldnt join. I have all the expansions of descent except for road to legend. 

[Brel]

Thanks for sharing some info of your gaming session!  I've been wanting to play Descent but it seems the long playing time keeps me from trying it out.  This is one of the reasons we now rarely play Runebound.

Anyways, the expansion to "Descent" which is "Road To Legend" will hopefully give a solution to this.  I read somewhere that the expansion will somewhat allow you to "save" the status of a game. 

[kantoboy]

with much much smaller dungeons. i heard each dungeon is at most an hour or two long.

[Rolf]

I'm really grateful to you guys for coming. With all the overtime I've been doing, I was burning out and needed a break. Thanks a bunch I actually came from work that morning and had only had about 2-3 hours sleep the night before.

Will post more later...

[dmnyo]

sorry bout not updating my contact info lol. lets play next time or whatever! ill put my number in.

[vladsee]

Maybe its time to have another Team South Game Day?  Lets start talking about the date, time and venue... 

I'm usually free on the weekends.  However, I've got some wargame commitments this weekend on the 12th as well as wargame day later this month.  I guess depending on the wargame day I'm free on either the 19th or 26th. 

I can bring Descent and we can have another go at it.  I want to be the player this time.  We can also finally try out GRIMM...

[Victor Kh'BaHzur]

Hi Vlad,

   I'm good for either dates, considering I'm pretty much free at the moment and looking at getting some part-time work (which is still up in the air).

   Whichever date we confirm, I'll bring the Runebound game just in case Caladan shows up.


Darth V
"I play NOT to win, but to have fun amongst friends..."