In Progress Let's Play Vengeance of the Blood Angels

[Darth Roxor]

- wait, nevermind. He’s dead. Another ‘Stealer swaggers up to our champion and smacks his shit around till he’s putty. The thing about toting around the Tent Pole of the Gods below your belt is that it tends to get in the way when you’re throwing down with aliens learned in the way of the fist.

... the friendly fire flying his way probably didn't help much either

 

[lightbane]

You're certainly trying, perhaps a bit too hard, to make the experience seem less boring. Watch out with burning up.
Speaking of: Killed Termies seemingly go up in flames or explode. Can this damage you if you're close enough? Perhaps that was what triggered the bombs due RNG fucking you over.

 

[Axe Father]

... the friendly fire flying his way probably didn't help much either

I'm not even sure there is friendly fire. I haven't talked about it yet but the bar in the lower right of the screen is called Attrition. It's a mix of health and stamina. It goes down when you fight in close combat and get hit with ranged weapons, and recharges when you aren't under attack. From what I can see friendly fire has no effect on it. Once again the manual doesn't offer much help.

You're certainly trying, perhaps a bit too hard, to make the experience seem less boring. Watch out with burning up.
Speaking of: Killed Termies seemingly go up in flames or explode. Can this damage you if you're close enough? Perhaps that was what triggered the bombs due RNG fucking you over.

Yeah, I know I'm laying it on thick. Sorry about that, I'm just trying to make it entertaining. I'll ease back if its more annoying than funny. As for exploding Terminators, it seems to be just cosmetic. I did learn a few other interesting things from the manual, however. One is that the meter with the skull and wings on the map screen is experience, and your guys get more skilled as they survive missions. The other is that you can tell which missions will reinforce your squad upon completion by looking at the colour of the extraction zone. If it's yellow, you'll get reinforcements on the next mission.

 

[baud]

You're certainly trying, perhaps a bit too hard, to make the experience seem less boring. Watch out with burning up.
Speaking of: Killed Termies seemingly go up in flames or explode. Can this damage you if you're close enough? Perhaps that was what triggered the bombs due RNG fucking you over.

Yeah, I know I'm laying it on thick. Sorry about that, I'm just trying to make it entertaining. I'll ease back if its more annoying than funny. As for exploding Terminators, it seems to be just cosmetic. I did learn a few other interesting things from the manual, however. One is that the meter with the skull and wings on the map screen is experience, and your guys get more skilled as they survive missions. The other is that you can tell which missions will reinforce your squad upon completion by looking at the colour of the extraction zone. If it's yellow, you'll get reinforcements on the next mission.

well, at least I'm entertained (the bit about the 'nids setting down for BBQ was fun, as were all the innuendos the previous update).

 

[Andnjord]

You're certainly trying, perhaps a bit too hard, to make the experience seem less boring. Watch out with burning up.
Speaking of: Killed Termies seemingly go up in flames or explode. Can this damage you if you're close enough? Perhaps that was what triggered the bombs due RNG fucking you over.

Yeah, I know I'm laying it on thick. Sorry about that, I'm just trying to make it entertaining. I'll ease back if its more annoying than funny. As for exploding Terminators, it seems to be just cosmetic. I did learn a few other interesting things from the manual, however. One is that the meter with the skull and wings on the map screen is experience, and your guys get more skilled as they survive missions. The other is that you can tell which missions will reinforce your squad upon completion by looking at the colour of the extraction zone. If it's yellow, you'll get reinforcements on the next mission.

well, at least I'm entertained

Likewise. I am perfectly content with the level and quantity of the humour

 

[Darth Roxor]

I'll ease back if its more annoying than funny.

dont you dare

 

[Darth Roxor]

oi

 

[Andnjord]

oi

 

[Darth Roxor]

 

[Andnjord]

They've won.

 

[abnaxus]

 

[Andnjord]

Since Axe Father asked about Cursed City previously, I thought I'd repost this:

The level ups are a nice addition to the game, providing a steady growth to your characters unlike Blackstone Fortress where it was far too easy to get them permanently inspired once you found the toon specific objects. The day/night cycle is great as a way to add pressure to each expedition, so is the the Fear mechanic for long term fail state. And the overall mechanics of Warhammer Quest are still fun, no need to change anything there.

BUT! I liked Blackstone Fortress far more for a few reasons:
-First the prevalence of ranged combat made you use terrain and positioning far more deliberately, in Cursed City it devolves often into charge-smash-move on. So I feel like combat is less tactical.

-In BF, for each expeditions you had several short combat scenarios that would be over in about 30 minutes. Then take a breath, draw the next expedition card and hold your breath at what the result would be. For Cursed City, each expedition is essentially one long combat scenario where you're constantly fighting, or rather grinding your way through endless (more on that later) hordes of not very dangerous mooks. This rapidly gets exhausting and frankly tedious. Most mooks die super quickly, and it's usually a binary 'I SMASH' or you're caught flat footed and 'I GOT SMASHED', with very little granularity in between.

-About the endless hordes: in BF for each combat scenario you'd draw the encounter deck at the start, then you'd ocasionaly reinforce the bad guys from that deck. Reinforcements were on a 1-6 on a d20, so usually once you'd killed all the initial monsters you were in the clear, and the enemy group would only reinforce fully on a 6 if my memory is correct. In Cursed City every time you wipe out a group you draw a new encounter card from the deck and spawn them right away. As I've said that monsters die really quickly and the combat scenarios are very long...this means you'll usually get through the entire encounter deck for each expedition, meaning you're almost guaranteed to fight every.single.possible.encounter. Every.single.expedition. Sometimes more than once if you're taking a long time to complete the scenario's objective. Having to fight every single boss every time completely ruined them for me. To be effective, the bosses rely on their synergies with specific mooks that need to be around them, but as you're drawing their cards randomly in most scenarios, they don't get those synergies going and thus they become pushovers, typically dying in a single round once your toons get their hands on them. Except for Radukar, but it feels really dumb encountering him all the time straight from level one and caving his face in regardless. He's more threatening that the others, but not enough to make you really want to avoid him either. Just a bigger speedbump than the others.

-That being said, combat scenarios are divided into two types: the generic ones that have all the problems mentionned above, and the headhunt ones, specificaly designed for each boss. The later ones are a ton of fun, showing that the basic mechanics are still fun in the right cicumstances, but whoever designed the mechanics for the generic ones should get his ass fired from GW. As a result of this, my friend and I decided we'll skip the generic scenarios (you're supposed to reach a certain level before tackling each boss) when we'll get back into it. This breaks the Fear mechanic, but fuck slogging again through one of the generic scenarios.

TLDR: A good game buried under the pile of shit that are the generic scenarios. Blackstone Fortress was much better.

Miniatures are gorgeous though, definitely got my money's worth in that regard.