Bootlegging and Ancient Ones!

            Well I suppose I am going to christen this blog with my firs Thursday Report! Every Thursday a few friends and I get together to play a game or two. Usually we break out one of our long winded Role-Playing campaigns but on nights like tonight we change it up and play a board game. Tonight we had the chance to play one and I will give you a rundown of what happened. I am going to try not to make this a review as I am saving that for Review Wednesdays. I want Thursday Reports to be more of taste of what my games are like. Expect short easy to ride but hopefully exciting stories of my endeavors here so here it goes.

            Our first game tonight was the Fantasy Flight game Elder Sign. This is more a less a lighter version of the bestselling game from the same company Arkham Horror. In Elder Sign you take on the role of a prohibition era average Joe or Jane who must use every tool available to stop an ancient evil being from gaining access and devouring our world.

            With the game in place we selected our character. We had Monterey Jack the Archaeologist who can attain the sought after Unique Items with ease. Joe Diamond the private eye with special hunches that tip odds. Sister Mary a nun whose faith protects her from the guile of evil and yours truly as Dexter Drake a stage magician with more than just a card up his sleeve. And standing against us was the powerful Yog-Sothoth the ancient god who watches over the passages between worlds.

            In a nutshell we had this game beat by turn two. The object is to collect Elder Signs (represented by tokens) before the ancient being awakens lest we have to face him in battle. We take turns going around a museum completing various tasks and adventures by rolling special six sided dice or d6. These dice have symbols on them which the players must match to the symbols on the adventures and tasks. Doing so yields items, spells, and the powerful Elder Sign. Failure usually harms the characters sanity, stamina or even bringing the ancient one closer to awakening in our world.

            So by turn two we had over half the signs we need with only two of the dreaded Doom Tokens on the ancient one’s track. Toward turn three though we ran into some trouble. Nearly all the adventures on the board had monster upon them. These tokens present additional challenges added to the ones we must already conquer to gain Elder Signs. Luckily with a clever play of few spells we were able to manipulate the dice to our favor and ultimately come out on top and victorious.

            Absolutely one of the most exciting games I have played of Elder Sign. The game presents a unique kind of tension that it hard to explain to incredibly addictive. They do a really great job of making you feel like average people with the potential to do great things, when you see that last Elder Sign laid down you can’t help but to cheer. This is a game everyone should try once. I wish I had more time to go into more depth but I plan on hitting more of that in my review. Look out for more of this in the near future.

Good Gaming Everybody!