first impressions

[Kiddarqo]

Well, that's the first AToE game, we played with 6 people, I played as the villain( The Horseman), the rest played a team match.

1:playing as the villain
that worked pretty good, that was one aspect of the game that I found was missing, giving the villain a face, so I'll probably keep doing this in future games, throwing for the co-op mystery chart, then draw a mystery card + fighting random fights that occur during the game, enough stuff to do as a villain. In the beginning I drew 2 mystery cards, kept one than discarded the other one, later on we changed it back to just drawing one card.

2 : my first impression is a little mixed, some aspects i liked, other aspects i have a few questions. Is it normal that the hero's have a though time collecting investigation because I found myself using the basic rules instead of the co-op rules because of this, 2 investigation to look at a secret, just collecting investigation on the board and not do the check to see if you can collect them.

3:Another question is it normal for the hero's to get KO'd a lot, at one time there were 3 players at the town hall + a couple of times the newly revived hero's were immediately KO'd again by the horseman therefor losing most or all of their investigation, items and allies, stirring up some frustration with some players and then having to skip their hero turn because their KO'd again, The Emp really had a hard time getting anything done on the board due to this + he was throwing really bad dice results too, so that didn't help either. Is this villain related??

4: The showdown, it took about 4 hours before the first showdown, seems a long time, my shadow marker was only at 11, I didn't multiply my wounds for the villain cause it just sounded so insane, Horseman wounds 24 (team of 3 + some bonuses) and getting to throw 5 combat dice so I left it at 11 wounds. I had like no trouble KO-ing the Hero's one at the time, ok I lost the battle but had I used all the wounds I would have KO'd the hero's in the first round, leaving them to start all over again, is that normal??

I'm not saying I didn' like it because I think it's a little early to make a" it's good, it's bad comment" because we've just played one villain and we've got a lot of villains to get through.

Anyway, I would appreciate some feedback on this thread so I can compare our scenario with some others.
greets
Da Kid

[mqstout]

2: Yes, absolutely. Some heroes have crappy spirit/cunning to pick it up. Were you properly rewarding enough investigation, from fights, from mysteries, etc? I find the board is usually rather littered with it.
3: KOs happen a lot -- especially versus The Horseman, because of his Ride Into Town ability.
4: That's my biggest problem with ATOE is the game length is too long for me. It's especially bad when someone uses that event card that cancels a showdown once someone finally engages one (in a competitive game). I find it's usually the second person to go to showdown who kills the villain. The first one weakens him, the second one goes in and kills him. Thus, no one ever wants to be the first one in.

[gavindowning]

Personally, I prefer the cooperative play, and I'm perfectly happy letting the board be the villain, but if you had fun, that's awesome.

I also tend to see a LOT of investigation littering the board. I've run out of Investigation in previous games, many times.

I find that KOs tend to happen towards the beginning of the game, but as the heroes gain more strength, it happens less and less. It's not unheard of for someone to lose a turn or two in a row because of getting KOed, though it's really frustrating. If it happened more than a couple times in a row, that's theoretically possible, but I've never seen it. That could be the result of villain play, particularly if the villain is getting to attack every round.

In cooperative games, I usually find a well-prepared team can make mincemeat out of 24 wounds. Everyone takes a turn to wound the Horseman, and if he's rolling 5 combat dice, that doesn't seem like it should KO anyone in a single round. (Maybe if you're the werewolf, with the hits on 4+ instead of 5+.) I'm wondering if you were doing combat and showdowns properly for a cooperative game.

[Old Dwarf]

The Game Lenght of AToE goes up massively with 6 people,I really think 3 is the upper limit
for a reasonably timed Game.

Knock outs are common,sometimes they even work to your advantage.

As Mqstout says,usually Investigation points are not that hard to come by.

OD

[Emp]

I played as the "detective Crap" (or Cook..whatever his name is). We drew heroes so maybe I got a shitty one.
I found the game to be very very slow. Didn't get any investigation points due to the fact that I got KO'd every time I had to fight....and I had to fight practicly every time it was my turn.
At first I was "let's get this show on the road" and attacked some Hell Hounds (I think...anyways...they were dogs)...I died. Didn't know I could run away after I got chewed on twice. 2 Dice combat roll is nothing and if you roll bad then it is even less.
Then that damn horseman shows up and knocks me out on the road. I eventualy get up in his turn en he runs me down again.
So after that I decided to avoid fights and start getting some stuff.....every card I drew...yep, you guessed it......ghost soldiers, hell dogs.......sigh.


The board littered with points? I remember only of a total of 4 being on the board during the entire game.

And Cisco, I know...houserules...but I'm still not comfortable with the fact of someone playing the actual villain. Just seems wrong to me...and probably to some others playing at your house as well but they don't have such a big mouth like me
But it's your show bro, you need to do what you need to do.

Maybe I had bad luck, or maybe we just played the game wrong...I don't know but to be honest I'm not realy jumping to do it all again.
My girlfriend had more luck I guess because she had loads of investigation points.

[mqstout]

Try the game competitively. I find it a much better game that way. The cooperative game of ATOE just... doesn't work for me.

[Kiddarqo]

I just reread the rules again, as far I can tell we played correctly, putting investigations on the board, fighting, etc. It's been a couple of days now since the game and I have come to find that the big difference between LNOE and ATOE is that ATOE plays more like D&D, lots of dicerolling for checks and stuff, were as LNOE is right in your face, characters with health boxes and some special abilities and if you want to hit an enemy you go up to it and hit it, ATOE doesn't work like that, well not completely anyway. Maybe that's the reason why EMP doesn't like it that much, I tried to get him to play D&D a couple of times but it's just not his thing. I see that the new game fortune and glory follows more ATOE gameplay with lots of checks and dicerolling so it could be that people that don't like ATOE won't like F&G aswell, maybe, we"ll see, I don't wan't to make a generalisation here but it's just something that made a connection that's all.
Anywayz still looking forward to play the next ATOE game, different villain and maybe we'll try the competitive game mode and see how it goes.

and Empy, your honesty is your best quality and I always appreciate an honest opinion, so you don't like ATOE, so what plenty of games out there
online multiplayer on thursday??

[Emp]

You know if I got of from work in time I will be roaming the online world....to kick your butt or cover and save it from those nasty treasurehunters...who knows.