Saturday 10 October 2015

Thunderbirds are Gone

Friday. Andrew and Andy made it to my house (Sam) for some non-leaderboard games. Andrew missed the email about starting later, but that meant he got to watch some TV while I put the boys to bed.

When they were settled Andrew and I had some time before Andy arrived, so we played a quick game of Mr Jack Pocket, the simpler version of Mr Jack. The principle is the same; the detective tries to unmask Jack whilst Jack stays unmasked - but there are no special moves for the characters, and no escaping. Jack wins either by being in the dark 6 times or staying undetected til the end of the eight round. I managed the latter.

Whitechapel never looked so sinister

With Andy imminent we set up K2. We did have a look at the expansions but in the end it was pure laziness that made us go for the base game. Andy arrived with my beer - thanks Andy! - and after a brief refresher we set off from base camp. With Andrew's slowly-steady victory in the last game fresh in my mind, I hesitated slightly, but my innate sense of adventure and restless spirit took over me, and I surged ahead up the mountain, making it to just off the peak and setting up camp.

Andrew, yet to die

Unfortunately I then succumbed to the cold and expired. With Andy and Andrew now on the upper slopes it was looking like my expedition was ending in ignominy - thankfully for me one of Andrew's climbers bit the dust too, as Andy survived by the skin of his teeth. This is why it's much safer not to go climbing at all.

Andy 11
Sam 7
Andrew 5 (did make the summit at least, so died happy)

Andy had brought Thunderbirds with him, the co-operative game of trying to defeat the evil deeds of the Hood, a bad guy I can't help but picture in a hoodie. The quiz-show-ghost of Martin stepped forward: was it gold, or Kickstarter crap? Let's find out!

look at the size of that Thunderbird

The board is a map of the world and, similar to Pandemic, the players each have a role (one of the Tracys, or Lady Penelope) and they/we dash around trying to foil the Hood. Also like Pandemic, there is a deck of cards flipped over at the end of the round that is usually making a bad situation worse. We managed to see off quite a few disasters before The indefatigable Hood eventually won out, by sheer persistence really. You have to take your pointy-shaped hat off to him.

Dastardly

Motley

Verdict: it wasn't the ideal time for me to judge - I was flaking slightly and from my angle everything was upside down. I'm also not steeped in Thunderbirds history or theme, having only caught the show once or twice as a kid. To me it basically felt like a retheme of Pandemic, though - solid, but not particularly different. But it was fun to play whilst listening to the Thunderbirds theme tune...

Crablogger. What an embarrassing apocalypse.

2 comments:

  1. Usually, co-op games suffer from the most experienced player advising the other players about what to do. At least this time no one had played it before, so there wasn't much of that.

    It occurs to me with my dice-modifying abilities I should've been on danger-watch. When we lost I had +6 in modifiers, which is a bit of a waste. Also, were we too obsessed about getting everyone in the right place at the right time during the game? We could've probably chanced it a bit more in the early parts of the game.

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  2. Thanks for indulging me with Thunderbirds. I enjoyed it, even if it was a bit much to take in for a first play - the old problem with cards on the table that you can't really read from where you are sitting. We definitely made a mistake in not leaving someone within easy reach of space each turn, and with all of those +2 chits we should definitely have ensured that you were on disaster aversion each turn. Now I want to try it again!

    Thanks for putting the theme tune on, Sam, but shouldn't we come up with a longer soundtrack for future games?

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