Tag Archives: PC Games

GrogHeads Reviews One Deck Dungeon

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Small stature. Big fun? ~

Avery Abernethy, 1 August 2018

One Deck Dungeon is a simple one or two character dungeon exploration game.  The two character game can be played either cooperatively with another person or both run by the same individual.  The game centers around rolling a handful of color coded die to overcome encounters.  The more experience your character has the more dice they obtain and the more ways they have to increase die values, swap dice of different colors, or gain additional dice.

The game mechanics are simple.  You pick either one or two characters from five choices (Fighter; Mage; Thief; Paladin; Archer).   Each character has different starting attributes on four different variables (melee, magic, nimbleness and health).  Different colored dice represent each attribute.  Next you pick an opponent as the “boss” of the dungeon out of a set of choices.  Bosses are rated at different difficulty levels and each changes the characteristics of the overall dungeon challenges.

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What’s Gus Playing: Total War: Warhammer 2 Tomb Kings – Part 3

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Danger dwarf’s doldrums drag diffidently  ~

Lloyd Sabin, 16 July 2018

We have now entered the summer doldrums. How do I know this? Because I have become bored and restless with my current gaming. Roughly about 150 turns in to my Total War: Warhammer 2 campaign, and I began to lose interest. Why? Perhaps the units and setting are just a bit too fantastical to me. Or maybe it’s because I suck at the tactical battles. Or there is the chance that I have been playing fantasy games for the last 3-4 weeks and I just need something new. Most likely it is a combination of all these factors and more that have turned my Tomb Kings campaign in to a long slog, with an end in sight, but far away.

Well after a short siege of their fortress city called The Awakening, their garrison and one full stack of bloodsuckers came at me, and totally bitch-slapped me

The Tomb Kings are not recommended for new players, by the game itself, in the faction selection screen. I am not a new Total War player but I am new to Warhammer, so I suppose there are a lot of intricacies to the Tomb Kings that I need to brush up on. I liked what I saw during this campaign – but there was a ton of lore…a little overwhelming and a bit unforgiving. So this carried over in to the tactical battles. I never felt 100% confident in what I was doing and always felt I did not know the full capabilities of my lords or my troops. Not the fault of the game, but my own fault for not studying up enough.

At this point I had two of the five Books of Nagash I needed. I gathered three full-stack Tomb King armies and declared war on the Vampire Counts, and went straight for the jugular in an attempt to grab the third book. Well after a short siege of their fortress city called The Awakening, their garrison and one full stack of bloodsuckers came at me, and totally bitch-slapped me. I lost every thing and was reeling back to my own dark, sandy domains. It was that embarrassingly complete loss that had me put aside the game for now, because it probably set me back another 150 turns until I could gather strength again and attempt to snatch another three Books of Nagash. So for now I put aside the fantasy war grind.

What’s Gus Playing: Total War: Warhammer 2 Tomb Kings – Part 2

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Take a toiling tour of the terrible tombs ~

Lloyd Sabin, 16 July 2018

Still trying to get to those four other Books of Nagash as the Tomb Kings. This campaign has bogged down a bit – partially because I am a Tomb Kings noob and partially because the game play has become somewhat repetitive. They’re both linked, though, and feed off each other.

The campaign is still fun enough, with enough things to do, to keep me going.

This Vortex campaign map is not as massive as the Mortal Empires map is…but it’s still pretty gigantic. After close to 150 turns I have revealed probably around 80 percent of it. There is some wacky fruity stuff out there in the Warhammer universe…knights riding spiders, talking giant toads, vampire pirates…the mind boggles. There are even some ordinary human factions, like the New World Colonies, which I had never heard of until stumbling across them in this play through. All intriguing, but perhaps a bit overwhelming.

It also doesn’t help matters that my armies, made up mostly of skeleton spearmen and swordsmen, are like tissue paper when facing elf (both light and dark) armies, which are my most common enemy. The dark elf armies are especially tough and tear through my units like they are undead toilet paper. I need to learn how to upgrade my troops quicker. Until then I need two armies to take on every one enemy army…not a recipe for victory.

The campaign is still fun enough, with enough things to do, to keep me going. Check out the below screen shots and let’s see if I can not only keep this campaign moving, but maybe even push forward to victory. I didn’t win my Norsca campaign earlier this year but I was one of the last five factions left standing in that Warhammer I campaign. I just barely snatched defeat from the jaws of victory (and Chaos).

What’s Gus Playing – The Witcher 3: Blood & Wine

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Which Witcher is Witchier than the Witches of the the Witcher? ~

Lloyd Sabin, 9 July 2018

there are new creatures to slay, dungeons to explore, armor to wear, and the main story itself  is excellent

The Witcher 3 is second only to Skyrim as my favorite action RPG, probably of all time. Having completed the main story line and Hearts of Stone, that leaves only Blood & Wine left for me to enjoy…which makes me kind of depressed. Guess I should enjoy it, relish it, take it into my arms and tell it I love it. Well I did a few days ago when I took my first tentative steps in to the Duchy of Toussaint. This area of the game is as big as some other action RPGs in their entirety, and is more than a little similar to how I imagine Mediterranean France to look.

And of course it’s very Witchery…there are new creatures to slay, dungeons to explore, armor to wear, and the main story itself (I am only a few hours in) is excellent. However I have to say that the balancing of Blood & Wine is not good…there are amped up enemies everywhere and I had to turn the difficulty down many times to advance. The worst example of this is a tiny side story mission called Extreme Cosplay.

What’s Gus Playing: Total War: Warhammer 2 – Tomb Kings Campaign

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The Magnificent Munchkin of Martial Mayhem Meanders Mischievously ~

Lloyd Sabin, 2 July 2018

In this Tomb Kings campaign, the majority of the lore is brand new to me and strikes me as quite dark and bizarre.

Damn it’s hot outside. As I write this it’s almost 100 degrees just beyond my window. I can’t bear the real heat out there anymore today so what better faction to play in Total War: Warhammer 2 than the one set in the brutal wastelands of Warhammer’s Great Desert and the Land of the Dead? None…absolutely none!

In this Tomb Kings campaign, the majority of the lore is brand new to me and strikes me as quite dark and bizarre. For a few turns I think that maybe I made a mistake and should just go and play something else until the campaign sinks its sharp, bony fingers in to the soft gaming part of my brain and I become hooked.

Tasked with finding five Books of Nagash to make my Tomb King faction unbeatable, I find myself getting drawn in to the game, which plays equal parts strategy game and adventure + exploration game. It is similar to the original Total War: Warhammer (which I played and came close to not losing as Norsca) but with more options and more varied story paths. There’s a lot about the Tomb Kings that is quite bizarre to my n00b gaming eyes, but I have grown to appreciate their undead, desert combing ways instead of being freaked out by them…mostly.