booyakajuice

Cosmic Frog: Find Muck

2023-09-05T09:29:57-04:00

Vendor: Devious Weasel Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 34.95

Designer	Jim Felli
Publisher	Devious Weasel Games
Players	2-6
Playtime	45-90 mins
Suggested Age	14 and up
Expansion For	Cosmic Frog
Additional Info	378028/cosmic-frog-find-muck http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/378028/cosmic-frog-find-muck/forums/63

The Cosmic Frog: Find Muck expansion adds mental powers to the game so that your frog is no longer merely immortal and invulnerable, but psionic as well! Mental powers open the way for mental combat and gullet purging.

This expansion also introduces muck lands, special terrain tiles that offer interesting choices for you in the Outer Dimensions and that function as wildcards for vault scoring.

Finally, this expansion introduces a new chip system for combat, raiding, and returning from the Outer Dimensions that allows for some serious metagaming.

This expansion can be used with the original Cosmic Frog dice-based system as well as the new chip-based system. Just be consistent. If you want to use dice, then use dice for everything, i.e., combat, raiding, and returning from the Outer Dimensions.

The Mirroring of Mary King

2022-11-29T09:30:26-05:00

Vendor: Devious Weasel Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 27.95

Designer	Jim Felli
Publisher	Devious Weasel Games
Players	2
Playtime	20-45 mins
Suggested Age	13 and up
Additional Info	343741/mirroring-mary-king http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/343741/mirroring-mary-king/forums/63

The Mirroring of Mary King is a two-player game in which one person is a mortal contemporary woman named Mary King and the other player is the ghost of Mary’s long dead ancestor, a 17th century Scottish merchant burgess of the same name. While on a week’s holiday in Edinburgh, Mary visits Mary King’s Close where her presence attracts the spirit of her long dead ancestor, now a hungry ghost that wants to live again in Mary’s body. The two Marys engage in a battle for control of the living Mary’s mortal body.

Players use control cards and power cards to exert their influence on Mary King’s psyche, represented by 12 tiles arranged in a 4 x 3 grid. These tiles are flipped back and forth throughout the game as the players gain and lose control of them.

The game progresses over five days, starting on Monday and ending on Friday. Each player gets one turn each day, with the ghost player always going first. As the week progresses, the mortal and the ghost become more exhausted and more desperate: the number of control cards each may play decreases and the number of ideas they may pursue increases. At the end of each player’s turn, both players suffer penalties based on the tiles of Mary that their opponent controls.

A player may immediately win the game by completing their image of Mary using the 12 tiles, or if their opponent runs out of cards. If neither player completes their image of Mary by the end of Friday, the winner is determined by a scoring system based on their remaining cards and their control of Mary.

—description from the publisher

Cosmic Frog

2020-12-01T00:13:15-05:00

Vendor: Devious Weasel Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 73.95

Designer	Jim Felli
Publisher	Devious Weasel Games
Players	2-6
Playing Time	45-90 mins
Suggested Age	13 and up
Expansion	Cosmic Frog: Find Muck
Honors	2020 Golden Geek Most Innovative Board Game Nominee 2020 Golden Geek Best Thematic Board Game Nominee 2020 Golden Geek Best Board Game Artwork & Presentation Nominee 2020 Cardboard Republic Immersionist Laurel Award Nominee
Additional Info	295905/cosmic-frog http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/295905/cosmic-frog/forums/63

Cosmic Frog is a game of collection, combat, and theft on a planetary scale. Each player controls a two-mile-tall, immortal, invulnerable frog-like creature that exists solely to gather terrain from the Shards of Aeth, the fragments of a long-ago shattered world. The First Ones seek to use the lands from the Shards to reconstruct the world of Aeth, and your frogs are their terrain harvesters.

At the start of the game, your frogs descend from the Aether, the cosmic sea between the worlds, onto a terrain-rich Shard of Aeth. Once on the Shard, you harvest land and store it in your massive gullet. When your gullet is sufficiently full, you leap into the Aether and disgorge your gullet contents into your inter-dimensional vault for permanent storage, then return to the Shard to collect more land. Although your frogs' collective mission is to gather as much land as possible for the First Ones, your private goal is to prove yourself to be the greatest of their harvesters by delivering to them the most valuable vault. To do this, you have to fill your vault strategically in a manner that both maximizes linear sets of identical lands and maximizes the diversity of lands in your vault at the end of the game.

Throughout the game, you're free to keep to yourself and focus on harvesting at your own pace...or you may attack other frogs and try to take lands directly from their gullets. You may even raid another frog's vault and steal the lands they have gathered if they have been knocked into the dreaded Outer Dimensions. As you are all immortal and invulnerable, no frog is ever wounded or killed — just irritated and inconvenienced.

But don't ever get too comfortable with your carefully crafted plans as the Aether is a chaotic and unstable place. Waves of Aether Flux will prompt you to mutate, and you may have to change your strategy in accordance with your new powers. And Splinters of Aeth, tiny slivers of the old world that swirl madly about in the Aether, will periodically fall from their orbit and crash into the Shard, destroying large areas of terrain and blasting apart the very Shard itself!

The game ends when the Shard is stripped of all harvestable land or when a Splinter shatters it. When the game ends, the player with the highest valued vault wins, and the frogs move to the next Shard to gather more land for the First Ones...

—description from the publisher

Dȗhr: The Lesser Houses

2018-05-14T09:53:05-04:00

Vendor: Devious Weasel Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 27.95

Designer	Jim Felli
Publisher	Devious Weasel Games
Players	4-6
Playtime	30 mins
Suggested Age	14 and up
Additional Info	246508/dhr-lesser-houses http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/246508/dhr-lesser-houses/forums/63

The monolithic city-state of Dûhr is at once a crucible of emerging and forgotten cultures, a cynosure of commerce, and a titan of military might. Its Great and Lesser Houses rise and fall with the whims of its Family Royal, the Sovereign House Kythidûhr. Amidst the festivals of summer, House Kythidûhr announced its intent to elevate one of Dûhr’s Lesser Houses to Great House status. By autumn’s frosts, the Lesser Houses were deeply embroiled in a fierce battle for the coveted title. Not with soldiers, for that would waste blood and gold, but with the most insidious of political weapons: suspicion and scandal. They attacked each other with aspersions and calumny, well devised and craftily exploited, designed to erode the social standing of their rival Houses and thereby remove them from contention.

Dûhr: The Lesser Houses accommodates 4 to 6 players. Each player is the master of a Lesser House of Dûhr, vying for Great House status. Players take turns using cards in their hand to trigger events, place suspicions and scandals on each other’s House, or activate their own House’s unique ability to affect cards already placed. The accumulation of suspicion and scandal cards on a House card erodes the populace’s favor for that House by raising suggestions of wrongdoing or embroiling it in scandals that incite public outrage.

All Houses begin the game without any suspicions or scandals and favored by the people of Dûhr. When a House accumulates a combined total of 5 suspicion and/or scandal cards, that House falls into disfavor with the populace. If a disfavored House ever has 3 or more revealed scandal cards, the House becomes vilified. The game ends immediately when the number of favored Houses remaining is 1 or none. Whoever has the highest score at that point wins the game. It is possible for a disfavored or vilified House to outscore a favored House and win the game!

Pronunciation note: pronounce "û" in "Dûhr" like the "oo" in "doom."

Bemused

2017-05-31T14:45:18-04:00

Vendor: Devious Weasel Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 21.95

Designer	Jim Felli
Publisher	Devious Weasel Games
Players	4-6
Playtime	15-30 mins
Suggested Age	12 and up
Additional Info	217974/bemused http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/217974/bemused/forums/63

Bemused is a card game for 4-6 players in which the players take on the role of a muse seeking to elevate their chosen human virtuoso to the greatest height of celebrity and influence. To do so, the muse must eliminate their virtuoso's rivals by levying doubts and dreads upon them until they are driven insane...or worse. Bemused is not a social deduction game. Although there are deductive elements, the game is a social interaction experience that encourages shameless table talk, bluffing, and deal-making as players seek to maximize their end game scores.

Each player has a virtuoso card that designates their human protégé and a hand of doubt and dread cards. Each turn, the player draws two doubt cards for their hand, places a doubt or dread card from their hand onto a virtuoso card, then discards a card from their hand. In some cases, a player may play two doubt cards from their hand, but this action permanently reduces their hand size. Each virtuoso has an ability that their muse may use, such as change a dread to a doubt or move a doubt from one virtuoso to another. Scheming, negotiating, and table talk are encouraged!

When a virtuoso is saddled with a combined total of five doubt and/or dread cards, the virtuoso is driven insane. An insane virtuoso still gets their turn and may still win the game, but their options for which cards they may play on their turn is limited by their insanity. If an insane virtuoso has more dread than doubts, that virtuoso dies and becomes a fantasma that haunts the remaining living virtuosos. A fantasma may still win the game!

Each muse's protégé also has a gemina, a secret virtuoso in the game that holds a psychic link with their protégé, and a secret that describes how their protégé feels about their gemina, and how the player's score will be affected by the state of their protégé's gemina when the game ends (e.g., the player may gain points if their virtuoso's gemina is not insane at the end of the game). Once a virtuoso's gemina is revealed, a player may use the gemina's ability as well as their protégé's ability! A player may may reveal and use their virtuoso's gemina for a price... but whenever a virtuoso goes insane, their gemina automatically flips over and can have severe consequences for play...

Shadows of Malice: Seekers of a Hidden Light

2015-08-21T16:06:00-04:00

Vendor: Devious Weasel Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 26.95

Designer	Jim Felli
Publisher	Devious Weasel Games
Players	1-8
Playtime	120-360 mins
Suggested Age	14 and up
Expands	Shadows of Malice
Additional Info	176786/shadows-malice-seekers-hidden-light https://boardgamegeek.com/forum/1616601/shadows-malice-seekers-hidden-light/reviews

Seekers of a Hidden Light enriches the Shadows of Malice base game by offering additional opportunities, challenges, and flavor for players seeking an added layer of atmosphere and theme. Seekers of a Hidden Light introduces three new elements to Shadows of Malice: bait, quests, and Lux.

With bait, the avatars can more easily provoke out-of-lair encounters and influence the type of creatures they encounter... which is especially useful in accomplishing quests! Quests are specific gathering and slaying tasks of varying difficulty assigned to the avatars by Mystics and rewarded with soulshards, potions, and... Lux! With enough Lux, the avatars can commission powerful Lux Potions and have potent Lux Runes carved into their items. Armed with Lux Potions and Lux Runes, the avatars are superbly suited to dispatch the Stronghold Guardians, destroy the Shadows, and thwart Xulthûl's plans for world domination.

Shadows of Malice (Revised Edition)

2014-09-05T16:01:00-04:00

Vendor: Devious Weasel Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 53.95

Designer	Jim Felli
Publisher	Devious Weasel Games
Players	2-8
Playtime	120 mins
Suggested Age	14 and up
Expansion	Shadows of Malice: Seekers of a Hidden Light
Additional Info	154510/shadows-malice http://boardgamegeek.com/forum/1537207/shadows-malice/reviews

Shadows of Malice is a cooperative game in which 2-8 players work to unseal hidden Wells of Light to prevent the shadow demon Xulthûl from gaining a physical form and overrunning the Realm of Aethos.

The Wells are located in strongholds scattered throughout the Realm and defended by powerful Guardians. Over the centuries, many of the Wells have fallen Dark, but if the players can find and unseal the remaining Light Wells they prevent Xulthûl from gaining substance and win the game. If Xulthûl’s Shadows, however, manage to defile a single Light Well, the demon will gain a body and enter the Realm. If this happens, the players must defeat Xulthûl in battle to save the Realm.

Players control avatars, heroic champions imbued with unique masteries over Light. Each turn, the players move through the Realm, confronting their fate, battling creatures with deadly abilities, and engaging the services of cities and mystics in order to gather the potions, treasure, and soulshards they will need to defeat the stronghold Guardians and unseal the Wells they protect. The Light or Dark nature of each Well is revealed only when its Guardian is defeated.

Meanwhile, Xulthûl’s Shadows are thickening in the Shadow Realm and will enter the game at random times in random locations, seeking the one Well that will bring about the entrance of their master.