This is a crossover... called the Gensokyo Zone

Maid Knight Saga - concise how to play

How to use this guide:

If you’re looking for a gameplay overview, you only need to read the “Goal of the game” and “Turn rundown” sections, and “Off-campus actions” for additional details. If you find anything confusing, you may read the Starting the game section for familiarizing yourself with the terms.

For help on the cards, read the dedicated “Card types” section.

The “Starting the game” and “Start-of-year ceremony” sections are for help in setting up the game and for familiarizing yourself with the game components.

I. Goal of the game

Players are aspiring maid knights attending the Royal Faltisia Academy training to become one. Throughout the game, you will seek to fulfill your Graduation Requirements and be the player with the most Maid Points (MP) by the end of the game. You may achieve this through strategic play of your cards and by increasing your character’s attributes.

II. Starting the game

1. Before starting the game, fill the empty rows 1, 3, and 5 of the Lecture Timetable board with the Attribute Tokens (square chips marked S, I, B, and P) randomly, but evenly, skipping over the spaces marked with an X, like so:

The attributes stand for Strength, Intelligence, Beauty, and Purity. The game will be played over 21 rounds of 3 Years of 7 months each, plus an exam phase at the end of each Year. The top of the timetable board shows the month (x axis) and the leftmost column (y axis) shows the current Year.

2. Each player is then dealt a random Character card, her corresponding Maid Ability card, and 3 Graduation Requirement cards. The player chooses 2 of the Grad Requirements to keep, discarding the remaining card.

3. Each player then distributes 8 attribute points to their Student ID board, marking your attribute points with the cube markers. Your graduation requirement may require you to reach a certain amount of a certain attribute (such as S larger than or equal to 10 in the above picture), so you should distribute your points accordingly. Also, place your Character and Maid Ability cards at the designated spot on the Student ID board, with the Character card on top of the Maid Ability:

4. Perform a Start-of-year ceremony

III Start-of-year ceremony

1. Stock the shop with Item cards 1 less than the number of players.

2. Draft Action Cards of the corresponding Year until all players have 7 cards. Refer to the instructions for how drafting works.

IV. Turn rundown

0. The game starts at the first month of the First Year. Place the timemarker token there to remind yourself of the current month and phase. Each month consists of 2 phases:

1. Lecture phase (marked by a book), or skip to perform off-campus action

2. Action (Card) phase (marked by a card), or forfeit for an off-campus action

After the Action Card phase is over, move on to the next month’s Lecture phase, then that month’s Action Card phase, and so on. In other words, Lecture, Card, Lecture, Card, etc.

- Lecture phase: If you attend a lecture, increase the corresponding attribute score on your student id and invoke the effects of any organization (efficiency) cards that you have face-up in front of you. If you skip it, perform an off-campus action instead.

- Action Card phase: During the Action Card phase, choose a card to play from your hand, and every player reveals their card simultaneously. If you choose to forfeit this and perform an off-campus action instead, keep the card face-down. All cards, played or face-down, remain in front of the player. Any cards played face-up have their effects resolved, with Remedial cards’ effects resolving last. The card’s costs and requirements must be paid and met. Otherwise, it cannot be played face-up.

V. Off-campus actions

If multiple players decide to take an off-campus action, turn order is determined by card numbers. Refer to the instructions for details.

The 4 off-campus actions are listed on your student ID. They are:

- Study: Take a Rainbow attribute token. If you have your maid license, take an additional non-rainbow attribute token of your choice.

- Part-time job: Take 3 sterlings. If you have your maid license, take an additional 2.

- Shopping: Buy 1 item from the shop.

- Maid Training: Do the following 2 things:
a. Swap sets of 3 of the same attribute tokens to increase your attribute scores. (E.g. discard 6 “S tokens” and 3 “I tokens” and increase your S score on your student ID by 2, and your I score by 1. You may do this as many or as few as you like.

b. Check if either all of your attributes are at least 7, or if one of your attributes is at least 12. If so, you earn your maid license: gain 2 sterlings, flip over your character card, and take your Maid Ability card underneath into your hand. Note that the Maid Ability cards must be played during an Action Card phase in order for them to take effect.

VI. Exam phase

At the end of each Year, for each attribute, find out who has the highest score on their ID card. The highest player scores the Maid Points indicated. After all 4 attributes have been dealt with, all players add up the total sum of their attribute scores. The player who has the highest sum is awarded the sterlings shown.

VII. Action Card types

a. Organization (brown): Each time you attend a lecture, gain an attribute token (NOT increase your attribute score) of the colour indicated. These cards’ effects are activated every time you attend a lecture throughout your three Years.

b. Focus (dark yellow): Take the resources indicated. They can be attribute tokens, sterlings, or attribute score increases. They may or may not cost resources.

c. ECA (green): Score Maid Points at the end of the game according to the table in the Game end scoring section

d. Assignment (blue): If you meet the requirements, you may play the card face-up. At the end of the game, score the amount of MP indicated. Some cards may require multiple attributes to be at a given level, as shown in the bottom left card.

e. Remedial (red): Always resolved last. The player who played this card takes the lecture shown and receives any other award indicated. All other players take the lecture. These lectures may not be skipped.

f. Special Evaluation (purple): Similar to the purple cards of San Juan and Citadels, they give you points at the end of the game.

g. face-down Action Cards are shown on the cards as grey card icons. They constitute their own category for the purposes of Special Evaluation and other cards. Do not set face-down Action Cards aside and keep them face-down in front of you.

VIII. Game end & scoring

The game ends after the exam phase of Year 3, after the 7th month. All players then calculate the points and the player with the highest points wins!

- Score +MP indicated if you meet the grad requirements and -MP indicated if you fail to
- Score MP of your face-up Action Cards and Maid Ability cards as shown in the top left-hand corner (-2MP if you have no ECA: B cards; refer to the chart below for ECA scoring)
- Score MP of your item cards as indicated
- Score MP of your character card
- Score MP based on each of your attribute scores (e.g. 6-9 = 1MP)
- Score +1MP for every 3 Sterlings
- Count up the MP chips

Posted 4 days ago

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Tags: board games, board game, tabletop games,

My Top 10 digital pinball tables, June 2023

I’ve always been a fan of pinball, but my interest in it had been renewed after playing on the Beatles pinball machine in 2019. After getting tired of getting my ass handed to me by unfair mobile games, it was really refreshing to play games where my loss could only be blamed on my poor play, rather than the designer having calculated it all to make things hard for you so that you have to pay for microtransactions. In any case, I started looking for more pinball games after Flash was no longer supported and Pinball King and Funhouse Pinball (not the Rudy one) became defunct and I need newer pinball games to play. I’ve discovered lots of tables I’ve never played before and here are my top tables.

10. El Dorado (Zen Pinball) - Pinball FX3

Not to be confused with the more well-known pinball table of the same name by Gottlieb. Admittedly, El Dorado is kind of an acquired taste. It didn’t look very fun at first, but after playing it for a bit, I found it pretty fun, and I only really fell in love with it after immersing myself in the role of an Indiana Jones-style archaeologist, and you’re pretty much playing as one digging up treasures, deciphering ancient glyphs, avoiding traps, and collecting idols and poison remedies. As part of Zen’s older original tables, El Dorado is relatively easy in that it’s very easy to keep the ball in play for a long period of time, and the ball saver could be activated easily in the mobile version and on Pinball FX2, so I will say this table isn’t one that offers the most excitement when it comes to the thrill of risking losing your ball all the time as with many of the other tables here. The treasure-hunting theme and the minigames and toys however quite sold me, and the gameplay is fun too, but you might wanna give this game more goes and throw yourself into the role for better enjoyment.

9. Pin-bot

I first discovered Pin-bot via the NES adaptation of the game, but I was always frustrated that it added animated enemies that gobbled up your ball (making you lose it) and other enemies outright destroying your flipper. They probably thought that adding enemies not present on physical tables could spice up the experience, but it just makes me wish I was playing on the real machine instead. With pinball you already have very limited control - 2 flippers. With one or both of your flippers taken away by enemies or additional enemies that eat your ball, that’s a massive handicap and only serves to make me want to play the real table instead. The Moon cheese ball though is a nice touch.

Pin-bot has been recreated for Visual Pinball and is on PSP as part of the Williams Collection. There was also an OK port of it for the Pinball Arcade on mobiles. The game is pretty straight-forward: You want to give Pinbot eyes and score jackpot, and try to reach the Sun as you move around the Solar System. The game is relatively simple to learn and is quite fun for what it is, although it does lack some of the features and presentations present in the more exciting pinball tables from the 90s.

8. Who Dunnit

Who Dunnit has been ported to Visual Pinball, and used to be available on the Pinball Arcade for mobile. Here you play as a noir detective trying to gather clues and interrogating suspects to solve murders. This table incorporates a roulette portion, a slot machine, and essentially a sort of deduction minigame. I personally find it to be great fun. Solving murders would culminate to a climatic roof chase mode where you have to shoot a changing target within a relatively short time limit. It doesn’t have a whole lot of modes, but it packs a lot into a relatively simple-looking table.

7. Pinball Noir - Pinball FX

Another noir detective-themed table, this is a newer Zen original table and these are not plagued by the problem of being too easy to keep the ball in play that you could play for long periods easily without losing a ball that was common in Zen originals in El Dorado’s time. It seems that it’s going for a more modern full-colour display style too since it doesn’t seem to be basing the score display on DMDs. This monochrome-ish table’s got a lot of style, although it seems to me that where you’re supposed to shoot at any given time isn’t so obvious, as everything will just be lit. The voice acting is also a little poor, with the lead actor sounding way too try-hard to sound like a noir detective in a way that doesn’t sound natural. Nonetheless, this is a table I find myself coming back to again and again. It’s fun to shoot the mobsters and score jackpots after they’re down.

6. Curse of the Mummy - Pinball FX

Now this table doesn’t look like much at first, but there’s a lot going on here. I believe you play as archaeologists raiding the mummy’s tomb, although that doesn’t seem very explicit. There are lots of objectives to do here which physically change the layout a little, like building a bridge that connects the two upper playfields, and lighting torches in a maze which turns the centre waterfall into a passageway. Also helping the game is its Egyptian-sounding soundtrack, which seems to be something that’s missing from other Egypt-related games, surprisingly. Just to reiterate, don’t be deceived by the simple-looking layout. There’s a lot to do here.

5. Nautilus Remake - Zaccaria Pinball

I find this to be an outlier in Zaccaria Pinball, in a good way. Now most of the Remake and Deluxe tables in Zaccaria tend to be pretty easy. This table, although the same applies, has really good presentation. An update inspired by their 70s pinball table, this modernized take introduces multiball, ramps, modes, and a wizard mode into the mix while adding a nice soundtrack that makes you feel like you’re diving in the deep sea. I really love this table, although I wish it would ramp up the difficult to match those of the 90s Williams tables and make it so that it’s easier to drain the ball. As with other Zaccaria tables though, there’s no graze period. If you get down to 1 ball, multiball mode immediately ends and you won’t get a few seconds to score a jackpot like Williams tables tend to give you.

4. Whirlwind

Previously available on The Pinball Arcade, and also on the Williams Collection for PSP and on Visual Pinball, and recently made available for Pinball FX, I accidentally discovered this machine after confusing its name for the predecessor table of Hurricane (it turns out to be Cyclone, not Whirlwind). As part of the “natural disaster series” along with Earthshaker and later inspiring features found in the famous pinball table the Addams Family and the Twilight Zone, Hurricane has a very thematic use of its iconic spinners called “Whirlwind spinners” on Wikipedia (though the article strangely does not mention the Whirlwind table), which will cause the ball to be thrown off its trajectory. The physical table also has a fan mounted on top of the backglass which blows wind towards the player’s face when the storm is here (the spinners are spinning). The goofy “storm blaster” and wind from the backglass are also nice treats, and you could hear the wind telling you to “Feel the power of the wind”, a line which would be referenced again in the Addams Family and the Twilight Zone. Overall a very fun table with a very thematic use of spinners.

3. Cirqus Voltaire

At first I didn’t like the theme. Some kind of evil cirqus controlled by a green-faced ringmaster? It seems evil circuses are kind of an overdone trope. Now I will still say that the theme isn’t an especially appealing one, but it really makes up for it in gameplay. You’re trying to perform various acts in hopes of joining the circus, and over the course of the game, you’ll perform the various available acts. My favourite is the juggler, who actually juggles the balls around the juggler ball locks.

But the star of this table is really its wizard mode - what happens after you successfully finish all the marvels. Without wanting to spoil the ending, this is something you should definitely give a try. This table has one of the most climatic endings I’ve seen in a pinball game.

2. Twilight Zone

Available on Visual Pinball and recently for Pinball FX (there was also a super easy adaptation on the Pinball Arcade), Twilight Zone is one of the most well-known pinball tables and its prices are very high if you’re looking to get a machine. If you’re one of my friends, you probably already know I’m a big fan of the TV show, but this table boasts one of the most complex rulesets I had come across in a pinball game.

With a few features taken from the Addams Family and Whirlwind, the goal is to “unlock the door with the key of imagination”. Now I was thoroughly disappointed that on the physical table, the door doesn’t actually open. Pinball FX’s recreation rectifies this by opening the door every time a door panel is awarded. This table is also filled with unconventional features like a gumball machine that dispenses a lighter and faster ball sometimes, and “invisible” magnet flippers called magnaflips.

The Twilight Zone is usually very punishing for its residents… But sometimes, perhaps, just before you score the jackpot, the game will give you opportunities for easier shots… which in itself makes for something quite unexpected and fitting for its theme… of the Twilight Zone.

1. The Getaway: High Speed II

Released for Pinball FX/FX3 and also available on some other platforms (mobile, Visual Pinball, formerly the Pinball Arcade), The Getaway is the sequel table to High Speed. Now I was pretty happy with HS, but after playing the Getaway, it pretty much completely replaces the original HS.

You play as the owner of a sports car trying to pick up a beautiful hitchhiker and running the red light while outrunning a cop in pursuit. The most eye-catching feature is the metal ramp equipped with electromagnets that speed up the ball above the playfield, called the Supercharger (which is apparently something you put on cars to make them go fast). This table also boasts fast-paced gameplay with a matching fast-paced soundtrack (as opposed to HS) as your ball would need to be fast in order to make the necessary shots. This table is also probably the fastest-to-wizard mode table I’ve ever played, with me reaching wizard mode in under 3 minutes regularly. Loop shots are fun as you try to keep looping the ball around the orbits, gaining increasing points for each successive loop. A little gimmick this table has its that in order to move to the next mode, you need to press the launch button, meaning you pretty much have to take your hand away from a flipper button, although it’s considerably easier to do on digital recreations when all you have to do is to press Enter when your flipper key is the right shift.

Overall a very exciting table just due to the fast action it delivers, making it my favourite table, along with Twilight Zone.

Conclusion

These are my personal top pinball tables. I do realize tables like the Addams Family and Medieval Madness are among the most popular tables, but they just don’t resonate with me as well as these ones here, and I wanted to include games other than ones found in Pinball FX’s Williams tables and Zaccaria Pinball here as well for some diversity, hence Pin-bot making it into the top 10s.

Posted 3 weeks ago

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Tags: pinball,

Dear Tumblr friends,I’m kinda having another reminescence moment. Tbh since the Tumblr purge, I made a twitter to try to keep in touch with my tumblr friends, but that didn’t really work since most of them just made a post saying they were leaving Tumblr but didn’t say what their twitter username was. Now it’s been like 6 years or so and I only have like 4 ppl from there I’m still in contact with and it makes me a little sad

If you’d like to reach out to me again, feel free to send me a message.

Posted 1 month ago

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Puerto Rico/San Juan custom rethemed Race for the Galaxy cards

Posted 1 month ago

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Tags: board games, tabletop games,

Thoughts on 100% Orange Juice as a board gamer (recommended!)

100% Orange Juice is one of the more enjoyable board games (physical and digital) to me, and I play a lot of German style board games like Cleopatra and Puerto Rico, so it’s able to compare with those to me.

The goal is pretty simple: Your goal is to level up to level 6, which you can do by either collecting stars or defeating enemies. You can collect stars in various ways, by landing on star-giving spaces, defeating enemies, and by some other means. If you have the required stars or wins, stop at a starting “home” space to level up. You may always choose to stop at your own home space if you pass it. There is quite a bit of decision-making in this game, including what cards to use, which branching path to take on the board, and whether to fight an opponent.

I really like the design of the game. If you get KO’d in battle, it gets progressively easier to revive, so you don’t have to wait around like in Ludo to roll a 6, which would take forever. Here, your revive roll requirement starts typically at 5, and is lowered with every fail (reset if you succeed), so you won’t be out of action for too long.

You also revive at full HP, so unlike in other board games like Monopoly and Monsters Menace America, getting KO’d (or bankrupted) doesn’t set you back so much that you might as well lose the game on the spot. You’ll be out for a couple turns, but then it would be relatively easy to catch up (unless you’re about to win and everyone gangs up on you, but then that’s justified).

Like Advance Wars, it has a lot of boards to choose from, and there is a wide variety of characters, each with their perks, and collectible cards to keep things fresh, without you having to play the same board, cards, and characters each time.

Overall, I’m very happy with this as a board game. I just wish it supported local multiplayer, as it only has options for solo play and online multiplayer. I would definitely play this game when I invited my friends over had it been an option.

I also have the version from DLSite and that one is sadly missing most content available in the Steam version.