There are several hidden roles games that use individual turns while still being fun at high player counts. Bang the dice game and Shadow Hunters jump readily to mind. I think it helps that turns there are fairly quick and very much impact everyone playing.
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CaptainPeacockBoard Game HoarderTop o' the LakeRegistered Userregular
Cribbage does have a large luck factor, but as in poker you can mitigate that in the pegging by playing your opponent. There is a level at which you can suss out what a person's hand is likely to contain based on their first and second card.
Cluck cluck, gibber gibber, my old man's a mushroom, etc.
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CaptainPeacockBoard Game HoarderTop o' the LakeRegistered Userregular
Plus the skill also heavily resides in knowing what cards to keep and what to throw away.
Cluck cluck, gibber gibber, my old man's a mushroom, etc.
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
I enjoy high player count games.. if the turns go fast.
However, many of my friends get locked into analysis paralysis, which makes me hesitant.
So Saturday I'm going to Thirsty Dice in Philly with 9 other people. It's a combined bachelor/bachelorette party and we're spending some time there to play some games and get to know each other, then an escape room, then dinner. The girls all know each other and 3 of them aren't game players, and the guys all know each other. Trying to come up with a list of potential games to save time and know rules. Thoughts?
I was thinking of the following possibilities:
Wits & Wagers
Skull
Telestrations
Any others? We're only looking to kill 3ish hours. (couldn't convince brides side to do more time with games - bride and groom both love board games - they're the ones I'm playing pandemic legacy with and Charterstone)
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
Red Flags is a great getting to know you group game—anybody can play, and it’s just a little bit saucy.
Cribbage does have a large luck factor, but as in poker you can mitigate that in the pegging by playing your opponent. There is a level at which you can suss out what a person's hand is likely to contain based on their first and second card.
Also like poker, it's the most boring game in the world when gambling money isn't involved.
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CaptainPeacockBoard Game HoarderTop o' the LakeRegistered Userregular
Money is all well and good, but pride is better.
We play for pride and derision.
And it's better than poker because you can tell other person they smell.
Cluck cluck, gibber gibber, my old man's a mushroom, etc.
Maybe it's already been discussed but they just launched a kickstarter for Root the RPG. I have to admit I'm tempted even though it seems both unnecessary and like something I'll almost never get to the table.
Gambling is also the only way I'd ever play Cosmic again. Everyone throws in $5. Winners evenly split the pot.
It's not even the money. It's so that every game doesn't end with the usual anti-climatic "base for a base?" 3 way victory.
That would make it even worse - you'd be just relying on card draws to let somebody take a solo victory. I don't think I've ever seen a solo victory. The game ends because people realise they can't get a solo victory and find a joint configuration
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
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ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
Alright, hot take now that I've played it: I don't think Quacks is actually good? It unquestionably has good elements, and building your bag is fun, but it's maybe the most multiplayer solitaire I've seen in a while, and that is really bad in a genre that's totally about a group gambling together (Incan Good or Celestia/Cloud 9) or getting put on the spot while everyone else eggs you on (Zombie Dice). It's just missing the most fundamental social interactions of the genre, which seems like a giant bust compared to everything else I've mentioned.
CaptainPeacockBoard Game HoarderTop o' the LakeRegistered Userregular
I dunno, my Quacks games have been quite interactive. We stare each other in the eyes, daring the other to go just one more, chiding the other about losing out on the bonus and bluffing that we're totally going to pull another one.
Cluck cluck, gibber gibber, my old man's a mushroom, etc.
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admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
Maybe it's already been discussed but they just launched a kickstarter for Root the RPG. I have to admit I'm tempted even though it seems both unnecessary and like something I'll almost never get to the table.
So why is my mouse hovering over the $100 pledge?
It’s the art.
I need to read the preview. I like PbtA but I’ve seen a lot of mediocre designs come out of it. Admittedly Magpie has a track record of good ones.
Was at target last night and saw they had forbidden sky on clearance for $20 when it's normally $40 so picked it up as we like forbidden desert.
It's really fun! Only played one game of it with the gf but it's different enough to be a new game yet familiar enough to be able to jump in and understand it. The whole electrical circuit aspect is really cool. Looking forward to playing it more
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FairchildRabbit used short words that were easy to understand, like "Hello Pooh, how about Lunch ?"Registered Userregular
The ROOT tabletop RPG just showed up on Kickstarter. Of course it's already 2,000% funded.
Was at target last night and saw they had forbidden sky on clearance for $20 when it's normally $40 so picked it up as we like forbidden desert.
It's really fun! Only played one game of it with the gf but it's different enough to be a new game yet familiar enough to be able to jump in and understand it. The whole electrical circuit aspect is really cool. Looking forward to playing it more
Yeah, there were like 5-6 clearance copies at my store. I passed on it because I bought so many board games this paycheck, but I think the circuitry angle is cool. I have no clue how the game itself is though.
Was at target last night and saw they had forbidden sky on clearance for $20 when it's normally $40 so picked it up as we like forbidden desert.
It's really fun! Only played one game of it with the gf but it's different enough to be a new game yet familiar enough to be able to jump in and understand it. The whole electrical circuit aspect is really cool. Looking forward to playing it more
Yeah, there were like 5-6 clearance copies at my store. I passed on it because I bought so many board games this paycheck, but I think the circuitry angle is cool. I have no clue how the game itself is though.
I've only played it once, but my initial impression was that it was clearly a descendant of Forbidden Desert but with additional complications that made it interesting enough to feel relatively fresh. Same basic game play but the new wrinkles were enough to hold our attention. And the circuitry and making the rocket light up were amusing.
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ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
Assorted thoughts from day 2 of a local private convention:
Played Quacks in the morning, thoughts already posted above. It's fine, I think there's better, whatever.
Played 2-player Glen Moore while waiting for some other people to finish another game. I knew this wasn't going to be hugely involved, but I still kinda wanted it to be a bit more than it was. It is enjoyable, but the market is pretty dead with two players. To its credit, it doesn't last too long so it does still make a good, satisfying filler, and I think the way the game scores is really nice (though again, kind of boring with two). Glad it's getting the reprint/makeover, but probably won't buy it when that comes around.
Played The Ancient World (2nd edition) with 3, and that was a treat. The theme and presentation are wonderful, which does make the game very easy to enjoy partaking in. The worker placement is light, but having to do damage control from defeating titans is a cute wrinkle. The way armies work, in that they get better over time by being retired, was an incredibly cool system. Overall I would actually be interested in owning this one despite wishing it was just a little bit bigger in some way ... Honestly though, it's a stellar candidate for gateway worker placement, provided people are given some appropriate warnings that A) Titans will fuck you up, so you really shouldn't fight them unless you can deal with the worst-case-scenario fallout, Armies are important, and some titans can be defeated only by swords (beware!), and C) The later cards are expensive, and scrolls are really important, so make sure to get a couple.
Played Architects of the West Kingdom with 4 because I was curious to know if it would surprise me (I didn't think it would be my cup of tea, knowing what I knew of it). It was fine? My friend teaching it said he had very similar feelings about the game on his first play, but really grew to enjoy it after the 2nd: it goes by pretty fast. Like, our end game scores were pretty tight despite doing some dramatically different things, but if I took a step back and looked at everything that I actually did, I built one whole building, 4 levels of the cathedral, and was virtuous with a few leftover resources. That's ... it ... And I was in 3rd by 3 points (two other players tied, actually).
For how much is going on with the number of workers and how fast turns tend to go, it just feels like there's a lot of busywork with not a ton of payoff? Saying that, I can still understand where some people like this game a lot, but - like I started with - I don't think it's for me.
Played Parks with 5 and it is a fucking treat, friends. Its gorgeous, the theme is cute, the gameplay is smart, and what you get in that box for what it costs is impressive. Parks is basically the evolution of the Tokaido design, where players are walking down a randomized trail four times across different seasons. You collect resources or perform actions on the different spaces, but you can't go to a space that's already occupied without using a once-per-season cheat. You start with a small end-game goal, get to acquire gear (special abilities!) and canteens (varied abilities!), take photos and visit parks, and it's all just so delightful. I would be curious how the game plays with fewer than 5 (the max), because there will be less competition for spaces and less cycling of the gear/parks decks (card consistency in the parks deck might be the biggest strike against overall balance, but goals are only worth 2 or 3 points so just playing well around what comes out will still have you in the running).
I'll be putting in an order for this with my FLGS later this morning.
Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
Hey what’s the two player codenames? Is it good? My friends mostly only get to play two player games, but love their friends’ copy of codenames when they play in a larger group. Worth getting it as a guest gift?
Hey what’s the two player codenames? Is it good? My friends mostly only get to play two player games, but love their friends’ copy of codenames when they play in a larger group. Worth getting it as a guest gift?
Codenames Duet, and it’s good. If someone loves Codenames, then Duet would be great for them.
ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
edited September 2019
Day three con thoughts: Oh man, the day is a blur. I know I played something in the morning but it's a giant question mark, because most of yesterday was Trickerion with the Academy.
So I'm a big fan of Trickerion to start with - it's clever and tight with a good arc, and if anything only really suffers from elements of the Dark Alley introducing some dumb luck into a game without much of it. So for our venture into the expansion (we only used the academy, not the machines and no magician powers, etc) we agreed to not play with prophecies, and I believe the game is better for it (it's just too much to keep track of that someone can randomly fuck with anyway).
The academy itself honestly isn't particularly complicated, nor is the way your protégé works, which is all thumbs up from me. It's also nice to start with an additional worker, even though you now have yet another board you'll want to go to and feel exactly as strapped as you did before. However both building and using the rooms, along with improving your protégé, are very fun things to do, and generally quite rewarding. Ignoring these elements is foolish because there are a lot of points to be had for building rooms if you can generate the money to cash in, and the rooms themselves range from "A nice bonus" to "Saved my bacon and now I have a second level 3 trick." Additionally, retiring tricks is interesting, although I feel I had a somewhat skewed experience with this element of the game since I played the Totally-Not-Peter-Dinklage Professor who gets to retire two tricks "for free." So I had a neat little passive income, but was incentivized to retire tricks early since they wouldn't occupy my board. Two other tricks were retired by other players, but for much more minor benefit than mine, so I'd be very curious to see more of this across more games. Ultimately the game scores much higher than the base (we were something like 160-135ish-135ish-100), and does feel even better to play, but there are two rather large caveats to this experience:
1) The physical size of the game is ballooned even further. Trickerion was already a bit of a hog with the expanding player boards, but now that everyone starts with an additional one, and a second board plus components for it are out, it's a sprawl.
2) The game took us roughly 5 hours to play. IN FAIRNESS, there were contributing factors to this - we had to constantly look up what new cards and tiles did, the convention was a bit loud, and we had to be interrupted several times because there was a charity competition happening right beside us that required numerous announcements. We also took a lot of bathroom breaks and whatnot, so with a more comfortable atmosphere and fewer interruptions, you could reasonably get it under 1-hour-per-player, but I still think that's a bit long. There's a trade-off to be had, because the expansion does make it a better game, but it also makes the time commitment just a little more than I want for an average game night. YMMV.
After that we grabbed a pizza because I had officially skipped lunch, and then when we got back we toned it back and played some lighter fare. Horrified was a pretty big let down for how much good press and buzz it seems to have gotten. It's ... Pandemic ... with some slightly more involved "cures" ... and a much less interesting deck of "bad thing happens." Monsters only activate when their icon appears on a card, and only do interesting things if the card specifically is for them (even then most are really boring or genuinely do nothing), or if they're the "frenzied" monster, which just acts more often. This meant in our game The Invisible Man teleported around stealing items and little else, Dracula (frenzied) ran all around town relentlessly attacking us, and The Mummy ... existed. This is compounded by the lackluster way "combat" works, which is that they roll dice, you take a hit for each hit rolled, and you have no health, but you can lose items instead. What this means is that people are walking around with a backpack of knick-knacks, and monsters are pursuing you so they can slap your books out of your hands like you're the class nerd.
You can add more monsters (the game says 4 is difficult, we played with the standard 3), and it WOULD be more difficult just because they would act more often. But it wouldn't be more fun or compelling. Villagers pop up at random so there are frequently times there's nothing to worry about other than scavenging for whatever pile of items is biggest. All of the "solves" for the monsters are "bring [colour] to [place] to tick box", with The Mummy having the best puzzle, but seeming to be the most boring actual monster on the board ... Ugh, whatever. It's just really boring and what it does that is new doesn't actually make up for how little choice the game has. With a lack of any real mounting tension the horror theme is completely absent outside of aesthetics. Just avoid it unless you're 100% new to board games or really need another Pandemic?
There was another small-box filler or two in there, but I don't think they're particularly noteworthy - nothing that blew my mind or was all that memorable. Today is the last day, so lets see what else we can get to the table~
Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
That review makes me glad I resisted the trickerion expansion.
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
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ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
Heh, happy to help? :P
And I remembered the morning game was Automobiles, which is actually pretty fun. It's a great mashup of bag-builder and racing game, though the theme is definitely a bit fucked by the fact that there are turns you might move 0-2 spaces which is nonsense in cars. Regardless, the game itself is recommended, and is the best of the Trains, Planes, Automobiles trilogy. Give it a shot if you happen to have the chance~
I quite like Horrified, but the theme carries a lot for me. Not sure the legs it'll have, but the light coop mixed with light pick up and deliver is a solid time. Probably only play it around Halloween but for that weight coop I think it's solid.
Edit: also I bought Cataclysm: A Second World War and Talon from GMT because apparently I felt I didn't have enough direct conflict games that no one ever wants to play? I'm kinda excited about both of them though!
I quite like Horrified, but the theme carries a lot for me. Not sure the legs it'll have, but the light coop mixed with light pick up and deliver is a solid time. Probably only play it around Halloween but for that weight coop I think it's solid.
I feel like even that isn't even enough for Horrified. We played it because one of my friends is HUGE on horror / camp. They had the game on order and absolutely wanted to love it, and it fell totally flat for them. This is not someone who is regularly a hardcore player or anything - most of her games are on the lighter to medium side. We talked about it at the end (I actively felt bad that it had disappointed them so badly because they were really looking forward to the game), and they told me they were going to cancel the order and put in for Parks instead because they had loved that experience.
I've never played anything larger scale than Combat Commander, but the super zoomed out scale of this one with the streamlined rules and economic/political aspect (plus solo friendliness) made it seem like a real good one to try. Plus the promise of playing out the entire full war campaign in a day is cool. I was looking hard at Triumph & Tragedy also, but that one is all hidden information which makes for a hard Solo game.
Knew from reviews going in that it was 4X themed but not really 4X. I'm not sure I'm even fully comfortable calling it a Euro though given the amount of randomness. It's certainly an engine builder and an optimization puzzle -- I feel like it models a Sid Meier's Civilization computer game stripped down to the action optimization focus of taking a turn. Which is in my wheelhouse but not really something I'd expect everyone to like.
Production wise, the painted miniatures are fine but I would have been just as happy without them. I do like most of the other bits and art well enough, but not quite as high quality as an EGG overproduction. And to be fair on that one, big fan of Ian O'Toole. Player mats are kind of odd though, thin sheets with a textured coating.
I'm looking forward to playing again but like Scythe I bet this is going to turn some people off who think they're getting something it's not. As someone who does play 4X games this felt reasonably light in comparison, but enough play time and system complexity I certainly wouldn't call it light.
That review makes me glad I resisted the trickerion expansion.
Not me, give me a game big enough to dive into and swim through. Trickerion and Anachrony both fit the bill. I loves me some huge over complex fiddly games. If I don't have to bring in extra chairs to store bits then i'm playing the wrong game.
I've never played anything larger scale than Combat Commander, but the super zoomed out scale of this one with the streamlined rules and economic/political aspect (plus solo friendliness) made it seem like a real good one to try. Plus the promise of playing out the entire full war campaign in a day is cool. I was looking hard at Triumph & Tragedy also, but that one is all hidden information which makes for a hard Solo game.
Speaking of this, I'll throw out a "Avoid Hitler's Reich at all cost!" warning.
It tries to be this big grand strategic version of Quatermaster General, but it's just a colossal mess.
It has the single, absolute, most very worst manual I've ever seen in a game. It is 90% a card game and the manual doesn't tell you when you draw new cards. Ponder that failure for a moment.
Then it has a glossary of terms that refer to their pages in the manual...except the glossary isn't on the back on the manual. It's on the back of the scenario book, which the glossary isn't referring to. So you have to look at the back of the scenario book to find which page to turn to in the manual. They didn't put the glossary...on the back of the book that the glossary is referring to.......
Ugh. I was doing so well saving money this month. then my local board game store started going out of business.
I'm picking up stuff I feel like I may never get to play just cause at one time or another i wanted to play them (but my groups player count went to 5 recently, so 4 players dont get used much anymore).
My couple plays plays of SC were fine, but I sold it pretty quick since it would never get played and no one loved it enough to try forcing it. The choices in the game seem pretty obvious, there's just too much info on the table to actually make them coherently. The actual game seemed to be who can parse this giant ever-changing spreadsheet of bullshit slightly better than everyone else and make a couple profitable trades off it. Probably you could get there if your had like 7 players who wanted to devote the time to it but that's is not me and my groups.
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However, many of my friends get locked into analysis paralysis, which makes me hesitant.
I was thinking of the following possibilities:
Wits & Wagers
Skull
Telestrations
Any others? We're only looking to kill 3ish hours. (couldn't convince brides side to do more time with games - bride and groom both love board games - they're the ones I'm playing pandemic legacy with and Charterstone)
Also like poker, it's the most boring game in the world when gambling money isn't involved.
We play for pride and derision.
And it's better than poker because you can tell other person they smell.
It's not even the money. It's so that every game doesn't end with the usual anti-climatic "base for a base?" 3 way victory.
So why is my mouse hovering over the $100 pledge?
That would make it even worse - you'd be just relying on card draws to let somebody take a solo victory. I don't think I've ever seen a solo victory. The game ends because people realise they can't get a solo victory and find a joint configuration
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
It’s the art.
I need to read the preview. I like PbtA but I’ve seen a lot of mediocre designs come out of it. Admittedly Magpie has a track record of good ones.
It's really fun! Only played one game of it with the gf but it's different enough to be a new game yet familiar enough to be able to jump in and understand it. The whole electrical circuit aspect is really cool. Looking forward to playing it more
Yeah, there were like 5-6 clearance copies at my store. I passed on it because I bought so many board games this paycheck, but I think the circuitry angle is cool. I have no clue how the game itself is though.
I've only played it once, but my initial impression was that it was clearly a descendant of Forbidden Desert but with additional complications that made it interesting enough to feel relatively fresh. Same basic game play but the new wrinkles were enough to hold our attention. And the circuitry and making the rocket light up were amusing.
Played Quacks in the morning, thoughts already posted above. It's fine, I think there's better, whatever.
Played 2-player Glen Moore while waiting for some other people to finish another game. I knew this wasn't going to be hugely involved, but I still kinda wanted it to be a bit more than it was. It is enjoyable, but the market is pretty dead with two players. To its credit, it doesn't last too long so it does still make a good, satisfying filler, and I think the way the game scores is really nice (though again, kind of boring with two). Glad it's getting the reprint/makeover, but probably won't buy it when that comes around.
Played The Ancient World (2nd edition) with 3, and that was a treat. The theme and presentation are wonderful, which does make the game very easy to enjoy partaking in. The worker placement is light, but having to do damage control from defeating titans is a cute wrinkle. The way armies work, in that they get better over time by being retired, was an incredibly cool system. Overall I would actually be interested in owning this one despite wishing it was just a little bit bigger in some way ... Honestly though, it's a stellar candidate for gateway worker placement, provided people are given some appropriate warnings that A) Titans will fuck you up, so you really shouldn't fight them unless you can deal with the worst-case-scenario fallout,
Played Architects of the West Kingdom with 4 because I was curious to know if it would surprise me (I didn't think it would be my cup of tea, knowing what I knew of it). It was fine? My friend teaching it said he had very similar feelings about the game on his first play, but really grew to enjoy it after the 2nd: it goes by pretty fast. Like, our end game scores were pretty tight despite doing some dramatically different things, but if I took a step back and looked at everything that I actually did, I built one whole building, 4 levels of the cathedral, and was virtuous with a few leftover resources. That's ... it ... And I was in 3rd by 3 points (two other players tied, actually).
For how much is going on with the number of workers and how fast turns tend to go, it just feels like there's a lot of busywork with not a ton of payoff? Saying that, I can still understand where some people like this game a lot, but - like I started with - I don't think it's for me.
Played Parks with 5 and it is a fucking treat, friends. Its gorgeous, the theme is cute, the gameplay is smart, and what you get in that box for what it costs is impressive. Parks is basically the evolution of the Tokaido design, where players are walking down a randomized trail four times across different seasons. You collect resources or perform actions on the different spaces, but you can't go to a space that's already occupied without using a once-per-season cheat. You start with a small end-game goal, get to acquire gear (special abilities!) and canteens (varied abilities!), take photos and visit parks, and it's all just so delightful. I would be curious how the game plays with fewer than 5 (the max), because there will be less competition for spaces and less cycling of the gear/parks decks (card consistency in the parks deck might be the biggest strike against overall balance, but goals are only worth 2 or 3 points so just playing well around what comes out will still have you in the running).
I'll be putting in an order for this with my FLGS later this morning.
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
Oh man, the day is a blur. I know I played something in the morning but it's a giant question mark, because most of yesterday was Trickerion with the Academy.
So I'm a big fan of Trickerion to start with - it's clever and tight with a good arc, and if anything only really suffers from elements of the Dark Alley introducing some dumb luck into a game without much of it. So for our venture into the expansion (we only used the academy, not the machines and no magician powers, etc) we agreed to not play with prophecies, and I believe the game is better for it (it's just too much to keep track of that someone can randomly fuck with anyway).
The academy itself honestly isn't particularly complicated, nor is the way your protégé works, which is all thumbs up from me. It's also nice to start with an additional worker, even though you now have yet another board you'll want to go to and feel exactly as strapped as you did before. However both building and using the rooms, along with improving your protégé, are very fun things to do, and generally quite rewarding. Ignoring these elements is foolish because there are a lot of points to be had for building rooms if you can generate the money to cash in, and the rooms themselves range from "A nice bonus" to "Saved my bacon and now I have a second level 3 trick." Additionally, retiring tricks is interesting, although I feel I had a somewhat skewed experience with this element of the game since I played the Totally-Not-Peter-Dinklage Professor who gets to retire two tricks "for free." So I had a neat little passive income, but was incentivized to retire tricks early since they wouldn't occupy my board. Two other tricks were retired by other players, but for much more minor benefit than mine, so I'd be very curious to see more of this across more games. Ultimately the game scores much higher than the base (we were something like 160-135ish-135ish-100), and does feel even better to play, but there are two rather large caveats to this experience:
1) The physical size of the game is ballooned even further. Trickerion was already a bit of a hog with the expanding player boards, but now that everyone starts with an additional one, and a second board plus components for it are out, it's a sprawl.
After that we grabbed a pizza because I had officially skipped lunch, and then when we got back we toned it back and played some lighter fare.
Horrified was a pretty big let down for how much good press and buzz it seems to have gotten. It's ... Pandemic ... with some slightly more involved "cures" ... and a much less interesting deck of "bad thing happens." Monsters only activate when their icon appears on a card, and only do interesting things if the card specifically is for them (even then most are really boring or genuinely do nothing), or if they're the "frenzied" monster, which just acts more often. This meant in our game The Invisible Man teleported around stealing items and little else, Dracula (frenzied) ran all around town relentlessly attacking us, and The Mummy ... existed. This is compounded by the lackluster way "combat" works, which is that they roll dice, you take a hit for each hit rolled, and you have no health, but you can lose items instead. What this means is that people are walking around with a backpack of knick-knacks, and monsters are pursuing you so they can slap your books out of your hands like you're the class nerd.
You can add more monsters (the game says 4 is difficult, we played with the standard 3), and it WOULD be more difficult just because they would act more often. But it wouldn't be more fun or compelling. Villagers pop up at random so there are frequently times there's nothing to worry about other than scavenging for whatever pile of items is biggest. All of the "solves" for the monsters are "bring [colour] to [place] to tick box", with The Mummy having the best puzzle, but seeming to be the most boring actual monster on the board ... Ugh, whatever. It's just really boring and what it does that is new doesn't actually make up for how little choice the game has. With a lack of any real mounting tension the horror theme is completely absent outside of aesthetics. Just avoid it unless you're 100% new to board games or really need another Pandemic?
There was another small-box filler or two in there, but I don't think they're particularly noteworthy - nothing that blew my mind or was all that memorable. Today is the last day, so lets see what else we can get to the table~
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
And I remembered the morning game was Automobiles, which is actually pretty fun. It's a great mashup of bag-builder and racing game, though the theme is definitely a bit fucked by the fact that there are turns you might move 0-2 spaces which is nonsense in cars. Regardless, the game itself is recommended, and is the best of the Trains, Planes, Automobiles trilogy. Give it a shot if you happen to have the chance~
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
Edit: also I bought Cataclysm: A Second World War and Talon from GMT because apparently I felt I didn't have enough direct conflict games that no one ever wants to play? I'm kinda excited about both of them though!
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
The designers of this one are in my local boardgame group, so don't be bashful about asking for rules help if you need it.
No, I'm afraid I have not played it. The big, theatre-level strategic WW2 games are not one of my favorite genres.
Knew from reviews going in that it was 4X themed but not really 4X. I'm not sure I'm even fully comfortable calling it a Euro though given the amount of randomness. It's certainly an engine builder and an optimization puzzle -- I feel like it models a Sid Meier's Civilization computer game stripped down to the action optimization focus of taking a turn. Which is in my wheelhouse but not really something I'd expect everyone to like.
Production wise, the painted miniatures are fine but I would have been just as happy without them. I do like most of the other bits and art well enough, but not quite as high quality as an EGG overproduction. And to be fair on that one, big fan of Ian O'Toole. Player mats are kind of odd though, thin sheets with a textured coating.
I'm looking forward to playing again but like Scythe I bet this is going to turn some people off who think they're getting something it's not. As someone who does play 4X games this felt reasonably light in comparison, but enough play time and system complexity I certainly wouldn't call it light.
Not me, give me a game big enough to dive into and swim through. Trickerion and Anachrony both fit the bill. I loves me some huge over complex fiddly games. If I don't have to bring in extra chairs to store bits then i'm playing the wrong game.
Speaking of this, I'll throw out a "Avoid Hitler's Reich at all cost!" warning.
It tries to be this big grand strategic version of Quatermaster General, but it's just a colossal mess.
It has the single, absolute, most very worst manual I've ever seen in a game. It is 90% a card game and the manual doesn't tell you when you draw new cards. Ponder that failure for a moment.
Then it has a glossary of terms that refer to their pages in the manual...except the glossary isn't on the back on the manual. It's on the back of the scenario book, which the glossary isn't referring to. So you have to look at the back of the scenario book to find which page to turn to in the manual. They didn't put the glossary...on the back of the book that the glossary is referring to.......
I'm picking up stuff I feel like I may never get to play just cause at one time or another i wanted to play them (but my groups player count went to 5 recently, so 4 players dont get used much anymore).
Neat, that game could definitely use it.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
Does it also come with more players who know how to play so that it can finally hit the table every now and then?