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[Board Games] Climbing out of our hovels to play in meatspace
JonBob
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Let's talk about board games.
In 2020 and 2021, people with large collections of board games were forced to stay indoors, apart from friends and acquaintances that share the hobby. We learned about technologies that allow us to share our pastime online, such as Board Game Arena. These are great! But they're still not the real thing.
There's a light at the end of the tunnel. Conventions are starting up again, with restrictions. Local game groups are getting together. The worldwide supply chain is still screwed, but new releases and Kickstarter projects are slowly trickling in.
What are your favorite games to play these days?
The big hits for me of late have been:
- Phantom Ink, a fantastic word-guessing game
- Project L, a polyomino-tiling engine builder
- MicroMacro, a sublime cooperative mystery game
Which games have you started playing online, and won't go back to the physical version?
It's the short and fast ones, for me. Incan Gold is so slick on BGA that I'm not reaching for it on the shelf.
Are you feeling ready for public events, or not yet? What was/will be your first?
I'll be going to Protospiel MI, which will be my first outing other than local friend events.
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Not sure game is actually good. Might be novelty and theme.
Living Forest is amazing online but i found it waaaay too fiddly in person. We're more likely to play ares project
It's good. It's better with the Norwegians expansion.
You can deck build if you want, or the cards come in decks that are reasonably coherent.
Anathema for some here, I'm sure, but if I owned where I lived I would be more likely to let treasures pile up and gather dust.
PSN: Wstfgl | GamerTag: An Evil Plan | Battle.net: FallenIdle#1970
Hit me up on BoardGameArena! User: Loaded D1
My favorite solo games:
Mage Knight
Leaving Earth
Arkham Horror LCG
Marvel Champions
Nusfjord
Viticulture
Wingspan
7 Wonders Duel
Games that I have and am trying to learn this year:
Gaia Project
Feast for Odin
Lord of the Rings LCG
Robinson Crusoe
Alien Legendary
Imperial Assault
Games that I hope to get this year:
Too Many Bones
Cloudspire
Hoplomachus
Obsession
Apex Theropod
Games my kids and I love to play:
New York Zoo (7 year olds 1st favorite game)
Horrified (7 year olds 2nd favorite game)
Descent: Legends in the Dark (9 year olds favorite)
Super Skill Pinball
Xia: Legends of a Drift System
Viticulture
Arkham Horror 3rd edition
Fireball Island
Othello
Chess
Hive
Blokus
Dungeon Mayhem
If you do get into it and are willing to sell/ship, let me know what's up. I'm always looking to rehome games that I'm looking for.
About the only negative is before dropping in the skull to end the turn, is making sure you've clicked through everything on the app and its on the home screen and ready. Besides that though, pretty good!
I'm waiting to hear of a tear down of the tower online so we can get a spare motor. I bet that's going to be a wear part down the line. Looking forward to the next game though, and for the inevitable legacy expansion, because damn this game is ripe for it.
Also, I have always thought this was based on Stephen King's Dark Tower Series, even the original game. I had to recalibrate expectations when I showed up to play today!
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Maybe like Red Dead, but everything is Ḟ̸̢̬̖͙͔̰̫̠́̅͑͐́͝͠ų̵̛̜͍͊̈͌̈́̍͝c̴̻̘̪̳̞̣̻̒̕͘͜k̴̡̲̗͋́͛̕͜i̵͉̠̲̫̣̥̓͒̔̍̚͜n̴̗̖̯̼̯͓̈́̍͛̄͠'̴̝͎̼͖͉͛͐͠ ̷̢̡̢̐̍̈́̈́̋͘͝͝W̴̢͔͔̱̙̪͋̀̄̎̎̊͝e̶̝̣͈͚̖̩͖̖̽̾͐̈́́͊̓í̷͔̳̥͖̦̀̓͐͝ͅr̶̛̮̪͉̰͒ͅd̴͖̹̻̳̤̽̉.
PSN: Wstfgl | GamerTag: An Evil Plan | Battle.net: FallenIdle#1970
Hit me up on BoardGameArena! User: Loaded D1
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
Got a call from my local store. Turns out.. they didn't originally realize that the mats for Dark Tower were add-ons and not part of the standard bundle.. and furthermore, they got misplaced or something. So they had some extra! And I got a call, saying "Hey, you want in?"
Well duh, to get my store discount + not having to pay for shipping or worry about fighting their online store? Heck yeah I will! Which just leaves sleeves as the only potential item I might still get.
Visualizing what "80%" means in terms of increased area of a circle is kind of wild. I'm also super appreciative that they re-scaled everything for the components, so they still work with the mat. I mean, except the rivers, but those seem like they were implied issues anyways?
Just comparing them... yup! Definitely room for minis now.
We're now keen on running an in-person game through Backstabbr with lots of in person communication.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
I'm disappointed that it's not hidden movement.
From what I've sussed out so far (having not played it yet):
The tower serves basically as a randomizer. Skulls can fall out of various places on it, in 1 of the cardinal directions. When a skull pops out, you put it on a settlement/building to show the spreading evil. If you ever need to place a 4th skull on a building, it pops and gives you corruption (which is one of the ways to lose).
Think of it like Pandemic. Instead of a deck randomly infecting a location, the tower does with its randomness stuff (and then you choose which location to "infect"). And because of the construction, skulls may not flow through properly and will start stacking up.
Then there's the seals. The seals cover various symbols (and can also cover a place where skulls come out - see above about multiple skulls removing). When a symbol is lit and facing you, it costs you extra resources to use the kind of action that is being displayed to you.
So.. bit of randomness, bit of visual flair to something the app is running.
Pretty much this. It also acts as a fun tension builder because you drop a skull in at the end of every players turn, but they don't always come right back out. So it might be a few turns later when you remove a door, or the tower rotates and then suddenly like 4 skulls fall into your kingdom.
Mostly it is just a neat centerpiece. You could write up a page of rules and have a spinner to do what the tower does, but the towers fun. Also it has a speaker in it, and makes noise too.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Hákarl 1.0
Rez 5, Str 4
ICE: Barrier - Bioroid - AP
When you rez this ICE during a run against this server, you may derez another installed card. If you do, the Runner cannot use paid abilities printed on bioroid ICE for the remainder of the turn.
Click to break 1 subroutine on this ICE
-> Do 1 brain damage
-> End the run
So in derezing another card, what if it's a card with counters or credits arazed. on them - do those tokens stay? That would be really cool on some drip economy cards that load credits when rezed.
I don't think there's anything in the definition of derez that removes counters/credits, and facedown cards are definitely allowed to have counters on, at least. So yeah, I'd say you can probably use it to double up on Adonis Campaign, for instance. There's a pretty limited pool of cards where that's positive, though; in most cases, that's a cost somewhere from 0 to massive.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
Of course, as the Corp you have to be careful that you are maintaining a legal board state. You can't advance an asset unless it says you can, but you can move advancement counters to it if you have an ability that lets you do such. Generally that is a place where "Don't be a dick" comes up. Lukas used to sit right behind the Corp players shoulder when observing games to make sure they weren't cheating. And I'm pretty sure Jinteki will stop you from doing something illegal.
MSRP ain't cheap on that box, lemme tell ya'!
If it was made of wood you'd call it a chest.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
yeah but if it was made of human flesh you'd call it "oh god who made that thing"
really makes you think
So the Runner had Flip Switch, which is a hardware that can be trashed for a few different effects - one of which is to jack out.
So the Runner initiates a run against a sever with an unrezzed ICE. He doesn't jack out before the rez. Corp decides to rez. Pay the cost - it's Ping. Ping's top ability says that when its rezed the Runner takes a tag.
At first the Runner argued that he thought he could use Flip Switch to jack out. Table discussed it thoroughly and we decided that it couldn't work that way because this ability is not marked as an interrupt. He could jack out before the first subroutine, but couldn't interrupt the top ability while it was happening
It also has great table presence and a wide appeal. Everyone I've shown it off to can't wait to try it themselves or play again. I'm not having a hard time like I usually do to get some people together for a game.
Yeah. This is a point of timing that was drilled into my mind.
Initiate run
corp decides whether to rez the first ice or not.
If first ice is rezzed, runner encounters it - encountered effects fire here.
Runner then gets to use abilities, typically against the active ice. Runner and corp flip back and forth on using said abilities (I forget which one initiates it off the top of my head).
Once both sides pass on using abilities, any subroutines that are not broken fire off. No non-interrupt / reaction abilities can be used during this until all subroutines are resolved.
If the runner isn't dead and then run isn't ended, the runner is considered to have passed the ice at this point.
The runner then gets a chance to either jack out or continue the run. (There's also a paid ability window in this area too).
So yeah. You literally cannot initiate a run and then jack out before encountering the first ice. HOWEVER, if the first ice isn't rezzed and the second one is, you CAN jack out at that point after successfully passing the unrezzed ice.
... Have I mentioned that I miss this game?
If you can find a way here, there's always a seat at the table.
See also: all board games
not mine
oh wait yes mine
I think I kept to the ruthless spirit of his counsel and fashioned a grim borough of airports and factories with a long and sickly river of industrial effluent, and through the good work of my PR firm I won 150 to 149, at the very end of the score track
Having played a few games now, this is a lot of what I really enjoy about Return to Dark Tower.
It's an awesome game visually. When you set it up on the table, it brings the "Woah!" reaction from players. There's none of this, "Trust me, this is going cool, I promise" while setting it up.
Thanks to the app and the tower, a lot of the more complex book-keeping that would need to be handled with either more components, time, or rules, just gets taken care of. There's a lot going on each turn, and plenty of options for players, but the pace feels brisk because you're not manually shuffling, spinning, dealing, or rolling to resolve stuff.
And with that, again, between the tower and the app, there's a lot of action on the table. So even when it's not your turn, the game holds your attention. Between 5 games now, I've never had to tell someone, "Hey Bob, it's your turn".
Plus, there's a lot of depth to the game, and strategies to consider. With diversity between monsters, adversaries, and quests, it's highly replayable. And while there's some "foundational" strategies that you start to work out, the differences keep you on your toes enough that there's not a "one-size-conquers-all" build.
Wrap all of this up and tie it with the "very easy to teach" bow, and you have a great game. In fact, that's the thing that sealed the deal for me...it's so, so, so easy to set up and start playing with new players, it makes it a joy to bring out. If Restoration Games is at Pax Unplugged this year, they better come ready to get a hug from me, because whoever designed a game with this much complexity built in, but being so easy to teach deserves it.
So a few years back, I bought King of Tokyo: Dark, the single print LE of King of Tokyo. They made 2 promos for it: Space Penguin Dark and Cyber Kitty Dark. At the time, I got ahold of a Cyber Kitty, because I like kitties. Time passes, and I can't find the other promo anywhere. I had talked to my LGS store owner about possibly getting ahold of one, but it was a bit of a crap shoot.
Fast forward to today, and I noticed the Space Penguin Dark promo on a KoT: Dark that my LGS had in. Thing is, I couldn't remember which promo I had already. I was pretty sure I was looking for the penguin, but it had been a couple years and a pandemic ago. To be 100% sure, I asked one of the managers (a friend) to see if there were any other copies of that promo around, in case a restock happened. She found 2 more copies of KoT: Dark, but they both had regular King of Tokyo promos. Which, while cool (a giant magical girl and a unicorn), were not the dark editions I was looking for.
So I take a risk.. and buy it. And getting home today? Turns out that the penguin was the one I needed! So now I have a complete KoT: Dark set! (The promos are the 2 characters that were changed between King of Tokyo 1st and 2nd edition). And good thing too. A quick price search shows EACH promo going for $40-80 online, with one outlier of Cyber Kitty going for $199. The board game's only $40!
So yeah. Not sure what I'm gonna do with my extra copy at this point. I'll PROBABLY donate it to Toys for Tots or something come Christmastime, like I did with the Citadels copy I bought just to get the promo.
Edit: Ignore the alien.
https://hasbropulse.com/blogs/avalon-hill/heroquest-try-out-a-new-beginning
Differences between Europe's and NA's editions of the original Hero quest