I'm at a point where a ton of games look cool but I want to find the best mechanically/thematically in their category or genre. If I can do better, it isn't worth it to buy something I know I'll be getting rid of eventually.
In case anyone missed it, 7th Continent 2nd printing kickstarter is requesting backers fill in a very short (~1 minute for me) survey to help them with some pre-planning on production. Head over to kickstarter to fill it in.
Haven't played but I think it's in the same category as Kingdom Death, Shadow of Brimstone and Myth where the base game is fun but only really worth it if you can get the whole Kickstarter bundle.
There's no way that Kingdom Death falls into the category of "only worth it if you can get the whole kickstarter bundle," as most of the expansions are meant as replacements for monsters that come in the base game... and the fact that buying all the expansions for Kingdom Death is like, a five-figure expense.
Haven't played but I think it's in the same category as Kingdom Death, Shadow of Brimstone and Myth where the base game is fun but only really worth it if you can get the whole Kickstarter bundle.
There's no way that Kingdom Death falls into the category of "only worth it if you can get the whole kickstarter bundle," as most of the expansions are meant as replacements for monsters that come in the base game... and the fact that buying all the expansions for Kingdom Death is like, a five-figure expense.
Yeah, KD is completely fine with the base game only. The rest of the stuff is fun but not necessary at all and some of it is just downright poor.
+3
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HedgethornAssociate Professor of Historical Hobby HorsesIn the Lions' DenRegistered Userregular
Concordia is a seemingly strange mishmash of mechanics which manages to be way more than the sum of its parts.
You move colonists around a map of the Mediterranean, using resources to build buildings that will produce more resources for you, which then let you build yet more buildings to produce more resources. Building in a city doesn't keep other players from building there, but it does make it more expensive. So there's a Catan style element of building, producing, building -- but without the randomness or blocking of Catan.
Resources can be bought or sold for varying amounts of money, so there's a "trading in the Mediterranean" feel about the whole thing: producing a bunch of cloth so that you can sell it for wheat, and then use the wheat to do what you really want.
Your available actions are determined by a hand of cards, which you discard in order to play the relevant action. You will also buy more cards from time to time, either with different actions from your starting cards or upgraded actions. But rather than having a deck that you cycle through, any cards you buy go straight into your hand, and when you pick up your discard pile you just take all your cards into your hand simultaneously. So there's a similarity to deckbuilders, but without the shuffle/draw randomness of something like Dominion.
Your victory points are ultimately almost a kind of set-collection: you get a number of points for, say, the number of regions you've built in, multiplied by the number of Saturn cards in your deck.
All of these somehow add up to a very elegant Euro with an entirely opaque scoring system. In my game group, it's almost always shocking who turns out to be winning when victory points are finally tallied up.
Conan is a pretty decent skirmish game and when I say skirmish, I mean that rather than a dungeon crawl or some other structure. The typical scenario features a small party of heroes (usually 3, sometimes with some support) carving through opposition to reach a particular goal.
Biggest weakness to the original box is the limited number of maps. Core game loop is pretty good and is based around managing fatigue in the form of activation gems.
Hey, so before I start hunting for a copy of Concordia, because of a lot of reviews praising its elegance, what games are most similar to it?
This is actually a tough question to answer because Concordia is thinking outside of the box mechanically.
The role selection is very distantly descended from Puerto Rico, but I honestly can't think of a game with similar drafting-for-VP aspects (it is not much like Dominion or Ascension etc at all, maybe Core Worlds a tiny bit?). I guess the map play feels the tiniest bit like Orleans?
Maybe a better answer to your question is how it feels to play, which is just "like a euro where you're trying to find a good move, but unusually forgiving in that all moves feel good, nothing your opponents do feels like it shafts you, and yet you're still excited to figure out what to do".
Conan is a pretty decent skirmish game and when I say skirmish, I mean that rather than a dungeon crawl or some other structure. The typical scenario features a small party of heroes (usually 3, sometimes with some support) carving through opposition to reach a particular goal.
Biggest weakness to the original box is the limited number of maps. Core game loop is pretty good and is based around managing fatigue in the form of activation gems.
Almost sounds like one of those that is great with the Kickstarter options but limited without. I still wake up in a cold sweat thinking about how I only bought the Zombicide: Black Plague base game.
+1
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
Conan is a pretty decent skirmish game and when I say skirmish, I mean that rather than a dungeon crawl or some other structure. The typical scenario features a small party of heroes (usually 3, sometimes with some support) carving through opposition to reach a particular goal.
Biggest weakness to the original box is the limited number of maps. Core game loop is pretty good and is based around managing fatigue in the form of activation gems.
Accurate description, but I really wasn't impressed by the gameplay.
I'm at a point where a ton of games look cool but I want to find the best mechanically/thematically in their category or genre. If I can do better, it isn't worth it to buy something I know I'll be getting rid of eventually.
Once you hit a certain point, it becomes very difficult to have two games where one is just "the other one but strictly better".
Unless you've got a very static playgroup and you all have fairly similar appetites week-to-week, it's worth having several acceptable games in the same genre, because some have elements you might be in the mood for or not, even if just for variety's sake, and you never quite know what games other people are going to like.
Hey, so before I start hunting for a copy of Concordia, because of a lot of reviews praising its elegance, what games are most similar to it?
This is actually a tough question to answer because Concordia is thinking outside of the box mechanically.
The role selection is very distantly descended from Puerto Rico, but I honestly can't think of a game with similar drafting-for-VP aspects (it is not much like Dominion or Ascension etc at all, maybe Core Worlds a tiny bit?). I guess the map play feels the tiniest bit like Orleans?
Maybe a better answer to your question is how it feels to play, which is just "like a euro where you're trying to find a good move, but unusually forgiving in that all moves feel good, nothing your opponents do feels like it shafts you, and yet you're still excited to figure out what to do".
Concordia is a seemingly strange mishmash of mechanics which manages to be way more than the sum of its parts.
You move colonists around a map of the Mediterranean, using resources to build buildings that will produce more resources for you, which then let you build yet more buildings to produce more resources. Building in a city doesn't keep other players from building there, but it does make it more expensive. So there's a Catan style element of building, producing, building -- but without the randomness or blocking of Catan.
Resources can be bought or sold for varying amounts of money, so there's a "trading in the Mediterranean" feel about the whole thing: producing a bunch of cloth so that you can sell it for wheat, and then use the wheat to do what you really want.
Your available actions are determined by a hand of cards, which you discard in order to play the relevant action. You will also buy more cards from time to time, either with different actions from your starting cards or upgraded actions. But rather than having a deck that you cycle through, any cards you buy go straight into your hand, and when you pick up your discard pile you just take all your cards into your hand simultaneously. So there's a similarity to deckbuilders, but without the shuffle/draw randomness of something like Dominion.
Your victory points are ultimately almost a kind of set-collection: you get a number of points for, say, the number of regions you've built in, multiplied by the number of Saturn cards in your deck.
All of these somehow add up to a very elegant Euro with an entirely opaque scoring system. In my game group, it's almost always shocking who turns out to be winning when victory points are finally tallied up.
Okay, at the very least it doesn't sound similar to Viticulture, or any of the games I have now. Thanks guys!
Speaking of TTA, played a 4p game at game night tonight and man that game is just super good. Took 3:45 (which I feel is a totally reasonable frame for a game of that scope) and 2 of those guys were just killers, which was enlightening to see. The 4th resigned near the beginning of age 3 having fallen into an irreparable military situation. I hung on and made some decent moves but ended up a distant 3rd, while the other two ended up within a couple points of each other (about 50 up on me).
Group got together and knocked out the prologue game and the first three months of Pandemic legacy 2, impressions and spoilers so far:
We kicked a good amount of butt the first two months, expanding the map was fun.
We came pretty close for the third month but ended up losing. This game scales against you pretty harshly! Bigger map, less supplies, and now epidemic count is checked against city card count and we have freaking 7 epidemics to deal with what the heck!
It seems like early on though you are going to eat some losses in order to build up some infastructure, upgrades, etc. Feels like much more of a ramp up than season 1. Neat so far and looking forward to taking another crack at March soon.
I really enjoyed my first game of Voyage of Marco Polo and I'm trying to decide if I like it better than Troyes. Maybe that's not the right comparison for dice placement games.
See, I adore Century Spice Road, so MP scrateches that fast paced economic itch. In my first game, I gleefully cranked out contracts (to be fair I was only one contract higher than other players.) But then I, who completed all my secret goals, exploded 20 points higher than the other players, winning by ten points because one city was on both objective cards. I have a concern that RNG will determine the ease of which players travel, like Ticket to Ride.
While Troyes is probably the better game, I enjoy marco polo more. Perhaps comparing them is not right, but they're both better than Roll for the Galaxy.
My first run of Clank! In! Space! was an utter joy as well.
I really enjoyed my first game of Voyage of Marco Polo and I'm trying to decide if I like it better than Troyes. Maybe that's not the right comparison for dice placement games.
See, I adore Century Spice Road, so MP scrateches that fast paced economic itch. In my first game, I gleefully cranked out contracts (to be fair I was only one contract higher than other players.) But then I, who completed all my secret goals, exploded 20 points higher than the other players, winning by ten points because one city was on both objective cards. I have a concern that RNG will determine the ease of which players travel, like Ticket to Ride.
While Troyes is probably the better game, I enjoy marco polo more. Perhaps comparing them is not right, but they're both better than Roll for the Galaxy.
My first run of Clank! In! Space! was an utter joy as well.
If you have the same city on two cards you only get the bonus for going to three different cities, as you only went to three different cities. Sounds like maybe your didn't do that from your wording? Also did you deal 4 and keep 2? That mitigates The luck of the draw on those a lot. Picking the right goals and character combo based on the board setup is real important.
I really enjoyed my first game of Voyage of Marco Polo and I'm trying to decide if I like it better than Troyes. Maybe that's not the right comparison for dice placement games.
See, I adore Century Spice Road, so MP scrateches that fast paced economic itch. In my first game, I gleefully cranked out contracts (to be fair I was only one contract higher than other players.) But then I, who completed all my secret goals, exploded 20 points higher than the other players, winning by ten points because one city was on both objective cards. I have a concern that RNG will determine the ease of which players travel, like Ticket to Ride.
While Troyes is probably the better game, I enjoy marco polo more. Perhaps comparing them is not right, but they're both better than Roll for the Galaxy.
My first run of Clank! In! Space! was an utter joy as well.
If you have the same city on two cards you only get the bonus for going to three different cities, as you only went to three different cities. Sounds like maybe your didn't do that from your wording? Also did you deal 4 and keep 2? That mitigates The luck of the draw on those a lot. Picking the right goals and character combo based on the board setup is real important.
Man Marco Polo is an awesome game.
Yes, thats true. I realized that and deducted the appropriate points. Still won by a lot though.
I won off the back of a very powerful final round. I completed two contracts, each with a black die reward, moved, then used the blacks to consecutively move again at a low price, giving me that extra step to place the city for my last goal.
eDIT - Ah, but I did fail to deal out four goals per player. I just gave everyone two.
AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
Oh, forgot to report back!
We.. lost early January.
I need to say this outside of spoilers, because it is important: Make sure you read all the actions in full on the cards or in the manual, and REMEMBER them. We tried to do an action only to find we hadn't met the prerequisite. And because that completely boned our planning, well.. we were done.
actual gameplay:
So yeah. We were all set to do a recon. Only to realize, as I was about to open the box, that we had forgotten we need a supply center there. We had the cards, we were just fighting a MASSIVE outbreak in Istambul, Cairo, and Tripoli that just would not let us move over to North America much.
We also found ourselves quite often stuck with cards that we couldn't transfer. We decided to take the builder to get supply centers faster, but that relied on her drawing cards... because we sure as heck couldn't waste turns moving people around!
I also misread my ability - I could only move pawns once per turn as an action. In the prologue, I had definitely played hopscotch more than that.
My character ended with an exposure thanks to Cairo being a butt. At the very last turn, we had an epidemic break out that pretty much forced all the black cities to get a cube and lose population. We decided to use our upgrade points to give the farmer the ability to remotely deliver, and the ability for the card trader to be a runner and move faster. We'll obviously be using that character instead of the builder next game.
Everyone was tense and panicked. We also were in agreement that we believe the first game was designed to be lost, if you aren't really good. It helps convey the idea that you really don't know what you are doing.
FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
You know how in Pandemic S1, you can play it non-legacy at the start a few times if you're unfamiliar to get the hang of the rules;
is this a thing you can do/should consider with Pandemic S2?
The basic start and set up seem like they're a long way removed from vanilla Pandemic and I'm just wondering if there's any thoughts on looping it once or twice before you start placing stickers or punching boxes.
You know how in Pandemic S1, you can play it non-legacy at the start a few times if you're unfamiliar to get the hang of the rules;
is this a thing you can do/should consider with Pandemic S2?
The basic start and set up seem like they're a long way removed from vanilla Pandemic and I'm just wondering if there's any thoughts on looping it once or twice before you start placing stickers or punching boxes.
Yes, the game is similar enough to vanilla pandemic, but also different enough, that I 100% recommend doing the prologue (non-legacy) game before playing your first legacy game.
Read and re-read the rules very carefully as you play the prologue game because you are going to keep thinking that some powers or rules worked like they did in Pandemic when they do not. The rhythm of the game is also subtly different, pay attention to how the action economy of producing supplies, moving supplies, transferring supplies, and dropping off supplies differs radically from simply removing disease cubes from the board.
In case anyone missed it, 7th Continent 2nd printing kickstarter is requesting backers fill in a very short (~1 minute for me) survey to help them with some pre-planning on production. Head over to kickstarter to fill it in.
I went all in on this thing based on reviews and I really hope it helps to get my wife into gaming.
I remember being halfway through legacy season 1 and still forgetting that you could do even simple actions from the base game like chartering flights.
I remember being halfway through legacy season 1 and still forgetting that you could do even simple actions from the base game like chartering flights.
I know that can be done, but I don't think there has even been an occasion to actually charter a flight. Usually when it comes up as a possibility, we need the card we would use to cure something.
Group got together and knocked out the prologue game and the first three months of Pandemic legacy 2, impressions and spoilers so far:
We kicked a good amount of butt the first two months, expanding the map was fun.
We came pretty close for the third month but ended up losing. This game scales against you pretty harshly! Bigger map, less supplies, and now epidemic count is checked against city card count and we have freaking 7 epidemics to deal with what the heck!
It seems like early on though you are going to eat some losses in order to build up some infastructure, upgrades, etc. Feels like much more of a ramp up than season 1. Neat so far and looking forward to taking another crack at March soon.
Spoilers up through March:
Those extra epidemics hit us hard too. The two people I play with both love adding new cities to the grid, which is we're currently sitting on 8 epidemics.
So far, we've lost the first game of every month, so I would definitely call this harder than Season 1, where we only lost two or three times over the entire season. We put down a lot of supply lines around North America last time, though, have a permanent supply center at our next intended recon point, and had some good luck with (lost haven spoiler)
innoculating the infection cards of some 1 and 2 pop cities so we won't have to waste supplies on them
so maybe our luck will change when we start April this weekend.
In case anyone missed it, 7th Continent 2nd printing kickstarter is requesting backers fill in a very short (~1 minute for me) survey to help them with some pre-planning on production. Head over to kickstarter to fill it in.
I went all in on this thing based on reviews and I really hope it helps to get my wife into gaming.
Our group lost at Mysterium tonight. I can't recall if that has ever happened before. My wife is not the best ghost by any means. Twice during the game she used a card picturing a chimney sweep to try to point us to the doctor. There were multiple men with mustaches in both cases, so it wasn't particularly helping. Afterward we pointed out that doctors have to go through 8 years of college and then a residency whereas chimney sweeps do not. So why on Earth does she associate chimney sweeps with doctors?
Our group lost at Mysterium tonight. I can't recall if that has ever happened before. My wife is not the best ghost by any means. Twice during the game she used a card picturing a chimney sweep to try to point us to the doctor. There were multiple men with mustaches in both cases, so it wasn't particularly helping. Afterward we pointed out that doctors have to go through 8 years of college and then a residency whereas chimney sweeps do not. So why on Earth does she associate chimney sweeps with doctors?
Part of what I enjoy about Mysterium is seeing how different people play Ghost. That's probably exactly what gets old if you have a constant group of people.
Part of what I enjoy about Mysterium is seeing how different people play Ghost. That's probably exactly what gets old if you have a constant group of people.
From our experience, the fun that you can have is inversely proportional to the skill level of the ghost. The most skilled ghost will bring about an easy win, but the terrible ghost will bring about memorable WTF moments.
On the topic of Mysterium, has anyone played with any of the expansions? I'm considering getting one or both of them to help mix things up a little this Christmas.
In case anyone missed it, 7th Continent 2nd printing kickstarter is requesting backers fill in a very short (~1 minute for me) survey to help them with some pre-planning on production. Head over to kickstarter to fill it in.
I went all in on this thing based on reviews and I really hope it helps to get my wife into gaming.
I'm pretty excited for it too.
Have you tried other games with your wife?
Anything competitive is flat out, but I've tried some co-op stuff. She didn't like Dark Souls because it was too complicated - which I think is a fair assessment really, for a game based around combat it should be a ton faster. I have a bunch of players v. DM games like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Star Wars Imperial Assault, but she's not a fan of those cause we're not 'playing together' since I run the bad guys.
Oh, she did like the Cryptozoic Ghostbusters Games which was nice since all the monsters are automated.
On the topic of Mysterium, has anyone played with any of the expansions? I'm considering getting one or both of them to help mix things up a little this Christmas.
We have the first one, Hidden Signs (English edition), and it doesn't add anything new to the game. It just contains more cards which is good because this game comes out quite a bit in our group. Rahdo mentioned the Polish edition adds new options for the ghost.
The other expansion, Secrets & Lies, they replaced the weapon with "secrets" cards. They look more like the location cards, so I really don't know if I would prefer that or not. We don't plan to pick it up unless it is on a super sale.
One of our friends has Dixit 3 and when we play over there, they let the ghost draw 4 Mysterium cards and 3 Dixit cards to add to the variability. Dixit 3 and Mysterium share the same artist.
In case anyone missed it, 7th Continent 2nd printing kickstarter is requesting backers fill in a very short (~1 minute for me) survey to help them with some pre-planning on production. Head over to kickstarter to fill it in.
I went all in on this thing based on reviews and I really hope it helps to get my wife into gaming.
I'm pretty excited for it too.
Have you tried other games with your wife?
Anything competitive is flat out, but I've tried some co-op stuff. She didn't like Dark Souls because it was too complicated - which I think is a fair assessment really, for a game based around combat it should be a ton faster. I have a bunch of players v. DM games like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Star Wars Imperial Assault, but she's not a fan of those cause we're not 'playing together' since I run the bad guys.
Oh, she did like the Cryptozoic Ghostbusters Games which was nice since all the monsters are automated.
On the topic of Mysterium, has anyone played with any of the expansions? I'm considering getting one or both of them to help mix things up a little this Christmas.
I consider Hidden Signs a must buy. No new gameplay but the extra cards are well worth it. Haven't tried the new expansion yet.
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he is v metal
For $50, maybe, but I wasn't that impressed when I tried it.
There's no way that Kingdom Death falls into the category of "only worth it if you can get the whole kickstarter bundle," as most of the expansions are meant as replacements for monsters that come in the base game... and the fact that buying all the expansions for Kingdom Death is like, a five-figure expense.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Yeah, KD is completely fine with the base game only. The rest of the stuff is fun but not necessary at all and some of it is just downright poor.
@Wearingglasses
Concordia is a seemingly strange mishmash of mechanics which manages to be way more than the sum of its parts.
You move colonists around a map of the Mediterranean, using resources to build buildings that will produce more resources for you, which then let you build yet more buildings to produce more resources. Building in a city doesn't keep other players from building there, but it does make it more expensive. So there's a Catan style element of building, producing, building -- but without the randomness or blocking of Catan.
Resources can be bought or sold for varying amounts of money, so there's a "trading in the Mediterranean" feel about the whole thing: producing a bunch of cloth so that you can sell it for wheat, and then use the wheat to do what you really want.
Your available actions are determined by a hand of cards, which you discard in order to play the relevant action. You will also buy more cards from time to time, either with different actions from your starting cards or upgraded actions. But rather than having a deck that you cycle through, any cards you buy go straight into your hand, and when you pick up your discard pile you just take all your cards into your hand simultaneously. So there's a similarity to deckbuilders, but without the shuffle/draw randomness of something like Dominion.
Your victory points are ultimately almost a kind of set-collection: you get a number of points for, say, the number of regions you've built in, multiplied by the number of Saturn cards in your deck.
All of these somehow add up to a very elegant Euro with an entirely opaque scoring system. In my game group, it's almost always shocking who turns out to be winning when victory points are finally tallied up.
Biggest weakness to the original box is the limited number of maps. Core game loop is pretty good and is based around managing fatigue in the form of activation gems.
This is actually a tough question to answer because Concordia is thinking outside of the box mechanically.
The role selection is very distantly descended from Puerto Rico, but I honestly can't think of a game with similar drafting-for-VP aspects (it is not much like Dominion or Ascension etc at all, maybe Core Worlds a tiny bit?). I guess the map play feels the tiniest bit like Orleans?
Maybe a better answer to your question is how it feels to play, which is just "like a euro where you're trying to find a good move, but unusually forgiving in that all moves feel good, nothing your opponents do feels like it shafts you, and yet you're still excited to figure out what to do".
Almost sounds like one of those that is great with the Kickstarter options but limited without. I still wake up in a cold sweat thinking about how I only bought the Zombicide: Black Plague base game.
Accurate description, but I really wasn't impressed by the gameplay.
Once you hit a certain point, it becomes very difficult to have two games where one is just "the other one but strictly better".
Unless you've got a very static playgroup and you all have fairly similar appetites week-to-week, it's worth having several acceptable games in the same genre, because some have elements you might be in the mood for or not, even if just for variety's sake, and you never quite know what games other people are going to like.
Okay, at the very least it doesn't sound similar to Viticulture, or any of the games I have now. Thanks guys!
We came pretty close for the third month but ended up losing. This game scales against you pretty harshly! Bigger map, less supplies, and now epidemic count is checked against city card count and we have freaking 7 epidemics to deal with what the heck!
It seems like early on though you are going to eat some losses in order to build up some infastructure, upgrades, etc. Feels like much more of a ramp up than season 1. Neat so far and looking forward to taking another crack at March soon.
See, I adore Century Spice Road, so MP scrateches that fast paced economic itch. In my first game, I gleefully cranked out contracts (to be fair I was only one contract higher than other players.) But then I, who completed all my secret goals, exploded 20 points higher than the other players, winning by ten points because one city was on both objective cards. I have a concern that RNG will determine the ease of which players travel, like Ticket to Ride.
While Troyes is probably the better game, I enjoy marco polo more. Perhaps comparing them is not right, but they're both better than Roll for the Galaxy.
My first run of Clank! In! Space! was an utter joy as well.
If you have the same city on two cards you only get the bonus for going to three different cities, as you only went to three different cities. Sounds like maybe your didn't do that from your wording? Also did you deal 4 and keep 2? That mitigates The luck of the draw on those a lot. Picking the right goals and character combo based on the board setup is real important.
Man Marco Polo is an awesome game.
Yes, thats true. I realized that and deducted the appropriate points. Still won by a lot though.
I won off the back of a very powerful final round. I completed two contracts, each with a black die reward, moved, then used the blacks to consecutively move again at a low price, giving me that extra step to place the city for my last goal.
eDIT - Ah, but I did fail to deal out four goals per player. I just gave everyone two.
We.. lost early January.
I need to say this outside of spoilers, because it is important: Make sure you read all the actions in full on the cards or in the manual, and REMEMBER them. We tried to do an action only to find we hadn't met the prerequisite. And because that completely boned our planning, well.. we were done.
actual gameplay:
We also found ourselves quite often stuck with cards that we couldn't transfer. We decided to take the builder to get supply centers faster, but that relied on her drawing cards... because we sure as heck couldn't waste turns moving people around!
I also misread my ability - I could only move pawns once per turn as an action. In the prologue, I had definitely played hopscotch more than that.
My character ended with an exposure thanks to Cairo being a butt. At the very last turn, we had an epidemic break out that pretty much forced all the black cities to get a cube and lose population. We decided to use our upgrade points to give the farmer the ability to remotely deliver, and the ability for the card trader to be a runner and move faster. We'll obviously be using that character instead of the builder next game.
Everyone was tense and panicked. We also were in agreement that we believe the first game was designed to be lost, if you aren't really good. It helps convey the idea that you really don't know what you are doing.
is this a thing you can do/should consider with Pandemic S2?
The basic start and set up seem like they're a long way removed from vanilla Pandemic and I'm just wondering if there's any thoughts on looping it once or twice before you start placing stickers or punching boxes.
Yes, the game is similar enough to vanilla pandemic, but also different enough, that I 100% recommend doing the prologue (non-legacy) game before playing your first legacy game.
Read and re-read the rules very carefully as you play the prologue game because you are going to keep thinking that some powers or rules worked like they did in Pandemic when they do not. The rhythm of the game is also subtly different, pay attention to how the action economy of producing supplies, moving supplies, transferring supplies, and dropping off supplies differs radically from simply removing disease cubes from the board.
I went all in on this thing based on reviews and I really hope it helps to get my wife into gaming.
I know that can be done, but I don't think there has even been an occasion to actually charter a flight. Usually when it comes up as a possibility, we need the card we would use to cure something.
Spoilers up through March:
So far, we've lost the first game of every month, so I would definitely call this harder than Season 1, where we only lost two or three times over the entire season. We put down a lot of supply lines around North America last time, though, have a permanent supply center at our next intended recon point, and had some good luck with (lost haven spoiler)
I'm pretty excited for it too.
Have you tried other games with your wife?
"They both deal with flues."
:?
Haha, that is really funny actually.
From our experience, the fun that you can have is inversely proportional to the skill level of the ghost. The most skilled ghost will bring about an easy win, but the terrible ghost will bring about memorable WTF moments.
Anything competitive is flat out, but I've tried some co-op stuff. She didn't like Dark Souls because it was too complicated - which I think is a fair assessment really, for a game based around combat it should be a ton faster. I have a bunch of players v. DM games like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Star Wars Imperial Assault, but she's not a fan of those cause we're not 'playing together' since I run the bad guys.
Oh, she did like the Cryptozoic Ghostbusters Games which was nice since all the monsters are automated.
We have the first one, Hidden Signs (English edition), and it doesn't add anything new to the game. It just contains more cards which is good because this game comes out quite a bit in our group. Rahdo mentioned the Polish edition adds new options for the ghost.
The other expansion, Secrets & Lies, they replaced the weapon with "secrets" cards. They look more like the location cards, so I really don't know if I would prefer that or not. We don't plan to pick it up unless it is on a super sale.
One of our friends has Dixit 3 and when we play over there, they let the ghost draw 4 Mysterium cards and 3 Dixit cards to add to the variability. Dixit 3 and Mysterium share the same artist.
Maybe try forbidden island or burgle bros?
I consider Hidden Signs a must buy. No new gameplay but the extra cards are well worth it. Haven't tried the new expansion yet.