This game sounds really intriguing to me, but can someone who's played it offer some thoughts about what the game is like, how it plays, if it's fine for people to jump into campaigns, or if you need a dedicated group, etc? And what, if anything, the stretch goals or expansion provide?
I went all in on this kickstarter, have received so far the base game, second wave gets me the expansion and all the mini-expansions .
My group of 4 people played it about 6 weeks straight to beat the goddess, restarting a few times when we lost, and damn it is a great game. I do not regret going all in at all, and look forward to the expansions. we took a break to play some more gloomhaven after beating the first curse, but I know it will be back on the table soon.
As far as jumping in, I think its fine. The base game is very co-operative. you really need to work together to survive, but its not so tight/difficult that it can't take a person going off the reservation occasionally. The action deck signifies the life force of the entire group playing, however there are ways that a single member of the group could get killed, if that happens that person can just pick his same character, or a different character and continue the game with the same group as if nothing happen (except he loses all the inventory and skills he had from his dead character), so if a character cant make a session you could just have another player play his character or just drop it out and start a new one. this does make things a bit harder just because the inventory gets taken out, but as i said, it does not make the game impossible.
The game is difficult if you waste cards, or if you don't take into account things like 'should i hunt now when i have no inventory space to hold the food until i can cook it' or 'should we hunt this spot or save it until later when the deck is lower on cards' then yes, your part will wipe, and you will have to start over, but I don't think it got boring for anyone playing the game.
I actually ordered a second copy of the rookie pledge when the manager reopened. One of my game group members might be interested in buying it from me, or im sure i can just ebay it. The stretch goals add several interesting things. the main game comes with 4 different 'curses' which are basically overall objectives to finish the game, the big expansion adds more curses, I think the mini-expansions mostly just add more cards and things that can happen (some are larger and have there own curses added to the game). The stretch goals add things like 'hard mode', a mode where there is a traitor in the group, several new characters to play as and the associated mini, and multiple more curses added to the game to give it even more longevity.
Just as a heads up, they had some color issues with the initial printing this time around. Apparently the curse card backs were different than the rest of the action deck so it was super easy to know when curses are coming. Anyway, they are gonna reprint that entire box as a replacement for people for free if they want to be delivered with the second wave.
I only say this because you're gonna end up with at least three sets of the base game.
AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
Broke out Twilight Imperium 4th Edition today! Haven’t played TI in like 10 years so it was a bit of a nostalgia trip.
Biggest and best change is simply that there’s a “here’s how to play your first game” learning set of rules, as well as a thick reference book, so that instead of the third edition’s 2 hour group read through to learn everything, now you can jump in and be playing in like 30 minutes.
The game is still crazy long and with four players we got through set up, learning, and 3 rounds in 4 hours, so had we been able to finish it likely would have taken another 4-5 hours to complete. But much fun was had by all. I like the changes I saw and will probably play again at some point.
Played Mint Delivery with the wife today at the Crossroads Mall after lunch. A lot of fun and different enough from Mint Works. Has a lot of variable rules, mostly based around traffic issues. There's also a single-player option by flipping the map cards over to work inside the mint factory sending out the mint supplies to the trucks of the main game. Very cool thematically.
I'd like to take this opportunity to extend a giant middle finger to the series. The hints jump straight from "vague hint" to "outright answer" without even telling you HOW you get the answer. 2 puzzles we had no idea how they got it even after seeing the answer. The final puzzle in particular was ridiculous. You had to get a 4 digit code and nowhere do we see any of the numbers in the solution. Even after looking up detailed explanations online we're still not seeing it.
Screw this series.
(of course SU&SD thinks it's better than Exit. Of freaking course they do.)
Skull for $10 was already a great investment after owning it for one day. Took it up to my brother's cookout and played 4 times with varying groups of adults and youths, all nongamers. It was a big hit with everyone, with much trash talking and raucous nonsense. Really just a great little bluffing game.
I'd like to take this opportunity to extend a giant middle finger to the series. The hints jump straight from "vague hint" to "outright answer" without even telling you HOW you get the answer. 2 puzzles we had no idea how they got it even after seeing the answer. The final puzzle in particular was ridiculous. You had to get a 4 digit code and nowhere do we see any of the numbers in the solution. Even after looking up detailed explanations online we're still not seeing it.
Screw this series.
(of course SU&SD thinks it's better than Exit. Of freaking course they do.)
From memory you need to look down from the top, and the shapes of the cards make the number. For us, we took ages to get the clue from the "Maze"
EXIT is the better series, Dr Goorse is a bit of a jump up difficulty wise. Bubble and Squeak is the best of the first 3 unlocks.
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
Played three games of One Night Ultimate Werewolf tonight, with a group of mostly newbies.
In the second game, I was a werewolf and there was a second werewolf. I claimed to be a Doppelganger but definitely had not thought through the web of lies this entailed. I floundered, claiming that I had doppelganged the guy next to me, who I said (wild guess) was a Robber. More floundering ensued as they asked who I had robbed, and I said I had switched with a third player, the Drunk. What card did I rob from him? Uh, I accidentally forgot to look at the card I had chosen, I said.
Incredibly, the person beside me said “Yes, I was the Robber,” so I managed to escape discovery despite my shambles of a story.
Sadly this didn’t matter, because the other werewolf claimed to be a Hunter, and the group determined that if they all shot the Hunter and the Hunter shot the Drunk, either the Drunk would be a Werewolf or the “Hunter” would be a Werewolf and that was the best odds we had. Of course the supposed Hunter was a Werewolf and we lost.
Quick Mint Delivery rules note: you are only allowed to have 3 open orders. This was accidentally omitted in the rules. If it wasn't for the ability that says "you may have four" I would not have even suspected.
Does the map change in the game or is it a set map?
It's a set map. The layout is quite neat actually, with the central space being the main Mint Factory and the only place you can convert white mints to red mints (3:1 ratio), convert white mints to green mints (2:1 ratio), or load up to 4 mints into your truck. The tiles N/S/W/E of the center are all Warehouses which allow you to convert white mints to green mints (2:1 ratio) or load up to 2 mints. Finally, the corner tiles are the city areas where you drop off your deliveries and have getting new orders.
More details for those who care:
The order cards change the way the game is played as each card has a city and mint fulfillment. Say you want to go to the green city, Spearmint Falls. The two orders available are "Orange city/2 red/5 points" and "Blue city/1 green/3 points". If you want the big 5-point payoff, you'll need 2 red mints, which can only be made at the Mint Factory in the center tile. That means committing 4 actions (load 4 mints, convert 3 to red, load 3 more mints, convert 3 to red) before heading out to the green city. What's worse is that the order has to be fulfilled at the Orange city another 6 moves away. Given that scenario, it's probably not in your best interest to use so many turns to fulfill that order.
Another interesting aspect is rewarding ignored orders. Each city always has 2 active orders. Say you decided to take the "Blue city/1 green/3 point" card instead. When you take that order, the other order gets a white mint added to it. If an order gets ignored long enough, it will have a bunch of mints on it, making it a tempting order to acquire.
There's a lot of planning ahead to best maximize your actions each turn. Since you can only do 2 actions, you have to make sure they count. Often times, it's better to fulfill smaller orders if they are located between nearby cities, rather than going for the big, cross-map red mint orders. Here's a review if you're interested:
Played Argent: The Consortium 2nd Ed yesterday for the first time and got absolutely housed. Wasn't able to get a supporter for the first three rounds and saw a ton of my students go to the infirmary. Fun game, but the hidden victory conditions really make it easy to get targeted even when you are last on all the voters. I'd like to try again, but a little apprehensive about getting nuked again for what i felt was not much reason.
Played Mint Delivery with the wife today at the Crossroads Mall after lunch. A lot of fun and different enough from Mint Works. Has a lot of variable rules, mostly based around traffic issues. There's also a single-player option by flipping the map cards over to work inside the mint factory sending out the mint supplies to the trucks of the main game. Very cool thematically.
Heh, Mint Works is my ONLY Kickstarter ever, so I'm sorry I missed Mint Delivery. Even after receiving it, I thought Mint Works would get relegated to the "infrequent filler pile" after a few plays, but somehow it's just clever and punchy enough to stay in my "bring everywhere" bag.
When I was a child, I had a fever... My BoardGameGeek profile
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Quick Mint Delivery rules note: you are only allowed to have 3 open orders. This was accidentally omitted in the rules. If it wasn't for the ability that says "you may have four" I would not have even suspected.
Played Mint Delivery with the wife today at the Crossroads Mall after lunch. A lot of fun and different enough from Mint Works. Has a lot of variable rules, mostly based around traffic issues. There's also a single-player option by flipping the map cards over to work inside the mint factory sending out the mint supplies to the trucks of the main game. Very cool thematically.
Heh, Mint Works is my ONLY Kickstarter ever, so I'm sorry I missed Mint Delivery. Even after receiving it, I thought Mint Works would get relegated to the "infrequent filler pile" after a few plays, but somehow it's just clever and punchy enough to stay in my "bring everywhere" bag.
I hope you can get your hands on a copy of Mint Delivery down the road.
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Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
I'd like to take this opportunity to extend a giant middle finger to the series. The hints jump straight from "vague hint" to "outright answer" without even telling you HOW you get the answer. 2 puzzles we had no idea how they got it even after seeing the answer. The final puzzle in particular was ridiculous. You had to get a 4 digit code and nowhere do we see any of the numbers in the solution. Even after looking up detailed explanations online we're still not seeing it.
Screw this series.
(of course SU&SD thinks it's better than Exit. Of freaking course they do.)
From memory you need to look down from the top, and the shapes of the cards make the number. For us, we took ages to get the clue from the "Maze"
EXIT is the better series, Dr Goorse is a bit of a jump up difficulty wise. Bubble and Squeak is the best of the first 3 unlocks.
Yeah we got that the four "map" cards needed to be layed out, but the instructions tell you to individually rotate them a quarter turn counter clockwise. The solution is only apparent if you DON'T do that and just leave the cards as is.
0
AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
Played Bloodborne today, that was very fun. I’m curious how it plays with 5 instead of 3–probably a lot more jockeying for position and fewer monsters escaping unscathed. We may go grab the expansion and play again later this week.
Also, thanks to the thread talking it up, I got the Choose Your Own Adventure board game earlier this week. Not sure if there are others yet but we got the House of Danger one. We finished the last chapter today. Overall it was a fun game! A neat way to share a CYOA experience with others, and very accessible too. I’m not sure how much replay value it has really, although you could certainly like “Time Stories” it and replay knowing the future to try and make better choices to max out your stats or complete a no-death run or something.
I also felt like this one was kind of scattershot theme-wise, with each chapter having a distinct feel or even a totally different genre than the others. I hope future versions are more coherent all the way through. Definitely enjoyed it and would play more of these.
The expansion is a must buy for Bloodborne. Much more interesting push your luck mechanics with the monsters and weapons. Plus the final bosses are so much better that I'd say to throw out all the original ones and use the expansion ones only.
You can see how our 5 player forum game went here.
This game sounds really intriguing to me, but can someone who's played it offer some thoughts about what the game is like, how it plays, if it's fine for people to jump into campaigns, or if you need a dedicated group, etc? And what, if anything, the stretch goals or expansion provide?
I went all in on this kickstarter, have received so far the base game, second wave gets me the expansion and all the mini-expansions .
My group of 4 people played it about 6 weeks straight to beat the goddess, restarting a few times when we lost, and damn it is a great game. I do not regret going all in at all, and look forward to the expansions. we took a break to play some more gloomhaven after beating the first curse, but I know it will be back on the table soon.
As far as jumping in, I think its fine. The base game is very co-operative. you really need to work together to survive, but its not so tight/difficult that it can't take a person going off the reservation occasionally. The action deck signifies the life force of the entire group playing, however there are ways that a single member of the group could get killed, if that happens that person can just pick his same character, or a different character and continue the game with the same group as if nothing happen (except he loses all the inventory and skills he had from his dead character), so if a character cant make a session you could just have another player play his character or just drop it out and start a new one. this does make things a bit harder just because the inventory gets taken out, but as i said, it does not make the game impossible.
The game is difficult if you waste cards, or if you don't take into account things like 'should i hunt now when i have no inventory space to hold the food until i can cook it' or 'should we hunt this spot or save it until later when the deck is lower on cards' then yes, your part will wipe, and you will have to start over, but I don't think it got boring for anyone playing the game.
I actually ordered a second copy of the rookie pledge when the manager reopened. One of my game group members might be interested in buying it from me, or im sure i can just ebay it. The stretch goals add several interesting things. the main game comes with 4 different 'curses' which are basically overall objectives to finish the game, the big expansion adds more curses, I think the mini-expansions mostly just add more cards and things that can happen (some are larger and have there own curses added to the game). The stretch goals add things like 'hard mode', a mode where there is a traitor in the group, several new characters to play as and the associated mini, and multiple more curses added to the game to give it even more longevity.
Just as a heads up, they had some color issues with the initial printing this time around. Apparently the curse card backs were different than the rest of the action deck so it was super easy to know when curses are coming. Anyway, they are gonna reprint that entire box as a replacement for people for free if they want to be delivered with the second wave.
I only say this because you're gonna end up with at least three sets of the base game.
Well the second copy is not for me, but yeah i knew about the color thing. was not really a problem for me, and they are super cool to do what they did to fix the issue immediately.
I actually just played Azul for the first time last night. It was very tight and in the third round I had the dawning realization of how cutthroat this was going to be then in the 5th round I had the option to end the game or try for another round that I was pretty sure I needed, but the fear of losing 4 points from taking the last tiles left made me end it instead and get wrecked in the final scoring.
The game is good. I wish the board had indents to hold the tiles and the score cube. But it's a game where I woke up today and wanted to play more of.
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+6
AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
edited July 2018
Everdell got here last week and I got it on the table with my wife. Once she wrapped her head around it it got fairly competitive, but I pulled away at the end via one of the "you did the thing!" point-reward cards you have to use a worker to claim.
I think it'll probably be a lot nastier a game with 4 than it was with 2, but in a good way. She and I were mostly on an island except for a couple of steals to prevent comboing; the game has a mechanic where if you've built an animal character's associated building, you can hire that animal for free once, so she swiped the Historian (who is a bat) after I'd built the Clock Tower he lives in, for example.
The Undertaker is some sort of beetle, which is a rad detail, but the Barge Toad gets the "most chilled-out animal guy" award.
Auralynx on
+1
jergarmarhollow man crewgoes pew pew pewRegistered Userregular
I can actually just played Azul for the first time last night. It was very tight and in the third round I had the dawning realization of how cutthroat this was going to be then in the 5th round I had the option to end the game or try for another round that I was pretty sure I needed, but the fear of losing 4 points from taking the last tiles left made me end it instead and get wrecked in the final scoring.
The game is good. I wish the board had indents to hold the tiles and the score cube. But it's a game where I woke up today and wanted to play more of.
I play Azul with my 7-year-old, and with my gaming buddies. It's a tense-fun 2-player game, and a more raucous-fun 4-player game. It's attractive enough to elicit "whoa, what game is that?" from strangers, but I personally keep pulling it out because I continue to find the gameplay compelling. Great to see it win SdJ.
I also win a lot, soooo.... there's that, too. Heh.
jergarmar on
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I played Mint Delivery last night with my girlfriend. It turns out to be a LOT more cutthroat 2p than with 3p given the additional rule of removing an order whenever you make a delivery. She beat me pretty handily because I did not catch onto aggressively using that 2p rule until it was way too late.
+2
AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
Anyone here have any experience with The Thing: Outpost 31? I keep eyeing it on the shelf but never pulling the trigger, as the one person who explained it to me didn't do the greatest of jobs...
Also, I hope my mint delivery is waiting for me at home... I haven't gotten any shipping notices though.
Anyone here have any experience with The Thing: Outpost 31? I keep eyeing it on the shelf but never pulling the trigger, as the one person who explained it to me didn't do the greatest of jobs...
Also, I hope my mint delivery is waiting for me at home... I haven't gotten any shipping notices though.
I played it with four and really enjoyed it, although the rule book is not the greatest.
Basically it’s a lot like BSG, or Avalon. Every round the team tries to explore one of the rooms in the current sector, hoping to find some specific things (gear, mostly, but also aliens). If they find the right stuff and fight off the aliens they can get through sectors 1, 2, and 3 and then to the helicopter to escape. In order to investigate, players anonymously contribute cards from their hand toward an investigation goal. If the team meets the goal, they get to search; if they get to search, they have a chance to find what they need to move on and ultimately fly away.
However, at least one of the players may be the Thing. Things want to sabotage investigations by throwing bad cards into the mix. Humans want to use investigation results to deduce who is The Thing, and Things want to disguise their behavior to avoid detection.
Some gear helps humans prevent Things from sabotaging, sometimes adverse events like fire and power outages make it harder to investigate at all, and sometimes your search turns up an alien you have to roll dice to fight. Also, when you move forward into the next sector, the infection has a chance to spread, as players are given a second role card and may turn from human into another Thing, changing which side they are to assist to victory.
That’s pretty much the whole game, but the way they’ve built it there are a lot of cool ways to play the deduction aspects—for example, having one player skip the investigation to go put out a fire gets them out of the way which might serve your ends, human or Thing. For another, the Captain (a different player each round who runs investigations) can use their actions to smoke out a monster or sabotage more subtly.
It’s a very well designed and handsome game. Definitely get it off your ehelf if you can, especially if you have 6 or more players.
Stopped at my local GameStop and picked up three different unlock games and a copy of skull! Was hoping for two copies of Skull but I'll have to check another store.
I was thinking about picking up an escape-room-in-a-box game or two for when my parents come to visit in a couple weeks. What are the must-buys?
The Exit games, hands down, 100%, if you're okay with the somewhat wasteful play-it-once-then-throw-it-in-the-bin design - but the end result is worth it, imo.
Anyone here have any experience with The Thing: Outpost 31? I keep eyeing it on the shelf but never pulling the trigger, as the one person who explained it to me didn't do the greatest of jobs...
So yeah, I've played this a few times. It's really good. It's not amazing and is actually maybe fundamentally broken with the rules as written (I'd recommend you don't allow players to talk about the cards they contribute to a challenge), but I've yet to have a bad game of it. It's a somewhere in the middle of Resistance and BSG, but definitely closer to the former. You're going to go on a series of missions where a leader will have to pick a team, and based on what players contribute to the task, it will either succeed or fail. There are other little things you need to worry about, and by the end of the game you must know exactly who all the uninfected players are. That's basically the game. It's quite simple, but thematic, and the board and minis are almost entirely superfluous, but I quite like it. It always leads into those shouting matches that you WANT from these games.
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Just as a heads up, they had some color issues with the initial printing this time around. Apparently the curse card backs were different than the rest of the action deck so it was super easy to know when curses are coming. Anyway, they are gonna reprint that entire box as a replacement for people for free if they want to be delivered with the second wave.
I only say this because you're gonna end up with at least three sets of the base game.
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
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Me too! Showed up yesterday, haven't even opened it yet.
You needed this.
Just got mine too! I need to tighten my lid because it keeps coming off. Can't wait to try it!
As I stalk the Kickstarter comments for this game I knew you got it before posting here (I think)! I'm jealous haha. Nothing yet in Ohio.
Selling Board Games for Medical Bills
Biggest and best change is simply that there’s a “here’s how to play your first game” learning set of rules, as well as a thick reference book, so that instead of the third edition’s 2 hour group read through to learn everything, now you can jump in and be playing in like 30 minutes.
The game is still crazy long and with four players we got through set up, learning, and 3 rounds in 4 hours, so had we been able to finish it likely would have taken another 4-5 hours to complete. But much fun was had by all. I like the changes I saw and will probably play again at some point.
Also this:
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
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Selling Board Games for Medical Bills
I'd like to take this opportunity to extend a giant middle finger to the series. The hints jump straight from "vague hint" to "outright answer" without even telling you HOW you get the answer. 2 puzzles we had no idea how they got it even after seeing the answer. The final puzzle in particular was ridiculous. You had to get a 4 digit code and nowhere do we see any of the numbers in the solution. Even after looking up detailed explanations online we're still not seeing it.
Screw this series.
(of course SU&SD thinks it's better than Exit. Of freaking course they do.)
Both of us give you permission.
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
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EXIT is the better series, Dr Goorse is a bit of a jump up difficulty wise. Bubble and Squeak is the best of the first 3 unlocks.
In the second game, I was a werewolf and there was a second werewolf. I claimed to be a Doppelganger but definitely had not thought through the web of lies this entailed. I floundered, claiming that I had doppelganged the guy next to me, who I said (wild guess) was a Robber. More floundering ensued as they asked who I had robbed, and I said I had switched with a third player, the Drunk. What card did I rob from him? Uh, I accidentally forgot to look at the card I had chosen, I said.
Incredibly, the person beside me said “Yes, I was the Robber,” so I managed to escape discovery despite my shambles of a story.
Sadly this didn’t matter, because the other werewolf claimed to be a Hunter, and the group determined that if they all shot the Hunter and the Hunter shot the Drunk, either the Drunk would be a Werewolf or the “Hunter” would be a Werewolf and that was the best odds we had. Of course the supposed Hunter was a Werewolf and we lost.
Does the map change in the game or is it a set map?
Selling Board Games for Medical Bills
It's a set map. The layout is quite neat actually, with the central space being the main Mint Factory and the only place you can convert white mints to red mints (3:1 ratio), convert white mints to green mints (2:1 ratio), or load up to 4 mints into your truck. The tiles N/S/W/E of the center are all Warehouses which allow you to convert white mints to green mints (2:1 ratio) or load up to 2 mints. Finally, the corner tiles are the city areas where you drop off your deliveries and have getting new orders.
More details for those who care:
Another interesting aspect is rewarding ignored orders. Each city always has 2 active orders. Say you decided to take the "Blue city/1 green/3 point" card instead. When you take that order, the other order gets a white mint added to it. If an order gets ignored long enough, it will have a bunch of mints on it, making it a tempting order to acquire.
There's a lot of planning ahead to best maximize your actions each turn. Since you can only do 2 actions, you have to make sure they count. Often times, it's better to fulfill smaller orders if they are located between nearby cities, rather than going for the big, cross-map red mint orders. Here's a review if you're interested:
(start at 1:40)
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
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Nintendo ID: Pastalonius
Smite\LoL:Gremlidin \ WoW & Overwatch & Hots: Gremlidin#1734
3ds: 3282-2248-0453
Heh, Mint Works is my ONLY Kickstarter ever, so I'm sorry I missed Mint Delivery. Even after receiving it, I thought Mint Works would get relegated to the "infrequent filler pile" after a few plays, but somehow it's just clever and punchy enough to stay in my "bring everywhere" bag.
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I was wondering about that, especially after reading the upgrade card. Wasn't a big deal in our game since we only had 3 orders max each.
I hope you can get your hands on a copy of Mint Delivery down the road.
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
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Also, thanks to the thread talking it up, I got the Choose Your Own Adventure board game earlier this week. Not sure if there are others yet but we got the House of Danger one. We finished the last chapter today. Overall it was a fun game! A neat way to share a CYOA experience with others, and very accessible too. I’m not sure how much replay value it has really, although you could certainly like “Time Stories” it and replay knowing the future to try and make better choices to max out your stats or complete a no-death run or something.
I also felt like this one was kind of scattershot theme-wise, with each chapter having a distinct feel or even a totally different genre than the others. I hope future versions are more coherent all the way through. Definitely enjoyed it and would play more of these.
You can see how our 5 player forum game went here.
Kennerspiel was The quack of Quedlinburg, which I've never heard of before.
Well the second copy is not for me, but yeah i knew about the color thing. was not really a problem for me, and they are super cool to do what they did to fix the issue immediately.
The game is good. I wish the board had indents to hold the tiles and the score cube. But it's a game where I woke up today and wanted to play more of.
This is peak board-gaming right here. I love it. :biggrin:
I think it'll probably be a lot nastier a game with 4 than it was with 2, but in a good way. She and I were mostly on an island except for a couple of steals to prevent comboing; the game has a mechanic where if you've built an animal character's associated building, you can hire that animal for free once, so she swiped the Historian (who is a bat) after I'd built the Clock Tower he lives in, for example.
The Undertaker is some sort of beetle, which is a rad detail, but the Barge Toad gets the "most chilled-out animal guy" award.
I play Azul with my 7-year-old, and with my gaming buddies. It's a tense-fun 2-player game, and a more raucous-fun 4-player game. It's attractive enough to elicit "whoa, what game is that?" from strangers, but I personally keep pulling it out because I continue to find the gameplay compelling. Great to see it win SdJ.
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Battle.net: TheGerm#1430 (Hearthstone, Destiny 2)
Also, I hope my mint delivery is waiting for me at home... I haven't gotten any shipping notices though.
I played it with four and really enjoyed it, although the rule book is not the greatest.
Basically it’s a lot like BSG, or Avalon. Every round the team tries to explore one of the rooms in the current sector, hoping to find some specific things (gear, mostly, but also aliens). If they find the right stuff and fight off the aliens they can get through sectors 1, 2, and 3 and then to the helicopter to escape. In order to investigate, players anonymously contribute cards from their hand toward an investigation goal. If the team meets the goal, they get to search; if they get to search, they have a chance to find what they need to move on and ultimately fly away.
However, at least one of the players may be the Thing. Things want to sabotage investigations by throwing bad cards into the mix. Humans want to use investigation results to deduce who is The Thing, and Things want to disguise their behavior to avoid detection.
Some gear helps humans prevent Things from sabotaging, sometimes adverse events like fire and power outages make it harder to investigate at all, and sometimes your search turns up an alien you have to roll dice to fight. Also, when you move forward into the next sector, the infection has a chance to spread, as players are given a second role card and may turn from human into another Thing, changing which side they are to assist to victory.
That’s pretty much the whole game, but the way they’ve built it there are a lot of cool ways to play the deduction aspects—for example, having one player skip the investigation to go put out a fire gets them out of the way which might serve your ends, human or Thing. For another, the Captain (a different player each round who runs investigations) can use their actions to smoke out a monster or sabotage more subtly.
It’s a very well designed and handsome game. Definitely get it off your ehelf if you can, especially if you have 6 or more players.
I have enjoyed Escape Room: The Game. The physicality of the device is very nice. It's not as elegant as either of the above, though.
The Exit games, hands down, 100%, if you're okay with the somewhat wasteful play-it-once-then-throw-it-in-the-bin design - but the end result is worth it, imo.
So yeah, I've played this a few times. It's really good. It's not amazing and is actually maybe fundamentally broken with the rules as written (I'd recommend you don't allow players to talk about the cards they contribute to a challenge), but I've yet to have a bad game of it. It's a somewhere in the middle of Resistance and BSG, but definitely closer to the former. You're going to go on a series of missions where a leader will have to pick a team, and based on what players contribute to the task, it will either succeed or fail. There are other little things you need to worry about, and by the end of the game you must know exactly who all the uninfected players are. That's basically the game. It's quite simple, but thematic, and the board and minis are almost entirely superfluous, but I quite like it. It always leads into those shouting matches that you WANT from these games.