Is that the one where you just write down literally as much money as you want every round of auction and at the end the person who spent the least (or something like that) wins?
It seemed neat but it feels like it'd be a very shallow experience. But I'm also terrible at auctions.
PSN,Steam,Live | CptHamiltonian
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admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
Is that the one where you just write down literally as much money as you want every round of auction and at the end the person who spent the least (or something like that) wins?
It seemed neat but it feels like it'd be a very shallow experience. But I'm also terrible at auctions.
Close. You can bid anything you want, and at the end whoever spent the most is automatically eliminated, and then the remaining players figure out their points from there. It's a very entertaining experience, which I think is good to have in games.
I want to play The Estates, but I'm not sure if I actually want to own it.
I'm pretty sure I own The Estates, but not even close to sure that I want to be forced to take stock of my current collection in the process of finding it.
We tried Posthuman Saga last night and it was real good but there's literally no player interaction other than denying people map tiles by essentially skipping your turn.
Still, I'm really starting to like everything Mighty Boards puts out.
Hi friends. Quick question. My 9 year old is really into Risk after seeing his 19 year old nephew play it on his phone. I got him Switch version so he can play by himself, but I really, really, really, really want to get an analog version to play with him when I can.
Is there a version of Risk, or another "Risk-like" game that we can enjoy together, apart from the traditional Risk? Especially something that can be played in less than an hour. I'm also interested if there's anything out there that shares the same spirit, but that we can potentially play cooperatively.
A Brief History of the World is a somewhat streamlined reversioning of my personal favorite Risk-like, History of the World. I haven't personally played the Brief version but my understanding is that it has been streamlined for both quicker play and more methods to plan around/avoid lots of dice rolls. Like the original, it also has a number of balancing mechanics that make playing the game more competitive even if someone does really well for a round or two, unlike in Risk where once someone gains momentum it can be another couple of hours watching them inevitably steamrolling the competition. However, the game does play better the more people are participating, IMO. BBG puts the playtime at 90-180 minutes, obviously if you're just playing with two players it'll be towards the short end.
What is probably a better option though would be Small World. It explicitly is designed with different maps depending on the number of people playing, and the fact that the races and special powers get shuffled every game will lend itself to more replay value. Dice rolling does exist but is kept to a minimum, which means most of the gameplay is simple addition/subtraction of units while taking into account abilities granted to try and maximize points. There's also the fact that victory points are also spent to draft new race/power combos, so there's another angle for basic addition/subtraction that could work for you. With just two players a game of Small World can definitely just take about an hour, plus or minus game set-up, although the game does have a very nice sorting tray. There's also a copious amounts of expansions and even a whole 'nother stand-alone game that are all cross-compatible if it really takes of with your son.
If you do play risk, I'd highly recommend playing the Mission Risk variant included with the base rules. Essentially, everyone gets a secret mission to accomplish and the game doesn't ever really get around to the final phase of slowly grinding out the win, long after any chance of a comeback is likely, short of extreme dice luck. It shortens the game time to about 45 minutes or less as I recall and keeps things a lot more snappy. I still prefer games like Small World, but Mission Risk variant is still an okay compromise and something I'm not completely against pulling out for game night if we want to go a bit more classic.
Is Mission Risk the one with 4 secret missions and you turn your last mission up so the other players can see it? Because while it is faster it can also drag on for hours like normal Risk depending on how people play.
Still superior to regular Risk unless you are specifically wanting a long game.
admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
Oops did I kill the thread.
Playing Pax Pamir 2e gave me an itch for a tableau builder that I could play without having to warn people "this game is gonna be a motherfucker." So I dug around looking for the best card-based tableau builder and after a lot of looking it seemed like the best one was... Race for the Galaxy. I skipped this classic back in the day because I was already playing a ton of Dominion, so another purely card-based game wasn't going to add any variety, but years later it's exactly what I'm looking for. I picked up the base game and the first expansion -- likely getting the second expansion soon, since that trio is one of the most popular formats among the dedicated players. I've only played a single 1v1 round but it's exactly what I wanted! The tableau building is very solid, the big Explore bonuses give you a lot of control over the random draws, and the combo potential is definitely there. The pitch-perfect Puerto Rico rip-off for action selection is fantastic for this style of game -- it's still multiplayer solitaire, but if you pay attention to what others are doing it'll pay off.
Highly recommend to anyone else looking for this exact style of game who somehow never played the classic.
The similarity between RftG and Puerto Rico is more than a mere rip-off. RftG was literally designed to be "Puerto Rico but just cards;" for whatever reason the development branched and San Juan was born, with RtfG being spun off into it's own thing. I've only played San Juan once (and an eternity ago) so I can't point to specific differences, sadly.
By "first and second expansions" do you mean The Gathering Storm and Rebels vs Imperium? Because Race has like three expansion "paths". Those two culminate with The Brink of War, and is the form of Race I most prefer, especially the addition of Prestige in the last set. Of the other two paths, I bounced off Alien Artifacts so hard I don't remember the last time I played Race in real life; the combination of that plus the existence of Roll has pushed my Race playing exclusively to solitaire games vs Keldon's AI. As a result, I haven't given the third path, Xeno Invasion, any time.
The similarity between RftG and Puerto Rico is more than a mere rip-off. RftG was literally designed to be "Puerto Rico but just cards;" for whatever reason the development branched and San Juan was born, with RtfG being spun off into it's own thing. I've only played San Juan once (and an eternity ago) so I can't point to specific differences, sadly.
By "first and second expansions" do you mean The Gathering Storm and Rebels vs Imperium? Because Race has like three expansion "paths". Those two culminate with The Brink of War, and is the form of Race I most prefer, especially the addition of Prestige in the last set. Of the other two paths, I bounced off Alien Artifacts so hard I don't remember the last time I played Race in real life; the combination of that plus the existence of Roll has pushed my Race playing exclusively to solitaire games vs Keldon's AI. As a result, I haven't given the third path, Xeno Invasion, any time.
Yep. I've heard widely varying opinions on Brink of War in particular. You're not the first person who's said Prestige is the best addition, but you're a minority. I'll likely end up grabbing it regardless.
People seem to like Alien Artifacts as long as you don't play with the Orb module; no one likes the Orb module.
The similarity between RftG and Puerto Rico is more than a mere rip-off. RftG was literally designed to be "Puerto Rico but just cards;" for whatever reason the development branched and San Juan was born, with RtfG being spun off into it's own thing. I've only played San Juan once (and an eternity ago) so I can't point to specific differences, sadly.
By "first and second expansions" do you mean The Gathering Storm and Rebels vs Imperium? Because Race has like three expansion "paths". Those two culminate with The Brink of War, and is the form of Race I most prefer, especially the addition of Prestige in the last set. Of the other two paths, I bounced off Alien Artifacts so hard I don't remember the last time I played Race in real life; the combination of that plus the existence of Roll has pushed my Race playing exclusively to solitaire games vs Keldon's AI. As a result, I haven't given the third path, Xeno Invasion, any time.
Yep. I've heard widely varying opinions on Brink of War in particular. You're not the first person who's said Prestige is the best addition, but you're a minority. I'll likely end up grabbing it regardless.
People seem to like Alien Artifacts as long as you don't play with the Orb module; no one likes the Orb module.
Prestige turns a quick filler game into a more in-depth game IMO but I totally get people who don't want the extra complication.
I don’t like the prestige set because you can’t just leave the cards in the deck while teaching new people. You have to completely remove it where you can mostly just easily ignore mechanics and icons from the prior two without much issue.
I don’t like the prestige set because you can’t just leave the cards in the deck while teaching new people. You have to completely remove it where you can mostly just easily ignore mechanics and icons from the prior two without much issue.
A completely valid point. Although I'd argue that Takeovers (introduced in RvI) are a harder concept to teach than Prestige.
Has anyone tried War of Whispers? It sounded extremely interesting in the SU&SD video but I'm at the point where I have to question all their recommendations and need a 2nd opinion.
Plus...$100??!?!!!!!! Dear lord, for what? There's less component and production oomph to it than the Game of Thrones board game.
Has anyone tried War of Whispers? It sounded extremely interesting in the SU&SD video but I'm at the point where I have to question all their recommendations and need a 2nd opinion.
Plus...$100??!?!!!!!! Dear lord, for what? There's less component and production oomph to it than the Game of Thrones board game.
I loved it for basically all the reasons in the SU&SD video. Dudes on a map kingdom building but quick and easy to teach with nice compact playtime. I think $100 is either the Kickstarter fancy edition or somebody price gouging because the SU&SD video caused it to sell out everywhere.
$99 is definitely price gouging. The deluxe edition on kickstarter was $70, and miniaturemarket has the standard price listed as $60. Right now amazon has the game listed from anywhere between $99 and $150 because people are insane.
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
How to tell I fell in love with "for the Galaxy":
I own all the expansions - though surprisingly it's the one game in my collection I haven't sleeved, probably due to space concerns.
I own Roll for the Galaxy + both its expansions
I own Jump Drive.
I own New Frontiers... which is such a wild gaming prospect.
I honestly haven't gotten to play Race in over half a decade, mostly because it just doesn't organize very well with all the expansions. Every now and then I look around for organizers or cases, but they are all built for the original box and can't hold everything properly.
I participated in a local math trade that just finished up.
I traded Steam with Steam Barons, Merchants and Marauders with Seas of Glory, Spyfall and Paperback. In return I snagged Scythe with Fenris expansion, Tigris and Euphrates, Smallworld and Pixel tactics 2.
I feel like I got some really good trades. Quite happy all told.
I have a shipping math trade that just completed as well. I put up Forbidden Stars (I love this game but I can't get it to the table), it ended up trading for Inis. I had Food Chain Magnate as my main want and Inis as a back up. Fairly happy with this trade; though I would have preferred Food Chain Magnate.
El Mucho on
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jergarmarhollow man crewgoes pew pew pewRegistered Userregular
The similarity between RftG and Puerto Rico is more than a mere rip-off. RftG was literally designed to be "Puerto Rico but just cards;" for whatever reason the development branched and San Juan was born, with RtfG being spun off into it's own thing. I've only played San Juan once (and an eternity ago) so I can't point to specific differences, sadly.
By "first and second expansions" do you mean The Gathering Storm and Rebels vs Imperium? Because Race has like three expansion "paths". Those two culminate with The Brink of War, and is the form of Race I most prefer, especially the addition of Prestige in the last set. Of the other two paths, I bounced off Alien Artifacts so hard I don't remember the last time I played Race in real life; the combination of that plus the existence of Roll has pushed my Race playing exclusively to solitaire games vs Keldon's AI. As a result, I haven't given the third path, Xeno Invasion, any time.
Yep. I've heard widely varying opinions on Brink of War in particular. You're not the first person who's said Prestige is the best addition, but you're a minority. I'll likely end up grabbing it regardless.
People seem to like Alien Artifacts as long as you don't play with the Orb module; no one likes the Orb module.
The base game plus the first expansion, The Gathering Storm, has stayed one of my favorite games for like 6 years. It's one of those perfect polished gems in my collection. I tried out a couple of the other expansions, never felt like they added much. BUT I was prevailed upon to try the Xeno Invasion, and then bought it. It's, like, really really good. It integrates the "extra" stuff with the base mechanics in a way that I never saw with the other expansions. Is it better than the base game? Eh, not sure, but it's very engaging in its own right. It's definitely fun to have an alternative way to play that's not just "the base game plus some fiddly additions".
I obviously REALLY need to try Roll, so don't take this as a criticism of that game. Just happened to be a game that my friends didn't pick up.
CaptainPeacockBoard Game HoarderTop o' the LakeRegistered Userregular
Roll has beautiful, candy-like dice.
Cluck cluck, gibber gibber, my old man's a mushroom, etc.
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admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
Honestly, it was never really a fight between Roll and Race because I need the cards -- I need them. Cards are the game piece that flood my brain with happy juice, I assume because my mind was permanently damaged by playing Magic when I was 9-years-old. So when I was looking for a game it was specifically for a card-based tableau builder, and while dice are nice they're not cards.
jergarmarhollow man crewgoes pew pew pewRegistered Userregular
Admanb, could not agree more. RFtG, Chudyk games (Red7, Innovation, Impulse, Mottainai), Concordia, Pax Pamir, Inis, Food Chain Magnate,... being able to manage and direct the game through a hand of cards releases ALL the "happy juice".
When I played Roll I found it was extremely difficult to tell what was going on with the other players; the cards in Race made it easy (well, once you got over the iconography wall.)
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
Honestly, it was never really a fight between Roll and Race because I need the cards -- I need them. Cards are the game piece that flood my brain with happy juice, I assume because my mind was permanently damaged by playing Magic when I was 9-years-old. So when I was looking for a game it was specifically for a card-based tableau builder, and while dice are nice they're not cards.
See, for me, I love the tactile nature of the dice. Rolling them, shaking the cups, using the cups to indicate when you are ready, and then pulling the big, chunky tiles out of the bag or shipping and generating a ton of stuff.
When I played Roll I found it was extremely difficult to tell what was going on with the other players; the cards in Race made it easy (well, once you got over the iconography wall.)
One thing that massively helps the entire Race family is that they all use the exact same iconography. So if you've played one, you have an idea how the others work. In Roll, there is very little you can do to directly combat your opponents (even compared to Race), so you kind of have to keep an eye on their engines. Usually the best way I could tell for how a turn would go was based on how many dice they were rolling, and consequently how long they spent lining up their dice workers. In my play groups, we also tended to play fast, but we would call out when we got some really cool engine or combo going.
Edit: Oh, that's cool! The expansion for New Frontiers is just going to be cardboard pieces, so they aren't gonna do a traditional box. Instead it's just going to be a slip cover or something, cutting down on shipping/storage costs. I love it when companies think ahead about things like that!
It's a decent short game that can be taught in 3 minutes, but no one felt anywhere near the love for it that SU&SD did. It is nice that it's a short version of Game of Thrones, and that you're not locked into one faction. You're randomly assigned a "spread" of all five factions at the start where you get 4 points for each city a certain faction controls, then 3, 2, 0, and -1. You can also swap spots on your spread at the end of a turn for a minor penalty, so you're still not out of it.
But we had some issues with it that held it back from being great.
- We appreciated the ability to swap loyalties, but it mean that everyone's loyalties ended up looking mostly the same by the end as everyone swapped to favor the leaders.
- The cards feel way too swingy. Teleporting armies to anywhere in the world. 6 armies popping up out of nowhere. etc. I get they wanted to shake up the "1:1 trade combat", but instead of revolving the cards around standard positioning strategy, it ends up being the other way around. You horde cards, then position your moves according to that. Drawing cards seemed far more valuable than the other actions.
- The cards also run into the same issue that the leader cards did in GoT: you have to print out summaries of what all the cards can do and pass them around to players. Otherwise it just turns into getting blindsided by effects you didn't know were possible. But then that introduces a new problem where I could see players get massive AP scanning the sheet, then looking around the table to see all the color cards everyone else has, back to the sheet, figuring out all the combos, back to the cards, back to the board, and so on. This wasn't so much an issue with GoT since you only really had to keep track of 1-2 cards each player had, rather than the 12+ color combos in this game. Plus you knew you were signing up for a long game with GoT, while the AP threatens the main appeal of WoW being a 60 minute game.
- The yellow faction might have an issue. Only one of their action spaces allows them to attack while the other factions get 2-3. Making an isolationist/pacifist faction would have been fine, except their only attack space is also the swap agents space, meaning no one can swap for it, meaning the first player to place their agent their can lock everyone else out of ever attacking with yellow for the entire game. Yellow usually ends up doing very poorly.
- Quite a few unclearly worded rules from the manual. "Forts add 1 (cube) to the defending army." Okay, does that count as 1 cube if the space is empty then? I played 3 games with 3 different groups. This was a question brought up by every group. You would think they would have run into during testing and had it clarified. There were at least 2 other such rules we weren't positive what to do with.
- Dear lord, this has some of the worst visual design I've ever seen. The art is fine, but their design decisions are horrendous. It's very hard to tell which cards belong to which empire. All the colors have this muddy, muted watercolor look to them, which would be fine if they didn't leave colors as the ONLY way to differentiate stuff. There is no symbol on the card backs, only the front. More than half the cards don't have a standout color to tell which empire they go to. The illustration on one has a soldier riding a horse, which is supposed to tell you it belongs to the Horse Empire instead of it just being common medieval transportation. One card has a blurred elephant in the background, so you're supposed to know that card is supposed to be the elephant empire, which is represented on the board by a flag with two white lines on it, which you're supposed to know are tusks. You're supposed to spot the Eagle Empire deck because one soldier has a blurry, half a centimeter large eagle emblem (that's literally how large it is on the card).
For the board, they decided to make cities and forts dark brown, and more than half the terrain is the same dark brown, with no outlines are anything to make things stand out. The forts are especially bad. 3 of them are constantly being missed by players they're so hard to spot. They decided to put dark brown towers on dark brown terrain surrounded by dark brown, tower-shaped features. It's so bad, I actually risked resale value to deface the board and paint outlines on the towers. I would paint the backs of the cards too but it would end up marking them, so I'm just going to get colored stickers.
That's how bad the visual design is. Again, all three groups I played with had these issues. How was this not addressed during testing?
Here, just look
Here are the front of the cards with the empire symbols clearly shown. Why couldn't the backs of the cards have these?!!!
Now here are the card backs. Quick, try to pick out which match up to which icon above, in the middle of a game, from across the table, while being held in someone's hand.
How much trouble would it have been to stick the icon on the back? The same icon they put on the front! Or at least a colored border!
Here's the board. Try to spot the towers without leaning in and squinting (the dark brown towers, not the little tan huts)
You probably spotted the one in the central desert and the top snow, right? How about the one in the 6 o'clock position bordering the desert? Or the 3 o'clock canyons? Or in the center hilly red area? Those are now outlined with white paint on my board.
Anyway, right now I'd give it a 7/10. It's one of those "decent for a quick game, wouldn't play it if it was longer", and I'm afraid that printing out player guides for the cards would make it longer.
People who played it, what do you think of the advanced rules of placing agent flags down on regions to count as cities? It seems to make the final round very bland. Everyone just uses the entire round to put down 2 flags in secure areas for an automatic 8 points, more than they could ever safely get from using council actions on the crowded final round.
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ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
There's no way SU&SD oversold another light wargame. No way at all.
Some of those War of Whisper points are fair enough personal preferences (I like big powerful card effects and am happy being surprised by them as I know it will go both ways) and the readability of the icons on the map is indeed drek, but I have a few mechanical rebuttals:
- Yes you can swap loyalties, but it has to be a 1 for 1 swap so you can rarely craft the exact order you want. If you want to move your 4th place loyalty deal into 1st place, you have to move your 1st place loyalty deal into 4th place, and then it is locked there. Plus tiebreakers go to least loyalty swaps, so the player who got the world as per their original plan will beat the player who switched up their loyalties to match how things are turning out. Plus swapping exposes your intentions. Plus, plus, plus with 5 loyalties and the need for 1 for 1 swaps, one of your loyalties has to remain unchanged.
- Cards be powerful, but drawing them comes at the cost of reinforcing leaving that colour open to being invaded. Cards are no good without armies to back them up. I found you really only want to draw cards from factions you want to lose, syphoning their resources to other factions.
- Yellow faction starts with a whole bunch of cities, and less attack actions means more raising armies. They're meant to be the turtlers of the asymmetric factions.
- An empty space belongs to its board colour so yes the forts still work and you'd need two armies to invade.
- Those card backs are clearly green, red and yellow to me from colour palette?
None of which changes the massive selling points to me of really easy to teach, really quick to play, and nobody gets their faction stomped down to insignificance early on but is forced to stay in the game.
I hadn't played with the agents as cities option, but I can see your issue with it. Though I will say, with the cards nowhere is really safe.
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The theme is "countries(/EU) bailing out national industries".
It seemed neat but it feels like it'd be a very shallow experience. But I'm also terrible at auctions.
The game is just called "QE." Apparently it stands for "Quantitative Easing" but that's not the title.
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
Quantitative Easing. The Fed released a board game based on it.
My BoardGameGeek profile
Battle.net: TheGerm#1430 (Hearthstone, Destiny 2)
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I'm pretty sure I own The Estates, but not even close to sure that I want to be forced to take stock of my current collection in the process of finding it.
Still, I'm really starting to like everything Mighty Boards puts out.
If you do play risk, I'd highly recommend playing the Mission Risk variant included with the base rules. Essentially, everyone gets a secret mission to accomplish and the game doesn't ever really get around to the final phase of slowly grinding out the win, long after any chance of a comeback is likely, short of extreme dice luck. It shortens the game time to about 45 minutes or less as I recall and keeps things a lot more snappy. I still prefer games like Small World, but Mission Risk variant is still an okay compromise and something I'm not completely against pulling out for game night if we want to go a bit more classic.
Still superior to regular Risk unless you are specifically wanting a long game.
Then we played it again.
Turns out Richard Garfield can design fun games.
Its really not that complicated:
Step 1. Don't put Blue in it.
There. You just made a game with the potential to be fun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xnZ6g14WwY
Playing Pax Pamir 2e gave me an itch for a tableau builder that I could play without having to warn people "this game is gonna be a motherfucker." So I dug around looking for the best card-based tableau builder and after a lot of looking it seemed like the best one was... Race for the Galaxy. I skipped this classic back in the day because I was already playing a ton of Dominion, so another purely card-based game wasn't going to add any variety, but years later it's exactly what I'm looking for. I picked up the base game and the first expansion -- likely getting the second expansion soon, since that trio is one of the most popular formats among the dedicated players. I've only played a single 1v1 round but it's exactly what I wanted! The tableau building is very solid, the big Explore bonuses give you a lot of control over the random draws, and the combo potential is definitely there. The pitch-perfect Puerto Rico rip-off for action selection is fantastic for this style of game -- it's still multiplayer solitaire, but if you pay attention to what others are doing it'll pay off.
Highly recommend to anyone else looking for this exact style of game who somehow never played the classic.
By "first and second expansions" do you mean The Gathering Storm and Rebels vs Imperium? Because Race has like three expansion "paths". Those two culminate with The Brink of War, and is the form of Race I most prefer, especially the addition of Prestige in the last set. Of the other two paths, I bounced off Alien Artifacts so hard I don't remember the last time I played Race in real life; the combination of that plus the existence of Roll has pushed my Race playing exclusively to solitaire games vs Keldon's AI. As a result, I haven't given the third path, Xeno Invasion, any time.
If that ends up feeling clumsy then I'm suddenly more interested in Roll
Yep. I've heard widely varying opinions on Brink of War in particular. You're not the first person who's said Prestige is the best addition, but you're a minority. I'll likely end up grabbing it regardless.
People seem to like Alien Artifacts as long as you don't play with the Orb module; no one likes the Orb module.
Prestige turns a quick filler game into a more in-depth game IMO but I totally get people who don't want the extra complication.
A completely valid point. Although I'd argue that Takeovers (introduced in RvI) are a harder concept to teach than Prestige.
Plus...$100??!?!!!!!! Dear lord, for what? There's less component and production oomph to it than the Game of Thrones board game.
I loved it for basically all the reasons in the SU&SD video. Dudes on a map kingdom building but quick and easy to teach with nice compact playtime. I think $100 is either the Kickstarter fancy edition or somebody price gouging because the SU&SD video caused it to sell out everywhere.
I own all the expansions - though surprisingly it's the one game in my collection I haven't sleeved, probably due to space concerns.
I own Roll for the Galaxy + both its expansions
I own Jump Drive.
I own New Frontiers... which is such a wild gaming prospect.
I honestly haven't gotten to play Race in over half a decade, mostly because it just doesn't organize very well with all the expansions. Every now and then I look around for organizers or cases, but they are all built for the original box and can't hold everything properly.
I traded Steam with Steam Barons, Merchants and Marauders with Seas of Glory, Spyfall and Paperback. In return I snagged Scythe with Fenris expansion, Tigris and Euphrates, Smallworld and Pixel tactics 2.
I feel like I got some really good trades. Quite happy all told.
I have a shipping math trade that just completed as well. I put up Forbidden Stars (I love this game but I can't get it to the table), it ended up trading for Inis. I had Food Chain Magnate as my main want and Inis as a back up. Fairly happy with this trade; though I would have preferred Food Chain Magnate.
Origin: theRealElMucho
The base game plus the first expansion, The Gathering Storm, has stayed one of my favorite games for like 6 years. It's one of those perfect polished gems in my collection. I tried out a couple of the other expansions, never felt like they added much. BUT I was prevailed upon to try the Xeno Invasion, and then bought it. It's, like, really really good. It integrates the "extra" stuff with the base mechanics in a way that I never saw with the other expansions. Is it better than the base game? Eh, not sure, but it's very engaging in its own right. It's definitely fun to have an alternative way to play that's not just "the base game plus some fiddly additions".
I obviously REALLY need to try Roll, so don't take this as a criticism of that game. Just happened to be a game that my friends didn't pick up.
My BoardGameGeek profile
Battle.net: TheGerm#1430 (Hearthstone, Destiny 2)
My BoardGameGeek profile
Battle.net: TheGerm#1430 (Hearthstone, Destiny 2)
See, for me, I love the tactile nature of the dice. Rolling them, shaking the cups, using the cups to indicate when you are ready, and then pulling the big, chunky tiles out of the bag or shipping and generating a ton of stuff.
One thing that massively helps the entire Race family is that they all use the exact same iconography. So if you've played one, you have an idea how the others work. In Roll, there is very little you can do to directly combat your opponents (even compared to Race), so you kind of have to keep an eye on their engines. Usually the best way I could tell for how a turn would go was based on how many dice they were rolling, and consequently how long they spent lining up their dice workers. In my play groups, we also tended to play fast, but we would call out when we got some really cool engine or combo going.
Edit: Oh, that's cool! The expansion for New Frontiers is just going to be cardboard pieces, so they aren't gonna do a traditional box. Instead it's just going to be a slip cover or something, cutting down on shipping/storage costs. I love it when companies think ahead about things like that!
long review
But we had some issues with it that held it back from being great.
- We appreciated the ability to swap loyalties, but it mean that everyone's loyalties ended up looking mostly the same by the end as everyone swapped to favor the leaders.
- The cards feel way too swingy. Teleporting armies to anywhere in the world. 6 armies popping up out of nowhere. etc. I get they wanted to shake up the "1:1 trade combat", but instead of revolving the cards around standard positioning strategy, it ends up being the other way around. You horde cards, then position your moves according to that. Drawing cards seemed far more valuable than the other actions.
- The cards also run into the same issue that the leader cards did in GoT: you have to print out summaries of what all the cards can do and pass them around to players. Otherwise it just turns into getting blindsided by effects you didn't know were possible. But then that introduces a new problem where I could see players get massive AP scanning the sheet, then looking around the table to see all the color cards everyone else has, back to the sheet, figuring out all the combos, back to the cards, back to the board, and so on. This wasn't so much an issue with GoT since you only really had to keep track of 1-2 cards each player had, rather than the 12+ color combos in this game. Plus you knew you were signing up for a long game with GoT, while the AP threatens the main appeal of WoW being a 60 minute game.
- The yellow faction might have an issue. Only one of their action spaces allows them to attack while the other factions get 2-3. Making an isolationist/pacifist faction would have been fine, except their only attack space is also the swap agents space, meaning no one can swap for it, meaning the first player to place their agent their can lock everyone else out of ever attacking with yellow for the entire game. Yellow usually ends up doing very poorly.
- Quite a few unclearly worded rules from the manual. "Forts add 1 (cube) to the defending army." Okay, does that count as 1 cube if the space is empty then? I played 3 games with 3 different groups. This was a question brought up by every group. You would think they would have run into during testing and had it clarified. There were at least 2 other such rules we weren't positive what to do with.
- Dear lord, this has some of the worst visual design I've ever seen. The art is fine, but their design decisions are horrendous. It's very hard to tell which cards belong to which empire. All the colors have this muddy, muted watercolor look to them, which would be fine if they didn't leave colors as the ONLY way to differentiate stuff. There is no symbol on the card backs, only the front. More than half the cards don't have a standout color to tell which empire they go to. The illustration on one has a soldier riding a horse, which is supposed to tell you it belongs to the Horse Empire instead of it just being common medieval transportation. One card has a blurred elephant in the background, so you're supposed to know that card is supposed to be the elephant empire, which is represented on the board by a flag with two white lines on it, which you're supposed to know are tusks. You're supposed to spot the Eagle Empire deck because one soldier has a blurry, half a centimeter large eagle emblem (that's literally how large it is on the card).
For the board, they decided to make cities and forts dark brown, and more than half the terrain is the same dark brown, with no outlines are anything to make things stand out. The forts are especially bad. 3 of them are constantly being missed by players they're so hard to spot. They decided to put dark brown towers on dark brown terrain surrounded by dark brown, tower-shaped features. It's so bad, I actually risked resale value to deface the board and paint outlines on the towers. I would paint the backs of the cards too but it would end up marking them, so I'm just going to get colored stickers.
That's how bad the visual design is. Again, all three groups I played with had these issues. How was this not addressed during testing?
Here, just look
Now here are the card backs. Quick, try to pick out which match up to which icon above, in the middle of a game, from across the table, while being held in someone's hand.
How much trouble would it have been to stick the icon on the back? The same icon they put on the front! Or at least a colored border!
Here's the board. Try to spot the towers without leaning in and squinting (the dark brown towers, not the little tan huts)
You probably spotted the one in the central desert and the top snow, right? How about the one in the 6 o'clock position bordering the desert? Or the 3 o'clock canyons? Or in the center hilly red area? Those are now outlined with white paint on my board.
Anyway, right now I'd give it a 7/10. It's one of those "decent for a quick game, wouldn't play it if it was longer", and I'm afraid that printing out player guides for the cards would make it longer.
People who played it, what do you think of the advanced rules of placing agent flags down on regions to count as cities? It seems to make the final round very bland. Everyone just uses the entire round to put down 2 flags in secure areas for an automatic 8 points, more than they could ever safely get from using council actions on the crowded final round.
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
- Yes you can swap loyalties, but it has to be a 1 for 1 swap so you can rarely craft the exact order you want. If you want to move your 4th place loyalty deal into 1st place, you have to move your 1st place loyalty deal into 4th place, and then it is locked there. Plus tiebreakers go to least loyalty swaps, so the player who got the world as per their original plan will beat the player who switched up their loyalties to match how things are turning out. Plus swapping exposes your intentions. Plus, plus, plus with 5 loyalties and the need for 1 for 1 swaps, one of your loyalties has to remain unchanged.
- Cards be powerful, but drawing them comes at the cost of reinforcing leaving that colour open to being invaded. Cards are no good without armies to back them up. I found you really only want to draw cards from factions you want to lose, syphoning their resources to other factions.
- Yellow faction starts with a whole bunch of cities, and less attack actions means more raising armies. They're meant to be the turtlers of the asymmetric factions.
- An empty space belongs to its board colour so yes the forts still work and you'd need two armies to invade.
- Those card backs are clearly green, red and yellow to me from colour palette?
None of which changes the massive selling points to me of really easy to teach, really quick to play, and nobody gets their faction stomped down to insignificance early on but is forced to stay in the game.
I hadn't played with the agents as cities option, but I can see your issue with it. Though I will say, with the cards nowhere is really safe.