BigPointyTeethrun away! run away!MinnesotaRegistered Userregular
I got together with a friend last weekend for the first time in months. Our local place is slowly opening back up. The number of tables was cut down by more than half, and were all spaced 6 feet apart. There was also a lot of mask usage.
First up was Undaunted: Normandy. We played the first scenario, so we each had two riflemen squads and two scout teams. We needed to get to five victory points through holding locations of various worth. He started with three points on his starting tile, while I had none. The rest of the points, though, were closer to me.
I started by moving my scout and then riflemen into the adjacent town, and captured it for two points. He moved in towards that town and then spent the rest of the game trying to eliminate my squad there. I responded by pulling more soldiers into my deck for that squad, while my other scout and riflemen went down the side of the map where there were the remaining points I needed. He lost because of that fixation on my one group of riflemen, and let my other troops move freely.
Next was Commands and Colors: Medieval. I've played a decent amount of Memoir 44, but I think I like this version way more. It felt like watching an actual battle unfold, like watching a History Channel documentary of a battle play out. We played the first scenario of this, which was just two battle lines facing each other. My line was paper thin in the middle with a smattering of decent troops and cavalry on either end. His was mostly the same, but had more cavalry and I think generally better troop types overall. All of his cavalry had bows while only my light cavalry had any.
I started by cautiously advancing while he sent his warriors charging in. Eventually my entire line disintegrated. As it went on, I was desperately trying to hold everything together just long enough. I ended up winning on the strength of a couple mounted charges just ripping into his flanks.
Unmatched was next. I was Robin Hood against King Arthur. Merlin started off hitting me from a distance, so I put a couple arrows in his face. Then we spent time maneuvering, trying to get the other into a position to attack. I ended a turn in range of him, thinking I could take the hit and finish him off the next round. Unfortunately, I used up all my defense cards (and found out after the fact that nearly the second half of my deck had all my shield cards), so I took the hit in full of nine points. Which was exactly enough to kill me. To provide context, I started with 14 hit points. It was a big hit. King Arthur cornered me and straight cut me down for murdering his wizard friend.
Last, we played Watergate. This was the game that surprised me the most. We had played Twilight Struggle before, and I enjoyed it, but I mainly remember it being fiddly, so I was hesitant to play Watergate. I was wrong, that game was pretty great and I want to take another crack at it.
I was Nixon, and doing my damnedest to obstruct and witness tamper. I got to several of the witnesses first, and was burning the trail of evidence as fast as I could get my hands on it. Unfortunately, the editor got enough red tokens to get his first special ability. I can't remember what the event was, maybe Watergate hearings? Anyway, he got to pull a piece of evidence and place it on the board. The board being, of course, a wall with red string connecting people to Nixon. He pulled exactly the piece he needed to win the game, like he came across the key piece of evidence that tied it all together.
Overall, I enjoyed all the games we played. I like Commands and Colors so much I finally ordered Ancients and I ordered the Muldoon vs Raptors expansion for Unmatched. I really thought Undaunted was going to be the one I came away wanting to play more of, and I do, but Watergate really grabbed me. It was like the experience of Twilight Struggle, the push and pull, but distilled down to a brisk thirty minutes where each card you play has two good effects you are forced to choose between.
I actually really like Pandemic it's a cool game, and it's fun to make a cool playlist for it and play
My wife and I have taken to listening to the Contagion soundtrack when we play Pandemic. It's perfect.
That sounds deeply anxiety-inducing.
You're not wrong! It also has that sciencey vibe. It's a thinky, planny soundtrack perfect to put your hand to your chin and go "hmmm, we're fucked i think" to.
BloodySloth on
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BigPointyTeethrun away! run away!MinnesotaRegistered Userregular
Thoughts on Command & Colors Ancients/Medieval vs Battlelore?
I've only played the Game of Thrones Battlelore which seemed to revolve more around the leaders and nearby units for commanding and rolling for troop type tokens to order individual troops, where Commands and Colors is focused around the left/center/right way of ordering troops. Otherwise they are pretty similar in combat resolution. Battlelore also has more involved scenario and victory conditions and a morale meter that pushes back and forth when units are eliminated.
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admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
Thoughts on Command & Colors Ancients/Medieval vs Battlelore?
I haven't played Medieval, but like @BigPointyTeeth said Ancients feels like an actual battle of that era unfolding. The mechanics reward you for preserving your battle line, utilizing skirmishers but leaving them retreating room, spreading out leaders, etc. It reminds me of playing far weightier games like the Great Battles of History series.
Battlelore feels much more like Memoir '44, where there's still plenty of tactics but you kind of just fling units around and try to use terrain as much as possible. However, there is far more variety in Battlelore since every army has its own special abilities and spells. C&C:A armies have minor variations in combat systems, but one faction's medium infantry are usually the same as any other faction's medium infantry.
I was really surprised how smooth and polished it felt. Feels smoother than any of the CoH games. Also graphically ahead with little details like oil pumps activating when you capture them.
So here’s what’s different from CoH that I could tell:
- Only 2 resources: Metal and oil
- Limited buildings. You’ve got the sand bags, barbed wire, and mines that engineers can build. Only 2 production buildings: barracks and workshop, with the workshop having an upgrade that lets it produce the more advanced mechs. That’s it for buildings.
-Infantry changing on the fly. Every killed infantry squad drops their equipment. You can pick it up and turn your entire infantry until into whatever unit dropped the equipment. Sort of like picking up special weapons in CoH, but moreso. You can even pick up engineer equipment to turn into engineers, or pick up rifles to turn back into basic riflemen.
-Loot pickups. The maps start with little piles of resources scattered around. They take about 10 seconds for an infantry unit to pick up, and provide a one time resource dump equivalent to what its generator would produce in 4 minutes (an oil well gives +1 oil per minute, a pile gives 4 oil). This puts an interesting twist on the very early game as you scramble for these piles. In addition, there are weapon crate that can transform your squad, exactly like the weapon drops from defeated squads. Do you go for the weapons first? Straight for the resources?
-Slower AA guns. Gone are the days of those silly CoH anti-tank guns that could zip around and unlimber in two seconds. The ones in Iron Harvest are SLOOOooooooow.
All in all, I was pleasantly surprised in what I thought was going to be a cheap cash in on a popular brand. If the multiplayer scene turns out to be robust, I’ll probably pick this up shortly after launch.
MrBody on
+1
ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
I was really surprised how smooth and polished it felt. Feels smoother than any of the CoH games. Also graphically ahead with little details like oil pumps activating when you capture them.
So here’s what’s different from CoH that I could tell:
- Only 2 resources: Metal and oil
- Limited buildings. You’ve got the sand bags, barbed wire, and mines that engineers can build. Only 2 production buildings: barracks and workshop, with the workshop having an upgrade that lets it produce the more advanced mechs. That’s it for buildings.
-Infantry changing on the fly. Every killed infantry squad drops their equipment. You can pick it up and turn your entire infantry until into whatever unit dropped the equipment. Sort of like picking up special weapons in CoH, but moreso. You can even pick up engineer equipment to turn into engineers, or pick up rifles to turn back into basic riflemen.
-Loot pickups. The maps start with little piles of resources scattered around. They take about 10 seconds for an infantry unit to pick up, and provide a one time resource dump equivalent to what its generator would produce in 4 minutes (an oil well gives +1 oil per minute, a pile gives 4 oil). This puts an interesting twist on the very early game as you scramble for these piles. In addition, there are weapon crate that can transform your squad, exactly like the weapon drops from defeated squads. Do you go for the weapons first? Straight for the resources?
-Slower AA guns. Gone are the days of those silly CoH anti-tank guns that could zip around and unlimber in two seconds. The ones in Iron Harvest are SLOOOooooooow.
All in all, I was pleasantly surprised in what I thought was going to be a cheap cash in on a popular brand. If the multiplayer scene turns out to be robust, I’ll probably pick this up shortly after launch.
Oh crap I didn’t know that it was Dire Wolf (aka the devs behind Eternal and the upcoming digital version of Root) doing the dev on it so it wraps back around to being Good News.
In other news, wow it’s been a week or two of companies being revealed as being toxic shitboxes.
Allegations of racism in the company aside, the game itself is a toxic shitbox.
I mean, is anyone surprised about the CAH thing? And it raises the questions about the game itself. So many of the cards are racially or sexually charged in very derogatory manners...is this game ok? Does, "Oh, it's just a joke," fly anymore. Does someone throwing down a card that is racially charged to get a laugh right?
I went to PAX Unplugged, and there was a huge effort to promote diversity and inclusiveness. Does bringing this game into an environment like that, the "party game for horrible people" something that should fly going forward?
The WotC thing was last week's discussion. They've already taken baby steps towards cleaning up their card database but obviously the hiring diversity aspect will need more time (if anything even happens there). I guess there was D&D-related post as well but I haven't read it.
AC:NH Chris from Glosta SW-5173-3598-2899 DA-4749-1014-4697 @vyolynce@mastodon.social
Allegations of racism in the company aside, the game itself is a toxic shitbox.
I mean, is anyone surprised about the CAH thing? And it raises the questions about the game itself. So many of the cards are racially or sexually charged in very derogatory manners...is this game ok? Does, "Oh, it's just a joke," fly anymore. Does someone throwing down a card that is racially charged to get a laugh right?
I went to PAX Unplugged, and there was a huge effort to promote diversity and inclusiveness. Does bringing this game into an environment like that, the "party game for horrible people" something that should fly going forward?
Someone gifted me the game of meme, which is just another skin on the apples to apples format, and I ended up throwing away over half the cards because of their content. It's a poor excuse to print stuff to be edgy or appear inclusive but actually be covering over issues with humor.
+2
BigPointyTeethrun away! run away!MinnesotaRegistered Userregular
edited June 2020
I took another crack at Navajo Wars last night. The first time I played, I did the intro scenario and ended with -3 points. I got the final two scoring cards pretty much back to back and just couldn't manage.
Last night, though, I only lost slightly less bad. I did the entire Spanish time period this time. So many times, I nearly broke the morale of the Spanish. At least twice, maybe three times, I got it down to one. All I needed was one more drop to run them out and get a victory. Unfortunately, they kept pushing in, building missions. Then I had to deal with a couple big raids, first from the Spanish, and then from a couple other tribes. Overall, it was a desperate struggle just to keep my families alive and fed. The entire time, it felt like the odds were firmly against me, and only slightly losing felt like an achievement.
It did take for God damn forever to play, but I had a child, wife, and cats interrupting me, so that probably inflated the play time.
Edit: Been thinking about this post and wanted to add to it a bit, as I find this is a hard one to talk about as a game considering the subject matter. It's not like a typical wargame, where you're controlling armies fighting each other. You're playing as a people who are fighting just to keep their way of life against invaders. Nearly every turn has something bad happen, and each victory you pull off is small and usually fleeting.
I initially bought it because I had always read that it was a great solo game. I think I ended up reading the designer's notes before playing my first game, all five pages of it, in a GMT rulebook. In it, he talks about how he started development after a conversation with a Navajo teen prompted him to read about Kit Carson and learned how much the history he thought he knew did not align with the reality. He continued to dig because he saw just how little he knew about the people he grew up with.
The rest of the notes goes through each game element and the reasoning behind each one. He also goes through each historical event card and expands on the history a bit.
Anyway, I just wanted to talk a bit more because it could easily be seen as a very callous tone deaf type of thing, turning that history into a game. As far as I can tell, from my very much white guy position, it seems like he went about it as respectful as possible.
it seems it would be a lot easier to not be a racist company full of shitheads than it would be to do same but then what do i know i work in a racist company full of shitheads
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Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
My copy of Solar Storm arrived. Imagine if the disease in Pandemic was accidentally crashing your spaceship into the sun.
It's a small box co-op that, from the single play yesterday, does a pretty good job of pandemic style escalating crises. It also only took ~45minutes to learn and play, which is ideal given that that is about the amount of time we get to ourselves. Plus it has
a built in way to vary difficulty.
The core mechanic is playing cards that match symbols on rooms. First you do this to repair them and then you can divert power to the core. Divert all eight rooms' power to the core and then you can activate it and you win. You lose if any one room blows up or the resource deck runs dry. Each turn you draw a damage card and the deck is stacked so the first ones damage one room, the next lump damage two and the final ones damage three. This gives excellent tempo building where you start off very calm and in control and then twenty minutes later you're caught between making progress towards winning and avoiding losing.
Very happy with backing that.
I went with the deluxe edition which has a few expansions. The alternate set of room powers is the most interesting as it gives you more setup variability. The escape pod gives a way for a player to solo win in a pure co-op (although it's not very well implemented so I'm assuming it's a joke). Then there are some damage cards that you can choose the damage locations if you draw, this gives you more immediate safety as you can avoid killing yourself on that draw but it means that future draws risk shafting you as it stops the damage being distributed equally between the rooms.
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
+3
BigPointyTeethrun away! run away!MinnesotaRegistered Userregular
My Commands and Colors Ancients arrived, along with the first three expansions. There are so many blocks. So many. Now I need to think about storage options. I used a couple of Plano boxes for the two armies in Medieval, but right off the bat, I have several different color armies with this.
I've also been playing Mage Knight recently after the ultimate edition came back down to a sane price. It's not as fiddly as I thought it would be, but it's enough that screw up a few minor things each game. Once you get going, it plays fairly smooth, and I'll feel like I'm trucking along at a good pace. I'll finish the game, though, and realize many hours have passed. It wouldn't be so bad, but I always start after I get home from work, so I end well past midnight. I'm still glad I finally got my hands on a copy.
Played this a couple times today, its quite fun. If you've played Fuse or Flatline by the same designer you've got a pretty good idea what to expect. Super frantic cooperative real time dice rolling. I love that your have turns in this one, and it captures the Pandemic flavor pretty well too. Definitely worth $10, though I'm not sure how often it'll realistically get played. My wife and I aren't really looking for a super stressful chaotic 15-20 minute experience all that often lol.
Root Attempt #2 with the Corvid Conspiracy; we played two games yesterday (one Underground/Cat/Corvid/Lizard and one Cat/Lizard/Riverfolk/Vagabond). I actually won as the Corvids this time, it took a bit to figure out how they worked and I had read one rule completely wrong in the previous game which meant I had far less resources in that game than I should have. It was a close game though (30 points is a win. The others had respectively 28 points, 26 points and the last one was working on a Dominion win scenario).
2nd game I played the Vagabond (the Owl to be precise) and I managed to keep up pretty well, but all parties were blocking me from getting specific items (Teapots), so I always had only a few actions each turn. Lizards had a decisive win this game.
Steam/Origin: davydizzy
+1
AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
edited June 2020
The Shut up & Sit Down news had a couple of articles linked today. I've only read one of them so far, but it was important enough to be shared.
Remember: Anyone you see in a game store (or any space) may be there for the first time. Make them feel welcome! My favorite thing to do with board games is teach new ones to players, and create new memories. I've only had a few bad experiences doing that.
Edit: The other article's brief but important too. I never really felt bad about randomness in games, personally. Like, I enjoyed psi in Netrunner, because it was part of the theme and flavor that the corps had all the control.
Jeff Beck and his Uproarious team just put up the KS for Intrepid: an asymmetric cooperative dice-placement game where you represent various countries dealing with calamities aboard the International Space Station. The expansion is basically free if you back in the first 48 hrs.
Vyolynce on
AC:NH Chris from Glosta SW-5173-3598-2899 DA-4749-1014-4697 @vyolynce@mastodon.social
+3
StragintDo Not GiftAlways DeclinesRegistered Userregular
Had anyone bought Coma Ward and the expansions? I bought it a little while ago and I just now opened stuff up but the mystery guest Coma Ward expansion has two of the same scenario in it. I know there is supposed to be a mystery one but I'm not sure if this was intended or a mishap.
PSN: Reaper_Stragint, Steam: DoublePitstoChesty
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
Had anyone bought Coma Ward and the expansions? I bought it a little while ago and I just now opened stuff up but the mystery guest Coma Ward expansion has two of the same scenario in it. I know there is supposed to be a mystery one but I'm not sure if this was intended or a mishap.
Had a couple great rounds in Unmatched with the wife today.
Her Bigfoot bodied my Robert Muldoon in the streets of London after an opening that seemingly saw Muldoon with an early lead. Muldoon and his squad being able to use their ranged attacks to fire down from the rooftops (and rig up the alleys with explosive traps) wasn't able to make up for the speed and power of a sasquatch and his weird bunny friend, sadly.
Round two saw my Dracula and her Sindbad tussle in a walled garden; Dracula tried to keep to the periphery and use his three concubines to screen attacks in the midfield, but avoiding Sinbad and his porter (also named Sinbad) became increasingly difficult, as time passed and sisterwives got maimed and slaughtered at the tip of a scimitar. It came down to the wire, with both characters at one health and barely any cards, when I was able to squeak out a cheesy victory by exploiting Dracula's ability to inflict an automatic one damage on any adjacent enemies at the start of his turn. I'll take it!
In other, tangentially related board gaming news, Goblinko (of Dungeon Degenerates fame) is giving away a special pack of stickers for free at the moment, or $8 if you want a 5-pack:
Edit: Just checked again and they're already sold out on the stickers, but are hoping to have more available soon. I was able to snag a pack, and used the opportunity to also buy a couple of the Dungeon Degenerates lorebooks by way of support.
Jeff Beck and his Uproarious team just put up the KS for Intrepid: an asymmetric cooperative dice-placement game where you represent various countries dealing with calamities aboard the International Space Station. The expansion is basically free if you back in the first 48 hrs.
Just backed it and have no idea what it's about. LOL!
Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
Jeff Beck and his Uproarious team just put up the KS for Intrepid: an asymmetric cooperative dice-placement game where you represent various countries dealing with calamities aboard the International Space Station. The expansion is basically free if you back in the first 48 hrs.
Just backed it and have no idea what it's about. LOL!
The word space was mentioned. Something something. Dice? Anyway, here is my wallet again, KS.
Jeff Beck and his Uproarious team just put up the KS for Intrepid: an asymmetric cooperative dice-placement game where you represent various countries dealing with calamities aboard the International Space Station. The expansion is basically free if you back in the first 48 hrs.
Just backed it and have no idea what it's about. LOL!
The word space was mentioned. Something something. Dice? Anyway, here is my wallet again, KS.
Noo! No more board games. Stop, Kickstar-oh what's this? Merchants of the Dark Road? Fuck.
I've been bad lately. I'm probably forgetting a bunch, too.
I picked up Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion at Target on Sunday. It's actually proved a really fantastic introduction to the universe. I have the original Gloomhaven but have never been able to muster the energy to set it up and learn it. It's an intimidating box and rulebook. Jaws of the Lion, however, has really eased me into the rules and it clicks so well now.
Project: ELITE arrived this week. I haven't tried it yet. Miniature quality doesn't seem up to CMON's usual standard. Some of the pieces were even off their stand and there was flashing around others.
I ordered a whole bunch of character packs for Aristeiaand then I bought acrylic 3D walls and neoprene playmats for it. I have a sickness, but they do look nice!
Xbox Live, PSN & Origin: Vacorsis 3DS: 2638-0037-166
+3
AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
Aw shit. Mayday's doing another Crokinole kickstarter.
Aw shit. Mayday's doing another Crokinole kickstarter.
Oh nooooo... I'm just the right amount of quarantined for this to get me.
It gets worse. They are only doing 500 of each style.
I decided to go with maple because it was lighter and I figure that if I hang it in a wall, it should lighten up the room. Plus it is easier to see the lines versus the rosewood.
Posts
Have you tried any of the Legacy seasons? There are a ton of Pandemic releases at this point, but Legacy seems like the best evolution of the format.
My wife and I have taken to listening to the Contagion soundtrack when we play Pandemic. It's perfect.
That sounds deeply anxiety-inducing.
Bad news: Asmodee
"Bad news: Asmodee" could be a thread title
First up was Undaunted: Normandy. We played the first scenario, so we each had two riflemen squads and two scout teams. We needed to get to five victory points through holding locations of various worth. He started with three points on his starting tile, while I had none. The rest of the points, though, were closer to me.
I started by moving my scout and then riflemen into the adjacent town, and captured it for two points. He moved in towards that town and then spent the rest of the game trying to eliminate my squad there. I responded by pulling more soldiers into my deck for that squad, while my other scout and riflemen went down the side of the map where there were the remaining points I needed. He lost because of that fixation on my one group of riflemen, and let my other troops move freely.
Next was Commands and Colors: Medieval. I've played a decent amount of Memoir 44, but I think I like this version way more. It felt like watching an actual battle unfold, like watching a History Channel documentary of a battle play out. We played the first scenario of this, which was just two battle lines facing each other. My line was paper thin in the middle with a smattering of decent troops and cavalry on either end. His was mostly the same, but had more cavalry and I think generally better troop types overall. All of his cavalry had bows while only my light cavalry had any.
I started by cautiously advancing while he sent his warriors charging in. Eventually my entire line disintegrated. As it went on, I was desperately trying to hold everything together just long enough. I ended up winning on the strength of a couple mounted charges just ripping into his flanks.
Unmatched was next. I was Robin Hood against King Arthur. Merlin started off hitting me from a distance, so I put a couple arrows in his face. Then we spent time maneuvering, trying to get the other into a position to attack. I ended a turn in range of him, thinking I could take the hit and finish him off the next round. Unfortunately, I used up all my defense cards (and found out after the fact that nearly the second half of my deck had all my shield cards), so I took the hit in full of nine points. Which was exactly enough to kill me. To provide context, I started with 14 hit points. It was a big hit. King Arthur cornered me and straight cut me down for murdering his wizard friend.
Last, we played Watergate. This was the game that surprised me the most. We had played Twilight Struggle before, and I enjoyed it, but I mainly remember it being fiddly, so I was hesitant to play Watergate. I was wrong, that game was pretty great and I want to take another crack at it.
I was Nixon, and doing my damnedest to obstruct and witness tamper. I got to several of the witnesses first, and was burning the trail of evidence as fast as I could get my hands on it. Unfortunately, the editor got enough red tokens to get his first special ability. I can't remember what the event was, maybe Watergate hearings? Anyway, he got to pull a piece of evidence and place it on the board. The board being, of course, a wall with red string connecting people to Nixon. He pulled exactly the piece he needed to win the game, like he came across the key piece of evidence that tied it all together.
Overall, I enjoyed all the games we played. I like Commands and Colors so much I finally ordered Ancients and I ordered the Muldoon vs Raptors expansion for Unmatched. I really thought Undaunted was going to be the one I came away wanting to play more of, and I do, but Watergate really grabbed me. It was like the experience of Twilight Struggle, the push and pull, but distilled down to a brisk thirty minutes where each card you play has two good effects you are forced to choose between.
You're not wrong! It also has that sciencey vibe. It's a thinky, planny soundtrack perfect to put your hand to your chin and go "hmmm, we're fucked i think" to.
I've only played the Game of Thrones Battlelore which seemed to revolve more around the leaders and nearby units for commanding and rolling for troop type tokens to order individual troops, where Commands and Colors is focused around the left/center/right way of ordering troops. Otherwise they are pretty similar in combat resolution. Battlelore also has more involved scenario and victory conditions and a morale meter that pushes back and forth when units are eliminated.
I haven't played Medieval, but like @BigPointyTeeth said Ancients feels like an actual battle of that era unfolding. The mechanics reward you for preserving your battle line, utilizing skirmishers but leaving them retreating room, spreading out leaders, etc. It reminds me of playing far weightier games like the Great Battles of History series.
Battlelore feels much more like Memoir '44, where there's still plenty of tactics but you kind of just fling units around and try to use terrain as much as possible. However, there is far more variety in Battlelore since every army has its own special abilities and spells. C&C:A armies have minor variations in combat systems, but one faction's medium infantry are usually the same as any other faction's medium infantry.
As one of the biggest FFG stans on this forum...
Yes. 100% yes.
Spent about an hour skirmishing.
I was really surprised how smooth and polished it felt. Feels smoother than any of the CoH games. Also graphically ahead with little details like oil pumps activating when you capture them.
So here’s what’s different from CoH that I could tell:
- Only 2 resources: Metal and oil
- Limited buildings. You’ve got the sand bags, barbed wire, and mines that engineers can build. Only 2 production buildings: barracks and workshop, with the workshop having an upgrade that lets it produce the more advanced mechs. That’s it for buildings.
-Infantry changing on the fly. Every killed infantry squad drops their equipment. You can pick it up and turn your entire infantry until into whatever unit dropped the equipment. Sort of like picking up special weapons in CoH, but moreso. You can even pick up engineer equipment to turn into engineers, or pick up rifles to turn back into basic riflemen.
-Loot pickups. The maps start with little piles of resources scattered around. They take about 10 seconds for an infantry unit to pick up, and provide a one time resource dump equivalent to what its generator would produce in 4 minutes (an oil well gives +1 oil per minute, a pile gives 4 oil). This puts an interesting twist on the very early game as you scramble for these piles. In addition, there are weapon crate that can transform your squad, exactly like the weapon drops from defeated squads. Do you go for the weapons first? Straight for the resources?
-Slower AA guns. Gone are the days of those silly CoH anti-tank guns that could zip around and unlimber in two seconds. The ones in Iron Harvest are SLOOOooooooow.
All in all, I was pleasantly surprised in what I thought was going to be a cheap cash in on a popular brand. If the multiplayer scene turns out to be robust, I’ll probably pick this up shortly after launch.
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
It's probably gonna suck because the translation will be AWFUL but wevs, at least I'll have it.
Oh crap I didn’t know that it was Dire Wolf (aka the devs behind Eternal and the upcoming digital version of Root) doing the dev on it so it wraps back around to being Good News.
In other news, wow it’s been a week or two of companies being revealed as being toxic shitboxes.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
I mean, is anyone surprised about the CAH thing? And it raises the questions about the game itself. So many of the cards are racially or sexually charged in very derogatory manners...is this game ok? Does, "Oh, it's just a joke," fly anymore. Does someone throwing down a card that is racially charged to get a laugh right?
I went to PAX Unplugged, and there was a huge effort to promote diversity and inclusiveness. Does bringing this game into an environment like that, the "party game for horrible people" something that should fly going forward?
Someone gifted me the game of meme, which is just another skin on the apples to apples format, and I ended up throwing away over half the cards because of their content. It's a poor excuse to print stuff to be edgy or appear inclusive but actually be covering over issues with humor.
Last night, though, I only lost slightly less bad. I did the entire Spanish time period this time. So many times, I nearly broke the morale of the Spanish. At least twice, maybe three times, I got it down to one. All I needed was one more drop to run them out and get a victory. Unfortunately, they kept pushing in, building missions. Then I had to deal with a couple big raids, first from the Spanish, and then from a couple other tribes. Overall, it was a desperate struggle just to keep my families alive and fed. The entire time, it felt like the odds were firmly against me, and only slightly losing felt like an achievement.
It did take for God damn forever to play, but I had a child, wife, and cats interrupting me, so that probably inflated the play time.
Edit: Been thinking about this post and wanted to add to it a bit, as I find this is a hard one to talk about as a game considering the subject matter. It's not like a typical wargame, where you're controlling armies fighting each other. You're playing as a people who are fighting just to keep their way of life against invaders. Nearly every turn has something bad happen, and each victory you pull off is small and usually fleeting.
I initially bought it because I had always read that it was a great solo game. I think I ended up reading the designer's notes before playing my first game, all five pages of it, in a GMT rulebook. In it, he talks about how he started development after a conversation with a Navajo teen prompted him to read about Kit Carson and learned how much the history he thought he knew did not align with the reality. He continued to dig because he saw just how little he knew about the people he grew up with.
The rest of the notes goes through each game element and the reasoning behind each one. He also goes through each historical event card and expands on the history a bit.
Anyway, I just wanted to talk a bit more because it could easily be seen as a very callous tone deaf type of thing, turning that history into a game. As far as I can tell, from my very much white guy position, it seems like he went about it as respectful as possible.
My copy of Solar Storm arrived. Imagine if the disease in Pandemic was accidentally crashing your spaceship into the sun.
It's a small box co-op that, from the single play yesterday, does a pretty good job of pandemic style escalating crises. It also only took ~45minutes to learn and play, which is ideal given that that is about the amount of time we get to ourselves. Plus it has
a built in way to vary difficulty.
The core mechanic is playing cards that match symbols on rooms. First you do this to repair them and then you can divert power to the core. Divert all eight rooms' power to the core and then you can activate it and you win. You lose if any one room blows up or the resource deck runs dry. Each turn you draw a damage card and the deck is stacked so the first ones damage one room, the next lump damage two and the final ones damage three. This gives excellent tempo building where you start off very calm and in control and then twenty minutes later you're caught between making progress towards winning and avoiding losing.
Very happy with backing that.
I went with the deluxe edition which has a few expansions. The alternate set of room powers is the most interesting as it gives you more setup variability. The escape pod gives a way for a player to solo win in a pure co-op (although it's not very well implemented so I'm assuming it's a joke). Then there are some damage cards that you can choose the damage locations if you draw, this gives you more immediate safety as you can avoid killing yourself on that draw but it means that future draws risk shafting you as it stops the damage being distributed equally between the rooms.
I've also been playing Mage Knight recently after the ultimate edition came back down to a sane price. It's not as fiddly as I thought it would be, but it's enough that screw up a few minor things each game. Once you get going, it plays fairly smooth, and I'll feel like I'm trucking along at a good pace. I'll finish the game, though, and realize many hours have passed. It wouldn't be so bad, but I always start after I get home from work, so I end well past midnight. I'm still glad I finally got my hands on a copy.
Played this a couple times today, its quite fun. If you've played Fuse or Flatline by the same designer you've got a pretty good idea what to expect. Super frantic cooperative real time dice rolling. I love that your have turns in this one, and it captures the Pandemic flavor pretty well too. Definitely worth $10, though I'm not sure how often it'll realistically get played. My wife and I aren't really looking for a super stressful chaotic 15-20 minute experience all that often lol.
2nd game I played the Vagabond (the Owl to be precise) and I managed to keep up pretty well, but all parties were blocking me from getting specific items (Teapots), so I always had only a few actions each turn. Lizards had a decisive win this game.
Remember: Anyone you see in a game store (or any space) may be there for the first time. Make them feel welcome! My favorite thing to do with board games is teach new ones to players, and create new memories. I've only had a few bad experiences doing that.
https://girlsgameshelf.com/2020/06/the-first-step-toward-change/
Edit: The other article's brief but important too. I never really felt bad about randomness in games, personally. Like, I enjoyed psi in Netrunner, because it was part of the theme and flavor that the corps had all the control.
https://mailchi.mp/2b636bcab565/gaming-from-my-perspective
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
I did. The whole game is a HUGE pile of crap and you'll need a lot of house rules to make it work at all. You can start here: https://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/2240891/full-scenario-issues-verge-throwing-game-away
In any case that sounds like an error, I'd write the creators and ask for the missing one.
Round two saw my Dracula and her Sindbad tussle in a walled garden; Dracula tried to keep to the periphery and use his three concubines to screen attacks in the midfield, but avoiding Sinbad and his porter (also named Sinbad) became increasingly difficult, as time passed and sisterwives got maimed and slaughtered at the tip of a scimitar. It came down to the wire, with both characters at one health and barely any cards, when I was able to squeak out a cheesy victory by exploiting Dracula's ability to inflict an automatic one damage on any adjacent enemies at the start of his turn. I'll take it!
In other, tangentially related board gaming news, Goblinko (of Dungeon Degenerates fame) is giving away a special pack of stickers for free at the moment, or $8 if you want a 5-pack:
Edit: Just checked again and they're already sold out on the stickers, but are hoping to have more available soon. I was able to snag a pack, and used the opportunity to also buy a couple of the Dungeon Degenerates lorebooks by way of support.
Just backed it and have no idea what it's about. LOL!
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
Steam ID
Twitch Page
Noo! No more board games. Stop, Kickstar-oh what's this? Merchants of the Dark Road? Fuck.
I've been bad lately. I'm probably forgetting a bunch, too.
I picked up Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion at Target on Sunday. It's actually proved a really fantastic introduction to the universe. I have the original Gloomhaven but have never been able to muster the energy to set it up and learn it. It's an intimidating box and rulebook. Jaws of the Lion, however, has really eased me into the rules and it clicks so well now.
Project: ELITE arrived this week. I haven't tried it yet. Miniature quality doesn't seem up to CMON's usual standard. Some of the pieces were even off their stand and there was flashing around others.
I ordered a whole bunch of character packs for Aristeia and then I bought acrylic 3D walls and neoprene playmats for it. I have a sickness, but they do look nice!
Oh nooooo... I'm just the right amount of quarantined for this to get me.
It gets worse. They are only doing 500 of each style.
I decided to go with maple because it was lighter and I figure that if I hang it in a wall, it should lighten up the room. Plus it is easier to see the lines versus the rosewood.