I hope the expansion adds a little bit of refinement to Wingspan. I really enjoy it, as does my wife. But I don't know if it's because we've played so many games together, but it does start to feel like a game that's a mile-wide but an inch deep. We bought the European expansion to add more bird cards to the mix, but what it made me think was that Wingspan doesn't need more cards. It seems to only dilute the game, as there's some pretty significant differences in the power level of certain birds. So much so that adding more cards doesn't feel like it makes the game better.
With this expansion, I hope there's some refinement to the actual gameplay. To be fair, too, I don't know exactly what I'm asking for. Wingspan is a beautiful game that's relatively easy to teach and easy to play. It does a good job of making players feel like they're part of the game, until the final scores get tallied (as I mentioned in another post), but there's just something missing in my mind to put it over the top.
I think the goal was to make something in a novel theme for entry into the hobby. It seems a stretch to expect the expansions to move it away from that mission statement
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
I hope the expansion adds a little bit of refinement to Wingspan. I really enjoy it, as does my wife. But I don't know if it's because we've played so many games together, but it does start to feel like a game that's a mile-wide but an inch deep. We bought the European expansion to add more bird cards to the mix, but what it made me think was that Wingspan doesn't need more cards. It seems to only dilute the game, as there's some pretty significant differences in the power level of certain birds. So much so that adding more cards doesn't feel like it makes the game better.
With this expansion, I hope there's some refinement to the actual gameplay. To be fair, too, I don't know exactly what I'm asking for. Wingspan is a beautiful game that's relatively easy to teach and easy to play. It does a good job of making players feel like they're part of the game, until the final scores get tallied (as I mentioned in another post), but there's just something missing in my mind to put it over the top.
What a good turn of phrase. I must adopt this. Thank you so much~
I think the goal was to make something in a novel theme for entry into the hobby. It seems a stretch to expect the expansions to move it away from that mission statement
But you would think they would do precisely that, right?
You have people entered into it, now try to take them one more step forward and give them something to freshen up and challenge existing fans of the game.
New players can continue to flow into the base game, and a true expansion acts as an enhancement. To me, that seems like the bigger win here.
Nothing good is Kickstarter exclusive forever. If it's good, it'll make its way to retail eventually. But it's probably not actually good, so you can afford to miss it.
the real trick is realizing that even if a thing is good and stays kickstarter exclusive forever and you can literally never get it... it just doesnt matter at all. there are so many great games, just get a different one.
This 100%. I already have a bunch of great games on my shelf that even without the pandemic never get enough table time. My friends group and I would all have to retire to make a dent in our games collections.
I think the goal was to make something in a novel theme for entry into the hobby. It seems a stretch to expect the expansions to move it away from that mission statement
But you would think they would do precisely that, right?
You have people entered into it, now try to take them one more step forward and give them something to freshen up and challenge existing fans of the game.
New players can continue to flow into the base game, and a true expansion acts as an enhancement. To me, that seems like the bigger win here.
You're seeing the games you want to play as a goal that everybody should progress towards . Complexity and weight levels are fine as preferences. Your argument would have things tend towards chit and counter wargames (or 18xx or whatever is right at the top end). They have hit a really healthy market which is growing rapidly, it makes sense to stay in the same area.
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
We played our very first game of Pandemic (with a Pandemic Legacy kit - basically our prep work for getting started on the game proper) and it was... well, none of us play board games with any regularity and we hadn’t really played any coop before. Even though we lost, it was pretty damn amazing: working together against the game’s fiendishly clever mechanics. The exhilaration when we found a cure to two diseases, the dread when we drew the third epidemic card, the horror when this started a cascade of outbreaks... My wife is usually pretty down on losing in games, and this could’ve turned her off Pandemic entirely, but we found ourselves talking about our choices and what happened and what we’d do differently next time most of the evening. So much looking forward to playing more of this, and to playing the legacy game before long!
Thirith on
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Everyone's first game of Pandemic:
"We have to remove all the cubes... holy shit we ran out of cards."
Everyone's second game of Pandemic:
"Ok leave most of the cubes, but we cannot allow anything to outbreak... holy shit we ran out of cards."
Everyone's third game of Pandemic:
"That dispatcher lady is amazing, why didn't we play with her before?" "Lady? That looks like Daryl from the Walking Dead to me."
Oh, our first game was more like this: "Fucking hell, we've just found a cure for two diseases... What's that, there are three yellow cubes in every single city in South America? And we've just drawn an epidemic card? Sheeeee-" (We had a medic, a researcher (or a scientist? the one that can swap cards more easily) and me as the dispatcher.)
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Custom SpecialI know I am, I'm sure I am,I'm Sounders 'til I die!Registered Userregular
FYI for anyone in the market, Amazon has the new 7 Wonders edition for 35 and has a click coupon for $7 off (so around about $30 after tax for most people)! Seems like a solid deal if you're into the new style and aren't invested into the original art/expansions.
FINALLY got to play Planet Apocalypse last night and children that game slaps and slaps hard. Everyone loved it. We trounced Baphomet and only made a few glaring ridiculous rules errors. Lost two characters but c'est l'enfer.
Hanah Hazard can be built into a legit mother fucking monster.
So I somehow ended up with the Android version of Twilight Struggle as well! I can see why that game was so highly rated for so long. It's a masterpiece. Wrapping my head around regional scoring is going to take a minute. This is one, though, that I can feel myself getting deep into with strategy articles and the like.
Second game of Pandemic, pretty much same setup... and we just about won. We wouldn’t have if I hadn’t remembered that we only needed to cure all four diseases. A couple of close calls, and there were only about half a dozen cards left on the player deck when we finally found a cure for the black disease. We were massively lucky, though; the Prognosis card (is that what it’s called? we’ve got the German version of the game) saved us from walking into a certain-death scenario with cascading outbreaks, and in the end we drew a Quiet Night card that could just as easily have been an epidemic card.
I felt oddly drained at the end, but it was still good, and I’m looking forward to getting started on Legacy before long.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
That's a huge bummer. It also pretty well explains the bitter struggle that distributing Oceans has been post-kickstarter (even before the pandemic made everything worse).
It sucks that it's all self-reinforcing, too; struggling as a business makes it harder to ship internationally and to provide great customer service, and those things in turn discourage people from dealing with your business.
FFG's Game of Thrones board game went digital on Steam today.
Reading reviews...oh wow. Sounds like they really went with a boneheaded decision for multiplayer.
There is no per turn timer option. People instead get a "chess clock" total time of an hour or more for the game.
Sounds like every game in multiplayer has losing player rage "quit" by going AFK just to get back at everyone else by forcing everyone to sit there waiting for an hour until the rager drops if they want to finish the game.
edit: oops, looks like it is 1 hour per turn. But that still hobbles anyone looking for a single sitting online multiplayer game. People just join games to troll by exiting right away and everyone has to sit for an hour before they're dropped and replaced by a bot. No option to kick people.
MrBody on
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
FFG's Game of Thrones board game went digital on Steam today.
Reading reviews...oh wow. Sounds like they really went with a boneheaded decision for multiplayer.
There is no per turn timer option. People instead get a "chess clock" total time of an hour or more for the game.
Sounds like every game in multiplayer has losing player rage "quit" by going AFK just to get back at everyone else by forcing everyone to sit there waiting for an hour until the rager drops if they want to finish the game.
edit: oops, looks like it is 1 hour per turn. But that still hobbles anyone looking for a single sitting online multiplayer game. People just join games to troll by exiting right away and everyone has to sit for an hour before they're dropped and replaced by a bot. No option to kick people.
I couldn't do board games with complete randos. No thank you. Half the fun for me is hanging out with my friends.
Games with randos works okay with async turns, but I would imagine something as backstabby as GOT is something you would only want to play with people you know in the first place.
KetarCome on upstairswe're having a partyRegistered Userregular
Games with randos also work fine for anything quick. I've played hundreds of games of Ticket to Ride online, and not one of them was with someone I know. I've also had plenty of fun playing with randos on Board Game Arena as long as I stick to stuff that plays pretty quickly like 7 Wonders.
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Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
My kids love Evolution, and it's one of the few games they'll pull off the shelf a "play" by themselves. More for fun than by the exact rules, but I love it.
I went ahead an ordered Oceans.
It's a bummer to hear about their problems, but the transparency is amazing. It's hard to forget how incredibly challenging running a small business can be.
We played Planet Apocalypse again last night and won again! We were on the Doom Gate map with Scylla who is a NASTY demon lord. She has a 6d8 attack and she has 6 snake heads that give her 1d12 each so if she's full up she' s rolling twelve fucking dice. You can pop the heads off easy and get boatloads of Courage but that doesn't hurt her and everyone gets a Pestilence marker per head popped.
By the end we had about 15 Doom Points because of the Ritual dance and a real bad stroke of luck pulling the legion that made demons move 2 spaces instead of one. We only had to fight Scylla twice tho and it's a good thing we beat her in the second Hell Time because the board was FULL of demons. Lost two heroes overall which seems to be our average so far.
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
We played Planet Apocalypse again last night and won again! We were on the Doom Gate map with Scylla who is a NASTY demon lord. She has a 6d8 attack and she has 6 snake heads that give her 1d12 each so if she's full up she' s rolling twelve fucking dice. You can pop the heads off easy and get boatloads of Courage but that doesn't hurt her and everyone gets a Pestilence marker per head popped.
By the end we had about 15 Doom Points because of the Ritual dance and a real bad stroke of luck pulling the legion that made demons move 2 spaces instead of one. We only had to fight Scylla twice tho and it's a good thing we beat her in the second Hell Time because the board was FULL of demons. Lost two heroes overall which seems to be our average so far.
I don't know what any of this means but it sounds fucking awesome.
ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
edited October 2020
We played Loot of Lima last night and boy is it an absolutely stellar deduction game. Everything about it is smart, and the little playerboard map things are really nice and fun. It was the kind of thing where we started and it was like, "Yeah, I guess I'll figure out some thing as we go?" and then I wound up catching on to different deductions I could make just because they left space on the player sheets for those notes. Since everybody is asking their questions publicly the level of interaction is high (almost no hidden information unlike most other games in the genre), and if you track things well you can absolutely get great little waterfalls of "Ah-ha!" If you enjoy deduction games I can't recommend it enough - it really stood out~
We played Planet Apocalypse again last night and won again! We were on the Doom Gate map with Scylla who is a NASTY demon lord. She has a 6d8 attack and she has 6 snake heads that give her 1d12 each so if she's full up she' s rolling twelve fucking dice. You can pop the heads off easy and get boatloads of Courage but that doesn't hurt her and everyone gets a Pestilence marker per head popped.
By the end we had about 15 Doom Points because of the Ritual dance and a real bad stroke of luck pulling the legion that made demons move 2 spaces instead of one. We only had to fight Scylla twice tho and it's a good thing we beat her in the second Hell Time because the board was FULL of demons. Lost two heroes overall which seems to be our average so far.
I don't know what any of this means but it sounds fucking awesome.
I think I finally sold my friends on playing Root online. One is halfway through the tutorials and finds the cats adorable. I told a married couple I'm prepared to work with them on the tutorial if they need help this weekend. As the most experienced member (albeit only playing against AI,) I'll pick the last available faction if we play together.
Totally forgot that the Arkham Horror 3ed.: Under Dark Waves big box expansion came out. Picked it up and played 1 scenario.
-4 new scenarios
-8 new investigators
-4 new map tiles, two each of Kingsport & Innsmouth
-Little mini-attachments to plug into the edges of map tiles
-A new anomaly mechanic: Terror
-Cards to add to existing decks
-Mini campaign mode
New scenarios:
We only tried 1. It seems like they're trying to push it into the direction of replayability through random branching paths. This is one of the things I said the game needed most. They...sort of succeeded. It's a very small baby step. Example being that the 2nd stage of one scenario opens up by randomly drawing 2 out of 3 cards and having those 2 objectives being in play. So every time, 1 of the 3 objectives will be left out. Not the biggest shakeup. Baby step.
It's also continuing the trend of needing to physically draw out a flowchart to keep track of the increasing complexity of objectives. You spend a clue here to randomly place a marker on a space then visit the marker for encounters, or you can defeat a certain monster to spend a clue and place a different marker. Reach 3 of one type of marker, and you move on to the next stage depending on which marker type reached 3, with other markers being converted in various ways to the different new objectives and OH MY GOD my head hurts. No joke, I actually had to take out a marker and draw out a little flowchart on paper because people were just scratching their heads trying to parse the cards.
New map tiles:
So Kingsport and Innsmouth are new map tiles that exist separate from the main Arkham board as a little side board. How do you avoid the side board mobility problem that AH2 had? There are about nine "travel route" attachments that you stick to the edges of map tiles. Each one is a method of travel: ferry, country road, or train. You move on to one, pay $1, and can teleport to any matching travel route space of the same type. They're spread around so no real instances of getting stuck too much. Not bad.
You also get attachments for 2 special spaces: Devil's Reef and House on the High Hill. They are high risk, high reward encounter spaces. Much like the 2 part encounters of expeditions in Eldritch Horror.
No sure I'm sold yet on the tile system. I get that they were going for a module add-on approach, but it just looks rickety compared to a solid board. Still not a fan of the nigh time art where everything is too dark to make out detail. AH2 gave the feeling of taking place at dusk/night, and that still had better detail.
New Terror anomaly:
Place doom tokens as normal. When there are 6 doom tokens in a neighborhood, you remove all doom from one space, put one doom on the scenario sheet, then "spread terror". Place a terror marker (goat skull) on the neighborhood, then place a terror encounter card on top of that neighborhood encounter deck, where it always remains on top. If there are any terror cards in that deck, you must encounter one of them, after which you may do one normal encounter there. The terror encounter gets more difficult the more terror markers are on that neighborhood (much like other anomalies with doom total). You can spend an action to test influence and for each success, remove one terror marker or encounter card.
So it's another feature of making things a little too complicated to comfortably keep track of. Once you do have the rule down though, Terror seemed way easier than the other anomalies. It's very easy to game doom placement where you concentrate it all in one space, so that even if terror gets triggered, you get to remove up to 6 doom right away to slow any future spread. It also doesn't lock the neighborhood down to anywhere near the degree that the old anomalies did. You had to remove every single doom token on the old anomalies before you could do a regular encounter. Here, you just soldier through one terror encounter than can do an encounter as normal in the same round. We ended up breezing through the scenario without even triggering the first doom event.
It also seems like continuing their band-aid solution to trying to make Will & Influence more useful. Throwing in little tests for them on a couple isolated scenario parts, rather than making them central to any kind of common action like all the other stats.
Mini-campaign:
Play through the 8 scenarios, without repeating any. Losing one loses the whole campaign.
Defeated investigators cannot be reused.
Penalties of increasing difficulty apply as the scenarios go on.
That's it. Not much. Still a little more thought than the campaign mode they put into Eldritch Horror's campaign mode in Masks of Nyarlathotep.
Summary:
New scenarios, so yay. Enjoyed the one I played, even if it seemed very easy. Random objective is a step in the right direction, even if it's currently very limited. If you loved 3rd edition, or liked it but thought playing the same 4 scenarios got stale, you'll like this. If you started off not liking 3rd edition, this won't change your mind.
Last night we tried the Launch Base map, we had to defend a rocket from the demons who were gonna swipe it to blow up the moon!
Spoiler: they did
We had Hannah and Moose again and I'm committed to making Penrod work because he starts out hella strong; you can't argue with a chainsaw taped to a rake now can you.
This map works weird as the Lord never moves, he just sits in the middle trying to jimmy the rocket door open and poops out demons like a hen on crack. We were up against Lord Cthon who is a beast; he starts with a 6d12 attack and every time yu kick in Hell Time or hurt him he adds 1d4 or upgrades one of his dice to the next highest die value. And he has 24 health so yeah do the horrible satanic math there. Also, when the Lord phase kicks in when Despair gets high enough, you score Doom Points off whatever is the highest area with demons in it surrounding the Launch Pad, 1-6. So Doom comes really really fast.
We only managed one Hell Time and only did 3 damage to the jerk; the main problem was I was rolling WAY too well for Satan whenever we popped an invasion token and there were a lot of Fiends and Cacodemons all over the place. That's good for Penrod, who gets Courage based on the Circle of the demon and not just killing, but not for anyone else. Very few Grylusses at all.
Anyway, we got swamped and now Hell is on the moon.
Horizon is pretty good so far. We haven't completed a hunt yet to the boss (it's 5 encounters ending in sawtooth battles) it plays out super smoothly in the encounter part of the game. It's both mechanically solid and flavorful. I like the flavor and mechanical differences between the classes though my partner has been a little scared to play the class that scraps cards for effects at the expense of health. But at least early on, things would have to go catastrophically wrong to get knocked out in the first 1-2 encounters. But like, this definitely feels like a horizon thing. Which is a big win for this i assume. I asked a friend if they'd paint my minis for it too so I'm all about it.
There's a little more upkeep than I'd like in between encounters. Like you have to convert the glory you gained during an encounter to your endgame scoring system (suns that mirror the hunters lodge in the game). I get it though. i've had some very lopsided glory scores at the end of an encounter so normalizing it makes sense and I like how that translates into leader picks the next encounter, person in last picks an "event" that provides them a bonus in the next hunt.
the merchant deck is odd though. It's nominally one deck, but you have to deal out merchant cards till you have essentially one of each type then you shop deckbuilder style where you replace what was just purchased. If it was going to be so type rigid on what was available i don't know why it's a shared deck as opposed to like "here's the weapon pile, armor pile upgrade pile, etc." my best guess is as a space consideration. the game sprawls out a bit between the player areas and the board and you shop at a merchant based on the level of your encounter so i guess it's easier to grab the merchant lvl1 pile then deal out the shop?
Anyone have an opinion on Space Alert? I adore anything by Vlaada Chvátil but missing this and Through the Ages. My group really likes coops, but was curious anyone's thoughts on the game.
Posts
I think the goal was to make something in a novel theme for entry into the hobby. It seems a stretch to expect the expansions to move it away from that mission statement
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
But you would think they would do precisely that, right?
You have people entered into it, now try to take them one more step forward and give them something to freshen up and challenge existing fans of the game.
New players can continue to flow into the base game, and a true expansion acts as an enhancement. To me, that seems like the bigger win here.
This 100%. I already have a bunch of great games on my shelf that even without the pandemic never get enough table time. My friends group and I would all have to retire to make a dent in our games collections.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
You're seeing the games you want to play as a goal that everybody should progress towards . Complexity and weight levels are fine as preferences. Your argument would have things tend towards chit and counter wargames (or 18xx or whatever is right at the top end). They have hit a really healthy market which is growing rapidly, it makes sense to stay in the same area.
this is so not true it gave me a rash
Don't ruin it for the rest of us!
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
"We have to remove all the cubes... holy shit we ran out of cards."
Everyone's second game of Pandemic:
"Ok leave most of the cubes, but we cannot allow anything to outbreak... holy shit we ran out of cards."
Everyone's third game of Pandemic:
"That dispatcher lady is amazing, why didn't we play with her before?" "Lady? That looks like Daryl from the Walking Dead to me."
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Hanah Hazard can be built into a legit mother fucking monster.
I felt oddly drained at the end, but it was still good, and I’m looking forward to getting started on Legacy before long.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2508223/article/35874227#35874227
It sucks that it's all self-reinforcing, too; struggling as a business makes it harder to ship internationally and to provide great customer service, and those things in turn discourage people from dealing with your business.
Reading reviews...oh wow. Sounds like they really went with a boneheaded decision for multiplayer.
There is no per turn timer option. People instead get a "chess clock" total time of an hour or more for the game.
Sounds like every game in multiplayer has losing player rage "quit" by going AFK just to get back at everyone else by forcing everyone to sit there waiting for an hour until the rager drops if they want to finish the game.
edit: oops, looks like it is 1 hour per turn. But that still hobbles anyone looking for a single sitting online multiplayer game. People just join games to troll by exiting right away and everyone has to sit for an hour before they're dropped and replaced by a bot. No option to kick people.
I couldn't do board games with complete randos. No thank you. Half the fun for me is hanging out with my friends.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
My kids love Evolution, and it's one of the few games they'll pull off the shelf a "play" by themselves. More for fun than by the exact rules, but I love it.
I went ahead an ordered Oceans.
It's a bummer to hear about their problems, but the transparency is amazing. It's hard to forget how incredibly challenging running a small business can be.
By the end we had about 15 Doom Points because of the Ritual dance and a real bad stroke of luck pulling the legion that made demons move 2 spaces instead of one. We only had to fight Scylla twice tho and it's a good thing we beat her in the second Hell Time because the board was FULL of demons. Lost two heroes overall which seems to be our average so far.
I don't know what any of this means but it sounds fucking awesome.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
Sandy Petersen overproduced kickstarter mini-fest.
EDIT - Also, Root came out on Android.
-4 new scenarios
-8 new investigators
-4 new map tiles, two each of Kingsport & Innsmouth
-Little mini-attachments to plug into the edges of map tiles
-A new anomaly mechanic: Terror
-Cards to add to existing decks
-Mini campaign mode
New scenarios:
We only tried 1. It seems like they're trying to push it into the direction of replayability through random branching paths. This is one of the things I said the game needed most. They...sort of succeeded. It's a very small baby step. Example being that the 2nd stage of one scenario opens up by randomly drawing 2 out of 3 cards and having those 2 objectives being in play. So every time, 1 of the 3 objectives will be left out. Not the biggest shakeup. Baby step.
It's also continuing the trend of needing to physically draw out a flowchart to keep track of the increasing complexity of objectives. You spend a clue here to randomly place a marker on a space then visit the marker for encounters, or you can defeat a certain monster to spend a clue and place a different marker. Reach 3 of one type of marker, and you move on to the next stage depending on which marker type reached 3, with other markers being converted in various ways to the different new objectives and OH MY GOD my head hurts. No joke, I actually had to take out a marker and draw out a little flowchart on paper because people were just scratching their heads trying to parse the cards.
New map tiles:
So Kingsport and Innsmouth are new map tiles that exist separate from the main Arkham board as a little side board. How do you avoid the side board mobility problem that AH2 had? There are about nine "travel route" attachments that you stick to the edges of map tiles. Each one is a method of travel: ferry, country road, or train. You move on to one, pay $1, and can teleport to any matching travel route space of the same type. They're spread around so no real instances of getting stuck too much. Not bad.
You also get attachments for 2 special spaces: Devil's Reef and House on the High Hill. They are high risk, high reward encounter spaces. Much like the 2 part encounters of expeditions in Eldritch Horror.
No sure I'm sold yet on the tile system. I get that they were going for a module add-on approach, but it just looks rickety compared to a solid board. Still not a fan of the nigh time art where everything is too dark to make out detail. AH2 gave the feeling of taking place at dusk/night, and that still had better detail.
New Terror anomaly:
Place doom tokens as normal. When there are 6 doom tokens in a neighborhood, you remove all doom from one space, put one doom on the scenario sheet, then "spread terror". Place a terror marker (goat skull) on the neighborhood, then place a terror encounter card on top of that neighborhood encounter deck, where it always remains on top. If there are any terror cards in that deck, you must encounter one of them, after which you may do one normal encounter there. The terror encounter gets more difficult the more terror markers are on that neighborhood (much like other anomalies with doom total). You can spend an action to test influence and for each success, remove one terror marker or encounter card.
So it's another feature of making things a little too complicated to comfortably keep track of. Once you do have the rule down though, Terror seemed way easier than the other anomalies. It's very easy to game doom placement where you concentrate it all in one space, so that even if terror gets triggered, you get to remove up to 6 doom right away to slow any future spread. It also doesn't lock the neighborhood down to anywhere near the degree that the old anomalies did. You had to remove every single doom token on the old anomalies before you could do a regular encounter. Here, you just soldier through one terror encounter than can do an encounter as normal in the same round. We ended up breezing through the scenario without even triggering the first doom event.
It also seems like continuing their band-aid solution to trying to make Will & Influence more useful. Throwing in little tests for them on a couple isolated scenario parts, rather than making them central to any kind of common action like all the other stats.
Mini-campaign:
Play through the 8 scenarios, without repeating any. Losing one loses the whole campaign.
Defeated investigators cannot be reused.
Penalties of increasing difficulty apply as the scenarios go on.
That's it. Not much. Still a little more thought than the campaign mode they put into Eldritch Horror's campaign mode in Masks of Nyarlathotep.
Summary:
New scenarios, so yay. Enjoyed the one I played, even if it seemed very easy. Random objective is a step in the right direction, even if it's currently very limited. If you loved 3rd edition, or liked it but thought playing the same 4 scenarios got stale, you'll like this. If you started off not liking 3rd edition, this won't change your mind.
Last night we tried the Launch Base map, we had to defend a rocket from the demons who were gonna swipe it to blow up the moon!
Spoiler: they did
We had Hannah and Moose again and I'm committed to making Penrod work because he starts out hella strong; you can't argue with a chainsaw taped to a rake now can you.
This map works weird as the Lord never moves, he just sits in the middle trying to jimmy the rocket door open and poops out demons like a hen on crack. We were up against Lord Cthon who is a beast; he starts with a 6d12 attack and every time yu kick in Hell Time or hurt him he adds 1d4 or upgrades one of his dice to the next highest die value. And he has 24 health so yeah do the horrible satanic math there. Also, when the Lord phase kicks in when Despair gets high enough, you score Doom Points off whatever is the highest area with demons in it surrounding the Launch Pad, 1-6. So Doom comes really really fast.
We only managed one Hell Time and only did 3 damage to the jerk; the main problem was I was rolling WAY too well for Satan whenever we popped an invasion token and there were a lot of Fiends and Cacodemons all over the place. That's good for Penrod, who gets Courage based on the Circle of the demon and not just killing, but not for anyone else. Very few Grylusses at all.
Anyway, we got swamped and now Hell is on the moon.
There's a little more upkeep than I'd like in between encounters. Like you have to convert the glory you gained during an encounter to your endgame scoring system (suns that mirror the hunters lodge in the game). I get it though. i've had some very lopsided glory scores at the end of an encounter so normalizing it makes sense and I like how that translates into leader picks the next encounter, person in last picks an "event" that provides them a bonus in the next hunt.
the merchant deck is odd though. It's nominally one deck, but you have to deal out merchant cards till you have essentially one of each type then you shop deckbuilder style where you replace what was just purchased. If it was going to be so type rigid on what was available i don't know why it's a shared deck as opposed to like "here's the weapon pile, armor pile upgrade pile, etc." my best guess is as a space consideration. the game sprawls out a bit between the player areas and the board and you shop at a merchant based on the level of your encounter so i guess it's easier to grab the merchant lvl1 pile then deal out the shop?
Selling Board Games for Medical Bills