Board games!

[Fiddler]

5 hours ago, RedEyedGhost said:

It looks like gamestop is liquidating they supply of board games, because their prices are insanely low right now. For instance Fallout which a lot of people were complaining about the price of up thread is now $29.99.

https://m.gamestop.com/product/toys/fallout-the-board-game/152157

I ended up picking up a few things, but none of them board games, lol.

[Werthead]

Some musings on the Axis & Allies franchise.

[HokieStone]

19 hours ago, Werthead said:

Some musings on the Axis & Allies franchise.

Good timing - on Board Game Geek just yesterday I saw "Axis & Allies & Zombies" and was a bit taken aback.  I'll be curious how that one plays out - I still need to play the WWI version.

 

Great overview of the series - I was unaware of the original "Nova Games" version.  I still have my classic 1984 Milton Bradley version, and I have the current editions of Europe and Pacific - only played the combined "global" monster once.  I didn't know that the Anniversary edition had been reprinted.  That's tempting to get...but not sure I can justify it since the versions I have don't make it to the table often.

[Werthead]

Early thoughts on the Fallout board game.

[Werthead]

My town has a new board game cafe, so that's allowed me to check out a lot of board games in a short space of time. Some of the ones I've played recently:

Barbarians: The Invasion

A Kickstarter game which looks jaw-droppingly beautiful with artwork, miniatures and multiple board games to die for. The game is fiddly as hell, never stooping to use one straightforward token when five will do, and over-engineered past the point of insanity. The game looks way more imposing than it actually is, however. One of the most interesting moments is when you realise the game is basically Settlers of Catan: Black Metal Edition, with your barbarian tribes engaging in friendly competition with one another for resources (including the very cool "sacrifice your leaders to a volcano" mechanic, with an actual 3D volcano in the game box) before going off and sacking civilised cities and kingdoms. Between turns you have to 1) appease a demon who will otherwise rain hellfire down on your tribe and 2) go to the pub. A very odd game and not one I'd buy (certainly not at the prices it's going for), but certainly worth checking out for the experience of it. It's bananas.

 

Survive! Escape from Atlantis

Escape from Atlantis is a board game I got as a kid about thirty years ago and has been in regular rotation ever since. It's a very simple game where an island is sinking into the sea and the players have to get their tribes to safety by boat whilst dodging sea monsters. It's a fun game that's been reissued under the title Survive! Escape from Atlantis. The core gameplay is intact and it's still a lot of fun, but production value wise the game has undergone a massive downgrade. The lovely 3D island pieces are now flat card hexagons, there's far fewer sea monsters and types of them (the removal of the giant octopus and the helper dolphins makes me sad) and the game just looks a lot cheaper in comparison to the original version of the game. On the plus side, it's now made out of sustainable materials and not the metric ton of plastic the original used, so it's certainly much kinder to the environment. There's also a cool point-scoring mechanic where each survivor is worth different amounts of points (to show how mayn riches or treasures they evacuated from the island) and a "sudden death" mechanic, where the last parts of the island to sink (the mountains) may result in a cataclysmic volcanic explosion. A fun, fast game.

 

The War of the Ring

A huge board game which replicates the War of the Ring from Tolkien's books (complete with some magnificent artwork) with a lot of very clever mechanics, rules and ideas. The evil player can amass vast armies and attack the good guys, whilst the good guys have to overcome their reluctance to fight in order to take the battle to Sauron. The wild card is the Fellowship of the Ring: if the good player can get Frodo and the Ring to Mordor (via a hidden movement mechanic), then the evil player will be defeated no matter how many good nations and cities lie in ruins. This creates an interesting situation where the evil player has to make decisions on whether to spend resources on hunting down the Ring-bearer or focus on taking enough territory and scoring enough victory points to win the game. Beautiful miniatures, one of the best boards I've ever seen and some very clever gameplay ideas (many of which Fantasy Flight stole wholesale for Star Wars: Rebellion, which is very similar to this game). It's big, quite long and mostly a two-player affair, however.

 

Memoir 44

This is one of the best board games I've ever played. Super fast to learn, incredibly fast to play (each battle or game usually lasts under half an hour) and a vast amount of customisation and expansions make this one of the finest board games of all time. It has a couple of flaws - most notably when you have a fantastic plan to launch an attack up the left flank only for five turns to go by without a single left flank order card coming up - but these are either minor or easily house-ruled away. There's even a ASoIaF variant (Battles of Westeros) which changes the mechanics in an intriguing manner, but it's reportedly a less elegant and much flabbier game. One drawback is that it seems to be low in stock in the UK at the moment and many of the expansions are out of print.

[HokieStone]

8 hours ago, Werthead said:

Survive! Escape from Atlantis

Escape from Atlantis is a board game I got as a kid about thirty years ago and has been in regular rotation ever since. It's a very simple game where an island is sinking into the sea and the players have to get their tribes to safety by boat whilst dodging sea monsters. It's a fun game that's been reissued under the title Survive! Escape from Atlantis. The core gameplay is intact and it's still a lot of fun, but production value wise the game has undergone a massive downgrade. The lovely 3D island pieces are now flat card hexagons, there's far fewer sea monsters and types of them (the removal of the giant octopus and the helper dolphins makes me sad) and the game just looks a lot cheaper in comparison to the original version of the game. On the plus side, it's now made out of sustainable materials and not the metric ton of plastic the original used, so it's certainly much kinder to the environment. There's also a cool point-scoring mechanic where each survivor is worth different amounts of points (to show how mayn riches or treasures they evacuated from the island) and a "sudden death" mechanic, where the last parts of the island to sink (the mountains) may result in a cataclysmic volcanic explosion. A fun, fast game.

 

 

Are you playing the Stronghold Games version of the game?  I think the production value is fantastic...and certainly much better than the 1980s Parker Brothers version.  There are dolphins in the game, so I'm a little confused.  No octopus in the base game, but they do sell a giant squid expansion.

I'm on my way back from Origins Game Fair...happy to give a summary once I'm not typing on my phone.

[Werthead]

21 hours ago, HokieStone said:

Are you playing the Stronghold Games version of the game?  I think the production value is fantastic...and certainly much better than the 1980s Parker Brothers version.  There are dolphins in the game, so I'm a little confused.  No octopus in the base game, but they do sell a giant squid expansion.

I'm on my way back from Origins Game Fair...happy to give a summary once I'm not typing on my phone.

You might be thinking of the American 1980s version, which was also called Survive. I'm referring to the 1988 UK version from Waddingtons called Escape from Atlantis, which had high-quality 3D plastic models (I still own it, although some pieces are missing).

The new edition has dolphins as a special power that's triggered by a card. The 1988 UK edition had dolphins as discrete creatures on the map that you moved around like other creatures (although you used a swirling selector thing which randomly picked which creatures to move on the next go). It also had octopuses included. The new edition has two expansions, one to extend the game to 6 players and also brings in (horrible-looking) octopuses and dolphins, and another one with a giant squid.

[RedEyedGhost]

On 6/17/2018 at 8:09 AM, Werthead said:

Barbarians: The Invasion

A Kickstarter game which looks jaw-droppingly beautiful with artwork, miniatures and multiple board games to die for. The game is fiddly as hell, never stooping to use one straightforward token when five will do, and over-engineered past the point of insanity. The game looks way more imposing than it actually is, however. One of the most interesting moments is when you realise the game is basically Settlers of Catan: Black Metal Edition, with your barbarian tribes engaging in friendly competition with one another for resources (including the very cool "sacrifice your leaders to a volcano" mechanic, with an actual 3D volcano in the game box) before going off and sacking civilised cities and kingdoms. Between turns you have to 1) appease a demon who will otherwise rain hellfire down on your tribe and 2) go to the pub. A very odd game and not one I'd buy (certainly not at the prices it's going for), but certainly worth checking out for the experience of it. It's bananas.

I've had that sitting unplayed on my shelf for I think about 6 months now...

 

On 6/17/2018 at 8:09 AM, Werthead said:

Memoir 44

This is one of the best board games I've ever played. Super fast to learn, incredibly fast to play (each battle or game usually lasts under half an hour) and a vast amount of customisation and expansions make this one of the finest board games of all time. It has a couple of flaws - most notably when you have a fantastic plan to launch an attack up the left flank only for five turns to go by without a single left flank order card coming up - but these are either minor or easily house-ruled away. There's even a ASoIaF variant (Battles of Westeros) which changes the mechanics in an intriguing manner, but it's reportedly a less elegant and much flabbier game. One drawback is that it seems to be low in stock in the UK at the moment and many of the expansions are out of print.

The designer, Richard Borg, has designed a sci-fi themed version of the system that's on kickstarter right now.

 

Anybody else played Rising Sun?  That's been my most disappointing game of the year probably.  I backed the kickstarter and the production is absolutely amazing, but the game play just didn't do it for me.  I love games that have that Puerto Rico like action selection mechanism, where one player selects an action, and then everybody has the opportunity to follow that action.  It has that same mechanism here, and you and your ally get a stronger version of the action while everybody else gets a watered down version.  My biggest problem with the game is that I never felt like I was doing enough over the course of the game - it's played over three rounds with 7 actions being selected in each round.  I played it at both 5 and 6, so in the 6 player game I only chose the action three times for the entire game, and four times in the 5 player game.  The battles also didn't wow me, as in both games I played the winner was the player whose troops committed sepuku the most often.  You get points for killing your troops before the battle begins if you know you won't be able to win, and it also increases your honor - honor is also used as the tie breaker, and there are a lot of ties throughout the game.  It's definitely very Euro-y in that you can't come close to doing everything (and tight Euros are my favorite types of games), but in this one it feels like you're doing way too little.  Money is extremely important for the battles, and it is so, so tight in this game unless you specifically target money generating abilities.  However, if you're doing that you're really missing out on other things.  I do think there is a lot of depth and possibilities in the game; I just don't think it's for me.  It's been a few months and I do intend to play it again before I decide whether I'll keep it or sell it, but I'm certainly leaning toward the latter.

I played Heroes of Land, Air, and Sea a week and a half ago and this was what I was wanting Rising Sun to be.  The action following mechanism is fantastic in this.  I also preferred the battle system, although you still did mostly know who would be winning as you went into the battle (at least how we played it).  It has a really nice resource management system as well, and extremely diversified special player powers (this is a very positive point for Rising Sun also).  But this is a full 4X game, so I don't feel that it is fair to compare it to Rising Sun one-to-one, but I preferred most every specific thing more in HoLAaS to Rising Sun.  The components are also very good, but Rising Sun's are definitely better.  

Keeping with miniatures heavy games, Sunday I played Mythic Battles Pantheon.  Wow, that was a fun dice chucking skirmish game.  Teaching it wasn't the most fun, but once we got playing everybody picked it up pretty fast.  Played it at four, and I think everybody would have been happy to play it again right away if we'd all had time.  

I also played Orleans (Sunday) and Altiplano (four Sundays ago), and I really preferred Orleans.  Same designer and similar mechanism on the bag building, but Orleans seemed to have a much better flow to it.  I played The Voyages of Marco Polo awhile back as well, that game is fantastic and everything else good you've heard about it is true.  Played two games of Hansa Teutonica a couple of weeks ago with different group (at 5 and then 3 players), this and Concordia have probably a very similar ratio between how fantastic the game is to how terrible the cover art is ratio.  Wonderful game.  Played Transatlantic two Sundays ago, it has a similar card play mechanism as Concordia, but it really does feel quite different overall and the artwork is lovely.  I felt bad at how much I destroyed my competition by, because they undervalued the Trade Houses and then let me pick up a card that was giving me way too much money.  Played Anachrony the same day as Altiplano, and I loved that one.  I was a much better teacher for that (the three other players destroyed me), and I didn't plan well enough to evacuate survivors and left a lot of points on the table.  Will happily play all of these again.

 

For non new to me games I've still been playing Gaia Project and Concordia as often as I'm able.  Halfway through a Charterstone campaign, we've kind of stalled out lately as life keeps getting in the way of everybody getting together for it.

 

I still need to get Scythe played with the Wind Gambit expansion.  Really looking forward to how it can modifies the game.  Also still need to get to Gloomhaven, City of Kings, and 7th Continent.  I just don't think I have the time for those epic fantasy games.  Thunderstone Quest is on that list too, but that mostly because I haven't had time to sleeve the cards yet... That's go to take an entire evening.  

[HokieStone]

On 6/18/2018 at 4:17 PM, Werthead said:

You might be thinking of the American 1980s version, which was also called Survive. I'm referring to the 1988 UK version from Waddingtons called Escape from Atlantis, which had high-quality 3D plastic models (I still own it, although some pieces are missing).

The new edition has dolphins as a special power that's triggered by a card. The 1988 UK edition had dolphins as discrete creatures on the map that you moved around like other creatures (although you used a swirling selector thing which randomly picked which creatures to move on the next go). It also had octopuses included. The new edition has two expansions, one to extend the game to 6 players and also brings in (horrible-looking) octopuses and dolphins, and another one with a giant squid.

Yep - I didn't realize there was a UK edition.  I've since seen the pictures.  To be honest, I prefer the the multi-level hexes in the Stronghold edition, and the meeples are an upgrade as well over the generic pawns.  But the sea creatures - and the boats - in the Waddingtons version are definitely top notch!

I'd forgotten the dolphins in the Stronghold version were an add on.  It made me look in my box...and I discovered I didn't have the rules for them...so I printed some off.  At least next time I play, I won't be surprised by missing rules...

 

6 hours ago, RedEyedGhost said:

I still need to get Scythe played with the Wind Gambit expansion.  Really looking forward to how it can modifies the game.  Also still need to get to Gloomhaven, City of Kings, and 7th Continent.  I just don't think I have the time for those epic fantasy games.  Thunderstone Quest is on that list too, but that mostly because I haven't had time to sleeve the cards yet... That's go to take an entire evening.  

Gloomhaven has been a disappointment for me.  It's a combat-fest, with the "story" just being some cards you read now and again.  Now...we are only 3 sessions in, so maybe more will come.  To be honest, I would probably be selling it....but my 13 year old son seems to love it, so we'll keep slogging through it.

Got to play a few games the last two days that I brought home from the Origins Game Fair that just happened in Columbus, Ohio.  "Roll Player" is a game, where the entire game is to build a D&D character.  It's from Thunderworks Games, and designer Keith Matejka.  It's heavier and more thinky than you might imagine.  It's a dice selection mechanism, where you are trying to get the best possible ability scores - higher scores are required for certain abilities based on your class.  As you place the dice, where you place them allows you to do certain things.  For example, placing a die in "Strength" allows you to flip any die you already have on your board.

"Junk Orbit" from Renegade Games and designer Daniel Solis is a quirky and fun game about sending your spaceship in orbit around Earth, the Moon and Mars to collect "junk" and deliver it to it's named destination (cities on the 3 worlds).  You move by ejecting junk a certain distance from your spaceship, and your ship moves that many spaces in the opposite direction.  The whole action/reaction thing.  The "box" is a big fat cylinder - which is neat...but I know will cause some people nightmares as they try to store it on a shelf.

"Ancestree" is a quick "7 Wonders lite" from Calliope Games and designer Eric Lang.  Over three rounds, you draft family members for your family tree.  They come in 5 different color tiles (representing the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.  At the end of three rounds, you score based on how many generations (not necessarily number of tiles) you have of each color - simply comparing to your neighbors like resolving conflict in 7 Wonders.  You also get points for having rich people in your family tree (but they are generally harder to connect) - and at the end of the game, there is a scoring scale for the number of marriages you have.

Lastly, I picked up "Century: Eastern Wonders", by Plan B Games and designer Emerson Matsuuchi.  This is a follow-up to last year's "Century: Spice Road".  It involves a similar theme of upgrading cubes to buy victory points (in this case tiles instead of cards).  In fact, instead of any cards, you sail your ship around the "ocean", establishing trading posts, where you can do the cube...er...spice conversion.  Played the game standalone tonight - I am looking forward to combining it with Spice Road and see what that game is like.

Had a fun time overall at Origins this year, but it definitely felt like a "working" convention for me.  As some of you may recall, I had my first game - "Santa's Workshop" - published by Rio Grande late last year.  This is the first major convention since then (at least here in the U.S.).  So, I spent some time at the Rio Grande room - they had a horde of volunteers teaching games, but I did a little teaching of SW, and answered questions.  People seemed to like the game, and several asked me to sign copies, which of course is both flattering and slightly odd.  I also spent a lot of time meeting with other publishers about having another game published.  Nothing was signed but a few them were very interested and took copies with them, so I'm hopeful something will come of that later this summer.  Also spend a lot of time in the "Unpub Room", playtesting other people's prototypes, and managed to get in one play of yet another game I'm working on, that's still very early in the process.  I did miss out on a few things...didn't get to demo as many games as I would have liked...saw "Reef" from Plan B Games, which got a lot of buzz...but it didn't really draw me in.  And missed seeing the new Fireball Island prototype in action.  But, still it was a great con.  Gen Con is not in the works for me, but I'm hoping to make it to Pax Unplugged late in the year.

[Werthead]

Gloomhaven and Descent both have that thing to me of being over-designed so as to ape RPGs...so why not just play an RPG? They're generally less complicated and fiddly than a board game pretending to be an RPG.

For me that kind of paradigm topped out with Hero Quest and Warhammer Quest. Anything more than that and you should just pick up D&D or something.

[SerHaHa]

Anyone into Europa?  I'd played the Western Europe campaign with a group in Calgary back in the 90s, the owner of The Sentry Box, probably the largest board/gaming store in Western Canada used to host it at his home.  Good times.  My interest in Axis and Allies as a youngster introduced me to that group and scene, I don't remember much about it now, other than it was a pretty great war game series.

The only other war board game we played was "A line in the sand", which was a Desert Storm 1 board game, fairly simple but highly entertaining from what I recall.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Is Settlers of Catan as good as it's hype or overrated? 

[HokieStone]

1 hour ago, chiKanery et al. said:

Is Settlers of Catan as good as it's hype or overrated? 

Well, if you're new to hobby board games (i.e. looking to step up from Monopoly, etc.) - then it's definitely a good start.  It's over 20 years old now, and I think a lot of "hard core" gamers have sort of left it behind.  But it still sells very well, and has a big presence at conventions.  I don't seek it out, but I would definitely still play.  In fact, now that I think about it...I'm not sure the last time I actually played.  Kind of makes me itch to play it again. 

So, I don't think it's overrated, per se - but I do think 20 years of more designs have left it feeling a little bit dated.

[Werthead]

52 minutes ago, chiKanery et al. said:

Is Settlers of Catan as good as it's hype or overrated? 

As Hokie says above. I'd actually rather recommend Pandemic, Ticket to Ride or Flashpoint as an intro to modern board games. Catan is still very solid, but it has been surpassed.

[DaveSumm]

I paid quite a bit to get hold of Food Chain Magnate but I’m really glad I did, it’s a great game. Each turn you choose a company structure out of your hand of staff to send to work that day, the goal being to market and sell food and drink and earn the most. It’s certainly cut throat, the designers philosophy is ‘if you can’t lose on the first turn, you shouldn’t play the first turn’ so it’s unforgiving for beginners. Hopefully my girlfriend and I get good together.

I got Fog of Love a while back and it was huge flop for us. I’m much more wary of glowing SUSD recommendations these days. We really tried hard to get into the spirit of it and role play a little, but I couldn’t see the game there. Your ‘opponent’ plays a card, and you choose from a bunch of options what your reaction is. ‘What would my character do?’ I guess is how you’re supposed to think of it. Except you’ve got your goals right in front of you, saying ‘to win, do the thing that gets more x points’. So I just fell into a rhythm of look at card, check goals, do the thing. And half the time the options do nothing to benefit anything so you just randomly choose, and I couldn’t find the fun in wondering what my invented person might do. It does have the best tutorial and the best box insert I’ve ever seen, it’s really beautiful. I ended up trading it for...

The Fox in the Forest which we’ve played once and had a great game. It’s really rare for a game to click on the first game so I’m confident this will be a winner. Pretty basic trick taking card game, except the fun part is that you can win by losing. If you lose by enough. So there’s a weird push and pull of needing you opponent not to get less than 4, but not to get too much, and pretending you’re trying to win/lose when you’re actually trying to do the opposite.

[Slurktan]

On 6/23/2018 at 3:45 AM, DaveSumm said:

I paid quite a bit to get hold of Food Chain Magnate but I’m really glad I did, it’s a great game. Each turn you choose a company structure out of your hand of staff to send to work that day, the goal being to market and sell food and drink and earn the most. It’s certainly cut throat, the designers philosophy is ‘if you can’t lose on the first turn, you shouldn’t play the first turn’ so it’s unforgiving for beginners. Hopefully my girlfriend and I get good together.

I love Food Chain Magnate.  The only problem I have with it is basically if you don't take the recruiter person first turn, you are way behind already.

[RedEyedGhost]

On 6/22/2018 at 5:29 PM, HokieStone said:

Well, if you're new to hobby board games (i.e. looking to step up from Monopoly, etc.) - then it's definitely a good start.  It's over 20 years old now, and I think a lot of "hard core" gamers have sort of left it behind.  But it still sells very well, and has a big presence at conventions.  I don't seek it out, but I would definitely still play.  In fact, now that I think about it...I'm not sure the last time I actually played.  Kind of makes me itch to play it again. 

So, I don't think it's overrated, per se - but I do think 20 years of more designs have left it feeling a little bit dated.

 

On 6/22/2018 at 5:40 PM, Werthead said:

As Hokie says above. I'd actually rather recommend Pandemic, Ticket to Ride or Flashpoint as an intro to modern board games. Catan is still very solid, but it has been surpassed.

I agree with HokieStone, and I would rather play Catan than any of the games Werthead listed.  For gateway games I would much rather play Barenpark, Majesty for the Realm, Century, Splendor, Carcassonne, Dominion, Clank!, Downforce, or especially Stone Age.

 

On 6/23/2018 at 1:45 AM, DaveSumm said:

I paid quite a bit to get hold of Food Chain Magnate but I’m really glad I did, it’s a great game. Each turn you choose a company structure out of your hand of staff to send to work that day, the goal being to market and sell food and drink and earn the most. It’s certainly cut throat, the designers philosophy is ‘if you can’t lose on the first turn, you shouldn’t play the first turn’ so it’s unforgiving for beginners. Hopefully my girlfriend and I get good together.

I would like to give that one a try.  The prototype like aesthetics are a big turn off though.  I don't understand how a 2015 game can have a 1985 graphic design, not that that seems to hurt any of the Splotter games as they always sell out quite quickly after their reprints.  Gameplay definitely trumps poor graphic design, but it doesn't excuse it.

[HokieStone]

Had a buddy in town this weekend.  Played "Roll Player" 3 times over the weekend.  It's really a fun game.  I'm gonna have to look into the expansion.  Got in a bunch of others as well, including blowing the dust off of "Eclipse" and "Panamax".  I like Eclipse a lot...but it gets to the table to little, we have to relearn the rules every time.  Our 5 player game took something like 4 hours.  My one complaint is that in the last few rounds, it turned into a slug fest.  I don't know if you can get away with no combat at all.  I walled myself off, and built my empire for 6 rounds, but that go everyone's attention, and they turned on me.

Panamax is another one where we have to relearn the rules each time.  But man...such a good game.  My issue with this one, though...I think some of the game end scoring bonuses are out of whack.  There are two bonuses for cruise ship passengers.  One gives you 5 points for every passenger you have, the other just lets you score the passengers again (the highest one is worth 5, the rest go down from there).  So, the first card is objectively better than the 2nd.  Still...love the mechanics of the game.

[DaveSumm]

13 hours ago, Slurktan said:

I love Food Chain Magnate.  The only problem I have with it is basically if you don't take the recruiter person first turn, you are way behind already.

Well I’ve only played three times, but we’ve fallen into a rhythm of hiring a trainer first. The ‘first to train’ ($15 off salaries) milestone has been so handy, without it you’re stuck on the bottom rung of employees until you actually sell something (surprisingly difficult). Only thing is, your next hire has to be a kitchen trainee or errand boy as they’re the only useful, trainable staff to actually get the milestone with. So we’ve been playing Trainer turn 1, hire Kitchen Trainee and train to Cook turn 2. From what I read, Trainer or Recruiting Girl are the two big opening moves.

10 hours ago, RedEyedGhost said:

I would like to give that one a try.  The prototype like aesthetics are a big turn off though.  I don't understand how a 2015 game can have a 1985 graphic design, not that that seems to hurt any of the Splotter games as they always sell out quite quickly after their reprints.  Gameplay definitely trumps poor graphic design, but it doesn't excuse it.

I really like it, though I know there’s plenty that don’t. I assumed they were shooting for a 50’s vibe and it works for me. There’s  a lot of fan-made tile replacements out there.

I will say that you pretty much have to have a card accordion though for this, you’d need a whole separate table for the cards otherwise. I just folded some card and it works great.

I picked up this game second hand, I’m actually gonna consider this a lot more I think. Gamers tend to care for their games, and if they’re selling they probably only played once or twice. I’ve had two good buys from the ‘like new’ sales on BGG.

[Werthead]

Tried out Zombiecide: Black Plague, which started out fun and rapidly got tedious as the game massively weights things in favour of the players so winning is a formality (the Inferno spell is so OP I assumed we were doing it wrong, but nope). Annoying, as the levelling-up mechanic is excellent (far better than Fallout's) and there was a huge amount of potential here. The noise mechanic is also great, but they really don't do enough with it. Fun for a little while but lacks depth and massively overpriced.

Then played X-Wing Miniatures for the first time and yikes. I see what people say when they say this is "spectacle gaming", gaming that looks awesome - the miniatures are to die for - but the actual game is really not much fun at all. A worthwhile method of getting some great miniatures for display or fleshing out your Star Wars Roleplaying Game needs though.