Board games!

[baxus]

I looked into Dark Dungeon some 10 years ago. It has very light rules (20 pages or something like that), and it's slogan was Roleplaying not ruleplaying. It was not level-based but XP-based and relied on action descriptions rather than learning all the feats, spells in the rulebook etc.

Couldn't find a group to play it with on a regular basis, though, so I only tried it once. It seemed quite fun.

I can't remember who the publisher/creator was but I'm sure you could find rulebook online.

[Lightning Lord]

Has anyone got any experience with Res Arcana and/or its expansion? I picked it up but haven't had a chance to play it yet but I am now eyeing the expansion.

[theMountainGoat]

Are there any UK based gamers here who are backers of Nemesis Lockdown on Kickstarter / Gamefound by any chance?

https://gamefound.com/projects/awaken-realms/nemesis-lockdown

I recently bought the base game at retail and wanted to get the expansions but late pledges are now closed so the only way to get all the new content with stretch goals included is to find someone willing to let me piggyback on their order. There was someone on BoardGameGeek offering to piggyback but it turns out he wants £60 commission for placing the order which is a bit more than I am willing to pay for the privilege. There would have also been high postage charges to pay on top of that.

For those interested, Nemesis is basically an Alien/Aliens board game except without the licence for the franchise, but the appearance and nature of the Intruders is so similar I'm surprised they have not been sued to be honest. It's a very good semi-cooperative with a dash of secret personal agendas to set up twists and betrayals type of game, bit on the pricey side but the components are very high quality. Punishing difficulty that makes getting a victory a rare and splendid thing to achieve but the challenge is fun even when everyone gets mauled to death by the aliens.

[HokieStone]

Just got the Terraforming Mars card game in the mail.  Looking to get it to the table while on vacation next week...

[HokieStone]

On 7/29/2021 at 8:28 PM, HokieStone said:

Just got the Terraforming Mars card game in the mail.  Looking to get it to the table while on vacation next week...

Been a while for this thread.  I have played the TM card game - "Ares Project" a few times now.  I'm undecided on it. It does have that TM feel, in a shorter timeframe, but I feel the end game is rushed.  It's a slow build...and then all of a sudden it ends.

Got "Canopy" in the mail on Saturday - Kickstarter from Weird City Games.  It's a card game, where you're sort of drafting differnet cards to go in your rain forest (your tableau of cards in front of you).  You can build trees, trying to get the highest tree bonus each round, and there's an end of game bonus for who has the most trees.  Other plants you collect, but they go away in between rounds - they tend to be various types of set collection...similar a bit to Sushi Go.  Animals you collect have special powers, and tend to be end of game scoring - you keep them between rounds.

I enjoyed it - the art is fantastic.  It's mainly a 2-player game, but you can play up to 4.  I said it was "sort of" drafting, because there are e piles of cards that you can look at in order, but each one you pass on, you add a card to.  In a 3 and 4 player game, they change it up so there is one communal pile, and then you share a pile with each of the players on either side of you.  I saw a few complaints about that, but I think it worked well.

Last Tuesday, I got my first try at 7 Wonders with the "Armada" expansion.  Basically, it gives you 4 tracks to send boats up, the tracks corresponding to different card colors (blue, green, yellow and red).  If you play a card of that color, you can pay extra resources to move that color boat up it's track, which gives you extra benefits.  There's a naval combat at the end of reach round which is resolved separately from regular combat (basically, you compare naval power to all other players).  I thought it was interesting...but perhaps a bit too much for 7 Wonders.

Also got to play "Quandry", which is an early 1990s game from Hasbro by Reiner Knizia.  Pretty straightforward tile drafting games, where you can collect tiles of differnt colors, while playing other tiles that change the value of the colors you are collecting.  Pretty fun.

[Werthead]

Hero Quest showed up and it's a very impressive, nice package. I compared it to my 1990 OG UK copy and it's impressive how faithful it is, down to the table and bookcase designs, the artwork and the cards, whilst also going in rather different directions: the miniatures are far superior (as you'd hope for 32 years of development down the line) and it's amusing finding all the Warhammer references - which to be fair were fairly minimal in the original - stripped out. The new classes (Bard and Druid) are very interesting and giving the evil sorcerer characters their own unique spell decks with some nasty stuff only they can do is quite cool.

The major drawback is that the OG game had fairly repetitive rules, which was fine for 7-year-olds wanting to get into it, but might be a bit lightweight for modern gamers, and they haven't changed the fundamentals, even with an optional rulebook (apparently a potential stretch goal they never got around to). There are plenty of fan house rules on line, of course (including immediately ditching the "roll to move" rule because yikes), but it does feel like a bit of a missed opportunity to enhance the rules at this stage. I saw someone complaining that they could have pulled in the more interesting rules from Advanced Hero Quest, but AHQ was a Games Workshop game alone with no input from MB (subsequently bought by Hasbro), they just licenced the name, so Hasbro don't have access to those rules.

On the opposite end of the cost/package spectrum, I also got War of Whispers and it's an outstanding game of bluff and double bluff. The designers claim they wanted to do the intrigue stuff from the original Game of Thrones boardgame without the risk in that game of players throttling one another for betraying them or ending marriages, and it does that very well.

Surprisingly, got a lot of mileage out of Fallout Shelter, a very tight, constrained four-player worker placement game that you can put a game away in under 90 minutes. I wasn't expecting much of it but it turned out to be a big hit at the table, even with people uninterested in the video game franchise. Superior, I feel, to the actual "proper" Fallout board game (which recently got a "patch" expansion to fix the problems in the OG release, which I should pick up but I was also underwhelmed enough by the original to be wary of it).

[broken one]

Driven by the movie hype I purchased Dune - the classical one, for max. 6 players. Each faction (House Atreides, House Harkonnen, Emperor, Fremen, Spacing Guild and Bene Gesserit) has different features and special skills and demands different strategy. When you get through rule book and gain some experience the game is really pleasant and satisfyng. Cons are obscure and complex rules (I had to search for clarification on forums several times) and the fact that for the game to be fully enjoyable you have to gather 6 players. 5 players game is OK, 4 will do, 3 and 2 does not make much sense as randomness (which determines order of making moves in each round) becomes important factor. 

As far as I know the game has just been rebranded (has new "skin" from the new movie) and a bit changed and soon will be (or already is) available, so maybe I should have waited a moment.

I've preordered reprint of "Hades" expansion for  Cyclades, looking forward to put my hands on it!

[.H.]

2 hours ago, broken one said:

Driven by the movie hype I purchased Dune - the classical one, for max. 6 players. Each faction (House Atreides, House Harkonnen, Emperor, Fremen, Spacing Guild and Bene Gesserit) has different features and special skills and demands different strategy. When you get through rule book and gain some experience the game is really pleasant and satisfyng. Cons are obscure and complex rules (I had to search for clarification on forums several times) and the fact that for the game to be fully enjoyable you have to gather 6 players. 5 players game is OK, 4 will do, 3 and 2 does not make much sense as randomness (which determines order of making moves in each round) becomes important factor. 

As far as I know the game has just been rebranded (has new "skin" from the new movie) and a bit changed and soon will be (or already is) available, so maybe I should have waited a moment.

From what I understand, the new "reskin" is also very much a reworking to make it play better at 3-4 players.

I got Dune Imperium though, myself, since we usually play at 2.  The Direwolf Digital App makes the "simulated" third player very easy to enact for the two player games.  I haven't gotten to play it at three actual humans though, yet.  Waiting on the Rise of Ix expansion now though, since I preordered it a while back for a sale price.

[broken one]

5 minutes ago, .H. said:

From what I understand, the new "reskin" is also very much a reworking to make it play better at 3-4 players.

So it seems I should have waited a moment, dammit :p

[.H.]

19 minutes ago, broken one said:

So it seems I should have waited a moment, dammit :p

Yeah, kind of does seem that way.  Perhaps you can find someone who wants locally who wants one over the other and trade?  Seems like a longshot though probably.

I haven't gotten too many new exciting games lately myself, but I did stumble upon a new in shrink copy of the well out of print El Grande Big Box at a LGS when we were on a trip to Houston a couple weeks ago.  It wasn't cheap, but below what it would cost online, so I picked it up.  It's a very neat, classic game although we have only gotten to play it at two so far, but I was glad to add it to my collection.

[HokieStone]

21 hours ago, Werthead said:

I saw someone complaining that they could have pulled in the more interesting rules from Advanced Hero Quest, but AHQ was a Games Workshop game alone with no input from MB (subsequently bought by Hasbro), they just licenced the name, so Hasbro don't have access to those rules.

That shouldn't be an issue - rules can't be copyrighted - https://strebecklaw.com/court-rules-favor-cloned-tabletop-game-no-protection-us-copyright-law/

[RedEyedGhost]

Speaking of Dune, Dune Imperium is hot garbage.  Just a bad, bad game.

[HokieStone]

Went to PAX Unplugged the last several days.  Smaller attendance than past years...but not by as much as I thought it would be.  Certainly felt more "normal" than Origins did just a few months ago. I did not search out the RPG stuff, or the big miniatures games (in the past, there were big X-Wing tournaments, for example) - so I can't speak to those. Vendor Hall still missing a few big names.  I split my time between the "Unpub" room, resting prototypes and the main gaming hall, wandering the vendors and playing games in open gaming.  Some highlights -

I like going through the "First Look" area, where have games that have just been released, and some that are not even in the U.S. yet.  This year, there was a "Second Look" area, for games that were released last year but didn't get much attention due to COVID shutting down conventions.  A few I played here:

- Apogee:  In my "real life", I'm in the satellite business, so I was very intrigued by this title, where you have to build your rocket (1st stage, 2nd stage, payload, and R&D efforts), and launch it to reach some goal.  In the "learning" game, you only have to reach Earth orbit, so it's fairly quick.  Longer games would have you going to the Moon, Mars, Venus...all the way out to Titan.  You hire engineers and set them to certain tasks - research, R&D, build, launch.  All well and fine...but overall, there was a little too much randomness here.  You hire engineers blindly (they have different abilities) - the are different types of cards for the different stages of the rocket - they come up randomly, yet there are goals to build certain types.  I wanted to try it a 2nd time, just to be sure we didn't misjudge it, but never got back to it.

- Furnace:  A clever auction/engine building game that takes place over 4 rounds.  Every player has 4 auction chips, valued from 1 - 4.  You can't put the same value chip where someone else already has that value, so put your "4" on the card you really  want.  The person who has the highest auction chip on a card wins the cards, but the players who didn't win it, get a consolation, usually a one-time lesser version of what's on the main card.  The cards you win, you but in your area, and they are the engine building aspect.  Generally, they produce coal, oil or metal, or convert between the three, or exchange them for money.  You can also upgrade your cards to do work more efficiently or do multiple actions.  Player with most money at the end wins.  This was a hit.

- Beyond the Sun:  Came out last year, and I'd played once on Boardgame Arena, but this was fun to play in person.  A space exploration game (sort of), where you can concentrate on map, and colonize other planets, or on the tech tree, in the race to develop new technology - or try to balance both aspects of the game.  Fun game, with an interesting resource management mechanism.

 

Some others we played:

- Cascadia - I bought this one based on reviews I'd seen, and it was worth it.  A tile drafter, where there is an array of terrain tiles, along with an animal randomly paired with each tile.  You draft both, and have to put your landscape down, and then the animal on a tile that can support it.  You don't have to match terrain types when putting down the tile, but terrain is scored based on largest contiguous areas of each terrain type.  Animals, on the other hand, score based on randomly drawn cards at the beginning of the game.  So, for example, in one game, bears may score based on being surrounded by animals other than bears.  In another game, they may score based on having mating pairs (two bears next to each other).  So, you are constantly balancing what the terrain tile gives you, vs the animal.

- Village - an old favorite, where you try to get the most out of your workers before they die...but you hope when they die, they get a place in the village record, and not an unmarked grave.

- Llama - A card game that uses an "Uno" mechanic.  I thought I would hate it, but it turned out to be a fun little card game (it really boils down to judge how long you should keep playing each round before passing).

- Cartographers - A "flip and write", where you're filling in terrain in a fantasy world, with the occasional monster attack to foil your plans.

- Metro X - Another "flip and write", where you are connecting subway stations.

A few others I'm forgetting at the moment...

[Werthead]

My Tales from the Loop Kickstarter showed up. I'm very intrigued by this, it seems to be the latest attempt to get a boardgame that moves into the RPG space without just turning into an RPG, and this one avoids the "choose your own adventure" massive card deck system that Fallout (badly) uses and the Skyrim board game uses (apparently better, but I decided not to back it). Interesting synergy between the board game and the RPG, even down to them sharing artwork and components (they're from the same company), though the miniature robots in the board game are very nice.

[Ran]

@Werthead

A little off topic -- by coincidence, I have pondered watching the Amazon series based on Tales from the Loop to make more use of Prime. Have you seen it? Recommend it?

[Werthead]

1 minute ago, Ran said:

@Werthead

A little off topic -- by coincidence, I have pondered watching the Amazon series based on Tales from the Loop to make more use of Prime. Have you seen it? Recommend it?

It's very good as its own thing, but it suffers from the Stranger Things effect. Both the art book and RPG have a very heavy Stranger Things vibe - and the OG material predates ST by a year - but because Amazon clearly didn't want to look like they were ripping off ST they went in a completely different direction, a bit more cold and austere as an SF anthology thing. The world is clearly not the same one described in the material and apart from the Loop itself (which is in a completely different location, not in Sweden any more or the prototype Loop location in Nevada from the books) and some of the robots, there's less of the OG artwork in the show than I was hoping, though there's still some bits and pieces.

I think if you're looking for an original Twilight Zone-but-in-a-shared-universe SF anthology show with some clever plotting, it's very good. If you're looking for Tales from the Loop: The TV Series, it can be a bit disappointing.

[HokieStone]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

 Interesting synergy between the board game and the RPG, even down to them sharing artwork and components (they're from the same company), though the miniature robots in the board game are very nice.

Not sure if that's as much "synergy" as it is "save money by reusing the same art", lol - but I don't know either the RPG or the board game, so maybe I'm being cynical.

Speaking of nice components, I got a demo of Maglev Metro at PAX - game looked interesting, it's about building a subway - in the future, I guess, because the subway is shuttling robots around.  Each player has track tiles, which are clear hexes with their track segments in their player color.  Each color is offset a bit on their tile, so you can stack these clear tiles, and all the different colored tracks are visible.  The little train car that you can use to pick up and deliver robots is made of a clear plastic in your player color, mounted on top of a metal "chassis". 

[Werthead]

33 minutes ago, HokieStone said:

Not sure if that's as much "synergy" as it is "save money by reusing the same art", lol - but I don't know either the RPG or the board game, so maybe I'm being cynical.

Well, Tales from the Loop started as an art project, so the art by Simon Stalenhag is a massive draw. He drew some new material for the RPG from the original art book and then some more bits for the board game and the TV show, but not a huge amount, so they had to repeat images between the three projects a lot. A bit like Jakub Rozalski's art being the draw for Scythe and the other materials in that world (like the video game Iron Harvest).

Quote

 

Speaking of nice components, I got a demo of Maglev Metro at PAX - game looked interesting, it's about building a subway - in the future, I guess, because the subway is shuttling robots around.  Each player has track tiles, which are clear hexes with their track segments in their player color.  Each color is offset a bit on their tile, so you can stack these clear tiles, and all the different colored tracks are visible.  The little train car that you can use to pick up and deliver robots is made of a clear plastic in your player color, mounted on top of a metal "chassis". 

 

That game does look pretty good and my regular group is partial to a good train-based game.

[HokieStone]

Hahahaha...so Neil deGrasse Tyson used the cover of my game Santa's Workshop as an example of scientific inaccuracy in the portrayal of Santa's North Pole...
 

Of course...he cut off the title and my name....

[Werthead]

18 minutes ago, HokieStone said:

Hahahaha...so Neil deGrasse Tyson used the cover of my game Santa's Workshop as an example of scientific inaccuracy in the portrayal of Santa's North Pole...

Of course...he cut off the title and my name....

Ha. I put in a reply noting that.