What are you playing?

[LaParka]

I'm playing castles tonight, one of my favourite games 

[Faded]

Finally got Cthulhu Wars to the table (floor) last week. Delighted that the mechanics are on par with the amazing production values. 

 

[LaParka]

I've got a two player game of Pax Renaissance coming up. It's a Phil Ecklund game which means it's ridiculously dense and I can see us struggling with the rulebook. I'm made up one of the chaps at the game club wants to play this style as his games are a niche within a niche! 

[Hexx]

Not Alone

 

Played the Exploration version at the expo, but this was first time playing original game.

 

 

A team of you effectively each choose one of 5 areas to explore (expanding as game progresses and you unlock more) while the Alien tries to guess where you'll go. Hunted are trying to survive until rescue (basically a certain number of rounds, although certain actions can speed this up) while the Alien wants to catch/east/assimilate a certain number of times.

 

Really liked it - played Alien once and Hunted Once. Both time Alien stomped home. (I initially missed in the rules the Alien advances any time a person is caught by creature, not just on "death" - but we quickly fixed that).

 

Lot of tactics choices and guessing. We changed numbers between games and it scaled just as well.

The big problem I can see with is that the Hunter cards vary in power quite a bit - opening hand can make a big difference. Also, based on those two games, seems very hard for hunter to win!

 

[cavalcade]

Played and really enjoyed T'zolkin (which I think I bought from someone here) - I was surprised that the cogs were far from a gimmick but a genuinely interesting twist on the worker placement genre. Iconography was ridiculous, but thankfully the two people I was playing with had actually been part of the original testing team, so could answer questions. Loved it really. As I am also loving Concordia. So simple, so elegant, but what a game!

 

Apart from that a quick blast through what's been hitting the table recently - One Deck Dungeon (love it), Lost Expedition (nice art, average game), Robinson Crusoe (we will finish this before First Martians....), Evolution: The Beginning (cut down version of the full game, but actually almost as good), Gloom of Kilforth (rules of keywordsforth), Xia and expansion (SPPPAAAAAACE!), Leaving Earth + Outer Planets (SPAAAAACEEEEE MATHHHHHS), Cave vs Cave (really like this, tense, tight), Bohnanza (pub game of choice #beanbantz), Century Spice Road (broken, but still fun), Sagrada (beautiful, excellent, GROZING PLIERS), Dice Force (overproduced, but surprisingly good), Lab Wars (a mess, but fun), Burgle Bros (not hugely replayable, but fun) and Aton (still one of my favourite 2 player games of all time). 

[Tourist]

Please explain why you love one deck dungeon. Are you playing the latest ruleset?

[cavalcade]

2 hours ago, Tourist said:

Please explain why you love one deck dungeon. Are you playing the latest ruleset?

 

I feel that's a loaded question! I think I have the 1.5 version. What do you think's wrong with it? It's breezy, chucky fun

[Tourist]

I think maybe the 1.5 version is a little bit more forgiving, but I first encountered it at PAX East where an actual official demo guy was demoing it to a random guy and neither of them had a clue what was going on. But I figured it was a small box so I could smuggle it home without my wife finding out and I figured it would be cheap so I took it up to the cash register and beamed with satisfaction at the lady and then she was like, that will be $25 or something insane like that and I did that British thing of being too embarrassed to not buy it so I bought it and was DETERMINED to enjoy it, but actually the rules are finicky, complicated, and unintuitive, and the game itself is unnecessarily brutal and low-skill. It seems to amount to turning over some cards, rolling some dice and not being able to exceed any of the target numbers because they are set too high. 

 

But so many people seem to like it I would really like to know what I'm missing...

[Hexx]

7 hours ago, cavalcade said:

Played and really enjoyed T'zolkin (which I think I bought from someone here) - I was surprised that the cogs were far from a gimmick but a genuinely interesting twist on the worker placement genre. Iconography was ridiculous, but thankfully the two people I was playing with had actually been part of the original testing team, so could answer questions. Loved it really. As I am also loving Concordia. So simple, so elegant, but what a game!

 

Apart from that a quick blast through what's been hitting the table recently - One Deck Dungeon (love it), Lost Expedition (nice art, average game), Robinson Crusoe (we will finish this before First Martians....), Evolution: The Beginning (cut down version of the full game, but actually almost as good), Gloom of Kilforth (rules of keywordsforth), Xia and expansion (SPPPAAAAAACE!), Leaving Earth + Outer Planets (SPAAAAACEEEEE MATHHHHHS), Cave vs Cave (really like this, tense, tight), Bohnanza (pub game of choice #beanbantz), Century Spice Road (broken, but still fun), Sagrada (beautiful, excellent, GROZING PLIERS), Dice Force (overproduced, but surprisingly good), Lab Wars (a mess, but fun), Burgle Bros (not hugely replayable, but fun) and Aton (still one of my favourite 2 player games of all time). 

 

Can you please give me 5 tips for Xia? Playing a 2 player game (with expac) tomorrow

[LaParka]

Some selected games over the last couple of weeks

 

La Isla - quick Feld game and like all of his games i've played, absolutely loved it. You're placing workers onto a map in order to surround animals to collect them. The interesting part is how you do it. Beginning of your turn you take three cards, those three cards can be used in three different ways and you have to decide which to use for what. You're deciding between a special ability, which colour cubes to take (which is used to place your workers on the map) and which card to move a marker on a track which gives you points for the amount of animals of that type that you've collected. The cool thing about the special ability is that you only have space for three cards so after turn four you have to cover one of your existing cards. Nice little conundrum of which to keep and which to cover. Only played it 2p, but I imagine it gets more cut throat at higher player counts because the map doesn't scale.

 

Stockpile - stock trading game. Wasn't too fussed on this but overall it wasn't bad and I wouldn't be annoyed if it was put in front of me to play. You have to bid on stocks and other card abilities. Of the five companies that you take stock in, they can go bust or your stocks can double in value. You have a player card which gives you a unique ability throughout the game which can cause some interesting issues between players. 

 

Pax Renaissance - Its an Ecklund game which means its quite dense and not always apparent what you're doing or how you're going to achieve your goals. I think it looks worse than it is because of how the cards are layed out and the terminology used. Things like 'ops' for abilities and a lot of flavour text on each of the cards. All you're really looking for is the card abilities and which side of your player area they are going to sit. After a while a comet card appears which, once taken, lets you activate one of the four victory conditions. Until that point you can't finish the game. The victory conditions are all relatively simple such as having more kings than your opponent or more law symbols and more republics. Getting that into your player area is the difficulty. Adore this game, and it plays quick too. Played two games in about an hour and the first was only longer because I kept checking some of the rules.

 

Volldampf - stripped down Age of Steam. Really good introduction to the genre with no special abilities but still having to auction for turn order, pick up and deliver, and the dilemma of bonds and paying them back. Difficult to get hold of but would play it in a heartbeat. I came last. 

 

Saint Petersburg - This was loads of fun. There are four rounds per turn and your paying for cards from a central display. Roughly the rounds are split into first round being money generation, second being victory points, third being nobles (the more unique the more points you get) and the fourth being upgrades to the previous three rounds. Theres some interplay where you get discount if you take the same card, and some cards give you special abilities. It did go quite long for what the game was but possibly because we played it with four.  

 

Terra Nova - This is why i've started going to a games club. Would never have heard of this game before going and now i'm trying to find a copy. Board is laid out with various terrain types, you've got workers on the board which you move and then lay stones down which cover up a space. Once an area is cordoned off it scores. You get more points for the less terrain types the complete area covers. Lovely game

 

[Hexx]

Xia: Legends of a Drift System (+Expac who's name I can't remember)

 

Really liked this. 3 players 10FP (i.e. victory points) game felt about the right length. Elite Dangerous the board game without the shitty docking nonsense  (

Thematically strong and will nice mechancis. A possible a little bit too much luck with dice rolls and tile draw, but I didn't find it a problem.

 

We had a somewhat dull game as none of us went agressive/pirate (thinking it would be mean to other players and hinder their enjoyment). On playing though death isn't such a bad option and we'd wish one of us had done it.

 

I think in a 3player/10FP point the explore tokens might be a bit too strong. Too easy to get 2 then 1 FP. We were reaching the limit of available tokens so in a bigger game (players or 20FP) their impact would be lessened but felt a little unbalanced in our game.

 

All 3 of us could have won on the last turn which was quite nice!

 

[Benny]

Played Yokohama at the weekend. It's excellent.

 

Also got to playtest Founders of Gloomhaven, which looks like it'll be a great and deep game when finished.

[Mortis]

Nice - tell more about founders - I'm on the fence about backing, even though I could probably back and flip for profit if I don't like it when it lands. 

[Benny]

Founders is quite unlike any other game I've played before but has many elements it shares with other games. The first thing to realise is that is has absolutely nothing in common with Gloomhaven apart from the theme and artwork, though the object of the game is about the founding of the city of Gloomhaven itself.

 

The object of the game is to place tiles on a city map and make unique buildings for victory points. On each player's turn they have a number of action cards they can use to either place tiles or buy other cards, using in game currency, a lot like Concordia. Then each other player can choose to follow that action themselves with a similar action, or a set of basic actions, before the next player's turn. You can choose to perform a basic action yourself instead of a main action on a card and then other players cannot follow it. This carries on with players putting their faction's type of resource on the board and building buildings that require those resources by linking them with roads, until one player chooses to call a vote. They use any unused cards to exchange for either more roads, money, or influence, which is a separate resource used for bidding. All players then bid on a number of special buildings using a tile corresponding to the building auction space, and their influence. The player who bids the most wins their chosen building, and they get to place it on the board. They will also get to use a unique action on that building that they can use with their workers, which are on their player board and can be used once they have houses on the map. Each player has a unique race which also has a special action that these workers can be placed on as a basic action.

 

Each building upgrade requires unique resources that will not always be available to your faction and you can spend money to borrow other player's resources, but the player who controls the resource for a building will get VP when it is built, if not the VP for the building itself, so the key to victory in the game is placing buildings near enough to other players to get the use of their resources, without giving them too many options for linking them up to what they want to build, and to use follow actions at the right time and place to keep tempo going.

 

I liked it a lot, though I know two people who will be backing it already, so will get a few opportunities to give it a few goes before deciding whether to get it. The Kickstarter is pretty good value though considering today's prices.

 

Also, Yokohama: don't get put off by the size of the board and the number of icons - it's actually very simple to understand and play in practice, but has a ton of options and strategies. Really elegant design.

[Exit Chamber]

Finally convinced the Mrs to give Mansions of Madness a go.

 

Played the first scenario. I kept quiet and let her take the lead because I didn't want to spoil anything.

 

We were about two turns from completing it when we lost, mainly because her investigator broke both legs and an arm early on fighting a deep one. Not ideal when she was Rita, the "speedy" character, so she basically had to crawl one space at a time hitting shit with a crowbar for an hour.

 

Great success though, we had a good laugh and she's asked to play again after tea, determined to win. Yay!

[Danster]

Hey guys, was playing Pandemic for the first time earlier with my girls. We won the introductory game, which was fun. But I'm not sure about part of the epidemics, when you have to shuffle the discarded infection cards and put them back in the main pack... Do you put them back so that they are next to be played, or so that they go to the back of the queue?

 

The rules say to take the cards from the bottom of the pack each turn, but to shuffle and put cards on the top during an epidemic... Little bit confusing, not sure why you'd take cards from the bottom anyway... And it feels like it would be more punishing if the epidemics mean more infections for repeat cities.

 

[Rikku]

You shuffle the discarded pile and then place those cards on top of the deck to be drawn next, so the chance of outbreaks is way tense after the epidemic.

 

I thought you only drew the first card of the epidemic from the bottom of the pile to place the three cubes on (rather than every turn), then shuffle that with the discarded cards and place that on top and then draw the infection cards. Which I think is less punishing as if you get two epidemics close together, then your at least bringing some new cards in to play from the bottom of the deck.

 

I think, it's been a while since I played! Sorry if I'm wrong!

[Rikku]

Picked up Roll Player earlier this week, I didn't manage to grab a copy of Sagrada and was itching for a chucky dice rolling game whilst waiting for Too Many Bones to arrive. One Deck Dungeon just didn't grab me despite thinking I would love it, and Roll Player was the opposite, love it despite thinking I wouldn't.

 

The point of the game is to basically create a character for a roll playing game.  You start by selecting your base starting race, then the point of the game is to fill in your 6 attributes with dice, each attribute has 3 spaces for a die to be placed.  Some races have +2 to a stat and some have -2 to a stat, so if you needed a DEX of 16-18 with a -2 race penalty you would need to place 3 x 6 sided die in to those slots. Each turn, placing a die on your character sheet allows you to take an attribute action, this could be anything from rerolling a die, to flipping a die already place from a 1 to a 6 or to swapping places with another die on the mat.

 

Each player then randomly picks a die from the bag and that determines your class.  Each class card is double sided so you can pick either one, then that determines your class colour. You can earn more points the more die you place that match your class colour.

 

Then you randomly select your alignment from a deck.  Certain things change your alignment as you play, having your class cube on the one with the most points at the end of the game is ideal!

 

You also randomly choose your background from a deck.  You can earn points by placing dice in the correct places for your background. 

 

At the start of the game you draw 6 die and place them on your character sheet how you wish. You don't get to make any attribute actions with those dice.  Then you draw three more dice, roll them and place them in the market. Depending on solo or group play, first player gets first dibs from the three dice to draft and place on their mat taking with it an initiative card.  Whoever has the lowest iniative after all dice have been placed, gets to go to the market and buy an item first. These improve your scoring opportunities for the end of the game and can allow you to take some actions, etc. You can buy weapons, armor, skills and traits.  Then the second player gets to buy something from the market after placing their die.

 

It's got a really great solo variant, but I think it would be good fun to play competitively.  Only takes about 30 minutes as well which is nice as most of my solo games take around 3 hours!

 

There's a little challenge running on BGG at the moment to see who can score the best Free Spirited, Savage, Halfling Barbarian.  I only scored 30 though, which I didn't think was too bad.  Ignore the coins at the end of my rows, I place them to remind myself not to move dice from them when taking attribute actions because I'm happy with them.

[Danster]

Thanks @Rikku, that makes more sense. I've read the rules again and it doesn't say to take the cards from the bottom except during epidemics, so that should make it more difficult.

 

Will have to try again and see how we get on.

 

[Professor Rob]

Played Terraforming Mars for the first time, having picked up the recent reprint. Loved the game immensely but I have to say that, for a game with an RRP of £65, the component quality is appalling. Usually I'm not bothered by such things, but in this case it's detrimental to the playing experience, as the shiny cubes skate all over the place on the thin glossy player mats. Given the price, they could have made them from thicker stock, with die-cut holes for the cubes to fit into (e.g. like Evolution), and I feel  like Stronghold have really tried to reduce the production cost to an absolute minimum, which is fine if the game is cheap (like Castles of Burgundy), but not if they're pitching it at a premium price.

[Benny]

It's the main reason I've still not bought it. Should be sub £50 at most.

[Mortis]

Yeah I played it for the first time last week and despite enjoying the game I couldn't get over the poor quality of the components. The cubes were chipping and scratched, the guy had laminated the player boards to make them at least durable and the cards had all been sleeved for the same reason. 

 I just thought how much more you get in the box for Scythe and that costs only a few quid more.

[Benny]

Most places actually sell Scythe for less I think. Apparently some people are VERY sensitive to criticism of TM's component quality. Which is weird because it's very valid despite being a great game.

[Lochenvar]

@Danster

 

You should usually draw from the top of the Infection deck. Then, when the discard pile is shuffled and put back on the top after an Epidemic, you'll be drawing cities that have already been infected. That's the core part of the infection mechanic, that cities continue to get worse and worse over time.

 

The only time you should draw from the bottom of the deck is during the Infect part of an Epidemic. That ensures that you're infecting a city that's not been hit before. That city will then be shuffled into the discards and put back on the top of the deck. As it now has three cubes on it, you need to make it a priority for treating, or it will outbreak when it's drawn again.

 

It's such an elegant system, which produces a virus spread that feels realistic, but is always different.

 

Such a great game.

[Professor Rob]

24 minutes ago, Benny said:

Most places actually sell Scythe for less I think. Apparently some people are VERY sensitive to criticism of TM's component quality. Which is weird because it's very valid despite being a great game.

 

Yeah, I've just been reading some of the threads on BGG. 

 

I've had a look at acrylic boards, and the cheapest I've found are these: http://www.eleventreedesigns.co.uk/Eleven_Tree_Designs/accessories_dash_boards.html, which adds £33.45 (for 5x, inc postage) to a game which I've already paid £55 for, just to make it playable.

[Benny]

Try cardboard overlays from Etsy.

 

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/472884308/5-terraforming-mars-cube-trays

[revlob]

It is difficult to justify the component quality of Terraforming Mars when comparing it to something like Scythe. The player mats are thin, the art on the tiles are poorly aligned, and the metallic cubes were made in a strange way: spray-painted while on sprues, then snapped off, leaving a corner unpainted on each one. I'm sure the decisions were made in the name of profits, but I haven't let it spoil my enjoyment of the game.

 

Clearly, with the number of products out there designed to "enhance" the experience, like the many different player board replacements you can get, it's an issue which bothers more people than I think let on. But I own both games, and I've tricked out Scythe with virtually every extra you can get, but I've not felt it necessary to modify TM in any way yet, save sleeving the cards. If anyone is thinking of getting it, but they worry the component issues might bother them, then all I can suggest is to see if you can see a copy being played somewhere before you buy. It doesn't look that bad, does it?

 

[Benny]

You just better hope that table doesn't wobble.

[Professor Rob]

I have no issue with how it looks, or any of the other things that people seem to be complaining about. It really is just about the practicalities of the cubes on the player boards, and the ease with which they can become misplaced when knocked. I might try making my own, and if that doesn't work out, splash out on the acrylic ones. As I said, I love the game, so it'll probably be worthwhile in the long run.

[Benny]

Yeah the game itself is great. Boardgamegeek denizens can just be hilariously salty at times when there is valid criticism. Much like here in Discussion actually.