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What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?
charlest wrote: I think Millennium Blades is totally an experiential game. There's strategy to be sure, but the game doesn't pay out to that part of your brain. Those that dig it revel in the bizarre structure and what it offers as a CCG simulator in feel.
We almost never play it due to the length and one player not liking it (why is it always one person?), but I haven't gotten rid of it because it hits me in a way no other game does.
I got a chance to play this a few days ago, and reactions in the group were pretty divided and ran the gamut from confused-but-curious to I-never-want-to-play-this-again. I absolutely love it and its two-games-in-one approach, but I perhaps love it more because I got it by trading away Gen7.
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- hotseatgames
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- Disgustipater
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- Dapper Deep One
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RobertB wrote: *Have a copy of Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage still in shrink too. Not sure what I was thinking when I bought that.
I keep wanting to buy this, and almost have several times. I even started a thread about it, but still never pulled the trigger. I was just thinking about it last night actually. Maybe I should find viable opponents first...
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- GorillaGrody
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- Will kvetch for free
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First things first. Miniature quality is about what you'd expect, if not a little better.
PROS:
--The game does a few things that are new, which can be said of all FFG same-but-different games, though in this case it does seem as if they spent some time really rethinking some of their basic principles.
--The Skill Deck system is particularly neat-o. It's essentially a streamlined version of the Runebound 3E skill-check system, with the difference being that each player hones a 15-plus-card deck which can either cue up actions or get revealed for successes. Often, you can stack the deck.
--Not a lot of bloat. There are just a couple of types of tokens, and the app provides context for them. The one thing I couldn't understand in MoM 2E was how many different tokens had to be used for it.
--Registering Damage, Fear and Weakness is also nicely streamlined. I suppose the X-Wing damage deck provides the design cue. Flip a card, maybe keep it flipped for ongoing effects. Weakness clogs up your deck.
--cool mechanic whereby sometimes you travel over land, as in an adventure game, and sometimes you enter a tactical board, as in a miniatures game. The map tiles for tactics are especially simple (but still modible and interesting), a huge plus.
--The app seems to work pretty well right out of the gate, no bugs as of yet. It does a better job of administration than some of these other app-driven systems, while still providing a tactile game experience.
CONS
--FFG still doesn't know what "difficulty" means, except to throw more monsters at the problem. You should expect in some instances to just stand in one place, mopping up "monster spills in aisle 9" in an endless torrent of repetitive mopping. It's not all this, but this is never, ever fun, and should not be the measurement of difficulty in any game. It's also common to nearly every game FFG does, and it's the reason why I play so few of them. Similarly, the heroes we chose from the 6 available seem unequipped for the long haul in a 2-person game. Further progression in this game might involve going back and trying it again with the "right" characters.
--Rules in Learn-to-play. Rules in Rules Reference. Rules in App. This is not the worst rules situation FFG has ever produced, but they cannot get their rule game together to save their own lives. One or two things don't make sense at all (such as, when does "facedown damage" occur so that it can be blocked). To be fair, mostly everything was clear.
--FFFG: the third F is for "Feckless Capitalism." You are paying 100 dollars MSRP for something that will, in 3-5 years, be a fancy-looking junk drawer of shit you should really just get around to throwing out. It's not even really a big junk drawer. The "not much bloat" comment above means a lot of air in the box, and a whole lot of expansions to come. I will definitely paint and flip this within the next couple of years, before it becomes unsellable, making me the feckless one.
--I have a high tolerance for licenced IPs and familiar tropes because, in the end, I like seeing folks produce mechanically sound but surprising results for things I think I know, and have almost zero tolerance for the sort of world-building maths nerds come up with when they try to be "creative.” But they really did the bare minimum to rethink Tolkien's world here, nor did they make an argument for it as something that needs to be revisited.
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One of the other players had played a few games of Cosmic over the years, and I taught the hosting couple to play Cosmic just last month. Even so, covering the rules was work, as one player only had experience with family boardgames and party games. And there were some definite differences from Cosmic Encounter. Eventually we got started and the game ran long as we all wrestled with the unfamiliar rules and cards and strategy.
Without going heavy into description, the major differences between Cosmic Encounter and The Iron Throne are the characters and the taking of hostages. Each player has a leader and four characters, and a personal draw deck that includes 10 special cards keyed to the leader and characters. Each turn focuses on an encounter between two characters, and each other player at the table can potentially join the encounter supporting one of the two characters featured in the encounter. If the encounter turns hostile (and usually does), the winner will take a hostage. On subsequent turns, that hostage can be kept, released for a free card draw, or tormented to cause the hostage's faction to lose power.
The hosts formed an alliance right away between House Targaryen and House Stark. Their former next door neighbor often supported them with the Martells. Two other players controlling the Lannisters and Greyjoys also played like a team, and I usually supported them with my Tyrells.
Near the end of a long and close game, there was a chance for a five-way victory that would have left my hapless Tyrells as the only losers. I played badly most of the game, on the losing side of nearly every encounter. On the final turn, I had a powerful ally card (Varys), which allowed me to hijack a Stark-Lannister encounter and choose their face down cards for them. I carefully determined that I could swing the fight in favor of the Lannisters. I chose a Hostility 20 for the Starks, and I chose the lowest Hostility card in the Lannister's hand signaling to him that he should use Tyrion's ability to convert both cards in the Encounter into negative numbers. But then the Targaryen player slapped down her Dany special card that gave their side a serious bonus for the Stark-Targaryen-Martell win. Everybody had fun and we will definitely play again next month.
Iron Throne took about 3.5 hours to plays, but included numerous conversations about the show or the rules, plus some lengthy discussions while trying to recruit support during an encounter. Experienced players might be able to play a six-player game within 2 hours. The sweet spot is probably five players, but I would love to try seven player sometime with Baratheon in the mix. The ally cards are a bit over-powered, but that probably helps move the game along since the rest of the game seems more tightly balanced than a typical Cosmic Encounter game.
Although there is much to admire about the original FFG design for the Game of Thrones boardgame from the early '00s, I feel that The Iron Throne is a better simulation of the books and the show, because it focuses on the characters and their interactions instead of the movement and logistics of armies and navies.
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- hotseatgames
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Next was Cthulhu Wars, but this time with Onslaught 3 stuff... the owner of the game (thankfully not me) played the Ancients. We also played on the new Shaggai map. I played my favorite faction, the Black Goat, another was Crawling Chaos and yet another was Tcho Tcho. This was only his second time, and I think this was a bad faction choice for him. Anyway....
We finally got to have every faction have its own unique Acolytes. This is cool! Except for the Ancients... their acolytes look like Hitler Youth. My goat worshippers had cool horned helmets.
The Ancients don't have a GOO. They build cathedrals around the map, and have various spell book achievements that involve giving power to other players. Their monsters are strong, but one set of them can't respawn once killed! Of course, they roll 7 dice so maybe that's okay. I think they will need another game or two until we get them really figured out.
The map... it's got a lot of spaces, all of which are shaped like rupees from Legend of Zelda. There are these numbered wyrms that you set out in various spaces, and after the Doom phase, dice are rolled. If a wyrm's number comes up, the space, and everything in it, is destroyed. If you lose stuff, you get compensation, but it's never as good as just having your stuff. That said, spoiler alert, but I lost two highly valuable spaces, including my GOO, in one turn, and I still won the whole game. This board destruction mechanic actually plays out in a very cool way, much more interesting than I thought it would be when I first heard about it. You also get to move the wyrms around, strategically trying to blow up other people's shit.
BUT... the board's printing job is a mess. The two boards are mis-aligned, by at least a quarter inch in my friend's copy. That part isn't a big deal, but due to the way the board is drawn out, the "wrap-around" spaces on the right and left sides are NOT intuitive and you really have to look carefully to determine adjacency. For such a premium product, this was disappointing.
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Cave Troll was exactly what I was hoping it would be. A quick nasty area majority game with simple rules and a fun theme. Hit all the right notes for what it was going for and I foresee many more plays of this one in the future. Nuking a big room with your troll, skulking around with your thief to nab unclaimed points, etc etc. Just really delivered 100%.
Ramen Fury is an alright little take that/set collection card game. The best part was that it came in packaging that looked like ramen noodles, and it was quick. Would play again, would not seek out of my own volition.
Pirateers was kind of a weird backgammon offshoot that was fast, brutal, and entertaining enough for the 15-20 minutes it took. I'd rather just play backgammon every time though. Also, bizarrely, I guess it was involved in a defamation suit at some point where the designer had to pay almost $800k to the publisher
www.google.com/amp/www.pressdemocrat.com...mendocino%3fview=AMP
Also played Northern Pacific , Medici: The Card Game , and Merchant of Venus 2e all of which I'm pretty sure I've talked about before and all of which I quite enjoy. All in all a nice day of games.
Also I have been tasked with bringing some games to a family Easter gathering this evening, mostly nongamers. We played Wizard before so I'll being that. Think I'll bring along Medici and Telestrations also. Medici is a long shot tbh, but I live in hope
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- hotseatgames
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- Erik Twice
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- Needs explosions
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Initially, there was no Cylon and it was obvious there wasn't. We quickly pushed to distance 4 in one jump and started the second round on very favourable conditions. I got handed another human card so I reaped the benefits of this situation.
One of the Cylons revealed himself shortly and handed me more cards to sow suspicion. But it didn't work because I was the character whose once-per-game ability allowed me to shoot another character. I simply offered another player, who I was very sure was a human, to decide for me who I should shoot. This put me beyond question because such an offer would be risky if I were a Cylon myself. With that solved, we decided to rush the trip and won before the Cylons could mount a counteroffensive.
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Everything here has been done before, but this is Star Wars so I guess it needed to be made.
I'd be lying if I didn't say it had moments of fun (I was Boba Fett flying the Moldy Crow around and pursuing bounties with 4-LOM and Greedo as my henchmen). But I'd rather play Merchants and Marauders or Xia any day. Nothing innovative here really at all.
Res Arcana was a much better game. Excellent Tom Lehman design that's very Tom Lehman-y. It does so much with a very little 8 card deck, allowing a ton of room for creativity and combo building. I can see this one having long legs with my group.
We've also played two of the latest three Unlock! releases, tackling the Land of the Lost one last night. This series continues to surprise and it still remains my favorite escape room line.
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- Michael Barnes
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- Mountebank
- HYPOCRITE
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- Matt Thrower
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- Shiny Balls
- Number Of Fence
Michael Barnes wrote: Res Arcana is the best game of 2019 so far.
My sampling of this years' crop has been pretty limited so far, but on the basis of what I've played, I'd concur. Review coming next week with any luck.
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