The Big Board-Gaming Catch-All

merphle wrote:

It looks like all of the Wizards D&D 5th edition hardcover books are on sale (~60% off). I haven't played D&D in literally decades, but I'm sorely tempted to pick some of these up just because they look so damn nice.

I don’t play much D&D but I’m glad I got mine because I have random people asking me to do one off sessions or mini campaigns

merphle wrote:

It looks like all of the Wizards D&D 5th edition hardcover books are on sale (~60% off). I haven't played D&D in literally decades, but I'm sorely tempted to pick some of these up just because they look so damn nice.

Link didn't work for some reason; might be just me, though. I went in via a different path and got a different one.

Wizards Stuff on Amazon

They've been on sale for a while, at least over a week, so I'd jump if you plan on getting them. Who knows how long they will stay this price.

-BEP

I've checked... Yep, group chap is getting Wingspan soon as poss. Ah well at least get to play it.

Off on a tangent... My Xmas gaming gift to my tother half and the boy, a game they could play together, just for them... Patchwork has been a hit. They played it three nights on the trot last week. I've not been getting a look in... Smiles.

Bubblefuzz wrote:

Off on a tangent... My Xmas gaming gift to my tother half and the boy, a game they could play together, just for them... Patchwork has been a hit. They played it three nights on the trot last week. I've not been getting a look in... Smiles.

It's a hit with my wife, too. It doesn't work well on the small table in our travel trailer, though, so I picked it and Cottage Garden up on Steam. We haven't tried it on her Surface, though, yet.

-BEP

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I played The Mind!

I thought it was ok/good. I think the only problem I had was awkwardness of players not getting the point of the game. They are newer gamers so that might of been it.

But very I’m optimistic the more I’ll play the more I’ll like it. I feel like this game is extremely dependent on who you are playing with. The more you know the other players and the more experience you have as a group the more fun the game becomes.

The mind reading is a lot fun. There are times you look at a player and you both know you have close cards and someone needs to go.

I also love how this game isn’t about winning, it’s about doing better than the last game. 10-12 seems insanely impossible that in my mind I’m more focus just going as far as i can.

I’ll have to report on this game again when I get more plays on. So far it’s ok.

The mind was a favorite for my group, but I definitely see it as a hit or miss depending on the group. For the group I played with it was intense and made us high five. Definitely want my own copy.

This is going back one or two pages, but if you like saying "burninate!" a lot, Clank! is a good game.

I had a biased start to The Mind as I heard about it from someone that more or less described it as "thanks but I've got toilet paper that's softer". I did reluctantly give it a go later on, and I felt the fun of it for level 1-3 and then I was over it and wanted to throw the game (but did not).

I also played Between Two Castles of the king guy recently and did really enjoy it, especially for the mashup quality,but the scoring is fiddly as.

I also thumbs up Space Base, I will say it's a little better than Valeria: Card Kingdoms as well, which is what I'd throw Machi Koro in the trash for. There is one card that is pretty negative to other players, but you could easily take it out of the deck.

We played the mind a fair bit as a family for a week and we were done. The group had a copy too and same from what folks have said played at a couple sessions and a few liked, a few didn't... So now it's just not played at all.

I can't give my copy of The Mind away now to anyone local I know. It'll probably go to a charity shop tbh.

I kind of like the look of that Illusion game though (which I think is same designer?). Basically looks like a Timeline game, but you're guessing the % of a certain colour on the cards of colourful patterns. There might be more to it than that... but I'd like to try.

The mind is an odd little thing and I love it to pieces for one reason and that's because as a game for my family it's great. It never fails to bring out laughs and groans when we play it. I tried bringing it to my game group once and holy cow it was a dud there. So yea.. highly dependent on what players you have around the table.

Aye, as a family we played it A LOT in that first week, before putting it to bed.

I've ordered Illusion. For £10, worth a shot.

We played Chapter 2 of Betrayal Legacy tonight! Good times! There are several threads on BGG with rules clarifications from Rob Daviau himself for this one.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

We played Chapter 2 of Betrayal Legacy tonight! Good times! There are several threads on BGG with rules clarifications from Rob Daviau himself for this one.

My family and I blazed up through chapter 5 (I think) in the two weeks after Christmas, but due to commitments we haven’t been able to play since then — and still won’t for a few months until my daughter comes home for spring break. We’ve never played the original Betrayal, so I don’t have a comparison point, but Betrayal Legacy is really really good.

carrotpanic wrote:

Nooo you still have to play with me! I haven't gotten a meaty board game in over two years, there's still plenty of fun to be had playing the old favorites for as rarely as I play these days.

I'll still play but the days of buying new are probably over. How's it been going anyhoo? Get anything in since CitOW?

merphle wrote:
Fedaykin98 wrote:

We played Chapter 2 of Betrayal Legacy tonight! Good times! There are several threads on BGG with rules clarifications from Rob Daviau himself for this one.

My family and I blazed up through chapter 5 (I think) in the two weeks after Christmas, but due to commitments we haven’t been able to play since then — and still won’t for a few months until my daughter comes home for spring break. We’ve never played the original Betrayal, so I don’t have a comparison point, but Betrayal Legacy is really really good.

It's extremely similar so far; fans of one would enjoy the other. Of course, the Legacy elements add a lot of excitement as well.

I did play Martin Wallace's London at a buddy's house over Christmas, which was a nice and slim card based economic engine game. Also played Qwixx (dice push your luck) and Arboretum (card arranging and hand management) which were both fun and compact.

Arboretum is great - I've probably played that 15-20 times with work folks.

I really like London. Such a great design. A tense puzzle.

It does a lot with a little, which I am an ever increasing fan of. Setup and footprint was minimal.

Same here. Funny how cyclical that's been for me - I started out digging the simple stuff before branching off into meatier, now angling toward simpler lighter stuff again.

Crockpot wrote:

I played The Mind!

I thought it was ok/good. I think the only problem I had was awkwardness of players not getting the point of the game. They are newer gamers so that might of been it.

But very I’m optimistic the more I’ll play the more I’ll like it. I feel like this game is extremely dependent on who you are playing with. The more you know the other players and the more experience you have as a group the more fun the game becomes.

The mind reading is a lot fun. There are times you look at a player and you both know you have close cards and someone needs to go.

I also love how this game isn’t about winning, it’s about doing better than the last game. 10-12 seems insanely impossible that in my mind I’m more focus just going as far as i can.

I’ll have to report on this game again when I get more plays on. So far it’s ok.

Played it on NYE and did not hate it like I expected. Even liked it and would be happy to play it again.
Agree that it is likely group dependent. There is that wonderful shared success when things work just right in a round that is that rare charge feeling.

Bel and I completed our first Gloomhaven mission, hosted by a friend who sprang not only for the game but the incredible Broken Token insert setup. Had a lot of fun, right out of the gate, and it's easy to see how it captured so many Dice Tower awards. It didn't take too long to realized that we weren't going to make it through on our first attempt, as we learned how quickly the fatigue curve can catch up to you. (We also had some incredibly bad luck with a critical miss failing to take out an elite guard at a key moment, followed up by our Brute being taken out by a totally unexpected flurry of attacks from some skellys.) The second run was relatively a cake walk (though our Brute fatigued himself this time!) which is my only criticism (as the setup has been spoiled), but it's not clear how often we'll have to repeat scenarios now that we understand the fatigue system.

I'm extra excited to be playing this because, as I've posted elsewhere before, this appears to be the deck-building adventure game I've been wanting for years. I began developing an idea for my own game several years ago, and hearing about Gloomhaven got me back to working on it. Fortunately the development (still shy of a first working prototype) has taken me to a pretty different place, so I can admire Isaac Childres' work and sharpen my own ideas against that experience. But more on that in the Boardgame design thread, which needs some love...!

PewPewRobo wrote:

I'm extra excited to be playing this because, as I've posted elsewhere before, this appears to be the deck-building adventure game I've been wanting for years.

It's a load of fun. I wish I had a way to leave it out for extended periods of time, but my table in the game room gets used for multiple things. We'll be building a gaming table this Spring / Summer that will partially alleviate the issue.

Here's the Gloomhaven thread.

-BEP

PewPewRobo wrote:
Fredrik_S wrote:

Burgle Bros.

That one does look fun! I will just put this here...

Thanks!

In a change from previous holidays, I only provided one board game gift suggestion for myself - Robin Hood and the Merry Men. It was an off-the-cuff idea, I saw it on the shelf at Miniature Market, liked the overall look of the game, and reviews were okay.

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I've had the chance to play it twice, and both times it created enough lingering thoughts in my head afterward to make it a keeper, at least for now. It's a semi-coop worker placement game that doesn't do anything new, but I like the combination of worker placement, push-your-luck, and a few thematic touches that make it stick out for me. Plus, I've always liked the Robin Hood stories and characters and the mechanics here that tie in those elements are pretty good.

I'm normally wary of semi-coop games, but this game is cleverly structured to make the actions that help others more than yourself (or prevent everyone from losing) are also the ones that give you the most points. For example, your workers are your "merry men", and if you send them to the most lucrative spots, they run the risk of being arrested by guards and thrown in prison. Everyone also has a Hero (with unique ability), and if you spend time rescuing merry men for other players, you score points. If you rescue your own merry men, that's good because you get them back but you get no VP for helping your own guys.

The artwork and components are great, and it lasts just about as long as I want it to. The one downside is the rule book, which feels like it was written by someone who knows the rules so well that they forget to point out a fair number of them. There were a LOT of rules we missed, or misinterpreted, or were badly explained during the first game. Rules about how your Hero moves around the board are at the start of one section, and then a really critical rule about how your Hero moves is in a sidebar 4 pages later. Just not well organized. Once we ironed everything out in the second game, things make more sense and flowed really well. So far, I'm enjoying it.

My copy of Wingspan arrived yesterday, from the Stonemaier champion preorder.

I've only played a single solo game so far, but it's good.

+ Components (especially the art) are just fantastic.
+ Gameplay seems good: lots of hard choices between "do I activate this cool combo, or play this cool bird card, or get this thing I really need" etc.
+ The regular automa beat me, but not by all that much! Yay, me!

MikeSands wrote:

My copy of Wingspan arrived yesterday, from the Stonemaier champion preorder.

I've only played a single solo game so far, but it's good.

+ Components (especially the art) are just fantastic.
+ Gameplay seems good: lots of hard choices between "do I activate this cool combo, or play this cool bird card, or get this thing I really need" etc.
+ The regular automa beat me, but not by all that much! Yay, me!

Nice!!!

Every Night is Game Night - Designer Round Table on Games with Non-traditional Themes... Two Parter, Episodes 120-121.

Thought might be of interest to some, especially those keen for Wingspan.

Featuring...
"Three designers of excellent games with non-traditional themes - Elizabeth Hargrave, designer of Wingspan; Sarah Reed, designer of Oaxaca: Crafts of a Culture; and R. Eric Reuss, designer of Spirit Island."

Part one is mostly about making and getting games published that don't follow the common fantasy, space, Cthulhu etc themes...

Part 2 is more about games research, world cultures in games and representation in design, publishing.

An interesting listen.

Regarding Gloomhaven on TableTop Simulator - does it save state between sessions? By state I mean the upgrades, coin, Exp, etc. on the characters? Also stuff like Road and City event card order and which ones are removed from the game? Places you've visited? Achievements?

I'm not even sure how TTS works. I bought it but haven't used it. I think it's all manual - ie. it doesn't know the rules and doesn't have AI, which is how I'd want it.

I own GH but have 2 remote people that may be interested in playing so I though this may be a good way for them to try it out.

-BEP

In Tabletop Simulator, in any game, you can save the exact state of the table, everything about it saves.