The Big Board-Gaming Catch-All

Does it make Feast for Odin even more of a fiddly bits explosion than it already is?

Boudreaux wrote:

Does it make Feast for Odin even more of a fiddly bits explosion than it already is?

Not really. It replaces the main board with several, but you'll only use one for each player count. The only bits it adds are four more islands (you don't have to use the new ones), and each player will start with a special building that only they can build. That's it.

Nice.

We're in San Diego for a couple days. We like to stop in to at least one good game shop. We like looking at board games (and typically pick one up on each trip), mainly, but also like seeing people playing wargames, MTG, etc.

Is there one you would recommend?

-BEP

bepnewt wrote:

We're in San Diego for a couple days. We like to stop in to at least one good game shop. We like looking at board games (and typically pick one up on each trip), mainly, but also like seeing people playing wargames, MTG, etc.

Is there one you would recommend?

-BEP

Depending where you are in San Diego there are couple good choices that come to mind.
Game Empire on Clairemont Mesa Blvd just off 805
Pair A Dice Games if you're close to north county

I've also heard good things about At Ease Games off Miramar and 15 if you're over that way but never made it over there myself.

jigsawhc wrote:
bepnewt wrote:

We're in San Diego for a couple days. We like to stop in to at least one good game shop. We like looking at board games (and typically pick one up on each trip), mainly, but also like seeing people playing wargames, MTG, etc.

Is there one you would recommend?

-BEP

Depending where you are in San Diego there are couple good choices that come to mind.
Game Empire on Clairemont Mesa Blvd just off 805
Pair A Dice Games if you're close to north county

I've also heard good things about At Ease Games off Miramar and 15 if you're over that way but never made it over there myself.

The only place I can vouch for is Game Empire. It’s good. Only bought a game and that’s it

We are near the Airport. We're here for my nephew's Marine boot camp graduation so we hotel'ed in that area.

Game Empire appears closest and that's the Kit found online last night. She saw they had Open Board Gaming at 5:00pm so we'll probably head there tonight and see what's going on.

Thanks for the info! If you plan on dropping in there tonight, let me know.

-BEP

Humble Board Game Bundle. Might just be worth it for Scythe alone.

Bloodborne Kickstarter is up! $10 off for the first 24 hours!

Zombicide is out as a mobile game now. Not a full recreation, but the main points are all there from my understanding. Being someone who has only played Black Plague, it seems pretty faithful. I would also say, I think the mobile is a better version than the Table Top. All I have done is the tutorial but I like it.

I played Space Base last night with 4 total players. It was billed as 'Better Machi-Koro'. Since I hated Machi Koro I was interested.

Simply put, you've got 12 skinny cards in front of you representing ships, labeled 1 through 12. On your turn you roll 2d6 and decide whether you want to activate 2 cards using the dice values of the individual dice or if you want to add them up and activate a higher value card. Then you can buy a new card, replacing one of your 12 with the new one and flipping the old one into a new 'deployed state'. When your opponents roll for their turn, your deployed ships can activate in a similar way.

I like it a little better than Machi Koro. My main complaint with that one was just how boring the roll and go play was, with little strategy other than grouping your purchases around 6-7-8.

With this one, since you pick one or two of your dice you do have a little more strategy. 1-6 come up far more often yet many of the best cards are in the 10-11-12 range. You roll and you have this moment of evaluating your options. Still, its a quick evaluation because one of your options will be objectively better in almost all cases.

I'd say I'd be interested in another playthrough but I wouldn't want to own the game and play lots. It doesn't seem very deep.

I enjoy Space Base quite a bit.

It can certainly get more strategic with the activation cubes and moving your cards all over the board for better placement. I agree its not deep, but there is some satisfaction in setting up your engine in such a way that if your roll an XX you all sorts of things happening.

Igneus wrote:

Zombicide is out as a mobile game now...it seems pretty faithful.

I just posted my thoughts on the iOS Catch-All:

New Zombicide game

.....is single player. Bought just now and will give thoughts later. Note I've never played Zombicide.
https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/0...

Edit 1: I played through the first two Zones totaling 10 maps. I have access two five characters and have not bought/unlocked any additional ones.

Good: The scenario format is alright as the game has a lot of different types of missions and interactions. The game moves quickly because of the bookkeeping being done for you....I probably would not want to play this solo as a tabletop game. Finding and trying out the next character abilities and weapons is a classic gameplay loop and it is done well here. Being able to replay maps and try to Perfect them by not taking damage and earning more currency is a nice fun challenge. The spawn points spit out new zombies every turn which is a nice way to keep up pressure. Even when getting Overrun you earn currency for each kill that survives the party wipe. The BUY buttons on the DLC characters don't seem to actually do anything.

Not for me: As you unlock new stuff, the difficulty so far is mostly ramping up by just ticking up the stats on the zombies little by little each map. On one map I was only slightly less powerful than the onrushing horde....it took probably 20 minutes of me scraping away as many as I could for currency before they finally wiped me...I guess the currency might be worth it but it was far from fun. The UI when trying to scroll and view your characters and weapons is touchy....if you so much as tap on the screen where an upgrade button will be, it will do so and use your currency.

So I might play Zone 3 but I completely wore myself out of dungeon crawls with such basic combat systems from far too much time spent on the Diablo series and occasionally an MMO, so Zombicide doesn't seem to be my cup of tea.

edit 2: I completed Zone 3, which introduced more zombie types and, more importantly for me, required fully exploiting the different class skills on the different characters. And I liked it. I liked it so much that I also completed Zone 4, and now my team is a varied bunch of badasses. I look forward to playing through the remaining zones 5-8 and seeing where this goes.

CarlBear95 wrote:

I enjoy Space Base quite a bit.

It can certainly get more strategic with the activation cubes and moving your cards all over the board for better placement. I agree its not deep, but there is some satisfaction in setting up your engine in such a way that if your roll an XX you all sorts of things happening.

Its tough to judge a game as a first timer. I didnt have a semblance of a strategy until an hour had passed. I had a 2x powered up and a 'shift dice to the right' thing, then I was stacking good options on 11 and 12. If I could have had that little rube goldberg machine go off I might not have finished dead last (by a lot)

Next time I'd try that again (earlier this time) and maybe get a 2nd shift dice and a reroll if possible.

Delbin wrote:

Humble Board Game Bundle. Might just be worth it for Scythe alone.

I picked it up for that but I'm also interested in the Pathfinder game. I tried it a while ago on my ancient ipad3 and it seemed promising but it didn't run very well.

Did they clean up the Scythe problems? When it was first available for purchase for early access, the reports I saw was that it hardly ran.

Huge board game sale on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/s/browse/ref=...

Wow, that's a lot of wading through crap. Some of it is over 50% off though!

Here are what I think are gems:

Robinson Crusoe
Sushi Go Party
Chickapig
Pandemic
Arhkam Horror 3rd Edition
Twilight Imperium 4th Edition
Coup
Game of Thrones Trivia (just kidding)
Sheriff of Nottingham
King of New York
7 Wonders Babel
Exploding Kittens--both standard and NSFW versions are on sale
Disney Villainous
Red Dragon Inn
Monopoly Gamer--reportedly the only version worth playing
Splendor
Ticket to Ride Firet Journey (my favorite edition since it plays fast)
Photosynthesis
Patchwork
Kingdomino

I can recommend El Dorado in that sale. So great.

More print and play building...

This time a solo game that's currently doing fairly well on Kickstarter Maquis

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/4sBLrcb.jpg)

If anyone is interested here's how I crafted, spoilered for those that ain't fussed

Spoiler:

Game Board - Printed on label paper, sprayed with clear acrylic and stuck to 3mm foamex board wastage picked up from a sign maker I use for work.

Pawns and resource tokens - Printed on label Paper, sprayed clear acrylic, circle punched and stuck to old tokens from old games, casino set.

Cards - Gutter fold on 80 gsm paper wrapped around 160 gsm black card core.

Spare room action tiles - Label paper, sprayed clear acrylic, scissor cut and stuck to old wooden bottle top game pieces.

Tracking and action cubes - single lego bits pilfered from the boy's collection.

Day tracking marker - Lego dynamite.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/08i9iwK.jpg)

That's part one of the Side Room Games PnP boxed set am working on. Part two, Black Sonata is next up.

I'm enjoying the crafting!

Fredrik_S wrote:

I can recommend El Dorado in that sale. So great.

Tokaido for $22.74 is great and I have enjoyed Concept and Quadropolis.
Steep discount on Star Wars Destiny Dice game for those into it ($100 36 pack booster for $31)

Photosynthesis is a cheap as I've seen.

Sale note aside - I'm attending a local con here in a few weeks and there is a huge virtual market where people can list games for sale, to be paid/delivered at the con. I love how despite listing several games at what I consider very low prices - about half of the price of a new discounted copy from Amazon or Miniature Market - there are still people trying to lowball me with offers of half of what I'm asking. I get that people are looking for a deal and I am free to refuse, but come on. I'm not one of those guys trying to sell opened/used games for $3 less than a new copy.

I was looking into Bloodborne today. I'm not a Bloodborne fan. Never played the video game but I did enjoy the card game. After looking into it more I think I might be tempted to back it. There seems to be some Gloomhaven influence on the design (combat card play, small randomness). If anything I would think this is simpler more streamlined Gloomhaven. Shorter mini multiple campaigns seems like a good way to go too. Still debating, I think the only thing that is driving me away is the darker theme and too many miniatures (weird, right?), but it doesn't look as bad as Kingdom Death.

$100 doesn't seem too bad, I am worried about all the expansions and add ons they will throw on top and my lack of self control!

Keithustus wrote:
Igneus wrote:

Zombicide is out as a mobile game now...it seems pretty faithful.

I just posted my thoughts on the iOS Catch-All:

So I have also gone through the first 3 zones at this point. For a time killer I like it. It is a pretty simple dungeon crawl. It has a mildly interesting story and the game play is straightforward.

What I like is that its a simple crawler in the vain of what is a pretty popular board game series. It takes a lot of the game play elements and translates them well. There is a story there, not great but it is there. What I don't like is that seeing weapon stats while in a character is not able to be done properly. To see important things like dice count you have to keep going out and checking the weapon in the armory. The Assassin class is basically useless since all of its weapon dice is a count of 1. So even dual wielding you can hit 2 monsters, semi hard. While someone like Josh (its a free DLC Character you get for linking your online asmodee account) dual wielding sawed off shotguns can clear out 6 enemies in one action/roll. Sure the assassin character Wanda can move a bunch but why run when you can stroll sucking up the cans of food every destroyed zombie has stored on their persons.

I think it hits that dungeon crawl on a phone spot very nicely. Most likely I will finish this.

IMAGE(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/A1nc8s2XE5L._SX425_.jpg)

I played 5 Minute Dungeon. I was seeing family over easter weekend and couldn't bring games with me because Frontier is super cheap unless you bring a suitcase. Went to Wal-Mart and decided to pick it up. I knew about it because My game group played it and I was in another game and they were having amazing time. Played with family members and it was a lot of fun! Extremely simple and easy to teach. The real time aspect is the heart of the game and communicating on the fly is fun but also frustrating in the funniest way possible. My 8 year old niece pick it up really fast.

Crockpot wrote:

I played 5 Minute Dungeon

Still enjoying it with the family and simple enough the boy could teach it to others at a charity game day tother week. The timer is key to the fun.

Re: Zombicide app...

Igneus wrote:

What I don't like is that seeing weapon stats while in a character is not able to be done properly. To see important things like dice count you have to keep going out and checking the weapon in the armory.

YES! This is awful. Especially for someone like me who hasn't played the board game.

A related annoying minor mistake is that the weapon stats screen, on adjacent lines of text, uses two different definitions of "range": (1) the distance at which a weapon may engage targets, e.g. 0-1 or 1-3, and (2) mathematical range, i.e. how much variation is there in how much damage the weapon does, e.g. 20-26 damage per hit. Does the board game suffer this ambiguity too?

Igneus wrote:

The Assassin class is basically useless since all of its weapon dice is a count of 1. So even dual wielding you can hit 2 monsters, semi hard....Sure the assassin character Wanda can move a bunch but why run when you can stroll sucking up the cans of food every destroyed zombie has stored on their persons.

I actually use Assassin Wanda on most missions and have absolutely no use for the Scout Amy. Wanda is my weapon collector, button presser, and door opener. Everyone else in the party is there for firepower. And with the way I have Wanda equipped, with one knife and one revolver, she can one-hit kill many of the zombies either in her zone or the next one, which can prove very useful if I need the others' firepower for crowd control. Amy, on the other hand, is neither great at maneuver nor great at firepower. She also only uses melee weapons. By using Wanda like this instead of just another firepower character I get a lot more flexibility to move the guns forward while she runs around doing all the non-bang-bang work like collecting every single weapon on every map. (I have Perfect on all the maps through Zone 4.)

Crockpot wrote:

I played 5 Minute Dungeon. I was seeing family over easter weekend and couldn't bring games with me because Frontier is super cheap unless you bring a suitcase. Went to Wal-Mart and decided to pick it up. I knew about it because My game group played it and I was in another game and they were having amazing time. Played with family members and it was a lot of fun! Extremely simple and easy to teach. The real time aspect is the heart of the game and communicating on the fly is fun but also frustrating in the funniest way possible. My 8 year old niece pick it up really fast.

Big fan of it. The Marvel version was on the amazon board game sale yesterday. Can't wait to give it a go with my son and nephew/niece.

Igneus wrote:
Crockpot wrote:

I played 5 Minute Dungeon. I was seeing family over easter weekend and couldn't bring games with me because Frontier is super cheap unless you bring a suitcase. Went to Wal-Mart and decided to pick it up. I knew about it because My game group played it and I was in another game and they were having amazing time. Played with family members and it was a lot of fun! Extremely simple and easy to teach. The real time aspect is the heart of the game and communicating on the fly is fun but also frustrating in the funniest way possible. My 8 year old niece pick it up really fast.

Big fan of it. The Marvel version was on the amazon board game sale yesterday. Can't wait to give it a go with my son and nephew/niece.

The Marvel one looks more fun and has more variety. But I think a prefer the expansion for dungeon because it adds a 6th player and adds some silliness with the game.