The Big Board-Gaming Catch-All

Natus wrote:

Root: the Underworld Expansion delivered.

What? I didn't think that one was even on the way yet!

If you ordered just the expansion, you’re frontloaded and should get it soon. If you got the everything package (me) or bought some add-ons (also me) it will be another month or three. And that’s just for US/CAN.

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Every time stories I've enjoyed to some extent.

Madame is complete trash.

It's starts out nicely, introduces a good mechanism. Interesting setting...

then it just spirals out of control. We gave up. It was too long, typos made it rough, and we missed on thing to clear the path forward. You keep losing things you need and makes you back track. It keeps introducing mini games that seem impossible to finish right. They also give you a red herring from the beginning and tell you early on but give you no direction to go next. So you think you're done but you're just on the wrong trail.

Even when we gave up, we try to move forward just reading cards and going through the path we would of went through. The ending kind of stops and leaves you with no direction. It's awful.

I'm kind of glad they are doing a reboot of Time Stories. It needed to change to make it good and my time stories group seem all on board and looking forward to what is next. We enjoyed every scenario up until now.

I'm still on the Time Stories train but if anybody asks, I would tell them to skip Madame. It's awful.

Afraid I have to agree with you there.

I wanted to like it but... it kinda felt like they knew this was the "last" one for the current line and just wanted to get to an "ending". I liked how they had been slowly revealing the metaplot but... it kinda felt like the last season of GoT in that respect.

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I played a quick couple game of Wavelength and I really enjoyed it. Sadly I could only get four to play tonight, so I don't think this is my full review of the game. I could tell right away this game benefits from having a big group because of the discussion and debate that can develop from a bigger team BUT 4 was still really fun. I was also surprise how well it was receive with my family members. They said they want to play again tomorrow. Hopefully we can get more to join in. It's extremely easy to teach, like codenames you can almost start playing without teaching and people just watching can get it right away.

Crockpot wrote:

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I played a quick couple game of Wavelength and I really enjoyed it. Sadly I could only get four to play tonight, so I don't think this is my full review of the game. I could tell right away this game benefits from having a big group because of the discussion and debate that can develop from a bigger team BUT 4 was still really fun. I was also surprise how well it was receive with my family members. They said they want to play again tomorrow. Hopefully we can get more to join in. It's extremely easy to teach, like codenames you can almost start playing without teaching and people just watching can get it right away.

I'm only going to have 4 for Christmas. We'll try it with 4 competitive, but I think that we'll also try to co-op rules. I suspect that may be more fun for 4.

I also compared Wavelength to Codenames in terms of being able to play immediately without duscussing the rules.

I agree that you want at least six so that there can be a discussion. You can get really interesting debate, but only if there are at least two people who are allowed to talk at a time. Hoping to play it tonight with family!

I didn't try the cooperative rules, that might work better.

We played Wavelength for a couple of hours last night, this game is the real deal. Some hilarious discussions about clues and reveals. Also, both teams are free to talk during all of the turns. We had some great back and forth when teams were discussing clues where the other team was trying to throw them off or throw out contrary suggestions or just generally muddying things up. This is a really genius social game.

Wahey! I got a copy of Pandemic Fall of Rome for Christmas.

MikeSands wrote:

Wahey! I got a copy of Pandemic Fall of Rome for Christmas.

I loved this game, but then I'm a whore for most things Imperial Rome.

I got two more expansions for Mansions of Madness. My wife grabbed them off my wishlist, and coincidentally, that's her favorite boardgame.

Also got some Amazon credit for whenever stuff I want comes back into stock and/or the prices come back to earth.

i got the most recent expansion for mansions too! (the Yig focused one with the cool Basilisk mini)

pyxistyx wrote:

i got the most recent expansion for mansions too! (the Yig focused one with the cool Basilisk mini)

I think I got the two before the most recent. I believe I now have everything other than it, one of the figure & tile collections, and some of the DLC. I need to start trying to play it very regularly - I've got a ton of new content and at least one scenario we failed by the skin of our teeth at the GWJ get-together for PAX South a few years ago.

Played a few more games of Wavelength. It's a solid game, will stay on my shelf but I don't think this will be the next big social game. I notice a lot of people enjoyed playing it but it doesn't have the "just one more game.." that Just One (ha! see what I did there) and Codenames gets. Which we did play Just One later one and people just wanted to keep on going.

But I did get a pleasant surprise where my sister and my brother and law just went back and forth on their own and treated more of a to get a discussion going. We all concluded this might be a great date/couples game (after you do few dates in) and treat as an activity to have fun discussions with.

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Quirky Circuits really impressed me and it might get a 10/10 rating from me after a few more plays. It's basically the mind mix with roborally. Like the mind, you play cards without talking and each card is how your robot moves on the board. It's cooperative and you all need to work together to clean up the room and get back to your charger in time before your battery is up. The flipbook acting like board and rules explanation is brilliant. The game is stupid easy to teach. It's extremely cute and charming. We had a few high five moments and laugh out loud moments. Good to see Mansions of Madness designer do something other than Arkham stuff. I think sadly this game is being overlooked. Perfect family game. Tons of content thanks to the flip book. Can not wait to play this one again.

Santa brought our family Pandemic and we gave it a shot tonight. Super fun. We failed and wiped out the entire population of Earth, but we're itching to try again.

Crockpot, if you liked the flipbook part, have you looked into Stuffed Fables? It’s the first storybook game and charming as hell. There’s some great paint jobs of the minis earlier in this forum (Completely not required).

Keithustus wrote:

Crockpot, if you liked the flipbook part, have you looked into Stuffed Fables? It’s the first storybook game and charming as hell. There’s some great paint jobs of the minis earlier in this forum (Completely not required).

I have but campaign + kid friendly is a bad combination for me right now. I don't have kids, I don't feel the need to make a campaign game out of it. Maybe one day. I know Plaid Hat is going crazy with the flip book concept. Also Near and Far is on my wishlist eventually.

I hope more designers look into a flipbook as a board game concept. I know Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion is doing it, which is a very much welcome concept into Gloomhaven. I might design a game around the concept and see how far I can push it.

Man, Azul is a very different game with two people than it is with four. When you have the brain bandwidth to track your opponent's board as well as your own it changes everything. Maybe there are people out there who can do that with 3 opponents, but not me. Before today I'd only ever played with the full 4 people and the best I could do was focus on my own board and try to make the best pick when it was my turn.

Azul Summer Pavilion is my favorite Azul

Near and Far is kinda terrible. The trappings are great but the gameplay is just no good, even with the coop expansion. In competitive mode it seems like it should be cool, adventuring and collecting goodies for points, but as someone starts to get close to the points goal you start looking at cheesy ways to score points that spoil the gameplay.

I think they need a better gameplay designer to tie together the lovely art and story they've created.

I just started up a campaign of Betrayal Legacy with my wife and sister. We’re almost done with the prelude and it looks like we’re missing a card. We’re at the point where the first player to die draws from the Legacy deck. Except that is very clearly part of the setup for chapter 1. We have cards L1 through L9 accounted for, and the next card is L11. Could someone with access to the game let me know what card L10 says? While I was trying to search for it online we got called away for birthday cake, and nobody needs that table, so the game is on hold until tomorrow evening...

polypusher wrote:

Near and Far is kinda terrible.

Ya it fell really flat for me and it felt like the weakest of Laukat's games.. which is weird because it's seemingly the most popular one.

Above and Below is very similar but felt way more engaging.

polypusher wrote:

Near and Far is kinda terrible. The trappings are great but the gameplay is just no good, even with the coop expansion. In competitive mode it seems like it should be cool, adventuring and collecting goodies for points, but as someone starts to get close to the points goal you start looking at cheesy ways to score points that spoil the gameplay.

I think they need a better gameplay designer to tie together the lovely art and story they've created.

I already played a friend copy and it's probably my favorite Red Raven Game next to Empires of the Void II. Easily better than Above and Below.

GrandmaFunk wrote:
polypusher wrote:

Near and Far is kinda terrible.

Ya it fell really flat for me and it felt like the weakest of Laukat's games.. which is weird because it's seemingly the most popular one.

Above and Below is very similar but felt way more engaging.

Interesting, as I was rather interested in the comparisons of the two as I enjoyed Above and Below.

As I’m exploring solo games, I’m wondering whether to pick up Arkham Horror TCG as Amazon has the base set for $23. Heard good things about the gameplay but also heard negatives about the aggressiveness of the release schedule and just warnings about the related rabbit hole one can end up falling into.

polypusher wrote:

Near and Far is kinda terrible. The trappings are great but the gameplay is just no good, even with the coop expansion. In competitive mode it seems like it should be cool, adventuring and collecting goodies for points, but as someone starts to get close to the points goal you start looking at cheesy ways to score points that spoil the gameplay.

I think they need a better gameplay designer to tie together the lovely art and story they've created.

Agreed. I was so excited about Far and Away after loving Above and Below. I found the whole town aspect pretty much pointless to the game. The adventuring aspect I liked, with the reading of the book and such, but it all ended up being slow and blah. Sold it and played Above and Below again.

I did appreciate that the heroes in Near and Far double as heroes in Above and Below, not that we have yet played A&B again. I have my problems with A&B as well from a game design perspective (certain end-game cards seem to be 'buy these or lose') but overall it's a much better game and leaves plenty of room for the story part of the game.

Crockpot wrote:

Quirky Circuits really impressed me and it might get a 10/10 rating from me after a few more plays. It's basically the mind mix with roborally.

| snip more good infoz |

I have been avoiding the board game scene for a while now so I'll stop buying games that never/rarely get played. When I saw your description, I had to go look for a video and ended up watching Rodney's.

Me want.

Thanks for the write-up, Crock.

-BEP

Vargen wrote:

I just started up a campaign of Betrayal Legacy with my wife and sister. We’re almost done with the prelude and it looks like we’re missing a card. We’re at the point where the first player to die draws from the Legacy deck. Except that is very clearly part of the setup for chapter 1. We have cards L1 through L9 accounted for, and the next card is L11. Could someone with access to the game let me know what card L10 says? While I was trying to search for it online we got called away for birthday cake, and nobody needs that table, so the game is on hold until tomorrow evening...

Man, I wish I'd read this last night. I'll try to check when I get home.