The Big Board-Gaming Catch-All

Haven’t seen anything worthwhile for me on Amazon Prime Day deals including browsing the current lightning deals. Anyone see anything good at all? Best titles I’ve seen are:

$25 Pandemic
$22 Splendor
$20 Onitama
$16 Queendomino
$32 Ticket to Ride (U.S.)
$25 Ticket to Ride Europe
$53 Ticket to Ride Rails and Sails—is this good? New to me.
$11 The Crew (kennerspiel des jahres)

My (virtual) gaming group and I are addicted to The Crew - quest for planet 9. It's a co-op trick taking game, but to win each player has to win a mission, namely winning a trick with a specific card in it. There are 4 suits 1-9 and a trump suit 1-4. There are restrictive communication rules like Hanabi. And that's it. Really complex strategy comes out of very simple rules. Lots of interaction, really quick, lots of fun.

I also got super interested in The Crew, because Board Game Arena has it in Beta and we gave it a try. Got it from Amazon for $.50 thanks to a $10 gift card

Keithustus wrote:

$53 Ticket to Ride Rails and Sails—is this good? New to me.

Ticket to Ride: Rails & Sails is a fun variant, but expect games to run longer with the addition of ships and ship color cards.

+1 vote for The Crew. It was actually very easy to sell to not just my board game friends but my Midwestern extended family. They were intrigued by a "fully cooperative Euchre/Spades game."

Since March my gaming group have been using boardgamearena.com and they just added The Crew into the beta and we've been playing it almost every time we get together. I am glad I got play it since I have it sitting on my shelf and it's still wrapped in plastic. We all really enjoy it.

Keithustus wrote:

Haven’t seen anything worthwhile for me on Amazon Prime Day deals including browsing the current lightning deals. Anyone see anything good at all? Best titles I’ve seen are:

$25 Pandemic
$22 Splendor
$20 Onitama
$16 Queendomino
$32 Ticket to Ride (U.S.)
$25 Ticket to Ride Europe
$53 Ticket to Ride Rails and Sails—is this good? New to me.
$11 The Crew (kennerspiel des jahres)

I don't see that The Crew deal. Do you have a link?

Must have ran out of stock or expired sometime last night.

My only complaint with The Crew is that it is possible, by random chance, to be dealt a set of missions that is basically impossible to complete given everyone's hand composition. However, games are so short that it's pretty quick to reset and try again. It is a minor hurdle on an otherwise fantastic trick-taking game.

Boudreaux wrote:

My only complaint with The Crew is that it is possible, by random chance, to be dealt a set of missions that is basically impossible to complete given everyone's hand composition. However, games are so short that it's pretty quick to reset and try again. It is a minor hurdle on an otherwise fantastic trick-taking game.

You're right about that. The mission where you only succeed if someone wins a trick with a non-trump 1 card took lots of tries. It only happened when one of us started with lots of 1 suit (and the 1 card in that suit) so they could control things and burn everyone else's cards in that suit.

Cross-posting from the Wargamers Corner thread

In the 'What did you play this weekend?' vein - I've been working on a project during social distancing to play through all of Creasy's Fifteen (now Twenty) Decisive Battles of the World series. This weekend was #5 - The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest using the proprietary system from Turning Point Simulations.

Here are some pictures of the initial ambush and counterattack plus a little of the AAR. Full link to this and the others is below.

Ambush:

IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/sJRY3DQ/IMG-20201018-150959-707.jpg)

Romans deploy to formation:

IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/wB5LL4F/IMG-20201018-150959-729.jpg)

Roman breakout:

IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/GMS5Jgt/IMG-20201018-150959-736.jpg)

Spoiler:

Our Arminius demonstrates classic patience, waiting for the optimum moment. Despite Varus falling during the initial ambush, German morale suffers as the Romans put up stiff resistance after initial losses, giving time for a substantial contingent of of the XVIII and XIX Legions to escape. Without the devastating victory promised by Arminius, it's likely the Roman survivors will join the Legio I Germanica and return to complete the conquest and Latinization of Germany.

Link - The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest
Tag Link - #twentybattles

Steam Digital Tabletop Fest: Oct 21 - 26

Not exactly consisting of video adaptations of board games, but there might be some interesting things to check out in there. Not "just" sales, either - there's a schedule of events, like streams with game devs, etc.

If nothing else, this page raised my awareness of a game due to hit early access in 2021: Dice Legacy. I have no idea if it's going to be any good, but it sure does look cute as heck.

I've watched a couple of the dev steams as part of the Steam Digital Tabletop Fest. The one for Root with the designer of the board game and the devs from the digital version was very good. I picked up quite a few strategy tips for the different factions.

There are loads of digital board games on sale from the likes of Dire Wolf, Asmodee, Handelabra, Acram etc. Also, Tabletop Simulator and its official DLC is heavily discounted.

McChuck, two other friends, and I had a successful online game night on Tuesday on his completed Betrayal at House on the Hill Legacy board.

I grabbed a copy of Pandemic Legacy Season 0 yesterday. Now all I need to do is schedule it, easy!

(NZ is currently safe for actual in-person play, too, which I am not taking for granted).

Jealous! (on both counts)!

My FLGS has my Pandemic Season 0 waiting for me to pick up. I'll be playing with my wife so players won't be a barrier but the opportunity we have where we can carve out enough time without kids harassing us and we also have the brain power to tackle games is an issue.

Plus we still have to finish Pandemic Legacy Season 2. We just did October yesterday and the shake up that happened there was beautiful.

Need something new to play with my almost 10 year old son. We've had good luck with 5 minute dungeon, ghost fightin treasure hunters. Bonus for co-op, and theme is important.

El-Producto wrote:

Need something new to play with my almost 10 year old son. We've had good luck with 5 minute dungeon, ghost fightin treasure hunters. Bonus for co-op, and theme is important.

My 9 year old really enjoys Castle Panic, with Wizard's Tower expansion. Might be worth me noting takes a bit longer than those you mention, can take an hour or so.

I'm painting up the little hammer horrorish minis for co-op Horrified at the mo. We've not played yet, but might be worth you looking at.

El-Producto wrote:

Need something new to play with my almost 10 year old son. We've had good luck with 5 minute dungeon, ghost fightin treasure hunters. Bonus for co-op, and theme is important.

It sounds like Ghost Stories would be in the right area not sure how easy it is to get that particular theme of the game though now its been reskinned.

Pandemic Legacy Season 0 update: we got together to play the prologue. It's a lot of fun and a really cool twist on the Pandemic mechanics.
Our game was only a partial success: 1 objective complete, the other failed.

Further details/rant:

Spoiler:

The failed objective was especially annoying: we had an "unknown city" objective, and due to the luck of the cards had not been able to get a blue team in place.
We got the location narrowed down to two cities, one with a team in place ready to grab the goods. The other we could not do anything about.
Can you guess which of the two cities turned out to be the target?

Still, difficulty felt good. Honestly, aside from the luck of the cards, we could have won if we'd prioritised the objective over fighting fires (i.e.: murdering enemy agents).

Oh, and the teams (we already think of them as roving murder vans) are a fantastic mechanic. Lots of fun getting them into place and seeing them do their job.

So weird that my main question for Rob Daviau never got asked: is Season 0 good for people who like legacy games but hate Pandemic? I was quite intrigued by the passport discussion on the episode.

Keithustus wrote:

So weird that my main question for Rob Daviau never got asked: is Season 0 good for people who like legacy games but hate Pandemic? I was quite intrigued by the passport discussion on the episode.

Hard to say without knowing what you dislike about Pandemic. The core gameplay is still the same (card handling, the threat/infection deck, etc). It's just thematically changed to be a cold war spy thriller instead of outbreak control. And you're searching for a bio-weapon so that side may well come on too.

About a year ago I watched a playthrough of a Mars-themed boardgame, and now I can't for the life of me remember what it was called. I've had it in my head for a year that it was Terraforming Mars, but a quick look at a playthrough of TM has dashed that illusion. Here's what I remember through the haze of time and pandemic living:

* Play seemed to be co-operative and the theme was on an individual level
* Theme centered around living in some kind of habitat? With individuals performing jobs and working to manage resources.
* There were definitely cubes used to fill tracks in several different board locations.
* I think the host explained that locations could be upgraded to allow them to be more efficient in what they did.

I remember getting the sense that this was kind of a co-op engine building game, where some players might be putting out (metaphorical) fires and others would be trying to get the engine running smoothly to prevent fires from starting.

Does this sound even remotely familiar to anyone?

Feegle wrote:

About a year ago I watched a playthrough of a Mars-themed boardgame, and now I can't for the life of me remember what it was called. I've had it in my head for a year that it was Terraforming Mars, but a quick look at a playthrough of TM has dashed that illusion. Here's what I remember through the haze of time and pandemic living:

* Play seemed to be co-operative and the theme was on an individual level
* Theme centered around living in some kind of habitat? With individuals performing jobs and working to manage resources.
* There were definitely cubes used to fill tracks in several different board locations.
* I think the host explained that locations could be upgraded to allow them to be more efficient in what they did.

I remember getting the sense that this was kind of a co-op engine building game, where some players might be putting out (metaphorical) fires and others would be trying to get the engine running smoothly to prevent fires from starting.

Does this sound even remotely familiar to anyone?

Was it First Martians? The cubes etc sound like it

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/...

Yes. Yes it was. Thank you!

MikeSands wrote:

Hard to say without knowing what you dislike about Pandemic.

That it’s supposedly a coop game but really is solo with other players moving some of the pieces around for that player.

My FLGS ordered me Castle Panic and it just arrived, picking up tomorrow.

Can't wait.

Keithustus wrote:
MikeSands wrote:

Hard to say without knowing what you dislike about Pandemic.

That it’s supposedly a coop game but really is solo with other players moving some of the pieces around for that player.

This is known as the alpha gamer problem. My opinion is that it can be mitigated, to a degree, if the person who would be the alpha gamer is aware of the problem and deliberately tries not to quarterback the game for everyone else.

Now there are many games that mitigate this through design, and most often that's due to the insertion of a real-time element (which reduces the time in which an alpha gamer would have to react to and comment on what everyone else should do). Examples include Escape: The Curse of the Temple and Space Alert. sometimes it's forced by another constraint.. such as, no one can talk (e.g. Magic Maze).

I would say classic Pandemic can suffer from alpha gamers. I've played only a bit of Pandemic Legacy Season 1, and none of the others, and that experience was not enough for me to weigh in on whether the Pandemic Legacy series has addressed this or not.

Yes, I love Space Alert in part for that. It’s odd that the issue which can ruin original Pandemic wasn’t mentioned in the Season 0 discussion.