The Big Board-Gaming Catch-All

Dreaded Gazebo wrote:
MikeSands wrote:

I played another game of Beyond the Sun yesterday, with two people new to the game and one who had played before. Great fun, and the new players both wanted to explore it more in future.

For me I think this is now tied with Oath as best game of the year (and Oath has a much narrower appeal).

Beyond the Sun is fantastic. It's one of my top designs in the last few years. I love how all the systems are interconnected and meaningful; not all games manage to get that right.

I've mentioned before, I think, how I will play BtS on BGA at the drop of a hat. But there's a part of it that's not thematic enough for me. The game is a tech tree and that's fun to play, but the game world doesn't inspire. But it's better than Oath for me, the latter being an instance where the designer for once couldn't create a coherent universe.

Natus wrote:

I've mentioned before, I think, how I will play BtS on BGA at the drop of a hat. But there's a part of it that's not thematic enough for me. The game is a tech tree and that's fun to play, but the game world doesn't inspire. But it's better than Oath for me, the latter being an instance where the designer for once couldn't create a coherent universe.

Oh, that's an interesting criticism. I have a copy sitting on my shelf unplayed, but all I have heard about Oath is that the story building and world building is amazing. What was it about the game that fell short, do you feel?

I certainly would not characterise Oath as incoherent. The cards are however a huge array of weird elements that appear in the empire now and again.

The game doesn't have a story itself, it provides a base that you can make stories from.

Personally, I love this emergent history that we're creating as we play games with my copy, but I don't think that's for everyone. Especially as the game is a pretty ruthless one to start with.

Fredrik_S wrote:
Natus wrote:

I've mentioned before, I think, how I will play BtS on BGA at the drop of a hat. But there's a part of it that's not thematic enough for me. The game is a tech tree and that's fun to play, but the game world doesn't inspire. But it's better than Oath for me, the latter being an instance where the designer for once couldn't create a coherent universe.

Oh, that's an interesting criticism. I have a copy sitting on my shelf unplayed, but all I have heard about Oath is that the story building and world building is amazing. What was it about the game that fell short, do you feel?

For me, Pax Pamir 2 and Root (I have yet to play JC) were exceptionally strong strategy games with excellent world-building (Root being the fictional universe, of course.) The factions, generally, were asymmetric, but it all worked together well. Oath is a legacy sandbox game...it's all on you to create a yes, coherent universe from all the weird stuff that Wehrle throws at you. And if you don't buy it--and I don't--not all the repeated games in the world will help that.

Then again, I'm not a sandbox kind of gamer. For strategy games in particular, I need an extremely strong chassis and a very clear idea of who I am and what my objective is. Burn Protestants? Capture three strongholds? Attain 30 VPs? No problem. Oath just confuses me, all the more so because of Wehrle's previous amazing thematic and design track record.

Natus wrote:

For strategy games in particular, I need an extremely strong chassis and a very clear idea of who I am and what my objective is. Burn Protestants? Capture three strongholds? Attain 30 VPs? No problem. Oath just confuses me, all the more so because of Wehrle's previous amazing thematic and design track record.

For me, this is a really clear element of Oath.

The chancellor is trying to maintain the empire by staying true to a particular victory condition (ie. what their dynasty stands for).
The citizens are factions trying to take over the empire from within (while keeping it strong, generally).
The exiles are external or outlaw factions either trying to take over the empire entire (via the oath) or to burn it down and replace it with something new (via a vision).

This all seems on point if you look at it in the context of the history of empires. E.g. China or Egypt in particular.

MikeSands wrote:

This all seems on point if you look at it in the context of the history of empires. E.g. China or Egypt in particular.

Now an Oath game tied to a particular empire? *That* I would buy! Er...buy and keep.

a couple months into Pandemic Legacy Season 0 and I'm really digging it.

My wife is a little blood thirsty though.

She enjoys removing enemy agents from the board much more than regular Pandemic disease cubes.

We’ve been pandemic legacy ing since last spring. Oh, wait.

Anybody Betrayal Legacy? If so, impressions? It appears OOP and is going for a premium.
Thank you,
Chad

chooka1 wrote:

Anybody Betrayal Legacy? If so, impressions? It appears OOP and is going for a premium.

I played through it and enjoyed it. I'd rate it below the pandemics and king's dilemma, but above others that I have played.

The overarching story, the way the game/house changes, and way each family develops are cool.

However, it's still Betrayal with all the random elements. Sometimes a haunt starts with one side set to win easily and the other to have no chance.

We got about 6 games into Betrayal Legacy then had a player leave the group and never got back to it. Classic issue with RPGs and Legacy games. That’s why my wife and I do the Pandemic Legacy games 2 player.

In other news. I love soloing Spirit Island.

When I play a spirit for the first time in Spirit Island I just play base game with no adversary or scenarios to get a feel for the Spirit.

I’m working through the Spirits from the most recent expansion and Just played Grinning Trickster Stirs Up Trouble.

He’s basically Loki.

I only got to use 1 fear card in the whole game game and wiped Every single coloniser piece off the board, all cities, towns and Explorers. Pretty sure I’ve never won that clean before.

He has a card called over enthusiastic arson. Wipes towns off the board really quick but causes blight. The trade off is he has to lose a card every time he cleans up blight. So he seems great for a rush strategy. Was a weird game but pretty cool.

MikeSands wrote:
chooka1 wrote:

Anybody Betrayal Legacy? If so, impressions? It appears OOP and is going for a premium.

I played through it and enjoyed it. I'd rate it below the pandemics and king's dilemma, but above others that I have played.

The overarching story, the way the game/house changes, and way each family develops are cool.

However, it's still Betrayal with all the random elements. Sometimes a haunt starts with one side set to win easily and the other to have no chance.

We played all the way through, and I'd agree with this. The randomness of Betrayal is still there. Not just with the haunts - there were some cool things they did with the legacy elements that never really came back around into play in our game. It was fun but I wouldn't pay premium for a copy while it's OOP.

Greetings. Can someone give me the link in this thread where, 'Dune Imperium' was discussed? I've tried several times to search it with no success. Thanks.

Donan wrote:

Greetings. Can someone give me the link in this thread where, 'Dune Imperium' was discussed? I've tried several times to search it with no success. Thanks.

Googling for "inurl:<this thread url, excluding the page query> dune imperium" shows one hit a few pages back. Were you expecting more?

merphle wrote:
Donan wrote:

Greetings. Can someone give me the link in this thread where, 'Dune Imperium' was discussed? I've tried several times to search it with no success. Thanks.

Googling for "inurl:<this thread url, excluding the page query> dune imperium" shows one hit a few pages back. Were you expecting more?

I thought I had posted about it here but I suppose not. I've only played one game of Dune Imperium and I am a huge Dune fanatic. It was good, but imho it can't measure up to the original 6-player boardgame, which is a work of art.

Boudreaux wrote:
MikeSands wrote:
chooka1 wrote:

Anybody Betrayal Legacy? If so, impressions? It appears OOP and is going for a premium.

I played through it and enjoyed it. I'd rate it below the pandemics and king's dilemma, but above others that I have played.

The overarching story, the way the game/house changes, and way each family develops are cool.

However, it's still Betrayal with all the random elements. Sometimes a haunt starts with one side set to win easily and the other to have no chance.

We played all the way through, and I'd agree with this. The randomness of Betrayal is still there. Not just with the haunts - there were some cool things they did with the legacy elements that never really came back around into play in our game. It was fun but I wouldn't pay premium for a copy while it's OOP.

Betrayal is just about my favorite board game. The legacy aspect only increases it. We had a lot of fun making some characters return at unreasonable ages which so they could have a chance to be or not be the traitor. It makes for a fun story. There is the Betrayal randomness, but if that's a problem for you, then Betrayal isn't the game for you. The first haunt really stuck with me.

merphle wrote:
Donan wrote:

Greetings. Can someone give me the link in this thread where, 'Dune Imperium' was discussed? I've tried several times to search it with no success. Thanks.

Googling for "inurl:<this thread url, excluding the page query> dune imperium" shows one hit a few pages back. Were you expecting more?

Yes, seeing how much was said on boardgamegeek, I thought a more insightful discussion would be here. Oh well, my mistake.

merphle wrote:
Donan wrote:

Greetings. Can someone give me the link in this thread where, 'Dune Imperium' was discussed? I've tried several times to search it with no success. Thanks.

Googling for "inurl:<this thread url, excluding the page query> dune imperium" shows one hit a few pages back. Were you expecting more?

I played it once. I believe my review of it was "It's fine." when asked about it by the person who brought it to game night.

Natus wrote:
merphle wrote:
Donan wrote:

Greetings. Can someone give me the link in this thread where, 'Dune Imperium' was discussed? I've tried several times to search it with no success. Thanks.

Googling for "inurl:<this thread url, excluding the page query> dune imperium" shows one hit a few pages back. Were you expecting more?

I thought I had posted about it here but I suppose not. I've only played one game of Dune Imperium and I am a huge Dune fanatic. It was good, but imho it can't measure up to the original 6-player boardgame, which is a work of art.

I have the original from when it first came out. I may end up selling it for it’s hard to get 6 people together nowadays. I was interested in DI because I read it’s solo play is good.

Natus wrote:

I thought I had posted about it here but I suppose not. I've only played one game of Dune Imperium and I am a huge Dune fanatic. It was good, but imho it can't measure up to the original 6-player boardgame, which is a work of art.

I recently got to play several games of the new GF9 version of Dune. Not the reprint - the new, shorter upcoming remake of the classic game. It's 2-4 player only, with the Fremen, House Harkonnen, House Atreides, and the "Imperium", which is sort of a combination of the Emperor, Spacing Guild, and Bene Gesserit.

It's pretty good. It sheds some of the fluff that makes the classic game so memorable (like the Bene Gesserit win prediction) and abstracts a lot of what it does keep, but it turns a "convention-only Event Game" into a nice, tight 90 minutes. The entire game is 5 turns long, the win condition is still holding 3 of 5 strongholds (I forget what they're called), combat is basically the same, and most of the unique powers of each faction are maintained. A lot of the asymmetry is moved into a Combat deck and a type of Event deck, which actually contain a lot of the same cool weapons and events from the original.

If you're a fan of the original it's definitely worth a look. It turns Dune into something that can be played fairly regularly vs. once every other year. It's probably still best at 4 players only, we did play a 2-player game that took probably 30 minutes but it wasn't quite as interesting.

Been playing in a regular 4 player, middling to heavy euro game in person group for months now. However last week was my first big meet up since Feb 2020. With 20 attendees, it was nice to be in a room full of gamers again. Some swift games were played.

Flamme Rouge. All 4 players got at least one cyclist over the finish line on the same turn, so close. Excellent and I may well look into purchasing for family play.

Furnace. Lovely looking engine builder with a neat bidding mechanic which elevates it above the standard for me. Want to play again!

Mini Rails. Despite me winning, of the four players I think I was the least enamoured with this small economic train game. It's short length was a plus.

Bubblefuzz wrote:

Flamme Rouge. All 4 players got at least one cyclist over the finish line on the same turn, so close. Excellent and I may well look into purchasing for family play.

This has to be my favourite game lately, and one I think should be the new gateway game gold standard.
It is incredibly elegant, super simple to teach, yet still has just enough tricky decisions that it engages even diehard strategy gamers.

A couple of months ago I managed a 2d meetup with 3 gaming buddies, we brought lots of big chunky strategy games to play like Anachrony and Gaia Project, but Flamme Rouge was the game we kept coming back to, and the campaign rules make it even better!

We played Cosmic Frog again last night and it solidified my opinion that it's my favorite game this year. It moves so fast and is so quirky and different from anything in my collection. First game we played we had not mixed up the end tiles and ended up finishing the game after the first strike so we set it up again, now with the correct mixing of barren and eruption tiles and it worked much better. Another little rule we had played wrong with the first time I played was that siphons give you an oomph back PER siphon PER land type.

I haven't decided on which frog type I like best, but I loved having the mind borer for a few rounds and making other players attack each eachother and sending them to the outer dimensions so their vault was unlocked for me. It wasn't a super solid strategy since I lost but it was worth exploring for sure.

We also played it with 3 people this time and I feel like 4 players is the sweet spot for that game.

Only bad thing about it is the enormous setup in the beginning with all the tiles. It takes awhile.

We also played Tyrants of the Underdark again after a few years have gone by and it doesn't really work anymore does it? It's not so much a deck builder but a cram anything into your deck.. builder. The fighting over the areas is too slow and uninteresting because the rewards from winning just one city is not good enough when I can just buy a card that gives as many vp or more than the holding a city. The cards themselves are pretty much variations of soldiers, money or spies and nothing really exciting or interesting comes up from buying them. It's fine as a background entertainment while chatting and having a drink but as far as quality games, it's a no from me.

Fredrik_S wrote:

We also played Tyrants of the Underdark again after a few years have gone by and it doesn't really work anymore does it? It's not so much a deck builder but a cram anything into your deck.. builder. The fighting over the areas is too slow and uninteresting because the rewards from winning just one city is not good enough when I can just buy a card that gives as many vp or more than the holding a city. The cards themselves are pretty much variations of soldiers, money or spies and nothing really exciting or interesting comes up from buying them. It's fine as a background entertainment while chatting and having a drink but as far as quality games, it's a no from me.

Crap. I bought it pre-pandemic and have been waiting to get it to the table.

Natus wrote:

Crap. I bought it pre-pandemic and have been waiting to get it to the table.

My friend who owns it loves it to pieces, so you might as well?

Yeah, don't give up on it until you try it. I think Tyrants is a pretty good blend of area control and deck building.

I got in another game of Beyond the Sun yesterday. Reinforced all my previous love, and won over another new player.

The thing I noticed is that it doesn't feel like it should have depth of replayability, but each game goes quite different anyhow.

Fredrik_S wrote:
Natus wrote:

Crap. I bought it pre-pandemic and have been waiting to get it to the table.

My friend who owns it loves it to pieces, so you might as well?

My playgroup (other than the person who dislikes deck builders) also really likes Tyrants. I can see Fredrick's point, but it does blend together quite well and if you ignore one aspect of the game you will probably fall behind.

Anyone have any experience with those rubber bands or elastic straps meant to hold board game boxes closed? I have a couple games that always disassemble themselves in transit if the lid comes slightly loose and was thinking of picking some up for use while traveling. Any recommendations?

I like the look of those, but I'd worry that the raised leather square at the joint would deform the contained box, or the box resting above.