Anyone collect board games? Just babbling about them.

[mjmjr25]

My boys would like it i'm sure. The box is just so large for how much play it will get is a big part of it too.

Well made point on the minis.

My kids are stupid bright - so that part isn't much of a benefit as it might be to some others, but again, a good point.

We play Mutant Meeples which is sort of like hyper fast version of robo rally, etc. My oldest 2 kids are just insane at that one. It's intimidating.

If it doesn't sell for $65 - i'll prolly keep it and give it some plays. I've attributed the super high BGG rating to the following League of Legends has, but I take it your view is the game is rock solid no matter what the branding?

 

[lithy]

I did not care for MvM. Preface that by saying that we only did a tutorial and one actual mission, I also did not read the rules I was taught so if I have something wrong it is either my friend's mistake or my mistaken memory.

Programming: I won't say I love programming games but I can enjoy it, Colt Express as an example but it is so frantic with so much changing that I'm not sure how much it can be considered programming. Ricochet Robots is fun in more of a puzzle type Chu Chu Rocket sort of game. I liked the programming movement in MvM.

Cooperative and Real-Time-ish?: I usually love cooperative games. Pandemic being probably my favorite game, we loved Legacy Season 1. I absolutely am ok with team wins. The supposed cooperative nature of MvM was so limited though. Add in the real time element of card selection and it was too chaotic to be enjoyable as a cooperative game. In our group there is no good way to penalize players in taking too long to select cards either which kinda makes it more boringer than if you were just frantically picking cards. But then with frantic picking plans are poorly made or not made at all.

That's my memory though it probably has been 2 years since I played...

 

[NeoSneth]

My boys would like it i'm sure. The box is just so large for how much play it will get is a big part of it too.

Well made point on the minis.

My kids are stupid bright - so that part isn't much of a benefit as it might be to some others, but again, a good point.

We play Mutant Meeples which is sort of like hyper fast version of robo rally, etc. My oldest 2 kids are just insane at that one. It's intimidating.

If it doesn't sell for $65 - i'll prolly keep it and give it some plays. I've attributed the super high BGG rating to the following League of Legends has, but I take it your view is the game is rock solid no matter what the branding?

The high rating is genuine. The connection to LoL is quite minimal unless you are deep into that world. It's not really mentioned anywhere in the game.

It does a good job of setting up an impossible mission that you ultimately overcome. The boss battle.... amazing.
People don't tend to realize that you get much stronger as the mission goes on. The board might be entirely covered by minions, but you get that one card slotted and find a way.

It does require people to play together. One for skill level, and another is for drafting. As lithy mentioned, one person can sour the draft. It's easily overcome by calling out you need a turn, combat, or scrap before the flop.

It's also one of the few games where I don't need the rulebook. I can put it on the table 4 months later, and skim the Quick reference card.

There's 10 missions in the box plus the tutorial missions. That ends up being 20+ hours, because you may fail a mission and need to repeat. It's quite similar to Pandemic Legacy in that regard.

 

[NeoSneth]

Bumping this up since so many of us are stuck at home. I really don't play boardgames online, but maybe this will improve the online experience to the point that I will. There's definitely great online portals for boardgaming, but I just dont focus like I would in person.

The gf and I knocked out Detective - a modern crime board game
This is probably one of my least favorite games from Ignaci. There is soooo much favor text. The entire game is flavor text. The overarching story was very cool, but I just couldn't get into the mechanisms. I think I want to switch to Chronicles of Crime or Deadline for our detective fix.

We are also planning to wrap up another Arkham LCG campaign this week. This would be the Carcosa story line. Still one of my favorite games, but I think it's starting to wear on my partner. It can be a bit difficult, so I make the game a bit easier at times without her knowing.

After that we have 7th Continent lined up. This looks like a great game to just leave on the table and play in the evenings, though I've been told you want to "reset" at times. My concern with this one is the hype. Seems easy enough, and people can join at any time if we actually have friends come over.

I might even try some Automata for Star Wars : Outer Rim. The game is actually a good open space boardgame that doesn't overcomplicate itself like the FireFly bg.

 

[mjmjr25]

Wow - can't believe it's been 8 months since I posted in this thread.

We've played a ton of stuff since my last post.

Machi Koro Legacy: really good LIGHT legacy game. It has just enough new each game to make it feel like a Legacy, but it's not intense and you can take time off in between plays.
Pandemic Legacy: We're in October, like 17 games in - game is balls hard now. Lost 3 out of 4. Fantastic game. A little creepy playing it right now.
King's Dilemma: More story than game, but super fun and you absolutely need to play with 5.
Point Salad: Super light, will get old soon, played about 18 rounds of it so far - excellent gateway and something to bring out at in-laws.
Amul: Card drafting game, very close to 7 Wonders, love this one, very under the radar.
Underwater Cities: Fantastic engine builder with nice actions to take each round - lots of blocking in a 4p game. Some similarities to Terraforming Mars.
Wingspan w/expansion: light game, a little long with 4, best at 3, great variety game to game. A good engine is possible, but then turns are too long, I like it, don't love it.
Tapestry: This game is fantastic - very similar to Underwater Cities actually, but plays a little faster and feels more grandiose. Love this one.
Orleans: Super fast game, easy to teach, but still feels like you're playing a mid-range euro.
Jaws: Surprisingly fun, plays fast, feels like a legit game - very pleasantly surprised.
Sundae Split: I cut you choose card game - super light but very fun.
Rail Pass: Co-op dexterity game in real-time. Nothing quite like it - very fun. Don't let the boxart fool you.

So many more...

 

[lithy]

We are generally back to staples, Pandemic, Splendor, Kingdomino, Jaipur, 7 Wonders Duel, Alchemists with King's Golem expansion.

I'm super bummed that Legacy Season 3 isn't out yet, would be a great time to play it, maybe I should play through Season 1 and 2 again to kill the time.

I was given an opportunity to play King's Dilemma and passed, didn't seem like a good fit for me gamewise.

Also playing some games with the 5 year old, he's getting better at losing...not great.

I have also gotten back into Star Wars CCG, but wife is reluctant to play so I mostly sit and build decks in my head...

 

[mjmjr25]

King's Dilemma is nice for it's uniqueness, but really needs 5 people to maximize what it is. You are force with moral dilemmas and depending what your family goal is (permanent, secret) and what you yearly goal is (changes game to game) you will find yourself rationalizing things you may not otherwise normally agree with. It's a great exercise in finding out what intrinsic biases you might have and with the right group can be a great time.

My boys like deckbuilders and card based games. We tried getting into Among the Stars, but it was meh. Not much interaction. Game end is underwhelming.

Oh, Cities Skylines was a pleasant surprise. A lot of reviews panned it - it was quite good I thought, both as solo and 2-3 player. Too convoluted for 4 players.

We've played a lot of Hex Roller recently too - an easy to teach but fairly thinky roll and write.

Tiny Towns you can teach a 5yo, but for such a simple game - that might be infuriating especially at higher player counts - plays up to 6 and if you start building something and no one picks the material you need before it gets back to you...madness and probably throwing stuff will happen. My 9yo (youngest) still loses it at this one - such a simple game, really dig this one.

 

[NeoSneth]

King's Dilemma is nice for it's uniqueness, but really needs 5 people to maximize what it is. You are force with moral dilemmas and depending what your family goal is (permanent, secret) and what you yearly goal is (changes game to game) you will find yourself rationalizing things you may not otherwise normally agree with. It's a great exercise in finding out what intrinsic biases you might have and with the right group can be a great time.

My boys like deckbuilders and card based games. We tried getting into Among the Stars, but it was meh. Not much interaction. Game end is underwhelming.

Oh, Cities Skylines was a pleasant surprise. A lot of reviews panned it - it was quite good I thought, both as solo and 2-3 player. Too convoluted for 4 players.

We've played a lot of Hex Roller recently too - an easy to teach but fairly thinky roll and write.

Tiny Towns you can teach a 5yo, but for such a simple game - that might be infuriating especially at higher player counts - plays up to 6 and if you start building something and no one picks the material you need before it gets back to you...madness and probably throwing stuff will happen. My 9yo (youngest) still loses it at this one - such a simple game, really dig this one.

I still really like deckbuilders, bag builders, and dice builders.

Handful of Stars: is one of my top 3 games of all time.
Hand of Fate : Ordeals - Out of Print, but absolutely a great deck builder. Artwork is stunning.
Artic Scavengers - great post apocalyptic setting. Has a beginner setup. Add mechanisms as you can handle them. really opens up.
Dale of Merchants - i have all 3 sets. so much variety.
Quarriors - great dice and variety. I have played this game well over 40 times since owning it. It's my equalizer with power gamers as it really just comes down to dice rolls. You feel like you are building a "deck" of dice, but the game is quite random in the end.

 

[Vectorman0]

I've been playing board games for about five years now, after being introduced to someone who is really into them. I don't need to collect them because my friend buys everything, learns the rules and then teaches our group. I'm so spoiled that the biggest problem I have is that we don't play most games more than once or twice, so it's hard to get a feel for them. And if we go to play something again a year later, I forgot the rules because we played twenty other games since.

I definitely dislike die-rolling and prefer games that are light on combat or equivalent "political" interaction. That said, I try pretty much anything, and most of the people I play with are flexible enough that we never have a problem choosing what to play. We are pretty big fans of most Vital Lacerda games, namely Lisboa. Those are some of our go-to games when we can't decide.

Since the virus has made meeting up out of the question, we played On Mars on Tabletopia last night. It probably took 25% longer to play because we were all learning the interface. There were a few technical hiccups, but nothing that ruined the experience. One person crashed a few times, which seemed to make a few pieces lose sync between players. We got through it and it was probably only ten minutes lost. I look forward to trying it again next week.

 

[pixeljunkie]

I am really loving Blackstone Fortress, I also grabbed Cthulhu Death May Die on Amazon since it was only $70...playing it now. It's ok. I never understood the term "Ameritrash" until I'd played enough CMON games recently and had the epiphany "ohhh, I GET IT".

As soon as I finish this Cthulhu playthrough, going right back to Blackstone though. It's really the perfect game for solo play.

 

[ForeverSublime]

Will probably have Robinson Crusoe available for trade/sale soon. After the initial "installation" period of learning the rules, the play time is quite reasonable: 2-player games take an hour. You'd think, how the manual is written, the game would take 4 hours.

The game reminds me of a version of Oregon Trail where you have to do all the admin every turn. Maybe it'd be a good solo game if like those print-and-play solo RPGs where you roll to see which of 200 things happen, but instead of having several reference lists, each list is broken into individual components of decks of cards and tokens. If you're into that, or playing solo in general, I'd like to hear what you think of the game. For me, I just don't see it sitting on the shelf waiting for its time to shine with a particular group of guests. There are far more pleasurable options with little more than a safe word as overhead.

@NeoSneth: If you have plans to sell Detective: Modern Crime, let me know.

Atlantis Rising (second edition) is coming in the mail. Stoked.

 

[NexusX]

Anyone plan on getting the relaunch of BattleTech Clan Invasion? I played back in highschool but I decided to get back into playing again once I saw that they are bringing back the game and new minis.

 

[NeoSneth]

Anyone plan on getting the relaunch of BattleTech Clan Invasion? I played back in highschool but I decided to get back into playing again once I saw that they are bringing back the game and new minis.

No. I'm glad Battletech is back in a big way, but the tabletop game is much more tedious than I'm willing to play now. This is a pretty typical round in Battletech: Roll to hit. Roll for LRM's. Roll for location. Roll for damage. Roll to see if you fell. Roll to see how you damaged yourself falling. Roll to get up. The problem is you are consulting the rules for quite a while until that becomes a faster turn, and that was just for a single shot. For my next attack...roll for.... " oh I forgot a moved 3 hexes this turn, let's start over."

I like to play in the Battletech Grinder at GenCon, and that satisfies it for me. There's a 30min tutorial to remind myself how to play. Then you can just jump into the Grinder which is a freeforall that never ends. You can pop back in whenever

 

[ForeverSublime]

Atlantis Rising (Second Edition) has been an absolute hit. It's super "slippery" - when learning the game you take your introductory round, and then you then you have this moment you realize the next round starts, and you say, "That's it? I get this!". I've seen that moment again and again. The game flows - you always seem to be doing something and before you know it, you've hit the midgame and notice time is running out. A free-to-print expansion is out, with a retail version on its way. Oh, and the game looks good enough to keep out and set up for immediate play if you have guests who see it and show some interest.

In the mail: Series 1 of Magic Puzzles

 

[NeoSneth]

Our weekly boardgame night has been on hiatus since April. We have a few old people in the group, and it's really not a good idea for them to be around us. I only get games to the table about once a month now with a very small group.
I've played some online with Tabletop simulator and boardgamearena, but I really dislike the digital implementation of boardgames.

I powered through half of Clank Legacy.
The exploration parts are fun, and the legacy aspects add just a little over time. I know nothing of the PA setting and characters used for this version.

Arkham Horror the Card Game
started the Forgotten Age campaign. It's a nice change of pace from horror to temples and snakes. very much like an Indiana jones movie.

 

[greedostick]

Our weekly boardgame night has been on hiatus since April. We have a few old people in the group, and it's really not a good idea for them to be around us. I only get games to the table about once a month now with a very small group.
I've played some online with Tabletop simulator and boardgamearena, but I really dislike the digital implementation of boardgames.

I powered through half of Clank Legacy.
The exploration parts are fun, and the legacy aspects add just a little over time. I know nothing of the PA setting and characters used for this version.

Arkham Horror the Card Game
started the Forgotten Age campaign. It's a nice change of pace from horror to temples and snakes. very much like an Indiana jones movie.

I want to play arkham horror card game. I love the Lord of the Rings LCG. I also really want to play Legend of the Five Rings, but it's not solo and everyone and their brother is scared to try anything not MTG.

Darkest Dungeon the board game is on the way. So that's something to look forward to during Covid.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1162110258/darkest-dungeon-the-board-game?ref=bgggamepage

 

[HDRchampion]

Been playing

One Night Ultimate Werewolf & Munchkins w/ the kiddos. I bought a bunch of board games awhile back and never got a chance to play them...We are thinking Pandemic or Ticket to Ride Euro next.

 

[greedostick]

Been playing

One Night Ultimate Werewolf & Munchkins w/ the kiddos. I bought a bunch of board games awhile back and never got a chance to play them...We are thinking Pandemic or Ticket to Ride Euro next.

Check out the ticket to ride expansion with the dinosaur. I think its called "Alvin". Its a nice twist on the game.

 

[lithy]

Been playing Sushi Go a lot lately, quick, no setup, can play a hand while kids run around and then take a break when someone is bleeding/crying.

My first new purchase in a while arrived yesterday. Pandemic Legacy: Season 0. We had a great time with Season 1, were kinda ok to slightly above average about Season 2.

Been trying to sell and gift away a lot of what I have sitting around. Still have way too many games that don't get played.

 

[NeoSneth]

I want to play arkham horror card game. I love the Lord of the Rings LCG. I also really want to play Legend of the Five Rings, but it's not solo and everyone and their brother is scared to try anything not MTG.

Darkest Dungeon the board game is on the way. So that's something to look forward to during Covid.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1162110258/darkest-dungeon-the-board-game?ref=bgggamepage

The biggest hurdle for Arkham Horror LCG is the amount of content. The number of packs can look intimidating, but they all follow the same release path. The new starter decks are a nice way to jump in as well. I find it much more narrative, and far more simple than LOTR LCG. There's no need to create perfect decks for scenarios like you would with LOTR.
This is easily a top 3 game for me, and I have enough content to keep me going for a decade or more.

 

[ForeverSublime]

Anyone spoil themselves (or someone else) with a game this holiday season?

I had The Crew on the shelf for a bit, and finally broke it open. It drinks easy. I like the idea of using the 2 player rules variant even with 3 people. It's a nice wrinkle in the puzzle, and adding just a little bit of information everyone can see adds to the suspense as play doesn't always follow expectations, yet it still feels goods when it plays out just as you'd planned.

 

[greedostick]

Anyone spoil themselves (or someone else) with a game this holiday season?

I had The Crew on the shelf for a bit, and finally broke it open. It drinks easy. I like the idea of using the 2 player rules variant even with 3 people. It's a nice wrinkle in the puzzle, and adding just a little bit of information everyone can see adds to the suspense as play doesn't always follow expectations, yet it still feels goods when it plays out just as you'd planned.

Nope.

Finally found Nemos War locally though after looking for a copy for over 2 years. So that was nice.

Lot's of cool looking games I want to try though such as...

Tainted Grail
Tapestry
Frosthaven
Lost Runes or Arnak

And of course I still want Kingdom Death Monster, but I don't think I have the room to play it. Everytime I say screw it and go on the website to buy it, its sold out.

 

[pixeljunkie]

Nope.

Finally found Nemos War locally though after looking for a copy for over 2 years. So that was nice.

Lot's of cool looking games I want to try though such as...

Tainted Grail
Tapestry
Frosthaven
Lost Runes or Arnak

And of course I still want Kingdom Death Monster, but I don't think I have the room to play it. Everytime I say screw it and go on the website to buy it, its sold out.

I think they are still taking preorders for the next batch of Kingdom Death. But yeah, I just can't seem to pull the trigger.

I didn't buy anything for Xmas but I wanna get Nemesis and maybe Gloomhaven Jaws of the Lion.

Tainted Grail...I really want that one but really wish they had a retail version. Trying to snag second hand kickstarter games is $$$$

 

[NeoSneth]

i picked up some stuff and was gifted quite a bit. People tend to default to boardgames as a gift for me nowadays. I purposely avoided some of the new games this year because I have a backlog.
Recent pickups:
Cosmic Frog - wild theme, fantastic components, amazing artwork.
Alien: Bug Hunt - better than expected. highly recommend.
more Arkham Horror LCG - the best
B-Sieged - I grabbed a used kickstarter pledge. best looking tower defense game.
Dune Imperium - deckbuilding and Dune. Deluxe components coming in March.
Honey Buzz: Deluxe - Love games with bees and ants. Components are 10/10. Game is great too.
Bees : Secret Kingdom - Light family filler. Artwork makes it better.

 

[Taiso]

I'll vouch for Bug Hunt. It feels a little rules heavy at the start but once you understand the mechanics it moves very fast and is pretty well designed.

I picked up Aliens: Another Glorious Day in the Corps and I like the rules well enough but am complete!y put off by having to assemble the minis for a board game in 2020. I don't even consider myself spoiled at this point. It's just how the components for board games are produced now. Gale Force 9 is a good company. Spartacus is probably in my top 3 board games of all time. But the minis debacle is disappointing.

One game I WHOLEHEARTRDLY recommend is Escape the Dark Castle. Old school dark fantasy aesthetic with randomized scenarios and brutal encounters. It's co-op, up to six players and none of the available characters trying to escape are combat worthy. They're cobblers and carpenters and priests and the like. The challenges all require one or more of three base stats to overcome (Might, Cunning and Wisdom) and very simple to understand mechanics for resolution, success and failure. Very brutal, with limited inventory spaces, intense resource management and a good balance of stats and strategy to succeed. Different characters are strongerin the stats than others so it's a good idea to take a team that gives rounded capabilities. I LOVE the old school 1st edition D&D/old British style art direction.

The game is dark fantasy horror and it's exactly what the medium needs more of these days: high risk high reward experiences that create lasting memories that firmly establish themselves in the gamer's psyche and create lifelong fans. Casual gaming is fun but their garbage tier throwaway nature lends itself to the hobby as unremarkable, trending the game design and marketing towards the casual and making legit experiences like this harder to find. This kind of game may winnow the market but creates a vastly more rabid and demanding fan base. ETDC takes me back like LS at the end of Mando S02, reminding me of the days of essential hobby experiences.