The Boardgame Thread

[lamaros]

Yes, that's exactly what it is.

Also that XCOM game looks awful.

[Hawkbit]

Thinking of buying either Trains or Seasons today.  I've watched gameplay videos, does anyone have thoughts on the two?  Seasons looks fun, but fiddly. 

[lamaros]

Played Battlelore with my brother last night. Good fun, and now we have a clue I'm sure the quality of play will rise.

[Goldenmean]

Thinking of buying either Trains or Seasons today.  I've watched gameplay videos, does anyone have thoughts on the two?  Seasons looks fun, but fiddly. 

That's sort of an apples vs. oranges type of choice. The two games don't have a lot in common.

My vote would be for Seasons, but you're right, it is fiddly. Trains is more accessible, but it's just Dominion with a board in many ways, so if you were going for accessible, I'd say you should just play Dominion or one of its clones.

Seasons is a solid drafting game, but like all drafting games, you're not going to play well until you know the mechanics well enough to know which cards to value more and which synergies work well, which can take some doing. I've enjoyed all of the games of it I've played though, and haven't heard any complaining from other people when it hits the table.

[Hawkbit]

That's what I figured.  I really like Dominion, but the theme is awful.  I was hoping Trains would be better in theme, but it's fairly marginal I guess. 

Thanks for the opinion.

[eldaec]

Some games I have played lately.

Quantum

Mentioned earlier in the thread, it keeps getting described as a light 4X, which is just wrong. Quantum is a fairly abstract tactical game of spaceships represented by dice, the dice are rolled to see what powers the spaceships have, then you try to puzzle out ways to combine the powers to blow up other ships and capture planets each turn. It is fun because spotting tactical combos each turn is fun and causes interesting stuff to happen, but the game is so swingy that you can't really develop much of a strategy beyond the next 2 turns. Play it if you like playing to make interesting things happen right now, don't bother if you are looking for a genuinely competitive strategy game.


Valley of the Kings

It is a deckbuilder, with a twist that you score by removing cards from your deck to your tomb (preferably in sets). But it is *really* well engineered, the need for your deck to have a lifecycle stops it feeling like there are simple strategies such as big money or engine building that you can follow for more than a few turns at a time, and the set collection/denial mechanic means more player interaction than you sometimes see in a deckbuilder. Has only 100 cards and needs no expansions ever.


Twilight Struggle

Finally played this, and was enormously impressed. Your first game is a great experience, purely to marvel out how the game is engineered to create scenarios that just feel like a cold war story, and longer term you can see the incredibly deep strategy game that skilled players would be able to have. However, you quickly realize that detailed knowledge of the deck and card interactions is absolutely central to anything beyond beginner play, and that makes me think this game is not going to function except when playing against opponents of very similar skill level. Also I'm not all that impressed with card templating, maybe I've been spoiled by magic, but nowhere on the card or in the rules does it say Quagmire/Bear-trap cause you to be unable to play a card as well as discard one each round. CIA Created/Lone Gunman leave us wondering if they mean reveal your hand for the whole turn? What happens when NORAD is played without control of Canada? There are generally accepted answers to these questions, but even knowing them, I'll be damned if I can see the answers on the cards.

But it is still a great game.


Splendor

Engine building game, you collect gems, use them to buy cards which make all other cards cheaper, then use the cards and more gems to buy cards that give you points. Every time I play this I have a nagging feeling that there won't be enough to keep the game interesting, but it keeps proving me wrong. Seems like it was playtested within an inch of its life - because the balance of strategies in this game is just perfect.


Eldritch Horror

Move around a map, collect loot and power ups, have encounters that basically say 'roll some dice to get a good thing or bad thing', then cooperatively beat up cthulu. It is good, kinda. But there is one design problem I have, this is supposed to be a game about theme and generating a story, but all the theme is on the encounter cards (roll some dice for a result), wheras all the player-engaged decisions happen prioritizing threats and moving about the board, where you might as well be playing Pandemic. This really needs an expansion which introduces either more theme to current decision making processes, or more decision making and strategy to the thematically written encounters. As it stands you need a really good group, who will naturally pull the theme off the encounter cards and almost role play the decision making - as it stands the game just doesn't do enough to help you appreciate the sheer volume of writing in the box.

[MrHat]

Heads up - Amazon Gold Box daily deals today are a bunch of decent boardgames at 40% off.

Thinking about Smash Up! and Sentinels.

[jakonovski]

Star Wars tactical combat by FFG. I'm so on board.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4994

[Goldenmean]

Star Wars tactical combat by FFG. I'm so on board.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4994

Yeah, I don't even want to think about what a money-press Star Wars Descent is going to be for them. As if they need it. I'm sure I'll end up grabbing that, the Eldritch Horror expansion, and Armada as well. God damn Fantasy Flight...

[schild]

There's no such thing as a board game that is a money-press. The closest things to such a product are Ticket to Ride, Dominion, and Munchkin. I know enough about Munchkin and Steve Jackson to say that even that level of success doesn't guarantee shit.

Unnecessary response I'm going to response to right now: Magic isn't a board game. It's a money-press.

[lamaros]

Fantasy Flight does ok I'd expect. For the select few up the chain.

[eldaec]

I suspect all Star Wars products are a money press for The Rat, not so much for the guys who develop and produce the stuff.

[Goldenmean]

By the standards of the board gaming industry, I'm pretty sure they do well. Admittedly, "by the standards of the board gaming industry" is akin to saying "He's the most successful panhandler on the block", but I wasn't implying that I wanted to invest in the company; I was mostly just bemoaning how much money they're going to vacuum out of my pocket, and while I don't know and am only mildly interested about how much money any of them are putting in the bank, they produce games and expansions (mostly expansions) at a ridiculous rate. If you follow a good slice of their product lines, there aren't many board game companies that even come close to producing things to buy faster.

I was mildly curious though and did some googling and it looks like FFG probably produces more revenue than Days of Wonder (FFG was listed at 21.9 million in 2011 with a 69% 3 year growth and DoW was mentioned at being 10-20 million in 2013 in a Forbes article), and definitely produces more than Steve Jackson Games (which was listed as being 7 million dollars in their quarterly reports in 2012). Mayfair Games seems to be in the 5-10 million dollar range. Those numbers are all different sources, so who knows how valid it is.

Of course that's just revenue though, and FFG also has significantly more employees than any of those companies, and almost certainly has more other overhead, as they're recognized for having some of the highest quality components in the industry, whereas a company like SJG pretty much just mindlessly churns out Munchkin cards at this point. I'm sure their net is significantly lower.

Anyway, back to board games instead of financials. Thanks for the recommendation about Valley of the Kings, eldaec. Pushed me over into buying it and played it with the girlfriend last night. Definitely the most satisfying two player deck builder experience I've had. Have you played with 3-4? I feel that you might lose some of the tactical aspects of the two player game, as the pyramid would frequently completely change between your turns.

Also played some 8 Minute Empire and 8 Minute Empire Legends this weekend. Simple games, but there's actually space to make meaningful decisions in them, and they're perfect for quick games to play while you're waiting for people to show up or are waiting for another game to finish so you can swap people around.

Also played Impulse, which is the new game by Carl Chudyk, who did Glory to Rome and Innovation. It's another entirely card based highly swingy, but strangely compelling game. I don't know if I'd recommend it to most people, but all of the computer programmers in the room seemed to find it highly satisfying, probably because it feels like you essentially lay out the board like a Turing Machine. I would recommend against playing with 6 people like we did though, and if you are going to play with that many, play teams. It's the game I've played recently that I've thought the most about once we were done.

And finally, the new Plaid Hat Game, Dead of Winter is my favorite Zombie themed game I've played. It has some neat role playing like aspects to it that make it a lot of fun if you play in character. It's got an interesting twist on the "cooperative game with a betrayer" mechanic also, where each player can only win if they both achieve the main objective *and* achieve their secret objective. Sometimes the secret objective is just flat out "Make sure everyone else dies", but more often it's just you hoarding some resource that would be more beneficial to the colony as a whole if you were to spend it, which will automatically read as traitorous behavior to the other players, even though it's actually just self interest.

[ynotgolf]

My 8 year old came home from his sleepover ranting and raving about the King of Toyko boardgame.  Says "dad, it's like Yahtzee and Pokémon in the same game."  Anyone played it?  Not looking to shell out $60 for a game (and mandatory expansion pack, "Dad you have to buy it!") which will sit collecting dust after a few weeks.

[lamaros]

King of New York just came out. Buy that instead.

FFG has been growing by 30% a year since 2002 by all reports, and they pay their junior workers shit all and treat them poorly, so I expect they are doing pretty well. No idea how much they have paid for the Star Wars license, but they've done really well with it. Plus all their other stuff.

[Goldenmean]

Your son is right, it's like Yahtzee with theme. To me that screams "Stay the hell away from this", but no one I know who has kids has regretted the purchase or seen it gone unplayed. I'd say the biggest problem would be you losing interest in playing with him, but I have no idea what your board gaming tastes are like. Plenty of adults I know seem to enjoy it as a filler sort of game also.

And yeah, what Lamaros said. King of New York just came out and seems to have slightly more depth than King of Tokyo. It's also cross compatible with King of Tokyo. Of course then that means your child's completionist urges might wind up with you dropping even more money...

[grebo]

Your son is right, it's like Yahtzee with theme. To me that screams "Stay the hell away from this", but no one I know who has kids has regretted the purchase or seen it gone unplayed. I'd say the biggest problem would be you losing interest in playing with him, but I have no idea what your board gaming tastes are like. Plenty of adults I know seem to enjoy it as a filler sort of game also.

And yeah, what Lamaros said. King of New York just came out and seems to have slightly more depth than King of Tokyo. It's also cross compatible with King of Tokyo. Of course then that means your child's completionist urges might wind up with you dropping even more money...

King of Tokyo is a fun party type game that has decent depth for what it is.  I've played it a few times.

[Thrawn]

Had someone who really likes Legendary bring over Legendary Encounters (the Alien one) on Sunday.  Enjoyed the theme, thought the game played pretty well, as a whole liked it.  It's a deck builder for those that aren't familiar with Legendary that plays in a co-op style with everyone working towards the same goals.  We lost miserably both games, didn't even get close really.  Thinking about that after the fact I realized it's because the more players you have the harder the game is by far.  It plays 1-5.  I don't remember the numbers but lets say you turn over one Hive card every turn and after about a dozen Hive cards you enter the second phase with the game getting harder and harder as you go.  For example in your starting 12 deck you have 5 cards that do 1 damage, to kill the last alien you have to do at minimum 10 damage in 1 turn with a 6 card hand.

So, if you are playing with just one player when the difficulty starts to ramp up in the second phase after about 12 turns you have your starting 12 weak base cards, plus up to 12ish new, better cards you've added to your deck.  Every hand of 6 you draw should work out to roughly half base cards and half upgraded cards.

However, for every player you add you increase the number of weak base cards on your side by 12 but get the same number of new cards and reach the higher difficulties in the same number of turns.  So in a 5 player game at the same time, in total you will have 60 weak base cards around the table, but the same number of 12ish better cards added to the pool.  So each player drawing a hand of 6 will get on average about 5 base cards and 1 upgraded card which leads to no one having good enough hands in the late game to be able to take down anything big without serious help from other players.

So my math just being rough off the top of my head aside, does this make sense to anyone else or am I just being crazy and over thinking this?  It seems like the game gets almost exponentially harder the more people you add.

[Goldenmean]

So my math just being rough off the top of my head aside, does this make sense to anyone else or am I just being crazy and over thinking this?  It seems like the game gets almost exponentially harder the more people you add.

It's a not an uncommon problem for cooperative games. Almost none of the card based ones scale such that they're a proper challenge at all player counts. My general solution for this is to figure out the sweet spot difficultywise and then only play with that number of players, or play with fewer with one person controlling multiple dummy players.

I haven't actually busted out Legendary Encounters yet (keep playing games with the obligatory person who hates cooperatives in the group), but I've mostly been hearing people complain that the game is too easy with 2 or 3. When I try it, I think I'm going to force 4 players.

There's a lot of options for tweaking the difficulty towards the end of the rulebook if I recall. Have you tried any of those?

[Goldenmean]

So I actually played Legendary Encounters: Aliens today, and I think I can speak more definitively on the difficulty issue. So, yes, you're right about getting to harder stuff faster with more players, but I think you also need to factor in how good the coordinate cards are (and no matter what characters you're playing with, you always have access to at least the sergeants). In a five person game, you theoretically have 4 other players who can be gifting you coordinate cards. It doesn't cost them anything, because you immediately redraw a coordinate you play for someone else, and it really enables you to either blow away big aliens, or purchase big new character cards. Each of the sergeants having a skill icon helps a lot for synergies.

There was definitely a bit of a learning curve, because our first game we played in traditional deckbuilding "Oh, let's set up our economy first" style, and we got absolutely pummeled. I think you really need to tilt your strategy more towards getting more strike cards as soon as possible so you can start clearing the board before you even start dreaming of getting the high cost cards. Once you have aliens falling into the combat zone, it goes downhill fast. We adjusted our tactics the second time around, and didn't really have much trouble winning a 4 player game using the Alien 2 setup, but it was still fun, and took a good amount of cooperation.

Roles matter also. The mercenary I think it is? The one who let's you spend stars as strikes for his role specific card? That guy is amazeballs. Especially if everyone has been stocking up on sergeants. We managed to one shot the Alien Queen (who's a 12 strength) on the first turn we discovered her thanks to stacking sergeants on him. The scout, medic and commander all seem great also. The priest, who let's you spend strikes as stars seems really second tier, considering how actively you need to be cleaning locations, but maybe he's good in some of the other scenarios. The synthetic is maybe a little questionable also if you aren't playing with a lot of cards that require skill synergies.

Anyway, this is honestly probably one of the best co-op experiences I've had. Even the person who generally hates co-ops had a good time. Everything is very thematic, there's a lot of replayability, and a lot of tuning you can do to suit the style of game you want. I'm really looking forward to trying it with the traitor mechanics.

[Goldenmean]

Haven't seen Imperial Settlers mentioned here yet, but I've been playing a fair amount of it. It's a fun little economy builder by Ignacy Trzewiczek, based on the same system as his earlier 51st State/New Era system.

Basically, everyone picks a civilization (Rome/Egypt/Barbarians/Japan in the base set). Each civilization has a unique deck, and a unique set of resources they produce every turn. Every turn you get a card from your civilization deck and then you draft 2 cards from the shared deck. Drafting is done by pulling out a number of cards from the base deck equal to 1 plus the number of players, and picking in player order, discarding the spare, then laying out another 1+x cards and picking in reverse player order. Then everyone gets whatever resources they have coming from production buildings they've played, their faction and any deals they've made.

Cards can either be built for their build cost, at which point they enter your tableau, razed by a raze token (one of the resource types) for some set of resources, or made a deal with with food (another resource type) for ongoing production every turn. Buildings in your tableau either give you more resources every turn, give you some ongoing ability or allow you to take a new action (generally something along the lines of trading one resource type for another, or for victory points). You can also raze enemy buildings (generally only basic buildings can be razed, Japan being an exception) if you have more than 1 raze token.

Play keeps going around for five turns, and then at the end you get 1 VP for every basic buildings you've built and 2 VP for each faction specific you've built, add that to however many VP you got in the course of the game, and that's that.

Really the selling point of this game is how different the different factions are. The barbarians are lousy resource producers, but they get a lot of people, and a lot of their faction specific buildings give them additional raze tokens, which let's them come savage your tableau to  get their resources, and other buildings make razing easier or give them VP or other benefits when they raze. Egypt has a lot of gold producing buildings, and methods to turn gold into VP. Gold is sort of a wild card resource, so it's fairly strong to begin with. They also seem to be the sneaky tricks faction. Lots of things to steal or shut down buildings from your opponents. Japan is all about deals, and has the best building synergy, but they're also the only faction that can have their faction specific buildings razed, so an aggressive player can ruin their combo cards. Rome seems the most generic. They've got a lot of buildings that fill multiple roles or give points for other buildings of that type.

Because each card can be used in multiple different ways (Do I want to build this card? Raze it? Make a deal with it?), there's lots of interesting choices. There's also a lot of space for ridiculous chains of effects. Because you immediately gain the benefits of production buildings as soon as you create them, it's entirely possible to get buildings that pay for themselves or more. And because the game is locked at 5 rounds, it plays pretty fast also.

Possibly best of all is the expansion possibility. More factions are a no-brainer, and apparently they're going to be selling expansions that have additional cards for existing factions, except instead of just adding them to the decks, you deck building so that your faction deck always has 30 cards, so it can be sort of an LCG in miniature.

[Thrawn]

Actually played Legendary Aliens again last night and crushed two games, where the first two times I played it I felt like we never even had a chance.  Just different groups maybe?  Did enjoy it though.  Not enough to buy it on my own since someone in my circle already has a copy, but don't think I'd ever object to playing it.

[Goldenmean]

It really is a good game. I wish they'd had a system like this from the beginning. Legendary proper is too easy, and the pseudo cooperative "Everyone can lose together, but you're still competing for VP" setup really didn't do it any favors.

I hope they do as good a job with the Predator and Firefly licenses (and the inevitable Alien vs. Predator expansion)

[Hawkbit]

Looks like FFG sent cease and desist letters to a handful of Netrunner deckbuilding sites.  I'm not sure why; speculation surrounding a potential Netrunner online version.

[Hawkbit]

http://netrunnerdb.com/web/app.php

Bummer.

Trash 1 fan site.
 End of story.
Site closed by order of Fantasy Flight Games.
FFG recommend you use CardGameDB.com.
FFG welcome suggestions on how to improve it.

[schild]

lol, what assholes

[Thrawn]

I'm not sure why; speculation surrounding a potential Netrunner online version.

Supposedly a site that would allow you to play Netrunner for free online was using the netrunnerdb.com images so netrunnerdb got hit with a cease and desist as collateral damage.

[Sky]

Thanks to schild for pimping Cave Evil. Finally found a gaming buddy and we were playing it until after 2am last night. Fucking awesome game.

[lamaros]

I played Clash of Cultures this weekend. Pretty damn good!

[schild]

Thanks to schild for pimping Cave Evil. Finally found a gaming buddy and we were playing it until after 2am last night. Fucking awesome game.

Yayyyyyy

[MrHat]

Played Betrayal at the House on Haunted Hill house Betrayal (Jesus this name sucks).

Really dug it. The events/omens are very atmospheric, everyone playing was pretty into it so that atmosphere didn't break.  When the Betrayal happened it REALLY slowed the game down, that 5-10 min break to learn something new nearly crashed the game for us.

Afterwards though, we did enjoy the cat and mouse scenario, and the shrunk people managed to escape the evil cats by finding a toy airplane and flying out.

Er, we think they won, the rules in the scenario book need some work...there was a lot of "ya, I think that's how it works".

All in all, it was fun, but I think it was more the group than the game.

[jgsugden]

Betrayal isn't the best balanced game, and the 'break' at betrayal can be annoying, but it has a special place in my heart.  I am still shocked that we do not have an official expansion....

[MrHat]

Betrayal isn't the best balanced game, and the 'break' at betrayal can be annoying, but it has a special place in my heart.  I am still shocked that we do not have an official expansion....

Ya, that's the impression I got too.  The balance isn't the best.  But if the group is cool with a little house-rules leeway, it really is fun.  (Like, ya, that's fine go ahead and roll 5 dice, or ya, I knocked you out the plane but it's still turned on so you don't have to roll that again).

[Goldenmean]

I like Betrayal at House on the Hill as an abstract concept, but the enjoyment varies wildly depending on scenario and when the haunt begins. Many scenarios revolve around some sort of "Investigators need to get to these particular rooms and do these things" mechanic. That generally means that the earlier the haunt begins, the more screwed the investigators are because they don't have ready access to their victory conditions, while on the other hand, if the haunt starts too late, it's just a matter of moving somewhere and then mindlessly tossing dice turn after turn.

At this point I try to stay away from playing this. I've just had too many games that have stagnated in the haunt phase with everyone just sitting in one place making the exact same check every turn. With dozens of scenarios, they can't all be winners, but too many resolve down to just mindlessly sitting in some target room racing to get a certain number of passed stat checks.

[Sky]

Has anyone played Psycho Raiders by EEE? We had such a good time with Cave Evil I decided to snag a copy.