The Boardgame Thread

[Goldenmean]

Kick started this also, but still waiting for it to arrive (shipped to my parents address in the US first).  Glad to hear it's fun.  Though what was the kickstarter add ins?  As I recall, there was basically only the option to buy the game, which then came with any random stretch goals they unlocked.

There was a 5th player expansion which was an optional buy (and also an art book), but a lot of the stretch goals that the kickstarter unlocked show up as separate boxes, not just more meat in the base box. From memory, the wildboar clan, mystics, gods of asgard, 5th player expansion, wolfman, mystic troll, fenrir, and mountain giant all show up as individual boxes. It's really annoying.

[jgsugden]

That is what I was referencing.  You can fit everything in the box if you take off the protective plastic, but you risk the tiny plastic parts on some of the figures breaking if they bounce around in the box.  Also, I intend to paint some of the sculpts for use in RPG, and that is another reason not to want them to bounce around in the box...

[Sky]

Game seemed too abstract for me (I prefer tactical minis games) and I'm still really wary of game plastic. The zombicide stuff isn't too bad, and the Kingdom Death stuff is actually quite nice (I'm painting one currently on my blog...slooowly).

I did snag the art book because Adrian Smith. His Art of Adrian Smith is still OOP, only art book of his I have is some French book, Dark Fantasy. Too bad they had to insert game lore into the art book for 7 Sins, I really wanted that but passed because I don't want their crappy prose...probably should've bit.

Since it's a board game, am I alone in thinking they really missed the idea of having the Sins embodied in miniatures for that one? Such great art and sculpting but almost no connection to the associated sin (vs something like Hell Dorado, which did a good job at sin-based minis). I liked the modified zombicide-style gameplay of 7 Sins, though and only stayed out because I have a gigantic tax bill coming down the pike...

[Goldenmean]

Game seemed too abstract for me (I prefer tactical minis games) and I'm still really wary of game plastic. The zombicide stuff isn't too bad, and the Kingdom Death stuff is actually quite nice (I'm painting one currently on my blog...slooowly).

If you're more of a miniature gamer, it's probably not your thing, but it feels like a really great mix of the relatively low randomness, cerebral nature of euros with the in your face conflict nature of ameritrash to me.

Since it's a board game, am I alone in thinking they really missed the idea of having the Sins embodied in miniatures for that one? Such great art and sculpting but almost no connection to the associated sin

Yeah, some of the miniature choices seem a little off to me. Not really their fault, considering this was all pre-existing IP that they just picked up the rights to and made a game out of, but there's definitely some odd choices. Lust especially seems wrong. I can sort of see that they were going for some horrible sexual melding of multiple people with the avatar, and everything seems to have extraneous breasts tacked on, but none of it really screams lust to me.

I just hope the gameplay is good. It seems like it might be a bit too ameritrashy for me. I like cooperatives and multiple heroes vs. bad guy games, and the multiple story/sin options seems like it'll give the game some variety, but Blood Rage and Dogs of War aside, most CMON games have been pretty shallow.

[apocrypha]

Bought a Mahjong set on eBay the other week. £17, which I was quite chuffed with, for a leather, bone & bamboo set.

[Sky]

a really great mix of the relatively low randomness, cerebral nature of euros

I do dig cerebral stuff, but I don't get the hate for dice. Life is random, you can be Stephen Hawking and still get hit by a truck on a bad day.

Haven't had much time with Kingdom Death Monster since I broke my toe, needed the table for painting space. But after my first few lantern years (lantern year = one full set of game phases) and reading a few gameplay stories in comments, this seems to be the Demon Souls of board games. The game is set up to teach you through experience and if you don't learn from experience (and hate dying) you should probably skip it. For instance (in a low spoilery way_:

[jgsugden]

...I do dig cerebral stuff, but I don't get the hate for dice. Life is random, you can be Stephen Hawking and still get hit by a truck on a bad day...

I also prefer some luck in my games.  Most of my favorite games hit these key notes:

1.) 45 to 90 minutes play time with nobody feeling eliminated more than 10 minutes before the end of the game.
2.) A newbie has a chance to win, but an expert is much more likely to win - but it isn't because the experienced players knows the cards in the deck, etc..., it is because they understand the strategy decisions better.
3.) Players make a lot of meaningful decisions rather than waiting to do the obvious move each turn.

These games usually involve a managed luck element, like rolling a few dice every turn to determine resources(Settlers) or selecting cards to determine the activities that can be taken that turn (Race for the Galaxy), etc...   

[Sky]

Well, KDM rules out #1, expect to die early and often. The game goes on, but I think the player with the dead character is SOL for the rest of the showdown phase (which shouldn't be too long once someone knows the rules well), though they are back directly after with a new character (or jumping in with another veteran character from teh settlement). Gear is persistent, as are teh settlement innovations/upgrades. But characters die.

I'm surprised how much interweaving of #3 there is between the phases, settlement is basically a town phase, using kill resources to tech, gear and build for the next hunt and showdown. And teh AI deck for teh boss keeps things unpredictable, fights can go smoothly or suddenly become a nightmare when the lion drags your hero through the group, knocking everyone aside and busting up your positioning. You very quickly learn to anticipate some of his AI cards are you play, there are bonuses to some positioning, but also risks of being in the wrong spot for some reactionary attacks.

I really need to get my foot back so I can use that table to play some more. It's reeeeally good, and I've only scratched the surface. And then there's all those expansions down the road...

[Goldenmean]

I do dig cerebral stuff, but I don't get the hate for dice. Life is random, you can be Stephen Hawking and still get hit by a truck on a bad day.

Life has many characteristics that are exactly the sort of thing I'm trying to avoid by playing board games. I don't entirely hate dice, but I much prefer randomness in card or cube tower form, because those are at least partially deterministic. Most of my problems with dice are that a lot of games with heavy dice rolling just aren't very good games. I quite like a lot of the euro-y dice games. Castles of Burgundy, Roll for the Galaxy, Voyages of Marco Polo, Istanbul, Seasons, etc. all great games, partially because most of those use dice to set what your options and then you pick strategies based off of that. For a lot of dice games, especially of the ameritrashy "Roll to resolve combat" variety, you have already picked your strategy, and the roll of the dice feels like an arbitrary "Nope, fuck you. Try again next turn", which I don't generally find fun, especially because those games tend to drag on for a while.

With that said, I've still got plenty of ameritrashy high conflict dice resolution games in my library. They just don't get played very much. Though speaking of, my copy of Kingdom Death showed up today. I expect everyone I game with regularly will hate it (hell, I'm halfway convinced that *I'll* hate it), but maybe I'll just play it furtively by myself in the middle of the night.

[Khaldun]

I think for me it comes down to whether a game of any kind is about the intelligent strategic management of probability and whether that management is part of the competitive action of the game.

So, say, hold'em poker is fun in this respect because: a) it lightly reduces the role of probability so that it takes a seat alongside the collection of information (as opposed to 5-card draw, which greatly increases the role of probability and reduces information); b) because there's multiple strategies you can use in playing to deal with probability and those strategies are especially interesting when there are several being represented by different players in a single game; c) there's still enough randomness in how the cards come down that you can be saved by luck or doomed by it in very memorable ways.

When dice-rolling in a boardgame is kind of flat, applied to everything in a dull and mechanistic way, it stops being something that really focuses your strategic approach to playing, it stops being something that structures a risk-reward decision or otherwise sharpens the way you play.

[Sky]

That's actually one of the 'nice' things about KDM. You're going to die. Humans are the bottom of the food chain, scavenging resources to improve things to the point where enough of you might survive to copulate the next turn. So the whole game is based on stacking the odds as high as you can, thus mitigating the dice but keeping randomness. But there is never an OP situation, because if you can dominate a fight, you should be hunting a tougher monster. If you don't, you don't get the improved resources and when the event monsters show up, you'll get kerpwned.

Seems like a nice system to keep pushing you forward, but you have to be comfortable with never really being powerful. Just able to have a better chance of not getting slaughtered and leaving the fate of the settlement to war vets missing limbs or with debilitating mental disorders.

[schild]

Sky, does the set on this page: http://shop.kingdomdeath.com/collections/in-stock/products/kingdom-death-monster-preorder-special

Have everything from the Kickstarter? I realize I'm probably paying a bit more, but eh, whatever. I have uhhh, 4 hours and change to buy it. Lemme know.


Edit: Went through the miniatures and extra cards list, and it looks like it does. These are the unsold sets. Fuckit, why not.

[Goldenmean]

Sky, does the set on this page: http://shop.kingdomdeath.com/collections/in-stock/products/kingdom-death-monster-preorder-special

Have everything from the Kickstarter? I realize I'm probably paying a bit more, but eh, whatever. I have uhhh, 4 hours and change to buy it. Lemme know.

Edit: Went through the miniatures and extra cards list, and it looks like it does. These are the unsold sets. Fuckit, why not.

That's the same set I bought after constantly hemming and hawing over it while it was on kickstarter and like every year since while the price steadily rose. It's got everything that matters contentwise from kickstarter. We're missing out on some kickstarter exclusive survivors, but those seem to just be different miniature sculpts without rules changes. Also kickstarter backers got an extra "survivor" box of goodies that had some more sprues. Like I think they get an extra phoenix figure and some more armor sets. And obviously kickstarter backers paid a lot less.

Unless you're really into the hobby side of things though, we get everything that matters.

[Sky]

Yeah, it's teh full game minus a few bonus things. Just extra armor sets and a few bonus sprues, nothing you'd need or probably even want. Last weekend to pre-order, so good call.

So many sprues. I've just finished painting the first one, no good pics yet. Really nice plastic, but get a bottle of testor's plastic cement: http://www.amazon.com/Liquid-Cement-Plastics-1-oz/dp/B0006N6ODS/

[schild]

yea I'm just gonna have to pay someone to paint all the main figures ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Ghambit]

yea I'm just gonna have to pay someone to paint all the main figures ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If you've got that kind of money to burn, the pre-order special shouldnt be a concern.  Sky, what do you think you'd charge per fig for a high quality job anyways?  Like $300 per high detail monster?

[Khaldun]

God, that's a beautiful paint job. Makes me want to learn how to do it!

[Sky]

It's hard to pin down a number, since I'm a slow painter with limited time. If you're serious about setting up a commission I could hook you up with a couple options (I'd check to make sure they're accepting currently, of course). But yeah, most people don't understand what decently painted miniatures go for, and if you cheap out you get what you pay for.

KDM looks GREAT unpainted, kind of a marble statue thing. I'd go either unpainted or at least high table/low display (I'd consider Zach low display for my skill level, which is intermediate).

By the way, not to go on about this one, but if you guys could shoot me a good vote over on CMoN, you'd be doing an old man a solid. http://www.coolminiornot.com/388457 Better pics there if you just want to look at what can be done.

Khaldun, what do you want to know? Best to take it down to the miniatures thread in Pen & Paper, though.

[Goldenmean]

Played our first games of Kingdom Death: Monster tonight. Dragged it out after we lost one of our Pandemic: Legacy players because we figured it was at least moderately thematic for the holiday. Got to say, I was expecting that my usual gaming group would hate it, but we all ended up having a blast. The showdown section of the game is almost entirely on rails. Like I don't think there's a single time when the ideal action isn't completely obvious just by glancing at the board (which is pretty much always "Move as close as possible to its blind spot and attack"), but the AI and hit location cards make for an amusing narrative experience despite it being mostly tactics free.

The settlement phase is really where the game started coming alive for me though, probably because I'm a sucker for tech trees, and the feedback loop of "Hunt monsters for parts to build better structures to build better equipment to hunt bigger monsters to get more parts to etc." is very appealing, and it's clear that you're not even really going to be able to put a dent in the innovation deck over the course of a settlement, not to mention there are some branching choices that affect what sort of society your settlement is going to be, so there should be a good chunk of replayability there.

Anyway, it's all incredibly random and juvenile, which I tend to hate, but the unrelenting grimdark is just so ridiculous, we ended up having a great time just trying to pretend we were all twelve year old boys and going all in on the silliness.

Also, I'm pretty sure my treatment of these miniatures would be considered a war crime by some people, and after seeing Sky's paint job, I almost feel bad about it. I went full on "Pffft, I don't even care about the miniatures aspect of this" and just put together the lion and the starting miniatures together with a box cutter and whatever super glue I found lying around. My lion's face isn't fully attached to his head because I got sick of trying to cut down the flashing on it. I'm pretty sure I attached some of the survivor's legs backwards. Thankfully one of the craftier people I play with just took the phoenix sprues away from me, because that figure is gorgeous.

[Sky]

Like I don't think there's a single time when the ideal action isn't completely obvious just by glancing at the board (which is pretty much always "Move as close as possible to its blind spot and attack"), but the AI and hit location cards make for an amusing narrative experience despite it being mostly tactics free.

Let me know how that works on later monsters. The lion is set up as a very straightfoward encounter, especially the level 1 version (and the prologue lion is basically the one pushover in the game).

TIL I'm a 12yr old. Nice.

Btw, there is a living FAQ/glossary in beta and also a pretty nice online character sheet. Still need to test it on my tablet, but as that's the intended device it should work well there. Should be live in a couple weeks, I'll let you guys know.

[Goldenmean]

Let me know how that works on later monsters. The lion is set up as a very straightfoward encounter, especially the level 1 version (and the prologue lion is basically the one pushover in the game).

Yeah, it's obvious the lion is set to easy mode, and even the higher level lions seem to have some tricks up their sleeve, and flipping through the cards while I was arranging them made it clear that other mobs have a lot more going on, but we just fought a few level 1s, so that's all I have to go on right now. Really though it seems that the depth of the showdown phase is going to come from knowing the AI cards and the hit location reactions and working around those. Until you have that knowledge, it seems that your strategy pretty much always needs to be "Get within range of the monster and hit it" on some level, even though there's space in the design to have controller type characters with headbands limiting the AI options or someone with a whip tanking, etc. I don't know. We'll probably hit an antelope and maybe the butcher up tonight, and I'll reassess.

TIL I'm a 12yr old. Nice.

No offense intended. Ultimately people can like whatever they want and I don't care, but  there's a lot of pretty juvenile humor in this from my perspective. I don't think you write text like "You hit the lion in the ding-dong" giving you an option to sever its testicles if you're planning on winning a Booker prize. I also find the endless grimdark of settings like this and 40k a bit eye-roll worthy, but I realize that's personal taste.

[Sky]

Even at a low level the lion can go to ground and punish the basic 'blind spot melee' tactic, and the risk with a whip is you're tripling your chance of drawing a trap card. It's usually a good bet, but it will eventually shorten the lifespan of whip users.

I'm a fan of the lore, though, so I admit I just get into the spirit of it.

[Goldenmean]

Even at a low level the lion can go to ground and punish the basic 'blind spot melee' tactic, and the risk with a whip is you're tripling your chance of drawing a trap card. It's usually a good bet, but it will eventually shorten the lifespan of whip users.

Yeah, I've seen people mention that AI card. It's just never come up for us. I do like that between only putting together a portion of the possible AI cards (at least for low level monsters), and wounds knocking AI cards off the stack before you have the chance to encounter them, you can go several fights with the same type of monster and still be seeing new things. It also gives a nice flavorful personality to the individual monsters.

I'm a fan of the lore, though, so I admit I just get into the spirit of it.

We've been doing the same to an extent. I can't take unrelenting grimdark without starting to go tongue in cheek about it, so we've just been playing up some of the ridiculous aspects of the random hunt/settlement events. Upon defeating the starter lion with the aforementioned blow to the gonads, we named our settlement Testopolis, and have been roleplaying all of our characters as genitalia worshiping cretins. We've basically just enshrined that resource card and sworn never to use it. No rage potion for us.

[Teleku]

Hey Sky, what color did you prime your Kingdom Death mini's?  White seems to be what all sorts of people use for stuff like this, but I've round I really like priming things black, and then laying the color down.  Does it really make that much of a difference in the end?  For that matter, is Grey an ok priming color?  Nobody seems to ever use it....


Your Kingdom Death mini looks amazing by the way.  I've decided I'm going to get myself back into this and attempt to get good at it.  Having Kick started Conan and Bloodrage, as well as buying the pre-order for Kingdom Death schild posted up (I never saw anything about it till this thread), I'll have plenty of awesome minis to try and paint.  I'm going to use a bunch of random old Warhammer mini's I never painted as my crash test dummies before moving on to that stuff.  Right now I'm trying to master the air brush, and seeing how much I can get away with using that instead of just hand brushing everything.

[Sky]

I prime in 3 ways, really depends on the project. While I do prime in basic black or white (Army Painter spray primer), my favorite is zenithal priming. Which is a fancy term for an easy thing. Prime the mini black as normal and then prime it lightly with white from the direction of the primary light source. Usually above and just in front and then just behind.

Zenithal priming gives the benefit of both: black in the crevices and underneaths to help establish shadows and white on the raised and upper surfaces to give better color for highlights.

I find grey to be the worst of the four options, you don't get the nooks filled with black and the highlights don't pop as easily.

If you look here, I primed teh stormtroopers in white and the other 3 IA minis with zenithal:



I'm painting through the Imperial Assault ones now if you guys are interested.

[jgsugden]

Very nice.  Has anyone ever started a thread on painting minis here on f13?

[Rendakor]

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=16395.0

[Sky]

That's where I suggested we take it, but technically it is board game stuff 

[Ghambit]

I do the zenithal style to create marble-like minis I dont feel like painting.  For classier games, it helps to have more of a chesspiece than a colorful mini.  I've done it in brass and copper as well.

[schild]

Sky throw a price at me to do a mediocre paint job on all of my Cave Evil and Kingdom Death shit.

[Teleku]

Ah, sorry, forgot about the painting thread.  I'll go post more questions over there.

[Thrawn]

I don't know what they still have in stock, but if anyone is shopping for games you might want to peek at Target currently.  It looks like if you get the right customer service person you can do some crazy coupon stacking and price matching to get really good deals, close to 50% off of Amazon pricing in some cases.



http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/1464706/target-extra-25-picked-zombicide-45

[Sky]

First batch of Imperial Assault troops done: http://cashwiley.com/2015/11/05/imperial-assault-stormtroopers-and-officer/

[Hawkbit]

Damn your work is great. I wish I had the time to dedicate to that!

[Sky]

Thanks!

In non-Sky-painting news the Banner Saga is going to KS a board game version. As a basic tbs tactical combat game, I guess it could work.

http://www.beastsofwar.com/the-banner-saga-warbands/megacons-banner-saga-board-game-coming-november-12th/