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Author Topic: 2018/2019 hits/misses  (Read 20182 times)
Soln
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on: January 02, 2019, 09:45:13 PM

1. What were your hits for 2018?
2. What were the games that missed?
3. What are you looking forward to in 2019?
Riggswolfe
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Reply #1 on: January 03, 2019, 08:08:34 PM

Hits: Nemesis, Maximum Apocalypse, Betrayal Legacy, Gloomhaven
Misses: Discover Lands Unknown by FFG

"We live in a country, where John Lennon takes six bullets in the chest, Yoko Ono was standing right next to him and not one fucking bullet! Explain that to me! Explain that to me, God! Explain it to me, God!" - Denis Leary summing up my feelings about the nature of the universe.
Ard
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Reply #2 on: January 04, 2019, 01:48:28 AM

1. Dicetopia, Crypt (technically this was this year I guess since I first played it on the 1st), Gloomhaven
2. Clank's Pyramid expansion
3. City of Kings showing up in a few weeks, Gem Hens (I wasn't joking about this in the other post)
Goldenmean
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Reply #3 on: January 04, 2019, 03:51:44 AM

1) In roughly descending order, Underwater Cities, Newton, Coimbra, Teotihuacan, Crusaders
2) This year really drove home how poorly competitive legacy games work (for me). Between slogging through a complete Charterstone campaign and getting partway through Rise of Queensdale and just nope-ing out, it seems increasingly unlikely anyone will ever manage to overcome the many problems the format has
3) Again, in roughly descending order Barrage, Mezo,
Empyreal, Cloudspire, Black Angel, Pipeline, City of The Big Shoulders, and who knows, maybe this will finally be the year Brasil gets released
Rendakor
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Reply #4 on: January 04, 2019, 05:17:40 AM

I haven't played enough current stuff to really have a definitive list, but Fireball Island Remastered was disappointed as hell. The board feels really cheaply made (as does the box), there was zero effort put into keeping the components together after a playthrough, and we mostly ran around the island separately failing to hit one another with fireballs.

"i can't be a star citizen. they won't even give me a star green card"
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Reply #5 on: January 04, 2019, 09:46:58 AM

i have some things to say

Escape from the Aliens in Outer Space is still fantastic with a good group.

Dice Throne is a perfect game for people that are terrible at card games, and still decent with people that are good. Drop life totals to 25 to play like a real person though.

Lands Unknown was actually pretty fun with two. Exploration is one of my favorite things so I'm a bit biased. There's a lot to do here work wise though, and the next iteration will likely be vastly superior once they get a grip on designing for that format.

Tokaido Collector's Edition had a few broken pieces. Emailed Funforge / Passport. Anyway, it's still the most non-competitive competitive game ever made.

Deep Space D6 is a good brain screensaver.

Alien Artifacts is fine, but with the expansion it's going to be vastly superior. Haven't even played it yet but I already know since they used the expansion to make mining planets as useful as attacking people and alien ships.

We're playing Shards of Infinity today, will see how it goes. (It's Star Realms, it'll be fine)
Hawkbit
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Reply #6 on: January 04, 2019, 01:59:07 PM



We're playing Shards of Infinity today, will see how it goes. (It's Star Realms, it'll be fine)

Please let us know how that goes. I've had that on my list and keep passing it up. Not sure why, for $20 hard to go wrong.
Jeff Kelly
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Reply #7 on: February 01, 2019, 03:59:09 AM

Hits:
Gloomhaven, our most played game. Only critique I have is that it's too long and not varied enough for its length. A more focused campaign would be better.

Kingdom Death Monster: technically not a 2018 game but we played it a lot. My group is mixed on it because you need a certain tolerance to being frustrated by failure since it's essentially a survival game. Mad expensive though if you want all of the expansions. Not sure if we want Poots to make more KDM or seek the help of a specialist for mental disorders though.

Spirit Island: Is mechanically different enough that it breaks your brain a little while you adapt to it. It also has a lot of options to tune the difficulty.

Detective: Great campaign, only game that encourages you to use mind maps and google. A bit clichè though. Great detective game without the weird conclusions of a Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective

Meeple Circus: simple idea, really, really fun.

Not a board game award: D&D 5th edition
The system is great and exceptionally well balanced without the "let's turn it into a minifig game" bullshit of 4th edition and it has great online support including character builders, campaign management tools and rulebook/compendium support.

Misses:

Overabundance of mediocre deck builders. a lot of middling and bad deck building games came out in 2018
Overreliance on phone apps: means the game won't be playable two years from now when they end support of the app.

Competitive "legacy" games. I'm with Schild on that one

Western legends: interesting setting but too many systems that are not balanced make this a bad game. A pity since I'm a sucker for western settings

Chronicles of Crime: Interesting conceit promises expandability (QR codes scanning and campaign in app). Only the first campaign is any good though, everything else we played has been mediocre at best. Relies heavily on railroading and hiding information from you to give you a reveal later. Plots are exceptionally stupid at times (don't have the option to arrest the perpetrator only to have the plot magically vanish him later). Detective is the much better game by comparison.

Not a board game award: Starfinder. Bland generic sci-fi setting, uninteresting mechanics, overreliance on items which leads to weird gatekeeping (level bound items and guns) while retaining the flaws of other Paizo RPGs (feats, feats everywhere). It's just bland.
« Last Edit: February 01, 2019, 04:03:55 AM by Jeff Kelly »
Bunk
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Reply #8 on: February 01, 2019, 06:42:01 AM

Hits for my group this year: Gaia Project, Scythe: Rise of Fenris

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jgsugden
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Reply #9 on: February 01, 2019, 07:23:29 AM

Gloomhaven would be on the list, but I think that ws a 2017 release.  It has been my most played of 2018, certainly.

Betrayal Legacy is really good with the right group.  It tops my list.

Root, Rising Sun and Stuffed Fables were enjoyable, but all have some flaws.

Deep Madness is disappointing on a cost versus benefit equation.

I was told Villainous was surprisingly good for a Licensed Game.  It is better than normal for a Licensed Game, but it will not get off my shelf with real gamers.


2020 will be the year I gave up all hope.
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Reply #10 on: February 01, 2019, 08:08:21 AM



We're playing Shards of Infinity today, will see how it goes. (It's Star Realms, it'll be fine)

Please let us know how that goes. I've had that on my list and keep passing it up. Not sure why, for $20 hard to go wrong.
I forgot to respond to this. It's Ascension++. I like it more than the multiplayer solitaire of Ascension.
ghost
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Reply #11 on: February 12, 2019, 06:32:35 PM

My 2018ish games.

Games I have loved:
     1.  Lorenzo il Magnifico-  Cool Mini or Not does a euro worker placement without miniatures, and it’s awesome.  It’s a top ten
            game for me.  
     2.  Viticulture-  better than Scythe.  I just got Wingspan, but I think this is Stonemeier’s best game.  Very thematic worker
            placement.  
     3.  Yamatai-  very good worker placement with 2 players, which is hard to do.  Also beautiful and with some interesting and
           unique mechanisms
     4.  Mottainai-  2-3 player streamlined Glory to Rome.  Plays fairly quickly and is great with 2, which Glory to Rome is not.  I
           love this game.  
     5.  Reef-  pretty game from the Azul folks.  Puzzly, yet simple enough for non-gamers.  Not as feisty as Azul, which can get
           downright nasty.  Honestly, I may like this better than Azul, which I love.  It’s not as good with 2 as Azul, though.
     6.  Bunny Kingdom-  awesome little drafter.  You have to have the bigger board, though.  It’s a requirement.  
     7.  Gates of Loyang-  this is Uwe’s best game, in my opinion.  It’s the opposite of what he’s been doing lately, which is giant,
           sprawling point salad type table hogs.  The mechanics of this game are tight and scoring is tough.  And you don’t have
           to feed anyone.  
     8.  Jump Drive-  this game has its flaws, but it is fast and furious.  You can get though 3-5 games in 45 minutes.  It basically
          takes out a lot of the busy work from Race for the Galaxy and the result is a better game, I think.  This could use an
          expansion or two to maintain long term relevance, however.  The best strategies are well known in my family at this point.  
     9.  Gloomhaven-  still trying to figure this out, but it seems awesome.  Will have a long while to get it ironed out.   Ohhhhh, I see.
     10.  Concordia-  strange area control situation with an awesome hand management system.  This is a solid game, but maybe
          At the bottom of the top end games for me this year.
    

Games I like, and will probably keep, despite not thinking they are awesome:
     1.  Keyforge-  still feeling this one out.  I think I like it.  I certainly have enough decks to test the theory.   awesome, for real
     2.  Imhotep -  blandish euro cube pusher that I probably shouldn’t like, but I do.  It has some unique scoring mechanisms
           that will keep it around, plus it’s easy for the kids to play.  
     3.  Roll Player-  this is an okay game.  There is some nostalgia value, for sure, with the character creation.  I honestly
           probably ought to sell it.  If I have to choose between this and a game like Viticulture, I’m playing Viticulture every time.
     4.  Stuffed Fables-  more storyteller than game.  The miniatures are bad ass and look awesome painted up.  Again, a decent
           kid’s game, but once we go through it once it willl be a bit useless.  Probably not replayable.
     5.  Fireball Island-  this game sucks, but is awesome at the same time.  Some of the production is great, some is awful (the
           shitty ass box is a travesty, and I usually don’t care about shit like that).  They could have made some better choices
           with the mechanics.  I probably wouldn’t keep for me, but the kids love it.  
     6.  Tigris and Euphrates-  super thick, almost abstract area cntrol game that is, I hear, a classic.  The play is a bit dated, in
           my opinion, and probably too deterministic.  I have the FF version and one of the older versions, too.   I am a little
           amazed at the lack of quality of the artistic direction of this (and Nexus Ops, too), as they could have done a lot better.  
           Looking forward to playing Yellow and Yangtze, the rework of Tigris and Euphrates.
     7.  Bear Park-  zen like tile layer.  Fun scoring.  I like the puzzle like aspect better than Parchwork, which everyone seems to
           love.
     8.  My Little Scythe-  over rated.  Seems like some folks think this might be decent as a grownup game.  It’s just not that good,
           and is generally overproduced for what it is.  
     9.  Photosynthesis-  interesting spatial mechanic.  It’s a beautiful game, for sure.  It could get nasty, particularly with the
           variant that specifies that you can’t advance your trees without sunlight.  I would pay for a version with quality miniatures to
           enhance the experience.  
     10.  Starship Samurai-  kind of dull, considering how awesome the miniatures are.  Could benefit from some more varied small
           ship options, and was irritated when the expansion didn’t have something new in that regard.  This one really is mostly
           about the card play.  I was left feeling that it could have been so much better.  I will definitely keep it for, and paint, the
           miniatures.  
     11.  Klask-  fun magnetic air hockey type deal.  It’s a well made wooden game with a small footprint.  I dig it.
     12.  Space Base-  roll two six sided dice and get an action mechanic.  It’s okay.  I mostly am pissed because of the stupid ass
           narrow cards and mailed in artwork.  I prefer Machi Koro to this, and they are very similar.  Machi Karo has a little more
           player interaction, normal sized cards and better artwork.  
     13.  Onitama-  I hate chess, and this makes that sort of game more palatable.  
     14.  Inbetween-  eh, I don’t know, man.  It feels like it wants to be the Twilight Struggle style card driven game, but they missed
           somewhere along the way.  Just shows me how damned hard an excellent two player game is to make.  There aren’t many
           lighter ones out there that bring anything new to the table and are fun.  I may try this one a time or two more, once the wife
           gets her new bifocals so she can read the damned text.

Garbage
     1.  Risk Legacy-  this is terrible.  The only redeeming factor was the legacy part, and now that’s been done so many times, and
          So much better, that  there’s no need to play this to get the experience.  If you want to know what a kingmaking is, this game
          will demonstrate the problem to you perfectly.
     2.  Roma-  roll dice, do things on cards, someone wins at some point.  Super bland.  
     3.  Las Vegas-  roll dice.  Put them on cards.  Maybe about gambling?  So bad.  
« Last Edit: February 12, 2019, 07:25:08 PM by ghost »
Goldenmean
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Reply #12 on: February 13, 2019, 04:06:54 AM

    1.  Lorenzo il Magnifico-  Cool Mini or Not does a euro worker placement without miniatures, and it’s awesome.  It’s a top ten
            game for me.  

Sorry to be a nit picky jerk, but this is a pet peeve of mine; CMON had nothing to do with designing this game. It's a Cranio Creations game that CMON picked up a year after it released at Essen and made the american version of. They didn't even change the components from what I've seen. Quibbling pedantry aside though, I agree that this game is great. It's definitely on my top 10 as well. That group of designers are probably my favorite in the business, next to maybe Pfister. They churn out games like mad, though they're constantly in different groupings with each other, but that, Grand Austria Hotel, Newton, Tzolk'in, Voyages of Marco Polo, Coimbra, Teotihuacan, etc. are all high on my all time favorites list.

BTW, you should take a look at the expansion for Lorenzo. It makes the game even better in my opinion. It's got a bunch of different modules that you can mix and match onto the game. More leader cards, some variable starting cards that you bid on, a fifth tower (though it still provides cards of the existing four colors), components for a 5th player, etc.

Definitely look at Coimbra as well. It's very reminiscent of Lorenzo to me in that it's got a fixed deck that you always see the entirety of every game, and you use dice to buy cards, but it's a dice drafting game as opposed to a dice placement game, though like I said, all of their games are pretty great, and I'm super excited for Barrage this year.
ghost
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Reply #13 on: February 13, 2019, 04:37:58 AM

Yeah, I've pretty well shut down my game buying except for select items.  I definitely have the expansion for Lorenzo, but haven't put it into action yet.  Still trying to get the base game fully figured out.
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Reply #14 on: February 13, 2019, 05:04:24 AM

CMON seems like a decent publisher to work with given the random shit they've got in their catalog. Like Railroad Ink and Lorenzo.
ghost
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Reply #15 on: February 18, 2019, 08:25:52 AM

Gizmos looks interesting.  I'm kind of at a point where I have to absolutely love something to get it though.  And need to start offloading some shit.
Goldenmean
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Reply #16 on: February 19, 2019, 03:05:58 AM

Gizmos is actually quite good for what it is, which is a very light, very quick engine builder. I'd basically never choose to play it at a game night, but it's a great lunch hour type game.
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Reply #17 on: February 25, 2019, 03:48:10 PM

Shadows of Brimstone: Forbidden Fortress has become our family game.
Sky
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Reply #18 on: February 25, 2019, 04:34:35 PM

Shadows of Brimstone: Forbidden Fortress has become our family game.
I wish I had gotten into SoB. I know the kid who painted the official minis and he loved the hell out of it, but I was over mini-based games not named Kingdom Death when the original KS dropped.
ghost
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Reply #19 on: March 10, 2019, 09:28:45 AM

Played Wingspan today.  It's great.  And there is a lot of variety built into the base game.  Don't expect a lot of player interaction (there is none) so if you require that sort of thing in a game, don't get this one.  The art and components are excellent, as well. 
Goldenmean
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Reply #20 on: March 10, 2019, 02:08:21 PM

I really wish Wingspan had less randomness than it does. A wider tableau of birds to pick from without having to do blind draws, and even more notably, not having the resource generation be dice driven would have made me like the game a lot more. As is, I can see why people like it. It's decent at what it does, has good art, and nice production value, but it left me pretty disappointed.
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Reply #21 on: March 10, 2019, 05:40:52 PM

i'm pretty upset there's so much hype behind a "playing alone together" game with nice bird art
ghost
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Reply #22 on: March 11, 2019, 04:34:52 PM

There's a big market for that sort of game, really.  I dig the "playing alone together" type game quite a bit myself.  Not every game needs to be Dominant Species. 
Jeff Kelly
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Reply #23 on: March 18, 2019, 04:56:02 AM

I get the appeal of playing together alone type games. Competitive games can be a hard sell if your circle of friends does not exclusively consist of game geeks and truly cooperative games require a level of cooperation and communication that can be difficult for a certain breed of board game geeks to handle.

I know people that are mentally unable to do their part in a cooperative environment and still try to "win" it against their team or are frustrated when they are not the star of the show. The wife of a friend of mine throws hissy fits when she has to forfeit card effects or actions in Gloomhaven even if this greatly benefits the group as a whole and she gets mad when other team members are more powerful than her.

This is not a single occurance either, truly cooperative games require social skills and that you reign in your ego if it benefits the group as a whole and a certain subset of gamers lacks those skills, which is why they're great at competitive games and suck at everything else.

Even worse when they turn into gamesplainers and try to run a whole cooperative game session by themselves by micro managing your turns and and play decisions as well.

Internet has ruined it even more because there's now always someone who has already analysed the winning meta of a popular game and those kinds of people have of course already studied every tactic, strategy and build that is currently OP.
Sky
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Reply #24 on: March 19, 2019, 01:17:13 PM

People who can't enjoy co-op games are sociopaths.
Hawkbit
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Reply #25 on: March 19, 2019, 08:31:47 PM

My little brother has our childhood game of HeroQuest, we played through the first mission tonight with my wife and kid. Neither have seen it before. What a blast, that game is still a bunch of fun.
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Reply #26 on: March 20, 2019, 09:50:17 AM

i have no clue when it came out but Clank! is half a game so

miss
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Reply #27 on: March 24, 2019, 05:15:20 PM

People who can't enjoy co-op games are sociopaths.

People who go around making statements like this, however, are well adjusted individuals.
Sky
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Reply #28 on: March 28, 2019, 11:05:15 AM

People who can't enjoy co-op games are sociopaths.

People who go around making statements like this, however, are well adjusted individuals.
Indubitably.
Jeff Kelly
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Reply #29 on: April 02, 2019, 07:26:58 AM

Hits: Pandemic Legacy Season 2
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Reply #30 on: April 02, 2019, 08:10:58 AM

schild
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Reply #31 on: April 02, 2019, 08:11:20 AM

Underwater Cities is exceptional. The only game I've played better than it in the last year is Spirit Island.
Jeff Kelly
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Reply #32 on: April 02, 2019, 08:21:14 AM


Disagree? If so I'd be interested why without spoilers if possible (we haven't finished the campaign yet)
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Reply #33 on: April 02, 2019, 08:23:03 AM


Disagree? If so I'd be interested why without spoilers if possible (we haven't finished the campaign yet)

oh, you're not done

no no, keep going, come back and say if it's a hit when you're done (this is all assuming you've played season 1)
Jeff Kelly
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Reply #34 on: April 02, 2019, 08:32:47 AM

Ok so I'll rephrase my verdict

Hits: So far Pandemic Legacy Season 2. Ohhhhh, I see.

Yeah, we've played Season 1 and we liked it very much. Obvious plot twist was obvious but other than that it was great fun.
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