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I do feel like the market is oversaturated at the moment in terms of boardgames. As well as that, there has been a steady increase in monopolisation, primarily by Asmodee (they got recently bought out themselves, right?). Anecdotally, there has been very little that has truly excited me in terms of board games recently (apart from SI, and that's not a recent development), and my board game purchases have gone way down. I think that might be more because my interest have calcified, though, and I don't feel the need to buy much more than I currently have.
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Aug 18, 2022 12:09
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| # ? Jun 4, 2024 14:20 |
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This is a good thing. edit: eh the HC thing is old news. Not an Edward fan and the early stuff with Amanda left a bad taste in my mouth. It's history now. Making money from board game content seems like a massive stressful grind and I don't envy anyone who does so. dishwasherlove fucked around with this message at 12:17 on Aug 18, 2022 |
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Aug 18, 2022 12:13
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dishwasherlove posted:This is a good thing.
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Aug 18, 2022 12:14
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Your soul is complete. You are free from the cult of the new. You have refined and honed your tastes over years of gaming where you can now pick up a single game and get value out of it for a continued period of time. This is how my parents felt when the arbitrarily decided to stop absorbing new music and now I understand.
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Aug 18, 2022 12:18
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I'm probably over-stressing it because it annoys me personally, but the movement in publishing to take what could be a £30~£50 game and put it out as a £100~£130 game by replacing punchboard w/ sculpted plastic figurines is not a good thing for the hobby. Things like Founders of Rome, or the new edition of Castles of Burgundy. It seems like they've identified that the hobby isn't going to grow much more, and that the way to increase your profits is to pump as much as you can from the audience you have. So I'll say the golden age has ended.Tekopo posted:Which part? The contentment w/ what you have, I would imagine.
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Aug 18, 2022 12:21
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I'm mostly buying Amabel Holland games these days, which is to say once a year at the sale. Pretty excited to get Eyelet, Siege of Mantua, and Watch Out! That's a Dracula! this year.
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Aug 18, 2022 12:24
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mellifluous posted:Any tips to keep in mind for a first playthrough? Neither of us has played before. Beginners tend to focus too much on the market and the map, and ignore the actions on their court cards. Taxation for example can be a pretty powerful move, when you can do it. So I recommend consciously checking over your court card actions at the very start of your turn. Also, since the last Dominance check gets double points, if your enemy can afford to buy it before you can, you are in trouble.
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Aug 18, 2022 12:25
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dishwasherlove posted:edit: eh the HC thing is old news. Not an Edward fan and the early stuff with Amanda left a bad taste in my mouth. It's history now. Making money from board game content seems like a massive stressful grind and I don't envy anyone who does so. As Terminally Bored might not know the old news, the main guy met his girlfriend while married to someone else. Just pretty shabby treatment of his wife, and as everyone involved was on his youtube show, it played out in the public eye. Anyway, I don't like HC because they manage to make everything seem complicated, which is like the reverse of what they should be doing.
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Aug 18, 2022 12:29
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mellifluous posted:I'm planning to play two-player Pax Pamir 2E tomorrow. I'm going to read the rulebook and was hoping to watch a playthrough as well. Does anyone have any video recommendations? Any tips to keep in mind for a first playthrough? Neither of us has played before. Thanks! The Overthrow rule (the link between purple cards and tribes on the board) is flagged as something that is easy to miss for a reason. - It's possible to get too attached to your tableau. Some cards are only really valuable for their on-play effects and can be safely replaced by another card. - Conversely it can be worthwhile hanging on to a card to change alignment or suit for a long time. You don't need to play everything straight away.
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Aug 18, 2022 13:06
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Tekopo posted:I do feel like the market is oversaturated at the moment in terms of boardgames. As well as that, there has been a steady increase in monopolisation, primarily by Asmodee (they got recently bought out themselves, right?). Anecdotally, there has been very little that has truly excited me in terms of board games recently (apart from SI, and that's not a recent development), and my board game purchases have gone way down. I think that might be more because my interest have calcified, though, and I don't feel the need to buy much more than I currently have. A well designed board game remains just as good many years after it was made and the best ones generally get reprinted, so every year I think the bar rises for genuine novelty or significant steps forward in accessibility or whatever. I think there was a ton of innovation over the past twenty years and we are now seeing increasingly marginal improvements to well established systems and game genres. Have there been better auction games than Ra, Modern Art, Chicago Express, Medici? Possibly, but it’s unlikely they are dramatically better to the same degree as those games were to their predecessors. And when we do get something vaguely new like legacy games or roll and writes there is a burst of innovation, a flood of titles and within a couple of years usually the best iteration is going to be 90% as good as anything that follows (pandemic legacy 1, railroad ink or whatever). And chances are all of them will be a high standard in terms of rules quality, play time, player scaling etc - compared to where we were 20 years ago. So yeah I think the golden age of boardgames is in one way over, but in another we get to experience it forever even if the truly exciting times are now past, where there were 5 genuinely outstanding games every year and a bunch of mediocre ones, rather than 50 very good games and nearly flawless games every year but none of them particularly better or dissimilar than their predecessors. I mean, there is plenty of innovation going on and all sorts of cool stuff, it’s just that the games aren’t THAT much better than what I’ve already got, for most groups and circumstances I’m likely to play with. I have great fillers, brain burnt euros, dynamic and ever mutable co-ops, highly thematic war games etc, and all of them for every player count, level of rules complexity and playtime, basically. Edit: have been trying to think about the most genuinely new and exciting purchase I’ve had last couple of years, and it was probably zombie teens / kids for my sons because extending a legacy mechanic into a kids game that was also fun enough for me to play was genius. Maybe Gloomhaven and Spirit Island? I didn’t like Root that much but it was probably that for other people. Almost all the other best stuff I’ve played has been reprints of older things. Maybe Ankh because it felt halfway between DoAM and a Knizia, and was a genuine surprise. But it didn’t blow me away like Kemet did when that came out. Blamestorm fucked around with this message at 13:41 on Aug 18, 2022 |
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Aug 18, 2022 13:37
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discount cathouse posted:Is the golden age of boardgames over or are we still living in it? I think it might be more accurate to say that the 'Board Game Gold Rush' might be waning. Sure, lots of crowdfunding projects still rake in shitloads of money, but there is a growing awareness and hostility towards the perpetual hype-sphincters and baloney-meisters. Frankly, they way they have operated in the past may not work outside of a 10-year bear market. TMG (Orleans, Yokohama) was an early one to fall, but now Petersen Games (Cthulhu Wars), Diea (Euthia) and Five24/Poketto (Mint Works) have essentially ceased operations in various ways as well. There's rumors that Funforge might be next. Now, bigger players like CMON and Steamforged are chugging along at a reasonable clip, but the shipping crisis has hit CMON hard in the Marvel: Zombicide project, and that has depleted a lot of goodwill in what people are calling "sticker shock". It might be a case of once burned, twice shy for people looking at physically large projects. I have nothing to back this up, but it feels like your average entrenched board gamer has finally had a reasonable chance to have been released from the spell of FOMO-fuelled crowdfunding. Enough time has passed that anyone who was already a board gamer in the earlier KS days probably got burned on something, whether it be Massive Darkness or Dark Souls: The Board Game or Batman: Gotham City Chronicles or Carnival Zombie: Second Edition. Those probably aren't even the best examples, because those actually got released or are currently being released. Things like the Blacklist Miniatures: Fantasy Series 1 have been produced but remain unreleased because the publisher owes money to their distributor. There are probably other instances but I don't pay much attention to crowdfunding campaigns such as these. Even if you didn't get burned, you probably heard about it going wrong on some project or had a friend get burned or something. It's likely impossible to have been in the space that long and not come across it in some way. Imagine in your game room that you have two Kallax shelves filled with a game that cost you $400 and loving sucks. It's so bad, everyone knows it so no one is buying it, and you obviously can't just throw it into the garbage. Every time you look at that collection, that annoyance (perhaps even shame) is going to crop up. That must weigh on your desire to back to get kicked square in the junk by Kickstarter fraudsters again, especially considering that you can also just get board games the normal way through retail. This combined with some additional awareness as to the necessity of plastic in board games, which is not a topic I have educated myself in but I know Matt of SUSD has mused about in the past. Despite this, many discovered board games in the last two+ years, because they could play with members of their household (SO, kids, etc). Board games have continued to grow in the last ten years or so; even in 2009 with Dominion and Pandemic we probably thought that was the peak too. It's continually gaining even more mainstream appeal, and I do not think this is all people getting swept up into crowdfunding. Part of this is silly meme tripe like Exploding Kittens, but even that still might serve as a gateway to teach people that games are not just Monopoly. Do these new people crowdfund games to the same level? I don't know. I think most everyone is vulnerable to FOMO until they get inoculated to it, but your average person has likely come across the issue with things like pre-order bonuses in video games or something. But then again, the video game industry showcases how normal such predatory behavior is and how profitable it can be, so perhaps this is giving the average consumer too much credit. In any case, the industry has noticed: board games now have a big section at Target, and it does not just contain the mass market trash. Gloomhaven, Spirit Island and even Ticket To Ride have (or are getting) Target-funded simplified versions, and a selection of popular designer board games. To me, this would have been unthinkable even 5 years ago when Toys "R" Us went bankrupt, being the largest brick-and-mortar seller of designer board games that I was aware of. (It's possible that the big box stores were already getting in on the act by 2016-17, but I am unsure.) So, I guess I don't think the Golden Age of Board Games (so to speak) is over necessarily, just the Gold Rush to scam board gamers, and this might be contributed to the scammers all moving on to crypto in the same way that the scammers used to be in book publishing but moved to film when that came around. We'll see how the next 2-5 years shake out with the world being what it is.
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Aug 18, 2022 13:43
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I mostly feel like my collection is mainly complete, with just a little bit of fine-tuning here and there. Just keeping tabs on what's new, in case the next Spirit Island-like comes along, or Knizia releases a cat-themed Samurai or something.
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Aug 18, 2022 13:49
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Mr. Squishy posted:As Terminally Bored might not know the old news, the main guy met his girlfriend while married to someone else. Just pretty shabby treatment of his wife, and as everyone involved was on his youtube show, it played out in the public eye. Anyway, I don't like HC because they manage to make everything seem complicated, which is like the reverse of what they should be doing. I didn't know that, thanks! That bearded dude always gets on my nerves for some reason. And he hated A Feast of Odin for some reason.
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Aug 18, 2022 14:59
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Magnetic North posted:Imagine in your game room that you have two Kallax shelves filled with a game that cost you $400 and loving sucks. It's so bad, everyone knows it so no one is buying it, and you obviously can't just throw it into the garbage. Every time you look at that collection, that annoyance (perhaps even shame) is going to crop up. Or, you know, you could. Don’t keep poo poo that has no value, it clutters your place and your head.
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Aug 18, 2022 15:50
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I played Cartographers over the weekend and I enjoyed the hell out of it. I haven't had that much fun with a new game in a long time.
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Aug 18, 2022 15:54
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I need a game-adjacent opinion: Playing card lines with high production values and interesting looks. Think magicians cards but useable for I have some Theory11s Monarchs, Elephants Prisms and Cyberpunk, Joker & the Thief Wayfarers. Looking for any other interesting lines.
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Aug 18, 2022 15:59
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Get some vintage KEM plastic cards.
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Aug 18, 2022 16:09
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The other thing I have noticed about the board game environment is that there are still many people moving through the progression of Exploding Kittens (or similar quality) > Catan (or similar quality) > good games that suit their taste > good games that suit their taste, playing circle, free time, and storage. I see the upgrades happening in real time in the local FB game sale/trade group. Each sell-off goes to an enthusiast earlier in the cursus ludorum.
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Aug 18, 2022 16:30
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Just this past weekend I pulled a couple up from the Catan rung of the hobby. Feelsgoodman
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Aug 18, 2022 18:56
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CitizenKeen posted:I played Cartographers over the weekend and I enjoyed the hell out of it. I haven't had that much fun with a new game in a long time. Cartographers rules. I went completionist on it and it wasn't too expensive. If you haven't grabbed it yet I recommend going through the Thunderworks website, because they throw in a skills expansion that is a pretty big improvement.
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Aug 18, 2022 19:05
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What’s the most interesting part of cartographers? It sounds interesting but I wanna know where the juice is
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Aug 18, 2022 19:11
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Tekopo posted:What’s the most interesting part of cartographers? It sounds interesting but I wanna know where the juice is I don't know, it was my first "draw on a board" game, so I don't know if it's state of the art or not. I own Railroad Inc but I've never cracked it open.
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Aug 18, 2022 19:13
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I find RRI a much better puzzle but some find it stressful.
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Aug 18, 2022 19:16
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Railroad Ink rules and also exists in a very chill digital format, it's one of my go-to "pull out at a small gathering" games alongside Skull. It's quite easy to teach, and the solitaire aspect of it helps to take off some of the pressure of "playing against others" because at the end of the day you're just making a pretty transit network.
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Aug 18, 2022 19:20
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Tekopo posted:What’s the most interesting part of cartographers? It sounds interesting but I wanna know where the juice is Like any good placement game, deciding where to place a shape can both score you a lot of points or completely screw you over. The specific thing that Cartographers does well is the seasons mechanic. There's four goals (A to D) and four seasons in a game (spring to winter), and each season scores two of the goals (spring is AB, summer is BC, fall is CD, winter is DA). Scoring high requires balancing the current season's goal with building towards a future one. The seasons also get shorter as they go, which gives the game a good pace. There's also a lot of nice little fantasy theme stuff, like collecting gold or dealing with monster threats, that gives it some extra spice. The game is never really anything other than an abstract game but the character does come through, particularly in expansions. Flaws are that the goal cards can be extremely confusing, so like read and reread them if you haven't played them before. And yeah at the end it kind of devolves into bingo, like waiting on specific cards you need, but I find that fun Lol.
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Aug 18, 2022 19:35
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My group LOVED That's Pretty Clever, and Railroad Ink bored us and me especially. Cartographers base game was fun for a bit but the sheen wore off quickly. I found that with competitive players games often feel very similar, with everyone going for the same (sensible) bonuses and goals in more or less the same order every time. On the other hand we have had great fun with Voyages, a print and play roll and write with a variety of maps that costs only a few bucks. Fantastic value.
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Aug 18, 2022 20:17
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I like that in Cartographers you don't necessarily have to just try to optimize every shape with the season goals, but can also preemptively fill ruin-spaces to get wild squares early, or circle mountains to get money asap. Also you should play by the rule that the prettiest map wins ties. Coloured pencils/markers are a must.
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Aug 18, 2022 20:42
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my purchasing has gone way down for a number of reasons, but I'm still pre-ordering every new splotter sight unseen.
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Aug 18, 2022 23:05
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Impermanent posted:my purchasing has gone way down for a number of reasons, but I'm still pre-ordering every new splotter sight unseen. My list of people and places with whom I'm automatically on board for anything from day 0 is very short, but damned if Splotter's not at the top of it.
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Aug 18, 2022 23:21
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PRADA SLUT posted:I need a game-adjacent opinion: Fontaines have some very interesting looks
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Aug 18, 2022 23:53
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Tekopo posted:my board game purchases have gone way down My purchases have been very slow, even as pandemic eases. I still play a reasonable number of board games, but my "dedicated group" was co-workers. With everyone working remotely, that's 99% gone. Rare to have enough people to game at lunch, too much hassle to get together after - a few don't even live in the city anymore. Dedicated nights pretty rare, don't need a lot of new games. I play some with the family, but we go through games pretty slow. Jaws of the Lion. Crew. D&D. These are games that last months, into years. (Did go back to Micro/Macro lately. Good game.) For casual "playing with visitors", I don't want to play a new game - I want to play a game I know backwards and forwards, where I know all the rules people might miss on a first playthrough, where my teaching spiel is smooth and fast, and where I have good reason to believe it'll be a hit with new players. Not worth experimenting with something new.
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Aug 19, 2022 00:41
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djfooboo posted:Just this past weekend I pulled a couple up from the Catan rung of the hobby. Feelsgoodman Don't forget there are people like me who are perpetually behind the curve Spent a cool $200 on recommendations from this thread after never getting beyond the Catan rung of the hobby. Jaipur, Spirit Island, Dominion for a few of 'em.
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Aug 19, 2022 00:56
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adnam posted:Don't forget there are people like me who are perpetually behind the curve The best part of being 'behind the curve' is your collection can be pure octane 
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Aug 19, 2022 01:09
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Magnetic North posted:The best part of being 'behind the curve' is your collection can be pure octane what about ‘ahead of the curve’ and your collection is pure methane
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Aug 19, 2022 01:39
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PRADA SLUT posted:what about ‘ahead of the curve’ and your collection is pure methane there is a whole thread for Kickstarter
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Aug 19, 2022 02:50
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If you want something new that is also old, tried and proven, get on the hype squad for Pueblo and Triomphe à Marengoadnam posted:Don't forget there are people like me who are perpetually behind the curve This is the pro play. Tried and tested designs, replayable until the day your Kallax shelf collapses
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Aug 19, 2022 14:59
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My purchases have nearly completely stopped, though I'm still finishing off some preorders that I did in days of yore. I think GMT just sent "Musket and Pike Dual Pack" to me.
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Aug 19, 2022 15:23
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Yeah I've pretty much stopped buying games too. I've got some 35~ titles for a variety of player counts, lengths and mechanics so I'm pretty much set.
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Aug 19, 2022 15:26
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I keep buying, but I'm rounding out new experiences. MIND MGMT because I don't own a hidden movement game, Shikoku 1889 because I don't own an 18XX game, Stationfall because I've never seen a board game like it.
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Aug 19, 2022 18:13
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I have a question. My fiancee's dad is open to doing some board game nights sometime but he says he doesn't know anything about board games or tabletop games. He probably knows about the standard stuff you'd see from parker bros and probably knows about some card games from casinos but he specifically said that the only board game he knows of is forbidden desert. The only reason he knows about forbidden desert is because we played it together once many years ago. At this point he's basically this tweet  but replace "boss baby" with "forbidden desert" and "watching his second movie" with "playing his second tabletop game." So I'd like to introduce him to various different games. I know what kinds of games I'll pick. Game choice isn't the problem here. My problem is the language. I have no idea how to easily communicate stuff about board games to him because I don't want to overwhelm him with a whole new dictionary of tabletop game words especially when he's just starting out with stuff. What are some mandatory foundational board game terminology that he should know? Like, obviously if he has never played a wargame before, talking about army points and templates is going to be confusing, just as it'd be confusing to try and explain a cooperative deckbuilder if he has never even heard of deckbuilding. I can't just say "we're going to play a cooperative area control game" if he still doesn't have a clue what area control games are, or what area control even means. I'm just not sure how best to approach it because I'd really rather not dump a massive wall of text on him akin to this post that is just me listing off a ton of different genres, mechanics, and terms.
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