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Got a pretty good amount of gaming in over the holidays. Let's hit the list: Cthulhu: Death May Die The game: Bare-knuckle fighting against waves of cultists and Classic Mythos Monsters. Presents as a dice-chucking monster-battler, but it's really closer to an action efficiency puzzle, requiring you to understand the unique mechanics of the scenario while balancing your need to survive to the end with the limited doom clock. I always have a good time with DMD. It's not the smartest or most sophisticated game around, but the breakneck pace and clever sanity system (you lose sanity from rolling certain dice results - but the more sanity you lose, the stronger your character gets, rolling more dice and gaining stronger skills) pretty much guarantees a good time every game. We lost the scenario pretty badly, but I think a second playthrough would have seen us at least get through the first part (every scenario has a goal to achieve before you get to physically punch Cthulhu/Hastur to death). My wife compared it to Horrified, which at first I didn't totally get, but the more I thought about it, the more accurate she was - it's a game about optimizing your actions, deciding where to take the risk and when to play it safe, and the scenario we played was about escorting NPCs (the other main thing you do in Horrified). I don't own any other big dumb boxes of plastic but I'm glad I own this one. Like a lot of my favourite movies, it's dumb in a smart way (or vice versa, I guess). Azul The game: Grab tiles, place tiles, talk about how nice the tiles are, curse your friend for leaving you with the six loving blue tiles on the last pick goddamit he knew I couldn't take those - I love Azul. Not much to say here other than that I inadvertently gave a counterfeit version as a Christmas gift. A quick trip to the LGS here sorted that issue out, and it was kind of worth it to see the intended recipient's reaction once he saw how much better the production on the real version was. One thing I really appreciate about it is how transparent the strategy is (while still having a high skill ceiling). Reliably, even when teaching non-gamers, people will get the basics by the second round, and by the third round, they'll be cursing out the other players for sniping the tiles they wanted, scheming to dump garbage on the other players, and generally getting deeper into the game than they would on most other first plays. Great game. Inis The game: Draft a set of action cards, then scheme, explore, and fight to take over a mythic Irish island. Battles are totally deterministic, more of a negotiation than anything else, and the victory condition system means the game constantly hangs on knife's edge (or an unsatisfying stalemate, once in a rare while). Another of my all-time favourites. I don't get to play it much back at home because one of the members of my usual group just strongly dislikes it (due to a bad string of experiences playing Scythe with an annoying prick, and a general aversion to heavy conflict games, any game with little plastic guys fighting for control is a no-go). Only got it to the table once over the break, but man I love this game. It's not at its best with new players, because the tension of the game arises from evaluating how close everyone around the table is to completing one (or more) of the three victory conditions. Some of the wind gets let out of the sails when I have to nudge the other players to notice that I could have won in a turn or two if they didn't take action right then and there. Despite that, just playing the game was great, and I was reminded of how gorgeous the art and production on the big tarot-sized action/deed cards is. If I could get a reliable group to play it more often, I think I'd be comfortable calling Inis my favourite game of all time. Dead simple rules but incredible emergent complexity, and I love the way the fights can end mid-battle if everyone just agrees to sue for peace. Furnace The game: 19th century industrialists compete to make the most money by bidding on machine cards, then using those cards to turn cubes into different cubes into money. Losing an auction can be the right move, because every losing bid gets to use a special "compensation" action on the card. This was one of several new games I picked up over the holidays. I wasn't sure if it would feel a bit bland, given the whole game is just grabbing cards to turn one resource into another, but I was surprised by how clever and quick the game runs. Firing up your engine is pretty satisfying, and the auction system adds just enough tension and player interaction to make the game feel like a social activity and not a heads-down exercise in playing with cubes. I had also assumed it was more in the Race for the Galaxy kind of length, but it's closer to a filler. With an experienced group, you could burn through it in less than half an hour, easy. I worry that it might feel a bit samey on multiple plays, but honestly it plays so quick that I don't think that's much of an issue. I'd also be interested in trying the variant where you can't re-arrange your cards and instead have to slot every new action into the chain and then run the whole thing from left to right (instead of being able to freely trigger your cards in any order). Paleo The game: Coop cavepeople explore the world (a deck) to collect resources and attempt to eventually create a cave painting (five victory points) before losing too many tribe members to the harsh natural conditions. A very interesting design, I can't think of another game that feels quite like this. In brief, every day every player gets to pick one card from the top three of their personal deck. You're picking based entirely on the card back, which might show, say, a mountain, or a dream, or a campfire (representing staying home at the cave). You don't know exactly what will be on the front, but you have an idea (mountains will probably give stone, rivers animals, and so on). Once everyone picks and flips, you can decide whether or not to use the actions on the card, or maybe help someone else with their card, pooling the stats and items you have access to across both groups of cavepeople. At first, you won't even know how to win, but after a few trips through the deck you'll start to feel out what kinds of opportunities appear on what cards and how to survive the occasional threat card. The game's production is lovely, with some superfluous-but-fun 3D cardboard bits like the two-level rack that holds your crafting recipes or the mammoth graveyard used to hold permanently-removed cards. I really enjoyed the first playthrough, the feeling of discovery was quite unusual for board games, and it played with the idea of memory in a more interesting way than a strict "memorize what these do or lose" kind of way. You kind of do feel like explorers, learning a bit about the world around you every time you flip a new card. I'm curious to see how the other modules play (the game works by combining a common card pool with two "modules", which add unique missions and cards - in the first scenario, the missions required us to build a tent and store some meat every night or else take one of the failure tokens). There were a ton of tokens and even some dice that we didn't use at all in the first scenario, and theoretically you can mix+match any two module sets to create a unique game. Definitely looking forward to playing this one more. Planet The game: Build a physical 3D planet by collecting magnetic biome tiles and physically attaching them to a big ol' twelve-sided magnet doohickey. Try to collect animal cards by creating large groups of specific terrain: penguins might want the largest ice region that isn't touching any desert, while elk might want the largest forest that's also touching a mountain. This one was a bit of a miss, unfortunately. My wife picked it up on recommendation from a board game TikTok person who has otherwise really matched our taste (for instance, he loves Targi and Cartographers, which are two of our favourite games). The game itself is very very simple, well-suited to a family game night but a little boring for a group of adults. The gimmick with the physical 3D "globe" is definitely delightful, and there is something interesting in how you can make mistakes just by virtue of not fully rotating the orb to see every connection - not a lot of games that use real 3D space to obscure information from you. Unfortunately the game itself was less fun than just playing with the orb. Earthborne Rangers The game: Arkham Horror LCG-style card 'em up, except with a friendly post-post-apocalyptic glowup. Explore a genuine open world, hike around the Post-Collapse Rockies, make friends with the animals, and once in a while flee from a terrifying biomechanical monstrosity. I'm a sucker for a very specific thing, which is highly flavourful card games. I love seeing a designer use a simple set of mechanics and tokens to represent a story beat with very limited room for text. Let me give an example: In Earthborne, every card has 1-3 "reactions" on it. Whenever you take an action, you flip a card and that card will give you a random value (-2 to +1) and show one of the reaction icons. After resolving the action, you check every active card for that icon, which helps bring the clockwork ecosystem to life. A doe might have a reaction that causes it to eat (inflict damage on) nearby flora cards. A buck might injure you, but only if there's a doe nearby for it to defend. Another icon on the buck triggers if there's another buck around - they both take damage, as they lock antlers in a fight for the doe. A termite mound might spawn more termites, while an anteater might be triggered to try and eat that nest. It's all very simple and very comprehensible, there's not a lot of complicated mechanics (stuff can take damage or "progress", when either is maxed out that card is cleared) but it's amazing at bringing life to the game. There isn't even the usual "enemy turn" or whatever, and in fact there's almost no upkeep. You just keep exploring, flipping up threats and NPCs and locations from the deck until you build up enough progress by "hiking" the location to leave to the next spot on the map. Aside from Sleeping Gods, it's the closest thing I've seen to a real open world board game - you're free from the start of the game to just pick a location and head there, seeing what you see along the way, maybe picking up a mission or two or maybe just trying to travel as far as you can in one day. The only "fail state" per se is ending the day (once your draw deck runs out, or if you take too much damage, you're forced to end the day), and some of the smaller missions require you to complete them in one day. There's no Arkham-style Doom timer, the only impetus is you and your drive to use your time efficiently to cover as much ground as possible. I could write a lot about how clever the game's design is (might do a big post on it later), but for now I'll end by saying it's a smart, beautiful game that's just nice. Can't remember the last adventure game I played where the total number of "enemies" I physically fought and defeated was, like, 2. And both of those were optional! I also played about half of a solo game of Imperium: Classics. Not totally sold on it but it needs an actual playthrough before I make any further decisions. I loved the art and the idea of a civ deck builder, but my playthrough as the Greeks felt pretty bland. Their gimmick is they can achieve Empire status (most civs progress through a mini-deck of Nation cards and then flip from Barbarians to Empire) really quick compared to other civs, but the actual unique Greek cards didn't have much flavour, even things as iconic as Sparta or the Olympics were just variations on "gives you resources" or "lets you get a card from the market." Obviously there's a whole world of depth and subtlety I didn't see yet, but I hope everything feels more distinct on my next playthrough. edit: Inadequately posted:There's two ways to play it solo: Score Attack mode, where you just draw an increasing number of bullets every round and see how many rounds you manage, and Boss Battle mode, where you play against one of the characters flipped over to their boss side, which gives you additional limitations on how you can manipulate your bullets and have Boss patterns that penalize you for not completing them which you need to keep in mind as well. My preferred style of play is 1v1 against a boss, though they scale up to four players. You can also play multiplayer, but I don't think it's as good at being a multiplayer game than it is a solo one because every character plays dramatically differently, with some being a lot harder than others to grasp mechanically, and unless you play with people already very familiar with the game most will flounder if given a random one they've never tried before. I love Bullet Heart! Funnily enough, my group only plays the multiplayer battle version, we've never been drawn to the score attack or boss fight variants. Something about hearing everyone lose their minds at the same time while the timer ticks down is just so enjoyable. BinaryDoubts fucked around with this message at 17:49 on Jan 2, 2024 |
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Jan 2, 2024 17:46
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I want Cthulhu DMD and Earthborne Rangers so bad. Them and Massive Darkness 2 have been on my list for so long. I love Imperium, Classics and the other one I can't remember. They're probably my third favorite solo game behind Arkham and Spirit Island. The flavor is mostly in how a civ plays mechanically, but it is a little dry. Once you get down the pattern of the AI you're playing against, the flow of the game is only beaten by Spirit Island.
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Jan 2, 2024 17:58
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furnace should only be played with the left-to-right production chain imo. when I teach it I will always explain the aforementioned as part of the rules. otherwise the resource conversion phase feels too freeform and loosey-goosey. plus it provides an actual use for the oversized player colour tokens (move them left-to-right as buildings resolve). it doesn’t really add any complexity and actually has the potential to speed the game up
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Jan 2, 2024 18:01
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I agree, I like the game much better with fixed machine line instead of allowing it to reshuffle every turn.
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Jan 2, 2024 19:21
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FulsomFrank posted:I replayed Brass for the first time in like 5 years and immediately remembered why I (mostly) love it. Every turn felt like agony because the decisions were almost always difficult. You always want to do one more thing, the cards are never right, and holy poo poo did your opponent really just do that now I'm in trouble...I am also not very good at it. I just think the set up for it is such a pain. Need to find an organiser solution. If you have more to spend or don't want to fiddle with glue, try the Tower Rex inserts. I don't have experience with the Brass version, but I have the Spirit Island, Wingspan, and Viticulture organizers, and they're top quality and very attractive. Available on Etsy and potentially Amazon.
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Jan 2, 2024 19:33
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panko posted:furnace should only be played with the left-to-right production chain imo. when I teach it I will always explain the aforementioned as part of the rules. otherwise the resource conversion phase feels too freeform and loosey-goosey. plus it provides an actual use for the oversized player colour tokens (move them left-to-right as buildings resolve). it doesn’t really add any complexity and actually has the potential to speed the game up To clarify, are you talking about the fixed order between rounds variant that Eyes is talking about or just teaching people to go left to right for organizational reasons? We do both because the variant makes the game better instead of letting players rearranged their line each round and going one direction makes it easier to track regardless. I assume you're talking about the variant too, but you didn't actually mention the reorganization restriction there. Morpheus posted:
Just fold the rulebook up, it's just paper. How is Interbellum though? Make it more of a full game and less filler or does it just add some decisions but keep the runtime about the same?
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Jan 2, 2024 20:03
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BinaryDoubts posted:Inis Do you ever play this with 2? That’s my most likely scenario, so I’d be interested to hear what you think.
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Jan 2, 2024 20:17
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Anonymous Robot posted:Do you ever play this with 2? That’s my most likely scenario, so I’d be interested to hear what you think. Not OP but two player is my preferred way to play, it really scratches the itch of being not strictly deterministic with all the randomness coming from the players. I’ve got about 15 plays with the same person head to head and we’ve never been able to get the rest of the group into it, but it’s worth it in my book.
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Jan 2, 2024 20:20
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Bottom Liner posted:To clarify, are you talking about the fixed order between rounds variant that Eyes is talking about or just teaching people to go left to right for organizational reasons? We do both because the variant makes the game better instead of letting players rearranged their line each round and going one direction makes it easier to track regardless. I assume you're talking about the variant too, but you didn't actually mention the reorganization restriction there. fixed order. in a hypothetical scenario where we’d be playing under the resolve in any order ruleset, I’d let people resolve their buildings whereever they were on their tableau, as long as they rotated them 90 degrees afterward to signify their used status
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Jan 2, 2024 20:23
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Anonymous Robot posted:Do you ever play this with 2? That’s my most likely scenario, so I’d be interested to hear what you think. I've only played it at 2 a few times but it's great in that format too. Like many good-at-2P games, it feels like a knife fight. Because everything in Inis is so deterministic (but not perfectly so!) every move really impacts your opponent, there's no wasted time or energy on building up your own little area, everything is intertwined to a brutal degree. Really fun way to play the game.
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Jan 2, 2024 20:26
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It’s funny, I generally find those “knife fight” type games mentally taxing enough that I’m often not up for them. I’d love a little more chaos! But at the same time, there is something beautiful about systems with near-perfect information that still manage to be challenging and fun rather than just math puzzles.
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Jan 2, 2024 20:38
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panko posted:fixed order. in a hypothetical scenario where we’d be playing under the resolve in any order ruleset, I’d let people resolve their buildings whereever they were on their tableau, as long as they rotated them 90 degrees afterward to signify their used status You can say tap here, we won't send the Pinkertons to your house like WotC Anonymous Robot posted:Do you ever play this with 2? That’s my most likely scenario, so I’d be interested to hear what you think. Inis at 2 is almost a push your luck game with a lot of brinksmanship back and forth. It's very good but different. Also, if anyone isn't aware the expansion end-game rules are a must and easily added to base (no components needed, just a rule).
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Jan 2, 2024 20:42
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BinaryDoubts posted:Earthborne Rangers Huh, I feel like I heard about this game 5ever ago but completely forgot about it until just now. Do you agree with the BGG not recommended rating on four players? I've noticed the website seems to specifically call out solo play, too, is it a better solo experience than Arkham?
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Jan 2, 2024 20:48
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Bottom Liner posted:You can say tap here, we won't send the Pinkertons to your house like WotC the conversation was already progressing up the pedantry track so I was trying to avoid the “ah, but lightly touching a card with a finger doesn’t do enough to differentiate used from unused!  ” gotcha. instead, this.
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Jan 2, 2024 21:12
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That's one of my favourite gotchas though. I mostly spring that on myself after I tap a card.
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Jan 2, 2024 21:14
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Mr. Squishy posted:after I tap a card.  Off to WotC gaol ya go.
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Jan 2, 2024 23:17
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BinaryDoubts posted:I also played about half of a solo game of Imperium: Classics. Not totally sold on it but it needs an actual playthrough before I make any further decisions. I loved the art and the idea of a civ deck builder, but my playthrough as the Greeks felt pretty bland. Their gimmick is they can achieve Empire status (most civs progress through a mini-deck of Nation cards and then flip from Barbarians to Empire) really quick compared to other civs, but the actual unique Greek cards didn't have much flavour, even things as iconic as Sparta or the Olympics were just variations on "gives you resources" or "lets you get a card from the market." Obviously there's a whole world of depth and subtlety I didn't see yet, but I hope everything feels more distinct on my next playthrough. For me, the shine on playing different real and imaginary ancient cultures in competition was dimmed almost entirely by the civs' sameness and the game's outstandingly fiddly upkeep. Those upkeep steps all do something important, but the game really felt like it needed another design pass.
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Jan 3, 2024 03:02
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Bottom Liner posted:Just fold the rulebook up, it's just paper. >: ( Bottom Liner posted:How is Interbellum though? Make it more of a full game and less filler or does it just add some decisions but keep the runtime about the same? The expansion is made up of a few modules, and most of them expand the playtime - either due to a fifth player, a custom bid tile (lets you put down a fifth bid tile and spend coal to set its value), or even just by virtue of increasing the number of cards available to bid on, therefore increasing the think time.
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Jan 3, 2024 14:36
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ChewyLSB posted:Huh, I feel like I heard about this game 5ever ago but completely forgot about it until just now. Do you agree with the BGG not recommended rating on four players? I've noticed the website seems to specifically call out solo play, too, is it a better solo experience than Arkham? I only played it at 2 but I played a LOT of it so I can speculate a little bit: true solo would be fine, I think. You would be slightly limited compared to a 2+ game as your stats (which also act as "action points" in a sense) are skewed, with one stat having 3 energy per turn and another only having 1 energy, with a lot of the actions requiring a total of 2 to succeed. That means that certain approaches might be closed off to you as realistically you can't do much with your 1-energy stat unless you have lots of complimentary cards to burn. That said, because the game is so open-ended, there's no problem in just moving past challenges you aren't suited to and instead going for ones you can handle. (Though I wouldn't play solo with only 1 Fitness, as that's the stat used to hike and move around the map). You'd probably be less efficient and see a little bit less of the card pool in solo, but given how vibes-based the game is anyway, I think that's fine. At 4... yeah, I don't think it would be a very smooth experience. Because you draw 1 card per player from the Path deck (encounters, creatures, features, etc.), and some go to your personal board while others go to a shared "along the way" area, at 4 you would end up with a lot of Stuff everywhere, and all that Stuff activates on every card flip (well, depending on what icons come up), the act of resolving an action would be a little slower than at 2. If you had a very focused, non-AP-prone group, it could maybe work, but your turns are quite open-ended with the choice to interact with basically anything anywhere on the board with one of four basic actions or any of the actions on any of the cards, and the added suite of options from 4P would definitely slow me down.
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Jan 3, 2024 14:43
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Was going to have a Feast for Odin + Kanban EV day on Friday... but it's just looking like Odin atm. Should I be adding the Speedcharger mini-expansion in for Kanban? For whenever I do get it to the table 
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Jan 3, 2024 15:12
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Infinitum posted:Was going to have a Feast for Odin + Kanban EV day on Friday... but it's just looking like Odin atm. "JUST" Odin. Aren't we feeling a bit precious. God has handed you an opportunity to play Uwe's masterwork and, if can humbly suggest, the pinnacle of the Euro genre as a whole... And you want more?
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Jan 3, 2024 15:55
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FulsomFrank posted:And you want more? 
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Jan 3, 2024 16:12
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I've recovered from our annual New Year's boardgaming blowout so here's the quick rundown of everything I remember: Project L: Using polyominoes of various shapes (think Tetris) score points and gain additional polyominoes by filling the spaces in various "puzzles". Unexpectedly fun, and if I was looking for more filler games I would probably buy it. Age of Gods: A janky piece of ameritrash (AKA "thematic game" if you're the sort of person who generally likes these games) which manages to be interesting in spite of being heavily luck based. A very simplistic wargame with the twist that you don't know which factions are yours until various points throughout the game where you get dealt cards to reveal to you (but not the other players) which factions will score you points. I am absolutely shocked that I didn't hate this, but I found its unbelievably shamelessly generic fantasy setting, as well as the mindgames surrounding faction ownership, strangely charming. Tiny Epic Dinosaurs: I always thought that all of these "tiny epic" games looked like total poo poo, so I'm glad that I've now played one so that I can confirm that at least this one is total poo poo. The most milquetoast, uninteresting worker placement game you'll ever see, with the added benefit of the cards being so small you can't easily read them at a distance / upside down. Who the gently caress is this marketed at? Betrayal At... (2nd edition / 3rd edition / Baldur's Gate): gently caress around inside a haunted house / Baldur's Gate while spooky poo poo happens and maybe one of your friends tries to kill you. I've now played 3 different versions of this game and still have no idea why people keep buying them. It's an OK filler game, but the haunts are regularly confusingly written / explained and sometimes go on for far, far too long. Inexplicably the most played game at the whole event (I think a total of maybe 8 or 9 playthroughs?) Hansa Teutonica: The Platonic ideal of themelessly and emotionlessly placing cubes in exactly the right place to enrage your loved ones and get the most points. I still adore this game, but having now played many 3 player games, it definitely is less fun with 3 than it is with 4 or 5. If they ever make a retheme I'll probably buy it instantly just for the potential to draw in some more players because "who wants to roleplay being a 14th century German accountant" somehow doesn't get people excited. I still haven't played on either of the "advanced" boards since I rarely get to play with the same people more than once or twice, which is a shame since the East Germany map seems to be generally recognised as an improvement over the original. Space Alert: A recorded message shouts at you while you and your friends (in real time) try to prevent your spaceship from being turned into space dust by secretly placing action cards on a timing track. Then after the recording you "play back" your actions in turn with "hilarious" consequences when it turns out nobody remembered to actually raise the shields. I'm getting more ambivalent on this game every time I play it, I don't feel that there's anything more to the game on subsequent plays, and the periods when the recording blasts loud static at you for an extended time are quite unpleasant (I have a hearing condition which makes this worse, so this is a fairly specific complaint). I presume that there's supposed to be a chaotic novelty to the game which I don't appreciate because I think that putting cubes onto a brown board while thinking seriously is the pinnacle of socialising. Tales of the Arabian Nights: Another "thematic game" but this one totally ditches any pretense of being even vaguely skill based and is so much better for it. It's basically a huge Choose Your Own Adventure game where you get to do increasingly stupid things and either fail hilariously or unexpectedly succeed. In a single game we had the guy who got turned into an animal no fewer than 3 times, someone roleplaying an evil necromancer who inadvertantly ended up becoming Sultan of the Djinn, I was enslaved for the entire game but still managed to destroy a magical mountain and became a Visier somehow (I was only 3 turns from also becoming Sultan), and Aladdin crossed the entire known world, got married and had a bunch of kids before being declared the "winner" The King is Dead: A very interesting, fairly abstract area control game where you play as a shadowy noble trying to gain influence over the warring factions of Medieval Great Britain (English, Welsh and Scottish). Influence is represented as, what else, cubes on the board. Throughout the course of the game you will play cards to add and remove cubes from various parts of the board, and regions are gradually scored and "captured" by a faction at which point that region is no longer in play. At the end of the game, the winning player is the one who has the most influence (represented by cubes you control yourself in your off-map "court") over the winning faction in the war. Since you don't play as a specific faction the game state is extremely fluid in the early game, but gradually clarifies as each player's options are reduced over time. I really enjoy this game, considering how simple it is in terms of rules there are some truly compelling decisions to make. Babylonia: A very simple but compelling tile placement game where you fight with the other players for control over cities and ziggurats in exchange for victory points. I love how easy this game is to teach, even small children should be able to understand how to play, but playing well is not easy. In terms of difficulty of rules vs. enjoyment from playing it might be the best game I own. I already mentioned Beyond the Sun and Furnace in earlier posts upthread so I won't add any details but these games were both great! Terraforming Mars: Did you know that it's possible to make a 4 player game of this take nearly 7 hours? I mercifully only spectated this one instead of playing, but I felt that this was worth mentioning anyway. A great example of why this is now on my Do Not Play list. Also, someone got over 100 megacredit production and still didn't win while having more cards on the table than 2 of the other players combined (one of whom was the overall winner) Overall - I'm unsure if people were just feeling tired after the first 2 days but after some initial good times, everyone wanted to play games where you just relax and roll dice instead of furiously thinking about strategy and it was kind of a downer. We could at least have played a few games of Power Grid since everyone knows the rules already! For the record, unplayed games I was really hoping to get to the table: Troyes, Brian Boru (I've played Troyes before, Brian Boru is totally new though) RabidWeasel fucked around with this message at 16:48 on Jan 3, 2024 |
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Jan 3, 2024 16:33
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 Wingspan, but dragons? Hell yeah. I'm here for it!
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Jan 3, 2024 17:08
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RabidWeasel posted:
God I hate this game so much lol
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Jan 3, 2024 17:12
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RabidWeasel posted:Terraforming Mars: Did you know that it's possible to make a 4 player game of this take nearly 7 hours? I mercifully only spectated this one instead of playing, but I felt that this was worth mentioning anyway. That's inexcusable. I'd start taking five-second turns to rush whichever endgame state is closest.
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Jan 3, 2024 17:22
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Frozen Peach posted:
 silvergoose posted:God I hate this game so much lol Reminds me of a con where we played like Ra, FCM, and another game after the table beside us had started TfM. We finished all 3 and they were maybe 75% done on the tracks.
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Jan 3, 2024 17:37
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Frozen Peach posted:
the worst part about this is the ominous foreshadowing line, “A wingspan game”
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Jan 3, 2024 17:50
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RabidWeasel posted:
How did it manage to take 7 hours? I've played with newbies, and our game takes 2.5 hours max with 4 players.
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Jan 3, 2024 17:52
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If dinosaurs can become chickens then what's to stop dragons from doing it too?
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Jan 3, 2024 17:53
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RabidWeasel posted:
Dear god, and I thought the 4-hour game with 5 people I played a few weeks back was long! Glad to hear you played some fun games, tho. After watching the SU&SD video on Hansa, I really wanna give it a shot sometime.
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Jan 3, 2024 17:53
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much of wingspan’s appeal to me is the education it provides on real-life birds. the mechanics of the game aren’t good enough to replace that with lore about shropshire fork-tongues or vermillion spinewings and still make me want to play
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Jan 3, 2024 18:02
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For what it's worth the Eastern map is barely more complex than the standard HT map.
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Jan 3, 2024 18:10
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DropTheAnvil posted:How did it manage to take 7 hours? I've played with newbies, and our game takes 2.5 hours max with 4 players. Playing with all the expansions except Turmoil, the players all have 50+ plays under their belt and the "meta" for playing TM in our group is to get as much card draw and off-map points scoring as possible. Everyone had colonies on Pluto and it was obvious that the game was going long when it got to generation ~8 and the oxygen track was at 2% (heat got filled in really fast though). One of the players is renowned for AP and takes long turns in basically every game. And that 7 hours does include set up and a lengthy meal break. Actual play time was probably closer to 5 hours, which is still crazy for a 4p game. Doctor Spaceman posted:For what it's worth the Eastern map is barely more complex than the standard HT map. I have been meaning to just play with it and see how it turns out, but the guy I usually rely on to play HT with me wasn't there this year for some reason and I didn't want to make things any more difficult for the new players.
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Jan 3, 2024 18:31
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panko posted:much of wingspan’s appeal to me is the education it provides on real-life birds. the mechanics of the game aren’t good enough to replace that with lore about shropshire fork-tongues or vermillion spinewings and still make me want to play I have been avoiding Wingspan but I have a dragon obsessed kid so...
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Jan 3, 2024 18:34
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panko posted:much of wingspan’s appeal to me is the education it provides on real-life birds. the mechanics of the game aren’t good enough to replace that with lore about shropshire fork-tongues or vermillion spinewings and still make me want to play Yeah, ornithology was a fresh theme with a rich seam of pretty creatures with interesting facts. Dragons? Less so. But I'm sure it will do well.
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Jan 3, 2024 18:41
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RabidWeasel posted:Tiny Epic Dinosaurs: I always thought that all of these "tiny epic" games looked like total poo poo, so I'm glad that I've now played one so that I can confirm that at least this one is total poo poo. Who the gently caress is this marketed at? PRADA SLUT posted:the worst part about this is the ominous foreshadowing line, “A wingspan game” SHOGGOTHSPAN SCYTHESPAN X-WINGSPAN
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Jan 3, 2024 18:41
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homullus posted:
Not gonna lie, they'd get me with this one.
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Jan 3, 2024 18:45
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They remade Ponzi Scheme but with dragons too. Thankfully it got a proper reprint afterwards.
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Jan 3, 2024 18:55
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Poopy Palpy posted:Not gonna lie, they'd get me with this one. the eggs would be wee droids
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Jan 3, 2024 18:59
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