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I picked up a couple of BitBoxes because I am quickly running out of shelf space and wanted a solution. After having some time using them in an organization frenzy, I will offer some thoughts, with no real order to them. Their use is highly variable, as you might expect. Games like Millennium Blades or Eldritch Horror or Argent, which fill the hell out of their boxes, will not find much use out of Bitbox. The games in my library that found the most use out of the Bitbox were the ones with a huge amount of empty space in their boxes, like Chicago Express, New Through the Ages, Tash Kalar, etc. I had originally Kickstarted this for those games, as well as for Cthulhu Wars, but in the case of CW, there's a ton of empty space in the boxes that I put them in that I can't really use for anything else, since it's just naturally empty space between minis. But for the rest, I'm grateful for the space savings, except the amount of space saved is sort of a weird calculation. Yes, you take a big empty box and fit it into a tight smaller box, but each Bitbox has two sleeves for the boards themselves. The problem is that the dimensions of these board sleeves are sort of weird and there's no way to 100% fully use it, so there's going to be an amount of wasted space that may or may not make up for the space saved. This is, of course, at the expense of having a potentially aesthetically pleasing set of game boxes to proudly flaunt your nerddom, which is sort of doubly weird since the games to put into a Bitbox are the ones that you like the most, since you obviously remove a lot of retail value by getting rid of their boxes. Caylus, as you might imagine, has both a great cover and a lot of empty space in the box. It is a tough call. Their pricing and SKUs are weird and inconvenient. Despite the fact that the boxes are pretty mix and match as far as size is concerned, you can't actually customize the boxes you want. That is, you can't get 8 medium storage boxes in a Bitbox, you can only get 4 mediums and 8 smalls. The problem is that I don't have a lot of games that fit into the smalls, but I do have a lot of games that fit into the mediums. The shipping is also horrific since for some reason they ship the boxes fully (voluminously) assembled, since I guess they don't trust people to fold cardboard boxes properly? An option to get it unfolded would have been good, and I wouldn't even have had to deal with the shipping errors that caused some of the boxes to be crushed in transit. In the end, I dunno. I definitely see some free space on my shelves, but it's less than what I was hoping. Although I don't mind the small games losing their boxes, like Welcome to the Dungeon + its expansion, Lost Legacy + its expansions, Coup, Resistance, etc., it's weird not seeing Caylus or Troyes on the shelves. Whether the space saved is worth it to you vs the loss of aesthetic value, resell value, and cost, that's something for you to decide for yourself.
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May 21, 2017 05:44
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| # ? May 25, 2024 08:35 |
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My stupid COIN idea is the board game market itself. You have your Hasbro Parker bros types vs your Magic the Gathering types vs your CMoN kickstarter types vs your hex and counter types.
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May 21, 2017 06:05
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Sleekly posted:My stupid COIN idea is the board game market itself.
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May 21, 2017 06:16
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I played A Feast for Odin at Heroicon earlier today. 3 New players and 1 moderately experience person and the game lasted about 4 hours. The tetris puzzle element was neat and adds an extra layer of skill. With 60 worker placement options, I always felt like there was something I wanted to use an action on; unlike Agricola which sometime leaves you with no good actions. It was a lot of fun and I loved the Viking theme. It seemed like pillaging/raiding and emigrating were aggressively stronger than any other options though (in our game the 2 players who focused on pillaging had obvious early leads and scored 123 and 122. I was the emigration player and managed a score of 115, but only by abusing turning cows into blue tiles). What's goon opinion of it? Are there strategies that are competitive with pillaging? Trip reports: Played AEG's new game "The Captain is Dead." The roles all have great Star Trekish flavor and it was good fun. With 5 players the game lasted over 2 hours before we narrowly squeaked out a win. Rulebook is a little unclear. It hits a lot of the same notes as Space Alert, but since there's no time pressure or other mechanism to reduce quarterbacking there's a lot of discussing what actions each player should take. On the whole, I still prefer Space Alert. Played Quartz twice last night. Very random but also very fast. Both times the winning player scored 70+ points in a single round out of five when most rounds scored ~10 points. Each player gets 5 special action cards + 1 more every round which resulted in a good amount of screwing other players over without anyone getting completely cock-blocked. Game rules can be explained in <10 minutes and are simple enough to allow conversation to flow. There's just enough interaction to encourage banter. Would play again. Played Zombicide but found it tedious. I got unlucky with a bad group that wasn't interested in explaining the rules and the rulebook is horrible to find anything in. Game was way too hard with just starting gear, but as soon as we cleared a room and had a few rounds to gear up it became so easy that even groups of 5-6 zombies could be handily dealt with by individual players. Ended up beating the third scenario in the gamebook with only 3 of the 6 players co-operating. Perfect knowledge and individual characters only being able to take 2 hits before dying heavily incentivized quarterbacking. LLSix fucked around with this message at 14:21 on May 21, 2017 |
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May 21, 2017 06:19
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PMush Perfect posted:What about mobile/tablet ports of physical games? Thats an expansion and will cost you more bux
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May 21, 2017 06:25
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COIN topics I'd like to see: Lebanese Civil War. Israel + Maronites / PLO + Syria / Sunni militia / Shia militia. You sorta need to fold in the Israelis and Christians as the de facto counterinsurgents, though some AI-controlled "neutral" troops would work too. Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars (2061 rebellion). UN police + transnationals / UNOMA quisling government / Red Martian insurgents / Free Settler insurgents. This one would have Martian bases under each faction like in Falling Sky, instead of population living in each space. I think someone mentioned Lord of the Rings? You'd need a lot of chrome for it, but this would rule completely. Afghan-Russian War! I posted about adapting the ADP map for this game but the project got too ahistorically weird for me. You kind of have to assume that the Soviet leadership was capable of adapting to their enemy and understanding how to win the war. But there are several games about this conflict and I would like to see a multiplayer one with some counterinsurgency rules, not just a lot of units shooting each other. My splitup of the 3 factions was Soviets + Afghan govt / Sunni + Pashtun insurgents / Shia + Ahmed Shah Masoud. Contemporary Middle East? Israel / Saudi / Iran / Islamists all lead vaguely defined coalitions, and each has to manage its off-map superpower patrons who can call in. And there are like 20 different non-aligned factions all fighting for their own interest. I'd play it!
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May 21, 2017 08:36
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We played Mage Knight and after doing the tutorial decided to do blitz coop. It took us about six sleepy hours to complete though we only just won, so I think we made a few mistakes with regards to capturing castles or are just slow people. Fun game and people enjoyed it, but it's going to be hard to get people to play it again sadly.
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May 21, 2017 09:42
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Vivian Darkbloom posted:COIN topics I'd like to see: The war against ISIS is absolutely perfect for COIN. I'd be surprised if we don't see a game of it in the next decade or so.
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May 21, 2017 10:51
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Brian Train is doing a current Iraq game, so expect an ISIS faction. Probably coalition, government, ISIS and Kurds.
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May 21, 2017 11:34
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LLSix posted:I played A Feast for Odin at Heroicon earlier today. 3 New players and 1 moderately experience person and the game lasted about 4 hours. The tetris puzzle element was neat and adds an extra layer of skill. With 60 worker placement options, I always felt like there was something I wanted to us an action on; unlike Agricola which sometime leaves you with no good actions. It was a lot of fun and I loved the Viking theme. It seemed like pillaging/raiding and emigrating were aggressively stronger than any other options though (in our game the 2 players who focused on pillaging had obvious early leads and scored 123 and 122. I was the emigration player and managed a score of 115, but only by abusing turning cows into blue tiles). What's goon opinion of it? Are there strategies that are competitive with pillaging? Pillaging and whaling are the best ways to get good tiles to place, yeah. Animals are very hard to do properly, with the relatively few times you'll get freebies. After a dozen or two plays, I'd mostly put emigration as the baseline (115 in your first game is pretty great, by the way!!), it's a fairly easy way to ensure about 100 points, combining it with houses (to use the food you aren't needing to feed your vikings) is a decent way to go. I've found the best way to go is exploration, pillaging or whaling to fill those up to get awesome bonuses, and get points either from massive income or emigration or houses, whatever feels right. Iceland is a boss island to take early.
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May 21, 2017 11:50
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Countblanc posted:The only time I've played Alchemists was with two other PhDs and we all felt the pettiness of academia was really well conveyed through the game's mechanics (though I don't think we took advantage of the disprove theory action as much as experienced players would). Definitely a fun time. I feel like I caught on to debunk quickly as I published a bunch of bullshit and as soon as someone debunked one of my things I was able to debunk the rest of my own theories with all the correct answers. I kind of want to see the same mechanical approach to a detective/homicide investigation game. It really did feel like a group deduction game.
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May 21, 2017 13:14
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How about a COIN game about train companies to really ratchet up the nerd factor? Or coin collecting.
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May 21, 2017 14:56
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The End posted:The war against ISIS is absolutely perfect for COIN. I'd be surprised if we don't see a game of it in the next decade or so. Wasn't the CIA demoing the game they'd made up as a training aid for their agents and employees at one point? I seem to recall it having elements of a COIN game (I have never played one and may be completely off base) - things like the different factions, how sometimes interests aligned in unusual ways between warlords, the insurgents, the government, and the U.S.
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May 21, 2017 15:41
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DarkHorse posted:Wasn't the CIA demoing the game they'd made up as a training aid for their agents and employees at one point? I seem to recall it having elements of a COIN game (I have never played one and may be completely off base) - things like the different factions, how sometimes interests aligned in unusual ways between warlords, the insurgents, the government, and the U.S. To be fair right now your just describing A Distant Plain.
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May 21, 2017 15:54
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DarkHorse posted:Wasn't the CIA demoing the game they'd made up as a training aid for their agents and employees at one point? I seem to recall it having elements of a COIN game (I have never played one and may be completely off base) - things like the different factions, how sometimes interests aligned in unusual ways between warlords, the insurgents, the government, and the U.S. I don't remember the details of the games, but they were demoing them a while ago. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/03/the-cia-uses-board-games-to-train-officers-and-i-got-to-play-them/
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May 21, 2017 16:03
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please knock Mom! posted:We played Mage Knight and after doing the tutorial decided to do blitz coop. It took us about six sleepy hours to complete though we only just won, so I think we made a few mistakes with regards to capturing castles or are just slow people. Fun game and people enjoyed it, but it's going to be hard to get people to play it again sadly. MK is quite fun as a solo game as well, so there's always that if you have trouble convincing your friends to play it. The Lost legion expansion also really improves the single player experience.
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May 21, 2017 16:09
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So after fumbling through the war of the ring rules, we've knocked out four more games since it arrived and loving it. Expansion wise, battles of the third age is for the 1st edition and lords of middle earth is for the second edition? I have the 2nd edition and was thinking about grabbing it since reviews are favourable. Any goon input on whether the expansion is worth it?
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May 21, 2017 17:55
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I have the Lords of MIddle Earth expansion and have read it thoroughly but haven't actually played it. My impression is that it adds a ton of flavor without unduly encumbering the rules, but that it's probably not strictly necessary. For example: you get recruitable characters for Galadriel and Elrond, but like Saruman they can't leave their home territories. This fits the theme perfectly and keeps the game from getting bogged down with too many special cases. But it's not dramatically different from the card-driven effects in the base game. It has some well thought out alternate setup rules to keep things fresh, but the base game is so good and allows so many different approaches that I'm not sure if you would ever need them. I kept thinking of War of the Ring while reading the COIN talk over the last few pages - it has some interesting similarities with the COIN approach but ends up doing everything quite differently. I imagine you could use the physical components of War of the Ring to play a mega house ruled custom COIN variant - you have event cards, at least four factions, insurgent hobbits, etc.
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May 21, 2017 18:10
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Sleekly posted:My stupid COIN idea is the board game market itself. Not so much the game market but the game design process, but this is your main competition. Complete with game titles parodying the game landscape of 1983.
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May 21, 2017 18:17
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COIN designer Volko Runkhe is a CIA Analyst, so don't be surprised if his stuff ends up at the naval war college and the like.
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May 21, 2017 19:23
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Had my first game of Food Chain Magnate yesterday, and it went well, mostly. I was in a great position to market everyone else out of being able to provide for any of the houses, while also being able to fully supply them, getting me the CFO milestone reasonably early. I set it up, sat back smugly... and then remembered I was first in the turn order and had just massively hosed myself over. I proceeded to end the game with $45 to my name, after a later turn fuckup where I played 9 dudes with 8 slots. Those rules really weren't kidding that the game is unforgiving.
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May 21, 2017 20:10
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From the Mercury Games newsletter that I somehow missed:quote:Mercury Games is proud to announce that we will be reprinting Container in a 10th Anniversary Edition! At this time we have an expected release date of Q4/2017.
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May 21, 2017 20:33
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I'll be watching that closely, because I made my own copy, but depending on the production values...
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May 21, 2017 21:05
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What's so great about Container that people speak about it highly and that it fetches high aftermarket prices?
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May 21, 2017 21:57
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The thing I remember the most is that the game economy is 100% player driven and you can completely tank markets and gently caress up the game, which is great. Do any other games do that (aside from 18XX)?
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May 21, 2017 22:09
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homullus posted:Not so much the game market but the game design process, but this is your main competition. Complete with game titles parodying the game landscape of 1983. lol it would have beed fun coming up with those titles some good ones there (on their horribly UNCLIPPED counters)
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May 21, 2017 22:18
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Countblanc posted:The only time I've played Alchemists was with two other PhDs and we all felt the pettiness of academia was really well conveyed through the game's mechanics (though I don't think we took advantage of the disprove theory action as much as experienced players would). Definitely a fun time. Yea, I'm not sure how much you exclusively focused on trains, but every strategy has to involve cows at least a little bit. It's so important to be shipping to more places that almost everyone wants at least one or 2 cowboys - at least until they've bought cows. Bottom Liner asked how it fares at different player counts - it's good at all, but I'd say the strength of the different strategies changes at different counts. Engineers is a lot less crowded with 2, and buildings have a lot more people passing by (and taking spaces) in 4. Increasing your movement capability also becomes a lot more important in 4.
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May 21, 2017 22:56
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al-azad posted:What's so great about Container that people speak about it highly and that it fetches high aftermarket prices? High interaction economics game that doesn't hold your hand, there's really nothing like it out there. It doesn't hold your hand though, so new players are liable to accidentally tanking the economy, which can lead to a long slog until enough money's flowing around again to get things back into gear.
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May 21, 2017 23:10
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taser rates posted:High interaction economics game that doesn't hold your hand, there's really nothing like it out there. It doesn't hold your hand though, so new players are liable to accidentally tanking the economy, which can lead to a long slog until enough money's flowing around again to get things back into gear. This happened 90% of the time. 10% of the time we actually got a decent game in. I sold it for a bunch of bucks and never looked back.
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May 21, 2017 23:12
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played a couple of games of dead of winter + the expansion and had a lot of fun are there any other board games like it? the crossroads mechanic is p. cool
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May 21, 2017 23:27
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General Morden posted:played a couple of games of dead of winter + the expansion and had a lot of fun yea you should pick up Archipelago. Same sort of "might be a traitor" thing, but with a bit more to think about in terms of resources, and you can trade them with each other like in Catan! For more crossroads like stuff with storylines you should try Gloomhaven if you like DnD tactical minis combat or maybe Pandemic for a co-op boardgame that has video-game like story and progression, complete with dramatic reveals.
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May 21, 2017 23:31
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General Morden posted:played a couple of games of dead of winter + the expansion and had a lot of fun Out of curiosity, did you have a traitor in any of those games you played?
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May 21, 2017 23:34
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DarkHorse posted:Out of curiosity, did you have a traitor in any of those games you played? 2 of the 3 games we played had a traitor. both times we thought there was no traitor, with one game having the traitor masterfully planning poo poo out and winning right as the colony was on the cusp of winning, and the 2nd game just being so rough that the traitor and everybody else had to team up together just to get through it all (everybody lost that game lol) funny enough, the 3rd game we played, we adamantly played through the game accusing each other of being the traitor, but it ended up being the game with none i really like the theme of the game and all of the unique characters and abilities + the potential to customize and deck out your survivors and base with cool weapons and upgrades
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May 21, 2017 23:41
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General Morden posted:2 of the 3 games we played had a traitor. both times we thought there was no traitor, with one game having the traitor masterfully planning poo poo out and winning right as the colony was on the cusp of winning, and the 2nd game just being so rough that the traitor and everybody else had to team up together just to get through it all (everybody lost that game lol) The reason I asked is because I had a theory that people who first played games without a traitor tended to enjoy it more than those who first started with one. The traitor has so much power in that game because it's so easy to lose. You've successfully disproven that theory 
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May 21, 2017 23:45
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Played another game of Petrichor, game must be good cause currently I've won two out of two games  I think the game is a pretty good light area control game that's pretty goddamn easy to teach. There's a lot of areas where you can really affect other people/mess their plans/screw them over, and the theme is nice and digestible enough. It doesn't excite me like a lot of other games and I wouldn't buy it but I wouldn't say no if someone offered to play it. The only thing about it which is kind of annoying is that the card draw can heavily affect you, but no more than the card draw in Brass and I love that game.
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May 21, 2017 23:53
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Impermanent posted:yea you should pick up Archipelago. Same sort of "might be a traitor" thing, but with a bit more to think about in terms of resources, and you can trade them with each other like in Catan! This is definitely my recommendation. It certainly isn't just like Dead of Winter but I think it'll have enough similarities without just being a redundant addition to your collection. Also it's a loving outstanding game, one of my favorites.
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May 22, 2017 00:19
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Impermanent posted:yea you should pick up Archipelago. Same sort of "might be a traitor" thing, but with a bit more to think about in terms of resources, and you can trade them with each other like in Catan! I assume you mean Pandemic Legacy, since baseline Pandemic has none of the above.
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May 22, 2017 02:22
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yeah that's right, pandemic legacy
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May 22, 2017 02:55
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General Morden posted:the crossroads mechanic is p. cool Play with the crossroads app if you are gonna play at all. Hides the consequence from players and adds a few more if I remember correctly. Also, has there been any news on subsequent crossroads games? GenCon? Bueller?
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May 22, 2017 04:32
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| # ? May 25, 2024 08:35 |
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I just got back from Geekway to the West this evening and thought I'd share some highs and lows from the convention. First, I can unequivocally recommend the con if anyone has been considering it. They have great prize support (even though this isn't super important to me, it is a nice bonus), a very big Play to Win selection, a good range of vendors, good support from publishers, an interesting selection of events, and plenty of gaming space. Now to the games: The "lows" (nothing was terrible, but these were the middling experiences) Yokohama: I love the production values on this one, but I'm still undecided on the game. I like the multi-step planning to achieve goals, and the ways you have to take your opponents into account a little bit, but so far in my three plays the game hasn't grabbed me. Also, I need to play it more to get a better impression of the end game triggers. I feel like the last game I played ended too abruptly with orders running out -- in fact, I was about to claim some orders, but an opponent claimed two just before me and emptied the order deck (without triggering the end) and so I had to stall a bit to finish up my plans. Lorenzo Il Magnifico: Tight enough game with tough choices to make each turn, but wasn't very memorable. I'd play it again if a friend wanted to, but I definitely won't be seeking this one out. Ulm: This one has some nice board art (I've been to Ulm, and the art reminds me of what I remember of being there, especially the square around the cathedral and the river) and a VERY creative action selection mechanic, but there's a bit too much randomness with not quite enough to mitigate it. It seems like the winner of this one could easily be determined by which cards they were lucky enough to draw. Not for me. Sola Fide: The Reformation: The underlying game here is good -- a mix of area control and card play with a neat drafting mechanism to craft your deck at the start of the game -- but I was disappointed that the theme didn't shine through very strongly. This might as well be an abstract (which isn't a terrible thing). Heartland: Fun tile-layer with just enough strategy for its weight to keep things interesting. I think the end game needs a fix, though, as it can pop-up suddenly and unexpectedly cut out the players who are early in turn order. My friend and I discussed a couple good house rules to fix it. This one is being re-implemented as Skyways, on Kickstarter now, but the redesign is terribly unattractive. Too bad -- if it looked halfway decent, I think I might have picked up the new version. The "highs": Madeira: I really enjoyed my first play of this one! Gets bonus points for having an excellent rule book that not only presents the rules clearly but also gives enough strategy hints that players have a sense of what to aim for from their first play without being dictated to. I think what I liked most about this one is how it created a nice tension between the urge to do a lot and the need to manage resources by providing just enough of a "tax" round to round on your active player pieces to keep things interesting. I also really like the way it lets you choose your endgame victory point objectives (the "Crown Requests") as the game progresses. Days of Ire: Budapest 1956: Before Geekway, I had played this once solo, and it was a lukewarm experience. I spend a semester in Budapest in college, and I was born on the twentieth anniversary of the beginning of the 1956 revolution, so the theme immediately grabbed me. But the solo game was pretty easy; I won pretty handily and never really felt pressured. At the con, I played the competitive "one versus many" version where I played the Soviet side against two revolutionary players. This was a much better game. The Soviet player gets to engage in some "Twilight Struggle lite" CDG gameplay, and playing against human opponents creates much more interesting situations. It was also nicely tense -- I came within a stroke of an instant morale victory, and then the revolutionaries crawled back to claim a solid win with a very strong last two turns. I like the art on this one a lot, too. Tramways: Played this one with two official variant rules: a draft of initial parcel cards, and a simplified Development ticket card row. I think they are both better than the default rules in the book. This is a nice AoS-inspired design with some deck-building elegantly grafted on. Our game was not as cut-throat as I am used to AoS being, but I think that could easily change with different board setups and player counts. I'm glad I Kickstarted this one and the upcoming expansion, but I'm not really surprised -- Alban Viard is quickly becoming one of my favorite designers. Indonesia: This was the last game of the con, and what a way to end it! It was my first play, and it was fantastic. Easily in my top three Splotter games (with FCM and Antiquity). The game was engaging and interesting throughout with lots of merger and turn order shenanigans. It also puts a neat twist on the turn order bid -- each player bids once in the old turn order (so first player is disadvantaged) but the money you bid isn't lost -- it's merely "banked", and still counts as end game victory points, but is unavailable to be used for the rest of the game. So you can make some REALLY big turn order bids without losing the points. But draining cash on hand is dangerous, as you might be subject to a hostile takeover! Much has been made on BGG of the comical production error on the oversized wooden bits, but the game is certainly functional out of the box. That said, I'm already considering a couple of upgrade options that look to provide, in my opinion, some gameplay improvements (not merely cosmetic).
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May 22, 2017 06:05
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