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Here’s the launching page for Canvas: Finishing Touches
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Oct 7, 2022 07:53
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Does anyone have the Return to the Dark Tower game? I was tempted, but the shipping fees to the UK are brutal ($55 for the base game, then $35 for the addons I want)
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Oct 7, 2022 17:21
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Angrymog posted:Does anyone have the Return to the Dark Tower game? I was tempted, but the shipping fees to the UK are brutal ($55 for the base game, then $35 for the addons I want) I have it, it's fun! I haven't won a game yet, but the interaction with the tower is really cool. If you can mirror your phone to the TV everyone can see all the interactions with the mobile app.
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Oct 7, 2022 17:49
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Angrymog posted:Does anyone have the Return to the Dark Tower game? I was tempted, but the shipping fees to the UK are brutal ($55 for the base game, then $35 for the addons I want) Here is what I would say: It is cool and clever, most notably the app-driven combat. It is not very complex, but the first expansion adds some complexity that for me helps round it out. It is gorgeous. The tower is absolutely a huge, expensive gimmick but is neat. It's very power-hungry, both batteries for the tower and on the app device. It is very difficult for me to recommend it because I feel like it's a game that probably has the meat to be a $60 or so family-friendly experience, with like a $30-40 expansion, but because of the lavish production - most notably the tower, which it does not actually need - it's MSRP what like...$180 or something? Just for the base box? But I like the game!
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Oct 7, 2022 22:55
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Yeah, with almost £-$ parity I can't justify nearly 300 quid. Maybe if our exchange rate gets better before they close the pledge manager, or I finish buying all the one of things the horse needs before Christmas. (Still have some rugs and a fancy bridle to go) I'll look at it again. Re: batteries is the tower rechargeable, or do you have to provide your own, and what sort of batteries does it use?
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Oct 8, 2022 09:35
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Angrymog posted:Re: batteries is the tower rechargeable, or do you have to provide your own, and what sort of batteries does it use? Have to provide your own AA batteries. Which you should absolutely get rechargeable ones. My understanding is it generally lasts maybe 3-4 plays on one set of AAs. (I've played it three times so far so haven't run out of batteries on the tower yet. My ipad, on the other hand...) Price is generally a problem I have with Restoration Games' stuff. A lot of what they've done seems cool but is much more expensive than the amount of actual gameplay depth on offer. I couldn't justify it with Fireball Island or Vendetta Road. At least Return to Dark Tower is coop so I can reasonably expect to play it a fair amount. And I feel like it has a bit more going on than a lot of the others. malkav11 fucked around with this message at 17:03 on Oct 8, 2022 |
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Oct 8, 2022 17:00
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Not sure if anyone cares about localized games, but Spieleschmiede has just started funding for a German edition of Vagrantsong - €79 for the game or €99 for the game plus the bonus scenarios and sleeves. Since I completely missed the English edition, I'm going for that one - maybe someone else is interested. It's 2/3 funded already. https://www.spiele-offensive.de/Spieleschmiede/Vagrantsong/
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Oct 8, 2022 17:22
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Decided I'll wait for someone else in the UK to have buyer's remorse when it finally arrives and pick it up then.
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Oct 12, 2022 17:10
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Always love it when a KS reprint hits and I have to remind myself, for the third time in as many campaigns, why I'm not smashing the "Back now" button. Oh, Deep Madness. I want to want you so much, yet all the clues tell me I'd actually be miserable playing you.
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Oct 12, 2022 17:19
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Memnaelar posted:Always love it when a KS reprint hits and I have to remind myself, for the third time in as many campaigns, why I'm not smashing the "Back now" button. My trick was going to the campaign, looking at what the all-in would cost and going "hell no." Not to say I've never paid $400+ on a crowdfunding campaign pledge but I ain't that excited about Deep Madness. Especially given how many minis I'd have to figure out storage for.
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Oct 12, 2022 23:06
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Memnaelar posted:Always love it when a KS reprint hits and I have to remind myself, for the third time in as many campaigns, why I'm not smashing the "Back now" button. There's a lot I liked about Deep Madness - the setting and some of the mechanics are super-cool - but unfortunately it has some pretty serious flaws that became apparent after repeat plays. The biggest one for me is that it takes the concept of a race-against-time dungeon crawl to a ridiculous extreme. We mathed it out and some of the scenarios would require you to take 100% optimal actions (as in taking actions that are purely to achieve the goals of the scenario, not taking any actions beyond the minimum necessary to explore/loot/fight etc) and have near-perfect luck in order to have any chance of success. We house-ruled quite a bit to make the game easier in terms of time pressure, but the problem then is that scenarios are not equally balanced so modifying the time pressure makes some scenarios too easy while others remain nigh-on-impossible. The second problem is that the main difficulty of the game which is time pressure is hugely variable depending on which characters you play with since some have significantly better action economy than others which means either always playing the same set of characters, or trying to adjust the difficulty depending on who you pick (or just accepting that you'll almost certainly lose I guess). For anyone considering this game, I'd strongly strongly suggest just getting Cthulhu Death May Die instead since it does basically everything that I'd hoped for from Deep Madness (and a lot of other stuff that is WAY better) apart from the more interesting setting.
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Oct 12, 2022 23:43
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Mind MGMT Deluxe rocked up today and hoooo boy is this a big hefty boi. I potentially have a game day on the weekend, so I will try to unpack it before then for some photos.
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Oct 13, 2022 07:37
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Memnaelar posted:Always love it when a KS reprint hits and I have to remind myself, for the third time in as many campaigns, why I'm not smashing the "Back now" button. Same, visually it looks amazing but Kerro posted:There's a lot I liked about Deep Madness - the setting and some of the mechanics are super-cool - but unfortunately it has some pretty serious flaws that became apparent after repeat plays. The biggest one for me is that it takes the concept of a race-against-time dungeon crawl to a ridiculous extreme. We mathed it out and some of the scenarios would require you to take 100% optimal actions (as in taking actions that are purely to achieve the goals of the scenario, not taking any actions beyond the minimum necessary to explore/loot/fight etc) and have near-perfect luck in order to have any chance of success. We house-ruled quite a bit to make the game easier in terms of time pressure, but the problem then is that scenarios are not equally balanced so modifying the time pressure makes some scenarios too easy while others remain nigh-on-impossible. The second problem is that the main difficulty of the game which is time pressure is hugely variable depending on which characters you play with since some have significantly better action economy than others which means either always playing the same set of characters, or trying to adjust the difficulty depending on who you pick (or just accepting that you'll almost certainly lose I guess). For anyone considering this game, I'd strongly strongly suggest just getting Cthulhu Death May Die instead since it does basically everything that I'd hoped for from Deep Madness (and a lot of other stuff that is WAY better) apart from the more interesting setting. Yeah, I've seen this mentioned a few times now. Also I think there is a new Cthulhu Death May Die campaign soon so might be better to wait for that
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Oct 13, 2022 08:01
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Infinitum posted:Mind MGMT Deluxe rocked up today and hoooo boy is this a big hefty boi. Yeah, I saw in the email that Australia was first on the list and I was like "Ooh, lucky Infinitum." Here in the Americas, waiting.
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Oct 13, 2022 12:08
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Angrymog posted:Decided I'll wait for someone else in the UK to have buyer's remorse when it finally arrives and pick it up then. I went all in because I am a sucker. Fortunately I paid before the pound completely crashed.
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Oct 13, 2022 15:49
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Infinitum posted:Mind MGMT Deluxe rocked up today and hoooo boy is this a big hefty boi.
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Oct 13, 2022 23:57
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CitizenKeen posted:Yeah, I saw in the email that Australia was first on the list and I was like "Ooh, lucky Infinitum." Hollandia posted:I'm keen to hear how this one goes, not least because they're running a Harrow County kickstarter now.  Didn't have a game day, so have some unboxing images. 1 Vs Many Hidden Movement is 100% my fav genre, and I have heard nothing but good things about Mind MGMT Production quality is high from the get go. There's a whole bunch of cool things all over the outside and inside of the box, so I'll try not to 'spoil' too much for Goons still waiting on their copies to arrive.  REALLY like when boxes are produced with Ease Of Opening in mind, particularly when you're paying for deluxe level products.  Makes it super easy to pick up this big rear end case of cards  Magnetic latches hide..  Mind MGMT and Rogue Agent cards.  Rest of the components are really high quality, you are definitely getting your moneys worth here. (I'll link the SUSD vid below so you can get closer looks at this stuff)  This was a reprint of the first run, and 10 Secret Missions have been added in. I am not sure if these will be available outside the KS campaign (Tho I'm sure someone will through them up on BGG)  For your enjoyment, here's a high quality shot of the game board so you can look around it. Again production quality is high, and the game board is nice and thick. Really solid once it's down on the table.  Hidden Movement games = Hidden Movement Screens, and this is the nice quality screen I've ever seen. I think Beast, another upcoming KS I backed, might have a similar quality screen. It's just really nice to have a screen that's not wafer thin cardboard for once.  The only 'complaint' I have is that the game has to be stored sideways in a Kallax. It's just too tall. Still looks amazing on the shelf  Haven't had a chance to look a the rules yet, and I'm trying to avoid unboxing as much as I can to really enjoy it once it hits the table. I'm super happy with the production quality, you are 100% getting your moneys worth here as a backer, and an October delivery when the original estimated delivery time was August 2022 isn't too shabby given the state of all things covid. Really happy to have this on my shelf Really excited to get this to the table Here's the SUSD review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAOhbIfV8qI
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Oct 15, 2022 10:17
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God drat that game looks like such a mindfuck. I like a boring-rear end beige farming game as much as the next goon, but I do wish more games were more adventurous with their themes and presentation. Though to be fair I think the shock success of things like Wingspan has been working to rattle that cage a little, even if the primary lesson people have taken from it is G̸͍̋a̵̺͝ṃ̸́ê̶̫ ̶̺̆P̵̱̏r̵͖̾e̵̠͛t̷̀ͅt̵͠ͅy̵̳̽, which is fair enough.
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Oct 15, 2022 11:02
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Just reading that post gave me full-on flashback memories of board games of my youth. drat.
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Oct 15, 2022 11:33
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Mind MGMT looks amazing! I kinda want it even though I backed Beast and am considering Harrow County. I mean how many hidden movement games do you need...
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Oct 15, 2022 12:01
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CODChimera posted:I mean how many hidden movement games do you need... https://i.imgur.com/0SR7fkm.mp4 
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Oct 15, 2022 12:11
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Everyone has that one genre where they try to get all of the games of that type even though their friends are sick of them and don't like them. For me it's Fighting Card Games.
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Oct 15, 2022 12:46
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East Asian abstracts for me, yeah. Shogi, go, xiangqi, mahjong both Chinese and riichi, I should grab a janggi set sometime.
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Oct 15, 2022 17:15
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CODChimera posted:I mean how many hidden movement games do you need... Me personally? Zero. Narrative coop campaign games, on the other hand...
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Oct 15, 2022 17:42
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I was gonna back Mind Management, but then I remembered I backed Beast and backed out. Hope Beast ends up being good because I only have one other hunt game, but I can’t see having more than 2 for my playgroup.
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Oct 15, 2022 18:19
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malkav11 posted:Me personally? Zero. Same. I'm such a sucker for those. Btw, any opinions on recent ones like ISS Vanguard or Oathsworn? I've seen video playthroughs, but sometimes, those are borderline paid endorsements.
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Oct 15, 2022 18:43
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Anything where I have to perform, or anything where people have to flick, toss, roll, or drop stuff on the board.
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Oct 15, 2022 21:11
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medchem posted:Same. I'm such a sucker for those. Did my thoughts on Oathsworn a few pages back, have played a decent amount of Vanguard, will type something up. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3777631&perpage=40&noseen=1&pagenumber=534#post525261004
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Oct 15, 2022 21:19
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ISS Vanguard Trip Report Played about 20 hours of ISS Vanguard over two weekends. Got to Objective 6, which looks to be about half way through the game. It’s been good fun so far. ISS Vanguard is an exploration and development focused game set in a reasonably hard sci-if setting where humanity has sent forth a single advanced ship to investigate an anomaly in space that results in the ship departing on a quest to determine the origins of human life and save humanity at the same time. Bit of a mix between Star Trek in exploring strange new worlds and Mass Effect in getting into the origins of life in the galaxy. The game is well organised, consisting mostly of cards, tokens and rulebooks, with optional miniatures as a game found thing. It contains your ships stats in a ring bound folder you slide upgrade cards into and has some nice plastic compartments for key components. It also uses a fully voiced app to read through the numerous logbook entries you unlock throughout the game. It’s a 1-4 player co-op game, though ideally I think you control all four departments even in a single or two player game. Gameplay wise, the game is divided into an exploration phase where you send an away team in their lander to investigate a location, typically a planet. The location is a two page spread in a ring bound rulebook, one which there are numerous locations to visit and interact with. Each of the four departments can send down a single team member from Recon, Security, Science and Engineering. Your character has a number of mechanics to represent them and handle the obstacles they will face on their mission. Primarily each character has a pool of dice of three different colours that they will use to overcome challenges. This pool is six dice initially but grows as departments increase in experience. The dice have a variety of symbols, representing different proficiencies such as Defense, Xenology, Biology, Harvesting and so on, but also three more common Basic symbols, an Accident symbol, and a Wild Card side. Each character has two actions on their turn, one of which can be a Special Action where dice are rolled to resolve effects on locations. For example you might be at a location full of verdant life, to harvest these alien plants as samples you can take a Special Action, where you roll as many dice as you chose then spend the results to achieve your goal. For example it might state that you can spend a Xenology and a Biology to get a critical success, or you can spend any two blue dice and a green dice to get a standard result. Failures will sometimes trigger negative effects, such as rolling a Danger Dice that can give your character an injury along with a mandatory injury dice that can worsen matters. Once dice are resolved they are moved to the spent area and are only recovered for use by the Rest action which consumes limited supplies, Exerting which is free but loses one of your dice for the rest of the mission or by specific mechanics. Each character also has a deck of 10 cards specific to their department which have a top effect that can be triggered at any time, re-rolls of dice, setting dice to a set symbol etc and a bottom value triggered by spending excess symbols rolled during a Special Action or Prepare Action. These decks are one of the major sources of difference in playstyle between the different departments, Recon is good at movement and avoiding event cards, Security protects characters from injury, Science manipulates the discovery decks and Engineering moves around mission equipment. Lastly each character has an ability to convert the Basic dice symbol into a specific one such as Xenology and unique charge ability with a limited number of uses per mission. These characters drawn from several hundred frozen crew members and you tend to use several different ones over the course of multiple missions. At the end of your turn you draw a largely negative event card that can injure you or advance timers on the board and play passes to the next player. Rewards you earn on a location include discoveries which are resources on the planet. You obtain discoveries from leads which you pull from a token bag. Actions on the planet also earn you victory points which become experience. You continue doing stuff on the planet until you decide to return to the lander at which point you enter the ship phase. The ship phase is organised around a ring bound folder which describes your ship, with card holders in it for the upgrades and improvements you obtain as you venture into strange new worlds. The ship folder also takes you step by step through a rigidly organised ship management phase where you return from your mission, unload your discoveries, send the wounded to sick bay, stick the dead on a memorial wall, determine what new research and engineering is available, decide where your ship flies next, scan the new location you are visiting, defrost more crew, handle any crisis, research new tech and then build new tech. Then prep for your next mission. All of this is handled by sliding cards around in the folder. When its time for the next mission, you choose a member of your department, choose which lander you are going to use to head to the mission, load up with mission equipment and fly through a series of challenges until you arrive at the next exploration phase. Your ship has three main resources to spend here, power, command and available crew, all of which have a lot of options to use on. It’s got a very nice two stage gameplay loop. The explorations are all about turn to turn tactics and problem solving, then back on the ship you make choices about what to do strategically to best improve your ship. It has a bit of an X-COM feel in that researching new tech and manufacturing it are an exciting element. Ups: Great organisation in the box, game sets up and tears down fast, packs away neatly and for a CCG nerd the ship folder with its pockets for upgrades is like an old friend. Theming is on point, you don’t get much in the way of weapon equipment, the challenges are mostly hostile environments, mysteries and the very occasional hazard that challenges you more directly. It feels like an exploration game. Exploration phase feels challenging, but ultimately you can leave a mission at any time and return. In fact we had a bumpy landing for one mission, into a harsh environment that made movement difficult and then we got attacked by a large monster. We bugged out a little battered and bruised, then loaded up with some mission equipment to handle the big guy and movement, changed to a different lander with a few carefully chosen upgrades and finessed the second attempt with aplomb. It felt like the loadout we chose then mattered a lot. Despite having a definite narrative and progression routes, you have free choice about what star systems to visit. Exploration into ship management was very much a “one more turn” feeling that the best strategy games have, that ended with us playing to 2am one night because we wanted to build our new landers. Solid sci-if narrative. Downs: Mini expansion looks great but is utterly unnecessary to play. Marmite: You are rolling dice, but the amount of dice fixing available between cards and charge abilities means they are fairly controllable. It’s a teamwork game, so some challenges are best overcome by a different department. You don’t play a specific character, but rather a rotating roster from your department Hints and tips: Always scan a location as much as you can. If you can’t afford the power commit some crew instead. It gives you hints on what type of lander to send down, what are the likely obstacles and challenges you’ll face and sometimes things to look for. You’re quite limited at command points at the start, make sure to recruit crew twice in the first two turns just to bulk up on available crew as you will have tons of things to use them for. Getting better landers early is valuable as the landing section can disrupt your exploration phase a lot with crews landing with injuries and lost supplies. Don’t be afraid to exert when your need to, it costs you a dice for the rest of the mission but gets you five dice back without an action and sometimes you are short actions. Read the map carefully and send crew where they can best solve the problems you are going to face. Injuries suck, avoid when you can. One injury recovers fine after a turn, but two takes a character out for a while and chance of death isn’t small if you go further. Conclusion: Great co-op adventure game with distinctive theming and playstyle.
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Oct 15, 2022 22:08
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HidaO-Win posted:ISS Vanguard Trip Report Very nice trip report. Makes me wish I had founded it, but I’m sure it’ll be up again for 2.0 in a year or so. Does it seem like you could replay the campaign and have a different experience, or will you pretty much exhaust the “exploration” in one play through?
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Oct 16, 2022 01:46
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snickles posted:Very nice trip report. Makes me wish I had founded it, but I’m sure it’ll be up again for 2.0 in a year or so. The late pledge is still open right now https://gamefound.com/projects/awaken-realms/iss-vanguard/update?sequenceNumber=44 I've been thinking about it (and https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mindclash/voidfall ) and I'm still on the fence. How is it solo?
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Oct 16, 2022 01:54
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No Garibaldi? Amateur.
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Oct 16, 2022 02:59
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snickles posted:Very nice trip report. Makes me wish I had founded it, but I’m sure it’ll be up again for 2.0 in a year or so. I think you could visit some different systems so there would be some changes but it feels an extra playthrough would cover a lot of the same ground. That said shipping in Wave 2 they have the Stretch Goal box with 5 additional scenarios and the Lost Fleet Campaign and as a separate add-on the Deadly Frontiers campaign both of which look like full sized brand new campaigns. So if you just got the Core Pledge you are getting 2 campaigns + some scenarios over two waves of shipping. Probably 60-80 hours of gameplay. I don’t need replayability really.
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Oct 16, 2022 11:42
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GreenBuckanneer posted:The late pledge is still open right now https://gamefound.com/projects/awaken-realms/iss-vanguard/update?sequenceNumber=44 Haven’t played solo, however ship management would be totally enjoyable solo. Exploration mode you’d control all four sections, so four characters. Cognitive load shouldn’t be too bad, but you would have a decent amount to work through. I think you’d end up having your characters mostly moving in teams of two (which is what we usually did when we had 3 or 4 players.) so assisting is easier to manage. (To assist another character at the location you can add a dice to their special action or play a card, so its a useful bump for different symbols or luck mitigation. My favourite character has the “Alpha” charge ability that lets you spend a charge to set an assisting characters dice to the face of your choice. You can buy a dice with a side with double wildcard symbols. The combo is fairly clear.)
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Oct 16, 2022 11:49
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Oh no! I finally got around to sleeving my copy of Etherfields only to realize that I got two copies of the same deck and I’m missing another one. Hopefully their customer service can replace it fairly quickly.
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Oct 17, 2022 06:19
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Vidmaster posted:Oh no! I finally got around to sleeving my copy of Etherfields only to realize that I got two copies of the same deck and I’m missing another one. Hopefully their customer service can replace it fairly quickly. I had that happen with Tainted Grail and they resolved it as soon as they got extra copies in.
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Oct 17, 2022 06:23
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Vidmaster posted:Oh no! I finally got around to sleeving my copy of Etherfields only to realize that I got two copies of the same deck and I’m missing another one. Hopefully their customer service can replace it fairly quickly. I was missing an entire expansion pack and they replaced it very quick with little hassle even though i didnt even notice immediately. They seem pretty great at customer service
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Oct 17, 2022 06:32
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The Spirit Island Nature Incarnate expansion is going up on the 18th aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
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Oct 17, 2022 06:42
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HidaO-Win posted:ISS Vanguard Trip Report This game sounds super cool
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Oct 17, 2022 14:24
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Vanguard looks fun. I realized too late that I'm not getting it until 2023 because I picked the wrong shipping. Oops.
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Oct 18, 2022 13:13
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