Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. I love Wings of War (although they still haven't released enough WW2 stuff) and love Star Wars so I'll probably go broke.
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. I love Wings of War (although they still haven't released enough WW2 stuff) and love Star Wars so I'll probably go broke.
I can't wait for this. Back when Fantasy Flight Games announced this, someone posted some pics of a homemade Death Star Trench Run scenario some guy had made for a con. Talk about EPIC!
I suggest reading over the demo rules before playing the game as the rulebook is kind of hard to get through. More so when you have a room full of teenage girls who can't wait to play the game.
Also, there are some gameplay videos on my friend's kickstarter page. I know I'm biased, but it's a really fun, quick game that I think a lot of people would like.
I glued together all of the Super Dungeon Explore minis this weekend. Took me 2 hours start to finish, and that was while watching a movie (True Grit). People are saying it took them 5 hours, wtf? Have they never built a model before? There are 45 minis, 7 pieces each on average. For the record, yes, they are sexy as hell.
Didn't get much actual board gaming in this weekend but the wife and I tried out Martian Dice. It looks and smells like Zombie Dice from Steve Jackson Games, so I was prepared to write it off as a complete knockoff, but the game is actually better! Also, they solved the production issues with the dice tube. The one from Tasty Minstrel Games is solid, meanwhile Steve Jackson gave up on fixing their tube and switched to a bag.
As for the rules of Martian Dice, they are simple: The 6 faces of the die are Tank, Death Ray (x2), Human, Cow, Chicken. Every turn, you roll all 13 dice, set aside the tanks, and then "bank" either all of your death rays, humans, cows, or chickens. Pick up the dice (minus tanks and whatever you banked) and roll again.
You can bank humans, cows,and chickens only once per turn (Yahtzee style), and each of these dice banked is worth 1 point at the turn's end. You can bank death rays as many time as you want. However, unless you have matched each tank with a banked death ray, you get zero points. First to 25 wins.
We played Super Dungeon Explore last week. The game is fun like any dungeon crawl. We played it incorrectly on a few parts, so it felt that the players were a bit over powered against The Consul. Jeremy did forget to do a few abilities every now and then to be able to power up his monsters. We also messed up with the loot system, but now that we have one game under our belt we will be playing this on New Year's we will hopefully have a better experience to gauge how well the game is.
Jeremy already wants more miniatures from Soda Pop in regards for monsters and enemies. So far he has yet to find anything. Hopefully they will release some in the near future because we can already see the need for different scenario/set up/boss encounters before players will be tired of the same thing.
Wish I knew you guys were interested in that game, would have kicked you a copy. It was released right at the same time as WotC bringing on a PR firm, so I accidentally got shipped 2 copies (one from their internal PR and one from the firm). They said our bad, just keep it, so I just sold the other copy for the ridiculously low price of like $35 on eBay.
Wish I knew you guys were interested in that game, would have kicked you a copy. It was released right at the same time as WotC bringing on a PR firm, so I accidentally got shipped 2 copies (one from their internal PR and one from the firm). They said our bad, just keep it, so I just sold the other copy for the ridiculously low price of like $35 on eBay.
I just got my copy of Eclipse. There were three left (out of two hundred when it started selling last week). The average score on BGG is now 8.53 and the rank has shot up from three hundred something to 154. This will slow down when it starts running up against the 10k rankings games but I estimate it'll hit the top 50 by years end (and I'll be surprised if it wont end up in the top 10 eventually).
Get it now If you want to be the cool kid at your local board game meetup. (disclaimer: the designer is an aquaintance of mine), or just print out the pieces if you can't het it right now and just play the game; it is worth the effort.
Wish I knew you guys were interested in that game, would have kicked you a copy. It was released right at the same time as WotC bringing on a PR firm, so I accidentally got shipped 2 copies (one from their internal PR and one from the firm). They said our bad, just keep it, so I just sold the other copy for the ridiculously low price of like $35 on eBay.
Made it to my local game night last night. Played Gold Mine, which is Carcassonne meets roll-and-move meets awfulness. It wasn't that bad, would actually make for a good family choice, but not something I ever intend on playing again.
Also crossed off Stone Age from my "why haven't I played this yet?" list. I've heard much about how Stone Age is supposed to be the go-to choice for introducing worker placement mechanics. We have some couples friends who come over and play euros like Ticket to Ride and Zooloretto, but are afraid to try anything deeper. I want to get them hooked on Agricola, but have been looking for an in-between step. The masses are probably right, I think Stone Age will be a good choice for that.
After a week of longing after it, I finally caved and bought Core Worlds. I was in love with it from the first time I saw it because it reminded me so much of Homeworld, still one of my favorite PC games of all time.
I was worried that it would just be another Dominion clone, but I was very pleasantly surprised. While it is a deck building game, it also has a heavy resource management.
Overall, we played a full 5 player game, it took about 2 hours, and we all had a blast. Definitely recommended. Not a Dominion clone at all, and very well done. Not much player interaction though.
I'm already looking forward to playing it again. And the art... The art is just gorgeous.
In other board game news, Core Worlds continues to be a fun, deep game that has reinvigorated the deck-building genre. Also, Founding Fathers and Black Gold are both fun as well.
So, I sort of came up with a new-ish game yesterday. I was at my girlfriend's house and we were killing time in the lead-up to the New Years countdown. Her brother brought out Risk.
"Risk?" I cried, "We might as well just roll a dice now to determine the winner and save a few hours!" They said, well, have you got a better idea?
Well, actually, I kinda did.
I explained it right then and there, and we played with those rules on the spot.
I grabbed a deck of cards and dealt everyone a hand of cards. (9 for a 2-player game, and then one less for each new player. We played a 3-player game, so 8 cards each) I threw away the Mission Cards. We picked countries and got guys like a normal game of risk. All the rules of risk not related to combat resolution remained the same. Here's the difference.
Risk is the game of Napoleonic battles; armies against armies. Thus, the first rule change was that you cannot attack with more armies than the person has defending at a time. For each army that you attack with, you take a card from your deck and put it down. The defender then picks a card from her hand and plays it against the attacker. Lowest to lowest, ties defender advantage, aces high.
You then discard those cards.
What happens if you don't have any cards and you want to attack or need to defend? Well, you play the card off the top of the deck, making it completely random. Think of it as breakdown of your strategy because you are trying to manage too many troops at once.
After you go around the table you replenish everyone's cards back to eight, plus one for each territory they took last round, regardless of if they kept it or not, to reward aggressive play, and shuffle the deck. This is the mechanic I'm least happy with, because it creates a hierarchy of action, but it also didn't seem to favour any player particularly so I'm not sure.
The results totally rocked.
Strategy in this game is obviously rather simple; you start by trying to get rid of your shitty cards by fighting battles you don't need to win, and try to force the other player to spend his good cards in those same fights. This lead to some actual strategy instead of just numbers bullshit; on the very first turn, my girlfriend played out her bad cards and gave up ground to her brother's assault, which expended his good cards, saved India with okay cards, then threw down her good stuff to counterattack. When I got a numerical advantage, I pressed it by using my good cards, then sacrificing a few lambs on unrelated attacks to deplete his hand, then just playing off the top of the deck until I overpowered him.
One of the advantages of the system is that turns are actually much faster despite the amount of thinking to be done; we all played fairly conservatively by Risk standards but we always felt like we were taking these giant gambles.
So, first day of 2012 and I've made Risk into a half-decent game. Your move, forum.
First game: my girlfriend leaves in the first round with 6 diamonds before a single disaster card is played. Oh how we laughed. Then we get wiped out. The next three mine crawls have early double disasters. In the end she wins with 9 diamonds.
Game later in the week: a friend wins with 97 diamonds. We all had so many diamonds we ran out, and had to count with our fingers.
I got my first board game about 6 months ago, Catan, classic and I thought it was really good for the first one. Most of my friends have played it and enjoyed it. I just got back from D.C. and while I was there I thought I should get some more board games, so I got two. Dominion and Carcasonne. It's been 20 days since I got back and we have played the crap out of Dominion, still going. But I'm a bit regretful about Carcasonne, I think it's too random, and sometimes people take a long time to put the stupid tile on the map making the game very tedious. By the way, I went to this great little game and puzzle store called Labyrinth (http://www.labyrinthgameshop.com/), the girls that work there are really friendly and helpful and I recommend it to everyone.
Carcassonne is far from random. If it were random, how is Rym able to win so consistently? Also, if your friends take a long time on their turn, in any game, yell at them and hit them.
I'm very much looking forward to trying this. Friend in my Wednesday night group got it and I watched them play some. The way the groups shook out last week, I wound up playing the new MageKnight board game instead.
MageKnight is the dungeon crawling genre on crack (although more thematically and overworld adventure, not a dungeon crawl). It's got a mountain of rules, but once you digest them, they all work together quite well. If you like four hour American-style adventuring board games, you will love this. Otherwise stay away. It also uses some deckbuilding, but as a means to an end, not as the meat of the game, which I think we will be seeing a LOT of in the future (A Few Acres of Snow is the only other game doing this right now).
Finally getting Super Dungeon Explore to the table today. Got it all set up, friends arriving at noon.
I'm going to keep an eye on eBay in the next couple of days and see if I can get a copy of Eclipse for something approximating reasonable. That'll let me bring it to my local group.
Eminent Domain was pretty fun. Apparently, it only actually works with 3 players, but even with 4 it's still an enjoyable experience.
Carcassonne is far from random. If it were random, how is Rym able to win so consistently? Also, if your friends take a long time on their turn, in any game, yell at them and hit them.
I have only played 7 games of Carcassonne in my life, and I've won every one. I've decided never to play it again to keep my 100% record.
Comments
http://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/63874/super-dungeon-explore-demo-rules
Also, there are some gameplay videos on my friend's kickstarter page. I know I'm biased, but it's a really fun, quick game that I think a lot of people would like.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/268844631/order-of-professional-sorcerers
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/113056/order-of-professional-sorcerers
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/221/ikusa
Didn't get much actual board gaming in this weekend but the wife and I tried out Martian Dice. It looks and smells like Zombie Dice from Steve Jackson Games, so I was prepared to write it off as a complete knockoff, but the game is actually better! Also, they solved the production issues with the dice tube. The one from Tasty Minstrel Games is solid, meanwhile Steve Jackson gave up on fixing their tube and switched to a bag.
As for the rules of Martian Dice, they are simple: The 6 faces of the die are Tank, Death Ray (x2), Human, Cow, Chicken. Every turn, you roll all 13 dice, set aside the tanks, and then "bank" either all of your death rays, humans, cows, or chickens. Pick up the dice (minus tanks and whatever you banked) and roll again.
You can bank humans, cows,and chickens only once per turn (Yahtzee style), and each of these dice banked is worth 1 point at the turn's end. You can bank death rays as many time as you want. However, unless you have matched each tank with a banked death ray, you get zero points. First to 25 wins.
Jeremy already wants more miniatures from Soda Pop in regards for monsters and enemies. So far he has yet to find anything. Hopefully they will release some in the near future because we can already see the need for different scenario/set up/boss encounters before players will be tired of the same thing.
;^)
Get it now If you want to be the cool kid at your local board game meetup. (disclaimer: the designer is an aquaintance of mine), or just print out the pieces if you can't het it right now and just play the game; it is worth the effort.
Also crossed off Stone Age from my "why haven't I played this yet?" list. I've heard much about how Stone Age is supposed to be the go-to choice for introducing worker placement mechanics. We have some couples friends who come over and play euros like Ticket to Ride and Zooloretto, but are afraid to try anything deeper. I want to get them hooked on Agricola, but have been looking for an in-between step. The masses are probably right, I think Stone Age will be a good choice for that.
I was worried that it would just be another Dominion clone, but I was very pleasantly surprised. While it is a deck building game, it also has a heavy resource management.
Overall, we played a full 5 player game, it took about 2 hours, and we all had a blast. Definitely recommended. Not a Dominion clone at all, and very well done. Not much player interaction though.
I'm already looking forward to playing it again. And the art... The art is just gorgeous.
BGG rank 22 (I was way off when I predicted 50 by years end).
In other board game news, Core Worlds continues to be a fun, deep game that has reinvigorated the deck-building genre. Also, Founding Fathers and Black Gold are both fun as well.
"Risk?" I cried, "We might as well just roll a dice now to determine the winner and save a few hours!" They said, well, have you got a better idea?
Well, actually, I kinda did.
I explained it right then and there, and we played with those rules on the spot.
I grabbed a deck of cards and dealt everyone a hand of cards. (9 for a 2-player game, and then one less for each new player. We played a 3-player game, so 8 cards each) I threw away the Mission Cards. We picked countries and got guys like a normal game of risk. All the rules of risk not related to combat resolution remained the same. Here's the difference.
Risk is the game of Napoleonic battles; armies against armies. Thus, the first rule change was that you cannot attack with more armies than the person has defending at a time. For each army that you attack with, you take a card from your deck and put it down. The defender then picks a card from her hand and plays it against the attacker. Lowest to lowest, ties defender advantage, aces high.
You then discard those cards.
What happens if you don't have any cards and you want to attack or need to defend? Well, you play the card off the top of the deck, making it completely random. Think of it as breakdown of your strategy because you are trying to manage too many troops at once.
After you go around the table you replenish everyone's cards back to eight, plus one for each territory they took last round, regardless of if they kept it or not, to reward aggressive play, and shuffle the deck. This is the mechanic I'm least happy with, because it creates a hierarchy of action, but it also didn't seem to favour any player particularly so I'm not sure.
The results totally rocked.
Strategy in this game is obviously rather simple; you start by trying to get rid of your shitty cards by fighting battles you don't need to win, and try to force the other player to spend his good cards in those same fights. This lead to some actual strategy instead of just numbers bullshit; on the very first turn, my girlfriend played out her bad cards and gave up ground to her brother's assault, which expended his good cards, saved India with okay cards, then threw down her good stuff to counterattack. When I got a numerical advantage, I pressed it by using my good cards, then sacrificing a few lambs on unrelated attacks to deplete his hand, then just playing off the top of the deck until I overpowered him.
One of the advantages of the system is that turns are actually much faster despite the amount of thinking to be done; we all played fairly conservatively by Risk standards but we always felt like we were taking these giant gambles.
So, first day of 2012 and I've made Risk into a half-decent game. Your move, forum.
First game: my girlfriend leaves in the first round with 6 diamonds before a single disaster card is played. Oh how we laughed. Then we get wiped out. The next three mine crawls have early double disasters. In the end she wins with 9 diamonds.
Game later in the week: a friend wins with 97 diamonds. We all had so many diamonds we ran out, and had to count with our fingers.
It's a fun game.
I just got back from D.C. and while I was there I thought I should get some more board games, so I got two. Dominion and Carcasonne.
It's been 20 days since I got back and we have played the crap out of Dominion, still going. But I'm a bit regretful about Carcasonne, I think it's too random, and sometimes people take a long time to put the stupid tile on the map making the game very tedious.
By the way, I went to this great little game and puzzle store called Labyrinth (http://www.labyrinthgameshop.com/), the girls that work there are really friendly and helpful and I recommend it to everyone.
MageKnight is the dungeon crawling genre on crack (although more thematically and overworld adventure, not a dungeon crawl). It's got a mountain of rules, but once you digest them, they all work together quite well. If you like four hour American-style adventuring board games, you will love this. Otherwise stay away. It also uses some deckbuilding, but as a means to an end, not as the meat of the game, which I think we will be seeing a LOT of in the future (A Few Acres of Snow is the only other game doing this right now).
Finally getting Super Dungeon Explore to the table today. Got it all set up, friends arriving at noon.
Eminent Domain was pretty fun. Apparently, it only actually works with 3 players, but even with 4 it's still an enjoyable experience.