Another week of new games (and some that I hadn’t played in a while) We played some more games yesterday, but I’ll get those the next time around because this will be long enough without them:
Discoveries - The Lewis & Clark dice game isn’t really Lewis & Clark, but it’s fine. It has elements of its big brother (recruiting new cards, trying to generate different kinds of movement over multiple turns, scooping the workers from the central board) but it feels very different. I enjoy the way the board game pulls those elements together more, but it’s currently easier to find people interested in the dice game.
Factory Fun - Played five times in a 24-hour period, will likely pass 10 plays before the end of the month. Incredibly enjoyable “speed” game that is actually quite slow - everyone flips a tile and spends 5 seconds carefully considering the consequences before they get grabby (and speedy players play russian roulette with their chosen tile). Apparently out of print, but there’s a new design and an iOS port on Kickstarter right now.
The King of Frontier - My watchtower + cities edged out a production engine that never fired and a well-connected board for the victory.
Cacao - I often find myself drawing and using my three-guy-tiles early, and ending up with underwhelming spots for the end of the game. Next time I may try holding onto them until the board completely fills out.
Power Grid Factory Manager - An older game that’s new to me. The turn order, auction, and market definitely feel like a sideways take on elements of Power Grid… which I enjoyed more on the initial play than Power Grid or First Sparks. I especially like the balancing act of available workers, cash, power consumption, and factory robots that affects each player differently after the first round.
Deep Sea Adventure - A tiny push your luck game (the Oink games box really is tiny) that is far more cruel than it looks. According to the rules, you are all short on cash and have to share a rented submarine with a single air supply, which is a hilarious and appropriate explanation of the game’s mechanics.
Vikings - I actually played this once before - basic rules, four players - and wasn’t very impressed. This Monday, Anthony and I played the advanced rules with only two players, and I raised my rating from 6 to 8 on the spot. It’s a shame when a game gets worse at its upper player count - because an ideal game can be difficult to put together at a games night (sorry, this is a four player game, but we don’t need a fourth…)
It seems I'm fortunate; even with so many new-to-me games over the past couple months, I haven't played something I actually dislike since PAX.
A lot of two-player games this week... and multiplayer games with two players... and Anthony's games, which explains the amount of cops and robbers!
Fast Food Franchise - Two brutal 3 player games; on Wednesday, Chicken bankrupted both of the other players rather quickly. On Friday, Chicken and Ice Cream ended up in a race to a million dollars, but the $200,000 Chicken chain outpaced Ice Cream's dividends. I have somehow managed to play this 5 times since picking it up from the BGG store last month!
Nothing Personal (first play in two years) - Some elements that I don't care for (most notably open negotiation with non-binding agreements, but there's a variant that addresses that in the back of the rules) but I'd play it again because Anthony enjoys it so much.
Race for the Galaxy - One quick two-player game of Rebel vs Imperium, where Alien Tech Institute and military pulled ahead of Prospecting Guild and several Improved Logistics-settled worlds.
HUE (new to me) - One of a series of tiny card games, mostly notable for being so small. But still enjoyable, the scoring mechanic provides enough interest to float a 10 minute game.
Ca$h 'n Guns - Anthony's copy, with the More Cash, More Guns expansion. This play caused me to bump my rating up, but I'm still not a fan of the special player powers - some powers help you win, some powers help you not lose, and 8 rounds of hold-ups and loot splits don't feel like enough to balance out the difference. I did enjoy the safe and the new loot cards quite a bit.
Police Precinct (new to me) - A co-op with enough personality to avoid feeling derivative of Pandemic. The game is fun - I especially liked offering the helping dice - but I have reservations about the theme. I called federal agents on a "street riot" in our first game, which felt a little TOO real.
Perry Rhodan: The Cosmic League (new to me) - A two-player pick up and deliver game that moves along at a rapid clip. You probably want a good way to 'teleport' your ship to keep up, and I got stomped after Anthony was able to cancel both of my sun-tunneling cards in a single turn.
Welcome to the Dungeon (new to me) - Even though there are four different characters in the box, we played for half an hour only using the Warrior. And - good sign - it was still interesting. I love that weakening the adventurer too much means everyone will pass, and stick you with a loser of your own creation.
Favor of the Pharaoh (new to me) - My preordered copy arrived on Monday, along with the Suburbia and Mad King Ludwig expansions... the first play really appealed to me, and was very close at the end. Anthony started the end-game roll-off with seven 6s, I managed eight 6s, and he was able to make nine 6s for the win.
Before I had the flu hit me I was enticed into playing a four player game of Catan in which they played with the normal setup but not the normal house placement. Needless to say I won being road barron while having 3 wheat fields.
Before I had the flu hit me I was enticed into playing a four player game of Catan in which they played with the normal setup but not the normal house placement. Needless to say I won being road barron while having 3 wheat fields.
I often find myself loaded with wheat and stone because it's the path of least resistance. You can make a road out of anything as long as you have enough of it...
Anthony said he likes reading these when I post them (he played in most of the games), so you get to read them every week, too ;P
Favor of the Pharaoh - Already crossed five plays, as we've been playing multiple games in a single sitting. Has a good feel as a 3-4 player game - 2p has less competition for powers and less trash-talking during the final roll-off.
Suburbia - The new expansion is neat, but the old expansion (Suburbia Inc.) is a favorite. With all the new tiles and additional setup, Suburbia 5* really wants its own storage solution, too.
The Battle at Kemble's Cascade (new to me) - Despite the unpredictable scoring and odd pacing (I had a lot of null turns, which may have been my fault), I love the theme.
Neuroshima: Convoy (new to me) - I told Anthony this is Blue Moon in the Neuroshima Hex setting - not very accurate but close enough. Enjoyed my first play, want to play it again as the robots.
Outpost (new to me) - An older (1991) game I finally got to play... and liked a lot, enough to play it again as a 2p. The lumpiness of the money adds tension to the auctions at any player count, and good 2p auction games are rare.
Rails of New England - Not new, but Anthony and I played our first full game after struggling through the rulebook (there's a revised rulebook on BGG that helps considerably). Comparisons to crayon rails (Empire Builder, etc.) are apt, even though the comparison falls apart under scrutiny. Want to play it again now that the hard part is out of the way.
I took a crack at the official single player mode for Viticulture tonight! I'm starting a single-player campaign suggested in the rules where you add a different expansion to the game each time you win against the AI deck.
I beat the AI by a measly point in the first game. Still lots of fun, though; definitely one of my favorites.
Picked up Pandemic Legacy and the new Game of Thrones Second Edition LCG. Looking forward to trying them both out.
I don't like Pandemic, but I like Legacy, so I need to know more info about that one.
I've played GoT LCG 2.0. At least with just one core set, the game is not good.
I got tired of Pandemic really quickly, but the Legacy aspect really interests me. I absolutely hate Risk, but Risk Legacy was a lot of fun, so hopefully Pandemic Legacy will also be good.
Went to a game night that is typically very good, and instead it was overrun by weirdos. I got into a 3 player game of Viticulture where one guy was a solid player, and the other was a 40 year old Comic Book Guy who was getting visibly upset by his inability to understand the simple mechanics of turning vines into grapes, grapes into wine, and aging your stock.
I am still not a fan of Viticulture. It seems like a very well-structured game at first, but the randomness of the card decks really irks me. The cards are very situational, but if you draw up early to build your course of action around them, the 7-card limit feels overly restrictive. I'm sure there are games with similar randomness that I enjoy, but Viticulture requires you to have such a *perfect* engine if you hope to win.
Ultimately I'd rather play most games by Feld or Rosenberg, or something like T'zolkin to scratch the worker placement itch.
After Viticulture I tried Airlines Europe (mediocre game, but was fun to play it and learn a bit of board game history, as the design it was based off of also spawned Ticket to Ride).
Next up was Codenames, a team-based social deduction game. It's a neat little game where 25 cards, each with one word on them, are put out on the table. 15 of those cards belong to one team or the other, and only one player from each team is allowed to see the secret grid that shows which cards belong to which team. Those players take turns giving their teams clues and allowing the team to attempt guessing which words are theirs. The point is to give a clue just specific enough to apply to 2 or 3 cards at a time without being impossible to discern. There are enough little tricks you can pull as a clue-giver that this game gets a thumbs up in my book, but I'm not over the moon about it. I'd like to play more when it's offered to me, as I enjoy social deduction games but am getting a bit tired of hidden identity stuff at the moment. I'm not going to run out and buy this, though.
Lastly we played crokinole, cause a very nice board was available to us. Can't go wrong there.
One of Viticulture's expansions has an advanced variant where you mill pretty much all the useless cards from the two visitor decks in addition to adding some new, much more generally useful ones. I feel like that did a lot to balance the card play in such a way that nobody feels gypped with their card draws anymore.
When we played the 6-player (!!!) game at PAX Prime, we didn't remove the useless cards for the decks so it didn't help much there.
Well, it doesn't help that I give no shits whatsoever about GoT. So the theme doesn't do anything for me at all. The game itself had all the same problems I've seen in LCGs that aren't Netrunner, such as Conquest, and Doomtown.
It's not easy to draw a lot of cards. The core set decks are full of pretty much all 1x copies of things. This makes the game ridiculously random, even more than Hearthstone.
I played each of those three games multiple times, and on every turn of every game there really were not many decisions to be made. The limited cards in your hand and the board state really only gave you one obvious path of action. Often that path was either a devastating blow to the opponent that they could not prevent, or was a vain effort to avoid losing.
The only real reason Netrunner is a success is because the core game design was done by Richard Garfield, and FFG just had to modify it a little bit. If you think about it, all the FFG published games I like were only published by FFG, and not created by them. Most of the games actually fully designed by FFG employees that I can think of are bad in very similar ways.
I mean, there is some cool stuff going on in these games. I like how you battle for planets in sequence Conquest. I like how in thrones you've can do different kinds of conflicts for different results. But the actual games, especially with just one core set, are not worth time or money.
Starcassonne has a new rule where you have to have a dice-off between players when you merge two opposing features to determine who gets control of it.
Also, apparently there are no plans to release it in the US.
There are tons of Star Wars-skinned board games out in Europe that don't make it over here b/c of licensing. They're doing Qwirkle and Ubongo this year as well.
Starcassonne has a new rule where you have to have a dice-off between players when you merge two opposing features to determine who gets control of it.
Also, apparently there are no plans to release it in the US.
You can't release it in the US because FFG has rights to Star Wars board games, but Z-Man has Carcassonne.
Hey! Pandemic Legacy is very good. Played two games of it so far, lost the first and won the second. Some neat surprises have already shown up, and I hear they only get wilder from here on out.
One of the players in our group really enjoyed the game but groused about the game's "consumable" design. I can see where some folks would be turned off by that, but I'm pretty sure I can still use the board and pieces to play a regular game of Pandemic once the campaign is finished.
In other news:
The Grizzled - A tense and very difficult co-op game. I really enjoy it even though both times I've played it have ended in stunning defeat.
Legendary Encounters: Predator - I've played this 8 times since buying it last month, and every time it's been a hoot. The design of both co-op and competitive modes feels very solid, and it improves on LE: Alien in some very clever ways.
Nothing Personal - It's a mafia-themed game with lots of negotiation, so I was bound to get a big kick out of it. I've yet to win a single time, but I'm slowly learning some strategies that should help me push ahead in future games.
Hey! Pandemic Legacy is very good. Played two games of it so far, lost the first and won the second. Some neat surprises have already shown up, and I hear they only get wilder from here on out.
This is what I've been waiting to hear from someone I trust. We usually play Pandemic with family, and this sounds like an interesting twist. I'll pick it up for the next visit.
I missed a game night during my trip to Austin, but Friday and Saturday were loaded this week. And hey, this will be the first post where my games are different from Anthony's for a while:
Eggs of Ostrich - People sometimes ask where they can find a copy. The best answer is “pay too much money on the BGG store” - although I have now played this 8 times, which is more success than I’ve had with Too Many Cinderellas outside of PAX.
Minerva (new to me) - Another Japanese game I picked up from the BGG store this month. The first non-solo game was very close - first and second place were only separated by one point. Two different people who arrived after we started playing told me they had heard about it, and were interested in playing the following week. Two other people compared to Glen More, which surprised me - I always assumed I'm the only one who likes Glen More enough to remember it.
Rails of New England - I really struggled with New Hampshire, after everything seemed to fall into my lap last week with Vermont.
Ticket to Ride - I’ve now played the USA map 16 times, which is not really that much, given how often I see this played.
Patchwork - I’ve read that Rosenberg’s next “big box” game (eg. Agricola, Le Havre) will have the same puzzle mechanism from Patchwork, which has my interest.
Favor of the Pharaoh - First game I’ve seen where taking the pharaoh resulted in an instant win - no one had enough dice.
Firefly - I’ve gone back and forth on this a lot, but there is a setup I enjoy for this game despite not having any remarkable fondness for the setting or show. I only wish it hadn’t put its worst foot forward with the recommended starting scenario. I also prefer one of the newer game ending triggers (play until the bank is out of money) to the older one (play until one player has a set amount of money).
Canal Mania (new to me) - The first game I picked up after last week’s game auction. It’s a fun, relatively simple train/connection game. You have a lot of options on your turn - three phases per turn, with several different options for how you spend each one. And it moves along at a nice clip, so... not disappointed with that purchase.
Comments
Discoveries - The Lewis & Clark dice game isn’t really Lewis & Clark, but it’s fine. It has elements of its big brother (recruiting new cards, trying to generate different kinds of movement over multiple turns, scooping the workers from the central board) but it feels very different. I enjoy the way the board game pulls those elements together more, but it’s currently easier to find people interested in the dice game.
Factory Fun - Played five times in a 24-hour period, will likely pass 10 plays before the end of the month. Incredibly enjoyable “speed” game that is actually quite slow - everyone flips a tile and spends 5 seconds carefully considering the consequences before they get grabby (and speedy players play russian roulette with their chosen tile). Apparently out of print, but there’s a new design and an iOS port on Kickstarter right now.
The King of Frontier - My watchtower + cities edged out a production engine that never fired and a well-connected board for the victory.
Cacao - I often find myself drawing and using my three-guy-tiles early, and ending up with underwhelming spots for the end of the game. Next time I may try holding onto them until the board completely fills out.
Power Grid Factory Manager - An older game that’s new to me. The turn order, auction, and market definitely feel like a sideways take on elements of Power Grid… which I enjoyed more on the initial play than Power Grid or First Sparks. I especially like the balancing act of available workers, cash, power consumption, and factory robots that affects each player differently after the first round.
Deep Sea Adventure - A tiny push your luck game (the Oink games box really is tiny) that is far more cruel than it looks. According to the rules, you are all short on cash and have to share a rented submarine with a single air supply, which is a hilarious and appropriate explanation of the game’s mechanics.
Vikings - I actually played this once before - basic rules, four players - and wasn’t very impressed. This Monday, Anthony and I played the advanced rules with only two players, and I raised my rating from 6 to 8 on the spot. It’s a shame when a game gets worse at its upper player count - because an ideal game can be difficult to put together at a games night (sorry, this is a four player game, but we don’t need a fourth…)
A lot of two-player games this week... and multiplayer games with two players... and Anthony's games, which explains the amount of cops and robbers!
Fast Food Franchise - Two brutal 3 player games; on Wednesday, Chicken bankrupted both of the other players rather quickly. On Friday, Chicken and Ice Cream ended up in a race to a million dollars, but the $200,000 Chicken chain outpaced Ice Cream's dividends. I have somehow managed to play this 5 times since picking it up from the BGG store last month!
Nothing Personal (first play in two years) - Some elements that I don't care for (most notably open negotiation with non-binding agreements, but there's a variant that addresses that in the back of the rules) but I'd play it again because Anthony enjoys it so much.
Race for the Galaxy - One quick two-player game of Rebel vs Imperium, where Alien Tech Institute and military pulled ahead of Prospecting Guild and several Improved Logistics-settled worlds.
HUE (new to me) - One of a series of tiny card games, mostly notable for being so small. But still enjoyable, the scoring mechanic provides enough interest to float a 10 minute game.
Ca$h 'n Guns - Anthony's copy, with the More Cash, More Guns expansion. This play caused me to bump my rating up, but I'm still not a fan of the special player powers - some powers help you win, some powers help you not lose, and 8 rounds of hold-ups and loot splits don't feel like enough to balance out the difference. I did enjoy the safe and the new loot cards quite a bit.
Police Precinct (new to me) - A co-op with enough personality to avoid feeling derivative of Pandemic. The game is fun - I especially liked offering the helping dice - but I have reservations about the theme. I called federal agents on a "street riot" in our first game, which felt a little TOO real.
Perry Rhodan: The Cosmic League (new to me) - A two-player pick up and deliver game that moves along at a rapid clip. You probably want a good way to 'teleport' your ship to keep up, and I got stomped after Anthony was able to cancel both of my sun-tunneling cards in a single turn.
Welcome to the Dungeon (new to me) - Even though there are four different characters in the box, we played for half an hour only using the Warrior. And - good sign - it was still interesting. I love that weakening the adventurer too much means everyone will pass, and stick you with a loser of your own creation.
Favor of the Pharaoh (new to me) - My preordered copy arrived on Monday, along with the Suburbia and Mad King Ludwig expansions... the first play really appealed to me, and was very close at the end. Anthony started the end-game roll-off with seven 6s, I managed eight 6s, and he was able to make nine 6s for the win.
Favor of the Pharaoh - Already crossed five plays, as we've been playing multiple games in a single sitting. Has a good feel as a 3-4 player game - 2p has less competition for powers and less trash-talking during the final roll-off.
Suburbia - The new expansion is neat, but the old expansion (Suburbia Inc.) is a favorite. With all the new tiles and additional setup, Suburbia 5* really wants its own storage solution, too.
The Battle at Kemble's Cascade (new to me) - Despite the unpredictable scoring and odd pacing (I had a lot of null turns, which may have been my fault), I love the theme.
Neuroshima: Convoy (new to me) - I told Anthony this is Blue Moon in the Neuroshima Hex setting - not very accurate but close enough. Enjoyed my first play, want to play it again as the robots.
Outpost (new to me) - An older (1991) game I finally got to play... and liked a lot, enough to play it again as a 2p. The lumpiness of the money adds tension to the auctions at any player count, and good 2p auction games are rare.
Rails of New England - Not new, but Anthony and I played our first full game after struggling through the rulebook (there's a revised rulebook on BGG that helps considerably). Comparisons to crayon rails (Empire Builder, etc.) are apt, even though the comparison falls apart under scrutiny. Want to play it again now that the hard part is out of the way.
I beat the AI by a measly point in the first game. Still lots of fun, though; definitely one of my favorites.
I've played GoT LCG 2.0. At least with just one core set, the game is not good.
Scott, why didn't you like GoT 2.0?
I am still not a fan of Viticulture. It seems like a very well-structured game at first, but the randomness of the card decks really irks me. The cards are very situational, but if you draw up early to build your course of action around them, the 7-card limit feels overly restrictive. I'm sure there are games with similar randomness that I enjoy, but Viticulture requires you to have such a *perfect* engine if you hope to win.
Ultimately I'd rather play most games by Feld or Rosenberg, or something like T'zolkin to scratch the worker placement itch.
After Viticulture I tried Airlines Europe (mediocre game, but was fun to play it and learn a bit of board game history, as the design it was based off of also spawned Ticket to Ride).
Next up was Codenames, a team-based social deduction game. It's a neat little game where 25 cards, each with one word on them, are put out on the table. 15 of those cards belong to one team or the other, and only one player from each team is allowed to see the secret grid that shows which cards belong to which team. Those players take turns giving their teams clues and allowing the team to attempt guessing which words are theirs. The point is to give a clue just specific enough to apply to 2 or 3 cards at a time without being impossible to discern. There are enough little tricks you can pull as a clue-giver that this game gets a thumbs up in my book, but I'm not over the moon about it. I'd like to play more when it's offered to me, as I enjoy social deduction games but am getting a bit tired of hidden identity stuff at the moment. I'm not going to run out and buy this, though.
Lastly we played crokinole, cause a very nice board was available to us. Can't go wrong there.
When we played the 6-player (!!!) game at PAX Prime, we didn't remove the useless cards for the decks so it didn't help much there.
It's not easy to draw a lot of cards. The core set decks are full of pretty much all 1x copies of things. This makes the game ridiculously random, even more than Hearthstone.
I played each of those three games multiple times, and on every turn of every game there really were not many decisions to be made. The limited cards in your hand and the board state really only gave you one obvious path of action. Often that path was either a devastating blow to the opponent that they could not prevent, or was a vain effort to avoid losing.
The only real reason Netrunner is a success is because the core game design was done by Richard Garfield, and FFG just had to modify it a little bit. If you think about it, all the FFG published games I like were only published by FFG, and not created by them. Most of the games actually fully designed by FFG employees that I can think of are bad in very similar ways.
I mean, there is some cool stuff going on in these games. I like how you battle for planets in sequence Conquest. I like how in thrones you've can do different kinds of conflicts for different results. But the actual games, especially with just one core set, are not worth time or money.
I present to you.
Carcassonne
Star Wars Edition
http://cundco.de/brettspiele/carcassonne-spin-offs/115/carcassonne-star-wars-edition?c=60
Star Trek: Catan,
Risk: The Walking Dead,
Clue: Dungeons & Dragons, and
Angry Birds: Star Wars - Jenga Death Star Game.
Also, apparently there are no plans to release it in the US.
One of the players in our group really enjoyed the game but groused about the game's "consumable" design. I can see where some folks would be turned off by that, but I'm pretty sure I can still use the board and pieces to play a regular game of Pandemic once the campaign is finished.
In other news:
The Grizzled - A tense and very difficult co-op game. I really enjoy it even though both times I've played it have ended in stunning defeat.
Legendary Encounters: Predator - I've played this 8 times since buying it last month, and every time it's been a hoot. The design of both co-op and competitive modes feels very solid, and it improves on LE: Alien in some very clever ways.
Nothing Personal - It's a mafia-themed game with lots of negotiation, so I was bound to get a big kick out of it. I've yet to win a single time, but I'm slowly learning some strategies that should help me push ahead in future games.
Eggs of Ostrich - People sometimes ask where they can find a copy. The best answer is “pay too much money on the BGG store” - although I have now played this 8 times, which is more success than I’ve had with Too Many Cinderellas outside of PAX.
Minerva (new to me) - Another Japanese game I picked up from the BGG store this month. The first non-solo game was very close - first and second place were only separated by one point. Two different people who arrived after we started playing told me they had heard about it, and were interested in playing the following week. Two other people compared to Glen More, which surprised me - I always assumed I'm the only one who likes Glen More enough to remember it.
Rails of New England - I really struggled with New Hampshire, after everything seemed to fall into my lap last week with Vermont.
Ticket to Ride - I’ve now played the USA map 16 times, which is not really that much, given how often I see this played.
Patchwork - I’ve read that Rosenberg’s next “big box” game (eg. Agricola, Le Havre) will have the same puzzle mechanism from Patchwork, which has my interest.
Favor of the Pharaoh - First game I’ve seen where taking the pharaoh resulted in an instant win - no one had enough dice.
Firefly - I’ve gone back and forth on this a lot, but there is a setup I enjoy for this game despite not having any remarkable fondness for the setting or show. I only wish it hadn’t put its worst foot forward with the recommended starting scenario. I also prefer one of the newer game ending triggers (play until the bank is out of money) to the older one (play until one player has a set amount of money).
Canal Mania (new to me) - The first game I picked up after last week’s game auction. It’s a fun, relatively simple train/connection game. You have a lot of options on your turn - three phases per turn, with several different options for how you spend each one. And it moves along at a nice clip, so... not disappointed with that purchase.