Boardgaming 2021: minis are back, baby!

Likewise.

Since there was a bit of discussion of Tainted Grail’s rulebook and its possible deficiencies in the old thread, I just wanted to link this clarifying summary and reference from Universal Head, who does good work, in case anyone finds they’d appreciate such a thing:
https://www.orderofgamers.com/tainted-grail-v1/

Labyrinth is NOT a good game.

Haven’t played it enough to really comment on that, but I certainly didn’t think it would obsolete TS, hence my asking.

I disagree with Tom on the premise of this thread just as much as I do when he says movies didn’t get good until the 1970s, but i agree with him on Twilight Struggle. If I’m going to play a 3+ hour long war game for only 2 players (which is almost never) that game is going to be War of the Ring.

Maybe Rebellion, but to me Rebellion is just not-as-good War of The Ring but for Star Wars. I haven’t played it with the expansion, though, and I hear that improves the game a bit.

But for 2 player card driven historical war games that aren’t 3-4 hours long I really like both the second edition of Washington’s War (which is more like 90 minutes) and Sekigahara (closer to 2 hours).

I know this is a bit late, but I opened up my kick-started of TG last night.

There’s…alot there.

So, I set up the game, and immediately cane afoul of what I think will either make or break this game for a new player.

I refer to the rules, specifically the explanations.

The rules explanations are some of the worst I’ve ever come across.

Instructions given are goddamed annoying and I have spent bout 2 hrs on Board Game Geek getting clarification.

To put that in perspective, we played this game for a total of maybe 4 hrs…so half of that of me scratching my head over instructions and at one point drifting embarrassingly close to a hissy fit.

For example, see if you can decipher, on first reading and with no searching, the rule for upgrading an attribute.

I can’t upload the pdf here.

Also, some things that are actually very simple have needlessly complicated instructions, such as how to set up your combat and diplomacy decks.

And regarding those 2 sets of cards, some genius decided the only marker, to help you classify them, would be a 25mm (millimetre!) Mark of colour referred to as a “banner” to see which your initial 15 cards are.

Seriously, they could very easily have printed the back of those cards in the colours of the character.

Spirit island has 4 start cards per spirit and you can find then in a matter of seconds.

This…

ANYWAY,

Once the irritation subsided, the actual game is fun.

It is not something like Mage Knight and the closest I’ve played to it is Gloomhaven, which I now miss.

It is more like those choose your own adventure books except …well bigger, and more entertaining, and you get to move people around.

I’ve seen some people complain about the combat and diplomacy systems, which are basically the same system with different cards and at first I found it confusing.

But after about 3 encounters I got how the system worked and I actually like it.

I got my arse handed to me on one occasion by “an angry mob” before I realised I could just run away.

Anyway, now that I’ve (mostly) gotten past the poor rules writing, I am.actually going to play the game again, and am.looking forward to it, tonight.

I didn’t have any trouble figuring out the rules, personally. Like, upgrading attributes, each attribute is paired with the one on the other side of the character card, so you add the two together and then check the little table as to how much another point between the two would cost in XP.

No, they couldn’t have, because then you would be able to see whether you were getting a starting card or an advanced card next. Spirit Island doesn’t have you draw power cards randomly, so it’s not the same situation at all.

Errm…

There are 80 combat and 80 diplomacy cards per character.

All the cards for Maggot, for example could have had Maggot on the back.

Their chosen system of 1/25 B card annotation in the lower corner of the card is…inferior.

That would have made the initial set up much easier:

Take all your character combat cards.

Next, (using something more obvious than the little smudge of colour they decided to call a “banner”) take the 15 cards marked thus (and given these are face down, they could quite easily be labelled starter cards on the face, perhaps in the corner where they put the 1/25 annotation, so when you draw them) and shuffle them. These are you start cards.

Shuffle the rest.

Repeat for diplomacy cards.

It took me all of 5 minutes to come up with better instructions.

Clear as mud.

And still clearer than what the rule book says.

Edit
And I’m sure it isn’t a hrs operation, but the explanation of the rules sucks.

Imho by far the worst aspect of the game so far. So, my essential point still stands, if you can get over the rules (and evidently for some that’s easy) then the rest of the game is interesting enough.

They couldn’t, though, because there are three characters (one from each campaign) that share that color of card (plus potentially a fourth if you have Niamh, who’s campaign agnostic for…reasons, and can be any color). And then each of those characters have their own unique personal cards as well.

?

Rule book says each character gets their own deck of 80 of each.

Doesn’t say nothing about sharing cards, at least not that I’ve seen so far.

Right. In any given campaign, you will play with up to one character of each color, each of whom will have a card pool (but not active deck) of 80 cards. But there are three characters of each color, one for each campaign, and Niamh is a switch hitter. So the blue cards that don’t have Beor’s name on them will be used for the blue characters in Last Knight and Age of Legends as well. Same with the other characters. You can also, if you have Niamh, choose to use her in place of the character that would usually occupy a given color in that campaign, and she will use the cards of that color, but add in the ones with her name on them instead of the ones with their name.

That makes slightly more sense but strikes me as quite the opposite of elegant.

And I think I have figured out the attribute advancement, after having read the rules for…hmmm…the 8th time.

And this is how I would have written that rule.

This is Arev

He has a point in aggression and a point in empathy.

Agression and empathy are a pair.

So are courage and caution.

So are practicality and spirituality.

To increase Arevs aggression:

Count the number of existing red blocks in the pair, in this case 2.
Then add the attribute you wish to increase, which makes a total of 3 red blocks.
Then multiply this by 2.

Thus you pay 6.

Edit:mobile phone formatting…ugh.

And this is the actual rule.

I don’t really see any difference except that you explicitly state which attributes are opposing, which they do earlier in the rules and is pretty obvious from layout IMO, and the exp cost actually caps out at 10, so your formula is only how it works for the first five points. -shrug- Anyway. I can try and help (preferably in the 2021 thread) with any questions you have but obviously you and I had different experiences parsing the rules. :)

I hate to say this, because I went all-in as well, but Tainted Grail is trash. Seriously, one of the worst designs and implementations I’ve tried to slog through in a long time.

-Tom

Haha, you bought Tainted Grail.

That said, I’m kind of tempted by ISS Vanguard. But I’m not buying it now. I’m going to wait for wave one to ship and reviews to come out. If Awaken continues this policy of reopening pledge managers after wave one ships (like they’ve done for Etherfields), maybe I’ll buy it then and just play it when wave 2 ships.

If they don’t reopen the pledge I’ll probably have forgotten about Vanguard by then so I can make myself feel better buying something else.

Both great examples. The various problems with Twilight Struggle that have since been solved with the invention of good boardgame design are 1) the playing time, 2) the overreliance on the whims of a d6, and 3) the importance of having to know the entire deck in order to play well. @Brooski will argue that #3 is actually a feature, and I don’t necessarily disagree. But it means that Twilight Struggle is not a good game to play unless you’re playing with someone of the same skill level (i.e. who knows the deck as well as you). And I’m sure Twilight Struggle fans who know the cards value how this informs the game, but it makes it less friendly to casual boardgamers, and especially to boardgamers who play a bunch of different games with a bunch of different people of different skill levels.

As for what games specifically obsolete it, The Expanse is a good sci-fi version of the basic concept. You’ve played it? I only got in one game before the pandemic. :(

I really like the 13 Days and 13 Minutes games as much shorter and compressed Twilight Struggles. For the specific Cold War theming, Ian Brody’s Quartermaster General: Cold War is my favorite in the Quartermaster General series. Really awesome interplay among three asymmetric sides and a great system for tracking escalating tension and possible nuclear exchanges. It does have that same issue as Twilight Struggle in that knowing the cards will give someone an advantage over someone who doesn’t know the cards, but it doesn’t dictate the game as much as it does for Twilight Struggle.

-Tom

Not as much as I’d like. We usually have (had) more than four in our group.