Boardgaming 2021: minis are back, baby!

[newbrof]

thanks, Tom. It is much clearer now!

[tomchick]

@newbrof

But is it correct, that after raiding (placing a worker on a settlement), I get to pickup a worker from the work areas in the village?

hm, or does the worker I pickup during a raid count as the pickup-worker action?

I’m a bit confused by the question, because when you raid, you aren’t putting a worker in the village. Instead, you’re putting a worker on the space you raided, and you’re leaving him there for the rest of the game. And, as you surmised, you’re taking the worker that was in the raided space. You’ll only ever have one worker available for your turn.

It’s one of the fundamental gameplay mechanics in the Raiders series. As you raid, you’re introducing new workers into the pool of available workers, which represents the Vikings/Scythians getting more battle experience. There’s a sort of progression of veterancy from grey, to blue, to red as the game goes on.

-Tom

[newbrof]

@tomchick

You’ll only ever have one worker available for your turn.

aha! That’s implied, because you only pickup the raided worker. Good!

From the rules:

Regardless of their choice, each turn will always follow the same pattern:

1. Place Worker and resolve its action.
2. Pick up a different Worker and resolve its action.

so the raided worker has no resolved action. So always one worker, that’s neat!

[Vesper]

New games:

[newbrof]

I read good things about Rambo: The Boardgame (1-4 players) and read less good things about Rambo: First Blood (1 Player only). Looks to be more like a prologue, choose-your-own-adventure game.

[newbrof]

Played a solo game of Raiders of Scythia in one go. I think it went smoothly, I noticed later that I raided a village with the wrong color. But it would not have made much of a difference against the easy AI.

I wished, they had a card anatomy in the rulebook. Eagles work simple, if you play the game. The right-hand blue flag on the eagle card is for the right-hand crew skill. And the left hand double-symbol is for the left hand (passive) skill on the crew card.

Also, you can’t use a skill of a crew member, if you don’t attach an eagle to the crew member. I think it is implied.

Playing with people could be fun. When you raid a village, you open up a quest for all other players, before you get chance to do it yourself. The AI can’t take advantage immediately.

The AI deck works well, so easy and fast. I can imagine that it mimicks an opponent pretty good (haven’t played with someone to compare).

I just couldn’t bring myself to hire a 0 strength crew member. I guess, that what horses are for. There are some great healing cards, because later in the game you can get a lot of wounds, especially if there is gold in the village.

Great game!

[Mike_Cathcart]

FFG has been teasing a big announcement for next Thursday. Rumor is they’re going to announce a reimplementation of Battlestar Galactica in Arkham times. There was a Reddit post last October by someone claiming to be a tester on the game who said it takes place on a cruise ship and features a new set of Arkham characters.

Anyway, FFG just posted this:

FantasyFlightGames (FFGames)

Fishes are the new toasters.

[Shieldwolf]

Hmm.
Think I’d still rather play BSG solely based on theme alone, but I’m happy to see that game be available again. Still, I am more intrigued by the new Human Punishment: The Beginning. Which also looks like a BSG type game.

Now if FFG were to come out with an Android 2nd edition…

[Vesper]

New stuff:

[newbrof]

Won my first game against easy AI in Rocketmen by Martin Wallace. I have some difficulties parsing rulebooks, recently. I used to learn games just by reading the rulebook, but now I have to sit in front of the board with the cards, and then I get it. I have a feeling some rulebooks are written that way, you need the material, to get the whole picture. Am I paranoid? Maybe…

Rocketmen is a deckbuilding game with a twist. In deckbuilders usually there are cards, that help you thin your deck. Not here. You thin your deck for every mission you prepare. You pay 10$ to put a card on your launch pad. So while prepping a mission to Mars, your deck becomes thinner and thinner.

After a successful mission all your rocket booster, thrusts and support cards return from your launch pad back to your discard, meaning your deck gets fat again.

The Ai is pretty simple, it gets a boost of a couple of steps when starting a mission and will then proceed to the destination one step per turn. It can get tense, when you have the same goal as the AI, then it gets a race.

On the image, all my yellow markers are completed successful missions (6 in total). That’s the end of the game, once you completed 6 mission. Each mission will also give you permanent advantages like income, resources or increased hand limit.

A mission is a push your luck thing. You can spent all game prepping your first mission or decide at one reasonable point, that you are going to push for lift off. Then you draw cards from the mission success deck. It will tell you how far your rocket will fly. You can boost your rocket distance with cards on your launch pad. The cards are really well done and multi use most of the time. There is no boring card, all are very thematic like the reusable rocket parts card, the quantum computer, and so on…

I bought the game blind in a store, but no regrets.

[Petey]

I was looking at Rocketmen but then bought Stellar Horizons instead. After opening and starting to read the Stellar rulebook, I think Rocketman might be a bit easier to parse!

[Matt_W]

I’m playing Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion solo. Tonight, I played through a lengthy scenario and it came down to the final card draw. I was pretty confident I could win, pulled out the heavy hitting card I’d been saving all game which would be more than enough to pull out victory… and drew a null. Game over because my deck is empty.

The loss mechanic has you keep all your gold and experience and replay the mission if you lose. That doesn’t sound super fun. Starting to remember what I don’t like about this game.

[newbrof]

@Matt_W

Starting to remember what I don’t like about this game.

this should be only a problem, if the game is not fun to play. Otherwise, failure should be an option in a game.

[triggercut]

@newbrof

Otherwise, failure should be an option in a game.

Sure.

But for some folks with Gloomhaven – myself included – a big portion of the “fun” or carrot or motive in playing is related to the larger campaign. And if the setup, play of a scenario, and game mechanics that bring that failure feel unsatisfactory, and the penalty paid for failure too onerous instead of drawing the player forward it has the opposite effect. The game goes back on the shelf and collects dust until the player “recovers” – or doesn’t – his or her will to tackle it again.

I’ve had the same sentiment in losing a scenario in Gloomhaven, and what jumps to mind currently for me is the feeling when I’ve failed a scenario in my current campaign playthrough in Pathfinder: The Adventure Card Game. If anything, you’d think failing a scenario in PACG should make me feel even more unsatisfied than failing one in Gloomhaven, given all the dice-chucking and failed rolls that go into bottling a PACG scenario.

But with PACG, I don’t feel like the game should go on the shelf when I lose a scenario (and right now, I’ve just finished one scenario to move ahead after two fails); quite the opposite, I can’t wait to try again. Perhaps it’s the setup time – I can now get PACG (which isn’t a particularly quick setup either) ready to roll in about half the time of Gloomhaven.

Maybe it’s the failure “terms” of Pathfinder. Each scenario of Pathfinder is like a dungeon in Diablo. You’re constantly having a chance to get more good loot that you can add to your character, and most Pathfinder scenario fail conditions require you to replay a failed scenario…but let you keep any loot or gear you collected in any previously unsuccessful attempts.

[malkav11]

I think the difference between Jaws of the Lion and regular Gloomhaven is that in regular Gloomhaven you’ll generally have like 9 other scenarios you can tackle next instead of beating your head against the one that you lost again immediately. We’ve only ever lost one scenario, I think - the infamous #72 - and never did get back to that one. I haven’t played JotL but it sounds like it’s fully linear.

[triggercut]

That’s a great point, I’ve only ever played original Gloomhaven and not JotL. That’s right, regular GH gives you options to proceed after a failed scenario. If JotL doesn’t…that’s a bummer.

[Matt_W]

I’ll confess I fudged the last draw and called it a win rather than replay the scenario. On the one hand, I was only starting to get a handle on character synergies and when to play what near the end of the scenario, and I also played a couple of rules wrong: one to my advantage and one to my disadvantage. So I could have benefited by replaying and taking a more strategic approach. BUT, it was a relatively long scenario, my eyes were glazing over, and I just didn’t want to replay it. I’m playing solo, so the only person I’m responsible to is me.

Jaws of the Lion is only fully linear for its first 5 onboarding scenarios and branches out more after that.

[malkav11]

Also, FWIW, there’s a variant rule to just treat nulls as -2 and crits as +2 to reduce outcome randomness in the modifier deck. I’ve never used it, but it would definitely avoid just completely whiffing your big attack in the clutch moment…

[cornchip]

I like the crit/null variant a lot. Also, I would argue that you should think of your big move as the one where you can guarantee advantage…not that success is assured, due to curses.

I enjoy GH’s core gameplay but it’s still demoralizing to fail at the end of a scenario. My group was four busy people who managed to find two hours a week, and when that happened, we felt like we lost a week, even though we mostly had good attitudes about the randomness in the game. It was more fun to fail quickly (like in the aforementioned #72, which took us three tries) so we could either reset immediately or talk tactics.

[Profanicus]

@Matt_W

I’m playing Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion solo.
…
Starting to remember what I don’t like about this game.

Using two characters?

I only got through the first four (tutorial) missions before starting to find the number of options/choices I had at the start of a mission a bit overwhelming.

I know you’re not meant to plan ahead based on both characters cards but I couldn’t help doing it to some degree, plus the urge to min/max/optimise is kind of strong in me and I think made my turns too long for too little payoff.

Of course it’s all quicker at the end of the mission but by then I’m upset over what I should have done differently earlier lol. ;)