I felt it was essentially this oversized puzzle piece of Orge in GIANT boardgame form, id rather play the lackluster pc version.
Car Wars on the other hand, looks like a well engineered streamlined slightly eurostyle edition of the classic car wars. Im very interested in checking it out!
Sounds good! I can always be talked into warring with teh carz.
Dragonfire shouldn’t be that hard to find. Here in the US, I just loaded up on the base game and first few expansions without much difficulty. That said, I don’t necessarily recommend it. It’s better than the Shadowfire themed game before it, but the character development is painfully slow. As far as deckbuilders go, you can do a lot better.
As for Renegade, that’s a tough call. It’s a fantastic game, but it’s very very very out of print and priced accordingly everywhere. A reprint is supposedly on the way, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
@Hereafter, do you have any interest in historical theming? The Imperium games (Classic and Legends) are some of the most exciting developments I’ve seen in deckbuilding in a while:
And if you’re in it for solitaire play like me, I really like the solitaire bots David Turczi made for each individual nation’s deck. They do a great job of capturing the feel of how that nation/deck would work with a human player.
-Tom
Is there any difference between Legends and Classics or is it just theming? And do these play well with 4 or are they better solitaire?
I’ve got a board gaming weekend coming up and thinking about adding one of these. Planning on getting Dune Imperium, Brass, Root, and maybe Scythe on the table.
I think Legends is considered a bit more difficult to learn. It also has more errata. :)
Classics consists of more classical civilizations. Legends is a mix of classical and fantasy empires, including Atlanteans and Arthurians. The latter is more complex, although not by all that much.
Can confirm, though — both push deck-building in some very interesting directions. I’d link my review, but I have no idea whether that’s kosher around here.
Trans-Siberian Railroads is so neat! I’ve only played once, but really loved the negotiations over who we should feed to the government. I can’t think of another game with negotiations that feel quite like that. Really fun table talk, and intensely dramatic results. All in a ruleset we learned in like 10 minutes.
Thanks for the suggestions, I’m actually don’t mind any themes. I can pick up Classics but Legends doesn’t seem to available in any Canadian retailers I checked.
Re: Dragonfire. I know, I read it’s average and slow but it’s one of those thing I want to try regardless. It’s like the hitting on the crazy girl at a party. Probably (99%) she’s going to kill me, but what if she’s the one?
I will probably edge into solitaire play more often than not. Which brings me to, Hostage Negotiator. That’s another one I can’t seem to find.
I don’t always love train games — ugh! trains! boring! — but both Trans-Siberian and Iberian Gauge were quite good. I should have expected that, given my affection for Holland’s designs, but there you go.
It’s totally cool in the context of discussion like these! But assuming those initials and that avatar mean what I think they mean, I’d be honored to link the review on your behalf. :)
I have only played them solitaire, which is why I bought them (I did have the opportunity to press some friends into a game, but I passed). As Dan points out in the review, there’s going to be a lot of downtime if you play with others. He’s okay with the pacing with two players, but even then I think the larger issue is that a lot of Imperium is figuring out the unique “puzzle” of how to play your nation. That’s not the sort of thing you want to throw a new player into, especially if you’ve already played solitaire to wrap your head around the game. So I think the bigger issue than the downtime is getting a group of players who are all on the same page in terms of puzzling out how to play their respective nations.
-Tom
Ill let you know as SOON as i get it, and lets get something on the books! :)
That’s good info, so it sounds like maybe not the best game for a board game weekend with friends.
I have played it (Imperium Legends, that is) once four-player and several times two-player. The thing is, yeah, you’re really concentrating on building up your own empire and it seems difficult to pay much attention to what your opponent is doing, and it doesn’t seem like there’s much to be gained by trying. It isn’t exactly multi-player solitaire; but it definitely has that issue.
Unfortunately I don’t have much desire to play it solitaire, and at least one of my friends who played four-player has said he’ll never do that again (he might be willing with three).
So, yeah, probably one or two players is the sweet spot for this.
[quote=“tomchick, post:1317, topic:150673, full:true”]
Ha, thanks, Tom! Good to know. (And yes, I’m Dan!)
I’ve enjoyed the pacing of Imperium with two players — with four it drags painfully — but you’re correct in identifying the bigger issue: some of the nations are tricky enough that you really don’t want to toss somebody in unprepared. Even in my group, which largely consists of experienced players, we had the occasional hiccup when somebody tried their hand at, say, the Arthurians, and had to work through their peccadilloes while the rest of us took more commonplace turns. Our worst downtimes had more to do with complex factions than player counts.
(As a side note, it doesn’t help that there are so many draw effects, which makes it impossible to plan turns in advance. For all its cleverness, Imperium has some real missteps as a multiplayer game.)
How many people is Car Wars? I’m thinking that a proper full vetting may be in order.
Honestly I’ve never played any of the classic Steve Jackson games, they were mostly before my time. But the reverence which some people hold them definitely intrigues me.
Honestly, Craig, I can’t say you missed much, from the modern view. I loved all the CW (and Ogre) stuff back in the day, hell, I still have my old pocket boxes. We spent many, many hours building cars and blowing each other up. But the system didn’t age well. But this…
makes me perk my head up a bit. Really? I have two friends who just got the box via the KS. Perhaps I should give it a try.
It’s hard for me to objectively assess. It’s probably a decent part nostalgia, they were some of the first ‘real’ games I played as a kid, stepping up from Monopoly and Risk and such. I remember coming across Ogre and Car Wars in a local hobby shop and just being transfixed. I don’t know how I’d feel about them if I were playing them for the first time - kind of like I have no idea whether Star Wars would grab me the same way as it did when I was five.
Is Munchkin a classic Steve Jackson game?
Yeah, I suppose it is. I’ve never really been into Munchkin personally though.
So I couldn’t pass up the great deal on Anno 1800 on Amazon. It’s an abstract cube pusher, but it’s a Martin Wallace abstract cube pusher with civ building theme pasted on, and it’s surprisingly a lot of fun. It’s very satisfying to push your cubes out to make a new industry or use your ships trade goods to borrow your neighbors factory so you can produce that fur coat you need.
You’re given 9 cards at the beginning of the game and you’re trying to fulfill the needs on them when you do you get a reward (and victory points) you then take the card out of play. The first one to get rid of all their cards gets 7 points and triggers the end game. The rub is that most of the cards give you new workers which means you have to take new cards so it becomes this endless loop of supplying demand on your cards and making more factories to supply demand on your new cards. It’s easy to teach but still has enough to make you really think.