Check out the Shut Up and Sit Down video. They mention that, while the game is enjoyable enough, it mostly plays itself on normal difficulty and you have very little to think about. I’ve heard that from others too. Seems to be a game normally played for the story and to spend time with friends who are not into super crunchy games.
Too many Thanksgivings.
It was nice to get back to Santa Monica. Still one of my favorite tableau-builders. Got the expansion on a Black Friday deal, so we’ll see how that shakes it up.
Brian Boru continues to please, although I’m curious if it will have a short tail. It’s very pacey, but almost too short at certain counts. I know, I know, that’s a weird complaint.
We finally completed the core box of Unsettled. I’m not often excited to dive straight into an expansion for one of these mega-Kickstarters, but I can hardly wait to try the next planet. So that’s a good sign.
I am playing on the standard difficulty and am only 7 scenarios in. I’m enjoying it mightily. I would say that the criticism of “the game plays itself” isn’t really coming off too valid for me. Quite the opposite, the longer I play, the more choices open up to my party members.
But I also haven’t played even halfway through, obviously. And Final Girl showed up on my porch on Saturday, so…
I heard the same feedback from another friend. If you keep playing it I’ll be very curious to hear if your opinion changes. Love the idea of a trick-taking area control game, especially with great art, but am pretty disappointed when I get a game that feels too samey after 5 plays.
Looking for a bit of a recommendation.
My 7 y/o daughter expressed interest in wargames. She likes moving the troops against one another in pretend battle.
Anything in this genre for that age? She liked the sound of Root, but that is too complicated. Stratego maybe?
A few years old, but check out this thread:
Memoir ‘44 might be a good choice. The miniatures give her the hands-on, moving the troops vibe, while the card play is visual and pretty straightforward.
I would go with Small World, but you don’t actually move your troops. But it’s a war, man.
The better Stratego is the Lord Of The Rings: The Confrontation version by Knizia. I wish I had this as a kid instead of Stratego.
And then there is Risk and Risk Junior… Risk junior is with pirates though.
This may have been because I was a poor teacher, but the whole “going into decline” thing was difficult for me to get through to my daughters when they were about 9 and 13.
It is a great game though and your kid may pick it right up.
Maybe OGRE since she could play the Ogre which is only one piece. It has dice rolls which are fun. The Probability of hitting maybe a bit too much but might be worth a try.
Good tips from everyone. Thank you!
it took me a couple of hours glueing 16 Aliens miniatures… The tails needed 1-2 minutes of a steady grip, and that were only the tails. The aliens were harder to glue than the warhammer silver tower minis I did a few years ago.
Putting together all dials (and the beautiful sentry gun dial) was quite fast… now I am ready to play, but also tired… I have to say, there will be no real space colonization without sentry guns, and no blip scanners without the original sound effects. Whenever in the future I would be asked to hop on a mission of jolly space colonization, the first thing I would ask would be: Do you even have sentry guns?
I’ve played two games of Final Girl now, and after getting myself and everyone else slaughtered in the first game, I managed to get myself and everyone else slaughtered in the second game, too. But I felt like I was doing a lot better the second time around. :)
Familiarity with Hostage Negotiator does help, and I realized as my first game was crashing to defeat in Final Girl that I’d forgotten/neglected some of the tactics I’d learned from playing HN.
I also do think there’s a decent amount more dice-roll bad-luck mitigation this time around, but if you string some bad rolls together, yikes! This does not bother me – I’m fine with that level of chaos. But I get why it’ll bother other players. The great thing about this game – and Hostage Negotiator – is that if you get screwed by your own terrible die rolls, well, that’s a thing. But gameplay and set up are fast enough that it doesn’t feel like that big a deal. (And I should note that my first two losses were not the result of poor die rolling. The fault lay strictly between the chair and the table, if you get my drift.)
Like Hostage Negotiator, the all-in pledge feels like an almost absurd amount of gaming goodness, if you like the core gameplay loop and theme (and I really like both.) The components are excellent, though I do wish that this “first season” had some sort of better full storage solution. With that said, a Season Two kickstarter with 4 or 5 new “movies” will launch on January 11, and Van Ryder Games promises that it will include an all-in storage solution as well for everything (maybe not the playmats, I guess.)
Anyone got movie guesses? I’m thinking Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Child’s Play and Scream.
Haha. Just seeing this. I never check those updates in the upper right corner.
But yeah, fisticuffs and viscera.
Those are good guesses! I could see an Omen feature film box. And maybe an homage to “You’re Next” – family home invasion horror kinda thing.
What would the difference be between a Halloween-inspired killer and the current Friday the 13th-inspired killer? For that matter, the Scream one seems pretty similar also. I’m not saying there isn’t one or that they couldn’t figure something out, just…I’m not seeing immediate obvious gameplay distinctions. Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Child’s Play, Omen and a home invasion one (I’d think You’re Next probably isn’t the immediate touchstone for most people there but should be, it’s great) all seem much more fruitful.
(I’m also really enjoying Final Girl. Much more so than Hostage Negotiator, which I’ve struggled to grok. I don’t know if I really understand Final Girl’s strategy so far, but the map and more diversified goals make it easier to identify a forward direction - even if it’s not necessarily the right one - and feels less abstract to me.)
Absolutely agree on enjoying FG: I see it as a really positive, thematic evolution of Hostage Negotiator. I’d be really interested in hearing Tom’s thoughts!
I don’t have it yet! Maybe I should break out some Hostage Negotiator to prep.
-Tom
I emailed Game Steward last Monday and they said they were sending out all the Black Friday stuff before the Final Girl preorders…even though the Final Girl shipment was already in. Uh, we ordered first, darn it.