Boardgaming 2022: the year of "point salad really isn't very filling"

I received Aeon’s Trespass and laid out all the millions of cards on a table that was within reach of my new puppy…OMG. I left for about 5 minutes outside to take the garbage and cardboard out to the street and coming back in…dozens of cards all over the floor and about 8 of them destroyed, one from a secret deck. If he wasn’t so darn cute…AUGH. Will try and get replacements but I spent a bit over MSRP to get this and am not a happy dad right now.

My daughters are 7 and 9 so some commonality on boardgames…

I’ll report back on Chronicles of Avel… this game is excellent! A great intro to light RPGs and co-operate play and great for the family. Fun mechanics include exploration and revealing tiles, and the game is well balanced to be fighting the boss at the end. My younger daughter was afraid of the Beast so had to leave the room, even as it was a fairly easy victory.

Some of the RPG game mechanics made me smile - like my daughter needing to rearrange equipment in her backpack and be forced to leave something behind that doesn’t fit. Should have sold that extra sword first!

Pic with daughter who always makes a funny face in pictures.

I also couldn’t help but snap a picture!

Love these pics!

But someone needs to photoshop some flames on that tower. Disaster Girl goes dark fantasy. :D

Love it! What are the ages of the kids? We have 7 and 3, and are probably a bit behind the curve in board games.

Mine are 8 and 3. We’ve always used board games as activities, but the older one has been increasingly interested in the games we play at our game nights. For New Year’s, she stayed up past midnight playing Return to Dark Tower with us. She felt very grown up and special.

Yeah, I think our soon-to-be 8 y.o. would love to play games with us, just for that reason, almost regardless of what the game is.

I read a couple reviews on BGG and forwarded one to the wife and got the go-ahead for it. (Just have to decide whether it should be a birthday present (she also needs a bigger bike) or if it should be a “family gift”.) Her younger brother will be four at the end of the month. One of the reviews mentioned playing it successfully with a 4 y.o. but honestly I don’t think he’ll have the ability to sit still for long enough (naturally). Trouble is, I’m not sure when we’d get time to play it when he’s not around, and if he is around he’ll want to be included (naturally).

My 4- and 6-year-olds got My Lil Everdell for Christmas and I was pleasantly surprised by how interesting the worker placement felt, while being significantly streamlined. And the game includes special starting handicap cards for younger players that meant I could go nuts trying to optimize my turns while still losing.

The only negative is that mountains of victory points are still the win condition, so the end of the game is the grownups anticlimactically adding up bonuses and declaring a winner. Which, I guess, it has in common with Everdell proper.

I think it’s a good one to own for the future anyway and good to give it a shot, but I agree with the challenge of trying to include the younger one. All kids are different and you may find success but I know my daughter at 4 would not have been able to hang on to it - it’s almost sophisticated enough for adults to play without kids. I’m tempted :). The box says 8+.

Thinking back, I think the most success I had a couple years ago was with My First Carcassone. I recall my younger daughter watched us play a few turns then wanted to try. The box says 4+. The older one was entertained by it too and wife and I could try and screw each other over :).

Just watched youtube and it looks like a good starter card game.

I’m seriously going to throw out a half dozen crappy consumer/mass market board games on my shelf, and divert more funds and time to the recommendations here.

PS @DT that tower is awesome.

My daughter and I got in a couple games of Dice Throne this weekend. I had got her the Santa Claus/Krampus box for Christmas and the kids got me the Marvel Dice Throne box so we had a bunch of new characters to try out.

Game 1 was Krampus vs. Scarlet Witch. It didn’t start out well for me as after the 1st 2 turns Krampus had hit me pretty hard and I was already down 45-23. However on my next turn I was able to roll Scarlet’s ultimate and on top of that by using her Crackle ability I was able to hit Krampus for 23 damage in one turn making the game 23-22. That was short lived though as Krampus continued to hammer me and I lost something like 16-0.

Game 2 pitted Santa Clause vs Miles Morales. No ultimates in this one as it was a back and forth affair the whole way. Santa Claus hitting me for more damage each turn than I could deal out, however Miles combo ability basically allowing me 2 offensive turns each turn kept me in the game. It looks like Santa had me beat, with just a few health left Santa goes for the final blow but luckily I roll a 6 on my defensive roll cutting his damage in half, then by using a couple more cards I’m able to block enough damage to barely keep me alive. On my next turn I’m able to send Santa packing back to the North Pole.

We really enjoyed all the new characters however both agreed Krampus was the coolest of the bunch so far.

Am I just missing the 2023 Board game discussion or did cardboard go out of style this year?

That sounds like a perfect thread title.

I am kind of interested in getting Zombicide, but overwhelmed by the variety of options. Does anyone have a suggestion for which version to get for someone new to the series?

I started with Zombicide Black Plague which I felt was a good intro with nice fantasy flavor. You can then add to that with the wolves expansion and many many other expansions. I have a friend who played through Black Plague with his son, I believe he said 47 scenarios. That’s a ton of content.

If you want the modern flavor, I would go with the base game, most recent addition.

I do enjoy Zombicide.

I also enjoyed Massive Darkness by the same folks.

Coincidentally I was looking at this last night also, as I enjoy CMON’s similar Cthulu and Bloodborne games.

From what I read, it seemed Black Plague was the favourite, up until Undead or Alive and the new Marvel one (which I’m not sure is in retail yet).

2nd Edition and up shifted from scenario-based to a campaign game, using four survivors instead of six. As a solo player this was appealing to me, since I groaned at the thought of controlling six. :)

The main complaint with 2e and beyond is lack of zombie variety, which is where Black Plague shines (I think mainly because there’s lots of expansions for it). The biggest complaint I saw for 2e specifically is that due to unbalanced campaign progression it is very easy, something that is apparently rectified in Undead or Alive. Black Plague also had complaints, like a controversial ‘friendly fire’ rule or something.

This is kind of where I’m at right now. I like the modern setting of 2e, and don’t care so much about it being easy. I also like having four characters instead of six.

Black Plague was tempting but I have so many medieval games already, and I’m not that interested in the Western and Marvel themes. Then there’s the sci-fi theme of the Invader line, which didn’t seem that popular by comparison…

Thanks for this - I have zero interest in the Marvel one or comic books in general.

Medieval/fantasy intrigues me the most, as does the modern.

Your intended player count may factor in also, as apparently you always need to take a full party (six in Black Plague, four in 2e and up).

So I think Black Plague requiring six survivors better supports three players than the following games, where someone would need to play two survivors to make up the four.

But it also makes playing with two players more fiddly, and I assume it takes up more table space.

edit: I may be misunderstanding how this works; apparently in recent games it is still six survivors, but many missions now also support four?

FYI, I made a 2023 board game thread. Seemed the thing to do now that it’s February.

(Happy to change the title when it’s no longer relevant)

I wouldn’t recommend Zombicide as like a lot of other CMON games it is a lot of price tag and storage for nowhere near commensurate gameplay reward. But if you specifically want it, for my part the modern day setting was one of the few things that made it stand out in my collection so I would still go for that over yet another fantasy game or the sci fi ones. Western… hmm. maybe.

An alternative recommendation though I dunno availability would be Carnival Zombie 2nd edition. You still will mow through undead and loot and struggle to survive but it has a much more original setting, extremely asymmetric characters and boss zombies, a neat dexterity “pile of corpses” mechanic, and (plus or minus as you prefer) is hard as balls. Should be around the price of one box of Zombicide to a bit above if you can get a direct sale copy, and I had way more fun.

Hot Diggity!

I am oganising some of my collection and moving a few to a new bookshelf and in doing so was browsing through various games and repairing boxes, etc. Opened up my copy of 1977 edition of War ot the Ring and at the bottom of the box found maps, counters and rules for Gondor and Sauron! That’s the SPI LOTR Holy Trinity!