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

You haven’t been charged for anything until the KS closes. Until then you can swap around your pledge however you like.

And that’s not a fee. you get a feature film box of your choice at that pledge and can add more as addons.

Ah, okay, great! Thanks for the info. I guess I misunderstood what they meant by ‘a la carte’.

I’m off to see about canceling that playmat and maybe adding some more film sets!

EDIT: And done! I went all in on the 3 remaining season 1 FF sets I didn’t have plus all 5 FF sets for season 2. I also went for the S1 and S2 miniatures.

So this is how kickstarter works, huh? Commence waiting.

Heads up that you should double check the season 2 pledge levels if you didn’t. There are bundles that knock a meaningful amount of dollars off buying it all as separate addons - in particular, the “all the season 2 feature films” tier is $90 versus $100 separately. I don’t remember if there’s one that’s those plus the minis or if you’d be looking at other stuff bundled in beyond that. Doing all in would be even cheaper but if you already own part of S1 not so much cheaper as to be worth getting redundant copies.

Yeah, thanks again! I went with the S2 feature film sets bundle plus add-ons for the rest.

I wanted Camp Happy Trails and Frightmare on Maple Lane from S1 because I love the movies… then I added Slaughter in the Grove just to complete the season but I’m not sure I’m into that theme. (What movie is it? The Serpent and the Rainbow? That would be cool.) I’m also not sure I want the fairytale set from season 2… but if I’m getting four, I might as well get the whole season.

I looked at the storage boxes and quickly decided against them. I love the VCR artwork but those are bigger than I need.

Starting out with Creech Manor was intimidating and it took longer to learn, but at least now I’m no longer scared of any advanced rule variations. The Thing box looks pretty cool! But I guess kickstarter means waiting so that’s what we’ll have to do. [checks calendar]

So I played my first Anno 1800 solo game. The solo game (not the solo campaign), is OK to learn the rules and industries and the limitations of what you can do and can’t do (limited space for industry tiles).

I came away with, that this is a racing game with shifting (personal) goal posts. You can more or less decide when/if to shift the goal post further down the line.

I played some rules wrong in the solo mode for when to get gold, so I had too much gold and I could finish the game before the timer ran out. I think I need to do it again… I also forgot the option to create new workers by paying recources, I mostly upgraded the existing workers, so I did not had to take new cards for creating workers.

So our 2nd game of In Too Deep was way faster. Game when to the new player by 2 points. It had been a while since I had played and forgot to move tokens over from the bonus locker so that might have swayed things in my favor but the other player went in too deep and didn’t lose any vps to squeak out the win. Even so really enjoying the game. I am curious if the criminal powers are get more use with more experienced plays. With only 2 actions using some of the powers just never seem worth the effort.

I was searching the forum for the old Quarterlies threads (surprisingly difficult) and ran across a Top 5 board games of the last 5 years thread. And it was posted 5 years ago, in 2017, sooo… Do we need a follow-up?

Granted, 2017 to 2022 is a pretty unconventional span to measure, but consider this: A search of that thread shows no instances of the word “Kickstarter/ed.” Gloomhaven (for better and worse probably the prototypical game of the period) was owned by a few thousand people at the time–the second wide-release Kickstarter was 2017. So I think there’s a very strong argument that five years ago was a quite important transition moment in the board game market and board gamer tastes. Hmm.

Hmm. I feel like you’re right- there has been a few big shifts in the boardgaming world in the last five years, and the prevalence of crowdfunded games is definitely one of them.

That said, your post made me think of Tom’s truism here of ‘good boardgame design was invented in 2008’ or somesuch hogwash. El Grande hit BGA in the last few days, and we fired up a game of it tonight. I originally bought my copy in 1998 or so, and goddamn does that game hold up today. So, so good.

And you know what, rereading that thread you linked (it’s only a hundred or so posts), and man, it just reminded me that the last two years of this pandemic have been terrible for boardgaming, not being able to get together in person. So while my collection has steadily grown, not much has actually gotten played, especially with friends. We do play on boardgamearena.com every Tuesday night, with a Discord server running voice chat, but the games we play on there aren’t the same as the ones we play in person. So a 5-year retrospective is kind of hard, since 2/5ths of that has been difficult.

I like this idea.

Lost my first 2 solo games of Anno 1800. Then it clicked and I beat the timer deck with 10 cards left.
This can be a pretty good multiplayer experience. I can imagine how everybody is trying not to waste actions and when and what to trade with whom. Trading gives the other player gold, which he/she can use to pay their workers and send them out again.

But you don’t want to build everything yourself, because that costs actions/time, so you need to trade.

I know a couple, which I will ambush with the game. I will need to go soft on them, because the better you know the production chains, the greater your advantage…

Okay, let’s do this.

What were the best board games (or digital board game adaptations) of the last five years?

Spirit Island
Sol: Last Days of a Star
Sidereal Confluence
Root
Babylonia

Also, it occurs to me that I didn’t list my plays from last week!

If you’re up for it, I would love to have you post your votes in the thread I linked to, DT, so they can be tallied with everyone else’s! (Note the formatting requirements in the top post.) Would also love to hear your thoughts over there on why these are your top choices!

Yeah, please plug those into the post. Babylonia needs your support! (I voted for it, and would love to see Sidereal Confluence get points too.)

Can you please xerox Sol or something and send it to me because I can’t find it and now you’re making me even sadder…!

Good news! It will be getting a reprint later this year via Kickstarter.

I just played another round of Final Girl with the Poltergeist in Creech Manor… thought I was absolute toast early on but I actually pulled off a win. I managed to keep the horror level in the three-dice range for most of the game. My third terror card was an Unstoppable Evil where a roll of the dice immediately killed five out of ten victims. Bad for them but it helped me keep the bloodlust topped out at only 4 through the whole game and up to the finale.

Mostly I just outran the Poltergeist who was much slower than usual for the endgame with a movement of 2. I was searching the garage when I got a lucky draw with the item card called A List of Things In The… which gave me a look at the full item deck in the closet. Carolyn wasn’t there so I knew I’d find her in the attic.

I also got lucky with two terror card discards plus a Crucifix that let me ignore the effects of the tenth and final terror card.

I’m impressed with how differently this game plays out from session to session. And the situations are all so appealingly cinematic. It’s really my kind of game.

I think my favorite horror movie gameplay scene was when I tried to sprint with two victims out the second story window. I failed the horror roll which meant I could still move one but I lost a heart and the action phase was immediately over. I’m not sure I followed the rules correctly, but I decided that even though I was on the exit space with two victims ready to save, the fact that I got the red X meant I would wait to save the victims (put them on my final girl card) on my next turn.

No big deal. I resolved the killer action then I drew the terror card called “Voices… I Hear Voices” “All victims able to move up to the next floor do so.” So, before I could save them, my two victims climbed right back up the ladder only to get killed on the next turn.

I can see the scene in the movie… my exhausted hero drags two people screaming to the window and guides them down the ladder. When it’s her turn to descend, she slips and lands hard on her ankle. Then, while she’s distracted by her injury, the two victims hear something calling to them from inside the house. They go silent and look back up at the window they just came out.

My groaning hero doesn’t notice as first one, then the other slowly walks back to the ladder and starts climbing. Eventually, she turns back to them, but-- where’d they go? WTF? She looks up just in time to see them at the top of the ladder climbing back through the window into the house where they’d just been… then come their screams.

Great stuff, this game!

Pretty sure that the only criteria for saving victims are that they are on an exit space and you are on the same exit space. It’s not an action and I believe can happen as soon as you move in.