Thanks for the info! I kinda figured that was likely and I’ll change my approach in the future. But in that example, I’m glad I played it that way. :)
I’m generally more interested in the horror movie I’m acting out than the game I’m playing if that makes any sense. And any time I’m confused by the rules or by game ambiguity (as they call it) I choose the thing that’s hardest on me. And none of it ever feels “unfair” because, well… it’s a horror movie!
I can also endorse Sol, though I’m pretty terrible at it. It’s definitely in my top 10, just not my top 5.
Fantastic!
Was there a late backing option on Final Girl last time? Thinking of skipping the KS offer due to KS’s idiotic move towards support of blockchain/NFT and was wondering if I can back on a secondary platform post campaign.
Got mine yesterday down here in NZ.
Excited to give it a whirl this week!
You may be in luck (and not the good kind) – Van Ryder Games hopped on the blockchain/NFT bandwagon a while ago with this nightmare. On the VRG Discord, the company president suggested avoiding the topic while the Final Girl campaign was running. People just don’t understand, y’know?
I got to play my first round of Oath tonight with some family members.
I really, really enjoyed it. It took us nearly 3 hours to play 5 rounds before we had a winner, but it should go much faster on future games.
I found a deep level of charm with the world as it is organically built. The strategic elements were very satisfying, and there were definitely a few really clever and satisfying combos we saw fired off.
The two aspects I didn’t like were how confusing the banners were with their behavior. You can recover them, and then add the currency, but the currency behaves kind of funny for each, and one has a whole different side… It was just really confusing for my group as we tried to process that with the other victory conditions.
We also had the same problem with campaigning… It was just confusing between the dice and the warbands plus the other modifiers and battle plans.
I think those complaints smooth out in subsequent games, but I do think it could use some streamlining.
I am very excited to get it out again, hopefully soon.
Ugh. Thanks. I got plenty of other games to play, I’ll give FG a miss.
Yep, that makes it easy to decide wether or not to back/buy in.
This was a good weekend to play new games.
I received Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition as a present.
It’s a smaller cousin of the full game (which I have only played once) and mixes the mechanisms of Terraforming Mars with Race to the Galaxy (action phase selection).
The solo game I played was to help me get to know the cards and rules. I was supposed to fully terraform the planet before the end of the game to win it. I did not get anywhere close. Lots to learn for that game. But what I really want is to play it with other players.
The improved card art and double layered player boards are nice though.
We got to try a brand new planet in Unsettled.
This one is home to constant landscape changing tides, making planning tricky. We won the game and got back to our ship on the very last player action before we would both have fallen unconcious. It was close. I enjoy the puzzles in that game a lot.
Always at the leading edge of board gaming, I got to play Lords of Waterdeep for the first time; only 10 years late.
I enjoyed it a lot. The theme is a thin veneer. But I do enjoy the worker placement game underneath. Good fun.
Finally, I got to play In Too Deep, not once but twice.
We hacked into the minds of criminals and rid the city of The Syndicate twice. In our first game, the winner went so deep that even the corruption penalty didn’t prevent him from winning. The city was safe despite his questionable methods. I ended up with the most corruption today, but halfheartedly. And so the penalties I received combined with some clever plays by my wife led her to a very decisive victory. Not sure I’m law enforcement material. But I really enjoy figuring out how to build combos to resolve multiple crimes on a turn. It’s an enjoyable ride.
Glad you like it. It may become my favorite pick up deliver as it doesn’t out stay it’s welcome. I really do like that you can play it straight or go into deep and still make it a viable path to victory. How many players did you have? I’m curious to know how much longer it is with more players and if it feels more chaotic with more players.
Got another one of my holiday purchases, to the table. It wasn’t a full play, but enough for my sons to get the rules down.
Mezo is an interesting take on an area control game. At first, you might dismiss it as another Blood Rage, Rising Sun or similar dudes on a map game.
Most games of that type have you build up armies and then move across the map to battle the other players, not Mezo. This game just plops you right into those battles.
Each player has asymmetrical god that comes with a unique ability and 5 action cards with 3 options on each card. Each battle you’ll choose a card and then choose 2 of the 3 actions. It has great tug of war feeling to it. Not only are you thinking about the battle your in, but you have to think about how you actions in the current battle will affect a later battles. Definitely has potential to be a really great game if you’re into area control.
I cleaned out my library (the one with books) and brought my rejects to the used book store that is also my neighborhood board game store. By profound luck, they had a used copy of Babylonia by Reiner Knizia, which a number of folks were talking up in new best-games thread. So I was able to walk out with that and a number of new used books without dropping a dime!
Totally agree on In Too Deep working its way to one of my favourite pick up and deliver games. I think gameplay time was under 2 hours both times. The first time included some rules discussion with someone who had watched a rules video. The second, however, had another 20’ tacked before those 2 hours to explain the rules to someone who knew nothing about the game. The more you play, the smoother it gets though. I thought filing evidence and so on would be confusing from reading the rules, but it all makes sense when you play,
Both games were 2 players. I’d love to play it at 3 or maybe 4 (and, fortunately, I have a group who would like to do just that). I’d be very hesitant to go to 5 though. The chaos would make it near impossible to plan your turns. You would likely spend a lot of time waiting for other players to parse the current state of the board.
That said, the game was enjoyed by everyone and they all asked to play again. So we shall do that. It will get easier the more players know the rules.
I love playing lots of games, but this week’s commitments bordered on exhausting.
I’ve been wanting to compare and contrast Unfathomable with Battlestar Galactica and Homeland for a while now, so early this week we held our final play of two of them. After four plays of Unfathomable, a 5k-word article on how BSG captured the period that was post-9/11 America whereas Unfathomable doesn’t even bother with cosmic horror was a cinch. I won’t miss this one.
Fred Serval’s recent Red Flag Over Paris is what Fort Sumter ought to have been: short and punchy, but not so lean that it loses the very reason I look for historical CDGs in the first place. It has a better grip on the importance of geography and political connections. Apparently the Paris Commune isn’t very well known even in France, so it’s been fun introducing the setting to my co-players. Fred was then kind enough to show off A Gest of Robin Hood, the upcoming second volume in GMT’s COIN-lite series. It pulls a few tricks that probably wouldn’t fit as well with the COIN Series proper, like hidden information, but it was a delight in the shorter format.
I also needed to wrap up a p/review for the upcoming third edition of Bloc by Bloc. I had some reservations about a game advocating for violent resistance, especially in light of last year’s capitol uprising, but the game grapples with some of its own contradictions in ways I didn’t expect.
One of our game nights was pretty much dedicated to wiping out a handful of games that we didn’t enjoy on the first play. Cascadia, McDune, and Free Radicals, I’m happy to be done with. We played Dune: Imperium to get the taste out of our mouths.
Lastly, I was pleased to teach Brian Boru to my sister and her husband. What a great game. Easily one of last year’s best.
Homeland is such a classic. I think it’s probably my favorite compromise between “lite party game” and “three hour slog-fest” in terms of playing something with a meaningful traitor dynamic. Gale Force Nine had a really nice licensing run with the Homeland, Firefly, and Sons of Anarchy games. I hear their gladiator TV show game was good as well.
Firefly was the last game I played in person. I love that crazy thing, as big and sprawling and messy and untuned as it is, especially with all the expansions. Easily the biggest table hog I own and such classic Ameritrash, with theming so good it doesn’t even matter that I’ve never seen the source material!
(Also true of Homeland and Sons of Anarchy!)
-Tom
Absolutely. They’ve never quite recovered from Sean Sweigart’s death. He had such a talent for identifying the core ethos of a TV show and translating it to cardboard. Have you ever played Spartacus? We pull it out once a year or so. It runs a little too long, but it’s every bit as trashy and exciting as the series.
Right, Sparticus, that’s the name I couldn’t think of! Because like Firefly, Homeland, and Sons of Anarchy, I haven’t seen it. The TV show or the movie with Burt Lancaster or one of those guys doing some famous chariot race scene or whatever. But I have heard it’s a pretty cool game.
I’m sorry to say I didn’t know his name or realize he was the connecting factor. Now that I’m looking at his credits on BGG, I’m wondering about the Star Trek: Ascendancy game. I couldn’t care less about the Star Trek licensing, but a three-player space opera/4X with asymmetric factions from the guy who developed all those Gale Force Nine games I like? If it weren’t for the fact that it requires human players, I’d be all over that!
-Tom
Okay, so here’s the source of me not putting that together: Sweigart also designed some goofy pro wrestling game for GF9. I played it at Gen Con once. Since I’ve never watched pro wrestling or had any interest in pro wrestling, it didn’t gel with me. But yes, I should have understood that you meant Spartacus (gladiator TV show!) rather than pro wrestling (also a gladiator TV show, as far as I know!).
Star Trek: Ascendancy is very good. In the same vein as his other adaptations, Sweigart knows his source material and adapts it faithfully. It’s a 4X civilization game, but with lots of early exploration straight out of the Original Series, diplomatic encounters from the Next Generation, border tensions and contested starbases like in Deep Space Nine, and none of Enterprise! That’s how you make Star Trek good. We played it for my sister-in-law’s birthday post-vaxx. It happens to be her favorite game other than Space Alert.
Heathen! Classic, my fav game among the gale force games! I host it at EVERY con, and gets almost as much as playtime as Terraforming mars, which is my fav mainstream game!
