I think the bigger issue is the “pro wrestling added to a figure skating competition” aspect. I just doesn’t seem like Mage Knight would bear up very well if players are banging into each other. But, boy, would I love to see it! I heartily endorse a forum game getting underway!
-Tom
I played Mage Knight competitively once. Once. I spent like an hour waiting for my turn to come around, during which time I meticulously plotted the order I had to do everything in to accomplish whatever it was I was trying to accomplish.
Right before my turn, the player before me cast some spell that made me discard a card. I rage quit and have never played since.
Don’t be a good guy, exploit what you can. Pillage the monasteries and raze the villages. Remember you want to be a one-person/thing army with some fodder to absorb wounds. Don’t be too hard on yourself though, sometimes the draw is hard and Draconians can really put an end to best laid plans for instance.
Sometimes I play board games.
I’m normally wary of “message games.” For a long time, most message games were terrible, closer to the edutainment shovelware my parents clogged my PC with in the '90s than anything resembling a play-worthy game. A few recent titles have been breaking that mold. I’ve written in the past about how games like Comanchería break past the usual barrier to become modern classics, not in spite of their messaging but because of it. More recently, Heading Forward and Stonewall Uprising have been pleasant surprises. The first one is about recovering from a head injury. The second covers three decades of fighting for LGBTQ rights. Sounds dour, doesn’t it? But both of them are rather good. Heading Forward manages to be a compelling solo hand management game about upgrading cards and prioritizing how you’ll spend limited resources (including things like attention and time). Stonewall Uprising is a bit more woolly, pitting two players against each other in an extended contest to dominate national discourse, and gamifies details like shifting the Overton Window and deliberately demoralizing rights activists. Fascinating stuff.
Has anyone played Moonrakers? Negotiation game with deck building. They have a deluxe Kickstarter coming in July, and I’m really intrigued by the game, but wondering if anyone has tried and it and can lend an opinion.
Van Ryder Games just revealed the full look of the season one storage box, and goddamn I can’t wait to display this on my game shelf:
Front vew:
And without the lid, it’s a work of art:
(The VCR thingy holds the game mats.)
Kimberly shows so much enthusiasm, I might want it now… sold out, dammit
edit: Game Steward for the rescue…
But why does the core box spine lack art? That seems… odd. (Rhetorical question of course).
The Core Box has the logo and it’s kind of a cool black and gray thing. I think they made a deliberate choice on the artwork to add a visual cue that you cannot play the game with just the core box. You need that and at least one “film” box.
I note they sized it to perfectly fit on one of those Ikea organizers that we all have for our games.
Yeah, folks who design these kind of storage solution thingies for their game universes have learned to be pretty respectful of the Kallax shelf. The big organizer that Chip Theory makes for Too Many Bones is made with similar thinking in mind.
It’s very pretty but it’s just another box to put the boxes you already have in, when I can not do that and be more flexible in how they’re arranged, spend less money, and of course, not have to deal with their assumption that I would want minis or playmats when I don’t. If it actually condensed those boxes (and granted, I don’t know how you would or whether it would be desirable given the way they do the game boards as covers for the film boxes), maybe.
I might just do that! Nothing set in stone yet, but looking like my address will literally be on Route 66. Which (not gonna lie) was totally an enticement.
Nice. Get those kicks!
I love the VCR theming of that Final Girl box but I decided to stick them on a bookshelf instead.
Any thoughts on Space Station Phoenix? My friend mentioned it and it looks potentially interesting? Was thinking about trying it out on TTS.
Nice! I’m 20 minutes from the Manchester Miniature Market, which has a great play space, fwiw.
Later this summer, probably in September, I’m looking to visit gaming friends who live a similar distance from the Miniature Market on Manchester. Maybe I could find a chance then to meet you StL folks (or soon to be) for some gaming? I know one friend has Spirit Island, and it has lain unplayed for three years.
It does some clever stuff! The setup is a monster and although it doesn’t break three hours it somehow feels long. But I do like certain aspects quite a bit.
The big one is how everyone begins with a fleet of ships representing various actions, but then deconstructs them for scrap metal over the course of the game, gradually constricting everyone’s options. This is a bit edged, and can lead to situations where some folks are locked out of access to certain actions, but the problem eases with experience. Once you get over that hump, it’s a smart blocking system with some turn order hiccups. I’m mixed on it overall, but it’s pretty darn novel.
Thanks for the thoughts! Sounds like it’s worth giving a try, at least.
As the resident co-op grump – my contention is that most co-op games can just as readily be played single-player, and I prefer games that actually require the presence of my friends – I had a nice surprise last night when I finally pressed into service three other folks to play The Grizzled, a co-op game from 2015 that I’m sure some of you have played.
The first issue is that it’s pretty difficult to wrap your head around the rules by reading them. I even tried a test game playing all the hands, but that didn’t help much. Which means it’s pretty difficult to teach. I think I can do better next time, but last night was a bit of a nightmare, and I thought I’d prepared better. It doesn’t help that the version I have – it’s a deluxe version with painted minis whose only gameplay function is to get in the way – contains what might be the most useless player aids I have ever seen. It’s as if the designers calculated how best to confuse everyone, and then they printed that on both sides of a bar coaster. Voila! Player aid!
But once we got a rhythm going and figured out the basic gameplay, what I like about The Grizzled is that it’s all about following the gameplay actions and trying to figure out who at the table most needs your help. Not by talking about it! This is not a talky co-op game like, say, Pandemic, Spirit Island, or Arkham Horror where everyone is chatting about what they’re going to do, and what needs to be done, and what another player could do instead, yadda yadda yadda. Instead, the rules are very clear that you can only communicate gameplay information via gameplay actions. So unlike other chatty games, this one is short rounds of people concentrating, watching closely, presumably paying attention to each other as they play. It’s not a game where you can just check out until it’s your turn.
Now this might sound exhausting, but it’s really not. Individual turns and even entire rounds are very brief. One thing The Grizzled absolutely nails is pacing. It’s snappy and short. It’s not a filler game, but it’s also not a main event game (although the deluxe version does have a campaign mode, which would turn The Grizzled into more of a main event game).
But my main discovery is that this is a game about literally supporting each other (the gameplay concept is called “support”), especially the most vulnerable among you. I think what’s special about The Grizzled is that it’s a whole other kind of psychology than other boardgames, which is obviously a big part of what draws people into coop gaming. But unlike other coop games, The Grizzled actually requires the presence of your friends (it uses hidden information) and demands that you all pay attention to each other as you play a game about helping one another. The entire point of The Grizzled is that none of you can get through this alone. And while I realize that might also be the point of various dungeon crawlers, deck-builders, worker placement boondoggles, and living card games, I have been able to get through every one of those alone with no problem. :)
But it does feel like an experience engineered to put you and up to three other players in a foxhole together. Except instead of shelling and machine guns being your adversaries, you’re all fighting against a chewy hand discarding puzzle with a poignant twist.
Part of what makes The Grizzled poignant is its WWI setting of hearty Frenchmen in the trenches. This isn’t about fighting battles. It’s about hanging fire trying to hold out until the war ends. It’s about trying to keep your friends alive. And if that weren’t enough, the lovely comic book artwork was drawn by an artist named Bernard Verlhac, who was killed in the Charlie Hedbo shootings in Paris in 2015. The Grizzled is steeped in a sort of national sadness, reaching across a century.
Here’s the base game, which is a small box:
Gah, that’s an outrageous price on Amazon, but I’m sure you could get it for $10 elsewhere. The base game is literally just a deck of cards. The expansion has a few more bits:
But here’s the version I have, which includes all the stuff from the expansion, layered into a campaign structure:
It also includes lovely painted minis that you can put on the table when you play if you’re into minis. They don’t do anything. You can’t even use them in place of your character cards, because whoever made the minis couldn’t be arsed to think off a way to present the single piece of information on a character card. That said, they are lovely minis and if you ever need a mini for a jolly Frenchman from 1914, well, now you’ll have six to choose from.
-Tom
