Boardgaming in 2017!

Coolstuffinc has had Star Wars: Armada on sale for $40 down from $75. Well, they did up until about an hour ago. The sale price ended Christmas Day. Although I would characterize myself as Armada-curious, I’ve held off ordering it for several reasons.

  1. Whether it’s $40 or $75, the core set is just the beginning. $20 Nebulon B Frigates! $30 Star Destroyers! $12 for moar squardrons of fighters! $25 for some ship no one’s ever heard of that Fantasy Flight invented to make more money!

  2. I don’t know anyone with whom I can consistently play.

2a) I have no interest in owning a game just to play it with strangers.

  1. I’m mainly interested in Armada for the campaign mode. Which it actually doesn’t even have! It’s an expansion that’s not out yet.

  2. I’ve already got a few things in my Coolstuffinc cart, so there’s no need to include Armada to hit the $100 free shipping threshold.

So, count me out, thankyouverymuch. After a few days of not getting it because I refuse to take part in yet another Fantasy Flight boondoggles, just before midnight, I put it into my cart and hurried through the checkout process before I could take it back. I am now the not-so-proud owner of Star Wars: Armada, a dippy game about scooching toy space ships around on a table.

Also, I got Bora Bora from my Secret Santa! I don’t know much Stefan Feld. I have Trajan and I really want to like it. I mean, I don’t have a problem with Feld’s point salad approach. There’s nothing inherently wrong with salad! But Trajan’s stupidly complicated and very unRoman mancalas break my brain. So Trajan sits way back in the back of my closet. But after breaking down the Bora Bora components and reading the rules, I’m delighted to discover what looks like a colorful and mancala-less take on Feld’s point salad model. I’m eager to play it!

-Tom

I think these should be reason #1 for not buying into a game like Armada. I mean, they as nice as the ships look sitting on a shelf, if you cant play the game, they’re just overpriced toys.

Though, as far as value goes, they actually are pretty much in-line with other miniature wargames on the market. Take that as you will.

Really interested to see what you think of Bora Bora, Tom. Its my favorite Feld game, though I’ve met plenty of people who don’t care for it. I also think its one of his more attractive games as well.

As far as gaming in the beginning of 2017, for me its going to be Quartermaster General 1914, Blood Bowl, as well as Guildball and Combat Commander (if they ever arrive). In fact, I just finished painting my humans team for BB (can’t wait to start the orcs!).

I am playtesting Kim Kanger’s Nemesis: Burma, 1944. If you say, “Bruce, how can anyone make an interesting game about some boring history thing?” then you don’t know Kim Kanger, designer of the best wargame of ALL TIME. I will update you on the details of Nemesis as I am able, whether you like it or not!

I mean, count it no surprise, but I hope you enjoy it Tom. The reason I don’t get into Armada is because I’m deep in X-Wing.

Which, speaking of boardgamimng 2017, on top of the wonderful Heroes of the Resistance from Jason, I also got the Gozanti and Ghost for Christmas. I also suspect that Imperial Veterans is sitting in a box in looking at right now (last Christmas/ my birthday party right now)

We’ll see if I score any other board games, but 2017 looks to be off to a fantastically fun start. Every new box makes X-wing that much more fun for me, who gets almost as much enjoyment from creating squads as I do playing.

I get to run my first game of Mansions of Madness today! I’ve owned the game for a long (long) time, but it’s been kind of a hard sell to my friends until now.

It’s kind of a self-propagating problem with miniatures games. Some people choose the popular ones to have people to play with, even if they don’t love the game system. Some people choose the less-popular ones because of interesting themes or systems, at the cost of not knowing who they’ll be able to play with.

That said, I’m hoping to try X-Wing in the next few months.

I also have copies of Castellion and Sylvion on the way. Very excited to try them. As much as I like Onirim, there’s not a lot of “table presence” to it. I like the physicality of putting down tiles and cards, so I suspect I will like the others even more.

Played Codenames last night for the first time along with the wife and kids. It was fun, but my wife was perturbed at me…not because I managed to get my daughter to guess three agents on our first turn of the second game, but because the clue I gave was “North” and one of the agents was “Antarctic”.

Haha. Code Names is favorite now for both my friends and family group. We haven’t tried the picture or adult version though.

I bought Codename Pictures for my nephew. We hope to try it soon.

I managed to get the in-laws to try Spyfall and Dixit yesterday & both went well. And hopefully a game night Friday but we shall see!

Just opened a box at my in laws. It was Codenames as well. Guess what we’re playing in a few minutes!

BSG: Mega-Holiday edition??

It’s hard for my family to keep up with the various games I have or am buying but I did get a little addition to one of my games this year for a present which is great.

meeples for pandemic

I ordered Tak, the new kickstarted game based on a game in The Kingkiller Chronicles series, about 2 months ago with an estimated release date of Nov / Dec 2016. Looks like it won’t get here before next month at least. Dang!

Of recent acquisitions I’m most excited about Pax Renaissance and the expansion to Pax Pamir. I haven’t had a chance to try Pamir with the expansion, but there are some really interesting gameplay additions (just from reading the rules, anyway), and Pamir is one of my favorite recent games. Renaissance seems like an improvement on the general Pax systems to me, and captures the flavor of the era rather well in a 1-2 hour game. Victory conditions are a bit more straightforward than in the previous games, and they can come suddenly. I would recommend the expansion as well, since it adds 50 cards with a couple of new concepts, but almost no extra complexity.

I also got Bios: Genesis, but haven’t had a chance to get into that one yet. People whose opinion I trust like it a lot, but it’s tough to just dive into. One of Eklund’s ‘science-y’ games, and the rules are tough sledding.

Bruce, I would be very interested in hearing about Nemesis whenever you are able. One of my most anticipated games by one of my favorite designers.

Nesrie, your pictures make me actually want to play Pandemic. And I hate Pandemic!

For the longest time, I’ve conflated Mansions of Madness and Betrayal at [the] House on the Hill because I’d never played either and they were equally uninteresting to me. But now that I’ve played Betrayal (which was just as terrible as I’d imagined), I’ve got a solid foundation to keep them straight. So one of the grossly unnecessary games I just ordered is the second edition of Mansions of Madness. Since it has some sort of game master app (?) that makes it suitable for solitaire (?), I figure I should give it a shot.

Good luck with your game with your friend. I’ll be curious to hear how it goes.

-Tom

See, this is exactly what I was talking about! Gozanti? Ghost? That’s no Star Wars I’ve ever heard of!

-Tom

Well, you know on the podcast how I told you that Rebels was one of the best things to come out Star Wars? If you’d have taken my suggestion then this would absolutely be Star Wars you heard of!

Craig

(P.S. watch Rebels you all ;) )

Mansions of Madness was a good time! It plays kind of like a hyper-focused game of D&D, with one player as keeper controlling the enemies (which the app handles in the second edition) and the rest of the players as investigators cooperating to win against whatever scenario is set up. We were able to play two games in five hours.

I like the game, but it sometimes feels like victories or defeats sneak up on everyone. It can feel a little arbitrary to flip an event card that says “if the investigators haven’t discovered this clue card, everyone loses.” But I enjoy it in the same way I enjoy an evening of role-playing. I get some friends together, they get to do some cooperative problem-solving, and the game isn’t that mentally taxing (despite the number of cards, choices, and pieces).

Heh, I remember how much you dislike it. These meeples make me want to introduce my family to Broken Token too. While I buy tons of board games, and give them away, it’s pretty rare for me to buy extras like these meeples. Extras for Agricola would be awesome.

/googles Broken Token

Great, thanks Nesrie, just what I needed, moar gaming stuff to buy! 😁