Boardgaming in 2017!

Cool. Most of the stuff seemed to be at MSRP so I decided to skip buying stuff, but damn did I play a lot of games.

Besides Clank in space, I found two small games which I might grab later on.

Love Letters and Kingdominos.

If nominations are still open, I’m going to suggest Valley of the Kings for the deckbuilder award. A neat little game (fits in a deck box) about assembling an engine with the purpose of disassembling itself.

Love Letters is a great game. Fun, easy to teach, quick to play.

Played it once 5 years ago. It’s so unmemorable that I had to go back to my notes to remember any details at all, other than having played it. Said notes ended with “it’s ok, no need to play again”.

I’ll disagree with both the description of it as a deckbuilder and as a tableau builder. I thought it was mostly an auction game. And that’s a tough genre to succeed in.

As for why that podcaster raved about this perfectly average game, that’s pretty much how board games work. When a game clicks with a group just by random chance, there’s a feedback cycle where they’ll play it more, enjoy it more, play it more, etc. And they’ll come to think of it as an all-time classic, even though in the rest of the world it’s totally obscure. I’ve got a bunch of those myself.

I think you’re being a bit harsh. It’s a tableau builder mixed with an auction game. I’m not going to say Fleet is a must-play, but it’s an elegantly designed, quick game that plays well for what it is.

I’ve played that! Yeah, it is pretty cool.

How do folks rate Aeon’s End in the deck builder hierarchy? Also, I have my eye on the sort of cutesy animal twist for deck building in the Kickstarter (still going) Direwild. It has some neat ideas, but I’m not sure if it’s a keeper.

I like it so far.

I tend not to sleeve games either (as my very worn Marvel Legendary set will attest), but for as many plays of this that are in the box, I’ll probably do at least the modifiers and monster abilities as you mentioned. Probably will do the player ability cards as well just given how much they’ll be handled.

The best deckbuilding game I’ve played is Sami Lasko’s Dale of Merchants, which feels like it was designed by someone whose sole exposure to the genre was overhearing someone talk drunkenly about Dominion in a bar. Everything about this game is delightful and insane: the premise, the art, the victory conditions, the card design, the loony factions, all of it. And with skilled players it can be ferociously competitive.

We did a trial run of the first scenario in Gloomhaven to get a feel for the mechanics before we start the campaign with a full group of four.

Very promising! The different classes are really distinct, and in general the mechanics feel solid and intuitive. The hand management element is really something. The way monster turns are handled in is also quite neat.

Looking forward to get going on the campaign and getting more stuff unlocked, feels like it can only improve from an already good position.

We played the first adventure of Gloomhaven the other night and failed. First time any of us had played, so it was more of a learning experience. Really cool setup.

Still waiting for my Gloomhaven to ship. 😢

Last weekend, I saw a game of Dale of Merchants played without knowing any of the rules. Delightful and insane sounds like a good way to describe people collecting cute pandas and groaning about tasters. I’ve played several deck builders and I didn’t have a clue about what was going on.

Looked like fun though.

My personal favorite Deckbuilder is Codex which uses deckbuilding to simulate RTS mechanics. I’m pretty sure I’ve talked enough about it here (one of my all time favorite games!) but I really wish it had made more of a splash.

I think it’s by far the best co-op deckbuilder I’ve played. There’s a ton of co-op deckbuilders that have pretty unexciting card powers and uninteresting cooperative decisions. Aeon’s End has lots of fun combos between cards and character abilities to discover as well as often tense decisions for how to resolve events.

I really need to pick this up at some point, if only the complete version wasn’t so expensive! I really enjoy David Sirlin’s approach to game design.

Yeah, I strongly suspect the price is a big part of why it isn’t more widespread. That and Sirlin’s personal reputation as a bit of an asshole.

There’s no shame in playing the first few scenarios on the easier difficulty. The rewards aren’t drastically different than the normal level and it’ll give you a chance to learn how it works.

I’d also advise putting some thought into your choice of personal goals as some are much harder than others! Assuming the rules allow you to choose between two. That’s how we played it but we might’ve houseruled that in.

I’m pretty sure you get to pick between the two! I’m trying to consider how I want to proceed. I might do a solo run for recording or play with a friend or two.

I really dig this game.