I’m loving it. The mix of storytelling and campaign play, along with the variability brought in by the locations and villain deck work really well. The tokens used for skill checks as story specific events work really nicely too. They are also an easy way to let the player tweak the difficulty.
The games are tense. The second scenario felt like a real race against time. I’ve only played 3 games with 2 players so far. But I’ll happily replay the missions both solo and with another player.
Simply by changing the character you play, you are going to have to adapt the way you approach a scenario.
The campaign and campaign notes are a nice touch too. I don’t think our first play through is going to end very well. But this is exactly what I’d expect for the setting.
As far as I’m concerned, I’m happy to recommend it and will get expansions later.
Personally, I’d recommend not watching a playthrough of the first mission and sticking with spoiler free reviews. That way, you get to enjoy the story beats for the first time yourself.
But if you are not bothered by that, it certainly don’t impede your enjoyment of the game. As I mentioned, I think it’s replayable.
I’m pretty pumped at how they keep refining board games. Even if it’s just mixing and matching the best bits from earlier games. Seems like we’re definitely in a golden age for this type of gaming. Now I just need my daughters to grow up (but not really, please stay my little girls indefinitely.)
Cool! I’ve gone to every one except the second, and I’m good friends with a few of the organizers. We need to schedule a QT3 meetup there! :) Any other takers out there?
To anyone out there in QT3 land who loves board games, the con is awesome and you should go! :)
@rowe33 have you received your copy of Gloomhaven yet? Mine came today. Man, it’s huge. I’m setting up a group later this week, probably. Should be interesting.
Man, jealous of both of you now! No, I’m one of the lucky 90 or so backers whose package was being trucked around the country for two weeks. It might be here this weekend or next weekend; Isaac isn’t really sure yet. Amazon Fulfillment has really botched it for a few of us.
I pre-ordered from retail mid January which sounds like it may have been a mistake. Apparently only 8% of the retail copies requested are being fulfilled due to out-sized demand! I’m sad, and will thus have to go buy a bunch of other board games to make up for it.
Played my first game of Kodama: The Tree Spirits and enjoyed it a lot. What’s unique about it is that you are building a tree visually out of cards. Each card shows a branch, and it has to connect to another branch on your tree without overlapping more than the one card. Scoring works in two ways: Each branch you place (you choose them from a line-up of four) scores based off the thingies that are on/around it–caterpillars, mushrooms, flowers, also stars and clouds. And then after each season (a few turns), you also play a Kodama card from your hand with its own unique scoring method. You can’t move branches once you’ve placed them, so it was interesting in our first game trying to figure out how to arrange a good tree. But the particular Kodama cards we each had made us grow our trees in a variety of ways. I was trying to make lots of multi-branch nodes, while someone else was going for few, long branches. Neat game!
(This is a reworking of Daniel Solis’ Kigi. He’s an interesting designer. He does open development of card games which he then does the graphic design for (usually) and puts up for print-on-demand. He did something like 12 games this way in 2014 and 2015. Several were picked up by major or second-tier publishers and made into more polished products. Looks like he’s got several more of these in the works right now. If you’re interested in board game development, you should definitely follow his blog and Twitter feed. You get to see his development process in action from start to finish.)
Sorry to hear that, man. Hopefully it’ll only be a few more days. Just think of how when you’re on your 40th scenario (halfway through the campaign) this well all be just a mildly irritating memory.
I’m running a few games at this year’s Total Con in Massachusetts.My general theme for running games are games my Friday night group doesn’t like to play, don’t hit the table often, or are just ones I love to play. All of my games sold out in 4 days.
Star Wars Rebellion: Not sure how this will play at the con. I’m not thrilled with how the 3-4 player game plays especially with the general/admiral rotation. I’m intentionally running this one on the first day when the attendance is low.
Arkham Horror: Love the game. Friday night group hates it as the general perception is Eldritch is better. This is the one time a year I can play the game. I do like the mysteries in Eldritch better, but Arkham is just a brutal game.
Blood Rage: Great con game. Quick and easy,
Spartactus: The same seven people show up every year, and it almost becomes an RPG game with us role playing the houses. It’s become my favorite game to run at the Con.
Fury of Dracula: Gaming groups hates it, so I run it twice at the con. Reminds me, I need to re-read the rules again.
Firefly: For reasons I can’t fully explain, this game both sells out fast, and has a ton of walk-ups. Oddly, the same guy has played it twice, after hating the first time he showed up for more the second time. I wonder if I’ll see him again. Due to the setup, I run it back to back this year. I got the meeple realty storage board which helps a lot.
I’m also giving playing D&D another shot this year. My D&D group fell apart, so I’m giving it another go at the con. The Organized play at the COn died off the last two years as Pathfinder took over. It looks to be back this year.
