Boardgaming in 2017!

Games
462

I would agree that they’re probably not both necessary, which is why you should sell Descent and get Gloomhaven. ;)

Seriously, Gloomhaven is better in pretty much every single way unless you insist on having one player competing against the rest of the table, since it’s coop rather than Descent’s one vs. many. But I know a lot of people now play with the app for full coop in Descent, too. And certainly Gloomhaven is a far better value.

The combat is the meat of the game (it’s what you spend 95% of your time with) and yes, it’s super cool and feels entirely original to me (no guarantees, of course). Basically, each class has a class-specific pool of cards. You select a hand from those cards equal to your class’s hand size to take into any given scenario. Every turn you select two of those cards to play that turn, place them face down in front of you, and select one as your initiative. Once everyone’s picked their cards, you flip an AI card (from monster-type specific AI decks) for each monster type, and you figure out the order of action based on everyone’s initiative values. When your turn comes up, you choose the top half of one of your cards and the bottom half of the other and take those actions in either order. After that, you put the cards into your discard pile, unless you used an action with a loss symbol, in which case that card is lost for the rest of the scenario, or one that persists past your turn. As you continue to take turns, you run lower and lower on cards and thus options until you have to rest, which knocks a card from your discard pile into your lost pile (chosen if you take a “long rest”, which uses your turn, random if you take a “short rest”, which doesn’t) and then moves the rest of your discard back into your hand. So as you take loss actions (which are more powerful) and rest, you get fewer and fewer options and less and less time between rests and finally you will just plain run out of cards and be out of the scenario. (Which is identical to being knocked out through damage.)

There’s other layers, like the modifier deck that applies to attacks and which you can gradually customize as you level up or by achieving secret battle goals, or the increasingly difficult choices as you add cards to your pool from levelling (but don’t ever expand your hand size), or the fact that you can sacrifice a card in your hand (or two in your discard) to just cancel a single instance of damage, or the way equipment allows youa few additional bonuses once per rest or once per scenario, further complicating your build, etc. It’s just remarkably deep and satisfying and asymmetric and rewarding and the challenge level is pitched such that we are generally just a couple of turns from burning out when we finally win.

PS: We haven’t seen the legacy stuff really, aside from adding scenarios to the map for future play, so our obsession with it is pretty much purely based on the combat.

463

I appreciate the explanation, but there’s nothing there that sounds particularly unique or even exciting to me. And given the dwindling cards, it actually sounds a bit like Mage Knight in terms of how you’re limited to what you can do, so you have to approach it a bit like a puzzle.

Frankly, it sounds a lot like the Pathfinder card game.

-Tom

464

I. Hate. You.

Well played sir. Despite what Tom “the wet blanket” Chick might think, that looks like one giant box of awesome to me!

I bet it would fit in well here…

IMG_0486.JPG1533×2052 792 KB

465

Oh God. I don’t know that I can handle that. I won’t let anyone mark my Pathfinder cards either.

466

I’ve never seen another game, much less a fantasy dungeon crawler, that uses the double-action card design (yes, superficially it’s similar to Mage Knight but there’s no resource expenditure to use the bottom and it’s always a completely separate action so it’s really quite different in practice) or the exhaustion/rest system Gloomhaven does. Like I say, that doesn’t mean there aren’t any, but I sure haven’t run into them so even if they are that seems tolerably unique to me.

It definitely doesn’t play much like Pathfinder ACG at all, and you’re not drawing your hand randomly, rolling any dice, or adding cards mid-scenario, plus the combat is very positional, so while it’s not as different to Mage Knight as it is to Pathfinder ACG, and you’re not wrong that it’s a bit puzzly, it’s still quite different in practice.

I said this before but there’s a build of the first couple of scenarios up on Tabletop Simulator that’s a good sample to see if you’d be into it. I don’t think the appeal quite comes across in just describing the mechanics.

467

There are only two things you sticker to my knowledge - a map board that has no other function in the game (and the feeling of adding locations to it is pretty great), since you do the actual scenarios on connected tiles, and, after a certain point, you can spend a ton of gold to add permanent minor enhancements to a few cards in a given class deck. If you really must you could always sleeve them and sticker the sleeve instead. But it’s barely going to happen, unless gold gets a lot easier to come by than it has been so far.

468

Yeah, selling Descent isn’t a great option since games hold their value about as much as used undies. Still, I’m waiting to see how impactful the Legacy stuff is since that might help me dodge Jones Rule here.

469

Am I missing something, or has no one mentioned Rising Sun yet? Personally, I’m pretty pumped (I really dug Blood Rage), and so far what they have shown looks promising. Also CMON are pretty much the masters of putting out exciting kickstarters. Any other thoughts?

470

I really dislike Blood Rage so it’s spiritual seccesor is of no interest to me. Cool minis though.

471

[quote=“merryprankster, post:468, topic:127711, full:true”]
Yeah, selling Descent isn’t a great option since Chaplin would fly out here and murder me in my sleep, then murder me again somehow, not sure how, but he’d find a way.[/quote]

Fixed that for you.

472

Why don’t we live next door to each other? I like, seriously, every one of those games!

473

I backed Rising Sun immediately. I really like Eric Lang games generally, Blood Rage is one of my favorite games, and am really excited about playing a battle game with negotiation intentionally built into the mechanics.

I’m also pleased to see the game has role-selection as the core mechanic. That’s one of my favorite game mechanics!

I don’t think there’s much to say about it now, though. The game is over a year out!

474

Door’s open anytime. :)

475

Ponzi Scheme was a big hit at the Meetup tonight. I’m surprised this game hasn’t gotten more buzz. It kind of looks like an economic game, what with its paper money, and board filled with numbers. Sure, that is part of the game, but that’s not the game. So, every round players will do 2 things. First, players may take an investment card. Investment cards provide immediate money. However, in 3 to 5 rounds those investments need to paid back. And the only place to get more money is getting more investments. But, those investments? They reset to 3 to 5 rounds in the future, when they’ll have to be paid again. It’s almost as if you are robbing your new investors to pay your old investors. Like, like, somekind of financial scheme.

The second thing players can do is offer a deal. So, when you take those investments? You also take a little cardboard chevron which represents a stake in some industry. The game calls them grain, transportation, real estate, and media. The game also says they are all hooey. Yet, those chevrons are how you will score VP at the end. The more you have in a single industry, the more that industry scores. So, during the deal phase, players will in turn order put some money in an envelop, offer it to a player with whom they share at least one ‘industry.’ The receiving player can either take the money and sell the chevron, or match the money in the envelop to buy a chevron. There is no way to back out once offered a deal. You either lose the chevron/VP and get some money, or lose money and gain VP. All the while, those loans will start piling up. And the higher the initial debt amount? The higher the interest rate. A starter investment might pay 11 bucks and you owe 10 every 5 rounds in the future. A high end investment might pay out $70, but you owe +$100 every 3 rounds.

Eventually, somebody’s loans investments will come due and they can’t pay. That player is bust and eliminated from the game, which immediately ends. Of the players who did not go bankrupt, most points wins.

Hence, the game is about grabbing money today, and hoping the game ends before you have to pay up. It’s about way overpaying for a chevron so that player doesn’t go bankrupt while you aren’t winning. It’s about removing a low interest ‘investment’ from the game, so all your opponents will be forced to take higher interesting ‘investments’ and get desperate faster. It’s spending all your money on players’ cheaply offered tiles and suddenly realize despite conservative play you are about to go bankrupt.

In other words, the game is social commentary in action, and a lot of laughs.

476

As a fun thought experiment, let’s see how Gloomhaven stacks up against Tom’s reasons he hates Mage Knight

[Quote= Tom Chick]
-10. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock
Mage Knight is a ruthlessly time limited game, where the single most important factor is how much time you have. It is a vicious exercise in maximizing efficiency. Yet you’re often left in a position where you have very few choices and all of them are terrible. [/quote]

Scenarios in GH are ruthlessly time-limited. Unlike MK, it isn’t a game-imposed timer, however (at least not that I’ve seen yet). Scenarios in GH are mostly limited by the players’ actual skill in managing their hand of cards. You start with a small deck, determined by the player’s Class- Spellweavers get 8, Tinkers get 12. This deck dwindles over the course of the game until you have none left, at which point you’re exhausted, and out of the scenario (though if the rest of the party succeeds, you do, too). After playing 3 scenarios, it seems pretty well-balanced- through careful play, you roll into the last room with just enough cards to make it. However, it’s still on a timer, and if that annoys you, it’s going to hurt here.

[Quote= Tom Chick]
-9. Mechanics and…uhwhat’s that other thing?

…whatever the case, for a game with all sorts of Ameritrashy bits, Mage Knight can hardly be arsed to come up with any theme.
Consider the characters. In one game, you’ll play the green flying lizard dude. You know he’s the green flying lizard dude because he uses the green lizard figure with wings. In another game, you’ll play one of the guys who’s not the green flying lizard dude…
…The monsters you fight are similarly a handful of unadorned stats. Oh, look, I just encountered a fortified defense of 7 with an attack of 3 that’s worth 3 fame if I defeat it! Is it an elf?..
Mage Knight, a bucket into which numbers are dumped, opts out of any meaningful theming. [/quote]

Thankfully, this seems to be the opposite in GH. The different classes are all completely different. There’s six to start with, with another dozen or so to unlock. Each has its own deck of cards that are completely different than the others. As you level, you unlock Perks, which are also Class-specific. Playing my Tinker is nothing like my frien’s Jim’s Scoundrel.
Monsters are similarly varied, with all sorts of little touches. The way they use some abilities is really neat. The difference between the Night and Air Demons we fought last night wen far deeper than stats on their cards, and the thematic bits were great.

[Quote= Tom Chick]
-8. At least it’s not called Thief Cleric
What’s a mage knight, anyway? What a terrible concept. It’s like a DPS tank. [/quote]

If I can point to anything in GH as kind of annoying, it’s the names of literally everything being awash in standard fantasy tropes. ‘Gloomhaven’, ‘The Black Barrow’, ‘The Chained Isle’. On the other hand, the rest of the worldbuilding seems fairly fresh. No elves, dwarves and halflings. Here it’s all Inox, Orchids, and other weird races.

[Quote= Tom Chick]
-7. You didn’t plan on playing any other games tonight, did you?
A corollary of a lot of the other problems with Mage Knight is that it’s slow. Some of the worst pacing I’ve ever seen in a game. And not just because it’s long. I don’t mind a long game. Some games need to be long. But I do mind a slow game and Mage Knight is one of the slowest games I’ve ever played. It is a slog playing solitaire. It is a hopeless quagmire of insufferable waiting playing with others. If you are a slow player, or if you have a slow player in your group, Mage Knight will push the bounds of patience like nothing else. Because…

-6. Go make a sandwich when it’s not your turn. Take your time.
The best boardgames minimize downtime by giving you something to do even when it’s not your turn. Some input or some decision or at least some direct stakes in the action. At the very least, you can plan for your upcoming turn. [/quote]

GH can be a tad slow. Especially at the beginning of a scenario when you have your whole hand, and no idea where the other players are headed. Unlike MK, however, you’re only trying to combo two cards per turn, and as the turns go on your options diminish, speeding things up as opposed to slowing them down. Also, everyone plays at the same time, so you aren’t waiting for it to get back around the table to you. Each scenario has clocked about two hours for us, and keeping the game organized in Plano boxes has kept setup time to a minimum- which is helped by the scenario book itself, clearly listing which components are needed for each one (i.e. 6 demons, 3 trees, 2 boulders, etc.).

[Quote= Tom Chick]
-5. How about none for me, all for you?
Mage Knight makes no effort to balance itself as a competitive game (the add-on includes variants to force balance into the game, as if it just now occurred to the developers that being lapped during a race isn’t conducive to making someone want to race). Even as a cooperative game, you’re just as likely to be the guy stuck with a BB caliber hero while the other guy has a bazooka hero[/quote]

GH is full co-op. So there’s that. There is some competition in that gold and items looted aren’t shared, ever. An interesting aspect is also that XP is granted by playing your Class effectively, not by killing monsters or getting loot. The cards in your Class deck have XP symbols on them, and you get the XP just by playing them for that ability. Some people get XP by laying the big whammy down on monsters. Some get it for healing. So the idea of a BB gun Vs. a bazooka isn’t really applicable. Your advancement (character growth and new options) is just tied to doing what you do, and doing it well.

[Quote= Tom Chick]
-4. Let me look that up
The rules are crammed onto a few pages in small print with almost no visuals to relate them to the game pieces. They’re also pretty finicky, because the design is pretty finicky. But they’re also incomplete. If you want to know important information, you’ll have to flip through a deck of cards. Don’t plan to lay these out on the table like a reference guide, because you need to check information on both sides. I’ve never played a boardgame with the rulebook printed in a deck of cards, much less two-sided cards. [/quote]

The rules on GH are better than in MK, but that’s not saying much. I hate the MK books. One should have all the rules, but some are missing, and you have to find them in the quickstart guide. At least GH is all in one book. There is a growing FAQ on BGG, though.

[Quote= Tom Chick]
-3. Cool minis or not?
Mage Knight is expensive because it has little painted toys for your characters, which are just heaps of stats poorly distinguished from any other heap of stats. There are also little painted plastic toys for cities with bases that you can use to indicate how strong the city is. There is no reason this information needs to be a clickable part of a plastic toy. Other than making the game more expensive so the publisher has a larger profit margin. [/quote]

GH only uses minis for the players. All the monsters are cardboard stands. There were actually a few KS sets with only cardboard, even for the heroes, but going forward they’ll all be minis. They’re fine, and I find they help keep track of what’s on the gameboard a bit easier. GH is expensive because the box is huge and packed with a ton of content. The minis might make it a bit more pricy, but it’s still going to be expensive without them.

[Quote= Tom Chick]
-2. A place for everything and everything in its…oh, wait, not anymore

The expansion ruins one of the few non-terrible things about Mage Knight: that it fits superneatly into a molded plastic insert inside the box. The expansion breaks this. You can’t even fit the new cards in the original box, much less the new plastic toys. I don’t mind long setup and breakdown times. What I mind is long set-up and breakdown times that are longer because of thoughtless packaging. [/quote]

The insert in GH is a joke. Throw it away and get a better system of organizing. I hear the reprint might -have a better insert. I’m not holding my breath.

[Quote= Tom Chick]
-1. Thou shalt not

Mage Knight violates more commandments of boardgame design than any other game! Which is all of them. Every. Single. Commandment. [/quote]

Letsee…
10. No baggies (-1)
9. Co-op? (-+0)
8. Includes rules for scaling scenarios to make them harder/easier. Does that count?
7. Not that I’ve seen. (+1)
6. Simultaneous play (+1)
5. You should be interacting with the other players, or you’re going to lose. You aren’t allowed to talk specifics, though. (+1)
4. 30 min/player. Incidentally, Wrong. (-1)
3. You’re going to have to check the rules. A lot. There are a few card-sized aids, but even they leave specifics off. (-1)
2. Rulebook is fine. Not excellent. Just fine. (-+0)

  1. As mentioned before, you can get copies of the game sans minis. I think they actually increase the utility here, buy YMMV. (-+0)

So, basically, a wash.

477

Gloomhaven’s insert is great for the cards and class boxes , it just isn’t any help with the seventeen sheets worth of cardboard punch outs. You don’t improve the storage by getting rid of it. Also I don’t think it will be changing in the reprint. What will be happening is that Isaac is working with Meeple Realty for them to sell a wooden insert designed for Gloomhaven.

478

Eh. I realized quickly I didn’t want to sort through ~120 baggies of sorted content (and try to keep the box level so everything wouldn’t spill- no board on top of the insert to keep everything down), and just went with the 4-Plano box solution. Works like a charm, and makes setup a breeze.

479

Just picked up Eldritch Horror and Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective Jack the Ripper and West End Adventures

480

Well done, DQ! Although you actually made me want to play Gloomhaven with a couple of those.

-Tom

481

Wow. The Sherlock Holmes game is so very not what I expected. It’s full of exposition. You read. A lot. There is actually a phone book. And a map. And newspapers. And various leads, that you read. How many chits or cards? None. You have paper that you find at home and a pen or pencil. You read and read and note what you think is important. It’s not a you vs I game. All the players work together to solve the crime. Eventually you decide that you solved it and then you open an evelope where Holmes tells you how he solved it. Then it’s scored. The most not game game that I’ve ever played. Not for everyone. But highly recommended none the less.