Yeah, the sherlock Holmes games are very different (and they have no replay) but very interesting nonetheless. We had a long discussion about them in a thread (don’t remember which).
Colosseum kick-starter finally arrived last week. The original was one of my.favourite games, but I never owned my own copy. Let’s hope this reprint lives up to my own hype!
Over in the Detective Games thread.
And on the subject of detectives, the reprint of Watson & Holmes: From the diaries of 221B appears to be out. The main reason I haven’t been recommending that game is that it’s been pretty much impossible to find. Since that’s now not a problem, it’s worth a look for anyone who liked Consulting Detective. (Or for anyone who liked the concept of SH:CD, but needed a bit more of a game around the experience).
I wrote some impressions earlier in that other thread, but we finally finished our playthrough of the original edition a month ago, and I thought it just got better toward the end. (Also, I wrote review of Watson & Holmes over on BGG with some more details).
Hah, well, mission… accomplished?
You say you have a friend with a copy, you really should give it a try. I have a lot of dungeoncrawl games, and I hemmed and hawed over actually picking this up, but I’m really glad I did. I’ve been looking for something more than the usual ‘move minis, roll dice, get loot’ game, and this really hits that spot.
Rumo(u)r has it that @tomchick will be the guest GM for this:
http://schedule.gamestorm.org/show_event.html?event_id=3164
Birthday today. Wife outdid herself! She photographed my boardgame collection, took it to the local FLGS and sought advice on titles for me. Ended up with:
Dominion (a staple that has not made it into my collection thus far)
XCOM: The Board Game
Star Wars: Imperial Assault
Not too shabby!
She presumed that Dominion was somehow related to Illwinter’s Dominions, which she knows I spend a lot of time playing, so I corrected that. But no biggie, as Dominion should be an excellent and easy to pick up game for her to play with me, which we shall test out tonight!
I have a question I think I might have asked in the past, but if I did I don’t remember the responses.
What board game should I play?
Haha, okay, more specifically, what’s the best board game you can quickly get new gamers into? What can I bring to a game night where the fanciest thing anyone’s ever played is Settlers of Cataan?
I have Dead of Winter and I love it, but I don’t get to play it often enough, so when I’m trying to get new people on board I still resort to making them watch a half hour YouTube video explaining it. If I tried to explain the rules myself it would take even longer and I’d forget something. I don’t actually think a half hour is unreasonable to explain a good game, but I still start losing people when I’m resorting to a video to teach them—it makes it seem more intimidating.
So I need something a little easier to get started with, and it will also help if the subject matter has broad appeal. A creepy Lovecraft horror game is probably a non-starter with some of my friends too, at least for now. Gotta build up to that.
Check out the 2016 version of Citadels or Sheriff of Notingham. Both rely on a lot of group interaction and as such I think do well in gateway settings. I also think Roll for the Galaxy is pretty decent for a group wanting a more mechanism driven experience, though it is more mid weight.
How many players do the games need to support?
Dixit, Mysterium, Coup, Captain Sonar all come to mind. There are plenty of others, more or less gamey (I have a soft spot for Dark Moon, which is a much simpler BSG, for instance). But target player counts would be useful.
Wendelius
Hadn’t given that much thought, there were about a dozen of us at the game night that inspired my request, so there were a few games happening at once. Usually people playing Cataan and then other people playing cards or just talking. I can’t imagine everyone actually getting involved in a single game at once, so 4–6 sounds right to me, but open to suggestions.
I think the biggest factor with new gamers is how long does a game take. A game that is fun and quick is best way to introduce them.
So Lords of Waterdeep is a little on the longer side.
A few come to mind:
- Pandemic (Normal, The Cure, and Cthulu)
- Ticket to Ride
- Blood Rage (quick games, not too rules heavy)
- Ghostbusters if you can get 4 people, or someone doesn’t mind playing two investigators)
- Betrayal on the House on the Hill
I have another WSIG question here. I’m going to have in-law relatives coming over and they’re going to stay at my home for a week. Incidentally, I’m planning to buy either Archipelago (after reading some very positive comments at here and Reddit) or Troyes (I feel like this is going to be better than Marco Polo, which I have traded away for game funding reason). Both games have similar list price at my FLGS but I’m going to get one of it.
So which games I should get? My relatives are casual gamers and have very limited exposure to tabletop games but I’m not keen on spending my limited funds on gateway games (Catan, 7 wonders, whatever) as either of these two games will see more plays with my friends or other gaming groups in the foreseeable future. Still, are Archipelago or Troyes too heavy for casual gamers? Does guiding my relatives with few turns of the games help making them understand what those games are about (3-4 working adults aged 20 - 30)?
By the way, we played Pandemic before and hated it :p. All my relatives prefer high conflict games or games that preferably have a winner since they grew up in a culture of Rummy/Mahjong gambling habits.
If any of you have other suggestions, please feel free to share :)
If they like high-conflict games, Spartacus.
I was just coming to smack around @Mark_Crump for suggesting it. With one experienced gamer, and others you introduce? Will be super susceptible to a single player dominating play. It is also a terrible game and why do so many people love it?
King of New York is something you really should give a look at. Simple enough for casuals/ newbies, but high conflict and quick and appeals to dyed in the wool board gamers. I can’t speak for Troyes though, haven’t played it myself.
Kingsburg + expansion would be great for that situation. I’ve used it as the gateway game for a few different groups now. Lots of conflict with the dice placement too.
Two games of Dominion with the wife are down. Last night was an open hand learning session with the recommended starting kingdom set. Second game tonight using the Size Distortion kingdom set. It’s only my third game ever (played it once years ago, I think with a more or less default kingdom as well). Both games were remarkably different, so it’s cool to see how the different card interactions can direct the game flow. Wifey was less enthused with the Size Distortion set on account of me getting an early drop on her with a few Bureaucrats. That said, it came down to a 1 point victory for me after I forced game end through supply exhaustion. Surprisingly, only one Witch was played the whole game, which turned the victory to me by that one curse card.
Anyway, she seems well enough pleased with it, so we should get some fun mileage out of it.
Also cracked out the tutorial mission for Imperial Assault (solo). Easy win for the Imperials, but victory is not really the point. Still, it feels like there should be some ZOC rules to prevent rushing objectives? I guess hard to tell before sampling the game proper…
I actually, er, surprised myself in catching the rebels out of position with timely use of the Imperial Officer’s Order ability to chain some additional interrupt moves and get to both terminals before being terminated.
Some clever dude on BGG has written a well regarded AI for IA, which in turn seems to have been ported to Android, which looks handy!
If you like it, I strongly suggest getting the Seaside expansion. It is much better, with more interesting card interactions. I doubt I would ever play base Dominion again, it’s that much better.
I was investigating expansions earlier today… ;)