Can someone sell me on X-Wing? I’ve never bought into a miniatures game before, but I love the theme and the idea of customizing armies I don’t have to paint. Is there a metagame? Can I play it on a relative budget?
Paging @CraigM!
There is not. It’s simply spending points on armies and pushing them into each other. Fantasy Flight just published a campaign add-on for Armada, which is one of the reasons I opted for that over X-Wing.
You cannot and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. I’d estimate that it’s going to cost at least $200 to fully buy into what the game is doing. I forget what Craig’s estimate was when we talked about it on the podcast, but having just bought into Armada, my experience is that there’s no way to really flex these games without spending a ton* of money.
-Tom
* definitions of “ton” may vary
I will answer in more detail when not on my phone, but you can make a single faction collection with enough variety for about $100. If you time it well and smart shop you can get a core set for $25 or less, and some of the aces/ combo packs for $20. Done right you could get a basic collection for $75. But having enough to make complete 100 point lists for less is… tough.
That said it is cheaper than Armada. I’d wager, with some coaching on what sets to buy for best bang/ buck, you could have enough for both factions with a decent range for $150. But that’s going to be a fairly limited range. We’re talking both core sets ($45 total), both aces packs $40-45), maybe 1 large ship each faction (probably $45 on sale), and 1-2 other ships of your choosing.
If you shop well you can usually get small ships for $10, the aces packs and large ships for around $20-25. Finding core sets for $25 is easy, and I’ve seen both for $20 during Christmas. But the reality is these games do just get better with more variety and options at your disposal, so this is only a start, there will always be another ship you want. And with new waves coming out about twice a year, it won’t be long before you want more.
But once I get to my desk @SadleyBradley I will sell you on why I love it, and why it might be for you by telling about my game nights the last two days.
So on Sunday my wife and I went to my brothers house, and stayed the night. What ensued was a day and a half of pure boardgaming bliss. Multiple rounds of Railroad Tycoon, and good ones at that, some King of Tokyo, Formula D, and a mega 4 person match of X-wing.
Railroad Tycoon is one game my brother and his wife love. So much so that they talk about getting it themselves. In my family I tend to be that guy, the one who introduces them all to the different games. Almost every game that my brother, or my sister in laws get tends to be one they discover through me. Anyhow, they are always up for RRT, and we did a 6 person match on the Western US map. It was a close and low scoring affair. Lots of close deliveries kept the points low, as nobody ever got much cranking distance wise. I don’t think anyone went beyond level 4. I thought my plan to run along the front range would win me the game, but a late break by my wife to connect Promontory to San Francisco was enough for her to edge me by 1.
They requested a rematch the next morning. And this one was way different. By the end almost everyone was level 6, and the points were way higher. But my brother, far behind, grabbed a New Industry card that placed cubes on an empty city just as we were going to end the game. This turned an otherwise tie with my sister in law to a 10 point victory for me. The last turn was all long deliveries for me. All that infrastructure I had built instead finally paid off.
But then we played X-wing. Oh boy did we…
Ok, at my desk, so let’s do this.
Why is it that I love X-wing when I’ve never been a miniatures guy? Well first off these are just beautiful miniatures. I’m no painter myself, plus the miniatures hobby has a well deserved reputation for being expensive. Now, make no mistake, this is a game that runs pricier than most board games, but it is still a fraction of what a traditional minis game costs, Realistically it is probably on par with most CCGs, or less due to the non random nature of expansions. But the reality is that the component quality is really good for what you pay.
But you’re not buying this because the miniatures look cool, you’d buy it because the game system is really good. It hits that simple mechanics leading to complex interactions bit perfectly, I feel. The basic system is straightforward. Each turn you
- Set your ship dials, picking your maneuver from 3 basic directions (straight, bank, turn) and 5 different speeds
- From lowest pilot skill to highest, reveal maneuvers in turn, and execute
- Choose an action(s) from those listed on your ship card. Focus, Target Lock, Evade, Boost, Barrel Roll
- From highest Pilots Skill to lowest, declare and execute an attack. You roll your attack die (red number listed on craft card), the defender rolls their defense die (green number listed on card). Add 11 red die for attacks at range 1, add 1 green die for attacks at range 3, or through an obstacle
- Compare die results and, if hits are greater than evades after modified, deal that much damage, subtracting shield tokens first (the blue sphere), then dealing damage cards. If the number of damage cards equals the hull value (yellow square), that ship is removed from play.
- Once all ships have attacked for that round, clear tokens and reset for a new turn
https://i0.wp.com/www.tabletopgeneral.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Poe_Dameron-e1441246850142.jpg
But there is so much variety that spawns from this. And it is all elegantly balanced by the points system. Now, obviously, there will always be combos that don’t make a ton of sense. A stealth Device on a Millenium Falcon is a terrible idea, but amazing on Soontir Fel. But if you create two lists of equal points they should both be capable of fighting on even footing. And this allows many different theories on how to fly, and all can be equally valid.
Don’t want to mess with tricky shenanigans? Fly a bunch of no frills cheap TIE Fighters at someone, en masse. That 12 point Academy Pilot is about as unthreatening as they come, alone. Put him with 7 other friends (96 points for 8 of them)? That’s a list that has been tournament competitive since day 1 (though getting tweaks along the way, today it is the 7 ship Black Squadron TIE with Crack Shot, the Black Crack).
Or go to the opposite extreme, where I tend to live, and fly a small number of kitted out Aces. Built to deal some serious hurt, with lots of tricks up their sleeves. But I only have 2-3 ships. Loosing one can end my day right there. That said the new Heroes of the Resistance adds one of my favorite pilots, Rey, flying the Falcon. Put Finn riding shotgun, with Kannan Jarrus dealing with stress, and for 54 points I have one ship that can dish a hell of a lot of pain.
And here we get to the crux of why I love it. It is a game that gives my mind lots of things to chew over. This is a game about thinking about ships and upgrades that compliment each other as much as it is about physically moving around the ships on a board and rolling the dice. This is a game where a swarm of mosquitos, weak on their own but hard to hit and annoying as all get out, is an equally valid choice to heavyweight puncher, as is glass cannon arc dodger, as is tricky bastard scum players stealing all your tokens. It is a game where spending 52 points on a single ship loaded to the nines with bombs, missiles, and turrets of every stripe on a ship with lots of health, but that can’t dodge anything is a legitimate choice if you can fly it well.
I probably make 2-3 lists for every one that hits the table. I spend more time playing the game poking at a list builder on my phone while at lunch than I do actually setting up the models. And I love that. I want to make this perfectly clear, that is not a criticism of the game from me, that is a selling point. It is a game that has enough depth to enable it to have that room to chew.
But it does that with a rule book that is fairly simple. It’s all in the cards. And the systems evoke the feeling of those ships wonderfully. Flying a Y-wing and you feel the strain of trying to get that thing turned around. A TIE Interceptor will dance circles around most ships on the board, but get it lined up for just one good shot and it could be dead. The Falcon is a big target with loads of health and a good turret, but it really only comes into its own when paired with the right crew and upgrades. Darth Vader is just a dirty bastard to fly against, and if flown extremely well can take on an entire fleet solo, but he’s still flying a TIE with shields at the end of the day.
And the TIE Defender? White K-turns (move then flip 180). Those will be the stuff of nightmares to your opponents.
So it evokes the themes. Flying TIE Fighters against the Falcon feels like that scene from Gladiator
Flying Soontir Fel in an Interceptor and you feel invincible… until someone squares you up good with a missile, and the dice fail you. Each ship, generally, feels right. It feels like flying Star Wars. It is tight action, flying by the seat of your pants intensity, but rewards thought and consideration. Knowing how to fly your list goes a long way towards winning, and almost any list can fight any other, if flown properly. Granted some have a thin margin of error, and there are some clear counters, but no fight is impossible.
Granted beating Dengar with Zuckuss using an Imperial Aces list will require a decent amount of luck as well as skill, but it is possible.
But right now especially the meta is wide open. There is no one single ‘I win’ list. People go to tournaments and win with a variety of things. Sure there are certain archetypes that are strong, Palp Aces, Dengaroo, Poe/ Miranda, but each faction is competitive, and many builds could win it all. And if you are just playing with friends? Pick some crazy combo that just sounds fun to play. Double YT-1300’s? Go for it. Barrel rolling X-wings with Luke Skywalker and Poe Dammeron boosting and barrel rolling around everything in sight? It is my kind of stupid fun! Boba Fett with…
Ok, no. Don’t do that. Boba Fett is kinda terrible, but Kath Scarlett in the Firespray is pretty ok. Like I said most ships can be competitive and fun to fly. I did not say all. Poor Boba…
So there you go. It is a game that I feel has a lot to offer. A game that I spend a disturbing amount of time thinking about. A game so good that it, single handedly, has done more to eliminate my video game time than almost any other.
Anyhow so we played 4 people on Monday. 150 points each side, 75 per person. My wife had Chopper flying the Ghost, with Sabine docked in the attack shuttle. My sister in law had Rey, and a Green Squadron A-wing.
My brother had 4 named TIE fighters with some EPTs, I had Darth Vader and two cheapie TIE/fo fighters (basically TIEs with a shield, and a little more maneuverability).
Rey may be a mean lady (who I love to fly), but when 7 TIEs roll up on her grill, it is a bad day for her. And Darth Vader is having none of your nonsense.
My brother and I won at time. We managed to take out both big ships before we lost too many TIEs. In the end it was Darth Vader who did most of the work though, the force is indeed strong with that one.
I asked to be sold, and sold I was. Thanks for that tremendous writeup!
I found the newest core set online for 23 bucks with Prime, so I’m going to give it a shot. The cost of fielding a few different armies is nothing to scoff at, but I can build it up over time if it grabs me. Thanks @CraigM!
Great post, Craig, and I love those pictures! But someone knocked over the Millennium Falcon. That baby has a guilty look on its face. At least you have some super glue over the left in case, say, the radar dish snapped off.
Are 150 point builds the norm in X-Wing? Armada’s full games are 300 points builds, so I’m wondering if there’s some sort of point inflation when capital ships are involved. The Armada play area with a full 300-point game is 3’ x 6’, which seems to be what you guys have going there. I just today bought a 3x6 sheet of plywood that I can put onto my not-quite-big-enough table.
How much are you expecting @SadleyBradley to spend???
What you’re describing costs $125, assuming the Black Crack trappings are standard issue (more if they involve some Aces pack or something). For that one build playing only that side. If you want try other builds, spend accordingly. If you want Rebel ships, spend accordingly. If you want other types of gameplay, other options, you’ll have to spend accordingly. These games only offer variety inasmuch as you’re willing to pay for it.
And while that might be worth it to some folks, it shouldn’t be downplayed. That’s a fundamental aspect of X-Wing. If your idea of boardgaming is a discreet set of rules and components that allow you and your friends to explore varied strategies for $40 to $60, this is NOT that.
-Tom
So, my family’s boardgame Santa (me) bought my sister Mansion’s of Madness Second Edition. She’s a potential geek/medium-heavy boardgame lover, but so far her introduction into the hobby has been progressive (starting with Catan, then Pandemic Legacy, now we are into Robinson, MvM etc…) so I though something in the line of Eldritch Horror (which she enjoyed but found too fiddly to learn without guidance) but app driven (so the fiddly parts are taken care of) would work.
And it did. After on play, she really enjoyed the game!
But I was a little meh about it. First of all, the app taking care of the bad guys, does help, but it does obscure a lot of the mechanics, so the process feels even more random than usual with these games. I haven’t read the rules with a human evil player of the first edition, but I suspect that would make for a better experience for players like me.
Then, the game structure is looser (and more narrative) than Eldritch or Arkham Horror, and while this brings narrative consistency to the experience, it makes it harder to play the game (game the system). It feels more like a bad RPG (the writing is not very good) than an strategic boardgame. I think it’s by design, but once we go there I think I’d rather play an RPG.
Finally, it was super easy. The puzzles were a joke and the combat unchallenging. This was just one story, and the easiest, but for a game like this to fully work I think it needs to be really, really hard. After all, there are not that many stories/scenarios included, and replay-ability is limited, I think.
I will still be playing with my sister the rest of the missions (and if she likes it enough, I’ll buy her the expansions. Need to bring her deep into the hobby) but gorgeous production aside (those boards would make for a great CoC PnP rpg scenario) it takes too long to play for what it is (90 minutes to 2 hours for that first introductory scenario).
I did love a couple of things about it, specially the damage cards. That’s a mechanic that I could see being backported into Eldritch Horror (although it would increase fiddlyness). Investigators feel more like real RPG characters, with more concrete objects in the inventory and a more grounded physical sense of space and available actions than other Mythos FFG games. So there’s stuff to like, but the overall structure seems off.
I would love to hear your take on it @tomchick
Great write up on X-Wing @CraigM, but I thought I would apply some actual numbers to this stuff.
Magic is far and away the most expensive game to play with the average “bought in” player sending around 1000USD and often higher, at least according to my FLGS (I like to talk business sometimes an those guys are pretty open).
For an army scale Miniatures game (40K, Warmchine) I can say from personal experience with both those game the realistic spend is around 1000USD. It’s possible to do smaller games like Malifaux for around 200USD and still have a pretty complete little army.
I’ve not built and X-Wing army, but based on second hand information from friends it sounds like X-wing runs in that 200USD range that Malifaux does, at least to build a single faction.
I know you can play Magic with a starter deck, Malifaux with just one crew box and X-Wing with just the starter set, but as a hobby gamer for a decade or so now I thought I would add some “real world” numbers to the price ranges for some of this stuff.
I began the new year playing 1 new game and 2 older ones (though calling a 2013 game old kind says something about the mentality of hobby).
Anyways. The new hotness… kind of… City of Spies: Estoril 1942. Estoril was a resort town in Portugal. During WWII, it served as a meeting place for literal royalty, and a lot of espionage activity. The game attempts to replicate this. Your task is to build the best web of spies. Each round has 6 locations. Whoever has the most strength at a location wins the prize. Except, the prize is the means of victory, a new spy! Players start with a hand of 6 spies, which they place around the board, sometimes face up sometimes face down. These spies often have special abilities which can help them win a location. Finally, spies each have a VP total… but a player can only ever hold 6 spies at the end of a round. Hence, this is mostly a tactical game of positioning, often not knowing exactly what your opponent is going to do. I enjoyed it, and it played in about an hour. I think I would enjoy more with 3 players instead of 4, since then players would get to place 4 spies instead of just 3, giving the game a more tactical feel. I do have a criticism, though, in that this can easily be a rich get richer game. The means of victory are also the reward, hence a player who does well on the first round has better spies to compete in later rounds, and so forth. The only real hiccup to this is often the more powerful spies in strength or abilities are worth less VP. On the otherhand, a poor first round means a player is going to be easy for other players to beat, and there is not “gang up on the leader there.” Still, careful play should keep the game even enough, and if not its still short.
Next up, Concordia. Trading in the Mediterranean has never been so interconnected. Unless it has, I don’t play many of these games. Anyways, I had only played this game once before and didn’t really enjoy it, but tried it again for sake of players wanting to play it. I did find it more enjoyable with 4 players than 5. Or, maybe just a better feel for the game. It’s an optimization game. Almost anything you do brings you closer to victory. So, to actually win you have to be doing it faster than your opponents. One of the best ways to do this is let your opponents actions give you free resources. The map is divided into regions with cities, each city producing a specific resource. As an action, a player can have a region produce, than everybody with a trading post in a city gets that city’s resource. Hence, it kind of makes sense to follow your opponents around building trading posts where they do. Except, the cost goes up a bit, and now they are discouraged from having a region produce because it will also give opponents resources… so maybe it won’t pay off. I don’t think I like this “free lunch” incentive. Regardless, what I really don’t like about the game is the wonky end game scoring. You won’t get it the first time you play it, but you have to be specializing in cards which give VP based on some criteria such as having a city in every territory. Meaning, you don’t know your score or your opponents scores, not really, until you add things up at the end.
Finally, Castles of Burgundy. Another game I never really enjoyed… and this time was no exception. This classic game is about rolling two dice, and doing the most you can with them. A dice either lets a player pick up a new tile to put in their stock, or add it to their hexagonal grid. Every hexagon has a die number on it, so don’t expect to reliably place them… but you will eventually. So, this is a long game with a very slow build. Occasionally players will have “super turns,” where one building lets them do another action which leads to another thing for lots of points. Much more often a player takes a building and then places a building, and it takes 5 minutes to figure out the best combination to do that with. Now, I’m selling the game a bit short here, since there is a lot of variety in those buildings, what with farm tiles giving VP and boats giving trade goods and improving turn order, and more tiles. Still, the pace of this game is just not for me. I probably wouldn’t like other Feld games, would I?
Board gaming in 2017, it begins.
I think this comes with the territory of “collectible miniatures configured into customizable armies,” though. And I get the sense from you that you think it’s NOT worth the added cost. So I’m curious, is there a miniatures game you feel WOULD justify the higher cost of entry? Or, beyond miniatures games, do you feel the same way about Magic? Hearthstone?
@CraigM’s biggest selling point to me was how he fiddles with different builds. I love that. Generally, I love fiddly games. I played Magic seriously for a few years, and I would sometimes spend multiple hours a day at a table in our local game store building decks, testing them out against someone, and then fiddling with them. And I think it’s a blast to sit down across from someone and have no idea what you’re going to see them play. I don’t know of a board game that offers exactly the same thing - I think the closest ones have you drafting or deckbuilding at the beginning, but I don’t think it’s the same thing. I’m drawn to games like that because I feel they offer something unique. You may disagree, or you may think the uniqueness isn’t worth it.
@merryprankster brings up a good point - relative to other games in the genre, X-Wing seems downright reasonable. I have friends who play in two Magic tournaments every week. Their decks alone, completely ignoring cards they might have at home, probably average out to about $600-800 each. And each one of them has at least two decks.
I’m willing to try it for $23 and buy in gradually if I like it. A couple of hundred dollars over a few months is about what I would spend on leisure for myself anyway.
Ha, we ‘posed’ the Falcon, right after Vader killed it. Vader is a jerk like that! And the two kids (not pictured: my 3 year old playing with the giant garbage truck one room over) were… grabby. And nice catch on the super glue. I travel with a bottle in my kit, for those times when something happens. Like getting fat fingers and popping the peg connector off the A-wing.
So the normal build, as I alluded before, is 100 points. That is the official tournament spec, and it is a good size to build towards. It gives lots of room for creativity, while forcing you to make decisions on what to include or not include. Most ships are balanced around the ability to fit them in 100 point lists, such as just being able to squeeze 4 Y-wings or B-wings with 1 upgrade each, but if you want Aces, you need to sacrifice a ship to get them.
Armada uses higher points to allow for fighter squadrons to be a thing, while having them points balanced with Capital ships. Plus, in X-wing, upgrades are a larger percentage of your points. Many times I fly a ship with half again its point cost in upgrades (usually only aces get this treatment, as the main benefit to generics is their cheap cost). Darth Vader, as I flew him, cost 41 points, with 12 of those 41 being upgrades. My favorite current Miranda Doni build (K-wing) is 52 points, with 23 points of upgrades on her, mostly bombs and missiles.
Now, having not gone into Armada I could be wrong, but there isn’t anything that runs like that. There it mostly seems the capital ships are the core, with the upgrades being used to add flavor to them. It would take a lot of Leia Organa cards at 3 points to make a dent in a 300 point list!
Ha, yeah. for the increased points we increased the play area. Normally it is a 3x3 area, but it can scale to what you need. The reason we did this is because, with two to a side, a regular 100 point build can leave some people with little to do, especially since they wanted the big ships. This let me give my wife and sister in law one decently built up large ship and one small ship each.
Heh, I must admit that not all lists I mention could be built with a basic starter collection. Mine was the entirety of my Christmas and Birthday last year, a portion of this year, and 3-4 ships bought throughout the year. All could be done! But you would need to be judicious with purchasing to get them.
Like that 8 TIE list? Well you get two in the core set (Which Bradley got for $23), and most small ships can be had for $10 or less, if you are willing to wait for a sale at Amazon or Miniatures Market. That A-wing you see? $8.50 in a flash sale. So if you time it right that 8 TIE list would run you $80. But I would never recommend that as a start, hell I can’t even run that many! I’ve got 4 regular TIE’s, 2 TIE/fo’s, and 3 Interceptors. No single ship type lists for me, I’ve got to mix and match.
And that is absolutely true. There is a ton of variety here, but the more sets you buy, the more you have personally available. Now, that said, most places are cool with proxying, that is printing out cards. Sure that is not tournament legal, but for casual play nobody has ever said boo. Hell there have been times when playing where I’ve asked my opponent if he had a specific ship or upgrade I wanted to try. Without fail the answer has always been ‘absolutely’, if they had it themselves. Especially if it is something unusual, people in Xwing I’ve found love to see interesting things.
Which is why I tried to be cautious about my phrasing. The claim that you could build a decent variety of a single faction for $100 relies on carefully choosing sets, and getting them on sale. But that is still going to be fairly constrained compared to a larger collection. $200 and spending well can get you a pretty good variety of both factions, and enough to fly something different each time. But that is the key, you have to be watching sales on those, because to hit that relies on getting small ships for about $10, and Aces packs or large ships for $20-25. Paying full price? That makes it really hard.
Yeah, I really had no clue. I just assumed that since it was cards, and card packs were only a few bucks each, that it probably wound up north of Xwing, but south of Warhammer for price. Turns out I was wrong!
This squares with what I’ve heard from friends, and that is single faction only, right? Well it’s why I’ve never gotten into them. That and I had no people I knew who did them either.
It depends on what you want for that single faction, but yeah. $200 is not an impossible amount. Right now I probably have a little under $200 for each faction in ships, and I have a ton of variety and ships. Only 1 of most packs, but that means that there are a few ships I have 2+. Partly this is because I’ve shopped well. For Christmas I got the Imperial Assault Carrier, which normally runs $60, for $30. This gave me two TIE Fighters and a huge ship, plus lots of upgrades. While not cheap, it hasn’t been an unreasonable expenditure.
But to keep to any kind of budget you do need to research what expansions to get ahead of time. See what upgrades they have, learn about the ships, and pick the ones that fill the holes you want filled. If there are two ships I want, I see which one has the pilots and upgrades I like more before deciding.
Which @SadleyBradley I hope you enjoy it. Tom is right that just the core set won’t be enough to get the full experience. So when you are ready I’d be more than willing to talk you through which packs to get, and in what order, based on what and how you want to play. One blanket recommendation though, keep an eye out for the original core set on sale. The core sets have 3 ships each, a ton of upgrades, extra templates, and an extra set of dice. 3 dice of each type isn’t really enough, considering that the basic TIE rolls 4 defense at range 3, and the X-wing rolls 4 attack at range 1. The core sets are really your best bang for buck to start.
Plus there are a ton of unique and interesting upgrades in both. The astromechs especially, R2-D2 may have been the first unique, but he is still one of the best around. And a regular old R2 is a Y-wing’s best friend.
I feel this is a weakness of Mansions of Madness. The looser structure makes it hard to instill urgency in the investigators. And if they aren’t moving along at a decent enough clip, then an event card gets flipped that basically says “you win/lose the game.” Either case isn’t great - winning feels unrewarding if you didn’t feel like you worked toward it, and losing feels unfair if you didn’t feel like you had a chance to prevent it.
This was my experience with one of the scenarios in the first edition. It is so weighted in favor of the investigators that I don’t even think it’s possible for the keeper to win, even if the investigators don’t know what’s going on. The other scenario I tried was weighted in favor of the keeper, but if the keeper isn’t moving fast enough toward their secret objective, then the scenario just ends without anyone winning. Very unfulfilling after ninety minutes of play.
Sounds like you might really enjoy the synergistic nature of army building in Miniatures games and I’d say $200 over a 2-4 month period is good budget for a game of that sort. That will allow you to build into strategies and learn the game, but move fast enough that you are able to get a decent size game going before too long.
The different games vary a bit on synergistic builds and how prominent they are, and often time different factions are more reliant on it than others. I’d do a bit of research and see what fits well with the sort of army you want to play.
The “you can only play small variants on this one faction without mortgaging your house” aspect of miniatures gaming is the biggest reason I don’t play them despite a lot of the concepts appealing. I don’t want one army, or one deck, or one or two characters I’ve mastered (in a fighting game or MOBA). I want to play with ALL the toys. I won’t claim that LCGs or worse, TCGs aren’t pretty freaking expensive in their own right, but at least the things you’re playing with are made of relatively inexpensive materials and while buying singles of the big power cards in a TCG might break the bank, assembling a pretty broad collection of the rest of the game is far more affordable. And of course, you don’t even have to do that with LCGs, because you’re getting a fixed set instead of having to either gamble or go to the aftermarket. And then, if the game has been discontinued, you might not even have to spend that much: I picked up the entire run of Warhammer Invasion minus the core set I’d purchased years before for $10 for boxed expansion and $3 per card pack. That’s a lotta cards to play with. Or Hecatomb, the pentagonal plastic card game Wizards tried for a couple expansions and then dropped - you can buy entire booster boxes of that for like $30-35 now.
Hoping to get my second game of Catacombs in on Friday. I love the concept, artwork, and overall game but don’t really have the right group to appreciate it! We’ll see how it goes.
My son greatly enjoyed it as you can see in the imbedded tweet picture:
https://twitter.com/J_Patrick_Riley/status/792869917389262848
With the holidays, travel to Japan, and Arkham Horror sucking up our co-op boardgaming time we haven’t been able to get around to the rest of the scenarios yet but I look forward to it.
I’m not Sadley but I wanted to thank you @CraigM for your writeups here and the podcast you did with @tomchick . (Thanks to Tom as well for that, obviously!) After the podcast I decided to buy my son some Xwing minis for Christmas. We haven’t had a chance to play yet with travels but I’m looking forward to it and may also hit you up for recommendations on cheap lists we can both play. I personally bought the original red core set back when it was released, but since we moved in April I haven’t been able to find it. Back to ransacking cardboard boxes for a while when I get home.
Yeah, I’m inclined to agree about factions in miniatures games being frustrating, even beyond the price concerns for building multiple types of armies.
One of the reasons I never bothered with Hearthstone and bounced off Shadowverse pretty quickly was because I have that same issue with their classes and how they restrict deckbuilding. As a Magic player, having a TCG tell me “okay, you can build a white deck, a blue deck, or a green deck, but you can’t build a white/blue deck, a blue/green deck, a white/green deck, or a white/blue/green deck” isn’t going to make me want to play it for very long.
Mechs vs Minions truly is a thing of beauty. We completed the 3rd mission today and had a blast. I started the game with my 3 sons. Tonight, I played with my 10 year old daughter and eldest son. It’s a game that works for pretty much everyone (though the 10 year old has the advantage of growing up in a boardgamey house and to have been watching us play the early missions).
Also, it’s so great to be faced with what feels like impossible odds and figure out a way to beat them.
I really like the way the radio play ties the storyline together as well. Very nice addition.
The other game we must have played at least 7 times over the past few days is Clank!
We love that game. It manages to mesh deckbuilder and push your luck with an exciting dungeon run for treasure. We don’t always make it out alive, but everybody pretty much wants to play it again after the game is done. It’s a great design that will only get better with an expansion (I assume an expansion must be planned) to add more cards to the mix.
Overall, boardgaming has been very good recently.
Has anyone here at Qt3 played Hands in the Sea yet?
It’s an adaptation of the A Few Acres of Snow system to cover the First Punic War. I missed the Kickstarter (wasn’t aware of it) but it’s at the top of my most wanted list right now. Seeing Mark Herman give the game a thumbs up on BGG sealed the deal.
Would love to hear any impressions from Qt3ers.