Sorry, haven’t checked in on this thread in a while. I’m in Deptford, so this would be ideal.
So I’m considering sleeving up the cards in my games of Clank! and Unfair. I have a bunch of unused Magic sleeves from my days as a degenerate MtG player. I tried sleeving a few of the Unfair cards and they fit but seem a tiny bit loose. I believe the Unfair cards are the standard poker size of 63mm X 88mm and the MtG sleeves are the 66mm X 91mm size. Does anyone have experience with using slightly oversized sleeves? Is this good enough or should I seek out some actual poker sized sleeves. And if so, where is a good place to find those?
Please refer to this BGG geeklist: https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/164572/card-sleeve-sizes-games
Thank you for that. The MtG sleeves I have are listed as appropriate for Unfair - I have the Ultra-Pro Standard Deck Protector sleeves. I will go ahead and sleeve up and give it a go next game. Also, according to that list, it looks those sleeves will also fit my Clank! game.
In other news, I decided to buy Terraforming mars but it was out of stock locally. However, Amazon had it for $54 with free 1 day shipping on Prime so I ordered that last night and it was delivered this morning. I was surprised how quickly it was delivered.
Oh, cool. I live in Catford. You’re closer than me to Lykurgos’ place. It’s very easy to get to.
Looking forward to maybe meeting you there or elsewhere for a boardgame or 3.
Wendelius
So I ended up getting a bunch of the Ultra Pro sleeves in various colors to match the Unfair decks and sleeving up around 350 Unfair cards. Fortunately, some of the other folks in my game group helped. I am pretty pleased with the sleeves. In addition to protecting the cards, the game played more easily: less time spent shuffling and picking up cards. (I just made everyone slide shuffle instead of ripple shuffle and that worked fine.) I also sleeved up Clank! and bought some sleeves for my new copy of Terraforming Mars which arrived today.
Last Sunday, we enjoyed a gaming sandwich, two slices of Kanagawa with a big chewy Dark Souls filling, figuratively speaking. We also ate lots of cake, literally speaking.
A lovely peaceful, thoughtful game I compare to Splendor, Patchwork and up to a point, Abyss and Caverna.
Follow your own little plan, be prepared to flex it to adapt to opportunity. Once you have a basic grasp of the gameplay begin to think not only of your own opportunities but also those of the other players. Maybe it is better to deny them a great set of cards than it is to hold out for an optimal set for yourself? Upgrade your painter studio for benefits in later rounds or rush out your painting? Take the low-point easier to get diplomas or hold out for those with big demands and points to match? Risk taking and playing a card which will make you first player if someone is going after you and might do the same?
Lots of lovely little choices for which you have useful but partial information to act upon.
My main take away from our first group play is that this game provides an excellently crafted challenge that is enormously faithful to the challenge also offered by the video game.
There are significant luck elements in the combat die-rolling and equipment card drawing but you massively improve your odds of success via analysis of enemy behavior and optimizing your actions to account for it. For mini and main boss encounters you also optimize via memorizing the specifics of attacks since these repeat in a fixed pattern until a change is triggered by reaching a pre-determined threshold.
I personally didn’t find it fun. I think we would have optimized better by completing another cycle of encounters rather before going to the main boss encounter in order to equip with better armor and weapons. However the idea of stepping through another 30+ minutes of what had mainly become a procedure did not have huge appeal.
That said, it seems to be a wonderful game for anyone keen to be challenged by a system they can learn and overcome, singly or in a group. I would be willing to play again even in a stand-alone scenario rather than campaign because I do recognize the cleverness of the challenge.
Also, in the video game Dark Souls I panic and fail to learn boss maneuvers. In this game I . . . . actually also panicked and caused our first group death by choosing to dodge from an attack. I failed the dodge and the combination of spending a stamina point AND taking the full damage killed me. All I needed to do was not dodge, and even the full attack damage would not have killed me. THIS IS EXACTLY what I would probably have done in the video game! Awesome!
Board Gaming in Canada Water, London
Want to join us? PM me, we have space within our regular group for a couple of new regulars :-)
Oh man, based on your write up and those pictures, I cannot think of a game I’d less rather play than that Dark Souls boardgame. Other than Mage Knight, of course.
Why don’t more people know Abyss? That’s a really good game.
I’ve recently played both Tiny Epic Galaxies and Tiny Epic Kingdoms. As you’d expect from the name, the Tiny Epic series is a trifle, but not without meaningful weight. They’re solid designs, scaled back for fewer more important decisions and shorter playing times.
After playing both, I’ve come down on the side of Kingdoms over Galaxies for a) Kingdoms’ hardcore asymmetry, and b) how much interaction there is. Lots of direct elbow throwing in Tiny Epic Kingdoms whereas Galaxies is just a tableau race. Bleh.
Also, I’ve kind of fallen for Flip City. How come no one ever told me how good it is? So neat and lean! If you like deck-builders, this is a real gem. Even as a solitaire game.
Also also, does anyone want my copy of Shahrazad? Ugh. Great production values, but it’s just a stupid math puzzle. What was I thinking?
-Tom
Wow, Tom is talking about games I own and play!
I’ve gotten to play Tiny Epic Galaxies more than Tiny Epic Kingdoms - the former’s dice-rolling makes it an easier sell as a quick game, and it needs less space and only one box for solitaire play - and haven’t played either with their respective expansions (not even the mini-expansions in the deluxe editions), but TEK definitely seems like it’s got cooler stuff going on. I even backed the Kickstarter for Ultra Tiny Epic Kingdoms, which shrinks the components even further to fit the game into a box the size of a deck of cards (and includes solitaire play out of the one box), but I keep forgetting I own it because it always ends up getting tucked into a corner of a bag or a storage tub. I’ve also got Tiny Epic Western and Tiny Epic Quest sitting here (the latter arrived just last week!), but haven’t played either of them yet, and I’ll probably back the second edition plus expansion of Tiny Epic Defenders when it hits Kickstarter sometime this year and proceed to never get around to playing that either.
I’ve only gotten to play Flip City with other people once, but I’ve played it solitaire several times, and really enjoy how it plays. That said, as with my other deckbuilders, I made sure to sleeve up my copy (in clear Dragon Shields, so my cards are actually decently protected, while still maintaining the double-faced aspect with no problems) to aid with shuffling tiny decks.
Shahrazad looks like I’d probably enjoy it if I ever got it to the table, and those tiles are super pretty. That said, any tarot-themed game feels like a cop-out if it isn’t using actual tarot-sized cards, which it looks like the older edition didn’t even do despite using cards and having “tarot” in the name!
The folks over on the SA Trad Games subforum suggest playing Dark Souls with a house rule of double XP and half sparks. Also that the sweet spot for it is two players because more makes maneuvering a lot less interesting and takes longer to boot.
Tiny bit of self promotion. My board game Deadline just hit stores & the usual online places, published by Wiz Kids. Very excited. Co-op game to solve realistic mysteries in 1938 New York. Two reviews so far, NerdsOnEarth and BoardGameQuest.
This! Our gaming group owned it for about 2 years before we first played it. The limit to 4 players and need for at least 3 (IMHO) does limit playability for us but I have enjoyed every playthrough we have managed.
Hah! Yeah, so we actually did double souls for the first set of encounters but dialed that back when it felt like it was over generous. Another issue that hit us, and mainly me playing the Herald, was that until the last campfire round prior to the Main Boss we had drawn 30 or so item cards and pretty much no weapon that was within reasonable upgrade range for the faith-based Herald. My Herald spent the entire game using Kukris (which apply bleed, meaning +2 damage when someone else does damage) and providing Healing and Fatigue recovery support.
I traded in five Star Wars Destiny cards and picked up Spirit Island. I have just finished reading the rules and checking out the cards and Man, this one looks really interesting. It is a cooperative game in which players take the roles of powerful Spirits defending their island home against European interlopers. The spirits differ from each other quite significantly- some might spread horrifying nightmares, or drown the invaders in the ocean, or possess the native tribes and rally them against the outsiders, or just send an endless regrowing kudzu to tear apart their works. The game is highly modular with a ton of different ways to adjust difficulty, ranging from using “blight cards” to change the rules when the island is under heavy assault to different nationalities for the invaders, giving them powers of their own. Has anyone played a game yet? I am going to play a solo session soon, and am quite excited to give it a try.
Congrats and good luck!
Flip City is such a charmingly unusual game. I just recently got the standalone follow-up (Wilderness?), but haven’t had a chance to try it out.
While one of the things I really love about deck-builders is how each session can feel very different from the last, this is not really a quality of Flip City, due to the very limited number of cards. But it more than makes up for it with the very unique mechanics. Not many games require you to hold the cards in very particular ways to play them. It’s like Flip City requires you to use the boardgaming equivalent of good posture!
Been playing a ton of Potion Explosion. I only recently picked this up on iOS but liked it enough to get the physical version. I then introduced my fiancée, my sister and my sister’s girlfriend to it when we last played board games. I have created fiends for this game and we are constantly pestering each other to take turns on the iOS version. Great fun. Looking forward to the expansion due out soon. I’m hoping it’s at GenCon so I can pick it up.
So I played my first solo game of Spirit Island and I am beginning to be convinced that there is something special here. I played as A Spread of Rampant Green, a nature spirit dedicated to growth and regrowth. I was extremely good at stopping the invaders from ravaging the island and stopped them from growing “tall”, e.g. a lot of buildings in one place, but what I was not good at was stopping the proliferation of explorers, and in turn minor settlements, across the island. I was constantly confronted by an array of small-but-interesting choices: How should I place my spiritual influence to spread the range of my powers? Should I consolidate influence and form a sacred site? How should I grow- do I need new powers, more energy, the ability to play more cards? Which powers should I use, and when, and where? Should I use my special ability to weaken my sacred sites and stop the invaders from ravaging my lands?
This is all with but a single spirit, mind you. Played either multiplayer or with a single player controlling multiple spirits the choices increase significantly, particularly since the spirits’ powers can aid each other.
The asymmetry really sells it. Once you understand the iconography and how the powers work you can really see how, say A Spread of Rampant Green differs fundamentally from, say, Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares. I haven’t been this excited to delve in more in a game for some time!
Ordered Spirit Island last night…had it ordered a few weeks ago but cancelled for some reason…I never cancel. Will be playing this solo and even though the Rahdo playthroughs didnt do much for me, for some reason I need to try this.
I play a lot of co-op games with my 9 and 7 year old kids - current favs are harry potter hogwarts adventure and forbidden island. How does this stack up in terms of difficulty? We also play star wars destiny, pokemon ccg, warhammer adventures, and one deck dungeon, to give an idea of our usual complexity.
They say it’s a step below Mage Knight in complexity. I play Forbidden Desert with my 11 year old but I dont think he’s ready for Spirit Island…although I might try it. We do play Mechs vs. Minions but he wants to be a progarmmer so he’s got some built in enjoyment for that kind of game. I’d also like know if anyone plays Spirit Island with their kids and what age they are?