Miniature Market has some Spirit Islands in stock.
Just to follow up on my earlier post about the board game that’s based on The Thing, Infection at Outpost 31, I received an email this morning from the creators with a link to the rules PDF. Have a look:
One thing that bums me out a bit, it was always kind of ambiguous in the movie whether someone knew they were infected until the thing chose to, or had to, reveal itself. I guess that was always going to be a casualty of a rules-based game that set humans and things in opposition, but it kind of dilutes the mystique of the premise for me, makes it just a little less interesting.
As does Amazon.
Malkav, I know a little bit of your tastes from your posts here and they overlap quite a bit with my own. I’d really be surprised if you didn’t enjoy this one.
Huh, they’re releasing Twilight Imperium Fourth Edition
I’ve always much preferred the idea of Twilight Imperium over the actual gameplay, but I wish them the best. Perhaps this will be the one I find worth my while- I always found them to just be too darn long with too much downtime.
It definitely looks up my alley. Can’t really justify getting it til we get a lot closer to done with Gloomhaven though.
Played Spirit Island at my boardgame night last night, and we all really liked it. What a great theme and execution of that theme. I could imagine playing it with a particular group would lead to endlessly long turns due to analysis paralysis, but we didn’t fret much about doing the absolutely most optimal thing and instead just tried to communicate what invaders we were going to try to handle on each turn and trusted that we’d do fairly well that way. And I think we won pretty handily! I played the River spirit and that was interesting, although I feel like I was probably the least effective spirit at the table (with Earth, Lightning, and Spreading Green). Most of us (except Green) played with the pre-made basic power card sets, and I’m glad we did. Honestly, I think if it were up to me, I would make this a game with pre-made power decks across the board. Not sure I feel like the random drawing adds much.
As per the back of his card, River Surges in Sunlight (aka the river god) is made for crowd control, which doesn’t do a whole lot unless it’s directly coordinating with another god. In a learning game, I suspect he can be the most frustrating. You’re moving pieces around to not much effect.
The game is so modular that I’m sure you could make your own power decks for the other gods. Just use the basic gods as a template. Don’t they all go two minors then a major? But don’t bother counting your score afterwards, because you’re cheating! :)
-Tom
Score? I don’t think we bothered to calculate a score.
I managed to be effective with the pushing, at least keeping guys off the lands that were going to ravage or build, and we had our moments of coordination. I also got a few decent damage powers, but they were nothing compared to what Lightning and Earth were dishing out.
I had a great time, though. I think it’s a really nice game.
Finished Pandemic Legacy with a score of 757.
Overall, I loved it. I thought it was a fun take and we got the game cheap enough that we didn’t mind the one-shot nature of the game.
I think River is a great support spirit, it has the ability to spread out quickly and can greatly help it’s allies. The extra energy it can provide can really help, say, Lightning lay waste to the bad guys.
I played the Game of Thrones board game for the first time last night (2nd edition).
Is that a good game? I’m pretty sure it’s not for me; I never liked Risk so I was already disinclined toward anything that just involves taking over a map. It was certainly better than Risk; I liked the Westeros phase, the effect of the influence tracks, watching other players’ combat unfold (I was avoiding a lot of conflict in the early part of the game).
The big problem was this was the wrong group of people at the wrong time for this game. We didn’t finish, and the latter half of what we did play (I think we got six rounds in) was pretty sloppy from several players for a number of reasons.
So that’s why I’m pretty sure it’s not for me—it was clearly a bad first impression based on the circumstances we were playing in, but I suspect I wouldn’t really love it even with an ideal group.
Curious what the rest of the gaming world thinks though.
It’s more like Diplomacy than Risk. I do like it, but there’s no denying it has flaws. It really shouldn’t take that long to play (maybe 2-3 hours?), although it does highly depend on how much diplomacy your group likes to engage in. We usually have a “no negotiations away from the table” rule, just to keep things from getting out of hand.
You’d have to be into low-luck, direct-conflict dudes-on-a-map type games to enjoy it.
And, from what I understand, have the right player count and/or expansions that give you maps that work better with other numbers of players.
THANKS
I did end up finding it at Coolstuff and also got Flamme Rouge. That’s where all my cool kid, loyalty points are accumulating anyway. :)
Fantasy Flight announced Twilight Imperium 4th Edition.
http://static.srcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/Planet-of-the-Apes-statue-of-liberty.jpg
I REALLY REALLY want to play this game again. I’ve played it once almost 10 years ago and loved it. (full disclosure I won). I’d love to play it again, but the cool guy who owns it hasn’t ever brought it out again. He’s too busy running some site called, “Quartertothree.com” and playing Spirit Island and Terraforming Mars.
My copy of Apocrypha Box One: The World, the urban fantasy adventure card game from Mike Selinker & Lone Shark Games, who do the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game for Paizo, arrived today. It was shipped from Atlas Games in Minneapolis, supposedly on Wednesday, and I live in the same metro area, so I’m a little surprised it took this long. But nevermind, I’m still one of the first people to get my hands on a copy so I can hardly complain. Very much looking forward to trying it out soon. My only misgiving is that while Pathfinder ACG very smartly trades on simulating the existing mechanics of Pathfinder and the existing story of adventure paths written for Pathfinder, Apocrypha will be entirely new and have to stand on its own terms. I find the theme more appealing and they’ve tapped some great writers to contribute, so hopefully it’ll be even better. But the jury’s still out.