CoolStuffInc have A Feast for Odin on sale at $60. I love Caverna, so I’m tempted…
Love A Feast for Odin…and I only play it solo.
Played Fireteam Zero for the first time last night. Am, “hopefully” about a 3rd into the first mission but the coin is turned over once and I have my 2 dudes stuck in a corner with a bunch of corrupted animals closing in. I keep forgetting to use the Focus cards. Also, nice to be able to use reactions from nearby heroes…basic monster AI but pretty fun and tactical so far.
Feast for odin is a very different game from Uwe’s usual games. It’s great with all player counts. For me it ranks number 4 or 5 in his games under Agricola Ora & Labora, Caverna and LeHarve.
Anyone have any thoughts on Mindclash’s Cerebia? Anyone demo it at GenCon?
I have only played Feast for Odin solo and done via a group of scenarios that have been established on Board Game Geek that places emphasis on a series of decisions. It plays to the strength of Feast for Odin, and worker placement games in general. They use a stacked deck of occupation cards with an associated context based on the scenario. The only randomness comes from dice rolls, weapon cards and what mountain tiles are revealed first. The aim is still to get the highest score possible, but given the restraints on the game, there is still some commonality to make scores comparable with others.
The link to the BGG thread is here Feast for Odin solo competition. NOW PLAYING: "From Sea To Shining Sea", "Hreidar The Fool" | A Feast for Odin
And the link to the associated game set up is here https://viking.000webhostapp.com/scenarios/index.html
With 16 scenarios currently, and assuming that sounds appealing, there is ample playtime to be had just with the solo mode.
For $60 I could not resist Odin. My group really enjoys Agricola and Caverna, so I’m excited to explore Uwe’s latest.
I have no idea if that will be any good or not, but the presentation is beautiful. Always my biggest problem with trying to get into wargames is that they are almost invariably ugly as shit.
Thanks for this. Time to renew my love for Feast for Odin.
Yesterday we played our first game of A Handful of Stars.
I have not played any other game sharing the system, so the combination of deckbuilder + strategic map felt new and very interesting. You can certainly see how the game has all these hidden strategies that are still not fully apparent to us (having to do with card combos). And the random map generation dis create a very interesting setup.
The only downside is that it ran a little bit too long for a 3 player game (about 3 hours) but we were coming to grips with the mechanics at the beginning, and some of my players have huge AP problems. I think this can be played in 1.5-2h easily the second time around. We’ll see. At that length it would be a cool game, but at 3 hours it’s slightly too long.
I really like Mythotopia, the previous game with this system. But I’m going to get rid of it for the silly reason that the territory names in the game are so ridiculously bad. You have to say things like “I’m invading Peened from Shog”. There’s a territory called Blore, and it’s right next to a place called Trogle. They’re worse than randomly generated names. Because of how the system works, you’re not only looking at them when you’re looking at the board but also when you’re looking at your hand of cards. I’m just too embarrassed to pull out the board at this point even though the game itself is pretty exciting and interesting. I’m hoping A Handful of Stars is pretty similar but with a more developed game universe. It has a much better name, at least.
Played maybe 10 hours of 7th Continent yesterday with a couple friends. It was pretty fun but super long and a little fiddly with all the management tasks you need to keep up with to keep the game going. Made it to the “end” only to realize we missed something earlier in the game and needed to backtrack a lot. Sort of put a damper on the whole thing.
I take it you didn’t use the “save” functionality they’ve advertised?
We actually did, but the chances we get this out to play again soon means I doubt it will get re-loaded.
I was asking because I thought it was intended to handle the length issue - pause between sessions and then load it back up, so to speak, next time around.
And that was the feature that persuaded me to back it.
My copy remains as yet unopened, because I lack a gaming circle of friends, and time and inclination to try this game solitaire.
Also, it’s in England and I’m not!
I’m sorely tempted to Ebay it. The prices there are 50% or more what I paid for it.
Star names are good enough. Race names are silly indeed, but you don’t really look at them too much.
Which is weird because there’s currently a kickstarter underway for the 2nd edition with expansions. I guess people want it now!
Sure, but a 12 hour plus game broken into 3 hour chunks will take you 14 hours.
I so want to try 7th continent, but I’m afraid it just wouldn’t get played.
Looked up War Room. Whew! That is one gorgeous looking board and with a measly 600 minute game time. I think I could get in a game of this and TI4 in one sitting. More power to you the cool war nerds that play this.
I broke down and backed Cerebria. My thought was if it sucks for my group. I can trade it or sell it at close to cost. That said, Mindclash is quickly moving up my publisher list so I expect I will end up keeping it. Man their games are meaty and oozing with theme.
Played 2 games of Lisboa. Man do I suck at it, but wow do I like it. I’m going to write a review, but I love how every part of that game ties back to the theme and history of the rebuilding of Lisbon. Whether it’s building using the rubble left by the earthquake, using your influence get what you need from different aristocrats, or just use of colors in the artwork, Lisbon is everywhere. You could over look some of this stuff, but if you play it take a moment to really soak it all in.
Finally, finished Pandemic Legacy. It was a great experience, but I call BS on the scores on the BGG. Unless they’ve played it multiple times (why would you) I cannot see anyone getting over 900 on their first game. Even gaming the system with some of the things I looked up. There’s just too many random things that happen if you don’t know they’re coming up.
May not be the right crowd to ask, but I need to find a service that will paint miniatures. Anyone have any recommendations?
I’m quickly falling in love with Lacerda because even though his games are the heaviest of heavy Eurogames (well, the heaviness is a big bonus for me), they’re intensely integrated with the theme in a way that’s typically been associated with the opposite end of the game design spectrum and very much not associated with, e.g., Knizia.