Would love to know which mysteries might be worth just totally giving a pass. I found the second one to be mostly broken. Is that your experience?
To me things really started falling apart around scenario four. There are some errors earlier than that but scenario four has a full page of errata, not counting the ones where something didn’t get printed right on the map or directory, which are handled in a different part of the errata.
So I played Ora et Labora for the first time yesterday. It’s my second Rosenberg game, after Feast for Odin. I love Feast for Odin despite all its complex fiddliness. I also liked Ora et Labora. We played a 3 player game with 2 new players in an hour and 45 minutes, which is fast IMO for a game of this complexity. I like the tight 1 action per turn concept and I liked how the game rewards looking ahead and planning. On the 7 to 9 scale, I’d give it a solid 8.5, would play again. On the Tom scale, I’d give it 3.5 stars out of 5.
I love the reputation system for exactly the reasons Tom describes. In fact I think it was when I fully realised the implications of this mechanic that the game started to sing for me. It very much puts me in mind of the fantastic corruption mechanic from the Lords of Waterdeep expansion.
I love these mechanisms that add an extra layer to the game, in theory you can ignore them, but if that other person starts using them maybe you have to consider it too.
This type of thing doesn’t always work for me though, I feel like the expeditions in Caverna have a similar feel, but I just find them annoying.
I’m quite intrigued by it. I love the theme. Thanks for the suggestion.
Surely this is a typo and you meant to write “second favorite Rosenberg game”? I find it hard to believe you’ve never played Agricola or Le Havre! I’m over Agricola, and I feel like it’s one of those games that’s been obsoleted by other better points salad games. But I still really like Le Havre a lot, and I wouldn’t hesitate to introduce it to any fan of economic engine games. It’s even got a good iOS port. You should give it a shot if you haven’t.
So you “like it and a half”? There are no half stars! Half stars are for the weak and indecisive! I’m rounding you up to 4 stars for “I really like it”. :)
So this just arrived. I’m surprised at how simple the basic mechanics are, but I guess that’s to make room for the special powers, character interactions, etc., which I haven’t looked at yet. At first glance, it seems like a less sloppy (?) iteration on the Sentinels of the Multiverse formula.
-Tom
Plays in 2-3 hours. Very appealing to those familiar with the Fallout video games.
We played our first campaign session of Gloomhaven today. So good!
We thought we’d blow through the first scenario easily since we did a dry run with three. We did not. We made some mistakes, had some bad luck. Mostly mistakes. Some newbie errors, some just not planning ahead.
We had some luck in the second scenario so we managed that quite easily after what was possibly the worst possible enemy action in the first round (the Bandit Archers spawned traps, slowing us down).
Next time we’ll have to decide where to head next. Can’t wait!
Finally played Agricola for the first time last weekend. It was fun. First Ewe Rosenberg game I’ve ever played and I liked it quite a lot. Glad I ordered a copy of Caverna, now I just need to get that to the table (and read the rules too I suppose).
Still waiting for a ship notification for Gloomhaven. :(
I’m still wading through the rule book. I’ve been busy and intend to play some solo before taking it to play with some friends. So much trouble focusing on all those rules. I’m excited, but that excitement does not appear to increase my attention span where rulebooks are concerned.
I bought Ghost Stories from my LGS this week, since they still had it on their 2017 clearance table a few days after Small Business Saturday. I was excited to start playing it, until I started shuffling up the cards and found they were some of the least durable cards I’ve shuffled in quite some time - a couple of them started getting crushed on the edges after just a few shuffles. As such, I won’t actually be playing the game until the sleeves I ordered last night come in.
@Knightsaber and @ShivaX are coming down this weekend to play Twilight Imperium 4th Edition with my son and I, should be awesome. I was hoping Fallout would hit my retailer yesterday or today but they are saying Monday, so we’ll have to catch that some time down the road, unless it manages to come in today unexpectedly.
Any TI advice for a group of newbs?
I’d love to hear an AAR if you have the time to do so. I’m really interested in the game, but had a bad experience with 3rd edition that’s making me nervous. I guess my advice based on that bad experience is: make sure everyone plans for the entire play-time and don’t keep playing if half the group is going to leave.
That’s good advice for any game! :)
I’ll see about taking some notes on factions and cool things that might come up, actually, n AAR would be kind of a cool thing to write up.
Alternatively, handcuff players to the table and put away the keys until the game is over :P
Ordered Fallout as the kid is all into the franchise but does not like board games. He “promised” me he’d try and play this one with me.
Played some V-Commandos last night. Stealth small squad game where it’s Way too easy to trip the alarms but had a couple nice short somewhat thinky games on the same map that turned out totally different with different squad members so that was good. Also, there are something like 27 small map cards you can play in 30 minutes and then 9 or so operations which use multiple maps for a longer experience. Also, I am going to just put a bunch of the map tiles together, create one large fortress with various things to do in order to win and see how it goes. Fairly fun game so far.
The rulebook is quite good, and note that the summary on the back page has page numbers for the rules.
I recommend a dry run of the first scenario.
We played our first game yesterday, just the three players as one couldn’t make it unexpectedly, but I’ll say that 3-player Twilight Imperium is quite a lot of fun - more than I had assumed, which makes me think I should have grabbed this years ago.
The game took about 7 hours (we started at around 4:30pm and finished at 11:30 - but we also had a LOT of questions to look up in the rules and also it took quite a bit to read through research options, faction abilities, agenda’s and action cards when they came up, all of it was new to us). And talk about analysis paralysis - this game has a lot of things you CAN do in a given turn, but which one secures a precious victory point, or denies your opponents one? It’s a crazy fascinating game, and that’s even before the Agenda phase kicks off and the wildest shit comes up for vote.
My son (on the right in this photo) randomly got the trading cat faction, and they proved incredibly effective all around. He spread quickly and early but not fast enough to grab Mecatol Rex, which I did. I was playing as Sardakk N’orr, a peace loving insect race that wanted no problems from anyone. Yeah, no one else believed me either.
I expanded into Mecatol Rex early, which was fun (achievement unlocked!) but @ShivaX decided “who voted for this!?” and marshaled a fleet of stinking human ships and overthrew the government (which admittedly at this point was a guy orbiting in a carrier).
The game proceeded smoothly, we had some great moments where we realized the political side of the game is probably the most interesting for a bit there - just the most uncomfortable situations arise from there and that stuff was great! Like at one point I abstained from voting, because I played an action card that let me predict the outcome (which was that no one wanted to be able to produce only 1 fighter or infantry for the cost of 2) - and as @ShivaX was playing humans and had a massive fleet of fighters, I predicted correctly earning a victory point. The anguish on those guys’ faces when they voted was delicious. No one wanted to cripple their production abilities, but no one wanted me to have a free victory point, either. :)
Too late, however, I realized the humans vile plan. He had gained a few victory points already from holding Rex this long, and there were now public objectives worth 2 VP’s so I upgraded my fleet to very powerful ships indeed - including enhanced anti-fighter destroyers and faction specific dreadnoughts. I invaded Mecatol Rex, the vengeance of my earlier lost carrier coming to bear on his face.
My ships lined up and readied an anti-fighter barrage that swept through his fighters, while my own fighters (thanks to an action card) were prototypes that gained +2 to combat rolls, and in the end of this exchange, He played a card that provided a boost to morale, and +1 to all combat rolls for the first round. I lost 2 or 3 ships and took damage on several others while crippling his ships and decimating his numbers in the opening round. I then played a card that repaired my two damaged dreadnoughts and wiped out the rest of his forces handily. The N’orr may not know much, but they know how to crush their opponents fleet into space debris. This is when I realized the combat was one of my favorite things in the game, too. I love the mechanics here, super fast but also interesting.
However, I couldn’t bring infantry with me, not enough time to swing around and grab them, and he had a PDS stopping me from bombing his planet, so he still gained his VP and managed to complete as well a secret victory condition, but my son did see this one coming and tried to prevent it, but didn’t comitt enough forces to the task and failed by a hair’s breadth.
And so thus Shiva took the first victory… but now we all know how to play! :)
Awesome write up!
I recently got a copy of Time of Crisis, and managed to get it to the table today. Its a pretty impressive design, and I can totally see some fun in there. Unfortunately, we had one person who joined us who doesn’t have much experience gaming, and so she problems grasping the game mechanics. To make things worse, she didn’t interested in reading the player aid (which has 90% of the games rules printed on it) or listening to my explanations. In the end, we pretty much let her win just to end the game. I really hope I can get another play of this soon with different players.