Boardgaming in 2018!

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1105

The comparison to Cosmic Encounter is a great insight! How many players were in your game with Fox clan? That is an important part of any balance discussion about the game I have found. Fox seem significantly stronger to me at lower player counts, where it is much harder for other players to contest them in each province. I think if you are playing with 3 players, and one player is new, giving them Fox clan is the way to go.

I have only played two games with Dynasty Invasion extra clans, but Sun and Moon seem to really depend on whether you have both new clans in the game or not. If you have both, the two players will compete for the additional lucky gods. If you only have Sun or Moon in there, one player has a powerful monopoly on the god-bank. I think this works better if the solo clan is Sun (as their ability is a bit weaker). But it is a LOT to keep track of on top of Kami unbound and any additional monsters that have been added…

Thanks for your Kami Unbound comment also – I will try to play more with that expansion alone to see if I can get a better handle on it. (Raijin in particular was quite frustrating the first time around, as he can negate all other figures).

The game reminds me a lot of Clockwork Wars (another great area control game that Tom Chick has recommended), except the swinginess comes from open-information season cards, instead of hidden-information espionage cards and hidden movement.

1106

5 players, so that makes sense we didn’t hit the issue. I’d hope the scaling number of war provinces would help with that, but I guess they still get free summons that stay on the board even in non-war provinces.

Yeah it reminds me of Clockwork Wars a lot as well. I think I like the open-information and negotiation focus over trying to out-guess opponents intentions, but Clockwork Wars is a really cool game.

Have you done much mid-game negotiation? One thing that’s helped the swinginess for me a lot is focusing on strategies where i have a ton of money and am willing to spend some of it on mid-game negotiations. For instance, I’ve often paid someone to move their Kami out of a territory I’m in, or paid someone off marshaling to where I want to go. Having extra money or ronin to throw around can really help reduce the feeling of chaos.

I think I’m going to hold off on Dynasty Invasion since I also feel overwhelmed by the amount of content the game already has. Thanks for the feedback!

1107

Negotiation is key for reining in the chaos, you’re absolutely right! The more of that, the better the game. Although sometimes it can add to the chaos in ways that can be pretty frustrating – for example, I have found some players try to get around the prohibition on trading coins in the war phase by essentially over-bidding during battles to provide war reparations to the loser, thus skewing future battles significantly.

Definitely let me know if you try the new clans, or try Fox with fewer players. I think I also prefer Rising Sun to Clockwork Wars, but I haven’t played either enough.

1108

We played a six player game of Rising Sun last night. We played for about four hours, and only got 2/3 of the way through the game! Needless to say, this is not a good game to play with multiple people with AP.

I don’t have much to say about Rising Sun at this point, except to say that whenever I play it, I feel like I want to play Blood Rage instead. It might not be as deep of a game, but I think its a much more fun experience overall.

1109

I prefer Blood Rage too. The slow build up round to round, the tension of waiting for the power cards to drop, and the great dynamic mind game in battles is way more appealing to me than the negotiation Rising Sun offers. But then I’m comparing a game I absolutely love to a game I really like. They don’t feel similar enough on the table for me to wish I was playing one over the other (I have a harder time deciding between Cry Havoc and Blood Rage).

1110

I think I’m starting to sputter in my enthusiasm for Blood Rage. It seems like nothing much matters until the final age which somehow manages to be super swingy and anti-climatic at the same time.

The stats don’t seem to matter much (apart from the end game glory bonus), mostly due to the limited space. You end up with a ton of rage you can’t use at the end as your rage count goes up and the number of spaces to place goes down. “Nothing I can do” is the phrase most commonly heard in the 3rd age. Everything is full, you can’t place, and you can’t clear space because spots are already pillaged and there’s no other way to initiate a battle. Horns don’t’ matter much for the same reason. Axes don’t matter much because only a small percentage of your glory is going to come from straight up battle victories.

Most victories seem to go to whoever grabbed Odin’s Throne (double glory for quests) and more than 1 quest in the final age. There’s just no real counterplay to that, especially if the quests are glorious death which you can’t really stop people from fulfilling. Two quests with Odin’s Throne gets you 44 glory in a game where the winner usually just tops 100, half the total glory from 3 cards with no maneuvering or counterplay involved. That’s not even getting into the other combos they could pull off with the other Loki cards.

I was hoping it would be like Chaos in the Old World in that the expansion massively improves the game, but looking over them they just seem like they add more fiddliness.

(I’m really, really getting sick of overproduced minis games too. Blood Rage should be a $50 game max. Same with Cthulhu Wars. Same with Mansions of Madness)

1111

Yeah, Blood Rage fell very, very flat for me as well. I am intersted to try Rising Sun though since I tend to like negotiation type of games.

I agree with @Infested_terran on the overproduced minis thing having grown a bit stale. Minis are cool and all, but just not necessary for everthing and I grow weary of paying the inflated price tags to accomidate them. I’m enjoying cheaper, faster pared down experiences like Battle for Rokugan and Letters from Whitehall more giant Kickstarter boondoggles these days.

1112

Your score breakdown is quite different than ours. Could be part of the difference of opinion. I find the final round to play out really differently from game to game, mostly based on how players have been building up. We’ve only rarely had short rounds with few combats at the end. Our winning scores are usually between 150 and 200. Odin’s Throne is a good get with 2 random quests (around 10 a pop) since it’s averaging around 13 points a card. Frigga’s Domain and Eternal Dragons are often worth between 48 and 64 points total as a combo (more potent if you have the sea serpent or prepped for the combo in the previous round) which is 24 points a card on the lower end. With max horns, if other people are pursuing Loki strategies, you can pretty easily get 30 points off Thor’s Domain (that scores units on the board) and have an easy time doing location quests.

Because of how effective the various Dragons cards are in general, we commonly have a lot of boats on the board. A surprise boat combat victory can really open up the board. In general, I think players who appear to benefit from losing a battle are often in the best position to go for surprising easy wins with pretty low value cards. When this happens, it usually means the location wasn’t successfully pillaged, so the board frees up significantly. Plus you’ll gain points winning battles and almost certainly have a chance to die again later in the round.

With all that in mind, I find the final round to be really dramatic and tense as everyone tries to nail their last combos to their fullest.

I can see what you’re saying about the stats (especially Rage, which in the final round I almost always end with a few left over). However, I think their value changes a lot depending on your strategy. It took me a while to find strong axes strategies but they’re definitely there. If you use some early cards to pump axes twice in your first battle and average winning 2.5ish battles per round, that start plus focusing on axes can get you around 40-50 points from battle points.

It does often seem like the last age is the only one that matters. I think in part this is because the huge scoring bonus from stats is added in in the last age and I often associate it with scoring there. Still, we usually come into the final age with around 40-50 points which is often less than the final score difference.

I’d also fully agree with your assumption about the expansions. They’re “fine”. I personally think Mystics degrades the game a little and Gods of Asgard is pretty take-it-or-leave-it. I regret getting them. Blood Rage is strange like that. It’s one of the only big Kickstarters I’m glad I got at retail because adding extras to the core game really brings it down in my opinion.

1113

We’ve now played two games of Feudum. Our first with 4 players last week, and then the same 4 people plus a new 5th last night.

I was intrigued after the first game, and less so after the second (even though I had a crushing victory in that game). Still want to play a few more times, though, for sure. I now have two main complaints- one was that the whole economy ground to a halt because a couple players didn’t push their part. All the farmer guild had to push was iron and wood, which were full on the merchant and Alchemist guilds, so you couldn’t do that. Simultaneously, there was no food or sulphur, and when they did come up, the same couple players immediately bought them, ostensibly to deny me the master actions for points. The problem was… I was on top of 3 guilds and journeyman on another, so sure, I couldn’t do those actions, but every time we changed epochs, I was still scoring a huge amount. Those guilds being starved wasn’t good for anyone- influence was in short supply, as were writs, etc. When two people tried to gum up the works, it was easy to do so, and since that’s a major portion of the game, just not much happened.

Second, the game just seems to accelerate too much as you play- which is good on the one hand (let’s not drag this out!), but just terrible on the other, as you really can’t react to stuff happening fast enough. The first epoch lasted several turns. The second only two. 3, 4, and 5 only one each, I think. I almost want to do away with the rolling the progress die to slow things down a bit.

On the plus side, both games played out radically different from one another. The first had little conflict, the only feudums built were in the second-to-last turn (terrible decision making on our parts!), etc… The second game I built a feudum on the fist turn and went on the warpath the second, and ended up crushing the whole game.

Mostly, I think the game may be just slightly over the line of being too-complex-for-its-own-good. We’ll see.

1114

Played a nice long 2 player game of Xia today - it was excellent. Xia is a sprawling space exploration/mission completion game and with 2 people who both knew how to play we were able to play a full game, get most of the tiles on the board, and have a good time. I was behind most of the game, managed to catch up for a tie at 19 points (20 is victory) and then lost the next turn. I was one turn away… which is the mark of a good game :O. Good fun.

1115

Welcome… to Anatomy Park!

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1116

I wouldn’t give up on Rising Sun. Originally we felt the same - a prettier Blood Rage - but now that we’ve hit our 6th play-through, it’s depth and complexity is starting to reveal itself.

Now, its a typical Eric Lang game, make no mistake. Polished, harmonious mechanics all dancing to the area control soundtrack but never quite becoming one great thing. But Rising might be really onto something with Alliances and Mandates.

The clan abilities are fine, marketplace and Oni are fine (and some straight out of Chaos of the Old World), but the Tea Ceremony is like making a new game each season. First couple times we played it was like “hey, lets ally so we don’t have to worry about each-others borders! woot”. But when everyone has a couple games under their belt…the real difficult questions matter like:

  • “Where are they sitting at the table, how many mandates will they even be able play this season, or next”
  • “If no harvests are played and Im broke, wheres my warchest coming from? Market? Borrow?”
  • “If I ally with x, we get the back to back, unstoppable mandates in between Shinto phases…”

Our game 1 experience and Game 5 experience were vastly different, and I think Tea Ceremonies in Game 5 each took almost 20 minutes of really passionate bargaining and bullshit for everyone trying to get their agendas set-up. That was great experience that few games can duplicate without taking 6+ hours (hello Twilight Imperium, Dune, Diplomacy).

Plus - it helps Rising Sun is easily one the most beautiful games ever produced with all the Kickstarter goals.

1117

Played when i dream with casuals, around 7 players. It was a big hit. It took a bit but then I learned how to be a good boogeyman. You don’t give completely out of the blue clues, you have to misdirect and give a related clue, so the guesser is confident to guess.

It’s Dixit with traitor mechanics! Excellent for casuals.

1118

Yeah the Boogeyman and the Sandmen need to be discreet, and if they figure out a way to work together, it works even better. I also plan to use this game with my core gaming group as well as at the family gatherings. Its’ so easy to set-up and once you get into, pretty fun.

1119

Cross-posting from the bargain thread:

Big summer sale over at Miniature Market.

The biggest highlight I saw was Qt3 fave Darkest Night 2E for $85.

1120

Huh. I’m probably going to put Rising Sun on long term hold for now (or at least try it on Tabletop Simulator first). I’m seeing bounce off a lot of people, and even the positive opinions are “it’s not something that’s enjoyable until half a dozen playthroughs”. It’s tough enough getting new strategy games to the table. I don’t think there’s any way I could get one to the table 6 times with the same group without it being enjoyable until later.

1121

That criticism always surprises me to hear about Rising Sun. I played it with 4 first-time players and they instantly fell in love with it. It takes several plays to get good with it, but just one to understand the basics. I think if there is one advantage to minis, it can draw in some people who otherwise might be intimidated by a take-that style area control game with many moving parts.

If you’re referring to the No Pun included review, I like those two, but they also said Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective was one of the top 10 board games of all time…

1122

Production issues aside, I’d agree with that sentiment. SH: CD is fabulous, and I’ve really not found another game that captures the sense of solving mysteries to the same degree. (Mythos Tales tries, and has a couple of interesting mechanics to add to things, but is not generally as well written and also has serious production errors.)

1123

To the extent there’s a game there, it’s comparing your score to a pre-determined (seemingly highly unfair and unbeatable) Sherlock number. I think it’s a fine experience in the right context, sort of like an escape room, but it’s more of a book than a game.

1124

Which I really enjoy.

In fact this reminds me of a new (very old) game I played recently.

So about 10 years ago a FLGS was having their semi annual board game auction. One game came up for sale, one I’d never heard of, but it was Sherlock Holmes and the price was $7, so I bought it. It was 221B Baker Street. A copy from about 1982 or so.

It sat in my closet for those 10 years, never getting played. Until, when with a friend buying one of those escape room games, he saw SHCD on the shelf and was interested, said how much he loved Sherlock. Well I was shocked, and told him about this mystery game in my closet. So we resolved to break it out.

And we did.

The design is aged. Mechanically it’s similar to Clue. Roll a die, move to location, get information. However there is a distinction. Each location has a specific clue, referenced by a number on the case filed that refers to a line in the clue book. And attention to detail matters, since noting things like a cigar and going to the tobacconist, are likely to yield relevant clues.

It’s a game that shows its age, but we enjoyed it for what it was. It really, fundamentally, is just a less crap Clue. The fact you actually have to piece together clues from the mystery is nice. When you get the final piece you need, and have the ‘AHA’ moment? It’s there. But it’s also very limited interaction, all you can do is use a lock to prevent other players from entering a location, and very simple mechanically. And, realistically, for any given mystery you’ll have to visit all but one or two locations anyhow.

But for a game I picked up for $7? It’ll do. Not sure I’ll seek out the expansion mysteries beyond the 20 it came with.