Boardgaming in 2018!

I’m so glad I’ve already played Gloomhaven or else listening to you guys I’d be buying a copy.

I played and fell in love with Fallen lands. This game is set in a post apocalyptic game that is like mixing Wastelands 2 with a little bit of Fallout 4 community management (except upgrading your faction city is how you win!). In the game you control a full 5 party group of survivors with unique skills and abilities. If you find a vehicle, this will be become your sixth member of your party! Each party member has skills and special abilities and you can equip them with equipment, each has a weight limit of what they can carry/equip. When you cant carry you can sell extra loot in town. You spend money to upgrade your factions town to win the game. There are a number of unique factions with their own custom special abilities, this game is brimming with asymmetrical play

Gameplay is about Arkham horror like story telling and skill check cards. It has a great story telling mechanic that is only beat by the Fallout board games evolving story live mechanic. The game is infinitely repayable, plays great solo, but has PVP for multiplayer of up to 5 players! This keeps game tense and involves a LOT of player interaction!

The downsides. The art is a little amateurish. The game is NOT light, its a semi heavy game with lite RPG elements and story telling. It also has lots of modifiers you can collect to your squad that made it daunting to at times process checks/challenges. Once you learn the rules it mostly fine, but the oh right I have that special ability that blocks ambushes will be hard to easily track. Amazing game, but odd graphics, heavy to initially learn, and the potential to become heavy tracking conditional bonuses are the only downsides ive seen in 2 games! Its my favorite post apocalyptic game to date, which considering I love the Fallout boardgame is saying a lot (Fallout loses because of the awful end game scoring but otherwise love).

It’s cheaper for me to order, and have delivered, Gloomhaven from amazon.com and not amazon. Co.UK.

Also the only amazon.co.UK seller doesn’t deliver to where I am…but the Americans do? 😯

I’m feeling the same way about mistfall, except I still haven’t figured out how to actually play…

There was a link to a boardgamegeek section explaining it, but every time I’ve tried it, it’s been down.

I sold my kickstarter copy of Gloomhaven as I thought it would take up too much time with all my other board games. Well, just ordered it again from Amazon…for some reason I just have to have it. Now, K:D:M is tempting too.

Just got back from an all day Meetup where we ended up going heavy all day. This group likes a mix of medium to heavy games, with the occasional light snack, but today was like a smorgasbord of heaviness. I played 2 back to back games of Gaia Project, which has become my current favorite game, and then we played a game of Clans of Caledonia, which I liked a fair amount. It had a bit of a comparable feel to elements of both Carson City and Terra Mystica but with more of a market element.

You can call Gaia Project “Terra Mystica in Space!” but it’s IMO a slightly more refined, slighter better design with more interesting asymmetrical factions. I played the Terrans and the Ivits today and both were quite distinct experiences.

As to the rest of the group, they went heavy also. At one point, we had 4 tables going, 1 table with Gaia Project, 1 with Terraforming Mars and 2(!) with Feast for Odin. That’s some heavy duty gaming for a rando meetup at a public library.

Good fun all around.

My Kickstarter copy of Gloomhaven ‘shipped’ in November, tracking and all, then sat in the US for three months. I think it was in storage next to the Ark of the Covenant.

5 days ago, it actually shipped from OR to me in NJ and is due to arrive on Monday.

I can barely remember why I was interested in it, but hopefully it’ll be cool. :)

@mono I think that’s fantastic news, better late than never! I think you’re in for a treat!

I finished documenting the components by taking some pictures, and skimming the rules and watching the official how to play videos (mentioned on the front page of the manual) and I’m really freaking pumped to dive into this ASAP.

Immediately on looking over the components, I see they changed (from videos I saw previously) how health is tracked, as well as XP. Instead of tracking them on the character mat/card directly (which always looked like something I’d ruin at some point) it’s done on separate and high quality spin-down “wheels” instead.

This got me wondering what other difference might exit for the 2nd edition, and I found someone collected them here for those curious.

I spent about 3 and a half hours last night playing the massive board game/labor of love Three Kingdoms Redux. This game is unique in that it plays exactly three players. Not 2, not 4, but 3. It is a worker placement game, only your workers are named figures from the period of Chinese history, called generals as a catch all for historical figures in the game. Each general is unique with a unique special power. When you place a general, you are bidding to use the action, as generals have different attributes.

The game initially seems very stingy with resources. However, by taking advantage of generals’ powers and special upgrades you can build, eventually resources become more plentiful. That is when the challenge in the game becomes turning resources into VP. A great source of VP is occupying border regions, but you will lose a general for the rest of the game and have to pay upkeep. So, occupy to quickly, you will be penalized. Move to slowly, and you will end the game with a ton of rice and gold good only to break a tie you are nowhere near.

So, that is a sense of the mechanism, but the theme also comes through, at least somewhat. This is not a war game, but a struggle for various advantages. You can’t be the best at everything, but come in first and second in enough, and you can maybe be the best of the 3 Kingdoms.

Another aspect of this game is the deliberate imbalance at the start of the game. The Wei player begins with 5 generals compared to 4 for Wu and 3 for Shu. A various points in the game more generals will be given to all players, so at the end everyone will have the same number. However, it still gives Wei a big advantage early, even as he starts with less resources elsewhere. Both times I’ve played this, Wei has won in the end, often by a not small margin (but not overwhelming either). I won’t call it imbalanced after two plays, but let us say Wei does seem more new player friendly.

Still, I do like this game. The resource and bidding for action spaces is very tight and very tactical. I don’t know a lot about the 3 Kingdoms period, but clearly the designers (a husband and wife who I think live in Singapore) did.

I want this game now, even though I’m not particularly interested in the 3 kingdoms.

Only problem is that where I live, boardgames aren’t really a hobby.

Even the expat community aren’t that interested from what I can gather.

Woe is me!

Still, it’s Jan 24th and the temperature is 20°c at 0836 so pros and cons. …

I still want this game. …

Whereabout is that?

Based on the temperature, I’m guessing nowhere near where I live (London), so I’ll be unlikely to be able to offer a suggestion to join our group. But if you are ever in the area, you’d be most welcome to.

Canary Islands.

Boardgaming just doesn’t seem a big deal in Spain.

Computer gaming seems to be on the up, but mostly for consoles.

Oh man, we have quite some in Madrid, but I can see how smaller places might struggle, although last time I visited my hometown (small 80k people city) they had opened a boardgame bar that, judging by how full it was at the time, seemed to be quite sucessful.

Of course, they don’t have to compete with scuba diving as a hobby, which might explain your situation.

Just laminate the boardgame and take it underwater.

Pushed forward in Gloomhaven yesterday, and managed to get access to the enhancement system that improves the cards. Now I have to find out what to do for my brute. In addition, we have now advanced to a stage where I can actually get something on my Brute’s personal quest done. I’ll miss the guy when he retires, but I think that it is still a while until that happens.

We have had our fair share of luck (self-made or not), so we have not failed any missions yet. It has been very close a couple of times, though.

I saw someone had organized the monster cards into envelopes, and it seems like it helps with reducing setup time.

Justice League: Dawn of Heroes is out in Europe, but there is no distribution deal in the Americas because of Warner. I really want to get a copy, so if you see it available for a shop that will ship overseas be sure to pass the link my way :) REALLY want this one! So far no luck!

I’m going to kick myself. I held off buying Gloomhaven on Amazon because my bday is coming up and I had it on my list, so didn’t want to spoil receiving it as a present… but for awhile there it was priced at about $140… and now the price has shot back up to $250.

My copy of Rising Sun came in. Looking forward to messing with it.

$140 is MSRP. Anything higher than that is scalpers trying to make a buck on low stock.

God help me I’m thinking about the $85 Daedalus organizer for Gloomhaven.