Boardgaming in 2018!

A few relevant items hit the ol Kickstarter today:

This one is talking about LEVEL 7 OMEGA PROTOCOL (2nd Edition), Didn’t know I would get quoted :)

I played Terraforming Mars for the first time last weekend. It was fun, though I feel that it is a little over-rated. I feel like the main mechanism of the game – setting up card combos – has been done better in other games, such as Imperial Settlers. The game is a little too complex for its own good, and with that complexity comes an extra layer of “fiddly-ness.” Its similar in that way to Robinson Crusoe, Terra Mystica or anything by Vital Lacerda. I guess its down to personal taste, but nowadays I find myself much more attracted to heavy games with simpler rulesets, like Brass, Tigris and Euphrates, or countless train games.

That said, loved the theme. The game also has good feeling of accomplishment when you’re finished. I need to get another play or two in before making any final conclusions about it, but I think right now I would rate it a solid 7.5 out of 10.

I can do Sunday night around 8 est if that works for you guys.

Is anyone here Cloudspiring?

I got Too Many Bones by the same group recently and didn’t really like it. Cloudspire looks like a game I’d like, but I’m going to hold off on it for that reason and see if the reviews relate to or address concerns I have from playing Too Many Bones. Specifically, I find that game to have a ton of fiddly special-case rules that are hard to remember, so I’m constantly jumping back to the rule book or one of the references. And while the references are great, half the rules are in the rulebook and not the reference and the other half are in the reference and not the ruleboook. Also, in a 2 player game there are 3 double-sided references (one for each character and one general) which have almost no overlapping rules, so hopefully if you’re looking for a rule it’s in the right place!

It’s frustrating when the act of trying to figure out what happens between decisions is so exhausting. It’s especially frustrating when those decisions are really enjoyable. As an aside, there’s a lot of narrative writing in Too Many Bones which has a cheeky humor I don’t really enjoy, but that’s just my own personal taste. I think I’d love the game if I could get past everything I need to remember and understand to play it.

I own Too Many Bones and really enjoy it! I agree that there are a few too many fiddly rules, but once I got used to those I felt that game was a lot of fun, and extremely challenging. Never felt like there was nearly enough upgrades to take per level, so for the most part was just hanging on until the end.

Also has good production values.

Brooksi,
No, but now I’m intrigued. Have you played Guardians of Atlantis? It is a great moba board game. with little to no downtime. Everyone plays cards at the same time and then just resolve in order of the card played.

Few questions for folks here:

Has anyone played Viticulture? Is it good? I’m not a huge fan of Jamie’s games. Euphoria is, imho, still his best and 100x better than scythe. Charterstone did nothing for me, but I like the theme of viticulture and it’s on massdrop right now.

Anyone back Barrage, Edge: the Downfall?

Finally anyone here have Pulsar 2849? Thoughts? I’m trying to trade for it, but haven’t had much luck. Don’t want to spend 50 dollars on.

I’ve played Viticulture, and I am not really a fan. It is a reasonably interesting worker placement game, with the twist of having a summer phase and a winter phase and workers used in the first phase won’t be available in the latter phase. However, part of gameplay is drawing cards which can be turned into different types of grape vines, and drawing cards which can turn specific wine combinations into Victory Points. Plus, there are special “guest” cards which give you a specific benefit which can be really powerful, except when they are not. So, for a superficially tight worker placement game, I feel to constrained by luck of draw when I play the game. If you draw a good synergy and execute, you can probably win. A late game strategy is to draw as many of those VP cards as you can and hope you get one you already have the wines to fulfill. This card dependency is made worse by a hand limit. Plus, the aging mechanic just feels wonky to me.

Sorry, don’t want to sound like I am Wine-ing, but I am Grape-ling with why I don’t like a game so many others do. Sorry, I am done, I’ll put a cork into it now.

Bonus points for bad puns. Looks like you saved me $80 I’ll stick with Vinhos.

It’s probably my most played worker placement game and I think Tuscany improves it considerably. I’ll have to give Vinhos more time but it didn’t feel as thematically tied to the actual wine business to me and of the three Lacerda games I have (Vinhos Deluxe, The Gallerist and Lisboa) it was easily my least favorite. Still brilliant, but…in a lot of cases I’d take out Viticulture instead.

Hey everyone I played this hip new game called Ticket to Ride for the first time!

I’ve played Pulsar 2849 11 times. It’s my favorite game I’ve picked up this year. My sweet spot for games is mid-weight Euros and this one really fits the bill.

It’s a very tight game. There’s only 8 rounds and 2 actions per round, and most of things you’ll want to do take 2-3 actions. One big part of the game is trying to find combos that can drastically increase your action efficiency and time them well because how things score changes from round to round. The game starts with these goals that look impossible with how few actions you get, but once you get a ways in you’ll find ways to reach them which is very satisfying.

Another big part is the competitive dice drafting. Actions in the game require dice of exact values which you’ll draft from a pool. Actions with a 6 are really only slightly more powerful than actions for a 1. However, taking high value dice means you need to move down on the turn order track or the “engineering” track (which can get you extra actions!). You’ll need to take the high dice at some point for pretty much all strategies, so one big decision is when you’re going to be willing to take a big hit in turn order. One potential downside of the game is timing that wrong can really sink you in a hard to recover way. But that danger tends to make that timing exciting for me.

The final big part is that Pulsar has a bunch of different little scoring systems, some subset of which get a big scoring boost each game. This makes each play quite different. Games focused on exploration will give lots of random bonuses that you’ll have to figure out how to best utilize in the moment, whereas a game focused on technology has a more strategic bent since you can see the whole tech tree up front. The focus is also the same for all players, which is interesting because if we all over-focus on tech, it can make grabbing points in other areas a bit easier and maybe worth it.

Things to worry about -

  1. There’s basically no theme. There is one in the rulebook, but it’s not very strong.
  2. Setup is a bit long, as it often is with Euros with a lot of random setup variability.
  3. Endgame scores are rarely close. Competitive people who get more out of close scores are less likely to enjoy the last bits of the game where a winner may already be clear. Players who just like maximizing their own scores will have more fun with the end-game on this one (which works well for my playstyle).

I played Viticulture/Tuscany on Monday!

Everything Greatatlantic said is true, but I still kinda like it. Tuscany adds a bunch of mini-expansions you can mix-and-match to keep the game interesting from play to play. It has issues, but as far as worker placement games go, it’s pretty good (maybe not as good as Tzolkin). Caveat, I liked Charterstone and I am playing Scythe right now (online)…

I was in the original Kickstarter and played it a few times. I ended up selling it, which is unlike me since I tend to hang on to games (although that is less the case with Euros I don’t enjoy, now). I recall it being very prone to luck, but don’t remember much as it was years ago. Anyway, I sold it.

For a euro style management game I really like Arkwright. The way it ties the worker pool, supply and demand, and wages together is pretty brilliant. For me it’s pretty much Capitalism, the game. It seems to have a real economic engine I can understand and doesn’t feel like a big standard abstract euro game but it keeps euro game design principles.

I really want to play this game. My gaming groups lately haven’t really been into the all-day game as much lately, unfortunately, so I haven’t picked up a copy, but I kind of want to organize an all day event just to have an excuse to pick it up and play it. It looks so great!

Nah, you’ve got it pegged.

Me too. just concerned it won’t get played enough to warrant a purchase. I have enough 4 hour plus games that i really like.