Boardgaming in 2018!

Played Agricola for the first time today. Ended up with 19 points and was told that wasn’t bad for a first timer.

I have to say, what a brutal game. Every resource is short, you never have enough workers, the harvests are tough, and the competition for the needed slots is nasty. I loved it.

Then we played Gaia Project. I had a good game as the race with the Brainstone (Teklas?) but I was one power short for my last federation, which based on the various scoring tiles and the cascade effect would have netted me about 25 points. I came in third, but I really do love this game.

Played Exit: the Pharaohs Tomb tonight with another couple. First time doing an escape ‘room’ board game. Took us long, but partly due to kids and getting dinner ready. Needed one clue due to needing to use a certain element that we were not aware was part of the puzzle.

It was a lot of fun, and we would definitely do one again. I was pleased with the quality of the puzzles and the way they worked with a simple deck of cards and minimal diecut components. Definitely gets a recommendation if you are interested in the concept.

I’ve noticed that a lot lately with FFG. Mansions of Madness, Imperial Assault both have expansions that are almost the same price as the game. I hope this isn’t a trend, but based on Kickstarters and amsodee buying up every publishing company, I’m guessing it’s going to be the new norm.

I wish they were almost the same price as the game, but they’re actually charging $100 for the core box on those two and the minimum advertised price policy means that only gets down to maybe $80 (or a good $30-40 more than the pricier expansions) if you’re lucky. Mansions of Madness 2E has less in the box and cost me $35 more than the first edition.

Enjoy the customer benefits of having a game publisher owned by a private equity group.

Though in fairness, FFG was clearly switched to maximizing profits in any way possible even before the buyout.

I lucked out with MoM 2. I got it for 50.00 when it first came out.

I picked up two games at my local Con this weekend:

Eldritch Horror: Masks of somethingorother: I bought it because of the campaign mode, but I also forgot I hadn’t unpacked Cities of Ruin. At this point, I have so damn many cards for this game I had to remove the original mythos and encounter cards to get it to fit in the deck boxes. I figured since I’ve played the game since launch, seeing new cards would be better.

Godfather: I love Eric Lange’s Blood Rage so I picked it up. Haven’t played it yet, but the walkthrough video I am watching makes it seem like a good game.

Anybody have any experience with Dice Throne? It’s got decent reviews on BBG and it seems like something that might be fun to play with my son.

I enjoyed this game quite a bit. Its like a more thematic Lord of Waterdeep with more depth. The art and production values are fine for the most part, but a little off and repetitive. It has many interesting choices you can make but also doesn’t have quite a deep as a variety as the Lord of Waterdeep variety of actions. More meaningful activity overall, but just not as diverse as LOWD if that makes sense.

I believe there was a little talk about it in the Kickstarter thread.

Thanks.

Oh look, there is this cool new feature called “search” that if I had used I would have learned that Dice Throne was discussed a bit earlier in this thread.

I liked it enough that I’m backing the season 2 on Kickstarter and will get the original as an add on at the end.

We finished our Charterstone campaign tonight! I can finally go read Tom’s review.

Learned Sentinels of the Multiverse tonight. I kicked asssss as the Wraith. We took down Omicron or whatever our villain was.

Learned Queen Domino. WAY more complicated than King. Neat but I prefer King.

Batman is live:

Tonight I won my first game of Gaia Project against the experienced gamer guys. Played as the Ivits with federations and planet types as the bonuses. Crippled myself a bit early to go up the terraforming track but it paid off b/c I was able to grab the bonus tech off the top of that track on turn 5. The bonus tech gave 3 VP per turn for federation. That turn I had 3, and the next turn I had 4, so that one tech gave me 21 points, which exceeded the margin of victory.

I’ve won GP before against a group of newer players but this group of experienced players has about 200 plays of Terra Mystica and a couple of dozen play of GP under their belts. They are really good at squeezing every last VP out of the game. I am feeling very self satisfied at the moment :O.

Got to finally play Fury of Dracula (3rd Edition). I’ve played 2nd edition a bunch but the day/night cycles were unrealistically long and combat was kind of a pain in the ass and the lack of info on the chits for encounters means having to refer to the rule book often. All that is fixed in 3rd edition but I totally forgot how long this sucker is. 3+ hours with new players at full player count. A big part of its length was all the discussions in-between turns where I might be, which easily added +1 hour.

I played Dracula and went just shy of 3 weeks only being encountered once…on like day 3, but I escaped as bat and they would never find me again for the rest of the game. They should have found me as I headed east, as they got a trail but I threaded the needle and slipped pass them heading back west all the way to Spain. It took them a few days to realize I was heading the other direction. The hunters moved fairly slowly and got slowed down by searching hideouts and fighting my vampire children. Mina Harker got taken out of action during week 2. By the end of week three I had two Vampires mature in a single day for the victory while I took a boat and went out to sea. They had just reached Spain.

I’ll probably get some guff for this, but Fury of Dracula works much better as a two-player game. Having four players share one side just bogs it down in the usual trapping of coop/solitaire. But when one player moves all four vampire hunters, it’s a much snappier game.

Even then, it is pretty darn long for what’s basically a hidden movement game. I’d love to see it streamlined, which is pretty much the last thing Fantasy Flight will ever do to a game. Not Scotland Yard streamlined, of course, but trimmed of some of the cruft in its current state.

Have you played this, by any chance?

https://www.amazon.com/Plaid-Hat-Games-SO01PHG-Specter/dp/B00YB3YVJS

It’s pretty forgettable and loosey goosey with the sci-fi theming – I love the theming in Fury of Dracula – but it’s the same basic gameplay without a bunch of cruft drawing it out.

-Tom

Serious question, since I haven’t played the game: doesn’t it have mechanics that make it such that a single player controlling the hunter side is far more powerful than several players doing so, in the same way Tragedy Looper is actively unplayable 1v1 because of how important the restrictions on in-round coordination between the three separate protagonist players are as a balancing tool? Or is it closer to a Darkest Night, where player roles are more or less arbitrarily divided, with no respect for how long or interesting a character’s turn might be and no real incentive to actually play the game in a group?

For something less uncertain, I picked up Three Kingdoms Redux from Miniature Market’s 10%-off-sale-items sale. I’ve always been quite interested by the theme, the mechanics, and the game’s dedication to asymmetry and a very specific player requirement, so hopefully I can get exactly two other players interested!

There is Whitehall Mystery, which is a streamlined version of Letters from Whitechapel while retaining compatibility with its extensions:

If you want the thrill of the chase with the 3 hours runtime, it’s a good one. We’ve played it a few times since and it’s always been close one way or another.

It should also be said that I’ve played Fury of Dracula 3rd edition with 4. And while it runs long, the interaction between the players, the plotting while Dracula eavesdrops and tries to maintain a poker face while the hunters discuss where to go are a big part of the fun factor in the game. You might dislike co-op, but this removes a very entertaining part of the game. It takes some composure to fool the hunters.

Got the German version of the latest expansion for Catacombs, “Wyverns of Wylemuir”. Looks like they implemented some nice new game mechanics. Will test it as soon as possible. I liked about the original game that only one person has to know the rules and you can teach the game as you go. You need the special character abilities later in the game but you have the first rooms as a training ground. As I don’t know any hardcore rule crunching gamers this is important for me (most of my other games are solo).
And: The two expansions fit easily into the original box.