Boardgaming in 2018!

Can’t look at the link now, but will check it out. The rulebook looks like it is fluffed up a bit. The font size alone is 32 point lol.

Oh, I was there, too. My boardgaming experience goes back as far as godawful stuff like, say, Talisman, or stuff that would have been better if good boardgame design had been invented yet. Dune, for instance.

But I’m not talking about any revolution. I’m talking about the invention of good boardgame design that arguably grew out of the revolution. Sure, there were exceptions that prove the rule (Cosmic Encounters, some inadvertently ingenious Knizia thing like his Lord of the Rings Stratego, the Jihad and Star Wars CCGs, Richard Garfield’s Netrunner). But as a widespread practice among designers and publishers, good boardgame design has only been around for about ten years.

I think Matt Leacock’s solitaire game, Pandemic, is the better turning point, since Twilight Struggle is barely on the brink of being a good game. It’s one of those games made for people who are already playing it. Which is fine if you’re into that sort of thing, and you must have been delighted with all those old hex-and-chit wargames. But Twilight Struggle missed the boat on the “making games accessible” part of modern boardgame design. Besides, it’s been obsoleted a couple of times over since then. There are boardgames that offer the same experience, in less time, with a lower barrier to entry.

But, yeah, as you know, I’m pretty much serious! The stuff that makes boardgames as good as they are these days is missing from most older games. Pretty much anything older than ten years – give or take – isn’t worth playing because there’s something better that’s been made since. The only reason to play those old games is that you might be super-attached to some sort of theming. Which I understand. The Cold War theme does a lot for me, as well. Just not enough to make me play Twilight Struggle when I could play something else that makes better use of my and my friends’ time.

-Tom

P.S. This post is only about 35% trolling. Give or take.

Talisman sucked in 1983, and anyone who says otherwise is a damned liar.

Not near as bad as most of the field at the time, though.

Can confirm, I played it a lot in college, along with a lot of other games that sucked. There are so many more good games now.

What is a better Talisman-like game?

Prophecy, an early Vlaada Chvatil game. And of course there are dozens of fantasy dungeon crawlers, etc, if you go farther afield.

I’m not sure why you wouldn’t place the beginning of the Renaissance at the more common (and admittedly more boring) threshold of Settlers of Catan. The Euro formula of family-friendly but still strategic gameplay not only was a hit on its own, but was the catalyst for a transformation in American games like the sort Avalon Hill and Fantasy Flight made. (Sid Sackson was way ahead of the curve, but didn’t have a lot of influence.) See Twilight Imperium 3rd Ed, and Betrayal at House on the Hill. Hobby gaming binged on Euro-style games for awhile because they were accessible and dynamic, until American design caught up and integrated those principles into games that were thematically rich and exciting. And now you have Scythe and Root, etc.

Pandemic is a watershed, but in a much more obvious way of making co-op games a viable genre and eventually turning them mainstream. Reiner Knizia’s Lord of the Rings co-op game was the spark. Pandemic’s accessible theme was the fuel.

It’s not a Talisman type game at all, but one of the games I played in those days that absolutely holds up for me is Wiz War. A multi player game that is actually good.

There are no Talisman-style games that are good, because the basic formula of “roll a die, then draw a card to see what happens to you” is dumb. Hundreds of games have been made on this formula, and they’re all unplayable dreck. (p.s. I played it a lot in the 80s because I had no idea how terrible it was).

The only good fantasy-adventure boardgame is Magic Realm, which unfortunately is completely unplayable because the rulebook is 300 pages long.

I maintain that Magic Realm isn’t really that complicated. I learned it when it came out, and I was around 12, and the rules were incomplete…how hard is it, really? Teaching it to a casual gaming group is impossible, though, I will agree to that extent.

You maintain correctly.

Tabletop Simulator has a great mod/version of Magic Realm.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=379131619

I’m mostly with @JoshL in that I think roll-and-move is almost always a lousy gameplay mechanic. I can think of a couple of exceptions, and they all involve giving the player more control over the rolling and moving. Gremlins, Inc is a great example (it’s a videogame boardgame, but still). Another is Culdcept (again, a videogame boardgame, but still). My favorite recent iteration of roll-and-move is this little jewel by Shadi Torby:

https://www.amazon.com/Nautilion-Game-Board-1-2-Player/dp/B01M4GM4EQ/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1541749158&sr=8-3&keywords=nautilion+board+game

I really like how you roll three dice and make difficult decisions about how to use each of them. Only one of them will actually move you.

Fair question. The answer is because Settlers of Catan is so insufferably godawful as a game. It clearly pre-dated the invention of good boardgame design. Which is what I’m talking about here. Good design, not a boom in popularity.

But, yeah, Catan is certainly a milestone in terms of getting us where we are today. But I cringe at the thought of actually playing it. Speaking of, I’ll give you a sheep for two wood.

-Tom

How about the new Sword & Sorcery Ancient Chronicles set
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ares-games/sword-and-sorcery-ancient-chronicles

Oh god yes. SU&SD has been on such an awful opinion streak that they warped back around to being useful reviewers in that I go by the opposite of what they recommend. To this day they’re the only opinion I’ve read saying Terra Mystica is way better than Gaia Project.

(that’s not even their biggest lapse in sanity where they give the thumbs down to Blood Rage & Scythe saying to play Battlelore and Forbidden Stars instead…wut???)

I’ve only tried two Unlock games, but every single Exit entry has been vastly superior. You don’t even have to destroy the Exit games with just a little bit of scanner+printer effort.

The best Exist experiences were Murder on the Orient Express and Forgotten Cabin. The bottom has been the Island one, and Sunken Treasure (which is crazy simplistic and linear). Although special mention has to be made for The Pharoah’s Tomb, which contains the single most bullshit puzzle in the entire series (everyone who’s played it immediately knows which one).

Yeah the beginning of the board game revolution happened around the mid 00s, but anything made before 2008 isn’t really worth playing anymore. Tom is underselling Dune though. It continues to be a great asymmetric game and when they did try to give it a modern makeover it was the broken mess named Rex (wow did they screw the balance pooch on that).

Holy crap though I can’t believe people are still playing Catan and base Pandemic. I see people playing it every single week at a local meetup. I don’t get it. Pandemic isn’t even the most accessible group co-op anymore; it’s ridiculously difficult to grasp a winning strategy if you haven’t played before, and it quickly becomes a rote conclusion once you do.

Catan is just misery. It is a worse game than Monopoly. Both are “luck of the dice quickly determines who is locked out of winning”, but Monopoly has the decency to put you out of your misery. Catan forces everyone to play to the very end. The only winning strategy in Catan is to give away all your stuff to the leader so the game ends faster.

I used to like SUSD but there was a point, I think when they transitioned to just videos, that I stopped paying attention.

And I feel they maybe got a bit big headed.

I feel No Pun Included, although less professional or slick looking, are more genuine and honest and have more heart.

I am totally biased because I went to university with Elaine and we lived in the same flat for 2 years.

My high school game club thought Stratego Legends was so great we had a whole grand tournament with it. Boy that time period really wasn’t anything like the embarrassment of riches we have now.