So did Detective: True Crime Stories ever manage to pull out of the stall? Or was it a disappointment the whole way?
Just received a copy of the out of print Mythos Tales. I was a fan of the concept of Consulting Detective, but felt it was way too loose as an actual game, with no clear end goal to the mysteries until you spoiled it with the end questions (plus what passed as conclusive proof of guilt was shockingly thin). Mythos Tales puts a set time limit on the cases, gates some locations off with prerequisite discoveries, and definite win/loss conditions based on what you can answer at the end.
I don’t think we’re going to get back to it; we lost too much momentum. I was playing that with two coworkers; we do a game night in the office every other Thursday. After our third round of Detective, we had two sessions in a row (so about a month) when one of the guys had a conflict, and when we were all together again two weeks ago we talked about it and I think everyone was just ready to move on so we didn’t pick it back up.
I think all three of us got to the point where if it was really important to someone we would be willing to keep playing to see it through to the conclusion, but that leaves no one actually advocating for it.
I really wish I knew someone else who was playing outside of our group because I’d be fascinated to hear if other people independently arrive at a similar opinion, or if there are people out there having a great time with it (and why).
That’s a shame, but goes back to my theory that Ignacy and Portal games are the Peter Molyneux of board gaming. They have amazing ideas that the execution just misses the mark.
If you’re looking for another detective app game, Chronicles of Crime, has been getting good press. Haven’t played it so I can’t say much more.
I’m still holding out for Detective: City of Angeles It will either be amazing, or sink like the titanic.
This week I’ve been introducing my son to deckbuilders. He really enjoyed Trains and now were playing Thunderstone (original version). It occurred to me that these games are kind of old. Has there been any good deckbuilders that we should check out?
Sure! Ascension is spectacularly imaginative, but there are 800 standalone versions of it. But even just the basic version as a two-player head-to-head game is aces. I prefer it to arguably more streamlined games like Star Realms because it’s so imaginative. And the artwork is unique. That’s rare in boardgames.
I don’t care for Clank, but I can see the appeal. It’s a deck-builder based on scooching an adventurer around a map. I don’t know how old your son is, but it’s very kid friendly. I think the later versions get better. There’s a mummy version and I think a space version just came out.
I like the basic framework of the Legendary games, but the theming can be forced. Frankly, once you’ve played their system, I don’t feel it works for anything but Alien. It’s co-op (i.e. solitaire), but they’ve got a lot of iterations. Marvel, Alien, Big Trouble in Little China, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. If you and your son want to play a co-op deck-builder and if he’s into any of those IPs, I would recommend a Legendary game.
Cryptozoic publishes a series called…wait for it…Deck Building Games. I’ve only played the Lord of the Rings and DC Comics versions, but I can vouch for the DC Comics version as being a solid and accessible deck-builder for multiple players. It’s been one of those games we pull out every so often because it holds up.
I have never played a deckbuilder I hated more than DC Deckbuilding Game, for what that’s worth. Actually, I haven’t hated any other deckbuilders, just that one. A lot. I think everything it does, Ascension does better by a country mile.
If you like Thunderstone, my understanding is that Thunderstone Advance and Thunderstone Quest refine the formula considerably (though I haven’t tried them myself because my experience with Thunderstone was that it was way too easy to get a village full of cards that didn’t help you with your monster draws and thus hours would be spent wheelspinning until someone finally had enough to take down the big bad that was at the front of the dungeon, and I quickly moved on to other stuff. That said, I didn’t hate it because it was possible, albeit rare, for it to come together well.)
I like the structure of Aeon’s End but I think it might be a down-the-road thing as some of its innovations aren’t going to stand out if you haven’t played much. And I can’t say I’ve really played it enough to be super sure it’s as varied a play experience as I prefer.
Privateer Press puts out a deckbuilding spinoff of their Warmachine and Hordes miniatures games called High Command, which has some interesting ideas and simulates the source material surprisingly well (or so I am told by a friend who plays them).
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Dominions is so 00s man.
Seriously though, there are tons of excellent deck builders that have taken the core Dominions concepts and done great things with them. Ascension is very good; I personally like Clank! (the new Gold and Silk expansion is quite good) and I’ve played 3 games of the new Thunderstone Quest now and liked it enough to order a retail copy. Thunderstone Quest specifically addresses the shortcomings of earlier Thunderstone games including the issues Malkav raised.
In terms of appeal to younger players, I would suggest either Ascension base game or Thunderstone Quest base game. Ascension does have the advantage of numerous expansions currently available if the group likes it and wants more, although Thunderstone Quest has a number of expansions also scheduled for the near-ish future.
I have of course played the ‘classic’ deck-builder Dominion. I’ve only played the original base set, but I found it sorely lacking in flavour.
I’ve also played Ascension (again, only the original version), while it did not lack for flavour, I never loved the gameplay.
I think I’ve been confusing Clank with another game, because I was sure it wasn’t a deck-builder. But a quick search on the internet reveals that you are correct. Maybe I should try and get a game of it sometime.
I really don’t like how this game looks, and I’m deeply sceptical of solitaire games.
Yeah, actually I house ruled Thunderstone and my version looks a lot like Thunderstone Quest. The vanilla original version just felt a little flat.
Never heard of either of these, I’ll check them out!
I don’t know how old your son is, but El Dorado is a great deck builder + racing across a map game, works for kids, and adult boardgamers like it too (I certainly do). I’ll give +1 to Thunderstone Quest as well.
Clank! is really good fun. It combines a dungeon run on a board and deck building to power that run. It’s one of the games I play regularly with my kids (aged 11 to 20) and we all enjoy it quite a bit.
Gold and Silk adds another board to Clank!, with one side being the Gold side and one side being the Silk side.
On the Gold side, new gold vein regions adjacent to several rooms are added, and the first player to reach those rooms can mine the gold to gain a coin or two. The bigger change on the Gold side is that a fairly hefty amount of bonus points are awarded players for mining gold, with the top gold miner getting 20 (IIRC) bonus points and then 10 and 5 IIRC for #2 and #3. This makes gold mining an interesting variation to scoring.
On the Silk side, several paths are affected by web tiles which require a boot or sword to remove and several rooms have bonuses that are webbed up and require a sword to access. Also, the Silk side adds an option to spend 8 Skill on a turn to take a bonus from a “bonus web” - the bonuses can only be taken once and only the first person to claim them can do so. The bonuses range from gold to Tomes, and working the bonus web can be a viable alternate scoring method.
Also, Gold and Silk adds a replacement Dwarf Meeple and a replacement Spider Boss monster token, just for fun.
Mechanically, both the Gold and Silk maps offer some additional scoring wrinkles and IMO add some nice variety to a game that I was beginning to tire of.
Couple notes re: Legendary. One, there’s Legendary and then Legendary Encounters - the latter is a significantly more refined and thematic approach, and is what they used for Alien, Predator, and I think Firefly and Big Trouble in Little China. The basic Legendary is what a million Marvel entries and one or two of the others use. IMO you want Encounters.
Two, Tom thinks (almost) every coop game is a solitaire game but there’s a difference. Just humor him. ;)
That said, while I enjoy Alien and Predator (haven’t tried the later Encounters titles, and wasn’t super impressed with my one session with Marvel), I have definite issues with Upper Deck’s production. They feel very cheap across the board, I’ve had issues with missing cards, and something about the way they pack cards leads to them being packed as sets of singles in a way that’s extremely annoying to disentangle and sort into actual order. So I can’t get super enthusiastic about recommending them to someone, at least as an early deckbuilder buy.
Thanks guys! Reading between the lines, I get the impression that the deck-building genre might be a little moribund. Shame if true, there’s something very engaging about the basic conceit.
One game I’ve been thinking of checking out is Core Worlds, I’ve heard good things about it.
I dunno about the genre being moribund, but I will say that I am personally less excited by pure deckbuilders than hybrid games that use it as one of the design elements, things like Eminent Domain (which mixes it with tableau building and role following ala Race for the Galaxy), A Study in Emerald (1st edition, which is out of print alas. Using influence and agents to buy cards in cities, control cities - and add their card to your deck, etc.), City of Remnants (your deck is your gang and you lose cards when your gang members die), that kinda thing.
Agreed, Hogwarts Battle is a great deck builder and tells the story of the Harry Potter years at Hogwarts to boot. So the theme is engaging for most people familiar with the stories.
That one and Clank are my 2 favourites right now, though I also have fond memories of playing Ascension with my son.
Hybrid deck builders like Clank + expansions (for variety) are definitely a genre I enjoy. There is also a hybrid bag builder / push your luck game called The quacks of Quedlinburg which I mentioned upthread which seems easy to learn, but also quite fun to play with friends and family. I believe that one is due out in the US in the next few weeks.
Aeon’s End is my current favorite. It’s very modular with solid variability. The only “downside” for me is that it is getting a digital treatment like Sentinels of the Multiverse so the paper version might similarly become more hassle than it’s worth with a digital brother around.
I too have Thunderstone 1st edition and hear great things about Thunderstone Quest (the newest version). I expect this to be my favorite soon as I am awaiting delivery.
I picked up Direwild via Kickstarter recently. It mixes dungeon crawl with deckbuilder. I’m very excited to play it. I hear really good things about another crawl/ deckbuilder hybrid Dungeon Alliance, but to me that one is just too deterministic and thus too much of a math puzzle.
The Warmachine and HordesHigh Command games are really terrible in my mind. I wanted to like them, but they are more of what I call deckADDERs than deck builders as the cycling and game length are way too minimal to really be about deck engine building. Plus the balancing on Command was really awful when I played it. Oh and it has a meta level of deck assembling that I just don’t have the time for nowadays.
