No, it’s a meetup group we have for longer/more involved games. We sign up to commit to playing a longer game. I’ve played Eclipse and Terra Mystica with this group before.
This is depressing. I did Kickstart and still haven’t received my copy.
Note that that’s a preorder. And as a backer, you are paying considerably less than MSRP or the quoted price either one. Even the second time around. (As a first KS backer, I paid $64, but shh.)
The developer has stated a few times he intends to make sure that all KS backers have their copies before the game goes to retail. When I saw this pop up on amazon for the 19th I figured all the KS copies had gone out. Hearing you haven’t received yours yet makes me even more skeptical that date will be met.
I really wish he’d let this go a little bit. I’m kind of sick of waiting for a product that was apparently shipped to the distributor more than a month ago, yet I’m supposedly going to be waiting perhaps another month to get it because some guy in Peoria might not have his Kickstarter copy.
Yeah I mean I can understand the frustration on both sides. I’m curious what the delay is on the KS copies. If the retail copies have been sitting around for a month where are the KS versions? I was under the impression there was no difference between the two so why not just fulfil the KS with the retail copies?
Yeah, I’m not sure what this obsession to have it “first” is all about with KS. I mean, kickstarters are being fulfilled, why not have it at retail too?
I’m in Europe and got it early, but my impression is that Gloomhaven 2nd Printing is one of the better run kickstarters, with transparency in communications and, if anything, maybe a bit too many production updates.
Bah, I’m stupidly sick today, nasty cough and cold. I cannot go play Twilight Imperium 4. I am very sad.
Might be a good day for some solo Terraforming Mars, with tea.
A week ago I did something I rarely do. I purchased a game without doing any research into the gameplay. I saw Charterstone on some site’s best-of-2017 list (not like an outlet I totally trust). I’d never heard of it before. But the headline is: Worker placement village-building Legacy game from Stonemaier Games. I’m honestly not a Stonemaier fanboy–much of their stuff is heavier than I want to play–but I recognize they do great design. The idea of a legacy version of my favorite genre was too much, so I ordered it on Amazon and it came a couple days ago. It’s hard to tell what it’s going to be like from reading the rules and looking at what components I can look at… And now I’m in that weird position with legacy games where I need to coordinate a group that’s willing to play it regularly. Can’t just whip it out at the next game night (Thursday) and give it a run.
Anyone tried Charterstone?
Out of context quote:
It’s too big and intimidating.
Charterstone, that is.
</juvenile>
Hey hey, two nights of board-gaming back to back, first Manhattan Project: Energy Empire last night, and Scythe tonight! I’ve had both of these games for months but this was my first time playing each of them.
Still at the stage where devising a grand strategy feels like a laughably distant possibility for both games—especially Scythe since it was just two of us figuring it out, but I think I basically understood and enjoyed the mechanics of both games pretty quickly.
On a whim I also bought Near and Far because I had some store credit burning a hole in my pocket, and it was the most interesting looking thing on the shelf that I’d at least vaguely heard of. From what little I understand of it, the whole “campaign” style isn’t like any other games I have yet. Has anyone played it?
So anyway, got two games from my shelf out of the “never-played” backlog, and added one new one. A net gain!
I’ve played a bit of Near & Far. The campaign system is definitely the best thing going for it as the base game is a bit lacking for me. The whole thing looks absolutely lovely though, and the writing is reasonable enough to make it worth investing some time in if you can find a like minded group (or even just one person) to play it with. They are releasing a co-op element for it next year which might make it easier for me to get some more plays out of it.
It won my Patreon review request drawing two months ago. Our group is half way through the campaign. My aim is to get through to the end and have a review posted within a few weeks. Everyone seems to like it quite a bit, and I hope there are still some surprises in store. However, I’m not sure there’s much to recommend it beyond the legacy angle.
-Tom
I’ve only just skimmed a bit of the manual, but can you articulate the difference between the campaign mode and the character mode? Is the former going through the “story” of every map but with no character changes?
I haven’t played “Character Mode” but my understanding is that the stories are more scripted for the character you choose, and you have to complete each one to finish the game. In “Campaign Mode” the stories are not specific to you, and could be completed by any player or no-one at all. They will still lead to levelling up etc.
Oh, that makes sense, I think.
I expect this may be a tricky one to find the right group to play with, but I knew I was taking that chance when I picked it up. So I’ll get back to everyone in a few years when I’ve played it!
(RE: Near and Far) I disagree with @moss_icon a little. The cool part about the campaign is you can get some story beats that carry over from game to game. However, there’s a leveling-up system that feels very tacked on and in my opinion does nothing for the campaign. There’s also a “campaign score” which I think feels pretty pointless.
If you just ignore leveling-up and the campaign score, the campaign plays fantastically with an inconsistent group. Players can easily join and leave whenever they’d like, including missing games with no problem. All the maps are made to be playable on their own so you don’t need the level-up structure to keep them in line. The continuous story threads pop up pretty infrequently throughout the missions, and when they do, I find it fun explaining to the rest of the group why something is significant.
If you’re at all worried about a consistent group, I would strongly encourage you to ignore the campaign scoring and leveling-up and just play the latest map with whoever is interested. If they want to stick around for more, that’s great! If not, find someone else to do the next map with you.
EDIT: Just to clarify, I would track the “keywords” and “sidequests” as part of the campaign, because they’re fun and still work fine whether people join or leave.
Joined the local gaming group and they were nice enough to play my brand new copy of Pandemic. We juuuust barely won! Now on to Pandemic Legacy Season 1.
Pandemic by Sam Posten III, on Flickr