Holy crap that is a great looking haul! I swear your copy of Photosynthesis is twice as deep as mine, but it must just be because the games around it in that shot are so thin. Those werewolves look great! Zombicide Black Plague hits on like everything I love in miniatures-based game feel. Rolling a ton of dice and knocking out ten guys at once, having zombies build up so much they don’t even fit in a space, having terrifying invulnerable monsters hulking around until you stumble over a way to kill them… The game’s a bit long for what it is, but full of satisfying experiences.
I just got back from a big international vacation which gave me a hard hankering for more interesting travel sized games (even if my next vacation isn’t for quite a while). I picked up a bunch of cheap, small games in the last week.
Pixel Tactics 3 - I’ve never played a Pixel Tactics game, but there’s like 8 different packs out there and it appears you can start with any. This was the one in the store. It’s a really quick 2-player tactical combat game played with a deck of cards. The game has a bunch of multi-use cards with crazy game-breaking abilities. It creates really interesting decision spaces that are largely about choosing from different power-combos, which is my favorite type of decision. I don’t think this game is well balanced, though, and it seems built to quickly devolve into an end-state once exploits are found. This works great for me for a short game. Very exciting, interesting to explore.
Oh My Goods! - The game with the worst name. This feels like a Uwe Rosenberg game where you’re turning goods into other goods to turn them into others goods. It’s played entirely with a deck of cards. Each turn has a random market of goods drawn, but only half is drawn before players choose what they’re going to do. This lends a push-your-luck feel to it since you might try and use a building even though there’s no resources for it out now because they might come out in the second half. It’s dramatic, swing-y, random, but with a lot more interesting Euro-y decisions then I was expecting when we first pulled it out. And I can put up with random swinging in a game that’s 30 minutes long.
Codenames Duet - The co-operative version of Codenames. Works great with 2-4 players, and easy to break down into a few bags for travel.
Through the Desert - This game isn’t travel sized, but I missed playing it so I picked it up as well. It’s another great game for playing with the sorts of people I might play Ticket to Ride with. It’s got incredibly simple rules and some obvious early strategies to give new players some direction. Experienced players are tracking everyone’s goals to make sure their best moves are their most threatened or threatening, and inexperienced players are just going towards high points, so there’s enough meat for both players to enjoy themselves in the same game. It’s a hard game to describe without just explaining the rules because it is thoroughly abstract. In some ways, it feels more like Go than a modern board game.
That definitely seems to be how it’s designed, but I’ve never found it to be quick in the slightest (3 hours or longer, generally). What are we missing?
Excellent! It really is one of my top 5 games all time.
Which map did you play, and how many players?
As for tabletop day, going to a friends later for some Captain Sonar, 7 Wonders, Love Letter, and Hogwarts Battles
3 hours! It’s taken us 20-30 minutes, though we’ve only played 3 times. Are you playing with a 30 card deck? The longest game we played we burned through our deck. Once you do that, you can’t draw cards anymore, so the game should draw to a close then. It sounds like you’re playing a totally different game!
I can’t remember. I know we’ve run out the deck at least one game, but it just seems like any time anyone gets an advantage it gets countered.
Wowzers. That is an Arkham Card Game all in right there.
Pixel Tactics is a lot of fun, but yeah, matches vary wildly in length. One thing worth noting is that some of the rules aren’t explained very well - for example, there are cards with persistent effects, but some of the products that include those cards (like the supplemental eight-character mini-expansions) don’t explain that those persistent effects go away after three turns, so I ended up in a game where all my heroes were immortal zombies and I couldn’t lose.
Regardless of how many expansions you have, you should never be playing with larger decks, unless you’re playing the draft rules (which involve shuffling up as many unique cards as you want into a large central deck that both players play out of) - though the deluxe box describes a deckbuilding option for larger decks with multiple copies of cards, the game is very much not balanced around each player having more than thirty cards (all of which are unique) in their deck.
Argh. I have just discovered that there is a Mistborn resource management and political intrigue game coming out this week in UK. You either try to be the house who curried the most t favour with the Lord Ruler if the Empire still stands when the game ends, or be the most rebellious house should it fall.
I love the theme and universe. And the opposite victory conditions could be interesting. But it’s not exactly going to be the game my sons gravitate to. Not sure it would ever hit the table should I buy it. :/
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/182626/mistborn-house-war
Ummm…so in the Arkham Horror LCG how do you know what acts, agendas and locations go with which scenarios? Assume I have dropped the stack of cards and they are no longer in order. I don’t see it on the cards or in the set up guide. Is it on the cards somewhere and I am missing it?
Gloomhaven tonight, where I’ll be starting up my lightning bolt class for the first time. Should be interesting!
Each scenario has an associated icon that’s on every related card.
Gotcha thanks. I think I found the icons. Wish the rulebook had mentioned it (Or I had noticed it before accidentally reading a couple minor spoilers in the set up book trying to figure it out).
We played on the Eastern US map with four players. I won easily, since I have more experience with these kind of games than the other players. However, the guy who was last most of the game ended up coming in second since he didn’t have as many bonds as the other players.
I really like the card mechanic coupled with the turn order bid. I also really enjoy how you can control the end of the game through depleting and developing cities. While it would be nice if the maps were tighter, I think its much more forgiving for new train game players.
Thanks. I have definitely jumped into the hobby faster than I expected.
Will work on unboxing and playing em all as quickly as I can =)
Yes, and I will say I think the Eastern US map is the worst of the lot, and obsoleted at any player count by other maps. 5-6 players and Western US is objectively better, and more balanced. For 4 either Europe or Britain. Europe is a though map for 3-4 players, and England is fun for 2-4, with a very fast developing and dynamic map. We literally will always play one of those maps over the Eastern US map.
I can believe this. In our game, I dominated the northeast, and there wasn’t much anyone could have done to prevent me from winning once i had completed the Boston-Washington major line. Its similar to our games that feature this part of the US (like the base game of Steam), and it gets same-y fast.
I would love to get the Europe map, but I’m hoping they reprint it with updated map design similar to the 10th anniversary edition. I think its much more attractive, and the added symbols for water spaces are really great. Will probably get the Japan map next.
Sweet. Online Multiplayer… might actually wind up playing this game.