Boardgaming in 2018!

Games
1022

Don,
I’ve resurfaced after playing Feudum and Heroes of Land Air and Sea.
I picked up a cheap copy of both games with all the Kickstarter extras including the insert. I sold both as they are ridiculously expensive at the moment. I tend to flip games as I’m pretty good at buying or trading cheap and selling at a profit (thus insuring my ability to feed my addiction).

Feudum
This is not a game for everyone.
It’s not a game you can play once and six months later expect it to just hit the table. I can’t give you a legitimate review after one play, but I will say this. It is fiddly and complex. I read the rules and watched an hour long instructional twice and I still didn’t get it till we started playing. “If a rosary bead is on a chicken…” Yes that is an actual rule.

All that said, I can’t stop thinking about playing it again and how I want to try different stuff. My 3 player game ended with 1 point separating 1st and 2nd and 3rd a mere 5 points behind that.

In a nutshell, Feudum is an area control game with a cool economic system driving it. A lot of it you seen before play a card for an action if you have certain pieces on the board you can do specialty actions. What makes Feudum unique is the cool guild economy and the push/pull mechanics associated with player control of the guilds.

Pros:
Open Sandbox Game
Great Iconography
Artwork
Heavy Euro
Cool closed economy system

Cons:
Rule Book
Could definitely use another pass.

Overpowered Guild Card**
One of the cards you can play let’s you double an action card you’ve already played. It’s great and can be used for all sorts of things, but it felt like you might only really ever want to use it to double up the guild card. I only played one game, so I could easily be wrong, but the guild action is very powerful.

Artwork
Some people have a problem seeing the difference between background art and paths for vessels. I didn’t have this issue but my older friends did. That said, with such a complex game you shouldn’t have to spend a lot of time focusing on if paths connect.

Odd Thematic Choices
See church’s chickens

I liked my initial play. There’s a lot to still figure out, but with so many games, I don’t think I could get my regular group to play enough to justify not selling it at a profit. I will most likely buy it again when it drops in price. Feudum is very, very cool! If you have a group that doesn’t have a ton of games, likes heavy euros you can get the base game for 50 bucks (you don’t need all the expansions or ks pieces to enjoy the game.

Heroes of Land Air & Sea
This is a 4x fantasy game by the tiny epic folks. With a 25 minutes per player play time, 4 ways to trigger the ending, and awesome 3d vehicles and towers. It sounds awesome, looks great, but ultimately was not interesting. My initial turn on to this game was the promise that this was more of an RTS than a 4x game.

Pros:
Good looking
Fast paced game play
Easy to learn
Cool card/bluffing battle system

Cons:
I hate the tiny epic line, not because their games are bad, but because they are marketed as quick small package versions of bigger games, but end up taking just as long to play. This is no exception. While I can see play time coming down it still took 3 players 2 half hours to play. I can play Eclipse in the same time and trust me it’s a much better game.

My biggest complaint is movement and building actions only allow for 1 unit to be built or one group to move. I understand why they had to do this, but it just feels wrong. In a 4x game, you want massive armies moving across the board.
Believe it or not I might even recommend this as a first foray into 4x games, but the price point of 100 dollars (179 if you want better races and the ability to play 5 and 6 players) was just not worth it. I sold this one very quickly but it should be readily available by end of year or whenever the next kickstarter opens.

This War of Mine
TWoM is a vicious, horrible, mean game and I loved every minute of it. It was punishing and emotional and full of tough choices. Not a game for everyone. Not something I will play a lot. It can be ridiculously long and I wish there were more cards, but the theme of this game just sucks you in.

I hate solo board gaming. Tom and I argue about it all the time, my argument is why not just play a video game which saves you all the book keeping etc. This is the first game I enjoyed playing solo. Maybe it’s the fact that the book keeping in this game is fairly easy or maybe there aren’t a lot of moving parts. Whatever the case, it worked for this me.

1023

Thanks for the nutshell-review. I think this was the review that sold me on it- it’s rather similar to what you wrote, actually. Long, but with little rules explanation and lots of ‘impressions’. I like the sort of game that can inspire that kind of writing. Really, I think the things that intrigue me most about it as the descriptions ‘open world’, ‘sandbox’ and ‘economic ecosystem’ all in the same breath.

I any case, I did get the base game for around $60. I didn’t feel the need to add squirrels & conifers, seals & sirens, etc to an already complex game (those are real expansions, for those wondering- the setting for this is a bit… odd). I am wondering about the solo/co-op(?) Expansion, though. Any experience with that?

1024

I feel like they haven’t necessarily raised their prices, but box contents are significantly reduced, and as noted, they don’t allow any real discounts via online shops. All of which increases the perception of less value for money.

1025

Awesome. Let me know what you think of it. Heavy Elephant has a great instructional and play through (don’t get scared that is 4 hours long.

1026

A college buddy of mine who is a game designer posted on Facebook this week that he’d been sent Feudum and all expansions. He likes the base game, but described the expansions as “boxes of air” that don’t seem worth whatever price is being asked on them.

1027

Hahaha. I’m not watching an instructional 4 hour video. I’ll figure it out- hell, I figured out Magic Realm eventually (oddly enough, another overly complex open-world-sandbox-y sort of game).

1028

Yeah, that’s part of the reason I didn’t bite on them. Seemed like retail is $30 for a few cards and wooden cubes. Taking a page from FFG, for sure, heh.

1029

I love big chunky games but IMO Feudum suffers from the dreaded “too big of a game to realize it’s actually not a good game” problem. That happens to games with millions of options that take 4 hours to play because a critical mass of people can’t play it enough times to actually form good opinions, and everyone rates it based on their one or two plays coupled with how cool it looks and how complicated it was.

Not judging the poster above specifically, it just seems to be a general trend these days, especially with games coming out of Kickstarter.

1030

I understand the sentiment, but there’s also the point of view that a good does not necessarily require to support many playthrough or perfect strategic balance.

If people play a game once or twice and the game is enjoyable that way for many people, it is indeed a good game for those people. Whether those opinions are really solid depends on the analytical capacity of the people playing, but you can form an opinion on a single playthrough, as you can form an opinion of a movie on a single viewing.

I think the boat of “a good game needs to show perfect balance so a play between very skilled opponents is tense” has sailed. Some games are designed to be played between skilled opponents and thus need to sustain many playthrough. Others don’t. The opossite approach, games that don’t click until you have played many times, is probably more.indicative of a bad game. The perfect game would be enjoyable on the first and on the hundredth playthrough, but a game does not need to be perfect to be good.

That said, Feudum looks sooooo cool. And I’m really intrigued by the sandbox concept. But this will never see the table (well not on the next 3-4 years) so I will have to sadly pass.

1031

At this point, I can count the number of games in my collection that I’ve played more than 10 times on the fingers of one hand*. Probably could still do it for over 5 times. It’s just too hard to fit repeated play in alongside a steady stream of new stuff I want to try out given the limited number of gaming evenings we have. So yeah, they don’t need to be - and probably shouldn’t be - best with experienced players playing at a high skill level.

*Those being Gloomhaven (probably 40-odd times), Sentinels of the Multiverse (probably just a bit less than that - at least one time for almost every villain and more on some), and Pandemic Legacy (I can’t remember exactly but I’d say 15-18 times - we only had to repeat a few months.)

1032

Just to be clear that’s not what I’m arguing. I’m saying people are rating the potential of the game rather than it’s actual merits, and if they played it more they’d realize it’s not good.

Juan has a good point, I guess, that if you like the game based on its potential, then that’s fine if you’re not planning to play it much more. But I agree with you Malkav, I don’t play my games much either… But that doesn’t make Feudum a good game. It was no good on the first play for me.

1033

I think this is an interesting conversation. The fact that so many board games keep coming out it is hard to get a group to stay on one game that you enjoy and that you want to improve in.

1034

Also I think the current market is driving games towards being enjoyable on the first plays even if that make them have less staying power. Like you guys I seldom play a game over and over again. Only solitaire games, those I play more often, and I think if the market for them explodes even with those I’ll play less often.

1035

Solitaire Board Games are hard for me to play because I cannot leave them set up in our apartment. They would have to be something that plays quickly.

1036

Go to the wargaming thread and see my solution for that. Works only with paper map wargames, with regular games I set up 3-4 hour sessions at night when everybody’s asleep.

1037

In theory I appreciate the idea of solitaire boardgames. In practice I contemplate the prospect of spending 15-20 minutes setting one up and 15-20 minutes tearing one down and then go do something on my computer instead.

“But malkav, there are solitaire games with very little setup,” one might say. Well, probably. But in my experience little setup means little complexity means little decision making or theme or simulation and what’s even the point then? (This is also how I feel about simple multiplayer games, by and large, but at least those involve human interaction.)

It’s sad, because I own Dawn of the Zeds and Nemo’s War and I mostly bought Unicornus Knights to play solo since people seem convinced it’s not super multiplayer-friendly and…yeah, I just don’t. I guess I did break Nemo’s War out once.

1038

It’s not 4 hours for the instructions… That’s an hour.
He really does go through everything. The other 3 hours are the guys goofing off and playing the game.

1039

Arrendek,
Completely understand and can relate to your comment. I can’t say Feudum is a great game(fiddly for sure), nor can I recommend it to everyone, but when I finish a game and I keep thinking about it. What I did. What I wish I had done and what I want to try next time. That, to me, says it’s a game worth playing and Feudum definitely gave me that.

1040

Hah, ok, but I probably still won’t watch it. I’m one of those old-man types that doesn’t understand why everything is to be on video nowadays (and why these kids are all on my lawn!). Really, video reviews, video explanations, video reactions of people watching videos? Where does the madness end? But I digress. I’ll just read the rules and play the game.

As for replaying games, my group has gotten better about that in the last year or two. I mean, we always had a few go-to games (Scepter of Zavandor, Power Grid, Formula De, Tichu, etc) that we’ve played dozens of times, but for while we really got into the ‘cult of the new’ like the rest of the gaming world. For a while now, though, we’ve been concentrating on brining back favorites, and playing new ones lots of times. Great Western Trail, A Feast for Odin, Shogun, Ground Floor and others all have multiple plays in the last bunch of months to keep them fresh and try new strategies.

1041

For Feudum, someone in my group watched a 30 minute video which covers almost everything. I think it’s on or linked on the publishers website? They were just as good on their first play as the rest of our group was by working through the rules together for like an hour and a half, so I highly recommend the video.