Miniature Market opened up preorders again today for $120 so I canceled my amazon order and placed a preorder with MM since I’m only 45 mins away. I called them to confirm I could pick my preorder up in store and the release date and the employee told me I could and that they were “expecting a release on the 19th”. Hopefully that’s true but I’m still pretty confused by this whole release schedule. If you have the game in stock what are you waiting for at this point? How can they be unsure two days out? How can some stores claim the 19th and others the 24th?
Played Vegas Showdown for the first time last night. Seems like a minor title but still enjoyable. We played a 5 person game, including teaching two new players, in just over an hour.
Also, observed part of a game of Gaia Project: that’s another one I want to play again soon.
Oh wow, that’s a blast from the past!
Vegas Showdown is a great game.
Amazon has Gloomhaven in stock now for $133.
Just got back from a gaming meetup. One of the guys had just received Gloomhaven and he started a group on that. I can’t always make the Thursday night meetup so I had to bow out, but it looked awesome.
I played Century: Spice Road and Azul. I had previously played Century: Golem Edition and Spice Road was essentially the same. Azul I had not played. I liked both of these games as simple, yet deep, and very strategic. Azul in particular meshed well with my brain.
Here’s a shocker: I do not like games with rules that are anything less than air-tight. I played Lifeboat, a party game that’s been around for a while, for the first time last night. One person had played it long ago, no one else ever had. Man, there’s some ambiguity and missing information in that rule sheet. There’s a lot that seemed obvious to me for how to navigate the gaps in the spirit of the game, but no game should come down to that sort of interpretation. After one play through I’m entirely confident I could write a superior rule sheet.
It was still mostly fun, but we also had one of those “I just wanted to see what would happen if I did something random that doesn’t advance anyone’s agenda” sort of players, and I always find that mentality hard to empathize with—especially, obviously, when it ends up hurting me. Anyway, I died on the lifeboat and they ate my body.
Or, if you’re in the UK, £224!
When I first got into boardgaming, I had a lot more disposable income, so I bought a lot more games that “looked interesting” without doing any research on them.
I bought one called Globalization, which looked like it would be kind of a crunchy, money-management sort of game with some humor. The first time I played it with some friends, we spent SO much time trying to comb the rule book looking for clarification on what you would think were really basic things. Like when you could play a card. Or how many things you could do on your turn.
We decided that we were just going to run with the rules as written instead of trying to hunt for rulings online, which enabled one player to basically take an infinitely long turn, leeching money from everyone else until we all quit. I haven’t played it since.
I remember being so annoyed because I was also playing a lot of Magic the Gathering at the time, which has pretty damn airtight rules. I just assumed that every game needed an equally good rulebook to even be made.
Hah, Magic probably also set the standard for me, now that you mention it. I don’t really connect it with my current board gaming habit since it was long ago and collectible card games are a different beast in some other ways, but when it comes to rules, at least as far as I fondly remember it, Magic did a great job of laying a simple foundation of rules, letting any card contradict and override the rules, but keeping it unambiguous. If you groked the underlying mechanics of how to resolve things, there was almost never any doubt and you could work through any complicated combination of contradictory cards to a clear, indisputable resolution. I mean, I know there were mistakes on cards here and there, but overall, it was great.
I also thought of Magic the first couple times I played Smash Up! last year (I might have already posted about it, I don’t remember). Same idea, “follow these real simple rules unless the cards say something else, then do that!”, but a very sloppy implementation.
I backed Ravine on Kickstarter, an upcoming survival party card game, because it’s from the team that made the Space Team card game, so I just wanted to support them (out of love-by-extension for the original Space Team mobile game). But thinking about it, the Space Team card game was pretty loose with some explanations, and a PDF of the Ravine rules that went out to backers a week or two ago has me thinking it’s gonna be another vague one. Oh well!
I got alerted yesterday that my copy of Gloomhaven shipped, so I should have it soon. VERY EXCITED!!!
For those getting Gloomhaven, I highly recommend the Broken Token organizer. That game has a ton of pieces to keep track of.
Haha, we fooled all of you. Actually it is terrible.
No, kidding. Is great!
I’m so glad I’ve already played Gloomhaven or else listening to you guys I’d be buying a copy.
I played and fell in love with Fallen lands. This game is set in a post apocalyptic game that is like mixing Wastelands 2 with a little bit of Fallout 4 community management (except upgrading your faction city is how you win!). In the game you control a full 5 party group of survivors with unique skills and abilities. If you find a vehicle, this will be become your sixth member of your party! Each party member has skills and special abilities and you can equip them with equipment, each has a weight limit of what they can carry/equip. When you cant carry you can sell extra loot in town. You spend money to upgrade your factions town to win the game. There are a number of unique factions with their own custom special abilities, this game is brimming with asymmetrical play
Gameplay is about Arkham horror like story telling and skill check cards. It has a great story telling mechanic that is only beat by the Fallout board games evolving story live mechanic. The game is infinitely repayable, plays great solo, but has PVP for multiplayer of up to 5 players! This keeps game tense and involves a LOT of player interaction!
The downsides. The art is a little amateurish. The game is NOT light, its a semi heavy game with lite RPG elements and story telling. It also has lots of modifiers you can collect to your squad that made it daunting to at times process checks/challenges. Once you learn the rules it mostly fine, but the oh right I have that special ability that blocks ambushes will be hard to easily track. Amazing game, but odd graphics, heavy to initially learn, and the potential to become heavy tracking conditional bonuses are the only downsides ive seen in 2 games! Its my favorite post apocalyptic game to date, which considering I love the Fallout boardgame is saying a lot (Fallout loses because of the awful end game scoring but otherwise love).
It’s cheaper for me to order, and have delivered, Gloomhaven from amazon.com and not amazon. Co.UK.
Also the only amazon.co.UK seller doesn’t deliver to where I am…but the Americans do? 😯
I’m feeling the same way about mistfall, except I still haven’t figured out how to actually play…
There was a link to a boardgamegeek section explaining it, but every time I’ve tried it, it’s been down.
I sold my kickstarter copy of Gloomhaven as I thought it would take up too much time with all my other board games. Well, just ordered it again from Amazon…for some reason I just have to have it. Now, K:D:M is tempting too.
Just got back from an all day Meetup where we ended up going heavy all day. This group likes a mix of medium to heavy games, with the occasional light snack, but today was like a smorgasbord of heaviness. I played 2 back to back games of Gaia Project, which has become my current favorite game, and then we played a game of Clans of Caledonia, which I liked a fair amount. It had a bit of a comparable feel to elements of both Carson City and Terra Mystica but with more of a market element.
You can call Gaia Project “Terra Mystica in Space!” but it’s IMO a slightly more refined, slighter better design with more interesting asymmetrical factions. I played the Terrans and the Ivits today and both were quite distinct experiences.
As to the rest of the group, they went heavy also. At one point, we had 4 tables going, 1 table with Gaia Project, 1 with Terraforming Mars and 2(!) with Feast for Odin. That’s some heavy duty gaming for a rando meetup at a public library.
Good fun all around.