Boardgaming in 2018!

My Kickstarter copy of Gloomhaven ‘shipped’ in November, tracking and all, then sat in the US for three months. I think it was in storage next to the Ark of the Covenant.

5 days ago, it actually shipped from OR to me in NJ and is due to arrive on Monday.

I can barely remember why I was interested in it, but hopefully it’ll be cool. :)

@mono I think that’s fantastic news, better late than never! I think you’re in for a treat!

I finished documenting the components by taking some pictures, and skimming the rules and watching the official how to play videos (mentioned on the front page of the manual) and I’m really freaking pumped to dive into this ASAP.

Immediately on looking over the components, I see they changed (from videos I saw previously) how health is tracked, as well as XP. Instead of tracking them on the character mat/card directly (which always looked like something I’d ruin at some point) it’s done on separate and high quality spin-down “wheels” instead.

This got me wondering what other difference might exit for the 2nd edition, and I found someone collected them here for those curious.

I spent about 3 and a half hours last night playing the massive board game/labor of love Three Kingdoms Redux. This game is unique in that it plays exactly three players. Not 2, not 4, but 3. It is a worker placement game, only your workers are named figures from the period of Chinese history, called generals as a catch all for historical figures in the game. Each general is unique with a unique special power. When you place a general, you are bidding to use the action, as generals have different attributes.

The game initially seems very stingy with resources. However, by taking advantage of generals’ powers and special upgrades you can build, eventually resources become more plentiful. That is when the challenge in the game becomes turning resources into VP. A great source of VP is occupying border regions, but you will lose a general for the rest of the game and have to pay upkeep. So, occupy to quickly, you will be penalized. Move to slowly, and you will end the game with a ton of rice and gold good only to break a tie you are nowhere near.

So, that is a sense of the mechanism, but the theme also comes through, at least somewhat. This is not a war game, but a struggle for various advantages. You can’t be the best at everything, but come in first and second in enough, and you can maybe be the best of the 3 Kingdoms.

Another aspect of this game is the deliberate imbalance at the start of the game. The Wei player begins with 5 generals compared to 4 for Wu and 3 for Shu. A various points in the game more generals will be given to all players, so at the end everyone will have the same number. However, it still gives Wei a big advantage early, even as he starts with less resources elsewhere. Both times I’ve played this, Wei has won in the end, often by a not small margin (but not overwhelming either). I won’t call it imbalanced after two plays, but let us say Wei does seem more new player friendly.

Still, I do like this game. The resource and bidding for action spaces is very tight and very tactical. I don’t know a lot about the 3 Kingdoms period, but clearly the designers (a husband and wife who I think live in Singapore) did.

I want this game now, even though I’m not particularly interested in the 3 kingdoms.

Only problem is that where I live, boardgames aren’t really a hobby.

Even the expat community aren’t that interested from what I can gather.

Woe is me!

Still, it’s Jan 24th and the temperature is 20°c at 0836 so pros and cons. …

I still want this game. …

Whereabout is that?

Based on the temperature, I’m guessing nowhere near where I live (London), so I’ll be unlikely to be able to offer a suggestion to join our group. But if you are ever in the area, you’d be most welcome to.

Canary Islands.

Boardgaming just doesn’t seem a big deal in Spain.

Computer gaming seems to be on the up, but mostly for consoles.

Oh man, we have quite some in Madrid, but I can see how smaller places might struggle, although last time I visited my hometown (small 80k people city) they had opened a boardgame bar that, judging by how full it was at the time, seemed to be quite sucessful.

Of course, they don’t have to compete with scuba diving as a hobby, which might explain your situation.

Just laminate the boardgame and take it underwater.

Pushed forward in Gloomhaven yesterday, and managed to get access to the enhancement system that improves the cards. Now I have to find out what to do for my brute. In addition, we have now advanced to a stage where I can actually get something on my Brute’s personal quest done. I’ll miss the guy when he retires, but I think that it is still a while until that happens.

We have had our fair share of luck (self-made or not), so we have not failed any missions yet. It has been very close a couple of times, though.

I saw someone had organized the monster cards into envelopes, and it seems like it helps with reducing setup time.

Justice League: Dawn of Heroes is out in Europe, but there is no distribution deal in the Americas because of Warner. I really want to get a copy, so if you see it available for a shop that will ship overseas be sure to pass the link my way :) REALLY want this one! So far no luck!

I’m going to kick myself. I held off buying Gloomhaven on Amazon because my bday is coming up and I had it on my list, so didn’t want to spoil receiving it as a present… but for awhile there it was priced at about $140… and now the price has shot back up to $250.

My copy of Rising Sun came in. Looking forward to messing with it.

$140 is MSRP. Anything higher than that is scalpers trying to make a buck on low stock.

God help me I’m thinking about the $85 Daedalus organizer for Gloomhaven.

Gloomhaven has so much stuff that I think some sort of organizer is practically required. I have the Broken Token one and am glad I had it ready to go when the game showed up.

I just did the cheap 4-Plano box thing and it works great.

We’ve just finished the first real story arc in Gloomhaven The Necromancer after 10 scenarios. We failed 1, and came damn close a few others- literally exhausting ourselves as we win. This mission was also the trigger for the endgame of my personal quest, so I’m looking forward to seeing where things go from here.

Just got back from playing Dinosaur Island which I liked a lot. It was heavier than I expected but still did well with the theme. Maybe it’s a bit overstuffed, it has worker placement, buying, then more worker placement, and then a phase where the dinosaurs eat people. Will definitely play again.

That’s the best organizer, I think. I went with an EU based one, because this one would be double the price with shipping (over 100€) but of all the ones I’ve seen it seems the most practical.

I have many organizers (I like heavier games than my usual group, so it helps to sell them if setup is taken care of) but Gloomhaven is the only game I wouldn’t dread to open without an organizer.

While I can understand why some people want to use plastic sleeves on their board games (I kicked that habit back in my Decipher LotR TCG days), I wonder if Gloomhaven might make someone reconsider doing so. The cost of the recommended amount of sleeves for Gloomhaven in one store over here costs as much as the game itself.

Played my first game of Twilight Imperium (third edition) last weekend. I started the game by not really liking it much, but as the day went on I ended up liking it quite a bit.

One of the best things about the game is the movement mechanic. You put a token from a limited supply on a sector to activate it. That allows you to do things like building ships but also moving ships toward that sector. After you activated a sector, everything that is in there is basically locked down for the rest of the round. Quite an elegant way to make it so that you can not build and attack with the same ships in the same round.

Now there were a few fundamental problems with the game that I have since learned are fixed in the fourth edition. Especially when it comes to scoring points. At the beginning of your turn you can choose a role, Puerto Rico style. One of the roles just gives you two points straight up (out of the 10 needed). I realised how over powered that was and just began positioning myself to pick that role as much as possible. It made me win the game. The other scoring opportunities trickle out during the game and are of less value than just picking up that role. Crazy to make something so uninteresting that important.

Another issue that I had with the game was the player aid. There are a ton of ship types in the game which are al referred to by name and there is no hint on the player aid of what those ships look like. This made the learning curve much harder than needed the first few rounds.

Funny enough I thought I would hate the die roles for combat actions, but it ended up kind of liking the suspense. It was also simple enough so that you could make a fair assessment of the risk you were taking.