I like Don’t mess with Cthulhu, deluxe looks cool.
We unboxed my copy of Elder Sign last night and beat both Yig and Shubnigurath. Thumbs up!
Whelp, I did it. Busted into the Gloomhaven box. The suction on the lid when I tried to open it was…intimidating. 😲
But once inside it was about what I expected. Lots is sealed little boxes and decks. And while there are a lot of chits to punch out it doesn’t seem horrible.
Anyway, I’ll post any further adventures In the Gloomhaven thread. But here it is in its full glory on my kitchen table. 👍👍👍
Here we go:
I find it very irritating those counters and stack of counters are misaligned. I need hobbit fingers.
Now I’ll have images of misaligned stacks of counters in my head all day driving me insane. So thanks for that!
Edit: closeups of counters like this are far too interesting/exciting. I may have a problem
Anybody played the physical version of this?
Victory Point did a 2nd edition last year with much nicer components like they have for other games. The Kickstarter included a digital version, which I just picked up the iOS version and seems awesome. I’m surprised this wasn’t brought up when I was looking for light games that can accommodate 5 back in November.
Co-op and competitive modes, playable solo, up to 7 players. What’s not to like?
What is it? I can’t see Steam hosted (and a few other) images at work.
Gem Rush
It has the most generic possible app store trash name they could have picked. I would never look or think twice about a game with this name at a glance.
Fair, but it shares the name with the board game.
I kickstarted the board game version of Hand of Fate and finally arrived. I’m excited to try it out this weekend. I loved the card artwork in the video game and I’m pretty excited to have them in physical form. Guess I’m a sucker.
Oh no, you caught me doubling up comments! Yeah, I know, but it’s not, like, a great name for a board game, either…
True, lol. I mean, you aren’t wrong.
I got the ugly copy aka the earlier version. Some of the counters are misaligned too. At least yours will be nice to hold in the ✋
Played every scenario twice now in Arkham Horror 3rd edition (Echoes of the Deep 4 times until we could beat it), and I’m not sure about the replay value anymore.
There’s a slight but more variance than the card game scenarios, but not much and certainly not to the level of Eldritch Horror. If we did play again, it would just be self made challenges like beating scenarios with the weakest investigators.
Anybody ever have any experience with A Handful of Stars? It looks like copies are still available through Grey Fox Games, and I was considering picking it up.
I see that @Juan_Raigada has played and liked it, but he didn’t give much detail. I never played A Few Acres of Snow or Mythotopia.
I played it this weekend. I suggest getting this. The enclosed rules are not the best.
Thanks for the tip! My box came with “Rulebook 2.0” which made me think the new print run has better rules. No idea if that’s the case though.
One important rule we missed is you can only place one visitor per dinosaur. We also missed that increasing dinosaur capacity (paddock levels) requires money. I think by the time we got to the end we were too impatient and just skimmed.
This writeup on BGG looks like a good quickstart too. I am not sure what I don’t like about the official rules. I think they are too wordy, maybe.
It is a somewhat light 4x style game, with a deckbuilding component that works pretty well and plays fast, imho. Rules can be a little ambiguous, but they are not complicated
Compared to things like Eclipse or TI4, it is dead simple in terms of rules (one single ship type and one single base type. All the rules fit in one page, with explanation of card effects in a second one), but it is cleverly designed to actually allow for quite different styles of builds through deck and tableau building. Each race gets a handful of starting cards that might not seem like much, but do help to define possible strategies. The deckbuilding picks up from there, with the possibility of placing cards in reserve (building a tableau) and allowing for some powerful late game strategies.
I think the combat is great (you just commit fleets and energy to the combat and whoever commits more wins. Commitment is alternating). Attacker suffers half loses unless defender never managed to be on top. It is simple and feels like a high level view of the military operations (emperor and not admiral).
The variable setup can sometimes screw up some players, and the game does not really have a catch up mechanism other than a defender advantage in combat loses (in that way, it is certainly wargamey) so you can have a runaway leader problem. So some people feel it’s a little bit too random. I don’t agree, the wild swings in setup is what motivates trying new strategies.
It is a very simple design, in a good way. It is not as elegant as other 4X games (understanding elegance as interlinked simple systems that generate interesting dynamics, here you don’t have as many systems in play), but that allows it to have a much lower rule weight and a much simpler learning curve (in terms of reading the board). And it does give a feeling of a sweeping space opera. So for me it’s a keeper.
Theming is a little meh, though, in that you can tell the designer does not really care that much about sci-fi (race names are Aggroloids, Technoids, Culturemoogs… at least its easy to get what the primary strategy can be for them). This also means very little chrome in the rules (no central planet to fight around ala Eclipse or TI4) and a little bit of a wasted opportunity, imho.
Overall I really like it, and would recommend it, but I read FFG did buy the rights to the system to publish their own version. This game, with FFG strong theming (Twilight Imperium, probably) and some expansions to add a couple of additional systems would be even better. So you might want to wait for the FFG reissue, if it does happen (it was a while ago they got the license and I heard nothing about it since).
Wow, I appreciate the prompt and thorough write-up!
I think I will go ahead and pick it up. I’ll let you know what I think when I eventually have the opportunity to play it.