“Broom Service?”
Not enough dimensions.
A few on that list I totally don’t get. A few I haven’t played. And a #1 pick that is indisputably correct, come at me bro
I know You like solitaire but that looks tedious and precarious. I can just imagine my pet or even my own clumsiness knocking that over mid game.
This is almost as bad as the IGN boardgame list.
I get some of these games, but I’m very curious what the criteria was to be on this list.
Good lord that list. Intentional click bait picks?
I’d love to see a Best/Disappointing/Surprising/Overrated article for board games.
Disappointing: Every Fantasy Flight game that had promise, but fell victim to their business approach.
Surprising: Cursed Court (competitive Craps meets Texas Hold’em)
Overrated: The Mind, Gloomhaven, Terraforming Mars, Root
I played Warcry yesterday, Games Workshop’s new fantasy skirmish game. Played three matches in a matter of hours, and had some fun. However, my overall impressions were kind of “meh”. It is a perfect example of modern GW game design – shorter games, simpler (more game-y) rules, but with a heavy dose of randomness. The games were almost too short, and it felt like there was not really enough time to make any kind of strategy or even respond to players actions effectively. Kill Team also had this problem, though I feel like a focus on ranger weapons gives the players a bit more flexibility.
I also played some Warlords games recently, including Black Powder and the new Black Seas. Black Powder is a really fun, relatively simple Napoleonic ruleset. However, it turns out that the rules are written for a huge 6’ x 10’ table (much bigger than ours) and so we cut all distances in half. The rules, though streamlined compare to other systems, still take some time to learn, but the game flows really smoothly once you do. Can’t wait to play this more in the upcoming months!
I also played a simple learning game of Black Seas. It’s a tall ship wargaming system that uses 1/600 miniatures. I think the basic rules that we used are a bit too simplistic, and that you need to incorporate some of the advanced rules to really add more fun to the game. Also, the wake marker that you put under the ship to mark it’s sail level is super fiddly, and I think we might track this another way in future games. The components that come with the starter set are also kind of disappointing, especially the card-stock “clips” that mark ship health. That said, I would really like to give this another play, especially once we can get more ships into play, since I think the simple rules will work better with larger fleets.
Some big site (can’t remember now but it may have been IGN) posted a christmas buyers guide and every game was an FFG buisness model game. It was just absurd.
Gift guides are almost always written to maximize Amazon affiliate income and SEO. I rarely take them seriously.
The author (singular) had played the game and liked it.
Well, sadly, it’s not a solitaire game. As for tedious, it depends. Meticulous, to be sure, as Academy Games mainly does wargames. But it’s also wacky with crazy powers and stuff blowing up and cool character abilities and units jumping around in and out of windows and over alleys. It’s also very well paced and chock full of interesting decisions.
As for precarious, I was worried, too. Turns out it’s surprisingly solid. Some really good workmanship in terms of how the multileveled stuff stands firm. The posts screw into the posts beneath them. But to collapse buildings when they explode, you just lift the top floor off, unscrew the posts under it, and put the flipped over floor on its rubble side where the posts were. Voila, collapsing building. Now, urk, roll damage for anyone who was standing there.
However, getting our fat fumblefingers in there was another matter entirely. But the danger of knocking stuff over was negligible.
-Tom
You can do that? Didn’t that mess anything up? I’m trying to wrap my head around this. You can’t just halve one of the gameplay systems, can you?
It never ceases to disappoint me how many games expect you to play several sessions with gimped rules because they’re worried about scaring people off with too much complexity. Hiding significant parts of your design behind the claim of “advanced rules” is such a cop out.
-Tom
Ah it is a miniatures games. All i know about the game is it’s based on a video game of the same name.
Dont get me wrong it looks cool but usually when you post pics of what’s on your table it is something you are playing solitaire and that photo looks like there are 6 different characters and all sorts of other stuff and I was just thinking man what a pain.
My initial instinct was to protest, “No it isn’t!” but I guess it is, isn’t it?
The level artwork has a lot of visual noise, but Academy Games did a great job of putting a strictly informational overlay on the tiles that you can see through the artwork. Still, it’s easy to lose sight of objective markers, and there were eight of them on the mission we played. I ended up putting colored cubes on each marker, but even then, it’s easy to lose sight of cubes and even figures in all that 3D. This is definitely a game where you’re standing and moving around the table a lot to get a sense for what’s where.
Actually, I bet you’d like it.
-Tom
When I saw that picture, I thought it was Apocalypse Chaos, a co-operative game published by ZMan games. My copy is still suffocating in shrink wrap, and I bought it purely because the premise looked interesting at the time. A 3-dimensional board tactical style game sounded great! Trouble is, I just never had the compulsion to pull it out from my cupboard. One day maybe, but currently Aeons End and the oodles of content within it and the other two big box games has occupied my board gaming time this month or so (excluding the Legacy Version).
When I read your thread about trying to sensibly narrate the events in Eldritch Horror, I figured you’d need a natural 7 in sanity and a 4 in willpower with the amulet that gives +2 to withstand the horrors of trying to make sense of the narrative that is Eldritch Horror. I remember Shut Up and Sit Down made a good point in their review of the game where, when the game works, it is very, very good. And then out of nowhere the narrative seems to grind its gears to a halt as an event happens that just seems so out of place. I’ve encountered that myself, part of the joy of all expansions being thrown in together.
In saying all that, you touched on what I do like within the emergent narrative of Eldritch Horror, the rise and/or fall of investigators over the course of the game. The lowly heroic waitress rising up out of nowhere smiting otherworldly creatures, while there is a shady photographer treading the edges of sanity as a dark pact he signed with blood is looking to be repaid in full come the next reckoning.
I really wish my humble little desk could hold Eldritch Horror and it worked nicely as a solo experience, but with all the moving parts and action across boards and reckonings, trying to control 4 investigators… yeah it’s a job and a half for one person.
It actually works very well. Its basically just scaling move distances and firing ranges by half, which to be honest, were actually pretty long to begin with compared to other miniature wargames (i.e. 12" infantry move compared to 6" in most games). That said, we are trying to figure out if we can fit a bigger table into our tiny games club so we can play with original measurements. It looks like many people convert full-size ping pong tables for this kind of game.
Agreed, the advanced rules are usually the best part of this kind of game! Whats ridiculous is that Black Seas basic rules feels more like something like X-Wing than a naval simulation.
Warlord’s own Hail Caesar (their Ancients Ruleset) includes rules for different miniature scales (because fielding an army in the standard 28mm can be a huge commitment).
You cut distances, but also formation widths.