Do you think they’ll add the prepared card symbols from WW1? I bet they will at least tighten the point spread for the mercy rule and maybe switch to less frequent scoring. And bring over the rule that lets you fish for build cards.
I can’t see Quartermaster General going over well for a casual gamer group. It can get frustrating “running out of gas”, playing Italy isn’t nearly as fun, and I can’t imagine the Axis ever having a chance of winning unless the German player knows that the trick is fishing for two specific cards in their deck plus being familiar with all the trick cards the Russians can pull.
Plus…it’s just not a very well balanced or varied game without the expansions.
Ethnos is also enjoyable with two, by the way. It’s one of those games that scale really well.
The art/theme did mean I had a lot of convincing to do before my wife agreed to play. She enjoyed the game in the end, but it doesn’t look appealing to her at all, which is a shame considering what a strong design it is. (I like John Howe’s work fine, but the stuff he’s done for Ethnos is perhaps a bit on the bland side, despite the fact that there are a few interesting looking fantasy races in the game.)
I thought it went well with a pretty casual group (three couples where some spouses weren’t as into games, and Fluxx/Settlers/deck-of-cards casual) but I had to stress you just play a card, draw a card, and kind of framed the game as kind of a wacky take on WW2 where anything can go wrong and did the affable host thing instead of trying hard to plan and win. Not ideal but it’s hard to get to the table so I took the opportunity.
Wohoo, my copy of Irish Gauge arrived. Looking forward to trying it.
I really like Irish Gauge. It’s a good game to start with, but in addition to that it’s the commercial production of a Winsome design so far.
The Queen versions tended to be horribly over-produced: garish, hard to read, and really expensive. And then on the other hand you had the Fred / Eagle ones that were ugly as fuck (basically it’s like they’d given a brutalist architect the task of doing the graphics design for a boardgame), and again really expensive.
Irish Gauge avoids all of that. The graphics design is quite pretty but never gets in the way of usability, and the price is quite reasonable. It seems like the Winsome back catalogue is being licensed at a furious rate now that Bohrer has retired. I hope Capstone got some of the other ones as well.
My copy of Tiny Epic Tactics arrived yesterday.
One of these days I’m going to make an active effort to get every Tiny Epic game I haven’t played yet to the table. It’s a lot of them at this point, since they keep releasing more!
I wish they would add the changes from WW! But I found a thread where the designer says here are the big changes, although still not very specific: New edition | Quartermaster General
Improving the play balance
Improving experience of first time players
More strategic choices (e.g. Axis Economic Warfare, Japan first)
Clarifying some poorly written cards
Nerfing some overpowered cards, replacing or upsizing the janky ones"
1 more piece, 3 more cards
Just a couple rules tweaks
Plus expansions will be reprinted.
EDIT: He says that the Prelude expansion remains fully compatible. That’s a good one!
I think my wife finally wore down from me talking about Too Many Bones and she told me just to order it. :-)
Bought this today. We played several rounds of the starter menu with 3, then 4, then 5 people and everybody had a great time.
It’s a great game both gamers and non gamers can enjoy. Light, attractive and fun.
The starter menu is perfect to introduce players to the game (it’s the only menu in the previous edition). And before you know it, the non gamers are comfortable with card drafting mechanics.
It’s a game pretty much everyone could/should own.
Too Many Bones with 40 Days in Daelore is on its way! Most of the additional characters are out of stock so it made the choice easier whether I should get an extra character or this expansion. Needed to get $150 to get the free shipping.
Totally. I have a copy of the base game that I throw in a bag (along with Exploding Kittens) whenever I’m going just about anywhere with other people. And we have a copy of Party that I play with my kids at home. Fun, simple and elegant.
So we played our sixth game of King’s Dilemma last night, and it continues to be good fun. It isn’t a ‘gamers game’, more of a social experiment. Gameplay just consists of drawing a card and reading out the current dilemma, and then each House (player or group of players) votes on it with some very straightforward and simple rules. Each Dilemma tells you some vague minor effects (national wealth might go up, knowledge might go down) to begin with, and one the vote is resolved you find the real effects- there can be unintended consequences, and things might move more than expected. After a number of these dilemmas, the current king dies or abdicates, and the game is over. Each House gets VPs based on their current goals (set at the beginning of the game), and receives Campaign VPs of a sort, though you don’t know how those are to be valued until the full campaign is over.
The campaign ends when all six storylines are finished- we’ve finished two, and there is one we haven’t even started yet. The stories get started and finished as a consequence of the dilemmas you draw, so it’s a little random, but each decision you make, you might unlock more cards in that storyline to add to the deck, so it increases the likelihood of continuing any given story. Kind of like a collaborative Choose Your Own Adventure. With consequences.
The rulebook opens with a disclaimer that “any of the atrocities depicted in this game are not condoned by the writers, publishers, etc, etc”. We saw a little of that during our first several games - “do we condone slavery by trading with these slavers and it’ll make us money”, as an example. Last night, though, things got dark. This game is not for kids.
I think that’s the classic menu (Dumpling, chopsticks, pudding). The one we used is actually called “my first meal”, which has miso, tea, green tea ice cream. Want to try the classic menu next.
Ah, didn’t realise that. That’s indeed different to the classic menu. I like the variety the party version adds when I play a friend’s copy.
Yeah, me too. I had looked at the original before, but wasn’t sure. The ability to change things up makes it a really compelling purchase.
A question has made its way to me, and I thought people here might have good answers. What’s the modern equivalent of HeroQuest - a not super heavy weight dungeon RPG-like game that a parent could play with their 12 and 14 year old kids?
Descent/Imperial Assault?
The D&D tile games – especially the ones like Tomb, could be good for this.