Just got to Chapter 6 of Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon (as opposed to the three other upcoming campaigns). I could go on for ages about all the cool things we’ve done and all the little tricks the game has up its sleeve, but it’d be heavily spoilery and probably not all that interesting to people not madly in love with this game also. But it’s really firing on all cylinders, and there’s a bunch of obvious ways the game could have gone differently already, both based on choices we made in where we chose to go, narrative choices made, and in the characters we’ve chosen to play. The combat and diplomacy systems continue to be challenging and very satisfying, although we’ve gotten enough experience at this point to both pick up game-changing Skills (on our most advanced attributes) and make several upgrades to our combat and diplomacy decks. At this point I’ve gone hard into an Aggression strategy and my Beor is an absolute monster in combat (not least because of cards like Dire Rage that are directly powered by the now 5 points in Aggression that he has), and starting to be potentially really effective (at a price) in diplomacy (because of cards like Might Makes Right that, yes, are directly powered by his 5 points in Aggression). Ailei isn’t combat-effective to the same degree, but having picked up a Caution skill that halves the cost of her character-specific healing action is still a tremendous asset overall (and has regularly been able to harvest herbs and help people in need in settlements and such). She’s a powerhouse in diplomacy, too. And while she’s rarely one to progress combat, she does a lot to set me up to do it and/or defuse the enemy’s attacks.
Really impressed. One of my best results from Kickstarter in 7 years.
I have played the learn-to-play scenario from Tainted Grail and also the first chapter. I’m also really excited by what this game has on offer. It’s as if they’ve taken my favorite bits from 7th Continent, added more gameplay and some more narrative and made a much stronger set of rules that interlock nicely together.
It does have at least one misfire - it seems like the concept of Guardian enemies that stick around and move on the map if you escape from them (and sometimes spawn for other reasons) was supposed to be this big threatening complication, but since they move randomly, it’s been our experience that they just kind of sit around and don’t do anything until they fuck off from the die roll or the location they’re on falling into the wyrdness. This is what you’re meant to use the big fancy minis from the Monsters addon for, so those feel a bit pointless. But oh well. There is a separate mechanic a bit later that is, actually, a problem.
Speaking of kickstarters, did anyone back Victoriana 20 years ago? A very well-drawn solo or co-op mystery game that released recently. The first thing that jumped out to me was how small the board is. It made me realize that so many games have board bloat. For example, “Conspiracy: The Solomon Gambit,” one of my favorite games to play with family, is a re-release of a 1970’s Milton Bradley game. It also has a board that is approximately 10,000 times the size of the original’s small board. But, at least it folds.
So what’s the verdict on the Die Hard board game? I’m reading reviews that say it’s too lite for a meaningful strategy game, but too long to be a satisfying lite game. That the thieves either have to focus entirely on the heist and completely ignore McClane, or focus entirely on killing McClane and completely ignore the heist because either one is a win condition but they can’t afford to split their effort. Also the visual design looks amazingly bland and the miniatures like they’re one step away from being Funko Pop figures.
My wife and I have a couple of games of Too Many Bones under our belt. We are playing on the easiest difficulty and lost the first game and won the 2nd. The basic loop is pretty fun:
Draw an event
Pick one of two choices (usually). Sometimes it involves battles and sometimes not. I like getting to see the details for the event and the rewards to make an informed decision, so I don’t have to guess - does the designer want me to go through the swamp or the forest. I can see the challenges and rewards each may bring.
Combat difficulty scales for the number of party members and the day in your adventure and is played out on a small grid. Positioning matters, but since it is small you can’t really get for from the enemies. They will close in, but with positioning you can control who will close in and who may get stuck going around the other enemies.
I did use different build for my character each time and really liked the second build much more than I expected.
After the event you may get some loot and or training points to improve your character.
Keep completing events until you get enough progress points to go after the main baddie (tyrant). The longer you wait the more difficult the encounter, but also the more powerful you can become.
Even though for a particular tyrant you encounter the same set of creatures, you get a different mix of them in individual battles and you don’t necessarily see each one in a given adventure.
Coming from Gloomhaven…
This doesn’t really play similar at all and I knew this coming in. Since Too Many Bones isn’t a campaign (unless you get one of the expansions) , progression is quicker. You’re pretty much getting to improve your character in one or two ways after each event, and you may also get some loot.
Personally, as a whole I like the battle system and character customization in Gloomhaven better. Man I loved picking which card I wanted after leveling up. I also feel like the Gloomhaven battles have more decisions in them. Still, I like Too Many Bones quite a bit. Sometimes managing movement and deck management could get exhausting in Gloomhaven, trying to make sure your deck lasted long enough and you had the cards you need when you needed them. Too Many Bones battles move much more quickly. And more importantly, my wife seems to like Too Many Bones too.
Cleaning up all the dice, ships, cards, etc is more time consuming than I would have guessed. Anyway it feels long - I haven’t timed it.
Add to that that the act constrained gameplay is likely to become repetitive. Honestly, I haven’t heard too many good things about the game. The theme and presentation are appealing though.
I received Near and Far and the expansion as a gift. It was on my wish list. I’m very interested in getting it to the table, but… I’m not sure which table.
My regular game group would be happy to play “Arcade Mode”, where you don’t read from the story book. They might even be willing to play the intro scenario with quests.
But a 10 game campaign? Never gonna happen. The “Character Mode” appears to be fewer games, so that might be a better choice, but still, it may not happen.
On the other hand, I could rope my kids into it. It’s a bit more complex than what they’re used to, but maybe they would like it. However, they would probably prefer the coop mode (in the expansion), but there’s only two coop scenarios.
As I’ve said before, (IMO) his games lose a lot without the story books. Even the campaign doesn’t lean heavily on the story on that game, though. I’d say just introduce them to the full version, starting with the starter map (it’s standalone anyway).
The presentation is actually what sealed the deal for me not picking it up today (had it in my hands). The visual design is so bland and minimal that it looks like a homebrew. It’s like The Reckoners without the plastic trays.
edit: ouch. I went ahead and read the rules. It’s not that it’s objectively complicated, but for such a shallow and lite system, most of the rules are way more complicated than they needed to be. No casual player is going to jump in to this eager to play out the fussy lock combination mechanic for the thieves. It almost seems like it started out as a roll and move game, but at the last minute they tried to cover it up by using cards to move instead.
Hans can only be killed by moving him to the window space and pushing him out. He cannot be killed by shooting or punching, but you can move him a space every time you shoot or punch him. It’s like some NES video game boss. Scratch that, even the actual Die Hard NES game didn’t have mechanics that video gamey.
This game needed to take a cue from Big Trouble in Little China.
A buddy who boardgames picked up Klask over the holidays and it has been a huge hit. It’s kind of impossible to describe: it’s a dexterity game that at first glance looks like miniaturized air hockey. Each player has a “paddle” (it looks more like a really tall chess pawn) that is magnetized on the bottom. You control the paddle with another magnetized “handle” that you hold under the board. You’re trying to hit a ball into your opponent’s goal, which is a circular hole in the board. The twist is that there are 3 little white pieces on the board (we call them “biscuits”), which are also magnetized and will stick to your paddle. If you attract 2 of the biscuits to your paddle, you lose a point. Also, if you drop your paddle into your own goal, you lose a point. So the game becomes a clever game of zone control, where you’re trying to use the ball to hit the biscuits into your opponent’s territory, which constrains their motion and might give you an opportunity to score a goal. Fast paced, hilarious, and a ton of fun.
Klask 2.0 is out now (at least at Target) and contains little stickers to put on both sides of the Striker to reduce friction. And it contains new biscuits that are shorter and are supposed to move more. The klask 2.0 spare parts set also has these stickers and biscuits. You can tell you have 2.0 because they got rid of the super cool text-only front box and replaced it with a more conventional box cover like the one you see in the SUSD video.
I bought Klask from Target maybe 6 months ago but I don’t think I got the 2.0 version :(
I see the 2.0 spare parts on Amazon but they don’t really look any different or mention anything about the strikers having stickers.
Edit: After further investigation I’ve found that the 2.0 spare parts picture on Amazon doesn’t show the buiscuts butt on another site you can see them. I wonder if Amazon just photoshopped a 1.0 package to say 2.0.
I honestly am not sure what is going on with the photo or the description, which doesn’t mention the stickers. I just know I bought spare parts 2.0 from Amazon this week and it does contain stickers and the new biscuits. That is all you need to ‘upgrade’ to 2.0 although I don’t think it’s a radical change.
What?! There is a Big Trouble in Little China board game? How does it play? If it can recreate the silly goofy action of the movie I would be very interested.
