Boardgaming in 2019!

The rules are indeed easy to follow. Although a little on the too long side (lots of pages for the amount of rules). Thankfully they solve that with the play aids. It feels like a really solid package.

By reading the rules it seems you want to be diving and rolling from behind and from the sun… climbing on the attack seems like a recipe for disaster.

Hopefully this weekend I’ll be able to have a go at it and test this theory.

Historically accurate or they all get asterisks.

Played my 3rd game of the first scenario of Deep Madness

Got my kid to finally play the game after 2 failed solo attempts. The only problem is that my kiddo kept sealing himself in rooms and did nothing to help me collect the clues and get to the final room…failed miserably again.

Deep Madness is great. I have lowered the difficulty a little not using devour tokens and also only allowing 2 monster card activations each turn (instead of 3 on some turns) and I still get my ass handed to me. It’s not super unfair though as I have not used each individual’s special talents to their max benefit and have not tried a few different strategies that I’ve read work a bit better.

Right now, this is my favorite board game…for solo for sure. You can add elite monsters to make the game more difficult (no way will I ever do that), and you can adjust many things to lower the difficulty without changing too much of how the game works. There are many, many expansions also with new good guys, and multiple new monsters and scenarios.

It takes up a little too much room on the table and there are some fiddly parts but I kept It on my table for 3 weeks which is amazing considering all the new games I bought during that time.

I got a weird kickstarted game called Imperius earlier this week. After a few plays, I’m really digging it. The game is inspired by Dune - intending to evoke the violent political maneuvering of that setting with a really small set of cards.

The twist in this game is you draft people to play from a set of cards containing your faction’s cards and your opponents’ cards. When you play your opponents’ cards, it’s still their card, giving them points or power. But by drafting it you get to choose where and how they’ll use it. It’s incredibly confusing in your first hand trying to figure out what you’re even supposed to do with other player’s cards, but it builds into some really interesting situations.

So maybe at first you’re playing opponent’s cards to bad places just to make sure they don’t score, but mostly you’re still trying to grab and use your own cards. Then you’ll see a basic combo where you draft your own assassin and an opponent’s noble. This way you can guarantee your assassin will kill a noble, which gets you points. Next you might draft your opponent’s military to shut down a different opponent’s commander, guaranteeing you still have military control of a planet at the end of a round. Then when you’re really in it, you’ll intentionally pass opponents your own cards because you’re pretty sure you know how they’ll play them and confidently work off that assumption.

It’s a weird game that sometimes feels super chaotic and impossible to control, and at other times plays off exactly the way someone planned. Because it jumps between these two states, it makes the high of your plan succeeding so much higher, like Paul Atreides looking through all the possible futures and choosing the one he wants. But the lows can also really burn. The game is played to 20 points and I’ve had a round where an opponent scored 11 points and I scored -1. Personally, I really like drama, so it’s worth it for me.

I also like games that feel out there. This reminds me a bit of Millenium Blades, Archipelago, or A Study in Emerald in the sense that it feels different from most board games, will probably have strong detractors, and probably won’t be copied because of how confusing it is. Unlike those, though, it’s only a 45 minute game played with a couple dozen cards.

Wow, thanks for the heads up on this one. Too late to get in on the Kickstarter, but it sounds great, and I’m always on the lookout for good 2p games.

I haven’t actually played it at 2 yet, but like it at 3 and 4 players. I’m pretty sure it’s coming to retail at some point, but you can at the very least pre-order it from Kolassal’s website.

What the what!?!

Ah, I see. I will have to check this out. Thanks!

Hmm… Let me qualify that. Like those games, I think Imperius is going to be most enjoyable to people who play board games regularly so they can appreciate the ways in which it’s weird.

It is always fun to see those types of games, especially when they are good and not just gimmicks (which I think all those three qualify as).

I guess BattleCon also fits the list.

Interesting! I played it once and it didn’t really click, but I’ve been meaning to try it again with different characters.

I got to play Archipelago again a few days ago (it had been a few years since I’d last played). I really love that game. It’s so uncomfortable in every possible way so quickly. I think it’s the best use of semi-co-op mechanic by a mile because of negotiation. Arguing about who’s going to save the day is way more fun when that argument includes a price tag. And when the theme makes “saving the day” feel uncomfortable again as soon as the relief vanishes.

Managed to start a basic game campaign. Two missions. First one I downed tree bombers. Second one I down one thanks to pre-existing damage and then in the first move he escorts manage to force exit 4 of my 6 planes and kill one of them. I had to abort the mission afterwards.

Pity. Because escorts were leaving on turn 3 (so they only got 3 attacks) and the turn limit was 10.

I’ll keep playing the campaign and see where it goes. I liked what I played a lot.

And I agree. Not only are the rules clear. The play aids are freaking amazing at making everything super easy to search.

Holy crap three bombers on the first mission? My first mission…did not go as well (as detailed in my AAR!).

oh damn! Its out… the solo game of superhero gloomhaven. PNP contest submission that looks awesome!

Teotihucan arrived. My kind of Christmas miracle.
Now if I could just get Nemesis off the boat.

Heads up the designer of Imperius is not happy with Kolassal Games. Not that you shouldn’t pick it up, but I know the designer had a lot of expansions planned and now that’s not happening, at least not with him attached.

Are you talking about this kind of awkward thread? That wasn’t how I read it, nor how the designer seems to want it interpreted. He also had an interesting, perhaps related, write up on how he likes to run one-off Kickstarter projects (because it’s financially safer and lets him experiment with more games). Whatever the case, hopefully more publishers end up wanting to re-publish his games because they all sound neat and are all out of print! (Except Cry Havoc, which I already own and also love.)

Wife and I found a fun bar game. Dungeon Mayhem, easy to carry in a coat pocket, plays quickly and easy to teach. You pick one of four D&D characters and play their deck to be the last one surviving. It isn’t well balanced, the rogue seems to be the most consistent, but easy to play even a couple beers in.

Got Arkham Horror 3rd edition for Christmas and finally tried it.

…and everyone had a frustrating miserable time.

I could write a ton about this, but basically it felt like they copied (exactly) the monster mechanics from the card game in how tough it was to deal with monsters while throwing them at you in traditional Arkham Horror numbers. It’s the exact same card game mechanics where monsters “engage” you and you have to spend an action to fight or evade them, with any monsters still left alive (or unexhausted from not being evaded) getting an automatic free hit after the players go.

But in the card game there weren’t as many monsters, you got 3 actions, and no restrictions on repeating them. In AH3, you only get 2 actions and cannot repeat any. So absolute most you can kill one monster per turn. Oh yeah and half the monsters are fast hunters who can attack you from across the entire board for half your health in one shot. It’s virtually a death sentence to attack more than one monster in a space, yet the monsters will always be clustered due to how spawning works (they all spawn in the same spot and move towards that same spot).

Just blargh. It really feels like the card game where it was balanced around 3 unrestricted actions per turn, but last minute they cut it down to 2 non-repeatable ones in AH3 for no reason without rebalancing it. Imagine dealing with monsters the card game way, but only equipped with the action point system from Eldritch.

We called the game after 6 turns because even with boosted strength and a shotgun, we just couldn’t come close to dealing with the flood of monsters (half the monster in the “beginner” scenario are hounds of tindalos, for crying out loud!).

We’ll give it another shot but if it continues to be like the first game, this thing is getting sold so fast. It came off like a half baked attempt to transition the card game over into a traditional Arkham Horror game.

Picked up the following this weekend but haven’t played either yet: Dinosaur Island, Villainous. Have we talked about either of these? Rules look good on both and have decent ratings. I’m sure someone in the old thread talked about DI but wasn’t sure on the Villain game.

I picked up games as gifts for my kids: Forbidden Sky, Gizmos, and Near and Far. We played Forbidden Sky yesterday (opened early) and it’s amazing how Leacock continues to keep pumping out these games, but with subtly different ideas every time. This one is a more overt continuation of the trilogy than Forbidden Desert was (your FD airship appears on the starting platform for FS), and features some interesting mechanics. I’m not sure it’s as elegant as either of the other two yet, and the components are kind of gimmicky. To escape the… sky?.. you have to complete a for-real electrical circuit, which makes the included rocket flash and make blast-off noises. The next entry will probably be something like Forbidden Space? Forbidden Moon? Forbidden Planet.