That’s not too bad. Thanks!
I got some Spirit Island plays in this weekend during a trip to a cabin with some friends. We played a 4 player game with the 4 low-complexity spirits, progression cards, no scenario, no adversary, but with a blight card. The whole thing took about 3 hours, but it worked surprisingly well. I had thought the potential interactions between all of the spirits would be overwhelming, but we all got kind of a general idea of where we could help each other if necessary, focused on the places where we could exert influence, and called for help when we needed it. It really does work out that the number of interactions make an alpha player nearly impossible; a very nice balance that the designers struck. It was a lot of fun, and we handily drove the white dudes off of the island.
Then me and the other board game enthusiast played another 2p round the next morning. To get a better feel for the more complex variants of the game, we tried out A Spread of Rampant Green and Ocean’s Hungry Grasp against the British adversary in the Guard the Island’s Heart scenario. This was really a lot of fun. I love how thematic the spirits’ powers are, with Oceans pulling presence into and out of the ocean like a tide, and Green popping up in all of the wetland and jungle spots, rotting the timbers of the invaders’ houses and making it impossible for them to build.
So far the game has been great fun to play, but not particularly challenging. It’s time to ramp up the difficulty and try one of the harder scenarios and/or a higher level adversary. I’m also excited to break out the expansion content and see how that works. This game is fantastic: it’s probably my favorite co-op.
Dude, you have so much cool stuff in store for you.
-Tom
The game is as hard as you want it to be, and in all kinds of neat ways :)
Crack out that expansion, too!
That’s the 3rd edition of Flick Em Up BTW.
I played Firenze online with some people from around here and thought it was really neat! I’d very much like to play it in person. Andreas Steding seems like a pretty safe designer to buy a game from. The Staufer Dynasty and Hansa Teutonica are easy to recommend Euros. (Though I don’t like any of them enough to own them and don’t plan on picking up Firenze, but I really hope someone I know does!)
Just finished first full game of Nemo’s War.
255 points, anti-imperial motive. Granted this was at sailor difficulty. Is everyone else playing at Officer or Captain?
Pulled off a bunch of bold attacks to sink an entire ocean of non-warships with a single action point, mitigating notoriety by doing uprisings everyone which feeds into max anti-imperial points. Got the sunken treasure fleet adventure which gives +2 to uprisings and raises the limit of cubes to 12, coupled that with the arcane library upgrade for another +1. Placed the max 12 cubes for 72 points, avoided lull turns after act 1 so no uprisings would be crushed.
Had cleared out nearly all non-warships, had no desire to face the remaining later warships and had no more uprisings to place, so when the negotiation event came that would let me end the game early for 12 adventure points, I took it.
Oooh been waiting for the repackaged Stone Age to land!
Okay, @TheRockSal, I need to decompress. Let’s talk Deep Madness!
I just passed the first scenario after three tries. I can’t imagine it’s possible to win if you’re playing with a kiddo faffing about locking doors. It really is a sort of puzzle, requiring a shifting in thinking, a lot of optimization, and a fair bit of luck.
The shift in thinking for me, a turning point actually, was realizing it’s not about killing monsters; it’s about managing them. Assault rifles and SMGs are all good and well, but you know what’s better? The electric rod’s ability to push a monster back or the rivet gun’s ability to drop a slow token on a monster.
Because the real trick in that first scenario is the depleting oxygen. I’m convinced you have to get through the flooded passageway at the far side of the map before the oxygen drops to zero. At that point, if your characters have accumulated any sort of damage – which of course they have – it will be impossible to get through those four flooded tiles.
So it’s run run run, which necessarily involves splitting into two groups to grab the clue tokens. I had previously figured everyone would be better clumped together, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. One of the designers posted a list of tips on BGG that I found pretty instructive, and it included splitting up your characters to better manage the time pressure.
I also took to heart the designer’s comment about using sanity. During my successful playthrough, I was freely spending it to try for better rolls in clutch situations, and then burning a turn resting. Seems to me it’s better to spend two turns exhausting sanity and then recovering it instead of spending the two turns attempting an action. Because based on a character’s sanity, which seems to range between three and five, that’s the difference between two attempts, one per action, or three to five attempts. Math! Optimization! Mitigated luck!
At first, I was a bit dismayed that Deep Rising seems like a glib Zombicide style of dice-hucking minis-scootching game. But now that I see the interplay of sanity, monster types, objectives, and character powers, I’m satisfied that there’s a lot more going on here.
Did you use any of the expansion characters? How many were you playing? Did any of the monsters types give you much trouble?
For me it was the anything that moves twice instead of once. I ended up with a ton of Hysterias either hot on my trail, or glommed onto my characters. And I got superlucky trapping a mess of Mind Eaters behind a hatch.
Just to be a stickler – I’m nothing if not a rules guy! – the only official variant to make the game easier is starting each character with a syringe card. Otherwise, any adjustments are just house rules. Which is fine, but I found it pretty rewarding struggling through the puzzle of that first scenario. Of course, I didn’t have a kiddo faffing about locking doors. :)
Have you tried any of the other scenarios yet? I’m torn between moving on to the second scenario, or retrying this first scenario with some of the expansion characters.
-Tom
I’m newer here, and read through a bunch of this thread and added a bunch of board games to my ever-growing purchase list (THANKS GUYS…). I have a few I’ve played recently that I love. I’ll admit that I’m not a huge “in it for the long haul” player type - I prefer games that don’t take all night when I have a gathering. I like to be able to bring 3-4 games to the table (that said, I am super curious about Gloomhaven and Twilight Imperium for at least one playthrough).
Last night at my local hobby shop’s game night, a fellow brought in a copy of Wingspan, which he got early through a Stonemaier subscription. I love this game.
It’s gorgeous, for one thing. Aesthetic is something I consider heavily when purchasing games. It looks like pictures out of a field book, and the boards that you play on actually fold up into little bird watching journals, which is such a nice little detail. The game elements are well made, the mechanics are fun and interesting, and it’s a lot like bird watching in general: quiet and relaxed, but the game is definitely not without a level of competition.
With a full table of 5, it took about 2 hours to play through for our first time, which is a comfortable average for me. Once players know what they’re doing, I imagine it’ll go a little faster. There are lots of different ways to score in this game, including with hidden objectives and random objectives that are displayed at the start of the game for the whole table.
Each bird card has a fact written on the bottom of it, which is a fun little detail. In all, the game ties aesthetic, mechanics, and gameplay together in a fun way that isn’t too aggressively competitive (none of us were violently vying for birds, since we all were approaching our victory objectives differently), so it’s nice for a cool-down game. I believe that Wingspan will hit my table often once I purchase it and bring it home.
The other thing I played last weekend was Victorian Masterminds by Cool Mini or Not. I love the idea behind this game! Thematically, everything ties together beautifully from the determination of the first player (whomever has the best evil laugh), all the way to the multiple paths to villainous victory. Players have several options to pursue in order to gain the most Mayhem Points, which ensures a varied experience from game to game, which gives it a high replay value.
I enjoyed my playthrough with a glass of wine in my very best “evil villain” goblet (which has a cat for the stem, because of course it does). This game is fun and accessible, one that I also really love and intend to add to my (already too large) collection.
Anyway, as I said, I read through most of the thread, but apologize if these have been covered and if I missed them. I love to write about, read about, analyze, and banter about board games, so uhh…I’ll probably be in this thread a lot.
Glad to engage with all of you!
Good write up! I’m pretty interested in Wingspan because I’ve seen nothing but quality from Stonemaier so far. I keep hearing good things about it so will look to pick it up at some point.
That looks like one for the list. A board game which encourages hamming it up? Right in my wheelhouse.
Welcome to Qt3!
I’m looking to get rid of my copy. I’d give it to you for shipping if you’re in the U.S. Send me a PM.
Victorian Masterminds looks neat!
Another plus on Wingspan is I quite like the solo game. It’s the only solo board game I’ve really clicked with so far. Just so quick and easy to set up and plays in about 30-45 minutes.
I actually didn’t realize there was a solo variant! I’ll be excited to take a look at it once I get a copy (assuming I can find one, I suspect they may be a hot buy for a lot of people based on what I’ve heard).
That wine is just begging to get knocked over onto the board. Gives me shivers just looking at it.
We had a wine incident with Gloomhaven, though it only affected a single class board and its character sheets. So no real permanent harm!. One incident in about 30 sessions isn’t too terrible but would be more distraught if it happened to a regular game and its board!
I can assure it you was placed there ONLY for purposes of a picture! Otherwise, it remained on the buffet behind me. ;) The gaming table I’m building has cup holders for this precise reason, lol.