Yeah, I can respect a few of the gameplay improvements Space Base makes, but it has no character compared to Machi Koro. Every card quickly becomes a collection of stats. They also have no thematic relationship to each other. No dairy farms that fuel your cheese factory or harbors that enable sushi stores and tuna boats.
(Still… sigh… When the SB campaign expansion comes out, set one aside for me, @vesper.)
Or you could just get rid of both those games and play Dice CIty instead which is a better game than Machi Koro. I haven’t played space base so I can’t compare it to that.
Does anyone know anything about the FFG game Outer Rim? It looks like it has elements of Firefly.
My wife, son and I got to play our first game of Franchise today. We all really enjoyed it.
You are the owners of brand new franchises in a small American town in the 60ies. But your eyes are set on becoming the king of all franchises across the whole country.
One of the most striking elements of the game is the game board. It’s full of twisting roads, cheap shortcuts, expensive motorways and opens up a bewildering set of possibilities when you wonder where your little franchise will expand next.
There is no luck in this game. No card draws. No dice rolls. Only you, your plans and your ability to react to your opponents’ moves. You should expand and have a presence everywhere. But that’s expensive. You should ensure your franchises dominate the biggest scoring cities. But doing so lowers your income. And so on… Every move has pluses and minuses.
The game is also very simple to learn. The 5 turn phases become completely intuitive within a turn or 2. And even though I was the one who had read the rules, my wife was giving strategy tips within minutes… And managed to completely obliterate my son and I on score.
Fun time and I’m looking forward to applying what I learned in game 1 in our next battle of the franchises.
The Franchise board and your description of it remind me of Power Grid. How does this compare, if you’ve played both? I’m intrigued by the franchise theme.
his does not track with any of our experiences with Wingspan through 5-6 plays. Maybe give it another shot with different people.
No Pun Included came to a somewhat similar conclusion to @cpugeek13 . The game doesn’t connect with everyone. Not surprising. It’s a vast hobby covering many tastes these days.
Alas, I’ve never played Power Grid. So I couldn’t say.
Good lord. Shut Up & Sit Down’s review of Blood on the Clocktower is…gushing, and that’s putting it mildly.
Someone brought a demo copy to a local night. It just felt like a 2 hour version of One Night Ultimate Werewolf. “You get one more vote after you’re killed” was the only differentiating selling point, which doesn’t count for much when the game is 2 hours.
$100!!!
Yeah, I think the best social deduction games are both simple and (relatively) quick. Blood on the Clocktower looks like neither of those. And that price tag — good lord!
I haven’t watched the SUSD review yet, though I’ve read a bunch of the criticism. I didn’t think very highly of them before (they seem to be very inconsistent in their recommendations ), but this seems like a new low.
I dunno, I’ve found them pretty consistent in their tastes, I just don’t agree with their priorities very often.
It’s hard to argue that they don’t have the best writing/editing around, but their final opinions…
…are actually so off from mine, that they wrap back around to being useful reviewers since I just go by the exact opposite of their recommendation. It’s worked pretty well so far!
Blood on the Clocktower gets their “best board game out right now” stamp. Ouch. (their previous best board game ever was Terra Mystica, even after Gaia Project came out)
Sometimes though you have no idea where they’re coming from or even if they played the game they’re talking about. They give a thumbs down to Scythe, then say a better alternative is Cosmic Encounter. Thumbs down to Blood Rage, say Battlelore is a better alternative. huh???
Huh, I think Scythe is radically overrated and Terra Mystica is a top 5 game for me. I guess board games are somewhat subjective. Apparently they enjoyed BotCT, but they also produced a 20 minute video explaining why they liked it and what kind of game it is, so people could make their own decisions about it. I don’t have a problem with any of that.
My problem is that this is a Kickstarter game. And a game published by a company who have never run a Kickstarter before nor even published a board game before. They’ve said up-front that they don’t have fulfillment and shipping companies lined up. They’re using Panda for manufacturing, but this felt-lined thing is a new process and who knows how that will go. None of that is spelled out in the video, which I’m kind of nonplussed by. Backing this game is a real risk. And because Kickstarter is not (NOT) a retail platform, backers have no recourse when Pandemonium realizes they’ve underfunded fulfillment or whatever and the whole thing falls through. SU&SD has generally had a policy of not reviewing KS only games before. This is a weird one to reverse that policy on.
I strongly disagree with their Scythe & Bloodrage opinions, but that’s theirs and that’s that.
But saying Cosmic Encounter & Battlelore are similar games to replace Scythe or Bloodrage is insane.
For Clocktower, I did play it and didn’t see how it was anything but a 2 hour long Ultimate Werewolf with even more complicated roles to keep track of. It got to the point where it felt pointless trying to deduce anything because of the dozen different layers of unreliable information.
And I keep hearing “no player elimination, you get one vote after you’re killed!” as the big difference. But that’s negated by it being a 2 hour game, and there’s been a bunch of social deduction games over the years without player elimination, including One Night Ultimate Werewolf.
The big hurdles for Clocktower are “why is this worth five times the money and time investment as the competition?” and nothing I experienced answered that. The whole kickstarter thing is another layer altogether.
You mean Gaia Project, which obsoletes Terra Mystica. :) I understand some people prefer Terra Mystica’s idiosyncrasies, but I don’t think I can go back after playing Gaia Project.
Huge red flag. Danger, Will Robinson! I’ve come to the conclusion that nine times out of ten, you’re going to get stuck with garbage when you buy from a first-time designer. :)
I’m guessing they got paid. Isn’t that how that sort of thing works?
Lucky.
-Tom
The first two-thirds of Power Grid is really fun.
I don’t think that’s correct. If you are talking about the recent video review of TM, you only saw a years old Terra Mystica review from before their videos were uploaded to the current YouTube channel. They have been progressively reuploading their archive. The hint is that Paul was in the review. He left SUSD last October.
I agree that the review of Blood on the Clocktower is gushing. I’m not that surprised as that’s really the type of game SUSD enjoys. And this seems like the most lavish / decadent production of such a game. And it does more than add one vote when you are dead.
That said, I also know my limitations in terms of social deduction games (and where my tastes and groups’ tastes differ from theirs). I know this one is not for me. If I could regularly organise sessions with 8-12 players, I’d be tempted though.
Completely agree on that one. I’d never touch that game before retail. And I know they have really been enjoying it for weeks. But I can’t believe SUSD would recommend such a risky product at this stage of development.
They don’t do paid KS previews. This is, for good or ill, their opinion based on the game they have been playing for a few months. I don’t know whether they were playing a free copy though.
Heh. In that case, Franchise is not like Power Grid. It plays very quickly. Doesn’t overstay its welcome and seems to provide meaningful and engaging decisions throughout. I’d need to play it more to confirm that. But I enjoyed that first game end to end.
I also got to play Viticulture with my son and daughter yesterday. What an epic battle of wine making that was. We all ended up within 1 point of each other and the winner was only decided by tie breaker.
I worried that the theme and worker placement wouldn’t be that engaging for a 17 and 12 years old. But they loved the many components (including cool metal coins I added) and they were son engaged in a hotly contested battle of wine making. My daughter was one order away from leaving us in the dust. Fun times and we’ll no doubt play more.
