I feel him on the pink component. Until I saw other people had them too, I actually thought they had a mixing issue at the factory. It makes zero sense that that good is pink like it is. The folding Folios and maybe the artbook would be reasons to get it. They don’t improve the game though, and like I mentioned before, the amount of plastic on the board probably hinders the ability to make sense out of everything quickly to the eye.
There’s a reissue of Kanban on Kickstarter right now, and as an add-on, they have the Kickstarter editions (with all the stretch goals) of The Gallerist, Escape Plan, Lisboa, On Mars, and Vinhos.
I own none of those, and have never played a Lacerda game, and I’m reeeeally tempted to spend $750 to just get them all. That is reasonable, right?
It seems perfectly reasonable to me, but I do usually try not to buy more than one or two boardgames at once, because most of them will end up on your game shelf unplayed and forgotten about. By the time your group has played and learned one or two of them, there’ll be some other new hotness to buy, and you’ll never catch up.
In the Nice Sandra variant, you are only rewarded PP for Banked Shifts you have over 5, instead of for all of your Banked Shifts.
They’re killing off my favorite strategy? Boo. That looks really nice! Kanban is one of our top five most played games.
Yeah, my “group”.
I really only have one person who is enthusiastic about games of this nature. Other things currently unplayed: Power Grid, Age of Steam, Brass, Castles of Burgundy, A Handful of Stars, Ragusa, Roads & Boats, Tammany Hall, Tigris & Euphrates, Twilight Struggle. Somehow I have managed to get people to play Food Chain Magnate, Anachrony, Trickerion, A Feast for Odin, A Study In Emerald, and a few other fairly daunting things.
Pricewise not bad.
I would say get
Kanban, Vinhos, for sure.
On Mars I’m not sold on yet and if you’ve never played one of his games then this one will probably overwhelm you. Even though it’s not terribly difficult to play, the teach is very hard.
Gallerist and Lisboa are both great and very heavy. If I were to give an edge game wise it would be to Lisboa, but i would say pick the theme you like.
Escape Plan is hit and miss with people. I think it’s fun. It’s a very Euro race game and if you like that and like LaCerda designs then it’s a no brainer (it’s probably his lightest quickest game)
The only game missing is CO2 but that’s because it’s distributed by another company.
Just saw your 2nd post. If you got people to play and like Trickerion (good for you another winner in my book) You should have no problem with Vinhos,Kanban, or Escape Plan. I would say Lisboa is up there with Trickerion in terms of stuff going on and the Gallerist just under that.
In a variant.
You should get in on Kanban EV, because it will be more expensive by a fair whack after the KS. They’ve done Kickstarter edition addons of all the previous games for every EGG/Lacerda Kickstarter, so there’s probably not a ton of rush on those (they will definitely do at least one more because On Mars is scheduled to get a coop expansion). But they’re all really nice and while I haven’t gotten to play Escape Plan or On Mars yet (frankly, I only have one person I can count on for games of this weight either and I’m thinking about how to fix that), I can pretty much vouch for all of them being a worthwhile purchase. Getting them all in one fell swoop -is- kinda crazy, but if you can afford it and want to…
Based on watching his GDC talk about Root, entitled “King Me: A Defense of Kingmaking in Game Design,” I think he justifies it by the game being all about Kingmaking and not trying to pretend otherwise. So turn order advantage “doesn’t really matter” because the players should be playing a Kingmaking game and adjusting for the first person problem as part of the kingmaking dilemma.
I also respect the clever parts of Root but ultimately I just don’t want to play a game that is all about kingmaking. I played enough games like that in the 80s and 90s.
Here’s the link to his talk: https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1025683/Board-Game-Design-Day-King
So alternate opinion: Lacerda games are too expensive and too difficult to get to the table to be worth it, particularly for all of them. You’ll buy them all and then watch them collect dust on your shelf. I’d just pick the one that looks most thematically interesting to you and get that. (Or don’t because Kickstarter isn’t a pre-order platform and a well-established company like EGG shouldn’t be using it for that purpose.)
Also, you can play Kanban online for free.
Odin’s Throne is exactly why I lost interest in Blood Rage. It was SO many points for so little effort or setup. I think victory went to the person who got it in all but one game.
I thought it was just me. Didn’t occur to me to leave it out before I sold it :\
In theory, Dudes on a Map is one of my favorite genres, but so many of them feel like they never playtested some parts.
Hitler’s Reich is still the worst example of this I’ve ever seen. They put the Glossary/Index on the back of the book that isn’t the rulebook. Repeat: they put the Index on the back of the book that the index does not refer to.
It’s like thing was by a former encyclopedia designer, back when they had a separate glossary book to refer you to the volumes.
Finished 5th game of War of Whispers.
I don’t dislike it, but I don’t think I’m going to bring it out again. If someone asked for it I’d play, but I’m not going to propose it, and I bought the thing!
I still think it’s weighted too heavily on crazy out of nowhere card plays, and players who don’t know what they can all do are sunk. Careful, long term positioning seems secondary.
I also think that it only really works with exactly 3 players. 2 loses most of the intrigue feeling, and with 4 the action spaces get clogged up too quickly and it feels like there isn’t much choice beyond the halfway point.
There’s also the issue of length. It has the same person problem I had with Terraforming Mars, where its entire appeal was quick, light play and if you have even one AP player that pushes the play time beyond a certain point, I have zero interest in playing it. In two games of WoW, we had an AP player who took forever and pushed the game well past an hour. I did not enjoy those games.
I dunno. I’ve definitely lost any excitement for it. It seems I only like SU&SD games that come with conditional recommendations. Every single one of their gushing recommendations I’ve been lukewarm on or outright disliked.
Would anyone like to play a game of Kanban online? It’d be fun to get a forum game going.
I’ll agree conditionally, but counter that I do like games that provide a separate book with an initial guided playthrough to help learn the rules, e.g. Mage Knight and Navajo Wars. But FFG’s practice of having a Quickplay book and a Glossary, with separate and occasionally inconsistent rules between them is maddening.
Sorry to make a 3rd post in a row, but they’re all at least unrelated.
Does anyone have experience with Friedemann Friese’s Fable and/or Fast Forward series. (Fable is a legacy-like system that he developed. Fast Forward is a way of introducing rules by printing them on the game components, so no rulebook is needed. Many titles are both.) Specifically, I’m looking at Fabled Fruit, Fear, Fortress, Flee, Fortune, Fine Sand, and Fire! I usually like FF’s designs. Are these any good?
See, I’d put the Mage Knight booklets up there in the realm of 275% infuriating. Every time I dig for a rule, I end up picking up the wrong one first.
I’ve also come to realize that my tastes don’t generally jive with Quinns’ and Matt’s (or even Paul’s, for that matter). It can be tough to resist their siren call, since their videos are excellent and well-produced and their enthusiasm is genuine. Although, it does irk me (in ways that I can’t quite understand) that a gushing review from them impacts sales of a game so profoundly. I’m not sure if reviewers should have that much power.
My insert for Arkham LCG arrived, so I’m feeling ready to make a go of a full campaign now. Also, I caved and bought an insert for Terraforming Mars.
Maybe it’s the journalist in me, but I find it depressing when reviewers don’t have any power (as with movies, say).
While it’s not a review site, Rodney’s Watch it Played is my go-to for gaming information. Usually, seeing a walkthrough is better for me. One time a review did change me to a buy was the Dice Tower review/play through of Rebellion. I was very much on the fence with that one, but they sold me on the game. It’s now one of my favorite games.
I could be convinced, although I’ll have to learn the rules.
I got Flee (a Fast Forward game) at PAX Unplugged. It looks interesting (and really simple to play) but I’ve not actually played it yet.
I think it’s just that hobby boardgames are a market where there are a lot of competing products to sort through and average sales per product tend not to be that high. If the numbers were bigger overall, a YouTube channel run by a couple dudes probably would not have that kind of outsized impact.