Expensive Board Game Day on Kickstarter.
Dark Tower (Man I wanted to go all in, but not at $225)
Oath (and I haaaate Root despite being a KS backer. This just looks so cool. Fingers crossed)
Hero Forge fully colored minis.
Holy shit Quins with this review.
Watch through to the end.
Yep. The post review bit was excellent and made a bit of a splash yesterday (Reddit and co). That’s part of why SUSD are awesome. Their podcast also often offers thoughtful chats. Though this video went even further.
I’ve never played any of the tiny games. Are they basically the same game with different themes?
Nope, they’re all different. For example:
Defenders - a co-op game where you defend the lands against the big bad evil.
Kingdoms - a versus area control game
Galaxies - worker placement, tableau type game
Zombies - a bad game
Haha. Good to know.
I might look into these eventually. They look nice and compact.
So bad. Like “what the hell were they thinking?” bad. Like “I could have thrown this money down a well instead” bad.
This is easily one of the best tabletop tower defense games if…
…you get the Dark War expansion. Which I hate having to say. It’s one of those situations where the vanilla game is entirely “meh”, but then you get the expansion and you’re all, like, “whoa, why didn’t they just make it like this in the first place???” Which means to recommend it, I have to tell someone they have to go all-in before it’s any good.
-Tom
At least you’re not stuck with the 1st edition, which is completely incompatible with the expansion! Very annoying.
A couple of games showed up in an email that seemed interesting. Anyone familiar with them?
And
Yeah, I’ve played both of them.
Citadels is sort of a classic. It’s a 20 year old game. The basic idea is players choose role cards from a fixed set of cards, but each player chooses secretly. The cards are resolved in order and do various things to earn victory points or stymie other players. The infamous Assassin card, for instance, will completely eliminate one role from the round, but only if someone chose to take it. It’s light on strategy, high on table dynamics and in my experience plays kind of slow. Each player is examining the hand of roles separately, which means the time to pick roles is really high can create quite a bit downtime (especially at high player counts). This gives it a very different feel than modern board game design (where every time you look up its your turn). It makes it easier to talk to other players at the table. It’s great for highly social groups where the primary focus is on socializing and the board game is a secondary focus. I find playing it with people focused on the game that it usually falls flat.
Dice Forge is a light engine builder where you roll dice to generate resources. You then use those resources to change out the sides of your dice to generate more resources. There’s a high degree of luck. The dice are nice and chunky and really satisfying to both throw and change out the faces of. It’s a satisfying gateway level engine builder, even easier to get into than Dominion. But, in my opinion, isn’t as interesting as Dominion. I personally like it a bit better than Space Base, which it feels very similar to.
Well, my copy of Empyreal: Spells and Steam has arrived, despite some weirdness with FedEx tracking that made it look like it had been delivered to someplace in Pennsylvania. The first box I took out seemed pretty reasonably sized. “Empyreal: Spells and Steam Deluxe Edition”, it said. “Hey, I might be able to fit this on my shelf, that’s a lot more reasonable than I was expecting from the project, which showed it as one of those long-ass boxes Millenium Blades comes in.” Then another box of the same size. “Oh, the expansion, cool…this might be a bit trickier.” Then a third box, that could fit the preceding two boxes and at least one more the same size. “Empyreal: Spells and Steam…huh, I wonder what this is.” Went back to the project and checked and that is the actual game - the Deluxe Edition is an upgrade box. Welp.
Mine had an expected delivery of Friday 17… and that would be a nope.
Considering how late the project is, I am hoping I am not one of the people with damaged punch-out boards.
Way to tell us nothing about the game itself! I had to go to BGG to find out this important bit of information:
Whoa.
-Tom
I think Citadels is and remains a classic. If there’s any flaw to it, it’s how that Assassin character porousnapkin mentioned can end up screwing one player repeatedly–not because they were ahead and someone whacked them, but just because they randomly got whacked a few times in a row. (You pick who to assassinate by the roles that were chosen, not by player, and those roles are hidden. So you’re assassinating based off your guess of who picked what role that turn.)
For those whose meta doesn’t like the Assassin, the game has alternative characters, and the replacement (Witch) is less harsh.
I haven’t actually played it yet!
Both characters are my biggest problem with Citadels. The Assassin does literally nothing for the player who picks it, but you have an arbitrary chance to screw someone else out of their turn. The Witch is a little better on both fronts, but it’s still pretty much purely something you pick to screw other players over, not to benefit yourself.
The Assassin makes you immune to being robbed by the thief or lose your cards to the magician before your turn, which is a prime motivation for people to chose it when we play.
You guys know who has a copy of Citadels and could probably speak to how good it is? @Brooski. You have a copy of Citadels, right, @Brooski?
Also, here’s a short play I wrote about Citadels. It’s called “Citadels”. I hope you enjoy it:
-Tom
pursued by a bear.