Agree Citadels is a classic, although so many other games have done more with the turn order drafting but now, I still like its length and the design of assassin/thief mechanics lead to so many tough/funny choices per hour due to how often you’re drafting.
Dice Forge is one of the most popular games at our game nights; board game novices and old hands all like it. There is luck but you have some ability to decide how swingy or predictable you want your dice to be. There are some combinations of purchases that make better than games than others but the default will give you an idea whether the game’s for you, in our experience.
That’s true, it does come first. I’d personally rather have a proper quantifiable benefit, not just the dubious provenance of maybe avoiding a thing you wouldn’t necessarily get hit by anyway and maybe screwing someone else over. -shrug-
Sure, I see that. But I don’t consider the benefit of going first and being able to know you can use your cards or money to be dubious, and when we play that security is the main motivation people have for choosing the assassin. The game is fast enough that occasionally being screwed by the assassin or thief doesn’t bother me much.
Played On Mars. The two people I played with did not like it…at all. The word “hate” was mentioned. I didn’t want to tell them I thought it was cool. I will say it is probably overly complicated for complication sake, but if you like LaCerda games than I suspect you will like on Mars.
I’ve played two games of Oceans now, one 4-and one 5-player, I kind it, and they both played out very differently. I’ve only played Evolution once, a few years back, and my only impression was ‘nice, but I’d rather play Evo for a similar theme’. I liked this a lot, though- some similar mechanics, but a lot more moving parts (literally, moving little fishies from one pool to another, heh), more decisions but less direct interaction, if I remember the original correctly. If play again.
Got through the first mission of Cthulhu death may die finally. Dug it, it’s a nice accompaniment to my very expensive statue. Very Zombicide-ish but maybe even more streamlined…
Wife and I have played some Marvel Champions. I really like it, and so went looking to get some of the expansions. What the heck? They aren’t available or the prices are insane!
Yeah, this seems typical when FFG has a successful LCG, unfortunately. On the upside, once they’ve figured out demand they tend to do a good job keeping old content in stock (at least, that’s what I’ve heard).
When you can, get that Green Goblin expansion! It’s really great! One scenario has the badguy with an alter-ego that he switches between. The other one has this amazing cinematic ramp, and is my favorite scenario so far.
Anyone have any experience with the solo game Black Sonata? The kickstarter for its expansion (which includes a copy of the base game) ends in a couple of days. It looks kind of intriguing, and I love the Shakespearean theming.
It’s a beautiful game. It’s easy to setup, you can play it in 15 minutes, the deduction part is well executed and the components are just wonderful. The only problem so far was, that it’s nothing you could play again and again without a break because from a certain point on you knew all the cards. This seems to be solved with the expansions. So I was very happy when it went on kickstarter.
Argh. I like the look of this game, but I really really hate Kickstarter. I hate it almost enough to boycott game publishers who use it, even if they sell their game elsewhere.
This episode of the Ludology podcast includes some interesting discussion of how publishers regard Kickstarter today. The head of Stronghold Games talks about how the market is so oversaturated that it’s a struggle to even get distributors to pick up a new title. He says that they are increasingly turning to Kickstarter to manage and minimize risk: it not only generates capital in advance of a print run, it also helps them gauge the game’s broader market appeal and plan accordingly.
