Petey
1564
Agree…I was excited until I read that.
Yep. Not assembled. Once you get the game, your next few days will be sprue and glue. The people I know who received it weren’t sure whether the assembled figures would fit back into the box either. Worth checking on BGG.
The game itself looks like excellent fun. But I passed because of that.
As for Lost Ruins of Arnak, if @Vesper has stock, jump on it if the sound of a game that mixes worker placement and deck building while exploring archeological digs to collect artifacts sounds appealing to you. You are going to see that game make a lot of top 3 games of the year, I believe . And it’s nigh impossible to get in UK because of that.
This is what you would get to assemble if you got the GF9 Aliens game (posted by someone in my gaming group who got it):
Fun Christmas break activity? :)
Vesper
1568
Picked up Lost Ruins of Arnak for myself. Looks super fun and hope to play it this week. We are out at the moment but I have more heading my way this week if anyone needs a copy.
Or you have AVP and you use those minis.
I’m interested to hear more. I’m afraid it’s just kind of meh and overly pumped up on the BGG vs being an actual great game.
Every board game reviewer who mentioned playing it immediately went on to say how awesome the game was for them. And since that includes several smaller reviewers I tend to trust, I’m really looking forward to it.
TBM also put it very high in his top of 2020 list.
Everybody seems to be having a lot of fun playing it.
I’d be willing if they were snap together, but to separate, assemble, and glue all that sounds awful.
My point really being is it really that good or is it really good for this year. There are lots of games that are AMAZING!!! when they come out and 9 months later everyone is like, “Who plays that anymore?”
Your point is well taken. Quality over time and staying power/replayability matter. But Vesper is not going to be able to answer it any more than what I’ve posted after a couple of plays.
A couple of questions:
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Any updated timeline on when you’re going to be able to ship items? Might be able to throw some business your way. :)
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In checking your site about shipping, I noticed that you’re selling “regular” and “damaged” versions of Lost Ruins of Arnak. Are a lot of them coming damaged? I ask because I got one from another seller, and it was damaged. The jewel and arrowhead tokens were just rolling around in the box and the reference cards were bent and slightly torn. The big one, though, was that the board had impact damage to one of the corners while folded (and to all corners when unfolded), but the exterior box was fine, meaning the board had been put into the box damaged.
Is that happening a lot? I don’t know if my retailer will take back an opened game, so I’m thinking about approaching CGE about it. Might help my case if mine is more than just an unlucky, one-off event.
It was more a general sentiment and also the bgg group here is pretty savvy. If you play a game you know pretty quickly if it is going to legs or if it is one trick pony.
Vesper
1578
So I haven’t turned it on for the website yet but we are doing shipping already! Doing it on the web in automated fashion requires entering a whole lot of data about game weights and sizes that I am not caught up with. I’m happy to ship games to anyone who wants them, just reach out!
Most of the time, “damaged” copies on the website have minor box damage (typically corners that are smushed). I would say we receive 1-2 damaged board games a week (out of 250ish). Anything that has really bad damage we don’t sell and get a refund on from the distributor. I haven’t heard of interior board damage on Arnak from anyone yet and my copy I got for myself was perfectly fine.
One channel feature that might be of interest to you, but requires waiting a while, is the retrospective Top 10 list for the year on The Broken Meeple channel.
When I said Lost Ruins of Arnak featured highly on his top 10 of 2020, it’s because it ended in first position. :)
But, later the next year, Luke will revisit his previous year’s top 10 and create a new one which potentially includes the other games he didn’t have a chance to play before the end of the year. It also reflects how the games have held up after another year of play. He just published the 2019 one:
To me, that’s a really useful feature which has prompted purchases in previous years. There is more perspective on the longevity of the games.
Luke expects movement in his 2020 list, as many games out on the continent or in the US got delayed in UK due to Covid. The 2020 retrospective version should also be out by Autumn for those reasons.
Yeah, Paul Grogan does a similar thing, but he just skips the same year list and only does top tens of the year before. Plus he doesn’t make that face on his yt preview picture, which makes me more likely to look at his content.
Paul Grogan and Luke Hector are both British YouTubers and friends (or at least long time acquaintances) who play together. Luke helped with Paul’s online conventions this year. But who you watch and based on what criteria is not for me to comment on. :)
I know who he is, it’s just a joke :)
Fair enough. :) He’s not super well known (11k subscribers), so I tend to assume people have no clue who he is.
His 2019 retrospective really makes me want to get Journeys in Middle Earth and play our copy of Settlers of the North more with my wife.
CraigM
1584
So I played the first of the Star Wars Unlock games, Escape from Echo Base.
I give it a solid 7. In terms of theming and fun, it is as good as Unlock has been. There are a few clever moments with the app I liked. It is on the easier side, though that might be because of the movie. Hard to say if mechanically it is easy, or I just knew the source so well as to make next steps obvious.
Still we enjoyed it, and had our fastest clear time on one yet. I’d still put Sherezade and Sherlock Holmes above it, but if the other two in this pack can match the theme and fun with a bit more puzzle difficulty, this could easily be their best (in my taste)
