The news is slightly old now, but the Wingspan digital version, one of my favourite board game apps, is getting the European expansion in May.
Anyone try Roll Player (EA warning)? Curious how the longevity is for solo play.
Oof. Roll Player. I desperately wanted to like the boardgame, to the point that I bought all the add-ons, telling myself one of them had to help. Sadly, I think it’s an absolutely godawful design if you’re looking for something about rolling up cool adventure characters. It’s nothing but a clutch of arbitrary and arbitrarily related dice puzzles, loosely hung together with what has to be some of the most half-assed attempts at theming I’ve ever seen.
But maybe the digital version is good. :)
-Tom
As far as I know, it closely adheres to the board game.
By the way, I just got myself a BGA premium account, so if anybody who doesn’t have one fancies a game of something, hit me up.
Has anyone here tried Rally the Troops? I just became aware of this site today - it looks like it’s trying to be to historic games what 18xx.games is to 18xx. Currently has a handful of well-regarded games available (Wilderness War, Hammer of the Scots, Pax Pamir, a few others).
Is there AI or is it strictly multipl[ayer?
Yeah, my buddy and I played a few games on there (Hammer of the Scots, Crusader Rex, Richard 3), then he added Wilderness War, so we tried that couple times, and now we’re trying a 4-player game of Pax Pamir (which is in testing right now, although anyone can get to it).
The implementations are very well done. Considering it’s all just JS and HTML, I’m pretty impressed.
To be clear, these are multiplayer (no AI), with rules enforcement. They work better sync (since there’s a lot of back-and-forth, especially in the block game battles), but they work just fine async as well, and it does have email turn notifications.
Also, the developer is very helpful and responsive on the discord server, if you do have any questions or problems.
@AWS260 @Sonoftgb
Rally the Troops is great. Wilderness War is what I’ve been playing but it was really good learning Shores of Tripoli there. There is no AI option but you can play all sides. With these block games and CDGs they don’t tend to lend themselves to solitaire play but it is a way to learn the interface.
Thanks, all! I may give it a spin with Shores of Tripoli - that game has been on my radar for a while.
Report back! I’ve had my eye on that one for a while as well, partly because it has a solo mode. But it looks too streamlined to support much of a solo mode. I got the sense it was very much about two players trying to outsmart and outmaneuver each other within the context of a pretty simple Euro-ey design.
-Tom
For all the positive or negative one could say about the design of the physical version, Talisman digital is a 1:1 of it. I have the digital version on Switch and the side version (which is more of a solo/quest variant) called Talisman Origins on my iPad. Both are fun to have a digital board game adventure for a bit. The everything Talisman (2 games and 52 DLCs) is on sale on Humble Bundle for $10ish. Which is less than the cost it would be to get a few DLC for my existing copies.
I will cross post on the bargain thread.
My impressions of playing this opposed bear this out. I don’t know what they do to make it soloable but it is a tight, abstract (but not so much that you lose sense of the history), elegant little game that is over very quickly while still offering the satisfaction of feeling like you’ve played a full game. It is very much like:
Which is also available to play on Rally the Troops. And, playing it there has gotten me to purchase the physical version. I love the smart production values on it. Nice small box with all you need wrapped up really well in a concise package.
I’m not even sure what games are being talked about in which parts of your post. :(
-Tom
It was an old post where you had asked AWS260 to report back on Shores of Tripoli, which is a great game. I am not sure about it’s solo mode though, which was mentioned in your quote there. Shores of Tripoli and the 300: Earth and Water game each share the features of being wonderfully elegant and concise game experiences.
I bought Spirit Island with the summer sale… and it actually works pretty well. The mouse controls are a little clunky, but removing a lot of the fiddling so you can just focus on the brain paralysis has been great. Would recommend.
thanks, bought 4 copies as gifts. Nostalgia helps, but I still enjoy the game. Online play is pretty robust and I can play this with remote family for a gaming night.
Nostalgia definitively helps. Even back in the day Talisman could way overstay its welcome with the roll and move chase. However, I do fondly remember many college nights where Talisman was subbed in for Warhammer Quest or such. I played someone else’s copy back then so I tracked down the base version of one of the reprints in 2008ish. It was fun to play with a post college gaming group for a bit, but mostly sits in my closet. Nowadays, I find the digital version an outstanding fit for me to just piddle around against the AI or do the questing solo elements of the Origins version.