Plus there was coffee! Thanks, it never occurred to me to question solo boardgames. They just always really seem to have their shit together. But I think you’re right.
Most of these are pretty new to me, where this was like my first or second game. Odin and Gallerist are the two I’ve played enough to say for sure they are some of my favorite games and I have a lot more plays left to go.
I’ve only had Cloudspire for a couple of weeks but it is really climbing the list, though.
Gol dang do I want to try Trickerion someday.
Yeah I looked into the new expansion when I played Feast for Odin recently. But I felt a little bummed out about it because it looks like incorpoorating new content means removal of old content eg: a new action board again, possible discarding of islands I think. It seems like the Danes expansion doesn’t really build on the base game and Norweigians. I really liked Norweigians for the artisan huts, and yes, the new board was nice, but what gets taken out to accomodate Danes? It would definitely be a wait and see for me with that expansion.
That’s interesting, I’ve read some of the designer’s notes on bgg and I don’t recall things being subtracted, so I guess now I’m curious about that. I did see that the new expansion may be sold Concordia: Venus style, where there is an expansion version for people who have the base game as well as a stand alone box that has everything you need to play Danes, but possibly not Norwegians?
Getting rid of islands seems unlikely, though, since you can always just play with all of the islands if you want. Maybe they’re just reissuing the existing islands with updates the way Norwegians did?
Well, let’s hope for the best! Shouldn’t be too long until we get some real details if they’re still targeting Q3.
A Feast for Odin is close to my favorite games. My daughters play games with me often and we’ve played Terraforming Mars since the youngest was about 10 or so. It’s her favorite. So I set up and teach AFFO to the two girls individually. After covering it all for maybe 30 minutes or more, they both said, “Not interested”. I tried to give them the “No, it really is fun once you get into it” method of persuasion, but I’d lost them probably 15 minutes in and they just continued to listen to be nice to their old man. :)
Luckily, it also a superb solo game and I LOVE the choices, multiple paths to victory and every mechanic. It’s something I can sit down to and play differently each time and not get paralyzed by the choices despite their being so many. Now, playing with my group where the guy who generally teaches gets a bit of AP, it can really be a slog.
I bought myself the Norwegians expansion for Christmas, but have yet to break it out.
Great write up!
You really should :) It does make Feast for Odin better, though there are some caveats. The first is removal of certain cards from the base game, not a big dealbreaker because of the number of cards already there. The included moutain strip tile I don’t use because they stuffed the printing - it is too long compared to the other strips. Old action board is gone for three loose bits of cardboard to make the new action board, but the actions themselves are so much better. I do love artisan huts because they give a good way to specialise and choose actions from the start. Raising livestock feels a lot better in the couple of playthroughs I did with it.
There’s a mini expansion I wish I could get for Feast for Odin, but it never made it to Australia. I guess the trouble is the new designer swears by it.
Cartographers is ok, i guess. I do enjoy it (you definitely should use colored pencils for the aesthetics though) but because it’s a score hunt and it feels (to me) the solo score targets are pretty arbitrary it doesn’t feel especially sophisticated.
Some scoring targets just… well, they suck. Terribly imbalanced compared to other scoring targets. This also doesn’t help that some scoring targets are easier early than others. So if you actually randomize the scoring targets like they recommend you’re more or less pre-fated to succeed or fail, since you can easily get two early scoring targets that you have no hope of reaching, and to do well in solo you need to average about 20 points a round as a minimum target. That’s not a problem in vs. modes, but in solo modes (imo) you almost have to pick the scoring targets manually rather than randomly to have a reasonable hope of getting above par.
So, the wife is out of town. I just got a bonus I wasn’t expecting. Gloomhaven is enjoyable on the PC, but I never could pass my Will check to actually try the boxed version I’ve had for years. What does this mean? Well, when you live within hours of multiple Amazon warehouses you order LOTR: Journeys in Milddle-earth and plan on spending the evening nerding the hell out (assuming it gets here this afternoon like it’s supposed to). You even decide to say ‘fuck it’ and grab two figure packs that you appear to be able to add into your core game. You did decide to hold off on the larger expansions though. I mean, you’re not totally insane.
Solo boardgaming, here I come.
Let’s hope you also plan to post images of your endeavor in a forum thread. I mean, you bought the figure packs, you might as well let us enjoy them with you! Good luck. I look forward to hearing more about the game.
-Tom
I haven’t even started setting up and I’m already table-shamed! I only have a card table and no fancy card holder thingies. But if I hadn’t already purchased it, I would have after seeing your setup @tylertoo. Very nifty!
Thanks. Fortunately my wife doesn’t object to my taking over the dining table for days on end.
What is all that card holder/tray stuff on the right of the picture? Did that come with the game? Is that some third-party thing you’ve appropriated? Tell me more!
-Tom
That was fast! The cardboard tiles popped out super easy and most of the figures are in great shape. I’m very much out of the figure game since like the 90s, so maybe this is normal. But so far I’m impressed with the quality.
For space reasons, I assume, the cards are for ants! They’re about a quarter of the size of a playing card. Again, maybe this is normal. They don’t seem to have a ton of text so this is fine. It makes for smaller footprint, so I’m cool with that.
My two figure packs won’t be here til tmrw so I figure I’ll learn the ropes with base set tonight. It seems pretty straightforward and much less involved than Gloomhaven (even compared to the digital version of that which does a lot of the minutia for you I would assume).
Pics or it didn’t happen!
I have only a few things to add:
@lostcawz keep us updated on your thoughts on Journeys! I have it and have played a couple of scenarios and enjoyed it quite a bit but got sidetracked by something else.
@tylertoo would love your impressions as well. Also I join others in asking about the absolutely deadsexy card holder thingy on the right.
Heh. Those smaller cards are a pretty common, standard size now. And you’re right, as long as a designer doesn’t use them to convey a bunch of info, they’re fine. I tend to think of them as counters (from my old boardgaming days in the 80s and 90s) but a bit bigger, easier to handle, and a little bit better at conveying info.
Oh man, I’m so accustomed to those tiny card sizes, especially in Fantasy Flight games, that I forget how they must look to people used to standard card sizes. :) They’re not all teensy sized are they? In @tylertoo’s pic, it looks like the cards on the right, in the holder thingie, are normal size, but that might just be my imagination playing a perspective trick.
-Tom
EDIT: Heh, this is like me and @triggercut peering over you guys’ shoulder, enjoying the game vicariously.
I thought they looked normal sized in the @tylertoo 's pic too, but all of mine are the smaller sized variety.
EDIT: Oh, except for the character cards that have character info. Those are normal sized.
Back when I got LoTR:JiME in 2020 I worked a trade on BGG where I sent a guy a game he wanted (and which I no longer wanted) and he used his 3D printer to print dashboards for me for both JiME and Gloomhaven. Here are the 3D plans for the dashboards, if you know anyone with a 3D printer:
Please note that the cork board underneath the dashboards is merely a dinner placemat upside down, so the plastic dashboards don’t scratch the dining table.
There are also dashboards on Etsy, like this sexy wooden one.
It is your imagination. They are tiny cards.
The technical term for this illusion is ‘partner-vision’!
