Great! HTMF is just long enough for young kids, I find, and very easy to teach (or to ignore the rules if the kids are too young). Glad it went down well.
I just spent the last few days playing a bunch of Dominion, and man is that game a gift that keeps on giving.
We focused mostly on “quickly crafted” card sets, and even if you get a bad mix, you can pretty quickly pull out a few cards and make sure that your next game will be epic.
“Quickly crafted”? Do you just mean randomized, with some editorializing to tweak the results?
Just finished my first game of Thunderstone (with 2 expansions) and loved it! Which proves I hated Dominion because of the theme (or lack thereof) and that it felt too much like a Euro game (which I generally dislike). Thunderstone seems to dull the Euro elements a bit, which makes it much more enjoyable for me. I also wasn’t a big fan of the massive combos in Dominion and playing one card at a time, both of which are absent in Thunderstone.
UndeadViking in his video review of Thunderstone also made a good point that Thunderstone’s expansions seem to move the game forward while Dominion’s are just more of the same, which I tend to agree with. Jeremy Salinas in his video review of Doomgate Leigon also commented that Thunderstone is just one perfect expansion away from becoming truly great. I wonder if Dragonspire could be that expansion?
To sum up, if you didn’t like Dominion as I did, Thunderstone could be your remedy.
Thunderstone is probably the most requested and enjoyable game in my game group. We have played it more than any other game. If it weren’t for the setup I’d probably call it my favorite game. I still need to get that second expansion which I will right after I work through the stash of games I got for Christmas.
I got 7 Wonders for Christmas and played it for an evening. Everyone seemed to enjoy it quite a bit. Although the mechanics and theme were completely different than Thunderstone, I got the same feeling of building combos, the same advantage of having very little downtime, and about the same amount of influence on other players. Although I’m not a big fan of the 7 Wonders theme, it will be the game I play with 6-7 players instead of Citadels, Bang!, and The Resistance.
I also got Defenders of the Realm for Christmas. I haven’t had a chance to play it yet, but the quality of the components really blew me away. Everything about it is top notch. Even the box feels more solid than any other game I own. I can see why this game is as expensive as it is.
(Sorry for quoting a fairly old post)
I just got this and have only played 4 games, but I like it. It’s gotten much better each time my group has played it because we have a better sense for the cards which cuts down on the slowdown of stuff like looking through the discard pile for which card you want for your Zombie mutate.
I played one 4 player game with the normal rules, then 3 games in 2v2 mode with the tournament rules for drafting. Honestly, I can’t see how this game could work over the long term without drafting. It seems necessary to enjoy the first round of the game. On top of that, the normal 4 player rules in my opinion provide a pretty poor game that isn’t well balanced. The Red and Black clan trap and destroy powers, for instance, become way less useful when you have 3 players you can target. The best you get for it is a gang up on the leader gameplay that isn’t particularly interesting. Plus, since the targeting ends up spread between all the players, it seems to me it’d be better to just focus on green, white, and blue cards that improve your own army.
However, the game is great in 2v2. There’s some interesting communication within a team, such as playing cards that make everyone in the game draw a few cards so your ally can pull off his big move. Targeting opponents also becomes more surgical, focusing on taking out specific cards that are the backbone of your opponents strategy more often in comparison to whittling down their power before the great battle (which seems like the normal strategy in normal 4 player). After playing a few games, I think I will only pull it out if there are 4 or 2 players because it really feels like it was built for those conditions.
I’m still a little worried it may be too luck based for my tastes, but there’s so many options available in a turn, I haven’t figured out yet if when I do well it’s due more to luck or good card placement. There’s a lot of strategy in drafting I don’t feel I’ve mastered yet either. For instance, it’s important to have an army that will keep cards in your hand as well as getting good activated abilities so your army is worthwhile on the next turn. It’s easy to build yourself into a corner with an army that is amazing in the first battle, but slowly whithers in the next few. At the moment, my feeling is there’s still a lot more I can learn and get better at in this game, so the luck aspect hasn’t worn me out yet. However, I could see burning out on this game after 15-20 plays. With a good expansion pack, that may go a bit longer. I would feel comfortable recommending it to gamer friends, but it’s not non-gamer friendly. Games with simple basic rules, but a huge amount of exceptions on the cards seem to destroy my non-gamer friends brains, and Gosu is definitely that kind of game.
Tried a learning game of Civ-the-boardgame tonight. Very cool mechanics, clearly a lot of scope for variety and a hell of a lot of tough strategic decisions. I’m pretty sure I’m a long way from grokking it. Then I got into a two-expansion game of Thunderstone that was pretty hilariously painful. In particular, I kept getting absolutely awful draws - I had Trainers and Militia, for example, but not once the entire game did I draw both in the same hand. I virtually never drew weapons with the heroes to use them, etc. Another significant contributing factor was that one of the three monster types was Doomknight - you know, the monsters that almost all have -1 or -2 light. You know how many light sources other than Torches we had? None. (There were also Blink Dogs. A certain amount of sobbing ensued at this.)
I did manage to have a Toryn Scrapper wield three shortbows simultaneously, though. I enjoyed that.
Edit: Oh! Also, we had a Sphinx (only Magic Attack counts), Succubus (x2)(Attack halved w/out Magic Attack present), something else where Magic Attack was required, and IIRC the Archduke of Pain also was only Magic Attack counts. We had one wizard hero that was rather anemic at level 1, and defeated monsters, and that was it for Magic Attack.
Credit to BGG for this:
Days of Wonder is now offering Necromancer Island for purchase on their website.
“Necromancer Island is a free, limited-edition Small World scenario originally available only from game retailers, or if you ordered a Small World product directly from Days of Wonder.”
Although the purchase price is free, shipping within the US will run you $5.18. Since I have the three expansions and Tales & Legends, this was a must purchase for to me to complete (pending more expansions!) my Small World collection!
Played 7 Wonders for the first time New Year’s Eve with my 4-person gaming group, and it was a huge hit. We must have played at least six games that night, and an additional four the following morning. We broke out Merchants & Marauders for the first time that morning, but they had already been drinking mimosas for breakfast, so their willingness to learn the rules (especially after having played 7 Wonders) was virtually nonexistent. It’s a great game, and I’ll teach them how to play it eventually!
You might want to consider an intelligent randomizer like this one: http://asmor.com/scripts/tsrand/
It makes sure you don’t get any painfully random setups like you describe. It’s suppose to work on most smart phones too.
jpinard
2031
Do 7 Wonders & Agricola have somewhat parallel game mechanics? (from the looks of it you have your own mini-baord in front of you to develop etc)
I wish I could tell you, but I’ve never played Agricola. Check out these two video reviews for all you need to know about the game’s mechanics.
dogbert
2033
I wouldn’t compare it to Agricola.
It’s straightforward & it might work for you, jpinard.
So there’s an Angry Birds ‘board game’.
It looks dreadful.
Case
2035
I’ve picked up several I’m itching to try:
Cadwallon: City of Thieves. Up to four players. Each player controls a gang of four thieves looking to steal the most ducats. Do you go for that last chest, or escape with your current ill-gotten gains?
Defenders of the Realm. Awesome production values. Fantasy co-op with some mechanics borrowed from Pandemic.
Space Alert. Played this awhile back, and it’s a hoot. Real time co-op where you try to defend your ship against external and internal threats.
First game of Twilight Imperium 3 today. My Sarlokk (+1 to all combat dice) had a serious problem by needing Mecatol Rex for long enough to have a space dock and 8 capitol ships in orbit around it, which ended up being a bridge too far over today’s 7 hour 4 player game. In the end, I was not a serious contender for victory and should have been a little less timid about use of force, but it’s challenging to visualize the combats beforehand with all of the bonuses and not to get sidetracked by the bugs’ resource and technology needs.
I had a really great time, though, and while I regret not getting to play any Dominant Species today with the opportunity to do a full six player game, I only regret it a bit. I understand where it might not cater to many attention spans, but I’m already looking forward to the next time.
Case
2037
[QUOTE=Lizard_King;]
I had a really great time, though, and while I regret not getting to play any Dominant Species today with the opportunity to do a full six player game, I only regret it a bit. I understand where it might not cater to many attention spans, but I’m already looking forward to the next time.[/QUOTE]
What’s your take on Dominant Species? I found a copy at my FLGS. I haven’t seen so many cardboard chits since I attempted to play Wellington’s Victory years ago.
I’ve only got one complete playthrough and 2 separate “a few turns to teach it” experiences, so I really don’t have a good handle on the strategy just yet. It’s the kind of game that defines elegance in terms of mechanics, and the theme is very substantial throughout in the form of the narrative feel rather than the visuals. Some people have problems with it aesthetically (my wife is very reliant on visual theme, so her impression was very negative), but it has a lot of appeal to me simply because it balances a sophisticated level of optimization with a hefty amount of player interaction in the form of subtle attacks and game-changing ass-kickers.
For right now, I’m very upbeat on the latter aspect since it appears that the slight tendency towards a runaway leader might have had to do with a misunderstanding of a core rule (that speciation populates ALL hexes adjacent to a resource chit, not just one) and definitely had to do with me missing most opportunities to kick ass in return or preemptively from not prioritizing the dominance cards early on or the ability to deplete resources in favor of more give and take attacks like glaciation.
So, “very positive”, although my inclination with player interaction games is that it’s better to screen participants for temper tantrums with a short game like Citadels beforehand to avoid someone crapping it up (not to be confused with simply getting bummed out when bad things happen to you, which is perfectly normal within reason and adjusting for alcohol).
I have the first two on my wishlist, but don’t know much about the third. Have you played all three of them (recently for Space Alert)? Is Space Alert a new edition compared to the one you played previously? I’ve heard DotR is packaged in a solid box and is worth the price.
Funkula
2040
Space Alert is interesting. It reminds me of co-op RoboRally, because you’re trying to program your actions, but unlike RoboRally if you interfere with someone else’s plans you can doom everyone. I haven’t played it much, because you really need exactly four or five people and you need to play it in a space with both a gaming table and a stereo (which rules out taking it to public play spaces). You might be able to get by with having the comms officer wearing a headset and listening to the reports, but you’d need a method of silencing everyone during the comm static interruptions.
I like it quite a bit, because it’s absolutely unique in the way it uses sound as part of the game, but you kind of need to have a regular group interested in developing a rapport as a team. It’s much harder to teach than other co-op games like Arkham because of the real-time constraints, and we never even graduated to using the internal threats because we were still losing nearly every time with purely external ones. If you bring a new player into the mix, you pretty much need to restart from square one. It’s a pretty hard game, but I think it would be ultimately rewarding if you’ve got a group that doesn’t jump ship for the newest and shiniest every two weeks.
