Impressions from my last games order:
Battlestar: Galactica - I’m probably the last boardgamer on the planet to play this. We’ve gotten in three games of it so far, which makes it the most-played game from this order. The traitor mechanics are solid–I particularly like the mid-game reveal of new loyalties. We’ve had both human and cylon victories, so the balance is working out for us. Overall, a solid game.
Chaos in the Old World - Only one game of this so far. I enjoyed it a lot, although I don’t really have a firm grasp on the strategy yet. I really like asymmetric games, so this one is right up my alley. My only issue is that it’s pretty strictly a four-player game, which will limit my chances to play.
Mansions of Madness - Arkham Horror meets Betrayal at House on the Hill. I’m a bit worried that it may tend towards AH’s length with BaHotH’s depth, however; the brilliant thing about BaHotH is that it plays so quickly. Our one game of MoM lasted over four hours. It’ll go faster once we’re familiar with the rules, but it still doesn’t look like a quick game.
Lorini
2742
Yup the four player only requirement killed Chaos for me too. And I can’t get four player Dungeon Lord to the table either :(
There are a lot of posts saying good things about 3 player Chaos on BGG but I haven’t tried that. Apparently leaving Khorne out makes for an interesting game. I want to see how it plays with five people after the expansion comes out later this year.
Reldan
2744
I love board games, have played a lot of them, and don’t feel shy about sharing my honest opinion about them. The level of fanboy I am for all thing AGoT is pretty high, and the mechanics of the game suit me perfectly. However, the base AGoT game is broken, and broken games simply aren’t good. If you ever play the Storm of Swords version of the game, I think you’d be amazed by just how well the game mechanics work when you take the broken stuff away. It’s like going from Street Fighter to Street Fighter II - you would never under any circumstances be interested in going back once you taste what a good implementation of the game plays like, and you’d see just how bad the original was in comparison.
deccan
2745
Just out of curiosity, any Canadians into boardgames here? Which websites do you buy from?
I’d love to take advantage of the lower US dollar and buy from the US but the USPS stopped doing ground shipments a while back and freight charges for sending boardgames to Malaysia by air is way too expensive. So most Malaysians end up buying from Canada.
I buy from Cool Stuff Inc. and Meeplemart. Meeplemart has fantastic prices and great shipping in Canada, but their stock isn’t always as good as CSI. CSI, on the other hand, stocks bloody well everything, but shipping can be pricey. Still, these are the two best sites I’ve found for board games.
Starlit Citadel’s expensive compared to meeplemart: expensive prices for games and expensive prices for shipping. meeplemart offers $14 flat shipping for orders.
Another one: germangames.com. They also offer flat-rate shipping and their prices/selection are pretty good. I haven’t gone there recently as they didn’t have most of the games I’ve been looking for over the past couple of years, but going back today their prices are comparable to meeplemart and cheaper than Starlit Citadel.
I finally played a round of Death Angel. Since I only fit one game in I won’t pretend like my opinion matters much, but I played with just two players and a rather significant chunk of the game was spent with me just watching the remainder of turns after my marines died. I imagine that this problem would only compound itself with four or more, since it seems unlikely that more than half of the players will be standing at the end. Is this the case, or am I just interpreting my first game poorly? (likely)
I am going to try the new LOTR LCG at some point today, as well.
Were you playing with two squads? 1-3 players uses multiple squads of marines per player. I guess it’s possible you could lose all four marines long before the other player wins/dies off, but it seems pretty unlikely.
We were. It’s not THAT unlikely, especially with heroic charge and bombs exploding in my face.
I can’t believe someone found Dorn to order. I tried, but I wasn’t able to locate a copy so I’ll wait for the reprint or more copies to show up in stores :)
JM1
2753
Woohoo! I just discovered a new FLGS 2 minutes walk from my house. It’s a nice little place - good gaming table, a ton of Warmachine/Hordes + GW stuff on display, a huge variety of hobby stuff (P3/GW/Vallejos paints, Army Painter stuff), and a good selection of boardgames. They’re keen to get people in playing and I’m more than happy to pop down during the week.
I’m quite excited by this - right now my gaming is limited to the occasional trek on the train to visit GloriousMess + friends.
Gears of War, a co-op 1-4 player game by Corey Konieczka. Not a huge fan of the license but Corey did a great job with the Space Hulk card game and this does sort of look like a cross between regular Space Hulk and Death Angel. Could be cool.
I’ll have to keep my eye on this one.
Awesome, you don’t even have to paint these fucking things because they already match the video game’s color palette.
It’s funny because it’s true.
JM1
2758
It does sound like a Big Box version of Death Angel. Wonder how many tokens it’ll have…
I just played this for the first time Saturday, 2 player. And yeah, the order stacks are a cool mechanic. Hard for me to wrap my brain around at first.
Found some of the rules rather obtuse though. The rulebook could’ve been written better. We never did find what the benefit of upgrading buildings was… but we figured it out ourselves at the end of the game. It’s like the writers had played Starcraft the PC game so much that they made some assumptions on what the players would know.
JM1
2760
Gahah:
Gears of War: The Board Game includes –
Over 30 plastic figures
Over 200 cards
35 Locust AI Cards
17 Double-sided Map Tiles
Nearly 75 tokens and markers
1 Mission Reference Sheet
5 Attack Dice and 4 Defense Dice
1 Line-of-Sight Ruler
FFG, you never fail to amuse me.
