Of course, that also means you didn’t “win” at Chaos in the Old World. Oh snap.
By the way, when you pick up Storm of Swords for $100 on eBay make sure you also get and paint some Warhammer minis so your game can look cooler.
JM, I haven’t quite replaced any boxes yet but I did spend some time this weekend combining all of Arkham Horror plus expansions into two boxes, one for the cards and one for everything else. I just glued some plywood dividers into the card box to keep them organized.
It’s a slippery slope, though. First you’re redesigning the inside of your Agricola box. Before you know it you’ve spent a week at the craft store trying to build this beautiful slidey case for your Dominion cards, which is great until you remember there are 30 expansions for it but also maybe you get to hang out with Korean models so that’s good. Next it’s off to carpentry school so you can craft an Arkham Horror suit case and furniture so you can play your custom built remake of the long out of print 1979 Avalon Hill classic, Dune.
Of course, your descent into madness is complete when you build the Necronomicon, sacrificing your baby to it in the process.
Wow I really want both the Agricola and Dominion boxes.
Dean
3003
The hidden orders mechanic is used in Starcraft with the added wrinkle that they stack and you can only play the top one on the stack, so, for instance, you put an order down on one planet, then I can put one of my orders down on top of yours, and you can’t play yours until I play mine. This leads to backwards thinking, because the first order you put down should be the order you actually want to play last, then second to last, and so on.
Starcraft also uses the “gold” order, where if you buy certain expansions for your base, you can use the extra special orders that give you bonuses.
There’s also a version of it in TI3.0 where you activate the hex you want everything to move into, but then you can choose what you want to move there. So you can put an activation counter in a hex, and everyone can get all prepped for war there, and you can decide not to send anything.
deccan
3004
Arguably the hidden orders in Shogun / Wallenstein are similar. The way Dungeon Lords makes players secretly pick actions is also close, especially since you may not get anything at all if you end up being the last player to pick that action.
As an aside, one of my boardgaming friends in Malaysia noticed that a boardgame video reviewing show used a photo of his game collection as their backdrop without asking for his permission. Check out my friend’s blog post here:
Finally got to play Small World - and Small World Underworld - last night. Pretty good stuff. Underworld adds some interesting tweaks but some of the powers seem …unexciting.
Played a four-player of Chaos in the Old World last night, lacking Khorne (one player had the Horned Rat, instead). I’ve had the expansion since it came out, but this was the first time i’d even looked at what was in there- I pretty much bought the expansion sight-unseen since I love the base game so much. Holy jeezus, that thing pretty much cranks the game up to 11. All the revamped chaos cardsand powers were completely over the top, and required radical re-thinking of how to play every Power. I imagine it’ll be hitting the table a lot in the next few weeks. The end point spread was 62 (slannesh)/61 (me, nurgle), 59 (Skaven), 40 Tzeentch after 4 rounds.
Then we played Power Grid Japan. I lost the game for lack of one dollar. I was the only one that had the power capacity to power 18 cities (everyone else only had 17), building 6 cities the last turn to get to 18 would have cost me $166. I had 165. I lost on the tie-break. :(
Also picked up Battleship:Galaxies, but didn’t get to play it, though I did almost lose it off my motorcycle on the ride home in the rain.
Lorini
3007
It’s kind of strange. The two “four player only” games I (had) have never get played. I sold Chaos because we just couldn’t seem to get four players together at the same time, and Chaos is a game that gets better with experienced players. Dungeon Lords (which I’m currently selling) doesn’t get played either. Maybe because the two of them take a long time to explain? I don’t know but I do know I miss playing Chaos.
And Runewars also uses a similar hidden order card mechanic, but each player chooses 4 cards each turn, and reveals/resolves 1 at a time.
Cool, I’m looking forward to giving it a try. I was more than a little pained that F&G looks so close in design to my own pulp adventure game, but it looks like mine is more on the heavy/deep side of things, so I can hold out hope that it won’t be totally redundant.
JM1
3010
I’ve spent a lot of time researching CITOW online and it seems like 3-player games are genuinely viable. They’ve even created a “dummy” Khorne player if you must have 4, and it even makes a worthwhile 3rd player for a 1v1.
Lorini
3011
You can do that in Dungeon Lords too. I just don’t like the idea of dummy players.
JM1
3012
Yeah, I can see it being a turn-off for a lot of people. Just having 3 players and ignoring a god ought to work fine though!
Arguably JM always uses a dummy player whenever he pops round, although I do try and provide suitable opposition.
JM1
3014
Dummy players are only slightly more predictable. And yes, we will be trying a 2 player game to see if it’s any good. Such a shame that one of the best games in recent years seems to have such a strict player restriction.
I’m really liking the look of A Few Acres of Snow, the new Martin Wallace game. It’s looks like a deck builder that is powering a mini wargame with a tiny bit of empire building in that you’re settling and fortifying locations before you start waring over them. Here are the rules.
Unfortunately it’s only available direct from the publisher for now but it should be in stores later this year. Immediately after that it will be available for play in my basement.
Mrenda
3018
Have you noticed an increase in the popularity in board games (and tabletop games in general) over the past 18 months?
The situation in Ireland seems to be getting better and better. A new shop opened in Dublin in the last two years. He moved from a cheap location to a (still cheapish) location that’s quite near to huge footfall areas. A new shop has opened in the north. Another shop that was a side-project for a guy has grown to full retail. The gaming conventions are seeing their biggest numbers since the early 2000’s. And people I run into are getting more and more into board games. The only person I know who is in the corporate world proper is getting more and more people coming up to him saying “I heard you run game nights.” And he’s not in a particular techy industry.
And this seems to be extending to general nerd culture as well. WotC has decided to bring D&D to the board game world. If you look at the computer game world, RPGs are increasing, and Dragon Age even published a tabletop RPG. More and more computer gaming sites are running articles on tabletop gaming (RPS having a regular column about board games.) Board games are selling iOS versions of their games, and TCGs are hitting it off in the computer game world. And you have films like Role Models showing LARPing and Knights of Badassdom coming out in the next few months. It seems like the Lord of the Rings films are paying off in creating more nerds, along with computer games spilling over to nerdery in the living room.
Am I alone in thinking that “old fashioned” tabletop gaming is getting more and more visibility.
Lorini
3019
I think WotC/Avalon Hill/Hasbro is seeing an opening with the success of Fantasy Flight games. FFG games are good, but they are frankly too complex for what they do. Hasbro will have released three ‘dudes on a map’ games in six weeks. Ikusa (Samauri Swords) will be out Tuesday and they just released Conquest of Nerath and Battleship:Galaxies. It will be really interesting to see how those do.
Here in the US, Settlers of Catan is doing really well in big box stores like Walmart. That alone gives me hope. Maybe one day it will outsell Monopoly!!
Mrenda
3020
Strange you should say that about FFG, because the games that I’ve played most over the past few months have been along the lines of FFG’s Silver Line. Games from “real” gamers’ publishers but toned down, run in an hour, easy to set up and come in a small box.
