nishil
3021
Have you play Checker’s.I like this game and its interesting to play out.
I wish I could imitate that whenever I wanted.
Also, Mike: thanks for link unwack!
Coolstuffinc had a coupon this weekend for 5% off (JULY5), and it’s still working today (I just used it to buy a heap of expansions for Summoner Wars and the LOTR solo/co-op LCG). I also have Quarriors on pre-order, so I’m hoping that plays as good as it looks.
I had a chance to try out Alien Frontiers (three-player), and can’t decide if I like it as much as Kingsburg. I love dice games like this where there’s always something to do regardless of your roll, but AF seemed a little sterile. I need to give it another go because there’s definitely room for multiple strategies. The alien tech cards you get can change the game in surprising ways, and mine let me operate very lean on dice while still eking out a victory over opponents who were throwing down handfuls of the things each turn. I’ve never liked Kingsburg’s fight mechanism at the end of each round, but haven’t tried it with the expansion yet so maybe they improved that.
Really looking forward to Quarriors. And those Summoner Wars armies/reinforcements. That game is pure joy.
Vesper
3024
Wanted to put in a good word for Cool Stuff Inc’s awesome customer service. My copy of Battleship Galaxies showed up with a smashed in side the day before we were going to play it for gaming night. I emailed CSI about it, and they immediately shipped out a new copy and said I could use the damaged one for gaming. They didn’t even ask for proof or want a payment to secure the new copy. After gaming, one of my friends wanted his own copy so after talking to CSI they let him buy the damaged one at a discount. As such, had no need to return the damaged one.
Great customer service, and people could easily have used that scenario to scam a cheap game out of them. Going to be giving them lots of my business in the future.
That’s crazy good customer service. Impressive.
Please sell me on this (or someone else dissuade me) as I’ve been on the fence on this one.
I would watch Tom Vasel’s initial review of Summoner Wars to get an idea of what it’s about. If that interests you enough, watch his review on the Summoner Wars Master Set as that is what you’ll want to pick up first (it includes an actual board, instead of the lame paper mats).
I own the first two sets of Summoner Wars plus the Vanguards and Undead and think it’s an absolutely brilliant game because, despite it having 14 different factions and half of those with expansion packs, it’s still incredibly balanced. I should mention that each faction plays completely differently, which I find absolutely fascinating. It also seems to be infinitely expandable, not only allowing for expansion packs for each faction, but new summoners and setup cards. Lastly, it’s extremely easy to understand and play but at the same time provides so many rich choices to make throughout a typical game (most only last 30 minutes).
If I had to name a downside, it would probably be the luck factor in the form of the dice you roll to determine hits and misses. I personally don’t mind it, but it can be frustrating sometimes when your opponent is on a hot streak and triggers unit abilities from the rolls and decimates your army without any recourse.
SlyFrog
3028
I was disappointed with the game. It was one that I bought even though I knew I shouldn’t. I let the hype make a decision for me, even though I had the feeling it wouldn’t be my type of game (and it wasn’t).
It has a fantasy theme, but it’s pretty hackneyed in my opinion. Essentially, you’re sliding around little cards on a grid. The cards have the inevitable “special power that breaks the game rules.” The little cards attack each other. The cards will say things like, “Sneak thief goblin,” or some such. The quality of being a sneak thief goblin will be such that you get to reroll 3 of 5 dice on an attack, or move twice or something.
I don’t know; it just left me cold.
Even this is incorporated into the game smartly, though. You can mitigate the randomness by using a faction like the Phoenix Elves (many of which do light damage without requiring a roll), or you can embrace it and pray to the Dice Gods by picking a gambler’s faction like the Tundra Orcs.
The ability of the different factions to accommodate different play styles is one of the things I like most about SW, but Nephrinn pointed out many of its other strengths. It is balanced beautifully, especially considering how many factions there are and how incredibly different they all play. It’s quick. There are no sucky cards (you can get draws that don’t play into your current strategy, but everything’s usable in its own way). Combat is straightforward and generally brutal. It’s easy to teach. All the info you need about units is printed directly on the cards. You don’t have to measure distances with string or even count out hexes the way you would in something like Heroscape because the board is so confined. It’s inexpensive and portable relative to all miniatures games, but not fiddly like a real card-based miniatures game like Battleground: Fantasy Warfare.
The thing I like most about it, though, is that it encourages aggressive play. The best way to get the resources needed to summon units (generally) is by beating the snot out of your opponent (their dead units become your resources, so it’s very Blood-For-The-Blood-God). Turtles get eaten alive in this game, which keeps the pace snappy and requires both players to participate instead of letting one sit back doing nothing while the other fumes and lays down a boring siege.
The folks designing this game temper unbridled creativity with rigorous playtesting, and I am always shocked by the new ideas they come up with that seem totally broken but fit neatly into the system. That’s not to say it is a deep system by any means, but its breadth is staggering, and the design is fully-realized (much like Yomi). SlyFrog’s description does no justice at all to the way a faction’s cards synergize with one another from a gameplay standpoint while also evoking a unique theme. I can see someone not liking the game, but to dismiss the design as an unrelated pile of modifiers with silly fantasy names randomly tacked on is absurd.
Anyone here played Puzzle Strike? I saw it at Card Kingdom the other day and looked interesting.
It’s by the same guy who designed Yomi, and is a deck building game that uses chips pulled from a bag instead of cards drawn from a deck. I like other deck builders better, and the best way to see if you’d want to pay money for it is to play the free online version here: http://www.fantasystrike.com/dev/
(Click the Puzzle Strike icon at the top, as it defaults to Yomi.)
Totally agree with Tracy on this. Summoner Wars is a brilliant design. I think I’m going to get my regular game group on board with it by running a tournament this year. SW will be our warm-up for the first hour of every game night.
yeah, I got most of that from the box. Didn’t know about the online trial, though- thanks for that, I’ll check it out.
I was just looking more for general impressions from people here. Bear in mind that I’m not that into deck-building games (I don’t really dislike them, but I don’t really like them either), but I do like synergy/combo mechanics (Alien Frontiers is aces). How does it play with 3-4 players? It seems to have a lot of interaction, but does that boil down to a couple of players fight, and the other(s) run away with it?
It’s Dominion as a fighting game. I really like it as a two-player game; as a multiplayer game, it suffers from the part where you attack clockwise, so if you’ve got a bad player to your left and a good one to your right, it’s the guy to your right who’s going to win the game.
SlyFrog
3036
I didn’t say they are unrelated. I just think they are boring. The game leaves me cold.
When I think of a good themed game, I don’t think of sliding little cards around on a grid. To me, the game is essentially an abstract with pasted on theme. You could easily have the units in summoner wars be space aliens instead of dwarves and goblins with no impact to the game whatsoever.
In fact, it’s clear the game is intentionally designed that way to be modular and permit expansions. That’s fine, but it does nothing for me.
FFG makes games I want to play. they also seem to have found the right balance of fiddly and compact. I really am looking forward to this one. (mostly because my group likes the Doom boardgame, but none of us want to be the bad guy)
This thread is huge so I apologize for being a tad lazy in advance. Inspectigater and I are trying to put together some board game nights (Omnicsia, send me a PM if you want in) and I was wondering if any of you Qt3’s have any suggestions for good co-op board games?
Holy crap. By that standard practically every game is, “essentially an abstract with a pasted on theme.” Any game can be reduced down to its mechanisms and summarily dismissed. Most could be completely rethemed with no impact to the game whatsoever.
Like I said, I can understand if you just don’t like it. There are plenty of highly-regarded games that leave me cold, too. It’s just that your summary of the game’s faults is an indictment of board games in general, not SW specifically.
JM1
3040
There’s a better post somewhere in the thread about co-op games. In terms of what I’ve played, and in order of how likely they are to appeal to people:
Pandemic (+expansion, pretty crucial) - very easy to get into, theme seems to amuse people, fairly short games
Space Hulk: Death Angel - tough, great theme if you like 40K or sci-fi, not great if you don’t, can lead to people sitting out games due to being killed
Arkham Horror - basically a madcap RPG set in the Lovecraft mythos. Great for D&D nerds and people who value story above smooth gameplay. Terrifically complex and very difficult.
