I’m in a similar situation re: lack of a gaming group. My 11-year old boy, however, declared that he loved the game after a few plays. In his case the theme plays a major role even when it feels pasted-on to me (he’s an avid Civilization IV fan) and his competitive streak gets amply rewarded by the mechanics. He just enjoys discovering new ways of amassing points and crushing us, though he was noticeably disappointed about the abstract way the game handles military progress.
I’m not sure he’d like it as much if he didn’t have that going for him, so it might be that the game is simply not your daughter’s cup of tea. It’s a great game but I’m not sure worth keeping for the 2-player variant.
tylertoo, I thought 2 player 7 Wonders was terrible but I really like the game for any other number of players. I guess I’d go with b or c depending on how much you hate storing stuff you don’t use.
So I had a pretty amazing thing happen over the holiday: I had four people at my place who had all played Space Alert before. The few times we’ve managed to play it always involved a new person so it would be this huge ramp up to teach the game and play it. Instead we actually played a game of Space Alert as a 45 minute filler between other games (including setup and break down). I think it was an eyeopener for some of us because we were used to thinking of Space Alert as a long game that takes the whole night to play. Hopefully this means more Space Alerts in the future. I love Space Alerts.
We also played Eclipse. You guys kinda talked it all out already but I really liked it. After the game ended you could see everyone was thinking about how they could have done things differently and that’s always a good sign. Our usual game night is Thursdays so I expect to be playing our second game then.
I really enjoy the 2-player 7 Wonders variant. My wife an I played a lot of Agricola over the last year (our Christmas gift last year, 7 Wonder was our gift this year) and we find it can touch on some of those same reasons we like Agricola, but in about 1/3rd the time commitment.
I had the exact same experience, except instead of the offender being an 11 year old girl, it was a 37 year old man. The dude just made up his mind that he wasn’t interested before ever playing. He softened slightly after a few hours of peer pressure, but I still haven’t managed to get the game back on the table since. Everyone else enjoyed it.
Maybe she just doesn’t like it it. I mean it’s not /that/ great a game, and it’s main claim to fame is playing quickly (especially with many players). If a 3 player game is taking you more than an hour to finish… well, I’d probably lose interest too.
Move on to something else, maybe some flavor of Settlers or another Ticket to Ride board, then come back to it later. It’ll help if you can get the game down enough you can finish it faster – picking 18 cards can go pretty quickly!
Might also try asking her what she didn’t like about it?
My wife and younger son often make this sort of snap judgement about things (most recently Blood Bowl Team Manager). My experience has been that sometimes there’s nothing you can do to move past it, and other times the resistance fades as they try a wider range of boardgames or watch other people play and you finally get an “Oh, ok. I’ll play”. Helps to have more than just three players though.
Lorini
4726
Ora & Labora is in stock at Boards and Bits.
z22
4727
Blood Bowl: Team Manager: A rarely remembered rule is that “downed” players can’t use any of their abilities or skills. A player with, in order: (SPRINT, TACKLE, PASS) that is downed from his own tackle attempt cannot use his PASS skill, or any ability he has.
Please convince me that this game is horrible, even if it isn’t. I can’t afford to be tempted!
That link is logged into someone’s B&B account.
Lorini
4730
Fixed, sorry about that. Three reviews of the game showed up this morning on BGG, and I basically agree with all of them.
Has anyone had any real luck with a single player LotR:LCG deck that doesn’t use Bilbo? I’ve been able to build a couple fairly succesful decks, but if I sub out Bilbo all hope is lost! That extra card every turn is just so powerful useful/necessary for getting your system set up.
Hey, I don’t have Bilbo!
Me and a friend tried the second mission in the base game, the one with the hill troll. We didn’t come close to beating it. It attacked me (I had the lore deck) and my friend was using the deck with Gimli in it. There was just no way for us to get Gimli to attack the troll once it engaged my side, at least no way that we could think of. Were we maybe missing something?
Generally, when a monster is engaged with a player, it’s very difficult to change that. There are a few ways that Gimli could still attack it of course.
The real problem is that the player controlling Gimli should have opted to engage with the troll instead of letting the troll engage.
One last tip, having a low threat helps a lot with this scenario. Try to keep it a couple points below 30 to allow everyone a few turns to build up to take out the troll and put some allies into play.
Oh dang, we forgot the rule that we could have chosen to engage an enemy! Thanks for the response. Your other points were great, too.
Dave, the Forest Snare card is pretty handy for dealing with powerful enemies while using the Lore deck.
Re: LoTR:LCG. So far I’ve played five solo games, all with the first adventure (Mirkwood), all with the deck with Gimli and pals (tactics deck?). And I’ve lost all five – lost 'em badly, as in never got to the second adventure card.
So I’m not sure if I’m playing wrong, or just playing badly, or that deck just plain sucks. Is anything winnable with that deck?
As has been linked previously in this thread, Rodney Smith won with the tactics deck in his Learn to Play video series.
Rodney got lucky as hell. I couldn’t win with that deck either, Tyler. But with a mixed deck, I rolled through that mission.
Thanks for the Snare tip, merry!
tylertoo, the tactics deck is very difficult to use monosphere solo because it has almost no ability to make quest progress. I lost as well when I tried it that way for the first scenario. You can keep attempting this for the challenge or you can move on to the spirit deck and win in a few turns.
D’oh. I actually watched all 11 episodes to learn the game. And then promptly forgot he’d used that deck when I asked the above question. So, nevermind.
I’d better go back and see how he did it. I feel like I keep drawing mostly locations early on, moreso than creatures, and that adds so much to the threat level that I can’t get over that initial hump even as I build up a decent offensive force.
Ah, thanks. Glad to hear it wasn’t just me. I’ll try another deck for now.
