Yeah, I really like the Eagles for mirkwood, but damn, the way you can stack dwarf effects looks impressive. I agree that they seem like they might be bettet in the mines.
Cant remember the guys name now, but the hero that comes in the last mirkwood pack is huge for a dwarf deck. +1 will and +1 attack for all dwarves…yowza. Not to mention cards like Kazad!Kazad! A lot of the dwarf stuff is so powerful for relativly low cost.
Those art sleeves look great and I am tempted to wait and get some. Yikes it looks pricey though, given how many carda there are. Even just the player cards looks like it would be a pretty penny.
I might just get some penny sleeves for the encounter deck,that seems pretty reasonable. Maybe I’ll get just a couple of the sweet art ones for the player cards I am immediatly using.
I know. I’m so torn on what to do right now. I feel like I have to use Dain Ironfoot for that huge bonus to dwarves and if I’m going to do that I might as well go full dwarf to take advantage of that bonus as much as I can. Ugh.
And I only buy enough sleeves for player cards that I can form a deck from; all the other player cards are thrown in penny sleeves (or not sleeved at all). That saves you money as you only have to buy one or two packs for yourself (50-100 sleeves).
Daagar
4944
I did my whole LOTR set in penny sleeves, not knowing much about sleeves in general and not wanting to double the cost of the game. It appears that so long as you smash/side riffle shuffle and can avoid doing anything too stupid, penny sleeves are sufficient. It is just me and my son, so there isn’t the danger of friends destroying things. And I know where my son lives if he mauls one ;) (And I’ll simply cry if I’m the culprit).
Cool, I think I will pick up some penny sleeves for the encounter decks then, sounds like that’s the way to go. I have some really nice FFG art sleeves with Arkham Horror box cover art on em (cause I like that piece a lot). I think I will use them for now for the player cards actually in use, even though they are off thematically, and maybe swap em out when the LotR sleeves are released.
And (to quote Tom Chick) holy cats Mage Knight is AMAZING! So much brilliance there I don’t even know where to begin. Absolutely glorious in all it’s wonderful theme and complexity. Can’t wait to bring it to game night, but damn, even solo it is pretty incredible. (poor Skyrim is gonna be so neglected)
Yeah, I know what you mean. I am starting to cook up a Leadership/Lore/Tactics deck using only dwarves (including allies). A three sphere deck is pretty resource constrained, but between that belt and the new lore dwarf I think a lot of that could be solved. Additionally the dwarf only cards are about one resource cheaper across the board for similar non dwarf only cards. I think that could help the resource situation tremendously. (I mean the new neutral card adds one HP to attached dwarf or hobbit…for a cost of…0)
Still, I’ll be sad to hang up the eagles. sniff (espiacially the attachment that grants an eagle’s stats to a hero…that’s just so badass.)
Let me third that. I usually sell it to new players as “Poker on Steroids”, but that is really doing it an injustice. Such a superbly tense, cutthroat game.
Mage Knight and Ora et Labora arrived yesterday, and what a difference in production quality. Ora et Labora has typical wooden bits and cardboard counters, but the boards are on some of the thinnest stock I’ve ever seen and the rules (particularly the player aids) are printed on tissue paper. I’ve never seen anything like it from a major publisher. And those rules. Wow. I had no idea how small text could get. It’s weird to see them pinch pennies like this on a major Uwe Rosenberg release.
Contrast that with Mage Knight, which comes with nicely-painted minis, tons of cards on seemingly good linen-finished stock, thick counters, and everything pre-wrapped and nestled in its proper place in the custom insert. Considering how badly WizKids botched the Star Trek: Fleet Command release I was pretty impressed with the quality of this one.
For some reason I watched an unboxing video of Mage Knight at BGG and was pretty awed by its quality and packaging. Forget about the game, I want to order it just for the quality of the production.
Lorini
4950
The component quality of Ora is not what Lookout/Zman ordered. It’s a result of the printing crises in Germany.
That’s the only thing that makes sense, because other than weird stuff like moldy/warped boards due to crappy Chinese printing, I’ve always been either satisfied or impressed with Z-Man’s releases.
I can’t believe that was printed in Germany. The back of one of the rulebooks looks like it was printed from an inkjet with the hiccups.
Lorini
4952
Someone on BGG said that the printers in Germany were working at 130% capacity, including printers new to the business. The collapse of Germany’s largest printer back in mid 2010 is still reverberating through the industry.
Giaddon
4953
This has been available for some time, but I thought I’d post it here for people who haven’t seen it before (like me!)
Race for the Galaxy AI
It’s the Race for the Galaxy card game, for free, with the three expansions (or not, customizable), against 1 or more AI opponents. There’s also online multiplayer (I haven’t tried this). Authorized by the game makers. I downloaded it and have played maybe a half-dozen games. Not the slickest interface, but it works well, the AIs play well, and the core game is excellent. I can’t believe it is freely available. If you’re a fan of strategy or card games at all, check this out.
Game rules here.
From this program it seems only a hop, skip and a jump to an iPad version, which I would love to see.
I played my 6th game of Risk: Legacy last night. We played our initial game last Tuesday and everyone was really into it, to my surprise. So much so, in fact, that my friend Todd was jonesing so much to play that he roped us into a special session on Sunday, and that’s all we played last night, despite having made plans to play Civilization with the new expansion. We played three games of it, while Eclipse sits neglected! Christ, this game really hits that sweet spot for making us want to see just what happens in that next pack. I really never thought I’d say this, but a frikken Risk Variant might be my GoY for 2011. Weird.
Don’t bother reporting me, I’ll just do it myself.
I’m not sure what it is about the auction mechanism in Taj Mahal that has people comparing it to poker. The bluffing? (e.g. “You better just let me have that princess or you’re getting nothing, fool!”)
I’ve tried it. if your group likes shouting and failure, you’ll have a blast. If your group expects to succeed, they’re going to get frustrated, and may hate it with the fire of a thousand suns.
If you reckon there’s wisdom in the Dwarf Fortress slogan, “Losing is fun!” then get Space Alert on the table as soon as possible.
Alan_Au
4957
I’ve played some Space Alert, and the time pressure encourages people to delegate tasks and operate somewhat independently. Depending on the group, this can be a good or bad thing.
Personally I like the idea of coop games, but some personalities aren’t well suited for coop, and I’ve seen games devolve into… not quite shouting matches, but heated debate between two people while the rest of the table sits there and rolls their eyes. I suppose it’s a good way to measure leadership and management potential.
This review puts it best: “Winning the game requires hand management, effective bluffing (convincing opponents to drop out, rather than continue bidding), and good long-term strategy. The poker comparisons are apt, given the potential for bluffing, and, if it weren’t for the theming and complexity, Taj Mahal would be a perfect gateway game for poker players.”
I might take you up on that, so if you see a strange invite from “SpectreCollie,” that’s me. The game seems really interesting from the manual, but there’s no way to try it out without a human opponent, as far as I can tell.
Thanks for the link, Tracy!
