5761

Played Ares Project with a friend this weekend. It is a fantastic implementation of RTS as a board game. As has been mentioned in this thread before, it has 4 factions that played differently (one group is trying to build a giant robot). I think it is a game that takes some commitment to play, to learn each faction’s strengths, heck to even learn them.

You have a deck of cards that can be played as buildings, as resources on buildings to provide units, or to start an attack.

Our first game we made some serious mistakes, but it was a learning game. It went to the end with both of us running out of cards. I went with trying to build a small number of powerful, but limited units and my opponent went numbers, and he won.

The second game we understood the rules better and I started to understand the Kahoum’s special abilities. I won by destroying my opponent base.

It is not a game for everyone, but if you like that sort of game it is great.

5762

My 13 yr old son loves Conquest of Nerath. It has that rick-like feeling that i think many teenage boys love. He also like A&A but i dont play that with him.

5763

I’ve played Mage Knight with my son (was 13 when I bought it) and we get along with it fine, and have made plenty of mistakes as we play that neither he nor I care about. It doesn’t come out often though as it is a real pain to setup. Love the idea of that game more than the actual playing unfortunately.

Have you considered Dungeon Command? We’ve been having a blast with that. Quick enough to setup and plenty of strategy in there. Not so strong on the solo play though.

5764

WIzard kings is a great suggestion I would never have run across myself. I love the look of those block games. Looks like the perfect middle ground between Euro meeples and cardboard chits. Thanks, Scamper.

Hope you two enjoy it. Peek around the geek for Chris Farrell’s posts on WK. He’s created some scenarios that are pretty great. The fog of war can lead to some fun gotcha moments.

5765

Slow, yes. Horrible – strongly disagree.

I did say in my opinion. I don’t think its a very well designed game. What does a hex represent? It takes all those movement points, yet you can go up and down a mountain in half a day.

It’d work better with dice for moment.

Just thinking about that game makes me angry. I am going to stop thinking about it :P

5766

Picked up the expansion to Eclipse and Call of the Wild for Mansions of Madness along with Space Cadets.

I’m worried Space Cadets is going to go over like brick with my game group. I haven’t even opened it yet.

My Game backlog:
Android Netrunner
X-wing
Tzolkin
Fortune and Glory
Merchants of Middle Ages (is this game any good?)
Rex (Dune Re-print)

5767

Mage Knight is one of my favorite games at the moment. I think it fits comfortably between Euro game style mechanics that I love and more interactive, territory control stuff usually reserved for Ameritrash games. Plus it has a fun theme (that I think it executes well on. Doing astonishing things in a single day is explained and intended as part of the world).

But I have friends who love Talisman, friends who love Stone Age, and friends who love Twilight Imperium. I can’t stand any of those games. I think that’s cool, though, because it shows how much depth there is to the medium, how many radically different things people get out of board games. I think it gets to Gus_Smedstad’s previous point about theme being a small part of a games to him. And yours about wishing Mage Knight had dice-based movement. I doubt I’d ever play Mage Knight if its movement was dice-based. We’re clearly getting something different out of games, or we wouldn’t be looking for such different things in them.

Onto games I’m playing… I picked up Troyes, Trajan, and Netrunner recently. I’ve gotten about 10 games in Trajan and really really like it. I still feel like I haven’t quite cracked it yet. It’s interesting that all the various actions are clearly intentionally unbalanced, but due to the weird action choosing mechanic, you end up having to do them anyway. Still having trouble figuring out what the best strategies are, but enjoying trying.

Troyes is fun and I like the way it abstracts its otherwise pretty generic theme. It feels a little sparse, not quite meaty enough, but it’s relaxing to play. I usually HATE dice in board games, but this game and Castles of Burgundy have really changed my mind. I love rolling dice up front and trying to figure out how to effectively use them, in comparison to them randomly determining how powerful my action is. It’s a small change, but one that makes me feel more in control.

I’m having a lot of fun with Netrunner. It’s the first CCG / LCG to engage me enough to want to deck build and keep playing. It helps a lot that there’s people to play with at work. Feels like there’s a lot of luck involved (running the deck at the right time, grabbing the right card from the opponents hand, or running the correct server), but it feels alright because their’s a guise of subterfuge that makes it feel a bit more controlled. I’m not sure if that’ll work long term, but 15-20ish games in so far and it’s still working for me. Curious to see how this game will progress with expansions as well.

5768

Uh, one of the dudes you can play as is like a dragon or something. They all have the potential to siege a city. They aren’t people, they’re mage knights. Mountains ain’t a thing.

Edit: Well I guess they are because you can’t go up or down mountains in Mage Knight. So we’re both wrong.

Edit edit: But the dragon guy can fly over mountains with his leap ability thing, so there.

5769

we have been playing Rails Across The World. That is a fun game, I think. And it is one that my two boys really enjoy. Tomorrow, the Western US Map Expansion arrives.

Also have Battlestar Galactica arriving tomorrow, also. That is a game I have put off for years. Finally pulled the tigger, though. I think watching the show (for the first time) pushed me to go ahead and get it.

5770

I didn’t write this review (and neither did Scamper), but it does a good job of laying out all the reasons I didn’t like Mage Knight: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/800679/an-adventure-game-with-no-surprises-a-negative-rev

But if anyone wants to do an online game of Magic Realm (using RealmSpeak) let me know…

5771

This is a good idea, though I’ve never actually figured out how to play the full bells and whistles version of Magic Realm (e.g. hiring native armies, character versus character combat, etc.).

5772

Oh man, it’s so good. I’m getting all giddy on your behalf over here. :)

5773

Meh, I love Mage Knight. The list of things that reviewer doesn’t like mostly reads like personal taste complaints and not actual problems with the game mechanics. Once you realize that not everyone likes the same things, it becomes easier to understand why the game is ranked so high on bgg.

I play it for the solo experience mostly, so the downtime doesn’t bother me. But that would be the only thing I might agree with when it comes to the game’s shortcomings.

5774

Licensed games don’t have to suck. Battlestar is excellent, although the worth of the expansions is really debatable. I’d stuck with the base set and maybe Pegasus.

Gale Force Nine’s Spartacus I enjoyed quite a bit as well and that company is getting this together for gencon:

Here’s hoping they do as good a job on this license. It would be a shame if it fell into the pile of crappy cash grabs.

Tom M

5775

So, if they are so great and magical, how can a bad hand have them just sit in place for a turn and do nothing? Magical potty break? Like I said, I don’t think the game makes any sense from a narrative perspective.

Btw, ratings are the Geek are fairly meaningless. You have rampant fanboys over rating games to try to push them to the top of the list.

The only ratings on the geek that I pay attention to are my geekbuddies because I know them and their play styles (even if we don’t always share the same opinions thankfully!).

Its sort of like how people rail against Metacritic averages.

5776

Limited print run announced up front (building up major hype and demand), high price (though, to be fair, not unreasonably so - the quality of the components are top notch) -> profit.

Though - really - who can understand GW’s business model.

5777

Ratings between divisions of gaming are meaningless - wargamers are the worst at trying to ratings trash competitors so far as I can figure, but when a games has the number of votes you see, you get a pretty good idea of how a game is liked within that division (Euro, co-op, wargame, family game, rails game, etc.). It’s not like the old days of Computing Gaming World when a literal handful of votes could swing things wildly.

5778

Michael Barnes of nohighscores.com and formerly of gameshark gave Mage Knight his game of the year award in 2011. That guy is critical beyond belief so if he likes it, that’s proof enough for me that it’s not a fan boy thing. It’s a great game in my opinion.

5779

Don’t know much of Barnes history on the geek, eh. He’s a fanboy of a particular type of game. They also gave it the thematic game of the year award.

I happen to think it is a puzzle game with a theme pasted on.

I would never put that much stock on any one person’s opinion.

5780

Man, Mage Knight is such a bummer for me. I own the damn thing and want nothing more than to play it solo, but when I try to read the rules, I have NO IDEA WHAT’S GOING ON. My favorite game is Paths of Glory, so I don’t think of myself as being rules-illiterate. Ah, well.