The thing about play by forum is that most people aren’t on a forum 24/7, so the less discussion required to progress through the turns the better. Some is inevitable in a coop game, of course. But when you have effects like a hero playing a card during another hero’s turn it’s easier to preload that stuff.
Oh no, it’s fine. The play by forum is a rather unique beast and things that are usually trivial are having immense impact on the speed of the game (such as everyone agreeing on the handling of an event card). It is like trying to play an asynchronous iPad game without push notifications nor even an iPad in a game not designed for such pacing. I agree we should have a lot more lateral than a normal game as despite everyone’s efforts, there isn’t a definitive table that we are playing on.
For those with Sentinels of the Multiverse, is it worth getting as a 2-player game? I understand you need 3 heroes at least and I will not play with more than one hero per player. What about the variant where you play with a fallen hero? Does that work?
It is worth getting even if you were only ever going to play it solo, in my opinion. One of the best games I have. Anywhere from 1-5 players…with 4 players probably being the sweet spot. But, it is more than capable of holding its own with 3 players…
oh wait…I see, I misunderstood after re-reading your post.
With only 2 players, and only 1 hero per player…I wouldn’t think so. Unless you wanted to run 2 heroes per player. It is easy to do that, though…in my solo games, I play 4 heroes with no problems at all
The game is balanced for 3 to 5 heroes. It’s easy enough to run two heroes per player in a two player game, imho.
Tom_Mc
6046
If everything goes well I will shortly have a copy of CO2.
I was pulled in by the way power plants are constructed in three parts from initial proposal through infrastructure construction and ending with the construction of the plant itself. That each phase may be competed by different players and each yield their own rewards is fascinating. The level of knowledge your company accrues by your scientist managing these projects and speaking at summits also put its hooks into me.
I like games like this that present research in an interesting way and I hope the forthcoming “In the Lab” expansion for Pandemic helps that game in that way. I assume there has got to be quite a few project/research games like this and the few more that come quickly to my mind are Manhatten Project, Liftoff, and High Frontier.
How many of us like these kind of games and what are your favorites?
Tom M
sclpls
6047
Just chiming in to say Puzzle Strike is an excellent game, and one of the few deck building games I haven’t grown tired of.
I like these types of games! But don’t have a ton of experience with them…
CO2 was awesome.
Manhattan Project was a total bust for our group.
An unusual, but relatively interesting one is Leonardo Da Vinci. It’s a worker placement game where you assign your apprentices to get you various resources that you need to build inventions that come semi-randomly out of a deck. What’s interesting is that you can sometimes peek into the deck a bit and therefore plan for things that are coming up when no one else can, which is important because you get the most points for building something first. I think you would call that the “research” mechanic. As I recall you also develop your laboratory to allow you to hire more apprentices and invent more complex machines.
Syzygy
6050
I bought the Anniversary Edition for Galaxy Trucker a couple of weeks ago. The Sit Down and Shut Up reviews, as well as my co-workers giving the game rave reviews from when someone borrowed a copy and brought it in convinced me to take the plunge.
One of my co-workers, who has held his own but hasn’t been amazing in all the other games we’ve played (Andean Abyss, Mage Knight, Agricola, Ascension, etc.) appears to be a savant at Galaxy Trucker. It was his third game, my first, and the other two players were at 2-3 plays each as well, and the scores were 87-16-9-8. And this was with him playing with one of the “Even Steven” handicaps!
Tom_Mc
6051
Galaxy Trucker is awesome. It usually runs on the expensive side but I have gotten a lot of play and enjoyment out of it.
The game I should have thought of when it comes to research is, “The New Science,” It’s all about research and making choices on when to publish for prestige and when to hold back in case you want to go for a bigger publication later.
Tom Mc
I kickstarted The New Science, and have wanted to play it since it got to the house. I’m a science geek and didn’t count on the fact that the rest of my family would turn their noses up at playing Newton, Galileo and the other greats. My fault, but still, sad panda.
Yep, the building mechanic is something some people are just really good at doing fast. If you play without the timer (which I do all the time; am I the only one?) then it evens it out a little bit because you can’t get totally screwed by the fast builder, but he still gets the advantage of being in the lead and of probably having one of the better ships.
Hey if you’re near Tampa and want to come out to a game day I guarantee we could get it on the table with willing participants. PM me for the details if you’re interested.
A new board game in the Arkham Horror “brand” just got announced, Eldritch Horror. Whereas Arkham Horror was city-focused, Mansions of Madness mansion-focused, and Elder Sign museum-focused, Eldritch Horror goes global, taking place across the entire world.
Definitely watch the 12 minute video on the website as it explains the game really well. Richard Launius and Corey Konieczka are both working on it, so I’m sure the design will be solid. And it’ll be releasing later this year!
ioticus
6056
I’m really excited about Eldritch Horror for a number of reasons: it occupies a nice gap between the lighter Elder Sign and heavier Arkham Horror, it’s co-designed by Corey K, it looks to be a meaty story driven game with a 2-4 hour playtime, can be played solo, and I like what I’ve seen in the excellent video presentation. Can’t wait for this, it’s the kind of game I was hoping to see after being disappointed with Elder Sign!
Eldrich horror looks like they really liked the pseudo campaign modes in elder sign ios and fleshed it out into a full game on its own.
I need to watch the video, but I’m tentatively optimistic about this. I still hope they have another expansion for Arkham Horror one of these days, but that’s looking less and less likely.
I guess I haven’t played enough Elder Sign to recognize this: What are the campaign modes on the iOS version?
Funkula
6060
I understand wanting more variety for a favored game, but Arkham Horror kind of has a ridiculous number of expansions already. Have you seriously played it so much that you’ve exhausted all the novelty of all combinations of all eight expansions?
