That reminds me of Fifth Frontier War - we got as far as setting it up, once. The board got messed up before we actually got to play.
War of the Ring is just a fantastic narrative game - it’s one of the few I’ve ever gotten around to writing a session report. As a straight up wargame it is mediocre, but in terms of evoking the world of Middle Earth - great.
Recently bought “Here I Stand: Wars of the Reformation”. Really looking forward to trying this out with the “hard-core” crowd down at the club; it is pretty highly rated among the card-driven games.
If you manage to play Android, please let us know. I picked it up two years ago, and it seems like a weekend project to even get one playthrough. There are some neat mechanics in there, but it seems you would need 5 very dedicated people to even have a shot at it.
Yeah, Android is one of those games where you need not only a lot of time set aside to play it, but a lot of time to experience and “digest” it. I’ve played it twice as a two player game and the biggest problem I had was that I didn’t know how to play my character properly, not only to my advantage, but to my opponent’s disadvantage. So, it helps greatly to “know thine enemy”. My advice: print out or write some notes down on how each of your opponent’s character’s story cards work to prevent the game from bogging down.
I’ve owned Android for a while, but only played about 3-4 times. It’s definitely a weekend game and plays better once you’re familiar with the basic rules and the core of each character’s mechanics. It’s a game that I like a lot for its thematic content and excellent bits and pieces (of which there are plenty!). It doesn’t always appeal to everyone though.
In other news, funagain.com has Civ:The Boardgame and Castle Ravenloft on sale for Black Friday. $50 = free shipping for today only also!
Amazon just shipped my copy of Civ. Much earlier than I expected :)
Nephrinn
1686
Just got mine from Amazon much to my surprise (didn’t think the mail was running today). Can’t wait to play it. :)
Just played my first game of civ, and I’m in love. At first, I thought the eagle games civ was the only way we would get it. I’m glad FFG went in and tried again because this is a very elegant system. I hope the expansions add more races and map tiles.
I think that’s probably something you can count on, unless FFG’s business model has been kidnapped by aliens. I’m glad it’s going well, as I picked up Dominant Species but Reldan got Civ, so we should have some exposure to the leaders of the pack.
I think that’s probably something you can count on, unless FFG’s business model has been kidnapped by aliens. I’m glad it’s going well, as I picked up Dominant Species but Reldan got Civ, so we should have some exposure to the leaders of the pack.
Let us know how Dominant Species turns out as I have that one on my radar.
I played my first 2p game of Civ and very much enjoyed it despite losing badly via military victory. The 2p game of Civ seems to be much more volatile in that one bad decision will likely mean game over.
My opponent got out to a slow start, but concentrated entirely on his military while I focused on everything but military. I made the mistake of planting a city too close to his forces and had it taken over a few turns later, which in turn netted him free tech. From then on he continued to upgrade his units and make a beeline for my capital.
Looking back, I should’ve kept my distance and invested a little more in having a standing military. Just like the video game, the board game will punish you for neglecting certain areas like military or economy.
The game is surprisingly deep because you can only perform one city management action per turn to focus on military, expansion, economy, or culture. And each of those choices has a whole myriad of sub-choices. Planning out how you expand in those areas via technology is also critical and I can definitely see leading to some analysis paralysis until you can get an idea of how everything works.
Anyway, looking forward to the next game.
Is there any fog of war in Civ? And yeah, I wasn’t sold on Dominant Species until I saw a couple of video reviews that explained the mechanics.
Not really. You can always see enemy forces and scouts as well as what they’re doing in their cities. However, you can’t see the makeup of the forces. So, the figure on the board representing an enemy force could be 3 tanks or 2 aircraft and an infantry. You could probably deduce the makeup based on the military tech of the enemy (which is also visible) since they likely would’ve upgraded whatever unit they have the most of first.
The only complaints I’ve heard about Dominant Species is that it’s a long game (doesn’t bother me) and that it’s chaotic (not sure about that one).
You will see what types of units your opponents buy, but they go into a draw pile for that player. Then when combat starts, you shuffle that pile draw three units plus extras depending on the situation and combat begins. So you can track what someone buys easily, but unless they have three units or less, it can still be random.
Thanks for the explanations. I look forward to completely misjudging the strengths of the system and getting demolished in combat soon.
This videohelped me understand it a lot better. When I think chaotic I think of a heavy element of pure chance or an abomination like Fluxx; it seems to me that DS has a strong reactive component because of the range of things your peers can affect before your turn, but
it seems like the game is very carefully calibrated to give you a way out strategically or at least something you can learn from for the next time. I’ve heard Glory To Rome and Citadels described as chaotic as well, and while I regard them as both games with a lot of player control over what each round looks like for the others, I don’t really find it something that can be described as disorderly or random-feeling. Hopefully, my hunch will be borne out by the game itself.
dogbert
1694
I’ve played Dominant Species & it didn’t feel chaotic/random at all.
Lorini
1695
Agreed. Pay attention to the cards that come out so you don’t accidentally do stuff that exaggerates the impact of the cards.
That’s reassuring. There’s a small game group meeting Monday-Tuesday in the area and I hope some of these will hit the table. Otherwise, I’m dying to try my hand at Chicago Express again.
So, I had a chance to go back over the rules for Civ today and it turns out I made a big mistake and is likely the reason I lost: you can take an action for each of your cities. We were playing it so that you got one and only one action no matter how many cities you possessed. I had 3 at one point and could’ve drafted a bigger army and built cities walls to protect myself sooner. Argh.
I love those moments of clarity when you’re looking at the rules after a hard-fought loss.
Looking for a “family” board game for Xmas. 2 years ago, Santa brought memoir '44, last year Small World. For context, I have 4 boys, ages 15, 10, 6, and 4. My 15 year old and I play the most, but we occasionally play with my 10 year old and sometimes even with my 6 yr old (although I help him).
We also have axis and allies and carcassonne, along with most mass produced games. We like the looks of arkham horror and space hulk, but wondering about complexity.
What do you recommend?
ShivaX
1700
Complexity-wise Space Hulk is pretty simple, but its also a purely 2 player game.
Arkham Asylum didn’t seem too convoluted from what I read of the rules, but its hard to say having never actually played it. You can download the rules from FFG’s website and see what its like.
