1701

I had it but really didn’t enjoy it. I can’t say anything completely damning about it. I just felt that the number of choices I had each turn were too limited. Plus, the theme didn’t really shine through for me. If I’m going to play a deck builder and Core Worlds is nearby, I’m going to go for that 9 out of 10 times.

1702

The benefactor was not out – I think much of it was group dynamics. People were very rarely taxing and reproducing a lot and we usually had enough goods on the domestic market to handle those crises, and even when we couldn’t handle the international crisis, the hit is only 1 unrest. That being said, I did use the barbarian on 2 or 3 tiles and assassinated the king, which might have balanced out the other factors. It could be that our end game conditions got met more quickly than they typically would. If the game had lasted a few more turns, I think the pressure would’ve really started to hit.

What are your thoughts on ideal group size? We were playing with 4 which was pretty good, but also meant quite a bit of waiting between turns. I’m sure some of this was people just learning the game, but I did wonder if 3 might be better, especially when turns get to be longer later in the game with more evolution cards/markets/ports.

1703

Downtime in Archipelago should be fairly short once you understand the basics of the game. I think 4 is the perfect number, myself.

1704

I suspect there aren’t a lot of folks here who wanted Caverna but don’t have it yet now that it’s widely available, but if anyone has been waiting for the price to go down, Amazon has it for $70. My understanding is that Mayfair doesn’t allow heavy discounting of their games, so I don’t know if this is the best price it’ll be for a while, but it seems to be the best price I can find right now.

I’m strongly tempted to pick it up, but even at $70 it’s a little hard to rationalize. I’ve still got a bunch of games that haven’t gotten more than a few runthroughs here at home, and I don’t know if Caverna is something my game group would typically go for. I didn’t realize that there are apparently solo rules for it. Has anyone tried them and can give impressions? How long does it play solo?

1705

The more I read about and look at Caverna, the more I think it may turn out to be one of those games that everyone was obsessed with getting that turns out to be mediocre and eventually forgotten.

More and more reviews seem to suggest that it is inferior to Agricola. It apparently allows the players to do so much, that it has lost the tension between choices that makes Agricola so special. It also apparently starts to feel like there is not a lot of difference between plays.

I am in the exact same position as you are mentally. I have decided to hold off.

1706

Everything I’ve read makes it sound inferior to Agricola while simultaneously claiming it entirely replaces Agricola. I dunno.

1707

I’m still researching a bit, but most of what I’ve seen/read says Caverna is, more straightforward (see the points and the good to food conversions) while at the same time losing some of the stuff that made Agricola more variable (like the cards). I’ve only played Agricola once, and I was a bit overwhelmed so it’s hard to judge it, but the two impressions I walked away with were that I did not like the cards, and I always felt I was on the cusp of starving. Caverna supposedly addresses both and seems to be the better choice if you didn’t invest in Agricola. Those who are really familiar with Agricola seem to be split between the inferior vs. replacement camps.

My guess is that Caverna is going to be more newbie-friendly (although definitely not a gateway game) and I like the theme somewhat better, as well as the adventuring path and the streamlining. I also haven’t read that many negative reviews, but I would agree that it was probably a bit over-hyped leading to scarcity, which only feeds the hype machine. I haven’t followed the hobby for more than a year, but we seem to get several of these games each year that are super highly anticipated, become impossible to buy, and then when supply catches up, end up failing to live up to the hype.

1708

I played it once and enjoyed it. But it can be a very long game. As for reviews, most folks I’ve heard talk about Caverna swear it’s better than Agricola. I probably would agree with them too. Agricola was never my favorite worker placement game and Caverna just seems richer in theme to me.

1709

Boy, does that Star Realms go down smooth! Picked it up yesterday, and granted, I had noodled with the mobile version, everything about it is either so straightforward or so familiar that it almost could have played itself (in a good way). I think this is the game my 13 year old has been looking for. He likes Dominion, but he never does too well in victory point games because he always focuses on getting cool actions or attacks. He likes Mag Blast, but no one will play such a cutthroat game with him. Star Realms is a wonderful middle ground.

I don’t know if “plays itself” and “great for my kid” sounds like faint praise, but it’s not. Except for this being a two-player game (only got one copy to start), I can see it being a popular offering at my boardgame night for sure.

1710

Have we talked about Shadowrun:Crossfire yet? A friend bought it last week, and we played it last night. I was pretty meh on it, honestly. It seemed way too hard and random, and even though I’m not a fan of deckbuilders in general, this one didn’t even seem to have much deckbuilding in it. We just ran through the titular Crossfire scenario several times, a couple with 2 players and a couple more with 3. Then there were the Legacy-style mechanics, which seemed to amount to ‘grind through the game losing for a whole bunch of times, until you get a minor upgrade, which hopefully means you might lose a little less’. All in all, not worth it.

On the flip side, we also played Valley of Kings, a little small-box AEG deckbuilder that was super streamlined, quick playing, and had lots and lots of choices to make on any given turn. Not the best game in the world, but a nice little filler that I wouldn’t mind playing again.

1711

You can play the physical Star Realms with four people you just need to buy two decks (though I have never had the chance to try it out). It also allows co-op scenario as well.

1712

I’ve never played Agricola so can only contribute half a perspective. I’m a frequent board-gamer including but not limited to euro-games and worker placement games and have a fair level of experience and appreciation for games good, great and less so. Caverna is for me up there in the “great games” category. Having played it with people who have played Agricola I hear that it offers a broader range of viable strategies / systems and is more forgiving in the sense that starvation is not something that requires a well-disciplined set-up of a food generation engine (but it does help). I’ve played either 3 or 4 matches with 4-5 people so far and am definitely still in the “learning basic strategies” phase, such as not letting any opponent go entirely unchallenged in the farming / animal husbandry / expeditions areas.

I really cannot imagine anyone rating this as a poor or even average game unless they didn’t like worker-placement games generically. I’d happily play this again and again but uh, not more than once per session, because boy it is a brain-burner!

Once it becomes available in UK I’m planning to get multiple hard-copies to enable the 3-4 player variants and dare to hope they will make it to the app version too (but not before a Friends list and an undo button!)

1713

I would disagree. Played this a lot a few months ago and then put it away. Came back to it this weekend and man what an amazing game. I am perplexed by the amount options you have. It’s agricola as created by Stephen Feld. There are so many buildings you want to buy, but having the resources and space becomes a real dilemma of time and location management. and Trying to hammer out a strategy is a great puzzle as you’re constantly watching other players. It’s a lot less solitaire than agricola was, even if you feel like you’re not blocked from spaces (which by the way is total bs our 4 player game I kept getting blocked).

For those curious, No Caverna is not better than Agricola. I don’t think it replaces it either. It just enough different with interesting decisions to make it a must keep in my book. The price tag is high ( curious to know if it’s actual costs or the fact that that they’ve become much more mainstream FFG prices are becoming ludicrous, but I digress.) Both can be stressful, but can be rewarding and they’re both great puzzles that I will never turn down.

1714

Caverna has a shitload of components, which probably contributes to having such a high MSRP.

over 300 wooden pieces for animals, resources and dwarfs - over 60 acrylic nuggets for Ore and Ruby - 16 game boards - 16 punchboards with over 400 pieces - 30 Cards

My understanding is that the publisher of Caverna is also against online retailer discounting. Rosenberg’s previous games went through Z-Man, who seem more reasonable (but tend to underprint games.)

1715

Wow, that paragraph sold me harder on Caverna then every other review I’ve read. Could you expand on how its more interactive? I don’t feel like that’s something I’ve seen pointed out often. Also, any chance you’ve played two player? Is the interaction still interesting there?

1716

I’d like to hear him expand on that as well, because that’s not my feeling about Caverna at all. There’s a lot less blocking and frustrating other players. There is the issue of some players relying on weapons for their resources, while others rely on the usual worker placement. This means Caverna can be really iffy as a two- and three-player game (in a two-player game, you each play past each other, and in a three player game, the odd-man out enjoys the luxury of having free rein while the other two have to vye with each other). But as much as I like Caverna – and I really like it – I think it suffers from the typical multiplayer solitaire syndrome.

-Tom
1717

No you can’t cause cave-ins or send exploding sheep (would be cool) to your opponents. Agricola creates interaction by limiting available resources and having players duke it out for first in turn order. Except for a few cards that may or may not come into play, players can build their farms independently without really paying attention to what their neighbors build. Caverna does something similar with resources, but it also adds the mechanic of “adventuring”. Send your dwarf out, they come back with some goods and gain experience. However dwarfs with more experience must be used later in your turn. So now I want to send my level 12 dwarf to space before you take it with your level 2, but that’s not going to happen unless I pay a ruby to the bank (not sure thematically why that is). So now it’s another layer of what move is your opponent taking next.I personally find myself much more interested in what tiles and actions my opponents are setting up for than I ever do in Agricola.

One other thing I really like about Caverna is that even when you feel behind it’s still possible to change your strategy and come back from defeat. This may change as we get better at the game, but The game I played this week with 4 was very much about changing my initial strategy and refocusing. This won’t mean a lot to someone who hasn’t played, but you’ll get the idea.

My original plan was to store up resources and purchase a room that would let me get 2 extra workers to the board by round 4 and 5. I had planned everything perfectly, but then player order switched and on a whim one of the other players took the tile I wanted. 4 rounds of turns wasted and I had nothing to show for it. Other players had working farms and mines and adventurers and I was left feeling pretty behind.
My go to strategy is to build farms and then the brewery, but with no farms that wasn’t an option besides having won with that strategy twice before the opponent to my left had decided he would give it a try.

So now I have no farms, some food from taking resources that gave additional food, and a bunch of empty mines. Not a great situation. Then I see it. Ore, lots of ore. With everyone adventuring ore was piling up pretty quickly and no one was taking it. I quickly take the ore. Then I purchase a tile that grants vps for having ore, and convert my strategy to a mining/animal farm. I convert rubies to animals right before breeding so I can bring in extra food. I take ore actions that with my mines grant extra ore and stone and I buy a tile that grants extra vps for stone. My final turn I buy a tile that no one can purchase because they all have adventures and come back to win the game.

Caverna is stressful. It’s harsh in a different way than Agricola (feeding is easier, but the game is shorter which means feeding happens quickly and food engines need to be built quickly) but it is very rewarding when you find a way to turn crushing blows into sweet victory.

*Tom, just saw your post. I wish you could have seen our game I was constantly blocked from important moves by other players. It was brutal.

1718

If you want to see a game with tons of indirect interaction, take a look at Bora Bora by Stefan Feld. Each round, you and your opponent are trying to achieve certain goals, such as having X number of men, or buying X number of shell necklaces, or building X number of huts. The great thing about the game is it is as much about trying to interfere with your opponents as it is trying to complete your own. I just got the game yesterday, so I’ve only played it once, but I’m really looking forward to playing it again!

1719

That sounds interesting. More competition over limited buildings makes sense as a new interaction point since typically you get to just play your hand of cards.

Two and three player are the situations I’m in most often, so I’ll probably give this a pass for the moment, but my interest is definitely piqued.

I like Bora Bora quite a bit as well. It took me a while to get my head around it (the cards in particular took me a while to learn to use well). I play it mostly two player with my girlfriend and it can be pretty brutal at that player count. With the zero sum push to get in each others way, it’s all about grabbing the necklace your opponent needs, placing dice specifically to block, and grabbing goals primarily to keep them from your opponent. There’s also a bigger incentive to only move places your opponent already has since it guarantees fish ownership. Good stuff.

1720

I definitely understand what you are saying, but I am getting to the point in my gaming where I have to be judicious about what else I buy. Not necessarily because of expense, but simply because there really are too many games for the amount of time available to play them.

Realistically, I am not going to be able to play much more than a game a week (and that is fairly aggressive). That means if I own 100 games, I’m going to be getting to play each game once every couple of years.

That just does not make a lot of sense to me. I have already discovered, based on the number of games that I have, that I feel like I essentially have to sit down and relearn the rules for each game every time I play, based on how many I have and how infrequently I therefore play each one.

So I cannot really, in particular, justify games that feel somewhat different, but are still fundamentally the same thing at a level of core mechanics.

And with Caverna, I already have, just off the top of my head, Agricola, Le Havre, and Ora et Labora. I like each of those three games, and am wondering what is really so distinct, so unique about Caverna, that I should spend another $70-80 and reduce my time with each of the existing three.