1781

Robert Florence is an interesting reviewer. He used to review boardgames for RPS in the voice of the table. I started following him when I saw his strangely touching review of Dixit.

1782

Yay! My copy of Space Hulk arrived today! :)

What a staggeringly beautiful game. So happy to have the 3e version of the game that really started it all for me back in 1989. :)

1783

I recently purchased and enjoyed Tokaido. Beautiful game, simple mechanics, no dice rolling (for those who hate that), tactics have to change based on what other players are doing. It’s a great game for those who do not like deep complicated games but varies enough where those who do like complicated game could probably enjoy a round or two of this. Really it’s simplistic and fun, and not super long.

1784

Sweet Knizia, that game is gorgeous. Like nothing else. Gameplay-wise I found it not unpleasant, but a bit mystifying. Well worth keeping in my collection, though.

1785

Looking forward to getting Tokaido from the Kickstarter - it looks amazing!

1786

Yeah it’s going to take me awhile to figure out how to play something so dependent on what others are doing. I wound up with way too much Yen at the end, but not that far behind the winner.

Interesting, I had no idea there was another edition in the works. I purchased mine on a steep discount to just try out. I find it… charming and even a little relaxing.

1787

Tokaido by Antoine Bauza… He has a run of good/great games, like Ghost Stories and 7 Wonders, Hanabi (SdJ Winner)… Tokaido is on my list, too.
Sometimes it is interesting, where game mechanics come from or to identify a lineage…
It goes like this: Egizia, Tokaido, Francis Drake. They all use the mechanic, to put your worker on a road to get some reward, but you never can go back on the road… I like that mechanic,
I am not sure if Egizia was the first…

I am looking for a good Zombie game to play solitaire. I know that Dawn of the Zeds is very good, but I find it a bit dry from the some walk through videos (and it is expensive to ship it to Europe).
Yesterday, I was so sure that I would be happy with Zombicide, but after watching some videos, it looks a bit generic. So I discovered Dark, Darker, Darkest. DDD has a bad rep because of the
rulebook, but there is a revised version online and it is a good game now, some even say it is great. It reminds me a bit of Ghost Stories, and it was compared to Resident Evil…

This video made me buy it


(Joel Eddy from DriveThru games)

So is this cool, or what?? It is a bit cheaper than Zombicide and I can start to play it tomorrow… In Ghost Stories, you have to beat Wu Feng,
but he is just an overpowerd card … here you get also to beat a big boss, but the game changes dramatically when you unlock the lab… wow

(Dead of Winter is a multiplayer game, would it work solitaire without the traitor(secret objectives thing???)

1788

I like Zombicide but it sure is expensive. It doesn’t feel quite so generic in practice, mind you. Those simple mechanics work beautifully towards generating fraught survival scenarios and tough choices. I feel like a lot of the pricetag is in the minis, though, and I wish there were a version with a cheaper approach to zombies (tokens or the like).

Dead of Winter has a pure coop mode that involves using the hard version of objectives. I assume this would work solo, although I’ve only had one person even mention it so I’m not sure if it’s still fun in that mode. One reason I’m not in any hurry to pick it up, since I hate traitor mechanics and that seems to be the main selling point.

I believe it’s out of print at the moment, but I have heard good things about Carnival Zombie.

1789

I saw the ks thought meh. The description was so terrible and I thought it was going to be some sort of mancala programming game, but after watching the Rhado’s play through, I am in awe of it. It just seems like such a great brain burner. So much to think about I love that. Definitely want to try it. I’m hoping to find an essen mule to grab that and Martin Wallace’s new game.

malkav11,
Can you explain the appeal of Zombicide to me.
My wife’s favorite zombie game to date is zombies!!! It’s way long for what it is but she loves just seeing waves of zombies on the board. I bought Zombicide hoping it would be a better version of that game. We played 3 games of it and thought it was trash. It was very easy to complete objectives without being overrun. We never felt trapped except for maybe once. In fact, I had to reread the rules and confirm on the bgg we were playing correctly because it just seemed too easy The minis were cool. but I just don’t know why that game makes so much $$$

1790

So of course I was talking to my wife tonight about possibly placing an order for some stuff, and out of all the things we talked about, Five Tribes was the only one she really expressed any interest in.

It’s worth noting that there’s been a bit of discussion over at the Geek about Rahdo’s comments regarding 2-player not really working well. Bruno even responded, and it sounds like the issues Rahdo had are really somewhat intentional decisions to make the auction phase more interesting for 2-players. Rahdo has come back and stressed that what he said was that it didn’t work well for them, but he wasn’t saying 2-player is broken.

I think what I’m starting to take away after watching a good number of Rahdo’s videos over the last few months is that, while his walkthroughs are generally very thorough and I’ve really enjoyed them, he doesn’t seem to get a lot of plays in before making them (mainly because of the volume he’s putting out), and so I think you have to take his comments with a large grain of salt. I’m pretty sure he’s said as much in a few of his posts I’ve read, that you have to watch the runthrough and make your own decisions.

Unfortunately there don’t seem to be a lot of real impressions from others at the Geek about it as a 2-player game, but there were a few possible suggestions about how you could deal with the auction phase if you felt the same as Rahdo about the possibility of players going after two consecutive turns. So I may end up changing my mind and giving the game a try after all.

1791

Well, for one thing, the scenarios vary wildly in difficulty and the listed ratings are not accurate. The first scenario is actually really hard and is rated medium, while scenarios with cars are significantly easier than they’re given credit for. But in general, “easy” has not been my experience of Zombicide. You start out underarmed and under most circumstances the zombies are spawning faster than you can kill them. You cannot afford to end your turn in a space with zombies or you will probably die. And in order to get better weapons and/or mission objectives, you need to go into buildings and they will be full of zombies. The hordes get pretty crazy. Sure, you get better at killing them as you find better weapons and level up, but the moment the first survivor goes to a new level, the zombies immediately start spawning harder and faster. So you have to balance the noise you’re making, zombie line of sight, clearing zombies that are getting too close without tipping into a new level too easily, etc. It gets pretty puzzly and tactical, and there’s usually a lot of hard choices in my experience. We’ve had scenarios where it made sense for one guy to wade into a crowd of zombies and buy us time by sacrificing himself to distract them, too, which strikes me as very zombie movie. It’s certainly way more interesting and tense than Zombies!!!, which is a game I will never play again.

Also, for what it’s worth - I’ve played probably four or five times with three scenarios and won only the one with the cars where you need to get a survivor up to ultrared to win. And even then we took some damage along the way. And this is all with the basic set. As far as I can tell the expansions beef up the experience considerably but we haven’t needed to break them out yet (I really should before season 3 ships, though). I tend to agree that it’s overpriced, but I dig it.

1792

I don’t think I have ever walked a game of Zombicide. There always seem to be more zombies spawning than the survivors can deal with. Sounds weird to me for it to be that easy. It’s a very tactical game by nature though, since you are always reacting to the horde, so if you want a more strategic game Zombicide is probably a poor choice.

1793

Actually it turns out the first scenario is listed as being hard. So I was wrong about that. The first (and I think only) “easy” rated scenario, though, with the zombies flooding out of two giant buildings and funnelling towards perma-noise zones, is not fucking easy at all. The “medium” kill-your-way-to-red scenario is significantly easier.

1794

My only experience with Zombicide was with 5-6 players. I found it to be a lot of fun, really challenging, a lot of banter between players of what to do or not to do. We did play Prison Break, not the original base game, and the zombies just kept coming. Oddly enough, the two we wound up loosing were in the car clearing the way for others. It almost felt like Left 4 Dead, a sacrifice to save the rest of the team. I spent several rounds near the escape trying to make it easier for them to get through before having to retreat wall the way. I do not know it would have felt the same with say 2 people though.

1795

I read the Walking Dead Risk game might be good… a mix between Pandemic and Risk. That should be a more strategic Zombie game… due to the license it feels a bit expensive at 50€

1796

With regards to Zombicide, has it ever been confirmed how player/character turn order works? I see discussions on BGG that contradict each other. When I played a 2-player game, whoever had the turn token (forget what it’s called) activated each of his three characters in whatever order he liked. The other player then did the same, and the turn token was passed to him, meaning his characters would activate first in the second round. Is that correct?

1797

Love Pandemic, yeah since I don’t watch Walking Dead, I wasn’t sure how much joy I would get with that premium. Several members of our group loves that show though.

Never played with one person having more than one character so I am not sure in that respect.

1798

According to the rulebook, yes.

1799

51st State is on sale in the BGG store for $15 plus postage.

Is it worth it if I own Imperial Settlers?

1800

I would say no. If it were New Era, I would say yes as New Era essentially fixes a lot of what was wrong with 51st State. But I always issue the caveat that if you get into New Era, you need to be aware that it is quite fiddly in comparison to its slimmed down cousin Imperial Settlers. It has an inexplicable rule of three that dominates resource storage, deals and conquests; as well as an iconography that is second only to Race for the Galaxy in its newbie UNfriendliness.

That being said, if you DO play New Era (especially with the Winter expansion) you’ll be rewarded with a game that’s so freakin’ thematically rich that you’ll be ignoring these issues after the first few turns and just enjoying yourself.