We just went through mission 6 of MvM and it’s still a blast. This last mission was slightly too easy (they were introducing new rules, so I guess it was a mini tutorial).
Can’t wait for mission 10!!!
Where did you find the expansion to Merchants and Marauders? That thing had a print run of like 20 (okay, I’m exaggerating, but still) and goes for ridiculous prices.
I actually want it because I own Merchants and Marauders, not to resell it, but no way I can pay like $100 for a small game expansion.
It was a while back, but I got my copy of Seas of Glory off Miniature Market. It’s a pretty good expansion and adds some much needed variety to M&M. I’d definitely suggest hunting down a copy.
They have copies at Meeplemart.
I ordered from Zman games.
Both places with shipping cost around $50.
Playing my first solo game last night. Solo rules from Wolfe on BGG.
Using 20 event cards…15 just doesn’t sound like enough.
Spent the first 4-6 turns buying and selling cargo to get enough money to get a Galleon with a few upgrades. 1 glory point. The 1 rumor card I have is doable but it takes me West through pirate waters to where they are patrolling. All the mission cards are West so I’m avoiding them also. No way do I have enough turns to buy and sell 3 of the same in- demand cargo 9 times to get 9 more glory points with 12 turns to go. All 4 naval ships are in play and my Spanish are at war with the English. Most of the naval ships are also in the Central or Western parts of the map so I think I will need to become a pirate as soon as possible, stay East and attack merchants in most of those East zones to get some glory points. Try and get some rumors that are in the Eastern areas and pray the naval ships dont start heading my way.
Fun game even solo.
I’ve been hearing good enough things about Vital Lacerda’s games that I went ahead and bought in on his latest Kickstarter, Lisboa, partly to be able to add on Vinhos Deluxe and The Gallerist after its conclusion. But I was a little leery because I tend not to be super into Euro games - the tendency to favor passionless math over theme is absolutely not my thing. I am now 100% confident in my decision because tonight one of my regular gaming group brought over his own copy of The Gallerist for us to try. And it was fucking awesome.
As we were unpacking it I just stared at this board absolutely full of iconography and all these pieces, none of which meant a single thing to me, and was full of existential dread. But once we got set up and I read the rules, it turns out that the actual play of the game is relatively simple. You move to one of four locations, and take one of two actions there. If someone else is on the space, you bump them off and after you act, they get a little bonus action before being sent home. If you’re starting on a location (and haven’t been bumped off), then you have to pick one of the other three locations. And there’s a couple things you can do as a bonus before or after your main action. But that’s really about it. What makes it a beautiful, murderous nightmare is that all of these actions hook into multiple subsystems of the game in a dizzyingly complex web of possibilities. And it all feels very thematic - you’re spurring on the careers of artists, but ideally -after- you’ve purchased their work so you can sell it at a big profit, scoring influence and cash based on the sorts of important visitors you’ve managed to lure to your gallery, but perhaps losing them again once they buy something you’re displaying, accumulating reputation for certain types of work, etc etc.
Oh, and I won with a final score of 163. But that’s not why I loved it. ;)
Yeah, Lacerda games are great largely because of how interesting his integration of theme is. I’m not sure how much I like Vinhos as a game, but I still play it semi-regularly because it’s such a weird and funny protracted story. If you get a chance to check out Kanban, I’d highly recommend that as well. It also seems extremely complicated until you start playing and then flows very simply and naturally. It seems like a boring theme from the outside (I really don’t care about cars at all), but as you play you’ll realize the game is actually about office politics, often in a hilariously in depth manner.
A friend of mine picked up 13 Days: The Cuban Missile Crisis and we were able to play a few games last weekend. We both really liked it and feel this game has a lot of strategic potential in a small package. Bruce Geryk’s article on the front page explains the mechanics far more eloquently than i ever could so definitely read that if you are interested in the game. I will say I can understand the comparisons to Twilight Struggle but they really are two completely different games. 13 Days really does a great job of wringing a lot of theme out of a really simple push/pull influence mechanic. Also the fact that you can play a whole game (including set up and tear down) in less than 45 minutes is just awesome in this type of game.
Unfortunately Kanban and CO2 both seem to be out of print (or at least out of stock at original prices), so I’m guessing I won’t get to try his back catalog unless maybe Eagle Gryphon get the rights and do a reprint KS. I think I’m going to ask them about that, actually. Then again, although we all enjoyed The Gallerist and would definitely play it again, I suspect three Lacerda games (Lisboa and Vinhos Deluxe/Gallerist should I add them on, which I probably will) is already a lot to get to table regularly.
I played CO2 a couple of times and loved it. Wish I’d bought it now. :/
Looks like they got plenty of questions about Kanban, at least, during the KS and their official word was “Stronghold Games has the rights to Kanban.” Of course, Z-Man Games used to publish Vinhos, so I mean…it’s conceivable that could change. But certainly there’s no incentive for them to discuss any plans to buy said rights in public until any such deal was actually done, lest the price go up. And no reason to assume any such plans exist, either.
SU&SD has just reviewed it:
I’m now satisfied it’s not for me.
Wendelius
Agreed. I might consider it as largely hobby a project but that dance card is pretty full these days. Watching the review I just don’t think it’s a “must have” for me as a board game and at that price it really needs to be.
I have the same impression I did before the review but more so: it’s a game idea I want, executed in a way I don’t want.
Could Gloomhaven be better for you perhaps? (Of course who knows, given it is not out.)
Gloomhaven looks like the pinnacle of everything I want in a fantasy campaign game, yes, and I am super looking forward to receiving my backer copy (looks like January!). It’s not quite the same thing, though, I don’t think.
Two friends came over today and one brought Scythe. Both guys are pretty serious boardgamers, I’m not. I enjoyed the game a lot but had a hard time juggling all the different mechanics and choices and things to balance in my head. Early on I was struggling to wrap my head around it all and made a conscious decision to slice off one part of the game – specifically, building any of those four building things that confer certain bonuses – to simply it a bit. I wasn’t concerned about winning, just about keeping up, staying competitive. The game was new to the others, but, as I said, they’re pretty hardcore and they seem to grasp the way the diferent elements interact far faster.
Maybe if I played board games like this more often, I would find it easier to keep up. Or maybe my brain just isn’t adept at this sort of thing. All that said, I ended up losing but only five points behind the second place guy, and ten behind the first place, so I was satisfied that I stayed competitive.
Part of the problem may have been that my mindset starting out was a wargame approach – moving a lot, battling a lot. My popularity obviously suffered. The other guys quietly went about adding workers, resources and building. At a certain point I realized that the best I could accomplish with my four mechs and character were to just annoy the shit out of the others guys by stymieing their plans. Toward the end I upgraded my bolster move to get me two hearts per turn to boost my popularity back up. In my final turn I pushed satisfaction into the top scoring tier, and one turn later the game ended. So just in the nick of time, I managed a competitive score.
It was a lot of fun, but I was left exhausted. Do others here ever struggle to keep up mentally with a fairly complex game? Have you ever done what I did – willfully ignore a small part of a game to better grasp the rest of it?
Yeah, a key thing to realize about Scythe is that it’s not a wargame. Combat is an important tool in your arsenal, but it’s one you should use sparingly. Your mechs tend to be more about territory control/denial and worker transport than combat, though they certainly do that as well.
I don’t find complexity all that daunting (well, perhaps at first - the Gallerist’s wall of unintelligible iconography was intense when first setting up but once I had read the rules it was far clearer), myself. I tend not to do a lot of long term planning, though. I look at the current options and see which one makes the most sense to me in the moment and then I do that. And I don’t think most boardgames have a very complex set of short term options. Like I said when I talked about The Gallerist, turn to turn you’re going one of three or four places and picking one of two actions there. So at max, that’s eight actions to consider. Scythe has three possible actions on your turn, with a secondary possible action if you have the right resources available. I mean, yes, optimal use of those actions might take some thought, but the games look more complicated than they are, in my view.
My go to approach even with non-complicated games is to first figure out what the simplest possible strategy is that’s competitive, which often involves ignoring a big part of the game. The nice thing about this approach is it gives you a baseline to compare to when you’re thinking about or experimenting with other ideas, and because it’s a simpler strategy, you can use it as the basis for your future approaches. For instance, in your next game of Scythe you can think about whether the buildings you ignored would have actually improved how you were playing, and if not, if there’s a change to your playstyle that would make them more viable.
I am often exhausted by complicated games after playing them. They’re also my favorite type of games, I just can’t bring myself to play them more than once a day.
Trying to come up with a gift idea for my son and his wife.
They own Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert, Star Wars Rebellion, Arkham Horror, Elder Sign, Castle Panic, Ticket to Ride, Catan, Game of Thrones, Dominion, a couple of the Flying Frog games, The Resistance: Avalon … and a few others I am forgetting. So, a mix of stuff from relatively light to table-breaking. I think they tend to like more thematic games, versus really abstract Euro games.
I’d like to get them something that’s good with anywhere from 2-5 players. Coop would be nice. Would like to get it under $50, but will stretch to $70. Hopefully on Amazon so I can get it in time for Christmas.
Tiny Epic Kingdoms (and expansion) seemed like a candidate, but it’s apparently a bit crap with 2 players. Terraforming Mars looked cool and has good buzz, but seems to be out of stock/expensive.
I feel like I’m going in circles over on Boardgamegeek.
Any suggestions? I know it’s kind of a wide open question.
With that list of game and requests, yeah, you’re going to get almost anything ;)
So I’m going to throw a bunch that have remained in heavy rotation for me over the years.
Railways of the World
King of Tokyo/ New York
7Wonders
The Adventurers
Various Ticket to Ride expansions/ maps (get 2-3 of these maybe)
Battlestar Galactica (note: base game really plays best at 5, with Pegasus 5-6. Not so great at 2-3 players)
Carcassonne big box
So there are a few ideas that you could play with. Railways of the World was, for the longest time, my absolute favorite. With the different maps it can perfectly go from 2-6. The base game is great, but it gets better with extra maps. Have 2-3? Pull out England for a knife fight in a phone booth. The Western US is the best 5-6 player map, and easily eclipses the original Eastern US map.