Thinking of buying some new board games

Games
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Putting this in its new thread to keep the Memoir-thread on-topic and to spite Dave Long some more.

Despite still having a few unopened board games in my gaming room, I’m getting a terrible urge to buy some new games again. Maybe you boardgamers here can voice your opinions about my list and potentially talk me out of spending silly amounts of money on cardboard, wood and plastic.

Here’s what I’ve been eyeing lately:

Antike
A (comparatively) fast empire building/conquest game. I haven’t researched this game extensively, but it’s gotten some good word of mouth.

Caylus
Caylus doesn’t really stand out for me with its theme and from reading the rules, but absolutely everyone who’s played it seems to recommend it to me. I guess I need to get it sooner or later just to see what the fuss is all about.

Descent
Dungeon crawling with marvelous bits. I’m very fond of the “one bad guy versus all other players”-mechanic, but I’m worried that the game takes too long and is badly balanced. Although games like these are more about the story and experience than balanced game mechanics, the comments on BGG make it sound like you have to do a lot of tweaking or the game will be either impossible or a cakewalk (depending on the scenario and number of players) to the adventurers. The high price will probably keep me away from this game for now.

Dungeon Twister
I’m a sucker for fantasy themed games, especially dungeon crawls. Even though this sounds like a pretty abstract game, and it’s only for two players, I probably can’t help buying it.

History of the World
Vinci is one of my favorite games, and this sounds a lot like its meatier big brother.

Meuterer
It’s dirt cheap and sounds like a fun game. As bonus, it’s from the maker of Attika, which is one my favorite games of all time.

Runebound
Another fantasy romp. There are a lot of fantasy “adventure” board games, but most of them are broken in one way or another. Runebound sounds like it would work well when purchased with a couple of expansions. I’m especially interested in the Midnight expansions, since I like that one vs. the rest thing. Unfortunately the playing options for the bad guy sound a bit too limited.

Senjutsu
I’m really interested in this one, but it seems impossible to find anywhere (especially in Europe). Even though I’m not a great stratego fan, the theme is appealing to me and the game mechanics sound clever and functional.

Shadows Over Camelot
I don’t own any cooperative games myself yet, so I’ve been looking over some options. Shadows Over Camelot has its fans, and the traitor mechanics sound pretty interesting.

Thurn and Taxis
Cheapish, light and quick. I’ve heard that this is a very fun filler game, so it’s a pretty easy pick.

Warrior Knights
I got interested in this game when it was compared to Wallenstein. I haven’t played many wargames (War of the Ring is probably the closest thing to a wargame that I own), but this one sounds like it’s streamlined enough and doesn’t take the whole weekend.

Phew. I don’t even know where I’m going to store all these games. I think I need help. :(

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My friend and I had plenty of fun with Zombies, really needs more than two players to bring out the best in it though, as well as a large flat area to spread the board out on.

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I only played Caylus once but it seems good and deep and the boardgamerati seem to esteem it.

I love the idea of Runebound – being an old Talisman-head – but the actual gameplay of it seems a little “meh.” Decent production values etc.; I just wasn’t having much fun with the actual mechanics of combat etc. And it didn’t have that quirky “what the hell will happen next” factor that made Talisman fun (and also probably made it an unbalanced mess).

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I just had a games night were we tried Memoir '44, Ra and Evo. Mem and Ra were new to me, Evo is an old favourite.

Memoir '44 was a lot of fun. It’s pretty fast playing, pretty simple but half the time you’re not entirely sure your skill matters as the right card at the right time can really swing things in your direction, or the other way! That being said, it is a lot of fun and it has a lot of flavour.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/12 Ra was completely confusing for the first round, but as we got to the end of the game everyone had an “ahaa!” moment and we all got it. It’s an amazingly clever game with so many subtle checks and balances, so many chances to screw each other over (with a smile on your face, half the time the other guy might not know he’s being done in!) and so much strategy. The theme is very abstract, but it is excellent.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/1159 Evo is a great little game of dinosaurs expanding over an island. You use the points you earn to buy upgrades to your dinosaurs - hopefully to let you generate more points. It’s a fun mechanism (using your own VPs to improve your dino) but it works wonderfully and them theme is great fun!

I’m really looking forward to picking up Friedrich, http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/12891. It’s been described as a ‘Euro Wargame’ and the system sounds like it beautifully simulates the tension of movement warfare and grand strategy, yet does so without horrible tables and dice rolls, and it plays fast.

Now, I notice you don’t have some classics on there. Puerto Rico, St Petersberg, Settlers of Catan are all must haves as well!

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Thurn und Taxis won the “Spiel des Jahres 2006” award a few weeks ago, including a free “Sell 1M units this Christmas” card. ;)

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Oh, that’s just the list of games I’m thinking of buying next. :) My full list of owned games is here.

Some games (like Settlers of Catan), I’ve already owned in the past and sold away.

Friedrich looks interesting, though. I’ve added it to my ever-growing list of games to get in the future.

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Ok a few thougts on some of the games:

History of the World:
Hmmm yes it is a little like a meatier brother of vinci, but it isnt as good. History is much more luck based as vinci as you never know what civs you get.

Shadow over camelot:

The traitor thing sounds interresting but in reality isnt, you cant do much as a traitor, you can only soak good cards and wait until the end of the game where you perhaps can break the game.

Warrior knights:

Yes its a good game (at least the old games workshop ed. from the last century)…

Only thing is, you have no clear frontiers as the castles that you own are plasterd over the whole map. As i remember it was a game with much backstabbing and political manouver. If you like chaotic games thats one for you.

Runebound:

Played it on a boardgame workshop last year… As i remember it wasnt that original… It played a little like Wizards from AH. Grab, if you can, a version of talisman instead, its much better…

Of course all of the above just my 2 eurocents

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It played a little like Wizards from AH.

Now that was a game I rather dug, back in the day.

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I bought Dungeon Twister thinking it would be a fun dungeon romp. It sucks. It passes itself off, as you mention, as an abstract similar to chess. Very bleh and I don’t think buying the expansions for it will help.

You cannot go wrong with Caylus as I’ve touted its wonderfulness (or is the word wonderment) in another thread.

I have Runebound, and while it is okay, I MUCH prefer Return of the Heroes. The map is better, and changable, and it just feels more like an adventure game.

Shadows over Camelot I absolutely love. The downside is that you really need at least 4 players, and preferably as close to 7 as possible to make the game fun with a potential traitor. You will need to make clear the limits on communication in the game as well as too much talking about the contents of your hand makes the game easily beatable.

Someone brought up a good point about turn order in Thurn and Taxis, and to be honest, I’ve only played the game twice, but I really enjoyed it and would not mind adding it to my collection.

A couple of other titles to consider that I find to be ‘excellent’ of recent releases are Power Grid and Blue Moon City. Power Grid is a very tight game about providing power to a network of cities on one of a variety of maps (the original game includes the US and Germany, the expansion board has France and Italy I believe). The technique used to determine turn order, in addition to the scaling of payouts ensures that the game stays close until the end, although it is hardly a luckfest.

Blue Moon City was one of the SdJ finalists and I was fortunate enough to play it several times during my last game gathering. It too includes and adjustable board, but is about building stones to a great temple.

Oh, and I recently picked up Mykerinos on a prize table which I really liked. You explore deserts and pyramids hoping to gain favor from various benefactors who provide you with special abilities, and then you use those favors at the local museum to score points. It is a majority ownership type game, but one that to me works very well.

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I wholeheartedly do not recommend Runebound. It’s terrible. It has essentially all of Talisman’s flaws–few player choices that matter, mostly random movement, mostly random encounters, random combat resolution, no player interaction, lots of downtime, way too fiddley for a game that is so random, excessive playtime–and none of Talisman’s character.

Additionally, it has a few flaws of its own that make it an even worse game than Talisman, as far as I’m concerned. Encounters in the game world are 100% voluntary; you have to travel to special adventure spaces (which are scattered sparsely around the board) to find them. This deprives the game of the sense of tension that Talisman has (where you might stumble across something dangerous at almost any time). The movement system features a unique mechanic… that adds nothing of value to the game. I give the designer credit for finding a way to have a “roll and move” mechanic on a nonlinear board. But the only thing it adds to the game is an element of analysis paralysis (and consequently longer playtime) as players spend way too much time trying to figure out how to best use the icons they rolled to get to where they want to go. It becomes ever more annoying when you realize that all that analysis just doesn’t matter. There are no interesting movement choices to be made because nothing ever happens in normal (non-adventure) hexes. Any given combination of movement dice either gets you closer to your desired destination, or it doesn’t. It’s an open-map equivalent of Talisman’s “right or left” movement decision, except that nothing happens in 95% of the spaces on the Runebound board. And it takes three times as long for players to decide how to move.

Worst of all, the game has terrible pacing. You have to travel to red (the toughest) adventure spaces in order to win the game, and those are all scattered on the outer edge of the board. Less difficult adventure spaces show up a little further in, and only the easiest adventures are in the middle areas of the board. This means that as the game goes on, it takes longer and longer to get to anywhere that you need to go. By the end of the game, you’ll be spending many eventless turns trudging across empty countryside (once someone defeats a challenge in an adventure space, that space becomes inactive; that means that late in the game, the middle areas of the board are just so much empty space).

So that’s my mini (or not-so-mini) Runebound review. Of the games on your list, I definitely recommend Caylus. It can seem a bit dry if you’ve just read the rules and not played, but in action it’s the diametric opposite of Runebound: a tight game composed entirely of interesting decision-making.

While I haven’t played them yet, I am also interested to hear feedback that anyone might have on Shadows Over Camelot and Warrior Knights. I love the concept of SOC, and I’m tempted to buy the game for the artwork alone (which is gorgeous).

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You know, I’ve been wanting a game to play that’s like Warhammer Quest or even Necromunda. I had almost every GW game released and my collection was destroyed/thrown away (man, when I realized all my Talisman stuff was gone I almost threw up), and I really am trying to build my board games up again.

Are there any comparably quest games and multi-level squad games to those two? I also miss Tyranid Attack and Space Hulk, but not as much. Is Hero’s Quest any good?

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Thanks. Your post definately made me reconsider getting Runebound. I guess is it’s time to do what all fans of this particular board game genre are doing: make my own prototype…

Thanks, I hadn’t noticed this game before. Looks worth reading up on.

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I disagree strongly with this. Talisman is much less interesting than Runebound in my opinion. Runebound isn’t the greatest game ever, but we really enjoyed it, and basically sold Talisman once we found it.

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Oh, anyone play the Lord of the Rings GW games? I see Necromunda is still around. Mordheim looks neat too.

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I am thinking of buying some friends that I can play boardgames with; are there friends for sale or trade at boardgamegeek?

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Ben seems to be talking about Runebound 1st ed. The 2nd ed. cleared up some of those complaints, and added some optional rules for random wilderness encounters and more player interaction. Still, the game drags like hell sometimes–it ought to finish in half the time. (Edit to add: Ben’s still right about most of his complaints. It’s not a great design, and no retooling can change that.)

I agree that Return of the Heroes is a better pseudo-RPG. You can actually develop a strategy rather than being blown around by chance all the time.

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I want to try Return of the Heroes, that sounds cool.

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Return of the Heroes looks a bit like Candyland to me.

Play Runebound with the optional card countdown rule. It nicely resolves the play dragging issue, and adds some good tension to the game.

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I love “History of the World”… it’s the only history of the world board game I’ve played that actually kind of looks like the history of the world once it’s done. Plus, it has a great mechanic for keeping all players in it until the very end. Plus, the rules are pretty simple. Highly underrated, in my book…

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Yeah, I should have mentioned that. I do have the 1st Edition. I did download the 2nd edition rules and read through them when that version came out, however, to see how much they improved on the 1st edition’s many shortcomings. My conclusion at the time was: not much. The new rules for random wilderness encounters (which the new rulebook strongly recommends using) are really clunky, involving multiple die rolls and a needlessly complex proceedure for determining what sort of card you encounter. I haven’t played with these rules, but I’m guessing they make games last even longer than they did in 1st Edition, which is a step in the wrong direction. And the rest of the issues that I had with 1st edition seemed to make it into the 2nd edition intact.

I was so disappointed with Runebound, back when I picked it up, that I unearthed an old fantasy board game concept that I had worked on in the past, and started tinkering with it again. It’s currently pretty close to “playable prototype” stage.

Good fantasy adventure games have always been something of a mythological beast, unfortunately. The only one that I’ve played that I still consider worthwhile is Magic Realm (which is an excellent game, though it has one major flaw: TOO COMPLEX. Good luck finding people who will play it with you). I’ve not played Return of the Heroes, though. I’ve seen the game in the store, but to be honest, I found the art a bit offputting (the game board, in particular, is fugly). Anyone care to elaborate on it’s strengths?