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New Board Gaming |OT2| On Tables, Off Topic

Blizzard

Banned
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I painstakingly made a Feast for Odin island for the solo scenario challenges, though I'm a month and a half late for Independence Day. :p I'm going to post some multiplayer variants once BGG posts the file, if anyone is interested.
 

nicoga3000

Saint Nic
this and blizzcon make me want come to us..
well and anime boston..
and a few other things...

oh well this year i'll try to go for essen.. :|

Indy is a fun city - Zoo is decent, Children's Museum is incredible, beer/food scene is aces...And you know, Gen Con, ha.

I did score a (free) pass for Saturday. So I'll be heading to the city around 7ish on Saturday so I can grab a parking spot. I'll probably go find a place to have coffee and a snack. If anyone in this thread will be down in the city and has any interest in meeting up, shoot me a message. Even if it's just for a quick, "Oh hey, it's you from GAF!" that would be rad.
 

KiKaL

Member
I will be about 3 blocks (Work) from GenCon but won't be attending. My boss will be there however for all 4 days and will even be pitching a game to publishers.

I would love to go check it out but I honestly I just want to walk through the convention area and just look at all the booths. I wish there was a pass to do just that for a few hours.
 

nicoga3000

Saint Nic
So is Mice and Mystics out of print? They announced a new game...I've been wanting to pickup M&M for a while, but it's been out of stock forever.
 

Experien

Member
Anything exciting but not impossible to find at GenCon that I should be aware of? I got someone who is willing to pick me up something.
 
Isn't Z-Man Games generally bad about reprinting games aside from Pandemic? At least that is the impression I get.

Whoops, mixed up Z-Man Games with Plaid Hat Games. Both owned by Asmodee anyway.
 

Ronabo

Member
Packing up and heading to Gen Con in the morning. Mostly going for the L5R stuff, but I will check out other things as I have time. Excited!
 
So I went to my local CoolStuffInc to pick up a big LotR LCG order, and like usual, look over tabletop selection. I realized now was a good time to start picking up other solo or co-op games for a try, and saw they had The Lost Expedition (plus it came with a free promo pack!). I'll say it looked semi cool from all the posts here but somehow the actual box itself grasped me way more.

I still have yet to learn how to play it, but really liking all I'm seeing!

Almost got Welcome to the Dungeon instead but realized it couldn't be played solo :(
 

Bane

Member
A friend of mine is a huge Game of Thrones fan and I'm thinking of trying to get her into a board game of it. She's a really casual gamer, are there any somewhat light games that I should look into?
 
A friend of mine is a huge Game of Thrones fan and I'm thinking of trying to get her into a board game of it. She's a really casual gamer, are there any somewhat light games that I should look into?
Hand of the King is the only light Got theme game I can think of unless you want to try the card game. The board game is pretty hefty and I wouldn't recommend for casual. That said, Hand is pretty neat set collection and with tactical gameplay and comes in small box.
 
Isn't Z-Man Games generally bad about reprinting games aside from Pandemic? At least that is the impression I get.

Whoops, mixed up Z-Man Games with Plaid Hat Games. Both owned by Asmodee anyway.
Well Zman bought out Plaid Hat which then get bought out by Asmodee. Since the acquisition it seem their marketing and production were in disarray. Also didn't help that the last Mice and Mystics spin off tanked.
 
Well Zman bought out Plaid Hat which then get bought out by Asmodee. Since the acquisition it seem their marketing and production were in disarray. Also didn't help that the last Mice and Mystics spin off tanked.

They should never have done a spin off. They should have continued with main line expansions.
 
I have 3rd edition TI and all the expansions, is there a big difference with 4E that would make me want it? Just visually it seems to be the same game component wise minus some tweaks to how things are arranged for ease
 
A friend of mine is a huge Game of Thrones fan and I'm thinking of trying to get her into a board game of it. She's a really casual gamer, are there any somewhat light games that I should look into?

Westeros Intrigue is pretty light and not very long. It also uses photos from the show. There are four different houses (Lannister, Stark, Baratheon and Targaryen) and your hand can consist of cards from any of the houses. You are building a pyramid and trying to cut off houses so that your opponent(s) can no longer play any of the cards from their hand.

Played it 3-player and was enjoyable enough. Plays up to six, and even though there's player elimination, the rounds are quick enough to get back into the game. However, I would not recommend it for two players.

You could honestly play it with a deck of poker cards.
 
Anyone have a chance to see/try The Thing game? Love the movie, a bit dubious about the game thus far, but remain optimistic.

Wondering if anyone has any opinions?
 

Phthisis

Member
Seems slightly tweaked, with some of the expansion stuff included and some removed like the tanks. Just not seeing justification of spending $150 still for this when I got the original and both it's expansions.

Yeah, same. Especially since the expansions have more content in them that will inevitably be re-sold as expansions for 4E. Sorry FFG, not re-buying what I already own.
 

Experien

Member
Anyone have a chance to see/try The Thing game? Love the movie, a bit dubious about the game thus far, but remain optimistic.

Wondering if anyone has any opinions?

I'd like to hear about that game too. But I backed the recently closed Who Goes There? so I am good if it doesn't pan out too well.
 
Yeah, same. Especially since the expansions have more content in them that will inevitably be re-sold as expansions for 4E. Sorry FFG, not re-buying what I already own.

The question is then for someone who doesn't own either is it better to snatch up ti3 with expansions before they become rare? Or just start with ti4?
 
The question is then for someone who doesn't own either is it better to snatch up ti3 with expansions before they become rare? Or just start with ti4?

I'm just starting with 4, personally. With TI3 expansion stuff in the box, my hope would be that they take the expansions for TI4 in slightly different directions than they did with three.
 
The question is then for someone who doesn't own either is it better to snatch up ti3 with expansions before they become rare? Or just start with ti4?

TI3 and expansions I believe is pretty expensive. TI4 release might have people unloading copies of 3rd, but who knows.

After Descent 2E came out, price on 1st Edition stuff shot through the roof as fans of 1E wanted to hoard it all.

If you don't own TI at all, then I imagine it's just best to get 4E now.

As someone who owns all the old content, it doesn't seem like enough of an upgrade tho to invest in, it's only slightly tweaked game.

I'm just starting with 4, personally. With TI3 expansion stuff in the box, my hope would be that they take the expansions for TI4 in slightly different directions than they did with three.

Only some of 3E's expansion content is in the 4E base set.
 
I have not learned my lesson. Forfeited another game of Death Angel because of a death spiral. You can do everything right and all it takes is a series of low defensive rolls to absolutely fuck you.
 

AstroLad

Hail to the KING baby
Seems slightly tweaked, with some of the expansion stuff included and some removed like the tanks. Just not seeing justification of spending $150 still for this when I got the original and both it's expansions.

That's fairly accurate. The two biggest changes I've spotted are that the tech tree is now a tech cloud (meaning there are no specific prerequisites, just that you need X technologies of a certain color before getting a more advanced one), and voting on political agendas happens at the end of the round, and all planets are refreshed beforehand. There are also various minor tweaks, most of which are nice but aren't going to change things substantially.

If you're looking for a good, solid update on Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition rules, I recommend googling "Shattered Ascension" and checking out what that site has to offer. A group of people have been refining it for about 10 years and came up with a lot of changes that make the game play much better than base 3rd edition.

Actually here is a link to their page. http://www.astralvault.net/games/SA/index.html

They have Tabletop Simulator mod specifically for their version of the game and there's a Discord channel where games get organized.
 

ultron87

Member
Sell this game to a guy who generally likes scifi stuff, but thinks playing a complicated game for over 3 hours is a bit too much.

Okay, so it's going to take more than 8 hours the first time you play it and that's probably a deal breaker. Which is completely reasonable. BUT it also is the best simulation of a ridiculous space opera you can play. This is a description I wrote awhile back in here that still holds up:

"If you throw in every optional module you've got a game where you one player can be the Borg from Star Trek slowly spreading across the galaxy and absorbing technology from the other players, while another player is assassinating someone's representative at the Galactic Council to get them elected as the Minister of War. Meanwhile the player with the race that lives in stars has finally fixed up their old Death Star equivalent and just destroyed a system by causing the star to super nova. The other player almost stopped them but the one fighter that got past the destroyer's anti fighter barrage wasn't able to roll a 9-10 followed by a 10 when it made a suicide run against the Death Star."

It's grand and ridiculous and super fun, but I honestly wouldn't recommend it to most people. Normal people won't enjoy playing a board game for 10 hours. There are better games out there for dang sure, but the experience of getting 6-8 people together that all intend to play this ridiculous space game for an entire day is pretty neat and is super memorable.
 
TI is amazing, but also a pain... have to usually set aside an entire day to play the game through with a group of 5-6 since it can get really drawn out and people got to take breaks... but damn it's amazing game too. But sadly get it out to the table maybe once a year at best :(
 

SCHUEY F1

Unconfirmed Member
I've only played TI once years ago and I think I enjoyed it. Our group plays Eclipse pretty regularly and we can get a game done in 3 hours or less. Maybe if I get can get TI on sale down the road I'll pick it.
 

Keasar

Member
TI is amazing, but also a pain... have to usually set aside an entire day to play the game through with a group of 5-6 since it can get really drawn out and people got to take breaks... but damn it's amazing game too. But sadly get it out to the table maybe once a year at best :(

The one time I played it I got 7 people in total to play. We set a specific date. I sent PDFs to everyone and instructed them to read specific parts of the rules that were relevant to the game so we wouldn't have to be hampered by rule explanation. Planned lunch break. Started in the morning.

Still took 10+ hours to play. Everyone was exhausted and tired by the end of the day and the winner got ahead by 1 point (me).

It was totally worth it.
 
Firstly, FFG put the TI4 rules online, for anyone that might be interested. I have not had a chance to fully read and digest them.

Sell this game to a guy who generally likes scifi stuff, but thinks playing a complicated game for over 3 hours is a bit too much.

The game looks super complicated at first, there are a lot of pieces, lots of cards and scoring victory points can seem a little strange (for example, destroying an enemy fleet doesn't grant VP). It can certainly take a LONG time to play. My first game was with 6 (I think) players and went for 5-6 hours. We certainly fucked a few rules up, but literally that first game got me completely hooked on TI.

I have referred to the game several ways: "Axis and Allies in Space", and more appropriately as "Masters of Orion: the Board Game". Combat and area control are similar to Axis and Allies; combat is basically identical. The "Masters of Orion" comparison comes in the form the Political Forum, where various leaders come together to vote on legislation that can change the course of a game. Just like MoO you can develop trade partnerships with other races, and each race feels unique in abilities, leaders, and (somewhat) in play style.

One of the things I like about the game is that there tends to be little down time to get lost. Each player will take several actions each round, but because you do actions one at a time, player by player, you're generally not waiting too long. And because Strategy Actions (the action from a strategy card, which is the only mandatory action each player HAS to take) can be used by all players, you still have to pay at least a small amount of attention even when it's not your turn so attentions wander less to phones/tablets.

The Political Phase has been changed for TI4 from TI3, but it looks like it's an 'end of round' type thing that everyone gets to participate in. Voting on the political agendas, and the wheeling and dealing (and backstabbing) involved is one of my favorite aspects of the game. You can win without ever once participating in a battle, IF you can play to your objectives, use your Strategy cards (and Action cards) to their fullest, and generally out think your opponents. Having a few battlecruisers or War Suns around to back up those machinations never hurts tho.

If you hate either Axis and Allies or Masters of Orion (the video game), then I'm not sure TI would be for you. If you have never played either of those games, but generally enjoy strategy space games, I suggest giving TI a try. It will be daunting, and slow, at first. That's unavoidable with any game, let alone one on the scale of TI. But I think in the end all the pieces flow together very, very well and make for dramatic stories. A 4-player game will go considerably faster than a 5 or 6 player game, so starting there is probably best. Twilight Imperium is my very, very favorite board game. I barely get to play it, and honestly cannot remember how long it has been since I've played, but each game of TI tends to be memorable and an exceedingly good time.
 

EYEL1NER

Member
I paid more than I would have liked for it, considering retail price was $19.99 when it was in-print, but I finally bought a copy of Ravensburger's Strike! There was a copy for $37 on eBay and they were doing 8% back in eBay bucks, so I got three bucks back. I went and watched the BGG Game Night! video for it and decided it was the exact kind of game like Roll For It that my family would love. There was also only that one copy left from that retailer, so that combined with it being an ideal game for my family and the $3 back forced me to get it. It's from a UK seller though, so I've gotta wait a few weeks and also hope that the box doesn't get crushed, becuase the integrity of the box and arena inside are important.
 
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