Board Games

I backed Bloodborne but I'm having buyers remorse. Maybe I should back TMB? Help!

Heads up if you didn't know, star wars imperial assault is $40 on Amazon today. You'll just have to change the buying option when you search for it to Amazon.

Seananigans said:

Ordered TMB and all the expansion/add-on stuff they had in stock, looks pretty sweet. The stuff I wasn't able to get were the Mech dude and Undertow. How quickly do they typically get stuff back in stock?

(Not super familiar with their store site, they both said in stock but when I selected NA region that indication went away).

Click to expand...

Awesome, you going to have a great time. Somethings will be weird and not make sense like right away like the enemies break ability or do flying enemies that you can’t attack this round block your movement. Overall though just follow the new player guides and after a few combats you understand most of the mechanics.

Played the hell out of Too Many Bones over the long weekend, we all had a lot of fun. I can't wait until the KS to get more of it. I think what makes the game stand out is just the visual appeal of the whole thing, and also something satisfying about stacking chips and using them as a visual representation of hit points is genius. That being said, there are a few things I would nit-pick about the game:

1) The first 3 encounters are the same very game and not randomized. This got old quick. I understand there are new initial encounter cards with the expansions, so not sweating this.

2) Player count really affects difficulty. I have played this with 2, 3, and 4 players now. I have not tried it solo yet but plan on it. With 2 players, it was the hardest (I heard solo is easier than 2p). I think 3 people is the sweet spot. With 4 people we steamrolled everything. The game doesn't scale that well imo. Take for example day 4.....with 4 players, you have a three 5 pt baddies, and a 1 pt baddie; by this point in the game 1 pt baddies are a joke, so really it's a 4v3 situation. On the other hand, for 2 players on day 4.....now you have a 5 pt baddie, and three 1 pt baddie. That's 4 monsters vs 2 players. Sure, the 1 pt baddies aren't that bad, but it's like a small horde. Much tougher. I may play around with the BQ points to see if I can make it more challenging with 4 people.

3) The skill dice is the fun part of the game, but really for optimizing characters raising the base stats gives you the most chance for success imo. For example, this weekend I had a friend play for the first time. He picked Tantrum. The rage dice was kinda confusing (I don't blame him), so he focused on raising his dex and attack dice, secondarily on health. I think he might have bought 2 skill dice max. I think he ended up with 8 dex and 8 attack by the time we got to the boss. The way we set up almost every fight was I would take on the strongest baddie as Pickett, then he would line up against the 2nd biggest baddie (5 pt). Lashback? Terrify? Flight? No worries, with 6-8 attack dice he was 1-shotting everything. Then, I would damage my baddie, the next round he would move up and finish off my mob. He almost never got hit because he never had the highest or lowest hps, and whatever mob started next to him usually died right away. The occasional mob with Break? Patches poisons, Boomer grenades, leave for the end, then Tantrum swoops in and kills. Also as Pickett, I find that I really only need 3 or 4 of the Commander skill dice; everything else I put into stats. Raising dex and def, getting a bunch of bones to use shield bash is so OP.

4) Game takes a lot longer than advertised, obviously the more players the longer it takes. I think it says 60-90 minutes on the box? That's a joke. I would guess a more realistic number is an hour x # of players, so 4 hours for a 4-player game, 2 hours for a 2-player game. Again, not a big deal when you are having fun, but plan accordingly.

Just some observations. Like I said, everyone had a great time playing and it's a really great social game, which I like. I like how you "level up" constantly, so your character is contantly evolving and improving. As a group it's fun strategizing about the battle mat, who goes where, who do we hit first, etc...no one in our group is an alpha-gamer which is nice. This also gets rid of the analysis-paralysis that I sometimes see with Gloomhaven.

My copy of Great Western Trail came in, going to give it a spin with my friends friday night before driving to kansas city in real life.

Great Western trail went pretty good. A lot faster-feeling turn cycles than most euros I've played, since your turn-by-turn decision tree is smaller. Feels like one of the rare games where 3 player is probably cleaner than 4 player, due to the different worker/point-source "focuses."

Modular Scythe board should come in this week or next week, so looking forward to playing scythe with Rusviet and Crimea not having god-tier peninsulas

Hateyou Do you also have One Deck Dungeon? If so, how would you compare the two?

Played through the first quest in Deck Box Dungeons today because my copy came in. It was enjoyable. By the time I got to the last room I owned all the items in the treasure deck. Like sure, I got some lucky rolls on loot but that seemed off to me. The rules are kind of awful. You need to figure a bunch of stuff out on your own. Most the stuff was pretty easy to figure out but still, it should be in the rules. Over all I enjoyed the game and going to throw it in to my Mini's bag to play at the end of the night. The mix of classes, characters and weapons gives it a pretty good amount of replay. The archer set up (bow, wanderer and the guy who has bonus ranged attack) seems really good. I was constantly using his ability to shoot again and again.

Each time you kill a monster you roll a d6 and get that much treasure. I had 13 monsters before entering the last room and an event which gave me 3 treasures. My adventure had 5 rooms.

Hateyou said:

Ah. You actually roll the monster die you killed to see how much loot you get, so you get 1-2 per mob, not 1-6.

Click to expand...

That would seem to make a difference.

Okay so after a few playthroughs of TMB, I'll say I enjoy it. I have 2 major complaints:

1. There is a lack of narrative sometimes and if you're not with fun people it feels mechanical.
2. It just makes me want to play D&D.

#2 is the same complaint I have with Gloomhaven. Also HP management in Gloomhaven as well as initiative is such a chore that I use an app on my tablet, which streamlines it, but then once again makes me ask, why am I simply not playing D&D? The HP and initiative in TMB is great.