Board Games

That game looks neat. Looks like they are expanding on Eric Lang's Dicemasters rules and combining them with the new Mage Wars rules. Plaid Hat puts out some suspect components which is probably how this game gets by at 50 bucks but still seems like a decent value. After reading the rules I will probably pre-order this through my FLGS.

Some interviews with the designer -The Totally Board

Hateyou_sl said:

I went ahead and pre-ordered, shipping was $7 for me and I'm only 4 hours from them, although who knows where they ship from. Any time you buy something from a company who isn't a warehouse logistics company, shipping going to be shitty. How much is it to Australia?

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Last I'd heard, it was more spent on shipping than the actual game for Dead of Winter straight from PHG if you were AUS.

Just ordered the new version of Mage Wars today, after I give it a run down to see how I enjoy the concept or not I'll consider this one. It really reminds me a ton of the Mage Wars stuff I've seen without the positioning which seems like a nice additional element but tune might change on a play of it.

Hateyou_sl said:

I went ahead and pre-ordered, shipping was $7 for me and I'm only 4 hours from them, although who knows where they ship from. Any time you buy something from a company who isn't a warehouse logistics company, shipping going to be shitty. How much is it to Australia?

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Yeah, as Vaclav said, pretty much at least as much as the game. Dead of Winter was $40 us in shipping. I'm also looking at Specter Ops, which they used to have at a special price of $35, now it's back to $50, but shipping is $52.

*edit*
I get that shipping isn't negligible, but this is ridiculous on so many levels. It's not like these are made in America and have to be shipped from there. They're all printed in china, or india, or whever printing is cheapest. There's no reason why they couldn't come up with a system where they can be shipping from there instead of going via the US to the world. And so many other company's are able to offer cheaper shipping, it's hard to understand why these guy's can't. I try and order from bookdepository in England when I can since they offer free worldworld shipping. Picked up Imperial Assault from them cheaper and without any postage costs.
/rant

Vaclav_sl said:

Last I'd heard, it was more spent on shipping than the actual game for Dead of Winter straight from PHG if you were AUS.

Just ordered the new version of Mage Wars today, after I give it a run down to see how I enjoy the concept or not I'll consider this one. It really reminds me a ton of the Mage Wars stuff I've seen without the positioning which seems like a nice additional element but tune might change on a play of it.

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I will never touch another Mage Wars product. I wrote a bad review on their first product and on their staff. In public they dismissed every concern I had about the game. Then their PR guy sent me an email offering me product to take down the review. That's shady as fuck. Their lack if understanding about what gamers want leads me to believe all their products will be well designed and marketed like shit. I'd rather give my dollar to someone who does it good enough that a community will form.

Arcaus_sl said:

I will never touch another Mage Wars product. I wrote a bad review on their first product and on their staff. In public they dismissed every concern I had about the game. Then their PR guy sent me an email offering me product to take down the review. That's shady as fuck. Their lack if understanding about what gamers want leads me to believe all their products will be well designed and marketed like shit. I'd rather give my dollar to someone who does it good enough that a community will form.

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Interesting, Tom Vasel loves the game and I tend to feel the same as him on almost everything.

I played a 5 man Dead of Winter game last weekend, overall we had fun but not sure I liked it, we played two games and still didn't get all the rules down, they seem easy enough if you do everything in order but in practice not so much. This is mainly due to the verbage you have to learn to understand what the card/rules state to do. The difference between player and survivor wasn't understood until late second game for example or When exactly to pull a crossroads card, etc.

Gameplay is equally exciting and unforgiving, if any player forgets something or does anything that adds too many zombies in any location it usually overruns killing 1-3 people and ending the game.


I like that fact even if you don't roll high enough to kill or search you can always do something helpful like building barricades or taking out the trash, but you really do need to search and kill every round if you hope to win most objectives.

We all agreed to play again soon.

Have gone through two short scenarios and I completely dig the gameplay. It took us a little bit to get the flow down as well but by the time we did the second scenario we had it down. What I don't like is the low possibility of a betrayer. I kind of liked how Tabletop set it up, one non-betrayer card per player instead of two, with the one standard betrayer card. Much more likely.

For those interested in Ashes, Plaid Hat has been doing daily articles on their website detailing in depth the starter decks and some of the rules items. They are fairly well written and worth the 2 minutes a day

moontayle_sl said:

Have gone through two short scenarios and I completely dig the gameplay. It took us a little bit to get the flow down as well but by the time we did the second scenario we had it down. What I don't like is the low possibility of a betrayer. I kind of liked how Tabletop set it up, one non-betrayer card per player instead of two, with the one standard betrayer card. Much more likely.

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That's actually in the rulebook as a variant FYI.

(Although only run it once since discovering it - and STILL ended up without a betrayer)

Played Telestrations Again Humanity last night. Basically Telestrations using Cards Against Humanity cards.
So funny, but so very very wrong. Somehow it finds a way to be way more wrong than just cards against humanity normally is.

meStevo_sl said:

I wish there were more digital versions of board/card games. I'm so hooked on the digital versions of Ascension. $9.99 on Steam, and free and then you have to buy all the expansions on iOS / Android. Just enjoying playing single player games on my phone and Surface.

Would love it if I could get the Cryptozoic system (DC Deck Building mostly), Quarriors, games like BSG, etc. digitally.

Games with shitty setup/takedown would be great, like Legendary.

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Quarriors is available on iOS or at least it used to be...

Anyone have experience with Zombicide?

Zombicide Base GameAmazon.com: Zombicide Base Game: Toys Games

Was looking for a co-op style game as they seem to be the bigger hits with my group.

faille_sl said:

Played Telestrations Again Humanity last night. Basically Telestrations using Cards Against Humanity cards.
So funny, but so very very wrong. Somehow it finds a way to be way more wrong than just cards against humanity normally is.

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I didn't realize but this is more popular than it seems. Its my groups go to drinking game. We have a few people who come up with ridiculous responses and usually sit them next to people who can draw. Turns out great.

You can stop buying board games guys. Dead of Winter is the best board game of all time.

We played Dead of Winter for the first time on Saturday...we played it without traitors, but still had the hidden objectives obviously. I had to get 3 gas for my hidden objective. We were on our last turn...we needed gas for that round's crisis. I drew a 4th on my turn, but we still were one short, so I had to decide if I was giving up on my personal objective. I figured I'd wait to see if the last guy found one...if not, I'd give mine up. He doesn't find one, but someone calls him out on having one in his hand, so he's battling with letting the group lose or losing individually since he needed it for his objective, as well. He gives in and then I get called out on having 5-6 cards left in my hand...I show the 3 gas and my girlfriend starts yelling at me and hitting me.

The moral of the story: Domestic abuse is real.

Awww you gotta play with the betrayer, it makes secret objectives so much harder. Or did you just not get one that time?

In my group of board game buddies we have played 8-9 games and never had everyone win. Betrayer has won once and 2 or 3 out of 4 have won once.

We just decided to leave that aspect out since only one person at the table had ever played the game before. We gave ourselves lower starting morale and less rounds to complete to make up for the lower complexity.

We had also just played 3 games of Resistance, so we were a little betrayered out at that point, too. Only myself and one other person completed our objectives.