Board Games

Xenoshyft is fun but it suffers from a lot of the same things as Dominion. When the cards are dealt there are some piles that are just so much better then other piles that you totally ignore half the game. It's kind of sad that some developers haven't figured that part of deck building out yet.

Seananigans said:

Hey Hate, have you tried the TTS KD:M scripted mod much? I've been digging into it, and it's pretty great (completely solidifies my desire to keep my Satan pledge, not that it needed it), but occasionally the scripts seem to break for some unknown reason.

Click to expand...

I have not but I will.

Bought Pandemic kind of on a whim and brought it to the cabin over the holidays, and was pleasantly surprised when my mostly non gaming friends were really into learning it. We ended up playing 5 times over 2 days and ended up winning our last 2 games as we got the hang of it.

I wish I had clued into this sooner so I could pick up Pandemic: Legacy, as that looks awesome, but I heard it's out of print. Does anyone have any experience with the Pandemic expansions?

In the lab is a must have, it gives you an alternate path to curing diseases that makes the game much more balanced with max players. On the brink adds in a few good things, but it's main appeal is adding support for 5 players instead of 4. Both expansions come with a new insert that holds all 3 expansions pretty nicely, so that's a plus too. I think there may be more, but those are the two I'm familiar with, and have played 50+ games with. I have no qualms recommending you get both, as we use them in every single game we play now.

I don't think Legacy is out of print either? I could be wrong of course, but there were just a ton of sales for it on black friday, so I assume there was stock. Can't recommend that game highly enough if you can get 4 people together regularly to play a campaign. Really good twists and turns, probably the best game I've ever played if I'm being honest. Just, super super memorable. Can't wait for season 2!

Got betrayal at house on the Hill. Instructions are fairly long and intense. How long should our first game run?

Noodleface said:

Got betrayal at house on the Hill. Instructions are fairly long and intense. How long should our first game run?

Click to expand...

It is super easy, don't over think it. Start with foyer tile, move to the next room, reveal tile, look at symbols, read top card of the symbol, if no symbols read tile and do what it says. Roll for haunt chance if you get omen card, repeat until haunt starts then, confirm who is the villian, have the villian leave the room and read their part as the rest discuss the gameplan.

I do suggest everyone write down their stats and changes as they come. The plastic markers made for your character tile are inconsistent and fairly shitty overall.

If you have tabletop sim I can give you a demo.

Always great to read!

Going to play Cry Havoc and Blood Rage tomorrow night, both look pretty complicated after watching the how to play videos.

Ao- said:

So that looks awesome, but I've got nothing from the original game... what level of the kickstarter do I need to back at to get an actual game?

Click to expand...

$300 would be the bare minimum for you.

Vaclav said:

$300 would be the bare minimum for you.

Click to expand...

That is peasant level, you need to spend 500 at least or be a scrub.

Hatorade said:

That is peasant level, you need to spend 500 at least or be a scrub.

Click to expand...

Indeed - I'd really recommend getting it all if someone can afford it - there's a good chance that you'll want it in the future - and most stuff will cost double (plus more expensive shipping) if it's even available again. The game with just the $300 core is solid with a ton of meat to it though but at the same time - anything you get later will be around double the cost later if you change your mind.

The absolutely insane value item is the Gambler's Chest - that's a "do not miss" item - it'll probably be 3-4x more if it's produced outside of Kickstarter - it's got so much content.

If you want a breakdown of "tiers" of importance though, I can go through and give my opinion on all current expansions (I either own them, or have played them via other's copies) and my estimations on the value of the new expansions to help you decide how to focus the budget that you have however.

Evert new KD:M update makes me happier that I got in on the Satan pledge. I don't know if I'm going to get any of the crossover stuff yet, maybe the Pathfinder stuff? I really am just all about the gameplay, so I don't care about any of the pin ups, and it seems like the crossover stuff is mostly all just that. I know they come with a couple gameplay elements, although he stated that they are more of a silly joke thing than something you might really want in the game. At this point, I may go in for an extra set of dice? I'm sure someone's going to post how many of those bases you would need, but I don't know that I care about the bases really either? Plus there's a part of me it feels like I should sleeve everything, even though I don't have a single game that I've ever sleeved, just based on the cost of the whole thing. But it's not like I'm going to be saving the game to resell later, so do I care if stuff gets a little worn?

Basically, my $1,666 pledge seems like a no-brainer, I just don't know if I want to add any more on top of it, not because it will cost more money, but more because I don't know if I really need to. What do you guys think / what are your plans?

And again, if anyone is thinking about getting into this, I know it's a little sketchy, but I would totally go install the Chrome extension FastBacker that will Auto refresh the page every 10 seconds for you and just keep trying to select whatever reward you want. I just left my computer at home running that thing for a couple weeks to get one. There's been a bunch of people dropping and changing pledges over the last 24 hours though, so you got a pretty good chance of still getting one I think.

Onoes said:

Evert new KD:M update makes me happier that I got in on the Satan pledge. I don't know if I'm going to get any of the crossover stuff yet, maybe the Pathfinder stuff? I really am just all about the gameplay, so I don't care about any of the pin ups, and it seems like the crossover stuff is mostly all just that. I know they come with a couple gameplay elements, although he stated that they are more of a silly joke thing than something you might really want in the game. At this point, I may go in for an extra set of dice? I'm sure someone's going to post how many of those bases you would need, but I don't know that I care about the bases really either? Plus there's a part of me it feels like I should sleeve everything, even though I don't have a single game that I've ever sleeved, just based on the cost of the whole thing. But it's not like I'm going to be saving the game to resell later, so do I care if stuff gets a little worn?

Basically, my $1,666 pledge seems like a no-brainer, I just don't know if I want to add any more on top of it, not because it will cost more money, but more because I don't know if I really need to. What do you guys think / what are your plans?

And again, if anyone is thinking about getting into this, I know it's a little sketchy, but I would totally go install the Chrome extension FastBacker that will Auto refresh the page every 10 seconds for you and just keep trying to select whatever reward you want. I just left my computer at home running that thing for a couple weeks to get one. There's been a bunch of people dropping and changing pledges over the last 24 hours though, so you got a pretty good chance of still getting one I think.

Click to expand...

The Crossover stuff will have some weird content rules added to it - I'm of mixed feelings about that. Got a feeling it'll be mini-campaign like (original w/ Flower Knight) Children of the Bloom style minor tweakery that isn't too impressive. (FK is cool as shit and original Children of the Bloom is fun, but it only adds a minimal amount of changes from Core campaign vs. DK and SS)

Extra dice are actually quite valuable - unless you're playing solo - and especially if you're playing at a large table. Sure you can use OTHER d10's, but the hit location dice are a bit more problematic and if you've got a big table (which you should have) slinging them across the table will end up with them on the floor more often than not. I do not and will not ever regret my choice to buy an extra set of dice ages ago. (Of course they were also cheaper then - $10/set - but if we started having regular 4 player games w/ non-owners I'd probably consider moving up to 4 sets - since I appreciate the efficiency that the second owner in our group brings his set of dice with him when he plays here and I note the efficiency from the third set)

Bases are a mixed bag - there's better ways of basing models overall - but for a quick and dirty "fitting" base they're incredible. But if you want to passion project base-doodads you'll always beat the face bases. Pre-narrative sculpts I would've been more assertive about them being really, really good. Now they're still decent, but the narrative sculpts since almost every one has a custom base (if not all? I've lost track...) will look leagues better. I fully expect to retire all my non-starter survivors for narratives once they're here.

One of the best secondary investments I've seen (not that I've done it yet myself - not found a good source yet for 3D printing files since I've theoretically got access to a highend 3D Printer via my local Makerspace - keep either finding ones that look bad to me in the render or end up being the wrong format for theirs, lol ><) would be the 3D terrain some people have put together - while "tile terrain" certainly works it does harm the game aestethic to a degree with so much beautiful modeling with full dimensionality versus a tile.

Mario Speedwagon said:

Someone got me pandemic for Christmas. It's kinda fun but I find myself not really likely cooperative games all that much. It takes away all the competitive aspects of gaming and a lot of the time seems to just devolve into the most knowledgeable player(s) telling everyone else what to do.

Thebes and bohnanza are both fun simple games though.

Click to expand...

That's how I feel about Pandemic as well. Try TIME Stories, Xenoshyft or Arkham Horror the card game. Theye do coop much better.

This KD:M kickstarter has been crazy. Guy tells us to "pledge responsibly" then unleashes an onslaught of creative stuff which I really didn't expect, every expansion looking better than the last one (with a few exceptions). I could dig around in my budget and go for the higher pledges but honestly, where to find the time to build all of that stuff, and then the place to store all of it?

Not to mention, how much time would it take to play the base game (now 30 years, people say 60 hours+...), the sunstalker full campaign, the dragon king full campaign, the gryphon full campaign, inverted mountain totally new campaign, the silver city campaign, the ivory dragon and screaming god +5 year campaigns, and now the freakin' full bloom abyssal woods campaign (biggest expansion yet!!!!!11!). I think this latest update made me realize how fucking insane that is not only for the wallet but also the amount of RL fucking years it would take to play it all. That said I'm still getting a lot of it, something-something fools and their money.