Board Games

There was a bunch of talk about Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn here before it released. For those interested it's a pretty deep game out of the basic box and well worth playing. It's also on Table Top Simulator.

If you like any board games at all, Table Top Simulator is on sale right now for like 10 bucks on Steam. It's well worth the price tag. You can get almost every board game out there for free from the Steam Workshop. Buying TTS is probably the best thing to happen to me in years.

I'm finding we have a million board games now. Can anyone recommend a good shelving system for them? Someone recommended an Ikea 5x5 shelf which looks alright for $200. Anything better in the range?

Noodlemod_sl said:

I'm finding we have a million board games now. Can anyone recommend a good shelving system for them? Someone recommended an Ikea 5x5 shelf which looks alright for $200. Anything better in the range?

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I just buy giant plastic garage shelving myself - cheap and fits all the weird box sizes that exist - so many "normal" shelves are spaced too narrow for some boxes.

Organize-It 4-Tier 600-lb. Heavy-Duty Resin Shelves - Black - BJs Wholesale Clubis the precise one I use two of so far, I believe.

We have two of the Ikea 5x5 shelves. They seem like they were made for board games. Anything too large to fit in a cubby...just put it on top.

Remmy_sl said:

Had a great time with the new Zombicide black plague last weekend with some friends. Ruleset and gameplay has really improved since the initial release. I was struggling to figure out suitable music, but then I remembered how great the old Doom soundtracks could be.

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Yeah, we just played it last night and my favorite part is the player dash-boards they really make your life easier managing your character.
Though having only two vault items seemed a little bit.... underwhelming. Come on, just two cards for vault items?! sheesh.

Played the new Eclipse Expansion a few times. Hot hell is the Time-Travel Race imbalanced. And not like, a predictable, compensatable level of imbalanced, but a completely random "Sometimes you just curbstomp everything with a completely explosive opener abusing free resources. Other times, you just get a free 8 points for playing the game."

One-Resource-Type race looked pretty IMBA on the sheet, but then the brutality of 1-planet systems never paying for their control disc, unlike other races with Econ planets, kicked in. Really hinges on getting an Alien Race nearby sitting on a nice hex turn one to dump their resources into trouncing. Sucking at Upgrade-Chicken due to lacking a double-upgrade action also hurt. Still was pretty fun to play, and had some really interesting play-sequences with its conjoined actions/ability to spend resources on anything.

Evolution Race was okay. Was interesting to see a race based on slowly accruing late game advantage, but that doesn't seem particularly strong in a game where early-game advantage snowballs into victory.

Just got my copy of Lost Woods...haven't played it yet, but I'm going to try to convince some friends to try it this weekend. This was the game I helped design one of the monsters for, so I'm pretty excited to see that come in to play.

I know it isn't a new game, but my girlfriend and I LOVE to play Kingdom Builder with the Nomads expansion.

My buddy just launched a Kickstarter for a game that he designed. Check it out:

Kickstarter: The Bermuda Crisis

The basis is a resource management card game where you are trying to find a specific resource out of a deck to advance your camp and earn victory points. There is trading involved so if you don't find what you need, maybe someone else did and you can swap for something they need. But there's also multiple paths to victory so while you are working hard on one strategy an opponent may be working equally hard on another completely viable route. Each pathway seems to be fairly balanced as well. In every game I've played, the loser had been one turn away from being the winner. I've only ever played it with 2, so it's great as a quick warm up duel game, but it can be played up to 4 (maybe even more but it can drag out between turns if you pack too many in).

I'm pretty biased, but I've had a good time every time I've played it (and my name is mentioned in the acknowledgements in the rule book for helping to playtest). If everyone would just buy 1 copy or 7. Or ask me any questions about the game.

Played Descent 2nd Ed again tonight. 2 encounters. 1st map, party worked together and beat the overlord in about 2hrs. Good round, no side had any major advantages and it was fun. Winning that round set players up for equal footing for going after the rangers artifact bow in the 2nd map. Map 2, Overlord played a pure "gotcha" card in round 1 before players even finished their turn and players were totally fucked from then on. Whenever I get the urge to give Descent "one more try" it never fails to remind me why I hate playing it. No way for players to recover if the Overlord gets the right cards. Conversly, if the Overlord gets shit cards, players usually have to still play smart of they can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

That and I am a shitty looser...

That being said, picked up Mission Red Planet and Villians of the Universe (sentenals of the univers expansion) and am pretty stoked to try those.

Played Dead of Winter three times so far. Love it.

Hateyou_sl said:

We got Descent and played with three of us. Me being the Overlord, my dad and friend playing two characters each. We did an all day bender on it because we don't get together often. We had the exact experience you just described. Every round one side ended up having an advantage very early in and the other side ended up feeling like they were getting pounded the rest of the round. We ended the day all kind of bummed because we really liked how it played, the art, etc. but it was too unbalanced to be fun.

I think we did 6 adventures, and we were 3-3 by the end of it, so it was balanced in that respect, but it just wasn't much fun getting to that point. Really wanted to like it too.

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Have yet to play Descent but I've played the shit out of Imperial Assault and it's a much better balanced game according to friends I know who've played Descent. Some of the scenarios can be slanted but that's by design. There's still an element of random chance with the dice rolls, but I've found it fairly easy to recover from early mistakes. Plus, you know, Star Wars.

I have heard, with the new wave boardgames and kickstarters that their are some games out that do Descent better than Descent. I need to look into some of them. I am learning that asymetrical games are a bitch for game companies to do right and they really seem to do better in a coop game setting. At least when I am getting my nuts kicked in by Eldrich Horror I knew going into the game that it was going to be a uphill fight and that one card is generally not going to throw the game totally for one side or the other.

I really enjoy Super Dungeon Explore a lot better then Descent. With the new campaign coming out in Legends for SDE, I don't see ever going back to Descent.

Djay_sl said:

Just got my copy ofLost Woods...haven't played it yet, but I'm going to try to convince some friends to try it this weekend. This was the game I helped design one of the monsters for, so I'm pretty excited to see that come in to play.

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Played it with 3 friends tonight...I really like it. This might be my favorite game off of Kickstarter. I think it's really easy to get non-hardcore gamers into and has a "big map" and survival/cooperative mode to keep replayability. We got one rule wrong that made it so we were all spread out, but other than that it seemed pretty easy to get started.

This is a tile laying/exploration game...you start at camp and explore, trying to find a way out of the woods. Along the way, you pick up weapons, potions, spells, and encounter enemies. Whomever has the most gold when you defeat the Guardian at the Exit and leave the woods wins. We still need to concentrate on Pandemic Legacy, but this game will be in my main rotation for awhile.

Spent on the tax return... Picked up Mistfall (looks better than descent, but hear the rulebook is rough. English was not 1st lang of writters), Blood Rage (gets huge praise on boardgamegeek), and Mission: Red Planet (6 player game, our game night fluxes between 3-8 players, never know who will show...).

So, the future looks promising!

Still no one else doing KDM? Sad times. Such a good game that gets top marks from everyone who plays - just that whole "really expensive to start" caveat.