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The New Board Game Thread (Newcomer Friendly)
- Thread starter AstroLad
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Eclipse is totally worth it. Has a ton of bits and a huge box to boot. Lots of content in there and it's a great game to boot. I've been tempted like five times now during various sales, but already have two friends that own the game so probably don't need a copy myself.
I thought you people might appreciate this. I proposed to my girlfriend last night by making a custom game of Wrath of Ashardalon with a custom character for her to play solo. I structured the powers to be a little more useful in solo play. She defeated a dragon and found a shiny ring in its hoard. I'll let you figure out the rest.
TumblingHippo
Member
Though I like the roles in Resistance: Avalon, I think the theme in the first Resistance beats it by a mile, and the theme of it actually makes it easier for new people to grasp it. Especially with the new "Merlin" and Assassin cards, I think that one will come out to the table at work more often.
Tragicomedy
Member
Finished purchasing all my gifts for a board game themed Christmas. The guy at the specialty shop I went into was praising Bang! so I wanted to see if anyone here can vouch for it.
They added Merlin and assassin cards to the first Resistance? That was the main reason I chose to go with Avalon over the original.
They added Merlin and assassin cards to the first Resistance? That was the main reason I chose to go with Avalon over the original.
BattleMonkey
Member
Major part of Sentinels is really picking your super hero team with other players and creating synergy amongst your cards for the greatest effect. You do have to kinda approach it like a rpg with stuff like tanking, controllers, dps, etc. Some folks dont like the no deck building aspects since it's premades, but to me that is also what makes the game fun in that you don't waste time with deck building, and can quickly do multiple games or retries by swapping out heroes.
It's been out since...September? Quite a while!
I've unfortunately only got a chance to play one game with it, but it definitely made things tough for the humans. This is likely due largely to the unfamiliarity of the new rules, and will even itself out after several more plays. The new characters are cool, the mutiny mechanic is great, the new skill cards are bitchin'. I probably need more time to decide if I like the demetrius/mission stuff and the rebel basestar didn't factor much into play.
I don't regret my purchase of it, and it's probably better than Pegasus at the very least.
Bang! can be pretty fun, just don't count on there being too many mind games ala the Resistance or Werewolf. It's more about the card combat and less about deduction. I've found in my group that if the Outlaws try and be too "tricky", pretending to be someone they're not, taking potshots around the table being "suspicious", they slowly lose the game as the Sheriff accumulates cards and advantages over them while they weaken themselves in an attempt to throw off the other players. And the end of the day they are going to need to start shooting the Sheriff at some point, and better for them if it's as soon as possible.
And all the Renegade has to do is play like he's a Deputy until all the Outlaws are dead, then it turns into a hilarious Hollywood clone battle of "I'm the real deputy!" "No I am!" with the Sheriff pondering which guy to kill.
I don't know if that encourages you or dissuades you, but with all the Resistance talk lately I thought I'd look at it in that light.
One Foul Note
Member
Was given Smallworld for my birthday, super excited and can't wait to play.
Good, it's great. Hope you enjoy it. Just don't make my mistake and for your first game accidentally play with three players on the two player version of the board. That was a bloodbath.
joeyjoejoeshabadoo
Member
What's funny is I'm the exact opposite. I was super hot on it when I first got it but have cooled on it since. The game is still solid but I've moved on to different things.
That sounds awesome actually. It's been on my list for a while, then the TableTop episode made me really excited for it. Might get a chance to play today we'll see.
I think it can become pretty flawed if you have some real knowledge disparities because some of the combos are pretty insane. The issue I originally had with it was that even though it was light there were all these powers so it wasn't great as a gateway game either -- but I think with the experience I have from the app now I could pretty easily overcome that just knowing everything off the top of my head.
platypotamus
Member
Awesome proposal dude!
I have had some really fun games of Sentinels and one game that was really terrible. Three of us playing and I chose a hero that was utterly useless in the mix, and we got trounced soundly. I couldn't have known beforehand - it was a hero none of us had played before, but one that really needs three or more other heros to work with.
Are there any team guides that anyone's aware of?
Alcotholic
Banned
I was walking home and I found a copy of The Lord of the Rings LCG in perfect, like-new condition leaning against a fence. Most excellent score.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
I was one of the other players. It took us over an hour but I think some of that was coming to grasp with how to play the game. There were 4 of us.
The game basically consists of:
- An address directory
- A map of london (the map is not really all that important)
- Dozens of daily newspapers
- A D&D style campaign manual.
You read the setup of the case and pick a location to go to to read a lead. You use the address directory to match a name or place name to an address, and flip to the right page in the campaign manual to read the lead there. Maybe the lead is a dead end (you go to a suspect's house and a doorman greets you to tell you he's at work), maybe not. You take notes. We took about 6 pages of notes all-told for the case. The next player follows whichever lead they'd like to follow. The newspaper has news stories, some of which might mention characters who relate to your case or stories that might be worth looking into. Whenever you feel you've solved the case, you flip past all the lead pages to a page of questions. You submit your answers and verify if they are correct. More questions correct = higher points, more leads taken before you answer the questions = lower points. There are dozens, probably 75 or 80 possible areas with leads to pursue. It's a LOT of reading and since precision is key you have to read it exactly, so that's where most of the time comes from. If you played it solo it'd go by quick because reading is obviously quicker than reading out loud. Any subsequent turn can look at notes or leads from previous turns.
One key thing is that since each location only has one blip of text, you never redouble your efforts. Anything you need at the crime scene, you'll find at the crime scene. If someone has an alibi, they probably have an alibi--you might be able to verify it if it's at a restaurant or whatever, but in general you need to assume that if something feels like a total dead end, it is. This is all dictated by the form of the game.
You get 10 campaigns with the game and since a given campaign has only one set of answers, you can only play the game ten times. There are further expansions available in French. The campaign we played was the first one, which involves the murder of a man who owned an arms company that was developing a new gun for the British navy. We got most of the secondary questions right but had completely missed a major plot thread related to the actual murderer and thus incorrectly concluded that another sketchy dude was the murderer. Whoops!
The English translation has a few typos in the campaign we played. One caused momentary confusion as a date was listed incorrectly and we debated whether or not that was an intentional clue or a typo. In addition, there are several leads you can follow for any case to give you bonus hints (IE ask Sherlock Holmes, go to the morgue, go to the police station, etc). None of these are necessary to solve any case but they can give you info. The addresses for those leads and only those leads are incorrectly translated. For example the address 51 NW (51 in the Northwest district) is listed as 51 NO (the french Nord-Ouest instead of Northwest).
It's definitely not like a choose your own adventure. With a choose your own adventure, you expect that you go to the key events and you're guided down the right path. In this case, it's all about finding the information pertinent to the case and making sure you use the information to arrive at the right conclusion. It's never going to be completely obvious that you're going down the right path. You need to really think out of the box in some cases, and you need to fill in the blanks yourself. The answer is never spelled out. And I'd say it certainly didn't feel random. Looking back at it, there were some obvious key leads that we should have followed and it was partially our fault to have been led astray by a bit of a red herring.
Was it thrilling? I'd say there was a bit of confusion in the first case since we weren't completely sure what the game expected of us, so that might have dampened the thrill a bit. I am more excited at the prospect to give this a second shot without having to second guess myself. I know now what the game expects of me and the type of reasoning that I need to employ to arrive at the proper solution. What's more thrilling to me right now is the prospect of going into the second case with the right mindset to solve the case. I'll be able to better answer this question once I have another go at it.
No real team guides out there, though this thread has a number of good hero matches: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/863645/which-heroes-work-best-together
As for an utterly useless hero, I'd be curious to know which one it was. In the core set, the ones that usually get identified as being 'weaker' are Visionary and Fanatic. Visionary should focus on her deck manipulation ability (she really can guide the fight one way or another) and while Fanatic alone is a bit underwhelming her, get her a buff or two, and she suddenly starts doing major damage (because her core power hits for two types of damage, each buff separately).
I've been playing a LOT of Sentinels lately, and we've had teams that have been terrible against some villains but great against others, so it's hard to say which team builds are most effective, because the environment and the villain play a huge role in what would be needed on the hero side of things.
Let us know how it goes! I'm definitely interested in hearing about it. Games that have more 'qualitative' properties to them are cool to me, rather than just doing visual accounting and racking up VPs and such.
Yup, I'm exactly the same way. Specifically, any game that involves a human element is really attractive to me. Any board game that leverages the fact that people are playing together in the same room is immediately propelled past most games that can be played just as well behind a computer screen.
Yesterday I've played the Daybreak expansion for the first time. It was a five player game and we included Demetrius, Pegasus, Cylon Baseship (from Exodus expansion), Mutiny-cards, Earth end-goal, and all skill-cards from all expansions; we excluded Cylon leaders, Final Five, Allies, Trauma and Personal Agendas to make sure that for our first Daybreak game we wouldn't get bogged down too much with non-Daybreak stuff.
Because there were five players and no Cylon-leaders we couldn't include the Muteneer-card (replaces the Sympathizer card from the base game) but we still used the Munity-cards. Basically what it comes down to is that if a (human) player ever gets 2 Mutiny cards he gets sent to the Brig and there's a decent chance that a player might get two over the course of the game because you get them from discarding a Treachery card or from Crisis Cards. However, to get rid of one you have to fulfill its action which usually comes down to losing resources, cards or sending someone to the Brig, sometimes in exchange for something positive. So they're kind of like Personal Agenda's except that they can happen earlier in the game and can be initiated by the player.
The new skill-cards are nice too and especially treachery has more of a presense than in the Pegasus expansion. We may have made a mistake with treachery-cards though, whenever there was any skillcheck abilty played in a skillcheck (also reckless ones) we'd trigger them, so this gave Cylon players more tools to work with and every single skill-check had unpredictable consequences. We only tried to do a mission with Demetrius once, but since there were two Cylon players in the game right from the beginning we quickly found that those skilltests were unpassable for human players.
So it was pretty much a terrible game, with two human players in the Brig after two rounds and two Cylon players there were few opportunities to even try to jump the ship. The only way to get players out of the brig was to try and get the right Quorum card, which of course I didn't get (I was both President and Admiral) and as the last standing human player I was already having a hard time not getting in the Brig myself; the Cylon players tried to Brig me, I had a Mutiny card that would send me to the Brig and at the same time I couldn't discard my Treachery cards because that would get me another Mutiny cards and also send me to the Brig.
The strategy of the Cylon players was to get as many Civilian Ships on the board as possible and destroying them with Raiders, so with 2 human players in the Brig and one trying to get them out they were able to decrease the Population-dial by 5 in one turn.
All in all, Daybreak is a good expansion, my experience is not so much a result of the expansion as it's bad luck wrt loyalty cards. I'm looking forward to next time.
I want this now. Sounds like something the wife would really like!
Anyone see any deals on the Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game core set? I'd like to give this a go.
Honestly, I'm not a fan of bogging the game down with too many mechanics. As a result, I'm a bit skeptical about Daybreak right now. However, if the mechanics work well in favor of balancing the game for a 4 or 6 player game, I'd totally be all over it. That's what's missing from BSG right now, IMO.
5 players - base game, Pegasus ship, Exodus' Cylon Baseship. Add in one of the additional mechanics if players are very experienced or cylons need a bit of help. That is the perfectly balanced game right now.
I've never been a fan of the Sympathizer or Cylon leader roles. Because of this, we usually only play BSG if we're exactly 5 players. We try to balance 4/6 player games by changing the resource counts a bit, but it's not quite the same.
Captain_Spanky
Member
There's very little luck in Mage Knight, aside from enemy tokens and the source.
I respectfully disagree. This review from a redditor sums it up perfectly for me:
[Mage Knight] is overly reliant on chance. Furthermore, that chance seems to be in all the wrong places. You can answer the question "what will the outcome of my hero's battle with these orcs be?" with absolute certainty, but the question "will my hero be able to pick up his lazy feet and walk to the nearest village next turn?" is anyone's guess. Combat is sucked free of drama, while merely moving around is a frustrating endeavor. It is extremely easy to get screwed by poor draws, and there is no way to mitigate this possibility.
BattleMonkey
Member
Luck in MK is about same level as any game involving dice.
Of course there is luck in MK. You cannot plan what cards you get, which means, you never can plan ahead. You can get all your cards of one type in either the start or end, and it will ruin your game imo. Its still a game highly reliant also on skill though, which is why I like it. Would love it to be even more skill-based though.
Affeinvasion
Member
I like MK alright. The thing I like the least is that the battles very rarely feel exciting. It's often a math problem that you solve before you even attempt to attack the thing. Usually the unscoutable ones are really hard too unless you murdered a bunch of scrubs early on. I think chance is used in the game to make leads even larger and very rarely serve to allow people to catch up (i.e. getting certain skills early vs later when they are useless). If you can kill monsters in the early game you will probably win.
I'm getting Mage Knight for Christmas actually. Looking forward to playing it solo and with a few players. Most games I own have luck involved be it dice or flipping cards so that part will not bother me.
Does The Lost Legion expansion add anything to the game right from the start or is it just add on material?
Does The Lost Legion expansion add anything to the game right from the start or is it just add on material?
BattleMonkey
Member
Adds space for another player, which you might not want. More players the longer the game is.
The coop scenarios are best
Haha OK. At first I was going to take the Spanky position but I guess that statement is most accurate. I hate how combat is 100% known. Not a fan of Mage Knight at all, just feels like a big boring puzzle like most of Vlaada's games. Though I "totally see the merit" "if you are into that kind of thing."
I feel like if it could be sped up a bit (especially the deck-building aspect, one card per level up is really slow) I think it could be an awesome game. As it is I find it a bit too long and a bit too slow to progress.
interested...
I was part of the kickstarter, so already have a copy ready to go!
I like it. There's a bit of a learning curve just to know all of the different traits and races, but fortunately they give you the text for each available. I like the game overall and am excited to play the physical version as all of the taking over pieces would feel much more satisfying for me.
BattleMonkey
Member
The Star Wars LCG expansion is out that adds multiplayer is out, 2 vs 2 mode or the 3 player coop vs. one player similar to the old WoW CCG Raid decks
joeyjoejoeshabadoo
Member
How is Star Wars? I'm a little hesitant on jumping in, because I don't know if I can commit to another LCG.
BattleMonkey
Member
I really like it, the deck building is real neat with it involving having to take card sets of 6 instead of cherry picking the best cards one at a time. It also forces decks to have some fluff nature to them since the sets have a theme to them. Having to have a dark side vs light side deck thing and no other way could be a turn off I think for some, since if you play with others you essentially need to have on you two decks. Though I guess Netrunner is similar? Not sure.
Having played a ton of Netrunner and a little SW I think they are quite different and both have their merits. Netrunner is more asymmetrical than SW and more fresh/novel in the sense of the win conditions for the Runner in particular. Netrunner gives you a bit more of a rush of the unexpected and has more ambush/trap/surprise-attack elements. SW meanwhile has this awesome core mechanic -- I really like the way resources are generated in that game and how you generate your economy. My first game I was kind of meh on it but I think that was just because I hadn't grokked the complexity (imo SW is slightly more complex than NR with all the different elements it has), but since then I really appreciate that it feels like you're building up this fleet and infrastructure and sending it into battle.
They're both really good games, making me wish I had the time to commit to two LCGs but sadly I don't. SW really makes me wish they would release a non-LCG version with like six factions that you could play sans deckbuilding.
BattleMonkey
Member
Yea im not very familiar with netrunner, only read about it so not sure. I think there is a good amount of traps and such in SW due to the Fate battles mechanice, but perhaps it comes out more of a gambling like element. It introduces lot of bluffing and surprises into the battles that can quickly turn a losing battle completely around.
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