The New Board Game Thread (Newcomer Friendly)
- Thread starter AstroLad
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BattleMonkey
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AstroLad said:
Cool, the app seems to have really given a boost in sales to the board game which has been around a while now. Plan on picking up a physical copy along with a bunch of other games once Dust Tactics comes out, to get free shipping.
I've done a few trades on there, most recently got Heroes of Graxia. Haven't played yet, but looks dominion-licious.StoOgE said:They never go through
Good luck and let me know about Steam.
I'm pretty pumped for Brass and have had my eye on Steam for a while without knowing it was the same designer.
Askani said:
Pirate Ship can definitely be really powerful in some setups, especially with inexperienced players, but it's pretty easy to play around when you know what you're doing and have the right cards available. Non-treasure sources of money help a lot (Fishing Village, Chancellor, Festival). Secret Chamber is also ridiculously good, both for defense and for its ability to generate extra cash. Alternatively, go for Pirate Ship yourself--sometimes the best defense is a good offense.
Plus one of the things I love about Pirate Ship is that it does change the game. Pirate Ship really discourages the usual strategy of buying lots of money and few actions. Makes the game more interesting.
Keep at it. As you get better at the game and more familiar with the cards, you'll figure it out.
That said, Treasure Map is bullshit, and I haven't even tried playing with Philosopher's Stone.
Neverfade said:
I actually had someone willing to trade Citadels and Forbidden Island for Memoir 44 but I backed out due to price inequity of about 10 dollars on my end. Wound up buying both for about 25 dollars total and getting 1960 in a math trade so it worked out well.
Other than the 12 dollars it cost to ship Memoir 44 :lol
BattleMonkey
Member
I don't know how lot of these online stores do it with board games and shipping specials like free or cheap $5 flat rates. I used to sell games out of another business I ran and the standard wholesale pricing on board games is about %40-45 off retail. These online shops are selling them at 20-25% off retail and then have to ship the stuff for free. Something like Descent or a big box FFG game by mail costs a ton. At work we have a special UPS account and we get special rates due to us shipping out thousands of boxes UPS each week, and even then a big board game can cost around $20 to ship standard ground services.
Volume sales obviously and in some cases it works out in there favor. Reselling board games is always a pain because of shipping costs. I usually never buy used games because most charge so much to ship these large games, and its usually better to just spend a little more to get a new copy from an online retailer.
Volume sales obviously and in some cases it works out in there favor. Reselling board games is always a pain because of shipping costs. I usually never buy used games because most charge so much to ship these large games, and its usually better to just spend a little more to get a new copy from an online retailer.
BattleMonkey said:
I really found this to be the case. I bought battle line and Lost Cities used for about 50% off of what they would have cost on CSI. After factoring in shipping, I paid about the same to get used copies of the games when I could have got new.
I plan on hitting the swap meet at BGG for sure since shipping isn't a factor.
joeyjoejoeshabadoo
Member
What Stooge said, play as two characters. With Pandemic we normally play with our hands open anyway so it's not too different.mrklaw said:
Castor Krieg
Banned
Ordered Warhammer: Invasion LCG and Space Hulk for solo play. 
XiaNaphryz
LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
Closest thing I could quickly find on BGG.Stumpokapow said:
BattleMonkey
Member
They seem to be enjoying themselves. See lot worse at any historical gaming conventions. The funniest is watching a table play 'Harpoon'. Everyone looks all serious, angry, and quiet pouring over paperwork.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
XiaNaphryz said:
Well it's got 3 50+ year old men in a basement with a 3 inch rule binder and haggling, but they're wearing pretty normal clothing and don't seem too feral, so it's not the picture I was thinking of
I know I'm on a video game forum, but no matter how nerdy board gamers, war gamers, miniture gamers, D&D players or hell, even Larpers or Furry's are at least they are interacting with actual people in real life.
I put that far above someone who plays WoW and never leaves mom's basement
Note: I am not talking about well adjusted MMORPG players with a life outside of the game.
I put that far above someone who plays WoW and never leaves mom's basement
Note: I am not talking about well adjusted MMORPG players with a life outside of the game.
Had a good night at the board game night at the pub. One of my friends is turning into a hardcore gamer and I love it She has come 2 weeks in a row now and actually drove in from San Antonio to make sure she could get to it
We played a game of Lost Cities which she really liked and wanted to play again, but I brought out Carcassonne instead. She did pretty well at Lost Cities and surprisingly only went negative on a single expedition in our three rounds. The first time I played I went negative on about half of them :lol
She hadn't played before but figured out what to do pretty early on and even did a good job of screwing up a mega-city (though I actually got lucky and got the one piece that would complete it anyway :lol..
Had a ton of fun, I think I'm going to bring the girlfriend and get her to bring her boyfriend next week to get some Power Grid played. Sadly this means I'm going to have to drop out of my game of Fury of Dracula, so I'll want to get that in at BGG-Con now.
Also, I present to you the mega-city. 59 points, plus gave me control of all 3 goods, so 89 points effectively :lol Believe it or not, she managed to get two different places locked down where only 1-2 pieces would allow me to finish *and* she put the cathedral in the city to try and block me. But the odds of getting that one piece is much greater in a two player game. :lol Still, clearly something a better player either would have blocked or managed to steal.
Also, as much as I like the iphone app, this game is so much better in person. Much easier for me to see the whole board.
She has come 2 weeks in a row now and actually drove in from San Antonio to make sure she could get to it We played a game of Lost Cities which she really liked and wanted to play again, but I brought out Carcassonne instead. She did pretty well at Lost Cities and surprisingly only went negative on a single expedition in our three rounds. The first time I played I went negative on about half of them :lol
She hadn't played before but figured out what to do pretty early on and even did a good job of screwing up a mega-city (though I actually got lucky and got the one piece that would complete it anyway :lol..
Had a ton of fun, I think I'm going to bring the girlfriend and get her to bring her boyfriend next week to get some Power Grid played. Sadly this means I'm going to have to drop out of my game of Fury of Dracula, so I'll want to get that in at BGG-Con now.
Also, I present to you the mega-city. 59 points, plus gave me control of all 3 goods, so 89 points effectively :lol Believe it or not, she managed to get two different places locked down where only 1-2 pieces would allow me to finish *and* she put the cathedral in the city to try and block me. But the odds of getting that one piece is much greater in a two player game. :lol Still, clearly something a better player either would have blocked or managed to steal.
Also, as much as I like the iphone app, this game is so much better in person. Much easier for me to see the whole board.
Funny I feel the opposite. Rarely break out the tabletop anymore because of my being weaned on the iPhone app. I'm like Carc . . . great game but I've already played that 20 times this week. At least with my regular group; I will introduce it to new people. The one big difference is the lack of expansions of course.
AstroLad said:
That is a big part of it. Vanilla carc is good, but I feel like I have to have the two expansions.
Monsieur Porkulus Maximus Meeple is largely useless, but the Inn's and Cathedrals are huge and the Builder and Goods are both very interesting.
More importantly, there are so many pieces missing from the base game that it is far too easy to block elements.
That said, I feel I have a better idea of the lay of the land with the physical game. I still have a hard time focusing on the entire board on the iphone version. I get tunnel vision on an area for some reason. Plus the social element will always be better in real life.
Though, not having to manually score farmers is pretty damn nice. Also, not having to worry about the board running off one of the sides of the table is good as well :lol It never fails that the starting piece remains an outer extremity and the game will always wind up building towards the nearest edge of the table.
platypotamus
Member
That is indeed a mega city. Wow.
BattleMonkey
Member
StoOgE said:
Pretty much all board game companies have similar issues. It's largely never their own faults, but so many problems with the overseas manufacturing. As almost none of these companies own their own production facilities, they are chained to the overseas availability. Lot of these factories that make these games are used by many companies for various products, and have competing interests in production. The other big issue is the growing competition for manufacturing is companies are forced to order and plan many months ahead of time. They put out a product and it sells out faster than predicted, they have little choice but to wait months for another print run.
They know people want the product, they have the preorders, but often they can't satisfy demand.
platypotamus
Member
Looks like the trade for Steam isn't going to happen (I was too slow, someone got to it first), but based on the BGG mail, I think Glory to Rome might
Well my CSI order shipped so thank goodness for that.
Some people are saying to check out Thoughthammer but I don't know. As I said in the BGG thread, I feel really bad for the retailers in this scenario, at least in terms of having to deal with irate customers who preordered and who still won't get the game.
Some people are saying to check out Thoughthammer but I don't know. As I said in the BGG thread, I feel really bad for the retailers in this scenario, at least in terms of having to deal with irate customers who preordered and who still won't get the game.
BattleMonkey
Member
Evlar said:
Probably not, but perhaps at the same facilities of other game companies products, as well as their own products as the company is constantly producing new games and expansions. Demand can catch a company off guard at times for gaming supplies. These companies like RGG are small, they do not have the power of something like Milton Bradley for example. The factories they make these games at usually have a queue of items to produce and you have to reserve your place in the manufacturing line months ahead of time. Toss in manufacturing time plus shipping, customs, distribution, and it all adds up to long delays between reprints.
It becomes a juggling act to balance what gets produced when they have the opportunity to do so, and often they have new products already scheduled that they rather not delay, so reprints of stuff like expansions will get put off in favor of staying on schedule. Larger game companies have similar issues, FFG for example sometimes takes forever to reprint some of it's products, while it's bigger sellers and new items get put ahead of the line.
For Chinese manufactured products especially there has been many problems in the recent years with lack of factory workers and closing facilities because of the economy. Another big issue besides manufacturing is also just the shipping process. These products generally always are shipped by boat to keep it economical, and there's been many issues with shipping delays as less ships are leaving China, so you got docks full of shipping containers stuck for weeks in line waiting for space on a freighter. Toss in extra customs precautions and you also sometimes get more delays.
On BGG there's talk of a container shortage or something. Meh, I'm less inclined to cut RGG slack when they've done this with every single Dominion release so far (just not to this extent). Of course I'm still buying it so my frustrations are largely immaterial to them I'm sure.
BattleMonkey
Member
Container shortage is very much true, they aren't the only game company that has mentioned these problems. Due to problems with metal costs and large demand for shipping, container and ship space is at a premium. You also have lot of corruption with big companies apparently bribing their cargo onto ships ahead of other companies. Our own company manufactures our products in China and we also have been going through this in the past 2 years.
The other issue is the makers get volume discounts. So a game goes out of print and they let demand build up a bit when they can order 20-30K copies of a game instead of ordering 2-3K every few months. They can very likely shave 5-10% off of costs with volume orders.
Doesn't make me any happier that I still can't buy stupid princes of florence, but I understand the need.
Also, big ups to Z-man games. I came clean with them and let them know I bought 1960 second hand and asked if they would sell me some extra marker cubes. They are sending them to me for free.
Those cats are awesome.
Doesn't make me any happier that I still can't buy stupid princes of florence, but I understand the need.
Also, big ups to Z-man games. I came clean with them and let them know I bought 1960 second hand and asked if they would sell me some extra marker cubes. They are sending them to me for free.
Those cats are awesome.
BattleMonkey
Member
StoOgE said:
Depends on the facility, many won't produce a product unless you order a minimum amount of pieces, especially in factories that are very popular and good. Another small time company much smaller than RGG even recently had a blog mentioning how they needed to order a minimum of 10k copies from the factory they were using. They also won't simply print up a small print run and ship it out, they have to wait till they can fill a shipping container with product before it will ever leave the factory. In some cases companies work with others to combine small orders to fill a container for shipping, but it's a major pain in the ass to do, so they are stuck at times having a product sit in a factory for weeks/months as they wait to accumulate a mix of goods to be able to fill a container.
joeyjoejoeshabadoo
Member
Zman is a great company. Really attentive to the community and they do their best to fix problems.StoOgE said:
platypotamus
Member
That looks like a pretty quality order. It's made up of 3/5s my-wishlist, 1/5 a game I've been interested in for forever, and 1/5 a game that Stooge has been trying to trade away for even longer than that.
Also, have my eye on Richard III: Wars of the Roses.
It's a block wargame that plays out in 2-3 hours that is fairly solidly ranked on BGG. I don't own a real wargame at all, but am a complete and total sucker for anything York, Lancaster or Tudor related so it's theme is right up my alley.
It seems to be a streamlined version of Hammer of the Scots which is very highly rated on BGG.
I don't know if anyone here has any experience with Hammer of the Scots (or less likely Richard III) but any opinion if a Eurogamer might enjoy this game? Seems like a good mid-tier level wargame without getting out paper maps and playing for 4 straight days.
It's a block wargame that plays out in 2-3 hours that is fairly solidly ranked on BGG. I don't own a real wargame at all, but am a complete and total sucker for anything York, Lancaster or Tudor related so it's theme is right up my alley.
It seems to be a streamlined version of Hammer of the Scots which is very highly rated on BGG.
I don't know if anyone here has any experience with Hammer of the Scots (or less likely Richard III) but any opinion if a Eurogamer might enjoy this game? Seems like a good mid-tier level wargame without getting out paper maps and playing for 4 straight days.
AstroLad said:
I am really interested in some Frasko impressions. I watched the video of the SPiel des Jahres nominations and it did look interesting.
Edit: And my expansion for Pandemic just arrived. Wow there is alot of stuff in there to keep the game interesting for a while. Great expansion.
ElectricBlue187
Member
Are there any iPhone board games you can play over the interweb? Life and Monoploy only work on local wifi 
ElectricBlue187 said:Are there any iPhone board games you can play over the interweb? Life and Monoploy only work on local wifi
I don't know if you are for real or if you have managed to counter troll astrolad.
Carcassonne and Words with Friends if you like scrabble.
carcassone, which we have a very active thread for: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=397985ElectricBlue187 said:Are there any iPhone board games you can play over the interweb? Life and Monoploy only work on local wifi
and samurai
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