What board games are you NOT buying?

Stonecutter wrote:

ThirstyMan wrote: Agree with comments on BTTR. In the same vein as Repo's rejection of Grand Tactical Series, I love me some OCS but can't pull the trigger on this one, at the moment.

Not buying any of Verssen's games.

Buying from someone slightly to the right of Hitler annoys me. I do have standards.

Aw man, seriously? I didn't know that. Damn it.

Nor did I. He seemed very nice in email. Does anyone know what Andy is referring to? Did he publish something?


Talon: Fleet Combat in Defense of Earth (GMT by the way, not Verssen) is still calling out to me. The designer is running Talon Tuesday, a weekly entry on GMT's blog showing examples of play and I'll tell you what -- it appears to be Star Fleet Battles without all the minutiae. I likely won't be able to get my buddies to play on our weekly gaming nights, but I have a big-ass game store opening a couple of miles from my house so I may find an opponent there if I get it.



Star Fleet Battles was a big game horizontally -- thousands of rules but each set corresponding to particular factions or even particular ships or ship systems. Talon looks much more streamlined and their intention is to keep it much simpler. Still has impulse movement, shield facings, weapon facings, etc., and even retains some of the lingo from Star Trek which surprises me considering it isn't a Star Trek branded title. Bad guys shoot disruptors, good guys phasers, etc. But the movement and shooting seem to be streamlined enough that you stand a chance to teach it in a short-attention-span world.

Haven't sprung for it yet. But I'm considering it. I may see if I can corner the designer for a brief interview for an article here.

S.

I have to admit, I'm digging it too. It looks really good.

That looks neat. Is it the Space Empires guy?

Gary Sax wrote: That looks neat. Is it the Space Empires guy?

Yes it is. He's talking about have them work in conjunction like a campaign.

sagrilarus wrote:

Gary Sax wrote: That looks neat. Is it the Space Empires guy?

Yes it is. He's talking about have them work in conjunction like a campaign.

Jim Krohn? Also the Band of Brothers guy?

Mr. White wrote:

sagrilarus wrote:

Gary Sax wrote: That looks neat. Is it the Space Empires guy?

Yes it is. He's talking about have them work in conjunction like a campaign.

Jim Krohn? Also the Band of Brothers guy?

Frohike wrote: Not sold on The Others: 7 Sins.

I know some folks here have jumped on board, and it's Eric Lang & all, etc. But everything about this is just off-kilter for me and not in a good way. The sins being incorporated as variations of tentacally blobs is boring and tame. The vibe comes off as trying to be "extreme" in a teenage variant of Garbage Pail Kids that doesn't really carry any kind of transgressive air to it (look out for those corrupted hobos, always stealing your shit amirite?). I'm surprised nothing has punny names yet. It's basically just a bunch of Cthulhu crap with arbitrary "sin" tags. The Hell Club (... really?) wears some bondage stuff, I guess. How Matrixey!

I was excited by this originally, but after doing more research after the KS launch, I changed my mind. Artwork of the blandest sort from top to bottom. Not sure why they went the Cthulhu route with the monsters. Traditional demons would have worked better. And all the videos I've seen depict a bland game.

Between that and CMON's KS campaign ... no thanks. There's a good bit of more interesting horror out there already.

I just swapped up. I'm on the prepub for Talon now, off of Silent Victory.

GMT's blog has run a couple of entries for Talon on its gameplay and it looks good. They're doing a simple version of it for the moment, leaving off missiles and fighters but the concept is there. I just love the impulse system for movement and actions, and Talon seems to be adding a nice twist to it. The most recent entry speaks to the backstory which appears quite good as well, with a sort of Basilisk Station feel to it.

Silent Victory still looks good, but likely I'll get one of these at half price if I buy the other prepub, so it doesn't make sense to be on both.

S.

I've decided against going in on Shadows of Malice. As much as I admire the guy for having the balls and vision to self-publish, and as awesome as it sounds, there are some things that I cannot tolerate. The rolling of random monsters is one of them, despite knowing that a random monster table is a hallmark mechanic for most of the best adventure games. Give me a chit, because I fucking hate charts for the most part. The other is the fact that there's no miniatures or standies. It's a cop out to say that it's "brave" and "forces you to use your imagination". Tell me anyone has been playing Zork again, and I'll be proven wrong.

I'm just spoiled, and I accept that.

There are some old school, regressive parts of Shadows of Malice but I would say that the random monsters are not one of them.

SuperflyTNT wrote: I've decided against going in on Shadows of Malice. As much as I admire the guy for having the balls and vision to self-publish, and as awesome as it sounds, there are some things that I cannot tolerate. The rolling of random monsters is one of them, despite knowing that a random monster table is a hallmark mechanic for most of the best adventure games. Give me a chit, because I fucking hate charts for the most part. The other is the fact that there's no miniatures or standies. It's a cop out to say that it's "brave" and "forces you to use your imagination". Tell me anyone has been playing Zork again, and I'll be proven wrong.

I'm just spoiled, and I accept that.

Well, I'm playing Moria/Angband -- imagination is required since you are an "@" symbol that fights upper and lower case monsters (all randomly generated)

P.S. Shadows of Malice is great, so there is that.

Space Ghost wrote:

SuperflyTNT wrote: I've decided against going in on Shadows of Malice. As much as I admire the guy for having the balls and vision to self-publish, and as awesome as it sounds, there are some things that I cannot tolerate. The rolling of random monsters is one of them, despite knowing that a random monster table is a hallmark mechanic for most of the best adventure games. Give me a chit, because I fucking hate charts for the most part. The other is the fact that there's no miniatures or standies. It's a cop out to say that it's "brave" and "forces you to use your imagination". Tell me anyone has been playing Zork again, and I'll be proven wrong.

I'm just spoiled, and I accept that.

Well, I'm playing Moria/Angband -- imagination is required since you are an "@" symbol that fights upper and lower case monsters (all randomly generated)

P.S. Shadows of Malice is great, so there is that.

Adding to that, I'm constantly playing TITAN on ACTS (usually along with several F:ATties) and it looks like this:


The sparse, minimal interface doesn't detract for me at all. I seem to carry a lot of the imagery in my head.

Speaking of which, when is the next game commencing? I have been out for several weeks now...

My last game ended yesterday. I'll send out an email here shortly for a game to start Monday morning.

I guess the irony is that one of my all time favorite games is the old DOS, ASCII "Dungeon of the Necromancer's Domain", which looks like a bag of crumpled up assholes.

www.classicdosgames.com/game/Dungeons_of...mancer's_Domain.html