FYI - Mechs vs. Minions goes on sale today at 11AM PDT

Website seems to be working fine now and the game is still in stock. I also read that Riot will do a reprint to meet demand if they feel it's there.

Quiet you. $500.

Michael Barnes wrote: Quiet you. $500.

Them's GOTY prices.

Josh Look wrote: You guys better clear some shelf space, another premium toad incoming!

Only 60 minutes playtime, beautiful visually, cooperative. No way this is a shelf toad in my group.

What's up with this title? I know nothing about it.

Why would I fight through crashed servers to get it?

Mr. White wrote: What's up with this title? I know nothing about it.

Why would I fight through crashed servers to get it?

It was a game that came out of nowhere and was announced 1 month ago. Many video reviewers were sent a copy to review it and were under embargo until last month so a bunch of reviews dropped on the same day.

They flew Tom Vasel and Quinns from SUSD in a year and a half ago to do some consulting on the game and give some feedback.

It was available starting yesterday and the 1st wave is shipping immediately. There's 30,000 total printed and it's expected to sell out.

It's a cooperative programming game where you kill minions and level up, kind of tower defense style. You don't really play a campaign but there's a narrative mission path with new rules introduced that is vaguely Legacy style (i.e. hidden content that you open as you go).

Beautiful components and most people have said this would normally be a $150 game, but Riot games is selling direct and cutting out the middle man so it's only $75. The size of the print run coupled with removing that middle man kind of makes this an unfair standard to apply to any other publisher.

The company who is putting this out makes League of Legends, the biggest video game in the world. This is not exactly a LoL board game, but it is set in the same world. While they're a video game company, they have a huge board game group in their headquarters and are fans of modern board games.

I was able to get a copy yesterday. Took about 5 hours of trying off and on in between meetings.

Good looking game. It looks like they're doing their best to make a good game by bringing in consultants, asking for advice, etc.

I also like that they limited the purchases to 1 per order. Didn't stop people from getting it up on eBay.

If the servers weren't so jacked up I might have tried to add some other things to my order but I didn't want to take the risk.

$75 plus $5 for shipping. Not bad at all.

At it's mechanical core, it uses the Robo Rally programming mechanism, only with drafted cards to populate your program board, and the cards can be gradually "stacked" during the course of the game to buff their effects. Combat incurs damage cards, which overwrite programmed slots with negative effects that can sometimes be exploited. This is melded into an objective-based grid crawl in the vein of Descent, with progressive scenarios that shift the gameplay around and repurpose game components and mechanics in a way that seems similar to Claustrophobia, but with pseudo-legacy envelopes to unseal the new stuff. Component-wise the production looks excellent. Pre-painted minis for the heroes, and the bucket of minions are pre-washed. It's just one of those out-of-the-blue games that instantly appealed to me, both in terms of design and the toy appeal.

Anyone gotten it to the table yet?

The production is AMAZING for the price. The other thing that impresses me is that the game is so not complicated. There is just enough stuff to make a game, and the extra rules are only added as an extended tutorial. Shows that a videogame company is making it. There is even a (skippable) tutorial level.

Played through tutorial and 1st mission with the wife the other day to gauge her interest and we both really enjoyed it. We skipped the timer for the draft phase as this was essentially a learning game, as we intend (now that I'm sure that she likes it) to play it 4 player. Ended up beating the mission on our first try, though admittedly I completely got the towing rule wrong (to be fair, the rulebook was too terse and didn't provide enough explanation) and wasn't using all the movement I should have been forced to. This game is much more forgiving than something like Robo Rally, and I love that you can power-up your commands, and even change them while doing so (so long as you keep it on the same color). Probably dragging this to BGG.Con as our other players will be there.

Don't think this is going to be "game of the year" material, but the game is just a lot of fun, and I've only scratched the surface.

Yeah, it mostly feels like Robo Rally with the bullshit taken out of it. We still kind of groan when we need to tow or position anything because the cards can get really screwed up but we're definitely getting better at gauging when to repair or re-arrange the steps, or even just trash/overwrite an existing one. It's also crucial to remember the special cards when they unlock, considering one of them in the first scenario allows you the basically heal the bomb if you're towing it (bomb = mech in that scenario). Also the abilities you unlock at cog level 15 are permanent for the rest of the scenario, so it definitely helps to arrange actions for maximum carnage.

This game would probably end up as a premium shelf toad™. Amazing production values of a game thats both coop and reimplements another game that isnt that highly acclaimed.... at least you can skip buying a storage solution since it has a decent insert.