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Shelf Toad of the Year
- san il defanso
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- ENDUT! HOCH HECH!
It feels like the problem is not that a game is too hard to play, it's that the next thing comes along so quickly that you can't focus on what you already have.
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2005: Runebound II
2006: Marvel Heroes
2007: Battlelore
2008: Android
2009: The Age of Conan
2010: Runewars or Merchants and Marauders
2011: Mage Knight
2012: Descent II
2013: Duel of Ages II
2014: Shadows of Brimstone
2015: ?
2016: Star Trek: Ascendancy
2017: Fallen Land
Despite my disdain for Euros, I picture Shelf Toads as being primarily AmeriTrash. Partly because the term Shelf Toad started here, and partly because EuroGames tend to be easier to get on the table for gamers in general, partly due to standard euro design paramaters, and partly due to the bias found at a certain non-F:AT site.
Is there a particular year that might stand out as The Year of the Toad?
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- ChristopherMD
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Since I don't get to play anything, I guess the defacto shelf toads for 2017 were the three things I bought: Liberty or Death, Colonial Twilight, and Inis. I think I maybe got Mechs vs Minions this year too, but I actually played that, so I guess it doesn't count.
My all-time shelf toad is probably Middle Earth Quest. It seems like a cool as hell asymmetrical game, I've just never managed to get it played. Hasn't helped that I never really digested the rules enough to where I felt comfortable teaching it, and the end game fight always seemed like a pretty goofy thing. Other headliners are Combat Commander, of which I have three big boxes and a scenario pack, but only played a half game of, Duel of Ages 2 with the master set thing, and Bonaparte at Marengo/Napoleon's Triumph.
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- Matt Thrower
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- Shiny Balls
- Number Of Fence
the_jake_1973 wrote: I refuse to live in a world where Merchants & Marauders is a shelf toad.
I'm afraid it's one of mine.
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- Cranberries
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- Don't give up.
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Da Bid Dabid wrote: Also curious to hear more about Borg, I remember Charlie enjoyed it more on later plays. Josh you play with them at all?
Yes, I came to enjoy the Borg after a few plays. In the beginning it was very rough going as they're tough sons of bitches (which is appropriate).
The thing is, the Borg drastically change the game and the players need to change their approach. You need to not explore beyond a single system or two until you've built up military. You need to save research for weapon upgrades, and you need to pump out lots of ships. If you run into the Borg you'll need to stall the cubes by using your ships as speed bumps in the space lanes and hope for the best.
When playing with the Borg in the center of the table I highly recommend the base game variant of accelerated starting resources. This helps you get your feet under you in the beginning.
The Borg expansion also has kind of a shoddy rulebook and you'll need to be ok with filling in blanks with reasonable assertions. There's gaps that arise and situations where you won't 100% know how to handle it.
The solo game is pretty decent. It's basically the multiplayer game where you're racing to 5 Ascendancy, but the Borg are barreling down on you from the start. I like how you can sort of extend or shorten the length between the Transwarp Hub and your home world to throttle difficulty.
Our preferred way to play with the Borg is to not use the Transwarp Hub, and to just keep their random encounter cards shuffled into the deck. Then we ensure no Borg encounters until turn 4. This gives us time to build up a bit and they turn into more of a mid/late game threat that can topple alliances and shift the landscape.
The thing about the Borg expansion as a whole is that they can be randomly punishing. An AI deck controls who they head towards and you can get hosed. The Borg get stronger when players are assimilated so there's some incentive for another to help you, but it still feels like you have no chance to win if they start gunning for you while leaving others alone. You need players that are fine with this and that will enjoy controlling the Borg and wrecking stuff.
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- southernman
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the_jake_1973 wrote: I refuse to live in a world where Merchants & Marauders is a shelf toad.
Because I have so few opportunities with four players that when I do get that number other games always take priority, even when I semi-regularly get three players I have other games that shunt themselves in front of it - and as many/most of my games are long the chance of squeezing more than two games in on those days are rare.
It is a good, fun game but we were a group who did agree it really should be called Merchants & Merchants - we did use a variant on BGG for awhile where your 10VPs had to com from a variety of actions, with actions limited to how many times you could score a VP for it. I see there are dozens (hundreds) of variants at BGG for it now so can't tell you which one it was, it has just about become a sandbox game.
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- SuperflyPete
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I recommend we also have a whiskey still on site.
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- Jackwraith
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Chaz wrote: My all-time shelf toad is probably Middle Earth Quest. It seems like a cool as hell asymmetrical game, I've just never managed to get it played. Hasn't helped that I never really digested the rules enough to where I felt comfortable teaching it...
We were feeling the same way about the rules until we made an intentional decision to play for five consecutive weeks at my weekly game group. By the time we were done, we had the rules fairly well internalized and could pick up the game again (as needed) without a full rules re-read.
On the toad topic, my biggest Toad for years was the Lord of the Rings LCG. My family stopped playing (Pathfinder ACG took over instead), but I kept buying. But in the past year they've jumped back on board and we've played all the way through The Lost Realm block. Just a tremendously great time.
By the end of summer, we plan to finish up what we have left: the Saga boxes and the Grey Havens block. Then and only then will I purchase anything new (e.g., Sands of Harad).
Other headliners are... Bonaparte at Marengo/Napoleon's Triumph.
I played Napoleon's Triumph over a dozen times in 2008-2009, but only a few times since then. It's extremely procedural, but totally unique and amazing. Everyone else in my game group avoids it like the plague, since it has absolutely no randomness. (It has uncertainty with hidden blocks, but no random elements in the form of dice, chit draws, etc. It's basically war chess.) So this will realistically never get played again, particularly since I'd have to relearn it from scratch - which isn't at all appetizing giving how much effort I had to invest in the first place.
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- Matt Thrower
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wkover wrote: I played Napoleon's Triumph over a dozen times in 2008-2009, but only a few times since then. It's extremely procedural, but totally unique and amazing. Everyone else in my game group avoids it like the plague, since it has absolutely no randomness. (It has uncertainty with hidden blocks, but no random elements in the form of dice, chit draws, etc. It's basically war chess.) So this will realistically never get played again, particularly since I'd have to relearn it from scratch - which isn't at all appetizing giving how much effort I had to invest in the first place.
It is extraordinary. I had a similar experience one year when I played it a bunch of times and I walked away from each one feeling like it was a game I could play for the rest of my life, if I had no other games to play. I do, of course, and in time it went into the loft. But it's one I so, so want to get out again and play against my regular gaming crony for weeks on end until I feel I've got a better handle on its brilliance.
It is also the best-looking game I have ever seen.
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