Lost Treasures of the Eurogames Reclamation Project

Michael Barnes wrote: I what does it add?

Nothing substantial. Olympos for me is what Tempus thrived to be, the perfect 90 iv. light.

Hey, there is another lost Euro...Tempus. Totally panned for not being the perfect 90 civ. lite, when it wasn't a civ at all but a logistics game.

And besides a bit of a turtling problem, was actually a not bad of a game.

black inferno wrote: Fantasy Flight has become its own genre

Somehow I wasn't buying it a while ago when Barnes was claiming that FFG wasn't Ameritrash, probably because I got into Ameritrash during FFG's reign after having been immersed in German gaming for a while (other than Cosmic, MTG, A&A, and a few others), but I'm now completely buying it, they really are drastically different. The post-Game-of-Thrones AT is as different from the pre-GoT AT as the post-Princes of Florence Euro is from the pre-PoF Euro (though, as with Euros, there has also been plenty of throwback AT...it just did not dominate the discussion for a long time, just as old-school-style Euros don't dominate discussion at BGG). When even the already-relatively-more-complex Games Workshop titles (e.g. Fury of Dracula and Warrior Knights) and Avalon Hill titles (Merchant of Venus, in particular) had a BUNCH of extra systems and rules added when converted into FFG games, it tells you how different their design philosophy was.

Got to admit that hitting the computer game licenses hard opened the door to a lot of alternate avenues. I had friends in college that didn't know anything about hobby games or Games Workshop, but they played the Eagle version of Civ.


A game that I feel is grossly overlooked Letters of Marque by Bruno Faidutti...And released by FFG.

This is a quick playing bluffing game, very much in the family friendly pull and play variety. I recommended it to a friend last FFG holiday sale and it was a staple to finish up a game night if there was 20-30 mins or so left.

Basically you had five ships (two with cannons embossed on the bottom), three cannon cards and a deck of five treasure cards (value 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7).

On a turn you:
-Flipped a treasure card from your deck and assigned a ship to it either with or without a cannon (and kept hidden from your opponent's)
-Brought one of your ships back and thereby banking your treasure
-Played a cannon cards

When you play a cannon card you pick an opponent's ship, they then reveal if their ship is protected with a cannon on the bottom or not. If it is protected they take your cannon card and is worth points to them at the end. If not, you take the treasure card assigned to the ship.

Play until all treasure cards are resolved. Then total up points and most is the winner.

It is a tight little bluffing game that for $9 at Miniature Market, it's a steal.

I worked at Media Play for years too! We never got the Eagle games at our store, so no employee discount for me though.

Right, you can clearly see how AGoT pretty much was the template for the FFG genre from TI3 on to Arkham Horror and right up to Horus Heresy. Even BSG is very much a FFG genre game, one of the best examples of the style, but still in that same millieu. And yes, some of their reprints they've tooled to be FFG games too.

The FFG genre is definitely _influenced_ by the GW games, Avalon Hill and so forth but it's that hybridization that made it its own thing. Look no further than Mr. Petersen's design notes in AGoT and TI3 and you'll pretty much see it all laid out.

I had not really thought about AGoT as a kind of "turning point" like Princes of Florence, but I think that is definitely the case here. I knew when that game came out that it was significant, I had a feeling that it was very important design. I actually reviewed both it and Age of Mythology for the Boulder Games newsletter and it was interesting looking at how both games approached hybridization. But Drover's style didn't pan out and it just wasn't as impactful. But really, I think it was the one-two punch of TI3 and Arkham Horror in 2005 that really locked the FFG style down...which requires piles and piles of cards, endless card text, hundreds of heart counters, and so forth to work.

Guy that was going to trade me Manila balked and traded it for- get this- TI_2_. WTF.

Not sure why, but I did NOT like Letters of Marque.

Tempus was so, so very bad.

You know, Martin Wallace is really just as culpable as Princes of Florence for ruining Eurogames...

Letter of Marque is an easy game to not like if you want more rather than just take it for what it is.

What's up with the post Princes of Florence Euro still being called Euros but you can't call post Game of Thrones FFG games Ameritrash?

Why not call FFG games Ameritrash and just refer to pre-Game of Thrones games as classic Ameritrash. Then you can call early Euro games family games or classic Euros or whatever. For the sake of discussions, fragmenting stuff further in ways which will require unitiated readers into doing research just to understand what you are talking about is detrimental to discussion as a whole (such as Barnes' redefining of Theme).

Michael Barnes wrote:
You know, Martin Wallace is really just as culpable as Princes of Florence for ruining Eurogames...

I like to consider Wallace a genre all on his own.

The intersection of the ERP and Civilization: Tempus was supposed to be a 90-minute Civ, and was going to make your wash brighter and your teeth whiter. And as I recall, that was about all we knew about Tempus until it was released. People were getting excited about it before it came out; a hybrid of Civ and Euro, all in a playable time.

It turned out that it wasn't. It was 90 minutes of pure dull. At no point did I think that I was playing a Civ-style game.

So my copy of Journey to the Center of the Earth came in...So just how much box damage does there need to be before bitching to the Post Office?

It looks like someone sat on the box. Game was new and in shrink, now the bottom is crushed in about half an inch and to the point that it put a 5" rip in the box. No idea yet what the components look like since I likely should take some photos.

I've had some corner dings before which haven't bothered me but this is by far the worst I've seen.

VonTush wrote: So my copy of Journey to the Center of the Earth came in...So just how much box damage does there need to be before bitching to the Post Office?

It looks like someone sat on the box. Game was new and in shrink, now the bottom is crushed in about half an inch and to the point that it put a 5" rip in the box. No idea yet what the components look like since I likely should take some photos.

I've had some corner dings before which haven't bothered me but this is by far the worst I've seen.

Personally, I wouldn't remotely blame that shit on the post office; that's the sender's fault. Don't ever wrap brown paper around a board game and ship it off, that's idiocy (is that what happened?). I have received games shipped in nothing but brown paper before, or in form-fitting cardboard with no cushion, and had them be just fine, so sometimes you can be lucky. But it's not good practice.

Mine came in today too...in...um...perfect conditon...

You sure it's postal damage? If it is, you should have $50 of insurance built in to Priority Mail. I would definitely file a claim on it.

It looks awesome except for one tiny detail. I don't think Mr. Vohwinkel read the book. He's got that goose that is in the movie on there in two different scenes. The goose is not in the book.

The Swarm also came in...I'm odddly really excited about it, it looks crazy. I read the Wikipedia entry about the book, it's not giant crabs, it's pfisteria-infected crabs.

Does anyone have a line on a copy of Around the World in 80 Days at a reasonable price? There's one on BGG for $40, which is still on the high end of what I want to pay. Getting JttCotE just made me want it more...

This one I'm pretty positive is on the Post Office. Came in a Priority Box that has a crush mark in the same spot.

I've never had to deal with a claim before...Do I throw it back to the seller? Or deal with it on my end? I'd rather not send the game back to try to get a replacement, but I'd be happy with credit back. Is that in the realm of possibility?

Michael Barnes wrote: Does anyone have a line on a copy of Around the World in 80 Days at a reasonable price? There's one on BGG for $40, which is still on the high end of what I want to pay. Getting JttCotE just made me want it more...

I played it for the first time yesterday and my opinion of MadDog's tastes jumped a bit because I know he's been saying this was a great game for a long time now.

There's one sitting in shrink on my FLGS shelf, but that's retail so no help there.

Think I'm going to have to dust off Doom and give that one another go soon.