Re: What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Yeah Scum and Villainy looks exceptional. Finally bombs will get their day.

Michael Barnes wrote: You lost as the Orcs? That isn't supposed to happen- they are almost OP unless the other player knows how to counter them effectively and not try to win a melee fight with them.

That's precisely what happened. The Drow player got smart after my orc chief started axing his elves for 50 damage a pop and started booby trapping the field and made excellent use of that damn umber hulk. He'd have it burrow and flank my orcs, kill something, and use an order to have it scuttle away and out of reach. It was a very good tactic for the Drow.

Umber Hulk? Nobody told me they had an Umber Hulk in this game. That alone garners a second look from me.

Brother, there's an Owlbear in there too. This game is the real deal.

Drow vs. Orcs is a pretty good match-up for the reasons you described. Lots of evasion and trickery on the Drow, raw hitting power and stamina for the Orc.

I really wish that they had done at least one other "lawful good/neutral" pack. Heroes of Cormyr is it. And that set has some really neat stuff, like an adventurer keyword that encourages you to form, effectively, parties since they help each other. Which also aids in getting more of the high level cards played. That's probably my favorite set, but I think most folks would say the Orcs and Drow are the best. Goblins are a swarm army. Undead behave pretty much like you'd expect a gang of skeletons and ghosts to act. That one has the best figures-Tomb Guardian, Dracolich, Servants of Kyuss, etc.

The game is so freaking good, and really there isn't anything like it. The closest comparable would be Wiz-War, but it's VERY different from that. It is a grid-based tactical miniatures skirmish but it has deterministic cardplay combat ("I do 50 damage", "OK, I counter 30 of it"). But you have an escalating point value (leadership) that determines what you can field. So on turn one, you might have an option to put two weaker units out or one heavy. Next turn, you might be deciding to bring on one more low level unit or wait until the next turn to put out a level 2 unit. And that level ties into what cards each unit can use coupled with what stats (con, str, dex, etc.) that unit has.

The dungeon maps are small with just a couple of treasures on them, they basically just let you boost your morale. So you send out the Halfling thief to handle those while sending out the Copper Dragon and whatnot to do the messy work. There's some terrain, but it's just blocking/difficult kind of stuff.

Simple, lots to play with, awesome figures,D&D setting. I would actually call this one of my favorite games of the past ten or so.

I don't usually homebrew up stuff, but I've been thinking about trying to play with some of the D&DAS tiles and maybe even some of the rules from that. So basically, doing a dungeon skirmish but with some adventure elements (encounters, wandering monsters and so forth). The treasures and statuses wouldn't work as printed though, probably not the traps either. And the monsters would have to do a base damage rather than rolling for it against AC since that's not how DC works. I dunno, maybe just playing DC on the tiles would be enough.

Is it suitable for team play if you have 4 players?

Played my best ever game of Magic Realm tonight. I was the Witch and lucky enough to find the Hoard early on. I absorbed the essence of the tremendous flying dragon and proceeded to loot the Hoard. First treasure that comes up? The Cloven Hoof. So now I'm permanently in dragon form. I fly to the Inn, take out all of the rogues and the poor patrol who happened to show up, and then just flew around killing whatever I felt like since no weapon or monster could penetrate my tremendous flying hide. Final score was 35. I had 243 notoriety. This is probably the only solo game I will ever need or want.

In case anyone's wondering, I slowly taught myself over the past couple of months using the recently-released Book of Learning as a learning aid. Don't be daunted by its length, it's the best possible way to learn how to play. Unlike "Magic Realm in Plain English," the Book of Learning is actually in plain English. It walks you through how to play with and make decisions in the game with lots of visual aids, instead of just reiterating the rules. You should be able to find it on the BGG page for Magic Realm, but if you want it and can't find it, let me know.

Michael Barnes wrote: Brother, there's an Owlbear in there too. This game is the real deal.

Drow vs. Orcs is a pretty good match-up for the reasons you described. Lots of evasion and trickery on the Drow, raw hitting power and stamina for the Orc.

I really wish that they had done at least one other "lawful good/neutral" pack. Heroes of Cormyr is it. And that set has some really neat stuff, like an adventurer keyword that encourages you to form, effectively, parties since they help each other. Which also aids in getting more of the high level cards played. That's probably my favorite set, but I think most folks would say the Orcs and Drow are the best. Goblins are a swarm army. Undead behave pretty much like you'd expect a gang of skeletons and ghosts to act. That one has the best figures-Tomb Guardian, Dracolich, Servants of Kyuss, etc.

The game is so freaking good, and really there isn't anything like it. The closest comparable would be Wiz-War, but it's VERY different from that. It is a grid-based tactical miniatures skirmish but it has deterministic cardplay combat ("I do 50 damage", "OK, I counter 30 of it"). But you have an escalating point value (leadership) that determines what you can field. So on turn one, you might have an option to put two weaker units out or one heavy. Next turn, you might be deciding to bring on one more low level unit or wait until the next turn to put out a level 2 unit. And that level ties into what cards each unit can use coupled with what stats (con, str, dex, etc.) that unit has.

The dungeon maps are small with just a couple of treasures on them, they basically just let you boost your morale. So you send out the Halfling thief to handle those while sending out the Copper Dragon and whatnot to do the messy work. There's some terrain, but it's just blocking/difficult kind of stuff.

Simple, lots to play with, awesome figures,D&D setting. I would actually call this one of my favorite games of the past ten or so.

I don't usually homebrew up stuff, but I've been thinking about trying to play with some of the D&DAS tiles and maybe even some of the rules from that. So basically, doing a dungeon skirmish but with some adventure elements (encounters, wandering monsters and so forth). The treasures and statuses wouldn't work as printed though, probably not the traps either. And the monsters would have to do a base damage rather than rolling for it against AC since that's not how DC works. I dunno, maybe just playing DC on the tiles would be enough.

I went back four pages in this thread, on an ipad at four in the morning, and couldn't figure out what game you are talking about. It occurred to me that it would be pretty funny if you just made up the Best Game Ever and pretended it existed.

evilgit wrote: Is it suitable for team play if you have 4 players?

2 players is by far the best way to play. That said, it does support teams. I only did it once, and it really just ended up like 2 2 player games going on simultaneously. I'm sure it depends on the crowd.

One house rule I'd make is to make the treasure tokens just worth 1 and then remove them, or just remove them entirely. The first half of the game is just scrambling over those stupid treasures, and it really just prolongs the game unnecessarily.

Dungeon Command

Impulse. Fun with 2, excellent with 3. I think that's the optimum number.

What's more, the guy who was playing for the first time, who isn't a hardcore gamer, won. It's not the inscrutable Lament Configuration it's been made out to be.