- Posts: 1236
- Thank you received: 404
Bugs: Recent Topics Paging, Uploading Images & Preview (11 Dec 2020)
Recent Topics paging, uploading images and preview bugs require a patch which has not yet been released.
Please consider adding your quick impressions and your rating to the game entry in our Board Game Directory after you post your thoughts so others can find them!
Please start new threads in the appropriate category for mini-session reports, discussions of specific games or other discussion starting posts.
What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?
charlest wrote: Bull, you think King of New York is a quicker game than KoT? Everything I've heard suggests its a bit longer.
Keeping in mind that I've only played once, I think the additions to the system work toward ending the game in a timely manner.
In KoT you'd have Tokyo rotating between players, and folks would duck out to heal when they were too low, and be relatively safe. In KoNY, the military units really tend to not let anyone be safe. Healing is still good, but energy is not as good because you want destruction either to turn buildings into military or eliminate military. The military also leave open ways to interact with players who are not in tokyo, either by rolling 3 skulls or 2 skulls and smashing some buildings. I feel like you simply do not have enough time in KoNY to build energy, you're too focused on staying alive, and killing.
This creates an interesting problem in that the best part of KoT were the cards, however sometimes the game could run an hour. In KoNY the game keeps pressure on you to survive, not shop, but in doing so, the best part of KoT is featured less (despite there being a giant stack of cards).
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
Legomancer wrote:
Valley of the Kings - This is the game people should be talking about instead of Star Realms.
I saw it played at Loncon and thought it looked very interesting (it was a father taking his kids through it.) Then I found one of my friends at Loncon had played it there and loved it, and has been trying to find a copy.
It seems unavailable in Oz at the moment for some reason, though my game store manager friend assures me that they'll be getting in stock soon.
It does look far more interesting than Star Realms.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- Colorcrayons
- Offline
- D8
- Wiz-Warrior
- Posts: 1693
- Thank you received: 1703
Opening with Rampage, which is a fast playing dexterity romp. I am surprised how much I liked it as it was my first time and initial impressions gleaned from researching bgg wasn't promising. It felt like play as one would with their gi joes or star wars figs on the sand mound in the backlot as a kid, and the thematic destruction of the game only added to the refreshing quality.
We then went on to Monsters Menace America, and found a brilliant way to improve the end game. The end game is simply resolved by playing a game of King of New York. The cards gained on MMA that affect the end game were simply converted to energon cubes so the buffs still trasferred to the end game in some way. Its needs to be fine tuned, but it turned out to be the most fun we've ever had playing MMA and not feeling robbed in the end due to randomness. The randomness of KoNY didn't make it feel as random as it would have otherwise at least.
With proper tweaking of the mutation and military cards in MMA for end game rewards to transfer to KoNY, it has a lot of potential.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- Posts: 67
- Thank you received: 16
Michael Barnes wrote: Except Mancala. It's the second good game this year with Mancala mechanics.
My wife loves Mancala and I'm drawing a blank, what's the other game?
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- Legomancer
- Offline
- D10
- Dave Lartigue
- Posts: 2944
- Thank you received: 3873
PavingMantis wrote:
Michael Barnes wrote: Except Mancala. It's the second good game this year with Mancala mechanics.
My wife loves Mancala and I'm drawing a blank, what's the other game?
I think he is probably Referring to Theseus: The Dark Orbit, which is sort of mancala-ish but not really.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- SuperflyPete
- Offline
- Salty AF
- SMH
- Posts: 10733
- Thank you received: 5119
Played rhe shit out of hoodrats withthe neighbors. Very few things are as entertaining as suburban white girls with money talking gangster.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
Colorcrayons wrote: Played a mini "Kaiju Game Day" today.
Opening with Rampage, which is a fast playing dexterity romp. I am surprised how much I liked it as it was my first time and initial impressions gleaned from researching bgg wasn't promising. It felt like play as one would with their gi joes or star wars figs on the sand mound in the backlot as a kid, and the thematic destruction of the game only added to the refreshing quality.
I love Rampage, but I've never played with the rules as written and my cards are still in shrink. Basically we do the normal actions and have people and floors worth one point each, most points at the end wins.
Game day today for me and most all of the early regulars were elsewhere, so the shopkeep and I played Jambo. I started off early going good, but then he drew all the crocodile cards and guards so I lost all my items cards that were chugging along for me. Meanwhile he was using his Supplies card to just burn through the deck finding wears cards. He managed to build a hand of three six wears cards allowing him to sell, buy the sell for a 28 point swing. And that pretty much sealed the games.
He then had to go tend to business and another person showed up and sat in. This round went a bit better for me and that first game gave me some ideas of how cards can combo and I did benefit from my opponent not knowing the cards being his first time.
This was the first time that I've played Jambo in years and once again I had the same feeling of being impressed that there's so much game in the box and feels like a more complete game than some of the others in the Kosmos 2-Player line.
Once that game wrapped up others showed up so we played a 5-Player game of Deadwood. I ended up losing 3 of my cowboys due to headshots in shootouts while my guys couldn't hit the broadside of a barn. The Undertaker this round made a killing as he was the one that headshot me a few times. But it came down to two other people once the Train Station was built and once again a head-shot prevailed. Good times were had by all. Some oddities were that the second Saloon never came out so everyone was short cowboys and the Bank didn't come out until the last few turns so everyone was just scraping by and had a different feel than my previous rounds of this game. As I was packing up a few were having me make sure I ask them for a game next time I bring it up.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- hotseatgames
- Away
- D12
- Posts: 7176
- Thank you received: 6290
Got brutalized. The end.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
Forbidden Island - I've never played this before and it's a cute family game. The design does indeed feel like a stripped down version of Pandemic. We had the pilot, the diver and the explorer. Tile placement was in our favor and stuff that sunk never really hurt us too much. We ended up winning pretty easily, but had a fun time doing so. When co-ops are good, they promote thinking and good table talk. It was fun to discuss our plans and bounce ideas off one another in this simple game. I think this one is a winner for family gamers.
Feudality - This Tom Wham game is still one of my absolute favorite light weight games. Some highlights: Bandits came and raided our fiefdoms no less then 3 times in the first couple of rounds. This resulted in us loses our Tower fortification making us all incredibly weak. One of the actions you can do on your turn is roll to have a secret game of hide the pickle with the Queen for a Victory Point. Many a points were scored from her slutty ways early on. As the game went on one player jumped out to a big lead. So me and the other guy losing decided to pile shit onto him. On one turn I purchased a black cloud that I put in his fiefdom that prevented tiles from producing. Then on the next turn his recently rebuilt tower was blown up thanks to a successful sabotage attempt from the other player. This guy never recovered and my friend who did the sabotage eventually won the game by a point or two. Great game. I've heard this game is going out of print because it's designed by Lookout Games. Well, Lookout was bought by Mayfair and this was originally published by ZMAN. So it looks like it's in limbo. It's a shame because this game is an absolute gem.
Dwarven Miner - My friend picked up this kickstarter game and was very excited to try it out. Each turn you roll 6 dice to acquire resources to build items. If you roll an orc symbol the die is locked and won't get any resources. With said items you're trying to fulfill request for your hand of three patron cards. Each patron that you fulfill with their required items, gives you VPs and a special ability of sorts. This game was decent. It has some nice artwork, very easy to grasp mechanics and only lasts about 40 mins or so. For a kickstarter game it's not that bad. It's nothing terrible original though. Everything in the game has been cribbed from other successful designs.
Santiago de Cuba - This is my kind of Euro game. It has very simple rules. The game features a decent dose of player interaction and it plays in about 30-45 mins. You're basically all skeevy merchants that drive around the city and procure goods to sell on the cargo ship sitting in the harbor. After one round the game made complete sense and we really got into the game. We had started drinking at this point and everyone was doing horrible Tony Montana-esque accents...I can only imagine what people within earshot would have thought of us. The game ended and we tallied up our points. Everyone had a blast with this game. It was outside of our comfort zone in terms of game setting. We all really liked it though. "This town...is like a great big pussy, just waiting to get fucked.........."
Talisman - We settled into our one 'big' game of the day. The Sage vs The Thief vs The Assassin. We set the game up using the base game's adventure cards. Then we attached the dungeon board and used that. As the thief I started off robbing the village and getting an axe and armor. Eventually found the holy grail and a runesword. The Sage came across a witch and after landing on her for the second time got toaded. He was absolutely fucking ripshit...he had some great items and followers at this point. The Assasin went around killing everything he came across. Eventually him and the Sage went into the dungeon where they both powered up. I used my axe to carve my way into the middle region. I just couldn't get my craft or strength very high though. Meanwhile they were both power leveling in the dungeon. The assassin killed the lord of darkness first and got some wicked cool prophecy orb. He got spit on in the forest though. The Sage killed the LoD and got some weird totem that let him use trophies as snacks for lifepoints. He got spit out on the plan of power. The sage reached the Crown first...but couldn't roll for shit. I eventually made it to "dice with Death"...but was struck down by a command spell. The Sage needed to roll well because if the Assassin reached him it was over. Well, he failed the Assassin climbed the stairs and sauntered over to the Crown. He looked at the Sage. The Sage knew. He knelt down and let the Assassin cut him down. The Assassin had like 13 points of strength and the Sage had no way of doing psychic combat so he was screwed. Great game, with a helluva finish.
Buccaneer - Broke out this game at the end. It's very simple. Not sure that it works well with just 3 though. You take turns placing one of your pirates on a stack until you have enough to board one of three ships in the center of the table. Problem is you can't create a stack of pirates and board on the same turn. We stumbled about trying to figure out the best tactics but none of us really wrapped our heads around it. It's an interesting little design...but I need to think about it a bit more. It confounded all of us.
All in all it was a great day. I had a blast.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
I know the game rewards you for it, but it just feels like two games smashed together. Like a player who chooses questing and a player who chooses farming would barely be competing for most spots in the game.
And the questing gameplay involves keeping track of number counters and just picking items from a menu. it's really uninspired, especially when compared to the reap, sow, harvest, breed part of Agricola which is basically intact in Caverna.
You are right in that you're not competing for spots in the game. The questers are fighting over questing spots, and the farmers are fighting over their spots.
The questing isn't what I'd call exciting, but I liked that it made things much more flexible. You're paying for that flexibility with efficiency (1 cow instead of 2+, etc). But in the last few turns, there's not much the quest players can't do.
I think it's definitely one of those strategies that only support 2 players to use, and might not even be able to support 2.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
Egg Shen wrote: Feudality - This Tom Wham game is still one of my absolute favorite light weight games.
This is one that I keep meaning to look at more and potentially grab before it is gone because I have a feeling that once it is gone, its gone. What appeals most is it almost seems like a parody of the heavier Rosenberg games.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- Posts: 49
- Thank you received: 24
VonTush wrote: Game day today for me and most all of the early regulars were elsewhere, so the shopkeep and I played Jambo. I started off early going good, but then he drew all the crocodile cards and guards so I lost all my items cards that were chugging along for me. Meanwhile he was using his Supplies card to just burn through the deck finding wears cards. He managed to build a hand of three six wears cards allowing him to sell, buy the sell for a 28 point swing. And that pretty much sealed the games.
He then had to go tend to business and another person showed up and sat in. This round went a bit better for me and that first game gave me some ideas of how cards can combo and I did benefit from my opponent not knowing the cards being his first time.
This was the first time that I've played Jambo in years and once again I had the same feeling of being impressed that there's so much game in the box and feels like a more complete game than some of the others in the Kosmos 2-Player line.
I've now played 4 games of Asante , the standalone expansion to Jambo and it really brought back those feelings of hunting for a deal as you spend your actions to sift through the cards either for a suitably powerful card or a useful goods card. I owned Jambo but sold it back in 2011? as it never quite worked for me but my tastes have changed and I'm enjoying Asante more than I did Jambo. It's just so different from other card games, which I why I think Mr Dorn is so proud of it, and why I'm not quite at ease with it.
I played a few games trying to build up artifacts that I could then spam to victory but they are so fragile and beneficial to your opponent that it seems to be a doomed strategy. My biggest concern is that the game seem forces you to go for one turn combos as having goods in your market stall, or using artifacts to draw extra cards usually invites the other player to play something powerful. There just aren't enough cards to counteract this and the ones that do exist like the Colonist bring their own issues.
At 30-45 minutes (2 games of RftG) I need to see if it will become a regular part of our games rotation but if it does I'll definitely track down another copy of Jambo to add some more variety.
Recommended.
The other 2 player Kosmos type game I've been playing from Zev's Discount Deliveries is Targi. The weird blocking game of worker placement. For this one the jury is still out but it's not as positive so far. I just don't get any sense of what the game is trying to be when all I see is VP combos without any sense of accomplishment. At a full hour there's so much competition.
I also received my copy of Xia, the much hyped kickstarted firefly-esque game of exploration, pick up and deliver style trading and combat. I'll try get it played on the weekend.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- Posts: 2478
- Thank you received: 735
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- Legomancer
- Offline
- D10
- Dave Lartigue
- Posts: 2944
- Thank you received: 3873
A Tale of Two Deckbuilders: Star Realms and Valley of the Kings
A few months ago a new game took the boardgaming community by surprise. Star Realms originated on Kickstarter, but it was picked up by a small publisher and released to huge success. It was in high demand, selling out soon wherever it was found.
The appeal of Star Realms is that it’s a deckbuilder — a game where you start with a weak initial deck and keep buying cards to add to it and make it stronger — that was small, fast, and inexpensive. For under $20 you got a deck that had you set for two players. Add another deck and now four can play.
The game play is pretty good. You start with a few weak ships that generate trade and attack. The deckbuilding is done Ascension style, where there’s a row of cards you can buy from that is refilled as you go. Cards belong to one of four factions, each of which specializes in one aspect of the game. A card will often get some kind of boost if played with another card from its faction. The goal is to attack the opponent, reducing her Authority (life) down to 0. It’s easy to learn and plays quickly.
The whole thing comes in a small, pocket-sized box. It’s an attractive package, both physically and psychologically, having an entire deckbuilding game of spaceships and starbases and pew-pew-pew packed into a tiny footprint. To add to the appeal, there’s now a digital version on PC, Mac, Android, and iOS, which is free to download and only costs a few bucks to unlock features. (I’m Legomancer on it, feel free to challenge me!) This has increased its appeal even more.
I grabbed Star Realms at Gen Con, where I first played it. Since then, all my plays have been online, but there have been a bunch of them. It’s a fast game, and has a certain “just one more”ness to it. It’s a fun game, and I like it. That said, despite having played a bunch of games online, it was pretty soon that I figured I’d seen everything the game had to offer. While the choices you make in the game aren’t as obvious as they seem (you don’t necessarily want to buy whatever you can afford, for example), they also aren’t terribly subtle. There are some combos to be found, but most of the cards are pretty straightforward, offering you one thing or another. It’s a good game, but it’s still a smallish game with a limited card pool to draw from. Expansions, assuming there are any coming, may help with that, but then the game won’t be pocket-friendly anymore, and that’s part of the appeal.
Meanwhile, AEG, which has put out both microgames and deckbuilders, quietly released Valley of the Kings, which has hardly gotten any hype. Like Star Realms, it’s a deckbuilder in a small box (half the thickness of Star Realms’, but twice the width) with a small price tag. Unlike Star Realms, it plays 2-4 right away. And unlike Star Realms, it’s full of tough, interesting choices.
In VotK, you are preparing your tomb for the afterlife. You’ll be using your cards to buy books and sarcophagi and canopic urns and such to help you enjoy the sweet hereafter. These cards will have powers that increase your money, gain more cards, or screw with your opponents. They’re also worth victory points. However, only the cards you pack away in your tomb will count for victory at the end of the game. You can have the finest collection of god statues the Nile has ever seen, but if they’re not in your tomb they’re not in Valhallankhamun or whatever the Egyptian afterlife is and they score nothing. And if they’re in your tomb, you can’t use them. So at some point you have to start throwing your good cards into your tomb and hope you can do without them. In addition, you can only buy cards from the bottom row of the pyramid arrangement of cards, but then the others crumble down to fill the missing space. So you can see what’s coming up to purchase.
That balance between having powerful cards to play and purchase with and getting those cards into your tomb is tough enough, but you also have to deal with cards that mess with each other’s plans, making you discard or sacrifice cards, give cards to an opponent, or even just removing a card from the pyramid that you know your opponent wants.
I heard about VotK after Gen Con and immediately ordered a copy. Since then I’ve played it several times, usually with two players. Meanwhile, my physical copy of Star Realms languishes. I like Star Realms, I really do, but Valley of the Kings is just a better game. It doesn’t have an online version, and wouldn’t really do asynchronous play well (some cards are played during an opponent’s turn), so I’m cool with playing that one live and Star Realms on the iPad. And VotK plays up to four.
I’m not really trying to pit one against the other here. They’re both good games, each with their own merits, of which I think one has more. I think Star Realms is fine, but I hate seeing Valley of the Kings getting completely ignored when I think it’s doing the better job of the two. It deserves more attention. It deserves your attention. Go check it out.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.