Front Page

Content

Authors

Game Index

Forums

Site Tools

Submissions

About

KK
Kevin Klemme
March 09, 2020
35142 2
Hot
KK
Kevin Klemme
January 27, 2020
20819 0
Hot
KK
Kevin Klemme
August 12, 2019
7405 0
Hot
O
oliverkinne
December 19, 2023
3967 0
Hot
O
oliverkinne
December 14, 2023
3495 0
Hot

Mycelia Board Game Review

Board Game Reviews
O
oliverkinne
December 12, 2023
2075 0
O
oliverkinne
December 07, 2023
2583 0

River Wild Board Game Review

Board Game Reviews
O
oliverkinne
December 05, 2023
2253 0
O
oliverkinne
November 30, 2023
2496 0
J
Jackwraith
November 29, 2023
3014 0
Hot
O
oliverkinne
November 28, 2023
1973 0
S
Spitfireixa
October 24, 2023
3692 0
Hot
O
oliverkinne
October 17, 2023
2620 0
O
oliverkinne
October 10, 2023
2461 0
O
oliverkinne
October 09, 2023
2289 0
O
oliverkinne
October 06, 2023
2505 0

Outback Crossing Review

Board Game Reviews
×
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.

× Use the stickied threads for short updates.

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?

More
12 Jan 2015 11:26 #194834 by Green Lantern
Played a 3-player learning game of Gears of War and really liked it on first impression. I am eager to try this one again with a full team of COGs and lay some waste to the locust. Rules didn't seem overwhelming and the book is put together well despite the mention of terms that don't get explained until later in the rules. The decision of when to use an Order card and when to save it for Locust assaults is really cool since your hand size is directly linked to your health. If you take a wound and can't discard an Order you are down for the count until a teammate can revive you. That makes for some tense decisions when it's time to choose between offense and defensive tactics.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Gary Sax

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

More
12 Jan 2015 12:11 #194844 by lj1983

Green Lantern wrote: Played a 3-player learning game of Gears of War and really liked it on first impression. I am eager to try this one again with a full team of COGs and lay some waste to the locust. Rules didn't seem overwhelming and the book is put together well despite the mention of terms that don't get explained until later in the rules. The decision of when to use an Order card and when to save it for Locust assaults is really cool since your hand size is directly linked to your health. If you take a wound and can't discard an Order you are down for the count until a teammate can revive you. That makes for some tense decisions when it's time to choose between offense and defensive tactics.


Gears is a pretty great design. its big negative is that it kind of drags with the larger maps. this is made worse with 4 people.

I don't really think there's much benefit to playing this with 4 vs 2. Like alot of co-ops that have each player draw a card for their turn for the AI, it actually gets harder with more people. more attacks coming in, less cards drawn per player per attack, so less healing/less options on your turn.

4 players is fun, but I enjoyed 2 the most. The big change in game-play is going from 1 to 2 players, as so many of the order cards work off team play.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Green Lantern

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

More
13 Jan 2015 03:57 #194955 by Hex Sinister
Finally got Robinson Crusoe and I love it so far. I do not think Ant Man should be in charge of the font and iconography though. Time to cave in and get reading glasses I guess :(

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

More
14 Jan 2015 11:14 #195084 by Legomancer
Last night I played Splendor, which I wasn't overwhelmingly wowed by the first time I played it but subsequent plays have continued to unwow me. It's okay enough but I really don't get the pants-tightening over this one.

Followed with Paperback, the word-making deckbuilding game. I liked it, but I enjoy Scrabble and I'm the kind of person who knows the two-letter words and hates playing with whiny babies who go, "that's not a real wooooooord you don't even know what it meeeeeeeans". Fuck you, it's an official word, go play Yahtzee if you can't handle a word game. It's got a lot of downtime, though, as you'll have like 10 cards, with wilds in them (my only complaint might be that there are too many wilds) so you know there's a good word in there that you just can't see. My opponent did not accept "DISHWASHERLY" (akin to or in the manner of a dishwasher). I'd get it but I can't imagine it getting played often. Great design. Supposedly it's being ported to iOS/Android, which will be great.

Then Zeppelin Attack, which is a small deckbuilding game of battling zeppelins piloted by apes, brains-in-a-jar, Nazis, and I guess Elsa from Frozen. It's light and fun and totally dismissable but I like it because it's actually very different from a traditional deckbuilder. You don't increase your deck size by a huge amount, for one thing, and also the "currency" cards are actually spent, so you have to build up cash every now and then, instead of just grabbing new cards each turn. I've only played it 2p, would like to get in some 3 or 4 games.

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

More
14 Jan 2015 11:43 - 14 Jan 2015 12:59 #195092 by Cranberries
The cover of Zeppelin Attack reminds me of some images I first saw in Epic Illustrated #10 (1980)(thanks dad, I was fourteen).





Last edit: 14 Jan 2015 12:59 by Cranberries.
The following user(s) said Thank You: OldHippy

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

More
14 Jan 2015 11:46 #195096 by san il defanso

Hex Sinister wrote: Finally got Robinson Crusoe and I love it so far. I do not think Ant Man should be in charge of the font and iconography though. Time to cave in and get reading glasses I guess :(


You can always tell the age of a gamer when they start complaining about small text on cards. I'm sure I'm only a couple years removed from that myself.

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

More
14 Jan 2015 12:11 #195104 by Grudunza
Picked up Samurai Spirit and played a solo game yesterday (controlling 3 samurai). It's an Antoine Bauza co-op game with a Seven Samurai theme, so there will be inevitable Ghost Stories comparisons, though really, they're almost nothing alike (eh, a little bit). It's pretty simple, and almost reminds me of a solitaire/patience kind of thing, where you're hoping to line up the right numbers of cards to last through three rounds, but with some decisions and special abilities added, and a tiny bit of theme.

There is a village you are trying to protect, with barricades, farms and families. If the third family is ever lost, you lose the game, and losing barricades makes it more likely to lose farms, which makes it more likely to lose families. You each have a samurai character, and on your turn you either decide to fight an attacker, which means either engaging or defending. If engaging them, you place them on the right of your character board where they add up their strength total and you try to equal your target number, giving you a powerful ability to use; if defending, you put them to the left of your board where they count as protecting against either the family, the farms, or yourself (you can take wounds which can kill you and lose the game). At the start of each of your turns, you have to initiate the penalty of the most recent attacker that you've engaged, so looking ahead and managing that is important. At the end of each round, for each character that didn't defend against a family or farm, one is lost, so in that sense it has the feel of Knizia's LOTR game, where you need to get the heart/sun tokens or suffer corruption.

A fun mechanic is that when you take your second wound, your character turns into its animal form on the back of your character board, which has a stronger special ability. So you kind of want to get there before too long, but maybe not too soon, because at that point you can only afford one more wound before dying.

Another option on your turn is to "support" by giving someone else a token that represents your special ability (which you can always use) for them to use on their next turn. There is a downside to that, as you have to then move one of the attacker cards to the "intruder" deck, which is revealed at the end of the round and may cause barricades/farms to go bye-bye. I found this ability very useful once in a while, though, and I think an important factor in being successful is managing the abilities of the characters and the timing of when they will be most effective. I ended up winning the game, but just barely with one family and two farms left, and I was playing on the Normal level (there is also Hard and Expert) without using the destroyed farm penalties (which are recommended against for the first play). So I can see this being very challenging and also with some decent replayability with mixing up the different characters as teams.

Took about 45 minutes to play, maybe less, but had a pretty solid return on decision-making. It plays up to 7, but I can see there being a large amount of AP issues with this game, so I don't think I'll touch it beyond 5p. From what I'm hearing it's being received as kind of "meh," but taking out any expectations for it to be like Ghost Stories, and for being pretty small and cheap and short, I think it's quite good for what it is.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Egg Shen

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

More
14 Jan 2015 12:12 #195105 by OldHippy
I played a few games of D&D Attack Wing recently. I have almost the whole first wave (no Ballista) and the Angel from wave two. That's more than enough to get some fun gaming in.

First off I love D&D, I have a tattoo on my back of the AD&D dungeon masters guide, I started playing at nine and have done so pretty much all my life, if I had one wish I used to say that it would be to have access to all the arcane and divine spells in the players handbook... yeah, I liked it way too much, for way too long.

This game is X-Wing... almost exactly. There are more differences than there were in the Star Trek version but not many. That said it does feel much, much different. Partly because of the difference between being in the air and on the ground and partly because it's been re-purposed to a much different world and not one that's just a hair away. Then there are effects and spells that have duration's to keep track of, items to equip and artifacts to win. It feels significantly different and that's something that Star Trek was missing.

I'm done with X-Wing now, once I got all the original trilogy ships I bowed out with my awesome fun complete game and don't plan on coming back. So this is my new crack for the time being. The mini's are beautiful and much more rugged than the X-Wing ones. Definitely a big step up from the Star Trek stuff in terms of aesthetics and almost on par with how awesome the X-Wing ones look. The game feels a little faster and more lethal, which is a nice change to be honest. X-Wing occasionally drags as sometimes the ships take a little too long to be destroyed, that's less of a problem in this game.

For now this game is a keeper and I really dig it, more time will tell if the balance is wacky, I just don't know yet but it feels pretty good so far. In any case it's not like I'm going to enter any tournaments any time soon so it's not really a big deal and none of my friends are balance junkies anyway. This is letting me chuck dice, kill shit, be killed, cast spells and I'm having a lot of fun with it. In fact I could see myself writing little adventures around this system.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Dr. Mabuse, VonTush, Hex Sinister

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

More
14 Jan 2015 12:31 #195109 by bomber
I've finally cut my collection down to just ONE GAME and its one of my own design, a buddhist inspired microgame it has only one piece, a spoon. Or does it? After a particularly calm and introspective 2 hours, we reflected on the fact that it was probably time to pack it away and drink some green tea while shaking our heads through the window at those fuckers at number 2 with their shelves full of Games Workshop miniatures and fully sleeved collectors edition of Dominion in a custom made oak carrying case.
The following user(s) said Thank You: bendgar, Space Ghost, Cranberries, Hex Sinister, wadenels, JEM

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

More
14 Jan 2015 13:07 #195117 by Mr. White

JonJacob wrote: I have a tattoo on my back of the AD&D dungeon masters guide


Forget what we've been playing, buying, spending...I gotta see a pic of this!
The following user(s) said Thank You: Gary Sax, Dr. Mabuse

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

More
14 Jan 2015 14:33 #195131 by OldHippy

Mr. White wrote:

JonJacob wrote: I have a tattoo on my back of the AD&D dungeon masters guide


Forget what we've been playing, buying, spending...I gotta see a pic of this!


It's 20 years old and in bad shape... I've been meaning to get it fixed up but what the hell... I'll try to take one later and post it. That should inspire me to get the new work done.

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

More
14 Jan 2015 14:48 #195132 by VonTush

JonJacob wrote: For now this game is a keeper and I really dig it, more time will tell if the balance is wacky, I just don't know yet but it feels pretty good so far. In any case it's not like I'm going to enter any tournaments any time soon so it's not really a big deal and none of my friends are balance junkies anyway. This is letting me chuck dice, kill shit, be killed, cast spells and I'm having a lot of fun with it. In fact I could see myself writing little adventures around this system.


I haven't been doing the OP scene for D&D but it sounded like the first month the dominant list was three balistas with a giant in support doing its warcry/horn thing helping out shooting.

If this is anything like Star Trek though, the OP is really where the balance gets out of whack. With the scenarios that come with the packs, those are harder to exploit since they typically aren't asymmetrical and usually involve objectives more than destroying your opponent.

I'm glad you're enjoying the game since I think I was the voice that pushed you into playing.

One of the guys I've played a few games against has been pulling out those fold up Pathfinder maps and some of those seem to add enough terrain to make it interesting but not so much that it is impossible to move around with.
The following user(s) said Thank You: OldHippy

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

More
14 Jan 2015 15:45 #195137 by Hex Sinister

San Il Defanso wrote:

Hex Sinister wrote: Finally got Robinson Crusoe and I love it so far. I do not think Ant Man should be in charge of the font and iconography though. Time to cave in and get reading glasses I guess :(


You can always tell the age of a gamer when they start complaining about small text on cards. I'm sure I'm only a couple years removed from that myself.

Heh, getting old sucks. Last month me and my friend broke out our old Middle Earth CCG which has this small black text on black background. It was terrible. We were passing a damn magnifying glass around and we're only in our later 40's.

I think I'm 46. Maybe 47, I don't want to fucking know anymore.


Not too old to enjoy NETRUNNER. Goddamn, this is one of the best games ever.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Dr. Mabuse, Attrition

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

More
14 Jan 2015 16:45 #195141 by Dr. Mabuse
Played Castles of Mad King...whatever. Guh, it's amazing how quickly my mind shuts down playing these victory point grab bag, solo tableau games. I hated Suburbia and on first play tolerated Castles but now...blehhhhh.

I'd much rather play Vegas Showdown because at least the bidding gave the sense of player interaction and you could buy rooms to use on later turns. There is absolutely no tension in games like Castles or Suburbia (which I found out later was by the same designer, go figure).

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

More
14 Jan 2015 20:38 #195166 by Legomancer
When I played Suburbia I felt that it was lousy as a boardgame but might make a good computer game. When it came out for iOS I grabbed it and it turns out it's lousy as a computer game as well. It's just not that interesting and about as fun as balancing your checkbook. I haven't played MKL yet.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Dr. Mabuse, stoic

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

Moderators: Gary Sax
Time to create page: 1.372 seconds