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Kevin Klemme
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Mycelia Board Game Review

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River Wild Board Game Review

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Outback Crossing Review

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23 Apr 2016 11:48 #226354 by Grudunza
Agreed on the Beagle campaign. I liked it in theory, but after two of the scenarios I haven't gone back to it, as it's almost like learning a whole new game each time.

Galactic Strike Force is a game that I bought, set up to play with two friends, and then about ten minutes into it I gifted it to one of those friends. I just wanted it away from my presence. What a mess of things to keep track of. And yes, I love fiddly games like Arkham Horror and Mage Knight, but something about GSF really turned me off.
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23 Apr 2016 13:01 #226358 by san il defanso
Beagle was an enormous disappointment for me. It's a huge hassle to learn, and the production does it no favors by dividing very important rules between the book and the scenario cards, which were never really meant to be used that way. The punishing difficulty is a shame too, because it works against the narrative for me.

It tries some really cool stuff, but it's way more trouble than it's worth.
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24 Apr 2016 18:14 #226393 by Kailes
Recently played Talisman with some friends for the first time. Most of them seemingly like Arkham/Eldritch Horror more, mostly because those games have a bit more meat to them. I'm not sure yet and need to play a few more games, but Talisman's simplicity may win me over. The adventure and exploration aspect of these games interests me the most and Talisman provides that with less clutter and quicker turns. Eldritch Horror may grant you more control over your character, but that feels like an illusion, because the events may still screw you and are often more punishing than the adventure cards in Talisman. Due to many adventure cards remaining on the board, especially the locations, it is easier to make plans. They may not work out, but a failed plan is not a big deal, while it may cost you the game in Eldritch Horror.

What I found lacking in the base game was interaction between characters. There simply was not enough incentive to attack other players. That may be due to inexperience, though. Is there an expansion that emphasizes that aspect? Sacred Pool seems to do that to an extent, but I'm not sure.

Anyway, I'm eager to play it again soon.

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24 Apr 2016 19:37 #226394 by SuperflyPete
We generally don't have PVP with Tally unless there's a bunch of very experienced players. Generally it's the least shitty option - you'll roll and either attack another player OR you are a Good character whose other choice is the Graveyard.

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25 Apr 2016 08:19 #226405 by JEM
Blood Rage with three. One player was trying to make Loki work, but I focused on pushing clan upgrades by pillaging soon and often. Not as tense or interesting as a four player game, but a relaxing way to spend an hour or so, and I was glad to get to play again.

Zombicide. We played the Rue Morgue mission, "Sea of Tents" which makes the map a step-by-step slog (or, alternatively a more usual run through the buildings but if you go that route you trigger additional permanent spawns). We had everything in this game- skinners, toxics, beserkers and dogs. Nothing like walking into a tent and flipping four toxics. We did use Team Actions also, and we needed them. With a lot of coordination, team work, and much medic-ing we made it through to the final event trigger with a board totally mobbed with deaders. It was possibly the best mission we've done yet.

Pandemic. Two of us decided to play some Pandemic while other games were finishing up. The copy available was just the base game. We almost cleared the board with 3/4 eradications with five epidemics in the deck. We went a second time with six and we did lose that on running out of blue cubes in a European chain-outbreak but I think we could have played better. I forgot how easy base Pandemic is. With In the Lab, you can't just sweep cubes off the map- you need them for processing and testing cures on the lab board, and the number of actions increases. It makes the game much more of a puzzle.

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25 Apr 2016 12:00 #226430 by Gregarius

Gary Sax wrote: Robinson is one of my favorite games, though... I'll probably buy the game of the year edition when it comes out and pass my current well loved version to someone else.

What's different about the Game of the Year edition?

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25 Apr 2016 13:15 #226432 by Gary Sax
It has a lot of the little improvements that they sell on the Portal store already included and might have a new, better rulebook. And it'll be compatible with future expansions, presumably. It also has slightly different sized cards.

I'll know better if I'll update when they release a thing that tells us what the final components are...
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25 Apr 2016 14:36 #226439 by Chaz
Oh good, another of those "wish I'd waited for the better version" releases. Yay, those always make me feel great .

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25 Apr 2016 15:08 #226441 by Gary Sax
Yeah, I know what you mean. I will give Portal some credit, though, Z-man has really fucked up that product and its release for the US market as bad as you could possibly do so. So I get taking the license back and redoing a definitive edition themselves.

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25 Apr 2016 20:56 #226466 by Josh Look
Do you like dinosaurs?
Do you not mind a game that's probably best solo but allows for multiplayer as well?
Are you ok with deckbuilders?

Apex Theropod.. You're welcome.

I think this game is really, really cool. It could be the dinosaurs talking, but I also think it does a few really neat things to set it apart. You play as a carnivorous dinosaur (there are 7 to choose from, including the well loved velociraptor, Utahraptor, and of course, Tyrannosaurus Rex). You're hunting for food, trying to evolve, populate your species and trying to survive what the environment throws your way. The game it plays most like is probably Legendary (though it looks 1,000 times better) but it has a few really neat tricks and a ton of detail. You can set up ambushes for later turns. You can set aside up to 3 attack cards per turn, but most of the time you'll add an "Alert" card to your discard pile. If you draw the Alert card in a future turn, you must play it, you discard everything you had set up in your ambush pile, and there's effects on the dinosaurs you're hunting that could go off (I stepped on a twig and scared every single dinosaur I was hunting away). Hunting dinosaurs gets you more evolve points to buy upgrade cards with, but they're set aside and are one time use. The combination of this with the ambush mechanic makes this the most "frustration-free" deckbuilder that I've played. You get your own private set up upgrade cards specifically for your species of dinosaur that you can buy (in addition to the community ones which have smaller effects), some of them are really cool and thematic. I was the T-Rex and had a bunch of cards that were about scavenging and allowed me to pick up carcasses.

This is the second edition I'm playing, should be hitting retailers soon. I've only played once but I can see this becoming my favorite "pure" deckbuilder because the mechanic is _perfect_ for the theme, the game makes great use of the theme, and hey, DINOSAURS!!! Seriously, the dino-loving kid in me is going kind of nuts right now.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Michael Barnes, Ska_baron, Almalik, Grudunza, aaxiom, Gregarius

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25 Apr 2016 21:14 #226468 by Michael Barnes
I think I'm going to get a review copy from MM on that one...LOVE dinosaurs. I requested a copy from the designer of the first edition, but he was weird about it. Looks like it was better to wait anyway.

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26 Apr 2016 03:05 #226484 by Grudunza
Josh, when playing that solo, what are you playing for? A certain threshold of points, or some kind of scenario thing like Legendary Encounters? Or against an AI bot?

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26 Apr 2016 08:38 #226494 by charlest
Phil's talked that up here quite a bit. Sounds cool.

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26 Apr 2016 09:04 - 26 Apr 2016 09:09 #226498 by Josh Look
It's a "boss battle." You mix a boss level dinosaur, each with its unique minions into the deck with the rest of the dinos you're hunting. When it comes up you have to fight it for flee (which puts it back at the bottom of the deck). If you can beat it before the game timer runs out you win, and then there's a VP count to help you track how you did vs previous games. I guess there's an online score thing coming where you could win exclusive cards, but I don't know about that. Anyway, I'm usually not a fan of boss battles, but it works fairly well in this game both mechanically and thematically. You're not forced to fight, you can wait it out to evolve your species, set up an ambush, and get a better hand, but you can't wait too long. There's also some cards in place to prevent the boss from doing its thing as soon as the game starts, which I like.

I just played a second game, this time as the velociraptor and the T-Rex was my boss. The velociraptor played very differently, lots of smaller attacks that favored careful planning and able to draw extra cards, giving you a sense of their speed. I had a rough go, the T-Rex and its minions are pretty tough and the environment screwed me hard. All of my young were killed off by predators, drought hit us hard twice, and when I finally had a good attack lined up against the T-Rex, a fucking dilophosaurus showed up and spat venom in my face. As I said in the previous post, there's a ton of detail in this game. The smaller prey are easy to pick off, they won't fight back, but are easily scared off. Some dinosaurs might go into a defensive stance, which changes how you hunt them entirely, if you can hunt them at all. Other carnivores will eat the other cards available and could put wounds in your deck if you decide to go after them.

The multiplayer rules look kind of wonky, and I understand the designer completely re-worked multiplayer to get player interaction into the game. I see someone has already put a variant up to have it work the way it did in the first edition though. I don't know, I'm not really thinking about more players at this point. Setup is also a bit of a chore, but man, once I'm into the game, looking at dinosaurs, thinking about dinosaurs, thinking like a dinosaur...all is right in the world.

I'll probably get another game in by the end of the day.
Last edit: 26 Apr 2016 09:09 by Josh Look.
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26 Apr 2016 09:14 #226502 by SuperflyPete
Between Triassic Terror and Die Schlacht Der Dinosaurier I'm pretty much set on Dino games :)

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