What board games are you BUYING?

My BGG comments on LoTR: JIME:

Great components, rules are pretty straightforward. Thematically.....eh its OK. The scenarios feel far too rushed - you want to hack and slash, but the threat mechanic forces to basically run as fast as you can. Reminded me of IMPERIAL ASSAULT in that regard. The fog of war by not knowing the map layout is offset by the PITA of having to sometimes shift/move the map so it doesn't fall off the edge of the table as it expands. The monster variety is rather limited, although to be fair that's more due to Tolkien not the game. The app is well done and does take care of a lot of the bookkeeping.

Got a copy of Hildegard after seeing it again in the KS thread. I didn't back it because I feared a lack of replayability, but I'm in a different game space now. Beautiful game and looking forward to playing it this weekend. Never played Spires End.

I've given Spire's End a couple of sessions and it's pretty much what I expected (in a good way, lots of Fighting Fantasy nostalgia with some body horror creepiness added to the mix). I still have questions about the lore and will re-explore but will also try not to burn through it too quickly. I think I may have had a freakishly good run with the combat since I've already reached the finale battle on my first run, with several Allies to spare, so I *might* see the "good" ending sooner than I'd hoped for.

We have a service that lets us get things from Amazon, and them someone mules them over to Kenya for a service fee. It ends up being a little pricey based on weight, so in celebration of completing my ordination courses I thought I'd buy some small games and ship them over here. I ended up buying Kingdomino, 6 nimmt!, and L.L.A.M.A.. Short games like that stand a much better chance of getting trotted out at a family game night, and they all represent titles that I've either wanted for a while, or have been curious about given buzz I've seen online.

Always tough to remember to buy for what will get played, rather than for what I aspire to get played.

Yeah, having more or less bailed out on "hobby" gaming, I'm finding that when I do buy a game it is very much more "will get played with family" than "might get played with friends".

Llama is so good, our deck is actually getting a little worn out.

I did buy a game, that Rear Window thing was like $15 on Amazon. Couldn't pass it up.

Barnes, it was your tweets on LLAMA that made me want to grab it.

Yeah, I'm generally not buying anything these days, but that attitude ("Will get played") is definitely the way to go. I'm so tempted by Imperium: Classics and Imperium: Legends, but I don't have a regular 2-player opponent right now, so they'd just sit on the shelf. Can't do it.

To the Imperium games specifically, if solo gaming is your thing they're pretty excellent and feel like playing against an opponent.

I got both of those, played them solo a couple of times, and out they went. I like the idea of it, but the whole game comes across as half-baked, cluttered, and messy. I can not imagine trying to teach it to someone else FFS.

Solo gaming is definitely NOT my thing so, yeah, even less reason to break my rule. Thanks.