Yeah, I think the DVG solo/coop stuff is what came closest for me. I have **Warfighter** with a bunch of expansions and it gets close in feel, although by far not close in depth. It is fun, but IMO much lighter with some more random thrown in. But you …

make sure your country looks only at the sales price, not at sales price plus shipping like in Germany. Easily kills if you have to pay 19% import tax on that ridiculous 35$ shipping costs for games from the US … (which makes importing cthulhu wars i…

No worries, exporting board games is no problem. Can’t say about _importing_ into your destination country, could be you have to pay taxes there, but getting stuff out of germany is easy, it’s what our economy is build on 😉 (and board games last I loo…

RPG elements? no way. This game is fun, I really love to play it (mostly solo with 2 or 3 runners), but the RPG elements are just plain not there. It’s mostly in the graphics design and some short 5-word flavor texts. Other than that it is just a const…

Well, probably that is why I love it so much – I really enjoy Shadowrun: Crossfire, Legends of Andor and Robinson Crusoe, too, and all of them were accused of being more like puzzles than anything else 😉 But really, with LOTR you can play thematic and…

by TheGargoyle
Well, the shipping on this game makes me not even consider to pledge, plain and simple. And I am sure many european potential backers will feel the same. I don’t really buy the “can’t be done cheaper”, either. There are far too many k…

He probably is using the Gandalf from the first Hobbit set he owns, that one can be kept in play in exchange for threat raising at end of turn.

by TheGargoyle
To me, Xenoshyft Onslaught is the solo and coop variant Thunderstone Advanced should have gotten, but never got (the root of corruption coop variant feels overly clumsy to me, don’t really enjoy it). If only they would do a “level up”…

Well, can’t say much about multiplayer, as I only play solo. In solo you want each and every card to have direct impact. So something that will be good if you happen to have another card in hand or run a tutor to find it – well, that’s not really good for solo play, because that hill troll over there will have ripped off your head before your tutor actually tutors anything up. Yes, I could use it to put elven stuff on Gandalf in my Elrond+Gandalf deck. But then, I could put the same stuff on Elrond and Glorfindel anyway, so why bother with turning Gandalf into a honorary elve? That doesn’t give me anything right that moment. Especially with High-Impact-Heroes I usually have a package of cards I want to run with them, because that makes them so much better. Which is why Silver Harp excites me much more than Elve Friend: Silver Harp will go right into the “must have” pack for Galadriel, because it directly interacts with something I already run whenever I have her in a deck: Galadriels Mirror. To me, Elve Friend sits in the same awkward spot as the Song of Whatever cards: yes, if you have them out, they make stuff easier due to the better ressource distribution. And yes, with Ghaladrim Minstrel, I can tutor them up and have them available. But it’s a full card to play and a full ressource to spend to maybe later have benefits, whereas something like A Good Harvest will give me ressource smoothing right there and then for 0 ressources and allows me to play that card I otherwise couldn’t play due to ressource problems. Probably my play style is heavily tainted by me playing almost exclusively solo one-handed, need that iinstant impact to just get a chance to survive that encounter. Quite often there just is no time for buildup and preparation.

My absolute favorite top game that I actually play (in contrast to MTG, which is my absolute favorite game of all time, but sadly never gets played due to missing play partners). You get full pre-game deck construction with tons of viable archetypes to…

yeah, it’s kinda sad. Playdek does do Android, though, so there still is hope that they catch up with other titles alongside those that are already there.

The old MTG player makes me be sceptical of multiple card combos. A dwarf-friend, well, that would be awesome – instant gratification in a Dain deck. But Noldor and Silvan? Maybe for healing from that healing Silvan, probably, but that’s again multiple…

Galdor and Erestor probably will turn my Elrond into Noldor Power and free up my Gandalf Hero to finally go walking with the Ents (he currently does duty as honorary Noldor in my Elrond deck). I really like the idea of discard-Noldor, hopefully that ar…

Yep. Galadriel is smiling.

Silver harp excites me for my galadriel deck – combo with mirror removes its downside and turns it into a really good digger for answers. But why is elf friend so good? What cards do you want to play on a non-elf that you can’t right now?

something of about 5 hours of shadowrun: crossfire solo playing after a teeth extraction was maybe not the longest, but definitely the most memorable. Getting beat down repeatedly by the obstacle and crossfire cards took my mind off the pain quite well…

mangling rules is how you play Wiz War. It’s not a game of Wiz War if you didn’t at least break 3 rules and played at least something totally wrong. I couldn’t even imagine how it would be to try to keep all those niggly little special rules in mind wh…

I don’t know how often I looked at Churchill since it came out and thought about getting it. But I try to restrain myself (still haven’t finished the campaign in Cruel Necessity). But it’s one of my want-have games alongside the COIN series (probably F…

Fun week for me, lots of different games to play: **Progress: Evolution of Technology** came out again, and it’s still great. My wife and I really enjoy it, but it’s on the heavier end of our spectrum, so doesn’t hit the table as often as I would like. We normally go for lighter stuff. But when we get it out, it’s a blast. **Golde Anges** came next, but only a solo play left-hand-vs-right-hand, but boy do I have to get that one to the table! It’s a really streamlined and smooth playing civ game. I am very eager to get it out, but again on the heavier side of things, so will have to find a good moment to place it. **Dungeon Dice** got it’s first pub-play and was tons of fun. And yes, now we are on the lighter side of games 😉 – it’s near insdestructability is what made me consider it back when I joined the kickstarter, but I never got around to play it for some reason. Now that I did I wonder why I didn’t get it out earlier. Only downside so far is that it gets a bit longish in the end game when most players are just one fame away from winning and everyone is just trying to slay a red monster. The weekly game meet got **Waggle Dance** and **VivaJava: The Dice Game** to the table again, and they still are great games. Our weekly meet is a very casual group, so lighter fair like VivaJava is just right. And Waggle Dance is a favorite there (and one of my wife and me, too). With my wife of course our usual **Paperback**, but a funny thing happened: I bougth Xenoshyft Onslaught, and to fill up the quota to get free shipping, I just threw in **Jaipur** – and well, Xenoshyft still is in it’s box, unplayed (except me soloing on the android app), but Jaipur got 8 plays already. Looks like that one is a real keeper for me and my wife. Regarding “splurging” – that would probably be Mage Knight, which I bought but never played. Just bought it, because seeing the run throughs made me want it. But then, that’s true of allmost all games in my collection. Probably the upcoming Game of Gnomes could be seen as splurging, because Fragor Games usually do lightish stuff with overproduced components. But still, it’s not as if it was Cthulhu Wars or something … No embarracing games here, sorry. Only serious stuff. Only embarracing things are all those unplayed games waiting to hit the table …

**Gears of War** comes in a similar box, only that it is much bigger. You see, had they used the additional space in the box to have a true insert to put your figures in, cool. But they just slapped a stupid cardboard insert into the box that just leav…

Most times I sleeve it is because the easier shuffling (mash shuffle is survivable for cards with sleeves and my shuffle of choice, because I am too clumsy for riffle shuffles 😉 ). So if I have games with large stacks of cards, I prefer them sleeved. …

One that was a quite a favorite of me for traveling is **Valley of the Kings** – a neat deck builder that can go into a standard two-deck-case (like you use for canasta or bridge or something like that) and has the big benefit of only needing a minimum…

**Among the Stars** would have been my first suggestion, too. Great game, plays really smooth with 3+ players. The 2 player is ok’ish, but sadly it’s scifi, so my wife doesn’t enjoy it. But building out your space station is lots of fun to me, and the …

I quite enjoyed **Golden Ages**, although that is more targeted at the civ game crowd, but it has many 4X aspects. You explore the map by placing tiles, you can war your opponents (although that part is quite restricted, so if you are looking for the e…

yeah, and it’s exploration part isn’t really that exploring. Everything is right there on the board. It’s just a move-and-fight or just-move or make-more-meeples game. Not really 4X and quite a letdown when I played it.