Category: Syndicated

Sword&Sorcery. Too much fiddly stuff going on for group play for me – I am usually the game teacher and this started early to turn into my wife pestering me with questions about stuff not yet described. Even my usual “let’s have a test round or two and I describe while stuff happens” didn’t work, as too much is connected with other stuff. Game!e works great solo and probably also when players familiarise with the rules up front, but that never happens at our game nights, so this will go into the solo-only pile. A bit sad, because I can see the good game beneath the pile of stuff, but well, it is as it is. Too many good and great games that work with my groups much better.

In for that one, too, even though it actually isn’t that much value – went in for the 100$ level, as that seems to have the best bang for bucks. The good thing with CTG is that there is no FOMO, because everything will be available later on. It’s mainly about being the first to own it 😉

I did back, but only for the expansion and the comfort creatures, since I already have base game from last KS. It is a fun game in its way, but be warned that it really is different I structure from other games, more akin to choose your adventure books. I myself only got into the curses as expansions, because they add replays, whereas weather and the other stuff enhances replays – and I don’t see myself doing lots of replays with this, more like going through all curses once and the maybe revisiting a few years down time, just as with those books. No point for me to add stuff that just changes how a curse plays during play if I don’t expect to do that replay. Comfort creatures just sounded too cute to skip, since I play solo with one character I thought having a companion for future curses might be worth it 😉

Yeah, that was really something new that I haven’t seen before. And it works astonishingly well in that game.

I love to play it and I love to bring ut to our game meet, but sadly it usually crashes the 2 hour limit, which is why I don’t get it to the table that often. I love the way you build your end game scoring up by buying cards and at the same time use those cards to get to place houses where they help you score. It is nicely interwoven during play. It jusr feels great to play, because you allways can do something, but of course you try to do it optimally.

The buttery smooth game play and the really great coopetiton – you quite often can’t avoid giving things to your opponents. The double use of action cards for both the actions you can take and end game scoring, the breat visual way the map fills up – it all snaps together so well. And you just feel great while playing it. Add that it is quite easy to teach, if people have played some other modern games before. And the different maps give nice variability without overburdening people with complexity.

One thing to keep in mind: they have horizontal (adding to gemerl game play) and vertical (adding new story by adding curses) expansions. I only went for the vertical ones, as those will provide play outside the allredy known, while horizpntal (weather, devourer) only add uf you throw them in from the start or replay curses, which I don’t relly see myself doing.

For me it was Polis: Fight for the Hegemony – I know, not a real war game, but that one made me look for more games on the border of euro and war games, stuff like Wir sind das Volk or the COIN series, CDGs and stuff like that. Games where grognards usually complain that they are not war games 😉 – sooner than later that drew me deeper into war game territory with stuff like Paths of Glory, Washington’s War, Twilight struggle. Then solo gaming got me closer to other publishers, since some of them have great solo variants, so now I have stuff around like Comancheria, War Fighter, Churchill, Pericles, but also things like Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear (with the solo expansion) and Night of Man. And COIN. These games always feel like they were built for me.

Military wins happen only when the right science is up for grabs and even then it often needs help by either military wonders or double-turn wonders to grab juicy fat military cards. More often than not a military win means your opponent didn’t pay attention or was too greedy. Science wins on the other hand are happening quite often, as that is a good way to go when you notice a runaway leader problem early enough. But again, without the help of double-turn wonders or the mausoleum allmost impossible.