Category: Syndicated

The thing is, I don’t know how good replay value will be – I know from back in the time when I read adventure books, even the big ones were read at max twice, then given away, because you would know too much about everything. And with this game, even t…

This. Allthough I would disagree on the micro game, because it is a rather deep and full game and goes easily for an hour. Which might be great for a long train ride. But the one thing that I really like about it as a travel game: the minimal footprint…

I wasn’t too impressed when reading the solo rules from the recon expansion. It read more like “this is something you can do with your cards when nobody else is around” than actual solo rules for the full game. Which could be problematic anyway, because of the inherent bluffing aspect of the skirmish phase.

Well, I hope someone picks this up for German translation, I could see this being a good game for me and my wife, giving me some thematic dressing and her a game where actions make sense in the theme.

Lord of the Ice Garden. Heavy as you ever could wish for, totally asymmetric win conditions and powers for every faction and no luck except from setup variations. Gorgeous plastic, too. Two game variants, so you can ease in with the basic game and afte…

My game is in German. But Legends of Andor just recently got a new publishing partner for English versions, so hopefully they will do a better job than FFG. Don’t remember who it was, though, sorry.

I try to go just to look and so only habe one or two “motivators”. This year it is Game of Gnomes, because I want at least one of the Fragor games in my collection, since they are the Definition of small scale designer games to me. No idea if the game is really good, but I am sure it will be overproduced. Other than that mainly looking at ger!an releases from Asmoodee, especially Xenoshyft and Blood Rage, and stuff from Heidelberger (where usually my ” only looking” breaks down).

no, as the “meta” is in the adventure packs, so you buy them with your cards. Adventure packs are not mixed, they stay as they are (constructed out of parts from the packs of one cycle). Each cycle has new mechanics in the adventures that try new ways to kill you.

As a recovering MTG player myself, who needed his deck building (and actually playing) fix desperately and didn’t have anyone to play MTG with, I went with LOTR:LCG and it fixed almost everything in that regard for me. I can deck build to the wazoo, I can netdeck if I want to try something someone else designed, the adventure decks provide an ever changing “meta” (different cycles have very different target approaches to destroy you) and, since it is a great solo game, I can just play it whenever I want and have the time. No need for any pesky friends here and no whining that my Bolas EDH deck is oppressive 😉 There is actually only one downside: almost no secondary market for singles. Which is not that bad, as even if you buy everything available you are far away from anything a useful MTG collection costs. But it is irritating, because the base game comes with incomplete sets of some cards (some only one copy, some only two copies) and so you either have to get additional core sets or try to hunt down cards on ebay. Overall it was a big win for me and it turned into my top number 2 game of all time (only surpassed by MTG). And since it is coop, you even have a decent chance to get someone else into it, because unlike MTG, you don’t obliterate the player just because they are a noob.

by TheGargoyle
Wow, now I am actually happy again that I skipped that kickstarter. Having it in German will help to bring it to the table.

by TheGargoyle
Well, this game actually comes with exclusives: the standees. And those make it cheaper than the full game, so for me in Germany, backing it now for the standees version actually makes ist quite probably cheaper than waiting for retai…

Exactly. More cards to choose from and terrain stuff that aligns with MTG lore. If that happens, I might consider it. Ok, there is one way they could make me insta-buy it: Karn as a chooseable plainswalker and a bunch of artifacts to accompany him.

by TheGargoyle
DreadArkive wrote:I stick with 51 cards, the extra one being “Gather Information”Exactly that. You can go up on cards if those cards are cantrips or tutors, because they replace themselves. In those cases you can go up slightly – 51-5…

by TheGargoyle
diceman wrote:Ok, here are the final 2 gnomes …..Wait. From the game description:”5 different gnomes, only one of which rides on a frog”So we are still missing one gnome, and that one has to ride a friggin frog, dammit! Don’t sell u…

Well, I hope they do, because without those, this game is rather bland. Taktical skirmishes really rely out interesting terrain features that you can take into account in your tactics. I’ll wait on this one to see what comes out with regards to terrain…

I do from time to time go for games that are on sale if they are actually super cheap. For example I got **Pergamon** for EUR 7.50 and **Kashgar** for EUR 11.50 – and in both cases, the games are great and especially Kashgar went right up on my list of…

I was in the same situation and after tons of research into the different games I decided to screw it and just get one where the theme sounded interesting to me and that was easily available. There are so many that I decided that getting one with an ap…

I liked Among the Stars when I played it – but I usually like games where I build something up in front of me, and the game does that in a – to me at least – very nice way. It didn’t have comborific experiences, though, it was a more relaxed affair tha…

Voages of Marco Polo is on my list of games to keep an eye out for sales. It really intrigues me, especially those really crazy special powers. I hope to get a chance to have some test plays, though, because it definitely sounds like something I should…

XIA is one of those games I would love to get, but know I would never get to the table. So it would sadly sit in my cupboard and collect dust. Not enough people around here into epic space opera games. Dang.

Interesting week for me with some new stuff and some side-tracks. For example I started with some **Magic the Gathering** solo play against the **Battle the Horde** challenge deck. I played with a deck-building variant of Magic even, because I did want to give my deckmasters deck a test flight. Kinda fun, I might do this more often. Next I went into the **VivaJava: The Dice Game** solo modes and gave them a try. Interesting, but – as could be expected by a dice game – quite random. I don’t think they are up there with the best solo games, it’s more like a pastime than a hard game. And I think I would prefer Pandemic: The Cure as a solo dice game over this one – even though I really enjoy VivaJava with two or more people. Then I got to play **Pandemic** on the Android App And really don’t like it. Maybe I am spoiled by The Cure, which plays much faster and feels much more streamlined to me, but Pandemic felt overly repetetive and unnecessarily prolonged to me. Oh well, one cardboard less to buy for me 😉 (I just seem to prefer the quicker Matt Leacock games like Pandemic: The Cure or Forbidden Desert). Another new one for me was **Pergamon** – I recently got it in a sale and I really like it. It’s combining some interesting mechanics and the components are really great. I happen to like the theme, too (I often present Valley of the Kings with an archaeologists theme where we build up collections instead of the rather weird “egyptian nobles preparing their graves”). I don’t have too many games where you have to outthink your opponents in some kind of bidding mechanism, so this one will nicely fill that niche for me. Other than that the usual plays of **Paperback** and **LOTR:LCG**, the first being my wifes and the second my favorite. I’m “in the hobby” for a long time, playing on and off since my childhood and getting games in bursts since I had my own job to pay for it. But I had some breaks due to digital games and virtual worlds that took up more time. And it helped that since a few years a lot of thematic games show up – I prefer my games with a bit of chrome that gives me some framework in which to execute the mechanics. For houserules, we for example play with houseruled blockings in **Waggledance**, because I think the as-written rules for the player numbers don’t really work. With 2-3 players, you block too many places and it gets too tight, with 4 players it is too open due to the missing blocking there. So I got a 5th set of dice to be able to block 1 place with 4 players, feels much better. Actually we found this house rule by accident due to a combined mistake in the german rules and me not paying attention when reading – but hey, the result is fun for us and players at our weekly game meeting agree with it.

could become great with the upcoming Erestor hero. Since the Noldor deck will just draw new hands over and over again, and since it can’t retain cards for next round, you want to give them away or use them all. So Message of Elrond can be in that other…

yeah, I always wonder what the heck those Noldor do hang out with those dwarves. On the other hand, I am the guy who put Grima in his elves deck because he thought that would be thematically less irritating than putting Steward of Gondor on Celeborn.

by TheGargoyle
If you do a German print run, I am in even though I already got your PnP and made a set myself. It is just a great game and the favourite of my wife and very favoured at our weekly game group, so having it in the original box would be…

Hmm, if the guy can get a better way to publish, I think **Paperback** has good chances to be relevant. It is just super accessible and has all ingrediences to become a classic – but as I said, it is currently hampered by slow distribution.

You first need to ask yourself if you want a more tactical game or a more strategical game. This would lead to two main families of deck builders: Dominion-style deck builders have a static display of available cards to buy, so they are much more strat…

I like how **Paperback** shows up in more and more lists. That game really deserves it, it’s a very fun and smooth deck builder I can break out with allmost everyone and get them playing in no time.

Legends of Andor does this nicely, the whole play you constantly get flavor text at key points of the story and you have little texts at the end, too, depending on win or loss.

Heh, Pergamon just got a group buy in Germany right now (it’s normally out of print) and I got in on that, because the theme is interesting to me. And it was dirt cheap. And Discoveries is one on my shortlist, but for now I kept away, because I already…

New this month was **Kashgar: Händler der Seidenstraße** and that one was only new to me, but not really new (it’s from 2013). I only learnt of it watching a rahdo runthrough and immediately thought that could be a good one for us – and when playing it this month, it quickly became one of our favorites. Mostly because of the really nice integration of card abilities and theme – it’s easy to remember what cards do when you read their title, because most of the card titles and their mechanics make sense together (ok, not the tailor, I still don’t get why a tailor gets someone from the street, putting it in front of your caravan and all that for only one pepper …). It’s a really fun “open deck builder” where you manage three different decks of cards, rotating them through their cards, using their card abilities. Really cool. The other new game was **Pandemic: The Cure** and that one really is new in Germany. I like it as an easy coop dice chucker. Not sure if I like it more than other dice games I have (VivaJava TDG, Elder Sign and Nations TDG especially), but since it is coop, I guess it will get more play – we need to take out the tension from time to time in our weekly group, and this one works for that. Not yet sure if I like this one better than Forbidden Desert – the visuals of FD are really fun in comparison to the quite bland visuals of Pandemic: The Cure. And I like the spatial aspects of FD. Oh, and regarding gencon: I’m german, so no comments on that. Ask me after Spiel 😉