Category: Syndicated

One or two, rarely more. Yeah, I get it, “some games just need more plays to click” – but you know, it could just be, that they are (subjectively from my perspective) just plain bad games for me. Too many games to play to really bother trying something over and over again if you decide you don’t really like it. You could have spent that time with some other game that you would have liked on the first play!

by TheGargoyle
dprijadi wrote:harrier usually use hover as means to land on carriers, not to attack ala True Lies lolBut the true-lies-way is much more fun!Ok, shortly after the atom bomb the movie got a bit surrealist …

Only played Among the Stars from your list. Wouldn’t recommend for mostly 2 player group, because it really needs at least 3. Sure, there is an official 2 player variant in the rules, but that is mostly just serviceable, not great. And even the inoffic…

Self Preservation is an essential card for Treebeard (hero). And Erkenbrand would love one, too, if you can make it happen. Even though it is expensive, it is repeatable healing that isn’t killed by simple “deal one damage to everyone” effects. It probably isn’t the best, but it is damn good. And with Treebeard arguably the best, since you need lots of healing and you need it fast. Healing being only Lore makes some heroes like Erkenbrand a bit awkward, because without healing support, his ability is rather suicidal. Protector of Lorien is great in decks with lots of duplicates of unique cards. Make those duplicates do stuff! It’s why I like it in decks like my Elrond+Gandalf deck, because there are lots of duplicates in there and tons of draw, so I usually have a hand full of stuff I can chuck at the protector for some additional will power during questing or raise my defense. For core heroes I probably would go with Denethor, because it can transform him into a super-defender. Or if I run Lore+Spirit, probably Eowyn to make her a one-woman-questing-machine. Out of core, Elrond and Gandalf are my favorite targets, because both have strong willpower and defense allready and just get so much better with this, often being able to do the job of two heroes.

At that price point I probably would go for War of the Rings anniversary edition instead and still keep some change. WotR is a known quantity in game play while KD:M still has to show if it is any good, with regards to game play.

Aside from my all-time love **Lord of the Rings: The Card Game** recently I dived into **Warfighter** and must say it is a really neat experience. You can play it coop, but the solo play is really good. It is a bit less setup and preparation than LOTR:TCG and I think a little bit easier, but that just sits well with me, because sometimes I don’t want to go into deep strategizing. Allthough I must say, nothing beats stomping southlanders with Treebeard for me 😉 I can second **Robinson Crusoe**, it is quite interesting and thematic. I don’t play it too often, though, because of the setup time. Other than that, **Progress: Evolution of Technology** caught me a bit by surprise. I only played it solo to learn the rules, but discovered a quite relaxing solo play. Sure, you just play a “beat your own highscore”, in a way, but I just like the game and it’s components and it is nice to run your culture through all the different epochs. **Gears of War** is a great coop that I really like to play solo, sometimes even with just one COG. The AI in that game still feels relevant today despite other games tried to build something similar. But again, setup time makes me take it out far less than I do like. Last but not least, **Sentinels of the Multiverse** is my go to game if I am in the mood to play something early sunday mornings – but I do so on my tablet, because that makes the game much more enjoyable, as you don’t have to keep track of all the boosts and negatives yourself. SotM is one of those games I think are easier with multiple players, because everyone only has to keep track of a subset of modifiers. I still play it with paper cards, though, because I like playing with cards, but more often than not I choose some other card game if I don’t want to stare at a screen.

by TheGargoyle

Man, this would be so great. I live in Münster, so the 30 years war and the westphalian peace treaties are quite close for me!

by TheGargoyle
Actually now in 2015 they get their own first mass-market produced game going via KS with nothing less than a State of Siege game: Dawn of the Zeds 🙂

They say they want to bring it back. I just sit here and hope !)

I’m waiting for **Valkyrie** from DVG for fixing my mech needs, because they said they will rework it to be a primarily solo game that can be played multiplayer, if needed (kinda like Warfighter I guess). Sadly not many people around here I could get t…

By far the favorite game of my wife and very high up for me, too. So much fun to play and easy to pack when you go on travel. It gets tons of play around here. The best thing about it is that it helps to bring non gamers to deck building games quite na…

by TheGargoyle

Immer noch nur als “angekündigt” im Shop gelistet. Das erste Halbjahr scheint bei Pegasus extrem dehnbar zu sein, so als Begriff 😉

ah, the Apex guy attaching laser cannons to his dinosaurs. I had seen the extra deck on the Apex KS, but 120 just to get one deck was a bit silly, despite the lasers. Allthough, lasers. And dinosaurs. And deck building. But the real thing sounds good, …

I allways played, even when it was just crappy games like Monopoly, or need-to-study-to-get-decently-good games like chess. I didn’t really enjoy the crappy games, but I enjoyed the “do something with family or friends”. In the end, board games for me are shared experiences, with modern games even shared adventures. Due to the fact that I don’t really enjoy tournament play, chess fizzled out for me after about 9 years. But modern board games (starting with Catan and Carcassonne and their ilk) brought me back. And modern games with good thematic foundation really tickle my “shared adventure” fancy. So when one year we were visiting friends of my wife, and they suggested playing some games (actually Catan and Carcassonne – but I infused them with some modernism in their games since then 😉 ) and my wife actually enjoyed it, I started to work on turning her into a board gamer. Still ongoing work, but hey, we are at the point where she will ask to play some games in the evening, so I am I am right on track with that project 🙂 The thing with good board games for me is that if they tell a story and you experience that story together with friends, it is on the same line as, like, going on vacation together or visiting a concert. You not only experience the game story itself, you experience your friends/family reaction to that story, you share common goals or fierce competition in a friendly setting (well, at least the outside of the game might be friendly, some gamesn themselves can be fierce down to the core 😉 ). I am a big fan of coop games for above reason, because quite often they deliver beautiful stories to share with your friends, without putting pressure on interactions between said friends. With the result that you still have something to talk about months later – like that time we actually destroyed the dragon in Legends of Andor but totally lost our castle to those Skraals. I still call it a draw. There are games that I really love for their mechanisms and the great puzzle they provide, but those are mostly games I play solitair. For me those games are just to relax – better than TV and for me much better than video games, because I get unglued from the screen. There is some overlap, some games can be great solo or with a group, but most games are only in either camp for me. I might play LOTR:LCG with someone else if they themselves enjoy it and learned it, but I don’t really feel any desire to teach it to someone. On the other hand, I like Paperback and play it a lot with my wife, because it is her favorite game, but never played the solo version. There are better deck builders for that. So, yeah, it’s either for the shared experiences with friends or family, or for the brain-burning (or sometimes the crazy random ride with dice) solo experience. I recently (a few months ago) started a weekly game group, so now there is an added third reason, which is “evangelizing modern board games”, but that’s so new that it isn’t really ingrained into my gaming habits, yet. But I totally could see that becoming another core motivation for playing games.

by TheGargoyle
Related Item: Thematic Solitaires for the Spare Time Challenged klkitchens wrote:Warhammer? Tide of Iron? :)Weeeeellll, ok. Kinda 😉

by TheGargoyle
Related Item: Thematic Solitaires for the Spare Time Challenged I think the physical version of Elder Signs is quite a good contender for chugginess. But it’s game time is a bit on the high end, especially if you take setup and teard…

by TheGargoyle
I think it is not a problem that BS got KdJ, but that there is no Expertenspiel des Jahres award. Expert games being games beyond gateway+, actual games that could target us on the geek ;)I guess I will just have to accept that SdJ an…

by TheGargoyle

An item Board Game:

Waggle Dance

has been added to the geeklist

Hidden gems!

Looks like currently it is all **Nations: the Dice Game** and **Paperback** for me. Got some **Friday** squeezed in, but both my weekly game group and my plaing with my wife were just dices and words. Not that I can complain a lot about that, both are …

by TheGargoyle
Yeah, from the three nominations, I think this is the weekest one for Kennerspiel. Sure, I bet it is a fun game, but is it really a Kennerspiel? It feels much more gateway to me than really Kennerspiel.

/me points to his 8-years-badge “why should I be anywhere else?” 😉 BGG is good to read up on a game, look at images or read some reviews, but following a discussion on BGG is just horrible. Reddit might not be the best discussion software, but it is much better than most of the alternatives.

Yeah, you nailed the strategy. Had the same experience when I got it – I don’t mind that it is easy, it’s good to have something to just spend some lazy time on. If I want to be punished, I pull out it’s “big brother” – Robinson Crusoe, Adventures on a Cursed Island 😉

I play three – my Rugrats, I call them. Len, Lini and Harsk. three feels ok for me to handle and enough characters to actually make use of helping abilities. I tried 4, but it got a bit too fiddly and took too much space and with 2 I felt I was running…

**Warfighter**. I have big problems with playing war games that have real world scenarios – it just is usually a turn-off for me. But it was touted as a very solid solo game and I caved and got it – and am really happy with it. I still would prefer to …

yeah, dice placements is sometning I really enjoy, too. I would be hard pressed to decide between that and deck building as my favorite mechanism.

by TheGargoyle

Also ich bin dankbar, dass in der Rezension die Kartensprache explizit erwähnt wird, da meine Frau kein Englisch spricht und ein Kauf für mich deshalb eine Fehlinvestition wäre – in den Shops, in denen ich geschaut habe, stand nämlich absolut nicht dabei, das es deutsche Karten nur als Pasteups gibt. Bei dem Preis wäre ich nicht bereit noch selber die Schere anzusetzen und mir Karten zu “basteln”. Das ist für mich keine “deutsche Version” als die sie z.B. bei Amazon beschrieben steht. Und bei einem deutschen Verlag gehe ich auch gar nicht davon aus, plötzlich englische Kartentexte zu haben, selbst wenn es im Kleingedruckten irgendwo steht, es fällt deutlich unter “unerwartete Eigenschaften”.

Well, so far no sign for new sources for german versions of Mage Knight expansions, so will have to see if it ever shows up here.

I guess in a few years it will be **Athlas: Duel for Divinity**, because even if I get the promised german cards and components, it still is a competetive fantasy strategy game for two players with an important “unit creation” step, which all totally rules out my wife, which makes me question why the heck I even bothered to get this game. Complete brain-fart on my account. 🙂 Other than that, **Mage Knight** – and I even only need myself at the table for that one. Oh well. One day I will play it.

In for now, but definitely would want more game play vids to show actual tactical game play beyond “move up to enemy, roll dice”. But the minis are cute, and steampunky stuff allways triggers my “want-reflexes” 😉 Oh, and they should make different factions different base color, so they are easier to see at a glance on the board. Yes, they are visual different, but still, colored game pieces are even better in that regard.

Yeah, **Valley of the Kings** would be my suggestion, too. It can be packed into a standard romme/bridge/canasta card case and when played only needs very little table space (a pyramid of 1+2+3+4 cards, the draw stack, sacrifice stack and both players …