Category: Syndicated

well, same here, except the food thing. I like food. Oh, another strategy: try to get a local board game group going, that way you can easily justify board game acquisitions as “for the group”.

But the cards-as-board makes it very portable – just a few baggies and a little box.

**Waggle Dance** definitely falls into that category for me. Cute and friendly art, light colors and a friendly game play, collecting nectar to make honey with your dice as bees.

playing predators? I think I will have to buy that one. Hunting down puny humans? Yay!

by TheGargoyle
They probably by now need an FAQ for the FAQ to clear out any leftover clarities in the rules 😉

For me a lot of **Race for the Galaxy** against the Gathering Storm AI – loads of fails on my part, because I still don’t have an idea to get a strategy going that is fast enough to compete with the bot. Then some **San Juan** with my wife, which is fun, and as a game much more relaxing than RftG, due to it’s much simpler and streamlined nature. And some solo play of **Thunderstone Advance**, i get into the mood every now and then and it still is a very nice solo experience, because you can easily tailor it to your mood. Sure, you can go for a random experience, but I myself often prefer to set up a village with cards I want to try out, combined with a matching set of hero options. Kinda using the village-setup as my “deck construction” phase before the actual game. Regarding gaming events: definitely in for shorter but more regular events. I’m going to start a local gaming meetup for our quarter in april, will be fun to see how it will run. Definitely aiming for a weekly 2 hour event (maybe some weeks 3 hours if we want to go into something deeper). No real favorite game as a kid – because games back in the late 60s and early 70s plain sucked, so the only option, I grudgingly took, was chess. As you maybe know it’s a rather dry abstract strategy game that hasn’t seen an expansion for centuries and probably was left for dead by it’s producer.

“favourite” depends on time and situation and partners a lot mire tna just the game. For example with solo-played coop, it is **Sentinels of the Multiverse** if I want non-fiddly and no-setup/teardown, because I cheat and play the app then. When having more time and want a more deep experience, it might be either **Lord of the Rings LCG** or **Shadowrun: Crossfire**, the latter one mostly if I am nit in tne mood for deck construction, although I have a few pre-built decks for LOTR, too. With my wife mostly **Elder Sign** or **Forbidden Desert**, depending on her mood for long or short games. For our two-monthly group definitely **Legends of Andor** for some time to come, too, because I just got the travels to the north expansion from the guys, so we are prepared. Strong contenders is **Robinson Crusoe** for some coop worker displacement and killing. If we are in a masochist mood 😉

**Lord of the Rings LCG** definitely. Got it to get my fix of deck construction and actual playing the deck, unlike MTG where in the end I only constructed and collected but only rarely got to play.

well, there seem to have been some packages that stank when you opened them. No idea if it was actually toxic substances as in “making you sick”, because people reporting on something like that usually exaggerate heavily. But the crystals are definitely no roses in my box (but not headache-inducing so). But as far as I recall the discussions, it was only the crystals, so easy to get rid of and replace, any hobby store might provide you with colored crystals of probably much better quality than what came in the Mage Knight box. No idea about the expansions, because one is out of print in Germany and only available at exorbitant prices and the other one was never released in german.

skipping “boring trading in the Mediterranean” for more interesting SciFi and Fantasy stuff. My wife prefers themes that are more realistic, where she can better relate to the actions she can take – and doesn’t relate that well to anything SciFi or Fantasy. Woops.

for me that’s already the case with the first expansion in german – no way to get it and nothing on wether the new partner will ever reprint it. Usually the expansion goes for over 100 euro 🙁

don’t forget the mission pack 1 – the POD expansion – because that one will be quite rare then, too.

Not much to report on, got a few plays of **Race for the Galaxy** and especially got to play the robot from **Race for the Galaxy: Gathering Storm**, quite happy with it, I guess this will be up on my top list of games now, as it hits multiple spots wi…

Yes, RftG should work great, it is fun both competetively and solo due to the different bot personas. **Thunderstone Advance** could work, too, although I personally found the solo variant a bit lacking. **Space Empire 4X** has great solo rules and com…

by TheGargoyle
I am just happy for anything neutral that can draw cards or reduce threat, because I can play it in mono tactics (Mablung helps with ressources) and the card itself helps with later incarnations. And if we get something tactics that g…

Yeah, astonishingly enough, that still is the main job if my watch, too. But I added “marking uninteresting stuff as read” and “panicking due to messages from my wife” as secondary jobs. Ok, the radar weather image via instaweather is cool, because it glows green on black, which is cool. Wel, that and the fact I can see if a break in the rain is upcoming so I can head out to the bus station 😉

for some reason my brain turned “enemy fetchland” into a fetchland that fetches lands from opponents libraries and I thought that idea would be neat.

**Robinson Crusoe, Adventures on a Cursed Island** got played for the first time, definitely will get more, since my wife liked it, too. And it seems to hit the sweet spot between mechanics and theme where all kinda makes sense when it destroys you. **…

Just a word of warning: it is not e ink. What they call e-paper display essentially is LCD with more reflective background. It has nothing to do with e-ink. It is more like the old LCD displays from Casio watches in the 90s, just with slightly better c…

Probably **Legends of Andor** because before it I had never played a boardgame with an ingame tutorial. And because it was a game I bought without knowing what I got into, other games I have, I usually bought fully expecting what I got. With LoA it was…

by TheGargoyle
First they promise us sharknado, now we get tables we can flip. Awesome!

Exactly this. Pebble is doing some really shady thing by calling their “LCD with more shiny background” e-Paper. People constantly mix it up with e-Ink, but it is really just dumb old LCD. Looks quite a bit like those old 5-Euro-clocks.

Aside from the already mentioned Valley of the Kings – which I highly recommend – there is Runeage, the Deckbuilder that does it all, coop, competetive or PvP. But with far lower space requirements and shorter playing time than Mage Knight 😉

Yeah, that low output at such a relatively high prixce does not sound like a bargain, especially since it is a “bring your own stand” solution …

Hah, Super Motherload is on my maybe-play list, too – got my copy a few days ago.

It is in the rule book. You block spaces when playing with less than four.

I can vouch for Waggle Dance, it is one of our favorites. Playes well with two with a dummy blocking “player” – you just randomly reduce placements on game start so the board gets a bit tighter – and well with 4. Very quick setup and teardown, very quick and fluid play and easy to teach. Essentially you can teach it in the first play, telling people what things are as they come up. It is not very brain burning, but you can really put in effort uf you want to, or play it casually with new players. And it just looks very friendly. Totally love it.

Yeah, Gandalf solo with Treebeard and Radagast so you have support for eagles and ents, that could be fun.

This. By a big margin. I just went in for a few packs to get some deck building and now own all the regular expansions, only the saga expansions still missing. It is just so good.

sure, do it all the time – if my realism kicks in and tells me “you won’t ever play this because it can’t be solo played and your wife doesn’t speak english” for example. Of course I could think about those things before I jump on a pledge, but where is the fun with that?