Category: Syndicated

**Lord of the Rings LCG** is by far my favorite game and my favorite solo game. I am a recovering mtg deck building maniac who switched to LOTR to get hus deck building fix without needing someone to playtest thise creations 😉 **Sentinels of the Multi…

by TheGargoyle
rahdo wrote:How about obstacles/elevations on the battlefield. If the expansion shipped with a long string, it could be placed in various configurations as part of battle setup to create stuff like a river, or a high hill. Discs on …

**Athlas, Duel for Divinity** is one I got despite knowing I probably will never find someone to play it with – but it triggered all the right points with me. I did years of chess while young and always li,ed tactical and strategic one-on-one fightsing…

My favorite deck is a Grixis Judo abomination, headed by Bolas. Because Nicol Bolas. I even got me a leather deck box with a bolas emblem embossed for it. Why? His planeswalker card was one of the first two foils I ever had – from the Ajani vs. Bolas d…

amazon.de hat üblicherweise Exemplare zu moderaten Preisen mitlerweile. Ich habs sogar schon im lokalen Spieleladen hier in Münster gesehen (Spielkultur). Allerdings nur englisch, von einer deutschen Version hab ich noch nix gehört.

**Valley of the Kings** is our go-to travel game for the reasons you mentioned. Add to it: cheap, so if you lose it, the loss isn’t too heavy. It’s just 104 cards. And table space is quite minimal, too, just 6 cards out, two stacks for deck and sacrifice stack and then the player decks and player discards. Plays 2-4, so if you find new friends, you can get them into the game, too (or cut out two player decks to even further reduce the amount of cards to carry with you). There are some confrontational cards in it, but those are really just a few (making the opponent to discard or sacrifice cards from hand). The only problem I could see is the pyramid-layout of the central “market”, that could shuffle around a bit on a train. But if you just put a bigger coin on each card, that should do it easily.

well, since I often look for ameritrashy games, I am out of luck usually, since those often come to germany super-expensive 🙂

I think you want to look at **Among the Stars**, because you build your space station in front of you, based on card drafting with two nice slick 2-player variants (or later with 3 or more people without special adaptions) and use your races special ab…

**Valley of the Kings** is a card game we really like, because it is a small box and plays fast, doesn’t need much table space and is cheap (about 10 bucks). And it has some nice twists on deck building with some set collection thrown in, so it can easily coexist with other deck builders. Plays great with 2 and can play up to 4, so friends can join in. **Among the Stars** has two 2-player variants, both deemed “official”, even though originally was fan created. Both play really well, I think, and again, the game can play more than 2, too. What I really like with Among the Stars is the spacial aspect of building your space station in front of you. I got it for 25 EUR, so it could still fit your limit.

It’s always funny for me, but this is one of the rare cases where we in Germany are lucky: Glory to Rome goes for 20 EUR in the german version 🙂

**Runeage** is a nice deck builder that has solo, coop and competitive play modes in various forms. Especially with the available expansion the coop opens up quite a bit and can be lots of fun, and the competitive modes allow both PvE (as in multi-play…

well, actually it was first announced weeks ago already, so by now it didn’t really come out of nowhere 😉

Probably **Tiny Epic Kingdom**, because squeezing so much 4X into a 25 EUR small box game is just fantastic. And **Valley of the Kings**, because the box is even smaller and it is my go-to game for traveling – and I only payed 8 EUR at Spiel 2014 for it.

by TheGargoyle
dang. someone seems to have snatched 99 dollars from my purse 😉

The only hurt kickstarter puts on me is financial. The net result of KS is just more available board games. How that could be seen as “hurting the hobby” is beyond me. It’s irrelevant if the game comes from a small mom+pop garden shed producer or from some big-wig multinational concern. It’s more games on the market available to play. If FFG decides to run their next big-box expansion to imperial assault as a KS, all the power to them. It doesn’t take away from anybody else, neither players nor other producers. If the company sees a game as too risky and wants to spread the risk – fine. Do it. If people want the game, they will be willing to share the risk and put some money out. If they don’t want it, they won’t pledge and the KS will fail. Simple as that.

by TheGargoyle
For me, a good all-around team for exploring a new villain+environment combo often is Legacy, Wraith, Tempest and Ra (although the latter one could be seen as a flex space and often depends on mood). This might not be the best team yo…

by TheGargoyle
Well, it matters because it means nobody who already hasn’t will be able to get the mission pack … (which is a big bummer for me, because the german version of it isn’t available on secondary markets, since it was only produced in v…

One other I could suggest, if you want lots of dice and some strategic planning: **Waggle Dance** gives you worker placement where your worker are bees represented by dice. And since you can grow your hive, you get more and more dice if you want, so yo…

My main new game is **Waggle dance**, because it is the first worker placement euro-style game my wife actively enjoys playing, going so far for her to choose this over her former favorite of Elder Sign. She loves the really streamlined rules and under…

by TheGargoyle
Throw in Pocket Imperium, too. And maybe Nearspace. Even more questions!

**Waggledance** made it’s first play with my wife and yay, she likes it! So we finally have some worker placement game to choose if we feel like it. It’s a quite lovely game, very nice mechanics that work very well and are easy to grasp. Perfect gatewa…

by TheGargoyle
yep, right, 25. 10 for prep work, 10 for second sticker slot and 5 for the in training upgrade. But still a long way for my dwarf to get there.

by TheGargoyle
As you guessed first, swapping out fundamentals as soon as you can get prep work. My dwarf always goes last, both with fundamentals and now with prep work. Of course running both would be rather weird – at 20 karma I probably would up…

Well, I got mine after the E-M1 came out and am still happy with the decision. For me she is in the happy place of just right – price was much better than the admittedly even better bigger sister, but all features I really care for are there. It is a r…

The german versions of Lost Legacy and Love Letter use friggin oversized cards. The most idiotic decision ever, because they make a classic “have it ready wherever and whenever” into another “meh, can’t squeeze that stack in anymore” problem.

**Lord of the Rings LCG** by far, because I can play it solo and it hits all the right buttons. Deck construction is tons of fun and the many different scenarios add replay value beyond all imagination. And I like the theme quite a bit.

**Thunderstone Advance** is the obvious one, because it has a play style (predertermined village, victory point cards) very similar to Dominion, but with lots of fantasy theme added in a way that actually feels a bit thematic. Leveling your heroes, hav…

by TheGargoyle
Never played the video game, only bought ut because I read about uts good AI system and watched playthtoughs and it is one of my favorite games. Sure, the theme might add to enjoyment if you know it, but nit knowing it poses no proble…

by TheGargoyle

Nachdem mein Spiel mitlerweile auch gekommen ist und ich die ersten Spiele gemacht habe: kann dem Review voll zustimmen. Fantastisches Gateway Game bei dem auch Vielspieler Spaß haben werden. Meine Frau ist nicht unbedingt Vielspieler und sie hat problemlos im ersten Spiel sich in die Regeln reingefunden und die ersten Kombinationen der Aktionen im Spiel gesehen und hatte – genau wie ich – eine Menge Spaß.

Schöne finde ich auch die Wertung: die Honigwaben sind zwar primäres Siegziel, aber eben auch gleichzeitig Spielende, so dass sich die Spieler darauf konzentrieren und wohl häufiger bei gleicher Honiganzahl landen werden – und dann entscheidet die kleinere Anzahl Bienen, oder wie bei uns wegen Bienengleichstand dann die höhere Anzahl unverbrauchter Nektar. Und da hat meine nicht-vielspiel-Frau doch glatt den viel-spiel-Grübler besiegt 😉

Einziger Wehrmutstropfen ist die Qualität der Würfel, die sind doch etwas billig produziert, bei einigen muss ich wohl mal die Löcher nachmalen und ein oder zwei haben kleine Defekte. Nichts was wirklich kritisch ist, oder gar spielbehindernd, aber wer da ein Problem mit hat könnte sich drüber ärgern.

Ich fand das Design übrigens nicht sonderlich verwirrend, ein paar wenige Konzepte die man lernen muss und man kann alle Karten gut interpretieren – weiße Würfel sind eigene Bienen, schwarze Würfel in Bildern sind gegnerische Bienen, Sterne auf Würfelseiten sind Joker – alles recht schlüssig zu lesen. Da brauchts nicht viele Erklärungen im Spiel, was ich gerade für Gateway Games gut finde, weil Einsteiger in ein neues Spiel bei zu viel Erklärungsbedarf doch schnell mal abschalten.

Ich geb dem Spiel auf unserem Tisch definitv mehr Chancen, auch und gerade wenn mal Besuch da ist, aber die Zweispieler-Variante (im Prinzip ja nur ausblocken von ein paar Aktionsfeldern) läuft gut genug, dass es auch für uns zu zweit interessant ist.

by TheGargoyle
The only thing making me even more happy would be a clear statement that the phone version is out soon, because then I could play it while sitting in meetings, giggling madly, slapping around villains, while people up front talk bulls…