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Mycelia Board Game Review

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River Wild Board Game Review

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Outback Crossing Review

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14 Jul 2019 23:20 #299640 by Jackwraith

hotseatgames wrote: Sounds like some good Cthulhu Wars action! Makes me want to get a game in again soon, but before that happens I need to get some mileage out of Lords of Hellas. LoH is a much more accessible design since each player is pretty much the same with slight hero differences.


I really want to get Lords on the table. I only recently picked up a copy because I found it cheap and haven't had a chance to play it, but I've been following Charlie's praise of it for the last year or two and Wade's review only reinforced that. So many games...
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14 Jul 2019 23:25 #299641 by Jackwraith

n815e wrote: But each faction board of CW tells you exactly what you need to do to obtain your spellbooks, which are required to win. And each spellbook is available to read from the beginning.
Some factions may be harder to “see” how to win with if you are unfamiliar with the game or the play style is different from what you normally like. But it is all there for you to see.


That's true. But it's a LOT of info to take in. First, every faction has a unique power and units with some variation. Then, each faction has unique methods of gaining its spellbooks. THEN, each faction has unique spellbooks. It's tough for people to even understand how their faction works, on top of remembering to do everything when 5 or 6 spellbooks are in play. Expecting them to know how everyone's else machine is working is a tough ask of most people on a first play.

Everything is there for Root to be seen, as well. There is no hidden information, but I've yet to see anyone be able to follow what everyone else is doing while also getting their guys up and running. That's why the Vagabond tends to win a lot of games with newer players, since he can almost literally just play his own game, swiping items when people are foolish enough to make them, and completing quests that no one else has time to pay attention to (and largely can't stop.) I think the Vagabond was introduced to be the X factor in a game that might otherwise function by rote between the three base factions, but his introduction also increases the learning curve for new players quite sharply.
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14 Jul 2019 23:39 #299642 by WadeMonnig
I'm sure I'm a bit slow on the uptake but it takes me a play or two with each CW faction to get my groove on... and I'm drawn to playing every faction to see which one I think I will dig the most. I loved king in yellow then everyone I played with saw how much fun it could be playing them, so they lined up to try them out. I've been defaulting to "Whatever faction is left" but I think I'm going to play my trump card (my game!) and pick first the next few games.
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15 Jul 2019 00:20 #299643 by hotseatgames
Ithaqua and Black Goat are my jam
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15 Jul 2019 08:39 #299644 by charlest
Black Goat is excellent. Opener is probably my favorite though.

I'm looking forward to playing Detective: City of Angels Mezike, bought a copy second hand I'm picking up at Gen Con and your play of it sounds great. There's an expansion (Bullets Over Hollywood) which adds a few cases as well. They're also producing more I believe.

Snuck in some extra weekend gaming yesterday when the family was busy. Someone else foisted Crypt upon us, a light set collection game with bidding and dice. I won by 1 point (53 to 52) and it was fine.

Then we played John Company. It was a little rough as they were three newbies and I messed up a couple of things which caused me to have to refer to the manual a bit more than I'm used to when teaching. We righted the ship though and soldiered on.

This particular play was weird. All of the Prizes were super expensive save one, which offered only a single VP reward. I thus leaned on manors personally but found myself without cash for the second half of the game.

The company was doing pretty well but the Madras presidency closed on turn 3 and all went to shit. One player failed two sail rolls and a campaign roll, each rolling at least three dice (this was over a couple of turns). That lead to the company not having enough money to pay dividends twice, the second time causing the collapse of the East India Trading Company. Unfortunately I had just moved into the Director of Trade position and was left as one of the players holding the bag. The guy who wasn't in an executive position was already doing well (lots of manors and he also scooped up three VP from a law passing that gave shipyard and factory owners VP). I came in last, but it was great as always.

We then played Flamme Roug, and I can safely say this game is better with four than three (although it's not poor at the latter count). We had a lot more hills in this one and it broke up the packs early. I had a better time feeling out my decisions and the long-term effects of burning certain cards early, I was also a little less afraid to use a high numbered card a bit earlier in the race rather than saving all of my nines and having too many for instance.

Regardless, it came down to three of us in a pack out front near the end. One player decided to go for it and burned around a corner at high speed, allowing to clear a red section in one move where the other two of us eased into the slope. This gave him the fraction of space he needed and he came over the crest of the hill just ahead of us. We had a small chance that if he didn't draw his 9, one of us may be able to overtake him, but he timed it well and his deck was thin, despite having accumulated many fatigue cards earlier. I came in third crossing the finish line in the last turn, I was within one space of second and that person was within one space of first. Very exciting finish and I learned don't bring a Roleur to a Sprinter race.

Late last night I was also able to solo the new Power Rangers game from the designer that did the new Doom. This is coming out from Renegade soon and the components are very nice. The minis are huge 32mm sized (they may be bigger honestly) and the Megazord model is fantastic - unfortunately it's a cardboard token in the base box and you have to buy a small expansion just for the miniature.

But the gameplay is very solid. It's not a great game, but it's pretty good. You move around between four main areas, bashing putty soldiers and waiting for monsters or the boss (Rita of course) to pop out.

It's a very simple game made more clever by the great combat system. You deal out cards for each enemy mini in your area when you start a battle, and each has different attacks or passive abilities. You then take turns with the enemies playing cards to deal each other damage, with your damage hitting specific cards. If you kill a card before it is triggered in the row the enemy will do nothing in that turn. Basically, there's some spatial tactical card play with variable enemy behavior cards that are specific to the enemy type (bosses and monster mini bosses have their own decks). Very neat and a relatively simple way to do it.

The game has this Street Masters/Sadler vibe in that each Power Ranger has their own asymmetrical deck, and then each bad guy group has their own deck as well. The environment is much simpler than Street Masters and overall, this is more accessible and shallow without as much combo-play or sophistication. Still, that weight fits the IP to some degree, although I can't see anyone playing this with say an 8 year old.

I'm not a huge Power Rangers fan - I did watch the show occasionally as a child - so the IP is not a huge draw for me. Yet, the game was pretty neat and a satisfying hour long coop that's whack-a-mole-ish, but boosted by a very interesting combat mechanic.
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15 Jul 2019 10:00 #299647 by mezike
Top tip for Flamme Rouge if you have less than four players and don’t have the expansion: you can still play the bots to make up the numbers by simply shuffling exhaustion cards into your chosen bot decks.

Muscle team = two cards in the Sprinteur and treat them as 5 when they come out.

Peloton = two cards in the Rouleur, only use the Rouleur deck for both cyclists, when the card comes out move the front bot 2 and the back bot 9.

Nowadays I’ll only race with four or six, it’s so much better with a full field.
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15 Jul 2019 10:18 #299648 by charlest
Six sounds a little nuts. I actually have Peloton unopened, wanted to feel out the base game a little first but plan on exploring the bots (and cobblestone) soon.

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15 Jul 2019 11:15 - 15 Jul 2019 11:16 #299652 by mezike
Six is really just fine so long as you use the breakaway rules. The first time we tried six we did so without using it and it was not much fun. The bots are very low overhead, adding the bonus cards is a smart way to compensate for the randomness of the card plays so you get a very low overhead solution for the AI.

I haven’t ever tried it solo but one of my friends has enjoyed playing the fan made Tour campaign competing against three bots.
Last edit: 15 Jul 2019 11:16 by mezike.
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15 Jul 2019 11:29 #299654 by RobertB
All this kicking Legends Untold around made me want to break out Legend of Drizzt. My brother, my daughter, and I played a couple of scenarios last Saturday. It makes me want to pick up painting again, since I had a bunch of primered ones in the box.

TBH, I'm not seeing what Legends Untold is bringing to the table that this game doesn't, except for LU giving you shitty loot and being in boxes about 1/4 the size.

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15 Jul 2019 14:43 #299662 by charlest

RobertB wrote: All this kicking Legends Untold around made me want to break out Legend of Drizzt. My brother, my daughter, and I played a couple of scenarios last Saturday. It makes me want to pick up painting again, since I had a bunch of primered ones in the box.

TBH, I'm not seeing what Legends Untold is bringing to the table that this game doesn't, except for LU giving you shitty loot and being in boxes about 1/4 the size.


I've only played Castle Ravenloft, and that was years ago when it came out, but I don't remember any real sense of exploration in that game. Tiles were virtually the same (with literally zero terrain), and it was basically toss out some enemies and fight. I didn't feel like the environment was alive at all and I never found myself invested in the organic growth of the dungeon. I think Legends Untold is a much better game when it comes to exploration.
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15 Jul 2019 15:15 #299664 by RobertB

charlest wrote:

RobertB wrote: All this kicking Legends Untold around made me want to break out Legend of Drizzt. My brother, my daughter, and I played a couple of scenarios last Saturday. It makes me want to pick up painting again, since I had a bunch of primered ones in the box.

TBH, I'm not seeing what Legends Untold is bringing to the table that this game doesn't, except for LU giving you shitty loot and being in boxes about 1/4 the size.


I've only played Castle Ravenloft, and that was years ago when it came out, but I don't remember any real sense of exploration in that game. Tiles were virtually the same (with literally zero terrain), and it was basically toss out some enemies and fight. I didn't feel like the environment was alive at all and I never found myself invested in the organic growth of the dungeon. I think Legends Untold is a much better game when it comes to exploration.

I'll grant that I have a total of one play of Legends Untold under my belt, so there could be awesome scenarios out there that I didn't see. But the one I did see was pretty vanilla - wander the sewers and try not to die until you pulled the 'You Win' card.

Nano-review of Legends Unknown from me is that four of us played it, and we all thought it was kind of meh.

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18 Jul 2019 08:48 #299769 by charlest
We tried the Poseidon module from the Lords of Hellas Dark Ages expansion last night. It was not a hit.

This adds a fourth monument on the bottom of the map as well as some port tokens that get placed on each of the monument spaces and on on the area that contains Sparta.

It also adds a new fleet mechanic, so when you send priests to Poseidon your fleet token moves up one space. It's basically another stat like Strength or Leadership, but you add your Fleet score to your strength in battle when fighting in a space with a port.

Having a fourth monument on the map works well. The map was built with this in mind and it doesn't feel bloated or anything. The ports were also neat because they allowed you to traverse the map and threaten spaces you otherwise couldn't.

The problem is that there's a huge incentive to camp the Poseidon space and just build monument over and over again after building a temple there. This means you get a priest back every time, which you can then send to the monument to get a boost to your fleet stat (making it easier to defend the monument since it has a port there), as well as give you bonus troops to recruit on a port space that you control - of course you put them on the Poseidon space. Additionally, the artifact that controlling the monument space gives you allows you to kill half of all troops at a port space! Holy shit that's nuts. And it gets refreshed for use every turn if you rush the monument build.

The end result was a player just racing the game to completion. He had a neighbor in Sparta from the get-go, but he'd destroy half his recruited troops each turn.

This strategy became the focus of the game and we had to work to stop this player from winning. He soon got all 15 of his troops in the Poseidon space, had +5 strength from his fleet stat, and just hunkered down after completing the thing.

Yet he didn't win. His neighbor attacked him first and won, thanks to having a blessing that allowed him to have six combat cards. The Poseidon monument player had nowhere to flee (we blocked off all eligible spaces) and lost his big ball of 12 remaining troops. Another player swept in and jetisoned the Spartan dude and ended up winning.

I was trying to monster hunt but this game was accelerated and didn't offer much time for that.

I'm not sure I'd want to play with this monument again. The ports were nifty, but the incentive to camp the Poseidon space and hammer it over and over again (even if it won't reliably allow you to win, it has the perception of giving you a decent shot) made for a pretty poor play. The other expansion elements better be better.

Played my second game of the Power Rangers game and we lost just as Rita hit the map. We were not risky enough early on, combining to fight clusters of putties instead of spreading out more. Second impression is that this is still a very solid game that's just shy of true greatness. The combat mechanic though is pretty damn slick and reinforces that this is really kind of a card/deck management game (with no deck building) where the board/minis are less significant.

Flamme Rouge hit the table again and I finally won. This game is excellent and has improved with each play. We played a track where the hills were all clustered near the end with level ground early. As we rounded the first set of corners and approached the hill, mayhem ensued with people breaking out and trying to hit the ascent clean. I was able to push my sprinter ahead by playing my nine on a downhill space. It took a few people by surprise and I grabbed the lead heading into the last hill. I was able to play my last nine coming over the crest and cross the finish line, winning by a single space. Very tense game and the most dramatic thus far.
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18 Jul 2019 09:07 #299770 by hotseatgames
That's disappointing about Poseidon. Did anyone build the factory / robot?
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18 Jul 2019 09:21 #299772 by charlest

hotseatgames wrote: That's disappointing about Poseidon. Did anyone build the factory / robot?


We only added in Poseidon, you're talking about Hephaestus, I think?

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18 Jul 2019 09:31 #299774 by hotseatgames
It's the 5th player side board, the special temple that is a factory and gives the player controlling it the ability to use the giant robot monster. I don't remember the names.

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