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Kevin Klemme
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Mycelia Board Game Review

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December 07, 2023
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River Wild Board Game Review

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Outback Crossing Review

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26 Jul 2019 08:53 - 26 Jul 2019 08:54 #300081 by hotseatgames
I'm using two. I was defeated with Arnold and John Connor. I'm going back in with Kyle Reese and "Alex the Hacker."

Also, for extra fun, read all the story text like an out of breath Kyle Reese.
Last edit: 26 Jul 2019 08:54 by hotseatgames.
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26 Jul 2019 09:36 #300084 by charlest
Ha. My characters in my solo campaign are Reese and the Guardian. But I've played a couple of others when playing multiplayer.



I suppose I should share what I played last night, it was a good night.

We played a three player game of Star Trek: Ascendancy. It had been awhile. I was Romulan up against the Cardassians and Fed. Fed won because we waited just slightly too long to start some shit. It was close though and I was one turn away from an Ascendancy victory myself. I did manage to snag Earth in an attempt to delay his win, but he was able to grab it back through Hegemony.

My fatal flaw was probably over-developing. I put down control nodes in a couple of systems but didn't really have the resources to populate their resource nodes. The Cardassian player discovered way too many phenomena and not enough resources, which put him back a bit. He pressured Federation first near end game and did some damage before succumbing to not enough guys deep behind enemy lines.

Next we played Deep Sea Adventure, a game which I've found totally overrated in the past. Again, it was not great. This stupid little thing throws down that line of treasure teasing you to go deep and push your luck. Yet every single time the person who travels just a little bit down and heads back early wins. It's way too punishing, mostly because the treasure slows you down AND uses up oxygen. I see no reason to play this dull game over Incan Gold or Can't Stop or Matt Fantastic's That's Not Lemonade.

That's ok, because the night turned again and we played Tentacle Town, the first release from Monster Fight Club (ex GF9 guys). We had an aborted first play due to me getting a rule wrong which wrecked the economy, but after setting up again and playing it correctly, we very much enjoyed it.

It's worker placement but you don't own workers, instead you're trying to own the areas workers go to. There's an area majority thing going on with a way to manipulate the enemy tentacles to hurt your opponent. The comparison to Survive is pretty good as there's some meanness here.

I think the best part about this game was hunting tentacles. You use harpoons and you can either spin the spinner or flip a tentacle token. Both result in 50% chance.

I like spinners so I defaulted to that, however, this quickly changed. We realized the optimal (fun) way to do this was to chuck the harpoon tokens overhand onto the table, mimicking an actual throw. One time we had a 11 harpoon attack and it was hilarious. Tentacle meat and victory points splattered everywhere.

I don't think this is a can't miss, game of the year game by any means, but it's a pretty interesting family weight worker placement game that supersedes something like Stone Age.

Oh, and I also managed to sneak in two games of Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire/Nightvault/Whatever which continues to be one of the best games ever released.
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26 Jul 2019 11:35 #300090 by Sagrilarus

barrowdown wrote: 1x Table Battles,


Odd question, but how on Earth did you play just one round of Table Battles? It's super quick, so generally I swap sides with whomever I'm playing with and play a second set. Which battle did you play?

For those who haven't seen Table Battles, it's a dice game with cards creating an abstract battlefield. Each historic battle you play has its own set of cards that more or less set up the geographic nature of the conflict by declaring who is allowed to attack who. Roll dice to power up cards, unleash an attack when you've filled the card's requirements. It's really easy and the nature of it means that you can as easily play Agincourt as Jutland. Current sets are for high medieval, War of the Roses, I think there's an American Revolution battle in there (Harlem?), ACW is on the list.

My copy is Print 'n Play which was dirt cheap and super simple to build with cheesy paper and some card sleeves. Oh, and matchsticks.

I really like this game, my favorite dice-roller. Worth a look.
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26 Jul 2019 12:31 #300092 by barrowdown

Sagrilarus wrote:

barrowdown wrote: 1x Table Battles,

Odd question, but how on Earth did you play just one round of Table Battles? It's super quick, so generally I swap sides with whomever I'm playing with and play a second set. Which battle did you play?


It was one game of White Mountain. My friend had never played before so took the easy battle. My wife was ready for a game after the one round so we moved onto a game that could support three. My friend enjoyed it enough that he was looking to pick it up at the FLGS when we stopped in over the weekend.

Following on Sag's glowing praise, the game really is an excellent dice roller that has a lot of depth from a surprisingly simple structure. I acquired the base game along with the Wars of the Roses and Age of Alexander expansions, but have not tried those out. The Alexander battles look like an interesting twist on the game as the Macedonians are extremely powerful, but cannot afford to lose a single unit.

I also recommend it.

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26 Jul 2019 18:04 #300098 by cdennett

charlest wrote: Next we played Deep Sea Adventure, a game which I've found totally overrated in the past. Again, it was not great. This stupid little thing throws down that line of treasure teasing you to go deep and push your luck. Yet every single time the person who travels just a little bit down and heads back early wins. It's way too punishing, mostly because the treasure slows you down AND uses up oxygen.


Cannot agree more. The game has a neat idea, but it's simply too easy for an aggressive player to sink the rest of the group. I've never seen anyone come back with a big haul...there's no incentive to let that happen.
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29 Jul 2019 10:45 #300197 by barrowdown
Played the second scenario of Chronicles of Crime: Welcome to Redview and it also enjoyable. After two rounds, I think the scenarios in this pack might be on the easier side, but they have lots of useless information in them as well to fill out the investigation. We have ended both scenarios well ahead of what we thought was the actual endpoint because we couldn't think of any other paths to investigate, only to find out we pretty much found out everything. In Noir, we often felt like we were making educated guesses during the conclusion, but we are 100% of the answers in these scenarios.

Also played four games of Zombie Kidz: Evolution and my daughter loved it. She had been nervous of it when we picked it up (she does not like to not understand something and it was a new game), but it did not take long for her to be making zombie sounds as she walked the zombies onto the board. She loved opening the envelopes and after the last game yesterday was excited to try again today in order to get the second envelope. Thanks for the recommendations all!
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30 Jul 2019 09:55 #300263 by DarthJoJo
A game of K2 and three of Melee at open play. K2 is just solid. It's just the complete package between the gorgeous and plentiful artwork and tension between making your push to get just a little higher and knowing when you have to back down. I love that moment of accepting that the mountain and weather have beat you and trying your best to get to safety, hoping that you didn't wait to long to make your decision. We played the easy route with the winter weather, and it's the first time I ever saw someone successfully pitch a tent and camp out the rest of the game on the peak. Not surprisingly, he won as the only player to summit.

Melee 2014 remains one of the most underappreciated games of recent history. A 5.9 on BoargGameGeek? There are higher rated Munchkin variants. That's some nonsense right there. There were turn one wins, there were turn three wins, there was cheering every time. We played the second game with the special abilities. They were fine, but we took them out for the third round, as they just stretched the game out. There's an incredibly stupid thread on the boardgame reddit at the moment where people are arguing the relative merits and complexity and quality of decisions between 7 Wonders and Sushi Go!. I say this as a fan of 7 Wonders: there is no choice in either of those games as delicious and terrible as an opponent on five gold making their final attack on your castle. (And Greed is better than both.)
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30 Jul 2019 11:32 #300270 by mezike

DarthJoJo wrote: K2 ... it's the first time I ever saw someone successfully pitch a tent and camp out the rest of the game on the peak.


Ha! I did exactly the same thing just last week, the other guys were not impressed. I don't think that it's hard to do on the easy map during summer. I just sat there right below the peak until the last round and then stepped up to the top flag before anybody else could because I was first in player order. It felt really cheesy so I won with a guilty conscience for not playing fair.

The Broad Peak expansion arrived a few days ago and we got a game in at the weekend. It's really great and addresses every complaint made against the base game. You now have three peaks that you can strive to conquer and each one gives you a bonus token as well as general points for scaling the heights. If you manage to traverse the mountain (or in other words pass a marked space on each side of the board) then every bonus token that climber has collected is worth an additional two points. This means that camping out is now a poor tactic as there is real incentive to keep moving and especially to start going back down the mountain (which also tackles the uncomfortable inference that climbers often die the moment the game ends). You can also pack up your tents for a single movement point which is a really nice addition even if you can now only take one tent instead of two. It is ultra mean to another player when they are sharing a tent with you. Broad Peak feels like the game that K2 should have been from the start.

The reverse of the board has a shorter and faster-paced game on it which we are yet to try, it doesn't look much different from the base game though.

I also soloed L'Hotse again and still keep dying. It's really tough with just two climbers, I think maybe I just have to accept pitching for lower scores and then working up from there instead of shooting the moon for the peak every time. Hoping to get this played at the club again as it generated quite a bit of interest.
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30 Jul 2019 16:07 #300278 by WadeMonnig

barrowdown wrote:
Also played four games of Zombie Kidz: Evolution and my daughter loved it. She had been nervous of it when we picked it up (she does not like to not understand something and it was a new game), but it did not take long for her to be making zombie sounds as she walked the zombies onto the board. She loved opening the envelopes and after the last game yesterday was excited to try again today in order to get the second envelope. Thanks for the recommendations all!

Ah, the joy of opening envelopes, something life and bills beats out of you as an adult. I defaulted to one envelope per session with my 6 year old niece. A reward every time seemed to make her happier. Spoiler *ish* After the first game she leaned over and whispered "There are going to be more characters" "Oh really?" I acted surprised. "What makes you think so?" "The game comes with extra standee bases" Nice deductive reasoning kiddo.
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30 Jul 2019 19:31 #300283 by Jexik
Dino Dunk and Heroscape with my son on Sunday. Both brought tears and cheers.

Then I had a beer over a game of 2p 7 Wonders + Cities when I came to deliver my X-Wing collection to a friend.
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30 Jul 2019 20:00 #300288 by mezike
A couple of mentions of 7 Wonders here. Has anyone else tried the “7 Blunders” variant where you play to get the lowest score? I actually find it a lot more enjoyable than than playing the regular game.

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30 Jul 2019 21:00 #300289 by Jexik
Is there a rule preventing you from discarding cards for 3 coins? Otherwise you'd just get as many brown/gray cards as possible and then never use your resources.

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31 Jul 2019 02:43 #300294 by mezike

Jexik wrote: Is there a rule preventing you from discarding cards for 3 coins? Otherwise you'd just get as many brown/gray cards as possible and then never use your resources.


Yes, exactly that. You must play one of the cards given to you and reveal your hand as proof if you cannot.
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31 Jul 2019 14:13 #300309 by RobertB
It was three-player Root, with two coworkers who were new. I took Lizards, and told them that they kind of sucked. They didn't believe me at first, but saw that I wasn't lying when I couldn't get any acolytes. They wouldn't fight me, I couldn't fight them without bird cards to make acolytes, and I didn't get any bird cards. I did okay, but couldn't get it to the win. Eyrie won it, I was about 7-8 points behind, and Cats brought up the rear.

The 3rd Edition Lizard rule changes did make them stronger, though. When I did get birds towards the end, it was, "Oh look, acolytes," wave the cards around, and acolytes would appear.
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31 Jul 2019 18:04 #300311 by Erik Twice
You are right on the Lizards being awful. They simply can't play the game if other players avoids them. As I've learned the game I've realized Root was quite unbalanced out of the box, so the fixes help quite a bit. Just turning the Cat's hospital ability from "one guy" to "all the guys defeated in the clearing" makes the game better.

I actually played it today. It was fun, the Birds are probably the best faction design-wise and they were fun to play. So I like the game, but I think the reason I've never felt too hot on it is the combat system. I just don't find it very interesting.

I also played a game called Soul of the Empire, which is a very unusual game. It's a religious-themed asymmetric "dudes on a map" game set on the year 54. There are four factions (Christians, Jews, Romans, Barbarians) and some interesting player powers. For example, when Jews and Romans fight against Christians, the loser of the combat wins. So there's this very interesting dynamic where you can a lot of troops to fight the other factions but not enough to autolose against another.

Each faction also has an unique deck except the Barbarians who use the decks of other players. And there are two ways to win: Either a VP victory by completing public objectives or fulfill a certain goal (Eg. Conquering Rome, converting X number and having presence in Y places). Quite frankly, this is a real Ameritrash asymmetric game and not the kind of assymetry where you get a little bonus.

The game has fairly low production values and I suspect it, like most Kickstarter games, might be in need of some development. The action mechanism has you roll dice, which seems convoluted and I wonder if the game can hold up to repeated play.

I can't speak much of the theme of the game, since I'm not knowledgeable of the time period and I haven't had enough time with the game. Still, I think it's interesting. There are very few games of this kind, much less ones bold enough to introduce large differences between its factions.
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