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Kevin Klemme
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Mycelia Board Game Review

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Outback Crossing Review

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01 Oct 2019 11:36 #302109 by RobertB

Gary Sax wrote: I played one of the most gobsmackingly bad games I've played in ages this weekend while visiting my nephew. Unstable Unicorns. Truly garbage card game.

I get why, but I hate that ordinary people are tricked into playing truly heinous, turgid games by wacky art and meme-ness on Kickstarter in a parallel board game space that operates outside of ordinary hobby games.


I think it's at Target. I wasn't even tempted because I'm still scarred from buying Exploding Cats.
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01 Oct 2019 11:39 #302110 by Sagrilarus
Yeah, you guys talked me into buying Villainous and it's sat on the shelf since the first play.
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01 Oct 2019 12:05 #302111 by Gary Sax
That explains it, I doubted my nephew had done a KS.

It is a bafflingly bad game.

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01 Oct 2019 12:36 #302112 by Jackwraith

Sagrilarus wrote: Yeah, you guys talked me into buying Villainous and it's sat on the shelf since the first play.


Villainous is one of those games that will take more that one play to "get it". Each player has a different goal, so unless you're a Disney fan that's interested in how those goals play out, it might be a steeper climb than for other games.

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02 Oct 2019 11:41 #302135 by barrowdown
I played the first turn of the Barbarossa scenario from The Dark Valley. I just finished clipping the counters and setting it up last weekend. Barbarossa and the main campaign start from the same spot, but I felt like playing through Barbarossa to get through learning from my initial mistakes is probably the best plan. Anyways, the game uses a chit-pull system for the order of the action phase. Reinforcements/replacements, strategic movement, air base, and attrition phases are all fixed, but everything else (movement, combat, logistics (supply), have a variable order. Each side can have one move and one combat per turn where all of a side's units activate, but there are also separate subgroup activations (panzer groups, key generals, etc.) that allow for additional move/attack activations for a smaller subset. The pool of chits changes from turn to turn to reflect weather, coordination, external supply/battle. My initial turn may not have been particularly great as I think I failed to really push forward the German supply depots as AGC really did not activate until after the logistics phase and so was not able to choke out the Soviet units through lack of supply. AGS had the best breakthrough (earning the sole VP of the turn through capturing Lvov), but they are also really scattered after an extremely lucky Soviet counterattack knocked out a key unit that was locking down Soviet supply and communication. AGN did fairly well and will likely take Riga next turn and eliminate all of the Baltic military district. Overall, I thought it was interesting and definitely want to see how it plays out.

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02 Oct 2019 12:29 #302137 by WadeMonnig
Terraforming Mars Two players, two hours- ish, still lots of explaining what I'm doing and why during the game. . Tied my wife 80-80 and lost on credits... one lousy credit.

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02 Oct 2019 17:05 #302148 by Joebot

Jackwraith wrote:

Sagrilarus wrote: Yeah, you guys talked me into buying Villainous and it's sat on the shelf since the first play.


Villainous is one of those games that will take more that one play to "get it". Each player has a different goal, so unless you're a Disney fan that's interested in how those goals play out, it might be a steeper climb than for other games.


I must be pretty dense, because I've played Villainous maybe 4 or 5 times, and I still don't "get it." The last time I played, I was Captain Hook. I spent the entire game trying to find ONE CARD that I needed. I cycled almost completely through my deck. With nothing to do, I just spun my wheels, turn after turn, trying to find the ONE CARD. I never did find it. My son was playing King John (collect 20 coins) and won easily. I never accomplished anything. SUPER FUN GAME.

That's probably the last time I'll be able to get it to the table. My family hates it (and I kind of do too).
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02 Oct 2019 17:44 #302150 by quozl
I don't get it either. Minimal player interaction.
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03 Oct 2019 10:50 #302168 by RobertB

WadeMonnig wrote: Terraforming Mars Two players, two hours- ish, still lots of explaining what I'm doing and why during the game. . Tied my wife 80-80 and lost on credits... one lousy credit.

My wife and I had an actual tie a while back - points and cash.
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03 Oct 2019 11:01 #302170 by barrowdown
We played the final game of Machi Koro: Legacy. It felt the same as all of the other ones. The story was basically nonsense, gibberish. The owner (who is the biggest Machi Koro fan) could see no reason why he would ever select playing a reset version of Legacy over the base game. All he could think was taking some of the buildings as expansion cards and put them in his base game. I think it is pretty much a pass and not worth picking up over the base game.
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03 Oct 2019 11:14 #302173 by Josh Look

quozl wrote: I don't get it either. Minimal player interaction.


Player interaction has a time and place. I used to think every game should have it because otherwise, what’s the point, but I played enough stuff where it was forced and came around to the truth: Not everything needs it and that’s fine.

I played my third game of Dead Man’s Cabal last night. It seems to be getting very little attention and it’s kind of no surprise. It’s very Euro and quite abstract, but it’s a game about being a necromancer who has no friends and decides to re-animate some. It’s weird, and the gameplay is strange enough to back it up. The mere act of manipulating the game’s components (largely different colored skulls) and going through the turn, which might have one step too many, feels arcane. I think that’s why it works so well for me. For as abstract as it is, it still feels like you’re up to some black magic as you pulls skulls from a bag, add them to a track, kicking one off and selecting one to go back in the bag, which then determines which action you’re taking.

Performing rituals to bring people back from the dead is just as strange and takes awhile to really see how it all comes together. You place skulls on a summoning circle, trying to connect the skulls from the “recipe” card for your potential party guests via lines in the circle. Some stay on the board for others to use but one has to go. Each turn has a private and a public action, and given that all players get to place skulls on the circle before summoning happens makes for what is initially a very enticing public action. You’ll quickly find it better to keep summoning for yourself.

It’s a hard one to explain, though by no means is it overly complicated. It’s just very unique, and that’s even without the theme. Definitely the kind of thing my eyes are always peeled for.
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03 Oct 2019 11:17 - 03 Oct 2019 11:18 #302174 by Sagrilarus

Joebot wrote: That's probably the last time I'll be able to get it to the table.


I get stuck saying this about a lot of games. I don't mind giving it another swing, but I have to convince others of the same, and it has to get into the give-it-another-chance queue which moves very slowly, especially after my friends come back from Gen Con with 30 new games between them. I have a bunch of games that need multiple plays to get traction.

I was Captain Hook too, and I was dumping and pulling cards the whole time just to get Pan onto the table.
Last edit: 03 Oct 2019 11:18 by Sagrilarus.
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03 Oct 2019 11:26 #302175 by DarthJoJo
Something new and something old at open play this week. Opened with The Menace Among Us, a hidden traitor game that plays a bit like a stripped down Battlestar Galactica. Your ship is out of power and running out of oxygen, and you and the crew need to fix that. Unless, of course, you’re the traitor and want everyone to die. It was fine. There are unique character abilities and personal decks that let you wound people or keep the ship from exploding. If you want a hidden traitor game with more crunch than Resistance, it can fill that role, but I tend to think Resistance has just the right crunch and balance between certainty and doubt.

Followed it up with my first game of Cosmic Encounter. All three of us were new players, and all three of us bounced off it. There were plenty of alliances, but the weak side would just play a ludicrously high encounter card that knocked out the assembled army. After a first play, I feel like I would have preferred a tighter range of encounter values that didn’t immediately negate the strength of a strong alliance.

I might just be a little sour on these, though, as someone had to read the rules at the table for both games. I get out to open play maybe once a month. I don’t want to spend half my time there very slowly learning the rules from the book and double checking something every turn. Only more frustrated about it as I brought SEAL Team Flix, had read the rules through twice beforehand and couldn’t get anyone interested. So it goes.
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03 Oct 2019 12:02 #302179 by charlest
I like Menace Among Us quite a bit. I think it occupies a unique space between social deduction and BSG more comfortably than Dark Moon.
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03 Oct 2019 12:17 #302180 by WadeMonnig
SEAL team flix is one of the rare games that I read the rules then set up a solo play to fix them in my mind. Even in a house full of people who constantly see me punching and setting up games, seeing it in action really drew everyone into wanting to play.
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