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What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?
- Michael Barnes
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Game wise, it looks very much like Blackstone Fortress. It’s also way more Old World feeling and looking. Not a Stormcast in sight.
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You're right about the colonies themselves - they're pretty neutral WRT terraforming vs. engines. The theory is that the Colonies cards lean more towards engines than the do towards terraforming. So the deck gets thinned out. Bear in mind that we're talking 1v1 here.mezike wrote: I’d say it depends on what colonies are in play. If it’s Titan and Enceladus then yeah, not much good unless you are building to have floaters and microbes. Ganymede, Io and Callisto are straight up boosting terraforming, although Callisto can be a godsend if you have power hungry projects or multiple trade fleets. The other colonies are supporting card based strategies because steel and titanium only really matter for cards and Pluto is straight card draws. Luna is the only one that is a flat benefit in all situations with hard cash rewards. But then all of that is true regardless of player count.
I would say that Colonies generally supports card based engines because they provide incremental gains that help either directly with drawing and playing cards or with stuff that can otherwise be a struggle with random draws (microbes, floaters, animals). The reason why I like it is exactly that, I believe that it adds agency by mitigates some randomness caused by that huge deck of cards.
I could very well suck at the game, but my experience has been that to make terraforming work with Colonies, you have to get a good draw and you have to be relentless about drafting (if you're drafting) and buying cards.
And even then you're going to need help from the deck. This might be Terraforming 101, but definitely harder in practice than in theory.
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The other problem I have is that I am all-in so Turmoil and Venus are also getting in the way, plus there will be another twenty cards coming with the box of tiles set. I'm sure I've lost track of what each individual expansion does because I'm up at a macro level where it's all working together.
edit: in direct response to your last point, there are always standard projects in the mix. As an example, my son and I have played three times in the last couple of weeks plus I've run a handful of solo games and in most of them I've barely touched any cards. Sometimes it's worth it to land an Asteroid just to get that heat bonus, or put down a lake or a forest paid for in cash, and building power plants are often a great investment. It does help a lot to have Turmoil in the game though because manipulating which party is in power can give some great bonuses that broaden your options. I'd actually rank the expansions now as Turmoil > Prelude > Colonies > Venus.
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Advice to the TWBG folks - do not use one of those $20 card shufflers on TM (or any game's) cards unless you sleeve them. They make shuffling easy but are hell on your cards.
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Michael Barnes wrote: Shell I wonder if you might come out better buying it and selling the sprues...those skeletons and zombies are going to be in high demand and this box is the only place to get them. They are freaking awesome and...here’s the weird thing...they are kind of under scaled. Which means they will be great for D&D, Frostgrave, etc. the heroes are a full head taller than they are. There are also some other great pieces that I think have more utilitiy than WHQ- bat swarms, rats, gravestones, pillars, etc. I bet you could dramatically defray the cost just selling the sprues off.
Game wise, it looks very much like Blackstone Fortress. It’s also way more Old World feeling and looking. Not a Stormcast in sight.
I mentioned this in the thread about this release, but the aesthetic on this thing is absolutely off the charts incredible. It's basically my happy place from all the GW properties---the gritty Old World, empire as pseudo-HRE under siege from everything aesthetic.
They were smart to move away from that crusty aesthetic because I doubt it plays well with other audiences but, fuck man, it hits me right.
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- hotseatgames
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Shellhead wrote: and then standing in line at the post office on a Saturday morning.
FYI, a couple of weeks ago I sold a game on ebay, and was delighted to find that I could schedule a USPS pickup online. I set the box on the porch that morning with the pre-printed label attached, the driver grabbed it, and that was that. Easiest ebaying I have ever done.
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- Erik Twice
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I haven't played too much with Colonies but I've actually found the opposite: That it lets you play a much more aggressive game because you don't need as many cards to do stuff.RobertB wrote: There's been more than one discussion on BGG about what Colonies does to the game, the thought being that for two players Colonies makes the game favor engines over terraforming. My wife is a firm believer in that, not from reading BGG because no way will she read BGG, but from her personal experience. For her it's cards, money, and point engines, or lose. I think they're all right, but I'm stubborn enough to keep trying something else, and losing.
I won a game of Colonies not playing any cards until turn 5 or 6. I don't think I could have done that in the base game.
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Talking about Terraforming Mars, I played that massive Giga-Terraforming Mars variant. It took 7 hours and was a lot of fun but I did get a headache. I'll try to write about it this week if my mind doesn't explode.
I'm also not fond of Turmoil. I don't own it and every time I play it I feel it drags. The -1TR economy feels wrong and the bonuses don't seem interesting me to, just tiring. I don't like it.
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- ChristopherMD
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- Michael Barnes
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I like Underwater Cities better than TM, I think. It’s probably not the better design, but I have more fun playing it. The economy is simple and the development curve feels good. Only producing three times is interesting and forces you into some tough mid-era choices. It’s interesting having a more fluid, four cards only tableau- it’s more tactical and situational, and you are never locked in. But it does seem like you are more prone to having bum investments out there. I’ve just played the learning game but I dig it so far. There is no AI, just automated obstruction which is just right for this kind of game.
Going back to Spirit Island, I’m reminded of some things about it I had forgotten...how utterly frustrating it can be for one. How awkward it is for another. I’m not really sure I find it al that fun...it’s definitely interesting, the concept alone is brilliant. But turn to turn I’m not really sure if I’m enjoying it. I’m just messing around with 1 spirit, when I was playing it a few years ago I was doing two and getting all of that crazy synergy/cross-spirit combo action in. Maybe I’m kind of shrugged about it right now because I want more economic concepts.
About to try Paladins of the West Kingdom. Never played any of those Garphill things other than the Raiders of the North Sea App.
Next week- Lost Ruins of Arnak.
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Aside from that, it was a lot of fun! Basically you go location to location in a dungeon, and each location has an encounter to read through and then probably some monsters to fight. The vibe and the writing and encounters and everything were great, exactly what you would expect from DD. I'm not sure how often I'll want to play through it again, having basically 100%d the dungeon the first time through, but it was worth playing at least once for sure.
It's a fun way to repurpose the stuff from the game into a slightly different form, and I really hope they come out with more of these. This one uses the monsters and whatnot from the Lowlands, so hopefully they'll do one for each environment.
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goblinkomegamall.com/blogs/gkocommunicat...ld-at-the-ghostgates
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Really interested to try this with some people soon. The combination of engine building and pick up and deliver/route building is neat, and figuring out when you need to switch gears from engine building to points rushing seems like it will be fun multiplayer.
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- Erik Twice
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