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Mycelia Board Game Review

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What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

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07 Jun 2014 13:54 #179948 by stoic
Last night my son and I played 51st State with the Winter Expansion and Gears of War. We sure had a lot of fun!

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07 Jun 2014 15:06 #179951 by Sagrilarus
I'm beating myself to a pulp in Warriors of God. The French have gotten a couple of big breaks and just thrown the English off the continent. Have thrown them out of England now too. I've never seen one this lopsided at the end of turn 5 before. The score is only France +7, but that could be +17 and the end of the next turn, because the English can't generate troops without control, and they have very little of that.

S.

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07 Jun 2014 15:51 #179953 by Msample
Hot battle dice, or English leader epidemic?

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07 Jun 2014 19:58 #179961 by Sagrilarus
You know, this has been a really weird game, and goes to show that leader death isn't the nemesis that it's made out to be. Big initiative rolls has been as responsible as anything else for a lot of the die-off.

The English have had their share of leader deaths, but they also had John of Gaunt live until he was 105 and a couple of others as well. I think as much as anything it was odd happenstance for both sides at just about the time that the English were managing to establish two toeholds, and then a turn with a whopping 8 impulses for the French and 7 for the English. That made for tons of opportunity for leaders to get into a set of big scrums and the sticky rule made for a very big round of battles on four separate regions.

In Normandy there were two English longbow leaders with two longbowmen under them and two troops, who got to roll 9 battle dice. Not a huge force, but a big attack and -- the biggie here -- both leaders were old. So there's not a lot of sense in preserving them unless you can get to controlled territory to transfer troops. That's a waste of moves with four troops in your forces. So instead they lit into a big French force under a young leader to break him down before leaving the board. Go out with a bang. Nine dice, scored three hits which was huge taking out a knight and a troop. But the French rolled three hits back (on nine dice I think) and suddenly the two English leaders had one unit under them. Time to leave! When they bailed the French took out all three remaining and both leaders croaked. Points for France.

Oddly enough in turn 4 it was the French that lost a bundle of leaders due to leader death, but the result of the "French Blob" -- the set of connected French-controlled areas in the middle of the board -- was that all their leaders topped off afterwards. Not so many, but each was now plenty tough, and the French controlled all the ports coming into France save one. With the topped-out French leaders England fell on turn 5. I'm really having to get creative in ways I haven't in the past, this while playing against myself.

Big initiative can either favor you or kill you, battle dice the same, initiative going the wrong way on the wrong turn can put an enemy leader in your back yard (especially England) and frankly a set of rolls for control can turn you into a juggernaut or a 90 pound weakling without too much effort. England had a three-star in Burgundy for three turns and didn't control. The idea that "leader death" is some sort of overwhelming effect on the game ignores a great big pile of other factors that, depending on the configuration of the board, can be just as big if not bigger. The phase order just makes shit happen that keeps you on the edge of control. And I think that's the key aspect of Warriors of God -- control. Having to place new leaders in controlled or neutral countries makes getting landing pads established very important. Choice of neutral leaders can be huge, especially when you try to leave units behind to fuel them up only to have your opponent pick them before you can. You want them fueled, but you don't dare leave too much for them or they look too good to your opponent who lands on the board already in a battle and armed to do it.

This is a game where both players will utter the phrase "oh shit" a dozen times each, regardless of who's winning. I really admire the design. You just can't make long-term plans, and that's my kind of gaming.

S.
The following user(s) said Thank You: JoelCFC25, Dr. Mabuse, Msample, stormseeker75, Erik Twice

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08 Jun 2014 14:07 #179972 by Cranberries
"You just can't make long-term plans, and that's my kind of gaming."

I bet certain personality types hate this game with a passion. Looking at the geek buddy comments on that one site, it looks like Trashers and Strategists both hate it, but for different reasons.

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08 Jun 2014 16:02 - 09 Jun 2014 11:52 #179977 by Sagrilarus
I won't claim to be the world's biggest Ameritrasher, though I appreciate its more risk-driven approaches.

And that's what Warriors of God presents in its phase order. A summary of the post-combat action is this:

1. Raise troops in your controlled regions.
2. Deploy those troops to your current leaders by walking them through your territories, or leave them where they are.
3. Determine which of your current leaders dies of illness.
4. Place your new leaders, selecting some from a common pool.

So you get a bunch of guys out onto the map and you know you have new, young leaders coming in that you can guarantee will live through the next turn at a minimum and likely longer. You want to power them up. But, you need to keep building your current leaders, who may die, and assigning troops to them perhaps pulls them from more favorable locations. So you pull troops to leaders you hope will survive, leaving other troops in locations that you hope to capitalize on. Add into the mix that some leaders could go either way (and grab those troops you leave on the field) at the end and you really have to play defense and offense simultaneously. If you knew who was going to die first, it would be easy. If you raised your troops last, easier still. But you don't.

You need to press your luck and hedge your bets at the same time, and it makes for really interesting gaming. In the old days back when I was a youth in '08 you'd hear people talk about "excruciating decisions" as a good thing, and WofG has plenty of them on each turn. It also has head-to-head combat and a big slice of history built into it as well, so for me personally it's a great fit. Unfortunately, I think "euro" has become much more predictable, much more predetermined with its heavy dependency on worker placement and Warriors of God, which was once considered leaning in on Euro is now decidedly out of it, considered too wild to fit the category.

S.
Last edit: 09 Jun 2014 11:52 by Sagrilarus.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Hatchling, Msample

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08 Jun 2014 20:11 #179987 by DukeofChutney
played Relic with the Nemesis expansion; Its quite a good expansion. Though i wouldn't say it is essential. Like many of the Talisman expansions, it adds extra cards and stuff which is good. Its namesake feature, the nemesis, the player who plays a bad guy is ok. One of the three of us played the tyranid brood lord and basically got beat on for 1 hour 30. He has to see us lose lots of fights and can power up tyranid enemies a bit. Also he can fight us in duels and can fight his own deck of adventure cards to level himself up. Thing with talisman type games is, and relic in particular, is that they snow ball. If your character fails to launch you can just get beat on. If you get lucky early win a few fights, level up a couple of times and then your rolling and most of the time you can afford to mitigate loses and realy cash in one wins. So if one player gets a head he or she can be hard to catch. I don't mind this in a light weight story style game like relic, but it can mean the Nemesis doesn't really pose much threat. My Eversor Assassin beat him in two fights.

Also played a bunch of Race for the Galaxy, with some expansion cards thrown in. Its ok. Im not blown away by it but it is growing on me. I think i still prefer Glory to Rome and Fleet, which feel similar but more interactive. Race seems to be a game where the main skill is just knowing the cards well and thus going for the right build order and discards.

We played a game of GW DungeonQuest too. I fell into the catacombs and got lost. Everyone else died too.

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09 Jun 2014 10:22 - 09 Jun 2014 10:22 #180005 by Dr. Mabuse
Sag, excellent comments about WoG. This should be it's own thread as it would be a shame for them to get lost in here.
Last edit: 09 Jun 2014 10:22 by Dr. Mabuse.

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09 Jun 2014 10:45 #180010 by Legomancer
This weekend it started with Robinson Crusoe, which I have been jonesing to play for some time. I really dug it and had this to say about it.

I've been on a tear about ccoperative games lately. They don't get much play action in either of my groups, and that bugs me, as there are a few I like. When Robinson Crusoe was suggested by a friend, I jumped at the chance, as I was getting to play a coop I'd heard good things about by a designer I really like.

I was not disappointed, either. It's a tough game, but it sticks brutally close to its theme (with a few exceptions -- why doesn't fur help against cold? I'd like to tear down the palisade for wood, etc.) We had four nearly-new players (one had played before), so there was no alpha player problem. On the contrary, each round the planning was more like, "Hey, I can do some hunting, so that will take care of food." or "I think you've got wood covered, so I'll raise our morale and prevent this disaster." The game had its ups and downs; at one point all seemed lost and then we bounced back, only to get wiped out again. The weather dice are brutal, almost too much so. We were apparently shipwrecked in Alaska, and that was our undoing.

It was a lot of fun and a great game. But, sadly, another game that won't get played because, "what's the point if I can't win?"

I really want to play it again. I'm gonna build that bonfire, dammit.

Then I played Dead Man's Draw with a friend. This is an iOS game that had print-and-play files, so we made a bunch of decks. I really dig it and was hoping a publisher would pick it up. One has...Mayday Games. Damn you, Monkey's Paw!

Then a five player game of a forgotten game called Krone & Schwert (Old Woman and Persperation). It's from 2002 and very much looks like it. It's also half-baked and fucked-up. I said this about it on BGG:

On the surface, this looks like a run-of-the-mill standard Eurogame from 12 years ago. Dull theme, drab visuals, but a small number of easily digestible rules. Turns out it's very much a run-of-the-mill standard Eurogame from 12 years ago. You're trying to build cities, castles, and cathedrals so that when there's a revolution against the King, you'll score points. And there will be a revolution against the King. Many of them. Towards the end of the game there will be one every other turn or more because there isn't any reason not to have a revolt against the king, and they will always have 100% predictable outcomes because since the last player who became king got a bunch of points for doing so there's no reason to let him be king and get even more points. The game completely falls apart at that point. And, if you're like me, and were unlucky in the race for Cathedrals (there are only so many), you don't give a hoot about the revolts because even if you support the winning side you'll get 1 point to the winner's 5, 6 or more. Yee-haw.

The rules suggest a lot more happening during the game than we saw. There isn't much about this game here on BGG, and I think there's a good reason. The designer probably doesn't think about it too much since he's too busy working on the thirteenthty-jillion meeple to add to Carcassonne.

Thankfully I enjoyed Crusoe so much that it more than made up for Krone & Schwert.

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09 Jun 2014 11:09 #180015 by VonTush
Crusoe really showed me what a co-op could be.

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