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Kevin Klemme
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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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16 Mar 2019 23:42 #293937 by DarthJoJo
Picked up The Mind. I pulled the 20% off gem during my store's St. Patrick's Day sale and figured why not. I had been leery for awhile as the first positive responses I heard to it came from Shut Up & Sit Down. I generally like the guys but couldn't understand their enthusiasm for easy Hanabi when they called Hanabi, a particular favorite of mine, "weird, collaborative performance art."

Anyway, it's fun. My wife and I scored level twelve on our second try. It may straddle that line between activity and game, but whatever, we liked it. She wants to play more, and I think it can fit that same role as Hanabi in that its conceit is immediately intriguing and rules explanation and play are fast enough that even if people are bored, it won't bore them too long.
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17 Mar 2019 01:55 #293938 by WadeMonnig
Stop the presses! Cthulhu Wars is legit fantastic! What? Everyone already knew that? Oh...carry on then.
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17 Mar 2019 10:27 #293941 by Colorcrayons

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17 Mar 2019 14:59 - 17 Mar 2019 14:59 #293948 by Erik Twice
Played a few games today.

Ticket to Ride on the France map. I know it's a very popular game but I think this is my second game of TtR. It's a fairly relaxed game, it doesn't demand much but it's engaging enough to have a charmful evening.

The Bottle Imp. This is a fun, thematic trick-taking game but it feels very limited in how you play your hand. At a glance, only a couple of your plays are impactful, the rest simply follow what you decided to do before.

Jekyll & Hyde. Another 2 vs 2 trick taking game. The twist is that, instead of playing a card, you can tell another player to play a card of your side. Fun, but I'll probably forget about it next week.

El Grande: I think being chaotic is a large reason why this is a fun game. The rest is that it's well-made, polished and a great example of what eurogame design has done for the medium. Still, I don't think it's really that interesting or engaing. It's a good game but I do not feel it's great, unlike most.
Last edit: 17 Mar 2019 14:59 by Erik Twice.
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17 Mar 2019 16:29 #293951 by southernman
Haven't spent much time remembering what happened in the games I've been playing but I have been getting a reasonable amount in since the beginning of the year:

Descent: Journeys in the Dark (Second Edition) (9)
BANG! The Dice Game (8)
Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game (6)
DC Comics Deck-Building Game: Heroes Unite (5)
Descent: Journeys in the Dark (Second Edition) – Road to Legend (5)
Gears of War: The Board Game (5)
Warhammer Underworlds (3)
Doom: The Boardgame (2)
Luchador! Mexican Wrestling Dice (2)
Risk Legacy (2)
Defenders of the Last Stand (1)
DungeonQuest Revised Edition (1)
Fury of Dracula (third/fourth edition) (1)
Runebound (Second Edition) (1)
Runewars (1)
Secrets of the Lost Tomb (1)
Spartacus: A Game of Blood & Treachery (1)
World of Warcraft: The Boardgame (1)
Cthulhu: A Deck Building Game (1)
Mage Knight Board Game (1)
Railways of the World (1)
Root (1)
Arctic Scavengers (1)
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17 Mar 2019 20:49 #293955 by Da Bid Dabid
Played Root for the first time tonight. I walked away thinking... it was alright but overall expectations from last year's hype may have resulted in a bit of disappointment. I was Woodland Alliance and won by gambling to get 2 VPs via combat in what would be my final round and just making it. Lots of layers are going on so would need to play more to really get a feel for it, but can think of a whole lot of games I'd rather play than those extra plays of Root. Also, I couldn't find a dedicated thread on this site to the game. Did I miss it?

Afterward, one player left so we played Luchador! a bunch. Still great.
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17 Mar 2019 21:15 #293957 by DarthJoJo
Three more solo games in on Vengeance and I’m still not entirely sure where I stand on it. I’m much more solid on the rules now, and there’s been an attendant ramp difficulty. This is definitely a good thing as I have to make hard choices now in my runs on the gangs, how hard to push and when to bug out.

The game as a whole, though? It kind of feels like it’s at war with itself. You have three distinct phases with different mechanics (card drafting, dice drafting, rpg-style upgrading, dice-driven combat), but two of these phases and their associated mechanics are built on a push-your-luck foundation. Do you go wide in the Wronging to take advantage of any gang you find or build sets for point efficiency? How much hurt can you afford to take in pursuing a zone’s boss during Combat? Which is fine, but it feels like too flimsy a base for a game that can easily push two hours not including the considerable setup and tear down.

It’s not top ten material, maybe not even top twenty, but I think it’ll stick around. The theme and production are so different from what’s out there, and it still creates these visceral, cinematic moments. My Australian trucker, finally having taken vengeance on the boss biker that put a bullet in her husband turned her attention on the grunt hiding in the side office who had just watched her cut through the rest of the gang in two perfect rolls. Cut to black. It doesn’t always hit, but when it does, it explodes like the Fourth of July.
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17 Mar 2019 22:10 #293961 by Jackwraith

Da Bid Dabid wrote: Lots of layers are going on so would need to play more to really get a feel for it, but can think of a whole lot of games I'd rather play than those extra plays of Root. Also, I couldn't find a dedicated thread on this site to the game. Did I miss it?


There are a LOT of layers to Root. I've found it's one of the games that virtually requires multiple plays to get the best from it; much like Dune. You also always want four players, much like always wanting six in Dune. There's a lot of texture to the card play and to how the different factions interact with each other, especially if you're playing with the expansion. My first play left me very unexcited, as well. Subsequent tries have ramped up the interest substantially. I still wouldn't number it among my favorite DoaMs (pretty much anything by Michael Oracz is occupying that spot, at the moment) but it's on the list that I'd gladly play if someone offered.
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18 Mar 2019 08:13 #293964 by Vysetron
I'd hesitate to call Root a DoaM because only about half the factions really play that way. It's looking like that ratio is going to stay true with the new expansion too. It's more COIN/wargamey than it is traditional DoaM.

My first session of Root felt like a really involved game of Kill Doctor Lucky. We were just beating on whoever looked like they were winning at any given moment and doing little else. Each subsequent play has just been better and better. There's a lot to unpack with each play.
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18 Mar 2019 08:42 #293965 by Jackwraith
I wouldn't. DoaM is having more dudes in a particular area than the other guy(s). That's expressly one of the more important rules in the game (Who rules the clearing?) and is key to activating many of the plays of the different factions. Just because the Vagabond is a solo operator and the Alliance wields a lot of influence through tokens, rather than dudes, doesn't mean that it's not an area control game based on how many warriors you have in said area; not to mention having cards that you can acquire that make your dudes better. That's a DoaM, by almost any estimation.
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18 Mar 2019 08:46 #293966 by Vysetron
Area control =/= DoaM, at least not all the time. Game taxonomy is ridiculously loose though so I'm not going to debate the point.

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18 Mar 2019 11:07 #293971 by Legomancer
This weekend was Conn Con, and here was my play list. I'll have more to say later. Asterisk means it was new to me.

FRI
The City (German version) x2 * - like this better than Jump Drive, glad I backed the English KS
Jump Drive
Metro - first play in 13 years. I discovered this game was Carcassonne before I discovered Carcassonne was Carcassonne (that is, it presents itself as a game of building things, but it's really a game of preventing anyone else from building anything)
Villa Paletti *
Mundus Novus
Via Nebula *
Neom *
Franchise * - when retheming, try to make sure the theme makes sense
Illimat *
Super Motherload

SAT
Tyrants of the Underdark * - glad this got talked up recently
Cahoots *
SpaceCorp * - waffling on buying this
Sid Meier's Civilization: New Dawn (taught)
Round House * - ugh

SUN
CVlizations
Three is One Too Many *
Cahoots
Yellow and Yangtze (taught)
Medici: The Card Game
The following user(s) said Thank You: southernman, Jackwraith, Frohike, Colorcrayons, GorillaGrody, Vysetron

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18 Mar 2019 14:07 #293994 by southernman

Da Bid Dabid wrote: Played Root for the first time tonight. I walked away thinking... it was alright but overall expectations from last year's hype may have resulted in a bit of disappointment. I was Woodland Alliance and won by gambling to get 2 VPs via combat in what would be my final round and just making it. Lots of layers are going on so would need to play more to really get a feel for it, but can think of a whole lot of games I'd rather play than those extra plays of Root. Also, I couldn't find a dedicated thread on this site to the game. Did I miss it?

Afterward, one player left so we played Luchador! a bunch. Still great.


I'm in the same boat on Root, I just played it the once but I didn't enjoy the faction I played (the Birds) and I didn't see anything in the other factions that interested my to try, it just isn't my type of fun. It is a very clever and well built game and the animal factions look great - but not for me.

And I'm in the same boat for Luchador as well, recently discovered it and great fun

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18 Mar 2019 16:20 #294002 by Virabhadra

WadeMonnig wrote: Cthulhu Wars is legit fantastic! What? Everyone already knew that?


The Petersen Games guy at GAMA last week demo'd The Ancients faction, but didn't say anything about when the rest of the line would be back in stock. Some people complain about the spellbook orders being rote but we haven't had that issue yet and it seems easy to mitigate with the number of other factions/GOOs/boards/options you can swap in from the considerable expansion material. Even out of the box, it is legit fantastic.
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