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Mycelia Board Game Review

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07 Apr 2019 09:24 #295109 by DukeofChutney
Moved house and my house mate is amenable to games. So far we've played two games of Survive and one of Ascending Empires, all with 3 players. Survive with the kraken expansion makes scores pretty low but remains a hoot. I cruised to w in in ascending empires being the more experienced player.

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07 Apr 2019 10:53 - 08 Apr 2019 00:00 #295110 by RobertB
Yesterday my brother and I went to a small game convention in Dayton ( Daycon ). We played:

Love Letter - while waiting for a friend to join us we played L5R Love Letter.

Lords of Waterdeep - My brother had never played a worker placement game before, and you can learn this one in five minutes. He hit on the "Play a million Intrigue cards" strategy, while I tried the "Who cares about Intrigue cards" strategy. His worked out better than mine, and he won going away,

Star Trek: Ascendency - This was a 5 player game, on a four-hour clock. I played Romulans, and my brother played Cardassians. The moderator had made the interesting decision of skipping the turn-order auction when our systems were connected. I had a shitty start, but was doing what I thought was okay. Then I looked up, and I saw that my brother was two turns from winning, and had blocked off his systems to keep us out. However, I had the Romulan cloaking tech. In the turn before he got the "neutralize Romulan cloaking" tech activated, I took his homeworld and the system with his only Starbase. So much for his victory, but what are brothers for? The moderator decided the timed win conditions were, "Most Ascendancy tokens, must have home system." That gave the Federation the win.

Blood Rage - This was a 4-player scheduled event. My brother had never played, and I had played it once, two years ago. I was able to get enough points for returning the dead from Valhalla and quests to squeak out a three-point win, 103-100. My brother liked it, and we'll probably play it again at out local game club sometime.

7 Wonders: Duel - Neither of us had played this before, although I had played 7 Wonders. I think I was getting punchy, because he ended up with all the resources, and I ended up with jack shit. At one point he pulled the Science token that gives all of his Wonders the "Play Again" effect. So he then picked up all of the rest of the Wonders in a single turn, which gave him enough Military to win.
Last edit: 08 Apr 2019 00:00 by RobertB.
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07 Apr 2019 13:11 #295112 by Jackwraith
A 5-player Ascendancy game followed by a game of Blood Rage? I am officially jealous.
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07 Apr 2019 14:52 #295115 by mads b.
I met up with a friend at the board game café in Copenhagen. It's the first board game café in Denmark and it's an awesome place. It's huge and it's almost always full of people playing everything from Parchesi and Monopoly to new prototypes and hardcore euros.

We started out with Battle For Rokugan which is sort of like Game of Thrones lite. You playce order tokens face down every turn and use them to attack, defend and sometimes change the map a bit by for instance making a region un-attackable for the rest of the game. The big difference is that you draw a hand of order tokens each turn which then also work as your units. So you don't have stacks of dudes on the map, but it's still very much a DoaM game. It runs for five rounds, scoring is handled at the end with each region giving points, points for having all the regions in a given territory and points for secret missions. So it felt like you didn't have a lot to fight for in the first rounds since you don't go for muster points or something like that. But if you hold a territory you get a bonus card with a pretty powerful ability, and gunning for those is definitely one of the ways to win. It wasn't perfect as a two player game, but it's fast and fun and I think it will work really well with four or five players.

We then tried The Quest for El Dorado which is a nice looking deck builder by Knizia. But not just a deck builder since you have to use your cards to race across a map to reach El Dorado. With two players you control two explorers each and it works like a charm. My friend managed to block one of my explorers at a crucial moment and won the game as a retaliation for my chrushing victory in Battle for Rokugan. While this is not something I would invite the friends over to play because it's only an hour long game and doesn't have that much story, it would work perfect as the second game of the evening. Or when the kids are just a little bit older. It's really good, and I especially like how the deck building is used for something on a map so you get the spatial aspect also.

I then convinced him to try My Little Scythe which I've considered buying for the kids. It has gotten a lot of good press, and it definitely looks gorgeous. But at the same time it's waaaaay to big for a game that's pretty fast. The idea is that you use your seekers (nice looking minis) to walk around on hexes, get into pie fights (sic!), generate apples and gems and maybe solve some quests. It's pretty darn sweet, but it's also kinda boring. You win by getting four trophies, but the thing is most everything will give you a trophy. Have three magic cards you mostly use for pie fighting in your hand - gain a trophy. Have seven pies - gain a trophy. Buy two upgrades - gain a trophy. Move stuff to the castle - gain a trophy. So it doesn't really feel like a game about doing something relating to the story, but mostly just like a game about getting trophies by doing game actions. Admittedly I think you'll have more resources on the board, more fighting for them and a more dynamic game with more players, but it just felt kinda lame. So I will not be buying that one.
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07 Apr 2019 14:58 #295116 by Jackwraith
Battle for Rokugan is much better with more players. It can often feel like it's based on the luck of the draw of the bonus cards, but even moreso when there's just two of you. Having four people shifting around on the map makes it feel much more even.
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07 Apr 2019 18:17 #295119 by Erik Twice
I'm a bit mixed on Battle for Rokugan. On one hand, I like the system. On the other, it's one of those games where it's impossible to get ahead or behind. Doing well ALWAYS comes at the expense of doing poorly somewhere else. It's like those eurogams with "tracks" where the leader gets +1, the trailing player -1 and it's impossible to do well in all.

I find that quite frustrating.

I played Terra Mystica and yeah, it's a typical euro in many ways but I like the mechanics. If instead of the "elemental tracks" and the weird power points you had a mechanic that interacted with the board, this could be a great game. I liked it enough to check it out on the iOS store. It seems the kind of game that I would enjoy playing on the go or to kill time. Do you guys know how is it? It's 11€ and I can't spend that much without being sure.

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08 Apr 2019 08:37 - 08 Apr 2019 08:48 #295126 by Jexik
In anticipation of the final season of the show, I attended an 8-player expanded Game of Thrones board game event yesterday with some friends. As one of the more experienced players, I was given the chance to play with the dragons and took it. I don't know that the dragons themselves are that powerful (we finished before they reached strength 3), but having so many units and territories proved so valuable in the early game. After the first round of building up power and my navy, I threw my weight behind the Lannisters' bid for the Iron Throne, provided that they "do right by the Vale of Arryn," (who is my out-of-game wife and a first time player). This allowed me to focus my energy on assaulting the Baratheons at Dragonstone on the 3rd turn, followed by pushing for King's Landing on the 4th. From there I popped around the map picking up my supporters. On the 6th round my 7th supporter was hiding deep in my own lands, with no way for outsiders to interfere at that time, so we called it.

The Starks were also a first time player, so the Greyjoys were knocking on victory's door with 5 castles as well. Martells were also new, they really needed to work with the Baratheons more quickly to stall my advance. The dragons were mostly used to pop around the map picking up supporters. One died at Oldtown. The Lannisters (owner of the game) was playing a slower strategy, grinding their way towards a high castle count and avoiding much outright conflict and using their Iron Throne to slow their enemies where possible. The Tyrells (and poor Baratheons) were the only others who had played before. The fact that the Targaryens don't have to defend their gains and holdings also seemed to be part of the issue, but again, I think a bit of diplomacy and deal-making from the opposition could have slowed me down more. Stark also had a chance to kill a dragon early, but chose to increase his other holdings instead.

I do like the game, but it is very dependent upon the group dynamics and player experience levels. It only takes a few small mistakes to snowball out of control. It felt a little unfair, but some people had to go soon anyway so it was about time for the game to end (after a lengthy rules explanation for all the first timers).
Last edit: 08 Apr 2019 08:48 by Jexik.
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08 Apr 2019 10:25 #295130 by jpat
Over the last two weekends, I played two 2p games of Food Chain Magnate with my wife. We lucked out a bit in the first game because the map segmentation meant we could kind of have our own little islands and focus on some of the core game mechanisms as a semi-introduction to the game. I won this first game on a strong final turn with a CFO bonus, but I couldn't catch up in the second game, which was much more conflictual on demand and price, and I spent several turns making almost no money due to salaries and not being able to match my wife's low, low prices. This game certainly offers a lot to think about and some interesting commentary on capitalism, but it's a little exhausting too, and I feel as though, despite losing the second game, I haven't done well in explaining how dinnertime works.

On Sunday we played a game of Terraforming Mars with all the fixins, including Prelude, Venus Next, and (for the first time) Colonies, though on the base game map. It couldn't have been closer, as I won by one point, in part by swiping the Landlord award that my wife had funded and thought she would be well ahead on (and she was for a good portion of the game). After only one play, I'm so-so on Colonies. It's not any more rules heavy than Venus Next and only slightly more than Prelude, but it does alter the frame of the game slightly and is ever-so-slightly fiddly.
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08 Apr 2019 11:48 - 08 Apr 2019 11:50 #295138 by DarthJoJo
Went to my first Game of Thrones LCG tournament since Worlds last November. A little different flavor as it was in the WAR format which creates teams to represent each faction and the teams play each other once, so it’s not a true Swiss format either. I was drafted to Team Stark with a bunch of friends, which was great.

After starting the day 1-2 (one loss being a guaranteed win, if I wasn’t greedy, and the other being a total blowout due to a terrible, terrible draw on my part) I ran the table to finish 5-2 and enter the play-in round for a chance at top 16. I liked my chances in that match if I saw two cards. I saw the first card on the flop. I saw the second card on my very last draw. Blow-out loss. So I finished 5-3 and 26 of 120, and our team took second overall. I had a great time playing a great game with people I hadn’t seen much of since moving out of the Cities.

Then I caught the flu.
Last edit: 08 Apr 2019 11:50 by DarthJoJo.
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08 Apr 2019 19:26 #295165 by Michael Barnes
Res Arcana is my favorite game of the year so far. It is really pretty brilliant- the core mechanism is that you have only 8 cards at random out of 40, and that’s your full deck. You have to buy and select things that complement and augment your set of cards. It’s really unique- very much a reductive, next-level tableau builder. The micro-deck thing sort of evolves the Donald X concept of having modular elements that create unique synergies each session. The tableau building is also evolutionary because it is really stripped down- yet even in 30-40 minutes it feels complete. It is definitely heartier than Splendor, Century, etc. and is more nuanced, but it’s not much more complicated. I love the look of it, there is ample interaction, and it’s just been a lot of fun to play at every player count.

I keep asking “is this is the next big game” because it feels so fresh...
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08 Apr 2019 23:41 #295181 by Vysetron
So it'll be two weeks before you sell it then?
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09 Apr 2019 00:21 #295183 by BillyBobThwarton
I had spotted a few packs of KeyForge at the comic shop around the holidays and finally got around to opening them up. I was really psyched about the game and ended up fairly disappointed. The decks we had felt so impotent and synergies were not very clear. Most turns all I really wanted to do was discard. The theme really hurt it for me as well. Reminded me of the factions in Star Realms - I just didn't care for whatever vague thing they represented. I feel like I'm not giving it a fair shake but it'll be hard to muster the interest in it again when we are surrounded by so many games we enjoyed right out of the gate.

Pulled out Omen: Edge of the Aegean recently. It was good, but having 3 different Omen games (with a fourth about to launch on Kickstarter) all with similar yet different units with similar yet different powers is maybe not working for us. I find myself distracted throughout play by considering the relationships to the other units in the other games. I don't know if it's that I need more similarities, want more differences, or just don't have enough gaming time to justify having the three versions.

I had played Merchant of Venus at a con in February and couldn't stop thinking about it. It being out of print likely contributed to my obsession. I found myself on ebay several times and refused to pay greater than what I figured I would be comfortable with ($50). Low and behold I found someone on BGG letting it go for $42, and not only was it a well cared for copy, it came with foamcore inserts that allow for a really quick setup. I had guessed correctly that my wife would really take to it - it maybe has been the strongest response to a game from her than I can remember. I really enjoy the transition from exploration to leveling up to exploiting the best opportunities. Right now we are sticking to the classic version - if anyone has a ringing endorsement for the standard version I'm all ears.
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09 Apr 2019 03:53 #295192 by Ah_Pook
Classic is the one true way. The new version adds a bunch of stuff that's not great, and takes away stuff that is great.
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09 Apr 2019 08:27 #295212 by Legomancer

Vysetron wrote: So it'll be two weeks before you sell it then?


I got dibs on it!

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09 Apr 2019 08:31 #295213 by Legomancer

BillyBobThwarton wrote: Pulled out Omen: Edge of the Aegean recently. It was good, but having 3 different Omen games (with a fourth about to launch on Kickstarter) all with similar yet different units with similar yet different powers is maybe not working for us. I find myself distracted throughout play by considering the relationships to the other units in the other games. I don't know if it's that I need more similarities, want more differences, or just don't have enough gaming time to justify having the three versions.


I have Omen: A Reign of War: Black Edition: Omega: Final: (2)(2) and Clowdus needs to quit with it. It's a great game but I literally have no idea how the version I have differs from others and I don't care. We don't need another Phil Eklund, who can't stop making the same game over and over. It's annoying and off-putting, which is a shame because there's a solid game there.
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