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06 Feb 2023 09:37 #338195 by hotseatgames
Some games over the weekend:
Pan Am - 3 players, the game went well and got pretty cut-throat towards the end. Scores ended 20, 19, 18. I came in second and interestingly enough never obtained a single airport. The person who came in last had like 4 of them. I personally think having more than 2 is a losing situation financially, and if you don't buy them early, don't buy them at all.

Mind MGMT - this was 4 players, I was the Recruiter, having been the only one who had previously played. The rogue agents did not make very good use of their mental note tokens, and I bamboozled them pretty easily. They loved the game.

New York Slice - 4 players, it had been a while but this game is a lot of fun as always. I think it can get a bit difficult to gauge where you stand, but maybe I just wasn't paying enough attention. I lost terribly.
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06 Feb 2023 10:34 #338198 by Jackwraith

hotseatgames wrote: Pan Am - 3 players, the game went well and got pretty cut-throat towards the end. Scores ended 20, 19, 18. I came in second and interestingly enough never obtained a single airport. The person who came in last had like 4 of them. I personally think having more than 2 is a losing situation financially, and if you don't buy them early, don't buy them at all.


Yup. Seen people get too tied up in the airport thing and it may be a frame of mind situation that kinda defies the actual mechanisms of the game. You don't need airports to have routes. You just need the route cards, which you can then dump off to get other routes. Airports are a great way to establish a locus that's far away from Pan Am's expansion and which you can use to generate income for a long while, but if you don't start with the cards in those distant areas, getting into a bidding war for airports is almost always a losing proposition, despite the income that they also contribute to your bottom line.
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06 Feb 2023 13:49 - 06 Feb 2023 13:50 #338200 by Msample
Spent Wed thru Sat at a small gathering that created last year when a small con was cancelled. After last years event was seen as a resounding success,  he arranged this years and I think this minicon is here to stay. Its certainly a vast improvement over the old con.   Total attendance was in the low 20s I think. 




I have no doubt other "cons" of this type have sprung up during the pandemic while larger ones weren't held and I think many will continue regardless. 




Games played, in no particular order:




WAR OF THE RING x3 . Played Michael Kiefte twice, switching sides. My Fellowship achieved the fairly rare feat of moving all the way to Mordor without being revealed. I entered with a large cast of Companions and even though several died to protect the hobbits, I was able to dunk the ring fairly easily .  When we switched sides, Michael's movement while not quite as successful nevertheless saw him reach Mordor fairly unscathed but crucially he was neither able to crown Aragorn or get Gandalf the White - and their crucial extra Action dice. So my military campaign was able to progress fairly well for awhile, but his Mordor Track progress stalled at the worst time, allowing me to crush the last FP Stronghold needed for victory.  My game against Jeromey's Shadow player saw about average Fellowship progress down towards Mordor. I split off Strider to get crowned in Dol Amroth , which was done while a horde of Corsairs appeared in the harbor. While the city fell making Aragorn's reign rather short, his and Boromir's presence resulted in the Shadow Army taking a long time to subdue the city and too weak to even contest Pelargir, which late in the game welcomed some Elvish reinforcements . Jeromey launched an attack on the northerm areas and got Dale and Woodland Realm along with Lorien but was cowed by the large Dwarven army in Erebor . However the hobbits in Mordor made steady progress and dunked the Ring before the Shadow military machine could capture one more VP as it ravaged Rohan. 


A STUDY IN EMERALD x2  . A classic that I have not played enough ( once last year , then a seven year drought til my most recent play ).  In one 5 player game I was a Loyalist, where my Pinkertons managed to find enough double agents to foil some other players while I hid some Old Ones and acquired two Agents that had War Track increases. In back to back turns, I played both Agents together to bump the War Track by 4 each time . Coupled with emptying the last card in two cities ( 4 War Track ) this was enough to trigger the game end as the highest Loyalist. My Cthulu masters were very pleased. My second, 4 player  game as a Restorationist was less successful. While I again  found some useful double agents via the Pinkertons ( claiming one and forcing Sherlock Holmes to reveal as a Restorationist ) my deck was rather weak esp compared to the other players . The unusual thing was that the board was almost entirely taken over both city control wise . All four players were in the high teens ( with 22 VP needed to trigger game end ) .  Additionally, every monster was either hidden or destroyed other than the three low value ones along the bottom row .  As it turned out there were three Loyalists and only one Restorationist. Seeing as how I was the weakest of the three "good guys" I made a high risk play to kill off another Royal ( ie monster ) while holding two Madness counters already. Alas my mind couldn't take the shock of blowing up my fourth Cthulu and I went insane, triggering game end and because one of us was below the long Loyalist, he ( Micheal Kiefte ) won. 


While this is definitely one of Wallace's best games, being one of his earlier ones it has a pretty shitty rulebook. There are some good  concise summary sheets on BGG here: boardgamegeek.com/filepage/102703/study-emerald-player-aid-card .  For Michael  it was his first game, but seeing as how he won he seemed to make out OK.  While the graphics are very thematic, UX wise they could be a lot better in places. I am not sure why in the day and age shit titles can be reprinted, this game ( with essentially free IP ) is OOP . I won't even acknowledge the vastly inferior watered down 2nd edition. 


CHARIOTEER . This was recently released and I had not played before. In short, its a set collection mechanic where each turn you played card(s) where your chariot moves distance equal to the number of icons with matching numbers. So if your cards have 3 Green 6s, you move 9. Icon color denotes type - black for better cornering, Green has higher numbers, Red results in damage to other chariots, and Orange repairs damage with lower movement.  If you manage to play 6 matching icons, you draw a random bonus tile you can use on later turns. 


In short this game fell very flat for me. I started near the back and except for one stretch stayed there most of the game. Other than a few Whip icons ( which I never drew ) players in last are in for a beatdown it seems. If a player has a good hand, they get another tile which helps them stay ahead. Damage hits EVERY player, which not only makes little sense thematically , further hinders the backmarkers. It does have the virtue of being easy to teach, and being relatively short - probably takes 90 minutes at most. 


DUNE IMPERIUM W/IMMORTALITY and IX expansions.  Taught one new player and we were off. This was a weird game in that after the first Tleixau card was bought, the remaining cards available to buy were lame so that row was ignored the rest of the game. The one card was "Twisted Mentat" which allows you to recall an agent, sort of a poor mans Kwisatz Haderach. I got it and the first Swordmaster so in several turns I got four actions. Coupled with Ilban ( draw a card when going to green spaces ) I had good card draw synergy. However a weak Imperium row meant few cards got bought even after several players nuked it to refresh it. In the end my lone card granting Diplomatic Access was not enough to offset my card draw engine and I came in second at 8 VP at game end. 


JOHN COMPANY 2nd Edition. My first play of the new version at a table of experienced 2E players. I knew I was along for the ride but was fine with that as I was trying to get refreshed on the game. Thematically and at its core, its the same game as before. But the changes, too long to list here, while mostly subtle in nature make it a much better game IMO. As a whole, the company is less likely to fail than before. And Deregulation ( where players can go into business for themselves ) is not as herky jerky and the indys do not totally shut off trade routes - in fact the Company can still trade first and even if the indys go first the company still gets half the value instead of none. If you didn't like 1E this isn't going to change. 


As for the game itself, I came in predictably last but enjoyed the experience. I did run the company for a few turns in the late game despite having a low share count; I was seen as the least likely to threaten anyone. My final score could have been a lot better had my Chairman retired with his decent bankroll  but he enjoyed the job enough to foil three Retirement rolls. Highlight of the game was Jeff Burdett's private firm blowing back to back 5 die shipping attempts (  1.7% chance ) resulting in the firms collapse and several of his and Jeromey's board members going to Debtors Prison. Jeromey was able to absorb this but fell short to Jen's Power strategy, where her end of game position on Shipyards and Workshops netted her the 8VP difference between 1st and 2nd place. 




ROOT. Hadn't played in awhile and not nearly enough FtF. My Woodland Alliance spent most of the game as the nail being hammered back down despite my attempts to point out that doing so only let the Eeyrie accumulate a massive Decree. In fact he never went into Turmoil and predictably he won by a fair margin. Stupid Cats and Vagabond.....the Vagabond esp was encouraging attacks on me; he was never attacked and was close to winning as well. Fuck the trash panda......Nevertheless its a good game that doesn't overstay its welcome and I look forward to future plays. 




NEMESIS LOCKDOWN 5 player. After a brief rules summary for the people with only base game experience we were off. My Sentry got his Quest item fairly early, a Battle suit that made him immune to both Fire and Slime. It took almost half the game to fulfill his objective, which was to grab an alien Egg and bring it home. It was the second to last revealed room all the way on the lower level. Other players were having similar success with their own quests; I think everyone pick objectives that didn't rely on other characters dying. That proved our downfall as the Main gate allowing escape into the Bunker remained closed. Worse, the spread of fire went unchecked as players either got a fire proof suit or just ran from fire. The escape pods started firing and soon it was time for people to leave as options were running out.  Unfortunatly the Self Destruct initiation room was also on the lowest level, too far to get to the bunker barring a risky move bar crawling thru the air vents and risking an alien attack. I don't think I've ever seen game go as long as ours ( about ten turns ) without a single player dying . That soon changed as the event drawn late in the game resulted in insufficient Fire markers and we all went down in a glorious firestorm. This game never fails to generate a good narrative and fun time. For instance Jeromey's Xenobiologist made lots of noise as he went Leroy Jenkins all over the place  but rarely encountered an actual alien; when he finally did his Knowledge and Probe arm made short work of it. He also killed the Queen in an airlock. He was rewarded with a fiery death along with the rest of us. 




WAR OF THE RING CARD GAME. I had only played this 2P once, this time was 4P and as I suspected, this is where the game truly shines. Whereas the WotR board game was principally designed 2P with multi player tacked on, this was clearly designed the other way around. I had the Dunedain and Elves . Early game both Shadow players got their card draws increased and we got some early VP . However them drawing more cards gave them more options than we did; I didn't get Elrond and Aragorn til about round 4. I also got Galadriel so I could peek at my top draw deck card before deciding to trash it. Thematically the game is very well done - the Free people can draw cards and sometimes force the Shadow to discard whereas the Shadow player forces discards and TRASHES, which depending on timing can really hurt the FP. Some FP characters are effectively bulletproof ( Frodo ) but by the end of the game, my total available deck was like 8 cards ( out of a starting 31 ) . Our Free Peoples made a go of it but came up short by 4 VP I think . 




I don't see playing this 2P again. Hell 2P WotR games for experienced players clock in under 2 hours at least for me and the non hoopleheads I play outside WBC, LOL. 




UNFATHOMABLE. This is the Cthulu themed BSG re-skin. I had heard good things about it but had not played it. If you've played BSG its a VERY easy and fast transition to learn. The game is supplied with EXCELLENT player aid cards for each player and after a short briefing for my benefit ( everyone else had played before ) were off . As it turned out both monster loyalty cards were in the initial deal. So when Jeromey made his evil intentions clear on a Skill check, I followed suit by using my characters magic ring to force multiple re-rolls to fail, burning their cards and making my intentions known as well. We were doing so well early on - driving all four resources down to half or less before the mid game  - that I thought the humans were doomed. However this game seems to allow them to hang on a bit longer and in the end they managed to eke out a win. 

The game mechanically is a bit cleaned up from BSG and in short from a pure mechical sense flows better. The theme while not as immersive as BSG is pretty decent and the Crisis event card readings can be pretty funny. The UX is also improved as well. Def worth checking out if you like BSG. I'll definitely play again. 
Last edit: 06 Feb 2023 13:50 by Msample.

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06 Feb 2023 22:39 #338205 by Jackwraith
Still on three with the Monday night group, which is starting to get mildly annoying, but whatevs. At least it's a group. We tried Tiny Epic Pirates because I hadn't played in a while and, based on my previous plays, it was lowest on the list for the TE series because of mechanical and comparison issues. The fact that you can only gain Legend by defeating other players or a mid-level merchant in larger games (you have to get through five of them before they start giving you Legend in 3-4 player games) often seems too narrow and we routinely see people winning at level 2 of Legend and sometimes only at level 1, without ever having done anything other than working the market. In a way, that's like some of the complaints in the past about this game's nearest comparison, Merchants & Marauders, as it's much easier to win that game as a merchant than as a pirate. But the latter game has so much story and opportunities to do interesting things on top of working the market and raiding shipping that I think TEP suffers in comparison. All of the other TE games stand on their own two feet/claws/treads. You can make comparisons, but none of the rest are clearly X game stripped down into a tiny box, but TEP basically is a smaller M&M and not necessarily a better one or one that has something that clearly makes it stand apart in the same way that, say, Tiny Epic Dinosaurs has that makes it a distinct game from something like Dinosaur Island.

Despite all of that criticism, it was a good game. It took the others a couple turns to get the hang of the rondel, as it does with almost everyone, but the upside was that they were extremely aggressive once they realized that it was much easier to pick on another player without any deckhands in Cannons in order to gain Legend than try to grind through so many merchants. Unfortunately for me, I was the preferred target for a couple turns, since I'd had all of my guys jostled to Repair by the navy and then got hammered again by both of them. One of them made it to Legend level three by doing that and got the extra deckhand. Both I and the other player did make it to Legend two, him by attacking me and me by winning the fight against my other opponent who attacked me again. Over the course of the game, we had all managed to work the market and sunk enough merchants for enough gold to bury two treasures and, on my last turn, I Explored one of the last tokens on the board, which was the 2 gold I needed to get to 13 and used my free action from my captain to bury my third. That left them both with one turn to try to get their third in the ground, but neither of them had the cash to do it in a single action and there were no Exploration tokens close enough to possibly give them the needed gold. We all got beaten up regularly by the navy, as our rondel layouts were such that we were routinely passing the Ship Line. I think the game does benefit quite a bit from players willing to slug it out, but I'd like to try a game or two with the ghost ship expansion and see if it adds a bit more meat to the proceedings.
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06 Feb 2023 23:58 - 07 Feb 2023 00:04 #338206 by Sagrilarus
[img=https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FoVNVF7XEAEajiE?format=jpg&name=large]

Alright, I give up. It’s more or less impossible to post an image anywhere on this site now.

pbs.twimg.com/media/FoVNVF7XEAEajiE?format=jpg&name=la

pbs.twimg.com/media/FoVNVF7XEAEajiE?format=jpg&name=large

pbs.twimg.com/media/FoVNVF7XEAEajiE?format=jpg&name=large
Last edit: 07 Feb 2023 00:04 by Sagrilarus.
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07 Feb 2023 23:02 - 08 Feb 2023 00:52 #338222 by Disgustipater


The URL needs to end in .jpg to work and websites now days make it as difficult as possible to directly link to images.

Edit - Looks like they have even blocked a direct link (like below). Crazy.

Last edit: 08 Feb 2023 00:52 by Disgustipater.

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08 Feb 2023 12:57 - 08 Feb 2023 13:00 #338243 by Cranberries

Sagrilarus wrote: [img=https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FoVNVF7XEAEajiE?format=jpg&name=large]

Alright, I give up. It’s more or less impossible to post an image anywhere on this site now.

pbs.twimg.com/media/FoVNVF7XEAEajiE?format=jpg&name=la

pbs.twimg.com/media/FoVNVF7XEAEajiE?format=jpg&name=large

pbs.twimg.com/media/FoVNVF7XEAEajiE?format=jpg&name=large


I put the images on imgur.com and then grab the link by right clicking.


The problem is not that we can't post images but that the people who keep the site running are working for free.
Last edit: 08 Feb 2023 13:00 by Cranberries.
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08 Feb 2023 14:59 #338251 by DarthJoJo
A few stone cold classics for me yesterday. Finally got back to Dominion after a few years. Apparently my deck building muscles have atrophied in that time. Got thoroughly roasted under a pile of Copper and Curses from Mountebank in the first game, and then failed to see the power of Quarry into Grand Market. My opponent was looping his deck every turn and buying Colony, so we called it early.

Neighbors brought over Azul in the evening. Late to the party on it, but it absolutely deserves the five(?) sequels. Great table presence, clean rules and you have to watch your opponents to win. Thought I was doing well until I wasted three turns not finishing blue on the three line and came in a distant last.

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08 Feb 2023 16:43 #338258 by Bernie
Finally got back to the table to continue Aeon Trespass: Odyssey . When we left off we were about to encounter our first Lvl2 monster. We die used to jump right in and go Labyrinthtauros. We came in with cold hit dice but hot damage dice. This worked out for us. In the end we lost one titan but beat down the beast. It was much tricker than Lvl 1 for sure. That fight ate up our playtime on day one.

I’m n day two we hit some Doom generation in our adventures and ended up getting into a brawl with the Tenmos. I knew this fight was a thing. But not at all what it was about. Well. I know now.

The fight opened with our tank getting smashed in the face. This led to him knocked down and well away from the fight with a despair and fear. Both things that make it harder to hit and one of which leads to bad things if still there at the end of the fight. The monster turn also left our best damage dealer at nine danger but having put two wounds of three we needed to do at bare minimum to win the encounter. Wounds above 3 lead to better rewards. We proceeded to get really lucky, our damage dealer died, our tank almost died, not the titan but the Argonaut. We may have pressed our luck more if not for this condition. We ended at six wounds. But we needed really high numbers to wound on the remaining wounds and our hardest hitter was dead. So we got while the getting was good.

We were one wound away from getting a Nymph unlock. Some timely crits helped with this. One doing an extra wound and the other, off our first swing I think, adding two break or opening tokens after every hit. It’s a stupidly absurd big deal. All in all we came out of the fight way better than we expected to.

We played one more day before we had to wrap. We are set to advance the main story on our next day. Which should get played tomorrow.
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08 Feb 2023 16:47 #338259 by charlest
You have some guts going for extra wounds against the Temenos. I've fought it three times I think and never managed that.

I have only a few days left, in the very last leg of the first Cycle.
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08 Feb 2023 17:29 #338263 by Bernie
Well. We lasted into the first action of our second turn. Our previous hit let us load what BP was next and we could swing with our debuffed guy at like 6 opening tokens. We had two wounds on it before we took our first action. It was pretty wild and lucky. 3 chain breaking hits. Two from our hardest hitter.

So. Brave. But not overly so. We expected ti lose one or two titans before we did our last wound. We really wanted to clear the fear card. And push for the nymph. But that was too far. We got to look at the BP deck and don’t think there was anything under 5 left in it. And only one 5.

But yeah. We were pretty lucky.

Can’t wait to hear your thoughts once you finish cycle one. Do you plan to do cycle two?
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08 Feb 2023 18:07 - 08 Feb 2023 22:48 #338264 by charlest
I probably will take a long break before Cycle II. I have other stuff I need to get to and this is taking up way too much space leaving it setup, unfortunately. Probably return to it in the Summer.
Last edit: 08 Feb 2023 22:48 by charlest.
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09 Feb 2023 12:27 #338278 by RobertB
Those sample pictures definitely make me want to drag out Lords of Vegas again.

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09 Feb 2023 17:52 #338282 by Sagrilarus
(Lords of Vegas)

We had a great play. Remarkable how often interesting conditions come up in that game. And how important taking risks is to getting your points going. I was in the hunt, but couldn't pull the win. One space short of the leader at the end.

I'm ready to play again!

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09 Feb 2023 22:46 #338284 by hotseatgames
Finished the first mission of the campaign of Tanares Adventures, which is the mega-expansion of Arena: The Contest. If I am correct, a given campaign will represent at least 22 missions out of the 100+ included in the game.

Missions 1 & 2 are always stock so I'm not to the point where anything branches or my decisions make much of a difference. In between the mission there are story bits and you get to make choices that have certain impacts.

You end up jumping around between 3 different books. This is a bit tedious but I think they did it to isolate story bits from quest bits, and to help avoid accidentally spoiling anything. In between quests there is this whole city management phase which I have yet to do. I understand the point of it but I also suspect it will just end up being busy work. There are rules for skipping it entirely if you just want to focus on quests, and I may end up doing that but I'm just not far enough to make that decision yet.

I really like this game; I think it straddles the line between deep tactical crunch and "easy to play" very well. I also suspect the campaign has a kitchen sink aspect to it that is not necessary, but even if you just played for the quests, they are cool and always unique.

I also have to give a shout out to the enemy reference cards. They are not exactly tarot sized but you get the idea; all relevant stats and behaviors are there, and they even have a picture of the miniature so you can find what you are looking for. Super well done.

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