What KICKSTARTER(S) are you BACKING and WHY?

Yikes. I can see why Wehrle and several others took the offered money for backerkit's kickstarter competitor instead.

I am leery of reading one bad experience from one side about Gamefound and drawing any conclusions from it. AWAKEN REALMS is behind it AFAIK and I've backed several projects without issue. I suspect from a publisher point of view the appeal of Gamefound or Backerkit is a combination of lower fees as well as a platform that tailored for boardgames as opposed to the one size fits all model of Kickstarter.

New Red Dragon Inn Battle for Greyport expansion I've put in for. I'm taking the opportunity for the all in to get all the Battle for Greyport stuff.

I received a replacement board from Mayday today. This one's playing surface is smooth and without issue. While getting a board with issues was a huge bummer and the initial correspondence was concerning, at the end of the day they made it right at no additional cost to me.

www.kickstarter.com/projects/ludically/r...d-fall-0/description

4X game by the same designer of Earth Reborn/Archipelago. I'll wait for other people to play it and let me know if it's good but I'm curious. It's also very expensive.

www.kickstarter.com/projects/skellig-gam...-fight-for-democracy

By the same designer of Watergate. Looks interesting (opinions may vary on this front) but also very very expensive; does the whole board really need to be dual layered? I can trust most of my friends to not bump the table and the ones I can't won't be sitting down to a 4 hour game with me. I appreciate the no bullshit approach to shipping costs though. Definitely not going in for it at that price.

Thanks to the variety of every available actions, you'll be lead to an intricate action planification each turn.

I do love a good intricate action planification.

Planification also jumped out at me. Ugh. Boelinger does always intrigue me. Earth Reborn was such a feat.

That is a very tempting kickstarter. I love crazy games like that.

If it's good, it'll get another kickstarter with an expansion. I'll wait and try it when it's done.

sornars wrote: By the same designer of Watergate. Looks interesting (opinions may vary on this front) but also very very expensive; does the whole board really need to be dual layered? I can trust most of my friends to not bump the table and the ones I can't won't be sitting down to a 4 hour game with me. I appreciate the no bullshit approach to shipping costs though. Definitely not going in for it at that price.

Watergate is cool as hell and I LOVE the Weimar theme, especially given current political realities, but it's not $123 cool.

Jackwraith wrote: ... but it's not $123 cool.

Your casual conversion of EUR to USD is accurate and painful.

In other crowd funding news, I found this feature by Gamefound mildly interesting:
gamefound.com/blog/post/securing-your-pledge-in-unstable-times

It has to be opted in to by the creator but it provides a form of insurance in which you're guaranteed a refund if shipping costs exceed the forecasts by more than 10%.

The CMON Dune War for Arrakis KS launches this week. As much as I despise CMON’s business model, the combo of theme coupled with the design chops of the WotR team will likely push me over the edge. Will be interesting to see how they do stretch goals etc .

Rules posted: resources.cmon.com/Dune-WIP-Rulebook.pdf

Ugh. 2-player. I have so many 2-player wargames that just don't see enough daylight, I can't go in for another one. (This being said with the caveat that I'm actively not seeking any more games of any kind and haven't been for a while.)

I watched a TTS playthrough vid of Dune and I must concede my enthusiasm has cooled a bit. It doesn't seem nearly as thematically well integrated as WoTR. It's a 2p game which obviously lacks the diplomacy angle you might expect from a Dune game and there was plenty of hidden information but in general it felt like there were nods to the Dune universe rather than a game that evoked the setting through gameplay. The 3-4 player rules are cute with the cones of silence to introduce keeping secrets (which is very Dune!) but I don't think it's how the game is likely to be best played, much like the multiplayer rules for WoTR.

A user on BGG says the better comparison between this game is The Battle of Five Armies rather than War of The Ring and I think that's probably an accurate takeaway from the single play through I've seen.

sornars wrote: A user on BGG says the better comparison between this game is The Battle of Five Armies rather than War of The Ring and I think that's probably an accurate takeaway from the single play through I've seen.

Just read through the first half of the rulebook and I'm seeing a lot of similarities to BotFA, though I wouldn't go so far to call this a Dune re-skin of that title. The ornithopters remind me of the Bats or Eagles, they both have a progress track for the good guys that unlocks leaders. But yeah, agree this doesn't have the same vibe as War of the Ring. I really shouldn't pick this up, as I can't even get BotFA to the table, but I probably will...

Jackwraith wrote: (This being said with the caveat that I'm actively not seeking any more games of any kind and haven't been for a while.)

Same here. I think that my FOMO eventually became FOST (Fear Of Shelf Toads), probably some time after I joined a local Facebook group that simply buys, sells, and trades board games. Quite a few of the games for sale are Kickstarters with shovelware expansions. Some of the sales posts feature two or three dozen different games, all captured in a single crowded photo.