What KICKSTARTER(S) are you BACKING and WHY?

Sagrilarus wrote:

What was the consensus around here about Thunder Road?

Complete dud for my group.

Oh boy, this could be interesting.

I belong to a large local Facebook group that buys, sells, and trades board games. About 1/3 of the games for sale are highly-rated on BGG, often eurogame classics but sometimes popular Ameritrash from FFG. Another 1/3 is copies of Root or Oath. And the other 1/3 is bloated Kickstarter shovelware games, typically a base game box plus several boxes of stretch goals. I am only slightly exaggerating about Root and Oath.

My local Facebook group has a lot of Kickstarter Game I've Never Heard Of ALL IN NIS $500

It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement, but then reality hits when the boxes arrive.

n815e wrote: It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement, but then reality hits when the boxes arrive.

This was me with Sentinels of the Multiverse: Oblivion. At the time, that box was HUGE, and now it's par for the course. It actually made playing difficult, to the point where it went into the Cellar game shelf (the shelf in the back part of the basement) and was largely forgotten about. I feel like had I just stuck to the Base set and the one expansion I had we probably would have played it more.

I credit that monstrosity with a massive slow down and more discerning eye when it came to backing things on KS.

I've cancelled BH2045. Mostly because I think I'm done buying games a year+ ahead of time. But also, I'm thinking now to just look on the used market (x months) after it releases for the sleeved, unplayed, probably discounted copies.

Ah_Pook wrote: My local Facebook group has a lot of Kickstarter Game I've Never Heard Of ALL IN NIS $500

I keep seeing them on ebay, but it seems noone wants to buy them. At least not for the asking price. I like to imagine it's not FOMO but the next bitcoin.

Cappster_ wrote: This was me with Sentinels of the Multiverse: Oblivion. At the time, that box was HUGE, and now it's par for the course. It actually made playing difficult, to the point where it went into the Cellar game shelf (the shelf in the back part of the basement) and was largely forgotten about. I feel like had I just stuck to the Base set and the one expansion I had we probably would have played it more.

I credit that monstrosity with a massive slow down and more discerning eye when it came to backing things on KS.

Have a friend who's a diehard Sentinels lover. He had everything for First Edition and did the KS for Oblivion. He both plays solitaire and talks others into playing with him fairly often. I am not one of those others. I LOVE the theme. Love it. One of my all-time favorite RPGs is Villains and Vigilantes, even with the original very wonky stat and combat systems. But I don't generally like co-ops and Sentinels suffers from the "lead dog" phenomenon, in which every game has significant actors (those who clearly contribute toward the goal/defeating the villain) and passengers, who toss in a card or a point of damage here and there but mostly watch the lead dogs play. That has been my experience in three plays of first edition and my lone play of Oblivion, a few weeks ago. If it was a better game, I could easily see myself owning Oblivion and playing every angle of it. The fact that it's huge and has all kinds of add-ons and variations is like catnip to me. It's why we always played Arkham Horror with all expansions included, even though the setup became kind of ridiculous (and the game itself was eventually let down by some obvious strategies.) But Sentinels is the one game I've encountered that is the exception to my "downtime" rule (wherein I don't mind watching others' turns because we're all playing the game (even competitive games) together.) If you're playing a lead dog, it's cool as hell. If you're not, you're actively questioning what role you're serving (i.e. why you even bothered to play) by turn 2.

ChristopherMD wrote: I'm backing Baseball Highlights 2045 new edition. I'm glad that it comes with all of the expansions as I'd hate to have to figure out which ones I'd want. Or chase them down outside of this.

So EG is doing a "new" edition of BH2045 with... exactly the same components as it's always had? (other than banishing half the teams) I guess that's a choice. No new art, no new gameplay upgrades, just the exact same cards from 10 years ago (plus a new mini-expansion and a handful of new promos) assembled together to fit in one box. Feels like they're aiming low here.

Yes, it is just a reprint of a popular game with expansions added for new players. If they made a revised or whatever instead then peeps would bitch that they have to re-buy the game. EG can't win either way, I guess.

ChristopherMD wrote: Yes, it is just a reprint of a popular game with expansions added for new players. If they made a revised or whatever instead then peeps would bitch that they have to re-buy the game. EG can't win either way, I guess.

I just figured since BH2045 is one of their more notable evergreen titles that they would put some oomph into getting people excited for a new version. But they went the low-risk, low-reward route. Maybe that's what more publishers will choose since input prices are still stubbornly high, I dunno.

Just feels like a game that was primed for a really nice, new edition with better art and cleaned-up design. I'm not sure how many more copies of the game they expect to sell if it's just the same old same old.

n815e wrote: It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement, but then reality hits when the boxes arrive.

Yeah, I've got a giant box of Black Rose Wars: Rebirth stuff that's been sitting in my office unopened for about a week. While I still quite like Black Rose Wars, it's a lot of work to curate a favorable experience. I was hoping it would be obvious how to take the best bits from the previous incarnation and this new one and build the uber-WizWar with it. Instead it sounds like it's better in some ways, worse in others, and there's no clear "best" way to mix up the stuff and play it. So I now see the whole thing as a burden, and thus it sits completely unopened (I should probably check to make sure I got everything at some point). I'm about ready to just try and flip it and see if I can get my money back. But if I do that, then I feel like I'll probably just use it as an excuse to get rid of the base game, as well (which may actually be a net positive on $$). But this might be the best result, honestly, so long as I don't take a bath financially. My only difficulty is whether I sell my original for likely a profit or give it to my neighbor who I know would love it and play the shit out of it...

My local opponent falls hard for big overproduced Kickstarters. The latest grift was PRIMAL THE AWAKENING . Not surprisingly, it follows a long line of games that look flashy, but utterly fucking fail on UX. Among the games many sins - and hardly unique to the genre of big box fantasy/dungeon crawlers

-A totally blank back rulebook cover, which would have been perfect to put an expanded sequence of play.

- Yet another game that despite having about 15 lbs of oversized miniatures and hundreds upon hundreds of cards, can't be unassed to print a simple 8.5x11 player aid card that explains the myriad different keywords, icons, etc . Instead you gotta dig that shit out of the rulebook.

- cards that have way too much blank space that could be better used to provide reminders etc. For instance, all Blue action cards reduce Struggle accumulated by the monster by one. Other than a sidebar in the ( 100+ plus ) rulebook, this is easy to miss and indeed we did miss it for half the first ( and only time ) we played it.

Unnecessarily large cards - in this case, weapons on tarot sized cards when normal sized cards would have been perfectly acceptable.

Oh yeah - the blurb for the game states "a fully cooperative monster hunting miniature boardgame" . There is no actual hunt; the entire playing area is a circular board with four zones; its a boss fight where you move from zone to zone dodging the monster and attacking it. Wee.

After one play, we packed this steaming turd up and my friend had a glum look on his face of "now I gotta figure out how to get rid of it ".

One day he'll learn.

I remember seeing that one on KS, and thinking it was a cool idea that would have been more palatable if it had standees. They were very lucky to have launched before Monster Hunter World.

Msample wrote: My local opponent falls hard for big overproduced Kickstarters. The latest grift was PRIMAL THE AWAKENING . Not surprisingly, it follows a long line of games that look flashy, but utterly fucking fail on UX.

After one play, we packed this steaming turd up and my friend had a glum look on his face of "now I gotta figure out how to get rid of it ".

One day he'll learn.

Do a lot of people just get swayed by the eye candy and totally ignore the actual gameplay? I ask this because, even in the case of designers that I trust, like Eric Lang, I'd be neck deep in the rules and gameplay examples either at the outset (if they had a PDF available) or as the campaign went along and those things were released. Hell, even in $35 campaigns for Tiny Epic Whatever, I'm digging into what the game actually is and if it sounds interesting. Or at least actually does what it says on the tin, unlike this case.