What KICKSTARTER(S) are you BACKING and WHY?

I saw Darkpass but they have shipping problems outside the US (they haven't got too many good deals) plus I have a new Sub Terra that is quite similar plus Machina Arcana arriving so that covers me in that particular theme.

I am trying to ignore most KSers as from Dec 2020 to June 2022 I have/had a dozen arriving, and most are not small, so there is enough gameplay there to keep me going to 2025 probably, and have been doing very well at it - but Mythic Battles: Ragnarok may be the one to break it.
It's not a game I would usually buy, 2-player or team battle, but after watching play-thrus it does look fun and with interesting rules/mechanics plus the 2v2 would work with us.

Nothing else has really tempted too much although upcoming ones The Witcher and Rainbow Six will see me looking carefully ....
Oh, and also the upcoming Gaijin by Awaken Realms Lite ... bugger

southernman wrote: I saw Darkpass but they have shipping problems outside the US (they haven't got too many good deals)

They did just drop the estimated US shipping to $20 from $30 but I suspect it'll end up back towards the latter in the pledge manager. They say the game is just heavy but they're trying to find better deals. I have a feeling this won't fund until it comes back later with 50 minis and a dice tray even though it doesn't use dice. Too bad.

The Monster Hunter World board game KS just went live. I have been following along with their blog updates, and I think this one looks pretty good. I'm backing at the core level and adding the extra hunters. The "All-In" seems insane to me. Too expensive and frankly too large.

www.kickstarter.com/projects/steamforged...world-the-board-game

hotseatgames wrote: The Monster Hunter World board game KS just went live. I have been following along with their blog updates, and I think this one looks pretty good. I'm backing at the core level and adding the extra hunters. The "All-In" seems insane to me. Too expensive and frankly too large.

www.kickstarter.com/projects/steamforged...world-the-board-game

It's a bit over-priced for what you get for me, unless you really love super nice miniatures, and adding more content just makes it seem still over-priced plus the game play variety isn't there for me - hunt a monster, hunt a different monster, hunt a bigger monster ...
Looks great and I'm sure it has a big market and will do well. I took Mythic Battles: Ragnarok instead, cheaper and more content plus different scenarios provided for the variety I'd like although being PvP will also provide that variety.

Despite still liking how the game looks mechanically, I canceled my Monster Hunter World pledge. They definitely did NOT properly incentivize me to not wait for retail. Rather than traditional stretch goals, they did "daily unlocks" which completely eliminated their risk of having to spend too much on "freebies". With the exception of two of these unlocks, NONE of them added to gameplay and some of them were literally useless, such as a poogie miniature. I've played MH and don't even remember this pig. It has no game function.

Anyway, I will snag it at retail, probably for less money than I would have paid to give Steamforged an interest free loan. The campaign is currently sitting at 4.5 million dollars.

Legit question, has Steamforged released a good game to date? I've heard nothing good about either Dark Souls or Horizon, their previous big mini heavy licensed Kickstarters. It boggles me that they're getting another bite at the apple, and that so many people are throwing piles of money at them at this point.

Charlie liked Devil May Cry. Some people say Resident Evil 2 was good, although the tiles looked practically unreadable from the photos I saw. I have never played a Steamforged game, so I was of course wary about Monster Hunter. I read all of their blog entries, and as I said, the way the game plays actually looks good to me. But that is not enough to get my KS money... the campaign has to be run in a certain way, and this one was not.

My opinion:

Dark Souls - Terrible
Shadow Games - Terrible, it's even scrubbed from their site
Resident Evil 2 - Terrible components, very average gameplay
Horizon Zero Dawn - Mediocre with some issues, components are decent
Devil May Cry - Pretty good overall, components are decent but the gameplay is borderline great. If the core box had another boss and the game was just slightly shorter, it would be excellent.

Those are the ones I've played. I just realized they have a story-driven Gears of War card game in development. Weird.

Guild Ball was pretty good, but they eventually ruined that and literally nuked the entire game, so I guess at one time they knew how to make a game but it appears as though those days are long gone.

The only thing I've been tempted to back recently was Factory Funner, but I decided to wait for retail. I think I've got 4 KS pending, and 3 of them are delivering like this week

Edit: I do kinda want to get some Bloodborne expansions that hit retail, but I've resisted so far. I really like BB though, so I'll probably grab one of the big box ones eventually if only to have a different tile set.

Is Bloodborne a loot game at all? Or do you pretty much always have what you start with?

hotseatgames wrote: Is Bloodborne a loot game at all? Or do you pretty much always have what you start with?

The game is organized into campaigns, each of which has 3 linked chapters. You choose your hunter weapon at the start of the campaign, and it doesn't change through the end of those 3 chapters. You do draw single use consumable cards as loot from various things, and you level up by buying new cards for your action deck. You start with a deck of 12 action cards, and each turn you draw 3. When you level up you buy better cards, and replace your starter cards with them. So you always have 12 cards, but they get better as you go. You buy them from a face up market of 4 cards, and there's a giant deck of them. Generally if you do well in a campaign you will have upgraded most or all of your cards by the end of it.

Just canceled my pledge for CMON's Marvel United X-Men. I got the retail version of Marvel United on Amazon for like $15 and my 11yo and I have been having a fair amount of fun with it. Deadpool and the various X-Men related characters are his favorite Marvel heroes so this seemed like a slam dunk until it kept growing bigger and bigger. Before I knew it, we were looking at $200 plus to get the core box, the Days of Future Past and Deadpool expansion boxes, the Spiderverse box from the first game, and a couple of component upgrades.

The component upgrades are what really killed it for me. $25 to have thicker cardboard components as opposed to the paper thin bullshit that comes in the retail box. The fact that they made that a paid extra as opposed to a general upgrade after already raising almost $3.5m pissed me off enough to come to my senses and decide to stick with the retail box of the original game that we already have. It's fun enough for $15, but it's truly nothing special and if I dropped $200 plus on the sequel LESS SHIPPING, I would have been really disappointed in myself. Glad I checked myself on this one.

It’s easy to get caught up in them.

I'm still putting in for the X-Men campaign, but not opting for any of the extra cardboard or plastic bits. The minis are my main focus anyway as they are a joy to paint. And when looking at the dollars per mini, it's decent. If painting figs is not someone's hobby, I don't think the ROI is there for the game itself.

I did recently back The Alleyman's Tarot deck. A set of 133 mismatched cards to make a completely unique deck. My wife reads tarot and this seemed like a pretty interesting set.