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Mycelia Board Game Review

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Outback Crossing Review

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What KICKSTARTER(S) are you BACKING and WHY?

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18 Aug 2021 19:13 #325816 by Andi Lennon
The art book 'Acid Vomit' is spectacular. Highly recommended. Let's face it -Dungeon Degenerates is a good game but the art is hands down the best thing about it.
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22 Aug 2021 08:44 - 22 Aug 2021 09:17 #325919 by sornars

Frohike wrote: After playing an alternative campaign starter from one of their lore zines a couple of days ago, I'm still very much into what they're producing.

Andi Lennon wrote: The art book 'Acid Vomit' is spectacular. Highly recommended. Let's face it -Dungeon Degenerates is a good game but the art is hands down the best thing about it.


I know folks were hot for this game when it came out - beyond the art how does the game itself hold up? I just picked up all of Eldritch Horror which is at a similar price point and is in the adventure game space so I'm curious how they'd compare (or is that even an apt comparison?). Given I enjoy the former, I'm not sure I'd have enough gaming time to play both but I've always been tempted since the first Kickstarter.

Edit: I just saw that some folks on Reddit have recently tackled this very question: www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/p41..._vs_eldritch_horror/ . My read of the consensus seems to be a slight preference of Eldritch Horror. Maybe I just get the art book and skip the game...
Last edit: 22 Aug 2021 09:17 by sornars.

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22 Aug 2021 11:13 #325920 by Ah_Pook
The branching campaign in DD is really cool. The style and writing and world building and art and overall vibe are incredible. The actual game is Totally Fine. Lots of dice and flipping cards offa million different decks. Imagine an adventure game, you're 90% of the way there. I really like it, but I also strongly recommend picking it up during their annual 50% off Black Friday sale (assuming they continue to run that). If you're already saturated with the style of game it doesn't do much to differentiate itself, on the gameplay front.
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22 Aug 2021 12:28 #325921 by n815e
I’m not looking to create an argument , but just want to make others aware. The reason I ended up getting rid of my DD stuff was that at least two of the cards have hidden swastikas on them from when the artist thought it was edgy and ‘sticking it to the squares’ by including them in his drawings.
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22 Aug 2021 13:21 - 22 Aug 2021 13:30 #325922 by ChristopherMD

n815e wrote: I’m not looking to create an argument , but just want to make others aware. The reason I ended up getting rid of my DD stuff was that at least two of the cards have hidden swastikas on them from when the artist thought it was edgy and ‘sticking it to the squares’ by including them in his drawings.


Exactly which cards?

Edit: boardgamegeek.com/thread/1659410/nazi-imagery-game-artwork
All Nazis are monsters but not all monsters are Nazi's. In this game a few are though so my Bog Witch will enjoy slaying those ones more is all.
Last edit: 22 Aug 2021 13:30 by ChristopherMD.

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22 Aug 2021 13:31 #325924 by southernman

ChristopherMD wrote:

n815e wrote: I’m not looking to create an argument , but just want to make others aware. The reason I ended up getting rid of my DD stuff was that at least two of the cards have hidden swastikas on them from when the artist thought it was edgy and ‘sticking it to the squares’ by including them in his drawings.


Exactly which cards?

I will be interested to know as well, I have most DD stuff (still unplayed thanks to covid) so would like to peak. And as it actually belongs to Indian religions he may have just been playing around with shit.

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22 Aug 2021 14:07 - 22 Aug 2021 14:09 #325925 by Frohike

Ah_Pook wrote: The branching campaign in DD is really cool. The style and writing and world building and art and overall vibe are incredible. The actual game is Totally Fine. Lots of dice and flipping cards offa million different decks. Imagine an adventure game, you're 90% of the way there. I really like it, but I also strongly recommend picking it up during their annual 50% off Black Friday sale (assuming they continue to run that). If you're already saturated with the style of game it doesn't do much to differentiate itself, on the gameplay front.


Yeah, it sticks to the adventure game mechanisms pretty closely. I just vastly prefer the setting to anything Lovecraft-related. As stated above, the branching campaign (which spans multiple game sessions) is its main distinguishing characteristic, and there's loads of world-building if you start to dig into the lore books, etc. It almost feels like the setting was initially developed as a RPG framework before Eric built a board game around it. That said, even the most gonzo narrative that this thing produces can sometimes get bogged down in the mechanical pace of the game, which can drag in similar ways to Runebound. I second Ah Pook's recommendation to wait for the Black Friday sale unless the vibe of the game is really calling to you.

Below is my more detailed report on the game from my BGG comments. I admittedly gush about it a bit as I was still within roughly 12 months of my first play, so the novel contrast in setting was still a major distinguishing factor for me. That said, I've still only played Eldritch Horror a handful of times and don't feel particularly compelled to return to it, while it looks like yesterday's DD session was my... 24th. :ohmy:

An overworld adventure game in the vein of Runebound, mixed with some Pandemic-ish elements (similar to Defenders of the Realm in that area, I guess), but it's all put together with a distinctly off-kilter sensibility, like they decided to re-invent the wheel and came up with something much more bizarre & delightful.

It inverts the Runebound 2e setup where traversal was subject to dice RNG but "adventures" were a bit simplified & atomic... & honestly kind of generic in that dry Terrinoth style. DD flips all of this on its head.

In DD, the traversal is a binary decision, either Force March or not (skip a road section, but gain exhaustion), combined with a travel mode of “bold” or “cautious" (which affects encounter choices, and being able to avoid/flee), but encounters that have a little bit more substance to them, both in the combat and the Crossroads-esque encounter cards that follow, both of which feel more immersive than the brief blurb & dice/pog toss you get in most FFG adventure games.

The weirder & more entertaining aspect of it is how the accrual of random items, status effects, intentional skillups & decisions in branching missions can lead to entertaining stories that don't just feel like you're along for the ride (unlike the zero agency randomness of a choose-your-own-paragraph style of game like Tales of the Arabian Nights).

Players have some agency, but there's also plenty of cascading randomness (via combat, adventure events, loot drops, etc), wrapped in an overarching scenario goal, and the impetus to keep Danger levels down in various nodes/towns via combat (the Pandemic-esque part).

Some drawbacks: it can take awhile to play and is best realized when playing an entire "campaign" of 4-5 scenarios. It's also very combat heavy, with nearly every other party movement being met with a combat encounter. The combat has an interesting dice system that condenses attack, defense, damage into a single roll, but it can become tiring after a couple of hours solo, at which time I usually just park the game & come back later.

Perks: rich, gonzo setting & stories, amazingly immersive art, & the fun of acquiring & leveling up new skills. It's comfort food for weirdos, or as HiveGod put it "milk for the motherless," and I absolutely adore it.

----

Experiential report from my early days with the game:

Some context. I'm not a Kickstarter backer, so no, my voice isn't of one who tasted the kool aid. I was a skeptic & got the game at retail. I've played a lot of adventure games and this one has been a singular experience.

For anyone who plays adventure games and wants a system that tells uniquely gonzo & evocative stories rather than the usual generic fantasy stuff, this game is a total treat. The art style is fantastic, the combat system has just enough depth to provide some fun decision making during a fight but streamlined enough to not get too bogged down in round-by-round minutiae, and the chain of missions that you play during a campaign (usually of 3-4 games) offers some satisfying branching that will let you play the game in surprisingly different ways at times. It's actually difficult to review in too much detail without spoiling some of the things that can happen, but BGG user Kuhrusty has been aggregating some entertaining session reports here:

boardgamegeek.com/thread/1902715/anointed-blood

boardgamegeek.com/thread/1970122/reminde...exists-and-kicks-ass

The rulebook is pretty well laid out but does require a few revisits as you play for the first time, partly because the game is fairly unique in how it implements some of its systems, namely the combat, which condenses attack hits & misses, defense hits & misses, offensive damage and defensive absorption, into a single roll of 5 (sometimes 6) color-coded dice. Between combat you'll be flipping encounter/event cards, decreasing danger levels Pandemic-style to prevent locations from tilting beyond danger level 6 which causes a Doom timer to increase (& other bad things to happen), leveling up towns to give you more cards to buy in them, using your XP to buy skills & abilities from a generous selection that's always available whether you're in town or not, and generally chasing down whatever objective is laid out for your current mission, though you're usually given a few ways to do it or several different objectives to choose from.

Even the first mission gives you several different choices as the jailer offers to let you out if you'll do him a favor and deliver a sensitive "package" to a friend of his. You can turn him down & fight him, then proceed with the "Loot & Pillage" mission which involves what you think it would, or take him up on his offer and go retrieve what turns out to be a Soothsayer's Head. Yep, a severed head, and it's infected. And even if you do choose to go pick this thing up, you can choose to not deliver it to the jailer's colleague at all (which would award you a good amount of gold) but take it to the place where the head itself is begging you to go, if one of your players is MAG(ic) 7 or a Puritan and can understand what the head is saying. Or you can drop it off with some village elders, who'll task you to do something else with it. If you do decide to pick this thing up, you'll have a 50/50 chance of getting infected. This infection will also direct your choices at the end of the mission, since the affected party member will begin to hear the siren call of his/her new master in the Mountains of Madness... which incidentally will only be accessible to you if you have a status effect (fatigued, poisoned, blessed, exalted, any other f'ed up state) because it's a "metaphysical" space. Not status effect...ed? You'll need to score some drugs in the next mission before trying to enter. From there you can kill or follow this master and... either option carries some cool rewards & outcomes so I'll stop spoiling it. :P

So the "adventure" side of this thing carries some serious flavor and variety. The characters also play very differently, ranging from your more typical magey/witchy peoples, to a kid who can dish out crazy amounts of damage in Lycanthrope form at the cost of gradually damaging herself, to a "witch smeller" who brandishes a gun with swappable ammo types and can, depending on her skill loadout, intimidate Heretic enemies or be immune to the Ambush effect if the enemies are witches/heretics, or can brand them with an iron and remove their special abilities, etc, etc, etc.

And while the butterfly effects of decisions in this game can lead to some entertaining & convoluted outcomes, the decisions themselves often aren't too complex & usually pretty binary. It's often a decision between traveling boldly or cautiously, fighting in an assault or guarded stance (which makes the 5 dice mean different things), choosing who gets a kill, whether or not to fast travel, whether or not to rest (and skillup). These are wrapped in so many paths & outcomes, customizable skills, & lots & lots of combat, that their repercussions become more complex & rich over time as your mission evolves and your characters gain more abilities and effects from various loot & consumables.

Speaking of consumables... these offer decisions as well and eshew the tired "health potion" trope. There are purchasable skills such as Gourmet which allow you to eat your kills. If you can keep it down with a CON(stitution) test, you'll get some healing, otherwise you might get some side effects from stuff like goblin flesh. Conversely, there are also food items such as the Luncheon Truncheon which can be eaten as a sausage or wielded as a pretty damned effective weapon or as bait ;)

Overall, I was stunned by how rich, varied, and evocative this game is. It's certainly not for everyone, in the tenor of its adventures, its art style, its sometimes archaic skill check system, RNG events, and so forth. It's also super combat-heavy, with combat encounters happening nearly every turn unless you're sitting in a town or luck out during the danger card flip. But the creators of this thing clearly put a lot of (oftentimes brilliant) design into its mechanisms and gameplay, which I honestly was not expecting until I decided to check it out for myself. I get a real sense of a living, breathing, intricately weird world when playing this, and I haven't experienced that with any other adventure system.

So... if you're an adventure game fan (things like Talisman, Runebound, or the Arkham/Eldritch horror games), take a close look at this one & lurk its forums[...]. It's not getting a ton of buzz because it's independently published and this game's approach to the genre is a bit unique but I'm personally glad that I stumbled across it. Definite keeper for me, to the point where I may start getting rid of some of my other adventure games. They are no longer in the same league.

Last edit: 22 Aug 2021 14:09 by Frohike.
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22 Aug 2021 15:24 #325926 by n815e

ChristopherMD wrote:

n815e wrote: I’m not looking to create an argument , but just want to make others aware. The reason I ended up getting rid of my DD stuff was that at least two of the cards have hidden swastikas on them from when the artist thought it was edgy and ‘sticking it to the squares’ by including them in his drawings.


Exactly which cards?

Edit: boardgamegeek.com/thread/1659410/nazi-imagery-game-artwork
All Nazis are monsters but not all monsters are Nazi's. In this game a few are though so my Bog Witch will enjoy slaying those ones more is all.


boardgamegeek.com/thread/2321382/publish...-cross-promote-sales

Spider Cider and the Morbad Fighter.

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22 Aug 2021 16:17 #325929 by southernman

ChristopherMD wrote:

n815e wrote: I’m not looking to create an argument , but just want to make others aware. The reason I ended up getting rid of my DD stuff was that at least two of the cards have hidden swastikas on them from when the artist thought it was edgy and ‘sticking it to the squares’ by including them in his drawings.


Exactly which cards?

Edit: boardgamegeek.com/thread/1659410/nazi-imagery-game-artwork
All Nazis are monsters but not all monsters are Nazi's. In this game a few are though so my Bog Witch will enjoy slaying those ones more is all.

Yeah, some minor images on a couple of cards representing evil characters in a distorted land - can't really see how that is promoting/glamourizing Nazis as the 'hero' players, themselves no saints, fight and dispose of them. Next thing we know we'll be told we can't watch Raiders of the Last Ark because they dared use Nazis in them as the terrible villains.
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22 Aug 2021 18:48 #325936 by n815e

southernman wrote:

ChristopherMD wrote:

n815e wrote: I’m not looking to create an argument , but just want to make others aware. The reason I ended up getting rid of my DD stuff was that at least two of the cards have hidden swastikas on them from when the artist thought it was edgy and ‘sticking it to the squares’ by including them in his drawings.


Exactly which cards?

Edit: boardgamegeek.com/thread/1659410/nazi-imagery-game-artwork
All Nazis are monsters but not all monsters are Nazi's. In this game a few are though so my Bog Witch will enjoy slaying those ones more is all.

Yeah, some minor images on a couple of cards representing evil characters in a distorted land - can't really see how that is promoting/glamourizing Nazis as the 'hero' players, themselves no saints, fight and dispose of them. Next thing we know we'll be told we can't watch Raiders of the Last Ark because they dared use Nazis in them as the terrible villains.


Like I wrote, I don’t want to argue over it.
But you are also not representing it correctly.

It’s up to you what your level of comfort is with any particular subject. For example, I’m not selling off Puerto Rico anytime soon; and as a sometimes collector of historical artifacts and a student of history with an interest in WWII and the Holocaust some time ago, I own actual objects from WWII and the Holocaust.
That’s quite different than some middle aged artist who admitted to thinking it was edgy to hide images of swastikas in his art and interview white supremacists for his magazine. Of course, he says he’s come around to seeing that’s not appropriate now and he will no longer do those things.
But nobody is coming to take away the bad Nazis from your games. So that kind of reaction isn’t a welcome response to the genuine issue some people see with someone taking joy in hiding these things in game art.

I regret bringing it up because I didn’t want to get into this again.
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06 Sep 2021 11:17 #326284 by mezike
I've had Club Stories for a while and rate it very highly as being a great take on football (soccer) management in board game form. Ignacy Trzewiczek picked up the design for Portal and has worked on the multiplayer aspect of what was originally a solo-only effort, tidied up with fresh art and readable fonts, and has re-released under the title Eleven. Launches tomorrow on Gamefound , hopefully they will relent on their asshat refusal to ship anything to the UK. Recommended to fans of the beautiful game to check it out.
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06 Sep 2021 11:44 - 07 Sep 2021 11:47 #326285 by sornars
I'm super pumped for Eleven, I look forward to seeing the details unfold through the campaign but the combination of economic game + football is an instant winner for me. Actual matches look highly abstracted but that's fine with me.

I had no idea about their refusal to ship to the UK but they're not alone. Splotter's reprint of Food Chain Magnate has been on my radar but they've also refused to ship here due to not wanting to figure out the post Brexit customs rules. Seems a weird way to run a business. I'm happy willing to pay extra VAT; just send me your poorly distributed games! I recognise that small publishers may just decide its not worth the effort but it's weird that Portal would do the same.
Last edit: 07 Sep 2021 11:47 by sornars.
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06 Sep 2021 12:07 #326286 by Gary Sax
11 does look extremely neat, thanks for putting it on my radar.

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06 Sep 2021 20:06 #326293 by Jackwraith
Been following this since Mezike pointed it out to me a couple months ago. Despite being a lifelong football fan, I never got into Football Manager that much, as I was usually already playing enough games alone. That this can now be produced- by Portal -as a multiplayer board game is too much for me to resist. I don't really need another game, but this ties in two of my biggest interests in one package and has a producer I already respect and games of whose I own and am very positive about.
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07 Sep 2021 11:26 #326311 by sornars
The Gamefound for Eleven is live and while the base box is reasonably priced, there is no info on the 5(!) expansions that are launching alongside it. I somehow feel like this isn't a game that demands five expansions from the get go... in any case, there's a TTS demo available to try: steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2595707475
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