What board games are you BUYING?

n815e wrote: For some reason I decided I really wanted Imperial Assault and traded for about half of it and then bought the rest.

If you want to get right in, there’s an app (Legends of the Alliance) with a fully cooperative campaign mode and standalone raid-style missions.

Or if you’re interested in the competitive skirmish, the IA Continuity Project has updated weaker cards and introduced a whole pile of new units to the game.

Thanks! I’ll check them out.

My wife just got back from a work trip to the US, and she brought back the first Quacks of Quedlinburg expansion. I bought the base game before we went back overseas, and it's actually become a true workhorse in our collection, so the expansion was an obvious buy. After all, we could at least use it for the fifth player.

But I was surprised by how much I liked the other new mechanics. It felt like they were designed to give people a fighting chance when they fell behind, but in the same risk-reward way that the rest of the game embraces. I also liked that it makes scores a little higher, always a nice feeling in a game where you want to push your luck more and more. More plays may moderate my feelings, but I'm quite pleased with it.

DarthJoJo wrote:

n815e wrote: For some reason I decided I really wanted Imperial Assault and traded for about half of it and then bought the rest.

If you want to get right in, there’s an app (Legends of the Alliance) with a fully cooperative campaign mode and standalone raid-style missions.

A vote for the app driven game, it worked very well and the (unfortunately) few available were good.
But after about three starts we never got more than a few missions into a face to face campaign game, we just found that with a reasonably competent Imperial player it was just too unbalanced and at that stage the Imperial player was just slaughtering the Rebels.
A year or two later we did play the Return to Hoth campaign right through but it was won easily by the Imperial player. We, 3 to 4 of us, play lots of games together and while not evenly skilled we're close enough to rule out one player being a lot better than the others - maybe it evens out a bit if you have lots of the small expansion packs added but for the content we had there was nearly always a large disparity between the two sides.

I saw on the SU&SD review that they suggested these imbalances need players to be a bit kinder to each other. I’ve also seen posts where people complain Rebels get too powerful. I think it’s part of these types of campaign games, if they aren’t designed well they can snowball. I think I am okay with it, but we’ll see.

n815e wrote: I saw on the SU&SD review that they suggested these imbalances need players to be a bit kinder to each other. I’ve also seen posts where people complain Rebels get too powerful. I think it’s part of these types of campaign games, if they aren’t designed well they can snowball. I think I am okay with it, but we’ll see.

I'd agree with the first one, the guy who owned the game was playing the Imperials to the max (and having fun), but in the end we never played it after that last effort so his loss. I know when we have Doom previously the Aliens player has always held back a bit if they were thumping the marines - games are for fun primarily.
It is a well designed game and well worth all teh hours you will put into it.

I did play the Imperial as more of a GM because if you’re playing competitively, there are some massive exploits. If the Rebels need to access a console in a corner, just line up a row of Stormtroopers three deep to keep them from walking through. It’s not fun and unthematic.

Don’t play the ISB cards as Imperial. They just add strain and keep the Rebels from doing the fun stuff with their characters.

There are also some huge power discrepancies in Rebel characters. They evened out later with experience, but Gideon with high-level upgrades is busted while the Tatooine characters are total trash.

I played the first campaign (the one in the box not the app) in-person over the course of a year. In typical FFG fashion it's not well balanced for differing player counts. I think you're best off always using 4 heroes regardless of player number. Even then its apparently got an issue that whoever is the first side to win two missions in a row will steamroll the other side for the rest of the campaign. Or at least the game is unbalanced in some way that allows this to frequently happen based on online comments. One of the games that made me despise campaign games. As the Imperial player there were several sessions that I only continued it because my friends were having fun kicking my ass as the rebels. I would have preferred playing something else at that point.

Edit: Just adding I bought it for the two-player skirmish and that didn't disappoint.

Sort of speaking of, I picked up LOTR:JIME. (I just wanted to type that out.) This is the classic hope-over-experience buy because I've never gotten past the first mission or two in either Descent (2e) or IA. This being coop makes it ever-so-slightly more likely that I will this time, but it's probably just an aspiration.

I haven't played it since its initial release, but LOTR: JIME was a pretty enjoyable game at the time. Did some neat things utilizing a similar engine to Mansions of Madness 2nd edition.

My BGG comments on LoTR: JIME:

Great components, rules are pretty straightforward. Thematically.....eh its OK. The scenarios feel far too rushed - you want to hack and slash, but the threat mechanic forces to basically run as fast as you can. Reminded me of IMPERIAL ASSAULT in that regard. The fog of war by not knowing the map layout is offset by the PITA of having to sometimes shift/move the map so it doesn't fall off the edge of the table as it expands. The monster variety is rather limited, although to be fair that's more due to Tolkien not the game. The app is well done and does take care of a lot of the bookkeeping.

Got a copy of Hildegard after seeing it again in the KS thread. I didn't back it because I feared a lack of replayability, but I'm in a different game space now. Beautiful game and looking forward to playing it this weekend. Never played Spires End.

I've given Spire's End a couple of sessions and it's pretty much what I expected (in a good way, lots of Fighting Fantasy nostalgia with some body horror creepiness added to the mix). I still have questions about the lore and will re-explore but will also try not to burn through it too quickly. I think I may have had a freakishly good run with the combat since I've already reached the finale battle on my first run, with several Allies to spare, so I *might* see the "good" ending sooner than I'd hoped for.

We have a service that lets us get things from Amazon, and them someone mules them over to Kenya for a service fee. It ends up being a little pricey based on weight, so in celebration of completing my ordination courses I thought I'd buy some small games and ship them over here. I ended up buying Kingdomino, 6 nimmt!, and L.L.A.M.A.. Short games like that stand a much better chance of getting trotted out at a family game night, and they all represent titles that I've either wanted for a while, or have been curious about given buzz I've seen online.

Always tough to remember to buy for what will get played, rather than for what I aspire to get played.

Yeah, having more or less bailed out on "hobby" gaming, I'm finding that when I do buy a game it is very much more "will get played with family" than "might get played with friends".

Llama is so good, our deck is actually getting a little worn out.

I did buy a game, that Rear Window thing was like $15 on Amazon. Couldn't pass it up.