What board games are you BUYING?

Barnes, it was your tweets on LLAMA that made me want to grab it.

Yeah, I'm generally not buying anything these days, but that attitude ("Will get played") is definitely the way to go. I'm so tempted by Imperium: Classics and Imperium: Legends, but I don't have a regular 2-player opponent right now, so they'd just sit on the shelf. Can't do it.

To the Imperium games specifically, if solo gaming is your thing they're pretty excellent and feel like playing against an opponent.

I got both of those, played them solo a couple of times, and out they went. I like the idea of it, but the whole game comes across as half-baked, cluttered, and messy. I can not imagine trying to teach it to someone else FFS.

Solo gaming is definitely NOT my thing so, yeah, even less reason to break my rule. Thanks.

Target has a buy 2, get 1 free deal on games.

The first new game I’ve bought from a game store in maybe 3 years: Cryo. The setting is really cool, the art looks great. I ~think~ it’s a buildier Stone Age kind of vibe.

Got that CRIME CITY MICRO MACRO or whatever it's called. Not really a game (cue disappointed chin-stroking from Eugene) but it's still fun. "Where's Waldo" but actually entertaining -- it has a temporal element to it, where you see a crime scene, then you look a little down the street and you see the perp running away, then a little further and he's running into a building, etc.

It's all cartoon animals, anthropomorphic rabbits and cats and stuff, but a little dark! Drunken lovers quarrel leads to accidental killing, followed by stashing the body and then the perp leaping to his death in despair. In fact there's not a lot that doesn't involve murder, infidelity, or both. Fun times, but use with caution if you play with little ones.

The second one had more family friendly cases if memory serves

Picked up Legendary Buffy The Vampire Slayer on clearance at Ollie's. I've never played a Legendary game before, but it looks fine? Like a totally serviceable workmanlike deck building system... Nothing looked surprising or innovative at all in the rules. My wife is a big Buffy fan so I figured she would get a kick out of it. The cooperative but also someone wins thing is weird but whatever.

WAR OF THE RING: THE CARD GAME.

Or technically, I bought it a while ago as a preorder and it showed up today.

Looks pretty sweet. The default mode of play is 2v2. There’s two parallel decks of locations you go through, “paths” (representing the progress of and hunt for the ringbearer) and “battlegrounds” (representing the military campaign to either crush the Free Peoples, or distract the Shadow from the Ring, respectively). You put various cards (characters, armies, artifacts) to battle at the paths and battlegrounds. Victory means you get points. You win if, at the end of the journey, you have more points. Or if you ever exceed the other side by 10+, auto-win.

A pretty abstracted way of dealing with the sprawling map of the board game version, but it still has the progression of the path (they come out in a rough order) and looks to present the tension of the original with the cat and mouse of pressing towards Mordor vs. threatening military victory.

The core mechanic is card cycling; in order to play a card you must discard one. Defeated cards are removed from the game, which is crushing as your options become gradually winnowed and desperate. Shades of Flamme Rouge, as you start with the best possible deck and are barely hanging on at the end.

Should get it to the table this weekend. More then.

Yeah I just got my copy as well, may get in a play this weekend. I photocopied the glossary in the back as player aids ; the game rather annoyingly uses "thematic" terms like Forsake instead of Trash, or Cycle vs Discard like just about every other fucking card game out there. Small thing I know but its just stupid design arrogance that interferes with picking up how to play the gamre.

Hmm, I have the opposite reaction. I mean there was a minute where I was like “what the fuck is forsake?” but:

- it’s not like “trash” is meaningful for any reason other than custom and tradition, it’s not like you’re literally throwing the card in the trash after all.

- if you don’t want to wallow in theme while playing a Tolkien game, there’s honestly better games out there. I mean, for 2p wargames, there’s a lot of games that are better, from a pure design perspective, than WOTR. More balanced, deeper, whatever.

So it doesn’t bother me yet, but the real test will be in play. If the new terms are more trouble then they’re worth, then I’ll come over to your side.

I was pretty excited for WOTR card game but I just don't have a place for a 2v2 card game that requires people to be invested and learn decks and stuff. That's just never ever hitting the table.

I think it’ll be no different than WotR, itself. You can play and enjoy it, but it’s at its best when you gain experience and know what the card decks are like. It’s already a game with four decks, more if you include Warriors.

But I understand not wanting or being able to invest in a game like that.