Board Games (Reviews, Rules, Regulations, Random)

[The Gnat]

Frosthaven is over $5 mil now in less than a day.

 

As for my gaming, I played Gloomhaven on Tabletop Simulator last night, I wouldn't recommend playing the expansion stuff there. The issue is it isn't fully programmed for that it seems, so you are trying to set-up the board more by guessing than anything else, and the whole thing was a pain. We were on there for 2.5 hours and got .25 of a scenario done. Most of that time was set-up. We'll see if we try again in two weeks or possibly we'll meet in person. Part of me doesn't want to try it again on there, even though we have the state saved so we can pick up, because it is way less fun, and I don't want my favorite game to feel less fun.

[The Gnat]

Played Small World via video chat on Friday night. It was interesting, worked pretty good, though helped that there's no hidden information. The only downside is that the two people on the other side of screen have analysis paralysis, so towards the end of the game it just dragged, and they were the two that were leading anyways, which makes it even more annoying. 

Saturday I'm going to do a board game night digitally and I have 3 or so games to try playing via video.

[Heimdallr]

1 hour ago, The Gnat said:

Played Small World via video chat on Friday night. It was interesting, worked pretty good, though helped that there's no hidden information. The only downside is that the two people on the other side of screen have analysis paralysis, so towards the end of the game it just dragged, and they were the two that were leading anyways, which makes it even more annoying. 

Saturday I'm going to do a board game night digitally and I have 3 or so games to try playing via video.

Do you recommend Small World? How is the replayability? @theJ recommended it and that was on my list of games to get.

 

[The Gnat]

1 minute ago, Heimdallr said:

Do you recommend Small World? How is the replayability? @theJ recommended it and that was on my list of games to get.

 

It's got solid replayability. And I like the game a lot. I'd call it Risk but fun. It's an area control game but it only lasts a certain number of rounds, depending on player count, and it's not really a game where you can gang up on someone. The replayability comes from the Race (Giant, Triton, Elf, etc) and the power (Wealthy, Diplomatic, Flying, etc) combos because you shuffle up those piles each time, and there's something like 11 or so races and 15-16 or so powers, so you get a lot of different combos.

[theJ]

2 hours ago, The Gnat said:

Played Small World via video chat on Friday night. It was interesting, worked pretty good, though helped that there's no hidden information. The only downside is that the two people on the other side of screen have analysis paralysis, so towards the end of the game it just dragged, and they were the two that were leading anyways, which makes it even more annoying. 

Saturday I'm going to do a board game night digitally and I have 3 or so games to try playing via video.

Well, you are supposed to hide the wealth count.  But that's easy to do remote.  They can just write it down as they go.

I get what you mean about analysis paralysis though.  I'm assuming it was when they had to pick new race/power combos?

My brother wants to do Power Grid remotely.  I don't have a copy of it, so we'll have to see how that works.

[The Gnat]

4 minutes ago, theJ said:

I get what you mean about analysis paralysis though.  I'm assuming it was when they had to pick new race/power combos?

Yup. And the issue is that they realized they were taking a while and then continued to take just as much time again after that realization on the same turn. Caused the game to drag a lot at the end.

Power Grid, don't have that one anymore, but would be an interesting one to try. It's been so long, no hidden information I take it, besides maybe money?

 

I'm doing a board game night on Saturday where we're planning on trying Just One, Stipulations, and Criss Cross

[theJ]

13 minutes ago, The Gnat said:

Power Grid, don't have that one anymore, but would be an interesting one to try. It's been so long, no hidden information I take it, besides maybe money?

 

Yeah just money.  And no small text to read over video.  The person with the board has to announce fuel prices, and probably walk the remote people through the build phase.  But it shouldn't slow the game down too much.

[The Gnat]

Digital Board Game night was a success on Saturday. We got three games to the table, Criss Cross (4 times), Just One, and Stipulations. All of them worked really well, and while I need to tweak my lighting set-up some so people can actually see my wife and my faces without us being in so much shadow, it was a lot of fun. Probably something we'll do again in a couple of weeks, though, we might do that Jackbox game focused so less board games, though a lot do take inspiration from board games.

[The Gnat]

I also did an interim list of top 100 games as I've been doing Top 10 lists on Nerdologists. Turns out that 7 of my top 10 board games are cooperative games, so it made it really easy to do a Top 10 Cooperative Board Games list.

[The Gnat]

Wrapped up our scenario on Table Top Simulator for Gloomhaven/Forgotten Circles, we decided not to try it again, mainly because it doesn't auto set-up the scenarios for the expansions so we'd have to do it over two nights, and hopefully MN's shelter in place will be done in two weeks or so. But we're thinking in two weeks, when we'd do Gloomhaven again normally, to play some other games, does anyone have any favorites that don't need much set-up for Table Top Simulator? Anyone else using Table Top Simulator during Covid-19?

[The Gnat]

Started up a D&D campaign last night. It should be fun, and playing on Zoom worked pretty well. I don't think we'll ever do Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds (I think that's the other), but Zoom worked well. I had some fun with it and I had people come with level 0 characters and their top 3 choices for classes and then go through a tower that spits them out after going through several challenges with a class and stats that aren't just 10 across the board, plus any racial bonuses they had.

[The Gnat]

Used some stimulus money to pick up a few new games that'll be arriving soon-ish, probably the start of May.

Clank! Legacy
Forgotten Waters
Silver
Silver & Gold (not related to Silver)
Ascension: Delerium
Cartographers

And a playmat for Marvel Champions.

[The Gnat]

Played Regular Clank! for the first time every last night on Table Top Simulator. It's a scripted game on TTS, which means that a lot of the set-up is already done for you, though it did seem to have some hiccups, which might have been because we were playing at 3 player, not 4. But It's pretty similar to Clank! In! Space! and I think that Clank! In! Space! is more interesting, a rare time when I like the Sci-Fi theme better than Fantasy, but regular Clank! is just a bit more simplified.

[SirA1]

Things I have added recently to the collection.

King of Tokyo: Dark Edition

Terraforming Mars Expansions Prelude and Colonies.

The Crew

Plus backed two Kickstarters this past week.

One big game and one small one.

Ankh: Gods of Egypt - I love Egyptian themed stuff and that's a ton of minis for that price.

The Great Race - The theme is great IMO and this is likely the only way to get the game. They aren't doing a retail version since it's a small company in France but they are planning on expansions (Asia/US maps).

 

[The Gnat]

I've been so tempted to back Ankh, but with how CMON is running this one, I don't feel like I'll be missing out on that much if I just wait until retail.

King of Tokyo is great, I thought about the Dark Edition because it looks cool, but I'm good with my base king of Tokyo.

I've heard really good things about The Crew, let me know what you think @SirA1 as it's one that I've debated about picking up. I almost has a little bit too much of that Mind hype to it and if something becomes too hyped, I sour on it before trying.

 

I picked up Chronicles of Crime from my local game store, they do drop off deliveries if you're close enough and they were dropping off something else for me already, but that I'd paid for as a preorder, so I wanted to support them by getting something else while they have to be closed down at least the storefront part.

 

And I played some D&D last night, second session of my Tower of the Gods campaign. The players and I rolled maybe 10 times throughout two hours of game play, but it was a blast, lots of role playing. And they are in a school but they know there are two spies among their group of classmates, so they spent a lot of time trying to figure that out.