Board Game thread

[apsham]

6 hours ago, Colly said:

This is super cheap in Zatu's January sale so I think I'm going to jump on it. 

Do it do it do it do it.

I'm getting good enough to do curving multi-room shots and room jumps.

[Tigerstyle]

Kingdom Death have a preorder up, I think I should get it. $350 though?

[Gongsun Zan]

On 19/01/2021 at 05:04, Tigerstyle said:

Kingdom Death have a preorder up, I think I should get it. $350 though?

It's my favorite board game of all time, and I've definitely gotten more than $350 in value out of it. Give or take, a single campaign takes about 30hours, and that's not counting any game overs or the time spent painting miniatures (if you're into that sort of thing). On the flip side, I wouldn't really get it unless you know have the time to play it (you can do a single session in around 1 to 2h).  

If you're not interested in assembling all the miniatures, you could probably sell all the armor kits for around $100 to get a third of the purchase price back. The other possibility is to wait for Black Friday, when the core game usually goes down to $300. 

But given how pricey it is, I'd definitely go a bit of research before deciding whether its something you'd enjoy. I'd say the closest thing this game resembles is X-Com 2 (the video game), with its emphasis on risk mitigation and bad dice rolls killing off all your favorite characters. If that's the sort of experience you enjoy, I'd say go for it. 

If you've got any other questions about the game feel free to ask. 

[Krabby]

Has anyone played or subscribed to "Hunt a Killer?" If so, what did y'all think about it?

Any other recommendations for murder mystery type of board games?

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

Went in on my first ever Kickstarter recently. Couldn't say no.

 

Picked up the deluxe version with Green Party expansion. It's highly rated and it sounds good from reviews and gameplay videos.

 

 

[Toe]

On 05/02/2021 at 00:44, JMarushin said:

Has anyone played or subscribed to "Hunt a Killer?" If so, what did y'all think about it?

Any other recommendations for murder mystery type of board games?

This is probably different, but looks like a lot of fun.

 

[Krabby]

Had our first Family Game Night with my wife and 3 y/o toddler!

We played Chutes and Ladders and my lil girl did a very good job waiting her turn, got a little squirrely towards the end but did good and she won so that was good

Then tried Don't Spill the Beans; she liked watching the beans spill more than anything so she liked it but wasn't much gameplay

Then we ended with several rousing rounds of Don't Break the Ice - she loved it haha; did a very good job again of waiting her turn, loved smacking the ice with a hammer, and took an affinity to the game's penguin piece. 

It's one of my dreams for my family is to do these once a week and our first attempt went very good!

[K]

Played three new games over Christmas.

My wife received Wingspan for her birthday. I'm struggling to love this game. It's beautiful, but I think there are so many scoring options at the end that it's difficult for me to build a strategy. Maybe I just need some more time with it. I know it's well loved, so it's probably just me.

Pandemic, which my wife received for Christmas, we love instantly. It's quite addictive. We always feel like we were so close to winning that next time we'll nail it, and of course we don't, so we want to try again. Really enjoyable. There's a reason it's a gateway game for people that don't play board games

And Quorridor, probably the perfect game. You can explain the rules to someone in less than thirty seconds, and there is so much depth to it, it has it's own notation. It's very addictive.

[apsham]

Wingspan is probably my favourite game of all time - and I'm actively involved in the community for the digital game as well!

[K]

oh awesome! It's so pretty. I love looking at it, but I think i'm struggling to work out how to be good at the game. Like when we picked up pandemic, although it's wild and unpredictable you know that you need to keep a calm head, reduce infections, work towards developing cures. with Wingspan I just can't figure out what i'm supposed to be doing exactly. it's difficult to know how to improve.

it also feels like it would be difficult to bring new players into.

we'll keep playing it, and i'm sure i'll learn, but it's very intimidating to start with.

[GhostMachine]

Heidi got the House Divided edition of Monopoly as a Christmas present from her son. That edition is about running for President and controlling states. Funny, as Heidi is not into politics at all. Haven't even opened the box yet.

Not a board game, but I bought her the Family Feud card game a few weeks ago.

[apsham]

4 minutes ago, K said:

oh awesome! It's so pretty. I love looking at it, but I think i'm struggling to work out how to be good at the game. Like when we picked up pandemic, although it's wild and unpredictable you know that you need to keep a calm head, reduce infections, work towards developing cures. with Wingspan I just can't figure out what i'm supposed to be doing exactly. it's difficult to know how to improve.

it also feels like it would be difficult to bring new players into.

we'll keep playing it, and i'm sure i'll learn, but it's very intimidating to start with.

It can be for sure! If you're just getting into it, here's some things that I'd probably start out with as advice;
 

• At the start of the game, look at your bonus cards - you don't have to break your back to work towards them, but they might help you form an initial strategy. Also look at the round goals that are coming up. If your starting hand of birds helps you do the first 2, that's cool - but you should focus on the 3rd and 4th round ones because that'll be more points in the end.
• Only focus on a couple of habitats, don't try to do all three. If you can get birds that will handle the other habitats, go in on those for sure. There are birds that you can play in your grasslands for example, that let you discard eggs to draw food. That means you can focus LESS on putting birds into your forest and just lay eggs, and then get to do the power to get food. You've basically taken two actions with one in that sense.
• This is something I NEVER did until I played the digital game - remember you can trade ANY two food to replace one food that you need as a cost to play a bird. It doesn't have to be two of the SAME food.
• In round 4, laying eggs and tucking cards can help you out massively. If you go too hard to get the food to play a bird you might be missing out on points. For instance, that late in the game if you spend 2-3 rounds getting the food, getting the eggs, and then playing the bird you probably would've gotten more points by just laying eggs all three rounds if you had space for them.
• If you're working on a couple of habitats at a time, don't undervalue the birds like the Wrens that move AFTER you activate that row. You keep doing that and you can cheat one level ahead each time you use them if you don't trap them behind another bird card.
• ALWAYS look for the 2 Ravens, the Killdeer and the Franklin's Gull - they're the Power 4 and they're really overpowered.

If there's anything else you're wondering, let me know! I've heard a TON of good things about building a "tucking engine" or one that allows you to draw a lot of cards, and then also put a lot of cards underneath others to score a ton of points. I've seen games where people have 50+ cards tucked under a single bird.

[K]

woah thanks man. My copy of Wingspan is about 1500km away, but i'll definitely crack it out when i get it back. that's awesome.

The 2-for-1 thing is one thing i actually did remember and took advantage of, but the other stuff is definitely new to me. I haven't even played enough to understand some of the things you're saying, like the Wren thing isn't ringing any bells at all, so I'm definitely not playing properly atm. looking forward to giving it another go.

[Roster Depth Sicko No. 2]

My parents bought me Mancala for Christmas, which is a really easy game to play and gets more in depth the more maths you throw at it.

Quorridor looks cool @K  and I've been meaning to pick up Pandemic for a while.

@Ollie gifted me Wingspan on Steam because he's just a great guy but I haven't given it a proper go yet.

[apsham]

4 minutes ago, K said:

woah thanks man. My copy of Wingspan is about 1500km away, but i'll definitely crack it out when i get it back. that's awesome.

The 2-for-1 thing is one thing i actually did remember and took advantage of, but the other stuff is definitely new to me. I haven't even played enough to understand some of the things you're saying, like the Wren thing isn't ringing any bells at all, so I'm definitely not playing properly atm. looking forward to giving it another go.

So when I say "the Wren" I'm just generalizing that birds of the same family tend to have the same powers, Wrens the power that moves them after you activate a row if they're the last bird in the row, so I was just generalizing that.

And yeah, there are a ton of people who have this game down PAT as far as a strategy goes. There's a site called Wingsplaining that covers it quite a bit, but I don't really tend to look THAT deep into it.

[Colly]

Anyone got any tips on travel games that aren't just travel Guess Who? We're doing a big car ride to France in a month so wanting something to keep my eldest (10) amused sat in the back with her grandma. She's got quite into games like Splendor and Quacks of Quedlinburg so can handle reasonably complex, but just something that can be played on the move, card games or similar? We've got Dobble and Exploding Kittens among others, but would be good to get something extra.

[apsham]

10 minutes ago, Colly said:

Anyone got any tips on travel games that aren't just travel Guess Who? We're doing a big car ride to France in a month so wanting something to keep my eldest (10) amused sat in the back with her grandma. She's got quite into games like Splendor and Quacks of Quedlinburg so can handle reasonably complex, but just something that can be played on the move, card games or similar? We've got Dobble and Exploding Kittens among others, but would be good to get something extra.

Ohhh that's a tough call! Not only that it's in the car but that it's for two. One thing that I've played since I was a kid is Sequence - and they have a pretty good looking travel version of that!

https://www.amazon.ca/Sequence-Travel-Tin-by-Jax/dp/B07PZ9QKDC/ref=sr_1_11?crid=2TUS6FOX7AQ3C&keywords=travel+board+game&qid=1652908178&sprefix=travel+board+gam%2Caps%2C132&sr=8-11

It's 10 dollars Canadian which likely means it's two pennies and a stick of gum in the States, although I couldn't actively find it on the American site. The game tin just uses pegs and a deck of cards... it's kinda Connect 4-y since that's still your goal but I like it as a pass-the-time game a lot more.

Most of my smaller footprint games need to have something laid out... got me thinking about this a lot, haha.

[Colly]

I aim to provoke deep thinking. Much obliged.

[K]

Played a Fake Artist Goes to New York recently. Really enjoyed it. Need a big group though which I rarely have.

Bought the European expansion for Wingspan for my wife, she's looking forward to playing that.

I also bought a mini-game called Mint Works

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/200077/mint-works

Whenever I travel with my wife, I carry around a mint tin with a few games in it, but they're getting a bit tired, so I bought this to replace them for a while. Hopefully it's good enough to kill a long wait at a train station or play over a coffee break.

[apsham]

Mint Works is still thought of as a pretty good portable game from what I remember - I never got around to playing it but it should be good for a bit!

I did an inventory today. With full games and expansions (and some of the games have little expansion that really blow this out) I'm sitting at 250 games or so currently in my inventory and that's likely where it's going to hover.