Dope ass board games

[scarm]

I'd say that the gameplay does work nicely. You start out by drafting a total of 5 Elements out of 5 Birds and 5 Food Sources. You usually in my experience go for a combination of 2+3. There are three general resources in the game: Cards, Food, and eggs. You have 3 Areas:

Water, which corresponds with cards,
steppe which corresponds with eggs,
and Forest, which corresponds with food.

Each area has 5 spaces for birds max. You can either activate one area each turn, or play a bird, to gain the resource it provides and activate effects of birds you already have in the area or add another bird. The more birds you have in an area, the better the effects of the area get, e.g. you can draw 3 cards instead of 1.

Card draw works as you think it would: In the water area there is a pile of birds, 3 of which are visible. when you activate the Water area or a bird effect that allows you to draw, you can choose between one of the open birds or a hidden card.

Food is a bit different: There are 5 dice in sth called the Birdfeeder, that are accessible by all players (in their respective turns). Only once 4 of them have been used, these dice can be rerolled. They have several foodtypes, some of which are rarer in Wheat, Insect, Rodent, Fish, and Berry, and different Birds need different food items. Think of Food as Mana of sorts. With a Forest at level 1 you can choose 1 food dice, with a Forest Level 5 you can choose 3 Food dice.

Eggs are the third resource: they act as a limiting factor of sorts: the more birds you have in an area the more eggs the next one will need. The first bird in each area costs 0 eggs, the 2. and 3. 1 egg and 4. and 5 3 eggs. Every bird has egg slots on them, representing the number of eggs they can hold.

Speaking of which Bird cards are balanced by several factors: Their "name" and species are important, because they build towards goals like: collect birds with Geographical areas in their names. (since i am horrible at embedding i am just gonna post a link to an example card: https://www.pinterest.de/pin/318700111133769241/)

The next thing are the symbols in the upper left corner, that signify where a bird can be played (which of the three areas).

The most important things are the victory points it provides, signified by the feather symbol (the peregrine falcon giving 5, which is a medium to good amount)

Below the places it can be played in are its food or mana costs, the p. falcon costs two rodents to play, which is moderately expensive because rodents are rare and only useful for predatory birds (food can be stashed once taken out of the birdfeeder).

And lat but not least birds have effects, most of which are acitvated when the area they are in are activated. The p. falcon ones is typical for predatory birds, and means that you have to reveal the top card of the deck, and if its a bird under a certain wingspan, the p. falcon will 'eat it', and 'grow' gaining + 1 vicotry point. other Birds give extra eggs or food etc.


What you want to try and do from my experience is decide for a "land combo" like in MtG, and play for 2 areas or "colors", while getting your thrid ressource through your birds. You also want to play for bonus objectives that you draw though and for round objectives that all players can compete for. Some Birds are very good but give their good effects to other players as well. The mechanics make a lot of sense and you have different trade-offs to take into account. I for example try to play a bit too bird-focused sometimes, but playing less birds and instead laying more eggs can often be a winning strategy as well, because each egg gives 1 VP, and many bonus goals are egg-focused. Player interaction is very significant in the round goals, because overinvesting is bad, but you also don't want to leave them uncontested, and in the bird deck, because some birds like the killdeer, which is very cheap and gives you eggs, are very desirable. The food mechanic on the other hand which i guess is supposed to be competitive, isn't really, jsut because the birdfeeder is rerolled relatively often, though i've had it happen that it was 'deadlocked' because it had like 3 fish in them that nobody wanted.

The biggest flaw i would criticize is bird balancing. Some are very good engine or stat sticks, while others are either incredibly situational or just never good, so you will often end up ignoring many birds, esp. when drawing.

[RefluxSemantic]

Board games prove that money does in fact buy happiness

[princeofcarthage]

Happiness is quite an arbitrary term tbh. You can't define, quantify it. What about those who don't enjoy playing board games?

[RefluxSemantic]

Happiness is quite an arbitrary term tbh. You can't define, quantify it. What about those who don't enjoy playing board games?

spoiler

This is what happiness is and theres nothing arbitrary about it.

As for the root clockwork expansion: quite liking it so far. It makes the 2 player experience much better. But overall root base game + clockwork expansion is probably a bit too expansive to recommend, and I dont know if I'd recommend the base game if you're only going to play it 1v1.

[princeofcarthage]

I have rarely played board games, does that mean I am unhappy? Actually board game concept is very rare in India, all these games gloomhaven, agricola, catan are very hard to find here... we all are unhappy.

[edeholland]

My newest purchases are Railroad Ink, My City and MicroMacro: Crime City.

Railroad Ink is a puzzly roll & write where you throw dice to decide what roads and railways you have to draw on the board, with the goal of making an expansive network of roads and railways. There is 0 player interaction. In the end you compare what everyone has drawn and how much you scored and that's it. I can highly recommend it to pretty much everyone. Even my non boardgaming friends got excited. It's a very accessible and fun game if you got just 20 minutes. (Or longer, we usually play 3 games back to back). All this for just 15 euros.

My City is a 2-4 player competitive tile laying game with legacy elements. If you like tetris-style puzzles, you'll like this. Highly recommended.

Haven't played MicroMacro: Crime City yet.

You can find my full collection here: https://boardgamegeek.com/collection/user/Edeholland

[RefluxSemantic]

My newest purchases are Railroad Ink, My City and MicroMacro: Crime City.

Railroad Ink is a puzzly roll & write where you throw dice to decide what roads and railways you have to draw on the board, with the goal of making an expansive network of roads and railways. There is 0 player interaction. In the end you compare what everyone has drawn and how much you scored and that's it. I can highly recommend it to pretty much everyone. Even my non boardgaming friends got excited. It's a very accessible and fun game if you got just 20 minutes. (Or longer, we usually play 3 games back to back). All this for just 15 euros.

My City is a 2-4 player competitive tile laying game with legacy elements. If you like tetris-style puzzles, you'll like this. Highly recommended.

Haven't played MicroMacro: Crime City yet.

You can find my full collection here: https://boardgamegeek.com/collection/user/Edeholland

First I was a bit amazed at the sheer volume of games you had, but fortunately a big part of this is just a wishlist.

Can you tell me why you rated everdell 'only' a 7?

[edeholland]

Disclaimer: I rated it after just a few games, to "save" it in my collection and to show others what I like (and what I want/not want to get as presents).

Things I didn't like:
- The text on the cards is so small/long that it's impossible to see what a card does at a glance. This means you either can't predict how another player is doing or you have to ask them to give you some of their cards.
- The game is prone to analysis paralysis. You get very few workers and there are lots of options, which means turns can take very long. You can think of your turn while others are playing, but odds are the option you had in mind is impossible by the time it's your turn. As a result, there is quite a bit of downtime.
- The game seems very dependant on how lucky your starting hand is. I got a good hand with a lot of synergies and as a result one of the other players said "I'm never going to beat you" from the start, and she was right. This is made worse by the following:
- There seem to be very few catchup mechanisms? We can't seem to reliably team against the best player which means being in a losing spot after 2/3 seasons feels like a waste of time from that point.

I did like the artwork, the theme etc.

I rated it based on Boardgamegeeks own rating system. 7: Good - usually willing to play. Which is exactly how I feel about it. I am unlikely to suggest the game, but I would probably play it when somebody else suggests it.

[edeholland]

@RefluxSemantic I really suggest you check out My City, it's just 30 euros atm.

Shut Up and Sit Down reviewed it. I can recommend their reviews. It's the only channel I've found which aren't huge anti charismatic nerds who are afwul at explaining stuff and they are good at telling you how playing a game feels, not just whether it's good or bad.

Link to their review of My City: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TARsDxuENo4

[RefluxSemantic]

I like shut up and sit down but so far I feel like a rarely agree with their reviews. Theres this specific type of game that they dont seem to review positively that I do like. Cant quite express what it is though.

[scarm]

@edeholland Just watched the first minutes of that review, isn't there quite the risk of mirrored gameplay in that game, considering the boards and buildings are mirrored if i see that correctly (plus everyone gets the same building every turn)? Just asking because i had a similar experience with a smaller game that is similar of sorts, "legendary forests", and we all ended up with similar or the same patterns at the end, which was a bit boring.

edit: skipped the skit part and reached the legacy gamemode and now i am intrigued.

[edeholland]

Good question, I think you tuned out just before he talks about the legacy part. The first game could, in theory, be mirrored. It's highly unlikely, there are lots of possibilities every round and even at the start of the game, but it's possible. From game #2 the game boards are no longer identical because based on the result of the previous game, you place stickers on your board with items you have to build on or with items you have to avoid building on. You'll even get different buildings entirely at a certain point in the game. So it's really a non issue.

[edeholland]

I like shut up and sit down but so far I feel like a rarely agree with their reviews. Theres this specific type of game that they dont seem to review positively that I do like. Cant quite express what it is though.

I don't always agree with them, but like I said, I think they do a good job or telling you what kind of experience you may get out of a game. SUSD tells you how satisfying it is to lay down a nice pattern of tetris-like buildings. They tell you how everyone groans and cheers when a new building is flipped. I've had the exact same experiences. I think it sets them apart from other reviewers who just do boring stuff like "this is good and this is bad".

[RefluxSemantic]

I like shut up and sit down but so far I feel like a rarely agree with their reviews. Theres this specific type of game that they dont seem to review positively that I do like. Cant quite express what it is though.

I don't always agree with them, but like I said, I think they do a good job or telling you what kind of experience you may get out of a game. SUSD tells you how satisfying it is to lay down a nice pattern of tetris-like buildings. They tell you how everyone groans and cheers when a new building is flipped. I've had the exact same experiences. I think it sets them apart from other reviewers who just do boring stuff like "this is good and this is bad".

Most other reviews indeed dont tell me much. I like the 3 minute review guy, its concise and he just tells you what the game is about. Susd is in depth and try to go deeper. Other reviews tend to be some poor combination of these two.

But there is a bit of a descripancy between what SUSD recommends and what I like. Like I said, I cant quite figure out what it is exactly. I think its at least partially because board games arent necessarily a social event for me where I gather with a group of friends to play a board game. That kinda lowers the need for an excitement factor, I suppose? I dont know, I need to think about this more. The fact that terraforming mars, root and spirit island (text review only) didnt get recommended by them makes me think twice about their reviews.

[RefluxSemantic]

@RefluxSemantic I really suggest you check out My City, it's just 30 euros atm.

Shut Up and Sit Down reviewed it. I can recommend their reviews. It's the only channel I've found which aren't huge anti charismatic nerds who are afwul at explaining stuff and they are good at telling you how playing a game feels, not just whether it's good or bad.

Link to their review of My City: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TARsDxuENo4

I already own patchwork and paris la cite de la luminiere which are both lightweight tile laying games, so I dont think I could justify this purchase. Its also maybe a bit light for my taste I think

[edeholland]

I've decided to look into how asymmetric this game actually gets. This is the starting board for the non-legacy gamemode (so this board doesn't change with stickers etc). A small starting piece which covers just 2 tiles has ~40 possibilities. I would say at least 20 of them are "viable". So yeah, mirroring each other is only really possible if done on purpose.

I already own patchwork and paris la cite de la luminiere which are both lightweight tile laying games, so I dont think I could justify this purchase. Its also maybe a bit light for my taste I think

That makes sense. I haven't owned a tile-laying game before so this was a good addition. You should track your owned/enjoyed games on Boardgamegeek btw, should be interesting to see.

Also, going to play Gloomhaven again tonight with a new class. Excited to find out how I'm supposed to play it.

[RefluxSemantic]

https://boardgamegeek.com/collection/user/Momuuu
My collection on bgg.

Ratings are at least moderately biased towards the sort of board game I prefer. I want the board game to feel like an experience, an activity. It doesnt have to be overly social as I only play with my gf which I already speak to quite frequently. I suppose I want it to kinda be like going to the movies; its a real activity and experience of 1-2 hours, it doesnt have to be super interactive but I do want it to be stimulating. So big games with a heavy theme and a bunch of components fill the sort of experience/activity demand and it has to have a meaningful amount of depth.

[scarm]

doesnt have to be overly social as I only play with my gf which I already speak to quite frequently.

This killed me, dutch humor is the best.

[Jam]

So we need 10 people...

https://kotaku.com/the-notorious-board- ... 1818510912

[RefluxSemantic]

I got some new games for my collection.

First of them is Everdell (no I didn't quite ignore the advice you guys gave, it was something my gf really liked so we got it). The rating edeholland gave is pretty accurate. It's not overly spectacular. There is enough depth to be entertaining though, and the art and game in general just looks stunning. Part of the board is a 3d cardboard tree and I can pretend that I'm some elitist board gamer that only cares about superior skill based gameplay mechanisms, but it's not true. When the game looks this nice, it makes me happy and that's the entire goal of the game. I'd give it a 7.5/10

The second one is Undaunted normandy. I need to play this one more, but my first impressions are extremely positive. The game kind of takes the idea of quest for el dorado's deckbuilding - where your deck is used to manipulate some character on the board - and turns it into a spectacularly exciting wargame. This twist on deckbuilding game is simply genius. It solves any sort of criticism I have of the concept and turns it into something that's genuinely exciting. I can't remember the last time I was this anxious for finding out what sort of move my opponent was coming up with, praying that it would not be too devastating. The only downside is that dice (and thus luck) play a pretty big role. The system to determine whether something is a hit or not is somewhat similar to xcom and that can just be really frustrating. But the games are quick and really exciting, so as long as you try to accept that luck is part of the experience it's not that bothersome. There's still some advanced game systems that I need to lay, but for now I'd probably give it an 8.5/10 or maybe even a 9/10 if the extra complexity improves the game a lot.

Last one is gloomhaven, jaws of the lion. I haven't played it yet, but I just opened the box and all I can say is wow. The amount of content that this game seems to come with for this price is insane. I honestly feel like I got away with theft.

[RefluxSemantic]

Wingspan
I like to think I'm that rational guy, that guy that likes the gameplay and doesn't care about the quality of components, the artwork or the theme, that I would rather play go or chess if only my friends and girlfriend would play that with me, that I'm all about gameplay depth. But wingspan made me realize that there could not be a bigger lie. I'm no INTP, I'm an irrational, emotion driven ENFP. In reality I do not just play board games, I collect them. I might care about gameplay, but if the game makes me feel good then I will be happy. I like having high quality components that look good, I like looking at the artwork of cards, I like to sort all my components in little bags, I like smelling at the new cards, I like to engage with the theme of the game.

And if you're anything like me, you'll love wingspan. These components have amazing quality, the best I've seen so far. The instruction manual has paper of amazing quality, the eggs are of marvelous quality, even the tokens in the punchboard seemed to be of above average quality. The birds have nice artwork and a little bit of extra flavor that I can't help but appreciate (and I don't even particularly like birds). The gameplay elements of the cards are also awesome, like the seagull costing any type of food (given that it's an omnivore). My favorite gameplay element so far is the birds of pray, that will pick up a card from the deck and if the bird on that card is small enough they'll 'eat' it (put that card under the bird of pray) to score a point. I like taking the extra time to read the name of the bird and show my girlfriend the cute bird that my cool hawk just devoured. That silly and time-wasting action might just be my favorite aspect of the game. I only have two meaningless points of critique: The cards don't smell great, they don't remind me of the times as a kid I got a new pack of yu-gi-oh cards or pokémon cards, they smell like the new high school books and remind me of the depressing feeling that summer was over. Also, I got 4 little trays to store something in but every sort of component comes in 5, so I am incredibly frustrated that there's no logical way to store stuff in these trays.

Gameplay-wise, it seems decent. The strategy is there, the flow of the game is nice, and the general gameplay is fresh. But I don't like wingspan for it's gameplay in particular, I just like the how pretty it is and how flavourful it is. I am not the rational gameplay-nerd that I think I am, I am a filthy casual that cares just as much if not more about how the components look and feel.

[Goodspeed]

I can recommend Humankind. Yeah it's a video game but it's really a digital board game. To me it has made painfully obvious how uninspired of a 4x game Civ has become.

[RefluxSemantic]

It's not a board game if it doesn't have components I can smell

[Goodspeed]

Yeah only in spirit

[Horsemen]

I can recommend Humankind. Yeah it's a video game but it's really a digital board game. To me it has made painfully obvious how uninspired of a 4x game Civ has become.

ESOC Humankind FFA match when?