Board Games!

[Tatsuya Kaname]

Just bought Scythe: The Rise of Fenris, an 8-game campaign expansion. Already played through episode 1 and it's a great start so far.

Also, anyone using Tabletopia?

[Tatsuya Kaname]

Root is Early Access on Steam

It feels excellent

Would definitely be down to set up a game night for it

I was thrown off by the sheer confusion I got from playing one game of Root (I remember my castle-thing got destroyed a few rounds in LOL)

Willing to try again after I try to understand the rules and strategies better.

[Tatsuya Kaname]

I did not like root.

Why not? It's still on my to play list. Though I've heard people say the factions are unbalanced

It's a war game w/ unsatisfying combat.

What war games do you suggest in its place?.

Any game where there is risk in attacking or a good way to defend.

...Scythe?

To be honest, that's not really a wargame. There's combat but deciding whether or not to prioritize combat in the first place is a bigger thing than the actual combat itself

[Tatsuya Kaname]

I'm soo excited for Pandemic Legacy Season 0 but I can't schecule any sessions with my usual Legacy group, we're all too busy. T.T

From the looks of it, it's going to be interesting. Not sold too much on the cold war theme but gameplay-side looks really cool.

[Tatsuya Kaname]

I'd prefer teaching an even more fast-paced, Ticket to Ride: New York. Only takes 15 minutes to play and still the same fun game.

[Tatsuya Kaname]

I mean, eh... I'm neutral on Dominion since most of the time it's just play to play to buy and get cluttered up with useless point cards. /s

But to be honest, Dominion is still a good introduction to deckbuilding games without any extra mechanics. That said, once I moved on to games like Clank! or Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle (and knew almost nothing about the movie/novel lore), I stuck with those.

[Tatsuya Kaname]

New topic. I'm still waiting for my local board game cafe's Dice Throne: Adventures copy to arrive. So excited for this.

I mean Dice Throne is a really fun game (especially Season 2 with the revamped art). I know, some of the character balances are give-or-take but it's still fun rolling dice while pretending to play some kind of Trading Card Games like Yu-Gi-Oh or Cardfight Vanguard at the same time.

Also I'm into story-driven campaign games, so I'm gonna love this expansion.

[Tatsuya Kaname]

Finally, I've tried replaying Root after a whole year.

I took the Vagabond Thief, and boy did I dominate the game.

(Not really, I was just bullying the Cat player and scored a bunch of points for cleaning out her Keep space. Other players in the game are Eerie and Corvid, who did pretty well.)

But yeah, it's a pretty solid game, you just have to know what you (and others) are trying to do. The reason I felt like I hated it back then because I had no idea how to go for my win.

[Tatsuya Kaname]

So a friend of mine bought a copy of Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion to play a campaign with our group. We've played through the first four scenarios so far and the game is amazing! I never played any actual RPGs (don't know if Mansions of Madness or Pandemic Legacy Seasons 1&2 count), but this game is fun. It's relatively easy to play but the challenge is not bad at all. I actually heard of Gloomhaven, the big one for a long time but never played it because of its cost and commitment. While I can see it could be a problem to progress this game for a while, the price point is pretty good for the amount of game (I recall they have 25 scenarios ready but you won't be able to play some of them as part of some story decisions) and it makes me feel like playing an actual Tabletop RPG, something I think I would totally suck at.

[Tatsuya Kaname]

Just bought a copy of Machi Koro Legacy for a cheap auction price. Blasted through 5 of the 10 games with my 3p group.

Problems with original Machi Koro still exists (without spoilers, there are still broken optimal strategies, and luck can still screw everyone), but I think I enjoyed playing it.

Sure (again, without any spoilers) the legacy aspects are pretty subtle compared to big names like Pandemic or Clank! Legacy, but it's a nice fresh air which is good because Machi Koro is aa light filler anyway. The changes we've discovered so far is simple enough to grasp on, but also interesting enough to make each game at least slightly different.

[Tatsuya Kaname]

About Camel Up, there's never a good reason to roll the dice other than that $1 bonus, but really you can just sit back, watch and bet and you'll get a better payoff unless you really screw up end eame betting, and even then, Partner rules suck. Like why the hell do I make the most strategic and paid move ever, only to be copied by another player who just fricking rolls? Gotta admit the unpredictability, the pyramid mechanisms (which easily breaks, even the plastic version) and stacking camels are what makes the game fun though.

Also Dice Throne is the best dice game ever, fight me (I mean the system as a whole, not sure about the co-op/solo expansion Dice Throne Adventures, which have a copy sitting in the board game cafe I'm working but haven't played it. I have heard mixed reviews about it and it's pretty different so I can't say anything about that, but just fighting each other by rolling dice and cardplay in the main game is really awesome and there are various ways to play in terms of characters and abilities.)

Perudo is fun, I'll admit, but that game's strategic thoughts are too much like Poker and Riichi Mahjong, and I'd mostly rather play those (although I'm pretty sure no one here plays or even knows Riichi Mahjong).

[Tatsuya Kaname]

We talked about it, and we have yet to play a game of Machi Koro, either of us, where one player wasn't simply out of the game very early on. Often with no relevant decisions they could have made to alter their fate, because it was just based on not being able to pull the lever right.

Yeah but comebacks ARE a thing in Machi Koro. Because even the worse rollers ever would net cash from wheat field. So he started buying more wheat fields... and another. While everyone else is building some kind of engine, he buys more wheat fields. Then a cafe, then when people started rolling two dice, he buys apple orchards. Then he buys a vegetasble market, upgrades to two dice and win the game in four rolls. while others are still struggling to trigger their forests.

It's a dice game. Sute, there will be one player luckier than others and 'gets a head start' but things turn around prety quickly too.

[Tatsuya Kaname]

That's Season 2 characters. Tactitian... well... has a lot of tactics, but he's super fun to play, a lot of fun combos.

Right off the bat, I'm not happy that I couldn't use the original Season 1 characters (with old components) for DTA because the stuff were made for Season 2 and Season 1: Rerolled. I guess I'll need opaque sleeves.

[Tatsuya Kaname]

Approaching Game 7 of 10 in Machi Koro Legacy and...

I can't say spoilers here but the game literally broke at this point. It's unplayable. Without doing house rules, one player is likely to win in no more than 5 turns.

We made sure not to misinterpret the new rules but that's really what happened.

[Tatsuya Kaname]

Yeah I like the design of the penguins that I can do a lot of trickshots with them (in theory; I actually suck at flicking games)

Flick em up is also very good but I feel like I have trouble explaining the rules to my customers because of some language barrier. Also flicking games don't really appeal that much to some people.

[Tatsuya Kaname]

I've started playing Charterstone Digital Edition with AI and I feel like without friends to share the experience with, the game plays fine but sometimes speed up in places I want to go a bit slower. For example, (spoilers-free) each endgame matters to at least one person and if it's an AI, the game would just skip to the outcome of that endgame so I feel like I lost some of the lore.

[Tatsuya Kaname]

Dominion's good for its time, but almost every other deck building game after that ruined it for me.

Now I play games like Clank! and completed two campaigns of original Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle