Board Games

Just wanted to let everyone know that there's a campaign going on for one of my favorite games, Dragons of Etchinstone, it's one of those 18 card games that you can play without a table, like Palm Island, so you can play on the bus or train on your way to work.

I really like that you can take a couple of fast turns here and there and whenever you wanna stop, you just chuck all the cards in your pocket and you're good to go.

I have no relation with the guys that created it, but I really like several of the games this designer has made, like Gloomhaven Buttons and Bugs and other micro games, so I wanted to give a shout out.

The last 5-10 years have seen an uptick in the trend of games having nicer and shinier bits and pieces. In my mind, the trend is best exemplified by Wingspan, which to me was a fairly average game wrapped in a beautiful package of glossy Cadbury eggs and pretty birds. I'm personally in favour of getting nicer bits and pieces for my games, but they are undeniably having an impact on prices (how much of an impact is something I'd find really interesting, let me know if any publisher has discussed the issue).

What do you think of this trend? Are you in favour of moving back to 100% cardboard chits, or do you like the newer, prettier boardgames?

(Link to the discussion that prompted this post)

SPOILERS AHEAD SO READ NO FURTHER IF IT MATTERS FOR YOU . . . . . .

So we've played through the Dunwich, and Path to Carcosa campaigns and had a grand time all the way through them. Then we started on the third campaign The Forgotten Age.

Things were definitely trickier with the new explore mechanic but manageable for the first two scenarios. We definitely felt a large step up in difficulty.

Then we got the Boundary Beyond and just got like totally smashed with almost no headway towards finishing the second act. Like we retried it twice but the results were nearly the same we got one maybe 2.5 locations cleared out before our situation became obviously hopeless.

The costs to explore each location are just so punishing and leaves you with no gas to handle the mythos that ultimately ushers us to our doom.

It's really soured our group on the game in general and I'm not sure they'll want to continue at this point. Is there something we're doing wrong?

Edit: Title was changed since many people don't seem to get the term 'hilariously incompetent'.

When he struggles to reach across the board to move his chariot, I lose the plot.

We both play Grand Austria Hotel on yucata.de all the time, this will be the first time on cardboard for us.

(An exceptional gaming experience, with plenty of opportunities for chaining. You can remove the Kitchen-Hand card for a more balanced game.)

Also saves on wrapping paper ;-)

Was very excited to get this expansion as it added some elegant additions to the well-crafted formula. I managed to play 3 games since Friday with it (3pl) and the experience solidified my view on it and its place as one of my favorite board games.

Pic is from the first game we played.

The Sardaukar Commanders add a much needed early tempo option for Solari. Normally you don't really have anything to do with Solari in the early term, as it's usually not worth spending it for 1 water when you could be saving it for a council position or a swordmaster. However now with the Sardaukar in play in some easy to reach positions, it gives players an incentive to spend their early money to quickly grab one of them before they're all snatched away.

Likewise in the late game, once you have your council seat and swordmaster, Solari didn't have that much impact outside the occasional conflict or card. Now if you have a few Sardaukar in your employ, they give a significant power to your combat efforts by quickly translating your spare change into extra reinforcements, plus some good abilities. I really like the difficult decisions this opens.

Likewise Technologies give more versatility to spice. Without them, someone who didn't have a lot of access to the influence side of the board, didn't have a ton of options for using spice, other than going to the guild now and then. The Ix tech now allows someone who didn't get access to a lot of influence cards, or who doesn't care about combat as much, to use green cards to utilize their spare spice as well. I am always up for giving more options to the players. The tech effects can also be quite powerful when paired with the right leaders. I won my second game handily by making a tech-intrigue combo and just spamming troops out constantly through it.

Finally the new leaders are all quite nice, and I like the more unique directions they took with some of them like the Guild Navigator.

Ultimately, very very happy with this addition, even if some of my playing mates were more muted in their appraisal.

About a year ago I put together this 2-sided reference card for Sentinels of the Multiverse: Definitive Edition to help teach some friends and family how to play (and to remind myself of some of the new keywords in DE). While talking with someone recently, they suggested I actually publish it somewhere online (which I probably should have done a year ago, but oh well).

PDF and LibreOffice Draw files for printing/editing.

When I printed it, I ended up folding/cutting the sheets into quarters and gluing them together to get a thicker card. You could probably just duplex print them if you had thick enough paper though (bleed-through is a concern).

Fair warning: I think I was a little aggressive with the page margins; I was trying hard to avoid shrinking the text more/packing it too tightly to be easily readable.

I did my best to be concise but accurate, particularly with the glossary (some rewording was necessary for space). I also tried to match the colors and style of the game for the Phases sidebar (as much as I could, anyway). The Damage block was added largely in response to getting asked several times what the different damage types "meant".

Though I'm probably done working on this, I would still love to hear any feedback anyone has. If anyone knows other lemmy communities or similar that this would be a good fit for, please let me know as well (but fuck reddit).

Picture shows the end state of a three player game. So much fun!

Nominal price of $2, free shipping worldwide.

On a blustery autumn evening, five old friends met in the backroom of one of the city’s oldest and most private clubs. Each had traveled a long distance — from all corners of the world — to meet on this very specific day… October 2, 1900 — 28 years to the day that the London eccentric, Phileas Fogg accepted and then won a £20,000 bet that he could travel Around the World in 80 Days. When the story of Fogg’s triumphant journey filled all the newspapers of the day, the five attended University together. Inspired by his impetuous gamble, and a few pints from the local pub, the group commemorated his circumnavigation with a more modest excursion and wager – a bottle of good claret to the first to make it to Le Procope in Paris. Each succeeding year, they met to celebrate the anniversary and pay tribute to Fogg. And each year a new expedition (always more difficult) with a new wager (always more expensive) was proposed. Now at the dawn of the century, it was time for a new impossible journey. The stakes: $1 Million in a winner-takes-all competition.

The objective: to see which of them could travel by rail to the most cities in North America — in just 7 days. The journey would begin immediately…

Taught the game to literally dozens of people, today I find out there's an actual interesting lore / backstory tidbit I could have been using to intro it! Damn!

Business Insider published an article today titled "An ex-Facebook exec said staff let Zuckerberg win at board games. But now the plot thickens."

TLDR for the article:

• In her new book "Careless People", a former Facebook executive recalls a SPECIFIC game of Catan played on an Indonesia trip in October 2014. She writes that other Facebook employees let Mark Zuckerberg win at Catan by never stealing from him and failing to block his victory.
• Another player at that game is refuting her assessment and saying that it's actually WORSE - that Zuckerberg enlisted the other players to gang up on him in order to secure the win.

What's funny to me about this article is that I'm sure we've all had at least one game session that has gone down in infamy due to it's contentiousness. It seems this specific session of Catan in Indonesia was THAT game for the players at the table that night. Over nine years later, they still recall the details of what went down. Excerpts from the article:

• She called out at one point when she saw one "particularly egregious" move and others flashed her looks.
• When she asked Zuckerberg if he really wanted to win that way [i.e. by others letting him win], he seemed "perplexed"
• "I feel the dynamics in the room shift and not in a good way."
• Hunter-Torrick said his tactic was to eliminate weaker players so he could then go after Zuckerberg, "who was the toughest player." But then something "more interesting" happened. "Zuckerberg said he was tired and wanted to sleep, and convinced the others to gang up on me so he could win! That's actually a much better story showing his ruthlessness," 

It's nice to see that I'm not the only one that doesn't let these things go! (kidding/not kidding)

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Credit u/UlisKromwell

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27350429

Hello, I've had this French edition of root since Christmas and I've been having plenty fun with it.

Anybody knows what these extra tokens are for?

There is:

• a bear
• the dynasty leaders
• a cat leader
• 5 castles
• 2 rivers with a riverfolk
• 4 animals with a wheelbarrow

I don't need them for playing the game so I'm guessing they're here for bonus rules, but I've never seen anything mentioning them. Is this for house rules?

Hi all,

I'm not one for self-promotion usually but just started my own book and board game shop in Amsterdam. It's online only at the moment but am looking to get a physical location up and running before the year is out. I ship anywhere in Europe and for the rest of the month have a 5% off deal going on (10% for orders over €100).

Spelenenspellen.nl

It would be convenient to leave board games out without them being in the way. Board game tables that have a sunken play surface and a removable cover are common solution. However it seems annoying to have to reach down to interact with anything. I’m also concerned about spills ruining game pieces if the table is used for dining when the cover is on

Shut up & Sit Down lads take the "Fromage" for a spin.

While I'm disappointed that this isn't my cut, this review made me laugh and cry (often at the same time).

Now that we've had a bit of time to play stuff, what do you think was the best release of 2024? Note this is addressing games that came out last year, not what you added to your collection in that time :)

alt text: special edition of the board game "Secret Hitler". there is a sticker sheet allowing for mods to the game including a sticker of Donald Trump's face