OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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hepcat
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by hepcat »

Zarathud wrote: Sun Jan 22, 2023 12:18 am First game of Frosthaven. Liking my character and getting the feel of the game mechanics again.
I definitely need to get that app down though. WAY too many card decks to manage while playing. We can cut our setup and tear down time in half...or more....once I get the hang of that app.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by paulbaxter »

Zarathud wrote: Sun Jan 22, 2023 12:18 am First game of Frosthaven. Liking my character and getting the feel of the game mechanics again.
Which character choices did you go with?

My oldest son was crazy enough to take the Geminate. He likes a challenge. I have enough to do managing the other aspects of the game, so I like the simpler characters and took the Drifter.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Skinypupy »

baelthazar wrote: Sat Jan 21, 2023 11:58 pm It is a FANTASTIC game that I never seem to get to play.
Holy crap, you ain't kidding. This game is brilliant.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Zarathud »

paulbaxter wrote:
Zarathud wrote: Sun Jan 22, 2023 12:18 am First game of Frosthaven. Liking my character and getting the feel of the game mechanics again.
Which character choices did you go with?

My oldest son was crazy enough to take the Geminate. He likes a challenge. I have enough to do managing the other aspects of the game, so I like the simpler characters and took the Drifter.
I chose Drifter because I love the buff tracks, and being able to keep 2+ going is just awesome. The bonus +2 move and +2 melee are awesome. Well worth removing 2 cards.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by baelthazar »

Skinypupy wrote: Sun Jan 22, 2023 12:03 am
baelthazar wrote: Sat Jan 21, 2023 11:58 pm She will certainly get distracted by the giant monsters!
My kids were in awe of the bases for the minis that have sound effects. Doubt I’ll use them when actually playing, but they’re pretty dang cool.
I would only use them when the little one is playing. Otherwise they are sort of a distraction.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by hepcat »

Zarathud wrote: Sun Jan 22, 2023 11:10 pm
paulbaxter wrote:
Zarathud wrote: Sun Jan 22, 2023 12:18 am First game of Frosthaven. Liking my character and getting the feel of the game mechanics again.
Which character choices did you go with?

My oldest son was crazy enough to take the Geminate. He likes a challenge. I have enough to do managing the other aspects of the game, so I like the simpler characters and took the Drifter.
I chose Drifter because I love the buff tracks, and being able to keep 2+ going is just awesome. The bonus +2 move and +2 melee are awesome. Well worth removing 2 cards.
I took the blink blade because I like pinballing around the map murdering people. He’s like one of those silver balls from Phantasm.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Zarathud »

You also like popping into a room, the drawing all the aggro.
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“It is the impractical things in this tumultuous hell-scape of a world that matter most. A book, a name, chicken soup. They help us remember that, even in our darkest hour, life is still to be savored.” - Poe, Altered Carbon
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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Yeah, I gotta work on that....
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by baelthazar »

Zarathud wrote: Mon Jan 23, 2023 11:11 pm You also like popping into a room, the drawing all the aggro.
That explains the fracas at GenCon.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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If by "aggro" you mean "adoring fans", then yes....yes indeed.
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OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Zarathud »

If you want to see a fracas, play with 100+ for the Kobold Midnight Madness at Origins Game Fair. Deafening is an understatement.

Hepcat is terrified of it. RMC still suffers from shell shock. I love the RPG.

There is no other RPG where falling to your knees barking and bleeding from rug burn will save your character from certain death. For a few minutes, and a few rolls.
"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts." - Albert Einstein
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“Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.” - John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St Andrews, 2/1/1867
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by YellowKing »

Tonight we turned towards some lighter fare and broke out Switch & Signal, a cooperative train management game which is way more fun than it sounds.

The game is played on a map of either Europe or North America (game board is double-sided) criss-crossed with train tracks populated with signals and track switches. Your task is to get 2 goods of each of the four colors from their base city to their port city. To do this, you'll have to successfully manage gray (slow) trains, brown (medium) trains, and black (fast) trains, picking up goods, delivering them, and doing this without crashing into other trains or blocked paths.

On your turn you use your hand of cards to do one of three actions. Move cards allow you to move a single train by rolling its die and moving it that many spaces along its track. Switch cards allow you to move switches to re-route track. Signal cards allow you to turn a signal on by placing a green counter over the red one printed on the board. Naturally trains can't move past a red signal, and must follow the track as defined by the path the switches take it. You may also discard any two cards to take *any* single action, or discard a card to load freight onto a train.

Before you can do those actions, however, you draw a card from the "event" deck and do what it says. This could have you deploy new trains, move all trains of a certain color, or some combination of both.

Easy enough, except time is your enemy. The event deck acts as a game timer, and once it's depleted, game over. To make matters worse, you have 7 time tokens that are removed for trains colliding into red signals, blocked track, or each other. Once those 7 tokens are removed, a card is removed from the event deck, shortening the game by a turn.

While the game starts off easy, things can get quickly chaotic as your carefully routed lines are upset by the randomness of the event deck. And as with most great cooperative games, you'll rarely have enough actions to fix every problem area that needs to be addressed. There's a lot of great puzzle solving that comes up, and every turn is full of meaningful decisions on what's critical priority and what can possibly be addressed on a future turn.

From a balance standpoint, we lost our first two games by one good, and won our final game on the very last turn's very last die roll. So I'd say it's incredibly well balanced from our limited exposure. This one's highly recommended if you're looking for a good family-weight game that still provides a decent challenge. And at a price point of around $35 it's a great value given the two-sided board allows for two very different gameplay experiences.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by AWS260 »

I have played Guards of Atlantis 2 a few times at four players (2v2) and really loved it. Tonight I played it with six (3v3) and can confidently say that I'll be sticking to four players moving forward. Six just takes a lot longer without adding much to the experience.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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It's a bit light for this crowd, but our after work game gang played a 6 player game of Gravwell 2nd Edition and it was a hoot. Insane number of lead changes and on the last turn, depending on what cards were played there were 4 different players that could have won. It's a game where your movement is dependent on your position relative to other players (and a couple bits of space junk) and the movement order is determined by the alphabetic order of the cards played, so you never really know when you are moving relative to others, which causes causes. Luckily I was one of the four in a position to win and had the right ability card charged: "Before and moves are made, you may disregard the sequence and move first." It's a first across the finish line game. Sorry suckers!

If you only played the first edition, the second edition expands both the max player count and adds asymmetric player ability that make things a bit more interesting. Oh and in the 1st edition you always race from the inside to the outside. In the second edition, if the player count is higher, 5+ maybe, half start on the inside and race out and the other half go the other way. It reallly keeps things interesting.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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Our friends from Atlanta were in town Tuesday night. I rarely get a chance to play any way but solo, so I took advantage of the opportunity. I broke out Cascadia. We played 2 games and had a ball. I'd only watched the 10 minute how-to-play video from kidsplaining, so I didn't have any advantage.

https://boardgamegeek.com/video/337199/ ... ia-flatout

The pairs of bears are awesome scorers! I won the first game, and my wife won the second. Our guests loved it so much they plan on buying it to play with their grandkids.

Good times were had by all.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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I was introduced to Cascadia at BGG.CON and immediately added it to my wishlist. It's great game that is also a great gateway game. Super easy to learn and play, but challenging enough to stilll be interesting even after many plays.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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coopasonic wrote: Thu Jan 26, 2023 1:54 pm I was introduced to Cascadia at BGG.CON and immediately added it to my wishlist. It's great game that is also a great gateway game. Super easy to learn and play, but challenging enough to stilll be interesting even after many plays.
I saw it in the vendor area at BGG.CON where we met. I was planning on getting it because it included the promo cards. I was going to get it the next day, but it was sold out. So Amazon ended up with my money.

It is definitely a great gateway game! It'll be hard to choose between it and Ticket to Ride whenever I set my sights on new players. :D
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Blackhawk »

YellowKing wrote: Sun Jan 22, 2023 9:51 am Played a quick round of Sentinels of the Multiverse: Definitive Edition which I bought to replace my original copy. I love all the improvements: the art, the tokens, the streamlined rules.

The game is still fiddly as hell with all the simultaneous conditions that can be going on, but this version at least makes it a bit easier to manage as long as you very carefully step through each phase.

Unfortunately the rulebook is still lacking in a lot of areas, and it's a shame they didn't take the chance to improve upon it more than they did. I'm talking giant gaps of information - they mention terms like Ongoing, Item, etc. but then never bother to explain what those actually mean. And list the phases of the game with a one sentence description beside each instead of fully explaning the mechanics and timing of each phase. To add insult to injury, they instead take up 2 precious pages of rulebook space for a FAQ of very specific use cases.

I'm shelving it for now in favor of learning Imperium: Classics but I'm looking forward to getting it back to the table soon.
My group played this for the first time tonight. They absolutely hated it.

It's less fiddly than the original, but it's still extremely fiddly.

We played three matches. The first two against Baron Blade went fine. The third match we took the second most 'difficult' enemy (Akash'Bhuta) on only the third most difficult environment (Magmaria, rated 4/10 difficulty.) We took Captain Cosmic, Wraith, and Absolute Zero.

It was miserable. First off, the first villain round, before anybody played anything, resulted in four Primeval Limbs in play. It completely locked us down. Wraith was unable to do anything from the very beginning, and Absolute Zero had all of his damage taken away on round 2. We had zero time to build up our hands to do enough damage to get rid of the limbs as they kept sprouting. We spent two *hours* whittling it down to half health, and at one point we had most of the limbs almost down (we had multiple 'damage X targets and few big hitting cards.) As soon as we got to that point, a card was drawn that reset all seven active limbs back to full.

1. When you have a half a dozen cards that target the lowest HP character and prevent them from playing, it's not a fun mechanic. Wraith took damage early, and from that point on was at -6 damage every round, plus was taking 6+ damage every round. The Wraith player *did not get to play for the entire two hours* because everything was designed to target the person unlucky enough to start with the lowest health. And when that person is a heavy damage dealer and can't attack? That's not fun.

2. Having a boss that with massive numbers of high-health HP sponges and then periodically taking away all progress players have made on it isn't fun.

3. Having multiple characters 100% dependent on items to be effective, and then punishing them by forcing them to discard those items, effectively removing them from the damage pool is not fun.

4. At the end, every environment phase was reading six to eight "Start" effects, then pulling a card, then reading six to eight "End" effects, then going to the villain phase and reading off six to eight more "End" effects. That was tedious, slow, and extremely not-fun.

5. If the only winning strategies against a villain (which I suspect is the case here) involve an intimate knowledge of the game to choose exactly the right heroes to counter that villain, then that villain requires expert knowledge and is *not* the second easiest boss in the game.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by YellowKing »

Yeah that's the biggest problem I have with the game - the luck of the draw can put you into a tailspin that you can't recover from. That happened the first time I played the new version at GenCon - I was teaching a new guy how to play and we got absolutely DESTROYED. He was ready to shelve it forever. I talked him into giving it another go and we won fairly easily. It can certainly be a bit swingy.

On the other hand, there are the thrilling sessions in which I'm absolutely sure there's no way I'm going to win, and then all of a sudden my engine starts purring and I start unleashing massive damage to barely eke out a win at the last minute. Those sessions are the only reason I keep the game in my collection.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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Round 1: Akash gets four limbs, hits Wraith, reducing her to 'lowest HP' and giving her -4 damage per turn (most of her cards do 1-3 damage early on.)

Round 2: Absolute Zero plays the item card that is central to him doing damage - everything else relies on it. Cosmic starts sending out 4HP constructs to try and support the team/do damage.

Round 3: Akash, now up to six or seven limbs, is doing 4 damage to the lowest HP person every round, and giving here -6 damage, and 2 damage to every target. The environment is now doing 4 damage to every target every round. Remember Captain Cosmic's 4-HP constructs? They're never around long enough to act. The order of the cards is such that the "damage to all targets" cards take every one of them out the round they're played. Captain Cosmic can't take any meaningful actions. Wraith is kept at the lowest HP, which keeps her at -6 damage and in a damage spiral. Wraith can't take any meaningful actions. Akash plays a card that forces Absolute Zero to destroy the item that he's reliant on for damage. Now Absolute Zero can't take any meaningful actions (except to heal himself.)

Round ?: Wraith has 4HP, and has managed to attack a grand total of one time during the three roudns that Akash was flipped and stopped growing new limbs and things worked out so that her -6 debuff was on one of Cosmic's constructs. Captain Cosmic hasn't done anything except boost the damage of one attack two times. Absolute Zero's healing has allowed him to build up enough cards to kill a few limbs, maybe one every round (and Akash gains 1-2 limbs per round.) Of the seven limbs up, four were close to death.

Round ?+1: Wraith finally dies.

Round ?+2: Akash draws a card that fully restores every limb, kills Captain Cosmic.

At that point, we gave up. It was unwinnable.

We never had a chance. Wraith never got to act, and every other hero's abilities were neutralized for most of the game. Winning would have required a lot of big damage early on, but most characters have to spend multiple rounds getting cards into play to do meaningful damage. It was unwinnable before a single player took their turn just due to the way the cards were shuffled, and for a game that took us this long to play, unwinnable through smart play or skill isn't fun.

In fac, it was the least fun I've had with a game in quite a long time.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by TheMix »

Absolute Zero is a really hard character to get going. And probably not good in 3-man team. He takes too long to get rolling.

Akash can be brutal. We had a game once where we were steam rolling her. Everything was under control. Then, about half-way through, she pulled the card that let her put out a bunch of limbs; and then got to play another card (I forget why), and pulled it again. We went from no limbs to ... I think 8 or 9. My memory is we threw in the towel. On the other hand, I have beaten her a number of times. Heroes with AoE really help. For a new villain I usually recommend the group go with one or more of the Dream Team heroes: Legacy, Tachyon, Tempest. For Akash, maybe Haka or Visionary.

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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Blackhawk »

I figured that Tempest and Haka would do better (from my experience with the first edition.) Maybe Ra. The problem is that the card you mentioned was pulled during the initial villain turn, resulting in four limbs being out before any players had their first turn. We never recovered from the setup.

FWIW, my son was running Absolute Zero. He plays a lot of video games with complex builds and mechanics, and had the character down just by thumbing through the deck in advance. And he was set to do good damage until his key card was forced into the trash in round 2 (I think), and there was no way to get it back.

Combining a character with a vital mechanic and having a way to take that one thing away without any player option to counter it , crippling the character for the entire game, is bad design.

Likewise having multiple cards that target the lowest HP character is a poor decision. Highest HP? It's going to cycle who is being targeted. Lowest? Once the lowest character is targeted, they're probably going to be the target for the entire game. We had two limbs that always damaged the lowest and three that gave - 2 to damage dealt.

Start with that and one player is out of the game on turn 1.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Smoove_B »

You've summarized all my issues with Sentinels. I wanted to love it, but mechanically I just couldn't push through - even with the newer "revised" edition. Punishing feels like the right word. I respect what they did with the design, but it's just a bit too dense for me.

My superhero card game of choice hasn't switched from Marvel Champions since I started with it. It's not perfect by any means, but it doesn't feel as punishing and somehow manages to create unique character experiences despite everyone using the same core mechanics of card play. Not that you asked for another game recommendation, but for me it hits the sweet spot of theme, depth and mechanical ease.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Blackhawk »

I think one thing that would help a lot would be to start the first round with the player turns rather than with villain turn. One turn to draw and lay out a few cards would go a long way toward countering killer cards drawn on round 1.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Blackhawk »

Smoove_B wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 3:17 pm Not that you asked for another game recommendation
And yet I'm googling it now.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Blackhawk »

Smoove_B wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 3:17 pm Marvel Champions since I started with it
Quick question - how much content does the base box come with? Is it one the FFG titles where the $60 box plays like a demo until you spend a couple of hundred more on extra cards? I've heard great things about both their Arkham and LotR LCGs, but every time I dug deeper I felt like I'd be getting a very incomplete experience without significant investment.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Smoove_B »

I think there's quite a bit. In addition to the 5 characters, you have three bosses you can fight. Where the "value" comes in is that each of the heroes can then be specialized with one of four different aspects. So each of the five characters then has four different "loadouts" you can try. Yes, some work better than others, but they're all technically playable.

And yes, you can get nutty by purchasing additional big-box (~$40) expansions and character (~$15) decks, but that's really just "more" if you're into the characters/villains those sets are covering.

I happen to like it because it plays *perfect* with one hero, so much so that I've yet to try it 2 handed or even with someone else in person.

I'm totally geeking out now because the X-Men are all coming out after years of more traditional Marvel characters. You can definitely feel the connections to the Arkham Horror LCG and even the LotR game. To me it's the easiest of those three to play - the least complex. LotR is still insanely dense and Arkham is right in the middle.

I'm not into deck customizing either. I just grab-n-go. So that's a whole different element if you're into that aspect where you really can get into crafting them (though here you're going to need to buy more stuff). I don't enjoy that aspect, so I ignore it completely and still have a blast.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Daveman »

There's a good amount of content in the core set. 5 heroes with recommended starting decks, a decent selection of cards to do some deck building on your own, and 3 villains to battle with a few modular side-encounters to mix things up.

One of the villains, Rhino, is essentially the tutorial and he's pretty basic, but you can play any of the villains in a harder mode and he's much challenging.

There's a ton of expansion content out there, but there's one I'd really suggest is the Green Goblin. It adds 2 new villains (different takes on Green Goblin) and a lot more modular add ins to make any villain fight different.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by YellowKing »

Well, it has begun. Frosthaven. I'm playing with the same group I played all of Gloomhaven and Forgotten Circles with, an endeavor that took nearly a year and a half. It's quite likely that we'll be playing this exclusively well into 2024.

Tonight was just playing the Scenario 0 warm-up, getting re-acclimated to the rules and trying to figure out our new classes. We had a blast, though it was a very simple and easy scenario. By all accounts Frosthaven ups the difficulty and complexity at least a half notch from Gloomhaven.

We've got a pretty sweet setup going. One of our group members cares for his elderly mother down at her beach house, but has a spare apartment in town that he uses for storage, hurricane evacuations, etc. We've got the game set up at the apartment and when we're done, we just leave it there on the table and there's nobody there to bother it until we come back next week.

We're using an app similar to Gloomhaven Helper to manage the monster deck, just as we did with the original GH. This new version is even nicer, with the ability to also manage the scenario loot decks.

It feels a bit daunting to be embarking on a campaign that we know will be a year-plus commitment, but at the same time we're all such fans of the game that it's something we've been anxiously looking forward to ever since Frosthaven was announced.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Zarathud »

What characters did you start with in Frosthaven?
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hepcat
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by hepcat »

Also, is it the official Gloomhaven app? I need to get acclimated to that one yet.
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YellowKing
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by YellowKing »

Zarathud wrote:What characters did you start with in Frosthaven?
Drifter - gave this to the guy in our group who doesn't like a lot of complexity. He's a really smart guy, just doesn't have the appetite to get in the weeds with card combos and positioning. It's a good fit, and I've been impressed with the class in the limited time we played.

Geminate - this one went to the guy in our group that LOVES complexity. The more difficult the class, the more he wants to play it. In our scenario, this class kicked ass (he cleared an entire room single-handedly), but at the cost of exhausting quickly without careful card management.

Boneshaper - this one went to our guy who loves playing summoners. Seems a good fit. No real takeaways yet from this class, as the Drifter and Geminate dominated the scenario.

I went with the Banner Spear. a polarizing class if you read the forums. Some people hate it because it's so position-dependent, while others say if you play it correctly it's a great class. I feel like with this group I can get some use out of him because they're very team-oriented and will listen when others are trying to set up big attacks. But we'll see. In this starter scenario, he didn't do a whole lot as the enemies were so spread out (and were dying so fast from the Drifter/Geminate) that I never had time to set a formation.
hepcat wrote:Also, is it the official Gloomhaven app? I need to get acclimated to that one yet.
This isn't the official one. We're using Gloomhaven Secretariat: https://ghs.champonthis.de/

It's a clone of the old Gloomhaven Helper which we were really familiar with, and since it is a web version we can throw it up on the big TV.

One note about using Gloomhaven Secretariat - it depends a lot on entering the player characters in order to calculate scenario level, etc. We prefer to let the app just run the monsters, and leave managing the characters to ourselves (IE, we flip our own physical player decks, track our own HP/XP/statuses, etc.). Letting the app track the players was just WAY too cumbersome as we waited for someone to enter every character's initiative, etc.

So what we do is tell the app what scenario we're playing (which auto-populates the monsters). Then we set the level manually and manually add/adjust any monsters as necessary for the level and player count.

To summarize, what the app is doing for us is:

- Flipping monster deck to tell us monster initiative/action
- Flipping monster attack modifier deck
- Tracking monster HP/statuses
- Tracking elements
- Flipping loot deck
- Tracking round number (useful in certain specific scenarios)

On the iPad we are also using a digital scenario tracker which hides information that's in the physicial scenario book to make things a bit more challenging. IE we don't see the entire dungeon layout from the start: it hides the legend so we don't know the scenario has traps/hazardous terrain, etc. until we get to that room.
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Malificent
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Malificent »

We're 5 or 6 scenarios into the game, playing the Deathwalker, Blinkblade, and Banner Spear. The Blinkblade has some complexity to it, but it is also a murderbot in the right hands. Deathwalker has been challenging to figure out the most efficient way to play. I'm playing the Banner Spear and have up to now, played mostly using ranged attacks and support, not taking big advantage of all the positioning cards. The blinkblade moves too much to keep u with and I've not yet gotten the hang of using the discardable Reinforcements card.

The scenarios are a little tougher than Gloomhaven and the classes are more balanced, creating a very on-edge play scenario, where we have won most of our scenarios by the skin of our teeth.
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Fardaza
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Fardaza »

I just returned from a long cruise in the Pacific. No phone or internet for 18 days! What a wonderful change of pace from normal life.

While on the ship, my wife and I got a chance to try out 2 of the games I brought along. Twice we played a four-player game of Cartographers with a couple we met onboard. All of us really liked it. My wife won both games, and I came in second both times. Our new friends really enjoyed it even though they lost. If we had colored pencils or crayons, the maps would have looked even better! Can't wait to play again.

We also got in 3 four-player games and 2 two-player rounds of Cascadia. I'm liking this game more and more! Everyone enjoyed it except for one guy who just couldn't grok it. My wife and I also played about half of a game on 3 or 4 occasions when we were either interrupted and had to quit, or someone else wanted to play so we started over. My wife won 3 out of 5 games. She's becoming quite the strategist! I didn't know she had it in her.

One of our church friends said today that she and her husband would also like to play it soon!

Who knows, this could be the start of a gaming group!! :o
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Isgrimnur »

Got Tainted Grail to the table with a friend of mine. Completely screwed up his combat deck, which didn't help things. We got into Chapter 2, but felt like we were behind the power curve, so we're going to restart in two weeks with our new knowledge. And not play with Beor.
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hepcat
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by hepcat »

I remember just trying to figure out what card each character was supposed to start with was a bit of a trial.
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Fardaza
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Fardaza »

I seem to remember some rather negative comments here about Tainted Grail in the past. It's got a new version, Kings of Ruin, with a late Kickstarter now open. Is it the kind of game you would recommend for solo players? I don't mind heavy rules if the game is engaging.
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hepcat
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by hepcat »

It's definitely unique. But my issue with Awaken Realms games is that it feels like they're more concerned with creating unique games than they are fun games. Sometimes they turn out to be fun, but it seems like that's accidental most of the time.

I enjoyed my first few games of Tainted Grail, but I ended up getting drawn away by something newer at one point. The curse of being a board game collector instead of a player...something I'm hoping to rectify going forward.

Etherfields, on the other hand, has yet to click with me.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Smoove_B »

The original Tainted Grail release was...grindy. They took that feedback and eventually released official updates to address that and from everything I've read, the last KS demonstrates incorporating that feedback from the start. I've read quite a few reviews where people gave up on Tainted Grail but decided to try Kings of Ruin and immediately backed a copy.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Skinypupy »

I've had Folklore the Affliction in my hands probably a half-dozen times over the past couple years. It looks very intriguing as a gothic D&D-style RPG, but the general feedback has always been so-so (too fiddly, too much bookkeeping, etc.). I decided to finally pull the trigger and get both the base game and the Fall of the Spire xpac, as I heard the added combat initiative mechanic made a big difference.

I think I've figured out all of the bits, bobs, and character sheets now, and will hopefully be digging into it this afternoon. Wish me luck.
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