Hey all! Sorry for the delay on this one. Had a lot of life stuff to take care of before this went up, and I wanted to put some more thoughts to paper before publishing. The choice was either publish a pretty thin post or delay a bit, and I chose the latter. Hopefully it was worth it!
DELAYED GRATIFICATION STARTS NOW
STUFF I'VE WRITTEN LATELY
So! Done a few proper reviews recently. I'm posting them on There Will Be Games as well as here because I don't want to force anyone to have to go off site to check my stuff out. One was for Samurai, the other for Tiny Towns. The former seems to have gone over pretty well, the latter not so much. Check 'em out if you're interested!
Reviews are difficult for me as of late. I don't do long-form so well anymore, and I feel like I repeat myself a lot. Forcing myself to write these was...interesting. Not sure I liked it, but I'll give it a few more tries at least.
THE CAPTAIN IS DEAD
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I've gone on record saying that coops are not typically my thing. Pandemic and its offshoots bounce off me like rubber. Solving an optimization puzzle is only entertaining as long as the puzzle lasts, and most of these games don't have enough tricks to stick around for me. Generally speaking I prefer thematic coops like Arkham Horror, or recently Camp Grizzly. TCiD, however, surprised me.
Make no mistake, this is a "put out the fires" coop. But unlike the rest of its ilk you don't win by simply doing that. Contributing to the win condition of repairing the jump drive does literally nothing to help with everything breaking around you, and it's expensive. This forces some actual tough decisions! I know, different from most coops!
What Captain has that other games of its ilk lack is variety. 18 characters with unique stats and abilities, huge event deck, and a whole bunch of interactivity with other players as you trade stuff around and contribute to each other's efforts. It's not that it does anything particularly new, it just does the formula very, very well. I'm not sure how long it'll stick around for us but for now we're nowhere near done with it. Also the theme helps, even if it is a smidge thin.
RAVNICA INQUISITION
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So it's...it's like The Resistance, right? But it's not. It's not that.
It's got MAGIC.
Look, there's not a lot to say about this one. Instead of going on multiple missions you have exactly 5 opportunities to be elected to take an action that may or may not give you information, then the game's over and one of the teams wins. So little information gets doled out that it's entirely possible you can go into the final vote knowing literally nothing. This is compounded by the fact that each player represents two of MTG's five colors, and can only be elected to take the actions that match one of said assigned colors. It's kind of a mess.
It's hard to complain a lot about a silly 15 minute social deduction game, but when a game like Don't Mess With Cthulhu/Time Bomb exists I just don't know why you'd go for this. Maybe it needs a full table; we only played the low end. I dunno. Unless you're a huge MTG fan I wouldn't seek it out.
BETRAYAL LEGACY
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Finally got another game of this in! It sure was another game of BL!
I'm not even going to do a spoiler post for this one. Nothing super notable happened here beyond being instructed by the scenario rulebook to yell at the traitor in real life, which we took full advantage of. It was a total shutout for us non-traitors because Betrayal does that sometimes.
It seems like the game has slowed down on introducing cool new hooks, which is unsurprising but still a bit disappointing. Was it fun? Oh sure. Just not as impressive as previous plays. Still very much looking forward to eventually finishing this out.
AIR, LAND & SEA
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Game weight is a weird stat in that it isn't really a stat. It's entirely subjective depending on what other games people have played. Plenty of heavy games have very little in the way of impactful decisions, despite having a laundry list of mechanisms. My favorite games tend to go the other way: simple rules, hard choices. And hoo BOY does Air Land & Sea deliver on that.
AL&S offers as many difficult impactful decisions in 15-20 minutes as many modern heavy games do in two hours. Every single card play is excruciating in the best way, and that's not even counting weighing whether or not you should concede to minimalize losses or not. That's what this game is really about: posturing, and daring your opponent to call you out on it. And it's brilliant.
When Dan Thurot reviewed this recently he made a couple boxing metaphors. I think that's apt because AL&S punches so far above its weight class it's ridiculous. As I've said elsewhere it's the Little Mac of board games, knocking out much more intimidating games left and right and only getting better as I play it more. Do yourself a favor and track this one down. It's unassuming, but it packs a highly recommended wallop.
MISKATONIC UNIVERSITY: THE RESTRICTED COLLECTION
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Oooooh secret Knizia? FORBIDDEN Knizia?
Maybe not so secret actually. I just don't pay enough attention to Kickstarter to know this was being made, it just kind of arrived on a local shelf and caught my eye for reasons I'll expand on later. Chaosium definitely did the production on this one to the 9s - if the box had an insert to keep the cards straight it would be one of the best looking small games I've seen in a while.
The game itself, on the other hand, hasn't impressed me so far. It's kind of like a more complex Circus Flohcati with player powers instead of events in the deck. But they're not even asymmetric or particularly interesting. Instead they're what keeps the game from just being a pure luckfest. It still is one, which is fine, but having to teach everyone 7 icons before playing a game this light and lucky is not great.
Yeah, I guess I'm just not feeling this one. It's a shame because everything about it appeals to me right up until the actual game starts. Then it just becomes a very meh Knizia that doesn't really leverage his usual strengths. I saw a video where Chaosium folks said they got the design and folded the theme in from there, which is pretty standard industry practice, but man does it feel transparent here. Shame really.
QE
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You know how I said I don't do Kickstarter? This was one of the rare exceptions. The pitch for QE was so bizarre and new to me that I pledged for it just to see if it worked. And you know what? I don't know. Because I haven't played it yet.
Had a chance to play it right after I got it, but timing didn't work out. Brought it to a few other places, no dice. Had it on the shelf when we had people over, played other stuff isntead. Took it to work, some of our usual players were out of state for two weeks. It's like fate itself is stopping me from printing all of the money, and frankly I'm not down with fate's bullshit right about now.
I will play this. Mark my words. I NEED to know if it works, because if it does I'm going to be introducing it to people for the foreseeable future.
CALL OF CTHULHU
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NOT A BOARD GAME?! HERESY!
After a long recent conversation about cosmic horror and how bad of a job board games do at portraying it (in summary: board games are good at pulp cthulhu but can't horror their way out of a kallax), I decided to get back into the game that's given me some of my favorite RPG memories way back when. Core book? Check. Pulp book? Check. Assorted modules to dig through? M-m-m-multicheck. I've missed CoC so much and just reading it again has been a tremendous amount of fun. The changes are all over the place (no d12s?!) but that's fine. I'm just excited to have this in my life again.
I play a lot of RPGs, but I barely ever run them so it's taking me some effort to get this going and find players. This led to me seriously jonesing for some cosmic shenanigans in the meantime. Tried the aforementioned Miskatonic game, but it didn't grab me. Played some Elder Sign on the app, that was pretty good. Tried out Lovecraft's Untold Stories on Steam. That thing is pulp as hell but seems solid so far? Haven't played enough to say for sure.
I want more GOOD cosmic horror games to tide me over until I get to run CoC. Recommendations are welcome. Not Cthulhu Wars. It's a fine game, but I'm not looking to rent the necessary storage unit to keep it in.
THE LAST BIT
Summer sucks, y'all. It's so hot. All the time. Sucks the energy right out of your energy gland.
Thanks for reading! More in a couple weeks.
So! Done a few proper reviews recently. I'm posting them on There Will Be Games as well as here because I don't want to force anyone to have to go off site to check my stuff out. One was for Samurai, the other for Tiny Towns. The former seems to have gone over pretty well, the latter not so much. Check 'em out if you're interested!
Reviews are difficult for me as of late. I don't do long-form so well anymore, and I feel like I repeat myself a lot. Forcing myself to write these was...interesting. Not sure I liked it, but I'll give it a few more tries at least.
/pic3279087.jpg)
I've gone on record saying that coops are not typically my thing. Pandemic and its offshoots bounce off me like rubber. Solving an optimization puzzle is only entertaining as long as the puzzle lasts, and most of these games don't have enough tricks to stick around for me. Generally speaking I prefer thematic coops like Arkham Horror, or recently Camp Grizzly. TCiD, however, surprised me.
Make no mistake, this is a "put out the fires" coop. But unlike the rest of its ilk you don't win by simply doing that. Contributing to the win condition of repairing the jump drive does literally nothing to help with everything breaking around you, and it's expensive. This forces some actual tough decisions! I know, different from most coops!
What Captain has that other games of its ilk lack is variety. 18 characters with unique stats and abilities, huge event deck, and a whole bunch of interactivity with other players as you trade stuff around and contribute to each other's efforts. It's not that it does anything particularly new, it just does the formula very, very well. I'm not sure how long it'll stick around for us but for now we're nowhere near done with it. Also the theme helps, even if it is a smidge thin.
/pic4767262.jpg)
So it's...it's like The Resistance, right? But it's not. It's not that.
It's got MAGIC.
Look, there's not a lot to say about this one. Instead of going on multiple missions you have exactly 5 opportunities to be elected to take an action that may or may not give you information, then the game's over and one of the teams wins. So little information gets doled out that it's entirely possible you can go into the final vote knowing literally nothing. This is compounded by the fact that each player represents two of MTG's five colors, and can only be elected to take the actions that match one of said assigned colors. It's kind of a mess.
It's hard to complain a lot about a silly 15 minute social deduction game, but when a game like Don't Mess With Cthulhu/Time Bomb exists I just don't know why you'd go for this. Maybe it needs a full table; we only played the low end. I dunno. Unless you're a huge MTG fan I wouldn't seek it out.
/pic4314964.jpg)
Finally got another game of this in! It sure was another game of BL!
I'm not even going to do a spoiler post for this one. Nothing super notable happened here beyond being instructed by the scenario rulebook to yell at the traitor in real life, which we took full advantage of. It was a total shutout for us non-traitors because Betrayal does that sometimes.
It seems like the game has slowed down on introducing cool new hooks, which is unsurprising but still a bit disappointing. Was it fun? Oh sure. Just not as impressive as previous plays. Still very much looking forward to eventually finishing this out.
/pic4387681.jpg)
Game weight is a weird stat in that it isn't really a stat. It's entirely subjective depending on what other games people have played. Plenty of heavy games have very little in the way of impactful decisions, despite having a laundry list of mechanisms. My favorite games tend to go the other way: simple rules, hard choices. And hoo BOY does Air Land & Sea deliver on that.
AL&S offers as many difficult impactful decisions in 15-20 minutes as many modern heavy games do in two hours. Every single card play is excruciating in the best way, and that's not even counting weighing whether or not you should concede to minimalize losses or not. That's what this game is really about: posturing, and daring your opponent to call you out on it. And it's brilliant.
When Dan Thurot reviewed this recently he made a couple boxing metaphors. I think that's apt because AL&S punches so far above its weight class it's ridiculous. As I've said elsewhere it's the Little Mac of board games, knocking out much more intimidating games left and right and only getting better as I play it more. Do yourself a favor and track this one down. It's unassuming, but it packs a highly recommended wallop.
/pic4422854.png)
Oooooh secret Knizia? FORBIDDEN Knizia?
Maybe not so secret actually. I just don't pay enough attention to Kickstarter to know this was being made, it just kind of arrived on a local shelf and caught my eye for reasons I'll expand on later. Chaosium definitely did the production on this one to the 9s - if the box had an insert to keep the cards straight it would be one of the best looking small games I've seen in a while.
The game itself, on the other hand, hasn't impressed me so far. It's kind of like a more complex Circus Flohcati with player powers instead of events in the deck. But they're not even asymmetric or particularly interesting. Instead they're what keeps the game from just being a pure luckfest. It still is one, which is fine, but having to teach everyone 7 icons before playing a game this light and lucky is not great.
Yeah, I guess I'm just not feeling this one. It's a shame because everything about it appeals to me right up until the actual game starts. Then it just becomes a very meh Knizia that doesn't really leverage his usual strengths. I saw a video where Chaosium folks said they got the design and folded the theme in from there, which is pretty standard industry practice, but man does it feel transparent here. Shame really.
/pic4383594.png)
You know how I said I don't do Kickstarter? This was one of the rare exceptions. The pitch for QE was so bizarre and new to me that I pledged for it just to see if it worked. And you know what? I don't know. Because I haven't played it yet.
Had a chance to play it right after I got it, but timing didn't work out. Brought it to a few other places, no dice. Had it on the shelf when we had people over, played other stuff isntead. Took it to work, some of our usual players were out of state for two weeks. It's like fate itself is stopping me from printing all of the money, and frankly I'm not down with fate's bullshit right about now.
I will play this. Mark my words. I NEED to know if it works, because if it does I'm going to be introducing it to people for the foreseeable future.
/pic2866746.png)
NOT A BOARD GAME?! HERESY!
After a long recent conversation about cosmic horror and how bad of a job board games do at portraying it (in summary: board games are good at pulp cthulhu but can't horror their way out of a kallax), I decided to get back into the game that's given me some of my favorite RPG memories way back when. Core book? Check. Pulp book? Check. Assorted modules to dig through? M-m-m-multicheck. I've missed CoC so much and just reading it again has been a tremendous amount of fun. The changes are all over the place (no d12s?!) but that's fine. I'm just excited to have this in my life again.
I play a lot of RPGs, but I barely ever run them so it's taking me some effort to get this going and find players. This led to me seriously jonesing for some cosmic shenanigans in the meantime. Tried the aforementioned Miskatonic game, but it didn't grab me. Played some Elder Sign on the app, that was pretty good. Tried out Lovecraft's Untold Stories on Steam. That thing is pulp as hell but seems solid so far? Haven't played enough to say for sure.
I want more GOOD cosmic horror games to tide me over until I get to run CoC. Recommendations are welcome. Not Cthulhu Wars. It's a fine game, but I'm not looking to rent the necessary storage unit to keep it in.
Summer sucks, y'all. It's so hot. All the time. Sucks the energy right out of your energy gland.
Thanks for reading! More in a couple weeks.