Octopus Overlords

Skinypupy wrote: ↑Sun Sep 20, 2020 4:00 pm

or the Aventuria card game.

Gorramit Smoove, you're going to cost me another $35!

You can have Aventuria + Inn of the Black Boar for cost of shipping (I can't get my corporate discount now so it wouldn't be super cheap). With the caveat that it's a card game with a ton of cards that I tried to organize and failed.

coopasonic wrote: ↑Mon Sep 21, 2020 10:39 am

Skinypupy wrote: ↑Sun Sep 20, 2020 4:00 pm

or the Aventuria card game.

Gorramit Smoove, you're going to cost me another $35!

You can have Aventuria + Inn of the Black Boar for cost of shipping (I can't get my corporate discount now so it wouldn't be super cheap). With the caveat that it's a card game with a ton of cards that I tried to organize and failed.

Hold up. Me...buying a used game from you? 2020 is truly throwing some seriously weird-ass curveballs.

Will shoot you a PM.

Aventuria with the black boar expansion is an absolute blast. It becomes a choose your own adventure in a way (although the choice is pretty much dictated by how well you do in the previous story element), combined with a neat deck building mechanic that sees you building back up from nothing (you were thrown into a dungeon naked and have to work your way back up the loot ladder).

I need to break this out again for another go.

hepcat wrote: ↑Mon Sep 21, 2020 10:12 am I use William instead of Bill whenever signing anything for shipping, etc., so I lost out big time.

I always use Aardvark Colosimo. Works out well.

And that also explains all the white powder in envelopes I keep getting from one Aardvark Colosimo.

We love Too Many Bones (base game) Our son bought it for us for lockdown and it's like the only co op I've ever really enjoyed. So happy it's not yet another legacy game. We can set up a scenario, play it, and then put the game away for another time. I ordered another character for it from the KS, looking forward to when that actually gets delivered.

Ghillie...get Ghillie.

The only thing about Too Many Bones that I don't like is the tactical map's confined space sometimes results in one shot kills for the enemy before you've even had a chance to take your turn. I understand why they made it so small, but I wish they'd added something to negate that frustrating aspect of combat.

But I do love getting upgrade points and then trying to figure out where to spend them. I know some players are happy just adding those points to the basic attributes (primarily dex and attack with some defense added in), but that really defeats the purpose of the game and you end up robbing yourself of the real fun.

disarm wrote: ↑Sun Sep 20, 2020 9:11 pm Thanks to looking back through this thread and doing some other online research, I just ordered a few more games that will be delivered tomorrow...

Blokus - conceptually simple enough that even the youngest can play, but a nice competitive game for everyone.

Castle Panic - perfect premise for a 6yo boy, and his sisters should be able to help him play once we learn the rules together

Forbidden Island - something a little more complex for the older two, but still cooperate so they can all work together

Solid choices--I played all 3 with my kids when they were younger, and all were well received.

I very nearly backed the last Aventuria KS, but had to back out at the last minute for financial reasons. It's still on my list, though. And after Torg Eternity I'm a big fan of the company.

They've launched a new non-KS funding project for Adventuria and it's $$$. Generally speaking they're more expensive products, but this latest project is a bridge too far, imho. I like the game system (and what I have), but I'm cooling on the company.

I can't seem to find anything on that. Do you have a link? I'm set with everything I already have, most likely. But I was just curious.

edit: nm, I found it.

200 bucks for all the new stuff is hefty. But if they offer them through their web store at some point, or via online retailers, I could see myself slowly adding these in as I play.

hepcat wrote: ↑Mon Sep 21, 2020 1:50 pm I can't seem to find anything on that. Do you have a link? I'm set with everything I already have, most likely. But I was just curious.

Guessing:

https://www.gameontabletop.com/cf418/av ... s-eng.html

Aventuria - Veil Dancer Hero Set - This hero set contains the hero deck of the Novadish Sharisad Karima al'Jamila and a plethora of irritating minions. In addition, with the "Orgy of Thorns" we offer you an erotic adventure that is explicitly aimed at adult players.

I knew it had to happen someday...

Family gaming is a success so far!

We played both Blokus and Castle Panic last night, and had a great time. I convinced my wife to give them a chance with me and Logan 6.4, and everyone had a great time. My wife won our inaugural game of Blokus, but all our towers fell to the monster horde in Castle Panic. Logan loved both games, and my skeptical wife also seemed to have a really good time. She even suggested a game before bed time tonight, so played Blokus again...really great game, even if we were both beaten by a 6yo (who did get a little help).

Hopefully, we'll take another shot at Castle Panic tomorrow night, when my step-daughters are home to play for the first time. Those monsters need to die!

You picked a very similar selection to the one I chose for my kids when I first got them gaming. One thing to be aware of with both Castle Panic and Forbidden Island - both require thinking two or three turns in advance. "If I hit that troll with my archer, then next turn you can hit it with that red knight and finish it with that any-color." (I'm approximating the names here - it's been a while.) It's a great tool for teaching kids to think ahead, but they'll likely need a bit of guidance until they get the hang of it to prevent repeated losses and wanting to quit.

Some quick ideas if you like those: Qwirkle is excellent for Blokus fans. Pandemic is great for the Castle Panic/Forbidden Island style play, provided that the content isn't a problem with your kids (it isn't adult content, but it involves fighting a pandemic and possibly losing - it could hit close to home for some.)

Castle Panic is just a great game overall. And I really enjoy the Star Trek Panic game as well.

Yeah, Star Trek Panic is fun. I played that at a wedding and bought a copy as soon as I got home.

Sounds like a great wedding.

If you wind up enjoying Castle Panic, the Wizard's Tower expansion is a great addition to the game. It makes the game harder but gives you some powerful new tools to help at the same time. We also have the Dark Titan expansion but have never tried it.

Daveman wrote:If you wind up enjoying Castle Panic, the Wizard's Tower expansion is a great addition to the game. It makes the game harder but gives you some powerful new tools to help at the same time. We also have the Dark Titan expansion but have never tried it.

We've only had time for one game of Castle Panic so far, and the 12yo twins weren't there, but I think it will be a hit. That said, I have looked into the expansions, and while they both seem really cool, I think we'll keep it simple for a while...let the kids pick up some strategy first, and not complicate things too much for our 6yo.

Thanks to all for the continued recommendations!

Daveman wrote:We also have the Dark Titan expansion but have never tried it.

Wizard's Tower is the only must-own expansion in the series (IMO), while Dark Titan ramps up the difficulty and Engines of War adds more stuff to build. I've never been brave enough to try all the expansion mashed together, though I have played Base+Wizard's Tower+Dark Titan and it was a challenge.

Out of all of them Engines of War is probably my least favorite. While it adds a lot more stuff to do and build, we found ourselves not bothering with most of it. The game never felt hard enough to spend the time/resources building traps and things, so we didn't bother. Maybe my opinion would change throwing Dark Titan into the mix, but on its own I felt like Engines was rather superfluous.

CASTLE PANIC is the one "adult" type game that somewhat clicked with my kids. DEAD PANIC is pretty fun too if you're not burned out on the zombie theme. Haven't tried the Star Trek one but have always wanted to.

I've found Star Trek Panic to be way harder then Castle Panic, and have lost way more games of it than I have won.

You would think with the additional strategy elements added in moving and rotating the ship you would have an easier time, but I'm only at about a 33% win ratio for this game. Still a hell of a lot of fun. And cool looking too, with the 3D Enterprise and clip on shields and explosions.

AWS260 wrote: ↑Sat Sep 12, 2020 7:53 pm I am playing Feast for Odin for the first time (on Discord - one guy owns the game and posts pictures as the game state changes). Man, this is one weird-ass game. It basically takes the highly thematic survival vibe of Agricola or Caverna, and asks, "What if we added Tetris?"

I think both Agricola and Caverna (and Le Havre, the other Uwe Rosenberg game I've played) do a great job of melding theme and gameplay, so Feast has thrown me for a loop. It is not a-thematic like so many bland eurogames. It is aggressively anti-thematic: arranging different-shaped goods on a Tetris grid has no reasonable analogue in reality whatsover. It's really interesting to see such a deliberate design decision, clearly grounded in a belief that sometime it's more important just to make game mechanisms that are fun.

Our game is barely halfway through, but so far, it's working.

Finally finished up this game today. I'm very proud of myself for coming in a close second. Now I immediately want to play again, so that I can try some of the strategies that I ignored entirely, like livestock or raiding/pillaging. The sheer amount of stuff you can do in this game is ridiculous.

Played a game of Black Seas over Zoom tonight. It was a lot of fun and worked surprisingly well. I had multiple devices set up so the players could see from different angles. I took care of all of the ship movement. Minis gaming in the time of Covid!

That is seriously impressive!

Love the background on the one participant.

That's awesome!

We had our first complete family gaming fail yesterday. I had picked up Throw Throw Burrito as a reward for the kids getting a few projects done. They love Exploding Kittens and this is by the same guy, so I figured they enjoy it.

For those who haven't played, it involves all players simultaneously drawing and discarding cards very quickly, trying to make matches of three cards. If you match certain cards, a "burrito war" breaks out, and everyone grabs for the foam burritos in the middle of the table and throws them at other people. If you get hit, you lose. It's a card game meets dodgeball, basically.

Wonder Twin 7.3a is generally good at games, but needs a moment to think about what he's doing. The frantic pace of everyone making immediate decisions, discarding, and drawing cards just completely overwhelmed him, and he broke down into tears not even 30 seconds into the first game. We hit pause on the game, and he and I went through it very slowly so he could fully understand it. Brought everyone back to the table, said "GO"...and he completely broke down again.

Wonder Twin 7.3b could figure out the card game aspect of it just fine, but when he got hit with the foam burrito, he completely melted down as well. He's the uber-competitive one, and simply could not handle losing the dodge ball aspect of the game. "It's not fair because sister can throw harder!", "Sister grabbed the better burrito! (there's two identical foam burritos", "You guys can move faster than me!", on and on and on.

Sadly, I'm just chalking this one up as a complete loss, and Throw Throw Burrito has gone back on the shelf for the forseeable future.

That's fantastic, hentzau!

I'm continuously amazed at how our group has adapted to virtual gaming. We've been plowing through the Gloomhaven: Forgotten Circles campaign without missing a beat. There was obviously quite a bit of learning curve with Tabletop Simulator at first, but it's become so second-nature now that I don't even really think about it. We open a separate Zoom meeting for voice chat and sharing Gloomhaven Helper and it works like a champ.

Skinypupy wrote: ↑Fri Sep 25, 2020 9:22 am That's awesome!

We had our first complete family gaming fail yesterday. I had picked up Throw Throw Burrito as a reward for the kids getting a few projects done.

…

Sadly, I'm just chalking this one up as a complete loss, and Throw Throw Burrito has gone back on the shelf for the forseeable future.

Oof.

I'd suggest a more simple and straightforward family-friendly action/dexterity game like Flick 'em Up! instead (kids'll love the toy box of nifty components, too):

RMC wrote: ↑Fri Sep 25, 2020 9:02 am Love the background on the one participant.

Yeah, he kept changing it through the game to different naval backgrounds. And when one of his brigs sank after (inadvertently) ramming the frigate, he changed his background to a sunken ship.

hentzau wrote: ↑Fri Sep 25, 2020 10:26 am

RMC wrote: ↑Fri Sep 25, 2020 9:02 am Love the background on the one participant.

Yeah, he kept changing it through the game to different naval backgrounds. And when one of his brigs sank after (inadvertently) ramming the frigate, he changed his background to a sunken ship.

On work calls I keep switching my background to some of the old spaces where I used to work in the Navy. I have some pictures off the internet, and I am scanning in some that I took while I was in. So that's always fun, and I can respect him making it more fun doing that in a game.

Way to set a course for adventure!

....your mind on a new roooomance

We broke in the new gaming table with Ticket to Ride, but after that it was an all-Star Wars weekend.

Kicked off Saturday with X-Wing Miniatures, where Little B 11.6's two TIE Fighters made short work of my X-wing. Then moved on to Star Wars Destiny, where I again failed to come out on top. My hero deck lost to her villain deck 2 games to 1. Ran through the first chapter of Imperial Assault: Return to Hoth again, and fared a little bit better this time. Knowing what I needed to do might have helped a little.

Finished off yesterday and have spent most of today with Star Wars: Outer Rim. Really, really enjoying this one, playing primarily solo. Played 6 games, and am 2-4 against the AI so far, with a couple of close losses. About the only thing I'm not crazy about is how much of a complete crapshoot bounty hunting can be. My last game had me only needing to find and capture Greedo. He was the very last green character token on the map, and the AI won before I tracked him down. Seems way more difficult to do bounty hunting than simply delivering goods, unless you get lucky. Other than that minor quibble, it's a fantastic game.

My wife and I played Argent: The Consortium again, making it two weekends in a row that we've played it. It's remarkable how much a different set of rooms and mage abilities can change up the strategic space in this game. Our second go had a very different feel from the first, with less wounding but more spells being thrown around.

I ended up winning by the skin of my teeth. We split the Consortium voters down the middle, six to six, but I had the lead in influence points, the tiebreaker. Whew.

Wife and I played Aftermath, a Adventure Book game about mice and hamsters and guinea pigs surviving in a post-human Apocalypse world.

The storybook is really interesting with page maps and a separate little travel grid that you have to move around to get to various mission locations in the city. The gameplay revolves around action cards, which are just playing cards in 4 colors and 3 numbers (1, 2, 3). Each color is associated with a different skill. Out of your 5 card hand, you play the cards to move around the map, or initiate skill tests with cards of the appropriate color. What's interesting is that you can add on extra cards to the test using a Gin Rummy style addition (either match color or number of initial card). Mixed in the deck are black threat cards that get placed on a sideboard when you draw them and determine whether enemies are hostile, and if they are, what actions they do.

It's a clever game, and the story is well written (at least so far). The minis are adorable and come pre-washed so you could play with them unpainted and they still look pretty cool. My biggest complaint is that occasionally there is some lack of clarity around some rules. The rulebook is pretty light and while I appreciate a non-heavy rulebook, it feels like this could have used a few more sidebars. And the second mission we played, it wasn't completely clear how the mission goal was accomplished. "Scout a house in Northbend". We went there and scavenged some cheese and gears. Was that enough to declare success? It wasn't completely clear, unlike the first mission, which was go to the Dungeon Enjo and bring back some Onion Snoodles.

Despite that, wife and I really enjoyed it and we're looking forward to playing more. That also means I need to stop painting Folklore minis and start painting some Aftermath heroes.

AWS260 wrote: ↑Sun Sep 27, 2020 11:48 pm My wife and I played Argent: The Consortium again, making it two weekends in a row that we've played it. It's remarkable how much a different set of rooms and mage abilities can change up the strategic space in this game. Our second go had a very different feel from the first, with less wounding but more spells being thrown around.

I ended up winning by the skin of my teeth. We split the Consortium voters down the middle, six to six, but I had the lead in influence points, the tiebreaker. Whew.

It's a really great game and I'm sorry I sold my copy now as I'd like to play it again sometime. Much better than Crystal Palace which tried to do the same thing but in my opinion failed on nearly every front.

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Sun Sep 20, 2020 3:13 pm I didn't like it for solo play (you didn't ask me, but I can at least jump in). It's a beautiful game - the card art is really evocative and well done. My issue with it was that I am not really sure it's a game. Instead, it felt more to me like it was like an RPG character creator and for solo you're trying to craft a character that's acquiring runes that will defeat a specific foe. If that's what you're looking for, it delivers. But in terms of playing a game? I just didn't see myself reaching for it ever again after a few times of playing.

I don't know if that would have changed playing with someone else either. I guess I agree with Liz - she sums it up well. To me it felt like the first iteration of a game. Kinda how I also felt when playing Folklore. It didn't feel like it was done.

So, I've gone back to Call to Adventure a couple times since my initial playthroughs. I think I agree with your assessment. It just hasn't really been that interesting since those first few tries.

I like the general idea of it, but actually put it away mid-run last night because it was just...meh.

Outer Rim is definitely better with other people. The AI isn't terrible, but it also isn't great.

Little B and I have played 3 games now, and all three games came down to the very last turn. She hit a die roll while I failed all three times. It was infuriating, but very fun. Might be my favorite game I've played his year.

I haven’t tried them yet, but there are some fan-made improved AI options over at BGG.