OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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

Post by Fardaza »

Wow! Did those come with a Kickstarter order? You get them thru Etsy? Etc?

Didn't see those on BGG!
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Malificent »

Fardaza wrote: Fri May 27, 2022 6:57 pm Wow! Did those come with a Kickstarter order? You get them thru Etsy? Etc?

Didn't see those on BGG!
All the terrain comes with Descent - high quality minis and all the terrain is part of the reason the game is more expensive.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Daveman »

Make sure you're looking up the right version of Descent. Only the newest, Descent: Legends of the Dark (not to be confusesd with the previous edition Descent: Journeys in the Dark) has the terrain.

Also worth noting that the new version is solely coop and is app-driven. The previous edition is typically one evil player vs. the heroes, although there is an excellent app released some years into the game that allows for a solo/coop game as well.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Malificent »

Daveman wrote: Sat May 28, 2022 7:46 am Make sure you're looking up the right version of Descent. Only the newest, Descent: Legends of the Dark (not to be confusesd with the previous edition Descent: Journeys in the Dark) has the terrain.

Also worth noting that the new version is solely coop and is app-driven. The previous edition is typically one evil player vs. the heroes, although there is an excellent app released some years into the game that allows for a solo/coop game as well.
Correct. I should've been clearer.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Fardaza »

That's where I went wrong. I was looking at Journeys.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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Sneaking in spam with a stealth edit. Tsk tsk tsk.
Last edited by mindloss on Wed Jun 01, 2022 4:27 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this week

Post by hepcat »

Excellent game day yesterday. I’d been jonesing for some Star Trek Ascendancy so we played a 3 player game. I passed out races randomly and got Vulcans. Zarathud went Federation and Seppe played the Andorians. I had read through the updated rulebook just recently and it does a great job of including all the races and how they differ in the rules from others. Vulcans don’t win by getting to 5 Ascendancy, they draw two end game goals from a deck of them , hiding one and making the other known. They also can’t colonize like the others. Instead they have to spend Ascendancy to “regain” lost colonies.

They also can’t lie to the other players, which is interesting.

The Andorians are like Romulans mixed with Klingons in gameplay. Establishing deep space listening posts and large attack fleets.

And the Feds are science mavens.

At least that’s how the races should be played. In actuality, the Federation realized too late that the Andorians were about to win and went full blown warmongers to stop them. I, on the other hand, was one production node (basically factories) away from my secret goal of building a dozen of them. But I couldn’t for the life of me find a pre warp or warp capable scoring for a hegemony action (peaceful takeover). So the Andorians took the game.

I had a blast though. If you’re even remotely a Star Trek fan this game ticks all the boxes. If you’re a fan of a good 4x space game, it’s also quite good.

Then i taught folks how to play Hour of Need. The only problem with the game is you need to remember a lot of rules specific to the issue and villain you’re playing with most of the time. So if you miss something, even one small sentence, you can easily lose.

And we lost.

Finally, we got in a game of Ashes Reborn, the updated Ashes Rise of the Phoenixborn. I still love this one and have everything for it. And I updated it all when the new upgrade was released last year. Seppe won again, but we had a blast.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Skinypupy »

I played Feast for Odin today.

My brain hurts.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by baelthazar »

Skinypupy wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 3:02 pm I played Feast for Odin today.

My brain hurts.
I set up Burncycle and am trying to learn it. My brain is also hurting. Thankfully, it has a good "How to Play" tutorial book.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Zarathud »

Hurts so good. I love a brain-burner and need to relearn Cloudspire.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Fardaza »

I'm trying to relearn Mage Knight. Got it out on the table last night. Sheesh, do you think they could make the print a little smaller in the Ultimate Edition manuals? :(

I can try to play it, now that I've finished the foamcore insert! (Only a 2-3 month process.) :roll:
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by coopasonic »

I taught my 16yo Hive this weekend. In our first game he managed to see what I was doing, escape it, devise his own plan from his observations of my attack and executed it successfully. tl;dr: he beat me
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Skinypupy »

Spent the past week at my brother's place for vacation, and I played a bunch of games for the first time. Some quick thoughts:

- Feast for Odin: Cool concept, but waaaaay too much for me to keep track of. As I mentioned, it made my brain hurt.
- Sagrada: I've played a ton of the app, but hadn't played the physical game before. It's beautiful, and I really love how it plays. Games go very, very quickly with two people though, which may be a negative for some (brother didn't like that aspect at all)
- Codenames: Awesome game, really enjoyed this. Got a little frustrating when playing with the kids (8 through 13), but was a blast with the adults. I might pick this one up for myself.
- Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra: This is the first Azul game I've played and I absolutely loved it. It has an amazing table presence and the simple but strategic gameplay is a blast. Another one that I'll likely be adding to my own collection.
- Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition: I'm on the fence with this one. I've played quite a bit of the original (mostly through the app) and it took about halfway through the first game before I could shift my paradigm to building an engine that doesn't automatically gain resources on every turn. That's a hard shift to make, and I'm not sure I like it, tbh. The board also very really underwhelming and not nearly as cool as building out a whole planet. We played a couple games, and I mostly just came away thinking that I'll stick to the original.
- Photosynthesis: Thought this one was just ok. The rotating shade mechanic was cool and it looks really nice on the table, but I found myself mostly just bored by the end of it. It's also really easy to screw up a couple initial moves and hamstring yourself for the rest of the game, which I didn't like.
- Spirit Island: This is the one I was probably looking forward to the most, but it kinda fell flat. Took us a good 90 minutes to figure it out, and even then we found ourselves making a bunch of errors. We ended up winning our first game, but I think we accidentally cheated. Like Feast for Odin, I think it's a cool concept that is just way too complex for my tastes. It's one that had been on my "should probably buy" list for ages, but I'm safe to remove it now, I think. Just not my thing.

He doesn't like dungeon crawlers, so I look forward to getting back to those when we get home. :)
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by wonderpug »

Skinypupy wrote: Mon Jun 13, 2022 10:55 am - Codenames: Awesome game, really enjoyed this. Got a little frustrating when playing with the kids (8 through 13), but was a blast with the adults. I might pick this one up for myself.
If you weren't aware, there are umpteen variations of Codenames that might better work with the kiddos. There's Marvel, Disney, etc., and you can have them be picture-based or text-based. Also, if you have a desire to play 2-player, Codenames Duets works really well for two.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by hentzau »

wonderpug wrote:
Skinypupy wrote: Mon Jun 13, 2022 10:55 am - Codenames: Awesome game, really enjoyed this. Got a little frustrating when playing with the kids (8 through 13), but was a blast with the adults. I might pick this one up for myself.
If you weren't aware, there are umpteen variations of Codenames that might better work with the kiddos. There's Marvel, Disney, etc., and you can have them be picture-based or text-based. Also, if you have a desire to play 2-player, Codenames Duets works really well for two.
I’ve often thought that Codenames would make an awesome game show.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by YellowKing »

Played a really fascinating game called Paint the Roses tonight. Based on Alice in Wonderland, it's a cooperative deduction game in which you're attempting to fill the Red Queen's garden with painted rose tiles before she chops off your head.

Each player chooses an Easy, Medium, or Hard "whim" card which dictates what two rose bushes the Queen wants painted. Easy cards consists of two adjacent colors, Medium cards consist of two adjacent colors OR two adjacent suits, and Hard cards can consist of two adjacent colors, two adjacent suits, or a combination of a color and a suit.

On a player's turn, they place a tile featuring a bush in a suit and color onto the board. The goal is to get the other players to guess your card, so in general you're trying to place the tile in such a way that it narrows down the possibilities of your card. Once you place the tile, you then put a cube on the tile for each "match" that tile satisfies. So for instance, if I put a Pink Heart tile next to a Pink Spade tile, and my card is Pink/Pink, I'd put one clue token down to let the other players know that something about that tile placement matches my card.

In addition, all other players put cubes down if that tile placement matches the combination on *their* card. In this fashion, players may deduce clues about players other than the active player.

After the active player places their tile and everyone has submitted clues, the group must guess a player's card. If they get it right, the Gardener token moves around the track a number of spaces corresponding to the point value of the card. If they get it wrong, however, the Queen moves double (the Queen always moves a minimum number of spaces per round, but incorrect guesses are particularly punishing).

Players win if they can fill every slot on the board with a rose bush before the Queen catches them. There are some interesting mechanics that cause the Queen to move increasingly faster as the players advance down the scoring track, so that the game almost forces a nail-biting finish. There is also decision making on which difficulty card to choose. The group as a whole can only have one Easy card in play at a time, so there's a lot of risk/reward in whether to choose Hard cards that are worth a ton of movement but harder to guess, or play it safer with Medium cards that move you slower but are easier to guess.

It probably sounds more complex in my discussion than it actually is, as I had the rules down in about five minutes. The strategy and deduction, however, is where the depth really shines. The Deluxe edition that our group has features some stellar components and one of the best insert trays I've seen in a long time. It also included some expansion modules that add additional challenges and twists to the gameplay that were quite interesting.

Had an absolute blast with this one, and it really was unlike anything I've played before with the possible exception of Shipwreck Arcana, another brain-burning cooperative deduction game. If you like logic puzzles, this one is a high recommend. The only caveat I'd say is that I think it really works best with 3 players and up. There are rules for 2 players, but a lot of the fun is in discussion with your teammates about what to guess.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Skinypupy »

Just finished our first game of the new version of Sentinels of the Multiverse. Superheroes aren’t typically my thing, but that was really fun! I love how it has a very simple basic structure that allows for a ton of complexity within its framework. Definitely going to take a minute to figure out how each character works, and how they synergize. We played with Legacy, Ra, Tachyon, and The Wraith and made pretty quick work of Baron Blade.

Little B 13.3 really loved it (she was just nuking shit as Ra) and it was right on the borderline of complexity for the Wonder Twins 9.0. One of them had it figured out pretty well by the time we finished, the other couldn’t quite get his head around it.

Looking forward to jumping into a few solo plays to get a better feel.

Quick question though. We played with the dinosaur island environment and lots of the dinosaur mobs say things like “deal the target other than itself with the second lowest HP X damage”. Does that include the villain and his henchmen/minions/etc? Or just heroes?
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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I've had a good time the past couple of weekends with Guards of Atlantis II, which is basically a MOBA in a board game. It's easy to set up, easy to parse, and the variety of characters make for an incredible range of combos and tactics. Really fun if you have at least 3 friends who are up for a team-based arena battle.

I also just received my Kickstarter copy of Circadians: Chaos Order, and hoo boy, does that game have a lot going on. Fundamentally, it's area control with an interesting action-selection mechanism, in which the players assign costs to the different actions at the beginning of each round. Combat uses a Dune-like battle wheel system, in which both sides secretly choose their strength. And there's some euro-style resource management, as you build structures that increase your income in different ways.

On top of all this, Chaos Order has a lot of asymmetry between factions. For example, each faction gains victory points in a different way and has a unique VP track, with different bonuses along the way and a different VP target needed to win the game. One faction introduces a set of mercenaries that could end up fighting for anyone. Instead of a static base, one faction has a flying dropship that moves around the board. Etcetera.

The production is very good, with oodles of wooden bits and cardstock tuckboxes (these were fun to assemble) to store each faction's pieces. On the downside, one of the tuckboxes was missing from my copy. On the upside, I sent an email and the head of the company replied the next day, promising to send the missing piece.

Now I just need to find time to play it with friends. Given the rules load, I don't think a weekday evening is going to cut it.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by coopasonic »

Played Space Base with work folks last week with 5 players. I'd never played with more than 3 before. Had a huge come from behind victory earning most of the victory points on other players turns and I think all four opponents combined *barely* had more points than I did at the end.

Back to a 2 player game with my older son this weekend in a much, much tighter game, but still won in a similar way, early placement of VPs on a low number, combined with a few bonus rolls also on low numbers.

I know the randomness is a big part of winning in Space Base, and is the exact reason I ditched Final Girl, but it works better for me in Space Base because everyone is at the mercy of RNGeezus.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Skinypupy »

Selling a bunch of old games so I have money in my Venmo + going in to just "browse" at the game store = bad news. Came home with Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape and the Unfinished Business xpac for Star Wars: Outer Rim today. :oops:

Unfinished Business is basically just MOAR. It doubles the amount of events, planet actions, market items, characters, and ships. Even with nothing else, that's exactly what I was hoping for out of it. There's also a cool ambition system, some new AI, and a way to zip from one end of the map to the other side Pac-Man style. All in all, good stuff.

I swore off mini-heavy dungeon crawlers, but was interested in Massive Darkness 2 because it is mostly self-contained 2(ish) hour missions rather than a long, drawn-out campaign that I'd feel guilty for never finishing. Plus, the mechanics look really interesting. Haven't played it yet (still watching how to play vids), but I can confidently report that the box is ridiculous. Minis and minis for days. :) Only problem is that everything barely fits back in, and it's bursting at the seams.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Smoove_B »

I've really been enjoying the original Massive Darkness, fwiw. It's hitting the right spot for complexity, time investment and reward. Plus the minis are all awesome.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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Smoove_B wrote: Mon Jun 27, 2022 10:38 pm I've really been enjoying the original Massive Darkness, fwiw. It's hitting the right spot for complexity, time investment and reward. Plus the minis are all awesome.
Your comments on the original actually nudged me to check this one out, as the consensus is that it improves on nearly everything.

So if I hate it, I'm blaming you. ;)
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Smoove_B »

:D

I'm willing to accept that. I hope it's a winner for you too - it really just feel "fun" with very little overhead.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by DarkOverLord »

Nothing special tbh I'm a big fan of Warcraft III Frothen Throne so I'm still playing a lot in it :P
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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Bot sense... tingling...
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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Blackhawk wrote: Tue Jun 28, 2022 7:22 am Bot sense... tingling...
Except... would a bot post an image? See other thread. Now I am unsure.

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

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TheMix wrote: Tue Jun 28, 2022 10:06 am
Blackhawk wrote: Tue Jun 28, 2022 7:22 am Bot sense... tingling...
Except... would a bot post an image? See other thread. Now I am unsure.
Ah, that was posted after the tingle. Prior to that it was all single lines that were phrased such that they could apply to any game/movie/show. I have seen more than one bot 'establish' itself the same way.

So, uh - DarkOverLord - if you're a human, welcome aboard! ;)
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by hepcat »

TheMix wrote: Tue Jun 28, 2022 10:06 am
Blackhawk wrote: Tue Jun 28, 2022 7:22 am Bot sense... tingling...
Except... would a bot post an image? See other thread. Now I am unsure.
I've been posting here for over a decade and no one has figured out I'm a bot yet.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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hepcat wrote:I've been posting here for over a decade and no one has figured out I'm a bot yet.
I had my suspicions, but figured you were one of the sentient AIs from Google so I just rolled with it.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by hepcat »

:lol: That is so true, my friend. Time Shares ARE a worthy investment in this current economic downturn!
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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hepcat wrote: Tue Jun 28, 2022 12:57 pm I've been posting here for over a decade and no one has figured out I'm a bot yet.
As far as you know.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

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HA! Good catch! Nordic oil prices ARE plummeting and you'd be wise to get in on the ground floor NOW!
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Skinypupy »

Some initial thoughts on Massive Darkness 2 after playing through the first couple scenarios with multiple character combinations.

At it's core, this is a pretty basic, no-frills dice chucking dungeon crawl. While the overall package is quite good, there isn't anything here you haven't seen before. There's the barest overarching narrative, and the entire experience is simply running through a dungeon opening doors, killing mobs, and collecting treasure. For better or worse.

The main hook seems to be the really interesting characters you can play as. The base game comes with 6 (Berzerker, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Wizard, Shaman) with a bunch more you can buy from xpacs. Thankfully the characters are all extremely well done and each plays in very different and interesting ways. The Paladin casts different auras that provide abilities for anyone in the zone and can switch them at will. The Ranger has a "press your luck" card draw mechanic on every attack that can potentially add buffs if you it the target number or debuffs if you go over. The Berzerker uses damage as Rage to activate abilities. The Rogue draws tokens from a literal "bag of tricks" and uses a trick to add a buff or discards one on each action. Etc, etc. Each character has their own completely unique playstyle, which makes each scenario a new and interesting challenge. I'm sure there will be combinations that prove more effective (I'm partial to Paladin/Rogue so far), but it's been very fun to experiment.

Probably the closest comparison I can make for MD2 from a thematic and mechanical standpoint is that is feels like a very simplified version of Sword & Sorcery. That's not a bad thing, imo, as S&S' complexity is ultimately what drove me away. Dungeon exploration is pretty basic, with everyone taking three actions on their turn. They can be any combination of move (each move gives two Move Points that can be used to either move or interact), attack, recover, trade & equip, and Special Action. You'll progress through a series of zones opening doors, spawning mobs, looting chests, handling traps, etc. All pretty basic stuff.

There's a timer that advances at the end of each turn that can add treasure tokens to a draw bag (more on that in a sec) or span wandering mobs. Interestingly, the wandering mobs are actually the most dangerous mobs in the game. Rather than being your standard low-level trash, wandering mobs are the equivalent of mini-bosses, which is an interesting switch. Forces you to move quickly to try and avoid an influx of more powerful monsters, rather than just adding a steady stream of standard mobs. It also means you're pulling out the cool huge minis from the bottom of the box right away, rather than waiting until you get to the final scenario to bust out the big bads. I love that, as I generally never even get around to using the cool big monsters because they're buried so deep in the campaign.

The combat is...fine. You build a dice pool based on your weapons and the enemy's defense, roll, then add up hits, blocks, and special abilities. Again, nothing we haven't seen before. I do like that you roll enemy counterattacks at the same time you roll your standard attack, which forces you to make immediate decisions about how to handle incoming enemy response.

You gain XP after defeating mobs or doing other actions, and I really like the way your characters quickly level from noobs to powerhouses over the course of a single scenario. There's no grinding through hours of different scenarios to advance your character, you'll be leveling quickly over the course of 90-120 minutes. It's very satisfying and introduces lots of variety to the scenario based on skills and abilities you add during level up.

Thematically, there's a couple things that don't quite work for me:

- The whole "darkness" mechanic feels rather gimmicky. Almost like they had to make it a bigger factor than it should be, just because it was in the name. The board is divided into light and dark zones. Attacking from a dark zone give you an additional attack die. This is HUGE, especially in the early game where you have limited weapon or skill choices. Shadow zones will also give certain heroes other unique abilities. So a huge part of the strategy ends up as simply figuring out how to position yourself and mobs to ensure you're attacking from a dark zone. Thematically, that's a little silly to me. Why would my Berzerker - who is running straight at the enemy in a blood frenzy - care about whether or not he was attacking from the darkness?

- There's no restrictions on who can use what equipment. Want your Rogue to equip that 2-handed Greatsword? Go for it. Want your Wizard to equip that plate mail armor? Have at it! There are things that work better with different characters as you get into the higher treasure drops, but the early game will see you making some really weird choices about who is using what gear.

- While I do like that the enemy counterattacks during your attack, I does lead to some weird head-scratching moments. For example, if my Ranger is attacking that group of Skeletons with a bow from range, then how exactly are they reaching me with a melee counterattack? I'm mostly just trying not to think about it too much, because it doesn't make a ton of sense.

- The treasure bag mechanic is interesting. You drop small markers into a treasure bag at the beginning of a scenario. There's lots of Common treasure markers, a few Rare markers, and no Epic markers. As you progress through the scenario, you pull these markers from the bag for different things. You pull some out when you defeat mobs to indicate what sort of treasure they drop. You pull some out when you encounter a treasure chest in a room. It gives a randomness to the treasure drops because you have a chance to draw out a more valuable marker with each pull, and additional Rare and Epic markers are added to the bag as you progress. It ends up feeling a little weird though, like every enemy you defeat is some sort of randomized loot piñata.

I mostly like it overall, but it hasn't blown my socks off. It's pretty basic dungeon crawling with a couple unique elements. Some of them work well (like the quick leveling and interesting characters) and some not as much ("I attack the darkness!"). There's only 9 scenarios in the base game, with more that can be added with xpacs. Between the different character combinations and randomized mobs though, that's more than enough to keep you busy for a while. Those expecting something new and unique won't find much here. Those who want the gaming equivalent of comfort food will probably love it.

Initial impressions are 6/8 tentacles.
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hepcat
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by hepcat »

I had the first edition kickstarter and I sold it after one game. There just wasn't enough meat on those bones for me. Each turn I could basically just do two things: move or hit something (a problem shared by the HexploreIt series, in my opinion). While you can boil most dungeon crawlers down to that, MD made no attempts to add mechanics that turned those into a strength instead of a weakness. The leveling mechanic also left a lot to be desired. Hopefully the 2nd edition addressed those issues as I believe I wasn't alone in my disappointment with it.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Smoove_B »

There were some core changes between the first and second versions of Massive Darkness, so I can't really comment on the newest edition but I specifically didn't pick up a copy of MD2 after hearing about the counter attack mechanism you've described as its theoretically possible to die when you range attack enemies that are armed with melee weapons (that counterattack). Thematically I was also more drawn to the original version - I guess #2 has more of a devil/angel theme?

The original also just uses a series of treasure decks, not token pulls but yes, the enemies are always loot pinatas. The game (imho) is feeding into the same design mentality as Diablo - it's all about the loot.

It's definitely about the characters - that seems to be CMON's entire philosophy. For me the original game is great because I can set it up, hammer out a round and then if I want, reset easily and re-play with a new character. Very low overhead. I really want to like and enjoy heavier RPG style board games, but I always end up fizzling out. For Massive Darkness, playing start to finish has never been an issue; I find value in that.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by Skinypupy »

Smoove_B wrote: Thu Jun 30, 2022 10:13 am There were some core changes between the first and second versions of Massive Darkness, so I can't really comment on the newest edition but I specifically didn't pick up a copy of MD2 after hearing about the counter attack mechanism you've described as its theoretically possible to die when you range attack enemies that are armed with melee weapons (that counterattack).
Yes, that's possible. I'm able to turn my brain off so it doesn't bug me too bad, but I can totally see it bothering others a lot.
Thematically I was also more drawn to the original version - I guess #2 has more of a devil/angel theme?
I think that's the theme, but honestly it's completely throwaway. There's literally a 2 sentence setup for each scenario, and none of the story elements are brought up in the actual gameplay (at least that I've seen so far).
For me the original game is great because I can set it up, hammer out a round and then if I want, reset easily and re-play with a new character. Very low overhead. I really want to like and enjoy heavier RPG style board games, but I always end up fizzling out. For Massive Darkness, playing start to finish has never been an issue; I find value in that.
Yeah, I should have mentioned this as a big positive for MD2. After guiltily stalling out on big campaign game after big campaign game, having something that I can just quickly set up, run through a scenario, and have a satisfying start-to-finish experience is a HUGE plus. I really enjoy that aspect of it.

There appears to be an xpac which adds a more codified campaign mode. Doubt I'll give it a look, but it's an option.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by EzeKieL »

More along the lines of what did I MAKE instead of play...

Ladies and Gents, I present to you the music video no one asked for:

Terraforming Mars meets (the theme music of) Peaky Blinders (or just Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds)
Spoiler:
Last edited by EzeKieL on Tue Jul 05, 2022 12:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
For whoever likes chillout downtempo music (or HipHop) ->
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by hepcat »

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

Post by YellowKing »

We finished up Batman: Everybody Lies tonight, which as I mentioned in my previous post about the game is another in a long line of Detective spin-offs, and the second IP-based spinoff after the disastrous Dune: House Secrets.

Fortunately Portal seemingly learned their lesson from Dune, and Batman: Everybody Lies is an excellent return to form. While it retains the streamlined gameplay of recent Detective entries, it doesn't sacrifice the challenge level. We actually lost out first case on this one, which is exceedingly rare for our group which has played every Detective game and expansion to date.

As a big Batman fan, I was really worried they'd screw up the feel of the universe. But I thought they did a great job with the characters and managed to put forth a great story that felt like it could have been lifted from the comic book pages. Supposedly they're going to release additional case files separately in the future, so I'm looking forward to continued adventures.
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Re: OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

Post by AWS260 »

I managed to get in a decent chunk of gaming over the weekend:

Getaway Driver: What it says on the tin. One player is the getaway driver, the other player is the police in hot pursuit. You move little wooden cars around a constantly-growing city grid, with the driver pulling off handbrake turns and causing chaos while the police bring more and more forces to the chase. Very fun, although the rulebook leaves a few things fuzzy.

Bronze Age: A two-player civilization-building card game. It's pretty abstract, and we found ourselves referring to the suit colors (e.g., orange) instead of the concepts they were supposed to represent (military). A nice diversion, but not a must-play.

Argent: The Consortium: A favorite of mine. Goofy spells everywhere. Numerous mages sent to the infirmary. An unpredictable end-game vote.

Root: The Lord of Hundreds absolutely steamrolled the Lizard Cult and Woodland Alliance. I should play this more frequently. (My current pace is about once every two years.)
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