jettisonjoe:
My friends and I finished Pandemic Legacy last night. We felt the final “month” was both anticlimactic and overly difficult, leaving us slightly frustrated and let-down at a game that we had eagerly played and greatly enjoyed up until then.
All in all, though, it provided upwards of 25 of hours of entertainment, and got us to hang out more consistently throughout 2016 than we had in a few years, so absolutely worth it.
It’s a new year in a new forum with a new board game thread! Since I keep stats, someone might find it interesting which games I played the most in 2016:
81 Netrunner
22 Codenames
21 Race for the Galaxy (about half of these were with the newest expansion)
13 Mottainai*
8 Stellar Conflict*
7 1846*
7 6 nimmt!
7 ButaBabel*
7 Deep Sea Adventure
7 Fabled Fruit*
7 No Thanks!
7 Schnappchen Jagd*
7 Witness*
6 Bohnanza
6 Mage Knight
6 Mamma Mia*
6 Ricochet Robots*
6 Russian Railroads*
6 T.I.M.E Stories*
5 Age of Craft*
5 Factory Fun
5 First Class: Unterwegs im Orient Express*
5 Fuji Flush*
5 Gauner Raus!*
5 Ginkgopolis
5 Innovation
5 Isle of Skye*
5 Jambo
5 Junk Art*
5 Linko!*
5 Stockpile*
5 Ticket to Ride
5 Web of Power*
5 Wings for the Baron*
5 Wizard Extreme*
5 Wyatt Earp*
… and 297 games played 1-4 times
(*: games I played for the first time in 2016)
The last game I played in 2016 was Speculation (2017 arrived about 10 minutes before the end of the game). I won’t know the first game I play in 2017 until tomorrow.
It might be a better conversation starter to revive the original post from the original thread:
Aren’t board games awesome?
What mechanics do you guys enjoy most?
What was your first Euro board game exposure?
I think tabletop gaming in general is awesome, although I’m more confident now about what I like and don’t like than I was four years ago. So… there are games that are more awesome for me, and games that are more awesome for you.
I love card games - traditional card games (trick-taking, rummy, etc) and more unusual uses for a hand of cards (Race for the Galaxy, Bohnanza). I like being surprised by games, or when things don’t go my way, but the results are interesting. I like “multiplayer solitaire,” but I also like when one player’s decision has a butterfly effect on the rest of the game. I enjoy light economic games, heavy economic games, and I like when all of the players can laugh at the events playing out in a heavy economic game.
My first exposure to euro-style games was probably Dominion. Before that I had played a lot of RPGs, and games like Arkham Horror. The only board games from that period I’m still fond of are Dominon and Betrayal at House on the Hill. When I was much younger, I played Hero Quest, Blood Bowl, Dragonstrike, The Omega Virus, The Game of Life, Monopoly, and a bunch of other less notable board games.
My thinking is it’s one of those cool things where the thread title almost but not completely matches the topic. Forums in use for a long time tend to have this sort of drift and I, personally, love it. Gives the space a sense of community and personality and just a sense that it’s constantly in use.
In the old forum, Netrunner and Magic: the Gathering got their own threads. Most other board/card games don’t seem to have enough penetration here to sustain an entire thread (Chess? Go? Maybe a thread for an entire category of games like trick-taking games)
It bothers me that there is an illegal tile placement in the thumbnail preview (There is track running off the hex grid in Baltimore, which cannot be upgraded like that anyway, due to the preprinted track on the space…)
Keep in mind that the Mayfair printing of 1830 has some weird component issues that might make it a little more challenging to learn (the 5 trains are on the back of the 2 trains, or something similar). Hit me up and we’ll play 1846 sometime (it’s shorter - 3 hours with new players instead of 6)
Why do they have to print so many different games? Couldn’t they just make 18XX that comes with a bunch of trains and tiles. Then they just sell extra maps like Formula D. Then people could use the same rules no matter what map they choose.
For the most part, every 18XX is unique enough that making interchangeable components is less practical than putting everything you need in the box. Like, even the tiles, which are the most reusable, have different distributions across games
For example, if you wanted to reuse components from 1830 to play 1846, you’d need:
Special tiles for Chicago, Cincinnati, Detroit and Cleveland, as well as some other tiles that aren’t available in 1830 (you would need a similarly huge set of new tiles if you tried to play 1830 using the tiles from 1846)
Cards for all of the private companies
New trains, since the costs (and available types of trains) are different (there are no 3/5 trains in 1830, there are no diesel trains in 1846)
Charters and stock certificates for companies that don’t show up in 1830 like Illinois Central and Grand Trunk Railroad
Which is pretty much what you get in the box. Since most 18XX games are designed by mega-nerds†, designers get kind of crazy tweaking rules sometimes, usually reflecting historical specifics of the setting. In 1860, the game ends in nationalization, when the government of the UK buys up every corporation starting with the smallest. Sometimes it feels like designers try mechanisms just to see what happens; if you ever wanted to play a game with a two-dimensional hexagonal stock market, 1854 exists.
† Francis Tresham designed the 18XX system. That’s the Civilization guy. Which means he has designed two board games that Sid Meier subsequently turned into popular PC games (Railroad Tycoon and Civilization)