I’m in for the whole deal, though I may still use my plano boxes over the tray (especially for scalability), I just also get the complaints and the people willing to wait.
The molded trays are smart, same with separating the income tracks from the rest of the boards.
…
The other day we were listing favorite games we played in 2018, and the first three three that came to mind were Root, John Company, and Pax Pamir. That’s a hell of a coup for a single designer’s games to occupy most of my brain with three very different experiences.
So between the people that dislike the kickstarter for any reason and the people that dislike the people that dislike the kickstarter I’m laughing a bit thinking about how this is a lot like most edition wars you see with D&D and such. On both sides. Like you’ve always got a faction of people that don’t want to give up any sunk costs (whether it’s money, options, or completion), but also ivory tower-type communication/marketing that says “no you’ll like this better” when a fair share of the criticism is legitimate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJ2Si2sjHNY
This video is NOT what you think. Everyone watch it.
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We got all the new, Scott-pacifying stuff for Quartermaster General in the mail yesterday.
Too bad he’ll never get to play it!
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Cole is a mastermind of interpreting (hi)stories into systems then turning those into mechanics that ooze the original themes, and his work with Sierra Madre has conditioned him to work with as few components as possible. I haven’t played Pax Pamir, but Root and John Company have great examples of the process. In his retooling of the Woodland Alliance faction Cole said that he played a mock-game between the Eyrie and the Marquis, then imagined what a revolution breaking out would look like. John Company captures the feeling of “expanding to meet the expanding costs of expanding” with the boom and bust of company stock and the one-way purchase of military hardware. It’s telling that the same piece in Root (warriors) can feel like currency, free victory points, a curb on expansion, deaths to avenge or precious commodities depending on which faction is looking at them.
If you were to recommend one game by this designer, having no prior experience with any of his games, which would you recommend?
Root. It’s cute, polished, accessible; and reading the dev diaries on BGG show how much thought went into developing the asymmetric mechanics. The other two are great but it’s easier to get people to sit down for “counter-insurgency with bunnies” than “let’s recreate the history of the East India Company and get stomped on by an elephant.”
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Not sure if anyone here has played the expansion of Pandante, but with Panda Poker being a like staple of my game group, a game that worked both as a serious game that you try and win and as a fun simple game you play when you’re feeling goofy. We couldn’t resist picking it up.
Honestly, we were joking about how with all the tiny quality of life changes to the new game, we’re not sure how we ever played the old one (the joke being, the old one was probably the board game we’d played most)
Anyway, last night the stars aligned and I won so many chips, we didn’t bother to count them. I had 0 chips left before taking the pot and it easily gave me the 175 required to win a 6 player game. Check it out:
And hand itself:
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This game is probably bad, but sometimes you just kinda want to burninate the peasants.
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Agree with Root. It’s the only one that’s (soon to be) easy to find. An Infamous Traffic is print-on-demand so it’s also easy to find, but it’s unusual and difficult to love compared to Root or even John Company.
re: Sierra Madre, this is happening:
tbh… despite the amount of actual rocket science in the design, the rules are presented in such a friendly way that this is proving much easier to learn than Pax Porfiriana or Bios: Megafauna. The box is crammed with four big rulebooks including a very conversational / clear Learn-to-Play, a full rules document, a separate set of rules for interstellar travel with some more-speculative-than-usual science, and a glossary (which is probably where half of the rules live, if experience holds)
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I feel like Dragoon scratches that itch.
I watched the Trogdor video. It’s seems like a meh co-op game where you take turns controlling Trogdor and try to burninate the whole village. Not worth playing.
Still, the theme is hella fun. It even has thatched roof cottages where you turn the roof over and they are on fire.
I do want this but having warning signs ringing in my ears.
Anyone know anything about this?
Seems like trick taking and area control with a good theme.
I couldn’t find a better place to put this but now you can chop it up with other board game fan.
Just got a tracking number for a delivery that contains Yellow & Yangtze. HEX T&E is coming to a PAX West near you.
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I’m watching my tracking number for Root, it’s been in “label created” for two days. Root is already practically a lock for my game of the year after playing it so much at PAX East, unless New Frontiers, Founders of Gloomhaven, or Yellow & Yangtze are powerful enough.
As for Joraku - I know it exists and got published by TMG, but it was a designer/team that I wasn’t familiar with, so it missed the cut.
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I also got the new version of Container. We will definitely get this to the table.
I just read your post, remembered I really wanted to preorder Root, googled them, went to the kickstarter page, then remembered I had already backed it.
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