New Battletech boxed sets announced at GenCon. Coming September/October.
Because there weren’t enough card games.
Yellow & Yangtze showed up.
Lion, Bull, Archer, and Pot are at it again!!!
Also one of the black pagodas arrived split in half. Guess I’ll shoot an email to Grail Games about that.
Yellow & Yangtze appears, based on our first play and some light analysis, to be equal in power to Tigris & Euphrates. Similar brainfeel, similarly deep (but different) heuristics.
The most stark difference is play time. I think the game is ~20 minutes shorter than T&E at all levels of play.
Waiting for the T&E v Y&Y episode.
That will come next week. We need to play a few more times to grok.
Episode title: The TEVYY debate
TL;DR: neither replaces the other. YY is more streamlined with fewer opportunities for chaos or massive scoring plays. Every single fiddly point in TE is made un-fiddly with an elegant rule.
They are different experiences with very different heuristics. I think they will end up being equal games with comparable table time.
Could this precipitate a T&E 2 or is Y&Y basically that?
With maybe one exception, the changes in Y&Y could not be ported into T&E without fundamental redesign.
There are only two rules I would ever even remotely consider bringing to T&E from Y&Y.
T&E - When a tile is placed to connect two kingdoms, no points are awarded.
Y&Y - When a tile is placed to connect two states, a point is awarded as normal if there is no conflict.
T&E - You may never connect two kingdoms with a leader.
Y&Y - You may connect two states with a leader if there are no conflicts.
I’m hesitant about the second one because it means you could grab treasures in T&E easily by placing the green leader.
https://boardgamegeek.com/geekpreview/6/spiel-18-preview
The games we would have seen at Essen this year if we didn’t all fail.
Some good stuff in here.
Key Flow because Keyflower is wonderful, so Keyflower: The Card Game must be at least a little wonderful.
Blue Lagoon looks like an evolutionary branch of Knizia’s Through the Desert, could be interesting.
New Corp Order because I’m interested in what 2Tomatoes does after Peak Oil
The Estates has a high likelihood of coming to reviewcon.
Buncha Sierra Madre Games. Reprints of Greenland and Neanderthal. Less thrilled about how Eklund will handle Pax Emancipation - but he has a record of setting out to make games with a strong political stance (invariably free-market libertarian) that end up arguing against themselves in interesting ways, so we’ll see. Also Pax Transhumanity.
I’m always there for anything Friedemann Friese does, including a reprint of Foppen.
Trick 'n Trouble is a reprint of Familiar’s Trouble with a Halloween theme. Now everyone can play the best 3p cooperative trick-taking game ever.
So I know a bunch of you are not in the dropmix news, but they just announced a new mode
Yes there is a puzzle mode to be released next week for free. Also a new promo card if you are going to TFCon in California to make a good chunk of chain.
You know the drill. Keep these recommendations flowing. I’m dipping into the preview now to start early First Look selections at Unplugged.
Also looking at Treasure Island. Erasable whiteboard map, one player is Long John Silver and buries their treasure somewhere on the island, other players are mutinous crew members interrogating him to find the treasure (and moving around the map with rulers and radius templates), but Long John is allowed to give false answers using a limited resource. Long John wins if he can keep everyone else off the treasure long enough, otherwise whoever finds the treasure wins.
Ok, so Richard Garfield wrote a big thing about the design and development of Keyforge.
The most fascinating part was this:
Varied Power: One thing that had to be embraced early was the fact that decks would have different power levels. This was inevitable given the wildly varied deck generation I wanted. My goal was to make most decks be able to have a good game against most other decks, and to introduce a handicapping system that allowed stronger decks to play on a more equal footing against weaker ones. The handicap system is based on “chains”; basically, each chain a deck begins with costs them a card during play. This system gives players a lot of flexibility for balancing their experience to their taste; including ‘bidding chains’ for very experienced players with knowledge of various deck strengths. When playing without chains certain match ups may not be fair – but for people like me they are still fun. …
He doesn’t fully explain the “bidding chain” mechanic, so we’ll have to see how it works. It’s still fascinating. Serious competitive players will presumably always play with the bidding chains. Players with stronger decks will somehow have to bid more, and that will cost them some cards. I assume as long as both players bid properly, this will create an equalizing handicap similar to golf, or maybe like letting one player start with stones on the board in Go.
I have renewed hope for this game because although FFG is publishing it, they seem to have had nothing to do with the game design. Richard went to pitch to them because they have the print on demand facilities the game requires.
The way I see it, I’ll probably get two decks,. If it’s good, I’ll convince other people to get at least one for themselves. Any time two people are waiting for a seat in a larger game, they can bust out some KeyForge. It will be more crunchy than other two player fare like Lost Cities, or Hive. Good for when the players in the larger game aren’t super close to finishing. Due to the lack of deck construction it will be a much better experience than M:tG or Netrunner.