It definitely shines as a campaign game. I think it’s a lot richer with 3 players… just enough for a role-playing game party where your contributions matter a lot, and aiding on tests drives some decisions. Right amount of niche protection for specializing.
Most of the non-core identities are more interesting than the ones in the core.
Also if Scott played a single game of it when it first came out, he probably played one of the core box scenarios, which are just kind of okay compared to the really good stuff in the released cycles.
Yes, it was definitely a core set thing. However, “it get’s better later” it always a tough pill for me to swallow, even when it is true. There are other things that are entirely and immediately good. I have little patience for things that are not.
The good thing is that you don’t even have to bother with the core set scenarios now that they’re into the 4th cycle of stuff.
Wow, it’s been out for way longer than I thought.
so, from what I’ve heard, each scenario is basically the deluxe box for that Scenario and then the booster packs(arkhamdb says 7). But from what I’ve heard, you don’t need earlier boxes to jump into later scenarios, although you will miss those player cards.
“It gets better later” is also usually tough for me to get through, but I did play through the 3-act core set campaign. Old high school buddy is not into tabletop gaming, but very into Cthulhu shit, so he bought it, and I helped him through it. Now that I know what I’m doing there, I would like to try some of this later stuff if it’s so much better.
I mean, I liked it from the start. Most of what you’re getting from an expansion box is standard LCG expansion stuff:
considerably expanded deckbuilding options
an expanded repertoire of clever mythos deck and location implementations - the first game of Dunwich Legacy gives you 4-5 unique locations with alternate methods to collect clues. Spending cash at the roulette table, discarding an ally in the lounge, a pit boss who walks around beating you up if you get clues in his location, a tiny telltale-esque branch that gives you access to one npc or another, recurring villains if you choose to cross the mob, etc. In a game design sense it’s fun just to see what they’re able to DO within the design without adding additional keywords.
room to grow a character throughout a campaign that’s 3x longer.
I could see multiple paths to clues really making this game shine, so that is good to hear.
Had the perfect game night yesterday. 3 people. Pioneers->Cat Lady->Crusaders. All three games, people were taking their turns lightning fast. Glorious
Played three games today:
Carcassonne - finally got to play this for the first time today.
Troyes - I really liked this game and wanted to play another game after finishing the first. I could easily see myself spending a lot of time on this one.
Voyages of Marco Polo — unfortunately I only got to play about 30-40 minutes before I had to leave the game. I played with 3 Taiwanese friends (only one of whom had played the game before) and the veteran player taught us all how to play (in Chinese) in a rapid fire fashion. He was trying to get us up and running fast, but we ended up more confused than anything. Simply put, he was not a good teacher. For a game with so many little rules, we were hopelessly lost in the first few rounds but started to make some sense of what we could do towards the time I had to leave. I’d love to give it another try, but this experience has made me realize that a bad teacher can make a new game a lot less fun and enjoyable.
Troyes is one of my favorite games.
Sheep & Thief : was introduced to this game by @DemoWeasel at Unplugged. This game is just too fucking adorable. We didn’t play with black sheep rules, but it was so amusing because I was touting to my friends how adorable this game is. Then spouse poked fun at me for it, but throughout the game he was looking at the actual art on the cards and kept pointing out how cute/clever the art is with the sheep doing various things. Friends enjoyed the game. I feel I don’t direly need to do the goal cards unless my first hand for drafting gives me a good chance to get towards that goal. I had no such luck getting longest river, but those scaling points are really good.
Paws and Padlocks: Another demoweasel introduced game I showed my friends. I enjoy these sorts of dungeon delves of get the treasure and GTFO. I like the card/room drawing/laying mechanic that doesn’t always stay there. I think that’s what gives the game re-playability.
What was amazing of this gameplay: A friend had the character card that has the ability to rotate a room once per turn, and she was on her way to win because she lucked out by getting so many Crystal Keys from card draws. She accidentally miscalculated on room rotation and would have won on a turn, so basically she had to wait another turn and was after me. I then decided to do what I can by playing my two item cards that were skeleton keys that could rotate more rooms to delay her victory. Then I play my normal keys to unlock/reveal more rooms and it ended up being 2 event cards. The first card was rotate all the rooms, which could NOT have come at a better time. The 2nd event card was “repeat the last played event card” that rotated the rooms again.
Because of all the room rotations that happened it still worked out for her to win on her next turn. We all laughed so hard at the sheer circumstance/coincidence that we had all those room rotations that resulted into bupkis.
Wingspan: This was my first play of this game. Friends introduced this to me. Yeah. This is going to be a purchase. It’s essentially worker placement/resource management with the theme of collecting birds and placing birds on the 3 terrains on your play board. My first impressions are:
Well thought out game that appears to be decently balanced to where players can get points in other ways towards victory.
Art is really good.
Educational in regards to the educating you for all the types of birds there are, regions they are from, and wingspan in metric system and not that imperialist nonsense.
Box and inserts to hold items are pretty much Broken Token levels of quality that already come with the game, however the dice tower could be improved.
And from what I understand this game only had birds of North and South America. We have yet to see any other continents, so expansions for other birds of the world to look forward to. Really impressed how Stonemaier games tend to have decent storage components of their games. This game is currently retailing at $50-$60 (right now in process of getting reprinted/restocked) and just seeing the components and type of game, that is a really good value.
I am looking forward to seeing this game back in stock at a reasonable price, because I will be purchasing this game and bringing to the PAXs/Cons to show my gaming peoples.
Now we just need to get you a fursona… 
Forgot about this one as well that we played last night.
Goodcritters: a game I saw demoweasel and peeps playing. So I guess this is similar to Ca$h N Guns, which is something I’ve been wanting to play for a while. Fun game. I was Judy Hopps’s evil twin sister. I ended up winning by robbing $5k from the spouse on the last turn.
Yet another animal game…
I too have played “animal games” and have to say most were at least ok. Granted @demoweasel had them do not sure if he knows his animal games and only shared good ones or if the theme in general begets ok quality.
I feel like I keep up a healthy ratio of “serious” and “pleasant” with my gaming, this weekend was mostly on the serious side of things.
At the store:
Aerion with @DemoWeasel, and then most of a game of 1824: Austria-Hungary. We had assumed Aerion would be a bit silly as a 2p game compared to Onirim, and while that’s kind of true Torbey knows what he’s doing and added the right rules that make it feel like a real partnership game. Sean wanted to play 1824 since the new edition is on ks now… it’s a bit of a butterfly effect game, you’re very constrained in the opening but the tiny decisions you’re allowed resonate outward. We had to pack it in to help set up the entire flea market… trying to arrange 1700 lots on the tables for the next day, including two copies of Ogre (we could have made another table if we had a third).
At home:
Cry Havoc and Churchill. Anthony had picked up Cry Havoc at the auction, and we found it to be really satisfying as an asymmetric conflict game, released almost the same time as Vast back in 2016. Really chunky decisions - you get 12-15 turns in the game, and it’s really easy to waste them. Churchill was a continuation of my unbroken streak of WWII grand strategy games (Empire of the Sun, Triumph & Tragedy… I might need to bring QMG to Reno to keep the streak going this weekend). If you’re not familiar (I don’t expect anyone here to be familiar), Churchill is a game about the Allied conferences during the war, starting in 1943. Both theaters of the war are playing out, but you don’t have much say outside of where you allocate your resources, and it quickly becomes apparent that Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill want different things. All the strategic stuff plays out in this clever conference phase where you get a hand full of advisors and play them to advance and debate different issues, which can also coerce things out of the other players.
After the game, we counted the score three times and joked that every one of us had won the game once… Churchill was winning until we remembered Roosevelt (now Truman)'s points for the Japanese A-bomb surrender condition. And then we noticed a double-counted space on the western front of Europe, and Stalin jumped into the lead on the strength of his Manhattan Project spy ring.
I’ve seen a lot of people buy OGRE (Rym). I’ve never seen anyone playing it. It’s just used as furniture.
I played it once, for several hours. The effort of dragging it across campus, setting it up, and finding someone willing to play a game bigger than 2/3rds of the tables in The Lounge was… Suboptimal.
If I had a large house, I’d play Ogre. It would be semi-permanently set up inside a game table in a room that’s dedicated to long-form gaming.
That’s the same room I’d set up a wargame that takes multiple sessions to complete.
