Board Game General /bgg/

>Thunderstone 3rd ed coming out
Can't decide if I want to buy it all the minute it comes out, or wait until they drop support after 2 years, and then announce 4th ed sometime late 2019

>3rd ed
Oh they did that did they? Sigh.

Yup, announced at Gencon, kickstarter coming in the next month or two, the BGG news video on it was mostly talking about how they're going to partner with gaming stores for some kind of special kickstarter packaging where you end up paying retail or w/e and the store gets their cut.

Would you say it plays better as a casual game, a competitive game, or is it like X-Wing and works well as both? I have to admit, I like the idea of open window displays better than random boosters and this idea of setting up tournaments over it.

Only demo'd it a couple quick times at smaller cons, and it felt more casual to me, but didn't buy in because I wasn't sure who I'd play with often enough to justify the purchase. They made the switch to blind boxes and my wavering immediately went to removing it from the possible wishlist.

The bigger problem is there's maybe 3 games all trying to occupy the same space right now, with Krosmaster/AQ/SDE all putting out campaign expansions, and having both PvE and PvP modes, the selling point on Krosmaster to me was it had these nice pre-painted models. Having to hope I get the minis I want when I buy blind drives me towards something like SDE (which although flawed I've already got the 1e of and did a meh to eh level paint job on) or AQ.

It's still a fun small arena combat system, and if you get your hands on the older sets cheap might be worth it to you. I'm the kinda guy who needs to get the most bang/buck out of my games, and ensure they're ones that'll get played more often, so I'm prolly a lil harsh on it, but I think there's better options right now.

I've picked up the base game plus the Wakfu heroes and the Dofus characters. I do really like the models, especially as a fan of the cartoon series. It seems like good casual fun, but I do agree. Blind boxes sound awful for my play style. Luckily, there's quite a lot of content out there that's not blind boxes and I don't see myself ever spending more money on this than there are expansions at the moment.

Not surprised, game's still very sought after and prices for new or used copies have soared since it went OOP. I was lucky to get Towers and Numenera at a reasonable price.

>New Thunderstone Edition!
Oh cool, I've already got all of Advance but it'll be neat to see what kind of new stuff they-
>'Epic' Thunderstone is now the base game
Wow, might as well just play fucking Ascension.

I honestly think most of the good stuff debuts or is pushed harder/more available at Essen. Gencon has become the con for Kickstarter debuts and pitches by American indie designers too poor to fly to Germany.

>'Epic' Thunderstone is now the base game
>Wow, might as well just play fucking Ascension.

Story behind this. I really want to get into a good deckbuilder from the ground up so what's wrong with going for this one?

Yeah if it wasn't being kickstarted I'd prolly buy a copy or two and leave them in shrink to re-sell once it goes OOP again, considering AEG doesn't seem to support any game longer than 2 years unless it's named Smash Up or Love Letter. But with the kickstarter I don't see it being near as rare a find, and as user said >Wow, might as well just play fucking Ascension.

Part of the issue is you've got GAMA in May when it's all announced, Origins in late June/early July where they leak out a couple dozen copies, and then Gencon where games are "released" and there's only a couple hundred copies max. Add in the way BGG/TDT/SUSD/Twitter/etc all have constant news about anything upcoming..... yeah Gencon can feel flat sometimes. It's also a big issue with shipping, for whatever reason it seems harder and harder to get copies of a game delivered on time and to Indy, which just sucks if that's the con you're spending a lot of money to attend.

Seafall sold out on day 1 -20 minutes; that's great for Plaid Hat, not so great for anyone who didn't win a VIG lottery badge and pay 4x cost for it. A few companies were good enough to not sell to VIG/exhibitors, but even then if you're not at the doors at 8am to wait for 2 hrs and then make a mad dash, you might as well sleep in and wait.

There were a lot of rather good games that "released" at Gencon where the hype was already maxed/starting to fade, or they just didn't bring that many copies, but to be fair it's really hard to be a smaller publisher and bring more. Honestly though look at SUSD's first review, Go Cuckoo, which if you're even a little into HABA you knew about 5 months ago. The Networks was a really big "indie" hit, but that was full hype at Origins. Potion Explosion was big, but it's a game that released last year and CMoN picked up and took 10 months to get into wide distribution.

I've been doing Gencon 5 years now, I skip the new stuff and just demo, look for old deals.

Regular Thunderstone is a bit like Dominion. You chose a few types of heroes, spells, weapons, items and villagers and set them in separate Village piles to buy them, strategy branches out fom card interactions.

'Epic' Thunderstone is an alt-ruleset, where you'd shuffle ALL types of cards into single piles (integrated heroes, items, weapons, etc) and built the Village using these random piles, so it was sort of a Dominion+Ascension hybrid market, and strategy depends almost entirely on what is available for sale at any given time.

That's what user meant about playing Ascension instead. Some people enjoy traditional, some people enjoy epic, to each their own. I like that you can actually choose how to play the game.

This user summed the difference nicely.
I dislike the Epic variant for the main reason I dislike Star Realms and Ascension. Once you know the cards you know what's important to buy first, and then it just boils down to 'is that important card randomly available to you on a turn where you have enough resources for it' and 'do these randomly available cards synergize with these other randomly available cards'.

Epic makes availability of cards that you have available to you to be random. That means that you have no idea if getting those thieves is a good choice because maybe only heavy weapons and spell buffs are going to come out for a while and they won't synergize at all when you were hoping for some bows or food items.

It just steals so much of the ability to strategize and plan out your actions ahead of time, ESPECIALLY if playing with four players. Half the board could change before it gets back to your turn meaning you might need to wait to plan until it's your turn, which can greatly lengthen turn times.

On a more minor gripe note, it's a tremendous pain in the ass to convert back to 'normal' Thunderstone after mixing everything up for epic since you're having to separate out hundreds of cards into dozens of different decks.

Also I have my stuff sleeved and the sleeves are glossy so having huge tall fat stack of cards is going to spill over at a mere glace. And has many times.

But, if you're interested in Thunderstone I'd recommend you get it, Thunderstone is my favorite deckbuilder and you can always play it in it's normal mode and epic and decide on which you like.

I'd recommend Kemet because it is almost pure strategy, with next to no chance. The first time my group played it we had to stop and just admire how well-designed the board was. First few plays will mostly be figuring out power tile combos to try to make and to try to deny opponents.

Anyone played pic related? I got it the other day and actually really enjoyed it

Got to play a Kickstarter version of scythe, was pretty good.

Left off the last sentence idea there:
...so they'll be slower but once everyone is familiar with the game and gets past their analysis paralysis, even the 5 player game won't go over two hours. Especially if you play to 8 points instead of 10.

>Gencon thoughts/hype
Not a lot of exciting announcements for me, though Arkham Horror LCG is super intriguing now that I own an Arkham universe game. Much more interested in seeing some Essen releases (A Feast for Odin, Great Western Trail)
>Most recent game played
Had a game of Keyflower tonight and enjoyed it a lot. It was a new group, and it helped that everyone had super enthusiastic personalities. I think this was the only rules-blunderless game of it I've ever played, which also helped (whenever I've mistaught a rule before, the game really suffered)
Small World is pretty good. I don't think TEK is good at all but some people like it.
>New Through the Ages
Personally I'd get the new one just to avoid supporting Eagle-Gryphon. There's you're super missing out on with the old edition though

I've got to travel a lot in the next few weeks. Most of the people I'll be staying/working with enjoy cards and board games, but usually the traditional sort. What would be a good light board/card Game to travel with (I.e. doesn't take up much space in a backpack) that I could get normies into easily enough?

Skull is pretty good, and you can play it with a regular pack of cards.

Party/Social:
>One Night Ultimate Werewolf
>Spyfall
>Bang: The Dice Game
>Good Cop Bad Cop

Card Games:
>Bohnanza
>Diamonds
>Sushi Go
>Love Letter/Cypher
>Hanabi

Board Games
>Carcassone (A bit more of a space hog, but can be made to fit in a relatively tight package)
>Tiny Epic Kingdom/Galaxy
>Eight Minute Empire Legends
>King of Tokyo

>avoid supporting Eagle-Gryphon
After how badly they fucked up the Tumblin Dice reprint (seriously how can you fuck up a wood board and bargain bin chessex dice?) I've added them to the vendetta list along with Mayfair, so glad I held off on ordering. Waiting a year on getting a copy of Incan Gold so I can have a friend bring me back the Iello French reprint when he's back from abroad.

Diamonds is pretty good, and you could prolly simulate it with a deck of cards, but the suits go 1-15 so it wouldn't be perfect. Right now I travel with a deck box that has copies of Rhino Hero and Hanabi in it, and a set of the role and voting cards from The Resistance. All great for playing with casuals and work pretty much anywhere, tho Rhino Hero works better in a bar than at the beach.

Scythe is not 2 hours. And it's not really a conquest game, it's a Euro pretending to be a conquest game.

this.

i was told that scythe was a conquest game but with some euro stuff mixed in. ended up being the complete opposite. played 3 games so far and all of them didnt really have too much fighting.

i ended up still having fun with the game though.

How did most mediums end up with several reviewers while we're stuck with 1 site run by religous zealots who will put a game down just because it offers their wholesome good Christian idea of a family?

Assuming Dice Tower-induced rage

Tom's not a zealot (Sam def is though)
Besides, Dice Tower isn't the only gig in town, and board games aren't even important enough on a societal scale that we need tons of reviewers. Reviewers aren't even all that important to the hobby

Wizard (the one that plays a lot like spades)
The Great Dalmuti
Cosmic Wimpout
print a copy of Secret Hitler?
bring dice for Liar's Dice
Bring a few packs of cards for random card games (I recommend Durak)
Love Letter

what I want to know is how come dice tower gets those seal of approval thingies on board game boxes?
were they like the first big reviewer guys for board games and it kinda stuck after that?

this isnt any sort of hate towards them. im just new to the hobby and just keep seeing their name on lots of stuff.
also, why cant they hire some graphic designer to do their stuff? all their design work literally looks like stuff from the early days of the internet.

Getting a good review from Vasel is a pretty solid way to boost sales, when he started doing seals of approval/excellence publishers asked if they could put them on the box. As for the graphic design they talked about it in the content creators panel at Gencon and he mentioned they're doing an overhaul of the logo. It's kinda sad how terrible the design is when you consider Jason is a graphic designer who's won awards and worked for major tv networks, but I suppose you can't just ask him to do the work for free.

All 3 have gone on missionary work and all 3 help run jesus camps. Tom is one of the worst for hating games because they're not friendly enough theme wise.

When there's so many boardgames and such a flux in quality between them, you'd think we could get better than these 3 clowns for widespread opinions, especially with how the hobby has expanded in the years.

>Getting a good review from Vasel is a pretty solid way to boost sales

but why him though? what exactly did he do to get that type of status?

He posted a LOT of reviews, when no one else was, and had one of, if not the first, board game podcasts. He's also generally pretty good about telling you when something's not good (Seafall is not doing well with TDT) and even tho user can't stop bitching about the fact he's a church goer and says certain things aren't good for his group, he does admit when a game is good even if he doesn't like it (see CitOW).

There's other review shows out there, and arguably better ones, but Dice Tower deals in volume unlike anyone else, and there's enough reviewers in their channel that you can generally find someone whose tastes match up with yours. Plus the most important thing to remember, no matter how bad the camera/sound work is, it's gotten better, and if you want high production values you get Tabletop, which is less than worthless as a review/rules overview.

For the user who was asking about Galaxy Trucker the other day, app is on sale right now all platforms $0.99, good time to grab it and get some practice in so you can destroy your friends if/when you get the cardboard edition.

I think deckbuilders like Star Realms and Ascension are less about 'I want to do this so I need those and that' and more 'I have those and that, so I should do this'; less planning ahead, more planning according to what you previously did.

That said though, I kind of want to try the Realms series with a tableau market as in Thunderstone, no idea how to do it though.

You could divide the cards and set them in 4 stacks, divided by faction, then add an extra action where you are given the option to send the top card on a single stack to the bottom.

scatterbrain samefag

...so you'd have 4 stacks per faction to choose from, still a bit of randomness to it, but you'd have more control over what goes into your deck, while adding an element of taking away a card your opponent could potentially use.

It's hard to set up in a tableau because there's not enough cards of a single ship to make a stack, Star Realms is balanced around limiting the most powerful ships and bases to 1 or 2.

For someone who loves galaxy trucker but doesn't have a tablet to play on and phone can't do it, and who already has the missions expansion, how is the app? Worth grabbing for whenever I can run it in near future? Just play the physical game instead?

A question for you fellows - I have been playing Kemet for quite a long time (recently I've been doing Cyclades more) and I also have expansion for it, the one with like 5 modules including the black pyramids. The problem is i never actually got to give any of them a go with exception of already mentioned pyramids. Anyone here has any experience with them?

I've got three games with most of the expansion under my belt. If we have to teach someone, my group usually just plays with the extra combat cards, the bonus combat round to determine turn order, the tokens you get for losing combat for that, and black pyramid/powers. I'd like to play more with the Path but just haven't had the opportunity. What did you want to know?

From what little I've played of it, the priests and their skills are a huge game changer and some of the items along the path are lots of fun. My group almost never gets to the victory point at the end of the path. The double edged knife item is a favorite.

Well, mostly which ones are the most fun i guess. Base Kemet is really solid and fun as fuck (also is possibly one of the best games in terms of avoiding "you only have losing moves, decide which losing move you take" problem of most multiplayer games) so i don't want to spoil it, so i wonder if it isn't disrupted by the expansions.

The set I listed plays pretty well for adding a little more depth without going overboard and also making determining turn order a bit better. Too often the player determining turn order in base game has one or two positions they care about and just randomly throw the rest of the players in the remaining positions imo.

All righty, will give it a go if I collect enough players.
How many do you usually have when you play? I think i actually never played a full 5-player game.

Am I the only person who doesn't like One Night Ultimate Werewolf as much as regular Werewolf? The puzzle seems way too easy to unfurl, and the fact that you can easily find out if someone who wasn't a werewolf earlier got their card switched and now is. At first they think they're a villager and give info but once the way the actions unfurled is obvious, they find out they're a werewolf and just give up. Happens way too often.

App has a whole campaign mode that is pretty cool, I'd say definitely worth picking up. It's got a lot of fun ideas.

Man, Vast looks really cool. I hope I can snag a copy in my country. I'm kicking myself for not backing the kickstarter.

What's a good dungeon crawl that doesn't need a player to play the enemies? I'm excited for the Dark Souls boardgame but is there any good ones that already exist and have proven themselves.
Don't say Kingdom Death. Something actually available on the market.

It's probably a question that has been asked before but do you have any recommandation for a Terra Mystica Light game ?
We recently started to play an awful lot of it and though it's a good game and all, it is 1) a little bit too much at times (not overwhelming but you kinda need to be in the appropriate mood), 2) pretty badly balanced (map isn't balanced, factions are obviously unbalanced as well).
But overall, the development management, almost no luck element at all and it's not too agressive for our tastes is great. In fact, we really want to love the game, but it's mostly the poorly balanced map and some factions being too OP that does it for us.

So do you have anything similar (not too agressive area control, no luck, maybe different factions for different playstyles) and possibly shorter, a bit less complex ?
We have been proposed Nippon and Gold West, didn't looked into it much...

So a question: Has anybody in the thread ever played a homebrew game? Not a modified ruleset to existing one, but something new from the ground up, as much as its possible these days.

Mice and Mystics
Shadow and brimstone

>what I want to know is how come dice tower gets those seal of approval thingies on board game boxes?
>were they like the first big reviewer guys for board games and it kinda stuck after that?
>this isnt any sort of hate towards them. im just new to the hobby and just keep seeing their name on lots of stuff.
>also, why cant they hire some graphic designer to do their stuff? all their design work literally looks like stuff from the early days of the internet.
Everything you said is true.

>and if you want high production values you get Tabletop
Or SUSD.

My local sci fi convention has a lot of wanna be boardgame designers testing their games out there. Most are awful and don't understand design at all, but some are alright.

The only majorly memorable one was one so awful. It was trying to be this castle like dungeon crawl. The combat rules were so complicated that everything slowed to a crawl and it took several turns to kill a monster. My character fell into a trap door just by bad luck and I had to lose 1d6 turns and after I lose 1d6 turns (it rolled a 6 of course) I had to crawl out of the pit which was 1 more turn wasted. I literally spent 7 slow turns unable to do anything, that was over half an hour of me doing nothing. It made me feel not the slightest bit bad that I pulled out my 3ds and started playing games during a boardgame.

>Or SUSD.
>
Seriously. SUSD's recommendations are actually shit for casuals because some of them have strict player counts (Captain Sonar), involve making yourself look silly which a lot people don't like (Monikers), or take a fucking long time (Food Chain Magnate) or are a pain in the ass to setup or take down. They're only meant for minimally employed, loud 20-30 somethings.

basically you think they are shit because you dont have many friends to play games with and youre a pretty reserved kinda person.
projecting much are we?

Whats a good game to indulge my 4x urges without alienating the rest of my group?

>lets bring people into board games
>i know
>a game that requires exactly six people and has each of them do a very different thing

What does that have to do with production values?

It's from last thread, I just like piling shit on SUSD whenever possible.

That sounds really shitty, did it ever take off? And speaking of which, now just remembered that one of my friend's friend participated in betatests of Master of the Ice Garden (god that thing is peculiar).

I hope not. The strange part was usually when shit is presented there, you get super basic components. Printed out cards, cubes, drawings on grid paper. That shitty game I played was full of some pretty detailed components. Elaborate walls and tiles, real cards, some actual art work. Outside of the player pieces which were just generic board game brand pieces, it looked like a fully realized game. Whoever this was invested in it, but they made just the worst gameplay. Maybe that's part of why it stuck out to me so much. One actually good game someone made that I tested was this hex grid based space combat game with actual space physics and shit like going belly up and some actually neat complex mechanics handled in a not overwhelming way. All the ships were just pictures on printed out paper and they didn't even do a black piece of large hexagonal grid paper, but the gameplay stuck out to me as kinda neat.

so cthulhu stuff is right up there with zombies on shit I'm sick of, but I'm kind of in the mood for a good multiplayer dread inducing game, and well done cthulhu does exactly that.

so what's your favorite lovecraftian board game? from what I've looked into it seems like eldritch horror would be a good choice, but I'm curious what others think.

Well, that sounds interesting
It does sound like something that gets gutted before release, if even

I'm currently waiting for any more news on the Arkham Horror LCG - looks quite good so far with the campaign style game play.

yeah, that does look surprisingly good, and its announcement is part of the reason I got interested in actually getting a lovecraft game. I guess I'm just in the mood for horror and it doesn't really need to be cthulhu, but let's be honest, most horror board games are cthulhu themed.

They're the one major site. They've been dedicated to it the longest and have both experience and the professionalism to keep making videos on a regular schedule. There was one big reviewer before them and I forget his name but he pretty much retired. Lastly, with how much editing they do, I don't blame them one bit for using really old stock crap for their opening titles. All their top ten lists are almost an hour long, why invest in making the first 10 seconds flashier?

>and then Gencon where games are "released" and there's only a couple hundred copies max.

It's a huge letdown since Gencon is now just a glorified gaming meetup group with some vendors.

>The Networks was a really big "indie" hit, but that was full hype at Origins.

It had also been KS already so had the Rahdo runthrough. I had already heard about it but can't buy it.

>Honestly though look at SUSD's first review,

Fuck no.

>I've been doing Gencon 5 years now, I skip the new stuff and just demo, look for old deals.

I go to local cons but I've always wanted a yearly huge con to go to with friends. I live far enough away from Gencon that it doesn't seem like a great deal if I all I want to do is try new board games. Dragon*con may be what I ultimately settle on as the big con I go to yearly.

I've been thinking of purchasing Smash Up, how is it? I personally haven't played it yet but it looks neat.

>Tom is one of the worst for hating games because they're not friendly enough theme wise.

>But Tom loves the new Bloodborne game

Interdasting...

Yeah, user is an idiot who can't stop tipping his fedora at his own atheism and being triggered by a mild-mannered christfag who isn't actually a brainwashed bigot.

>It's a huge letdown since Gencon is now just a glorified gaming meetup group with some vendors.
To be fair, Gencon was always about gaming first, the vendors showing up was secondary. My brother in law's been going since the MECCA days, he looks at the exhibit hall as a bonus and the gaming halls + auction house as the main draw. Considering how much you spend on a badge these days just walking the exhibit hall and buying more toys seems a bit like wasted cash. The event catalog goes live 3 months prior to show and most events sell out in an hour or two; the con really is the best way to playtest older games you haven't gotten to yet, or that've released since Essen and you don't want to drop $50+ on without trying first. Plus you know those games will be in the exhibit hall when you've made a decision. Plus the best stuff in the exhibit hall are all the non-gaming toys/authors/artists you won't get to see anywhere else.

Also I'd never recommend watching SUSD's first video review, I meant their first written one since Gencon, you don't even have to open the link, just look a the title and recognize they're behind by 4-5 months there.

Core Worlds would be my recommendation - it's not a true 4x, but it's a good Space Empire building game.

Get Arkham Horror friendo.

>I meant their first written one since Gencon
Dead Last you mean?

>most horror board games are cthulhu themed.
The Bloody Inn?

Oh if that was their first since the con they're only 6 weeks behind, I was talking about Go Cuckoo, Haba's had that leaked out since GAMA and all the trade people who were at the show said it's almost insta-buy.

To be fair, most of their reviews are for stuff you can actually purchase which would be why they seem quite late; the new stuff are in the bi-weekly(?) news article. That said, they've done a few things for kickstarter stuff I think? Unless I misheard that.

>Considering how much you spend on a badge these days just walking the exhibit hall and buying more toys seems a bit like wasted cash. The event catalog goes live 3 months prior to show and most events sell out in an hour or two; the con really is the best way to playtest older games you haven't gotten to yet, or that've released since Essen and you don't want to drop $50+ on without trying first.

I just don't think that's a big a draw to me. Any convention over a certain size will have a board gaming section. PAX has a huge one. My buddy played Tentacle Bento which sold out because it's PAX. All the anime and comic conventions I've been to have an open gaming area with a decent amount of Euros/family games and most of the demos are free unlike Gencon. I also have access to a board gaming cafe with a large selection. You'd have to want to try some really obscure stuff to justify the price of Gencon.

>Also I'd never recommend watching SUSD's first video review,

I'd never recommend any of their reviews, but that's personal taste. I got what you meant though.

>You'd have to want to try some really obscure stuff to justify the price of Gencon.
Yeah I can see that if you've got a cafe/LGS nearby that's solid; the 3 LGS in my area all feel way too creepy/toxic for me to spend more than the time needed to make a paint purchase. With free room/board I can justify Gencon easier than most, plus the last couple years I've gotten casually into PFS and the new season releases there with some pretty big special events.

That said I've done Whosyercon in Indy the last two years, and I enjoy the more relaxed atmosphere quite a bit more, they just need to get the hotel hosting it to stop being such shit. 2-3k people might be the ideal size for a con, allows them to be free, have plenty of demo events, and you might run into 1 stinkbeast a day instead of a dozen.

Tried this out there, was a nice quick, screw your neighbor card game. Ended up being my only purchase along with some Guild Ball stuff.

Wyrd had some sick looking stuff in their display booths. This year I bought the Wyrd Nightmare Edition and the Privateer Press exclusives on their websites, screw waiting in line for that stuff anymore.

Those are some good recs. Only problem is that Nippon is actually heavier than TM. For (slightly) variable player powers maybe check out City of Iron. There's no game map but there is a lot of fighting for majority/opportunity for direct conflict
I've played designer's pre-kickstarter prototypes a few times
Try it before you buy it
The LCG looks much more streamlined while still emphasizing story. It's really comfy looking honestly

I feel like a board game crash is coming.

There's so much crap. My local stores are so overstocked, and most of what they have is stuff is no name games. Their shelves are particularly overstocked like crazy with sci fi and fantasy stuff.

i'm a new player that wants to play online. what game would be a good starting point for me? i'm a very competitive person. i haven't developed a particular taste for any specific genre, i'm just looking for general recommendations.

>So guys, what are your thoughts about Gencon?

Pretty underwhelmed. New mansions of madness looks cool I guess.

>Things you were hyped to hear about?

I was hyped about Last Friday, but MarcoWargamer made a review and he seems so disappointed. His tastes usually line up pretty well with mine.

>Things you were sad to not hear anything about?

No news of the Legendary : Alien expansion.

>Things you wish hadn't happened/happened differently?

I dunno.

>Also, most recent game played and how was it?

Most recent.. I'm not sure. I think it's Karuba. Which I love.

Honestly, I could live with that. There's too much stuff coming out, I cant keep up and as such I feel kind of numb to many announcements.

boardgamearena.com
boiteajeux.net
yucata.de
brettspielwelt.de

Try anything that catches your eye.

what are your personal favorites?

I'm more of an euro guy
Puerto Rico
Castles of Burgundy
In the Year of the Dragon
Through the Ages
Jaipur
Caylus
Stone Age

I don't think there's a crash on the horizon.

One of the reasons behind the video gaming crash was a saturation of product and no quality control and no media/communication infrastructure to know what was good and what was bad. The market was over saturated and consumer confidence was at an all time low.

That's not the same situation we have currently in board games. Yes there is tons of product on the market, however I don't think that it's 'oversaturated'.

And consumer confidence I would say is at an all time high currently. There's many companies that are just implicitly trusted to make god products because they've made SO MANY AMAIZNG PRODUCTS already.

That combined with how many reviewers are easy to access it becomes easier and easier to know which games are generally good or bad. or might fit your style and preferences.

If anything I think we're gonna see a bit of a market divergence. What I mean is I think we're going to see more and more extremes in our board games. More games being produced as massive luxury items like Food Chain Magnate, Star Wars Rebellion, Mansions of Madness, and more games being produced as tiny, easy to transport and store games like One Night Ultimate Werewolf, the Tiny Epic series, and Love Letter. I think that the middle ground of your Ticket to Rides and Roll for the Galaxy are going to start to get squeezed into those huge or small categories.

>I don't think there's a crash on the horizon.

I don't either... What I can see is some games surviving based on hype and massive buy-in from casual gamers (like Exploding Kittens for example). But with the proliferation of gaming companies and quality Kickstarter offerings I can see the more discerning board gamers having higher expectations of quality. This is almost certainly going to result in some startup companies simply not lasting long if they don't have very well designed / appealing products. And that can be damn skippy difficult to achieve right out of the gate. Particularly when competing with companies / designers that have decades of design and manufacturing experience. That said, with FFG / ANA becoming the obnoxious 'Giant in the Playground' of board gaming, I'm glad that so many quality KS from 'the little guys' are hitting the market these days.

There's an absurd amount of stuff and part of that is that it's just so much easier to produce games now and it's such a low risk compared to other forms of media. Combine that with the growing market and we're in a huge boom that is doomed to fizzle out under it's own weight but I wouldn't say we'll see a crash or anything. Like someone said, confidence is at a rather large high and we do have at least some public opinion going around unlike with the dark ages of videogames. Further more, we do have some quality staples in the industry. Fantasy Flight I don't see going anywhere anytime soon, and there's even individual makers who are becoming famed for their boardgame design.

I don't think there's a crash in the horizon. I do think that big corps will strangle sellers and consumers.