Board Game General /bgg/

What's the deal with Meetup.com? Do they charge users money? How to do they make money?

>What's the deal with Meetup.com? Do they charge users money? How to do they make money?
The organizer of each meetup has to pay an annual fee.

>war
memoir 44
>gladiators
never played one, does Wiz War count?
>dudes on a map
Inis Inis Inis Inis
>combat resolution
semi-random, early 40k was pretty good at it

>does Wiz War count
Sure, I was thinking more as a general "get in the arena and duke it out" theme; KoT, Ultimate Warriorz, Summoner Wars, hell even MtG could be seen as gladiatorial in nature.

Literally just Cthulhu Pandemic. Would not play again.

A married couple I know is looking for some games that are simple and good for two players; think Tsuro, for example. They want stuff they can play in a half hour while their baby naps. Any others I can suggest to them?

Anything from the abstract, dice chuckers, the first two from deckbuilders, the light cards, first 3 drafting, Carc, Splendor, Pagoda, Survive..... prolly a few others on there that can be done in 30 minutes.

you guys ever play this? its pretty fun once you get past the "le so randum name xD" aspect and its great taking your time to build up a spell to fuck over all of your enemies

the sequel is better

Has anyone played any board games apps aside from the two I mentioned? Any others worth getting?

Don't know about the paid ones, but Condado and Farmasonne are free ripoffs of San Juan and Carcasonne respectively.

Sentinels of the multiverse is pretty cool, but expensive if you want the expansions (and you will if you get really into it). Splendor and San Juan apps are pretty good. Patchwork is free(and good) on android if you have amazon prime. Dream quest is an awesome deckbuilding RPG, just ignore the art. Sadly no android version, but it's available on IOS and PC. Ticket to Ride and Small Worlds apps are also good. To be honest, I haven't found a board game app that sucks, unless the game it's based on sucks.

Phone/tablet apps? Elder Sign has great production, and despite the fact you lose all the fun of chucking dice, it's prolly better than the tabletop version, as all the fiddly upkeep is automated. 1st & Goal can be a little buggy but if you're a football fan it's fantastic and a really good representation of the board game; be aware you will hate that fucking play die. Carcassonne, TtR and Splendor are just straight ports, but good animation/music and the difficulty seems about right. Hey That's My Fish if you're an abstract fan, it's got a nice challenge mode by letting you unlock layouts for the tiles by meeting different win conditions. Patchwork/Ingenious are ok, nothing to write home about but can be gotten for free off the amazon store every so often. Alhambra was a disappointment (the controls are fucking tiny, especially on a phone) but if you're a big fan I guess it's a fair representation.

Onirim was free last week on ios/android, and the user who posted it here is my new best friend; I've played about 30-40 games. Fantastic solo game but I never had the time or energy to bother with that much shuffling for just myself.

Also Galaxy Trucker; you might not be a fan of the board version (I'm not really) but the way it sets up the campaign and missions is fantastic. It's something you can burn out on (Star Realms app killed it for me the last 6 months) but the challenge is perfect, and that sort of frustrating you'd get from playing arcade ports on the old NES. You will yell and swear and be pissed at that one fucking rock that ruined your perfect setup and of course the aliens only accept the winning fucking ship, but just maybe one more try before bed, it's only 3am.

It's fun but I wouldn't really play it outside of a filler/party scenario.

Mage Knight is my favorite game and I haven't really found anything that scratches the same itch. Any suggestions?

Does anyone have a print and play version of Lost Lake and/or it's expansions?

Err... I mean Lost Legacy

i has played ascension A LOT. and it's great

Got all the expansions, feels good man.

kickstarter.com/projects/152730994/deception-undercover-allies-0/rewards

Looks like hiddenidentitykino is back in the menu boys

>87 dollars just to get the base game
Haha no thanks

First KS I ever backed, the game just looks amazing gameplay wise and visually, but I would really rather spend 40$ less and get tokens or cardboard standups and not super expensive minis.

Still, asymmetrical area-control with various win-cons sounds amazing, and the gameplay I saw so far also looked promising.

Lets not forget the shipping is dirt cheap.

Anyone else backing?

Does anyone on here frequent Boardgame Geek?

I'm making a boardgame and am just going through the forums and that, wondering what to comment on and how to set up to make a [WIP] post and whew, the place is a little overwhelming.

I think I might have considered it if I haven't already gone all-out on Mythic Battles: Pantheon.
Though I must say that I don't like the visual style that much. That mix of Greek mythology and sci-fi just doesn't sit right with me.

>the place is a little overwhelming
Understatement; they've been changing up their web design because of the analytics for how many people would show up based off a google search and immediately move away, the game pages were from the early web 90s era and tough to deal with for newcomers. Still not a huge fan of the new game pages since there's not as much editing as I want but they've grown on me. There's not a single good way to make it easier to deal with from the start, but I find editing your front page to cover exactly what you're interested in, helps a lot. If you've got a safe landing page you're better off

As for where to post? Prolly either design theory or wip subforum of link below
>boardgamegeek.com/forum/974616/boardgamegeek/board-game-design

>That mix of Greek mythology and sci-fi just doesn't sit right with me.
I sympathize - but you should read Illium by Dan Simmons sometime.

I want your opinions of Betrayal at House on the Hill. Do you guys consider it a good game? Would you consider any house rules or modifications to make it more fun, balanced, or skill based? Is the expansion any good besides the haunts? Are there any good haunts in the expansion, because the ones I've played so far are pretty dumb. It doesn't help that they've made questionable decisions on who they got to make their haunts.

>What's the best war themed one?
Heroes of Normandie shows no signs of getting replaced as my go-to pseudo-wargame. Convincingly simulationist without drowning me in CRT's, great art, light but significant hidden information, colorful scenario play, more customization for skirmish modes than I'll ever be able to shake a Panther at. The base dice combat resolution leaves something to be desired, but that's been easy to fix.

>How about gladiatorial combat?
It's still a shameless dicechucker with great art but virtually nonexistant production quality, but for the moment I have to give this one to Arsenal: Arena Combat - a light card-driven system for 'Mech brawling with fun resource management and great pacing.
But I think it's going to be completely replaced for me by Giga-Robo once that ships, despite the latter having significantly more bland art and falling definitively on the wrong end of the Battletech-Gundam spectrum.
>Dudes on a map?
Kemet for blood, Rex for tension.
Both are just far too good.
>What's your favorite method of combat resolution?
I'm addicted to resolution systems that use hidden information derived from player choices.

The game is really solid, but I probably won't go in for it.
Looks like it does a couple interesting things, but doesn't seem very elegant about it.

>I want your opinions of Betrayal at House on the Hill.
Remember this part.
>Do you guys consider it a good game?
No. Not even remotely.
>Would you consider any house rules or modifications to make it more fun, balanced, or skill based?
Does kerosene count?
>Is the expansion any good besides the haunts?
I'd bet money it's not any good including the haunts, but I'm sure as hell not going to spend any time investigating that hypothesis.

>I'd bet money it's not any good including the haunts, but I'm sure as hell not going to spend any time investigating that hypothesis.
I'll give you a hint: They got the guys from Cards Against Humanity, Zoe Quinn, and Anita Sarkessian to write some of their haunts.

Game is 100% crap. The only thing it's good for it is BBQ fuel.

How is San Juan? How similar is it to Race for the Galaxy?

>Arsenal: Arena Combat
This game has been on my radar recently. What do you like and not like about it?

What could go wrong? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

>What could go right? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

FYP.

I was severely disappointed that Race for the Galaxy came without a map of the galaxy. I was so disappointed, I immediately passed it on. This may have been a mistake.

What's the most similar game to RaceftG but with a map to play on?

Any ideas how to bolt a map to RftG? Possible at all?

I'm Seeing as you like Kemet and Rex so much, what drives you off LoH?
Asymmetrical, Combat might be a bit dull but the whole Quests and empowering you hero seems to make up for it in my opinion.

It's a decent Horror Movie Simulator, and my group tends to have fun with it. Some of the haunts are badly balanced or insane, but it's good for a laugh and so far we haven't played it out. Don't know about the expansion but suggests that I'll probably avoid it like the plague.

Very similar with less moving parts/variations of cards, phases aren't in a fixed order, and no VP depletion game end condition.

So if I already owned Race, is there a point to getting San Juan as well?

Like:
-The energy management is great, though I've found keeping the energy cards in stacks is easier to handle than splayed out like the manual indicates.
-I like the dice pools you have to spend for attack/evade/armor rolls - though I think sometimes the decisions about when to spend these are a little too straightforward. Full refresh of your pools every turn is probably too generous.
-The weapons and equipment and so forth that make up the decks are for the most part really flavorful and fun, but it feels like a couple of the weapons might be just a little too strong - they work fine with the premade decks but are probably too much of an autoinclude if you're deckbuilding.
Art is great, cards are borderline overdesigned but still look good.

What I don't like:
-Production Quality: The game is really meant to be an alternate use for your battletech box set or equivalent robots-on-a-hex-map game, not something that stands on it's own. The included cut-it-out-yourself paper tokens for the mechs are sad, and the empty gladiator arena map is a little boring.
-With 40 cards in a deck and no more than two copies of any given card, draw variance is a little high. You can draw aggressively by throwing away / playing lots of cards to find what you need, but since you're dead if you deck out there's risk there. Adds some interesting decisions, but RNG can make it frustrating.
-Too many dice, which aren't included with the game. It's a good thing I have so many d6 sitting around, because for the high attack builds you can easily be throwing 15+d6 on a single shot. And since the success rate on every die is a flat 1/3, even big rolls can be really unpredictable.
-Variety. I wish there was just more content for the game, especially for the price. More of everything would also help motivate me to deckbuild more.

I'm low on sleep so this probably all sounds like a really unfocused ramble, sorry.

I've actually played Betrayal with the expansion a few times. I'm wondering if the expansion makes things significantly better assuming I just skipped any of the new haunts if they sounded bad. I found some of the features neat, but I'm wondering if house rules and effect overwrites can improve the game without spending $25 on an expansion that cooperated with losers.

I've played the following haunts
>One was involving the traitor becoming Hamlet and trying to complete certain tasks while the heroes say some lines. There were stupid things like the traitor getting bonus rolls if they say things Shakespearean-like. We played it TWICE and crushed the traitor both times. Both were triggered in the Theater. The Theater only has two haunts.
>We also played the other Theater haunt, which involved everyone but one person being the traitor (for mechanical purposes, but I still made "The Room" references) The sole hero is the director who is frustrated with his actors/traitors and is trying to get his special item to complete his vision. The traitors meanwhile are trying to launch their career and are competing with each other. It's as lame as it sounds.

One of our players also flicked through the Traitor's Tome and found a line saying "You're fired." Either it's a lame haunt where you are employees of some boss, maybe a demon boss, or Donald Trump. If it's the latter, I would BEG people not to buy the expansion on principle of the haunt being lame, unfitting, and dated and probably political crap.

So yeah, 2/25 haunts are shit, and probably a third one as well. Not to mention that two other well-known shits are working for it, I can safely say that at least 20% of the haunts are crap.

Assuming you're talking about the app games, I mentioned Condado above that works like San Juan which is free, so no real reason not to. If you're buying the official games though, then probably not; San Juan's merit over Race is that it is a lot easier to teach other players since they can worry about less things, but if you already own one they play similarly enough that you don't *need* the other.

On the note of making your own game, what do you all recommend for someone starting out trying to make a game? What should I make sure is working first?

This is just a quick shot from the hip, so I could easily be way off-base, but
The monster victory condition concerns me a little, I usually want victory conditions to be about directly interacting with the other players.
The other two area control objectives are maybe a little too similar? Might not be an issue.
Battle cards being a single resource that you spend on either attacking monsters or on fights with the other players smells like it'll encourage everyone to either focus on the monsters objective or the area control, and ignore the other. Maybe there's enough feedback between monster loot/glory helping the area control and area control helping you bully the other players heroes that this isn't a problem.

And it's expensive.

But I do really like the way they structure and control round length, that's pretty clever,
I'd like a closer look at the rulebook, cards, and hero abilities, though.

To me, to make a game you need to start with which interesting decisions of what type you want players to make.
Then go throguh which mechanics you enjoy yourself or want to improve on from other games you've played.
Make a prorotype, test it, evaluate it and change it until you're happy.
After you have a decent working base you need to do a few passes about game flow and balance, playtesting with a broader audience and fixing things that people don't understand or don't like, etc.

So to give a terrible example: I want my game to be based on a weighted graph, and players need to decide which routes they take, that's the focus of the game. For that to be important, not only the weight of the road must be relevant, but there should be some further pros and cons. They'll need an objective, probably something like going from one point of the map to the other. Let's make a competitive game, where the goal of other players is not only to advance themselves but also to hinder you. Here I would say mechanics I want are things like "deckbuilding", "take that", etc. Once I have a somewhat formed idea I'd go on to see how it works, and iterate on it. Iteration iteration iteration until I have something enjoyable. If something isn't working don't be afraid to scrap it, I've worked on projects where nobody was "feeling" the game and we tried to fix it when we should have just let it die.

I play it on Halloween just for the B horror movie factor of the theme. Thematically, it has some fun scenarios, but the game itself is awful. Not in a way that takes too long or that is clunky to play, which is what can make it worth a play, but in the fact that you're doing nothing. I'm used to random, but every win is entirely arbitrary. There wasn't even an attempt to make half these scenarios winnable for one side and the can't plan anything keep exploring random shit beginning has such a huge impact on how the other half of the scenarios go.

As if that wasn't bad enough in addition to the "Trump haunt", it's also mechanically a pain in the ass. Adds yet another floor for the house which does nothing but convolute things even more.

Wait, what?! Are we talking about simply having a boss that makes one or two non-political Trump references like "You're fired", or is the boss really Not!Trump?

Hey /bgg/, is Mysterium fun?

Me and a group of friends recently started playing board games and I got interested in it.
So far we've been playing Dead of Winter and Eldtrich Horror, do you recomment anything?

Thanks!

I don't own it so I can't confirm, but their Twitter posted about having a Trump election related haunt.

From my undersatandibg its very much a notTrump

Then the expansion is a no-go for me and I hated Trump since the beginning.

Any other dungeon-crawler games with diverse scenarios that are better than Betrayal? I have a thing for maps and architecture. Is Mansions of Madness any good? I've only played it once and had some fun.

My groups library. Blue is played, yellow is introducing next time.

I'm trying to get my group to play wargames by stockholm syndroming them with slightly increasing complexity. What are some logical next choices?

>dont wanna play videogames but too tired to play solo tabletop

Please tell me Im mot alone

Late pledging is still possible and I'm really tempted to. Please talk me out of it. I resisted all this time but a few days ago I started worrying that I could miss the next BIG game like back when I didn't go for Scythe.

What's your guys' opinion on this? It's just nice visuals and plastic right?

It's fine. It is more of a "watch your friends figure out your thing but can't because they don't see the thing right there" type of game, and some say playing the ghost can get rather dull if you don't enjoy that kind of thing. For the price point though I'd actually recommend Deception: Murder in Hong Kong or Codenames, both are cheaper and feature guessing stuff by clues.

As for other games, try dipping your toes into eurogames - games that are light on theme and are usually competitive - like Ticket to Ride(?) (Europe has the highest recommendation I think) or Splendor.

If you have the money and don't mine having it tied up, it's a safe bet as long as you're willing to use eBay. Someone will pay a pretty penny for all those exclusives far beyond what you pay. When I heard Dark Souls severely disappointed, I sold mine online for $30 more than I paid in total for just the core box. I still await all the expansions to ship to me and sell all those for probably another decently large amount to add onto the $30 I already made.

I do hope it turns out well and am genuinely interested having gone through the rules and watched what I could of gameplay, but that backup plan makes me not worried at all.

Now prepare to be flooded with people triggered by buzzwords.

>$100 pledge
Think of all the tacos you could eat with that

You missed nothing by not backing Scythe. The game has some visual appeal but mechanics are sub-par.
Besides Rising Sun is really just weeb Bloodrage rehash. And Bloodrage wasn't all that great.

Small world next, easy normie bait. Then something like 1775 or 878 or the canadian one so they learn cdg mechanics. then you just straight up whip out empire of the sun one day and blow their tits off

Do you guys buy new components for your games or upgrade what it came with? For example, I'm wanting to buy plastic gems and some metal coins (once I can find them) for splendor

I've spent more than a little on metal coins for generic use, and acrylic tokens for netrunner.
I don't really need games to be fancy, but there's certainly something to be said for a more tactile experience.

How replayable is pandemic without expansions? Does it get boring?

Where did you buy your metal coins? I'm trying to find some generic ones instead of them having pirate decor all over them

Fantasycoin.com
I think they also have a set of coins and metal gems specifically for splendor.

>Metal gems
Glass is a metal, right?

Inis or Kemet?

Silicon is a metalloid on the periodic table, seems a stretch, but fair.

I can't say about the Pandemic expansions, but I know I would rather play Flash Point than base Pandemic. Then again, I have a few expansions for Flash Point.

Having done some research I have avoided buying Pandemic until / unless I get a deal that includes at least one expansion. As for variants like Iberia and Cthulhu, they seem pretty weak thematically and bring nothing particularly new. I will not comment on (((Legacy))).

Flashpoint seems like a good game but it's not a priority.

yeah I was gonna get the first expansion but it's out of print atm and twice the price, and the second expansion requires the first

Go full diy and mint your own coins.

Has anyone here played Conan? It sounds super good but the price is not something I want to gamble on.

I've played it a few times. Sometimes really hated it, sometimes really enjoyed it.

I found it vastly depended on the people I played it with. People who take it as fun and know that you didn't *choose* to be against them and the like are good people to play this game with.

Inis without a doubt. So fast, every decision is important which includes your opponents

A massive amount of content was kickstarter exclusive so you can't even play the entire game. That alone makes it not worth it to me

IA's mechanics are based in Descent: Journeys in the Dark 2nd Ed. Both are good in their own ways, but I find IA to be a little more mechanically clean. Descent has a companion app so you CAN play fully co-op if you like, and an app for Imperial Assault is on the way, release date unknown.

Gloomhaven is almost an RPG in a box, while staying grounded in Dungeon Crawling. Have yet to play personally but it looks pretty epic (and costs pretty epic $$$ too). "Massive Darkness" seems to play the Dungeon Crawler much closer to home, although i know even less about that Kickstarted game.

The Dark Souls Board game certainly is popular, but from what I can tell, its even more grind-y than its source material: you keep fighting through the same rooms so you can have enough souls (XP) just to use the items you've already acquired. Doesn't sound pleasant, but I haven't played.

Mansions of Madness is almost the rougelike of dungeon crawlers. Its more pick-up-and-play than IA, each scenario being self contained and only a few hours to go through. More exploration and less combat than the others listed here, and i'd say the difficulty on anything besides the first mission is going to require multiple attempts. At the same time, if you like the setting, its a very solid game. 2nd Edition comes with a companion App standard, so its fully co-op.

Hope that helps!

Is Descent better with the app playing the Overlord? Is anything necessary to use it or can it be used with the original game only? I'd like to actually get the game on my table. I spent quite a bit of money on it and so far, it brought me nothing (and the box somehow ended up being damaged with a corner ripped so I can't sell it)

>One of our players also flicked through the Traitor's Tome and found a line saying "You're fired." Either it's a lame haunt where you are employees of some boss, maybe a demon boss, or Donald Trump. If it's the latter, I would BEG people not to buy the expansion on principle of the haunt being lame, unfitting, and dated and probably political crap.

It is a political joke

The haunt is called "Make America Disintegrate" or some such.

Whelp

I might be blind, but I didn't see "you're fired" in this one. Could there be TWO haunts that reference him in this shitty expansion?

Show us your backed Kickstarter projects

Craigslist seller 1.5 hours away selling

Elasund: The First City -- $25
Martinique -- $10
Augsburg 1520 -- $25
Monuments: Wonders of Antiquity -- $20
Age of Discovery -- $12

Any worth going out of my way?

7 Wonders Duel

Fuck off and kill yourself.

Does it exist, is there a coherent set of rules anywhere...

Mayfair or Mayday put together a kickstarter for it which was basically a complete fucking scam, proceeded to whine about how everyone was on their case for it and it really was a super serious project guize and then acted completely surprised and hard-done-by when it fell through.

Yes, but has another tried to walk in the footsteps of the architect. Someone who isnt pushing out a 500$ scam

How fuck that was awful. Why can't people keep their shitty agendas out of games?

*Holy

>if I haven't already gone all-out on Mythic Battles: Pantheon.
Goddamn retard falling for plastic pusher games, MB:P is going to be terrible