-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
Board Gaming Era |OT| (Mostly) Unplugged Gaming
- Thread starter XShagrath
- Start date
Good news for anyone else waiting on the warehouse 13 game they got in all but one of the dice samples
And they are all within satisfactory levels! Provided that the goo die that are coming in next week are good we should be getting a delivery window! There is a light at the end of the tunnel
And they are all within satisfactory levels! Provided that the goo die that are coming in next week are good we should be getting a delivery window! There is a light at the end of the tunnel
I got a copy of Seal Team Flix in the mail and was pretty bummed to find out it had actual visible mold growing on the wooden components. The game smells absolutely awful, just totally foul. I've never seen anyone bring up mold in relation to this game, so it isn't a wide-spread issue; it's probably more of a one-off incident and I was just unlucky to get a copy in this shape that had probably been improperly stored at the distributor's warehouse or something. I was going to attempt cleaning the pieces but people on BGG were telling me to get rid of it. The head of Elzra games, the publisher for Catacombs, chimed in and said he has dealt with games he's released having mold and I should not attempt to clean in, wrap it in a plastic bag, and leave it outside of my house until I figure out what to do with it.
So I decided to email WizKids and ask them some questions ahead of filling out a product request form.
Now, WizKids has a pretty bad reputation in regards to their customer service. I've seen mention of their poor response times and lengthy shipping times before while just browsing BGG or the board game subreddit in the past, but I decided to search out comments to see if things had improved now that Zev (formerly of Z-Man Games) is with the company. I found many comments from the past few months ranging back to ten years ago saying they are one of the worst companies for resolving issues with missing or damaged components in a game. They supposedly take forever to respond, if they ever actually do respond. Often times they'll not tell you if they have approved a replacement or not and just send it out, but it'll take months to show up. And then after people wait months wondering if they'll get what they need to play their game or not, it'll show up and be the wrong part or damaged in the same way as the old one. And then after that you've just got the general problems people have with WizKids in the first place, like cheap and poor quality components, bad paintjobs, poor rulesbooks, and more.
Well I'm pleased to say that they responded quick, within a day and a half. They said that they will get a new copy of the game sent out to me, but will be opening it and personally inspecting it beforehand to make sure there are no mold issues. Score! I am really hyped up for Seal Team Flix, so that is great news. Now I'm just trying to think if there are any components worth saving out of the moldy copy. I'd want to have extra map boards with walls, for backups or for making larger custom scenarios, but any cardboard or other organic material should probably be binned along with the wood. I guess the dice and character stands that are plastic should be okay after a thorough scrubbing though, no?
Amazon had NMBR 9 for $11.99 last night so I grabbed a copy of that. I'm not sure if it is still the same price at the moment but if it is, I may grab another one so I can play the game with 5-8 people.
So I decided to email WizKids and ask them some questions ahead of filling out a product request form.
Now, WizKids has a pretty bad reputation in regards to their customer service. I've seen mention of their poor response times and lengthy shipping times before while just browsing BGG or the board game subreddit in the past, but I decided to search out comments to see if things had improved now that Zev (formerly of Z-Man Games) is with the company. I found many comments from the past few months ranging back to ten years ago saying they are one of the worst companies for resolving issues with missing or damaged components in a game. They supposedly take forever to respond, if they ever actually do respond. Often times they'll not tell you if they have approved a replacement or not and just send it out, but it'll take months to show up. And then after people wait months wondering if they'll get what they need to play their game or not, it'll show up and be the wrong part or damaged in the same way as the old one. And then after that you've just got the general problems people have with WizKids in the first place, like cheap and poor quality components, bad paintjobs, poor rulesbooks, and more.
Well I'm pleased to say that they responded quick, within a day and a half. They said that they will get a new copy of the game sent out to me, but will be opening it and personally inspecting it beforehand to make sure there are no mold issues. Score! I am really hyped up for Seal Team Flix, so that is great news. Now I'm just trying to think if there are any components worth saving out of the moldy copy. I'd want to have extra map boards with walls, for backups or for making larger custom scenarios, but any cardboard or other organic material should probably be binned along with the wood. I guess the dice and character stands that are plastic should be okay after a thorough scrubbing though, no?
Amazon had NMBR 9 for $11.99 last night so I grabbed a copy of that. I'm not sure if it is still the same price at the moment but if it is, I may grab another one so I can play the game with 5-8 people.
Get rid of it all. Mold is insidious, it'll grab onto any surfaces it can get a hold into. The risk isn't worth keeping the pieces/parts.
The only game I bought & opened to discover mold issues like that happened to be a Z-Man Game :) War of the Roses, an overlooked gem of a semi-coop area control auction game with a war theme :) They straight-up replaced it too.
I think $90 for the base Bloodborne pledge is a fantastic deal. I don't regret missing the all in pledge because there is enough content to keep me happy.
I am curious how the newly announced tariffs will effect existing Kickstarters. I have heard everything from "not much, the company will absorb the cost" to "pledge managers may have to be reopened so customers can pay the difference". Every time a good discussion gets going on my FB groups, the administrators shut it down because things get political. Very frustrating.
I am curious how the newly announced tariffs will effect existing Kickstarters. I have heard everything from "not much, the company will absorb the cost" to "pledge managers may have to be reopened so customers can pay the difference". Every time a good discussion gets going on my FB groups, the administrators shut it down because things get political. Very frustrating.
I'm very curious too. I expect shipping costs for Kickstarters will go up by a couple of dollars, and there could be a big rush to get current Kickstarters out quickly before the tariffs go in effect. Let's hope it's just temporary.
here is a quote someone posted that is making me a tad nervous:
(From a game designer)
"DVG News…
If you've been following the news, you've seen the stories about the US-China trade war. It's true, the trade war is going to levy duties on game products leaving China that were not previously in place. The estimate is a duty of 25% added to the cost of the games.
To put this into perspective, I received a phone call from our printer in China yesterday. We've worked together for years, and this is maybe the second or third time they've called. All our communications are done via email. They wanted to reach out to make sure I understood that this is a very bad thing.
The printer confirmed the duty, and said the exact date will probably be sometime in June, and all games leaving China after that will have the extra cost, which they must of course pass on to me.
This catches DVG at a bad time as we have Castle Itter, Pavlov's House reprint, and all of Warfighter Shadow War being printed right now. None of them are exiting China before the deadline.
What this means…
There has been talk of companies with games that were funded with Kickstarter months ago, adjusting the pricing in the pledge manager to take the duty increase into account. I will make every attempt not to have to do this. However, I will probably need to increase the MSRPs for this wave of games before they ship out through the distribution channels.
I sincerely hope the two countries can work something out in the coming weeks to cancel the proposed duty increase.
In closing, it would be very easy for this to turn into a political thread, let's not. Once the discussion turns political, it will go from civil discourse to flaming circus in about 3 posts."
The above versus a quick post by Double Six dive who says that they are exploring the issue but felt impact was minimal and they would "eat" the cost.
Finally got around to playing Grimm Forest with the family. Was fun and easy to learn. Went quick.
Picked up MegaLand at target for $11.50, excited to give that one a try
My copy of Noctiluca came. That's my Saturday game this weekend I think
Picked up MegaLand at target for $11.50, excited to give that one a try
My copy of Noctiluca came. That's my Saturday game this weekend I think
Let's hope at worst it's 25% to the manufactured cost not the MSRP.
Let's say a game is $100 MSRP, usually it's 5x the manufacturing cost which puts it at $20. 25% of $20 is $5 extra and hopefully they just eat the cost for this round of games.
I feel like Gloomhaven is doing what World of Warcraft did for me video game wise when it released. I don't have the urge to buy new board games since we started our weekly Gloomhaven round. It's not like I don't play other things at our local meetup and when I meet up with friends. But I haven't bought a single game, except Sub Terra, since we started playing GH in January. The only other game I consider to buy is Wingspan, because of its low entry level difficulty.
It's not that there aren't any games that interest me, but it always comes back to that I don't need them right now.
It's not that there aren't any games that interest me, but it always comes back to that I don't need them right now.
Played a full solo mode game of A Feast for Odin. I really like that game, and can't wait to play it with a group of people.
Very interesting article about the tariff issue:
https://www.polygon.com/2019/5/17/18628486/trump-trade-tariff-china-tabletop-games-rpgs-cards-dice
https://www.polygon.com/2019/5/17/18628486/trump-trade-tariff-china-tabletop-games-rpgs-cards-dice
Last edited:
OP
OP
It should be everything. I already had the initial stuff from the first KS, so I'm getting the expansion stuff this time around, which is next week for US folks. I assume if you ordered everything, and just chose "Wave 2 Shipping" or whatever, you're gonna get everything tomorrow.
Probably, but none of the three items listed sounded like all the expansions but I figure it should be most things.
OP
OP
Going off of the KS updates, it sounds like everything arrived in the US last weekend, and should start shipping out next week.
I need to retry 7th Continent again too. Getting the second box will be a good reason for that. I feel you on the difficulty, I'll probably just play with some more forgiving rules just to have fun exploring all the cards and figuring out the puzzle type stuff. Like I'm not really playing that game for a hard core survival deck management thing (even though I totally should've known that's what I was getting when I backed it).
I've heard that one of the most important tricks to enjoying 7th Continent is to skip the first scenario and go to the next one. For whatever reason the designers decided to make it super long and a lot less fun than the later ones.
That's what I did for the "recommended first" quest line. I sort of just went through it after losing all my action cards twice but it left me scratching my head and wonder how in the world were people supposed to beat that mission. The amount of space you must cover in such little time is ridiculous and there aren't many ways to get food.
Once I understood how surviving works in 7th continent I've not had an issue. Do you understand how stacking items works? I feel that's the biggest difference between survival and slaughter in the game that a lot of people get wrong.
I also got Megaland on sale. I can't believe how nice the insert is. I usually sleeve, but for this kids game, I'm not going to trash the nice insert to make it happen.
Well you can put food in an item stack, but it's still only one use. They key is just making sure you cook it for the added restoration of the action deck.
Blargh, here I am, about to drop $350 on Bloodborne knowing full well that I'm going to paint 1/3 of the miniatures and probably play it 5 times.
that's more what I meant, that each food still takes a slot.
the game is much easier if you house rule that you can pile up food :P
Don't forget to look UNDER the insert. I'm assuming that what should be there still is.
I hate trashing nice inserts, but I find myself doing it more and more recently to save space. Nmbr 9 (to combine two copies), word on the street (to combine base and expansion), and resident evil 2 (go from 8ish boxes to 3) are some of the recent ones I've done.
Also my thunder stone quest ks expansion came in. Still haven't sleeved this beast but need to soon, same with legendary marvel.
Stacking as in combining them? My problem is that it takes so many action cards to do anything that I run out of stamina before things can really get done, especially with the first mission.
You have an optino to play on easy (if you draw a skull from the discard pile you sacrfice a special card instead and then reshuffle the discard pile into an new action deck). It is an option. Also one of the characters can pull 25 cards out of the discard pile which is a huge amount. Even on easy you'll fail some challenges because of the lock symbol.
Yes I saw that! How's that game? I remember eyeing it before, but for some reason I don't remember, I dropped my attention from it. Maybe it was longish or had too much narrative in a way that might harm replayability for my tastes? I don't remember. I forget about the game to be honest. I might be thinking of the other games in that series though.. Hm..
Yeah usually I get rid of most inserts in the sleeving process, or yes, to combine expansions.. But one problem is when you do that, you often need to at least replace the insert with *something*, and designing new inserts or doing foamcore, I just don't seem to have the time for it now. I have a backlog of games that need a decent foam core insert. Or, I wish there was a modular set of thin cardboard/cardstock pieces that you could use to build quick and efficient insert replacements. Like something cheap that could be a card holder/divider that comes in a couple different heights. I'm talking real cheap. On some of my games with smaller boxes, I've just cut and repurposed the existing insert. Right now I need to give a very small game box some 'lift' to account for the sleeved cards. It's a pain, again, I wish there was a cheap kit of cardboard insert pieces you could just toss into a box and tape it down.
Wondering if anyone can offer up some suggestions about getting into either Magic: The Gathering or another similar style game. I'm just looking for something to play with my wife and/or a friend. Magic has always appealed to me and I've always wanted to play it, but the feeling used to be it's a total financial sink. But I've read a few things about duel decks or being able to still get into the game casually without dropping loads of cash.
So just wondering what my best options are. Grabbing a duel deck or a couple core sets? Or is there another game that I should look into?
Also to note, my wife and I did try Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn a couple years ago, for some reason that one just didn't click with me.
So just wondering what my best options are. Grabbing a duel deck or a couple core sets? Or is there another game that I should look into?
Also to note, my wife and I did try Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn a couple years ago, for some reason that one just didn't click with me.
What was it about Ashes that you didn't like, and what kinds of things appeal to you about Magic? I can try to narrow down some options for you based on that.
General aesthetics aside, I didn't enjoy the dice as much as I thought I would and it just felt a little too slow paced for my liking I suppose. While we didn't play it a whole lot, it did seem some of the preconstructed decks were a little off balance. We haven't had the desire to go back to the game to try the drafting rules.
As far as Magic goes, I've been a fan of the artstyle and I like the idea of being able to build a deck from it's different color classes and the card combos that can emerge from that.
Yeah I don't think Ashes even sold well or garnered much interest. I wanted to compare that game to Seasons (a good cards + dice game), but it's not exactly a CCG style game.
The most common advice is to go for Cube draft for Magic. Basically, you buy enough cards to make a large but balanced pool of cards (a "cube") that you shuffle together. From this heap, you create randomized booster "packs" that you draft for each game, much like the regular draft format. Players like this because you don't have to play it like an arms race or build decks ahead of time, you just keep cycling through this pool and each game is a unique experience.
I've never done this myself (it feels slightly hard to understand as someone who is a beginner at Magic), but there are guides online.
Alternatively you could check out a game called Epic, which is a streamlined variation of Magic. It's got the same gameplay, color classes and very similar keyword effects as Magic, but you don't use lands. The game comes in one cheap 180 card set (basically like a mini cube) that you can play draft or constructed, and there are expansion packs once you're ready to add to it. As a very casual player of these types of games, I like it.
Thanks for the info! Just checked out Epic and it's cheap and seems rather close to MTG. Seems to be a cheaper jumping in point than the Magic Cube. Do you have any experience or thoughts on Keyforge? I just came across that one this morning and it sounds pretty fun.
Looking for opinions from other Heavy Gamers!
Last game I look to add this year is a three way tie between:
Trickerion
Arkwright
Lignum
If anyone can offer an opinion on which way I should lean, let me know!
Last game I look to add this year is a three way tie between:
Trickerion
Arkwright
Lignum
If anyone can offer an opinion on which way I should lean, let me know!
I enjoyed playing Magic when I got into it but I didn't enjoy buying it; the CCG business model is not for me. There are a lot of games that are similar to MtG though and even more that capture the back-and-forth feel of MtG. Are you specifically looking for a card game? If not, I'd recommend Dice Throne. It reminds me a lot of how MtG feels to play. I've seen it described a lot (and describe it the same way) as Magic-meets-King of Tokyo. You've got a character that has different attacks, you roll and reroll your dice (where the King of Tokyo comparisons come in to play) to try to get the required symbols to get those attacks off so you can damage your opponent's life points, you generate currency that is similar to mana and required to use your cards, you play cards to upgrade your attacks or affect your dice (or opponent's dice) or interrupt attacks like instants in Magic. You can play it with 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, or as a free-for-all. It plays really well at 1v1 though and could be a good one for your wife and yourself to play.
Keyforge is fun, I have enjoyed the times I've played. But as you probably know, it's a game where you buy a premade deck and cannot modify it. For me, this is a great thing, since deck making is the thing I have the most trouble with in these games.
The idea of Keyforge was to get a deck, play it a bunch of times to figure out its strengths and maximize what it can do. This means that you're gonna have some cards in your deck that are not "useful", at least at first glance. I like this idea, but other people don't like this because some decks are better than others and they just want to tinker and make the perfect deck. I think both POVs are fair, it's just a matter of opinion. However, there's a caveat in that if you want to change the game up you have to keep buying decks at 7-10 bucks a pop. The decks and the game do make it possible to play one deck differently each time, so there is that.
For me, I think something like Epic gives me something more authentic to Magic while being probably the cheapest and easiest way to get in and have something with variability and customization. There are a lot of good card games worth checking out but I feel like that's a good entry point.
Last edited:
I've only played Trickerion. The artwork is fantastic, but the gameplay was only okay -- it ran far too long for what it was. The game could have done with another design iteration that streamlined away the excess complications that added marginal strategic/tactical depth.
Last edited:
Yeah, I am struggling with this. In my heart I know Arkwright is probably the best game, but getting it to the table will be an undertaking. Food Chain has been a huge hit so far though. I know Trickerion's theme will help things out.
The thing with Trickerion is that it doesn't feel at all like a heavy game in its depth, only in its length and [needlessly] complicated mechanics. It's a step up from Lords of Waterdeep and Stone Age, sure, but it's nowhere near as interesting as Food Chain Magnate (which has comparatively simple rules/mechanics).
Thank you! Definitely putting Epic up on the list and Keyforge just sounds much easier since it's already a built deck.
Dice Throne looks fun - is it very similar to King of Tokyo? That's something we've already played quite a bit of in the past so not sure if it'll end up feeling redundant too quickly for us?
Above and Below is pretty good, but then I'm a fan of most Red Raven games so take that into consideration. AaB is probably their next easiest game in terms of complexity. There is a narrative book that you consult on occasion, but not as often as you'd think. That said, there is a random system that means you might see a bunch of the same stories come up if you're unlucky. Either way, it's a side mechanism to the core city building mechanic of the game.
The biggest complaint people have with the book seems to be that there's no continuing story. Each bit is a random self-contained event.
Near and Far, the "sequel" game is a bit more dependent on the storybook and has more of a true story path. I'd say if you like MegaLand's game mechanics there's a decent chance you'll like AaB.
I'll make the obvious suggestion of KeyForge, $10 gets you a complete, unique deck. The starter box is a great option for $40 as it gives you two tutorial decks, 2 unique decks, and nice components to make the game easier to play. Sure you could money sink if you want to own a ton of decks or get a specific set of houses/cards, but if you're looking to go casual you can't beat keyforge.
I do think Keyforge is good I just don't think it has quite the depth of strategy that Magic and a magic clone (Epic) offer. But it's definitely worth checking out.