Paid Members stumobir Posted January 2, 2023 Paid Members Share Posted January 2, 2023 Received Brass: Birmingham for Christmas this year and gave it a play last night. It took a while to get to grip with the rules and we made a few mistakes in the early rounds but we really enjoyed in and will give it another whirl at the weekend. Premise is that you’re an industrialist during the Industrial Revolution looking to build your industries and trade routes in order to sell to the market and score VPs. As it was our first game there wasn’t much strategy in our efforts and we were just building wherever we could during that action but I can see it having good replayability as you look at better ways of building your own network while keeping your opponent at bay. Also played quite a bit of Terraforming Mars last year but I’ve grown less fond of it each time. Even with the Prelude expansion which is designed to speed the early stages of the game up it still feels like it takes forever to get going. There are a huge amount of action cards which is encouraging at first but quickly becomes apparent that they all do the same few things, mostly just move your fiddly tokens up and down your player mat. I’d still recommend it to most but with the caveat that you’ll be bored of it after a few games. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Just Some Guy Posted January 2, 2023 Share Posted January 2, 2023 I'll never get bored of Terraforming Mars. It does help that we play it sparingly. Since adding the Turmoil expansion it takes an afternoon rather than an evening. We have Brass: Lancashire and 3/4 of the group likes it whilst the remaining player is driven to despair when the canal network she has spent an hour putting together gets ripped from the board. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Thunderplex Posted January 2, 2023 Author Paid Members Share Posted January 2, 2023 Tried Terraforming Mars a few times, and just cannot warm to it for some reason. Strangely, I really enjoy its spin-off, The Ares Project. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Just Some Guy Posted January 2, 2023 Share Posted January 2, 2023 I backed TM:The Dice Game on Kickstarter which may be another variation on the theme you may like. I'll let you know what I think when it gets delivered. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Awards Moderator Onyx2 Posted January 2, 2023 Awards Moderator Share Posted January 2, 2023 I recommend digital Terraforming Mars (on Steam). Eliminates the fiddly setup / teardown, speeds up turns. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Merzbow Posted January 15, 2023 Share Posted January 15, 2023 Is there any way I could get a WWF/WWE Raw Deal starter set without it costing an arm and a leg? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Thunderplex Posted January 16, 2023 Author Paid Members Share Posted January 16, 2023 2 hours ago, Merzbow said: Is there any way I could get a WWF/WWE Raw Deal starter set without it costing an arm and a leg? Ooohh, are they dear now? Got a few in the attic, might have a gander on EBay! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members JNLister Posted January 21, 2023 Paid Members Share Posted January 21, 2023 I'm going to attempt to mention all the games I play for the first time at my weekly group from the start of this year in this thread. Kicking off with Obsession, which is a Downton Abbey/Jane Austen type theme where your family is trying to raise money by holding events, using the money to expand your facilities, and attracting more of the gentry into your social circle. The big challenge is balancing money and reputation (because rich Americans are so vulgar). It's a lot to get your head around at the start, but it scales up very smoothly as the game progresses and you start planning several turns ahead. Once you get the flow, you realise it's actually pretty tight because you only do the main turn sequence (pick an activity, pick the guests, assign servants, buy a facility) about 14 times. Not really got the hang of how to win yet as it's got a lot of different ways of scoring.Shear Panic is a surprisingly tactical light game from several years ago. It's all about manipulating a bunch of sheep (two per player plus a black sheep) using a fixed set of actions (eg push your sheep's row, jump over other sheep, turn everything 90 degrees), with a simple rule about the flock having to come back together after every move. You can only use each action a certain number of times and that's it for the game, so you have to pick your spots (and see what moves other people have left to use). It's kept interesting by the fact that how you score changes across four sections of the game (keep your sheep together/be closest to the front/get your sheep by the black sheep/be furthest from the front.) I don't think anyone would play it enough to develop a winning strategy but it's a good longish-filler.Roll Through The Ages is a roll-and-write version of the much longer board game. As you'd expect, it's a good mix of strategy and tactics and a case of making the most of the randomness. We had our first monthly all-day session specifically for long games and I got a chance to play the hot-game-of-right now, Ark Nova. In a sentence, it's a game so good that it taking five hours to play was not a chore at all, though the length does severely restrict its potential for repeat plays. The look and feel is pretty much a cross between Terraforming Mars and Wingspan. It's based on your building a zoo and trying to build up appeal (ie how cool the animals you have are), conservation points and reputation (which gets you access to better things.) One unusual point is that the appeal and conservation point trackers run in opposite directions and you play until somebody's scores "cross over", play one more turn and add bonus points, then the winner is based on the gap between the two. In other words, you can't just go for one type of point. The gameplay is very smooth and turns are quick (which makes the long play time bearable) with a lovely mechanism where you choose between five actions. Each are in a slot (1-5) and the power of the action depends on the slot. After you've played an action, it goes to slot 1 and everything else moves up. So you are trying to find the right mix of using a particular action right now or waiting until it's built up to something more powerful. It all winds up in this lovely flow where you are thinking about making the msot of the current move, planning the sequence of the next few moves, and thinking about the long-term strategy as well. It's also pitched just right to where you have to think carefully about your options, but there's never so much choice that you wind up overwhelmed and either taking too long or feeling rushed into picking a sub-optimal play. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Thunderplex Posted January 21, 2023 Author Paid Members Share Posted January 21, 2023 Love Ark Nova, but I always fall into the trap of seeing an animal I like, and just getting it no matter what my strategy was. “Oohhhh, a monkey, having that” Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Just Some Guy Posted January 22, 2023 Share Posted January 22, 2023 I'll echo the love for Ark Nova. We found at 3 players that play time decreased over multiple plays. Played it as a 4 player for the 1st time last week and back up to 4 hours again. Looking forward to adding the Aquarius expansion to the shelf this year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members JNLister Posted February 3, 2023 Paid Members Share Posted February 3, 2023 Couple of new (or rather first-time playing) ones this week:Darkrock Ventures is what a mechanics nerd would call a lightweight dice-driven worker placement and everyone else would call "Castles of Burgandy but simpler... and in space." Pretty universal reaction on the table was that it's a nice idea to try do a short-play Euro game, but it's neither one thing not the other, so it feels like you need to build up a strategy but then it ends before you can get anything going. There are quite a few official rule modifications/variants/extra components that might improve it but I wouldn't rush to replay. Parade is one of those very simple card games that has just enough depth and a twist it make it interesting. The actual rules would probably take longer to read than they do to teach. There's a fair bit of luck but it's short enough that you don't really mind if you have a bad game (he says, having won through pure skill and judgment of course.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Carbomb Posted February 3, 2023 Paid Members Share Posted February 3, 2023 On 1/1/2023 at 11:05 AM, Thunderplex said: I got Wingspan Asia too, along with Pandemic: Cthulhu and Destinies. I got this a few years ago, and it is good, but it's surprising just how little replay value it has, so I've been looking at a couple of fan-made scenarios for the original, to try to figure out how I might be able to adapt them for the Cthulhu variant. So far, the most appealing is the Government Lockdown one, but it doesn't map exactly on to Cthulhu, so got to figure out what adjustments to make. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Thunderplex Posted February 3, 2023 Author Paid Members Share Posted February 3, 2023 Not even opened the box yet unfortunately. Not stopped me buying other stuff though! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Carbomb Posted February 3, 2023 Paid Members Share Posted February 3, 2023 1 hour ago, Thunderplex said: Not even opened the box yet unfortunately. Not stopped me buying other stuff though! Don't let me put you off. It's still great for quite a few plays with different variations, and the artwork and feel of it is superb; you get a real feel for the horror of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Browser Brady Posted February 4, 2023 Share Posted February 4, 2023 My Mrs got us a board game called sequence, it’s essentially connect 4 just with playing cards but it’s brilliant . Very very easy to play and very fun… Anybody play it or have any suggestions for other games along that line ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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