Yes, it was pretty good.
I’ve played with 6, all new. 2 hours, but with a rules mistake that added at least 15 minutes.
It got a little bit, slap the leader at the end, but it didn’t drag.
The map and components remind me of Concordia, but it’s more Dudes on a Map than that. The ending is making me think of Inis
Okay, I’ve never played any of the Graphill games, so tell me about all of the:
West Kingdom
North Sea
South Tigris
games. Paladins seems very popular, and Wayfarers / Scholars?
I think Architects of the West Kingdom is a pretty clever worker placement game.
I played Paladins once solo and was pretty flat on it. Probably better as a multiplayer game; maybe I expected too much because the solo community on BGG seems to generally prefer Paladins as the top solo in the West Kingdom series.
I rather liked Viscounts when I played it solo. A nice deck-builder-with-board game. I wished the cards churned on their own a bit better, but it was fun.
I’ve been interested to learn more about the South series, but haven’t learned enough to buy any of the products. They all sound great though.
North Sea:
Shipwrights - never played the original. Had the Redux version, it was ok but nothing special. Sold it on.
Explorers - I could imagine people liking this if they had a history with it and fond memories. Can’t see it grabbing anyone else. It’s nice enough but the word ‘meh’ could have been designed for it.
Raiders - good game. Probably even better with at least one expansion? The only one of the North Sea trilogy I’ve kept.
West Kingdom:
Architects - I like this a lot, some fun angles on worker placement and it all works together to make a good game.
Paladins - some people love this. I don’t; I found it dull, and the most spreadsheet-like of all Garphill’s games. The only West Kingdom game I didn’t keep.
Viscounts - I really enjoy this game, it feels like a classic board game but a modern-ish version. And there’s a castle.
South Tigris:
I haven’t had these very long and have only played them solo as yet. I think they’re great, and can’t imagine getting rid of any of them. They’re quite dense and complicated, certainly more than the previous trilogies, so they require a bit of effort to learn, but once you do they go like a dream. Possibly the best-designed games I’ve played, and I think they’re good and thematic too. I can see why some people might not like them - they’re not exciting, as such. For me they’re a bit like a more complex Concordia - a superb machine that’s just a pleasure to operate.
Oh - I like the Mico’s art a lot. Some people don’t.
definitely not the one to get started with. it is really on the heavy side.
Architects is good fun and imo the best of WK. I am considering selling the other two. Viscounts is fine but won’t see the table anytime soon in my large collection . Paladins has been replaced by Legacy of Yu for me.
Legacy of Yu is great.
I enjoy Hadrian’s Wall too, but only solo.
It’s WAY too expensive for me and you can’t even get it easily in the UK right now, but has anyone played Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era?
Youtube is showing me people who love it, and I am a big ES fan.
(Or even opinions about Too Many Bones, since it’s similar and also seemed to be REALLY popular a couple of years ago)
I have a single Chip Theory game and it has served as an example to myself that I am not going to be interested in others. I think they are overproduced for what they actually do and I love high production values. Hoplomachus Victorum is a dice-based skirmish game and I hate the dice. I mean they are nice dice but the distribution of results obtained from them sucks the fun right out of the game. Also I may not be the right person to own any skirmish games… I mean it’s not on my sell pile but also not on my “play anytime soon” pile.
So my take is this: these games look very shiny and have incredibly nice production but in the end I am still playing the underlying game … and that just doesn’t hold up to the production (IMO). I have too many games that are better games, to spend my time playing something because it feels so nice to handle the poker chips.
I have not played TMB or even looked more than in passing at SPIEL in the direction of Elderscrolls
But there are a lot of fans of their games–they appear to be very successful.
(Also I realized that I have another game of theirs on preorder… the solo game 20 Strong–I expect I’ll hate the dice)
I played Too Many Bones a couple of times and was utterly whelmed.
Not overwhelmed, not underwhelmed, just whelmed. It was aggressively fine.
But at that cost? My gods. A great $50 game, an okay $90 game, but $150CAD+? F’getaboutit.
I also am always cautious when people love really expensive games of any stripe (Kingdom Death Monster is awful. 7th Continent is one of the worst designed pieces of garbage I have ever played, where the game actively discourages you having fun. Dark Souls is a random mess, Oathsworn is badly written and bloated…). They aren’t ALWAYS bad (Gloomhaven is good, Descent is fantastic), but because the cost is so high we all tend to value it higher because we spent so much on it.
But I haven’t played Elder Scrolls, except in video game format. If I was a gambler? I would bet the board game is bad.
I wouldn’t put it quite like that but almost… we tried a few times and it got old so very fast.
But because my partner bought it it takes up two heavy boxes of space amount of space on my shelves and I can’t get rid of it.
“REALLY popular a couple of years ago” … and crickets ever since. That’s a good indicator you can pass, usually!
I’ll go one step further than that. I found Too Many Bones to be a poor game.
The game engine doesn’t care at all what happens to you, which is fine enough; but failure is hugely punished as you are force-advanced along the proverbial rails. The “fun” thing and the “right” thing are rarely the same thing.
And the whole thing is hugely over-produced. Like @Marx said, it’s a $50 game with a $120+ pricetag because they decided that the company’s whole schtick is “we only make deluxe games”.
Imagine wanting to check out a new movie that came out, but being forced to buy a collector edition box set with 18 hours of director commentary and a photo book presentation of the storyboards.
I’ve avoided all CTG games since trying TMB. I really hope that ES:Bot2E becomes a standout hit beyond what TMB can offer, but I’m not holding my breath.
I think there may be a lesson for me here: only deluxify games that have proven themselves to me not to anyone else. To me. Don’t pay deluxe price up front. If I like a game as much as Spirit Island I have no problem at all buying a second copy and splurging for all the extras.
I’ve played TMB once with @EnterTheWyvern and @lalunaverde .My thought at the time was: quite fun, but felt very mechanistic. Of course many board games are, you negotiate the state machine of manoeuvres and upgrades and things, but there wasn’t much more. If the rules say “this troll has HARDY + BLEED + COMPOUND”, fine, I know what a troll is and I can hang what the keywords mean on that. If it’s just a made-up name, there’s no sense of a reality behind it.
More on my blog at RogerBW's Blog: Someone Else's Garden Games (July) .
Yeah. I was pretty brief on it, but going back to what I said, “the game doesn’t care what happens to you” works in a number of ways.
The Game: Okay, you have an encounter. There are… uh, 4 opponents
Players: Oooh, okay. We’ve stumbled onto a gang of…
The Game: Yeah, it’s just 2 orcs, a dragon, and a harmless pixie
Players: Wait, what? Why is there a dragon here? We can’t kill that!
The Game: Probably not. Yeah, that really sucks for you. But the pixie should be easy; it probably all averages out in the end. <yawn>
The Players: <too busy being eaten by a dragon>
Interesting! Thanks all. Yes, that’s what I’d heard about Chip Theory in general, but there is a lot of buzz around Elder Scrolls being “This one is actually good!”
The money makes it an instant “no” unless I can get it half price so I can wait and see if the buzz lasts.
I’m more positive than most around here about the game Too Many Bones. I won’t disagree that production choices make it more expensive than the game play feels like it should be. I also won’t disagree about how mechanical it can feel. However there is a bit of magic in the narrative elements and how the game has an arc just held together well enough by the sparse writing. It’s maybe more constructed looking back than a narrative you feel a part of as it flows along.
Also the game can be uncaring, you do just get beaten up sometimes, lose before you have a turn even. You will get a chance to try again but even if you succeed second time you’ll probably not win the campaign. I think though that sort of suits the creatures involved and I’m not above creating a tale of woe and failure. The early characters are really interesting, all play differently and feel varied. A side effect of the scenarios being all over the shop is the puzzle can stay fresh especially with different blends of characters.
I really enjoyed it and had no regrets on all the many times I played. I did play it a lot so moved it on when I had stopped feeling fresh with it. I got to a point where I was parsing scenarios quickly and for me that kills a game. I played tons to get there so I’d still put it in my top games of all time in terms of hours played and length of peak enthusiasm.