I posted a couple of weeks ago about receiving GPS, Mountain Goats, and Sequoia but not getting the addon, Bites. Bites has now arrived! I’m pretty excited as I think it may fit a “weeknight game” category that has been difficult to stir excitement for with my partner. The box is a bit larger than I expected, but it is decidedly hefty, though I’m sure a good amount of that heft will go in the recycling bin along with the punchboards.
EDIT: it appears there was an accident during shipping and one minor injury was incurred. Nothing a little wood glue can’t fix, assuming I can figure out how to clamp it.
Well, I know I just bought a new game because GMT charged me for one today, but I have numerous outstanding P500 orders, so I’m deliberately NOT checking to see what it is. I want it to be a surprise.
Reading the rules… the iconography in this game is really bad. The player aids just have symbols with no writing at all. Instead of a glossary explaining the symbols, the rulebook shows the player aid diagrams with written descriptions beside each picture!!! Why didn’t they just include text in the player aid then?!?!
Even worse, they use the same icon for ‘take a tile’ and ‘take whatever the building tells you: resource/tile/VP’ (with the examplar being blue building so take a tile). So the iconography doesn’t even work without writing!
I think I’m going to have to tell people to ignore the player aid.
Also read on BGG that it’s easier to explain the game with expansion instead of urbanisation, building rather than add a floor, and workers rather than resources. Sounds like sage advice! It does seem like quite a lazy translation that makes everything slightly more obtuse than it needs to be, for an already quite obtuse ruleset.
Definitely, but they could’ve worked on producing a simple universal set of icons that mean the same thing in every instance. From the pictures alone it’s quite difficult to tell when the card colour matters and when it doesn’t, and when the reward for the action is set or an option of various things.
None of the actions are particularly complex, but the pictures barely help at all.
And it’s here. Just so you all know: it’s soooo pretty and I am withholding pictures until I can get a decent one of the little ship meeples. The box is just that somewhat flatter size so many of you profess to like about Brass B or A War of Whispers… and it has purple, pink, turquoise and gray(?) as player colors. The board has rounded corners and… I just stood it atop my big Spirit Island box so I can see the vulcano on the cover. So shiny!
I’ll let you know if the game is as good as it is pretty once I’ve played–but pretty is a good start. Just saying.
Newly arrived this cold, snowy, winter day: Age of Steammaps! Replacement Rust Belt, Germany, Southern US & Western US maps, along with the “buy these to get the replacements sent for free” maps: Detroit Bankruptcy and Heavy Cardboard – two highly rated if not gimmicky AoS maps.
pillbox’s 2021 Purchase Tracker as of 2021-01-15: 0
Just a card from a CCG. As discussed earlier, CCG players are insane. By total fluke I got 2 copies of a quite rare Flesh & Blood card in blind packs, so sold one. I’d quite happily sell the other one too, but at the prices it is I don’t think there’s many collector’s of that level.
I feel like, as a boardgamer, my priorities are completely different from a CCG player! It makes me feel a bit weird to be honest, but it’s just a different mindset.
I just bought the game because the mechanics sound fun, and now it already feels icky with how much money is involved. Give me my LCGs back
(That aside, Flesh & Blood has some quite interesting mechanics and the free mod on TTS is really well done. Definitely worth checking out for a different take on a duelling card game.)
Massive game bonanza on Mighty Ape (NZ Amazon-like website) and with a 40% discount, I could not stop myself from buying Empires of the Void II
Cannot wait to get it on Monday, it was on my Xmas wish list and I was hoping to get it, so I didn’t and this is a great opportunity to make up for it. I definitely needed a space opera in my collection, and this seems like a sensible one.
We have this and have played a couple of times. Really enjoyed it and would be delighted to play again, though fiddly to set up. I think I’d recommend what we didn’t do, and play a few games in relatively short succession so you get the rules fixed in your head. They are not difficult in action but the rule book feels to me at least quite complicated to parse and requires less than clear look-ups.
It’s well worth a TTS shot. I think it’s interesting how each hero is very much tied to a single style of play, with the deck building very much in the nuance of how that style works out. I’m still not sure whether the card pool will allow divergent play of the same hero, or whether that’s even necessary with such a tight game. But the game flow is totally unlike anything I’ve played before, and getting the deck to work as a fluid engine is a nice little brain burner.
The precon starter decks do seem to lack the teeth for getting that last little bit of juice from your hero (at least, as a beginner), but the TTS mod allows importing of any deck listed on FAB.net. Playing badly makes the game last a lot longer as the whole thing grinds to a halt. Can see the time shooting down with a couple of plays.
Thanks for the heads up, but unfortunately I don’t have anything that can run TTS (I use my phone for everything).
As an aside, this week’s episode of The Covenant Cast (Team Covenant) discussed collectability and F&B was a big part of it (as were Pokemon and MtG). If you have time, it’s an interesting listen.
Yeah, I find their analysis interesting. They’re clearly very much of the CCG mentality of ‘why would I ever sell when I’m playing?’, which ignores my own demographic of ‘prioritising game over value, but I have my limits’. If one card is worth the same as a massive Kickstarter, of course I’ll sell that card. Owning it means nothing to me (which is the opposite of their position of owning a card exceeding any monetary value). They have spoken a bit about the ‘needing to sell to justify the massive cost of the game’ group in the past, but only in a very positive light.
In the community there is far more friction between gamers and sellers than Covenant acknowledge in their laid back let bygones be bygones frame of mind. I’ve seen a far few disparaging comments about those who wish to sell, particularly when someone naively asks what a card is worth (which seems to be very much a faux pas!). I can understand the annoyance of community forums filling up with people wanting to make bank rather than talking about the game itself, but with so few formal games at the moment it’s difficult for a balance to be reached.
So ‘collectivity’ may be good for the life span of the game, but it does create a lot of issues too. I’ve always loved LCGs because there is no money connection there, and I don’t really care about them dying after 4 or 5 seasons since that’s all my mental capacity can hold anyway.
As a boardgamer, I’d much rather have a self contained game that has everything I need than a sprawling, meta encompassing behemoth that contains cards that have superseded other cards, power creep in later cards, and the like. I feel like LCG + big faction expansions + 2 or 3 seasons of blister packs is all I ever need!
With FaB, I can see myself checking out after Monarch or the following mini-Box. Having all the characters is all I need for a game. I can sell to break even so it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. Maybe I’ll play a few blind pack games at my FLGS, but other than that I’m happy.
I do agree with them that it’s silly how things specifically designed not to be collectible, like free intro tester decks and starter decks, have suddenly become collectible. The market is absolutely crazy. It needs to settle down or the game might die.
and I am withholding pictures until I can get a decent one of the little ship meeples. The box is just that somewhat flatter size so many of you profess to like about Brass B or A War of Whispers… and it has purple, pink, turquoise and gray(?) as player colors. The board has rounded corners and… I just stood it atop my big Spirit Island box so I can see the vulcano on the cover. So shiny!
