I had actually gotten about 6 missions into Galaxy Defenders solo before I decided I liked it enough for the hard-to-obtain core expansions to be an issue. It would have driven me nuts knowing I’d never get to see the primary campaign through to the finale. Or probably more honestly, cared enough for that to matter but not enough to shell out for it.
S&S has the bonus of being easily acquired if I want to see the different acts through, and the plan is absolutely to tackle it solo. Still, if my partner wants to pop in and lob a few spells, the more the merrier! Enemy management is definitely trickier solo.
Finally finished the Mansions of Madness 2E run we left hanging when we finally got a quorum for King’s Dilemma. The sailor, author, and reformed cultist had to break out of a Silver Twilight dungeon. Once we regathered our bearings we did okay, but unfortunately, as the Reformed Cultist I took a little bit too much Horror and went Insane, a little before what seemed like the tail end of the scenario. Turned out, my insanity was that I hadn’t reformed so much and needed to sacrifice a fellow PC to Shub-Niggurath. If I did, I immediately won, otherwise I wouldn’t win. Well, it required me to be in possession of a bladed weapon (I had obtained a Ritual Dagger, quite appropriate) and alone with just one other investigator at the start of my turn. Problem being, I had long had Kleptomania, so there was no good excuse to end my turn in another player’s space or I’d steal from them. So I let the sailor move into our new hallway and my space as the first move of a turn, then Explore a nearby room. It didn’t seem relevant to escaping, and seemed oriented at a Lore character (his Lore? 2. Mine, 5.), so when I failed to convince him not to move in on pure “why bother” territory, I did succeed at telling him I’d investigate instead. And…started the turn with just him and my dagger. slash
I’m not into traitor games, but I’m still pretty proud of that. (It helps that MoM is like…96% coop. You might not go insane at all. If you do, that card is one of 18, and while I think there might be one or two other similar ones, most are like “you are now mute” or whatnot.)
Playing a lot of ‘Quest for El Dorado’ lately, it’s such a perfect family game. Last night was a ‘Grudge Match / Re-match’ after a really close finish the previous night
Also had a game of Automobiles with my kid as well, that’s a game I need to play more often and I should bring the racing season expansion elements in to it.
Yeah, I’ve played it there quite a bit too, it’s a really nice implementation. I’m pretty mediocre at the game but still enjoy it a lot, which is always a good sign.
We’ve just finished our The King’s Dilemma campaign. Blasted through the whole thing since lockdown started.
Is this a tight experience? No
Is it incredibly group dependent? Yes
Is it the best game I’ve ever played? No
Is the role playing consistent throughout the game with character development? No
Was it easy to ‘game’ it? Yes
Was it a unique (in my game experience) game? Yes
Did we cause some terrible, terrible things to happen? Yes
Was the ending worth it? Oh yes
Was it brilliant fun? Yes
Have we stuck the game board to the wall as a reminder? Yes, yes we have!
First legacy/ campaign game we’ve finished. Massively helped by lockdown, but my eldest was asking to play this every day. I’d say it’s less of a game and more of an experience but it was really good. If you’ve got a group who’ll stick with it and really push the story, plotting and back stabbing to the limit then I’d highly recommend it.
I’ve played quite a few games of March of the Ants now, and I’ve got some thoughts! Disclaimer, I’ve only played solo and two-handed competitive games, none with another player, but with that out of the way, here are my (quite lengthy) opinions:
I find the components very charming, but a less charmed person might describe them as “not very good.” The player boards, score track, and player aids are all cardstock, and the cards themselves are quite thin and flimsy. The food tokens are also very dull beige discs, which is weird when they could have looked better (and maybe been cheaper) if they were just cardboard tokens. The hexes that form the map are very sturdy, though, I really enjoy the art, and the cards shuffle quite nicely.
One component I think is top-notch is the box. It’s not an exceptionally great box or anything, but it is the perfect size. It’s a little smaller than a sheet of paper, and about as tall as the short end of a playing card, which means it’s nice and compact. It holds all the pieces comfortably without too much space, but with enough space for the expansions (I think, at least). It also gives an honest impression of the weight of the game, which is always nice. It is probably my favorite board game box of all time–I know that’s a weird thing to say, but I just like it that much.
The gameplay is really interesting. On your turn you can Explore (reveal a new hex and move into it), March (turn larvae into ants and move ants), Forage (draw cards), play a card, or Rest (basically just pass). It’s all fairly standard stuff, but the cool thing is that every time a player takes an action, every other player gets a Reaction, which is sort of a worse version of the action. It makes the game very interactive, and means there isn’t any downtime because you always get to do a little something. I also love the cardplay; there are your basic events and scoring cards, but most of the cards are Evolutions, either Head, Thorax, or Abdomen. The amount of each Evolution you have boosts a part of the game for you (Heads boost your army strength, Thorax boosts your movement, Abdomen boosts your ability to feed), and the topmost of each gives you an ability that slightly bends the game. It makes every game feel different as you build your ants according to your strategy and the cards in your hand.
The combat is also noteworthy. Each hex has a number of spaces that provide resources at the end of the round, and you move your ants into these spaces when you move into a hex. If a hex ever has more ants than available spaces, there is a fight after all players have taken actions. To fight, each player adds the number of ants to the number of Head evolutions they have, then can optionally discard a card from hand to boost their attack value (think Unmatched). The loser loses ants equal to the winner’s army strength, but the winner still loses ants equal to half the loser’s strength. It makes each fight really tense, brutal, and important, without adding any randomness or die rolls.
Scoring is fairly simple, but still robust–you get points for winning fights, for controlling hexes adjacent to the central hex, and for various card effects you can play during the round. It means players can have different focuses during a game and still be successful, which I like a lot.
The Resting mechanic is a little weird, but I do like it. In a two-player game, when one player rests, the other player gets another action, and then the round is over and you move to the fight phase. It results in some weird situations where one player could build up resources to have an incredibly huge final round, and then the second player just rests and invalidates that plan entirely. Once you know about it, though, you just have to make sure to focus on the short-term. Building for the future is important, but you can’t bank too many resources because the tempo of the game is controlled by other players.
Speaking of tempo, the game is blisteringly fast. There are four rounds in the game, and each round you may only have a few actions, so a two-player game can be finished in less than an hour. Like a lot of the mechanics, this means my first game was hilariously bad; I set up some resources, built up an economy, and then the game ended and I was left with nothing but plans and regrets. It just reinforces the tactical nature of the game; your plans need to be quick and flexible, and you need to work on them immediately. It also means the game fits a 4X experience into a manageable amount of time, which is exactly what I was hoping for.
By this point, if you’re still reading, you might be wondering why I’ve only mentioned the two-player game, when I said I’ve also played some solo games. Here is where I have to strap on my negativity helmet and plunge into the depths of Criticism Cave, because I found the solo game removed almost every interesting mechanic from the game. In the solo/co-op mode, you’re up against centipedes; a source of irritation/points and food in the competitive game, the co-op game sees them much more aggressive, swarming the Hive and advancing ruthlessly towards the center of the map. The problem is, because they’re so relentless, there’s no point in taking most of the actions any more. You can’t explore more than once or twice in the whole game or else your ants will just get annihilated; you don’t want to draw cards very often because that’s just another turn for the centipedes; playing any card that isn’t a Head evolution is almost always a bad idea, because the centipedes hit hard and you need those resources. I’ve played maybe half a dozen times, and the optimal way to play is to just explore for your first action, then fortify the two hexes you control and fight centipedes over and over until you’ve won. The Reaction mechanic is also completely absent, which is a shame. It takes a game all about freedom, exploration, and tense decisions, and turns it into a kind of rote and predictable tower defense-style game. It’s still fun, but it gets stale very quickly, and I’d honestly rather just play two players against each other.
The possible saving grace/additional problem is the expansion, which I don’t own. By all accounts, the solo mode in the expansion fixes all the issues I have, as it gives you a reason to explore and develop an economy. It’s also a modular expansion, which I find I like a lot more than a traditional expansion, as it adds a lot more variety than just “use the expansion or don’t”. I never like the idea of throwing money into a game I don’t love, but I do love this game–I just wish I could love it as a solo game.
So, there you have it! A fascinating game with simple complexities and interesting decisions that fits a perfect niche in my board game collection, but one that really faltered in its solo mode. I’m very hopeful about the expansion, but I’ll probably hold off on buying it for now.
Some solo gaming this week with Nusfjord which I found obscured the mechanics a bit too much behind a complicated fishing process. I found it very difficult to figure out how much fish were worth. Like, building boats is useful because they give victory points but they also give you more fish, which is good but too much of a focus on fish means you end up with too many fish to be useful? And the elders use fish and take actions that are slightly better than some of the normal actions but have a mechanic to give you back some fish so they don’t use too many fish? I’ll have another go but I didn’t really understand what tactics I should have been considering.
More successful was Onirim, which is simple enough that it was much easier to understand. Play cards, draw cards, decide whether to hold onto key cards or use them to increase your chances of success for more risk. After 2 plays I lost once and won once. Looking forward to adding in some expansions as well.
I failed to get people to play Terra Mystica on BGA yesterday. I’d managed to convince 2 out of 3, but the third disagreed with my assertion that the rules of Terra Mystica were easier than rules of Gloomhaven. We ended up playing Codenames online instead, which was still fun. In the final round we managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat with a 5-card clue, which is probably the best I’m ever going to do in that game!
So, what say you? Is Terra Mystica more complicated than Gloomhaven? Am I just biased because I’m always the one who has to look up the answers to rules queries when we play Gloomhaven?
Gloomhaven is far more complicated than Terra Mystica. That said, you can’t win Terra Mystica unless you understand it well, while you can just play Gloomhaven casually as long as one person knows what going on.
I got a bit swamped like this at first. Firstly, your strategy from round one should be largely dictated by the A and B cards you can see. Can you combine any to get lots of a type of resource?
I always find a way to use up the fish. Remember that every time you use an elder, you take a fish from a served plate, and so you need to refill those plates at sometime. Even filling just the first 3 plates costs 6 fish. Serving loads of fish is also good as you get gold for every plate served, and every gold is a VP at the end. If there aren’t buildings which cost a lot of fish, there’s usually a building which lets you buy other resources with fish.
The only time then you look to alter your strategy is rounds 4 and 6 from memory, when the C cards come into play, and usually reward a lot of resources with a lot of VPs.
Out of interest, what score did you end up with? I found it hard to break 30 using the single fish deck, I had far more success and options when I used the two-fish deck.
I misunderstood a couple of things which meant that I ended up ignoring my score at the end and treating it as a practice. Next time I’ll see how well I can manage, but I can see how 30 would be tricky. I’m interested to see the differences between the decks as well
My first play through I wasn’t taking a fish from the leftmost plate each time I used an elder, and making sure I put it on that elder (the third on one gives you a fish back), so I had loads of elder actions and too much fish, as I was never filling plates. If the plates are empty and you want to fill them, that’s 22 fish right away.
Anything else you’re unsure of, I’m pretty on top of the solo mode now, so just ask
OK, I can answer some of these questions. Terra Mystica on BGA is a “premium” game: that means that the person who sets up the game (defines number of players, invites people, etc.) must be a paying member. Other players need not be paying members.
If you play from the same IPv4 address as another member, there’ll be a flag on their entries in the lobby saying something like “X plays from the same address as Y, see our policy”. Basically this is “please don’t collude out-of-band” – they don’t want two people sitting next to each other making private deals that the rest of the game doesn’t know about. (Also they don’t want you playing against your own sockpuppet to boost your game score.) But I know a couple who regularly play this way and they say they haven’t had any warnings or other problems, just that flag.
Sorry, I didn’t express that well. That’s what BGA is worried about, and it’s why they put the flag on – they specifically don’t have a policy saying “you may not play from the same address as another player”.
I think that if neither if you is a paying member, and you try to play a game without a paying member in it, you will find that one of you is unable to join.
