I looked at inis when it launched but didn’t back for exactly this reason. Seemed pretty harsh at the time to lock out 1st / 2nd edition owners. Glad to hear they sorted it.
Well looks like I’ve backed another kickstarter then.
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Nemed is separate now? Thanks for the heads up and…
Why is the carriage nearly as much as the game - I just don’t play enough Inis to justify it 
Will probably do FlashPoint this weekend though…
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I was on basically the same idea around Agricola SE. It’s a classic, I’ve never played it and it seems like a decent entry point (more so than the 15 anniversary edition).
I think I’m going to hold on because i think that initial drafting/seven buildings in hand feels like an overwhelming first bit of a game and I wanted to dip my toe back into something a bit lighter before I went all in.
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i have played it before. but it’s been a while. also I’ve played a decent number of other Rosenberg games now so I feel it’s the right time to try and figure out this one.
Most appalling feature: Turczi solo. I like his solos. But Uwe has good Beat your own score solo options in all his games.
Also I really want the Bielefeld deck🫠
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I’ve found Turczi solo to be “hard to learn, easy to play.” There’s generally a manual and a flowchart but once you get into the feel (and logic) of it it does become breezy. So not my favorite but acceptable in the end.
The solo mode actually may push me in - I do get to play Agricola pretty regularly but the chance to get Farmers of the Moor (and the new expansion) on the table against a simulated opponent really increases the value. Those are harder to get played.
I’m going to wait until the very end, though. Who knows how I’ll feel later. Sometimes these feelings pass in a hard way - that said, I’ve been leaning pro pretty much the whole way (despite vocally complaining about the art, the card design, and the lack of EIK on the message boards. I’m advocating for a QR code that lets you hand-create E, I, and K out of the ABCDE cards that imitate them, along with a smaller deck of the net new cards. And put the banned cards into the L/promo deck.)
(And if they are worried about card duplication, there’s already card duplication between G and ABCD. Most of the decks are made to mix with EIK, and if you mix them with ABCDE you’re going to get duplicates…)
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With only 8 days left in the campaign (i.e. almost 3 weeks since launch), the Phantom Division gameplay video is up. I’d checked in tonight, imagining they would have posted it a week or more ago, but it was today:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/phantomhorizon/phantom-division/posts/4412035
To their credit the video seems pretty comprehensive, and includes the full mission set-up process (if not the post-game tear-down). The video is in three parts, at timestamps:
- 00:00 – set-up and related explanations
- 14:45 – game overview
- 19:00 – play through
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I see that Agricola Extravagant Edition[1] is a smashing success. I really don’t see this stopping, imo. Lacerda’s deluxified games produced by Eagle-Gyphon sells well (as well as pseudo-Lacerdas like Galactic Cruise). And Awakened Realms shows that it doesn’t have to be a Troops on a Map with hundreds of minis for it to sell with that price tag. And by deluxifing old classic games, they can be sure that these games have a long-time fan following that would buy these and newbies will buy them because they know it’s a classic (as oppose to these supposed “modern classics” that were only released last year.)
[1]Now to be fair, I feel like the content that you get is actually pretty good from the price that they are asking.
I don’t know what’s next. Twilight Struggle is having a “special edition” already. Tigris and Euphrates? Caylus? Power Grid?
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Power grid fits the mould a bit better I think. Perhaps Ticket To Ride? Both of those are harder because all the expansions are maps but they fit the mould of games that have basically still been in print since their first publication. Catan probably fits too.
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I’d be shocked if we don’t see some very expensive editions of Ticket to Ride and Catan appear within the next few years!
They seem like good candidates for people who want to get a big deluxe box.
I think I might be fairly opposed to these big reprints, at least when the original is still available. The Agricola one rubs me the wrong way (maybe just the art but also it just looks too big and expensive) but the Food Chain Magnate one seemed silly enough that it convinced me to buy a copy of the original instead. Same content at half the price with (in my opinion) less garish production!
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If I were the sort of person who played one game a lot I might be interested in a super-pretty edition. (Many years ago I saw a version of Catan in a wooden box, hand-painted tiles, etc.) But I don’t; I play lots of different games a little bit each.
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The mini-less edition is pretty good. It’s base + expansion + QoL things that you’d buy from the BGG store or etsy (I have both of these accessories from BGG). The minis are the ones that inflate the price for no benefit
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Having the Special Editions next to the in print normal editions does have the plus that there’s a hype around a great game but people can choose the normal version at a normal price.
(Although I must say I think they’ve been quite reasonable with all the tiers and available versions - you can get basically more game for a price cheaper than the 15 anniversary edition)
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I received news that Old King’s Crown is near fulfilment. This is one of my blind buys that I backed because the aesthetics really works with me and Cole Werhle babble about it.
The last time I did a blind back was Guards of Atlantis. Keen to see if this is another GOA2 or (gestures at so many shitty kickstarters I’ve backed)
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It’s just had it’s deluxe release! The USA game now comes with full sized cards.
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Catan did this with the big 3d version. The price point was crazy when it launched, £300 I think. Don’t think the model worked as the price has dropped massively.
I think there is a balance in terms of classic games with enough sustained interest from the community that would spend this sort of money on a game.
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The rub with Catan was it front loaded the wrong kind of premium (imo). The kind of premium that works (in boardgames but also other things - dvds, Netflix) is a product that gives you “full content”. The Agricola one is a product met with success I think majorly because it has “everything” (sorry acacia) and the aesthetic is neither here nor there to some extent.
With Catan they released premium original Catan and then a compatible expansion for the same price. Just completely counter to what people always ask for in big box and premium editions. There might be a few who just want super nice Original Game but I think it’s really small minority.
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I think that they were still using the “few games played a lot” mindset. Everyone plays Monopoly, therefore there’s a market for an expensive Monopoly set with high quality components. And so ditto Catan? (I don’t know how significant the expansions were to Normal People as opposed to hobbyist gamers.)
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If anyone is a Paperback Adventures fan - the Big Box expansion launches tomorrow (today? Time is weird), and you get a freebie if you follow before it opens.
https://gamefound.com/en/projects/tim-fowers/paperback-adventures-volume-2
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I did finally go in on Agricola. Did I mention that?
It was the solo that did it for me. A true solo means I can get a lot more time with Farmers of the Moor and this new Irrigation thing.
Co-op is also interesting (and I wonder how it crosses over with Dead Harvest).
All this back and forth on the cards led me to feed a card database into an LLM to find out which cards really were pulled into Revised and which were not. It’s an interesting exercise and another look under the hood at what LLMs can and can’t do. But I was interested to see that some cards appear in E, I, and K with zero adjustments! Which must be about keeping core functionality. And then a slightly different card might appear in G and another in Wm.
You also have some cards that have like 10 different variants but no exact duplicates across both old and revised cards - obviously good ideas that needed to be rebalanced or expanded on.
The whole process has gotten me more comfortable with moving to ABCDE.
I’m still very salt about the overall art style. Agricola is not idyllic in the way that worked for Burgundy Deluxe and La Granja Deluxe. I’d like a lot more mud and burlap in my subsistence farming.
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