Board Games

Kuriin_sl said:

Do you guys recommend buying Pandemic Legacy or the original? Never heard of it until reading in this thread and Amazon mentioned there was an original version.

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The original is a solid game that you can play again and again, the Legacy version only starts out like the original then tells a story from there. If you just wana good game in the library, pick up the original, if you have a group that would play through the story Legacy is a hell of an experience.

look at Temple of Elemental Evil. It scratched the HQ itch for me

Dungeons Dragons: Temple of Elemental Evil Board Game | Board Game | BoardGameGeek

Chanur_sl said:

Can anyone recommend a game similar to Hero Quest? Really loved that game as a kid and its no longer being made.

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Kingdom Death: Monster if price is no object fits the campaign motif with a Dark Souls/Civilization/Monster Hunter style vibe - but $300-400ish. (Very worth it though) [All of it is "4 vs. 1" boss battles however - but it's superbly done - expansions will add other variants to play however, but they're all on the horizon]

Descent 2E is probably the most mainstream kind - normal swords and sorcery, tons of expansions so will get pricy if you're getting everything though.

Imperial Assault is Descent 2E with a Star Wars change in scenery, heard very good things, not done it myself.

Shadows of Brimstone is a Cthulhu meets Wild West game in the tabletop RPG/campaign vein - very good as well.

KDM has replaced all of them to me, but I'll be the first to acknowledge it's a huge investment and it won't fit everyone. But all the rest are solid (well, quoting other reviews for IA - I've not played it myself)

Ratina_sl said:

look at Temple of Elemental Evil. It scratched the HQ itch for me

Dungeons Dragons: Temple of Elemental Evil Board Game | Board Game | BoardGameGeek

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There's no campaign element to it is there? HQ without a campaign element really isn't HQ to me.

Shadows of brimstone is probably the truest to HQ, lots of tables to roll on, a functional campaign, random loot. Its a fun game.

imperial assault is good as long as your DM isn't a jerk. hopefully its newest expansions fixed some of the weird stun mechanics. also a fun game.

KDM is a superior game on every front however just very very pricey.

Kuriin_sl said:

Do you guys recommend buying Pandemic Legacy or the original? Never heard of it until reading in this thread and Amazon mentioned there was an original version.

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you might as well buy legacy since you can play it like normal pandemic, albeit with a few drawbacks, without going into the legacy part. Of course you'll probably want to before too long

Vaclav_sl said:

There's no campaign element to it is there? HQ without a campaign element really isn't HQ to me.

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There is. I think. I played a few months ago with a friend but I don't remember much about it.

IA is solid as is Descent 2e which it's based off of.

Vaclav_sl said:

There's no campaign element to it is there? HQ without a campaign element really isn't HQ to me.

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There's 12-15 missions, and the treasure and encounter deck evolve as you do well or poorly. Its by no means best game ever, but my group had enough fun with it we are going to pick up the older D&D ones

Ratina_sl said:

There's 12-15 missions, and the treasure and encounter deck evolve as you do well or poorly. Its by no means best game ever, but my group had enough fun with it we are going to pick up the older D&D ones

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Ah neat, so Descentish then. Was not aware - makes them more appealing to me - not that I think any will replace KDM - it'll take forever for it to stale I think.

Chanur_sl said:

How is the Ravenloft one? That has always been my favorite setting for D&D.

Ill probably get it and ToEE next.

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ToEE is the newest one and it shows, we just picked up Ravenloft and it seems they were still refining the ideas. The decks don't change as far as I can tell and there's less character advancement then ToEE

meStevo_sl said:

Not many in my group like the Descent style games. We're really big into co-op stuff, and stuff like Descent would probably be more up our alley if the bad guys were deck-driven or something instead of player-controlled, if that makes any sense.

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Part of what I love about KDM so much - AI deck makes it complicated enough to not be completely predictable, versus simplistic control involved in most pure co-op.

meStevo_sl said:

Not many in my group like the Descent style games. We're really big into co-op stuff, and stuff like Descent would probably be more up our alley if the bad guys were deck-driven or something instead of player-controlled, if that makes any sense.

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If you are in to full co-op and want a game similar to Descent, Super Dungeon Explore can be played like Descent or 100% co-op.

There are a few expansions for descent that make it fully co-op -example. There is also a second campaign book -book.

Finally got around to playing a couple of the Kickstarters that came in.

10' To Kill- You're 1 of 16 hitmen on 16 tiles with 3 targets that you need to take out before the other players identify you. Using the rules of who you're allowed to kill and when, you start to piece together which character the other player is and have them arrested. I didn't like it as a 2 player game. My girlfriend made a lucky guess on her first turn and it made the rest of the game extremely boring for me as I could only move characters and guess hers to try to end the game. Even on our second game when it took us much longer to identify each other, it still seemed trivial to figure out since you know 4 characters your opponent isn't from the start (your character and your 3 targets)...then as soon as they kill someone you can normally get those 12 options down to 3-4 and just use your next couple turns asking if those characters are theirs. I think it would be better with 4 people since it's harder to keep track of everything.

Burgle Bros.- A cooperative heist game. I really liked this game, but my girlfriend got distracted which hurt the playthrough a bit. You and your team are trying to make your way through an office building trying to steal something from a safe on each floor before escaping off the roof with all of the loot while evading security traps and guards. I generally like cooperative games and this one was different enough from the Pandemic and Forbidden Island styles to make me feel like it's a good addition to my collection. The only thing I don't really like is the safe-opening mechanism. It's just rolling dice until you get the right numbers to open the safe. I guess I don't have a better way to do it, but it just felt tedious, but that may be because the safes were literally the last tiles we uncovered on each floor, so we were already a bit burned-out by that point.

Still haven't got around to Tesla vs Edison yet. Lost Woods should be coming soon with the monster I helped design, so I'm looking forward to that, as well. People are pretty busy with the holidays, but I'm planning on opening up with one of these games, then playing 2-3 games of Pandemic Legacy each week until we wrap that up.

Sale ends today. Just saw it.

PSA: Amazon one-day sale cuts highly rated board game prices in half | Ars Technica