I recently played Archipelago for the first time and the physical object is just so, so pretty. It feels like the setup is quite complex—perhaps too complex to be worth it—but I’m in love with the pieces and the way it tries to integrate a standard eurogame theme into its mechanics in a way that’s actually relevant.
I didn’t like the 7 Wonders: Leaders expansion; one leader in particular seemed to have a very unbalancing effect, not so much on the owning player as their neighbours thanks to the effect on resource distribution.
Ah, I’d like to hijack the sub-thread to recommend Elder sign: the usual Cthulhu setting, the usual occult detectives, but a very interesting cooperative structure. Each player at every turn has an array of adventures to face, each adventure gaining him/her some resources, with the goal to accumulate enough Elder signs before the chosen Ancient One awakes. It feels more like an RPG than a board game, and with my most nerdy friends we’ve had tons of fun. It tends to be a little bit on the easy side, if you have a munchkin friend (like I do), but with more than two player the coordination tends to become more difficult. And is one of the very few board games which is still satisfyng to play alone. Wil Wheaton has a review of the game in his Youtube channel, which I cannot link because I’m behind my company firewall.
Ah, that reminds me of the other game I hated lately: Mansions of Madness.
I’ve long felt that these RPG-like games miss the point: if you’re going to give one player the DM role, you might as well give them the freedom to make stuff up on the fly. Don’t Rest Your Head is the best horror game I’ve played (and run), because it gives you just enough mechanics to enforce the narrative structure and then gets out of your way, letting the DM do what needs to be done and react very quickly on the fly because there’s just not that much system. This game felt like too much bookkeeping, not enough flexibility, and an experience of playing it through to the bitter end when the outcome became obvious to all of us because of the sheer mechanics of it all.
Board Games:
I recently played Archipelago for the first time and the physical object is just so, so pretty. It feels like the setup is quite complex—perhaps too complex to be worth it—but I’m in love with the pieces and the way it tries to integrate a standard eurogame theme into its mechanics in a way that’s actually relevant.
I didn’t like the 7 Wonders: Leaders expansion; one leader in particular seemed to have a very unbalancing effect, not so much on the owning player as their neighbours thanks to the effect on resource distribution.
Ah, I’d like to hijack the sub-thread to recommend Elder sign: the usual Cthulhu setting, the usual occult detectives, but a very interesting cooperative structure. Each player at every turn has an array of adventures to face, each adventure gaining him/her some resources, with the goal to accumulate enough Elder signs before the chosen Ancient One awakes.
It feels more like an RPG than a board game, and with my most nerdy friends we’ve had tons of fun. It tends to be a little bit on the easy side, if you have a munchkin friend (like I do), but with more than two player the coordination tends to become more difficult. And is one of the very few board games which is still satisfyng to play alone.
Wil Wheaton has a review of the game in his Youtube channel, which I cannot link because I’m behind my company firewall.
Ah, that reminds me of the other game I hated lately: Mansions of Madness.
I’ve long felt that these RPG-like games miss the point: if you’re going to give one player the DM role, you might as well give them the freedom to make stuff up on the fly. Don’t Rest Your Head is the best horror game I’ve played (and run), because it gives you just enough mechanics to enforce the narrative structure and then gets out of your way, letting the DM do what needs to be done and react very quickly on the fly because there’s just not that much system. This game felt like too much bookkeeping, not enough flexibility, and an experience of playing it through to the bitter end when the outcome became obvious to all of us because of the sheer mechanics of it all.