Transformers Deck Building Game!
I don’t know why deck building games generally take me forever to figure out, especially ones like this. Every card has like three stats or actions that can happen — slowly everything comes together and the game is really fun solo. Looking forward to more throwback robot fun
Love both of those games. A good week!
We finally finished our SoB campaign and are messing with some smaller games. This weekend we’ve been playing the new version of Tales of the Arabian Nights. Neither of us played the original but we did play and enjoy the recent Tales of the Arthurian Knights. This one plays a bit different but still excels at making some cool stories as you travel the map. Lots of fun if you’re into the style of game it is.
That map should be an inspiration to us all! WOW.
I love what you did with the grey marker. I will have to copy many of these concepts.
Sounds like a lot of Steamforged Games.
Frost Punk, by the same designer I believe, also is a beast to set up but I LOVE it.
This one may be of interest for @Dungeondive to review;
Recording an episode on it tomorrow. 
So curious about this and if it works for you solo. Looking forward to watching the video!
Was in Target over the weekend and on a whim went to check out the games. Found HeroQuest First Light for about $28. I know it’s a Daniel favorite. Looking forward to digging into it this weekend.
So maybe there’s time for a look at Space Kraken? That particular shuttle has left the docking bay for me, but I would still enjoy hearing your thoughts on it someday.
We are getting to it. Hopefully by the end of the year. My wife and I take turns choosing games that may take us longer than a month to play. Space Kraken is my next choice. But we play a bunch of smaller/one-off games in-between. So we’ll probably do that for a couple of months now and Space Kraken should be our next campaign game.
Though my wife is really pushing to get in one of those game books from Archmage Press before their next crowdfunding campaign to see if we like it. I don’t know how long those take, so there might be a mini-campaign in there?
We spent the better part of yesterday playing Lairs. A 2 player game where you each set up a dungeon layout and then try to get through the other’s fastest and with the most points (for killing monsters and collecting treasure). To get out you need either 3 treasure chests, 3 killed monsters, or 2 of each before you can use the exit.
First thing I’ll say is that while I absolutely love the game, I wouldn’t want it without at least the adventurer’s pack expansion, which was included in the Kickstarter version but not retail. The bulk of the game seems to be in this expansion, without which your dungeon has a single bland trap and monster and your characters only have a couple of special abilities to choose from. It would get stale in a couple of plays. I don’t know why they would even sell the core box like this.
But with the adventurer’s pack, and the slow addition of new game mechanics by opening boxes and envelopes between plays (which can easily be reset), it’s an absolutely amazing game. As you play game after game everything gets more complex and varied, but you also start to learn your opponents habits and can try to set up your dungeon to mess with them, or guess about their design to try and figure out when you can move more recklessly. I don’t want to spoil anything because so much of it is hidden at first, but you will get new monsters, traps, treasures, and character skills that can change strategies up quite a bit. We threw this on the table to try a single game yesterday and must have played at least 10 times. Into the wee hours… We’re still unlocking things from the adventurer’s pack and then there’s the deeper dungeons expansion after that, which has bigger dungeon boards, more mechanics, and even a 1 vs Many mode.
Here’s a shot of an early-ish play. My dungeon on the right has my wife at the exit and you can see she left a treasure chest, monster, and trap on the board (not my most inventive setup tho). This sits behind a screen as hidden info. The pad on the left is the dungeon I was moving through that she had hidden behind her screen. I usually uncover more than that but sometimes a speedy run is a great way to win because it puts time pressure on the other player. And moving into spaces blindly can really mess you up. Peeking into spaces is way safer but also much slower.
I do love the ability to dig through walls and add to the map in Deep Rock. It’s become my go-to game this summer for hard days when I just need to lay waste to a bunch of enemies.
Not to beat a dead horse but we played further in Lairs. This game just keeps amazing me. We went through the adventurer’s pack and everything that offered and moved on to the different modules offered in Deeper Dungeons. You can really tailor the experience at this point. The one downside might be that luck plays more of a role the more complexity you add in. We’re at a point where you can basically use design to force people into situations they cannot avoid without getting a lucky deck pull from “scrounging”. But sometimes you just jump into the danger and take a bit of hit anyway. The balance between playing it safe vs reckless just keeps getting more important the more you add in.
And I didn’t expect this game to hit a point where it just competes with other games as a good choice for a straight up dungeon crawl. I figured it’d be more a novelty competitive game with the designing elements making it stand out (and they are very fun). But no, once you have all the options of what to play with it’s a standout dungeon crawl even if you ignore the whole other side of it (building out a dungeon for someone else).
All the art is courtesy of Google image search but I made and hand cut all these cards myself. They’re for a custom board game I’m making for the Great Lakes Dungeon Siege. I was thinking of sharing a playthrough video on the forum.
The Synth of Fate! Bzzoannnn…
After Lairs, we’ve been spending some time with Fallen Land 2nd edition. Never played the previous one. It’s fun, but we’re still trying to work out a good configuration for 2 players that don’t enjoy a lot of “take that” competitive elements. First we played the normal competitive game but without PVP and staying hands-off while we each did our own thing. That was OK. Then we tried some scenarios. Those are also alright but the mechanics of the scenario tend to take over and I feel like I’d rather be in the sandbox doing whatever more than plopping down radio towers or being penalized every move. So now we’re back to playing the original way, still not allowing PVP, but bringing back a lot of the “red dot” cards (that effect players directly). We went through the deck and tossed any that seemed too mean. We’re not sure that all the reversals make up for how cruel some of those cards are. We also dropped any that seemed like they could be easily timed to definitely secure character kills in the other party (ones that give like 2 damage to each party member, etc…). Hopefully this moves the game more towards something we want to play.
All that said, I can definitely see the solo gaming appeal here.
We’re gonna mess with The Waste of Parts next. A coop game where you try to drive a mutli-room mechanical contraption across a wasteland full of nanobot-infused monsters and survive till you get to the other side.
Hopefully it’s good because I just peeled the plastic off both sides of 80+ acrylic standees and all their bases. Took long enough for me to question my desire to play this game multiple times. But I did get it done.
High component quality with metal dials and gears, acrylic standees, plastic character boards, etc… Hope it’s not all just gimmick.
Do you have any hard-won tips for peeling plastic off acrylic tokens? I can do about ten before my fingernails are destroyed.
