It's that time of year again where we share what we bought over the Black Friday and Cyber Monday shop-a-thon. For me I nabbed a few gamer things!
First up was what my teenager has been waiting for: his own gaming PC. We ordered all the parts which will make up his holiday haul. He is also getting some hand-me-downs from my recent upgrade (GPU and PSU). We went with an AMD build again; Ryzen 7600X CPU, 5700 XT GPU (hand me down), 2 TB NVMe SSD, and 32 GB memory. I'd say I got great deals but it was pretty lackluster as far as deals go this year.
I was nostalgic for some holiday season tunes ringing through the halls (home office) so am finally filling the "no speakers" gap for my home PC. I grabbed this soundbar to fill the role.
Lastly I surfed the board game sales and like PC parts... it felt like a down year as far as deals go. I did end up grabbing the Arkham Horror The Card Game Revised Core Set which was at an all time low. This was on my "want to try" list and now that I have a teenager in the family it felt like the right time to adult our co-op games. Looking forward to giving this a whirl.
GamesMadeMe is a series of posts that cover gaming-related topics that have shaped who I am as a gamer today. With the release hype of Baldur's Gate 3 upon us (no, I am not playing it) it had me thinking about my journey into Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn. Specifically the big, fat ringbound instruction manual.
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| A legendary artifact of gaming past! |
That is a good looking instruction manual! When you picked up the box at the game store (a local mall GameStop for me at the time) there was some weight to it and you knew you were getting into something good. Seeing the manual slide out of the game box was an awesome feeling and you knew what you were going to be doing for the next few hours while you waited for the multi-CD install process to finish.
Even before Baldur's Gate 2 I have fond memories of sitting in the back of the family minivan reading through the manual of whatever latest video game I just bought. I still remember buying Final Fantasy 8 and flipping through the manual. I was so excited for that game and decades later that memory is stuck in my head. Some of my favorites like FF8 and BG2 are still with me to this day.
That experience is all but gone today and I can't remember the last video game I bought that came with any sort of game-related material. I can still get a hit of the nostalgia with most board games and their manuals but it's more of a chore there as you really can't play the board game until you digest the rules book so it's always getting in the way of the fun.
I have tried to bring some of this joy to my oldest son as well. He found my Shadows of Amn instruction manual some time after he was reading by himself and he consumed the whole thing over the course of a couple days. He didn't really want to play the game; was just fascinated there was a "book" with so much about a game in it. We also bought him the collector's edition of the Zelda Breath of the Wild strategy guide and I've never seen a kid more fond of a book in my entire life. He gets limited electronic time so he filled other time with reading and earmarking every last part of that book and coming up with elaborate plans for his one hour of electronic time the next day. Man that makes a gaming dad smile ear to ear.
Dang... need a tissue. /sniff Where does the time go anyways. Game manuals made me the gamer I am today.
Happy New Year everyone and welcome to 2023. One of our household traditions is to play Axis & Allies & Zombies .... and... I wanted to share my Axis victory image from last night. As my son would annotate his version of the picture "w for dad"!
This should teach him not to get greedy with the Soviets in future games. Moscow can fall quickly and is the most reasonable target for the Axis to win. In the picture you will see black (Germany/Axis) in Moscow where a hard fought battle was won after a northern blitz move.
It was looking pretty bleak for the Axis before this which is why my son tried to start pushing into eastern Europe with the Soviets. A move he certainly regretted when the tanks rolled into Moscow.
What a great way to start off 2023 (for me at least)!
Gone from the original is the perfectly square map and in it's place is a New York shaped map. This fits the theme but I feel like it gives up a bit of the "chess like" feeling of the original. There are nooks on the board that a player will get stuck on (or at least did in our first couple of games).
Also added to this version as a required feature are role cards that are played each turn that require/allow a player to take a unique action. The twist is that if the card says "must" the player "must" take the action or lose a worker. Simple to start but later in games this can be a real problem if, for example, you only have Subway Operators left and there is no free spaces to move to... goodbye worker (of which you only get two!).
The roles add some variety to the game and unlike the original where the cards were optional rules they are a core part of New York. This makes the game a little harder to teach to anyone that has never played Santorini but for our family who are Santorini veterans it took no time to pick up.
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| Grrrrr... Statue of Liberty!!!! |
In summary the game is fun, but would not be one I recommend someone get if they don't have the original. The original is superior; mostly for the "no god/role cards: version that is easy to teach/hard to master. With that said, if you own the original and enjoy it, then New York is worth getting as it kicks it up a notch.
In Planted players are raising house plants and working to keep them fed and watered so they grow up and score lots of points. Throw in some decorations (pots, shelves, hanging baskets, etc) for bonus points. The game is played over four rounds in which players select a card before passing the remaining cards left or right similar to Sushi Go.
Our family really enjoyed the game. It is light weight and plays quickly (~30 minutes in our experience). It is easy to learn but requires some skill in planning out what you want to focus on each turn.
Only persistent cards like tools carry over between rounds so each turn is mostly self contained. This can frustrating if the cards dealt that round don't support what you are working for with your plants, but there is a catch all mechanic where unspent resources at the end of the round can be turned into extra victory points through a mechanic known as propagation. This was very useful in the early rounds when I didn't have many plants and thus wound up with more resources than I could use and when victory scoring came it was the difference that put me over the top!
The artwork and components are top notch. We especially loved the water tokens. The plants featured are all real and we found a few of our own houseplants dwelling in the mix. "Hey is this the plant we gave grandma?" is the quote of the night; thats how good the artwork is of the plants.
Over all a big thumbs up for Planted. Anyone looking for a light weight family game this is it.
The first thing I noticed about the game were the components. Mail trucks, an eye pleasing board, package/letter/postcard cards, and best of all: the postage slips and stamp!
To fast forward to some final thoughts; the components make the game. The game itself is simple and after a few plays the strategy is limited. But the satisfaction from stamping your slip when you complete a delivery? It feels awesome. Every. Single. Time.
Components aside the game itself is easy to understand and teach. It plays quickly (~30m now that we know what we are doing) which makes this a great holiday game to play with family. We are looking forward to playing with my brother-in-law who is a true blue USPS mailman but doesn't play games; that is approachable the game is.
The game play is straight forward and comparable to Ticket to Ride. You get letters/packages that need to go places and you can draw cards that let you move across the board to get them to those places. Postcards are on the board and once passed they are gained by the player. The board is split into different regions and delivering packages from/to different regions gains additional points.
Best of all as players complete the deliveries and actions on the board they get to stamp their little postal slip and that is so satisfying it has brought my family back to the table multiple times. I personally love the stamp!
There is a bit of player on player competition as well in the game. If you are passing another mail carrier you can either take one of their deliveries or give them one of yours. Have a long haul package destined for Alaska? Drop it on another carrier! Have the travel cards to grab a package from another player and delivery it? Then sneak in for the steal. The only downside is newer players will get picked on by experienced players, but it is one of the most fun aspects of the game. Without "assisting another mailman" this game would be far too basic.
My biggest complaint about the game is that there is not variable rewards as far as distance for a delivery. A delivery that requires you to go from coast to coast is worth the same as one you can complete in the same turn. This is OK if you have the stronger travel cards such as planes or trains, but if you don't... well you either have to swap mail with other players and try to stick them with the stinker package or you need to spend your turns trucking it out to its destination; either way its the same reward.
Another nitpick I have is that the next letter/parcel/postcard that will replace a delivered one is visible to all players. This is too much information for players to plan moves. Having the "next up" be hidden somehow instead of face up would add some much needed randomness to the game. With that said the cards being face up does allow a bit of skill in chaining deliveries together.
My last comment will be on the rules. They are well laid out for the basic game but they offer nothing for the scenarios or questions that pop up regularly. For example: what does "passing through" really mean? If I stop on a spot but don't end my turn there is that passing through? Or is passing through just when I move through it? Does the hot air balloon count as passing through or not because it says "go over"? What happens if a postcard appears on the spot I am already at? Do I just get it? Questions I am not alone in asking as evidenced by Board Game Geek's rules sub-forum for the game.
Over all the game is a gem and far too good considering it is literally licensed by USPS. Have you played it? What are your thoughts? Leave a comment and I'll assist you with delivering it!
I caught wind of recent news regarding TCGPlayer and BGG Geek Marketplace and wanted to share some thoughts.
I had a short stint as a volunteer writer for TCGPlayer posting articles about the World of Warcraft TCG. At the time it was very much a fan run site for fans of TCGs. I did not get the vibe of "we are a future multi-million dollar corporation". Feels like I missed an opportunity here had I stuck with the freelance writing for TCGPlayer.... giving me vibes of the time I missed out on contributing to WoWHead before it got gobbled up for a million dollars... which makes me lament my younger days and not having the chance to become a streamer (I was an early adopter of Google Video before Google had Youtube). Apparently my destiny is to always be early to the party!
The next news item to cover is Board Game Geek's (BGG) sudden announcement they were shutting down Geek Market. This came as a surprise as BGG was in progress testing an updated version of Geek Market so to go from beta testing a new version to shutting down the entire thing (including the original Geek Market) caught the BGG community by surprise. Since that announcement and uproar from the community the folks at BGG have opted to establish a new classified-style market.
I don't really have any commentary; just found the news interesting.
More can be read in these three posts at BGG (in chronological order)
General critical consensus seems to be that Discover: Lands Unknown was a flop, but I found the game to be engaging and enjoyable while delivering on its core mechanic of a survival experience.
The second game gifted over the holidays was Photosynthesis. This has been on my list for a while. As an avid gardener the aesthetic of this game spoke to me. The green, orange,yellow, and blue of the trees looks great on the table.
This is one from the bargain bin at our local Ollies (#olliesarmy represent!). High Command is a card drafting game set in the Iron Kingdoms setting of Warmachine. I would best describe it as a drafting version of Smash Up for folks that want the Warhammer 40k aesthetic instead (yes I said Warhammer damn it!).
Hidden role games; I love 'em. But mostly for the social aspect at the gaming table; not inside my PC over the magical tubes that make the internet. The main draw is a randomly assigned team that has "perfect information" playing against the uneducated masses. In Town of Salem that means its the mafia out to get the town. It works surprisingly well considering the limitations of what is essentially a chat room with rules.
I am a huge fan of card games (one of my favorites of all time being The Spoils TCG). I've played Magic the Gathering on and off since the 1990s in both physical and digital forms. I've tended to prefer board games with cards more than those with dice. There is just something soothing about holding a hand of cards and battling wits with an opponent. Android: Netrunner itches all the recesses of my mind and is one of the most amazing card games I have ever played.
The corporation is not forced into "rezzing" a card leading to a critical aspect of the game: bluffing. The potential for the corporation to bluff a runner is there and many a Netrunner game has been lost to a bad decision. At the same time, just like in Poker, a bluff is still only hiding an end result that can be broken down to a mathematical probability. A good runner is going to be able to look at their cards in hand and in play and know when the odds are in their favor. Between experienced players, bluffing does not play as big of a role as it does for new players learning the game, but the simple fact of having a bluff as a physical representation (face down cards) on the board is an amazing piece of the puzzle for this game.
The runner also has advantages in their favor, first being that they receive 4 clicks per turn to the 3 clicks of the corporation's turn (the corporation is allowed to draw a card for free every turn though as a compromise). Clicks are actions that can be taken during a turn. Secondly, the runner can "trash" corporation cards for a set cost after accessing them which allows the runner to really negatively impact the corporations play. Lastly, the runner does not need to spend actions each turn advancing agendas to score the related points. The runner simply needs to access an agenda played by the corporation to steal it and thus receive it's allocated agenda points towards their victory total (7 are needed to win).
. However, Microsoft's Surface continues to impress me, this time showing off Settlers of Catan
.. It is the epitome of everything that is WRONG with Apple. With that said, Small World
has been converted from boardgame and has been released as an iPad app by Days of Wonder. This is the same boardgame developer known for Ticket to Ride, Battlelore, etc.Small World for iPad is the first digital adaptation of this award-winning fantasy board game. It enables two players to face off against each other and vie for conquest and control of a world that is simply too small to accommodate all of the zany fantasy characters that inhabit Small World. Sitting across from each other around the iPad, players use their troops to occupy territory and conquer adjacent lands in order to push the other players' races off the face of the earth.While this isn't the first boardgame to make it to iPad, it's the first one that caught my attention. Small World is a great game and the graphical styling is perfect for a touch tablet.
