What’s on the Kickstarter?

So let’s start out by talking about what is on the page, which you can see here. There is more on this crowdfunding page than their other Kickstarter campaigns, which I think is worth calling out a few things. Mainly that, before, add-ons, there are three products that you can back. Some of them are just expansions and there is a core box.

Core Box

The Core Box is almost a must buy if you’re going to back the Kickstarter. Though, you can always mix and match any of the Dice Throne content together. But the core box is where you will get most of the new characters. And what they were announcing new characters for mainly.

If you want to play as the X-Men, you now can. You’ll have a choice of Rogue, Gambit, Storm, Iceman, Jean Grey, Cyclops, Psylocke, or Wolverine. And they have a nice range of difficulty on characters that you can play which they nicely call out now. So if you want more of the Dice Throne game, or you want to start playing it because you love the X-Men, this is a great spot to start.

Missions

Now, Dice Throne is traditionally a competitive game. It’s called Battle Yahtzee by some, though there is much more control over the dice than in Yahtzee. But Dice Throne is not only a competitive game. There are two ways that you can play it cooperatively. The first was Dice Throne Adventures which came out a few years ago. And now Missions is going to offer some of that cooperative game play, but I believe in a shorter game than the Dice Throne Adventures Campaign.

This is the big area of the game that I want to look into. What I like while looking at it is that the villains vary a lot. And the Missions don’t seem to just be X-Men focused. Yes, you have Mister Sinister. But you also battle Thanos. Thanos is going to be more of a Marvel Dice Throne versus Marvel Dice Throne X-Men villain. Though, if you go by the comics, some of the X-Men play a big role in the Infinity Gauntlet storyline.

Deadpool

Finally, there is Deadpool. He isn’t really the last thing, there are add-ons as well. But Deadpool as a playable character coming in his own premium box. I say premium because he comes with the miniature and acrylic tokens that you can upgrade for the other characters. Downside is, if you want it all matching, he doesn’t come with a cardboard standee and he doesn’t come with cardboard tokens.

Deadpool is mainly just going to be another character you can mix in to fight with or against. Now he isn’t a Missions villain, though that’d be great, but for the base competitive game, he’ll be able to be played. What always worries me with Deadpool in games is that he often is taken too meta and it’s either too strong or too annoying to play with.

What Level to Back

So, I want to talk about this because I am still waffling on it. The question I’m asking myself isn’t about the core box, I want more characters always. It isn’t about Deadpool, against more characters. And I do have concerns with Deadpool. Is he going to be broken because he’s too meta or too annoying? I don’t know, but I want to give him a try.

Missions is the part that I don’t know about. Why? Because do I want to play it as a cooperative game. I thought that I did with Dice Throne Adventures. But when I got it, I realized, I didn’t want a big campaign. I like Dice Throne as that head to head battling game, or multiplayer battling game. And Dice Throne Adventures, it might have been great, but it was a much longer mode of the game. So I never felt like playing it.

Missions, on the other hand, I need to look into more. If it offers some of that cooperative play with out too much extra work to play the bad guys, then I’m more intrigued. If I can sit down and play a game in an hour, that is reasonable, even an hour and a half. I just don’t want a lot of sessions.

But, I like the acrylic tokens as well. So if I were to drop backing with Missions, it’d be easier to pick those up. Right now, I don’t have acrylic tokens added as an add-on. If I were to get rid of Missions, I’d likely add those on instead, so it isn’t a money saving move.

Marvel Dice Throne X-Men

Like I said, this isn’t a back of brick. If you want to know if you should back it, you likely already know. Either you back it because you know you love Dice Throne, you back it because you love X-Men, or you know you don’t like either enough to back it and won’t. It’s a bit simpler than some because this is a game that has been out for a long time.

Man vs Meeple has coverage on it if you want to see how the characters play. Maybe you like Dice Throne but you don’t know if you need more characters. Then checking out a video or two is going to help let you know. But for me, it’s always fun to have more. And with everything, I think I figured it out, there are 35 different combinations. So I’ll be trying out new ones for a long time.

Which character do you look forward to playing most? For me, it’s Gambit and Rogue.

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Pros

• Proven company
• Proven game
• Not a Big Campaign
• Upgrade Pack for Season 2 Included

Cons

• Box Price
• Dice Throne Adventure Content

The Page

Roxley has been around for a while in the Kickstarter space. And they have just started and are getting close now to finishing delivering Marvel Dice Throne. Which actually delivered I believe on time. So they have a really good track record.

The biggest Dice Throne miss, thus far, was Dice Throne Adventures, for some people. And it wasn’t even a miss for everyone. I sold mine without playing just because I like the head to head or King of the Hill style of the game enough that I didn’t feel I’d ever play it. Of course now there is a DTA (Dice Throne Adventures) bonus pack that comes with this pack.

And let’s talk about price a little bit. Roxley is giving a very cheap price for shipping. They say that they are subsidizing it, which I believe is true. However, some of that does appear to be coming in the cost of the single box. Granted, that does come with the DTA bonus pack and if you want the free upgraded boards for some Dice Throne Season 2 characters. It isn’t a bad price, but if you want to get the box later at retail, then you can just get that box cheaper then.

The Game

The game is one that I’ve talked about a lot. Dice Throne is always high on my Top 100 list. And I believe that this will also be high on the list. I like the idea of taking characters like Santa up against a Gunslinger or Krampus against Doctor Strange. That’s the great thing about Dice Throne is you always have that mix and match ability. And who knows, maybe one of these characters will make my Top 10, you can see my pre-Marvel list here.

But let’s talk a bit about how the game is played.

Dice Throne sometimes gets called battle Yahtzee. In this game you are playing down cards to upgrade abilities. Then you attack your opponent using Yahtzee style rolling rules. Three rolls and keeping dice as you go. You use whatever you end up on to activate abilities that either get you tokens or inflict tokens with your roll or deals out damage.

Then your opponent can possibly roll defense and either prevent some damage, deal damage back, or again get some tokens. The goal is to get your opponent down to 0 health and first player to do so wins the game. It might seem like a lot of luck, but there is strategy that goes into what you keep and building up to turns where you can mitigate the dice more.

Back or Brick

I love Dice Throne so Santa vs Krampus is an easy Back for me. Plus it’s just a new character box, so it’s less of an investment which is very nice. I think it’ll be fun to play with these two characters.

I also get if someone might not love the game. There is an element of luck. And while I don’t find the luck too bad in the game, I could see others not liking it as much. I do think learning how to mitigate your dice and when to keep back cards is important. But for some it might be too random. But let me know if this is a Back or Brick for you.

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What Board Games Are Leaving?

This time the games were in a number of different categories that are leaving. Some of them I was very excited for but as time has gone on my excitement has waned on them. Others are just classic games that I don’t play anymore. And I think that’s one thing I’m noticing about having bought a lot of games over the years. Stuff that I don’t get to quickly, that is more likely to fall out of my current taste in games.

Sentinels of the Multiverse

This is one that I didn’t buy too long ago. I mainly bought it because it was on a great sale. I think I got the base game and something like 16 or 17 expansions for about $80. My plan is to try and sell it for about the same amount. I thought I’d give it a whirl because it looked cool, but when it comes down to superhero themed games, I’m going to pick Marvel Champions over it.

Dice Throne Adventures

This one is only kind of out the door at this point. Again, it’s another one that I’d really like to get played. But with middling reviews for this Dice Throne expansion, that makes it into a cooperative game. I’m not that excited to try it anymore. Add in the fact that I love Dice Throne as a two player head to head battle or king of the hill fighting, it’s hard to want to try a new way to play it that’s so different.

Merchant’s Cove

Merchant’s Cove, a game in my Top 100 games, and could still easily be there this upcoming year or longer, also leaving. The reason for that is it’s a very big game, a very light game, and there’s a learning curve, but not a bad one, each time you pull out and play a new character. I love the level of production on the game, but it makes it harder to table.

Uno

Uno is not a fun game, it’s a classic game. And when I started my collection, I wanted to own a number of the classics. Now, there are other very simple games that I have that I’d play over Uno. Add in that Uno can take no time or forever to play, it’s just not worth it.

Phase 10

Phase 10 is another classic game, one that I don’t hate, but also one that I am not that likely to play again. If I do play it, it’ll be with my parents who have a copy. Phase 10 is a fine game that takes too long because it doesn’t progress. I want to replace mine with 5 Crowns. A game that does a similar thing with getting sets and runs, but with a more limited game length.

Chess

Chess is yet another classic, and one that I feel like I should have. But the game is not one that I play, so do I keep the tin around and let it take up space on a game shelf? Or do I let it go to someone who is excited to get a decent looking all wooden chess set? I think it’s smarter to let it go to someone else enjoy it and if or when I want to get a new chess set, I can always do that later.

8-Bit Box

Another game I picked up with store credit, and one that I really wanted to play when I got it. But then my interested in it waned over time because it’s learning basically a new game for each one that I’d pull out of the box. The whole 8-Bit arcade game thing, that’s pretty cool, but if it creates a barrier to entry, well, then it ends up leaving my collection.

Karuba: The Card Game

Grabbed this one from a local Goodwill, I wasn’t thinking about it, thought it was the board game. Should have been obvious that it was different. I wouldn’t mind giving it a whirl, it’s more that I’m trying to find that thrift store gem, and this wasn’t it.

Cat Cafe

Added to the pile last night from a section I’d already gone through. Cat Cafe is a fun enough roll and write game. And it has some cool things that I don’t mind with drafting dice and then a shared die that’s left. But the game feels like it should do more. And I don’t like the end game trigger. You get more points for completing towers and the first person who completes three ends the game.

The Drink

Islay Storm again for me. Finished off the bottle of this Scotch from Trader Joe’s. It’s a really good Scotch for the price it’s at, and a very peat forward Scotch. I really enjoy peat in my Scotch, so this is always a good one when I make it to Trader Joes.

Upcoming Streams

So what comes after this. Well, it’s going to be some smaller games being streamed up through the end of the month. Start of May, I want to kick off another campaign game. And I might be playing through some Perdition’s Mouth, or I have a few others that I’m considering as well.

But I do want to maybe play through more Paper Dungeons, I had fun playing two games last time. But I have a few other games, Village Green, Dinosaur Island Rawr ‘n Write, Welcome To Dino World, and others that I can play solo as well. And two of those are ones that I want to try out to see if they’ll stick in my collection.

If you want to know when I go live, you can go to the Malts and Meeples YouTube channel, subscribe, and click the notification bell. That’ll let you know when I go live or schedule a video.

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The Games

Well, no spoilers like last time, the list will be at the bottom for those who don’t have time to watch the whole video. But let’s talk a bit about how I picked these games. This is a bit different than a lot of lists. The other two I’ve done, they were cooperative games and small box games. A game is either in a small box or not, though small can be debated. And a game is either cooperative or not. Or at least it has a cooperative mode anyways. For this list, it was my choice of what I had on my shelf.

There was an even split of cooperative and competitive games on the list which surprised me. And if you know my taste in games, there were five campaign style games on the list. Though, that’s only half the list, I thought I might have picked more. And there were some games that I left off the list that definitely could have made it.

So they are honorable mentions that I didn’t mention, but Forgotten Waters and Dice Throne Adventures are two of the top ones on that list. Lost Ruins of Arnak , Yggdrasil Chronicles and Detective: City of Angels also could have made the list. I skipped games like Vienna Connection because while I haven’t played it, I have played Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game which is the same system.

The Beer

Last nights beer was a local one again. This time from Lift Bridge brewing, it was a Kolsh beer, Lemon Bar flavored. It is an okay beer. I saw lemon in the name and I was excited for it, but like the pink lemonade beer that I had from Tin Whiskers a stream or two ago. While a lemon bar should be sweeter, the sweetness basically overwhelmed the lemon flavor. The lemon should have been a stronger punch of flavor with a sweet finish versus what it was to make it a more enjoyable drink. Still, for a hot summer day, I think it’d be a solid option, just not the first one I’d reach for.

The List

1. Nemesis
2. Dwellings of Eldervale
3. Middara: Unintentional Mallum Act 1
4. Clank Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated
5. Reichbusters: Projekt Vril
6. Solomon Kane
7. Deep Madness
8. The Reckoners
9. Kohaku
10. Heroes of Land, Air, & Sea

Upcoming Streams

So a few options for what’s coming up next. No Monday stream next week, but I’m thinking some reviews and maybe a topic instead of a Top 10 for my next stream. So let me know what topic sounds good.

And on Wednesday, I think my plan is to play Railroad Ink Challenge, but I had so much fun playing Aeon’s End last Wednesday that following that up, I mght actually start playing Aeon’s End Legacy two handed for a bigger playthrough. Let me know your thoughts on that, I as I learn how to play it, I might have some polls for whom I should play as.

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Dice Throne Season 1 and Adventures

So, the whole story of why I am selling Adventures is in the Point of Order article. Basically, I got painted minis and a second copy of Dice Throne Adventures in a sale, so I am selling that one. I can still play with my own copy. Probably the more interesting is Dice Throne Season 1. That game is one that I love, so why am I selling it. Well, because my version was the original version of the game. For a lot of people, not an issue, for me not much of an issue either. But for a lot of people, they’d upgrade it to the big box version, I went the opposite direction. I have all of Season 2 in the duel boxes, think boxes with two characters in them. Then I got the Ninja vs Treant duel box. I wanted to get the duel boxes for the original six characters. Mainly, they’d fit on my shelf nicer, and it makes them easier to transport around. So it’s less I’m getting rid of the game, more that my version is changing.

Sword & Sorcery

Now, I was stoked for this game. I picked up the base game and then an expansion, plus character packs. Now I am selling it. Am I said that I’m getting rid of it, no, because I had my fun with it. My hope was that it’d be like Gloomhaven. A massive campaign that I’d want to keep around and play again. Sword & Sorcery fell short of that. The story lacked for me. The game play, while fun, repeated too much. You roll dice, see if you hit, the bad guys go, repeat the process. You find weapons, you level up and get new skills, and you repeat. While Dice Throne has you chucking dice like this does, the characters in Dice Throne feel more unique. In Sword & Sorcery, the characters were fun but everything lacked feeling so different. And the actions you could take, outside of combat, were too basic or possibly not common enough. We reached a point where we had a few actions, but couldn’t do anything with all of them, so there was waste every turn.

All of that is pretty negative. But I still like the game. It is or was in my Top 100, I think it’ll drop out. The game play works, it plays pretty fast, and you can get through the story quickly. It’s not like Gloomhaven where the story lasts for weeks and weeks and it took me three years to get through it. Sword & Sorcery, it took 3 months to get through it. That is nice to have a shorter story game. But, because the story is simpler and shorter, and the game play is simpler, I don’t see myself going back to the game. again.

So I am selling all of that. The store credit will help with getting more Marvel Champions characters and expansions as they are released, or it might help get more Deep Madness expansions as well. We’ll see when it all comes through. So really with all of this, I’m going down one game, and it’s a game that I’ve had my fun with it, now it’s time for someone else to have fun with it.

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The Games

The games that got unboxed yesterday varied from new ones that I’d gotten via Kickstarter, ordered from the company, an Amazon purchase and from my FLGS, friendly local game store. So a wide variety of content for the stream.

From Amazon I purchased Adventure Land from Haba. This is a game about collection treasures, fighting monsters, and more. But it’s done in a very abstract way. You move your adventurers down and to the right, never back up or towards the left. That means that you need to figure out when to push forward to get that one treasure or when to hold back an adventurer to move later in the game.

At my FLGS, I picked up Space Base from AEG. Some call it a Machi Koro killer, it is all about building that tableau of cards in front of you and them activating. This one seems to have more going on in it than Machi Koro did. I expect that it’ll be less of an introductory game to the genre of engine or tableau building.

Direct from the publisher, Breaking Games, I joined in on the hype for Dwellings of Eldervale. This is a massive worker placement, fighting, exploring game. I almost get a little bit of a Lords of Hellas vibe from how it does a little bit of everything, and I really like Lords of Hellas. It’s a big game, and I love the noise making monster bases.

Finally, from Kickstarter, but really from Roxley Games, we have Dice Throne Adventures. Dice Throne is one of my favorite games. I love the one on one, or king of the hill battling and dice chucking. This makes it cooperative as you explore portals and fight bosses.

Patreon Announcement

I talked about this yesterday, but on my stream I went through my Patreon again. In particular, I ran down all the different levels and why I am doing a Patreon. I’m going to be mentioning this from time to time and I’ll be talking about it briefly probably in every stream that it exists. But if you are enjoying my content and want to help support it getting bigger and better, Patreon, right now, is the only way to do that. Any money that I get through it will go into improving the website, the Malts and Meeples livestreams, and the 10 Minute Marvel podcast. Thank you so much for checking out the content and even considering the Patreon. I know a lot fights for people’s attention and money, and I hope that you enjoy what you are getting from the site, streams, and podcast.

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Let’s start by talking about some Kickstarters that I will have coming in. I’m counting reprints/second editions with this, so the first one is:

Middara – This game rivals Gloomhaven in terms of size and is bigger in terms of story. There has been so much put into it, and the first kickstarter took forever to fulfill. However, I’m just backing what came out in that Kickstarter so I expect to get mine next year, and projected date places it the middle of next year. In Middara, you are in an anime-esque world and fighting through a massive story with lots of different dungeons and interactions. You make decisions that might change up things in the future, and you upgrade your characters with interesting skills and weapons. This game looks amazing, when I’ll play it, who knows, but I’m excited for it.

Village Attacks – Another reprint, I played it at GenCon last year, got a scenario and a few bits for it, found out that it was impossible to find, but then they kickstarted an expansion for it, which I backed so I could use my GenCon scenario. In this game, it’s tower defense, but you’re the bad guys who are keeping those pesky villagers with their torches and pitchforks from running you at of your house. It’s fully cooperative which I like, and the theme is just a lot of fun. I’m excited for this one to get it back to the table and properly deal with those villagers again. The scenarios are a lot of fun, and depending on what villagers come out when, the game will feel different playing the same scenario.

Dice Throne Adventures – I’ve talked about how much I like Dice Throne. This Yahtzee/King of Tokyo style game where you are fighting a character against another character. You’re part of a massive tournament that the evil emperor has set-up that isn’t at all like Mortal Kombat or anything like that. But in Dice Throne Adventures, you are fighting your way through the evil emperors lands, leveling up your characters, and playing cooperative against the game with whatever characters you want from Season One or Two of Dice Throne. It sounds like a campaign dungeon crawl, and while it does have some of that feel, it’s shorter in terms of campaign so you can get through it and play again without the time commitment like you need for bigger dungeon crawls.

Shadows of Kilforth – I blame Rolling Solo Youtube Channel for getting me into this game, the original, Gloom of Killforth is a one shot adventure game where you are in a world where things are going poorly and you as an adventurer are leveling up, exploring locations, fighting monsters, hoping to get strong enough to be able to take down whatever monster is blighting the land. The original game had a fantasy feel, and while this maintains the fantasy, it also has an eastern feel to it as well, which is cool. This game is also a smaller footprint game as you’re not setting up massive dungeons and needing a million tiles to play it.

Those are ones that I’ve kickstarted already that I’m really excited for. There are two that I know I want to kickstart in 2020, so let’s talk about those.

Frosthaven – Sequel to my #1 game of all time, no brainer I want this. I expect to get it sometime in 2021, but it kickstarts in March of 2020, so I’ll have paid for it then. It builds off of Gloomhaven and the Forgotten Circle expansion to tell you a whole new story set in the same world. But unlike in Gloomhaven where you start out of a set city, in Frosthaven, it adds in some city building and you have to worry about defending the town as well as going out on adventures. The out of the box characters seem a bit more challenging but also seem amazing to play. I’m curious to see how this game differs from Gloomhaven, but I hope it keeps a ton of the same feel.

ISS-Vanguard – A story game from Awaken Realms, sign me up. I have Tainted Grail that I’m dying to play (I’m going to try and play it over my time off around Christmas), but ISS-Vanguard is supposed to be more of an open world sort of game (or open worlds since you’re in space). You can go to different planets in different orders and experience the story that way. The art work that came in the Tainted Grail surprise box is amazing and I really love the style. I’m going to be curious to see how an open world game with a story comes together, but I like the idea of a non-fantasy big story exploration game.

Roll Player Adventure – Now, I don’t like the base game, but I got to play an early prototype of this at GenCon, and this is very different than a game where you’re rolling up your character like Roll Player is. In this, it’s a campaign game, but as compared to some games with campaigns, like from Awaken Realms or Gloomhaven, it isn’t nearly as heavy. The story is a little bit sillier, but the mechanics are fun. Can you manipulate the dice to be able to get through all the story and encounters that you run across. The mechanics were cool, and the game at GenCon, even in an early form, was a ton of fun. Helped that I might have been a power hungry sorcerer.

And, finally, and these aren’t last or least, but there are a few games that are coming out in other ways that I’m definitely interested in. Might just be normal publisher, but also might be kickstarter, I haven’t researched enough.

Deranged – Wait, you’re saying, it doesn’t say 2020, but for it coming to the US, it’s coming in 2020. I played this at GenCon and it was amazing. The game play was smart and simple, the world building of the game was really cool. While it’s not story driven, there is a lot going on, and the card play is really really fun in the game. I like the light horror theming as you’re trying to avoid monsters, get rid of your curses and not become deranged. But it’s very possible that you will or that you’ll die, and then you’ll need to get rid of more curses. It seems like a cooperative game where you’re trying to escape this town with no curses, but it’s competitive, and only one person can escape, so if someone gets too close, time to get kill them and give them another curse. Can someone win in all that fighting, who knows.

Time of Legends: Destinies – I almost kickstarted this game, then I decided I wanted Oathsworn instead. But this one seems really interesting. Each character has secrets that they are trying to solve as well as solve the story that is happening in this game that is set in the same world as Time of Legends: Joan of Arc. But in this one they combined with Lucky Duck games that did Chronicles of Crime, so there’s app integration. And there is a scenario builder that people can use to create more, since out of the box it seemed to come only with a few. For me, I really want to try this one next year, and hopefully if I can make it to GenCon it’ll be there for demoing.

Pandemic Legacy Season 3 – Some of my best gaming experiences have been playing through the first two season. I’m so excited for the 3rd season and last season. I don’t know anything about the game, I just know that I want it and I’m going to be ready to play it the second that I get it. No official release date yet for it, but it sounds like it should be a 2020 release and I’m guessing first half of 2020. That’s about it that I know about it, but it’s an instant buy for me.

There’s so many games coming out and with my proclivity for campaign games, I need to get cracking on the ones that I already have. I need to figure out a more consistent time to play them on Malts and Meeples, but we’ll talk about that in a future article about New Years Nerdsolutions.

What games are you looking forward to, is there a game coming out or to kickstarter that you just need to play?

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

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