Shipping Problems

So, like I said, I’m going to start with the big issue that is happening in board games, and generally just shipping period. Getting onto a ship or even into a shipping container costs a ton of money, way more than a lot of companies were planning for. This has especially hit Kickstarter companies. If a game as Kickstarted in 2019 and is shipping now, the amount charged for shipping would be vastly different. Along with that, manufacturing costs can also be higher.

Needless to say, this has hit some of the board gaming companies hard. There is one company that I know of which is asking people to pay additional shipping right now. They’ve already collected but the options are pay additional shipping, only be able to ship part of it, or wait on shipping until prices come down. Another has said that they will cover the shipping but gave a PayPal account. And another asked people buy/order from their webstore. Mainly because they make a standard profit on that, so it can help offset shipping costs.

Roll Player Promos

Thunderworks games as the company that asked for people to buy from their webstore if they could, to help offset shipping. While I already have most of what I want from them, all or Roll Player and Cartographers, plus getting Roll Player Adventures and the Cartographers expansion via Kickstarter. But I didn’t have the two extra character for Roll Player. They don’t really add much to the game, it is just more characters. But like I said, this was a way to help offset some of the shipping costs for Thunderworks.

Cartographers Playmat

Now, the promos were very cheap, I think $6 per promo, so I decided it’d be good to add something bigger. Had Lock-Up, their worker placement game set in the same world as Roll Player been available, I might have gone with that. But that was sold out, so I decided to get a playmat. This isn’t needed for the simple roll and write that Cartographers is, but it does help. Like with Welcome To the playmat just helps lay out the cards that everyone is using nicer. Plus the artwork and look of it is cool, so they not.

Now onto the expansion order:

Terraforming Mars: Turmoil

Turmoil, surprisingly, doesn’t make the game easier. in Terraforming Mars: Turmoil you now get planetary events, like sandstorms that can come in and mess stuff up. Plus there is a governing body that you want to control or at least influence so things that happen are good for you. Terraforming Mars gives you a lot to think about and this one just adds in a little bit more. I feel like with that and Prelude I now have two interesting expansions that I can mix into the base game.

Folklore The Affliction – Fall of the Spire

An expansion for an RPG in a box. Folklore The Affliction really tries to be that game that has you rolling dice, dealing with encounters and world events and finding a story. This just adds in more story and more game content. Folklore is a campaign game that I really need to get to the table sometime soon. Though, honestly it’ll be a bit because I have Aeon’s End Legacy to play through and we’ll see what I get to after that.

Tiny Towns: Villagers & Fortune

Finally, two expansions for Tiny Towns. Now, I like Tiny Towns, I think it’s a fun simple game, and that’s really why I got more of it. There a ton of different combos but when you’ve played with all the different buildings you’ve played with them. Even if you can mix them together differently. So what I’m hoping is that Villagers and Fortunes will both add in a little bit more content that’ll be fun to play around with. I don’t need them to keep playing TIny Towns, but I think without them the shelf life of Tiny Towns would be shorter.

Dune: House Secrets

This is one that I just pre-ordered today. While the others are either already here or will be shortly, Dune: House Secrets will get here in Q4 of 2021, so a few months from now. Why pre-order it? Good question, Portal Games does a great job of making sure that there are plenty of copies of their games. But with the pre-order that means that I’ll get some extra bonuses. For Vienna Connection, that was wooden tokens, some design diaries, and more. Just stuff to add to the experience, they are doing something similar for Dune: House Secrets, so I just wanted that extra little bit.

Plus, Dune: House Secrets is based off of the Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game system. I really like that system. It creates interesting stories and I love the deduction aspect that it gives you. So, I’m hoping that they’ll be able to leverage that into an interesting story of intrigue set in the Dune world. I like the Dune world/universe that is in the books, so I think that it should work well for me.

Which Do You Want To Play?

I have to be patient for Dune: House Secrets, so I’ll set that one to the side. Right now I think that playing Terraforming Mars is at the top of my list. I know it has a solo mode, but it’s a long game. Maybe I can get it set-up say this week after Aeon’s End and then leave it up and play it over a few evenings. Let me know which one you want to play.

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Anhk: Gods of Egypt

This is the last of Eric Lang’s “trilogy” of games, Blood Rage, Rising Sun, and now Anhk. This one I thought about on Kickstarter, but I’d just come off of Marvel United so I didn’t feel like I needed to back it. It was an interesting looking game and I like the Egyptian deity theme. I’m curious as to how it plays and if it’s one that should pick up. I didn’t back it on KS as well because I didn’t feel like I’d miss out on the exclusives that it had.

Akreis

This one might have been on last years list, but it’s one that I’d love to pick up. Just came to KS at the wrong time for me to back it. It’s a legacy style Egyptian themed game, and it looks fun. I like the minis in it, I like how they are leveraging almost an ICECOOL type thing where you have pieces of the box that are the board, so it’s not just flat tile pieces. I wish I’d had more of a chance to check it out at GenCon 2019.

Dawn of Madness

Pretty sure that this is another one that came to Kickstarter first, but it is from the same company that did Deep Madness a deep see themed horror game. This one is also a horror game, so I’m really interested to see what comes out with it, and might pick it up if they have any sort of webstore or way to get it. The aesthetic on it looks amazing.

Cubitos

Tis is a fun looking game from AEG that I heard about on Tantrum House’s YouTube channel as one of them had it as one of their top games in 2020, which is when they got to play it but for the rest of us it comes out in 2021. I like the idea of a racing game, and while I have a few, this one looks like it has a pretty fun look to it, and I’m just curious as to what it’ll be like.

Descent: Legends of the Dark

This new massive Descent game looks amazing. I love that it’s fully cooperative, I love that it has app integration, and while it is a spendy game for sure, I am really interested in how it will play. When Fantasy Flight talked about it, it looked really good, and I like the concepts behind it. I also like the artwork a lot, though I know some people don’t. And I like the app a lot, I am curious to see how much more it can bring to the game than the Journeys in Middle-Earth and Mansions of Madness app brings to that game.

Smash Up: Marvel

Now, I have previous owned Smash Up and I got rid of it. I love Marvel, so which will win out. I don’t have Marvel Splendor yet, even though that has a Marvel theme. I want to give this one a try though, because it’s not that I didn’t like Smash Up, it was just that Smash Up wasn’t that great a two player game which is what I was playing it at most. Maybe the Marvel theme will get me in.

Lost Ones

This is one that I had backed and then didn’t back on Kickstarter from Greenbrier Games. I think that this game looks really good, and I want to try it out, but the KS version that I would have gotten would basically have been the same as the retail version, or so it seemed, so it was one that I recommended but passed on. I do have a little concern about replayability, but the concept and world is so cool.

X-Men: Mutant Insurrection

Now, another Marvel themed game, and a game that I’ve kind of played before as it seems to have similarities to Elder Signs. I thought that the base Elder Signs was just fine, but I ended up selling it. This is one that again I’m curious about, but I’m a bit worried that if I get it, it might be lackluster. I’m hoping that this is something I can try before I’d buy it. And again, this isn’t because Elder Signs was bad, it was just that we’d played the base game a handful of times and seen what it had to offer.

Adventure Ink: Five Factions of Filigree

This was one that I heard about last year and it sounded cool. This game is a legacy game and it just seems cool. I like legacy games a lot, and I think that the mechanics all sound really interesting to me. It is a cooperative game as well, so you don’t need someone running the monsters or story, which is basically expected at this point. And it can be played as one off sessions as well, which is fun.

Hibachi

Another game that I backed and then did on Kickstarter, this one again added some but I don’t know that I needed more for this dexterity game. I love the theme of Hibachi with dexterity and the animal chefs are cute. I could see picking this one up and it being a hit for game nights for sure, but not one that I needed to grab off of Kickstarter.

The Libarians: Adventure Card Game

Another tough one for me, I played it at GenCon and I liked the game quite well. I thought it was a fun deck building, action point management game. I love the theme, but then on Kickstarter, I just couldn’t pull the trigger. I’m still not sure that it did enough that felt that cool to me, or that it looked good enough to really sell itself on the table, it’s a weird thing. But I kind of want to give it another go, because I did enjoy my playthrough.

Hanamikoji: Geisha’s Road

I don’t know much about it, other than it keeps the same theme and similar style of artwork to Hanamikoji which I love. So I am hoping that this one is equally as brain burning, fast, and enjoyable. And it’s against about winning favor and influencing where the Geisha go by giving them gifts, to which restaurant, so I’m excited for it.

Unmatched Marvel

So a game that I haven’t owned before is getting a Marvel theme. I was interested in Unmatched before, mainly as a two player game of some head to head tactical combat, but while the boxes they’d put out sounded fun, they weren’t up my alley, Marvel, of course is, and I like that it’s not hte standard heroes, there are two of them announced and one is Hell’s Kitchen, which is a great theme and fun characters.

And that’s a lot of games that I’m interested in, a lot of them I really want to check out and I’m hoping if GenCon happens in 2021 in person that I’d have a chance to wander around, try out a bunch and see what they are like. There are definitely a lot of cool games, a lot from Kickstarter, that are coming out, and this is nothing compared to what will actually come out in 2021.

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Nemesis

This was one of the first games by Awaken Realms that I took note of. I didn’t actually back it the first time around, so I’m waiting on my copy from the second Kickstarter for it. Plus, this one is available in retail now, still might be tricky to find. This is a semi-cooperative game where each person has their own secret objective. In the game you are trying to survive an alien incursion onto your space ship, kill them off, and pilot back to earth. But of course, the aliens are out to get you and the engines and navigation are off-line. Plus, you might not want to end up on Earth, but to go to another planet instead, or you might have a rivalry with another character, so you won’t kill them, but you won’t help them in an alien flight. This game looks beautiful on the table with all of it’s minis and the game play is good as well.

Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon

Another game by Awaken Realms, this one you’ll be able to find on the secondary market only, as I’m not 100% sure it’ll ever come to retail. But this is an epic campaign/adventure game in a wyrdness filled lands of Avalon, where the Menhir that King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table lit in the time of legends are starting to go out. A group was sent out from your town to explore and try and find somewhere or someone who could help in the lands, but they’ve been gone a long time. Now you and you and a few others in your town are being sent out to find them as the wyrdness and the tainted creatures start to come closer to the town. Can you survive? This game has a great story and is extremely hard as you push through it, trying to figure out how to survive, when to fight the monsters, when to run away, when to push into exhaustion and when to stop and rest. Overall, an amazing game, but like I said, it’s going to be harder to find.

Folklore: The Affliction

Maybe you want something that is a bit more standard fantasy, this game of ghosts, werewolves, and vampires, is definitely that, and definitely more D&D like. Greenbrier Games has created a DM less RPG type game, with set piece battles, travel and exploration and story that you can unfold as you go. This one is for that person in your life who is a bit more of a crunchy gamer as this really does straddle that line of being Dungeons and Dragons like with the dice you roll for attacks and damage. This one definitely has some challenge and survival to it, but as compared to Tainted Grail the difficulty level is easier and the story while dark is less dark. This one also doesn’t have the minis, though you could get them, and same with Tainted Grail actually, not that many minis. This one is also available via Greenbrier’s site, so one that you can get, it also might be available in some retail locations. There are a lot of small add-ons you can get as well for it, or big ones, such as minis.

T.I.M.E. Stories

This one is kind of a campaign game, but not really. In this game you are going through different scenarios in time and a multiverse, almost like an escape room. You are trying to figure out puzzles, deal with threats that come up, and interact with characters. You’re doing this as you race against the clock. Granted, only your consciousness is being sent back in time, into another body, so you can always try again. I know that some of the scenarios (and there is theoretically a campaign throughout, but not really) aren’t as good, but the four that I’ve played thus far have been a ton of fun. The puzzles are engaging, and while it can be a bit slow playing through part of the game that you’ve played before, it gives you a chance to checkout new parts of the story and world and decide what direction you want to go. I know that I always loved to delve possibly further in that I should have to see what I could find. Overall, a really cool game that has a lot of interesting scenarios.

The 7th Continent

This one has two different versions, there is a Kickstarter version that might be fairly hard to find, though I’ve started to see more show up on the secondary market, and there is a retail version. Both are going to be good, the retail version is just going to have some less content. In this game you awaken on the 7th Continent, an interesting land, knowing that you’ve been cursed. You then have to utilize cards, push your luck and explore the lands. Basically no minis in this game, but what is really interesting, and Tainted Grail does a similar thing, is what you explore the map as you go, and each curse might drop you into a different part of the map, but you’ll know what might be off in one direction if you head that way in future plays of the game. The first curse, for that reason, is extremely expansive and takes you all over the map and can take a very long time while ones after that are a bit more focused, so I will say, if you get this one or give this one, if the first curse is taking forever and you’ve sunk what you feel like is enough time into it, move onto the next one.

Now, i could go on further. Pandemic Legacy (any of the seasons) and Gloomhaven are two that I’ve talked about before that would certainly be epic games. Clank! Legacy, Aeon’s End Legacy, Reichbusters, deep Madness, Apocrypha, Dragonfire, Blood Rage, Zombicide, Mansions of Madness, Marvel Champions, Sword & Sorcery. All of these games have an epic feel to them at times and in their own way. So if none of the ones I’ve mentioned sound that interesting, you can spend some time going through those to see as well what might work best for yourself or who you’re giving the gift to.

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Pros

• Solo game play
• Theme
• Not a campaign
• Story elements
• Price for Retail
• Established Company

Cons

• Shipping
• Retail vs Minis Pledge
• Old style feeling stretch goals

The Page

This is a company that has run Kickstarters before for their Folklore: The Affliction and Champions of Hara, so they know what they are doing. With that said, I think it’s an okay laid out page. You get the idea and theme of the game well at the top, but in terms of actual game play, you get way more from the video at the top than you do from the game play section.

I will also say that there are parts of the page that don’t feel like a more recent Kickstarter, even two years ago this would have made sense, now it feels like it’s a bit out of date. The pledge levels for example, there is the retail pledge and the minis pledge. Honestly, nothing too odd about that, but the minis pledge level has more game play to it as well. So if I want to get all the game play, I need to get the minis as well. This then continues into the stretch goals where some are just for the minis level and some will also be in the retail level. It feels like there is a level missing, like it should be retail which is just the game no stretch goals unless it’s a cosmetic upgrade, linen finish on cards stuff like that, standees version, cheaper than the minis version with all the game play additions, and then one with the minis. At least that’s what it seems like a lot more are doing, instead of me now guessing what stretch goals I might get or not. I can understand why a company would do it that way, I just think it’s a bit messier than some other ways of handling it and feels like there is more of an upsell going on with this one.

The artwork, though, is outstanding on the game, and definitely provides that classical fairies and magic feel to the game that it really feels like they are going for.

The Game

So the game itself has a lot going for me, I like that this is a narrative driven game where you have branching choices of what you can do and depending on what you find and what skills you’ve used before, your options might be limited because of that. I really like the fae setting, that is something that I’ve always really enjoyed in books and movies and games even other games. Stuff like The Dresden Files leans into it heavily or anime The Ancient Magus Bride, I’ve even picked up a fae book for D&D monsters.

Beyond the theme, I like the push yourself element to the game where you have skills or abilities basically that are cards you can play out of your hands. As I talked about above, you spend those, you don’t have them potentially for a narrative challenge you need to deal with and you’re going to be dealing with that in a different way than you’d have preferred. Not only that but they don’t refresh automatically, you need to find a place to rest, basically, and then you’ll refresh your cards back to your hand. This almost has a bit of a 7th Continent vibe in how you are pushing forward but trying to balance card use with the risk, and the exploration element also lends itself to that vibe as well.

There are a couple more things game play wise that are interesting and maybe slightly concerning. The first is that this is not a campaign game, normally I get really excited about campaign games, or this sort of theme would be a campaign game, but I love that this is a game that takes about an hour to an hour and a half to play, and you still get some narrative with the encounters you have and what you find. But with that, I’m slightly worried about long term replayability. I’m worried that if I see 60-70% of the tiles each game, even with me potentially not having all options open for that I do, that the narrative will run out or I’ll start to know, giant green mushroom, don’t eat it, little blue mushroom, eat it, yellow mushroom, eat it if you play this card but not this card and it either won’t be as interesting or it’ll become something where I try and optimize the game, and this doesn’t feel like that sort of game.

Back or Brick

This one was a pretty easy Back for me, the theme and the exploration really make the game interesting to me. I love fae stuff, I think that’s an element of fantasy that is not delved into nearly as much as it should be. The only thing I don’t like, right now, is the upselling that is going on with this, you get more if you get the minis. I get that they have a super deluxe version that comes with extra games, but I want the game play for this without the minis, though I get it, it the minis look amazing. It makes me wonder if this is something worth backing on here, or how much I’ll actually save versus buying this later retail. With that said, and with my concerns about replayability, everything else sings to me about this game from the artwork and theme, to the game play itself, so I’m backing this now that the retail level with maybe getting pressured into the minis level.

Is this a back or a brick for you?

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