The NEW New Boardgames Thread

[Syt]

I've gone through the rules of Legion of Honor (didn't play since I ended up playing Vic3 instead ). I'm sure the crowd here would "love" it, because it's very heavily chance/luck based.

Essentially, gameplay is divided into 16 "periods" which are further broken down into sub-sections, being in Garrison or on Campaign, depending on historical context. For each such section there's some basic management - finding a wife, getting/asking for a new assignment, trying to manage your finances/glory etc., before going into card drawing (almost every subsection has special cards for historical events or battles; in total you create a stack of 3 cards per player from the main stack plus period cards). You then take turns drawing those cards and following their contents. This could be something mundane, or the "special event" of that specific timeline (which sometimes ends the round), and then trying to make the best of it. In case of battles you can try to play it safe or try to win glory (at a risk to health/life/getting imprisoned). If two players are in the same battle, they can create some synergies. If you manage to climb the ranks there's optional (very simple) rules for commanding battles. At the end (Abdication & Return) players have to decide whether to declare for Napoleon or the Bourbons. If the latter it's essentially game over. If the former you have a chance at greater glories (including a chance at Napoleon winning at Waterloo), or prosecution afterwards, including losing money, ranks, or even being executed.

I think it's great for randomized emerging narratives (which I love), less so if you like strict control over the game's mechanics and the outcome. It would remain to be seen how it holds up when replaying, since the historical events will be the same each time. I might start a game with 3 or 4 characters (instead of solo) to see how that goes. I can see, though, how playing in a group can be fiddly, what with creating the card decks for each subsection of the history. On the other hand, it creates a good way of playing it in sessions instead of one big push.

[celedhring]

How does one ply a Gloomhaven game online?

IIRC we used Tabletop Simulator. It worked very well.

Same. There are a bunch of implementations that automate a lot of fiddliness.