The NEW New Boardgames Thread

[CountDeMoney]

You can only stock up on so many copies of Connect Four and Stay Alive!, you know.

[Ed Anger]

I might just buy the Guns of Naverone play set.

[CountDeMoney]

So we're going to go there, are we.

[Ed Anger]

 

Possibly. Depends how long I stay awake.

[11B4V]

[CountDeMoney]

Pfft...gull wing prop aircraft?  Off the Independence? NOT

[Tamas]

To buy Leaving Earth or not to buy Leaving Earth, that is the question. My boardgame shop has it back in stock.


Also, I am looking for a good game on the fall of the Roman Empire period that's hopefully not out of print.

[Tamas]

Oh and I, of course, could not keep myself away from The Lamps Are Going Out, since its WW1.

I really really want to like it but it has two big flaws I think:

The smaller one is that combat favours the attacker, by default. That only means that the attacker wins ties, but considering combat is "who rolls higher with 1d6", that's quite a thing.
Trenches help but quite randomly, you can't really rely on them.

The bigger flaw is the technology system. It is pretty easy: each side has a deck of cards, which contains the techs, grouped into a number of categories. Each turn you draw a card, and if that is your next step in its category (lets say, you have Artillery 1 already and you drew Artillery 2, then you keep it and now have it researched), and if it is not, you put it back to the deck.

Easy, right? Except that this seem to have a total snowballing effect: if you are unlucky you will keep drawing from a deck of the same size, while every time you do get lucky the deck decreases, making it more likely you will make a further discovery making further ones even easier etc. I have yet to have a test game where one side didn't lollercoasted away in tech, and it can be absolutely decisive.

[Delirium]

Don't like the sound of that. I want to try Balance of Powers before I do Lamps are going out anyway though.

In other news I have tried The Supreme Commander (the flawed GMT game that was fixed extensively post release in 2013). It is also critically flawed in that combat is almost entirely attrition and no maneuver. You cannot move in zoc's at all and you get stuck in zoc's even in advance after combat. Armour has one advantage (besides higher MA) and that is to allow their stack an attack capability in a Follow up combat phase, but they cannot move before that. Coupled with a few other things France and the Low countries take forever to clear out, the designer Dan Holte admits that he usually conquers France "at the end of the summer" but several posters report on France falling rarely in their games. I tried three solitaire games and one ftf and got nowhere in 1940. The game needs variant rules but you sort of feel it shouldn't be necessary after the kind of overhaul GMT did already. Hugely disappointing.

[Valmy]

The smaller one is that combat favours the attacker, by default. That only means that the attacker wins ties, but considering combat is "who rolls higher with 1d6", that's quite a thing.
Trenches help but quite randomly, you can't really rely on them.

They were aware this was a WWI simulation right?

[Tamas]

The smaller one is that combat favours the attacker, by default. That only means that the attacker wins ties, but considering combat is "who rolls higher with 1d6", that's quite a thing.
Trenches help but quite randomly, you can't really rely on them.

They were aware this was a WWI simulation right?

It is weird!

Especially since the way the game works, after you attack (and flip your armies as a result, making them more vulnerable) you have the chance to flip them back for production points later on in your turn.

So assuming you are not attacking more than what you can cover with your production points, attacking does not weaken you before the opponent gets to attack you. While the enemy armies you managed to flip with your attack will be unable to attack (on account of being flipped) on their turn.

Which is fine to some degree, I mean attack should be incentivised, but together with the even rolls thing ends up with the weird feeling of being more worried about defending than attacking, in a WW1 game.

It truly is a shame as it is a quick to play elegant game that does give you WW1 flavour, but only when completely random factors align. The "proper WW1 flavour" is just one of the highly random probabilities happening.

So yeah, Balance of Powers is still the best choice on the realism vs complexity field.

[celedhring]

The map and the combat system made it look a bit like a gloryfied Risk when I first read about this game. Which wasn't actually that bad of a thing, I was looking forward to this as the kind of ersatz-wargame to lure my playing groups with. One of my friends is a WWI buff and would certainly dig the setting.

[Valmy]

Which is fine to some degree, I mean attack should be incentivised, but together with the even rolls thing ends up with the weird feeling of being more worried about defending than attacking, in a WW1 game.

To be fair, with the exception of the very first year of the war the defenders still got obliterated and took horrendous and roughly equal casualties. The attackers just never gained much ground.

[Tamas]

Which is fine to some degree, I mean attack should be incentivised, but together with the even rolls thing ends up with the weird feeling of being more worried about defending than attacking, in a WW1 game.

To be fair, with the exception of the very first year of the war the defenders still got obliterated and took horrendous and roughly equal casualties. The attackers just never gained much ground.

True, but the game works with huge areas on the map and cancelling retreat is restricted and is of horrible price (perma-eliminating an army. eg. permanently removing one of 9/10 french units in the game, to cancel a single retreat)

[Ed Anger]

Some old friends want to play wargames the day after Thanksgiving.

Will anything published after 1985 be played? Highly doubful.

Star fleet battles and Avalon hill flat box games. AGAIN.