The NEW New Boardgames Thread

[Tamas]

What's the big deal with Thunder in the East? I developed a headache trying to browse the rules.

[Berkut]

It looks pretty.

I like games where I can build up and break down units

I like games where the various sides actually look different in how they are structured, rather than just having different combat values

I like games that I think find the right scale for their conflict.

[11B4V]

It looks pretty.

I like games where I can build up and break down units

I like games where the various sides actually look different in how they are structured, rather than just having different combat values

I like games that I think find the right scale for their conflict.

plus Frank Chadwick

[Berkut]

It looks pretty.

I like games where I can build up and break down units

I like games where the various sides actually look different in how they are structured, rather than just having different combat values

I like games that I think find the right scale for their conflict.

plus Frank Chadwick

Does he have something to do with the game?

[11B4V]

It looks pretty.

I like games where I can build up and break down units

I like games where the various sides actually look different in how they are structured, rather than just having different combat values

I like games that I think find the right scale for their conflict.

plus Frank Chadwick

Does he have something to do with the game?

Unless in mistaken, he's the designer.

[11B4V]

Finally picked up a copy of Where There Is Discord: War in the South Atlantic

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/35614/where-there-discord-war-south-atlantic/credits

Currently digging into The Defense of Rorke's Drift

The Defense of Rorke's Drift

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/7840/defense-rorkes-drift

[Tamas]

Pendragon is awesome. The bots appear pretty good, at least playing as the Civitates, I can't really have a cooperation with the Dux, so that ought to make it a bit easier on bot barbarians, even though bot Dux are pretty decent mopping them up.

It is very cool to see Roman Britain gradually unravel, with you trying to slow the process long enough to win the game.


Gandhi is also pretty great, in a lot of ways on the opposite end of the Coin spectrum. Pendragon is full of little rules that are great for simulation purposes, but make it quite the monster game, almost.

Gandhi is much more elegant, and the non-violent factions are done excellently, I think. As the Raj they pose a tough challenge. If you want to curb them quickly, you end up helping their agenda with your actions, and if you're slow and lenient then you may not be able to stop them from winning. The traditional violent insurgent faction can also be trouble, of course, but dealing with them is standard COIN fare.

The Gandhi bots are using a partial card-based system, I am not sure what to think of it. It makes the bits much more variedand unpredictable, and the way the system works, if a faction desperstely need one kind of action it will end up doing it, but on the other hand, there is less of an illusion of an overall scripted plan, as with the other COIN bots.

[The Minsky Moment]

Gandhi is also pretty great, in a lot of ways on the opposite end of the Coin spectrum. Pendragon is full of little rules that are great for simulation purposes, but make it quite the monster game, almost

Which is a little odd because there is a lot of rich historical information we have about pre-independence India for simulation purposes whereas we know virtually nothing about the period covered by Pendragon, such that the game necessarily is a fantasy scenario, or at best extreme speculation. 

[Tamas]

Gandhi is also pretty great, in a lot of ways on the opposite end of the Coin spectrum. Pendragon is full of little rules that are great for simulation purposes, but make it quite the monster game, almost

Which is a little odd because there is a lot of rich historical information we have about pre-independence India for simulation purposes whereas we know virtually nothing about the period covered by Pendragon, such that the game necessarily is a fantasy scenario, or at best extreme speculation.

Well yes of course, and Pendragon acknowledges this. It's hard to explain if one hasn't played a COIN game. They are very euro-ish but manage to maintain an air of historical simulation, even if highly abstracted.

One cool thing about these games is the historical background info provided in the playbook on the different events depicted on cards. In Gandhi, these are almost all some single, well-documented events, acts, articles, etc. as you mentioned, and these have quite obvious links to their in-game effects. In Pendragon it's more about historical places/sites/events, often with a lot of speculation, and an in-game effect very loosely tied to them.

[The Minsky Moment]

I'll probably pick it up - I do have interest in the period and it sounds like one of the better efforts in the series.  Curious to see how they handled things.

[Tamas]

I'll probably pick it up - I do have interest in the period and it sounds like one of the better efforts in the series.  Curious to see how they handled things.

If you have played any of the other COIN games and were generally ok with it, then I am sure you'll like it, considering your interest in the period.

But as someone's very first COIN game, it might be tough to digest.

[Habbaku]

Pendragon is definitely one of the few (the other is Fire in the Lake) COIN games that I think might actually map system to topic. Many of the rest (especially, for example, the American Revolution one) just seem so ham-handed in shoving the square peg of four players into the round hole of however many factions should actually be involved.

[Habbaku]

John Company (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/211716/john-company) continues to entertain amongst my local group.

We had a pretty...unique situation yesterday. At a full table, we ended the first turn with the company barely making enough money to sustain trade for turn 2's operations. And then turn 2's end saw failures to conquer, failures to trade, depression in every Indian state (4 events turn 1, 3 events turn 2, most of which were depression results), and then the events at end of turn 2 destroyed 7 ships that conducted trade. Combined with the bailout that triggered and some untimely retirement rolls, we ended up with only 1 Presidency actually operating in the next turn.

A few players kept injecting capital to keep the company going a few more turns, but the debt pileup ended up resulting in rolling bailouts, a revolving-door of retirement/firings, and eventual collapse when the last President standing deliberately tanked operations due to being ahead in VPs (final scores being 8, 7, 6, 5, 5, and 3).

[Oexmelin]

I am looking forward to the second printing next year. Thinking of offering an elective « History through board games » as I just discovered my only grad students is really into it.

[Habbaku]

It is definitely one of the best boardgames to show the fucked-up incentives that the entire operation was laboring under. Cole Wehrle got everything right in that department.