The NEW New Boardgames Thread

[bogh]

In completely unrelated news, I picked Paths of Glory recently and am trying to master it with my regular adversary. Any tips to help me humiliate him?

[Maladict]

Stumbled through my first Imperial Struggle game, up to the second war turn. Definitely not as clean and elegant as TS, but this could be a lot of fun.

[Habbaku]

In completely unrelated news, I picked Paths of Glory recently and am trying to master it with my regular adversary. Any tips to help me humiliate him?

Lots of random tips:


Race to LW and TW, attempting to get there before your opponent if possible.

Prune your deck of 2* events/CCs as much as possible.

If you don't plan on making a move in a theater, entrench to level 2 (as CP) or level 1 (as AP) ASAP. Hit a high-tide and then dig like your life depends on it. It'll make the RP calculus vastly stronger for you going forward.

Pick a power and hammer them. I typically drill the Russians or British as the CP or hammer the Germans as AP. You want the opponent *not* using his multiple country RPs as much as possible while your own losses are as multi-national as possible.

Get RPs, preferably early in the turn if possible so you don't feel pressured to get them later in the turn when your position can be harmed.

Plan to open new fronts where possible. "New front" being using the Turkish armies to cave in Basra or the Caucasus, or maybe even racing to crush Egypt before the AP gets Allenby. Possibly Italy if you're playing Sud Armee (a huge, huge card, possibly one of the best events in the game).

As AP, your "new front" might be the Caucasus or the Balkans, but a late-game one is pressure with Allenby. Either way, you have to prepare it, which brings me to my last point...

...SR. SR a lot. See those corps in your replacement box? You won't need half of them and things like Sud Armee or just using them to plug gaps in the line are immensely valuable. Don't leave your corps exposed to free-kill attacks, but do use them to shore your line up and turn your 10-strength German stack on the 9-11 column into a 12-strength German stack that fires on the 12-14 column. That shift is huge.

[The Brain]

Fuck that. Seduce his gf.

[bogh]

Great tips from both of you. Cheers!

[Oexmelin]

Mine has arrived. It's pretty, looks interesting, though less tight and elegant then Twillight Struggle.

Please share your impressions after play - it will be awhile before I'll get to play it.

So, my copy has also arrived.

First impressions: WTF is a camel doing on the cover illustration?

[Solmyr]

Playing through a solo game of IS, will try with a friend next week. So far, seems to require a lot of bookkeeping to keep track of who is winning in which region/market/war theatre, because there are no grades of winning like in TS, you win or lose everything.

[Maladict]

because there are no grades of winning like in TS, you win or lose everything.

Yes, but everything is scored simultaneously, so it typically more or less evens out.

[Habbaku]

I use small, colored dice and just update the award count that way in the middle of each turn. Keeping track of the global demand commodities is easier because there are so few to worry about, but the array of spaces for the awards can be easier to lose track of.

FWIW, the Vassal module is pretty good and has a running tracker for spaces, though I've found it has some bugs (and definitely doesn't subtract spaces for conflict marker placement).

[11B4V]

Ran across this. Ill have to give it a go this week.

[Tamas]

Another monster I will ever just solo IF I manage to squeeze it onto my table will arrive tomorrow: Stellar Horizons.

[celedhring]

With the sudden interruption of boardgame weekend with my friends for most of the year because yay covid, I'm thinking of soloing some of my unboxed boardgames. I have a huge table at least...

[Tamas]

Another monster I will ever just solo IF I manage to squeeze it onto my table will arrive tomorrow: Stellar Horizons.

If there is ever going to be a decent Vassal module for this, then there must be a Languish game.

It is basically a near-future empire builder in the solar system spanning about 120 years with yearly turns. So far as I can see it, the main avenue to victory is building as many settlements (each point of settlement on a base representing an increasing number of population, from 100 at level 1 to 100 million at level 60) as you can to gain VPs.

There is an exploration and research system that is quite competitive, and it allows for a gradual increase in efficiency and abilities.

The economy is not very involved but crucial, with 3 types of resources needed to build/repair ships and buildings. These are replaced just by money on Earth but lifting off Earth every bloody time you need to resupply a crewed ship or if you need resources to build a new building is bad business, so you will want to move resource extraction and shuip building off planet.

There is also combat. On first reading I really detested that there are space pirates potentially fairly early in the game, but I think they are a pretty neat mechanic: Ignoring if one pops up on a route you are using is expensive, so you will want to build one of your combat-capable ships to get rid of them. But when you have such a ship and your opponents don't, suddenly, embargoing them starts seeming like a lucrative and useful proposition, not to mention destroying their stuff. So once somebody builds a military ship or two, the others will be incentivised to follow suit, thus leading to potential escalation.

There can be up to 7 players.  I have no idea how experienced you have to be to finish a campaign game in one day even with 3 or 4, so it is well suited to online play in that regard.

You guys should check out the game, it's pretty awesome. It needs a LOT of space though. I can extend my table to a bit over 2 meters but it is a bit on the thin side of things, so I ended up having to pack up the planet tiles quite close together, but it is playable. What also helped is the excellent research sheet player aid someone did on Boardgamegeek, it saved me from having to lay out the MASSIVE tech sheet that comes with the game, and just mark and follow faction tech progress on a printed A4.

[Habbaku]

I waffled on buying that a bit ago but am pretty interested, overall. I'll look further into it, at least.

[Berkut]

Yeah, it looks pretty interesting.