OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

[hepcat]

I finished session 2 of my third try at a campaign yesterday. The status doesn't really bother me that much as I rarely get more than 1 or 2 during a battle. And when you get the same one, it just moves that die to the back of the cooldown track. Also, don't forget that enemies pretty much ignore you when you're two tiles away from them or more, which happens in dungeons and delves.

Yesterday's session 2 closer was a dungeon....and I loved it. That mode is what got me to buy into this. And it does not disappoint. I still find the round limit of 6 rounds a bit annoying, but if you manage your overfatigue correctly and get one or two of the many items that manage the round die (ticking it down in some cases), you can probably last a few more rounds...or even more. Plus, many of the longer end session games involving delves or dungeons actually tick down the round die 2 to 3 numbers when you're halfway through, or have met a major goal of the quest's first part.

My observations so far are that two handed skills can devastate enemies...if you take care to control your cooldown. Those hefty damage numbers come with a huge price in adding light fatigue. And if you're not careful, you'll suddenly find yourself with no place to put newly exhausted dice and you have to drain them and add even MORE fatigue. It's a rough balance to maintain.

And light armor is a must if you go mage. The fact that it uses the magic battleform means it works with pretty much any magic school you go with.

[Skinypupy]

Also, don't forget that enemies pretty much ignore you when you're two tiles away from them or more, which happens in dungeons and delves.

I thought I read that enemies move 2 tiles towards their priority target if out of range. Or did I just make that up in my head, because it seems like the logical thing for them to do?

[hepcat]

Hmmm....I may be mistaken then. I just posted this question on BGG though. I've been playing that if not in sight, they don't move. It was part of my winning strategy in yesterday's dungeon even.

edit: Yup, I'm wrong. Damn it. There goes one of my winning strategies.

[LordMortis]

Two plus years in to the world of post employment and I'm still trying to convince myself that it's OK to spend money. I've been playing Ark Nova and Forest Shuffle a lot on BGA so I broke down and ordered physical copies that should arrive today in time to come to the table this week. $100 is nothing to most of you but for me it's therapy.

[disarm]

I haven't posted in this thread in a long time, but I'm trying to get my family back into games again. We started playing a lot while we were home during the pandemic, but that slowly faded out over the last year or two. To that end, I picked up a few new games to get us going again, and got my son to play with me last night...

Seaside - quick, easy tile-drawing game that you can learn and play a full game in 15 minutes or less. It's very simple, but fun as a warm-up or a game to take outside home

Horrified: Greek Monsters - grabbed this one because the Horrified series is well regarded and I thought my 10yo son would like the subject matter. We played twice last night and it was a lot of fun...got destroyed the first time, but got a pretty easy win using the same heroes/monsters the second time once we better understood how the game works. This was fun enough that I think we'll be going back to it a lot and trying to get more of the family to play with us.

Lastly, I finally got a copy of Pandemic and we'll probably play during tonight's snow storm. I'm familiar with it after playing a couple times with friends, and we enjoy Forbidden Island which has very similar gameplay but a little simpler. One of goals with getting into Pandemic is to get my family interested enough to give the Legacy series a try. The idea of a 'legacy' game is really cool to me and the Pandemic series are supposedly some of the best. We'll see how it goes...

[AWS260]

Then third was a game of Medina. Abstract city building game. You lay down wood pieces to build castles. But anyone can claim the castles but as soon as they do they can't grow anymore. The bigger the castle the more they score so you have to time it carefully. You want to build bigger castles but stop at just the right time so nobody steals your big castle. Fun quick abstract game. Highly recommended.

I played Medina for the first time tonight. Very fun! It's weird - because you're building the city together from a blank slate, the early game is kind of confused and meandering. But then the buildings start to take shape, and suddenly it's a cutthroat battle for real estate. Great stuff.

[Montag]

Played a second session of Arydia. Not very enthused about it yet. Combat has a complexity twist on where you hit your target based on the weapon type. It makes sense, but kind of clunky. Money seems too tight - especially with more players. You can get a new skill when you level up - but it may require you to go somewhere or meet some condition to actually use the new skill. Not thrilled about that.

So far I am glad it was somebody else's money. We will keep going and see if it picks up.

[YellowKing]

Our group played the final campaign scenario of Frosthaven last night. We've been playing since around this time 2023, almost every week for 2 years straight.

Unfortunately we got our butts handed to us, so we're going to have to drop a few levels and try again next week. Typically for a loss we drop the difficulty level by 1 and try again, but in this case we are probably just going to drop it to Level 0 just to get past it and move on.

As we did with Gloomhaven, we also plan on going back and playing any scenarios we never unlocked during the campaign. That should keep us busy for another 3 months, then we'll move on to our backlog of non-campaign one-off games.

I found Frosthaven to be largely superior to Gloomhaven in most ways for experienced players. The scenarios and characters were typically much more interesting mechanically speaking. The outpost stuff wasn't entirely well-implemented, but it did offer a fairly interesting side project to occupy us between scenarios. There were a couple of significant flaws that I won't go into due to spoilers, but on the whole certainly one of the most epic board game journeys I've ever experienced.

Coming to the end is a little bittersweet. While I'm definitely looking forward to knocking out a variety of other games (and eventually starting a new campaign dungeon crawler), an adventure of 2 years (nearly 4 if you count our Gloomhaven sessions) is not something you can just toss aside lightly.

[Fardaza]

Our group played the final campaign scenario of Frosthaven last night. We've been playing since around this time 2023, almost every week for 2 years straight.

Unfortunately we got our butts handed to us, so we're going to have to drop a few levels and try again next week. Typically for a loss we drop the difficulty level by 1 and try again, but in this case we are probably just going to drop it to Level 0 just to get past it and move on.

As we did with Gloomhaven, we also plan on going back and playing any scenarios we never unlocked during the campaign. That should keep us busy for another 3 months, then we'll move on to our backlog of non-campaign one-off games.

I found Frosthaven to be largely superior to Gloomhaven in most ways for experienced players. The scenarios and characters were typically much more interesting mechanically speaking. The outpost stuff wasn't entirely well-implemented, but it did offer a fairly interesting side project to occupy us between scenarios. There were a couple of significant flaws that I won't go into due to spoilers, but on the whole certainly one of the most epic board game journeys I've ever experienced.

Coming to the end is a little bittersweet. While I'm definitely looking forward to knocking out a variety of other games (and eventually starting a new campaign dungeon crawler), an adventure of 2 years (nearly 4 if you count our Gloomhaven sessions) is not something you can just toss aside lightly.

That is so cool. I wish I had a group like that to campaign with!

Definitely understand the bittersweet part though. That's been a major part of your gaming life and life in general for 4 years!

After you play a lot of one-offs and such, you should really consider Oathsworn: Into the Deepwood as your next campaign game. It should only take you about a year to finish!

[YellowKing]

Yeah I own Oathsworn so it's near the top of the list for next campaign game. I think the guys would really enjoy it coming off Gloomhaven since it's also card-driven and very tactical. Along with the town intermissions, it seems like a very natural progression from Frosthaven. We've also tossed around the idea of knocking out Tales from the Red Dragon Inn as a light palate cleanser before diving into something heavy.

As far as the game group goes, it came about completely by accident. We had a big ice storm come through 7 or 8 years ago, and my work was put on lockdown which meant essential employees had to come in and shelter in place. I was just getting into board gaming as a serious hobby at the time, so I threw Pandemic in the trunk of the car in case I got bored.

Well the overnight shelter in place turned into 4 days due to the hazardous road conditions, so we were definitely bored. I wound up teaching Pandemic to my co-workers and every night we'd play multiple sessions.

We had so much fun that we decided to start meeting after work once a week. By this point we were all picking up games (mostly co-op), so we'd meet in an empty conference room we were given permission to use and play whatever the newest shiny thing was.

The (real) pandemic hit in the middle of our Gloomhaven campaign, so unable to meet in person we still met over Tabletop Simulator and finished the campaign that way. We wound up losing our office space after the pandemic when everyone started working from home, so we started meeting at one of the guy's apartments. And that's where we've been to this day

One of the highlights of my first GenCon was getting to meet Matt Leacock (Pandemic designer) and tell him how his game had led to us co-workers becoming good friends who had bonded over many years of gaming.

[Fardaza]

Yeah I own Oathsworn so it's near the top of the list for next campaign game. I think the guys would really enjoy it coming off Gloomhaven since it's also card-driven and very tactical. Along with the town intermissions, it seems like a very natural progression from Frosthaven. We've also tossed around the idea of knocking out Tales from the Red Dragon Inn as a light palate cleanser before diving into something heavy.


One of the highlights of my first GenCon was getting to meet Matt Leacock (Pandemic designer) and tell him how his game had led to us co-workers becoming good friends who had bonded over many years of gaming.

That's excellent that you got to tell Matt that.

I'm waiting for Tales From the Red Dragon Inn to arrive from Kickstarter. That's going to be my next solo campaign game. Hopefully soon.