Octopus Overlords

baelthazar wrote:

Lorini wrote:Had great games of Caverna (Agricola II), Russian Railroads and Wildcatters! Playing Kohl & Kolonie today.

Hey! Where did you get Caverna already?!

Pre-ordered it from the Funagain Essen crop and paid $109 for it. Yep, that's right, $109!! I LOVE the game though so worth it to me. Supposedly it will be 'out' on December 20th. Now I don't know if that means retailers or distributors but it should be on the shelves by the beginning of the new year either way. Keep in mind that the lowest anyone can charge for the game is $81. Caverna fixes the issues I had with Agricola. The main issue was the cards, the random card combos and the need to draft cards. That added length to an already long game. No cards (in hand) for Caverna, there are buildings instead. Much easier to deal with and play against. The next issue I have with Agricola is the importance of the Family Growth space. That's much lessened. In the four player game there's three Family Growth spaces, one at the start and two more as the game goes on. Also each Dwarf (player piece) is only worth a point instead of three points. Lastly, you can win the game with only three Dwarves if you work hard at it. The only problem is that there is a LOT OF STUFF in this game, making set up and take down take some real time. Game weighs 10 pounds when you get it, just to give you an idea of what's there.

I'll be playing it again as soon as possible, but not today because there will only be three of us and I really like the 4+ Caverna game best.

You only paid $20 more than I did, so I would say that was well worth it. As you said, they are supposed to be shipping this out soon, but there are rumors of a wood shortage that might block some pre-orders. I placed, on a whim, a pre-order with CLS Games in Atlanta (the ones that have listings in nearly every BGG marketplace). They were the earliest to list and I thought I would try them out for a change. I hope that doesn't bite me in the rear, given that CSI now has it listed for pre-order.

I am very much looking forward to it and your recommendation makes me feel even more excited. My wife and I like Agricola but, as you said, the cards are a PITA and unbalance the entire thing. We tried the drafting mechanic, but we spend like 30 minutes purely on drafting! This is why we prefer All Creatures Big and Small, because of the lack of cards and the purity of focus.

Besides... this is Agricola: Dwarf Fortress Edition, so I HAD to get it.

Introduce three of my friends from work to RoboRally. It was as much fun as I remembered and they all had a great time.

The last copy I physically played was the original release at least 15 years ago. I was a little disappointed in the quality of the components in the Avalon Hill re-issue, but the game-play was still there.

baelthazar wrote:You only paid $20 more than I did, so I would say that was well worth it. As you said, they are supposed to be shipping this out soon, but there are rumors of a wood shortage that might block some pre-orders. I placed, on a whim, a pre-order with CLS Games in Atlanta (the ones that have listings in nearly every BGG marketplace). They were the earliest to list and I thought I would try them out for a change. I hope that doesn't bite me in the rear, given that CSI now has it listed for pre-order.

I am very much looking forward to it and your recommendation makes me feel even more excited. My wife and I like Agricola but, as you said, the cards are a PITA and unbalance the entire thing. We tried the drafting mechanic, but we spend like 30 minutes purely on drafting! This is why we prefer All Creatures Big and Small, because of the lack of cards and the purity of focus.

Besides... this is Agricola: Dwarf Fortress Edition, so I HAD to get it.

Yeah I'm hoping that my pre-order from CSI comes through fine. I really like the idea of Agricola without the cards and a little different taste to the game. I like Agricola, don't get me wrong, but the cards... are just not my favorite. All Creatures Big and Small is a little more fun IMO, although not as deep. We will see if my order is fulfilled in December like it says it should be.

Shinjin wrote:Introduce three of my friends from work to RoboRally. It was as much fun as I remembered and they all had a great time.

The last copy I physically played was the original release at least 15 years ago. I was a little disappointed in the quality of the components in the Avalon Hill re-issue, but the game-play was still there.

Love that game. Never fails to have the whole table laughing.

Just because I have to stand up turn around to figure out if I need turn right or turn left.

Just remember to rotate your hands outward and you get the proper direction. It makes it so that you won't be staring back over your shoulder as you try to orient yourself when you're pointed toward your own chair.

The last time we played, I finally taught myself "rotate left" means counter clockwise and "rotate right" means clockwise. The orientation of my bot and figuring out it's left and right doesn't matter if I think turn clockwise or turn counter clockwise. While I have no spacialrelationship intelligence at all, you don't need any to know how a clock turns... That only took me about a decade to figure out.

Maybe I should work on a hex-based version with 60-120-180 turns...

Either that, or someone should just bring Powerboats.

Woo, Robinson Crusoe is apparently being unloaded at the Z-Man warehouse. Now to see if it makes it over to Amazon at a reasonable price, or if I'm getting a copy of Eldritch Horror instead.

Had the crew together this last Saturday.

We played: BSG with the Daybreak expansion. Umm... Humans lost badly, and the mutineer did not come out until after the sleeper phase, which we barely made it to.

The Demitrius ship was a cool addition, but never really got to be used, as we never had enough people to actually cover what needed to be done. Played with 7, with a Cylon leader and the one cylon came out in turn one and he was our second pilot, I was the other pilot, but our hanger kept getting damaged, and I spent 1/2 the game in the sickbay. And for some reason my teammates did not trust me, so they would XO everyone but me, and then get mad when I had no cards to play and help them. <sigh> So I was a human and lost.

Then we played Smashup, Steampunk Dino's seem cool, but did not play well together, and with 7 playing it was a little longer than usual. I lost this game, also.

Then we played Munchkin with 8, and that was fun, again long with that many players. I lost as well.

Then we had a few leave and played 6 player Spartacus. Wow, this game is rough, but is an absolute blast! Glad you all convinced me to buy it.

I was in contention for the whole game, and it came down to the last arena combat, that was forced into a Primus. But the only way I was in contention was I had to discard my 3 gladiators to gain an influence. So the organizer was the other in contention, and he choose me and one other guy to be a team, and then two others against me. I had umm..given up my gladiators, so I had to send in a 1,1,1 slave. Yeah, he didn't last long, and my teammates Gladiator, who was a stud, did okay, but 2 on one, and one of them had a ranged weapon, so he was pretty much dead as well.

But fun was had by all, and reading some of the flavor text in Spartacus calls for ensuring no kids were around.

Chaz wrote:Woo, Robinson Crusoe is apparently being unloaded at the Z-Man warehouse. Now to see if it makes it over to Amazon at a reasonable price, or if I'm getting a copy of Eldritch Horror instead.

And Letters from Whitechapel reprint has arrived at FFs warehouse. Merry Christmas to all.

Goddamit, I want that too. My wife might actually enjoy that one. I don't know that she'd be so into Eldritch. She'll probably like Crusoe as long as we get to use the dog.

Chaz wrote:Woo, Robinson Crusoe is apparently being unloaded at the Z-Man warehouse. Now to see if it makes it over to Amazon at a reasonable price, or if I'm getting a copy of Eldritch Horror instead.

On Friday, our FLGS had a copy for like $120 or some similar insane amount. I couldn't convince myself to pull the trigger.

RMC wrote:Then we played Munchkin with 8, and that was fun

Nuh-uh

As a matter of principal, I refuse to pay more than MSRP for a game.

LordMortis wrote:

Chaz wrote:Woo, Robinson Crusoe is apparently being unloaded at the Z-Man warehouse. Now to see if it makes it over to Amazon at a reasonable price, or if I'm getting a copy of Eldritch Horror instead.

On Friday, our FLGS had a copy for like $120 or some similar insane amount. I couldn't convince myself to pull the trigger.

RMC wrote:Then we played Munchkin with 8, and that was fun

Nuh-uh

hehe... One of the new guys to the group brought it, and had a ton of the expansions, so we played with the Cthulu and Vampire(Bites I think it was called) expansion.

I still like Smash-up and Legendary better as card games, but for a quick, stab everyone in the back game it was fun.

I still have to get my group to be able to 'break' up and play two games at once. We can now have 8 or even 9 with girlfriends/wives show up to play. I don't have that many games that scale that high, so I would love to get everyone to agree to play two games at once.

And if anyone ever needs it, I actually buy subs from Walmart for 30 bucks for a huge 6ft sub(well really 6 - 1 ft subs in a box). It feeds almost everyone, it actually tastes good, and compared to everything else it is cheap.

I think we might get together on New Years Eve and play all day and night, so I might pick up a new game...Wondering what sounds good...

RMC wrote:I think we might get together on New Years Eve and play all day and night, so I might pick up a new game...Wondering what sounds good...

As Remus noted, redrun picked up Trains this weekend and I'm really digging on it. It's a card shuffler, whose card dynamic is a clone of Dominion with the addition of actual interaction amongst players by including a board, where you build stations to collect victory points and rails to either build more stations or connect into stations that other players have already built.

The board game aspect adds a lot of strategy to the Dominion style of game. My only criticisms are:

1) They should (have) put more emphasis on the rail and station building.
2) There are too many card cycle cards in this basic edition of the game.

Even so, I think the basic edition of Trains is away better than Dominion and all of its expansion (that I've played). The game is a lot less like four people playing solitaire together.

LordMortis wrote:

RMC wrote:I think we might get together on New Years Eve and play all day and night, so I might pick up a new game...Wondering what sounds good...

As Remus noted, redrun picked up Trains this weekend and I'm really digging on it. It's a card shuffler, whose card dynamic is a clone of Dominion with the addition of actual interaction amongst players by including a board, where you build stations to collect victory points and rails to either build more stations or connect into stations that other players have already built.

The board game aspect adds a lot of strategy to the Dominion style of game. My only criticisms are:

1) They should (have) put more emphasis on the rail and station building.
2) There are too many card cycle cards in this basic edition of the game.

Even so, I think the basic edition of Trains is away better than Dominion and all of its expansion (that I've played). The game is a lot less like four people playing solitaire together.

Hoping to get Trains either for Christmas or afterwards.

Anyone played Hegemonic before?

It's a space game like Eclipse, and I don't think I will buy anymore space type games until Eclipse is played out, but one of the guys I game with said it is pretty good.

Anyone have experience with it?

Adding Trains to the "check it out" list... dammit.

coopasonic wrote:And Letters from Whitechapel reprint has arrived at FFs warehouse. Merry Christmas to all.

Showing Dec 20th availability.

Lorini wrote:

baelthazar wrote:

Lorini wrote:Had great games of Caverna (Agricola II), Russian Railroads and Wildcatters! Playing Kohl & Kolonie today.

Hey! Where did you get Caverna already?!

Pre-ordered it from the Funagain Essen crop and paid $109 for it. Yep, that's right, $109!! I LOVE the game though so worth it to me. Supposedly it will be 'out' on December 20th. Now I don't know if that means retailers or distributors but it should be on the shelves by the beginning of the new year either way. Keep in mind that the lowest anyone can charge for the game is $81. Caverna fixes the issues I had with Agricola. The main issue was the cards, the random card combos and the need to draft cards. That added length to an already long game. No cards (in hand) for Caverna, there are buildings instead. Much easier to deal with and play against. The next issue I have with Agricola is the importance of the Family Growth space. That's much lessened. In the four player game there's three Family Growth spaces, one at the start and two more as the game goes on. Also each Dwarf (player piece) is only worth a point instead of three points. Lastly, you can win the game with only three Dwarves if you work hard at it. The only problem is that there is a LOT OF STUFF in this game, making set up and take down take some real time. Game weighs 10 pounds when you get it, just to give you an idea of what's there.

I'll be playing it again as soon as possible, but not today because there will only be three of us and I really like the 4+ Caverna game best.

I agree with everything Lorna says about Caverna, it's been a lot of fun and a refreshing change from Agricola. I've played my copy several times since BGGcon, although I am completely missing 1 punchout sheet. We'll see what Asmodee does for me.

SpaceLord wrote:I agree with everything Lorna says about Caverna, it's been a lot of fun and a refreshing change from Agricola. I've played my copy several times since BGGcon, although I am completely missing 1 punchout sheet. We'll see what Asmodee does for me.

Asmosee's quality control is pretty pretty bad if 7 Cities is any indicator and I was none too impressed with their customer relations or turn around time to resolve a problem. But the good news is that they seem to eventually resolve most of their problems, even if it takes many months. Reading back in this thread, it took about 4 months for them to send me non differentiated cards for 7 Wonders and they refused to replace my German boards with English boards, insisting that they boards made no difference.

Luck to you!

LordMortis wrote:

SpaceLord wrote:I agree with everything Lorna says about Caverna, it's been a lot of fun and a refreshing change from Agricola. I've played my copy several times since BGGcon, although I am completely missing 1 punchout sheet. We'll see what Asmodee does for me.

Asmosee's quality control is pretty pretty bad if 7 Cities is any indicator and I was none too impressed with their customer relations or turn around time to resolve a problem. But the good news is that they seem to eventually resolve most of their problems, even if it takes many months. Reading back in this thread, it took about 4 months for them to send me non differentiated cards for 7 Wonders and they refused to replace my German boards with English boards, insisting that they boards made no difference.

Luck to you!

Wow, I was thinking of getting 7 wonders, but no way I will buy something from a company that has that kind of track record. Is this normal for them? I would not want a German board, I would want an English one and they would not be the same to me...

Anybody get a chance to try out the new edition of BattleLore? I liked the first edition, but always felt it was missing "something."

Mayfair/Lookout Games are the publishers of Caverna, not Asmodee. Send Hanno (username Hanno) a geekmail on boardgamegeek and see what he says. Most copies of 7 Wonders now are fine by the way.

Lorini wrote:Mayfair/Lookout Games are the publishers of Caverna, not Asmodee. Send Hanno (username Hanno) a geekmail on boardgamegeek and see what he says. Most copies of 7 Wonders now are fine by the way.

Cool. I'll just do some checking up on it and go from there. Thanks.

RMC wrote:Wow, I was thinking of getting 7 wonders, but no way I will buy something from a company that has that kind of track record. Is this normal for them? I would not want a German board, I would want an English one and they would not be the same to me...

Their entire run of cards was messed up for the second (third?) printing, so there were a lot of us who had to wait. I don't know about boards. I never heard anyone else complain but I wasn't looking for other complaints. This was in 2011, so you should be fairly safe from the effects of debacle.

Caverna is shipping to Mayfair pre-orders right now so look for it on shelves this weekend.

Lorini wrote:Caverna is shipping to Mayfair pre-orders right now so look for it on shelves this weekend.

Hopefully that means it will be waiting for me at my door when I get home from Christmas break.

RMC wrote:

Lorini wrote:Mayfair/Lookout Games are the publishers of Caverna, not Asmodee. Send Hanno (username Hanno) a geekmail on boardgamegeek and see what he says. Most copies of 7 Wonders now are fine by the way.

Cool. I'll just do some checking up on it and go from there. Thanks.

I only mentioned Asmodee because when I emailed the German Lookout guys, they actually told me to email Asmodee. It didn't make any sense, but I did it anyway. Of course, A. replied they don't have anything to do with Caverna. Through BGG, though, I found an email of someone at Lookout that's been dealing with the missing sheets. We'll see what they do.

So the Robinson Crusoe reprint went up for sale on the Z-Man website yesterday afternoon, for full retail plus shipping. Then was sold out about an hour later. This does not give me a lot of hope for getting a copy. Hopefully they just sent most of their copies off to retail...

They had to have had SOME idea of demand by now and should have printed accordingly. I have less and less respect for Z-Man the longer this goes on.

I am refreshing CSIs releases and restocks page way too often, looking for both RC and Whitechapel.

I have had pretty good luck with my FLGS as a source for the really hot, in-demand board games like this. When I was looking for Robinson Crusoe the first time around, all the online shops were sold out before a lot of stores even got their stock in. I was able to call my FLGS and have them reserve me a copy when it came in. It took awhile, but I got it. When I picked it up, I asked how many they received and how many people had asked for it. They only got the one copy, and I was the only one who called about it. Sometimes I think board gamers are so conditioned against paying MSRP at their local game stores that they overlook it in situations like this.

CSI will not be getting Caverna until the beginning of next week at the earliest and maybe not until after Xmas. Everyone else is getting their stock this week it seems. Again think about supporting your local FLGS if you have one, since you only get a 10% online discount.

hepcat wrote:They had to have had SOME idea of demand by now and should have printed accordingly. I have less and less respect for Z-Man the longer this goes on.

Apparently another shipment is expected in January.

Lorini wrote:CSI will not be getting Caverna until the beginning of next week at the earliest and maybe not until after Xmas. Everyone else is getting their stock this week it seems. Again think about supporting your local FLGS if you have one, since you only get a 10% online discount.

I wonder if CLS will get it in stock? I took a gamble with them, but I was getting a bit weary of CSI and MM. I do not anticipate getting the shipment before I leave to see family, however.

There was a copy of Robinson Crusoe sitting at my FLGS several weeks after release. I sort of wonder if it is still there...

baelthazar wrote:

Lorini wrote:CSI will not be getting Caverna until the beginning of next week at the earliest and maybe not until after Xmas. Everyone else is getting their stock this week it seems. Again think about supporting your local FLGS if you have one, since you only get a 10% online discount.

I wonder if CLS will get it in stock? I took a gamble with them, but I was getting a bit weary of CSI and MM. I do not anticipate getting the shipment before I leave to see family, however.

There was a copy of Robinson Crusoe sitting at my FLGS several weeks after release. I sort of wonder if it is still there...

I think that there is a store in Cleveland, right by the airport that has this in stock. Or at least it was in stock not that long ago. So if you are by Cleveland, there is a copy there. He's expensive, but a good guy.

Tonight, the annual "what games do I schlep across the state to play with family and friends over the holidays?" exercise gets to happen. The one time of year I really hate my 100+ game collection. So much potential...so many hard choices.

This usually coincides with the "remember Thanksgiving, and how you only played 3 of the 12 games you brought" exercise, which is usually followed by the "middle-aged man realizes he wants to bring more games than clothes, takes a hard look at life choices" exercise.