Board Games!

[John]

Broke out Dinosaur Island last night for a learning game. My wife called it Stone Age Jurassic Park, which is a pretty good description. You’re finding Dino Recipes to help you build Dinos and stock up your different amusement parks. It reminded me of the one time I played Archipelago, where you have a couple different gameplay mechanisms trying to work together to affect different number tracks. It was confusing at first, but we got the hang of it by the end of the short game. We’ll try a Medium length game next now that we’ve worked out most of the rules.

I expected the theme to be a little too “hip” based on the Kickstarter videos and rulebook, but it was fine. We also got the expansion (Totally Liquid, adds in water dinos) and dice based 2-player only reworking (Duelosaur Island) in the Kickstarter bundle. Have to work through the first game a couple times first before digging further though.

[Egarwaen]

We've played a bunch of Dinosaur Island so I'm up for comparing notes. Our biggest complaint is that the game tends to finish extremely quickly even at medium length; it's very hard to get enough money to buy any significant number of attractions, especially since lab upgrades and specialists are both cheaper and accelerate the end of the game.

We tried one game with the water dinosaurs and did not like them; they felt super swingy and unbalanced.

[Karzac]

The new Game of Thrones expansion, Mother of Dragons, is very good. Highly recommend to anybody who loves the original and wants to spice it up. It adds so much to change the dynamic of the game.

[John]

Any 2 player variant in that expansion? I’ve wanted to get this to the table for years, but none of our board game friends here have watched the show, and the friends who have seen the show would be scared off by the game complexity.

[Karzac]

Originally Posted by John

Any 2 player variant in that expansion? I’ve wanted to get this to the table for years, but none of our board game friends here have watched the show, and the friends who have seen the show would be scared off by the game complexity.

No, the game just fundamentally wouldn't work with two players. I suppose they could release a two-player variant, but at that point they'd be better off just releasing a totally different game.

I will say that there's absolutely no need to have seen the show or read the books to appreciate the game. While familiarity certainly adds something, it's a great game regardless of your background with the source material.

[John]

Does anyone have strong feelings for/against any of the third party organizer/game enhancer companies? I’ve used box organizers from Broken Token, and think they’re fine, but overpriced, and don’t really like using wood with stuff like unsleeved cards. I like my Catan injection molded board, but the Kickstarter for that was apparently mismanaged and the dude lost everything.

I’ve recently been looking into player mat replacements for Terraforming Mars, and have seen some 3D printed Etsy stores, as well as GameTrayz as options. Broken Token has some too, but I’d prefer plastic/acrylic if I’m going to be touching the piece more often than setup/teardown.

[Sarcasmorator]

I just buy Plano/hardware boxes, which in my experience do the job a lot cheaper and more flexibly than custom stuff.

I've bought a couple things through Etsy for X-wing (movement templates), and like them. Most games I don't bother.

[Sarcasmorator]

So if you want a lighter, faster alternative to Twilight Imperium that's less econ-engine than Eclipse, you may want to check out Hyperspace, by the designer of Cthulhu Wars.

(I didn't work on this one :::cry::: but it looks cool!)

Also it's just $69 for the base pledge with four factions (there are MANY more as add-ons or in higher pledge levels), which is

NICE