Hello, new to the forum and this is post 2 for me. Have listened to your guys podcast for months now and decided to join.
I have not played Via Nebula, but the box has been staring at me every time I wonder in my local game store. And I am not even familiar with el capitan. Most of my euros are mid weight Red Raven games.
Any who, I love board games and glad to see people talking about them on here. Does anyone have a love for abstracts like I do? Always looking for recommendations. My favorite games are the GIPF series, The Duke and Quantum. The more depth and strategy in a game with the least amount of rules as possible is usually what I shoot for. And I donāt necessarily care about theme, just want the game to be aesthetically beautiful. I saw someone mentioned Hive and I believe that game to be overrated.
Iāve played this one a few times but havenāt yet bought my own copy. I really like it! High quality components, and the central idea of pieces flipping to an alternate form of movement/capture every time they move is rock solid.
Anyway, I did get a playthrough of Via Nebula and I had nothing but praise for it. To quote an email I sent to a friend:
The stunning feature of the game is that it is a tactics-heavy and highly interactive euro game but it plays in about 45 minutes and I can actually explain the rules to people that arenāt full grognard. By comparison, Martin Wallaceās game Brass (about industrial tycoons in north england) takes about 2-3 hours to play and has a dense rulebook in very small type. The two games actually play fairly similarly so it is remarkable that so much of the experience of the heavier/drier game can be distilled into such a neat package.
Probably the best feature (for me, personally) is that the game has really well-made 2 player rules
Well, that might be enough for me to pick up a copy. Love quick playing mid weight euros. And here I thought I was done buying boardgames for the year. And also I play a lot of 2 player so if that is a homerun then I am very interested in this.
Cosmic Encounter was first published in 1977. Iāve only played the latest edition (from Fantasy Flight), but it is fantastic. The core of the game is composed of a bunch of crappy old gameplay mechanics that were miraculously implemented in such a way that they actually strengthen the experience. Itās very weird.
I like Cosmic, but Iām rarely playing it to win; that sounds like it would be extremely frustrating. You more play it to screw around and do dumb shit with your friends. Maybe Jordan gets some broken combo and is a dick with it all game, so everyone else conspires against him and tries to make a 4-way-tie where only he loses.
A great uncle on my fatherās side made a very simplistic board game about horse racing (involving hurdles, and needing to roll specific numbers on dice to jump over said hurdles) would hold up for me purely on sentimental value. I think about what wound up happening to it, now that said uncle and his wife have surely passed, and whether his son valued it like I did.
I finally played a Pandemic! Been meaning to for a while since I hear so much about it. We played the 1800 version and it was BEAUTIFUL. The game itself wasā¦ okay. Like other co-op games of this style, I feel like Iād rather just play it alone as a strategy game on the PC. The other players were really just extra heads since everyone moved their pieces based on advice of others. I mean, it was still a fun activity trying to solve the puzzle together, but it didnāt make a big impression. We won on our final possible turn.
I have the same problem with Flashpoint, which we also played.We played the DANGEROUS WATERS expansion, which is a super hard map set in a submarine. I enjoyed this because of how hilariously screwed we were.
At this point in time, thereās no reason to play vanilla Pandemic when Pandemic Legacy exists.
Like, even if youāve never played Pandemic before, just get pandemic legacy instead. I guarantee you it is a far more thrilling experience than the normal game.
I guess part of it is that while failure wonāt ruin the campaign, it will have lasting repercussions. The presence of real consequences to the game makes the tense moments feel genuinely tense.
Ok so thereās one reason not to play Pandemic Legacy. I canāt imagine that the whole structure of the game works at all if you canāt get a consistent group going.
