My group busted out a game of Eldrich Horror today, and I really felt it was too easy the whole time. It was a super goofy gaming experience. A bunch of different people came and left over the course of the game (making it a marathon, it was like 7 hours) and we ended up with a new player, and another playing a different character-slot than he started with.
We also played a game of Gloom, and that’s a pretty cool little card game.
I never really gelled with Eldritch Horror. I don’t think it has enough Mythos flavor to it. Plus, the little “adventures” that happen on each turn sometimes feel really out of place based on your location. For my money, Mansions of Madness is more where it’s at (once you get over the agonizing setup process (which I’ve read the expansions fix somehow)).
Huh. While I don’t think any of the “Cthulhu” games are really “good”, I definitely think Eldritch Horror is the best of them, as an experience generator (though story generators are all pretty interchangeable depending on what you prefer for your board game-fic mashup, I never got the privileging that Tales of the Arabian Nights has gotten because it’s pretty godawful taken as a game and the Arabesque mode it operates in feels disconnected from the source material)
The globe trotting gun toting adventure feels remarkably closer to short stories like “the Call of Cthulhu” whereas most terrible lovecraft nerds tend to forget that he was a pulp writer.
elder sign is fun, but even with both expansions (which both add stuff to make the game harder), it’s still very very easy.
also, it’s entirely about rolling dice, which a lot of people will have a totally justified dislike for
I really like Eldar Sign, and it’s probably my favorite Yahtzee-based game, but all of the FFG Lovecraft stuff is way too easy. I tend to play Kevin Wilson, although he hasn’t been involved with the games in the last few years, I don’t think.
That’s a long game. The longest I’ve seen is about three hours, I think, even with breaks. Here are my excuses for finding Eldritch Horror difficult:
One reason I like this game is that it serves as an alternative to Pandemic. I like Pandemic, but I think I have played it enough for a while. I don’t want to reach the point where I actively dislike it due to overexposure as with Settlers of Catan and Apples to Apples (only took a few games to reach that point with that one).
You don’t happen to play Warhammer, do you? I played Elder Sign once. I did get the impression that it was relatively easy. We seemed to win without too much trouble.
The real answer is to play Space Alert, the best co-op.
That’s almost always the right choice but it has a few drawbacks: it’s dramatically less fun with less than 4 players, and some people just don’t like the feeling of playing the game because of the combination of info-overload co-op puzzles and real-time decision making. (obviously I’m not one of them as it is one of my favorite games but some people just find the time pressure more torturous than fun)
I was pushing for Space Alert but the game library didn’t have it.
After playing it again recently, I’m tempted to say that Shogun is my single favorite board game. (The reworked Wallenstein one, I mean.) I wouldn’t want to be limited to playing it and only it or anything, but I really like its design. It’s a nice balance between a European-style game and so-called Ameritrash.
I like the realistic way that you give your orders for a season and you can’t just change your mind when events beyiond your control cause them to no longer make sense. And it’s hard not to like the tower that you use to resolve combat.
Last year, I had a chance to play the original Wallenstein for the first time, after owning Shogun for years. It was pretty much the same thing, so I liked it, too. I am almost tempted to get the new edition even though it would be a complete redundancy in my collection.
I’ve been super tempted to get shogun but everyone keeps telling me how glad they are that I’m pushing lighter fare (mysterium) lately and all my eclipse bros are finishing their early access games or doing law doctorates so I’m afraid I won’t find the time and it’ll sit
Nah, it was Case 2. Apparently Case 1 was brilliant, but alas.
I see people are talking about Eldritch Horror! I thought it was terrible and boring. We won, no thanks to me, I’m sure. Half the people playing lost interest half-way through (including me) while the other half were super into it. It just felt like I wasn’t really doing anything, even when I wasn’t just waiting for my turn.
I have been pretty negative in this thread so far, sorry everyone 
I like boardgames!! I just have been playing ones I haven’t cared for recently, it seems.
Mysterium is pretty great! Even if the game goes terribly wrong, it’s fun to watch the “ghost” squirm.
Maybe dumb question, but: When you play with two characters each, do you still follow the 2-player rules and setup, or do you play as if with four players?
four players 
Alright, finally got a chance to play with the Nethervoid deck in Tash Kalar tonight, and wow. They have a lot of insanely cool stuff, like the only one piece pattern in the game and on a heroic no less, a card that can bottom deck itself after being played, a card that can give you 2 extra actions, etc. They are balanced though by either having some kind of negative effect on you (eg spend an action doing nothing) or requiring a decent amount of set up to get the most out of, which is where the Gateway comes in. The gateway is a glass bead that you stick on top of your summons, and quite a few of the cards have effects that reference the gateway, like say Power Seeker, which if it is not the gateway, can take as many combat moves towards the gateway it wants to. In any case, Vlaada and his team did an awesome job in making a new faction that plays very differently from the existing ones.
man yeah pandemic legacy is fucking hilarious
yeah! How far are you? We’re into August.
going into june after two afternoons of being like “yeah let’s play one more” over and over again. we’ve lost once so far. i’m playing with just my girlfriend and we’re on 2x2 now, too, though we did start out just 1x1. we might not have tried 2x2, really, if not for my reading your post, but that does seem to be the way to go. if nothing else 1x1 seems like it might be on the easier side.
all the boxes and cards and surprises are cute, though i’m really impressed with the very novel options for rpg party-building and the seemingly increasingly heavy on-board consequences to everything. i didn’t expect to feel this way but i’m even excited to start a fresh game with some other friends of mine later this month.
i don’t know, i might just be overly enthusiastic about it because it’s so fresh still, but i think there’s some pretty inspired game design here on several different levels.
I think we’ve lost at least two or three times. Enough to get back up to 4 funding at which point it seems really hard to lose if you play well.