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eHalcyon

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Kickstarter Games of Interest
« on: May 06, 2015, 10:10:14 pm »
+2

The previous thread ended up being a dumping ground for advertisements, so I thought I'd start a new one.  Please use this thread to talk about any kickstarter games you personally find interesting or worth discussing for whatever reason.  If you're a forum regular who is lucky enough to be publishing a game, that's worth sharing too.  If you are a random passerby who wants to advertise, you should plug it over here.
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eHalcyon

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Re: Kickstarter Games of Interest
« Reply #1 on: May 06, 2015, 10:11:28 pm »
+3

Lots of interesting games are up right now!  I am almost certainly going to back one, my friend is already backing another, and the others just look pretty neat.

Coup: Rebellion G54


This is the one I'm probably going to back.  If you don't know about Coup, you've been living under a rock.  It's an enormously popular bluffing game that is simple to learn and plays very quickly.  I actually hadn't played it until very recently, and found it mediocre, but I expect that it really shines when you play it again and again.

Before I'd even played it once, I was already very interested in Coup: Guatemala 1954, the successor to Coup.  The gameplay is almost identical, but the key difference is that there are 25 different roles from which you only choose 5 per game.  This kind of variety instantly grabs me in any game.

The KS campaign is for Rebellion G54, which is the same as Guatemala but with the same sci-fi theme as the most(?) well-known version of Coup published by Indie Boards and Cards.

Millenium Blades


I posted about this in the random thread, and this is the game that a friend is backing.  It is by the guys who produced BattleCON.

Millenium Blades is a CCG simulator.  In the game, you are players of a [fictional] CCG which is also called Millenium Blades.  Over the course of the game you will buy booster packs and singles, grow your collection, trade cards, build your deck and make friends with the other hobbyists (this is an actual mechanism in the game).  You'll also face off against each other in tournaments.  You'll earn points for all these things; you might not be the most competitive player of the CCG but you could still win just by having an awesome collection. 

The fictional CCG itself will evolve in different ways in each game because there are a bunch of expansions that may be released which won't be the same in each game.  Also, many of these expansions have hilarious themes.

All in all, it sounds like a really fun time, especially if you have nostalgia for any CCG as a hobby.

Speaking of CCGs...

Gruff


This is not a CCG, but it is a 2 player tactical card game in the vein of Magic or Hearthstone.  That puts it outside my wheelhouse, but it still looks neat enough to grab my attention and tempt me.

The game has several things going for it.  First is the theme.  The game is set in some sort of dark fantasy world where you play as shepherds travelling between worlds.  In order to protect yourself, you make use of horrendously twisted and mutated goat monsters.  It sounds hilarious and the art is just the right level of cartoony fun to make it work.

Second is the setup.  You choose a unique Shepherd and 3 unique Goats.  Each Goat has 15 ability cards from which you choose 8.  You shuffle them all together to form a deck of just 24 cards.  And then you go.  It gives you some of that deck construction feel but in a quicker, more concentrated form.

Third is the cost.  At $25, it's rather affordable. 

Anyway, I am probably not going to back it.  I am more interested in the Coup project and I still have a few finished campaigns that have yet to deliver.  I also rarely play 2p games and I'm actually not sure if I'd even enjoy this style of game.  But still, the project looks really neat.

Evolution


This campaign is primarily for a new expansion to Evolution, Flight.  It also includes some rebalanced cards for the original game (which was on kickstarter not too long ago, actually).  My understanding is that v1.0 was tested and balanced, but it turned out that inexperienced players tended to be less aggressive than expected.  The changes serve to tighten up the ecosystem so that there is less food available overall, forcing more direct competition and probably a few extinctions.

The game interests me mainly because animals are awesome and this game lets you make customized animals.  I am probably not going to back it because, if I did, I would feel too tempted to get both the base game and the expansion together, which is too big an investment at this time.

Finally, I wanted to mention...

The Titan Series


This is not a specific game, but rather a series.  The publisher has rounded up a bunch of well known designers (the titular "titans") who have committed to producing a gateway game each.  There is very little information available though, and it's a long-term investment if you buy in.  An interesting project, though one that doesn't tempt me much at all.

What do you guys think?  Did you back or receive a game recently?  Anything interesting on your radar?

Edit: fixing an image link
« Last Edit: May 14, 2015, 08:39:33 pm by eHalcyon »
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jaketheyak

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Re: Kickstarter Games of Interest
« Reply #2 on: May 07, 2015, 12:14:00 am »
+1

The Titan Series is an interesting concept, but I think it is a huge upfront commitment which expects backers to take a little too much on faith.
I mean, there are some pretty established names there, so I guess we can expect high quality games but, as you say, there is so little specific information about each.

And, even though it might save you quite a bit on the retail price, paying $145 up-front for a set of purchases that will dribble in over the course of 4 years is not very appealing at all.
That's assuming that it doesn't have the sort of schedule-creep that is almost inevitable for Kickstarter campaigns, especially a massively collaborative effort like this.

Oh, yeah, and the stated aim is for a set of "casual, family friendly, gateway games".
I think this is at odds with appealing to the sort of hard-core gamer demographic who might actually be interested in investing money up-front for a board games subscription.
« Last Edit: May 07, 2015, 12:15:28 am by jaketheyak »
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eHalcyon

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Re: Kickstarter Games of Interest
« Reply #3 on: May 07, 2015, 12:32:24 am »
+1

The Titan Series is an interesting concept, but I think it is a huge upfront commitment which expects backers to take a little too much on faith.
I mean, there are some pretty established names there, so I guess we can expect high quality games but, as you say, there is so little specific information about each.

And, even though it might save you quite a bit on the retail price, paying $145 up-front for a set of purchases that will dribble in over the course of 4 years is not very appealing at all.
That's assuming that it doesn't have the sort of schedule-creep that is almost inevitable for Kickstarter campaigns, especially a massively collaborative effort like this.

Oh, yeah, and the stated aim is for a set of "casual, family friendly, gateway games".
I think this is at odds with appealing to the sort of hard-core gamer demographic who might actually be interested in investing money up-front for a board games subscription.

I think the target audience is hardcore gamers who want gateway games to draw in friends and family.  But yeah, I'm with you on the rest.
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eHalcyon

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Re: Kickstarter Games of Interest
« Reply #4 on: May 09, 2015, 09:24:35 pm »
+2

So I backed the kickstarter for Coup: Rebellion G54 by Indie Boards and Cards, but I am finding their system off-putting.  They don't do stretch rewards anymore, but instead they do rewards for supporting them via social media, e.g. thumbing things on BGG.  Nothing is announced in advance though, so it may as well be arbitrary. 

They've added two things to the campaign so far, neither of them for G54.  First is a promo role for Coup, second are corrected player aids for Coup: Reformation (so apparently they were incorrect before).

Reading recent comments on the campaign, I learned that they added another Coup promo to the previous One Night Resistance kickstarter campaign.  The problem is that they don't intend to release that promo through any other source.  The takeaway for me is that there is a decent possibility that they may release G54 promos in the future that I won't be able to get unless I buy into a whole other game I may not want.  That's almost enough to put me off of it.  As it is, I intend to keep my pledge but I'll probably have to let go of my completionist tendencies as far as G54 is concerned.
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Re: Kickstarter Games of Interest
« Reply #5 on: May 14, 2015, 08:29:20 pm »
+1

Gruff seems pretty neat. I might end up backing it, it's quite affordable. I am moderately concerned about whether it can get stale quickly. Not knowing what the cards are, I don't know how much real variety they can bring (cf. Dominion base game).

Coup fits a pretty useful niche for me (short, accomodates different number of players, doesn't suck). But there's already a retail version, right?
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eHalcyon

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Re: Kickstarter Games of Interest
« Reply #6 on: May 14, 2015, 08:38:17 pm »
0

Gruff seems pretty neat. I might end up backing it, it's quite affordable. I am moderately concerned about whether it can get stale quickly. Not knowing what the cards are, I don't know how much real variety they can bring (cf. Dominion base game).

Coup fits a pretty useful niche for me (short, accomodates different number of players, doesn't suck). But there's already a retail version, right?

My understanding is that first there was Coup, then IBC created a sci-fi themed version for mass retail.  Then there was Coup: Guatemala 1954, which was a sequel.  Now IBC is kickstarting this with a similar sci-fi theme.  The different with this version is that there are numerous more roles of which you use a subset, much like how Dominion works.  Lots of people who have played Guatemala say that it "fired" the original game.  It's essentially everything Coup is and more.

I personally don't have Coup at all and was never really interested in it because I thought it could get stale pretty quickly (this is just groundless speculation though).  The variety in G54 theoretically remedies that.
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eHalcyon

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Re: Kickstarter Games of Interest
« Reply #7 on: May 14, 2015, 09:22:05 pm »
+2

Oh, this one is ending really soon (4 hours) but I think it's worth mentioning.

Xenon Profiteer


It's a deck builder with some unique stuff going on.  Going from memory (I watched rahdo's run through a few weeks ago)... Thematically, you are building a system/plant to extract Xenon from the air.  Every turn you have to add like five cards to your deck (representing various components of air).  Then you use your cards to try to empty your hand of everything but Xenon.  The deck building is Ascension style with an added bidding system.  There are two rows, one with cards for your deck and the other for contracts (various alternative goals, I think).  A neat thing with the regular cards is that you can pay a higher price to install it to your system so you don't have to draw and play it to use it.
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Re: Kickstarter Games of Interest
« Reply #8 on: May 15, 2015, 10:39:44 am »
+3

I personally don't have Coup at all and was never really interested in it because I thought it could get stale pretty quickly (this is just groundless speculation though).  The variety in G54 theoretically remedies that.

I love coup and it occupies a totally unique place in my game collection. Of course it is short, portable, and easy to teach, but rather than getting stale after playing with the same group, it actually gets more interesting. I wasn't really expecting this at all from that game, but in a group of people that gets really into it and is pretty good, the game becomes about a lot of bluffing and conventions.

Back when I was playing it dozens of times a week with the same group, the game kept evolving. As we would learn how people tended to play, they would adopt different styles and conventions to catch others off guard. The intricate balance of the roles and the self-balancing mechanics are what I loved best about the original, so while I'm excited about the new game, I am concerned it could lose some of that.
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eHalcyon

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Re: Kickstarter Games of Interest
« Reply #9 on: May 15, 2015, 12:25:00 pm »
0

The intricate balance of the roles and the self-balancing mechanics are what I loved best about the original, so while I'm excited about the new game, I am concerned it could lose some of that.

The new roles should still be balanced, and the nice thing is that you could play with the same set repeatedly if you wish.  Maybe you could do it just for the night, or more or less depending on mood.  I believe it's also recommended to use one each from specific groups of roles so you always have a money market, a role switcher, an attack, etc.
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Re: Kickstarter Games of Interest
« Reply #10 on: May 15, 2015, 05:24:41 pm »
+2

The previous thread ended up being a dumping ground for advertisements,

I thought I goofed, :(

Quote
If you're a forum regular who is lucky enough to be publishing a game, that's worth sharing too.

But then I felt better. :)
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Dsell

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Re: Kickstarter Games of Interest
« Reply #11 on: May 15, 2015, 08:53:28 pm »
+3

The intricate balance of the roles and the self-balancing mechanics are what I loved best about the original, so while I'm excited about the new game, I am concerned it could lose some of that.

The new roles should still be balanced, and the nice thing is that you could play with the same set repeatedly if you wish.  Maybe you could do it just for the night, or more or less depending on mood.  I believe it's also recommended to use one each from specific groups of roles so you always have a money market, a role switcher, an attack, etc.

The variety is why I am looking forward to the game, but the original roles were intricately and purposefully balanced. I'm sure the new cards will be balanced overall, but there's a difference between "nothing is very overpowered or underpowered" and "these roles were made to complement each other perfectly."
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AdamH

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Re: Kickstarter Games of Interest
« Reply #12 on: May 19, 2015, 09:00:46 am »
0

The intricate balance of the roles and the self-balancing mechanics are what I loved best about the original, so while I'm excited about the new game, I am concerned it could lose some of that.

The new roles should still be balanced, and the nice thing is that you could play with the same set repeatedly if you wish.  Maybe you could do it just for the night, or more or less depending on mood.  I believe it's also recommended to use one each from specific groups of roles so you always have a money market, a role switcher, an attack, etc.

The variety is why I am looking forward to the game, but the original roles were intricately and purposefully balanced. I'm sure the new cards will be balanced overall, but there's a difference between "nothing is very overpowered or underpowered" and "these roles were made to complement each other perfectly."

This. I snap-bought this game on Kickstarter when I saw this thread, but I have the same concerns. There's a good chance we'll just end up playing regular Coup after trying this out for a while.

For some reason, Coup has become very popular again in my IRL group. It seems like the go-to short game of choice again. Usually games don't make re-appearances here but Coup has done it. And I'm not complaining ;)
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Dsell

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Re: Kickstarter Games of Interest
« Reply #13 on: May 19, 2015, 10:15:30 am »
+1

The intricate balance of the roles and the self-balancing mechanics are what I loved best about the original, so while I'm excited about the new game, I am concerned it could lose some of that.

The new roles should still be balanced, and the nice thing is that you could play with the same set repeatedly if you wish.  Maybe you could do it just for the night, or more or less depending on mood.  I believe it's also recommended to use one each from specific groups of roles so you always have a money market, a role switcher, an attack, etc.

The variety is why I am looking forward to the game, but the original roles were intricately and purposefully balanced. I'm sure the new cards will be balanced overall, but there's a difference between "nothing is very overpowered or underpowered" and "these roles were made to complement each other perfectly."

This. I snap-bought this game on Kickstarter when I saw this thread, but I have the same concerns. There's a good chance we'll just end up playing regular Coup after trying this out for a while.

For some reason, Coup has become very popular again in my IRL group. It seems like the go-to short game of choice again. Usually games don't make re-appearances here but Coup has done it. And I'm not complaining ;)

It's coming back in my IRL group as well! We're excited about the G54 stuff. I played a lot on Sunday, and got to introduce a new player.
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eHalcyon

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Re: Kickstarter Games of Interest
« Reply #14 on: May 21, 2015, 10:56:22 pm »
+2

Mottainai


I expect that this will be of interest to many in the forums.  Mottainai is designed by Carl Chudyk, designer of Innovation and Glory to Rome; Mottainai is a spiritual successor to the latter.  Based on what little I know of GtR, it's actually pretty similar.  The game consists of 54 unique cards which all have (I think) 5 different uses.  It plays 2-3 and you can add a second deck to play up to 5.

It's worth noting that there is a free full-colour PnP available here.  Here are the rules, but you may find it easier to watch a video tutorial.  Here's a livestream they did recently where they did a very thorough rules explanation and then a 2-player run-through.

I wasn't interested at first, but the portability, simple aesthetic and elegant gameplay have won me over.  My main concern now is cost.  Factoring in shipping and exchange rate, it's actually pretty expensive for me.  I think this is one where I will wait for it to hit retail.

Assault on Doomrock - Doompocalypse


Doomrock is a fully-cooperative fantasy adventure game.  I was really interested when the game was up on IndieGoGo (largely due to rhado's run-through), but the price was really prohibitive.  The cost on this kickstarter campaign is much more reasonable.  In fact, it looks like it may be a better deal than when it hits retail (though the current retail price of Doomrock might just be due to availability).  They've already blown through most of their stretch goals, and a recent update suggests that the creators will not recklessly add new goals.  That said, they did add a really nice one that should be reached soon -- alternative female art on the back of all the hero cards.  Really cool.

I am not committed yet, mainly because most of the reviews I've read note that the game runs a bit long.  It's also a fairly significant buy-in.

Click Clack Lumberjack 2.0


I actually have almost no interest in this game, but I know that its previous iterations have been really popular.  This is apparently the best version yet of Toc Toc Woodman and Bling Bling Gemstone.  Notably, this one has a rhyming name.  Instant winner!  If you're into dexterity games and don't already have one of the aforementioned, this is worth checking out.





In other news, it looks like the Titan Series has reached its lofty $135,000 goal.  I hope it works out for all those long-term investors!
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eHalcyon

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Re: Kickstarter Games of Interest
« Reply #15 on: August 28, 2015, 06:28:05 pm »
+1

Dingo's Dreams


and

City of Iron (2nd Edition)


These two games are in the same kickstarter campaign from Red Raven Games, which ends in only 3 days.

Dingo's Dreams is an abstract family game by Alf Seegert.  You shift tiles around and it just looks really pretty.  I don't know if I'd actually enjoy it, but it's a cheap addition to what is (for me) the main draw of the campaign.

City of Iron already exists, but the second edition features improved art and various tweaks.  I was really interested a game back when it was new, so I'm on board now even though I can't remember much about it.  I do know that it features an asymmetric deck building mechanism, and I think there are elements of set collection.  I'm not really selling it well here, but there are various reviews for it available, like from Dice Tower and rahdo.

Red Raven Games does good stuff.  Check out the campaign!

Trove: The Crystal Caverns


Don't know much about the publisher.  The game looks really neat though.  Charming art and ambitious premise -- it's a game that tries to push asymmetry to the limit.  The players take on one of four roles that have radically different goals and options.

Meepillows


Not a game, just a thing.  Meeple-shaped pillows.
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popsofctown

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Re: Kickstarter Games of Interest
« Reply #16 on: August 30, 2015, 11:27:42 pm »
0

It seems like the kickstarter flow for such a large proportion of games indicates something wrong with the industry.  IDK.  It doesn't seem like the way capitalism usually tends to work when things are healthy.  Not a criticism of kickstarting in and of itself.

But I'm not really the target audience or anything anyway.  I just play the hardcore two player stuff like Magic. 
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Kirian

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Re: Kickstarter Games of Interest
« Reply #17 on: August 31, 2015, 02:45:15 am »
+3

It seems like the kickstarter flow for such a large proportion of games indicates something wrong with the industry.  IDK.  It doesn't seem like the way capitalism usually tends to work when things are healthy.

It's an economy of scale thing.  A large company can take a risk on something relatively unknown, or can spend large amounts of money promoting the product, or can spend cash on focus groups and market research to figure out how many units to produce... or all three.

Even the titans of the hobby gaming industry are not large companies*.  The crowdfunding setup allows smaller publishers to determine approximate interest and base sales projections and print run sizes on that information.

*One could make an argument for WOTC being a large company because it's part of Hasbro, but I think you know what I mean.
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popsofctown

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Re: Kickstarter Games of Interest
« Reply #18 on: August 31, 2015, 11:34:14 am »
0

So why don't we have more big companies?  There's big fishing and big toy companies.  Why isn't the industry big enough to support big companies? :(
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eHalcyon

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Re: Kickstarter Games of Interest
« Reply #19 on: August 31, 2015, 01:16:12 pm »
+2

So why don't we have more big companies?  There's big fishing and big toy companies.  Why isn't the industry big enough to support big companies? :(

Because it's a niche hobby.  It's growing, but most people still associate board games with Monopoly, Risk, etc. 
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Re: Kickstarter Games of Interest
« Reply #20 on: August 31, 2015, 01:50:46 pm »
+6

I was playing Powergrid in my FLGS. Some tourists walked in, and I heard the following exchange:
"What are they playing?"
"Some sort of Monopoly."
I cried a little.

Another good one was a lady that walked in, and got super excited, and started talking to us in the middle of a game: "I am so excited, I have no idea what this is, or what you are doing, but I feel like I just stepped into the set of the Big Bang Theory!". I was half expecting her to throw peanuts at us or something.
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Re: Kickstarter Games of Interest
« Reply #21 on: September 22, 2015, 03:03:19 pm »
0

So why don't we have more big companies?  There's big fishing and big toy companies.  Why isn't the industry big enough to support big companies? :(

Because it's a niche hobby.  It's growing, but most people still associate board games with Monopoly, Risk, etc.

Hello forum users.

I agree, it is a hobby, bit its comming slowly out its cave. In Poland few projects were crowdfunded by our kickstarter, one of this project is http://polakpotrafi.pl/projekt/diadem?utm_source=projects (its not mine, I post is as an example). As you navigate this website, you can see several such crowdfunds being succesfully. This makes me think that RPG games or board games are geting more and more interest. Still, they are - in majority - associated with Monopoly game type.

On the other hand, better the game = higher the price. Took me 13 years to develop my board game - big strategy world battle, and there is no way I could bring it to live as a full scale product delivered to customers, because 1 game would cost at least 500$, which is too much in my opinion if you ask me. After all I ended up having most uniqe strategy game ever created, which makes me happy. Speaking of crowdfund, I rather would turn to take such action with PC product at this moment. More chances to get funds (if product has potential) and final game would cost 1% of this price.
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Re: Kickstarter Games of Interest
« Reply #22 on: September 30, 2015, 10:12:44 pm »
+1

Anybody else intrigued by Campaign Trail? I backed it (which made me feel forever unclean, being a former FLGS employee). It looks like it might scratch my itch for a "generic" electoral game (Campaign Manger 2008 is so...2008, somehow  :P) and 1960 is both OOP and so...1960, somehow.  ???



And I'm interested in it almost entirely because it's the US presidential campaign. The use of independents as a third party/faction/team also seems like a reasonable thematic stretch. At least they didn't use the Reform Party or something!  :D
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Re: Kickstarter Games of Interest
« Reply #23 on: October 22, 2015, 07:40:11 am »
+2

Coup: Rebellion G54


This is the one I'm probably going to back.  If you don't know about Coup, you've been living under a rock.  It's an enormously popular bluffing game that is simple to learn and plays very quickly.  I actually hadn't played it until very recently, and found it mediocre, but I expect that it really shines when you play it again and again.

Before I'd even played it once, I was already very interested in Coup: Guatemala 1954, the successor to Coup.  The gameplay is almost identical, but the key difference is that there are 25 different roles from which you only choose 5 per game.  This kind of variety instantly grabs me in any game.

The KS campaign is for Rebellion G54, which is the same as Guatemala but with the same sci-fi theme as the most(?) well-known version of Coup published by Indie Boards and Cards.

This recently arrived for me and I finally got it to the table on Tuesday night. None of us had played with the expansion before, and we had a couple of people new to Coup (we played a game of base Coup first for them).

I felt like I had no idea what was going on in each game, which is pretty good, I suppose.

In base Coup, certain roles you claim are more likely to be challenged (Assassin/Contessa) and others are less likely (Duke/Ambassador). If you follow this intuition, you will get completely pwnt in this new game. It tends to vary with each game, but particularly the roles like Priest and General that target every other player and can be blocked only by other copies of that card: these became quite powerful because people refused to bluff them.

Like, Priest would be OP if people didn't realize they could bluff Priest to block and almost never be challenged -- most people won't challenge you over one dollar. That's exactly what happened so three people at the table complained loudly about Priest. General was a little different, once a single General had been turned up, one guy with a General and two life can use his ability, then when everybody claims General to block, he can just challenge them all and kill almost everybody at the table while staying alive himself.

The ways to play around some of these roles through bluffing are more complex because of the general imbalance present in each game, so adapting to and navigating through the imbalance of each game can give a big edge when done correctly.

I'm a little worried that people will think it's too random and that some roles are OP, but I don't think that's the case, and that hasn't been said by anyone yet, so I'm optimistic.
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thespaceinvader

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Re: Kickstarter Games of Interest
« Reply #24 on: October 28, 2015, 07:43:36 am »
+3

Probably worth mentioning Scythe which looks like a very nice euro-style 4x game with an excellent theme, and is published by Stonemaier Games who have a very strong reputation as a good publisher and a good kickstarter deliverer.

Closes on 5 November.
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