What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Dark Castle is one of those games where you can’t go into expecting the ultimate gaming experience. It’s silly, not at all serious, capricious, and your enjoyment depends on just taking it for what it is.

Charlie, which expansions do you have? I really like the look of that shuttle...You know it’s weird but I think that the maybe co-op, maybe not thing makes it more suitable for multiplayer than most skirmish games. I am interested to see how it incentivized teaming up.

Michael Barnes wrote: Dark Castle is one of those games where you can’t go into expecting the ultimate gaming experience. It’s silly, not at all serious, capricious, and your enjoyment depends on just taking it for what it is.

I don't mean to sound overly confrontational, but the latter part is bullshit. I took it for precisely what it is, but unfortunately it didn't deliver neither as a game, nor as a storytelling device. While I liked the dice resolution it became too simple in the long run. It never really feels like your choices impact the situation. Which would be okay if the game had something else, but it really doesn't. Because all the events stand alone, the only thing connecting the first part of your adventure to the next is your current health level. This is much the same in Dungeonquest, but in DQ you also have the room layout and possible several situations in which something bad did or didn't happen. In EtDC almost all encounters will slowly grind down your health and that's it.

I really like the artwork and I think all the cards in themselves have some pretty neat storytelling. But as a whole the experienced story was pretty bland because it has no structure. And the same goes for the choices in the game. I don't believe that all game should have "meaningful choices" or anything, but this really have too few.

It's great that you like it and I'm not trying to take your experience away from you. But saying that my lack of enjoyment of the game comes from me playing it the wrong way is a bit arrogant when I try to explain precisely why it didn't work for me.

No, I think you are misreading me here or I may not have been quite clear with what I meant by that.

This game is a big ol’ tribute to Fighting Fantasy and similar 1980s game books. The gameplay (which is, as you correctly observed, slight at best) is very similar and the whole “you find a noble wandering the dungeon for no apparent reason” thing is straight out of them. The books usually had weird non-sequiturs and a sometimes awkward sense of disjointed narrative. The aim of the game is to create a very specific kind of atmosphere, and it totally succeeds at that.

So all of that is to say if you aren’t on board with that, and if getting to that atmosphere isn’t as important to you as the gameplay or if you are expecting something else, then it’s not going to work. This is totally a game that isn’t for everybody. One of my first thoughts about it was people are going to hate this.

So yeah, if you don’t accept or like what it is trying to do, you aren’t going to go for it. Which I totally get because what it is doing is frankly atavistic and out of step.

One more thing. I think you are absolutely right, Michael, that in order to enjoy EtDC you have to "take it for what it is". It just seemed from you post that you assumed I hadn't done that.

Missed your post before replying to my own.

I see your point about Fighting Fantasy and there are definitely similarities. I absolutely love the FF books, and there is one important difference: the books have structure and - to some extent - a branching narrative. By turning left in the Deathtrap Dungeon you find something you don't find by turning right. By being lucky you discover an item you don't find if you roll too high and so on. Having random encounters and drawing random items doesn't, in my opinion, create the same sort of story.

That being said I think the dice system in EtDC is a bit more interesting than the one in the Fighting Fantasy books

Quick edit:
Also I don't hate the game in any way. I think it has a log going for it, but in the end it just fails to deliver consequences in either the narrative or the game system.

Played LAMA , the SdJ nominated Knizia card game from last year, 6 times at game night last night and today with my wife and man it's a really great family card game. If you like that kind of thing you should get this one asap. We played it at the end of the night last night, some players being quite inebriated by that point, and it was perfect. It's feather light, but the decision to push your luck and stay in by drawing a card vs folding is nicely tense (sometimes), the game plays lightning fast, and there is generally much merriment in watching people eat 25 points in a round or clutch going out to drop 10 points and steal the win. It's kinda push your luck Uno without the take that. I can't emphasize enough, this is a super light family card game. Don't go in expecting anything but that. But it's a great one!

Game 2 of Arkham coop LCG. It still isn't really clicking for my spouse, still a big barrier to entry.

We'll see.

Re AHLCG, the starting decks are trash and there aren't enough cards in the base set to build better decks or really do any deck building. So it's kind ofa catch 22. The game feels bad with the starter decks so you don't know if you're into it, but the only way it will feel better is if you drop a ton more money on it to see if you actually like it with proper decks and deckbuilding.

That is tricky. If I had to guess, there is less than a zero percent chance my spouse will deck build anyway in her first 10-20 games given how overwhelming the unique card text wall is in the game in every facet.

Arkhamdb has a billion online decks also, and you can filter by content owned. If you do buy more stuff you can just grab some net decks and cut out deckbuilding altogether until you want to mess with it (assuming you ever do).

That is a good suggestion. I'm waffling on buying all the Dunwich stuff because the game has only gone over marginally well in the first two games, but I find it interesting so I think it would get some solo play even if my spouse is like fuck this thing.

A question for Charlie about Core Space.

How would the system be without the campaign rules? Does it work as a series of one-offs or does it need the character progression to shine?

I decided to introduce my two sons to Root. This was because they had really enjoyed Lords of Hellas, so I was hoping they would also like Root. This would also give me an opportunity to get Root to the table, as it has been a shelf toad.

My one son chose the cats, as I expected him to, and the other chose the Woodland Alliance, as I expected him to. I took the Birds. This was my first crack at the birds.... what a disaster. Also, teaching this game just plain sucks.

I never drew the right cards to make my decree function, and ended up going into turmoil 3 different times. I lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 points due to this. Meanwhile, the alliance did not understand what they were supposed to be doing until way too late. The cats could not be stopped and easily claimed 30 points. Second place was sitting all the way back at 14 points and I think I had 7.

One son (the winner, not surprisingly) enjoyed it while the other gave it a solid "eh."

It sure seems like how much someone likes a game the first time they play it has a lot to do with whether or not they won. If I went by that metric, I would hate almost every game I have ever played.

hotseatgames wrote:
It sure seems like how much someone likes a game the first time they play it has a lot to do with whether or not they won. If I went by that metric, I would hate almost every game I have ever played.

Hell, I teach almost every game to almost every group I play and still manage to almost never win the first game. I probably concentrate on getting everything right and making it run smoothly too much when I teach (and not enough on actually playing to win). I think Wasteland Express Delivery Service was the last game I won the first game of and that was maybe a year ago?

And, in regards to Lords of Hellas post above, I don't think I've ever felt like I wasn't at least in contention to win at some point...maybe I'm just clueless when I am completely out of it.

bendgar wrote: A question for Charlie about Core Space.

How would the system be without the campaign rules? Does it work as a series of one-offs or does it need the character progression to shine?

That's an interesting question. I think the individual plays would be just as enjoyable as the core mechanisms don't rely on campaign progression or an overall narrative to be fulfilling, but I think without the campaign functionality you'd have a very limited lifespan. In that format I wouldn't really recommend owning it although I would recommend playing someone else's copy.

The hitch is that preservation of your crew is a large part of the game. It's about assessing risks and trying to determine how long you should hang around attempting to complete the job once shit hits the fan. The robotic enemy called the Purge eventually show up and you need to be on your way back to your shuttle when it gets really nasty. Getting caught in a choke point is terrible, although I will say my best experiences with the game have been when I've asked another player for help and they've risked their crew to help me evac a fallen dude.

If one of your guys drops and you don't actually drag their body back to your ship, then you have to roll on this chart and it can be bad. It's not quite the serious injury chart from old Necromunda but it can cost you precious credits and you can possibly lose them for good.

In a campaign format, actually accomplishing the objective is less important - which is really interesting. In my last play, we were doing a four player with two players each running a single character in a crew. So kind of 2v2 but each side just one contained crew. My side found some really exceptional gear (a military line rifle which was worth a shit ton and very effective), so when the other group pushed faster than us to nab the incriminating data card objective, we felt less pressure to stop them or start a fight over small potatoes. You get rewarded for accomplishing the objective, but you don't get penalized for not fulfilling it. Money is always the big incentive, so scrounging can be just as rewarding (ideally you salvage and accomplish the mission).

The campaign progression is 50% loot and 50% skills. It's interesting because there's a pretty solid amount of equipment in the game and each expansion adds more for you to come across and mess with, but your characters can carry very little. It places a bit of tension around salvage and forces you to leave equipment slots open for hauling gear back, possibly leaving behind some cheaper pistol to drag that shiny new rifle with you.

The skill progression is excellent in my eyes. You gain more powerful skills more rapidly than most games, but you are still limited within a mission of only using a couple of your abilities over the course of play. So progression tends to lead to a wider menu of abilities but you really need to be picky about choosing your spots and when to unleash them. It lends a more gritty feel to play as your characters are heroic, but not at all super-heroic. Yet they're capable of those individual moments of bravery where they nail that difficult shot and sprint across open ground unperturbed.

The rulebook has a series of linked scenarios to form a narrative campaign, but the campaign rules themselves don't require this. You could play random scenarios you devise yourself or ones you find in the different expansion sets just fine, linking them in your head with your own narrative with the primary goal of your campaign being simply to survive. You could also likely have two different players with crews at different strengths and it wouldn't be a problem as long as someone wasn't envious. The power level in this game is not so important due to the overwhelming Purge countdown.

Michael - I bought two more crew sets (one with the robot and one with the big alien), the hardback book (unnecessary but some interesting advanced rules as well as rules for gangers and security neutrals), and more of those plastic peg holders for larger games with four players. They also sent me advanced copies of the Purge Outbreak expansion which adds new Purge types and the Zed's Bar expansion which adds gang minis I think (or maybe security). I haven't opened the latter two expansions yet but need to get around to reviewing them.

I really like how the additional crew add new equipment and a single scenario in each box. I love those little equipment tokens and how they're able to pack some actual personality into such a concise stat line.

Also, one really unsung boon in this game is that you can use any character mini as a civillian. Each stat board for characters has a civillian stat line on the reverse. Not that civvies are wildly different or anything, but it's still neat to allow new options.

My only complaints about the game after a number of plays now, is that I wish it was a touch easier to play four players with the base sized map. It works, but it's a bit tight and overcrowded. 2-3 players is better, unless you plan on having two players control a single crew and just each control a character or two (which does work well actually). I also wish the scenarios were a little more varied as they kind of always focus on getting to one spot and performing some checks, then getting out. This isn't a system problem but merely a designer one. Maybe they'll get more adventurous in the future.

I'm also eyeing that shuttle Michael, will probably order it next time I make a purchase. Would like to wait for some other bigger expansions to come out first to save on shipping.