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Mycelia Board Game Review

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Bugs: Recent Topics Paging, Uploading Images & Preview (11 Dec 2020)

Recent Topics paging, uploading images and preview bugs require a patch which has not yet been released.

Play Matt: Top Titles 25 - 1

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22 Jun 2020 00:01 #311269 by Matt Thrower
#24 Wrath of Ashardalon / D&D Adventure System
What makes it...

See entries 50-26 here.

#25 Ticket to Ride / Ticket to Ride: Europe

There’s a good reason why this has been a smash breakout hit outside the hobby: it is fast, fun and exciting. And for gamers, there’s just enough meat here to satisfy. The original has the nasty ratchet of predicting and blocking routes, while the Europe version is a little kinder and has a few extra strategic levers. It’s a game where you’ll never have a dull session and that, alone, makes it worthy of a top slot.

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22 Jun 2020 00:53 #311270 by Andi Lennon
I fear I must have missed something fundamental in my play-through of the D&D Adventure System-Castle Ravenloft as my whole group found it tedious in the extreme. Bad art, uninteresting combat mechanics, perfunctory writing etc. and yet I continue to see it lauded so it's a little perplexing and perhaps worth another shot.

I am however looking forward to both Pax Pamir 2e and Undaunted: Normandy which I have on the way.

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22 Jun 2020 04:10 #311272 by Matt Thrower

Andi Lennon wrote: I fear I must have missed something fundamental in my play-through of the D&D Adventure System-Castle Ravenloft as my whole group found it tedious in the extreme. Bad art, uninteresting combat mechanics, perfunctory writing etc. and yet I continue to see it lauded so it's a little perplexing and perhaps worth another shot.

I am however looking forward to both Pax Pamir 2e and Undaunted: Normandy which I have on the way.


You don't have to like a game just because others do. I'll agree that the card art and the writing is poor. Many of the early scenarios are quite easy, which some people don't care for in a co-op game but I prefer a well-pitched difficulty curve with some quick wins.

The main reason I like it is because it creates the sense of a living, breathing dungeon to explore, something almost no other co-op game has managed.

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22 Jun 2020 05:38 #311273 by Andi Lennon
Yeah it's not really a case of wanting to like it, more a nagging suspicion I might have somehow fucked up the rules. Which, given its simplicity isn't exactly a ringing endorsement of my intellect.

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22 Jun 2020 10:23 #311279 by Ah_Pook
I like the D&D games because they hit what I want it if a coop dungeon crawl well with a minimum of rules overhead or fiddly bullshit. Roll dice, kill monsters, find loot, fight a big bad at the end. It's simple and fun, and the rules get out of the way of having that simple fun.
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22 Jun 2020 12:34 #311283 by Jexik
Replied by Jexik on topic Play Matt: Top Titles 25 - 1
Okay, I know what to complain about now - Catan, Power Grid. Both of which I'd much rather play over Lords of Waterdeep, which I found immensely overrated all over the place.

As a resident PHG and Emerson Matsuuchi fan, it's nice to see Specter Ops up here.

Otherwise, great list and I wish I had played more wargames.
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22 Jun 2020 12:56 #311287 by Gary Sax
There's a lot more gold in the wargame scene than people know, there's just also a bigger tide of broken shit.
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22 Jun 2020 14:01 #311292 by Jexik
Replied by Jexik on topic Play Matt: Top Titles 25 - 1
Yeah, with wargames it seems like you basically gotta 'know a guy', and then that's your go-to person to play these mostly 2p games.

At the clubs I used to go to before all this, 2p games were very uncommon, and I never really thought to play wargames with my wife.
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22 Jun 2020 14:11 #311293 by jeb
Replied by jeb on topic Play Matt: Top Titles 25 - 1
I can't complain, other than to take ARKHAM 2e over 1e, but I get the sentimentality there. The rest of this all lines up with what I want in games as well. I might actually prefer 1960: THE MAKING OF A PRESIDENT to TWILIGHT STRUGGLE (am I allowed to say this?), but I'd need more plays of each to suss all that out.

Candidates where my top 25 differs from Matt's are probably:
WALLENSTEIN: cube tower used to cool effect, grindy attack mode to convinced taxed rabble to pitchfork other taxed rabble so they become my rabble, and tons of horribly misprounounced German make this a gem.

ACQUIRE: best gateway game that is also 50 years old. Great money game for folks that learned to deeply hate MONOPOLY.

SURVIVE: Best, most ruthless meeple game since CARCASSONNE, and definitely more overt about it. Yeah, I am sinking that boat.

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22 Jun 2020 15:03 #311296 by Matt Thrower

Jexik wrote: Okay, I know what to complain about now - Catan, Power Grid. Both of which I'd much rather play over Lords of Waterdeep, which I found immensely overrated all over the place.

As a resident PHG and Emerson Matsuuchi fan, it's nice to see Specter Ops up here.

Otherwise, great list and I wish I had played more wargames.


Thanks. I feel the same about Power Grid as you do about Waterdeep. Power Grid is just a maths lesson, except more expensive and time-consuming.
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22 Jun 2020 15:10 #311297 by Matt Thrower

jeb wrote: I can't complain, other than to take ARKHAM 2e over 1e, but I get the sentimentality there. The rest of this all lines up with what I want in games as well. I might actually prefer 1960: THE MAKING OF A PRESIDENT to TWILIGHT STRUGGLE (am I allowed to say this?), but I'd need more plays of each to suss all that out.

Candidates where my top 25 differs from Matt's are probably:
WALLENSTEIN: cube tower used to cool effect, grindy attack mode to convinced taxed rabble to pitchfork other taxed rabble so they become my rabble, and tons of horribly misprounounced German make this a gem.

ACQUIRE: best gateway game that is also 50 years old. Great money game for folks that learned to deeply hate MONOPOLY.

SURVIVE: Best, most ruthless meeple game since CARCASSONNE, and definitely more overt about it. Yeah, I am sinking that boat.


It's not sentimentality: I've never actually played Arkham Horror 2e. Just never felt the need to. I'm sure it's a superior game but when I've got the original, a bunch of expansions, a bunch of cool stories and a hand-made box I know I won't ever get rid of it, so I've never felt the need.

I did not like 1960. It seemed to have a bunch of pointless fluff elements and then just consisted of adding cubes, taking them away, adding them and so on ad nauseam.

Wallenstein is great - it's further up this list, somewhere.

Acquire is really clever, it's a game I admire as a seminal design but fundamentally it feels too much like hard work than a game.

Survive is okay, but I found it didn't deliver on its promise in the way I'd hoped. Yes it's great fun to pull tiles out from under your opponent's meeples and eat them but the hidden values make the whole game a crapshoot. As a result, you just can't gloat the way you want to.
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22 Jun 2020 16:11 #311300 by Gary Sax
Yeah, 1960 didn't work well with me either. It was missing all of the big dramatic swings (e.g. high stakes coups) of Twilight Struggle. Which I don't think is wrong, thematically, it just moves it way down for me gameplaywise.
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22 Jun 2020 17:25 #311302 by jeb
Replied by jeb on topic Play Matt: Top Titles 25 - 1
I think my heart can't take the gut-punch awfulness of playing some of the cards in TWILIGHT STRUGGLE when things swing your opponents's way. 1960 dilutes that to my benefit and your detriment, I suppose.

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22 Jun 2020 17:29 - 22 Jun 2020 17:30 #311303 by Gary Sax
I think the gut wrenching coup rolls are actually a feature, not a bug, but the absolute dependence on card knowledge to know some shit to avoid is a much more questionable decision. It means you have 0 chance against an even average player who knows the cards. I have mixed feelings about that?
Last edit: 22 Jun 2020 17:30 by Gary Sax.
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23 Jun 2020 03:02 #311308 by mc
Replied by mc on topic Play Matt: Top Titles 25 - 1
So the question is what gives the gut punch without the advantage?

I have been playing some Founding Fathers at yucata, and it's probably too early to comment - but it feels like the events on the cards can be massive, but because they represent people, they cycle through all the time, so knowing the deck for those one use kind of events is not a thing so much.

I don't know if it's gut punchy though in quite the same way.
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