I love Smallworld, and yeah, I never get tired of it. Another one whose rules are pretty straightforward is Power Grid, been playing it for years and it hasn't gotten old yet (except for the sometimes pretty sudden and ruthless endgame).
Do you find the replayability of smallworld is largely due to the randomisation of which (race, attribute) pairs are available per game?
Arguably Dominion has good replayability for similar reasons: you only play with a subset of the cards every game, and a lot of the strategy revolves around exploiting interactions between different cards. On the other hand Dominion is one of those games where there is very limited interaction between players, which perhaps doesn't make for great replayability.
I also play Hearthstone, the Blizzard card game, and that's a pretty awful example, sometimes, of bad randomization with all those effect that can range from harmful to do nothing to win the game on the spot.
The randomization in Smallworld is good because you always have a certain amount of control over it and you can plan for it/around it. On top of that the power swings are not really extreme (some race - attribute combos are stronger than others but the overall power range is reasonably small).
The rulebook for chess and go is zillions of published books on pattern matching and book openings and book responses. To play at a high level you have to memorize and perfectly apply uncountable zillions of rules and patterns or you'll just be destroyed by someone who's memorized more rules. If you don't know all the chess book openings and you play against someone who does know them, you may as well just save everyone some time and immediately resign. Much like MtG, how much time and money are you willing to spend to win? This turned me off from the whole genre of "memorize and pattern match" games, I just don't find that to be recreational.
The pinnacle of large rulesets is RPG games, anyway. With the possible exception of some 80s classics like squad leader and starfleet battles there are no rulebooks that compare in size to the foot or so linear shelf space of a full set of Pathfinder rulebooks.
Strategy/tactics != rules. The rules for chess and go are simple. The gameplaying that stems from those simple rules is obviously quite complex--and, as you say, it has been deeply studied so anyone wanting to play even somewhat competently needs to have a passing understanding of quite a bit. But the rules themselves (especially with go) are quite straightforward compared to most modern adult boardgames.
So what is it you're really asking for? A game where even a beginner can beat a long-time fan, yet one that is interesting? I think those goals are conflicting unless we're talking pure gambling.
A game that was basically an IQ test might work as well. Like having to solve those abstract pattern matching or 3D-to-2D geometry questions. Maybe. I'd guess there's some slight advantage to having answered many of such questions, but I doubt it is nearly as big a difference as, say, studying Chess or Go.
I actually find that the opposite works for most cases.
The best board games are the ones that are either a take on "common social games" or have a fairly simple ruleset.
The problem with complex rulesets is that they tend to make rounds very long which when you combine it with 4-6 players makes games drag for considerably longer than they need to be.
The worse games are the ones that try to mitigate that with multiple victory paths often partially RNG based or silly "sudden death" rounds after an arbitrary round count to force games to last no longer than 60-90min.
Sure you can point to games or systems like D20 but even then the core ruleset is fairly simple and uniform and the rest is just ad hoc that can be used rarely or not at all.
The one thing you need for a good board game is to have decent strategic depth with mechanics that induce interesting social dynamics, a lot of games try to implement the former by making it complicated by design and forget the latter.
Go/baduk would be the most obvious counter-example here. It has something like 9 rules in total (depending on how you count them) and has been replayed for more than 5000 years.
It targets a very specific kind a board players. The one with dozen of boxes on their shelves, with titles you never heard of. I got a friend like that, every time he invites me for a game afternoon it's always a ton of fun... after the boring 2 hours spent for the new comers to adjust to the rules.
So yeah, not for everybody, but I look forward to play it. I may offer it actually.
I'm a board game lover from way back - and I agree, this looks really complicated, and I never got that "I've got to play it" feeling from looking at the pics and the write up.
After all these years, I still drag out my ancient boxes of "Shogun" and "Axis & Allies" if I want to occupy 4 to 7 hours with my friends... Those games have the right level of strategy, fun, diplomacy, and ease of play as any game I've tried.
One of the main reason I like scythe is it can be played in less than 1.5 hours. I've played axis and allies in the past, but I don't really enjoy games that take that long to play.
It looks like it has same kind of mechanics as Eclipse[1] and Game of thrones[2]. I have really enjoyed those two and I hope scythe isn't too similiar.
I can't talk for Eclipse or Scythe, but we brought the Game of Thrones game and it was pretty terrible. It seemed needlessly complicated and just wasn't that fun.
It is nothing like Game of Thrones. The person who made the comparison was probably just thinking of how you can choose order tokens to place, but Scythe's choices are simpler and more dynamic, and in other aspects of the game, it is quite different.
Interesting, our group has liked it a lot, even with some of its obvious flaws in balance.
I'm happy to make a few compromises to get a board game that make new players more interested in board games overall. After playing GoT, a few of my friends who have never played "adult" board games now regularly play games like Caracassone.
I personally loved the Game of Thrones game. There was interesting combat strategies with their mechanic of sorta simultaneous turns, plenty of around the table politicking, the combat cards and bidding were fun. I haven't played that many other war games except shogun and risk so i might just be missing something better but for what its worth I've really enjoyed it.
Think about Scythe as an Eclipse without the ship customization and upkeep phase, simple production (only one type per area, augmented by a max number of production units) and fixed map (with barriers!)... it goes much faster and less downtime. Another game which I like and is a bit similar as a simplified eclipse is Hyperborea. I only read about Game of Thrones, but the comparison would be that in both Eclipse and Game of Thrones you are like in Scythe more or less allowed to negotiate, bribe and trade t a certain extend
Can someone explain to me why it needed to raise $1.8 Million dollars via Kickstarter? Does that cover production costs as well as development time?
Wouldn't it be more fair to consumers if only development cost was covered by the kickstarter and then production costs were covered by actual pre-orders?
Kickstarted board games are almost exclusively preorders for the game. So it didn't "need" to raise that money -- in fact it looks like their original target was about $33k.
It's an interesting question about fairness to consumers. Honestly I don't know that fairness is relevant here, as the Kickstarter boardgame scene is thriving -- many new board games exist through kickstarter than would otherwise exist in the world, and the consumers know this and participate in the ecosystem. If the kickstarter was limited to raising money for development costs then it's not clear that the producers would be quite as incentivized to put projects up there.
Why are people downvoting this? This is a honest question, they had multiple tiers with some pretty damn silly stretch goals, or at least it can be considered a stretch as far as the actual costs go.
Kickstarter backers are getting the game now, for the rest of us we can preorder it for 48 GBP in the UK[1], on average each backer payed 104$ into the campaign, non backers can get a copy of the game now for 63$ (only 4$ more than the cheapest get a copy of the game option on kickstarter).
It's not that surprising that some people question what the money is actually being spent on during those KS campaigns, and with how many of them fail all the time due to mismanagement not to mention being potentially fraud cases to begin with I think it's a question worth asking.
I also think it's about time that Kickstarter forces companies to be more open and transparent about how they spend the money, Kickstarter already takes power from consumers because they become effectively investors but without any of the perks that come with being a shareholder and it just might be the time we get some of that power back.
I backed the $119 edition, as well as many other Kickstarter campaigns over the last few years (along with almost every campaign that Stonemaier Games has done) and I actually mostly agree with your comment, except for a few specific points regarding this project in particular.
Kickstarter really needs to reign in on projects taking in a whole load of money, and then remaining completely silent as they pass deadline after deadline without shipping. I'm not sure how they can do this though, I hope they have people figuring it out!
For the cost of this project specifically, the cheapest version of Scythe on Kickstarter comes with quite a few extra things (extra game cards, better tokens, that kind of thing) that the retail version won't (maybe about $30 worth, although I haven't done the calculations). In addition, the project owner has been the best example of an owner keeping their backers up-to-date with production - check out the 39 updates on the Kickstarter! I think it's fair to say that I've learned a huge amount about the board game industry through his campaigns (although him supplying backers with the names of the ships that were carrying containers of the game from factory to distribution points brought me to new levels of shipping-anxiety), and I think that his price points have always been fair.
I have had some bad experiences with Kickstarter of course (Pebble's first Kickstarter was a farce even though they delivered eventually, Hello Sense haven't delivered on their promise), but Jamey's projects have never been one of them.
I don't have any opinion or experience with this project specifically, I thought the stretch goals were a bit silly but then again what can you do with board game.
I was just surprised that the original comment I've replied was done voted because the OP also made no assertions (negative or otherwise) towards this project but asked a question about how the kickstarter board game scene operates in general.
It's good to hear that your experience with this project was a good one, I still do not like crowdfunding, I more or less see it as capitalism at it's worst which allows for opportunistic people to operate without the most important restriction of the free market - responsibility towards your investors.
And while I do see the appeal in crowdfunding and I do understand that it might be the only way to grinlight certain projects or products, it seems to be used too much these days, and in many cases by individuals or companies that would not have issues getting funding through traditional channels which means they either want to profit more of their product (kickstarter funding is considerably cheaper than any other source of funding bar government grants) or the actual risk of that project is too high for any sensible investor to invest in it in the first place.
Whats worse is that Kickstarter has very little incentive to combat this type of behaviour since it's their source of revenue, they get their cut regardless if the project succeeds or not, they do not inherit any (or very little) of the risk, and without actual legislation that will define rules for crowdfunding I don't see them enforcing any real restrictions by themselves unless we as consumers stop playing their game, and based on the fact that Kickstarter only seems to get more popular with every disaster I don't think that day would arrive any time soon.
I understand your perspective completely, and I agree with you on the central point of Kickstarter needing to figure out how to look after the backer. When you have companies effectively using Kickstarter as a pre-ordering and marketing system rather than a means of raising capital without going to investors, there's a problem.
What I'm becoming more and more concerned about, however, is products which are clearly unviable, or just plain silly. There seems to be a surge in people saying 'A computer the size of a pack of cards? I can make that!' (to use a random example rather than picking on any particular product) and then collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce a low quality Raspberry Pi clone. Or even worse, nothing at all, and going bankrupt before they get the chance to refund backers (as if that was ever in their plan).
Jamey definitely didn't need to raise 1.8 million to get his game into production, (he asked for $33k I think). I imagine that the success was a bit of a shock, and he's considering pulling out of using Kickstarter in the future in favour of a more traditional pre-order route (he's written a fair amount about it on his blog http://stonemaiergames.com/e-newsletter/blog/, which is a very interesting read whether you like Kickstarter, the business of board games or neither).
Outside of rare situations, people need multiple successful board game Kickstarters now to earn a full-time income on top of expenses. I'm finding that to be a good quality check since the first bad project is the last for any aspiring game designer.
However, that is not the case in the sleazy consumer products/Internet of Things area of Kickstarter, where it is common to do things like pay consultants 10-33% of money raised to pump up the campaign, something that's only viable if the development costs aren't significant enough for the project to turn out well.
> it seems to be used too much these days, and in many cases by individuals or companies that would not have issues getting funding through traditional channels
I have seen this a lot, people suggesting that it is somehow wrong or destructive to use Kickstarter unless you have no other options.
Why? What if he just likes Kickstarter, it works well for his funding and pre-order needs, and his audience is familiar with it? Why should he stop using something that works to cobble together some other system that does the same thing? Why should he use a 20th century funding strategy and business structure when we live in a time when you can just fill out a form, press a button, and then run a business out of your kitchen? Isn't that kind of the dream?
The only argument I've heard is that it somehow takes revenue away from other more constrained Kickstarters. I guess the idea is that people go onto Kickstarter with a fixed budget and choose some number of projects to back within that budget.
But I have doubts that "is this within my budget for Kickstarter projects?" is a common purchasing constraint. And there is also the fact that by putting his projects on Kickstarter, he is repeatedly drawing his customer base to the site, many of whom will then browse for other related content, thus increasing the funding for other projects.
> Kickstarter already takes power from consumers ... it just might be the time we get some of that power back
They're not taking anything from anyone. If you don't like it don't use it. You're using really alarmist language to talk about a website people go to voluntarily. It's not food and water. It's board games. Why do you care how other people chose to use their money?
Kickstarter and the rest of the crowd source services mix customers and investors into a mishmash that effectively strips you from the rights and privileges of either.
You do not receive the rights and benefits of being an investor nor do you enjoy the guaranteed buyer protection as you would as a consumer buying a product.
And while you can try and hide behind the "it's a choice" argument this doesn't pass the simple smell test.
Launching a product via crowdfunding is now cheaper and less risky than launching a product through normal means, like some one else have mentioned in this thread, there are too many companies that use it as a marketing and pre-order platform instead of what it originally was meant to be - a place to get funding for projects that would not be able to be funded through normal means.
If this trend continues and everything moves to kickstarter like platforms you as a consumer suffer, you lose the rights and benefits that consumer protection laws provide, while still paying the same price and sometimes even a premium.
I don't care what people do with their money, I care about trends that could have a negative impact on myself or society now or in the future.
For me this is no different than the twitter, google, or facebook "censorship" debate, you can claim these are private services and they can do what they want. I see it from a different perspective, in my eyes when you reach a certain market position you no longer can hide behind "I'm just a company I can do what I want" and you must respect the neutrality of information and the freedom of speech for everyone.
I agree with most of your points but this one I have a bit of an issue with.
I get that this may not have been the original vision of Kickstarter and similar platforms. But, in terms of consumer risk, this actually seems to be pretty far down the scale. Say I'm using Kickstarter to gauge interest in something I basically know how to do and have the capital to create. Is that really a problem compared to doing a Kickstarter for something that's a germ of an idea with many unknown development and production issues to come?
I do get that pre-orders are riskier than pre-orders on Amazon. But it still seems as if market validation of a concept/product is still useful for everyone concerned.
> nor do you enjoy the guaranteed buyer protection as you would as a consumer buying a product.
Is this actually true? I mean when you order a product you pay for a contract, it's possible the company will not deliver and go bankrupt - isn't that exactly the same situation as when you order via Kickstarter?
> there are too many companies that use it as a marketing and pre-order platform instead of what it originally was meant to be - a place to get funding for projects that would not be able to be funded through normal means.
A lot of websites end up being used for something different from what they were originally intended for. Heck, the Internet itself was intended for quite different purposes than those it serves today. Who cares?
> If this trend continues and everything moves to kickstarter like platforms you as a consumer suffer, you lose the rights and benefits that consumer protection laws provide, while still paying the same price and sometimes even a premium.
In a competitive marketplace there is no anti-free-lunch. No-one is getting rich off board gaming. Rather, more and better board games are being created. Customers aren't being stupid, they're accepting the risks because they're worth it.
I think a weird thing about kickstarter is that lots of campaigns just become places for pre orders. Pretty much everyone understands that the backer-amount just shows how much interest there is, but meanwhile the money is still being added to the amount that basically suggests "how much money will be spent creating this product".
One thing to understand is that comparing the $100 version to the retail $63 version is an apples to oranges comparison. The $100 version includes a larger board, realistic upgraded resources, metal instead of cardboard coins, extra cards and power wheels, etc. These extras can be purchased separately (with shipping), but then you end up spending more than $100.
The board game market is strangely bifurcating where one biz model is $100 and up at seemingly ever higher prices via kickstarter, and the other model is something like the gmtgames p500 model where you preorder at a considerable discount to list price. So I got a copy of MBT last week for about 40% off because I preordered on the P500 a long time ago, at the same time as the kickstarter people were getting scythe for their $100 or whatever. DVG is in more or less the same market as gmtgames and has run some expensive kickstarters I've participated in, so its not merely a eurogames vs grognard thing or whatever.
The most interesting consumer side effect is one model has prices drop after launch, and the other has prices increase after launch.
One similarity is both models require extreme levels of customer participation, not a mere casual search at amazon for any game and expect it to arrive in two days, its a multi-month (year?) commitment of planning ahead and keeping up with the marketplace.
From having participated in some RPG kickstarters (admittedly slightly off topic) I sometimes think they aren't even beginning product development until some time after the kickstarter is funded, which will eventually lead to some spectacular inevitable fails.
Some Cliff's Notes on VLM's post for anyone who, like me, didn't fully get it at first:
GMT Games are a wargame company. They specialise in the classic style of wargames, with hexes and tokens with attack and defence strength and whatnot. That said, they have also published things like Reiner Knizia's 'Battle Line', and the famous Cold War geopolitics game 'Twilight Struggle'.
GMT Games release games using their 'Project 500' model. They develop games, and once one is nearly finished, they make it available for pre-order, at a discount. If they get 500 pre-orders, they produce it. If they don't get 500 pre-orders, they don't produce it, and the people who pre-ordered don't get charged [1].
MBT is a modern rewrite [2] of a classic hex-and-counter wargame from 1987 [3] which models tank warfare in Europe during the version of World War 3 which looked most likely at the time.
DVG is Dan Verssen Games, also primarily a wargame company. They have done a number of kickstarters. Some just sell the game at a modest discount, like Warfighter - World War II [4]. Some upsell pricey vanity options, like The Cards of Cthulhu [5].
Eurogames are a hard-to-define genre which, IMHO, emphasise mechanics giving rise to involving, complex play rather than realism. Settlers of Catan is the godfather. Further examples are Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, Alhambra, Kingdom Builder, etc.
Grognards are players of classic hex-and-counter wargames [6], and, metonymically, such games themselves.
A lot of the kickstarter money goes towards the pledge rewards: Only ~500 people got a tier that doesn't include the final game, for all others the game + goodies have to be produced and paid for. The 33k minimum amount probably was calculated to be enough to set up production and making the game for the people pledging.
Kickstarters that do not offer rewards, just to cover some development process, generally do not work as well. People want to get stuff.
Stonemeier uses Kickstarter more or less a preorder system, with some higher level donation tiers for absurd perks like your face in the game. KS does not require that your project finish, but it does require backer rewards delivered. The most popular backer reward tiers includes the actual game, priced at basically MSRP.
It's absolutely true that consumers are taking more risks than your average GameStop preorder. Stonemeier has an impeccable record, and so his company reaps the ongoing benefits of that lower delivery risk profile by using KS. Another way to think of this is that you are completely free to avoid project risk by purchasing from a backer via BGG/ebay, but will likely have to pay a premium for it. I imagine some people intentionally preorder two, just to pop one up for sale.
It didn't need to raise $1.8m - the goal was $33k.
For a game like this where a big part of the appeal is the artwork there isn't really a clean divide between development and production, but it's fair to say a decent chunk of the money could be attributed to "production", sure.
What's the distinction you're drawing between kickstarter and preorder? Legally and practically they're the same thing, no? In any case I don't see what you could be considering "unfair".
Long answer: Terra Mystica works precisely because it doesn't have combat. It's about gaining points to win, and to do that you have to do other things, each with their own costs and cost centers. It works because it's about management of what you've got, when you play what actions, and taking advantage of the strengths of your particular peoples.
Scythe by comparison is very beautifully produced, and overall it's a good game, but not a truly excellent one. It's just not at the same level as something like TM or Kemet, for something else similar.
My main gripe with it is that too much of the game is dictated at the start. It'd be like playing chess with the first 5 moves dictated to both sides.
TM has a similar setup in that it's a static starting map, with factions that have static benefits, but the map starts changing fast because of what's available with bonus cards each turn, what can go where (or not), so you have to improvise. There's no real benefit to improvising on Scythe - indeed it's generally going to make things go worse for you. You're sort of railroaded into a certain way of playing.
It think it's a bit shorter and a bit more simple to explain which means that it can be more practical for a gaming night with 4 or 5 players. I clocked a 2 player at 1.5u and a four player game at 3h, with experience that'll go down. More importantly this is with a 9 year old who picked up the game quicker then I did as a experienced board gamer and kept beating me. I personally like the theme a bit more.
On boardgamegeek there's a thread going about possible downsides, but I can't really comment on that as I've only played 5 games, and thoroughly enjoy that. I played a lot (> 100) of 2p Puerto Rico, another highly rated game - with the same person and as we know eachothers favorite strategies we actively try to block them, with randomization of the buildings (and expansions) we still like the game. I think that although the openings might tend to get scripted there might be enough variety for future replayability. I like it more then Terra Mystica personally.
The discussion thread about it is here: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1612607/scythe-are-people-re...
If you are a board game enthusiast, chances are you'll eventually get bored with basic rules and want something more complicated that allows for interesting game mechanism or complex decisions. If you look at Board Game Geeks top games, a lot of them have a high complexity rating.
I'd note that sometimes complexity comes from surprisingly simple rules, like with Go or Chess. Next to Terra Mystica, Go or Chess might appear simple.
Used to agree with that, then a friend got Risk Legacy which has a 15 game campaign. It took us a couple hours the first night just to go through the rules, but it was one of the most fun experiences of my life and we all bonded from it. 4 years later and those are still my closest friends (excluding my gf).
This is one of those games that looks complicated until you start playing. I was one of the Kickstarter backers, and was a bit unsure of the suitability of the game for casual play.
After 22 plays and counting with many different people, I can safely say that this isn't too hard to grasp. Essentially, your turn boils down to picking 1 of 4 (or 5) different actions, over and over again. Compared to Terra Mystica, this game is much easier to learn.
I will add that Jamey, the designer, has perfected the Kickstarter process for board gaming. He has a book and tons of free articles on his site - I'm a fan of his book here: http://stonemaiergames.com/kickstarter/book/
> This is one of those games that looks complicated until you start playing. I was one of the Kickstarter backers, and was a bit unsure of the suitability of the game for casual play.
I watched the tutorial video and felt completely overwhelmed less than 5 minutes in! Is it really that easy to play? The tutorial almost felt like it was reading out game logic source code at points. It feels like it's at the level of complexity where it should be a computer game with a computer dictating and enforcing the rules but I can understand the appeal of wanting to play around a table.
Very few. When I've played games like poker and Monopoly I've seen new players struggle with the (relatively simple) rules so I was comparing this game to those.
Monopoly is rather complex for the relatively small dose of fun it provides. Poker is quite simple in its base form, so I'm not sure what to tell you there.
Codenames is quite good and is available from Target.
Love Letter is a modern classic of tight, simple design.
These are two examples of what I would consider gateway games for people who have only ever heard of Monopoly or Trivial Pursuit.
Fun fact: on one of the art pictures you can see bear with satchel on his side that says 'Wojtek'. It's a reference to real bear named Wojtek that served during WW2 in Polish army: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wojtek_(bear)
After the stunning success of Pandemic: Legacy, I would have said SeaFall is the most-hyped game of 2016, but hype is subjective.
Scythe does a really great job of blending euro-style resource mechanics within a strong amero-style theme/board. And I totally agree with everyone; it's not as complicated as it looks. That said, I wouldn't recommend it if you're new to modern board games. There are a ton of games with similar levels of fun and strategy that are more accessible...
Carcassonne has a nice iPad implementation as well. (As does Settlers--though it's a bit more complex and I find it's Carcassonne I come back to more regularly.)
I agree Carcassonne is a great gateway game. The basic rules are straightforward but there is some deeper strategy. There are also quite a few expansions that can add even more depth in different dimensions, so you can expand the game to your tastes.
Oh there are so many; it'd be great to know what kinds of thigns you're into, but here's a generic list of modern classics that are tried and true:
Carcassonne - Really simple and elegant tile-laying game that is full of strategic decisions for players of all levels. (If you like the tile-laying, continue on to Castles of Mad King Ludwig or Suburbia)
Dominion - Introduced the "deck-building" mechanic where you buy cards for your own personal deck over the course of the game and manage probabilities of drawing what you need (this later blossomed into a HUGE genre; good next steps are Valley of the Kings, Arctic Scavengers, or Star Realms).
Pandemic - Cooperative game about battling disease outbreaks across the globe. In some ways it can be easier for new gamers because you're all working together to solve the challenge. Spawned many expansions, as well as the aforementioned "Legacy" version, which is effectively a campaign mode with permanent changes game-to-game. (Also check out Flash Point: Fire Rescue, and Forbidden Desert/Forbidden Island.)
Coup/The Resistance - These are social deduction/bluffing games where players have hidden roles. They offer slightly different experiences: Coup is slightly more strategic and about selecting the right roles to come out ahead, while The Resistance is a little simpler but brings out more tension (because it's team v team). (Also check out Avalon a Resistance spin-off. If you want a little more tactical structure behind the deduction, checkout Citadels)
Hanabi - A really unique cooperative game about communicating information effectively. You can see everyone's cards but your own, and as a team you are trying to lay cards down in a specific order, but you are limited in the kind of clues you can give to others, and clues are a limited resource. (There isn't much that's super-similar to Hanabi, but a more advanced and thematic spiritual successor is coming out in a few weeks called Beyond Baker Street)
Sushi Go - Elegant little "card drafting" game where you take a card from your hand and then pass the hand to the next player, trying to collect sets of sushi to earn points. Despite its simple mechanic, it's balanced, quick, and fun for all types of gamers. (In this genre, I'd really recommend 7 Wonders, which is based on the exact same mechanic, but involves building an ancient civilization and brings rich resource management challenges into the game. One of my favorite games to this day; you could even start with this, but it's definitely a higher complexity level and it would be very helpful to have someone teach.)
Ticket to Ride - Very straightforward game about collecting sets of cards and using them to place trains on a map. One of the few games I can get my dad to play that we all find fun -- new players can get into the game quickly. Spawned a ton of spin-offs, so it's definitely loved.
Lords of Waterdeep - Great introduction to the "worker placement" genre. Players move tokens to take actions, as well as preventing others from taking the same action. The actions let you collect followers, construct buildings, and send them on quests (the game takes place within an official D&D setting). I don't personally love this one because I got into more advanced worker-placement games before I played it, but I can understand why it's adored by so many people. (Interesting next steps: Viticulture or if you want to jump off the deep end Caverna/Agricola, which are punishing but both have spent time rated as BGG's highest ranked game)
If that's not enough to look up, here are some other games I don't have time to describe, but I'd also recommend for newbies: Splendor, Takenoko, Ra, FUSE, Survive: Escape from Atlantis, <...
I'd recommend Pandemic. It's a little bit different to most games in that it's a co-op game, but it's a lot of fun and I feel challenges most people's perceptions on how board games should be.
Stone Age is a fairly basic but fun introduction to worker placement games.
Puerto Rico is fairly simple but is quite satisfying.
Basically I've found that it's good to play a variety of different board game types to see what you personally enjoy.
I watched half a play-through, someone may point out something I didn't notice - but it looks fairly uninspiring. The two players playing hardly interacted (it didn't seem what one player was doing had that interesting of an impact on another players strategy), further it seems like the common-case where there are one or two optimal strategies that you derive after a couple playthroughs and after which there are not enough dynamic elements add much novelty.
Yes, it includes a small deck of cards with symbols you can use to simulate resistance. Actually people have been using multiple AI forces successfully against n people. I am trying it this week with my collectors edition copy. You can read about how it works here https://app.box.com/s/rj3jrw0rab2uiz02up89kbant5g8ew1p/1/499...
I mostly choose my boardgames based on BGG rating, the existence of a good and practical solo variant and playtime under 3h, examples are Race for the Galaxy, Neandertal, Imperial Settlers, The New Era, Robinson Crusoe with the Lost retheme and Polis
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 157 ms ] threadThere are several games that are not too complicated, that also has a charm, but necessarily, more complicated mechanism makes for more variable play.
For more modern games, Smallworld (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/40692/small-world) is a great example for high replayability and relatively simple game mechanics.
Arguably Dominion has good replayability for similar reasons: you only play with a subset of the cards every game, and a lot of the strategy revolves around exploiting interactions between different cards. On the other hand Dominion is one of those games where there is very limited interaction between players, which perhaps doesn't make for great replayability.
I also play Hearthstone, the Blizzard card game, and that's a pretty awful example, sometimes, of bad randomization with all those effect that can range from harmful to do nothing to win the game on the spot.
The randomization in Smallworld is good because you always have a certain amount of control over it and you can plan for it/around it. On top of that the power swings are not really extreme (some race - attribute combos are stronger than others but the overall power range is reasonably small).
It is all about pacing an the impression of pace. In some regards it is like Cycling sprint discipline.
Watching top level Dominion games can be like watchig a different game. It has crazy, crazy depth and replayability.
The pinnacle of large rulesets is RPG games, anyway. With the possible exception of some 80s classics like squad leader and starfleet battles there are no rulebooks that compare in size to the foot or so linear shelf space of a full set of Pathfinder rulebooks.
I found Smallworld unfun.
The problem with complex rulesets is that they tend to make rounds very long which when you combine it with 4-6 players makes games drag for considerably longer than they need to be.
The worse games are the ones that try to mitigate that with multiple victory paths often partially RNG based or silly "sudden death" rounds after an arbitrary round count to force games to last no longer than 60-90min.
Sure you can point to games or systems like D20 but even then the core ruleset is fairly simple and uniform and the rest is just ad hoc that can be used rarely or not at all.
The one thing you need for a good board game is to have decent strategic depth with mechanics that induce interesting social dynamics, a lot of games try to implement the former by making it complicated by design and forget the latter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_of_go#Concise_statement
So yeah, not for everybody, but I look forward to play it. I may offer it actually.
I prefer the most bang for the rules, they should be as simple as possible to let the game still be interesting
After all these years, I still drag out my ancient boxes of "Shogun" and "Axis & Allies" if I want to occupy 4 to 7 hours with my friends... Those games have the right level of strategy, fun, diplomacy, and ease of play as any game I've tried.
Can someone compare scythe for these two?
[1]: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/72125/eclipse
[2]: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/103343/game-thrones-boar...
I hope Scythe isn't like that at all.
I'm happy to make a few compromises to get a board game that make new players more interested in board games overall. After playing GoT, a few of my friends who have never played "adult" board games now regularly play games like Caracassone.
Wouldn't it be more fair to consumers if only development cost was covered by the kickstarter and then production costs were covered by actual pre-orders?
It's an interesting question about fairness to consumers. Honestly I don't know that fairness is relevant here, as the Kickstarter boardgame scene is thriving -- many new board games exist through kickstarter than would otherwise exist in the world, and the consumers know this and participate in the ecosystem. If the kickstarter was limited to raising money for development costs then it's not clear that the producers would be quite as incentivized to put projects up there.
Kickstarter backers are getting the game now, for the rest of us we can preorder it for 48 GBP in the UK[1], on average each backer payed 104$ into the campaign, non backers can get a copy of the game now for 63$ (only 4$ more than the cheapest get a copy of the game option on kickstarter).
It's not that surprising that some people question what the money is actually being spent on during those KS campaigns, and with how many of them fail all the time due to mismanagement not to mention being potentially fraud cases to begin with I think it's a question worth asking.
I also think it's about time that Kickstarter forces companies to be more open and transparent about how they spend the money, Kickstarter already takes power from consumers because they become effectively investors but without any of the perks that come with being a shareholder and it just might be the time we get some of that power back.
[1]https://www.theboardgamehut.co.uk/preorders/116-scythe-preor...
For the cost of this project specifically, the cheapest version of Scythe on Kickstarter comes with quite a few extra things (extra game cards, better tokens, that kind of thing) that the retail version won't (maybe about $30 worth, although I haven't done the calculations). In addition, the project owner has been the best example of an owner keeping their backers up-to-date with production - check out the 39 updates on the Kickstarter! I think it's fair to say that I've learned a huge amount about the board game industry through his campaigns (although him supplying backers with the names of the ships that were carrying containers of the game from factory to distribution points brought me to new levels of shipping-anxiety), and I think that his price points have always been fair.
I have had some bad experiences with Kickstarter of course (Pebble's first Kickstarter was a farce even though they delivered eventually, Hello Sense haven't delivered on their promise), but Jamey's projects have never been one of them.
It's good to hear that your experience with this project was a good one, I still do not like crowdfunding, I more or less see it as capitalism at it's worst which allows for opportunistic people to operate without the most important restriction of the free market - responsibility towards your investors.
And while I do see the appeal in crowdfunding and I do understand that it might be the only way to grinlight certain projects or products, it seems to be used too much these days, and in many cases by individuals or companies that would not have issues getting funding through traditional channels which means they either want to profit more of their product (kickstarter funding is considerably cheaper than any other source of funding bar government grants) or the actual risk of that project is too high for any sensible investor to invest in it in the first place.
Whats worse is that Kickstarter has very little incentive to combat this type of behaviour since it's their source of revenue, they get their cut regardless if the project succeeds or not, they do not inherit any (or very little) of the risk, and without actual legislation that will define rules for crowdfunding I don't see them enforcing any real restrictions by themselves unless we as consumers stop playing their game, and based on the fact that Kickstarter only seems to get more popular with every disaster I don't think that day would arrive any time soon.
What I'm becoming more and more concerned about, however, is products which are clearly unviable, or just plain silly. There seems to be a surge in people saying 'A computer the size of a pack of cards? I can make that!' (to use a random example rather than picking on any particular product) and then collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce a low quality Raspberry Pi clone. Or even worse, nothing at all, and going bankrupt before they get the chance to refund backers (as if that was ever in their plan).
Jamey definitely didn't need to raise 1.8 million to get his game into production, (he asked for $33k I think). I imagine that the success was a bit of a shock, and he's considering pulling out of using Kickstarter in the future in favour of a more traditional pre-order route (he's written a fair amount about it on his blog http://stonemaiergames.com/e-newsletter/blog/, which is a very interesting read whether you like Kickstarter, the business of board games or neither).
However, that is not the case in the sleazy consumer products/Internet of Things area of Kickstarter, where it is common to do things like pay consultants 10-33% of money raised to pump up the campaign, something that's only viable if the development costs aren't significant enough for the project to turn out well.
I have seen this a lot, people suggesting that it is somehow wrong or destructive to use Kickstarter unless you have no other options.
Why? What if he just likes Kickstarter, it works well for his funding and pre-order needs, and his audience is familiar with it? Why should he stop using something that works to cobble together some other system that does the same thing? Why should he use a 20th century funding strategy and business structure when we live in a time when you can just fill out a form, press a button, and then run a business out of your kitchen? Isn't that kind of the dream?
The only argument I've heard is that it somehow takes revenue away from other more constrained Kickstarters. I guess the idea is that people go onto Kickstarter with a fixed budget and choose some number of projects to back within that budget.
But I have doubts that "is this within my budget for Kickstarter projects?" is a common purchasing constraint. And there is also the fact that by putting his projects on Kickstarter, he is repeatedly drawing his customer base to the site, many of whom will then browse for other related content, thus increasing the funding for other projects.
They're not taking anything from anyone. If you don't like it don't use it. You're using really alarmist language to talk about a website people go to voluntarily. It's not food and water. It's board games. Why do you care how other people chose to use their money?
Kickstarter and the rest of the crowd source services mix customers and investors into a mishmash that effectively strips you from the rights and privileges of either. You do not receive the rights and benefits of being an investor nor do you enjoy the guaranteed buyer protection as you would as a consumer buying a product.
And while you can try and hide behind the "it's a choice" argument this doesn't pass the simple smell test. Launching a product via crowdfunding is now cheaper and less risky than launching a product through normal means, like some one else have mentioned in this thread, there are too many companies that use it as a marketing and pre-order platform instead of what it originally was meant to be - a place to get funding for projects that would not be able to be funded through normal means. If this trend continues and everything moves to kickstarter like platforms you as a consumer suffer, you lose the rights and benefits that consumer protection laws provide, while still paying the same price and sometimes even a premium.
I don't care what people do with their money, I care about trends that could have a negative impact on myself or society now or in the future. For me this is no different than the twitter, google, or facebook "censorship" debate, you can claim these are private services and they can do what they want. I see it from a different perspective, in my eyes when you reach a certain market position you no longer can hide behind "I'm just a company I can do what I want" and you must respect the neutrality of information and the freedom of speech for everyone.
I agree with most of your points but this one I have a bit of an issue with.
I get that this may not have been the original vision of Kickstarter and similar platforms. But, in terms of consumer risk, this actually seems to be pretty far down the scale. Say I'm using Kickstarter to gauge interest in something I basically know how to do and have the capital to create. Is that really a problem compared to doing a Kickstarter for something that's a germ of an idea with many unknown development and production issues to come?
I do get that pre-orders are riskier than pre-orders on Amazon. But it still seems as if market validation of a concept/product is still useful for everyone concerned.
Yes you are.
> nor do you enjoy the guaranteed buyer protection as you would as a consumer buying a product.
Is this actually true? I mean when you order a product you pay for a contract, it's possible the company will not deliver and go bankrupt - isn't that exactly the same situation as when you order via Kickstarter?
> there are too many companies that use it as a marketing and pre-order platform instead of what it originally was meant to be - a place to get funding for projects that would not be able to be funded through normal means.
A lot of websites end up being used for something different from what they were originally intended for. Heck, the Internet itself was intended for quite different purposes than those it serves today. Who cares?
> If this trend continues and everything moves to kickstarter like platforms you as a consumer suffer, you lose the rights and benefits that consumer protection laws provide, while still paying the same price and sometimes even a premium.
In a competitive marketplace there is no anti-free-lunch. No-one is getting rich off board gaming. Rather, more and better board games are being created. Customers aren't being stupid, they're accepting the risks because they're worth it.
The most interesting consumer side effect is one model has prices drop after launch, and the other has prices increase after launch.
One similarity is both models require extreme levels of customer participation, not a mere casual search at amazon for any game and expect it to arrive in two days, its a multi-month (year?) commitment of planning ahead and keeping up with the marketplace.
From having participated in some RPG kickstarters (admittedly slightly off topic) I sometimes think they aren't even beginning product development until some time after the kickstarter is funded, which will eventually lead to some spectacular inevitable fails.
GMT Games are a wargame company. They specialise in the classic style of wargames, with hexes and tokens with attack and defence strength and whatnot. That said, they have also published things like Reiner Knizia's 'Battle Line', and the famous Cold War geopolitics game 'Twilight Struggle'.
GMT Games release games using their 'Project 500' model. They develop games, and once one is nearly finished, they make it available for pre-order, at a discount. If they get 500 pre-orders, they produce it. If they don't get 500 pre-orders, they don't produce it, and the people who pre-ordered don't get charged [1].
MBT is a modern rewrite [2] of a classic hex-and-counter wargame from 1987 [3] which models tank warfare in Europe during the version of World War 3 which looked most likely at the time.
DVG is Dan Verssen Games, also primarily a wargame company. They have done a number of kickstarters. Some just sell the game at a modest discount, like Warfighter - World War II [4]. Some upsell pricey vanity options, like The Cards of Cthulhu [5].
Eurogames are a hard-to-define genre which, IMHO, emphasise mechanics giving rise to involving, complex play rather than realism. Settlers of Catan is the godfather. Further examples are Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, Alhambra, Kingdom Builder, etc.
Grognards are players of classic hex-and-counter wargames [6], and, metonymically, such games themselves.
[1] https://www.gmtgames.com/t-GMTP500Details.aspx
[2] http://www.insidegmt.com/?p=498
[3] https://boardgamegeek.com/image/87628/mbt
[4] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/11606594/warfighter-wor...
[5] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dvgames/the-cards-of-ct...
[6] https://grognard.com/About.aspx#pageTop
Kickstarters that do not offer rewards, just to cover some development process, generally do not work as well. People want to get stuff.
It's absolutely true that consumers are taking more risks than your average GameStop preorder. Stonemeier has an impeccable record, and so his company reaps the ongoing benefits of that lower delivery risk profile by using KS. Another way to think of this is that you are completely free to avoid project risk by purchasing from a backer via BGG/ebay, but will likely have to pay a premium for it. I imagine some people intentionally preorder two, just to pop one up for sale.
For a game like this where a big part of the appeal is the artwork there isn't really a clean divide between development and production, but it's fair to say a decent chunk of the money could be attributed to "production", sure.
What's the distinction you're drawing between kickstarter and preorder? Legally and practically they're the same thing, no? In any case I don't see what you could be considering "unfair".
Long answer: Terra Mystica works precisely because it doesn't have combat. It's about gaining points to win, and to do that you have to do other things, each with their own costs and cost centers. It works because it's about management of what you've got, when you play what actions, and taking advantage of the strengths of your particular peoples.
Scythe by comparison is very beautifully produced, and overall it's a good game, but not a truly excellent one. It's just not at the same level as something like TM or Kemet, for something else similar.
My main gripe with it is that too much of the game is dictated at the start. It'd be like playing chess with the first 5 moves dictated to both sides.
TM has a similar setup in that it's a static starting map, with factions that have static benefits, but the map starts changing fast because of what's available with bonus cards each turn, what can go where (or not), so you have to improvise. There's no real benefit to improvising on Scythe - indeed it's generally going to make things go worse for you. You're sort of railroaded into a certain way of playing.
Overall I'd give it a 7.5/10
I see this is ad for Scythe. but still.
If you are a board game enthusiast, chances are you'll eventually get bored with basic rules and want something more complicated that allows for interesting game mechanism or complex decisions. If you look at Board Game Geeks top games, a lot of them have a high complexity rating.
After 22 plays and counting with many different people, I can safely say that this isn't too hard to grasp. Essentially, your turn boils down to picking 1 of 4 (or 5) different actions, over and over again. Compared to Terra Mystica, this game is much easier to learn.
If you want a succinct rules explanation, Rodney from Watch it Played has a great tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffMLIL5qGQg
I will add that Jamey, the designer, has perfected the Kickstarter process for board gaming. He has a book and tons of free articles on his site - I'm a fan of his book here: http://stonemaiergames.com/kickstarter/book/
I watched the tutorial video and felt completely overwhelmed less than 5 minutes in! Is it really that easy to play? The tutorial almost felt like it was reading out game logic source code at points. It feels like it's at the level of complexity where it should be a computer game with a computer dictating and enforcing the rules but I can understand the appeal of wanting to play around a table.
"He is now referenced in the new Hearts of Iron IV game, as an easter egg achievement, Bearer of Artillery."
http://www.hoi4wiki.com/Achievements
Looks like someone could update the article to include Scythe now.
Scythe does a really great job of blending euro-style resource mechanics within a strong amero-style theme/board. And I totally agree with everyone; it's not as complicated as it looks. That said, I wouldn't recommend it if you're new to modern board games. There are a ton of games with similar levels of fun and strategy that are more accessible...
Edit: My phone corrected "Catan" to "Satan"
Carcassonne - Really simple and elegant tile-laying game that is full of strategic decisions for players of all levels. (If you like the tile-laying, continue on to Castles of Mad King Ludwig or Suburbia)
Dominion - Introduced the "deck-building" mechanic where you buy cards for your own personal deck over the course of the game and manage probabilities of drawing what you need (this later blossomed into a HUGE genre; good next steps are Valley of the Kings, Arctic Scavengers, or Star Realms).
Pandemic - Cooperative game about battling disease outbreaks across the globe. In some ways it can be easier for new gamers because you're all working together to solve the challenge. Spawned many expansions, as well as the aforementioned "Legacy" version, which is effectively a campaign mode with permanent changes game-to-game. (Also check out Flash Point: Fire Rescue, and Forbidden Desert/Forbidden Island.)
Coup/The Resistance - These are social deduction/bluffing games where players have hidden roles. They offer slightly different experiences: Coup is slightly more strategic and about selecting the right roles to come out ahead, while The Resistance is a little simpler but brings out more tension (because it's team v team). (Also check out Avalon a Resistance spin-off. If you want a little more tactical structure behind the deduction, checkout Citadels)
Hanabi - A really unique cooperative game about communicating information effectively. You can see everyone's cards but your own, and as a team you are trying to lay cards down in a specific order, but you are limited in the kind of clues you can give to others, and clues are a limited resource. (There isn't much that's super-similar to Hanabi, but a more advanced and thematic spiritual successor is coming out in a few weeks called Beyond Baker Street)
Sushi Go - Elegant little "card drafting" game where you take a card from your hand and then pass the hand to the next player, trying to collect sets of sushi to earn points. Despite its simple mechanic, it's balanced, quick, and fun for all types of gamers. (In this genre, I'd really recommend 7 Wonders, which is based on the exact same mechanic, but involves building an ancient civilization and brings rich resource management challenges into the game. One of my favorite games to this day; you could even start with this, but it's definitely a higher complexity level and it would be very helpful to have someone teach.)
Ticket to Ride - Very straightforward game about collecting sets of cards and using them to place trains on a map. One of the few games I can get my dad to play that we all find fun -- new players can get into the game quickly. Spawned a ton of spin-offs, so it's definitely loved.
Lords of Waterdeep - Great introduction to the "worker placement" genre. Players move tokens to take actions, as well as preventing others from taking the same action. The actions let you collect followers, construct buildings, and send them on quests (the game takes place within an official D&D setting). I don't personally love this one because I got into more advanced worker-placement games before I played it, but I can understand why it's adored by so many people. (Interesting next steps: Viticulture or if you want to jump off the deep end Caverna/Agricola, which are punishing but both have spent time rated as BGG's highest ranked game)
If that's not enough to look up, here are some other games I don't have time to describe, but I'd also recommend for newbies: Splendor, Takenoko, Ra, FUSE, Survive: Escape from Atlantis, <...
Basically I've found that it's good to play a variety of different board game types to see what you personally enjoy.
Also see this post: https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/198483/numbers-bgg-1 I would recommend looking at the Popular games on that list.
I mostly choose my boardgames based on BGG rating, the existence of a good and practical solo variant and playtime under 3h, examples are Race for the Galaxy, Neandertal, Imperial Settlers, The New Era, Robinson Crusoe with the Lost retheme and Polis