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[s0]

This year is the year of co-op adventure card games lol. I bought 3 of them in the last 2 months. I've already gushed at length about Mistfall itt, but now I'm gonna talk about another one because why not.

Legends of Andor: Chada & Thorn

Not sure if this one has an English release yet. It's a spinoff of Legends of Andor, a pretty good story-driven adventure board game with some Euro-ish elements. This one combines adventure gaming with a somewhat Euro-esque design philosophy as well, but that's where the similarities end, mechanically. It's a game about progressing along occasionally branching paths while running from an ever advancing deadly curse while balancing various resources to make sure you pass all the challenges ahead of you. It's 2 players only. You play as the titular characters (a ranger/archer and a warrior). The central mechanic of the game is managing rows of cards that contain things like action cards, enemies, equipment etc. In that sense it's a little like a deck builder except each player has 3 small decks at once and there's no shuffling and no hand. Each turn you get to activate the front card of one of your rows and shift it to the back. It's actually a really clever mechanic and not one I've seen in any other game so that's cool.

The actual co-op part is pretty decent. You only have 2 primary ways to interact with each other directly (help the other player skip spaces in a path or help the other player fight an enemy). The first one is more significant than the latter. The game does require mutual planning to win but there could be more of it imo.

The game uses randomness very sparingly. The only uncertain elements are which "curse cards" (cards that make you spend resources when you activate them), which boards you play on and which enemies you draw. This is both good and bad. The bad part is that it's somewhat puzzle-esque (tho not a total puzzle) which limits replay value. There are different "quests" that each use a different pool of boards. You can play them as a campaign (there's a story), but nothing carries over between quests.

There are few components, but the amount feels right for what the game tries to accomplish.  The only thing it could really use more of are quests/boards. The low number of components also makes for quick setup time and very sparing use of table space which is a big plus. Another big plus is that it's one of the shortest and fastest paced games I've played in this genre. A quest only takes about 30 minutes and it moves extremely quickly because each turn only consists of 1 action. It's also pretty intuitive and easy to learn despite the rulebook being unclear on some things.

Its main weakness is in the flavor/theme department. The card art is very nice and the story, while typical fantasy schlock, is entertaining for what it is. Unfortunately it's brought down by the fact that the card row mechanic makes no thematic sense whatsoever and the game feels rather abstract as a result. It's a little like Reiner Knizia's Lord of the Rings in that way.

Anyway it's good and I would recommend it if you're looking for a quick to play adventure board/card game with an interesting central mechanic.

[Nillo]

I think my interest in co-op card games was soured by Pathfinder ACG tbh. I heard a lot of good things about that game and my experience with it didn't live up to expectations at all, mechanically it was too simple and the theme was nonexistent. So I'm much more careful with those types of games now. I did enjoy the Lord of the Rings card game though.

[s0]

I think my interest in co-op card games was soured by Pathfinder ACG tbh. I heard a lot of good things about that game and my experience with it didn't live up to expectations at all, mechanically it was too simple and the theme was nonexistent. So I'm much more careful with those types of games now. I did enjoy the Lord of the Rings card game though.

pathfinder has a cool deck upgrade mechanic, but the core gameplay sucks and is a pure grind. andor is nothing like it tho. it's literally the diametral opposite of pathfinder actually.

[Nillo]

I just checked my games store again and they have stocked Mistfall now so I think I'd like to get it. (Primarily because of your glowing recommendation haha)

The only issue is I've heard there are a lot of cards with errata in Mistfall so I wonder if it might be wise to wait until a second printing fixes that?

[s0]

unfortunately yes. the rulebook is also kind of a clusterfuck. the game itself is great but i would wait for another print if i were you.

[Jointhesaga]

Lately, I'm playing a lot of Fallout 4 (PS4), the occasional Star Wars Battlefront (PS4), and a bunch of Adventure Capitalist and Card Hunter (PC). And I'm constantly playing Words with Friends on my iPhone with people who enjoy smacking me around with letters.

[s0]

btw @nillo: the warhammer quest card game is another game in the same genre i can recommend. a bit lighter and slightly more luck driven (tho it's far from a dicefest and has some good decisionmaking, which is surprising given the game it's based on) than mistfall but still really good. Also unlike mistfall it has pretty good campaign play, so might be the better choice if youre into that.

another thing it has over mistfall is that enemies are more varied and designed in a very thematic way. for instance, bats are not very powerful but are "hard to hit", i.e. they mainly stick to the "shadow zone" (same thing as the staging area in the lotr card game) and slowly bleed out your party from there, ghouls cause disease, spiders cause you to exhaust (tap) one of your 4 action cards each turn, etc

[Nillo]

I have finished the protoss campaign and I will say I liked it a lot. It has a boring villain but the rest of the characters are good. The Spear of Adun abilities and army units are pretty well-balanced I think. There are many different options and many of them seem to be viable. The only ones that really seem OP are the dark templars. If you build an army of DTs you can kill ground units ridiculously fast.

I'm going through the campaign again using the Master Archives and collecting achievements. However there seems to be a bug which caused me to lose previously collected solarite. That's annoying, but thankfully you can get it back by speedrunning the missions on casual difficulty.

[starsrift]

Continuing my quest for an interesting indie villagebuilder. This time, playing Valhalla Hills. Sadly, it has the same problem as The Spatials, Planetbase, Banished, etc - a lovely system and graphics, but little actual gameplay content, and the game itself is insufficiently complex to carry a sandbox like Cities, SimCity, or even The Sims can. Valhalla Hills at least uses an unlock progression system lifted from the rouge-like games which encourages you to keep playing, and gives a mission victory condition but that's really it and it's not nearly enough. Maps are randomly generated, not designed. It also has a decent tutorial system, which gives it one up on The Spatials, and of course the unlock-progression thing nicely reinforces lessons and helps you lern the gam.

Come on guys, I get that we've not seen a great builder in a while, but maybe study some of the great ones of old to discover why they were so great. The Caesar series, for instance, set hard goals and give specific map challenges.

[s0]

Take an afternoon to learn dorf fortress. It pays off, I promise

[Schoq]

I tried for so many afternoons to no avail though

[s0]

Then GIT GUD

I only learned how to play dwarf fortress bc i was staying home with laryngitis and was bored. You really have to set aside time to learn how to play df. Once you understand the basic flow, the rest is not thaaaat difficult. A lot like paradox strategy games, it's actually an easy gam to play "casually" in 10-15 min bursts once youve got the mechanics down.

[Alevice]

I have finished the protoss campaign and I will say I liked it a lot. It has a boring villain but the rest of the characters are good. The Spear of Adun abilities and army units are pretty well-balanced I think. There are many different options and many of them seem to be viable. The only ones that really seem OP are the dark templars. If you build an army of DTs you can kill ground units ridiculously fast.

I'm going through the campaign again using the Master Archives and collecting achievements. However there seems to be a bug which caused me to lose previously collected solarite. That's annoying, but thankfully you can get it back by speedrunning the missions on casual difficulty.

I suppose you could hack the bank entries, but eh.

There are a few retcons, that as a Starcraft fan, get on my nerves, specially since it might contradict any extension done by content creators. That said, its the best campaign of the sc2 trilogy, by far.

Have you played the epilogue yet?

[Nillo]

There are a few retcons, that as a Starcraft fan, get on my nerves, specially since it might contradict any extension done by content creators. That said, its the best campaign of the sc2 trilogy, by far.

Have you played the epilogue yet?

Yeah it's definitely the best campaign out of the three, very well done. However I think that Terrans had the most entertaining hub level. Exploring the Hyperion is more interesting than talking to Abathur (as amusing as he is) and the lack of banter when talking to Protoss allies makes the Spear of Adun interior a little... suffocating, I guess? But I can't blame them because that's just how it is with the Protoss.

I haven't played the Epilogue yet, I'm planning to do so after I've completed the achievements of the main campaign (or most of them at least).

[Alec S.]

I've been mostly playing Jagged Alliance 2 and Marlow Briggs, along with a bunch of shmups I got in the steam sale (Mushihimesama, Danmaku Unlimited 2, and DRM). 

Marlow Briggs is really good.  Like, I had seen a partial let's play and played a bit of the game previously (it's been sitting on my backlog) but I'd always thought of it as basically a pretty good game that was just a lot better than you'd expect giving that it's a low budget American character action game.  It's certainly not as deep as a Platinum game, but it's a lot smoother than, say, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.  Like Enslaved, it tries to make itself kind of an action-adventure game with platforming and navigation puzzles along side the character-action combat, but I'd say it works a lot better here than it does in Enslaved (although because of the camera, sometimes some jumps are a bit hard to judge.  At least you actually have to judge your jumps.)

Jagged Alliance has been a game I've been meaning to put more time into for ages, and I'm finally sitting down and doing it.  I'm having a bit of trouble getting past the initial old PC game "How am I supposed to be playing this" hurdle.  I don't like how little I can move my characters in each turn, and I'm currently at a point where I completed a mission and now don't know what I'm supposed to do.  But it looks like there's a lot of interesting stuff in the game once I get the hang of it.

[starsrift]

Take an afternoon to learn dorf fortress. It pays off, I promise

I have tried. I'm not sure what's more impenetrable, the ASCII graphics or the lack of tutorial.

[saturdaymorning]

I went home for Thanksgiving and found the old Xbox 360 unplugged and cleaned up. Parents got a new smart TV setup so the Netflix machine was no longer needed. I took it back with me, and I've been trying out Ninja Blade. It's a From title though I never would've guessed. Fast paced, mashy action segments are broken up by QTE scenes. It's pretty bad. It reminds me of the PS2 Shinobi game, but without the combo system which required planning and forethought.

[Cobralad]

at least they were more more honest about making players run through same bits of content several times.

[s0]

Take an afternoon to learn dorf fortress. It pays off, I promise

I have tried. I'm not sure what's more impenetrable, the ASCII graphics or the lack of tutorial.

there are plenty of tutorials for df. theyre just not in the game

[SirNiko]

Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist is worth picking up. Designed by the guy that did The Stanley Parable. It's 15 minutes long and free, evidently as a scheme to get folks to sign up for the e-mail newsletter. It's a good scheme.

It doesn't have as many places to explore as in the Stanley Parable, but the environments do have more objects to interact with.