Recently bought Above and Below, great game! Good balance of strategy and adventure/storytelling which i havent tried before.

If you've been on the fence about Food Chain Magnate but were nervous about price, funagain has it for $65 https://www.funagain.com/control/pro...duct_id=034026. Buy now and thank me later. Splotter has no immediate plans to do a 7th printing. On their site they said they are done printing for a pretty long while. Once its gone, it may not be available at any reasonable price for a long while.

Easily the best heavy game to come out in 2015. It won the Golden Elephant Award for the best heavy game of the year to boot!

Damn, that's cheap (Nevermind, back to $99.99 and sold out...glad I took the plunge 2 weeks ago)

I just got in a wooden insert set for Food Chain Magnate from etsy; taking photos and will post them soon

Preview:

So Food Chain Magnate is a great game, but it takes a LOT of space to play. So the insert for it ($35 from Marvelous Meeples on etsy) not only serves to organize the pieces, but more importantly DRASTICALLY reduces the playing space needed.

First, here is the box without any organizing insert (ignore insert piece at top of picture). If you don't at least band the card stacks or something then the cards near the top get all mixed up:




Here are all the pieces of the insert:



Here are the game pieces placed in the insert:



And all back in the wooden box:




Now, here is the game laid out normally. This is on a 3'x3' game mat:



Damn, that's a lot of space just for the cards! Plus you have piles of food/drink pieces and stacks of tiles when you don't have the rest in the insert


On the same mat, here is how you play with this insert:



Now there is plenty of room for players to actually play the game



Here are the cards in the insert, which puts them all in the same order as on the menu:





Pros: This is well-constructed and you can get it with the slots sized for sleeved or unsleeved cards. It holds all the pieces very well and organized, which is great for a game that has zero organizer sections in the retail box. But more importantly, setup and cleanup are much faster and the space needed to play the game is 1/2 or less.

Con: When cards are in the holder, you can't see the bottom of the cards to know if it's a salaried person or if they can be trained to better jobs, but the player menu tells you that stuff (tho doesn't tell you which jobs they can be trained to). That will matter more the first few plays, but you can always take one of each of those cards out and put them in a row along the top of your area for easy reference.

A+, would recommend as it's not that costly and will help you get this great game to the table more often.

Link: https://www.etsy.com/listing/2953165...lated_listings

Looks awesome. Heard a lot of good things about that, but the same Cons. Tommy & Lee from Meeple Realty are making their own insert shortly for it too, so keep an eye out for that, if so inclined. Will fit sleeved cards too.

Thanks, took a look at Meeple Realty and they have some nice stuff

I'm good for this game, but may use them for other games in the future. I do still need to sleeve my cards, though.

Btw, I got the game mat from coolstuffinc for only $17.99 and it's great so far. (This one, tho it's now $26 and out of stock: http://www.coolstuffinc.com/p/215807)

I have no doubt the quiver gaming mat is an even better surface, but that thing is $129 for the same size

Food Chain Magnate is in stock for $89 right now on coolstuffinc

http://www.coolstuffinc.com/p/223240

Anyone played Castle Panic or Star Trek Panic? There's a sale right now and thinking of getting it. Co-op game, not sure if good or just button pushing.

I play Castle Panic several times a week with my daughter bc she loves it.

It's a good, well-known co-op game not aimed at kids that's pretty good; I personally prefer heavier games, but for a lighter game it's enjoyable; could also be good for getting more casual players into games as a sort of gateway game.

It's co-op but also whomever kills the most monsters wins (but everyone loses if monsters tear down your castle)

Wizard tower expansion is nice addition if you end up liking the game, making it tougher but also giving more powerful cards to fight the monsters.

Me and my gf got the second edition of Mansion of Madness for christmas. It's cooperative game where up to 5 investigators are thrown into a mansion to explore and solve a mystery in. It's based on the lore of H.P. Lovecraft/Arkham Horror which I'm not at all familiar with, but you don't have to be. It uses an app (phone, ipad or computer) as an important tool to playing the game, it basically acts as a game master and it works very well.

We've only played 1 out of 5 scenarios, but the game seems awesome so far. The 60-90 min scenario took closer to 180 minutes for my group of bumbling fools to play through (not counting our first attempt at the scenario where we failed miserably). I'm not sure how great the replay value is but there should be a good amount of play time within the 5 scenarios.

As for the ChrisV™ critique of cooporative games with complete information, at the beginning of the game all information is shared, but during the game it's possible for individual investigators to go insane and (potentially) get a changed win condition (a bit similar to a traitor in Dead of Winter). This effect seems really cool, at least for as long as you don't know which insane conditions there are in the game*. Once you know they may be easy to identify, I don't know yet. I also think the game plays best with 4-5 dedicated players, if you bring in a newbie I think the experienced players will end up making most of the decisions.

Will need more play to evaluate, but I'm very optimistic.

*Reading the game instructions spoiled one insane effect for me, if you're about to start playing this game I would be careful to avoid doing that.

I didn't realise I was trademarked. Makes sense, I am valuable property.

I generally like traitor games, but doesn't complete information make it a bit obvious when the traitor starts deviating from group consensus? That happened a bit in Shadows Over Camelot even without complete information (individual player hands are private).

I just got home from Sydney and on my doorstep was Airlines Europe. Bought it as a birthday present for a friend who likes TTR a lot.

I haven't played Shadows Over Camelot, but it seems there's no easy way to deal with an insane investigator in MoM. If any investigator dies, the group loses (unless the group complete their wincon that turn). You can force the insane investigator to act first every turn in order to counteract his potential shenanigans with your remaining actions, but that's it I think.

I need to play more to have any idea of how this works out in practice, considering I don't even know what insane conditions there are.

New personal best



AI helped me a bit, because he refused to place a 12th card, so I could place some nice valuable developments in the last couple of cards.

Picked up Between Two Cities as a family gift for Christmas. It was okay I guess. Pretty light game (and plays 3-7 people so nice for largish groups) but scoring is kind of confusing for newer people. Might be better once you get the hang of it.

More importantly than game playing, our excessively expensive* cabinet arrived today. Pleased enough with the finished product.



* We have two rules in our house. The first rule is that she gets her way on all the small arguments and I get my way on all the big ones. The second rule is that there are no big arguments.

It is 100% worth the price. Can play basically any board or card game on there. DM players play Terra Mystica, Democracy, and New Angeles on there pretty frequently.

Nice cabinet

My 8 year old daughter got the following games for Christmas:

Harry Potter card game: cooperative deck building game. Somewhat like dominion but cooperative and has 7 decks in it; you start with deck one and once you beat it you go to year 2 which adds rules and cards and complexity and so on through all 7 years. We've only played and beaten year one so far but she likes it. Good game for any Potter fans out there.

Patchwork: just played this tonight and she got -17 the first time and +17 the second once she figured out buttons are important and how to fill out the board; she got the 7x7 bonus even the second game. Looks like a hit.

Dream Home: haven't played yet, but supposed to be good for her age

7 wonders duel: I played it with her older cousin and enjoyed it; I think she'll like it once she learns it

Splendor: we played this 3-player with her cousin and it went well; should be good for more plays at her age while teaching her the basics of engine building and racing for milestones

Flash Point: Fire Rescue: A classic coop game about escaping from a burning building; we haven't played this yet

Sushi Go! Party: the expanded version of the original; haven't played with her yet; will be her first endeavor into card drafting

Mario Party 10: Wii U video board game; haven't played with her yet but it's a fun light game

Splendor is one of my favorite games and I also enjoy patchwork and 7 wonders duel .

The Mario kart game needs the system to be played ?

Yeah it's on Wii U; it's the latest version of Mario Party where you roll dice to move along a board but often stop to play a mini game for points (stars or coins I forget); mini games are usually decently fun

I think Fusion Frenzy on original Xbox was the best of this genre

I figure splendor, patchwork and 7 wonders duel are all games where she can learn to see how what she does may help/harm the opponent's next move and to think forward a few moves and set herself up for bigger payoffs

Sorry I can't read thought you said Mario kart lol

Speaking of Mario Kart, my son got the Anki Overdrive race track; it's like those slot car tracks but without slots and you use phone to control it and can play each other or the computer (who then controls the other physical car) and you can shoot lasers (green shells) to spin each other out and use tractor beams to slow them down

Race or battle mode; it's closest to a hybrid physical-virtual mix of Mario Kart that I've seen

I got a few solo games as well, but haven't played them yet:

Arkham Horror Card Game
Hostage Negotiator

Anyone else play any good solo games that you can recommend? The more puzzly and less luck the better

I've seen those. How much do they cost and are they fun?