So the board game bug hit me again and I started flying through amazon adding all kinds to my wishlist. Really had to stop myself from spending hundreds cause some of them I have looked at before last year and they were way more pricey, and now the price on some seems to have come down. Just wondering what everyone thinks of the following or can offer any insight on them:

Dark Souls miniatures board game: This looks amazing, and it's currently on sale for $100 with Prime. VERY hard not to pull the trigger on this one. Anyone played it?

Scythe: About 7 months ago when I looked at it it was like $125, now it's $65. Very tempting to pick up

Alien vs Predator the hunt begins: Again last year when I checked it out it was $125, and now it's $55 in what's called a "2nd edition" Anyone able to shed some light on what has changed from the first edition? Factory box looks smaller for the 2nd edition, and I did hear something about the miniatures being very bad for the 1st edition, so maybe that's all that's changed? How many expansions does this game have?

Boss Monster: This looks like a very fun game. Amazon has a bundle that is Boss Monster 1, 2, and all 3 expansions for $61. Should I bite?

Megaman Board game: An actual Megaman miniatures baord game?! Are all the robot bosses from Megaman 2-6 in this?

I have heard enough horror stories about the company and it's handling of the game to stay away from AvP.

Boss Monster is a fun little game.

Megaman isn't great. Last I checked, it only has the Robot Masters from 1, with expansions for the 2 extra bosses from the remake.

Dang that's dissapointing to hear about AvP and Megaman. 1st Megaman was garbage so not sure why they would base it off 1.

And what horror stories are there about the AvP company?

I went all in on the Dark Souls kickstarter. Received the core game and the expansions and sg are due next month.

The game is great, thematic, fun, hard if you hack and slash and easy if you think. The boss fights are so good.

There are two downsides when not playing campaign mode. Earning souls and loot. They are minimized when playing 4 player but for each player less than full they compound. There are a ton of house rules for fixing both souls gained and item procurement for non-campaign games. They speed things up and keep you progressing where the grind would otherwise stagnate and draw games out from 1.5 hours to 3+.

If you love the video game, you'll love this board game translation even with the faults described.

I just received Massive Darkness kickstarter over the weekend and it's meant to be more hack and slash, and throws more loot at you than you can handle. It's very fun too, but I fear without all the kickstarter exclusives it would get stale. Dark Souls had zero exclusives so you'll be able to get everything released.

Boss monster is fairly fun, but not much depth.

Just went all in on that $61 Boss monster bundle, taking a chance with that haha. removed Megaman board game from my list thanks to above suggestions.

Still wondering what is bad about AvP the hunt begins (and what has changed from 1st to 2nd edition)

Also found a few more I was wondering about:

Photosynthesis (this game looks beautfiful)

Captain Sonar

Raptor

Terraforming Mars

Quantum Revised edition

Evolution

I'm not super clued in to the AvP issues, but one of the things I've heard is that they released a 2nd edition of the game before all if the original KS backers had received the 1st edition, and then did not upgrade them. I also picked up some of the figs to use as proxies for another game and was not impressed. They were small and seemed exceptionally brittle, even for resin.

Captain Sonar I looked at a bit at GenCon. It's sort of a bridge simulator crossed with battleship. 2 teams, each controlling a single sub, separated by a big screen. You don't know where the other guy is, but each move gets called out (n,s,e,w) and the guy manning the sensors keeps track of enemy movement with a dry erase marker and try's to deduce the enemy's location based on how they are navigating around islands. It looked interesting, but I'm not sure there is enough there for good replayability. There is one game called just "Sonar" that is two teams of 1-2 people each, "Captain Sonar" is apparently a more advanced version that supports teams of up to 4 each.

Heard really good things about Terraforming Mars, but don't know anything about it.

Evolution is kinda a neat game but the flight expansions adds complexity without really improving the game.

A game that I have been enjoying to ridiculous levels for the past year or so is Shadows of Brimstone. Old west crossed with lovecraftian horror cooperative dungeon crawl. The had some rocky issues with the first KS, but there is a lot out now (including a 2nd KS that can still be late pledged).

Thanks for all the replies so far! Yeah just been on a board game kick and have a soft spot for miniatures type games haha. One thing I can't beleive there is not a game of yet is Mechwarrior/battletech. I mean I think there is a game, but not a traditional miniatures board game with maps and such. I think those properties would be great for that! When I typed in board games on amazon there were 400 pages of results, I think I made it to page 25 before I had added so many things to my list that I told myself I better call it quits haha. Granted a lot of those pages are prolly childrens games as well

On ‎9‎/‎7‎/‎2017 at 0:59 PM, TasteTheRainbow said:

Boss monster is fairly fun, but not much depth.

Agreed. Boss Monster usually isn't my first-choice game, but it's still pretty fun, relatively easy to learn, and doesn't take up much space, so it usually ends up being taken to Game Night as an option and gets played at least somewhat regularly.

Scyth is an awesome game . Ive played with 3 and 4 players and works really well

I have been eyeing Scyth, but I am not much of a boardgamer anymore.

10 minutes ago, Arrowman said:

I have been eyeing Scyth, but I am not much of a boardgamer anymore.

Once a board gamer always a boardgamer! Just takes the right game to release your inner child again!

I demo'd the Dark Souls board game at Gencon. If the full game is as fun as the demo, I think it's absolutely worth the buy.

Boss Monster is a lot of fun, I'd recommend it.

I bought AvP: The Hunt Begins, Second Edition last fall. While the gameplay is fun and thematic (in my opinion), there are a lot of serious quality control issues with the miniatures and parts included with the game.
Many of the Alien miniatures had pieces broken off (a second mouth gone here, a few back spikes broken there, and a hand broken off one) and one of the marines was completely broken in half. This is odd because the miniatures come delivered in soft storage foam. But the core set miniatures do come fully assembled.

I had also picked up some expansions to add to the Aliens faction and all of them had chunks of excess plastic sticking off from where you would connect the limbs to the body, requiring them to be cut off with special tools. There was also excess plastic sticking off the end of the alien head crests and the end of the tails. It made it absolutely miserable to assemble, especially for someone like me who has never had a game where I needed to assemble my own miniatures before.

The tiles you use for making the maps in AvP warped within a week of me having the game. It doesn't make them unplayable, but it is annoying.

Again, the AvP game is fun to play and the miniatures themselves are incredibly detailed and look amazing, but the quality control on the miniatures and map tiles is terrible. Getting the game depends on how much work you want to put into fixing up quality control mistakes for an arguably fun AvP game experience.

Hilariously entertaining beer-and-pretzels game, now available with FFG quality: Wiz War.

On 2017-09-08 at 10:56 AM, voltagejim said:

Thanks for all the replies so far! Yeah just been on a board game kick and have a soft spot for miniatures type games haha. One thing I can't beleive there is not a game of yet is Mechwarrior/battletech. I mean I think there is a game, but not a traditional miniatures board game with maps and such. I think those properties would be great for that! When I typed in board games on amazon there were 400 pages of results, I think I made it to page 25 before I had added so many things to my list that I told myself I better call it quits haha. Granted a lot of those pages are prolly childrens games as well

Wait, what? Battletech started as a minis game over 30 years ago and is still around. It's created spin off strategic level minis, fighter combat and numerous computer games... I've misunderstood you, right?

Iron Wind metals does the minis

Catalyst currently publishes the rules

12 hours ago, LagJanson said:

Wait, what? Battletech started as a minis game over 30 years ago and is still around. It's created spin off strategic level minis, fighter combat and numerous computer games... I've misunderstood you, right?

Iron Wind metals does the minis

Catalyst currently publishes the rules

I think I have this game in a box ready to be moved right now. Had gray plastic miniatures. When I was a teenager I used to sit in the back of the mini-van on the trips to town trying to design my own custom mech for play in the game.

I can't seem to find a battletech mini's board game with map and everything. All I can ever find are the mechs by themselves. Got a link to one I can favcorite on amazon?

35 minutes ago, voltagejim said:

I can't seem to find a battletech mini's board game with map and everything. All I can ever find are the mechs by themselves. Got a link to one I can favcorite on amazon?

Here is a link... At least you know what to look for from it.

13 hours ago, Arrowman said:

I think I have this game in a box ready to be moved right now. Had gray plastic miniatures. When I was a teenager I used to sit in the back of the mini-van on the trips to town trying to design my own custom mech for play in the game.

Our local group used to do customs. Won a game without firing simply because everybody ran away from my 5/8 speed 55 ton mech... With two Ultra AC20s. Sure, I had only maximum of five rounds of fire, less on full auto, but it could crush anything in its path. Good fun!

I think the confusion here might be coming from the difference between a miniatures board game and a full on miniatures wargame. There have been lots of tabletop battletech games, but as far as I know they have all been wargames ala 40k, x-wing itself, warmahordes, starfleet battles and the like with freeform battlefield layouts and more customizability in force selection; and not "miniatures board games" with board tiles providing pre-defined playing fields and the like.

Granted, there is increasingly less distinction between the two as manufacturing advancements make miniatures easier to produce for board games and game design advancements make wargames play more and more like boardgames with highly customizable "boards"

On ‎9‎/‎14‎/‎2017 at 1:13 AM, Forgottenlore said:

I think the confusion here might be coming from the difference between a miniatures board game and a full on miniatures wargame. There have been lots of tabletop battletech games, but as far as I know they have all been wargames ala 40k, x-wing itself, warmahordes, starfleet battles and the like with freeform battlefield layouts and more customizability in force selection; and not "miniatures board games" with board tiles providing pre-defined playing fields and the like.

Granted, there is increasingly less distinction between the two as manufacturing advancements make miniatures easier to produce for board games and game design advancements make wargames play more and more like boardgames with highly customizable "boards"

I'm not sure I understand this statement. Can you expand? Battletech does come with hex map sheets of pre-defined areas of terrain and such and it's often how it's played instead of the freeform beautiful terrain. I mean, I love having all that stuff, but outside the big conventions we use the hex maps.

Just noticed my link didn't work before. Sorry @voltagejim - https://www.amazon.ca/Catalyst-Game-Labs-CAT3500B-BattleTech/dp/193687685X The box set is unavailable on Amazon.ca at the moment, but it at least shows you what it looks like and some of the previous versions.

Oh sweet, that's cool! I will add that to my list of games to get then! I think I will take a chance on the AVP game just cause I love the franchise, and based the reviews it seems I will have at least a 75% chance of my tiles not wraping and the minis not busted haha. Only thing I notcied was the the expansions for the game look very expensive and the mini's for the expansions don't look like they go with the game at all. Like they are way more detailed it seems and almost seem like full on action figures and way bigger than the ones that come with the game.

Next game I may get is now between Downforce, Colony, and Exodus Proxima Centari