On 10/12/2018 at 9:21 AM, subtrendy2 said:

Man, I wish Marvel was better at making good board and video games (Spidey PS4 aside).

And the Wizkids thing looks fine, but I'm getting kinda weary of the "every IP gets a miniatures game" trend. I like stuff like IA that comes with a ton of other components and rules, but I really get the feeling that a lot of Wizkids consumer base is simply collectors rather than people who want to play the game. Not that there's anything wrong with collecting, but it's not a draw for me.

Hey, let's give credit where credit is due. This game (plus the X-Men and Dark City expansions) is fantastic.

2 hours ago, Deathseed said:

Hey, let's give credit where credit is due. This game (plus the X-Men and Dark City expansions) is fantastic.

Eh, I've played it several times. Personally, I'm not really impressed. Cards and box are high quality, but I'd much rather play a game where you're actually a hero, rather than a suit ordering them around.

2 hours ago, subtrendy2 said:

Eh, I've played it several times. Personally, I'm not really impressed. Cards and box are high quality, but I'd much rather play a game where you're actually a hero, rather than a suit ordering them around.

To each their own.

On 1/4/2019 at 10:16 AM, subtrendy2 said:

This is maybe an obvious one for some people, but it's been about a year since the start of my first D&D campaign (I'm a player) and I can't believe I slept on this phenomenon so long.

If you play combat on a grid (as opposed to strictly verbally) it's actually not too dissimilar to Imperial Assault, albeit much more open-ended.

Here's our set-up, with a monitor inlaid into a custom-built table our DM made, this time in a fight against a dragon (from that old MegaBloks line):

As you can maybe see there, our characters are basically stones with character art on the inside. This month, we plan on using HeroForge to build custom minis for the player characters and have a painting party. The DM got herself a scary looking dragon to paint so she can join us as well.

But yeah, I've been having a blast with my gnome warlock, and even though we've been playing since last March, I feel like I just recently started to actually understand the rules within the last few weeks. Not that they're overly complicated (I mean, they kinda are, but I think most people here could handle them no problem) but I'd been focusing far more on the roleplaying, personally. Turns out my character is significantly better at combat than I previously knew, so that was something I had to explain to my party...

If you could bring elements of D&D into IA, what would you bring?

On 1/16/2019 at 7:30 PM, Pollux85 said:

If you could bring elements of D&D into IA, what would you bring?

Fantastic question.

For me, I'd say roleplaying and creativity (IA is creative in its own way, but I'll explain in a bit).

Nearly every IA mission picks up where a D&D roleplaying encounter ends . Generally combat's still pretty fun in both games, but a lot of the time in D&D there are alternatives to fighting. In fact, sometimes fighting can be considered a fail state. Considering how often the Rebel heroes are terribly outnumbered, it would sometimes be logical (and fun) to give them a more open-ended (bu no less challenging) way out of combat before it even begins. The app manages this at times, to some extent.

Roleplaying lets players really lean into their specializations. For instance, my gnome warlock is an incredible liar. I've managed to lie my way through both combat encounters and even political elections during out campaign. Other players are better at intimidation, stealth, etc. I can definitely see how this could apply well to Imperial Assault.

As far as creativity goes, I think IA's stance on it comes with the territory. IA is a semi-competitive tactical minis game played on a grid board. The rules are pretty well laid out, so there isn't a lot of room for creative interpretation. There are times where you can kick an enemy into the Sarlaac pit or have Chopper electrocute enemies near terminals, but they're not all that often.

The elephant in the room here is that there are three lines of Star Wars RPGs already, so maybe I should just play those if I want a more robust roleplaying experience. But if I was to strictly try and improve IA in these ways, without removing the competitive aspect of the game (because that's kind of its identity, after all) I would probably do the following:

-Introduce a combat de-escalation mechanic to the game. Not sure how exactly that would work at the moment, but it's something interesting to consider. The problem is that with retaining the competitive aspect, some of the roleplaying still won't translate as well. For example, my silver-tongued gnome loses some of his charm when the lie is merely an attribute roll, without adding some personal pizzazz (and situational buffs/debuffs).

- Have better environmental hazards/ interactable objects on the maps.

- Introduce scenarios where the Rebels can interact with more neutral units. The app kind of does this, but Descent's travel mechanic also does to some extent (which I really wish had been added to IA).

Interested how others might view these changes.

edit: Pardon my poor memory right now, but I've seen some pretty good ideas for social encounter designs between missions on here. Still not quite D&D, but it's something I'd absolutely be interested in trying now, especially since I know my group is up for a little roleplay now (and I know exactly how that sounds, thank you very much )

Wizkids just announced a minis dungeon crawler style Marvel game.

https://geekandsundry.com/marvel-strike-teams-is-the-spectacular-superhero-dungeon-crawler/

On ‎10‎/‎10‎/‎2018 at 3:33 PM, FrogTrigger said:

So I check the FFG news regularly, I love a lot of their games like MoM, Descent, LOTR LCG, IA obviously, etc.. but it made me wonder, are there any other board gaming companies like FFG out there?

I know FFG is known for their quality, which is top notch, and their aggressive board game models that really spank your wallet. Are there any other companies that have such a broad arc on different genres and IP titles?

Basically, I'm pretty new to board games and have been a FFG fanboi with IA being my gateway drug, I've seen a lot of cool looking games on kick starters but have yet to branch out. What other board game companies do you like/follow?

Definitely one of my other favorite board game publishers is Avalon Hill. While they are generally know for large-scale, strategy warfare games like Axis and Allies and Ikusa, they are well-detailed and do a great job of transporting you to their setting.

While not a great analog, my group and I have been enjoying Betrayal Legacy, which strings a long campaign through multiple game sessions as a generation of families become implicated in a dark mystery involving a constantly shifting haunted house. It's a legacy game, so we have been progressing forward and making permanent changes to the game and components as we are playing. It's our first legacy game, and we are having a ton of fun with it!

Happy gaming!

Gamelyn Games and their Tiny Epic series are absolutely worth checking out. Tons of fun and a huge variety of game mechanics that play very well with 1-4 and sometimes even 5 players.

Not to mention their first big box game Heroes of Land, Air and Sea which has very quickly become one of my absolute favorite games.

At this point you could probably accuse me of fan-boying for both Gamelyn Games and FFG and I think you'd have a fair point. I enjoy a lot of what they each do.

It's a shame FFG and Games Workshop split paths. I really liked the Warhammer Conquest LCG, was late to the 4th edition Talisman party and completely missed out on Forbidden Stars. Oh well, thankfully there's still plenty to like and dive into!

There are several other companies and games I could mention but I promised myself to keep it brief.

On 10/21/2018 at 8:59 AM, mulletcheese said:

...while thinking about non-FFG games similar to IA I have to mention core space:

Hadn't heard of this, will defo keep my eyes peeled for it now. Nice one

On 1/18/2019 at 11:19 AM, subtrendy2 said:

Fantastic question.

For me, I'd say roleplaying and creativity (IA is creative in its own way, but I'll explain in a bit).

Nearly every IA mission picks up where a D&D roleplaying encounter ends . Generally combat's still pretty fun in both games, but a lot of the time in D&D there are alternatives to fighting. In fact, sometimes fighting can be considered a fail state. Considering how often the Rebel heroes are terribly outnumbered, it would sometimes be logical (and fun) to give them a more open-ended (bu no less challenging) way out of combat before it even begins. The app manages this at times, to some extent.

Roleplaying lets players really lean into their specializations. For instance, my gnome warlock is an incredible liar. I've managed to lie my way through both combat encounters and even political elections during out campaign. Other players are better at intimidation, stealth, etc. I can definitely see how this could apply well to Imperial Assault.

As far as creativity goes, I think IA's stance on it comes with the territory. IA is a semi-competitive tactical minis game played on a grid board. The rules are pretty well laid out, so there isn't a lot of room for creative interpretation. There are times where you can kick an enemy into the Sarlaac pit or have Chopper electrocute enemies near terminals, but they're not all that often.

The elephant in the room here is that there are three lines of Star Wars RPGs already, so maybe I should just play those if I want a more robust roleplaying experience. But if I was to strictly try and improve IA in these ways, without removing the competitive aspect of the game (because that's kind of its identity, after all) I would probably do the following:

-Introduce a combat de-escalation mechanic to the game. Not sure how exactly that would work at the moment, but it's something interesting to consider. The problem is that with retaining the competitive aspect, some of the roleplaying still won't translate as well. For example, my silver-tongued gnome loses some of his charm when the lie is merely an attribute roll, without adding some personal pizzazz (and situational buffs/debuffs).

- Have better environmental hazards/ interactable objects on the maps.

- Introduce scenarios where the Rebels can interact with more neutral units. The app kind of does this, but Descent's travel mechanic also does to some extent (which I really wish had been added to IA).

Interested how others might view these changes.

edit: Pardon my poor memory right now, but I've seen some pretty good ideas for social encounter designs between missions on here. Still not quite D&D, but it's something I'd absolutely be interested in trying now, especially since I know my group is up for a little roleplay now (and I know exactly how that sounds, thank you very much )

It's interesting, because I believe that the app has some of these aspects of story and encounters that involve player agency and choice, at least in Legends of the Alliance, if I recall correctly. It's been a while, but I could have sworn that when I played it we were making certain dialogue options. I really can't say how much they added to the trajectory of the story, if any, but they were fun little personal moments that gave us some investment.

Fascinatingly, I believe Gloomhaven has a similar sort of encounter system where there's a scenario that isn't predicated on combat, but rather on the decisions of the group. It's really fascinating to see these crop up in more of these dungeon-crawlers, but you notice that it's only for cooperative games. I guess it would be remiss if there was a way to include the Imperial Player in some way.

On 1/25/2019 at 2:49 PM, 54NCH32 said:

Hadn't heard of this, will defo keep my eyes peeled for it now. Nice one

So I went all in on the January Core Space pre-order! Can't wait, defo some nice terrain elements to it that ill integrate into our IA games

1 hour ago, Kunitzu San said:

It's interesting, because I believe that the app has some of these aspects of story and encounters that involve player agency and choice, at least in Legends of the Alliance, if I recall correctly. It's been a while, but I could have sworn that when I played it we were making certain dialogue options. I really can't say how much they added to the trajectory of the story, if any, but they were fun little personal moments that gave us some investment.

Fascinatingly, I believe Gloomhaven has a similar sort of encounter system where there's a scenario that isn't predicated on combat, but rather on the decisions of the group. It's really fascinating to see these crop up in more of these dungeon-crawlers, but you notice that it's only for cooperative games. I guess it would be remiss if there was a way to include the Imperial Player in some way. 

It does, to some extent. And I really do like the app.

I guess what I like about D&D is that players can get creative in ways that the DM didn't necessarily intend. For instance, maybe your Warlock character can cast Fear and cause enemies to run away from, only for your Rogue to cut a rope and drop a chandelier on them (some DMs may have planned that as a possibility, granted, but I think the point remains that you can use the environment to your advantage in creative, unpredictable ways).

In Imperial Assault, the app may give you the option to swing a log into the side of an AT-ST ewok style, but that's something planned into the app. In fact, in some of these cases, the "special takedown" may be the only way to destroy a unit.

And I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, just different. It's more akin to something like The Legend of Zelda series than it is to Monster Hunter- and much like IA and D&D, both of those games are popular for a reason, despite their differences.

A game that I’ve discovered this year and absolutely love it - Heroes of Normandie.

It has all of the best features of imperial assault plus a lot more. It is very modular, fun, tactical, and you can create so many things with it.

When it first came out there were some challenges with the rules. However, it has matured very well and the rules have been updated and improved significantly since it the original release. Thus, ignore any comments about the rules on boardgame geek.

What l really like about HoN is that it is a system that is very flexible.

Different terrain has different features beyond what imperial assault offered. You can blow up buildings with a tank. A tank can go over a destroyed tank or push it over.

There is also a fog of war. If you have an iPad there is an iOS game as an intro to the board game system.

I highly recommend it.

Version 2.0 should be coming out this year.

https://www.devil-pig-games.com/en/games/heroes-of-normandie/

Meanwhile, you can pre-order Heroes of Stalingrad - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1538673930/heroes-of-stalingrad-world-war-2-wargame-on-the-fr

On 6/2/2019 at 10:31 PM, robertpolson said:

A game that I’ve discovered this year and absolutely love it - Heroes of Normandie.

It has all of the best features of imperial assault plus a lot more. It is very modular, fun, tactical, and you can create so many things with it.

When it first came out there were some challenges with the rules. However, it has matured very well and the rules have been updated and improved significantly since it the original release. Thus, ignore any comments about the rules on boardgame geek.

What l really like about HoN is that it is a system that is very flexible.

Different terrain has different features beyond what imperial assault offered. You can blow up buildings with a tank. A tank can go over a destroyed tank or push it over.

There is also a fog of war. If you have an iPad there is an iOS game as an intro to the board game system.

I highly recommend it.

Version 2.0 should be coming out this year.

https://www.devil-pig-games.com/en/games/heroes-of-normandie/

Meanwhile, you can pre-order Heroes of Stalingrad - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1538673930/heroes-of-stalingrad-world-war-2-wargame-on-the-fr

I went for the cthulhu version, shadows of normandie. I haven't played it yet, it's just sitting on a shelf staring at me.