Board Game Update from me. I was not able to resist the temptation to back the Batman Board Game. Not only that, but I have also backed 3 additional Board Games. Crypt, because it was cheap. Unbroken, as I don't have any proper single player board games, and I am interested in expanding my knowledge about them. Darwin's Choice, which is a game about combining different animals. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/marcduer/darwins-choice-create-evolve-extinct-rethink <-- Link to it if anyone is interested. Currently waiting for One Night Ultimate Werewolf to go on sale, as my brother have expressed wanting to play it. (Though looking at my budget, I should probably try to get him to buy it himself.) I am also designing some personal Board Games to play with my Family and Friends. No new news about the Board Game of mine that is currently being published, it's still undergoing lots of playtesting. The art of the game is almost finalized, hoping to be able to show it here soon.
Was heavily considering backing this game, but looking at all the similar board games I have, I couldn't justify it. The minis look so beautiful, I adore the Xenomorph-esque aliens.
Mage Wars isn’t collectible. You start with all the spells available and in your spell book. There are a couple of proper expansions that bring new mages and new spells, but they are all ‘known’ purchases. Academy is quite a poor relation to proper Mage Wars. I just bought City of Kings and that is looking pretty decent.
The other problem is that even when there are new mechanics, it often means you need to take out some existing ones because there just isn't enough consistency in the space otherwise if you have too many competing mechanics available. Generally, a product like that with more than 1 or 2 expansions, you are better off just selecting the specific expansions you want to play with and using some subset of the cards in them - trying to use them all at once almost never gives you a good experience. With many of these games, players have even created "recommended" lists of which pieces from what expansions are good to use together.
mage wars had the best expansions, though the rules were often fairly short sighted and rule debates came up often =( I miss that game, the stores stopped carrying it here
well the reason it's an issue is nobody plays it anymore, they pulled a pox nora and stopped releasing expansions in 2016. thus I have nobody local to play with, I stopped buying the expansions after that and it's a shame because it's easily the best 1 v 1 game I've played,
i do run my own board game nights but mage wars is a lot like pox nora, or magic, as it's a competitive game. much like magic you build grimoires/decks you use to fight your opponent, unlike those games there is very little luck in what you play drawing any card in your grimoire you feel is fit for the current situation to cast, even gaining mana every turn like you gain nora in poxnora to cast these spells or summon your monsters. anyway it ends up much like when you play an inexperienced opponent in pox nora, the fun with these games is playing someone of equal skill and pushing your deck to it's limits, but you don't get that facing a deck you built and piloted by someone who barely knows the rules. also doesn't help my friends have the tactical skill of toddlers, and it's impossible to get any enjoyment from playing these types of games against them, to be quite honest my daughter is my best hope for a real opponent lol, 14 or so years and she might be a good opponent =)
You can play Mage Wars on line using Vassal. It’s an old school hex war game program mostly, but I played a dozen or so games a couple of years back. All against good players. That said, Pox is much quicker and scratches the same itch.
mage wars when you get optimized decks with optimized plays, is actually pretty quick. much like pox the better the players the quicker the games unless you end up in a stalemate and need to grind it out
It's a lot of fun, but just SO SLOW. I like playing it online at boardgamearena tho, much faster. Let me know if you want to have a game sometimes, Emries plays too.
Try the ORIGINAL Advanced Civilisation board game. It came before the computer game and is cracking. Takes 12+ hours and 6+ people though! Check it out on BGG
I actually think the game is more fun when everyone sucks at it. I hate getting some uberleet online who thinks he's MLG. It's more fun when you are like, I want to have Ghandi and try and make the Hanging Gardens!