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Post by The Spice Weasel on Apr 3, 2020 12:08:35 GMT -5
I just ordered Pandemic Legacy Season 1 because, you know, why not? Mrs. Weasel loves Pandemic and we now have the time to work through a legacy game. That's awesome! I loved that game. When all this COVID-19 stuff started, my game group were all emailing each other stuff like "This is just like in Pandemic when [redacted redacted redacted redacted]!" We agreed that based on our decision-making in that game, none of us should be running the CDC. So, April, huh?
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Post by Hugs and Hisses on Apr 7, 2020 14:50:35 GMT -5
That's awesome! I loved that game. When all this COVID-19 stuff started, my game group were all emailing each other stuff like "This is just like in Pandemic when [redacted redacted redacted redacted]!" We agreed that based on our decision-making in that game, none of us should be running the CDC. So, April, huh? I don't remember it exactly, but I'm guessing April was the month when we all literally screamed in horror.
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Post by The Spice Weasel on Apr 8, 2020 12:16:56 GMT -5
So, April, huh? I don't remember it exactly, but I'm guessing April was the month when we all literally screamed in horror. In the game and real life. We lost our first game. A seemingly innocuous decision led to a perfectly horrible chain of events that saw us go from winning with two eradications to toast in about five turns. Hilariously horrific. Wanted another light and quick game for two so I got Welcome To. Very excited to finally play it. I think it will be perfect for us and I'll lose a lot. Also got the 1912 expansion for Ticket to Ride to breathe some life into that. Still haven't worked up the nerve to teach Brass.
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Post by ganews on Apr 9, 2020 23:13:45 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Apr 10, 2020 0:46:24 GMT -5
AWESOME! I am now on there. Screen name is Grillburg.
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Crash Test Dumbass
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ffc what now
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Post by Crash Test Dumbass on Apr 10, 2020 13:26:27 GMT -5
I'm down for it, but new user creation is down in the bad way while Europe gets their game on.
ETA: I'm in, username Crash Test
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Post by Nudeviking on Apr 12, 2020 23:55:23 GMT -5
My daughter got some kind of card game called Dobble. I am terrible at it and it makes me feel bad because I am routinely getting my ass beat by a four year old at it.
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Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Apr 16, 2020 7:54:09 GMT -5
When would you be playing?
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Post by Hugs and Hisses on Apr 16, 2020 8:54:46 GMT -5
The Spice Weasel -- Losing at Pandemic Legacy feels great though, because you get more fancy cards! I always kinda felt like, "OK, so we've completely lost half the world to a horrible plague, but look! We can have One Quiet Night and Airlift for the next game! There's no way we can lose!" Cut to next game -- "OK, so we've completely lost three quarters of the world to an even worse plague, but look! We can have One Quiet Night, Airlift, and Get Out of Jail Free* for the next game!" *I totally don't remember the names of the fancy cards now. It's all a blur of disease cubes and scars. And I'm so glad you got Welcome To! That's one of Stately Dick 'n' Hisses Manor's two go-to weekend lunchtime games! Liz is very married to her strategy of maximizing estate values, and almost always wins. Boomer always fills the top row first which never, ever, ever wins and I don't know why she does it. I am very married to a strategy of "do the things that seem the most fun that instant" and since planning estates and property values isn't ever fun that instant, I almost never win. But I'm not sure I've ever had a game of it that wasn't fun. The thematic expansions are also a total blast, particularly the winter version. I think Deep Water has had them on sale a lot recently.
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Post by The Spice Weasel on Apr 17, 2020 14:56:18 GMT -5
And I'm so glad you got Welcome To! That's one of Stately Dick 'n' Hisses Manor's two go-to weekend lunchtime games! Liz is very married to her strategy of maximizing estate values, and almost always wins. Boomer always fills the top row first which never, ever, ever wins and I don't know why she does it. I am very married to a strategy of "do the things that seem the most fun that instant" and since planning estates and property values isn't ever fun that instant, I almost never win. But I'm not sure I've ever had a game of it that wasn't fun. The thematic expansions are also a total blast, particularly the winter version. I think Deep Water has had them on sale a lot recently. It's a great little game isn't? A lot of fun for $20. I can see this easily becoming our go-to quick/relaxed game ahead of Patchwork and Azul. What changes up in the expansions? The goals or are the streets different as well? Played Ticket to Ride last night with the 1912 expansion. That was the most interesting a 2 person TtR game has felt in a while. Finally broke out Brass: Birmingham two nights ago. It went about as I expected: Initial apprehension followed by quickly getting it. It's not that it has a lot of rules, it's that every rule has an exception. To its credit, all of the rules and their exceptions make logical sense within Brass' economy. Also, it lends itself to teaching as you go because so many instances present themselves organically and kind of in order. We played with our cards face up on the table so we could talk through decisions and options. Looking forward to playing it again and trying different things out.
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Post by Hugs and Hisses on Apr 20, 2020 10:11:02 GMT -5
The Spice Weasel I'm so glad you finally got Brass to the table! Did you follow Quinn's advice for teaching games? I love when a big, scary game teaches itself. That's how I feel about Altiplano. "Listen, this makes no sense, but trust me, just start playing and it'll all just fall into place, I promise!" As for Welcome To, the expansions have all the same basic rules, but then add one or two little tweaks to get bonus points. The best of them is the Winter Expansion. At the end, you connect all the houses you've numbered in sequence with strings of holiday lights. One each street, you count the houses in the longest string and then get one bonus point for each house on that string. So it encourages you not skip numbers which makes juuuuust enough of a difference to make it super-fun. The Halloween Expansion has an adorable little push-your-luck element that involves choosing bonus-point-generating candy corns and ghosts that appear on most of the houses. The Spring one is brutal, and I haven't tried the Summer one yet. I dislike the art design on the doomsday and zombie ones, so I won't be trying them. The expansions are a great way to spice things up, but the base game is still the best version, I think!
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Crash Test Dumbass
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ffc what now
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Post by Crash Test Dumbass on Apr 20, 2020 12:06:04 GMT -5
I was called into an impromptu game of 7 Wonders last night on BGA. Somehow I won without having a single idea of how the game was played or really even what was going on. I've been playing a lot of Carcassone on BGA too, as well as their intro game, Can't Stop. I gave in and gave them the $24 to go premium.
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Post by The Spice Weasel on Apr 23, 2020 14:46:04 GMT -5
The Spice Weasel I'm so glad you finally got Brass to the table! Did you follow Quinn's advice for teaching games? I love when a big, scary game teaches itself. That's how I feel about Altiplano. "Listen, this makes no sense, but trust me, just start playing and it'll all just fall into place, I promise!" As for Welcome To, the expansions have all the same basic rules, but then add one or two little tweaks to get bonus points. The best of them is the Winter Expansion. At the end, you connect all the houses you've numbered in sequence with strings of holiday lights. One each street, you count the houses in the longest string and then get one bonus point for each house on that string. So it encourages you not skip numbers which makes juuuuust enough of a difference to make it super-fun. The Halloween Expansion has an adorable little push-your-luck element that involves choosing bonus-point-generating candy corns and ghosts that appear on most of the houses. The Spring one is brutal, and I haven't tried the Summer one yet. I dislike the art design on the doomsday and zombie ones, so I won't be trying them. The expansions are a great way to spice things up, but the base game is still the best version, I think! Yup. I used Quinns' advice to make a generic outline template and then started filling it in. If I can do Brass & GWT, the skies the limit, right? "Let me tell you about this guy named Vital Lacerda." I like the sound of the Christmas one. Will have to check that out.
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Post by ganews on Apr 25, 2020 21:43:17 GMT -5
I have finally created an account. I'm ganews, same as in town.
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Post by ganews on May 1, 2020 23:39:09 GMT -5
I have finally created an account. I'm ganews, same as in town. Having a lot of fun with this. I had a Zoom/BGA game night with local friends on Thursday. I upgraded to premium so I can play with our friends who moved to California last year and my sister in Georgia, at least for the length of this pandemic. And if we want to get a group here, I'm down.
New games to me are 6 Nimmt and Can't Stop. Turns out beating silent, anonymous strangers online is very satisfying.
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Post by Deleted on May 13, 2020 13:22:21 GMT -5
HeroForge is almost ready to release their new pre-colored miniatures options to the public. It sounds like a neat idea, but then also the price for a single miniature in this format looks like it starts at about $45.
For one ~2" tall mini.
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Post by Hugs and Hisses on May 15, 2020 11:02:48 GMT -5
For all you Dominion fans out there, the new expansion is fabulous! I haven't won a game with it yet, but it's got some cool stuff going on in it. At least, if you're like me and still can't get enough Dominion. Never enough Dominion... ::happy sigh:: Also, I upgraded my copy of Wingspan to include the Meeple Source bird meeples and oh em gee, I'm totally smitten. I can't seem to get a picture to load here, but you can check out my army of robins here.
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LazBro
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Post by LazBro on May 17, 2020 8:08:48 GMT -5
For all you Dominion fans out there, the new expansion is fabulous! I haven't won a game with it yet, but it's got some cool stuff going on in it. At least, if you're like me and still can't get enough Dominion. Never enough Dominion... ::happy sigh:: Also, I upgraded my copy of Wingspan to include the Meeple Source bird meeples and oh em gee, I'm totally smitten. I can't seem to get a picture to load here, but you can check out my army of robins here. Those are VERY good meeples.
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Post by Superb Owl 🦉 on May 17, 2020 11:06:19 GMT -5
So a couple of months ago I bought "No Thank You, Evil!" thinking of introducing Baby B to tabletop RPGs. It's a bit more complex than I expected, so I was hoping to find something simpler to start with. Yesterday I found this: Hero Kids! It's a very easy to understand kids' RPG for ages 4 and up, and there's a PDF bundle for $19.95 on DriveThruRPG right now that includes the main rules, a bunch of character and monster cards, and a ton of adventures! Each adventure includes premade maps, cut-out monster stat cards and paper standee miniatures. Along with the adventurer cards and standees, it is ready to go right off the printer! Hero Kids Complete Fantasy PDF BundleI read through the main rules in about an hour, and am VERY excited to try this out both with Baby B and Mrs B (who also has no tabletop RPG experience and wants to learn)! (EDIT - They also have a sci-fi version for when we finish the fantasy adventures!) Did you ever come back to “No Thank You, Evil!” or have strong thoughts on Hero Kids? I had started playing my old Fabled Lands books with Owl Jr., but now little sister has taken an interest as well and I could use something that works well for multiple 6-8 year old players.
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Post by Deleted on May 17, 2020 16:00:45 GMT -5
So a couple of months ago I bought "No Thank You, Evil!" thinking of introducing Baby B to tabletop RPGs. It's a bit more complex than I expected, so I was hoping to find something simpler to start with. Yesterday I found this: Hero Kids! It's a very easy to understand kids' RPG for ages 4 and up, and there's a PDF bundle for $19.95 on DriveThruRPG right now that includes the main rules, a bunch of character and monster cards, and a ton of adventures! Each adventure includes premade maps, cut-out monster stat cards and paper standee miniatures. Along with the adventurer cards and standees, it is ready to go right off the printer! Hero Kids Complete Fantasy PDF BundleI read through the main rules in about an hour, and am VERY excited to try this out both with Baby B and Mrs B (who also has no tabletop RPG experience and wants to learn)! (EDIT - They also have a sci-fi version for when we finish the fantasy adventures!) Did you ever come back to “No Thank You, Evil!” or have strong thoughts on Hero Kids? I had started playing my old Fabled Lands books with Owl Jr., but now little sister has taken an interest as well and I could use something that works well for multiple 6-8 year old players. Not yet, hoping to soon though.
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Post by Nudeviking on May 25, 2020 20:18:43 GMT -5
After a few months of COVID-19, "You can come to work from 9-6 in the office but all other work-related things (business trips, bowling teams, clubs, mandatory fun) are cancelled," my work related board game club met last night. We played a few card games en masse and then split into two groups to play various Eurostyle games. The group I was in played a game called Wingspan about birds. It was one of those quasi-resource management games only it was birds and eggs instead of corn and Mayans or coal and Robber Barons or whatever. Generally I'm not great at those games since they generally take a few playthroughs before you understand the mechanics in a way that will allow you to win but this one was simple enough that not only was I able to figure out how to play well but actually ended up winning against two people who'd played the game before and one like me had never played before (they came in second).
Another thing I liked about it was unlike other games of this ilk where you're constantly trying to dick over other players this one had way more things that benefited all players ("every player gets 1 worm whenever this ability is used" vs. "Take 1 iron ore from every player whenever this ability is used") so there are fewer instances of being like, "Fuck you man I needed that coal, I'm so going to get revenge on you the first chance I can!" Granted there were a ton of random bird cards of which we only saw like 30 in use so it's completely possible that the "Steal your neighbor's berries" is a thing that exists but just never came into play. Anyway, it's a fun game that I would readily play again.
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Post by Hugs and Hisses on Jun 2, 2020 8:55:17 GMT -5
Nudeviking -- So glad you liked Wingspan! It's the game that I've played the most during these "shelter in place" times. There's an expansion that introduces some more interesting options (including stealing resources, but even in that case, the player who lost a resource gets to replace it with something from the feeder) but it remains a very gentle game. My game buddies house ruled it to play longer rounds -- we use all 8 action cubes in every round -- and it means getting to interact with more birds. If your group is amenable to house rules, you might give it a try!
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Post by Nudeviking on Jun 2, 2020 19:20:04 GMT -5
Nudeviking -- So glad you liked Wingspan! It's the game that I've played the most during these "shelter in place" times. There's an expansion that introduces some more interesting options (including stealing resources, but even in that case, the player who lost a resource gets to replace it with something from the feeder) but it remains a very gentle game. My game buddies house ruled it to play longer rounds -- we use all 8 action cubes in every round -- and it means getting to interact with more birds. If your group is amenable to house rules, you might give it a try! Getting to see more birds would be good since that was my favorite bit. Oh how I howled with laughter about how ridiculous some of the birds looked!
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Post by Hugs and Hisses on Jun 3, 2020 10:10:43 GMT -5
The Spice Weasel -- I tried out the Welcome To sequel -- Welcome To New Las Vegas. It's great! I know Quinns and Matt from SU&SD were really lukewarm on it, but I disagree with their assessments. It wasn't nearly as complicated as Quinns said. No, it's not elegant as the original, but if you enjoy the original I think you'd enjoy the sequel. It changes juuuust enough up to make it feel like a really different challenge, but it's juuuuust enough the same that it feels familiar and fun. One of the main mechanics is that instead of only being able to up the values you get for estates, now you get to focus on which effects you want to prioritize and then up those values. It's more flexible in that regard.
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Post by The Spice Weasel on Jun 4, 2020 10:31:11 GMT -5
The Spice Weasel -- I tried out the Welcome To sequel -- Welcome To New Las Vegas. It's great! I know Quinns and Matt from SU&SD were really lukewarm on it, but I disagree with their assessments. It wasn't nearly as complicated as Quinns said. No, it's not elegant as the original, but if you enjoy the original I think you'd enjoy the sequel. It changes juuuust enough up to make it feel like a really different challenge, but it's juuuuust enough the same that it feels familiar and fun. One of the main mechanics is that instead of only being able to up the values you get for estates, now you get to focus on which effects you want to prioritize and then up those values. It's more flexible in that regard. Thanks. That looks really cool and Mrs. Weasel will love the theme. In order to get a bit more out of Pandemic Legacy we tried playing a couple of months over without advancing the game. Some rules had to be adjusted, but we still tried to stick to what was there. Before we started we had considered doing it as a four player game where we each controlled two characters. We decided to give that a shot and immediately got our asses kicked. We added a couple of event cards to the deck and tried again. Got our asses kicked again. Finally on the third try we squeaked by on the last play of the game. What I'm saying is, this game has to be hard as hell with four people compared to two. One downside of the 2 player game is that we've gotten really comfortable with a particular pairing (Quarantine Specialist & Operations Expert) that we've used them in almost every game. Also, real life can stop shadowing Pandemic Legacy 1 at any time.
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Post by The Spice Weasel on Jun 11, 2020 14:26:25 GMT -5
If you're a game publisher of any merit from small independent to large publishing house, how in the name of god and all things holy, is the first item on your Marketing & Promotion To-Do List not "Go to BGG and put a link to our game's website on the game profile page"?
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Post by ganews on Jun 14, 2020 20:59:27 GMT -5
I am on Board Game Arena almost every night, not necessarily playing but at least checking to see if friends are online. I've had multiple virtual game nights with local friends, friends that moved to California, my Georgia family, and my in-laws in Japan. My local friends are also premium members, which means we can all use the voice chat functionality instead of setting up a separate Zoom or something.
Wifemate's family is a longtime fan of Uno variants, so we've been able to play Solo on Friday nights US/Saturday morning Japan. It has mechanics for hand swappping that actually make it better than any Uno.
Other games I've played for the first time ever or in a long while which have become regulars: Battle Sheep, Carcassone, Jaipur, Takenoko, Lost Cities, Incan Gold, 6 Nimmit, Can't Stop, Stir Fry 18. It's also interesting to see dynamics change so much for some games based on the number of players, something that isn't as observable on a monthly game night.
It is weird how in this day and age BGA has no privacy settings whatsoever. You can see anyone's game history and scores, when they played, even when they are or were logged in. They don't even have to be your platform friend, you just have to know their username. I haven't seen any mechanism for limiting this.
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Post by Superb Owl 🦉 on Jun 23, 2020 16:54:31 GMT -5
I had been meaning to update on my kids RPG experiences. I've gone through the first couple starter adventures that come with the No Thank You, Evil box and that's gone pretty well. The younger kid got a little antsy going through the character set-up, but that's probably my fault for not doing the simplified version of that first time out. We had fun with the starter games, but they are a bit short, clearly just meant to get everybody used to how the game works. I appreciated that there are basically all of 3 stats the kids have to worry about (Tough, Fast, and Smart) and that everything is geared to just making whatever plan the kids come up with work out (with an emphasis on helping each other out to make that happen).
So now, I'm getting to the point that I actually have to come up with some new material for them to play through and I have a newfound respect for DM's who do this for complicated grown-up campaigns, because even putting together something relatively simple for a 6 and 8 year old is a lot of work.
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Post by The Spice Weasel on Jun 25, 2020 11:17:13 GMT -5
Two weeks ago a video titled "Pan Am Review - The sleeper game of 2020?" from Man vs. Meeple popped up in the recommended on my YT home page. I don't subscribe to MvM but I watch their videos occasionally and I was definitely intrigued by a game using Pan Am Airlines branding. I loved it immediately just because of the board map and card art, but the game itself looked really cool. My shortest description would be a more sophisticated Ticket to Ride with worker placement and auction/bidding mechanisms driving the action. We've never really played any bidding games, and the closest thing to Euro-style worker placement would probably be Great Western Trail. The fun part was tracking down info on the game. My little rant in my post from two weeks ago was about this game. Turns out Funko will be releasing it to a wider audience later in the year but for the time being the only place you can buy it is Target. I wanted this game so bad I braved two suburban strip malls to get it. The first Target I visited hadn't put it on the shelf yet and I had no interest in asking anyone to look for it in the back. Despite having never really played a bidding or worker placement game, this was one of the easiest game teaches I've done for Mrs. Weasel. It was familiar enough to not be overwhelming at first and the mechanics work so well within the structure of the game it's really easy to jump in and learn as you go. There's enough variety to the various decks that drive the game that each game can feel very different. Compare that to Ticket to Ride where if you play it enough you can suss out which routes others are building. Though this isn't really a route building game because you aren't necessarily trying to build a connected network as much as you are trying to sell off your more lucrative routes to Pan Am for cash & stock. I think this is a game that you could play with newbies but still has enough meat and fun dilemmas for more experienced players. boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/303057/pan-amTL,DR: If a more sophisticated Ticket to Ride with worker placement and bidding set in the heyday of mid-century air travel sounds appealing, check out Pan Am.
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Baron von Costume
TI Forumite
Like an iron maiden made of pillows... the punishment is decadence!
Posts: 4,660
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Post by Baron von Costume on Jun 26, 2020 1:51:40 GMT -5
Two weeks ago a video titled "Pan Am Review - The sleeper game of 2020?" from Man vs. Meeple popped up in the recommended on my YT home page. I don't subscribe to MvM but I watch their videos occasionally and I was definitely intrigued by a game using Pan Am Airlines branding. I loved it immediately just because of the board map and card art, but the game itself looked really cool. My shortest description would be a more sophisticated Ticket to Ride with worker placement and auction/bidding mechanisms driving the action. We've never really played any bidding games, and the closest thing to Euro-style worker placement would probably be Great Western Trail. The fun part was tracking down info on the game. My little rant in my post from two weeks ago was about this game. Turns out Funko will be releasing it to a wider audience later in the year but for the time being the only place you can buy it is Target. I wanted this game so bad I braved two suburban strip malls to get it. The first Target I visited hadn't put it on the shelf yet and I had no interest in asking anyone to look for it in the back. Despite having never really played a bidding or worker placement game, this was one of the easiest game teaches I've done for Mrs. Weasel. It was familiar enough to not be overwhelming at first and the mechanics work so well within the structure of the game it's really easy to jump in and learn as you go. There's enough variety to the various decks that drive the game that each game can feel very different. Compare that to Ticket to Ride where if you play it enough you can suss out which routes others are building. Though this isn't really a route building game because you aren't necessarily trying to build a connected network as much as you are trying to sell off your more lucrative routes to Pan Am for cash & stock. I think this is a game that you could play with newbies but still has enough meat and fun dilemmas for more experienced players. boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/303057/pan-amTL,DR: If a more sophisticated Ticket to Ride with worker placement and bidding set in the heyday of mid-century air travel sounds appealing, check out Pan Am. Sounds very up my street. should check out the vid.
I just bought Star Wars outer rim, looking forward to trying it.
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