As per title. I personally really enjoy deckbuilding / engine builders and civilisation games, but most of them understandably end just as you’re hitting the sweet spot of getting your engine up and running. Probably why Through the Ages is my favorite game - has all the mechanics I like, but lasts long enough that I feel like I get a chance to run them.
I love the ship customization in Eclipse, each type of ship (scout, fighter, cruiser) has a certain number of squares on your board that you can put any ship competent into. You can add more engines so it can move further in one action, or computers so you’re more likely to hit, or more guns so you roll more dice, or more shields so they are harder to destroy. You can find or research better components and all of your ships of the same class use the same blueprint.
I love how you can customize your units for how you want to play, but I’m not a fan of 4x games and wish there were other games with a similar mechanic.
Galaxy trucker, maybe? It’s a very different game, but it does have the ship building mechanic
You can’t exactly plan your Galaxy Trucker ship, it’s more “doing the best you can with what you’ve found.” For example: if you want to put a bunch of engines on your ship but don’t find very many, then there is nothing you can do about that.
I love how In spirit Island all the natural inhabitants and the spirits use wooden tokens and the invaders are made of plastic. Such a simple flavor thing but I love it so much.
Dice Forge’s gimmick is that it’s a dice builder (rather than a deck builder). Fun if you like rolling dice a lot and finding out what you get.
In a similar vein, Dice Throne is basically Yahtzee, but the combos you make are attacks at other players. Do I take this safe, easy combo, or reroll it all to go for my special attack?
Diplomacy’s gimmick is that there is no randomizer other than how much you trust the other players. I feel like that isn’t used enough in games. Even something like Secret Hitler has randomness of the deck.
Root’s gimmick is that every player is a different faction that plays completely differently from everyone else. Makes finding a group to play with in person a challenge (due to the learning curve), but is surprisingly well balanced.
Root’s gimmick is that every player is a different faction that plays completely differently from everyone else. Makes finding a group to play with in person a challenge (due to the learning curve), but is surprisingly well balanced.
Arcs Blighted Reach is exactly this, cranked up to 11.
Aw man, as fun as that sounds, I’m never going to convince anyone to play it with me lol
Try looking for a local game group or Meetup? It’s hard to get friends into heavy games, it’s easier to get gamers into friends.
I do love me a multilayer player board
Mystic Vale is a neat take on the deckbuilder. Each player starts with the same 20-card deck, but Instead of earning new cards to add to your deck, you modify the cards themselves.
You add these clear plastic cards into the sleeve that add or modify one of three sections on your cards.
Yeah, I like this mechanic, I want to see it tried by other games.
Unfortunately, i think Mystic Veil is too multiplayer solitare for me. And it seems like the winning strategy is always to snatch up all the Growth cards before anyone else so you can eventually draw nearly your whole deck every turn.
Edge of Darkness is good, unfortunately they made a mess of the Kickstarter to the point that it’s not viable for it to get a retail release.
In card games I always like that little spice that’s added when discards can be picked up by someone else and used. It adds an element of “should I perhaps continue with this less-than-perfect hand, or should I risk helping someone else build the perfect hand?”
This is a huge part of Arboretum (do I discard this card I know you want or am I safe to discard this other card I might need), and also big part of Fantasy Realms
I don’t know these games (I’m out of the loop on commercial and board games for the past 20-odd years, sadly) but I have loved this mechanism since playing the earliest rummy-family games from China. (Majiang is the most recent of a loooooooooooooooooong line of build-and-discard games in China.) The added spice of worrying if someone is going to use your discard to improve their hand or even complete it before you can do yours is part of why I like playing the rummy family.
I also like deck building but some games feel like everyone plays pretty much for oneself.
Deckbuilding + a board fits a sweet spot for me.
Tyrants of the Underdark is my favorite, it’s a familiar deck building formula but has a central board with area control zones for players to fight over.
I also enjoyed my play of Dune: Imperium, but it has a lot of other things going on as well. (Worker placement, area control, resource management, action cards)
Yeah, some deckbuilders are way too multiplayer solitaire. I’ll always love dominion but it definitely suffers from this. I found Clank, especially the latest entries, to be a good highly interactive deckbuilder.
