For hidden voting games like Avalon, where the mechanics of voting are a bit slow and interrupt the game experience loop, what solutions have you found to make voting faster?

Are there physical voting devices you like?

Back in one of my old hacker spaces someone built a wireless voting system which was really handy, and really made games like Avalon 2-4x more enjoyable.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/11056179

The designer behind Star Wars board games Imperial Assault and Rebellion is returning to the galaxy far, far away with a new co-op game based on spin-off series The Mandalorian.

The Mandalorian: Adventures marks the first time since 2019’s open-galaxy exploration game Star Wars: Outer Rim that Corey Konieczka has worked in the enduring sci-fi universe, having departed publisher Fantasy Flight Games after 14 years to open experimental studio Unexpected Games that same year. Unexpected will be the publisher of the new board game.

The upcoming board game will specifically adapt the first season of the Disney+ show, which follows Pedro Pascal’s helmeted bounty hunter Din Djarin as he protects ‘baby Yoda’ Grogu from falling into the grasp of Werner Herzog’s mysterious client and Giancarlo Esposito’s post-Empire villain Moff Gideon.

Eight characters from Mandalorian’s first season will be able to join forces, including the titular Mando and enemy-turned-ally tracker droid IG-11 (Taika Waititi impression optional). Each character has a unique deck of skill cards they can use during scenarios to battle and work towards a variety of objectives, which will vary depending on the mission - each based on “iconic moments” from the show.

Those missions will play out in a ringbound book that forms the game’s board and displays the different setup process, win conditions and map rules for each scenario. The maps themselves look to be hex-based, with the players’ character standees and tokens representing enemies moving around the top-down view of environments and buildings as they spar.

The combination of card-driven cooperative combat, different decks for each character and the use of hex-grid maps and unique scenarios in a book-board brought to mind dungeon-crawling Gloomhaven for me - in particular its beginner-friendly spin-off Jaws of the Lion.

Been in the north GA mountains playing board games with some of my closest friends. For the last several years we rent a cabin for at least weekend each year. It’s my last one before moving and it’s been a blast. Still have through Monday.

[Edit for games play list:]

• Seas of strife
• Nippon
• So Clover
• Knarr
• Wyrmspan
• Aqua
• Just One
• Supply Lines of the American Revolution
• Table tennis
• Zombicide
• Straw

I finally received my copies of two Splotter Spellen titles that a friend of mine was holding onto. Beest and D’raf. The original seller wasn’t shipping them outside of the EU, so my friend in Spain received them and brought them back.

Also happy that the DIY box style matches my edition is of Bus.

Once I get my preordered rerelease of Ur: 1830 BC, I’ll have every title I’d been interested in, bringing the total to 15.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/10807345

Played Space Hulk's second mission last night as the genestealers. Ton of fun. Compared to the first mission, the board setup was absolutely massive.

In this mission the marines won by either locking down all the genestealer entry points or killing all the genestealers. The genestealers won by killing all the marines. Genestealers didn't have infinite reserves, and lost 1/3 of their blip tokens from the initial pool.

I had early luck as the marine with the assault cannon used a lot of ammo to blow open doors, and then after his reload shoot at a few blips of genestealers before rolling an improbable triple same number, which ressulted in the assault cannon's ammo cooking off and killing the marine.

I tried to leverage this by bringing all my genestealers in on this side of the board. I sent some groups preparing to ambush the thunder hammer and storm shield welding sergeant, and other groups to take out the lone normal terminator.

I paid for my early luck as the lone terminator rolled hit after hit with no jams, completely destroying lines of genestealers. The sergeant moved into the hallway where genestealer laid in wait on both sides and used multiple high numbers of command points to take initiative, destroying clusters of genestealers, then turn around to face a line of attackers. While not ideal, the genestealers had numbers on their side, by the sergeant smashed alien after alien, with none landing a hit on him. That was game.

Fun mission. I wish we'd had time to swap sides, but next play will be mission 3. I have the genestealers in my possession and plan to paint them as fast as I am able.

Last year I made a physical board game that ties in to my group’s pathfinder campaign, and with how well it went I’ve made a digital version of it and released it under the Paizo Community Use Policy.

Its set in Thuvia and centres around the Sun Orchid Elixir Sale.

The game consists of eight rounds with two main phases, and is a mix of strategic worker placement/resource management and card based bidding/bluffing.

The game supports up to six players, but also includes rules for playing solo.

It is fully free to play, and you can find it here: https://vassalengine.org/wiki/Module:Sun_Orchid_Elixir_Sale

(Although mechanically complete, there are some cards that are missing flavour text right now. This might get updated in future versions, I invite your suggestions)

(This was originally a physical board game, and some design elements still reflect that. I am considering redoing the main game board from scratch, if you see anything else that might need redesigning now that the format has changed to digital, I invite your suggestions)

I got my father-in-law for the family secret Santa this year. He's super into Marvel/comics and I was thinking of getting him a marvel/superhero themed board game he can play with the family. Google returned a bunch of different options for Marvel themed games, but I can't tell which are good or bad.

What games would you recommend for gifting?

I've been working on a minimalist deck of cards inspired by dice pips and hexadecimal digits. The assets are available for commercial or noncommercial use (I should probably write a proper LICENSE.TXT about this) since, like, they're just some quick scribbles I did with GIMP and ImageMagick as a proof of concept anyway. Would love your thoughts on this! Can you think of any games that would work better with high contrast cards? Maybe a use for having sixteen ranks instead of thirteen/fourteen?

Some of my favorites:

Root: Vagabond: I enjoy how this is such a different style than the other three in the base game.

Gaia Project: Ivits: Just very clever encouraging to make a close nit Hivemind rather than spreading out, it's very satisfying every time you hit a new federation milestone.

Scythe: Polania: I just like exploring and claiming as many encounters as possible around the board.

Terraforming Mars: Ecoline for Solo Play: The extra plant just is a load off for my solo games where I don't always have to worry about focusing on oxygen so much and Ecoline feels like I have more freedom over what cards to pick.

What have you been playing? new games, old games. any thoughts?

on another site we had a thread that was simply to discuss what you've played recently and any general thoughts on those games. Thought I might kick it off here.

Finally got the Wingspan Nesting Box. It fits all the current expansions and has room for the future. I swear it must clock in at like 20lbs.

Still a little annoyed that all the Wingspan stuff that holds sleeved cards won't fit the mote or less widely available and "standard" sleeves (Wingspan cards are not the same size as many other games) but thats not really anything a little 3D printing can't fix.