Dale Yu: Preview of Mob Treasure (a puzzle book treasure hunt)

Mob Treasure

Author: Jan Van Damme

Publisher: Crux Club

Players: 1

I was approached by the author of Mob Treasure to take an advanced look at his treasure hunt book, Mob Treasure.  The plans are for the book to go live on Kickstarter this week, and since we’ve had fun doing similar books in the past (https://opinionatedgamers.com/2018/11/09/preview-codex-enigmatum/), we were happy to give this one a try as well.  The Crux Club is based in New York City, and it appears that they do outdoor escape room activities (as well as an upcoming one that uses Augmented reality!) and puzzle books.

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Posted in Kickstarter, Preview | 1 Comment

15 Great Designers

This is another article in our “10 Great” series, but we’re going to try something a little different this time.  Instead of selecting 10 great games that fit a particular category, we all voted on who our favorite game designers are.  With such a huge number of successful designers out there, we decided to expand the usual methodology and had everyone vote for their fifteen favorite designers.  There were no restrictions on who could be voted on, or even what criteria to use–we pretty much embrace laissez faire here at the old OG and, surprisingly enough, it works out for us most of the time.  So we just sent out the ballots and let people vote however they wanted to.

The Methodology

Normally, we each vote for 10 items, but there were requests to expand it to 15 choices after the voting had begun.  So to keep from having to make too dramatic a change with our online voting spreadsheet, we came up with a different voting procedure.  Each voter’s top choice was worth 15 points, second place was worth 14 points, and so on, all the way down to the tenth pick, which was worth 6 points, just the same as usual.  But this time around, we let each voter list their 11th through 15th picks and each of these was also worth 6 points apiece.  It was the simplest way of doing things so that the later votes were still worth something.  At the end of the process, all of the points were tallied up and our top picks made the article.

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Return to the Core Worlds: Empires and Nemesis

Once you’ve conquered the core worlds… what happens next?

“Winning is easy; governing is harder.”

No, No, Not Yet

Butch: [Walks back, and Harvey tenses to begin the fight] No, no, not yet. Not until me and Harvey get the rules straightened out.
Harvey: Rules? In a knife fight? No rules.
[Butch kicks him in the groin and Harvey falls to his knees]
Butch: Well, if there ain’t going to be any rules, let’s get the fight started. Someone count. 1,2,3 go.
Sundance: [quickly] 1,2,3, go.
[Butch knocks Harvey out]
Flat Nose: I was rooting for you all along, Butch
Butch: Well, thank you, Flat Nose. That’s what sustained me in my time of trouble.

In the spirit of Butch & Sundance, let’s get the rules straightened out as I start this playtest report/preview/review:

  1. This is not a paid review. I received a playtest copy of the prototypes and will be first in line to back both Empires and the Nemesis deck when they hits Kickstarter next week.
  2. I’ve been playing a playtest copy – and while the art is solid, it’s not the same thing as a finished game. Any pictures taken by me are of the prototype copy.
  3. Due to COVID, all but one of my plays of Empires utilized the solo system. (I’ll talk more about that later.)

The Story Continues…

At the close of every game of Andrew Parks’ Core Worlds (released in 2011), the various players had inexorably advanced through the outer planets and finally subdued the core worlds in their quest for power. The question Core Worlds: Empires answers is…

…what happens now?

Each player starts with an empire of six worlds (their core world plus one planet in each of the rings) as well as a fabled leader. The task now is to turn resources and your fledgling empire into the dominant force in the galaxy – accumulating Empire points through efficiently and wisely directing your ambassadors to build armies, curry favor with the Galactic Orders, and even attempt to conquer other planets.

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Simmy Peerutin – Review of Paris

Paris

Designed by Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling

Published by Game Brewer and others

Initial Impressions (after 2 plays) by Simmy Peerutin

This ‘initial impressions’ review assumes the reader has either read the rules or watched a video explanation of the basics.

Welcome to Paris in the first decade of the 20th century.

Players take the roles of wealthy real estate investors whose task is to purchase buildings in 6 Parisian districts as well as develop and maintain landmarks, and by doing so earn victory points. These points are earned by dominating districts, matching prestige tokens to landmarks you develop and by fulfilling bonus tile conditions. Continue reading

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Happy 10th Birthday to the Opinionated Gamers!

Well, it’s hard to believe, but this blog has been going strong for TEN YEARS NOW! The actual anniversary was actually on Sunday, January 24, and I had meant to post our birthday celebration then – but real life got in the way… So a few days late – but it doesn’t dampen our excitement!!!

Nevertheless, we’re proud to still be going strong ten full years after we started. At ten years old, we believe we’re one of the longest running websites about boardgames (yes, we know BGG just turned 21… but most of the sites we used to read back then have sadly gone away…) Everything started slow – with our very first review on Norenberc, and we’ve been constantly growing each year. The original group of writers arose from the ashes of BoardgameNews, and we started with a simple plan of writing about games, limiting our blog to one post a day. We have actually done a pretty good job keeping to that limit, trying to give each of our topics its own day in the sun. We’re committed to continuing our written reviews, and we’ve made an effort to increase our social media presence on Twitter and Instagram. Some of us are getting long in the tooth, but we’re trying our best to keep up with the times!

Last year, we had our highest traffic ever as well as our highest number of posts (nearly 400!). We’ve had over 40 different people serve as the primary author of an article, had a number of guest writers, and plenty of other Opinionated Gamers that have given their input in support.

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Posted in Commentary, Site News | 6 Comments

The Opinionated Gamers Top Games of 2020 pt 1

Everyone has to have their Top whatever lists done in January. That’s just the way it rolls in the board gaming world. If you release a list of your favorite games of 2020 in July of the following year? Forget about it, it’ll be buried and folks won’t pay nearly as much attention. We as humans like to turn over a new leaf at the beginning of the year. We like to look back and see what we did and what the best parts were. Maybe more so this year than in years past. We want to find the joyful, the happy, the best things to highlight from what was honestly, a pretty rough year, both in board gaming, and in day to day life. Most of us who play board games rely on other people to play with us, What was the one thing that we were supposed to avoid for the most part in 2020? People. That avoidance has made it very difficult for a lot of folks to play games, to have that social interaction. Yes, digital games are out there and publishers seem to be becoming more open to having their newer games on digital platforms, but I know that I for one, am not really comfortable grading games based on the digital interactions that I have with them. I need to have the social aspect of gaming as well in order to enjoy it, the feel of the cards, the sound of the dice, the laughter and the occasional outburst. Games are great, but games are nothing without the people that we play them with. 

So with that I’ve come up with an idea and hopefully we see some interesting results. We are going to look back at 2020 right now, and we here at The Opinionated Gamers, or at least those of us comfortable enough to, have tried to come up with our Top 15 games of 2020. If you pay attention to the title of the article though, we are going to do it in parts. We’ll do this now in January, and then in June/July, if we have the time, we’ll look back again and see if there are changes as more folks have the opportunity to actually play games with people. Will the list change? I am not sure, but we’re going to see. I have a theory on what we’ll see, but I’ll jot that down somewhere else and save it for later, if it comes true. What? Do you think I’m going to admit when I am wrong? 

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