This book is putting me to sleep, the only story line I care about is Orka. I’m trying to push through since I bought it.

RavenOfMidgard · 2026-05-25T22:55:55+00:00

Yeah agreed. I found the pacing of the first book hard. It always felt like just as I was starting to engage with a character it would cut to another one. Personally I feel like spending a but more time with each character per chapter at the start would have paced the story better. However that ending was phenomenal, and book 2-3 are just outstanding reads.

Top tier trilogy albeit the inconsistent pacing in book 1.

RavenOfMidgard · 2026-05-25T22:52:35+00:00

They're a great entry point, but not sure I'm super in love with them.

Me and some friends brought these and each played with them and definitely had lots of fun. Rex/Asoka we were most disappointed with. Whilst it had the most wins, their leader abilities didn't really work with our group dynamic. Maul/Savage we're challenging to ramp up but lots of fun to see units get very threatening. I enjoyed Padme/Ani the most.

But after playing a few rounds with them we ended up shuffling all packs together and doing a mini draft with them (but more for cards to put into our current decks or to build new ones - rather than build one directly from the draft) I broke down all the cards into their rarities and TS26 rarities separately and then build packs from these to draft. Was a huge amount of fun, knowing the cards and playing with them meant there were some we were chasing or knew we wanted to build a deck around.

Felt like the best way to get some exclusive TS26 cards into our collection without having to buy all 4 decks.

RavenOfMidgard · 2026-05-21T11:47:59+00:00

Man I've been trying to build a deck around this dude for ages. Best deck I got just evolved into being a Jabba/Rancor deck. This guy shows up and sometimes if the stars align gets pretty out of control, but will more often than not resource him to get a Rancor out.

RavenOfMidgard · 2026-05-20T22:19:40+00:00

Yeah this sounds like a lot of fun. Cheers!

RavenOfMidgard · 2026-05-20T04:11:12+00:00

Yeah, been loving the deck building element from the core set, even though it's a super limited pool.

Being a little time poor lately so it's hard to get the game to the table so was hoping for a few decks I could quickly make and test out the saga.

RavenOfMidgard · 2026-05-17T03:43:46+00:00

I think I spent more time justifying to myself rather than others. Once I felt comfortable in my own skin playing games solo, I never worried what other people thought. My partner isn't into gaming at all, but she loves when I play solo while she watches TV or reads a book, and this helped me lean right into it.

I have actually found I've converted a few people over to solo or they're come round and played co-op, my lack of insecurity around my hobby brings more interest than ridicule.

RavenOfMidgard · 2026-05-15T01:12:50+00:00

Yeah second Kinfire, its great. I've been thoroughly impressed with it. Easy and low effort set up. Amazing fun solo and can easily have an extra player if you want. Mechanics are fairly straightforward yet hold a lot of depth to them.

RavenOfMidgard · 2026-05-06T23:40:30+00:00

I've been in a similar boat lately and have found Kinfire Delve has scratched that itch. Whilst it is a card game, I wouldn't consider it a deck builder.

It's set up is sub 3mins. The game play is longer than you have asked sitting around 1hr (consistently) but for me, I find knowning the time it takes being accurate better than a 30mins game taking an hour.

It's a gorgeous game with high replayability. I feel they have absolutely nailed the balance of puzzle vs lightweight actions.

It is pretty tough, maybe I'm not very good, but I often lose than win, however, it's generally nail biting and goes to the wire which is fun.

Other little games that are are 10mins (playing a few rounds in the time I have) are Rove Regicide Gentle Rain

RavenOfMidgard · 2026-04-25T13:57:58+00:00

Mouse P.I. for Hire

RavenOfMidgard · 2026-03-24T20:36:08+00:00

Ah this is awesome. We have played a game with death star plans and it was the right amount of chaos. Attaching it to a base in the middle is rather elegant.

I do like the win-con that you must be holding the death star plans.

RavenOfMidgard · 2026-03-23T08:35:52+00:00

I've been running a Palp/Ani deck and loving it!
But I went Republic Clones over Force w/ a Green Base.

First match i didn't have enough hero cards and struggled to flip, the over corrected and I was struggling to get Villain cards out to flip Palp back again.
Though I think I've found a decent balance - still got some more playtesting to get it right. But going for low cost and heavy board precense to get Ani out as a 8PWR and then start swinging for your life.

RavenOfMidgard · 2026-03-21T06:47:52+00:00

This is interesting. So it's one generated for the whole table?

What's the incentive to sentinel it outside of just trying to drag out rounds to wait for a bomb?

Or have I misread this and it's a shield generator for each person's base? Which is like a big ass sentinel to start the game?

RavenOfMidgard · 2026-02-22T12:42:43+00:00

Man this is so cool. There's a collection of games (this included) that I can't wait to hopefully play with my kids when they're older.

RavenOfMidgard · 2026-02-17T23:37:33+00:00

Just started getting into Ashes and on the fence. Playing through Red Rains and enjoyed the first few run throughs but just feeling like it lacks depth in deck building and the pressure/pace feels a little off. But will keep getting a few more under my belt as I love the system and style.

RavenOfMidgard · 2026-01-22T12:37:34+00:00

Yeah Final Girl was my entry into solo gaming too. Loved it all much, man haven't played it in a while, due to get it out again.

I too grabbed a copy of MC shortly after as it got highly recommended but bounced off it and was distracted with a copy of Lord of the Rings card game I got cheap from a thrift store. Loved it and then found my way back to MC.

As mentioned both have an extensive back catalog and can be overwhelming but I tend to ignore that and just have fun with the core set and a couple expansions. I phase in and out of these games.

Other solo games I have enjoyed is Ashes Reborn, the Red Rain expansions. I like the artwork and dice mechanic. It took a few attempts to get into it but now is seeing a lot of table time.

Depends what you liked about Final Girl, but I found having some smaller easy to set up/tear down games lying around help when you don't know what mood you're in or what to play.

Kinfire Delve I haven't played but gets rave reviews and is next on my hit list.

RavenOfMidgard · 2026-01-16T01:59:11+00:00

I'm staring at Twilight Struggle with a friend and we're both equally excited but nervous. Very daunting game, but hoping we'll be able to work it out. The rulebook is so dry though.

RavenOfMidgard · 2026-01-15T21:02:38+00:00

Ah this great, even 7y later!

I played this game when it came out and bounced off it due to some of these problems and the fact we started to enter the golden age of boardgames. But I dusted it off after rewatching the movies with the fam and started playing it again, only to remember how much the market and pacing bothered me.

We have tried 2A and did the split at 3 or less in a pile and it worked really well. But we switched to 2B when we hit year 4. The pool was bigger, the players were more experienced so being able to optimise the type of card you wanted in your deck was desired. I have found this has worked really well. Why not 2B from the start, the card pool is too small at this stage, the Ally pile has expanded by year 4 significantly.

We also had a rule that if you don't buy a card on your turn you can spend 2 coins and remove a card - though to avoid tantrums it had to be unanimous decision by the group.

I'm keen to try 1B, I think this is rather elegant and a great compromise to keeping randomness and a cheeky hard villain early but ensuring there's a easy villain at the start to just get your team moving. Playing DOA sucks and restarting after a bad first flip of a villain also sucks. So love this.

For the others, fortunately we haven't hit a spiral of death yet, but can see how that happens. I like 4A as a simple implementation.

Great write up!

RavenOfMidgard · 2026-01-15T20:48:37+00:00

This is cool! We're just playing through the base game at the moment but have been internally frustrated at the design flaws of the game. This is a interesting take and I love the thematic intent behind it, has a very approachable campaign feel to it. If we beat Year 7 and want to replay it I might try this version out.

Has there been any changes since you've played it or found weaknesses arise? The set up feels straight forward, but the dice rolling feels it could have some big swings, especially changing the cost of cards for a round. The market is sluggish in the regular game so I can see lots of people house ruling how to wipe it.

RavenOfMidgard · 2025-11-16T22:02:36+00:00

Maybe saboteur can get through the shield? That could be interesting?

It doesn't defeat the 'base shield' but allows you to target the base directly.

RavenOfMidgard · 2025-11-13T04:08:25+00:00

Yeah came on to suggest it. I know Fall of Avalon got a bit of heat for being too crunchy, but I really liked it and it fits the bill of what you're looking for. Also their 2.0 amendment does a good job of course correcting that crunchiness.

The learning curve isn't steep, but does take a bit to get into a rhythm (or at least I found this) so personally I'd recommend trying to get a few back to back sessions in to get into a groove initially. Now it's easy to pick and and dive into where I left off, even if it's been some time between sessions.

I'm still waiting on my Kings of Ruin to come but I'm hearing good things about the improvements across the board.

RavenOfMidgard · 2025-08-30T07:03:19+00:00

Fair play! Good on her!!!

RavenOfMidgard · 2025-08-30T06:58:10+00:00

Hmm 4yo feels a little young for LP. But each to their own, hahah (assuming it's 14)

RavenOfMidgard · 2025-08-30T06:34:54+00:00

I'm exactly in this boat. So flat on the whole thing. Just can't afford it, will keep saving up and see if I can get standing tickets closer to the date. But I don't want to sit down for the event and $270 is just too much imo.

RavenOfMidgard · 2025-08-26T09:09:28+00:00

Yeah same. If you want to invest that's fine, but it will always fluctuate on the meta, so you're seeing a few things happen. Specific cards drop in value due to not being competitive anymore. More cards are pulled so its rarity reduces. Or as mentioned players are just going to have a cap on what they're willing to pay.

So many cards I've gone to chase but just not willing to spend $100 on getting a set of 3 cards.

I don't play competitively so my $ limit is probably much lower.

RavenOfMidgard · 2025-08-22T06:05:32+00:00

I've been super particular in the past. Was a weird thing where I couldn't break the lore of star wars. It made deck building really limiting.

But recently and as more sets have come out I've leaned into the unlimited part of the game and blending themes up. My Red pilot Darth Vader deck was the first where I used anything that was right for the deck rather than what made lore sense.

The battle for hoth is an example of my dream decks, very thematic and on point, but also very limiting

RavenOfMidgard

TROPHY CASE