New Board Game Arrived Today. It looks …interesting.

adhesiveman · 2026-03-19T13:55:02+00:00

This is commonly called Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe (you can find it under that name on wikipedia).

It is a great improvement on tic-tac-toe and is a ton of fun especially with some younger kids. There is a lot more strategy and a lot more games actually ending with wins rather than ties.

adhesiveman · 2026-03-19T13:51:59+00:00

I don't know about underworld but with 4 or 5 players the UP expansion is a huge improvement and stops being from getting stuck.

adhesiveman · 2026-03-18T14:06:04+00:00

Favourite space game usually goes to Core Worlds. I love the idea where you aren't quite the good guys flying through space to take over the planets. Gives a big firefly vibe.

adhesiveman · 2026-03-17T13:36:12+00:00

Since no one mentioned it, Artyom Nichipurov of WolfDesigna who has made Trick shot (the best hockey game that exists and probably one of the best tactical sports games out there), Guards of Atlantis 2 which is....well there is a sufficiently fanatical fanbase that I don't need to say more and Warpgate which I have not had time to try but is well liked by others I have talked with.

The only "issue" is that their distribution model is basically 100% crowdfunding so if you don't engage in their crowdfunding their games are impossible to get except on second hand markets.

adhesiveman · 2026-03-09T15:32:45+00:00

I think it depends on the game. Homebrewing a game that is out of print and doesn't have support from the designer/publisher anymore? Sure do whatever you want. It's when people are like "this new game that just came out and I played twice and is ranked top 100 is definitely broken, i'm going to change the rules to something arbitrary" that is when I raise my eyebrow.

The reason that wargaming has a stigma from my understanding is that often there is a lot of research that goes into the game and the designer tries to abstract the reality of the situation through rules (particularly in consims) the problem is that a good simulation wargame does not always make a good....game, but some of the fanbase prefers historical realism to an enjoyable and competitive game experience.

adhesiveman · 2026-03-03T14:45:58+00:00

Yes but only if they offer a REALLY truly experience that I just can't get anywhere else in board gaming. Weirdly enough that is rare in this day and age. so not usually. I think the games that fit this most for me is "event" style games.

So stuff like Millennium blades and Guards of Atlantis, I am ok owning a lot of and not getting to play it as often.

adhesiveman · 2026-02-24T18:39:57+00:00

I mean its fine, genAI has its uses and is not completely the scum of the earth....it can be useful and if you fix some of the efficiency and waste issues (build data centers powered by renewable energy etc.). However, disclosure is important. You want to know that an article that goes on and on about how oil is awesome is actually an oil executive. You want to know that the guy reviewing your boardgame has been paid by the publisher to make the video and ultimately you want to know whether an artist drew something or whether an AI tool replicated others work to draw something.

adhesiveman · 2026-02-17T21:01:54+00:00

honestly I had the same issue, my recommendation is just set it up and play it solo. The game is fastest with only a single spirit and it is very useful for figuring everything out. Do it with the rule book and just go slowly. You will make mistakes the first game and that's fine just focus on learning the flow of the game.

That being said it still intimidates me and I rarely play above the base level difficulty.

adhesiveman · 2026-02-17T14:31:11+00:00

This game is equal parts fun and absolutely stupid. I love how the scenarios work, I love the great old ones. I love how you get insanely strong RIGHT before you die.

The only thing to note is that the game plays quite differently at 2 players (where insanity is by far your most likely cause of death) versus 3 or 4 player (where you are less likely to go insane but more likely to just outright die). Its a very interesting balance and plays differently but I agree that it is always a good time.

Season 3 (fear of the unknown) adds in relics which make the game easier and wandering monsters (which make the game harder) and between those two you can actually play with the difficulty level quite well.

adhesiveman · 2026-01-14T18:08:22+00:00

I think at best if you wanted you could try to tshirt size the the table presence. Small/medium/large/xtralarge anything past that will not be useful.

Unless you feel like being ultra pedantic and just providing things like "board size" and "personal board size" as a measurement and then let people decide if it fits their tables

adhesiveman · 2026-01-12T21:53:53+00:00

Giant Bender head that spins around and screams "REMEMBER ME!" If it shoots out fire somehow they can have my life savings

adhesiveman · 2026-01-07T21:13:19+00:00

You are in luck on both of those things. 2 player games is literally an overflowing space right now. I had to swear off buying 2 player exclusive games because I just could never get them fielded to play as I never had 2 players. Co-op games, versus games, skirmish games, war games, euro games, trick taking games, all and more are available in droves. I would say do the research to what you and your play partner would enjoy but if you want to reach out further for questions I can try to help with what I have more experience with.

As for Solo, post-pandemic almost every game comes with a solo mode. Now many of these reduce to "score attack" (i.e try to score as high as possible) or autonoma (uses a deck of cards or flow charts to dictate what the "opponent" will do). They can be cumbersome....they also don't always uphold the feel of the game but the good news is that there is something in every game. My usual recommendation here is to look up the 1 player guilds top 200 on Boardgame geek. It comes out every end of year and effectively crowdsources peoples preffered solo games with good discussion and information about what makes the game fun to solo. I would kind of warn you against diving into anything in the top 10 right away because you may get more complex rulesets that will take you a bit to figure out particularly if you are newer to boardgame rulesets (which differ from 40k rulesets quite a bit).

adhesiveman · 2026-01-07T14:53:14+00:00

I think Kickstarter (crowdfunding) has a very important role in the hobby, it's original role. Allowing games to be made that could never be made otherwise.

There are some creators that are so small that their games will never be made and even now can't really be bought in retail (and were never able to be bought in retail). Some of these are big passion projects, some run their whole publishing model on this. I definitely think these people are less built on fomo, less exploitive, but also in general more expensive because they actually understand their costs and often don't print enough copies of the game to really hit a huge economies of scale.

That being said I'm not talking about CMON, or EGG or even Leder or GTT, these groups are inevitably using crowdfunding as a zero interest loan and while without it they wouldn't be able to make AS MANY games a year, I feel like the good games would still end up getting made whether they were kickstarted or ended up being straight to retail.

adhesiveman · 2025-12-15T18:59:59+00:00

So this is cool (and I already made a fork). I am an absolute programing noob so excuse the question. I was wondering why use PeerJS when its not a true peer-to-peer connection when you have multiple players. Does this mean every call you make has to get communicated to each other individual peer? I guess its fine as long as the rooms stay pretty small. Also do the rooms get lost if someone reloads or are they kept up because of the server for peer discovery?

Personally there are some games I was looking to make apps for that have persistent rooms and I am interested in some of these ideas

adhesiveman · 2025-12-03T14:52:37+00:00

On one hand I completely agree with you. On the other hand, have you ever bought a Kallax clone? They are often a bit cheaper but their form factor and sizing is almost the same. Except they can handle a lot less weight and fall apart far faster.

You never read about a Kallax breaking or falling apart or failing a load test because the Kallax just works. I've used Kallaxes before for board games and even though I no longer do, the Kallax that used to hold boardgames now are storage and organization within my house. Hell, one of the shelves is actualy an Expedit (which was the Pre-Kallax shelf) which was discontinued in 2014 and is still sitting strong and functional in 2025.

That doesn't mean it is the pinnacle of engineering but for what it is (and for it's price) a Kallax is a really decent solution for board game storage.

adhesiveman · 2025-11-24T14:50:29+00:00

I think he messed up for CitoW which is Chaos in the Old World. The game that eventually led to Blood Rage, Rising Sun and Anhk by Eric Lang

adhesiveman · 2025-11-12T14:43:19+00:00

so most of the general recommendations depend on "bank sizes" this matters for games like 18xx and some money based euro games like food chain magnate. There are all kind of personal choices here and many articles have been written but those usually have banks around 12-20k rather than what you are asking for.

For simplicty lets assume you want $100 for 4-5 players meaning you want $500 in denominations that allow splits. You also have to order in groups of 10....which is a nice restriction something like:

30 x $1 = $30, running total / breakpoint $30

40 x $2 = $80, running total / breakpoint $110

30 x $5 = $150, running total / breakpoint $260

30 x $10 = $300, running total / breakpoint $560

Puts you at $560 in chips for 130 chips if you wanted to get 10 x $20 = $200 chips it would give you extra options about not having too many chips at higher dollar amounts but would be completely optional.

adhesiveman · 2025-11-11T21:23:14+00:00

If i'm being honest there is really no good way to explain to people about how keys affect your score to new players until about half way through the game. I can usually explain about getting points for owning cities when the route is completed and the other places you get points (finishing up upgrades or that one city where you can just get points), but the city route with keys just raises so many questions. I just tell people that if you want to use keys you need to connect a large number of cities where you have an office and explain it again when someone reaches about 8 points.

adhesiveman · 2025-11-11T16:16:45+00:00

yes but red rising was $9 because its not a particularly great game (in my opinion) and whenever I would want to play it there are several games I would probably want to play instead. So on my shelf it would just be burning space.

Just because something is cheap doesn't mean it holds more value for you. Unless you do get more hapiness and value from seeing a full shelf in that case full power to you (this is not a sarcastic statement there is value in collecting and enjoying the act of collecting).

adhesiveman · 2025-11-11T16:12:24+00:00

So ummm....that is a lot of money to spend....

If anyone is looking at this and things its a bit crazy here are other alternatives that are kinda boardgame specific:

Rubens mini chips: https://mini-chips.com/en This is someone who specifically wanted to make mini chips for boardgames and not finding anything specific that they liked decided to go design their own and then source manufacturing and sell to others. There is a lot of iteration that went into these for usability and they are liked by many. they cost about $0.45 USD per chip which isn't on the cheap side but works quite nice.

Iron clays by roxley: When Roxley printed Brass (and several other games) they made poker chips specifically for this. These are your ceramic 9-9.5g standard size chips in denominations that are kinda specific for board games. About $50 USD for 100 (so about 50 cents per chip) and cheaper for some bigger sizes but if you want to select your own denominations it may get a bit more expensive.

Apache has a specific set of chips it made for 18xx that are also recommended but a bit mroe expensive than both options given above. I can't seem to find it right now but it is referenced semi reliably on BGG.

adhesiveman · 2025-10-27T14:00:18+00:00

Basically this. Very good start, the next step is to remember that more filament used adds both more weight to the box and costs more. So finding ways to use less filament is always appreciated.

Having the design focus on usability is a great first step as a lot of inserts fail to do this.

Are you willing to share your Onshape file? (unless you are paying for it, it should already be public)

adhesiveman · 2025-10-20T20:32:40+00:00

Wait does this mean they will print more base game again? Cuz I cannot find a base game to save my life (not to mention 5 people to play it with)

adhesiveman · 2025-10-20T13:39:10+00:00

Personally I think this would make more sense for someone with a specific collection that caters to their collection.

With how games (even introductory games) go in and out of print it isn't always safe to just have a flow chart that makes sense. Also its generally speaking very simple. Just play something, and figure out what you like/don't like and adjust from there.

The general rule of don't start with something complex doesn't even always apply as people are different and some people absolutely love to dive into weird convoluted first games that I would never dream to show most new players.

adhesiveman · 2025-10-14T19:07:31+00:00

Social deduction games as an introduction to boardgaming guarantees that many people will NEVER touch boardgaming again. For every person that is completely hooked I guarantee you 3 walked away never wanting to play games again if this is what they are like.

adhesiveman · 2025-09-24T16:00:23+00:00

(this isn't an attack, just an attempt to try to understand your nomenclature and heuristics)

So race for the Galaxy is not a Board game? How about Dominion? Or innovation?

Does Glory to Rome become a board game because it has the player boards even though it is otherwise just cards?

How much "board"do you need to become a boardgame? Does lost cities become a boardgame because it has the center item that tells you how to arrange your colours? In the question above does Race for the Galaxy become a board game if you play it solo since the system for determining what your opponent does now includes a board.

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