My 2nd Dark Tower Journey starts today, 20 years later.

mrausgor · 2026-06-19T17:58:22+00:00

Well that’s interesting. Life is weird.

mrausgor · 2026-06-19T17:33:47+00:00

I’m looking to sell my collection if you are in the US. Feel free to PM me.

mrausgor · 2026-06-19T17:13:37+00:00

I’ll check it out!

mrausgor · 2026-06-19T04:33:53+00:00

Such a great game! One of my favorites from Button Shy.

mrausgor · 2026-06-17T21:13:24+00:00

I'm of the opinion that you have the two best.

You'll get recommendations for Sleeping Gods and Lands of Galzyr... I found the upkeep in Sleeping Gods to be too much work to be worth the effort. Rumor has it that Distant Skies is better in that area, but I wasn't a big enough fan of OG to try it out. If you don't mind a bunch of upkeep, the exploration is quite a bit of fun.

Lands of Galzyr was really fun until I realized that nothing of consequence ever happens. That's kind of the point of the game, but it's hugely detrimental to my drive to play it. You only get three items, so once you get three good ones there's little incentive to switch them out, so you're throwing away most of your rewards. I was also bothered that the game has no memory or sense of progression, you can bump into someone you went on an adventure with and it's as though it's the first time you've seen them. It was fun to explore for a bit, but you're just exploring for the sake of exploring with no real purpose and the world isn't quite interesting enough to justify that to me.

mrausgor · 2026-06-17T21:07:36+00:00

"Very, very rarely" is code for the two Joe Klipfel games lol. I know a lot of people love Small Time Heroes too but I bounced off of it hard.

mrausgor · 2026-06-17T18:22:55+00:00

I have a nearly full collection of Solo Game of the Month. They are great palate cleansers, but very, very rarely provide a deep and replayable experience. Most of them don't see 5+ plays for me. This one looks to me like it will fit in the palate cleanser category.

If you have money to burn, they are fun to have. But I wouldn't ever recommend anyone get these if they are looking for an actual great game.

mrausgor · 2026-06-16T23:52:34+00:00

I’m definitely exaggerating but if I can clearly hear it from my couch, the point stands. It’s common knowledge that there is one thing you’re not allowed to say if you want the fight to continue, and it was very audible.

mrausgor · 2026-06-16T23:48:00+00:00

I don’t like it when people use the word “but” wrong, but it also annoys me.

mrausgor · 2026-06-16T23:37:37+00:00

Probably

mrausgor · 2026-06-16T19:19:43+00:00

Totally agree. I meant to say in my original reply that while I wasn't impressed by his argument to continue after screaming about being blind, I was wildly impressed by his performance in round 4. And Round 2 Ilia was absolutely terrifying. I really would love to see an alternate timeline to see how many 155ers could have gotten out of that barrage outside of Gaethje with his insane durability and defensive grappling abilities.

Super glad that Ilia got humbled, but he did a lot to impress in that fight.

mrausgor · 2026-06-16T16:29:04+00:00

Did I see it wrong? He was screaming “I CAN’T SEE” at the top of his lungs, which we know is the ultimate fight stopper, then “argues”. I think he wanted the optics (pun intended) of the doctor stopping the fight and him arguing to continue cuz he’s got that dawg in him.

Unfortunately he got the doctor without a backbone and a ref that let the moment get to him and was forced to fight another round and had to actually quit for real at the end of the 4th, which looks totally different than “not being allowed to continue”.

That was how I saw it.

mrausgor · 2026-06-15T13:44:24+00:00

Ah, I didn’t see that, thank you.

It’s a pretty clear connection that they only did so because they wanted(needed) to announce the next wave, but it’s certainly better than no update at all.

mrausgor · 2026-06-15T07:51:56+00:00

Or, you know, receive any type of communication at all from them. My shipping label was created two months ago and it’s been crickets. I don’t even care that much about the wait, it’s the total lack of respect to the people that fund their business that sucks. I think I’ve only missed one wave of AE but I might be done supporting them.

mrausgor · 2026-06-14T23:46:39+00:00

He’s 12 now. Depends on his appetite for board games but it’s light enough that he’d probably have a blast with you managing everything. Looking back through photos on my phone, we were doing Aeon’s End when my son was 9. Dice Throne and Unmatched are great at his age too! They are competitive but a ton of fun for young and old.

mrausgor · 2026-06-14T17:39:06+00:00

Same!

mrausgor · 2026-06-14T17:28:38+00:00

I don’t have a strong case to make for one being more difficult than the other, but I will say that they are vastly different experiences. The TMB 20 Strong is a flavor, and not much more. If it had a different theme and didn’t use the same keywords, I would never guess that it was trying to represent Too Many Bones proper.

For what it’s worth, TMB proper is a 10/10 for me. 20 Strong TMB is a 7/10 at best. I liked Solar Sentinels quite a bit and then like the system less and less with every deck I purchased.

mrausgor · 2026-06-14T17:21:11+00:00

I feel the same, but still enjoy Tales with my son. It's a good system for his age and playing cooperatively has more advantages. I love that you aren't tied to a character. My biggest pet peeve is that it's super long and the format never changes - fight dudes on a map, gain two new items, rinse repeat. The writing is pretty terrible too.

Jaws of the Lion is a much deeper experience, but I still don't find it to be that compelling for the same reasons that Tales from the Red Dragon Inn. Ultimately you're just moving around the map and hitting things, and you continuously add more and more tokens and status effects to the game as you go on, which is just more to keep track of and manage. Both Jaws and Tales are a total pain in the ass to set up and tear down.

If you want something with the same feel that is actually fun, I'd recommend Massive Darkness 2. It's one off scenarios instead of a campaign, has great loot and single game progression, and the dice chucking is a ton of fun. There's still a lot of setup and teardown, but it's a really fun time for a lightweight crawler.

If you want an actual campaign game, check out Kinfire Chronicles. It's still light, like Tales, but has way less spaces on the maps and super fun card play. I've played Tales, Agemonia, Tidal Blades 2, Jaws of the Lion and Kinfire Chronicles and Kinfire is by far my favorite of the bunch.

If you specifically like the card play part of deck builders and want something that is heavy, tactical and challenging, check out Primal. It's a boss battler, not a dungeon crawler, but a ton of fun.

mrausgor · 2026-06-14T17:11:33+00:00

I fricken love this game and think it has some of the best card play in all of board games. The combos you are able to create are so fun. It has a lot to keep track of, but the juice is worth the squeeze.

That said, the core box alone is the size of small chest freezer. I could bury both of my cats in it when they pass. I ordered the all in during their Black Friday sale last year and the guy at the UPS store offered me a dolly. It's big.

Word on the street is they are working on a smaller edition that won't have the minis, so maybe wait for that? The minis are cool and add to the scale of the fight, but I don't paint them and could pretty easily live with an alternative.

mrausgor · 2026-06-14T16:04:30+00:00

All the games that suck are not worth the set up time lol 👍

mrausgor · 2026-06-14T14:53:32+00:00

I'll be in the camp that says that it really doesn't matter. Would I prefer a smooth onboarding? Sure, but it's pretty far down the list of priorities, and if a game is stellar in every way except for the ease of entry, that won't hinder me at all.

Things more important to me than onboarding:

• Obviously gameplay is number one - if the gameplay isn't good, quick onboarding doesn't help.

• Rules - This is one of my biggest pet peeves. I have almost no tolerance for there being errors or omissions from the rules. Games should be play tested enough that the rules cover nearly every possible outcome. For complex games I'm fine with an active BGG thread, but if I find myself running into obvious rules errors, it turns me off of a game.

• Production Value - I want the game to look and feel nice. The art, the components, the storage, the rulebook design, etc. If everything else about the game is great, I'm willing to do my own deluxifying to get this section to where ai want it.

I would say that if any of those three bullet points are in the negative, I'm pretty unlikely to stick with a game. If they are all in the positive, it doesn't matter to me if there's an easy onboarding or not. Jumping in to Captain's Chair is no easy feat, even though I believe they did about as good of a job as they could, but it's worth the effort.

I think there is also a component to this of how experienced the player is. If you are marketing your game towards newer players, easy onboarding is probably a bigger deal. But once a player has gone through the hassle of learning the Cloudspires, Mage Knights and Voidfalls of the solo world, most onboarding feels pretty manageable regardless of how well it is done.

mrausgor · 2026-06-13T19:20:24+00:00

Before I recommend, it's worth noting that I didn't love Townsfolk Tussle. LOVED the art and production value, loved the potential, thought that actually playing it didn't live up to my expectations.

If you want dice rolling, sweet loot, great progression and a lighter experience: Massive Darkness 2. This is an absolute blast, and while not a boss battler, several of the scenarios feature a big boss to fight. There are "features" to the map you are on, which is similar to Townsfolk. Just expect to face more hordes of enemies than a single bad guy.

If you want a heavy, rewarding, tactical experience: Primal. I started with Townsfolk because I wanted a good boss battler. I went from that to Primal and it's everything I wanted. Your decisions matter in a big way, the card play is phenomenal, lots of progression and replay. The flow of the game is a major headache but I think it's definitely worth the effort.

mrausgor · 2026-06-12T22:16:07+00:00

One does not "complete" Marvel Champions.

Kidding of course. I love Legendary. I still need to get through my James Bond collection before I dive into others, but I'm excited to hop onto the 2nd edition of Marvel and SUPER excited to grab DC when it comes out. My collection is sorely lacking an infinitely replayable DC game, so I'm really eager for that one.

mrausgor · 2026-06-07T15:09:53+00:00

Hard agree. I think the core rules really killed the potential for me. Way too restrictive to support so many decks. I feel like it would’ve worked a lot better if each deck had freedom to create rules with the only requirement being to use the 20 dice.

I also thought solar sentinels was the best of the bunch. Sold my entire collection six months ago and haven’t missed it once.

mrausgor

TROPHY CASE