Longer board games

Make some tea—we'll be here some time

Find a committed group and see how the time passes by when you emerge in these games. It could get late, better assume spending 2-4 hours.

Gloomhaven, Frosthaven, and every expansion

You like the cooperative strategic elements of ttRPGs? This dungeon crawler gives you one of the best cooperative fighting mechanic I've ever seen. Yes, the box is big and expensive. But even if you meet once a week to play a scenario you need to play at least a year to finish everything. And at that point you feel like getting out your favourite character again and start from new. I really like that this game does not have dice. Instead you use a card deck from which you draw when attacking to add (or subtract) the modifier. What makes this better than a dice? Well, while levelling up you can upgrade your modifier cards with better once. When did you ever change the sides of a dice?

Not the strong suit in my opinion is the story. You are forced to make decisions during the story without really knowing all information or the consequences and it often feels very random. Just don't focus on it too much and get to the part where you can work together to beat up some monsters, or city guards (depending on your story choices). I don't care as long as I can make interesting strategic decisions. Some people say it is too much material to set up, but in my experience it just needs some thought through organisation and routines.

One extra though about the sequel Frosthaven: Congrats on the game makers to make the fights even more varied, strategic, and stream lined. However, the stories did not improve in my opinion. And I really don't like how much more things they added to the so called "outpost phase" before each scenario. I don't want to draw randomly which buildings are being destroyed. I don't want to spend extra time, looking for stickers to put on a map. I don't want to trade resources for other resources. Please leave me alone with your "riddle book" with riddles I can only solve if I remember a detail from the (not great story) we played 4 months ago. That is not the game I decided to play tonight and tbh it is not your strong suit. Don't steal my time away from enjoying your amazing fighting gameplay. So my tip for Frosthaven players is: discuss with your party what is fun for you and adjust the rules accordingly. Be careful to not make it yourself too easy, but don't spend too much thoughts, energy, and time on the game elements you don't enjoy.

Even with all this critique, this game is one of my favourite games of all time and deserves all 5 stars.

Slay the spire - the board game

I love the video game and spent so many Saturday mornings waking up and starting the weekend with a couple of hours in the spire. So just imagine my excitement when they announced the board game! I am proud of have been one of the many kickstarter supporters and I was not disappointed when my kickstarter edition arrived. First, a couple of words about the game play: It is a rogue like cooperative deck building game. And without these buzz words: You continuously improve your deck in order to draw cards that synergise better with each other to deal more damage faster! I always say this is a game of self-control: Don't take every card that is offered to you or your deck will quickly become full of different strategies that don't work together. And removing cards is a gift not a curse.

The game developers really really care about your game experience. They had to change many things because in a video game it is easy to automatically reduce health by 63 points or to exchange all your cards at once with better cards (but only for one combat). In a board game this would have been a pain! Therefore, the health points were down scaled a lot, every single damage point counts and the cards and artifacts were adjusted to fit in a game without any algorithm support.