Stately Play

Month: March 2018

Kickstarter Roundup: What’s hot in tabletop gaming on the crowdfunding front

March 22, 2018 David Neumann 7

Tabletop • There are a million discussions out there about Kickstarter and its effect and influence on the world of cardboard gaming with both pros and cons in regards to the crowdfunding giant. Whatever side you may fall on, Kickstarter isn’t going anywhere soon and more and more publishers are finding the pre-order-esque system of Kickstarter a more risk-averse way of publishing than the standard route. From my vantage point the only downside is that many games are Kickstarter only, which means that if you don’t have the time or money to jump on a campaign when it’s live, you’re out of luck and will have to buy the game on the secondary market, which is usually populated by sharks with no interest in said game, only looking to profit and profit big. Then again, it’s only a game, and missing one of the thousands of releases each year isn’t going to ruin anyone’s life. So, I thought it would be a good time to look at some of the games currently on Kickstarter and let you know what’s out there that looks good. I’m not sure if this will be a weekly or monthly feature (or a recurring feature at all), but I’m desperate for stuff to write about, so I’m using you as guinea pigs. Thanks! Of course, there are a ton of games out there on Kickstarter and I can’t cover them all. Thus, I’m only grabbing a handful of the games that have piqued my interest.

Civilization VI for Mac catches up to its PC counterpart, adds Rise & Fall

March 22, 2018 David Neumann 1

Rise and Fall available for PC/Mac/Linux • iPad version available w/o Rise & Fall expansion • Mac gamers are used to being disappointed when it comes to new games not making their way to our preferred platform. I know, it’s my own damn fault for expecting my MacBook Pro to compete with a Windows machine but, dammit, I so much prefer my Mac for doing what I’m doing right now, namely writing. So, without the resources to have both, I’m saddled with a Mac for gaming. I’m still waiting for Divinity: Original Sin 2 to come to Mac (I kickstarted it not realizing it was going to be Windows only) and have been waiting patiently for Aspyr to bring the first Civ VI expansion–which arrived on Windows in early February–to Mac. Today, I was totally surprised when I loaded up Steam and, lo and behold, there was a 2 GB update. What could it be? Yes, Rise and Fall has come to Mac.

Fire & Ice coming to Terra Mystica in April

March 22, 2018 David Neumann 5

iOS, Android, PC/Mac/Linux • I haven’t spent a lot of time singing the praises of Digidiced‘s digital port of the euro-game masterpiece, Terra Mystica. Not because it’s not a great port or the game itself isn’t my cup of tea, the reality is that the game is just too damn confusing. Yes, I’ve played it on the tabletop, but I’m not sure I ever got my head around TM’s wheels-within-wheels design that seems complex for complexity’s sake. Seriously, there are so many different rules, ways to play, and mechanisms that it’s a very hard game to truly understand without many, many playthroughs. And all complexity happens even before you take into account the 14 different races, each with their own tweaks to the base rules. On the tabletop you can take your time to figure out just what the hell is going on, but the app comes at you full speed. There are tokens flying, actions being taken, and points being scored and I JUST CAN’T HANDLE IT.

A weekend of gaming dissected or how I learned to stop worrying and love 18xx

March 21, 2018 David Neumann 23

Tabletop • As I mentioned last Friday, I spent last Thursday through Sunday up in the woods with four of my best [only? -ed.] friends where we would drink and eat far too much while playing as many games as we could fit in the time allotted to us. This was the seventh year we’ve done this and, in the past, I would try to bring as many new games as possible. It slowly dawned on all of us that trying to teach games to folks who’ve been drinking since noon isn’t a great idea unless you start teaching well before noon. Thus, I’ve limited my new game exploration to only one each morning and after that–once the Sailor Jerry starts flowing–we sink back into the comfortable arms of games we already know how to play. This year our fallback was 18xx. Lots and lots of 18xx.

Short Cut: SYNTHETIK

March 20, 2018 Alex Connolly 2

PC • Nothing turns the alternator of mid-life assessment more than realising you’re no longer at the top of your game-game. Nerves withering like sun-dried kelp. Reaction time raising smirks and eyebrows in the Galapagos paddock. The abyss, it looms. But then along comes the invigorating cordite suppository known as SYNTHETIK. Sometimes, you just need a little help to feel the old magic.

Better Stately Than Never: The Lost World of Trespasser

March 19, 2018 Alex Connolly 4

Trespasser: Jurassic Park is such an outrageously fantastic game. It’s as much a primeval, primordial walking sim as it is a survival-lite FPS, served on a revolutionary bed of fully-realised physics. It has wonderful environmental story-telling; audiologs and internal monologues that don’t strain atmosphere. It offers a natural sense of physicality. Hell, it did the two-weapon limit before Halo. Trespasser: Jurassic Park is also a broken, under-baked mess. Twenty years on, there hasn’t really been a game quite like Trespasser. There have been games better than it in some of its aspirations, but DreamWorks Interactive’s ungainly opus is more than the sum of its oft-busted parts. What follows is a record of certain events in which I took part between the years 1980 and 1997, on an island I will call Site B – Hammond

A Stately Play-cation

March 16, 2018 David Neumann 20

Hey everyone! Just wanted to let everyone know that I’m currently up in the still wintry northern woods of Wisconsin. No, I haven’t been abducted by scofflaws looking to sell me into the sex-trade for fat, old white guys. I’m not that lucky. Instead, I’m at our annual mini-convention that consists of myself and 4 of my gaming buddies and we’re playing the hell out of the many, many pounds of cardboard we brought with us. So far we’ve played Inis, Railways of the World, 1889, Hab & Gut, Flamme Rouge, Antiquity and the list is only going to keep growing. Bottom line I’m not going to be around to post today, which means no Stately Scrying article this afternoon as well as no other cutting edge news stories (I might be stretching the limits of believability by calling anything I write “cutting edge”). I’ll definitely be posting next week, however, and will give a run down and mini-review of everything that hits the table this weekend. See you then!

Darkest Dungeon adds DLC and drastically drops down to a dollar

March 14, 2018 David Neumann 6

iPad, PC/Mac/Linux, Switch, Xbox, Playstation • When Darkest Dungeon came out for iPad last fall, I instantly became addicted and played it more than I had in the previous three years it had dwelled on my laptop. I know the love for DD wasn’t universal with many complaining about the wonky UI that could be both tiny and fidgety at the same time, while others saying the difficulty level went beyond their definition of fun. Both were valid points–it’s close, but not a perfect port–but I loved it and kept throwing my hapless adventurers right into the woodchipper with the hope that the Crimson Court and other expansion content would soon arrive on the platform. Today is that day.

Stately Playthrough: Darkest Night 2nd Edition, Introduction and Turn 1

March 13, 2018 David Neumann 6

Tabletop • Okay, we’re going to try this again and see what happens. Yes, I know I abandoned the Liberty or Death walkthrough but I have several good reasons. Or excuses. Let’s call them excuses. First, right around Thanksgiving my gaming area was “ungamified” due to all the family stuff happening through the holidays. Secondly, I had to pack Liberty or Death away and, thirdly, I’m far too lazy to get it back out and set it up and whatnot. I was also a bit wary of starting up again using the format I had been using, basically my iPhone flying around the board. It made Liberty or Death feel more like the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan which means the shaky-cam feel was a bit too nauseating. So, it took me awhile to get this new format down, but I like it a bit more. I’m still working on getting my narration to fit what you’re seeing on screen, but it’s not too bad and will get better the more I do this. I will be getting back to Liberty or Death and the hope is to make board game vids (and even video game vids) a more common occurrence. I know a lot of readers dislike videos in general. I get it. I’m trying to figure out how to not have these appear on the front page at all, but instead show up only in a new menu. Hopefully I get that working and this will be the only one that gets front page treatment. Also, they shouldn’t diminish the quantity or quality of the writing. For example, While this series is a walkthrough of Darkest Night 2nd Edition, I still plan on writing a Cardboard Critique and more for the front page, sans video. Thanks for sticking around as I stumble through figuring all this out.

Iron Harvest lumbers onto Kickstarter

March 13, 2018 Alex Connolly 0

PC, Playstation 4, Xbox One • Everyone is kickstarting something these days. You, me, this guy. But King Art Games are crowd-funding something rather special; an RTS based on the fire-and-steel pulp of Jakub Różalski‘s 1920+ world [This is the same setting you’ll find in the board game Scythe, as well as its upcoming digital port. -ed.]. Think pot-bellied, soot-blasting mechanica. Cast-iron monstrosities a continuation of Victorian pomp and Edwardian arms development. The Iron Harvest is upon us.

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