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This Week’s Explorable Games
This round of Explorable Favorites is from BoardGaming.com member Utter Loser. The games selected from their Favorites shelf were:
- Pandemic: On the Brink
Z-Man Games | Published: 2009 - Kings of Air and Steam
Tasty Minstrel Games | Published: 2013
These games will be explorable until next Monday, March 2nd
After you’ve explored these games, let us know what you think about them in the comments below!
Anyone want to add a tip to Kings of Air and Steam so I can explore my own favorite game? 🙂
@Stargazer, I guess the idea is that the zeppelin can’t land in the city, so it must have the trains deliver from the depot…I guess.
I hope you all enjoyed the explorable favorites, I know it is a highlight of the week for me to check out what new games might interest me. It was an honor (even though it was random) to be able to share my favorites with you.
Haven’t played Pandemic with the expansion. Would have liked to. Pandemic was super hot with my gaming group for awhile. We played on a regular basis. I don’t recall ever winning either. We had victory snatched from us many times. Can’t get the game to the table now.
KoAaS looks fantastic. Maybe I’m missing something, but why are zepplins and trains needed to deliver goods? Why can’t a zepplin deliver goods directly to the customer? This seems like an odd mechanic.
Great review- thanks @AD! 🙂
@AD: Yes, that is certainly a possibility. Unfortunately the games I would add to my Favorites shelf are in the same situation as the existing games. I seem to be the master of obscure games on this site! 😉
@Account- Thanks, that would be great!
@anm – I love Kings of Air and Steam… I’d be happy to post a review tomorrow morning if nobody else does before then.
Anyone played Kings of Air and Steam and willing to write a review? I need to rate one more to finish the exploration.
@Stargazer1 – you’re not as far off as you may think. You could provide the second review for BattleTech… then you just need someone to review Wallenstein or For the People. And if neither of those happen, you’re only 95 critic points from adding another spot on your Favorites shelf!
@AD: Thanks for explaining the selection process! It’s nice to know these things. I now also know that I cannot be selected, but that’s OK. I’m sticking with my favorites.
Haha, just decided to check back in here and found out that I’ve been passed over just because more o’ you knuckleheads haven’t played and reviewed Jambo yet! Hoo boy, what a travesty! 😛 Here’s hoping I get picked again so @steelchamp’s review can get some more love. Jambo really is a swell game, and I think SC makes some great points about it. I’ll be sure to have it on me for PAX East, if anyone else is going. 🙂
@Account Deletion – thanks for writing up the process, was very interesting to find out!
@Hai
I’m a helper!
I also edited my post to spell your name right. I am such a unkultured savage.
Great explorables this week! We’ve been waffling over whether or not to get a Pandemic expansion for awhile now. I like the idea of someone being a bioterrorist and the unpredictable disease. As for Kings of Air and Steam, our FLGS has had a copy for awhile and I’ve looked at it a couple times now. It was good to learn about it this week as it never seemed enough for me.
@AD – I noticed that recent picks came from more active contributors, which is great. It is like a reward for participating in the community. Also, hilarious if I actually beat out @SP that week! I don’t win very often 🙂
@Bitbot Thanks for keeping the meta game alive 🙂 *hug* – I have been very busy these past few days
@SP Great minds think alike. I’m already backing Trickerion and am really excited to get it.
@Account thanks so much for that explanation. Now that I’ve been selected I should probably check my list of true and current favorites to make it more up to date. Don’t get me wrong, I like both of these games a lot, I just haven’t looked at my favorites for a while. It’s ever changing!
Missed it by that much! Ah well. What’s funny is shortly after @Game_Ninja was chosen I decided I should really re-evaluate my favourites since I hadn’t touched them since joining, but I think CO2 is still one of the only ones that hasn’t been explored yet. It’s a great game, I hope someone else does a review sometime so that it can get some more exposure 🙂
@Utter Loser, Bit and Bot, and anybody else interested… here is how I handle random selections (and Bit and Bot has already caught on to the biggest difference between my method and Jim’s):
At some point between Sunday afternoon and Monday morning I grab a list of all users that have logged in over the prior 72 hours. I run a random number generator in Excel to assign arbitrary numbers to everybody… then rank those random numbers in ascending order.
Starting with the user who had the lowest number generated, I visit the user’s page to see if they have at least 2 games on their Favorites shelf that haven’t been Explorable before (at this time I also make sure the user hasn’t been selected before). Provided they have 2 games that haven’t been Explorable, I check out those games and make sure they have at least 2 reviews. If the user has 2 games on their Favorites shelf that haven’t been Explorable but contain 2+ reviews, my work is done! (Well, kind of… I still have to go track down rulebooks and YouTube videos most of the time).
If that first user doesn’t have 2 games that will work, I move to the 2nd user and so on until I find one that works. I wouldn’t want anybody to change their favorites just to get selected (after all, as a user of the site I’m more interested in what games are actually people’s favorites… but if you’re wondering why you haven’t been selected (other than the random thing), that’s probably why).
Because I’m being so transparent here, I’ll share a little more that may be of interest to the effected users…
@Kassidy Helfant has been selected twice… but only Gravwell and Jambo haven’t been Explorable from his shelf. It bums me out, because Kassidy is a user who’s contributions I’ve enjoyed and I’d love to feature him… but don’t want to say “go change your favorites!” Fortunately @steelchamp just posted a 2nd review for Jambo this week, so the next time Kassidy is selected he’ll be eligible.
I ran into the same thing the first time @Stratagon was selected, but by the 2nd time he was selected he had rearranged his favorites and had the necessary “unexplored but still reviewed” titles to stick.
Among others in this comments thread, @SP was also selected several weeks ago but couldn’t be used because CO2 has only 1 review. Oddly, that may have been the week that @Game Ninja ended up as our Explorable Shelf.
Oo if you like simultaneous action selection you may want to take a look at Trickerion on Kickstarter (if you like Kickstarter). Dungeon Petz also has a version of simultaneous action selection, and is an excellent game.
Well, honestly Kings of Air and Steam was on my favorite list from when I first joined the site, before I went crazy with buying a bunch of games. I still like the game, but haven’t played it in a while. My favorite part, that I wish I found in more games is the simultaneous action selection that has you picking 4 moves at a time. This makes it very tricky to plan, but I like how it makes you think about being more flexible with your moves and plans.
I prefer to only play Pandemic with the On the Brink expansion, one because of the added player and roles that become available and two because of the Virulent strain epidemic cards. It makes one virus a little more difficult to beat and makes you make tougher choices on what virus should be attacked first.