Board Games on kickstarter (Nov 19)

Thank you AD for being back with this post on KS. Me too, I wish your work will allow you to continue more regularly this KS post.
This week I’m backing **BrilliAnts** because these young fellows from Quebec seem to have created a very nice game (which can be played with children from 8+ to very addicted usual gamers of all age). Already 250% funded in 3 days and the 6th SG has just been unlocked a few hours again.

Yea, new Kickstarter games! Thanks AD!

So glad to see this back again. I have been missing this segment of the site. And thanks for all the effort you put into the site (and everyone else that does as well!).

I have my eyes on a couple of games. Deep Space D-6 and Centauri Saga. Does anyone know more about there? I only have a few days left for each to decide.

@Harry –

As Cool Mini’s prominently-displayed Tom Vasel quote decrees, Arcadia Quest is an absolutely outstanding game. It’s a wonderfully competitive, campaign-driven game which allows you to dwell on it for weeks at a time as you jostle for position against your opponents through dungeon after dungeon.

It’s (rightfully) compared and contrasted with Super Dungeon Explore due to the nearly identical look and the suspicious timing of Cool Mini’s disassociation with Soda Pop Miniatures and their announcement of AQ, but the games are as different as could be outside of the “dungeon tiles, miniatures and treasures” thing. AQ is straight competition from the get-go, requiring no cooperation or partnerships to progress through. Heroes getting killed by the dungeon monsters will affect their “score”, but you just keep re-spawning until the dungeon is defeated. SDE (if you haven’t played it) is either a solid 1-vs-many crawl requiring a DM or a terrific full coop requiring constant communication and planning between players. And SDE is more monster-focused while AQ is all about the heroes. Where AQ smokes SDE (at least until Legends is released) is the excellent campaigning. The winner of a scenario in AQ chooses the next scenario that will be played (out of a few options) until the final scenario is reached; once beaten, scores are tallied and a winner is declared. Each scenario takes an hour or two depending on player count, and you carry all of your upgraded weaponry between scenarios.

But there’s still the “Cool Mini Problem” – all of those exclusives from the first campaign you can’t get your hands on now without playing into the hands of the eBay anti-gamers (my name for the plastic prospectors who feed off of Kickstarter exclusives with little care for actually playing with them, only capitalizing off of those of us who wish to…) While this can cripple (in my opinion) Zombicide, Rum and Bones and several other terrific Cool Mini games, it doesn’t hurt AQ as badly because Cool Mini has released several retail packs with additional heroes. If you’re playing with 4, additional heroes are necessary pretty quickly – with 12 heroes in the box, you’ll use all of them in every game (each player controls a “guild” of 3 heroes each). Most of the game’s variability lies in unique hero powers, so playing with the same 12 (only exploring different combinations) every game will have limited shelf life.

Of course, you’re backing the expansion now – and that will have a ton of exclusive heroes for you to choose from, so you should be fine. And the announcement of the Frost Dragon expansion in the current Kickstarter will probably make the game better than ever – a 6th, fully cooperative scenario for all players to play through after a victor has been declared from the campaign proper will go a long way to soothing the losers who may feel a little bitter at spending six nights on a game only to lose…

Thanks for the sentiments everyone! It’s always been my intention to help Jeff with game additions when time allows, and I hope to be able to sprinkle some in here or there again now. It always pains me to see the same games sitting on top of the “New Games” area on the right side of the main page for too long…

I pledged fo Perdition Mouth but I’m still not sure

I have Secret of the lost Tomb and I love the game but I don’t feel that I need more expansion, ther is a lot going one only with the base game.

I almost pledged for Victory and Glory but the 35$ shipping for Canada slowed my swing

I’m in for Century Saga

I also pledged for Lunarchitect…not on this list

Thanks for everything you’ve been doing on the site, and welcome back!

Great to have you back with this spot, AD! 🙂 I hope life calms down for you soon.

I’d like to add the one project I’m backing at the moment, a really interesting looking game from the always reliable Ragnar Brothers: Nina and Pinta…
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2061897488/nina-and-pinta