This week’s Explorable Favorites (Jun 15)

Congrats! I never played Werewolf, but Claustrophobia is one of my favorites too. Awesome asymmetrical 2-player game! Tough decisions, varied scenarios, beautiful components. Can’t recommend it enough really.

Or maybe I’m just getting old….

Anyway, thanks for picking my shelf this week AD 🙂

I am in fact not a werewolf fan and still have not tried it as the early random eliminations seems a little brutal. ONUW does away with that part and lasting only 10 minutes or so it gives me so many hilarious, chaotic and a few “What the heck just happened” golden moments that can be such a blast. While it can be prone to alpha players people will usually quickly get into the game and I’ve never played just one game of this.

Claustrophobia on the other hand is as close to a perfect 2 player dungeon crawl as I can imagine. Rules are simple and quick to explain even for new players and games will seldom last more then 1 hour. Just a brilliant design with each die number giving different stats. Even with the high amount of die rolling going on there is a high amount of strategic choices for both parts but very little downtime at the same time. If I can’t play Advanced Civilization or 18XX I’d be more than happy to settle for Claustrophobia 😀

As for my own personal experiences:

Claustrophobia does intrigue the H-E-BGdot Echelon Toothpicks out of me. (I’m sorry with my Canadian Banner Call – hockey sticks is too derivative.) (And I’m guessing there will never be a BGdot Library entry for The **** Game). I have played Space Hulk once or twice and rather poorly. I admit – I enjoy Warhammer Questing but never got into the Full Metal Crusader end of The Workshop or tossed my space mace into the air like a slo-mo 2001 Bone of Epicness. I just don’t skirmish and all those space dwarves and orcz tantalized but they never went cardboard enough. Space Hulk was gamey-esque but all the facing and action counts. Ugh. Claustrophobia sounds about as close as I should probably get to the realm of Boys Sitting Around Tables Whipping Out Measuring Tapes.

Any Werewolf or social betrayal/traitor game for that matter is like Tabletop Dodgeball for me and I’m out in the second round. Either I have a very bad poker face or a very good one and that leads to someone wanting to pick on me. We have played it at cookouts or big count holiday parties and I’m usually dead by dawn and wandering over to splash in the kiddie pool or checking to see if there are any bacon wrapped scallops left. (And since I usually make them – there is a concealed stash :P) I can pull off a good sociopath coolness for The Resistance but Werewolf gets me thrown to the wolves and non-wolves alike.

@Akden & Bit Bot – oh you Wax Seal Niner Boys with your Beta Badges and Secret Unlocks that don’t even have officially badginess yet. 😛 Congrats and a fist shake – some of us won’t be seeing ‘Stone of the Sun’ until the dog days of July. 🙁

@Bit Bot I’m about a week worth of chit chatter behind – is that what you were gloating about and rolling around in virtual gold last week like Scrooge McDuck? 😛 😉 Ho ho

Well Dwellers in the City of Gold – for those reviews I tossed out when Featured Publishers was sitting about like a limp stick and couldn’t actually touch for myself- magical mystery glitch or not:

YOU’RE WELCOME! 😛 😛 😛 😉

Yo ho ho and a bottle of Sacred Shelf Spotlight! Congrats @inmarg on being the Chosen Meeple! 😉

Don’t forget to stop by and share the meta-game 🙂 I know you and I had some Claustrophobia chit chat as it is on my list and I’m always trying to help The Boy find his next Dungeon Crawl – hoping his next crawl is the Heroquest home. Interest piqued for BGdotters it seems.

Think I could like Claustrophobia.

Congrats Inmarg! I have had my eye on Claustrophobia for some time now.