#sierramadregames

[illuminatinggames]

A few shots of our latest round of Bios: Origins on #tabletopsimulator. I do continue to really enjoy this, and it is (a lot) better with the full compliment of 4 players, in my opinion anyway. But it’s not short, and TTS adds probably at least 10% to the play time. Our game took a bit over 4 hours - honestly not too bad for what the game gives you, but longer than any modern game from #sierramadregames not named High Frontier. Top tip 1: I think you want to be pretty aggressive about challenging the gods in Epoch I unless you *really* need whatever your elder is parked on; foundations last the whole game, give you diversity which can make your culture more durable, and are generally good. Early on, when people only have 1-2 elders, you can usually win if you call. Top tip 2: don’t forget to use the Library action to make the critical jumps to information levels 2 and 3. Top tip 3: Trade is super-strong. Never pass up an opportunity to grab it. Top tip 4: it’s possible to turn around a slow start, but it’s hard. The key is to build up your Free Will and Information levels don’t you can grab foundations, and not to get too distracted until you can have a decent elder pool. With chaos, revolutions, and dictators things can be quite fluid in Epochs III and IV, and advantages in Metallurgy, Mystics, and cities can be quite transient in Epochs II and III. Ideas can provide strong temporary advantages, but they aren’t permanent, and while the Foundations do stick around for an improbably long time, the cultures are just a lot more fluid than in traditional Civ games, so you can play opportunistically in the later epochs and hope to turn the tables. It’s not easy, but it can be done. Last thing: unless I’m missing something about resource distribution, give the experienced players the Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons. They seem significantly harder than Home Florensis and Homo Erectus. Erectus particularly, with their generally easy access to the Americas, has tons of space while Cro-Magnon is extremely cramped. I think next time I might try the first dispersal game, which probably adds 20min to the game but also might help even out Epoch I a bit. #bgg #boardgamegeek https://www.instagram.com/p/CDDqT73hWXw/?igshid=1pi1s8r5hu7w3

[patatedestenebres]

Coucou mes p'tites patates ! Nouvelle vidéo sur le YouTube de Patate des ténèbres, une rapide présentation de Greenland, un excellent jeu de Phil Eklund et Karim Chakroun, chez Sierra Madre games! N'hésites pas à liker, partager, t'abonner et laisser un commentaire ! #youtube #patatedestenebres #sierramadregames #jeudesociété #boardgames https://www.instagram.com/p/CCnohkIqte1/?igshid=1iocp0hpqan1w

[gryplanszowemyslowice]

Dziś nietuzinkowe granie w Bios Genesis :) Do zobaczenia za tydzień! #biosgenesis #sierramadregames #phileklund #gryplanszowe #planszowki #planszówki #grybezpradu #grybezprądu #boardgamesofinstagram #boardgames #boardgame #bgg #boardgamegeek #boardgamegeeks #bggcommunity #tabletop #tabletopgames #tabletopgame #boardgaming #analoggame #analoggames #geek #boardgamer #boardgameaddict #brädspel #giochidatavolo #jeudesociete #brettspiel #ボードゲーム (w: Gry Planszowe Mysłowice) https://www.instagram.com/p/B3aSMIvIEgS/?igshid=k85tn1zkhy62

[thosnod]

BGG Expansion pack #paxrenaissance #sierramadregames #juegosdemesa #labsk #boardgames #bgg #phileklund (en Galapagar)

[fragmentismo]

Aprendiendo a hablar #Neanderthal #SierraMadreGames #boardgames #juegosdemesa via Instagram https://ift.tt/2NG5f6g

[jeebstheman-blog-blog]

Last night, we brought Puerto Rico back to the table. It’s been too long. Also got Neanderthal played, which was really neat with how everything works. It was good times! #gamenight #boardgamenight #boardgames #riograndegames #sierramadregames #phileklund #andreasseyfarth https://www.instagram.com/p/BrVbroNDBeT/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=16ddlfmu6zkcu

[romirplayhouse]

Ajudando a escrever a história da Companhia das Índias Orientais em JOHN COMPANY, de Cole Wehrle, pela Sierra Madre Games. #colewehrle #sierramadregames #johncompany #ieco #economia #mercantilismo #jogodetabuleiro #boardgames #brettspiele https://www.instagram.com/p/Bqz40ZYDO73/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=iqydlg0htrgt

[cainite62]

I have it!! Gracias @lyo005!! #boardgames #HighFrontier #SierraMadreGames

[illuminatinggames]

My Tunit are having a bit of a hard time in Greenland from #sierramadregames on #tabletopsimulator. This is one of my favorite games that I very rarely get to play, so I always have to relearn how different the factions are: the Thule are expert hunters, the Tunit are extremely efficient users of energy, and the Norse have iron. Things got really cold in our game, so the hunting grounds got almost exhausted, but we also had pretty easy access to fuel for most of the game (both timber from the New World and biofuels from seals and whales) so keeping the tribes intact and alive actually wasn’t too hard. This is another Sierra Madre title that, while not technically too complicated, takes a play or two to figure out. There is some trickiness to the victory conditions and when to convert to monotheism and how to play the endgame that is not going to make sense until you have a feel for the game. It’s also hard to know when to try to out-survive your opponents, and when you have to fight. Anyway, I really like this game. Neanderthal is really interesting too, and in some ways is a somewhat more elegant, easier to understand version (it’s nice that there is a huge amount of rules overlap between the two games), but I have to say that even though I like the game aesthetics of Neanderthal more, I find the Greenland setting just a lot more evocative and engaging. These are both games that, if you think there is any chance at all that you might like them, you owe yourself to try. #bgg #boardgamegeek #boardgames #virtualgamenight #tabletopgames #tabletopgaming https://www.instagram.com/p/CB7a0qpB9lg/?igshid=1jc36u5qw6v8o

[illuminatinggames]

Bios Genesis. This is probably Kim & my favorite SMG game, or at least the one we play together the most. Some days you manage to colonize the earth, some days the earth gets you. We both got several single-celled life forms going, but they failed to evolve very far and then punishing radiation stripped the earth of most of its ingredients for life. I went to Mars very late in the game, in a last-ditch attempt to get something going at about the 2 billion year mark, but failed. Usually we manage to get at least plants evolved, and often even animals, but managing the delicate early growth phase of your single-celled organism is tricky and I think we were out of practice with the risks. So this game is only 3-4 years old now, but it already feels a little out of date as there has been a lot of progress in the science of early life. Bios Genesis encompasses a lot of different theories about how life might have first appeared, from the classic warm pond to lightning-in-a-primordial-soup to the deep sea vents (the last of which seems to be the current favorite among scientists studying this problem). Like a lot of SMG titles, you have to bear in mind a lot of it is speculation in the interests of gaming variety that probably does not reflect the views of actual experts. Even though there is a lot of good science in there, I wish SMG’s games would present less as authoritative and more as the flights of speculation and fancy that they usually are. But still, they’re a lot of fun and a great way to expose yourself to some of the ideas about the origins of life, or evolution, or whatever. #bgg #boardgamegeek #boardgames #sierramadregames https://www.instagram.com/p/B-rBmXRBJPH/?igshid=wn3rrz3q39xd

[illuminatinggames]

Another play of John Company! I’ve always wanted to own a Scottish Island via commercial oppression of an entire subcontinent. So, I’ve come to a few realizations about this game. Firstly, the rules are not great. I just discovered a rule I’ve been playing wrong all this time; fairly minor, but still. I have this complexity metric: how many plays does it take before I can play the game correctly with confidence. I’m apparently still making rules errors on this sucker at play 7 or 8. I don’t think the game is complicated, I think it’s just a case of a not-great rulebook. Second, and I’m surprised it took me this long to figure this out, but it seems clear the game you want to play here is the full 10-turn “campaign” game with possible deregulation. The costs and returns of various player investments seem clearly calibrated for playing 10 turns, not 6. In a short game, things like Captains and Shipyards are clearly pretty expensive for very limited return on investment, and even Factories are a crap shoot. All these take most of a 6 turn game just to recoup their costs, never mind actually make money. So after just turn 2 maybe and 3 definitely doing any of these things just doesn’t make any sense. But in a 10 turn game, where these investments with large up front costs have a lot longer to pay off, it seems like everything would open up quite a bit. With 4 players we got through 6 turns in about 3 hours, so 10 turns would be longish for this sort of game, but far from crazy. So anyway, now I’m super-curious to try that. The game has grown on me in the last couple plays as we’ve gotten the hang of the favor mechanic and have been able to manage the company more successfully. Although the game takes up to 6 players, I do recommend 4p as a good spot for pacing reasons. Like Pax Porfiriana, I’m not sure there is enough in there to really support 6 players. #bgg #boardgamegeek #boardgames #sierramadregames #colewerhle #johncompanyboardgame #johncompany #tabletopgames #boardgamenight #brettspiel #j2s (at Portola Valley, California) https://www.instagram.com/p/B9gPqcwhk9s/?igshid=5g130sr28onc

[illuminatinggames]

Bios: Origins, 4-player. My people didn’t fare super-well, but hey, at least we had music in the pre-historic past. I’ve been quite enjoying this! It unfortunately doesn’t quite escape some of Phil Eklund’s quirks - chiefly mildly unsatisfactory final scoring, but also a weird bolted-on politics module - but I do still think it’s quite good; we just hold Phil and #SierraMadreGames to a high standard around here. One of the really appealing things about the original Origins: How We Became Human (despite its manifest failings) was that it was untethered from the “strict progression” feel of most civilization games, and peoples really went through cycles of rise and fall. Bios Origins hasn’t totally lost that, but the foundations you acquire 45kya still do stick around through the modern day, giving your culture a coherency over the millennia which doesn’t make a ton of sense. But it’s fine; cultures can still decline and stage big comebacks late and the game is still *way* more interesting to me than traditional, fairly generic civ-builders, and it packs a lot of narrative into a reasonable 4hr playing time. Plus, it actually plays quite cleanly despite the legendarily opaque rulebook - please don’t give 2-3+ hours of you life or whatever to the online tutorial videos. Just (“just”) read the rules and push some pieces around for a bit and it’ll make sense if you have any kind of gaming instincts (it’s one of the better SMG titles in this regard imo). Anyway, even if it’s not the best SMG game of the decade, it’s a fitting capper to the Bios series (all of which I like a lot) and a great way to finish of a decade in which the biggest story in gaming for me was both the emergence of Sierra Madre and Phil Eklund as the most interesting force in gaming, and the fact that there is a real market for these things, when they’re done really well. With Cole Wehrle now following in his footsteps and doing hugely successful games in this style as well, there is reason for optimism in a niche that has otherwise felt like it’s been a bit stuck for a while. #bgg #boardgamegeek #boardgames #boardgamesofinstagram #boardgamenight #tabletopgames https://www.instagram.com/p/B9LPZ0vBzBq/?igshid=1v9p5kztty8uh

[illuminatinggames]

A few shots from a game of Bios: Origins 2nd. Still enjoying this! We played 2p; I do think moreso that other Bios and some Pax games, this really wants more players - 3 or 4. The 2p board is just a little empty, and the 3p game felt more dynamic. Here is my recommendation on this one: go direct to the advanced game (the “basic” game seems a little empty), but skip the First Dispersal option (which seems underdeveloped and a bit pointless). From the rulebook the game seems really daunting, but once you sit down and actually play it’s not bad at all - I actually think it’s easier than any of the recent Paxes and comparable to today’s high-end euros - but you’ve got to make scans/copies of the Rosetta Stone for people. It can be pretty swingy, and catching up isn’t exactly easy, but it’s a pretty dynamic game so the last two era can be exciting. There is enough going on here that I’m still figuring it out, but so far I’m liking it. #sierramadregames #boardgamegeek #boardgames #tabletopgames https://www.instagram.com/p/B67Cgy5hMCb/?igshid=ovjk67v9q7ha

[illuminatinggames]

I haven’t tried to use Vassal in ages, but with #gaminginthetimeofcovid19 I thought I’d give it a try again and try 2-player live Pax Rennaisance (the same day the Pax Rennaisance Deluxe Kickstarter goes live, yay!). Historically the problem with Vassal has been that it’s quite mousing-intensive, and this is bad for my various musculoskeletal issues. But I was pleased that this setup, a MacBook with a trackpad, which worked pretty nicely. It was about 90 minutes for a live game and I wouldn’t want to do more than that, and I’d need a bigger screen; Vassal is very screen-real-estate-intensive. And also rather finicky generally. And also doesn’t enforce rules. But it does have a lot of games I like, including almost everything in #sierramadregames modern catalog (although I’m holding out some hope that Greenland on iPad will get here soon), Root, and obviously a ton of wargames. https://www.instagram.com/p/B-tYOMXB-5q/?igshid=2xs26klomty8

[illuminatinggames]

Soloing Bios: Origins 2nd. I really *wanted* to like the original but had to admit, in the end, that it was deeply flawed as both simulation and game. 2nd clearly has major improvements including a massively reduced playing time to get through all four eras, and unlinking elders/innovation from your board state, so you can lose a bunch of units and cities and not be completely stuck and unable to do anything. It’s still a pretty brutal game, but my solo game saw several dramatic reversals of fortune, so maybe. My one too for veterans of the previous version would be to not be paranoid about expansion. In 1st, if you had a bunch of guys on the map and lost them for whatever reason, it could gum up your innovation track and leave you paralyzed for an hour or more as you tried to recover. This is no longer really the case, and staking out territory is important. After just the solo game I have some concerns, a couple things I’m going to keep an eye on, but it seems fairly promising and I’m looking forward to giving it a try with actual players. Like most (but not all) SMG titles, it seems like you want to skip to the advanced game. And make a scan of the Rosetta Stone so everyone can have a copy. #bgg #boardgamegeek #sierramadregames https://www.instagram.com/p/B5mTocDBt5e/?igshid=usjgoehtsawk

[illuminatinggames]

John Company. I had kinda laid off of this game last year after playing a number of games where players were constantly trying to extract cash payments for favors and the Chairman was demanding payouts or he’d zero your budget, and the company would just constantly fall apart due to infighting. But playing it again after a reset was actually really fun. I think we (or I anyway) just realized that even though you may be Governor of a huge and lucrative Governorship, the opportunities for direct personal enrichment aren’t actually that high, so the currency of deals really does usually need to be favors rather than cash transactions (the favor mechanic is pretty clever). Paying cash for favors inside the company is just almost never worth it. Especially as Chairperson though you should both ask for and call in favors aggressively. I still wish the trading dice rolls weren’t quite so all-or-nothing - our company still managed to fail due to several really bad trading die rolls in a row - but with a slightly more sensible set of deal-making terms this was definitely fun to play again, and I definitely wouldn’t mind getting it back in the rotation. It’s a little too bad Sierra Madre is so wedded to the small footprint - the general design of the board is quite nice, but the information is just so tiny. #bgg #boardgamegeek #boardgames #sierramadregames #tabletopgames #boardgameday #brettspiele #j2s https://www.instagram.com/p/B8XeQLhBQO6/?igshid=19tqc26h0in1t