RogerBW's Blog

Thirsty Meeples June 2018 26 June 2018

Back to the boardgame café. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.

Our first game was Saltlands, a post-apocalyptic scavenger hunt, of which our first impression was that this is a game that tries very hard not to be played. The rules are not at all clear even about how setup works; and you get all these neat vehicles

but you don't get to use most of them in a smaller game; and they're only for the raiders; if you capture one, you don't get to use the miniature.

The raider trucks swarmed.

There's a really nifty system for moving your sand-yacht as the wind changes strength and direction… but if you capture a raider vehicle, while it's slower, you get to carry more cards and go up-wind.

The goal of the game is to turn up all the rumour cards (which move the coloured goal tokens about), then to get to one of those goals with the right cards. Which means in practice it's a scavenger hunt where you have to turn over lots and lots and lots of tokens – so it would have been really nice if the rules had made it clear that revealing an adjacent token isn't an action, while picking it up and getting the benefit of it is. (I think.)

In spite of this we managed to complete the game on the last action, with two out of three of us escaping. But, well, I saw this at Essen in 2016 and didn't back their kickstarter then… and I don't regret that, even if the plastic vehicles are really nifty; the random token system just serves to draw the game out, without letting you plan anything more than "get to as many tiles as possible". I may steal the mechanics I like (the wind system, mostly) and do something more interesting with them.

That took a while, so our other game was Museum Rush… which ended up feeling like Burgle Bros Lite. You're all thieves, stealing stuff from a museum; but the Clock cards that end the game are scattered randomly through the deck, and in my five turns I drew four of them, which meant I didn't get much in the way of nifty powers (in the same deck). It's OK, I guess, but I can't think of a reason I'd recommend this rather than Burgle Bros.

[Buy Saltlands at Amazon] [Buy Museum Rush at Amazon] and help support the blog. ["As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases."]

Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.

Search
Archive
Tags 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 3d printing action advent of code aeronautics aikakirja anecdote animation anime army astronomy audio audio tech aviation base commerce battletech beer boardgaming book of the week bookmonth chain of command children chris chronicle church of no redeeming virtues cold war comedy computing contemporary cornish smuggler cosmic encounter coup covid-19 crime cthulhu eternal cycling dead of winter doctor who documentary drama driving drone ecchi economics en garde espionage essen 2015 essen 2016 essen 2017 essen 2018 essen 2019 essen 2022 essen 2023 existential risk falklands war fandom fanfic fantasy feminism film firefly first world war flash point flight simulation food garmin drive gazebo genesys geocaching geodata gin gkp gurps gurps 101 gus harpoon historical history horror hugo 2014 hugo 2015 hugo 2016 hugo 2017 hugo 2018 hugo 2019 hugo 2020 hugo 2022 hugo-nebula reread in brief avoid instrumented life javascript julian simpson julie enfield kickstarter kotlin learn to play leaving earth linux liquor lovecraftiana lua mecha men with beards mpd museum music mystery naval noir non-fiction one for the brow opera parody paul temple perl perl weekly challenge photography podcast politics postscript powers prediction privacy project woolsack pyracantha python quantum rail raku ranting raspberry pi reading reading boardgames social real life restaurant reviews romance rpg a day rpgs ruby rust scala science fiction scythe second world war security shipwreck simutrans smartphone south atlantic war squaddies stationery steampunk stuarts suburbia superheroes suspense television the resistance the weekly challenge thirsty meeples thriller tin soldier torg toys trailers travel type 26 type 31 type 45 vietnam war war wargaming weather wives and sweethearts writing about writing x-wing young adult
Special All book reviews, All film reviews
Produced by aikakirja v0.1