HOMM 3 the Board Game

[Varen Tai]

OK, as I get to it, I'll post pics of the minis and other game components here for anyone who is interested.

Just saying, I've played every iteration of HOMM since King's Bounty first came out over 30 years ago! One of my all-time favorite series. I have even enjoyed the later ones, HOMM 6 & 7, despite all the hate they got.

[Varen Tai]

OK, here we go with the stream of pics! This was fun for me to do and none of you is obligated to read any of this, but I figgered someone might be interested.

Example of the cities, heroes, and hexes with the map pieces. Each faction has its own map with removable pieces to show when each part has been built. On top is the Necropolis, bottom is the Castle.

Each hero has another hero on the other side from the same faction. All heroes have a specialty, making them unique, and they can go up to level 7.

The hex pieces go from easy to hard and have a variety of interactable areas and treasures.

This is the combat map - just like the video game, combat takes place on a zoomed in version of the overland map. Each faction starts on one of the two sides and they duke it out in the middle.

[Varen Tai]

Each creature card from a faction has two sides - this is the basic side. From the Dungeon faction, ranging from the weakest to the strongest.

Once they are upgraded, they get additional abilities, though if they take enough damage, they downgrade to the flip side and you have to upgrade them again, or re-recruit them if they die completely.

[Varen Tai]

These are the miniatures from the Dungeon faction (same as the cards above). Each faction has a city to mark the map (on the left), and two hero minis.

From the Necropolis faction.

[Varen Tai]

Minis from the Neutral faction - they have no town and are usually what you fight on the main map.

Castle faction.

[Varen Tai]

Fortress faction.

Tower faction.

[Varen Tai]

Rampart faction.

Inferno faction.

[Basil_Bottletop]

@Harding

 

My Friday night D&D night has morphed into board game night since Gen Con -back in August- because the guilt pile was getting awfully high (and the GM needed a break anyways). We play three players, but they sometimes run stuff two player. What are you into?

[Harding]

1 minute ago, Basil_Bottletop said:

@Harding

 

My Friday night D&D night has morphed into board game night since Gen Con -back in August- because the guilt pile was getting awfully high (and the GM needed a break anyways). We play three players, but they sometimes run stuff two player. What are you into?

Anything with a cool setting. Gloomhaven, Marvel Legendary (card building game), Cathan, Risk, Android, Hero Quest, Warhammer, Munchkin among many others

[Varen Tai]

9 minutes ago, Harding said:

Anything with a cool setting. Gloomhaven, Marvel Legendary (card building game), Cathan, Risk, Android, Hero Quest, Warhammer, Munchkin among many others

Oooo, android! I have netrunner and Android both. They are both really fun! When anyone asks me to play Clue, I suggest Android instead. 😁

I got tired of Munchkin - it's a great gateway drug because it's so random that even newbies can feel like they have a chance to win, but it's so random where even newbies have a chance to win that I stopped enjoying it.

I have Gloomhaven but have not been able to gather a group with any regularity to actually do more than a couple of hours of learning on the first scenario. And since it's definitely a campaign game, you gotta have some level of continuity.

In a similar vein as Gloomhaven, I also have Swords & Sorcery, another campaign based figurine game. Got to play the first few scenarios of that with a group before the group dissolved for RL reasons, and that was really fun as well! Highly recommended!

My wife and I frequently play Everdell, along with the Spirecrest expansion, Just got Newleaf this last week for her birthday, but we haven't had a chance to try it out yet. Everdell is definitely her favorite.

[Basil_Bottletop]

We actually don't play a ton of legacy games like Gloomhaven, much to my chagrin. They even owned them, but I think when I started poking for them, we were still very much in the guilt pile mode to get through as many games as possible on any given Friday night. About the only one we saw all the way through was a trick-taking card game called The Crew. There's an underwater version and a space version.

So this game group was made years ago and we've done ttrpgs, a few Diablo-clone multiplayer video games, a bunch of Hot Seat style Civ games, and then of course board games. But one thing that came up around Thanksgiving last year was that the declaration that 'He always wins' (HE changes depending on who we're playfully mad at in that moment). So I started keeping track of winners, but only for games with just the three of us because we found that when we added other people -which happens just frequent enough to mess with the stats- that it does tend to twist the dynamic enough.

 

Here is the list as of last Friday. We've played many of them multiple times and we've definitely played some of the old classics before this list was formed, but if any of these strike your fancy, I can give a quick review.

Terraforming Mars - Dice

Creature Comforts

Lost Ruins of Arnak

Wingspan

Ticket to Ride

Empire's End

Apiary

Terraforming Mars CPU

Tapestry

Rolling Realms

Barenpark

Earth

Raising Robots

The Fox Experiment

Fantasy Realms

Bunny Kingdom in the Sky

Cartographers

Castles of Burgundy

Redwood

Spell Smashers

Wyrmspan

Abandon All Artichokes

Arboretum

Isle of Trains

World Wonders

Faeries & Magical Beasts

Stonespire Architects

Panda Royale

[Basil_Bottletop]

Everdell, Wingspan, Terraforming Mars, Through the Ages, Sagrada, Carcasonne, and Splendor all have decent online versions you can get off Steam. We really like them in general, but one of our members tends to binge play them to the point that the other two of us don't want anything to do with his expertise, unless we're confident in our own skills (Through the Ages and Terraforming Mars are the two that are most likely).

But having the ability to let the computer do the math or 'You CAN'T do that' for you is nice.

Also, on those rare occasions when I can't get to their house but I can hide away in the basement with my laptop and not be a responsible adult/parent, having the online option is nice. We just use speaker phone or something like Discord voice channels.

Edited March 27 by Basil_Bottletop (see edit history)

[Harding]

I binged Talisman for years (both the physical and digital version on Steam), but I always end up winning so my regular group of players don't wanna play anymore.

 

Of the list you've shown, the only ones I know (but never played) are Carcasonne, Spell Smashers and Terraforming Mars. If you may, I would like a quick review when you have time. I was on verge of buying Spell Smashers in the past, but ended up spending on Netrunner instead *wink wink toward Varen*

[Varen Tai]

yeah, no regrets on buying Netrunner. One of the single best 2 player games I've ever owned.

[Basil_Bottletop]

Spell Smasher is a word building game, aka... a spelling game. We enjoy all of the different types of them, but one of our gaming members does have some dyslexia and so we do allow you to google to make sure you're spelling a word right before submitting it. Overall, it's a fun enough themed game of spelling though. You fight monsters with words, you buy gear and potions to help you score higher. It has a meager 'hardship' recovery rule that helps in larger groups, but it might be more balancing in a two person game because both players would be utilizing it more frequently.

I know spelling games can be hit or miss with some players, but just know that at it's most basic function the game is a 'draw some cards, try to make a high scoring word, best words win the game'.