meepleriot

[meepleriot]

This might be the best video on boardgames I've seen so far. So much truth in it. Absolutely recommended.

[meepleriot]

The Pax-Project, Pt. 1

I’m a huge fan of the Pax-System! With its historical depth and the hight player interaction, this system pushes 2 of my main buttons, that make me interested in games. Over the last 2 years I aquired all of the Pax-Games out there (with the exception of Pax Penning, which I will defenitely get in the future). Of all the Pax-Games I own, I only played 3 so far, which is a bummer. So I started…

[meepleriot]

Session Report: Red Dust Rebellion

Friday evening we met for our second play of GMTs Red Dust Rebellion. RDR is volume XII in GMTs COIN series and it’s the first one that’s set in a sci-fi universe. It’s the year 2250 and Mars has been a colony for about 200 years. But tensions start to run high, with the Red Dust Movement trying to gain independence from Earth and want a Mars for Martians run by Martians. The Mars Government, a…

[meepleriot]

Session Report: 1812 - Napoleons Fateful March

Played my third game the other day of 1812: Napoleons Fateful March by VUCA Simulations and I have to say: I haven’t been impressed by a design as much in a very long time! This game just pushes all my buttons: Strong thematic gameplay, it’s highly strategic, lots of tough decicions, point to point movement, logistics, hidden information about the strength of troops als well as the orders they…

[meepleriot]

Top 10 new to me games of 2024!

Ok, so I already made a top 10 of my most played games of 2024. Now let’s go on with my top 10 of new to me games I played last year. And let’s see if my most played games are also my favorites. But maybe I’ll begin with some statistics: Last year I played 98 games out of which 68 were new to me. So more than one new game each week! Crazy if you think about it. My H-Index lies at 7. So 7 games…

[meepleriot]

New Years Resolutions

I guess everyone has those. Losing some weight, do more sports, read more books, and so on. I got them too, but there’s also a few things I wanna change about my boardgaming. Not my shelf, but comes pretty close. Far too often I look at my shelf and it makes me sad. That might wonder you, since those games usually bring us a lot of joyful hours. Sure they do, I love them. But there’s a lot of…

[meepleriot]

Session Report: Root.

𝗥𝗼𝗼𝘁 by Leder Games and designed by Cole Wehrle with Kyle Ferrin as an Artist, doesn’t need a lot of words, I guess, as by now, everybody in the boardgaming community knows, how great this game is. Since a couple of months, we have a monthly get together at our local boardgame bar Das Brett, to dive deeper into the game, cause this deserves to get played regularly. Not only are we trying out…

[meepleriot]

Top 10 meistgespielte Spiele 2024

Das Jahr ist vorbei, Zeit natürlich für die ein oder andere Top-Liste. Aber nach welchen Parametern auswählen? Ich hab mir gedacht, ich werde einfach mehrere Top Listen machen: Die Top 10 meiner meistgespielten Spiele, eine Top 10 der Spiele, die mich dieses Jahr am meisten begeistert haben und dann vielleicht noch eine Liste, mit Spielen, welche dieses Jahr erschienen sind und die mich überzeugt…

[meepleriot]

If you're into Wargames, Conflict Simulations, historical games or political games: Come, join the community, share your experiences, ask questions,... Let's build a network!

https://www.tumblr.com/communities/boardwargames

[meepleriot]

𝗥𝗲𝗱 𝗗𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗥𝗲𝗯𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻 by GMT Games.

RDR is the 12th volume in the COIN-Series and the first one, that's not depicting a historical conflict, but is set in a Sci-fi future on Mars.

Other than that it's classical COIN, with 4 faction, fighting for control over Mars: The Martian Government, that wants things to stay as they are and the Corporations that just want to make profits in every way possible, especially through terraforming Mars, form the COIN factions. The rebels are made up by the Red Dust Movement that want to become independent from earth and the Church of the Reclaimer, who are kinda eco-terrorists and cultists, who want to return Mars to its original state.

There's a lot in there one already knows from previous titles in the series. So if you already played a COIN or two, it's rather easy to get into it.

But there's also some nice twists and tweaks that set this off:

- The Aldrin Cycler as the way to get troops, resources and settlers from Earth to Mars. As they first have to go through transit, this adds a nice layer of logistics for the Corps and the Government.

- Connected with this is the Earth Confidence track, that the Corps and the Government fight over, as it gives them access to the Earth Government troops, as well as VPs for the Martian Government.

- The Red Dust Movement has very strong capability cards, that alter the rules in their favor.

- The Church plays totally different from any other faction in any other COIN Game: They have Asset Cards, that either function as resources to take actions, strong events only the Church can use, or simply to jump ahead in turn order. Very interesting and fun to play!

- You can do damage to places now.

- You can house settlers, changing the population value of spaces.

- Raging storms forbid certain actions in spaces.

All this are some very nice new elements in the game. Of course they bring with them more complexity. This is the heaviest game of the series I played so far. We struggled a bit in the beginning to fully grasp it, but after a few turns it went smoothly.

From my first play I can say I really like this one!

[meepleriot]

𝗥𝗼𝗼𝘁 by Leder Games and designed by Cole Wehrle, doesn't need a lot of words, I guess, as by now, everybody in the boardgaming community knows, how great this game is.

Since a couple of months, we have a monthly get together at our local boardgame bar Das Brett, to dive deeper into the game, cause this deserves to get played regularly.

Not only are we trying out the many different factions, we also explore the different mini expansions and maps of the game.

The last time we played the game, we tried the lakeside map, which changes the geography and connections in a big way, as there's a huge lake in the middle of the map. You either can try to go around it, which takes some time to get from A to B, or you can use the boat, that's an integral part of this map variant.

Using the boat not only gets you faster to where you wanna go, also, whenever you use it, you're allowed to draw a card, which makes this option very rewarding.

Generally this map is a lot of fun and adds to the tactical decision space the game already offers, and I can only recommend it, to give the game a little bit of variety in between.

But not every faction profits from this map variant in the same way. It's mostly for factions, that don't have it that easy to move around on the map. For example, we had The Underground Dutchy and the Maquis de Cat in play and both factions have a big radius of movement already. Also the Corvid Conspiracy, that was also in play, don't have to move a lot, as they can recruit into almost every space on the map.

Therefore the boat wasn't used that often and I think that map variant would have made more sense, with other factions on play, that have it harder to get around.

Still definitely wanna explore this map and it's tactical possibilities more, so for sure gonna play it again.